The Main Corpse gbcm-6

by Diane Mott Davidson

  I didn’t know what to think, but I didn’t say so. It was getting late. I made sympathetic clucking noises and promised to call soon. Then I revved up the van and tried to put the party out of my mind. As I drove out of the country club, I turned on my wipers. The rain had turned to large flakes of snow that splatted on my windshield. Welcome to June fifth in the high country.

  At home, my dear, wonderful husband Tom looked delighted to see me. His greeting was the first good thing to happen to yours truly all day. He grinned widely, opened the back door, and relieved me of the first box of dirty pans. I felt the anxiety of the afternoon slide away. Tom’s large body was encased in a sea green terry-cloth robe I had bought him for our first anniversary. It matched his green eyes, which twinkled in his handsome face. I scooted back to the van and brought the second box of pans through the softly falling snow. Tom was cooking, and I couldn’t wait to see what delicacy he’d put together. It is a truism of the culinary world that the caterer never has a chance to eat until all the food is cold, picked over, or gone. When I came back into the kitchen, Tom had set out two fluted champagne glasses and a large bottle of bubbly.

  “Uh-oh,” he said. “The caterer doesn’t have that successful event look on her face.” He took the last load from my arms, set the carton on the counter, and wrapped me in one of his warm, tight hugs.

  “Gosh, I need this,” I murmured into his warm shoulder that smelled of soap. “It was not only unsuccessful. It was horrible.”

  He drew back, and I wanted to say, Lord, but you’re gorgeous, but decided to save it. He gave me a look of deep sympathy. “Weather ruin things?”

  “No. Marla nearly got into a fistfight with the host.”

  “Gee,” he said with jovial sarcasm. He let me go and squeezed my hand. “What else is new? Hold on a minute.”

  I eyed the counter while Tom worked to open the champagne. He appeared to be making cookies. But what kind of treat contained whole wheat flour, nonfat dry milk, and liver powder? Something that went with champagne? I said, “I’m afraid to ask what you’re making. Health cookies?”

  He popped the cork. “Not cookies. Homemade dog biscuits. For Jake.” He smiled.

  “Oh, Tom, you have got to be kidding.” He put down the champagne bottle and brandished a large cookie cutter in the shape of a dog bone. He wasn’t kidding. As he poured, I glanced at the kitchen clock – it was almost one – and sank into one of our kitchen chairs. Tom had put out a crusty loaf of sourdough bread and a large wedge of Bel Paese cheese. He handed me a glass full of spritzy bubbles.

  Jake’s Dog Biscuits

  2 ˝ cups whole wheat flour

  ˝ cup powdered milk

  ˝ teaspoon garlic powder

  ˝ teaspoon salt

  1 teaspoon brown sugar

  6 tablespoons margarine or shortening

  1 egg, beaten

  3 tablespoons liver powder

  ˝ cup ice water

  Preheat oven to 350°. In a large bowl, combine flour, powdered milk, garlic powder, salt, and sugar. Cut in shortening. Mix in egg, then add liver powder. Add ice water until mixture forms a ball. Pat out dough ˝ inch thick on a lightly oiled cookie sheet. Cut with any size cutter and remove scraps. Bake 30 minutes. Cool before serving.

  “Here’s to good work situations,” he said seriously, raising his glass.

  I clinked my glass against his and sipped. “Speaking of which. I saw Shockley.”

  “Please don’t ruin my cooking experience,” he said with the same jolly sarcasm. He turned enthusiastically back to the dog biscuit dough. “And before you say one word, I’ll tell you why I’m doing this. Jake needs to trust us. So we’ve got to pamper him. Show him that we care.”

  “I certainly hope making homemade dog biscuits at one o’clock in the morning does the trick.”

  Undiscouraged, Tom grinned again. “Besides that, Shockley made me so damn mad yesterday, I’m thinking of having his secretary give him some of these with his coffee Monday morning.”

  I groaned. Would that idiot police chief never stop bothering my husband? “Now what?”

  “First tell me about your party. The food turned out all right, didn’t it? Did the tent and ovens get there on time? How about Macguire?”

  I briefly recapped the evening’s events, concluding with my worry that Marla’s erratic behavior might lead to another bout with heart disease.

  “Trouble with an assay?” Tom frowned. “Why didn’t she ask Tony about it before confronting Albert?”

