Dying for Chocolate

22.

I couldn’t sleep. As I had so many times before, I ran a mental film of Philip’s BMW’s terrifying swerves and then sickening smash. I added to the film the new knowledge that he had been blinded. It explained everything.

Well, almost everything. Blinded by what? By unrinsed contact lenses embedded with peroxide. You couldn’t drive that road if you couldn’t see that road. Could the lack of rinse have been an accident? Reason said no. So did the existence of a murderous patient. Or perhaps it was not a patient at all, but Elizabeth had just thought it was.

Blinded by whom? Julian had problems that erupted in hostility. In meeting with Philip Miller, General Bo and Adele were probably trying to help the troubled teen. Weezie had her own agenda: to protect her land and win back her errant spouse. And of course there was Brian himself—ace developer and, perhaps, jealous husband.

I did not know if there was a way to figure this out. Psychologists keep notes on their patients and Schulz had Philip’s. Their content remained a mystery. Arch had gone to a counselor after he became addicted to escaping from reality in fantasy role-playing games. That fellow had referred to notes during our three-way monthly discussions. But what kind of notes did they teach you to take in Shrink School?

Moreover, as academics love to say, there were other ramifications. Sure, I had kicked in Philip’s door. I had looked for and found a schedule for his appointments and activities. I presumed the police had seen his schedule, too. But Schulz would never let me see the files. I was his friend and confidante, but there were limits.

Images of Philip with Adele, Philip with Elizabeth, Philip with Julian, Philip with Weezie floated up as I tossed fitfully in the guest-room bed. Philip with Weezie. Mapping out a game plan for dealing with county commissioners? Or playing some other kind of game? I didn’t want to think about it.

Against all transcendental teaching, I started to repeat my mantra just to get to sleep. That plus the early sunrise had their usual soporific effect. I fell into a deep cloud of slumber that was only dispersed when my radio alarm blasted me at seven o’clock with the Beatles’ version of “Twist and Shout.”

I pressed all the wrong buttons and finally got it off. Arch was still asleep so I turned off the motion detector, stumbled to the phone in the kitchen, and wondered if you could free-base caffeine.

I punched the buttons and got Schulz, the early bird. I said, “Finally!”

There was a pause. “Well,” he said, “I didn’t want to wake you up returning your call.”

“Sorry, had a bad night. Any chance we could get together today?”

“Let’s see. Later in the morning? ’Bout ten?”

At that moment I was sure I heard someone pick up the phone. Paranoia or no, I did not answer Schulz.

“Hello?” said Tom Schulz and General Farquhar at the same moment.

“I’m on the other extension, Goldy,” said the general.

I said, “Do you need me to get off?” Although I didn’t see why he would, with two other lines in the house.

“No, no,” he said, “sorry to have bothered you, it’s just that I want to talk to you about a special dessert for our anniversary party tonight.”

I told him to come on down and heard the distinct click of him getting off the line. I asked Schulz if he would meet me at the Aspen Meadow grocery store.

He said, “At the grocery store? Hold on, I have to check my calendar. . . . I have to be in court this afternoon. I can come up there, but not for long. The supermarket’s not where I usually interview people. You’ve been reading too many spy stories.”

I said, “My life is a frigging spy story.”

General Farquhar slipped into the kitchen and began pacing like Napoleon. I rang off, fixed espresso, and took out some cookbooks. I sipped the velvety dark stuff, felt my brain coming to life as the general began to grunt over photographs of million-calorie desserts.

He looked up at me with a puzzled expression. “What exactly are you fixing for the party?”

I tried to rid the word interrogation from my mind. Instead of my name, rank, and serial number, I said, “Grilled shrimp, French hamburgers, something vegetarian for Julian, rotini salad with a creamy Dijon dressing, cold cooked asparagus with lemon, and whatever you want for dessert.”

“Great, great,” he said with some impatience. He flipped a cookbook shut, paced, paused by the counter. “Listen, I have a surprise for Adele, a piece of jewelry that I never thought I’d get my hands on, something she admired once in Florence. So I’d like a real special dessert.”

