Killer Pancake

Grateful for the quiet, I started to rinse dishes and place them in the dishwasher. It was half past eight So much for Tom making it home for dinner. But as soon as I had that thought, the front-door latch popped.

Tom strode in, stood at the kitchen threshold, opened his arms, and said, “You look beautiful.”

Hard to ignore my runaway, bleach-splotched hair, my face streaked with makeup, Pete’s oversize Virtues of Coffee sweatsuit. “Is that a joke?”

He circled me in an enormous hug. “Never,” he whispered in my ear. For the first time that day, I relaxed. But then I tensed, trying to think of how to explain my appearance.

“Some … bleach water spilled on me today.” It was sort of the truth. Half of the truth.

“Well, I wasn’t going to ask. How’s Marla?” His mouth close to my ear sent shivers down my spine.

“Surviving. Want to taste some of the lowfat food I’m teaching myself to cook for her? Want to hear how I got into trouble today?”

“Do I have to? I’d rather do something else,” he murmured.

“Incorrigible.”

“Beautiful.”

“Later.”

On that hopeful note, he reluctantly pulled away from me. I poured him a glass of red wine, started the fettuccine reheating, and asked if he’d listened to the voice mail.

“Oh, yes,” he replied with a broad smile. “Yes, yes. And I listened to my other messages too. Had a little visit with the horticultural powers that be. Seems Charles Braithwaite, Ph.D., is in the process of getting the blue rose patented, which takes quite a while. One thing you have to do when you’re patenting a flower? You name it.” I put a plateful of the steaming pasta in front of him. He wound up a spoonful of the fettuccine and downed it. His bushy eyebrows arched upward. “Gosh, Goldy, this is delicious. Lowfat?”

FUDGE SOUFFLÉ

½ cup unsweetened cocoa powder

½ cup confectioners’ sugar

1 cup skim milk

⅓ cup semisweet chocolate chips

5 egg whites

¼ cup sugar

½ teaspoon vanilla extract Lowfat whipped topping (optional)Whisk the cocoa powder, confectioners’ sugar, and milk in the top of a double boiler over boiling water until smooth. Add the chocolate chips and stir until the chips are melted. Stir and lower the heat to simmer.In a large bowl, beat the egg whites until soft peaks form. Gradually add sugar and beat until stiff peaks form. Fold the vanilla and ½ cup of the chocolate mixture into the egg white mixture.Bring the water in the bottom of the double boiler back to a boil. Stir the chocolate-egg white mixture into the chocolate mixture in the top of the double boiler. Using and electric beater or a whisk, beat this mixture for a minute or until it is well combined. Cover the double boiler and continue to cook over boiling water for 25 to 30 minutes or until the soufflé is puffed and set. Serve with lowfat whipped toping, if desired.Serves 4

“Don’t act so surprised. What’s Braithwaite going to name the rose? And did you do any research on Hotchkiss?”

His green eyes twinkled. “Charles Braithwaite was naming his blue rose the Claire Satterfield.”

“Good Lord!”

Arch stuck his head into the kitchen, waved to Tom, and announced he was going up to bed early. I must have looked stunned. At the beginning of July, Arch was rarely willing to hit the sack earlier than he did during the school year.

“But—” I began.

Arch pulled his mouth into a tight scowl. “I just don’t want Julian to think I’ve abandoned him.”

“I’m sure he doesn’t think you’ve—”

But he was gone. I didn’t go after him because the phone rang. It was Tony Royce. While Tom savored the fettuccine and polished off the salad, Tony informed me that Hotchkiss Skin & Hair was a privately held company that didn’t have to report its profits and losses to shareholders, so the information he’d been able to get for me was sketchy.

“That’s okay,” I told him. My pencil was poised. “Sketchy is better than zilch.”

“Hotchkiss Skin & Hair needs a face-lift, Goldy. We’re talking major surgery.”

“Skip the puns, Tony—”

But he was on a roll. “I mean,” he persisted, “we’re talking a company that puts a new wrinkle on financing!” I know Tony and Marla had fun together, and that she thought he was brilliant with money. But the substance of their relationship, I had to admit, I just didn’t understand.

“And their financial status is …?” I prodded.

“Who are you talking to?” Tom suddenly wanted to know.

“Just a sec, Tony.” I covered the phone. “Marla’s boyfriend. He’s an equities analyst, and he looked into Hotchkiss Skin & Hair for me.”

Tom was incredulous. “Doing the financial check on the company is our job. What are you doing?”

I said defensively, “I just happened to run into Tony at the hospital. Ill tell you all about it.”

“You’d better.”

“Okay, Tony,” I said back into the phone, ignoring the expression on Tom’s face, “what’s their financial status?”

Tony Royce snorted. “Terrible, terrible. Hotchkiss has been giving facials for years, when women thought they needed them and would line up out the door to get one. But from a business standpoint, facials aren’t exactly a big growth industry these days. They’re labor-intensive. Which means expensive, and you can’t do a huge markup on them. And, unless you’ve got a steady demand from the carriage trade to sustain your business, you’re out of luck.” He paused to sigh, taking deep satisfaction from being the man in the know. “But baby-boomer women … now, there’s an interesting demographic group. The ones who have money mostly work outside the home, and they don’t have time for facials. Or,” he said with a chuckle, “no advertising genius has yet convinced these women that they need to have facials. So Mama Hotchkiss, sensing she needed to change with the times, decided to launch a new set of products designed for these very same baby-boomer women. It was called Renewal. Didja ever buy any Renewal, Goldy? I mean,” he chuckled, “not that you need it or anything.”

“Can’t say that I made that purchase, Tony.”

Another lugubrious sigh. “Neither did anybody else. Renewal flopped. Big-time. Mama Hotchkiss went to the bank for a loan. Nobody was biting, even when she offered free facials. Bankers don’t like facials, Goldy. They prefer to look intimidating and ugly inside their expensive suits so that customers will bow down, scrape, and lick the floor.”

Speaking of licking and scraping, I checked on the soufflé that I was trying to keep warm for Tom. It was still dark and puffed. I removed the double-boiler top from the heat. I’d found that working with food often helps when listening to arrogant people on the telephone.

“So,” he persisted, “what do you think happened?”

“Renewal flopped, just as you said,” I replied. “But the business didn’t go under. So … if a cake I’d staked my reputation on flopped, and I didn’t lose the business, I’d develop a cookie. Or a torte. You have to sell something.”

“Take you out of that apron and put you in a banker’s suit, Goldy.”

High praise indeed, considering the source. “Thanks. So Hotchkiss started to look for new products? But they needed more money for that, so they went to some pal of yours.”

“Hey. I know everyone in the Denver financial community, and I’ve lived here for only a little over a year.”

“You’re marvelous. Forget the cookies, I’m going to have to pay you in brownies.”

Tony made a long hmmm noise. “So they got a loan to develop new products. Their business plan was drawn up by none other than—”

“Reggie Hotchkiss!” I concluded triumphantly.

“If you knew all this, why’d you ask me?” He sounded peeved.

“I didn’t know any of it, Tony. You did sketchy for me, I just filled in the holes. How long does Hotchkiss Skin & Hair have to prove themselves?”

“They report to my banker friend next month. But he’s been getting glowing reports from Reg. They’ve got a new line, they’re guaranteed success. Everyone makes piles of money.”

Yes, I knew all about their new line, it was fresh from Mignon Cosmetics. But I decided not to mention that to Tony. I asked him how and when I could deliver the promised brownies to him. He said he’d be at the Braithwaites’ party tomorrow night, and hadn’t a little bird told him I was catering that party? You bet, I said, and hung up.

I told Tom what I’d learned. He even took out his trusty spiral notebook and jotted down a few notes. Then, while he watched in amusement, I flipped through the phone book, located Hotchkiss Skin & Hair, and put in a call. Lucky for me, the corporate number had a tape saying if I wanted a facial or any one of their products, leave my name and number. Someone would get back to me just as soon as one of their skin-care staff became available.

I summoned a frantic voice. My newly discovered acting ability was going to get me into deep trouble one of these days, but right now I had to admit I was rather enjoying it. “This is Goldy Schulz calling, and I need a facial at your earliest convenience! I … I saw a brochure of your new product line and I want to buy everything. Everything. I need it! You have to understand, I’m desperate! I know you all are the ones who can help me!” I left my number and disconnected.

“Woman,” Tom mused as he rinsed off his dish. “Sometimes I don’t know what to think about you.”

I ladled scoopfuls of hot fudge soufflé into bowls and spooned on lowfat whipped topping. I handed one to Tom. “I’ve told you all I know. Now, what did you find out about Hotchkiss? And what about Shaman Krill? What he’s up to?”

Tom shook his head and took a bite. “Oh, God.”

Oh, God, was right. The fudge soufflé was warm and rich, and melted on the tongue, just the way the thousand-calories-a-bite hot fudge sundaes did. Marla was going to love this. “Tom? What did you find out?”

He wrinkled his brow and dug into the soufflé. “Hotchkiss is in trouble financially. Desperately needs to have success with his new line.”

“If you knew all that, why didn’t you tell me?”

“Because I have ways of investigating that don’t involve sleazy characters like Tony Royce.”

I sighed. “So you don’t mind if I get a facial?”

“’Course not. Just don’t—”

“Get into trouble, I know.” I felt guilty not telling him about the bleach water and the threatening note, but I knew he would halt my sleuthing around immediately if I ’fessed up. “There’s a ton of fudge soufflé here,” I warned him. “Both of the guys went to bed already, so I hope you’ll eat more.”

He gestured with his spoon. “Remember when you were living with the Farquhars, and you told me all about how chocolate was an aphrodisiac?” I nodded, and he picked up our bowls and put them in the sink. Then he pulled me up from my seat. It was so unexpected that I laughed. Maybe because he’d been gone so much lately, it felt as if we were going to be newlyweds forever. He kissed my cheek, then my other cheek, then my ear. “Isn’t that what you told me? You’re such a great caterer. To do all that research, I mean.” He narrowed one eye and arched one of those bushy brows. “Tell you what, though, I’ve always thought of myself as a good cop.”

“A great cop,” I corrected him, and kissed him back.

“But I certainly,” he said as he scooped me up easily into his arms, “never”—I squealed as he started to walk out of the kitchen—“ever,” he said emphatically as he carried me up the stairs to our bedroom, “had this much fun doing police work in my entire life.”

So much for second helpings.

Saturday morning, July 4, brought a very early call for Tom. His subsequent departure accompanied a mumbled farewell to me that I thought included words about bail. But I was still half-asleep, and registered only the loss of his body heat from our bed.

At half past five I gave up on slumber. Daylight had invaded our bedroom, and the morning concert of birds was in full swing. I was exhausted. I’d crept downstairs at midnight when I heard Julian talking on the phone. His tone had been the one he used with friends—confiding, pleading. I can’t stop thinking about her. When they take the body, it’ll be like she’s really dead. Why would someone do this? I’d felt guilty listening in and tiptoed back upstairs. Now, with another food fair day looming and no relief in sight for Julian’s pain, I felt as if it was all too much.

I pushed the window open, took a deep breath of cool, sweet air, and gazed at the bowl of ultra-blue Colorado sky. Stretching up to the horizon, vast expanses of pines covered the closest mountains like thick waves of forest-green needlepoint. Brilliant chartreuse groves of aspens in full leaf patched the deep green undulating over the hills. The air was extremely still. Aspen Meadow Lake offered a plate-glass reflection of the spruces and ponderosa pines lining its shore. With any luck, this weather would hold through the food fair and the fireworks at Aspen Meadow Lake.

I went through a slow yoga routine, fixed myself a cappuccino, and moved efficiently around the kitchen to assemble more ribs, salad, bread, and cookies. I caught sight of the bag that had held Marla’s hand cream and realized it was finally Saturday. The day Marla was due home. Also the day Claire’s parents were arriving from Australia to claim her body.

I sat at the kitchen table and tried to remember if Julian had told me what he was doing today. Had I failed him in not being around during this painful time? At least during the night he’d been seeking companionship by talking to someone on the phone. I sipped the last of the cold coffee, rinsed my cup, and caught sight of a note Julian had left under a refrigerator magnet. He had arranged to get together with some school buddies. Would I please, he wanted to know, leave him instructions for preparing the Braithwaites’ Fourth of July party tonight? I’ll be home by ten AM., and I want to learn how to do that turkey curry, he wrote in his small, cramped script, so don’t just give me the easy stuff! And then—Did you find out anything about Claire? J.

Grief tightened my throat. In two months Julian would be at Cornell. A year ago, he’d needed a place to live for his high school senior year, a salary for his work with the catering business, and a short course in food service before he began his official college studies in food science. But the tight family unit we’d developed since had come as a bonus, a surprise, a slice of what the theologians call grace. Now his departure loomed like a black hole. I punched buttons on my kitchen computer to bring up the menu for the Braithwaites. My mind mulled Julian’s last plea: Did you find out anything about Claire? No, Julian. Nothing helpful. Nothing to answer your questions or to ease your pain. Nothing to explain why I—and by extension, my family—was being threatened. Yet.

Through an effort of pure will, I pushed the sadness aside. I wanted to help Julian patch his shattered young life back together. That would be my farewell present.

In the interim, it was time to work. My screen held the lowfat menu Babs Braithwaite had ordered: Cucumber-Mint Soup, Barbecued Fruit Skewers, Turkey Curry with Raisin Rice and Condiments, Vegetable Slaw, Homemade Rolls, Frosted Fudge Cookies. Honestly, lowfat food was beginning to dominate my life. The printer spat out the menu while I checked that we had all the ingredients for the curry and the cookies. I removed ground turkey from the freezer to thaw, then chopped onions and apples for the sauce. I scrawled a note to Julian that he could start by chopping the fruit for the barbecue skewers.

The phone rang and I gave my usual greeting: “Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right!”

“Ah, may I speak with Miss Shulley?” The voice was high and extremely snooty. I figured it was a wrong number, but the caller plowed on to explain: “This is Hotchkiss Skin & Hair. Is Miss Shula available? She requested an urgent appointment for skin treatment and asked to order all the products from our catalogue. I was wondering how she planned to pay for her order.”

My blood ran cold. I’d never even had a facial, and here I was, a not-well-to-do caterer ordering all kinds of hideously expensive products and making an appointment for a treatment—which the woman pronounced with the same kind of awe usually reserved for electroshock therapy—under false pretenses. The caller was bound to ask all kinds of questions I was not prepared to answer—What is your skin type, or do you even know? Is this your first visit? How many years of neglect are we talking about? I pressed my lips together and wondered how much of a drain it was going to be—from time, money, and emotional reserves—to find out exactly what Reggie Hotchkiss was up to.

“This is Mrs. Schulz. I made the call. And I have a coupon for the facial.”

The voice became instantly ingratiating. “Oh, Mrs…. Zult, we can take you at your earliest convenience. There’s no problem with scheduling a skin treatment. And of course we’ll also provide you with all the products you requested. How soon can you make it in today, and do you plan to pay by check or credit card?”

Why did she need to know this? Did they have people stiff them for soap and moisturizer? “Ah … well, I live up in Aspen Meadow—”

“In the country club area? Or in Flicker Ridge?”

Needless to say, the answer to that question was neither of the above, although I catered in million-dollar homes in those areas quite often. I imagined my interrogator with a pen poised over the same kind of client card that Dusty had filled out for me at Mignon. I said, “How much … er … time should I allow?”

“Well, Mrs…. Shoop, that depends on what you would like us to do for you. What problems are you having with your skin?”

“Aah …” What problems, exactly? “My … er … face is in a state of crisis. I … don’t feel as if I’m as attractive as I could be.”

“Mrs. Chute,” purred the smug voice, “that’s why we’re here! You’d best allow two hours for a facial and makeup application. That’s not very long to undo several decades of abuse.”

Decades of abuse sounded a bit extreme, but I said only, “Two hours? I can be there by one. How do I get there from Westside Mall?”

She explained where in the Aqua Bella neighborhood Hotchkiss Skin & Hair was located. I could drive or I could walk.

“And with the coupon,” I said uneasily, “just how much more will it cost to undo several decades of … complexion problems?”

She told me. I said I’d put the whole thing on my credit card, hung up, then grabbed the counter to keep from fainting.

“Gosh, Mom.” Arch entered the kitchen from the direction of the TV room. He pushed his glasses up his nose. “Now what?” Today’s tie-dyed T-shirt was a symphony of bilious colors.

“Remember … when your soles separated from your sneakers and I couldn’t afford to buy you a new pair?”

“Only dorks call them sneakers these days, Mom. But okay, sure. That was in November of sixth grade. You got me some new athletic shoes at Christmas. So?”

“I’m about to spend the cash equivalent of ten pairs of athletic shoes.”

Arch, being a literal fellow, looked at my feet. “Why’d you do that?”

“’Cuz my face needs it.”

He slowly raised his large brown eyes behind their tortoiseshell glasses from the floor to my face. “Am I missing something here?”

“Oh, Arch. I’m sorry. You went to bed early, and now you’re up early. What you’re missing is a nice breakfast. How about some?”

Unlike the previous day, he brightened. You never could tell with kids, when they would be hungry. But breakfast, unlike the world of beauty, was something we both understood. Since Marla was coming home in the late morning, I resolved to prepare a dish that I could take over and leave for the private nurse to heat up in Marla’s kitchen. Something healthful that wasn’t oatmeal. If I worked quickly, I’d still be able to set up for the food fair with time to spare. Watched by my ravenous son, I began to measure flour and whip yet more egg whites. Something beautiful and appealing to the eye and to the tongue. Something breakfast-y that would satisfy Marla’s sweet tooth. Something that could be frozen and reheated without catastrophe.

Within moments I was dropping dollops of batter speckled with fruit cocktail on a nonstick cookie sheet, and feeling pretty smug. Arch transported the food for the fair out to the van, and by the time he was finished, a delicious pancake aroma swirled through the kitchen.

“Oh, I forgot to tell you,” he said as he mixed Dutch cocoa powder with sugar to make hot chocolate. “Julian’s gone to visit some friends. He left early. And Tom left early too. Tom said to tell you Krill is an actor. I thought krill lived in the ocean.”

I said I wasn’t exactly sure, but I thought Krill was just some weird guy who was very convincing acting like a weird guy. I brought out the cookie sheet with the fruit-cocktail pancakes. Arch oohed approvingly at the golden, puffed rounds. He heated maple syrup—a mail-order gift from his grandparents, who doted on him—while I put together a fresh strawberry sauce for Marla.

When his mouth was full, Arch said, “You m’berd’s c’ming early f’ me today?” When I glared, he swallowed and repeated: “You remember Dad’s coming early for me today? We’re going over to his condo for the Fourth. I think Keystone puts on some fireworks. Now do you remember? Not as good as Aspen Meadow Lake, probably,” he added, no doubt to console me.

“No,” I said lightly, “I didn’t remember, thanks for reminding me. Are you packed?”

“Sort of. I still have to find my sparklers. Hey, Mom! These pancakes are awesome … I mean, cool! You should call them Killer Pancakes!” He shoveled in a few more mouthfuls. I looked out my kitchen window and found myself wishing for some of that soothing saxophone music. But at this hour, the only sound was the morning rush of traffic down Aspen Meadow’s Main Street, topped by a louder, closer sputter of a foreign car coming down our road. The sound was familiar, and I knew it the way I knew the sound of the mailman’s old grinding Subaru. But I couldn’t place it. Then I did hear a familiar roar—the Jerk’s Jeep. I sighed and headed for the front door to let him in before he staged some sort of stunt. He’d never touched me when Arch was present. On the other hand, when it came to my ex-husband, there was always a first time for most things bad.

I opened the door and he strode in angrily. He bellowed for Arch. He seemed loaded for bear, although I judged him to be sober. Of course, I’d been wrong about that before too.

“In the kitchen!” was Arch’s fearful response.

“Don’t mind me,” I said as I started to close the front door, then thought better of it and left it ajar.

John Richard bent over Arch’s plate which held only a half-pancake in a puddle of syrup. Then he slowly moved his eyes to stare into the half-full cup of hot chocolate. Arch, who had stopped eating, gave me a confused glance.

John Richard rasped, “Why do you eat that shit your mother gives you? You want to grow up fat and sick and have a heart attack like Marla?”