  I sipped the champagne. “Discretion and tact have never been Marla’s long suits, Tom. Besides, the mine is Albert’s baby, not Tony’s. Anyway, I’m sure that now she wishes she had had a tete-a-tete with Tony instead of bawling out his partner in front of everybody.”

  “This is going to put the captain in a foul mood,” Tom mused. “Glad he’ll have the rest of the weekend to think about it.”

  “You mentioned that he had upset you.”

  “Upset me? Upset me? You mean, after I’ve worked two months on the case against David Calvin, the fact that Shockley has ruined it for me has upset me? Nah.”

  David Calvin had shot and killed his ex-wife not five miles from our home. Calvin hadn’t liked the fact that his ex was going out with somebody, so he’d shot the boyfriend, too. The boyfriend had been in a coma for two months. I knew that Tom had recovered Calvin’s murder weapon and vehicle, and had been confident about getting a conviction.

  “Oh, Tom, don’t tell me. What did Shockley do now?”

  Tom heaved a huge sigh and fingered his glass. “We have investigative keys. What that means is, say we know a guy was wearing a black shirt, that he used a thirty-two, that he shot the victim four times. Those facts are the keys. They are secret. Very, very secret. The reason we don’t divulge the keys is that we use them in questioning the suspect. Say we ask about the weapon, without being specific. The guy says, ‘But I don’t even own a thirty-two!’ Then we know we’ve got our guy.”

  The kitchen began to fill with a savory, homemade-bread aroma. Lucky Jake. I cut myself a slice of sourdough, smeared it with the creamy cheese, and waited for Tom to continue.

  “Shockley was so proud of all the work we’ve – no, wait – the work I’ve done, that he blabbed about it to a lawyer friend of his. The captain needs to impress people. Anyway, that attorney just became the court-appointed defense lawyer for David Calvin.” He took a last swig of champagne. “Good-bye, case.”

  “No, no,” I protested. “You’ve got other evidence, you’ve got – “

  “Trust me,” he said as he brought the sheet of warm bone-shaped biscuits out of the oven. “You lose the keys, you’ve lost the case.”

  I rinsed our glasses while he set the biscuits on racks to cool.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” I murmured in his ear. “And then I want to have some fun.”

  “Oh, woman,” he said with a chuckle. “You better make that a quick shower.”

  The snow turned back to rain that pattered on the roof as we made love. Afterward, I snuggled into Tom’s arms, my hair still damp from the fast shower. As I felt his warmth surround me, I pondered what kind of wonderful man would take the time to make biscuits for my son’s new dog after two months of work had been ruined and a killer might go free.

  4

  Sunday morning I was startled awake by an ungodly canine howl. At first I thought the sound was a dream. Maybe it was the Hound of Heaven’s wail, promising divine retribution. Or perhaps it was the bellow of the I Hound of the Baskervilles, on the trail of a hapless victim.

  It was neither. It was good old Jake, the hound of Arch. Our much-desired-although-not-by-me canine pet had a problem with allowing people to sleep. Apparently Tom had already succumbed; I could hear the familiar clinking of dishes as he worked in the kitchen. I rolled over and covered my head with a pillow so I didn’t have to see the still-falling rain. I didn’t resent Jake, I told myself, because Arch loved him. And Tom was working hard with Arc
h to rehabilitate the dog. I knew I shouldn’t feel like Scrooge, but I did.

  The sheriffs department had branded Jake an unreliable bloodhound. When the dog’s handler of many years retired, the new handler insisted Jake had lost the scent on three consecutive trails. Jake fell into disrepute, was released from his Furman County K-9 unit, and ended up in a kennel. When the hound lost weight and became despondent, an activist group of dog-lovers obtained his release from the department and put him up for adoption. Seizing an opportunity, Tom had brought Jake home last month. Brought him home gleefully. Unrepentantly. As if to mock me, Jake raised his howl an octave and several decibels.

  I burrowed under the handmade king-size quilt Tom had presented to me on our first anniversary. Yes, I loved Tom, I 10ved him to pieces. I just didn’t love Jake, even if my good-hearted husband had brought him home because my son had been pleading for a pet from time immemorial. Now the two males in my life seemed to have found new meaning in nursing the wretched animal back to mental and physical health. Unfortunately, despite a layer of batting over my ears, I could still hear unreliable, untrustworthy, unhappy Jake. Perhaps he needed to share his misery.

