Fatally Flaky

I bade Hanna farewell and took off for home. I hadn’t gone ten paces when my cell phone buzzed.

“Where the hell are you?” Marla fumed. “I’m outside your house and you’re not answering. Billie’s wedding is over, Goldy. You can come out of hiding.”

“I’m out taking a walk,” I said. “I’ll be there in less than ten minutes.”

“Ten minutes?”

I actually smiled. “Just get in your Mercedes and wait for me.”

“I’m going to need a drink when you finally let me in. Father Pete and I couldn’t find the diocesan letters, and everyone was calling the church, wanting to know about arrangements for Jack. I’ve already had a heart attack myself, you know. So this is all just as depressing as hell.”

“Tell me about it.”

Soon I was outside our house, and I speedily let Marla in. I asked her if she wanted a sherry. She glanced at our kitchen clock—I was thankful we actually had one—and said to make it scotch with a splash of soda.

“I don’t care that it’s not technically cocktail time,” Marla said. “I need the good stuff, calories be damned. Speaking of which, do you have any food left over from the wedding? I know we had eggs this morning, but I’m hungry again. And I didn’t get very much of that fabulous-looking food during the reception, I’m sorry to say.” She grinned widely. “But I’m hungry for it now.”

“Julian packed up, sorry. I have some Brie and crackers. Will that do?”

Marla lifted an eyebrow. “Works for me. God, that spa was awful, with Victor hovering around, as if he was spying on you, on the wedding, on something. Victor gives me the creeps. He employs Lucas Carmichael there, did you know? The vaunted PA does intake evaluations.”

“Lucas?” My mind immediately leaped to the possibility that Lucas and Victor, neither of whom was on my Favorite Persons list, were in cahoots. But in cahoots about what, exactly?

Marla was squinting at me. “Goldy, what in the world are you thinking? You look awful. Look, I know I said I’m sorry about Jack, but maybe I shouldn’t—” Marla paused, then reached over and squeezed my hand. “Maybe I should go home. I’m sorry I brought up all this stuff.”

“It’s okay, you can talk about the spa or Victor.” My throat closed momentarily. “You can talk about Jack.” I felt Marla’s friendship embrace me. Oddly, this meant that tears were able to run freely down my face.

Marla disappeared, then reappeared with a box of tissues. “C’mon, let it out.”

So I did. But something Marla had said stuck in my head, and when I stopped crying I stared at her steadily.

“Dammit, what’s wrong now?” She sipped her drink, set the glass on the table, and glared back at me. “You want some other brand of tissues?”

“No, I want you to go out to Gold Gulch Spa.”

“Why?” She waited for me to say something, but my throat had closed again. “You want me to help you get Jack’s car? I mean, it’s still out there, isn’t it?”

“No. I want you to go out there as a client. For a week.”

She stuck a piece of Brie in her mouth. “Forget it,” she mumbled around the cheese.

“It’s not for me. It’s for Jack.”

Marla closed her mouth and chewed. Then she shut her eyes and rubbed them, as if she were trying to think of just the right words. Finally, she said, “Jack passed away last night, Goldy. He doesn’t care whether I lose weight or not.”

“Don’t joke, okay? Just listen.” I explained to her how Jack had written “Gold” on a piece of paper, and how Lucas had misunderstood Jack as wanting to summon me to his bedside. But, I said, it was my opinion that Jack had been referring to Gold Gulch Spa. I’d even seen him rummaging around in the Smoothie Cabin when I’d been out there. And, I added, I thought Victor Lane was having money problems. He’d asked Charlotte Attenborough to invest in Gold Gulch. So maybe Jack was looking for evidence of money problems, and Victor caught him…and attacked him.

“Goldy,” Marla said after a few more minutes’ thought, “I think you need a drink, too.” When I sighed, she insisted, “Who knows what Jack meant? He’d just been attacked, he was probably on some megadose of painkiller, he could have meant anything. And anyway, Victor’s been looking for a financial angel to help with that spa since he first took it over. He even asked me to invest in the place. I went out there once, as a day client? I told him he needed to serve better food if he wanted any of my bucks. Nothing against Yolanda, I think she’s a great cook. But when I complained to her, she said Victor keeps a stranglehold on the regimen out there.” Marla took a long pull on her drink. “Really, I think you should just—” She paused again. “Just—”

“Grieve?” I supplied. “I already tried that. I want to know what was going on with Jack, and why Doc Finn, his best friend, was killed.” I reminded myself not to give away anything Tom had told me about Finn’s peculiar murder. “Something is going on out at that spa,” I insisted to Marla, “and I think Jack wanted me to find out what it was.”

“But he didn’t say anything to you about it, did he? He didn’t leave you a note telling you something untoward was happening at Gold Gulch, did he? And he certainly didn’t indicate what he wanted you, or better yet, Tom, to do about it. Did he?”

“No. Not really. But there’s more.” I told her about the crowd in the hospital: Lucas, Billie, Charlotte, and Craig. I told her about Jack’s impatience to have them all gone, and how he’d written “Keys,” and “Fin” on the paper, too. As if in proof, I drew the crumpled paper from my sweatpants pocket and laid it on the kitchen table.

Marla peered down at it. I suddenly saw Jack’s shaky lettering through somebody else’s eyes, and an arrow of doubt found its way to my heart.

“Goldy,” said Marla, “he didn’t even spell Finn’s name right. And you think this word ‘Gold’ stands for Gold Gulch Spa?”

“I do,” I said with more firmness than I felt. “I’m, uh, going to see if I can go out there and cook. Maybe help Yolanda in the kitchen or something. But I need you to be poking around, too. Like, for example, talk to the other, long time guests about the Smoothie Cabin, about whether Victor is selling them something other than fruit drinks. Or try to find out more about what ever financial problems Victor might have.”

“Why? Because Jack was scrounging around in the Smoothie Cabin? I’m sure that has all kinds of interesting things to do with Doc Finn’s death.”

“Something’s going on out there in that Smoothie Cabin,” I said stubbornly. “Victor Lane has cameras focused on the inside and the outside of a one-way mirror that looks into the space, and he keeps that cabin locked up tight—”

“Maybe he’s worried the clients, desperate for extra food, will get in there and trash the place.”

I sighed in exasperation. “Why won’t you take me seriously?”

“But listen to yourself. You want me to go out to Gold Gulch Spa as a client, and exercise and eat a bunch of low-fat food for a week.”

“Or high-protein meals,” I corrected. “I don’t know what kind of diet Victor has people on.”

“Okay, so I go out there and eat and exercise for a week, and you’ll be working in the kitchen, and in the meantime, I’m supposed to chat up the other guests and see if Victor Lane is a drug dealer. And that will help you find out why Doc Finn was killed?”

Okay, it sounded a teensy bit illogical. But I said, “Yes. Please.”

Marla collapsed her head onto the table and banged it several times, for effect. She said, “You’d better fix me another drink.”

MARLA LEFT SOON after, to sleep, she said. “You know, Casanova’s aunts used to have to nap for months before he showed up.”

“Casanova?” I said. “What are you talking about? Are you planning on a tryst out at the spa?”

“I wish. No, I’m planning on withdrawing from booze and chocolate. Oh, and did I add the part about being exhausted from exercising?”

“Look at all the good being out there did for Billie.”

“All the good that spa did for Billie was negligible,” Marla immediately retorted. “Charlotte had to pay her dressmaker to let out that expensive wedding dress ad nauseam, well, maybe not ad nauseam, because that would have made Billie thinner. Billie lost a total of two pounds, and she still ended up postponing the wedding all those times.”

“Who told you all this?” I asked absentmindedly as I walked Marla to her car. I’d thought getting outside would do me good, but when I saw Jack’s empty house looming across the street, my stomach clenched.

Marla turned to me. “Goldy, are you listening? Charlotte told me. She figured Billie had some secret supply of fattening food out there. Plus, whenever Billie came home from Gold Gulch, within a few days she was a nervous wreck.”

Hmm, I thought, and why would that be? But I said nothing because, to me, Billie always seemed to be a nervous wreck. But in the end, as I knew she would, Marla promised to call Victor Lane to see if she could book into Gold Gulch for the upcoming week.

Back in the house, I splashed cold water on my face and looked hard at myself in the mirror. If I wanted to find out what had happened to Finn and Jack, then Marla wasn’t the only one who needed a spa visit. I really would have to go out to Gold Gulch. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust the police, and Tom especially. I did trust them. But what if Victor hid evidence, clammed up, or hired a lawyer? If Marla talked to the guests, and I talked to the staff—especially Isabelle—then I’d have a better chance of finding out the truth.

I paced around the kitchen. Victor Lane didn’t like me, blast him. So how was I going to get out there?

I came back again to the idea of Yolanda. When we’d both worked at a restaurant down in Denver, we’d become good friends. She’d help me out with this, of that I was sure. I put in a call to her house and left a message on her voice mail.

Suddenly, before Yolanda had even agreed to let me help her, I had the same worry that Marla did about good food becoming scarce. Tom loved my Chilled Curried Chicken Salad. So I preheated the oven, washed my hands, and sprinkled olive oil, salt, and pepper on chicken breasts. If I was going to be going out to Gold Gulch, I reasoned, then Tom would need to have food ready for him, right?

Tom. What would he say to my plan, besides that it was cockamamie? Figuring a good offense was the best defense, I called Tom and left a message: I was going out to Gold Gulch Spa to repay Yolanda for all the help she’d given me at the wedding. Could Tom spare Sergeant Boyd to come with me?

I speared the chicken breasts with a meat thermometer, put them in the oven, and began hunting for the other ingredients. When the phone rang, I was just finishing draining juice from the mandarin oranges and pineapple tidbits. I figured the ringing phone was Yolanda calling me back, and I picked it up quickly and delivered my singsongy business greeting.

“Goldy, are you out of your mind?” Tom spluttered.

“Oops. Guess I shouldn’t have answered the phone.”

“Oops? You don’t need to help Yolanda. What? You want to go out and mess up another crime scene—”

“Wait a minute,” I protested, as I measured out mayonnaise. “What was the first crime scene I messed up?”

“You know I’m talking about breaking into Jack’s house,” Tom said, with an attempt at patience. “And now we’ve had—”

“Hold on,” I interrupted as I nabbed chutney from the walk-in. “I didn’t break into Jack’s house, and it isn’t a crime scene—”

“Wait, now, Miss G. Within hours of Jack dying, you used a dubious legal basis to employ Jack’s own keys to enter his house, without knocking or ringing, according to Lucas.”

“Lucas needs to make fewer accusations, and hit fewer people on the side of the head,” I replied, indignant. “Listen, Tom,” I said, as I worked on my own patience, “I’m sorry if I upset you, as well as Lucas, but I was just trying to figure out why Jack—”

“Where’s Marla?” Tom demanded.

“I sent her home to nap.”

“Nap? Why does she need to nap?”

“She had too much to drink over here, what with the Irish coffee this morning, and scotch and soda this afternoon. Plus, she’s going to try to come out to the spa this week, too. For that, she needed to rest up.”

Tom said, “Jesus.” Then he paused, thinking. “If Boyd can’t go out there with you, you’re not going.”

“All right.” The call-waiting beeped, and I glanced at the phone’s readout, which is what I should have done before picking up to hear Tom being angry. “Yolanda’s ready to talk to me. I’ve gotta go.”

After Tom warned me again not to go into potentially dangerous situations, he signed off. Sighing, I clicked over to Yolanda.

“Are you out of your mind, Goldy?” Yolanda asked me.

“Don’t start. Tom’s already bawled me out.”

“How long has it been since you worked in a restaurant?”

“Come on, Yolanda. Let me help. Oh, and Tom says I have to have Boyd with me if I’m going to be working out there.”

“There’s not enough room in that kitchen for you, me, my two assistants, and a cop,” Yolanda said flatly, “even if the cop is kind of cute. There’s hardly enough room as it is. Plus, Victor’s such a jerk, he’d never let you work in there for no good reason.”

“You can tell him I’m repaying you for helping with the wedding.”

“He’ll never buy it.”

I pondered the salad dressing I was making, as well as the situation with Yolanda. She was right about the Victor piece of this.

“How about this,” I proposed. “You call Victor and tell him you have appendicitis. Or something. And it’s an ailment so sudden and dreadful that you have to go into the hospital. You tell him you’ve asked me to take over, since we used to work together in a restaurant, and I know what I’m doing. Then I take your place for two or three days, and Boyd helps me. We manage in the small space, you come back after those days off, and I pay you your entire salary for a week.”

“Why do you want to get in there so badly?” Yolanda demanded. “I hate Victor, but I really need this job. If you make trouble for him, he might fire me.”

“Oh, don’t worry,” I said, although in the far reaches of my brain, the ones that oversaw vengeance for not hiring me, I saw making trouble for Victor as a plus. Still, though, Victor was Yolanda’s boss, and I really didn’t want to create problems for my old friend.

“Uh, Goldy? You didn’t answer my question. What do you think you’re going to find out at the spa?”

I set the blender on High and walked into the other room. Should I explain to Yolanda about the note from Jack? Well, if I was trusting her to lie for me, then perhaps I should. So I told her about Jack dying after being attacked at the spa. “Did you see anyone skulking around outside? Did anyone come through the kitchen to use your exit?”

“I’ve already talked to the cops about this. We were working hard, you know that. Did you notice anyone going in or out?”

“No. I wish I had.”

“And if anyone came in or out, I certainly don’t know when they were around. The one thing I remember? Jack crept through, made some kind of joke, and said he was going out for a smoke. Then he slipped through the door we use for putting out our dirty aprons and towels. He, uh, you know, didn’t come back in.”

I took a deep breath and told Yolanda about the note Jack had written for me in the hospital.

“Huh? He wrote ‘Gold’ on a piece of paper,” said Yolanda, incredulous, “and you think he was referring to the spa, and not you?”

“He didn’t call me Goldy. He called me Gertie Girl.”

Yolanda paused. “Did he write anything else on the paper?”

“Yes. He wrote ‘Keys’ and ‘Fin,’ which was the name of his best friend. Although he didn’t spell Finn’s name correctly. Look, Yolanda, does Victor ever have you make up smoothies in the Smoothie Cabin?”

“No, Victor does all that. He makes up batches of them, and then has some of the staff pour them for the guests, usually. It’s not as if it’s a secret recipe, he tells me, but he still won’t let me do it. It’s less work for me, anyway.”

“Do you think he would let me do it?”

“I’m sure he would not. He says he has to monitor the calories the clients get.”

Right, I thought. “Do you think Isabelle would let me into the Smoothie Cabin?”

“I doubt it, but she might, even though Victor told her he was going to fire her if she let anybody else in there.”

“Okay, I’ll talk to her when I get out there.”

“She can’t fake appendicitis, too.”

“Don’t worry, Yolanda. And thanks.”

“Goldy,” she replied, “you should have your head examined.”

“Will you call Victor and pave the way for me?”

“Yes, and you don’t have to pay me all that money.”

“Yes, I do. Jack was my godfather.” My voice cracked, and I silently cursed it. “I loved him, and I want to find out what he was looking for in the Smoothie Cabin. I want to find out what happened to him.”

“The cops have been out at the spa all day!” She sounded exasperated. “What do you think you’ll find that they missed?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “But I know I’m not going to rest until I at least make an effort on behalf of Jack.”

Yolanda exhaled again. “That’s why you don’t have to pay me.” She paused. “I didn’t need my appendix anyway.”

20

I woke in a sweat before the alarm went off. Our room wasn’t hot, and I was not menopausal (yet). Hmm. I glanced at our clock: not quite five. I slid out of bed and tiptoed over to flip the switch, to keep the clock from awakening Tom. Perhaps worry about the upcoming day had jolted me out of sleep. Those worries included: Would Victor Lane, who long ago had insisted to me that women in general and I in particular couldn’t cook, be nice to me? (Fat chance.) Would the spa clients like the food I prepared? (Not if they were anything like Billie.) Would I feel any better if I found out anything on the subject of why Jack had been attacked? (Too early to tell.)

Then again, maybe anxieties about the upcoming day had not awakened me. Our bedroom was filled with unusually bright light. I pulled back the curtain and couldn’t believe that after all our weeks of rain, sunshine streaking through the pines and aspens now dappled our street.

I veered away from looking at Jack’s house and instead spread out my yoga mat. I lay down and tried to summon an attitude of optimism to match the weather. But that would entail forgetting that my dear godfather was dead. It would also mean consigning to the River of Forgetfulness the colossal argument I’d had with Tom the night before.

As I stretched and breathed and tried unsuccessfully to clear my mind, I recalled how the first thing that had happened after dinner was that Yolanda had called me back. She’d phoned Victor with the bad news of her sudden attack of appendicitis and having to be down at Southwest Hospital. Instead of being compassionate, Victor had started yelling, no surprise. Yolanda had grunted and groaned her way through a fake pain attack and managed to say she’d hired a replacement, who was yours truly. Victor had been pissed, she said, laughing, but he’d agreed to let her off until Thursday dinner, when she’d “better be back, or be fired.”

“Oh, for crying out loud,” I said. “Who’s he going to get if he lets you go?”

“Hey, Goldy, good question! But I groaned big, and he told me to stop. So I managed to thank him. I also told him I’d call my assistants so they could be there to help you with breakfast. You don’t have to show up until quarter to six. Can you manage that?”

“Absolutely,” I promised. “Do you think he suspects you were faking?”

“That’s the only thing that worries me. I keep telling him he needs to see a shrink, get on some antiparanoia medicine.”

“Jeez.” I remembered Victor blowing his top about Jack’s search of the Smoothie Cabin, and how he’d questioned me as to what my godfather had been up to. Had I put on a good enough act? I wondered.

“Totally. But listen,” she warned, “in addition to Boyd, you might need Julian to help you with dinner. It’s not the extra cooking that makes the last meal of the day difficult. It’s the serving. The clients just get really, really hungry by the end of the day.”

“If Julian can’t help, then I’ll find someone else.”

Yolanda had promised to e-mail me the menu for Tuesday so I would know what to expect. She also told me the recipes were stored in the spa’s kitchen computer, and gave me the password: weight. She made me swear to call her if I needed her back. And she still didn’t want me to pay her. I told her I’d had lots of catering assignments this summer, was up to my chef’s hat in money, and had a free week, to boot. She laughed and said she was capable of making a rapid recovery. I thanked her again and signed off.

Then I called Julian, who said, “Oh no, I don’t think I can do low-fat food.” When I told him the emphasis was on health, not weight loss, he said, “Okay, I’m down for it.” Which was Julian-speak for yes, he would help.

Tom, unfortunately, had been even angrier than Victor Lane when he heard I’d had Yolanda lie so I could do a fill-in job at Gold Gulch. I’d broken the news to him when we were chopping the last ingredients for the Chilled Curried Chicken Salad. Tom had stopped slicing, put down his knife, and shaken his head.

“I told you on the phone, Goldy, you’re not going out there again unless Boyd goes with you.”

“And I said that was fine! He just has to be there at a quarter to six.”

Tom called Boyd with the specifics, and nodded curtly when he got off the phone. So Boyd must have been down for it, too.

I handed Tom a spoon with a dollop of the curry dressing. “It’ll be better when it’s chilled.”

He tasted and nodded. “Know what, Miss G.? You’d be better if you chilled.”

“Very funny.”

