Sticks & Scones

I was shutting down the computer when there was an explosion behind me. Or was it on me? A cold, dark pain filled my head. I realized that someone had hit me, was hitting me, again and again and again. My skullbones reverberated in agony.

My sight clouded, then went black. I screamed for help and tried to cover my head, turn around, anything. I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d been listening to the roar of the vac upstairs, reading Tom’s personal correspondence –

My attacker hit me again and my chin slammed into Tom’s desk. My knees crumpled and I was sliding, helplessly, whimpering, trying to cover my head, my body afire with pain. This isn’t fair. Was I saying it or thinking it? Damn, damn, my inner voice supplied. My knees and then my body banged onto the basement’s cold floor.

John Richard had never said he’d love me always. But Tom had. The day of our wedding. I’ll love you forever, Miss G. Forever and ever.

As unconsciousness claimed me, I remembered Tom’s handsome face that happy day, and the sound of his warm promise.

I’ll love you forever.

-12-

Getting banged up is bad. Gaining consciousness is worse. From my years with the Jerk, I was acquainted with sledgehammer-wedged-in-the-skull pain. The worst part is that you suspect that if you’d used the brain inside your head in the first place, this might not have happened to you. I’d been told that on independent janitorial service was going to clean up the glass. Not some guy

masquerading as a window fixer. Damn again, I thought. You idiot.

Yeah, yeah, Tom had said something about not blaming yourself when you screwed up. So: Wracked with pain, lying sprawled on our basement floor, drowning in self-recrimination, I tried to talk myself into getting up on my feet again and calling for help. After agonizing minutes of thinking about moving, then searching for the least painful way to stand, I fought off nausea, trembling, and visual black clouds to get to my feet. Once upright, I gingerly touched my head until I found the beginnings of a lump. Agh! I sighed and looked around. Tom’s desk was clean, as in, nothing on it anymore. No papers. No files.

No computer.

I blinked and swayed dizzily. My watch said ten-thirty. I walked - slowly, taking steadying breaths - up the stairs, into my kitchen. I called and looked all around; no attacker in sight. Did we have any painkillers in the house? My brain offered no answer. In fact, my thinking was extremely fuzzy, even as to the location of the Cognac I used to make Cherries Jubilee. Everything in the kitchen seemed turned around… or different.

Wretchedly, I realized that things seemed unfamiliar because the smashed monitor of my kitchen computer lay on the floor beside the keyboard. The kitchen computer itself was also missing.

I started to cry. Then I yelled and cursed. Of course, there was no question that folks on the street might hear me.

But I didn’t care what the neighbors thought. My own shouted curses miraculously seemed to clear my brain, at least until I could pour myself a glass of Cognac from the dining-room cabinet. Of course, I’d learned in Med Wives 101 that you didn’t treat a head injury with alcohol, but my brain was screaming for reprieve from the pain. I had just taken a first naughty swallow when the front doorbell bonged, making my head spin. Great, I thought, things couldn’t get much worse.

I peered through the peephole at the smiling faces of Sergeants Boyd and Armstrong. Not exactly in the nick of time, were they?

“Somebody broke in,” I announced bluntly as Boyd, his barrel-shaped body somewhat rounder than the last time I’d

seen him, came through the door.

“Here? Just now?” asked Boyd, eyeing me, my trembling hand, and my glass of brandy.

When I replied in the affirmative, Armstrong, whose towering frame and fierce face contraindicated what I knew to be his gentle demeanor, said, “You look as if you’re in pain.” Since I’d seen him last, he’d lost a few more of the sparse brown hairs he combed so diligently over his bald spot.

I said, “I am. Got knocked over the head. But… come on out to the dining room. I know the two of you won’t have a glass of booze while you’re on duty. Before lunch, no less. But I’m treating a nasty bump.”

Boyd and Armstrong told me to wait. In the front hallway, they insisted on separately assessing my noggin, which involved painful pressing on my head, then unblinking assessment of my eyes. Both decreed I should see a doctor that day.

“I can’t. I have to go back to Tom. He’s resting at Hyde Castle.”

“You need to get attention,” Boyd insisted.

“Look, thanks, but I’m aware of the symptoms of severe head injury,” I replied. “Blurred vision, slurred speech, nausea, loss of memory, fainting, and sleeping too much. If I show any of those signs, I’ll call for help. Scout’s honor.”

Armstrong’s scowl deepened. “Show us where this happened.”

“I was sitting there,” I said after I’d led them to the bottom of the cellar steps. I indicated Tom’s swivel chair.

“I was whacked from behind.” I felt

inside my jeans pocket and repressed a sigh of relief. The disk was still there. I knew I should mention to Boyd and Armstrong that I’d downloaded Tom’s files. But I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. I couldn’t even think. In fact, I did feel a bit dizzy. But I’d be damned if I was going to any damn doctor on this damned day. Was rage a symptom of brain injury?

“Can we go back upstairs?” I asked them. “I need to sit down. You might want to look in the kitchen, because whoever it was stole that computer, too.”

“You pass out on me, I’m gonna get fired,” Boyd announced glumly as we headed up the stairs. In the kitchen, Boyd called for help on his radio while I tossed out the rest of the brandy and made myself an espresso. The computer thief wouldn’t have left prints on my coffee machine, would he?

“To process a crime scene,” Boyd concluded to the dispatcher.

To process a crime scene at the Schulzes’ house, again.

“Can we sit in the dining room?” Armstrong asked me. “We need to get through some questions.”

In the dining room, Boyd opened what looked like the same smudged notebook he’d carried for years. I wondered if he ever bought new ones.

“So what were you doing in the basement?” he began gently. “I mean, what were you doing when you were sitting at Tom’s desk? Working on his computer?”

His black eyes bored into me. I swallowed. “No, not on the computer. I was …looking on Tom’s shelves, for our photo albums. I need a picture of John Richard Korman. You know, my ex. He was released last Friday. The Hydes want a photograph of him, since they need to know what he looks like in case he tries to get into the castle.”

“There were photo albums on the desk down there?” Armstrong looked skeptical.

“I’m not sure…” I lied. But I could not tell Boyd and Armstrong that I was seeking the identity of her. Moreover, I was not ready to admit I thought a) that my husband might be having an affair and b) that I was snooping around in his stuff to get the answer to a).

“I need that picture,” I repeated firmly. “And the photo albums are down there somewhere. I think,” I added. I was trying to sound confused in the aftermath of the attack. I knew full well that our

albums were in an upstairs closet.

“If they’re in the basement, we can’t get them now. We’ll taint the crime scene,” Armstrong murmured. “Do you have any ideas who might have hit you?”

I told them about the bowlegged man who’d showed up claiming he was sent to fix the window. I also told them about the woman in the car. Trudy would be eager to talk about the mysterious beauty in the station wagon, I said, and she had her license plate number, too. Armstrong checked to see if either the glass truck or the car was still outside. Neither was.

“Could you please tell me about Andy Balachek?” I asked when he returned.

Boyd sighed. “They finished the autopsy last night. Did it extra fast because Tom was shot at the scene. But Goldy,” he added hastily, “we need to run through what happened with the window shooting first. Who you think might have done it and why. It may be connected to this attack on you. Then we’ll talk about Balachek.”

And so, for the third time, I told my story. I played Chardé‘s message for them. They asked for the tape and I gave it to them.

“There’s something else,” I added. “I saw Chardé Lauderdale at the hospital while I was waiting to see how Tom was.”

Boyd stopped scribbling and looked up, frowning.

“What was she doing?”

“Nothing. Standing at the waiting-room window.”

Boyd and Armstrong exchanged a look. Then Boyd took a deep breath. “Mrs. Lauderdale has already complained to Captain Lambert about being questioned over your window shooting. She gave him an earful, especially since she and her husband keep getting calls about the child-abuse case. I guess the newspaper article didn’t help.”

I shuddered when I thought back to the sensationalist Mountain Journal headline: “Caterer in Hot Water Over Attempt to Save Child.” I said, “I’m supposed to see the Lauderdales Thursday at a lunch I’m catering. Chardé‘ll probably behave herself there. And if she shows up here or at the castle, I’ll call you right away.”

“All right,” said Boyd, nodding. “Now we need to know about what happened yesterday morning after you left here, up to the point where Tom was shot.”

I recited the events of the previous morning. I added that I hadn’t heard back from Pat Gerber, and they mumbled something about the A.D.A. being the hardest person in the county to reach. I told them Eliot and Sukie Hyde had been extraordinarily nice and welcoming.

Boyd said, “Tell us about finding Balachek.” I hesitated. Boyd and Armstrong worked well together. They dug for the right data and usually shed light on a case. Before, when I’d wanted information on an investigation that involved someone I knew, I’d had to wheedle it out of them. Now I needed their theory on who had murdered Andy Balachek and why. It was highly probable, I reasoned, that Andy’s killer either shot Tom or knew who had. But looking at their impassive, suspicious-cop faces, I was reminded of oysters that no pliers were ever going to open.

“I had to check the chapel to see if the portable dining tables had been delivered for the luncheon. When I parked and looked down at the creek, Andy was in it.” Boyd and Armstrong waited for me to go on. I asked, “So: what was the cause of death?”

When they resolutely said nothing, I thought back. Andy had been wearing a lumberjack plaid shirt and jeans. I didn’t remember seeing a jacket on him, much less blood staining his clothes. What he had had was … wait.

“His hands were black,” I exclaimed. “Was he tortured before he died? Then someone shot him and threw his body there?” The oyster faces looked mildly surprised. I was right. “Now are you going to tell me what your theory is?”

Boyd shook his head. “We don’t know who dumped Balachek in the creek.” He stabbed a stubby finger at me. “And you, Sherlock, can’t divulge anything about the color of his hands.”

“Was he shocked electrically?” I asked. They groaned. I pressed on. “Seems as if I remember somebody else dying of electrocution. The former spouse of someone at the castle, yes? Ring any bells?”

Again, the two cops looked at one another. Boyd sighed. “Carl Rourke, Sukie Hyde’s first husband, died in a freak electrical accident while working on a roof.”

“Do you think there’s any correlation between the two deaths?” I asked.

“Not yet,” Armstrong said. “I repeat, Goldy, you can not talk about Balachek’s burned hands, or the possibility of electric shock, with anyone. It’s a key.”

Uh-huh. Before I could protest or reply, our doorbell rang again. Three men from the sheriffs department had arrived to process the basement. I showed them in, then murmured to Boyd and Armstrong that if they weren’t going to share their theories on what had happened to Balachek, I really needed to get back to my injured husband.

“We’ll be calling Tom,” Boyd told me. “We’ve got copies of all of Andy’s e-mails. Last one was ten days ago.

Then he called you, wanting Tom. Said he was in Central City, but might go to Jersey after that. We’re wondering If Balachek tried to communicate after that phone call. Like by another e-mail, phone call, whatever.”

Maybe he sent Tom something by FedEx, I almost joked, but, for once, refrained. Had Tom mentioned anything else, they wanted to know?

Well, there’s some woman. “No,” I replied without looking at them. “He didn’t. At least, not that I know of.”

They said that was all for now, but they were staying at our house for a while, if that was all right. The doorbell bonged again and I went to get it. Thinking it was more cops, I pulled the door open without checking the peephole.

It was the Jerk, with Viv Martini at his side.

He looked thin and pale, and his face seemed hard, a tad less confident. The effect of several months in prison, no doubt. He wore charcoal pants, a yellow pullover, and what looked like a new reversible down jacket, black on one side, bright blue on the other, visible at the open neck. His still good-looking face, though, revealed a dark mood. Viv, with her thin face and body, spiked blond hair, black-heeled boots, tight black pants, and fashionably poufed black nylon jacket, looked as if she were on her way to a stint with a punk rock band. When she unzipped the jacket, a tight V-neck revealing her significant cleavage sprang into view.

“Get out here,” ordered John Richard, his command rigid with anger.

Without saying a word, I slammed the door and dashed back to the dining room. I told Boyd and Armstrong what was going on and asked them to accompany me back to the porch. Just in case, I added.

Oh, my, how I delighted in the look of dismayed surprise that clouded the Jerk’s face when the conspicuously armed Boyd and Armstrong stepped onto the porch behind me. When we were all outside - John Richard and Viv to one side, me with my cop buddies beside the porch swing - Sharks and Jets - I asked the Jerk what he wanted.

“I want my son.” His voice was thick with the attempt to be simultaneously mean and conciliatory. “How dare you slap a restraining order on me? It’s a good thing it’s temporary, because I am going to stomp you so bad in two weeks, you’re going to wish you’d moved to Florida. I already got the story on what happened to you here, by the way.”

“You’re in violation of a restraining order, and you’re out on probation, buster,” said Boyd. “So watch your mouth. And if you move even an inch closer to your ex-wife, I’m going to arrest you.”

“I wasn’t talking to you,” the Jerk retorted. Viv sidled closer to John Richard, slipped her hands around his waist, then slid her fingers inside his belt. John Richard stiffened and actually blushed.

“Move back, ma’am,” Boyd ordered. This Viv did, but with a reluctant pout. John Richard gulped. His time in jail must have made him awfully horny. Apparently, he’d found just the right gal to meet his needs.

Boyd walked up to John Richard. He folded his arms, lifted his chin, and waited. John Richard took a step backward, right onto Viv’s toes, and she squawked. I wondered if she was having the tiniest flicker of doubt about her new boyfriend’s power. After a moment’s hesitation, she took another precarious step back from John Richard. I felt… well… triumphant.

“I’ll make arrangements for you to see Arch,” I told John Richard. “Call your lawyer.”

John Richard’s voice was cold. His eyes stayed on Boyd. “We want to see him today. We’re going to take him back to my place, not some stranger’s castle, where you have to stay because somebody else you pissed off is taking potshots at windows in your house.”

I looked at Viv, who widened her black-lined eyes at me. In a deep, sexy voice, she said, “Windows don’t turn me on, Goldy.”

I raised an eyebrow at her. “Mac user?”

“Knock it off,” John Richard snarled.

“I’ll call your lawyer,” I repeated to him. “Now, leave. Please.”

“You have not heard the last of this,” John Richard said softly.

“Ooh,” Viv murmured. She leaned toward the Jerk’s ear and purred, “I love it when you threaten the rough stuff.” As I shook my head, John Richard took Viv’s hand and descended the porch steps.

“You haven’t heard even the beginning of the last of this,” John Richard shot over his shoulder.

How very unfortunate, I thought as he climbed into the driver’s seat of the gold Mercedes. How very unfortunate, indeed.

-14-

Head pounding, body aching, I trod upstairs, tossed a slew of outfits and odds and ends for Tom, Arch, and me into a large suitcase, and retrieved the canvas sack Tom had filled with our photo albums. There were bound to be several photos of the Jerk in one of the old books… enough for the Hydes and Michaela to get a good image of the guy who needed to be kept out of the castle.

And then the suspicious side of me, that voice I wished would be quiet, insisted I had one more thing I needed to do. I called to Boyd and Armstrong that I would be right down.

Rifling through Tom’s bureau made me wish that Episcopalians were as big on confession as Catholics. Yes, “reconciliation of a penitent” was a sacrament available to us. But it wasn’t so common among the Chosen Frozen that the thought of cleansing away my sin - in this case, deliberately invading my husband’s privacy - made committing the sin any easier. So I felt like a heel. Still, if there were love letters, charge receipts, anything, I wanted to find them, because I needed to know what was going on. After five minutes of frantic searching, I came up with nothing. Of course not, I thought, as I carried the suitcase and heavy sack of albums down the steps. I didn’t really think he’d cheat on me, did I?

The suspicious voice admitted that I wasn’t sure. Boyd heaved the suitcase and sack into my van, then turned to me. “I don’t want you and Tom moving back in here until we catch these guys, understand? We’re putting a twenty-four- hour guard on the house, starting now.”

I sighed, but nodded. Boyd told me to call anytime if I needed help. I promised I would. I thanked him for helping with Dr. Korman and for pulling together a team to watch our place. He nodded impassively. When he walked back to the house, I saw Trudy and Jake watching him from her window. Jake’s morose face about broke my heart.

I sat in my van and tried to think. My head throbbed. I couldn’t face another historic-food discussion with Eliot Hyde just then. John Richard knew Arch was in school. His appearance at our house must have been meant to intimidate me. For a moment, I savored the memory of that astonished look on his face when confronted with two armed cops.

But what about the mystery woman who’d been sitting in the rusty station wagon? Did she know we were staying at the castle? Had she followed me there after shooting out the window?

Was she the one who’d shot Tom? Was she the one Tom didn’t love?

I glanced around at the sack of photo albums on the floor. That suspicious voice again wormed its way into my brain … maybe this was where he’d stashed his credit card receipts for flowers, motel visits, jewelry. On the other hand, perhaps being whacked on the head and sustaining a visit from a violent narcissist unleashed more industrial-strength paranoia in the cerebral cortex.

I dug reluctantly into the bag of albums. As it turned out, Tom had purchased another photo album since our wedding. He hadn’t mounted anything in it, but he’d tidily rubber-banded the photos from the last year and stuck them inside. Guilt juiced through my veins when I saw Tom’s pictures of me barbecuing for our little family’s first picnic, of Julian standing by the fountain at the University of Colorado student union. I scooped up the photos and slapped them back inside the new album. Then, unable to help myself, I finished my nefarious snooping task, shaking each of our old albums to see if any incriminating papers fell out.

An old envelope dropped to the van floor. I bent and retrieved it. Inside was a snapshot of John Richard in his white doctor coat. His blond hair tousled, his hands in his pockets, he was smiling with all the charm that had hypnotized so many women - me included. I didn’t remember saving the picture, but perhaps I had and just didn’t recall. Or maybe Arch, ever the idealist when it came to his father, had tucked it away. I slipped the picture back into the envelope and dropped it into my purse.

Finally I reached Tom’s own ancient album. When I shook it, newspaper articles and stray photos cascaded into my lap. “Army Veteran Graduates First,” screamed a proud headline of the Furman County Sheriffs Department newsletter, detailing Tom’s triumphant graduation at the top of his class from police academy. “Top Cop Honored” was another one, for the time Tom had received an award for finding a group of paintings stolen from a Denver art dealer and stashed in an Aspen Meadow garage. Then there was a much older photograph: Tom in his Cub Scout uniform, curly sandy-brown hair, chubby cheeks, crooked smile.

It was too much. I cracked open the yellowed pages of the old album and admired each photo of my dear Tom. As I worked my way through the book, I tried to replace each item I’d shaken loose in its original order.

Page after page showed Tom with school friends, in his army uniform, with cop buddies. My suspicion turned to pride, then to bitter humiliation for doubting him. He had been delirious after he’d been wounded yesterday, that was all there was to it. I had replaced nearly every article and photo when, suddenly, I was brought up short.

“Local Nurse Reported Killed in Mekong Delta Helo Crash” was the headline from a 1975 article. I stared down at it and recalled what I knew: that Tom had been engaged to a woman named Sara who’d been a few years ahead of him in high school. Sara had gone to nursing school and then been assigned to a Mobile Army Surgical Hospital, a MASH, in Vietnam. As soon as he turned eighteen, Tom had enlisted and followed her over. That was all that he’d told me, except that they’d never actually seen each other in that war-ravaged country before she was killed. But hadn’t she died in an artillery shelling, not a helicopter crash?

There was a graduation photo of her in her white nurse’s cap and uniform. Sara Beth O’Malley had been a pretty young woman with wavy dark hair and a face glowing with youth, enthusiasm, and pride. I swallowed. On the photo, she’d written: Love you forever, S.B.

I sat there for a long time. I’d seen her, of course. Her face was now thinner, the youthful glow long gone. But the years had not rendered her unrecognizable. I’d announced I was Goldy Schulz. I’m just waiting, she’d said, when I’d stared into the battered station wagon. She’d started the car and pulled away. I’d been so eager to suspect her that I hadn’t registered - much less understood - her expression as she whipped the wagon away from the curb.

Her lips had trembled; her eyes had been filled with pain.

A cold wind rocked the van as I started down our street. Questions tumbled through my mind: Is she really Sara? What was she doing here? I remembered the title of one of Tom’s e-mails. Call to State Department. Even worse, I wondered how in the world I was going to broach all this to Tom. Hey, honey? Any old flames still burning? I did wonder how someone who’d been reported dead in Vietnam could disappear for all these years. If the woman in the station wagon was Sara Beth O’Malley, where had she been for the last couple of decades?

And in the question department, I had a few more: Why had our computers been stolen? Could Sara Beth O’Malley have doubled back to pick them up? No … it had to have been “Morris Hart,” whoever he was. Besides the e-mails from Sara Beth, there had been all those communications from Andy to Tom. Was Morris Hart connected somehow with the stamp thieves? Was he Ray Wolff’s missing partner?

