Double Shot

DOUBLE

SHOT

Diane Mott Davidson

TO JASMINE CRESSWELL

A brilliant writer and unfailing friend

But if any one has caused pain, he has caused it not to me, but in some measure…to you all.

—II Corinthians 2:5, RSV

If you sit by the river long enough, the bodies of all your enemies will float by.

—Chinese proverb

Prologue

You think you know people.

You see a snapshot from the old days—from fifteen, sixteen years ago. The memories swim up. You think, Ah yes, those people from long ago. There were folks who were kind. Some who weren’t. And then there were some you barely knew. You stare at the photograph. Do I really remember these people?

Define remember.

Then you hear about a sacrificial gift, a private kindness pitched your way. Oddly, the gift was given so you’d be kept in the dark. Is it always helpful to be the recipient of good deeds?

Define good.

Say the snapshot does not reveal another reality—a hidden darkness, a nefariousness. A sin, as we Sunday-school teachers say. At the time of the photograph, a bullet was fired from far away. Not a real bullet, mind you, but a metaphorical one. An evil was done; a cruelty committed; a line crossed over. But it was hushed up. Denied. Forgotten.

Define forgotten.

Because, see, some people never forget.

They’re called victims.

Celebration of the Life of Albert Kerr, M.D.

THE ROUNDHOUSE

TUESDAY, JUNE THE 7TH

TWELVE O’CLOCK NOON

Chilled Asparagus Soup

Radiatore Pasta Salad

Arugula, Watercress, and Hearts of Palm Salad, Champagne Vinaigrette

Herb-Crusted Grilled and Chilled Salmon

Potatoes Anna

Spinach Soufflé

Mini-baguettes

Tennessee Chess Tartlets

Fresh Peach Pies

Homemade Vanilla Bean Ice Cream

1

It’s a funny thing about being hit in the head. Afterward, you’re never quite sure what happened. You only know that something did.

At five in the morning on June the seventh, I was pushing my dessert-laden old pie wagon up the walk to the Roundhouse, a failed restaurant I’d leased and was converting into a catering-events center.

At half-past five, I was lying in the grass, wondering what I was doing there and why I was in so much pain.

Reconstruct, I ordered myself, as I wiped gravel from my mouth. I hadn’t fainted. But I had been knocked out. My head throbbed, my knees stung, and the back of my neck felt as if it had been guillotined with a dull blade. I groaned, tried to move my legs, and was rewarded with a wave of nausea. I rubbed my eyes and tried to think, but the memory remained out of reach.

My husband, a cop, often tells witnesses to begin their story at daybreak on the day they see a crime. This gives folks a chance to talk about how normal everything was before events went haywire.

So that’s what I did.

I closed my eyes and recalled rising at four, when mountain chickadees, Steller’s jays, and all manner of avian creatures begin their summer-in-the-Rockies concert. I showered, did my yoga, and kissed Tom, to whom I’d been married for two years, good-bye. He mumbled that he’d be in his office at the sheriff’s department later in the day.

When I checked on my son, Arch, he was slumbering deeply inside his cocoon of dark blue sheets. I knew Arch would wait until the last possible moment before getting dressed to assist with that day’s catered event. But at least he was helping out, which was more than most fifteen-year-olds would be willing to do at the start of summer vacation. I loaded the last of the event’s foodstuffs into my catering van, made the short drive up Aspen Meadow’s Main Street, and rounded the lake. A quarter mile along Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive, I turned into the paved Roundhouse lot, where I’d parked and unloaded.

So far so good. I remembered merrily wheeling my cart up the gravel path toward the back door of my newly remodeled commercial kitchen. Peach pie slices glistened between lattices of flaky crust. A hundred smooth, golden, Tennessee chess tartlets bobbled in their packing. Threads of early morning sunlight shimmered on the surface of Aspen Meadow Lake, two hundred yards away. In the distance, a flock of ducks took off from the lake, quacking, flapping their wings, and ruffling the water.

Recalling all this made the area behind my eyes sting. But when I tried to turn over, pain ran up my side and I gasped. The desserts, the lake, the ducks. Then what?

As I’d steered the wagon toward the ramp to the back entry, I’d noticed something odd about the Roundhouse kitchen door. It was slightly ajar.

A thread of fear had raced up my neck. My body turned cold and I stopped the cart, whose creaky wheels had been filling the morning silence. A thump echoed from out of the kitchen. Then a crack. As I reeled back on the path, someone leaped out of the kitchen door.

A man? A woman? Whoever it was wore a black top, black pants, and a ski mask. The intruder lunged down the ramp. Wrenching the pie wagon backward, I teetered, then backpedaled furiously. He—was it a man?—shoved the cart out of the way. It toppled over. Pastries spewed onto the grass. The prowler loomed, then hand-chopped the back of my neck. The force of the blow made me cry out.

With silver spots clouding my eyes, I’d registered crumpling, then falling. I’d bitten my tongue and tasted blood. Then there had been the terrible pain, and the darkness.

Okay, so that was what had happened. But why had someone wearing a mask been in my kitchen in the first place? I did not know. What I did know was that lumps of granite and sharp blades of drought-ravaged scrub grass were piercing my chest. Again I tried to lift myself, but a current of pain ran down my body. When I thought, You have an event to cater in six hours, tears popped out of my eyes. Who could have done this to me? Why today, of all days? My business, Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!, was set to put on only our second event since I’d leased the Roundhouse. It was a big lunch following a funeral—a funeral that might as well have been mine.

Water burbled nearby: Cottonwood Creek, a foot below its normal flow. A car rumbled past—the beginning of the morning commuter traffic from the stone and stucco mini-mansions that ranged along the upper part of the creek. Positioned as I was on the far side of the Roundhouse, it was unlikely that any of the lawyers, accountants, or doctors making their way down to Denver would see me and call for help. With enormous effort, I pushed up to my elbows, fought queasiness, and got to my feet. The overturned pie cart lay a few feet away. Crusts and fruit slices littered the sparse grass. Tart-let filling oozed into the dust.

I almost thought, Peachy!, but stopped myself.

I limped to the van and climbed inside. Then I locked the doors, opened the glove compartment, and pulled out the thirty-eight I’d started keeping in there since the twenty-second of April. That was when my ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, had had his prison sentence commuted by the governor of Colorado.

He had been serving four years for aggravated assault and probation violation. Although he’d beaten me up plenty of times before I’d kicked him out seven years ago, the assault he’d been convicted for—finally—had been his attack on a subsequent girlfriend. Unfortunately, he’d been behind bars for less than a year.

I sighed and peered through the windshield, alert to any movement that might indicate a prowler. Could John Richard Korman have done this? For the Jerk, which was what his other ex-wife and I called him, nothing was impossible. Still, this attack was a departure from his usual MO, which meant letting you know in no uncertain terms that he was the one with the power. Besides, he was coming to the funeral, since he’d worked with the doctor who’d passed away. The doc’s widow had apologetically asked if that was all right. I’d said yes. In front of others, the Jerk was unfailingly charming. It was when he got you alone that you had to worry.

With the ominous gray weapon lying on the dashboard, I assessed myself. In the physical department, it no longer hurt to breathe. My neck ached, my knees were bleeding, and my support hose—I called them “the caterer’s friend”—were ruined. Still, I no longer felt dizzy or disoriented, and my Med Wives 101 knowledge assured me I hadn’t had a concussion. I opened my trusty first-aid kit with one hand and pressed the automatic dial for Tom’s cell with the other. He must have been out of range, so I left him a message. I then pressed the numbers of the sheriff’s department.

Tom wasn’t at his desk yet, either. I gave another brief account to his voice mail, then toggled over to the department’s operator and explained what had happened. Yes, I needed a patrol car to come up. No, I did not feel I was in any immediate danger. No, I did not think anyone was still in the Roundhouse, and no, I did not know what this attacker was doing in the kitchen or if my business had sustained any damage. Did I have any idea who this prowler was? she asked.

“Not really,” I answered truthfully. “You’ve got files on my ex-husband. But he’s never gone to the trouble of wearing a mask. I have competitors, but most of them are in Denver.” I took a deep breath, eager to be off the phone.

The operator assured me an officer would be up within forty-five minutes. Was that all right? she wanted to know. I told her the sooner the better. I had work to do.

I opened a bottle of water, took four ibuprofen, and had the comforting thought that my body did not hurt as much as it would in a few hours. I wrenched off the torn stockings, dabbed blood from my knees, and smeared on antiseptic. Once I’d smoothed a pair of large bandages into place, I winced as I slipped on a new pair of hose. Then I changed into a clean catering uniform—black pants, white shirt—and checked my watch. Just past six. Time to hustle.

First things first. I’d done the right thing by calling the cops. But I was determined to follow through with the funeral lunch. Nevertheless, with the tartlets and pies ruined, we would need a new dessert.

I put away the first-aid kit and punched in more numbers, this time for Marla Korman, the Jerk’s other ex-wife and my best friend. I was still keeping a close eye on the Roundhouse—in case anyone was lurking about or my prowler decided to return.

Marla’s phone rang ten times before I got her machine. I tried two more times and again was connected to her recorded voice. I knew she was home. She just wasn’t picking up, which figured at six o’clock in the morning. Resigned, I kept calling until the phone was whacked off its cradle and I heard distant groaning.

“This better be good,” Marla announced, her voice even huskier than usual.

“It’s me. I need you to come to the Roundhouse. Please.”

“It’s not even…the Roundhouse? Goldy? They don’t even serve coffee!” She yawned. “Oh, yeah, you took over there. Hold on.” Shuffling noises engulfed the receiver, and I could imagine ultrawealthy Marla rearranging her Delft-blue chintz-covered comforter and mound of feather pillows on her cherry four-poster bed.

“I’m sorry to call so early.” Tears again slid out of my eyes, but I whacked them away. “I…can’t reach Tom. Something bad has happened.”

“What’s the matter?” Marla’s suddenly sharp voice demanded.

“I’ve been hit. Attacked. I didn’t see who it was.”

“You have to call 911.”

“I did. A sheriff’s car is en route. Tom’s not at his desk, and whoever did this is gone. Could you please come over here, Marla? And I’d appreciate it if you could bring those cakes I made for your garden-club splinter-group bake sale. My dessert for the Kerr reception was wrecked.”

“You’ve been beaten up and you want me to bring you some cakes, for God’s sake?”

“Yes, please.”

Marla cursed, said she’d be right over, and hung up.

Runners and walkers were beginning their morning circuit of the lake. On the far side of the water, a few kids with rods and reels had started casting for lake trout and tiger muskies. It had been almost an hour since I’d been knocked out, and there’d been no sign of the marauder coming back to finish me off.

Only slightly reassured, I hobbled from the van back to where I’d been hit. Unfortunately, there were no telltale shoe prints or conveniently dropped clues as to the identity of my attacker. I glanced at the broken back door. There was no way I was going inside without Marla. Still, I had sixty guests arriving in just five and a half hours, and the mess outside had to be cleaned up. Moving cautiously, I set the cart upright, loaded it with broken crusts and pieces of peach, and transported the debris to the Dumpster at the edge of the lot.

Fifteen minutes later, horn blaring, auxiliary lights flashing, Marla roared into the parking lot. Hefting a large canvas bag, she lunged from her new gold Mercedes sedan.

“You know he did this,” she cried when she caught up with me.

“Let’s talk in the van.”

She flung her sack onto the passenger-side floor, then climbed in beside me. Voluptuously pretty, she wore a hot-pink silk caftan shot through with gold. Gleaming barrettes of pink diamonds and tiny cultured pearls held her brown curls in place. She looked like a sunrise.

I said, “You didn’t put any of my chocolate cakes in that bag, did you?”

“Don’t start. They’re in my trunk.” Marla dug into the bag. “Here, have this.” She handed me one of her special drinks, a Mason jar filled with ice cubes, espresso, and whipping cream. I thought of it as “Heart Attack on the Rocks,” but took it gratefully.

Marla snarled, “I’m sure this was the work of el Jerk-o. The governor might as well have said, ‘Get out of jail free! Go be naughty, we don’t care.’ ”

“I don’t know who it was, I just know that I hurt.” I sipped the luscious, creamy drink. “This is from heaven, though. Thanks.”

“I’d still like to know where our ex was this morning.”

I was back to peering out the windshield. “How about, rolling around in bed with Sandee Blue?”

“Girlfriend almost half his age,” Marla shot back. “It’s a wonder he didn’t have a heart attack, instead of me. Actually, that’s not a bad idea. I can see Cecelia’s headline now: ‘What Prominent Local Doctor, a Convicted Felon, Died of Coronary Arrest While Bonking His Fifty-fourth Conquest?’ ”

I smiled. Cecelia Brisbane was our town’s ruthless gossip columnist. In Aspen Meadow, Cecelia’s weekly feature in the Mountain Journal was more feared, and more quickly devoured, than any national tabloid.

“Wait a minute,” Marla said. “How about ‘Fart’s Heart Departs’?”

“Too obscure. And what makes you so sure Sandee was his fifty-fourth?” Marla’s hobby of obsessively tracking John Richard’s girlfriends, finances, and legal troubles gave her life meaning.

“Put it this way, I’m fairly certain Sandee’s fifty-four. Courtney MacEwan was fifty-three. Ruby Drake was fifty-two. And then there was Val,” she mused, “fifty-one. You don’t suppose one of his old flames could have attacked you, do you?”

I shrugged. “A slightly plump, mid-thirties ex-wife, with a fifteen-year-old son and a husband who’s a cop? Doesn’t sound like a target to me.”

“Maybe, maybe not. But there’s something else I’d like to know. Now that the Jerk is out of jail, where do you think he’s getting his money? You can’t keep a young girlfriend and rent a house in the country club area on your good looks.” She eyed me. “Speaking of appearance, you look like hell. No doubt about it, Goldy needs a chocolate-filled croissant.” She burrowed back in her bag.

I declined the croissant and slugged down the last of the latte. “Listen, could you help me set up? I don’t want to be alone in the Roundhouse.”

“Absolutely. But bring the gun.” She pushed open the passenger door and yelled, “If you’re in Goldy’s kitchen, she’ll shoot you in the nuts!”

“I don’t want to bring the gun.”

She gave me a wicked look. “If the Jerk’s in there, you could pop him off.”

“Not funny.”

“Then give the gun to me. I’ll protect us.”

“Forget it.”

“Goldy, if you don’t take that weapon, and then the cops arrive, they’ll say, ‘What the hell were you doing going into that place unarmed?’ ”

I sighed, handed Marla the entrance key—I thought the cops might want to photograph the kitchen door—and got out of the van. Then I snagged the thirty-eight and pointed it down, safety on, as we approached the Roundhouse’s French doors. But another nasty surprise awaited us.

“Oh my God!” Marla cried after she’d pulled the key out of the lock and opened the doors.

My heart plummeted as I reeled back.

The smell of spoiled food was horrific. I thought, I’m doomed.

2

It’s a body,” Marla whispered. “The killer hit you so you couldn’t witness anything.”

“It’s spoiled food,” I corrected her. I limped inside, still aiming the gun at the floor. The putrid stench turned my stomach. Not meaning to, I took a deep breath. The smell filled my nostrils and I coughed. I panted—anything to avoid using the olfactory gland.

Delicately holding her nose, Marla followed me into the Roundhouse dining room. The place had never served as an actual train roundhouse, but was merely a fifty-year-old hexagonal building constructed of dark-stained pine logs. With a massive stone fire-place at its center, the dining room resembled a giant wooden teepee. The irony was that I’d been looking forward to the Roundhouse’s early morning aroma, where smoke from thousands of barbecued steaks still lingered in the log walls.

“What do you want to do?” Marla asked, her voice nasal.

“Check everything in the kitchen,” I replied. “Trash—every container. Refrigerators.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. “With a simple assault and vandalism, there’s no way the cops will do prints and all that. Let’s go around to the side. Whoever attacked me came out that way, and probably broke in there, too.”

“Just make sure you’ve got hold of that gun,” Marla ordered.

“That’s the last thing we’re going to need.” My mind seized on the funeral lunch. “What we’re going to need is more food. And quick.”

Our footsteps echoed on the wooden deck as we made our slow way around to the side of the old restaurant. My back still ached and my knees hurt. The sight of the wooden ramp that my attacker had raced down gave me gooseflesh.

A hundred yards away, the sun had risen higher, and Aspen Meadow Lake was a field of sparkles. When I’d signed the lease on the Roundhouse at the end of April, the large deck and magnificent view of the water had been selling points. In Colorado, people want to hold events both inside and outside, and any catering center that doesn’t offer both is sunk. I shook my head, remembering my early enthusiasm for the Roundhouse. While reconfiguring the place for catered affairs, I’d come to wish the lake was full of cold cash instead of chilly snowmelt. But it was still a nice view. Calming. And calm was what I needed at the moment.

When we arrived at the back door, the reek was even more intense. I peered at the spot where the lock had been forced. Splinters littered the deck and the kitchen floor. Yellow wood showed where the hinge had been torn off from the paneling around it. Carefully, Marla and I tiptoed inside. She flipped on the lights—no power outage, anyway—and the spacious, newly painted kitchen popped into view. To my surprise, the place was completely clean.

“Stop. Take the safety off,” Marla whispered. “I hear something.”

Oh, man, I knew we should have waited in the car. Marla pointed to a paper grocery bag on the far side of the floor. With its flap rolled tight, the contents lay shrouded in darkness. But was it…moving?

“Stay put,” I ordered, then advanced, thirty-eight raised, across the kitchen.

Without warning, the bag shuddered open and a dozen mice raced out. Startled, I accidentally shot off the damn gun.

Marla shrieked and ran outside. The rodents scattered. I cursed, eased the safety back on the thirty-eight, and placed it on the counter. Now the place really stank, with gunsmoke in addition to the stench of garbage. And probably a neighbor would call the cops. Maybe that would get them up here quicker, I thought as I pulled over some folding chairs to prop open the wrecked door. If my attacker had planted more mice, we needed to provide an easy exit for the furry little creatures. Plus, I was desperate to air out the place.

“Stop that!” Marla snapped from the deck. “You need to get the cops to get clues from the door.”

“They won’t have time for that, trust me.”

The ibuprofen was kicking in and I could move a bit more easily as I limped back over to the bag, now empty. I didn’t want to ponder how much a fumigator was going to cost. Oh, hell, I thought as I looked ruefully at the bullet hole in my new kitchen floor. Add on to that the price of oak-floor repair.

I took what they call in yoga a cleansing breath. If you’re smelling something putrid, does the breath still cleanse? I didn’t think so. Focus, I told myself. Marla, whom I always depended on to be brave and helpful, was blubbering on the deck.

First I had to find the spoiled food. I began to check the trash containers. Every one of them was empty.

“Why didn’t you shoot them?” Marla wailed. “You had the gun, for God’s sake, why didn’t you keep firing? Oh my God, mice! Maybe they were rats,” and so on.

I stared at the two commercial refrigerators I’d installed in the kitchen. They were walk-ins I’d bought at a restaurant auction. The previous evening, I’d placed eleven hundred dollars’ worth of grilled and chilled herb-crusted salmon, potatoes Anna, radiatore pasta salad, and spinach soufflé mixture into them. The food cart had contained the now-wrecked desserts. When Julian Teller, my longtime assistant, drove over from Boulder, he was bringing a vat of his luscious cream of asparagus soup. Liz Fury, a forty-two-year-old single mom who was my other helper, was visiting an early-bird farmers’ market to pick up fresh arugula and watercress for the salad. These she would toss with delicately marinated hearts of palm and her own champagne vinaigrette.

Slowly, I opened first one, then the other refrigerator door.

I lurched away from the blast of hot, putrid air. A second later I was taking shallow breaths through my mouth and peering inside.

The refrigerator interiors were warm and dark. They stank of rotten food. I knew the math of spoilage; every caterer did. For every hour foods with mayonnaise and other perishable substances are at a temperature above sixty-five degrees, the toxins multiply exponentially. My attacker couldn’t just have shown up this morning and wrecked this food. So what was going on?

I moved outside as quickly as my battered body would allow. Marla was still sniveling on the deck. I checked the compressors. Someone had thrown the safety switches on both of them. I howled and pushed them into place, then hobbled back inside.

