Catering to Nobody

“What was the mistrial about?”

“Sex.”

“Gee, copper, thanks a lot. Even Vonette told me that.”

“Korman was brought to trial on charges of having sex with a minor. Our Bebe Hollenbeck. This guy said that Korman was then also under investigation by the Illinois Board of Medical Examiners for taking liberties with patients, which would explain the rest of the article you ripped.”

“Sorry about that.”

“That’s the difference between you and Laura Smiley,” said Schulz. “She was careful with evidence, that cop told me. She was going to be a witness against Korman. She was a young woman, then, a new teacher, in her twenties this guy thought.”

“So why the mistrial?”

“It was 1967. Supreme Court passed down the Miranda ruling in 1966. Cops weren’t used to it yet. They forgot to advise Korman—of his rights, you know.” He paused for a minute, and I could imagine him drinking coffee, shaking his head. “Anyway,” he went on, “Korman was under a cloud. Then this young Bebe, on her seventeenth birthday, mind you, drinks an entire bottle of liquor and dies on the spot. More bad publicity, so Korman moves out here to get a fresh start.”

“And how did Laura Smiley get involved after that?”

“Now that’s what the cop remembers, clear as a bell. After the mistrial, the D.A. decided not to attempt another trial. So this young teacher comes strutting into his office and throws one holy fit. Turns out her father is an alcoholic. Bebe’s mother is headed that way, so Laura wants to protect her student.”

“What happened?”

Schulz said, “Laura screamed that Fritz Korman was a menace to all women. Said she had evidence that could curtail his practice of medicine permanently. Said if the cops wouldn’t get him, she would. She tried to get the Board of Medical Examiners to do something too, but Korman decided to move out here, and rather than revoking his license, the board said, Just don’t come back to this state. Are you ready for this? Our friend went back to the cops, banged on this investigator’s desk. She said this will happen again over her dead body. Then she marched out. Laura Smiley.”

I said, “But then the Kormans, not knowing her feelings, you’d have to assume, picked Aspen Meadow to live in. Vonette told me back then there was medical licensing reciprocity with Illinois. They liked the place when Laura brought them here, back when they were all getting along.” I thought for a minute, then went on, “Nobody figured on Laura’s parents being killed. She moved back. Her parents were gone, Bebe was gone, and the Kormans were already settled in her hometown, where she had a house and friends. She must have decided to put it behind her.”

“Appears that way. Then after twenty years, something snapped.”

“If she had something on him, why wait? Maybe she was blackmailing him.” I paused. “I don’t think so, though. She wasn’t that type. And it goes against what she said in a note she wrote just before she died.”

“Oh God. I don’t even want to hear how you got that. Why don’t you just tell me the rest of what you’ve been up to.”

I dug out the note to Arch and read it aloud. Then I told Shulz that Laura had been friendly with Pomeroy, that they had been in an Al-Anon group together.

“And speaking of that, there was this weird thing with the drugstore,” I said.

“You break in there, too? If somebody’s listening in on this line, you’re going to have to get back into business. Then you can hire me as a caterer after they fire me from being a cop.”

“Are you interested in the drugstore or not? This’ll go a long way toward getting that body exhumed.”

“Don’t tell me,” he said. “You found the murder weapon on aisle B.”

“Your new deputy coroner said Laura had a foreign substance, Valium, in her stomach. She didn’t have a prescription for Valium or any other tranquilizer. And if she belonged to one of the AA organizations there’s a good chance she didn’t drink or take drugs at all.” I hesitated. “Come to think of it, there wasn’t any liquor in her house, either. Odd stuff like flour in a flower box—”

“What?”

“Just her sense of humor. Puns.”

Schulz clucked his tongue.

I said, “I’m wondering if that person in Laura’s house the day I set off the alarm…” I was thinking. “Was, maybe, looking for that evidence?” I stopped. “In the living room—” I began, remembering something. “Vonette—”

“She was in there?”

“No. She had a flask. At the reception. She added something to her drink.”

“You’re thinking she may have fixed Fritz’s drink, too? Remember any pellets, Goldy, or just a flask?”

I said, “Pomeroy Locraft says Fritz was cheating on Vonette. If she knew he was up to his old tricks, maybe she’d take some kind of corrective steps.”

“Hmm.”

“Pomeroy saw the flask, too. Maybe she spilled her guts to him the way she did with us.” I chewed my nails for a second. “I’m going out there tomorrow—I’ll see what I can dig up.”

“I wish you’d quit saying dig up to a homicide investigator,” said Schulz. Then, “You still going out with me on Halloween?”

“Saturday night? Oh yes.” How was I going to hide the food for the athletic club party from him? I didn’t want to have to explain illegal catering. “I was wondering if you could pick Arch up and I’ll meet you there. I have a late cleaning job,” I fibbed. “But what made you think of Halloween?”

“I’ve seen the way you go goo-goo eyed over this Pomeroy fella. I want you to remember our date. Just in case he flirts with you when you go out there investigating.”

“Aha,” I said, pleased. “The jealous sort.”

“Maybe so,” he replied evenly. “But look at it this way. It’s better to be with a great investigator than an incompetent driving instructor.”

The road to the Wildlife Preserve was actually a wide, bumpy, mud-and-rock affair that was not officially open to the public between mid-September and the beginning of June. The altitude was about a thousand feet above town, and it snowed in greater abundance there, both early and late. I already knew how to lift and pull the swing gate to enter in the off season, since it had only been last April that Arch had done his beekeeping project with Pomeroy.

Before leaving I had written a note for Patty Sue:

Gone to see Driver Educator. Back late. Please give Arch nonchocolate supper.

And one for Arch:

Am out at Pom’s getting honey. If P.S. not back by supper, have tuna casserole in refrig. Lich costume needs cotton batting. Please ride bike to Aspen Meadow Drug and charge some. I need to make costume tonight because tomorrow I have to cook for party.

Love, Mom

Arch, Arch. I swerved to avoid a pothole full of snow melt and remembered how it had been even muddier in April when he had jumped up and down in enthusiasm each time I’d picked him up after working with Pom. That effervescence, that love for his teachers and for learning, was all gone now.

“The bees are so neat, Mom,” he had said. “They swarm once a year, and they usually come back to the same place. They come back to Pom’s because of all the great wildflowers out in the Preserve. And they know where all the flowers are! You see there’s this, like, navigator bee who goes out and finds bushes and stuff and comes back and tells the other bees how to get there. It’s very complicated. Bees are smart.”

“Bees? Smart?”

“Oh yes,” he said enthusiastically, “they are very intelligent. Pom and I wear white because the bees like it. They’re afraid of black because that reminds them of bears. It’s way back in their memory. Sort of like how you hate snakes, and in the Bible somebody says women don’t like snakes? Bees know that bears steal their honey so they all learned to hate the color black and to attack big black animals on two feet. So we have to wear white.”

“I thought honeybees didn’t sting.”

“Of course they sting,” he protested. “Why do you think we have to wear those nets over our faces? Actually, what makes them sting is if they get scared. You know, somebody invades the hive or something. That’s why you’ve got to smoke them out before you go in for the honey. You see,” he concluded in his patronizing tone, “there’s really a lot to learn if you want to become a bee-keeper. You’d better not try it, Mom.”

I rolled down the window to look for elk or deer trying to get into the Preserve before hunting season began. The day was warm, but a cool breeze buffeted the stands of pine that bordered the road. From a distance I could see the stone chimney of Pom’s cabin. Although I knew his honey shed was large enough to also serve as a garage, he had left six vehicles in varying states of abandonment parked every which way on the surrounding property. Growing up in New Jersey, I had noticed that the natives accumulated hydrangeas. Coloradans, on the other hand, collected cars. And parked them in their garages and yards so they could use the nearly new four-wheel drive to get out in the snow, the old pickup to haul stuff, the old Scout with the plow to do the driveway, the station wagon to take everybody skiing, and the gutted VW and Chevy because they had such great parts.

“Glad you could make it,” Pomeroy said and gave that heart-melting half smile before stepping aside for me to enter.

I said, “I kind of miss coming out here. Arch loved doing work with you.”

“And I liked working with him. He’s a great kid. You’re lucky.”

I sighed in spite of myself. “Being a parent is not all roses, Pom. It’s almost as hard as being married.”

He blushed an absolutely purple hue. Then I thought again of what Marla had said. Was he that hung up on his ex? Even Marla and I weren’t that bad about John Richard. Whatever the reason, I already felt I’d blown it.

He said, “Why don’t you sit down and have some herb tea? Got some great honey for it.”

I looked around the one-room house. It had probably been a hunter’s cabin before the area was declared a preserve. In front of the picture window were two telescopes. These I assumed could be trained on the beehives, which I knew to be upwind of the cabin, at a small distance in the meadow.

“Watching the birds and the bees?” I said while he was filling the teapot. I peered into one of the scopes.

“No.”

“Watching wildlife?”

He didn’t say anything. Maybe he still felt guilty about the driving lesson. In any event, his mind was elsewhere.

“I got a car,” I said. “Vonette’s loaning me one.”

“Great.”

More silence.

I said, “Are you coming to the club’s Halloween party?”

A nod.

I said, “Don’t tell anybody, I’m making the food.” He snorted. “Cleaning the place, too. Hey!” I had moved the scope to focus on the area just below the hives. “You have a garden.”

“Yeah,” he said, “in springtime. Want your honey now?”

I took three large jars from him and gave him a check. Then I looked around the room for something else to talk about.

“Has it snowed up here yet?” I said brightly. “Do you see more or less wildlife when there’s snow on the ground?”

Pomeroy reached for two mugs, placed a teabag in the pot, and cocked his head at me.

“You want to see wildlife, Goldy? Look through the other telescope. This is Wednesday, lunchtime, warm weather. Should be right on schedule. This is what I wanted you to see.”

I gave him a sideways glance and stepped over to the other scope. Without moving it I looked in. Far out in the meadow there was movement. My skin went cold.

It was people. One on top of the other. One was Patty Sue. With Fritz Korman.

Nobody had to tell them about the birds and the bees.

CHAPTER 21

I don’t believe this.”

No response from Pomeroy.

I looked at him. “Do they come here often?”

He poured the water into the teapot and steam clouded his face.

“Twice in the last couple of weeks. Weather’s been nice. You know how people like to do it out-of-doors in this state. The hikers generally save it for summer, though.”

My eyes scanned the room. He set the tea tray on the table. It was disconcerting to be witnessing the sexual activity of another couple while in the company of a man to whom one was attracted.

Pomeroy filled the mugs with tea. I couldn’t help noticing the way his shoulders moved under his soft flannel shirt. I wondered who did his laundry, and looked around the room for a washing machine. His couch, tables, and chairs were rough-hewn pine scattered with store-bought pillows. The furniture looked homemade. There were no modern conveniences besides a refrigerator and oven in the open kitchen. In the living area were several lamps, and by his bed in one corner were a radiophone and alarm clock. So he had electricity and water, anyway. If Patty Sue and Fritz had wanted a cool drink or piece of toast for a postcoital snack, they could have marched on up. Right.

I looked again at Pomeroy, this engaging hermit in the middle of his homemade couch in the middle of his homemade cabin in the middle of nowhere. I ran my fingers over the green-brown coffee table made from pine beetle-killed wood.

He said, “Well?”

I moved a ceramic pot filled with ivy from one side of the table to the other, and thought.

“It makes sense,” I said finally. “I was in his office last week looking for some files. Patty Sue had gone in to see him, but I never saw her come back out. This Monday I was over there and Arch showed me the back door to the office, which I never knew existed. So.”

Pom said, “What were you looking for in his files?”

I stood up and went over to the window. Patty Sue and Fritz were walking through the tall grass toward the trees where the Jeep was just visible.

“Oh,” I said dully, “you know I’m trying to get my catering going again. The cops aren’t making much headway so I’m looking into things myself. Trying to figure out what the connection between Fritz and Laura Smiley was, why someone would try to poison him at her funeral. Trying to answer big questions like that while he’s banging away on my roommate.”

“Find anything?”