To the west, swirls of fog scudded in front of a thin cloud cover the hue of gray flannel. My stomach growled. It was already eleven forty-five of a morning that felt far too long and threatened snow. My body was not going to allow me another crisis-laden day without regular meals.

Nevertheless, there was a place I wanted to visit before returning to Hyde Castle. Some injuries you take very personally. Your husband being shot, for example. I did not know if the Hydes and Chardé would still be at the chapel, where I definitely wanted to look around. But another site I wanted to check was the one staked out by the shooter. No doubt, the Furman County Sheriff’s Department would do a good job investigating. But an attempt on Tom’s life was too traumatic for me to just go back to the day-to-day life of catering without making sure the department was doing a thorough job. I envisioned Tom rolling his eyes.

I turned left on Homestead Drive, wound past the Homestead Museum, then gunned the van through an old neighborhood dotted with rustic log cabins. The road changed from dirt to pavement, and 1 ascended through an upscale subdivision filled with gray and beige mansionettes sporting tile roofs and landscaped lawns that looked desolate under their dustings of snow. I hooked the van right onto a dirt road that quickly deteriorated to a rutted trail. The van had a compass display, which indicated I was heading east, paralleling Cottonwood Creek. I tried to picture what I’d seen from the police chopper, then decided I was heading toward the right spot.

Finally, I entered Cottonwood Park, a county-maintained facility where folks could hike, picnic, even camp overnight. I turned right onto another dirt road that looked as if it snaked down to the creek. I bumped past empty, snow-crusted picnic tables, forlorn-looking freestanding grills, and carved wooden signs indicating trailheads. At length I came to a stand of pines cordoned off with bright yellow police ribbons.

I parked behind a pair of sheriff’s department vehicles and made my way down one edge of the yellow tape, where two uniformed officers yelled that I should stop. I identified myself and asked to come in to talk. They considered this for a minute, then signaled me to enter.

I scooted under the plastic ribbon. My boots slipped on the thick carpeting of snow-slick pine needles. The two cops asked for ID, which I showed them.

“I want to see where the guy was standing when my husband was shot. Please,” I added politely.

“That area’s been thoroughly checked for evidence,” one officer informed me, his tone simultaneously defensive and weary. When I said nothing, he softened a bit. “All right, the crime-scene guys are done. You can look, but just for a minute.” He told me to follow him.

We made our way through the snow and rocks to a picnic table about fifteen feet from a promontory overlooking the creek. It seemed an odd place for a table, since the ground fell away steeply to the narrow state highway. If you or your kids tumbled down the rocks and onto the pavement, could you sue the county park system?

“We figure the shooter was about

here,” my guide told me as we stepped gingerly to the edge of the promontory. “Hidden from the road by the rocks, so no one would notice him.”

The view revealed only the top of one of Hyde Castle’s towers. Below the castle’s driveway and dense evergreens, the trickle through Cottonwood Creek was alternately black and still or white with suds, in sharp contrast to the steep creek banks covered with ice and rocks. Hyde Chapel’s lofty spires and dark stone made it look as if it had been transported from an Arthurian-legend board game. In the parking lot, where Tom and I had been moving toward each other when he was shot, a police car and the crime-lab van were the only vehicles. I could see the line of boulders where we’d sought cover. Andy Balachek’s body, of course, was gone.

The chapel, the bridge, the parking lot, Andy’s corpse: I stared down and tried to make sense of what I was looking at. Maybe the shooter was aiming for whatever cop found the body. But if a law-enforcement person discovered Andy, wouldn’t the shooter be putting himself in the line of fire? Then again, Tom was a cop, and he’d been helpless against a concealed sharpshooter.

Maybe someone wasn’t just looking for whoever found Andy. Perhaps he was aiming specifically for Tom. Or maybe he’d been aiming for me, and hadn’t obtained a good enough angle the first time I’d hopped out of the van to look at the creek. Or

possibly there was some other motive that I did not know. Maybe someone had followed Tom, wanting to shoot him. Maybe someone had followed me and shot Tom instead. The answer to why remained elusive.

Discouraged, head throbbing, thoughts

roiling, I drove back to the castle. It was almost one o’clock. On the way up the winding driveway, I pulled to the side so that two painting-company vans could roar past. After parking, I lugged the suitcase and bag of photo albums to the entry and tapped in the gatehouse security code. Walking through the elegant stables-turned-living-room, I noticed a blotch of beige paint over the cream of the walls. Next to it was taped another Wet Point sign. What was this, more rethinking of the paint scheme by Chardé the decorator? Just how close to the Hydes was she? Close enough for her husband, herself, and her painters to have the gatehouse keypad code?

In the huge kitchen, Marla and Sukie were downing sizzling, Julian-made cheese croquettes, along with the creamy Dijon and tart cranberry sauces I’d brought. Oh, well. I was going to have to make a new hors d’oeuvre for Thursday’s labyrinth lunch anyway, and I didn’t begrudge anyone any goodies. Sukie and Eliot were hosting our family and enduring the disruption a crime brings. And Marla was my best friend.

Eliot was off somewhere, Sukie informed me, studying Elizabethan games the kids could play Friday night. “He does not think bear-baiting would be enjoyed by the parents,” she added with a soft giggle as she ran her hand through her flyaway blond hair. “He does want to talk to you,” she added as she ladled more ruby-hued cranberry sauce onto a croquette.

“I want to apologize again for all the confusion yesterday,” I told her. “We’re very thankful you’ve taken us in.”

She waved this away. “You must not worry! This is a good way for us to test having people stay here! It is practice for our future conferences.”

I felt a sudden chill and looked around the kitchen. One of the old windows had come loose and swung open. As I hastened across to close it, I asked if anyone had checked on Tom recently.

Julian had been up to our room just ten minutes before. “He’s asleep, Goldy,” he said, without sounding reassuring. Julian’s face was drawn. He seemed preoccupied, despite the coos of admiration from Marla and Sukie over his lovely lunch. Worried about Tom? Arch? Me?

Marla studied my face as I walked back to the table. “You look awful, Goldy, almost as bad as Julian. Are you okay? Where have you been? What took so long?”

I gestured to the suitcase and bag of albums and mumbled that I’d been getting them from the house. I handed the photo of John Richard to Sukie. “Here’s the guy we need to bar from entry. I don’t want to keep him from Arch, but he’s very volatile, and an ex-con to boot. So when he does see Arch, it’s going to have to be in a place with a lot of people.” I omitted the part about the attack from the computer thief, because I didn’t want to upset Sukie.

But Sukie’s blue eyes were full of worry as she handed me back the photo. “You did miss a call, Goldy, from the assistant district attorney. Her name is Pat Gerber? She wants you to call her.” She showed me the phone, tucked between the refrigerator and the glass-fronted kitchen cupboard of Eliot’s meticulously labeled Elizabethan conserves. I peered in at rows of chokecherry and redcurrant jellies, strawberry conserve with champagne, and plum jam. “This is just half of his insomniac production from this summer,” she said airily. “I was beginning to think we should not have destroyed the stillroom.”

As I dialed the district attorney’s office, I wondered how toasted brioche would taste with the plum jam, or whether I could make a good Cumberland sauce with the currant jelly. I was put on hold and amused myself with the image of a latter-day Jay Gatsby fretting over a bubbling vat of conserve. When I was finally connected with Pat, she said that since I hadn’t specified parental visitation for John Richard in the restraining order, he was squawking to anyone who would listen. If I could work it out with the lawyers, the best thing to do - since everything had become so acrimonious, Pat added - would be to take Arch to a neutral site for the hand-off. I suggested an Aspen Meadow counseling center that included such a service. Good idea, Pat agreed. I told her I’d call my lawyer about letting John Richard have Arch overnight.

“Sounds workable,” she said. I should be prepared for a battle royal in two weeks, she went on, when the temporary order expired and we had to go before a judge and argue about permanent visitation orders. “John Richard’s got a prison record, which should make some difference, but it may not, since he’s got money and position in the community. And by the way, if he does make any threats against you, write them down,” Pat advised sternly. “If you can, have witnesses.”

What do you know, I thought, that’s already happened. After we hung up, I scribbled down what had transpired at our house, put in a call to my lawyer, and outlined the overnight suggestion. He said he’d deal with the Jerk’s lawyer, who had already left three messages for him. Unless I heard to the contrary, I should drop Arch off at the counseling center today after fencing practice, around five-fifteen, with his overnight bag. Then I should pick up my son after school tomorrow. My heart sank as I hung up. Was this what I was looking forward to - a constant shuffling of poor Arch to and from his ex-con father?

Julian slid me a plate arranged with two hot croquettes and two small bowls of dipping sauces. The croquettes were crisp and crunchy on the outside, tasty with a homemade roux-binder and hot melted cheese on the inside. I made mm-mm noises and dunked the second one into both the spicy Dijon mustard and tart cranberry sauces. I virtuously declined more, saying I had to go check on Tom.

I wanted to see Tom, that was true. It was so much better than brooding about the Jerk. But in reality, I mused guiltily as I trod up the carpeted stairs to our suite, I wanted to boot up my laptop - assuming Tom was still asleep - and read all the contents of that disk with its revealing electronic mail.

But he was not asleep. He was talking on the portable telephone, which he carefully put on his end table when I entered the suite. I wondered with whom he’d been talking, wondered if I had the guts to confront him about his communication with Sara Beth O’Malley. Had his state of blood loss, pain, and shock meant he’d forgotten what he’d said to me by the creek?

Was I going to live the rest of my married life like this? “Sheriff’s department,” he said matter-of-factly, gesturing at the phone. Then he eyed me suspiciously. “What happened to you? You’re so late!”

“Oh, I got knocked out. Boyd will tell you all about it. Somebody stole our computers. How are you feeling?”

“What? Who knocked you out? Where? Miss G., I want you to tell me about it.”

“I was at the house.” I told him about being hit, the theft, the threatening visit of John Richard and Viv, and my trip to the shooter’s perch. “So we won’t be going home anytime soon.” I omitted any mention of the mysterious appearance of Sara Beth O’Malley, because I just couldn’t face talking about that. Yet.

Tom stared at me in stunned disbelief. “You put your life in danger for some pictures and a disk on food? Why didn’t you just get a police shot of Korman and go to the library for cookbooks?”

“Because I typed up very specific stuff for Eliot Hyde.”

“This is all my fault,” Tom said angrily. He shifted in the bed, obviously in pain, obviously peevish. “Damn this case.”

“Forget the case and just get better.”

He groaned and thumped his pillow, unable to get comfortable on the big bed. “I’ll get better if I can just figure out how Andy Balachek got himself killed, and who’s beating up on my wife.” He paused, then looked back at me. “The whole thing’s strange … .”

“I… saw Andy’s blackened hands. Tom, was he electrocuted?”

“If I tell you, will you promise me not to go back into our house?” When I nodded, Tom said, “He was, but he didn’t die of the shock. That’s what’s so weird. You get a huge electric shock, you figure you can’t go far. Right?”

“Did Andy go anywhere?” Tom’s eyes were grim. “It looks as if he was electrocuted, then shot. Then the killer put him in the creek, and either hightailed it out of there, or sat and waited for me to show up.”

-14-

Marla slipped into the room without knocking. “Goldy!” she whispered. Her eyes glowed. “I have news!” Then she was instantly apologetic. “Sorry, Tom! I didn’t knock because I thought you’d be asleep.” She tossed her head of brown curls and lifted an eyebrow at me. “Come out into the hall if you want gossip about you-know-who and his you-know- what.”

“Ah,” I said, understanding Marla-speak for the Jerk and his sex life, the Jerk and his money, or both.

“I don’t know about you girls,” Tom teased. His mischievous smile vanished, however, when he moved his shoulder.

“Need a painkiller?” I asked, immediately concerned.

“No.” Typical male response. “I just want some quiet.

Go visit with Marla.” To Marla, I said, “Let’s hear it.” She giggled and scurried out the door. I kissed Tom’s forehead and told him I’d be back soon to check on him.

Animosity manifests itself in a number of ways, I thought as I avoided another Wet Paint sign in the hall. I possessed a passive defensiveness toward the Jerk. I never knew when he might attack, but I had learned not to let down my guard. Active animosity, on the other hand, was Marla’s specialty. She fed her obsessive

hatred for the Jerk with information. She paid her lawyer a separate monthly fee to employ investigators to keep tabs on our mutual ex-husband’s shenanigans, sexual adventures, and - her favorite - his financial woes. From the triumphant tone in her voice, I suspected her latest news fell in the last category.

“You’re not going to believe what he’s up to now,” she began eagerly, once we were standing beside one of the tall windows that overlooked the courtyard.

“Try me.”

“Well,” she reported, her face set in mock disapproval, “it’s a shady financial deal.”

“Begin at the beginning.”

“My lawyer just called.” She ran a bejeweled hand through her hair. “Okay, you remember when he had to sell the Keystone condo?” I nodded. To offset monetary setbacks the previous year, John Richard had been forced to auction off his ski resort condominium. According to Marla, the condo had been the setting of much debauchery. “Okay, then he had to go through the inconvenience of being incarcerated, so he had to sell his practice. He realized about six hundred thou from that, after taxes and whatnot. His legal fees have reduced that by about half. So he’s back in his country-club house after … what? Serving less than five months of his sentence. Payments on the house are six thou a month and have never stopped. Add to that, paying you child support. On the plus side, his new salary at ACHMO is, don’t puke, eight hundred thou a year.”

“Eight hundred thousand dollars a year?”

“Uh, yeah. His lawyer landed him a job with the same HMO where his last girlfriend - the one he assaulted, let us not forget - once worked. Now John Richard is tightening up ACHMO’s formularies for prescription drugs. So when you ask, Who at my HMO sets up the rules to deny me prescriptions? here’s your answer: The Jerk.”]

“He’s ratcheted up his stinginess to a grand scale.”

“No kidding.” Marla went on: “Okay, you’ve got an idea of his income, assets, and liabilities. Plus he’s got a prison record now, and getting a new mortgage is a tad difficult. So: How do you figure he’s buying a three-million-dollar town house in Beaver Creek?”

“Three million?” I gasped. “You have got to be - Wait, maybe he got a signing bonus with ACHMO.”

She shook her head. “Nope. Lawyer’s investigator says ACHMO took a hammering when they gave their new CEO a monster signing bonus. The news made it into the Post, the stockholders went ballistic at the annual meeting. ACHMO doesn’t give signing bonuses anymore. But you haven’t heard it all.”

I thought I detected the sound of distant yelling, coming from across the courtyard. “What was that?”

Marla glanced carelessly through one of the windows, then back at me. “Who knows? Now listen, the down payment on this place in Beaver Creek was three hundred thousand. My sources have their ways with the mortgage company, and report that he got a loan for a hundred fifty thou, equity from his place in the country club. His partner in the sale put up the other hundred fifty. Down payment done. Payments are interest only for the first six months, then a big balloon payment. And guess whose names are on the deed?”

“I can’t.”

“John Richard Korman and his new sidekick, Viv Martini.”

“But… he never goes for joint ownership. It was one of my problems when we were doing the divorce settlement.”

She waggled a finger at me. “Don’t you think I know that? The sources inside the mortgage company - oh, don’t give me that look, anyone can be bought. Anyway, my investigator says John Richard was making noises that lie would be making the interest payments for six months. Viv has a modest income from gun sales. But when it came to that five-hundred-thousand-dollar balloon payment? Viv was the one asking about when the half-mil would be due, exactly, and if the mortgage company would take a check from John Richard’s account. My theory is that the balloon payment is her responsibility. Otherwise he wouldn’t do the deal, don’t you think? I’m also thinking they’re planning on selling the place for a huge profit, after they make the balloon payment. And they both go away happy. Or at least filthy rich.”

Filthy, indeed. “But if Viv Martini had a hundred fifty thou to blow, why latch onto the Jerk? Why would you do that kind of deal with someone you’d just startned going out with?”

When Marla shrugged, her diamond dangle earrings sparkled. “He’s cute. He’s a doctor. What the hell, Goldy, why did we hook up with him?”

Because I loved him, I answered silently. Because he’d promised he loved me, too. Duh.

“Wait a minute.” I tried to think. “Arch told me John Richard was going to give Viv something when he got out of prison. A Mercedes, he said. Or a trip to Rio. Or maybe a Mercedes and a town house, huh?” I shook my head. “But even if you set aside the hundred fifty thou, where does the half-mil for the balloon come from?”

Marla’s smile broadened. “I figure it’s a drug deal. Prescription meds, sold on the black market at a huge profit.”

While Marla chattered about how she was going to have this or that friend of hers in Beaver Creek keep a lookout on everything John Richard and Viv did up there, I resolved to talk to Sergeant Boyd on the subject of Viv Martini. Boyd would be willing to tell me what the department knew, wouldn’t he? Well… he might if I threatened to follow Viv until I found out what she was doing. Thot wouldn’t only be time-consuming, it would be dangerous. On the other hand, I didn’t reckon it would be as perilous as going into a financial partnership with the Jerk. Viv was either one tough babe, or she was dangerously smitten with Dr. John Richard Korman. Marla said, “And you know those leather duds Viv wears, well, there’s only one leather specialty shop in Beaver Creek, and the owner is a good friend of mine - “

I nodded, paying little attention. Last month, Furman County had been the scene of the murder of a FedEx driver and the theft of his three-million-dollar cargo. Yesterday, the body of one of the suspected hijackers had been found. Now, if I wasn’t making too much of a leap, a former girlfriend of Ray Wolff, the guy accused of master-minding the robbery, was doing a big real estate deal with a doctor whose assault conviction might not

be known in ultrachic Beaver Creek. Was John Richard scamming the HMO? Was it possible that Viv Martini was laundering money through real estate? How probable was it that John Richard was being taken for a ride by his new girlfriend? Maybe John Richard would have to go back to jail. A shiver of delight wriggled down my spine.

“What do you suppose is the attraction between those two?” Marla demanded, then answered her own question by launching into a monologue on the subjects of sex and money. I thought of something else: If Viv was not doing a drug or other underhanded deal with the Jerk, did he know how she was getting her money? He had to trust that she’d come up with the cash. Then again, maybe all she had to do was wrap herself around his torso and ask for the rough stuff.

“Listen,” Marla went on breathlessly, “I’ve found out something else about John Richard that might interest you. Has to do with your current employer.” I gave her a skeptical look.

“According to Christine Busby, Sukie’s great pal on the labyrinth committee? Sukie’s a cancer survivor.”

“So? Lots of people are, Marla.”

She opened her eyes wide. “Cervical cancer. Detected by John Richard, who did Sukie’s hysterectomy. She’s been cancer-free for five years and can’t say enough to Christine about how wonderful El Jerko is.”

“But she didn’t act as if she knew him when I mentioned his name. Or when I showed her his picture - “

“Hmm. She didn’t confide in me about her illness, either. Maybe she doesn’t want to spill her secrets to her beloved ex-doctor’s ex-wives.”

“Marla, I need to tell Tom - “

Before I could finish articulating that thought, two people appeared on the far side of the courtyard. Both in hooded winter coats, they seemed to be arguing beneath the ground-level arcade that enclosed the courtyard. Their voices carried but the words were unrecognizable. The altercation rose a notch when the two tried to make their points by thrusting pointed fingers in each other’s faces. I shuddered. Unless my own experience was wrong, it wouldn’t be long before the conflict went physical.

Marla, ever willing to be diverted from gossiping about one situation to shoving her way into another, stared down avidly at the squabble. What looked like a tall man and a shorter, stockier one were now slapping each other’s hands away. The short man put his hands on the chest of the tall one and pushed him back. The tall man stumbled, fell, rolled, and then jumped back to his feet. His hood fell off.

“Wow!” Marla exclaimed. “The lord of the manor just went ass-over-teakettle. And Sir Eliot is quarreling with …”

But neither of us could make out the other person until both of Eliot’s hands flew up as if to choke the short man. Startled, the man pulled back and his hood flopped down … and revealed the disheveled white hair of Michaela Kirovsky, who was flailing as Eliot’s hands closed on her throat.

“Good God,” breathed Marla. “It’s that caretaker woman. Goldy - call nine-one- one.”

But there was no need, for at that instant Michaela wrenched violently away from Eliot and pulled a gleaming rapier off one of the covered arch supports. While Marla and I looked on in horror, Michaela slashed downward with the sword and struck Eliot’s left arm. I gasped. It was a move I’d seen Arch perform in fencing practice.

“I’ve got to tell Tom,” I said. “Get someone on the phone - “

“Hey!” yelled Marla, as she banged on the leaded glass. “Stop that!”