I said, “Get. Out.” Why was he doing this? Did he secretly feel guilty himself about Marla having the heart attack? Unlikely.

“Gee, Dad,” Arch interjected, “it’s okay—”

A loud knocking made the front-door frame reverberate; a female “Hoo-hoo?” echoed down the hall. John Richard stood with his hands on his hips, unmoving, staring at my collection of cookbooks as if fascinated by their arrangement on the shelf. Arch ran out of the kitchen and up the stairs. He knew he had to get his stuff, and quickly, to avoid a scene.

“Hoo-hoo, Goldy, it’s your partner in bleach!” came the voice again.

Frances Markasian peered into the foyer. She had reverted to her normal attire: black T-shirt, frayed blue jeans, duct-taped sneakers, voluminous black raincoat, and equally voluminous black purse. She looked like a skinny bat. “There you are!” she said. “Sorry to be here so early, but I was just trying to catch you before you went to the fair. Is that okay? Can we talk? Can I come in? I won’t smoke.”

I came out onto the front porch and gestured in the direction of the porch swing. “Let’s just stay out here. I thought I heard your Fiat, I just wasn’t used to hearing it so early in the morning.”

KILLER PANCAKES

2 cups all-purpose flour

1 cup sugar

1 teaspoon baking soda

½ teaspoon salt

2 egg whites

1 16-ounce can juice-packed fruit cocktail, drained and juice reserved

maple syrup or chopped fresh strawberries macerated with a little sugarPreheat the oven to 350°. Spray 2 non-stick cookie sheets with vegetable oil and set aside.Sift the dry ingredients together and set aside. Beat the egg whites until frothy. Beat in the juice. Gradually add the dry mixture, stirring until well blended. Fold in the fruit cocktail.Using an ½-cup (2-tablespoon) measure, scoop dollops of pancake batter onto the sprayed pans, leaving at least 2 inches between the pancakes. Bake for 10 to 15 minutes or until puffed and golden. Serve hot with maple syrup, fresh strawberries, peaches, or other fruit.Serves 4

Frances backed toward the swing, her head tilted as she appraised me. “Goldy, are you all right?”

I attempted a smile. “Let’s just say I had an unexpected visitor early this morning.”

“Who?”

“Frances, what exactly is it you want me to do for you?”

She drew out a Marlboro, held it up for my inspection, and I nodded. Much as I hated cigarettes, I knew Frances would get down to business more quickly if she had nicotine. She fished around in her purse for a lighter, brought one out along with a Jolt cola, lit the cig, popped the can top, inhaled, exhaled, and took a big swig from the can, all in a quick series of practiced motions.

“Okay,” she said presently, “I need more Mignon cosmetics and I don’t want them to get suspicious. So I was hoping you could get the stuff for me—”

“Oh, Frances, for heaven’s sake, I have so much to do today—”

“—and I’ve checked with my editor, and he wants you to cater a big shower, for his wife in two weeks, lots of guests, couples, a hundred people, name your price.” She smiled broadly and took another drag.

I guess I could spare five or ten minutes. “Look, Frances. I can’t spend a lot of time at that counter today. I have another appointment today, my friend is coming home from the hospital, and I have to cook for a big party tonight—”

“I know, I know, the Braithwaites’. But that’s not until tonight, and I was really hoping you could get this stuff for me today.” I sighed. When did she think caterers did their preparations? The cigarette dangled from the side of her mouth as she rooted around in her purse again and finally pulled out a list along with a plastic zip bag. She unzipped the bag and fanned out its contents: three hundred-dollar bills. Then she started reading the list: “Magic Pore-dosing Toner, thirteen ounce; Extra Rich Nighttime Replacement Moisturizer, ten ounce; Ultra Gentile Eye Cream Firmer, ten ounce…” She finished reading, inhaled, blew out a fat stream of smoke, then flicked her ashes over the side of the porch and handed me the money. She was probably the last person in the universe who would want to buy three hundred dollars’ worth of cosmetics. “Okay? Bring me the change—if there is any—and the receipt in the bag. I mean, not that I don’t trust you. But you know.”

“Sure, sure, Frances, whatever you want,” I replied, resigned. I’d long since found that it was easier just to give in to this most-persistent reporter.

Behind us, the screen door creaked open. A scowl darkened Frances’s face. She flicked her cigarette in the direction of the sidewalk and began to root around again in her purse.

“Goldy,” came John Richard’s angry voice, “would you mind leaving the kaffeeklatsch until later and getting your butt in here to look for … what the hell—”

His brow wrinkled and his dark eyes were fastened on Frances as if mesmerized. I followed his gaze back to Frances and saw she was pointing what looked like a hunting knife handle at John Richard’s solar plexus.

“Oh, Frances,” I snapped, “for heaven’s sake, put that away. What kind of thing is that anyway—”

But she paid me no heed. “Get off of this porch,” she said calmly to the Jerk. “This is a ballistic knife. The blade is projected from the handle by a spring-loaded device. John Richard Korman, I’ve just taken the safety off my ballistic knife. I am not in the mood for another baptism by bleach water—”

“Bitch!” the Jerk spat out in furious bewilderment. “I don’t know who you are or what your problem is—”

The muscles in Frances’s unmade-up face were steely. “Funny, I know who you are. And I know about Eileen Robinson, lying in Southwest Hospital with two broken ribs and a pair of bruised arms to match. And I know what happened to me yesterday in the company of Goldy, your not-amicably-divorced-from-you ex-wife. I was unprepared before, but that’s over.” She waved the knife handle. “I am not even slightly intimidated by you.” Sunlight glinted off the weapon. “Move.”

Arch whacked the screen door open. “Okay, Dad, I found my sparklers—” He careened into his immobile father. “What’s …” Then he noticed Frances and her weapon. His eyes and mouth opened wide. His eyebrows rose. “Uh. Excuse me? Mom? Should I call 911?”

My ears were ringing with frustration. What if Frances released the knife and it hit Arch? “No, no, don’t call. Just go with your dad. Frances, put that knife away. Please. Now.”

Frances did not flinch.

John Richard’s face was a study in fury. He stuck out his chin and curled his hands into fists. “I don’t know who you are, lady, but you’re confused. Not only that, but you are breaking the law.” She stared right back at him. “Do you have a permit to carry that? I doubt it. I doubt it very, very much.” He started in the direction of the porch steps. Down he went, with Frances’s ballistic knife following each step he took. As if to attract the attention of neighbors, the Jerk yelled, “You are menacing me, you bitch! Whoever the hell you are! Do you hear? I’m going to file a complaint.”

Frances retorted calmly, equally loudly, “Be my guest!”

John Richard bounded into his Jeep, started it, and revved it deafeningly. Arch was still gaping at Frances, who had her eyes and weapon trained on the Jeep. “Does that knife have an explosive charge or a spring-loaded device?” he asked in a low whisper. Before Frances could answer, John Richard leaned on his horn. Arch scooped up his bag and sidled over to the porch steps. “Miss Markasian? I don’t mean to be, like, judgmental, but I think maybe you should cut back on your caffeine. Don’t hurt my dad, okay?” And with that, he sprinted to the Jeep.

Frances pressed her lips together, nudged the safety back in place, and dropped the big knife back in her bag. The Jeep roared away.

“Dammit, Frances, what in the hell do you think you’re doing?”

She picked up her Jolt cola. “I told you. Knowing what I know about what happened to Eileen Robinson, and after that little incident on the roof, I swore I’d be ready the next time. That’s it. So when you came out your door looking so upset, and then His Menacing Majesty appeared unexpectedly, there I was, a little girl scout, all prepared.” She sighed. “You should get a weapon, Goldy. It really gives you a sense of power.”

“No, thanks. When do you want to come back to pick up all these cosmetics I’m buying?”

“Later.” And with that she hefted up her bag, for which I had a new and profound respect, hopped down the porch steps, and strode away. I looked up and down the curbs for her car. It wasn’t parked on the street. And by the time I looked for Frances, she had disappeared.

Back in the house, I finished making the Killer Pancakes and set them aside to cool. Then I sloshed together a new bucket of bleach water for the fair, carefully covered it, and hauled it out to the van. After packing the Killer Pancakes between layers of waxed paper in a plastic container, I got the spare key to Marla’s house from where Julian had left it for me, and started out. Clouds were just beginning to float in from the westernmost mountains. Perhaps it wouldn’t be a bright and cloudless day after all. The events of the morning certainly hadn’t been very sunny.

By the time I’d let myself into Marla’s house, stored the food in the refrigerator, and written a note to the nurse, the westernmost sky was gray with fast-moving, towering thunderheads. Although the rain usually arrived in the mountain towns several hours before it traveled eastward to Denver, even the possibility of being drenched inside a roof tent was unappealing in the extreme. My spirits sank.

The early-bird shopping special had ended Friday. As a result, very few walkers and eaters were lined up outside the mall’s entrance. The Spare the Hares! people were nowhere in sight. I parked and hauled all my supplies up to the roof, where a small cluster of people was already beginning to gather. For the early morning musical entertainment today, the food fair organizers had hired a calliope player. The place sounded and felt like a half-empty merry-go-round.

I fired up the burners, set out the salad, bread, and cookies, and plopped the ribs on the grill, where they began to sizzle. That done, I survived the daily visit from the health inspector and started to serve the occasional guest. Pete, whose customers were equally sparse, brought me a triple-shot latte and my caterer’s uniform, which his wife had washed and pressed. I showed my gratitude by loading him down with ribs and cookies.

“This is probably the best brunch I’ll have this year,” he said appreciatively. I toasted him with the paper coffee cup. He frowned. When I looked confused, he said, “When you hold that cup up, turn the logo out, okay? I need all the advertising I can get.”

I obliged. After a very slow two hours, I packed up the leftovers, returned them to the van, and plucked Frances’s list and money from my purse. I had an hour to shop and make it to nearby Hotchkiss Skin & Hair. With any luck, the visit to the cosmetics counter would take less than ten minutes.

There were hardly any shoppers inside the department store either. Dusty Routt wasn’t at the Mignon counter. The only sales associate was Harriet Wells, and she was writing in the by-now-familiar large ledger.

“Hi-ho, remember me?” I called brightly as I approached.

Her look was glazed, then memories clicked into place and she said brightly, “The caterer!” She glanced from side to side and whispered, “Would you like another muffin? Tell me what you think is in this one. The store’s so dead today, no one will notice. You look starved.” Her laugh tinkled above all the crystal bottles of perfume and bright shelves of makeup.

I gratefully took a fragrant golden-brown muffin. I bit into it The orange flecks turned out to be carrot and the spice ginger. I truthfully told her the muffin was wonderful and asked for the recipe, always the most sincere form of thanks. While we were talking about the virtues of using sorghum versus honey for sweetener, the ceiling—or something nearby—cracked. Actually, there was a loud cracking sound. I glanced up at the security blind but could see nothing.

“What in the world …?” I demanded as Harriet offered me another muffin.

“Well, you know,” she said with a wise smile, “there is a fault line that runs right through Golden. We may be in for an earthquake yet!”

I finished the muffin, licked my fingertips, and brought out my list. As I started to tick off the items, Harriet’s eyes gleamed.

“Wait, wait,” she commanded me excitedly. “Let me get your client card. That’s the only way we’ll be able to keep track of all these products!”

I didn’t want to enlighten her that all this stuff was for someone else. If I did, we would have to start a client card for Frances, or at least amend the one she had, and on and on. As Harriet expertly assembled the lovely glass jars filled with creams and lotions, the ceiling, or wall, or whatever it was, made another ominous creak.

“Goodness!” she said, and looked up. “Maybe there’s a plumbing problem. Honestly!”

I handed over the money, feeling nervous, feeling that I wanted to get out of the store. But not quite yet. While she was making the change, I asked quickly, “So what do you think happened to Claire Satterfield?”

Harriet shook her head and sighed. “I think she was run down by a member of that horrible group. Those awful people saying”—she made a face—“spare the tares. They’ve bothered us before.”

“Really? How?”

“Oh! They come in here and yell at us. They say, ‘How can you sell cosmetics that are tested on poor, innocent animals?’ They make a scene and drive the customers away. It’s pathetic. Why don’t they just go out into the wild with the animals if they love them so much? Why bother us?” She showed me the receipt and made a perfunctory gesture to show the products and receipt to the camera. Then she ducked down and brought out my bag. I tucked it in the zip bag with the change and turned to leave.

Crea-eak! Craa-a-ack! went the wall of the security blind.

“For heaven’s sake!” exclaimed Harriet. We were standing not two feet away from each other. I felt another shiver of fear.

“You’d better call security,” I said.

Security came. It came in the form of Nick Gentileschi. Above the store entrance, the security blind floor broke open with a splintering crash. Gentileschi’s heavy body plummeted from overhead. Oh my God, I thought as his bulk in its dark polyester suit fell and fell. Oh my God, please, no … His body would have hit me if I hadn’t jumped out of the way. Instead, his weight landed hard on the glass-and-chrome Mignon counter. Metal shattered, glass crumpled, shards flew. At the last moment I thought to cover my eyes. Harriet Wells leapt back and screamed. She kept screaming like a woman possessed. When I uncovered my eyes, glass was everywhere. Gentileschi’s body had landed in an impossibly contorted position. I knew he was dead. In fact, from the stiffness of his body atop the shattered makeup counter, I guessed he’d been dead for several hours before his weight sent him tumbling out of the blind. A gaping hole above the store entrance was jagged with splintered wood. Inside the craggy hole was blackness. Harriet Wells screamed on.

“Oh, no, please,” I said as I backed up, away from the mess. “Please let this not be happening….”

Harriet’s screams turned into a sirenlike screech for help. Curious customers sidled up to the scene, like filings to a magnet. I was about to turn away, when a flash of paper caught my eye. Something slipped out of Nick Gentileschi’s pocket and rested next to the place where the linoleum met the plush gray carpeting.

The slip was actually two pieces of … what? I looked more closely. Photographs.

I leaned in and stared incredulously at two photographs taken at very close range. A large woman was half-naked, caught by the camera in the act of undressing. A dark skirt hung from the woman’s ample hips. A dark-and-light jacket was draped on a wall hook behind her. The top of her body was completely exposed; her breasts hung pendulously as the camera caught her action of slipping off her bra.

Even slightly out of focus, the woman was recognizable. It was Babs Braithwaite.

I backed away from the photographs, the shattered counter, and the sight of Nick Gentileschi contorted above fluorescent-lit displays. From the corner of my eye I could see Stan White hurtling down the escalator. Shoppers, surprised and morbidly curious, gathered on both ends of the aisle. My feet inched backward until I hit the table filled with zircons. The boxes tumbled. I fell on top of them. I realized that the gasping I heard was coming from me. I closed my mouth, rolled over, and saw Stan White display his badge to the onlookers.

“I’m from department store security!” he bellowed. “Please clear the store. Do not use this exit!” And with that, Stan White turned away from the hesitantly departing crowd and gazed dispassionately at Nick Gentileschi’s body. He felt for a pulse, then stepped into the aisle and loomed over me. In the background, I could hear Harriet sobbing.

“Are you all right?” he demanded.

“Yes,” I burbled from the floor, “I think so.” My hair was in my face and my skirt was tangled around my hips. I was having a hard time breathing.

“Did you see what happened?” When I nodded, Stan stabbed a stubby finger at me and barked, “Don’t leave.” He gulped and added, “Please.”

Leaving me sprawled amid the fake gems and their velvet boxes, he darted over to the remaining group of gaping spectators. Grimly, he herded them away from the area leading to the counter. Then he pulled displays into the aisles to isolate the area around the shattered glass, the destroyed merchandise, and Nick Gentileschi’s twisted corpse. I watched as he made call after call on the phone behind the cosmetics counter. Harriet sat on a low shelf, her knees to her chest, her back pressed against the cabinet that held the Frosted Cherries Jubilee lipsticks. She was whimpering uncontrollably. Her lovely, perfectly made-up face and manicured hands were streaked with blood from splinters of glass. Her blond twist of hair had fallen apart and hung in clumps and strands, like remnants of insulation.

I maneuvered myself behind the counter, carefully avoiding the mess, and asked if I could help. Her whimpers immediately turned to wails: “Twenty-eight years! Twenty-eight years in this business! And nothing, nothing has ever happened. Not like this. Why is this … why?” When I reached for some cotton balls to dab away the blood on her face, she made batting motions to get me away. “No, no, no!” she screamed. “Leave me alone! Go away!”

Fine, I thought, fine. Wait for the police, paramedics, whatever you want.

“Okay, please move back,” said Stan White once he was off the phone. “Please move away from the counter.” He scowled in my direction, apparently recognizing me for the first time. “You? What are you doing here again?”

“Nothing.” I squeezed past the mess again, in no mood for explanations.

He made an awkward move in my direction, then looked confused. When he caught shoplifters in the store, he knew what to do. When he had a corpse to deal with, however, he was less sure. “Don’t leave,” he ordered me again. “The police are coming. They want to know if anyone saw … if there were any witnesses.”

“I’m not going.” I stood, shaking, on the lush carpet I couldn’t bear to look at Nick Gentileschi’s corpse sprawled on the shattered Mignon counter. Nor could I listen to another moment of Harriet’s abject weeping. Dizziness swept over me. An empty seat in the shoe department beckoned. I sat down uneasily, making sure that I faced away from Nick Gentileschi’s body. The store’s overhead speakers crackled and the gentle background music stopped mid-bar. A female voice announced that owing to an emergency, Prince & Grogan was now closed. Apparently Stan White had called the office with the intercom. All shoppers should depart in an orderly fashion, the calm voice went on soothingly, either through the exit that went into the parking lot or via the elevator located next to Lingerie. This would take them down to the parking lot exit.

I glanced at the wall display of pumps, espadrilles, and walking shoes, and thought vaguely that the police wouldn’t want everyone dismissed. But the store had a reputation to uphold, and that reputation said the only excitement was in shopping. The dramatic loss of their security chief didn’t qualify as a good retail experience.

It wasn’t long before the Furman County Sheriff’s Department arrived in force. Tom must have been tied up with another investigation, because the stern-looking team strode in without him. A victim advocate accompanied them. I stayed only long enough to give my name and phone number and the very sparse details of what I’d heard and seen. Cracking noises. A body falling. No one suspicious around. Yes, I’d known the deceased, but only in passing. When the investigating officers asked if I knew whether he had any enemies, I said they might want to look at the photos that had fallen out of his pocket. Why? The cops wanted to know. I told them the woman in the pictures had claimed someone was behind the mirror when she was trying on a bathing suit yesterday. The investigating team took their pictures, brushed fingerprint powder over every surface in sight, and sealed up the photos from Nick Gentileschi’s pocket in evidence bags. They also strung up yellow police ribbons, assigned a smaller team to start on a search of the store in general and the security office in particular. The victim advocate asked if I needed help. I said I did not, but that I was fairly sure Harriet Wells needed quite a bit of it. A policeman stationed himself at each door. The store was now officially closed.

I looked at my watch: one-thirty. I should go home, I thought. Go home and cook. Forget this event, these people, this place. These people and their products are the farthest thing imaginable from what they say they offer And what did they say they offered? Beauty. Freedom from stress. Longevity. What a joke.

I walked out the exit by the parking lot. Rain pelted down. I slumped onto the curb and again fought dizziness.

Frances Markasian should have come herself to buy her cosmetics. If she had, she would have been the one to see Gentileschi tumble out of the blind and crash onto the glass. Thinking of Frances made my stomach turn over. She wouldn’t be sitting on a curb feeling ill. She’d be back there asking questions and making a pest out of herself.

I was crying. When I tried to wipe my face, I realized that somehow, through the horror and confusion, I was still clutching the bag with Frances’s Mignon purchases. The paper, damp and limp from the rain, rustled softly when I looked inside. Yes, there were her jars of stuff and a plastic bag of bills and loose change.

I started walking. I wasn’t ready to go back to the van. I needed to move, to clear my head. All around, people trotted through the rain to their cars or to the heavy main doors to the mall. I looked into a Prince & Grogan plate-glass window. I didn’t see the leggy mannequins clad in short black suits, but instead gaped at my bedraggled reflection. Standing there, watching my elongated, pained face, I thought about the body as it came falling down, down, down. What had Nick Gentileschi been doing up in the blind? Especially when department store security supposedly didn’t use them anymore? Why were the pictures of Babs in his pocket? Did this have anything to do with Claire’s murder?

