Dark Tort

“No, I never saw that. Poor Dusty. Couldn’t she have insisted on a paternity test?”

Julian held up a stubby finger. “While Dusty was studying for her GED, she had an early-term miscarriage. This was while the Habitat house was being built. Then Dusty’s family moved in across the street from you, and she started to work for Mignon Cosmetics. She was determined to put Ogden behind her, and she became really focused on getting ahead, being ambitious. Remember?” I nodded. “After another cosmetics company hired her, she thought she was on her way up, but that cosmetics company went belly-up. So then Dusty got her associate’s degree down at Red Rocks. It just took her eighteen months, if you can believe it. And then Dusty’s uncle, Richard Chenault, joined the law firm in Aspen Meadow, and felt sorry for his niece. Supposedly. Anyway, he hired her and is paying for her tuition bills at the Mile-High Paralegal Institute.”

I sipped my coffee. “Do you know anything about this brother, Edgar?”

“Just that he died in custody after being picked up on a DUI. He got beaten along the way, but nobody seems to know exactly what happened. Yeah, right. When I was going out with Dusty, Mrs. Routt could not stop talking about Edgar’s death. She was, like, obsessed. Then one day, she said she wasn’t going to talk about it anymore, because it was making her totally nuts, and she needed to pay attention to the present. She didn’t tell you about that either, did she?”

“No, she didn’t.” I stared out the window at aspen leaves being blown off the trees at the side of our house. “Still, no wonder Sally Routt hates the police and the press.”

Julian said, “Yeah, no wonder.”

CHAPTER 7

Julian offered to clean up. He said it would help him deal with how ticked off the story about Dusty always made him feel. When I thanked him, he nodded, his face still flushed from his outburst detailing Dusty’s problems. Even though the lovely scent of baked cake was a tempting reason to stay and try to chat some more, I thought it better to make a quick exit. When I stood up to help Julian gather dirty bowls, beaters, and pans, he stopped me.

“C’mon, let me do this by myself. You remember I’m cooking dinner for Marla and spending the night over there, right?”

Right, right, he had told us this. Marla was, in fact, Julian’s aunt by blood, and I was always happy to see them getting together. Julian promised to be back in the morning to help me finish the prep for Donald Ellis’s birthday party.

That was the thing about Julian, I reflected, as I bounded up the stairs to wash my hair. He was reliable and he was kind. And there was something else. There’s a stereotype embedded in people’s mind, and it runs through literature, movies, and TV. And that is that men are unemotional, logical, and analytical. Living with Arch, Julian, and Tom, I’d concluded that nothing could be further from the truth. Okay, so none of them was prone to teary outbursts. But they felt injustices, cruelties, and loss just as severely as any female I’d ever met.

I thought about poor Dusty as the warm water poured over my scalp. Everything she’d tried to have—a career, money, a relationship, a good education—all these had come to naught. And then she’d been killed.

A rock formed in my throat as I blew my hair dry. After I pulled on a sweater and denim skirt, I felt dizzy, and sat on Tom’s and my bed. I was severely sleep-deprived. But I was also suffering from finding a corpse the previous night.

Work, business, activity, forward movement—all these were needed to help me get going again. I had to pick up Marla at the Creekside Spa, then dash down to Denver to collect Arch and Gus. And I was determined to grab a recipe booklet and look at the collection of Charlie Baker’s paintings at CBHS. Were all of his recipes screwed up, or just Nora’s? I wanted to know, doggone it.

I headed up Main Street, now festooned with crepe-paper ghosts, skeletons, and pumpkins. Ordinarily, I loved Halloween, chiefly because it marked the beginning of the big party season. Most caterers—and I was no exception—made the bulk of their profit during the two months between Halloween and New Year’s. I already had a slew of events scheduled to take place at the Roundhouse, which was situated beside Cottonwood Creek several miles before the spa. If I could ever get the doggone plumbing completed…but I veered away from that thought.

I had already booked a designer to come in and decorate the Roundhouse for Christmas. My throat again closed up, thinking of the five thousand dollars it was going to cost me to transform the place into a garlanded indoor forest twinkling with “millions”—so said the decorator blithely—of tiny colored lights. But that was what well-heeled clients expected these days for a Christmas party, and I’d transferred the cost of the decorations into the contracts for office parties, wedding receptions, family-and-friends dinners, and ladies’-clubs holiday luncheons. So far, the only one who had blinked was yours truly, and that was because the plumbing was running me another ten thousand bucks.

When I passed the conference center, I steeled myself to have a look, since the head contractor had told me firmly not to come by anymore, as all my questions slowed down his workers. Happily, despite the cold weather, I saw half a dozen men in heavy work outfits plodding across the ground outside the hexagonal building. Several trucks in the lot were parked at odd angles, and one of them boasted a winch. Did that mean pipe was being laid? I certainly hoped so. I hadn’t had an event for the last couple of weeks, as people didn’t seem to want to get married or be otherwise festive in the latter part of September and early part of October. Up until today, I’d been thankful for my breakfast-meeting contract at Hanrahan & Jule.

Yes, I thought as my hands gripped the steering wheel. Up until today.

At twenty past two I pulled into the parking lot of the Creekside Spa and eased my van with its painted logo “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!” between a gold Mercedes and a black BMW. I waited in fear for a slender, imperious receptionist to come out and tell me to move my vehicle to the service entrance! Now! This had happened more often than I cared to remember. But I still wasn’t quite used to it.

I turned off the van’s engine. It grumbled and shook, then sighed to silence. Across the street, Cottonwood Creek, swollen with snowmelt from the first mountain storms, surged over a clump of rocks, then flowed placidly farther on. On this side of the road, I could just make out the grumble of earthmoving machines and the beep-beep-beep of tractors in reverse. Peering to the edge of the parking lot, I saw tractors and dump trucks moving and smoothing dirt, one more example of the relentless construction that always seemed to envelop Aspen Meadow.

My skin prickled with gooseflesh. This was the first time I had been alone, really alone and able to think, since I’d tripped over Dusty’s body. I swallowed. Then again, maybe I didn’t want to think. Maybe I didn’t want to get myself all depressed. After all, I still had to pick up Arch and Gus.

Gus. The story of Gus, Arch’s half brother, was what made the memories of death come up anyway. It seemed that when he’d been married to me, Dr. John Richard Korman’s endless list of sexual conquests had included Talitha Vikarios, daughter of Ted and Ginger Vikarios, who now lived in Aspen Meadow. Talitha had become pregnant by the Jerk, and, in a supreme act of putting others before self, had left home rather than risk destroying our family. When Talitha died in a freak car accident in Utah, her son Gus came to Aspen Meadow to live with his grandparents. With him, he brought a letter to me from his dead mother, telling the truth of Gus’s paternity and begging me to forgive her and to be compassionate toward her son. Which, of course, I’d been happy—more than happy—to be.

Arch, taken aback at first with the prospect of having a living, breathing half brother, had slowly come to welcome Gus. The two boys looked so similar, they could have been twins. Following the advice of a counselor, the Vikarioses had sent Gus to the Christian Brothers High School, where Arch was a sophomore. We had Gus to dinner at least once a week, and to sleep over as much as he wanted. At fourteen and a half, Gus, confident and outgoing in a way that Arch was not, had adjusted quickly to his new environment. He laughed and joked with Arch’s friends and worked hard at his school assignments. Despite the hippie atmosphere of the Moab commune where he’d grown up, Gus was fiercely competitive for grades. Gus also excelled at soccer, where he had quickly become a much-valued member of the CBHS junior varsity.

As far as my predator-bird mom eyes could tell, Arch was not jealous of ninth-grader Gus’s popularity at CBHS. Instead, my son was in awe. It even seemed that Gus truly cherished Arch. He regaled us with tales of life on the commune, and was always eager to invite Arch to his grandparents’ house to play games or watch movies. An unexpected by-product of all this affection was that Gus was being baptized at our parish, St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, this Sunday. “Because it’s important to Arch,” Gus had solemnly told me. But how could it be important to Arch, who had stopped going to church? Another question for the ages.

The only problem with all this as far as I could see was that the christening was being done by Bishop Sutherland. Yes, Father Pete was still recovering from his coronary, and yes, we’d all agreed that the bishop should do the honors. But hearing Julian’s stories had suddenly made me wary.

The biblical adage “Speak of the devil, and he doth appear” stunned me out of reverie. Tall, slender, white-haired Bishop Uriah Sutherland himself, wearing (yes!) a purple polo shirt that said “Bish! Bish! Bish!” along with stylish white shorts and expensive running shoes, was standing next to my van, panting. His coarse-featured face was flushed and matched the purple shirt. Had he been jogging? Hadn’t he moved here from Utah because he had heart trouble? Was running up Cottonwood Creek Road, which rose from eight thousand to nine thousand feet above sea level, really a good idea? I didn’t have time to contemplate these issues, because Bishop Sutherland was using his big bishop’s ring to rap on my window.

I pressed the button to lower the window and gave him what I hoped was a cheerful, inquisitive expression.

“Hi there!” he said, placing an icy hand on my forearm.

“Hi!”

“Could you move your van, please?” he said. “I can’t back out.” He continued to grip my arm. Did he need help? Was he having a heart attack?

“Uh, sure, I’ll move it. No problem. Sure. Sorry!” But I couldn’t drive the car if he didn’t let go of my left arm. I cleared my throat. “Uh, do you remember me? I’m…a relative of Gus Vikarios, whom you’re baptizing on Sunday.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He let go of my arm to wipe his brow. Then he walked around to the driver side of the black BMW. As I put the van in reverse and eased out of the space and up into the lot, I wondered if he had on one of those medical-alert bracelets, and if he had a cell phone in his car, or what was probably actually his daughter’s car.

What is he, your kid? I could hear Tom’s voice admonishing me. I sighed as the BMW shot out of its space.

“Was he running?” Marla demanded as she slid into the van’s passenger seat. “Don’t you think that’s dangerous if you have a weak heart? And do you think St. Luke’s is paying him enough to buy all his fancy duds, or did Donald and Nora foot his bills?”

“Yes, running is not a good idea if you’ve had cardiovascular problems, and I don’t know who finances his lifestyle. Let’s just go get the boys.” I drove out of the lot and onto Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive. I had barely noticed the trees on the way up to the spa. But a breeze had picked up, and a sudden shower of golden leaves dappled the windshield. Marla and I squealed with delight as my windshield wipers smacked off the aspens’ detritus. We commented on how thick the clusters of lemon-slice leaves were this year, how they quivered and quaked above the trees’ thin white trunks. Why does the beauty of nature hurt after the loss of someone you care about? Dusty would never see these forests, would never feel the sweet-scented breeze of fall in Colorado again.

“Have you heard anything about Dusty?” Marla wanted to know.

“Not a word. Tom’s down at the department now, so he should find out something. But it looks as if Nora Ellis might go ahead with the party for Donald. She’s going to call me back after she talks to him.”

Marla shook her head. “I made some inquiries at the spa, after my facial and before my massage. Everyone wanted to know what had happened, so I told them. I also said you were looking into it, because Sally Routt was so broken up, she asked for your help.”

We rounded a curve where stands of blue spruce hugged the road. I tried to think of how to tell Marla that I really didn’t want people to think of me when someone was killed, just because I was married to a homicide investigator and helped him out from time to time. When I finally told her as much, she shook her head.

“More than time to time, girlfriend. Anyway, some of the gals did give me wary looks, like they wanted to tell me something, or at least they wanted to know dark things about Dusty or the law firm. So I wrote my phone number on little pieces of paper, and handed them all around, and said if anyone had some hot gossip, I was the one who could relay it to you. Hope that’s okay.”

I exhaled. Was it okay? Sure it was, I reasoned. If a bit of useful information did come in from one of the society ladies, I could just pass it along to Tom, who would forward it to the department. The grateful investigators would be happy to follow up on any leads I provided, wouldn’t they?

Don’t answer that question.

We passed the Roundhouse, where workers were continuing to hop over the trenches they’d made for the pipe. I tried not to think how much they were charging by the hour.

When we were almost to the interstate, we slowed to enter the parking lot that abutted the garage for Aspen Meadow Imports. The Mercedes was ready. Marla paid and said she wanted us to go down to Denver in it, as it was more comfortable for her than my van. I assented, and left the van at the edge of the lot, which happened to face the office building housing Hanrahan & Jule. Inside the barrier of yellow ribbons, a team of investigators had broken up into small groups to talk among themselves or peer solemnly at the pavement of the parking lot. I shuddered.

“What do you suppose happened to Dusty?” Marla asked, her husky voice lowered a notch.

“She either surprised somebody or somebody was waiting for her. Anyway, she was attacked and fought back enough to break a picture frame.” I hesitated. “It looked to me as if she’d been strangled.”

“Good God.”

“I feel so sorry for Sally. Oh, and by the way, remember how she said she didn’t trust the police? Do you want to know why?” I mentioned the stories of Edgar dying in custody, of the drama teacher and Dusty supposedly having an affair, which the drama teacher had vociferously denied. “Do you remember this story about Ogden, the drama teacher?”

“Where were you, Mars?” Marla said.

“When the Jerk used to bother me, or when I get busy with catering, I don’t even glance at the papers.”

“Well. That was back when ‘blame the woman’ was the first thing everyone did.” Marla’s tone turned bitter. “He claimed Dusty was a slut, and that he’d had a vasectomy anyway, and people believed him. That man has a lot to answer for, but I doubt he ever will. Poor Dusty.”

Marla piloted the Mercedes down the mountain toward Denver. We didn’t talk, which was unusual for us. I tried just to focus on what I had to do next, which was to check out Charlie Baker’s artworks, to pick up Arch and Gus, and to bring them home. And then, hopefully, to visit with Wink Calhoun over dinner.

The Christian Brothers High School lies on twenty acres snuggled at the base of the foothills, just on the westernmost edge of Denver. Set up in the twenties as an orphanage for boys, the institution had evolved into a boys’ boarding and day school in the forties, then a boys’ day school in the sixties. With the population of Denver and environs burgeoning in the eighties and nineties, the demand for parochial high schools had shot up. Under pressure from hordes of Catholic parents, CBHS had gone coed and soon doubled its student body to a thousand kids.

But the thing I liked best about CBHS, I thought as I turned off of the interstate and headed south, was the energetic, can-do attitude of the place. Unlike Elk Park Prep, the status-conscious, materialistically driven school where Arch had spent three miserable years, the main money emphasis at CBHS was: “We Need to Raise the Money for More Needy Kids’ Tuition!” To my astonishment, different parent groups and committees enthusiastically ran all manner of fund-raisers throughout the year, and ended up bringing in half a million dollars annually, earmarked entirely for need-based scholarships. And what competition there was to raise more money than the other groups! And what medals and buttons and ribbons did they all vie for at the end of the year, given to folks who had shown the most devotion to fund-raising! The place never ceased to amaze me.

I turned into the parking lot in front of the long, squat brick school building with its mansard roof composed entirely of asphalt tiles. As usual, the front steps and sparse lawn were sprinkled with students engaged in their customary activities: chatting as they put cans from a drop box into paper bags for the Catholic Soup Kitchen, calling to one another as they threw footballs back and forth, or counting out bills from a cash box as they sat at card tables, readying themselves to sell tickets to one event or another. Why weren’t these kids in class? I always wondered. They must have the last period off, I figured. And they wanted to get the jump on parents arriving to pick up their kids. Who knew? Anyone arriving might order a dozen tickets to Bye Bye Birdie!

Marla ran the gauntlet with me. I followed as she scampered through, donating fifty bucks to the Halloween canned-food drive and purchasing a pair of tickets to Twelfth Night. We pushed through the doors to the lobby. It was as unprepossessing as the building’s exterior, a wide, low-ceilinged space lined with much-fingerprinted glass cases filled with CBHS hats, gloves, and sweatshirts for sale. Four metal chairs were set up at odd angles on the linoleum floor, as if students waiting for this or that permission never stayed in them for very long.

“Goldy!” cried Rose, the receptionist, who sat behind a half wall that stretched the width of the lobby. Rose, who had to be in her late fifties, had a mop of silvery gray curls, a thin, pretty face, and enormous brown eyes that were magnified by oversize silver-framed glasses. She rushed out into the lobby to greet us. Clad in a gray sweater with matching pants, Rose had the figure of a twenty-year-old. At night, she’d told me, she taught aerobics at her church. Whenever I saw her, I felt tired.

“Rose,” I began, after introducing Marla, “we’d like to see Charlie Baker’s paintings, if you don’t mind—”

“Oh, I’m already prepared for you.” She held up a formidable bunch of keys. “Just follow me.”

We dashed along behind her, following her trail of faint floral cologne that was somehow at odds with the atmosphere of office paper, floor wax, and metal lockers that stretched down echoing hallways. We walked past numerous large prints depicting saints in one or another act of goodness, and at length came to an oversize double wooden door.

Rose proceeded to unlock one of the wide doors. Then, with practiced dexterity, she switched keys to open what looked like a cage door, the kind you see in front of a bank vault.

“I was so sad when we had to do this,” Rose explained as the cage door shuddered and creaked open. “But the school was broken into once, and my cash box was stolen. It only had a hundred dollars in it. Just think if the thieves had gotten one of these!” She reached in to flip on an overhead panel of fluorescent lights, which buzzed and then flickered to life. Rose shook her head before leading us into the gallery.

About two dozen paintings by Charlie Baker hung on yellow-painted cement-block walls. They were all pictures of food—that is, of the dishes he’d loved to prepare. Charlie had laughingly told me that he was a “recovering chef,” one who had turned to cooking for friends and painting—for himself, for fun—after a distant aunt died and unexpectedly bequeathed him “a packet,” as he jokingly put it. After quitting his job—he’d been one of the early chefs at the Roundhouse, in its heyday—Charlie had gleefully retired. But he hadn’t stopped working. Instead, he treated friends and neighbors—yours truly included, since we baked cookies and pies together each year for the St. Luke’s bazaar—to his exquisite, lovingly prepared dishes.

And here some of them were, in paintings that stood out against the bland yellow walls: Braised Chicken Breasts with Fresh Tomatoes and Scallions, All-American Apple Pie, Chocolate-Dipped Dried Fruits, even the Asparagus Quiche Julian had mentioned. Charlie had reveled in painting pictures of the dishes he prepared, and he always rendered the ingredients underneath in perfect calligraphic letters. Those of us who had been lucky enough to eat at his house were able to ooh and aah over the artwork, once we’d oohed and aahed over the dinner.

I think Charlie would have been content just to keep cooking and painting for himself and his pals forever. But then Father Biesbrouck, a former rector at St. Luke’s, had urged him to try selling his paintings at the bazaar. Somehow, a reporter for a national magazine had ended up at our yearly event, and she’d been so taken with Charlie’s art that she’d written a long piece about them, including photographs. She’d entitled the article “Hidden Food Treasures in the West.” And the rest, as they say, is history.

Or was. Charlie became prolific and expensive. Oddly, the rector who’d recommended that he sell his art had had a nervous breakdown—cause unknown—and had committed suicide. This past January, Charlie had been diagnosed with the pancreatic cancer that should have been his death knell, if he hadn’t suffered a fatal fall in March. Late at night, he’d lost his balance and slipped, the police had hypothesized, so that he’d tumbled down the long, curved staircase at his house. He’d broken his neck. With no signs of foul play and no suicide note, law enforcement had concluded that Charlie’s death had been an accident.

Reportedly, he’d left his estate, plus a huge inventory of paintings that were meant to be sold, to benefit two causes: the Christian Brothers High School, where he’d been raised, and St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, with the proviso that the funds be used to build a clergy retreat house in Aspen Meadow. Charlie had told me that he wanted clergy to be able to rest and pull themselves together when they were feeling low, instead of taking Father Biesbrouck’s suicidal route.

“Look at this one,” Marla said, startling me. It was entitled Chocolate Pie with Pecan Crust. Charlie’s thick brushstrokes and lovingly rendered rich tones of brown and gold made the crust look realistically crunchy and the pie filling beckoningly thick and creamy. “Makes me hungry just looking at it,” Marla said, her tone morose.

“You see anything you want to make?” Rose’s voice rose querulously in the hushed space. “The booklets with his recipes are over here. I just thought you might want to look at these before you made your decision.”

