Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) gs-1

by Diane Mott Davidson

  We settled on Friday before school and hung up. One more thing I just couldn’t wait for.

  The next morning frost painted the kitchen windows and I had the usual go-round with Arch concerning his outer clothing.

  “But it gets so hot in the afternoon,” he complained, “and kids make fun of me wearing my coat when they’re in sweats.”

  “So let them,” I said. “You won’t be sick for Halloween and they will, which is all right because from what you say they don’t care about it anyway.”

  He stomped out muttering something unintelligible.

  The van was doing its cough-and-sputter warm-up routine when Patty Sue came skittering out of the house in white lace blouse, white skirt, and matching white tights. No coat for her either. It was no wonder she had health problems. But I couldn’t ask her about anything. We had been friends when she first arrived. What had happened?

  When I pulled up in front of Korman and Korman, Obstetrics and Gynecology, Patty Sue gave me a puzzled look.

  “Did you say you were sick?” she asked.

  I sighed. “Yes and no.”

  Entering K and K, I had always told John Richard, was an experience rivaled only by stepping into the big greenhouse at the Denver Botanic Gardens. Why obstetricians needed a jungle environment for an office was something better left to psychologists. Perhaps the sudden entry into leanness suggested fecundity. Freud, I had told John Richard to his immense irritation, would have hypothesized something more specific. I avoided the enfolding arms of a stand of Norfolk pine, threaded my way through oversized bamboo plants, and ducked a hanging basket of wandering Jew before arriving at the reception desk.

  “Do you have an appointment?” asked the nurse-receptionist.

  “Yes,” I said breezily. “You just don’t recognize me without my safari hat.”

  “Name?”

  “Bear,” I said, “as in Goldilocks and the Three—”

  “I don’t have a chart on you,” she said without looking up. “You’ll have to fill out new-patient papers.” She handed me a clipboard filled with forms that would have given the IRS pause.

  “But you don’t understand,” I said. “John Richard is my—”

  I stopped as her withering glance shot through me. Perhaps it would be better not to advertise my presence in this office after a four-year absence. Nor did I feel welcome, given the Jerk’s assumption of my guilt in the rat-poison affair. In fact I had better try to avoid him altogether.

  “Tell you what,” I said conspiratorially, “I’ll bet I could find my file back there. Just let me take a look.”

  “Oh no—” she began, but was interrupted by an extremely distressed patient who had appeared at my side.

  “I’m pregnant,” whispered a woman to the nurse. Her voice broke. She said, “Unplanned.” The patient signaled to her husband, who emerged from behind the foliage.

  “You have two options,” the nurse started to say as I slid behind the counter’s side door.

  “And we were so careful,” the woman complained.

  I surveyed the file cabinets. Inside these formidable gray metal boxes the files were color-coded, I knew. Since more than thirty-six months had elapsed since I had been treated by my ex-husband, I would be classified as inactive. I opened the top drawer, A through I, pink files.

  I saw some names I recognized, but no Bear. Were these current? The next drawer, J through S, was more helpful. There was Jackson, T., which would be Trixie, and Korman, M., which would be Marla. She had been married to John Richard more recently than I, and might still be classified as active, although like me she now went to a female gynecologist in Denver. There was also Korman, V.—Vonette. At this juncture I remembered that the last time I had been in the Korman office, I too had been a Korman, so these must be the current or only recently inactive patients.

  I skipped the next drawer and opened drawer J through S in the adjoining cabinet, which bulged with green files. Inactive? The unhappily expectant patient at the desk was still bemoaning her fate; her husband was figuring out dates with the nurse. My ex-husband’s voice floated out his office door.

  If only there were some plants behind the counter. I needed cover.