Startled, Eliot and Michaela glanced up. I whispered a curse and pulled back from the window. Marla, undaunted, waved both hands over her head and bellowed, “No fighting! Stop that or I’ll call the cops!”

Could they hear her through the glass? Did I care? I just wanted to be someplace else. So, apparently, did Michaela and Eliot, for when I peeked back out the window, both had disappeared through an unseen doorway.

“What in the hell do you suppose that was about?” demanded Marla. “I mean, they didn’t even give us a second look. And anyway! Even if you disagree with someone who works for you, you don’t try to choke ‘em. I mean, not unless you coach college basketball.”

“I can’t deal with this now,” I said abruptly, realizing that if Michaela was not at fencing practice, it must have been canceled. “I’ve got to run.” While Marla waited, I darted into our room - Tom was sleeping - and snagged my purse and jacket.

“Run where?” she whispered when I returned.

“I need to pick up Arch.” I zipped to Arch’s room, grabbed his overnight bag, and trotted back toward Marla. “I’ve got to drop him off for the Jerk, then come back and take care of Tom. And I want to get out of here before Eliot realizes I saw him. Should we report him to the domestic-abuse people, though?”

“Better wait on that,” said Marla,

“because I think we might have just saved him from being stabbed, gored, and left for dead.” She walked purposefully down the hall. “Think I should tell Sukie? She’s Swiss, she’s used to being neutral, right?”

“Don’t,” I advised as I tried to hurry along behind her. Marla, heavier than I by about fifty pounds, had become devoted to a minimal but effective exercise routine since having a heart attack the previous summer. Still, I was surprised when she quickstepped down the carpeted stairs beside me. Following her, my head throbbed. I said, “Snooping around is hard on your health.”

“Uh-huh,” she replied. “I noticed what it’s doing for yours.” We pulled up in front of the kitchen door. “I just want to know why those two were arguing,” she said, the very picture of innocence. She pushed into the kitchen and merrily asked Julian where Sukie had gotten to. Julian, chopping vegetables, called to Sukie, who

peeked out, startled, from where she was crouching inside the hearth. We’d interrupted her scrubbing of the fireplace’s interior walls, and she was not happy. Despite the twice-weekly visits of a cleaning company, Sukie felt compelled to check obsessively for spots they might have missed. Well, I’d probably be critical of any caterer I had to hire, so who was I to judge?

As I pulled out of the garage and accelerated across the causeway, a new question occurred to me: Did Sukie’s cleaning jobs include straightening out messes made by her husband?

At quarter after three, Arch raced out the school gym entrance. “They’re refinishing the floor of the school fencing loft,” he announced as he heaved his bookbag into the rear of the van, “so Michaela gave us an assignment. She told us to run up and down five hundred stairs.” His tone was weary. “Fifty times ten stairs. Or whatever. But I’m too hungry to do that right now.”

“Why run up and down stairs?” I asked as I headed toward the Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop.

“Strengthens the legs.” He glanced over the seat. “My overnight bag? Are we moving again?”

“Your dad and I have worked out a visitation policy for the next couple of weeks,” I began, as if John Richard and I had actually peacefully cooperated on a new arrangement. I explained to Arch that I’d be leaving him at the counseling center by the library. His bag held clean clothes and toiletries, and his dad would take him to school the next day. I pulled into a parking space on Main Street. After practice, I concluded, I would pick him up.

Without responding, Arch jumped out of the van and shot into the pastry shop.

“Well, I’m glad to see Dad,” he said finally, after he’d ordered two pieces of Linzertorte and a soft drink. “But Michaela promised that tonight Eliot would show me exactly where the young duke died. Would you tell her where I am? Ask her if I can see it tomorrow after practice?”

“Sure,” I said, with some hesitance, as Arch wolfed down his first piece of torte. I guessed medieval history could be pretty cool if you focused on death and ghosts. Still, I wasn’t certain I wanted Eliot and Michaela showing Arch anything. “Ah, honey? I don’t want you poking around where someone died. Any chance I could go with you?”

He sighed and put down his second piece of torte. “First you want me to get along with these people, then you tell me you need to chaperone me around the place. Which is it?” “The castle… is big, very big, and parts of it are closed off. I just… I’m not entirely sure the whole place is safe, that’s all.” The memory of Eliot lunging for Michaela’s throat made my stomach knot. “Also, I don’t want you going anywhere with Michaela and Eliot without me along.” “Okay, Mom,” he said as he tossed his paper plate and cup, “just forget that I was trying to get along with the Hydes. I’ll tell them I can’t do anything or go

anywhere without my mommy there to take care of me.” Why was mothering so hard? I exhaled, unable to think of a reply. Arch said he was going to find some steps to start running up and down. I sat in the van with the motor running and tried to think. Arch was due to turn fifteen in April, a fact he reminded me of whenever he accused me of babying him. But that was two months away. What I needed to concentrate on was where I should move our family next, before Eliot and Michaela killed one another, and while figuring out what John Richard and Viv Martini were up to. Not to mention who’d shot Tom. But immediate answers eluded me. When Arch returned, gasping, he said, “I think I’m going to puke.” On that happy note, we drove to the counseling center in silence. When we pulled into the library parking lot and got out of the van, I glanced around. One could never be sure that the Jerk would actually show up at any particular prearranged time, I thought, as I chewed the in-side of my cheek.

“Here you are,” announced a throaty female voice be-hind me. I whirled and the hair on the back of my neck stood on end. It was Viv Martini herself, dressed in skin-hugging chocolate brown leather pants and jacket. Once again, her jacket was zipped down to reveal cleavage. Would it be too prudish for me to put my hand over Arch’s eyes? “Hi, Viv,” Arch said matter-of-factly. “Want me to put my stuff in the car?” “Your dad’s not here yet-” Viv began. “Arch,” I interrupted her, “would you run into the library and see if the new Jacques Pepin has come in for me? I requested it a month ago.” He sighed, rolled his eyes, and dropped his bag on the pavement. “Please be nice to him,” I told Viv, as soon as Arch had disappeared into the library. “He’s really struggling with his dad getting out of jail.” “10m nice to him,” Viv protested. “I got John Richard to buy a treadmill and free weights so we could both work out with Arch. Arch likes me.” I paused, but only for a moment. John Richard could be along any moment. “Look,” I said, a tad desperately, “my husband is a policeman who’s been shot-” “So we saw on the news.” To my surprise, Viv’s eyes were sympathetic. “How awful! Do they have any idea who did it?” “Not yet. But my ex said you knew Ray Wolff, who was arrested by my husband.” I watched her closely, but saw nothing on her face except concern. “Do you have any idea if Wolff was involved in the shooting?” “I don’t give a damn about Ray Wolffi” she snapped. “There’s no telling what lies up to. That’s why I left him.” I managed a smile. Did I believe her? “A rumor in town also has you seen with Andy Balachek, whose body I found.”

“Forget it,” she said immediately. “I didn’t touch Andy. He wasn’t my type. He was a sweet kid. Ray seduced him into that theft, the way he does everybody. Ray’s a son-of-a-bitch snake who will promise you anything to get what he wants.”

Arch came out of the library and called to us. I said quickly, “So, Viv? You wouldn’t have any idea who killed Andy, would you?”

She signaled to Arch. “Some buddy of Ray’s, probably. Once they do what he says, they’re like those bugs that crawl back under rocks, never to see the light of day.”

Without warning, the gold Mercedes screamed into the lot. John Richard hopped out, crossed his arms, and glared at us. I squinted at the dealer’s paper tags on the Mercedes. Lauderdale Luxury Imports. Was the Mercedes John Richard’s car or Viv’s? Arch announced that there were fifty holds on the Pepin, and I wouldn’t get it for a while. Then he shyly looked up to Viv, who sauntered away with her arm slung over my son’s shoulder. The sight made me want to puke.

Once they’d pulled away, I headed back to the castle. Dusk in the Rocky Mountain winter is a sudden, cold affair, arriving early and bringing with it a lengthy atmospheric gloom. I felt my mood drop with the temperature and the darkness.

In the kitchen of the. castle, Eliot, wearing an old-fashioned double-breasted gray suit and gray Ascot tie, was giving Julian instructions on the general outlines for a Tudor dinner. I looked closely at his left arm, the one Michaela had struck with the sword. Was that a slight bandage-bulge, or was I imagining it? In his right hand, Eliot held a crystal glass of sherry that he gestured with to make his points. “It was not a supper; although what the Elizabethans called dinner; we’ll be serving at suppertime on Friday evening for the fencing team.” The sherry slopped over the side of the glass.

Sukie, standing on the other side of the room in a full-length black velvet coat, groaned, undoubtedly thinking of her just-scrubbed floor. I put on an enthusiastic face. Whatever Eliot wanted in the food department, no matter how arcane, he was going to get. I didn’t intend to get throttled.

“Now, as Goldy may have told you,” Eliot said, jutting his chin in Julian’s direction, “during the Renaissance, your typical late-sixteenth-century courtier would be served neither dinner nor supper in the Great Hall. Hollywood notwithstanding, of course,” he added with a chuckle and sip of his drink. He continued: “The large change from medieval to Renaissance food service was that the king and queen - or lord and lady, as you will - withdrew to private chambers for meals. On very special occasions, such as Christmas, they would eat in the hall with a full complement of courtiers. The lord and lady and their intimates would be served on the dais, so all could see and admire them.”

Julian’s handsome face was set in a raised-eyebrow, pressed-lip expression of I’m-trying-not-to-laugh. Without warning, I felt suddenly cold again, and glanced around. Was I the only one noticing that the same window kept sliding open? While Eliot lectured, I sidled over to the window, shut it, and then hustled back to the kitchen table, where Julian had laid out trays of beautifully arranged vegetarian fare.

One platter contained a magazine-perfect stack of diamond-cut, grill-striped golden polenta, another a stunning array of steamed pale green artichokes, golden ears of corn, bright orange and green baby carrots, and broccoli florets. A third tray contained a bowl of arugula and romaine lettuces beside a heated crock of what looked and smelled like the recipe I’d shown him for a hot port wine and chčvre dressing. I looked closer. The creamy vinaigrette was studded with poached figs. So it was the recipe I’d shown him. I’d felt triumphant putting it together, for figs had been brought to Britain by the Romans. My mouth watered.

“But we’ll have more time to talk tomorrow,” Eliot concluded with a toothy grin and last delicate slurp from his glass. “Sukie and I are going out for the evening. Enjoy the … veggies. Goldy can tell you a Tudor courtier typically consumed two pounds of meat a day. Venison, rabbit, mackerel, goose, pheasant, peacock, et cetera.” He nodded at the spread. “No cornbread, no carrots. The occasional potato.”

Ever polite, Julian smiled and nodded. Sukie gave us her best approximation of an apologetic look and announced that Michaela had a small kitchenette in her castle apartment, and usually did not join them for the evening meal. Then she and Eliot swept away.

I was left wondering. Had Eliot’s family treated the Kirovskys like family for so many years that it was impossible to fire her, even if she stabbed him with a sword? If Sartre was right, and hell was other people, what was other people you don’t get along with living forever at close quarters.? A lower circle of hell?

I put these questions aside as Julian and I shouldered the trays and trucked them up to Tom’s and my room. Julian had already set three places at a card table next to Tom’s side of the bed. Not a dais in the Great Hall, but absolutely perfect for a cozy family meal. We said grace. In addition to thanks, I prayed for safety and guidance, and for my son.

“Are we all sure we want to stay here?” Julian asked delicately, as he passed the salad. “That Eliot guy is weird.”

“I’m comfortable,” Tom offered. “We wouldn’t have as good security in a hotel, I can tell you that, unless Lambert pulled some extra guys off the force to keep watch over us. So… unless the person who shot me can find a way into a heavily fortified castle, I’d say we’re in pretty good shape.”

“Chardé Lauderdale might be able to find her way in,” I ventured.

“I think I could deal with that skinny decorator,” Tom insisted with a chuckle.

I started piling goodies onto Tom’s plate and my own. “Before you turn down a hotel, you should know I saw Eliot having a nasty fight this afternoon with his caretaker, Michaela Kirovsky, Marla broke it up.”

“Yeah,” Tom replied. “Marla called while you were running Arch around. She said none of her sources know if Eliot and Michaela fight all the time, or if what you saw this afternoon was a one-time thing.” Tom laughed and shook his head. “I’d say Eliot Hyde is more than weird, maybe even certifiable. When we’re done eating, I’ll tell you all about his pranks.”

“Oh, tell us now,” I coaxed with a giggle, infinitely glad that Tom felt well enough to gossip. I finished heaping his plate with polenta and vegetables and set it in front of him.

Tom took a few bites, and complimented Julian. Then he said, “Eliot told the sheriff’s department, and townsfolk who would listen, that any castle-property trespasser would be attacked by a ghost.”

“I’ll bet that brought in the gawkers,” Julian said with a wry smile.

Tom laughed again. “You don’t know the half of it.”

Figgy Salad

4 ounces small Mission figs (13 to 15 figlets”) ˝ cup ruby port ˝ teaspoon sugar 1 ounce (about 2 tablespoons) filberts (also called hazelnuts) 2 tablespoons balsamic vinegar 1 large shallot, minced by hand or in a small food processor 2 ounces chčvre, softened and sliced 1/4 cup olive oil ź teaspoon salt freshly ground black pepper to taste 8 cups field greens (“baby” variety, if possible), rinsed, drained, patted dry, wrapped in paper towels, and chilled

Cut the stems off the figs, rinse them, and pat dry. Place them in a small saucepan with the port and sugar and bring to a simmer over medium heat. Cover the pan, lower the heat to the lowest setting, and simmer gently for about 10 minutes, or until the figs are soft. Drain the figs, reserving the cooking liquid. Allow the figs to cool, then slice them into quarters and set aside. Using a wide frying pan, toast the filberts over medium heat, stirring frequently, until they emit a nutty smell, about 5 to 10 minutes. Remove them from the heat, and when they are cool, coarsely chop them. Reheat the cooking liquid over low heat and stir in the vinegar, shallot, chčvre, oil, and seasonings. Add the figs and raise the heat to medium-low. Stir the dressing until the cheese is completely melted. Toss the field greens with the warm dressing and sprinkle the nuts on top. Serve immediately.

Makes 6 servings

-15-

I knew better than to interrupt Tom when he began a Tale of Law Enforcement. I took a first luscious bite of Julian’s beautifully prepared salad. The warm, bittersweet dressing had melted the creamy chunks of chčvre and made a silky coating for the sweet, moist figs and bitter greens. It was a heavenly mčlange. Was this really my recipe, or had Julian transformed it into something otherworldly? Maybe what made it delicious was someone else fixing it.

I felt myself relax. And I was thankful: That my husband was alive, that Julian was with us once again, that Arch and I had survived our first encounter with the Jerk-as-ex-con. As I munched the sumptuous grilled polenta, I ordered myself to set aside worries about Tom’s wound, the other woman he claimed not to love, and Andy Balachek’s corpse in Cottonwood Creek.

“Eliot had moved back from the East Coast and lived in this castle for almost, oh, five years,” Tom continued, “when he realized his tours were a flop and his inheritance was going to drain away soon. So. About four years ago, he took out a loan against the equity in the castle itself and used it to refurbish the chapel by the creek. Vandals had broken some windows and spray-painted the walls and floor. Eliot spent fifty thou on folding wooden chairs, heaters, an antique organ, a handmade gold cross, spotlights, repairs to the stained-glass windows, and installation of electricity. The first wedding went off well. Unfortunately, Eliot hadn’t thought of security, and vandals broke in after the celebration and stole the gold cross.”

“Wow,” said Julian, as he piled jewel-colored baby vegetables on our plates. “How much bad luck would that bring?”

Tom nodded. “Eliot’s next strategy, in addition to installing a lockbox, was to arrange an interview with the Mountain Journal. He claimed the dead duke, the rich young nephew from Tudor times, still haunted the place and roamed the grounds. Eliot called his own estate ‘Poltergeist Palace.’ He warned that anyone breaking into Hyde Chapel or the castle could be attacked by the ghost.”

“So he’s the one who came up with the name,” I muttered.

“A second couple tying the knot in Hyde Chapel didn’t even finish their ceremony. The bride was spooked to begin with, because the groom had lost his first wife in a car accident. Before they got to ‘I do,’ a screaming started up in the chapel. Or near the chapel; the witnesses couldn’t agree. Nobody could find the screamer. So the bride got hysterical and started hollering herself, claiming it was the ghost of her husband’s first wife.”

“How come none of this was publicized at Saint Luke’s when Eliot gave them Hyde Chapel?” I asked, fascinated.

“Because Episcopalians have the Holy Ghost,” Julian interjected.

“That’s the Holy Spirit to you,” I shot back.

Tom grinned. “You guys want me to finish this story?” When we both nodded, he went on: “The bride in the second ceremony refused to go on with the service. The groom demanded his money back. Eliot said no. The groom gave Eliot a fist to the jaw, and knocked him out. One of the guests called us. By the time we got there, the guests had all dispersed, and the bride and groom had skedaddled to a justice of the peace. Somebody had given Eliot Hyde smelling salts. We found him in the chapel storage area, where he was rewinding a tape of screaming sounds, probably broadcast through speakers in the chapel. He said he’d set up the tape to go off if the chapel was broken into, but somehow the recorder had gotten tripped by the wedding party. We told him to get rid of the tape, or next time we’d arrest him for creating a public nuisance.”

“Poor Eliot,” I said.

Julian rolled his muscled swimmer’s shoulders as he polished off his plate of veggies. “Way I heard it, when I was at Elk Park Prep? Someone actually did die here. A child. And not four centuries ago, either.”

“What?” Tom and I demanded.

Julian shrugged. “The story at school was that a couple came up here to have an illegitimate baby, and it was a stillbirth. They threw the baby’s corpse down the well. As I said, this isn’t an ancient ghost rumor, either. It was something in the last ten years.”

“No one reported it to the sheriff’s department,” Tom replied, “or I would have heard about it.”

“Search warrant!” I cried.

“Forget it,” said Tom.

“Here’s my opinion,” Julian said, picking up our plates. “Eliot may have acted weird by scaring folks off. But if you ask me, Sukie’s the nutcase.” He frowned. “There is such a thing as too clean, you know. I finish with a bowl, she washes it. She wipes down the walls, then cleans the windows. Done with that? She sweeps the floor, gets on her hands and knees, and scrubs it. Why would a rich person with a hired cleaning service be so anal?”

“Julian!” Tom and I cried.

He went on: “I’ve only been here one day. Sukie seemed to like the lunch, right? But then I began thinking she was just keeping an eye on me, to make sure I didn’t steal anything. When she grabbed away a sauté pan I was still using, I told her she didn’t need to worry, I was bonded She apologized. She says she cleans because she’s Swiss. Next week, she’s hiring a specialist to wax all the wood floors. She told me that while she was at a church meeting Sunday night, Chardé came in and she and Eliot splashed paint samples all over the place. Sukie went absolutely nuts. Then the paint guys came back today with more paint samples. Eliot told her not to worry, brighter colors would make the castle more attractive as a conference center.” He motioned with the tray he had now filled with plates. “Anyway, if I don’t put these in the dishwasher before I go to bed, she’ll come around in the middle of the night looking for them.”

I didn’t like the idea of Julian wandering around the castle alone at night, but tried to keep my voice serene. “Listen, Julian, do me a favor, okay? When you finish in the kitchen and come back up, just knock gently on our door. One knock. So we can be sure you’re all right.”

“So you know the ghost didn’t snag me?” Julian said with a wink. He heaved up the tray. “Okay, Ma and Pa. I’ll knock.” We thanked him again for the marvelous meal. He grinned, delighted with our praise, and backed out the door.

When Tom and I were alone at last, I washed my hands and began the task of removing his bandage, cleaning the wound, then taping it back up. Lord knows, I longed to ask him about Sara Beth O’Malley. But I couldn’t. The newly bloodied bandage, the ugly bruising around the wound, the black stitches on his swollen flesh, made me resolve to say nothing.

Even if I suspected Tom’s old girlfriend had shot him for being disloyal to her and marrying me, what good would it do to confront Tom? I gently laid new gauze in place. What I really wanted to know, I decided, was if he still cared about her, and if he’d acted on that by … whatever. Stop, I ordered myself, as I gently pressed down the last bit of tape. The Jerk had betrayed me for years, years when I’d stuck my head in the proverbial sandbox so much I might as well have been living at the beach. By the end of our marriage I’d turned into a suspicious harpy who thought everything John Richard told me was a lie. If I got back into mistrustful thinking, I was going to make myself miserable.