I blinked once, twice. Okay, so I hadn’t had more than two hours of sleep since…well, when? Wednesday night? And now it was Friday afternoon. But still, I couldn’t help but reflect that my dear, sweet, young neighbor was lying in the Furman County Morgue, and I was here looking at artworks and talking about recipes, trying to figure out if Charlie could have messed up ingredients for any other dish. It was all too much.

“Maybe we should buy that recipe leaflet from you now,” I said to Rose, my voice cracking. “I need to pick up Arch and Gus. Thanks for showing us the paintings,” I added belatedly.

“I understand,” Rose said in a soft voice, and for a moment, I wondered if she had heard about Dusty, too.

Leaflet in hand, I followed Marla back out to her Mercedes. En route, she purchased another fifty dollars’ worth of grocery coupons; the kids could use them “however they wanted,” Marla said, for their canned-food drive. I shook my head, but my friend muttered that it made her feel good and was cheaper than therapy.

Once Marla had started the engine and eased behind a line of vans and station wagons filled with waiting parents, she asked, “Couldn’t we just have gone to the door where the students come out and waited for Gus and Arch? If there was a big crowd of students, we could just call out to them.”

I actually laughed. “Not if you value maintaining any shred of your relationship with Arch. Or Gus either, for that matter. You want to embarrass them to death by calling out to them? Forget it. We can just hold on until they notice us. Trust me.”

It didn’t take as long as she thought it would, for Arch’s antennae worked pretty well in the pickup department, even if it was Marla’s car and not my trusty van. Gus, who had started chatting with a group of girls, quickly slung his book bag over his shoulder and followed his half brother out to the Mercedes. Belatedly, I remembered Gus’s junior-varsity practice. Would we have to wait for him?

“No practice today,” Gus announced, as if reading my mind. He tossed his book bag on the floor and scooted into the backseat beside Arch. “Coach is on a business trip. Thanks for getting us. Hi, Marla.”

“Yo, kid. You, too, Arch.”

“Marla,” Arch said patiently, “don’t try to talk jive. It doesn’t work, okay?”

Marla sighed and hit the pedal. Soon we were on our way back up the interstate. How was I going to gauge if Arch was upset about Dusty? He hadn’t ever known her very well, which, at this juncture, I took to be a good thing.

I turned around and faced the boys. Gus, ever energetic, had brought with him the clean smell of boy sweat and notebooks. As he rustled around in his book bag, Arch, quiet and always worried, sat very still and frowned at me for paying undue attention to him.

“What is it, Mom?”

“Just checking on you, that’s all.”

Gus stopped rummaging around in his books and flopped back on the seat. He raised his eyebrows at Arch, as in What’s she talking about?

“Our neighbor, Dusty Routt, died this morning,” Arch said quickly. To me, he said, “Does Tom know anything yet?”

“No. Sorry, hon.”

“Does that mean we can’t sell magazine subscriptions tonight?” Gus asked. “I mean, are the neighbors going to be all upset? We’ve got a deadline on this drive. Maybe we could go to another neighborhood. Marla, could you drive us?”

Marla opened her eyes wide at me, as in How did I get dragged into this? But she said, “I suppose so.”

Thick pillows of gray cloud had moved in while we were waiting for the boys. As we ascended the steepest part of the interstate, snow began to fall. First there were just a few flakes, rushing toward Marla’s windshield at a slant. When we crested the peak of the interstate and entered the wide downward curve to Aspen Meadow, the fall of tiny flakes suddenly thickened. On either side of us, cars began to slow; wipers started sweeping away new layers of flakes.

“I guess this means we won’t be able to sell subscriptions,” Arch said, with the relief audible in his voice.

“Oh, it’s okay to sell stuff when it’s snowing,” Gus replied, his voice as confident as ever. “I used to do it all the time in Utah. Especially if you don’t wear a hat and you have, like, icicles frozen in your hair. Then people buy all kinds of stuff, ’cuz they feel sorry for you.”

Arch snorted. “I hate people feeling sorry for me. I’ve had it my whole life, and it sucks.”

Gus said, “Trust me, Arch. It’s like power. People feel sorry for you, you can get whatever you want.”

I wasn’t sure that was true. But with the memory of Dusty’s inert body so fresh in my mind, I was reluctant to venture an opinion. In our cooking lessons, I’d come to feel heartily sorry for Dusty, with her lack of money and her high ambitions. Now I’d heard the sad story of her bad luck and mistreatment at the hands of a drama teacher. And then, just when she’d gotten a good job and was moving up in the world, someone had strangled her.

Yes, I felt very sorry for Dusty. I also felt painfully sympathetic toward her mother, Sally.

As Marla pressed the accelerator and urged the Mercedes back up the mountain, I bit the inside of my cheek. Gus could talk all he wanted about sympathy generating power. But it seemed to me that neither Dusty nor Sally had, or had ever had, any power at all.

CHAPTER 8

When Marla swung into the driveway of Aspen Meadow Imports, a tall mechanic with long, droopy cheeks and a gray ponytail came out waving a rag.

“Wait,” he called to us. When he was beside the Mercedes, he said, “You can’t leave that food truck here. That van. What does it say? Goldilocks’ Catering. We’ve had trouble with a bear coming down every night and foraging in our garbage.”

Under her breath, Marla said, “One bear’s food is another bear’s trash. But still, can mountain bears read?”

I hated it when people made fun of my Germanic maiden name, but I was prepared to ignore my best friend. To the mechanic, I said, “I’m moving it. I was just helping out a friend.”

The mechanic’s cheeks drooped even farther. “Okay, lady. Those bears can smell food. I wouldn’t want to be responsible if one of ’em broke into your vehicle.”

“I’m moving it!”

Marla laughed, then promised she would call if she heard anything. I thanked her for the ride and bustled Gus and Arch into the van.

At the boys’ request, I left them off three blocks from our house. They swore they’d be home by half past five, because they’d be famished, Gus said, his smile huge. As usual, Gus was upbeat at the prospect of being a fund-raising vendor of magazines. Arch, on the other hand, was morose, as he hated selling more than having his teeth pulled without anesthetic. But I couldn’t even try to cheer him up the way I usually did. In point of fact, I didn’t feel as if I had any cheer left.

I pulled my van into the driveway rather than parking it on the street. If by some miracle the plow came through that night, I didn’t want to get walled in by a hardpacked, man-made snowdrift. I also didn’t want to risk leaving my van on the curb again. When I stepped out into the three-inch-deep icy carpet of snow, I shrieked with surprise. But that didn’t stop me from traipsing up and locking the van doors with the remote. I pressed the button twice, so that the security system beeped. This time, I wanted to be sure the van was locked.

Completely chilled, I raced through the fall of flakes to the front of the house. Once I’d slammed the door, I leaned on it and shuddered. I let my coat slip to the floor, limped to the living room, and flopped onto the couch. Tom was rattling around in the kitchen, for which I was thankful. Apparently, he hadn’t heard me come in.

But our animals had. Scout the cat and Jake the bloodhound rushed to greet me. Well, I shouldn’t say that Scout rushed, because that cat never went quickly to anything, even food. But he did stride into the living room and, sensing I might need comfort, dropped his back on top of my shoes and rolled over, all in one smooth movement. You can pat me if it will make you feel better. I did, while Jake slobbered kisses on my cheeks. The large hound also began to whine between large liquid tonguings. Don’t tell me animals can’t sense moods.

“There you are,” said Tom as he whisked into the living room carrying a silver tray sporting two glasses of sherry, homemade crackers, and a wedge of sharp English cheddar, his favorite. “It’s a bit early for a cocktail.” His tone was cheery, his handsome face the picture of confidence. “Then again, I thought you might need one.”

“What I need most of all is to talk to you.”

“One thing at a time, wife.”

I smiled my thanks and left to change and wash my hands. By the time I’d pulled on sweats and returned to the living room, Tom had built a cozy fire and set the silver tray on his antique cherrywood butler’s tray, which he’d judiciously placed in front of my old sofa when he’d moved into the house. The scene was typically Tom-and-Goldy. On the one hand, there was Tom’s lovingly purchased, laboriously polished cherry furniture. He said taking care of his pieces helped reduce stress from the job. And then there was my old sofa. Once I’d kicked out the Jerk, I’d wanted to remove as many memories of his presence as possible, and I’d had every piece in the living room reupholstered in the cheapest fabric available. It was a sunny orange that I’d determinedly told myself was going to match my new circumstances. Unfortunately, the orange had turned somewhat dingy, and I kept thinking I was going to have everything redone one of these days. But so far, that day had not materialized.

And then there was the sherry, aged and golden, bought by Tom. He’d poured it into antique cut-crystal glasses that had belonged to my grandmother. These, too, felt like Tom’s, since he’d salvaged them from a basement cardboard box that I’d hidden behind our Christmas decorations. Talk about erasing memories: I hadn’t even remembered packing up the crystal and putting it out of sight some years before. In any event, the glasses were what remained of my breakables, as I’d come to think of them, after John Richard had smashed every dish of our Minton bone china, in one of his numerous fits of rage. Thinking about the Jerk didn’t do much for my mood. Squinting at Tom’s tray, I stood at the edge of the living room, immobile.

“Miss G.! I can tell you’re not doing so hot. Come and sit by me. Talk to me. I know what you need.” Tom’s eyes were steadily trained on my face. “You need to eat, drink, talk, and go to bed. How many hours has it been since you had some real sleep? Too many. Way too many.”

“The last thing I want to do is go to bed,” I heard my voice say. “I want to be with you, and with Arch…and I’ll eat and drink and—” What was that last part? Oh yes, talk. There was that.

“All right,” Tom said gently, patting the couch. “Maybe you won’t be merry. But at least sit down until you can start cooking and doing again.”

“Okay, okay.”

I moved with a kind of stiff uneasiness onto the couch. I tried not to think. After a minute, I took the glass Tom proffered, and sipped. The sherry tasted like liquid fire. But it helped. So did the crunchy, surprisingly flaky homemade crackers. I took a second bite and looked at Tom. Sharp cheddar cheese? Tangy English mustard? Imported cayenne pepper? I couldn’t get my mind even to work on that superficial level: food, work, prepping, catering. I blinked at the fire, and realized this was the first time I’d been sitting still and relaxing in the past twenty-something hours. Even so, all my muscles felt bunched up, tense with despair and confusion.

I felt the glass slip between my fingers. In a voice that seemed to be coming from across the room, I said, “What the hell is going on?”

Tom snagged my glass and put it on the table. “You’re tired, wife. You’re drained. Maybe you should just go to bed.” But instead of ordering me upstairs, he pulled me close and rubbed the small of my back. After a few moments of this, the tautness began to melt.

“I’m afraid to…to think.”

“I know, I know,” Tom murmured. “Why do you suppose I polish furniture? Just take it easy for a few minutes and don’t try to use your brain.”

But I couldn’t. I pulled away from him. “Tell me what’s going on at the department,” I demanded. “What have they learned?”

Tom ducked his chin. His sea-green eyes assessed me. Then he pulled his mouth into a straight line. “Let’s go into the kitchen and work. We can talk there.”

Mechanically, I followed Tom to our cooking space. He’d thawed a tenderloin of beef, and I helped him tie it into a perfect roll. Tom had become obsessed with beef lately, and had added to my mail order—the best way to get prime, I’d learned, if not the cheapest—on more than one occasion. In fact, I was serving tenderloins at Donald Ellis’s birthday party…oh Lord, I didn’t want to think about that.

Tom used one of my new sharp-as-the-dickens Japanese knives to insert slivers of garlic all along the surface of the beef. Then he rubbed the roll with oil, sprinkled it with dried rosemary and thyme, packed it with a gravelly layer of ground black peppercorns, and sprinkled it with our French sea salt. And suddenly, with that small detail, I felt my mind drifting back here, to our family, to our life together. Salt. Salt. What had my son said about it, when Tom had waxed lyrical on the taste value of the new crystals?

“Yo, Tom! NaCl is NaCl,” Arch had observed, shaking his head.

“Oh, ye of little faith,” Tom had intoned, before serving us steaks sprinkled with the little nuggets of flavor. I’d thought it was wonderful; Arch had remarked that it was “still just salt.”

Remembering this now, I began to cry. No sobbing, mind you, just a wholly unexpected spill of tears. Oh, what was the matter with me?

Dusty, Dusty. She had been part of a family, too, the Routts, a loving family whose loss I could not begin to contemplate. My mind brought up the image of her pronated wrist, my seemingly endless attempts to breathe life into her limp body. I’d seen dead people before, of course. But Dusty had been so young, and so loved…

Tom had not seen me start crying, as he was busy inserting a thermometer into the meat. When he placed the pan into the oven next to half a dozen baking potatoes, I ordered myself to get my act together.

Without much forethought, I marched determinedly to the walk-in refrigerator, wrenched open the door, and stared into the cool darkness. What would we have with this particular tenderloin?

Why, béarnaise sauce, I thought, and reached for a small tub of Tom’s meticulously clarified butter and a bunch of fresh tarragon. Charlie Baker made a great béarnaise, that’s what he would have served, I thought instinctively. Be quiet, I told my mind. Concentrate.

I melted the butter, separated the eggs, and pulverized a handful of tarragon leaves in my herb grinder. Once I’d beaten and warmed the egg yolks and swished in some tarragon vinegar, I whisked in drops of melted butter. The concentration required for these tasks finally began to soften the agonizing tension in my brain. Beside me, Tom was assembling a salade composée of Wagnerian proportions: steamed fresh grean beans, asparagus, and peas, arranged on a lush bed of arugula leaves.

“What have they looked at, Tom?” I asked. My gaze never left the sauce. “The cops, I mean? The detectives. What have they found?”

Tom continued carefully to lay out rows of green beans. “Well, they haven’t found much yet, except that it looks as if she was slapped in the face, got her head bashed into a painting, and then she was strangled to death. The questions they’ll ask, investigating? First, was this a robbery gone bad? Was Dusty supposed to be there, or was she an unexpected complication?”

“It didn’t look like a robbery. I mean, I didn’t see any signs of a break-in.”

“There wasn’t a forced entry. So it didn’t look like a robbery to you. But with so much information on computers and disks these days, who knows? Maybe the office had valuables, too.”

“You mean, the kind you’d keep in a safe?”

Tom shook his head. “No. The kind you put on display. Gold clocks. Sculptures by famous—”

“Wait. There were expensive paintings on the walls. You know, by Charlie Baker. Fifty thou each, why wouldn’t somebody steal those?”

Tom shrugged. “Kind of hard to shove those into a getaway bag, although you could. That partner, Richard Chenault? He’s helping them with an inventory. So is the office manager. Louise Upton.” I scowled, but Tom grinned. “I haven’t talked to her, but Boyd did. She told him to call her ‘ma’am.’” He went on: “Then again, maybe it wasn’t a robbery. Say Dusty knew something, had discovered something, had asked questions she shouldn’t have, was making a pest out of herself…any of a number of things. So somebody says he wants to meet her before she helps you with the bread. Your unlocked van is on the street, so first he turns the lights and radio on, draining the battery so you’ll be late. It doesn’t take long to kill someone.”

“So, the department is constructing scenarios about what could have happened? Developing suspects from that?”

“Not yet. They have to ask lots of other questions first. Who were her enemies? Did she owe anybody money? Was she doing any dangerous work? Did anyone resent her for any reason? If so, who resented her, and why?” Tom sighed. “But as I say, the very first thing they have to figure out is if she walked in on a burglary, or if someone was waiting for her. Right, no forced entry, so somebody might have had a key. On the other hand, the security at that office was not that tight. Somebody could have come in, posing as a client or delivery person or whatever, and then never went out. He or she waited until everybody left, and then started to rob the place. Dusty could have surprised this person, and he might have killed her to avoid apprehension.”

“Or maybe someone was waiting for her and then wanted to make it look like a burglary.”

“That, too.” Tom’s tone was rueful. After a moment, he said, “We did find out one thing concerning her work. From Richard Chenault, her uncle.”

“I’m listening.”

“He said that Dusty spent quite a bit of time working with Charlie Baker, once he found out he had pancreatic cancer. Charlie wanted to tidy up his correspondence, his bank accounts, his legal affairs. He and Dusty got along well, and he liked having her there to help him out.”

“I know she knew Charlie, but I guess I didn’t know she was actually working closely with him. How long had this been going on?”

“Since the beginning of this year.”

“Have the cops found any connection between Charlie Baker and Dusty that could have spelled trouble for her?”

“Not yet. But they’re looking into it.”

We worked in silence for a while. I set the heavenly scented béarnaise sauce over barely simmering water and hoped Arch and Gus would arrive home soon. The October evenings were already rushing toward early darkness, and with someone who might have sabotaged my van out there, I felt uneasy.

“Look,” I said, “I keep going back to my van. If I hadn’t been late to the H&J office, then what? Would I have been strangled, too? Or could I have saved her?”

“I already talked to Arch about the van this morning. He is absolutely sure, completely positive, that he turned off the radio, because he’d come to the end of a Dave Matthews song. Then he remembers picking up his book bag, opening the passenger door, and slamming it shut. He remembers the slamming because he said he was in such a bad mood. Plus, he recalls staring at the car for a minute, making sure he had everything he needed for his homework.”

“Right. And I suppose he’s absolutely positive he locked it, too.”

“No, that he’s not sure of. In fact, he thinks he didn’t, because his hands were full with his book bag and books.” Tom stopped laying down hard-boiled egg halves and waited until I met his gaze. “He’s sure he didn’t leave the radio and lights on. He’s sure he didn’t remember to lock the van.”

“So you do think somebody tampered with my car. Or my son has a conveniently slippery memory.”

“The former. My theory is, someone was watching you, knew your schedule. Knew when you left for the firm to go make the bread for the Friday-morning meeting.” He finished the salad and covered it with plastic wrap. “I told the investigators to send our guys out to canvass our neighbors, check if anyone saw somebody, anybody, messing with your car. We need to know if a neighbor saw someone scouting you out. I also told our guys to look at any folks who might have seen an odd, as in out of the ordinary, vehicle over by H&J that late at night.”

Someone scouting you out. I tried to rid myself of the memory of Vic Zaruski and his long, furious face, of his boatlike white convertible, and of the many times it had been parked in the Routts’ driveway. In the Routts’ driveway or on the street. He wouldn’t have messed up my car, would he? He wouldn’t have strangled a girl he cared about, or had once cared about, would he?

“Goldy?” Tom queried. “Think. Look back at that scene you came upon in the office. Something missing? Something out of place?”

I sighed. I’d already told the investigators down at the department that I couldn’t tell if the place had been robbed, that I’d been concentrating on Dusty…and then I remembered I hadn’t yet told Tom about the bracelet. Where was my mind?

“Tom,” I began, “I need to talk to you about a piece of jewelry that Dusty was wearing last week.” Tom raised his eyebrows and cocked his chin, as in Go on. I told him all I’d shared with Britt and how I’d been unsure whether Dusty had been wearing the opal and diamond piece around her wrist when I’d found her.

“You don’t know where she got it?” Tom asked.

I shook my head. “She promised to wear it last night, and to tell me about it.”

“And you can’t remember whether she had it on when you found her.”

“Nope. It’s as if the memory is just out of reach.”

He told me to sit down, then pulled up a chair for himself. Then he took my hand and told me to shut my eyes. This I did.

“Now picture the office after you tripped and got up,” he said softly, “and describe every aspect of it to me.”

I did this, too. At one point Tom told me to imagine that I was seeing Dusty, and gently rolling her over.

“Was the bracelet there?” he asked.

In my mind’s eye, I looked at Dusty’s wrists. They were empty. I said, “No. There’s no bracelet, no watch, nothing.”

“Now open your eyes and talk to me.”

I hesitated. “Do you think Sally Routt would tell us if she’d seen Dusty wearing an expensive bracelet?”

“She might tell you. I doubt very seriously she’d tell me, or any cop, for that matter, given her attitude toward law enforcement.” Tom stared out the window, where new snow clung to every pine needle, every branch of aspen leaves. “The last few weeks or days,” he said finally. “How did Dusty seem? Didn’t I hear Sally Routt talking to you about that?”

“Sally said Dusty had been secretive.”

“And was she? I mean, apart from dodging the bracelet question?”

I stopped to think. “She did seem like…like someone with a secret.”