The cars whooshed behind me on the wet thoroughfare. Oh, Claire, I found myself whispering, I am so sorry. I am so sorry I can’t figure this out for you. I am so sorry, Julian. It’s just getting worse, instead of resolved.

Like my van returning to Aspen Meadow by rote, I walked as if I had someplace to go. Where was I supposed to go? I couldn’t remember. My shoes sloshed through puddles. Cold droplets continued to beat down all around. Kids pedaled past me on bikes. One yelled something like Get inside, lady! But I didn’t acknowledge him. Forks of lightning flared in the distance. Thunder rumbled overhead. I walked on. I didn’t care about the wet, didn’t care that my caterer’s outfit was getting soaked. If I got pneumonia, I thought absurdly, I could go to Marla’s house and her nurse would take care of both of us. I walked down one street, then another. I saw Nick Gentileschi’s body tumble from a great height. Again I heard the sickening crack as his weight hit the glass counter.

Finally, I stopped. Where was the store, exactly? Where was the hospital? The mall?

Where was I, exactly?

The houses, street, sidewalk, shrubs, and fences swam slowly into focus. I had arrived in the older neighborhood of Aqua Bella that Dusty had pointed out so enviously when we were sipping our lattes on the mall’s garage roof. Of course, “older” in Denver usually means “from the 1950s.” Along the sidewalk where I stood, drenched and disoriented, a Frank Lloyd Wright-style redstone-and-brick ranch was flanked by a white Georgian two-story with pristine black shutters and a turreted blue and pink neo-Victorian mini-mansion. The Victorian was like a large feminine presence. No one had controlled the zoning along this street, unfortunately, and none of these lovely buildings was an actual domicile. A small sign at the end of the sidewalk to the ranch home indicated it was now the office for a trio of dentists. The Georgian was devoted to accounting.

A blue and pink picket fence primly separated the sidewalk from the lush green lawn in front of the Victorian. White wicker furniture brimming with blue and pink cushions dotted a spacious front porch. An elaborately lettered sign on the picket fence announced that the business was Hotchkiss Skin & Hair.

Behind a glass door intricately patterned with white metal, the blue front door to Hotchkiss opened. Behind the fence, the rain, and the glass, a silhouette appeared in the lighted doorway. The visage regarded me, then beckoned. It was the young, cheerful face of Dusty Routt.

I moved toward the Victorian house. Perhaps I had intended unconsciously to come here all along, since I had received the directions over the phone. But Dusty worked at Mignon, not at Hotchkiss. Hotchkiss was Mignon’s competitor. Dusty held the glass door open as I stumbled inside.

“Goldy! Jeez, come in … you’re, like, totally … Look at you! You’re a wreck! I mean … I saw in the appointment book that you were coming, but … you’re so late! What were you doing out in the rain? Where’s your van? Why didn’t you wear a raincoat?”

I found myself in a foyer decorated with pale pink carpeting, matte pink walls, small gold and crystal chandeliers, white leather and gilt wood French provincial chairs, and a long glass counter arrayed with cosmetic products. The place was so at odds with my drenched, wraithlike appearance that I let out a crazy cackle. Dusty stared. I couldn’t tell her what I was thinking—that Hotchkiss Skin & Hair looked like an upscale whorehouse.

A pretty woman stood behind the reception desk. Her wide, pale face boasted dark streaks of brownish-pink blush. Her voice was as soft as her swirled nimbus of cocoa-colored hair and pink mohair sweater. She asked, “Are you ready for your appointment?”

I looked at Dusty. Out of her Mignon uniform and wearing a white shirt and green culottes, she looked younger—more her age. I said, “Nick Gentileschi…”

Dusty tilted her head. “What about Nick? Did he come with you? Is he here?” She glanced back toward the rainswept sidewalk. “He wouldn’t come here,” she said, confused, “because he works at—”

I cleared my throat. “Nick’s dead. There’s been an accident at the store.”

Dusty’s carefully plucked eyebrows shot up. “Oh my God! Dead? Nick? It’s not true. Is it?” When I nodded, she said, “I’ve gotta go. Oh … this is unbelievable—”

“You are Mrs. Schulz, then?” inquired the soft-voiced woman at the desk. The pink mohair materialized as a dress around a voluptuous body. “How did you say you were going to take care of your charges today?”

“Uh …” I fumbled with the slippery opening to my pocketbook. What charges? “I need a cab,” I said uncertainly.

“We’ll call one for you,” Ms. Mohair assured me breathily. “We just need your credit card.”

I guess it had been a long time since I’d taken a cab. I thought they took only cash. I handed her my Visa.

“What happened to Nick?” Dusty demanded.

I was suddenly aware of being wet and very cold. “I have no idea. Dusty? Could I get a …?”

“A what?” she asked. “What happened to Nick?”

“I don’t know.” My teeth chattered. “One minute I was standing at the counter, the next he was crashing out of that blind above the store entrance—”

“The blind?” She was incredulous. “He fell out of the blind? What in the world was he doing up there?”

The woman with the soft voice reappeared with my credit card and a paper slip and I signed. For what, I wasn’t quite sure. What had happened to Marla’s coupon? “We can take you back now, Mrs. Schulz. Let’s get you a dry robe,” she said intimately, ignoring Dusty, “and put those damp things in our dryer. Shall we?”

It sounded good. In fact, it sounded wonderful.

“Gosh, Goldy,” said Dusty, “are you sure you want to do your facial now anyway?”

“Oh, I …”

Competing voices invaded my brain. I’m so sorry, Claire. I’m so sorry I couldn’t figure anything out.

I’d made this appointment with Hotchkiss Skin & Hair because I was trying to discover why and how Hotchkiss was copying or stealing from Mignon, and if the fierce competition between the cosmetics companies could extend to killing people. Behind the reception desk, I saw first one, then another woman scurry down a far hall. Both wore lab coats. But I felt unsteady. Stay here, where all was unknown? Or ask Dusty for a ride back to my van? Tom would certainly want to know what was going on. With sudden resolve, though, I decided to stay. I would manage, I would have this facial, I would call a cab. And I would tell Tom all about what had happened at the department store. But a question nagged. “Dusty,” I said, “what in the world are you doing here?”

She pressed her lips together and relieved me of my purse and the paper bag. Then she leaned in close and whispered, “Reggie Hotchkiss wants to hire me. I mean, he’s promised. We just had a meeting. You know, I just have to get away from Mignon. That place is crazy. Come on, I’ll take your stuff back.”

“Mrs. Schulz,” said the soft-voiced woman, who had materialized once again at my side, “just look at what a mess you are.” She took my arm with surprising firmness. A shiver with a life of its own went through my wet clothes. What a mess, indeed.

Dusty said she’d bring my stuff to my room when I was in the robe. The pink-mohair lady led me down the hall, where she put me in a small chamber that had the antiseptic feel of a doctor’s examination room. Instead of an examining table, however, the middle of the room boasted an enormous reclining chair. It was probably the throne where you got your facial. Large, imposing machines sat next to the chair. Ms. Mohair handed me a green hospital-type gown that tied in the front. She said in that soft, whispery voice, “Somebody will be with you momentarily.” Then she was gone.

Ravel’s Bolero was being piped incongruously into the professional-looking space. I stripped off my damp clothing and hung it on a hook, stepped gingerly across the black and white linoleum, and pulled a couple of paper towels from the dispenser over the sink. After what I’d seen fall from Nick Gentileschi’s pocket, I was paranoid about my own shivery nakedness. Who was watching? Oddly, the room held no mirrors. I glanced up at the ceiling—no cameras that I could discern—then chided myself for being ridiculous. I cinched the warm hospital gown around my middle, patted my damp hair with the paper towels, and took a deep breath.

Within moments a short, ponytailed woman of about twenty-five swished into the room. She was carrying a large plastic bag.

“These are yours,” she announced. “Your friend had to leave. Your purse and department store bag are inside. They’re wet.”

She dropped the bag lightly by the wall and shoved her hands deep into the pockets of her white lab coat. She frowned as she assessed me. She wore little makeup over an acne-scarred face that was quite plain. I don’t know why I found both of these physical aspects surprising. But her whole appearance, from the tightly pulled ponytail to her white stockings and white tied shoes said technician rather than beauty queen.

“Your hair is wet too,” she observed. She strode efficiently to a cupboard, retrieved a warm, folded towel, and handed it to me. I thanked her and rubbed the towel over my scalp. “But you did not make an appointment for hair,” she said with a slight, scolding shake of the head.

“This towel’s fine. My hair is just …” Well, my hair. No amount of money lavished on it was going to change that unstylish mass of curls into anything. “Let’s just start with the face today, okay?”

And start she did. While Bolero played in the background, the white-coated woman, whose name was Lane—short, crisp, efficient, fitting her persona—told me we were beginning the process with a thorough cleansing. Her fingers energetically massaged thick, creamy stuff onto my face which she then wiped off with a warm, wet towel. This was followed by a fruity-smelling toner, which she applied in simultaneous swipes across the left and right sides of my face.

“Okay!” she said when the toner was turning my face into what felt like a dry Popsicle. “I’m going to start a list of all the products you should be using for your face. For starters, Wizard cleanser and pore-closing toner.”

“Well, er, how much do they cost?”

She waved this away. “We can just put it on your card.”

“I’m sorry, I need to know.”

She consulted a sheet. “Thirty-six dollars for a ten-ounce bottle of cleanser.” Impatient. “Forty dollars for a twelve-ounce bottle of toner.”

I didn’t mean to gasp, but I did anyway. I saw Arch going shoeless for the rest of his life. “But that’s even more than Mignon! And I thought they were the most expensive.”

Lane pursed her lips, then announced: “We are the most expensive. Do you want to improve your skin or not? We are the best. You’ll see real results if you work with these products.”

I mumbled something along the lines of “Okay.”

Lane slapped down the pencil on her tray. “Let’s go to the next step, then.”

She turned on one of the imposing machines next to the chair. I became more nervous when she assured me that the machine was for brushing. Or, as I thought when Lane stroked my face with electric brushes attached to hoses that ran to the machine, it was sort of like getting a shoe polish for the face, minus the shoes and the polish.

When she was done, Lane gave me a disapproving, suspicious look and ordered me to close my eyes. Having learned my lesson from my Mignon makeover with Dusty, I closed my eyes without argument. Lane placed a wet cloth over my closed lids, levered the chair back, and turned on a rumbly machine that she told me was for steam.

“I’m taking your clothes to the dryer, and I’ll be back in twenty minutes,” she said. Her white nurse’s shoes squeaked toward the door. “Relax.”

Left to steam, my thoughts, and Bolero, I tried to unwind. I tried to think about what it was Maurice Ravel was setting to music. Unfortunately, all I could hear was the crash and thud of a vehicle hitting Claire, the shatter and crack as Nick Gentileschi fell out of the department store’s blind.

When Lane returned, she whipped the cloth off my eyes, turned off the steam, and retrieved what looked like a small magnifying glass from her pocket. I recoiled. My face had never been examined at close range.

“I’m going to turn off the light,” she declared bluntly, “and assess the amount of damage you’ve done over the years to your skin.”

By the time I’d managed to stammer, “Do I have to?” the overhead light was off, a purplish light had winked on, and Lane’s magnified eye was accompanied by tsk-tsk noises a la Sherlock Holmes. She flipped the lights back on, donned plastic gloves, and picked up a needle.

“Wait, wait.” I sat up quickly. “I thought women came in to have facials because it was fun and relaxing. Sort of like having a massage.”

“You’re going to look so much better,” she assured me. “We need to get rid of those blemishes.” She brandished the needle.

“Please, no,” I said feebly. “I have a real problem with … needles.”

Lane’s countenance was that of a nurse with an unpleasant but utterly necessary medication.

She said, “The receptionist reported you claimed you were terribly upset about your skin. Now you say you’re unsure about buying products, and you don’t want to have a facial. Are you certain you came in here really wanting to improve your appearance? Or is there some other reason you’re here?”

Paranoia reared its unattractive head again, and I succumbed. “It’s why I’m here,” I said meekly, and slumped back in the chair.

Lane poked and I shrieked. Again I got the displeased-nurse routine. Blemishes, she said as she poked again. I felt blood drip down my forehead. Lane dabbed at it. She put down the needle and, with two plastic-gloved fingers, squeezed the skin on my nose with all her might. I screamed again. At least with a dentist you got anesthetic.

Lane sighed reprovingly and brought the gloved hands to her abdomen. “Are you going to let me finish my work or not?”

“Not,” I said decisively, rubbing my poor, bent nose. The area above my nostrils felt as if it were on fire. My will—my entire desire in life—was now focused on getting out of Hotchkiss Skin & Hair.

“Do you just want your masque now?”

“Will it hurt?”

She rolled her eyes and sighed, then said, “No! Of course it won’t hurt.”

Lane had no credibility with me anymore. But I didn’t think a masque could be too bad unless you let it dry and it became more like a theater mask. Or maybe the masque would get to be like those masks they use in horror flicks to suffocate people…. Lane tapped her foot. Yes, I told her, I was desperate for the masque. She swabbed on some more thick, creamy stuff, draped towels over my face, and left. Oh, thank you, God, I said as I pulled the towels away and rubbed the cream off. Thank you, thank you, thank you for giving me a chance to get out of here. I didn’t want a masque, I didn’t want a facial, I certainly didn’t want any makeup.

I tiptoed over to my damp shoes and eased my feet inside. The rubber soles squished noisily as I headed for the door. I can’t escape in this robe, I realized with dismay. But how in the world would I find the dryer where they’d put my clothes? I retrieved the big plastic bag, grabbed the sack with Frances’s purchases, and put it in my purse, which I snapped shut. Clutching my purse, I peeked out in the hall. It was empty. I again thanked the Almighty and began to sneak past closed doors toward the back of the mansion. At each door I listened, but heard only silence, the buzz of the machines, or the low murmur of the facialists as they tortured other clients.

My whole problem, I thought as I moved from door to door down the hall, is that I am not a masochist. If I’d been a masochist, I would have endured all that pain for beauty. Then again, if I’d been a masochist, I would have stayed in my first marriage.

At the last closed door on the hall, I stopped. It was a wider door, the kind that usually goes to some kind of utility room. Inside a machine methodically whirred and thudded. A dryer.

I opened the door and whipped inside a tiny room that held what looked like a closet and a pantry covered with louvered doors. The door squeaked closed behind me. Shelves in the closet held neatly arrayed towels, uniforms, and large bottles of what I assumed to be cosmetic stuff. I creaked open the louvered doors and was rewarded with a washer and dryer. Above them and on each side were shelves filled with a much more haphazard assortment of stored items. These I ignored as I squeaked open the dryer door and reached in for my clothes. They were warm but still slightly damp.

Someone was coming. I nipped into the pantry and pinched my fingers closing the door. I don’t know why I was so afraid of being discovered aborting the facial, but I think it had something to do with the needle. The person who had come in was humming. I eased in behind a couple of white lab coats. Something like animal fur brushed my neck. Through the louvers I could see the hummer reaching for the bottles on the shelves. The fur began to tickle my neck. Sweat broke out on my cheeks. The hummer tapped the closet door shut with her foot and strolled out.

I creaked the door back open and reached behind me to snatch the fur away from my neck before I sneezed. No luck. A tiny but powerful convulsion escaped my lips and left my eyes watering. That would teach me to walk for blocks in the rain. Cursing and sniffling, I stepped out of the pantry clutching the fur thing. Wait. It was a wig, sort of a frosted blond affair. I tossed it down on the dryer, retrieved my clothes, and quickly dressed. As I was about to leave the room, my eyes slewed over to the wig again. Hairpieces frightened me, by and large. They were too much like dead animals. But I had seen this wig before.

I picked it up and examined it. Who had been wearing this monstrosity? Where had I seen her? A memory began to resolve itself. Before the Mignon banquet. I’d seen someone in the garage. A woman, dressed in bright yellow. Yes, I could see her striding purposefully toward the door, then sticking her head out the service entrance and demanding to know what was going on when Tom and I were trying to tend to Julian.

Then I remembered something else: Claire frowning when she recognized someone at the banquet. My saying, What? And her frustration. Her saying: Oh God. And then Dusty, the next day, saying: We saw you. We recognized you. Man, you are going to get into so much trouble.

Yes, I had seen this wig. Slender, good-looking Reggie Hotchkiss had been wearing it when he sneaked into the Mignon Fall into Color Banquet. It was at that banquet that he’d probably picked up the ideas he needed for his autumn catalogue. I just didn’t know what else he’d done there. Run down the very successful sales associate of a rival firm?

I tossed the wig back on the shelf. I slipped out the utility room door and saw illuminated red letters at the end of the hall: EXIT. Ten steps to freedom. No alarm went off as I pressed the door bar, landed on a concrete step, and inhaled cool, rain-dampened air. Here behind the Hotchkiss establishment, a ragtag lawn and overflowing rosebushes ran the length of the pink and blue picket fence. A rusty-hinged gate interrupted the fence between the brambles at the far end of the yard. Praying that I wasn’t being observed, I walked across the wet grass, lifted the latch, and felt a rush of light-headed relief as I escaped into an alley.

Steam misted off the streets of the Aqua Bella neighborhood. Sunlight struggled to cut through the thickly humid air. To the west, clouds lifted along the foothills, leaving trails of creamy fog snaking between dark green hills. To get oriented in the Denver area, the key is to remember that the mountains are always to the west. The mall was situated between the Rockies and me, so I started off at a moderate westward jog down the sidewalk. I hop-scotched over shiny patches of puddle. Behind me, I could almost imagine Lane’s terse, businesslike voice screaming, Stop that unmasqued woman!

But I was in no mood for entanglements. I panted and bumbled along. How could I have walked this far? I touched my forehead. It was still bleeding. Someday, I thought, Marla and I would have a good laugh about my Hotchkiss makeover masquerade.

By the time I slipped behind the wheel of my van, I thought I was going to have a heart attack myself. As I drove back to Aspen Meadow, I inhaled deep yoga-exercise breaths. Claire Satterfield had been dead for three days. Nick Gentileschi had tumbled out of the blind today. His body hadn’t even twitched when it landed.

How long had he been dead? And then there was Reggie Hotchkiss, who had spied at the Mignon banquet, under cover of wig. In addition to all that, tonight I was catering a chi-chi dinner for a couple up to their wealthy ears in the imbroglio: Claire’s presumed lover, Dr. Charles Braithwaite, and Charlie’s wife, Babs, the woman Nick Gentileschi had been covertly photographing in the Prince & Grogan fitting rooms.

How did I get myself into these situations?

When my van chugged off the interstate at the Aspen Meadow exit, the rain clouds had cleared and left an immense bluer-than-blue sky. I passed the country club, where sunlight glinted off the roof of the Braithwaites’ greenhouse at its high point on Aspen Knoll. It was from there that the guests would finish munching their fudge cookies and watch the Fourth of July fireworks display over Aspen Meadow Lake. Which would give me some time to do some snooping around in the infamous greenhouse.

I swung the van up to our house and saw that Julian had returned and left the Range Rover at a slight angle in the driveway. I parked in the one available spot on the street. When I hopped out, Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, was outside, pulling weeds. Her son Colin was on her back, snuggled into one of those corduroy baby-holders. I didn’t see Dusty, which was probably just as well. I couldn’t take any questioning on how the Hotchkiss facial had gone. Besides, I needed to phone Tom. I called a greeting to them, but Colin seemed fascinated by the mass of long-stemmed purple fireweed. Colin was so thin and tiny, it was hard to believe he was three months old. As he reached for a monarch butterfly on a fireweed stem, his little hand was dwarfed by the butterfly’s dark, outstretched wings. Deprived of his target, his head of gleaming strawberry-blond hair bobbed in my direction. Poor, sweet child, born too early, to a family that could scarcely manage to take care of him. I felt my heart squeeze inside my chest.

