The Grilling Season

THE GRILLING SEASON

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

STANLEY CUP VICTORY CELEBRATION Saturday, August 2 Featuring

SOUTH OF THE BORDER APPETIZERS Layered Dip of guacamole, refried bean purée, sour cream, cubed fresh tomatoes, and Cheddar cheese Tortilla Chips Crudités: cauliflower, carrot, celery, cucumber, cherry tomatoe Mexican Eggrolls

ENTREE Goalie’s Grilled Tuna Grilled Slapshot Salad Mediterranean Orzo Salad Vietnamese Slaw Hockey Puck Biscuits, Potato Rolls

DESSERT Stanley Cupcakes surrounding Rink Cake Mexican Beers, Chablis, Coffee

1

Getting revenge can kill you. If you want real revenge, you have to be willing to pay. Life is not like the movies. Unfortunately. With these happy thoughts, I measured out fudge cake batter into cupcake liners and slid the pan into the oven. I set the timer and reminded myself for the thousandth time that I’d let go of the need for revenge. I wasn’t a hot-blooded teenager. I was a thirty-three-year-old caterer with a business to run and work to do. Half-past six on a cool August morning? What I needed was coffee.

You never let go of the thirst for revenge. Yeah, well. Maybe hearing other people’s sad stories sparked thoughts of my own. Or in this case I’d heard one unhappy story, one story needing justice. But what could I do for a client in emotional pain? I’d agreed to cater her hockey party. A nurse had told my client Patricia McCracken that hosting this sports celebration would distract her from her problems. But whenever we discussed the menu, Patricia didn’t want to talk about vittles; she wanted to talk about vindication. And I was as unenthusiastic about jumping into her revenge fantasy as I was about washing dishes after a banquet.

For five years, I’d run the only food-service business in the small mountain town of Aspen Meadow, Colorado. My son, Arch, was fourteen years old. Just over a year ago, I’d married for the second time. Add to this the fact that I’d already sought punishment for the scoundrel who’d recently wronged Patricia McCracken. I’d barely escaped with my life.

I retrieved unsalted butter and extrathick whipping cream from my walk-in refrigerator, then reached up to my cabinet shelves for aromatic Mexican vanilla and confectioner’s sugar. Stay busy, I had advised Patricia. It’lI help. Make your guest list. Plan your decorations. Some people despise slates of tasks and errands. But I revel in work. Work keeps my mind off weighty matters. Usually.

Take this morning, for example. After finishing the cupcakes I needed to check my other bookings, make sure our sick boarder was sleeping peacefully, then rush to pick up Arch from an overnight parry. Before zipping back to my commercial-size kitchen in our small home, I was going to deliver Arch to the country-club residence of his can’t-he-bothered father. My ex-husband, ob-gyn Dr. John Richard Korman, was the father – and scoundrel – in question. He was the man my client Patricia McCracken obsessively hated; he was the man I had escaped from. He was known to his other ex-wife and me as the Jerk. Small example of Jerk behavior: Dr. John Richard Korman would no more pick up his son from an overnight than he would beat some eggs for breakfast. And careful of that word beat.

I stared at the menu on my computer screen and struggled to refocus on the task at hand. After much hesitation, Patricia had finally decided that her party would be a two-month-late celebration of the Colorado Avalanche winning the Stanley Cup. But making the plans with her hadn’t been easy. One week she didn’t care about the menu; the next she obsessed about details, such as how long to grill fish. After many discussions, Patricia had finally ordered Mexican appetizers, grilled fish from Florida (the Avs had beaten the Florida Panthers in the Cup finals and I’d dubbed the entree Goalies’ Grilled Tuna), three kinds of salads, puck-shaped biscuits, and homemade potato rolls. Plus a dessenrt Patricia’s husband had christened Stanley Cupcakes. I sighed. After dropping off Arch this morning, I still faced a truckload of food prep. Not only that, but this evening’s event promised to be raucous, perhaps even dangerous. I mean, hockey fans? Now there are folks who take revenge seriously.

I turned away from the computer. Our security system was off, so I opened the kitchen window and took a deep breath of summery mountain air. The postdawn Colorado sky glowed as it lightened from indigo to periwinkle. From the back of my brain came the echo of Patricia’s furious voice.

“I’m telling you, Goldy. I need to see someone punished.”

I slapped open the other window and tried to block out the memory of her anger by inhaling more crisp air skimming down from the snow-dusted mountains. August in the high country brings warm, breezy days and nights cool enough for a log fire.

Heaven.

Unless you have to deal with John Richard Korman, I my own inner voice reminded me. Then it can be hell. Perhaps I should have told Patricia, an old friend who until now had loved cooking, to prepare herself for a descent into the underworld. I took a bag of coffee beans from the freezer, then sliced a thick piece of homemade oatmeal bread and dropped it into the toaster. The interior wires glowed red; the delicious scent of hot toast filled the kitchen.

Poor Patricia. After years of infertility and after adopting a son just before her first marriage had gone sour, she had remarried, endured a year of fertility drugs, and become pregnant. But she lost the baby. Unexpectedly, horribly, and avoidably, according to her. John Richard was her obstetrician. And she blamed him for the baby’s death.

Now she wanted my help. I had been married to Dr. John Richard Korman, she reminded me; I’d suffered through an acrimonious divorce. How could she deal with her rage against him? she wanted to know. How could she get through this?

I’d told her I’d cooked with much imagination when I was furious with the Jerk. But no matter what I’d said two weeks ago while booking the event, it hadn’t been enough. Patricia, short and pear-shaped, with bitten-down nails and eyeliner applied with a shaky hand, had fumed like a pressure cooker. She’d shaken her mahogany-with-platinum hair and complained that I wasn’t helping. She wanted revenge on the Jerk, and she wanted it now.

I took a bite of the crunchy toast and looked out my window at a dozen elk plodding through our neighbors’ property. We live just off Main Street in Aspen Meadow, but the elk pay no attention to houses, fences, or any other son of human presence, as long as the humans don’t carry guns. In July and August the herds move down from the highest elevations in anticipation of hunting season, when hunters march into the hills in search of the huge dusty-brown creatures. When darkness engulfs the mountains, the elk’s bugling, along with their hooves cracking through underbrush, are the only heralds of their arrival. Other times, you don’t know the elk have been through until every last one of the leaves on your Montmorency cherry trees has been stripped. Deep, telltale hoof-prints in nearby mud usually betray the culprits.

A dog barked at the elk and the herd trundled off, leaping over a three-foot-high fence as if it were nothing. I glanced back at my computer screen, but again couldn’t rid myself of the image of Patricia McCracken tapping the fleshy nub of her index finger on her bone-white Corian counter.

“Everyone hates him, Goldy,” she’d declared. “John Richard Korman and that damn HMO that you have to belong to if you want him for your doctor. I can’t believe we signed up. I can’t believe I ever wanted John Richard as my doctor. But I’m telling you. He’s going down.”

And so then I’d heard the whole story. Patricia had been diagnosed with placenta previa, a precarious condition that jeopardizes the stability of the unborn child. Total bed rest is usually recommended; Patricia had begged John Richard to prescribe a hospital stay. She’d been denied it.

Seven months into the pregnancy, Patricia had hemorrhaged and the baby was asphyxiated. Devastated, she’d sued John Richard for malpractice and AstuteCare, her HMO – otherwise known as ACHMO – for negligence. She said her lawyers were certain she would win. But Patricia, understandably, was depressed. She wanted more, and she didn’t like the idea of waiting for vindication. She wanted… Well, what? Money? To drive John Richard out of his practice? To force him into a public confession?

“Will he admit he made a mistake?” she’d demanded of me two weeks ago. “Will he apologize?

Will he confess he ruined my life?”

Next question. Naturally, I’d felt too sick to tell her the truth.

I spread a thick layer of tart chokecherry jelly on what remained of the toast. As the menu was set, the contract signed, and the first installment check written, I’d tried to warn Patricia gently. John Richard Korman was the most powerful, best-known ob-gyn doctor in town. The Jerk would not go down lightly. He never acknowledged making a mistake. And he’d certainly die before doing so publicly. But Patricia, whose fine-boned facial features and small, quivering nose above her plump body always put me in mind of a rabbit, had stiffened. She was having none of it. She had filed her suits. And she was out for blood.

I brushed crumbs off my hands. I hadn’t wanted to argue with her. I’d told her to sue away, we needed to talk about setting up her party. Sheesh. A headache loomed. I really needed coffee.

I greedily inhaled the luscious scent of ltalian-roast beans as they spilled between my fingers into the grinder. Tap water gushed into the well of my espresso machine. I had thought I wouldn’t talk to Patricia again until tonight, but she had called yesterday. The woman was so obsessed that she’d been frantic to share news. She’d informed me that John Richard wouldn’t be engaging in a prolonged legal battle with her. It seemed the Jerk was having severe financial problems.

Now I must confess, that news made my ears perk up. Being desperate for justice is a psychologically dangerous place to be. You hope that some lie, some transgression, some publicly witnessed crime will trip up your personal enemy. Nothing happens. Meanwhile, the desire for revenge can eat you up, give you insomnia, and – horrors – take away your appetite. You have to let go or die. So you need at least to say you’re starting over and getting on with your life. All of this I had done. But now: Was this really happening? Could I watch the sun rise, sip some espresso, and rejoice in my ex-husband finally facing the music?

The coffee grinder pulverized the beans with a satisfying growl. I didn’t want to be premature. I couldn’t imagine that there would finally be punishment for the man who had broken my left thumb in three places with a hammer. I reached for the coffee doser and touched my hand. The thumb still wouldn’t bend properly even now, seven years after the orthopedic surgeon who’d set it insisted I’d be throwing pizza dough in no time.

“He’s got to pay,” Patricia had insisted shrilly when she’d called yesterday. “I don’t understand why you could never get him to pay, Goldy.”

It hadn’t worked like that. I tamped the grounds into the doser and remembered how stupefied I’d been when John Richard had gone unscathed. This in spite of the fact that he’d repeatedly beaten me. Time after time I’d had to escape from the house clutching Arch tightly, trying to get to a safe house. But after he’d smashed up my body and our marriage, John Richard had gone on with his life, his practice, his girlfriends, and his lifestyle. He’d remarried, divorced again, and taken up right where he’d left off. Until now, it seemed as if the man had been able to get away with anything. The odds looked good that he’d survive Patricia’s legal threats, too.

I ran scalding water into a Limoges demitasse to heat it, then fitted the doser into place. I dumped the water out of the warmed cup, delicately placed it under the doser, and pressed the button. In the face of unrelenting curiosity from the town about the progress of her lawsuits, Patricia had spent most of the last two months at her condo in Keystone, a ski resort just over an hour away from Aspen Meadow. After booking the hockey party, she’d gone back to Keystone for two final weeks of peace, punctuated only by calls to me about her party. She’d discovered what I knew well: that it was nearly impossible to avoid the nosiness and gossip of Aspen Meadow.

Steaming twin strands of espresso spurted into my cup and I frowned. When John Richard and I were married and stories had come to me, of his flings with patients, nurses, and anyone else who fell under his gorgeous-guy spell, I’d confronted him, cried, yelled, threatened. And I’d paid for my protests with the usual pattern of black-and-blue marks: bruises on my upper arms from being grabbed and shaken, a black right eye. Sometimes worse.

“You must have tried to do something,” Patricia had protested. “Why couldn’t you do anything?”

I pushed the doser to stop the flow of coffee. Excuse me, Patricia, but I had done something. I’d stopped listening to the gossip. I’d planned a divorce as I taught myself to make golden-brown loaves of brioche, delicate poached Dover sole, creamy dark chocolate truffles. I’d fantasized about opening a restaurant or becoming a caterer. I’d dutifully kept close to a hundred of my newly developed recipes on our family computer. In one of the Jerk’s last acts before I kicked him out, he’d reformatted the computer’s hard drive. I’d lost every recipe.

I sipped the rich, dark espresso, blinked with caffeine-induced delight, and scowled at the next cupcake pan. Maybe Patricia couldn’t understand why I hadn’t done more. Let’s see: I’d sought help from the church. Our priest hadn’t wanted to hear about John Richard beating me up. Donations from the rich doctor might fall off. And then I’d tried to file criminal charges. But when divorce proceedings began, John Richard’s high-powered lawyer had assured me that pressing criminal charges against his client would threaten his ability to pay child support. Worse-it might even bring on a custody battle.

Faced with such consequences and the fear of losing Arch, I’d given up seeking punishment for John Richard Korman. But the law had changed, and now a bruise-covered spouse didn’t have to press charges. Back then, however, the legal system had failed me. Still, at age twenty-seven, I’d been glad enough to get out of the marriage with my life and my child.

“I can’t believe you couldn’t convince people how bad he was,” Patricia had contended. “I mean, between you and Marla? Come on.”

During the eight years of our marriage, and even in the six years since the divorce, the Jerk’s - behavior was unknown to many, dismissed or disbelieved by others. And yes, he’d dished out disdain and disloyalty to his second ex-wife, Marla Korman, who’d since become my best friend. I grinned, thinking of good old Marla. She’d kill the Jerk if she had the chance, but she’d had a heart attack last year and was trying to be careful.

I should have told Patricia I had tried to have the Jerk penalized in some way, any way. But I’d been determined not to go crazy. Patricia, though, was on the edge. A very dangerous edge. I set down my coffee and stirred another bowl of cake batter. The scent of chocolate cake perfumed the kitchen. Her malpractice suit would put him out of business, Patricia insisted. She apologized that this could mean a loss of child support for Arch. I told her not to worry about us. I’d manage, I always had. Patricia claimed that no matter what, she was going to make John Richard pay, and she was going to bring down ACHMO at the same time. Good for you, I thought now, with an involuntary shiver.

I began to scoop silky dollops of cake batter into the next pan. I put down the spatula, sipped more coffee, and smiled. There was another reason why I’d given up the need for revenge. Just over a year ago, happiness had come into my life like an unexpected houseguest determined to stay. I’d married a homicide investigator who worked for the sheriff’s department. Tom Schulz’s bearlike, handsome presence, his kindness and intelligence, his affection for Arch and me, still felt like a miracle. I glanced up at one of his recent presents to me: a blond doll dressed the way you might imagine a Tyrolean caterer would be, with a snowy lace apron over a royal blue vest and skirt. Actually, the doll’s official name was Icelandic Babsie, and Tom had bought it for me to celebrate an upcoming booking to cater a doll show. He’d told me I could sell the doll in a year and retire on the profits. In addition to his other virtues, the man has a sense of humor.

Tom was like a slice of capital-G Grace, a concept I sometimes discussed with my Sunday school class. Plus, being married to a cop finally made me feel safe. And through all this – divorce, building a business, raising a child, remarrying – I’d held my own. I’d kept my friendships, made new ones, even stayed the course in our local church, where we now had a new priest and I still took my turn teaching Sunday school and making muffins for the after-ser- vice coffee. Which brought us to the present moment.

Rejoicing in the suffering of others is a sin. Well, then. Call me a big-time sinner.

The timer beeped and I remembered the hockey fans. I checked the cupcakes – not quite done – reset the timer, and again studied the menu for the party. I took a deep breath and ordered my-self to let go of all the negative thoughts that Patricia’s vengeful tale had provoked.

“He’s going to run out of money,” Patricia’s voice echoed.

I still did not know how, in addition to the legal mess, the Jerk had gotten himself into a deep financial pickle. I’d promised Patricia I’d listen to the details of that news when I catered her party.

I grimaced at the list of dishes to be prepared and tried to picture the setup at the McCrackens’ Aspen Meadow Country Club home. The McCrackens were adding playing hockey to celebrating hockey. So I would start with beer and a vegetable-and-chip tray with layered Mexican dip served at the end of the driveway during the in-line skating, provide more drinks and Mexican eggrolls upstairs in the living room, do the grilling and barbecue buffet on the large deck, then finish in the living room with cupcakes and coffee. Actually, the McCrackens did not live too far from the Jerk’s year-old million-dollar house. The million-dollar house he might have to sell. Oh, too bad.

Think about hockey, I scolded myself. Fix the frosting for the Stanley Cupcakes. I’d told Patricia the NHL wouldn’t approve of her husband’s name for the dessert. She’d retorted that she didn’t care. I fitted the electric mixer with a flat beater and recalled how breathless Patricia had been with her news yesterday about John Richard’s impending financial demise.

“We were right there when they auctioned off his Keystone condo,” she’d squealed. “It went for sixty thousand below market. This must be the juiciest revenge you’ve ever envisioned,” she’d added with glee.

Not quite. John Richard still had the Aspen Meadow house, a condo in Hawaii, white and silver Jeeps with personalized license plates-the white one said OB and the silver said GYN, just in case anyone wondered what kind of doctor he was – and a wealthy, beautiful, smart, new girlfriend whom I grudgingly admired.

The beater began its slow circuit through the pale, unsalted butter. John Richard’s girlfriend, Suz Craig, was the executive vice-president of the AstuteCare Health Maintenance Organization. I didn’t know if Suz’s feelings for John Richard were being affected by Patricia’s suit against ACHMO. I did know that as of four weeks ago, John Richard and Suz were nuts about each other. To celebrate going together for six whole months, he had given her a full-length mink coat, bought on sale at the beginning of the summer, Arch had informed me. Suz had even modeled the coat when I’d catered a corporate lunch at her home in July. And why shouldn’t I have catered for her? Suz had unabashedly informed me that she was a great businesswoman. Well, so was I.

Suz was young, thin, blond, a whiz at her job – by her own accounting – and eager, I thought, to show me that she wasn’t going to make the same relationship mistakes that I had. What that meant, I didn’t know, and didn’t want to ask. Suz had confided that she’d given John Richard a solid gold ID bracelet as a way of showing her six-month-old affection. I’d tried not to roll my eyes. The only stage of relationship John Richard did well was infatuation. But if John Richard and his girlfriend wanted to act like high school sweethearts, I wasn’t going to stop them. His relationships never lasted very long. No, Patricia McCracken hadn’t been quite on the money when she’d said John Richard’s financial crash was the juiciest revenge I’d ever envisioned.

John Richard had not yet lost the malpractice suit. His girlfriend hadn’t renounced him. He wasn’t in jail; he hadn’t even been publicly humiliated. A declaration of personal bankruptcy, which was what I was assuming was about to happen, was not the kind of revenge I’d always hoped for.

But it was close.

2

When I opened the oven to take out the cupcakes, the scent of chocolate drenched the kitchen. I drank it in and immediately felt better. Thinking dark thoughts was unappealing; thinking dark chocolate thoughts was vastly better. That was the conclusion I’d come to yesterday as I whipped up a batch of fudge. Stirring the sinfully rich pot of candy, I’d decided I really didn’t want to get a blow-by-blow description from Patricia of John Richard’s condo being auctioned off, after all. Listening to sizzling gossip while grilling tuna during the parry tonight could lead to frayed nerves, scorched fish, or worse.

Nor could I quite picture hearing about the woes of John Richard Korman while catering to a large group of hockey aficionados. The fans would be hollering with blood-mania at slow-motion videos of battered hockey players slamming other bruised and injured players into the glass – while I celebrated a vengeance I’d tried to put behind me years ago? Something about that didn’t quite work.

I straightened and rotated my shoulders. My right shoulder was scarred from the time John Richard had shoved me into a dishwasher and I’d landed on a knife. I’d fallen on my left shoulder when he pushed me down the stairs in a drunken rage. Both shoulders seized up with pain from time to time. Yesterday, when I was making the fudge, the ache in my upper back had been unbearable. Of course I’d suspected it was because my body didn’t want to be reminded of John Richard. Let go of it, I’d admonished myself. I’d called Patricia in Keystone and said I didn’t want to hear any more about the Jerk.

“You don’t want to hear before our hockey game about your ex-husband’s ruin? Don’t you want to hear what he said to my lawyer about the money the suit is costing him?” Patricia had shrieked. When I’d said no, she seemed stunned by my lack of interest. “You’re crazy. This whole thing is a huge come-down for him.” Then she said – I swear she said this – “You must be out of your pucking mind.”

Maybe so. But my shoulders felt better today. I swirled thick whipping cream into a mountain of snowy confectioner’s sugar for the cupcake frosting. Yes, I could wait to hear the news. Now I could wait, that is. Tom Schulz, even if he was my husband, had always felt that justice would eventually triumph. I guess that’s why he’s in the business he is.