“Not meaning to be. Look, investigating the Finn case is proving more difficult than we’d anticipated, because of all the mud and trash down in that ravine next to the highway. If I have to worry about you and what you’re up to every minute, then my own work becomes more challenging than my cardiologist wants.”

“What cardiologist?” I asked. I spooned the pineapple, mandarin oranges, raisins, shreds of roast chicken, and chopped red onion into a crystal bowl and tossed them together. Then I ladled on creamy dollops of the curry-and-chutney-laced dressing, and stirred again. “When did you start going to a cardiologist? And does this mean I should have used low-fat mayonnaise?”

Tom began washing the cutting boards. “Now who’s being the funny one? Anyway, all that is beside the point.”

“Look, Tom, I’m insisting on going out to the spa because Jack wanted me to. I feel it in my bones.”

“So much for empirical analysis,” Tom said dryly. “Tell me: do you feel it in your bones that Jack wanted you to get hurt? Hurt the way he was, I mean?”

I gave him a look full of vinegar. “He wrote ‘Gold’ on a piece of paper—”

“Ah, the infamous meaningless note.”

“And remember, Boyd will be with me—”

“Yeah, I had to take him off a security detail for the governor, so if the gov gets whacked in the next three days, it’s on you.”

I ignored this, because I knew Boyd wouldn’t have been taken off an important security detail unless they’d found someone to replace him. “So,” I went on, “Boyd will be helping me. The bistro where Julian works is closed for the month of August, and he’s going to come over and lend a hand, too. And there will only be sixty-one guests at the spa. Piece of cake.”

Tom rolled his eyes at the ceiling instead of making a joke about the cake.

“Tom! I will be fine.”

He bristled. “Fine? Fine?”

“I’ll take my cell phone.”

“Service out there is spotty. That’s what we discovered when we were looking into the attack on Jack.” His shoulders slumped. “All right, if you’re determined to do this, Boyd sticks to you like epoxy, and you go through the spa switchboard if you need me.”

I agreed. I called Arch. Gus had already invited him to stay at his house for “their last free week before school starts.” So much for Gus’s grandparents’ school-supply shopping plans.

“It’s not like you’re going to prison next week,” I said to Arch.

Arch said, “Mom, you haven’t been in an American high school lately.”

I didn’t want to argue, so I told him I’d be back Thursday. Still, I sensed Tom was worried about this little expedition, Yolanda was anxious that her fake illness would be found out, Marla was bitching about going to numerous exercise classes every day, and Julian was okay with healthful recipes, but was dead set against cooking low-fat food.

Other than all that, I thought as I stretched into my last asana, everything was, as we say in food service, peachy.

I took a quick shower and crept down to the kitchen, where I filled an insulated mug with ice, splashed in a goodly dose of whipping cream, and pulled four shots of espresso for a volcanic Summertime Special. I took a long swig, then shuddered when I thought of the menus Yolanda had e-mailed me for that day. For dessert, the clients were getting canned fruit with low-cal whipped topping. That didn’t sound too healthful to me.

When I’d loaded the cooking equipment I couldn’t live without into the van, my eye snagged on the facade of Jack’s Victorian. The unfinished front porch, with its higgledy-piggledy assortment of flowerpots, made the place look even more forlorn. I looked away, down at the Grizzly Saloon, where an early morning worker was sweeping the porch. By half past ten, the place would be filled with patrons—usually men, sad to say—who couldn’t get through the day without booze, and plenty of it.

I gunned the engine: time to get out to Gold Gulch Spa. Even if Tom thought I was nuts, I knew what I wanted to do: find out why someone had killed Doc Finn. He’d been investigating something. Then Jack had searched the Smoothie Cabin. Maybe Doc Finn and/or Jack had found what they were looking for, and were threatening to go public with it.

If either one or both of them had gathered evidence proving some kind of wrongdoing, then that would be it—finito, fin, the end—for the spa.

If the whistleblower had been Doc Finn, then the note in his trash reading “Have analyzed” could be the key. Had Doc Finn taken a sample from the spa…from the Smoothie Cabin…and put it into a vial? And had he received the news back as to what was in the vial? Had he confronted Victor, and if so, had the old doctor been lethally punished for his efforts?

And how did Billie Attenborough, now Billie Miller, play into this, if at all? She and Doc Finn, whom she had already professed to hate, had been having a large, loud argument out at Gold Gulch Spa right before he was killed. Billie had said Doc Finn had told her she shouldn’t try to lose weight so quickly. I still didn’t believe this. I couldn’t remember when Craig Miller had said he and Billie would be leaving for the Greek Isles for their honeymoon…I just recalled how much I wanted them to be on it, instead of hanging around Aspen Meadow.

I also wanted to know what the hell Charlotte was up to. To my mind, she hadn’t really explained what her shoes were doing in Doc Finn’s Porsche.

Was my theory about Victor possibly having it in for Doc Finn and/or Jack likely or unlikely? What was Lucas up to, if anything? Where did Charlotte, Billie, and her new husband fit in, if at all?

I pressed my lips together and wound up Upper Cottonwood Creek Road on the way to Gold Gulch Spa. No question, it would pay to be extremely vigilant.

My cell phone rang, startling me out of my reverie.

“Okay, boss,” came Julian’s crackling voice, “I’m on the interstate and Sergeant Boyd is right behind me. He said to call you and tell you not to drive into the spa until we catch up. Tom’s orders.”

“Well,” I said with a nervous laugh, “make it snappy.” I glanced at the car clock: half past five.

“I would,” replied Julian, “but remember, Boyd’s a cop, and he’s driving like a cop. Right behind me. Slowly.”

“Is he in a police car?”

“No, but I have a feeling that if I go twenty miles per hour over the speed limit, he’ll get out the handcuffs.”

TWENTY MINUTES LATER, the five of us—Boyd, Julian, Yolanda’s two female assistants, and yours truly—were madly scrambling eggs, toasting whole wheat bread, and swirling soft tofu with spring water, to mix into oatmeal. The two breakfast servers were filling the skim milk and decaf coffee machines.

“I thought you said this was a high-class place,” Boyd commented as he peered into the walk-in refrigerator. “I’m not seeing any expensive low-fat breakfast meat in here. In fact, I’m not seeing any kind of breakfast meat in here.”

“Better for your arteries, Mr. Policeman,” Julian commented.

“Yeah?” said Boyd. “Kiss my ass, Mr. Vegetarian.”

“Boys, boys,” I scolded gently, “this is no place for a food fight, even a verbal one.”

But the two of them were already racing around the kitchen’s big island like a couple of kids. Julian snapped a dish towel at Boyd. Boyd snatched a wet pot scrubber and hurled it at Julian. The two kitchen assistants began giggling as the fight escalated to Boyd and Julian swinging kitchen implements at each other. The assistants’ laughter reached hyena levels. While the two guys banged around and yelled taunts, I prayed that Victor Lane was far away. I also began to wonder where the seven thousand dollars a week that each client paid to visit Gold Gulch went. The kitchen did not hold a single piece of fresh fruit, and only the most desultory collection of fresh vegetables. Frozen chickens, thawing for to night’s broiling and tomorrow’s lunch, had been bought in bulk, as had the pork tenderloins that I was fixing for the next night’s dinner. Why would Yolanda put up with preparing such foods, instead of insisting on high-quality, fresh ingredients? She must really need this paycheck. I frowned.

Of course, there was no way I was going to tell Victor Lane how to run his spa. Still, when I’d started out in catering, it had taken me a while to figure out how to calculate what exactly I had to charge to make a profit in food service, and Victor, I was sure, had done the same thing. The basic rule of thumb was that you took your raw ingredients and tripled them. As far as I could figure, Victor Lane was paying less than two bucks a day per person for his raw materials. So if the clients were paying a thousand dollars a day for food, shelter, and exercise, I wondered how much the shelter, cleaning, and exercise classes cost.

Charlotte had told me Gold Gulch was almost always full, with a waiting list, even year-round. Victor must be making a killing. But if that was true, then why was he trying to convince Marla, Lucas, and Charlotte to invest in Gold Gulch?

While I was wondering about all this, Boyd and Julian picked up sauté pans and clanked them together like swords. I tried to filter out the racket while looking more closely at the menus Yolanda had posted in the kitchen: Scrambled Eggs and Canned Fruit Cocktail for this morning; Baked Tuna with Tomato Salad for lunch; Broiled Chicken, Cauliflower, and Broccoli for to night, with packaged Angel Food Cake for dessert. If you were allergic to anything, you got yogurt. Whoopee!

Tomorrow the clients were getting more Scrambled Eggs with Toast, or Oatmeal with Tofu and Sugarless Applesauce for breakfast; Chicken Salad with fat-free mayo for lunch—I gagged—and Roast Pork Tenderloin with more Sugarless Applesauce plus Steamed Green Beans for dinner, with yet more Angel Food Cake. Another day of Awful, or offal, depending on how you looked at it.

Even when I’d gone to boarding school as a scholarship student, and we’d all complained about the food, nothing had been as bad as this.

An enormous crash, squealing, and hollering on the other side of the kitchen stopped me wondering about anything. Julian, Boyd, and the sauté pans they were wielding had collided with the plastic vat of fruit cocktail, which in turn had spilled all over the floor.

“Oh, hell, boss, I’m sorry,” Julian apologized. “I’ll clean it up.”

“No, no, I’ll do that,” Boyd said. But then he said, “Wait. Don’t move. Don’t do anything.” He looked a tad ridiculous, I had to say, holding his pan aloft and peering down at the floor, as if he’d seen a giant insect and was about to whack it.

When Victor Lane bellowed, “Everybody out!” I jumped. I hadn’t heard or seen him come in. Nor had the two combatants. Julian had murmured something about looking for a mop, and Boyd was still staring in confusion at the mess on the floor.

“Victor, I’m so sorry,” I babbled. “These two, my, my, er, staff people, that is, were just trying to help me. I’ll clean up the spilled fruit, I promise.”

“Oh, no you won’t,” Victor Lane retorted. His skeletal face loomed too close to mine, and I reared back defensively. “I should have known Yolanda would screw up my place,” he continued angrily. “Appendicitis, my ass. She’s probably visiting relatives. And anyway, she should have let me choose a replacement. There are plenty of cooks out there who could use a job.”

“Sir,” said Boyd, “please—”

“Shut up!” screamed Victor, his back to us. “Get out of my kitchen!” He was at the sink, filling a bucket with water. He ignored Boyd and picked up the full bucket.

Then, to my astonishment, Victor doused the section of the floor covered with fruit cocktail with water. The water, syrup, and about half the fruit were whisked down a floor drain. Victor was cleaning up something? Why? I’d never seen him do anything other than give orders…or criticize.

“Sir!” said Boyd.

“Be quiet and get out!” cried Victor.

21

That guy is a nut,” said Boyd, his voice low.

“Naw,” said Julian, “more of a legume. A peanut.”

“Guys, you’re driving me bonkers,” I said.

We were sitting outside in my van, the only place we felt safe enough to talk, until we were sure Victor was out of the spa kitchen.

“Maybe he’s a soybean,” said Julian. “Full of protein but bitter.”

“Don’t the two of you start up again,” I warned. They were sitting side by side in the backseat, wearing guilty-little-boy expressions. “I don’t want us to get thrown out of here. Listen, Sergeant Boyd, what did you see in the fruit cocktail?”

He shook his head. “That wasn’t just fruit cocktail. There was something in it. Something that didn’t dissolve.”

“What?” I asked, thinking of the Smoothie Cabin.

“I don’t know,” Boyd said carefully. “But you noticed the clients were only supposed to get small cups of it? One little cup each, no seconds?”

“Yes,” I said thoughtfully. “Okay, look,” I began. Then I told them about Jack searching the Smoothie Cabin, and my conviction that something suspicious was going on behind that particular locked door. “I need to get into that Smoothie Cabin,” I concluded.

“We’ll go together,” said Boyd, his voice protective.

“Girls and boys?” said Julian. “How ’bout I take samples of all the food, to get tested?”

“You’re on,” I said. “I’m just wondering if I should warn—”

But I didn’t get a chance to finish the thought, because the person I wanted to warn was Marla, now on a path leading from one of the dormitories. She wore a giant pink muumuu, pink sunglasses, and pink flip-flops. She raised one dramatic hand to her forehead, Tallulah Bank-head style, and waved with the other. When she came a bit closer and saw that Julian and Boyd were with me, her waving became genuinely enthusiastic.

“Three of my favorite people, all in one place!” she cried. “It’s okay for me to be in the van, right? I mean, Victor warned us last night not to fraternize with the help.”

“What?” I squealed.

“My sentiments exactly,” said Marla. “We met all the exercise instructors last night, and not one of them is attractive, trust me.”

“You mean, none of them is an attractive guy,” Julian teased.

“Well,” said Marla, fluffing out her hair and peering into the backseat, “none of them is as attractive as, say, Sergeant Boyd here.”

I checked the rearview mirror, and tough-as-steel Sergeant Boyd was indeed blushing.

“I’m going to have to get back to the sheriff’s department,” Boyd said. “Working at this place is proving beyond my capacities.”

“I doubt that,” said Marla, keeping the flirtatious lilt in her voice. “And I certainly hope the three of you have been fixing a marvelous breakfast here. Last night we had an intake assessment and a demonstration of the athletic equipment, which we were all required to be involved in, Victor said, for insurance purposes. What the hell does that mean? If you die after the first night, it’s not his fault? Well, anyway, I about dropped dead, but I didn’t, ’cuz I only walked for ten minutes on that blasted treadmill. So now I’m famished, and if what ever you’re giving us today is as pathetic as the fish and fruit they gave us last night, I’m going to quit now.”

“Fish and fruit?” Boyd asked sharply. “What kind of fruit?”

Marla paused, then looked over the seat again. “Canned peaches! It’s the middle of summer, and we’re in a state that grows peaches, for God’s sake! So why were we having canned peaches, will somebody please tell me?”

“What did Victor say?” I asked.

“Victor didn’t say nada,” Marla replied. “Yolanda was the one in charge last night, and she said Victor had done all the calorie calculating, and only canned peaches worked for his careful dietary what ever. Why?” She was suddenly curious, as if I might give her a gossipy tidbit that would get her through exercise class. “I’ll tell you something else, though. The women say the smoothies are wonderful, and make them feel dreamy.”

“Dreamy?” I asked. “How can a smoothie make you feel dreamy?”

“I don’t know,” Marla replied. “But we’re all only allowed one a day, so maybe they limit dreaminess the way they limit calories.”

A rustling emerged from the backseat. Then Boyd reached forward with two zipped plastic bags. “Could you save me some of your fruit cocktail this morning? And some of your smoothie this afternoon? Please?”

“Why?” asked the increasingly inquisitive Marla. “What do you think is in them?”

“I don’t know,” said Boyd flatly. “That’s why I need you to gather some up for me. Preferably when no one is looking, if you can manage it.”

“But you must suspect—,” Marla had begun, when the bell rang for breakfast.

“Look, Marla,” I said, “we do suspect Victor might be putting something in the food. We don’t know what.”

Another bell rang. “Oops, gotta run. Victor said we had one minute after the second bell rang to make it into the chow line, and then the line was closed. That’s what he called it, too, a chow line, like we’re a bunch of dogs who need to—oh, man, I have to run, I’m starving.” She stuffed the plastic bags into a copious pocket of her muumuu, and opened the door. Then she pointed into the backseat with a pink-painted nail. “I’m doing you a favor, Sergeant Boyd, and I’m going to expect a favor in return!”

“Christ,” said Boyd when Marla shut the door. “I wonder if Schulz will take me back now.”

“Victor just left,” said Julian. “We’d better hustle in there if we’re going to help with breakfast.” And off we went.

Inside, I dished out the scrambled eggs, using the little scoops marked EGG MEASUREMENT. Julian and Boyd spooned oatmeal into small bowls for the clients who wanted that instead of eggs. Yolanda’s assistants sprayed butter substitute onto whole wheat toast and put little dabs of sugar-free jam on top. The very few male clients—four, to be exact—were stoic, but the women kept commenting that they were ravenous. It made me wish I’d brought some brownies for them.

“Well, well, what are you doing here?” asked Billie Attenborough Miller, the last woman in line.

I was so taken aback to hear her voice that I dropped the serving spoon. Julian came rushing over with another.

“Omigod,” said Billie. “This kid’s here, too? Where’s Yolanda?”

“Sick!” I managed to squeak. Meanwhile, my brain was madly fluttering with questions. Dr. Craig Miller was nowhere in sight. Was he still in bed? Had they even consummated the marriage?

“Ah, the bride,” said Boyd, more smoothly than I could have managed.

“You!” said Billie. “The cop! Why are you here?”

Boyd said solicitously, “I’m here helping Goldy, since Yolanda has appendicitis.”

“Your tax dollars at work!” Billie sang. “Is someone going to use a new spoon to give me some eggs, or am I going to be standing here all day?”

Julian obligingly lifted a new, clean spoon and gave Billie a heaping spoonful of eggs. She eyed it warily. If she complained he’d given her too much, he could take some off her plate. If she complained he’d given her too little, he might say that was all she got, if she expected to lose weight.

“And why haven’t you left for your honeymoon?” Boyd persisted.

“My husband wanted to stay here a few days before we leave for our honeymoon,” Billie replied huffily. “Not that it’s any of your business.” With this, she picked up her plate and strode off.

In the kitchen, the presence of the other workers made conversation among Julian, Boyd, and me impossible. But when the two worker bees announced it was time for them to help the two servers clear the tables, Boyd and I lifted our eyebrows at each other.

I said, “Billie drove me crazy for months, then after changing the date twice, she finally got married, and they’re staying here, eating this food? Is she trying to lose more weight to fit into her bathing suit? I remember now that Craig Miller told me he had to change their tickets for getting to Greece, but why not stay in a hotel?”

Boyd rubbed his forehead. “I don’t know. It’s a good thing I’m helping you, though. I don’t like that woman. Whenever we get somebody who’s real belligerent, we think he or she might have had something to do with the crime. And I’ll tell you what, she was like a pit bull when we questioned her after Jack Carmichael was attacked.”

“Tell me about it. And where is Craig Miller? Sleeping in?” I didn’t really want to see either of the Millers, but I did have someone I wanted to talk to. I had the idea of checking the calendar of classes right outside the dining room. When I came back, I asked Boyd, “Any chance you and Julian could finish washing the dishes, and then set up for lunch? I need to go find someone named Isabelle. She works here, and is the only one who might have a key to the Smoothie Cabin, besides Victor,” I added.

“I promised your husband I wouldn’t let you out of my sight,” said Boyd.

“Then look out the front kitchen windows,” I said. “I’m going to pause out there, where Jack was attacked. Then I’ll be walking along a highly visible path to the gym, which is a highly visible structure, where Isabelle is.”

“Boss,” said Julian, “we should really start fixing lunch as soon as we get breakfast cleanup done. Any chance you know what Yolanda wants us to make?”

I showed him the kitchen computer, then booted it up, entered the password, and brought up the screen with monday lunch.

“Thanks, guys,” I said. I removed my apron, and walked quietly outside, while behind me, Julian shrieked, “That’s it? That’s disgusting!”

The area where Jack had been hit was surrounded by tattered yellow police ribbons. Since I’d already picked up my godfather’s Rolex and been bawled out for it by Tom, I knew better than to go into the cordoned-off section of lawn and garden, even though the absence of police probably meant they’d finished investigating this place. But…had they found anything out? I wondered if Tom would tell me. I took off for the gym.