When I came through the security system, I smelled simmering onions, cooked potatoes, and … cigarette smoke. The latter seemed to be drifting down from the second story. At least it’s not hashish, I thought grimly as I took the stairs two at a time. In the spare bedroom at the front of the house, I found Julian sitting hunched over in the maple rocking chair I had used to rock Arch when he was an infant. Smoke curled from an unfiltered cigarette in his hands. His foot tapped the floor as he pushed back and forth. A small pile of ashes lay at his feet. He had not noticed me.

I said, “I’m back. What’s going on?”

He didn’t look around. His voice was morose, resigned. “Not much. I read your note and marinated the fruit. I cooked the potatoes and onions for the cucumber soup too.” His face twisted. “Did you find out any—?”

“Not yet. Actually, there’s some more bad news.” I sat down in the old love seat that now belonged to Scout the cat. “Want to hear it?”

“I guess.”

“Nick Gentileschi died at the store. He had an accident.”

Julian’s eyes opened in terror and disbelief. “What? The security guy? What happened? Does Tom know? What kind of accident?”

“Oh, Julian …” I sighed. “He fell out of one of those blinds. I don’t know more than that. I was just about to go call Tom. Want to come down?”

He seemed suddenly aware of the cigarette he held and tapped ashes into his palm, “I’ll be down in a little bit. Listen, Goldy, I’m sorry—”

“About what? I’m trying to help you—”

“It’s just that I don’t want you to get hurt.”

“I’m not going to get hurt. Now, I know you probably don’t want to talk about this, but do you think you’re going to be up to helping me with the Braithwaites’ party?”

His “Sure” was anything but. I walked pensively down to the kitchen. Before I could call Tom, the phone rang. It was Arch. He rarely called from the Keystone condo because the Jerk, who lavished money on himself, complained about any extra dollar Arch cost him. The only exception to this rule was on those rare occasions when John Richard had done something—failing to show up was one of his favorites—that made him feel guilty. When John Richard was hit by a rare attack of conscience, Arch would get loaded down with gifts he would never use. In fact, when my son came home from one of these weekends toting a new mountain bike, skis, or Rollerblades, I knew there’d been trouble.

I gripped the phone and tried not to sound panicked. “What’s wrong?”

“It’s not about Dad, don’t worry. He’s asleep in the other room,” he said in a low voice. “I think he had too much to drink at lunch. He’s having a nap.”

“Too much to—” I let out an exasperated breath. “Arch, do you need me to come and get you?”

“No, Mom, I’m cool. Please, don’t get hysterical. We’re going to walk to the fireworks up here.”

“I am not hysterical,” I said through clenched teeth.

“Listen, Mom. I’m just calling to see how Julian’s doing.”

I sighed and thought of the slumped figure in the upstairs bedroom. “Not too great.”

“Did you find out anything about Claire? Has Marla gotten out of the hospital?”

“Arch, I just got home myself. I’ll call you as soon as Tom figures out what’s going on. And I was just about to call Marla.”

“You know, I really do think Tom is great,” Arch assured me. Except I didn’t need to be reassured.

“Arch, why are you telling me this? You sound as if you’re in some kind of trouble. Did Dad hurt you? Please tell me.”

“Oh, Mom. You take everything so seriously. It’s just that I didn’t want Tom to think that I thought he was a pig or anything. I would never call him that.”

“He knows.”

“And I didn’t get to say good-bye to him because he left so early, and then Frances Markasian was waving that knife around later, and well, you know.”

“So everything is okay?”

“Yes, Mom! I was just sitting here thinking about Tom and Julian, and Marla, that’s all.”

“You’re feeling lonely.”

“Mom.”

“Okay, okay.”

He said he couldn’t wait to see us Sunday afternoon. And no, he was not looking forward to the fireworks because Dad had met a new friend and they were taking her along. She was afraid of loud noises, though, so they might have to leave early. He sighed in disappointment and said, “Peace, Mom.”

I hung up and banged my fist on the counter. If the new girlfriend didn’t like loud noises, she’d better find herself a new guy to date.

I put in a call to Marla’s house. The nurse said she was sleeping, but yes, she’d seen the lowfat pancakes. How was her frame of mind? I asked. Depressed, the nurse replied without elaboration. When could I come over, I wanted to know. Tomorrow. Marla was resting today after the trip home from the hospital; no visitors, no excursions. So much for Tony’s push to get her to the Braithwaites’ party. I even had the feeling the nurse had dealt with Tony in very short order. I said I’d be over tomorrow. You’ll have to make it in the afternoon, she announced before hanging up. I wished I could send that nurse out to deal with the Jerk.

I braced myself and punched the phone buttons again. If Tom wasn’t there, what would I say to his voice mail? But he snagged it after less than one ring.

“Schulz.”

“It’s me. I was at Prince & Grogan when Gentileschi—”

“I heard. He was strangled in the box up there. They call it a blind, where the security guys used to sit.”

“I know. Do they know who—”

“Negative. I’m going to be here late tonight working on this.”

“I saw the photos in his pocket, Tom. They’re of Babs Braithwaite.”

He sighed. “Goldy, you didn’t touch them, did you?”

“No, of course not.”

“Did anybody besides you see them?”

I tried to remember: Who else was around? Stan White, the security man, had come down the escalator; Harriet Wells had been whimpering behind the counter. I’d been the only customer within close range. “I don’t think so, maybe the other security guy saw them. I was there buying some stuff for Frances and … what was the deal with Gentileschi anyway? Did he always do that kind of thing? Spy on customers?”

Tom replied in a flat tone, “You should see the pictures we found at his house. Had a thing for large women. Not that they would like to hear what he was doing back there behind the mirrors.”

“Did you ever get the message I left you, that Babs Braithwaite was certain she’d heard something back behind the dressing room mirror? It was when the security guy nabbed me for eavesdropping.”

“Yeah, Miss G., I got your message. We’ve got one team investigating at the store now, and another questioning Mrs. Braithwaite and her husband. Dr. Braithwaite spent quite a bit of time and money in that department store, the assistant security guy tells us.”

“Tom, do you remember that I’m catering at their place tonight?”

“Uh, Miss Goldy? I don’t think so. Get somebody else. The Braithwaites are suspects in a homicide. Maybe two homicides. I don’t want you going in there and starting to snoop around. Let us do our work. Please. Also, and this is official now, you’re off the case. Thanks for your help, but it’s too dicey for you to do any more digging in this thing. It’s gotten too dangerous.”

“Oh come on, Tom. The Braithwaites are big wheels in the community. If I cancel, I’m sunk in my own hometown. Look, if either of the Braithwaites comes after me, I’ll put a vat of cucumber-mint soup between us.”

Tom muttered something unintelligible, but said nothing further. I remembered guiltily that I hadn’t even told him about the bleach water and the threatening note. Tom said he had two other calls coming in at the same time, general counsel for Prince & Grogan was having a stroke on line one, and his team at the Braithwaites’ house was clamoring to talk to him on line two. He’d get back to me.

With the police team crawling all over the Braithwaites’ place, I wondered if Babs still would even want to hold her annual party. I put in a phone call to her. A policeman I knew answered, and after some delay, Babs came on the line.

“Yes?” She was obviously unhappy to be interrupted.

“I apologize for calling,” I began, then stopped. What was I supposed to say? But I was just wondering if the cops would be done before the party? And by the way, I didn’t think those pictures did you justice? “Er, I was just wondering what the schedule was for tonight. When you needed us to set up, you know.”

Her voice became stiff with impatience. “Your contract says set up for food service, then food service, followed by packing up from nine or so until you’re done. The guests will start arriving at seven. How long do you need to set up for twelve people?”

“No more than an hour—”

“I won’t be able to supervise you. I’m having my hair and makeup done from five to six forty-five.”

“Not to worry, we do a great job supervising ourselves.”

She paused. “Will that boy be with you?” she asked curiously.

“My son? Or the nineteen-year-old fellow who helps me?”

“The teenager. The one who did all that damage to my car.”

I felt as if I were suddenly under the interrogation light, like the NFL coach who gets grilled on how many injured players will be in the starting lineup. I assumed an indifferent tone. “Julian will be with me.”

“How’s he holding up?”

I was very interested to know why she cared. But I merely replied, “He’s doing okay. Oh, Babs, by the way. My friend Marla says she didn’t recommend my business to you. I mean, since you said that she did, I was just wondering who in fact did the recommending. Just out of curiosity. You know? I want to thank whoever it was.”

Her voice rose irritably. “For heaven’s sake, I can’t remember who referred you to me!” She paused, then continued in an even higher tone: “Why, you’re not having second thoughts about coming tonight, are you? Don’t tell me you’re not ready. I don’t know who I’d get on such short notice!”

“Not to worry, Babs. We’ll be there. Around six.” Before she could start interrogating me again, I politely signed off and wished Arch could experience what it really meant to deal with someone hysterical.

I checked my watch: three o’clock. It was time to cook.

Like many wealthy clients, Babs Braithwaite wanted to host an extravagant catered dinner but did not want to pay much for it. “Can’t you make it look and taste sumptuous without using all those expensive ingredients?” she had demanded. “Can’t you cook without larding all the dishes with butter and cream? You know, the way caterers do?” As if she knew so much. Lowfat ingredients were usually more expensive and labor-intensive than traditional foods. In any event, after a lengthy discussion we had decided on a turkey curry served with raisin rice. Then Babs had loftily dismissed me with the announcement that since it was the Fourth, she would wear a red, white, and blue sari to go with the food. Everyone else was supposed to be decked out in red, white, and blue, she’d maintained in a resigned tone. I didn’t protest. I had long ago quit trying to figure out wealthy clients’ idiosyncrasies. At least she hadn’t told me to wear a sari. Or demanded only red, white, and blue food.

I sautéed the turkey, drained it, then moved on to chop fragrant piles of onion and apple. When these were sizzling in a wide frying pan, I started the sauce. As the pungent scent of curry filled the kitchen, I began to feel the tension in my shoulders loosen. My hands stopped shaking as I drizzled in skim milk fortified once again with powdered nonfat milk. This silky concoction did indeed provide the rich, thick consistency of whipping cream without fat. I smiled and tasted the curry sauce. It was divine. Working with food is always healing. The ingredients, the smells, the flavors—the delight in experimenting and putting a meal together—all these bring joy, no matter what the circumstances. I had another spoonful of the hot, creamy curry sauce. Doggone, but it was good. I was going to have to try it out on Arch and Julian.

When I was halfway through grating the vegetables for the slaw, there was a loud banging on the front door. Again I looked at my watch: three-fifteen. It couldn’t be either Tom or Arch. Alicia, my supplier, had made her visit and I had all the ingredients I needed. I turned off the blender and trudged to the door to peer through the peephole.

“No smoking,” I warned Frances Markasian when I opened the door. “And no ballistic knives.”

“Okay, okay!” She held up her large black purse as if for inspection. I waved it away. “Don’t be so paranoid, Goldy, I just want—”

But I was already walking away from her. “I’m working, so you’ll have to talk to me out in the kitchen.”

She followed dutifully and took a seat in one of the oak chairs while I peered at my recipe for vegetable slaw. Swathed in her usual black trench coat, she waited until I’d finished grating the carrots, radishes, jicama, and cucumbers before asking, “Where’s my stuff?”

I took out plump, gorgeous scallions and began to slice them. “What stuff? I don’t have any of your stuff!”

She rummaged through her bag for her pack of cigarettes, belatedly remembered she couldn’t smoke, and impatiently rapped the cigarette package on the table. “Excuse me, Goldy, but I seem to remember giving you three crisp hundred-dollar bills and a list of cosmetics to buy? Did you get them or not?”

Patience, I ordered myself as I turned away from the mountains of slaw ingredients. I had cooking to do, and this journalist could make herself into a worse pest than the infamous mountain pine beetle. I dug through my sorry purse and found the still-damp bag full of the cosmetics Frances had ordered. When I handed it to her, she took it greedily and dumped the jars, bottles, and her change—bills and coins—out on my kitchen table.

I said loudly, “Gee, Goldy! Thanks so much for going out of your way to buy these cosmetics! Of course, I already know they aren’t going to change my appearance one bit.”

Frances ignored me, pawed through the items on the tabletop, then swept a handful of frizzed black hair out of her eyes and shot me a quizzical look. “Where’s the receipt?”

“What?”

“Where’s the receipt? ¿Entiendes inglés? Did you get a receipt for what you spent my money on or not?”

“Excuse me, Frances, but your change is all there. Give me a break! What do you need your receipt for?”

“Give me a break!” Her face was furious. “You’re a businesswoman, you know the importance of a receipt! Without a receipt, this junk comes out of my pocket! Can’t you do anything right?” Then, to my astonishment, she scooped up the cosmetics and money, stuffed them into the bag, and stomped angrily out of the room. My front door slammed resoundingly behind her.

I felt my mouth fall open in bewilderment. What was going on here? I looked at the chopped vegetables, the unfinished cucumber soup, and the pans of marinating fruit. My sane inner voice quietly urged me to forget about Frances and her tantrums and get on with the work of the day. After all, she had that spring-loaded knife in her purse.

But another, angrier inner voice demanded to know how Frances had known I was home. In fact, this was the second time I’d suspected she was spying on me. The first had been when she’d shown up just as the Jerk was leaving this morning. How had she known then that I hadn’t left yet? How had she known this afternoon that I’d just returned home from the mall?

I rushed outside and looked up and down the street: no dark Fiat, no Frances. I saw motion across the street. Frances’s black coat was just visible moving beyond the stand of fireweed at the Routts’ place. I darted after her. If it was Frances, what was she doing with the Routts? Was Dusty feeding Frances information? Given all that Dusty had told me, that didn’t ring true. I had introduced them to each other at the Mignon banquet, for heaven’s sake. Whatever Frances was involved in preceded that introduction, unless they were both lying. What was it Tom had told me? In this business, expect to be deceived.

As I came up the graded driveway, I saw the black-coated figure duck through a door at the side of the house. From the outside it looked like an old-fashioned porch with jalousie windows instead of screens. I’d always assumed the saxophone music had been wafting out of this room, because the slatted windows were the only ones on the Routts’ house that faced the street. With some trepidation I started up the steps to this separate entrance. What would I say? Uh, excuse me, just trying to be neighborly, but by the way, what’s going on?

TURKEY CURRY WITH

RAISIN RICE

1 pound ground turkey

1 cup chopped unpeeled apple

1 cup chopped onion

1 ½ tablespoons olive oil

2 tablespoons all-purpose flour

1 tablespoon curry powder

1 tablespoon beef bouillon Granules

½ cup nonfat dry milk

2 cups skim milkIn a large sauté pan, sauté the turkey over medium-high heat, stirring frequently, until browned evenly. Drain the turkey on paper towels and set aside.Spray a wide nonstick skillet with vegetable oil spray. Over medium heat, sauté the apple and onion, stirring frequently, until the onion is translucent. Set aside.In another large skillet, heat the olive oil over low heat just until it is warm. Stir in the flour and curry powder. Heat and stir over medium-low heat until the flour begins to bubble. Combine the bouillon granules, dry milk, and skim milk; whisk until combined. (The bouillon granules will dissolve when they are heated in the sauce.) Gradually add the milk mixture to the curry mixture, continuing to stir over medium-low heat until the mixture thickens. When the mixture is thick, add the turkey and the apple-onion mixture. Stir well and heat through. Serve over Raisin Rice.

Serves 4

Raisin Rice: In a large nonstick skillet, toast 1 cup of raw white rice over medium heat, stirring frequently, until most of the rice is brown. (Appearance may be mottled; this is desirable.) Add ½ cup raisins and 2 ¼ cups lowfat chicken stock, bring the mixture to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover the pan, and cook for 25 minutes or until the liquid is absorbed.

LOWFAT CHICKEN STOCK

12 ⅓ cups canned chicken broth (2 49 ½-ounce cans)

1 large onion, chopped

1 carrot, chopped

3 to 3 ½ pounds chicken legs and thighs, skinned and all visible fat removed

12 ⅓ cups water (2 cans of water)

1 celery stalk with leaves

2 bay leaves

1 teaspoon dried thymeDiscard fat from the top of the cans of chicken broth. Heat a very large stockpot. (If you do not have a very large stockpot, you can divide the ingredients and make the stock in two stockpots.) Remove from the heat and spray twice with vegetable oil spray. Toss in the onion and carrot, lower the heat, and cover the pot. Cook, stirring frequently, over medium-high, add the chicken, and cook until the chicken flesh is browned on both sides, about 5 minutes. Pour in the chicken broth and water, add the celery and bay leaves, and bring to a boil. Boil for 5 minutes. As foam accumulates, skim it off and discard. Lower the heat to simmer and add the thyme. Simmer, covered, for 2 hours. Add water as necessary to keep the chicken covered with liquid.Remove the pot from the heat. Remove the chicken and allow to cool, then pick the meat from the bones and reserve for another use. Strain the stock and discard the vegetables and bay leaves. Cool to room temperature. Cover and refrigerate overnight. Lift any congealed fat from the stock and discard. Store for 2 or 3 days in the refrigerator or freeze for longer storage.

Makes 20 to 24 cups

The porch door was open. Frances stood next to a stout man whose white hair was brushed back in thin streaks. She was talking rapidly and intensely. Their backs were to me, and they were both oblivious of my presence. From the doorway I could see the porch room was simply furnished with a futon piled with unfashionably striped pillows, two mismatched chairs, and a table. On the table was an old rotary-dial telephone and a sax.

My attention was drawn to the older man listening intently to Frances. This, I assumed, was the grandfather I’d never seen. I tapped on the aluminum doorframe. Frances turned abruptly and fell silent.

“Excuse me?” I said politely. “May I come in?” Without waiting for a reply, I edged into the room. Through the jalousie windows on the other side of the small room, the roof of Frances’s Fiat was just visible. So this was where she’d been parking. But who had told her when I was home? Maybe the grandfather was the one who’d been spying on my house. Uneasily, I asked, “Is Dusty home?” The man turned slightly in my direction, but not fully. “Are you Dusty’s grandfather?” I asked politely. “I’m your neighbor, Goldy Schulz. Frances was just over at my house….” I offered my hand. He ignored it.

Mr. Routt’s face looked like a pie crust that had spilled over its edges. I looked at Frances for guidance, but her face had tightened in quiet fury at my appearance.

I said, “Mr. Routt?”

He turned large, watery blue eyes to me. There was no way this man had been spying on my house. He was blind.

I’m sorry,” I stammered. “Please forgive the intrusion,” I added bitterly. I gave Frances the most withering glance I could muster. She assumed an indifferent demeanor and shrugged, as if to say, You got yourself into this.

“It’s not her fault,” said the old man. His voice cracked and wheezed, as if it were rusted from lack of use. “She was doing something for me. Please, Mrs. Schulz, don’t be upset with Frances.”

The three of us stood in the spare, dismal room for a moment without speaking. The man shifted from one foot to the other, as if he were trying to decide what to tell me.

“I’m John Routt, Mrs. Schulz,” he said at last. His rumpled white shirt hung in soft folds, as if it had been washed and dried but not ironed. The shirt was slack over John Routt’s chest, but a button strained to stay clasped over his copious stomach. His gray pants were as wrinkled as the shirt. I had the painful feeling that he did his own laundry.

“Forgive me,” I said again, “I was just trying to find out why Frances here”—I glared at her—“always seems to be turning up only when she’s certain I’m home.” Then I remembered the truck outside my window during the storm. I added, “Or spying on me at night.”

“I am not now, nor have I ever, been engaged in spying on you,” Frances countered defensively. “I’ve got better things to do with my time.”

“Mr. Routt,” I said, “I don’t know what’s going on here or how you’re involved.” To Frances, I said acidly, “Do you want to come back to my house, Ms. Journalism? Tell me the real reason you went in disguise to Prince & Grogan? Or is department store intelligence not on the same level with spying on a caterer?”

Frances drew a cigarette out of her purse. She lit it and said, “Goldy, chill out. I’m working on a story. That’s all you’ve ever needed to know.” She blew smoke in my direction.

“Oh, really? Are you going to do a story on how the Prince & Grogan head of security was found dead this afternoon?”

This had the desired effect. Frances’s body jerked. The cigarette dropped from her fingers.

“Nicholas Gentileschi?” John Routt said. “Dead?”

“Yes. Did you know him?”

John Routt was shaking his head. “No. No, I did not.”

