Sticks & Scones gbcm-10

by Diane Mott Davidson

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “Knock it off,” John Richard snarled.

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

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

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

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

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

  -14-

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  I glanced around at the sack of photo albums on the floor. That suspicious voice again wormed its way into my brain … maybe this was where he’d stashed his credit card receipts for flowers, motel visits, jewelry. On the other hand, perhaps being whacked on the head and sustaining a visit from a violent narcissist unleashed more industrial-strength paranoia in t
he cerebral cortex.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  “We figure the shooter was about

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

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

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

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

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

  Discouraged, head throbbing, thoughts

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

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