Sticks & Scones gbcm-10

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Half an hour later, I had baked a fresh batch of steaming scones and set them on a tray next to a plate of dewy butter slices, a jar of Eliot’s chokecherry jelly, and a pot of steeping English Breakfast tea. Making my way up to our room, I noticed that the courtyard looked magical under its fresh blanket of snow. If I lived here, I decided as I disarmed our door, I’d turn it into a school. A cooking school, where we ate our cookies and cakes out in the courtyard, while black-suited butlers served tea and sherry.

  “I was just about to ring for all that,” Tom commented as I sashayed in with the tray. He was sitting in one of the wingback chairs doing leg-extension exercises. “I missed you today, Miss G.”

  I set the tray down and gave him a careful hug. “Poor Tom. Sorry I had to work. Want to hear about it?”

  And so I ran through the whole thing for him, from the early intrusions of Buddy, Chardé, John Richard, and Viv, to discovering the stamp from Mauritius in the center of the window. He whistled.

  “Tom,” I said when I’d finished, “I think all the stamps might have been there. They were all in the chapel. Then they were moved. By someone in a hurry.”

  “Or by someone who didn’t know he’d left one behind.” He gazed into the cold fireplace. “The chapel has that big storeroom. If you were a crook trying to hide something in the chapel, why not put it in the storeroom? Especially since Ray Wolff was arrested while scoping out a storage area?”

  “Because it’s too obvious?” I replied. “There’s something we’re missing.” I followed his line of sight to the hearth. “I keep thinking about Andy. Did he find the stamps after they were stolen and hidden away? He indicated to you that he knew where they were, so what’s the deal? How was he electrocuted? If he was shot in the chapel, why couldn’t the sheriff’s department find any evidence there? The stamps were in the chapel, and he was dumped in the creek by the chapel. But the crime scene itself was clean.” I paused, baffled. “I just don’t get it.”

  “Here’s one more thing,” Tom commented. “The ballistics report came in on the bullet they took out of me. It came from the same gun that killed Andy and Mo Hartfield. The bullet that shattered our window came from a different gun. No match.”

  “Oh, for crying out loud.” Would anything in this case ever add up?

  Tom surveyed the tea detritus. “Know what? That just felt like an appetizer to me. Let’s go see what we can find in that big kitchen.”

  Delighted to see that his appetite was back, I followed him down to the kitchen, where we feasted on leftover meat pie, reheated green beans, manchet bread, and labyrinth cake. Arch and Julian came home, as did Sukie and Eliot. My son joyfully announced that because tomorrow, Friday, was a half school-day, and this Saturday was Valentine’s Day, the teachers were assigning no homework for tonight or the weekend.

  “That calls for a toast,” decreed Eliot. “To our successful donor lunch, and to no homework.” He breezed out of the room and returned with a bottle of port.

  “I think we have something special in the refrigerator, too,” murmured Sukie. Sukie brought out a chilled bottle of bubbly nonalcoholic cranberry stuff. Arch rewarded her with a murmured thanks and one of his suppressed smiles.

  While we were sipping our drinks and nibbling on cake, I guiltily remembered Michaela. Shouldn’t we have invited her to join us?

  But when I suggested it, Eliot waved this away. “Sometimes you see Michaela. Usually you don’t.”

  Sukie added, “We don’t try to force it.”

  I nodded and didn’t pursue the question. I wondered if I’d ever figure out the dynamic between Eliot and Sukie on the one hand, and between Eliot, Sukie, and Michaela on the other. Was she sort of an employee, sort of a tenant, sort of a neighbor, sort of a pain in the behind, or all of the above?

  I didn’t know and was too tired to try to find out. We all loaded our dishes into the dishwasher, said good night, and headed our separate ways.

  Before we went to bed, Tom told me we should be back in our own house by Sunday. “They put in the glass, finish the cleanup, fix our security system, and we go back.”

  “Uh-huh. And what about the person who shot it out?”

  “They’re still working on it,” said Tom. His green eyes sought me out. “I’m not feeling up to seeing Sara Beth at the dentist tomorrow.”

  “Whatever feels right to you,” I said stiffly, as I snuggled into bed. He told me he loved me and that he hoped I slept well. I guess he wasn’t in the mood for one-armed lovemaking.