I said, “Fourteen Carrot Cake?”

He craned his neck back to gaze at the ceiling. “She admired this ring in a shop on a bridge over the Arno. Later we had those hard Italian cookies that have nuts in them. Sometimes they have chocolate on top. Know what I mean?” He gave me his characteristic squint.

I said, “Biscotti?”

He smacked his hands together. “That’s it. Could you make some for tonight? Instead of a cake? She would understand. Hell, she’d love it.”

I told him it would be no problem. The fifteenth anniversary was crystal, I wanted to say, and Adele might want you to replace the Waterford vase destroyed in the garden-explosion, but never mind. The Farquhars had managed to keep a good relationship, a married one, too, for fifteen years. Maybe they could give me some pointers.

The general was rattling on about the fact that he had ordered all the flowers and for me not to worry about that. I patted him on the back and told him he was just a huge help, then managed to shoo him out of the kitchen so I could check recipes and make a list. There would be thirty of us this time, all the same people who were at the Harrington aphrodisiac dinner, friends from the school, the club, and various committees, plus Arch and me.

Plus Arch’s friends! Oh Lord, I thought on the way to the grocery store, I had forgotten to make the calls as I’d promised. I would have to call the kids’ parents the moment I got home from seeing Schulz. Could Arch have given up and be inviting them while he was at summer school today? There were too many things to worry about, I reflected as I swung my van in next to Schulz’s car in the parking lot. When I found him, he was picking out artichokes.

I leaned into him, spylike, and said under my breath, “You need to stop calling me on the Farquhars’ phone. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah, 007? Why’s that?”

“Get serious. I’ve discovered the perfect crime.”

He said, “Artie Chokes Two for a Dollar.”

“Are you done?”

ANNIVERSARY BURGERS

2 eggs, beaten

2 tablespoons whipping cream

2 tablespoons milk

2 slices bread, torn up

1 tablespoon dried minced onion

1 ½ teaspoons salt

2 teaspoons prepared horseradish

¼ teaspoon black pepper (preferably freshly ground

¼ teaspoon dried thyme

¼ teaspoon dry mustard

2 pounds lean ground beef

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

½ cup catsup

Light a charcoal fire.

Mix eggs with cream and milk, then add torn-up bread, onion, salt, horseradish, pepper, thyme, and dry mustard. Stir well, let stand for 10 minutes, then stir well again, until all is well moistened and the bread is no longer in pieces. Add ground beef and mix well.

Melt butter with catsup and keep warm.

Measure out beef in ½-cup increments and form patties. Grill over hot coals on one side. Turn and brush with butter-catsup mixture. Grill other side. Serve hot.

Makes about 9 patties

DIJON PASTA SALAD

1 pound tricolored fusilli or rotini pasta

2/3 cup corn oil

2 tablespoons cider vinegar

2 teaspoons Dijon-style mustard

2/3 cup mayonnaise

2 large celery ribs, chopped

6 thick bacon slices, cooked and chopped

2 hard-cooked eggs, chopped

2 scallions, chopped

½ to 1 teaspoon salt

paprika (optional)

Cook pasta in boiling water just until done, usually 11 to 13 minutes. Drain. Run cold water over pasta until it is completely cool.

In a large bowl, whisk together oil, vinegar, mustard, and mayonnaise.

Add pasta and all other ingredients to dressing, mix carefully, and taste for seasoning. Chill thoroughly before serving.

Makes 8 to 10 servings

“No, I’m waiting by the vegetables for the town caterer to tell me how to do my job.”

I told him my theory about the peroxide on the unrinsed lenses. About the anesthetic delaying the burning of the corneas. I finished with, “All the killer would have to do is sneak into the doctor’s office somehow, do a trade with the saline solution, and then just wait for things to self-destruct. But you’d have to know Philip’s schedule beforehand.” I handed him two firm artichokes.

“No offense, Miss G., but it sounds a little thin. If you’ve got a real homicidal person on your hands, there are easier ways.” He put down the artichokes, picked up some celery, put it down. “Like guns.”