“No.”

He stood up and walked to his cooking area, then came back with a plate of hot biscuits and a bowl of honey.

He said, “I made these for you. The honey’s from a new batch of bees I sent away for from a catalog. South American. Mean as can be—sometimes they chase me off. Good producers, though.”

He split one of the steaming rounds, plastered it with honey, then handed it to me on a paper napkin. It was delicious.

He said, “Surprised at a man’s cooking?”

“For heaven’s sake, Pom, will you get serious? Even the police have told me more than you have, which is that Fritz cheats on Vonette, which is something I already knew from his past, thank you.”

“What do you want to know?”

“Do you know why Laura went to see Fritz? If you two were such pals, why wouldn’t she tell you something as important as that? She left an article in her locker. She was going to show it to Patty Sue and Trixie. It was about a mistrial. Was she trying to warn them about something?”

“I already told you, she didn’t tell me everything. She had known a student, Vonette’s daughter, who was her friend. Since Laura was the daughter of an alcoholic, she relived the whole scenario by seeing this neglected teenage daughter, who then had a stepfather coming on to her. She tried to stop it. When that backfired, and Laura’s parents died, she tried to let it go in Al-Anon. But she was shocked when I told her what was going on out here.”

“That was recent, wasn’t it?”

He looked at me and nodded. “Last few months.”

I said, “Was it at the athletic club, and Marla stumbled in on your conversation?”

“Yeah. Laura said, ‘He told me he’d cleaned up his act.’ ” Pomeroy looked at me. He said, “Those were her words. ‘After twenty years,’ she said, ‘I can’t believe he’s up to his old tricks.’ ” He paused and bit into a biscuit. “After we talked, she came out to work with me. She saw them out there in the meadow. She was angry, seeing this again after all these years, him going after a younger woman. ‘I can’t believe it,’ she kept saying, ‘he swore to me when I first moved back here that he’d changed.’ ” Pomeroy cleared his throat. “I do know this. She had something on Korman besides what I’m telling you. She said, ‘This time there will be justice, you can count on it.’ She was beside herself. I had to drive her home. That’s when she left the science text in my car, by the way. Anyway, maybe seeing them was what triggered her. The next thing you know, suicide.”

“It must be convenient for Fritz,” I mused, “the women in his life just offing themselves when the going gets rough. First Bebe Hollenbeck, then Laura Smiley.”

“Better keep an eye on your roommate,” added Pomeroy.

Suddenly I was exhausted by it all. Now that the landscape was empty of people I turned my attention out the window. Several gently sloping acres in what could roughly be termed Pomeroy’s front yard eventually met the creek, one of the high tributaries of the Upper Cottonwood. The white-hives where Arch and Pomeroy had worked so diligently last spring ranged along the hill.

“What are the bees doing now?” I asked. “Still producing honey?”

“When it’s warm in October like this, they’ll fly. Not many flowers now, of course, so the production’s real low.”

A series of posts jutted along the creek front, with rope between some of them. The rope led to several of the hives.

I said, “What’s all that heavy twine?”

He laughed. “Old-fashioned burglar alarm. Arch just loved it, said he was going to use it in one of his dragon-adventures, or whatever they’re called. Somebody comes up from the creek trying to break into your place, trips over the rope, the hives topple over and you’ve got yourself a swarm of bees that’ll do more damage than a shotgun.”

We were quiet for a few minutes.

I said, “Arch really thought you were the greatest.”

“I enjoyed him. I like all the kids. With Laura gone, I don’t know if the teachers will be willing to let the students come out here for projects. I’ll miss them. A lot.”

“Did you notice anything strange about Arch? I mean last spring, was he secretive or—”

“No.” Pomeroy waved his hand at me. “We had great talks, he was always very serious about everything. I could see why Laura got such a kick out of him.” Pom gave me a long look with those brown eyes, full of sadness and pity.

My voice was hard. “I’ve been thinking that she shared too much with him. I’m not convinced it was healthy.”

He shrugged. “I loved to talk to Arch, too. Sometimes it was like talking to a little adult. Maybe Laura felt the same way, I don’t know. But I know she and Arch did admire each other.” He paused. “Something else you should know, if you’re worried about your relationship with Arch.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Arch said his mother was pretty tough. He even said one of the reasons he wasn’t cool was that all the kids complained about how bad their mothers’ cooking was, slime and worms and mold and so on. But to be perfectly honest, he would tell me, his mother’s cooking was pretty good.”

And with that shred of good news amidst all the bad, I said goodbye to Pomeroy and smiled all the way down the dirt road through the trees, back toward town.

“Mom, I got the batting,” Arch announced when I strode into our house and banged the door behind me. “I opened the book to the lich illustration, so you can see what I need to look like. I’m going to wear it to the athletic club. Maybe some of the people will think I’m a midget and not a kid.”

I hugged him. “Not likely. Midgets aren’t as neat as eleven-year-olds.”

He patted my back. “Did you have a good day or something?”

“Do I have to have a good day to give my own kid a hug?”

“Sorry. You just haven’t seemed happy lately. Neither has Patty Sue.”

No kidding.

“Did you have a snack?” I said.

“Well, they had burritos for lunch at school and I hate them, so I ordered from the Chinese place when I got home because I didn’t exactly want tuna casserole. I charged it. Hope that’s okay. Patty Sue came in a little while ago and she was hungry, too.” He paused.

“Go on.”

“Well,” he said as he pushed his glasses back up his nose, “when the guy came with our order and we opened all those little boxes, I said, Hey, this is like the boxes I used to get my goldfish in from the pet store. I felt real bad because then Patty Sue went into the bathroom and threw up.”

“Oh, God. Is she sleeping now?”

“I think so,” said Arch with a rueful twist of his mouth. “I knocked on her door and asked her if I could bring her some sweet-and-sour pork on a plate, sort of like breakfast in bed, but she said the smell of it made her sick, and please don’t talk about the goldfish.”

“Any more good news?”

“Vonette called. She sounded real upset. Said she’s a wreck and wants you to call her about the car.”

I shook my head and headed down toward my sewing room. I said, “That can wait.”

“Good,” said Arch as he retreated, “because I need to use the phone and I didn’t want to use the business line.”

We parted and I reluctantly plugged in the Japanese sewing machine I had bought from a traveling salesman who had failed to mention the all-Japanese instruction booklet. But I had been smart enough to figure out how to go forward and backward, and, staring at the illustration for the lich, I figured that was all I needed.

A robe like a Druid priest’s with batting in the shoulders and sleeves like a magician’s, the description said; the costume should have a ragged but costly aspect. The lich face was terrifying, like a skull. I drew on the material with a tailor’s pencil, then cut and sewed until the hood and shoulders were done and all it needed was a hem. Arch could paint the muslin any colors he wanted, and knowing him, he would.

The picture in the book was black and white. My gaze wandered to the caption, which read:

The lich specializes in vengeful activity. It uses spells, charms, traps and poison potions to punish the wicked. One spell of particular use is raising the dead. By communicating with deceased victims, the lich gathers evidence against evildoers. It carries out its plan of vengeance using small sharp weapons and clerical spells such as deep sleep, fireball, and scaring its victims to death. The lich stops only when the wicked one is dead.

I set aside the costume. Jesus wept, I remembered, before he raised Lazarus. I had no such grand plans. But I wept anyway.

CHAPTER 22

Todd?” came Arch’s whisper over the phone, “I can’t talk long. I’ve been trying to reach you since yesterday.”

“Our phone’s been broken. What’s wrong? Does she suspect something?”

“No, she’s sewing,” Arch replied. “But I’ve still got to be careful.”

I’d wiped my face, blown my nose. Now I breathed oh-so-shallowly as I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece.

Todd said, “I can barely hear you. Do you want me to come over?”

“No,” said Arch, “no time before dinner.” He paused. “Listen, you’re not going to believe this. I got it.”

Todd asked, “Got what?”

“A weapon, silly,” Arch said with an impatient hiss. “It’s better than a knife too, because it’s just like in the book. Small and sharp. I found it in a plastic bag in my grandmother’s car. We’ll have to clean it later. It’s under our woodpile now.”

“Great!” replied Todd. “What spell are you going to use?”

“How about fireball?”

“Ever done it before?”

“Well,” admitted Arch, “not in real life.”

“Easy,” said Todd, “you could just make a Molotov cocktail. Get yourself a bottle, see, and fill it with gasoline—”

“Who’re you talking to?” asked a sleepy Patty Sue as she slouched into the room.

I pressed the receiver back into the cradle.

I said, “Nobody. Just checking to see if the phone’s free so I can call Vonette.”

She tilted her head at me. “What are you making for dinner? Arch ordered some Chinese stuff but it didn’t look that great to me. I am hungry, though.”

I said, “You’ve had a big day.”

She nodded, yawned again.

“Sorry we don’t have anything to eat,” I lied. “In fact I need you and Arch to go to the store for me before dinner—”

“But I haven’t even gotten my regular license yet,” Patty Sue protested, “and I don’t know how I’d drive with a cast.” She wandered out of the room toward the kitchen. I turned off the sewing machine and followed her.

“That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll drive.” I grabbed a pencil from beside the phone and hastily began to write. Patty Sue was fishing gherkins out of a jar with her pinky. “I have lots to do,” I went on, “and you guys can help me out while I do other errands.” I called to Arch, and he came clomping down to the kitchen while Patty Sue read the list over my shoulder.

“Now what?” he demanded.

I looked at the two of them and tried to imagine myself as a patient person.

“I have two parties this week, one day after tomorrow for my women’s group and one at the athletic club the next day. This means a lot of shopping and cooking. You two,” I went on, “will please buy groceries while I pick up pizza and do errands, and then we’ll all come home and discuss the news of the day. Okay?”

“Oh, guess what?” said Patty Sue. “Speaking of news. Dr. Korman’s treatments finally worked.”

Arch groaned and left to get his jacket.

I stared at her. “What do you mean, his treatment worked? You want to tell me what that treatment was?”

Patty Sue’s face turned quite pink.

“Oh, that’s confidential, Goldy. All I can tell you is that as of this afternoon, I’m, um, normal.”

I shook my head. If the North Pole was normal, then Patty Sue was living in Antarctica.

“The thing is,” said Patty Sue, “it’s been a long time for me. Since I was normal, I mean. Anyway, I don’t feel so good.”

Neither, I reflected, did I, as I swung the boatlike Chrysler wagon into the parking lot of Aspen Meadow’s grocery, one of a western chain of food stores. The store’s dairy selection was pasteurized to the extent that everything tasted scalded; the produce was whatever could make it to Colorado from California without rotting. Nevertheless, I had made the list long enough to keep both Arch and Patty Sue occupied for at least an hour.

Under the woodpile. In September I had stacked a half cord of firewood beneath the house’s old deck. Once back home I put on garden gloves and began to dig and scrape out bits of bark and grass from beneath the freshly split yellow logs. The sky was beginning to darken and the sharp smell of wood smoke was already in the air. I hoped that snakes of all genres had begun to hibernate or whatever it was snakes did in the winter. Black widows, of course, were notorious inhabitants of woodpiles.

A plastic bag crackled in my fingers and I drew it out. Inside the bag was the soft towel covering for a surgical pack, the kind I knew Fritz and John Richard kept in the storage closet in the room where the nurses drew blood. It was similar to, perhaps even exactly the same as, the one Arch had tried to steal from the office. Had he succeeded after all? I opened it carefully. Rolled up wads of latex, which I guessed to be surgical gloves, were at the top of the bag. They weren’t usually in the kit. Tissue forceps, suture set, two-by-two’s, other stuff I recognized.

A scalpel, one of the kind that used disposable blades.

The blade had dried blood on it.

Now I really had something to tell Tom Schulz. And a few things to discuss with my son.

“Tom,” I said into the phone, “I have to talk to you.”

“I barely recognized your voice, you sounded so friendly.”

“Tell me about the weapon Laura Smiley used on herself.”

“Well now, I don’t know whether—”

“Come on,” I pleaded, “you told me yourself that a suicide case was closed unless some evidence was found—”

“And so far you’ve given me theories, a torn article, a note, and a missing prescription.”