The refrigerators had hummed to life. I pulled open the doors, then stared inside. I couldn’t comprehend what I was seeing.

The bowls, vats, and trays of salmon, potatoes, pasta, and spinach reeked of putrescence. So the guy, or whoever it was, had thrown the compressors last night, to guarantee that the food would be wrecked? And then he’d broken in this morning to plant some mice? Had he done anything else?

I saw the answer in a line of small, dead trout strung across the shelves of one refrigerator. On the base of the other walk-in, another paper bag seemed to be wriggling…oh God.

About six mice—fewer than in the other bag, anyway—scampered out. I jumped from one foot to the other, which made my body scream with pain.

“More mice coming!” I hollered at Marla.

“Will you shoot that damn gun?” she shrieked from the far side of the deck.

“Not again,” I called back. I limped back to my van and stowed the thirty-eight in my glove compartment.

This was not, as it turned out, one of my better ideas.

Within ten minutes, I’d rustled up both Liz and Julian on their cells. I said I needed a ton of d-Con, at least a dozen mousetraps, and a carload of air fresheners.

“Okay, boss,” Julian agreed. The kid was calmer than any twenty-one-year-old I’d ever known. “But what’re you going to do for food?”

“Assiettes de charcuterie,” I said decisively. “Plates of chilled imported salami, Westphalian ham, and Port Salut cheese. And some lovely fresh rolls. Can you find an open delicatessen in Boulder? And a bakery?”

“No prob.”

“Plus, I’ll need a load of unsalted butter and…jars of gherkins, if you can manage it. With your soup, Liz’s salad, and the garden-club cakes, we ought to be in good shape.”

“The garden-club cakes?”

“Flourless chocolate. Marla ordered them to sell for her splinter group’s bake sale. But they’re not going to get them.”

“Goldy, what’re you going to do if Roger Mannis shows up?”

“Oh, God help us.”

Roger Mannis was the new district health inspector, assigned to make life difficult for yours truly and other caterers in our part of the county. The guy was a nightmare, Uriah Heep meets Jack the Ripper, with a Ph.D. in biology, to boot. He’d shown up—unannounced, as was his prerogative—at our very first event in the Roundhouse. I’d been serving tea, sandwiches, petits fours, and sliced fruit out on the deck. Unfortunately, the garden-club ladies had been acting anything but ladylike in their fight over a town tree-planting campaign. Roger Mannis—thirtyish, tall, and dark-haired, with deep-set eyes and a chin that could have sliced a pork loin—had started writing up every infraction he could find. He shook his head at the landscaping over my new plumbing lines. He stuck his little thermometer into the fruit salad and found it insufficiently chilled. He claimed to have detected insect remains on the floor of the deck. Julian and I knew to beg pardon and act obsequious, especially since we needed to calm the enemy armies of the garden club, who’d been on the verge of a fruit fight.

My dear Liz Fury, however, had been a bit more flippant. Tossing her silver-white hair and thrusting a long finger in Roger Mannis’s face, she’d told him that the staff of Goldilocks’ Catering abided by all hygiene rules. She announced, moreover, that Roger was being an ass. Distracted, the garden-club ladies had begun to titter. Liz hollered that Roger could get that ass, his ass, away from the Roundhouse immediately. Otherwise, she’d call his supervisor, her uncle Ozzie, who also happened to be the Furman County Health Inspector, and have him canned. “So to speak!” cried one of the women, and the entire garden club had snickered.

Roger Mannis had responded by narrowing his pupils, bottomless dark caverns that made most caterers’ innards quake. His sharp chin had quivered as he’d stepped toward me and hovered ominously, clutching his clipboard. He’d been so close I could smell his aftershave. I’d actually cowered. Then Roger Mannis had turned on his heel and left.

Unfortunately, someone had been sitting right next to where I was standing during the whole interchange with Mannis. The wrong someone, as it turned out: Cecelia Brisbane, that most ruthless of gossip columnists, had been peering through her thick, cloudy glasses as she tried to cover the garden-club meeting. I heard later that she’d been hoping for hot items on the tree-planting conflict. Instead, Cecelia had mercilessly skewered me, the event, and the district health inspector. During what recent get-together was a county official with a chainsaw chin, muskrat eyes, and clothes resembling a nuclear-bomb inspector told off by our town’s caterer?

There was no point calling the Mountain Journal office and complaining. I’d tried that once and it hadn’t worked. I just didn’t want to think about it.

So…now, in answer to Julian’s question: What was I going to do if Roger Mannis made an unexpected visit to this catered event…and saw all this spoiled food? I didn’t want to contemplate that, either.

“Goldy, are you all right?” Julian asked, startling me.

“Sure. Thanks for reminding me about the dear inspector,” I replied into the phone. “Let me see if Marla can waylay him.”

While Marla and I dumped the vats of slimy pasta, stinking salmon, and putrid spinach into plastic bags, I tried to think of a way to bring up the Mannis predicament. The apparent disappearance of the mice had soothed Marla’s nerves somewhat. Plus, she’d been eager to speculate about who could have done all this damage—although her considerable moneybags were still placed on the Jerk.

“He threatened you from prison,” she asserted as she lugged a trash bag to the Dumpster. “To your face and behind your back. To Arch, to his lawyer, to anyone who would listen. He read the Denver Post and the Rocky Mountain News every day, and when some guy got off for beating or killing his wife, he mailed the article to you, Goldy. For God’s sake!” She paused at the far end of the parking lot. “I suppose he’s making an appearance at the lunch?”

“Holly Kerr invited him,” I replied. “You remember Holly, don’t you? Albert’s wife, now widow? She wanted to include all the old gang from Southwest Hospital.” I grunted as I heaved my bag over the lip of the Dumpster.

Marla groaned and clumsily tipped in her sack. I frowned. Her beautiful pink-and-gold silk dress was stained with sweat and spotted with spoiled food. Dear Marla. And here I was going to ask something else of her.

“Uh, girlfriend?”

Marla lifted her chin and shot me a wary look. Her brown curls had come askew from the sparkling barrettes, and perspiration streaked her face.

“Now what?”

“I’m sorry, but when the cops arrive, I need you to do one more thing.”

“It can’t be worse than this.”

“Would you be willing to go home,” I asked quickly, “take a nice shower, put on something really sexy, and find a county employee named Roger Mannis? I’ll give you his work number and address. Then distract him, seduce him, or do something to keep him occupied over the next few hours.”

“You mean Roger Mannis, the health inspector who hassled you at the garden-club lunch? The subject of Cecelia’s column, he of the muskrat eyes? One and the same?”

“Does that mean you’ll do it?” I asked as a sheriff’s-department vehicle finally, finally drove into the lot.

“You know what, Goldy?” Marla wiped her brow, glanced at the cop car, then put her hands on her hips. “If you weren’t my friend, I would have no excitement in my life.”

3

She drove off, as they say in this part of the world, in a cloud of dust. The cop, a brawny blond fellow named Sawyer, had me repeat what had happened and show him the scene of the crime. He frowned at the place where I’d fallen, probed the splintered door frame with his finger, and narrowed his eyes at the bullet hole in the floor. He also told me I should see a doctor. I promised I would when the dust settled.

“Still, Mrs. Schulz, I’m going to stay here with you until your help arrives.”

“Feel like carrying some trash?”

His grin was expansive. “Sure.”

With Sawyer at my side, I hobbled back to the kitchen. The two of us grabbed the last of the trash bags—Sawyer insisted on taking three, so I had only one—traversed the lot, and heaved them into the Dumpster.

“I need you to show me the gun you used in the kitchen,” Officer Sawyer said mildly as we made our way back to the Roundhouse.

I veered toward the van, unlocked it, and flipped open the glove compartment. Then I unloaded the gun and handed it to him. He looked at it briefly before giving it back. His expression was inscrutable.

I put the thirty-eight into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “My permit’s in the kitchen, in my purse.”

“That’s all right.” He waited for me to close the van door, then walked beside me back to the Roundhouse.

The breeze that had been ruffling the lake’s surface died down. Half a mile away, the lake house was deserted. Paddleboat and skiff rental did not begin until ten, and even the walkers and runners had hightailed away to their daily pursuits. The small commuter rush had abated, and Upper Cottonwood Creek Road was quiet.

I walked slowly. My shoulders ached. My back throbbed. Our footsteps on the gravel were the only sounds. Things seemed, as they also say in this part of the world, too quiet.

“Officer Sawyer?” I said suddenly. “Have you had this kind of attack around here lately? Somebody in a ski mask, vandalizing commercial establishments?”

Sawyer shook his head. “There’s always a first time. I wish you’d go see a doctor.”

I thought, Sure, right after I find some electric fans, get the bleach, clean out the walk-ins, and start setting up….

“I know that we are all thankful for the life of Albert Kerr,” Dr. Ted Vikarios announced, his voice as authoritative as that of Moses descending from Sinai. Dr. V., as we’d always called him, towered over the microphone, his six and a half feet not even slightly reduced by having reached his early sixties. His long, large-featured face was as imposing as ever, although I was pretty sure he was now dyeing his jet-black hair. He still wore it swooped up in front, like a wave cresting toward shore. “We rejoice in spite of our pain!” his voice boomed, and the mourners jumped in their seats.

Tell me about pain, I thought. My back, neck, and knees were still in a world of hurt. I shifted from foot to foot and glanced out at the people gathered for the memorial lunch. Most of the sixty guests had served in Southwest’s ob-gyn department sixteen years ago, during the time that Drs. Kerr and Vikarios had been co–department heads of ob-gyn. And maybe they wished they hadn’t, because Dr. V. had already been preaching to them for twenty-five minutes.

John Richard Korman, looking breezy, nonchalant, and as devastatingly handsome as ever, sat by the French doors. He wore a pink oxford-cloth shirt, patterned gold-and-green silk tie, and khaki pants. Did he look freshly showered? I mean, you would have to fix yourself up if you’d taken time out that morning to attack your ex-wife. At the very least, your naturally blond hair would get messed up underneath that ski mask. Stop it, I ordered myself. You’re not at all sure that John Richard was the culprit.

I returned my attention to the lunch. The only way I was going to get through this event was not to care that he was present. Make that not to care insofar as possible, since I had already noticed how he was charming the women at his table with sly grins, winks, and an occasional backward flip of his careful-to-look-

casual bangs. It did seem that he was studiously ignoring me. Not that I gave a slice of salami about that, either…at least until I could prove or disprove that he was the one who’d attacked me.

Anyway, I certainly wasn’t going to confront him. Not here. Not now.

“We need to focus on gratitude!” Dr. V. shouted. He opened his long, thin arms to their full width, like one of those hang gliders you’re always seeing taking off from Colorado peaks.

Okay, I could focus on gratitude. Clutching a glass of water, I backed into one of the Roundhouse’s dark corners and swallowed four more ibuprofen. I believed that I was more thankful than Ted Vikarios. If I hadn’t been choking on the pills, I would have been giving fervent praise to the Almighty that Julian, Liz, and I had somehow, somehow, pulled this lunch together after all.

“We miss Albert!” Dr. V. moaned, and the mourners groaned in response.

I swallowed hard and wondered if I missed Albert Kerr. Before Albert’s wife, Holly, had returned to Aspen Meadow with Albert’s ashes the previous month, I hadn’t seen either one of them for over fourteen years. But they had doted on Arch when he was a newborn. It hurt not to see someone for a long time. I had liked the Kerrs, and had felt a pang to hear Albert had died of cancer while serving as the priest for a small Anglican congregation in Qatar, of all places. Still, Albert’s lovely wife—widow—Holly had called me to do this event.

We had been close to both the Kerrs and Vikarioses when Albert, Ted, and the Jerk had worked together, Holly had reminded me.

I had gritted my teeth and promised Holly we would have a lovely lunch. And whether we had an anonymous attacker, a herd of mice, or a four-figure cost overrun, I was going to finish this luncheon, by golly. I took a deep breath, which was not a good idea.

Had anyone else noticed that the Roundhouse smelled like a pine forest? I stepped out from the corner and tried to avoid looking at the Jerk, who had put his arm around his new girlfriend. Girlfriend, schmirlfriend, my main question was whether anyone was sniffing the air and making faces. The scent, Organic Pine, could have been called The Woods You’ll Never Get Out Of. It certainly smelled like a denser forest than anything Hansel and Gretel had dealt with. Okay, Liz and Arch had gone too wild with their enthusiastic spraying. They’d coated the kitchen with the stuff, emptied a can each into the refrigerators, and squirted the fragrance into every corner of the old restaurant.

I blinked at Cecelia Brisbane, who was seated close by. Her wide body spilled over the chair seat as she hunched over the table, her thick glasses perched on the edge of her bulbous nose. She was taking notes, for God’s sake! If she made fun of the Roundhouse’s pine odor in her next column, I’d tell her to be grateful the folks hadn’t inhaled what had preceded it.

I focused on the rest of the guests. Gray-haired, squirrel-faced Nan Watkins, a longtime ob-gyn nurse at Southwest Hospital, nodded to me and gave a thumbs-up. I was doing her retirement party this week, so it was a good thing she was enjoying the lunch. In fact, all of the guests looked satisfied—at least with the food, if not with Ted Vikarios’s droning on. I’d been gratified by the way they’d slurped down Julian’s herb-topped chilled asparagus soup. After that, the mourners had dug into our quickly assembled assiettes de charcuterie. Amazing how a long church service can stimulate the appetite.

And speaking of church, God, and things we were thankful for, I’d also been grateful to the Almighty that Liz had been able to muster Arch out earlier than I’d requested. Looking over at Arch, now quietly filling water glasses at a far table, I was filled with pride. At fifteen, my son was finally getting taller. His shoulders were broadening, he’d cut his toast-brown hair short, and he’d traded in his thick tortoiseshell glasses for thin wire-rimmed specs.

But there was another change in Arch. Toward the end of the school year, I’d finally had enough of my son’s self-centeredness and obsession with having stuff. I’d barely been able to deal with a stream of demands for an electric guitar, a high-tech cell phone, a new computer, and other paraphernalia. Worse, his annoying behavior was increasingly expressing itself as verbal abuse directed at yours truly. I’d lived in denial for all those years with the Jerk, I said to myself one particularly sleepless night, was I going to do the same with Arch?

I was not. No matter whose “fault” his behavior was—I blamed the brats at Elk Park Preparatory School, Arch blamed me—I decided to pull him out of EPP. Unfortunately, there was no Episcopal high school in the Denver area. So I told Arch he could go away to military school (I was bluffing) or he could attend the Christian Brothers Catholic High School, not far from the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. After much yelling and door slamming, he chose the Brothers.

Once Arch had been admitted, the school had phoned and invited him on a class retreat. Arch had had a fantastic time. He had made a slew of new friends who now invited him to skate, play guitar, or just hang out, something he had never, ever been asked to do by any student at Elk Park Prep.

And then my son had started required community work in a Catholic Workers’ soup kitchen. Chopping fifteen pounds of onions on Saturday mornings to go into stew he then helped serve to two-hundred-plus homeless people—this had changed his materialism, but quick. Now he put away half his allowance for the Catholic Workers and begged me for paid work so he could help more people eat.

Well, I was all for helping people eat. I mean, just look at this lunch! It might be costing me a mint, but it was happening. Right from the start, Liz and Julian had commandeered Arch into an assembly line that would have left Henry Ford in the dust. They’d zipped around the kitchen prep table, placing slabs of creamy Port Salut cheese beside delicate rosettes of spicy imported salami. Because I was hurting, they’d given me the meager job of rolling the delicately smoked Westphalian ham into thin cylinders. They’d placed these next to slices of a heavenly homemade goat cheese Liz had nabbed at the farmers’ market. We’d all pitched in to pile Liz’s salad—crisp, tender field greens mixed with crunchy slices of hearts of palm and coated with her scrumptious vinaigrette—into pyramids in the middle of each assiette just as the first cars wheeled into the gravel driveway. Right before the lunch had commenced, when we’d been finishing the last of the plates, Dr. Ted Vikarios had burst into the kitchen. Apparently, Arch wasn’t the only one with matters religious on his mind.

“Jesus God Almighty!” Ted Vikarios yelled.

The four of us had jumped. After recovering, I’d reminded him of who I was. Goldy, from the old days, remember? Limping along, I’d led him back out to the dining room and asked him what I could do to help him. When he’d mumbled microphone and podium, I’d carefully shown him where he’d be giving his speech after the meal. Seeming preoccupied, he’d wandered off.

After that inauspicious kickoff, however, the lunch itself had been stupendous. The guests had devoured every morsel of food, right down to the baguettes, the butter—even the gherkins. Moving through the tables, I’d noticed a few members of the crowd making sandwiches from leftovers and tucking them into purses and sacks—a sure sign of success, if not good manners.

And now the guests were devouring the swoon-inducing slices of the flourless chocolate cakes I’d made for Marla. We’d topped them with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, quickly purchased by Julian, as our homemade batch had melted when the compressors were shut off. Julian had handed the portable mike—at least I’d set that up the previous day—to Albert’s widow, Holly. Short, gray-haired, as vibrant and energetic at fifty-five as she had been at forty, she’d given an enthusiastic thanks to everyone who’d come. She’d added that there would be one tribute only, from Albert’s old friend Ted Vikarios.

As Ted now proclaimed into the microphone, his wife, Ginger Vikarios, smiled nervously at the crowd. Like her husband, Ginger, slender and overly made up, had taken unsuccessful steps to look as if she had not aged. She’d dyed her hair orange, the lipstick on her downturned mouth was orange, and she had bright spots of orange blush on each cheek. She looked fragile and unhappy, like a sad clown. I certainly hoped Ginger had not heard the insensitive comments on the way her curly orange hair matched her unfashionable orange taffeta dress. Whatever had happened to people wearing black to funerals? they wanted to know. I hadn’t the foggiest.

John Richard Korman’s late arrival with his blond, nubile new girlfriend, Sandee Blue, had caused a ripple in the crowd. Sandee, her platinum curls swept forward in a sexy do, ignored Ted Vikarios as she giggled and nuzzled John Richard’s ear. Smiling, John Richard pulled away, ran his fingers through his long hair, and winked knowingly at Sandee. I wondered if he was technically old enough to be her father.

Marla and I had met Sandee two weeks before, when we’d delivered Arch to John Richard’s house prior to a golf lesson. Clad in a bikini (to the best of my knowledge, the Jerk had not installed an indoor pool in his country-club rental house), she’d opened the heavy door, looked us up and down, and introduced herself.

“I’m Sandee Blue. That’s Sandee with two e s.”

Arch had done his best not to gawk. I’d shuddered and, for once, been tongue-tied.

Confused, Sandee had asked, “Are you here with money?”

Without missing a beat, Marla had said, “No, but we’d be blue, too, if we didn’t have any.” Sandee had retreated, looking even more perplexed. Then we’d heard the Jerk yelling at her from inside the house, and finally he’d appeared and wordlessly taken Arch. What was that French saying—plus ça change? Well, anyway, stuff doesn’t change and neither do jerks.

According to Marla, Sandee worked in the country-club golf shop, and that was where John Richard had decided he had to have her. Also according to Marla, once John Richard met Sandee, he’d dumped his willowy, wealthy, gorgeous, brunette girlfriend, Courtney MacEwan. Courtney was a highly competitive tennis-playing socialite. She was known for throwing her racket and her fluorescent pink tennis balls at opponents who beat her—and hitting them. This was not the kind of woman I’d want to have as an enemy, but John Richard was an expert in—Marla’s term—the Art of Bedding Dangerously.

Now, watching John Richard lean over and whisper in Sandee’s ear, my gaze traveled over to lovely, brown-haired Courtney MacEwan, standing on the far side of the French doors. Unlike Ginger Vikarios’s orange gown, Courtney’s dress was black, but it was so low cut and tight—showing muscles I wasn’t even sure I had—that it made Ginger’s pouffery look tame. I racked my gray cells to figure out why Courtney was here, and then remembered that her former husband—he had died of a heart attack when Courtney had surprised him in bed with a flight attendant—had been a top executive at Southwest Hospital.