It is going to happen, Tom had frequently assured me. John Richard Korman will go too far, get caught, and be nailed. In fact, I had been vaguely aware that John Richard was having financial problems. After all, I hadn’t received a child support payment in three months. He was usually late, but not this late. Despite Patricia’s dire news about the Keystone condo, I’d actually been hoping that John Richard could talk to me this morning about his money situation, without lawyers, without lying, and without loudness. Fat chance.

But, as they say, I was going to be in that neck of the woods, so I might as well try to chat with him. With Arch as a buffer, and before John Richard had had a drink or two, we could occasionally communicate. Besides, if I thought we could get something settled, it would make the chauffeuring job this morning less irksome. The house where Arch was staying was only two miles from John Richard’s neo-Tudor monstrosity, while it was close to ten miles from our place.

I was doing the pickup because Arch had been desperate to attend the party. The poor kid had not made many friends at the private school he’d started attending two years ago. Now that he was going into ninth grade, he relished the idea of someone inviting him over, even if it was because he was one of the few kids not currently away on an exotic summer vacation. An invite is an invite, Arch had reminded me seriously as he nudged his tortoiseshell glasses up his nose and donned a too-large pair of denim shorts to go with a raggedy nut-brown shirt that matched his hair. And I’m going.

I slid the bowl of frosting into the walk-in, set the cupcakes on racks to cool, and scribbled a note to Tom to have one for breakfast if he craved an early-morning chocolate fix. I would be back soon, I wrote. Tom had been out past midnight working on a case. In the hours before dawn he had crept in and tried not to wake me. But whenever he pulled the Velcro straps off his bulletproof vest, I woke in a sudden sweat. For over a year, he’d been telling me I’d get used to it. I never had.

I tiptoed upstairs to check on our boarder. Recovering from mononucleosis, nineteen-year-old Macguire Perkins was spending the summer with us until his father came home from teaching a course in Vermont. A tousle of red hair, a patch of pale skin, and loud snores indicated that Macguire was sleeping, as usual. Arch’s bloodhound, Jake, dozed at Macguire’s side, while our cat, an adopted stray named Scout, kept a watchful emerald eye from his perch on the dresser.

I finished getting ready and quietly crept out our front door. Another fresh morning breeze whispered through the aspens. After a nastily wet spring, we were enjoying what the locals call a one-in-ten year for wildflowers. This was probably going to be a one-in-ten year for the elk population, too, but I didn’t mind. I revved up Tom’s dark blue Chrysler sedan that he’d left in the driveway behind my van. Backing out, I tried to avoid blue flax, blush-pink wild roses, and brilliant white daisies, all nodding in the warm wind.

Actually, one of the reasons I’d come to admire John Richard’s current girlfriend, Suz Craig, was that she had learned the names of nearly a hundred different kinds of flowers that were being put in as part of an elaborate landscaping project at her country-club home. While I was setting up for the business lunch in July, Suz had taken the time to point out the varieties of campanula and columbines that her landscapers were planting between the quartz boulders and striped chunks of riprap rock. Even businesswomen who were vice-presidents needed a hobby, I supposed. The lunch had been a going-away gig for some AstuteCare people visiting from out of town. As ACHMO’s regional veep, it was Suz’s job to provide their “day in the mountains,” a de rigueur excursion for visiting out-of-staters. The buffet as well as the day had been Colorado picture-postcard perfect: sapphire-blue sky, sweet mountain air redolent of pine, platters of chilled steamed Rocky Mountain trout, and luscious chocolate truffles.

The only mishap of the catered lunch had occurred when Chris Corey, the overweight head of ACHMO’s Provider Relations, had taken a spill down an incomplete set of stone steps. Chris had sprained his ankle and Suz had vowed to fire the landscapers. One of the guests had taken a bite of trout, winked at me, and commented that firing people was what Suz did best. I’d made a mental note. Maybe she’d dump the Jerk before too long. I wondered how he would react.

The sedan’s engine purred as I passed Aspen Meadow Lake, where the early-morning sun and whiff of breeze had whipped the placid water into jagged sparkles. At the Lakeview Shopping Center across the road from the lake, a tattered banner, ruffling slightly, announced that Aspen Meadow Health Foods was under new management. Beneath the banner a beautifully painted sign advertised the upcoming doll show at the LakeCenter. BABSIE BASH! the curlicued script screamed. GO BERSERK! I pressed the accelerator and hummed along with the engine. When I thought about Babsie dolls these days, I didn’t think berserk, I thought bread and butter. Starting Tuesday, I’d be catering to the doll folks for two days. The bash organizers had warned me that they didn’t want any food to get on the display tables, the Babsie costume boxes, the eensy-weensy furniture, the tiny high heels, the fanciful costumes, or, God forbid, the dolls. I’d assured them I could do all their meals, including a final barbecue, outside – complete with finger bowls, if they wanted. They’d said I should find a Chef Babsie outfit to wear. I’d been afraid to ask them if they were kidding.

Once I’d rounded the lake, the sedan started uphill toward the country-club area. Actually, Suz Craig had always reminded me of Babsie. Beyond her looks, though, I had to admit that Suz had a phenomenal mind and a charismatic personality to go with her statuesque, size-six body. I never had been able to understand how the Jerk could attract women like her.

I glanced in the rearview mirror at my slightly chubby face, brown eyes, and Shirley Temple-blond-brown curls. “He got you, didn’t he?” I said to my puzzled reflection, then laughed.

The stone entryway into the country-club area had been graffiti-sprayed by vandals. The vandals’ defacement of property was one of this summer’s ongoing problems in our little town. Still, I knew my way to Arch’s friend’s house without having to decipher the spray-painted street signs. The developer for the old part of the club had been an indiscriminate Anglophile. He’d given the streets names like Beowulf, Chaucer, Elizabethan, Cromwell, Tudor, and Brinsley. As long as you knew a bit about English history, you were in good shape. I approached the turn to Jacobean Drive, where Suz Craig lived, and hesitated. I pulled over and the sedan tires crunched on the gravel. Despite my best intentions, I was suffering a typical Jerk-inspired dilemma. Would he be home yet?

Tom’s cellular was close at hand. I could call John Richard first to make sure he was awake and ready for Arch’s arrival. On the other hand, I didn’t want to wake him up and risk one of his infamous tantrums. If I drove past Suz’s and saw one of his cars in the driveway, I would know to stall on picking up Arch. But stall how? I tapped the dashboard in frustration.

Okay – I remembered that the woebegone landscapers had been planning three patios, along with a series of steps, on Suz’s sloping property. The vandalism had been so bad in the country club that Suz had confessed to being afraid to have the flagstones delivered and left outside, where they ran the risk of being spray-painted with cuss words. So Suz’s garage was full of flagstones, and if John Richard had spent the night with his girlfriend, one of his Jeeps would be sitting in her driveway. This, in spite of the fact that his house was close by. But John Richard never walked for exercise; he played tennis.

I revved the engine, turned up Jacobean, and immediately knew something was wrong. I rolled down the window and tried to figure out what didn’t fit. The rhythmic, slushy beat of automated sprinklers buzzed across manicured green lawns. On both sides of the road bunches of trim aspens, conical blue spruces, and buttercup-flowered potentilla bushes were all picture-perfect. Picture-perfect except for one thing. In the ditch running beside Suz’s driveway, one of the landscape people had inconsiderately dumped one of the quartz boulders.

One of the quartz boulders? No.

I slowed the sedan, carefully set the parking brake, and got out of the car. Then, feeling faintly dizzy, I walked toward the ditch. Suz’s cheerily painted mailbox had been knocked or driven over and lay in the middle of the street. The block letters of the name Craig gleamed in white paint on the shiny black metal. I looked back at the ditch.

It was not a quartz boulder that lay in the dirt. It was Suz.

Oh God, I prayed, no.

I moved haltingly toward the ditch. Loosely clad in a terry-cloth bathrobe, the exposed parts of Suz’s slender body were blue and white. Her shapely legs were improbably skewed, as if she were running a race. Her blond hair, normally tied back in a pert ponytail, was soaked with mud. It clung to her face like seaweed. Her bruised arms hugged her torso, while her blue lips were set in a silent scream. She did not appear to be breathing.

What to do? Call somebody? Tom? No, no, no, there might be hope, if an ambulance could get here quickly. Plus, some logical voice whispered, I needed to call for help as if I didn’t have any idea as to what had happened. Which I didn’t. Which I did. Get into the car. Dial 911. A whirring noise in my ears made thinking difficult as I ran to the sedan. Too late, too late. Emergency Medical Services wouldn’t be able to do anything. I knew it even as my shaking fingers punched 911 and Send on the cell phone. The connection was not immediate, as frequently happens in the mountains. One second, two endless, endless seconds. There was no movement from the ditch. Very faintly, from a distant part of my brain, I could hear Tom’s voice.

He will go too for. Get caught. Be nailed.

3

I told the 911 operator who I was, where I was, and why I was calling. “She doesn’t seem to be alive,” I added. Did I know CPR? the operator wanted to know. No, no, I replied, sorry.

“Just stay were you are, the operator commanded.

For some reason I looked at my watch. Five to seven. I had to call Tom. Although I knew it would irritate the 911 operator, I disconnected and punched the digits for the personal line into our house.

“Schulz,” Tom barked into the phone.

“Listen, something’s happened…” This was a mistake. Even with the worst-case scenario, which I did not want to contemplate, I surely knew they would never assign this-what would he call it? – this matter, this incident, this case, to my husband.

“It seems… I didn’t … “

“Goldy,” Tom commanded, “tell me what’s going on. Slowly.”

“I … I was driving up Jacobean in the country-club area,” I began, and then told him bluntly exactly what I was looking at through the windshield – a young woman. Looked like Suz Craig, John Richard’s girlfriend. Lying half-dressed in a ditch. Not moving. Not breathing.

“Sit tight, ” he ordered. “If you see John Richard, or anyone, say nothing. If someone comes, get out of the car. Don’t let anybody near that ditch. I’ll be there before the ambulance. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Goldy? I’ll be there.”

I closed the phone and felt relief. I scanned the quiet landscape and had a sudden memory of the time a live power line had snapped during a blizzard and landed on our street. Touching the wire meant sure electrocution. The most important job, the fire department had warned, was to keep people, especially children, away from the dark wire that had curved onto the street like a monstrous snake. And how similar was this situation? I couldn’t think. I only knew I had to keep prying eyes and intrusive, questioning people away from what lay in that ditch.

And speaking of children, I had to call Arch. Of course I couldn’t remember the number of the house where he was. People named Rodine. I called Information, got the number, and phoned. Gail Rodine didn’t sound too happy, but I told her tersely that there would be a delay before I arrived.

“I’m leaving to start setting up the doll show at ten,” Gail petulantly announced.”

“I’ll be there long before that,” I said, and disconnected before she could whine any more.

I peered out through the windshield of Tom’s car and wondered how long it would be before someone came along. Tom was right: Sit tight, he’d said. If someone saw me, a stranger, standing in the road looking out of place, that would excite curiosity. My heart quickened as the front door to one of the houses swung open. A chunky man in a dark bathrobe came out, bent to retrieve his newspaper without looking up the street, then waddled back through his columned entryway. I let out a breath of relief that I quickly gasped right back in as John Richard’s white Jeep roared into view from the opposite side of Jacobean.

What should I do? – Don’t let anybody near that ditch.

John Richard catapulted the Jeep up into Suz’s driveway. Apparently he’d taken no notice of Tom’s car or of me sitting in it. Springing from his own vehicle, John Richard turned and scanned the road. Did he hesitate and narrow his eyes when he saw the toppled mailbox, then my sedan? I couldn’t be sure. The soil between the house and the ditch had been churned up and heaped into a small hillock by the landscapers. The body in the ditch could not be seen from the house. At least I hoped it couldn’t. John Richard turned back to his Jeep, reached into the passenger-side seat, and pulled out a bunch of roses.

I’m going to be sick.

I knew without knowing what had happened. They’d fought.

You left, angry, thinking she was going to be just fine. You wanted her to recover, take aspirin, cry a little. You’d call later. But she stumbled out the door, looking for help. She fell into the ditch and died. And yet here you are with roses. You bought them at the grocery store this morning. The store is open all night and always helps you with your morning-after remorse. So here you ore, figuring you can just patch everything up.

Not this time.

I forced my leaden hand to open the sedan door. Fear pulsed through every nerve. But I’d told Tom I would keep people away from the ditch, and I had to do that. Even if that meant undergoing this most dreaded of confrontations.

John Richard had already bounded up to Suz’s door and was impatiently ringing the bell. He didn’t take any notice of me until I was almost by his side. Then he turned and faced me, and I prayed for strength: mental, spiritual, and physical. Especially physical.

By any panel of judges, John Richard would be declared one of the handsomest men to walk the earth. His wide, dark blue eyes regarded me as his angular face instantly assumed its familiar what-the-hell-do-you-want expression. The bunch of roses wobbled in his large, strong hand.

“Why are you here?” he demanded. “What’s your problem?” Of course, I couldn’t find my voice. When I didn’t respond immediately, he smirked. “Suz said you seemed real interested in her place. Smells a little bit like obsession to me.”

Don’t get into on argument.

“Well… I … uh,” I faltered. I looked at him warily. Was he going to lose his temper? Turn all that rage on me? In front of this upscale neighborhood with its watching windows? “I … was actually driving by … looking for you. I … didn’t want Arch to arrive at your place and have it be empty.” My voice sounded absurdly high.

He surveyed the street for my van. “Really.”

I held my breath. Please let the body not be visible from the house.

“Where is Arch?” asked John Richard, the man I had once loved. The man I now loathed beyond measure, the man I did my best to ignore, despite his constant bad behavior, which always demanded attention. “Where is your van? Look at me, dammit.” His blue eyes drilled into mine. His icy, threatening tone was all too familiar. “Why won’t you tell me why you’re here? No Arch? No van? This certainly smacks of the ex-wife spying on the ex-husband’s girlfriend.”

“I just – “

At that moment the familiar wheeze of my van sounded its way up Jacobean. Tom parked behind his own sedan and within three seconds was striding across Suz’s lawn from the acute angle of the neighbor’s yard. Smart man. Any visual diversion from the ditch would buy time. With one of his large, pawlike hands, Tom motioned for me to move away from John Richard. I inched backward until my feet bumped the edge of the porch. Tom’s green eyes never wavered from John Richard as he approached the porch where we stood.

“What the – ?” John Richard was furious. “Is this some kind of family incident? You’d better tell me what’s going on, Goldy,” he commanded.

Take a wild guess. But I was going to say nothing to that arrogant voice.

Bordering the expansive front step was a fat; clay pot brimming with vivid red geraniums and dusty-blue ageratum. I had backed up beside it and I now stared down at the tall red flowers, unable to meet John Richard’s enraged gaze. “I don’t really know very much,” I murmured.

“Hey there,” said Tom, as if we were all meeting on the golf course.

John Richard wasn’t fooled for a moment. “You want to tell me what the hell you’re doing here at seven o’clock in the morning, cop? Or why Goldy just happened to be passing by?”

Tom’s wide face stayed flat, passive, totally unreadable. He blinked and took a deep, measuring breath that pulled up his expansive chest: He regarded John Richard’s handsome face and athletic frame.

Finally Tom said, “We seem to have a situation here.”

“What?” cried John Richard, incredulous. Or acting incredulous, my skeptical inner voice immediately supplied. John Richard’s face tightened with fury – and something else. “What kind of situation?”

His voice was stone-hard, but there was a crack in that stone, something rarely heard when he spoke: fear. “What’s the matter with you two?” He turned his wrath on me. “What, did Suz call you early this morning, Goldy? Trying to get a little girlie sympathy? Strength in numbers, right? Just like you and Marla, a whimpering duo going for the gold medal in pettiness.” He swept his scathing glance over Tom and me. “So you just rushed right out early in the morning, then called your personal police squad to I back you up, right? What did Suz tell you, that we I mixed it up last night?”

“You mixed it up last night,” Tom quietly repeated.

John Richard flung the roses down. The paper made a crinkly sound as the bouquet landed on the grass, and a bloodred petal shook free. “Well, let me tell you, both of you, this is none of your damn business, do you understand me? Suz has lots of problems you don’t even know about. It really wasn’t as bad as – ”

He was silenced by the wail of a siren. The ambulance screamed from the club entryway. I knew from all Tom had told me that unless a victim’s body has mold on it, the paramedics feel duty-bound to try to revive that victim. Still, as the ambulance shrieked to a halt, I wanted them to do their damnedest. I prayed they would be able to bring Suz back while knowing in my heart that it was no longer within the realm of possibility.

Tom strode off the porch in the direction of the ambulance. When the paramedics were out of their vehicle, Tom pointed. The medics vaulted toward the ditch.

“Jesus Christ,” muttered John Richard as he shoved past me. Caught off balance by the power of his push, I fell backward onto the flowerpot. I tripped off the edge of the porch and landed facedown in the dirt. When I scraped the soil off my elbows, I thought I heard a forlorn meow. I looked around but only saw John Richard. He was a preppy vision in khaki pants and burgundy shirt as he swiftly approached the area where the emergency medical folks were establishing their territory. “Hey! I’m a doctor!” he called. “What’s going on?”

The medics were already working and paid him no heed. From beside the ditch Tom issued instructions. When John Richard arrived at the side of the ditch and yelped at the sight there, Tom shook his head grimly.

I pulled myself up, brushed the dirt off my clothes, and walked down the driveway. Neighbors were clustering on their porches. Three men walked purposefully toward the activity, as if they’d been appointed by the homeowners’ association to find out what was going on and therefore were above nosiness. Tom pointed to me, then swept his arm toward the approaching men. Keep those guys away. I picked up the pace.

“Okay, folks,” I said to the men, “just stay back. Please… That man’s my husband and this is a medical emergency.”

One of them, a bald, pinch-faced fellow whom, I recognized as a minor dignitary from the Bank of Aspen Meadow, narrowed his eyes at the ditch.

“That’s not your husband, that’s your ex – “

“The ex and the current,” I replied sharply. “The current’s a cop and he has asked me to keep you all – “

“What happened?” rasped another man. He was short and pudgy and sported a goatee that matched his gray sweatsuit. “Aren’t you… haven’t I seen you… aren’t you the town caterer?” He inhaled angrily. “I demand to know why that ambulance is here. Was there a breakin? I have children. Tell me what’s going on.” The third man, tan, white-mustached, wearing gardening clothes and a billed cap, nodded mutely.

“You’ll find out soon enough,” decibel higher than necessary.

From the ditch John Richard squawked. I couldn’t help it: I turned around. I couldn’t see Suz, but I saw the medics working to hook her up to some equipment. I knew the drill: Check for vital signs. In those horrible few moments they’d already sought her pulse. They’d looked into her eyes to see if the irises were fixed and dilated. The only problem I was having was in accepting the next step. A dull thump reverberated through the air. Dammit. They were trying to get her heart to beat. Once more the thump echoed through the morning stillness.

Even though my view was partially blocked, I knew the next stage was for the paramedics to send. telemetry down to a Denver hospital. An emergency-room doctor would make the declaration to stop trying to resuscitate.

John Richard shrieked: “What the hell is that thing doing there?” He torqued his head around and stared at Suz’s house.

One of the paramedics was holding something. The medic held it out to Tom, affording me a sideways view of it. He held a piece of jewelry, a thick, heavy gold bracelet.

I stared, uncomprehending, at the bracelet, then felt my eyes being drawn to the naked spot on John Richard’s left wrist. My worries about personal bankruptcy seemed a century old. The street felt as if it were moving under my feet. Steady, girl.

“I don’t believe this!” John Richard yelled. “This is entrapment! This is a setup! Why won’t you talk to me?”

The three bystanders I was trying to keep away from the ditch nudged urgently past me.

“Hey!” I yelped. “You can’t go – “

But by the time I caught up with them, they stood beside the ditch. Damn them. Tom could not stop the men from gaping at the medics and poor, wretched Suz; he was talking into his mobile phone. And what was I now hearing? No. Yes. Tom was reciting the Miranda rights to John Richard Korman.

“Stop this,” John Richard protested loudly as Tom’s caution continued. “You have no idea what you’re doing! Suz had… She… AstuteCare had more… enemies… than I have patients. She was into more – “

I could not believe my ears. This was so fast … too fast. What had John Richard said or done? He and Suz had “mixed it up.” And the ID bracelet – where had the medics found it? Were John Richard’s admission of a fight and a piece of his jewelry enough to warrant an arrest? Apparently so. But John Richard had brought flowers, he must have thought Suz was alive, or must have wanted to believe she was alive, or wanted to appear to believe she was alive.