  He wasn’t the only one who wasn’t happy this morning. Depression surfaced. I wished Tom were back in our warm bed, so I could forget the feeling of defeat that inevitably comes on the morning after a bad catered event. Disrupted party, no bookings, sullied reputation looming. Not to mention the possibility of going out of business. I groaned. Even a bloodhound’s plaintive wail couldn’t drown out the memory of Marla screeching. Now, six too-short hours later, I was in no mood to order Jake-reincarnated-from-the-Baskervilles to be quiet. Not that the The Howler would pay the slightest attention to me, anyway.

  As I hauled myself out of bed, I remembered I had a solitary booking for the day – an anniversary dinner for the Kirby-Joneses, buyers for a local gift store who had just returned from Kenya. Weddings and anniversaries were usually my bread and butter in June. This June, however, it seemed as if people either were not getting married, were getting divorced, or were celebrating their anniversaries in Fiji. Today’s job would be the perfect antidote for worry. I had been thankful for it, even though it had posed a few problems.

  I stretched through my yoga routine and recalled all the fun Macguire and I had had planning the menu for the Kirby-Joneses. Twenty-five years ago, well-wishers at their wedding reception had so besieged the newlywed K-Js that the bride and groom had left Washington’s Congressional Country Club ravenous. So we drove and drove, and then we stopped and had this wonderful Italian food, Mrs. Kirby-Jones had wistfully informed me at our planning meeting. It was at a marvelous place called Guido’s on Rockville Pike. I wore my pink dress with the double-orchid corsage.

  As it turned out, the Kirby-Joneses desired a menu offering Italian items that exactly matched the dinner they’d had right after their wedding reception. I’d promptly acquiesced. After all, most. food orders are emotionally based.

  I moved from the yoga asana known as the Sun Greeting to some leg stretches. I recalled poor Macguire’s unhappy face when he’d reported back to me. His painstaking investigations had revealed that Guido’s-on-the-Pike in Rockville, Maryland, had gone out of business over a decade ago. Guido, now deceased, hadn’t bequeathed any menus to his heirs. Of course, I had not revealed these details to Mrs. Kirby-Jones. As I said, I was frantic for work. I just need to know what you ordered, I’d said confidently to my new client. Don’t give it a second thought, I’d maintained, we’ll ask the restaurant for their recipes and it’ll taste just like Guido’s. With what I considered promising resourcefulness, Macguire had located a single back issue of Gourmet that contained Guido’s-on-the-Pike recipe for Bolognese sauce. So now I was committed to serving pizza with goat cheese, ravioli in white wine cream sauce, lasagne verde with Bolognese sauce, tossed salad, Italian bread, and tiramisu to twenty people. But in April, when I’d booked the event, hoping we could serve dinner on the Kirby-Joneses’ expansive deck, I hadn’t figured on an incessant downpour on June 6. Maybe that was why Jake was howling. Somebody had left him out in the rain. I wanted to howl, too.

  Coffee, I thought. I need coffee. I finished dressing for church and went in search of caffeine and the rest of the household. The only family member I could find was Scout the cat, a stray I’d adopted two years ago. He was crouched in a window well watching Jake bark. I would have sworn the cat was delighted to observe the dog’s misery. To date, Scout had made no sign of forgiving us for adopting the hound.

  “I’m sorry,” I muttered, and stroked his back. know you would have preferred a gerbil.”

  Scout’s response was the scathing feline equivalent of hrumph.

  “Mom?” came Arch’s voice from behind me. “Why I are you talking to the cat about rodents?”

  My son’s appearance this morning was a jumble of tortoiseshell glasses magnifying brown eyes, freckles, tousled brown hair topped with a baseball cap worn backwards, sweatpants, and a too-long, crookedly hanging orange poncho. “Well, Mom?” he said in the reproachful tone he often took with me these days. He straightened his glasses on his freckled nose and waited.

  “I feel sorry for Scout. Why is that dog howling, anyway?”

  Arch peered out the window and adjusted his cap. “He’s not that dog. Jake’s just excited.”

  “About what?”

  “About going out with Tom and me.”

  “Out where? Aren’t you coming with me to church?”