I said, “Well, then—”

His shoulders slumped. There was an uncomfortable silence. “You see, Mrs. Schulz,” he said finally. “I was doing something for Frances and she was doing something for me.”

“And what was that? I’m sorry, but this does affect our family … you see, my helper, Julian Teller, lost a dear friend—”

“I know,” said John Routt. He absentmindedly patted his wrinkled pants. “Oh, Mrs. Schulz, the reason I hired Frances is that Nicholas Gentileschi suspected my granddaughter of theft. I’m sorry to hear he died, but I’m not surprised, with the people we’re dealing with. Frances and I were trying to clear Dusty. That’s why we needed the receipt. That’s why Frances was asking you for it. Does that make sense? Dusty was being accused of not giving receipts, but our suspicion was that the whole place has a receipt problem.”

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand. I don’t know what happened to the receipt. I saw it, but then Nick Gentileschi’s body … the receipt is probably back at the store. And I still don’t understand why you would need it.”

John Routt said, “There has been some theft at the store. I was afraid Gentileschi suspected I was behind the thievery. You see, what you may not know is that I have a history with Foucault-Reiser Cosmetics.”

I was suddenly aware of how much work I had to do before deadline time for the Braithwaites’ party. What John Routt was saying confused me. Outside, raindrops began to fall.

I said, “What history? What theft?”

He invited me to sit down. When the three of us were settled in the sparsely decorated room, he smiled wryly. “Mrs. Schulz, did your husband serve in Vietnam?”

Taken off guard, I said, “Well, yes, as a matter of fact. That was before I knew him, though.”

“And he came back and became a policeman,” Mr. Routt said.

“He … finished his degree first, I think. Then he went into law enforcement.”

Frances grunted, but John Routt held up an age-spotted hand. “When I got back from Korea in ’fifty-four, I was twenty-one. I tried to get into the police academy in—”

“Don’t, John,” Frances interrupted sharply. “Don’t tell her where. No specifics. She doesn’t need to know, for crying out loud! Goldy, I’m still trying to salvage a story here. If you don’t mind, I’d like to keep you and your investigator husband out of this until it’s published. Please at least let me do that.”

John Routt shook his head. He continued, “… tried to get into the police academy … in the small town I was from. But there weren’t any openings. No openings. There or anywhere else.” He paused for a long time, his eyes closed. When he opened them he clucked his tongue. “Did you ever feel utterly worthless, Mrs. Schulz? As if everything that went wrong in your life Was your fault?”

“Yes,” I said evenly, “I have felt that way. For seven years, as a matter of fact.”

“And what did you do to change things?” he asked. His watery eyes blinked as he waited for my answer.

“I got a divorce and started a catering business.”

Again John Routt clucked. “I should have done that! My goodness. Actually, I didn’t want a divorce, I just wanted a job. But there weren’t any jobs.” He sighed. “So I robbed a bank. More accurately, I drove the getaway car for a couple of buddies of mine.”

The bank job. Tom had mentioned a famous bank robbery involving a man named Routt. His memory had been correct. Our neighbor was the same Routt. No wonder Sally Routt had told Dusty she was afraid of what the church helping to build their house might find out. “So if you were driving a getaway car, you … must have been able to—” I began. Frances groaned.

“Yes,” John Routt said softly. “I had my vision then. But I got caught and convicted for armed robbery. Eventually I ended up at the state penitentiary in—”

“John!” Frances interjected.

“I went to a state penitentiary,” John Routt continued. “I was young,” he said. “I was married. And so, Mrs. Schulz, when I was promised points in the time-off-for-good-behavior program, I took it.” For the first time, his voice wavered. His head drooped forward. Frances and I sat very still as John Routt collected himself. “Catch was,” he went on, “to get my time off, I had to volunteer for cosmetics testing from a company called Foucault-Reiser.” He let out a self-deprecating cackle. “And here I am! The chemical the company used on me caused an infection in one eye. It spread to the other eye as quick as you could imagine. They don’t use that chemical in cosmetics, thank the Lord. Because of me! I’m the reason your eyes don’t burn when you smear your mascara.”

“God help us,” I said softly, appalled. I remembered Frances’s cryptic answer to my demand to know what she was up to: Did you ever hear of Ray Charles?

Frances stood up. “John, you don’t have to tell her all this. We’ll get Mignon, one way or another. It is going to happen.”

“Let me finish telling Mrs. Schulz what I’m going to tell her, will you, Frances? Please?”

She flopped back in her chair and rooted around for a cigarette.

John Routt shook his head and gestured with his large, trembling hands. Overhead, the rain beat down harder. “The warden was being paid by Foucault-Reiser, and he said if I told what had happened when their chemical ruined my eyes, I’d never get out of that place. Foucault-Reiser gave me some money, and I was released early. And before you ask, no, I didn’t sue.” When he shook his head, some strands of white hair came loose again. He patted them back into place. “Nobody but rich folks sued back then. I learned to play the saxophone. My wife, Jaylene, supported us by being a nurse. But when Jaylene died last year, I came to live with my daughter. Sally’s had a hard life … connected up with two men who wouldn’t marry her … well. Anyway, Sally’s the one, Dusty’s mother, that is, who read me the article Frances did on the high cost of cosmetics. That’s why Frances is here. I called her. I told her I might have a big story for her newspaper.” He chuckled. “She was doing it all for me, trying to get justice, trying to get a big story.” His voice turned serious. “I didn’t want my granddaughter to know. God only knows why she took a job with that same company. She knew what happened to me, but … I guess it’s like the children of race car drivers, wanting to get involved in the same thing….” He cackled sarcastically. “They must pay well. They’ve always paid well. But no matter what, I didn’t want to get Dusty involved.”

I could hear Dusty’s voice as she applied eyeshadow to my lids: Don’t open your eyes! You don’t know what could happen! God only knew why she’d taken the job, indeed. I wondered where Dusty was.

Frances said, “John—”

“Frances, don’t keep on. Mrs. Schulz?”

“Please call me Goldy.”

“I just want to finish telling you, since you wanted to know why Frances was here. Last month, just after Frances and I started working together, Dusty told us they were targeting her for employee theft.” He shook his head. “I thought, oh my Lord! They must know—Mignon, the parent company, Foucault-Reiser—someone must know I’m trying to get back at them! So they’re targeting my granddaughter! They’re trying to frame her with employee theft!”

Frances could no longer contain herself. “And then Claire Satterfield was run down,” she interrupted. “For a while I even thought they were trying to get me.”

I felt more bewildered than ever. “Who is they? And why spy on me?”

Frances Markasian shook her head at my profound ignorance. “First of all, Goldy,” she said tartly, “no one is spying on you.” She blew out smoke. “John has superdeveloped hearing. We knew you had the food fair this morning, and I didn’t want to risk going into that store again so soon. So we had this idea that you could buy some stuff for us, and see if any of the other sales associates were neglecting to give receipts. That’s probably all that happened to Dusty … she just forgot to give somebody a receipt! Anyway … John heard your van come back, that’s how we knew you were home. That’s it. They is Mignon Cosmetics, Goldy.” She announced it the way a math teacher explains the end of a formula to a slow student. “It’s all a conspiracy, don’t you see?”

“No, I don’t see.”

Frances’s voice became frustrated. “Mignon wanted to undermine John’s story, so they cast suspicion on his granddaughter. When that didn’t work, they killed Claire Satterfield, one of their top sales producers. And now they’ve killed the security guy. If John comes forward with his story, they’ll be able to say, ‘Ah-ha! This is the guy who’s been causing all our problems, a convict undermining our company using hired killers!’ Don’t you get it?”

I’m not long on conspiracy theories. The JFK assassination still has me stumped. Watergate had seemed beyond belief, and it had actually been true. But Frances, I could tell, was not going to be dissuaded. And I wasn’t going to argue with her. My kitchen was calling. I had cooking to do if the Braithwaites’ guests were going to eat. Tom and the cops could separate the myth from the reality. I had just one last question.

“Frances, why were you so insistent about having the receipt?”

“Because Dusty’s been in so much trouble—” John began.

“Because Dusty was convinced she was being framed,” Frances rasped. “Claire said Gentileschi had been watching Dusty since the last inventory.”

“Forgive me for being thick,” I interrupted. “Why since the inventory?”

John waved Frances’s objections away. He said, “It goes like this: A customer, say it’s you”—he gestured with an open hand—“makes a large cash purchase. Say you buy … a scarf. The employee makes a big show of putting your receipt in the bag, but instead he palms it.” He closed his hand. “Then the employee uses your receipt to do a cash refund to himself. If you discover you don’t have the receipt at the end of the day, you—the shopper—you say, oops, I musta lost it in all my shopping. And nobody’s the wiser until inventory time six months later, when they find out a scarf’s been shoplifted. Or at least, that’s what they think.”

“Oh, my,” I said. “And had Prince & Grogan suffered a lot of loss?”

“Prince & Grogan just did their big inventory in June,” Frances replied impatiently. “The store sharks were out to find out what had happened to thousands of dollars’ worth of shoes, costume jewelry, lipstick, and perfume. That’s probably why the security guy was so quick to come after you yesterday.” Her eyes narrowed to knowing slits.

“But why would Harriet not give me—” I began.

Frances said, “I think Mignon has told Harriet Wells that Dusty is a potential problem to the company. Mignon could have told Harriet that when a big cash sale is made, put in Dusty’s associate number. In other words, ring it up as if Dusty had made the sale. Then keep the receipt, and ring the return in as a cash refund, also to her associate number, so she looks guilty all the way around. And it’s all computerized, so it looks official. I’m telling you, they’re trying to frame her.”

“That’s quite a conspiracy, if you asked me.”

“Exactly. If you’ll pardon my saying so, it’s the cosmetics company, stupid.”

“Okey-doke,” I said, rising. This time I didn’t hold my hand out to John Routt, I just touched his forearm. “Thank you for telling me your whole story, Mr. Routt. Do you mind if I share it with my husband? He might want to come over and chat with you.”

John Routt’s voice caught in his throat. He seemed to sense I thought Frances’s theory was baloney. Perhaps he even suspected that I’d lost the receipt, which was what I suspected myself. After a moment he said, “Do you think we still have a chance? Will people care what happened in the past? Now that all these other crimes are happening? I don’t want Dusty to be hurt. She knows nothing of my dealings with Frances.”

“But it was through Dusty that you found out Claire had had other boyfriends? And Frances suspected one of them was a good-looking animal-rights activist?” I asked him.

He hung his head. No wonder Frances had seemed to have so much information so early. Right from the beginning, she’d developed speculations—bizarre guesses, as it turned out—to go with Claire’s being killed.

“Mrs. Schulz,” said John Routt, “do you think people will want to hear my story?”

“I hope so,” I said delicately. “Frances won’t give up,” I added truthfully. “You can count on her. Good luck.”

I excused myself and ran through the raindrops toward my house and my kitchen. Once I was safely ensconced in chopping a pile of mint leaves, I heard Frances’s Fiat roar away.

“Where’ve you been?” Julian asked as he toasted the kernels for the raisin rice.

“At the Routts’ place.”

“You were gone a long time.”

“I’m sorry. I’m working, I’m working.”

In my absence, Julian had finished the slaw. I swirled yogurt and the freshly chopped mint into the soup, and we continued to work together in silence. We had a quiet teamwork in the kitchen that I would sorely miss when he went off to school. I reached for the ingredients for fudge cookies and wondered how much round-trip plane tickets cost from Denver to Ithaca.

“Are you okay?” Julian asked as he poured stock over the golden brown rice and it let out a delicious, steamy hiss.

“Oh, yes.” What could have happened to that damn receipt? Had I ever had it? Had Harriet put it in the bag or handed it back to me with my change? But the change was in the bag. I’d never opened my wallet. “I just … Julian, why was Dusty expelled from Elk Park Prep?”

“I really have no idea. You know, they were about to move into the Habitat House, and I guess her mom begged the school authorities to hush it up. I mean, since the Habitat House was sponsored by the church and all. They didn’t want to look like the kind of people you wouldn’t want to have in your law-abiding middle-class neighborhood, I guess.”

Well, well. This undoubtedly was why I hadn’t heard through the, town grapevine that an ex-convict was living across the street. The Routts had managed to keep that quiet too. I asked, “Could Dusty have been expelled for stealing?”

He laughed. “Man, I doubt it. Right after she left, I had four CDs stolen from my locker. So if they threw Dusty out because they thought she was a thief, they didn’t get the right person. Why do you care?”

“Oh, I don’t know. She just seems so … needy or something. By the way, Arch called asking about you.” Julian raised his eyebrows. “So what should I have told him? How are you, Julian?”

He sighed. “Functioning. Listen, We’ve still got two hours before we’re due up at the Braithwaites’ place. If you think you can finish the rice, I’d like to take some food over to Marla’s house. Lowfat, of course.”

“Hey, I was born making fudge cookies and curry at the same time. But I should warn you—Marla’s storm-trooper nurse may not let you see her.”

He turned on our Jenn-Air grill and brought out some chicken breasts he’d marinated separately. “I don’t really need to see her. I just want her to … start eating again. What is it you’re always telling me?”

“When All Else Fails, Send in Food.”

“Exactly.” He laid the chicken pieces on the grill; they sputtered invitingly. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d had a regular meal. A caterer’s life. I stirred more of the cream alternative into the curry, took a final taste, and started in on the fudge cookies.

Julian started to tremble. When I looked over at him, he ran out of the kitchen and I finished the grilling. When he returned, his face splotchy, his eyes red, he said he didn’t want to talk. If that was okay. I said it was fine, and helped him wrap up a dinner care package for Marla.

After he left, that angry inner voice nagged at me as I carefully sifted flour and cocoa powder. Claire Satterfield’s death remained a bizarre, inescapable event. I whipped egg whites and added the dry ingredients, then stirred the whole concoction together. Tom wanted me out of the case. Sorry, Tom. Not when I must help Julian.

Before the store inventory, someone had been stealing from Mignon Cosmetics. One shoplifting theory was that employees palmed the merchandise receipts instead of giving them to customers, and then used the receipts later to get cash refunds. Who were the people there most often? Harriet, Claire, Dusty: All three knew the workings of the camera. But would they have dared to steal right in front of it? And of course there was Shaman Krill, who might have been involved in the thievery as part of his nasty campaign to destroy the cosmetics company. How could he get the receipts, if that indeed was how the shoplifting was done? If he shoplifted directly, then he might have been seen—or photographed—by Gentileschi or Stan White. Of course, if Nick Gentileschi had been unsavory enough to take surreptitious photos of Babs Braithwaite, there was no telling what other activities he could have been involved in. And then there was John Routt. He couldn’t see to shoplift, so he was out, and Frances was up in the stratosphere with her conspiracy theories.

That left Reggie Hotchkiss. The man with the wig. He had spied on Mignon, and he’d shamelessly copied their promo campaign for fall products. Would he also have tried to sabotage them?

I dropped perfect rounds of shiny fudge batter onto a cookie sheet, set the cookie sheet into the oven, and stirred the curry. Maybe Reggie Hotchkiss would be at the Braithwaites’ house tonight. Babs wanted to impress people, and the Hotchkiss Heir Apparent would be a perfect name for her guest list. I wondered who was doing her makeup.

I set aside the curry and rice to cool before Julian packed them into the van. Within half an hour he returned with the good news that although Marla was still asleep, the nurse had gratefully taken the dinner he’d brought and said his aunt had told her he was a brilliant cook. And yes, the nurse had said, Julian could come over tomorrow when I visited, as long as we didn’t upset Marla.

“Who, us?” I said with a laugh as I started frosting the cooled fudge cookies.

Without being asked, Julian packed up the curry and rice, opened the door to the walk-in, and began hoisting boxes to go into the van. He said, “I’m the calmest person I know. Also the most depressed.”

“Oh, Julian, what can I—”

“Nothing. And don’t ask me again if I want to stay home, because the answer is no.”

Resigned, I again decorated the Vanilla-iced fudge cookies by lightly dusting them with cocoa powder. While I took a quick shower, Julian finished packing the van. As we drove in silence to the Aspen Meadow Country Club area, I sneaked a glance at Julian’s pale, exhausted face. I thought of all my friends who’d tried to fix me up with their single male neighbors, cousins, colleagues, coaches, and postal workers when I was divorced. Now, finally, I understood their impulse, because more than anything I wanted someone for Julian to find comfort from, as I had with Tom. But no friend can force that loving other person on you, I’d learned. If I hadn’t stumbled into Tom in the course of my catering business, I’d probably still be the woman with a chip on her shoulder who refused to be comforted by anyone.

The stone entryway to the country club area had been draped with swathes of red, white, and blue fabric. I swung the van past an exuberant group of kids with sparklers and up toward Aspen Knoll.

“What was it exactly that Babs’s parents did to earn their fortune?” Julian asked as we passed hillocks of elegant, showy landscaping that featured lush sprays of pampas grass, miniature aspens, iris of every conceivable hue, and masses and masses of pink and yellow perennials.

“Butter,” I said.

“And here I thought all the money in this part of the country was tied up with oil.”

I was still laughing when we pulled around to the back entrance of the colossal contemporary-style house. Neither Charles nor Babs was in sight. We didn’t have any luck at the garage door, so we tried the front. A maid directed us to deck stairs that led to the side door to the kitchen. After we’d trekked up and down those stairs eleven times to unload our supplies, I began to wonder how much the Braithwaites had to pay someone to bring in the groceries. I also wondered about my boxes: They all said “Fourth of July party at the Braithwaites.” I hadn’t labeled the cartons, nor had I noticed that Julian had labeled them earlier. Well, he had to have taken them out of the refrigerator, so I knew they had to be right.

We were running slightly behind schedule, so the first order of business was to scope the place. The living room, where Julian and I would serve the soup and skewers as hors d’oeuvre, had a bar at the ready. It was an enormous room decorated in an Oriental style, which meant lots of heavy mahogany tables, silk screens, and low-slung silk-covered couches and chairs. Bowls of white and red peonies graced the mantelpiece and bar. The maid had already set the dining room table for twelve. A lovely floral arrangement of red roses, white lilies, and blue gladiolas carried out the July Fourth theme for the evening. Each place also boasted a miniature American flag with the name of the guest engraved on its flagpole. We circled the table under the maid’s watchful eye. I saw what I was hoping for. Mr. Reginald Hotchkiss was indeed one of the invited guests.

I sighed and tried to think of a strategy for asking him a few questions. Or for doing any sleuthing around this immense estate. When I was back in the kitchen, I looked out the window at Charles Braithwaite’s greenhouse. With little actual cooking ahead, I’d surely have time to sneak down there while it was still light outside and look for a blue rose or two. The curry was done, all it needed was reheating. Ditto the rice. I knelt and opened the first carton, then stared at the contents. My eyes aren’t working, I thought. Something’s wrong. I leaned back on my heels, suddenly dizzy. What were the symptoms of heart attack? Indigestion, cold sweat, feeling light-headed. This isn’t happening, I thought. Maybe I’m going into cardiac arrest.

I looked back inside the box. There was no curry. There was no raisin rice. There was no vegetable slaw. There were neatly packed boxes of arborio rice, lowfat chicken broth, even several large bags of slightly thawed shrimp. And a note to me, in Tom Schulz’s unmistakable scrawl. I opened it with trembling hands.Dear Miss Goldy,Sorry about this, but I really don’t want you snooping at the Braithwaites’ place tonight, and knowing you, that’s precisely what you have in mind. You didn’t tell me someone hit you with bleach water and wrote you a threatening note, Julian told me. You are in danger, dear wife. The only way to prevent you from getting into more trouble is to switch food on you so that you have to spend all your time cooking instead of sneaking around getting you—and me—into trouble. So: attached is my recipe for Shrimp Risotto. I had a Denver chef prepare all the ingredients for your menu. It perfectly meets Babs Braithwaite’s requirement of being lowfat. And you can tell her it’s even low-cost, since the shrimp is being donated by your local homicide investigator. She should be pleased as punch to be getting large shrimp for the price of ground turkey. And we’ll all be pleased to eat turkey curry every day next week.Don’t be mad at Julian. I asked him to pick up the boxes and told him it was a nice surprise for you. I know you won’t be pleased, because risotto is time-consuming and demands that the cook be there every second to attend to it. But that’s what I want, Goldy. You doing your job and me doing mine. Don’t be too mad at me. I’m just trying to think of both of us.—Tom

“Brauuugh!” I hollered. Don’t be too angry with him? I was going to kill him with my bare hands. “Julian!” I roared. “How the hell could you do this to me? How could you let him do this to me?”

