“Quentin Drake was a computer geek for an engineering company before he got laid off. I don’t know about her. You’re not going after this guy’s killer, Goldy.”
I carefully stirred the strawberries into the sugar mixture and tried to sound nonchalant. “I know, I know. I’m just looking for a link.”
We worked in companionable silence for a while. I carefully placed the pie in the oven, taking care not to jiggle Tom’s brownie pan. He was washing the bespattered bowl and beaters and I was wiping the counters when Arch made one of his noiseless entries into the kitchen.
“I have something else to tell you,” he began. When Arch had Tom’s and my attention, he crossed his arms and looked at the floor. “I just don’t want to get this guy into trouble. I mean, he’s old. I can’t imagine he would hurt anyone. I don’t think he would want to hurt me.”
Tom used his best interrogation technique when a suspect began to talk: Say nothing. Reluctantly, I followed his lead.
Arch let out a deep breath. “Todd and I figured out who’s been following me. We tag-teamed our watch at Todd’s house. The car was there, with the guy inside. I used Todd’s telescope to see who it was.” Arch’s brow furrowed above his glasses. “Why would Ted Vikarios be stalking me?”
“Ted Vikarios?” I repeated. I pictured Ted standing, tall and charismatic, at the microphone in the Roundhouse.
“Ted Vikarios?” Tom repeated. “You mean the guy you said gave the long-winded speech at the lunch? Who had the argument with Korman? The one whose wife got ridiculed by the mean women? What’s his background?”
“He’s a former preacher. And a medical doctor.” I recounted the history of Albert and Ted being co–department heads for ob-gyn at Southwest, and how they’d gotten religion. They’d gone their separate ways: the Kerrs to England for seminary and then Qatar for missionary work, the Vikarioses to fame, fortune, and, ultimately, ruin.
“Ruin?” Tom asked.
They’d…had a scandal, I said, with a meaningful look at Tom that said sex.
“Wait,” interjected Arch. “Excuse me, didn’t mean to interrupt. But I’m supposed to call Todd about this birthday party on Saturday. So…does something smell like brownies?”
Tom smiled. “If it looks like chocolate and smells like chocolate, then there’s a pretty good chance that it is chocolate. Thirty minutes’ cooking time. Two hours to cool, if we’re being sticklers. Which we aren’t.”
“Great!” Arch headed toward the kitchen door, his conscience clear, his appetite set. “Call me if you figure out what’s going on!”
“Tom,” I said softly, after Arch was gone. “I may be beginning to see something.” If it looks like a payoff and smells like a payoff, Nan had said, maybe it is a payoff. “Remember I was telling you about the Vikarioses’ ruin?”
He nodded, and I gave him a brief account of the scandal concerning Talitha Vikarios and her out-of-wedlock child by Albert Kerr. The papers had gorged on the fact that Ted Vikarios, a man who made boxed tape sets called Victory over Sin, had a daughter who’d been living in a commune. And then Nan Watkins had told me Talitha was dead.
“If Ted Vikarios and John Richard weren’t arguing about money after the funeral lunch, what were they arguing about?” I wondered aloud. “And most puzzling of all, why would Ted be stalking Arch?”
Tom’s face was understanding as he reached for a squeegee and began scrubbing. “Sometimes if I just rejuggle all the pieces in a homicide, I come up with an answer.”
But the words were not even out of his mouth before I knew. I said, “Albert Kerr had mumps when he was a teenager.”
“And that’s important because…”
I felt so low, all of a sudden. I couldn’t even say the words. The kitchen spun around, and Tom’s soapy hands grabbed me.
“Miss Goldy! What’s wrong?” He eased me into a kitchen chair, then nabbed a cotton towel and filled it with ice. With great gentleness, he held it to my forehead. He whispered, “Don’t try to talk.”
“It’s okay.” In my mind’s eye, I saw the photo of that dear, sweet candy striper as she hugged Arch and held him close. I remembered Talitha Vikarios even better than I had before. She’d been wonderfully attentive, she’d doted on the infant Arch. You’re so lucky, Mrs. Korman! I want to have a family someday, too! If I had a family, I wouldn’t let anything destroy it!