“But this way it looks like an accident,” I said.

“If the guy dies.”

“He’d die driving blind on that twisting road,” I insisted. “Listen. Do me a favor. I’m going to see Weezie Harrington tonight, and I want to try to find out more about her. But when I found the calendar—”

He leaned against the celery bin and closed his eyes. “I’m afraid to ask.”

“Well. . .” I said slowly, “don’t get mad, okay?” He let his shoulders go slack. I went on, “I got into Philip’s office and looked at his schedule.”

“We saw his schedule, too, Miss G.”

“Yes, but you didn’t know at that time that Julian Teller used peroxide for his hair! He saw Julian for his regular appointment and also the Farquhars, probably something to do with Julian’s behavior, I’d say. I had to go in to see Arch’s counselor monthly about the fantasy role-playing games. Don’t you think it’s strange that he saw the three of them, all in the few days before he died? Then on the day before he died, he had lunch with Weezie Harrington?”

“This is great. You broke into and entered Miller’s office. You rifled his desk. You found his schedule. You figure, they don’t license private investigators in this state, you’re home free?”

I pressed my lips together.

“B and E is still a crime.”

“Julian bleaches his hair,” I said. “That’s like new evidence, or whatever you call it. Can’t you just run a background check on him?”

“I gotta go,” Schulz said. He patted me on the shoulder.

“Do you even care about this?”

“Do you?”

I was taken aback. “Yes,” I said after a minute, “I guess I do.”

“I have a big caseload, Miss G. But I’ll do what I can to find out about Julian.”

I made a face at him.

“Mainly because,” he said before wheeling off with his empty cart, “you aren’t going to be able to get this Philip fellow out of your mind until I do.” He paused to look at me. “Am I right?”

I looked away.

After half an hour my cart bulged with packages of fresh rotini, bunches of dark slender asparagus, a feathery dill plant and shiny lemon, almonds, as well as anise seed, and unsalted butter. Finally, I stopped to pick up what I had ordered the previous week: pounds upon pounds of jumbo shrimp and ground chuck that the grocery had meticulously wrapped in butcher paper. I loved spending other people’s money.

The van gave me a little bit of trouble when I turned the key.

I whispered to it. I coaxed. I shrieked. The engine finally turned over and I started toward Aspen Meadow Country Club. I would have made it in ten minutes, too, if I hadn’t seen Arch walking along the dirt shoulder at a very determined pace. When I pulled over, the van sputtered and died.

“Arch! Where are you going? Why aren’t you in school? This road is too dangerous for you to walk along, what’s—”

“Go away! Leave me alone! You don’t care anyway!”

I put my head on the steering wheel. This was why women could never get ahead. Just when you thought you were getting somewhere, your child was going to have a crisis. I put on the emergency flashers and got out.

“Arch,” I said as I pursued him along the narrow path of dust and weeds, “please stop and talk to me. I do care. Come on and get in the van and we’ll go back to the Farquhars and we can talk while I cook—”

He whirled and glared at me. “I’m going into town to get some magic stuff and then I’m going to walk over to my friends’ houses and ask their parents if they can come tonight.”

“I’m sorry. Why don’t you just call them?”

“You were supposed to call them.”

“I didn’t see the list—”

“It’s in your Poe book! You always tell me Lot to invite friends myself! That it’s the mom’s job!”

I felt my body slouch. “I’m sorry, hon, but I haven’t had time to read . . .”

He turned his back to me and resumed walking.

“Okay, look!” I called. “Just get into the van and we’ll go home and make the calls together. It’ll be much faster!”

He stopped and turned again. “I still need a hat and cape.”

“Okay, okay, I can probably manage a cape,” I said. “The top hat will have to wait until the next trip to Denver.”

Arch walked toward me, apparently satisfied with the compromise.

“Where are you going to get a cape?” he asked once we had settled into the van.

I turned the key. Nothing happened. I looked at him. “I was thinking the church might have one.”

Arch reached for the door handle, as if I had double-crossed him and he was going to get out of the car as quickly as possible.