Tom said quietly, “You’re under arrest. I’ve just arranged for transport.” He reached in his back pocket for his handcuffs. He must have brought them, I thought, stupefied. Tom must have brought the cuffs and his badge and his weapon, when I told him where I was and what I’d seen.

John Richard leaped forward and swung at Tom; the three neighborhood ambassadors jumped back. John Richard’s fist shot upward again. But Tom was ready for him. He grabbed John Richard’s right arm and swung it forcefully around. Cursing, John Richard fell to his knees. Tom put his other hand into John Richard’s back and brought him easily to the ground. John Richard yelled, threatened, cursed, and reminded Tom of what he would do to him the minute he got free.

Tom leaned over and said, “Shut. Up.”

4

With practiced quickness, the paramedics transferred their energy from trying to revive Suz to pulling back. They authoritatively called out orders and pushed aside the bystanders. No matter: The group of people, which had now grown to five, had turned their attention from Suz and could not stop staring, fascinated, at John Richard. Handcuffed, he knelt in the street. Tom kept him there. Tom’s muscular body leaned toward John Richard. My husband spoke into my ex-husband’s ear. I could not make out what he was saying over the voices of the medics. But if the twisted look of fury on John Richard’s face was any indication, it wasn’t good news. Tom turned and made an announcement to the mesmerized bystanders. “Okay, you five, here’s the deal. Go stand in different driveways until we’ve stabilized this situation. Police officers will come talk to you when they arrive. Do not discuss this among yourselves.” He paused to make sure they understood. Two nodded; the others just stared. “All right, thank you. Go ahead, please, move away. Now.”

As the men promptly defied Tom’s orders by departing in a whispering cluster, John Richard raised his angry voice, demanding to be let out of the handcuffs. The medics ignored him, as did Tom, who once again pulled the mobile unit off his belt and made a call. I heard him say the words “captain,” “video,” and “team.”

Tom spoke again to John Richard, then helped him to his feet. The Jerk, cuffed, shook loose of Tom’s arm, then stalked angrily to the base of Suz Craig’s tar-streaked driveway. Tall and elegant even with his arms bound at an improbable angle behind him, Dr. John Richard Korman stood shifting his weight from one khaki-clad leg to the other. I thought absurdly that he looked as if he were considering poses for an art class. Above his gorgeous, chiseled face, which occasionally spasmed with rage, his blond hair was only slightly tousled from his exchange with Tom.

I turned away, disbelieving. Was this really happening? There was a buzzing in my ears. My eyes burned. I sat down on the curb and focused on Tom

Tom knew what he was doing. He could switch into his take-charge mode without a hitch. He nimbly moved his beefy body around the periphery of the ditch. He gave a few more instructions to the paramedics, who plopped down listlessly on the dirt-strewn incline. He had probably told them to do nothing until the coroner arrived. Then, his face set in that intimidating expression I knew so well, Tom walked in the direction of the driveway and John Richard. I tried to remember a time when I had seen these significant men from my life standing next to each other. I failed. And this certainly wasn’t the circumstance where I wanted to make the comparison of how the two appeared and how they acted. I looked away, up the street.

If I was right about what Tom had told the paramedics, the coroner would be arriving soon in his van. As my eyes skimmed the row of big, beautifully maintained houses, I wondered helplessly about Arch. I still had to go get him. I needed to stand up and put one foot in front of the other and tell Tom I was leaving. But exactly how would I say that? I’ve got to go tell my son that his father has been arrested for murder? I stayed put.

Tom, meanwhile, gently took a stiff John Richard by the elbow and guided him up the driveway toward the house. Reluctantly, I stood and followed. The buzzing in my ears was not from the sprinklers.

Get Arch, get out of the club, and get bock home. But who would take care of my son at home, comfort him and talk to him? I had a party tonight. Could Macguire help, even though he was bedridden with mono? Not likely. I would think of something. For now, I had to get away from here. The bystanders, perched like friendly watchdogs on this street full of posh houses and lush green lawns, watched my journey up the driveway with undisguised interest.

“I need to leave,” I announced to Tom. I darted a sideways glance at John Richard. Tom had directed him to the far end of Suz’s porch, where he perched stiffly on the edge of a white wicker couch. I flinched at the sight of his scathing stare and his silent, enraged face. I cleared my throat. “I need to get Arch.”

“You do that!” John Richard exploded, but not, I noticed, loudly enough for the nosy neighbors to hear. I looked at him curiously. His outburst contained no sadness. No grief. “Go get Arch!” he yelled, his face shaking. “Tell him why we can’t go hiking! And be sure to let him know what you and. your buddy have cooked up here! Arch is bound to just love it!”

My temper snapped. “Listen!” I yelled back, “I was just driving up – “

“Save itl” John Richard hissed. The cords in his neck strained. “No more child support if I’m in jail! Think about it!”

“Look, you.” I tried to stop the angry shaking of my voice but could not. “I haven’t gotten any child support since –”

“Goldy.” Tom’s passionless tone mercifully stilled the exchange. He waited until he had my complete attention. “Don’t get Arch yet. You need to stay here, make a statement.” His face was calm. “And you should see a victim advocate.”

“Victim advocate?” John Richard bellowed. “What does she need an advocate for? I’m the damn victim here!”

I gaped at Tom, dumbfounded. Of course. I had discovered the body. The police had to question me. And the psychologists’ recommendation for a person discovering a body was that that person was traumatized and needed comfort. But this wasn’t the first murder victim I’d found. I’d managed be-fore without an advocate. Still, what was the psychologists’ recommendation if your ex-husband was charged with the murder you’d stumbled upon? I couldn’t think. I swayed as I stood between the overturned geranium pot and the wicker furniture. What had I been doing just a moment ago? Oh, yes.

I’d been having an argument with my ex-husband about money. Now I was having a conversation with my current husband about an advocate.

You must get Arch, my inner voice urged. You must tell him what’s happened before someone else does. Trauma? You bet. Undreamed-of trauma. But like most women, I couldn’t take time out from the other crises of my life to be taken care of. “I don’t want an advocate,” I told Tom. “I’m okay.”

Even as I spoke Tom was pulling the phone off his belt. “What s Marla’s number?”

“Oh, right!” John Richard raged. “Let’s get old Marla over here. One big happy family. Hey! I have an idea! Ask that fat dumb broad how she planted my ID bracelet in that ditch.”

Tom ignored him as I recited Marla’s number. Should Marla really come, though? I didn’t want this situation to aggravate her cardiac condition. She should not come here, I muttered. When Tom asked, I gave him the address of Arch’s friend, Sam Rodine. It was near enough to Marla’s house that she could meet me there. While Tom murmured into the phone, the coroner’s black van pulled up beside the curb. A warm breeze swished through the aspens. The babble of voices on the street increased in volume.

“I don’t believe this,” muttered John Richard. “No, Marla… Goldy’s fine, just upset,” Tom was saying. “But I need you to take care of her for a while. Meet her over at the Rodines’ house and bring some iced coffee or something. Just be with her, okay?” While he was talking, his eyes never left the two men from the coroner’s staff who were going about their grim work in the ditch. I noticed John Richard’s eyes never strayed toward that spot.

“Look, Marla, Goldy will tell you what’s going on when she meets you, okay? I need to go,” Tom said in his conversation-ending voice. “She’ll be tied up here for about fifteen minutes, so … Sure you can get dressed that fast. Yes, Goldy is with me now. No, we’re not at home. Marla, please… Okay, look, Goldy and I are over on Jacobean, here in the country-club area.”

Marla’s squawk through the receiver was audible across the porch. Of course Marla didn’t need to ask where on Jacobean we were. She was the one who had called me seven months ago and in a tremulous, indignant voice, announced the name, address, and all the vital statistics she’d gleaned on John Richard’s latest conquest, Suz Craig.

“No, don’t come over, we’ve got enough confusion as it is. Goldy won’t be here too much longer… .” Tom sighed. “Yes,” he said finally, “John Richard Korman is here, too. Marla, remember what I said. Goldy will be on her way to the Rodines’ place in a quarter of an hour.” Then he muttered, “See you later,” and disconnected. Well, that was one way to get out of a conversation.

Tom leaped off the porch without explaining where he was going. He stopped to talk to someone from the coroner’s van, then hustled back to us. He held up a hand to me: five minutes.

“Okay, Mr. Talkative,” said Tom to John Richard. He sounded almost cheery as he snapped the phone back on his belt. “You’ve been wanting to talk and now you’ve got your chance. How about telling us exactly what happened here?”

“That’s Dr. Talkative to you, schmuck.” John Richard tossed his head, suddenly calm. His changes in mood, of course, were well known to me. “And I’ve been Mirandized. I’m not saying another word until I talk to my lawyer. Just the way you told me to.” Then John Richard turned. His dark blue eyes spit fire at me even as his voice remained hideously even. “But as for you, I know you’re behind this. One way or another, I’m going to find out how. And if you tell my son about this in any way that makes me look bad, I’ll have you hauled into court so fast you’ll think our breakup was a caterers’ picnic.”

Oh, sure, I thought. But I didn’t want to hear his empty threats. I was leaving. Of course, I wanted to ask John Richard what kind of “mixing up” he and Suz had done the night before. Mixing up. What a euphemism. How about, “I beat up women when they don’t do what I want?” In the near distance, sirens wailed. I shivered and wondered about the ID bracelet that Suz had so proudly given John Richard. And why would John Richard think Suz wanted to call me this morning? The sirens shrieked louder and a police car, lights flashing, burst into view. I knew better than to try to have any further conversation with John Richard.

The police car squealed to a stop behind the coroner’s van. A uniformed policeman and a tall, dark blond plainclothes woman I didn’t recognize came up to the porch and asked if I was Goldy Schulz, the person who’d found the dead woman.

Was I ready to make my statement? they wanted to know. Just then, there was one of those unexplained moments of utter silence. The breeze dropped. The coroner’s staff in the ditch was still. The speculative buzz on the street ceased. Even the sprinklers stopped their metronomic splatting. Maybe the quiet was in my head. Maybe I was going to pass out.

“Mrs. Schulz?” inquired the tall female officer, who had said her name was Sergeant Beiner. She leaned in close. “Are you all right?”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I need… need to go get my son.”

“Very soon,” she replied, as she straightened. Sergeant Beiner was fiftyish. Her six-foot height was somewhat mitigated by a humpback, and her narrow face was actually topped with a rooster-style burst of blond and gray curls. “We’re making an exception so you can go in just a few minutes. You should be coming down to the department,” she added, with a wary glance at John Richard. Then her tone turned sympathetic. “But since you have to go pick up your child, Mrs. Schulz, we’ll just ask a few questions now. We know where we can reach you if we need to talk to you some more later. Okay?”

I nodded. “Later,” I said dully, “I’ll be at home.”

The sergeant gently led me off the porch, out of earshot of John Richard and Tom. She motioned for the uniformed policeman to stand by her side as she ticked off her questions: How did you get here? What exactly did you see? What did you do? Did you see anybody driving away? Did you see anybody in the area?

While she made notes, I told her everything: I arrived in Tom’s sedan between six-thirty and seven, I saw a body in the ditch; I called 911 and Tom. No one drove away. No one showed up except Dr. John Richard Korman, clutching a bouquet. It was a painful recitation. Sergeant Beiner said she or one of the primary investigators would be by to see me later in the day. I walked unsteadily back to the porch.

“I’m leaving,” I told Tom. He stepped off the porch and gave me a wordless hug. I murmured, “I’ll be okay” into his chest. Then I pulled away.

Behind me, the grating noises of a stretcher being wheeled across the pavement disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Another meow directed my attention to the porch steps. A small calico ball of fur dashed out and clawed at the upended geraniums. It was Suz’s cat, Tippy. I snagged the small feline and was rewarded with a scratch on the arm. Tippy, shivering and terrified, then scrambled up my arm. When I tried to coax her down, she dug her claws in and remained poised on my shoulder. Her little body trembled next to my head.

Two more police cars wheeled up Jacobean, red and blue lights flashing. I walked to my van with Tippy the cat perched resolutely on my shoulder. I knew the cat was part of the crime scene. But she would be ignored and abandoned if I didn’t care for her. So I took her. Three more uniformed Furman County deputies crossed Suz Craig’s lawn to Tom. Two more hauled equipment toward the ditch. No one noticed me.

The video team began to record the scene. I averted my eyes and opened the van door. The cat leaped into the back. I stared at the keys in my hand. My ring was just like Tom’s: keys to the house, keys to the sedan, keys to the van. I tried hard to remember what it was I was supposed to do with these keys. It could have been me. After a moment of fumbling with the ignition, I started my van, and stepped hard on the accelerator. It could so very easily have been me in that ditch, if I hadn’t gotten out all those years ago.

The dozen people gathered on porches stared with avid interest as my van chugged down the street. One man shook his head at my noisy progress. His red scalp blazed in the warming sun. Along the street, the velvety lawns glowed like chartreuse carpets.

Suz Craig took my place. But it could so very easily have been me.

3

The cat howled the two miles to Hadley Court. I pulled up in front of a three-story, white-brick-and-blue-gingerbread-trimmed Victorian-style mansion that was about as far from a mountain contemporary as it was from Mars. Marla’s Mercedes squealed around the corner as I eased to the curb. Behind her tinted windshield I could see she was talking excitedly on her car phone, which she quickly hung up when she spotted me. She threw open her door and came bustling toward the van.

Marla’s raspberry-colored sequined sweatsuit did not flatter her portly figure. In one hand she held a covered glass and in the other a paper bag. My dear , friend always brought something that she thought would make you feel better. Usually the only thing I needed was to see her, and as usual, the sight of her rushing toward me, her rhinestone-studded sunglasses jiggling up and down on her concerned face, brought a wave of relief. Wealthy by inheritance, talkative by nature, and pretty in an unconventional way, Marla had endured being married to John Richard for six years less than I had. After John Richard’s first few rampages, Marla had also shown much more confidence than I had when it came to ridding oneself of a burdensome spouse. She’d shoved an attacking John Richard into a hanging plant and dislocated his shoulder. She’d then managed to cut the marital knot with great expertise. She and I had become fast friends when her divorce was final, proving that even the worst marital experiences can hold some redemption. Last summer she’d survived a heart attack. Earlier this summer, she’d survived a disastrous breakup with the one guy she’d been serious about since divorcing the Jerk. We had a history, the two of us. And I loved her dearly.

“Okay, tell me,” she began without preamble when I hopped out of the van to greet her, “are you okay? Probably not,” she added with an opulent, scarlet-lipsticked frown.

I fought off an unexpected wave of dizziness. “I don’t know. No. Probably not.”

“Let’s get back in your van, so people don’t come out and start asking a bunch of questions. Jeez, this town – I’ve already had two calls on my cellular.” Her brown eyes softened with sympathy and she proffered a plastic-wrapped crystal glass. For the first time, I noticed her hair was damp. “Look, Goldy, I brought you an iced latte. Well, actually half espresso and half cream dumped over ice. Very naughty, but oh so good.” She held up the brown bag in her other hand. “And here we have a whole bunch of meds that I just dumped out of my medicine cabinet. They’re mostly tranquilizers. Which do you want first?”

“Coffee and downers?” I asked incredulously. I sagged against the van door. I wondered if any Furman County victim advocates carried lunch-bags full of prescription tranquilizers. Probably not. “Come on, back in you go.” Marla hustled me into the van, where the air was even warmer than it was outside. But the interior of my vehicle was familiar and smelled faintly, even pleasantly, of cooked food. The cat was uncharacteristically quiet. I rolled down my window; Marla did the same.

“Just drink this,” she commanded, thrusting the glass into my hand. “Tom said to bring you – ” Abruptly she stopped. She blinked. “One of my friends on Jacobean called. Suz is dead? Are they sure? Lynn Tollifer, you know her? She and her nosy teenage son, Luke, live across the street from Suz. Luke told Lynn that Suz’s body was in a ditch at the end of her driveway. Who found her? You?” I nodded and took a tiny sip of the chilly liquid. It tasted like melted ice cream. Marla clutched the top of her frizzy brown hair. “Suz dead! I don’t believe it, but I do believe it.”

“It should have been me. But he got Suz Craig instead.” My voice cracked. I sagged against the headrest. “Gosh, I’m feeling-” John Richard’s glare, his anger, haunted me. And I’d had such a strong feeling that he’d been acting, playing a part, but why? And what part? Why come over the morning after you’d had a fight with your girlfriend, bearing flowers, if you’d hurt her badly? If you’d killed her? But he hadn’t meant to hurt her badly. At least that’s what he always said. He probably hadn’t meant to kill her, either.

“Do you think he beat her up so badly she died?” Marla asked.

“Yes, I do. Suz had a black right eye. And I bruises on her arms – ” I choked.

“Mother of God.”

“I don’t know what to do.”

“Drink your coffee,” Marla ordered sharply. “We can talk about all this later. If you don’t look better in five minutes, I’m calling an ambulance for you and taking Arch home myself.”

The air inside the van, despite the open windows, felt stifling. Marla slid toward me smelling of floral soap and powder. She’d obviously just jumped out of the shower when Tom called her, and I felt a fleeting sense of regret to have caused her trouble. Then the weight of the morning’s events smacked me like one of those Jersey-shore waves you’re not expecting, and I didn’t know whether I wanted the espresso or enough tranquilizers to put me out for a few days.

“Okay, Goldy, look at me,” Marla commanded sharply. “Keep drinking that coffee.” I took another sip and stared into her large, liquid brown eyes. “Still feeling light-headed?”

“I’m doing a little better,” I replied in a voice that didn’t even convince me.

“Your first problem is Arch. Think what –

“The sob that nearly choked me turned into another and then a whole barrage that wouldn’t quit. Marla hugged me and spoke soft words of no import. Still crying, I glanced up. Gail Rodine was staring out her front window. She probably wasn’t expecting to see two women, one with a Mercedes and one with a beat-up van, hugging each other while one sobbed effusively, out in front of her elaborate Victorian cottage. On second thought, Gail Rodine probably was about to call the vice squad.

I”I have to get my act together,” I croaked.

“Yeah, you do,” Marla replied hopefully. “What you need is some medication. Chill you out a little.” She thrust the brown bag into my hand and I peered tentatively at bottles of Librium and Valium, foil-encased capsule samples of God-only-knew-what, even a hypodermic. I carefully pulled out the needle, which was labeled Versed. From Med Wives 101, I knew this was a high-potency tranquilizer.

“Where on earth did you get all this?”

“Goldy, with the legion of doctors who are either treating me or going out with me, and an ex- , husband who’s a doctor, you wonder that? Which tone do you want?”

“None. I need to parent, cook, cater, and drive this van without, benefit of altered states of consciousness. I won’t be able to perform any of those tasks if I’m floating inside a drug-induced cloud somewhere in the stratosphere.” And just as uncontrollably as the sobs had begun, they ended, and I giggled. Marla shrugged philosophically, dropped the needle back into the bag, and shoved the bag into my glove compartment. Then she started to laugh herself.

“Look, Goldy, I promised Tom I’d help and that’s what I’m going to do. Okay, here’s what you tell Arch. You say there’s been an incident and his father might be in trouble. Dear old Dad’s gone down to the sheriff’s department to talk to the folks there. Dear old Dad will be talking to his lawyer over the weekend. With school out, with no town paper until Wednesday, and with the Denver TV stations covering their own murders, Arch won’t hear about the arrest except from the Jerk himself, maybe tomorrow.” Marla exhaled triumphantly.

“It’s going to be awful… .” “Yep,” she agreed matter-of-factly. Again she ran her bejeweled fingers through her tangled, damp hair. “But let me clue you in to something, kiddo. You are not responsible for the Jerk’s problems. He is. A hard lesson that took both of us a lot of years to learn, but there it is. Right?”

I stared out the window in sullen silence. Hard lesson, indeed.

“Okay now. Next step,” Marla breezed on, “who’s at home? Somebody to screen your calls? Be with Arch?”

“Macguire Perkins.”

“Oh, great. How’s he doing? Is the mono over, or almost over, or what?”

“He’s sleeping, as usual. Not eating. But he could be good for Arch. You know, be someone to talk to besides me about what’s happening.”

“Does Macguire do anything that would get Arch out of the house? You know, go out to the movies, whatever?”