Courtney had been John Richard’s squeeze in—what, April, the beginning of May? Then the Jerk had moved on to the greener Sandee pasture, and they’d split. Now Courtney stared in his direction. The bitterness of her expression shrieked, If I can’t have this man, no one will! I wondered if her copious Louis Vuitton bag held a couple of tennis balls.

The crowd scooped up the last of their cake and ice cream, glanced at their watches, and rustled in their seats. Oblivious, Ted Vikarios rumbled on about the good deeds Albert Kerr had done. Albert had sold his possessions and taken Holly to England, where he’d gone to seminary. He’d accepted a call to a small Christian mission in Qatar—he really hadn’t liked the cold English weather—and served there for twelve years. He’d fought valiantly against the disease that had finally claimed him, etc., etc.

Again waves of fatigue and pain washed over me. The places where my attacker had hit were killing me. When I’d signaled to Julian and Liz to stop clearing, I’d had no idea Ted Vikarios would talk until mold grew on cheese. On and on he went, about how the Lord had done this in Albert’s life and the Lord had done that. The agnostics among the country-club set were stirring in their seats. To them, a conversion experience was changing dollars into euros.

When a couple of people scraped back their chairs and got up to leave, Dr. V. cleared his throat into the mike. It came out like a thunderclap, and a spontaneous titter swept through the Roundhouse dining room. More people began to stand up and move about. I glanced at Holly Kerr. She kept her chin up and her back straight as she spoke to well-wishers.

If I could just finish the cleaning without losing my temper with the Jerk and accusing him of beating me up, I could count this event as a salvaged success. I scanned the crowd again. Ted Vikarios was still talking. I had to clear away the dirty dishes, whether it made noise or not.

Holly Kerr caught my eye, nodded, and smiled. Then she handed an envelope to a young man and indicated that he was to give it to me. My eyes snagged on Courtney MacEwan, whose rage-filled stare at John Richard—who was again cozying up to Sandee—had not quit. Courtney folded her arms, which made a whole bunch more muscles pop out. Now John Richard and Sandee-with-two-es were exchanging a not-so-

surreptitious kiss. I turned quickly, picked up a tray of dirty glasses beside one of the tables, and only vaguely registered footsteps clicking up to my side.

“Ever noticed,” Courtney MacEwan hissed in my ear, “how people can’t wait to have sex after funerals?”

I lost my grip on the tray. Unbalanced, one of the glasses popped upward and spiraled toward the floor. An alert guest, a bodybuilder-type guy with thick, dry blond-brown hair that resembled a lion’s mane, dove for it with an outfielder’s extended reach. Grinning hugely, he held it high. The guests at the table applauded.

“Courtney,” I said through clenched teeth—and a false smile—“get into the kitchen if you want to talk about sex.”

Courtney fluttered sparkly eyelids and mauve-toned fingernails and slithered ahead of me. It was a good thing, too, because the crowd parted like the Red Sea for that low-cut dress.

“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted droned on.

“Was that a trick play with the glass?” an older woman asked me. Her broad face lit up with an admiring smile. “If you toss two glasses into the air, Dannyboy here will be able to catch both of those, too.” The table giggled and leaned forward. I noticed several bottles of wine between the plates, not served by yours truly. In fact, I was willing to bet that the folks at this table had never worked at Southwest Hospital. There were two guys (including Dannyboy, he of the lion mane) who looked like thugs, and three women, two pretty younger ones and the one who’d first spoken to me. Her thick makeup and dyed black hair screamed Aging Hooker. Still, she looked familiar. But I was distracted from trying to place her by Dannyboy, whose drunk, raised voice announced: “If you toss three glasses in the air, I can juggle those, too!”

“And dearest, loveliest Holly,” Ted Vikarios shouted into the microphone, “was a nurturing presence all along.” Registering the disturbance—Dannyboy, the joker who wouldn’t let me pass—Ted glared in our direction. “She even nursed Albert, whom we are remembering today, whom we are trying to remember today”—more glaring—“beginning when he was sick and missed school as a teenager…”

“So did John Richard cheat on you, too?” Courtney stage-whispered over her shoulder. “And what did you do to his girlfriends?” I kept a white-knuckled grip on the tray and refused to answer.

“Hey, caterer,” Dannyboy was saying as he tugged on my apron. Behind him, his table laughed wildly. “C’mon, let’s have some fun. With the glasses, I mean.”

I tore myself away and limped painfully toward the kitchen. When I finally made it, I placed the tray next to the sink, then walked over and carefully closed the door to the dining room. I took a deep breath before facing Courtney, who had almost screwed up this already-almost-screwed-up event.

“Doggone it, Courtney, what is the matter with you? I’ve been divorced from John Richard for over a decade! Of course he cheated on me. I didn’t do anything to any girlfriends of his except feel sorry for her, whoever she was. And as to the sex-after-funerals question, how should I know? When I’m catering a funeral lunch, what I do afterward is dishes.”

She looked over at me, then pressed her lips together. But it was no-go. Tears slid down her cheeks. In an effort to look stronger than she apparently was feeling, she rolled her shoulders and flexed those arm muscles.

“God damn him,” she said. “He owes me.” She slapped tears away. I plucked a clean tissue from my apron pocket and handed it to her. “I just hate him so much now.” She honked into the tissue. “We were going to get married. We’d been together for less than a month, and he sent back my stuff from his house in boxes from the golf shop, for crying out loud. Why the golf shop?”

She started to cry. I rinsed dishes, wondering how long this would last. The golf shop, she kept repeating. Why the golf shop?

“Maybe Sandee gave him the boxes,” I offered. “I mean, she’s some kind of golf expert, isn’t she?”

To my great surprise, Courtney burst out laughing. “Oh, yeah, Sandee’s a golf expert, all right! Puts the ball right in the hole!”

Her facial muscles jumped and twitched. Oh boy, she had it bad. This was unfortunate. John Richard never went back to a woman he’d abandoned.

“What is going on in here?” Marla demanded as she banged through the kitchen door. She was holding an envelope, which she handed to me. “This is from Holly Kerr. Some guy was waiting to give it to you, but was afraid to come into the kitchen because the door was closed. Ooh, yummy, leftover cake.” She daintily helped herself to a corner of chocolate, then noticed Courtney MacEwan. “For crying out loud, Courtney, what are you so bent out of shape about? I mean, besides being dumped for a twenty-one-year-old?”

Courtney glared at Marla, who shook her head at Courtney’s décolleté dress.

“Very sexy, C. You ought to be able to pick up somebody new, right here at this funeral.”

Courtney lifted her chin and appraised Marla’s black linen dress. “You look pretty inviting yourself, Marla. Did you have a hot date before the funeral?”

“Oh, darling, did I!” Marla replied, rolling her eyes.

“But what are you doing here?” I asked Marla, once I’d stashed Holly’s payment, which I intended to refund to her since we’d never had the poached salmon.

Marla turned her attention to me. “You are so ungrateful.”

“But what about you-know-who?” I whispered as Courtney cracked open the kitchen door to check on the whereabouts of John Richard. I didn’t know if she was listening to Marla and me or not, but you couldn’t be too careful with Courtney. I was pretty sure she still blamed me for being hostile to her relationship with John Richard. I had been nothing of the kind, of course; this had been John Richard’s excuse to Courtney for why they had to break up. (“ ‘Goldy is such a jealous ex-wife,’ ” Marla said the Jerk had claimed to Courtney. “ ‘If she finds out you’re staying here at the house, she’ll go back to family court and try to have my visitations with Arch reduced!’ ”)

“At this very moment,” Marla said as she picked up a corner of cake and checked her new diamond Rolex, “my lawyer is in the office of your favorite district food inspector, claiming he’s going to sue him and his entire staff on behalf of his client who has food poisoning.”

“You’re so bad—” I began.

Courtney let out a gargled noise and reeled back. None other than the Jerk himself popped his head into the kitchen. He looked all around, then grinned widely.

“Oops!” he said with mock surprise. “Three old girlfriends. What’re you doing, plotting? Goldy, I need to see you. Now.”

“I’m not going anywhere with you.”

He stepped all the way into the kitchen, put his hands on his hips, and announced in a low, threatening voice, “I. Need. You. Now.”

Before I could say “Tough tacks,” Courtney shrieked, “You bastard! I ought to—” She strode toward him. John Richard rolled his shoulders and got ready to fight. With sudden deftness, Marla picked up a crystal platter of leftover cake, stepped in front of Courtney, and used the platter as a shield. Most of the chocolate landed on the ample tops of Courtney’s breasts.

“You bitch!” Courtney cried as my platter fell to the floor and broke to smithereens.

John Richard pointed at me and said, “Parking lot.” Then he slithered away.

Courtney refocused her energy on the Jerk. She stalked out of the kitchen, chocolate coating and all.

Julian, dark-haired and efficient, pushed into the kitchen with a tray of dirty dishes. He glanced at the floor with its shards of crystal. “What happened here?”

“I’ll explain later. Listen, I don’t want to face the Jerk alone. The cop’s left. Would the two of you come with me?” I begged Julian and Marla in a low voice.

“Of course,” the two of them said in unison. Liz came into the kitchen and announced that Arch had left with his friend and his friend’s mom, and that I had said it was all right. I nodded, although with all the events of the morning, I had no idea what I had promised Arch. Liz said she would press on with the cleanup. Marla and Julian nipped along ahead of me, out the trashed back door and down the gravel path. Halfway down, we came to an abrupt halt.

Ted Vikarios, evidently having finished his eulogy for Albert, had planted himself in the Jerk’s path and was shaking his finger in my ex-husband’s face. John Richard, unusually for him, was speaking in a low, reconciling tone. Ted turned red, bared his teeth, and kept ranting. I could only make out a couple of his phrases: asking an important question and should be ashamed of yourself.

“We ought to go back,” I murmured to Marla and Julian.

“Forget it,” Marla replied. She put her hand on my arm and edged closer to the two men. “We’re just out of earshot. Maybe super-Christian Ted is upset by the Jerk serving time as a convicted felon.”

John Richard, retreating to his usual gracelessness, told Ted to go home and stop acting like an old man. Leaving Ted dumbfounded, John Richard trotted out to the parking lot. After a few moments, he revved his new Audi TT, circled the lot in a spray of gravel, and pulled up near the path. In the front seat, Sandee was checking her lipstick in the visor mirror. Julian, Marla, and I gave a fuming Dr. V. a wide berth and stopped short a safe three yards from the roaring Audi.

“I need you to bring Arch over in three hours,” John Richard yelled at me. “I got my tee time changed.”

Even if John Richard had shoved me and whacked my neck and screwed up the lunch food, I did not also need him to holler orders in front of the Roundhouse windows. Julian and Marla edged closer to the Audi. They crossed their arms and stood their ground in front of me.

“John Richard, did you have anything to do with a break-in here at the Roundhouse?” Marla called merrily. “Spoiled food? Mice?” Her voice turned sharp. “Did you beat Goldy up, you son of a bitch?”

“Goldy!” John Richard ignored Marla and raised his voice a notch. “Four o’clock! Got it?”

My ears burned. I tried not to think about how everyone in the dining room, everyone within a half-mile radius, could hear John Richard yelling at me. Could someone be so brazen as to assault his ex-wife in the morning and then demand she bring over their son in the afternoon?

“I’m busy,” I called. “So is Arch—”

Moving quickly, John Richard jumped out of his car, slammed the door, and strode around Marla and Julian to tower over me. “Let’s get this straight,” he announced. “I don’t care about you! I don’t care about how supposedly busy you are! I don’t care about your little schedule! I don’t care, do you understand?”

Julian darted around me with sudden quickness, planting himself face-to-face with John Richard and folding his arms. Although the Jerk was a couple of inches taller than Julian, the Jerk’s prison-induced softness was no match for Julian’s compact, muscled, twenty-one-year-old body. John Richard backed up to the Audi.

I felt the old panic well up. A lump the size of Pikes Peak formed in my throat. When I glanced over my shoulder, it was as I expected. More than a dozen faces peered at us from the Roundhouse windows.

“Get out!” Julian yelled. “Drive away now, or we’ll call the cops for the second time today!”

John Richard stood staring at us for a long moment, then got into his car. He strapped himself into the TT beside Sandee with two e s and roared off. He didn’t look back.

4

Whoa!” Marla patted Julian on the back. “Good work, kiddo!” Julian beamed, nodded, and walked wordlessly in the direction of the kitchen. Marla asked me, “So are you going to take Arch over?”

“I have to. At this very moment, John Richard is probably calling his lawyer on his cell. He’ll complain about Julian and about how uncooperative I am.”

“Want company on the drop-off?” Marla wanted to know. “I could duck out of PosteriTREE’s bake sale. By the way, you’re going to bring me something to make up for my loss of cakes, aren’t you?”

“Sure, sure. I’ve got brownies in the freezer. And I’ll be fine dropping off Arch, thanks.” I stared at the dust settling in the parking lot after the Audi’s departure. “Arch might have other plans. Do you think that ever occurred to el Jerk-o? This is so typical of him, I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it.”

In back of Marla, people streamed from the Roundhouse. I hugged my friend, thanked her, and limped back to the kitchen. From the dining room, the scrape of chairs, shuffle of footsteps, and gurgle of relieved voices announced the end of an event. Was I imagining it, or were people calling to each other in exultation: Ted Vikarios has left the podium, at last, at last! I glanced around for Ted and Ginger Vikarios, eager to find out what had precipitated Ted’s fury. But the Vikarioses had already left.

In the kitchen, Julian and Liz were loading the commercial dishwashers. What would I do without my two masterly assistants?

Julian stopped loading. “You okay, boss?”

“No, but never mind.”

“We heard John Richard yelling.” Liz’s large eyes were filled with sympathy. “Sorry he’s back to ruin your life.”

“Yeah, well.”

“Boss?” Julian again. “You’re going to have a problem, I think. When Arch left with the Druckmans, he said he wasn’t sure if you knew his schedule. He said he’d write you a note when he got home.” I groaned. Great. “Look,” Julian went on, “why don’t you let Liz and me finish up here? It’s no big deal. We can board up the back door, too. We’ve already figured out how to do it.”

“First I need to know how much the two of you spent on cheeses, meats, and salad ingredients. This function never would have happened without you. I’m not leaving until I get your receipts.”

Before they could reply, my cell phone rang again. Oh, great, a call from John Richard’s lawyer, already. Mrs. Schulz, you promised to accommodate your ex-husband with requested visitations…

It was not a lawyer. It was Tom. Finally.

“I’ve been in a meeting with the sheriff and just got your message,” he said, his voice subdued. “Are you all right?”

At the sound of Tom’s voice, something twisted inside my chest. No, I was not even close to all right. I wanted Tom here with me, wanted his handsome face, his green eyes the color of the ocean, his big body surrounding mine.

“Um—” I said, faltering.

“Goldy? Why did you call me?” The distant tone that I’d come to know in the past month crept into his voice. In May, Tom had lost a case, and a guilty defendant had gone free. The shock felt in the department had been profound. Tom had gone into such a deep depression that he seemed to be a new man, not the jovial, affectionate one I’d married.

“I had a problem here at the center.” The places where I’d been hit ached deeply. Somehow, though, I didn’t feel able just then to tell Tom what had happened.

“I’m reading a report here of shots fired. Down near you, about eight this morning?”

“That was me. I fired my gun.” I wanted to elaborate, but somehow felt unable to. Ordinarily, he was able to return my calls right away, sheriff or no sheriff. And he usually greeted me so enthusiastically, Miss G., what are you up to now? Miss Goldy, everything all right? As silence lengthened between us, I had to remind myself again that his behavior was not owing to anything I had done. Tom had turned all his anger at losing that case inward, and I was going to have to gut it out.

Finally Tom said, “You want to tell me what’s going on?”

“Oh, Tom. Somebody broke into the Roundhouse. I surprised him when he was still here. He…shoved me out of the way and whacked the back of my neck so hard that I passed out—”

“Wait, wait. Do you need me to come up there? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine. Really. I called the department and they sent a patrolman who took a report. You should know, though, the prowler had sabotaged me. He must have thrown the switches on the fridge and freezer compressors last night, so all the food was spoiled. Then this morning, he broke down the back door and left a string of trout in the refrigerator and bags of mice on the floor. I didn’t see a face.”

“But you tried to shoot the guy?”

“No. I was so startled by the mice that I shot the gun by accident. I made a hole in the floor, but—”

“Goldy. Who do you think could have done this?”

“John Richard? Some enemy I don’t know about? I can’t imagine. Listen, I’ll be okay. Julian and Liz have offered to clean up. And get this, John Richard was at the Kerr lunch. Demanding loudly that I bring Arch over at four to play golf.”

“Let me meet you at his house. Please?”

“Marla’s already offered. I turned her down. I promise, Tom, I’m staying in the van while Arch hauls his clubs to the Jerk’s door.”

He sighed and said he’d see me that night. I clapped the phone shut and consulted my watch: 1:15. My aching body pined for a shower and a nap. Unfortunately, I had miles to go before I slept…not to mention returning home to a husband who was on an entirely different emotional path from mine.

I wrote checks to Liz and Julian. A short while later, my van pulled out of the Roundhouse parking lot. When I opened the windows, the hot scent of dry pines gusted inside. Had my assailant been watching for me very early this morning, perhaps from the trees on the far side of the creek? Who would want to ruin a caterer’s food? And most problematic: Would this person strike—and strike me—again?

I piloted the van around the lake and down Main Street. The severe drought and ensuing watering restrictions had given Aspen Meadow the dusty look of an Old West village. Still, the merchants had bravely put out a profusion of artificial flowers. Fake geraniums poked from window boxes outside Aspen Meadow Jewelry. Plastic ivy twined around lampposts the length of Main Street, from the Grizzly Bear Saloon to Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles. Local kids and tourists vied for the best viewing spot in front of Town Taffy’s big window, where mechanized silver arms pulled and stretched shiny ribbons of candy. Aspen Meadow depended on tourists and locals alike to spend large amounts of money during the summer months, and the store owners were determined to don their usual festive look. I’d even heard that members of our Chamber of Commerce had pestered CNN to quit reporting on Colorado forest fires. Those newscasts were ruining business!

When I pulled up in front of our own drying, dying lawn, I tried to ignore it, along with the flowers, now struggling, that Tom had so lovingly nurtured through the last two summers. The Alpine rosebushes, chokecherries, and lilacs, even the aspens and pines, all drooped with thirst. But I was powerless to help them, as exterior watering had been banned.

Inside, Jake the bloodhound bounded up and covered my face with kisses. Scout, our long-haired brown-and-white cat, watched reproachfully from the top of the stairs. The feline would never lower himself to ask for affection. In the way of cats everywhere, he would wait until people needed him.

After feeding and watering the animals, I checked the phone messages. There was always the possibility that Arch had called to say something helpful, like that he’d be back by three. No luck.

Out of habit, I booted up my computer to check upcoming events. Alas, nothing magical had appeared on the culinary horizon, as gigs had dried up along with the mountain grasses. This week held only two other assignments. Day after tomorrow, I was doing breakfast at the Aspen Meadow Country Club for Marla’s garden-club splinter group, PosteriTREE. Presumably, they’d be discussing how much money they’d made on today’s bake sale. That same afternoon, Julian, Liz, and I were doing a picnic under a rented tent, paid for by the Southwest Hospital Women’s Auxiliary. They were hosting a retirement party for Nan Watkins, who’d been a longtime nurse at the facility. At least the free day before the picnic would give me time to have the Roundhouse back door replaced, install some kind of fence around the compressors, and bring in a class-A fumigator….

There was a scribbled message from Arch on the counter:

I forgot some stuff. It was just hockey gear (that’s why I’m home writing you this). Todd’s mom is taking us down to the rink in Lakewood to play with some other kids from Christian Brothers. We’ll call her when we’re done, so don’t worry. I thought your lunch thing was good. Hope it’s okay that I didn’t stay to help with the dishes. I’ll do them next time. A.K.

It was a nice note. Lakewood, just west of Denver, was forty-five minutes away. But I had to convince Arch to leave, get him cleaned up and golf-ready, and probably take Todd home, too. How was I going to deliver Arch to the Jerk’s by four, given that it was now one-thirty? And how come my ex-husband was always able to screw up my life?

