Dying for Chocolate

27.

I called Schulz. “Arch is gone,” I heard my disembodied voice saying. “I can’t find him. I’m losing my mind.”

He said, “Back up. Begin with when you left the parking lot.”

“John Richard couldn’t get Arch because the security gate was locked and the general wouldn’t let him in. He said he could see through his scope that Arch wasn’t with him. Which was true. Tom. I know Arch is in trouble. He left our old danger code.”

Schulz was calm. He asked questions: about the card, about Bo, about when everyone had disappeared, about where Julian could go, about Sissy.

He said, “I’ll call the girl’s parents. If we haven’t found him by tonight I’ll put out an APB. You call Arch’s friends, Adele’s friends, see if you can come up with anything.” He hesitated. “Something you should know. It’s been six hours since they got Harrington’s body out of the pool. I had the coroner make a preliminary check for what I suspected, and it looks as if it was there.”

I struggled to focus back on the floating body of Brian Harrington. “What?”

“He didn’t drown. There wasn’t any water in his lungs. But his insides were burned up. My guess would be by cantharidin.”

I was numb. I said, “I’ll make those calls and drive around to look for Arch. Think I should go talk to Weezie Harrington?”

“We already did. She said Brian was restless last night, told her he was going out for a walk to look at the stars.”

“And?”

“That was the last time she saw him. She says. The guys believed her.”

“What do you think?”

“I think, Miss Goldy, that you should be careful.”

I phoned Weezie. One of the women who had come to be with her answered. Weezie would be grateful for my sympathy. At my request she asked the assembled group about Arch. No, nobody knew where he was, no one had seen him on the street. I said I would be coming over to talk to Weezie myself, if that was okay. It was.

I called Marla. Adele wasn’t there and she didn’t know where she could be. Marla said, “Should I be worried about my sister? She never worries about me.”

“I don’t know why she would be with Sissy, who can be pretty hostile sometimes. I really don’t even know what’s going on,” I said truthfully. “If you want to worry about somebody, worry about Arch.”

Marla said she would call Arch’s friends. I gave her a list of numbers and asked her to drive over by our old house and check to see if any of the neighbors had seen him.

“I know he loves you, Goldy. He wouldn’t run away.”

A rock formed in my throat. I whispered, “Sure,” and signed off.

I steeled myself and called John Richard.

He said, “Now what?”

I said, “Arch is missing. I need you to get a new attitude and help out.”

He said, “Whose fault is this?”

I hung up.

The general responded with a nod when I said I was going to ask Weezie some questions and look for Arch. I asked him again if he had any idea where everyone had gone.

He shook his head. I picked up the Mace. He said, “An ambush.”

The van whined all the way down the driveway. I decided to do a street-by-street search for Arch in Meadowview before showing up at the Harrington house. Even if I did not find him, at least it would make me feel that I was working on it.

The sky, covered with pearly haze most of the day, now boiled with dark clouds. Here and there gray wisps of moisture hung over the mountains. If Arch was with Julian, they both would soon be soaked. If Arch was with Sissy . . . but why would he be with Sissy?

I rolled down my window. As if on cue, raindrops pelted the windshield. Thunder rolled like gunfire in the distance. I called Arch’s name as I chugged in first gear along Sam Snead Lane, Arnold Palmer Avenue, Gary Player Parkway.

Nothing. There were not even any playing children I could ask; they’d all been driven in by the rain. I headed back to Weezie’s.

I parked the van behind the Audis, Buick Rivieras, and Lincoln Continentals lining the Harrington driveway. The cars belonged to women, I discovered when I went inside, who knew the Harringtons from the athletic club and the country club. They cooed, hugged, and whispered to Weezie and each other. They were happy to see me, but puzzled. One woman asked, “Are you a friend of Weezie’s?”

I swallowed an angry response. A svelte brunette who had been sitting across from Weezie on a leather recliner asked us if we wanted anything. I said, “Coffee,” to be rid of her, plopped into her empty spot, and mumbled my condolences.