  I turned back to the green files and had a sudden thought. Could Laura Smiley be in here? Would she have been active or inactive? I flipped quickly back to the S pink files: Sandoval, Scalia, Sheffield, Smythe. Back to the green files I went, checking into Slacek, Smalrose, Smart, Smith. No Smiley in either green or pink. Perhaps it had been misfiled. I began with the green H’s, where I saw Heath and Hilliard, then the J’s, Jacoby, Jermaine, and so on, through K’s, where I found Korman, G., and removed it, through the L’s, Lapham, Leduc, Locraft, and Ludmiller, when the sudden swift foot of John Richard kicked the file drawer out of my hands so that it crashed into the cabinet.

  “You,” he said. “What the hell are you doing in here? I mean, besides being nosy?”

  “I’m not being nosy,” I said. I gritted my teeth and tried to cut him with a glance. From behind the waiting-room bushes faces appeared, like curious pygmies. “I was looking,” I said airily, “for my file.” I waved it. “Which I found.”

  Whispers from the waiting room.

  John Richard said to the nurse, “Why is she back here?”

  The nurse looked at me and back at the Jerk, who was a large hulking blond presence in his white doctor coat.

  “She was looking for her file,” she said. “I think.”

  John Richard narrowed his eyes at me again. “I suppose you weaseled your way in here with an appointment?”

  I murmured assent, holding my file like a life preserver with one hand, and gesturing to the appointment book with the other. John Richard hunched over the book, and I prayed his pants would split. Then he glared back at me.

  “Let me tell you something,” he said in a rough whisper. His index finger stabbed the air between us. “I don’t know what you’re up to here. But you keep out of those confidential files, you little bitch. If you try to harm my father again I’ll wring your neck. And listen up. Get yourself another doctor. Don’t come back to this office or I’ll call the cops.”

  “I’ve got another doctor,” I said. “But feel free to call the cops. Ah … try the one I’ve been going out with. He shoots people for assault and battery.”

  John Richard gave me a look with enough steel in it to keep Pittsburgh going for a day. Then he whisked out in a cloud of anger and white coat.

  “You can see Dr. Korman now,” said the nurse, avoiding my eyes. “The other doctor. Just go on back.” She knew she had screwed up.

  Patty Sue was nowhere in sight. I assumed she had already seen Fritz, come back out through the plants, and gone downstairs to the pastry shop for a bite to eat. Knowing Patty Sue, it would be more than a bite. I walked quickly past the waiting-room jungle and peered around the corner into the room where they drew blood and refrigerated samples and medications. This was also where they stored all the equipment for “office surgery,” their euphemistic term for ridding the uterus of anything unwanted. My guess was that such a procedure would be the next visit for the unexpectedly pregnant patient who had preceded me.

  I knew I was also unwanted in this office. I peeked around the corner, unwilling to be removed myself.

  The room with the abortion equipment was empty. I walked quietly past.

  “Hi, Fritz,” I said as I entered his office. “Hope you don’t mind my coming in like this.”

  “Goldy.” He looked up at me with a frown. He said, “You know you’re not supposed to come in here. Let the nurse put you in one of the examination rooms. Then I’ll come see you.”

  “Oh thanks,” I said, and averted my eyes from his tall frame to the office greenery, which resembled the profusion of foliage in the waiting room. There were rows of geraniums on shelves in a built-out window, Swedish and other strains of ivy hanging behind the desk and couch, and tall rubber plants hugging the frame of a door. “Tell me, Fritz
,” I said, “do you have a repressed desire to be a botanist?”

  He smiled. He sat in his chair and swiveled toward me. With his head tilted, his bald pate caught the light and shone like a halo. He said, “Repressed desires? That’s shrink talk. Now why don’t you go to an examination room and we’ll get on with our appointment?”

  I sat on the couch, a dark, softly stuffed expanse that exuded the sensual smell and sigh of leather.

  “I’m not sick,” I said.

  He chuckled. “That’s not what my son tells me.”

  “Did you like the cakes?”

  He nodded. “Is that why you’re here? To talk about food? Because I have other patients to attend to. Ones who are sick.”

  “I need to talk to you about business. Yours and mine, if that’s okay. I won’t take long.”