I dug around in my freezer, snagged four bags of frozen brownies, and walked back to the van as quickly as my bruised knees would allow. As I zipped down the interstate, I called Eileen Druckman and asked her if I could pick up the boys. She said yes, thank goodness. When I pulled up in front of the Summit Rink forty minutes later, even the van was panting.

Once inside the rink area—I never could imagine how much it cost to keep this place so freezing cold—I found it hard to make out Arch and Todd. The kids playing a makeshift hockey game were wearing masks and a ton of padding. Of course, I knew better than to call out my introvert son’s name—oh, did I ever. When he was nine, Arch hadn’t spoken to me for a week after I’d had him paged in a grocery store.

Finally I picked out a possible candidate and watched him carefully. Yes, that had to be Arch. I signaled to him three times until finally he got the message and wearily skated over to the gate.

“Mom! What’s going on?” He lifted his mask, revealing a flushed face streaming with sweat. Another teenager skated up and tilted back his face gear: Todd, his face as red and wet as Arch’s.

“I’ve got to take you to play golf with your father.”

“Oh, Mom. Not now. Please!” Arch pulled down his mask and pushed off from the gate. I was impressed by how well he was learning to skate backward, anyway. “When does Dad want me?” he demanded through the mask.

“ASAP. Sorry.”

Arch’s shoulders slumped. “We’re in the middle of a scrimmage.”

Todd called, “Aw, c’mon, Arch. Play golf with your dad. He just got out of jail.”

At these words, a few players hockey-stopped nearby. Somebody’s dad was in jail? His kid might be a really good hockey player! The opposing team used the sudden break to send the puck whizzing into the goal, and the eavesdroppers squawked. If I could have disappeared, I would have.

Meanwhile, Arch was skating back to the gate. I was thankful. In the Elk Park Prep days, we would have had a long argument—which I would have lost.

“Just pretend the golf ball’s a hockey puck and really slam it,” Todd called to him. “That’s what the pros do.”

Arch, the mask again tilted on his brow, shook his head. But at least both boys tramped off the ice.

My guilt at pulling them from the scrimmage prompted me to buy a king’s ransom of soft drinks, chips, and candy bars, for which they were noisily thankful. The van chugged back up the mountain to the sound of ripping wrappers and breaking chips. By three o’clock, I had gotten Arch home and convinced him to take a very quick shower, while Todd played video games. After some searching, I laid my hands on a passably clean polo shirt and a pair of khakis. When I hauled out the golf clubs John Richard had bought for Arch, I marveled that they were immaculate, anyway, without a speck of mud or grass on them. By three-fifteen, we were off.

I dropped Todd at his house and thanked him for his patience. At half-past three, Arch and I toted the bags of almost-thawed brownies through the service entrance of the Aspen Meadow Country Club. Or as Marla and I referred to it, the so-called country club. If Aspen Meadow didn’t have inbred high society, and it didn’t, it also had nothing to rival the magnificent colonial clubs of the East. But AMCC’s big motel-like main building had just undergone an expensive remodeling, with new locker rooms, golf and tennis shops, a weight room, and a meeting room, where PosteriTREE, as the garden-club splinter group called itself, was having its bake sale from three to five.

Marla stood with some pals behind one of the three buffet tables girdling the crowded room. She bustled toward me. She was wearing her third lovely outfit of the day, this one a casual suit in a printed jungle-motif fabric.

“Cecelia is here,” she muttered, and I felt my eyes drawn to the Mountain Journal’s gossip columnist. Cecelia, her large pear shape not enhanced by a shapeless white man’s shirt and baggy black pants, was thrusting her bespectacled, shovel-shaped face into the middle of a conversation between Ginger Vikarios and Courtney MacEwan. Ginger immediately put her head down, turned on her heel, and walked away, while tall, gorgeous Courtney looked down her nose at Cecelia and said nothing.

“Oops, maybe Cecelia just insulted Ginger,” Marla said mildly. “Wouldn’t be the first time.”

“Look, here are your brownies,” I said quickly. Arch had handed me the bags and scuttled off. He was in the process of admiring the cakes, cookies, and muffins being proffered by the women. If I didn’t get him out of there, he was sure to drop dollops of lemon curd onto his golf shirt.

But I was prevented from leaving by Cecelia Brisbane, who sidled up and pinched my elbow. Her bulging eyes were greatly magnified by her glasses’ thick lenses.

She said, “I hear your ex is up to his old tricks.”

Marla cleared her throat. I gazed innocently at Cecelia’s wide, wrinkled face and unruly gray hair, which was the color and consistency of steel wool. I said, “Oh, really? Where’d you hear that?”

Cecelia was genetically incapable of grinning. Her uneven, greasy gray bangs fell across her forehead and over the tops of her glasses. She pulled her lips into a serious scowl. “I heard you had a bit of an incident at the Roundhouse this morning.”

I smiled. “Define ‘bit of an incident.’ ”

“Who do you think hit you?” she pressed.

“Hey!” Marla exclaimed. “How do you know what happened—”

I held up a hand to quiet Marla. “Actually, Cecelia,” I replied, “you probably have a better idea than I do.”

“I have complaints about your ex on file,” Cecelia persisted.

“So do the cops, Cecelia.”

“Not the same kind of files, I bet.”

I tilted my head at her, curious. “You want to explain yourself?”

Cecelia straightened her glasses and squinted at me. She replied in a deadpan voice, “Not here. But I can, if you want. Especially if you can tell me what I want to know.”

Arch bounced up, chewing on a brownie. “Mom! I thought we were in some kind of hurry to get to Dad’s.”

“We are,” I told him. I bade Cecelia a polite good-bye, then hustled Arch out the service exit. Backing the van out of its narrow parking space, I came very close to whacking Cecelia’s battered old station wagon. I hit the brakes and did some maneuvering to wiggle the van clear, without incident. Cecelia wasn’t the kind of person you wanted to have as an enemy.

Zooming past the club’s mini-mansions in the direction of John Richard’s rental, I wondered what in the hell Cecelia had been talking about. There was Marla’s question: Now that the Jerk is out of jail, where’s he getting his money? He had no job that I knew of, or, more important, that Marla knew of. My best friend had also calculated that John Richard’s highly publicized sponsoring of a local golfing event—twenty-five thousand bucks—plus purchasing the Audi—another forty thou—plus rent must have been subsidized by Courtney, the newly wealthy widow. Lots of her money, apparently, had been lavished on the Jerk.

But John Richard had dumped Courtney, and according to Marla, he was renting in the club area while he looked for a big house to buy. In this, Marla had joyfully concluded, he would not be successful. While our ex was incarcerated and deprived of the Mountain Journal, he probably hadn’t heard that home sales in Aspen Meadow had virtually stopped. Fire insurers had refused to write new homeowner policies. This did not bring down the general anxiety level in the town. Was John Richard’s search for a house what Cecelia wanted to know about? Maybe. But I doubted it.

I whizzed into an area of extra-large houses: here a huge colonial, there a rambling contemporary, around the corner a Swiss-style chalet. Every few houses, there was the type favored by John Richard: a mock Tudor, with lots of plaster and crisscrossed exterior woodwork. One thing the houses in the club did have in common: They all boasted very green lawns. In town, rumors of how country-club residents managed illegal watering were rife. Some said hoses whistled across lawns at midnight. Others claimed that underground sprinkler systems hissed to life at three in the morning. Like the communists, residents were supposed to report infractions by neighbors. But in that department too, there were reports of deals—I won’t tell if you won’t. So much for community spirit.

When I piloted the van into the dead end that contained the Jerk’s current mock-Tudor domicile, another car was parked out front. I sighed and prayed that this was not a new girlfriend. Maybe that was why John Richard favored the architecture he did: He fancied himself a contemporary Henry the Eighth. Lotta wives, lotta girlfriends.

I parked the van behind the car, an older blue Chevy sedan that looked as if someone was in it.

“Okay, hon,” I said to Arch. He looked passably clean. He’d neatly parted and combed his wet hair after the shower, and he’d managed to lick all the chocolate away from around his mouth. “Just take your clubs and go to the door, do you mind? I’ll wait here until you’re inside.”

Arch pushed his glasses up his nose. “Okay, Mom. Sorry you had to go to so much trouble.”

“Don’t worry about it. Just hurry.” It was exactly ten to four, which meant Arch and his father didn’t have a whole lot of time to get down to the club for their tee time.

Arch let out a long, exasperated breath, hopped out of the van, and heaved the strap of his golf bag over his shoulder. Then he trudged up the driveway, turning left to go up the steps to the house.

A sudden rapping on my hood startled me. An older man, maybe in his mid-fifties, with a receding hairline, gray hair combed straight back, and one of those thin-skinned, skeletal faces, wanted to talk to me. I caught my breath and looked out the windshield. He’d left the door to the Chevy sedan open.

“Mrs. Korman?” he called.

I lowered the window. “Excuse me?”

“Dad!” Arch was calling. “Dad! Open the door!”

“Mrs. Korman, do you have my money?” the man demanded. He wore a plaid cotton shirt, brown polyester pants, and worn, mud-colored leather shoes. Definitely not a country-club type.

“I’m sorry, I—” I began.

“Please tell me you have my money, Mrs. Korman,” the man pleaded. “I was here when I was supposed to be.”

The van’s side door slid open. The clubs clanked ferociously as Arch threw them in the back. He banged the door closed, then opened the passenger door and hopped back into the front seat.

“Dad left without me! Let’s go!”

“Look,” I said to the man, “who are you? What money? Why do you think I’m supposed to give you money?”

But Skeleton Face had had enough. He was trotting back to the sedan.

“Colorado GPG 521, blue Chevy Nova,” I said under my breath. Then I dug into my purse, nabbed a ballpoint and an index card, and wrote it down. Had John Richard gotten himself into debt? Was this guy a creditor?

“Mom, he’s not here. I knocked and knocked. Come on, let’s split.”

I squinted up at the Tudor. I reached for the cell and punched in the numbers for Dr. Hiding-in-the-House. No response, but I didn’t expect there to be, since my caller ID came up as restricted. I left a message, saying that if John Richard wanted to see his son, he’d better get his butt out here. Nothing happened.

As a breeze swirled the dust in the street, I wondered what to do. Go home, and risk an angry call from the Jerk’s lawyer? Or bang on the door myself and run the hazard of a very unpleasant encounter, possibly as bad as, or worse than, the attack that morning?

I glanced at the glove compartment, but just as quickly dismissed the idea of brandishing a firearm. What if he startled me and the thirty-eight again went off accidentally?

I said, “Get your clubs, Arch. Let’s try one more time.”

As Arch trudged around to get his golf bag, I reached under the van seat and took out the Swiss Army knife I kept under there. I opened it, slipped it into the pocket of the caterer’s apron I was still wearing, and climbed up the front steps with Arch. We knocked and yelled for John Richard. I didn’t doubt that he was watching to see if his creditor was truly gone, and not returning.

“Wait here,” I said. “I’ll check the garage and see if the Audi’s inside.” I gripped the knife and hobbled back down the steps. John Richard’s geraniums and delphiniums were lush and full, I noted, no doubt from illegal watering. Still limping slightly, I rounded the house to the three-car garage.

Two bays were closed; the third, nearest to the back door, was partially open. Still holding the knife handle, I ducked down to peer into the open space. I saw myself staring at my reflection in the TT’s chrome. So he was home, the bastard.

My aching back and legs made it difficult to tuck myself underneath the garage door. Plus, I had to come up with a plan. My cell phone was in my other apron pocket, in case I needed it.

The garage smelled of grease, exhaust, and something else…. What? My footsteps gritted over the concrete as I eased around the back of the Audi. As soon as I got to the inside door to the house, I vowed, I’d call Marla. I wouldn’t go in, but I’d tell her I did need her to meet me over here and force the Jerk to open up, just in case he decided to—

I stopped and stared in disbelief. I couldn’t move, couldn’t process what I was seeing. And yet there it was. There he was. John Richard, with his head skewed at a crazy angle, his body sprawled across the front seat of his car. His chest was covered with blood. He was a mess. And he was dead.

5

I had loved him. I had hated him. He had stood beside me, grinning, when Arch was born. Many nights, he had thrust out his chest and thrashed me, until welts rose on my arms and back. I’d been convinced he had a black heart. Now his chest cavity was a gory mass of skin, bone, and blood.

And his heart wasn’t beating.

I couldn’t look at him, or what was left of him. I knew that smell now: cordite, the gas produced when a gun fires. My clammy hand gripped my cell phone. I called 911 and shakily explained that my ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, had been shot. Yes, I thought he was dead. They asked for my location and I blanked.

“Aspen Meadow Country Club.” My voice cracked. “A rental. Tudor house, on a dead end. This is a new place, and he’s lying in the garage. Wait. We’re at 4402 Stoneberry. I can’t remember—”

But there was something I did remember: Arch. Oh my God, Arch. He was at the front door, waiting. Waiting for his father. What if he came looking for me in the garage? I was not going to allow him to see this.

“Ma’am?” The emergency operator’s voice spiraled into my ear. “What do you mean, a new place for him?”

“Look, I have to go. I’ll be out front when the sheriff’s department shows up. My van, Goldilocks’ Catering, is parked there. Please, I have to go. My fifteen-year-old son is here. He doesn’t know his father is dead.”

The operator’s voice droned on. I didn’t know if I was hearing her words or just mentally substituting what I knew she would say. Stay on the scene, stay calm, stay put, do not hang up. I ducked beneath the half-open garage door and closed the cell phone.

A sudden wind whipped the aspens and pines around the houses of the cul-de-sac. A cloud of dust rose into the air and shimmered in the sunlight. Then it blasted against John Richard’s house. I closed my eyes against the grit and fought dizziness.

For he himself knows whereof we are made; he remembers that we are but dust.

What was I going to say to Arch? I simply could not imagine how to announce, “Your father had been shot. He’s dead.”

Riffs of jazz guitar emanated from the van radio. Arch had gotten tired of waiting. The time was ticking down until I told him.

I was having trouble breathing. Inhale, I ordered myself. Exhale. I pulled out the cell and dialed Tom.

“Somebody’s shot John Richard,” I announced to his voice mail. “He’s dead. Oh, Tom, please come up to his house.” The wind rose again and showered me with dust. “We need you. Please.”

I closed the phone. I would have to get rid of the hysterical note in my voice before talking to Arch.

John Richard’s chest had been blown wide open. The image of what I’d seen made me dizzy. John Richard’s pink shirt had been drenched in blood. And his pants…khakis, had been covered with blood, too. Oh, God, I couldn’t think about it.

I dialed Marla’s cell.

“Get over to the Jerk’s new house as quickly as you can,” I said to her voice mail. “I think somebody’s shot him. He’s dead.”

My knees buckled and I sat down in the driveway. The wind picked up another nimbus of shiny dust and whacked it onto the cul-de-sac. John Richard’s lush grass bristled and flattened. The blue delphiniums rimming the house bent and swayed.

Our days are like the grass; we flourish like the flower of the field.

I prayed. Help me. Perhaps God was already sending these verses from the 103rd Psalm, one my Sunday-school class had memorized. We flourish like a flower in the field, and then?

When the wind goes over it, it is gone, and its place shall know it no more.

John Richard was no more. Was it possible, after all these years? Was he really gone, this man who had hurt so many people? I swallowed hard, stood, and steadied myself. It was time to go talk to Arch.

“Hon, something very bad has happened.” I slipped into the van driver’s seat and turned off the radio.

Arch furrowed his brow. “What? Is Dad okay?”

“Arch, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, but your dad is not okay.” Arch frowned, his eyes fixed on me. “It’s very bad news, I’m afraid, so prepare yourself. Your dad is dead. I think he’s been shot. The police will be here soon.”

“What are you saying, Mom? Dad’s been involved in a shooting? When? Where is he?”

“He’s in the garage. Something went very wrong. That’s why the sheriff’s department is coming.”

“Where’s your cell?” Arch demanded, his voice loud. Denial, denial, of course. “Call an ambulance, they might be able to revive him!”

“Oh, Arch—”

Dust sprayed on the windshield. There was the distant sound of sirens. The sheriff’s department must have had an officer patrolling Aspen Meadow. They’d have radioed and told him to hightail it over here.

“Mom!” Arch yelled, his eyes wild.

It had been a long time since Arch had let me hug him, but he did now. He was trembling violently.

“Mom—” His voice cracked. “Please!” He wrenched away. “What happened? Why won’t you tell me?”

“I don’t know what happened. If I did, I’d tell you.”

Arch put his head in his hands. He began to sob, wrenching cries that felt as if they were ripping my chest open. After a while, I reached out for him, but his hands batted me away. The tear-stained face he turned to me was filled with rage.

“Tell me what happened, Mom! Who was that guy who was here? Did he shoot Dad?”

“I don’t know! That’s why the police are—” Mrs. Korman, do you have my money? What kind of money problem had John Richard gotten himself into? Had he plunged himself into a debt jam? One he couldn’t climb out of? My mind wheeled and bumped over the possibilities as Arch continued to cry.

Without warning, the van’s back door rumbled open, startling both of us. Arch used his shirt to wipe his face, then adjusted his glasses.

“It’s me,” Tom’s deep, authoritative voice announced. He climbed in, sat heavily in the rear seat, and wordlessly handed each of us a homemade quilt. These thick handmade creations were for victims and survivors of violent crime, stitched by volunteers in the county. I wrapped myself in mine, a red-and-white beauty with, ironically, a heart motif. Arch let his black-and-gold-patterned one fall to the floor.

My cell phone chirped and I picked it up. The caller ID indicated it was Marla. Tom gently removed the phone from my hand and pressed Talk.

“Yeah, Marla. It’s true. Goldy and Arch are right here with me, in the van. Yeah, I sped up to Stoneberry. No, don’t come. I’m telling you, stay away. Keep your cell next to you and we’ll call you back. Yeah, soon.” Then he pressed End.

A sudden rapping on the side window made me jump. It was the same sound the skeleton-faced fellow had made when he’d asked for his money. I wanted to tell Tom about that, but I didn’t want to upset Arch more than he already was.

My son’s face was very pale. He was shivering and biting his bottom lip. I picked up the quilt and tucked it behind his shoulders.

“Schulz,” said a uniformed cop. “They’re asking for you up on the driveway. They want to know your relationship with all this.”

Tom climbed from the van. I watched his commanding swagger as he accompanied the cop up the driveway. Three police cars now ringed the dead end. I turned to my son, who had pulled around the edge of the quilt to cover his face.

“Arch, honey,” I said gently, “what can I do for you? Do you want me to call Todd? See if he can come over here? The cops are going to want to talk to me…because I found your dad. They’ll probably talk to you, too. Then I’ll have to go down to the department. When I do, would you like to go over to the Druckmans’? Or do you want to stay with me?” I paused. “I’m willing to have you with me every minute.”

Arch hesitated, then poked his head out of the quilt. He was scowling, trying to keep a lid on his feelings. “I don’t know. All right, I’ll be with Todd.” He raised his eyes to mine. “What about you, Mom?”

“I’ll be fine,” I said, with more calm than I felt.

I called the Druckmans’ house and told the machine that we’d had a family emergency. If Eileen could come to the Stoneberry cul-de-sac to wait for Arch, we would deeply appreciate it. I closed the cell phone, thinking I should call St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, where John Richard was a sometime parishioner. But I couldn’t face it. I stared out the windshield, unable to think. The sun’s glare on the dust burned my eyes.

Cops swarmed all around us. Once again, Arch’s breath began to come out as soblike gasps. I hugged him. Shoulders heaving, he accepted the embrace.

Tom startled us by opening the back door. He slid in again, his face grim. Still, he reached over and patted Arch on the back.

“Hey, buddy. I’m sorry. We’re going to take care of you.”

Arch cleared his throat once, twice. Then the three of us were silent. What if the cops insisted Arch go to the department with me? I couldn’t contemplate it.

When Eileen Druckman’s black BMW wagon roared up, I thanked God. Eileen leaped out of the car and trotted toward the van. She wore a gray sweatsuit. Her dark hair was wet, as if she’d just gotten out of the shower. Bless her for answering my desperate call so quickly.