“Or secrets,” Tom said, his voice low.

Gus and Arch were not due back for a while, so I slipped back over to the Routts’ house. Sally was still crying incessantly. I said I had something important to ask her, and she quieted for a moment. Had she seen Dusty wearing a bracelet? I asked. Opals interwoven with diamonds? I drew a quick sketch on a piece of paper offered by Sally’s father, who tapped his way to the kitchen and opened a drawer to pull out a single sheaf. For a blind man, he could get around remarkably well, but he undoubtedly had every inch of the house memorized. Sally blinked at my crude drawing. She said she’d never seen anything like it, on Dusty or anywhere else. When she described the bracelet to her father, asking if he had felt anything on Dusty’s forearm when she hugged him, he simply shook his head.

“Dusty didn’t tell us everything,” Sally told me, handing the paper back. “And as I told you before, she’d been keeping something to herself, or so it seemed to me, lately. Of course, I was always worried when it came to our relationship. You know, I’m a single mom who’s made a bunch of mistakes. She knows I didn’t want another repeat of the Ogden mess.”

“Um, did the cops take everything from her room? Jewelry box, everything?”

“Yes,” Sally said, with a sharp intake of breath. “She had a jewelry box, but they showed it to me, and there was just an old silver charm bracelet in there. I told them they could take it, but they didn’t. They did turn her mattress upside down, since that’s the main place people hide things, apparently. They looked in our freezer, too. Second place people hide things. Nothing there either.”

“Yeah. Well. If there’s anything you think of, Sally, anything she might have said to you, anything she might have been keeping that seemed strange to you, would you please tell me? It would help.”

Sally bit her bottom lip so hard I thought it would bleed. But she merely nodded before she began weeping again. I told her I could see myself out.

Back at the house, I told Tom I’d come away empty. Did this mean the killer had stolen the bracelet? I asked.

“Not necessarily,” he replied.

“Maybe it was in her purse,” I said numbly. “Did the cops find her purse?”

“Yeah, they did. I think they would have told me if they’d found a real expensive piece of jewelry in there.” I must have looked despondent because then Tom said, “Why don’t you give me your Picasso there, and I’ll fax it down to the department with a note? They alert all the pawnshops, in case something turns up. A twenty-thousand-dollar bracelet ought to raise a few eyebrows on East Colfax, in any event.”

“Aren’t there pawnshops anywhere else in Denver?”

“Just a figure of speech, Miss G.” He finished his note to the department and punched in the fax numbers. “It’s always a good idea to cover all your bases.”

I was wondering if that was a figure of speech, too—did it mean you had to have a guy on each base defending it, or did it mean you had to cover the bases if it started raining—probably not that one, I reasoned—when the boys returned. It was already five forty-five. Gus clutched such a large handful of twenties and checks that when he slapped them triumphantly on the kitchen table, a third of them drifted to the floor. Behind him, Arch, cautious as ever, had folded his much smaller take into a careful package that he placed on the counter, along with the magazine order form. Gus’s blond-brown hair, several shades lighter than Arch’s toast-colored locks, framed his face, halolike, as he grinned, ebullient. The two of them resembled the faces of Janus: Arch ever worried and scowling, and Gus optimistic and brimming with confidence.

“Arch, where do you put your stuff?” Gus demanded as he unzipped his down jacket and dropped it to the floor. “Oops.” Gus, his appealing face shiny with melted snow, gave me a wide smile and scooped up the coat.

“I’ll show you,” Arch said, frowning. He hung his and Gus’s jackets on the hooks in the kitchen, then turned to give me a serious look. “We invited somebody to dinner.”

“What?”

Immediately defensive, Arch retorted, “It’s what you would have done! We found her crying in her house. It’s Wink Calhoun, Dusty’s friend. You know, the one who adopted Latte? Anyway, she’s coming, and she’s bringing Latte. Hope that’s okay. They’ll both be here in about five minutes—”

“I’ve already invited Wink, but not Latte—” I began.

“C’mon, Mrs. Schulz,” Gus pleaded, his cheerful, red-cheeked face upturned to mine. “That’s a really cool dog, and we don’t have one at my grandparents’ place. Anyway, he took right to me! We both said it would be okay if she brought him.”

“Call me Aunt G.,” I told him, and he broke into a huge smile.

“Okay, Aunt G.,” which came out sounding like Angie, “we had to do it. Wink was Dusty’s best friend. Plus, she lives in a garage or something.”

“I know, I know, I’ve already asked—”

“Actually, Wink lives in a guesthouse,” Arch corrected, in a tone that made me cringe, since it echoed my own. “It’s a garage that somebody turned into a guesthouse on Pine Way. Nobody was at the big house, so we backtracked to the driveway and followed the sound of the crying. And get this, she’s only a receptionist, and she bought three subscriptions.”

Tom asked, “Is that how she described herself, ‘only a receptionist’?”

“Yeah,” the boys chorused.

“She’s the receptionist at Hanrahan & Jule,” I informed the boys as the doorbell rang. Then I said, “You boys need to go find Scout the cat and put him in the cage we use to take him to the vet. If he attacks Latte again—”

But the boys were already scrambling away, calling exuberantly for the cat.

When I opened the door, Wink Calhoun, tall, pretty, and pink-eyed, hesitated before stepping across the threshold. Her flat, oblong face always seemed just a bit too large for her body, and a pronounced underbite prevented her from being beautiful. But she had a ready smile and a retro look, complete with finger-waved light brown hair that gave her an undeniable charm. She wore a navy blazer over a white oxford-cloth shirt and a long blackwatch-plaid kilt that complemented her slender, shapely figure. She also wore tassel loafers, which I noted were soaking wet.

Her lack of movement at the door frustrated Latte the basset hound, however. He let out several loud barks and bolted into the house, tearing the leash out of Wink’s hands.

“I’m so sorry!” Wink began as the boys tumbled out of the kitchen to welcome the dog. Wink called to Latte to calm down. Not only did the basset hound ignore her, he started barking wildly as he raced around in a circle from the front hall, through the living room, then the dining room, then into the kitchen, back through the hall and the living room…until he hit the dining room again. Scout the cat, who had been hiding in the basement, took that opportunity to streak up the stairs, where the boys squealed and pounced on him. Jake the bloodhound, who had been sitting in his usual spot out on the deck, was clawing madly on the back door to be let in, all while howling at the top of his lungs to be allowed to be part of the fun. Latte, who seemed to be encouraged by the chaos, continued to make a mad circular dash through the rooms on the main floor, until Tom scooped him up in his arms.

“I’m telling you, Miss G.,” Tom called over Latte’s hollering, “apprehending criminals is nothing to this!”

“This is so cool!” Arch said, smiling gleefully, when he and Gus returned to the kitchen.

“Here, let me have him,” Gus was insisting to Tom. Tom allowed a squirming Latte to be taken by Gus. Latte, sensing the weakness of the transfer, wiggled madly and leaped out of Gus’s arms, only to begin his crazed circuit once more. Tom caught him again in the kitchen, and quickly transferred the dog outside.

“I made it!” Wink said. “You wanted me to come over, and the boys said—”

“Tom’s fixing a roast. Come on in.”

I shut the door behind her and opened my arms. She walked into my hug and began to shake with sobs.

“I’m so sorry, oh, dear Wink, I’m so sorry,” I repeated over and over.

Tom peeked out the kitchen door. The boys’ voices behind him were querulous. Where’s Mom? Why won’t you let the dogs in? Why doesn’t Wink come into the kitchen? But when Tom caught my eye and saw the embrace, he backed silently into the kitchen and quieted the boys.

At length, Wink stopped crying. She took a tissue out of her blazer pocket, cleaned up her face, and regarded me.

“Let’s talk in the living room,” I said gently. “How about a glass of sherry?”

Wink swallowed and didn’t move. “Sorry about falling apart. Dusty was my best friend in the firm. This happens to other people. It doesn’t happen to people you know.”

“The cops are working on it,” I reassured her. “It’s a good sheriff’s department. And later on, you and I can talk about what they were all up to.”

Wink pressed her lips together firmly. “I don’t think the cops are going to find out what happened to her.”

“What do you mean?”

“You don’t know these people the way I do.”

CHAPTER 9

So tell me about them,” I said.

“I wasn’t trying to scare you. I really do want to find out what happened to Dusty,” she said. Her mouth turned down. “I just don’t want to hear any of the gory details, you know?”

“Don’t worry.”

“And I can’t divulge any, you know, of the confidential business stuff, although I really don’t care at this point.”

“The cops talked to you, right?”

She looked over at the fire. “Yeah.”

“You told them everything pertinent, I hope?” When she nodded, I said, “Let’s go sit down.”

I led her into the living room, where I poured two glasses of sherry. I knew I probably shouldn’t have more booze, especially after I’d had only a few hours’ worth of sleep the previous night, and part of that slumber had taken place in a moving car. But I’d hardly touched the glass Tom had given me, and I wanted Wink to feel better. Plus, I wanted to loosen up her tongue, even to facts she might not think were pertinent.

“What do the cops know so far, about Dusty’s death?” she asked, once she’d thanked me for her glass of amber liquid.

Immediately wary, I said, “Not much.” The coroner and the rest of law enforcement usually kept secret the cause and manner of death, in the hope that a killer might unwittingly give away some detail that had not been released to the public. I wished Tom would join us, but I could hear him out in the kitchen. He’d closed both doors, had let both hounds back in, and was now listening to Arch and Gus alternate in telling stories about the people who’d bought magazine subscriptions. Without thinking, I checked Wink’s wrist. I was ashamed to be looking, even unconsciously, for Dusty’s bracelet. But crooks, Tom was always telling me, were notoriously stupid. Wink’s shirt had long sleeves, and I couldn’t see anything. Still, I told myself I was being ridiculous. Wink had been Dusty’s best friend.

I said, “What did you mean when you said I didn’t know these people the way you do? Do you think someone will hurt you if you tell the cops something? Or even if you tell me?”

“I’m just spooked.” She took a sip of sherry and looked around the living room, apparently as confused as most visitors by the combination of cheap orange upholstered furniture and clearly valuable antique wood pieces. “Somebody has good taste,” she said, but without sounding bitchy.

“Tom’s a collector.”

“How’s Sally doing, do you know?”

“She’s doing terribly, Wink. And if it will make you feel better about telling me about the folks in the firm, she’s asked me to investigate Dusty’s death. On my own, that is, without law enforcement.” I sipped my sherry and decided just to wait. It didn’t take long.

“I do have something to tell you,” she said, glancing up at me. “Something I didn’t tell the authorities, because they didn’t ask me a direct question about it, you know?” She shook her head. “Listen to me, I sound just like them.” She thrust out her small chin, as if steeling herself. “I wanted to tell you over the phone, but I wanted to think about it first. Then King Richard came over, wanting me to do some typing, if you can imagine.” She took a long slug of sherry. “Louise Upton needs money. She was married once, if you can believe it.” Wink shook her head, as if forestalling my question. “She just tells people to call her ‘Miss Upton.’ There’s no law against that, I think. Anyway, her ex-husband doesn’t work, and he sued her for alimony. He came into the office one time, screaming and yelling that Louise was late with that month’s check. He was such a brute, I almost felt sorry for Louise. After he left, Claggs told me about the alimony situation.”

“And so you think this has something to do with Dusty?”

Tears erupted from Wink’s eyes. “Oh God. I told Dusty. I mean, we were close, you know? And last week she was complaining about what a bitch Louise was, always wanting to have everything just so. She’d started calling her Miss Uptight, which I thought was hilarious. She said between Miss Uptight and King Richard, it was a wonder we got any work done at all. So I just told her about Louise having an ex, and how she had to pay him alimony. I shouldn’t have, but since I didn’t technically break my vow of confidentiality to Louise—I mean, I didn’t tell any of the guys at H&J—I thought it was okay. Listen to me. I’m starting to sound like one of them again.”

“Do you think Dusty threw it back in her face? Maybe one time when she was angry for being corrected?”

“Well, that’s what I’m afraid of.” Wink rubbed her forehead. “It was a disaster waiting to happen, since Dusty and Louise didn’t get along.”

“What did you get out of promising not to tell the guys about the alimony? Did Louise offer you anything?”

She looked down at her hands. “No,” she muttered, her voice barely above a whisper. “I guess she sort of wanted to be friends. Maybe not, though.”

“Do you know if Dusty didn’t get along with anyone else? Or if she had any romantic liaisons?”

Wink, still staring at her hands, shook her head forcefully. “Didn’t get along? I don’t know. Romantic liaison? I don’t think so.” She paused to think. “Okay, Claggs had just won a lot of money in a poker game in Central City. I heard them laughing about it. Dusty and Alonzo, I mean. But Claggs is married to Ookie. Happily married, I think.”

“So Claggs is a gambler?”

Wink shrugged. “I think he does it for fun. You know, to relieve stress. Until ski season starts, anyway.”

“Any idea how much money he’d won? Or how he’d spent it?”

“Not a clue. But there is something I’ve always wondered about. I mean, Ookie teaches squash at the Aspen Meadow Country Club, and most of the other lawyers work out there, too. So why does Claggs work out at the Butterfield Rec? Why did he work out with Dusty, I mean?”

“Because Dusty couldn’t afford to join the country club?” I offered.

Wink’s tone turned stubborn. “I just think she would have told me if she was romantically involved with him.”

I thought, Would she have told you, if it was meant to be a secret? “So except for working out together, you had no inkling as to whether she was seeing Claggs outside of work?”

“I’m telling you, she really didn’t talk to me about Claggs!”

“Do you know if she was seeing anybody?” I pressed.

Wink wrinkled her face. “If you’re looking for romantic-type information, Dusty had been going out with Vic Zaruski. They’d just had a bad breakup. The end.”

I pressed my lips together. “I didn’t get much of a feeling for the atmosphere at Hanrahan & Jule,” I said, my tone innocent.

“You didn’t, really?” She took a deep breath. “The whole place feels as if it’s in a constant state of power struggle.”

“Between whom?”

“Between the partners over whose cases are more important. Between the associates over who has the most work. Between the lawyers and the paralegals, when we had two of them, over whom the paralegals should be working for. And that leads to stress. You couldn’t complain, because…well, just because.”

When she didn’t offer any more, I asked, “Was Dusty in this power struggle? And did it turn deadly?”

“I don’t know. And that’s what I told the cops, honest.”

There was another long silence, finally broken by Tom calling us to dinner. As she was about to follow me through the kitchen door, Wink stopped. I turned back to make sure she was okay. That little chin of hers was wobbling again, and her hands were clenched. All her pale brown hair’s tiny waves seemed to tremble at once. She dashed wetness out of her eyes, then cleared her throat and moved into the warm, inviting space, where the rich scent of roasting beef filled the air like a cushion.

“Hi again, Wink,” Arch said, his voice grave. “I’m glad you came. My mom’s a really good cook.”

“Hey!” Tom interjected, his voice playful. “Who’s cooking this dinner, anyway? By the way, Wink, I’m Tom.”

Wink nodded to Tom, then smiled at the boys and me. “Thanks, Arch, I already know how good a cook your mom is. She brings…brought us breakfast at the firm, and everybody was always fighting over the food.” Her cheeks colored.

“Sorry about what happened,” Gus chimed in. “Arch said the dead girl was your friend.”

“She was.” Wink swallowed and struggled for control.

“That sucks,” Gus said.

“Welcome anyway, Wink.” Tom moved forward and yanked out a chair. “Come sit down.”

This Wink did. Tom pulled the tenderloin out of the oven to let it rest, then began to assemble the baked potatoes, steamed broccoli, and cheese sauce that he knew Arch enjoyed having with friends. I nipped back out to the living room and picked up Wink’s sherry glass—I’d managed to get through our conversation with only a couple of small sips—and brought it back out to the kitchen. I checked the thermometer that Tom had left inserted in the meat. I was happy to see that the beef juices had settled, and the temp indicated a perfect medium rare. In addition to the cheddar-cheese sauce, Tom had managed to reheat the béarnaise I’d made, without curdling it.

“You didn’t think I could do two sauces at once, did you?” he asked mildly, when I raised my eyebrows at the pair of gravy boats with their perfectly smooth, golden loads. “Why don’t you sit down, Miss G.?”

So I did. To my great astonishment, I was famished. And then I remembered that I hadn’t actually had breakfast. Come to think of it, I hadn’t had much of a lunch, either. (A salad didn’t count as a meal, I always told myself.)

Tom had shaken up a mild balsamic vinaigrette and now he sprinkled judicious amounts over his salade composée. Arch, Gus, and even Wink poured rivers of creamy cheddar sauce over their potatoes and broccoli, while Tom and I opted for salad. The tenderloin was done to perfection: pink and tender on the inside, with a crunchy, delicious roasted exterior bearing crisp herbs. With some reheated soft rolls that we all slathered with butter, it was a feast. Hunger makes the best sauce, I’d learned when I was nine. No kidding.

And perhaps wine makes the best smoother-over of distraught emotions, I thought after a while. Wink had twisted her rail-thin body into what looked like an impossible yoga position to watch Tom open a bottle of Burgundy, a Côte de Nuits. Our dinner wasn’t exactly a cause for any kind of celebration, but the meal and the wine made us feel better. Cared for, even. Which was what Tom was good at, I reminded myself.

“They keep hundred-dollar-a-bottle Côte de Nuits Burgundy in a locked cabinet at the firm,” Wink observed. “But it’s just for meetings between the partners and the clients. Not for the receptionist and paralegals, I mean.” She looked at Tom with sudden interest. “Would the cops have gone through all the locked cabinets?”

Tom’s eyes were hooded. “I’m sure they’re over there going through everything, trust me.”

I took a big forkful of salad, curious myself to know what they might have found inside there, since I, too, knew of the locked cabinet. But like the receptionist and paralegals, the caterer wasn’t allowed to fiddle with the heart-of-maple cabinets, either. Still, Tom was right: searching for Dusty’s killer, the cops would have demanded entry to every locked drawer and cabinet in the place. There was no question that our sheriff’s department was good at crime-scene mechanics, largely, I think, because they feared having Tom bawl them out if they screwed up.

The Burgundy was delicious. I’m not one of those folks who can say a wine has complex chocolate and citrus notes along with undertones of blackberry, but I can say, “Omigod, this stuff is fantastic!” Tom beamed.

The wine also seemed to have a calming effect on Wink. Arch and Gus, oblivious to our pleasured imbibing, were going over to Gus’s grandparents’ condo to spend the night, and they continued to chat and burble and interrupt each other about the video games they were going to play and the movies they were going to watch. Every now and then they asked Wink, but not us, if she had seen this or that movie. Most of the time she had, and the boys invariably found this cool. Meanwhile, the redness began to dissipate from Wink’s eyes, and I thought I detected the tension melting from her face.

At length, Wink drained her wineglass. Smiling, she said, “Hey, Gus! I read in the St. Luke’s bulletin that you were going to be baptized.”

“Yup,” said Gus, his standard affirmative.

“By Sutherland?” she asked.

“Yup.”

“Well, you know,” Wink continued with a sly smile, “he always quizzes the confirmands ahead of time. Takes them into a Sunday-school room and asks them about the sacraments and how God structured things so we could be saved. You know your stuff?”

Gus was looking at her with alarm. “How’m I supposed to know how God structured things?” he cried, his eyes wide. “I don’t even know how the government structures things! This really sucks.”

“Aw, don’t worry, Gus,” Arch said authoritatively. “It’s not that bad. It’s sort of like Dungeons and Dragons. You have to learn how any particular world works before you can move around in it. You ever play D&D?”

Gus’s forehead wrinkled. “I learned some witchcraft in the commune.”

“Let’s not go there,” I said quickly.

“But…you’re still coming to my christening, aren’t you, Arch?” Gus asked, suddenly worried. “Maybe you could give me some answers, you know, like on what he’s going to ask before I have to take this quiz.”

“I’ve sort of fallen away from the church,” Arch admitted.

“Man,” Gus retorted. “I thought this was important to you; that’s why I’m doing it!”

“Right, right, I know,” Arch said. “It is important to me, I promise. I’m coming to your thing, even if I haven’t been going to church for a while.” He gave Gus a reassuring smile. “It’ll be okay.”