“Tom!”

“Okay, okay. One of those twin-bladed ladies’ razors. It had a lot of blood on it, I know that. From the depth of the wound on her wrists, the deputy coroner figured she could have done it with that. Although he’s not a terribly sharp guy.”

“Not too sharp,” I said. “That sounds like something Laura Smiley would say.”

“I don’t get it.”

“Forget it,” I said. Then I asked, “So the theory was she was shaving her legs?”

“I guess.”

“Dumb. Stupid. Imbecilic.”

“It’s good to hear you sounding like yourself. What’d you find out from Pomeroy? Did he know anything about Vonette?”

I said, “Hold on. Laura Smiley didn’t shave, I’ll be willing to bet anything. She was a feminist—”

“Is that like socialist? I don’t think they shave either.”

“I know it’s a challenge, but try to take me seriously. Look at it practically. Have you ever cut yourself with one of those Good News razors? Or some other twin-bladed kind?”

“Strictly an electric man, myself.”

“Well,” I said, “it’s almost impossible, I don’t care what the deputy coroner says. You’d have to be trying real hard, because you can barely nick yourself, much less cut, wound, stab, or slash. I’d say your deputy coroner has got a hole in his head.”

“Well,” Tom said apologetically, “he’s new. So you’re saying you think she used something else?”

“She or someone else.” I fingered the surgical kit. “You’d better come on over. I’ve got something for you.”

Within fifteen minutes he had picked it up. He looked dubious. Wanted to know if this was some kind of kid’s joke. Asked if I touched anything, and where I found it.

“Arch got it out of this station wagon, which belongs to the Kormans,” I said. “You know Laura’s blood type and all that?”

He said, “Yes, we do, Goldy. Now listen. I know it’s hard for you to leave the police work to me. But just for a couple of days, try.”

Then it was time for me to do the picking up, first pizza with extra cheese, Arch’s favorite, then assorted goodies from the pastry shop for the women’s meeting. When I arrived at the grocery store both Arch and Patty Sue were shuffling down an aisle wearing fatigued, irritated faces. It was, after all, past dinnertime. I checked their cart for the avocados, carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, Belgian endive, apples, assortment of cheeses, chicken, eggs, chips, ground beef, cups and crepe paper, and decorative squash and pumpkin I had ordered. Plus Coke and chocolate soda. I was thankful for the fifty dollars from Hal.

“Mom,” whined Arch, “this is boring. I’m tired and hungry.”

“Just need frozen bread dough,” I mumbled, claiming the cart.

“I saw your ex-husband and his new girlfriend over a couple of aisles,” whispered Patty Sue, “with the older Dr. Korman and Vonette.”

I turned to her as we headed toward the frozen-food section. “Oh, that’s just great. What’re they doing here?”

But I didn’t have to wait for Patty Sue to come up with an answer, for at that moment the Korman entourage came wheeling around to frozen foods.

Patty Sue moaned. She said, “I’m not feeling too good.”

“Just do me the favor of not asking for a medical consultation right now,” I said.

“Why, look who’s here,” said John Richard. “Goldilocks shopping for porridge. What are you going to put in it?”

“Hello, Vonette,” I announced, as if the girlfriend and two doctors were not present.

“Ho Arch! How’s my boy?” asked John Richard as he pinched his unsmiling son on the cheek. With his tall, hunk-type frame, John Richard looked like a benevolent defensive end talking to a young fan. Only Arch was not acting properly adoring. John Richard responded by turning to his girlfriend. “I told you she was a bitch,” he said between his teeth. The girlfriend bobbed a head of streaked hair. “Goldy,” he went on, turning back to me, “meet Pam Mosser. She teaches geometry at the high school. She’s my, er, fiancée.”

I was so proud of myself. I smiled politely and said, “How do you do?” The virtue of an eastern upbringing.

“Patty Sue,” said Fritz, “how are you getting along?”

“Well,” she began, “not too—”

“Please be quiet, Patty Sue,” I ordered.

“Now Goldy,” Fritz warned. “Don’t start up.”

“Start up with what?” I asked and gave Vonette a knowing look, from which she shrank.

Fritz turned to stare at Vonette.

“Mom,” Arch moaned beside me, “I’m getting tireder.”

“I still don’t feel so—” Patty Sue began.

My ex-mother-in-law looked at me guiltily and cleared her throat. Patty Sue had disappeared down the aisle.

“Oh, Goldy dear,” Vonette said nervously, “I need the car back. I’m sorry, I forgot something, ah, it needs to go into the shop. Sorry,” she said again.

I wasn’t ready for another loss of vehicle. I turned to beat a retreat past orange juice and toward ice cream, where Patty Sue had arrived and was filling her arms with Fudge Swirl, Double Chocolate Chip, and Rocky Road.

“Couple of days,” I promised over my shoulder. “At the club Halloween party. My van should be ready by then. Then I’ll give you the Chrysler. See you Friday, Vonette!”

We were almost at the checkout stand.

To my utter delight, Arch turned around and yelled, “What’s geometry?”

CHAPTER 23

I got into the car feeling light-headed. But I congratulated myself on one thing: I had survived the encounter. Every little success helped.

“Have some pizza,” I said to Arch. “It’s either next to you or you’re sitting on it.”

Patty Sue found the pizza box. She and Arch began to tug out hot triangular slices stringy with mozzarella. The smell was inviting, but I wasn’t hungry. The last two hours had been too draining. Arch opened the soft drinks and offered me one. When I refused, I noticed that my hands were shaking.

I said, “Let’s go home.”

After getting Arch to bed and carefully placing the food supplies onto the pantry and refrigerator shelves, I still felt unsettled. It was bad enough to have to live in the same town and hear of John Richard’s many exploits. Bad enough to have to endure his arrogance and new wealth. But to have to endure him at the grocery store was almost too much.

The next few days were going to be hectic. There was cleaning the club, cooking for the meeting Friday and the party Saturday, plus trying to follow up with Schulz on the scalpel and Arch and his eccentricities. If that was all they were.

The key to the athletic club beckoned. Work. That was the ticket. It had helped when I was preparing for Laura’s wake. With decorating supplies and heavy-duty cleaners I could do something useful and work off industrial-strength stress at the same time. Friday night, I could make a recheck for a spot cleaning before the party. Even athletes couldn’t completely mess up a place in a couple of days, could they?

My key turned in the latch and echoed loudly in the darkness. I flipped on the lights. The empty Nautilus machines sprang into view like a chamber of horrors. They flashed silver in the minors. Without jocks pumping iron and exercycling and running in place, the air between the club’s cream-colored walls and gray and burgundy carpet expanded, thinned out.

I shook myself. The place had a new life when one was in it alone. The walls, shelves, machines seemed to undergo a metamorphosis at night, like toys in nursery stories. I gritted my teeth to haul the vacuum and bags of supplies across to the front desk.

Standing in the middle of the open area, I puzzled over where to put the table with pumpkins, punch bowl, and party munchies for Halloween. I could put the long tables by the walls overlooking the racquetball courts, then cover them and the columns in the dance area with orange and black crepe paper.

The closet next to the bank of mirrors flanking the Nautilus equipment, when I had found its one light, yielded four long tables that would work for the snacks. I placed all the chemicals on the closet floor and started setting up.

During a break I peered down the stairs and saw that all traces of the exercise-room mirror, the one Trixie had shattered, were gone. Oh, how replacing the old mirror with fun house-style trick ones to make all the skinny people look fat would have been hilarious. But I was not in the practical joke business.

I dusted, vacuumed, decorated. It was after midnight when I mixed the solutions for disinfectant and tub-and-tile cleaner and trotted downstairs to start on the locker rooms.

There were some jogging suits and open lockers on the men’s side, and despite the staff’s once-over on the sinks and showers, the vague odor of sweat still hung in the air. I sprayed the diluted disinfectant into one sink and heard music go on in the aerobics room.

“Just give me money …”

It was a jazzed-up version of a Beatles hit. I knew I was the only one who was supposed to be here. Was this a burglar with a sense of humor? One who needed rock and roll to steal hand weights and towels?

I pushed back fear by reasoning that the music camouflaged any noise I could make. I crept out of the locker room. Looking around the corner I could just see the movement of someone … exercising?

It was Trixie. She was kicking her legs out and shrieking along with the singers.

“Muh-huh-honey … that’s what I want!”

I waved my spray bottle to indicate my presence.

“Hey, Trix!”

She gave the startled cry of a person discovered naked. Which, of course, she was not.

“Goldy! I thought you were coming tomorrow.”

“What are you doing?”

She began to cry and crumpled onto the rug. I hurried over.

“I just wanted to be alone,” she said finally. “I just wanted everybody to quit bugging me. You … don’t understand.”

“Try me.”

She took deep breaths to try to calm herself, then hiccuped. “You can’t, because you have a child.”

“I am sorry about your loss. You know that.”

Her voice was bitter. “That man took mine away from me.”

“Fritz?”

“He knew I had high blood pressure. That the placenta could break down. It did. I lost the baby while I waited for him. What was he doing? Why didn’t he hurry? Now everybody just feels sorry for me. And he goes on with his practice.”

She began to cry again. I hugged her and eventually her sobs subsided. The tape ended; we were enveloped in quiet.

“Are you still coming to our group the day after—or I guess”—I took a look at my watch—“it’s technically tomorrow?”

She gave that harsh laugh. “You really think that’ll help?”

“What would help?”

Trixie gulped and said, “If Laura were still alive. She had some information on Korman she was going to show me. I told her my whole story one day after class. She said it wasn’t the first time he had messed up. She was planning on doing something—”

We were interrupted by a noise upstairs, someone walking across the open room I had just cleaned and decorated. I put my finger to my lips.

I whispered to her, “Are there any weights down here?”

She nodded.

“Could you throw one at a burglar, if that’s—?”

She nodded again. “I have a very strong arm.”

“Let’s go.”

We crept upstairs. Trixie had picked up some weights and was warming up her triceps with two-pounders in each hand. To my chagrin the intruder had turned the lights off. Only the outdoor parking lot lights cast a pale neon glow on the room.

“Where is—” Trixie began.

“The closet,” I whispered back.

The closet door was partly open. A wedge of light shone out its door, casting a huge triangle of gold-gray on the carpet. The wrapped pillars looked ghastly.

“Can you hit the closet door?”

“I think so,” she hissed. “Hold this one.” She let go of one of the weights and damned if I didn’t drop it.

“Eeyah!” I shrieked when it hit my toe.

The closet light went out.

“Uh!” shouted Trixie as she heaved the other weight through the darkness.

CRASH! went the Nautilus room mirror.

“Oh no!” screamed Trixie.

Someone rushed past us in the blackness.

I tried to run but fell over on my pain-wrenched toe.

“Turn the lights on!” I commanded Trixie. “Hurry! Run outside! See if you can tell who it is, or see their car!”

Trixie cursed and careened through the dimness. She hit the light switch and then stumbled out the front door.

Across the way the Nautilus room mirror looked like an avant-garde glass sculpture. I would have to remind Hal of this when he sued me. What the hell. He hadn’t exactly provided a high-security place to work in, had he?

“I saw the car,” Trixie gasped when she came trotting back.

“And?”

“Kinda weird,” she said. “It looked just like Laura’s old blue Volvo.”

CHAPTER 24

Hopping down my well of sleep came frog-faced doctors holding scalpel blades. Hot on their trail were gargoyle-faced liches in unhemmed robes, and behind them roared a phalanx of honking blue Volvos. The Volvos crashed against the well walls; the liches and frogs in robes scampered down toward me to escape the wailing horns. I had the frantic thought: Have I disinfected those walls yet?

Br-r-ring! Br-r-ring! went the Volvo horns.

Br-r-ring!

The phone.

I sat up. My right toe was throbbing. What Laura would have said: Call a toe truck.

The clock read ten-twenty. I’d gotten home at two-thirty, I remembered, after finally driving an exhausted Trixie home. Except for this ringing, my house was quiet—a sure sign that everyone had decided to let me sleep after my wee-hour janitorial stint. Everyone, that is, except this nut calling me.

