Dark Tort

DARK TORT

Diane Mott Davidson

To Sandra Dijkstra

and her marvelous team

Thank you for your decades of work to support Goldy and me

But jealous souls will not be answered so.

They are not ever jealous for

the cause but jealous for they’re jealous.

’Tis a monster begot on itself,

borne on itself.

—Othello, act III, scene iv

CHAPTER 1

I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19.

At first I thought it was a joke. Loaded down with bread-making supplies, I had just pushed through the heavy wooden door of Hanrahan & Jule, the boutique law firm in Aspen Meadow where I’d been catering breakfasts for several months. My foot caught and I stumbled forward. I thought, Those H&J clowns are up to something. Again.

The bag of flour I was carrying slid from my hands and exploded on the carpet. Two jars of yeast plummeted onto the coffee table, where they burst into shards and powder. My last bottle of molasses sailed in a wide arc and cracked open on the receptionist’s cherrywood desk. A thick wave of sweet, dark liquid began a gluey descent across the phone console. My steel bowl of bread sponge catapulted out of my arms and hit the wall.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to change my own trajectory toward an end table. It was one of two rough-hewn, cabin-style monstrosities that the decorator had thought necessary to make Hanrahan & Jule look like what it claimed to be: “your Rocky Mountain neighborhood law firm!”

I hit the end table, ricocheted over to the desk, cried out, and finally landed on my stomach. I had tripped over I-knew-not-what in a spectacular manner, and now I was prone on an imitation Native American rug. I shrieked, “Very funny, fellas!” But the lawyers who pulled these pranks didn’t appear.

I wiped flour out of my eyes and waited for the guys to reveal themselves. When they didn’t, I tried to focus on what I could see of the small lobby space. Lamps made of elk horns sat on the clunky tables. The bentwood couches, which were placed beneath homey paintings of food, were empty. I was lying on a sponge-soaked picture of a tepee. The pain assaulting my tailbone was excruciating.

Gritting my teeth, I figured I was about as upset as any caterer could be, when the bread for the following morning’s breakfast has been wrecked the night before. I still hadn’t seen what had caused my fall. Nor was there any telltale noise. In fact, the law firm of Hanrahan & Jule was completely quiet.

I’d ended up on the far side of the massive coffee table, a thick column of wood carved, I’d been told, from the trunk of an ancient blue spruce tree. I rubbed my behind and stared at the dark lacquered bark. Had I just stumbled over my own feet? No, I was sure the small cadre of lawyers who were not in Maui this week, ostensibly engaging in continuing education, was responsible for this mishap.

I heaved myself onto my back, wondering if the guys—and that’s what all ten H&J lawyers were, guys—would think this was more funny than when they’d put green food coloring into the cheddar omelettes. Or how about the live moths that had fluttered out of one of my folded tablecloths? And then, oh Lord, then—there was the gin-switched-for-water in my espresso machine. Soon after that trick, I’d seen one of the partners pouring vodka into the very same machine’s water well. I’d used my tray to whack him from behind—accidentally, of course—and spewed forty dollars’ worth of Stolichnaya across the firm’s huge kitchen.

Staring at the ceiling, I sighed. Now that my flour, yeast, molasses, and sponge were kaput, was the partner who’d ordered the breakfast going to run out and buy freshly baked loaves for his Friday-morning meeting with clients? I doubted it very much. I wrenched my body around to survey the damage.

And there, sprawled on the far side of the coffee table, was Dusty Routt.

In addition to being a friend, Dusty was our neighbor. She was also in training to become the firm’s second paralegal, and she often got drafted into playing a part in these high jinks. At the very least, she was sometimes pressed into trying to cover them up, as I’d discovered after the spiked-coffee affair, when I’d caught her disposing of a plastic bag holding two empty gin bottles. “Orders from King Richard,” Dusty had whispered conspiratorially. “He says I have to get rid of the evidence. Without you catching me, that is,” she’d added with a characteristic giggle as she slammed the Dumpster lid shut. Since King Richard was Dusty’s uncle, Richard Chenault, the same partner whose Stoly I later disposed of, I knew a confrontation was out of the question. Just this past August, Richard’s secretary had been summarily fired when she’d had the audacity—or stupidity—to send a locket engraved for Richard’s mistress to his, uh, wife. Richard’s wife, a doctor named K.D., had promptly filed for divorce.

I stared at Dusty’s back, waiting. I couldn’t see her face. Still, I knew it was Dusty. There was her highlighted-at-home hair; there was the like-new beige Calvin Klein suit she was wearing. I’d actually found the suit for her at Aspen Meadow’s secondhand store. Now I wanted to hear her high, joyful voice as she jumped up to cry, “Surprise!” I anticipated a trio of attorneys leaping out from behind the receptionist’s desk and squealing, “Gotcha!”

But I still couldn’t hear anything at all.

“Dusty!” I whispered hoarsely. “Get up. Gag’s over.”

She didn’t move. I did finally hear something, but it was only the steady plink plop of beaten egg dripping onto one of the end tables. My gaze shifted from Dusty to where the sponge liquid had first landed, on Charlie Baker’s painting of peach pie, one of three of his famous pictures of food that adorned the lobby walls. The frame was broken. Had I done that to dear, departed Charlie Baker’s artwork?

Charlie Baker. I swallowed. Don’t go there, I ordered myself. But then I squinted at some splotches and drips that had stained the painted pie, with its list of ingredients meticulously penned underneath…

Fear scurried down my back. I hauled myself up onto my hands and knees. Dusty Routt, the pretty, ambitious twenty-year-old whose family had lived across the street from us for the last three years, lay a foot away. She still wasn’t moving.

“Oh God, Dusty!” I yelled. “Get up!”

Dusty’s body was twisted, I saw now, and that was why her face was turned toward the carpet. Her twenty-first birthday was the next day, she’d excitedly informed me. The carrot cake I’d made for her still sat wrapped in my caterer’s van. But she hadn’t even twitched since I’d tripped over her.

“Dammit!” I hollered as I scooted forward and grabbed her wrist. I couldn’t feel a pulse.

Maybe it’s just weak. Maybe I’m not feeling in the right spot. I struggled to a half-standing position. Dusty looked as if she’d fallen sideways. Her pretty face was obscured by her tumble of blond-brown hair. I gently shook her shoulders, but nothing happened.

I pushed my fingers into a new place on Dusty’s wrist, then noticed that the beige skirt had somehow gotten caught up around her hips, hips she had ruthlessly slimmed by riding an exercise bike at Aspen Meadow’s new rec center every morning before showing up for work. When King Richard had hired Dusty, as ambitious a niece as any tightfisted uncle could ever hope to have, she’d been determined to look as mature as possible. She’d just finished her associate’s degree and was starting paralegal school, and was set on acquiring—and fitting into—a professional wardrobe. Remembering her happy gratitude when I’d presented her with the suit, I gently shook her again with my free hand.

“Dusty, it’s me, Goldy,” I murmured as I let go of her wrist and reached under her shoulders with both hands. “I’m going to turn you over.”

Her body was limp, but warm. There was redness around her neck. I saw now that blood was seeping out of a small gash at the top of her forehead, and her pretty face was flushed on one side. Her blue eyes were half open. Her slack mouth contrasted with her bright, curly hair. She didn’t moan or blink, and I cursed silently. When I shook her again, her legs sprawled like a scarecrow’s; her hands flopped open, palm up. The thoughts I should get out of here and Don’t touch anything competed ferociously with If she’s still alive, I could help her.

I felt in my apron pocket for my cell phone. Not there. I patted my pants pockets. Again, nothing. I’d been in a hurry to get over here after my van wouldn’t start, and I must have left the phone in the front seat. I gently let go of Dusty and jumped over to the reception desk. But when I picked up the molasses-covered receiver to call for help, there was no dial tone. I raced to the first office on the hall, felt for a light, and found another phone. I jabbed buttons, to no effect. Did the H&J folks shut down all telecommunications at night? I hadn’t a clue.

I returned to Dusty and frantically started CPR. I noticed that the redness around her neck was quite dark, not just pink. My heart faltered. I wanted to talk to Dusty, to ask if someone had hurt her, and why. But I couldn’t do any of those things, because I was trying to breathe life into her lungs.

As I worked feverishly on my young neighbor, I kept thinking, This isn’t happening. There was fake blood. There were weak pulses. I still half expected her to jump up, erupt into giggles, and shout for everybody to leap out from assorted hiding places. I felt the other wrist for a pulse. Even if it’s weak, I remembered from my days in Med Wives 101, keep going. I momentarily stopped CPR and waited for Dusty to breathe on her own. She didn’t.

Leave, that same inner voice commanded me. Get out. Call for help from somewhere else. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I was bent on bringing about the resuscitation part of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

After—What was it? Five minutes? Ten? A half hour?—I gave up. Later, the cops wanted to know when I’d left the H&J office. And every time they asked, I told them I didn’t know, that time had turned fluid once I’d discovered Dusty. And why did that matter so much? I wondered. I could not pinpoint the actual moment when I exhaled, got to my feet, and again glanced in vain around the office for something that might explain what was going on. Feeling foolish, I peeked around the firm’s massive front door to make sure no one was waiting in the hall. Then I dashed out.

The door closed with a firm k-chook. I pulled the red metal ring with my two office keys out of my pocket. I always kept the H&J keys on a separate ring, because I had been warned that losing them meant a five-hundred-dollar fine. I secured the bolt with the second key and raced down the half-lit hallway.

If only, if only, if only I’d been here on time, I repeated to myself, Dusty would still be alive. But I wasn’t going to think that way. It was possible she could still be revived. Possible, but not probable. Feeling like a failure, I pushed through the metal service door.

Outside, the chilly-sweet autumn air smacked my face and made me cough. A sharp mountain breeze was lashing the trees that circled the rear parking lot. Nearby, a neon light illuminated pines, spruce, and a stand of aspens. The golden leaves cloaking the aspens’ white-barked branches quaked and shuddered. Another whip of air sprayed dust and ice into my eyes. I needed my cell phone. Had I locked my van after parking back here in the service lot? I could not remember.

My breath came out in frosted white tatters as I trotted, half blind, toward my normally trustworthy vehicle, which had delayed me tonight with its drained battery. I could imagine the voice of my husband, Tom, a sheriff’s department investigator, urging me to get cracking. Get out of there. But I didn’t know what had happened, and I desperately wanted to help Dusty. Tom’s voice drilled my inner ear: Never stay alone at a crime scene that hasn’t been secured. Right, right. This was a rule every cop learned at the academy. But I wasn’t sure I’d actually been at a crime scene, because of course, I wasn’t a cop. But being married to a cop, I’d learned the rules—sometimes the hard way. And I often didn’t exactly follow them, as Tom frequently was at pains to point out.

Hugging my sides, I hurtled awkwardly across the gravel. Dizziness assaulted me, and I slowed to a walk and tried to breathe normally. What was the swooshing noise in my ears? I tried to ignore it, tried to tell myself it was the hum of traffic from Interstate 70. My white shirt gleamed in the neon haze drifting down from the crown of a nearby light pole. Where was my jacket? Inside the van, probably. I rummaged in the pockets of my pants, and realized I had dropped my car keys in the law firm office. With just the smallest amount of hope, I pulled on the van door. Locked, of course.

I turned around and tried to think. Was it close to eleven? What place would be open? Where would there be a pay phone? Did anyone actually use pay phones anymore? I shook my head to rid myself of the drumming in my ears and tried to force myself to think clearly.

As I trotted around the building I scolded myself again for not getting here right at ten, when I was scheduled to show Dusty how to make the high-protein bread King Richard had asked I serve his clients the next morning. I cursed as I surveyed the front lot, where a freezing nighttime mist hugged the grid of streetlights in front of the long, two-story office building. This was where the lawyers, clients, and staff parked…but the space held only Dusty’s Civic.

My breath puffed as I ran, panting, toward the shopping center across the street. I thought of Dusty again, sprawled out on the reception-area carpeting. Back in my pre-Tom days, I’d been unhappily married to John Richard Korman, a physically abusive doctor who was the father of my fifteen-year-old son, Arch. It was during my years with the Jerk, as his other ex-wife and I had called him, that I’d learned the lessons of Med Wives 101, our own version of medical authority. Sometimes you can’t feel a pulse, I stubbornly reminded myself for at least the tenth time.

After glancing around for traffic—there was none—I hopped onto the road beside the parking lot. A combination of dropping temperature and frigid humidity had sheeted the pavement with ice. I shivered. Why hadn’t I worn my jacket into H&J? Because I’d been in a hurry to meet Dusty for our sixth and final cooking lesson. She’d said she had something to tell me.

I scooted across the street to the access road that led up to the three-sided strip mall. Ahead, a few lights twinkled in the chilly fog. The main tenant of the shopping center was a supermarket. There were also a liquor store and two bars, a reminder of our saloon heritage here in the West. Other occupants included a store called Art, Music, and Copies, various and sundry clothing, shoe, and western-wear stores, and Aspen Meadow Café. These all appeared abandoned and wreathed in darkness.

Please, God, I prayed, as I jumped carefully onto the access road’s slippery pavement. Please let Dusty be okay. The thin, vulnerable face of Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, loomed before me. She’d already lost a son, Dusty’s older brother, whom I hadn’t known. I couldn’t even contemplate talking to Sally about Dusty being hurt. Or worse.

The cord to one of the pay phones outside Aspen Meadow Café was torn off. The other phone had no dial tone. Another sudden, glacial breeze stung my skin as I tried to make out shapes in the near distance. The shopping center was not abandoned, after all. About ten folks, their bodies padded with puffy down jackets, huddled outside the grocery store. But the store was closed. What was going on? I wondered. Then I remembered a special on ski-lift tickets beginning at midnight. The first two dozen people to buy a hundred bucks’ worth of food got a season pass at Vail. The would-be bargain hunters stomped and stamped, but they were tough—again, this was the West—and had no intention of wimping out in heated cars.

It would take me at least five minutes to jog up there, and several more to find someone with a cell phone who could call an ambulance. Plus, I was freezing. I needed to find someplace closer.

I peered along the line of nearby storefronts. Next to the unopened café was Art, Music, and Copies. Inside, a gray fluorescent bulb blinked, as if someone had forgotten to turn it off. Still, I thought I remembered that the copy place, as we called it, was supposed to be open late. I trotted up the sidewalk and banged on the large plate-glass window, which boasted hot pink lettering that screamed “You Own It, We’ll Clone It!” I tried the door, which rattled reassuringly: it was locked, but loose. Someone had to be in there, I reasoned. Still, as I knocked harder, I wondered if I should be running up to the grocery store.

When there was no response, I hammered mercilessly on the glass door. And it broke.

Finally someone appeared. I even recognized him: a young fellow, twentyish, Dusty’s boyfriend. Vic Something. I’d seen him over at the Routts’ house from time to time.

He yelled, “Why did you do that?”

“I need help!” I called, surveying the shards now littering the inside of the store. “It’s an emergency!”

“I guess so.” Vic was tall and very slender, his peaked face set off by an explosion of curls the color of straw. As he moved toward me, his young, high forehead wrinkled like folded tissue.

“Could you just hurry up?” I implored.

Vic’s long legs finally brought him to the door. “You didn’t have to break the door. Oh, it’s you, Goldy,” he said breathlessly. “Well, I can only let you do a couple of copies, and you’re going to have to pay cash because—”

“I need a phone!”

His hand was unexpectedly warm and moist as he grabbed mine. “Take it easy, take it easy. Okay, step over the glass.” His last name swum up into consciousness: Vic Zaruski. Yes, definitely Dusty’s boyfriend, but did I recall that they’d broken up? I wasn’t sure what kind of connection Vic had with Dusty now, if any, because my mind wasn’t working properly.

“I simply have to call help.” I stumbled forward over the pile of glass and into the store’s warm interior. “Show me the phone. Please. Someone’s hurt.”

Vic, his wide, dark brown eyes blinking in disbelief, his hair glowing like a ragged halo in the flickering neon, seemed at a loss for words. But he moved to the counter, picked up the phone, and handed it to me.

As I punched in the three digits, Vic’s worried glance took me in. He reached underneath the counter and pulled out a sweatshirt. “Put this on,” he whispered. I clutched it and nodded thanks. When the emergency operator answered, I told her what I’d found, and where. I said we needed medical help right away.

Vic drew back, his face drained of color. He said, “What?” But I had to ignore him, as I was telling the operator that in addition to an ambulance, she needed to send the sheriff’s department.

I pulled the sweatshirt over my head as the operator continued to talk, telling me to be calm, that help was on the way.

“What’s going on?” Vic demanded. Wind blew through the hole where the door had been, and a couple of curious ticket seekers from the grocery store peeked in. How much had they heard? What if they decided to go across the street to poke around and try to see what I was so upset about? Abruptly, I hung up the phone and bolted for the smashed door.

“Was there a break-in?” Vic persisted from behind me. “You said you needed an ambulance for Dusty? Why? Why do the cops need to come?”

When we reached the glass, I suddenly turned back. Vic collided with me and I caught a whiff of his scent, some musky boy-cologne.

“Vic,” I said, my voice low. “You need to herd these people back up to the grocery store. It’s important that they not go across the street. Please.”

“I can’t—” he began to protest. But I ignored him, as well as the people staring at me as I stepped over the glass and onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, Goldy—” came one voice, but I didn’t look back.

“I’ll get my cell,” a female voice announced, but I didn’t pay any attention to that either. My skin needled under the huge sweatshirt as I walked quickly down the slick sidewalk. I knew I shouldn’t be talking to anyone now except medical and law enforcement people. No sense making more of a mess of this than I already had.

Behind me, Vic’s excited voice told the curiosity seekers to get back up to the grocery store. He ordered them not to follow us. Us? Dammit. Vic’s footsteps echoed down the pavement behind me.

“Vic, you cannot follow me,” I shouted. He didn’t answer, and soon he was right at my side. As we walked, he begged me to talk to him, but I just shook my head. Finally we arrived at the grass-covered hill that overlooked the road. We stood, waiting, for what felt like an eternity, but which in actuality was probably not more than fifteen minutes. Vic’s frustration and fear radiated like a negatively charged aura.

In the time since I’d raced across the street, the darkness had deepened and the cold intensified. On the far side of the street, the parking lot still held Dusty’s forlorn Civic. Vic began to cough in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was crying. When I told him again to stay put, he moved away from me.

Across the street, a long black car moved into the parking lot. Then another dark vehicle, this one coming from the I-70 side, pulled into the lot. Not even a moment later, a third car followed them. Oh, Lord, I thought as I recognized all three cars. Maybe the woman with the cell, or perhaps someone else outside the grocery store, had seen me bolting from the building occupied by Hanrahan & Jule. I had to have looked suspicious, frantic and coatless, as I leaped across the street, ran up the shopping-center sidewalk, and banged on the copy-place door. When I’d broken the glass and shouted for a phone, then called for an ambulance and the sheriff’s department, anyone within fifty yards would have heard me.

I stopped at the bottom of the hill and glanced back at the crowd of folks outside the grocery store. They were moving en masse, making their way down to where Vic and I were standing. Welcome to living in a small town. Someone had thought, What’s up at this time of night, with the caterer running away from the office building occupied by H&J? That same someone had put two and two together and made a call. And now, across the street in the H&J lot, we were faced with the result.

The lawyers are coming! The lawyers are coming!

Great.

CHAPTER 1

I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19.

At first I thought it was a joke. Loaded down with bread-making supplies, I had just pushed through the heavy wooden door of Hanrahan & Jule, the boutique law firm in Aspen Meadow where I’d been catering breakfasts for several months. My foot caught and I stumbled forward. I thought, Those H&J clowns are up to something. Again.

The bag of flour I was carrying slid from my hands and exploded on the carpet. Two jars of yeast plummeted onto the coffee table, where they burst into shards and powder. My last bottle of molasses sailed in a wide arc and cracked open on the receptionist’s cherrywood desk. A thick wave of sweet, dark liquid began a gluey descent across the phone console. My steel bowl of bread sponge catapulted out of my arms and hit the wall.