The way you’ve been driving lately, I thought, you might want to start praying. But I kept mum. Meanwhile, Tom picked up the Burgundy and poured Wink and yours truly a second glass. No question about it: I was going to sleep tonight.

“You didn’t drive over here, did you?” Tom asked.

“I’ll be fine,” Wink insisted.

The boys sang out, “Uh-oh,” then scampered off to watch television until Gus’s grandparents arrived.

“We could drive you home,” I offered. “Or you could stay here,” I added as an afterthought. If we didn’t know the people at H&J the way Wink did, maybe she would feel better not being alone tonight. “We could make up the couch in the living room, or you could stay in Arch’s room, since he’s going over to—”

“We’ll think of something,” Tom interrupted, shooting me a warning glance: Best not to distract someone whom you want to get going telling you her story. If your informant—or helpful person, as Tom sometimes called them—starts worrying about who’s outside, or where they’re going to have lunch, or if their car is parked legally, then the flow of data is going to come to a sudden halt.

Of course, I didn’t know whether we should be interrogating Wink or not. But I let go of it. If she needed to spill her guts about her relationship with Dusty, or goings-on among what Sally Routt called the “vermin” at H&J, then fine. Still…

My train of thought was derailed by the phone ringing. Eight o’clock on a Friday night? Must be a client.

“I checked with my husband,” Nora Ellis said without identifying herself, “and he wants to proceed with the party.”

“Fine, fine,” I replied, trying to make a smooth transition. “You’re talking about Mr. Ellis wanting to go ahead with his birthday celebration. I understand.”

“He said it would be what Dusty wanted us to do.”

“He thinks it’s what Dusty would want you to do?”

“Goldy,” she said, her voice suddenly kind. “Forgive me. I’m just nervous about this going well. I want Donald to love it. Okay? I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten. And I’ve gotten you some help, as I promised. I hired Louise Upton to oversee things in the kitchen.”

“That is so unnecessary,” I said. I made my tone gentle, too, to keep from screaming. But she had already hung up. To Tom and Wink, I said, “Nora Ellis is going to proceed, as she called it, with her party for her husband. Apparently, Donald Ellis thinks it’s what Dusty would have wanted them to do. And Nora hired Louise Upton to oversee things in the kitchen.”

Wink snorted. “Poor you. And Dusty wasn’t even invited to their party. None of the staff is ever included in their reindeer games. Plus, Miss Uptight will just make your life miserable.”

“That doesn’t surprise me,” I said in a low voice. I couldn’t imagine Louise Upton shedding her armor to be helpful in the kitchen. Would she carry her own sword? For heaven’s sake, I told myself, shut up and stop being such a bitch. Somebody had loved Louise once, a husband, now an ex-husband, who was milking her for alimony. If that was what made her difficult, then I could suddenly understand her a lot better.

“I know you had to talk to the cops, too,” Wink said, her eyes on me, her tone half questioning.

“Yeah, I did. How’d it go for you?”

Wink rubbed her forehead with both hands. “Not too bad. Some of the same stuff you were asking me in the living room. Who didn’t get along with Dusty? What was she working on? Man, it got boring. Then they’d ask me the same question in a sort of different way, like I’d trip myself up in a lie, or something.”

Tom’s grin was good-natured. “Well, how do you think we’ll catch folks who aren’t telling the truth?”

Wink straightened in her chair. “Dusty was working on a few things. She’d been working since January for Charlie Baker, trying to help him get his affairs in order. She was spending her office time on a big oil-and-gas-lease mess, part of a ridiculously complicated estate that won’t be settled before I’m forty.”

“Don’t knock turning forty,” I said lightheartedly. “It may seem far off now, but someday…”

Wink managed to smile. “Anyway, the lease thing was with Donald Ellis, who isn’t a partner. Can you imagine trying to find anything, much less oil-and-gas leases, in Donald Ellis’s office? But he’s a hard worker, I’ll give him that. Anyway, then in March, Charlie Baker died, and Richard, who is a partner, was handling the estate. So all of a sudden Dusty wasn’t helping Donald anymore at all, she was working full-time for King Richard, trying to get everything in Charlie’s big estate in order.”

“So did the cops make anything out of all that?” I asked.

“I don’t know. You’d have to ask Georgina, the one paralegal we have left.”

“You had more paralegals before?”

“Yeah,” Wink said. “Two others. But they were hired away by another firm last year. They haven’t been replaced yet. Marilou, the legal secretary, has been interviewing replacements for the secretary Richard fired. The guys have been bringing in extra paralegals, too, when they’re really snowed under. They get a lot done.”

“Do you mean the paralegals?” I asked, confused.

“Of course I do! You should see how hard those extras worked, when they were with H&J. Plus, Dusty was like a slave to the guys. Marilou and Georgina are, too, when they’re not in Hawaii taking notes at meetings that the attorneys are supposed to go to. Let me tell you what I’ve learned from working in the law firm. Here’s what paralegals can’t do: They can’t give legal-costs estimates to the client. They can’t share in the firm’s profits. And they can’t talk in court. But they do all the other work, trust me. Show me a group of male lawyers who don’t have most of their work done by female paralegals, and I’ll show you a graveyard.”

“Now there’s a happy thought,” Tom said cheerfully. “So if Dusty was getting so much work done for the firm, why would someone kill her? Did she have enemies in the firm? Or not?”

Wink shook her head sadly. “She and Alonzo were close. They worked out together. Really, the problem was, except for the occasional flare-up with Louise Upton, Dusty got along with everyone.”

“Why was that a problem?” I asked.

Wink leaned forward. “Because you don’t mix with the other levels of the fief in a fiefdom. You don’t try to get along with everyone, because it’s only going to make you miserable. And most of all, you don’t get ambitious.”

“How was she ambitious, specifically?” I asked.

“She answered questions the lawyers should have,” she said. “She was possessive about her relationship with Charlie Baker. If you’re not even a paralegal yet, you don’t make yourself the guardian of one of the firm’s biggest clients.” I raised an eyebrow at Tom. Now he, too, wanted to know if Dusty’s legendary determination and get-up-and-go-ness were what had gotten her killed.

The phone rang. Not another client. Not at this hour. Besides the Ellis party, the only upcoming events I had were the reception after Gus’s christening on Sunday and the post-ribbon-cutting celebration for the Mountain Pastoral Center on Monday night. The menus were set; the checks had been written; the food had been ordered. The caller ID gave no hint. I made a quick apology to Tom and Wink and pressed the talk button.

“Goldilocks’ Cate—”

“Goldy? This is Miss Upton.”

Oh, boy. Past eight o’clock on a Friday night? No, it was more likely that the formidable office manager wanted to give me some new instructions. We’ll need you to bring breakfast in on Monday to a new location…Oh, and by the way, no mention of the unfortunate event of Thursday night…

“Miss Uh—” I began again.

“Mr. Claggett and Mr. Ellis and I will be over in a little bit.”

“Be over in a little bit?” I squawked, glancing around the kitchen with its mass of dirty dishes and sauce-coated pans. “Can’t we just talk on the pho—”

Louise Upton cleared her throat. “We will be over in a little bit.”

“What little bit? I’ve got—”

“About twenty minutes.”

She hung up before asking me if I was mourning the death of my young neighbor, if I would be home, if I had people here, if I had work to do, if her visit was in any way inconvenient…all of which were true. But did she care? She did not. At least she was acting in character. I told Tom and Wink that Miss Uptight, plus Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis, would be arriving momentarily, and could they help me wash, or at least hide, all these dishes?

The last, the very last person I wanted to see that evening was Louise Upton. She would want to know every single detail of my discovery of Dusty, so that her mind could begin working on a spin that exonerated the firm. For Miss Upton loved the firm, she glorified it, she obsessed about it. She had told me once, “I am married to this firm.”

I’d avoided saying, “Poor you.” And now there was this ex-husband saga to deal with…should I tell Tom about that before Miss Uptight arrived?

Still, my promise to Sally Routt loomed in my mind. I will try, I’d promised, to find out what happened to Dusty. If anyone knew what negative tales could be told about H&J, it was Louise Upton. But that old legalism about a wife not testifying against her husband pertained to the nth degree here. Louise Upton would rather be stripped naked on Main Street than spill her guts about the firm.

And what about Alonzo Claggett, the gambler, and Donald Ellis, the oil-and-gas guy? Alonzo had been embarrassed by not knowing something that Dusty had known, and I was willing to bet the same thing had happened to Donald. Maybe one of them had had it in for her.

“Man, what are you thinking about, Goldy?” Wink demanded. “You look as if you just bit into an onion.”

“A minute ago, I was thinking about Miss Uptight standing naked in the middle of Main Street.”

“I’d rather bite into an onion,” Wink acknowledged. She finished drying the gravy boat and put it on a shelf. “I need to rock on home. Thanks for dinner. And I’m fine, I’ve only had two glasses of wine, total.”

“Nope,” Tom said. “I’ll drive you and then walk back here. You only live two blocks away.” Tom eyed the kitchen, which was clean. “You okay with this, Miss G.? If I go right now, I’ll probably be back by the time they arrive.”

“Sure, of course.”

Wink handed Tom her keys and told him her car was the black Jetta. Tears welled in her eyes as she turned back to me.

“Please don’t tell anybody what I told you. About Miss Upton. It could get me into trouble.”

“I’m not going to get you into trouble,” I said gently. “But you should tell Tom what you told me. About Louise’s ex-husband, the alimony, and her needing money. It might help the police, in some way that you can’t imagine at the moment.” I added, “And you can call me about anything else you might think of.”

Wink slipped into her blazer and worked on gathering up Latte, who, after all the commotion, had fallen asleep on our couch. She heaved the slumbering hound up into her arms, where he sagged like a sack of blocks. Panting, Wink started down the hall. Almost as an afterthought, she said, “It’s unlikely I’ll think of anything else.”

CHAPTER 10

Tom was back within half an hour, with no Louise Upton, Alonzo Claggett, or Donald Ellis in sight. Tom reported that Wink had told him about Louise’s ex-husband and her need for money. He was going to hurry and call the department about it, just in case Louise hadn’t been forthcoming about her background. But he needn’t have hurried, as it was another hour before the doorbell rang.

I desensitized our security system and opened the door for Donald Ellis, Alonzo Claggett, and Louise Upton. Twenty minutes had become ninety. Let’s see, if I’d been billing them in six-minute increments, then I’d have made, oh…well, I needed a calculator.

“Goldy,” said Donald Ellis, his thin voice low. “Thank you for seeing us.”

“No problem,” I replied.

“Yeah, thanks!” said Alonzo Claggett, who sounded a bit too cheery, it seemed to me, for someone who had just lost a friend at his workplace.

“Your house is very hard to find,” Louise snarled, as if their tardiness were my fault.

I assumed my most hospitable voice. “Please come in. Here’s a mat for your boots.” I pointed behind them. “And there’s the coatrack.”

Donald murmured their appreciation while Louise tsked, stamped, and complained about the parking on our street. Claggs, perhaps to counteract Louise’s brusqueness, commented on what a nice house we had. He noticed the cherry sideboard and buffet in our living room, both of which had been brought by Tom from his cabin. He and Tom fell into an easy conversation about Chippendale while Donald helped Louise remove her outer garments.

“How come you know so much about antiques?” Tom asked Alonzo.

“Oh, my family had lots of them in their Roland Park house. They gave Ookie and me a whole lot of them, but we sold them when the going got rough in Vail.” He rolled forward on his toes and winked at me. “Didn’t endear me to my folks, needless to say.”

“I’ll bet. Want to come in?”

But they did not, apparently, want to come into the living room and be treated as real guests. This put me on my guard. Why were the three of them here? Whose idea had it been to come to Tom’s and my house so late at night the day after one of their staff had been killed?

“We’re not going to stay long,” Claggs gushed. “We promise. We just wanted to see if you were okay. Ookie sends her regards, by the way.” He dug into his dark brown slacks and brought out an envelope. “She says my clients—the Fieldings?—loved the breakfast you fixed for us so much, they went on and on to her about it.”

“Well, you did their will, Mr. Claggett,” I murmured, embarrassed to have Tom, Louise, and Donald Ellis witnessing this effusive praise. “I just did the quiche and fruit—”

“No, no,” he interrupted me. “It was the whole package. Quiche, fruit, and will. That’s what they told Ookie! Anyway, in appreciation, Ookie wanted you to have a guest pass and a coupon for six free squash lessons.”

To me, “free squash lessons” implied someone teaching me to make zucchini bread, but never mind. I took the envelope and thanked him.

Louise whispered to Donald, “That is really so very unnecessary,” her voice loud enough so that I would hear it. Donald reddened to the roots of his red hair, and recoiled as if stung. I thought for at least the hundredth time how much Donald Ellis reminded me of my son. Arch was fifteen and a half now, but Donald’s invariably vulnerable expression recalled Arch’s at an earlier age—say, eleven. Back then, Arch had been particularly susceptible to the taunts of bullies and braggarts. Even the untoward remark of a teacher could cause him to blush scarlet, as Donald was doing now.

Still, there was one thing I had learned about Donald Ellis: for all of his weak, defenseless appearance, clients loved him. He always ushered them into the conference room, as his office was too much of a wreck for even one person. These meetings were special for the client, as Donald would invariably book me to do a special lunch for them, usually a cold roast-beef salad with shaved Parmesan or chilled grilled salmon topped with caviar. After I’d cleared the dishes away, Donald would pull out a single yellow legal pad. This he would cover with his tiny scrawl as the client outlined what he or she wanted.

And then a week later there would be a will to be signed. The client would reappear, beaming and grateful, satisfied that his wishes after death had been set down. In the three-plus months I’d been at H&J, I’d seen it too many times to doubt it. Clients wanted Donald because he seemed so, well, sensitive. “Especially for a lawyer!” I would hear them whisper sometimes. And in the end, they felt they had helped him as much as he had helped them. And apparently, they liked that feeling.

While Donald was only a bit taller than I was, which would put him at about five feet three, Claggs was taller, better looking, more authoritative, and goodness knew, much more aggressive. Must have been all that advanced-run skiing, I’d figured once. Still, where Donald was quiet, Claggs was effusive, good-humored, always joking. When he was expecting an especially bellicose client, he’d regale the guys at the attorneys’ breakfast about the client being furious because he’d been beaten in the “race to the house.” The race to the house, I’d learned, was the way estate lawyers referred to heirs or wannabe heirs dashing to the residence of the recently deceased, to plunder whatever wasn’t locked away or nailed down. There was also “the icy hand from the grave,” another reference to clients, usually the ultrawealthy ones, who wanted to structure their wills in such a detailed manner that not a single heir would be getting a penny without jumping through a dizzying number of hoops.

“Well, everybody,” Tom said, to break the standing-in-the-hall stalemate, “if you don’t want to come into the living room, let’s all go out to the kitchen and have some cake and coffee; how about it?”

Claggs followed Tom with alacrity. Louise lifted her chin and plowed in my direction. I found myself scrambling out of her way, a soldier jumping out of the path of a Sherman tank. At the door to our cooking area, she whirled, almost knocking over Donald Ellis. Now I had the full benefit of her glare. “Although we have to say, we would like to know what you were up to, coming into the law firm at ten o’clock at night to make bread!”

“I was doing my usual prep for the Friday-morning meeting,” I replied evenly. “If you don’t believe me, ask Richard.”

But she was long gone, the kitchen door swinging behind her. Donald Ellis lagged behind. Finally he said, “I…we just wanted to make sure you were all right.” His nearly colorless blue eyes implored me.

I almost burst out laughing. Was this the real reason the three of them were gracing me with a late-night visit? Tell us you’re all right. Tell us you’re not going to sue us for the trauma you experienced tripping over a corpse in our office.

“I’m fine, thanks. Or as well as can be expected.”

Tom, sensitive to my absence, pulled open the kitchen door. His handsome, imperturbable face took us in. Donald nodded at Tom, his face again scarlet from…what? Embarrassment? Who knew?

Tom said, “Something going on out here?”

“We’re fine,” I said.

In the kitchen, Claggs was remarking on the “fantastic” job that Tom had done putting in the oak floor and installing the marble countertops. He moved his hands lovingly down the front of one of the cabinets. Had Tom done all this custom work with cherrywood, too? he wanted to know. Tom replied that he had. Louise had enthroned herself on one of our kitchen chairs and was listening with interest to all that Claggs was pointing out. Was I being paranoid, or did I imagine that Louise felt the kitchen was a bit too grand for the caterer who prepared the attorneys’ breakfasts? I put the idea out of my mind.

Tom fixed the drinks: bourbon on the rocks for Claggs, scotch and water for Donald. Louise, who was rummaging around in her capacious purse, said she would like nothing, thank you. It was not a sincere expression of gratitude, but again, I told myself to let it go. Once Louise had retrieved her PDA, she began tapping the stylus on the screen. After a moment, she looked up at me in triumph. “I have no Friday-morning meeting for Mr. Chenault recorded here!”

“It was his regular meeting with clients! Are you saying I was breaking into the firm to leave some yeast and flour late Thursday night?” I said, with more heat than I intended. “Should we call Richard Chenault at home and check with him?”

“Miss Upton,” Tom said gently, “why don’t you give Goldy a break.” It was not a question.

I punched buttons on my business computer, which occupied the far end of our kitchen countertop. My calendar for the third week in October flashed into view, and I pointed to Friday, October 20. “Miss Upton, would you like to have a look at this?” I tapped my own screen for emphasis. “‘Thursday night, ten o’clock, arrive law firm, make dough. Friday five A.M. Bake bread for Chenault breakfast meeting.’”

Louise Upton stood, stepped to the counter, and peered at my computer screen. I could see her eyes focus downward not on Thursday or Friday, but on tomorrow morning, Saturday. Ten A.M., arrive Ellis house for birthday party prep. One P.M., birthday party.

“Well!” she said, staring at the computer.

She continued to read my screen, glancing from side to side at every single event I had listed as she pursed her lips and shook her head. I swallowed: was she looking to prove somehow that I truly was not supposed to be at H&J the previous night? Or was she just being nosy? Suddenly, I was immobilized. Miss Upton had the ability to get me fired, of that I was quite positive. And yet surely this was not appropriate…

With a conspicuous cough, Tom slid his big, athletic frame between my screen and Miss Upton. Caught off balance, the office manager teetered on her thick heels and groaned out a loud “Oof!” as she backed into Donald Ellis. Donald, short and slender and not known for his athleticism, listed backward until he collided with our kitchen table, which sent his scotch and water spewing through the air.

A set of chair and human dominoes tumbled loudly onto our oak floor. The chairs clattered away. Miss Upton, her legs flailing, struggled to right herself: a giant sea turtle squashing a worm, which was Donald Ellis. His thin, pale face had turned more purple than cooked beets.

Claggs knocked over his own drink as he fell to his knees and began pulling on Donald.

I bent down, grasped Miss Upton’s carrotlike fingers and fleshy forearm, and tried to pull her up. Unfortunately, she was much stronger than I was, and her prone position plus the laws of physics gave her an advantage. I felt myself being pulled downward and squawked, “Tom! Help!”

With his usual efficiency of movement, Tom took two long steps around to Donald Ellis, reached in under his shoulders, and yanked him out from under Miss Upton. Unfortunately, when Donald’s torso was about halfway free, Miss Upton lifted her monumental head and bonked it back down, directly onto Donald Ellis’s scrotum.

Donald let out a high screech. With a massive effort, Claggs and Tom managed to heave Donald out from under Louise.

“Okay, big fella.” Tom spoke reassuringly to Donald Ellis, Esquire, Champion of Hardworking Husbands Seeking to Cut Inheritances from Willfully Spending Wives and Profligate Progeny, as he dragged the unfortunate lawyer toward our back door. “You’re going to be just fine in a minute.” Before I could think of what to do, Tom shifted Donald’s weight onto his strong right shoulder. Meanwhile, Claggs had opened our back door. In one smooth movement, Tom yanked Donald through the door. Claggs followed them onto the deck.

From the floor, Louise Upton wailed, “Could somebody please help me?”

Between Miss Upton’s ham-hock forearm and what I could remember of Archimedes’ lever principle, it only took a few moments of thrashing about to get the two of us vertical again. She was pale and disconcerted; I was more exhausted than if I’d landed a marlin. And not nearly as happy.