I said into the receiver, “This had better be good.”

“Ho-ho!” came Tom Schulz’s too cheerful voice. “In your usual good mood, too. What’d you do, tie one on last night?”

“Please.”

He said, “I thought you might be interested in helping us investigate that scalpel. Because that’s what it was, you know.”

“A scalpel. I told you it was a frigging scalpel. I passed Med Wives 101, you know. Did you have a blood match?”

“Easy now. They’re working on the blood match. It’s coming. Right now I need more to go on than what you’ve given me. Including why your son would have that scalpel stashed.”

“I told you. He found it in the Kormans’ car, and my theory is that someone put it there after using it on Laura.”

“Theory?” Tom Schulz yelled. “That’s what I’m supposed to go to the DA with? A caterer’s theory?”

“Seems to me, Tom,” I said, “that you need to find out who would have access to Just One Bite.”

“That’s easy. Anybody can get it to kill rats.”

“Lots of folks think Fritz is just that. A rat.” I told him about the creekside activity with Patty Sue.

“Incredible,” said Tom Schulz. “He’s irresistible even to a woman with a broken arm.”

“You don’t understand,” I said in Patty Sue’s defense. “My housemate respects authority with a capital R. That’s how people like Fritz get their power.”

Schulz asked again, “Are you going to tell me what your kid was doing with that scalpel?”

“I don’t know what he was doing with it,” I replied truthfully. “I’m going to try to find out. But there’s more. I got into a mess with Trixie last night.” I told him about the intruder, the mirror, and the Volvo.

“Trouble just follows you around, you know? Be careful. Because whoever our guy, or gal, is, they’re going to try again to do in Fritz. You don’t want your kid to get in the middle. And chances are our culprit won’t mess with a few pellets of rat poison this time.”

“Why not?”

“Bright little Goldy can’t figure that one out?”

“Excuse me. Let me go get a cup of coffee and my brain will get into gear.”

“Our murderer will probably use something else, and there will be a next time,” Schulz said, “because the first time, he or she flunked Poisoning 101. Just watch it.”

“I plan to,” I said, and hung up.

I spent the next day hustling around the house to get ready for the Amour Anonymous meeting. Looking at the treats from the pastry shop made me wonder if we might need more. I could always use any surplus from today on the Halloween party. I slathered fudge frosting on brownies for Patty Sue. I stuffed crêpes with sugared ricotta cheese and smothered them with apricot sauce for Marla (“I spent the last two days in Vegas,” she’d called that morning to tell me. “I thought it would be a good break. Ended up spending the whole time with a glass of Jack Daniel’s and bag of peanuts in one hand and a roll of quarters in the other. Pretty soon the coins sounded like peanuts and the peanuts smelled like coins and I thought, now I’m really crazy. Guess I need the group, Goldy, don’t you think? I’ll bring the dessert sherry, you just make lots to eat.”)

The phone rang again. Alicia couldn’t come: she’d had a blowout on I-70. Her load of pumpkins had exploded like grenades when they hit the concrete. Two dozen cars had spun out in orange slime … no one was hurt … the road was closed so it could be cleaned … traffic had backed up for six miles. With significant understatement, she added, “You can’t imagine the mess.”

A couple of other women called with excuses, none so spectacular. When I finally got back to cooking I melted sugar into a dark syrup for Vonette’s favorite, Burnt-Sugar Cake. Pondering what Trixie would fancy, I decided she could manage with cookies. Marla would finish them if Trixie was holding out for health food.

And speaking of which, I could use Pomeroy’s honey to make my marvelous Honey-I’m-Home Ginger Snaps. This was my very own tasty invention. They were popular with the station-wagon set. Plus, they kept well.

The spicy scent of baking cookies filled the kitchen. When I was done I surveyed the spread. If we were going to be involved in telling all our sad stories we could do with a few sweets.

Marla arrived first. She swept in wearing a bespangled tent-type dress and a long scarf that said Club Mediterranée.

“God,” she fumed, “I’m exhausted. It’s a good thing I don’t take drugs. Someone could have sold me some speed and I would have spent another six hundred bucks on those slot machines and put Planter’s out of business. Tell me you’ve made something fabulous to eat.”

“In there.” I gestured toward the dining room.

“Where is everybody?”

“Coming. They’re eating dinner.”

“I ate dinner,” she said as she picked up a dessert plate and attacked the brownies. “I just saved room for dessert.”

“Did I hear someone mention dessert?” asked a yawning Patty Sue as she descended from upstairs, where she had been napping.

“You bet,” said Marla, “come quickly before I eat it all.”

Running suit–attired Trixie trotted in carrying hand weights. I begged her to leave them by the door, which she did.

“Hoo-hoo!” yodeled Vonette from the front door. She was already tipsy. Her orange hair looked like an abandoned robins’ nest.

Honey-I’m-Home Gingersnaps

2 cups all-purpose flour (high altitude: add 1 tablespoon)

2 teaspoons baking soda

¼ teaspoon salt

1½ teaspoons ground ginger

1 teaspoon ground cinnamon

½ teaspoon ground cloves

¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg

¼ cup solid vegetable shortening

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

1 cup sugar

1 large egg

¼ cup honey

¼ teaspoon finely minced lemon zest

Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter two cookie sheets.

Sift together the flour, soda, salt, ginger, cinnamon, cloves, and nutmeg. Set aside.

In a large mixer bowl, cream the shortening, butter, and sugar until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and the honey until well combined. Stir in the flour mixture and the zest, stirring until well combined, with no traces of flour visible.

Using a 1-tablespoon scoop, measure the cookies onto the cookie sheets, keeping them two inches apart. Do not attempt to make more than one dozen per sheet. Bake the batches one at a time, until the cookies have puffed and flattened and have a crinkly surface, 10 to 12 minutes per batch.

Cool the cookies completely on racks.

Makes 32 cookies

“Time to get started,” I warned them as Vonette splashed dessert sherry into her coffee.

“What we do here,” I began, “is talk, share, and give support.”

Trixie said, “I just don’t see how this can help.”

I said, “Then why don’t you go first? Tell us what’s bothering you.”

“I hate doctors,” she said evenly, “and I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Aw, c’mon honey,” coaxed Vonette. “I don’t mind. And I’m married to one.” She took a healthy swig from her coffee cup.

Patty Sue said, “I’m feeling sick.”

“You see?” accused Trixie. “Somebody starts talking about doctors and right away, somebody feels sick. Why do we depend on them so much?”

“Chocolate’s more reliable,” said Marla, who was waddling out to the kitchen to replenish the brownie platter, which I had stupidly put within her reach.

Patty Sue said faintly, “I think we have to trust our doctors. Either that or the treatment doesn’t work.”

“Trix?” I said. “Do you want to talk or not?”

Trixie ground her teeth. “I did trust a doctor and look at where it got me.”

Marla plopped back down at her place. Patty Sue gave me her wide-eyed look.

I concentrated my gaze on Trixie and said, “You feel angry.”

“What do you think?”

“And so,” I went on, “you throw—”

Marla said, “Oh my God. You throw up? What a waste.”

“Please don’t talk about throwing up,” said Patty Sue as she stood to go out to the bathroom.

“This is great,” Marla commented. “We say we’re going to talk about men and all we talk about is food and barf.”

Vonette cleared her throat. “Well, girls,” she began, “I can talk about it without talking about food. You see, I know something about doctors. I can tell you—” She stopped to pour sherry directly into her cup, an action I felt I should stop, since she was already pretty sloshed.

I said, “Tell us, Vonette.”

But Trixie interrupted her. “If you’re angry too, Vonette, why don’t you do something? Talk, talk, talk! How about a little action?”

“Temper, temper,” said Marla. “Have a ginger snap.” To demonstrate, she had one herself.

A limp-looking Patty Sue sat down again. I turned back to Vonette.

“So what do you want to tell us, Vonette?”

She took another long sip from her cup. “Do you girls talk about sex in here?”

Everyone was immediately quiet.

“Sure,” said Marla.

“He’s impotent with me,” Vonette said finally, her voice dropping. “But not with everyone else. He says because I drink too much, our lack of a sex life is all my fault.”

Patty Sue said, “I wish we could change the subject.”

Marla rolled her eyes at me.

“Everybody thinks I don’t know what goes on,” Vonette was saying, “but I know. It’s just that … thinking about it gives me these awful headaches. Thirty-six years,” she muttered into her cup before draining it. “For what? Oh, my little Bebe.” She started to sniffle. “I miss you. Bebe, Bebe.”

“Do you think Laura had,” I said tentatively, “something on Fritz, that she was going to confront him—”

“Confront?” yelled Trixie. “Confront? Why do we have to listen to shrink talk all the time?”

“She had something,” said Vonette. “Of course she did. Oh, my.” She reached into her purse and pulled out what I knew was her Valium pillbox, then downed one of the green pills with her newly filled coffee cup of sherry.

“You see,” said Marla as she sliced a piece of the Burnt-Sugar Cake. “This is what happens when you abandon food for other palliatives.”

“What palliatives?” asked Patty Sue.

“Forget it,” said Marla, with her mouth full.

“This just makes me so angry,” said Trixie, her forehead wrinkled into a scowl. “Yak, yak, yak. I knew it wouldn’t do any good to come.”

“Trixie,” I said, “how else could you express your anger?”

“What’s that,” she said, “more shrink talk? How about having some of these doctors pay for the damage they inflict? I mean really pay?”

I said, “What would that look like?”

Trixie groaned and got up from the table, then flopped down on my living room couch with her arms folded across her chest.

“This is getting out of control,” I said under my breath to Marla.

“Don’t tell me,” she said after swallowing, “I learned all about control when I had to deal with the Jerk’s lawyer.”

“Laura,” came Vonette’s drunken voice. In her stupor at the end of the table, she had heard little of the previous conversation. “Laura had something. But not just on him, if you see what I mean.”

I said, “I’m not following you.”

“You don’t?” said Vonette with a confused look. “Don’t you see that stuff Bebe wrote to her teacher about her home life said something about me, too?” She finished what was in her cup. “At that moment, when my Bebe died, my life was over. Laura had something on us, all right. It’s not over, though. I’m going to get him. I’m going to go home and call him an impotent old ass. I’m going to tell him I’m going to turn him in to the Colorado Board of Medical Examiners. Ha! That man screwed anyone, even his own patients!”

Marla and I looked at each other.

Trixie screamed, “You see what I mean?”

Patty Sue had her usual reaction to acute stress. She fainted.

CHAPTER 25

Halloween.

A thick shroud of October fog clung to the ground as I drove back up to the mountains at five-thirty Halloween morning. Already Colorado was in costume—a shroud mourning the loss of Indian summer. Or perhaps the loss of innocence.

Patty Sue was in the hospital. The doctor had said she was about two months pregnant. After the women’s meeting she hadn’t felt any better, even when I brought her back to consciousness with a little ammonia on a paper towel. She was in pain; a couple of pills “to relieve periodic suffering” did no good. It was late anyway, so I’d sent everybody home. Vonette was still babbling on about getting Fritz, even after we’d stuffed her into Marla’s car.

About three A.M. Patty Sue’s cramping from what she’d thought was her period had become so intense that even I became frightened. There was more blood. I scuttled the idea of an ambulance, figuring I could get her down to a Denver hospital more quickly myself. After a quick call to the Emergency Room, we were on our way.

The on-call gynecologist was courteous, informative, and even sympathetic. Trixie should have been there to see a few stereotypes break down. He said they’d have to keep Patty Sue for a while. It looked as if there had been a small separation of the placenta. The fetus appeared healthy and had a good heartbeat. I was worried that the X-rays for Patty Sue’s broken arm might have harmed the fetus, but again the doc said not to worry. Poor Patty Sue.

In her room I swabbed her face with a wet cloth.

Her eyes, dulled by the loss of sleep, fixed on my face.

“I feel awful,” she said.

“First three months are the worst,” I said. “I should have figured it out … the way you’ve been sick.”