Talitha Vikarios had had one other person she’d adored, though. And she’d been weepy, too, as she held Arch. Inexplicably weepy.
I gazed into Tom’s green eyes. “When a teenage male gets the mumps, it usually renders him sterile. Which explains why Albert and Holly Kerr didn’t have any children. When Talitha Vikarios told her parents that Albert Kerr was the father of her child, she was lying.”
“Whoa. Back up. So Talitha took off to have the child in some commune?”
“Yes. My bet is that when she was discovered by the media, she told what she thought was a white lie. Albert Kerr was far away, and couldn’t be affected. Plus, while the Kerrs were overseas, there would be no way for Ted and Ginger to know that Albert had had the mumps when he was a kid. Holly told me about it when she was reminiscing.”
Tom said, “So Albert Kerr had had the mumps and was sterile. But the Vikarioses, Talitha included, didn’t know. Right? Why would she assign paternity to some guy who was sterile, and out of the country to boot?”
“Maybe I’m doing a quantum leap here, but I think she was protecting me. And Arch. Our family.”
“So…are you saying you think the father of her child was John Richard Korman?”
“I am. I think he seduced her the way he did most pretty young nurses. I think she made the disastrous mistake of falling in love with him. They had an affair, and she got pregnant. She left to have the child, rather than abort.”
“Oh, Miss G.”
And then I moaned. Tom gave me a quizzical look. I said, “Before the Kerr memorial lunch, Ted Vikarios came into the kitchen looking for something. He yelled, ‘Jesus God Almighty!’ and startled us. But he wasn’t calling on a supreme being, Tom. He was looking at Arch.” I clutched the table. “Arch must look a lot like his grandson.”
Tom groaned, but I held up my hand. I was thinking, trying to put it all together…or as much of it as I could guess at.
I went on. “Right then, when Ted saw Arch, I’ll bet he figured it out. No doubt he and Ginger had been puzzling over this for a long time.” I paused. “Let’s say, after the discovery of Talitha’s child, they believed Talitha’s story that Albert was the father. The Kerrs, long gone, probably denied it from afar, in a flurry of correspondence. But let’s say Talitha stuck to her story…and it looks as if she stayed in the Utah commune, too. So the Vikarioses had no relationship with their child or their grandchild, no money because their tape empire had failed, and no more friendship with the Kerrs.”
Tom said, “I’m following you. But how do the Vikarioses end up in a country-club condo in Aspen Meadow?”
I said, “Holly Kerr’s husband was terminally ill with cancer. She’d just inherited millions, but the money couldn’t help her husband. So maybe she forgave the Vikarioses for suspecting Albert. She hated the stories she heard from friends, about how the Vikarioses were suffering. And she wanted to reconcile with them before her husband died. So she started sending them a stipend. The Vikarioses were grateful, but they were still left with the mystery of who had fathered their grandchild and ruined their lives—”
Wait a minute. My kitchen shears had been stolen, and John Richard’s hair had been clipped after he was dead. So Arch thought Ted Vikarios was an old man who wouldn’t harm anybody? Had Ted demanded the truth from John Richard outside the Roundhouse? Had he said, “Are you the man who impregnated my unmarried daughter? Are you the man who ruined our lives?”
I said softly, “Ted Vikarios could have killed the Jerk and then cut a swatch of hair for a paternity test.”
“Now, Goldy, that is reaching—”
“I n
eed to make a call.” I tapped keys to pull up the address book on my computer and scrolled to Priscilla Throckbottom’s number. What do you know, she had given me both her home and cell-phone numbers. It was only half-past eight, so with any luck…
“Priscilla?” I said breathlessly when she answered her cell. “It’s Goldy Schulz.”
“I’m at the country club,” Priscilla announced excitedly. “We’re all still here, all still talking about Courtney MacEwan’s arrest!”
“Courtney was arrested?”
“I saw the police come myself. We all did! They took her away!”
“In handcuffs, Priscilla? Did they read her her rights? Or did she just agree to go in for questioning—”
Priscilla’s tone changed. “Is this why you’re calling me when I’m entertaining friends at the country club?” Clearly, she wasn’t going to allow someone, especially a caterer, to water down her story. “You called to ask questions about Courtney MacEwan? Or do you have something else on your mind?”