Still, I thought the best tack was to be conciliatory. I said, “I’m terribly, terribly sorry, Miss Upton. How about if we go out to the living room and sit down?”

“Two of my lawyers are outside. I think I should wait for them.”

Excuse me? Two of your lawyers? But I let this pass, walked to the back door, and peeked out to the deck. Tom was standing protectively over Donald Ellis, who was sitting, his back hunched, his body shuddering, on a deck chair. Claggs was standing with his hands in his pockets, surveying the backyard. I could hear his voice through the glass. He was telling Tom how wonderful he could tell the landscaping was, even with the snow. Had Tom put all the plants in himself? Claggs wanted to know. I motioned to Tom for them to come inside, which they did, Donald leading with a slow, tentative gait, Claggs and Tom following.

This visit, whatever it was about, wasn’t going very well.

After a few minutes, the five of us were sitting, albeit awkwardly, at our kitchen table. Donald, recovering some of his manliness, had sat up straight and asked for a second scotch. Claggs said he would pass on another bourbon, thanks. I mopped up the two spilled drinks while Tom poured Donald a second hefty dose of Johnnie Walker Black. He splashed a few drops of water on top, plinked in a couple of ice cubes, and placed it in front of Donald Ellis, who took a large gulp. Donald’s face had taken on an even more pallid cast than usual, and he couldn’t seem to stop blinking.

Arch poked his head into the kitchen. “Everything okay down here? We heard a lot of crashing and banging and were worried.”

Miss Upton whirled in her chair and gave Arch a daggerlike look. She cried, “Young man! We’re having a meeting in here, as you can see. Now, if your presence is required, we will summon—”

Arch disappeared.

To Louise Upton, I said evenly, “If you ever, and I do mean ever, want me to cater at Hanrahan & Jule again, you will not, I repeat, not, ever speak to my son again in that manner.”

Louise Upton, immediately defensive, said, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Oh-kay,” Tom said, getting up. “Know what? This so-called meeting is over. Next time any one of the three of you wishes to speak to my wife, we’ll set up a meeting at the sheriff’s department. In an interrogation room.”

“I’m sure that isn’t necessary,” Donald Ellis whispered. He took another long slug of his drink. “Louise, do you mind?” He gave her a meaningful look, and she sat back in her chair, silenced. Man, I wish I could do that. “Louise and Claggs and I,” Donald continued, his voice now firm and authoritative, “just wanted to see how Goldy was doing. We were worried. About her. Please, we’re sorry to have intruded here…and to have caused a, uh, disturbance.” He turned his liquid eyes on me. “I would like you to accept our most sincere condolences. We know Dusty was your friend and neighbor. That’s the only reason we’re here. On behalf of the firm,” he added.

“We’d also like to know what Dusty was doing there at that hour—” Miss Upton began again, her tone unrepentant.

“Dusty was at the firm to help me with the cooking for the Friday meeting,” I said, my voice steely, “as I have already told both you and the cops.”

Louise opened her mouth to speak again, but she was silenced by another stern look from Donald Ellis.

“If you have any idea of what might have happened, or why,” Donald said, his tone again soft, “we would sincerely like to know. We do feel terrible about Dusty. Poor dear girl.”

“We do,” Claggs echoed.

Tom sat back down. “Don’t worry, Mr. Ellis. Mr. Claggett. Miss Upton. The sheriff’s department is working on the case. We don’t need any lawyers just yet.”

“Well!” interjected Louise Upton. “Did she commit…I mean, did she fall down and…or what exactly did happen?”

Tom smiled and said, “Miss Upton, what exactly was the nature of your relationship with Miss Routt?”

“Well, I, uh…we should probably be going,” Louise stammered. “But wait, Mr. Ellis hasn’t finished his drink.”

Donald Ellis lifted his drink to his lips and drained it. “I’m done,” he said to no one in particular.

Claggs said, “Thanks so much for having us, Goldy. This is a great house, really. Glad you’re doing okay—”

Louise stood abruptly and started down the hall.

We were interrupted from finishing our farewells by a loud honking, a fearsome crash, and yells erupting from the street. Louise Upton, who was not quite at the front door, started screaming. Tom bolted for the front door and strode down our sidewalk. I followed, pushing past Louise Upton and Donald Ellis, both of whom were gaping at what appeared to be a hit-and-run pedestrian accident. Walking fast, Tom had already arrived beside the pedestrian, who was sitting on the snowy street beside the curb. He appeared somewhat dazed, and it was my guess he’d narrowly avoided being run over.

Tom helped the pedestrian to his feet. The man was tall, and wore a dark ski hat and coat. He leaned over the grille of a nearby pickup, coughing. I wished I knew what had happened or how badly hurt the guy might be. I looked up and down the street. A couple of inches of snow covered everything: the cars, the lawns, the houses, the pavement. Otherwise, there was no movement at all.

Blinking against the cold, I moved awkwardly toward Tom, who was now talking to the moaning man. Maybe Tom would want me to summon an ambulance or get the department car up here. But when Tom gave me a sideways glance, he held up his hand, indicating I should not come closer. I hugged my sides and waited.

The color of the pickup the pedestrian had landed on, or jumped for, was obscured by snow. On the pavement just beside the pickup sat a large, oddly shaped metal box. It looked as if the man had been holding the box when he’d been avoiding whatever vehicle had been coming down the street. So had the box skittered out of the man’s hands when he’d slammed into the truck’s hood? Maybe his load had been so heavy that he’d slipped on the ice, lunged forward, and lost his balance. But there had been that honking, the yelling.

Wait. The box on the ground was a computer. Or had been. I sure hoped whoever owned it had backed up his data.

Murmuring among themselves, Louise, Donald, and Claggs clomped quickly through the snow and down the street toward the spot where Donald had parked his black BMW. They seemed to be concerned about whether Donald’s car had been hit. Convinced the Beemer was okay, Claggs helped Louise into the backseat, then got in beside her.

Donald Ellis paused and looked back at us. Since he was standing right under a streetlight, I could see his sheaf of red hair hanging like a broom over his forehead. There was pain in his face, and perhaps some question as to what had happened. Something in the tilt of his head made me think he wanted to come back and help. But then he averted his eyes, climbed into his car, and drove away.

CHAPTER 11

It’s Vic,” Tom said as he crunched through the snow to my side. “He’s insisting on bringing that thing in himself.” Behind him, Vic had ducked down to pick up the computer. “He was bringing it over when the driver of one of those supersized SUVs almost hit him. Vic’s sure the driver saw him, too. But that’s all he can remember.”

“What?”

“Look, you’re freezing out here. Let me get Vic inside, then we’ll talk. Okay?”

I nodded and started back up the sidewalk. Then I turned. “Tom? I already have a computer. Why was he bringing me one?”

“It’s Dusty’s!” Vic’s voice as he lugged the computer to the curb was somewhere between a cough and a gasp. “Her mom didn’t want the cops to have it. She wanted you to have it.”

“Is that so?” Tom asked mildly as he helped Vic up onto the curb.

“Yeah.” Vic’s long legs were having trouble getting a purchase on the sidewalk. “She’s not thinking too great. I’m sure she didn’t mean you, Mr.—Officer Schulz. Oh God, I probably just screwed everything up.” When Tom stood him upright on the sidewalk, Vic put the computer down, leaned his head back, and took a deep breath. His exhalation came out as a cloud.

“Look, I’m okay,” he said, his voice still wobbly. “Let me bring in this computer the way I promised Mrs. Routt.”

After much shuffling and grunting, and a slip in the snow that almost spilled computer guts all over our yard, Vic manhandled the computer onto our dining-room table. He stretched his back, then wiped his hands on the seat of his jeans before running them through his curly hair. “I’m just trying to help Mrs. Routt, you know?”

A honk from outside interrupted us. It was the Vikarioses, pulling up in their Cadillac to pick up Gus and Arch. I called upstairs for the boys, who came tumbling down carrying backpacks and duffel bags.

“Thanks for dinner, Aunt G.!” Gus sang out. “Did you bring that D&D stuff, Arch?”

“Yeah, I’ve got it,” my son replied. To me he said, “Man, who was that mean lady?”

“Somebody I work for.”

Arch rolled his eyes in disgust. “And I thought school was bad.” We agreed I would call him the next afternoon. He wanted another driving lesson, he announced gaily. I held my tongue instead of saying how great that sounded (not). He told me he’d wait for my call. Before I could say I didn’t know when I would be done with Donald Ellis’s birthday party, he and Gus were gone.

Tom and Vic had passed me on their way into the kitchen. I followed them. Hot chocolate was in order, no doubt about it. Vic had brought over Dusty’s computer? I might have been tired before, but now I was wide-awake.

“Here’s the deal,” Vic said, once he had shed his cap, jacket, and boots, sipped some cocoa, and stopped shivering. “You know Mrs. Routt is not a big fan of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department.”

Tom nodded. “Are you trying to tell me this is evidence she withheld from the detectives?”

“She wants Goldy to have it.” Vic’s tone had turned stubborn.

“Goldy can see it,” Tom replied evenly. “But tomorrow morning, I’m taking it down to the department. And I’ll try to convince our guys not to arrest Mrs. Routt for withholding evidence in a homicide investigation.”

Vic’s face turned pale under his freckles. He seemed to be struggling with a response when the phone rang. I checked my watch: almost eleven. This was turning into a very long evening.

“Is Vic there?” Sally Routt asked, her voice breathless. “He never came back, and one of the neighbors just called and said somebody was hurt in the street.” She snuffled, then started to sob. “I can’t, I can’t…take any more.”

“Vic is fine, Sally,” I reassured her. “We’re just going to let him rest for a minute. Then he’ll be on his way back over.”

“I’m just jittery about everything; sorry.” She stopped and took a deep breath, as if trying to keep her composure. “Colin can’t seem to stop crying, and I’m trying to get him back to sleep. It feels as if everything is falling apart.”

“Do you want to come stay with us? It would be fine, Arch is going over to his half brother’s—”

“I just would like you to send Vic back over. I know I didn’t want to see him earlier, but now he’s being awfully nice and helpful…”

“Right. I’ll send him back.”

When I told Vic that Sally needed him, he shook his head and stood up. “Yeah, I stayed too long.” Vic’s dark eyes caught mine. “Mrs. Schulz, you look awfully tired.”

I nodded grimly. I did feel numb from exhaustion, not only because it was getting really late, but because thinking about Donald Ellis’s party was draining what little late-night energy I had managed to summon after the visit from Claggs et al. In point of fact, I wanted this particular day to end as soon as possible. Still, though, what had Vic said? I’m just trying to help Mrs. Routt, you know? No, I didn’t know. Why, all of a sudden, was Vic Zaruski trying to help Sally Routt? Were they particularly close? Or was Vic trying to stay close to the investigation for other reasons? And furthermore: as long as I was being suspicious, had Vic really almost been run down by an SUV? Or had he staged a near accident to make himself sympathetic? Hmm.

“Just a sec, Vic,” I said. “Where’d Dusty get the computer? Do you know?”

“St. Luke’s parish office. The church was getting a whole new system, so they gave that old thing to Dusty.” His face became serious again. “Anyway, Mrs. Routt thought it might be useful to you in looking into Dusty’s death.”

“I’m not an alternative to the cops, Vic. Remember what Tom said? He’s taking it down to the department. In any event, even if I could get something out of that bashed-up machine, which is a pretty big if, I’d be guilty of concealing evidence and obstruction of justice and God only knows what else, maybe material witness after the fact.”

“You can give the cops information that might lead to an arrest, Sally says,” Vic continued. “She just doesn’t want embarrassing stuff about Dusty appearing in the paper, you know. In case she was, you know—”

“Having an affair with a client of H&J? Selling drugs? Swapping sexual favors for expensive jewelry?”

Vic shrugged. “Whatever. Look, I gotta go.”

“Tom,” I said after I’d closed the door, “do you trust Vic?”

He cocked his head and gave me his patented half smile. “I don’t trust anybody until we’ve got a strong case against a suspect in custody.”

“Right. Well, in the meantime, would you be willing to have a look at Dusty’s computer?”

“In the morning, Miss G. It’ll keep. Meanwhile, you look exhausted.”

I peered into the antique gilded mirror that Tom had hung in our front hall. The light shining through the crystal drops of our small overhead chandelier—another antique find of Tom’s—cast a prism across the front hall. My dark-circled eyes, pallid face, and head of flattened blond curls did not look too good.

“Exhausted, nothing. I look like hell.” I glanced back at the kitchen. “You go on up. I’ll be with you in five minutes.”

“I need to take care of the animals first. Miss G., do not try to mess with that computer tonight. If you do, I’m going to carry you up to bed myself.”

“Yeah, yeah, tough guy,” I muttered as Tom moved quickly into the pet-care area adjoining the kitchen, where he was greeted by Jake and Scout. Instead of following him, I veered into the dining room. Fatigue or no fatigue, I was consumed with curiosity regarding Dusty’s computer.

I frowned at the big plastic-encased box with its small moss-colored screen. The thing was not just a dinosaur, it was a Tyrannosaurus rex that had fallen off a cliff. I didn’t recognize the brand, but that didn’t mean anything. Like most kids of his generation, Arch was the technological wizard of the household. And he was away, spending the night with his half brother. Since the next day was Saturday, he wouldn’t be home before Tom carted the thing off to the department. Dammit.

The plastic housing was dented and the screen scratched where Vic had slammed into the car on our curb. Probably won’t even boot, I thought as I plugged in the cord. To my surprise, when I pressed what I thought was the on button, the box started humming. But the screen remained dark. I checked the wires for a loose connection and tapped every button I could think of that might bring the thing to life, with no result.

Of course, I was desperate to know what Dusty had recorded, if anything. Perhaps she’d fingered someone she hadn’t been getting along with, even said how scared of him she was. Yeah, right. Maybe her hopes and dreams were recorded in a separate file. There might even be love letters. I imagined myself reading the inner workings of Dusty’s mind. A knot of grief formed in my chest and I rubbed my face. From the entry to the dining room, Tom cleared his throat. He held out his hand. I grasped it and followed him up to bed.

I woke during the night, not because of any noise, but because of the sudden silence. A monumental stillness blanketed our house and neighborhood. More snow, I thought. I’d been too preoccupied with disaster to check the forecast. Worse, I had an event to cater that day, a party that I’d be driving to in a van with only marginally safe radial tires. Then I remembered Dusty, and scolded myself for being upset about something as insignificant as the status of my wheels.

A sob erupted from somewhere in my gut. It took me more by surprise than it did Tom. Tom, immediately alert, pulled me in so that my back was warmed by his chest.

“It’s going to be okay, Miss G.,” he murmured. “You’re going to be all right. Everything will work out.”

I cried until I was too tired to cry anymore. Then I allowed Tom’s warmth to circle me like a mantle. Like the house, I fell into a deep hush.

When my alarm went off at five, everything outside was still quite dark. I slipped out of bed and tiptoed to a window. About four inches of new snow nestled against the ledge. Not as bad as it could have been, I thought as my eyes inevitably sought out the little Habitat house where the Routts lived. A streetlight nearby barely illuminated the place, which was shrouded in darkness. Sally would be getting up this morning without her daughter there, without her daughter ever coming back. My mind jumped to the thought of the funeral. When would it take place? Too shocked with reality, no one had spoken of it the day before. I hadn’t a clue when the coroner’s office would release Dusty’s body. It was the weekend, so things could be backed up…

Liquid concrete seemed to be pouring into my chest again, so I turned away and sat on the navy, burgundy, and cream Oriental runner Tom had placed in our bedroom for me to do my yoga every morning.

“You should not face the world if you are unable to give to the world,” André, my catering mentor, had been wont to say. No question about it, I did not feel able to face the world this morning, much less give it a thing. But I needed to go forward. I closed my eyes and prayed for Dusty and her family. Then I crossed my legs and surveyed my narrow piece of carpet. A few minutes later, I began with the cleansing breath and started to move, slowly, slowly through my asanas. Whenever thoughts raided my head, I put them aside with another cleansing breath. It helped.

Something else that would help was a major dose of caffeine, I told myself as I took a quick shower and zipped myself into a clean catering outfit of black pants and white shirt. The house felt cold as I stole down the stairs, and I tried to recall if Tom or I had remembered to turn on the heat. If either one of us had, and the heat wasn’t working, that meant there’d been a power outage because of the snow. If we’d lost power, then the espresso machine would be out of commission, and if I couldn’t have a four-shot latte before finishing up the prep for the Ellis party, I was going to have to find a tractor to drive into the house of the power company’s CEO.

And here I’d been thinking that prayer and yoga had rendered me serene. Well, there were limits.

But the power was on. In less than two minutes I’d turned on the heat in the main-floor rooms and was sitting on one of our new kitchen stools, sipping a quadruple-shot latte made with whipping cream. I slurped down some more coffee and stared at the screen of the kitchen computer. For Donald Ellis’s birthday party, I’d already made the empanadas, guacamole, and stuffed Portobello mushrooms. Now I just had to pull together salad ingredients, crush herbs to sprinkle over the beef tenderloin, and prep the ingredients for the Parmesan mashed-potato mounds. The steamed broccoli, snap peas, and pattypan squash, along with their cherry-tomato garnish, could be prepped at the Ellises’ house, and the frozen homemade sourdough rolls just needed to be thawed. And there was the Old Reliable birthday cake, which Julian had wrapped and put in the walk-in, and I only needed to frost and decorate the thing.

The other eight H&J lawyers were still in Maui, ostensibly pursuing their continuing-education courses; Georgina, the firm’s paralegal, and Marilou, the legal secretary, were taking their notes for them. And Georgina and Marilou wouldn’t have been invited to Donald’s party, in any event. So the folks from the firm would be Richard Chenault and K.D., his soon-to-be ex-wife, whom Donald had asked Nora to invite, since, Nora had said, she was “such a wonderful person.” Claggs and his wife, Ookie, would also be in attendance, Nora had told me, although she warned me that “Ookie always gets plastered at these things, so watch the wine.” Oh yeah, right, between roasting the tenderloins and heating the potato puffs, I would just dash out and check on the levels of Chardonnay and Pinot Noir. But I had said nothing as Nora had breezed on with the list of guests. Along with Nora and Donald and Nora’s father, Bishop Sutherland, there would be three other neighbor couples, “two attorneys and their wives, and a couple, the Odes, who are clients of Donald’s.” I had catered to a few of these folks, but knew none of them well…except for Michael Radford, the divorce lawyer whom Marla had hired when she’d wanted to protect her wealth from the Jerk. Michael Radford had been good at that.

Now, because that only made thirteen, Nora had asked if I knew of a single female around town who would be appropriate. I’d immediately supplied Marla’s name. Nora had barely been able to conceal a wrinkle of disgust—she knew Marla from St. Luke’s—before she drew her pretty, impish face into a smile and said that would be fine. Luckily, Marla, the self-proclaimed scourge of the country-club set, could usually be counted upon to keep one or another conversational group laughing. Or crying. But she’d liven up the party, no question. When I’d brightly told Nora this, she’d muttered, “I’ll bet.”

I removed the tenderloins from the refrigerator. Since the beef required just a short time to roast, I’d be cooking them at the Ellises’ house. I washed my hands, took out a batch of frozen homemade sourdough rolls, and started in on the potatoes. Julian had placed himself in charge of the vegetables and salad. I glanced at the clock: incredibly, it was six already. Julian had promised to be here by seven with his supplies, and he was unfailingly punctual.

While the potatoes were boiling, I pulled the sheet cake out of the freezer and placed it on the kitchen table. Nora had directed me to decorate it with something “lawyerly,” whatever that meant. But after staring at the large rectangle for a while and trying to think what she meant, I realized I should make the whole thing look like a legal pad. A frosted yellow rectangle covered with thin blue frosted lines shouldn’t be so difficult, I thought, as I softened unsalted butter and pulled out confectioners’ sugar, cream, and vanilla. Then on one of the lines I’d carefully write “No Law Against Having a Happy Birthday, Donald!” Honestly, the stuff caterers are called upon to do.

