Fatally Flaky gbcm-15

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I went back to frowning at the list. If O’Neal was Dodie, then that looked like the best bet. If it referred to another O’Neal, or if it was Ceci, then I would be out of luck, as I didn’t know any other O’Neals, and Ceci was on her honeymoon.

  The clock still indicated it was too early to call the O’Neal residence. I took the time to go through the Aspen Meadow phone book, looking for any Parker I knew—there were twenty-seven of them—but none was familiar. There were three pages of Whites, so I gave up on those right away. There were only four Fosters, and I wrote down those names. There was no Katchadourian in the phone book, so I called directory information, which told me that the number was unlisted.

  I cursed and slammed the phone book closed. Tom was still asleep, Marla was at Gold Gulch Spa, out of cell phone reach…but what about Arch? I’d told him he had to keep his own cell phone on at all times. So I called him.

  “Oh, Mom,” came his sleepy voice. “What is it? Is something wrong?”

  “Not really.” I hesitated, as I could just imagine him encased in his sleeping bag over at his half brother’s house.

  “Well, then why are you calling me? I’m so tired!”

  “Sorry, hon.” I tried to make my voice nonchalant. “I was just calling to see if you remembered Todd’s rotator cuff problems.”

  “What?”

  “Remember when Todd had his shoulder problems?”

  “Mom, I’m so tired. Can’t this wait? Why do you need to know about this now?” Sudden tears welled in my eyes, and I couldn’t find my voice. When I didn’t speak for a couple of minutes, Arch said, “Mom? Are you still there? Hello?”

  “It has to do with your Uncle Jack,” I whispered. And then I further embarrassed myself by starting to cry.

  “Oh, Mom, I’m sorry.” He groaned, and I heard the unmistakable slither of body against nylon sleeping bag. “C’mon, please don’t cry.”

  “Okay,” I said, but still had to stifle sobs.

  “All right, look,” said poor, confused Arch. “You want to know about Todd’s shoulder because it has something to do with Uncle Jack?”

  “Yes. It’s a long story.”

  Arch grunted. “That’s what you always say.” When I didn’t go on, he took a deep breath, and I realized for the first time that I hadn’t managed to cushion Arch from grief.

  “Sweetheart?” I said. “Are you all right? I mean, I haven’t even asked you how you’re doing since Jack died.”

  “Mom, c’mon. I’m fine. Tom called me. I didn’t know Jack as well as you did. And since I’m over with Gus, it’s not like I’m looking at Jack’s house every day, you know. I’m okay,” he reassured me. “So.” He yawned. “What was your question about Todd?”

  “Tell me about the rotator cuff.”

  “Yeah, right. Todd was doing something in swimming that he wasn’t supposed to. The guy at the doctor’s told him to do exercises, but that just made his shoulder worse. A lot worse. His shoulder froze, at least, that’s what the physical therapist told Todd when he couldn’t make his arm move. So then Todd’s mom took him to a specialist, and there was a long wait for an MRI, I think, but when they finally got one, it showed his rotator cuff was torn. So he had to have surgery.” Arch stopped talking, exhausted and out of explanations.

  “Is that it? Did somebody hurt Todd, or threaten him?”

  “Threaten him?”

  I rolled my eyes ceilingward and wished it were later, as in afternoon, which was when Arch got up in the summertime. “Arch,” I pleaded, “please try to remember.”

  “Nobody tried to hurt or threaten him,” my son said definitively. “Can I go back to bed now?”

  “Just wait.” I scanned the list. Every one of the conditions listed beside the names pertained to medical issues. “Didn’t Todd start off at Spruce Medical? I mean, when he was first hurt?”

  “I guess so. Why?”

  “What doctor did he see there?”

  “I don’t know. Actually, I know he saw two people. Probably both doctors, I guess.”

  “Do you know who either doctor was, in case the police want to know?”

  “No. Mom, please let me go back to sleep.”

  “Okay, sweetheart, thank you. Bye.”

  There was a pause on the line. “Did I help you?”

  “Yes, Arch, thanks. You’re great.”