I jumped out when Eileen was intercepted by a cop. He seemed to accept her explanation for why she was here, and let her go. As I walked over to meet her, I noted that what had to be my heightened adrenaline from finding John Richard had diminished the physical pain from that morning’s assault. Once again, I shook my head at the irony.

“John Richard’s been shot,” I murmured. “He’s dead.”

Eileen’s slim, pretty face twitched. “Good Lord.”

With Tom helping him, Arch slowly descended from the van. He still had the black-and-gold quilt pulled tightly around his head and shoulders. On this breezy, dusty June afternoon, he needed the protection. Before my son was allowed to leave, though, the same policeman intercepted him.

“We need him to give a statement, ma’am,” the cop informed me.

My shoulders slumped. “Can’t it possibly wait?”

He shook his head, but his tone softened. “The detectives aren’t here yet. Tell you what, I’ll take a preliminary report. You need to be here, though.”

I nodded. Of course. I knew a parent had to be present when a minor was questioned. But I sure didn’t look forward to it.

We walked to his car, which smelled of tuna sandwiches and old vinyl. In a halting voice, Arch told the patrolman everything he’d seen, from the old man in the blue sedan (he’d been up knocking on the door when the guy asked for his money), to there being no answer at his father’s house. When we got to the part about how I’d told him to wait while I went to the garage, the patrolman flicked me a look. Still numb, I pressed my lips together and shrugged. When Arch broke down and started crying, the cop told him he could leave.

Eileen walked over and held Arch. “Todd’s waiting for you. Oh, you dear boy, I’m so sorry.”

“Arch!” Tom called after him. “I’ll come over to the Druckmans’ house as soon as I finish here with your mom. All right?”

Arch looked back and nodded, his face a pale sliver inside the dark quilt.

When Eileen’s wagon had belched smoke and taken off down Stoneberry, Tom muttered to me that he’d return in a few minutes. He strode back up the driveway. I couldn’t think of what I was supposed to do. The policeman said I needed to wait for the detectives, so I climbed back into the van’s driver’s seat. There were now six Furman County Sheriff’s Department cars parked at various angles in the cul-de-sac.

It was going to be a long afternoon.

Cops came and went. One unrolled yellow crime-scene tape around John Richard’s rental property. The coroner arrived.

I had no idea how much time had passed. Finally, finally, Tom came walking back down the driveway. When he climbed into the passenger seat, his ordinarily rosy face was drained of color.

I said, “Now what’s—”

He held up his hand. Then he reached forward and opened my glove compartment. My glove compartment that I usually kept locked.

It was empty. I stared at the vacant space, not comprehending.

“Dammit!” Tom whacked the compartment closed. This unusually violent act unnerved me. My ears began to ring.

“Tom. Don’t tell me they found my gun in the garage.”

He shook his head. “You know they’re not going to let me be part of this investigation. But…I happened to see the thirty-eight beside the driveway, like someone had tossed it there. I just didn’t want to believe it.”

“I did not shoot him. I swear.”

He reached out for my hands and held them. “I know.” He paused. “After you accidentally fired at the mice this morning, you didn’t lock your thirty-eight back in your glove compartment, did you?”

I thought back, now wholly confused. I must have locked the compartment. I’d unlocked it when I’d shown my gun to the officer investigating the attack. He’d left when Julian and Liz arrived. Then we’d been in such a hurry to get new food, my body had hurt so much from being hit, and I’d been so worried about Roger Mannis showing up…no, I remembered replacing the gun, but not relocking the compartment. But aside from that cop, Marla, and Tom, who knew I kept a gun in the van? And Marla would never have done this. She was working at the bake sale, and she would have joked that that was much more important than shooting the Jerk.

Tom reached for my cell phone and pressed the buttons for Marla’s cell. She must have answered right away, because Tom began talking almost immediately.

“Trouble here, Marla. We need you to find a criminal attorney for Goldy and have him meet her down at the department ASAP.” Tom paused. “What do you mean, why? Of course she didn’t do it. But things aren’t going too well. We’ll tell you more later.” Then he pressed End. I could just imagine Marla hurling her cell phone against whatever wall was convenient. She hated people hanging up on her.

Tom handed me my phone. “Put this in your pocket. We’re going to have to talk quickly because—”

“Oh, Lord, Tom, I’m going to be sick.”

“Listen to me. Look at me.”

I focused on those green eyes, usually liquid with love. Now they were stern, commanding. My stomach tightened even more. “Say as little as possible, understand? Don’t worry that it makes you look guilty.” He touched my cheek, as if to soften his words. “Do not talk about being attacked this morning. Do not tell them the gun went off in your hand. Do not even tell them you have a gun. Give as brief a statement as possible. Then when you get down to the department, demand to confer with your lawyer.” His eyes turned gentle. “You have to trust me on this.”

“I trust you on everything,” I said weakly.

Two detectives were sauntering down the driveway. I knew they were detectives because they wore dark suits and sober ties. One held a clipboard. The other signaled to Tom that they wanted to talk to me. Panic rose in my throat, as it had so many nights when John Richard had been raging, hollering, and throwing things. The memory of that fear immobilized me.

I wanted to bolt.

My mind, so blank a while ago, was now whirling. This morning I’d been beaten up and sabotaged. Of course I’d suspected the Jerk. I’d taken my thirty-eight into the Roundhouse and been so startled by rodents, I’d accidentally fired at the floor. And now I had gunshot residue on my hands. John Richard had been shot with my gun, stolen from my glove compartment that I’d stupidly forgotten to lock. He’d been killed sometime in the three hours between when I’d last seen him at the Roundhouse and four o’clock. And when I’d last seen him at the Roundhouse, sixty-plus people had witnessed the two of us locked in a shouting match.

“Mrs. Korman? I mean, Mrs. Schulz?” said the first detective, a young, red-haired fellow with a name tag that said “Reilly.” His clipboard, I noticed, was filled with bright white paper. Behind him was someone else I didn’t recognize, a taller, older man with black hair, a ruddy complexion, and “Blackridge” on his name tag. “Could you get out of your vehicle and talk to us for a few minutes?”

I obeyed him. Tom had put his career on the line by checking my glove compartment, to see if the weapon they’d found was mine. My dear husband. How different he was from the one who now lay dead up in the garage.

Everything will be all right, I told myself. But it sure didn’t feel that way.

6

Will you give us permission to search your vehicle?”

Reilly asked in the same formal tone.

“Yes, yes, of course,” I said automatically. And then I had a horrible thought: What if the killer who’d taken my gun had planted something in my car? The detectives had already nodded at two crime-scene guys; one of them clambered into the car. Tom looked at me and gave a thumbs-up. I wanted to feel confident, but I didn’t.

I took a deep breath and followed the detectives halfway around the cul-de-sac, until we arrived at a department car.

“When did you get here, Mrs. Schulz?” Reilly asked, his blue eyes flat.

“Just before four. Maybe five, ten of.”

He scribbled. “And why were you here?”

“John Richard Korman, the man who was…shot, is, was my ex-husband. This morning, well, actually, this afternoon, he…” Suddenly I couldn’t stand it. Literally. “I need to sit down.”

They opened the doors of the department car, and the three of us slid in. Blackridge sat in the driver’s seat. Reilly, beside me in the back, told me to keep on with my story.

“He, John Richard, said he had a late tee time for playing golf with Arch. Arch is our fifteen-year-old son who just left.” Neither detective spoke. Reilly motioned for me to go on. “John Richard said for me to bring Arch over at four, which I did.”

When Reilly wrote, his short, pale, freckled fingers moved very fast. Blackridge’s face, meanwhile, was impassive. When a groan escaped me, the detectives exchanged a glance.

“When you got here,” Blackridge asked, “was anyone else here?”

“Yes, someone was.” I described the down-at-the-heels fellow with the skeletal face. Blackridge wanted to know about the man’s car, and seemed surprised that I’d written down the license number. Reilly retrieved the piece of paper I offered from my pocket and took more notes.

“What made you do that?” Blackridge again. “Take down this man’s license number, I mean.”

“He called me ‘Mrs. Korman.’ I guess he assumed I was John Richard’s wife because Arch was up at the door yelling, ‘Dad! Dad! Open the door!’ Anyway, the man wanted to know if I had his money.”

“ ‘His money,’ ” Blackridge repeated. “What money?”

“Well,” I said, “obviously, money the Jer—uh, John Richard owed him!” As Arch would say, Duh. Through all this, Reilly wrote.

“Then what did you do?” Blackridge demanded.

“Nothing. The guy seemed to get nervous. He left. Then I went up to the door with Arch. We both banged on it and rang the bell.”

“You banged on the door?” Blackridge’s dark brown eyes pierced me. “Why?”

I sighed. “Because I was sure John Richard was in there.” I ordered myself to get the anger out of my voice before saying any more. In a calmer tone, I went on: “You have to understand. John Richard had been very insistent that I bring Arch over promptly at four. I was convinced he was hiding out from this fellow, one of his creditors, who wanted his money. But I figured that since the guy had driven off, John Richard just wasn’t aware that the coast was clear. So when he still didn’t answer the door, I said to Arch, ‘Let’s try one more time.’ ” I stopped talking, trying to recall what had happened next. What had happened exactly.

“Then what?” Blackridge prompted me after a few moments.

“I walked around to the garage.”

“Where was your son?”

“I told him to wait at the front door.”

“You said, ‘Let’s try one more time.’ Why didn’t you have your son go with you?”

“I don’t know.” Why did the truth have to look so bad? Just wait here, honey, while I go pretend to discover Dad, dead. Heat rose to my cheeks. I added, “I told my son I was just checking to see if the Audi was there.”

The detectives traded another look.

Blackridge said, “Go on.”

“The garage door was half open, which was bizarre, or at least unusual for John Richard.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because John Richard loved that car, that new Audi. He was manic about his stuff. He’d never risk someone being able to break in through the garage.” Blackridge nodded for me to continue. “I ducked down. I could see that the Audi was still there. So I scooted under the garage door—”

“Why not call Arch over at that point?” Blackridge wanted to know. “You’d been at the front door together, trying to summon his father.”

I let out a deep breath. “I don’t know.” This seemed to be my refrain for the day. “Anyway,” I went on quickly, eager for this to be over, since I knew I was going to have to repeat the whole thing down at the department. “I went in, walked across the garage, and then…” I paused, remembering the horrid sight of John Richard’s twisted body. “Then I saw him. In his car. I saw he’d been shot and that he was dead. So I called Tom and got his voice mail. I left a message about what I’d seen, and I asked him to come up here. Then I called you all.”

“Did you touch anything in the garage? Move anything? Take anything?”

“No, no, no, of course not.”

Reilly tapped the clipboard with his pen. “We’ll be analyzing the tape of your call to 911,” he put in.

“Go ahead,” I retorted, feeling fury flare. So what if I’d hung up on the 911 operator? I’d been worried about Arch, still out front. I hadn’t wanted him to make an appearance in the garage and see his father, so grotesque in death.

Blackridge lifted a warning eyebrow at Reilly. “And next, Mrs. Schulz?” he asked gently.

I bit the inside of my cheek. In a homicide case, the cops traced all the calls you made, so omitting the call to Marla was a bad idea. “I called my best friend, Marla Korman. She’s John Richard’s other ex-wife. I got her voice mail, too.” I took a deep breath.

“And why did you call the other ex-wife of the man you’d just found dead?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t think. Because she’s my friend, I suppose. I left her a message saying John Richard was dead. Then I went to tell my son there had been a terrible accident. That his father was dead. I knew he’d need me. Then the two of us waited for you all to show up.”

Blackridge had hooked his meaty arm over the front seat so he could turn and look at me. “Do you have any idea who could have done this, Mrs. Schulz? Did Dr. Korman have enemies? Say, particular people who didn’t like him?”

I thought of Courtney MacEwan’s cold eyes and hardened visage this morning. He owes me. But she was only one of many women—present company included—whom John Richard had made love to passionately for a while before moving on to someone else.

“He had ex-girlfriends,” I said lamely. “Lots of them. Fifty-some.”

“Fifty-some? Can you give us names of the most recent ones?”

I felt horrid pointing the finger at Courtney, but I was being truthful here, right? “I’m pretty sure the most recent ex-girlfriend is named Courtney MacEwan.”

“Spell her name, please.” Reilly’s thin voice startled me. Feeling like a total heel, I spelled Courtney’s name.

“Anyone else?” Blackridge asked.

“His current girlfriend is named Sandee Blue. I think she works at the country-club golf shop.”

“Anyone else?”

“Wait. He had an argument at the funeral lunch with a man named Ted Vikarios. I don’t know where Ted lives or even if the argument is significant.” I spelled Ted’s name for them. Did I know any other possible enemies of John Richard? they asked. I said, “Apart from the man wanting his money, I don’t know who John Richard’s current acquaintances are. Were.” I did not add my usual comment, I try to stay as far away from him as possible.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz,” Blackridge said. Finally. “You know the drill here. You’re the primary witness, and we need to take you down to the department to make a taped statement.” Reilly flipped over the pages of notes he’d taken and tucked the clipboard beside him. Blackridge turned the key in the ignition, and we started out for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. There, I knew, everything would be different.

My new criminal lawyer would be waiting. This would make me look even more guilty, but tough tacks. And the taped interrogation would not be, as they say, a piece of cake.

Brewster Motley had wide shoulders, a mop of long, sun-bleached blond curls, and a tanned, boyish face complete with impish grin. He looked like a surfer who’d accidentally gotten tucked into an expensive gray Italian suit and dark gray leather loafers. Unfortunately, I’d had to deal with a few criminal lawyers. When you’re telling them what actually happened, they smirk at you. And then when the two of you are with the cops, your lawyer commands you to shut up, even when you have a perfectly good explanation for how things went so wrong. In any event, I took to happy-go-lucky-looking Brewster Motley. He’d believe I was innocent, wouldn’t he?

Tom had told me to demand to see my lawyer immediately. So when we reached the department parking lot, I astonished Reilly and Blackridge by announcing that my attorney should have arrived by now. I said I wanted to confer with him before any taping began. When Blackridge glanced in the rearview mirror to check my expression, I just closed my eyes.

After about ten minutes of bureaucratic wrangling and trying to find the person Mrs. Schulz was asking for, I was ushered into a room where Brewster Motley was waiting, grinning from ear to ear. Surf’s up!

“I think I’m in trouble,” I began, once the door was closed. Brewster suppressed his grin and nodded sympathetically.

“Tell me about it.” His voice was as warm and comforting as custard sauce. “Let’s sit.” He snapped open a luxurious leather briefcase and pulled out a notepad. “Relax.”

I did as told. No wonder they call them Counselor.

“First of all, Mr. Motley, I did not shoot my ex-husband.”

“Call me Brewster. And by the way, I’m aware of the few times you’ve helped the cops with cases. I read about them in the paper.”

“Super. But I have to tell you, Brewster, there are a lot of circumstances that are going to make this look really bad.” I gave a very abbreviated account of the terrible history between John Richard and me. John Richard, I went on, was an unreformed batterer who’d beaten one girlfriend almost to death, an act that had finally landed him in prison for aggravated assault. He’d gotten out six weeks ago, on April the twenty-second, and had already dumped one girlfriend who was now furious with him. Brewster asked for her name and I spelled out Courtney MacEwan for the second time that day. I told him about the Jerk’s brief argument with Ted Vikarios, and again spelled out that name. Plus, John Richard seemed to be in trouble with creditors. He was living a country-club lifestyle with no visible means of support. I believed he was borrowing large amounts of money, secured by who-knows-what. That could be the only explanation for his sudden ability to sponsor a golf tournament, afford the rent on a Tudor McMansion, and buy, not lease, a new Audi. John Richard had been trying to embrace the high-flying rich-doctor lifestyle he used to have. Except that he wasn’t practicing medicine. His license had been suspended when he went to jail.

“How do you know he bought the Audi?”

“His other ex-wife, Marla Korman, and I are best friends. She told me.”

“Yes. That’s the Mrs. Marla Korman who hired me.”

“Right. Marla loves to track the…John Richard, his love life and financial dealings. And she passes on all she learns to me.” I felt my cheeks coloring. “We do gossip about him. Did.”

Brewster tapped his pen on the desk. “Did you and Dr. Korman have any children?”

I told him about Arch, that my son had been with me when I’d discovered John Richard’s body. Well, not exactly with me, and that was part of the problem.

Brewster held up a hand and gave me another charming grin. “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Did Dr. Korman keep up with child support while he was in prison?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “His lawyer arranged for the sale of the Jer—uh, John Richard’s house, and supposedly the child support came out of that.”

“What do you mean, supposedly? Did you ask Korman’s lawyer where the money came from?”

“You bet I did. And he rudely informed me that as long as I got the money, where it came from was none of my beeswax. He also told me that Marla’s snooping wasn’t going to get her anywhere.”

There was a knock on the door. Brewster Motley jumped from his chair to answer it. He spoke in a low but confident voice.

“No,” he said finally, “my client and I will tell you when we’re ready.” Without waiting for a reply, he shut the door.

“Maybe we should move along to today,” Brewster said lightly once he was seated again. “Tell me everything you think is pertinent.”

I described showing up to prep a funeral lunch, being shoved aside by an unknown assailant and then chopped in the neck. No, I didn’t know who the guy in the mask was. Yes, I suspected the Jerk. That was what Marla and I had begun calling John Richard at least ten years ago. It was based on his initials, I explained, and it suited his personality, too. Brewster shook his head, a grim smile on his face.

I summarized the rest of it—Marla coming, our discovery of the break-in, the mice, my firing the thirty-eight. Brewster wrinkled his tanned face.

“Where’d you get the gun?”

“I’ve been keeping the thirty-eight in my glove compartment ever since John Richard had his sentence commuted.”

Brewster’s blond curlicues of hair trembled. My heart plummeted.

“Why was his sentence commuted?”

I sighed. “A prison guard was having a heart attack. John Richard gave him CPR and saved his life. There were witnesses. The guard, his cardiologist, and everyone in the guard’s family wrote to the governor begging him to let John Richard out.”

Brewster frowned. “And nobody’s tried to hit or ambush you until today?”

“No.”

“And you fired the gun today.”

“Right. You should know that my husband of the past two years is Tom Schulz, a sheriff’s-department investigator,” I added quickly. “He thought my having the thirty-eight was a good idea, as long as I kept the glove compartment locked, which I’m sorry to say I appear not to have done, um, after I accidentally fired at the mice.” Brewster stopped writing and gave me a confused look. “A cop came and took a report. I showed him the gun, then put it back into the glove compartment. But I forgot to lock it.”

“How do you know you forgot to lock it, Mrs. Schulz?”

“Because somebody stole my gun.”

His expression was studiously flat. “Keep giving me an exact summary of events, please.”

“My assistants and I were able to put together another meal, a cold plate. But after the lunch, John Richard started screaming at me, outside the Roundhouse. He wanted me to bring Arch over to his house at four so they could play golf. It wasn’t a pretty exchange. Even worse, lots of the guests still at the lunch—”

Wait a minute. By the time John Richard and I were arguing, people had begun to leave. There’d been folks milling around in the parking lot, getting into their cars and taking off. One of them had gone into my van and stolen my gun. But why? And who? Usually people sneaked into my van to steal food. So the culprit hadn’t found any food, had stolen my gun, and then had killed John Richard with it, just for good measure?

“Lots of the guests still at lunch,” Brewster prompted me.

“And folks in the parking lot, too. They all witnessed this argument. Anyway, I rustled up Arch, who was with a pal at an ice rink down in Lakewood. I brought them to our house, got Arch cleaned up, delivered some brownies to a bake sale, dropped Arch’s friend at his house and arrived at John Richard’s just before four.”

“Please give me the times, exactly.”

I did. I also repeated the scenario of the fellow asking for money, then driving off, and how I’d discovered the body—by myself. Brewster nodded and kept writing.

“But you haven’t heard the worst part, Mr. Mot—Brewster.”

“He was shot with your gun?”

“My gun was at the scene. How’d you know?”

“More important, how do you know, Mrs. Schulz?”

I let out a breath. How could I say this without it sounding as if I was somehow collaborating with my cop husband? “Even though he’s not on the case, my husband had been up at the garage with the team. When he came out, he spotted my thirty-eight lying beside the driveway. He came back to my van and opened the glove compartment. When there was nothing there, I knew my gun had to be up near John Richard.”