Isabelle was more energetic than I expected. She was not attractive. Her freckled complexion was blotchy, her brown hair was pulled back in a low ponytail, and her too-thin ankles and wrists all canceled out any femininity quotient. But she knew how to move to a beat, and maybe her lack of prettiness gave the guests confidence, in a perverse way. I was amazed when she convinced even the most recalcitrant of the bunch—always in the back row, just like elementary school—to step up and wiggle their behinds. Billie Miller was right in front of the room’s big mirror, so I ducked behind an exercise bike to avoid being seen by her.

“What are you doing here?” Victor bellowed from in back of me. I was so startled I crashed over into the exercise bike, toppling it noisily to the floor. I tried to right it, but was too weak. Victor did it one-handed, all the while giving me a scalding look. I had to wonder: did this guy have an invisibility cloak that prevented me from seeing when he was sneaking up on me?

“I, I need to talk to Isabelle?” I proffered, scuttling around to put the newly upright exercise bike between the spa owner and myself. If Boyd was bothered by Billie’s bellicosity, I was giving the Hostility Prize to Victor.

“If you have so much time on your hands, away from the kitchen, that you need to sneak around my spa—”

“I’m not sneaking around!” I protested. “I was waiting for Isabelle. She was practically the last person to see my godfather alive—”

Victor smirked. “Then get into her class, Goldy! Look, there’s an empty spot right there in the front row—”

“The hell you say,” I retorted.

Victor pointed. “You want to talk to Isabelle? Go exercise with her.”

Omigod, why was this spa so popular? It just had to be one of those cases where the owner was nice to the clients, but hell on the help. Still, I was in no position to argue, because truth to tell, I had been sneaking around. Problem was, wherever it was I was intent on sneaking, Victor always seemed to be a step ahead of me.

Isabelle gave me a very sympathetic look. The class wasn’t half bad, moving as it did from the cha-cha to a kind of rock-and-roll step that I managed to keep up with. Of course, I looked ridiculous in my black catering pants and white shirt, which stood out painfully against all the brilliant hues spandex had to offer. But for the most part, the clients really were overweight, so it wasn’t as if we were at the Aspen Meadow Athletic Club, with its high-voltage classes and even higher-voltage clientele.

“You wanted to see me?” Isabelle asked quietly, once we’d gone through a stretch routine that was so relaxing I almost fell asleep. “I don’t have a class for another hour.”

“Yes, please.” I paused to take a drink of water from the conical cup Isabelle offered. “Thanks.” I tried to think of how to pose the questions I knew I needed to ask. “My godfather, Jack Carmichael—”

“I heard he died. I’m sorry. He was a nice man. And funny, you know? Not funny peculiar, but funny ha-ha.”

“Right. I saw you two in the Smoothie Cabin, and then dancing together at the reception.”

Isabelle blushed. “I don’t know why he wanted me in the Smoothie Cabin. I mean, he said it was for ‘cover,’ what ever that meant. He was searching for something.”

“What, do you know?”

She shook her head. “He said the less I knew, the better. That’s what I told the cops when they talked to me.”

“Please, Isabelle,” I begged. “He must have given you some idea of what he was up to.”

Isabelle cast a furtive glance around. We were alone. “He did ask me—” She stopped. “I don’t want to lose my job. I mean, it’s a crap minimum-wage job, but I need it.”

“If he didn’t ask you to do anything illegal, then you’re fine. You saw how well Victor Lane and I get along, which is to say that we don’t. So I’m not going to be talking to him about what you tell me.” Meanwhile, I was thinking, A crap minimum-wage job? If Victor didn’t buy high-quality foodstuffs, and he didn’t pay his people anything, what was he doing with all the money he made from the spa? Maybe those insurance costs he’d mentioned at the meeting Marla went to were particularly onerous.

“Jack wanted to know about Doc Finn,” Isabelle whispered. “Jack knew Doc Finn had been out here last week. Jack wanted to know every single thing Finn had done while he was at Gold Gulch. How much time Finn had spent, with whom, and what had happened. I did tell the cops all this,” she concluded.

I thought of Jack’s scribbled notes: “Fin.” I said, “I heard that when Finn was here, he had a big fight with Billie Attenborough.”

“He did.” Isabelle’s voice was barely audible.

“She told me Finn was mad at her for losing weight so fast.”

Isabelle waited a moment and then shook her head. “Their argument,” she whispered, “had nothing to do with weight.”

“What did it have to do with?”

“Her wedding.”

“Losing weight for her wedding?”

Isabelle shook her head. “I don’t know, because at that point, they went into her room. That’s what I told Jack, and that’s what I told the cops. Jack asked me if Billie, in one of her many visits to the spa, had been seeing anyone else. Like a guy,” she added, embarrassed. “I told him Billie had been here once when Lucas, Jack’s son, was here. Jack shook his head, but I wasn’t sure if he was disappointed in Lucas or in Billie.”

“Did Lucas enjoy being here?”

“Hard to tell. He consults for Victor, but I don’t think Victor pays him much. Lucas complained that the spa was too expensive. But he’s back this week, so he must have found some money around somewhere.”

No kidding. I said, “So go on about Jack.”

“Well,” Isabelle said, “there just isn’t anything. Still, I figured Doc Finn must not have won the argument with Billie, because Billie and Craig Miller are here, enjoying one of the three suites. And talk about weird, Billie’s mother is here, too. They sat together at the intake meeting last night. Around the staff room? Our theory is that Billie’s mother wants to know if the wedding’s been consummated.”

I said, “I sort of wondered that same thing when Billie showed up in the dining room this morning, without her new husband.”

“They brought food when they checked in,” said Isabelle. “Two coolers’ worth.”

“Based on the menus I saw, I don’t blame them.” But I was puzzled. “What difference would it make if the wedding is consummated?”

Isabelle grinned for the first time since we’d begun talking. “The staff is taking bets on it. Our theory is that if Billie and Craig have consummated their union, then Craig can’t give Billie back to Charlotte and say, ‘No thanks.’”

“A wife is not something you can return to the store if you don’t like her,” I said.

Isabelle’s lips quirked into a mischievous smile. “There’s a first for everything.”

“How about a second for everything?”

“What?” she asked, suddenly suspicious.

“I need you to get me into that Smoothie Cabin.”

Isabelle said, “Victor will fire me.”

“Do you know how to disable the security cameras?”

Isabelle looked at me as if I’d asked her to fix the transmission in a Korean sports car. “Uh, no way.”

“Do you have any spray paint?” I asked. “We can do it the old-fashioned way.”

22

Julian and Boyd kept watch. I set up a ladder near the outside camera, the one that pointed into the Smoothie Cabin. Isabelle handed me a can of gold spray paint that they kept for when the clients made Christmas crafts. Then she buttoned a catering jacket onto my head, as a makeshift mask. When I said I could see through the front gap, I stepped up the ladder, pointed to the camera lens, and sprayed. Once Isabelle had let me into the Smoothie Cabin, I repeated the process. Then Isabelle joined Julian and Boyd in monitoring the door. Isabelle told me I probably had no more than five minutes, as Victor kept a close eye on the feed from the cameras in his office, near the reception area.

“You need to be methodical,” Boyd had told me beforehand. “I wanted to go in with you, but I can’t. I don’t have a search warrant, so you’re going to have to take samples of everything you find. If I take anything out of there, Schulz will have my badge.”

The room was really like a large closet, about eight feet by eight feet. There was a small, humming refrigerator filled with yogurt, ice, strawberries, blueberries, and three tall bottles of what looked and smelled like jam, except they were labeled smoothie mix. I extracted the plastic bags Boyd had given me and quickly spooned in samples of mango, strawberry, and pineapple. Across the two counters, bunches of bananas were carefully arrayed between three blenders. A sink, a bottle of dishwashing liquid, and a drain looked innocuous enough. The first cupboard I checked held plastic glasses and spoons. The second contained about two dozen plastic canisters with healthful-sounding labels like protein powder, ginseng, echinacea, vitamin powder, chamomile, and the like. Each canister contained powders of various colors.

“Take samples of everything you find.” Boyd’s words echoed in my ears.

I was about halfway through when Julian knocked quickly on the door. “Boss!” he whispered urgently through the door. “He’s coming!”

“Have Isabelle waylay him,” I whispered back.

“Give me the samples,” Boyd ordered me through the door. “I’ll make my way to the van out the back door of the kitchen. Meet me there.”

I did as directed. I stuffed the bags into a large grocery bag I’d brought expressly for this purpose and handed them to Boyd. Then I walked quickly through the cabin door, raced across the kitchen, and hauled myself out the kitchen’s back door. There, I scooted around a half-full cart of dirty table linens and towels, and ran to where we had parked the van. Thank God Boyd had insisted we put the vehicle behind the spa’s garage, where it could not be seen.

Boyd was already there. He’d placed the grocery bag in the back. He told me to walk calmly around the corner and start toward the dining room. He’d be right behind me.

In front of the Smoothie Cabin door, Isabelle was explaining to Victor that she had no idea who could have picked the lock to the Smoothie Cabin and vandalized the cameras.

When Victor saw me, he held up his hand for Isabelle to stop talking. He narrowed his eyes at me and said, “I don’t suppose you know anything about this.”

I said, “Anything about what?”

“If I find spray paint in that kitchen, you’re done here.”

I said, “Spray paint? For what?”

“Isabelle,” Victor said loudly, “give me back that key I gave you to the Smoothie Cabin.” When she sheepishly handed it over, Victor said she was done helping him with smoothies. Now, he concluded, he was on his way to the hardware store to get a padlock for the Smoothie Cabin door.

Somehow, we got through the rest of the day. I didn’t discover anything else, and none of the food seemed to have anything odd about it. When Victor returned from the hardware store, he went straight to the Smoothie Cabin. I prayed that the clean-up job I’d done would convince Victor not to destroy any evidence, if indeed there was evidence to be had there. I hadn’t found any vials, which wasn’t encouraging. What was encouraging was that Victor hadn’t fired Isabelle on the spot, or thrown me out of the spa altogether. He must be desperate for cooks and aerobics instructors, I thought.

I saw Lucas only briefly at lunch, and Charlotte, Billie, and Craig Miller for a moment at dinner. I didn’t have a chance to speak to any of them, which was probably just as well. Boyd, meanwhile, hovered over me, which made me feel crowded. But I’d agreed to his being there, so I was compliant. Plus, I simply could not wait for him to get those samples analyzed.

The one time I saw Marla, Boyd instructed Julian to watch over me. Then Boyd sauntered off to go talk to Marla. Marla rummaged in her gym carrier and, as unobtrusively as possible—not easy if you were Marla—gave Boyd the plastic bags he’d given her that morning.

I was so tired by the time we finished cooking dinner that I wanted to go have a soak in the hot springs pool before heading home. I knew if I did, Victor would fire me for sure. I was still worried about those broken plates, though, and thought we should check on the status of the clean up.

The spa servers were washing the dishes—their job, they insisted—while the clients were settling in for an evening of karaoke, which I’d always thought was a singularly foolish activity. But nobody was asking me.

“Let’s go up and see if the hot pool has been reopened,” I suggested to Boyd. It was half past seven, and the twilight air smelled delicious. Shreds of sulfurous mist from the hot springs were unraveling overhead. There was a hint of fall in the breeze. Boyd, who was still tagging along beside me, lifted an expressive eyebrow.

“I’m not propositioning you,” I insisted. “Don’t give me that look.”

“I’m not allowing you to go into any body of water. If I did, I’d lose my job.”

I laughed so hard that my fatigue abated a bit. By the time we reached the top of the path that led to the steaming pool, I’d told him in no uncertain terms I only wanted to see if the mess I’d made had been cleaned up. He was visibly relieved that there was still a no entry sign by the pool. I was disappointed, as ribbons of hot mist floated invitingly our way. But still. Presumably, the remains of a couple dozen broken cups and plates lurked on the slimy bottom. Once again, I wondered where Victor Lane was putting all his money from running the spa. Not into handymen and cleaning crews, clearly.

“Tough luck,” I said, trying hard to sound sincere.

“Yeah.” A man of few words, was our Boyd. We turned back down the path.

“Can you help me?” asked a large, fleshy blond woman as she toiled up the path. She stopped to gasp for breath. “I…I followed you from the kitchen.”

Boyd, ever watchful, stepped in front of me. “Help you with what?”

“I’m starving.” She put her hands on her waist, bent over, and panted. She was about sixty, and her thin blond hair had dark gray roots. “I…I’ve been here before, and…Yolanda always gave me”—here she blushed—“gave us, some of us, that is, extra food. After dinner, at the back door to the kitchen.” She straightened and wheezed. “We paid her,” she added, then reached into the copious pocket of even-more-copious pants and pulled out a wad of cash. “I can pay you.”

Boyd turned to face me, so that his back was to the woman. He gave me a what-the-hell bug-eyed look.

“It’s all right,” I said soothingly to the woman. “I don’t have anything right now, but I can bring you something tomorrow.”

“Oh, thank God,” said the woman, who made her way back down the path while we waited behind.

“Didn’t she come here to lose weight?” Boyd asked, once the woman was out of earshot. “Why sabotage yourself like that?”

“It’s probably like being able to get drugs in rehab. Those clinics are one of the best places to score. So if she wants a dessert, I’ll bring her one.”

“Kee-rist,” said Boyd. “And I thought cops were the most cynical guys in the world.”

AT HOME, TOM was upstairs taking a shower. I checked our voice mail: there was nothing from Bogen the jeweler about Jack’s clock, and that irritated me. Finally I went upstairs, and on impulse, joined Tom in the shower. That proved more rejuvenating than any old hot springs pool.

“I’m hungry,” Tom whispered in my ear, when we were embracing, afterward, in the steamy bathroom. “You?”

I nodded assent. We put on pajamas and trekked down to the kitchen.

“How was the spa?” Tom asked. He was ladling spoonfuls of Chilled Curried Chicken Salad onto glass plates.

“Exhausting.” I opened bottles of imported beer—what I’d been told was the proper drink to go with curry—and placed cold glasses on our table. I told him about Isabelle’s revelations, which were more puzzling than eye opening. I then said I had gone into the Smoothie Cabin to hunt around.

Tom closed his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, Boyd confessed to me. Did you find anything?”

“Don’t get mad at Boyd, okay?” I told him about Boyd suspecting that he saw “something” in the fruit cocktail, and how I had taken samples from jars of preserved fruit and powdered supplements.

“If Boyd comes back with anything,” Tom said matter-of-factly, “we won’t be able to use it in court. You know that, right?”

“I know, I know,” I said, although I wasn’t convinced. Plus, we still had Marla’s smoothie and fruit cocktail to get analyzed. It had been served to her, so she had the right to have it analyzed, correct? I said, “Lucas was up there. It looks as if he’s already starting to spend Jack’s money.”

“He’s not going to be able to spend it until the coroner’s office gives him a death certificate, and there won’t be any death certificate until we know more—”

He stopped talking when he saw my eyes pooling. The day had been so bone-crushingly busy, I’d somehow put the fact that Jack was dead on the back burner of my mind. But now Tom’s use of the term “death certificate” gave Jack’s premature departure from this life a finality I wasn’t ready to face.

“Miss G.” His voice was warm. He took my hands in his. “We shouldn’t be talking about this. Remember, Father Pete said you should take a couple of days to grieve.”

“A couple of days. Right. If I were to spend a couple of days moping around the house, I’d go stark raving bonkers. Hold on a sec.” I left the kitchen, blew my nose in the bathroom, washed my hands, and returned with a box of tissues. “Please tell me more about the case. I really want to know.”

“You know we’ve tentatively linked Finn’s death with Jack’s? That’s partly owing to the note Jack wrote you. It’s not much of a link, but it’s a link.”

“So…did the pathologist confirm that the heart attack was directly caused by Jack being attacked?”

Tom shook his head. “The connection isn’t certain. But given the head trauma that Jack did experience, it’s clear that someone tried to kill him out at the spa, and almost succeeded. Well, did succeed, in the end, because he just died later.” Tom narrowed his eyes at me. “You all right?”

“Fine. But the person who attacked Jack couldn’t have counted on Jack having a heart attack in the hospital from his injuries.”

“Exactly.”

It took me a second to understand what Tom was implying, and when I did, it chilled me to the bone. “The call Doc Finn received the night he was murdered came from within Southwest Hospital. Are you saying that someone in the hospital might have…helped Jack to have a heart attack? Might have poisoned him or…?”

“It’s obviously a possibility. Jack had a history of heart disease and he’d been badly injured, but the heart attack was still very sudden. Even closely monitored the way he was, we can’t rule out tampering. So the pathologist is checking everything in Jack’s system against the meds he was taking for his heart condition. Those meds, by the way, were in his house.”

“Right,” I said. “And remember, Lucas was already inside the house when I used Jack’s keys to get in. So maybe he planted something, or took something away.”

“We’ve talked to him, again. He says he didn’t touch anything, and we can check his house, if we want. You don’t like Lucas, do you?”

My shoulders slumped. “I’m not sure he’s a killer. But he’s like the cousin you never really got along with, the cousin you suspected was trashing your toys and stealing from your mother’s purse, but you could never prove anything.”

Tom grinned. “Your professional psychiatric opinion, no doubt.”

I shrugged. “What else have you found out?”

“Nothing. These tests take a bit of time, you know, Goldy, even when you’re doing things on an expedited schedule, which we are.”

I rubbed my forehead. “I can’t think of what to do.”

Tom knew better than to tell me to do nothing. He said, “I’ll tell you how you can help. We have all the technical expertise, the teams going out talking to witnesses, the labs doing their tests. But what you’re particularly good at is dissecting…people’s relationships. It’s not the how that’s really stumping us here, although we’re working on that. It’s the why. You want to help? Bring that intellect to bear on the reasons somebody or somebodies would want these two guys…to be gone.”

I exhaled so disconsolately that I knew Tom sensed my frustration. Finn had stuck his nose into some kind of hornets’ nest and had dragged Jack into it behind him. Had it been very odd, or even criminal, activities performed by Victor Lane at the spa, or an entirely different problem? I felt no closer to an answer than I’d been when I woke up Monday morning and learned of Jack’s death.

Tom looked around the kitchen with a thoughtful gaze. “You want to cook?”

I was so startled by his suggestion that I actually laughed. It was already after ten, and I had to get up at five. But Tom knew what would make me feel better—apart from shenanigans in the shower, that is.

Thirty minutes later, Tom had finished the dishes, and I’d made the same chocolate cookies I’d made the other day. They were so flaky, the first one I made broke off in my mouth. Hmm. While Tom was putting the dishes away, I decided not to spoon ice cream into the middle. Instead, I whipped together a buttery, extra-creamy vanilla frosting, and spread it between two of the cookies. Yum! Tom agreed.

I would give—not sell—the resulting cookie sandwiches to any person who presented herself at the spa kitchen’s back door the next evening.

“I can’t believe you’re making those for these spa guests who are trying to lose weight,” Tom commented.

“Boyd was right beside me,” I said defensively, “when the lady wanting the treats approached us on the path.”

“Sort of like getting drugs in rehab.”

“That’s what I told Boyd.”

TWO HOURS LATER, Tom was in a deep slumber beside me, and I should have been fast asleep, too. But this was one of those times when, despite my physical exhaustion, my mind was wide awake. Too wide.