I wasn’t sure I’d be able to change my own trajectory toward an end table. It was one of two rough-hewn, cabin-style monstrosities that the decorator had thought necessary to make Hanrahan & Jule look like what it claimed to be: “your Rocky Mountain neighborhood law firm!”

I hit the end table, ricocheted over to the desk, cried out, and finally landed on my stomach. I had tripped over I-knew-not-what in a spectacular manner, and now I was prone on an imitation Native American rug. I shrieked, “Very funny, fellas!” But the lawyers who pulled these pranks didn’t appear.

I wiped flour out of my eyes and waited for the guys to reveal themselves. When they didn’t, I tried to focus on what I could see of the small lobby space. Lamps made of elk horns sat on the clunky tables. The bentwood couches, which were placed beneath homey paintings of food, were empty. I was lying on a sponge-soaked picture of a tepee. The pain assaulting my tailbone was excruciating.

Gritting my teeth, I figured I was about as upset as any caterer could be, when the bread for the following morning’s breakfast has been wrecked the night before. I still hadn’t seen what had caused my fall. Nor was there any telltale noise. In fact, the law firm of Hanrahan & Jule was completely quiet.

I’d ended up on the far side of the massive coffee table, a thick column of wood carved, I’d been told, from the trunk of an ancient blue spruce tree. I rubbed my behind and stared at the dark lacquered bark. Had I just stumbled over my own feet? No, I was sure the small cadre of lawyers who were not in Maui this week, ostensibly engaging in continuing education, was responsible for this mishap.

I heaved myself onto my back, wondering if the guys—and that’s what all ten H&J lawyers were, guys—would think this was more funny than when they’d put green food coloring into the cheddar omelettes. Or how about the live moths that had fluttered out of one of my folded tablecloths? And then, oh Lord, then—there was the gin-switched-for-water in my espresso machine. Soon after that trick, I’d seen one of the partners pouring vodka into the very same machine’s water well. I’d used my tray to whack him from behind—accidentally, of course—and spewed forty dollars’ worth of Stolichnaya across the firm’s huge kitchen.

Staring at the ceiling, I sighed. Now that my flour, yeast, molasses, and sponge were kaput, was the partner who’d ordered the breakfast going to run out and buy freshly baked loaves for his Friday-morning meeting with clients? I doubted it very much. I wrenched my body around to survey the damage.

And there, sprawled on the far side of the coffee table, was Dusty Routt.

In addition to being a friend, Dusty was our neighbor. She was also in training to become the firm’s second paralegal, and she often got drafted into playing a part in these high jinks. At the very least, she was sometimes pressed into trying to cover them up, as I’d discovered after the spiked-coffee affair, when I’d caught her disposing of a plastic bag holding two empty gin bottles. “Orders from King Richard,” Dusty had whispered conspiratorially. “He says I have to get rid of the evidence. Without you catching me, that is,” she’d added with a characteristic giggle as she slammed the Dumpster lid shut. Since King Richard was Dusty’s uncle, Richard Chenault, the same partner whose Stoly I later disposed of, I knew a confrontation was out of the question. Just this past August, Richard’s secretary had been summarily fired when she’d had the audacity—or stupidity—to send a locket engraved for Richard’s mistress to his, uh, wife. Richard’s wife, a doctor named K.D., had promptly filed for divorce.

I stared at Dusty’s back, waiting. I couldn’t see her face. Still, I knew it was Dusty. There was her highlighted-at-home hair; there was the like-new beige Calvin Klein suit she was wearing. I’d actually found the suit for her at Aspen Meadow’s secondhand store. Now I wanted to hear her high, joyful voice as she jumped up to cry, “Surprise!” I anticipated a trio of attorneys leaping out from behind the receptionist’s desk and squealing, “Gotcha!”

But I still couldn’t hear anything at all.

“Dusty!” I whispered hoarsely. “Get up. Gag’s over.”

She didn’t move. I did finally hear something, but it was only the steady plink plop of beaten egg dripping onto one of the end tables. My gaze shifted from Dusty to where the sponge liquid had first landed, on Charlie Baker’s painting of peach pie, one of three of his famous pictures of food that adorned the lobby walls. The frame was broken. Had I done that to dear, departed Charlie Baker’s artwork?

Charlie Baker. I swallowed. Don’t go there, I ordered myself. But then I squinted at some splotches and drips that had stained the painted pie, with its list of ingredients meticulously penned underneath…

Fear scurried down my back. I hauled myself up onto my hands and knees. Dusty Routt, the pretty, ambitious twenty-year-old whose family had lived across the street from us for the last three years, lay a foot away. She still wasn’t moving.

“Oh God, Dusty!” I yelled. “Get up!”

Dusty’s body was twisted, I saw now, and that was why her face was turned toward the carpet. Her twenty-first birthday was the next day, she’d excitedly informed me. The carrot cake I’d made for her still sat wrapped in my caterer’s van. But she hadn’t even twitched since I’d tripped over her.

“Dammit!” I hollered as I scooted forward and grabbed her wrist. I couldn’t feel a pulse.

Maybe it’s just weak. Maybe I’m not feeling in the right spot. I struggled to a half-standing position. Dusty looked as if she’d fallen sideways. Her pretty face was obscured by her tumble of blond-brown hair. I gently shook her shoulders, but nothing happened.

I pushed my fingers into a new place on Dusty’s wrist, then noticed that the beige skirt had somehow gotten caught up around her hips, hips she had ruthlessly slimmed by riding an exercise bike at Aspen Meadow’s new rec center every morning before showing up for work. When King Richard had hired Dusty, as ambitious a niece as any tightfisted uncle could ever hope to have, she’d been determined to look as mature as possible. She’d just finished her associate’s degree and was starting paralegal school, and was set on acquiring—and fitting into—a professional wardrobe. Remembering her happy gratitude when I’d presented her with the suit, I gently shook her again with my free hand.

“Dusty, it’s me, Goldy,” I murmured as I let go of her wrist and reached under her shoulders with both hands. “I’m going to turn you over.”

Her body was limp, but warm. There was redness around her neck. I saw now that blood was seeping out of a small gash at the top of her forehead, and her pretty face was flushed on one side. Her blue eyes were half open. Her slack mouth contrasted with her bright, curly hair. She didn’t moan or blink, and I cursed silently. When I shook her again, her legs sprawled like a scarecrow’s; her hands flopped open, palm up. The thoughts I should get out of here and Don’t touch anything competed ferociously with If she’s still alive, I could help her.

I felt in my apron pocket for my cell phone. Not there. I patted my pants pockets. Again, nothing. I’d been in a hurry to get over here after my van wouldn’t start, and I must have left the phone in the front seat. I gently let go of Dusty and jumped over to the reception desk. But when I picked up the molasses-covered receiver to call for help, there was no dial tone. I raced to the first office on the hall, felt for a light, and found another phone. I jabbed buttons, to no effect. Did the H&J folks shut down all telecommunications at night? I hadn’t a clue.

I returned to Dusty and frantically started CPR. I noticed that the redness around her neck was quite dark, not just pink. My heart faltered. I wanted to talk to Dusty, to ask if someone had hurt her, and why. But I couldn’t do any of those things, because I was trying to breathe life into her lungs.

As I worked feverishly on my young neighbor, I kept thinking, This isn’t happening. There was fake blood. There were weak pulses. I still half expected her to jump up, erupt into giggles, and shout for everybody to leap out from assorted hiding places. I felt the other wrist for a pulse. Even if it’s weak, I remembered from my days in Med Wives 101, keep going. I momentarily stopped CPR and waited for Dusty to breathe on her own. She didn’t.

Leave, that same inner voice commanded me. Get out. Call for help from somewhere else. But I couldn’t. Not yet. I was bent on bringing about the resuscitation part of cardiopulmonary resuscitation.

After—What was it? Five minutes? Ten? A half hour?—I gave up. Later, the cops wanted to know when I’d left the H&J office. And every time they asked, I told them I didn’t know, that time had turned fluid once I’d discovered Dusty. And why did that matter so much? I wondered. I could not pinpoint the actual moment when I exhaled, got to my feet, and again glanced in vain around the office for something that might explain what was going on. Feeling foolish, I peeked around the firm’s massive front door to make sure no one was waiting in the hall. Then I dashed out.

The door closed with a firm k-chook. I pulled the red metal ring with my two office keys out of my pocket. I always kept the H&J keys on a separate ring, because I had been warned that losing them meant a five-hundred-dollar fine. I secured the bolt with the second key and raced down the half-lit hallway.

If only, if only, if only I’d been here on time, I repeated to myself, Dusty would still be alive. But I wasn’t going to think that way. It was possible she could still be revived. Possible, but not probable. Feeling like a failure, I pushed through the metal service door.

Outside, the chilly-sweet autumn air smacked my face and made me cough. A sharp mountain breeze was lashing the trees that circled the rear parking lot. Nearby, a neon light illuminated pines, spruce, and a stand of aspens. The golden leaves cloaking the aspens’ white-barked branches quaked and shuddered. Another whip of air sprayed dust and ice into my eyes. I needed my cell phone. Had I locked my van after parking back here in the service lot? I could not remember.

My breath came out in frosted white tatters as I trotted, half blind, toward my normally trustworthy vehicle, which had delayed me tonight with its drained battery. I could imagine the voice of my husband, Tom, a sheriff’s department investigator, urging me to get cracking. Get out of there. But I didn’t know what had happened, and I desperately wanted to help Dusty. Tom’s voice drilled my inner ear: Never stay alone at a crime scene that hasn’t been secured. Right, right. This was a rule every cop learned at the academy. But I wasn’t sure I’d actually been at a crime scene, because of course, I wasn’t a cop. But being married to a cop, I’d learned the rules—sometimes the hard way. And I often didn’t exactly follow them, as Tom frequently was at pains to point out.

Hugging my sides, I hurtled awkwardly across the gravel. Dizziness assaulted me, and I slowed to a walk and tried to breathe normally. What was the swooshing noise in my ears? I tried to ignore it, tried to tell myself it was the hum of traffic from Interstate 70. My white shirt gleamed in the neon haze drifting down from the crown of a nearby light pole. Where was my jacket? Inside the van, probably. I rummaged in the pockets of my pants, and realized I had dropped my car keys in the law firm office. With just the smallest amount of hope, I pulled on the van door. Locked, of course.

I turned around and tried to think. Was it close to eleven? What place would be open? Where would there be a pay phone? Did anyone actually use pay phones anymore? I shook my head to rid myself of the drumming in my ears and tried to force myself to think clearly.

As I trotted around the building I scolded myself again for not getting here right at ten, when I was scheduled to show Dusty how to make the high-protein bread King Richard had asked I serve his clients the next morning. I cursed as I surveyed the front lot, where a freezing nighttime mist hugged the grid of streetlights in front of the long, two-story office building. This was where the lawyers, clients, and staff parked…but the space held only Dusty’s Civic.

My breath puffed as I ran, panting, toward the shopping center across the street. I thought of Dusty again, sprawled out on the reception-area carpeting. Back in my pre-Tom days, I’d been unhappily married to John Richard Korman, a physically abusive doctor who was the father of my fifteen-year-old son, Arch. It was during my years with the Jerk, as his other ex-wife and I had called him, that I’d learned the lessons of Med Wives 101, our own version of medical authority. Sometimes you can’t feel a pulse, I stubbornly reminded myself for at least the tenth time.

After glancing around for traffic—there was none—I hopped onto the road beside the parking lot. A combination of dropping temperature and frigid humidity had sheeted the pavement with ice. I shivered. Why hadn’t I worn my jacket into H&J? Because I’d been in a hurry to meet Dusty for our sixth and final cooking lesson. She’d said she had something to tell me.

I scooted across the street to the access road that led up to the three-sided strip mall. Ahead, a few lights twinkled in the chilly fog. The main tenant of the shopping center was a supermarket. There were also a liquor store and two bars, a reminder of our saloon heritage here in the West. Other occupants included a store called Art, Music, and Copies, various and sundry clothing, shoe, and western-wear stores, and Aspen Meadow Café. These all appeared abandoned and wreathed in darkness.

Please, God, I prayed, as I jumped carefully onto the access road’s slippery pavement. Please let Dusty be okay. The thin, vulnerable face of Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, loomed before me. She’d already lost a son, Dusty’s older brother, whom I hadn’t known. I couldn’t even contemplate talking to Sally about Dusty being hurt. Or worse.

The cord to one of the pay phones outside Aspen Meadow Café was torn off. The other phone had no dial tone. Another sudden, glacial breeze stung my skin as I tried to make out shapes in the near distance. The shopping center was not abandoned, after all. About ten folks, their bodies padded with puffy down jackets, huddled outside the grocery store. But the store was closed. What was going on? I wondered. Then I remembered a special on ski-lift tickets beginning at midnight. The first two dozen people to buy a hundred bucks’ worth of food got a season pass at Vail. The would-be bargain hunters stomped and stamped, but they were tough—again, this was the West—and had no intention of wimping out in heated cars.

It would take me at least five minutes to jog up there, and several more to find someone with a cell phone who could call an ambulance. Plus, I was freezing. I needed to find someplace closer.

I peered along the line of nearby storefronts. Next to the unopened café was Art, Music, and Copies. Inside, a gray fluorescent bulb blinked, as if someone had forgotten to turn it off. Still, I thought I remembered that the copy place, as we called it, was supposed to be open late. I trotted up the sidewalk and banged on the large plate-glass window, which boasted hot pink lettering that screamed “You Own It, We’ll Clone It!” I tried the door, which rattled reassuringly: it was locked, but loose. Someone had to be in there, I reasoned. Still, as I knocked harder, I wondered if I should be running up to the grocery store.

When there was no response, I hammered mercilessly on the glass door. And it broke.

Finally someone appeared. I even recognized him: a young fellow, twentyish, Dusty’s boyfriend. Vic Something. I’d seen him over at the Routts’ house from time to time.

He yelled, “Why did you do that?”

“I need help!” I called, surveying the shards now littering the inside of the store. “It’s an emergency!”

“I guess so.” Vic was tall and very slender, his peaked face set off by an explosion of curls the color of straw. As he moved toward me, his young, high forehead wrinkled like folded tissue.

“Could you just hurry up?” I implored.

Vic’s long legs finally brought him to the door. “You didn’t have to break the door. Oh, it’s you, Goldy,” he said breathlessly. “Well, I can only let you do a couple of copies, and you’re going to have to pay cash because—”

“I need a phone!”

His hand was unexpectedly warm and moist as he grabbed mine. “Take it easy, take it easy. Okay, step over the glass.” His last name swum up into consciousness: Vic Zaruski. Yes, definitely Dusty’s boyfriend, but did I recall that they’d broken up? I wasn’t sure what kind of connection Vic had with Dusty now, if any, because my mind wasn’t working properly.

“I simply have to call help.” I stumbled forward over the pile of glass and into the store’s warm interior. “Show me the phone. Please. Someone’s hurt.”

Vic, his wide, dark brown eyes blinking in disbelief, his hair glowing like a ragged halo in the flickering neon, seemed at a loss for words. But he moved to the counter, picked up the phone, and handed it to me.

As I punched in the three digits, Vic’s worried glance took me in. He reached underneath the counter and pulled out a sweatshirt. “Put this on,” he whispered. I clutched it and nodded thanks. When the emergency operator answered, I told her what I’d found, and where. I said we needed medical help right away.

Vic drew back, his face drained of color. He said, “What?” But I had to ignore him, as I was telling the operator that in addition to an ambulance, she needed to send the sheriff’s department.

I pulled the sweatshirt over my head as the operator continued to talk, telling me to be calm, that help was on the way.

“What’s going on?” Vic demanded. Wind blew through the hole where the door had been, and a couple of curious ticket seekers from the grocery store peeked in. How much had they heard? What if they decided to go across the street to poke around and try to see what I was so upset about? Abruptly, I hung up the phone and bolted for the smashed door.

“Was there a break-in?” Vic persisted from behind me. “You said you needed an ambulance for Dusty? Why? Why do the cops need to come?”

When we reached the glass, I suddenly turned back. Vic collided with me and I caught a whiff of his scent, some musky boy-cologne.

“Vic,” I said, my voice low. “You need to herd these people back up to the grocery store. It’s important that they not go across the street. Please.”

“I can’t—” he began to protest. But I ignored him, as well as the people staring at me as I stepped over the glass and onto the sidewalk.

“Hey, Goldy—” came one voice, but I didn’t look back.

“I’ll get my cell,” a female voice announced, but I didn’t pay any attention to that either. My skin needled under the huge sweatshirt as I walked quickly down the slick sidewalk. I knew I shouldn’t be talking to anyone now except medical and law enforcement people. No sense making more of a mess of this than I already had.

Behind me, Vic’s excited voice told the curiosity seekers to get back up to the grocery store. He ordered them not to follow us. Us? Dammit. Vic’s footsteps echoed down the pavement behind me.

“Vic, you cannot follow me,” I shouted. He didn’t answer, and soon he was right at my side. As we walked, he begged me to talk to him, but I just shook my head. Finally we arrived at the grass-covered hill that overlooked the road. We stood, waiting, for what felt like an eternity, but which in actuality was probably not more than fifteen minutes. Vic’s frustration and fear radiated like a negatively charged aura.

In the time since I’d raced across the street, the darkness had deepened and the cold intensified. On the far side of the street, the parking lot still held Dusty’s forlorn Civic. Vic began to cough in a vain attempt to disguise the fact that he was crying. When I told him again to stay put, he moved away from me.

Across the street, a long black car moved into the parking lot. Then another dark vehicle, this one coming from the I-70 side, pulled into the lot. Not even a moment later, a third car followed them. Oh, Lord, I thought as I recognized all three cars. Maybe the woman with the cell, or perhaps someone else outside the grocery store, had seen me bolting from the building occupied by Hanrahan & Jule. I had to have looked suspicious, frantic and coatless, as I leaped across the street, ran up the shopping-center sidewalk, and banged on the copy-place door. When I’d broken the glass and shouted for a phone, then called for an ambulance and the sheriff’s department, anyone within fifty yards would have heard me.

I stopped at the bottom of the hill and glanced back at the crowd of folks outside the grocery store. They were moving en masse, making their way down to where Vic and I were standing. Welcome to living in a small town. Someone had thought, What’s up at this time of night, with the caterer running away from the office building occupied by H&J? That same someone had put two and two together and made a call. And now, across the street in the H&J lot, we were faced with the result.

The lawyers are coming! The lawyers are coming!

Great.

CHAPTER 2

As I slipped down the embankment on my way to the road, I tried to think. I could not, could not allow anyone to go into the firm without telling them what they’d find. Shivering, I rushed across the street.

“Wait!” I called to the figures emerging from the pair of precisely parked black BMWs. Heeding me, two tall people stood outside their respective car doors, their arms crossed. As they gazed in my direction, they neither talked nor acknowledged each other’s presence. My breath wheezed in the cold, thick fog. Still, I recognized the commanding presence of lean, silver-haired Richard Chenault, the well-built, late-fifties partner who was Dusty’s uncle—the attorney we had dubbed King Richard. This week, King Richard was the only one of the three partners not doing continuing education on Maui.

Standing nearby was his soon-to-be-divorced doctor wife, the statuesque K. D. Chenault, formerly K. D. van Ruisdael. K.D., whom I liked and admired immensely, was an emergency-room doc who had known the Jerk—and hated him. During my divorce, she’d been one of my few supporters. K.D.’s black coat hung open; underneath it, she was wearing a surgical suit. Her long, light chestnut hair, held back in an ineffective ponytail, was slightly disheveled. I wondered if she had just arrived at the big Flicker Ridge house she and Richard still shared—while they fought over property—when the call from who knows whom had summoned Richard. As tired as I was sure K.D. was bound to be, if she was indeed coming after a shift, I could still imagine her insisting on driving out this late. Yes, the weather was inhospitably cold. But she would have wanted to see if she was needed.

“K.D.,” I gasped as I rummaged in my pants pockets for my set of office keys. “Dusty’s upstairs. It looks as if…as if her heart’s stopped. Maybe you could try to help her?”

In one swift movement, K.D. nodded, nabbed the keys, and turned to race up the steps to the firm.

“Dusty?” Richard Chenault asked me, his voice incredulous. “Our Dusty? What happened? Was there a break-in?”