There was another rap at the door. Brewster put the notepad back in his leather briefcase and stood up.

He said, “Every time they ask you a question, look at me before you say a single word.” He hesitated, then gave me his beach-boy grin, as if he were actually looking forward to the interrogation. Still smiling, he said, “Let’s boogie.”

I followed Brewster down the hall until the cop who’d knocked on the door ushered us into an interrogation room. Two more cops were there, along with Blackridge and Reilly. The cops shocked me when they stepped forward and placed brown paper bags over my hands, then taped the bags closed. Meanwhile, Blackridge was talking.

“Mrs. Schulz, you have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney…”

Aw jeez, Miranda? And they were checking for gunshot residue already? There was no way they could have run the serial numbers on my thirty-eight that quickly.

“I strongly object to the placement of bags on my client’s hands.” Brewster’s voice was suddenly authoritative, cold with rage. “She is here as a witness, not a suspect. Either arrest her or take the bags off.”

“Sit down, Counselor,” ordered Blackridge. “She’s a suspect.” He motioned me to a chair, too. I stared up at the blank mirrored wall, behind which, I knew, a video camera was rolling. Probably the chief of detectives was back there, too, observing this little drama along with a prosecutor. Oh, joy. “While the two of you were having your conference,” Blackridge went on, “we had a chance to check our files. There are quite a few reports in there from you, Mrs. Schulz.” He raised those same questioning dark eyes and black eyebrows at me. “Your ex-husband perpetrated violence on you? Did you finally see your chance to get even?”

“We resent the question,” Brewster quickly announced. “My client will not answer. And if you checked those files thoroughly, you saw that Mrs. Schulz has helped your department with several homicide investigations.”

Reilly snorted.

Unmoved, Blackridge went on, “We also had the chance to talk to a few guests at the lunch you catered today. They said that when folks were beginning to leave, you and your ex-husband had a screaming match outside.”

Brewster piped up, “Dr. Korman yelled at my client. He demanded she bring their son over at four o’clock today, which was not a prearranged visitation. As you saw from your files, he was a violent, dangerous man, given to fits of temper. His demand was extremely inconvenient for my client, and she said so. If you check your witnesses, you’ll see it was Dr. Korman raising his voice. Not my client.”

I sighed and put my bagged hands up on the table. This was a mistake.

“How’d you get those marks on your arms?” Blackridge demanded.

Puzzled, I looked down. The places my arms had hit when I’d landed on the ground this morning had had time to swell and turn red. In some places, they were already shading to purple.

“My client refuses to answer questions on her appearance,” Brewster said, indignant.

Blackridge ignored him. “Can you account for your movements, Mrs. Schulz, between the time of your argument with Dr. Korman and your finding his body?”

I glanced at Brewster, who nodded. In as few words as possible, and looking straight at the video camera, I recounted the chronology.

“And you told us earlier there was a man there?” Blackridge prompted.

Brewster indicated that I could answer, so I again summed up the story about the down-at-the-heels gent wanting his money.

Blackridge leaned into my face. “Do you own a gun, Mrs. Schulz?”

“I’m advising my client not to answer,” Brewster interjected. “And I want you to take the bags off.”

“Look, Counselor, either you let us swab her hands or we’ll get a fast court order to do it.”

“You will find GSR on my client’s hands,” Brewster announced, his voice matter-of-fact. “The explanation is simple.”

“I’ll bet it is,” Blackridge muttered.

“There was a rodent infestation at her place of business this morning. She was carrying a firearm to protect herself and accidentally fired when surprised by the rodents. Not only do we have a witness to this shooting, but a Furman County patrolman, called to the scene, saw the bullet hole in the Roundhouse kitchen floor. He also saw her weapon in her van’s glove compartment.”

“Right,” said Blackridge. Then he turned to me and glowered. “So you do have a gun. Your ex beat you up today, didn’t he? Or maybe he did it last night. So you planned today out. You put mice in your restaurant, got a friend to meet you there, and then you shot at the little furry creatures. That way, you’d have a good explanation for the GSR. You knew you’d see Dr. Korman at the event you were catering, and that he’d want something right away. He always wanted something, didn’t he? You’d have to do something for him, take something over to his house. Or maybe you made up an excuse to go over there.”

“No—” I protested.

“You saw your chance and you took it, didn’t you, Mrs. Schulz?”

“No!” I yelled. My voice was loud and vehement, but I didn’t care. “I’d have everything to lose and nothing to gain by doing such a thing!” Under the table, one of Brewster’s loafers nudged my left sneaker. I pressed my lips together.

“Again, Mrs. Schulz, for the record, do you know who else disliked Dr. Korman as much as you did?”

“My client refuses to answer unless you reword the question.” For a surfer dude, Brewster Motley sure seemed to know his stuff.

“Calm down, Counselor, we’re not in court yet.” Blackridge tilted his wide, meaty face at me. “Do you have any idea who Dr. Korman’s enemies were, Mrs. Schulz?”

For the third time that day, I found myself spelling MacEwan and, even more reluctantly, Vikarios. I said John Richard had no job, and appeared to be living on what I surmised was borrowed money. Beyond that, I did not know.

“What about the other ex-wife? Marla Korman? Any enmity between her and Dr. Korman?”

Brewster shook his head and said, “My client refuses to answer any questions about Dr. Korman’s other ex-wife. You’ll have to interrogate Marla Korman yourselves.”

Well, I certainly didn’t like the idea of that. But Brewster had not given me permission to speak.

“Where is your gun now, Mrs. Schulz?” Blackridge asked.

“My client refuses to answer.” Brewster had allowed a weary note to creep into his voice. “Okay, boys, do the GSR test, and then we’re done here, unless you intend to arrest my client.”

Blackridge made a face, but glanced over at the cops who’d bagged my hands and gave a single nod. They brought in the distilled water and Q-tips, removed the bags, and swabbed first the top and inside of my index fingers, then the web of my hands going to my thumbs, and finally the top and inside of my thumbs. Checking for antimonium barium, otherwise known as gunshot residue. Which they were going to find, all because I’d been startled by mice.

The cops left the room with the swabs. The detectives exchanged some prearranged facial signal and told us to wait. When they banged out the door, it shook on its hinges.

I covered my mouth and leaned over to Brewster. “What are they doing now? Where’d they go?”

Brewster, with a palm over his own mouth, whispered, “They’re consulting with whoever was behind the mirror. They’re trying to decide if they have enough evidence to go to a prosecutor now. They’re also trying to decide if you’re a flight risk. My guess is that they’ll answer no to both questions, and let you go.”

What seemed an eternity later, but was probably only ten minutes, Reilly reentered the room. I thought of Arch. My stomach cramped. Please, God, let me not be sent to jail.

“Mrs. Schulz?” His tone was solemn. “You may go for now. Please do not leave Furman County. Do you understand?”

Did I understand? How dumb did he think I was?

My voice was weak and my body was unsteady. But I said, “Sure,” scraped back my chair, and followed Brewster Motley out of the interrogation room.

7

As we walked down the department’s echoing metal steps, dizziness assaulted me. I grabbed the metal railing, which was shockingly cold. Or was it really hot? Hard to tell.

I told myself that grabbing something hot should remind me of…a delectable dish, something hot from the oven, its crumbly crust steaming, its fruit filling sizzling…. I stopped and closed my eyes.

The last time I’d burned my fingers had been when a pot holder had slipped, and I’d inadvertently grabbed the copper side of a hot tarte tatin mold. Straight from the oven, the tarte’s luscious, bronzed apple slices had bubbled and popped around the edges of a circle of buttery, impossibly flaky pastry. To compound the injury to my burned finger, a few drops of scalding caramelized juice had oozed out of the pan onto my palm and I’d yelped. To comfort myself, I’d wrapped my hand in an ice pack; with my free hand, I’d scooped out a large helping of the tarte and heaped it with frosty globes of cinnamon ice cream….

“Goldy?”

I opened my eyes and stared up at the wavy-glassed four-story bank of windows. The glass caught and magnified the sunlight. I blinked in the glare.

What had I been thinking about? Oh, yes, caramelized apples….

Brewster, seeing that I was no longer descending, turned and gave me a questioning look. “Need help?” he asked.

“Thanks, I’m fine,” I replied, and started back down the ringing metal steps. Then I stopped again. I had no way to get home. The detectives had brought me down in a department car. Tom was either at the Druckmans’ house or at home—in either case, he was with Arch and I didn’t want to bother him.

“Actually, there is something you can do for me, Brewster. If you wouldn’t mind.” I told him I needed a ride back to my van, which was at the scene of the crime. If the crime-scene guys had finished with it, then I’d be able to pick it up and drive home.

“That’s absolutely no problem,” he replied cheerily. “I have a few more questions for you, anyway. Might save you an office visit.”

Oh great, I thought dully as Brewster disappeared outside to retrieve his car. More questions. I’d already had what, three hours of interrogation at John Richard’s house and here at the department? I just couldn’t wait.

When Brewster pulled up in his gold Mercedes—a sleek, shiny sedan not unlike Marla’s—I smiled at the unlawyerlike stickers on his rear window. On the right was “Burton,” a brand of snowboard; on the left, bless my intuition, “Hobie Surfboards.” I didn’t care what kind of dude he was as long as he was a good attorney. And so far, he’d seemed more than competent.

The bright light and dusty wind momentarily blinded me as I made my way to the passenger door. Once I was settled into the plush leather seat, though, Brewster smoothly maneuvered the Benz out of the parking lot. No question: This was not like driving with Marla. There, every item of conversation was punctuated with my friend either braking, accelerating, or cursing.

“By the way,” Brewster began, as if reading my mind, “your pal Marla is paying for all my time. So don’t worry about costs, and don’t hesitate to call with questions.”

“That’s super. She’s great.” Then I tensed. “That’s not a conflict of interest for you, is it? I mean, those detectives were acting as if she was a suspect, too.”

“If Marla needs a lawyer, she can get her own. You’re my client.” Brewster whizzed onto the interstate. “Goldy,” he said, “could you give me a quick history of your marriage to, and divorce from, Dr. Korman?”

And so I did. There was this glamorous, charismatic medical student, the story always began, and yours truly, spellbound at nineteen, hadn’t been a very good judge of character. Yes, I said bitterly, the sheriff’s department still had my complaints on file. Not that my pleas for help had done any good, since in those days a spouse had to agree to press charges, something I was reluctant to do. Even after we were divorced, John Richard had continued his brash and brutal ways with women, until he’d finally been thrown in jail. A prison sentence actually, that he’d been serving in the Furman County Jail because the penitentiary at Cañon City was overcrowded. But being incarcerated hadn’t ended his ability to attract women.

“How long has he known Courtney MacEwan?”

“He’s probably known her for eight or nine years. The way I heard it, as soon as he got out, he called her to go out for coffee, which became lunch, which became a tennis game, which became a whirlwind affair.”

Brewster nodded. “I know the firm that handled her husband’s will. She got about twenty million.”

“And don’t think John Richard wasn’t aware of that.” I recounted all I’d learned from Marla, how John Richard had promised Courtney they’d get married as soon as possible. But then he’d balked—because of Arch, he claimed. How Marla and I suspected, but weren’t sure, that Courtney had been bankrolling John Richard’s reentry into society. Until he dumped her, that is. Then we thought he might have started borrowing money. And Courtney had been pissed.

“I read about it in Cecelia Brisbane’s gossip column in the Journal,” Brewster mused.

I groaned. As soon as I’d seen Cecelia’s cruel column from Friday, the fifth of May, I’d snatched the newspaper and stuffed it in the garbage before Arch could see it. The column had read, “What cute doctor is back out on the golf course, wearing plus fours over his prison suit? And what well-moneyed tennis-playing widow is getting to know him (in the biblical sense, dear readers!) when the two of them leave the club and zip over to their love nest?”

How could people get away with this kind of stuff? I’d wondered. And is this what Cecelia had meant today, when she’d said John Richard was up to his old tricks? I did not know. Arch, studying for his final exams, had either not seen the “cute doctor” column or not cared. I doubted the latter.

“So when did he break up with Courtney?” Brewster asked.

“Arch called one Saturday and asked me to come get him at John Richard’s house. His dad was busy packing boxes, he said. The next thing I knew, Courtney was out and a new girlfriend had been installed.”

“His new girlfriend? You mentioned her to the cops.”

“Sandee with two e s, as she calls herself. Her last name is Blue. Supposedly, John Richard met her in the country-club golf shop, but she doesn’t look like any lady golfer I’ve ever seen.” Brewster gave me a questioning look. “They’re usually svelte and trim. Long and lean. Sandee’s short and buxom, and dresses, if you could call it that, to show off her figure. She doesn’t look a day over twenty-five.”

Brewster grunted. “And then Courtney showed up at the lunch today. And John Richard was there. With Sandee?”

“Yup.”

“Any chance that John Richard could have just dumped Sandee? Or that Sandee might have another boyfriend?”

“Very unlikely that he just dumped her. I don’t know if Sandee has any other love interest. But I do know this: John Richard and Sandee were smooching and snuggling very openly at the funeral lunch, all under the jealous eye of Courtney.” Had I seen anyone else eyeing them? I wasn’t sure. Had anyone been taking photographs at the lunch? I thought I remembered a flashbulb or two, but couldn’t recall who’d been taking pictures, or when. But I did remember something else. “Brewster, when Courtney came into the kitchen, she said, ‘He owes me.’ I thought she meant in a general sense, but maybe that means Marla is right, and she was bankrolling him.”

Brewster nodded. We crested the apex of the interstate and shot beneath the Ooh-Ah Bridge, so named because of its panoramic view of the Continental Divide. In this year of drought, only tiny snowcaps clung to the dull brown peaks. Possible good news, weather wise, was rising from the west: A steep bank of clouds moving our way might bring real rain, and not the dreaded virga. Virga, as the meteorologists were always telling us, was distinguishable as a dark, vertical band descending from storm clouds, but not reaching the ground. The rain fell, but evaporated in midair.

“Okay,” Brewster said. “Now just a couple of quick questions. Who’s this Vikarios fellow?”

I told him about Ted Vikarios, former co–department head at Southwest Hospital. He and his peer, Albert Kerr, had both left doctoring to pursue a calling to be…well, what would you call it? “More religious,” I said finally. “Albert became a priest, and Ted made tapes.”

“Victory over Sin?” Brewster asked. “I remember those. He was down in Colorado Springs, wasn’t he? I heard he made a mint, then lost it all because of some scandal.”

“That he did. But John Richard only went to the Springs on rare occasions, and as far as I know, they hadn’t seen each other in thirteen, fourteen years.”

Brewster nodded. “They’ll be looking at all of Korman’s known associates, including the guys he hung out with at the jail. Okay. So what’s this about there being a problem that Arch wasn’t with you when you discovered Dr. Korman’s body?”

I explained my inadvertent use of the word let’s, as in, “Let’s try one more time.” Then I’d impulsively told Arch to wait while I went to check the garage. I’d related all this to the detectives, back at John Richard’s house. Now they were acting as if I’d killed my ex-husband and realized I had to spare my son the sight of his dead father.

Brewster grinned again but kept his eyes on the road. “Speaking of names. You and Marla need to quit using that moniker, the Jerk. Try to stop even thinking it, ’cuz you really don’t want it to slip out inadvertently.”

I sighed. “What happens next?

Brewster chewed his bottom lip. “Do you have any ideas who might have attacked you this morning? Besides your ex-husband. Did he have enemies in jail? Or friends?”

“I don’t know. He pretty much defined me as his main enemy, the one who’d ruined his life. He…threatened to try to get full custody of Arch, but he always did that. He just didn’t like to pay child support. I’ve come to think he just liked to argue.”

“Did he fight with everybody?”

“Eventually.”

“This morning…when you made your report to the police? After the attack?” When I nodded, Brewster went on: “How about this. Someone wants to frame you for Korman’s death. So they attack you and sabotage your food. You’re going to think it’s Korman, and be furious and suspicious. He’s going to be as mean as he usually is, so when the two of you see each other at the lunch, there are more than the predictable fireworks. And then the killer somehow manages to get your gun and shoots Korman, knowing that you’ll be bringing Arch over. The person who finds the body usually is the prime suspect.”

“I know, I know.” I looked out the window and thought. “What happens when they trace the gun to me?”

“They might come up to your house, bully you, threaten you some more. Before you say a word, call me. Then wait for me to show up.” A blast of dust hit the Mercedes. “You know, they’re going to be doing ballistics tests on the bullets they take out of your ex-husband. They’ll also be checking with Dr. Korman’s neighbors about shots being fired. What did they see and hear, and when? And don’t forget the fellow who wanted his money. They need to check on everything to build any kind of case, trust me.”

“All right.”

Brewster concentrated on the road for a bit, then asked, “Is there anyone who can vouch for your being at the Summit rink in Lakewood at two o’clock?”

“Arch’s friend Todd Druckman. We took him home. A lot of folks must have seen me, in the parking lot, or buying candy from the vending machines.” I chewed the inside of my cheek. “You know, getting back to the assault. Cecelia Brisbane knew about it soon after it happened. She confronted me at the bake sale.”

Brewster nodded knowingly. “Don’t get paranoid, but she may have rigged up a way to listen in on your phone conversations. It might be good not to talk about this case on the phone, just until I can get your lines checked by our security guy.”

“Oh, great. What if Marla calls me with all the latest gossip?”

“Tell her you’ll call her right back. Then use a pay phone. Just tonight.” Brewster gave me his patented grin. “Goldy, this is a big case. The cops are going to put a lot of people on it, and so will the papers, especially since you’ve been involved with homicide investigations already. It’s important that you watch your step.”

“Okay.” I took a calming breath. “Anything else?”

Brewster shook his head. Another gust of wind rained dust on the interstate. The big SUVs in the neighboring lanes rocked precipitously, but Brewster and his Benz were unfazed. When we zoomed down the exit for Aspen Meadow Parkway, he asked me where exactly my van, and John Richard’s house, were located.

“Stoneberry, number 4402, I’ll direct you once we get past the entrance to the country-club area.”

“When we get there,” Brewster advised, “the cops will be everywhere on the property. Somebody should tell you it’s all right to take your vehicle. Or they won’t, and I’ll take you home. Just don’t get into a conversation and don’t linger. Once you get the okay, hop into your vehicle and take off. Got it?”

“Yes, fine, sure.” I felt unbelievably weary. Every part of my body ached, and the swollen bruises throbbed. My legs tingled, as they always did in the aftermath of a demanding event. Even my brain felt as if it was closing down from overuse. I wanted to be home. Tears bit the back of my eyes. I couldn’t hold them in, but at least I didn’t sob. I bent over to my purse, fished around for a tissue, and carefully wiped my face. Brewster pretended not to notice.

At John Richard’s house, the wind was blowing dust everywhere: into the driveway, onto the crime-scene tape, onto all the cops and investigators moving to and fro. In a couple of places, the tape had broken free of its moorings and fluttered in the breeze like bright party ribbons. I was about to leap from Brewster’s Benz when he turned to me.

“Our security guy will check your phones, then I’ll call you if there are any developments. You have to promise me you’ll phone me if you hear anything.”

I did. I also thanked him. A cop called out that they were done with my van and I could take it. Within moments I was back in the driver’s seat, revving the engine and chugging away from John Richard’s house. I didn’t look back.

Tom’s Chrysler, covered with grit, sat in the driveway. That was a relief. On the street, there was another vehicle I recognized, but couldn’t quite place. It sported a bumper sticker that read: “The Episcopal Church Welcomes You.” Somebody was here from St. Luke’s. For this, too, I was thankful.

When I came through the door, Tom was right there. He folded me into a long, comforting hug.

“Where’s Arch?” I asked, my voice muffled.

“Upstairs with Father Pete. I called the church from Eileen’s. He was here when we arrived.” I burrowed into Tom’s shoulder, unable to think. “What do you want to do now?” Tom murmured. “Are you hungry? I barbecued some steaks for Arch and Father Pete. I made one for you, too, and saved it. It’s good cold.”

“Did Arch eat anything?”