Weezie raised bloodshot eyes. Her mane of silver-blond hair was wildly askew. She said, “Thanks. Did you find Arch?”

“No, but people are looking, and I’m going to keep searching when I leave here. Are you sure you never saw him this afternoon?”

“Not once. This has been a nightmare. I have to believe . . .” Her voice broke. “I have to believe there was a reason for his life. He was a good person.” Her eyes searched mine. “Wasn’t he?”

“He was,” I said without hesitation. “He did lots of good things in the community. And I know he adored you. Very much.”

I didn’t know if she knew I was lying, but she started crying anyway. A startled face appeared at the kitchen door: What had I said to cause such an outburst? I waved the person off and left the recliner to sit next to Weezie.

I said, “It’s okay,” and patted her back.

“He didn’t love me,” she sobbed.

“Sure he did, yes he did, he told me so himself.”

“He did?” She sniffed and opened the red eyes wide at me. “When?”

I stalled. I said, “Let’s see, let me think. When did he tell me he loved you. Why, uh, during that party last night, when he helped me with the dessert.”

“I thought I heard you two arguing up there.”

“Oh no, it was just something about the dessert. You know.” As white lies went, it didn’t sound too bad.

Weezie snorted and said, “Did he tell you where he was going after we went to bed? Did he say he was going to meet somebody?”

“Gee, no, I don’t think so. No, definitely not. Probably he had insomnia, Weezie. I have it myself.”

“And do you go swimming to get rid of it?”

“Well, no, that never occurred to me “

She burst out crying again.

“He was jealous,” she said between sobs. Her eyes narrowed in a glare of accusation. “He thought I was seeing Philip Miller,” here she lowered her voice, “that I was sleeping with him. That was a lie, a grotesque rumor.”

“It’s a small town,” I said, again trying to sound consoling. “You know how people talk.”

She was not listening to me. Her head was in her hands. “I just wanted him to love me,” she said fiercely. “That was all I wanted.”

I felt the molecules in my hand draw back, draw away from Weezie as my mind began to spin. I had learned something from “The Purloined Letter.” The narrowed possibilities had been before me all along. I murmured something about needing to go look for Arch and made my exit.

Philip had known Brian’s life had been in danger. He had started to tell me about it. He had wanted my help, and that was why he had called me before the Elk Park Prep brunch. It was this that someone had heard on the phone. This that had prompted the incident in the Aspen Meadow Café.

J want to talk to you about food, Philip had said to me.

But why? Because I was the one who was researching the question, Can you make someone love you?

They had found Spanish fly in Philip’s briefcase after the accident. The accident that was not an accident.

I rushed back to the Farquhars and took the Mace inside with me. There was something I had to find, something I had seen only once. I came through the security gate and crept around the house. The general had fallen asleep on the deck with his mouth open. His loud, drunken snore reverberated through air cooled by the late shower. I put one of the crocheted afghans over him and tiptoed into the study.

Where would it be? I searched through drawers. The clock in the study clicked the minutes away. I hauled out a pile of papers and sifted through them. Nothing. The general’s file cabinet was next. The first drawer held everything from Army to Explosives: Conventional, History of, New, through Intelligence, Domestic, Foreign. The first file in the next drawer was given over to IRA and the last was half an inch of papers on Qaddafi, Muammar. The last drawer started off Radicals and ended with War. Now that was a cheerful thought. I slammed the drawers shut, then had an idea. Intelligence, Domestic. The file nearly fell through my hands. Within a minute I held the piece of mail I had been hunting. I put it on top of the pile from the desk and sat down.

The envelope had been addressed to Julian. That was what had thrown me off.

Inside was his birth certificate.

Why was it in the study, concealed in a file? I put the certificate back in the envelope and tapped it with my finger. Because. Because unknown to the Bureau of Vital Records, and unknown to Julian, someone else had been the first one to do the seeking.

I heard a small noise behind me. I looked up. My hands covered the address on the envelope. The ink seemed to burn through my fingertips.

Adele gave me a polite, inquiring look. She said, “Did you find what you were looking for?”