You failed Jack, my hyped-up brain accused. He wanted you to figure something out, and you’re not doing it.

I’m trying, some other part of my brain protested.

Not hard enough.

Finally, I gave up on sleep and crept down to the kitchen. What did the accusatory voice in my head expect me to do? Since that voice was now resolutely silent, I made myself another Summertime Special. What the hell, I had to get up in five hours anyway, why not just stay up all night?

I moved restlessly around the kitchen, picking up a cup here, checking my knives there. Something was indeed niggling at the back of my mind now, but what?

It was something I’d said to Tom. When I used the keys to get into Jack’s house…

I rummaged around in the living room until I found the ring of keys Jack had wanted me to take, as well as the crumpled paper with Jack’s scribbled notes: “Gold. Fin. Keys.”

What was I missing? I sipped my coffee, and turned over Jack’s keys, which jingled in my hand. The key to his house was there, plus the key to his car, which as far as I knew was still out at the spa. Maybe the cops had impounded the car and were searching it. Tom hadn’t mentioned anything about that. There were keys to I-knew-not-what. Jack’s liquor cabinet? A storage compartment I didn’t know about? Maybe I should have given Tom these damn keys.

I turned over one, a smaller one, then turned it back. On one side were the initials amcc. On the other was a letter and a number: m-71.

Omigosh, my golly, I thought. The brand-new golf clubs had been in Jack’s living room, along with the old-new travel clock. But Jack eschewed clocks, and he had constantly complained that his bursitis had made it impossible for him to keep playing golf. I was having the clock examined and dissected, but I’d practically forgotten about the stupid golf clubs.

I glanced at the key again. It didn’t belong to a liquor cabinet and it certainly wouldn’t open a storage container. The key was from the Aspen Meadow Country Club, the AMCC.

Jack had given me the keys, I was willing to bet, and set up the clubs in his living room, in case something happened to him. He had safeguarded something, I had no idea what, and he’d wanted me to figure it out—a final puzzle for his godchild. That was why he’d given me the keys. He’d put what ever he wanted me to find in locker number 71, on the men’s side of the changing rooms at the country club.

I didn’t stop to think. Aspen Meadow Country Club served fancy dinners and offered dancing until two in the morning. The dining room did not close any particular night, Marla had told me, because members were required to eat there five times a month. I knew some of my clients found this requirement onerous, but then they’d reluctantly bought the diamonds and dresses to make it all possible.

If I went back upstairs, I’d awaken Tom, and I definitely didn’t want to do that. I’d already put another change of clothes in the van, which was in the driveway. I wrote Tom a note: “Gone to Aspen Meadow Country Club, back by three.” Then I disarmed the house’s security system, grabbed my purse and Jack’s and my keys, and was off.

IN THE PARKING lot of the AMCC, I changed into my catering uniform, which I hoped looked similar enough to the club’s servers’ uniforms for me to fit in. The parking lot was, dishearteningly, less than a quarter full. I certainly hoped the cars belonged to patrons, and not just worker bees.

I came in through the kitchen, where a couple of long-suffering workers were washing pots and pans and speaking in Spanish.

I said, “Busco los clientes,” which I hoped meant that I was looking for the clients, and not, I’m searching for my long-lost parents. I’d once asked the male manager of a Spanish grocery store, “¿Tiene huevos?” Which I thought meant “Do you have eggs?” but instead meant, “Do you have balls?” and not the the kind you bounce around on the playground. I never went back.

But one of the dishwashers nodded and said merely, “Allá.” He pointed in the direction of the dining room, the location of which I knew very well. I nodded my thanks and took off through the kitchen doors. But instead of heading upstairs toward the dining room, from which some waltz music was playing too loudly, I headed downstairs, to the darkened locker rooms.

When I got to the side marked men, I opened the door, which creaked ominously. I called, “Hello? Maid service?” When no one answered, I turned on the overhead lights, which flickered gray, and then finally came on. I made my way cautiously inside.

I was gripping Jack’s keys so hard that my palms were beginning to sweat. The locker numbers danced in front of my eyes, a function, no doubt, of my extreme fatigue. I told myself to relax, I’d be in bed soon enough, and I’d have the satisfaction of knowing what Jack and Doc Finn had been up to. That thought gave me a pop of energy, and I slowly began to peruse the lockers until I found number 71.

No sooner had I put the key in the lock than I heard the locker room door creak open. I cursed silently, and for once wished that I had Boyd back by my side to protect me.

“Maid service!” I called loudly. “We’ll be done cleaning in here in fifteen minutes! Can you come back, please?”

To my very great relief, the door creaked back closed. Probably some inebriated fart had wandered away from his wife. He’d gotten confused and figured it was time to play golf.

I tried to downplay paranoid thoughts that I had been followed. No way, I told myself. What, was someone parked outside our house, ready to follow my van in the middle of the night?

I certainly hoped not.

I swallowed hard and turned the key in the lock. Just get what ever it is and get out, I told myself. Go back through the kitchen, where the dishwashing staff will still be at work. I’d ask one of them to accompany me back to my car. Would my crappy Spanish yield me the right phrases? Well, one problem at a time.

I opened locker M-71. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a single piece of paper was not it. The writing was old-fashioned, not Jack’s.

O’Neal—dehydration

Parker—thyroid

Druckman—rotator cuff

Foster, White, Katchadourian—Symptoms of addiction withdrawal. All were told they were stressed out, should go back for a week or more. Once there, they said, they felt better. Home two days, more symptoms of withdrawal. Again told to go to back. Etc.

I reread the paper. Symptoms of withdrawal? From what? They should go back for a week or more? Go back where? To Gold Gulch Spa? And what were Foster, White, and Katchadourian, none of whom I knew, withdrawing from? From the stuff in the fruit cocktail? From the smoothies? From something I had taken out of the Smoothie Cabin?

I wanted to scream at heaven: The next time you leave me a puzzle, Jack, make the solution clearer, won’t you?

I heard nothing but silence.

23

I tucked Jack’s keys and the paper into my pocket and walked quickly, watchfully, back to the kitchen. I saw no one, and the band in the dining room was playing “Good Night, Ladies,” the cue that the dancers’ evening was winding down.

One of the workers kindly accompanied me to my van. My spotty memory of Spanish yielded up the phrase, “Tengo miedo.” I’m afraid. Which I was. Alone, in the men’s locker room, in a country club I didn’t belong to, in the middle of the night, trying to figure out why someone had killed a kindly doctor and attacked my godfather so brutally he’d died of a heart attack? You bet your bippy I was full of miedo.

With the wiry Hispanic man there to protect me, I looked cautiously around the parking lot: were any of these cars new since my arrival? I couldn’t tell. I thanked the worker, then offered him ten dollars as a tip, which he proudly declined. I thanked him again and hoped I hadn’t offended him. Some cultural walls take time to hurdle, and my brain was too mushy to learn what ever lesson was being offered. I jumped into the van and raced home.

There were some cars out on the road, but it was hard to tell if anyone was following me. I didn’t think so, and no one turned up our narrow road off Main Street. Still, I was massively relieved when I slouched into our kitchen. I guess I shouldn’t have been too surprised to find Tom at our table, a glass of scotch in front of him.

“You needed to play nine holes of golf in the middle of the night?”

“I just didn’t want to wake you—”

“You could have at least taken your cell phone,” he said mildly, turning his green eyes in my direction. “Turned it on, too, in case your nervous husband woke up, didn’t find you, but found this cryptic note about you waking up with a sudden desire to mix with the country-club set.”

“I wasn’t mixing with anyone, I was getting this.” I handed him the paper and explained its provenance. I didn’t tell him about my fear that someone might have followed me, then come into the locker room while I was there.

“I want you to give me Jack’s keys right now.” Tom held out his hand. “No excuses, and no more late-night ideas for investigating. You’re not rational.”

“Oh, don’t pull that logical argument—,” I began.

Tom held up his hand. “Enough, Miss G. I also need that paper. I’ll make a copy for you.” And off he went to the basement, where he kept his office equipment.

So, at just after three in the morning, Tom wordlessly handed me a duplicate of the scrawled note from the golf club locker. When we finally climbed into bed, I was grateful Tom hadn’t bawled me out more than he had.

WHEN THE ALARM went off at five, I thought I was going to die. Or maybe I was already dead. I slapped it, reset it for seven for Tom, and then went slowly through my yoga routine. Both my insides and outsides felt covered with grit, so I took a quick shower. Then I made my way down to the kitchen, fixed myself a quadruple espresso, and sat down to think.

I missed Jack. His absence was like an ache. If he had stayed in New Jersey, if he had never moved here this year, then I wouldn’t have known what it was like to have my beloved godfather so close by, wouldn’t have known how much fun it would be to renew a relationship that had meant everything to me when I was young.

Yes, I missed him.

I knew enough psychology to be aware that one ignored one’s feelings at one’s peril. But beyond acknowledging that yeah, okay, I was sad, what was I supposed to do? This was not the first time I’d reflected that academic psychology departments were long on analysis and short on advice. And in the long run, what did people need, analysis of their problems, or advice on how to fix them?

Well, I needed the latter, I thought as I pulled another four shots and dumped them over cream and ice. And then I felt another tug on my heart, because if there was one person who’d offered me support and advice in copious quantities, whenever I’d wanted or needed either, it was Jack Carmichael.

This line of thought wasn’t getting me anywhere, so I looked at my copy of the paper I’d pulled from men’s locker number 71 at the Aspen Meadow Country Club. Maybe it meant something, maybe it didn’t. But as feeling depressed worked quite a bit less well for me than a quest for meaningfulness, I chose the latter.

This note did mean something; Jack had left it for me. Maybe he’d felt someone closing in, and left the piece of paper in the golf club locker as an insurance policy. But the problem with an insurance policy is that you have to understand it in order to get anything out of it.

The handwriting was unfamiliar. I had known that Todd Druckman had had a rotator cuff injury. But my calendar announced all too unfortunately that the Druckmans were off on their fishing trip in Montana. Todd had woefully told Arch that his mother had strictly forbidden the taking of any cell phones into the backcountry. You’d have thought she’d told him he couldn’t have any food or water either.

I glanced at the clock: quarter past five. If I was going to fulfill my duties out at Gold Gulch Spa, I had to get cracking. I glanced back at the list, with its puzzle demanding a solution.

I called Julian, who was already on his way over from Boulder. Could he fix high-protein vegetable frittatas this morning, for sixty-one clients at Gold Gulch Spa? I’d pay him well, I assured him.

“Oh, boss,” Julian said, relieved. “You bet. Victor says absolutely no fresh fruit, but I bought fresh vegetables at the farmers’ market day before yesterday. I put them into bags to bring to the spa, just in case I could find a way to serve them. I can stop and pick up cheese and cream, too.”

“I’ll be there by lunchtime,” I said. “Think you can handle it? Yolanda said there were plenty of foodstuffs, and the menus and recipes are there in her computer. You don’t have to follow her recipes exactly.”

“No problem,” he said confidently. “I’ll do my own Summertime Frittata. If you have any issues, call me through the spa switchboard, okay? I can’t get cell reception out there to save my life.”

“Absolutely. And thanks.”

“Before you hang up,” Julian said, at once awkward and shy, “tell me, what’s going on?”

I gave him a brief summary of my evening’s ramblings, and the list in front of me. He whistled. I asked him if any of the names sounded familiar to him, and he said, except for Druckman and O’Neal, no, sorry. We signed off and agreed I’d be out at Gold Gulch no later than eleven.

Next I punched in the numbers for Boyd’s cell phone. He picked up on the first ring, and was oh-so-relieved not to have to do guard duty this morning. We arranged to meet at the spa at eleven, in time to prepare the lunch.

I went back to frowning at the list. If O’Neal was Dodie, then that looked like the best bet. If it referred to another O’Neal, or if it was Ceci, then I would be out of luck, as I didn’t know any other O’Neals, and Ceci was on her honeymoon.

The clock still indicated it was too early to call the O’Neal residence. I took the time to go through the Aspen Meadow phone book, looking for any Parker I knew—there were twenty-seven of them—but none was familiar. There were three pages of Whites, so I gave up on those right away. There were only four Fosters, and I wrote down those names. There was no Katchadourian in the phone book, so I called directory information, which told me that the number was unlisted.

I cursed and slammed the phone book closed. Tom was still asleep, Marla was at Gold Gulch Spa, out of cell phone reach…but what about Arch? I’d told him he had to keep his own cell phone on at all times. So I called him.

“Oh, Mom,” came his sleepy voice. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

“Not really.” I hesitated, as I could just imagine him encased in his sleeping bag over at his half brother’s house.

“Well, then why are you calling me? I’m so tired!”

“Sorry, hon.” I tried to make my voice nonchalant. “I was just calling to see if you remembered Todd’s rotator cuff problems.”

“What?”

“Remember when Todd had his shoulder problems?”

“Mom, I’m so tired. Can’t this wait? Why do you need to know about this now?” Sudden tears welled in my eyes, and I couldn’t find my voice. When I didn’t speak for a couple of minutes, Arch said, “Mom? Are you still there? Hello?”

“It has to do with your Uncle Jack,” I whispered. And then I further embarrassed myself by starting to cry.

“Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.” He groaned, and I heard the unmistakable slither of body against nylon sleeping bag. “C’mon, please don’t cry.”

“Okay,” I said, but still had to stifle sobs.

“All right, look,” said poor, confused Arch. “You want to know about Todd’s shoulder because it has something to do with Uncle Jack?”

“Yes. It’s a long story.”

Arch grunted. “That’s what you always say.” When I didn’t go on, he took a deep breath, and I realized for the first time that I hadn’t managed to cushion Arch from grief.

“Sweetheart?” I said. “Are you all right? I mean, I haven’t even asked you how you’re doing since Jack died.”

“Mom, c’mon. I’m fine. Tom called me. I didn’t know Jack as well as you did. And since I’m over with Gus, it’s not like I’m looking at Jack’s house every day, you know. I’m okay,” he reassured me. “So.” He yawned. “What was your question about Todd?”

“Tell me about the rotator cuff.”

“Yeah, right. Todd was doing something in swimming that he wasn’t supposed to. The guy at the doctor’s told him to do exercises, but that just made his shoulder worse. A lot worse. His shoulder froze, at least, that’s what the physical therapist told Todd when he couldn’t make his arm move. So then Todd’s mom took him to a specialist, and there was a long wait for an MRI, I think, but when they finally got one, it showed his rotator cuff was torn. So he had to have surgery.” Arch stopped talking, exhausted and out of explanations.

“Is that it? Did somebody hurt Todd, or threaten him?”

“Threaten him?”

I rolled my eyes ceilingward and wished it were later, as in afternoon, which was when Arch got up in the summertime. “Arch,” I pleaded, “please try to remember.”

“Nobody tried to hurt or threaten him,” my son said definitively. “Can I go back to bed now?”

“Just wait.” I scanned the list. Every one of the conditions listed beside the names pertained to medical issues. “Didn’t Todd start off at Spruce Medical? I mean, when he was first hurt?”

“I guess so. Why?”

“What doctor did he see there?”

“I don’t know. Actually, I know he saw two people. Probably both doctors, I guess.”

“Do you know who either doctor was, in case the police want to know?”

“No. Mom, please let me go back to sleep.”

“Okay, sweetheart, thank you. Bye.”

There was a pause on the line. “Did I help you?”

“Yes, Arch, thanks. You’re great.”

He groaned and signed off, and I went back to staring at the list. I don’t know how long I’d been trying to make sense of it when Tom shuffled into the kitchen. He wore a blue terry cloth robe and white terry slippers, and his cider-colored hair was rumpled.

“Miss G.” His arms encircled my waist. “You’re starting to worry me.”

“I’m okay.”

“Yeah, right.” Tom opened the walk-in, peered in, and removed eggs and vegetables.

“What are you doing?”

“Making breakfast?” he said. “It is morning, right?” He ran water over the vegetables. “So, I assume you’ve thrown in the towel on cooking at the spa?”

“No, Julian’s doing breakfast. I’m going out there later. Don’t worry, I called Boyd and told him about the change.”

“Chop this onion for me, then, will you?” He handed me a red onion, cutting board, and sharp knife. “You’re squinting at that piece of paper as if it could tell you all you need to know.”

Was it the onion that was making my eyes water, or was it Tom’s comment? “I just feel as if the person who attacked Jack attacked me, too.”

“They did,” Tom said simply. “That’s the way it works, unfortunately.” He eyed me. “You want me to get Victim Assistance over here for you?”

“No, I’m fine.”

“Right.” Tom began to slice broccoli. “You break into Jack’s house—”

“I didn’t break in! I had keys! That he had given me!”

“—then you decide to start working at a spa you dislike, forcing me to take one of my guys off of a security detail. After that, you sneak out of the house in the middle of the night—”

“I didn’t sneak out! I was trying not to wake you up!”

“And then you focus on a list you found in a locker that could just as easily have been left there by the last duffer to use that space.”

“No, Tom, that won’t work. The locker key was on Jack’s key ring, the key ring he had me take from him. That list refers to patients…maybe Doc Finn’s patients? Maybe the handwriting is Doc Finn’s?”

“We’ll check on that, trust me.”

“I already called Arch,” I confessed, handing Tom the board with the onion, “to ask him why Todd’s name is on the list.”

Tom peered down at the list. “What did he say?”

“He clarified what Todd told us about it last week. Todd had a messed-up shoulder from swimming. The first person to see him at Spruce Medical told him to do some weight-lifting exercises, which only made it worse. Todd saw somebody else next. But then a physical therapist told Todd his shoulder was frozen and his mother took him to a specialist. He had an MRI and then surgery.”

Tom slid a baking sheet with the vegetables into the oven. Then he handed me a hunk of Havarti and asked me to grate a cup. Next, he broke eggs into a mixing bowl. He said, “You know that to make a straight line, you need two points? Investigation is like that. To make a straight line, you need two points, to get a context. Knowing about Todd gives you one point. You need one more.”

I watched as he poured a cup of whipping cream into the beaten eggs. I suspected Tom was using Julian’s recipe for Summertime Frittata. Oh, well.

“You see this, where he writes, ‘All were told they were stressed out, should go back for a week or more’?” I asked. “And apparently three people had symptoms of addiction withdrawal?”

Tom gave me an inscrutable look. “Mmm.”

“Well, that sounds as if Finn was maybe talking about clients of the spa. If you found a drug in a container in Doc Finn’s trash, and a note that said he needed to get it analyzed, and you found a towel in his car from Gold Gulch, and you knew he’d been out there recently, couldn’t you maybe make a leap that he suspected Victor Lane was feeding those Gold Gulch clients addictive drugs? I mean, without their knowledge? That would lead to symptoms of withdrawal.”

“That’s a big leap,” Tom said. He plopped a chunk of butter into our sauté pan and turned the heat to low. “Listen, you can’t mention this list to anyone.”

I groaned, and told him I’d already told Julian about it.

Tom said, “Julian knows better than to talk about it. Listen, Miss G., we know something is going on out there because Jack was attacked at Billie’s wedding. But we’re not completely sure what the issues, crimes, what ever, are. That’s why I wanted Boyd to stick to you like epoxy while you were working in the kitchen, which I still think is a half-assed idea.”

“I know you disapprove. I promise to keep being careful,” I said, watching Tom pour the egg mixture into the pan. For my part, I pulled a loaf of Cuban Bread out of the freezer. Yolanda had taught me how to make it a dozen years earlier, and it had been one of our family’s favorites ever since.