“I suppose,” I murmured. What did Macguire do? Not much. Virtually nothing at all, to be honest. “He’s under doctor’s orders to get mild exercise. And for Macguire ‘mild’ means ‘with as little exertion as possible.’ I urge him to take a walk most days. Sometimes Arch goes along, and they make it as far as John Richard’s office.”

“Okay, you’ll have to get Arch to go out with Macguire for a stroll today. You want him out of the house for a bit. You know your phone’s going to start ringing.”

I sighed. “You know you can’t make Arch do anything when he has his mind set on something else. Which he will have when he hears this news. Besides, Arch was supposed to go hiking with John Richard and spend the night with him while I worked the McCrackens’ Stanley Cup celebration party here in the club.”

“Good,” said Marla bluntly. I wondered confusedly why everything seemed good to her today. She cast an appraising eye at the Rodines’ house. Gail’s face was no longer in the window. “I’ll call Arch’s friend. What’s his name, Todd Druckman?” I nodded, and she went on. “I’ll ask Todd if Arch can go over and spend the night. That’ll get him out of your house. Can Macguire accompany you and help tonight? Is he contagious or anything?”

“No, he’s not contagious. But I can assure you he won’t have the energy for it.” I stared glumly out the window. “How can you talk about all this now?”

“Uh. Let’s see. ‘Cuz your husband the cop asked me to take care of you?”

I touched her forearm and she tilted her head questioningly. “Is this really happening?” I asked my best friend. “Did John Richard finally kill someone?”

She didn’t answer, because at that moment we both heard a very faint voice calling, “Mom?”

Arch had come out onto the Rodines’ porch. At fourteen, he was still much shorter than his peers, with tousled brown hair and a generally scruffy appearance. He had changed into khaki cutoffs and a T-shirt printed with the Biocess logo. Biocess was the product of a drug company for which John Richard had been doing endorsements lately. Unfortunately, the only things Arch or I ever got out of John Richard’s high-paying endorsements were ugly Tshirts and pens that leaked all over the place. Arch’s tortoiseshell glasses winked as he shielded his eyes against the sun and frowned at Marla’s and my cars in the street.

“We’ll be up to get you in a minute, Arch!” Marla called. “You don’t need to come out yet!”

Without replying, Arch turned on his heel and retreated into the house.

“So do you think he did it?” I pressed, not able to let it go. “Do you think John Richard Korman actually, finally, went over the edge and killed someone?”

“Of course I do,” Marla replied evenly. “With ten or twelve drinks in him and something to set him off? No question. You said yourself you saw the bruise marks. And the Jerk had something big to set him off, take my word for it.”

“What? I mean, besides some money problems.”

“He didn’t have anything besides money problems, Goldy. He and ACHMO are being sued by the McCrackens, and even with malpractice insurance, he’s going to have costs. I heard the malpractice people hired an attorney, ACHMO had to hire several attorneys, and John Richard had to hire his own separate attorney. You know how much preparation these trials are going to take. My guess is the financial mess of his lawsuit is eating him alive.” She said it smugly. I wasn’t the only one who wanted John Richard to suffer. “Look, you haven’t had any child support for months, right?”

“Three, to be exact.”

Marla raised her eyebrows in mock astonishment. Of course she’d heard me complain about John Richard slacking off in this department numerous times. She went on. “You were so eager to get out of that marriage that you took a one-time financial settlement and minimal child support. Now every time you need something for Arch, like, say, tuition money, you have to go back and negotiate, or should I say beg. Right?” I nodded dully and glanced up at the porch. Arch was nowhere in sight. Marla wagged a finger at me to make sure I was paying attention. “My lawyer went for a part of the practice. Ten percent of the gross income per annum. Not that I needed it, but I figured the best way to punish the Jerk was in his pocketbook. If you – “

I interrupted impatiently. “Marla, a woman is dead. Where is this going?”

“To the bank, honey. Back in the good old pre-managed care days, I got sixty to eighty thou a year, a reliable ten percent of six to eight hundred thousand of the Jerk’s gyn and baby-delivery practice. But things began to change. With more and more of his patients signing up with HMOs instead of half of them being insured and half paying out of pocket, his income started to decline. He supplemented it with endorsing that designer antibiotic for pregnant women with infections. What’s the name of it?”

“Biocess,” I supplied.

“Right. Another fifty thou a year there, of which I got a paltry five. Plus he began to work in the hospitals on the weekends, but you know how he hates to have his social life tied up, even if working a weekend shift brought him in another sixty thou a year. All this was getting exhausting for the poor fellow.”

“Marla – “

“Wait. Then he got bought out by the AstuteCare Health Maintenance Organization, aka ACHMO, which sounds like a sneeze more than an HMO, but – ” She shrugged. “We don’t need to be reminded of that little transaction, which also brought into our lives the now-dead-as-a-doorknob Ms. Craig.”

Poor Suz. An ache pierced my chest.

“Goldy, these days, if you want to have a baby in Aspen Meadow, or if you want to have the Jerk as your gynecologist, you or your husband or your significant other has to belong to ACHMO, yes? I mean, God only knows why any sane woman would insist on having John Richard as her doctor. But he does have his supporters, I suppose. How strong that support might be depends on your willingness to pony up with the cost of ACHMO membership.”

“Marla, I know this. And that ACHMO bought his practice for one point one mil, and he bought the fancy new house in the club over by Suz. So what?”

Marla said patiently, “So I got a hundred ten thousand when he sold the practice, but in the two years since then I’ve only received thirty thousand dollars the first year, twenty this year. Don’t you get it? His annual income has dropped by more than half. Enough to get him mightily ticked off, wouldn’t you say? First I called that new secretary of his, the sweet young thing? You know who I mean.”

“ReeAnn Collins,” I said. ReeAnn was a lovely twenty-three-year-old who’d been working for John Richard for the last ten months or so. I’d suspected ReeAnn was half in love with him, of course. I’d thought of warning her off, as I always thought I should. But I never did. I hadn’t warned Suz Craig, either. A stone seemed to form in my throat.

“ReeAnn didn’t know anything about why my reimbursement was dropping off,” Marla went on smoothly, “so I called AstuteCare. I demanded to know how much money John Richard was due to get and when.”

“Sheesh, Marla.”

“Oh, it was fun. I talked to Suz Craig’s secretary and then I talked to some guy named Chris Corey, who handles Provider Relations. Corey used to be a doctor, but now he’s making it big in administration,” she added with a coarse laugh. “He was so-o- o polite, trying to tell me that how much John I Richard made was none of my frigging business.”

“Yes, I know him – ” In my mind’s eye, I saw a heavy man tumbling down a flight of steps. “Chris I Corey sprained his ankle over at Suz’s.”

“Yeah, I’ve seen him limping around. He lives with his sister, Tina, up here. She’s one of the women in charge of the Babsie show at the LakeCenter.”

I tried to focus. I didn’t care about the Coreys. “Are you telling me,” I said, “that John Richard has gone from earning up to eight hundred thousand dollars a year down to making three hundred thousand dollars a year?”

“Sad, ain’t it?”

“And he supplemented that income by endorsing Biocess and working in the hospital. You’re saying you didn’t like the way your share dropped and you tried to find out if he was stiffing you.” What on earth did any of this have to do with the death of Suz?

“Right!” Marla said firmly. “So finally I called my lawyer about the drop in income and told him about all the people I’d talked to. My lawyer made some more calls and then let me know that the Biocess endorsement was in some kind of limbo. Plus John Richard hasn’t yet received the latest bonus he was supposed to get from ACHMO. A bonus in the big fat neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. When the bonus does come through, I should see some more cash. I would love to have my cut of that, Goldy. But mainly I did all this just to annoy John Richard, because I knew it would get back to him that I was nosing around. The guy is up to his ears in debt from the good old days, what with payments to you, and payments to me, and payments on his condos, and payments on his new house, and payments on his cars, and dealing with the McCrockens. So. I wanted the Jerk to know I was on his case. I wanted him to squirm.”

“And the connection to Suz Craig is …” Marla raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you? Suz was the one who decided whether or not he got the bonus.”

6

Marla and I were prevented from further discussion of John Richard’s plummeting finances and mounting problems by the sudden reappearance of my son. Arch bounded awkwardly off the Rodines’ porch and frowned as he lugged his overnight bag toward us. I had the sinking feeling that the overnight had not gone well. Marla asked if I wanted her to stay and I said no. After giving Arch a quick, wordless hug and me a bright, reassuring smile, she va-voomed off in her Mercedes.

“Why was Marla here?” Arch asked as he clicked his. seat belt in place. He had the thickened voice and strong boy smell that always seems to accompany the morning-after of slumber parties.

“Just visiting,” I said lightly.

“Do you think Dad’s up yet? I haven’t had any breakfast.”

“You don’t seem very happy,” I observed, more as a probe to see if anyone had called the Rodines to report the situation on Jacobean Drive.

“Oh, well.” His tone was disgusted. “I mean, we were going to have breakfast, we were supposed to, but then something happened.” He shook the hair out of his eyes. “You know Clay Horning?”

“Yes.” Clay Horning was the resident hooligan of the Elk Park Prep eighth grade. I kept my opinion to myself, however.

“Clay took half a dozen of Mrs. Rodine’s Babsie dolls off a chair. He couldn’t understand why Mrs. Rodine had them there. I mean, she never plays with them, but they’re on the chairs, on the tables, on the sofas, on the beds, on the bureaus, everywhere! You ask me, Mrs. Rodine is a doll junkie! Anyway, Clay wanted to see how the heads from some of the dolls would look on the bodies of others. He pulled off all the heads and was switching them around – I mean, they pop right on – when Mrs. Rodine had a hissy fit. She swung her frying pan at him. Clay jumped out of the way, but all the uncooked bacon slid out on those headless Babsies. Do you believe that something so stupid could ruin a slumber party?” He shook his head. “Some people.”

I didn’t reply. After a few seconds Arch pushed his glasses up his nose and squinched his mouth to one side. “Mom? I don’t mean to complain.” He waited for me to speak. “Are you upset about Mrs. Rodine and the frying pan? Or are you mad that she didn’t give me anything to eat? I’m really not that hungry.”

“Mrs. Rodine is not an easy person to deal with,” I said softly. “But I don’t want to talk about her, Arch. Let’s just sit here a minute. I need to think.”

He shrugged. “Ohh-kay. Whatever.” I watched my son and felt my heart ache with love, with my inability to communicate, and with foreboding. In the last year Arch had finally adjusted to a new family life. He adored Tom, while maintaining a ferocious devotion to his father. But John Richard did little more than tolerate Arch and use him in arguments with me. When Marla’s nephew, our much-loved boarder Julian Teller, left for Cornell, the resulting hole in Arch’s life had been filled by an adopted bloodhound, Jake. Lately, Arch and Macguire Perkins had become friendly. The two boys liked to listen to music and – as they put it – hang out at John Richard’s office. All of which now seemed charmingly innocent and faraway. It was unlikely that they would still hang out at the office of a doctor who’d been accused of murder.

Before I could phrase what needed to be said, a forlorn feline howl erupted from the back of the van. Another quickly followed. Arch whirled.

“Mom? Is that Scout? What’s going on?”

“No.” I sighed. Tippy wanted out. “I’ll be right back.” When I hopped from the van, Gail Rodine, a top-heavy, matronly brunette, stood glaring on her spacious porch. Holding a clipboard to her chest, she scowled at me, as if my presence at her curb was intrusive. At Gail’s side was a tall, similarly heavyset woman with long blond braids. The blonde appeared to be wearing a doctor-type jacket. I yanked open the van’s rear door and caught sight of the little calico cat lurking behind my spare tire. “Come on, Tippy,” I urged. “Out you come.”

Suz’s cat did not need to be coaxed. She leaped from the van, crouched on the Rodine lawn, then dashed to one of the blooming pink rosebushes encircling the porch. The cat tried frantically to claw her way up a rosebush. Gail Rodine squawked. The woman with the blond braids swiftly descended the porch steps, arms outstretched. Between Gail’s angry yelps, the soothing words the blond woman offered the panicked cat were barely audible. The cat, sensing a friend, leaped from the destroyed rosebush into the open arms of the woman. Then she clawed her way up to her shoulder.

“Mom?” said Arch. “What is going on? Whose cat is that? It looks like Ms. Craig’s.”

“I’m so sorry,” I said, approaching the blond woman, whose hand reached up to stroke the cat on her shoulder. “It’s not mine, it’s… somebody else’s.” Her wide blue jacket had “Dr. Babsie” embroidered in dark blue script over her head. “I know you, don’t I? Do you practice in our town? I’m Goldy Schulz.”

The woman let out a strange, eager laugh. She gave me an intense blue-eyed look. “You’re the caterer, right? You’re doing several meals for us next week. I’m Tina Corey. Head of the Aspen Meadow Babsie Doll Club. How do you know me?”

“From church?” I guessed, without adding that her face was only vaguely familiar. But St. Luke’s had three services each weekend and it was possible to go for years without knowing another parishioner s name.

“Mom?” Arch called from the van. “We need to go or Dad’s going to be really upset.”

I signaled to him to wait. “I … I’ve met your brother, Tina. Chris. At ACHMO. Are you a doctor, too? I mean, It says… on your jacket …

She chuckled again. “No-o, this is just the adult-size Babsie-as-Veterinarian costume. Do you like it?”

“I … uh … sure. I need to go. Want to give me the cat? She’s not mine.” But when I reached out to Tippy, the cat hissed at me.

“Animals always love me,” Tina assured me. “Want me to return her to her rightful owner?”

“Actually,” I said, desperate, “if you’d just be willing to take care of her for a while until we can get her turned over to the Mountain Animal Protective League – “

Tina opened her eyes wide. “Never! I’ll keep her! I have a bunch of cats already. What’s her name?”

“I think the owner called her Tippy.” Murmuring, Tina reached up and gently removed the cat from her shoulder. Gail Rodine glared. “Sweet baby!” crooned Tina, “I’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

“Thanks, Tina,” I said, not waiting for the cat’s reply. “See you next week. At the doll show.” I trotted back to the van, not daring to glance at Gail Rodine. I hopped back into the driver’s seat and cleared my throat. There was no easy way to do this, despite what Marla had said. “Listen, Arch,” I said. “Dad’s in trouble.”

He moved impatiently in the seat next to me. “What?” Behind the thick lenses his eyes grew wary. “Is he okay?”

“Not really. I mean physically he’s okay, but – “

“What do you mean, then? Dad’s in trouble?” Anxiety cracked his voice. I was desperate to co-fort him even as my own voice trembled with each revelation. Dad’s down at the department with Tom and Looks like he and his girlfriend had an argument and Actua//y, nobody knows exactly what happened, but Suz Craig is dead. Arch’s reaction-dumbfounded denial was followed by panic.

“She’s dead? Suz is dead? Are you sure?”

“Yes. I saw her body lying in a ditch when I drove by her house this morning. And your dad’s under arrest.” I took a deep breath. “He’s been accused of killing her.”

Arch looked out the window. Gail and Tina were seated, conversing, on the porch. The cat was in Tina’s arms. “But… that doesn’t make sense.”

“Hon, I know.” He was silent, then said: “When will I get to see him?”

“I’m not sure.”

“But, why were you driving by Ms. Craig’s house in the first place?”

“Arch, please. I just wanted to avoid taking you to an empty house.”

He faced me again. His voice rose with confusion. “Whose empty house? Why? What are you talking about?”

“Dad’s! I mean, I thought he might have spent the night at Suz’s place and not be home yet! I … was just trying to see where he was so I could spare you some pain,” I gabbled helplessly. “I didn’t know what I was going to stumble on to.”

“Well, you didn’t spare me any pain,” my son said harshly, and turned away from me to stare out the window again.

As I drove the van back into Aspen Meadow, I did my best to act loving and patient. It didn’t work. Arch had retreated into silence.

Why did John Richard Korman continue to mess up our lives? That was the question to which there was no answer. My knuckles whitened as I gripped the steering wheel.

At home Arch slammed out of the van ahead of me. Macguire had let Jake into our fenced backyard. The hound howled with delight at our arrival. Anticipating my worry about the neighbors’ complaints, Arch became intent on getting Jake back into the house. I sat in the van contemplating Arch’s short legs and flapping T-shirt and the crisis that confronted us.

My son would talk to me about how he was feeling, I felt sure. Only he would do it in his own time. We always worked things out, I told myself. But I felt a twinge of uncertainty. I slid out of the van and trod carefully across the wooden deck I’d added to the back of the house some years before. Suddenly I stopped and stared at the diagonal slats. The deck, the doggone deck. Dizzily, I sank down on a cushioned redwood chair.

The deck had been my idea. My present to John Richard on our fifth anniversary. Oh, Lord, why was I thinking about this now? Because everything was erupting: my life, my family, my mind. The world felt like a pinball machine flashing TILT with no way to turn it off.

I gazed down at the deck. I had saved the money out of what John Richard called my “grocery allowance,” what I later referred to, once I learned how much money he was really earning, as my “pittance.” Naively, I had thought the deck would be a wonderful place for us to gather as a family. I’d even believed that John Richard and I would enjoy watching the progress of its construction. Ha.

I ran my fingers over the smooth redwood railing that always smelled so wonderful after a rain-storm. When the builders started, John Richard had second-guessed and criticized every aspect of the construction. Why redwood? It’s too expensive. Why do you have to have it so big? The next day: Why is it so small? Why don’t you add a barbecue? and despite the fact that he wasn’t contributing, he’d yell This is costing a mint! Do you think I’m made of money? In the end, he’d declared he was never going to sit out on our lovely redwood deck. So the deck stood empty. To his friends, he’d laughed about my project. He’d called it Goldy’s Golden Goof.

After the divorce papers were signed and I had deposited my settlement check, my very first act had been to drive to Howard Lorton Galleries, the most exclusive furniture store in Denver. There I’d impulsively ordered a thousand dollars’ worth of deck furniture.

Why rehash old history now? Once again my brain supplied a warning. Because he’s barged into your life again, and it’s not just to declare bankruptcy. Watch your back, Goldy.

7

Inside the house, Arch was on the phone. He looked at me solemnly, then shook his head.

“ReeAnn,” he said impatiently into the receiver. Had John Richard’s secretary called us? Or had Arch just phoned her? “I don’t know what you’re supposed to tell the patients. Better see who’s on call for Dad… I don’t know! Look, would you please ask him to give me a ring if he phones in?” His voice cracked. “No! How should I know what they’re doing to him?” He banged the phone down and regarded me dolefully. After a moment he said, “You look terrible, Mom.”

“Thanks.”

“Why don’t you cook .or something?”

I glanced around the kitchen. Cook or somethIng. The rows of cupcakes sat waiting to be iced. The remains of my coffee fixings lay in a heap by the sink. Nothing beckoned.

“Mom, please.” Arch gave me a quick hug, then pulled back, embarrassed. “It’s going to be okay. It’s just all a big mistake.”

“Oh, honey…” But words failed.

“Let me go see if Macguire went back to bed after he let Jake out,” Arch announced abruptly. “It’s time for him to be up, no matter what, don’t you think?”

“Yeah, sure.” I shook my head as Arch left to rouse our boarder. To keep from brooding, I made another espresso.

“I’m up, I’m up,” Macguire Perkins hollered through the closed door of his room. His muffled voice echoed mournfully down the stairs.

I slugged down the coffee, hauled myself over to our walk-in refrigerator, and stared at the contents. Fixing breakfast for Macguire Perkins – maybe that was a cook or something challenge I could handle. Arch was right: I seemed to think more logically when preparing food, anyway. And with Macguire as a buffer, perhaps Arch and I would be able to discuss his father’s status as a murder suspect without further fireworks. I heard more banging upstairs.

“I’m up, didn’t you hear me?” called Macguire. “Why is everyone tormenting me?”

Good old Macguire, I thought as I got out eggs and butter. With no plans one year after graduating from the same prep school that Arch attended, Macguire had begun the summer working part-time for me. Macguire’s father, the headmaster of Elk Park Prep, had agreed to let Macguire live alone in their house on the school grounds for three months. Meanwhile, Perkins senior was off to direct a summer seminar in Burlington, Vermont. When he started as my assistant, Macguire confessed that he was reluctantly trying to decide what to do with his life. What he wanted to do with his life wasn’t catering, I discovered after he’d been working in the business a few weeks. Then Macguire made the announcement that he’d decided to become a police detective. Unfortunately, he’d run amok.