“I don’t know.” I faltered.

A pair of H&J attorneys approached us from the other car. Donald Ellis, an associate at the firm who was in his midthirties, was short and very thin, with a pale face that bore the ghost of teen freckles. His shock of rust-colored hair glowed in the shrouded streetlight. Donald was a quiet fellow who holed up for hours in his office, which was more messy than Arch’s room had ever been at any stage of his childhood. While five of the seven associates had opted to join the partners in Hawaii, Donald had said he desperately needed to catch up on his paperwork. Which begged the question: How was he going to find his paperwork?

The other lawyer was the final associate who’d stayed home from Maui: Alonzo Claggett, or “Claggs,” as the other attorneys called him. I’d learned that fifteen years ago, he and his wife had moved from Baltimore to Vail, where they’d decided to slum it for a couple of years until their wedding-gift money ran out. When it had, Alonzo had continued to be a ski bum while his athletic wife, Elizabeth, whom everyone had always called by her nickname, Ookie, taught squash during the day and worked as a waitress at night. When Ookie’s parents had heard their country-club-raised daughter was spending her evenings waiting on tables, they had flown out to Colorado and created a family storm that rivaled any hurricane ever to hit the Chesapeake Bay. So much for slumming.

Claggs, humbled, had finally figured the only way to feed his skiing habit was to do a law degree at the University of Colorado and live and work within an hour’s driving time from the resorts. Ookie had gleefully begun work as a squash instructor only, and the two of them had embarked on their happily-ever-after life. Or so it always seemed to me.

Alonzo had dark curly hair and blue eyes, the startling product of mixing an Italian mother with a WASP father. He was slightly taller than yours truly, and as slim and fit as a short basketball player or tall gymnast. He frequently came into the law firm with Dusty, since he worked out at the new Aspen Meadow rec center, called the Butterfield, where Dusty rode the exercise bike. I’d always thought it made Dusty feel appreciated, one of the gang, to come into the office at Alonzo’s side, although Louise Upton, the ultrasevere office manager, clearly disapproved. One didn’t mix the lower and higher totems on the pole, after all.

And of course, I realized belatedly, with only three lawyers working in the firm this week, I probably shouldn’t have expected a bevy of joke-playing attorneys to come jumping out of nowhere to yell, “Surprise!” when I tripped over Dusty.

The final car that had pulled into the lot made me shudder, but not from the cold. It was Louise Upton, in the dark green Lexus she’d bought used at a great price, as she always told anyone who would listen. She banged out of her car and began to stride toward Richard. She was wearing a long gray coat that emphasized her broad shoulders and broad backside. Her step was military stiff, but as she marched, her steel-wool pad of hair did not budge.

I recalled the time I’d pointed out two errors of grammar in my contract, a contract that had been drawn up by one of the partners, to Louise, or Miss Upton, as I’d been told I should call her. She was a sixtyish, formidable guard dog of a woman, and she had told me if I wanted to be the firm’s caterer, I needed to learn my place. She’d actually said that: I needed to learn my place.

When I’d quietly asked her what my place was, she’d told me she didn’t think I was cute. Not one bit. And if I wanted to act cute, and make grammatical corrections to my contract, I could tear up said contract, and they would simply find somebody else to cater their meetings.

While I’d frowned and pretended to contemplate a saddle nailed to the wall in the cowboy-themed conference room, I’d tried to think of a cute joke, or at least how I could make a cute-acting exit. But we’d been spared a confrontation by the sudden appearance of Donald Ellis. When Donald had summoned Louise and told her she was needed in a partner’s office, I’d quickly penned in the needed corrections, initialed them, and signed on the dotted line. Acting distracted, Donald had taken over the negotiation and said how much they appreciated the fact that such a well-known local caterer would be working for them. In fact, he was going to recommend that his wife, Nora, hire me for their next party. Then he’d told me to go make him some coffee, and bring it to him. When Louise Upton had reappeared, Donald, the contract, and yours truly had all disappeared. The office manager was not a happy camper.

So. Ever since then, I had not been Louise Upton’s favorite person. I’d figured I could do without her friendship, but the upcoming confrontation was bound to be particularly terrible. Lucky for me, the chilly nighttime fog prevented me from reading her facial expression, which was sure to be negative.

“Goldy!” Louise exclaimed. “I would like to know—”

“Louise!” Richard Chenault barked. “Please be quiet!” He turned to me. “Goldy, I’m worried about you.” His suddenly caring tone penetrated the soup of frigid mist. “Are you all right? Do you have any idea what happened to Dusty?” Richard’s silver hair was swept up and back in a way most folks, present company included, found intimidating. But his tanned, handsome-featured face was quite young-looking. It was a disconcerting combination, the gleaming, neatly combed hair and the gorgeous, unwrinkled face with its startlingly pale gray eyes. I dreaded telling him that his niece Dusty Routt—daughter of the ne’er-do-well brother who’d abandoned his family—might be dead.

“It’s bad,” I said, trying to keep my voice steady. “I found Dusty…”

“You found Dusty?” Donald Ellis echoed. He glanced up to where K.D. had gone. “In the office?”

“Yes.” I inhaled. “She was here to help me cook for the Friday breakfast meeting. When I arrived, she was on the floor, not moving. I don’t know what was wrong with her. She…she wasn’t breathing.”

“Omigod,” said Alonzo Claggett. “You called for an ambulance?”

I assured him that I had, and it should be along any minute. Meanwhile, I added grimly, maybe K.D. would have some luck reviving her. I hugged my sides. I was chilled to the bone, and the sweatshirt Vic had given me still wasn’t helping.

“Everybody looks cold,” Richard said, his voice gentle but firm. “Let’s go inside and check on Dusty and K.D.” He lifted his chin at Donald, Alonzo, and Louise, to indicate that everyone should follow him.

“We probably ought to avoid the office,” I managed to say. My breath came out in a ghostlike puff. “I mean, we should wait for the cops.” I wasn’t quite ready to say, Because it might be a crime scene.

“I have a key to the second conference room,” Richard said, his voice softer than I had ever heard it. “It’s down the hall from our office. We hardly ever use it because it hasn’t been redecorated yet.” He said, “Let’s go, everybody,” then walked purposefully toward the sidewalk.

“I feel a little dizzy,” Alonzo said, his voice low.

“Sit down on the ground,” I commanded, quickly putting an arm around him. “Let me lower you.”

“I’ll help,” Donald offered. His voice cracked, too, but he had enough composure to take on half of Alonzo’s weight and get him down to the curb. “Try to breathe, Claggs.”

“I’m okay,” Alonzo replied weakly, when he clearly was not. He bit his upper lip and took several deep breaths. “We need to get inside—I mean, to the conference room, where Richard wants us. I just feel so…cold, all of a sudden.” He inhaled several lungfuls of air and then announced that he was getting up.

“Lean on me,” Donald directed, as he grunted and groaned, and finally hauled Alonzo up from the pavement.

We followed the others. Our footsteps made gritty sounds as we headed up the main steps to the office. I scanned the parking lot, but there was still no sign of emergency vehicles. I prayed K.D. was having more luck with Dusty than I’d had.

Once we were inside the building, our little brigade marched past the closed door to the office. There was no sign of K.D. At the far end of the dark hall, Richard ushered us into a dusty, scruffy-looking Queen Anne–style conference room. Dimly lit with filthy crystal chandeliers, the space had an oak floor covered with a navy-and-burgundy Oriental rug, an oval cherry conference table, a hidden sink, and a grit-covered glassed-in cabinet that housed wine and double–old-fashioned glasses, along with cups and saucers. Hanging on the walls between brass-and-crystal wall sconces were Charlie Baker drawings, these presumably less valuable than the actual paintings in the H&J lobby. Despite the grime, I liked this space much better than the cowboy-style insanity of the main office. But maybe clients wanted to be reminded they were in the West.

Richard began: “This woman I know called me and said she saw someone hurrying over from the law office. She thought maybe you were a burglar. Donald and Alonzo happened to be at my house, discussing a case, and came with me, as did K.D. We called Louise on our way over. Were you hurt? Was there an assailant outside our office? Had he gotten inside?” His gray eyes bore into me, at once concerned and wanting to get at what exactly was going on. “She said you were hysterical.”

“Well—” I began.

“This same woman said you banged on the door of that art-and-music store until it broke. Then you demanded that somebody call an ambulance and the police.” Again, his sharp eyes questioned me.

“I don’t know what happened, Richard,” I began, whereupon Louise Upton loudly cleared her throat. Well, tough tacks. I wasn’t going to call him “Mr. Chenault” when he had repeatedly told me not to. “Richard,” I went on, “I’m just telling you what I saw when I came in to start the bread for your meeting with clients tomorrow. Dusty was lying on the floor of the lobby.” I pressed my lips together and took in all their faces. “I think…I don’t think…I need to say that I very much doubt K.D. will be able to revive her.”

There was a collective intake of breath. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis exchanged a glance.

“You don’t?” Richard’s unfailingly polite facade slipped for a moment. “You think she died in this office? Our office? You think our Dusty died here?”

“No,” Donald Ellis said. His face turned scarlet to the roots of his red hair. “This is our…we’ve been here since…I don’t believe it. Dusty?” Tears welled in his eyes. Stupefied, he turned to glare at Alonzo Claggett. Alonzo covered his face with his hands.

Richard was having trouble staying composed. He licked his lips and stared at me. “Do you—you said maybe she had a heart attack? We could help K.D. with CPR…Dusty was too young—”

“I did CPR on Dusty for a long time,” I said. “It felt like half an hour but might have been less. It looked as if she…she had been…attacked.”

The conference room fell completely silent.

“She must have been associating with the wrong element,” announced Louise Upton, her voice steely. “Someone had to have followed her into our office. She must not have closed the door completely. Maybe it was a teenager, looking for someone to rob. He ran into Dusty and killed her.”

I tried not to think of how many times Arch had complained to me that when something went wrong, the first person suspected was always a teenager.

“Well! When Richard called, I was just leaving the Aspen Meadow Chorale’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance,” Louise went on blithely. “I guess I should have stayed home. Then I could have done something about this. Although I don’t know how I could have possibly envisioned such a thing happening to one of our…” She left the sentence unanswered.

“Has anyone called her family?” Richard asked, his voice barely audible.

“No,” I told him. “I just dialed 911.”

“What in the hell is this going to mean?” Alonzo looked up. His expression was wild; his voice high and querulous. “That is”—he struggled to put together his question—“what will it mean for the firm?”

“Alonzo,” said Richard, “you need to…” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Goldy?” Donald Ellis, distraught, was fidgeting in his chair. His flushed face still bore the marks of tears. “Goldy?” Donald said again, placing his restless hands palm down on the rosewood table. “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know.”

My answer hung in the air until finally, finally, sirens screamed in the distance.

I stood and took in the men’s grim faces. I said, “I have to talk to the cops. Please, don’t anyone go into the office.”

“Take my keys, Goldy,” Richard said. He handed me a gold key ring. When I looked at him, uncomprehending, he added, “You gave yours to K.D., remember?”

Louise Upton had left the table and was clanking around underneath the sink in the corner bar. She brought up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and clapped it down on the dusty bar, then squeaked open the cabinet and started pulling out glasses.

“Goldy,” Louise inquired, “do you suppose you could go get us some ice?”

I didn’t look at her as I opened the door. Before the door shut, I heard Louise say, “Richard, that girl never does a thing I tell her.”

I walked down the hall, out the main second-story entrance to the building, and down the steps.

In the parking lot, red, blue, and white lights flashed in the fog, which had become thicker and more frigid as the night wore on. I hopped onto the grass, and then hugged my sides as the icy blades fingered their way through my shoes, stockings, and pants. Vic had crossed over to this side of the street. He now stood alone next to Dusty’s Civic in the middle of the parking lot. He looked dazed. I walked up beside him and began waving in the emergency vehicles.

Cops and med techs spilled onto the pavement. When the first pair of policemen trotted up to us, I gave them Richard’s gold key ring and told them to take the medics upstairs, to the office of Hanrahan & Jule. There was a doctor on-site, I added. I asked the cops if they wanted me to come; they said no. As the paramedics traipsed up the stairs behind the law enforcement team, Vic made his way to the sidewalk. I thought he might try to follow the medics into the office, so I went after him. But instead of going anywhere, he stopped at the foot of the outside steps, then flopped onto the cold, wet grass. I sat down beside him.

“Vic? Talk to me.”

“I—I can’t. Is it really bad? Tell me it isn’t.”

“I’m not sure.” I hesitated. Finally I said, “Can I get you a drink? They’ve got some scotch upstairs.”

“No, no.” He sighed.

His voice was shaking. “What happened, will you tell me?”

I’d told the lawyers, hadn’t I? “I found Dusty upstairs. She…she wasn’t breathing.”

“You found Dusty?” Vic echoed. “What do you mean? What was the matter with her?”

“I don’t know, except that she just wasn’t taking any breaths. But a doctor went right up to the office when I came over here. Now they’ve got a whole team of medics in the office.”

Vic uttered a stream of profanities and ran his large hands through his head of sandy curls. He didn’t seem to want to talk anymore, but I was still worried about him, and scooted over closer to where he was sitting. He abruptly stood and marched over to Dusty’s Civic, where he let out a moan. When I walked to his side, my feet crunched over glass. Great. The cops would say I destroyed one crime scene and mindlessly tampered with another. Gently, I put my arm around Vic. His body shook under my touch.

“Vic,” I said, feeling dreadful, “we need to move back over to the sidewalk.”

“Tell me the worst isn’t true. What did you find?”

“It looked as if she’d been attacked.”

He began to sob. I murmured comforting words and guided him back to the staircase.

The moon had risen and lightened the darkness. I finally thought to look at my watch, which said it was half past twelve. Had it really been two hours since I’d showed up at the law firm? It felt like nothing; it felt like forever. A solitary cop approached us.

“Which one of you called the department?” he asked, his voice matter-of-fact.

“I did,” I replied. For the first time, my own voice cracked. “I found her.”

The cop eyed me, his gaze impenetrable. He was short and stockily built, and he wore a sheriff’s department leather jacket that made him look even wider than he was. He had dark, close-set eyes and equally dark eyebrows. His frown was formidable.

“I’m Officer Nelson,” he began. “You went into that office first?”

“Yes,” I said. Nearby, Vic tried to stifle his weeping.

“I’m going to need to see some ID from you.”

“I’m Investigator Tom Schulz’s wife,” I said. Officer Nelson flinched. Why? I wondered. Was he intimidated by Tom’s reputation? “In terms of ID, my purse and driver’s license are locked in my van, which is in back of this office building. My cell phone’s in there, too. I dropped my van keys when I…when I made the discovery.”

“I remember you. The caterer, right?” When I nodded, he went on: “Where did you go after you left here?”

I paused as Vic shuffled up. The cop regarded him without curiosity. “She came to our place. Art, Music, and Copies. It’s right over there.” Vic pointed across the street.

“Sir,” the cop said to Vic, “would you please move back across the street, back to your place of business? Someone will be over shortly to take your statement.” Nelson turned his attention back to me. “Was anyone else around? People who could have seen someone leave this office?”

“Not that I know of.”

“We had another call to the department from someone who said she was outside the grocery store.”

I wormed my frigid hands up inside the sleeves of Vic’s sweatshirt. “Officer Nelson, as far as I know, I was the only one over on this side of the street when I…made the discovery.”

“Let’s go back to my car, okay?”

Feeling queasy, I followed Officer Nelson to his car. Furman County is one of the biggest counties in Colorado, and their sheriff’s department is impressively large. This cop knew me, but I didn’t know him. That made me even more nervous as I tried to formulate the words to describe what I’d done, and why.

When we slid into the black-and-white, the cop handed me a sheriff’s department blanket. “So you’re Schulz’s wife. How ’bout that.” I nodded, feeling only slightly less ill at ease. It wasn’t as if Nelson was offering to shake my hand. Instead, he pulled out a clipboard. “When and how did you find this woman?”

“Is she—?” I demanded. “Did she—”

The cop shook his head, then continued with his questions. What was the woman’s full name, where did she live? Why did she happen to be here, and why did I? He wrote everything down, then told me not to go anywhere. He stepped out of the patrol car, shut the door, and motioned for Vic Zaruski, who hadn’t moved, to come over. I turned in the seat to watch them. Vic seemed to be explaining that his place of employment was not where he should be headed. After dispersing the waiting-to-see-what-was-going-on crowd, Nelson led Vic to another police car.

The sheriff’s department’s white criminalistics van pulled into the lot and parked beside the Beemers. Armed with cameras, the crime-scene technicians descended on the office building. I focused my eyes far away.

Almost four miles distant, the portion of Aspen Meadow Lake that hadn’t yet frozen shimmered in the moonlight. What was the cop asking Vic? I shivered, even though the motor was running and metallic-smelling heat blasted out of the dashboard fans. Actually, I did know what Officer Nelson was demanding of Vic Zaruski. How do you know this woman, Goldy Schulz? When this Mrs. Schulz came into your store to report the crime, how did she act? Did she seem upset? What did she say, exactly? He was asking those questions because I was the one who’d found Dusty, and therefore was automatically the first person whom law enforcement would suspect. This was another thing I wasn’t quite ready to face.

Sudden shouting startled me. A moment later, a very upset Richard Chenault, his face set in frustration, his cashmere coat billowing around behind him, loped ungracefully down the steps from the building’s upper level. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis, unsure of anything except that they probably were supposed to follow, hurried fast on Richard’s heels. Louise Upton maneuvered down after them, then immediately marched purposefully over to the nearest policeman, who happened to be standing on the sidewalk directing the crime-scene techs. Louise raised her voice so high I caught every word, unfortunately.

“Mr. Chenault is a very well-respected member of this community,” Louise cried, shaking her finger in the unsuspecting cop’s face. “It’s his office, and he deserves to know what is going on in there! Now, did someone break in? Is his niece dead? We need to know these things! Also, we have many valuable items and irreplaceable files inside—”

The cop interrupted her, speaking words I couldn’t make out. Louise Upton promptly stopped talking, pressed her lips together, and stepped back a pace. The cop leaned in toward her and raised his forefinger, talking all the while. Louise ducked her chin, pressed her lips together, and listened, looking humbled, for once. I thought, Oh, man, if only I had a camera.

Donald Ellis and Alonzo Claggett, meanwhile, shook their heads as they spoke to two other policemen. Richard Chenault, his voice subdued and his face stricken, talked to a third cop.

Two more cops were leaning in to stare at the area in front of Dusty’s old Honda. I squinted at the Civic. Dusty had been fond of telling me that she left her car, a donation from a St. Luke’s parishioner, as far from the office building as possible, to get a bit of extra exercise walking to the law firm. Once summer was over, she’d started working out at the rec center with Alonzo. Then they’d drive separately over to H&J. At the office, she changed into whatever suit she was wearing at the office that day. I sighed.

So, what was going on with Dusty’s Civic? It was parked right under a streetlight. Dusty had been as meticulous about the appearance of that little car as she was of her own person. But the paint job was a wreck, and the rear lights had been…what? Smashed? I got out of the patrol car, motioned to a nearby cop, and pointed to the car. In a garbled voice, I informed him it was Dusty’s, and that it had been vandalized.

He nodded, then looked at me sympathetically. “She was a friend of yours, this girl?” I nodded. “For long?”

“A few years.”

The cop closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows, as in, Too bad. He told me the detectives would want to talk to me after a bit, and I shouldn’t go anywhere. Then he walked away.

I swallowed and watched him. Why hadn’t he asked more about Dusty? I knew what questions I’d face once the detectives arrived. The same ones I’d gotten from Officer Nelson. And then there were the questions that were important to me, questions the cops were very unlikely to ask.

Why was Dusty so special to you? Because I still thought of her as a high-school kid. Because she and her low-income family lived in a Habitat for Humanity house, just down the street from us, and people in town still made fun of them. Because until her uncle Richard, who didn’t believe in handouts, had agreed to pay off her student loans for community college, foot the bill for her paralegal training, and hire her, she’d never seemed to have a bit of luck.