“Let him do what?” Julian bounded over and picked up the note. As he was reading it, the maid appeared in the kitchen.

“The mistress would like to see the two of you when you have a minute,” she announced.

Well, that was just great. I looked at all the food—the new food—that had to be prepared.

The maid cleared her throat. “The mistress—”

“Right now?” I demanded. “Does she have to see me this very minute?” I didn’t have a speech ready yet.

“Yes,” replied the maid. “First bedroom at the top of the stairs.”

My stomach made an unexpected growl, no doubt caused by hunger, apprehension at seeing “the mistress,” and worry about preparing the accursed risotto. Julian, reading my mind, told me to go ahead. He’d read the recipe and start setting us up. No wonder he’d given me that guilty look at the house, and packed all the boxes so efficiently into the van while I was taking a shower.

“You and I are going to have a talk,” I told him. “I won’t be long.” I marched out of the kitchen. I had my teeth clenched so lightly and was moving so fast, I failed to see that the next surface after the tiled kitchen floor was a slick green marble foyer. I avoided breaking my derrière by springing for the winding staircase. I landed facedown on the fourth stair up, and saw from very close range that the stairs were carpeted with a thick white wool weave, the kind you see either in ads or in houses without children. I stood up and walked more cautiously past two large silk screens showing carp floating in an ocean of gold. Again I felt my jaw clench with anger, and I averted my eyes. Carp made me think of bodies of water, and thinking of bodies of water made me think of shrimp, and thinking of shrimp in general and shrimp risotto in particular renewed a fury that was rapidly becoming volcanic. When I came to the top of the stairs, I took a deep breath and sat down facing the upstairs hallway. Relax, I told myself. Think about something else. How much you love preparing labor-intensive Italian food, for example.

When that didn’t work, I took a few deep yoga breaths. I should go see Babs, I thought. Maybe I can get her to tell me something I don’t know about Claire. Or about Claire and her husband.

But I wasn’t ready. I let air out of my lungs and stared at two portraits hanging on the opposite wall. The one on the left was of Babs, flatteringly painted with a somewhat slimmer face than the actuality. But the artist had been right on target with wide pink brushstrokes that had frozen Babs’s girlish-insecure smile permanently into place. The other painting showed a bespectacled Charles looking somber and resigned, even a trifle defeated. Here, too, however, the painter had found the single feature, that which spoke volumes about the personality he sought to capture. In the painting, Charles’s long, unruly pale hair said, I want to be wild, so that the effect he conveyed was a cross between a college professor and Harpo Marx.

From behind a door just down the hall I heard laughing and light rock music. I felt a surge of impatience. I had work to do. Oh, man, did I ever have work to do. But I had to go in and tell “the mistress” what was going on. My knuckles rapped on the cold white wood.

There was a giggled “Come on in!” and I pushed the door open with dread. Sometimes—especially in the summer, for reasons I did not understand—clients started the party early by beginning to indulge in alcoholic beverages long before their guests arrived. The results ranged from enthusiastically kissing someone else’s spouse to falling into their own swimming pools.

I walked tentatively into the spacious boudoir. Suddenly I felt like Alice, miniaturized in Wonderland, except that I had landed not in water but in the middle of a giant wedding bouquet. Roses, roses, and more roses were everywhere; they filled every available space. White roses, red roses, pink roses, and yellow roses were bunched in vases, arranged in baskets, gathered into bowls that bedecked every shelf, bureau, and windowsill. Lush scent filled the air. It was unnerving.

SHRIMP RISOTTO WITH

PORTOBELLO MUSHROOMS

1 tablespoon dry sherry

1 ½ cups chopped portobello mushrooms

4 to 4 ½ cups lowfat chicken stock (see preceding recipe)

1 cup water

1 teaspoon Old Bay Seasoning

¾ A pound (about 20 to 22) large “Easy-Peel” Shrimp

1 tablespoon olive oil

½ cup finely chopped onion

1 garlic clove, pressed

1 ¼ cups Arborio rice

1 teaspoon finely chopped fresh thyme

4 cups broccoli floretsPour the sherry over the chopped mushrooms, stir, and set aside to marinate while you prepare the risotto.In a large saucepan, bring 1 cup of the chicken stock, the water, and the Old Bay Seasoning to a boil. Add the shrimp and poach for 3 to 5 minutes or until just pink. Remove and shell; set aside.Heat of teaspoons of the olive oil in a heavy-bottomed skillet. Add the onion and sauté over medium heat for 2 to 5 minutes or until it is limp. Add the garlic and rice. Cook and stir for 1 minute or until the rice just begins to change color. Continuing to stir over medium-low heat, add the remaining chicken stock ⅔ cup at a time, stirring until the liquid is absorbed. Continue the process until the rice is tender and the mixture is creamy (this can take up to 30 minutes).Heat the other teaspoon of olive oil in a small sauté pan and briefly sauté the marinated mushroom pieces over medium-high heat until they release their liquid. Remove from the heat.Steam the broccoli for 5 to 6 minutes or until it is bright green and tender.Stir the cooked shrimp, fresh thyme, and mushrooms into the cooked risotto and stir over medium-low heat until heated through. Place the broccoli around the edge of a large platter. Fill the center with the risotto.

Serves 4 to 6

I struggled for my bearings. In the midst of the bower, two figures were visible in front of a lighted bank of mirrors at the far end of the room. It took me a moment to realize that the seated person was Babs Braithwaite. With her hair full of rollers, her face covered with pasty-looking goo, and her large body swathed in a pink terry-cloth robe, she looked like a matronly alien in a science fiction movie. Standing next to her, an impeccably restored Harriet Wells wore a crisp white knee-length smock. Below the smock, her legs emerged long and ballerinalike. Harriet turned her sparkling smile on me and I saw a small bandage on her forehead. She sure didn’t look like someone who was sixty-two, much less someone who’d been surprised earlier by a dead body tumbling down on the glass counter in front of her.

“Well, come on in!” Babs called gaily into the mirror. “Have one of Harriet’s herb rolls! I don’t suppose you’d better have any Asti Spumante though. Well, we’ve got juice. Lowcal!” Babs cried impatiently, “Well, come on, Goldy, we’re not going to bite! Where’s that young fellow who works for you?”

“Getting the food set up. Aah, there’s something I need to talk to you—”

“Don’t you think your assistant deserves a snack too?” Babs’s speech was already slurred. When she talked, the facial paste moved up and down.

“Julian’s fine,” I assured her. “He really needs to work on getting things going. As do I, actually.” Call me old-fashioned, but I didn’t think it would be appropriate to bring Julian into a rose-filled boudoir where the partially clad hostess was halfway to being plastered, in more ways than one. If Julian was still intent on a career in food service, he’d have plenty of time to discover just how idiosyncratic clients could be. And just how idiosyncratic errant spouses could be.

“Well, you come on, then,” said Babs, disgruntled. “This’ll just take a minute. Have a little snack and come on over, I want to talk to you about tonight.”

Babs allowed Harriet to start wiping off the pink goo. From my newfound knowledge, I recognized that it was a cosmetic masque. I strolled over to the silver teacart. The cart’s top shelf held a globe vase of white and pink roses, a silver ice bucket containing a large green bottle set at a rakish angle, two tulip champagne glasses next to a stack of luncheon plates, a woven silver basket of puffed, delectable-looking rolls, and a silver plate piled with scoops of chèvre and pats of butter. My stomach growled in reproval, so to be sociable I reached for a plate, a roll, a dollop of chèvre, and one of those inviting pats of butter. When I pulled the roll apart, I was surprised to see it was speckled with bits of green.

“The rolls contain rosemary from my garden.” Harriet shot a quick, shy smile in my direction. “You don’t have to guess this time.”

I took a bite. The soft, herb-flavored roll was feathery and light. “Out of this world,” I told her.

Harriet nodded as she told Babs to close her eyes and relax. With her lids shut, Babs asked, “Did you know the police were here all afternoon, Goldy?”

“Aah,” I said, and stalling, took another bite of my roll. Babs was a gossip who was always digging for nuggets, it seemed. I needed to be careful. Not only that, but how I would steer the conversation from the cops visiting to shrimp risotto was going to be tricky. “Seems to me I did hear about that. Harriet probably told you about the terrible thing that happened at the store.”

“You’re damn right she did,” Babs said gruffly. “Don’t you remember that day I told you somebody was back in the dressing room when I was changing into a bathing suit? I told you!” Tears trickled out over the remaining goop on her face. “I’m so embarrassed!”

Harriet patted her shoulder. “Don’t upset yourself, it’ll just make your nose red. Come now, dear.” More patting. “Everything’s going to be just fine.”

I nibbled more roll and tried to think of what to say. Well I sure am glad I never bought a bathing suit there would be kind of crass.

Babs sniffled mightily, grabbed the tissues Harriet offered, and dabbed at her closed eyes. She said, “So how are the police doing in their investigation?”

“I really don’t have a clue,” I replied truthfully, “I’ve been too busy even to talk to my husband.” And when I do talk to him, it’s not going to be about the investigation, you can be sure of that. It’s going to be about what a pain-in-the-behind preparing shrimp risotto from scratch is….

Babs opened one eye. “Yes, I’ve been hearing from one of our guests just how busy you’ve been. That’s why I was wondering if you were doing a little undercover work for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department.” The eye glared at me accusingly.

“Excuse me?”

Harriet’s shoulders slumped in frustration as Babs slapped her hand away impatiently. “Reggie Hotchkiss is an important member of this community, Goldy,” Babs said. “He’s not someone you or I or anyone else can afford to alienate. If there’s police work to be done, leave it to the police.”

“I didn’t alienate Hotchkiss,” I said defensively. “I haven’t even seen him today. And the last thing I would want to do, believe me, is get in the way of police work.” And of course now, I wasn’t going to have a chance to. “And Babs, I do need to talk to you about the menu—”

“Reggie called just an hour ago,” Babs accused. She pointed a freshly manicured nail. “He said you’d gone to his boutique and pretended you wanted a facial, then went snooping all around and sneaked out when no one was looking!”

I finished the roll and put the empty plate down on the tray. “I had an appointment for a facial, which I kept. When the technician started poking me with a needle, I told her to stop and I left.” All of this was technically true. “That’s it. And I paid in advance, too, for a procedure they didn’t even have to finish.”

Babs leaned back and allowed Harriet to smoothe moisturizer on her cheeks and throat. “Look, Goldy, I’m just trying to calm things down before the party. You understand that, don’t you? I used to be a client of Hotchkiss, but now I’ve gone over to Mignon, because Harriet just makes me look so much better. And I’m sure I’m not the only one. Reggie’s green with envy, of course, and he’s always been a big sponsor of our playhouse fund-raisers, so I have to keep a good relationship with him. Don’t upset him, will you? You know he has such a temper.”

“I won’t upset him,” I said acidly. “But I think he knows a lot more about Mignon Cosmetics than he’s revealing.” Did I know Reggie had a temper? All I knew was that he was a pretty smooth industrial spy. Harriet stopped putting on Babs’s makeup and gave me a very puzzled look, which I ignored. “Please, Babs,” I blurted out. “There’s something I have to tell you. My … er … shipment of ground turkey didn’t come in. I substituted large, very expensive shrimp, and I’m absorbing the cost difference myself. I’ll be making a risotto, and it’s a very delicious—”

“I know what risotto is,” she snapped. “I love it.” She pondered my announcement for a moment, clearly glad she’d be getting prime shellfish for a ground-poultry price. “Fine, then, change the menu if you have to. I guess I’ll have to find something to wear besides my sari.”

“Well, I regret—”

“How’s your assistant fellow doing?” she asked abruptly. Since this was the second time she’d asked about him, I grew wary.

“He’s in the kitchen starting the—”

“I didn’t ask what was he doing,” Babs interrupted as Harriet dotted concealer under her eye. “I asked you how he was doing.”

“He’s doing fine,” I said evenly.

“But I thought he was involved with that girl who was run over at the mall. Wasn’t he? I’m sure I heard that somewhere.”

“He was,” I said, again careful. I wanted to protect Julian from Babs’s tongue, and I was afraid we were getting into uncharted territory.

Babs lifted her chin for Harriet to dab green stuff on her reddish nose. After Harriet had rubbed the green in, her swift fingers deftly distributed foundation over Babs’s face. Presto: The green disappeared and there were no more dark bags under Babs’s eyes, no more red nose. Her face was a smooth, even tone, I was impressed.

Babs turned around again in her white leather chair. Her eyes didn’t have any makeup on them yet, but they still bored into me. “Was Julian going steady with Claire Satterfield?” she asked icily.

“Going steady?” I asked. Now, there was a term I hadn’t heard in a long time. “You mean, were they seeing each other to the exclusion of all others?”

“Whatever.” Babs’s voice was scathing. Her eyes never left my face.

“Yes, Babs, I think they were going steady. Now, if you’ll pardon me, I do need to get back down to the kitchen if you want to have your party tonight.”

Without another word Babs turned back to the mirror. Harriet gave me a quick sympathetic glance. Actually, I felt sorrier for her than she did for me. If it was up to me to make Babs Braithwaite beautiful on a regular basis, I’d find some new line of work.

Within twenty minutes, Harriet Wells had finished her makeup miracle and departed. While Julian busied himself shelling the shrimp—he dared not look at me—I stared at the menu Tom had written up and some Denver chef had assembled the ingredients for:Fourth of July Ethnic Celebration

Cucumber Gazpacho

Grilled Focaccia with Garlic

Shrimp Risotto with Portobello Mushrooms

Caesar Salad

Vanilla-Frosted Fudge Cookies

Well, now, wasn’t that nice. I noted that Tom had had the chef make a batch of the fudge cookies from my recipe. Maybe his hired cook used the kitchen down at the sheriff’s department. I could imagine Tom insisting he had done the right thing. The bowl of dark red gazpacho, thick with chunks of cucumber, was snuggled next to nuggets of focaccia dough. Once I’d patted the dough out into satiny rounds, brushed them with olive oil, and inserted slivers of garlic at judicious intervals, Julian showed me where in the Braithwaites’ three refrigerators he’d found spots to chill the other courses. The first kitchen cooler was devoted to food, the second to liquor, the third to flowers. While I was working on the focaccia, he’d sandwiched the gazpacho between bottles of Vouvray and wedged the salad underneath a bowl of roses. On the deck off the kitchen he had also lit off the gas grill without incident. Soon the focaccia loaves were sizzling merrily and sending up clouds of succulent smoke.

I looked out at Aspen Meadow Lake and wondered if Tom was feeling even remotely remorseful for sneaking around getting food switched on me. Despite my anger over what he’d done, I felt a pang from missing him on the holiday. Although I’d never thought the Fourth of July was very romantic, a little candlelit dinner around one A.M. would have been nice … once we’d had our argument about the food and the investigation and done some delicious making-up. Then I thought about Marla. I hoped she was resting comfortably, and not worrying about Tony Royce. And then there was Julian, who’d had great plans to take a nighttime picnic to the lake tonight after he’d helped me set up for the Braithwaites. He and Claire had planned to watch the fireworks together. I searched his face for a sign of what he was thinking, but he was inscrutable.

Now that we both knew the layout of the house and kitchen, we quickly discussed how we would orchestrate cooking and serving. When the guests began pulling up in their Porsches and Miatas, we were trying to remove the last focaccia loaf without burning our fingers. Suddenly, I saw Charles Braithwaite, his white-blond hair shimmering in the late afternoon sun as he trudged up from his greenhouse. His face was downcast. With no obvious enthusiasm he removed his gloves and headed for the living-room side of the house.

“Guess he’s not really a party kind of guy,” Julian observed.

I tsked. “With us catering his Fourth? Crazy. Look out, I need you to grab the other side of the platter so that the loaves don’t go skittering off the deck.” He did so and I added, “Gotta say, Big J., I think Charlie-baby is more than a little crazy, anyway.”

“No, no, he’s not,” said Julian defensively as the tray of fragrant grilled loaves teetered between us, “he’s a good guy. I told you the time he had our senior bio class over to look at how he does genetic engineering. It was cool. Like a spy mission.” Julian smiled wryly through the plumes of garlic-scented barbecue smoke.

“Great.” I looked back, but Charles had disappeared through a side door. The last thing I was going to do was mention to Julian that not only had Charlie been obsessed with secrecy; he’d gone mad over Claire Satterfield. “Better arrange the soup, we should be serving it in half an hour.”

“O captain, my captain, wherefore art thou, my captain?” Julian said as he did as directed. I lifted the platters of bread and tried not to smile. He bowed in my direction and doffed a pretend hat Maybe he would recover. Maybe he was just acting.

I said, “Let’s try to have run in spite of Tom’s stunt. We’re still going to make a lot of money tonight.”

“Then it’s fun by definition,” he said grimly.

When I came out to the living room with the loaves, the guests, all clad in some variation of red, white, and blue, were chatting amiably. Tony Royce, resplendent in a bright red shirt, navy bandanna, and white pants, had had the guts to invite another woman to replace Marla. His date was plump and fortyish, her bleached-blond hair held up in two perky pigtails. Her outfit matched Tony’s. Although I didn’t know her, something about her said wealthy widow. Too bad for Tony that his brownies were still in my walk-in refrigerator, along with the turkey curry. Reggie Hotchkiss, playing the part of casual cool rich guy, wore blue jeans and a shirt printed with a collage of the American flag. In my role as servant, I didn’t dare tell Reg that his apparel came off as unpatriotic But I couldn’t have enlightened him anyway, as Reg made a great point of giving me his back when I offered him the platter of focaccia wedges. La-de-da, I thought. So much for sympathizing with the proletariat.

I did feel sorry for Charles Braithwaite, however, who had either forgotten or not cared to dress in the national colors mandated by his wife. Well, I thought the dress code was a pretty corny idea too. Charles didn’t appear to have an opinion. With his long, lanky frame still completely clothed in khaki, he seemed oblivious. It was clear Charlie-baby would rather be in his greenhouse, or on safari with the French Foreign Legion—anywhere but here. By the time I reached him with the focaccia tray, he was slumped by a silk-draped corner window listening with a pained expression to Tony Royce’s date. She was complaining about how impossible it was to grow orchids indoors in Colorado. They just seem to know they’re not in a rain forest, she lamented. Charles groaned sadly, as if he’d give anything to be in the rain forest.

I whisked back out to the kitchen, added broth to the Arborio rice speckled with garlic and onion, stirred, and then helped Julian ladle chilled, chunky gazpacho into cold soup bowls. After sprinkling the soup with chopped scallions, I placed the bowls around the dining room table, then hustled back to the kitchen to add more broth to the risotto. I wiggled a spoon through the mixture, tossed homemade croutons for the salad in a mixture of olive oil and melted butter, stirred the risotto again, tossed the salad, and stirred more broth into the risotto. When Julian headed off to move the guests through the soup course, I stepped out on the deck to grill extra Portobello mushrooms and curse Tom Schulz. Forget the idea of making up over a romantic dinner. He’d have to pay for this little trick with a weekend at the Broadmoor.

In the fading light, the view of Aspen Meadow and the lake was even more spectacular than when we arrived. As the sun slipped rapidly behind the mountains to the west, a few rays backlit brilliant pink skeins of cloud. Darkness, and the fireworks, were just over ah hour away. I flipped the large mushroom caps and allowed my eyes to rest on the gently sloping acreage around the house. Two paths led from the house to the lower grounds. About a hundred yards down, Charles’s greenhouse was separated from a small garden filled with lawn chairs by a split rail fence twined with rosebushes. It was these, I surmised, that must have provided the blooms for Babs’s bedroom. Beyond the knoll, the roads coming into Aspen Meadow were already clogged with firework spectators from Denver.