Against all advice, Macguire had tried to solve a case on his own. The result was that a criminal had savagely beaten him and-in a raging storm, by the side of the road-left him for dead. Macguire had ended up in the hospital with multiple bruises and lacerations. Unfortunately, that was just the beginning of his medical troubles. After being discharged from the hospital, he’d gone home to Elk Park, where he immediately developed strep throat that quickly evolved into full-blown infectious mononucleosis.

Headmaster Perkins had flown home and asked for my help. Macguire was unable to swallow anything more than liquids and began to shed weight at an alarming rate. During the first three weeks of July, he lost twenty pounds. His doctor said when Macguire finished his antibiotics, he needed rest, support, nutritious food, and very moderate exercise. But Headmaster Perkins couldn’t picture trying to help his son get better while the two of them lived out of suitcases in a Vermont bed-and-breakfast, no matter how quaint the setting. That was when Perkins senior begged me to allow Macguire to live with us for the remainder of the summer.

“Just give the kid three squares a day. Or even three cubes. You know, steaks,” he’d told me. A square meal or a cube steak? The headmaster thought he was hilarious. For the most part, Perkins senior was merely ridiculous. “Under your care, Goldy dear,” he’d announced airily, “I have no doubt my son should recover nicely in a week or two.”

I’d said yes, and as a result Macguire Perkins had been living with us since mid-July. But recover nicely was exactly what the teenager hadn’t done. Of course, our observation of Macguire was inevitably colored by our experience with the now-absent Julian Teller, whose high energy, intellectual sharpness, and enthusiastic affection for our family had been hallmarks of his time with us. Julian had done everything from loving Arch as if the two were the closest of brothers to cooking wildly inventive vegetarian dishes for our family meals. To Julian’s surprise but not to ours, he’d been offered a great summer job working in the kitchen of a chic hotel in upstate New York. We felt his absence deeply.

When Tom and Arch and I had agreed to take Macguire in, I’d secretly hoped that Arch would somehow be the beneficiary, because he would have a new friend Julian’s age.

Arch, sensing my motive, had mumbled, “It’s like when your dog dies, you can’t just go out and buy a new dog.”

“Arch, give him a chance,” I’d protested.

“Trust me, Mom, it’s not the same.”

But despite Arch’s initial reluctance, he’d grudgingly accepted having Macguire as a boarder. Macguire was slow-moving, honest, and sweet. Furthermore, he presented a much more challenging rehabilitation situation than we’d ever faced with Jake, Arch’s beloved bloodhound, who’d been fired from law enforcement for being suspected of being unreliable. Which the dear dog wasn’t, as it turned out.

The problem with Macguire, however, was that he would not eat. He said he couldn’t-he wasn’t hungry. Wouldn’t or couldn’t, the result was the same. The boy would not take nourishment.

In the breakfast department Macguire shunned bacon and sausage; scrambled, poached, boiled, or fried eggs; toast or English muffins; ready-to-eat cereal, oatmeal, or granola; yogurt shakes; fresh fruit of any kind. I had yet to convince him to swallow anything more than orange juice. He claimed his stomach hurt whenever he ate even the smallest morsels. His doctor had proclaimed, “When he gets hungry, he’ll eat.” In the three weeks he’d been with us, however, that hadn’t happened. But I was ever hopeful. Now I set aside the eggs and butter and went back to our refrigerator. There I retrieved a bowl of homemade chocolate pudding left over from a catering job. I ladled spoonfuls of it into a crystal parfait glass.

Arch clomped back into the kitchen after completing his summoning duty, flopped into a chair, and turned doleful eyes to me.

“When do you suppose I’ll be able to talk to Dad? He hasn’t called his office and ReeAnn is having a fit.”

“I don’t know,” I answered truthfully.

“But… is Dad in jail? When will he get out?” Arch insisted.

“Um, I’m not sure. He’s probably being processed.”

“Oh, great. Like liverwurst.” I let this pass, set the chocolate pudding on the table, and started to mix up a batch of hockey-puck biscuits. If Macguire wouldn’t go for traditional bacon-and-egg-type breakfast-taste sensations, perhaps he’d flip for chocolate and biscuits.

While Arch contemplated the table, wrestling with his confusion, I sifted the flour with the other dry ingredients while my food processor cut through the shortening. I mixed in the buttermilk, patted out the dough, cut it into circles on a sheet, and set the sheet in the oven. Then I cleaned the doser and refilled my espresso machine with water. This would be my fourth quadruple-shot of the morning, but I desperately craved the clearheadedness that caffeine usually offered. Unfortunately, such clarity had eluded me ever since my gruesome discovery on Jacobean Drive.

Nevertheless, the coffee-making process gave me time to think about how to deal with Arch. I wished that I hadn’t told Marla it was okay to leave. She’d have been able to help me with this minefield of a dialogue, cowardly as that sounded. Arch’s questions were difficult to answer, not only because they were delivered in an alternately pleading and hostile manner, but also because the answers themselves were sure not to please him. When would John Richard be freed? How was I going to tell my son that bail was not supposed to be granted in capital cases? Of course, occasionally something was wrong with the arrest or the evidence, or the judge had a surpassing reason for granting bail. Sometimes the suspect’s standing in the community was so impeccable that the judge let him or her out once a huge bail had been set. But John Richard’s reputation was far from impeccable.

I took a deep breath and poured Macguire some juice. “Your father’s lawyer will go before a judge first thing Monday morning and at least try to get him out on bail. I have to tell you, Arch, it would be unusual for the request to be granted. And if bail is set very high, I don’t know if your father has that kind of cash or equity in his house.”

Arch’s face darkened and he turned away from me. On some level he seemed to be aware of his father’s financial problems. “What about Tom? Are they going to assign Tom to this case?”

“I doubt that very much,” I said carefully. “It would probably be viewed as a conflict of interest.”

Arch flashed back around. His forehead was so furrowed with alarm that I felt my heart slam against my chest. You bet it’s a conflict of interest, I could imagine him saying. But to my surprise his distress went the other way. “They’re not going to assign Tom? But I thought you said he was the best the department has! If they don’t assign Tom, how will we ever prove Dad’s innocent?” I was speechless.

So Arch’s question hung unanswered as Macguire Perkins galumphed slowly into the kitchen. His yellowed eyes were difficult to look at, as were his hollow cheeks and emaciated frame. When I first met him, he’d been strong, a basketball player and bodybuilder. Now, thin and lethargic, Macguire seemed to teeter on his long legs like a precariously staked scarecrow.

“Well,” he murmured without enthusiasm, how’s everybody?”

“Not so hot,” Arch mumbled. Macguire sat down at the table, ran his fingers through his long, unevenly shorn red hair – going to the barber gave him a headache – and stared forlornly at the pudding and juice. Then he sighed and pushed both away. Undaunted, I poured him a glass of milk. He took one sip. When I pulled the hot, I puffed biscuits out of the oven, he said, “I hope you didn’t make those for me. Because I can’t even look at them. Sorry.”

“It’s okay,” I lied encouragingly, and set the pan on a rack to cool. So much for today’s hearty breakfast.

“My dad’s been arrested,” Arch announced in a tone that said, Can you believe the injustices of this world?

“Bummer,” replied Macguire. He took another tiny sip of milk, then said, “My dad was arrested once, but he doesn’t want anybody to know.”

“For what?” asked Arch, who of course wanted to know.

“Drunk and disorderly,” Macguire replied matter-of-factly. “It was after my mom left and Daddy-o couldn’t handle it.”

Arch closed his eyes and shook his head. I turned away and ran hot water and soap into the biscuit-batter bowl.

“I have to cater tonight,” I announced. “Stanley Cup celebration party. Marla is calling Todd to see if you can go over there, Arch. Do you feel up to helping me, Macguire?”

“Can I see how I feel later?” His smile was wan. “I want to help. You know folks think that if there’s a thin caterer, they won’t gain any weight eating the food you serve.”

Before I could voice my opinion about this theory, Arch sighed. “I don’t want to go to Todd’s,” he said morosely.

“Man,” said Macguire, “you are in one tight mood, big A. Why don’t you go for a walk with me? We’ll go visit Kids’ Vids if you want, see if they have any cool new games.”

Arch sighed again. “It’s going to rain. Besides, Dad might call.”

Macguire strained his neck to look outside, where the sun shone between a few drifts of cloud. “What, you predict the weather? That’s pretty cool.” By the door, Jake let loose with another of his howls. “Come on, buddy, we’ll go by your dad’s office and see if there’s any news. We’ll even take the dog. If it rains, we’ll all get wet.”

“oh, you just want to go see ReeAnn,” Arch accused.

When Macguire’s jaundiced-appearing face blushed the color of a sweet potato, I knew Arch had found a target. I said, “ReeAnn probably won’t be in any mood for company.”

“Sure she will,” Arch countered. “ReeAnn likes to see Macguire. They took driver ed together, and now she has a Porsche. He’s had a crush on her forever. And not even because of the Porsche,” he glumly added.

“Gee, Arch,” Macguire said, “thank you for pointing all this out. You and the hound dog want to walk or not?”

Arch regarded me warily from behind his thick f glasses. “So can Dad call me from the jailor what?”

“You can call him and then he’ll call you back. But I’d say you might be better off waiting. Besides, as you know, he’ll have to call his office at some point.”

“All right,” said Arch, defeated. He took Jake’s leash from its hook on the wall and departed.

“So what’s Dr. Korman been arrested for?” Macguire asked as soon as the door closed on Arch.

I said, “Murder.” Outside, Jake howled with happiness.

Macguire sipped the milk and didn’t miss a beat. “Oh yeah? Who’d he kill?”

“Macguire, if you want to go into police work, you need to learn to say, ‘Whom did they say he killed?’ “

“Okay, who’d they say he bumped off?”

“His girlfriend. Suz Craig.”

Macguire’s rusty eyebrows shot up. “Uh-oh. How’d he do it? Wait. How’re they saying she bought?”

“Beaten to death, looked like. The technical term would be multiple blunt-force injuries, I think.” I had another flash of Suz’s bruised and broken body in the ditch.

“Huh,” said Macguire. “Too bad.” On the deck, Arch was having a noisy heart-to-heart with Jake about the attachment of the leash. “So this dead broad was your ex-husband’s chick? Or … one of them, anyway?”

I took a steadying sip of coffee. The only activity Macguire energetically pursued during his convalescence was reading Raymond Chandler. Unfortunately, it sometimes took me a moment to translate the private-dick lingo. “Why do you ask that?”

Macguire frowned. “Uh, ask what?”

I said patiently, “Why did you ask if Suz Craig was one of his… girlfriends?”

“Well, wasn’t she? I thought he had a lot of girlfriends.”

“Yes,” I said cautiously. “But I thought Suz was his only girlfriend. His only current girlfriend.”

“Oh.” He scowled at the milk he’d scarcely touched. “Well.”

“Macguire, I’ve tried to put as much distance as possible between my ex-husband’s love life and myself. I don’t ask for any details.”

“So, what’re you saying? You’re feeling bad because his girlfriend croaked, huh?”

“Yes.” I exhaled. “A woman is dead, and like it or not, at the moment I’m feeling extremely guilty because I never pressed charges against him and got him sent to jail. If I had, maybe Suz Craig would be alive today.”

“Don’t feel too bad, Goldy.” His face assumed its typically philosophical expression. “Nobody can go back in time. It’s a bummer, but there it is.” He shrugged.

I took another discreet sip of my coffee and bit into one of the biscuits. It was moist, hot, and comforting. “Macguire, do you know if my ex-husband had other current girlfriends besides Suz Craig? Did you hear or see something… at his office, say? Why did you say ‘one’ of his girlfriends?”

Macguire scraped back his chair and avoided my eyes. “Uh,” he replied slowly, “maybe I should just talk to Tom about it.”

“Probably that would be a good idea. But it’s unlikely Tom will be assigned to this case.”

“Bummer.” He sighed. “Did Dr. Korman have another girlfriend that you know about?”

“Oh, well, no, not exactly. Maybe I’m just imagining things because I was, like, jealous. I just thought… that he had something going with ReeAnn.”

“You saw John Richard and ReeAnn together? Away from the office?”

“Well, yeah. He was over at ReeAnn’s house once, in the evening, when I dropped by to give her a book about Porsches. I mean, I didn’t have to take it over. I was like, taking it instead of mailing it because I just wanted to see her. But Dr. Korman was over there and they were cooking out.”

“How long ago was this?”

“Oh … end of the school year, I think. You know Arch and I walk over to the office sometimes. But ReeAnn and I never talk about any deep stuff while Arch is visiting his dad. Or seeing if his dad wants to visit.” He thought for a moment. “But one time I did ask her if she wanted to go to the CD store with me – “

“Macguire.”

“Yeah. Well, when we went to the store, we looked at CDs and talked about this and that and I asked ReeAnn if there were, like, any guys in her life at the moment, and she got all secretive and said, maybe. Then I asked her about her job, and she had all kinds of things to say. She didn’t like the secretary who had worked there before her, because that woman was fired to make way for ReeAnn. Or so ReeAnn thought.”

“Beatrice Waxman.”

“She called her Battleaxe Woman. Battleaxe Woman wouldn’t help ReeAnn learn the filing.”

“Filing?”

“Filing, filing claims, something. But the person ReeAnn really hated big-time was this Craig lady with the HMO. Suz Craig. Some hotshot veep, right?”

“A vice-president, yes.” Macguire shook his head, remembering. “Well, Tom might want to get somebody from the department to talk to ReeAnn about Ms. Craig. ReeAnn was trying to work on billing with the HMO, and Ms. Craig drove her crazy. I’m telling you, I don’t know why, but ReeAnn really hated that Craig woman’s guts.”

8

From our front porch I watched thin, sweatsuit-clad Macguire lope painfully down the sidewalk after Arch, who had changed into too-large green Bermuda shorts and a faded green T-shirt-both garments left behind by Julian. With his short arms outstretched and his glasses slipping down his wrinkled nose, Arch tugged unsuccessfully on Jake’s’ leash. The bloodhound’s long tawny legs lunged briskly down the pavement. When the unlikely trio spun past the corner store in the direction of John Richard’s office, I wearily turned to go back to my kitchen. Your dad’s under arrest. Despite Marla’s beliefs to the contrary, no amount of walking was going to make that better.

At the front door I was brought up short by the security system panel that had been installed two summers previously. Back then, after almost four years of being on my own, I’d begun to go out again. To go out occasionally. To go out occasionally with men. And just when I’d thought John Richard had mended his ways, his behavior suddenly became a problem. Why should I have been surprised? He hadn’t liked the idea of me dating. To demonstrate his opposition to my new social life, he’d threatened a reduction in child support – through his lawyer, of course – and then had taken to driving slowly past our house. Well, I’d been a psych major in college; I knew passive-aggressive behavior when I saw it. Amid the Jerk’s protests of uninvolvement – l never went near your place, bitch – I’d gotten the system, both for deterrent and for actual security. And by and large, the system had done the trick.

This morning John Richard Korman had once again been utterly adamant concerning his innocence. But we weren’t talking about cruising past someone’s house or making financial threats. Still, he’d almost convinced me he hadn’t killed Suz Craig. At least for a brief moment, I’d suspended disbelief and accepted his story. Now, of course, I was equally certain he’d been lying. They’d mixed it up, he’d said. John Richard Korman always had an explanation ready for losing his temper and beating the living daylights out of whatever woman was offending him. People couldn’t change that much in two years. People couldn’t change that much in a lifetime. I made a mental note to ask Tom if Suz Craig’s house had a security system.

I was about to punch the panel buttons when a sheriff’s department car pulled up in front of the house. Two women got out-Sergeant Beiner and a uniformed woman I didn’t recognize. I nodded and waved. Of course. Sergeant Beiner had said she’d be coming over later. I would have to answer more questions. Well, maybe they could tell me a thing or two.

Sergeant Beiner’s step was spry as she strode up our sidewalk. Her high, feathered top of blond-gray hair shook when she asked me how I was doing. When I said I was passable, she smiled briefly, showing slender, yellow teeth, and asked if she could run a few more things by me.

“Deputy Irving will take notes.”

Deputy Irving, a curly-haired brunette with a plump face and a uniform that pulled tightly around her midsection, nodded. Deputy Irving was under thirty, with no wedding ring.

“I’m sure you know the questions,” Sergeant Beiner began in a soothing, apologetic tone. When she smiled, her face wrinkled pleasantly. “Down at the department, we’re aware of your record of detection.”

“Thanks,” I replied. “I want to help.”

“We also remember that you managed to break somebody out of jail once. Somebody who was innocent, as it turned out.”

“You have nothing to worry about this time,” I assured her. “Would you like some coffee? I’ve had the equivalent of about sixteen cups today, I think. One more can’t hurt.”

Both women shook their heads. I invited them to be seated on the porch chairs. When the three of us were settled, Deputy Irving dutifully pulled out her notebook and recorded my name and address. Again I told the sergeant about spotting Suz Craig in the ditch by her home around a quarter to seven and about phoning for medical help.

“Did you suspect she was dead?” Sergeant Beiner asked mildly.

I looked away. “Yes. But I know the drill too, Sergeant Beiner. That’s why I phoned EMS.”

“A woman on the street named Lynn Tollifer saw you through her front window. She didn’t know why you went back to Schulz’s car after starting up the street. She figured you were calling about vandalism. Mrs. Tollifer said she couldn’t see the ditch from her window. See the body, you know.”

“My friend Marla Korman got a call from Lynn about Suz, and Lynn said her son told her about Suz …” I paused. “You don’t think vandals had anything to do with…”

Sergeant Beiner shrugged. “You were there for the arrest.” It wasn’t a question. She regarded me with the same calm manner that infused her voice. “Of course you’ve got somebody to vouch for your whereabouts during the night.” That wasn’t a question, either.

“Tom can vouch for me. He came in at midnight. What exactly did Lynn’s son see?”

Sergeant Beiner gave me the same wrinkle-faced smile she had when she arrived at the house. “How well did you know Suz Craig?”

I tried not to envision the pale corpse in the ditch when Suz’s name was mentioned. Impossible. “I catered for her once,” I replied. “And of course she was my ex-husband’s girlfriend. His current girlfriend. Or at least one of them,” I added. Deputy Irving scribbled away. “I’m not sure if he had other girlfriends, but he might have. His secretary, ReeAnn Collins, might know. She keeps his calendar. Plus, it’s possible ReeAnn might have been seeing John Richard herself.”

When asked, I spelled ReeAnn’s name for them.

Sergeant Beiner rocked back in her chair.

“How long ago did you cater this event for Ms. Craig?”

“Little less than a month. July tenth, I think. No, wait, the eleventh. It was a Friday, and the group of people had all been visiting for a week at the Denver office of the AstuteCare HMO. ACHMO.”

“What group of people?”

“Human Resources. That’s what one of them told me. ACHMO is based in Minneapolis and that’s where the team was from.”

“Did any of them talk to you?” I thought back. Steamed trout, vegetable frittata, coleslaw, wild rice salad with porcini mushrooms, fruit cup, chocolate truffles. Everyone had seemed to be in a good mood. “They were happy. Suz seemed pleased, too, with all her landscaping underway. She was pointing out the plants that were being put in as part of a landscaping project. I think it was being done by Aspen Meadow Nursery.”

A look passed between the two officers. Sergeant Beiner regarded me with pursed lips, then said, “Suz Craig fired Aspen Meadow Nursery. By all accounts, she was pretty hard to work for.”

“Really? Well, I think she fired the nursery because one of her department heads fell down the stone steps. He sprained his ankle, and she mentioned she was going to fire her landscapers.” I paused. “Actually, I’m surprised. She seemed so excited about their work.”

“Was Suz Craig a demanding client when you catered for her?” Beiner wanted to know.

“I thought for a minute. Had Suz been hard to work for? Not even slightly. Although most of my, clients were wonderful, I’d had enough horrendous ones to know the type. “I didn’t have any problem with her. It was a one-shot deal, though, not a long-term project. If anything, she seemed unusually accommodating.” I remembered Suz, her blond ponytail bobbing, her shiny blue silk skin skimming her knees as she stepped along the newly laid path. “She praised me to the skies for my food, and insisted I go around her property with the guests. She even helped me with the cleanup.” When the two policewomen said nothing, I added, “That’s unusual, believe me.”

“Were these people from Minneapolis still around when she was so magnanimously cleaning up?”

“All five department heads were there. The Provider Relations man left because of his injury. He was the one who fell down the steps. The HR guy asked me for a recipe.”

“HR?”