She’d been a scholarship student at Elk Park Prep. Julian Teller, my part-time assistant and our occasional boarder, had been a classmate of Dusty’s at EPP. He, too, had been a scholarship student, and he and Dusty had been boyfriend-girlfriend for a while. He said Dusty had been smart…not just bright, but brilliant. And then she’d been expelled from Elk Park Prep because she’d become pregnant…not by Julian.

That spring, I’d been dealing full-time with the Jerk, who, even though we were divorced, managed to make my life miserable. I had taken meals over when Dusty had miscarried, but the Routts hadn’t offered any details of the misbegotten pregnancy. Nor had I asked any. I did know that Dusty had managed to get her GED after the Elk Park Prep meltdown. The next time I’d come in close contact with her, she’d been working at a cosmetics counter at a department store.

“Those bastard Routt children,” the mean-spirited had snorted. “We wonder if Dusty is selling those free samples she gets.”

Dusty had taken everything in stride. She’d worked her way up to being a highly compensated cosmetics associate before being lured away to a full-service spa. When the spa had gone belly-up, she’d enrolled in community college. Sometime later, she’d told me about her uncle, previously unknown to the family, getting altitude sickness on his way back from an attorneys’ conference in Vail. Dusty’s mother, Sally Routt, may not have known about Richard, but he had known about her, and he’d called his sister-in-law and begged for help, having just vomited all over his rental car. Not sure of the cause of Richard’s distress, Sally and Dusty had rushed him down to the Southwest Hospital ER, where he’d ended up mewling and puking in his doctor’s arms, and that doctor had been K.D.

Richard’s recovery had been near miraculous, and he had proceeded to sweep K.D. off her feet. He’d sold his partnership in a Los Angeles firm and opened his own office in Aspen Meadow. A year ago, he and K.D. had bought their big place in Flicker Ridge, and Richard had offered to pay off Dusty’s loans, give her a job, and pay for her training.

Maybe Richard had seen it as an investment in having his very own paralegal, with on-the-job training in estate law, to boot. Perhaps his guilt at having so much in the material-goods department had finally begun gnawing at him. I had no way of knowing, because between a polite, solicitous manner with clients and staff, occasional bursts of regal temper, and showing a nutty tendency to pull practical jokes, King Richard was pretty hard to read. Dusty hadn’t complained about him to me, in any event. Nor had she lauded him. She’d only laughed her wonderful tinkling giggle and called her uncle “the King.”

In any event, Dusty had confided to me that now she was working to build a career, a real life, as she put it. She was going to push to quit her humble surroundings. She was moving, moving, moving, as she put it, moving up in the world!

I stared at the bustling parking lot. Cops were turning away bystanders. Other law enforcement folks began to unroll yellow crime-scene tape around the imposing stone-and-wood entry to Hanrahan & Jule. Donald and Alonzo appeared to be pestering the cops with questions, but their curiosity was met with a grim silence. Was I imagining it, or was the officer in charge wearing a happy smirk as he asserted his authority over the attorneys? I did not have time to contemplate this question, because a detective ordered a sergeant to whisk me down to the department for questioning.

CHAPTER 3

The detective, who identified himself as Britt, handed me my car keys. I’d actually dropped them between two of the steps going up to the law firm. He also gave me my office keys, which K.D. had apparently asked to be returned to me.

As the coroner’s van pulled up, Britt drove me around the back of the law office, where I jumped out and grabbed my coat and purse from my own van. We took off just as another pair of cars from the Furman County Sheriff’s Department showed up. The H&J crew were scattered along the sidewalk outside where the cops were now finishing unrolling the crime-scene tape. Donald and Alonzo still stood together, their heads bowed in conversation. Richard Chenault, looking stricken, sat alone on the curb. There was no sign of K.D. or Louise Upton.

The glaze of frost that had whitened the streets was beginning to melt, and a breeze moved through the stiff brown grass that bordered the road to the interstate. I asked the detective if I could please call my husband. He seemed to know who Tom was, and nodded. After fishing my cell phone from the bottom of my purse, I punched in Tom’s cell number.

“Thank God you called,” Tom’s gruff voice announced, before the first ring had finished. “Where are you? Did your van die again? I’m dressed and ready to go.”

“Oh, Tom. I’m at, well, I was at H&J. Dusty Routt…well, it looks as if Dusty is dead,” I blurted out. My voice cracked.

There was shuffling in the background. “I’m writing Arch a note.” A moment later, I could hear a door closing. “Wait. I’m on my way to my car.” I imagined Tom’s tall, muscular body, of which I knew every groove, even the old scar from a bullet wound. I saw his handsome face drawn into a frown as he folded himself into his car, turned on the engine, and pulled out his trusty spiral notebook that went everywhere with him. “Okay, start over,” he said in that commanding voice that made subordinates smile and suspects cower.

“I was supposed to give Dusty her last cooking lesson tonight, the way we’ve been doing for the last five weeks. We were working on bread baking and she said she wanted to talk to me about something, too. But I fell over her in the reception area…” A sob erupted from my throat. “I’m on my way to the department now with a fellow named Britt.”

“I’ll meet you down there.”

“But I want to tell you how I tried to do CPR—”

“Stop talking,” Tom commanded. “All cop cars are wired for sound. Don’t tell me any more about what you found, because they’ll compare it with what you say at the department.” In the background, his engine growled. “You were supposed to be there at ten, but you didn’t make it because I had to give you a jump, right? Just answer yes or no.”

“Yes. I think I got there about—”

“Stop.” He considered. “Arch is all set, so don’t worry. If he wakes up early, he’ll know where we are. He can get his own breakfast, and the car pool will pick him up at the usual time. Listen. I don’t know if you want to think about this right now. But Gus’s grandmother called right after you left tonight. Wants to know if Gus can come over after school to sell candy in the neighborhood.”

My mind reeled. Gus Vikarios was Arch’s recently discovered half brother. I truly did want Gus and Arch to spend time together, get to know each other, and all that. But trying to make those plans now, after what I’d seen tonight, felt too trivial to contemplate.

“Tell you what,” Tom said. “I’ll take care of it. You want me to call Marla?”

Marla Korman, the Jerk’s other ex and my best friend, wouldn’t want yes or no answers to any of her questions. Marla craved gossip more than a crack addict needed a daily hit. As the patrol car sped down the mountain to the department, I could just imagine the details she’d demand. Who else knew you were there at night? Was Dusty involved with someone? Someone I might know? My mind erupted with worry: Arch. Marla. Sally Routt. Dusty. “I can’t think about this stuff now, Tom, I can’t—”

“I’m telling you, let me take care of Arch being with Gus. Okay, the catering. You’re done for today, ’cause now that it’s after midnight, it’s officially Friday. The cops will close the firm office probably for the weekend. But what about tomorrow, Saturday?”

“Uh, birthday party,” I stammered. “Ellises. It’s for Donald Ellis, a lawyer in the firm.” But that was tomorrow. And as Tom had pointed out, this was today, Friday, just after midnight. And I had all I could handle.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz,” said Britt. “Wrap it up.”

“I…don’t have a way to get home,” I told Tom.

“That’s why I’m coming down, among other reasons.”

“Listen, Tom. Somebody needs to go be with Sally Routt.” Pain cramped my throat as I pictured Dusty’s diminutive, wan, single mother. In her late thirties and taking care of a toddler son and blind father in addition to Dusty, Sally Routt never seemed to be able to do more than keep body, soul, and family together. Sally had been right to be overprotective of her only daughter. Not that it had done much good.

He let out a long breath. “She’s going to be in bad shape, you know.”

“Tom, don’t.”

“Her father was blinded in prison. Her older son died while he was in custody for a DWI. You think she’s going to trust the cops to find out what happened to her daughter?”

The patrol car swung into the sheriff’s department’s mammoth parking lot.

“I can’t deal with this right now,” I whispered.

“Okay. I’ll see you later. Just think, I could have let Arch drive me down to the department. For practice.”

I took a deep breath. Arch was officially fifteen and a half, with a fresh learner’s permit. So far, he had not proved himself adept at driving. But this was cop humor. It was how Tom and his cronies dealt with the dark side, the misery and death, the evil. And they won’t let up. They will spin something for laughs until your hair turns gray and you’ve forgotten what you were thinking about in the first place.

“Whatever.” The patrol car stopped. Britt, his eyes facing forward, turned off the engine and waited for me.

I closed my cell phone. Dizziness gripped my brain. Without warning, jokes, humor, laughter, hysteria—all these bubbled simultaneously inside my brain. Stop it, I ordered myself as I got out of the car. But my inner ear registered the Hanrahan & Jule attorneys cackling over the gin-laced espresso. I blinked and heard Tom and his department buddies howling when the coroner poked fun at the uninitiated who thought autopsy was a kind of car, artery the study of pictures.

I walked slowly across the paved lot, trying to keep my balance as Britt led the way to the massive steel double door. A blast of warm, metallic air rushed out of the department entrance. I felt like hell.

After I was seated in one of the department’s interrogation rooms, my head began to throb, and I belatedly realized that even though it was the middle of the night, I was probably going through caffeine withdrawal. Britt reluctantly agreed to get me some java.

I assessed Britt when he came back through the door holding a thin cardboard tray with two foam cups. He was thirty, I guessed, since most cops didn’t make detective until then. Still, with his baby face, dark hair, and perpetually puzzled expression, he looked younger.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz. How did you come to work in that law office? Don’t leave out any details, okay?”

I sipped some life-giving caffeine. Then I began to talk.

From the beginning of July until tonight, I told Britt, I’d been making and serving breakfasts to the early arrivals at Hanrahan & Jule, one of the three law offices in Aspen Meadow. As catering jobs went, I continued, this was a relatively high-stress assignment, not least because I’d never catered to so many talkative, joking, obsessed-with-work folks before. Ordinarily, I’d get there at five every morning, and within an hour, the place would be buzzing. But not on Thursdays. Thursdays I came in at night, since Richard scheduled breakfast meetings with clients on Friday mornings.

There was a knock on the door. A uniformed officer poked his head through and told Britt he was needed elsewhere, but not for long.

“Keep that thought,” Britt ordered, before whisking away.

But I was temporarily incapable of holding any thought. I sipped more coffee and allowed the memories to surface.

By the beginning of October, I’d become worn out from the H&J job, although I’d been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t. Every morning, after moving through my yoga routine and getting dressed, I’d give myself a pep talk in our bathroom mirror. A slightly plump, slightly weathered early-thirties face, with brown eyes and unfashionable Shirley Temple–blond curls, would stare back. Admit it, I’d say to myself, you’re not quite ready for the lawyers today. But I’d button up my white caterer’s shirt anyway. I’d bustle containers of eggs whisked with cream and fresh herbs, applewood-smoked bacon, breakfast sausage, fresh-squeezed orange juice, fragrant homemade bread, and sliced fruit out to my van. And I’d tell myself to buck up, drink a latte, and pull myself together.

Besides that, I’d reassure myself, I wasn’t alone. The lawyers of H&J also catered. Unlike yours truly, though, these guys were paid extremely well to work at coddling extremely wealthy clients. Here we shared another trait, as I’d often experienced the crankiness of well-moneyed people. Rich folks’ quirks and caprices often cost caterers time, money, and endless aggravation. But unlike the attorneys, I wasn’t paid by the hour. And every whim an enraged H&J client wanted dealt with in the next twenty-four hours meant Billables, baby! Billables, aka hours billable to the client, were what the guys lived for, what they assured one another they were generating tons of as they scarfed down Cuban sandwiches I sometimes brought in at suppertime, long after a CEO with a trophy wife or a silk-suited octogenarian had huffed out of the office.

“I want to cut my children out of my will” was a frequent threat.

“I’m bequeathing everything to the new Anglican mission” was another one. “I don’t ever want to be hugged in church again.”

“My niece hasn’t written to me in two years, Goldy. Who do you think I should give my pearls to?”

Aw, give ’em to your niece anyway, I wanted to say as I pressed focaccia loaded with garlic-infused pork between the metal plates of my indoor grill. But as the attorneys were so very fond of saying, “What you pay for the advice is what it’s worth.” Unfortunately, any counsel doled out by yours truly wasn’t worth a grain of my favorite hand-harvested sea salt.

I’d been referred to H&J in June by a criminal attorney named Brewster Motley. Unlike his not-a-hair-out-of-place colleagues, Brewster was well tanned and laid back. He’d warned me, though. “Listen up, Goldy,” he’d said as he ran his hands through his mop of blond hair. “H&J lawyers do mostly estate law, but they’re still uptight as hell. Watch your kitchen equipment, okay? Ditto the food. I don’t need to act nuts to relieve stress, but they do. You don’t want to be serving cheesecake flavored with soy sauce. Okay? Be cool.” He’d pointed his thumbs heavenward, which in Brewsterese meant anything from “Stay calm” to “Surf’s up.” Anyway, Brewster had helped me out of a jam recently, when I’d desperately needed help. When he’d referred me to H&J, I’d felt obligated—but also grateful—to take on the firm as a client. How hard could it be to make early breakfasts, cater occasional meetings, and be on call to deliver a tray of sandwiches at six in the evening, every now and then? Wouldn’t the hungry attorneys and assorted staff be supergrateful for my proffered goodies?

Sometimes I’m amazed I have any naïveté left.

In any event, I’d become their caterer. At the beginning of September, Dusty Routt, our pretty, enthusiastic neighbor, had asked me to teach her to cook. Because of her class and work schedule, we met every Thursday night at ten in H&J’s beautifully outfitted kitchen, to plan and prep Richard’s Friday-morning meetings. We would chat, roast rashers of bacon so that they would just need a quick heating in the microwave, mix up bread to rise overnight, cut creamy chèvre into dot-sized bites, check for jams and preserves, count croissants and slices of prosciutto…I’d enjoyed Dusty’s company, and I’d taught her to flip omelettes with the best of them.

So.

I put my head down on the steel table in the interrogation room. Earlier, earlier, I should have been there earlier, I repeated silently to myself. Birthday or no, Dusty had wanted to discuss “something important” with me. Something to do with the stunning bracelet I’d seen her wearing last week? She’d giggled and promised to tell me about the opal-and-diamond bracelet “soon.” I remembered telling her to practice taking deep breaths, because twenty-one candles on a carrot cake was a conflagration! She had smiled quickly, before her face had turned uncharacteristically grim.

But then there was that issue of my son driving, which Tom had found so humorous. For the past few weeks, I’d been trying to teach Arch to drive in various parking lots…with zero success. Our last session had been the previous afternoon, at our local Safeway. Okay, I admit it, I’d given Arch conflicting directions on reversing, and he’d ended up crushing a line of grocery carts. When we’d finally arrived home, I’d apologized and offered my son another driving lesson on Saturday. But since I’d already lost my temper in the grocery-store lot, then lost it again when I wrote the grocery-store manager a check for the destroyed carts, Arch had refused either to forgive me or to get out of the van.

I’d stomped away, and Arch had left the van lights and radio on—inadvertently, I was sure. So before driving to the firm tonight, I’d had to take Tom away from polishing his beloved antique highboy, which was what he did for relaxation. Once he had located the jumper cables, he’d eased his sedan out into the street and started working on my vehicle. The van engine had ground and groaned, wheezed and coughed, and finally turned over. I’d shown up at the law office with my caterer’s load…half an hour late.

So I’d failed Dusty. I’d failed her monumentally.

Britt reappeared with his clipboard and apologized for the delay.

“We were talking about your meeting with Dusty on Thursday nights, Mrs. Schulz. Was this every Thursday night?”

“Yes, for just over a month.”

“Who else knew that was when you met?”

“I have no idea. Everyone could have known, because we didn’t make a secret of it. She helped me prepare and set out the food for the Friday-morning meeting, and folks sometimes complimented her on it.”

“Who complimented her on the food, specifically?”

I closed my eyes. Well, King Richard always thanked Dusty, proudly and loudly. I told Britt about Richard Chenault, how he was Dusty’s uncle and enjoyed taking pride in her accomplishments.

“Which were by extension compliments for him?” I nodded. Britt went on: “Anyone who wouldn’t compliment her on the food?” Britt asked slyly.

“Well, there’s Louise Upton. She’s the office manager, and she never compliments anyone, except for guys who are higher up the totem pole than she is.”

Britt’s baby face broke into a smile. “Not your favorite person, then.”

I shrugged. “She’s okay, I suppose. She runs a tight ship, and she loves Hanrahan and Jule.”

“A tight ship with a totem pole.”

“Detective, it’s the wee hours of the morning, and I don’t know if you’re making a joke or what. I also don’t know how much longer I can last.”

“Would you say Dusty Routt and Louise Upton were enemies?”

“Not enemies, really. Louise just uses no social skills with people she believes are beneath her.”

“Okay. So you were set to meet Dusty tonight?”

“Yes, at ten, our usual time. But then my car wouldn’t start because my son drained the battery.” I explained about my not looking properly into the rearview mirror and directing my son into a line of grocery carts, and how that had precipitated a furious argument between the two of us, which in turn had led to Arch staying in the car with the lights on and the radio running…

“You were parked in a garage,” Britt asked, “or on the street?”

“On the street,” I said, “because I knew I was going out later, and I didn’t want Tom to block me in when he got home.”

“After this argument with your son, do you know whether he locked the van when he got out of it?”

“No,” I admitted. “I don’t. Gee, do you think…maybe one of my neighbors saw someone messing around with my car.”

Britt took a deep breath. “We’ll canvass your neighborhood. Now, Investigator Schulz gives you a jump, you take off for H&J, and you get there at what time?”

“The exact time?” I sipped more coffee, which tasted as metallic as the building smelled. “I’m pretty sure it was right around ten-thirty. Yeah, pretty sure. I didn’t check my watch, though.” Britt gave me a narrow-eyed look, and my mind conjured up the image of him informing his pals that Tom Schulz’s wife…you know, the caterer?…was as flaky as one of her renowned piecrusts. “I came into the office, and tripped. I didn’t know what was going on. I certainly didn’t think I’d stumbled over a body.” I sighed. “At first I thought it was a joke. The lawyers in the firm like to pull pranks. But then I saw something wrong with one of the paintings in the lobby…”

“Something wrong?”

“You know, it’s one of Charlie Baker’s paintings of food. The firm has several.”

“I’m familiar with his work. Like it, too. But it’s out of a detective salary’s reach. So what was wrong with it?”

“The bread dough I was carrying slopped onto the painting when I fell, which is why I noticed anything. The frame on the painting looked broken and there was a darker stain. I think it may have been blood.” My weak voice indicated a brain thicker than cold oatmeal. “Then when I tried to get up, I saw Dusty lying there. I went to her and realized she wasn’t moving or breathing.”

“So you thought…what?”

I looked him square in his puzzled dark eyes. “I didn’t think. I used to be married to a doctor, and I learned a lot. Not anything good about him, mind you. But I do know about medical procedure, so I did CPR.” I shook my head. “But nothing happened. She had a gash on her forehead, so that might explain the blood on the painting.”

“Was she warm when you started CPR?”

“Yes.”

“How long did you try to revive her?”

“I’m not sure. It seemed like a long time, maybe half an hour, but it might have been less. I couldn’t think about anything except trying to get a pulse…but the CPR wasn’t working. My cell phone was back in the van, and the office phone lines weren’t operating, so then I just left the lobby to try to find help.”

“So you did CPR and then you left. Please, please tell me what time you think it was.”

“I don’t know,” I said through clenched teeth. “I didn’t think to check my watch or a clock. I peeked both ways down the hall, then ran out back to my car, but—”

“Wait. Think back to that parking lot in front of the H&J office building. Before you went around back. Did you see anything there? I need to know precisely, especially if it was something suspicious.”

I frowned. “Well, no. That I can recall, anyway. You see, I went out the service entrance. It leads out back.”

“Did you see Ms. Routt’s car?”

“Not until I went around to the front. I saw her Honda Civic, parked alone in the lot.”

“Did you see anything else around the building? Other cars, trucks, anybody coming in or going out?”

“Not that I noticed.”

“What about when you were on your way up the stairs to the law firm, when you were coming in, or in the office itself? Anything unusual?”