“Something wrong, Goldy?” Tom gave me the full benefit of those all-knowing green eyes.

“I’m worried about you.”

“Don’t, I’ll be fine.” He paused. “Is Arch on your mind?”

“Yes, that’s it.” My voice cracked.

“The kid’ll be all right. Korman won’t try anything while he’s on parole. Why don’t you come to bed?”

And so I did. I wanted to ask Tom if he still loved me, but I couldn’t. It had been a long day, a very long day. Still, once I was between the crisp cotton sheets and down comforter that were worthy of the most luxurious hotel, sleep eluded me. I switched from fretting about Tom, to wondering if I could safely boot my laptop and read his e-mails, to worrying about Arch. Where was my son at that moment? Did he miss me? I turned over and sighed.

“Goldy, what is it?”

“I’m just thinking about when Arch was a newborn.

I’d lie in bed and fret about whether he was breathing, even though he was just down the hall. I found that if I lay very still and listened, I could hear him. It was like your eyes adjusting to the dark. My ears took in all the sounds of the night, and finally made out his tiny infant breath. In and out. It was comforting. Does that sound nuts?”

“He’s breathing now, Miss G., in his bed at Korman’s house. He’s all right. If he wasn’t, we would have heard about it.”

At that moment a muffled knock on the door indicated Julian was retiring to his room. A few moments later, Tom snored softly beside me.

My eyes remained wide open, my body tense. Finally, I eased from beneath the comforter. Despite the heat pouring from the baseboards, the air in the big room was chilly. I sat down on the velvety wool rug.

Tom wasn’t in a deep enough sleep for me to start tapping away on a keyboard. Besides, if I read the e-mails tonight, I’d feel too guilty to sleep. Especially if he caught me.

I hugged myself against the cold and thought about Arch. Yes, he was with John Richard, and no, I couldn’t phone at midnight to check that he’d brushed his teeth and been tucked in. (Question: How do you tuck in an almost-fifteen-year-old, anyway? Answer: You don’t.) And what if Viv decided to tell Arch a bedtime story about automatic weapons?

Don’t think about it. Very quietly, I slipped into my heavy coat, boots, and mittens. There was something I could do, a ritual that had always helped with worry about Arch’s safety when he was spending the night at a friend’s, or camping with the Cub Scouts in the wildlife preserve. I’d face in the direction of my son’s location and send him good vibes. This was not a spiritual exercise sanctioned in your neighborhood Episcopal church. But I’d always found it reassuring, and believed that God would understand.

I quietly maneuvered through the set of double doors to the southeast tower. My boots scraped the floor. The sharp air was dense with ice crystals. The dim light illuminating the tower cast long shadows on the dark stone.

John Richard’s house lay southwest of the castle, in the Aspen Meadow Country Club area. I shivered, oriented myself, then stood by the window that faced southwest. I closed my eyes. Then I brought up the vision of Arch sleeping. I willed myself to be very still.

After a few moments, I could have sworn I heard breathing. It was not my own breath, but the rapid, shallow inhale-exhale of a child. Fear rippled through my veins. I opened my eyes and glanced around quickly: nothing. When I tipped forward to check out the window, there was only the barely lit black water of the moat below, and across the moat, a small neon light by the castle Dumpster. Ghosts didn’t usually breathe, did they? Being dead and all? I’m losing it, I decided, as I tiptoed back to our room, shed my outerwear, and slipped into bed. I need sleep.

But I lay awake for a long time, thinking about what to do next.

Dawn brought frigid air and charcoal clouds hemmed with a bright blue sliver of sky. To my chagrin, my neck had stiffened from my nasty encounter with the computer thief. What sleep I’d managed to get had brought some clarity, however. Boyd and Armstrong had promised to touch base today. I would call them first, with some questions of my own. And I had to talk with Eliot about the new arrangements for the next day’s labyrinth lunch. With Tom still asleep, I rolled quietly out of bed, emptied my mind, and began a slow yoga routine. Breathe, stretch, breathe, hold. Before long, I felt better.

As I started to get dressed, I remembered the disk and Sara Beth O’Malley. I frowned, remembering Tom’s story. Talk about a ghost.

Tom’s snoring was deep and sonorous. With my laptop tucked under my arm, I tiptoed into the bathroom. I didn’t give myself time to think, much less feel guilty. I plugged in the computer and booted it up, covered the toilet seat with warm towels, and sat down to break into my husband’s e-mail.

There were seven messages: three from “The Gambler,” as Andy apparently called himself, three from “S.B.,” and one from the State Department. I had already opened the first of S.B.‘s messages: Do you remember me.p You said you’d love me forevet: Now I went straight to the second.

I need to prove myself to you? I smiled. Good old Tom. Figure out if she is who she says she is. I’m putting myself in danger just writing to you. Nobody knows I’m here. Remember our secret engagement ring? We didn’t want people to criticize us for being too young to know what we were doing. So you picked out a tiny ruby, my birthstone, set in platinum. In answer to your other question, I’ve been in a little village. After my so-called death, I went from being a nurse to being a doctor.: - S.B.

At least she wasn’t calling herself “Your S.B.” anymore. I battled guilt as I opened the third and final communication from her, dated three weeks ago.

Tom, I saw your wife and son today. I read in the paper that she’s a caterer: I don’t want to upset your life. I just would like to see you. Why am I here, you asked. An anonymous donor is giving us medical supplies. I’m pilling them up. I also have a dental abscess and need a root canal. They don’t have neighborhood endodontists in my country, although they can manage fake passports and counterfeit checks. I’m taking the risk to tell you all this for a reason. I have an appointment at High Country Dental on February 13 at 9 A.M. I’d like to see you before my appointment, if possible. S.B.

Wait a minute. My country?

The next communication, the one from the State Department, was unemotional and to the point.

Officer Schulz: As you were notified by the DOD in 1975, Major Sara Beth O’Malley, R.N., was listed as missing, presumed dead. Her Mobile Army Surgical Hospital unit was destroyed during on attack three months before American forces withdrew from Saigon. Her body was not recovered, and the DOD has not had reason to change its assessment.

From time to time, we get unsubstantiated reports of war-era Americans still living in Vietnam. Neither we nor the Defense Deportment has any way of investigating these claims.

We urge all persons who have eyewitness reports of missing veterans to fill out a Form 626-3A, available on-line at the above address.

This happy epistle was signed by a minor dignitary of the Department.

So: Sara Beth O’Malley had somehow survived the war, unbeknownst to Washington bureaucrats. She’d also become a doctor for a village whose plumbing facilities undoubtedly wouldn’t appeal to Sukie. The part I couldn’t fathom was why she’d risk coming back to Colorado after twenty-five years to pick up supplies and have her teeth fixed, and oh, by the way, to check on her old fiancé, who had long believed her dead.

I don’t love her. Tom had probably been afraid that if he died from the shot, I’d find the e-mails. Which I had anyway. She thought Arch was his son. If she read in the paper that I was a caterer, she knew I did local events, like the one at Hyde Chapel. Had she been waiting for me to show up for the labyrinth lunch, and shot Tom by accident, instead of me? I wondered if the army or her villagers had taught her to shoot, after all.

I stared at the blinking cursor. Was Sara Beth O’Malley telling the truth? Where was she staying? If she wasn’t in Aspen Meadow, where was she?

Suddenly I remembered what Captain Lambert had quoted from the owner of The Stamp Fox: If you have contacts in the Far East… you can fence anything.

Maybe this was too far-fetched. Could Sara Beth O’Malley possibly be hooked up with Ray Wolff and his thieving gang? And, most importantly for my psyche and I marriage: In the last month, has Tom seen her?

I sighed, rode a wave of caffeine-craving, and opened the first of the e-mails from “The Gambler,” Andy Balachek himself. Whoever had shot Tom must have known about Andy’s body right there in the creek. If I was going to figure out who the shooter was, it might help to know what had been going on with Andy before he died.

Hey, Officer Schultz, he wrote on January 20, I really appreciate you letting me write to you. Look, all I want is to get enough money to pay my dad back for his truck. I don’t want him to die with my stealing hanging over my head. And I don’t want to go to prison. I didn’t want anybody to die. I didn’t kill the FedEx driver. So you can tell the D.A. that, too. Ray whacked him.

Where’s Ray Wolff? Where are the stamps? You don’t want much, do you? Day after tomorrow, Ray will be casing places to store the stamps. When you think Storage in Furman County, what do you think of?

His next communication was equally defensive, written in the same flip, bravado tone. Tom, man, are you trying to get me into more trouble? You got Ray Wolff, you got THE GUY who whacked the drivel; why can’t I come in now and collect the reward? My dads not going to live much longer. Now you’re telling me I can’t get out of the theft and complicity charges without rolling over on my partner and telling you where the loot is? Come on, Tom, give me a break.

The third and final letter was his farewell. Tom, I’ve got a stake, and a chance to make big money to pay my dad back. Why do you keep asking me the same questions? No, I can’t turn in our other partner. No, I can’t tell you where the stuff is, or how we’re going to sell it. It’s getting hard writing you, I’m being watched all the time. I think my partner suspects I turned Ray in. But I had my reasons. I’ll call you from Atlantic City. If I can.

Well, there was one question answered, at least for me: our other partner. One person. Probably our shooter.

And as to Andy’s movements? He had called me from Central City, not Atlantic City. Then he’d disappeared, and turned up dead in Aspen Meadow. Unless Pete Balachek was incoherent from his illness, the police would have questioned him about his son and his associates. I didn’t have a clue as to who the “partner” was. Nor did I have the slightest idea where the stolen stamps were. So what was my next move?

One thing was sure: I wanted to visit with Sara Beth O’Malley. She might or might not be expecting Tom to meet her at the dentist’s the day after tomorrow. But I had a very easy way of finding out if she was telling the truth on that score. I knew where the endodontist’s office was. Oh, the glories of living in a small town.

-16-

While my disk coughed up recipes and menus for Tudor feasts, my mind traveled back to the fight between Michaela and Eliot. The figures on the screen swam. At a Saint John’s Day feast five years before the death of Henry VIII, the offerings included venison pies… .

Was I overreacting, or had that courtyard conflict struck a bit too close for comfort? If Eliot was physically explosive with his female staff, did I even want to consider a long-term job for him? I frowned and tried to think. My screen dimmed. I wanted to report their skirmish to the cops. But Tom had told me to stay out of it, and that’s what I would do. For now.

I tapped a button; the screen brightened. In addition to consuming venison pies, the folks at Hampton Court had enjoyed a Saint John’s Day first course of beef in vinegar sauce, carp baked with wine and prunes, bread, butter, and eggs. For the second course, the courtiers had dug into boiled mutton, swan, peacocks, roast boar with pudding, wafers, and marzipan. Ah yes: The high-protein, high-fat, high-sugar diet. No wonder their teeth had fallen out.

I browsed forward to 1588, when an Elizabethan feast had included joints of venison roasted in rye, sides of beef, boars’ heads,. bacon, calves’ feet, game pies with cinnamon,. peacock, herons, blackbirds, larks,. salmon, eels, turbot, whiting, sprats, oysters,. sweetmeats, syrups, jellies, candied roses and violets, grapes, oranges, almonds, hazelnuts,. cakes and syrup-soaked confections.

Well. Eliot and I had already agreed that calves’ feet and spicy elk pie wouldn’t go over big with the youthful fencing team. Not to mention that any plan to serve herons and larks would ensure wrathful demonstrations from every environmental group in Aspen Meadow.

So we’d come up with compromises. “Sides of beef” had metamorphosed into veal roasts; already ordered from my supplier. Current seafood prices precluded offering oysters, salmon, or turbot, and I’d told Eliot the kids wouldn’t touch eels. I’d been delighted to tell him, though, that a recipe from Roman Britain had included prawns. There was the Roman Empire, and then there was the British Empire, which had included India. So we had decided on a shrimp curry. That had left only dessert. In the end, we’d agreed the fencers would enjoy a real Elizabethan plum tart. And then Eliot had decided on tucking in the zirconia. Sara Beth might not be the only client for the dentist.

All this had left one uncharted territory: Side Dishes. Americans would not eat a meal composed only of meat and sugar. I clicked on a file marked Potatoes, Corn, and Tomatoes, all exotic European imports in Elizabeth’s time. Sir Walter Raleigh, according to one source, had brought back potatoes from Virginia, and raised them on his estate in Ireland. Eliot had told me to be creative, so I would test-drive a potato concoction that night. If everyone liked it, I would serve it to the fencers and their families.

I closed down the computer, dressed, and knocked softly on Julian’s door. After squinting at the carved wood, I extracted a note wedged between the frame and the brass doorknob. Am doing 50 laps of crawl in the indoor pool. Meet you in the kitchen at 8.

My shoulders hurt just thinking about fifty laps of anything.

It was quarter to eight. I snagged an extra cardigan in case someone had left the kitchen window open again, quietly closed our door, and reminded myself to act grateful toward our hosts, regardless of the argument I’d witnessed. I would find out what was going on between Eliot and Michaela one way or another. Meanwhile, we had a meal to fix. My banged-up body ached with each step down to the kitchen. So I focused resolutely on the” breakfast Julian and I could whip up. Ricotta-stuffed pancakes. Poached eggs smothered in steamed baby vegetables. One of the joys of the first meal of the day is that it can melt away most pain.

When I banged into the kitchen, I saw Sukie first. Bent over the double sink, she was wearing rubber gloves and viciously scrubbing a suds-filled coffeepot. Behind her, the errant window was closed. Michaela and Eliot sat at the kitchen table, sullenly eyeing a plate of frosty prepackaged strudel. Beside the pastry lay a dozen boxes overflowing with fabric swatches and paint chips.

Uh-oh, I thought, too late. Standing by the hearth with her arms crossed, Chardé Lauderdale gasped when she spotted me. She wore a dark green pantsuit with a fur collar that set off her pretty features. Two red spots flamed on her cheeks. Clearly, she wasn’t expecting to see me. Or was she? I held my chin high and gave her an even look.

Buddy Lauderdale, standing by one of the windows overlooking the moat, turned slowly to face me. He touched the lapels of his camel’s-hair coat, narrowed his glassy eyes, then straightened his swarthy face into a passive, self-consciously blank expression. Next to his father, sixteen-year-old Howie Lauderdale shifted his feet. Howie wore de rigueur shabby-chic khaki shirt and pants, along with his fencing jacket. He was short for his age, with a chubby, angelic face, dark curly hair, and a smile I had always found endearing, especially when he encouraged Arch with his fencing. How such a great kid could have been produced by Buddy Lauderdale was beyond me. Then again, I hadn’t known the ex-wife Buddy had dumped to marry the lovely Chardé. Probably she’d been a great mother.

“Hi, Goldy,” said Howie in a low voice. He colored when his father touched his arm.

“I am very sorry to hear you’ve moved yourself in here,” Chardé spat in my direction.

“Now, Chardé,” Eliot began soothingly. Today he wore tweed pants and a smoking jacket. Did the man even own a pair of jeans? He said, “You and Buddy and Goldy have merely had an unfortunate misunderstanding. Howie, chap, come on over here and help me figure out how to defrost this thing in the microwave.”

Chardé snorted; Buddy crossed his arms and didn’t budge. Michaela set her lips in a scowl. Howie and Eliot busied themselves with the microwave while Sukie ran the faucet full blast to rinse out the coffeepot. When the microwave beeped and Eliot pulled out the strudel, poor Howie looked from one adult to another, probably hoping someone would somehow break the tension.

“Uh,” Howie said to me, his face crimson, “Arch is doing real well with the foil. The whole team is amazed at how he’s come along.”

“I’m glad,” I said. Since no one had told me what they were doing in the kitchen at this hour, I ventured, “Do you all have an early practice today?”

“No, no,” Howie replied, as Eliot handed him a piece of pastry that looked like iced cardboard. “I was just working with Michaela in her loft. My dad and Chardé wanted to watch. We’re going to school as soon as Chardé leaves her stuff … and then I guess we’ll see you, uh - “

Sukie finished drying the coffeepot and wiped her hands on her apron. “Buddy, Chardé, Howie,” she murmured. “Goldy and her family and her friend are staying with us through the fencing banquet.”

“That’s a mistake,” Chardé announced. I turned away and searched in the Hydes’ refrigerator for unsalted butter and eggs. When I headed for the mixer, Chardé cocked her head at Eliot. “I hope she’s paying you rent, Eliot.”

Michaela interrupted to say it was time for her to leave. After she clomped out, Eliot slumped at the kitchen table, looking as chilled as the strudel. I pulled a loaf pan out of a cupboard and glanced at Buddy, who was stroking his dimpled chin and frowning. Should I ask him where little Patty was? With a nanny? Better off with a babysitter than with her parents, right? I rummaged in the cupboards and pulled out two types of dried fruit: pineapple and sour cherries. I found a cutting board and a knife, and placed everything on the kitchen table across from Eliot. Just concentrate on the cooking.

Buddy Lauderdale sauntered forward and pulled a fat catalog out from under the mountain of paint chips. With annoying deliberateness, he laid it on top of the cutting board. Then he asked in that oily voice 1 knew only too well, “Ever heard of Marvin, Goldy? They make windows.”

Taken aback, I stared at the catalog jacket for Marvin Windows, casements and bays floating against a background of blue sky.

“Are you trying to tell me something, Mr. Lauderdale?” I managed to say. “Or would you rather tell my husband, upstairs?”

“Oh, yeah,” said Buddy, as he tapped his cheek in mock thoughtfulness, “how is your husband?”

I turned to Sukie, who was standing in front of the microwave cabinet. “I need to make a call. Someplace private.”

“Don’t you dare call the police again,” Chardé Lauderdale shrieked at me as she began gathering up her swatches and chips. She stopped only long enough to stab a scarlet-painted nail in my direction. “I am a good person. I don’t want you to get in my way anymore. I don’t want to run into you at Elk Park Prep, I don’t want to run into you here, I don’t want to see you at the luncheon tomorrow. You stay out of our lives, do you understand?”

“Please, people - ” Eliot faltered. He had a pained expression on his face, like a king whose courtiers’ conflicts were giving him a headache.

“I’m going to Elk Park Prep today, I’m staying here, and I’ll be catering the lunch tomorrow,” I informed Chardé, getting angry myself. “So if you don’t want to run into me, you’d better stay home. Oh, and that includes the banquet Friday night, too.”

Sukie hustled over to Buddy, Howie, and Chardé, helped scoop up the paint chips and catalogs, and murmured about coming another time to work on the new color schemes. Howie muttered that he needed to get to school, and Eliot announced that Buddy should take a look at his car. When they all left, I didn’t offer any goodbyes.

Instead, I returned to the sweet bread I intended to make for breakfast. The combination of dried pineapple and cherries would make a not-too-sweet-or-too-tart, gloriously colorful loaf. I closed my eyes and imagined holding a bread slice up to the light.

Don’t think about the Lauderdales, just cook.

I chopped the fragrant dried fruits, set them to soak, and revved up the mixer. The beaters whipped through the butter and sugar until it resembled spun gold. By the time I was adding flour, leavening, and orange juice, I had a name for the concoction: Stained-Glass Sweet Bread.

“Dear Goldy, I am so sorry about the Lauderdales,” Eliot announced in his kingly, regretful voice, as he swung through the door from the dining room. “Everything to them is a drama, and I do get tired of being their audience. We were at their New Year’s Eve party, but did not see the conflict that so upset everyone.” I stifled a response: No one saw it except for me. That’s the problem. Meanwhile, Eliot turned his attention to the mixer bowl. “Let’s chat about something more pleasant. Historic menus. “

I nodded an assent, finished scooping the thick batter into the prepared pan, and decided to let it rise a while to lighten the texture.

“May I use the phone first?” I asked him. “I need to make a couple of important calls. I’d like to do it where I won’t be interrupted.”

He wrinkled his brow, a sure sign of mental wheels whizzing. Is my caterer spreading more bad publicity for my castle? “Yes, yes, of course,” he said, with effort. “My office is more private.”

I set the timer, glanced at my watch, grabbed my extra sweater, and followed him out. We ran into Julian in the hallway. His brown hair was wet from his postswim shower, and he looked dapper in black chef pants and a white shirt. I begged him to preheat the oven, and put in the bread. He said he’d love to, then whistled cheerfully as he banged into the kitchen.

“Damn!” he yelled as the door swung closed. “It’s cold in here! Who opened that window again?”

“Eliot?” I asked as he held open a door that led through the courtyard. “If you’ve got a loose catch on a window, why don’t you have it fixed?”

Eliot’s voice was rueful. “It’s original glass.”