  He grinned again. His teeth were slightly gray, from age, but when he smiled he filled the room with his aura, a sort of older-movie-star appeal.

  He said, “I don’t know anything about cooking, Goldy.”

  “That’s okay,” I said and looked at a wall of framed degrees and other official-looking papers, then at a table next to the couch where African violets circled some family photographs. In these Vonette and John Richard appeared with the doctor, and there were shots of fishing buddies. There was no sign of the strange girl.

  “Fritz.” I eyed him solemnly. “You know I didn’t put that stuff in your coffee. But the cops have closed down my business until they figure out what’s going on. You’d think that would be simple, but it isn’t.” I told him that I was looking into the histories of some of his former patients who might have something against him.

  He said, “So if the catering doesn’t work out, you’re considering a career with the cops?” Another wide smile. “You know I can’t tell you anything about patients. I heard John Richard out there screaming at you for going through the files.” He leaned toward me. “They’re confidential, Goldy.”

  “Did Trixie Jackson ever threaten you?” I demanded. “She was real upset about her stillbirth.”

  He cocked his head and looked at me as if he were dealing with a thick-headed child. “It’s a very difficult thing for a prospective mother to take. It’s also hard on the doctor.”

  I gave him a sympathetic look. “I’m sure.” I cleared my throat. “How about Laura?”

  His face lost expression. “Laura who?”

  “Laura Smiley,” I said, astonished. Did he really have so many patients with that first name? I said, “Laura whose funeral you attended nine days ago. Who, a long time ago, also lived in Carolton, Illinois.” I took a breath. “Who had an appointment with you the day she died.”

  He shook his head. “You’re confused, Goldy, in more ways than one.” He stood up, a signal our interview was over. “Do you think Laura Smiley messed with my coffee? She couldn’t have put pellets in someone’s drink if she was dead, could she? And I told you patient dealings are not open to your misguided prying. Now why don’t you go home and cook and let the police do the investigating?”

  I stood up but pressed on. “How come there’s no file out there on her, if she was a patient?” Fritz shrugged. I said, “Why can’t you tell me if or why she was here the day she died? I mean if you or John Richard told her she had cancer or something, then the cops should know.”

  He stopped by the door I had come in. He said, “She killed herself. That’s what the police know. If they want more they can come and ask me themselves. Now it’s time for you to go.”

  “But what about in Illinois? I’ve found photographs of a girl, a teenager, and then I found an article about you—”

  He held the door open.

  He said, “Goodbye, Goldy.”

  CHAPTER 13

  I hadn’t received any clarification about the torn article in Laura’s locker. Not that Fritz would have told me about a mistrial or anything else. He had his reasons for not divulging information. I didn’t know what they were, but I doubted confidentiality of files was uppermost in his mind. As I swept and scrubbed and scoured other people’s houses that week, I decided my financial rationale for getting information was more important than any of his reasons. Let Fritz clean houses for a while, see how it felt. Unfortunately, I didn’t know what my investigation methods were going to be. Yet.

  Schulz was no help. In addition to the two homicides he was working on, he’d had another crisis. Some late-season rock climbers had found the body of a biker down Cottonwood Creek Canyon. So he was momentarily tied up sorting out the politics of rival gangs. The department clerk said he’d call me as soon as he could.

  _____

  The Thursday evening meeting of Amour Anonymous, postponed because of a funeral, was similarly funereal itself, complete with surprise ending.

  After cleaning two houses, Patty Sue said she was too tired to attend, but that she’d make the next meeting. Two other women who were occasional attendees called and backed out, so it was just Marla and myself. I made cream puffs and coffee and put out a bottle of dessert sherry.

  “I’ll eat anything you cook,” Marla said when she walked in. “The hell with the health department.”

  The sight of Marla, grinning broadly and wearing an orange and black jumper—she always dressed in seasonal colors—made my heart soften. She looked like a giant pumpkin. I hugged her.

  “I asked for food, not love,” her muffled voice said into my shoulder. “We can eat the former and talk about the latter.” I let go of her and she held up a package, grinning. “Where’s your little guy? I’ve brought him something.”