While the beaters were mixing the ingredients into a creamy mélange, I hunted up my cake-decorating tools, professional food colors, and a plastic ruler. I could only find an old one of Arch’s, so I washed it three times in the hottest water I could stand, since I didn’t want any bits of dried school glue or old chewing gum sticking to Bishop Sutherland’s, or anyone else’s, teeth. Frosting the cake itself took concentration, but it was fun, sort of like an elementary-school art project. Once it was done, I snapped a hard plastic sheet-cake cover over my creation. It wouldn’t do to get my masterpiece smashed by an errant raw tenderloin. I whacked the walk-in door fully open and carefully placed the sheet cake on a shelf.

Julian was almost due to arrive, so I drained the potatoes and started gathering the serving platters and utensils we would need. Nora’s maid was setting the table and cleaning up; Nora herself had ordered Chardonnay to go with the appetizers as well as the Pinot Noir that I had suggested be served with the beef. We would arrive at ten to set up, finish the cooking, and serve, and everything should go like clockwork.

I stared at the steaming potatoes and tried to think, but couldn’t. I fixed myself another latte and sat down at the kitchen table. Why had Dusty told me she wanted to learn to cook so she could snag a rich dude? Had she had someone in mind? Did the bracelet that I wasn’t supposed to see mean she’d found that wealthy guy? I had no idea, and my memory of Dusty seemed to mock me. Every time she’d mastered a new dish, she’d thrown back her head and laughed with such innocence that I’d found myself smiling. Now I wondered why this had amused me.

Buck up, I ordered myself. But what if Sally called today asking if I’d figured anything out? Dusty’s computer, which might or might not yield up any secrets, was worthless until someone was able to fix it, and even that was doubtful. Please find out what happened to my baby, Sally had begged me. I banged my cup down on the saucer so hard that both of them broke.

I cursed and cleaned up the mess. Then I buttered my muffin tins, mashed the potatoes and mixed in cream, seasonings, and Parmesan, and carefully scooped out smooth balls of this mixture and dropped them into individual muffin cups. So now I was done until Julian showed up. I fixed myself a plain espresso—well, those last four shots had been mixed with cream, so they hardly counted, did they?—poured it into a plastic cup, and scooted back up to my computer screen. I would open a file on Dusty and put in everything I knew so far. I’d pose a few questions, too.

Sipping the dark stuff, I typed up the names and positions of every single person who’d been working at the law firm as of Thursday night, excluding the lawyers, paralegal, and legal secretary in Hawaii: Richard Chenault. Donald Ellis. Louise Upton. Wink Calhoun. Alonzo Claggett. Had Dusty had problems with any of them that neither Wink nor I knew about? Wink had said Dusty had been working on some complicated oil-and-gas leases for Donald Ellis. But then, after Charlie Baker died, dealing with his estate had taken precedence. This work had been bumped up the totem pole because Richard was handling it, and Richard was, as Louise Upton never tired of reminding us, the boss. I wondered if Wink knew the details of either of those chunks of work.

What about clients? I knew some of them from when they facetiously requested my advice, and was occasionally introduced when I brought in drinks and comestibles. Who would know more about the clients with whom Dusty had contact? If anyone would, it would be Wink. I reminded myself to put a call in to her a bit later in the morning.

What else? Well, there was Vic Zaruski. He and Dusty had just broken up, but could he have given her the bracelet when they were going together? I was pretty sure Vic’s salary at Art, Music, and Copies could not be much above minimum wage. I also knew vaguely that Vic was trying to make it as a musician. But I doubted any of his gigs would have generated enough cash for him to purchase anything as elaborate as that bracelet.

Could Donald Ellis have given Dusty the bracelet? He was a nerd who was married, and his wife was worth a mint. He sure didn’t seem like the cheating type, but maybe he fooled around anyway. Could Richard have given the bracelet to Dusty, as a gift for her work at the firm? If so, why would it have been such a big secret?

And then there was Alonzo Claggett. He was much better looking than either Donald or Richard, and if he gambled and his wife drank, maybe he was looking for an understanding young paralegal-in-training to comfort him. And if Dusty’s beau had been Alonzo, Donald, or a married client, then that would explain why she’d felt the need to keep things secret. Or maybe she had worried about the wrath of Louise Upton, if Louise had thought totems on the pole had become involved? Then again, had Dusty been concerned about Vic getting jealous? Who knew?

What about one of the lawyers who was in Hawaii? Was any one of them partial to Dusty? Who would know? Maybe a more appropriate question would be, Who would tell me?

This wasn’t much to go on, I reflected as I slid from my seat. But it was a start. Would Alonzo, Donald, or Richard be willing to talk to me about Dusty at the party? Working at the firm, I’d learned lawyers loved to gossip more than high-school girls. Maybe they’d let me in on some inside scoop.

I glanced over at the potato puffs, which seemed to be calling me. Well, I had made plenty. I melted some butter in a small sauté pan and fried a fourth of one until it was golden brown. My mouth watered as I placed the potato puff on a plate. With the first bite, I almost swooned. The crispy exterior housed a hot, thick, cheesy interior. Talk about comfort food. Why didn’t folks have mashed potatoes for breakfast?

The phone rang. It stopped ringing before I’d finished my last bite, which irritated me no end. I certainly hoped it wasn’t Julian, informing us his Range Rover was stuck in a snowdrift.

Tom shuffled into the kitchen in his robe, a mangy gray thing that I was dying to steal and throw away when he wasn’t looking.

“That was the coroner’s office. Cause of death was lack of oxygen. Manner of death was strangulation. She fought with her attacker, but didn’t get any skin under her nails, unfortunately. The coroner’s investigating some other things, and we should know more later in the day. Looks like Dusty broke glass in one of the picture frames, or was slammed into it. Anyway, that was indeed the cause of the gash in her forehead, and all the blood.”

“Have they figured out the time of death, anything like that?”

“Whoa, Goldy, we’re lucky to have that much. They’ll establish a window for time of death when they do the full autopsy. He said they’re not too stacked up there.”

I looked out the window at the snow and tried not to think of corpses accumulated in piles.

“Did they find anything at the crime scene? Like that opal and diamond bracelet I was telling you about?”

“Nope. No bracelet. No sign of forced entry either. What’s the security like there, anyway?”

“Old-fashioned,” I replied. “Keys. Everybody had a set.”

Tom looked around the kitchen. “Well, they want me to go in and help them out. I’m going to have to take the computer.”

“Tom, please. I don’t want to get Sally Routt into trouble.”

“Gotta do my job, Miss G. And I don’t think you’d fancy being charged as a material witness.”

Oh, so that was what I was facing. I put two cups under the spouts of the espresso machine, pressed buttons, and tried to think.

“Okay, look,” I ventured. “The computer won’t boot. Could you see if you can fix it? If you can, I’ll print out everything that’s in it and look it over. I’ll see if Dusty said anything about a new boyfriend, or enemies, or rich clients, or even folks at the law firm. If I recognize any of the people she’s talking about, I can tell you. Meanwhile, if it won’t boot, you can take it and I’ll tell Sally she needs to trust law enforcement more.”

Tom raised his eyebrows. “I’ll give it an hour. The team won’t be assembled down at the department until nine.”

“Get it to work, and I’ll make your sausage-and-potato casserole for dinner tonight.”

Tom chuckled. “You make that casserole, I’ll get somebody here now to fix that machine.”

Tom moved into the dining room and began puttering with the old computer. As he grunted and complained under his breath, I assembled boxes to take over to the Ellis place. Julian called and said a Volvo had crashed into a BMW at the bottom of Marla’s driveway, and he couldn’t get out. Apparently, a tow truck was on the way. He also offered an unprintable curse on folks who didn’t know how to drive in snow. He promised to be at the house by eight. I told him it was no problem, I was running ahead of schedule.

Five minutes later, Tom hollered, “Yeah, baby!” in the excited tone he used to celebrate a Bronco touchdown. I hurried into the dining room; the computer screen was lit with a screen saver that was a picture of little Colin Routt. “One of the wires was loose,” he offered. I told him I’d checked all the connections. Tom shrugged, then double-clicked and brought up a list of documents.

“Okay, Goldy. I’m going to connect my printer to this thing so you can get all the stuff you want. It’s better than my messing with your printer, then having to hook it back up to the kitchen computer. Okay?”

“Great. I’ll get everything printed out before you leave, trust me.”

Tom reached out and pulled me in for a warm hug. “Aren’t you glad you have a husband who can fix things?”

I kissed his handsome face on both cheeks, then looked into his green eyes the color of the ocean. “I’m glad I have you. I don’t care about the fix-it part.”

“Yeah, right.” He released me and ambled off to the basement, where he kept his computer, files, and printer.

It only took about another ten minutes before Tom’s printer was connected and merrily spitting out reams of paper from the Routts’ files. There was a lot of material. Recipes. Addresses. Bills. What looked like drafts of papers and briefs Dusty had written for her first semester of paralegal training courses. There was a file marked “Journal,” but I didn’t take the time to read any of it, as I was in a hurry to finish. The journal itself was forty-odd pages long, single spaced.

“Done,” I said to Tom as he reentered the living room, freshly showered and looking snazzy in jeans, turtleneck, and a chocolate-brown wool sweater I’d given him. He glanced at the stack of pages: about four hundred. He cocked one of his sandy-colored eyebrows at me. When are you going to have time to read all that? Then he disconnected the computer and heaved it onto the kitchen table. He pulled on his boots, overcoat, and cable-knit brown wool cap, another gift from me. When he was dressed for the outdoors, he pulled me in for a long kiss that reminded me again why I was glad this particular man was my husband, fix-it genius or no.

“I’ll call you,” he said after he let go of me.

“Wait a sec. When you’re down at the department, could you ask the detectives if they picked up on anything in the romantic department for Dusty? I mean, if she was having a fling with someone who gave her that bracelet, would the lawyers or staff be duty bound to tell your guys?”

“Oh, absolutely. I’ll ask.”

A moment later he was pushing out our back door holding the computer. “You’re going to have your cell?”

“I’m putting it in my pocket right now.”

Which was what I did. No sooner had he backed carefully out of our driveway than Julian pulled into it. The Rover engine growled as Julian made short work of the snow. On the way in, he put down his bags to pat Scout and Jake. Then he picked up his loads and stamped across the deck to the back door.

“Dammit to hell and back that folks from Florida feel they have to make a trek to the farthest grocery store available to get milk when it snows!” were his first words once he’d come into the kitchen.

“And good morning to you, too, Goldy,” I said.

“Yeah, yeah.” He placed the bags on the counter and gave me his patented furious look, although I knew him well enough by now to tell it was bogus. “From now on,” he announced, his dark hair quivering, “I’m going to start filling a really big thermos with espresso and sugar before I go anywhere. Either that, or have a battery-operated coffee machine put in that car, I swear.”

“Great idea. Have some caffeine, then let’s finish up the food for this lunch.”

Julian fixed himself a quadruple espresso, which he doused with his usual numerous heaping teaspoons of sugar. I tried not to look, like on those nature channels where you really don’t want to see the alligator eat the flamingo. But it was too late.

“As long as you were running ahead of schedule and I wasn’t going to be here on time, I stopped at Aspen Meadow Café to pick up some pastries and run them over to Meg Blatchford,” he said. When Julian smiled, his entire face lit. “The oldest Episcopalian in Aspen Meadow was out in the snow, no less, practicing pitching her softball into that bucket in her yard. But there was something else.”

“Something else?”

Julian chugged his espresso and set his cup in the sink. “There wasn’t anything physically wrong with her. You know her, she’s so healthy she should be the cover girl for the AARP magazine. What I mean is that she was agitated. She said she’d like to talk to you. Said it couldn’t wait until tomorrow’s christening.”

I looked ruefully at the stack of pages I’d printed out from Dusty’s computer. A snowstorm, Julian delayed, and now the ordinarily docile Meg Blatchford needing to see me ASAP. When was I going to get to read what Dusty had put in her computer? What if Sally called demanding to know what progress I’d made?

Julian, sensing my distress, washed his hands, then began retrieving the vegetables he’d brought and running them under cold water. Over the gush from the faucet, he said, “We could make it to Meg’s, you know. If we left here at nine instead of nine-thirty. I can finish the prep while you pack the van. No, wait. I had a look at your tires the other day, and you don’t want to take the van in this snow. Let’s take the Rover.”

“Your Rover’s not approved as a food-service vehicle.”

“Yeah? There isn’t going to be any food service if we get stuck in a ditch.”

“Look…Julian?”

“Oh, boy. Here it comes.”

“I have some stuff I’m desperate to start reading before we go. Any chance you could do all the prep and pack us up?”

“Absolutely.” He grinned widely. “I’ll go really fast.”

I fixed myself another espresso with cream and carried it into the dining room. One of these days, I told myself, I’ve got to start drinking decaf.

I figured I’d begin with the journal. Dusty didn’t say at the beginning, “In the event of my death, please destroy,” but I still felt as if I was invading someone’s privacy. I told myself I was doing this for Sally. I also prayed that I’d find something helpful to the sheriff’s department investigation.

At least she had dated the entries, which I began to skim. She’d been working for the law firm since just before the beginning of the year, which was when she’d started the second semester of her second year of paralegal night classes. Almost right away, Richard had given her all kinds of work to do, including helping the artist Charlie Baker, who’d just been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, get his papers in order. But Dusty had enjoyed the work. She hated trying to find anything in Donald Ellis’s office, loved working out with Alonzo Claggett, but never thought she’d be as fit as his wife, Ookie. She also dodged Louise Upton at every opportunity.

The next few pages were devoted to talking about how she never had enough money to buy the things she wanted. She listed the things she wanted: To learn about the law, everything about it. And after that, she’d like a Porsche SUV, a place of her own, a trip to Mexico…On the sixth page, a despondent note crept in.

March 22: Charlie Baker died last night. Fell down his stairs, somebody said. It’s weird, especially after what I was called in to do the night before that. Oh, I’m so sad I can hardly write in here. How long had I been working with him, getting his stuff in order? Three months. At least he thanked me by giving me the you-know-what. Now when I look at it, I’ll always think of him. The cops asked me if Charlie was sad. You know, depressed. If you had pancreatic cancer, I asked them, wouldn’t YOU be depressed? They looked at me like I was nuts. I WISH I WAS ALLOWED TO TALK ABOUT THE OTHER THING.

The “you-know-what”? At least he thanked me by giving me…what? A bracelet? A painting? And what was the “other thing”? Was that what she’d been called in to do? Dusty was sure of what she was talking about. But it seemed to me she’d been worried someone else might be reading this. Because if someone did read it, which was, in fact, what I was doing, he or she would have to guess as to the nature of the “you-know-what” and “the other thing.”

I skimmed about ten pages, in which she talked at length about how much she disliked Miss Upton, whom she did indeed call “Miss Uptight.”

On March 27, she wrote, “Now that I know Miss Uptight is strapped for cash, I don’t have to be so scared of her anymore. It takes her power away. I wonder if she’ll know I know. Maybe I should act as if she still frightens me.”

She talked about the oil-and-gas work with Donald Ellis, which had to be “the most boring thing on earth. And here I thought studying the law and learning about it would be fun. Those great big long drawers stuffed with his maps are the most confusing things in that entire wreck of an office. Where is the map of the southern Wyoming gas deposits, he wants to know? Who has ANY IDEA? Not me.” She said she couldn’t find the missing papers and maps in Donald’s office unless she had a year and a staff of six, all professional organizers. Which she didn’t.

Richard she referred to as “King Richard,” “the Chief,” and “my screaming uncle.” She resented taking time from the “oil and gas mess” to tend to Charlie’s estate, which “just makes me feel sad.”

April 1: So now it’s my job to go over to Charlie’s and clean out the refrigerator, take the fish out of his aquarium, and dispose of his plants. It’s snowing outside! I can’t put two dozen houseplants that Charlie sprayed and watered and doted on into a trash bag and leave them to freeze out on the curb! Sometimes I think the Chief has no feelings. Correction: I know he has no feelings.

April 30: I go over there and I pick up the mail every day. I get the bank statements, the bills. Not the most entertaining work in the world. But at least I stop in to see Meg, and that’s fun.

In June, she began to mention wanting to learn to cook.

June 15: I am so bummed! I wanted to take cooking lessons at Aspen Meadow Café, but they say their kitchen is too small. I’m in love. But I’m afraid this is another Mr. O. Still, how am I going to make great meals for my new Mr.O. if I don’t know how to cook? Oh God, I’m so in love with him. I’ve never been in love like this before. One day I was normal, you know, just me. Then I was a new person. I’m just going to call him New O.

New Mr. O.? New O.? Who was that?

I quickly read the rest of the pages. There was talk of work, talk of seeing “New O.,” talk of being in love. Her last entry read: “Now I can compare them.”

Compare what?

“Julian,” I called. “Do you know all the guys Dusty was involved with?”

“I think so,” his voice echoed from the kitchen. “There was Dick—Dick Shenley, from Elk Park Prep, although I never thought they were that serious, even though they went together until Dusty got involved with Mr. Ogden. Then there was Mr. Ogden, of course, that drama teacher I told you about. You know, I think she loved Mr. Ogden. The mistake she made was that she thought Mr. Ogden would leave his wife, but he didn’t. And of course she made a huge mistake to let him get her pregnant.”

I stared at the sheet in front of me. “Anyone else with a last name beginning with O? Or a first name beginning with O, like, say…Otto?”

Julian stopped packing up our boxes for the party and came into the dining room. “Nope. There was only one Otto in our class, and he was gay.” He thought for a minute. “I don’t know any guys our age in town with a first or last name beginning with O.” He pulled out his cell. “Let me phone a friend who went to Elk Park Prep.”

Meanwhile, I put a call in to Wink Calhoun, who so far, hadn’t seemed to know very much about her best friend. After I identified myself, I asked, “Do you know of a Mr. O. whom Dusty might have been involved with?”

“Mr. O.? Um…no. Wait. Donald Ellis has a client named Rock Ode, if you can believe it. He’s gorgeous, very flirtatious, but also recently married. Dusty and I called him Rock ’n Roll.”

“Do you think Rock ’n Roll and Dusty might have had something going besides flirting and working?”

“Goldy. Rock ’n Roll’s just married a model.”

As if that answered everything, I thought, smiling. I’d catered for a fashion photographer a while back, and the models had been the least scintillating conversationalists I’d ever met. “Look,” I said, beginning to feel anxious about the upcoming party, “could you just think about it? When will I see you again?”

“I’m coming to Gus’s christening. If I think of anything, I promise to tell you.”

I gnawed at the inside of my cheek. “How about if we do it both ways. If I think of anything, I’ll call you, too.”

“Whatever you want.”

I thanked her and nipped back into the kitchen to work on the boxes. Julian, still on his cell, wrote me a note saying he’d called two friends who hadn’t gone to Elk Park Prep, but instead had graduated from Aspen Meadow High School. No O. His tone at the moment was compassionate. He scribbled, “Now I’m on with Sally Routt.”

“Just a couple of quick questions,” he murmured. “No, no, we’re just trying to clarify one thing.” Hearing this, I grabbed his note to me and wrote, “Ask her if she knows whether Charlie Baker gave Dusty something, and if so, what?” He posed the question, furrowed his brow, and waited. Then he thanked her for her help and came back out to the kitchen.

“There were four guys with first or last names beginning with O in the last three years at Elk Park Prep,” he announced. “One was the Otto I told you about. The other three were O’Meara, O’Laughlin, and Orck. O’Meara died in a car accident last year. O’Laughlin’s in the army serving in Germany. His wife and two-year-old twins are with him. And she didn’t know what happened to Orck, but she thinks he moved to California.”

I closed the flaps on the box with the cake. “Maybe this O-guy is someone she met in paralegal school.”

“That’s why I called Sally Routt. She’s never heard of anyone with a first or last name beginning with O. It took her a few minutes, but she went to check the photograph of Dusty’s first-year night class at Mile-High Paralegal Institute. No Os in there. Sally says Dusty met Vic at paralegal school. He dropped out because it was too boring, he said. So he’s trying to make it again as a musician. Also, Sally doesn’t know of a single thing that Charlie Baker gave to Dusty.”

So there’d been no one at Elk Park Prep or Aspen Meadow High School with a first or last name beginning with O. There was no one at Dusty’s paralegal school or at Hanrahan & Jule with last names beginning with O. There was only a flirtatious, wealthy, married H&J client named Rock Ode, which sounded like the title of a compact disc. Great.