“Not that I haven’t told you. Look, I’m really beginning to feel tired and stressed out. My husband said he’d be waiting for me—”

“Yeah, yeah, we know.” The dark eyebrows knit into a sympathetic expression. “Just a couple more things. Why did you agree to give Ms. Routt cooking lessons at the firm?”

I explained to him about how Dusty and I were friends and neighbors. “We talked a lot. It was fun for both of us. And in the firm’s kitchen, we could cook and visit without the interruption of phones and whatnot.”

“But you’re a thirtyish married woman and she was a twentyish single female. What was so much fun to talk about?”

“Her studies, her work, my work, my clients, the law firm, the people there. Dusty wanted to…get ahead. She was ambitious, and I was flattered that she wanted my advice about this or that.”

“This or that?”

“What she should wear to a lunch meeting with big clients. Whether she should take golf lessons. That kind of thing.”

“Did Ms. Routt have any problems with anyone in the law firm? Was she scared of someone on staff there?”

Of course, this was what I’d been wondering ever since I’d raced across the street. Who, who, who? And yet I was still unprepared for this question.

“Mrs. Schulz? I’m asking you again. You said Louise Upton was hard on her?”

“No, no, not really. Louise Upton just enjoyed savoring her power, that’s all.” I thought for a minute. “Dusty did have to be careful about protocol at the firm. One time, at a staff meeting I was catering? Dusty’s uncle, Richard Chenault, asked a question about how a particular kind of will could avoid probate. Nobody seemed to know. Finally Richard said, ‘Come on, Claggs, for God’s sake! This is your area!’”

“Claggs?”

“Alonzo Claggett, one of the associates. He’s really a great guy, and he cared about Dusty. He came tonight, after I found her—”

“We’re getting ahead of ourselves. Back to this meeting.”

I blew out air. “Well, as all the lawyers were filing out, Dusty motioned her uncle aside. She whispered to him that you could avoid probate with the kind of estate they were discussing by setting up a particular kind of irrevocable trust. I didn’t really understand the details, but I gather she had them correct.”

“Then what happened?”

“What happened? Richard wouldn’t let Alonzo Claggett forget it. In other meetings, he’d joke that maybe instead of asking Alonzo a question, he’d just consult with Dusty. It was funny to everybody but Alonzo, and Dusty hated it.”

“How do you know that?”

“Because she told me. At a lunch I catered for the lawyers and their wives, Nora Ellis, Donald Ellis’s wife, scolded Dusty. Nora said that Dusty shouldn’t give legal opinions, since she wasn’t a lawyer. In fact, she wasn’t even a paralegal yet. And Ookie Claggett, Alonzo’s wife? She went out of her way to ignore Dusty through that whole lunch. All over one intelligent remark from Dusty, who was just trying to please her uncle.”

“You’re sure it was only one?”

“Well, it was the only one I witnessed. Maybe there were others.”

“Maybe Mr. Chenault began asking for help from Dusty when he should have been consulting his associates.”

I shook my head. “I think Dusty would have told me, if that had been true.”

“Who did Dusty hang out with at the law firm?”

“Only one other person besides me. She was good buddies with Wink Calhoun, the firm’s receptionist.”

“Wink? Ookie? Claggs? Where do these people get their names?”

I was so tired, I laughed. “I don’t know.”

“Spell Wink’s full name for me, would you?” This I did. Then Britt said, “Did they go for lunch together? Hang out on the weekends?”

“Yes, Dusty and Wink were friends. I saw Wink over at the Routts’ house sometimes, and I know Dusty went to see her.”

“And at the firm, were they friendly?”

“Sure.”

“With each other and the lawyers, or just with each other?”

It was all I could do not to start laughing again. “When I serve breakfast, from Monday through Thursday? There’s a dining room, with two big dining tables. The staff—Wink, Dusty, and Georgina, their paralegal who’s now in Hawaii with the other attorneys—would always sit at the second table. They didn’t really mix with the bigwigs.”

“The bigwigs?”

“You know. The lawyers. I mean, the lawyers were okay, but—”

Britt poised his pen over his notebook. “Describe them to me. How’d you get hired by H&J in the first place?”

“I was referred by Brewster Motley. He’s a friend of Richard Chenault, who’s the head honcho. Brewster is a criminal attorney who—”

“Yeah, I know him,” Britt interrupted. “Looks like a beach bum, talks like Perry Mason. Did he get along with Ms. Routt?”

I frowned. “I don’t even think they knew each other.”

“Can you name the rest of the staff that’s in Hawaii?” Britt tilted his baby face as I recited the names. In the fluorescent light of the interrogation room, his skin looked pale and clammy. “Describe Richard Chenault to me.”

“Late fifties, combs his silver hair straight back, so he always looks like he just got out of a swimming pool. A strong guy, and proud of it. Does a lot of bodybuilding, I think.”

“And the kind of work he was doing with Dusty?”

“I don’t know exactly. Wills, estates, that kind of thing. That’s what they do at H&J.”

“Chenault easy to get along with?”

I smiled. “I wouldn’t go that far. He is imperious. And he loves to play jokes on me.” I told him about the gin in the coffee, the moths in the tablecloth, the green food coloring in the eggs.

“He just sounds like a ton of fun.”

“He sort of is, really. He fell in love with a friend of mine, a doctor.” I told him about K.D. and the altitude sickness. “They moved to a big house in Aspen Meadow and Richard bought a partnership in Hanrahan & Jule. But he had a little something on the side, and it wasn’t asparagus. K.D. found out, and now they’re getting divorced.”

“Did Richard Chenault get along with his niece?”

“I’m telling you, everybody seemed to get along with Dusty. And really, because she was working so hard for Richard, it had gotten to be that I didn’t see her a whole lot outside of the firm, except for our cooking lessons together.”

Britt asked, “You live across the street from her family, right?”

“Yes.”

“They get along? Any problems?”

“They all get along. No problems. Really, they’re great. Sally, Dusty’s mother, adores her, as do both her grandfather, who lives with them, and Dusty’s little brother, Colin.”

“Go on.” When I gave him a quizzical look, he said, “Tell me more about her family.”

“Dusty’s father, Richard’s brother, took a hike while Sally Routt was pregnant with Colin, Dusty’s very little brother. He left her with nothing but debts, and hasn’t been heard from since. Sally was forced out on the street, literally. One of the first things she did was to take back her maiden name, Routt. Sally’s father, John, lives with them, because he was blinded in prison.”

Britt’s forehead furrowed. “Blinded in prison?”

“Back before rabbits were the guinea pigs for cosmetics companies, those companies tested their products on prisoners.” Britt closed his eyes and shook his head. “John Routt was a guinea pig for a cosmetics company testing mascara, and the stuff blinded him. Dusty loves…loved her grandfather. He’s one of the reasons she went to work for a cosmetics company after high school…she said she didn’t want that to happen to anybody else. Naive, but sweet, which is the way Dusty was.”

“So she went from a cosmetics company to a law firm? Just like that? Seems like an odd leap, for a young woman, anyway.”

“No, she went to community college in between. It was her uncle who hired her to work for H&J.”

“But why would she want to work in a law firm?”

I pressed my lips together and tried to remember exactly what Dusty had said about that particular leap. We’d been working on a breakfast pie at the time, a light-tasting but hearty concoction of blue cheese, eggs, and cream cheese, mellowed with sautéed shallot and chopped scallion. We’d just decided to call the dish Blue Cheesecake, when Dusty launched into a story about a family on our street suing a Colorado electric company. When a March blizzard dumped five feet of snow on our little burg, we’d lost power for a couple of days. But west of Aspen Meadow, the outage had lasted for five days, because some dummy at the power company had sent every one of their tractors over to the western slope. This family on our street had been particularly distraught, as their very independent eighty-year-old grandmother lived out in the area that didn’t have power. Cell-phone service in the mountains is iffy at best, and the family hadn’t been able to raise the grandmother or any of her neighbors. By the time the power company managed to bring a tractor over from Grand Junction and replace the fuse that had blown in the neighborhood, the grandmother had run out of firewood. She had frozen to death.

The family on our street had been unable to get the county attorney to charge the power company with negligent homicide. But they’d been determined to sue the power company in civil court for wrongful death. This had gotten Dusty interested in torts, and the law. She hadn’t had the wherewithal to go to college, but she received a partial scholarship to a community college. After that, she was determined to become a paralegal, and maybe even eventually a lawyer. If the family whose grandmother had died was going to sue the power company, then maybe, Dusty reasoned, she could eventually help people like her grandfather, who had been treated so abominably by that cosmetics company, all those years ago. And then her uncle had shown up, and been willing to foot the bill and hire her, so Dusty had seen it as divine intervention.

All this I explained to Britt. He whistled.

“Sounds like a pretty extraordinary young woman.”

“She was.”

He asked, “What about Dusty’s love life?”

I thought back, trying to remember what had been just out of reach when I’d first seen Vic a few hours ago. “A couple of months ago, Dusty told me about some problems she was having with her boyfriend. He’s Vic Zaruski, the fellow who helped me tonight. I just happened to run into him when I was looking for a phone.”

“Stop and tell me about that.”

This I did, as Britt wrote. “Vic was very nice and helpful, and he seemed extremely broken up when he heard something had happened to Dusty.” I went on to explain that I knew little of Vic, beyond a short but friendly chat I’d had with him one time when I’d brought a meal over to the Routts, and he’d been waiting for Dusty. He was going to a technical and vocational school somewhere outside of Denver, and he loved to play the piano. I did remember that he was particularly proud of his car, a vintage white Chrysler Sebring convertible that he kept in immaculate condition. This summer, I’d admired the way Vic glided that ultracool car into the Routts’ driveway, when he came to pick up Dusty. I didn’t know the details of the breakup, I only was aware that I hadn’t seen the Sebring for a while. Still, what twenty-year-old woman didn’t have romantic ups and downs?

“So, did Dusty have a current boyfriend?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe.”

“Dusty told you all this stuff while you cooked together, but you don’t know whether she had a boyfriend?”

“Wait a minute.” She’d said she had something to tell me. And she’d promised to explain the new bracelet. My brain finally recalled what had been bothering me. “There might have been somebody, though she didn’t exactly tell me about it.”

“What do you mean?”

I bit my lip. I was so tired. And was it warm in this room, or was that my imagination? “I’m not sure,” I said finally.

“Tell me anyway.”

“When Dusty came last week for her cooking lesson, she was wearing a bracelet. It wasn’t the kind of jewelry she could possibly afford.”

“What do you mean?”

I shook my head. “It was a complex arrangement of opals and diamonds. I asked her about it, almost, you know, playfully. Anyway, she…glanced down at it and kind of frowned. Then she said she’d go take it off, she really shouldn’t cook while she was wearing it. Then I said, ‘Aren’t you going to tell me about it?’ And she said, ‘How ’bout this? I’ll wear it next week and explain it to you.’”

“Meaning what?”

“I don’t know. Did you find a bracelet on her?”

“Did you, Mrs. Schulz?”

“No, I did not.”

“Was she wearing it when you discovered her?”

“I don’t remember.”

Detective Britt closed his eyes and shook his head. Then he opened his eyes and half grinned. “What do you think was going on with this bracelet?”

“I thought I wasn’t supposed to speculate.”

“Exactly. So, in all your cooking lessons, Dusty Routt never mentioned a boyfriend. But once, you caught sight of a bracelet? And she said she had something important to tell you? Something important to tell you last night, to be exact, when she was going to explain the bracelet.”

“That’s correct.”

Since I wasn’t supposed to speculate, what I didn’t tell Britt was that I had thought Dusty was kidding around one time when she had told me that her real motivation in learning to sauté vegetables, steam fish, bake bread, and roast lamb was to attract a wealthy husband. This dream fellow would fall in love with her cooking, she reasoned, with a laugh and a shake of her newly highlighted hair. But it had felt so much like a joke that I’d never taken it seriously. And in all our time together, she’d never talked again about this inspiration for learning to cook. Maybe I’d inform Britt of this particular conversation at some point.

“Look,” I said, “I have a ton of kitchen work to do for a big party tomorrow, if the party actually takes place. And I mean what I keep telling you, I really am exhausted. Do you have any idea when I could get back the kitchen equipment that I dropped in the H&J office?”

“We’ll have your husband bring it to you.”

“Thanks. Sorry about the mess I left in the reception area.”

“Not your fault. A cleaning team will come in when we’re done with the crime-scene analysis.”

“Good.” I rubbed my eyes. If there had been a bed there in that toasty-warm interrogation room, I think I would have lain down on it.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz. Where will you be for the next couple of days? In case we need to talk to you some more.”

I gave him our address, the Ellises’ address, where I was supposed to be doing Donald Ellis’s birthday party the next day, and the location of St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Aspen Meadow, where I was catering Gus’s christening on Sunday. Almost as an afterthought, I said, “I sure don’t feel like going back to work after a friend of mine has died. I don’t want to think about having to act happy when I see people.”

“Oh, Mrs. Schulz,” said Britt. “Tell me about it.”

CHAPTER 4

Tom was waiting for me in the department snack room. I blinked in the bright light of the pop and candy machines that lined the walls. In one, glassed-in shelves offered limp, plastic-wrapped sandwiches that looked like one of Arch’s lab experiments. Several patrol officers, appearing even more exhausted than the sandwiches, sat talking at one of the small tables. Upon our entrance, they put down their foam coffee cups and surveyed us with hooded, curious eyes. Tom nodded to me and tilted his head, indicating the door. The less said in the department, he seemed to be saying, the better.

Fine by me.

“I was just bringing in the bread ingredients,” I explained to him ten minutes later, once we were headed up the interstate, back toward Aspen Meadow. A blanket of clouds now obscured the moon, and the night was once again impenetrably dark. A chilly wind slapped the dark sedan and swirled up flakes of ice from the roadway. I went on: “When I went in, I tripped over her. It took me a few minutes to realize Dusty was just lying there…and that she wasn’t moving.”

Tom drew his mouth into a frown and concentrated on keeping the car from swerving out of the lane. “First tell me how you’re doing. Then we’ll get to Dusty.” He flicked me a quick glance, which seemed to tell him I wasn’t doing very well, as a matter of fact. He turned his eyes back to the road and held out his right arm. “Come here.”

I leaned in to his embrace. My seat belt cinched my torso and I unbuckled it. What was he going to do, arrest me? I was numb, cold, unable to feel anything. The reassuring way Tom tugged me into his warmth, the way his strong hand held on to my right shoulder…these were what I needed, and he knew it.

“Did you get somebody to go over there, to be with Sally?”

“I called Father Pete. I know he’s recovering from that coronary, but I also knew he’d probably have another one if I didn’t call him about this.”

“Will I be able to see Sally when we get home?”

“Nope. You’re a witness, and they’re going to try to keep you apart.”

“But she’s my friend,” I pleaded. “A neighbor, Tom. Please. I just feel responsible, dammit. I keep thinking, if I’d only arrived on time—”

“Stop. Look, let me see what I can do. Father Pete should be there, and our team is probably finishing up at the Routts’ house. Then the victim-assistance people will go in, try to be helpful, that kind of thing.”

I shuddered. I didn’t want to picture the victim-assistance team, with their quilts and their counseling. Your daughter’s just been killed, Mrs. Routt, you need anything from the grocery store? But I knew they would do better than that.

“I want to be there for Sally. Her family has been through too much.”

Tom’s hand tightened on my shoulder. “I’ll talk to my people. Don’t worry. Knowing you, you’ll be there, Miss G.”

I snuggled into Tom’s side, closed my eyes, and thought about the Routts. I liked them. And I felt empathy for Sally, since I’d spent quite a few years as a single mom myself. But life had been much more challenging for her than it had been for me. When Colin’s father had skipped, Sally had told me she’d been forced to patch together funds for food, clothing, and shelter from a variety of government agencies. Our parish, Saint Luke’s Episcopal, had coordinated with Habitat for Humanity to chip in with materials, muscle, and weeks’ worth of meals, coordinated by yours truly, to help build Sally, her father, Dusty, and little Colin a modest, two-story house across the street from us.

But there had been other disasters, like Dusty’s pregnancy and loss of her scholarship. Dusty had told me she wanted the baby. She’d been excited. And then she’d miscarried. On and on it seemed to go for the Routts. Now gossip in town would center on how “the welfare people” were clearly unwilling or unable to break out of the pattern of screwing up their lives. Unfortunately, Dusty’s murder would appear to be confirmation of this cruel judgment.

I opened my eyes. Had I slept? I thought so. What time was it? The dashboard clock said it was half past three. The road was now cloaked in a frigid fog that promised snow. Despite the icy slick that was glazing the roads, I wanted Tom to drive faster. I wanted to get home, take a shower, and get into bed. I wanted my dear warm husband to lie down beside me, wrap his arms around me, and tell me everything was going to be all right. Which, of course, it wasn’t.

The sedan crested the hill and I pulled away from Tom. The dark cloud surrounding us obscured the mountains of the Continental Divide. There, the peaks had been iced with snow since the beginning of September, and I suspected they were now getting a fresh dumping.

“So,” I asked Tom, “what are the cops doing at the Routts’ house now? I mean, right this minute?”

Tom exhaled. “The usual. If the mother’s not a suspect—”

I snorted and checked the rearview mirror. Pinpricks of snow were tapping on the windshield. “Of course she’s not a suspect.”

“They’ll ask if anyone else has rights to the house.”

“What are you talking about?”

“Miss G. Let me finish. Our guys don’t want anyone to be able to go into the Routts’ house and plant things.”

“Plant things?”

Tom’s voice turned weary. “Put things in there that would tend to implicate someone else. Or indicate suicide.”

“Tom, for God’s sake. There was redness around her neck and on one of her cheeks. Her face had been bashed into a glass-covered picture.”

“Okay then, look at it from another angle. The department doesn’t want anyone entering and removing incriminating evidence. Once our guys have those two things established—that is, nobody strange can come in, and nothing can be taken out—they’ll talk to the mother, see if she knew anything suspicious going on with her daughter. Threatening phone calls, that kind of thing. Then they’ll ask permission to go through Dusty’s stuff. Drawers, pockets, correspondence, you name it. They’ll be seeing if they can come up with some clues as to what happened to her, and why.”

We headed past the closed shops on Main Street, where the fog softened the smiles from the merchants’ electrified jack-o’-lanterns. When Tom pulled into our driveway, I glanced at the two police cars parked outside the Routts’ house. When we finally stepped carefully across our ice-crusted deck, I began to shiver.

Coming into the chilly house did not help. With fall temperatures fluctuating from thirties in the mornings to the eighties in the afternoons, we kept the heat off in most of the rooms. And despite the absence of the Jerk, all the windows remained closed and security wired, unless we were home. The reason for this was simple.

Roger Mannis, our arrogant, creepy county health inspector, was the prime suspect in a head bashing I’d received before a June catered event at the Roundhouse, a catering-events center by Aspen Meadow Lake that I’d opened last spring. The center, too, was finally fully wired for security. Now, unfortunately, the Roundhouse was having a whole set of pipes replaced, and the trenches dug around the former restaurant made it look like a giant prairie-dog village.

I’d expected that Roger was still plotting against Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right! until Tom explained to me that he and Roger had had a talk. Tom could intimidate anybody, all the while keeping his voice easygoing and his hand resting gently on his gun. Roger’s manner had been stiff, but comprehending, Tom said. But when we weren’t at home, Tom added, the windows were to remain closed and armed.

So here we were, unfortunately, with the October chill permeating the shut-up house. Arch, who had his own thermostat, had kept his room positively balmy when he was younger. But now that he was involved in sports, he liked his own cold. If he became chilled, which was rare, he tucked himself inside a sleeping bag on his floor.

The clock indicated it was four o’clock. Arch would be getting up in three hours. With Tom always involved trying to solve murders, how would I tell Arch that our lovely friend from across the street had met such a fate? I did not know. I couldn’t even remember whose turn it was to drive carpool.

Tom turned off the security system, then announced he was bringing in firewood from the pile he’d stacked next to our deck. I moved, zombielike, through the house to the living-room windows. Several neighbors had leashed their dogs and were trailing behind them up the sidewalk, ever curious about what new crisis was overtaking “the welfare people.” Anger prickled my skin, but there was nothing I could do. Maybe I was wrong, anyway; maybe they wanted to help. The police cars were still parked outside the Routts’ house, and Father Pete’s car was behind them. There was no movement from within.