“Doctor Korman is the one—” she began, but tears started rolling down onto her pillow.

“It’s okay,” I said, and then stopped to take her hand. I said, “That’s what you told Laura Smiley, isn’t it? That he had been having relations with you.”

She nodded. “He said it would help my condition. Laura already knew what was going on. She told me she needed to talk to me about it.”

I said gently, “What did she say?”

“She said I had to get him to stop. But I told her I was afraid of him. What did I know about medicine? Maybe he was right. And he told me that if I told anyone about the treatment he would call my parents and tell them I was uncooperative.”

She started to cry again, a miserable sobbing that erupted from her chest. I leaned over and hugged her until she stopped.

I said into her ear, “Can you just tell me what Laura said when you said you couldn’t confront him?”

Patty Sue coughed before whispering back, “She said she could get him to stop. She thought he had changed from the way he was before, you know, from what Vonette told us. Laura said she thought Fritz had reformed. Then it was strange because she said she could ruin his practice. She said she had the power to do that.”

“Do you know what she meant?”

“The next time I heard about Laura, she was dead.”

I called Patty Sue’s parents. Her mother answered. When I related my news there was a long silence.

Patty Sue’s mother said, “She didn’t tell us she had a boyfriend.”

I told her Patty Sue would tell them all about it. She said she and her husband could be at the hospital shortly after eight that morning.

Now the mist clouded my windshield so thickly that I slowed to twenty miles an hour and pulled over into the far right lane. When winter approaches in Colorado, it comes like the poet’s cat. It pads along the back roads and darkens the sky earlier each evening until finally, near mid-December, it plops on its ample backside as the cold sets in. During those months of early darkness, the residents take refuge by their firesides or bulk themselves up with Coors and ski stories to await the coming snows.

And it began this way, not with the ferocious onslaught of thunder and hail that mark spring’s arrival, but gently, subtly, with a cold cloud of mist.

Fog swallowed the cars around me. I straightened up to peer through the glass and thought about Patty Sue. When she came to live with us she had worked hard learning to cook. She had asked questions about my life, and she had told me about hers. It was in September that she wafted off, first into indifference, and late in the month into distraction. The distracted behavior coincided, I now realized, with the confession to Laura and Laura’s death.

My heart tugged for this twenty-year-old about to learn the rigors of motherhood. I would have stayed with her longer but I was worried about Arch. He had been very drowsy when I had told him of the impending trip to the hospital.

Arch, Arch. What was he up to with liches and magic spells and lessons in making Molotov cocktails? Worse than that, what were his plans for a used surgical kit?

I pushed open the front door. The house’s air was warm and still, a place wrapped in sleep. Soon Arch’s alarm broke the silence. I ground coffee beans, ran water, and turned up the radio news, which warned of clouds and wind and possibly snow in the mountains Halloween night.

The phone rang: Marla.

She said, “Vonette overdosed last night. She’s really in bad shape. There’s a possibility it was a suicide attempt.”

“Oh my God. How’d you hear that?”

“Fritz called the priest from the hospital and the churchwomen set up a phone tree. I feel horrible. What do you think we should do?”

“Not sure. I have to get Arch off to school. How about if you call John Richard? We have to keep up with how she’s doing.”

“Thanks a lot,” Marla said without enthusiasm. “Don’t suppose it could wait until tonight, do you? I mean, if she’s out of danger and they’re still going to come to the party. I suppose that would be beaucoup crass.”

“I wouldn’t put anything past them. Call me later. I’ll be up to my rear in chips and dip. Almost forgot. Patty Sue’s two months pregnant.”

“What? Expecting? I didn’t even know.”

“Neither did she. By Fritz, no less.”

“Jesus,” Marla said. “That guy never quits. If I were Vonette, I’d want to die too.”

An hour later I had shooed Arch off to school wearing his lich costume. Asking him tough questions was simply not within my emotional repertoire after the events of the previous night. The house was silent. No clients calling for parties. No Arch sneaking about. No Patty Sue bumping into walls. Still. Questions hung heavily in the air.

Time to let the mind cook along with the hands. As usual.

First on the agenda for the athletic club party was the preparation of guy bow, an Oriental chicken-and-egg affair seasoned with soy and encased in a bread shell.

But as I folded and rolled out the dough, I could not get the image of Vonette out of my mind. She seemed a sudden absence. Prayer had been a difficult proposition since I’d stopped teaching Sunday school. But I prayed now for Vonette.

I set aside the guy bow and prayed. Please, please. Then I peeled, pitted, and mashed the plump avocados destined for my Holy Moly Guacamole. Once the rich dip was done, I set it aside and tried to think.

Why had Vonette done it? Had the headaches finally become unbearable? Had something not killed the pain?

Worst question of all was one that filled my mind like the bowls of silky guacamole.

Had the messy anger of our meeting the evening before triggered some deep mechanism that had been operating all along, only incrementally, with liquor and drugs? Instead of killing herself slowly, had Vonette gone over the edge because of what the meeting had made her think about? And what about her oath to confront Fritz?

About that I did not even want to think. But had to.

Before starting the deviled eggs and empanadas I called the hospital. Patty Sue was okay; her parents were with her.

A nurse who knew me said Vonette Korman was in a coma. I didn’t ask if anyone was with her. I could imagine her face and her curly orange hair, but she wasn’t there. It was as if the ground around our relationship had suddenly collapsed.

I tried to focus back on the party. My next task was to arrange concentric circles of the empanadas and deviled

Holy Moly Guacamole

1 large or 2 small avocados, peeled, pitted and mashed to make 1 cup

1½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice

1 teaspoon freshly grated onion

¼ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon picante sauce

¼ cup mayonnaise

Corn Chips

Place the mashed avocado in a non-metallic bowl. Mix in the juice, onion, salt, and picante sauce until well blended. Spread the mayonnaise over the top to the edges, cover the bowl, and refrigerate. At serving time, uncover the bowl and thoroughly mix in the mayonnaise. Serve with corn chips.

Makes 1¼ cups

eggs. With the eggs in the guy bow we’d have a cholesterol-heavy night, but what the hey. Eggs were cheap and looked good. Besides, they filled people up, a key concept in catering.

My phone rang: Tom Schulz. Yes, I remembered about tonight. I asked if he had heard about Vonette.

“Yeah,” he said. “I heard the call for the ’copter. Why?”

“I don’t know. I just feel real bad about it. She could have done it so many times before … Why last night?”

“Was she at that meeting you were supposed to have?” he asked, suddenly wary. “Your house, right? What happened?”

“Don’t get suspicious, Mr. Investigator. We just talked. Women’s stuff. Besides, it’s confidential.”

“Was she upset when she left?”

I let out a breath. “Well, yes. She was upset. But not suicidal.”

“That Fritz sure has his problems.”

I put all the bags of chips in one large bag. “Listen,” I said, “I hope you’ll stay on this case with Vonette.”

“Take it easy,” Tom responded, “she isn’t dead. Yet.”

“If she dies,” I warned him, “I hope you’ll get on it right away. Toxicology, the whole bit.”

“Don’t worry. That’s my job, Goldy. And the coroner’s back, too, no more new deputy stuff. Are the guys around here happy about that!” He chuckled. “You just concentrate on tonight. I’ll be by at seven to pick up Arch while you finish your cleaning job. Then we’ll dance the night away, and you’ll forget all your troubles.”

“That,” I said before hanging up, “I seriously doubt.”

CHAPTER 26

How do I look, Mom?” asked Arch as he entered the kitchen that evening. Although he had not made up his face for school, he decided for the party to put on the full war paint of the superhuman lich.

I stopped packing the appetizers into plastic containers, took off my witch’s hat and mask, and surveyed him in the painted muslin robe and hood. Around his neck was the heavy gold-plated jewelry Vonette had lent him earlier in the week. The eleven-year-old face glowed with white and black theatrical makeup painted like a skull.

“What am I supposed to say to a lich,” I asked dryly, “you look dreadful? Sorry, lich, I didn’t pack any worms for you to eat. And please don’t get any ideas about installing an alarm system at the athletic club.”

“Don’t worry, Mom,” he replied soberly, “liches are only satisfied when they suck the blood from their victims.”

On that happy note, I whisked off for the club with the Kormans’ station wagon full of food. The last thing I needed was for my soon-to-be escort, who also happened to be the police officer who had closed my business, to know that I was catering illegally.

Twenty minutes later I pulled the station wagon into the club parking lot, which held only two cars. Already the night was quite cool, and the rising moon glowed yellow on the eastern horizon. I shivered.

Pomeroy Locraft greeted me at the door and took one of the boxes from my hands. He was dressed as a beekeeper, complete with mask.

“Now that’s an original costume,” I remarked.

“Beekeeper from another planet,” he rejoined, looking over my shoulder. “Newest offering from Stephen King. Trixie’s here with me. She’s a little drunk, just thought I’d warn you. Seems things got kind of out of control at your place last night.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Where’s Arch?”

“Coming with Tom Schulz. My date,” I added.

“Bringing the cops to keep your ex-husband in line? Not a bad idea.”

We set about arranging the platters and punch bowl. Pom said Hal was having a fit about someone breaking the big mirror in the Nautilus room. I had every intention of confessing to my part in that accident after I got through some of the more pressing crises.

Trixie told me in a whiskeyed whisper that she had thrown away all the shards on the floor. She was trying to explain more when Arch came bouncing in.

“Where’s Tom Schulz?” I asked. “Please tell me he’s wearing anything but a police uniform.”

“You know, Mom,” Arch said in his serious tone, “you aren’t very nice to Investigator Schulz. He’s not a clown. He’s a magistrate. An enforcer of laws in the human order.”

“Just remember not to mention that I made this food for tonight.”

Arch was nodding doubtfully when Tom Schulz walked in, bedecked in costume and makeup that was somewhere between Bozo and Ronald McDonald. I looked at Arch, who avoided my eyes by surveying the tables laden with food.

“Patty Sue called while you were in the shower,” Arch said. “Said she’ll be back tomorrow. Her parents were going to bring her up. She said she wouldn’t be able to drive for a while.”

Tom Schulz, Pomeroy, and I all said together, “That’s good.”

When Tom and Pomeroy had sauntered off for a friendly glass of punch, I asked Arch, “Do you still miss Ms. Smiley?”

He nodded without looking at me. This was always a bad sign.

“On Halloween,” I went on, “all the ghosts of dead people are supposed to come out, you know.”

“Don’t be weird, Mom.”

“I was just wondering if you’d thought about that.”

He returned my gaze. “Sometimes I miss her. She was the only teacher who ever liked me. But if she killed herself, then I guess she was crazy the way everyone says.”

“If she thought you were a really great kid, and she did, then she was not crazy.”

“Mom? I want some chips.”

I reached for his forearm. “Just tell me, Arch, you’re not taking this lich stuff too seriously, are you? Curses, violent revenge for dead souls, sucking blood, all that?”

“What makes you think that?”

How could I say, From your phone conversation with Todd that I wasn’t supposed to be listening to? He sidled away.

“Arch, old buddy!” Pomeroy called out as Arch approached the tables. “What are you supposed to be, the label on a poison bottle?”

I looked around the club. The place still looked pretty clean. Trixie had done a passable job of cleaning the floor of the Nautilus room.

“A lich,” Arch was explaining to the Martian beekeeper.

Hal whizzed over on roller skates. He was dressed as a Blues Brother.

He glared at me from behind his dark glasses.

He said, “You want to tell me about that mirror?”

I said, “What mirror?”

He skated away. I took protection at Tom Schulz’s side.

“Think the Korman doctors will be here tonight?” he asked.

I nonchalantly rearranged the deviled eggs and the crudités inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.

“Knowing them,” I said, “they aren’t going to sit by the bedside of a woman in a coma. It remains to be seen whether they’re crude enough to come here tonight. They don’t even know about Patty Sue.”

“What about Patty Sue?”

I told him the story of my hapless roommate, and also about what Laura had said to her, indicating she had some kind of power over Fritz Korman.