  I called Arch from the nether regions of the house and poured coffee into two cups.

  “A whole pack of Hershey bars?” Arch’s delighted voice said behind my back. “Gosh, Marla, thanks.”

  I was about to scold Marla for ruining Arch’s teeth when I got a look at his face. It was painted a shiny black.

  “What’s with the disguise?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light.

  “It’s part of some work I’m doing,” he said seriously. The whites of his eyes shone as he opened them wide. “I’m trying to make our house safer.”

  “By doing what?” I demanded, but he was gone.

  Marla shook her head. “What’s with him?”

  “Not sure,” I said. “But I think he’s still pretty spooked about Laura’s death.”

  “Well, who isn’t,” said Marla. She swallowed the last of her first cream puff and started on another. “And it doesn’t help that the dear teacher was a little nutty, either.”

  “Oh yeah?” I said. “What makes you say that? I mean, I’m beginning to think the same thing. But you get around so much more than I do.”

  “Oh, you know,” she said.

  “Marla,” I said firmly, “I don’t. And every time I try to ask anybody about Laura, the person either starts crying or kicks me off the premises.”

  “I’d like to see someone try to kick you off any premises.”

  “Just tell me why you think she was wacko. I really want to know.”

  “Well, chill out. Good Lord,” said Marla. “She would get this bee in her bonnet, I don’t know.” She sucked the filling out of her third cream puff before delicately biting into it. “I’ve always wondered about elementary school teachers anyway. They’re either slightly off base when they go in or they get that way after five years of ignoring books for grown-ups so they can gobble more third-grade texts.”

  I said, “Are you talking about teachers in general, or one in particular?”

  “Okay, look,” said Marla as she extended one of her fleshy arms for the sherry bottle. “Here’s an example. We used to both take our cars into that foreign-car repair shop off Main Street. She had that Volvo, I had the Jag. Neither of them were cheap cars to fix, tune up, get parts for, whatever. And I guess she had a lemon or something, or the guy couldn’t fix all the problems, but they would always be arguing when I came in. When he would go to check if they’d done all the work, Laura wo
uld turn around to me, flick her lighter on, and tell me how she wished she could torch the place. Then she’d light a cigarette and go ha-ha. So I’d ha-ha back. One time she told me she was keeping a list of all the Volvo’s problems, and she was going to send it to Ralph Nader in Swedish and put the whole car company out of business.”

  “Huh?” I said.

  “That’s what I said, especially when she asked me how to say piece of shit in Swedish,” Marla went on. “But here’s the weird part. The mechanic comes back and she turns all sweet. I mean, a complete switch. Making jokes. And I was sitting there thinking, What the hell’s going on here? Then after she paid him and he went back out again, she said, ‘You can bet I’m never coming back here.’ She said, ‘It can’t be that difficult to find someone who really knows how to fix cars.’ And I guess she did because I never saw her there again.”

  “Well,” I said, “she told Arch the President should paint his skin black and go to South Africa, see what it’s really like to live under apartheid.”

  “Not a bad idea,” said Marla with a grunt. “Anyway, is that what Arch is doing tonight? African sympathy ritual?”

  The lights flickered.

  “I have no idea what he’s doing,” I said. “But he’s been acting odd lately, so I wouldn’t put anything past him.”

  “Do you have something to talk about tonight?” Marla asked. “I mean besides Laura Smiley.”

  We were quiet while I tried to take the focus off Laura and put it onto myself. The lights flickered again.

  “That reminds me,” I said. “What about the unrequited love you were claiming for her?”

  “I’m checking around. Looking into it. Has to do with the beekeeping Ice Man, though, I can tell you that. I just have to find someone who’s been close to him to confirm the rumor.”

  I said, “Nothing ever works.”

  Marla wiped her mouth. “Oh, stop complaining.” She winked at me. “Tell you what, you can complain now that our two-person meeting is underway. It’s your turn, anyway.”