  Arch frowned. “We’re going on a mission, actually. Tom took me to the five o’clock church service yesterday. Jake is feeling a lot better, and not acting so …you know, nervous. We wanted to see if he could get his trust level back.” He paused. When I didn’t protest his attempt to rehabilitate Jake, he plowed on. “Listen, General Farquhar called while you were gone last night. I told him about getting Jake. He wants us to come visit.”

  “Who’s ‘us’?” I asked. I hated sounding like an interrogator, but when it came to General Bo Farquhar, there wasn’t much choice. The only guest who isn’t here is General Farquhar, Tony Royce had said. Says he’s too busy. Really. General Bo, who also happened to be Marla’s brother-in-law, had recently finished his prison sentence for possessing rocket-propelled grenades, a large quantity of C-4, Kalashnikovs, Uzis, and all kinds of other contraband. Until he became settled, the general was staying on the estate of some friends who were adapting military technology for law enforcement. I’d heard their thousand-acre spread west of Aspen Meadow was surrounded by closed-circuit cameras and a nine-foot electrical fence. Not the place you wanted to send your son with his untrustworthy dog for a pleasant afternoon romp in the pouring rain.

  “Listen, Mom, General Bo says he’s real depressed. He was hoping you could bring him something made with chocolate, since the people who’re taking care of him don’t like it or don’t have it or something. His phone number’s down in the kitchen. Anyway. Gotta fly.” His high-topped black sneakers made squishing noises as he fled before I could raise any more objections.

  “Arch, please tell me where you’re going. I won’t veto it. Even though it’s raining, in case you hadn’t noticed.”

  The orange poncho rustled as Arch’s short legs hastened down the hallway. “Better ask Tom,” he threw back over his shoulder. “I have to go make sure we have everything. Jake’s getting impatient.”

  No kidding. I glanced at my reflection in one of Tom’s antique mirrors, and wondered if what folks said about owners looking like their pets would come to pass. I was still a short, slightly chunky thirty-three-year-old with unfashionably curly blond hair and brown eyes. Jake, on the other hand, boasted a sleek brown body, a long nose, droopy eyes and ears, and a perpetually slobbery mouth. All these attributes, my son had enthusiastically reported, helped him smell better. I pressed my lips together. I wished I liked Jake more, since he made Arch so happy. When I’d divorced his father six years ago, Arch had started begging for a pet. But I was freshly single, financi
ally shaky, and struggling to launch a new catering business, not to mention a new emotional life, and I couldn’t face the idea of tending an animal. I couldn’t picture tearing up endless heads of lettuce for guinea pigs or listening to hamsters race all night on their little wheels. Back then, it was all I could do to maintain myself and Arch and handle the food preparation for nervous clients.

  I remembered the rainy day last month when Tom had arrived with Jake. The prospect of caring for an emotionally distraught and out-of-work bloodhound in addition to running my not-so-healthy catering business had been too much. I’d threatened to stick my head into the proofing oven with the cinnamon rolls. I was prevented from doing so by Jake’s enthusiastic scrabbling up the cabinet door. Then his not-always-reliable olfactory gland directed him toward the oven, and his powerful legs and body shoved me out of the way as he moved in closer to the rolls. Apparently, Jake loved the smell of cinnamon.

  I sighed and entered the kitchen. The delectable smell of lemon and cherries mingled. Outside, Jake yowled away from his doghouse. Rain spat against the windows. My kitchen was warm and snug and smelled terrific. Still, my mood failed to improve.

  Tom was setting a single place with a flowered Limoges plate. Hearing my sigh, he shot me an appraising look. Like Arch, he wore a tentlike fluorescent orange poncho. I couldn’t imagine what they were planning to do in the rain to restore Jake’s shattered ability to trust humans. Clearly, homemade dog biscuits were not enough. Tom gave me his usual jaunty smile. His sand-colored hair was damp. Perhaps he’d already tried to quiet the dog outside, to no avail. Seeing my forlorn look, his handsome face and green eyes softened.

  “Morning, Miss G.” He pressed the button on the espresso machine while his other big hand reached for a diminutive cup. “Not feeling too happy? How about, some coffee cake? Be out in five minutes.”

  I sighed again. “Sure.”

  “Now, sit down and have some caffeine. We’re going to be going out pretty quick here. Marla called. She wants you to go down to the Prospect office with her tomorrow morning.”