He said, “I don’t want a chasuble.”

How he could remember the names of all the priestly garments when that same vocabulary eluded me was another of Arch’s amazing traits. But in this particular context, when the van again refused to turn over, it just made me angry. Why couldn’t Arch know about cars, say, instead of magic and fantasy role-playing games and ecclesiastical trappings?

I said, “We’ll go to Aspen Meadow Drug, then. They have everything.” The van, as if in agreement, finally turned over.

We pawed through the drugstore racks. Nothing. I told Arch to let me have one more look, and while I did he saw one of his friends from the list. The kid had just come from the doctor where he’d had an ear check. I invited him to the party. While they were chatting (“Bring a swimsuit,” Arch was saying, while the mother gave me a startled look. How can you afford a pool?) I trundled off to find a clerk, a teenage girl who was so fat my heart went out to her. Still, I was not above promising her a dozen Scout’s Brownies if she would check the upstairs storeroom for a cape left unsold at Halloween. Her eyes brightened, and after disappearing for five minutes she handed me a black satin adult cape still in its plastic wrapper. Fifty dollars. I thanked her profusely and got her name so I could leave her the brownies.

“We’re in business, kid,” I called to Arch as I held the package aloft, headed for the checkout, and prayed that my groceries had survived this half-hour delay.

But the van would not start. Arch gave me an impatient look.

I screamed, “This is not my fault!”

To my complete amazement, he said quietly, “Why don’t you just get out the jumper cables?”

I nodded in dumbfounded silence and began to extract the jumper cables from old newspapers and cans and other things I had been meaning to recycle. Arch climbed out of the van and found his friend’s mother, who agreed to give us a jump. Problem was, she couldn’t remember which wire went where, and I was so frazzled I couldn’t either, so it was something of a relief when Arch took the wires out of my hands and commanded the woman to start her car.

“Do you really not know how to do this, Mom?”

“I do, I just forget. It’s like changing a tire. You have to figure it out, just like when you have a flat tire. Only when you get a flat tire you’re so frustrated it takes fifteen minutes to calm down enough to think.”

“You have to pretend you’re an electrical circuit,” Arch said as he pinched open the toothed cable-claws and attached them to the batteries. “The cables just complete the circuit.” After a few moments he said triumphantly, “Now try it.”

It started like a charm. Arch disconnected the cables and threw them in on top of the shrimp. I was awash in guilt for thinking he did not know about cars. I yelled thanks to the woman and her son.

Back at the Farquhars, though, things did not go so smoothly. The phone began its incessant ringing. Aspen Meadow Florist called. Did General Farquhar really want three rare orchids on the corsage, at fifteen dollars each? Yes, I said. What could it hurt? Then Brian Harrington called. Was sweet Sissy going to be at the anniversary party? What business was it of his, I wanted to know, but only said yes. Then I heard a click and couldn’t get a dial tone. Either the Farquhars were having trouble with their phone or the person who kept picking up the line was doing it again.

“Damn, damn, damn,” I said as I slammed the phone repeatedly into its cradle. Whoever it was, I thought savagely, that shouldn’t feel too pleasant on the ear.

“Now what’s wrong?” Arch demanded.

“I can’t get the phone to work,” I said crossly. After a few more receiver-slams the dial tone finally popped back, and I tried four of the names on Arch’s list. Three no-answers and one busy signal.

“I’m sorry, Arch, I’ll keep trying once I get the pasta going for the salad. Nobody’s home, so it’s really not my—

“Nothing is ever your fault! Whose fault is it?” He stomped out of the kitchen. When he got into the hall, he yelled, “Sometimes I just want to go and live with Dad!”

I let cold water gush into deep pots, then set them on to boil. I gritted my teeth. All my motherly work for nothing. Go and live with your father, I wanted to yell back. But I would not. I dumped the almonds into the food processor. The blade made a huge noise, as if it were grinding gravel. It was strangely comforting. I was not going to get angry. I was not going to say what I knew to be true.

Your father doesn’t want you.