Stained-Glass Sweet Bread

1 ˝ cups dried tart cherries ˝ cup chopped dried pineapple 4 tablespoons(1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened 1 1/2 cups sugar 2 eggs 4 cups all-purpose flour (High altitude: add 2 tablespoons) 4 teaspoons baking powder (High altitude: 1 tablespoon) ˝ teaspoon baking soda 2 teaspoons salt 1 1/2 cups orange juice

Place the cherries and chopped pineapple in a large bowl and cover with boiling water. Let stand 15 minutes, then drain and pat dry with paper towels. Set aside. Butter and flour two 8 1/2 x 4 1/2-inch loaf pans. Set aside. Cream the butter with the sugar until well blended. (Mixture will look like wet sand.) Add the eggs and beat well. Sift the dry ingredients together twice. Add the flour mixture alternately to the creamed mixture with the orange juice, beginning and ending with the dry ingredients. Stir in the fruits, blending well Divide evenly between the pans. Allow to stand for 20 minutes. While the mixture is standing, preheat the oven to 350°F. Bake the breads for 45 to 55 minutes, until toothpicks inserted in the loaves come out clean. Cool in the pans 10 minutes, then allow to cool completely on racks.

Makes 2 loaves

Outside, a bitter wind smacked our faces. I pulled on my sweater and reflected that if I’d made millions selling some old letter, I’d get a new kitchen window, no matter what anyone told me about preservation. I gasped at the cold and caught the word “shortcut,” as a cloud of steam issued from Eliot’s mouth. I struggled to match his long strides as we trotted along an ice-edged brick pathway through the Tudor garden. Overhead, a red-tailed hawk teetered on the wind. Below, the snow-dusted, dun-colored plant stalks rattled and swayed.

“Even with all the money we made from the sale of our famous letter,” Eliot called back to me, as if reading my mind, “we did not have sufficient funds to redo the entire castle. You see the north half of the east range?” I hugged myself, turned, and looked back obediently. “We did the first floor where the dining room and kitchen are. Above that, it’s all closed off.” He pointed to the window that Marla had banged on when she’d yelled at him. “That’s the south side of the east range,” Eliot continued. My eyes swept over the rapiers on the arch supports. “There, where you’re staying in the guest suites, we re-did the upper story. On the south range - ” He pointed to his right, to the wall with the postern gate ” - we did restore both stories.”

Okay, okay, my mind screamed. I don’t need background on the refurbishing effort when I’m freezing to death!

“The Great Hall on the east side of the south range is on the second floor,” Eliot blithely persisted, “while four conference rooms are below it. On the west side of the postern gate,” his hand arched to the right, “there are the swimming pool and locker rooms on the lower level, and conference rooms above. My study is in the west range” - he gestured farther to the right, directly across the courtyard from the kitchen - “where we’ve only redone half of the lower story. Further down the hall from my study is Sukie’s and my room.”

“And Michaela?” I couldn’t help asking. “Where does she live?”

He gave me a sharp look, then pointed back to the gatehouse. “She occupies the western section of the north range, including the gatehouse. According to my grandfather’s will, Vladimir Kirovsky’s descendants may stay there as long as their family remain the castle caretakers. Sukie and I intend to hire a whole staff of caretakers, of course, as soon as the conversion to a conference center is complete.” He exhaled without saying where all those worker-bees were slated to reside. “And you’ve already seen our lovely living room, decorated by Chardé, who does have talent, even if she’s a tad rough around the edges.”

Not merely rough around the edges, my mind supplied, but sharp and dangerous.

We entered the arcade on the west side of the courtyard. Eliot tapped numbers on a security keypad beside a massive wooden door. “Of course,” he added, “Chardé does disrupt us sometimes, coming in unannounced to try new paints and toss swatches all over the place. I bumped into her one night when I was coming over to work on my jams. I didn’t even realize Sukie had given her the security code, but Sukie said Chardé insisted, that it would make the decorating effort easier for everyone.”

Doggone it, I thought as I moved through the wooden doorway into a hallway lit by new windows on the arcade side. The last thing I could tolerate in the middle of the night was crashing into Chardé Lauderdale. Eliot touched a switch, and electrified torches on the far wall illuminated tapestries of battle scenes.

“Mr. Hyde,” I began, as I hugged myself to warm up. “We’re very thankful you could have us here. But if Chardé and Buddy Lauderdale can’t be kept out of the castle, then my husband and I need to take Arch and Julian somewhere else. The Lauderdales and I… are in conflict, as you know, from that New Year’s party. They might have shot at our house. They might even be the ones who shot Tom.”

Eliot’s brown eyes shone with indulgence. “They would never do such things. In any case, dear Goldy, you, your husband, your child, your dear young friend - you are all perfectly safe. Each suite has a security pad outside the room, did Sukie not show you? You determine your own code. Once you set it inside your room, no one can come through your door. The instructions are in your night tables.” He waved at a tapestry of a unicorn. “When Chardé figures out the colors for the last paint jobs, we’ll change the gatehouse codes and she won’t be back.”

I asked hesitantly, “How much do you really know about the Lauderdales?”

“We’ve been friends … well, since all the hoopla about the letter, and I bought our first Jaguar. I’ll tell you what I know: The Lauderdales are so concerned about looking rich, they’re lavishing money they don’t have on charity. For example, we’re happy Buddy helped pay for the refurbishment of the labyrinth. But when I tried to convince him to have a salesman recognition dinner here, he said entertaining his employees was not something he really did. My take on it was that a salesmen’s dinner doesn’t pack as much prestigious punch as a lavish gift to the church, and therefore isn’t worth more debt.”

“Do you know I saw him shake his baby until she passed out? That he was arrested?”

“Of course,” Eliot replied, with more regal regret. “And I know his reputation has suffered. But I can’t believe that he would go out shooting windows and people.”

I shook my head. How did you get through to someone who believed the only problem with being caught half killing a child was what it did to your reputation? Without further discussion, Eliot ushered me into his study, a large, mahogany-paneled room. Outside, the clouds had softened to luminescent puffs, and light streamed through a leaded-glass bay window. In the room itself, the illuminated bookcases and massive desk were decorated with models of ships and castles, brass flasks and horns, and other British-male accoutrements. Royal-blue carpeting, blue-and-gold draperies, brass fixtures, and oxblood leather chairs all screamed English Club - no I doubt exactly what Eliot had told Chardt he wanted.

“Lovely,” I breathed.

“Thank you.” He seated himself at his gargantuan desk and launched into an explanation of what we needed to do. “The lunch menu for the labyrinth donors we have all set, with two minor changes. The priest from Saint Luke’s is allowing me to give a pitch about the conference center after the lunch.” Eliot sniffed. “Awfully big of him, seeing as how Saint Luke’s now possesses a genuine medieval chapel. Anyway, Sukie would like to simplify things and offer caviar with toast points, onion toasts, and English cheese puffs for hors d’oeuvres.” He waved his hand. “We already have these from mail order. But we still need a first course, which should be English-y.”

English-y. I nodded.

“Do you have a recipe on your disk for an Elizabethan-style soup?” he asked, worried. “A soup not running and not standing, as they say?”

“I do,” I said, thankful I had picked up the disk, even if I’d gotten banged up in the process. “How about a hot cream of chicken soup made with rosemary and thyme, both herbs mentioned by Shakespeare?”

“Wonderful,” Eliot replied with a sigh. “Now, for Friday’s plum tart.” He opened a drawer, drew out a small brass box, then dumped the sparkling contents onto a leather-edged blue blotter. “Zirconia,” he said proudly, “to be tucked into the plums.”

I nodded, not having a clue how I would conceal the stones so that guests wouldn’t accidentally ingest them. “Okey-doke.”

“Now,” Eliot continued, as he fingered a miniature brass cannon, “for the banquet. We can’t just have food; the fencing team must have entertainment and games. You don’t suppose the boys and girls would be interested in English country dances, do you?”

“Uh…no.”

“It’s too bad we don’t have a small troupe of players to act for us.” He tapped a long finger on the leather blotter. “Or better, musicians.”

“Sukie said you were researching games?” I ventured. “I seem to remember the Elizabethans loved to make wagers. Right?”

He looked as if I’d said excrement. “Wagers? Ah, yes, I suppose I do know they were gamblers. But I can’t allow the castle to be the scene of - “

“I’m not talking Las Vegas. You should steer clear of financial wagers, because the parents won’t be happy if the kids beg for dough. But how about some small ball games, in addition to the fencing demonstration?”

“Brilliant!” he exclaimed, slapping the desk. “Penny-prick! Shuttlecock! We’ll use half of the Great Hall for the games! Can you give the food some game-playing names?”

“We can have the veal roast with …” I frowned, then inspiration struck. “Penny-Prick Potato Casserole. Raisin Rice with … Shuttlecock Shrimp Curry. I don’t know if you can give molded strawberry salads, steamed broccoli, or chutney and curry side dishes Tudor names. But after the meal, we’ll play games and have the plum tart.”

“Perfect!” he cried. “I am so delighted I employed you!” He beamed, I beamed, the sun beamed in on us.

Then he announced he had to go figure out how to arrange the Great Hall. He managed another regal wave, this time in the direction of the telephone, and told me to feel free to make my calls. Mi palacio es su palacio, he announced grandly, then departed.

The Furman County Sheriff’s Department was first on my list. Once through, I pressed the numbers for Sergeant Boyd’s extension.

“Listen,” I said after he’d asked about Tom and I’d assured him Tom was on the mend, “you know those intelligence files you keep on people?”

“For crying out loud, Goldy, you know I can’t give you a file.”

“I just want to know what you’ve got in one. Viv Martini.”

“Your ex’s new girlfriend? How do you think that’s going to look, somebody hears I’m giving you that information?”

“Sergeant Boyd, Captain Lambert already told me she slept with Ray Wolff and possibly Andy Balachek. But now she’s doing a complicated real estate deal with John Richard Korman. To be specific, she plunked down a hundred fifty thousand dollars to go in on a condo sale with him in Beaver Creek. He never agrees to joint ownership, so something’s going on.”

“Where’d she get a hundred fifty thousand bucks?” Boyd’s voice was distant. He was riffling papers.

“You tell me.”

“We watched her bank account after those stamps were stolen. Nothing happened.”

“Well,” I said, “did you all check any stores besides pawnshops after the stamp heist?”

“I don’t know. Our guys are supposed to, but sometimes they don’t have time to get to specialty places.” He sighed. “Okay, here’s the file. You breathe a word of this, I’m fired. Viv’s been hooked up with Wolff since she got out of high school. But, let’s see… it says here a snitch in Golden put Viv Martini back… okay, seven years ago, she was shacked up with your good buddy there at the castle, Eliot Hyde.”

“What.?” I glanced around the room. Any listening devices? Where had Eliot gone?

“That’s what it says.”

I gulped. “So Andy Balachek and Tom were shot right near Eliot’s property, and Viv Martini, who’s been involved with Andy, possibly, and definitely Andy’s accomplice, Ray, who was arrested by Tom, this same Viv has an old relationship with Eliot Hyde? Did you guys question Eliot after Tom was shot?”

“Of course we did! He claims not to have seen Viv in years.”

I shook my head, puzzled. “What possible attraction could there have been between Eliot Hyde and Viv Martini?”

“For crying out loud, Goldy! She’s good-looking, he’s not bad, he wanted a cute girlfriend and she figured he was loaded. Our snitch says she wanted him to start an illegal casino there. This was just when gambling was legalized, but only for Central City and Blackhawk. The snitch says Viv wanted to accommodate the home-town gamblers at the castle. They could use all those halls and rooms to hide people, in case of a cop raid.”

Remembering how Eliot had blanched at my mention of wagers, I still felt skeptical. “Was this casino-castle her idea? Or Ray Wolff’s?”

“Who knows? All I know is Eliot nixed it, said it would make him look bad if he was caught, and he couldn’t afford that.” Boyd paused, and I thought of Eliot’s sensitivity regarding reputation. Boyd asked, “How’d you find out about the condo?”

“I have my snitches, too, Sergeant.” When he sighed again, I asked, “What about those specialty stores, then? Any stamps show up there?”

“Why, you got something I need to know?” When I said I didn’t, he went on: “The insurer for The Stamp Fox is hiring a private investigator, and has promised to share anything he gets. We’re concentrating on the investigations into the deaths of the driver and Balachek.”

“You must have investigated Viv Martini.”

“Of course. She was sleeping with your ex-husband all night Sunday night. And they weren’t getting much sleep, according to your ex. Please don’t interrogate either one of them.”

“Whatever you say,” I replied, then pretended to ponder a bit. “Listen,” I said, trying to sound thoughtful, “do Buddy and Chardé Lauderdale have alibis for the time Tom was shot? A little while ago, they were both here at Hyde Castle, giving me a hard time.”

“What kind of hard time?”

I told him about the incident in the Hydes’ kitchen, to which Boyd replied, “Their alibi is each other. Oh, and we checked on Sukie Hyde’s first husband. One of his guys was on the roof with him when he stepped on a stray wire from a bathroom fan. Nobody seemed to think it was suspicious.” He paused. “But here’s something related to the stamp heist. Our friend Buddy Lauderdale was in The Stamp Fox a month before the theft, asking about values. He said he wanted to invest in stamps, but never did.” When I made a hmm-ing noise, Boyd warned me to be careful, that Buddy Lauderdale was reputedly one of the best shots in the county. I promised him I would be, and signed off.

One thing was certain. There was no way I was waiting for some faraway insurance company to get around to hiring an investigator. Eliot’s lowest desk drawer yielded a Yellow Pages, and under “Stamps-Collectors,” I found four shops in the Denver area. I blithely let my fingers do the walking while presenting myself as Francesca Chastain, collector of any stamp with a picture of royalty. Price, I said, was no object. Even over the phone, you could hear those store owners’ hearts speed up.

The first three, general dealers in stamps and coins, said they hadn’t seen a cover with Queen Victoria on it anywhere but at stamp shows. But the fourth philatelic dealer, an estate auction agent named Troy McIntire operating out of his home in Golden, gave me an evasive reply.

“What exactly are you looking for?” McIntire demanded.

“I collect anything with kings or queens on the stamps. What I’m especially looking for is covers with Queen Victoria on them.”

“I might be able to help you,” McIntire said, with a forced reluctance that sounded cagey. “If price really is no object, and the price is paid in cash.”

I eagerly made an appointment for that afternoon, then leafed through the phone book for Southwest Hospital. I talked to three nurses before I located the flight nurse who had helped Tom. Her name was Norma Randall. She was on duty on the third floor, and said she could talk for five minutes.

“The cop,” Norma Randall said, remembering. “Day before yesterday? Tom? Couldn’t forget him. Or you, either. He’s doing okay?”

“Yes,” I replied. “Thanks to you all. You… seemed to be… more experienced than most flight nurses.” Once you passed thirty, I’d observed, being experienced was the euphemism for being older.

She laughed. “I’ve been doing it a long time. Too long, I think sometimes.” She paused. “Weren’t you married to Dr. John Richard Korman?” When I replied that I was, she went on: “I worked with him one time, after we brought in an Aspen Meadow woman with a retained placenta.”

I made a noncommittal mm-mm noise.

“Don’t worry, he did a fine job,” she said, reading my mind. “What can I do for you now?”

“I don’t want to keep you, Norma, but I’m … trying to locate a cousin who’s a flight nurse. Where did you do your nursing training?”

“Nebraska.”

“Well,” I said boldly, “do you know anyone at the hospital who would have gone to The Front Range School of Nursing in the late sixties? I’m particularly interested in women who would have had flight nurse training.”

She said she didn’t know anyone off the top of her head, but her relief had just come in, and she could ask a few people, if I wanted. I thanked her and said I didn’t mind being put on hold.

“I found one of the older ER techs,” she informed me triumphantly on her return. “He told me there was a flight nurse named Connie Oliver who graduated from Front Range at about the time you’re talking about. He thinks she may have switched to being a school nurse. Denver or Furman County.”

I thanked Nurse Randall and signed off, then decided to bypass Denver and hope for luck with Furman County , Schools’ central office. I was listening to the choices of an automated phone-answering system when rapping at the study door nearly made me drop the phone.

Julian cried, “Breakfast! And it came from across the North Pole, via the castle garden!” Flourishing a large silver tray, he pushed through the heavy door. Michaela Kirovsky followed him, holding a coffeepot. Julian’s energy filled the study as he bounced forward. “Hey, boss?” he asked me with a grin. “Don’t give me that look like you can’t eat.” When I hastily hung up, he cried, “Hey! Wha’d you swallow, a canary?”

-17-

You’re going to love this,” Julian announced as he set the tray laden with golden-glazed miniature Bundt cakes on Eliot’s desk. It was actually two trays, one on top of the other.

“Got multiple orders for room service?” I asked mildly. “When in doubt, Bundt?”

“I’m putting half of this on the other tray for Tom. He’s still asleep, I just checked. Michaela’s helping because she forgot some equipment and had to come back to the castle.” In addition to the cakes sparkling with orange zest and sugar, there were two plastic-wrapped crystal bowls. Julian pulled off the plastic and revealed snowy yogurt artfully topped with slices of kiwi, strawberry, banana, apple, and plum. “Oh,” he said, “I’m saving that sweet bread you made for later, since it was too hot to cut I made these orange cakes last night while the dinner was cooking.” He glanced around the study and wrinkled his nose. “Man! What decade is it?”

“Any decade you want, for a price,” Michaela supplied with a wicked smile.

“Do I detect animosity toward the decorator?” I asked mildly.

Michaela snorted. “Chardé keeps asking when she gets to do my place. I keep telling Eliot: Never.”

When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “Thanks for bringing the goodies over, guys. I thought if I didn’t have caffeine soon, 1 was going to pass out.”

Michaela nodded wordlessly as Julian relieved her of the coffeepot and poured me a steaming cup. I thanked him, took a sip - Zowie! good stuff - and glanced at Michaela. Her pale skin glowed in the daylight. But her eyes remained clouded. She pressed her lips together, and I wondered if she thought she’d said too much about Chardé. But there was something else there What? Did she know something she wasn’t sharing?

“Michaela, I need to ask you a question.” When I put down my cup, it clattered in the china saucer. “As you know, my husband was shot next to Hyde Chapel. By Cottonwood Creek, near where poor Andy Balachek’s body was found. You live in the gatehouse, with a view of the front of the castle. Did you see anything at all late Sunday night? Or early Monday morning? People moving? Cars parked?”

She flushed deeply. “No. Sorry. The police already asked me about that, when they came over to talk to Eliot and Sukie. I don’t have a view of the creek. I didn’t see anything.”

She’s not telling the truth, my mind insisted. Why? “How about Andy Balachek? Did you keep up with him after his father fixed the dam?”

More blushing. “Yes,” she replied, “I knew Andy. His mother died when he was little. We used to have a small … club, I guess you’d call it, for locals of Russian and eastern European descent. In my father’s time, we gathered here at the castle, for the holidays. We’d visit and make our favorite foods. Peter and Roberta Balachek always brought baby Andy.” She cleared her throat uneasily. “And then Roberta got cancer and died, and little Andy grew up and became big Andy. We got gambling in the state, and Andy - well, his addiction just about killed poor Peter.” She looked at her hands, struggling visibly to compose herself. “I know Andy was found near where your husband was shot. You want to know all you can about him. There just isn’t much.” She inhaled. “My free period’s almost over. I need to get back to school… .”

“You seem very sensitive to boys. Andy Balachek. My Arch. It’s a gift.”

She hesitated at the study door. “I didn’t do Andy much good, though, did I?”

“Whoa,” observed Julian when she’d left. He refilled my cup. “What was that about?”

“I don’t know. What was she like at Elk Park Prep?”

A frown wrinkled Julian’s handsome face. “Quiet. Really hard-working. Lonely, it seemed to me, but I didn’t fence, so I didn’t know her very well. One time when we had a senior tour here, we asked her about the baby who’d supposedly been thrown down the well. She said that story was borscht, a mix-up from the ghost story about the duke. She isn’t the most charismatic coach at Elk Park Prep, but she’s, you know, a stalwart. Like Tom. Everybody likes her. Everybody likes Tom. What’s the matter?”

My ears were ringing. Everybody likes Tom. At this point, I couldn’t talk to Tom, Arch, or gossip-hungry Marla. But I had to talk to somebody I trusted, or the secret was going to explode inside of me. “Julian.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m afraid Tom is having an affair - “

“Bull!”

“Or maybe he was having an affair and broke it off.” I choked. “I think he might have been shot by this other woman, who could be his ex-fiancée. Then again, unless she was somehow involved with Andy Balachek, she couldn’t have guessed he would show up at the chapel, right?”

“Tom’s ex-fiancée? What are you talking about?”