Julian had cleared the soup bowls and finished arranging the salads when I returned with the mushrooms. He served the salads while I stirred the remaining ingredients into the steaming risotto. Plump shrimp were nestled invitingly between chunks of sherry-soaked Portobello mushrooms in the bed of luscious, creamy rice. Julian had steamed fresh broccoli to a bright green, and I artfully surrounded the risotto with the emerald-colored florets. Reggie Hotchkiss finally acknowledged my presence by giving me an angry, wide-eyed stare when I offered the platter. Of course, I was eager to tell him how much I disliked him, his procedures, and his silly outfit, but I kept my lips firmly sealed. When the guests had polished off the risotto and Julian had begun clearing the plates, I came out to the kitchen to get the fudge cookies. Unfortunately, Reggie Hotchkiss followed me.

I switched on the coffee urn and tried to ignore him as I reached for the cookie tin. I didn’t want to get upset on a festive occasion, especially a festive, lucrative occasion. Let the mood fit the food, we always say in the food business. But when Reggie marched up in his gaudy print shirt and edged between me and the dessert-plate platter, my mood turned decidedly dark.

“Would you please go back out to the dining room?” I said in a pained, sweet voice. I reached for the container of fudge cookies and arranged them decoratively on a separate piece of stoneware.

When I looked up, the brown hair around Reggie Hotchkiss’s bald spot was trembling. His thin, good-looking face was filled with rage. “I’m not going anywhere until you tell me what you and your fascist-pig husband are doing investigating my place of business without a search warrant.”

I leaned back, startled. A temptation arose to use language that certainly would never get Goldilocks’ Catering invited back to the Braithwaites anytime soon. To keep my temper in check, I reached out for a fudge cookie, brought it to my mouth, and took a huge bite. The dark, velvety moistness melted over my tongue. I closed my eyes and chewed. It was better than a shot of tequila.

“Are you going to answer me,” Reggie yelled, “or are you going to stuff your face? What kind of damn caterer are you anyway?”

This eruption brought a furious, flushed Julian catapulting into the room. He slammed an uneven stack of plates down on the counter and hollered, “What in the fucking hell is going on out here?”

So much for future catering at the Braithwaites. I calmly swallowed the fudge cookie, squeezed past Reggie, and hoisted the platter of cookies. This I offered to Julian.

“Would you please,” I asked with as much charm as possible, “take these goodies out to the guests? Mr. Hotchkiss wants to have a chat with me, and we’re going to have to go outside, I’m afraid.”

But Julian didn’t take the tray. Instead, he addressed Reggie Hotchkiss: “You touch her, and I will beat your bald head to a pulp. Understand?” His sneakers squeaked on the tile floor as he grabbed the platter from me. “I’m going to be out on that deck in five minutes. Five minutes. Got it?”

Reggie Hotchkiss stared at the ceiling. He said, “Ah, but I do feel such a bond with the younger members of the working class.”

Julian glared at him in disbelief, then pushed through the door to the dining room.

“Come on, Reg, you want to talk, let’s make it snappy,” I said as I led the way to the side deck.

The sun had set, and the sky, now violet, promised a perfect backdrop for fireworks. I sighed and wished fervently that Reggie were not there. Unfortunately, he placed his imposing self with its red, white, and blue shirt once again in front of my face.

“First,” he said suddenly, holding up one index finger, “you call my place of business. You say”—and here he raised his voice to a falsetto that resembled nothing that had ever come out of my mouth—“‘oh, my, but I want to buy all kinds of stuff from your fall catalogue!’ Then next”—voice back down, a second finger up—“you make an appointment under false pretenses—”

I’d suddenly had enough. “Don’t you dare bully me,” I said evenly. “I made an appointment. I kept it. I even paid for a job that didn’t get finished. What’s your complaint, anyway? I’ve got work to do and you’re interrupting it.”

“Oh, I’m interrupting your work, oh, excuse me.” Reggie flailed his arms. “And what about all our new products that you wanted to order?”

“You mean all those products you stole from the fall line of Mignon Cosmetics? Those?”

His face colored in great red and white splotches that dashed with the loud shirt. “What?” he bellowed. “What?”

“Excuse me, Reg,” I said, furious myself now, “I think you know quite well what I’m talking about. I catered that banquet for Mignon. You were there too, spying in your cute blond wig. You got your list of what you figured would be money-making Mignon products and you just copied them into your fall catalogue. Anybody with half a brain could see the plagiarism.”

His face contorted with rage. Maybe I’d gone too far, maybe it took a full brain to figure the theft he’d committed. But he’d made me so angry with his accusations, I couldn’t help it. And besides, I hadn’t told him the cute blond wig had fallen on my head when I was escaping Lane, the needle-wielding facialist.

“You are in some kind of trouble,” Reggie warned in an ominous voice. This time the index finger trembled when he pointed. “You have just dug yourself into a hole so deep, you’ll never get out, lady. You—”

“Hey, you stupid fuck!” yelled Julian from the deck door. He strode angrily out onto the deck and squared off against Reggie’s patriotically clad paunch. “What’d I tell you about not threatening her?”

“I know who you are too,” Reggie raged at Julian, still wagging his finger. “You’re the low-class creep that Claire Satterfield had finally decided was her one and only. Lucky you, boy. She went from robbing the grave to robbing the cradle!” The colors in his face were decidedly unhealthy.

“You better watch what you say,” growled Julian, suddenly aware, as was I, that the rest of the guests had appeared on the other deck, their faces filled with curiosity about the disappearance of their fellow guest, their servers, and the resulting commotion.

Reggie held up his hands. “No competition from me, guy. I didn’t want to sleep with her, I just wanted to hire her. That woman could sell cosmetics just by standing still. How was she in bed?”

That did it. Julian lunged forward. Reggie began to whack indiscriminately. I tried to step between them and caught the brunt of Julian’s forceful, angry body on one side and Reggie’s chest on the other.

From the middle of the male sandwich, I choked out, “Go inside, Julian! Please!”

He obeyed by whirling around and striding angrily back into the kitchen. Reggie Hotchkiss fell against the deck rail. Absent male support, I tottered on the deck planks. I caught my balance just a moment before my trajectory would have landed me on the grill. The pain from Julian’s body crashing into mine was concentrated in my head. I rubbed my temples and tried to clear my brain.

When I looked up at Reggie Hotchkiss, he had recovered. Standing stock-still, he hissed, “I have been mistreated and misjudged, and I am not going to forget it.”

“Fine.”

He brushed imaginary dust off the American-flag shirt and made his final pronouncement in my direction. “In the classless society,” he said as he headed for the deck stairs, “there will be no need for servants. You will be obsolete.” He trod heavily down the wooden steps and headed for his Bentley, presumably not the same one he had driven up the steps of the Lincoln Memorial.

Everyone was staring. I asked lightly, “In the classless society, who does the cooking?”

Sensing that the excitement was over, the guests on the deck turned their attention back to Babs. Her perfectly made-up face was trembling with anger, but she managed to announce breathlessly that, goodness, time was marching on! Each guest was to carry a sparkler and a glass of sparkling wine down to the lower garden. Lawn chairs were set up there, she trilled on. Even as she spoke, the maid was moving across the yard lighting upright torches. The dark-haired woman Reggie Hotchkiss had come with volunteered to light the sparklers and pour the wine. Her high, laughing voice seemed to indicate that she minded not in the least that Reggie had deserted her.

But there was more abandonment going on. In the fading light, Charles Braithwaite skulked away from his guests, walking swiftly down the path toward his greenhouse. From the furtive, quick nature of his stride, it didn’t look as if his purpose was to set up chairs, join in festivities, or have sparkling anything.

I took a deep breath of evening air and tried to remember what I still had to do. Babs was paying her maid to stay late and clean up, so all Julian and I faced was packing the pans and containers we had brought and schlepping them back down the deck stairs to the van. But cigarette smoke drifting upward from underneath the deck made me doubt Julian’s commitment to the packing task.

“If a caterer is smoking next to the house,” I announced downward into the deepening darkness, “that could get him into distinct trouble with the hostess, to the extent that a certain caterer and her capable assistant wouldn’t get paid. We might not get paid anyway, after having a little squabble with a guest.” I didn’t tell him I needed help. If Julian wanted to unwind from his encounter with Reggie Hotchkiss, then that was fine by me, as long as he didn’t get into any more arguments. Arch was in Keystone; Tom was working late; I had nothing to look forward to except an empty house and a rousing argument with Tom over switching my food. The later I got to it, the better.

The glowing butt of Julian’s cigarette moved past one of the torches. I watched him turn not toward the garden, but in the direction of the greenhouse. After I’d brought our platters in from outside and come back out to check that the grill was off and the deck clear, I couldn’t see him anymore, as the guests holding their champagne and their twinkling sparklers moved in a slow, loud knot down to the chairs.

The maid bustled about helping me clean pans. I checked my watch when all the catering supplies were in boxes: Nine forty-five. Julian had not returned. The fireworks would be starting soon. There was no sign of Charles Braithwaite either, but that didn’t surprise me. I decided to wait ten more minutes out on the deck. It was not like Julian to be inconsiderate. On the other hand, he’d been so upset that he probably lost track of time.

There was a flash of light followed by a loud peh-beh! sound and a puff of gray smoke beside the lake. A white shot of light rocketed upward, paused, and then a shower of white lights sprayed down from the sky over Aspen Meadow. The blossom of brilliance reflected gloriously in the smooth surface of the lake. The show had begun.

There was another boom and flash, and this time the shower of overhead glitter was emerald. In the few seconds of light, my eyes scanned the garden and the greenhouse. Julian’s silhouette was briefly visible, along with the smoke from a cigarette. He was standing beside the rose-laden fence.

For heaven’s sake, I wondered, what was he doing? An explosion-generated scream accompanied the next luminous fall of bits of light, and I felt a wave of unease. Impulsively, I headed toward the torchlit path. Maybe Julian was watching the fireworks and had forgotten about me completely. Maybe he was in one of his grieving-and-smoking spells and needed me to snap him out of it.

I made my way down the paved walk and learned to fix the path ahead by stopping at the torches, then waiting for the intermittent sprays of colored lights overhead. I knew I was getting close when the heady smell of roses and the laughter of Babs and her guests announced my proximity to the split-rail fence. I maneuvered around the fence and soon found myself at the edge of the greenhouse.

“Julian!” I whispered. “Where are you?”

“Over here!” came his called response after a moment. “Come on around to the front!”

I followed his voice and tried to figure out where the front was. In a flash of pink and blue sparkles that reflected in the near side of the greenhouse panes, I saw that I was on the shorter wall. The door was probably somewhere along the longer one. When I came around to the length side of the greenhouse rectangle, I could make Julian out. He was standing beside a slightly open door.

“Julian! For heaven’s sake! What are you doing?”

“Sorry if you’ve been waiting for me,” he said when I was by his side. “I was thinking about that awful Hotchkiss guy … and smoking where Babs couldn’t see me … and then I … well, I just got here. The door is open, and that worries me.”

“You stayed down here in the dark, and left me to wonder what in the world had befallen you, and now you’re worried about a door? So what about the damn door!”

Julian’s earnest, boyish face and blunt-cut blond hair was suddenly revealed by a glistening shower of red, white, and blue. “Don’t be upset,” he pleaded. “It’s just that Dr. Braithwaite … you don’t understand, he would never leave this place open! Especially if he was going to be having guests who were strangers. The guy’s a security nut about his experiments. I don’t know where he is, but I think I should stay here and guard the place until he gets back. He’s got a lot of stuff in there that’s pretty dangerous.”

I took a deep breath and tried to think. Really, Julian’s loyalty to Charles Braithwaite was admirable. Misguided, but admirable.

“Okay look,” I told him, “we can’t stay here and wait for the host to show. Just close and lock the door. Please.”

“No,” said Julian stubbornly. “I owe it to Dr. Braithwaite at least to check if there’s been any damage. Then we can call the police or something.”

“Okay then,” I said as amiably as possible. “Let’s go inside and turn on the light, if there is one, and see if there’s been any vandalism or whatever. Maybe there’s a phone to call the main house or the police. Otherwise, we really need to go back up to the house.”

“Okay, okay.” Together, we moved up the concrete steps to the open door. “Actually,” he added meekly, “I was kind of afraid to go in there alone.”

Well, that was just peachy, I thought rather indignantly, as my hand felt along the inside of the Plexiglas. Did a lot of stuff that’s pretty dangerous include woman-eating plants? I groped along the slick surface. My fingers brushed something cold and I instinctively recoiled. Then I realized it was a conduit leading to a light switch. Triumphantly, my fingers found the switch. I flipped on an overhead fluorescent fixture.

After the near darkness it took a moment to adjust to the light. Julian stepped forward and peered around the greenhouse, which really looked more like a lab than a place to raise flowers. Row upon row of tables was neatly piled with equipment that meant nothing to me. There were plants arranged on shelves too, a cornucopia of flora in all stages of development. But at least the place seemed orderly, and not as if someone had broken in and made a mess trying to steal, vandalize, or whatever it was Julian seemed so worried about.

“Looks pretty innocent,” I commented as I moved toward one of the tables. “Maybe he just forgot to lock the door …”

“No, no, no, don’t touch anything,” Julian warned. He gestured at the space. “You’re looking at a lab set up for molecular biology,” he said with genuine awe. He pointed to two metal boxes on a near table. “Those are gel boxes for electrophoresis. That’s the process for analyzing DNA. When our class visited, Mr. Braithwaite told us he was looking for an enzyme in plants that produces blue color. You know, because scientists hadn’t had any luck at, like, splicing it into roses because the color receptors just weren’t there.”

I looked at the boxes, fascinated. So this was where he’d created the blue rose. In spite of the uneasy feeling that Julian and I didn’t belong there, I found it astonishing that someone could put together this kind of complicated scientific setup in our little burg of Aspen Meadow. Of course, with enough money, you could probably analyze sunscreens in Antarctica.

“You just put the plant into the gel and look at it through the microscope?”

Julian shook his head. “No, no, first you have to grind it up.” He pointed to a cylindrical tank that was three feet high and about three feet in diameter. “You have to put the flower petals into liquid nitrogen, which is what’s in that vat. You grind the petals in there till they’re like a fine powder, then you have to add a buffer—”

“Liquid nitrogen?” I interrupted. “Isn’t that pretty cold stuff?”

He grinned. It was the first time I’d seen him amused since Claire’s death. “Try minus one hundred ninety-six degrees. That cold enough for you? You wear latex gloves, Goldy.” He pointed to some gloves tidily placed by a mortar and pestle next to the tank. “If you put your hands in there unprotected, they’d break off. Put your head in, and you’d be the headless horseman. Not to mention that the fumes would suffocate you.”

I decided I’d had enough science lesson. “Okay Julian, thanks. Let’s go back up to the house.”

“But I haven’t told you about the sequencing gel apparatus and the laminer air-flow hood! Not to mention the gene gun. That’s really cool.”

Cooler than minus 196 I couldn’t imagine. “Gene gun? Can you shoot anybody with it?”

“Very funny.” He moved to a table and picked up what looked like an elongated pistol. “You introduce your bit of DNA into the axillary buds of the flower you’re experimenting with, and you pray like mad that you end up with your blue daffodil, or whatever it is—” He fell silent as his eyes rested on a cluster of flowering plants that I could just dimly see. They were grouped next to the vat of liquid nitrogen. “What the hell?” Julian peered in closely at the flowers. “He had these covered up last time … oh my God, it’s a frigging blue rose!” He picked up a small pot and held it up to the light. I felt my heart stumble in my chest. I wanted to get out of there so badly. “Judas priest!” cried Julian. “Look at this, Goldy! I can’t believe it! Do you know what this means?”

A whimper came from behind a shelf of books at the far end of the lab. Julian and I gaped at each other.

“Go away!” sobbed the voice. “Just leave!”

Julian carefully put the pot down with the others. “It’s him,” he stage-whispered to me.

The sobs grew louder. “Just go away! Leave me in peace!”

“Dr. Braithwaite,” Julian said as he moved toward the shelves, “we were just worried about you, when the door was open—”

The entire shelf of books erupted at that moment as a growling Charles Braithwaite heaved them forward and emerged with his arms outstretched. Julian jumped back from the cascade of volumes. Sobbing, his arms raised, Charles Braithwaite had the aspect of a skinny, white-haired ogre. He growled at us, then screeched, “Go a-way! Leave!”

“Julian!” I yelled. “Let’s get out of here!”

Julian didn’t move.

“Why … won’t … you … leave?” Charles Braithwaite bellowed. He stood with his thin legs apart, his long arms outstretched. “Nothing … means … anything.” Then, defeated, he stumbled through the fallen books and sank against one of the tables. In a much lower, more subdued voice, he murmured, “If you will just please go away, I won’t turn you in for smoking as a minor.”

The guy was losing it, that much was dear. First he was howling like a crazy person, then he was making calm pronouncements. I was sorely tempted to exit as bidden, but Julian stepped with determination over the piles of disheveled books.

“Dr. Braithwaite,” he said calmly, “you’re upset.” Smart kid, I thought. Just keep your tone low. Smarter yet, I thought ruefully, get the heck out. Julian held out his hand. “Why don’t you just come up with us—”

“No!” Charles Braithwaite roared, his white hair shaking wildly. “Leave me alone!”

“Come on, Julian,” I implored from the entrance to the greenhouse. “Let’s just—”

“I’m not doing it,” Julian said in my direction, his voice sharp but still low. “We’re not leaving without him. Look, Dr. Braithwaite, you don’t have to—”

The white-haired man raised a mournful face to Julian. He raised his index finger, calm again in his bizarre way. He acted as if he were instructing Julian in an important point of molecular biology. “Claire Satterfield brought something into my life that I’d never had. So there’s just one thing I want you to know before I die.” Oh hell, I thought. “And that is,” he continued, “that you did not cause the accident with my … wife.” He spat out the word. “No. Babs was following you and Claire because she thought you were bringing Claire to me for … an assignation. You didn’t fail to signal, my wife was following too … closely. So there you are.” He crossed his arms, QED.

“Claire?” asked Julian. “You … and …” He shook his head and seemed to make a decision. “It’s okay, Dr. Braithwaite, it’s … over.” Julian looked around the lab, trying to assess, I thought, how Charles Braithwaite could fulfill what seemed to be his desire to do himself in. He picked up the pot he’d placed on the near table. “Come on, look! You’ve created a blue rose! You’ve got a lot to live for—”

“I wanted to give it to her,” Charles said wistfully. Overhead, the finale firework showered red, white, and blue sparkles that absurdly lit the greenhouse with twinkling light, illuminating the tears on his stricken face. “To Claire. That’s why I was in the mall garage that day. I wanted to give it to her as my parting gift. The flower named after her, because it was so beautiful. So rare.” He looked at Julian and shrugged. “And then I—can you blame me? I heard that terrible sound, and I knew. You want to know the truth? I thought my wife had done it. Maybe she did! Maybe she hired somebody to do the hit-and-run.” He stretched his arms to their full length. “And it was all Babs’s fault I met Claire in the first place! She sent me in to pick up her damn stuff. And there was Claire, acting as if I were … as if I were the most wonderful …” He dropped his arms and shook his head vigorously, as if he’d just come to the realization of whatever it was he’d been concentrating on before he’d digressed. “Listen,” he said abruptly, “I’ve thought this all through. Just leave me in peace, please. Now, all right?”

“Let’s go talk about it up at the house!” Julian said brightly. “I mean really, Dr. Braithwaite, you’re too young to die. You need to give it some more thought.”

“No!” wailed Charles Braithwaite. “Go away!” He stepped agilely over the books, and to my shock, put both arms around the vat of liquid nitrogen. This was how he was going to kill himself. Using liquid nitrogen. We had to get out. Charles began to rock the tank. “Can’t you hear?” he roared. “This is the end! Get out of the way!”

“Julian!” I shrieked.

But Julian ignored me. He stepped briskly over the pile of books and grabbed Charles Braithwaite’s arm. The vat of liquid nitrogen continued to rock. Yanking hard, Julian pulled Charles away just as the top came off the tank.

“Get out!” Julian shouted to me as he dragged a flailing Charles in my direction. “Go!”

I banged open the door. When I looked back, the tank teetered as the freezing chemical splashed over one side, emitting clouds of white smoke. Julian scrambled toward the exit, his arms firmly encircling Charles Braithwaite’s chest. Charles, his white hair wild, kicked halfheartedly. But he was no match for young Julian’s strength. The three of us bounded out of the greenhouse just as the vat crashed downward. I couldn’t help it—I looked back again, just in time to see the liquid nitrogen spilling over and destroying the blue rose plants.