Tom shoveled the vegetables into the pan, sprinkled the Havarti on top, and slid his concoction into the oven. He watched me trying to cut the bread. “Here,” he said, “let me slice that for you.”

“Thanks.” I watched him saw expertly at the frozen loaf. When he popped two pieces into the toaster, I asked, “Any word yet on Lucas’s inheritance?”

“Sorry, I forgot to tell you what we found out about Jack’s will.

Lucas stands to inherit four million dollars from Jack. And, Lucas is the sole beneficiary of Jack’s will, I’m sorry to say…or sorry, anyway, if you were expecting something.”

I hugged Tom. “The memories Jack left me are more valuable than that. But listen. Wouldn’t four million smackers be motive to kill someone? Especially if you were having money problems?”

“You bet it would be.” He took out two plates, then slathered the toast with butter.

I shook my head. “That worthless Lucas—”

Tom shrugged as he took the frittata out of the oven. “You need two points to make a line, Miss G. Remember that.”

As I was groaning, Tom’s cell rang. He listened for a moment, then said, “You’re sure?” When he heard that whoever had called was indeed certain, he signed off.

He picked up his fork to dig into the frittata, then put it down. Finally he said, “The traces in the vial in Finn’s trash? Valium.”

“Good Lord. But not enough to make a line to Gold Gulch.”

“Not yet.”

I insisted Tom go to work. He took the paper I’d found in the golf club locker, and promised he would have his handwriting people on it ASAP. I gave him the main number of the switchboard out at Gold Gulch Spa, if he couldn’t reach me on my cell. He promised to call if he had anything, he said, that was “earth shattering.”

Speaking of calling, I still hadn’t heard back from Hans Bogen, Aspen Meadow’s premier jeweler and clock repairer. By the time I’d finished the dishes, it was nine o’clock, so I dialed the Bogen household.

Hanna answered on the first ring. She said, “I know he’s working on your clock, Goldy, and that he has the machinery spread out all over his workstation at the store. But so far, he hasn’t found anything.”

I gave her, too, the numbers of both my cell and the main switchboard out at Gold Gulch. I told her the clock situation was one of some urgency.

“Why don’t you just buy a new travel clock?” she asked.

“It’s not a gift for someone. It just…is of great importance to me.”

“Let me tell you,” said Hanna. “Clock repair is like marriage. There will always be vexations.”

Omigod, more Jane Austen. I gritted my teeth, but thanked Hanna and told her I hoped to hear from Hans soon.

Next on the list was O’Neal. If this was the O’Neal I knew, then finding the answer to the dehydration question should be fairly easy. But Dodie had left a message on her voice mail saying she and her granddaughter would be out of the country for the next week. Great. Norman O’Neal was not in the office, a receptionist crisply told me, but she would certainly put my name on his desk for when he came back.

“Sorry,” I said, “this is a very pressing matter. It’s quite urgent.” Actually, the only urgency was mine, in that I didn’t want to face a lot more emotional emptiness, the kind bred from grief. Better to keep moving, I told myself, and to get others to move along with me, if possible.

“All matters that Mr. O’Neal deals with are of some urgency,” she said, as if I were speaking about the need to go to the bathroom.

“Oh, yeah?” I replied. Ordinarily I am not rude, but the combination of lack of sleep and this woman’s hostility was breaking down my hold on civility. “This is Goldy Schulz, and Norman himself called me from the hospital a few nights ago. He was desperate for me to help him be reconciled with his daughter. I am able to do that now,” I lied. “So, why don’t we skip the baloney here, and you just tell me where he is right now, okay?”

“One moment, please,” was her chilly response. Within twenty seconds she was back on the line. “He’s at the Grizzly,” she said, a faint, very faint, whiff of apology in her tone. “He’s having an early breakfast. Do you know where the Grizzly is?”

“Yes, thanks.” I hung up, and reflected that the only kind of breakfast they served at the Grizzly was the liquid variety. And I didn’t mean smoothies.

Inside the Grizzly Saloon, it was fairly easy to pick out Norman O’Neal. He was the only one at the bar not wearing a cowboy hat. In front of him were a shot and a beer chaser. So much for deciding to go to rehab.

“Gee, Norman,” I said cheerfully, “thought I’d never find you.”

“Who’re you?” He narrowed his watery eyes at me.

“I’m Goldy? The caterer from Ceci’s wedding? The wedding you ruined by getting plastered and then coming in and knocking out the priest?”

His facial muscles quirked. “I did that? I don’t remember.”

“You called me from the hospital and asked if I could help you become reconciled with Ceci.”

Norman’s unshaven jaw dropped slightly. “Yeah. I want that.”

I lifted my chin in the direction of the booze. “Why don’t you leave that, and come up to our house for some coffee? We only live half a block away.”

“I’m coming,” he said, before downing the shot and taking a long pull on the beer. Great.

When I had Norman O’Neal in my kitchen, I brewed a pot of coffee. I also toasted him a couple of pieces of Yolanda’s Cuban Bread, which I liberally slathered with butter.

“You got any peanuts?” Norman asked.

We did, of course, but I said, “No.” I didn’t want to give Norman anything that would make him thirsty. With his haggard, gray cheeks and skin hanging loosely on his bones, he looked as if he’d been existing on peanuts for the last six months.

“So,” said Norman, “how are you going to help me with Ceci? I thought she was on her honeymoon.”

This negotiation was going to be delicate, and it would have helped if Norman O’Neal were not already a couple of sheets to the wind…not long after nine o’clock in the morning.

“Ceci is on her honeymoon,” I said, “and Dodie has taken your granddaughter out of the country.”

“She can’t do that!” Norman protested, weaving a bit on his kitchen chair. “That’s my granddaughter, too!”

“You told me you’d never seen her. Your adopted granddaughter, that is. You also told me she almost died.”

Norman’s rheumy eyes regarded me warily. “What does this have to do with my…being reconciled with Ceci?”

“It has everything to do with it, Norman,” I said coolly, “because I need to know what your granddaughter almost died of. I need to know all the details you can remember. And after I hear them, I promise I’m going to call Ceci, and leave a message on her voice mail telling her I must talk to her about her father. And when I do talk to her in person, I’m going to tell her how much you want to see her and be a part of her life. I’m also going to tell her what a great idea being reconciled to you is, especially if you decide to go into rehab, which is where you belong.”

Norman O’Neal sucked in one side of his mouth. “That sounds like an awful lot of conditions.”

“You want this deal, or not?”

There was a long silence in the kitchen.

Norman said warily, “Why do you want to know what was wrong with my granddaughter?”

“What difference does it make why I want to know?”

Norman reared back. “Because there are privacy laws concerning health information these days, missy.”

“Oh, yeah? Well, when you called me from the hospital after ruining Ceci’s wedding, you didn’t care about privacy laws. You were too busy crying about being reconciled with your daughter and being a grandfather to her adopted daughter. That was before you puked your guts out, though.”

Norman winced, then slammed down some coffee. “The baby almost died of dehydration.”

“Dehydration?”

“Yeah.” He took a long pull of coffee, then went on, “Ceci wanted to adopt a baby so badly. So she went through some Eastern European adoption agency.” He smirked at me. “Dodie isn’t the only one with spies, you know.” When I said nothing, he said, “The baby got over here, and supposedly she’d been checked out by doctors at the orphanage she came from, but for what ever reason, Ceci couldn’t get her to take a bottle of formula. So Ceci took her to Spruce Medical, and some physician’s assistant there told her she might be allergic to formula, try her on soy. So she tried her on soy, no luck.”

“Wait. A physician’s assistant? Who? Lucas Carmichael?”

“I don’t know who they are there.” Norman weaved a bit more, as if he were trying to figure out where in the story he was.

“On soy, no luck,” I prompted.

“Okay,” Norman said, with effort. “So then Ceci went back to Spruce Medical, and said she wasn’t leaving until somebody helped her. A doctor saw her, and told her to give the baby a bottle of water. But the baby wouldn’t take a bottle of water.”

“What doctor?”

Norman shrugged. “The water didn’t work either.” He closed his eyes.

“Norman! Is there more to this story?”

“Yeah. My spies tell me Ceci finally called Doc Finn, even though he was officially retired. But he’d been her doctor when she was little, and she trusted him. He recognized that the baby was severely dehydrated. Finn convinced her to take the baby down to Southwest Hospital, where they put her on an IV. They said down there that in another twelve hours, the baby would have been dead. That’s the rest of the story.”

“That’s all of it?”

“Ceci was eternally grateful to Doc Finn. That’s why she wanted him to give her away at her wedding.” Norman’s eyes filled with self-pitying tears, which he brushed away. “Instead of me.”

“I understand,” I said, and Norman finally seemed more chipper, as if he’d just been let out of class. “Uh, Norman? Is there something else, something you’re not telling me?”

NORMAN SQUIRMED. “WELL, this next part, I’m not supposed to know.”

“Seems to me you shouldn’t be knowing any of this.”

“Well,” said Norman bitterly, “aren’t you the soul of compassion.” I stood and refilled his coffee, hoping that would make me seem more…compassionate. Alcoholics are always saying no one understands them, Tom had told me often enough. “Dodie began malpractice proceedings against Spruce Medical.”

“Against a physician’s assistant or doctor in particular?”

Norman shook his head. “Don’t know that. All I do know is that somebody came along claiming to represent the practice, and told Dodie if she dropped her suit, he’d give her three hundred thousand dollars. That’s a huge amount, given that the doctors in Romania or wherever it was had given the little girl a clean bill of health. I don’t think anyone in the entire country of Romania has three hundred grand. Dodie must have known she was on slippery ground with the suit, so she took the money. It paid for Ceci’s wedding and a down payment on a large house for Ceci and her husband.”

“Wow.” It seemed to me that Norman O’Neal might be estranged from his ex-wife and daughter, but that he was doing a pretty good job of keeping up with their doings.

“So will you help me with Ceci?” he asked, his voice pathetic with desire.

“Absolutely,” I replied. “I’m sure you’ll be a great grandfather.”

“I’m a drunk,” he said, with doleful insight.

“That’s why there’s rehab,” I told him. And then I drove him home. Afterward, I called Norman’s office and said somebody would have to deliver his car to his house, as he was now indisposed. And, I hoped but did not say, Norman’s on the phone right now with rehab centers.

24

It was half past ten. I was already feeling guilty about leaving Julian with all the work out at Gold Gulch. So I jumped into my catering uniform, phoned Boyd to ask if he could still meet me at the spa, and hopped into my van. On the way out on Upper Cottonwood Creek Road, I called Tom and told him all I’d learned from Norman O’Neal.

“I’m not seeing a straight line yet,” I said.

“A dotted one, maybe.” Tom was uncharacteristically silent.

Wait a minute.

“Charlotte’s blackboard,” I said. “The name O’Neal had been written down, and then erased. Maybe Billie wrote it down when she was looking for me last Friday morning, and blasted into Ceci’s wedding. But maybe it had to do with Dodie’s lawsuit.”

Tom said only, “Okay, go on.”

“Look, Tom, you said for me to look at the relationships among these people. And of all the people connected to this case, the Attenboroughs are the only ones I know who have three hundred grand just lying around. They also would have the motivation to try to save Spruce Medical, because they didn’t want anything to sully the name and reputation of their dear Craig Miller.”

Tom said, “Big leap.”

“What about the piece of paper I got at the golf club? Did you analyze the handwriting?”

There was more silence. In a low voice, Tom said, “It looks like it’s Doc Finn’s writing. I’m sorry, Goldy.”

“You’re sorry?” Once more my brain wasn’t functioning quite properly. “Sorry about what?”

“Well…we always suspected these two cases were linked, and now we know it for sure.”

Okay, maybe my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, but my emotions were picking up signals from Tom that made me anxious. “So the two cases are linked,” I repeated. “What else?”

“I’ve sent guys out to try to find the right people to match the names on the list. Unfortunately, most people won’t admit to having symptoms of addiction,” he added. Still, this was good, I thought, as the sheriff’s department had much better resources for finding people than yours truly with a phone book. Tom paused again.

“Tom, what is it?”

“Okay, Miss G. We got the preliminary results back from the autopsy on Jack. He did die of a heart attack. But the attack was induced.”

“Induced? How?”

“He was taking verapamil for his heart. We talked to his cardiologist, and she insists Jack was very faithful about his medicine. The only problems she had with him were his smoking and drinking.” Tom took a deep breath. “I wish I could be with you to tell you this. Jack had a very excessive amount of verapamil in his system. Our guess at this point is that a liquid form of verapamil was put into his IV…at the hospital.”

I pulled over to the side of the road.

“So Jack was killed at Southwest Hospital,” I said flatly.

“I’m sorry, Goldy. Yes. They don’t have surveillance cameras pointed at the patients’ rooms, so we have no idea who could have gone in or out. Liquid verapamil? We asked ourselves, who with a motive to kill Jack would have access to that? At first, we just came down to Craig and/or Lucas. But then we thought, wait a sec, wasn’t his girlfriend Charlotte a nurse, back in the day? Maybe she would have a way to get hold of it. Plus, Billie the Bitch Bride hated Jack, and she has money, so she could probably get what ever she wanted on a black market somewhere. And finally, we have Victor Lane. You said he videotaped Jack hunting around in the Smoothie Cabin. Maybe Victor got real nervous about what Jack was up to, and decided to get rid of him. He knows how to make smoothies, maybe he knows how to put stuff in an IV.”

“But…did all those people know Jack took verapamil?”

“We don’t know. Listen, Miss G., I’m aware that Marla’s out at Gold Gulch. Is Julian still there, too?”

“Yes. In fact, I’m on my way to help him. Boyd’s going to meet me, then we’ll drive in together.” Tom said nothing. “I’ll be fine. I’ll see you to night.”

“Wait. Where’s Boyd meeting you?”

“On the dirt shoulder beside the turnoff from Upper Cottonwood Creek Road that leads to the spa. Please don’t worry, Tom.” I made my tone reassuring, because I’d kept my poor husband up most of the night with the country club key caper, and as long as I was feeling miserable anyway, I might as well feel guilty about that, too.

We signed off with assurances of mutual love. This helped.

As I waited for Boyd, I glanced across the street at the old Spruce Medical Group building, now virtually empty. Two trucks with the logo front range drains were parked on the side, but I didn’t know if they were the last or even the only remaining tenants of the building.

I took a sip of the coffee I’d remembered to bring and averted my eyes from the former medical building.

I couldn’t help feeling that I had failed Jack, not to mention Doc Finn. Doc Finn had tended so lovingly to Arch, it made my heart ache now. And Jack had come through for me, over and over. He had showered me with many things, but what I’d most appreciated was his steadfast love.

Outside, the weather was sunny and cool. The plethora of rain we’d had in the past month had left everything freshly green and refulgent, not at all like a normal Colorado August. Still, the tall, swaying grasses and the thick bunches of wild asters did nothing to brighten my mood.

Boyd signaled me with his lights when he was a hundred feet from the turnoff. When we rolled into Gold Gulch Spa, my watch said it was almost eleven. The clients must still be in classes, because I didn’t see anyone around except staff people. They were rolling their laundry carts from door to door, depositing soiled towels in one side of the cart and pulling fresh towels out of the other.

Julian greeted us at the kitchen door. In answer to my question, he said nothing unusual or weird or crazy had happened that morning, except the women had loved the vegetable frittata. Victor had shown up as usual with his vat of fruit cocktail, and he’d even had a bite of the frittata.

Julian’s face broke into a wide grin. “He didn’t ask how many calories were in it, or even what I’d used. He just offered me a job, ‘to replace Yolanda,’ he said. I told Victor if he wanted to hire me, he was going to have to hire you, too. He just walked away with the empty vat of fruit cocktail.”

I shook my head and thanked him. “What are we fixing for lunch?”

“Chicken salad with fat-free mayo. I doctored it up with fresh sliced scallions and really crisp celery. I also alternated thick slices of farmers’ market tomatoes with slices of buffalo mozzarella and leaves of fresh basil. Then I poured a bit of pesto over that.”

I rolled my eyes. “Victor’s going to kill us.”

“Nah,” said Julian. “Hey, Boyd, you want to taste this Tomato Napoleon? It’s great, and it’s vegetarian.”

“Yeah,” said Boyd, as he followed Julian into the kitchen, “but I’ll bet dollars to doughnuts that Napoleon never ate it.”

We got through lunch, which the clients raved about. Lucas nodded to me, but didn’t speak. Maybe he was softening toward me, I didn’t know. Charlotte and Billie came in together, deep in conversation. Either they didn’t see me or they ignored me, but in any event, we didn’t speak, and I didn’t have a chance to ask if either of them had bailed out Spruce Medical to the tune of three hundred thou. Marla winked at me and murmured that she could tell Julian and I had been working on the food, because it was suddenly scrumptious.

“Give Julian the credit,” I said.

Marla smiled at Julian. “I’m always willing to do that.”

Soon all the other clients shuffled off for their smoothies. Today’s flavor was mango-strawberry. I hoped that was all that was in them. Once we’d cleaned the dining room and kitchen, I was ready for a break. Boyd and I went outside and sat on the deserted lawn furniture. Scraps of yellow police ribbon still fluttered in the light breeze, and the sulfuric smell of the hot spring floated down to the spa’s main grounds. I wondered if anyone had ever cleaned up the hot pool.

As usual at this point in the day, the spa looked as quiet as a Mexican town square at siesta time. Boyd and I sat in silence, while I tried to think. I scolded myself for not finding out which of the dormitories Marla was housed in, because I surely would have liked her company.

As it turned out, she had sneaked back into the kitchen with Julian. She was asking if there was going to be anything decent to eat for dinner.

“Pork tenderloin, cauliflower mash, and steamed broccoli,” Julian replied. “I’m going to lightly sauté the broccoli with garlic, and I’m making a stuffing for the pork that features figs. The cauliflower mash will have whipping cream—”

Marla burst out laughing. “So is this spa where you come to lose weight, or gain it?”

“For dessert, let’s see,” Julian continued, unfazed. He eyed the computer screen. “Canned plums with diet nondairy topping. I can’t make something else, because I don’t have the butter and eggs I’d need.”

“Canned plums for dessert?” Marla cried. “That’s it?”

I turned to Boyd and asked if he’d bring in the cooler that was in the back of my van. A moment later, when Boyd hauled the cooler into the kitchen, Julian cried out.

“I’ve got a feeling Goldy’s got something better for dessert in that cooler!”

Ten minutes later, the four of us, plus Yolanda’s two helpers and the two servers who’d just finished setting the tables for dinner, were enjoying the chocolate cookies filled with frosting.

“This is the flakiest, most buttery chocolate cookie I’ve ever had in my life,” Marla said to me. “You’re a genius.”

“Thanks. I wish I’d been enough of a genius to keep my godfather alive.”

Julian, Marla, and Boyd made sympathetic murmurs in my direction. Yolanda’s helpers and the servers, all of whom had finished their cookies, looked awkward, and quickly excused themselves. They said if Victor caught them eating, they’d lose their jobs.

“That guy Victor is a maniac,” said Marla, her voice lowered. “We all cringe when he goes by.”

I exhaled. I’d been cringing in Victor’s presence for many a year.

Boyd asked Marla, “Where is everybody? You’d think you’d see the guests walking around or something. The place looks as deserted as a beach after a hurricane.”