“Her name is Sara Beth O’Malley. She was a nurse who supposedly died at the end of the Vietnam war.”

“What?”

“She reportedly died in a helo crash on the Mekong Delta, but she didn’t. I’m telling you, she’s not dead. She sent him e-mails.” I gulped. “And she was watching our house, too.”

“Watching the house? When? Did you tell the police?”

I tore my gaze away from his face: His concern and love tugged at my heart. Outside, the moat reflected the sky. “I told the investigators a woman was there, not who she was.”

He plopped into one of Eliot’s leather armchairs and softened his tone. “When did you first think this woman wasn’t dead?”

“After Tom was shot, he said, ‘I don’t love her.’ Then he passed out. Since he got out of surgery, he hasn’t talked about who he meant. I’m not even sure he remembers saying anything.” I felt blood seep into my cheeks.

“And you saw this same woman outside the house?”

“Trudy next door saw her first, the morning after our window was shattered. This woman parked outside our house and kept staring at it. I tried to talk to her, but she refused to talk to me. She just took off. From old photographs, I thought she looked just like an older version of the woman Tom was once engaged to. She’s very pretty… And her name’s Sara Beth O’Malley. Those old photographs? Signed just like the recent e-mails: ‘S.B.’”

“So she didn’t die over there. Incredible. And now she’s back. But why?”

“According to her e-mail, she’s here to get supplies. To get her teeth fixed. To hook up with her old flame. All of the above, or none. Besides e-mails from her, there was one from the State Department. Tom had written them to see if there’d been any old or new reports of Sara Beth O’Malley surviving the attack that supposedly killed her. State said no.”

Julian was pensive. “Goldy … do you want me to ask Tom about it?”

“No!” My hands clenched. “I just don’t know what to do.”

Julian stood, picked up the top tray, then moved a silver place setting and the coffeepot to the bottom tray. Using tongs, he transferred one of the miniature Bundt cakes to a small plate, then set out a place mat and silverware on the desk.

He hefted up the tray and studied me a moment. “Boss, you’ve got a sleep debt the size of a jumbo mortgage. You need to rest, have something to eat, wait until you can think again. There’s too much going on to keep it all straight. Why don’t you just concentrate on Tom, Arch, and our catering jobs this week? We’ll get Tom better, then we’ll ask him.” When I said nothing, he headed for the door. “Look,” he said over his shoulder, “how ‘bout I tell Tom about one of my old high-school girlfriends who showed up at C.U. We broke up and she got cancer, supposedly. Then it turns out she got better and decided to go to college, where she looked me up.” He balanced the tray and opened the door. “See what he says.”

“An old girlfriend of yours? With cancer? Is that true?”

He flashed a smile back at me. “I wouldn’t tell you, Miss Nosy, if it was.” “Thanks, Julian.”

“Don’t mention it.” I swigged the rich coffee, spooned up the yogurt, downed half of the succulent cake, licked my fingers, and redialed the Furman County Schools’ central office. After maneuvering through the options network, I was finally connected to an administrator in charge of student medical care.

“I’m from Aspen Meadow, and I’m looking for a school nurse named Connie Oliver,” I began pleasantly. “I need to check on an outbreak of strep.”

When I was put on hold, I scanned Eliot’s elegant office. To the right of the glowing bay window, Chardé had placed an Oriental-style silk screen. On the other, I noticed, was a molding-framed opening. With sudden recognition, I realized it was one of those wall indentations that indicated a garderobe. Sheesh! Those medieval folks must have had to go to the bathroom a lot –

“What strep outbreak?” I was rudely asked. I’d almost forgotten I was on the phone.

“It was reported in January at our middle school,” I shot back. I knew about the strep outbreak from the Mountain Journal. After several more long minutes of holding, the administrator returned.

“We can’t search the medical files over the phone.”

“That’s all right. If I could just speak to Nurse Oliver, we could clear up the question of my son’s medication. She treated him.”

“Without the files, Ms. Oliver cannot be expected - “

“Don’t worry, I’ll take the responsibility!” I replied, trying to sound chipper. “I just want to chat for a sec, if she’s available. Do you know which schools she’ll be visiting today?”

A sigh. “Ms. Oliver will be overseeing vision tests at Fox Meadows Elementary from ten-thirty to noon,” the woman informed me tartly. “Please identify yourself at the school office before seeking her out.” She hung up before I could thank her.

Bureaucrats!

I finished the last of the luscious cake and considered what to do next. It was quarter to nine. I needed to work out the prep for the next day’s lunch and then check on Tom. And of course we all had to eat tonight, so there was also dinner for six to consider. But not yet. First, I had to think.

The drawers to Eliot’s desk were not locked. With only a slight pang of guilt-if he didn’t want folks going through his drawers, he’d lock them, right? - I rummaged for a clean sheet of paper. One drawer yielded pamphlets from conference centers across the country. Under that lay a legal pad filled with painstaking notes comparing prices, accommodations, and length of stay. Apparently, Eliot had no truck with computers, which could have produced such a spreadsheet in seconds. There was no blank paper. The next drawer held worn, slightly dusty pamphlets: Medieval Castles and Their Secrets. Have Your Wedding at Hyde Chapel! And A Brief Tour of Hyde Castle. There were also several copies of the audiotape Eliot had been urging me to listen to: The History of the Labyrinth. I slipped one of the audiotapes in my sweater pocket, then rifled through the pamphlets: There were between six and ten banded copies of each one, so I helped myself to one of each - the better to know the place where I was doing my job, I rationalized - then stuck them in my pocket, too. Finally, I went back to the first drawer and ripped a clean sheet of paper from the back of the legal pad.

CHRONOLOGY, I wrote at the top of the page.

1. January 1. The Lauderdales, in financial trouble, have New Year’s party. Buddy shakes baby. I call cops. The Lauderdales swear revenge.

2. January 15. Valuable stamps - easily fenced in the Far East - are stolen from FedEx truck. The driver is killed. Witnesses say there were three robbers. Peter Balachek has a heart attack.

3. January 20. Frightened, worried that his father will die, Andy Balachek identifies himself to Tom as one of the truck-hijacking gang. Andy tries to make a plea deal. Tells Tom where Ray Wolff will be.

4. January 22. Tom arrests Ray Wolff on Andy’s tip. In another e-mail, Andy refuses to give location of valuable stamps.

5. January 24. Andy sends a third e-mail to Tom, saying he has a stake and is going to Atlantic City to gamble. Tom takes off for New Jersey.

6. February 6. Andy calls me from Central City, desperate to talk to Tom. John Richard Korman gets out of jail early. He immediately hooks up with his new girlfriend, Ray Wolff’s old lover, who is also Eliot Hyde’s old lover, Viv Martini. He has told Arch he’s going to buy an expensive present for Viv.

7. February 9. Our window is shot out.

8. February 9. I find Andy’s dead body in the creek, near Hyde Chapel, where I’m supposed to cater later in the day. Andy had an electric shock, then was shot and killed. Tom is shot.

9. February 10. Our computers are stolen. I discover that Tom’s long-lost fiancée, Sara Beth O’Malley, has reappeared after many years of “death.” Supposedly, she is living under an assumed identity in Vietnam, and works as a village doctor. The Jerk is driving a new gold Mercedes from Lauderdale Imports. He and Viv Martini have entered into an unusual real estate venture.

10. February 11. Michaela Kirovsky says she knew Andy Balachek when he visited the castle, but acts as if she’s covering something up.

How were these people - Andy, Viv, John Richard, Eliot, Sukie, Chardé and Buddy, Sara Beth, and Michaela - linked? Or were they? Had Tom been the target of the shooter, or had I? And what event would dis_rupt our lives next? I did not know.

I did know one thing, contrary to Michaela’s assertion: Andy was the key. Andy who stole, Andy who gambled, Andy who talked, Andy who ended up dead in Cottonwood Creek. And I wasn’t going to learn any more about him sitting in Eliot Hyde’s fit-for-a-prime-minister office.

I tucked the packet of zirconia into my pocket with the pamphlets and tape, then scooped up the tray. I maneuvered my load into the hall and decided that before checking on Tom, I would see if Michaela was still in the castle. If I could convince her that whoever had shot Tom had to be connected to Andy’s death, maybe she’d come up with some information about the dead young man.

To my left, double glass doors opened onto the hallway that led to the north range and the gatehouse, where Michaela resided. I hesitated when I read a hand-lettered I sign spanning the glass doors: UNDER CONSTRUCTION-NO ADMITTANCE! I listened for the bang and clatter of construction workers, but heard nothing. Was this northern side of the west range where Chardé was doing intensive new decorating work, I wondered? Did she insist on being left alone? Did I care?

I wondered what kind of construction could be taking place. The castle already had a pool, a Great Hall, and a fencing loft. Maybe a movie theater was next. Surely they didn’t mean I couldn’t be admitted, I reasoned, as I pushed through the door. If I ran into Chardé, I could use the tray as a shield.

The hall looked almost identical to the one next to Eliot’s office. Pale green Oriental runners bisected the dark hardwood floor. Medieval-looking tapestries lined the walls. There were two doors. The first one, Eliot had told me, led to his and Sukie’s bedroom. Past the door at the far end, another glass entryway led, presumably, into the northwest drum tower. I walked down the hall with great care, just in case I encountered a hole in the floor or an unfriendly decorator.

The construction, such as it was, was used-to-be-fresh paint by the far door - more of the same paint that was elsewhere in the castle - with another Wet Point sign by the door. Here, it looked as if someone had spilled or thrown a can of the viscous beige stuff on the wall, on the floor, and on the lower half of the wooden door. The door itself had no security pad, but had some holes in it at regular intervals. Above the doorknob was a formidable, new-looking brass padlock.

I stared at the spilled paint. The hardened, abstract pool of beige looked worse than in the living room or up in the hall by our room. It was so unsightly and random that I wondered if this was what the argument between Eliot and Michaela had been about. Chardé keeps asking when she gets to do my place. Maybe Michaela had spilled the paint, when she was just supposed to dab it around artistically. Had Eliot suspected Michaela of making the mess, and accused her, or caught her? And they’d fought? That seemed pretty silly.

Hold on. I put down the tray and peered intently at the padlock. Only half of it was completely screwed into place; the other hung limply from a single screw, as if the package containing the lock had not yielded enough of the little suckers that you needed to attach it to whatever you were trying to lock.

And I thought buying a not – enough - nails package only happened to me.

I knocked on the door. No reply. Quickly, before I could think about it, I applied the same principle to this door that I had to Eliot’s unsecured desk drawers. If you don’t want me checking on things, better make sure they’re locked up. I pushed through the door.

“What the heck - ” I said aloud, as I stared at stained white walls, arched windows filled with plain, not leaded, glass, and a jumble of bookshelves bursting with toys, worn picture books, wooden blocks, and boxed games. Ranged at the edges of a stained, odd-size pink rug, was battered furniture in shades of green, blue, and pink. What was this room used for? Was Eliot so eccentric that he kept a playroom for the dead duke, in case Ghost-Boy got tired of haunting the castle and wanted a quick game of Chutes and Ladders? Or was this a nursery where Eliot and Michaela had played as children - a place that would be turned into a babysitting room for the conference center?

I thought I heard footsteps coming from the direction of the study. When I peeked around the doorjamb, however, the hall was empty. I scurried out, carefully closing the door behind me, and picked up my tray. Then I continued away from the study, soldiering on down toward the drum tower.

It must have been some kind of babysitter’s room, I decided as I scurried along. I shoved through the second set of glass doors - also marked with NO ADMITTANCE signs - and again encountered the chill of a corner tower. Was the door to the sitter’s room getting a padlock because the Hydes didn’t want Chardé to give it a decorating overhaul? Had visitors in Eliot’s father’s time come to the castle for a tour, and brought the children because there was free babysitting? Later, I’d have to check my snitched pamphlets for a Hyde Castle floor plan.

I pushed into the last hallway, which was identical to the one by Eliot’s office. These two doors, however, were marked with small brass plates that read Private Residence. Hoping to find Michaela, I knocked on each one, but received no reply.

Finally I walked out onto the ground floor of the gatehouse, where Arch and I had entered upon our arrival.

The front portcullis and the massive wooden gates were closed; the alarm was set. Good, I thought. No way for the Jerk to push his way in.

When I arrived in the empty kitchen minutes later, the air was once again frigid from the open window. I banged my tray down, looked out the window - a forty-foot drop to the moat, with no way for the Jerk or the Lauderdales to climb up - and slammed the errant window shut. I was thankful that the kitchen held only a tiny reminder that the Lauderdales had even been there: Chardé had left a pile of decorating magazines and folders by the hearth.

Once my dishes were stowed in the dishwasher, I scanned the menu for the following day’s lunch. The boxes of frozen homemade chicken stock I’d brought would form the base for the luncheon’s cream of chicken soup and the banquet’s shrimp curry. I chewed the inside of my cheek and used the kitchen phone to reconfirm with Alicia, my supplier. She had been scheduled to bring all the ingredients for the banquet - veal roasts, frozen jumbo shrimp, fresh strawberries and bananas for the molded salad, and bunches of broccoli - to our house on Friday morning. I left a message asking that the foodstuffs, plus a lamb roast and a couple of extra bags of haricots verts and Yukon Gold potatoes, be brought to Hyde Castle today, if possible. I provided the phone number and a warning that she’d have to alert the residents to the time of her arrival, so they could open the portcullis. Knowing Alicia, she’d think portcullis was a drink, and want some.

While giving my message to Alicia’s voice mail, I’d found a second, larger microwave oven cleverly hidden inside what looked like a bread box. After some experimentation with programming, I started the chicken stock defrosting, then minced a mountain of shallots, carrots, and celery. Soon the hearty scent of vegetables simmering in a pool of melted butter filled the kitchen. I tried to recall what I’d read that morning from my research disk on English food. After some thought, I sketched out a simple plan for the evening meal: lamb roast with pan gravy and mint jelly, baked potatoes, steamed haricots verts, a large tossed salad with grated fresh Parmesan cheese, and homemade bread. I’d brought the potatoes, beans, bread, and greens from home. If Alicia couldn’t make it today, Julian could go out and pick up the lamb roast.

For dessert, it would probably be good to make a dish with some historic significance. But the Elizabethans had favored marzipan, and I wasn’t up to doing marzipan anything. My eyes fell on the Stained-Glass Sweet Bread I’d made earlier that morning, but decided it would be better for tea. I chewed the inside of my cheek some more.

The Hydes’ freezer yielded a gallon of premium ice cream: Swiss Chocolate, no surprise. With ice cream, I’d learned long ago, it’s better to serve at least two different kinds of cookies. One should be crunchy and redolent of a spice, such as ginger, or a flavoring, like vanilla or almond. The other should be soft and rich, smeared with a creamy icing, if possible. After some deliberation, I decided on a shortbread for the former, which I’d name after Queen Elizabeth’s rival to the north, Mary, Queen of Scots. The other, a chocolate cookie whose dark, fudgy essence and brownie-like texture I could already savor, I would call 911 Cookies - for chocolate emergencies. I was in an extended one right now.

I beat confectioners’ sugar into butter, added a hint of vanilla, and mixed in two kinds of flour sifted with a tad of leavening. I patted the shortbread dough into round cake pans, scored each into wedges, and fluted the rims. Once I’d started the buttery shortbreads on their slow bake to divine flakiness, I melted dark bittersweet chocolate with butter and sifted dry ingredients for the 911’s. Like the sweet bread, these, too, would benefit from a brief mellowing, only in the refrigerator. Once I’d mixed the dough, I covered the bowl with plastic wrap, set it to chill, and slipped up to see Tom.

911 Chocolate Emergency Cookies

6 ounces semisweet chocolate chips 6 ounces bittersweet chocolate, broken into large pieces (recommended brands: Lindt Bittersweet, Godiva Dark) 8 tablespoons (1 stick) unsalted butter, softened and divided 1 ˝ cups all-purpose flour 1/3 cup unsweetened Dutch-style cocoa (recommended brand: Hershey’s European-style) 1 ˝ teaspoons baking powder ˝ teaspoon salt ž cup dark brown sugar, firmly packed ž cup granulated sugar 3 large eggs 1 ˝ teaspoons vanilla extract Vanilla Icing (recipe follows)

In the top of a double boiler, melt the chips, chopped chocolate, and 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) of the butter. When melted, set aside to cool briefly. Sift together the flour, cocoa, baking powder, and salt. Set aside. In a large mixing bowl, beat the remaining 4 tablespoons of butter with the sugars. When the mixture is the consistency of wet sand, add the eggs and vanilla. Mix in the slightly cooled chocolate mixture, beating only until combined. Stir in the flour mixture, mixing only until completely combined and no traces of flour appear. Cover the bowl with plastic wrap and refrigerate for 25 minutes, until the mixture can be easily spooned up with an ice-cream scoop. Preheat the oven to 350°F, Butter two cookie sheets. Using a 4-teaspoon ice-cream scoop, measure out a dozen cookies per sheet. Bake one sheet at a time for about 9 to 11 minutes, just until the cookies have puffed and flattened. Do not overbake; the cookies will firm up upon cooling. Allow the cookies to cool 2 minutes on the cookie sheet, then transfer them to racks and allow to cool completely.

Frost with Vanilla Icing.

Makes 4 dozen cookies

Vanilla Icing: 4 tablespoons (1/2 stick) unsalted butter, softened 1/3 cup whipping cream ž teaspoon vanilla extract 2 ž cups confectioners’ sugar, or more if needed

Beat the butter until very creamy. Gradually add the cream, vanilla, and confectioners’ sugar and beat well. If necessary, add more confectioners’ sugar to the icing. It should be fairly stiff, not soupy. Spread a thick layer of icing on each cookie.

Queen of Scots Shortbread

16 tablespoons (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened ˝ cup confectioners sugar ž teaspoon vanilla extract 1 1/2 cups all-purpose flour ˝ cup rice flour (available at health food stores) or all-purpose flour ź teaspoon baking powder ź teaspoon salt

Preheat the oven to 350°F. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter until it is very creamy. Add the confectioners’ sugar and beat well, about 5 minutes. Beat in the vanilla. Sift the flours with the baking powder and salt, then add them to the 3 butter mixture, beating only until well combined. With floured fingers, gently pat the dough into two ungreased 8-inch round cake pans. Using the floured tines of a fork, score the shortbreads into eighths. Press the tines around the edges of each shortbread to resemble fluting, and prick the shortbread with a decorative design, if desired. Bake for 20 to 25 minutes, or until the edge of the shortbread is just beginning to brown. Allow to cool 10 minutes on a rack. While the shortbread is still warm, gently cut through the marked-off wedges. Using a pointed metal spatula or pie server, carefully lever out the shortbread wedges and allow them to cool completely on a rack.

Make 16 wedge-shaped cookies

“He said he wants to rest,” Julian whispered to me as he precariously balanced the tray while closing the door. “I changed the bandage after he ate. He only had a few bites, but we did have a good visit. He didn’t say anything about getting any on the side.”

“Julian!” I scolded, “I need to set our security system,” I said, feeling guilty that I hadn’t come up earlier.

“I did that, too. I found the directions in the bedside drawer of the room Arch and I are in.” Gripping Tom’s tray, he looked all around before whispering, “Both of ‘em are set to Arch’s birthday.”

“Thanks, Julian.” Arch had been born on April the fifteenth, a happy respite from thoughts of the Internal Revenue Service. At least, that was the way I had always viewed it: Joy and Taxes. Julian showed me the red light on our armed door, and the green-lit keypad beside it.

“One more thing,” Julian warned as we started back down the hall. “Tom wants to start cooking again.”

“You’re kidding.”

“Nope. He has an idea for a hearty breakfast dish.”

“Good Lord.”

“Well, at least that means his mind is getting hungry, even if his body hasn’t caught up. He says he’s going to start tomorrow. He wants to get on with his life.”

I rolled my eyes. “Did you tell him your girlfriend story?”

“Nah. Didn’t seem right - trying to get the truth out of a cop who’s confined to bed because he’s been shot.”

After a few moments, we banged back into the kitchen, where – miraculously - the window had stayed closed. I showed Julian the beginnings of the soup and the shortbreads, and told him about the now-thickened fudgy chocolate cookie dough. When I pulled out the shortbreads, Julian dug into Sukie’s perfectly organized kitchen-equipment drawer, extracted an ice-cream scoop, and offered to make the chocolate cookies.

I thanked him and mentioned I should be going. “Taste the chocolate cookies,” I added, “to see if they need icing. We’ll be serving everybody chocolate ice cream, too. Oh, and if Alicia doesn’t show, do you think you could pick up a lamb roast?” I recited the evening meal menu; he said that would be no problem. I told him all the places I’d be that day, if he got a hankering for cell-phone communication.