“Not much. A few bites. And you’ve already got women phoning from the church. I’m sure you’re not in any mood to return calls.”

“You’ve got that right.” I pulled away from him. “You know what I really want to do? Cook. More than anything, that’ll soothe my nerves.”

“No way.” Tom assessed my bruised arms and legs. “You’ve got to be in pain.”

“I promise to move slowly.”

I washed my hands and put on an apron. I didn’t have the apples to make tarte tatin, so I just took out unsalted butter, eggs, and slivered almonds. I placed them on the counter and stared at them. I felt a stab of worry for Arch. I grabbed the counter to steady myself, then tiptoed out of the kitchen and glanced up the stairs. With Arch’s door closed, I could barely hear Father Pete’s deep voice. I couldn’t make out Arch’s voice at all.

Back in the kitchen, I washed my hands again and told Tom to relax. He settled at our oak kitchen table and kept a watchful, dubious eye on me. Moving slowly, I gathered up flour, sugar, vanilla, and other ingredients I thought would make a delicate, crunchy cookie. As I toasted the almonds, I gave Tom a report of all that had taken place at the department and with my new lawyer. He rolled his eyes and shook his head. His only comment was that, as he’d suspected, they’d taken him off the case. Formally, he was out of the loop. Sergeant Boyd, an old friend of his, had promised to keep him informed of anything he could pick up.

I smiled as I measured flour. I could just imagine Sergeant Boyd, his dark hair clipped in an unfashionable crew cut, his barrel-shaped body, his short, carrotlike fingers. Like Tom, he was no-nonsense when it came to police work. If there was anyone who could bully information out of someone on the investigative team, it was Boyd.

I went back to stirring the warming almonds until they gave off an intoxicating, nutty scent, then I dumped them out to cool on paper towels. As I sifted the flour, checked the softening butter, and measured a judicious amount of sparkling sugar, I wondered what I would call this creation. How about Goldy’s Nuthouse Cookies? I beat the butter until it was creamy, then blended in the sugar until the mélange looked like spun gold. After stirring in the other ingredients, I rolled the mixture into logs and set them in the freezer.

I couldn’t stand it any longer: I had to see how Arch was. I crept up the stairs and listened outside the door of his bedroom, the room he had shared with Julian before Julian left for college. Arch’s strained, occasionally sobbing voice alternated with Father Pete’s low rumble. Probably not the best moment to interrupt, I decided, and tiptoed back down the stairs.

Tom and I cleaned the kitchen. Then I asked Tom to sit down with me. He took a moment to retrieve my new quilt. Then he wrapped me up in it and scooted his chair beside mine. He put his arms around me and pulled me close.

He murmured, “Maybe you shouldn’t try to talk.”

“I have to.” My voice caught. In spite of the quilt, I was shaking violently. Then the words rushed out of me. “Tell me. Tell me who you think killed John Richard.”

Tom sighed. “Goldy, don’t.”

“Please. They suspect me. And I’m very worried about how Arch will react to that.” To my embarrassment, my stomach growled with hunger. My early-morning latte and toast was a distant memory.

Tom let go of me and walked over to the refrigerator. “I want the guys to look closely at that assault on you. I also want them to investigate the folks attending that funeral lunch. Somebody didn’t want the event to be a success, and might even have been setting you up…although how or why isn’t clear.” He pulled out a covered plate, unwrapped it, and sliced off a corner of grilled steak. He stabbed this with a fork and held it up to my mouth. He said, “You need to eat.”

I obeyed. The grill-flavored meat was succulent and tender. “Thanks.” I finished my morsel and crossed my arms. “Why look at people from the lunch? Because somebody whacked me and sabotaged my food? Because my gun was stolen there?”

“Yes and yes. I wish you wouldn’t start probing this just yet. You’re not only in pain, you’re exhausted.” I shrugged. Tom went on, “Then again, maybe someone was waiting here at the house for you. At some point, our perp searched your van for something. Maybe he or she was looking for that same money that the skeleton-faced man wanted, and found your gun instead. If the gun was stolen while your van was here at the house, that wouldn’t have given the killer a whole lot of time to haul over to John Richard’s house and kill him. But it might have been enough.” He sliced off another piece of steak. Like an obedient baby bird, I gobbled it down. “That theory wouldn’t quite fit with the half-open garage door and your ex in his Audi.”

I swallowed. “Why not?”

“John Richard had to be just coming in or just going out, right? And the killer trapped him in his garage.” I gave Tom a confused look. “It’s a matter of trying to figure out a chronology. The department will know more when they get the autopsy report. Plus, the neighbors might have seen or heard something. Hopefully, our guys will be able to pin down the time of death as just when you arrived at the rink in Lakewood.”

I undid myself from the quilt and retrieved the first almost-frozen cookie roll. “I hope Boyd can find out a lot.”

While the oven heated, we worked together slicing the silky dough. As soon as a sheet went into the oven, the phone rang. The caller ID indicated that it was Marla.

“Uh-oh,” said Tom. “You were supposed to call her the minute you walked in the door. Better answer it. I don’t want her to bite my head off.”

Now there was something. I’d never seen Tom afraid of anyone. I languidly picked up the phone and cried, “Girlfriend!”

“Dammit, Goldy,” Marla’s husky voice gasped, as if she’d walked up several flights of stairs. “I just talked to Brewster, and he said he dropped you off an hour ago! I want to hear all about it, plus I have stuff to tell you—”

Don’t talk about the case on the phone. It was probably best to follow Brewster’s expensive advice.

“Marla, I’ve gotta go! The timer’s going off and a whole batch of cookies is about to come out of the oven!”

“Baloney! That never stopped you before. Just take them out of the oven! Now listen, John Richard and—”

“Omigod! Smoke!” I squealed. “The cookies are burning! Quick, Tom, get the fire extinguisher!”

In reality, I pulled a perfect batch of fragrant, golden cookies from the oven. Confused but prepared, Tom huddled next to me with the fire extinguisher poised to blast the cookies. I put the sheet down on the cooling rack and covered the phone with one hand.

“Don’t you dare,” I whispered.

“What’s going on?” he whispered back.

“Goldy!” Marla screamed from the receiver.

“I’ll call you back in ten minutes, Marla. Promise.”

As I was putting the phone back in its holder, I heard Marla’s diminished voice say, “If my phone still had a cord, I would use it to wring your neck! Don’t hang up on me—”

Ah, silence. I eased the cookies off the sheet, nabbed a piece of foil, and piled it with ten hot ones—they were small, I told myself—then invited Tom to have the rest.

“I’ll finish the other rolls later,” I said hastily as I grabbed my jacket.

“Goldy, for crying out loud! It’s past eight o’clock. Where are you going?”

“To a pay phone to call Marla back.” He began to pull on his “Furman County Sheriff’s Department Softball” sweatshirt. I said, “No, please. Don’t. Stay here with Arch. I won’t be long.”

“Forget it. You were assaulted this morning, and you’re not going anywhere alone. Besides, what pay phone are you going to use?”

“The one at the Grizzly Bear Saloon.” I eased the front door open.

“You’re kidding!” he protested. He wrote a quick note to Arch, then hustled out behind me. “The Grizzly has at least one drunken brawl a night.”

“Don’t worry. The guys usually fight with each other, not some caterer who just wants to use the phone. At least, that’s what I hope.”

8

As Tom and I made our way down the street, smoke suddenly filled our nostrils. I coughed, then took shallow breaths. This was no barbecue smoke. Moreover, the night was warm, the sun had just set, and I doubted anyone needed a fire for warmth. I hadn’t heard a report of a wildfire, and neither had Tom. If there was any news, the Grizzly was sure to have it.

A sign hanging from the buckled eave read: “Never Out of Service Since 1870.” Never redecorated, either, I thought as we pushed through arched, louvered half doors and shuffled across a genuine sawdust-covered floor. I registered the presence of at least six dozen bankers, electricians, lawyers, plus assorted ne’er-do-wells. Of course, they were all sporting cowboy hats, vests, and boots. That hadn’t changed since 1870, either.

On the stage, a band was playing “Jailhouse Rock.” A short but otherwise fairly convincing Elvis impersonator—upswept dark hair, skintight sequined suit, energetic hips—was bellowing, “Uh-uh-UH!” A glittery sign beside the band announced that they were “Nashville Bobby and the Boys,” and they were going to be in Aspen Meadow for four more days. Then they moved on to Steamboat Springs, where they’d be playing at the Lonely Hearts Café for two days, before returning to Aspen Meadow the following week. They did seem to take themselves seriously. I took a deep breath and again started coughing.

“Does anybody know where that smoke smell is coming from?” Tom asked the crowd.

“New forest fire,” a wiry fellow piped up. He wore fringed leather pants, a ten-gallon hat, and a shirt sewn with his name on it: “Tex.” Tex took a long pull of beer. “Up in the preserve. Fifteen miles away. Thousand acres, sixty percent contained.”

“Hey!” A very blond, very pudgy woman hipped me to one side, and I fell onto the back of a chair. Around us, everyone laughed.

“Do you mind?” I yelled at the woman, rubbing my ribs that were already bruised enough, thank you very much. Tom tried to hide his smile.

She was probably ten years my senior. She wore fringed beige leather that sparkled with…was there such a thing as fake rhinestones? I didn’t have time to think about it, because I found myself staring at how the rhinestones were also scrolled into a name: “Blondie.”

“Hey!” she yelled again, poking my chest with a long, scarlet fingernail. I stared at her. Her thick pancake makeup glittered under the saloon’s electric-torch chandeliers. I stared at her scarlet-lipsticked mouth as it formed the words “Gitcher own boyfriend!” This time it was the stench of bourbon that made me reel back. Blondie thrust her double chin in my direction. “Ja hear me?” her drunken breath demanded. “Get lost. Tex is mine.”

I teetered backward over two more chairs. “I’ve got a husband, thanks,” I mumbled as more folks laughed.

Tex, immensely pleased to be apparently desired by two short, blond women, tipped his beer and gave me a sly look. I turned to Tom, who winked at me. Tex cleared his throat loudly.

“The fire should be out by mornin’,” he said. Then he lifted his chin and raised one eyebrow. I don’t care about a husband! You interested in me?

I shook my head in an emphatic negative. As I stumbled away, Nashville Bobby and the Boys started howling at the crowd about being nothing but a hound dog. I didn’t care about Tex; I cared even less about Nashville Bobby and his boys. What did worry me was the new fire, since the Roundhouse was situated a mere eight miles from the preserve. How close was the nearest hydrant? If necessary, could the firemen pump water from the lake? Thousand acres, sixty percent contained. We’d become so accustomed to the wildfires that we just cited each one’s statistics—where it was, how much under control, when the firefighters expected complete containment—and moved on with our lives. This was what I needed to do, I thought, then jumped as Nashville Bobby turned up the volume a notch.

Through the cigarette smoke, I could barely make out the stage. Colorado was most emphatically not California, so everyone smoked indoors, sometimes two cigarettes at a time. Nashville Bobby warbled, shook his hips, and finished his song with a bow. To raucous applause, Bobby then announced that the band was going to debut their new song, “Trash.” Sad guitar-string plinking was followed by Bobby crooning:

“I’m just garbage under your sink,You threw me in here and didn’t think!Now I’m gettin’ old, ’n startin’ to stinkYou don’t check the bag; you don’t even wink.”

Tom asked if I wanted anything, like a beer, but I said no. I pushed my way through the crowd until I finally arrived at the dimly lit phone, which was a grimy beige house phone with a stretched-out cord. It was perched at a slight angle between the heavy doors of the saloon’s two restrooms. A stern admonition posted on the wall forbade long-distance calls and asked for coins to be left in a wooden honor box. I dropped in quarters, lifted the receiver, and pressed buttons. When Marla answered, our connection was rough and full of static.

“Marla? It’s me. Marla?”

“ ‘Trash!’ ” sang the band. “ ‘Trash! That’s all I am.’ ”

“Goldy?”

“Marla!”

“ ‘Trash!’ ”

“Goldy, where the hell are you calling from?”

“ ‘Trash!’ ”

“I can’t talk about the case over my home phone!” I hollered. Three cowboys turned a baleful eye in my direction. Embarrassed, I turned toward the wall, where my nose scraped a map of the immense Aspen Meadow Wildfire Preserve. Raccoon Creek, Cherokee Pass, Cowboy Cliff: These were just a few of the landmarks connected by fire roads and hiking trails. Things could be worse, I realized. I could be out fighting that fire.

I realized I was still wearing my apron, the pocket of which bulged with still-warm cookies. Most of them had probably broken in my journey through the crowd. But at least I had an emergency sugar-carb supply.

“For crying out loud, Goldy!” Marla screeched. “Tell me what happened at the sheriff’s department! Do they know who killed the Jerk? Was it the same person who assaulted you?”

“I don’t know anything—”

“You’re holding out on me!”

I pulled the phone’s cord so I could get the receiver inside the swinging wooden door to the ladies’ room. A massive cement column separated the two stalls. The wood-paneled interior, dimly lit by a solitary hanging lightbulb, also revealed two stained sinks, a large cracked mirror, and an enormous black garbage can.

“Don’t start, Marla!” I warned her. “This has been one of the worst days of my life!” I tried to get comfortable. This was difficult since I had to grip the phone while my knuckles were getting flayed on the rough paneling. I softened my tone. “Listen, thanks for sending Brewster. He was great.”

“So tell me about it, would you? I’m dying over here without any information. Tom wouldn’t breathe a word and neither would Brewster, damn him.”

“Oh, Marla, I can’t go into detail. The bottom line is that I don’t know anything new. I can’t talk because Arch is at home and he’s a wreck.” But she insisted, so I gave her the shortest possible précis of the day’s events, including the cops finding my gun not far from John Richard’s body. “At the lunch, you didn’t happen to see any suspicious folks around my van, did you?”

“No,” she said. “Sorry. But I did find out something that might be significant.” My heart leaped. Or was it my stomach growling again? Hard to tell. Marla went on: “Sandee with two e s does not work at the golf shop. She never did. She’s a stripper at the Rainbow Men’s Club in Denver.”

“What? How did John Richard meet her?”

“As they say, ‘One can only presume.’ But I didn’t. Presume, that is. I asked Courtney. John Richard met Sandee at the Rainbow. That is how low the Jerk had sunk. Picking up girls at strip clubs!”

“You called Courtney? But she’s…”

Words failed as my stomach howled again. I didn’t care about Courtney; I didn’t care if the Jerk had sunk to hell. Despite the bites of steak, I was ravenous. I groped in my apron pocket, pulled out a warm cookie, and popped it into my mouth. The crunch of toasted almonds and the pure, buttery flavor made my head spin. I stuffed in another two.

“Of course I called Courtney,” Marla retorted. “And whatever you’re eating, I want some as compensation for my legal bills. Goldy?”

“Mmf.” My mouth was full. I didn’t really feel guilty, but what was going on here? I’d been attacked; my food had been sabotaged; renegade rodents had caused me to fire my gun. I stuffed two more cookies into my mouth and didn’t answer Marla. Our ex-husband had been murdered. At this point, I was the prime suspect in his murder. I shoved in a few more cookies and realized I was beginning to feel a bit better. Well! This was how low I had sunk: crammed into a stinking saloon toilet, I was discussing strippers on a grimy phone while stuffing myself with nut cookies. Close by, Bobby and his boys launched into “I’m Just Roadkill on the Highway of Love.”

“The main reason I called Courtney,” Marla went on, “was to tell her the Jerk was dead. Wanted to see what kind of reaction I’d get.”

I finished the cookies. “Brewster says we can’t call our ex the Jerk anymore. Even in death.”

I guess I couldn’t really blame Marla for rapping her fancy phone against her tiled kitchen wall. But it did hurt my ear.

“Goldy? Brewster takes orders from me, not vice versa. And are you listening to my story here? Courtney was stunned to hear about the Jerk. It was either total disbelief or a great acting job. She exploded. We’re talking nuclear. We’re talking nova. She screamed that you’d prevented them from getting married, because of some custody problem. Plus, she’d loaned John Richard a hundred thousand dollars at the beginning of May, and two weeks later he dumped her for Sandee with two e s. How’s she supposed to get her money back now? she screamed. So! The Jerk owed her money, the same way he owed the man at his house,” Marla concluded triumphantly.

“Wait a minute. Courtney loaned him that much money? How stupid is she?”

“You got me.”

“And the gent at John Richard’s house didn’t look as if he could have loaned John Richard anything—”

“Let’s go down to the strip club tomorrow!” Marla squealed. “We can question Sandee, just the two of us.”

I slumped against the rough wall. “I can’t. I have your PosteriTREE meeting and Nan’s retirement picnic to prep, and the cops and Brewster told me to stay away—”

She rapped the phone again. “Girlfriend! Tom is not working this case. Without him, the sheriff’s department will never find out who shot the Jerk. They need us! So I’ll pick you up at eleven. Then we—”

Without warning, pain racked my wrist as Blondie barged through the restroom door. The phone cord sprang away like a bow-string. I grabbed for it, but ended up seizing Blondie instead. Her warm, drunk breath said, “Erf?,” while she struggled mightily for balance. I tried to hold her up, snag the phone, and reach for the swinging restroom door all at once. I failed on all counts.

Blondie had not been expecting a sudden embrace. Her high-heeled boots clattered backward. Her leather-fringed arms wind-milled away from me as she tried to get her balance on the slick floor. The phone cord wrapped around the wire suspending the lightbulb and boomeranged in a high arc toward the ceiling. I gargled for help as Blondie’s cowgirl-skirted butt crashed into the cement post separating the two stalls. Marla’s distant voice shrieked, “Goldy?” Unfortunately, the laws of physics were already sending Blondie catapulting into the yawning trash can, where she promptly threw up. Following the same laws of physics, the returning restroom door smacked me in the face just as the phone cord finished its downward trajectory and Marla’s screaming voice splashed into the toilet.

I grabbed my nose, sure that blood was streaming out of it. Black spots clouded my vision. I groped with my free hand in the direction of what I hoped was the saloon. I bumped into a body, a man’s body, and prayed it was not a catering client.

“Sandee Blue is my girlfriend,” the man’s voice whispered in my ear as he swung me around and clutched my shoulders. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Okay, okay,” I mumbled, suddenly fearful. Was this the person who’d beaten me up that morning? “Who are you?” I struggled against his viselike hold. “Could you please let go of me?”

“Go on, get out of here,” he said, pushing me roughly away. I fell onto the filthy floor. By the time I could turn around, he was gone.

I blinked and steadied myself until I could see the red exit sign. Cursing under my breath, I lurched in the direction of Tom’s table.

“Goldy!” It was Tom’s calming voice. “Are you all right? What happened to your nose? There’s blood everywhere.” A rough paper napkin was pushed into my hand, and I pressed it to my nostrils. I gasped and begged Tom to take me out for air. Some tourists told the bartender to call a cab. He replied that there were no cab companies in Aspen Meadow.

With Tom holding me up, I finally, finally stumbled out the saloon doors. Behind us, Tex’s voice announced: “You know, she didn’t seem that drunk.”

9

My dear wife,” Tom said gently as he guided me through our front door. “You don’t look so hot.”

“No kidding.” I stepped carefully into the hallway. Assaulted by dizziness, I blinked at the sudden bright light. Tom’s strong hands reached out to grab me. “Something happened there, Tom. At the Grizzly. Back by the phone, I bumped into a man who said that Sandee Blue was his girlfriend, and I shouldn’t forget it.”

“Any idea who he was? Maybe your early-morning attacker?”

“I can’t say.” I grasped Tom’s hand.

“Well, what did he look like?”

“I don’t know. He turned me around, then pushed me down. By the time I got up, he was gone.”

Tom pulled me in for a hug and was silent.

I gently extracted myself and squinted at my husband’s handsome face. “Tom?”

“Goldy, do you go looking for trouble? Or does it just find you?”

“Thanks. No more calls using the Grizzly phone. Promise.”

“Did you ever get to talk to Marla?”

“Not really.” I closed my eyes and rubbed my aching forehead. How late was it? I had no clue. And where was Arch? How was he doing? I mumbled, “Arch?”

Tom pulled me back into a hug. “Father Pete’s car is still out front. I assume he’s in there with him.”