“Goldy, go get in bed.” Tom’s voice was tender. Down on one knee, he was carefully laying pine logs on top of kindling he’d meticulously stacked. The sound of the match igniting startled me.

“Miss G. Please.”

“All right, all right.” I moved up the stairs, dropped my clothes spattered with bread sponge into the hamper, and eventually found my way into the shower. I let steaming water run over my aching face and body and tried not to think. Moments later, I was in bed. Oddly, I slept a profound, dreamless sleep until twenty after six. I dressed quickly, came downstairs, and found Tom lying, eyes half open, on the living-room couch.

“Is Arch up?” I asked as I sat down next to him.

“Not yet. Friend of mine brought back your van with your supplies. I unloaded everything.”

“You’re the best.” I stared at the fire.

“Did you get any sleep?”

“Couple of hours. Enough.”

I hesitated. “I should be doing something. For the Routts, I mean.”

Tom sat up and ran his large hands through his wavy brown hair. The doorbell startled both of us. Tom sighed, then got up to answer it.

“Who could that be?” I wondered aloud. “If it’s a reporter, get out your gun and use it.”

But it was not a reporter, and the commingled voices in our hallway indicated the new arrival was Julian, my assistant. Of course, Julian would have wanted to be here. So despite the wee hour, Tom had undoubtedly called Julian’s apartment in Boulder and asked him to make the drive to Aspen Meadow to be with us. As they exchanged murmured greetings, I wondered if it would be good for Julian to come with me when I finally did go over to check on Sally. Julian had been close to Dusty for a time. Oh God, I thought as I laid my head on the couch cushion. This was all too much.

Julian’s voice asked: “Goldy? Where are you?”

I heaved myself up on my elbow and turned around. Julian, compact and muscled, stood not quite six feet. His dark hair was tousled; his jeans, wrinkled oxford-cloth shirt, and secondhand leather jacket clearly had been donned in haste. His handsome face was splotched from crying. He shifted from one foot to the other, waiting for me to answer him. With his awkward stance and clenched fists, he looked more shook up than I’d seen him in a long time.

I mumbled, “Thanks for coming.”

“Dusty?” His voice was incredulous. “Who would want to hurt Dusty?” He moved into the living room and sat heavily on one of our chairs. He uttered an expletive and stared at the floor. The three of us were quiet for what seemed like a very long time.

At length, Julian asked, “Are you going over there?”

“Tom says we can’t while the cops are still inside the house. Then he’s going to call the department to see if we’re allowed to go over.”

“You found her?” When I nodded, he said, “Was it bad?”

“I tried to revive her.” I shook my head. “Yeah, it was bad.”

“Do they have any idea who…” But he let the question dangle.

“Not yet,” Tom said. “But we will.”

Silence filled the living room again. Julian stared at the fire. “When we go over, will we be able to take them some food?”

“Sure,” I said.

“I guess…I guess we’d both feel better if we hit the kitchen.”

He was right. I needed to clear my brain, and the way I did that was by cooking. At the moment, that was also the only thing I could do for Sally Routt.

“Okay,” Tom said, “I’m going to go check on Arch and wake him up in twenty. I’ll make sure he’s got his backpack and, uh, learner’s permit.”

“Tom,” I said, “don’t even think about—”

“Just kidding!”

“Have you got anything going today?” Julian asked as he walked slowly down the hallway toward the kitchen. Once there, he flipped on the espresso machine and began hunting through our cupboards for the sugar. Julian never took fewer than four teaspoons of the sweet stuff in his caffeine jolts. The memory of accidentally sipping a titanically sweet, Julian-fixed demitasse popped me out of my stupor. I didn’t want that to happen again. Opening my eyes wide, I clattered two cups under the machine’s spout.

“In the catering department, I haven’t got anything until tomorrow,” I told him. “That’s when I cater Donald Ellis’s thirty-fifth birthday party. I can’t imagine Nora will go forward with it, after what happened to Dusty.” I sighed. “Then on Sunday, Nora’s father is baptizing Gus. Nora’s father is a bishop named Sutherland.”

Julian sat in one of our kitchen chairs, his expression confused. “Sutherland? That name’s familiar.”

“You remember Father Pete had a mild coronary in July?” When Julian nodded, I went on: “Sutherland’s been taking over his liturgical and administrative duties, even some pastoral ones, since then. He was the bishop of the diocese of southern Utah until the end of last year, when he developed heart problems. He took early retirement and moved in with Nora and Donald. Your hometown’s in southern Utah, even though it’s in a different diocese. Think that might be why you recognize the name?”

“Yeah,” he said after a moment. “That’s it. He came around to do confirmations in Bluff one year, when the bishop of Navajoland was sick. Bishop Sutherland’s not a very good preacher.”

“Then let’s hope for a brief sermon on Sunday. Why don’t you see what you can find in the walk-in? Pick out ingredients that look good to you. We’ll pull together something nice for the Routts.”

Julian’s sneakers squeaked as he moved across our wooden floor to the walk-in. After what seemed like an age, he emerged loaded down with unsalted butter, several bags of vegetables, fruit, fresh herbs, and huge wrapped packages of Brie, Fontina, Gruyère, and Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese. Once Julian had arranged his load on the counter, I pressed the button on the espresso machine and watched the dark, syrupy liquid twine into our cups. Overhead, I could hear Tom walking around in that authoritative way he had. I felt strangely comforted. Julian sat down, ladled sugar into his cup, took a sip, then stared at the calendar on the computer screen. “You’re doing a party for Nora Ellis? I’ve encountered her, too. She wasn’t the easiest person I’ve ever had to work for. Typical very wealthy lady, wants the best-quality stuff, but only at a steep discount.”

I smiled at him. “So you don’t like Bishop Sutherland, and you don’t like his daughter, Nora Ellis. One is a bad preacher and one isn’t easy to work for, is that it?” I sipped my coffee. “Have to tell you, big J., Nora’s been perfectly nice to me.”

Julian set his coffee aside and slowly unwrapped the cheeses. “Okay, let me think. I did a dinner party over in Boulder, a charity thing? It was when I was working for Doc’s Bistro, and Doc really believed in this organization that Nora was involved with to help underprivileged kids. It was called Up and Coming. Anyway, Doc couldn’t do the dinner, so I filled in. Nora Ellis kept sending people into the kitchen to see how I was doing. I had the feeling she was having them check that I was using real cream, real butter, and Parmesan that didn’t come out of a tube with holes in the top.”

I finished my coffee, rinsed my cup, and began grating my own real Parmesan, unsure even what we were going to do with it. But still, I was focusing on Julian’s story, because it was getting my mind off the vision of Dusty lying on the H&J floor. I said, “It would drive me nuts if a client kept bugging me like that. What was her problem?”

“Oh, everything,” Julian said as he disappeared into the walk-in, then reappeared with a jar of homemade pesto. “You know how clients can be.”

Golden strands of cheese fell in front of the grater as I worked. “She was probably just freaking out over the event going well.”

“Charity events are the worst,” Julian said bitterly.

I suddenly felt queasy about working with Nora Ellis. Then again, maybe I was just feeling queasy, period. As I was rewrapping the cheese, Tom walked into the kitchen.

“Arch is getting ready,” he announced. “I told him about Dusty, so he wouldn’t be upset by the police cars. But I just said she was in an accident.” He moved toward the phone. “Anyway, I’m calling Marla. Asking her to come over, too.”

“You’ll wake her up,” I warned him.

“She’ll live.”

Julian slowly moved his cutting board piled with perfect slices of Brie to the far end of the marble counter. “You’re calling Marla?” he said, his voice quavering. “Could you ask her to bring a dozen more eggs?” Julian looked at me as if he was going to say something, then shook his head. I fixed us both second cups of espresso while Tom dialed Marla.

“Is Arch going to attend the baptism?” Julian asked as he spooned sugar into his cup. He glanced warily at Tom, who had reached Marla and appeared to be arguing with her. In a very low voice, Julian said, “I thought you told me Arch had stopped going to church.”

“He insists he’s going.” I slugged my coffee decisively, again rinsed the cup, and made my own foray into the walk-in. Staring at the shelves, I couldn’t remember why I’d come into the cooled space, or what I was seeking. Without thinking, I pulled a large bag of Granny Smith apples off the shelf. Apple Betty, I thought. Apple Betty with ice cream was the ultimate comfort food and it was easy to prepare. I slammed the door too hard behind me, and it shuddered. “Arch wants to support Gus. He wants to be a part of the significant events in his half brother’s life. Can you blame him? Arch figures if he lies low, no one will mention the fact that he’s taken a sabbatical from the ecclesiastical experience.”

For the first time since he’d arrived, Julian smiled. “Is Meg Blatchford going to be there?” he asked.

“You bet.” At seventy-nine, Meg Blatchford was the oldest Episcopalian in Aspen Meadow. After a person was baptized at St. Luke’s, Meg was the one who took the baby or stood beside the child or adult and said, “You may welcome the newly baptized.” Liturgically speaking, it wasn’t strictly kosher for Meg to ask this question, as the celebrant was supposed to do it. Still, it had been such a long-standing tradition in our parish that no one objected. It added a nice touch, the oldest Christian in the place welcoming the newest.

Julian shrugged. “I hope I can be as strong as she is when I’m in my seventies. I’ve been taking her pastries every week for over a year. Last time I was there, she was pitching a softball so hard into that little basket she uses for practice, you know what I’m talking about? Anyway, I thought she was going to break the basket.”

I nodded. “She’s pretty amazing.”

Julian slurped down the last of his coffee. After clattering our cups into our big commercial dishwasher, he methodically began to rinse a bunch of scallions.

“You got some blue cheese? I’ve changed my mind on what I’m going to make. I’m going to wrap up this Brie and use it for something else, and instead, I want to make that pie you and Dusty…Oh, Christ.” At the mention of Dusty’s name, tears unexpectedly spilled out of Julian’s eyes. He walked quickly into the ground-floor bathroom, where he started running the faucet. A wave of sadness engulfed me. I turned on my computer, told myself to buck up, and printed out the Blue Cheesecake recipe.

When Julian returned to the kitchen, he didn’t mention the incident. Instead, he said, “Um, I need some tomatoes to make a salad. I didn’t see any in the walk-in.”

“I’ll go downstairs to look for some.”

“Downstairs?”

“Just trust me, okay?” I said as I traipsed down the steps to the basement. Our brief mountain growing season had not deterred Tom from planting a dozen cherry-tomato plants in June. When a September frost had threatened to ruin his crop—then only masses of chartreuse nuggets—he’d grumbled and pulled the plants up by the roots. After stringing a dozen meat hooks across our laundry-room ceiling, he’d hung entire plants—including roots with dirt still clinging to them—upside down, and declared the fruit would ripen by Halloween. Great, I’d replied, as I surveyed the grit covering the concrete floor. Tom, abashed, had swept up the mess. But we were still treated to a fresh shower of dirt every time someone picked some of his crop.

To my surprise, I was able to find a couple dozen good-looking cherry tomatoes from Tom’s batlike plants. I placed them on the washing machine, swept up the dirt, and brought my haul upstairs. My sauté pan held chopped shallots that were sizzling in a golden puddle of melted butter. Julian was busy beating cream cheese, so I turned my attention to the apples. They were just ripe, and I’d planned to take a pie into the firm…Oh, Dusty, I thought suddenly, I’m so sorry. A blade of sorrow stabbed my chest.

Just cook, my inner voice commanded. Get on with things.

So I did, with Julian at my side. While we were working, Arch came in with Tom. Arch looked spiffy in his new wire-rim glasses and de rigueur Abercrombie clothing: rumpled white shirt and baggy gray trousers. His toast-colored hair was dark and wet after his shower.

“Dusty?” Arch began, pushing his glasses up his nose. He looked from me to Tom to Julian. “Dusty from across the street? Tom said you tried to help her?”

I faced him and held my arms out. Too old for a hug, Arch stayed in place. “Yes, hon,” I said, “I did try to help her.”

“There’re a bunch of police cars parked in front of the Routts’. Why? Why not just the coroner’s van?”

Sometimes I wished my son did not know quite so much about police procedure.

“Our guys are helping Mrs. Routt,” Tom supplied.

“Dusty was killed, wasn’t she?” Arch blurted out, his voice accusing. His narrowed eyes took in Tom, Julian, and me. Then he dropped his backpack and stalked out of the kitchen.

“Don’t worry, I’ll get him,” Tom offered.

Julian slumped in a kitchen chair, the savory blue cheesecake and tomato salad momentarily forgotten. “What’s Tom going to say?”

“He’ll tell him the truth. You want more coffee?”

“What the hell, why not.”

Within five minutes Julian had finished his third espresso and we were again working side by side at the counter. Unspoken but understood between us was the knowledge that our energy came from the fact that we were making food for Dusty’s family.

Not much later, Arch shuffled back into the kitchen. He stared at the floor as he asked, “Julian, are you coming to pick Gus and me up from school today?”

“Can’t, bud. Sorry. I promised Marla I’d go to her place tonight. But,” he said suddenly, “I’ll be back to help your mom tomorrow. Want me to spend the night after we do that party?”

“Sure,” Arch said, his voice low. That would be great, thanks.” I felt bad that Arch was feeling sad about Dusty. But clearly, he didn’t want to discuss it at the moment. He heaved up his backpack and turned to me. “Tom canceled my car-pool ride. He’s taking me out for breakfast on the way to the Vikarioses’ house. After that, the Vikarioses are going to drive Gus and me down to school.” I lifted my eyebrows at Tom, who shrugged. Arch went on: “And Gus is coming over today after school. Is that okay? And for dinner, too. Tom just talked to them. Then they want me to go over there to spend the night.” He looked at Julian, his brow furrowed. “Wait a sec. Want me to stay home, Julian?”

“I’m going to be coming back here anyway after I see Marla,” Julian said, as if he hadn’t doubted it for a moment. “So whether you decide to go to Gus’s or not, I’ll be around.”

Cheered that he could stay home with Julian if he needed to, Arch smiled. “Thanks.”

In addition to phoning the car pool and the Vikarioses, Tom had called one of his friends in the department, to see if it would be okay for us to go over to the Routts’ house. We’d been given the go-ahead. Tom had also phoned the Routts themselves, to ask if we could come over sometime in the next couple of hours. When he got the green light on that one, too, he gave me the news, a promise that he’d be back as soon as he dropped Arch off, and a kiss. Then he and Arch were gone.

Julian and I got back to work. Within ninety minutes, Julian had pulled puffed cheesecake out of the oven and arranged sourdough rolls and butter in a covered basket. Tom, meanwhile, had returned and shaken up a fresh garlic vinaigrette for the tomatoes, which he arranged on a bed of romaine and Bibb lettuce and sprinkled with scallions. I carefully pulled the Apple Betty out of the oven. It oozed spicy, lusciously scented juices out from under its crumb crust. At five past nine, Marla rang the doorbell. I went to greet her.

My best friend had swathed her wide figure in a black silk pantsuit. Her curly brown hair, usually held marginally in place by jeweled barrettes, was pulled back from her pretty face by a black velvet headband. Her large brown eyes were puffed and bloodshot.

“I can’t believe this,” she said, handing me a plastic grocery bag with a pack of eggs inside.

“Thanks,” I said. “And no, we can’t believe it either.”

I stowed the eggs, and the four of us packed up the food. Finally, we began our slow trek across the street to the Routts’ house. The sheriff’s department cars had pulled away. Tom had told us that it had been Sally’s father, Dusty’s grandfather John, who had choked and said yes, he’d be happy to have us come over, since Father Pete hadn’t been able to stay long. Tom also said Dusty’s little brother, three-year-old Colin, had been screaming inconsolably in the background.

I surveyed our offerings: Julian’s steaming, golden-crusted savory pie, Tom’s precisely arranged tomato salad, the breadbasket with its pats of butter, my spicy apple Betty with its crumbly crust. Without realizing it, we’d all created concoctions that demanded the precise cutting of vegetables and fruit, as if organizing food could somehow order experience and make life neat. Like most folks, we believed that performing that small ritual of comfort, bringing nourishing gifts, could make life after a sudden death more bearable.

Which, of course, was doubtful.

I pressed my lips together and led the way as we walked toward the door of the Routts’ small house.

CHAPTER 5

When we arrived, Marla marched up the cement steps and rang the bell. Tom, Julian, and I followed her to the small red-painted landing. When no one came to the door, Marla pressed the buzzer again. Still there was no answer. She turned around and frowned at us, then tried again.

“Go away!” a voice shrieked: Sally Routt. She couldn’t have been more than six feet from what I knew was a thin door. Yet we had heard no movement from within. “I don’t want to talk to you anymore! I haven’t got a lawyer, so you’re just going to have to deal with it.”

Marla raised her hands: Now what? Tom lifted his eyebrows at Julian.

I walked up next to the door. “Sally, it’s us,” I said in a low voice. “Goldy and Tom from across the street. And our friends Marla, from the church, and Julian Teller. We’ve brought some food for you. You can just take it, or you could let us in, if you like.” After a beat I said, “Your father said it was okay for us to come over.”

The stained, hollow door opened a crack. “Your husband, Tom, is a cop,” Sally, still unseen, announced in a high, frightened voice. “I don’t want any more cops in here. Suggesting my baby deserved to die.” She erupted in a sob.

Suggesting what?

“Mrs. Routt, it’s Julian Teller.” Julian nodded confidently at me. “You know we loved Dusty.” He hesitated respectfully. “But if you don’t want us just yet, we can leave our trays here, then come back later for them. Or you could, you know, come over to Goldy’s place—”

The door creaked open and Sally appeared. Short and slender, she was dressed in a graying sweatshirt and faded blue jeans. Her thin, frizzy light brown hair looked like a frayed broom. Her slender face, usually quite pale, was pink from crying. Her eyes were so swollen I didn’t know how she could see out of them.

Without looking at our little party, she said, “I’m never leaving this house again. There’s nothing out there for me.”

With that, she departed, but she swung the door all the way open, which I took as an invitation. She could always tell us to leave, I reasoned, as we pushed our way into the small living room, with its bedspread-covered couch, flimsy coffee table, and mismatched chairs. I’d only been inside the Routts’ place a few times, but it invariably depressed me. The church might have helped build and pay for the house, but they hadn’t provided much in the furniture department.

Sally slumped on the couch and gazed at the floor. Julian placed his tray on the battered coffee table. I followed suit.

“Kitchen must be back here somewhere,” Tom muttered. He swung past us around a short corner. There was a clattering of wood hitting counter—presumably Tom’s suddenly putting the tray down—and then a guttural sobbing emanated from the same direction. But I knew this voice, too: it was John Routt.

Tom’s comforting voice interspersed the deep groans and sobs. I felt confident Tom could handle Mr. Routt; it just would take a while. Meanwhile, Sally began to rock back and forth and wail. Before I could turn my attention to her, though, someone started banging on the front door. Sally rolled sideways on the couch and buried her face in a folded, incongruously cheery red-and-white-patterned quilt, no doubt brought by the deputies. After rubbing her cheeks and eyes with the quilt, she stopped crying momentarily. The pounding on the front door started up again, more loudly and insistently than before.

“I can’t…take any more,” Sally whispered to me. As she lay on the couch, her puffy eyes sought out mine. “Get rid of whoever that is, would you please, Goldy?”

I nodded. Marla and Julian, eager to be helpful, had been building blocks with Colin on the far side of the room. But the knocking had scared him, and he began to cry. He toddled over to his mother’s side and threw himself on top of her legs. Sally reached out a limp arm and patted Colin’s head.

What were neighbors supposed to do to be helpful in times like this? Just work on getting your friends through the next hour, an inner voice said. Failing that, attend to the next fifteen minutes.

I shouldn’t have been surprised to see Vic Zaruski at the door. His face, like Sally’s, was blotched, his expression stricken.

“What’s going on?” he asked me. The humidity from the previous night’s fog had made his head of straw-colored curls wild. “Why are you here?”

“Vic, you know we live across the street,” I said gently. Behind me, Colin raised his crying a notch. “Look, it would help if you didn’t bang on the door.”