“I’ll keep an eye on Tom, too,” he offered. “And take him snacks, to jump-start his energy supply.”

“You’re great,” I said, and meant it. My eyes fell back to the pile of folders and magazines Chardé had left on the kitchen hearth. I picked them up. On the bottom was Chardé‘s portfolio, a slick two-page folder with photographs of some of her decorating assignments. On the back of the folder was a photo: a family portrait of Buddy, Chardé, their teenage son, Howie, and their baby girl, Patty. As an afterthought, I snagged one of the framed newspaper photos from the kitchen wall. This one featured a picture of Eliot and Sukie caught in an enthusiastic kiss, with a caption about the auction of Henry’s letter being complete.

Figuring they could come in handy, I tucked the portfolio and picture into my oversize canvas tote bag. I could show the pictures to the stamp agent in Golden … which, in turn, might lead me closer to finding out who had shot Tom. Impulsively, I climbed up to Arch’s room and grabbed his high-powered binoculars. Constellations at night, bad guys during the day: Not a stellar combination.

-18-

I blinked at the sunshine that suffused the sky. Fair days in the Colorado winter feature a low-hanging sun glazing snow-covered fields and hills. The glare can become so intensely bright that to drive without sunglasses is to invite disaster.

I adjusted my shades, set my jaw, and headed east toward The Stamp Fox. Tom had repeatedly told me that the most profitable time to catch a crook was the first forty-eight hours after the commission of a crime. I had just passed that landmark forty-eighth hour, with zero results. I lowered the driver-side visor against the dazzle, and accelerated down the mountain.

I slowed when I spotted Lauderdale’s Luxury Imports on the north side of the highway. Not too many businesses are situated at the base of the foothills above Denver, as the sloping sites provide monumental construction challenges. But Buddy Lauderdale had found a plateau for his sprawling enterprise, and acres of Jaguars, Mercedeses, BMWs, and Audis glittered enticingly in the sun. I exited the highway, wended along a northbound frontage road, then parked across from the showroom and a lot crammed with late-model Jaguars. Jumping out, I focused the binocs on the eastward view from the offices that-flanked the showroom.

Not surprisingly, the Furman East Shopping Center sprang instantly into view. Designed like a rustic Mexican town, with dark pink stucco and orange-brown roof tiles, the cluster of shops boasted a fake bell tower sandwiched between an upscale women’s clothing store and a glass-fronted independent bookstore. The Stamp Fox was a bit harder to spot, but eventually I nailed it, flanked by an Italian ice cream store and a florist.

Out front stood a FedEx box. So you could see everything from here, if you knew what to look for. Hmm. I jumped back in the van and hightailed it to the mall.

The Stamp Fox was a tiny, gold-wallpapered shop that resembled a fifties-era jewelry store. Electrified candles from an oversize fixture reflected in the brass-lined glass cases. Inside each case, handwritten envelopes with gloriously colored stamps - covers with frankings, to the connoisseurs - begged to be studied. Maybe stamp-collecting was like riding a bike; you never forgot how. I sighed, and wondered what had happened to my painstakingly collected box of glassine-enveloped stamps. I’d left it behind at home when I’d gone off to boarding school. Probably been eaten by mice in the attic.

The shop owner was out, according to his overweight, pale assistant, whose name tag informed me he was Steve Byron, Philatelist. This Byron, whose only romantic inclination had to do with postal history, had a round face to match his round body. He was about twenty-two, and had neatly waved short brown hair and small, colorless eyes behind glasses as thick as bottle-bottoms. The Michelin Man as Stamp Guy. Byron finished locking a glass case, parted his thick lips in a hopeful smile, and waddled toward me.

“Collector?” he asked cheerfully. “Looking for something in particular? We’ve got a brand-new estate sale just in. You’re the first. Top-flight stuff.”

I blurted out, “I’m Francesca Chastain, and I’m a thematic collector,” before I had a chance to think. I was careful not to touch my purse, as I’d heard that showed a subconscious desire not to spend money. Instead, I put a voracious gleam in my eye and tried to think of a nonexistent theme for my obsolete hobby. “I’m the first to see a new set of covers?” I asked greedily. “Do you take Visa?”

Steve Byron gurgled with happiness. “Oh, yes. Your collecting theme is … ?”

I gulped. I was looking for news of the Mauritius Queen Victoria stamp theft, and some indication that Sara Beth O’Malley had come back from Vietnam with an agenda that included more than fixing her teeth. Still, I did not want to appear to be the snoop I actually was. I swallowed and tried to think how to mask my intentions while weaseling information out of Byron.

“A picture of any place or person beginning with the letter V.” To Byron’s look of puzzlement, I waved a hand in the air, a la Eliot. “Uh … Vatican City. Venezuela. Venice. Frankings with pictures of … Queen Victoria.” Steve Byron’s fleshy mouth fell open. “And don’t ask me if I have a Penny Black. I don’t. I’ll buy one from you, though.” Almost as an afterthought, I added, “Stamps from Vietnam.”

“I didn’t catch your name,” stammered Byron. “Francesca Chastain. Do you have any pieces to I show me?”

He licked his lips. “We don’t have anything with Victoria. We did, but they’re gone.” He hesitated. “I do have a couple of covers showing Venice, from a time when there was an international effort to save the city from sinking. And I’ve got one from Vietnam. I’ll show them to you.”

The first case he led me to displayed a cover from Tunisia depicting a mosaic from Venice’s Saint Mark’s Cathedral. I pretended to show interest. The second cover, though, stunned me. The label indicated that it was from 1973. It depicted a stylized lion, symbol of Saint Mark and, by extension, Venice. The printed words on the stamp were in French: Pour Venise UNESCO. This cover was not from France, however, much less Italy. It was from Cambodia, or, as stated below the lion: République Khmčre.

“Where’d you get this one?” I demanded, too sharply. He was taken aback. “From the same collector who sold us the one from Vietnam. An American serviceman was stationed over there in the seventies and collected stamps. He came home, became an alcoholic, and was in pretty bad shape when he stumbled into our showroom last fall. He sold his collection to help pay his deductible for thirty days of treatment at a facility.” Byron moved to another case. “The Vietnam stamp he sold us is here. It’s from ‘72, from what was then still called South Vietnam. Shows reconstruction after the Tet Offensive. Would you like to see either one of them?”

“Could I talk to the veteran who sold you these covers?” It was a long shot, but maybe he knew something about a local woman who’d turned up dead … if indeed the “veteran” story was true.

Byron shook his head. “He died. He got out of treatment, got plastered, and drove his car the wrong way on I-seventy. A tractor-trailer obliterated him.”

“What was his name?”

“Trier. Marcus Trier. His family went to our church, but they moved to Florida. Why do you ask? Did you know Marcus?”

“Just … wondering if we have a mutual friend. I cursed silently and tried to think what to do next. I was till set to visit the stamp agent in Golden, to check out .the long possibility that the stolen Queen Victoria stamps had been fenced there. For that expedition, though, I needed something in particular. “Do you have a current catalog of your items for sale? With prices and pictures?”

“Not quite current, but I’ll get you what we have.”

Byron trundled off. After a moment, he returned with a pamphlet-size catalog. “Only some of our inventory is pictured. The reproductions are in color, though.” He lipped through the pages. “Prices are from three months ago. Only a few would have changed. Oops, here’s some of the Victoria stuff.” He picked up a black marker. “I’ll just cross it out, since we don’t have it anymore.”

“No!” I shouted. Startled, the poor boy almost dropped his pen. “I want prices for everything.” To his look If surprise, I gushed apologetically, “I’m really a passionate collector.”

“Guess so.” He handed me the catalog, unhappy not to be making a sale. “We can take your Visa over the phone, once you decide what you want.”

I thanked him and backed out of the store. I had ninety minutes before I was due at the auction agent’s house in Golden, and in that interval I had to pick up a few things, find Fox Meadows Elementary, and try to get some information out of Connie Oliver. Worse yet, my stomach was growling on a day that held no lunchbreak. The last emergency truffle in my purse was not going to do the trick.

On the other hand, just ten steps away was that Italian ice cream store… .

Ten minutes later, I was clutching a bag with newly bought school paste, scissors, and blank paper, and diving into a sugar cone with a triple scoop of dark chocolate gelato. Fox Meadows Elementary, the gelato-scooper had informed me, was a mere fifteen minutes away. The creamy chocolate melted in my mouth as I balanced the cone in my left hand and piloted the van with my right - no easy task. I finally came to the turnoff of a new, winding road that led to the elementary school. I crammed the rest of the cone into my mouth - ecstasy! - and hopped out of the van.

Connie Oliver had just finished testing the vision of the fourth-graders. At least, that was what she said when I introduced myself as Francesca Chastain, my nom de jour. Nurse Oliver was of medium height, with makeup covering remnants of freckles in a plain face. I judged her to be about fifty. She greeted me and then self-consciously touched her stiff, frosted-to-cover-the-gray hair. I said I was doing a newspaper piece on how Vietnam had affected graduating classes from high schools, colleges, and nursing schools.

“I wouldn’t know,” she said flatly, as she led the way out of the stuffy, cabbage-smelling cafeteria to a bench overlooking the playground. The air was cold, but our seat in the sun was warm enough. The children, happy to be out of their classrooms, shrieked and chased each other through the swings. Connie Oliver put on her sunglasses and fixed her eyes on the playground. “We’ve never had a reunion,” she said finally. “It would be too sad. Our class was small, fifteen in all. Right after graduation, two died on a helicopter mission into the foothills, freak snowstorm kind of thing. Later that year, another died in a car crash, and one more died in Vietnam. The rest of us didn’t want to get together. It would have been too sad.”

“Who died in Vietnam?”

“Aren’t you going to take notes?”

“If I need to remember something.”

Connie shrugged. She kept her mouth closed for a long time, and I feared she’d changed her mind about talking to me. Finally she said, “Her name was Sara Beth O’Malley. She was with a MASH unit in a valley. It was right before the end of the war. Her unit was overrun and she died … “

I said, “I’m sorry.”

Connie looked at me, then returned her gaze to the playground. I knew I hadn’t sounded sincere, so I waited a few moments before continuing.

“Did you all get together for… the funeral service when they shipped Miss O’Malley’s body back? To commemorate her belonging to your class?”

Connie Oliver tugged her coat tightly around her and shook her head. “The Army wasn’t able to retrieve her body. We didn’t have a memorial service.”

I mm-mmed sympathetically, and again waited. “Is there anyone who would know whether there was a ceremony for Sara Beth O’Malley? Family in the area, something like that?” Somebody who might be hiding her now? I added mentally.

“Nah. Sara Beth didn’t have a lot of family. Her parents were fairly old when she studied to become a nurse, so they must have passed away by now.” Connie Oliver wrinkled her forehead, remembering something. “She was engaged, though. The guy was younger. I think he might still have been in high school when she finished nursing school.” I held my breath. She squinted at me. “His name was Tom. Schwartz or Shoemaker or something like that. He adored her. Much later, I heard through the Fox Meadows D.A.R.E. officer that Sara Beth’s fiancé had become a cop. I guess you could see if you could find him through the sheriff’s department.”

“Okay, thanks.” I paused, almost overwhelmed by so many words from her strung together at once. I had to ask another question. “Did you ever hear anything about Sara Beth coming back from Vietnam? Like she wasn’t really dead after all?”

“No!” She paused, shaking her head, clearly annoyed.

“The things you journalists come up with, I swear.” A bell rang and she stood up. “I have to go in. You want to know more about Sara Beth, you need to go talk to Tom Schlosser or whoever he was.”

“Okay. Thanks. You don’t happen to know any more about him?”

She gestured to a boy who was limping toward her. “What is it, George?”

“Mike kicked me. I’m crippled. I think I’m going to have to go home.”

Connie’s voice turned indulgent. “Let me have a look.”

As George scooted onto the bench, I said, “I promise I’ll get out of your hair if you can just finish what you were telling me about Sara Beth’s fiancé. Did he grieve over her death?”

“That I don’t know,” Connie said as she carefully folded down George’s sock. I winced at the swelling bruise. No question about it, life on the playground was still pretty darn rough. Connie’s voice was quick and dismissive. “All I remember, Miss Chastain, is that even though Tom was younger than Sara Beth, he was terribly protective of her, always calling to see how she was holding up during exams, seeing if she wanted to go out to eat. That kind of thing. He was crazy about her. Some girls have all the luck.”

“Thanks again,” I repeated forlornly, before sneaking George my last emergency truffle. He gave me a wide smile. I winked at him and left.

On my way to Golden, I called the castle. To my astonishment, Tom answered.

“Hello, husband,” I said, hoping he wouldn’t hear the tremor in my voice. “I’m just phoning to check in. How are you feeling?”

“Great, for a one-armed guy. Where the heck are you?”

“Doing errands.” It was sort of the truth. “I’ll be home in no time.”

“Julian keeps stuffing everyone around here with food. Nobody’s going to be hungry until midnight.”

“Incorrect!” Julian yelled from the background.

“Okay,” Tom said, laughing. “Alicia hasn’t arrived yet. But the Hydes talked to Julian about tonight’s dinner. They have a leg of lamb and won’t let him go get one. It’s thawing now. They’re excited you all are fixing dinner, and want to have it in the Great Hall.”

I told him that would be no problem, signed off, and parked on the steeply sloping street that boasted the residence of Troy McIntire, auction agent. It was a mixed area of run-down houses, I noticed, as I cut and pasted from The Stamp Fox catalog. Some older dwellings were made of stone, while others were cheaply faced with vinyl siding or false brick. My assembling mission complete, I walked up to a one-story brick house with peeling white trim.

“I’m Francesca Chastain,” I told the short, stooped, sandy-haired man who opened the door. I judged him to be in his mid-sixties. “We have an appoint - “

“Yeah, yeah. McIntire,” he snapped brusquely as he offered a gnarled hand and closed the door behind him. “What exactly are you looking for?”

So, we were going to stand on his porch to conduct business? Oh-kay. I remembered Lambert’s words that the types of stamps stolen had never been reported in the newspaper. I handed McIntire the cut-and-pasted page I’d made from The Stamp Fox catalog. On it I’d slapped five pictures of the most valuable Queen Victoria stamps. Troy McIntire held the sheet up to his face and perused it, then quirked a thin eyebrow.

“Okay, yeah, I have one of these.” A crooked finger pointed to a picture on my sheet. “A man was going through his great-grandmother’s stuff and found it. There might be more, but he has to go through a ton of stuff. You wanna buy it?”

“How much?”

He squinted at me, rheumy bloodshot eyes in a pale face. “It’s in mint condition. Two hundred twenty-five thousand.”

“Actually,” I said tartly, “I’m an investigator working with the police.”

“Go away.” He dropped the sheet and turned toward his door.

“I’m going to need to see that stamp,” I said, my voice firm.

“The heck you say.”

“Please turn around and look at me.”

He slowly turned back and shot me a baleful look; “You’re not coming in without a warrant. And let’s see some ID.”

“It’s in the car.”

“You ain’t no investigator!”

I sighed. “You’re right. I’m a collector. Part of my collection was stolen when I gave a party. It’s driving me nuts.”

“You ain’t the first to have stamps stolen.”

“I know. I’ve already been over to that place at the mall.”

McIntire snorted contemptuously. “That guy’s a piker.”

“Could you please help me? Could you just tell me who sold you those stamps?”

“It was just some guy. I don’t remember his name.” He quickly whirled, pulled on the knob, and slid through his door.

“Please wait.” I planted my elbow on the door. McIntire groaned. With my legs braced and my right elbow forcing his door open, I used my right hand to grasp my wallet and my free left hand to rummage around for my wad of photographs. I thrust the packet across the threshold. “Recognize any of these people?”

He looked down at the first one: the cuddle of saccharine-smiling Chardé and Buddy and family. “These are the people who were at your party?”

“Have you seen either one of them?”

“Nope.” He shuffled past snapshots of Sukie and Eliot and one of Arch in his fencing gear, being corrected by Michaela on his lunge. Then he stopped dead.

“What is it?” I demanded.

“Nothing.” He tried to hand me back the photos, but they fell on the ground. Avoiding my eyes, he swiftly wrenched the door away and slammed it shut.

“Can’t you tell me anything?” I pleaded. “Did you recognize anybody?”

“Scram!”

“Thanks for nothing!” I snarled, suddenly deeply exhausted, frustrated, and extremely angry. I dropped to my knees and started to scoop up the fallen photos.

Chardé and Buddy. Sukie and Eliot. Michaela and Arch.

I gasped and my blood ran to ice. The final photo was the one I’d shown Sukie and Eliot. The Jerk. In his scrubs.

“Hey! Was your mystery seller a slender, good-looking guy?” I hollered at the closed door. “Blond hair, drives a gold Mercedes? Real pale, like he’d just gotten out of prison?”

Inside, all was silence.

-19-

I hopped into the van, revved it, and made a hasty U-turn. I glanced back at the house, knowing McIntire was watching my departure through a crack in the curtains. But maybe I was imagining it, the way I was everything else. I punched in Sergeant Boyd’s number on the cellular and told him of my interview with the auction agent. After I described the interchange about the stamps and McIntire’s reaction to my photos, I took a deep breath. Then I said:

“I suspect that the person who sold McIntire the stamp was my ex-con ex-husband, John Richard Korman.”

“Goldy, that is such a long shot.”

“Listen, Sergeant Boyd. John Richard knew Ray Wolff in jail, and now he’s deeply involved with Viv Martini, Wolff’s ex-girlfriend. John Richard just bought a car from Buddy Lauderdale that he can’t possibly afford, not to mention a condo he can’t even begin to afford. He must be getting that money from somewhere. Maybe he cut a deal with Buddy. Not only that, but John Richard treated Sukie Hyde for cancer, and she never mentioned it to me - “

“Take it easy, Goldy,” Boyd interrupted, obviously determined to put an end to my speculations. “First, we have to question McIntire. Then if we strongly suspect the man received stolen goods connected to a robbery, we’ll try to get a search warrant for his house. If we can arrest him and he agrees to identify Korman from a lineup, we’ll have something to go on. But, all this stuff about Buddy Lauderdale?” He hesitated. “I don’t know, Goldy. It’s beginning to look like you’ve got something against the guy.”

“Maybe he sold the stamp to McIntire,” I said quickly. “It’s so obvious. You can see The Stamp Fox from his showroom, I was just there - “

“Goldy, stop.”

“I want to know who shot Tom.”

“So do we all. But you’re reaching. For example, do you really think Sukie Hyde would give you the details of her cancer treatment? Especially since it was your ex-husband who treated her? Come on.”

I exhaled. “You think I’m losing it.”

“I think you’re reading bizarre stuff into the way some people act. And I think you need to be cautious.”

“A driver’s been killed. A robber’s been killed and dumped in a creek. My husband’s been shot. Our house has been vandalized and burgled. And you’re saying my problem is I can’t deal with some people, and I need to be cautious?”

“Just trying to help out,” Boyd replied. “We think we might have a line on your computers, by the way. An older guy matching the description you gave offered to sell a couple that sounded like yours to an undercover cop this morning.”

“Where?”

“In a bar.”

“Morris Han brought our computers to a bar? And tried to sell them there? And one of your guys just happened to be tying one on, first thing in the morning?”

“Hey, our undercover guys go to bars when they open. It’s their job. Where do you think crooks go in the morning? To the office?”

“Can you visit McIntire soon? Please?” Okay, I was wheedling, but I really needed his help. He agreed and signed off.

It was three o’clock. Either Julian or I needed to pick up Arch from fencing practice al; five. At the castle, I had a lot of cooking to do and labyrinth research to review. I shook my head and pressed the accelerator.

Approaching the Hogback, a sudden cold wind rolled out of the foothills and rocked the van. Was I deluded? Or did I truly believe that Buddy or Chardé or Viv - all of whom either did have or might have the security codes for the castle - or Eliot, or Sukie, or even Michaela, who also had access to everything and seemed awfully angry about something, was guilty of grand-scale theft? Could anyone of them commit murder? Or was the killer some compatriot of Ray Wolff’s, such as the man who stole our computers?

Fast-moving dark clouds raced from north to south as I headed west, up into the canyon that led to Aspen Meadow. It was true that Andy had been found in the creek, not far from the place where Tom was later shot… and both spots were within spitting distance of the fence surrounding the Hyde Castle estate. Somebody was up to I something, but whether it was John Richard, Viv Martini, Chardé Lauderdale, or her smarmy sharpshooting husband Buddy Lauderdale, I did not know. What worried .I me more was having Arch, Tom, and Julian in such close proximity to the Hydes and their friends. Yes, we could arm our doors at night, but what about during the day? If someone brandished a gun like the one that killed Andy Balachek, a butcher knife wasn’t going to be much defense.