“Human Resources. The head of HR at the Denver office of AstuteCare is Brandon Yuille. Do you know him? His mother died last year, and his father, Mickey Yuille, bought the Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop not long after. Now that Mickey keeps baker’s hours, I hardly ever see him. But I’m friends with the Yuilles. We swap recipes and food. I made them some fudge last week and they gave me some Thai peanut sauce.” I paused. “So. That’s who was there that I can remember.”

Beiner raised her eyebrows. “All those people were still around when Ms. Craig was doing the dishes with you?”

“Well, yes.”

“Maybe she wanted to impress the Minneapolis people with her versatility. Do you know anything else about her?” Beiner prompted me.

“She was single. Wealthy. Smart. Very pretty.”

“Right.”

I sighed deeply, because I knew what was coming next.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz,” said Beiner. “You have any idea why someone would want Suz Craig dead?”

If Arch were here, he would say, “Don’t answer, Mom.” And of course, really, I didn’t know that John Richard would want Suz dead. But he could lose his temper so easily. Especially if the woman with command of the purse strings had pulled those strings shut.

“My ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, is having money problems. Severe money problems. He’s a member doctor of the AstuteCare HMO, they pay him a salary. What I heard was – “

“What you heard from whom?” “His other ex-wife. Marla Korman. You might want to talk to her. Marla told me that John Richard hadn’t yet received his bonus. Apparently, Suz was the one who decided whether he got it or not.”

Beiner nodded; Irving wrote and flipped a page.

“Know about her relationships with anyone else? Neighbors? Friends?”

“She was fairly new in the community. To be fair, I think she moved up here to be closer to John Richard.”

“What did your ex-husband say to you about their relationship?”

What did he ever say to me about a relationship he was having? The woman I’m with now is so much nicer/smarter/prettier/more together than you. I shrugged.

“The usual. He adored her.”

“Mrs. Schulz? Does your ex-husband have any reason to think you disliked Suz Craig?”

I couldn’t help laughing. “John Richard believed I was jealous of Suz. Which of course I was not. I really didn’t know too much about their relationship. He was going out with her last night, I know that. Then this morning he mentioned that they’d ‘mixed it up.’ That’s one of his terms for beating up a woman. Another one is ‘getting physical.’ ” As if his losses of temper were bouts. “You know that my complaints of his violence against me, including photographs of my face and body, are pan of police record.”

Her voice a tone lower, Beiner said, “You’re saying there’s not much to like in John Richard Korman.”

“I divorced him.” The sergeant made a circular motion with her finger and Deputy Irving closed her notebook. In the same low tone, Beiner asked, “So do you have a theory on this? I’d really like to know.”

Unexpectedly, the old rage surged up. The thought of sitting on my porch and calmly saying, Yes, I think he beat this woman to death, made me ill. I clenched my teeth, cleared my throat, swallowed hard. “The facts of the case will tell you what happened,” I said finally. “Just beware of John Richard Korman. He’s the most accomplished liar you’ll ever meet.” When no more questions were forthcoming, I asked, “Are we done?”

The two women stood. Sergeant Beiner followed Deputy Irving down the steps. Then she turned back.

“Are you sure you’re all right, Mrs. Schulz? You look kind of green around the gills. Do you need a victim advocate?”

“I need Tom.”

The sergeant nodded. She said, “I’ll call him from the car, an strode away.

Back in my kitchen, I decided against calling g Marla. It was getting on to late morning. No matter; how difficult, I had to put this catastrophe behind me. I had to do the rest of the food prep for the j hockey party. Besides, Marla was undoubtedly on the phone at this very moment, chatting up her country-club cronies to glean everything she could about Suz Craig and her relationship with John Richard Korman. Marla would give me an exhaustive report of her findings before long, of that I could bet the contents of my refrigerator.

I tried to stir the chilled frosting with a wooden spoon. Too cold. I stared at my silent phone. Good old Marla. While I’d done everything in my power to distance myself from John Richard, the fact that we had Arch in common meant I had to deal with my ex-husband, at the very least, on a biweekly basis. Marla, on the other hand, had no children in common with the Jerk, had no reason to see him at all, in fact, and yet she took the greatest delight in following, and reporting on, his every escapade. Her way of despising John Richard was to gloat over and widely publicize each of his setbacks, even if they were slight. And when he had some kind of triumph, like being bought out by ACHMO, her compensation for his good fortune was that she got a cut of the deal.

I set aside the icing, booted up my computer, and studied the menu for tonight’s party. The last thing I wanted to do was work an event. My thoughts slipped back to poor, sweet, confused Arch, and I suddenly realized I’d been selfish. He needed a victim advocate. I put in a quick call to the office of the therapist Arch had worked with several years ago. An answering machine at the shrink’s office picked up. Feeling disconsolate, I left a message saying my fourteen-year-old son was going through a crisis and needed help asap.

Work, I told myself. You’ll feel better. The kitchen clock was closing in on eleven-thirty. My contract time for the party setup was five o’clock, and I had miles to go before packing up and taking off.

I filled my pasta pentola with water and set it on to boil. Three salads for this evening and one of them was… One of them was…

One of his girlfriends was … John Richard had a girlfriend besides Suz Craig? Black-haired, perky, distance-cyclist ReeAnn Collins, of all people? Of course, I’d always been convinced that John Richard had fired his previous secretary, stodgy, reliable Beatrice Waxman, and hired nubile ReeAnn, because of the latter’s looks. I doubted ReeAnn – whose father, according to Macguire, had promised her a Porsche if she’d get a job-had any prowess with word processing. Or, heaven only knew, computerized billing.

And how did Macguire fit into all this? He’d gone over to ReeAnn’s townhouse – another gift from Daddy – at dinnertime, with the flimsy excuse of delivering a book. He’d found John Richard there before him, barbecuing with his secretary. Dinner with the secretary did not an affair make, although with John Richard it probably did. Well, I would tell Tom, as I’d promised Macguire. And I would go over to visit ReeAnn, I suddenly decided.

The hockey-party menu indicated that I had promised Mediterranean orzo salad, a vegetable melange I’d dubbed Grilled Slapshot Salad, and Vietnamese Slaw, all of which needed to be prepared and chilled. While the pasta was cooking, Marla called.

“That didn’t take long,” I commented as I began to pit Kalamata olives.

“Give me a break, I’ve been worried about you. How are you doing?” Her voice trembled with concern. I felt the usual pang of gratitude that she was such a long-suffering friend.

“I’m not doing very well at all.” I rinsed my hands. “It’s like I’m having post-traumatic stress disorder. Every time I look around this house, something reminds me of the Jerk.”

“Take a Valium. Go lie down for a while.”

“For crying out loud, Marla, I’ve got a party tonight.”

She paused to take a bite of food: her tranquilizer. “Oh, right, the McCrackens’ hockey party. You’re going to have to wear a T-shirt that says ‘I don’t know anything.’ Otherwise, the guests are going to drive you nuts wanting to know what’s going on. Plus Patricia’s husband is a doctor, isn’t he?”

“Her first husband was. Skip. Skip interned with John Richard and Ralph Shelton. Don’t you remember?”

“Not really. That was before my time with the Jerk, honey.”

“Well, Skip dumped Patricia when she said she wanted to adopt a child. I got to know Patricia when she was going through the divorce. Her new husband is a dentist. Clark.”

“Still, their friends all know the Jerk, so you’re going to get a slew of questions.”

Ah, Aspen Meadow, which alternated between being intimate and incestuous. “I’ve already had a slew of questions. The cops just left.”

“What did they want?”

“Oh, the usual. What did I see. What did I know about her. What did I know about the two of them.”

“Hmph. Have you heard anything else? About the two of them, I mean?”

“No.” I sliced the olives into delicate black bits. Then, as usual, my curiosity got the better of me. I murmured, “How about you?”

She took another noisy bite of whatever she was chewing and then washed it down with something liquid. “Well, I’ve been trying, God knows. I’ve been waiting ages for the Jerk to get his due, although I’m truly sorry Suz Craig had to die for it. ” She paused. “Okay. For one thing, John Richard and Suz were at the club bar last night, drinking and arguing almost until the place closed at midnight.”

“Aspen Meadow Country Club?” I asked. “Says who?”

“Yes, the country club. You know how John Richard loves to see folks and be seen. And the per-son who said so was Fay Shelton, current wife of Dr. Ralph Shelton, recently fired by ACHMO by none other than Suz Craig herself.” She paused. “Or so I heard. Hold on, there’s somebody at my door.”

I moved the olives aside and began on some fat, ripe tomatoes that smelled so delicately sweet, I was tempted to pop a couple of juicy red chunks right into my mouth. But the health inspector had recently sent out a sign to be posted in all commercial kitchens: NO SMOKING, EATING, OR DRINKING IN THE FOOD AREA! USE PLASTIC GLOVES WHEN HANDLING RAW MEAT! Across the state, chefs had promptly denounced the first admonition. How were they supposed to serve what they were preparing if they couldn’t taste it? A subsequent missive from the inspector allowed as how we could taste with a plastic spoon, which was to be immediately tossed out. As Macguire and Arch would say, Whatever.

“Can you believe that?” Marla asked when she returned to the phone. “Frances Markasian from the Mountain Journal here at my doorstep already, wanting to interview me about what a bloodsucker my husband was. I told her ex-husband and suggested she go back to covering the doll show. Then I got this idea: ‘Press Babsie – ‘ “

“Frances knows about Suz? She knows about John Richard’s arrest?”

“She knows all about it. Maybe she’s got one of those police-band radios. More likely, somebody who lives on Jacobean called her. Frances insisted she needed to talk to me. Said it was urgent. What would be urgent about talking to me?” “What in the world did you say?” “I told her to come back on Monday,” Marla replied gleefully. “I know I’ll have more to report on the Jerk’s bloodsuckiness by then.”

“For heaven’s sake.” I glanced at the clock. Nearly noon. “Exactly when was Ralph Shelton fired?” I tried to remember the last time I’d catered any event where the Sheltons were present, but drew a blank. I’d known Ralph when John Richard was in medical school with him, and Ralph had a different wife and a daughter I adored. But when your marital situation changes, many of the friendships sadly seem to evaporate. “Where do the Sheltons live, exactly? Aren’t they over there near John Richard?”

“Yes, of course. On Chaucer, I think. Ralph’s a huge hockey fan so you’ll probably see him tonight. Listen, though, here’s something else I found out from Fay. Her hubbie, Ralph, wasn’t the only one who had problems with Suz Craig. There was a nurse with a gambling addiction. ACHMO didn’t fancy one of their RNs taking the bus up to Central City and avidly playing the slots, hour after hour.”

“Gambling? Do you know the nurse’s name? Would Fay?”

“She didn’t say, but I could ask her. On second thought, the word is that Ralph Shelton has a temper, which he usually reserves for yelling at referees at Avalanche games. If I act nosy, he might slam me into the glass. Metaphorically speaking, of course. You’re more subtle, Goldy. You should go talk to him.”

“Oh, sure. What am I, the local gal who deals with bad-tempered doctors?” I heard Tom’s Chrysler roll into the driveway.

“How’s Arch handling his father being arrested?” Marla asked.

“Wretchedly. He and Macguire are out for a walk now.”

“Did Arch like Suz?” I sighed. “Arch never likes or dislikes John Richard’s girlfriends. He just tolerates them. It’s a survival mechanism.”

“You know he’s going to want you to help him clear his dad. You’ve acquired a reputation as a woman who can nose around criminal cases like that godawful bloodhound of his.”

I groaned. “Yeah, sure. This is one criminal case I’m going to keep my nose out of, thanks all the same.”

“Listen,” she insisted, as I heard Tom’s foot-steps approach on the deck. His slow trudge signaled that things were not going well. “You could drop by the Sheltons’ place on your way to the McCrackens’, Goldy. Say you got lost, need directions, and” – here she raised her voice to a trill – “oh, by the way, Ralph, old buddy, any ideas about what John Richard and Suz Craig were squabbling about last night? Think he got mad enough at the club bar that he went home and beat her to death?”

“Marla – “

“On second thought, Ralph baby,” she trilled, undeterred, “were you so mad at her for canning you that you went home and killed her? Keep your hockey helmet on now, Ralph, and your stick down – “

“Please, I have to go.” “Promise you’ll call me if you have any more post-traumatic whatever-it-is flashes.”

I hung up. Tom lumbered into the kitchen and headed straight for the sink to wash his hands. I suspected it was less because of my careful training than it was his desire to rid himself of whatever psychological muck he was bringing home from the sheriff’s department. His face seemed haggard and downcast. My heart sank.

“I’m sorry,” I blurted out, “it looks as if you’ve been dealing with John Richard.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said as he dropped into one of the kitchen chairs. He had pulled on blue jeans and a navy cotton shirt when I’d called him this morning. Despite the casual clothes, he didn’t look as if he’d had anything close to a casual day. He rubbed his eyes, then added, “It’s not your fault he is the way he is. Never was.”

“He’s like herpes,” I said. “You just never know when he’s going to erupt.”

Tom offered no reply. I glanced at him expecting a smile, but his handsome face stayed set in deep thought, his lovely liquid green eyes fixed on the table. I turned back to the orzo salad.

Mediterranean Orzo Salad

1 cup (6 ounces) uncooked orzo pasta

3 tablespoons finely chopped red onion

1 cup seeded, chopped fresh tomato (about 3 small tomatoes)

ź cup chopped celery

2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil (or more if desired)

2 tablespoons finely chopped pitted Kalamata olives

2 tablespoons capers

1 teaspoon “grained” Dijon mustard

ź teaspoon sugar

1 tablespoon balsamic vinegar

2 tablespoons garlic oil (available in specialty food shops, such as Williams-Sonoma)

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

3 ˝ ounces chčvre, crumbled

Bring a large quantity of water to a boil and cook the orzo just until tender (“al dente”). Drain and allow to cool. Mix the pasta with the onion, tomato, celery, basil, olives, and capers. In a small bowl, whisk together the mustard, sugar, and vinegar. Gradually beat in the oil until an emulsion forms. Pour this vinaigrette over the pasta mixture and season with salt and pepper. Chill the salad. When it is cold, mix in the crumbled chčvre, then serve.

Serves 4

The densely fragrant chčvre cheese fell into appetizing bits as my knife sliced through it. I chopped fragrant fresh basil and crisp stalks of celery, then mixed them in with the orzo. Next I whisked seasonings into balsamic vinegar and began to beat in garlic-flavored oil for an emulsion. When the dressing turned thick and creamy, I poured it over the orzo and vegetables, then stirred it carefully. Although I knew the salad should chill, I was ravenous. I delicately mixed in the chčvre, then reached for a plastic spoon to have a taste. When I put the spoonful into my mouth, the pungent Mediterranean flavors of crumbly cheese and garlic-robed pasta almost made me swoon.

I turned to Tom. “Hungry? I’ll bet you haven’t had anything besides vending-machine coffee and Danish.”

“Sure. I’ll take whatever you’ve got going.”

I ladled out a large bowl of the warmly fragrant pasta salad. On a whim, even though it was just past noon, I poured him a glass of Chianti. I figured he needed it. Then I poured myself one, figuring I needed it even more.

“This is absolutely delicious,” he murmured appreciatively after the first few bites. “I’m sure the hockey folks will love it.” I gave him a kiss, thanked him, tucked the rest of the salad into the walk-in refrigerator to chill, and turned to the mountain of mushrooms, onions, and zucchini I needed to trim for the Grilled Slapshot Salad.

Grilled Slapshot Salad

2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil Salt and freshly ground pepper to taste

3 large or 4 small garlic cloves, pressed, or 1 ˝ teaspoons finely minced garlic

3 medium-size or 4 small zucchini

8 ounces fresh whole mushrooms

1 sweet onion (sometimes called Mexican sweet onion or Peruvian sweet onion)

2 ears fresh or frozen corn, defrosted

1 tablespoon (or more) sherry vinaigrette (see Exhibition Salad with Meringue-Baked Pecans)

1 to 2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil

Whisk together the oil, salt, pepper and garlic and divide it between two 9-by 13-inch glass pans. Slice the zucchini on the bias into ź” slices, place the slices into one of the pans, and mi carefully with your hands so that all the zucchini slices are lightly coated with the oil-garlic mixture. Trim the stem of the mushrooms. Slice the onion horizontally into ź” slices. Place the mushrooms, onion slices, and corn into the other glass pan and again mix carefully by hand so that all the vegetable are lightly coated with the oil-garlic mixture.

Oil and preheat the grill. Preheat the oven to 400°. Place the zucchini slice on the grill and cook briefly – no longer than 30 seconds – on one side only. Place the zucchini slices back into the glass pan, cooked side up, and put them into the oven while you prepare the rest of the salad (no longer than 10 minutes). Briefly grill the mushrooms, onion slices, and corn on all sides, until they have grill marks but are not cooked through. This should only take a few minutes. Remove the onion slices and mushrooms and set them aside to cool. Holding each ear of corn perpendicular to the cutting surface, slice off the kernels. Remove the zucchini from the oven. Combine the zucchini slices, mushrooms, onion slices, and corn kernels. Pour the vinaigrette over the vegetables and carefully stir in the fresh basil. Serve immediately or chill for no more than 1 hour.

Serves 4

I said, “Want me to keep working, or do you want me to sit with you for a bit?”

He shook his head. “Think I need my hand held?”

“No, I didn’t mean – ” I blutted out. But he held out his hand and I took it.

“No. Fault’s mine, Miss G. I’ve been put in the background on this case and I’m blaming you, which I shouldn’t. Actually, please stop worrying about me. You’re the one who should be stressed out. My wife the caterer, the one who refuses to see a victim advocate no matter how bad things get.”

“Oh, please.”

“Oh, please, yourself, Miss G. Talk to me.”

I sat at the table across from him and took a sip of wine. Its acrid taste burned into my chest. I sighed. “This… event. It’s horrid. Whenever I stop chopping or cooking, the memories flood in. I’m desperate to know what’s going on. At the same time, I want – I need – it to be over.”

He nodded. “Makes sense. Should we all go up to the cabin for a while?” Tom’s lovely, remote log dwelling outside of Aspen Meadow had flooded this spring, and he’d lost his tenants. Tom and I had scrubbed the floors and walls. Over the Jerk’s objections that we were spoiling Arch, we’d paid him to wash the windows. But we hadn’t yet advertised for new renters. Maybe going to the cabin wasn’t such a great notion. I knew Tom, Arch, and Macguire wouldn’t relish being away from our home base for an extended time. And if I stayed up there alone, I’d brood and fret even more.

“No, thanks. I just need to work. Be with you all. And… although I know it’s going to be tough, I’d like to keep informed on what’s happening. Arch is going to have questions around the clock.”

His fingers stroked my hair. “Okay. Keep cooking, if that’s what you need to do. And I’d be happy to tell you what’s going on. It’ll make me feel as if I’m doing something on this case.” He sounded glum.

I frowned at the vegetables. “There’s one thing I told Beiner that you should know.” I related to him Macguire’s suspicion that ReeAnn Collins, John Richard’s secretary for the past six months, was romantically involved with him. Tom put down his fork, retrieved his spiral notebook from his back pocket, and made a note. While I heated the kitchen stove top grill for the Slapshot Salad, I shared Marla’s news about John Richard and Suz’s fight at the club last night, and that Suz had reportedly fired a doctor named Ralph Shelton and a nurse whose name I did not know.

“Yeah “– Tom shook his head – “there was some kind of problem with this Craig woman being able to keep people. We don’t know much yet, but we do know that.”

I nodded, then felt a pang of guilt. “Are you sure you want to talk to me about the case? I mean, after what happened last time, when Marla got into so much trouble?”

He looked at me intently. “Miss G. I can’t believe you’d really want to get any more involved in this than you are already.”

“Excuse me, but my first responsibility is to Arch. Whatever that looks like.” I felt the edge creep into my voice and despised myself for it. Tom, after all, was not the enemy. “I’m sorry. I … just need to know what’s going on. No surprises.”

“Some cases have surprises. It’s the nature of the work. “

“Maybe so, but I need to know the surprises in this case before Arch does.”

He sighed. I slathered slices of zucchini with a mixture of olive oil and minced garlic. When I laid the glistening wedges on the heated grill, Tom pushed his empty bowl aside.

“All right. Near as they can figure, Suz Craig died between three and five this morning. Rigor hadn’t set in when the medics arrived, which is one of the reasons they tried to revive her. There are signs of a struggle in her house, pots and pans strewn about in the kitchen. The guys are out doing a neighborhood canvass asking questions, but so far there’s very little.”