Tom Schulz picked up two brownies. “She didn’t use it for twenty years,” he said. “But seeing Patty Sue with him, or hearing what Patty Sue had to say, set her off.” He thought. “If the docs come, see if you can find out what Laura was threatening. That’s our missing link. I’m still running the scalpel for prints and other tests, by the way.”

“Glad to see the cops are doing their job. Don’t eat any more brownies until more people get here.” He gave me a quizzical X-ray look. I’d blown it. I said, “You see, I’m still a caterer at heart. And I don’t know how you expect me to find out what Laura was holding over Fritz’s head.”

“Well,” said Tom, licking his clown fingers, “you’re going to be a detective, you figure things out. Detect.”

At that moment the Jerk made a grand entrance with the teacher on his arm. He was dressed as a doctor. Not very original. She was dressed as a nurse. Poor thing, I hoped she was well stocked with bandages.

Trixie reappeared from the bathroom, where I assumed she had been either drinking or being sick or both, and for the first time I noticed she was also dressed as a witch. We could have passed as nonidentical twins. Marla swept in, despite the fact that John Richard was here. Maybe that meant she was getting over him. She was dressed as a Las Vegas showgirl, plump but very charming in her net stockings and low-cut leotard. She made a beeline for the food table.

Then, to my shock, came a stocky bald man dressed in black. His gait and swagger gave him away: Fritz Niebold Korman. I heard an explosion of laughter near him, as someone who had apparently asked what he was screamed, “Oh no! Fritz Korman’s dressed as Zorro!”

I surreptitiously began refilling the punch bowl with ginger ale and fruit juice. No one was talking about Vonette, which was probably a good thing. She would pull through, I was sure.

In a little while the guy bow and guacamole were almost gone. The empanadas lay untouched. You never could tell what people were going to eat. I resolved to pay no more attention to the status of the food and drink. I didn’t want to get into more trouble with Schulz, and Hal had treated me rudely enough that I felt justified in not doing any actual serving.

One of the club staff put on an aerobics-class tape and men, women, witches, wizards, doctors, nurses, clowns, and showgirls all began to gyrate enthusiastically. Perhaps, like Pavlov’s dog, they were used to working hard to this music.

“Where’s your date, the cop?” Pomeroy asked when I was munching the last of the guy bow.

I waved my hand. “He’s out there somewhere,” I replied. “I’m not keeping tabs on anything or anyone tonight.”

“Poor Goldilocks,” Pomeroy said, “nothing is ever just right. Why don’t you come dance with a lonely beekeeper?”

The music had turned slow. One of the cool-down songs usually reserved for the end of an aerobics class moaned from the speakers. Some astute staff member lowered the lights and as Pom took me into his arms to start dancing, I noticed that I was feeling anything but cooled down. Just the opposite, in fact.

Pom must have sensed my reaction. He pulled me in a little tighter, and even in the darkened room I could see the Jerk giving me the Evil Eye. Ha! Let him suffer.

“I wish you’d take that mask off,” I whispered to Pomeroy. “Then I could give you a kiss and make my ex-husband feel terrible.”

“Hey, please don’t think of me as a sex object.”

“You know what Laura would have said about that?”

“No,” said Pomeroy.

“She would have said that a beekeeper should make a stinging reply.”

“She had a way with words, didn’t she?” Pomeroy said as he pulled me closer. My heart went zing! But I was determined to stay rational.

When the music finished he steered me back to the food table as the couples began to disperse to get refreshments.

“What did she have on Fritz Korman, though?” I asked as I ignored my own resolution to do nothing, opened a fresh bottle of fruit juice, and sloshed it into the punch bowl.

He said, “I don’t know. I think maybe it was something from that student of hers.”

The empanadas had disappeared during the last dance. Pomeroy was looking around the room.

He said, “Still don’t see your date, sweets, so you’re going to have to put up with me for a while. Here they come—your ex-husband and his father. Now you can kiss me.” He took off his mask and put it on the floor while I pretended to be busy replenishing brownies.

“I’m not going to eat a thing you fix,” the Jerk said defiantly when I offered him the platter.

Laura Smiley would have said, Then no brownie points.

Laura Smiley would have said …

Laura Smiley would have said …

I thought of jokes. Laura-type jokes. Why didn’t the gunslinging prosecutor shoot down the defendant? Because he didn’t have enough ammunition. Why did the little girl eat dynamite? Because she wanted to grow bangs. Why dynamite? Why not gunshot? Or some other kind of ammunition?

Ammunition.

I turned away from my ex-husband. Two people dressed as bats began to play racquetball. The ball thwacked against the wall with the same regularity that my mind was making one step, then another. Finally, I had the weapon to shoot the bad guy down. Now all I needed was to load that weapon.

But not yet. After the party, after everyone had gone home.

Tom Schulz was dancing with Marla. I slid up beside him and whispered, “I figured it out. What she had on him. I even think I know where it is. And I have an idea of who might have put the stuff in Fritz’s coffee.”

He shook his clown stomach and said, “At least give me until the end of this song, okay?”

Marla rolled her eyes at me.

What the hey, after all this time and effort. I took a deep breath and strolled back to the snack table where Pomeroy, Fritz, and John Richard were engaged in some uneasy conversation. I still hadn’t kissed Pomeroy, and my chance was at hand.

“Better go get your girlfriend,” I said to the Jerk, “looks as if she’s trying to set up another date.”

And indeed, there was the fiancée on the club’s desk phone. She had a serious look on her face. After a moment she came over and whispered something to John Richard, who turned to his father.

“Dad,” John Richard said. His voice cracked. Fritz turned to look at him.

“Dad,” he said again, “she died.”

Fritz, who was drinking punch, brought his hands up to his face. But then, just as suddenly as John Richard’s announcement had come, Fritz began to cough. It wasn’t just regular coughing, but hacking and wheezing, and he was holding his throat. He slumped to the floor and John Richard knelt down with him.

“Dad!” John Richard bellowed. “What is it?”

“That stuff, that stuff!” he cried, pointing to his punch cup.

I was frozen, statuelike, still in shock from the news of Vonette, but there was John Richard sniffing Fritz’s punch cup and giving me an unholy look of rage. John Richard ducked underneath the food table and just as quickly brought out my bottle of phenol-based industrial-strength disinfectant concentrate. There was my name in black marking pen, as clear as could be next to where I’d written POISON with the telltale skull and crossbones.

John Richard glowered at me. “You!” he screamed. “Again! Schulz! Get over here! Put this bitch under arrest!”

“Now wait a minute,” I murmured, but Schulz was already there talking to John Richard, trying to get him to calm down.

Schulz leaned over the table.

He said, “You didn’t do this, did you?”

I said, “You know I didn’t.”

Schulz said, “Did you fix this punch and this food?”

I floundered. I looked at my shoes. I said, “I’m not saying a word until I talk to a lawyer.”

When I raised my eyes to Tom Schulz’s silence, his look of disbelief and disappointment was much more difficult to take than John Richard’s anger.

“I didn’t know this was going to happen,” I said fiercely.

“Now you listen,” Schulz said, jabbing the air with his index finger, “you get over and stand in that corner by that broken mirror. I need to call the Poison Center again, get this man down to the hospital. The guys in my department aren’t going to believe this happened while I was here. I don’t believe it myself. But that’s not what I don’t believe most of all.” He eyed me. “I think you know what that is.”

I nodded.

“Get your things,” I ordered Arch, who had materialized beside me.

Looking around the room I could see Marla and Trixie in a tête-à-tête. Pomeroy had picked up his mask from beside the table and was heading over toward his net by the jagged mirror. I walked behind him to catch up; there wasn’t any way anyone in that room could have missed the interchange between Schulz and me. But maybe Pom would be willing to ignore it.

Trixie appeared beside us. She said, “This really pisses me off. I mean, again? Honest to God, doctors.”

Marla bounced over.

“Jesus,” she said, “Vonette’s dead. Have you told Arch?”

“Not yet,” I said. “And don’t you tell him either. We’ve got to find out what’s going on with Fritz first. But there’s something else I need you to do. Call your lawyer. Get him started on extracting money from Korman and Korman for Patty Sue’s maternity care. She’s going to need it.”

Marla’s face lit up like all of Vegas. “You mean I get to take John Richard to court again? For money? Ha! I’m in heaven.”

“Arch,” I called, “we’re going with Pom. Lots has happened.”

Arch said, “That sure was a short party.”

I touched Pomeroy’s arm.

“Can you give Arch and me a ride home?” I whispered. “I want to go out the back and avoid all this mess.”

He nodded.

Then when Schulz was leaning over the recumbent Fritz, I hustled Arch out behind Pomeroy.

I did want a ride. But I had absolutely no intention of going home.

CHAPTER 27

Outside, a sudden breeze swept over us. The moon was still climbing.

Pomeroy said, “Why do you need a ride from me? Why don’t you just climb back on the broomstick you rode over here?”

“Because,” I said impatiently, “I don’t feel so good going anywhere in the car loaned to me by my deceased ex-mother-in-law, whose husband I have just been accused by my ex-husband of attempting to poison. Again.”

It was lame, but it would get me started on what it was I wanted to do with Pomeroy.

He smiled and said, “Let’s roll.”

Arch pronounced Pom’s four-wheel-drive vehicle cool when we climbed in. The tires spewed gravel as we wheeled out of the parking lot, and the wind picked up the dust and blew it into a whirlwind.

I put my arm around Arch and hugged him close to me. The sad news could wait.

After a few moments Pom said, “Tell me where you live, Goldy.”

I took a deep breath. “Well actually, Pomeroy, I don’t want to go home just yet.”

He continued to drive, very cool, no emotion. “What did you have in mind? Or should I say, where?”

I said, “I want to go to Laura’s old house. I’ve got an idea of where to look for something. Drive me to her house and I’ll show you.”

Laura Smiley’s garage was dank and cold and smelled faintly of oil. Arch said he wanted to stay in the car and I didn’t blame him. The wind groaned through the garage window jamb and swished the dry leaves outside. I flipped the switch for the single garage light bulb; it threw a dim light. Groping through the odds and ends on the work-table, I found the box I was looking for and pulled it out to show Pom.

I said, “The woman loved puns. She left all the clues for us. She put flour in a box with a flower, sugar behind a picture of Sugar Ray Leonard. She was obsessed with punishing Korman and she knew where to keep that ammunition.”

I took a breath, then went on.

“She wrote letters to students she loved: And they wrote back. I’ll bet she kept every letter. That was the evidence she had, what she never got to use.”

I looked at Pom in the garage’s gray light. I said, “I’ll bet you knew she didn’t drink or take drugs. Someone slipped her a little Valium, enough to calm a person used to drugs, but enough to put a non-drug user, a total abstainer, to sleep. Then that person slashed her wrists with a scalpel blade and put a razor in her hand, except she didn’t shave because she was a radical feminist. She didn’t kill herself, she was murdered for what was in this box. You figure it out.”

“I can’t.”

I read the label on the box. “BB’s. In Laura’s handwriting. I doubt she was out shooting western long-eared squirrels, Pom. I’ll bet she never used her BB gun.”

“You’re way ahead of me.”

Arch creaked open the passenger side door of Pom’s car. He said, “Mom. I’m tired. Why are we here, anyway?”

“Just a few more minutes,” I told him. “Take it easy.”

With hands quivering, I opened the box. Inside was what I expected to find, letters in a large scrawling hand bound with ribbons. I riffled through them. The return addressee was the same on each one: Hollenbeck.

I said, “You see, she even used puns to hide things. Bebe’s stuff is in the BB box.”

Pom looked into the box and shook his head.

I turned to him. “You were looking for it, too, weren’t you?”