Upstairs, a quietly closing door was followed by shuffling. The stairs creaked as Father Pete Zoukaki’s immense bulk began to descend. I did not know how Father Pete had come to be an Anglican, because he looked like central casting’s idea of a priest from The Godfather. I held my breath as his small black shoes trundled into view, followed by short chopstick legs. These balanced slowly on each step, so that his black-swathed calzone of a body could lumber downward without toppling. At the landing, he turned slowly, like a jumbo jet moving into a gate.

“Arch is sleeping,” he announced. His voice was low pitched and warm, perfect for pastoring. He maneuvered down the last three steps, mopped his brow, and gave us a solemn nod. His ultradark hair and beard were intensely curly. His skin was the color of olive oil. His espresso-black eyes filled with concern as he reached out for me. “Goldy.” I let go of Tom and allowed Father Pete’s sausage arms to pat my back. “This will all be over soon.”

This will all be over soon? When was soon, exactly? When Father Pete had counseled Arch some more? When the sheriff’s department found the killer? When the Jerk was deep in Aspen Meadow Cemetery? I swallowed and tried to get hold of myself.

“Thank you for coming,” I said softly.

“No trouble,” Father Pete’s commanding voice assured me. He let go and assessed me with those dark eyes. “You don’t look well. You should try to get to bed.”

I clenched my teeth. “I’m aware that I don’t look well.” After an awkward moment, I asked, “What about the…uh…?” I cleared my throat and smoothed my face into an attempt at composure. Tom gently took my hand and flicked me a questioning glance. He wanted to bail me out, but had no idea what I was asking.

“It’s just that I’m worried about…” I tried again. Well, everything. Father Pete and Tom waited. My hit-with-the-restroom-door nose was throbbing. Father Pete pursed his thick lips, glanced at my bruised arms, and frowned.

“There’s the matter of”—I cleared my throat—“a service.”

Father Pete nodded. “Besides Arch, did Dr. Korman have next of kin?”

I shook my head.

“All right then,” Father Pete said in that deep, comforting voice. “I’ll call the coroner, see if they know who’s been designated to make arrangements.” When he furrowed his forehead, his bushy black eyebrows appeared truly ominous. “Someone from the church will call you with the details. It would be good for Arch—”

“We’ll bring him,” I said hastily.

Father Pete nodded again, gave Tom a grim take care of her look, and trundled out the front door.

“Would it be possible for you to put this whole rotten day out of your mind for a while?” Tom murmured in my ear.

“I wish.”

“Try.”

I tiptoed upstairs, peeled off my clothes, and took a long, hot shower. When I emerged, the mirror revealed my very red nose and two purple bruises on my lower arms. My back sported a bright pink sore spot. I closed my eyes and gingerly put on a terry robe.

I slipped between the cool sheets and reached out for Tom’s warm body. With a gentleness that brought tears to my eyes, he put his hands on my cheeks and whispered that I should tell him if anything hurt. I nodded. He wiped my tears away, pulled me closer, and gave me a long kiss. It was the kind of kiss that went on and on, passionate, insistent, tender beyond words. It was like drowning—and I wanted to drown. His large, muscled body enclosed mine. He touched me, gently sliding his large hands over my sore neck and bruised arms.

He said, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. I love you now and forever and ever. I’m…sorry I haven’t been a very good husband lately.”

“Shh. You’ve been fine. The best.”

“Well, I’m going to kill the bastard who hurt you.”

“Great. When?”

“Now it’s your turn to hush.”

So. Afterward, Tom held me next to him, unwilling to let me go even in slumber. I listened to his soft snoring, to the beat of his heart inside his big chest. For the first time that day, I felt safe.

Courtney MacEwan had been right. People do have sex after funerals.

A thunderclap jolted me from a deep sleep. Fear gripped my chest as I sent the covers flying. My body’s numerous aches screamed in protest.

Tom reached out for me. “Rain, Goldy. It’s rain. I’ll make sure Arch is all right.” Tom slipped quietly away.

Arch was most emphatically not all right. He was sobbing loudly, uncontrollably. Tom was murmuring, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I slipped on my robe, crept down the hall, and peered into the room.

“Arch? Honey?” I tried. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated Arch’s room. Julian’s old twin bed stood flat and empty. Arch, covered by the black-and-gold quilt, lay facedown on his own bed. He was screaming and writhing, yelling something about his fall, his fault…

I called to him again. He did not respond to me.

Perched beside Arch, Tom kept his voice soothing. “Arch. You’re going to be all right. This is the worst part. Arch, nothing was your fault.”

But Arch was having none of it.

“It is my fault,” my son’s voice hollered. He pounded his bed, making it shudder. I moved hesitantly into the room. “I never should have gone down to play hockey. If we just could have been there earlier, this never would have happened! Oh, God! It is my fault! Don’t say it’s not my fault when it is!”

Tom motioned me over and mumbled that he was going to get our sleeping bags. I took his warm spot on the quilt and tried a few comforting words of my own. Arch’s body writhed with his sobs.

“Honey, don’t,” I tried. “Please stop crying. You’re going to make yourself sick.” I kept my voice calm, kept repeating the same things, kept hoping Arch would calm down. “Please, Arch. Your dad’s death had nothing to do with you, or when we got to his house. I promise.”

I reached out to rub Arch’s back, but he shrugged me away. Then he lowered one leg and kicked his foot against the floor. The bed wheels creaked and the bed rolled sideways. He didn’t want to be comforted, and that was that.

While I was puzzling over this, a small stone pelted the dark window. My heart jumped into my throat. Soon, another tiny rocket popped against the glass. Then another and another. Handfuls of pebbles were being tossed at the window. I turned on the lamp by Arch’s digital clock. Another flash of lightning brought the room and the pine trees outside into sudden focus. A pile of hail was accumulating on the windowsill. The thunder boomed again. So we were at the last of the Colorado seasons: blizzard, flood, fire, hail. Great.

Tom shuffled back in, clutching a pair of red sleeping bags. Their whispery nylon rustling, combined with the thunder and the drum of hail, startled Arch out of his crying jag. He rubbed his face and reached for his glasses, next to the lamp.

“What’s going on?”

Tom stepped purposefully across the room. “Your mom and I are going to spend the rest of the night in here. It’ll be better if we can all be together tonight. Your mom’ll be over here on Julian’s old bed.” He hefted one of the slithery bags onto the empty mattress by the window. “I’ll sleep on the floor. You need anything, look down and yell for it.”

“Has anybody…” Arch’s voice caught. “Has anybody called Julian? To tell him what happened?”

Above the patter of hail, I promised, “First thing in the morning.”

I hunkered down into the flannel. Yes, we needed Julian. Since he’d helped with the funeral lunch, the cops had probably already talked to him about John Richard. Then again, maybe not. In addition to working for my business a couple of days a week, Julian held down a part-time job in a Boulder bistro. Plus, he was always taking at least one course at the University of Colorado, in pursuit of his degree. He wasn’t the easiest person to find, as the cops would probably discover. Then again, those law-enforcement folks had proved that they could zero in on connections between the murder victim and just about anything they wanted.

The hail continued to hammer the roof. Rat-a-tat-

tat! Do you own a gun, Mrs. Schulz? Rat-a-tat-tat!

Why did hail have to sound so much like a firing squad, anyway?

The phone started ringing at 6:22. The incessant, demanding ringing seemed to be coming from inside my head. I blinked at the red 6:22 on Arch’s digital clock, and wished I had a baseball bat. The kind you break phones with.

My head ached; my body throbbed. I needed quiet. I needed healing. I scooted down into the flannel and pulled the sleeping bag over my static-charged hair. When the ringing stopped, I again poked out my head.

It was a typically chilly June morning in the mountains. Brilliant sunlight glistened through the windowsill’s melting mounds of hail. Rainbows shimmered across the walls of Arch’s room.

I assumed that the unmoving lump on the neighboring bed, still covered with the black-and-gold quilt, was Arch. Tom’s sleeping bag lay flattened and empty. The phone started up again. Who could possibly be calling at this hour? Like a leaden cloak, the events of the previous day descended on my brain. Who could be wanting so desperately to talk? Let’s see: The cops. The local paper. My new criminal lawyer, who would have bad news.

I sat up. Droplets of water gleamed on the pine branches brushing Arch’s window. The previous day’s fierce, dusty wind had indeed pushed in those storm clouds hovering over the Continental Divide. With any luck, the hail would have smothered the fire up in the preserve. At least one thing around here could be under control, and that would be a welcome change.

Tom appeared at the doorway and motioned for me. I shed the flannel-and-nylon cocoon, tiptoed out to the hallway, and followed him into our room. There, I tucked myself into a fresh sweatshirt and pants.

“Who keeps calling?” I asked.

“Tell you downstairs.”

Our wooden steps creaked more loudly than usual as I headed for the kitchen. I listened for Arch, but heard nothing.

“It’s the paper,” Tom announced ruefully, once we were seated at our oak table and he was revving up the espresso machine. “First Frances Markasian, then somebody else from the Mountain Journal. They want to know how long they’re going to have to wait until they can get a statement from you. Then Frances Markasian two more times.”

I couldn’t help myself; I cackled. Frances Markasian, a legend in her own mind, was a so-called investigative reporter at the Mountain Journal. Sometimes, when she wanted information, we were pals. Most of the time, we weren’t.

Suddenly, it was all too much. I laughed as my arm made a sweeping gesture to indicate the entire outdoors. Dazzling remainders of hail sparkled on the aspens, the lodgepole pines, the blue spruce. Our dry grass was spotted with white. The tender shoots of our perennials glistened with unaccustomed wetness.

“Hell has frozen over,” I announced. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not talking to the Journal.”

Tom added water to the coffee machine. “You’re sounding slightly bitter this morning. Here’s some good news, though. The hail helped the firefighters get that blaze out in the preserve. Unfortunately, with more dry weather on the way, they’re warning that the fire danger is still high. Okay, how many shots of espresso would you like?”

“I’ll take a double, thanks.” Ordinarily I would have had six, but in the last couple of months, I’d been trying to cut back.

Tom warmed a cup and pressed the machine’s buttons. When he set the steaming dark drink on the table, he placed his hand on mine.

“We need to talk. As in, strategy.”

The phone rang again, and I was tempted to throw my luscious cup of hot espresso at it. Reading my mind, Tom checked the caller ID.

“Priscilla Throckbottom?” Tom asked me.

I groaned. Priscilla Throckbottom, head of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Women and several other local organizations, had booked me to do the breakfast for her PosteriTREE committee at the country club, to be held the following morning. Now either she wanted me to work with her to plan John Richard’s funeral or she wanted to see if I was still doing her breakfast. Perhaps she wanted her own version of what had happened. Maybe she wanted all three. And at six forty-five in the morning, no less.

“Let’s turn off all the ringers,” I proposed. “I don’t want them to wake Arch. The machine can take the messages. I’ll call Julian at eight or so.”

Tom nodded, fussed with the buttons on the kitchen phone—our home line and my business number had separate ringers—then left to silence the receivers throughout the house. I sipped Tom’s dark brew and felt a bit better, even though my body still ached from the previous morning’s attack outside the Roundhouse. The question of who had sabotaged and hit me, and why, was like a puzzle locked inside a rock. Who hated me that much? Somebody trying to divert attention from himself as the Jerk’s killer? A competitor? Who? The only other catering competition I’d ever had in Aspen Meadow had all switched over to being chefs of the personal (forty or so clients) or private (one big, demanding client) variety. As far as I could see, I posed no threat. Maybe Marla would have a lead on it this morning. You didn’t make all that mess at the Roundhouse and not brag to somebody.

Recalling the detectives’ interrogation, I wondered why they hadn’t asked me if I’d set up a friend to assault me. They clearly thought I’d planned the accidental-shooting incident. Maybe they speculated that the bruises on my arms were self-inflicted. I should have given them a good look at my neck.

And of course, I wanted most of all to know who had killed my ex-husband. I had concern for myself, as a suspect. And perhaps I did, after all, have concern for him.

A sudden vision of John Richard’s bloody body loomed. I resolutely put it out of my mind, but it popped up again. Something had been wrong…something apart from the fact that he’d been dead, of course. I swallowed more coffee, closed my eyes, and went over the mental image. The blood, his face, his hair…something had been off, or strange, or at the very least, out of place. I hadn’t spotted my gun, so that wasn’t it. Still, something had struck me as weird, and I was fairly sure this was beside the fact that John Richard had been shot. But the observation, or realization, or whatever it was, flashed just out of reach, like a silvery trout wriggling off a hook.

At least I could remember John Richard’s body, or what I’d been able to see, given its skewed angle. Who could have done such a thing? Was it the same person who’d attacked me? And how was I going to find out these things?

I put my cup in the sink and did a few gentle yoga stretches. Blood flowed to my bruises like an anesthetic. If Yogi Berra was right, and 90 percent of baseball was half mental, then perhaps the same was true of pain. I took more cleansing breaths before stretching, breathing, and stretching some more. I had another double shot of espresso and felt restored. Ready to face the day, I booted up my computer.

Tom lumbered back into the kitchen, full of purpose and resolve. Overhead, the shower water began running.

He rubbed his hands together. “Miss G.? You seem to be feeling better.”

I nodded. “So do you, Tom. Are you doing better?”

“Last night was great.”

“Besides that.”

His face darkened and he turned away. “Sometimes. It feels good to help you and Arch. I wish I could work on this case, but the department actually told me to take some time off, to help the two of you.”

“Well. Thanks.”

His smile was rueful. “All right, then. I still need to get Arch out of here. If people can’t get you to answer the phone, they’ll come to the door. Believe me, I know.” He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “I want to get him somewhere safe, as in emotionally safe. Do you have plans for today?” I told him about the two events I needed to finish prepping. Then Marla was taking me out to lunch. I omitted the strip-club part. “Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking,” Tom went on. “Call Trudy next door, and ask her if she can take in cards, flowers, casseroles. Meanwhile, Arch and I are going out.” He looked at the ceiling. “Maybe we’ll play golf.”

“Golf? The day after his father’s been killed?”

“It was my idea. And he doesn’t want to sit around.” He stood, reached into a cupboard for a tray, and set it with a plate, napkin, and silverware. “The fresh air will do him good. Miss G., trust me—you don’t want him here if reporters start swarming.”

Tom poured a glass of juice for the tray. I smiled. He had called me Miss G. twice this morning. Maybe he was getting better.

“Since I don’t belong to the country club,” he went on, “I suggested the municipal course by the lake. It’s not a bad course, and it’s unlikely he’ll see anybody he knows. No embarrassing questions that way.”

I shook my head, dumbfounded. Whenever someone close to me had died—a grandparent, an uncle I hadn’t seen in years—I’d felt numb. Even throwing myself back into whatever work needed doing had been an emotional chore. Then again, until the last two years, I hadn’t had Tom to help me through a crisis. Maybe I would have been willing to go play golf with him, too.

Tom popped two slices of brioche into the toaster and gave me a sidelong glance. “Couple more things.” He handed me a new cell phone and an index card. “Use this instead of your old one. Brewster Motley’s guy brought it by this morning. Also, the home phones are secure.” He smiled. “He also swept the place for bugs, if you can believe it. More important, I called a buddy of mine and ordered a chain-link fence and gates, complete with heavy-duty locks, to be put in around your compressors and switches outside the Roundhouse. Boyd will bring your new keys by later. He also promised to call either you or Marla, strictly on the q.t., if he heard any details about the investigation. Okeydoke?”

“Great. Thanks.” I watched in puzzlement as Tom zapped thick-sliced bacon in the microwave, then buttered the brioche. Within moments he was layering sizzling bacon strips on the toasted bread. My mouth watered.

“Bacon sandwich,” Tom offered. “I’m taking this up to Arch.” He lifted the tray to his shoulder, waiter style. “We should be taking off within twenty minutes.”

Upstairs, the water was still running. “Tom,” I protested gently. “He’s still in the shower. Why won’t you just let him have his breakfast after he’s dressed, in the kitchen the way he usually does? Please? I want to see him. Talk to him. Check on how he’s doing.”

Tom hesitated at the kitchen door, still gripping the tray. Finally, his green eyes met mine. “He’s not quite ready to see you, Miss G.”

“What?”

“Just…give him some time. All right?”

“What are you talking about?”

Tom hesitated, then put the tray down on the counter. He walked over, embraced me, and murmured in my ear, “Arch needs somebody to blame. Last night he blamed himself. This morning, it’s you. He doesn’t understand how you let your gun get stolen. He thinks you should have called paramedics once you found his dad in the garage.” Tom sighed. “He’s not doing well, Goldy. As soon as the department figures out what happened, he’ll have the right person to blame. Just…don’t overreact, okay?”

“But I didn’t do anything,” I protested. “Arch was less than thirty yards away from me when I found John Richard, who was already dead.”

“I know that. On some level, he does, too. He’s just real wound up now, and he’s not being logical. He needs a friend, someone he can trust, to start his grieving with. I’m not talking about Todd. Right now, he feels okay with me. Let me go with it, will you?”

My face, my ears, every part of my body began to pulse with heat, not to mention embarrassment, shame, and worry. Somehow I had failed my son. I thought I was going to be sick. Trust Tom? I was beginning to feel I couldn’t trust anyone. I couldn’t even think. My ex-husband was dead, and my beloved son wouldn’t even talk to me? What was going on here?

Tom picked up the tray and disappeared. I ran cold water from the kitchen faucet, splashed my face, then dried it with a rough paper towel. I swallowed back the rock in my throat, and tried not to picture Arch’s freckled, innocent face, with his glasses riding down his nose. I tried to imagine him not being angry with me.

Cook, an inner voice advised. It’s better than just standing around feeling bad.

My computer laid out the prep I still had to do. Regardless of whatever problems a dead ex-husband, an alienated son, nosy churchwomen, or bothersome journalists could pose, I had to work. Not only that, but I was determined to do a thorough check of my van to see if anything besides my thirty-eight had been ripped off. The cops wouldn’t have been able to tell that, would they? I took a deep breath and tapped buttons. First I printed out the inventory sheets for my equipment boxes. Then I pulled up the menus for the two upcoming events.

I wondered uneasily if Priscilla Throckbottom had been calling to change the time or place for the committee breakfast. My computer reminded me that I’d already made and frozen her mini-brioches, but that I still had to make the Crustless Fontina and Gorgonzola Quiches. Very early the next morning, I would slice a mega-ton of fresh fruit. Ah, the caterer’s life.

As I pulled out eggs, cheeses, cream, and butter, I worried that Priscilla might be immersed in one of her last-minute crises, where she insisted on adding or subtracting two, three, or six guests. Then again, maybe the death of John Richard had made Priscilla wonder if things were proceeding normally chez Goldilocks. Well, doggone it, they were. And if she wanted to add, subtract, or cancel, she’d be out of luck. More than one person in this world could be hard-nosed!

I pictured Priscilla’s committee as I began crumbling pungent Gorgonzola. Ostensibly, the eight women of PosteriTREE, the ones who’d held the previous day’s bake sale, were doing a town-beautification project. They were raising funds to buy and plant native trees around Aspen Meadow. But as usual with these types of groups, I suspected that the real reason for belonging to the committee was to be able to say that you were on it. I’d heard one woman brag that PosteriTREE members belonged to the crème de la crème of town society.

I set aside the Gorgonzola and started grating the fontina. The crème de la crème of town society? From a caterer’s viewpoint, Aspen Meadow didn’t have any society. At least, we didn’t have anything as identifiable as what you’d see in a major metropolis. I’d worked for clients who’d hailed from the nation’s capital: Two entire shelves in the library had been devoted to their collection of The Green Book, also known as The Social List of Washington. And Washington was not alone. Victorian London had had its Upper Ten Thousand; New York had its Dun and Bradstreet; even early twentieth-century Denver had had its Sacred Thirty-Six. But what did twenty-first-century Aspen Meadow, Colorado, have? A country club that looked like a Holiday Inn, a saloon featuring every band from Nashville Bobby and the Boys to Backhoe Dan and the Dumpsters, and oh, yes, a yearly cultural event that brought in folks from all over the country: the Aspen Meadow Rodeo. I rest my case.