Free The Wrong Stuff by Sharon Fiffer Page A

than this cozy little drawing implied—all the visitors’ cabins, artists’ residences, and work spaces were drawn in. The lodge faced east, and the gallery was just west of it. Jane tried to memorize it like a watch face. If the lodge and gallery were at twelve o’clock, then the barn was at ten. That would put Blake’s studio at eleven, just behind the trees from where Jane had found Rick Moore.
    Jane saw Blake wave and nod to someone in the doorway to his right. Jane supposed it led to the kitchen since the young woman standing there wore a white canvas apron over her tight blue jeans. Blake then signaled to Glen, pointing toward the kitchen and nodding.
    â€œCheryl and the staff have tea prepared, but instead of setting up in here as usual, we’re going to ask that you please serve yourselves from the kitchen and be as comfortable as you can here in the great room while the police finish up their business,” said Glen, and after one beat, “Rick loved tea time. Especially the way we at Campbell and LaSalle celebrated it every day. I think we should all go on and enjoy it now.”
    â€œâ€˜We at Campbell and LaSalle’ love our tea?” Jane asked. “He’s an animated brochure.”
    â€œI’m going to cut him some slack here,” Tim said. “I think maybe there’s just some comfort in retreating into a script.”
    At least the script had merit. Jane realized that she had never seen a tea table laid out quite like the spread at Campbell and LaSalle.
    There were the sandwiches: smoked salmon and heavenly date bread and butter; cucumber, cress, thinly sliced radishes, again with that real, pale butter that made you forget your name when it melted on your tongue; and, as a matter of fact, tongue; and pastrami, shaved so thinly and placed so delicately on rye rounds, painted so beautifully with a brown mustard, that each little morsel was a work of art; and the chicken salad and curried egg salad on dense white bread cut into shapes of hens and eggs.
    The sweet trays were laden with slices of cake and scones; tiny muffins that looked carved out of some rich marble; butter cookies and fruit tarts; and whole multi-tiered trays reserved for chocolate: dark chocolate mint cakes, éclairs, slices of seven-layer cocoa bliss. Bowls of whipped cream and fresh fruit were interspersed with the trays.
    â€œThe berries alone are exotic. Where in Michigan in late fall do you get strawberries that look like that?” Jane asked, overwhelmed with the bounty laid out before her.
    â€œGlen and Blake are both loaded: family money, earned money, inherited money. They’re green magnets. This property belonged to Blake’s grandfather. It was the family compound, hunting lodge, and summer camp. He and Glen decided to run this place from here and make it a mecca for artists and people who appreciated fine things,” said Tim, heaping his plate with sandwiches.
    â€œAre they a couple?”
    â€œNot everyone who dresses well and has taste and good manners is gay, my dear,” Tim said, adding, “more’s the pity. Glen was widowed years ago. His wife was a painter who died in a car accident. Blake’s never married, but as you can imagine, there are several willing consorts-in-waiting.”
    Jane looked over at Blake, who was drinking tea and talking to the long-haired woman speaking directly into his ear. He was bending close to her, listening intently, and nodding. The police were circulating, asking guests one by one to step out into Blake’s studio for interviews.
    A blond young man, wearing jeans so covered in paint splatters that it looked more like a purposeful fashion statement than the garb of the workingman, came over to Tim and began talking as if they had been studio mates for years.
    â€œI warned him about that tent, but no, he was such a know-it-all, really more like a got-to-know-it-all, I guess. He kept saying he had to