  He groaned and signed off, and I went back to staring at the list. I don’t know how long I’d been trying to make sense of it when Tom shuffled into the kitchen. He wore a blue terry cloth robe and white terry slippers, and his cider-colored hair was rumpled.

  “Miss G.” His arms encircled my waist. “You’re starting to worry me.”

  “I’m okay.”

  “Yeah, right.” Tom opened the walk-in, peered in, and removed eggs and vegetables.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Making breakfast?” he said. “It is morning, right?” He ran water over the vegetables. “So, I assume you’ve thrown in the towel on cooking at the spa?”

  “No, Julian’s doing breakfast. I’m going out there later. Don’t worry, I called Boyd and told him about the change.”

  “Chop this onion for me, then, will you?” He handed me a red onion, cutting board, and sharp knife. “You’re squinting at that piece of paper as if it could tell you all you need to know.”

  Was it the onion that was making my eyes water, or was it Tom’s comment? “I just feel as if the person who attacked Jack attacked me, too.”

  “They did,” Tom said simply. “That’s the way it works, unfortunately.” He eyed me. “You want me to get Victim Assistance over here for you?”

  “No, I’m fine.”

  “Right.” Tom began to slice broccoli. “You break into Jack’s house—”

  “I didn’t break in! I had keys! That he had given me!”

  “—then you decide to start working at a spa you dislike, forcing me to take one of my guys off of a security detail. After that, you sneak out of the house in the middle of the night—”

  “I didn’t sneak out! I was trying not to wake you up!”

  “And then you focus on a list you found in a locker that could just as easily have been left there by the last duffer to use that space.”

  “No, Tom, that won’t work. The locker key was on Jack’s key ring, the key ring he had me take from him. That list refers to patients…maybe Doc Finn’s patients? Maybe the handwriting is Doc Finn’s?”

  “We’ll check on that, trust me.”

  “I already called Arch,” I confessed, handing Tom the board with the onion, “to ask him why Todd’s name is on the list.”

  Tom peered down at the list. “What did he say?”

  “He clarified what Todd told us about it last week. Todd had a messed-up shoulder from swimming. The first person to see him at Spruce Medical told him to do some weight-lifting exercises, which only made it worse. Todd saw somebody else next. But then a physical therapist told Todd his shoulder was frozen and his mother took him to a specialist. He had an MRI and then surgery.”

  Tom slid a baking sheet with the vegetables into the oven. Then he handed me a hunk of Havarti and asked me to grate a cup. Next, he broke eggs into a mixing bowl. He said, “You know that to make a straight line, you need two points? Investigation is like that. To make a straight line, you need two points, to get a context. Knowing about Todd gives you one point. You need one more.”

  I watched as he poured a cup of whipping cream into the beaten eggs. I suspected Tom was using Julian’s recipe for Summertime Frittata. Oh, well.

  “You see this, where he writes, ‘All were told they were stressed out, should go back for a week or more’?” I asked. “And apparently three people had symptoms of addiction withdrawal?”

  Tom gave me an inscrutable look. “Mmm.”

  “Well, that sounds as if Finn was maybe talking about clients of the spa. If you found a drug in a container in Doc Finn’s trash, and a note that said he needed to get it analyzed,
and you found a towel in his car from Gold Gulch, and you knew he’d been out there recently, couldn’t you maybe make a leap that he suspected Victor Lane was feeding those Gold Gulch clients addictive drugs? I mean, without their knowledge? That would lead to symptoms of withdrawal.”

  “That’s a big leap,” Tom said. He plopped a chunk of butter into our sauté pan and turned the heat to low. “Listen, you can’t mention this list to anyone.”

  I groaned, and told him I’d already told Julian about it.

  Tom said, “Julian knows better than to talk about it. Listen, Miss G., we know something is going on out there because Jack was attacked at Billie’s wedding. But we’re not completely sure what the issues, crimes, what ever, are. That’s why I wanted Boyd to stick to you like epoxy while you were working in the kitchen, which I still think is a half-assed idea.”

  “I know you disapprove. I promise to keep being careful,” I said, watching Tom pour the egg mixture into the pan. For my part, I pulled a loaf of Cuban Bread out of the freezer. Yolanda had taught me how to make it a dozen years earlier, and it had been one of our family’s favorites ever since.