Boyd’s warning had been, You need to be cautious. I even imagined what he would say to me, if I presented him with my worry about susceptibility. Boyd would insist that our family had already been at the castle one night, enough for a determined killer to have a go at us. So if the killer was in the castle, why hadn’t he or she made a move?

Tom will know what to do, I thought as I swung through the castle gates. Snowflakes swirled down. I slowed the van, as the icy patches of the long drive were treacherous in the white blur. Concentrating on not slipping, I reflected that being completely honest with Tom was not something I’d been very good at lately. Covert ops and frustration had intruded - in the form of Sara Beth O’Malley. My mind spun back to the question tormenting me for the last two days: What secret is Tom keeping from me? For my part, I was definitely shielding my investigation of Nurse O’Malley from him. He was crazy about her. Connie Oliver had said of Tom and Sara Beth. He was terribly protective of her: Maybe he didn’t love her anymore, as he’d claimed to me. But could he be protecting her? From what? How would I find out without asking him? As I strode into the castle, I realized that while I had many questions, I didn’t have a single answer. It was time to bite the bullet.

I was surprised to see Tom in the kitchen, groping through one of the glass-fronted cabinets. With his right shoulder bandaged and his arm immobilized by the sling, he was moving with a slowness that made me cringe. In contrast, Julian bounced back and forth from the counter - where an enticing array of miniature finger-shaped sandwiches was arranged - and the kitchen table. Tom shuffled to a stop and gave me a baleful look.

“Miss G.” His voice was an attempt at joviality, but his eyes betrayed his physical pain. “I’ve been worried about you.”

“Tom,” I scolded, “you shouldn’t be up.”

“Please. I couldn’t lie there another minute. Looking at all that old English furniture gave me the heebie-jeebies. So I thought Julian and I could make tea - “

Julian interjected, “Make that he tells me what he wants for a Brit-style tea, and I make all the sandwiches and cakes. Hungry?”

The Italian ice cream was a distant memory. I grinned and nodded. Tom loved to cook and to direct cooking. Before relaxing, though, I had to check the dinner ingredients. On the counter beside the refrigerator, the Hydes’ lamb roast was happily defrosting. I washed my hands and stuck the meat with a thermometer probe so that room temperature for the interior wouldn’t be a matter of guesswork. Now all I had to find was some mint jelly to go with the lamb. If you were going to be English, you had to go all the way, right?

“Well, boss,” Julian remarked, “In one department, our tea won’t be authentic.” His smile was impish. “No smoked salmon. So I made cucumber sandwiches. And I’m about to spread cream cheese on that sweet bread you made. Eat your heart out, Weight Watchers.”

Tom awkwardly stretched his free hand to unlock a high cabinet. “If this isn’t where Sukie stores her tea strainer, and teapot, I’m going to have words with that woman.” He fumbled about on the shelf and ultimately drew out a box of English Breakfast tea leaves, a silver strainer, and Eliot’s ceramic teapot shaped like an English butler. Tom pulled the key from the cupboard. “And before you ask, Goldy, Sukie gave me the keys and told me to get out anything we needed. The trick is just to find which key goes with which hole.” He surveyed the kitchen table. “What else do we need?”

“Scones!” Julian and I said in unison.

Julian offered to put together butter, jams, and thick whipped cream if I would bake the treats. I was happy for scone duty, since I had a recipe that I’d been tinkering with back in Ye Olde Home Kitchen, the same one I’d tried – unsuccessfully - to make for the cops. Eliot had mentioned that he eventually wanted to serve Victorian-style tea to conference clients, and I was eager to offer irresistible samples of my wares. My laptop booted while I rummaged through my boxes for a package of currants. I inserted the disk with British-fare recipes. Eventually the scone recipe flashed on the screen.

I preheated the oven and poured boiling water over the currants. While the currants were plumping up, I measured dry ingredients into the Hydes’ food processor. Chunks of cold unsalted butter went in next, followed by a quick binding with egg, milk, and cream. I patted out and cut the resulting rich dough, then slid scone triangles into the oven. While Tom merrily squabbled with Julian over the taste merits of meat-based over vegetarian chili, Julian searched through the kitchen jam cabinet for lemon marmalade.

“See if you can nab some mint jelly,” I begged him. After a few minutes of clattering, Julian brought out small crystal jars of blackberry jelly, orange and lemon marmalades, and raspberry jam.

“No mint jelly,” he said, discouraged. After a moment, he brightened. “Hold on, I think I remember seeing some mint jelly in Eliot’s other jam cabinet.” He grabbed the keys, disappeared into the buttery/dining room, and cursed colorfully. Then more sounds of clanking glass reached the kitchen. After a moment, Julian marched back into the kitchen, clutching jars of mint and sherry jelly.

While the baking scones filled the kitchen with a homey scent, we sipped Tom’s dark, hot, perfectly brewed English Breakfast tea and ate the delectable cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches. Julian remembered that Michaela had called to say she was bringing Arch home. When I expressed guilt that we weren’t including our hosts, Julian said the Hydes would be out until the evening meal. Eliot, Julian went on, had signed up to attend a late-afternoon seminar on running a home-based business. Sukie, vowing that she was the only Hyde who had any business running anything, had insisted on accompanying him. Julian had packed them a snack of gourmet vegetarian wraps. They’d said they’d be back at seven for dinner in the Great Hall, where Eliot had already set up the Elizabethan games he wanted us to try. Great, I thought. Cook, eat, and playa rousing game or two of indoor badminton and horseshoes. Excuse me - shuttlecock and penny prick. Why did Elizabethan games sound like naughty sex? Would the Elk Park parents call after Friday’s banquet and complain?

I put these worries out of my head when the steaming scones emerged from the oven. We cooed and chattered and spread layers of whipped cream and jams on each split half. Yum, my brain cried, when I bit into flaky, moist layers slathered with cream and melting sherry jelly. I noticed Tom was still not eating much. Nevertheless, his spirits seemed to have perked up in the presence of family and food. I glanced at the clock: quarter to four. If we were going to have our heart-to-heart, the time was approaching.

“Goldy?” asked Julian. “I forgot to tell you your supplier finally arrived. She brought another lamb roast, plus all the extra foodstuffs for tomorrow and Friday. When we finish here, do you want me to keep working on the labyrinth lunch? I finished the soup. Eliot said before he left that he wanted us to check that the tables would arrive early tomorrow morning.”

“Let’s wait on that,” I replied. “And thanks for helping Alicia, and for getting started here. I want to work on tonight’s dinner, but not quite yet.” Even though the bedroom would have been a better setting for my tęte-ŕ-tęte with Tom, the time was ripe. I gave Julian a meaningful glance.

“Okay!” Julian exclaimed. “I guess I’ll go set the six of us up in the Great Hall.” In a wink, he was gone.

“Tom,” I plunged in, “we need to talk. Something’s been bothering me.…” I faltered.

He furrowed his brow, but his face was blank. “Go on.”

“Right after you were shot, you said something strange to me. You said, ‘I don’t love her.’”

His shoulders slumped and he looked away. “Oh God. So it’s true. I didn’t imagine it.”

“Didn’t imagine what? That Sara Beth O’Malley is alive?”

Tom’s eyes, when he turned back to me, were the lucid green of sunlit seawater. “Goldy, I love you. I’m married to you. When I woke up in that hospital, I didn’t know whether I’d dreamed that she’d come back or not. They warned me that the pain medication might be hallucinogenic, so I put it down to that. Then I woke up here, and I thought I saw somebody run out of our room.”

No wonder he’d been looking so full of pain. My heart ached. “A man or a woman was running out of our room? Didn’t you have your door armed?”

“The door was armed.” There was more than a hint of irritation in his voice. “It didn’t look like a man or a woman. It looked like a kid in a suit of armor, like that ghost story last night. It looked like a hallucination, except the armor clanked pretty loudly.”

“But Sara Beth O’Malley isn’t a hallucination, right?”

He shook his head. “No, I think she’s alive. All these years of silence, then she starts sending me e-mails. I was trying to figure out what was going on when I was shot.”

He looked so forlorn that I took his big hands into mine. “Since it’s full-disclosure time,” I said hesitantly, “I want to tell you that I downloaded her e-mails, plus the one you received from the State Department. I also downloaded Andy’s e-mails, because I thought it might help figure out who shot the two of you. I put all the e-mails on a disk before our computers were stolen.”

He lifted a sandy eyebrow. “Let me get this straight. You not only read my personal, private e-mails from Andy Balachek, you also read my personal, private electronic correspondence from and about Sara Beth?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that when you told me that you didn’t love some woman, I was sure she was the one who’d shot at our house and shot you. I was trying to figure out who it was, too.”

“But I’d already told you I didn’t love her.”

“So, you haven’t actually seen her yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I have to tell you, I have.”

“What?” Tom’s face furrowed. “Are you sure? You saw her? Talked to her?”

“Both. But not for more than a minute. The day after you were shot, she staked out our house. I looked at an old photograph of her from your album. She looked like the same woman, only older.”

“Uh-huh.”

I tried to control my trembling voice. “I’m wondering if she shot out our window, and then she shot you, because she’s the jealous type.” I forced myself to stop talking.

“My, my.”

I paused, then went on: “Look, Tom, I’m terribly sorry about prying into the Sara Beth thing. Can you just please tell me what’s going on?”

He lifted his left shoulder. “She didn’t die. Or else, I figured, someone was doing a great hoax job. But if you saw her and talked to her, I don’t know. I do think I should try to meet her. She said in her e-mail she has a dentist’s appointment Friday morning … .”

I swallowed. Did I trust him meeting with that lovely, enigmatic woman? What were my choices? I could hear the reluctance in my voice when I said, “I won’t do anything else about her if you don’t want me to. But here’s one more thing I’ve been wondering about … although it’s a bit far-fetched.”

“Don’t worry, Miss G.” His voice was grim. “I’m used to far-fetched these days.”

“The owner of The Stamp Fox insists any stolen philatelic material can be easily fenced in the Far East. Do you think there’s a possibility Sara Beth could be part of the stamp robbery?”

He considered the crumbs on our plates, then shook his head. “It’s not like her. Or at least, not the way she used to be. Obviously, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

“As long as this is truth time, you should know I’ve been doing some poking around on a related matter.” Tom groaned and I continued hastily, “I’m not sure it’s safe for us to stay here. Sukie was treated by John Richard for cancer, and didn’t tell me - “

“That makes her dangerous?”

“The Lauderdales hate me, and Chardé is the castle decorator. She can get into the castle anytime she wants.”

“Now there’s an indication of guilt.” “And Eliot Hyde had an affair with Viv Martini, who is John Richard’s new girlfriend and was Ray Wolff’s - “

“You have been busy. Listen, I want to go home, too. And we will, soon. Meanwhile, I think it’s fine for us to be here. Eliot Hyde is so afraid of looking bad in the public eye he wouldn’t dare try anything, and Sukie knows where her bread gets buttered.”

“I’m not so sure - “

“You’ll have to trust my judgment. Of course, you haven’t been doing too well in the trust department lately.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Still, my brain buzzed with unanswered questions. The minutes ticked by. I had lied to Tom by not immediately ‘fessing up to my e-mail snooping; he had lied to me by covering up the whole resurrection-of-Sara-Beth problem. We sat in silence, not sure how to react to one another. The room shadows lengthened. Finally Tom said he was going to rest a while, and would meet us in the Great Hall at seven.

I preheated the oven and washed the tea dishes. Then I rubbed the thawed lamb roast with garlic, put it into the oven, and started the potatoes boiling. When I was washing the green beans, Boyd called.

“There was no sign of Troy McIntire when we got to his house,” he began matter-of-factly. “Neighbors say, about half an hour after you left? Old Troy came out of his house lugging several big suitcases. We’re hoping for a search warrant, but I’m sure that even if we get one, we wouldn’t find anything incriminating. As for your ex-husband, he’s not at home. I should know more about your computers tonight.”

“Thanks for trying,” I told him, then returned to my culinary duties. After the exchange with Tom, my mood had dropped. With no good news from Boyd, it plunged to a new low. To distract myself from the worries that seemed to beset us on every side, I decided to make the plum tarts for Friday’s banquet dessert.

The thought of laboriously wrapping the zirconia stones in foil with no accompaniment besides my own thoughts - the Hydes either didn’t have a stereo or I just couldn’t find it - was abhorrent. In one of our hastily packed boxes, I remembered seeing Arch’s Walkman, so I poked around until I found it.

I inserted the labyrinth-background tape from Eliot’s desk, washed my hands, and assembled the ingredients for the tart crusts. Eliot had wanted me to bone up on labyrinths so that I could field questions during the next day’s lunch. What he didn’t realize was that except for the dieters, no one ever asks the caterer much. The dieters have two questions: “What’s in this?” and “Is it low-fat?” They can be tiresome clients.

The labyrinth was a very ancient form, the tape began. It differed from a maze, a laid-out puzzle where you had choices as to which way to go. A labyrinth led only one way, but unless you paid attention to every twist and turn, you wouldn’t make it to the center. The oldest surviving labyrinth formed a stepping-stone path laid into the floor of the nave of Chartres Cathedral. The distance to its center from the front door was used as a mystical measurement, and mirrored the distance from the door to the center of the rose window. At the center you will find God, the tape informed me. Pilgrims now walked the labyrinth only once a year, but in medieval times it might have been walked often. These days, chairs covered the Chartres labyrinth.

As I sliced the dark plums into juicy slices, the taped voice launched into a discussion of labyrinth symbolism, which, in fact, was similar to that of the maze. Theseus had wound into the maze of the Minotaur, slain him in its center, then found his way back out to safety with the help of thread, thoughtfully provided by Ariadne. Christians walking to the center of the labyrinth could only get lost if they weren’t paying attention. By treading the path of the labyrinth, Christians took a spiritual journey to the death of Christ, and his temporary descent to hell. By symbolically descending and then ascending again, a pilgrim retraced the messianic journey, found God, and, hopefully, figured out all his or her life problems along the way. The idea of a walking meditation was appealing, but I wondered what happened if you got stuck in the

Damson-in-Distress Plum Tart

14 tablespoons (1 3/4 sticks) unsalted butter 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour, plus an additional 3 tablespoons for the filling 3 1/2 tablespoons sour cream, plus an additional cup for the filling ž teaspoon salt 9 Damson or other plums (If using small Italian plums, you may need as many as 24 2 eggs 1 1/2 cups sugar

Preheat the oven to 325°F. Butter the bottom and sides of a 9 x 13-inch glass pan. For the crust, first fit a food processor with the steel blade. Cut the butter into chunks, Place it into the bowl of the food processor along with the 2 1/4 cups flour, 3 1/2 tablespoons sour cream, and salt. Process until the dough pulls into a ball. Gently pat the dough into an even, layer on the bottom of the prepared pan. For the filling, pit and slice the plums into quarters. Cover the prepared crust with rows of sliced plums to completely cover the crust. Beat the eggs with the sugar, 3 tablespoons flour, and 1/2 cup sour cream until well blended. Pour this beaten mixture carefully over the rows of plums. Bake the tart for 45 to 60 minutes, or until the top is golden brown and the custard is set in the middle. (I use a spoon to check the middle of the tart. The custard should be congealed, not soupy.) Allow the tart to cool completely on a rack. Cut into rectangles and serve with best-quality vanilla ice cream. Refrigerate any unserved portion.

Makes 16 servings

“It’s good to have you back,” I said, and hugged him. Fourteen-year-old boys do not like motherly embraces. But if you don’t mind putting your arms around a kid-dying-to-get-away-from-you, you can let him know you care.

“I’m starving,” he announced, peeking into the oven. “And I’ve got a ton of astronomy homework. How long to dinner?”

I told him it would be a few hours and he should wash up for a snack. While he soaped his hands, I fixed him scones, cheddar slices, and a soft drink. When he finished, I told him, he could help Julian set up in the Great Hall, then ask for homework help.

“Michaela’s idea is so cool,” Arch enthused, his mouth crammed with scone. “We’re going to show everybody how to fence, then we’re going to reconstruct a duel where some guy insulted another guy. The insulting guy got stabbed and bled to death.”

I shuddered, remembering the Lauderdales and their threats. “I think anyone who resorts to weapons to resolve conflicts has already lost.”

“Yeah, well, I think that’s why we always yelled that saying on the playground. Y’know, ‘Sticks and stones may break my bones, but names can never hurt me.’ Michaela says that when duels started, they used swords. Then they switched to pistols. You got in a duel with both guys’ packing guns, somebody was going to get whacked.” He sounded ecstatic. I remembered Buddy Lauderdale’s face as he was led away in handcuffs on New Year’s Eve. By the time I commented, “Now there’s a happy thought,” Arch had already whisked away.

-20-

At quarter past six, Arch returned to the kitchen to pick up the hot-water baths for the chafers. He reported that he’d done all of his schoolwork, except for astronomy. For that, he had to wait until the stars rose. Might be up late, he added with mock ruefulness, but I let it go.

Julian, meanwhile, fretted that the night’s menu had no gourmet vegetarian dishes. So he scurried about to prepare two of his bistro specialties: a colorful lentil-tomato-scallion salad, and a bowl of baby spinach leaves tossed with a balsamic vinaigrette and topped with slices of goat cheese and tiny dollops of a red onion marmalade he grabbed from the dining-room jam cabinet.

“I might want to get this recipe from Eliot,” I commented, when I tasted the spicy relish. Julian nodded.

Arch, careful to protect his white fencing outfit, put together a heaping basket of warm rolls and butter. As we were loading the lamb roast and fixings onto trays, Eliot appeared.

He was wearing a double-breasted black suit that gave him a vaguely military air - probably a captain-of-the-castle look he was going after. With great ceremony, he announced that the seminar had been a success. While we picked up the gravy boat, extra candles, and matches, Eliot shuffled and banged in the dining room. Eventually he emerged with an elaborate corkscrew and two bottles of red wine. The only thing he and Sukie had disagreed on, he went on, was the number of people the castle could feed on a daily basis.

“This castle held a hundred people in the Middle Ages,” he told us, as he eyed his marmalade on top of Julian’s salad, “with complete self-sufficiency. And besides, we’ve done fine with you four,” he added over his shoulder. He sashayed ahead of us through the heavy wooden hallway doors that led to the stairs.

“And we’re thankful,” I gushed. I didn’t point out that Eliot had done no cooking, cleaning, or conference-running, not to mention battle-preparation, during our stay. Not only that, but medieval kitchen staffs usually numbered over fifty. I didn’t point this out, either. If a caterer wants to keep her job, she does not correct the client.

I had never been in the Great Hall at night. Chandeliers and candles illuminated the cavernous space. The walls, paneled with dark, elaborately carved wooden squares, were hung with rich tapestries depicting battle scenes. Rows of arched leaded-glass windows bisected the walls. On the second story at the far end of the hall, a large balcony I had not noticed before projected out over the room. That area, Eliot said as I directed the food into the chafers, had been the minstrels’ gallery. Below the gallery, the wood-paneled wall also jutted into the hall - another medieval toilet, Sukie told me, pragmatic as ever. The corner also held an arched doorway that led to the postern gate. Eliot went on to inform us that in the Middle Ages, only the courtiers dined in this hall. The servants had been relegated to their own dining hall on the castle’s south range.

Eliot, his chin held high, led us to the far end of the hall, where he’d set up a badminton net and marked out a court with tape. The penny-prick game looked straight-forward enough: players stood behind a boundary and threw knives at an empty bottle, trying to knock a penny off the bottle’s lip, without overturning the bottle itself. Although the game historically was played with real knives, Eliot, ever wary of folks hurting themselves at the castle and the story getting into the paper, had bought a dozen of the rubber variety.

Tom appeared as I finished organizing the buffet. He walked over slowly and gave me a one-armed hug. Tears stung my eyes. I squeezed him back and prayed for all of Sara Beth O’Malley’s teeth to fall out of her mouth before Friday.

Sukie, Eliot, Michaela, Tom, Arch, and I dug into the tender lamb roast, the garlicky potatoes, the crunchy beans, the rich, hot gravy, and the cool mint jelly. Julian fixed himself a heaping plate of vegetables and salads, while Eliot waxed eloquent on the fact that the ceremonial procession of the courses from the kitchen to the Great Hall - which we’d unconsciously imitated when we’d lugged the food up the stairs - had been extraordinarily important in medieval and Renaissance times. The lord of the castle wanted to put on a big show, to prove to everybody how rich he was.