Marla looked furtively around, then drew a plastic shampoo bottle out of her pocket. It didn’t look as if it was full of shampoo, though, as the liquid had separated.

“I had to improvise,” she said. “Yesterday we had strawberry, but today it’s mango-strawberry. I thought you might want to test it, too. I dumped out my shampoo, and saved my smoothie. Have to say, Victor watches us pretty carefully to make sure we’re finishing them. But when I saw him sucking up to Charlotte Attenborough, I put my smoothie cup in my pocket and held on to it all the way back to my room. Listen,” Marla said confidently, as she reached for a second cookie, “I know my drugs, or, what I should say,” she amended, batting her eyes at Boyd, “is, I know the effects of drugs. I know I shouldn’t have tasted the smoothie, but I did. This is not just fruit and what ever else they say is in it. Something else is in this drink.” She handed it across to Boyd. “Yesterday, even a little taste zoned me out. And I’m not talking chamomile either. My best guess is that it’s a prescription tranquilizer.”

Once again, I couldn’t affirm her report, but I knew in my heart that it was true. I just prayed that the samples we’d taken yesterday would show what we suspected. Everyone else at Gold Gulch took a nap in the afternoon, but Marla had been wary, and with good reason.

“Can you arrest Victor Lane?” I asked Boyd.

“Not yet,” he said. “We took samples of the fruit cocktail and smoothies, which are being analyzed. But the analysis has to come back before we can get a warrant for the Smoothie Cabin, Victor’s office and house, and anyplace else. Then our guys can look for the drugs themselves.”

I closed my eyes and tilted my head back, thinking of the list that Doc Finn had compiled, and that Jack had put in a locker at Aspen Meadow Country Club. “What if you had a bunch of people who had withdrawal symptoms when they got home from here? And the only way for them to feel better would be to come back to the spa?”

“You’re asking me?” said Boyd. “I’m telling you, we can’t arrest somebody unless we have evidence that will make the arrest stick. Sorry,” he added.

“Maybe we should get going on dinner,” said Julian. “I’ve already ladled the plums into little bowls, but we need to make the fig filling for the pork, and pound the tenderloins so we can put them together with the filling in the middle.”

Marla said, “I’d better get back to my bed and pretend to be asleep.” But before she left, she came over and gave me a warm hug. “You look like hell,” she whispered in my ear. “Why don’t you get Yolanda back here? What can you do that the police can’t?”

I thought of Tom, and his insistence on having dots that connected. I thought of his request that I look at relationships. And I thought impatiently of the tests that Boyd said he would have rushed through the lab.

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. Marla hugged me and took off.

Maybe I didn’t know what I could do that the cops couldn’t, but I did know, had known, my godfather. If I hadn’t, then I never would have discovered the last puzzles he’d left for me: the key ring that had opened the way to the golf clubs, the country club locker, and the nonfunctioning travel clock.

But what difference did it all make? I wondered as I seared the stuffed pork tenderloins while Julian steamed and mashed the cauliflower and Boyd trimmed the broccoli. Jack was still dead, murdered. Doc Finn was dead, murdered. There were lots of suspects, but no clear lines.

“I think I’m going to go over to the office and make a phone call,” I announced to Boyd. “I’ll be fine.”

“If you don’t want Victor popping up and overhearing you,” Boyd replied, “you can use your cell over in the trees up by the pathways. I could come with you. When Jack was hit, we found we could get more reliable reception over there.”

“I forgot my cell. Plus, I think it might look suspicious if I took yours and went up the path for just a quick call. Look.” I pointed at the path to the log cabin office. “The door to a regular telephone is just twenty yards away. You can watch me all the way there and back.”

“Nope,” said Boyd resolutely. “I’m going with you.”

I sighed hugely, but it made no difference.

Isabelle was on the phone ordering supplies for the following week. When she saw me, she quickly finished her business, then handed the phone over to me.

“Thanks,” I said.

“Don’t mention it,” she replied. “Just…if Victor fires me at some point, would you think about hiring me?”

“Of course. Thing is, I don’t really have regular staff. But if he does let you go, I’ll see if I can find someone who needs a staff person with your particular gifts.”

“You mean, like breaking and entering?”

“Well,” I said, “we didn’t do any breaking. We just entered.”

Isabelle giggled and took off. I sat down and dialed Aspen Meadow Jewelers. To my surprise, Hans Bogen answered the phone himself. He said Hanna was on her way out to the spa, to give me what he had found inside the clock.

“Inside the workings?”

“No, Goldy. I didn’t need to take it apart, after all. When there was nothing wrong with the mechanism, I began to take apart the clock case. I think I’ve found what you might have been looking for underneath the fabric of the case. It is a thin piece of paper, along with a small key.”

My shoulders slumped. More keys. Terrific. I thanked Hans, and said I would pay him for his efforts.

The first bell for dinner rang, so Boyd and I hustled back to the spa kitchen, where Julian had filled all the hot tables with boiling water. Despite the fact that we’d departed from the spa’s recipes a bit—well, a lot—we had to pile each client’s plate to identical measurements. As every caterer worth her hand-harvested sea salt knew, a buffet was an invitation to disastrous overeating. The two extra kitchen helpers were in charge of keeping a cold buffet filled with nonfattening salad ingredients, so they bustled around doing that. I sliced the filled, sautéed, and roasted pork. Boyd, bless his heart, was bending seriously over the bubbling pots that he was using as a base for steaming the broccoli.

Victor Lane came into the kitchen while we were hustling back and forth with trays of loaded plates. He said nothing, but cast a judgmental eye around everywhere. I didn’t know whether he suspected the big cardboard box on the kitchen island was filled with chocolate cookies and vanilla frosting, and I determinedly ignored both the box and Victor. On one of my return trips to the kitchen, he had left, but Hanna Bogen was waiting at the back door.

“Here you are, Goldy.” She handed me a small key, much smaller than the ones that had been on Jack’s key ring. “I must get back. There was a small, thin piece of paper in there, too.” She put the paper in my hand. “It looks like a note.” She paused as I stared at the two items in the palm of my hand. “Are you all right?”

“No, but please thank Hans for me.”

I opened the note first. It was in Jack’s handwriting.

Gertie Girl,

If you’re reading this, then I’m gone. Finn left me this key, he said, as an insurance policy, in case something happened to him. But I don’t know what it goes to, and I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe you can. I’ve had a good run, and you were a big part of it. Wherever God sends me, I want you to know that I’ll be thinking of you.

Love,

Jack

Hanna was still standing at the back door. “Goldy?”

At first I couldn’t speak. Finally, I said, “I don’t know what this is a key to.”

Hanna shook her head. “It didn’t have anything to do with the clock, Hans said.”

No kidding. I thanked Hanna, and she left. I slipped Jack’s note and the key into my pocket.

Somehow, we got through dinner and the many complaints that canned plums were not enough for dessert. While the servers were clearing the tables, a small line of women appeared at the back door.

“We heard you were bringing sweets,” the first one, a brunette, said.

“Where’s Victor?” I asked.

“On the phone in his office,” the second one, who had long, auburn hair and a protruding jaw, replied. “Hurry! How much are you charging?”

“I’m not,” I said. I asked Julian to help me form an assembly line. First he slathered the flat side of one cookie with the creamy vanilla frosting, then I topped the frosting with another cookie. I placed the cookie sandwiches on paper towels and began handing them, one per client, to the women. “Just enjoy them quickly, don’t tell Victor where you got them, and don’t blame me if you don’t lose weight.”

When all the sandwiches were gone, I began to wonder how well Yolanda was able to supplement the meager salary she got from Victor. At five dollars a pop, I could have made over a hundred bucks to night. Not bad.

But how many of those women were addicted to Valium, and who knew what other drugs, that Victor was giving them? Really, it was a miracle that “all” they had shown was signs of withdrawal…someone could have died. If Valium was in the smoothies, what else was Victor using? No wonder this place cost so much. But people always returned, because the addiction monster was eating them alive. What a sorry state of affairs.

While we washed and dried dishes, I thought fiercely that when the time came, I certainly hoped that the sheriff’s department closed this place down…and sent arrogant, scheming Victor Lane away for a very long time.

When we were done, I felt bone tired, and sat down on one of the two chairs in the kitchen. I missed Tom. I missed Arch. And, like a deep ache, I missed Jack.

“You want to go home?” Boyd asked. “It looks as if we’re done here for the night.”

“Not yet,” I replied. I was thinking that Jack had probably tried that little key in every locked drawer of the Smoothie Cabin…to no avail. But he’d seemed to have been convinced that the key went to something out here. And I’d be damned if I was going to leave this place until I’d figured out what lock the little key opened.

“Goldy,” said Boyd. “What’s the matter?”

I cleared my throat. “Just miss Jack, that’s all.”

He nodded. Like Tom, Boyd had spent enough time with the relatives of victims of crime that he knew their despair could be unfathomable. Wordlessly, he moved to the big walk-in and retrieved a…jar?

“This is from Tom,” Boyd said. “It’s your Summertime Special, kept chilled in my cooler. He figured you’d need caffeine after we finished to night, and that you’d be tired enough that you would sleep anyway, when you got home.”

“Thanks.” I unscrewed the jar and took a small sip. Wonderful. While Boyd fixed himself a large ice water, then sat patiently on the other side of the kitchen, I slipped my free hand into my apron pocket. I felt the note from Jack and Finn’s small key that Jack had hidden inside the clock.

Oh, Jack, I thought, what did you get yourself into?

He’d been on to something, he and Doc Finn. It involved the spa, and it involved a number of people with medical conditions, none of whom I could reach. Jack had given me a bunch of keys that had helped me get into his house, where I’d seen a bag of golf clubs he never used, and an inoperative travel clock hiding a key and a note.

I took another swallow of the coffee and thought back to when Jack had first arrived here from New Jersey, how he’d been so happy to reveal he’d bought the dilapidated place across the street from us. I’d been equally delighted to have him there, and our time together had been joyful.

When Jack had brought us some trout one night, he’d regaled us with the faux pas he’d made concerning the cultural and governmental differences between New Jersey and Colorado. He’d made us laugh over his every mistake.

A waiter had given Jack a blank look when he’d ordered a salad with “Roquefort” dressing. He’d learned to ask for “blue cheese.” Jack had piled up a month’s worth of trash waiting for municipal trash collection, until I told him waste services were privately contracted. Most of all, he’d been stymied by our postal service. Everyone in Aspen Meadow was on a rural route, we’d finally informed him. Either you maintained one of a row of boxes near your residence, or, if you were very lucky, the mailman put your correspondence in a single box near your house. Otherwise, you were stuck with renting a receptacle at the post office. Jack’s days of waiting for the mail to be delivered through a slot in his front door were over. Jack had just shaken his head and installed a box at the end of his driveway, like the rest of us on our street.

And then Jack had become friends with dear, kind Doc Finn, whose sharp intellect and compassionate heart, as well as his affinity for fishing and drinking, made him the perfect companion for my godfather.

But something had gone very wrong. Doc Finn had saved little Lissa O’Neal, that much I’d learned from her grandfather Norman, who I sincerely hoped was in rehab at this very moment. Perhaps the Druckmans had told Finn about Todd’s rotator cuff. And then…had some patients suffering from withdrawal come to Finn, too?

At that point, Doc Finn had gone digging. Was this a big assumption, or not? Had Doc Finn known he was in danger? He must have, or he wouldn’t have given Jack the piece of paper with the list of names, the one I’d found in the golf club locker. But the last part of the puzzle, this damnable small key, was something Jack had not been able to figure out. So he’d left it for me.

I drank some more of my coffee and ran everything I knew about the case through my mind once more. And then I had an idea. It was crazy. Or was it? Jack hadn’t known what the key went to because he wasn’t used to having this kind of service.

But I did.

What I had in my apron pocket was the key to a mailbox. And not one at Aspen Meadow’s main post office, because I knew what those looked like. But where? Doc Finn had given Jack the key, or maybe Doc Finn had left the key where Jack could find it…

And then I knew.

“I need to drive somewhere,” I announced suddenly to Boyd. “I’ll be back in less than fifteen minutes.”

“I’m coming with you,” he protested. But before he could insist further, an absolutely horrible sound came through the screen door to the kitchen. It was the sound of people vomiting.

Vomiting and screaming and puking some more.

“What the hell…?” asked Julian as he raced in from the dining room, where he’d been setting up for breakfast. He ran out the door ahead of Boyd and me.

The women I had given cookie sandwiches to were holding on to their stomachs and throwing up. The remains of some of the food were on the grass. There wasn’t a person out there who had not received a dessert from me. I thought I was going to be sick.

“What have you done?” Victor Lane, who had suddenly appeared, shouted in my face. “Why are these women sick?”

“I don’t know!” I said.

“Leave her alone,” Boyd said, interposing himself between Lane and me.

“This isn’t anything from our menu!” Victor cried, looking at the remains on the grass.

“Somebody call for help,” I commanded Julian.

But Boyd said, “It’ll be faster if it comes from me. Stay with her,” he said to Julian, and then he rushed in the direction of the trees, where, up high, he had said, he could get a cell phone signal.

With Boyd gone, Victor Lane could walk right up to me again, too close. His skeletal face loomed next to mine. “You are fired from here forever and ever, do you understand?” And then he smiled at me, and turned away.

Julian and I tried to help the women on the lawn, who were quite ill. What ever had happened to them? And had Victor gone to call for help?

“Goldy?” said Isabelle from beside me. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know,” I said truthfully. “Could you help me get these women some ginger ale? Do you have any? I think that would help them. Do you keep any antinausea medication around here?”

“No,” said Isabelle, “but we have diet ginger ale. I’ll get it for them.”

I looked at the women holding their stomachs, at Julian talking to several of them, trying to determine what had made them sick, and at Isabelle, who’d just banged into the kitchen to pour glasses of ginger ale. I knew I was not being paranoid when I reached the painful conclusion they’d been given something to make them sick. And I hadn’t done it. But I now had a pretty good idea who had.

“Let me help you,” I said to one of the women as I knelt beside her.

“Leave me alone,” she said. “What did you put in those cookies? Why did you try to poison us?”

“I didn’t!”

“Go away,” she said fiercely. “Leave us alone until a doctor can help us.” Then she rolled away from me.

All right, what ever you want, I thought. Julian was talking to a woman who was lying on the grass. Boyd had disappeared into the trees.

So I walked quickly back into the kitchen, grabbed my keys, revved up my van, and accelerated out of there.

25

The OFFICE SPACE FOR LEASE sign in front of the old Spruce Medical Group building was creaking as it swung in the mild breeze. I ignored both the wind and the sign, and hopped up to the entrance, which, as I recalled, had a row of locked mailboxes out front. Jack hadn’t thought to look here when Doc Finn had given him the small key, because Jack didn’t connect the key with rural mail delivery. But I had that knowledge, and I prayed it was going to help me.

I certainly hoped I wasn’t chasing a wild hare. But I had to know.

Only two of the mailboxes seemed to be in use: Front Range Drains and a lawyer’s office. Still, there was an old, battered sign over the boxes that read, THIEVES WANT YOUR MAIL! REMOVE EVERYTHING EVERY NIGHT! Well, I certainly hoped a killer—I still had only an inkling of who it could be—would not have thought to come out here to try to steal mail…or what ever.

It suddenly occurred to me that in my haste, I had not checked to see if I had been followed. I peered into the parking lot, but saw only my van and the ones belonging to Front Range Drains.

I took the key out of my apron pocket and gingerly began trying it in the locked boxes. There were a dozen of them, most of which were unmarked. The little key went into the first seven just fine, it just didn’t move. And then on the eighth, success.

A pile of wet circulars fell at my feet when the door creaked open, proving that retirement, and even death, couldn’t keep the junk mail away. Who was still paying rent for this box, a year after Doc Finn had retired from Spruce Medical? Maybe Doc Finn had been paying it.

I went through every ad for roof repair, every credit card offer, every discount card for oil changes. Nothing. I sighed.

But something had made Finn give Jack this key, as a kind of insurance policy, in case something happened to him. What? I felt inside the mailbox: the top, the bottom, and then the sides…wait.

There was something small and rectangular taped on one side of the mailbox. With infinite care, I peeled the sticky stuff away, and then stared, with only dawning comprehension, at a…flash drive? Doc Finn, Tech Boy? I groaned.

I was twenty-five minutes away from home, and I had a load of women getting sick from food I had given them—but had not put anything bad into—back at Gold Gulch Spa. I’d left Julian wrestling with the problem, and Boyd in the woods, trying to get a cell signal. Once the cops and ambulances arrived, I was going to be at the spa all night, answering questions and allowing food to be packed up and taken for analysis. I couldn’t abandon Julian and Boyd; I had to go back.

After all, I told myself, Yolanda kept a computer in the spa kitchen, and I could plug the flash drive in there. Plenty of people were milling around, like rubberneckers trying to get a look at an accident. And then the cops would be here again.

And so I went back. The scene had not changed much. Victor Lane was yelling at Julian, who was ignoring him as he passed out glasses of ginger ale. When Julian saw me, he stood up and handed the tray of glasses to Isabelle. Victor was still hollering at Julian, who walked away.

“What do you think made them sick?” Julian asked me, once he was close to the kitchen doors.

Of course, I had been thinking about this ever since I’d driven out of the spa. “My guess?” I said. “Ipecac. Stirred into the frosting while we were busy serving dinner.”

Julian screwed his face into incomprehension. “But who would do that?”

“My money’s on Victor,” I said. “He wanted an excuse to get me out of the spa, and maybe to discredit me with the police. But it could have been someone else.”

“One of the women here brought antinausea medication,” Julian said. “She has to take it when she gets a migraine, and when she heard about the crisis, she came racing out here with her bottle. She and Isabelle and Marla are giving it to the sick women.” Julian shook his head. “I don’t think there’s anything more we can do to help them until the ambulance arrives.”

Boyd wasn’t back from the woods yet, so Julian told me he was going to wash up, then pour out some more ginger ale. He sternly warned me not to leave the kitchen, and I agreed that I would stay put.

As soon as he was gone, I booted up Yolanda’s computer, on the far side of the sink. While the machine was humming and dinging, I added some more ice cubes to my Summertime Special. It was going to be a long night, and I figured I’d need extra caffeine.

After a few moments of tapping my foot, slugging down the creamy coffee, and cursing technology, I was able to bring up the contents of the flash drive. I sat down on one of the stools Yolanda’s people used when they weren’t rushing around, and tried to figure out what Doc Finn had left on his flash drive.

There were five files.

The first was text. It said “Medical University of Trinidad—top student. He died in a climbing accident—Peru, where he’d gone with Tim Anderson, a close friend who had flunked out of MUT. Residency—Grady Memorial, Atlanta. Terminated, stealing drugs. Record sealed.”

But who was this person? The file gave no clue. Next came the second file, also text.

“Victor Landheugel, became Lane—former pharmacy tech. Terminated, fraudulent billing to Medicare. Prosecutor: woman, whom he’d vowed to get back at. She later had fatal car accident.”

I took another swig of coffee. Huh, Victor Lane. It had been my experience that if a person acted like a jerk, he had stuff to hide. And sure enough, Victor Lane had all kinds of stuff to hide.

THE THIRD, FOURTH, and fifth files were photographs. The first photograph I did not recognize. The caption said, “Craig Miller, Medical University of Trinidad.” He was much younger then. But as I stared at the photo, I thought, No. This guy, this Craig Miller in the photograph, had a chubby, unattractive face; freckles; and okay, dark, wavy hair. The Craig Miller I knew had a full mop of dark curls, and was much better looking than the homely fellow in the photograph.