  I lay there, staring at the dark ceiling, and made a decision. Sara Beth O’Malley may have been expecting Tom. But she was going to get me.

  Friday the thirteenth dawned very cold and bright. I moved through my yoga routine while Tom slept. In the kitchen, Michaela and Arch were having miniature sugared doughnuts and tiny cans of a chemical concoction that claimed to be better than chocolate milk.

  “Don’t get upset, Mom,” Arch begged as he stuffed a doughnut into his mouth. “Julian let me get these goodies last night. He was up late studying, and said you should wake him when you need help this morning. Otherwise his alarm is set for eleven. Julian is great, man. I can’t remember the last time I had two junk-food meals in a row.”

  Michaela’s indulgent smile stopped me from scolding. At least Arch was amusing someone.

  When they left at a quarter to eight, I made a swift overview of the fencing-banquet preparation. I’d already baked the plum tarts. The veal had only to be rubbed with oil, garlic, and spices, then roasted just before the banquet. The potato casseroles I could easily put together in the afternoon. That left the molded salad, shrimp curry, and raisin rice. I looked over my recipes. If I moved ahead with the salad and curry sauce, the former could jell while the latter mellowed before the arrival of the shrimp. With any luck, I could finish those dishes and take off for the dentist ahead of schedule.

  While the pineapple juice for the gelatin was heating, I sliced bananas and more fat, juicy strawberries - bless Alicia - and reflected on everything I knew about the events of the past week. There were those acts someone - or ones - had committed. Shoot out our window. Kill Andy. Shoot Tom. Steal the computers. Murder the man who steals the computers. Somewhere in there, hide a multimillion-dollar stamp haul in the center of a rose window. Then move the loot. But accidentally leave one behind. The sequence of those acts, I realized, had to be part of the solution to the puzzle.

  I wondered about Sara Beth. If jealousy were the motive for all this activity, could you remove shooting out our window and shooting Tom as being related to the stamp theft? If so, then how could you account for those acts being done by two separate guns?

  You have to think the way the thief does, Tom was fond of saying. In this case, you had to start with the facts you knew, try to extrapolate the thinking behind them, and from all that, deduce the identity of the thief.

  Yeah, sure. My mind was as clear as … well … unmolded salad.

  I mixed the gelatin into the boiling juice, added chilled juice, then folded in all the fruits. Unlike my mother’s generation, I never waited before mixing ingredients into gelatin. No one ever seems to notice if the fruits sink or float, do they? Sinking or floating in real life, on the other hand, is another matter.

  In an oversize Dutch oven, I gently sautéed chopped apples and onions in melted butter, then stirred in curry powder, flour, and spices. I shelled, deveined, and cooked the shrimp, then dropped the shrimp tails into bubbling chicken stock. Finally I stirred the stock, vermouth, and heavy cream into the sauce. The mixture gave off a divinely pungent scent.

  Once the salad molds and shrimp were chilling in the refrigerator, and the curry sauce was cooling, I powered up with a double espresso, two reheated scones, two thick pats of unsalted butter, and generous dollops of blueberry preserves. Yum. Why Arch preferred chalky, store-bought doughnuts to homemade baked goods was one of the mysteries of the ages.

  At quarter to nine, I was seated in my van, sipping another doub
le espresso, and eyeing the front of Aspen Meadow’s endodontist office. What I was actually going to say to Sara Beth O’Malley I had not worked out yet. Of course then again, last time, outside my home, she hadn’t allowed me to say much.

  Well, what was I going to say? Hey, Sara Beth! Why didn’t you tell anybody you were alive? Why’d you come back to taunt your old fiancé and his family.? Oh, and anonymously donated supplies notwithstanding, why didn’t you go to a dentist closer to home.? Was it because your “supplies” were from a big stamp deal going down here? So you decided to kill two birds with one stone? Or rather; two thieves with one gun?

  She came walking up the steps by the dentist’s office as stealthily as a cat, and just as quietly. Had she acquired get-around-in-the-jungle skills? Her eyes scanned the upper lot for Tom. Her distinguished, Jackie Kennedy face and dark hair streaked with gray once again gave me a frisson.