He looked in over my shoulder. “Where is everybody? Mrs. Routt? Her father? Colin?”

Get rid of them, Sally had said to me. But surely she would want to see her daughter’s ex-boyfriend? Would it help to have him here? I hesitated. Julian appeared from behind me.

“The little guy hasn’t had any breakfast,” he announced. “I checked their refrigerator, and they don’t have any eggs, juice, bread, butter, stuff like that. Mind if I get some goodies from your place? I’m not sure the kid would like that quiche, so I thought I’d make him French toast. I’ve got my own keys.”

“Sure,” I said, then turned my attention back to Vic. He had been so kind and helpful to me after I’d found Dusty. Still, I was uncertain about how to proceed. What if Sally, in the way of mothers of teenage daughters from the beginning of time, had not actually liked her daughter’s boyfriend?

Stepping agilely around Vic, Julian trotted down the stairs. “Oh yeah, Goldy,” he tossed over his shoulder. “You’d better check on Sally, see what she wants to do about…visitors.”

“Stay here,” I ordered Vic. I walked quickly back to Sally, who still lay on the couch, with a steadily weeping Colin leaning against her knees. “Vic’s here,” I said softly. “Do you want to see him, or should I tell him to come back later?”

Sally closed her eyes and shook her head. “He’s a nice boy, but I’m not ready to see him.”

Great. I leaned in to Colin. “Will you come into my arms, Colin?” I crooned. Colin shook his head steadfastly and gripped his mother’s legs.

“Seems to me,” Marla called from the opposite side of the room, “that Colin’s auntie Marla has some chocolate candy deep in her purse!” She picked up her voluminous Louis Vuitton bag and began to rummage through it. Then she stopped and stared into it. “I know that candy bar is in here somewhere. If only I had Colin to help me look for it!”

Colin, suddenly alert, but still wary from not quite comprehending the source of the chaos around him, nevertheless unclasped his mother’s legs. He ran toward Marla as fast as his short legs would take him. So much for a nutritious breakfast.

I turned and wiggled through the barely open front door, which I shut behind me. “Vic, look, you were so great and helpful last night. Could you come back later? They’re all a mess in there—”

“I’m a mess.” His voice was fierce. He turned away, stuffed his hands in his pockets, and stared at his white Sebring convertible, its top still down in defiance of the gathering clouds and the cooling days. “I just…I can’t…” He twisted his head and lifted his pointed chin. “So do the cops have any idea who did this?”

I exhaled. “I don’t know, Vic. They just left here a short while ago. I had to go down to the department to answer their questions, just as you did. Did you see Dusty last night?”

He sank down on the red concrete landing and put his head in his hands. “No, no. I…hadn’t seen her for a couple of weeks.” He paused. Then his words came out in a sudden rush. “We were supposed to have lunch together today. She said she had something important to tell me. It’s her birthday, too. But she told me not to get her anything.” He ran his fingers through his wild hair. “Oh, God. If she just would have talked to me.”

I ran my right sneaker across the Routts’ dusty gray doormat, with its inscribed “Welcome” worn down to nubs. “Talked to you about what?”

He shook his head, despairing. “Everything. Nothing. I don’t know.”

“Did she get along with the people at the law firm?” I asked mildly, my voice low.

Vic jerked his head around and stared up at me. “Now what do you think, Goldy? I mean, look what’s happened. It’s just like at that stupid school. Elk Park Prep. Everybody else screws up, and Dusty gets blamed.”

Everybody else screws up? I knew Dusty had become pregnant; I knew she’d been expelled. But who had screwed up? I asked calmly, “What are you talking about? Someone made a mistake and Dusty got blamed for what?”

Vic jumped up, dusted off the seat of his jeans, and pulled his keys out of one of his pockets. “I’m out of here. You want to know the details of Dusty’s history, maybe Julian will tell you.” He jumped down the stairs two at a time. “Nobody wants me here, right? ‘Could you come back later?’” He mimicked my voice so cannily that chills scurried down my back.

“Wait, Vic,” I pleaded. “Why don’t you go across the street to our house and wait for us? We’ll be over in a little while. Julian just needs to get some supplies, and after he does some cooking, he can stay with you—”

“Forget it!” He jumped over the Sebring’s driver-side door and landed in his seat with a whack. He shoved on a pair of dark glasses and revved the engine. “Could you come back later?” he aped again. He hooked a long arm over the passenger seat, twisted his head, and backed too fast out of the Routts’ steep dirt driveway. The Sebring rocked and bumped until it reached the street. Vic braked hard in the street and stared at me, all the goodwill from the previous night evaporated. Then he drove away.

Shaking my head, I watched Julian cross from our house. He was carrying two brown paper grocery bags.

“What was he yelling about?” Julian demanded. “He’s just going to upset Mrs. Routt even more.”

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “He wanted to come in, and she didn’t want to see him yet. Vic helped me last night, when I ran away from the law firm and was desperate for a phone. He was very upset when he learned the news about Dusty. Maybe talking to the cops pushed him over the edge—”

Julian shifted the bags and started up the porch steps. In a low voice, he announced, “Word I heard was that he and Dusty had broken up recently.”

“Yes, Dusty told me. She didn’t tell me the reason, though.”

“You know how ambitious she was. She must have been thinking, How far can a guy working his way through vocational school go? Can you open the door for me?”

“Sure.” Was that really what Dusty had been thinking? I wondered.

Twenty minutes later, Colin was shoveling Julian-made, syrup-soaked squares of French toast into his mouth so fast I was afraid he would choke. Julian rolled his eyes at me as he stood guard over Colin’s little table and waited to be told “More!” The dull yellow chair-within-a-table where Colin sat was a thick plastic square with a small seat cut out of the middle. It may have been the modern version of a high chair, but it was so scuffed and worn that I was willing to bet it had served at least four toddlers before it was given to the Routts.

Everything else in the kitchen, and in the house, looked second-, third-, or fourth-hand. In the living room, Sally still lay on the spread-covered couch. John Routt, whose elderly face always reminded me of an enormous piecrust that had spilled over the edges of its dish, tapped his way in with his cane, with Tom by his side. As usual, John Routt had his very thin white hair neatly combed back from his large forehead. He was wearing clean but extremely wrinkled clothing, including a large, formerly white shirt that hugged his copious belly. His much-washed black chinos had shrunk above his ankles.

He had composed himself somewhat, although his skin was still mottled and the area around his blue, sightless eyes was very red.

“Thank you for coming,” John said. “You all have always been very kind.”

“Oh, you’re certainly welcome,” I mumbled.

When I lowered myself onto one of the chairs, Sally sat up. She pressed her hands between her knees and stared down at them. Marla, murmuring reassurances, sat next to her and put her arm around Sally’s shoulders. It wasn’t at all clear if Sally was listening to her. I looked around the living room. The low walls held no pictures. Ranged across the space were an old portable TV on a dented pressed-wood console, a set of TV tables from the fifties, and a dinosaur-era computer on a seen-better-days card table.

After Colin had eaten, Julian and Marla and I all looked at one another: Now what? John Routt stood shakily, and seemed to be asking himself the same question as he swayed, sightless, chin held high, his right ear cocked, waiting for a cue.

“Sarah?” his low, brittle voice inquired. “Where are you, dear?”

“Here, Dad.” Sally rose and gently led him to the couch. Marla hastily stood as the old man felt his way into a sitting position. He set his cane onto the floor. When Sally sat down beside him, he put his right arm around his daughter’s shoulders.

I looked up at Marla, who shrugged. Tom said, “The food is all in the refrigerator, and I wrote out directions on how it should be heated up.”

“That’s very kind of you, Tom,” John said, his voice rusty.

Julian tipped his head toward the door, as in We should split. But I couldn’t just yet. I had to say something to the Routts, offer to help, to ask if I could do something practical besides just saying, “If there’s anything I can do…” I’d heard that sorry phrase enough at funerals, when it was offered to the bereaved as an exit line. To me it always meant “Don’t bug me.”

“I’d like to bring in your meals this week,” I announced to Sally. “I can call St. Luke’s, too, if you want, to ask, uh, Bishop Sutherland to come over, help you with the arrangements…” I stopped talking when Sally raised her head and gave me a sour look.

Sally snorted. “Please don’t insult me, Goldy. After Father Pete had his heart attack and that guy came in, I went to see him. Just to say hi, introduce myself. He asked if I was there for money. Before I could reply, he asked if I’d availed myself of the job-search services available through the county. I said no, because I had a three-year-old and a blind father to care for. I was so embarrassed, and I so wished I’d never stopped by. But it got worse. He sat there wearing his expensive, hand-tailored clothes—believe me, I can recognize fancy garments, even if I don’t wear them—and said our house had been paid for by the church, and he didn’t have the authority to give us any more funds. Goldy, I wasn’t there for money. But I was so taken aback, I just shook my head. My voice wouldn’t work, so I turned around and left his office. Later, of course, I thought I should have said, ‘Nice to meet you, too!’”

My brain muttered, God help us. “I, uh, I’m sorry—”

“You see, Goldy,” Sally said, her voice suddenly fierce, “that’s what you don’t understand.” She lifted her chin, and her thin face quivered. “I know you’re married to a cop, and Tom, I know you’re a good man. Julian, thanks also for your help.” She took a deep breath. “But as far as the rest of the world goes? We’re trash. I learned that when my dear—” Her voice cracked. “When my sweet son Edgar died in custody, who cared? Nobody, except us. I learned it again when Dusty was going to Elk Park Prep. One of her teachers gets her pregnant, and whose fault is that? Who gets kicked out? Not the teacher! He claimed she was lying, but she wasn’t.”

One of her teachers got her pregnant? Now this was a part of the Elk Park saga that I had not heard. “I—I’m sorry.” I faltered. “I didn’t know—”

Sally’s voice didn’t drip with sarcasm, it was a veritable waterfall of sarcasm. “Oh yes, the cops are going to find Dusty’s killer. Just like they found Edgar’s. The cops will find out what happened!” She rubbed her forehead with stiffened fingers. “Like hell.”

I said firmly, “You know our phone number—”

Sally shook her head. She stood up, as if to usher us out. Tom, Marla, and Julian responded with alacrity, hustling to the front door. Colin, sensing that another dramatic change was taking place, began to whine to be let out of his chair. But my feet were glued to the living room’s thin, faded rug.

“We’ll wait for you outside,” Julian announced as he held the door open for Marla and Tom.

“Sally,” I repeated, my voice hopeless, “I just feel so awful—”

Sally kept rubbing her forehead, her face down. “How did my baby look?” she whispered. “Did she look as if she suffered?”

I thought of Dusty’s bloodied forehead, of her darkened cheek, of the broken glass of the picture frames. Her neck had been very red, too red, when I was doing CPR. Had she been strangled? I remembered from Med Wives 101 that it took four minutes for the brain to be deprived of enough oxygen to die. Four minutes of having someone’s hands grasping your throat so tightly that you can’t breathe. Four minutes of struggling with a choker’s deadly grip. Four minutes of being swung around an office, getting your face smashed into glass and your legs and torso whacked mercilessly into desks and furniture. Four minutes.

“No,” Sally interjected. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear about it. I want to imagine her the way she was. Trying to grow up. Trying to get ahead in the world.” Sally’s bloated eyes sought mine. “But you know what? The world didn’t want her. When she was down, that’s what she’d say. ‘The world’s against me, Mom,’ she’d say. And then she’d start over on some new project. Some new job. Some new boyfriend.” Sally exhaled again in disgust. “And for what? For nothing.”

“Oh, Sally.”

Sally put her hand on her hip. “I don’t need meals, Goldy. What I need is for you to find out what happened to my baby.”

“What?”

“I read the paper. I know you help Tom sometimes.”

“Well, I…the police are—”

“You really think they’re going to help the welfare people? The way Bishop Sutherland did, for example? Please. That law firm was a nest of vermin. Vermin, all of them. Dusty knew it. Something was going on, I’m sure of it. I know my…I knew my daughter. The past month, she’d been acting really secretive. Something was going on, and that’s what got her killed.”

“Did you tell the detectives this?”

Sally’s laugh was shrill. “No, Goldy, I didn’t tell the detectives this, because then the next thing you know, they’ll start spreading rumors about Dusty, and who she was going out with, and what she was up to, and then oops! All of a sudden some dark facts will come out. They tried to say my son Edgar was a violent drunk. Goldy”—her eyes implored me—“he was a kid. And I don’t want to be hearing that my daughter did this or that, she was involved with so-and-so. And by the way, wasn’t she expelled from Elk Park Prep, and oh yeah, didn’t she use her wiles to try to break up the marriage of one of her teachers? And on and on, until in the minds of the public, she deserved to die.”

I sighed, unable to think of anything to say. She was right. I’d seen it again and again. A low-income person without power is blamed for a crime and goes to jail on scanty evidence. A wealthy person who’s guilty as hell impugns the job the police are doing, impugns the victim, impugns whoever’s around, and gets away with rape…or murder.

“You want to help us?” Sally asked, her voice both defiant and pleading. “Then help. I’m not saying you’re a bad cook. We think you’re a great cook. But if you really want to help me? Find out what was—what is going on in that scumbag law firm. Then you’ll be able to tell us who killed my baby girl.”

I looked her in the eye and licked my lips.

“Please,” she begged me. “Please find out what happened to my baby.”

I nodded. I thought, What the hell am I doing? But I said, “Okay, Sally.”

As I walked carefully back across the street, I again saw Dusty’s lifeless body. I remembered her eager expression as she learned to cook. I recalled how disappointed she’d been when one of her own cakes had fallen. I remembered how her face had lit up when I found her the vintage Calvin Klein suit.

I thought of the birthday cake I’d made her.

And then I remembered a joke Marla had told me when I’d started working at Hanrahan & Jule.

Q: Who’s the only kind, courteous person at a law-association breakfast?A: The caterer.

Well, I thought as I entered our house. Not anymore.

CHAPTER 6

Our kitchen clock said it was just eleven, aka back-to-reality time. Or at least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. I stared at the phone. What did I need to do? Oh yes, call Nora Ellis to see if she still wanted to throw a birthday party for hubbie Donald the next day.

She wasn’t there, so I left a message. Even if the sky falls in, never assume a client will cancel a party, André, my mentor had told me. Feeling numb, I moved mechanically over to my computer to check the prep schedule for my three upcoming events: the party, the christening, and the ribbon cutting for the new Mountain Pastoral Center. That last was supposedly going to be held at my catering and conference center, the Roundhouse. The plumbers had assured me they would be done by then. I had too much on my mind to call them for the fifteenth time and bug them.

In the hallway, Tom, Julian, and Marla were talking in low tones about Dusty’s friends, who should be called, who else in the church could bring in meals and run errands for the Routts. I should have been helping them. But somehow talking about the Routts, after all I’d been through during the last eighteen hours, was more than I could handle at the moment. I walked into the kitchen.

Nora had handed me the recipe for the birthday cake she wanted for her husband. It was from one of Charlie Baker’s last paintings, she said, The Cake Series II. She’d bought the painting for Donald and was giving it to him for his present. Charlie’s recipe, Nora claimed, was an historically accurate version of Journey Cake, a confection the pioneers had baked on a board and eaten as they journeyed across America in their covered wagons. Actually, what Nora had given me was just a list of ingredients, which was all that my good old pal Charlie Baker, for whom I’d catered and with whom I’d cooked for the St. Luke’s bazaar, had ever put at the bottom of his paintings. I made myself a latte and remembered Nora’s happy expression when I said I was an old hand at Journey Cake, also known as Johnny Cake.

I pulled out flour and spices and thought about tall, cheerful Nora Ellis, whose straight blond hair fell in a perfect curtain around her head. When we first met, she told me she’d had good and bad luck with caterers. She’d already been burned, figuratively speaking, by both a Denver and a Boulder caterer. Worrying about these mishaps must have been why she was so stressed out when she was running the charity event Julian had catered, I reasoned now. Anyway, my talks with her had always been very amicable. To avoid a repeat of her two unfortunate events, she wanted tastes of the dishes I proposed to serve. I’d acquiesced. In point of fact, most party givers wanted a taste test these days. Problem was, you couldn’t measure efficiency of service, politeness of wait staff, heat of the food, and myriad factors that were just as important as how things tasted. Nora had told me she’d heard that unscrupulous caterers often made blatantly dishonest substitutions. At the Boulder party, her guests were supposed to be served poached salmon. Instead, they’d gotten choulibiac, an infinitely cheaper dish made from leftover bits of salmon. The Denver caterer had unabashedly offered up pork loin instead of the promised roast suckling pig.

“Oops,” I said.

“Yeah, oops,” Nora replied, her pretty face alight with an equal mixture of anger and humor. “Oops, guess what caterers got reported to their respective Better Business Bureaus?”

In the end, Nora had decided on stuffed Portobello mushrooms and empanadas with guacamole for appetizers. For the main course, she’d opted for beef tenderloin, that long, luscious piece of meat from which filets mignons were sliced. Hot beef in the middle of a cold October day was appropriately festive, I assured her. Served with feathery mashed potato puffs, a light salad, and steamed vegetables, the lunch would not be too heavy. And, I added with a smile, beef tenderloin was something a caterer simply could not fake.

As Nora and I had drunk cup after cup of spiced apple cider in her mammoth kitchen, I’d assured her that things would go well. I had a long list of references, which I handed to her. She’d been very jovial, waving her hand and saying she was easy to please. I’d smiled. But now I was more wary, as I wanted to keep Julian’s experience in the back of my mind.

I didn’t have time to ponder this issue, but I did need to make the Journey Cake. If the party did not go forward, I could serve it at Gus’s christening the following day. I drained my espresso cup and put it into the sink. Unfortunately, the first time I’d done a dry run of Nora’s, or rather, Charlie Baker’s Journey Cake recipe, it had flopped. It had fallen, sunk, collapsed. If you wanted a historic angle, you’d have to think of San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake.

Once again, I edged over to the espresso maker. Too much caffeine, you drink too much caffeine, I heard my doctor saying. Tough tacks, I’d replied. And anyway, the machine felt like my anchor. “Or warm teddy bear,” Tom had joked.

Well, I needed a hug from my teddy bear, not only because of worry over how Arch and Julian were dealing with Dusty’s death, but also because I had something infinitely more banal to ponder: the plumbers and their work, or lack thereof, at the Roundhouse. I remembered an old joke we used to tell back in New Jersey. I’d always thought it came from The Tonight Show, but I wasn’t sure:

A doctor calls a plumber in the middle of the night because his toilet is running and keeping him awake. The plumber drives out and fixes the problem in about fifteen minutes. A week later, the doctor receives a bill for four hundred dollars. Enraged, he calls the plumber to complain. “I’m a doctor and I don’t even charge sixteen hundred bucks an hour!” And the plumber calmly replies, “I didn’t either when I was a doctor.”

I fixed myself a one-shot espresso, drank it down, and put in a call to Front Range Plumbing. As usual, I got their machine. I told them who I was and reminded them this Monday evening, that is, in three days, I had an event to cater at the Roundhouse. I needed the plumbing fixed. Please, I added, before hanging up.

Well, I consoled myself as I again rinsed a cup, if the guys laying the pipe were not done, we would have to hold the post-ribbon-cutting event for the new Mountain Pastoral Center in a small room at the Aspen Meadow Country Club. Luckily, a very foresighted Marla had booked it “just in case.”

“Hello, Goldy, are you in there?” Marla’s voice seemed to be coming from far away. “I’m dropping my Mercedes off for some work in a few minutes, and a repairman is driving me out to Creekside Spa. I’m supposed to be at the spa in half an hour. Do you want me to stay with you for a while longer, or not?”

“Yes, please stay.”

“Let me make us all some more coffee.” Tom was suddenly at my side. “Sit down, Goldy.”

“I don’t want any more caffeine, thanks.”

Tom lowered his voice. “Are you all right?”

I shrugged and didn’t mention the Journey Cake, the food for the christening and the ribbon-cutting receptions, the plumbing problems, or Dusty. Instead, I sat down at our kitchen table next to Julian, who looked disconsolate. Was he remembering a time he’d been with Dusty, to the movies, for a hike? Was he recalling what it was like to kiss her? I didn’t want to think about it.