Our odd trio darted through the guests meandering up to the house. We turned deaf ears to “Oh my goodness, what’s the matter with Charlie!” and “The fireworks must have really upset him!” and laughing exclamations of that ilk. In the kitchen I called 911 and told them who I was, where we were, and what was going on.

“Liquid nitrogen?” was the deputy’s incredulous response. “Liquid nitrogen? Are you sure that’s all it was? Were there any other chemicals? We’re going to have to get the toxic waste team up there. Was this part of some wacko Fourth of July party?”

“No, no,” I said. “Any chance you could put me through to Tom Schulz?”

The deputy stalled and kept asking me questions until I assured him I wasn’t going to hang up, I just wanted to talk to Tom instead of him. He said he’d transfer me. Then he put me on hold.

I tapped my fingers on the kitchen counter and watched as Julian ministered to Charles Braithwaite. Using a low, quiet voice, Julian admonished Charles to lie relaxed on the spotless kitchen floor, and to breathe normally. Was he hurt, Julian wanted to know. When Charles shook his head, Julian asked him who he was and what was going on. Tears ran down Charles’s thin face as he gave halting responses to Julian’s steady questions. Then Julian patted his shoulders and checked his pulse and told him in a voice that rippled out like custard that everything was going to be all right.

Julian amazed me, really. He had proven himself to be singlemindedly ambitious in the schoolroom and the kitchen. He loved and hated with a ferocity that was frightening and occasionally explosive. But there were times like these when I was reminded he’d spent most of his life among the Navajo in Bluff, Utah. He had an uncanny ability to act the wise healer when it was heeded. I watched him calmly checking Charles Braithwaite for shock. What had he said to Charles in the greenhouse? You’re too young to die. Claire Satterfield had been much too young to die too. What was still unclear to me was whether Julian would be able to heal from that terrible loss. He was too young to have the loving part of himself die.

The deputy’s voice crackled in my ear. ‘Tom Schulz isn’t here.’ At that moment, the first wave of law-enforcement and fire vehicles pulled up, so I signed off.

Hours later, when the fireworks had ended and the moon had risen and the guests—including an angry Tony Royce, without his promised brownies—had finally left, when Babs Braithwaite had exploded in a fit of hysterics and Charles had been taken to the hospital for observation, when the toxic-waste team had realized only nitrogen—a fertilizer—had spilled, and Julian had decided to spend the night at a friend’s, I drove the van home. The fireworks spectators had all departed, but in the moonlight I could see the enormous mess of trash they’d left on the golf course by the lake.

I came through the door just before two A.M. Tom, amazingly enough, was in the kitchen making chocolate ice cream. Waiting for me, and undoubtedly too wired from the investigation to sleep, he’d decided to concoct a Neapolitan ice cream torte, with a chocolate-cookie-crumb base and layers of homemade vanilla, fresh strawberry, and finally dark chocolate ice cream. Allowing thirty minutes per batch of ice cream, I figured he’d been at this for quite some time. The kitchen was a mess of cream containers, beaters, and bowls.

“It’s not exactly the colors of the flag,” he said ruefully when I peered into the bowl and raised my eyebrows. “But it’s gonna be great. I can’t wait for you to try it. Where’ve you been anyway? I guess my little ruse didn’t work.”

“Little ruse? Little ruse? Is that what you call it?” I glared at him. He grinned widely. After a few seconds of trying to keep up my withering stare, I couldn’t help myself. I burst out laughing. “And when did you have time to do all that menu planning, Mr. Investigator? I am never, never going to forgive you.”

He grabbed me by the waist and swung me perilously close to the clutter of ice creams. “Oh, sure you’re going to forgive me,” he reassured me as I giggled wildly. “And I didn’t have time to do the cooking. I faxed your recipes down to a chef from a restaurant near the sheriff’s department, and paid him to get the ingredients together and make the cookies and the soup and the bread dough. It took me less than five minutes. Anyway, knowing you, the risotto didn’t stop you, it just slowed you down. The fireworks were over a couple of hours ago. Was the party okay?”

He sat me down on a chair and I told him all about it. I assured him that Julian had been a champ and that Dr. Charles Braithwaite would survive, especially if he could get some intensive psychiatric help. I confessed to having a fight with Reggie Hotchkiss, and that Julian had been involved. Tom seemed worried—did I think Hotchkiss had thrown the bleach water and left the note? I said I had no idea. He asked if Reggie could know where Julian was tonight, and I told him Reggie had left long before Julian had decided to go his friend’s house.

“Think you’ll ever cater for the Braithwaites again?” he asked.

“No. And I don’t care either. I am kind of disappointed that they may be innocent in all this. I still don’t trust either of them.”

When I finished talking, Tom wordlessly cut me a wide wedge of the triple-layered torte. The chocolate ice cream was still soft over the more solid layers of strawberry and vanilla. Biting into the three delicious flavors and through the crunchy chocolate-cookie crust, I was reminded of childhood birthday parties in New Jersey, where Neapolitan ice cream and chocolate cake were the order of the day.

I told Tom, “This is the most delicious thing I have ever tasted in my entire life. But you know we shouldn’t have it. We don’t want to get into the kind of situation … like Marla.”

Tom put his arms around me. “Everything in moderation, Miss G. Besides, you’re too young to have a heart attack.”

“Excuse me,” I blubbered, “but I am not.” Too young. It seemed that phrase was cropping up a lot lately. I even remembered using it with Arch, when I’d told him he was too young to be using sixties language….

I sat up straight. Wait a cotton-picking minute.

“Ah-ha!” said Tom. “She’s changing her mind. She’s going to have some Neapolitan ice cream after all—”

“Tom,” I said urgently, “who did Shaman Krill say he worked for?”

“He didn’t. I’ve been laboring on that guy day and night. He won’t tell us jack.”

“But he wasn’t with the animal rights people, you know that. And he’s an actor. How old would you say he was?”

“About as old as this Neapolitan ice cream is going to be by the time you eat it.”

“Tom!”

“I forget. Twenty-seven, maybe.”

“So he wasn’t old enough to know any of that sixties lingo he was using with us like ‘fascist pig’ and ‘capitalist imperialist’ and all that.”

“There are movies,” Tom said dubiously. “Documentaries.”

“And scripts,” I said. To humor him, I had a bit of ice cream. He’d put fresh strawberries into the pink layer. It was like chilled, succulent essence of fruit. “You know who uses that kind of language? For whom it’s second nature, don’t you?”

He cocked his head and lifted his eyebrows. “Nope. But I just know you’re going to tell me.”

“Reggie Hotchkiss. He knows the lingo. He paid for the demonstration, I’ll bet, to disrupt Mignon. Shaman Krill is a Reggie Hotchkiss plant. Maybe Reggie ran Claire down himself. Oh, Lord, and I had a fight with him tonight….”

Tom said, “The security for this house is airtight. And I have a forty-five, don’t forget.”

“You don’t believe me. I’ll bet you a thousand dollars Reggie has something to do with the murders at that department store.”

Tom reached over and began to unbutton the top of my blouse. “Guess what? I get to sleep in tomorrow. No strategy meeting first thing. And why don’t you bet something I really want?”

I shook my head. “You know what being newly married to you is like? It’s like walking a marathon instead of running it. I hardly ever get to see you, so we’re always in … what’s it called? The heady throes of romance. At the rate we’re going, we’ll be newlyweds for the next ten years.”

“So living with me is like stopping smoking and walking a marathon. What’s a heady throe of romance?”

“Plus I can see you’re just bowled over with my marvelous powers of deduction.”

He kept unbuttoning. “As always.”

“And I see catching a killer is the highest priority for you right now.”

He let go of my blouse and reached for the phone. “I’ll bet you a thousand dollars that I can put in a call to have Shaman Krill picked up faster than you can get those clothes off and meet me upstairs.”

I didn’t collect on his bet. I could have. When Tom reached the sheriff’s department, they—true to form—put him on hold. I even had time for a shower.

Later, much later, I murmured, “I love you, love you, love you,” into his ear and buried my nose in his short, sweet-smelling hair. For a night that had taken so many bizarre turns, this one was ending up pretty well. He pulled me in close. Pale moonlight filled our bedroom. I felt sleep fall as gently as the pink bursts of fireworks had scattered their lights over the lake.

When Sunday morning came, Tom was still sleeping soundly. I slipped out of bed with the idea that a hefty dose of caffeine was in order. But Scout the cat boldly rolled onto his back in front of the espresso machine and demanded attention. I rubbed his stomach as he writhed from side to side, demanding more! more! Eventually he decided he’d had enough affection and hopped off the counter, and I was able to load the machine with fresh beans and water. Soon dark strands of espresso hissed into the twin shot glasses and I poured them over milk and ice and stepped out onto the front porch.

The brilliant morning sky promised a return to hot weather. Geraniums and johnny-jump-ups in the porch pots moved in the breeze. A dog barked in the distance. Across the street, the Routts’ house was silent: no Colin crying, no jazz saxophone. The morning of the fifth of July always felt odd. It was as if time had slipped around midnight during the fight for independence, and left the whole country to suffer a summer hangover.

I sipped my icy latte and wondered how Charles Braithwaite was doing. Julian had just gone through shock. He’d managed to recover fairly quickly. But Charles was older. Age usually dictated a longer recuperation from trauma. And speaking of recovering from trauma, Marla was due to greet the world again this afternoon. I checked my watch: seven-twenty.

When I finished the coffee I felt heavy-hearted and tired. I toyed with the idea of going back to bed. But before I could do so, the phone rang. I bolted for it so the ringing wouldn’t wake up Tom. It was Officer Boyd from the sheriff’s department.

“He’s asleep,” I whispered. “Can it wait?”

“Just tell him we got Krill,” said Boyd. “Tom said it was your idea anyway, that the guy was a phony. Looks as if you were right, Goldy. Krill buckled when we asked him if his employer was Hotchkiss. He told us Hotchkiss hired him to be disruptive, even gave him a script. The lingo, the chants, the dead bunny—you name it.”

“But did Krill drive the truck that killed Claire? Did he … have some connection to Gentileschi?”

“Not that he’ll admit to. But don’t worry,” Boyd said in his laconic, confident manner. “He’ll crack. Give it time. Tell Schulz when he wakes up that we’ll have a confession in no time.”

I hung up. I remembered my promise to give an update on Marla to the St. Luke’s parishioners at the early service. Rather than wake Tom, I left him a note on the kitchen table that said Boyd was working on Krill and that he should call the department. As I quietly slid into a skirt and blouse, the key to Prince & Grogan storage caught my eye from where I’d left it on the bureau after removing it from my bra on Friday. I was, after all, going to church, I reflected guiltily, and there was that bit about thou shalt not steal. I slid the key into my pocket. I would return the key. Eventually.

The sparse congregation at St Luke’s all looked droopy-eyed. The interim pastor, who was serving while a parish committee searched for a new rector after the loss of our last one, forgot to turn on the altar lights, but no one minded. We moved slowly through the prayers. Thankfully, there weren’t any hymns. The choir, the organist, and our voices, were on vacation. When asked by the priest, I gave a very brief update on Marla’s condition. During the intercessions, when we made special requests for intervention and healing, I tried to allow my mind to become blank. The excitement of the past few days would eventually fade. The spirit would return to its old rhythms. Into the blankness I summoned Marla’s face. Then Charles Braithwaite’s, then old Mr. Routt’s. I prayed for Julian, for the repose of the souls of Claire and Nick.

Without warning, the parade of faces became muddled in my mind. The more I struggled to focus, the more curiosity insinuated itself, like Scout plopping between me and the espresso machine. You’re tired, I told myself. You’ve been through a lot. I leaned back in the pew.

All around me parishioners continued to offer their supplications. I opened my eyes, then shut them. It didn’t help. My mind was preoccupied with images, questions, memories that didn’t connect. I remembered Arch repeating his science teacher’s assertion that the memory was like a Rolodex. When you can’t remember something, it’s not that you don’t have the information. You just can’t access it. In my mind’s eye I saw a vehicle following mine down to the mall the morning of the Mignon banquet. Saw again someone watching outside our house at night. Heard Shaman Krill shout sixties-style derision, saw him swing a dead rabbit at me. Viewed the pain on Mr. Routt’s unseeing face. Felt the spray of glass as Nick Gentileschi’s body hit the Mignon counter.

My muscles trembled with fatigue. The gentle susurration of prayer rose from the pews all around, and scraps of remembered conversation surfaced in my mind. About Claire: That woman could sell cosmetics…. From Nick: We’re reviewing the films. From Frances Markasian: They’ve got a security problem. From Babs Braithwaite: There’s somebody back there.

But the police had their man: Shaman Krill. Krill, or somebody else that Reggie Hotchkiss had hired, or maybe even Reggie himself, could have done it all. Claire was a fabulous saleswoman, so Reggie certainly had motivation to get rid of one of the competitor’s best producers. Reggie further undermined Mignon’s sales with his bogus Spare the Hares campaign. Covering all the bases, he also copied their products in his own catalogue.

Had Reggie covered all the bases with Nick Gentileschi, though? That was what didn’t fit. Why would someone have to kill the security chief? Because of potentially embarrassing photographs? Because of something that had turned up on the films? What about the cash refund problem? Frances had said, It’s all computerized, so it looks official. But what was official? I had seen stacks of computer printouts in the department store office. Would they detail transactions, or would those be in the ledger?

Someone touched my shoulder; I opened my eyes.

“We’re passing the peace,” a woman told me. She had gray hair pulled back in a neat bun, crinkles around her eyes, and a worried smile. “Are you all right?”

“Fine, thank you.” I stood quickly and shook her hand. “The peace of the Lord.”

She smiled and squeezed my hand. “Peace.”

Which was what Arch had said. And Reggie Hotchkiss, the plagiarizing pacifist.

With enormous effort I turned my attention back to the service and went through the communion portion of the liturgy. Afterward, the tired crowd engaged in halfhearted chat, and I nabbed a cup of church coffee. The stuff tasted like something you would lick off the inside of a twenty-year-old aluminum pot.

It was nine-fifteen. As I climbed into the van, the curious voices rocketing around in my brain began shooting off again. What could that camera above the Mignon counter record? What did the printouts and the ledger show? If Shaman Krill was under arrest, what harm could it do if I went down to the store and just looked around a little bit? If I could be there when Prince & Grogan opened, maybe I could snoop uninterrupted. If somebody like Stan White bothered me, I could use as my excuse the fact that I was looking for the receipt that Frances was so furious I’d lost.

I revved the van and took off for the mall. When I arrived, I realized that people were as reluctant to shop on the morning of July the fifth as they were to go to church. I felt foolish going into Prince & Grogan when the doors were finally unlocked. The place was virtually empty.

When I arrived at the department store offices, I announced to the woman behind the credit window: “I need to see Lisa in accounts payable. Is she in yet?”

“I don’t know. You can check.”

Lisa was not in. I rifled through the stacks of printouts on her office floor until I came to the one marked Cosmetics. I scanned each of the folded pages, but they yielded only columns of numbers, and then rows of numbers across from the columns under headings like YTD. Doggone it.

Determined, I picked up the accordion-folded sheaf, slipped the printout under my blouse, and headed out of Lisa’s office. If I compared the printout to the ledger, maybe it would all make sense. Hugging the printout to my body, I rode down the escalator.

The Mignon counter looked as if a bomb blast had hit it. Tape held together the web of remaining glass. Plywood covered the bare spots. The broken blind was also haphazardly covered with strips of plywood. Harriet Wells, her blond hair frothed up in another of her twists, her Mignon uniform crisp, was tidying up. She looked up at me with a surprised, happy face.

“You’re the last person I expected to see here!” she said with a high, tinkly laugh. She sat on her stool beside the counter and scowled. “This is always a slow morning.”

I shifted the printout around and said, “Listen, Harriet, I’m looking for a receipt that I might have dropped in here the other day, when Nick fell—” She tilted her head at me appraisingly, then closed her eyes and shuddered. “—anyway,” I went on, “the purchase wasn’t for me, it was for someone else, and now they’re wanting the receipt, and blaming me that I lost it.”

Before she could answer, a male customer came up to the far side of the counter and began to test perfumes. Harriet slid off her stool, came over to the counter and reached underneath for a Tupperware container of muffins.

“Are you hungry?” she asked with a bright smile.

My stomach reminded me that I had had quite a bit of caffeine and nothing substantial in the last three hours. “Of course. Especially for something you’ve baked.”

“These are made with sour cream,” she confessed as she took the top off the container. “But see if you can guess the other ingredient. You’re so good at that.”

I took a bite. Sour cream, though fattening, was a good ingredient for keeping things fresh. I even had a pound cake recipe that required that the finished cake be wrapped for twenty-four hours before being served. The muffin was buttery, rich, and delicious. It was flecked with tiny bits of green that tasted like mint.

“Can’t tell what it is,” I said, then looked down at the customer testing perfumes. It was Reggie Hotchkiss. My heart sank.

“Okay, Harriet,” he crowed. “Tell me what was so important you had to see me on a Sunday morning.”

“Look in the trash, if you want,” Harriet said over her shoulder. “This shouldn’t take long … I never tell Hotchkiss a thing. You can try in front of the counter too, although the cleaning crew’s been in to vacuum up all the glass and … you know.”

Did I ever. I scooted behind the counter and slipped the computer paper out of my blouse. What a relief. I just hoped Harriet hadn’t seen it When Reggie quizzed Harriet and sprayed one cologne on his right arm, the other on his left, I looked up at the security camera. From where it was positioned, it could take in the entire front of the counter, the cash register—at right angles to the counter—and the file cabinets and storage areas behind the counter.

Harriet was murmuring questions to Reggie, and he replied more expansively and loudly to each inquiry. Eventually he began to yak about perfume, citrus versus floral, pine versus patchouli. He seemed to be ignoring me, but I’d seen him do that before. I took another bite of muffin.

First things first. I put the computer paper beside the large blue ledger that I’d seen Dusty flipping through Thursday, the first day I’d visited the Mignon counter. Then I squinted at the file drawer. I remembered Dusty writing down all the information about my complexion and putting it on a client card. Would it be filed under my name or Dusty’s? I took another careful bite of muffin and slid open the file drawer. Routt. Satterfield. Wells. Each file was jammed with the cards. Dusty had the least, Claire’s file bulged, and Harriet had the most, which would make sense since she’d been working for Mignon the longest. I wondered if Dusty’s was slender because she hadn’t been working there as long as the others or because she was less successful. Or could it be because she’d been moving client cards over to Hotchkiss Skin & Hair?

Harriet looked around to see what I was doing. I held up the muffin with one hand, while making an enthusiastic okay sign with the other. She nodded, rolled her eyes in exasperation, and turned back to Reggie. He seemed to be enjoying making Harriet uncomfortable. I slid the file drawer closed and walked over to the trash receptacle. It was empty. My eye fell on the ledger and printout. I struggled with my conscience for thirty seconds, then opened the ledger first. If Claire was a top sales associate that Reggie was trying to get rid of, the proof should be in there, and be easier to read than the printout. Maybe they would subpoena the ledger at Reggie’s trial.

I reached over and helped myself to another green-speckled muffin as I turned the ledger pages and tried to decipher them.

“Goldy!”

I looked around. Dusty was standing by the lipsticks looking disheveled and tired, but ready to work in her Mignon smock. “Why is Reggie Hotchkiss here on a Sunday morning, do you know? What are you doing here? My God, look at this mess.”

I felt immediate guilt. What was I doing, anyway? “I’m just looking at this sales ledger. Show me what’s what as compared to the printouts, will you? Did Claire have good sales?”

Dusty glanced down at Reggie and Harriet, then said, “Well, I guess so.” She moved to the ledger. “She was getting there. Let’s see.” She flipped expertly through the ledger pages and then ran a gnawed fingernail across a row of columns. “April, I had eight hundred in sales, Claire had fifteen hundred twenty-two, Harriet had—whoa! three thousand and fifty.” She flipped a page. “May, I didn’t do so hot. Six-fifty. Claire had two thousand eighty and Harriet had twenty-five hundred. See? That’s what happens when the weather’s warm. People don’t shop.”