But oh my, Dusty was dying to cook for this person. She was in love. Her life had started over, she was a changed woman! If Dusty had acquired a new boyfriend, especially one who was hungry for gourmet meals, and rich enough to afford an expensive jeweled bracelet, wouldn’t she have told somebody?

Maybe she was planning on telling me, and then she was killed.

Which left me with a question: Who in the world was this New O.?

CHAPTER 12

I gathered the papers together quickly, as Julian and I needed to hustle if we were going to have time to visit with Meg Blatchford. Since we were going in the Rover, and that was an SUV, another SUV thought flitted across my mind: What if I was wrong to suspect Vic had concocted the story of almost being mowed down by an SUV? After all, there had been that honking horn, and Vic did seem genuinely shaken up, and worried that the computer had been damaged. What if the person who’d killed Dusty had been watching the Routts’ house last night and had seen Vic coming out with the computer? Thinking the machine might contain incriminating information, had this watcher tried to run over Vic and his load so as to destroy any electronically stored data?

I dismissed this idea as paranoid. Then again, some folks say paranoids, like pessimists, are realists.

I pressed my fingers to my temples to forestall a headache. If such a theory was even marginally true, could that errant driver now think we had the computer? Had he seen Tom go out with it? I reminded myself to turn on the security system before Julian and I left. Then I clipped together the printed-out papers from Dusty’s computer and shoved them under the skirt of our living-room couch. Once we were out on the street, I’d see if any of the parked vehicles looked unfamiliar.

Julian had transported all but two of our boxes out to his Rover. I put on my parka and boots, and with a last heave-ho, Julian and I picked up our big cartons and pushed through the back door.

Outside, I was momentarily blinded by sunshine reflecting off the snow. Blinking, I reshifted my box and tried to bring the deck into focus, because I most decidedly did not want to catapult down the steps and send fifteen pounds of cake, frosting, plates, and candles skittering across our backyard. Each piece of our deck furniture, I saw, bore a thick white cap. I’d forgotten all about my poor geraniums; they were probably done for. Oh, well. I had bigger problems. Much bigger.

I put my box down on the picnic table and pressed the buttons to set the security system. Any intrusion would summon the security company, Tom, and Tom’s .38.

Turning toward the garage, I shifted my box again and glanced overhead. Caterers always worry about the weather: Will there be trouble getting to the event? Will people arrive late and screw up the food-serving schedule? If the driveway is slippery with snow, will either Julian or I slip and break an ankle while retrieving the boxes from the Rover? I prayed that the Ellises would have an empty bay in their garage that we could use.

Shiny white clouds sporting gray underbellies raced across the sky from west to east. As soon as a nimbus obscured the sun, the light quickly went from bright to dark. It didn’t look as if more precipitation was imminent. Still, we’d received enough snow that mud could be a problem. All around our backyard, pine and aspen trees were heavily laden with the white stuff. Explosive thumps signaled loads of snow sliding off branches and landing on the ground. In many ways, it was a typical autumn day in the high country. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”? As Arch would say, I don’t think so.

Julian and I stomped through the snow toward the Rover, which he had turned on to warm up. When I stopped to rest—I was still suffering from a sleep deficit the size of the national debt—I could hear brave song from the few remaining birds. Well, I consoled myself, at least it wasn’t winter yet. Not technically, anyway.

When Julian eased the Rover to the end of our driveway, I looked up and down the street. Unfortunately, every single vehicle bore a thick hat of snow, making the cars unrecognizable. But nothing looked suspicious, and I couldn’t imagine that any wannabe hit-and-run driver would have spent the entire nineteen-degree night parked by our curb, waiting for something to happen. At least, I hoped not.

The roads were treacherous, with a thick mixture of ice and slush plastering the pavement. As we headed up Main Street toward the lake, I was glad we were in the Rover. Furman County’s gargantuan plows had swept the snow into a mountain range of mire bordering the sidewalk through town. Shop owners, eager to entice customers driven inside by the storm, were out brushing new white hats off their jack-o’-lanterns, giant black felt spiders, and witches.

Two of the merchants had thrown in the towel on Halloween. Instead, they’d hastily festooned their storefronts with garlands of twinkling red and green lights and signs announcing the numbers of days and weeks left until Christmas, a holiday Dusty Routt would not see. I sighed. But then the SUV in front of us skidded sideways on the uphill approach to the lake. Julian, who had allowed plenty of room for such an eventuality, gently pressed the brakes.

I was tempted to holler at the SUV driver. Apparently he hadn’t heard, or didn’t care to know, what longtime Coloradans knew well: four-wheel drive helps you go in snow, but it does not help you go, much less stop, on ice.

Julian slowed to a crawl, which caused a line of impatient drivers—all from out of town, I was willing to bet—to form behind us. After we circled the lake, the road finally widened and a bevy of drivers tooted triumphantly as they zoomed past. I gritted my teeth. An obese, bearded, particularly infuriated fellow driving a Volvo flipped us the bird as he whizzed past, too closely, on the left. Since we were still going uphill, Julian stared grimly ahead and kept his snail’s pace. And then, twenty yards in front of us—oops!—the Volvo went into a wild skid across the left-hand lanes and collided with—oops!—a state patrol car hidden in the pines. The boom and crunch of crashing metal and breaking glass made the Rover shake.

“Oh my God,” said Julian, as he slowed the Rover even more. “That guy in the Volvo is so unbelievably screwed.”

“Julian!” I admonished him. “Are the two of them okay?”

He stared out his window. “Sure. The state patrolman just got out of his wrecked prowler, and he is not a happy camper. And look at that—the fat bearded guy is waddling toward him and yelling, ’cuz he’s mad the cop was in his way. Oh, man, I am so glad I’m not out there.”

“Me, too.” And then I thought of Arch, fifteen and a half and clutching his freshly minted learner’s permit. How would he have done piloting a vehicle in this mess? I immediately felt nauseous, and banished the thought. I was supposed to call him a bit later, so we could coordinate another driving lesson. I glanced at my watch and reminded myself that in teenage-boy time, half past nine in the morning was early yet. My cell was safely tucked in my pocket, as I’d promised Tom, and working out our mom–son instruction could wait until Julian and I had finished setting up at the Ellises’.

Once we were through town, Julian headed toward Flicker Ridge, where both Meg Blatchford and the Ellises lived. Flicker Ridge, an ultraposh area developed in the last decade, was also where Charlie Baker had purchased a house, once the prices for his paintings had skyrocketed. I wondered if his many-windowed mansion, perched at the top of the ridge, had been put up for sale yet. How long did it take to settle an estate, anyway? I had no idea.

Julian moved cautiously around a plow in the right lane. I pressed my lips together. Catering in a firm specializing in estate law, you’d have thought I’d have picked up lots of legal knowledge oddments, such as the period of time it took to settle the estate of a single man. But in fact, I hadn’t picked up a whole lot. Folks had their wills and revocable and irrevocable trusts, plus writs and motions and suits, and they scurried around, yelling at one another, ushering in clients, or hiding out in their offices and calling me on my cell to bring them coffee, preferably made without any of Richard’s booze mixed in. Which, of course, I was happy to do.

The one thing that I had learned, though, I thought as Julian eased the Rover around another collision, was the meaning of the word tort. A tort was any type of wrong. Fraud. Embezzlement. Theft. Something a wealthy client could get sued for. And what every attorney I knew moaned and groaned about was attempts at tort reform, meaning caps being put on the amount of money the good little guy could take from the rich bad guy. With tort reform, they all shrieked, they would all be out of business. Torts kept many a lawyer alive, but they made everyone hysterical.

I’d take the other kind of torte any day.

Julian’s voice startled me out of my reverie. “Look at how gorgeous everything looks!”

With his left hand, he was pointing at the wide field and dense evergreen forest rising on our left. The snowy meadow sparkled in the sunshine. Up in the woods bordering the flatland, every tree’s branches bore a sculpted cargo of ice. Multiplied thousands of times, the profusion of whitened branches was indeed breathtaking. At the base of the hill, several stands of tall, gray-barked aspens stood out in sharp relief. Their snow shed, the branches were still trimmed with thick bouquets of yellow leaves the color of a school bus.

“You know what they say about Aspen Meadow, don’t you?” Julian asked. “You take half your pay in scenery.”

I smiled in spite of myself. There had been much protest from town environmentalists over the building of Flicker Ridge, which was coming up on our right. The exasperated developer, now-deceased Brian Harrington, had given three thousand acres of meadow and wooded hills—largely unbuildable, cynics had pointed out—to Furman County Open Space. Brian’s critics had shut up, Brian had taken a huge tax write-off, and Aspen Meadow now had miles of hiking trails that enticed tourists all through the summer months. During the fall, winter, and spring, the Harrington Hills, as Brian had insisted they be called, attracted only the most dedicated of snowshoe enthusiasts. With each new snowfall, the hills became more impenetrable—and more stunning.

A moment later we turned through the stone entryway to Flicker Ridge. Because the homeowners here had contracted with their own snow-removal folks, the roads were better plowed than the ones in town. Julian gave the Rover some gas. On either side of us, enormous, villalike houses, gray and beige and pink, rose like ghosts above rolling expansive yards, now patchwork fields of green and white. There were no kids, no sleds, no snowball fights. It was eerie.

After a mile, Julian maneuvered the Rover around a left turn and gunned the engine toward the peak of the ridge. On a treed spread across from Charlie Baker’s many-windowed McMansion, Meg Blatchford lived in the one log residence Brian Harrington had been unable to get torn down. I could just imagine Brian going head-to-head with Meg Blatchford. Brian might have been able to handle troublesome eco-activists, but he was no match for seventy-nine-year-old Meg.

Meg’s half-mile-long driveway had been plowed, I was thankful to see, but the fact that it was shaded meant much of it was still icy. After some skidding, Julian decided to park halfway up. We could hoof it the rest of the way.

The house, which was a cabin that had been added onto on both sides by Meg’s father, was set in a thick stand of lodgepole pines, those towering, slender evergreens whose trunks, tourists were always amazed to hear, had been used for the actual poles for the lodges; hence the name. In a cleared area, Meg had set up her softball pitching-practice area. She had built a mound at one end, where she kept a covered basket of softballs. At the other edge was a wooden wall with a painted O. She had told me one time that once she had a spot to practice every day, her pitch became more deadly than ever. I was very willing to believe her.

Meg, appropriately wearing a thick gray jacket with the hood up, came out to greet us.

“Oh, look!” she exclaimed. “Julian! Goldy! You came. Oh, dear Julian, look at you, the second visit in one day. Can you come in for a quick cup of tea?”

I nodded, and we stamped the snow off our boots. I was so glad we weren’t going to have to stand outside while she did more pitching practice. Meg Blatchford, tall and athletic, with a head of white curls and a spring in her step, played on several women’s senior softball teams, and she was the star pitcher on each one. She was the most inspiring older person I’d ever met. Her wrinkled face was always tan—dermatologists be damned—because one of her teams traveled year-round, to places like Phoenix, Tucson, and Fort Lauderdale. Her brown eyes sparkled with life, and her broad-shouldered, slender frame moved more quickly than mine ever had. Far from doting on her, members of our church community were often proclaiming Meg’s latest doings: Meg’s team just took the tristate trophy. Meg won most valuable senior softball player in the state. Meg Blatchford just snagged the Denver-area Senior Female Athlete of the year! (And we’re just betting she could take out the winner of the Junior Female Athlete of the year and kick her butt!)

Julian and I followed Meg’s straight-backed, nimble step up the wide redstone steps that led to the old cabin part of her residence.

This central section had been decorated by Meg’s mother, Eugenia Blatchford. The living room’s beamed ceiling was low, which made the large room feel snug. One whole wall was made up of a massive hearth that Eugenia had painstakingly composed of layer after layer of smooth river rocks. The other walls were hung with a dozen-plus sets of elk and deer racks. Between all those horns, Eugenia had placed black-and-white photos of Blatchford ancestors posing in late-nineteenth-and early-twentieth-century Aspen Meadow, when it was first a trading post, then a lumber town. I was also surprised to see two Charlie Baker paintings, one on either side of the room. I didn’t remember that Meg had had any.

While Julian and Meg commented on how the snow had snarled traffic in Aspen Meadow, I nipped over to look at the painting to the right of the fireplace. It was titled Venison Stew. The central image was a lone deer standing in a snowy pine forest. With his usual thickly applied brushstrokes, Charlie had just caught the filtered sunlight illuminating the tawny browns, deep greens, and pearly ground. Underneath the image was Charlie’s list of stew ingredients, inscribed in gold calligraphic letters, and, typically, without directions. As in the other paintings I’d seen, the perimeter of the painting was filled with fanciful decorations. Here the images looked like little rectangular blocks embellished with squiggles. With my nose almost on the painting, I squinted and finally made out tiny sticks of butter, animated with thin legs and arms and smiley faces, marching in a merry band around the deer and the stew ingredients.

Meg settled herself in a chair near the hearth. Her two couches and four chairs were all constructed of rough-hewn logs. Each one sported horsehair cushions and was piled with Native American woven blankets in shades of rust, sand, and gray. The decorator of the H&J reception area might have thought she was evoking the Old West, but this was the real deal. I picked out a chair near Meg and sat down.

“Goldy and I have a party to do in a little while,” Julian said from the doorway. “Why don’t you let me get the tea so you all can have time to talk?” Before we could respond, Julian trod quickly across a Hopi rug of the same weave and earth tones as the room’s blankets and cushions. “Don’t worry,” he said as he disappeared around a corner. “I’ll find what I need.”

I felt suddenly awkward, sitting in this Old West living room with a woman whom I admired but did not know very well. Meg, usually so forthright, smoothed imaginary wrinkles out of her jeans and stared at the ashes in the fireplace. “I don’t know where to start, and I know you can’t stay long.” Her voice trembled. “I talked to Sally Routt this morning, and I feel so disconnected…” She pulled a tissue from where she’d tucked it into her waistband, and began to weep quietly.

“I understand,” I said softly. I felt my own throat close. Maybe coming over to this house had not been a good idea.

Meg dabbed her eyes and nose. “Sally said you were trying to help figure out what happened to her daughter. She said you’d promised to keep the police and press out of it.”

“That’s not exactly—” I began, but stopped. “Look, Meg. I am trying to help Sally. Why don’t you start by telling me why you wanted to see me.”

“Well.” Meg cleared her throat and gave me the benefit of her clear brown eyes. “You remember my neighbor Charlie Baker.”

I nodded. “We were friends. We used to cook together sometimes.”

“He was a wonderful, eccentric old coot.” She smiled, remembering, then frowned. “You know how much Charlie adored our congregation, and the feeling was mutual. He always insisted on making all the pancakes for the Shrove Tuesday supper. He relished running the luncheon café at the church during the Episcopal Church Women’s home tour.”

I tried to keep the impatience out of my voice. “We did the baked goods for the bazaar together.”

“You remember how upset he was when Father Biesbrouck died.”

“I do.”

“But never mind,” she said brusquely. “That hurt us all. When Charlie found out he was sick, he had a lot to do, you know, legally. H&J was his firm, and they sent Dusty over to work with him, to get his affairs in order. She…she came every day. What a dear girl. She would help Charlie, then she would always come over here to say hello, bring me some warm whole wheat bread or something else that Charlie had made for me. Even though he was sick, he still baked. Dusty said he claimed it made him feel as if he could live forever.” She stopped talking for a moment. “Poor Charlie. He wanted to have one last show, in March.”

“I know,” I interjected. “I did the food for it—”

She waved this away. “People came from all over, they bought Charlie’s paintings. He sat in a chair and soaked it all in. But when I drove him home, he was in a foul mood, poor thing. There’d been an accident outside the gallery, and that slowed us down…but he hardly seemed to notice it. When I left him off, he asked me if I knew of any private investigators.”

“A private investigator? To find out what?”

Julian appeared, carrying tea things. After he’d set down the tray, he said, “Do you all want me to leave?”

“No, no,” Meg said, her voice distressed. “It’s all right.” Julian poured the tea and gave me a wide-eyed look, as in What’s going on? I shook my head quickly, then took the proffered cup, which Julian announced was Darjeeling. Meg barely nodded when Julian put her cup down on a small table made of intricately twisted branches.

Meg fixed me with that gaze of hers. “I told him to try H&J. He said he had other business to do there.”

“What kind of business?” I asked.

“I don’t know, he didn’t say.” She frowned, lost in her reminiscence. “I guess he meant his will, but that’s just conjecture.”

“Uh,” Julian interjected, “I don’t want to be rude here, but Goldy and I need to think about getting over to the Ellises’ house.”

Meg stood up. “All right, then,” she announced. “I didn’t ask you to come here because of Charlie. I wanted to see you because of Dusty.” She glared at the tea things, as if they were somehow getting in the way of her story. “Could you bring your tea into my workout room? I’ll show you…what has me disconcerted.”

Julian and I glanced at each other, then picked up separate mugs. Julian doused his with sugar, and then we dutifully followed Meg down a narrow hallway and into a small log room that had bookshelves on three sides and a wall of wavy-glassed casement windows overlooking the ridge. Incongruously, a treadmill and two weight machines were placed in front of the shelves and windows.

“Used to be my father’s office,” Meg said by way of explanation. She moved over to the treadmill, which had been placed next to the bank of windows on the far side of the room. “I walk here, and run a bit, too. Do my exercises, push-ups and working with weights. Looking out the window keeps me from getting bored.”

I peeked out the window, which had a view through the pines…to Charlie Baker’s house. In profile, the house looked like the glass prow of a ship, set at anchor overlooking Flicker Ridge. From the window, one also had a good view of the iron fence around Charlie’s house, and the gate to his driveway.

“That lot was empty for many years,” Meg told us. “When Charlie became successful, he asked me if I would mind if he bought the land from the Flicker Ridge developers. I told him if I was going to have a neighbor, it was better to have him than a member of the nouveaux riches. That’s a category that you can put your friends the Ellises in, by the way.”

“They’re not my friends,” I corrected her. “They’re my clients.”

“Touché,” said Meg. “So Charlie built that monstrosity of a house. Talk about people living in glass houses. Well. When I walked on my treadmill, I would see cars, trucks, repair people, anyone coming and going from that house. I knew Dusty’s Civic by heart. Whenever I saw it, it would make me happy, because I knew she was helping Charlie, and that she’d be coming over soon with fresh, warm bread.” Meg smiled faintly at the memory.

“So,” I prompted her, “you saw something having to do with Dusty?”

Meg lifted her chin. “Dusty told me, after Charlie died, that the law firm had put her in charge of picking up his mail on her lunch hour. She said that was part of settling an estate.” She shook her head. “I suppose I was wrong to expect her to keep coming over. I mean, Charlie wasn’t there anymore, so there was no bread to bring. And a young girl’s lunch hour is only sixty minutes, after all. But…well, it just used to comfort me to see her car in Charlie’s driveway every day. All of a sudden, after Charlie died, she began to pull into his garage and put down the door. I don’t mean to sound like an old woman, because after all, I am an old woman. But I’d be over here on my treadmill, thinking, The days are getting longer, why doesn’t she park outside? And why does it take her entire lunch hour to pick up the mail? She was like clockwork, though, after Charlie died. Drive through Charlie’s gate at ten after noon, go straight into the garage—I suppose she had a remote control for that—close the garage door. Then the garage door would open at ten to one, and out would come the Civic. Don’t you think that’s odd? Does it take an hour to pick up someone’s mail?”

“Maybe she had other things to do for the law firm,” I offered. “Inventory Charlie’s stuff, that kind of thing.”

“Right,” said Meg, nodding. “That’s what I thought, because I asked a friend on one of my softball teams. Lots to do, check out bank account statements, find assets, and so on. But then…” She stopped talking.

“Then?” asked Julian, his voice betraying a hint of impatience.

“Then Tuesday night of this week, Dusty’s Civic was there. She came through the gate at about a quarter to five. Didn’t park in the garage. Ran up the steps of Charlie’s house and came out less than five minutes later. She was carrying a tube.”

“A tube like a tube of toothpaste?” Julian again.

“No, no, no,” corrected Meg. “A tube like the kind you send through the mail.”

Right, I thought, a tube like the kind you send through the mail. Or like the kind you use for a rolled-up painting.