Tom, all assurance, placed a pair of cups under the nozzles and pressed buttons. Rich ropes of espresso hissed out. Marla placed plump, bejeweled hands on Julian’s and my arms.

“You two should take some time off,” she advised.

I snorted; Julian looked out the window. Tom placed the cups in front of Marla and Julian, then raised an eyebrow in my direction.

“Miss G., Julian, Marla’s right.” He unhooked his cell phone from his belt. “Let me call Victim Assistance.”

I squealed, “Forget it!” with such ferocity that Tom put down his phone and patted my shoulder.

“Okay, Miss G.,” he murmured. “Whatever you want.”

“Goldy. Julian.” Marla’s voice was full of alarm. “Don’t cook today, please. Don’t even stay at home. Come with me to the spa. We can leave now and I’ll call them on the cell, book the two of you with the same package I’m getting. They take guys, Julian, no worries. You could each get a ninety-minute massage, oil and water treatment, full-body wrap—”

I cleared my throat. Did neither Tom nor Marla understand that they just weren’t helping? Julian gave me a knowing glance. Finally he stood up and clicked buttons on my kitchen computer. I squinted. He’d brought up my catering schedule and was pushing more buttons. My printer spat out recipes.

Oh yes, Julian, also in the food business, knew that cooking healed. The two of us could try the Journey Cake again. Creaming butter and sugar, sifting flour, and mixing, mixing, mixing: all these would help. Listening to Tom and Marla, on the other hand, was driving me nuts.

“All right, all right, I give up. My body will be done at half past two,” Marla said, her voice suddenly plaintive. “But my car won’t be done until five. I hate to bring this up, Goldy, but you promised to pick me up at the spa. Want me to get the repairman to come get me?”

“No, no, I’ll do it. It’ll help me get my mind off the fact that I promised Sally Routt I’d look into her daughter’s death.”

I was escorting her to the front door, but she stopped in the hallway so she could point a crimson-painted nail at my face. “You’re nuts. You also look like hell. Don’t go anywhere without me. I mean, after you pick me up.”

I smiled. “So does that mean you’re willing to come down to Christian Brothers High School with me to pick up Arch?”

An unexpected cloud passed over Marla’s features. She mumbled, “You’re not taking him for another driving lesson, are you?”

“C’mon, girlfriend. I am, after all, a very good teacher.”

“That’s what I’m worried about,” she said. “That and the fact that Arch asked if he could try out my Mercedes.”

“Oh yes? Let’s see, your new car’s at least five months old. I mean, it already needs work. If you let Arch drive it sometime, well, who knows—”

The bejeweled fingers flashed in front of my eyes. “I know you’re kidding, so don’t even finish that thought.” With a mumbled farewell, she flounced out.

When I came back into the kitchen, Tom was arranging slices of goat cheese and cooked beets on salads of mixed field greens. Julian was concentrating on measuring out ingredients for a vinaigrette.

“C’mere, Miss G.” Tom motioned me forward, and I walked into his arms. “I’m in this crime-fighting business. I know you never get used to…what you saw last night.”

“Yeah. You’re right.” My voice next to his shoulder was muffled. I shuddered, and he pulled me in tighter. “She was just so…so—”

“I know. Young. Unfinished. Hopeful.”

“Right.” I pulled away from Tom. “I need to make a call.”

“Goldy,” Tom said, “take it easy for a while, will you?”

“Just one call,” I replied, thinking of Sally’s plea that I help her find out what had happened to her daughter. I snagged the phone and my purse and slipped into the living room. There, I took out my little handheld and looked up the home number of Wink Calhoun, receptionist at H&J. I tapped in the numbers, without knowing what I was going to say. Wink was, had been, Dusty’s closest friend at the firm. But Wink and I were also chums of a kind, since she had adopted Latte, a basset hound we had inherited from a friend.

Wink answered on the first ring. I could hear Latte howling in the background. “Hello?” As usual, Wink’s Southern drawl was more pronounced when she was upset. “Goldy? I have caller ID,” she explained, her voice cracking. “What happened to Dusty? The police have been here, and Richard is on his way over…Latte! Stop howling, please!”

The dog ignored her.

“Oh, Wink,” I said, “I’m so sorry. I know how close you and Dusty were—”

“I’m in hail.” Hell. Yeah; me, too. Her voice turned pleading. “Why would someone do this?”

“I don’t know. Do you want to come over to our place? I have to go out for a while, but my husband, Tom, and our family friend Julian Teller are here. I…just thought you might not want to be alone.”

“I can’t.” Caint. “King Richard is bringing over some work for me to do here at my house. The cops won’t let us back into…back into…” She started crying again, then clearly made a huge effort to stop. “I’d like to see you.”

“You want to come to our house later?” I asked. “Say for dinner?”

Another sob. “I don’t know. I’m not feeling so good. I want to know why someone did this. Can’t you help the cops? Haven’t you done that before? What if somebody gets away with this crime?”

“I’m trying, Wink. Look, come over to our house when you finish your work, okay? Julian Teller will be here and can let you in.”

“Well, maybe.”

“You know how you were talking about my helping with the case, Wink?” When she mmm-hmmed, I made my voice firm. “I was hoping you could write down everything Dusty was working on.”

“I don’t know that stuff. That’s why they had her doing it.”

My stomach was growling, I was exhausted, and Wink was being Wink.

“Well, if you can think of anything, anything at all, we could go over it later.” That was about as far as I was going to get in one phone call, I reasoned. People want you to figure something out, but when you ask them to do some work in helping with the figuring, they get schizzy. We signed off.

“Hey,” I said, surveying the kitchen table, which Tom had carefully set with three place settings. “I just realized I’m starving.”

Tom beamed. Soon he and Julian and I were tucking into beds of crunchy greens, whose accents of sweet, crunchy fall beets and creamy, tart cheese were perfectly complemented by Tom’s sharp balsamic vinaigrette and the soft rolls he’d heated—with a pat of butter melting inside each one.

“So who were you on the phone with?” Julian asked, once we were washing the dishes.

“Wink Calhoun. Remember she took Latte off our hands when Scout kept attacking him?” Julian and Tom nodded, their faces grim. Our adopted cat had not taken well to the new, ultrafriendly basset hound, and had used his claws to show it. “She’s the receptionist at Hanrahan and Jule. Anyway, I invited her over here for dinner, hope that’s okay. She might be willing to talk to us about her best friend at that law firm, Dusty Routt.”

Tom’s cell rang and he moved into the hallway. When he came back, he asked if Julian would be staying at the house to cook. When Julian replied that he was, Tom said he was going down to the department. Before leaving, he gave me another hug and told me to call him if anything, anything at all, came up. I promised I would, and he took off.

Julian placed the printed-out recipes for Donald Ellis’s birthday party in a neat pile on the counter. “Where do you want to start?”

“Worst first,” I replied.

So. With the index card that Nora Ellis had given me for her husband’s birthday cake laid on the counter, Julian and I began placing the ingredients on our workspace: unsalted butter, apple cider, flour, spices.

“What, no eggs? Why isn’t there a real recipe?” Julian wondered aloud. “Are you just supposed to add things in order without a thought as to how they’re incorporated?” He stopped measuring sugar and stared at the list of ingredients. “This recipe doesn’t look right.”

I sighed, placed the butter in the mixer, and flipped the switch. “I know. The folks coming across the country in covered wagons didn’t have all our ingredients, and I know most recipes for Journey Cake don’t have eggs. But I’ve tasted Journey Cake, and it’s good. So you’re right. Something is wrong with Nora’s recipe, or rather, Charlie Baker’s recipe—”

“But Charlie Baker was a great cook,” Julian interjected. “I know he just listed ingredients on his paintings, but everything I’ve made from them has been great.”

“Ditto. Maybe I messed this thing up when I made it the first time. Plus, the recipe needs to be doubled to make enough for the party. My proportions could have been off.”

Julian stared at the mixer blades cutting swathes through the butter. “Are you sure this was one of Charlie’s recipes? Nora Ellis sure doesn’t cook, and she proudly informed me that her mother grew up with a cast of thousands. Thousands of servants, that is.”

“The cake is related to her present for Donald.” I picked up the wax paper cradling the sugar and allowed it to snow into the butter. “She’s giving him a painting by Charlie Baker. It was one of the last ones he did before he died. He gave it the name Cake Series II.”

Julian whistled. “That must have set her back a bit. Last I heard, Charlie’s paintings of food, with the ingredients lettered underneath, were worth fifty thousand each. And up. That’s a lot of cakes.”

“I know, I know. But I was happy for Charlie to make all that money, even if he had an awful short time to spend it. Once he got that diagnosis of pancreatic cancer, all the money in the country couldn’t help him.”

“Such a bummer,” Julian agreed.

“So I want to get his recipe right. This time, anyway.”

Julian nodded. I added half the dry ingredients to the sugar and butter, stirred carefully, poured in the cider, then tipped in the rest of the dry ingredients.

“Looks awful thick,” Julian mused.

“Like cement.” The biceps and triceps in my arms were nowhere near equal to the task, so Julian took over while I buttered the pan. “Sometimes coffee-cake batter is really thick,” I said hopefully. “Cookie batter, too, and both of them turn out moist and great.”

Julian scraped the batter into the pan and slid it into the oven. Then he sat down at the kitchen table and put his head in his hands.

“Oh God, Julian, I’m sorry. You want to go up and rest?”

“No, boss, it’s not that. It’s…It’s Dusty. I mean, I hadn’t seen her too much over the past couple of years—almost three years, I guess, since I started college. We broke up when she was…well, seventeen, I guess. But we always got along after that. I mean, we were friends. I just…imagined she’d always be there, you know?” He exhaled. “You really don’t think that kids you went to school with are going to be murdered.”

“I know.” I sat down beside him. “I’m sorry. Wink’s going to be a wreck, too.” Julian rubbed his face. “She and Dusty were such great buds. I can’t imagine what she’s feeling right now.”

“This is so bad.”

I murmured comfort while Julian ran his hands through his short, dark brown hair. Julian had first come into our lives with a bleached-blond Mohawk haircut, and an over-the-top hostile attitude. He’d gradually become an indispensable part of our family, inspiring Arch with his dedication to swimming and studying, inspiring me by being a genius in the kitchen, and gradually dropping his chip-on-the-shoulder to wrap all of us in a stubborn, bearlike affection. Yet like Arch, he now felt desolate and guilty.

I peeked in at the cake, which looked as if it was shrinking into a hard sponge. I muttered a curse under my breath. Julian looked in the oven and shook his head.

“Just make a regular butter cake,” Julian said. “Trust me, Goldy. Nora Ellis will never know the difference.”

“Yeah. But what if, one day, she decides she wants to cook? And if she tries to make Journey Cake and it flops, she’ll ask me why I didn’t use her recipe, and demand her money back.”

“She might ask for her money back, yeah, but she is much too tied up with shopping, manicures, and talking on the phone with her girlfriends ever to want to cook, or ever to bake a cake. Why is this recipe so important, anyway?”

“Because it’s on the painting. Have to say, now I’m really curious to know if Charlie screwed up this recipe, or if Nora did when she copied it down. But I don’t know where I’d get another recipe from Charlie Baker to test.”

Julian bit his lip, deep in thought. “Wait a sec. Don’t you remember when we did that fund-raising spaghetti party for the football uniforms at Arch’s new school? Turns out, Charlie Baker was an orphan who went to the Christian Brothers High School, back when it was an orphanage. He gave them a bunch of his paintings, and they’re hanging in one of the halls. Didn’t you see them? I just glanced at a couple on the way to the men’s room. What caught my eye was the one for Asparagus Quiche.”

“Oh, man, now I’m really curious. Let me phone the school.”

I put in a call to CBHS, where an obliging secretary said they were asked for Charlie’s recipes all the time. They’d put together a leaflet that they sold for five bucks—payable to the Football Boosters—to anyone who wanted one. I asked the secretary about the quiche, and if she’d heard of Charlie’s Cake Series. Maybe I or II? She had no idea what I was talking about.

“But we’d be very happy to sell you a booklet,” she sang out. “We keep them in with his paintings, so people can see the real thing if they want. We had to move them out of the hallway,” she said, her voice suddenly morose. “They got too valuable to keep them hanging between the lockers.”

I thanked her, hung up, and stared at Nora’s card again. “I still think Nora could have copied it down wrong. Perhaps Charlie was getting addled toward the end of his life.”

Julian shrugged. “It’s more likely Nora screwed it up. If the CBHS secretary doesn’t know about Charlie’s cake recipes, then let’s just make ‘Old Reliable.’”

“That’s a possibility. What would I do without you, Julian?”

“Fall apart,” Julian muttered, but then he smiled as he removed the hard disk of fallen cake from the oven.

I was taking out more butter and eggs when the doorbell rang. When I looked through the security peephole, I saw Nora Ellis, tall, blond, and blue-eyed, looking perfect in a herringbone blazer and black pants, standing next to Ookie Claggett, wife of Alonzo Claggett, aka Claggs. Ookie, a muscled, short-haired brunette, was always dressed for squash. Today, despite the fact that it was now October, she wore white shorts and a white T-shirt with the logo of Aspen Meadow Country Club. She was even carrying a squash racket, which she lofted and waved at the peephole.

My heart vibrated in my chest as I opened the door.

“You need help?” Julian yelped from the kitchen.

“No, thanks.”

“Hi there,” I said as I slid out onto the front porch. I certainly did not want to precipitate another conflict between Julian and Nora Ellis. “We’re working inside,” I stammered, “so things are a mess and I can’t…well, you two probably heard about the…death at H&J this morning.”

“Oh, heavens,” said Ookie, tapping her racket on her thigh. “We did. That poor girl.”

I couldn’t interpret her tone. According to Marla, who kept track of such things, Nora Ellis and Ookie Claggett had a love-hate, gossipdependent, ultracompetitive friendship. I addressed Nora. “Under the circumstances, Mrs. Ellis, Nora, I…didn’t think you’d want to go ahead with—”

“My husband’s birthday party?” Her voice was querulous as she brushed the curtain of platinum hair back from her fine-featured face. “Well, I don’t know what to do, actually. He’s a mess. Everyone at the firm is.”

“Well, um, you might want to ask him about the party. It’s possible he’ll think it…wouldn’t work.”

“I know,” she said. “Maybe we shouldn’t go ahead with it. Still, I think everyone desperately needs cheering up.” She hesitated. “Were you able to make the cake?” she asked.

“I’m working on it right now. Actually, just double-checking here, but do you still happen to have that list of ingredients?”

“Why, yes,” said Nora, surprised. While Ookie sighed and rolled her eyes and indicated this was a huge waste of her time, Nora dug around in her Prada bag until she found an index card. “Do you want to just take this?” she asked.

“No, I’ll copy it, thanks.” I excused myself, wiggled back through the front door, and returned with my own index card and a pen. Nora proceeded to read me the exact list of ingredients we’d already used. “Are you set now?”

“Absolutely,” I said, trying to sound more confident than I felt.

“All right, then, I will check with Donald,” she said as she and Ookie turned to go. After a moment, she added, “Everyone is going to be so upset, if we do go forward. Maybe you need some help.”

“No, thanks, I’m fine—” I began.

She lifted her chin and shook her blond hair in a gesture of impatience. “Tell you what. If Donald is okay with us having the party, then we’ll do it.”

“Uh, when you make a decision, I just need to know as soon as—”

But Nora and Ookie were already walking toward a black Hummer.

When I returned to the kitchen, I slapped my index card on the counter and told Julian the content of my conversation with the two associates’ wives. He raised his eyebrows, as in I told you so.

I eyed the shrunken Frisbee of cake, then checked my new index card with its list. The ingredients were the same. “To hell with Nora’s cake. Let’s whip up Old Reliable.”

“That’s the spirit.” Julian began creaming the butter while I assembled the dry ingredients. During my years at boarding school, Old Reliable had been a staple of our bake sales. To buy new sticks for the field-hockey team or fund a field trip to Chancellorsville, the day students would bring in platters of cookies and cakes that we boarding students would then slice and sell after lunch. I had a vivid memory of girls carrying paper napkins topped with huge slices of tender yellow cake that had been slathered with chocolate buttercream icing. Those Southerners knew how to cook, I’d give them that. Maybe our school bake sales weren’t on the level of some of the fancy fund-raisers we did at St. Luke’s Episcopal, but the principle of “You Can Eat Blamelessly if You’re Raising Money” was identical.

If we did indeed cater Donald Ellis’s birthday party, I would need to double the ingredients, I realized, as I printed out my old recipe. I worked the math and wrote up the proportions, then handed the paper to Julian to make sure I’d done it right. He recalculated the ingredients and found I’d only failed to double the baking powder. Agh!

“You’re distracted,” Julian said encouragingly. “I can’t believe you’re trying to…well, I can believe it, given everything you’ve told me about that law firm. Let’s boogie on this cake so you can pick up Arch and Gus on time.”

I sifted the dry ingredients, then creamed the sugar into the butter while Julian separated eight eggs. Julian rarely complained, and he took to his tasks with determination, eyeing each yolk and white carefully to make sure none of one mixed in with the other. Working with him in the kitchen was like skiing with someone you’ve known forever. He goes one way, you go the other, and no one skis over anyone’s toes.

We put the cake pans into the oven and observed the batter’s progress through the glass, as anxious as parents watching their own kid ski down a slope for the first time. But the cake rose beautifully, and emerged puffed and golden.

After we’d placed the pans on racks to cool, Julian frowned at Charlie’s cake recipe, or rather his recipe for cake failure.

“It really was not like Charlie to do this incorrectly,” Julian said, his voice stubborn.

“Well, let it go for now. Julian? Sally Routt has asked me to look into Dusty’s death. Just tell me, how did Dusty seem to you, when you were going to school together? I mean, was she friendly, standoffish, smart, not so smart, what?”

Julian turned, leaned against the counter, and folded his arms. After a moment, he said, “She was smart, yeah. I mean, Elk Park Prep gave her a full ride, until everything fell apart.”

“We’re talking about before the Routts moved in across the street.”

“Yeah.”

Julian pointed to the espresso machine and raised his eyebrows, as in How many shots? I thought, To hell with my doctor, and said, “A couple. With some cream, if you don’t mind. Thanks. Whenever I do get to bed, I’m going to sleep no matter what.”

Julian’s sneakers squeaked as he moved quickly around the kitchen to fetch demitasse cups, whipping cream, and to refill our bowl of sugar, which he had emptied. He pulled the shots, doused mine with cream, and placed the cups on the kitchen table. I sat down and, as usual, averted my eyes as he proceeded to ladle obscene amounts of sugar into his coffee. Why did he have such perfect teeth? I wondered.

“What do you mean,” I prompted him, “until everything fell apart?”

“Okay,” he began, after taking a preliminary slurp, frowning, and dumping in another dose of the sweet stuff. “You have to remember, this was before teachers started being held accountable if they had sex with students. It’s hard to think of a time when the student got blamed, but that’s exactly what used to happen. Anyway, that’s certainly what went down at Elk Park Prep when Dusty had an affair with the drama teacher, Mr. Ogden. Ogden was totally pathetic. He kept moaning about how his acting career was being foiled because his wife was so jealous of the time he spent on his work. Everybody felt sorry for him. Or at least, the girls did.”

My stomach churned, and it wasn’t from the espresso, which was actually excellent. Men could be just as manipulative as women, thank you very much.

“Nobody felt sorrier for him than Dusty,” Julian went on. “And then she got pregnant, even though Ogden told her he’d had a vasectomy! Dusty told me later that she really had thought Mr. Ogden would leave Mrs. Ogden and be with her, but forget that. Next thing anyone knew, Ogden was going to the headmaster, claiming Dusty was a slut who was falsely accusing him of fathering her child, which he could not have done, because he’d had that vasectomy. And also, Ogden insisted, Dusty needed to be expelled because she was with child, and that had violated the terms of her scholarship.” Julian finished his coffee and made a face. “Anyway, that lily-livered son of a bitch headmaster did expel her. Ogden’s version of the story came out in the papers. You didn’t see it? Dusty had falsely accused a teacher of impregnating her, blah, blah, blah.”