I took a deep breath, and smelled smoke. It was sweet, and it was…billowing out of our oven. “Just a sec, Priscilla!” I put down the phone and looked around wildly for pot holders. When I pulled out the pie, it was a steaming, gurgling mess. Hot strawberry goo dripped relentlessly from the pie-plate rim. A quart of red lava had already bubbled onto the bottom of the oven, where it was blackening into a smoking island. Tom grabbed his own pair of pot holders and helped me ease the pie onto a rack.
“Goldy?” Priscilla’s voice called from the counter.
“Coming, coming!” I called. I’d made dozens of fruit pies. What had I done wrong?
“Goldy! I’m a busy woman, you know!”
Tom waved for me to return to the phone.
“Sorry about that, Priscilla. Ah…remember this morning, when you and the committee were talking about the Vikarioses?”
“I don’t remember. Is this going to take long?”
“Priscilla,” I stage-whispered, “I could keep you posted on Courtney’s status.” Tom stopped wiping up the mess and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “What the charges are, who her lawyer is, that kind of thing.”
“Well, then.” I could hear Priscilla salivating through the phone line. “All right, Goldy, so. What were you wondering about the Vikarioses?”
“Remember when the committee was discussing their daughter? The one with the child? I, uh, heard she died. The Vikarioses’ daughter, that is.”
“She did,” Priscilla replied crisply. “Talitha. Last month, in Moab, Utah. A truck accident, was the story I got. Somebody cut off a pickup, which then swerved into the oncoming lane and hit Talitha.”
“Do you…know what happened to the child? Talitha’s child, that is?”
Priscilla snorted. “Ted and Ginger are taking care of the boy. He was hurt in the accident, and he doesn’t have any other family, of course. I think it’s a terrible idea. They’re too old to have children.” She inhaled. “Is that all, Goldy?”
“Um, yes. Thank you.”
She lowered her voice. “When will you know about Courtney? One of the women here said Courtney precipitated her husband’s heart attack by making sure he was having sex with that flight attendant before she stalked into their bedroom and surprised them. That’s how she ended up inheriting all that money that she lavished on your worthless ex-husband.”
I smiled in spite of myself. With Courtney, or with John Richard, nothing surprised me. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll call you.”
“By the way, I’m doing the flowers for your ex-husband’s memorial service. That’s one thing the garden club can’t take away from me. That, and the planting we’ll be doing up in the preserve, if they can ever manage to put out the fire! Did you hear they think some hikers are trapped back there?”
I told her that I had not heard that, then signed off. I asked Tom if he had picked up on a story about the blaze threatening some hikers in the preserve. He cocked a bushy eyebrow and replied that this sounded like more horse manure from Priscilla Throckbottom. Meanwhile, bless him, he had cleaned up the entire pie mess. His brownies had managed to bake alongside the strawberry volcano and were now cooling as he sliced his super-sub sandwich. Arch, sensing that a meal was imminent, had slipped back into the kitchen. To my astonishment, he washed his hands and began setting the table without being asked. The next time I got a big tip, it was going to Arch.
Arch pushed his glasses up his nose, peered around, and sniffed. “Did something burn?”
“It’s okay, hon,” I said.
“Good, ’cuz I’m starving.”
But I wasn’t. In fact, I was desperate to do something else altogether.
“Guys,” I said to Tom and Arch, “I want to go over to the Vikarioses. Now.”
It was the second time that evening that Tom laughed. “Forget it!”
“Mom,” Arch pleaded, “I’m so hungry.”
“Eat,” Tom urged Arch. “Your mother’s hallucinating and will snap out of it soon.”
“Tom, I want to go and I want to go now. If you aren’t going to come with me, then I’m going alone.”
“What happened to your promise not to go into dangerous situations?”
“You can come. And bring a gun.”
Tom put down the knife, then leaned forward on his knuckles. “I’d like to keep my job, thanks. You want, I’ll call the department and Blackridge and Reilly can go over there tomorrow.” When Arch shuffled into the walk-in in search of lemonade, Tom whispered to me, “And anyway, what would you say to Ted Vikarios once you got there?” He brought his voice up an octave to mimic mine. “Ted, did you kill my ex-husband? Could you please wait here while I call the cops?”