“Two policewomen were over here.” “Beiner and Irving. They’re good.” His sandy eyebrows rose. “There was more vandalism in the country club sometime during the night. Looks like kids painting street signs and fences again, but who knows? One possibility is that Suz surprised the vandals somehow, and they killed her. On the other hand, only the club’s walls and a few street signs were spray-painted last night. We thought we were dealing with late-at-night vandals, but we may be dealing with early-morning ones. Of course, that wouldn’t explain why her kitchen pans were on the floor. Or why she died clutching a gold ID bracelet that said ‘To JRK: You’re the best. Love, SC.’ ” He took a deep breath. “Korman, of course, is claiming someone stole his bracelet. He also says he left her house between midnight and one o’clock, after they had that little disagreement you were referring to.”

I removed the grilled zucchini slices with their lovely diagonal dark stripes, then placed them in a separate, lightly oiled pan to finish in the oven. “Little disagreement, my Aunt Fanny. John Richard will drink and argue for hours. Sometimes he loses his temper right away, sometimes he waits, especially if he’s trying to get something out of you. Like a bonus, say.” I slipped the pan into the oven. The air was wonderfully fragrant. “I think he just snapped. Beat the daylights out of her, then had no idea she’d walk out of her house and go looking for help. That’s my theory, anyway.”

Tom shrugged. “He’s been unwavering on the leaving-at-one story. But even if he did leave after assaulting her, if she walked out of her house and died from falling into that ditch, he’s still our man.”

“Tom, if there’s something I know well, it’s that John Richard lies. He lies so much it’s exhausting to try to untangle what he says. This morning, when I saw those roses in his hand, I thought: This is one of his lies. It just comes naturally to him. I used to try to figure out why he lied. I thought it was because his mother was an alcoholic or because of the trouble with his father. But that’s no excuse. He’s still a pathological liar.”

Tom actually chuckled. “Yeah, Miss G., they usually are.” He pushed his chair out from the table. “How about a hug for a hardworking cop?”

I smiled and dumped the mushrooms on the hot grill, where they made a delicious hissing sound. Then Tom pulled me into his lap for a marvelous, tight embrace.

“Captain called me in for a heart-to-heart,” he murmured into my ear. “They’re appointing a district attorney’s investigator to head the case. But I’m not officially off the homicide investigation. I’m just behind the scenes. Can’t go anywhere or interrogate anyone or gather any evidence unless I take somebody with me. That’s how they avoid conflict of interest.”

“I thought you hated that D.A.‘s investigator. He’s always mooching food. What’s his name?”

“Donny Saunders. The laziest guy in a four-state area. And arrogant on top of that.” He sighed. “Better go get those mushrooms before they burn.”

I jumped up and scooped the mushrooms into a large bowl, then placed golden ears of corn and thick, glistening onion slices on the grill. They hissed and sputtered and filled the kitchen with a divine scent. I flipped the slices and rotated the corn so the kernels browned evenly. When I was removing these, I felt Tom’s arms gently circling my waist.

“I’m cooking,” I reminded him as I turned off the burners.”

He nuzzled my cheek and whispered, Looks to me like you’re almost done. And I’m not hearing Arch, Macguire, and Jake. Can that possibly mean we have the house to ourselves for one brief moment?”

I tried to suppress a smile. I couldn’t. “Actually, it does.”

He took my hand and we walked wordlessly up the stairs. The bedsheets were cool and inviting. As we began to make love, a warm, gentle summer breeze filled the lace curtains, like a woman’s skirt being lifted.

“I love you,” I said afterward.

He turned his handsome, wide face to me and smiled. “I love you, too.”

“And in case reading ID bracelets has put any doubt in your mind,” I added, “you’re the best.”

9

Tom kissed me and said that unless I needed him, he was going to catch up on his sleep. I told him to nap away, I still had tons of work to do. Then I tiptoed down the stairs and took the chilled bag of tuna fillets out of the walk-in refrigerator just as the boys traipsed back into the kitchen with Jake. While Arch diligently ran water and plopped ice cubes into a bowl for his bloodhound, Macguire slouched with a gusty, exhausted sigh into one of the chairs. He put his head in his hands and groaned. I ran the water to rinse the fish. I was waiting for Macguire to say, at long last, that he was hungry. He didn’t.

“I should go back to bed,” he said after another guttural moan. “I’m so tired. Can you do this bash without me?” When I told him I could, he turned to Arch. “Buddy? Thanks for the walk. Sorry we couldn’t get over to your dad’s office. I’m trashed now, need to hit the sack.”

Arch nodded and poured himself a glass of pink lemonade.

“Macguire,” I attempted, “please, can I fix you a little something to eat – “

He waved this away and put his head in his hands again, apparently too weary to climb the stairs to his room. I placed the first tuna fillets in a glass pan. Unfortunately, at that moment Murphy’s law of telephones kicked in and my business line rang. I begged Arch to answer it so I wouldn’t slime the receiver with fish juice. He gave me a world-weary look that immediately changed to one of concern when he realized who was on the other end of the line.

“Oh! Dad! How are you doing? Can I come see you?”

I swallowed hard. Macguire blinked and then blinked again, his expression turning quickly from fatigue to interest. I patted the fillets dry, then washed my hands, trying to decide what to do. Grab the phone from Arch? Write him a note to let me talk? Did I really want to speak to the Jerk? I viciously ground pepper over the fish. But it was too early to marinate the fillets. I dithered, stamped from foot to foot while trying to catch Arch’s eye, then snapped plastic wrap over the fish.

“Oh, Dad, I’m so glad you called me. Wow, I’m sorry you have to … Oh, that sounds awful! Gosh, I can’t believe…”

Saturday, just past noon-less than five hours since the arrest. John Richard had been processed; was he calling me or his son? Had he talked to his lawyer? Why call here? Unfortunately, despite my feelings on the subject, I could not prevent Arch from talking to his father.

“Where’s Tom?” Macguire whispered as I forced myself to turn my back on Arch and glare at the menu. I was not going to listen to the conversation. No matter what the Jerk was up to, I still had to ; finish my next catering task.

I said, “Tom’s asleep.”

Still the earnest whisper from Macguire. “You should wake him up. He should know – “

“Macguire. If John Richard Korman wants to talk to me, he would have demanded to do so. That’s the way he is. But he called our son. They have a right to talk. And as a witness, I can’t talk to him.”

Still, when I sneaked a glance at Arch’s freckled face, I was shocked. My son’s cheeks, previously flushed with color from his walk with Macguire and Jake, were now translucently pale. A scowl set his face in an expression of worry so deep that I hared John Richard more than ever. How could the man drag our son into this? Arch held out the phone.

He said eagerly, “Mom, Dad wants to talk to you.”

Well, great. I shook my head vigorously at the proffered phone. Arch’s eyes flared wide behind the tortoiseshell glasses.

“Yes, yes, you have to!” he whispered fiercely. . I reached for a kitchen towel and grabbed the receiver. “What is it?” I asked in a clipped tone. “I’m not supposed to be talking to you. You must know that. I’m a witness, remember?”

“Witness to what?” His voice grated through the wire. I was sorely tempted to hang up. No matter how hard I tried to put this man out of my life, he always insisted on reappearing, full of menace. At that moment I didn’t care what kind of trouble he was in. I didn’t want to hear about it. I didn’t want to be a part of it.

Arch leaned toward me and whispered earnestly, “You need to help Dad, Mom. Please!” Behind Arch, Macguire opened his eyes wide. He had perked up considerably since the phone call began. Macguire was thinking about getting involved with criminals again, I’d have the kid thrown into jail myself.

“I’m listening,” I said brusquely into the receiver. “But you’re jeopardizing your case by talking me.”

“I’ll take that chance.”

“I have a lot of work to do.”

“Well, excuse me for interrupting your cooking schedule,” John Richard snarled. “I just need to discuss this mess that you got me into. Understand? I’m a life-threatening situation here. I’m sitting in the jaiI, I don’t know what’s going on, and I need you to something for me. If you hadn’t been cruising by Suz’s house at that hour – “

“I told you,” I said through clenched teeth. Just like the man to make Suz Craig’s murder my fauIt, just because I’d had the bad luck to discover her body. “I didn’t want Arch to get to your place with nobody home – “

“Shut up and listen for once, Goldy, will you? There’s a whole line of thugs waiting to use this one. I just… I can’t… nobody will tell me anything. It’s driving me nuts. I need to know what the police have found out about when Suz died.”

More than ever, his supreme arrogance astonished me. “Even if I knew that” – which of course I did – “I couldn’t tell you. Look, I don’t think we shouuld be – “

“When she died is important – “

“Why do you think I – “

“Well, I’ll find out soon enough,” he fumed. “If you want our son to suffer from this escapade, because that’s all it is, then just be difficult.”

I said nothing. I’d learned this lesson the hard way. You talk, you give him something to criticize. You say nothing, you may eventually get out of the conversation. Without getting hurt.

“Goldy? Are you listening to me? Goldy? Or are you holding the phone away from your ear?”

I smiled at Arch and Macguire, who were both staring at me in consternation. “I’m listening,” I replied evenly.

John Richard resumed his fake-earnest tone. “Look. It’s just that if I could know the time of death right now, instead of having to wait for the damn lawyers to jaw about it, a lot of things could get cleared up. My attorney is hiring his own investigator, and he thinks if we get the right judge there’s a chance I’ll be able to get out of here on Monday – “

Dream on, I thought. Actually, as I’d told Arch, one in a million chance. I’d heard of it exactly once. So in our state that would make it one in four million point… What was our state’s population?

“Did you hear what I said?” my ex-husband yelled.

“Monday,” I repeated. I glanced at the tuna fillets and the menu with lists of dishes I still had to prepare for this evening. Actually, I was running a bit ahead of schedule. No way I was telling him that, though.

“Okay, now listen up,” the Jerk continued, undaunted, “I want you to use that morbid curiosity of yours to check on a few things. First, there’s this nurse named Amy Bartholomew. Suz fired her. Now she’s doing something with the new health-food store, I think. Also, Suz had an unpleasant visit in July from Ralph Shelton. Do you remember him? She fired him, too. Plus, Suz had some kind of delicate material – “

“Hey! Stop!” I interrupted him. Goosebumps ran over my skin. “I can’t do any of that. Even you must recognize how inappropriate it would be for me to go poking around – “

“No, I don’t recognize that – “

“It is hard for me to believe that your self-centeredness extends this far,” I snapped. “You cannot possibly think that the wife of a police officer, who happens to be your badly treated ex-wife, should go snooping around – “

“Mom!” Arch’s eyes blazed. “Stop it!” he hissed. “You have to help him!”

“My self-centeredness!” John Richard was shrieking. “My self-centeredness!”

This time I did hold the phone away from my ear. Arch pressed his fingers against his eyes and shook his head. The tormented expression on his face made my heart ache. With a ragged breath I said: “John Richard, I need to get off the phone.”

His icy tone chilled my blood. “I did not kill Suz Craig. I loved her.” He paused, then continued very deliberately, “It’s time for you to set aside your own self-centeredness. For. the sake of our son and his mental health, you need to help me prove that I’m being set up for this damn murder. Do you understand?”

I covered the phone with my hand. “Arch?” I asked with as much calmness as I could muster. My son gave me a defiant look, scowled, and crossed his arms. He was silent. “Would you please go upstairs for a few minutes and let me finish this phone call?” After a fractional hesitation he turned and hurtled out of the kitchen. Macguire made no move to go anywhere except to shuffle toward the walk-in, muttering about needing a Pepsi. “Macguire,” I pleaded, “just give me a minute here, okay?”

“I’m not going to bother you,” Macguire said innocently. “I just need a pop. Maybe I’ll see something in there that will make me hungry. You never know.”

“Goldy,” John Richard raged, “could you let go of domestic life for a minute and listen to me? I did not commit this crime. I left Suz’s house at one A.M. When I left, she was fine.”

“If you left her house at one and she was fine,” I repeated calmly, “then tell that to your investigator. If you have done nothing wrong, then you have nothing to worry about.” Then I hung up.

“What’s going on?” asked Macguire solicitously. He held a soft-drink can in one hand and the parfait glass of chocolate pudding in the other-the same one he’d turned up his nose at earlier.

I cleared my throat. “Apart from the fact that my ex-husband has been arrested for homicide and my son believes I should try to get him off?” I sighed. My head ached. I sat down, rubbing my temples. “Let’s see, the only other things going on are that I’ve got a big party to cater tonight. Oh, yes, and my son is absolutely furious with me. Apart from that, not much.”

“Bummer,” said Macguire. He set the pudding aside, untouched, poured the soft drink into a glass, then slurped fizz from the top. “Know what? I don’t need a nap, I think. I’ll see if Arch wants to talk or listen to music. We’ll be quiet, though. We won’t bother you, I promise.”

I murmured a grateful thanks and stared at the ingredients for a second batch of biscuits. As usual when dealing with John Richard, a sense of unreality closed in. Was I crazy, or was he? He was crazy. No question. A crazy liar, always had been. But then – and this had always puzzled me – how could he be so successful in the rest of his life, the part of his life that did not involve me? He had a fantastic job, lots of money, and a steady stream of girlfriends. People liked him. Was it his looks? Well, that was part of it. And he was intelligent. No genius, but he could sound good and fake his way through the situations he knew nothing about. Add to that his great ability to talk and charm his way into people’s hearts. And so far he’d been able to lie and cheat his way out of the many, many messes he’d made. And he’d been able to keep the messes quiet.

I did not kill Suz Craig. Yeah, sure. I again measured flour, baking powder, and salt into my food processor, scooped in smooth white vegetable shortening, and let the blade slice the mixture into tiny bits. Then why were you bringing flowers over this morning? Why did she have a death grasp on your ID bracelet? Why are you trying to find out the time of death? So you can change your story? I shuddered. I was not going to help him. No matter how manipulative he managed to be. No matter how much he dragged Arch into this.

Poor Arch. I pulsed the processor and watched the blade bite through the ingredients. He wanted

Goalies’ Grilled Tuna

4 (6 to 8 ounces each) fresh boneless tuna steaks

Salt and freshly ground black pepper

ź cup sherry vinaigrette (see Exhibition Salad with Meringue-Baked Pecans, page)

Rinse the tuna steaks and pat them dry. Place them in a glass pan, season with salt and pepper, and pour the vinaigrette over them. Cover with plastic wrap and marinate for 30 minutes to 1 hour.

Preheat the grill. Grill the steaks for 2 to 3 minutes per side for rare, 5 minutes per side for well done.

Serves 4

so much for me to help his father. But I couldn’t. The man was evil. I dribbled in buttermilk until the dough clung together in a ball. I wanted to tell Arch that trying to follow one of his father’s lies to get to the truth was futile. You get involved with John Richard, you get sucked into a vortex just like old Captain Ahab, and end up at the bottom of the ocean. As I scooped the silky dough out of the processor, my mind reverted to one of its common themes: How come the evil people in your life don’t just die? How come the evil people in your life are able to kill smart, promising women like Suz Craig?

Well, the rain falls on the just and the unjust. Then again, had Suz been so smart and promising? Had there perhaps been an evil side to Suz Craig, too? I thought of the rumors Marla had gathered about the dead woman. No, no, no, I chided myself. Don’t get into this. So what if she fired Amy Bartholomew, the nurse who supposedly had gambling problems? So what if she fired Ralph Shelton? I preheated the oven and rolled out the biscuit dough into a soft, rectangular pillow.

Suz, after all, was a boss-type person, and a boss-type person sometimes had to fire people. As sole proprietor of my business, I was thankful I’d never had to perform that particular function myself. I brandished the puck-size biscuit cutter I’d finally found at a baking supply store and cut the dough into circles. Then I arrayed them carefully on a cookie sheet.

I was not going to get dragged into this. Suz had an unpleasant visit in July from Ralph Shelton. Do you remember him? John Richard’s sarcastic voice echoed in my thoughts. Of course I remembered Ralph Shelton the doctor, the hockey fan extraordinaire. We used to be friends. Like John Richard, Ralph had specialized in ob-gyn at the University of Colorado Medical School. Another buddy of theirs had been Patricia McCracken’s ex-husband, Skip. Skip had moved to Colorado Springs, and I hadn’t seen him in years.

Ralph Shelton. What was his history? I set the timer for the biscuits and thought back. Ralph had divorced his first wife, a petite, very erudite teacher, and over her pained objections, obtained sole custody of their daughter, Jill, who was Arch’s age. Problem was, Ralph hadn’t been able to take care of Jill when he’d gone on business trips, had late meetings, or had to deliver a baby. So he’d turned to me to take care of his daughter, over and over and over. Meanwhile, Jill’s own mother was desperate to have the girl down in her new place in Albuquerque. With mounting problems in my own marriage and young Arch unable to shake a string of ear infections, I’d finally told Ralph I couldn’t take care of his daughter three or four times a week. Combined with my separation from John Richard, this had meant the end of the friendship with Ralph Shelton, unfortunately. The worst part was that Ralph had finally sent his daughter to live with her mother in New Mexico. Arch and I had missed Jill terribly. She’d been a fun-loving child with such an infectious laugh that our house had felt empty for weeks after she moved away.

The timer beeped. I slapped the cookie sheet out of the oven with an overenthusiastic bang, then rolled and cut out another batch of biscuits. I stared at the cutter in my hand. I’d been so proud of myself for finding the cutter. When the biscuits were baked, they were the exact dimensions of a hockey puck. Perfect for tonight’s party.

Ralph’s a big hockey fan, Marla had told me. No kidding. Back in the medical-school days, the only way Ralph Shelton could relieve his academic anxiety was to go to hockey games at McNichols Arena, where he’d bought lifetime season tickets for our ill-fated first NHL team, the Colorado Rockies. I had never understood how Ralph could vent his frustration by cheering for such a poorly performing team. Glumly reporting their losses whenever we got together, Ralph’s face had been ruddy and lined. What little hair he had had turned prematurely gray around a widening bald spot. Whether the hair loss resulted from the pain of being a Rockies hockey fan or the prospect of practicing medicine, I knew not…

When the franchise had moved on, Ralph had been disconsolate. Whether his enthusiasms had subsequently shifted to baseball, when the new team named the Rockies were swinging bats and setting homerun and attendance records at newly built Coors Field, I knew not. By then, Ralph Shelton had passed out of my orbit. And I’d had my hands too full with the divorce from John Richard to care.

Wait a minute. Sometimes a girlfriend will dye .J her hair, and become virtually unrecognizable. I . watched my oven timer ticking down the seconds until this batch of biscuits would be done. I remembered Ralph Shelton; I’d seen him quite recently. I just hadn’t recognized him out of context and with a new look. His bald head had been covered by a billed cap. He’d exchanged his sports-fan garb for gardening clothes. He’d grown a mustache that was prematurely white. I watched my clock. What else? He’d been eager to see what the paramedics were doing. This morning, my oId friend Ralph Shelton had been one of the gawking neighbors on Jacobean Drive.

10

The food, I scolded myself. Work! I perused my recipe for Vietnamese slaw. Napa cabbage, carrots, very lightly steamed snow peas-all these needed to be julienned. When my hand became tired from slicing, I decided to stop and check the phone book. Ralph and Fay Shelton lived on Chaucer Drive, one street over from Suz Craig’s street. So what had Ralph been doing up so early this morning? Taking a stroll around the neighborhood? I couldn’t wait for Tom to wake up.

The phone rang. Patricia McCracken’s voice zinged across the wire. “I can’t cancel this party,” she wailed.

“You’d better not,” I exclaimed as I stared at the mountains of colorful vegetables I’d already cut into uniform thin slices.

“The police have been here, Goldy. I was so nervous about seeing everybody at this party, my first public appearance since I filed the suits, that I took a sleeping pill last night. I don’t remember a thing.” She took a deep breath and added defiantly, “I didn’t kill that HMO lady.”

“Oh-kay,” I said as I searched my shelves for rice wine vinegar.

“Do you think John Richard killed her?” “I don’t know.”

“See you at five then.” She didn’t wait for me to say good-bye.

What an odd call. I whisked sesame oil with the rice wine vinegar and thought back to the wet spring we’d just come through. I had seen Patricia and her son, Tyler, once, at the library. It had been a momentous spring for our town library, but not because the incessant rain had brought any heightened demand for books. The cause for sensation had been the foxes that had made their den in the rocky hillside behind the windowed reading room. When a litter of five cubs was produced, the births became big-time small-town news. Soon the fox cubs were claiming the early-evening hours to cavort, tumble, and prance through the quartz and granite spillway in full view of an audience of excited children of all ages. Never mind that reading in the high-windowed room became impossible. Any visitor to or from the library was greeted with the same query: “Seen the foxes?”