He said, “Yes, but…”

“I’m not going to worry about that now,” I said. “Listen. She made an appointment to see Fritz the day she died. Saturday. The day I think he killed her. Knowing about Patty Sue, about him seducing a young girl again, made her decide to confront him, made her threaten to bring out the letters after all these years. She could have ruined his practice, a fact he knew all too well. He escorted her out the back door, brought her over here in his old station wagon, maybe on the pretext of talking things through. I’ll bet he brought her in that car because he didn’t want anyone to recognize his Jeep with its customized plates. Then they had tea or something, in went the Valium, and out came the scalpel that he used and the ladies’ razor that she didn’t use. He left the surgical pack in the wagon, never thinking anybody would drive it. But the nurse screwed up and sent Laura a bill anyway, even though she wasn’t a patient. If she was dead, nobody would think to look here for evidence. I mean, if it looked as if she killed herself.”

I touched the letters, then glanced up at Pom in the darkness.

“I just need one more thing,” I said. “Please take me to Fritz’s office.”

He drove, fast but silent. At the office of Korman and Korman I heaved a rock to break the front window, grateful for the things I had learned from Trixie: I climbed in and went to the file I was looking for. I read it and came back to the car.

“What the hell are you doing?” asked Pom.

“Just take me out to your place,” I begged him, “and we can go through these letters tonight and call Tom Schulz, maybe get him to arrest Fritz instead of me. Arch can stretch out on your bed. I just can’t go home now, wanted for another poisoning and with a crazed John Richard on the loose.”

He sighed. “First my car, now my house. Let me know when you want the bees.”

The four-wheel drive jolted and bounced over the muddy road to the Preserve. In my lap I held the box of correspondence between two women, both now dead. The moon came out from behind a cloud and shone through the pines, which were thickening as we roared deeper into the forest. Maybe coming here hadn’t been such a great idea. Impenetrable woods populated with deer and elk and other wildlife could not attract trick or treaters. I missed the little neighborhood mites with their bags and plastic pumpkins. They brought Halloween down to kid-size level. Out here, the Eve of All Hallows, with its promise of unleashed spirits, loomed as large as the stands of blue spruce that swung in the evening breeze. Branches of evergreen lining the road fingered Pom’s windshield. I reached for Arch’s hand.

“You okay?”

“Yes, Mom. I just don’t understand why we’re going out here instead of going home.”

I said, “Just wait.”

When we got to the cabin, I took off my witch’s cape and hat and tried to wash the paint off Arch’s face. I considered waiting until morning to tell him about the death of his grandmother. But I did not under any circumstances want him to hear it accidentally or casually, from someone else. I decided to break the news after I had tucked him into Pomeroy’s cot.

“I’m sorry, Arch,” I whispered. “I have bad news. Vonette died this evening.”

He was very still, his eyes locked into mine. The shadow of the silver greasepaint that had not yielded to the washcloth gave him the aspect of a ghoul. When his tears began I wiped his face on the sleeve of my witch costume.

“And,” I went on slowly, “somebody’s tried to poison Fritz again. Except whoever did it probably didn’t put enough in again. That’s what I think.”

A few moments later he murmured, “Why are we here?”

“Well,” I said with a sigh, “your dad’s feeling really crazy right now. His mother’s dead and his dad’s sick. And you know how your dad can get when he’s angry, throwing dishes around and all. So I thought we’d be safer out here.”

He said nothing for a long time while tears continued to well up. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, opened it again.

He said, “Is Vonette in heaven? With Laura Smiley?”

I felt the tears prick behind my own eyes as I took my son into my arms.

I said, “Absolutely. They are up there together, taking care of each other, right now.”

Within half an hour Arch was breathing the comforting shallow wheeze of a child asleep. Pomeroy placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of me and we began the long work of opening letter after letter and reading them in silence. Outside, the wind howled and groaned. The waves of air would start and stop, and once after the sudden cessation of sound I thought I heard a car engine being turned off.

“Did you hear that?” I asked Pom.

He shook his head. “Out here you hear all kinds of stuff. You learn to ignore it.”

“Listen to this,” I said: I kept my voice low so Arch would not awaken. “Bebe writes, ‘He came in this morning when Mom was still asleep. After he did it to me again he wanted to know who I’ve told. He says this is just supposed to be between us. He says people who betray secrets die. I’m afraid.’ ”

“It’s bad, all right,” said Pom, who was slouched down between the cushions of his homemade sofa. His beekeeper suit was crumpled; he looked like a tired ghost. “I just read where she was bleeding and was afraid to go to a doctor, least of all her own stepfather. So she just waited for it to go away.”

Now there seemed to be sticks breaking outside. Perhaps it was a solitary elk moving through the forest. Pom noticed nothing. He was intensely involved in reading the letters. I thought I must be getting paranoid.

I read again, “ ‘Miss Smiley, I have stopped going to church because I know God doesn’t like me anymore. Fritz said—’ ” I paused and looked up at Pom. “You see, there she uses his name. I’m sure that’ll help with laws about evidence.” I looked back at the sheet in my hand. “ ‘Fritz said Mom knows. What does that mean, Miss Smiley? What does Mom know?’ ”

I shook my head. “Pom. No wonder this kid drank a whole bottle.”

“Yes,” came a voice from the door, “that’s why she did it, all right.”

And in walked Fritz Korman still in his black Zorro suit. He had a small gun in his hand.

“Put that thing down,” demanded Pomeroy. “Goldy’s kid is asleep over there.”

Fritz’s bald head shone in the soft yellow light of Pomeroy’s lamps. He was leering at us. A broad self-satisfied smile stretched across his handsome face. The devil’s own, out on Halloween night. My heart turned to ice.

I said, “I thought you were so sick.”

He brought his nose up in a wrinkle and kept the gun pointed at us.

“Goldy, honey,” he said, “that’s why we have ipecac. To get poison out of people’s systems. And since I figured it was Pomeroy or you or one of your buddies who tried to do me in, I’ve come to find out. And look at what else we’ve found.”

I said, “You bastard.”

“Now don’t go waking up my grandchild, Goldy. He’s going to find your and Pom’s bodies out in that garage shed after your little lovers’ quarrel. Now let’s all go out slowly.” And he motioned us with the gun to move over to the door.

“Did you kill Vonette?” I demanded without moving. “She knew about these letters, didn’t she? She threatened you, is my bet. How’d you make it look like suicide this time? And what about Laura Smiley?”

He gave me a rueful smile. “Well now, aren’t you full of questions?”

I pressed on, “Arch found an opened surgical kit in the Chrysler. Is that why you wanted your car back so badly, because of what you had left in there? Was that the car a neighbor heard at Laura’s that Saturday morning?” He smirked at me. “What I want to know is, how you got in and out of that house without the police finding any prints.”

He raised his eyebrows, again in mock surprise. He said, “Amazing invention, surgical gloves.”

“Look, Fritz,” said Pomeroy evenly. “Cut the crap. Take the letters and go. You don’t need to kill us, for God’s sake, there’s been enough dying already. Just go.”

Fritz cocked his head at Pomeroy, the same leer fixed on his face. For the first time, it occurred to me that my former father-in-law, a man I had liked for so long, was insane.

“Pomeroy Locraft, you are offending me. You have offended me already. You have accused me of immorality.”

“You mean,” I said, “for performing an abortion on his wife who was an alcoholic?”

“Well, Goldy. You’ve been reading those files,” said Fritz. He turned back to the beekeeper. “Poor Pomeroy, wanted to be a daddy so badly. Came into my office all upset. But it was too late.”

Pomeroy was shaking his head. He said to Fritz, “I wouldn’t go outside in that outfit if I were you—”

“Fritz,” I babbled, “where will you go? They’ll catch you, you know.”

He snorted. “By the time they figure out I’m gone, I’ll be the proprietor of a little hotel in Mexico.”

“What about Vonette?” I demanded, stalling, anything. “How much Demerol did you have to inject her with to kill her? Don’t you think the cops are going to figure that out?”

Fritz looked from one of us to the other. “Vonette’s better off now. The police will find nothing. I am tired,” he announced, “of listening to you two. Walk.”

And out we shuffled. I gave a last long look at the lump on the bed that was my son.

Halfway to the shed, Fritz called to us to stop.

“Almost forgot,” he said over the breeze stirring the trees. “If you and your boyfriend here are going to kill each other, we need another gun. So turn left, boys and girls, and we can go to my car and get one.” And then he laughed, a horrible high-pitched sound that made my stomach turn over.

We turned and marched through the dry grass toward what I could dimly see was Fritz’s Jeep. The evening was still cloudy and the moon was high in the sky. Occasionally moonlight swept the meadow. Pom’s cabin, the honey shed, the silvered grass would appear—and then be gone. I kept glancing back to see some movement in the cabin. Had Arch awakened? But if he had, what good would it do? Would he have heard? How could he get help? Would he be too terrified or confused to do anything? I had noticed a rural fire number posted on one of the trees near the cabin, an indication that someone had Pomeroy on a map somewhere. Fat lot of good that would do us.

Fritz was muttering and thrashing through his glove compartment.

“Goldy,” whispered Pom, “when we get down to the shed, I’ll try to hit him. If we’re in the back of the shed, go out the back door. Then run back to the house and get Arch and take off in my car. The keys are in it.”

“What about you?” I whispered back.

“Shut up, you two,” hollered Fritz. He had come around the car and now held two firearms. “Turn around and get down to that shed.”

We obediently turned and started back over the rocks and grass in the direction of the shed, Fritz behind us. I walked on tiptoe, trying to avoid holes. At one point I stepped on something that felt like eggshells. Then suddenly the clouds parted again and gray-white moonlight flooded the meadow.

Jesus God in heaven. There was a small figure making its way to the creek, and it was carrying something. A bottle? I couldn’t tell. There was something else I could discern, but did not want to accept.

It was Arch.

CHAPTER 28

When the three of us reached the shed, Fritz ordered Pom to go in first and turn on the light, with the warning that I would be shot immediately if the light did not come on. Pom did as he was told and we walked in. Surprise. Between the shelves loaded with supplies there was just enough room for a car. A blue Volvo.

“I knew you had her car,” I said to Pom.

“I was supposed to be fixing it,” he said.

“I already figured out that you were looking for the evidence she had against Fritz. Just tell me what you were doing at the athletic club the other night,” I said.

“I told you two to shut your mouths,” said Fritz.

But then I scanned the shelves in the shed, and I knew what Pom had been looking for Thursday night.

“Okay, this is how it’s going to work,” Fritz announced. “Goldy, you get over—”

“FIREBALL, FIREBALL, COME TO THE AID OF THE LICH!” shouted Arch’s young voice from outside.

“Shut up!” shouted Fritz. “Hey, who is that? Come out here! Hey!”

Through the air from the blackness came some kind of a projectile, whizzing, ablaze … It was a Molotov cocktail.

“Get out!” shouted Pom. He grabbed my arm and shoved me out the shed door. I heard the bottle shatter and explode. Pom was on the ground beside me. Fritz was nowhere.

And then I heard what sounded like a low roar, beginning slowly and rising, louder and louder.

The bees. Arch had pulled the rope.

“I’ve got to get one of the smoke pots going to get rid of the bees,” Pomeroy cried into my ear. “They’re going to sting Fritz to death. Go around back! Get Arch!”

The warm weather had dried the grass to straw. Already smoke was billowing heavily from one side of the shed, and flames were licking the grass.

“Arch!” I screamed. “Arch! Where are you?”

A gust of wind fanned the flames into a roar that swallowed my voice. The smoke stung my eyes and nose. My breath caught in my mouth. A bee landed on my arm and I screamed.

“Arch! Arch!”

The smoke was so thick that my eyes felt as if they were on fire. My own tears blinded me as I stumbled toward the meadow. The air was hot. I felt wildly with my hands for trees, bush branches, boulders, anything by which Arch might be huddled. Pine tree branches whacked and scratched my face. I fell over a clump of rocks.

“Arch!”

A thin voice called, “Over here, Mom!”

I jumped and ran in the direction of that sound. Branches again clawed my face. Twice I stumbled on snake holes and fell into black straw. The air was thick, unbreathable with the smoke. From time to time I would feel the brush of a bee. I ran for Arch, calling. His responding voice was my beacon. Finally I could see the cabin.

Then came the sound of vehicles cracking over small trees. Who? Twirling red and white lights flashed through the web of branches and pungent air. What was it?

Oh, God. It was the fire department.