  I believed Tom when he said he hadn’t met with Sara Beth - or done worse - in the last month. She was a woman from his past who’d just appeared out of nowhere. What I wasn’t sure of was whether he still loved her. She was certainly one of the most striking women I’d ever seen, especially since in twenty-degree weather she was dressed only in a clingy gray turtleneck and long gray pants. I look fat in gray, and never wear it. Sara Beth didn’t look fat in anything. I sighed, and wondered. The ability to survive cold, the ability to move stealthily. Despite my first impression that she was a nonshooting type, had she also learned the jungle skill of killing a target?

  Before I could chicken out, I assumed a friendly demeanor and walked up to her.

  “Please don’t run away,” were the first words out of my mouth. “I’m Tom’s wife. Won’t you just talk to me? I’m not going to turn you in. For anything.”

  She lifted her chin. She wore no makeup, and looked younger and better for it. Stop it, I scolded myself. In her quiet, rusty-from-disuse English, Sara Beth said, “I am sorry I ever tried to contact Tom.”

  “You’ve got a few minutes, right? Please. Just come sit in my van and talk. I need to talk to you about Tom being shot,” I added, studying her face.

  She turned so pale I thought she might faint. Startled, she almost lost her balance. When she faltered, I tucked my arm in hers and led her to the van.

  Once I’d coaxed her inside, I turned the heat on full blast. She rubbed her hands and shivered.

  “I’m Goldy Schulz,” I said.

  She gave me a slight smile. “That’s what you said last time. What happened to Tom?”

  “Some bad guy shot him Monday morning. He was hit in the shoulder, but he’s mobile and recovering.”

  “Was this before or after the window?”

  “After. Do you know anything about either shooting?”

  Her face darkened and she stared at the windshield. “No. I just came here to get supplies and have my teeth fixed.”

  “Here?” I asked calmly. I tried to make my voice soothing, the better to coax out information. “You’ve been away twenty-some years. Why’d you stay in Southeast Asia all that time? Why didn’t you come home to your fiancé?”

  “Look, I attempted to let him know I’d survived. Not right away, of course. It was too dangerous. I was afraid of trying to get back.”

  “So you became a village doctor?”

  “I did it for survival,” she replied. Her face was chiseled into seriousness, and I suddenly imagined interviewing her for some postwar documentary. Sheesh! “Stories came back about Saigon as a madhouse,” she was saying. “People were trying to get out before all hell broke loose. Many of them failed. I’d broken my back when the copter crashed. By the time I recovered, the Americans were long gone. The Vietcong weren’t going to say, ‘You forgot somebody! Come on back and pick her up!’ The village people told me I’d never get out alive.

  So I stayed, and worked hard, so the villagers would want me there. So they would keep my secret. They adopted me,” she added, “and I grew to love them. The American government did a terrible thing to that country.”

  “Uh, thanks. We figured that out, but only after thousands of our own soldiers died.”

  “I tried to communicate with Tom. I just never had any luck. For example, fifteen years ago - “

  “Fifteen years ago?”

  She ran her fingers through her streaked hair. Her voice had turned calm. She was finally reciting a story she’d prepared for a long time. “Fifteen years ago I gave a letter to Tom to a French agricultural worker who showed up in the village. But the Frenchman died when he stepped on a mine beside the railroad track. After that, I didn’t try to communicate anymore, because I figured it would be too disruptive to Tom’s life. And then I had to pick up some supplies and deal with this tooth problem. Another visitor to the village told us about e-mail, so I… changed my mind and tried that once I got to the States, through a friend’s account.” The face she turned to me seemed profoundly sad. “You always think, or hope, maybe, that people haven’t changed. That somehow you can touch base with your old life. I’m sorry I did.” She hesitated. “I’d still like to see Tom, if he isn’t too badly hurt.”

  Not so fast, I thought. I still have a couple of questions. Again, I reminded myself to be sweet and polite. “Do you happen to know anything about stamps? As in, the valuable kind that are so easy to fence overseas? Especially in the Far East?”