Paying a visit to the reading room, Arch and I had encountered Patricia dragging a recalcitrant, whining Tyler with one hand and balancing an armload of Dr. Seuss books with the other.

“Did you see the foxes, Tyler?” I’d asked her son happily. “Are they out tonight?”

Tyler had given me a grumpy stare and let out a wail. Patricia had snarled, “We’re not interested in a family of foxes. Not now. Not ever.”

Startled, I’d pulled open the massive door to the library for Arch. When he passed by me, he’d mumbled, “What – does she raise chickens or something?”

Not even close, I realized now as I folded the sweet-sour dressing into the slaw ingredients. Struggling with the recent loss of her baby, Patricia hadn’t wanted to see the fox cubs playing. The notion of a big, happy family had been slipping from her grasp. I covered the enormous bowl with plastic wrap and popped it into the walk-in refrigerator.

“If you’re making so-good food noises, I want some,” Tom announced cheerfully as he strode into the room. “Oh, man.” He took in a greedy breath. “More biscuits?”

I nodded and removed the last cookie sheet of the golden, puffed rounds, then silently split one, slathered it with butter and blackberry jam, and handed the plate with it to Tom. When he finished, I’d tell him about seeing Ralph Shelton.

While he sat down and began to eat, I put in another batch of biscuits. I iced the dark chocolate cupcakes, which would surround a centerpiece hockey-rink-shaped cake provided by Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop. I placed the cupcakes in covered plastic containers. I wasn’t going to brood anymore. I was in my wonderful kitchen, filled with marvelous scents, and feeding the man I loved most in the world. Then I realized he was watching me.

“Tom? What is it?”

“Final batch of biscuits about to come out?”

“In a little bit.”

He paused, then glanced at the clock. “How’s your time going? When do you have to leave?”

“In about an hour. Why?”

His face grew wary. “I’m worried about Arch.”

“So am I. But what makes you mention it? Did he tell you about the phone call?” Doggone John Richard, anyway.

Tom shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. When I went by his room, he was sitting ramrod stiff in his desk chair, staring at nothing. I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he said ‘Not to you, I don’t.’ “

My spirits, briefly raised by my productive work, fell flat. I guessed Macguire had not been successful trying to entice Arch into listening to music. I grabbed a chair and sat. “Tom. Arch wants me to help John Richard. He’s desperate for me to prove his father’s innocence.”

Tom groaned. “Goldy, you can’t. I told you I’d keep you informed. But this isn’t like that time you found the body in the woods by Elk Park Prep. This time the prime suspect showed up at the scene, started raising Cain, and was arrested. You can’t get involved in this: you’re a witness. Listen, let’s get Arch down here to talk – “

I held up a hand to stop him. “John Richard called here about a half hour ago.”

“He called here? Wanting to talk to you? Do you know how illegal that is?”

“I told him. He claimed he called to talk to Arch. But then he told Arch to put me on. Even from jail he was his usual manipulative self, whining to Arch and demanding to know from me what time Suz died so that he could use his medical knowledge of rigor mortis to prove he’s not the murderer.”

Tom chuckled cynically. “That guy. Maybe he was trying to reconstruct his timetable.” He frowned. His sandy eyebrows drew into a furry, uneven line. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

I shot him an exasperated look. “Of course not.”

“I can just tell,” he said resignedly, “that this is going to be one holy mess.”

“Listen, Tom, remember when I told you about a doctor Suz had supposedly fired, one named Ralph Shelton? What I didn’t tell you was about John Richard’s and my history with him.” Briefly, I summarized how we’d all known one another years ago, when Arch was small. “Anyway,” I said, “Ralph’s a tall bald fellow with a white mustache. I know he was one of those guys I shooed away from, the ditch this morning. I didn’t recognize him because he looked so different with a cap on his head. Plus, his hair used to be gray, not white, and he didn’t have a mustache.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “You’re kidding.” “I’m not. Ralph was there, trying to see what the paramedics were doing. He was wearing gardening clothes and a baseball cap. Your guys must have talked to him in their neighborhood canvass.” I thought back to the fashionable camouflage-print pants, wide suspenders, dark billed cap, and hand-spun collarless shirt Ralph had been wearing that morning. In retrospect, it was perhaps too studied an outfit to have donned so early in the morning. But something else nagged at my memory. What was it? Something about Ralph hadn’t looked quite right. What? But my tired brain refused to yield any details.

“I’ll check on Shelton,” said Tom curtly. “But I do think you need to go talk to Arch. I’ll pack this stuff up.”

“The last time you packed my stuff I had to make risotto from scratch for a Fourth of July parry. As I recall, you thought it would be funny to substitute ingredients on me, so I wouldn’t go snooping around in a suspect’s house.”

He stood and rinsed his dish. “I thought,” he said without missing a beat, “that I would be keeping you out of trouble by making you do extra work that time, Miss G. Besides, I apologized and you forgave me. No fair hassling me about it now.” He reached into the pantry for several of the large cardboard boxes I used for carting food.

I walked up the stairs, thinking. Shower, change, call Marla – all these I had to do before leaving. Plus talk to Arch, get him smoothed out on his father being thrown into jail under suspicion of committing a brutal murder. Sure.

My son sat slumped in his desk chair. His lank brown hair was uncombed. His glasses perched halfway down his nose. Julian’s cast-off T-shirt hung on his motionless body. I longed to hug him tightly, the way I had when he was small and I’d always been able to comfort him.

“Arch. Hon, please. Let’s talk.”

“About what?” His voice was toneless.

“May I come in?”

His eyes didn’t leave the pile of magazines on his desk. He shrugged. “I thought you had a parry to do.”

“Arch, please, I’m worried about you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m worried about Dad” He whirled and faced me, his brown eyes ablaze. “You just don’t care, do you?”

I sat on the bed. Honesty was the best policy. “You know how when you leave your homework in your room? I don’t snatch it up and go running to school to bail you out. It’s called being responsible for your actions – “

“Oh, Mom!” he yelled, his tone disgusted. He glared at me. “Don’t treat me like a baby! Just don’t start, okay?”

“No, then,” I said frankly, “I don’t care about your father. I only care about you.”

“If you cared about me,” he shot back fiercely, “you’d be willing to at least think about whether he did this murder or not. Dad isn’t lying.”

“Did he tell you that he hit Suz the way he used to hit me? He admitted that to Tom and me, you know. That was one of the reasons Tom arrested him this morning. I’m just telling you the truth here, Arch. I’m sorry if the facts are so painful. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

He pushed abruptly out of his chair. “I need to go. I need to go check some things out.”

“What things?”

“There’s a nurse who runs a health-food store – “

“Don’t you even think about doing your father’s investigative errands, young man. His lawyer will hire an investigator on Monday.”

“So now you’re going to say I can’t go to the health-food store?”

“What are you planning on doing there?”

“I don’t know yet.” He stood in front of the mirror and frowned at himself. Apparently going to the health-food store did not warrant clothes changing or hair combing. “Don’t worry, Mom.” His voice carried a hint of conciliation. “I’ll get Macguire to go with me.”

“He’s asleep,” I said, hoping this was true. I hadn’t heard a peep out of Macguire since he’d shuffled out of the kitchen carrying his soft drink.

“I’ll wake him up! It’ll be good for him to walk again, anyway.”

“He’ll pass out.”

“Mom!” Once again I got the angry, indignant stare. “Will you stop bugging me? Why won’t you at least admit Dad might be down there in jail for no reason? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

I rose from the bed, walked to the door, and assumed a quiet tone. “I love you, Arch. I just don’t want to see you getting involved in your dad’s problems.”

He pushed past me. It was an unconscious, but more gentle, imitation of his father’s shove by me that morning. “Sorry, Mom. I already am involved. I wish you would help him. He really needs you.”

Well, great. I quietly made my way to Tom’s and my room to get ready for the evening party. My heart ached.

Fifteen minutes later I’d showered, changed, and punched in a call to Marla’s answering machine. When I went out the door, luminescent gray clouds billowed just at the edge of the western horizon. Even this early in August, snow would be falling each morning on the highest peaks to the west. When the afternoon sun warmed and wilted that ephemeral white blanket, the mountain towns on the Front Range would get a brief, deliciously cooling rain. But first the moisture would build into luxuriant cumulus towers that resembled fantastic, brilliant mushrooms. Once these clouds completely filled the western sky, they would spill eastward over the hillsides.

Tom had loaded my supplies and announced that he was going to the hardware store, one of his favorite Saturday-afternoon occupations. He seldom came home with more than a dollar’s worth of washers, screws, and nails. Sometimes Arch accompanied him. But I found these excursions deadly boring. Guy stuff. Not surprisingly, Arch had declined accompanying Tom, and my husband had rumbled off alone in his dark sedan.

Arch!. I revved the van and backed out of the driveway. It was early, a good thing since I needed to drive around a little bit to think. At the end of our street, I turned and headed along the creek. When I passed Aspen Meadow Nursery on the left and Aspen Meadow Barbecue on the right, I chewed the inside of my cheek. Arch couldn’t forsake his father. I didn’t really want him to. Despite John Richard’s coldly selfish behavior, Arch clung fiercely to the hope of getting love from his other parent. And John Richard spoiled Arch enough with material things – usually when he felt guilty over reneging on a promise – that Arch’s longing for a relationship remained like a sharp hunger, seldom fed.

I made a U-turn, drove back through town, and headed up toward the lake. Perched on the edge of the waterfall between the lake and lower Cottonwood Creek, a gaggle of shiny black cormorants arched their backs and eyed the water beneath for fish. Arch used to love to go down to the lake when he was little and feed the waterfowl, now strictly prohibited, as human feeding messed up the birds’ willingness to migrate. Arch had known distress back then: the pain of the playground, the agony of his parents’ divorce. Then as now, I had tried to soothe and protect him. But his distress this time didn’t change the fact that Dr. John Richard Korman, batterer of women, had finally been caught. And then, in front of a street full of nosy neighbors, he’d resisted arrest. I dreaded Arch hearing about that scene.

What was painfully inevitable, I knew, was that John Richard would maintain his innocence to his son and anyone else who would listen until the proverbial bovines came home. No matter what he did or what folks he hurt, John Richard would insist to the end that he was not responsible for his actions. Well, we would just see about that.

I passed the lake. In the near distance cars sent up a nimbus of dust as women from the Aspen Meadow Babsie Club drove into the LakeCenter parking lot on their way to set up for the doll show. What Arch couldn’t see was that this crime – this event with Suz Craig – was going to change everything. The publicity surrounding the arrest, the breadth of the investigation, the preliminary hearing, the trial, the conviction, the sentencing-these would alter his relationship with his father forever. Perhaps it was this coming change that Arch sensed. So he’d plunged into denial. Who wouldn’t?

I passed a solitary rower at the edge of the lake and turned the van in the direction of the country club. Since I was still a bit early, did I dare swing by Aspen Meadow Health Foods, to see if Amy Bartholomew, the nurse-without-a-poker-face, was in? No, I’d had enough crime for one day. Besides, Arch and Macguire might be headed over there. If my son thought I was checking up on him, he would have a fit.

Dread made my heart heavy, the way your chest hurts when an election is going to the wrong people and all you can do is watch the numbers mount. I swung through the entryway to the residential part of the country club, where a crew dressed in white overalls and white billed caps was busy at work eradicating the vandals’ painted handiwork from the stone walls. I shook my head. I felt helpless watching Arch’s dilemma, which was sure to end worse than any election. The best I could hope for was that it would all be over soon.

It was this idea of expediting things that made me turn onto Jacobean and from there chug left on Sheridan, then on to Chaucer, where I eased up in front of the Shelton place. The house was a massive, out-of-proportion two-story neo-Georgian. White-painted brick contrasted with shiny black shutters and window boxes lush with bright red geraniums and artfully dripping variegated cream-and-green ivy.

What exactly was I doing here? Trying to disprove John Richard’s theory, whatever it was, about, Ralph Shelton? Trying to remember what it was I had seen this morning? I didn’t know. I parked behind the Sheltons’ van and hopped out of my own. I knew the rules: Anybody who might testify in a case is a witness. Not only had I witnessed all that had I transpired between John Richard and Tom, I’d see or thought I’d seen, Ralph Shelton this morning. If I ever had to testify, I didn’t want to think about how I could be challenged because of the contact I was now making with Ralph. I also tried not to think about how upset Tom would be with me for making this little sleuthing side trip.

Apart from this morning, how long had it been since I’d talked to Ralph? Too long. I’d last seen his daughter as a four-year-old. Now Jill was a teenager, like Arch. I rapped hard on the elaborate, gleaming brass knocker. Of course, Ralph probably wouldn’t even be home. Saturday afternoon on a gorgeous Colorado summer day? He was probably out playing golf.

But he was not on the fairway. Even before the doorbell stopped donging “Three Blind Mice,” tall, white-mustached Ralph answered the door. He had changed from the gardening clothes to a collarless navy shirt and faded blue jeans – Calvin Klein at Home.

“What is it?” He stared at me with eyes that seemed to be made of yellow glass.

“Ralph!” I exclaimed brightly. “Ralph, don’t you remember me? I used to take care of Jill, about ten years ago.”

He pulled himself up. “I am Dr. Shelton.” Always. Is your first nome Doctor? I smiled. “Ralph, it’s Goldy Korman. Now Goldy Schulz. Don’t you remember me from all those years ago? I’m a caterer now.”

He squinted and cleared his throat. “Goldy?”

“We… saw each other in front of Suz Craig’s house, when the police were there. This morning. Don’t you recall? Over on Jacobean. I didn’t recognize you, either. And then I remembered. And after all we’d been through together way back when…”

But I couldn’t come up with a last-minute lie to push myself into a conversation with this man. Instead, I stared mutely at the right side of his face, where there was a square, expertly cut gauze bandage. I saw again what I’d seen this morning. Just at the upper end of the bandage, under the clear tape, were the beginnings, just the very beginnings, of four vertical gash marks. The kind of scratches that could be made by a woman’s nails, when she was fighting you off.

11

Forgive me, it’s been such a trying day.” Ralph’s unctuous tone made me even more uneasy. “I never would have known… and this morning when you were ordering people around, you seemed so distraught… .” He tilted his bald head and closed his amber eyes, as if struggling to recall the events. Then he shook his head. “Terrible tragedy. The police even questioned me, since I was out on my walk when…” He paused. “But why are you here now? I mean, if you want to catch up on old times, then give me a call and we can set up a lunch or something… . I’ll bring some pictures of Jill, she’s playing soccer down in New Mexico… .” His voice trailed off. A country-club doctor choosing to have lunch with a caterer who was married to a cop? Not likely, regardless of our history. But Ralph pressed on, with an eagerness that seemed almost sad. “Actually, I’ve missed all of my old friends lately, things have been going so badly… and now this has happened. Should we set up a lunch right now?” His hand went nervously to the top button of his shin. “That would be a terrific idea.”

“Oh! Well, actually, I can’t make any appointments now, I’m looking for the McCrackens’ house.” It was lame, but it had to do. “Do you know Clark and Patricia McCracken? Remember, Patricia used to be married to Skip all those years ago… .” He squinted skeptically and I rushed on. “I’m catering a Stanley Cup celebration there tonight, at the McCrackens’, and I just can’t remember exactly where they live, and then I remembered you were such a big hockey fan…”

But he had already held up a hand for me to wait. I fell silent as his tall form disappeared down a hallway whose walls were bathed in a vertigo-inducing print of floating cabbage roses. Beyond, I glimpsed a country kitchen with frilly curtains and gleaming copper. I wondered if Ralph had found another job after being fired by ACHMO. If he had not, I doubted he’d be able to keep up life in his old income bracket.

“Twenty-two Markham,” he said pleasantly as he returned, waving an engraved invitation. Then he regarded me. .“I’m going over there in just a little bit myself. We’ve remained friends, in spite of everything. It’s amazing that she… Well. The guests are all going to skate, get another dose of Cup fever. Sound good? But how can you cater at a house you haven’t visited?”

I was ready for this one. “Do it all the time. Actually, I thought I knew where the McCrackens’ place was. But after this morning my life seems to have turned upside down.” I stared helplessly into his yellow eyes, so much like those of a cat. “It’s just been a nightmare.”

He grinned sympathetically. “Yes, well, I’ll just see you over at the McCrackens’ place – “

I leaned against the doorframe. “Ralph, can you just show me how to get to Markham? Please? I’m feeling extremely disoriented.”

With obvious reluctance, he walked outside and gestured at Chaucer, where, as I well knew, I needed to take two rights and then a left to get to the McCrackens’ place. He turned and again squinted. My forlorn expression must have finally ignited a spark of curiosity, for before going into his house, he hesitated.

“How did you happen to come upon… Suz Craig… er, in the ditch?” he asked abruptly. “I mean, did you drive over it or something?”

“I was on my way to the Rodines’ place to pick up my son and take him to his father. I just saw her there… in front of her house. Uh… how about you?”

“Oh, I was out for my walk.” I sighed. “I’m sorry for ordering you around this morning. Did you say the police questioned you? I seem to remember them wanting to talk to everybody, you know?”

“Yes, well.” He cleared his throat. “You wouldn’t believe what they wanted to know from me.” He rubbed his bandaged cheek. I felt my own face heat up. “How had I scratched myself, they asked. So I told them what I’m telling you.” I didn’t like the tone of his voice. Did it mask hostility, or was I imagining things? “Our cat doesn’t like to go to the veterinarian’s. She scratched me when I tried to put her into the cage.”

I nodded sympathetically and thought that Sergeant Beiner was probably on the phone with the veterinarian right now, finding out if in fact Ralph Shelton had just brought a female cat in for a visit. I thanked him for helping me, then backed away. Time to grill fish for the McCrackens.

“So,” Ralph said slowly, “the police suspect my oId friend, John Richard Korman?” His fingers brushed the top of his shirt, then went to his bandage again. Suddenly, he didn’t seem to want me to leave.

I shrugged as convincingly as possible. “Who knows? I try to keep up with that guy as little as I possible.” I turned toward my van. “Thanks for your help, Ralph.”

“Wait,” he called. “I’m sorry. Of course you have as little to do with him as possible. I … I remember how he treated you.” I turned back and waited for him to speak. Finally he said, “It’s just that I’ve had such a horrible morning.” I pressed my lips together. “I knew her, you know,” he said bluntly. Was his voice wistful? Hard to tell. “I knew Suz Craig.”

“Really?” I asked. “Oh, right, the HMO. And you’re a doc. I hardly know anyone in the medical business anymore. Do you practice in Denver?”

“I did. Our group was affiliated with ACHMO. Still is, actually, I’m just not a part of it.” He heaved a sigh. “I’ll see you at the party later. Sure you know where you’re going?” Before I could answer, however, he said, “Good-bye.” Then he closed the door.

Well, doggone. Ralph was in some kind of pain, no question, and it wasn’t just from cat scratches. I gave the brass knocker one last glance and walked back to my vehicle – in case he was watching through a window – and hightailed it over to the McCrackens’ place. Within five minutes I’d eased up to the curb in front of a tall wooden house that had been stained a bilious purple, with shutters painted a dull maroon. They should have photographed this place for a National Hockey League advertisement. Avalanche flags hung from the lampposts along the walk. Oversize Avalanche banners were draped from each upstairs window. The place looked like a sporting-goods store.

When I drove into the McCrackens’ driveway, though, I was prevented from pulling up to the back entrance. A rope had been put up around a large, rectangular paved area that had been marked with bright white lines to resemble a hockey rink. I couldn’t imagine what my tires would do to all those brilliant chalky lines if I drove over them. I dreaded contemplating how I was going to unload, much less serve.

Clark McCracken, a long-legged fellow with a thin, sweating red face and lots of sweat-streaked brown hair, flapped his arms maniacally as he came loping down the drive toward me. He was wearing a maroon Avalanche jersey, shiny maroon shorts, and stiff, bulky kneepads that made his gait resemble the canter of a crippled race-horse. No question – this man was ready for the end-of-the-driveway game. There was also no question that he wasn’t ready for my van to ruin all his chalk marks. I sighed. Unloading a hundred pounds of supplies anywhere near the shortest route to the kitchen was going to be impossible. I rolled down the window and resolved to stay pleasant.