  Tom shoveled the vegetables into the pan, sprinkled the Havarti on top, and slid his concoction into the oven. He watched me trying to cut the bread. “Here,” he said, “let me slice that for you.”

  “Thanks.” I watched him saw expertly at the frozen loaf. When he popped two pieces into the toaster, I asked, “Any word yet on Lucas’s inheritance?”

  “Sorry, I forgot to tell you what we found out about Jack’s will.

  Lucas stands to inherit four million dollars from Jack. And, Lucas is the sole beneficiary of Jack’s will, I’m sorry to say…or sorry, anyway, if you were expecting something.”

  I hugged Tom. “The memories Jack left me are more valuable than that. But listen. Wouldn’t four million smackers be motive to kill someone? Especially if you were having money problems?”

  “You bet it would be.” He took out two plates, then slathered the toast with butter.

  I shook my head. “That worthless Lucas—”

  Tom shrugged as he took the frittata out of the oven. “You need two points to make a line, Miss G. Remember that.”

  As I was groaning, Tom’s cell rang. He listened for a moment, then said, “You’re sure?” When he heard that whoever had called was indeed certain, he signed off.

  He picked up his fork to dig into the frittata, then put it down. Finally he said, “The traces in the vial in Finn’s trash? Valium.”

  “Good Lord. But not enough to make a line to Gold Gulch.”

  “Not yet.”

  I insisted Tom go to work. He took the paper I’d found in the golf club locker, and promised he would have his handwriting people on it ASAP. I gave him the main number of the switchboard out at Gold Gulch Spa, if he couldn’t reach me on my cell. He promised to call if he had anything, he said, that was “earth shattering.”

  Speaking of calling, I still hadn’t heard back from Hans Bogen, Aspen Meadow’s premier jeweler and clock repairer. By the time I’d finished the dishes, it was nine o’clock, so I dialed the Bogen household.

  Hanna answered on the first ring. She said, “I know he’s working on your clock, Goldy, and that he has the machinery spread out all over his workstation at the store. But so far, he hasn’t found anything.”

  I gave her, too, the numbers of both my cell and the main switchboard out at Gold Gulch. I told her the clock situation was one of some urgency.

  “Why don’t you just buy a new travel clock?” she asked.

  “It’s not a gift for someone. It just…is of great importance to me.”

  “Let me tell you,” said Hanna. “Clock repair is like marriage. There will always be vexations.”

  Omigod, more Jane Austen. I gritted my teeth, but thanked Hanna and told her I hoped to hear from Hans soon.

  Next on the list was O’Neal. If this was the O’Neal I knew, then finding the answer to the dehydration question should be fairly easy. But Dodie had left a message on her voice mail saying she and her granddaughter would be out of the country for the next week. Great. Norman O’Neal was not in the office, a receptionist crisply told me, but she would certainly put my name on his desk for when he came back.

  “Sorry,” I said, “this is a very pressing matter. It’s quite urgent.” Actually, the only urgency was mine, in that I didn’t want to face a lot more emotional emptiness, the kind bred from grief. Better to keep moving, I told myself, and to get others to move along with me, if possible.

  “All matters that Mr. O’Neal deals with are of some urgency,” she said, as if I were speaking about the need to go to the bathroom.

  “Oh, yeah?” I replied. Ordinarily I am not rude, but the combination of lack of sleep and this woman’s hostility was breaking down my hold on civility. “This is Goldy Schulz, and Norman himself called me from the hospital a few nights ago. He was desperate for me to help him be reconciled with his daughter. I am able to do that now,” I lied. “So, why don’t we skip the baloney here, and you just tell me where he is right now, okay?”

  “One moment, please,” was her chilly response. Within twenty seconds she was back on the line. “He’s at the Grizzly,” she said, a faint, very faint, whiff of apology in her tone. “He’s having an early breakfast. Do you know where the Grizzly is?”

  “Yes, thanks.” I hung up, and reflected that the only kind of breakfast they served at the Grizzly was the liquid variety. And I didn’t mean smoothies.