Dusty was doing the inventory. I may not have learned much of what they did at H&J, but I certainly remembered the lawyers’ joke about the “race to the house.” That was why you had locks changed right after someone died. Dusty had told me she had received the new locks to Charlie’s house from Richard himself, who was Charlie’s executor. She’d also told me that no one was allowed to take anything out of Charlie’s house until the estate was settled, and that wasn’t going to happen until she had completed the inventory, which was extensive.

Would she have dared to take a painting? Why? If she had stolen a work of Charlie’s, how could she possibly have thought she would get away with it? I felt more confused than ever.

And what was this with the closed garage doors on her lunch hour?

“Wait,” I said, thinking of the “New O.” from Dusty’s journal. “Do you have any idea what was going on in Dusty’s life at the time? Like maybe she had a boyfriend or something?”

Meg’s face wrinkled in disgust. “She never discussed her social life with me, Goldy.”

“Okay.” Now I felt embarrassed, and covered it by taking another sip of tea. “Let’s go back to the tube. Did she say Charlie had given her something?” I pressed. “That he had left her something? A painting, maybe?”

“No,” Meg said. “And I have no idea what Dusty was doing over there on her lunch hour every day. Working on the inventory? Then why not stay longer? And working on what?” Meg paused. “I never found out any of those things because two days after Dusty came out with the tube, you found her in the law firm. Dead.”

CHAPTER 13

So: Two days before Dusty was killed, she had carried a tube—maybe the kind used to store paintings—out of Charlie Baker’s house. She’d been in love with a boyfriend nobody, not even her mother, seemed to know anything about. What else? Let’s see: When the weather had been blizzardlike, Dusty had parked her Honda in front of Charlie Baker’s house, and walked inside to do his legal work. Once Charlie had passed away, Dusty had received new keys to Charlie’s house, been assigned to inventory Charlie’s estate, and do other odd jobs such as pick up his mail every day. But by the time she’d been assigned to do all that, the weather had turned pleasant. Nevertheless, she’d driven her Civic into Charlie’s garage when she arrived…and closed the door behind her.

Goodness me, I thought grimly as Julian piloted the Rover back down to the main road that ran through Flicker Ridge, all this info was not helping to clear up anything. I sighed. Dusty Routt had been dead for over twenty-four hours, and all I’d picked up was information that seemed, at best, disconnected. Worse, I’d made no progress trying to figure out what had been going on in her life that had prompted someone to kill her.

I didn’t even want to contemplate the inevitable meeting with Sally Routt.

Once Julian was on Flicker Ridge Road, he headed the Rover toward the western edge of the development. Donald and Nora Ellis lived by Flicker Ridge’s border, on a dead end that overlooked hundreds of acres of pine forest, all part of Furman County Open Space. It was prime real estate that kids could have run and played in, but the Ellises had no children. If anything, they were a typical example of the housing reversal that had become part of the demography of Aspen Meadow, and perhaps the rest of the country. To wit: the fewer kids and the more money you had, the bigger house and yard you demanded. On our lower-middle-class street, the lots were tiny and the houses small. Yet after school every day, kids spilled out of the driveways and onto the sidewalks to kick soccer balls, throw baseballs, and toss Frisbees to their dogs. When a blizzard moved through and school was canceled, the kiddos would grab their big toboggans and slide merrily down our road, yelling “Yahoo!” all the way, until they made a sharp right turn into the last driveway before Main Street.

Then again, Nora and Donald Ellis weren’t entirely without family, as Bishop Sutherland, Nora’s father, had been living with them for almost ten months. What I had picked up from Nora was not an isn’t-this-fun-Dad’s-come-to-stay-with-us attitude. When I’d booked the party, Nora had tossed her blond hair and announced, “Yes, my father will be at Donald’s party, because he will still be living with us. That’s why I had to invite Marla, so we’d be an even number at the table. God! The sooner my father’s out of here—” She’d stopped. Then she’d laughed, as if it were all a joke. “Maybe he’ll hook up with Marla, get married, and have all kinds of money to spend on medical treatment for that damn arrhythmia! Not to mention unlimited funds for clothing, cars, trips, and anything his big old diseased heart desires.”

Well, I definitely didn’t want somebody with medical problems to hook up with my best friend, who’d already had a heart attack, thank you very much. On impulse, I put in a cell call to Wink Calhoun. Luckily, she was at home.

“Wink,” I asked casually after I’d identified myself, “do you know anything about Bishop Uriah Sutherland? I’m just wondering, because he’s my closest friend’s sort-of date for the party today, and I don’t know anything about him, apart from the fact that he’s been helping out at our parish for a while.”

Wink was uncharacteristically silent for a few minutes, and as Julian drove past the For Sale sign outside Richard and K.D. Chenault’s big stucco house, I thought we’d been disconnected. “Wink? You there?”

“Yeah,” she said tentatively. “I know a little bit about him. You mean Donald’s father-in-law, right?”

“That’s right,” I said, immediately on guard myself. She’d been forthcoming before. Why was she hesitant now? “Something wrong?”

“No. Well, not exactly. Bishop Uriah just gives me the creeps when he comes sprinting over to the office from their house, supposedly to say hi to Donald. And he’s always all covered with sweat, like he’s been in a race. Sometimes I’m afraid he’s going to collapse on our floor, and I’m going to have to do CPR.”

“You’re saying he runs over to H&J?” I’d seen Uriah running, too, along the Upper Cottonwood before the snow had moved in. But I’d learned in Med Wives 101 that folks with arrhythmia were supposed to walk. Walk slowly. Maybe it had been too many years since I’d been a med wife to know the latest thinking in the cardio department.

“Yeah,” Wink went on. “I thought one time that he was trying to get there before anyone else arrived. Once? I caught him going through our trash in back of the law firm. He said he’d lost something.”

“How could Uriah Sutherland have lost something in the firm’s garbage?”

“I don’t know. Plus, when he comes in? Even though he says he’s there to see Donald, I just always get the feeling that that’s not what he’s there for. I mean, it just feels weird. He likes to poke around, ask questions. He’s nice and all, but just…” She left the sentence unfinished.

“What kind of questions does he ask when he pokes around? Does he have legal problems?”

“If he did have legal problems, Goldy, he sure wasn’t going to tell me, the lowly receptionist. But the questions he has asked me are all stupid stuff, like, ‘How long does it take to get a will through probate, anyway?’ That kind of thing. Dusty and I would always tell him just to ask his son-in-law. We didn’t know whether he ever did. So Dusty and I used to wonder if Donald charged him.” She laughed.

“But, Wink,” I protested as Julian gave me a questioning look, “if the bishop has legal problems in addition to his medical issues, why doesn’t he pay for advice someplace else? He must be able to afford it. I mean, he doesn’t have rent to worry about, and he should be eligible for payments from the church’s pension fund.”

Wink sighed hugely, then seemed to think for a moment. “I don’t think the bishop necessarily has a lot of money. At our staff Christmas party last year, Donald Ellis got a little drunk and complained about his father-in-law. He said Bishop Sutherland had champagne tastes, but Kool-Aid income. Want to hear the dirty details?”

“I specialize in dirty details,” I replied, then put my hand over the receiver and asked Julian to pull over. He groaned, but acquiesced.

According to Wink, who’d gotten her info from the half-inebriated Donald, Bishop Uriah Sutherland had not endeared himself to his daughter any more than he had to his ex-wife, Nora’s mother, Renata. According to Wink via Donald, Renata Sutherland, a transplanted-to-Denver Connecticut socialite, had been smart—or wily, or cruel, depending on your point of view—enough to construct an elaborate prenuptial agreement before tying the knot with Uriah, who was then a priest at Renata’s Denver parish. This agreement had put all of Renata’s considerable dough into an unbreakable trust for any offspring she and Uriah might have, but not for Uriah.

Renata and Uriah’s bitter divorce, when Nora was fifteen, had left Uriah virtually destitute. He’d been forced to live on his very modest priest’s salary, in a house the parish provided. Even worse, Uriah’s daughter, Nora, had blamed her father for the divorce, and had gladly moved to Connecticut with her mother. Nora had made her yearly trips to Denver to visit her father only under duress, until she was twenty. Then she’d suddenly turned enthusiastic about coming to the Mile-High City, but not because of her dad. No: she’d wanted to escape her mother’s obsession with matching her up with the sons of her friends…and she’d begun a secret romance with Donald Ellis, then a deeply indebted student at the University of Denver Law School.

According to Donald, Uriah’s parish still loved him, even if his wife didn’t. And Uriah had endeared himself to someone else. When Uriah had been making rounds at a Denver hospital, he’d met a much-younger Charlie Baker, then suffering from shingles. A nominal Catholic since his orphan days, Charlie had been deeply grateful for Uriah’s kindness and daily visits. Charlie, then a chef at a Denver restaurant, had become an Episcopalian. When Aspen Meadow Country Club had needed someone to run their renovated kitchen, Charlie had been hired. He’d moved to our little burg, joined St. Luke’s, and done his painting on the weekends.

Uriah Sutherland’s ex-wife, meanwhile, had died, leaving an über-size packet to Nora. Nora had promptly married the fellow she loved, Donald Ellis. When Donald had graduated from law school and been offered a job at H&J, Nora and Donald had set up camp—a luxurious, mansion-size camp—in Aspen Meadow. Donald had been at H&J almost five full years, and was waiting to find out if he’d made partner. Nora definitely had enough wealthy contacts that she could bring big business to H&J, Donald had told Wink, which could label him a “rainmaker,” thus enhancing his prospects in the partner department.

In the meantime, Uriah Sutherland had been chosen as bishop of the Diocese of Southern Utah. But after only a couple of years, he began experiencing arrythmia. He had taken early retirement at the first of the year…and had promptly announced he was coming to live with his daughter, Nora, and her husband in Aspen Meadow.

“I didn’t get the feeling Nora and Donald had invited Uriah to stay, and I certainly didn’t pick up on any good feelings for the bishop.” Wink hesitated. “Is that the kind of information you were looking for?” she asked, clearly relishing her role as gossip provider.

“I don’t know what I’m looking for,” I said ruefully. “But I still think it’s interesting that Bishop Sutherland keeps poking around at H&J. Did he have any connection to Dusty? Did they get along? What about Charlie Baker? Was Uriah mentioned in Charlie’s will?”

“I have no idea. You could ask Alonzo, though. He and Dusty worked out every day, and I know they were close.” This last was delivered in a way that again sounded off-key. I decided to press my luck, even if it sounded a tad nosy.

“Wink? You and Dusty were friends. According to a couple of people I’ve talked to, Dusty and Alonzo were friends. But you and Alonzo aren’t friends. Am I getting this straight?”

She sighed. “I’m not quite cool enough, or pretty enough, for Alonzo. Nor do I quite measure up to being noticed by his squash-playing bitch of a wife, Ookie.”

“Ookie’s a bitch?” I asked innocently. “Was she a bitch to Dusty?”

“I don’t know. All I know is that when Nora Ellis invited me to play squash over at the club’s courts? Ookie came up to me and said, ‘Excuse me! These courts are for members only.’”

“What did you say?”

“Nothing! I was too surprised. Then Nora sauntered up and said, ‘Now, now, girlfriend. You know as well as I do that these courts are for members and their guests.” Wink tsked. “I think that Nora and Ookie are friendly to each other on the surface, but underneath they’re a couple of sumo wrestlers. Skinny sumo wrestlers.”

Now there’s an image, I thought. Still, all this stuff about Uriah poking around at H&J, literally and figuratively, was pretty interesting. I wondered if I’d get a chance to poke around at the Ellises’ house, maybe to see why Uriah was so interested in trash. Pretty risky, even for me.

Julian and I had to get a move on, but Wink had offered a lot of information, data that might prove useful at some point. “Just one more question,” I said. Beside me, Julian exhaled. “Where’d you get the name Wink?”

“From my father. It was a nickname. Just think, I could’ve gone through grade school with kids yelling, ‘Catch the ball, Mildred!’”

“That’s not so bad.”

“Maybe to you it isn’t.” She signed off.

As Julian began driving again, I tapped the dashboard and tried to think. Bishop Uriah Sutherland had had heart problems, I did know that. But he’d recovered sufficiently by the time he’d been in Aspen Meadow a short while to start helping out at St. Luke’s. When our rector, Father Pete, had had a heart attack—was there something about being a clergyman that induced cardiovascular illness?—Bishop Uriah had smoothly and kindly stepped in and taken over liturgical, pastoral, and administrative duties. The St. Luke’s budget had been stretched paying two salaries, it was true, but nobody wanted to deny a recovering Father Pete his income. I’d asked myself—but nobody else—why we had to pay Uriah Sutherland, too, since he lived at his daughter and son-in-law’s palatial estate in Flicker Ridge. But my wondering had seemed smug and self-righteous even to me. If Uriah had been an arrhythmia-prone caterer who’d suddenly had to go back to work, I wouldn’t have wanted to deny him pay, would I?

And now I knew what he spent money on: stuff that folks with champagne tastes always spent money on: fashionable clothes, fancy cars, extravagant vacations, jewelry…wait a second.

Was it even possible that Bishop Uriah had been “New O.” in Dusty’s diary? Had he given her the bracelet? He was old enough to be, well, almost her grandfather. But she’d already had a fling with an older man, Mr. Ogden. Was it possible?

Well, I suppose anything was possible. It just didn’t seem probable. It also was very odd that Uriah had been poking around at H&J. What had he wanted to find, or find out? Something in general or something in particular? And if he had champagne tastes, why not indulge them by getting a downtown Denver lawyer to answer his queries?

I pursed my lips, recalling what Wink had said about Bishop Uriah being an old friend of Charlie Baker’s. The bishop and I had chatted briefly at Charlie Baker’s last show in March, the night before Charlie died. That night, Uriah seemed much less of his usual charming self. In fact, he appeared downright upset, swallowing and looking from picture to picture, as if paintings of cookies and brownies were more indecipherable than quantum theory. I thought of the bishop’s arrhythmia, and of Charlie’s incurable cancer. Maybe Uriah was contemplating his friend’s coming death. When I asked if he was all right, he assured me he was fine.

Charlie Baker, his moon face shining, his body weak from failed chemotherapy, laid his hand on mine and patted it.

“Don’t worry, Uriah’s just a worrywart,” Charlie said in his soft voice that always sounded as if he had a slight lisp.

“What’s he worrying about?” I asked.

“Me, probably,” Charlie replied, his voice low and cheerless. “I’m going to die soon, and Uriah knows it. But he’s a clergyman, and he’s not allowed to show his distress the way other people are.”

“Oh, Charlie, please forgive me for being so insensitive,” I protested, feeling like a heel. “Now, what can I bring you? Some of my ginger snaps? Or how about some chips and dip, the recipe for which is none other than our favorite food artist’s?”

His gaze had been forlorn. “Oh, Goldy, I wish you’d let me leave you a painting in my will.”

“Charlie, would you quit being so morbid? I’ve already told you, I can’t afford the insurance. But you’re sweet.”

I’d wanted desperately to get Charlie’s mind off of dying, but I’d been unsuccessful.

And then, without warning, Charlie was gone, and I was awash with the grief one feels when a dear friend dies suddenly, and you’re left with all the things you didn’t say. You’re such a great friend, Charlie. This is the best dip I’ve ever tasted. The next time we cook together, we’ll make your chicken piccata…

Don’t, I reprimanded myself, as Julian slowed the Rover. Charlie had been more than a friend, he’d been a culinary comrade-in-arms. I swallowed and told myself to snap out of it. Caterer’s rule for parties: Let the mood fit the food. It was time to act festive, even if I didn’t feel it.

“What are you thinking about?” Julian asked. “You don’t look so hot.”

“I’m fine, thanks. I’m just concentrating,” I reassured him as he turned onto Woods’ End, the cul-de-sac where the Ellises’ manse was located. I certainly did not want to depress Julian by talking about Charlie. Then we’d both be down, and that was not what we needed before doing a big—and, if Nora Ellis was generous with gratuities, potentially quite profitable—party.

The Ellises’ enormous stucco residence sat on the top of a gentle slope that received enough southern exposure for the sun to have melted most of the snow on their front yard. Between the remaining patches of white, the grass was lushly green, even in October. The perfectly trimmed aspens, plethora of fruit trees, and long serpentine rock wall topped with stunning shrubs all screamed Professional Landscaping Service. The house itself, which was at least twice the size of the Chenaults’ mansion, boasted numerous jutting spaces capped with red tile roofs. There was a massive, three-story entrance. The whole place looked as if six Taco Bells had been used as building blocks: four on the bottom, two on top.

“We should have brought burritos,” Julian mused as the Rover crunched over some residual melting ice on the long driveway. When he’d pulled the Rover halfway up the driveway, he craned his neck back to check out the underside of one of the tile roofs. “I didn’t know lawyers made this much money. Isn’t Donald Ellis just an associate at H&J? Not a partner, right?”

“Not yet,” I replied. “But Nora’s the one with the dough, as she told me at least fifteen times when she was booking this event. She inherited twenty million from her mother. And if we do a great job today, maybe some of that dinero will come our way. Are you up for it?”

Julian gave me a high five and pushed open his door. We were still a ways from the arched entrance to the kitchen, which boasted a new carved sign over the lintel: “Welcome to Our Cucina!” it screamed. Cute, very cute. I wondered if Donald Ellis had received it as an early birthday present.

A shout from the end of the driveway interrupted my musings.

“Hey, you two!” came Marla’s voice. “Wait up, okay? I’ve got something to tell you!”

“Hey, Marla!” Julian and I called back in unison. I was happy to see her, but puzzled. It was not quite ten. The party was not set to start until one. Was Marla’s news so compelling that she couldn’t even wait an extra couple of hours?

“Anyway, I thought you might want some company,” she called, in answer to our unspoken question. “Maybe some help, too!” she added. Carefully carrying a stringed shopping bag, she was stomping up the driveway in a politically incorrect mink coat and even less correct mink-trimmed black Italian leather boots. I could only imagine what kind of Halloween-colored outfit she would be wearing. Whatever clothes she wore, they were sure to be made of silk, fur, or something else highly destructible, and there was no way I was letting her near the butter, wines, lemon vinaigrette, or any other of the food necessary for today’s lunch prep. Still, Marla’s aid was usually of the emotional variety, anyway.

“Hello?” said an accented voice from the hacienda doorway. It was a heavy, older woman with short gray hair and an easy smile. Judging by her black uniform with its white apron, she was the maid. I hadn’t met her the last time I was here. She introduced herself as Lorraine, and said she worked for Mrs. Ellis. She was here to help, she told me. And Miss Upton would be here shortly. Miss Upton would be helping, too.

“Oh, marvelous!” I replied, trying to sound enthusiastic instead of sarcastic.

“One thing, though,” Lorraine said, indicating the Rover. “Won’t your work be easier if you pull your SUV into the garage, close to the kitchen? Then you could open the back?”

“Sure, that would be great. Thanks.” As Julian traipsed through the ice back to the Rover, I noticed that one of the Ellises’ BMWs was parked out on Woods’ End. Had that been intentional, too? So that people driving up could see how rich the Ellises were? Somehow, I thought so.

Julian moved the Rover into the end spot of the four-car garage. We shouldered our first loads. Marla, chatting merrily about how snow seemed to melt faster in some parts of town than others, trailed along behind us. I gritted my teeth and told myself to be upbeat.

The kitchen, which I had scoped out on my earlier visit, was a huge, high-ceilinged, light-filled space that featured a rosy, wide-paneled oak floor, expanses of black-and-silver granite, two bay windows, and long lines of gleaming cherrywood cabinets. The Ellises, or Nora anyway, had spared no expense on two top-of-the-line ovens and a six-burner stovetop. I heaved my first box on the granite-topped center island that was the size of a small barge. I also wondered for the umpteenth time why people who had money for big kitchens almost never actually cooked in them.

“Gosh,” Marla trilled as she followed me inside, “I feel as if I’m in a naked centerfold for House & Garden!” She placed her enormous gift bag on the island and shrugged her mink coat into Lorraine’s waiting hands. Sure enough, Marla’s Halloween-appropriate attire was a pale orange silk dress trimmed in horizontal strips of black silk fringe. It looked great on her, complementing her brown-blond hair and twinkling, diamond-crusted barrettes. But it would look awful splashed with vinaigrette before the party even began.