  “What are you talking about? I told you, I used e-mail.” She gave me a wide-eyed Tom-marrid-a-nut look, then reached for the door handle. “I have to go. If Tom can manage, I’d like him to drive me to the airport at four o’clock this afternoon. The dental pain meds will be wearing off by then, and talking will be a challenge. But I’d like to see him before I go. I’m staying in the Idaho Springs Inn, under the name Sara Brand. If he’s not there, I’ll take the shuttle bus.” She opened the door and swiveled one of her slender legs out of the van.

  “Wait,” I said. “Just … tell me, do you still love him? Are you here because you’re trying to steal him back? I have to know.”

  She lowered her chin and gave me the full benefit of her intense brown eyes. “We had a good relationship, but it’s been over for a long time. Enjoy what you have, Goldy. He’s a good man.”

  Without saying goodbye, she trotted toward the dentist’s office.

  Great. Either she was telling the truth, or she was an incredibly good actress. Did I care? I wasn’t sure.

  The maxim When you feel really low, focus on the food had always proved useful. This time would be no exception. I torqued the van out of the lot and drove to the grocery store, where I bought not one but two quarts of nondairy lime sorbet for lactose-intolerant Howie Lauderdale. I knew he probably wouldn’t eat all sixty-four ounces, even if he was a teenager. But a Caterer’s Basic Rule of Dessert is that you must have plenty of backup food, even for a single special-request treat. Then if eight more folks communicate a sudden desire for lime sorbet, they won’t feel cheated when you say you don’t have any.

  I hit the brakes hard halfway through the store parking lot. Behind me, a VW Bug beeped. What had I just said to myself? If eight more folks communicate a desire …

  I pulled into a vacant parking space. What had Sara Beth said about my husband? I tried to communicate with Tom. I just never had any luck.

  Who else ran out of luck communicating? How about Andy Balachek? First by a letter to Tom at the department, then by e-mail, and finally by telephone, that young man had been obsessed with staying in touch. The last time we’d heard from Andy had been via cell phone from Central City. Or had it?

  You have to think the way the thief does.

  Trudy Quincy had been taking in our mail all week. Was it possible Andy had somehow tried to communicate, and we just hadn’t had any luck receiving it?

  Heart in mouth, I threw the gearshift into drive, stepped on the gas, and thankfully only skidded once while racing over the snow-packed streets back to our house. I avoided looking at our plywood-covered window, leapt from the van, and ho
pped through the new snow to the Quincys’ house. Please let my neighbor be home, I prayed. Please let her not think I’ve gone bananas.

  When Trudy opened her door, she was cuddling our cat on her left shoulder. Scout gave me that slit-eyed feline greeting: Who the hell are you? Then he snuggled in closer to Trudy.

  “Goldy!” Trudy cried. “C’mon in! This kitty thinks he’s my baby. I fried him up some trout Bill caught and froze last summer, and now I don’t think he’s ever going back to your place.”

  “Oh, well - ” I began, but got no further before Jake bounded around a corner, leaped up on me, and started slathering my face. No way I’m staying at the Quincys’! Leave that stupid cat here and let’s go home! I told him to get down, then patted him feverishly so Trudy and I could talk without further interruption.

  “Do you have our mail?” I said casually. “I’m looking for something in particular. Something important.”

  “Sure.” She frowned and glanced down at Scout. “It’s in a big pile on the dining-room table. We can walk in there, but not too fast. Kitty doesn’t like to be hurried.”

  I sidled into the Quincys’ dining room. Scout and Jake eyed each other, but I ignored them. I asked Trudy - who was no Sukie Hyde in the organizational department - if there happened to be any order to the mountain of letters. She said the new stuff was on top of the old stuff. I turned the heap over and started going through it.

  From Monday there were two bills, seven ads, three catalogs, the sheriff’s department newsletter, and a postcard for Arch.

  From Tuesday, there were nine ads, six catalogs, a bill, notice of a cooking equipment sale, and a bulk-mail fundraising letter from Elk Park Prep.

  And then. His handwriting was uneven and loopy, the b’s and l’s tall and unevenly slanted, the j’s dotted with tiny circles. The letter was addressed to Tom, with “Gambler” scrawled in the upper left-hand corner. Postmarked Monday. No return address. I snatched it, thanked Trudy, and sprinted out. Behind me, Jake wailed.