  Inside the Grizzly Saloon, it was fairly easy to pick out Norman O’Neal. He was the only one at the bar not wearing a cowboy hat. In front of him were a shot and a beer chaser. So much for deciding to go to rehab.

  “Gee, Norman,” I said cheerfully, “thought I’d never find you.”

  “Who’re you?” He narrowed his watery eyes at me.

  “I’m Goldy? The caterer from Ceci’s wedding? The wedding you ruined by getting plastered and then coming in and knocking out the priest?”

  His facial muscles quirked. “I did that? I don’t remember.”

  “You called me from the hospital and asked if I could help you become reconciled with Ceci.”

  Norman’s unshaven jaw dropped slightly. “Yeah. I want that.”

  I lifted my chin in the direction of the booze. “Why don’t you leave that, and come up to our house for some coffee? We only live half a block away.”

  “I’m coming,” he said, before downing the shot and taking a long pull on the beer. Great.

  When I had Norman O’Neal in my kitchen, I brewed a pot of coffee. I also toasted him a couple of pieces of Yolanda’s Cuban Bread, which I liberally slathered with butter.

  “You got any peanuts?” Norman asked.

  We did, of course, but I said, “No.” I didn’t want to give Norman anything that would make him thirsty. With his haggard, gray cheeks and skin hanging loosely on his bones, he looked as if he’d been existing on peanuts for the last six months.

  “So,” said Norman, “how are you going to help me with Ceci? I thought she was on her honeymoon.”

  This negotiation was going to be delicate, and it would have helped if Norman O’Neal were not already a couple of sheets to the wind…not long after nine o’clock in the morning.

  “Ceci is on her honeymoon,” I said, “and Dodie has taken your granddaughter out of the country.”

  “She can’t do that!” Norman protested, weaving a bit on his kitchen chair. “That’s my granddaughter, too!”

  “You told me you’d never seen her. Your adopted granddaughter, that is. You also told me she almost died.”

  Norman’s rheumy eyes regarded me warily. “What does this have to do with my…being reconciled with Ceci?”

  “It has everything to do with it, Norman,” I said coolly, “because I need to know what your granddaughter almost died of. I need to know all the details you can remember. And after I hear them, I promise I’m going to call Ceci, and leave a message on he
r voice mail telling her I must talk to her about her father. And when I do talk to her in person, I’m going to tell her how much you want to see her and be a part of her life. I’m also going to tell her what a great idea being reconciled to you is, especially if you decide to go into rehab, which is where you belong.”

  Norman O’Neal sucked in one side of his mouth. “That sounds like an awful lot of conditions.”

  “You want this deal, or not?”

  There was a long silence in the kitchen.

  Norman said warily, “Why do you want to know what was wrong with my granddaughter?”

  “What difference does it make why I want to know?”

  Norman reared back. “Because there are privacy laws concerning health information these days, missy.”

  “Oh, yeah? Well, when you called me from the hospital after ruining Ceci’s wedding, you didn’t care about privacy laws. You were too busy crying about being reconciled with your daughter and being a grandfather to her adopted daughter. That was before you puked your guts out, though.”

  Norman winced, then slammed down some coffee. “The baby almost died of dehydration.”

  “Dehydration?”

  “Yeah.” He took a long pull of coffee, then went on, “Ceci wanted to adopt a baby so badly. So she went through some Eastern European adoption agency.” He smirked at me. “Dodie isn’t the only one with spies, you know.” When I said nothing, he said, “The baby got over here, and supposedly she’d been checked out by doctors at the orphanage she came from, but for what ever reason, Ceci couldn’t get her to take a bottle of formula. So Ceci took her to Spruce Medical, and some physician’s assistant there told her she might be allergic to formula, try her on soy. So she tried her on soy, no luck.”

  “Wait. A physician’s assistant? Who? Lucas Carmichael?”

  “I don’t know who they are there.” Norman weaved a bit more, as if he were trying to figure out where in the story he was.

  “On soy, no luck,” I prompted.

  “Okay,” Norman said, with effort. “So then Ceci went back to Spruce Medical, and said she wasn’t leaving until somebody helped her. A doctor saw her, and told her to give the baby a bottle of water. But the baby wouldn’t take a bottle of water.”