“Arch!” I called. “Arch! Arch!”

Turning back to the shed I could see some flames, mostly smoke.

“Arch!”

“Here, Mom,” came a small voice by a tree. I stumbled over to the sound.

I pulled him to me. “Arch,” I said, “Arch.”

He said, his voice muffled by my squeeze, “Is Fritz dead?”

“I don’t know,” I cried. I could hear men’s voices shouting. Figures were running down to the shed. “What were you trying to do by throwing that bomb?”

Arch said, “I just wanted to scare him. He was acting so weird!”

I shook my head, hugged him tighter. “And did you call the fire department before you started this blaze?”

He pulled back from my chest.

“Of course,” he said matter-of-factly. “Pom showed me how to use his radiophone once. The fire number is on it.” His face was shiny with sweat. Despite his apparent calm, his voice was shaking. “And I told the fire department to call Tom Schulz.”

At that moment, I was so glad to have him alive and with me that I did not care whom he had called.

“Thanks, Arch,” I whispered into his ear. “You probably saved my life, you know. Pom’s, too.” I paused. “Hon, I’ve been so worried about you. Potions and revenge and weapons. It’s not the same as life, you know, real life.”

He let his head bob forward. “I know,” he said, barely audible over the din from the firefighters. “But”—and now his eyes behind the thick glasses implored me—“it was just because of the kids at school. Todd and I were going to put a curse on them. But it didn’t work I mean we sort of chickened out. You know? We had a curse and a weapon, but the milkwort potion was too gross. I got to make the Molotov cocktail anyway, because I remembered where Pom keeps his extra gasoline tank. And I, uh, let the bees go by pulling the rope that warns of an intruder. Man, I can’t wait to tell Todd about that.”

What could I say? He was my son. He didn’t cater to anybody either. Still. The games were his escape from reality. What he had done was brave, but much too hazardous for a boy of eleven. I hugged him again.

“You’re really great,” I said. “But when all this is over we’re both going to go see the school psychologist. We need to have a long chat.”

He looked up at me. The smoke stung my eyes to tears again when he said, “All I need is you, Mom.”

By the time we made our way back up to the cabin, Tom Schulz, still in his clown costume, was sitting on a tall stool boasting about having the situation under control. Fritz, he informed us, was going by rescue squad to a hospital in Denver. He had stings over half his body. And Schulz had sent an investigator to the Korman house to confiscate the records of injections the doctor claimed to have given Vonette. He was going to see if it matched the toxicological report he was ordering.

“I’ve got a cop with Korman now,” Tom said. “Because we don’t even have to wait for those records. That doctor is under arrest.”

“Finally,” interjected Pomeroy, who had reentered his cabin, covered with soot.

I sank onto the couch and pulled Arch down next to me. I never wanted to let him out of my sight again. For the next few hours, anyway. The muscles in my legs and arms ached. A sudden wave of exhaustion swept through my body.

“And you, Miss G,” Tom said as he wagged a heavy finger at me, “are in one load of trouble for making that food.”

“Tell me what you arrested Fritz for,” I demanded weakly.

He puffed out his chest. “Investigation of first-degree murder. Man, I am so smart. I got that scalpel checked for blood and fingerprints. Lucky for us the record on Laura Smiley said she was blood type AB negative, which just happened to match the blood on the blade and the handle. Best of all, I found a right index fingerprint.”

I gave him a questioning look. “I thought there were surgical gloves …?”

“Oh, Goldy,” Tom rejoined, “you got a long way to go before you become a grown-up detective. Not to mention that your ability to follow orders needs some work. Man wears surgical gloves, touches his forehead or something, picks up some body oil which has some kind of enzymes or something in it, hell, I’m not too sure myself. Anyway, then he touches something and some of that enzyme and oil stuff comes off and bingo, the print comes through the glove.” He smiled proudly. “I sent that scalpel down to Denver for a laser picture, got a print, matched it with the Department of Motor Vehicles print of Fritz Korman’s right index, and what do you know.”

I closed my eyes and leaned my head back against the cushion.

“Well,” I said, “aren’t you something. Take that box of letters, too. They ought to help your case.”

“Hey, you finally found something! How about that.” He slid off his stool and looked into the box.

I said, “I think that’s what Laura threatened him with. Vonette might have known about them too, but was too afraid or embarrassed to reveal what she knew. They both probably threatened him with exposure. In Aspen Meadow that would have been the kiss of death. Which it was for them.”

“Sort of like closing down a catering business?” he said with a smile. He stopped talking for a minute, shifted his weight on the stool. “Well, Miss Goldy, after all this, I ought to at least rate breakfast with you,” he said with a big clown grin. “Make that brunch. Soon’s I get some of the work on this done.” He eyed Pomeroy, who was finally removing the sooty beekeeper suit. Then he added, “I mean, since we never did get to finish our date.”

I looked at Tom Schulz.

I said, “You bet. Give me five minutes and you can take Arch and me home, out for breakfast when the sun comes up, whatever. Meanwhile, I need to have a little chat with the beekeeper. Outside.”

Pom gave me a rueful glance and said, “Let’s go.”

The two of us walked in silence down to the creek. Our feet swished through the grass. The clouds had left the night sky, but acrid smoke stench still hung in the air. Lights from the flashing fire trucks made Pomeroy’s tired face look like a statue in a city square at night.

I said, “You had a predator who raided one of your hives a couple of weeks ago. A skunk, maybe. That’s why you couldn’t bring me any more honey before the funeral, right?”

“Yes, a skunk. So what?”

“Arch didn’t forget the things he learned from you,” I went on. “He talked about those facts, even used them in his games. When a wizard trespasses a secret lair, he is attacked by a straight-flying line of stingrays. Just like bees. You have to approach danger from the side. Just like bees. When you have unwanted animals, you call the Division of Wildlife. Just like bees. In a game, when you have problems with giant water rats, you crack open a raw alligator egg and mix in chopped-up electric eel. Just like bees. Only with bees, when you have a skunk or rat or field mouse getting into the honey, you crack open an egg and mix the yolk with poison, right?”

“Yeah. So?”

“A poison called Just One Bite, right? That you just happen to keep on the shelves of your shed. Still right?”

Silence. Then he said, “That’s right.”

“And when a caterer turned cleaning lady tells you she’s going to be cleaning the club, you sneak over to look for the poisonous disinfectant, right?”

“Right.”

“But you make the mistake of bringing the club cleaning woman flowers in the hospital, and you call her ‘sweets’ at a party, both of which are remarkably like the bouquet and note you sent her after you first tried to poison Doctor Fritz Niebold Korman, right?”

“Goldy, I wasn’t trying to kill him,” he protested. “I wanted to, to terrify him, make him sweat. I wanted him to get real worried about dying.”

“Uh-huh. And you mention to your protege, the one who is so easy to talk to, who sounds just like a little adult, and who just happens to be my son, that Laura didn’t get along with Fritz and Vonette, and that furthermore, Fritz had no respect for human life. Right again?”

There was a long silence. Pom crossed his arms and stared at the black rushing creek.

He said, “After my wife had her abortion, she left. All I could think about was death. And of course, getting back at him for what he’d done. I know it’s not grounds for a malpractice suit. She did what she wanted. But nobody thought about me. It was my child, too, even if she was an alcoholic and the baby probably would have had problems. I wanted Korman to think about death for a while. I’m sorry if Arch took what I said too seriously.”

“It’s his grandfather we’re talking about.”

“I am really sorry. Revenge makes you a little crazy. I’m sorry about your business, too,” he said. In the moonlight I could see his furrowed brow, his earnest dark eyes. “That’s why I wanted to teach Patty Sue how to drive, so she could help you—”

“All because of your ex-wife’s abortion? I thought in Al-Anon you were supposed to learn how to take care of yourself. Let go of the addict in your life. I wish I’d figured out earlier what you were doing in that organization, instead of just working on Laura.” I paused. “Wake up and smell the coffee, Pom. You want to have children, get married and have them.”

We didn’t say anything. I crossed my arms. It was time to go.

I said, “You know what Newman says to Redford in The Sting when they first meet? ‘Revenge is for suckers.’ ” I was quiet for a minute before saying, “I have to tell Schulz you’re the one. Unless you’re ready to ’fess up.”

Pom turned away from me completely. He put his hands on his hips and stared at the creek. He cleared his throat. I let him have his silence.

“I’m ready,” he said after a moment. “The person I wanted to hurt is being punished. You don’t need to turn me in. I can do that myself.”

I touched his shoulder. He headed back to the cabin.

Later, although I could not say how much later, Tom Schulz was driving me out of the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve in a police car. We bounced along the dirt road in silence. Despite all the excitement Arch had fallen asleep in the backseat within minutes.

The night was very still. Overhead, a sea of stars glittered. The moon was crossing to the west and the wind had died down. Or, I reflected, since it was near dawn and already All Saints’ Day, the wind like everything else had given up the ghost.

“Guess you’ll be getting back into the catering business,” Tom finally remarked.

“Guess so,” I replied, “since I don’t need to worry about people coming along and dumping strange chemicals into people’s drinks at my functions.”

“You know,” he said, “I had a feeling it was Pomeroy. Quiet people make me nervous.”

“How’d you figure that out?”

“I thought I saw him. Couldn’t be sure. It was right after you were talking real close to him, he bent over to put that net hat down and brought out the cleaner. Sometimes you don’t arrest someone right away, especially when Murder One and a bunch of other stuff are a possibility at the same time. Anyway,” he said with a self-satisfied smirk, “when you followed him I figured you knew he’d done it too, and that you could take as good care of him as I could.”

“I thought you didn’t want me to leave the party! Was that all an act?”

“Course it was. If Goldy’s the prime suspect, Pomeroy won’t try to bolt before I’ve got some evidence. Or a confession, thank you very much. You mind?”

“I can’t believe you! Pomeroy could have killed me!”

“Oh, I think you and Arch could’ve defended yourselves. It took three fire trucks and six smoke pots just to get the bees and Molotov cocktail under control.”

I smiled in spite of myself.

Tom Schulz turned onto the highway.

Funny thing, revenge.

Revenge against Fritz Korman was what had motivated Laura because of Bebe and Patty Sue, Vonette because of Laura and Bebe, Pomeroy because of his baby, Arch because of his teacher and his grandmother. Nor was I above reproach, with my hatred of John Richard Korman, the jerk I used to be married to.

Ahead the highway stretched like a smooth gray ribbon pulling us into the day when we remember the dead. To the west the mountain tops were fiery with dawn’s light. Schulz pointed to the pine trees, whose needles glowed silver.

Why do we remember the dead? I had asked my Sunday school class when we were studying All Saints’ Day. So we can let them go.

Tom Schulz pulled up in front of the Aspen Meadow pastry shop. The warm scent of cinnamon rolls wafted into the morning coolness. I was happy to be there, happy to be with Tom Schulz, happy, period.

He said, “I love this place. Let’s start with some rolls. Not as good as yours, of course.”

“Flattery will get you absolutely—”

“Same old Goldy. Okay, this being the beginning of a new day and all that, you better let me start by just buying you a cup of coffee.”

I smiled and said, “Sure. Black. You put anything in it, I’ll kill you.”

INDEX TO THE RECIPES

Goldy’s Marvelous Mayonnaise

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Wild Man’s Wild Rice Salad

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Goldy’s Dream Cake

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Dungeon Bars

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Goldy’s Terrific Toffee

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Honey-I’m-Home Ginger Snaps

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Holy Moly Guacamole

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Diane Mott Davidson is the author of eleven Goldy novels: Catering to Nobody, Dying for Chocolate, The Cereal Murders, The Last Suppers, Killer Pancake, The Main Corpse, The Grilling Season, Prime Cut, Tough Cookie, Sticks & Scones, and Chopping Spree. Diane lives in Evergreen, Colorado, with her family.

If you enjoyed Diane Mott Davidson’s delicious debut mystery, CATERING TO NOBODY, you won’t want to miss any of the tantalizing entrees in her nationally bestselling culinary mystery series!

Available wherever Bantam Books are sold