“No,” I said calmly. “I’d say we were grieving and we needed pastoral care. We heard he was a pastor, and we’d like to come in and talk.”
“Who is we, white woman?”
Arch had returned and was munching on a large wedge of sandwich. “If you guys go, ask Mr. Vikarios why he’s been following me.”
I chewed the inside of my cheek. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving Arch home alone if Tom and I both went. But I truly had no idea what we might be encountering at the Vikarios condo. I wavered. Maybe this idea really was foolhardy.
“All right, all right,” Tom said, his voice resigned. “Let me go call Boyd. I’ll ask him to come here and stay with Arch.”
Thirty minutes later, with Boyd and Arch scooping out vanilla ice cream to make enormous brownies à la mode, I followed Tom to his sedan. My husband was wearing a brown corduroy jacket, which I hoped concealed a shoulder holster, and he was holding a pair of high-powered binoculars. Once we were buckled in, Tom said, “We are not getting out of this car when we get there. I’m parking up on the road and then the two of us are going to see if we can spot anything suspicious. Then we’ll make a decision.” He held up his key chain. “We’re not going anywhere until you promise not to go crazy on me.”
“I promise.” Sheesh! “Before you can say tiddlywinks, we’ll be back home digging into your sandwich.”
We chugged down toward Main Street. Tom said, “I’d rather be back home, thank you very much. On such a beautiful night, I’d rather be working with and devouring food—thank you very much. This very minute, you and Arch and I could be eating that sandwich on our deck, by the light of the pearly moon, instead of traipsing around on a wild-goose chase—”
At the light on Main Street—there was only one, so locals just referred to it as “the light”—Tom eased the sedan to a stop. I turned to him.
“What did you say, Tom?”
“Goose chase. Eat outside. Deck. All of the above.”
“Be serious for a second. Something about the pearly moon.”
The light turned green; Tom accelerated. “All right then. How’s ghostly moon?”
I was reaching for a memory. I’d seen something. Something as luminous as a ghost. Something that hadn’t belonged where I’d seen it.
“The V
ikarioses don’t live far from John Richard’s rental. Could you just swing by there?” I begged. “I think I dropped something. In the street, not at the house.”
Tom shook his head. “It’s a good thing I’m crazy about you, Miss G. Then again, maybe I’m just plain crazy.”
The moonlight cast a pale light over the granite-and-moss rock pillars flanking the entryway to the country-club area. We passed a few cars—luckily, all the gapers had left their decks—and within moments were crunching over the gravel washout on Stoneberry. The evergreens, aspens, and Alpine roses ringing the cul-de-sac shrouded the pavement in darkness. When we stopped in front of the rental, Tom drew out a Maglite from the floor of the backseat. He held it in his lap for a moment, as if unsure if he should give it to me.
“What did you drop?” he wanted to know.
“A piece of jewelry. Several pieces of jewelry. They’ll just take a sec to find, if they’re still there.”
“You don’t wear jewelry, Miss G.”
“Are you going to give me the light or not?”
When I slid out of the front seat, I snapped on the Maglite and tried to remember exactly where I’d seen what Tom is always telling his investigators to look for: something out of place. The smoke seemed to have dissipated, thank God, and the mountain breeze was sweet as sugar. Alpine roses by the curb bobbed to and fro. I trod gingerly over the asphalt and lustrous flood of gravel, sweeping the Mag as I went.
And then I saw them: a spill of pearls glowing in the moonlight, among a fall of creamy rose petals. I directed the flashlight’s pool of light to where the wash of tiny, uneven stones had deposited the oyster’s perfect nuggets. I reached down and picked them up, one by one. When they were securely in my pocket, I turned off the flashlight and returned to the sedan.
Maybe they were nothing. Maybe they were something. Should I bother Blackridge and Reilly again?
If the pearls were significant, there was a logical explanation as to why the crime-scene investigators hadn’t found them. Everything—grass, trees, pavement—had been coated with dust when I’d discovered John Richard on Tuesday. The pearls would have been easy to miss. But that night the hailstorm had bathed away the dust. Gravity and a stream of dirt had swept the pearls out of John Richard’s yard and into the street, where anyone looking could have found them.
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