The second photo’s caption also read “Craig Miller.” It had the subtitle “Atlanta.” Here was the handsome, easygoing doctor who had just married Billie Attenborough.

The fifth and final file was a photograph with the caption, “Tim Anderson, Medical University of Trinidad.” And although he’d been much younger then, this was the person I knew as Craig Miller.

So. Right here—this was that final point, the one that would make a straight line.

The Craig Miller I knew was not Craig Miller; he was Tim Anderson. The real Craig Miller had died—or been pushed?—off a mountain in Peru.

Passing himself off as the deceased doctor—the real Craig Miller who’d actually gotten a degree—Tim Anderson had been able to secure a residency in Atlanta. But he hadn’t proven himself to be very competent, had been involved with drugs and gotten fired. He’d come to Aspen Meadow, probably disguising his background once again, and taken a position at Spruce Medical Group, where his track record with patients had attracted Doc Finn’s attention. He’d found a partner in crime in Victor Lane, and, it was my new theory, they’d conspired to use the spa to get clients hooked on drugs. It never ceased to amaze me how bad people tended to find each other. Tim Anderson/Craig Miller had also been able to parlay his looks and his fake doctorhood into a handsome payout from Charlotte Attenborough, who was desperate to get her daughter married off, and if the husband-to-be was a doctor, so much the better. Charlotte had even paid off Dodie O’Neal, so that Craig could avoid a lawsuit.

I got up so quickly my head swam. I had to find Boyd. I had to tell him what I had found out. Then I needed to get Julian, Marla, and myself out of here.

I blinked and tried to get my bearings. I walked out the kitchen’s back door, awkwardly skirted the omnipresent laundry cart, and headed for the various trails where Boyd had gone.

As I rounded the main building, I could see that the poisoned women were still on the ground, but at least they weren’t moaning anymore. Julian and Isabelle continued to move rapidly from person to person, making sure the women were as comfortable as possible.

I looked up into the trees, trying to make out exactly where Boyd had gone. I felt a sudden wave of confusion. Had he scuttled up the path toward the hot springs pool, or had he headed straight up the mountain? I decided on the path to the hot springs pool.

I gave the sick women and all the onlookers a wide berth, then began to stumble up the path to the hot springs pool. I blinked. Was it getting dark really quickly, or was I just moving slowly? Or both?

Once I was partway up the path, I stopped, confused. Which way had I thought Boyd had gone?

Why wasn’t my mind working? I looked down. Where had the path gone?

My shoulder was tapped from behind, and I turned, thinking someone was there to help me. But it was Craig Miller, or the person I thought was Craig Miller, pushing one of the spa’s ubiquitous laundry carts.

“How’s that drug working for you?” he asked with such coolness that my skin prickled with gooseflesh. “That’s the problem with Valium, you know? Especially in large quantities, stirred into your iced coffee. You never know how it’s going to affect the patient.”

“You,” I said, “you—” But now my mouth wasn’t working, either. I also didn’t seem to have much control over my limbs, so when Craig/Tim pushed me into the cart, I fell into it with a painful awkwardness. “Don’t,” was all I managed to say before he threw a pile of dirty towels on top of me and began to push the cart up the hill.

“Just in case you’re wondering,” he said, “I took that flash drive that Doc Finn left.” His voice sounded muffled. “Oh, yes, here we go, up to death,” he said merrily as the cart rattled and bumped over the trail.

I tried to say, “Stop,” tried to struggle, but an overwhelming lethargy was making that impossible. I clawed at the sides of the cart, and managed only to knock the towels off my face. I was being pushed…somewhere. And no one was noticing.

“Want to talk?” Tim/Craig asked merrily. “Oh, wait, you can’t talk. Or not much.”

I groaned. I had enough presence of mind, though, to know that I had to try to make myself puke, to get rid of as much of the heavy-duty dose of tranquilizer as I possibly could. The person pushing the cart had killed both Doc Finn and Jack, and since I’d become an obstacle, I was sure to be next.

When the cart went over a bump, I allowed myself to fall on my side. Even that was an effort, as was the attempt to put fingers down my throat.

“You’ll be my fourth victim,” said Craig. “I did too much partying in Trinidad, too many drugs, didn’t get my medical degree. But old Craig Miller, the real Craig Miller, he didn’t care. That nerd was so happy to have a cool, popular friend! So when we were in Peru, it was easy enough to push him off a cliff. By the time I’d hiked out, then returned with help, Craig’s body was swollen, darkened, unrecognizable. I said it was my dear friend, Tim Anderson. All I had to do was fix his ID to look more like me, steal his diploma, and I was on my way.”

I stuck my fingers down my throat and pushed. Nothing. At least I made a retching sound, which fake Craig found funny.

“Everything was going just fine until Doc Finn came sniffing around,” he continued jovially. “He just couldn’t leave well enough alone. Couldn’t stay in retirement. Couldn’t keep his trap shut. Yeah, that was the worst part. He told my dear fiancée that she shouldn’t marry me. Lucky for me, he didn’t give her a reason.”

The argument out at the spa. Isabelle had been partially right. Doc Finn and Billie had been fighting not about the wedding, but about the marriage, period.

“But Billie,” fake Craig went on, “felt duty bound to tell me all about it. Billie likes having someone take care of her; someone who isn’t her mother. And I liked the idea of having all of Charlotte’s money sooner rather than later. So I stole a pair of Charlotte’s shoes to plant in Finn’s car to attract the police’s attention. Charlotte hated Doc Finn, too, because he was always taking Jack away on expeditions that didn’t include her. I put the shoes in Finn’s car once I ran him off the road, after I managed to get Finn called down to Southwest Hospital. And by the way! That was your first mistake. You had Yolanda lie to that greedy bastard, Victor Lane, and say she was in Southwest Hospital with appendicitis. Guess how hard it was for me to check that she wasn’t there at all? Not hard in the slightest.”

I groaned as he pushed the cart over a large rock.

“Your second mistake, Miss Caterer, was not doing research on what brings people back to a place that serves food! I bet you think you knew all about that. Well, see, in China there was a restaurant that was really popular. Really, really popular, with lines of customers stretching down the street. Everyone said the food made them feel so good. No wonder, either. The food was laced with opium, and that’s what gave Victor Lane the idea to make a killing here, if you’ll pardon the expression, doing the same thing, but with different drugs.”

A rotten-egg scent reached my nostrils. We were close to the hot springs pool, the same one that had been closed since Sunday, when I’d dropped the load holding Craig and Billie’s dishes and glasses. Finally, finally, the sulfurous odor, plus my own attempts made me throw up.

“All out!” fake Craig said joyfully. He bumped the laundry cart to a stop, and once again I retched. “Girl, what are you doing?” he cried. “Don’t tell me I’m making you sick! A doctor’s not supposed to make folks sick!” He dumped the cart on its side, and I rolled out. “You know,” he said, “I’ve never drowned anyone before. Push, bump, poison. This is a first. All right, in you go.”

Just having a chance to breathe outside of the cart made me feel a tad better. Plus—was it wishful thinking or reality?—I was feeling stronger since I’d managed to clear out my gut a bit.

But I didn’t act strong. I remained limp while the man I’d known as Craig Miller grunted and groaned as he dragged me to the edge of the pool. But I would not allow him to hold my head underwater until I drowned.

When I felt the relatively smooth concrete flooring under my behind, I took the deepest breath I could manage and rolled myself into the scalding water, which woke me up even further, thank God.

I allowed myself to go down like deadweight. As Craig’s hands thrashed about trying to get purchase on my hair, I went completely under. Darkness had fallen, and the pool was unlit. So there was no way, or at least I hoped there was no way, he would be able to tell where I was.

I pushed off from the side and was able to come above the water for a moment, to take another deep breath. Craig cursed, stretching his arm out to grab me.

But I knew how to dive…downward. I was aware that I would have only one chance. My hands groped the bottom of the pool for a shard, a piece of that blasted china, a chunk of glass…and then my right hand closed around a large piece of broken dish. I felt for the sharp side even as Craig’s hands splashed furiously to try to get me.

It felt as if my lungs were bursting. But I found the very bottom of the pool and crouched on it, because I knew I would need all my strength to push up, and have good aim.

I thought of Arch; of Tom; of dear Doc Finn; of my sweet godfather, Jack, and pushed hard, up, up, up to the surface, where Craig was so startled to see me that he didn’t think to protect his face. In the fading light, I aimed straight for his eyes.

I missed them. But the broken dish sank deeply into his cheek. I pushed the sharp piece in as hard as I could, while Craig screamed in agony. He stopped trying to grab me, and brought both hands up to his face, which was streaming with blood.

I pushed myself clumsily out of the pool and called for help. My voice came out as a squawk. Drenched, scalded, and furious, I struggled with the gate to the pool and tumbled on to the walkway. My right hand with the broken dish was covered in blood. Boyd was already racing up the path toward me, shaking his head.

Behind him, to my surprise, came Billie Attenborough. “Have you seen Craig? Is he in there? This cop would only look for you, instead of helping me.” She muscled past me into the pool area and saw Craig, bleeding, on the ground. He was shrieking unintelligibly. “Goldy!” cried Billie. “What have you done to my husband?” She eyed me furiously.

I tried to say, “Nothing he didn’t deserve,” but I was still having trouble talking.

TWO WEEKS LATER, we packed a reunion picnic lunch for Norman O’Neal, Ceci, and Lissa at the Mountainside Rehabilitation Center. Marla, who had “missed all the action at the spa,” as she put it, had insisted on bringing a basket of fresh farmers’ market fruit.

“Alcoholics love sugar,” she confided to me. “In fact, they need it.” She frowned at the nectarines and peaches. “Maybe I should have brought something chocolate.”

“I already did that,” I said. In our cooler I’d packed a dessert made with vanilla ice-cream sandwiched between layers of a chocolate Bundt cake, which I’d glazed with more chocolate, then frozen hard. I was calling the confection Black-and-White Cake.

Black and white. A description of this case? Yes, if you thought only of the greed that had led Craig Miller/Tim Anderson to kill and kill and kill again. Billie had been greedy to be married to a doctor, and she’d been sufficiently flaky, temperamental, and spoiled not to notice that her groom didn’t really love her. She’d already filed for divorce, and the last I heard, she had signed up for an Internet dating service.

After the memorial service for Doc Finn, Father Pete told me when the service for Jack would be. I had thought my grieving was over, but I cried anyway. When my godfather died, I’d believed that staying home and doing nothing but cry was not the way to mourn. I’d gotten out there in the world to figure out what had happened.

Craig Miller wasn’t a real doctor, and he’d been incorrect in his diagnoses of patients, some of whom had gone straight to old, reliable Doc Finn for help. They’d brought tales of other patients being misdiagnosed, friends who were exhibiting signs of drug withdrawal after visiting Gold Gulch Spa. Doc Finn had decided to investigate, and that had put him on a collision course with Craig Miller and Victor Lane.

Of course, it was easy enough for Craig Miller to make that anonymous “emergency” call from Southwest Hospital to Doc Finn, then hightail it up the canyon until he saw Finn’s Cayenne coming in the opposite direction. He’d made a U-turn and hit Finn’s car so hard from behind that it had catapulted into a ravine. The cops found Craig’s banged-up vehicle where he’d hidden it away. Once Miller had bashed in the doctor’s head with a rock, he’d taken the shoes he’d swiped from Charlotte’s voluminous closet and planted them in Finn’s Cayenne…to point the cops toward her, and away from him, as part of his plan to get her sent to prison, leaving her new son-in-law free to take her money.

Of course, getting Craig Miller indicted for murder, and Victor Lane, his partner in crime, indicted for the illegal distribution of Valium and cocaine had provided some satisfaction for me. Yes, cocaine, the lab determined! That was what Victor had used to get the spa clients moving in their morning exercise classes! That was what was in the fruit cocktail that he had insisted on cleaning up all by himself! The Furman County Sheriff’s Department had discovered the drugs in the Smoothie Cabin, once they’d finally gotten the analysis back on the drugs Isabelle and I swiped. Armed with a search warrant, they’d found what they needed zipped into those packets that read chamomile (for the crushed Valium) and protein powder (for the cocaine). Blech!

In the spa trash, investigators found the bottle of ipecac that Victor Lane had mixed into my lovely butter icing when he was alone in the kitchen. He’d caught me not once, but twice, trying to figure out what he kept hidden in the Smoothie Cabin. Victor Lane had been willing to make his own clients sick just because he sensed I was getting close to figuring out what he was up to. Brother.

“Gold. Fin. Key.” Those were the words Jack had written for me in the hospital, shortly before he was killed. He had wanted me to go to Gold Gulch Spa. He’d hoped I’d find out what Finn had discovered. And that was why he’d left the key Finn had given him inside his house, to which he’d also given me the key. My godfather had been addled and sick, but he’d been determined to give me enough to go on that I could figure out his last puzzle.

The spa was closed by order of the county health department. Last I heard, Lucas Carmichael was trying to buy it. He put Jack’s unfinished Victorian up for sale.

A teary-eyed Charlotte Attenborough gave me a wordless embrace before Jack’s memorial service. What was there to say? I had no idea.

But I was quite surprised when Lucas Carmichael gave me a strong hug briefly before the service began.

“I’m sorry about everything,” I said.

“It’s okay,” he said, then leaned into my shoulder and sobbed. “Oh, God, I feel so awful.” I gave his back a gentle pat, but he tore away and rushed into the church.

As we processed slowly into St. Luke’s, Tom murmured to me that we were on our way to getting justice for Jack and Doc Finn. Yes, okay.

As Father Pete led the prayers, my thoughts returned to Jack’s last note to me: “Finn left me this key, he said, as an insurance policy, in case something happened to him. But I don’t know what it goes to, and I couldn’t figure it out. Maybe you can.” And I had.

But despite my reconciliation with Lucas, I didn’t yet feel a sense of comfort regarding the death of his father. No, not by a long shot. Once again, Jack’s words came to mind: “I’ve had a good run, and you were a big part of it.”

He’d given me puzzles and games, and love. And I’d always worked on solving his puzzles, including the last one. And I’d loved him right back.

We prayed, and Arch, bless his heart, got up in front of the congregation and talked about how much fun Jack had been. I hadn’t been up to it; nor had Lucas. Tom squeezed my hand.

Finally, at the end of the service, I thought of the last words in his note: “Wherever God sends me, I want you to know that I’ll be thinking of you.”

Now, when I miss my godfather, that’s what I remember.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The author would like to acknowledge the help of the following people: Jim Davidson, Jeff, Rosa, Ryan, and Nicholas Davidson, with particular thanks to Rosa for help with the Spanish in the text; J. Z. Davidson; Joey Davidson; Linda, David, and Becca Ranz, with thanks for giving me a place to work in Nashville; Sandra Dijkstra, my extraordinarily hardworking agent, along with her excellent team; Carolyn Marino, my superb and kind editor; Brian Murray, Jane Friedman, and Michael Morrison, all of whom have been very supportive of Goldy; Lisa Gallagher, for the tremendous job she has done at Morrow; Dee Dee De-Bartlo, Joseph Papa, Wendy Lee, and the rest of the fabulous team at Morrow/HarperCollins; Kathy Saideman, for her remarkably insightful readings of the text; Richard Staller, D.O., who always patiently answers my many medical questions; Carol Alexander, for patiently and lovingly testing all the recipes; the following writers friends, who are always willing to be supportive: Julie Kaewert, Jasmine Cresswell, Emilie Richards, Connie Laux, Karen Young Stone, and Leslie O’Kane; Ed Neiman, the wonderful chef and chief caterer of Sage Creek Foods in Evergreen; Ed’s phenomenal sous-chef, the tremendously talented Dave Pruett, who patiently instructed me for hours as he allowed me to work a wedding and reception with his team; Triena Harper, who, even though she is retired from being deputy coroner of the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, still helps me enormously; and as always, my amazingly helpful source on police procedure, Sergeant Richard Millsapps, now also retired from the Jefferson County Sheriff’s Department, Golden, Colorado.

RECIPES IN

FATALLY FLAKY

Julian’s Summer Frittata

Nutcase Cranberry-Apricot Bread

Totally Unorthodox Coeur à la Crème

Heirloom Tomato Salad

Arch’s Flapjacks

Figgy Piggy

Yolanda’s Cuban Bread

Chilled Curried Chicken Salad

Fatally Flaky Cookies

Black-and-White Cake

Julian’s Summer Frittata

8 ounces fresh broccoli

6 tablespoons best-quality extra-virgin olive oil, divided

1 red onion, sliced

8 ounces fresh baby spinach

8 ounces fresh mushrooms

1 bunch green onions

2 tablespoons unsalted butter

12 large eggs

1 cup heavy whipping cream

1 teaspoon kosher salt

½ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

½ cup freshly grated Parmesan (preferred type: genuine Parmigiano-Reggiano), divided

½ cup finely chopped or grated Havarti cheese

Preheat the oven to 350°F.

Rinse the broccoli and remove the stems. On a large cutting board, chop it into bite-size morsels. Measure out 2 cups and reserve the remainder for another use.

Line a rimmed baking sheet with foil; place the broccoli on the foil and mix with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, then put the onion on top of the broccoli and pour 2 tablespoons of oil on top. Bake for 10 minutes, stir, then return to the oven for 15 minutes, or until the broccoli is tender. Remove from oven and allow to cool slightly. (Leave the oven on.)

While the broccoli and onion are cooling, wash the spinach and steam until wilted, allowing only the water that clings to the leaves in the pot. Watch carefully; do not scorch. This only takes a couple of minutes. Drain and allow the spinach to cool. When the spinach is cool enough to handle, use paper towels to carefully wring out all liquid. Remove the spinach to a cutting board and chop it.

Clean and finely chop the mushrooms. Using a clean cloth towel that can be stained, or paper towels, wring all liquid out of the mushrooms. Clean and finely slice the green onions. Measure out ½ cup and reserve the remainder for another use.

In a large, ovenproof sauté pan, melt the butter over medium-low heat and sauté the ½ cup green onions and mushroom pieces until the mushrooms begin to separate. Remove from the heat, place in a bowl, and wipe out the pan.

In a large mixing bowl, beat the eggs until they are well blended, then blend in the cream, seasonings, ¼ cup of the Parmesan, and Havarti. Mix the cooled spinach, broccoli, onion, and green onion–mushroom mixture into the egg-cheese mixture. Over medium heat, heat the remaining 3 tablespoons of oil in the ovenproof sauté pan just until it ripples. Carefully pour the egg-cheese-vegetable mixture into the pan. Sprinkle the remaining Parmesan on top.

Place the pan in the oven and bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until the center is set.

Makes 8 servings

Nutcase Cranberry-Apricot Bread

1 cup pecan halves

1½ cups dried cranberries

1 cup dried apricots, chopped

6 tablespoons unsalted butter (¾ stick), at room temperature

2 cups granulated sugar

3 large eggs

6

¹

/

₃

cups all-purpose flour (high altitude: add 3 tablespoons)

1 tablespoon plus 2 teaspoons baking powder (high altitude: 1 tablespoon plus 1 teaspoon)

¾ teaspoon baking soda

2½ teaspoons kosher salt

2 cups fresh orange juice

1 tablespoon orange zest, finely chopped

Using a wide skillet and stirring frequently, toast the pecans over medium-low heat until they turn a slightly darker brown and begin to emit a nutty smell, about 10 to 15 minutes. Remove to a cutting board, cool, and chop. Set aside.

Bring 3 cups of spring or tap water to a boil. Place the cranberries and apricots in a large bowl and pour the boiling water over them. Let stand 15 minutes, then drain and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside.

Butter and flour three 8½-inch by 4½-inch glass loaf pans. Set aside.

Cream the butter with the sugar until well blended. (Mixture will look like wet sand.) Add the eggs and beat well. Sift the remaining dry ingredients. Add the flour mixture alternately to the creamed mixture with the orange juice, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stir in the fruits, nuts, and zest, blending well. Divide the mixture evenly among the pans. Allow to stand for 20 minutes.

While the mixture is standing, preheat the oven to 350°F.

Bake the breads for 45 to 55 minutes, or until toothpicks inserted in the loaves come out clean. Cool in the pans 10 minutes, then allow to cool completely on racks.

Makes 3 loaves

Totally Unorthodox Coeur à la Crème

2½ cups heavy whipping cream, chilled

8 ounces mascarpone cheese

1 cup confectioners’ sugar, sifted

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Pecan Crust (recipe follows)

1 pound fresh strawberries, rinsed, patted dry, hulled, and halved

1 pound fresh blueberries, rinsed and patted dry

1 cup apricot preserves

½ cup spring water

In a large mixing bowl, beat the cream until stiff peaks form, about 2 to 3 minutes.

In another large mixing bowl, beat the mascarpone on low speed just until blended. Add the sugar and vanilla and beat only until well blended.

Using a rubber spatula, fold the whipped cream into the cheese mixture.

Cut a piece of 2-ply cheesecloth large enough to line a large strainer or large coeur à la crème mold (the kind made with holes in the bottom, so the mixture can drain), with enough cheesecloth left over to fold up over the combined mixture.

Wet the cheesecloth and wring it out. Line the strainer or mold with the cheesecloth.

Gently spoon the mixture into the lined strainer or mold. Fold the ends of the cheesecloth up over the mixture. Suspend the strainer or mold over a bowl and put into the refrigerator. Allow to drain overnight.

To assemble the coeur, make the Pecan Crust and allow to cool completely. Spoon the chilled and drained mascarpone mixture into the cooled crust. (You may cover the coeur with plastic wrap at this point and chill up to four hours.)

Just before serving time, arrange the strawberries and blueberries in rows on top of the mascarpone mixture.

Place any leftover berries in a bowl to pass.

Makes 12 servings

Pecan Crust

1½ cups pecan halves

2 cups all-purpose flour

3 tablespoons confections’ sugar

1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, melted

In a large sauté pan, toast the pecans over medium-low heat, stirring constantly, until they emit a nutty scent, about 10 to 15 minutes. Place the nuts on paper towels to cool. As soon as they are cool enough to touch, place the nuts on a cutting board and roughly chop.

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter the bottom of a 9-by-13-inch glass pan well.

Sift the flour with the confectioners’ sugar into a large bowl. Using a wooden spoon, mix in the melted butter and pecans. Pat the mixture into the bottom of the prepared pan.

Bake for 10 to 15 minutes, or until the edges of the crust begin to brown. Place on a rack to cool completely before filling.

Heirloom Tomato Salad

1 pound (16 ounces) fresh heirloom or vine-ripened tomatoes

12 large fresh basil leaves

2 to 3 fresh garlic cloves

8 ounces Camembert cheese

½ cup red wine pear vinegar or red wine vinegar

1 tablespoon smooth Dijon mustard

½ teaspoon granulated sugar

Sea salt and freshly ground black pepper

1 cup best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

Cut the stems out of the tomatoes. If they are large, halve them horizontally. Holding them, one at a time and cut-side down, over the sink, gently squeeze until most of the seeds come out. Place them on a cutting board and cut them in fourths if they are small, or eighths if they are large. Place in a large glass bowl.

Finely chop 8 leaves of basil and measure it. You should have 2 tablespoons. Sprinkle the chopped basil on top of the tomatoes. Push the garlic through a press and measure it. You should have 2 teaspoons. Sprinkle the garlic on top of the basil. Using a sharp serrated knife, trim most of the rind from the cheese. Slice it into 16 equal segments, and place them on top of the garlic.

In a medium-size glass jar with a lid, combine the vinegar, mustard, sugar, and salt and pepper to taste. Using a narrow whisk or a spoon, stir well. Screw the lid onto the jar and shake well. Remove the lid, add the olive oil to the vinegar mixture, screw the lid back on, and shake vigorously, or until the dressing is completely emulsified.

Pour the dressing over the ingredients in the bowl and gently toss the salad. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the salad at least 4 hours, or up to 24 hours, before you serve it.

When you are ready to serve the salad, place it in a pretty bowl, sprinkle lightly with a bit more salt and a grating of black pepper, and arrange the remaining whole basil leaves on top, as a garnish.

Makes 8 servings

Arch’s Flapjacks

¼ cup small-curd cottage cheese

1 large egg

1 cup buttermilk

2 tablespoons vegetable oil (preferably safflower or canola)

1½ cups all-purpose flour

2 teaspoons baking powder

½ teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon granulated sugar (optional)

Additional vegetable oil or clarified butter

Butter, maple syrup, and/or fruit preserves

Whirl cottage cheese in blender. In a large bowl, beat together the egg, buttermilk, and oil. Stir in the cottage cheese and set aside.

Sift together the flour, baking powder, baking soda, salt, and sugar, if using. Add to egg mixture and stir with a large wooden spoon just until combined. If mixture is too thick, add 2 to 3 tablespoons more buttermilk.

Heat a tablespoon of oil or clarified butter on a griddle or in a skillet over medium heat until the oil ripples. For each flapjack, pour in a bit less than ¼ cup batter. Cook flapjack until it is covered with bubbles and dry around the edges. Turn and cook the other side until it is golden brown.

Serve immediately with butter and toppings.

Makes 9 four-inch flapjacks

Figgy Piggy

Two 1 pound pork tenderloins, marinated overnight in Dijon Marinade (see below)

Figgy Stuffing

2 teaspoons kosher salt

2 teaspoons freshly ground black pepper

¹

/

₃

pound prosciutto, cut in strips

2 tablespoons best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

½ cup dry white wine

Dijon Marinade

½ cup smooth Dijon mustard

2 tablespoons pressed or minced garlic

½ cup dry red wine

2 tablespoons dried thyme leaves, crushed

1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

1 teaspoon granulated sugar

½ cup best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

1 bay leaf

For Dijon marinade: Using a wire whisk, mix together the mustard, garlic, wine, thyme, pepper, and sugar in a 9-by-13-inch glass pan. Whisking constantly, mix in the olive oil until the mixture emulsifies. Slip the bay leaf under the surface of the mixture.

Using a sharp knife, remove the silver skin and fat from the tenderloins. Pat them dry, then place them in the marinade. Turn them to make sure they are evenly coated. Cover the pan tightly with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator to marinate overnight.

Figgy Stuffing

2 shallots, peeled, trimmed, and chopped

1 tablespoon best-quality extra-virgin olive oil

½ pound dried figs, stems removed, chopped

¼ cup homemade or canned chicken stock

2 tablespoons chopped fresh sage

For Figgy Stuffing: Using a large, ovenproof skillet, sauté the shallots in the olive oil for about 5 minutes over medium-low heat, or until they are limp and translucent. Add the figs, stock, and sage, raise the heat, and bring the mixture to a boil. Reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and simmer until the figs are tender and the liquid is absorbed, about 5 to 10 minutes. Set the mixture aside in a bowl to cool slightly while you prepare the tenderloins.

When you are ready to prepare the dish, preheat the oven to 375°F. Place one of the oven racks in the middle of the oven.

Remove the tenderloins from the marinade, wipe them dry with paper towels, and place them side by side on a cutting board, with the thick end of one next to the thin end of the other. Using the flat side of a mallet or the palm of your hand, pound the tenderloins until they are an even 1 inch thickness. (This will make them able to hold the stuffing.) Sprinkle them with the salt and pepper.

Spread the Figgy Stuffing mixture down the length of one of the tenderloins. Carefully place the other tenderloin on top. Place the proscuitto strips crosswise down the length of the tenderloin “sandwich.”

Cut 4 feet of kitchen twine into four 12-inch lengths. Carefully slide the pieces of kitchen twine crosswise, at even widths,

underneath

the tenderloin “sandwich.” Tie the pieces of twine and cut off any excess.

Wipe out the ovenproof sauté pan and heat 2 tablespoons of olive oil over medium-high heat, just until the oil ripples. Add the tenderloin “sandwich,” curving it to fit the pan. Sauté for three minutes. Then, using tongs, very carefully turn the tenderloin “sandwich” over to sauté for another three minutes.

Remove the skillet from the stove and add the wine to the skillet. Insert a digital meat thermometer into the pork and place it in the oven. Roast the pork until the thermometer indicates the internal temperature has reached 140°F (about 15 minutes).

Carefully remove the tenderloin “sandwich” to a platter and cover it with aluminum foil. Allow the pork to rest for 10 minutes.

Remove the foil and the pieces of twine, slice crosswise in ¾-inch slices, and serve. (You can pass a bowl with the pan drippings, if there are any.)

Makes about 8 servings

Yolanda’s Cuban Bread

2 cups spring water

2 tablespoons dark brown sugar

4½ teaspoons active dry yeast (contents of two ¼-ounce packages)

2 tablespoons Bread Dough Enhancer (recipe follows)

5½ cups bread flour

¼ cup soy flour

¼ cup nonfat dry milk

2 tablespoons wheat germ

1 tablespoon sea salt

2 tablespoons (or more) poppy seeds

In a small pan, heat the spring water until an instant-read thermometer reads 110 to 115°F. Pour the water into a warm bowl and stir in the sugar and yeast. Place in a warm spot to proof, about 15 minutes. If yeast is active, the mixture will be foamy and covered with bubbles. (If it is not foamy and bubbly, toss the mixture and start over, using new yeast.)

While the yeast is proofing, mix together the Bread Dough Enhancer, flours, dry milk, wheat germ, and salt. Place this mixture into the large bowl of a mixer with a dough hook. Add the proofed yeast mixture and stir until well combined. Insert the dough hook into the mixer and knead 10 minutes.

While the mixture is kneading, butter a large bowl. Place the mixture into the bowl, cover with buttered plastic wrap, and set aside to rise until doubled (about 30 minutes).

Remove the plastic wrap, punch the dough down, and divide it into 2 equal pieces. Shape the pieces into 2 round loaves and place them on a baking sheet lined with a silicone baking mat. Using a sharp knife, cut a 1-inch-deep cross into the loaves. Brush the loaves with water and sprinkle the poppy seeds on top.

Note: Do not preheat the oven.

Place a cake pan filled with hot water on the bottom rack of the

cold

oven. Place the baking sheet with the loaves on the middle rack of the oven. Close the oven door and turn the oven to 400°F. Bake 30 to 40 minutes, or until the loaves are golden brown. (They will open up and look like flowers; this is normal.) Serve warm or cool.

Note: This bread does not keep well. If you are not going to serve both loaves immediately, allow the second loaf to cool completely, then freeze it in a zipped plastic freezer bag.

Makes 2 loaves

Bread Dough Enhancer

1 cup wheat gluten

2 tablespoons lecithin

1 teaspoon powdered pectin

1 teaspoon ground ginger

2 tablespoons gelatin powder

½ cup nonfat dry milk

In a large bowl, mix all ingredients. Place mixture in a heavy-duty zipped plastic bag and keep in refrigerator. Mixture will last 6 months; use 1 to 2 tablespoons in all yeast bread recipes.

Chilled Curried Chicken Salad

3 large or 4 medium-size bone-in, skin-on chicken breast halves

Best-quality extra-virgin olive oil, sea salt, and freshly ground black pepper

Contents of three 15-ounce cans mandarin oranges, drained

Contents of one 20-ounce can pineapple tidbits, drained

½ cup raisins (or more, if desired)

¾ cup red onion, finely chopped

1½ cups real, best-quality mayonnaise

1 tablespoon curry powder (or more, if desired)

2 tablespoons chutney (or more, if desired)

¾ teaspoon salt

2 tablespoons sour cream

2 tablespoons fresh lime juice

Large, best-quality salted peanuts

Preheat the oven to 400°F.

Place the chicken breasts on a large rimmed baking pan covered with a silicone baking sheet. Rub oil onto the pieces and sprinkle them with salt and pepper.

Bake the chicken 25 to 40 minutes, or until thoroughly cooked. Check by slicing into one of the pieces, all the way to the bone. All the meat should have turned completely white, with no trace of pink. Remove the pan from the oven and allow the chicken to cool completely.

When the chicken is cool, remove the skin and bones and tear the meat into bite-size pieces. Measure it; you should have 4 cups. Reserve any remainder for another use.

In a large glass serving bowl, place the chicken, drained oranges, pineapple, raisins, and red onion.

To make the dressing: Place the mayonnaise, curry powder, chutney, salt, sour cream, and lime juice in the bowl of a food processor fitted with the steel blade. Blend all the ingredients on high, or until almost completely smooth. You may have to turn the processor off and remove the top one or two times, to scrape down the sides with a rubber spatula. This should not take more than 2 minutes.

Pour the dressing over the ingredients in the serving bowl and stir carefully but well, until all the ingredients are evenly distributed.

Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and chill the salad for at least 24 hours.

Serve with a large bowl of peanuts to sprinkle on top of each serving.

Makes 4 to 6 servings

Fatally Flaky Cookies

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter

¾ cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed

1 tablespoon best-quality unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (recommended brand: Hershey’s dark European style)

1½ cups quick-cooking oats

1 tablespoon all-purpose flour (high altitude: 2 tablespoons)

1 teaspoon baking powder

¼ teaspoon sea salt

1 large egg

2 teaspoons pure vanilla extract

Filling: Either 1 quart best-quality vanilla ice cream (recommended brand: Häagen-Dazs)

Or Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

(recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Line 2 rimmed cookie sheets with silicone baking sheets.

In a large, heavy-bottomed pan, melt the butter over low heat. Add the sugar and raise the heat to medium. Using a wooden spoon, stir until the mixture bubbles, about 3 to 5 minutes. Remove from heat, pour into a heatproof bowl, and set aside to cool while you prepare the rest of the ingredients.

In a large bowl, stir together the cocoa, oats, flour, baking powder, and sea salt until well combined.

In another bowl, beat together the egg and vanilla. Stir into the oat mixture until well combined. Add the cooled butter mixture and stir well.

Using a 1-tablespoon ice-cream scoop, measure out the batter onto cookie sheets, allowing at least 2 inches between cookies (they spread, and you need all the cookies to be a uniform size).

Bake the cookies, one sheet at a time, 10 to 12 minutes, or until the cookies are completely cooked. Allow to cool on the sheets for 5 minutes, then, using a wide, rubber-tipped spatula, carefully transfer the cookies to cooling racks. Allow to cool completely.

When you are ready to serve, spread 2 tablespoons of either the ice cream or the Vanilla Buttercream Frosting on the flat side of one cookie, then top with the flat side of a second cookie. Serve immediately, or freeze.

Makes about a dozen sandwich cookies

Vanilla Buttercream Frosting

½ cup (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened

2 cups confectioners’ sugar, sifted

Whipping cream or milk

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

In a large mixing bowl, beat the butter on medium speed until it is very creamy. Slowly add the sugar, a quarter cup at a time, beating each time until the sugar is completely blended into the butter. If the frosting begins to get too stiff, add a tablespoon of cream or milk. Beat in the vanilla, and if the frosting is still too stiff, add another tablespoon of cream or milk. You want the frosting to be fairly stiff so the sandwich cookies stay together. Cover and refrigerate any unused frosting.

Black-and-White Cake

Note: This is an ice-cream cake and should be kept frozen until ready to serve.

Butter and additional flour for pans and rack

1 quart best-quality vanilla ice cream (recommended brand: Häagen-Dazs)

3 cups all-purpose flour (high altitude: add ½ cup)

2 cups granulated sugar

¼ cup plus 2 tablespoons best-quality unsweetened Dutch-process cocoa powder (recommended brand: Hershey’s dark European style)

2 teaspoons baking soda

1 teaspoon salt

½ cup plus 2 tablespoons safflower or canola oil

2 tablespoons distilled white vinegar

1 tablespoon pure vanilla extract

2 tablespoons dark rum

2 cups low-fat milk (high altitude: add 1 tablespoon)

Chocolate Glaze

(recipe follows)

Preheat the oven to 350°F. Butter a 9-inch cake pan and a large cooking rack. Butter and flour two more 9-inch cake pans.

Soften the ice cream in a micro wave oven, just until it is spreadable. Spread it evenly in the buttered pan and place it back in the freezer.

Sift together the flour, sugar cocoa, baking soda, and salt. Sift it again into a large mixing bowl. Add the oil, vinegar, vanilla, rum, and milk. Beat on low speed for 1 minute, then scrape bowl. Beat on medium speed for 1 to 2 minutes, or until batter is completely mixed.

Pour the batter into the buttered and floured pans and bake for 25 to 35 minutes, or until a toothpick inserted in the center of one of the layers comes out clean. Cool in the pans for 10 minutes, then turn out onto the buttered rack to cool completely.

When you are ready to assemble the cake, soften the ice cream layer slightly and unmold it onto a plate. Place one cake layer on a serving dish. Place the ice cream layer on top. Carefully place the second cake layer on top of the ice cream. Loosely cover the whole thing with foil and place back in the freezer. Freeze until firm, about 3 hours.

Make the Chocolate Glaze and allow it to come to room temperature.

When you are ready to serve the cake, remove the serving dish from the freezer. Slowly pour it over the cake, smoothing it over the top and sides. Using a serrated knife dipped in hot water and wiped dry, cut the cake. Refreeze any unused portions.

Makes 12 large servings

Chocolate Glaze

10 ounces best-quality bittersweet chocolate (recommended brand: Godiva dark)

10 ounces (2½ sticks) unsalted butter

3 tablespoons light corn syrup

Using a sharp knife, chop the chocolate. Place it and the butter in the top of a double boiler. Bring 2 inches of water to a boil in the

bottom

of the double boiler, and place the pan with the chocolate and butter on top. Place the double boiler over high heat and stir occasionally until the butter and chocolate are melted. Remove the top pan from the heat and whisk in the corn syrup. Allow to come to room temperature before pouring on the cake.

About the Author

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON is the author of fourteen bestselling novels featuring the irresistible Goldy Schulz. She lives in Colorado with her family.

www.dianemottdavidson.com

Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

Also by Diane Mott Davidson

Catering to Nobody

Dying for Chocolate

The Cereal Murders

The Last Suppers

Killer Pancake

The Main Corpse

The Grilling Season

Prime Cut

Tough Cookie

Sticks & Scones

Chopping Spree

Double Shot

Dark Tort

Sweet Revenge

Credits

Jacket photograph by Mike Kemp/RubberBall Photography

Copyright

This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

FATALLY FLAKY. Copyright © 2009 by Diane Mott Davidson.

*In a small pan, heat the preserves and water and cook over medium-low heat, stirring. Remove from heat and cool slightly. Using a pastry brush, brush this syrup over the berries, covering them completely.