“I will—” Julian began, but Father Pete stopped him by holding up his hand, which resembled a bear’s paw.
“Back in the old days,” Father Pete went on, almost apologetically, “I could have given, or at least loaned, Drew money from my discretionary fund. But with so many priests using their discretionary funds to send themselves to Europe or to buy new Volvos, now the government says all funds in those accounts have to go to the genuinely, verifiably poor. I’m pretty sure Drew and Holly are not actually poverty-stricken, even if they were going through a bad patch. I know George doesn’t have financial issues—”
“I’ll give Drew money,” Julian piped up.
“So will Tom and I,” I said. “How much are we talking about?”
“Let me do it!” Julian said, his grief momentarily flashing as anger. Julian had inherited money that he seemed hardly ever to use, except when his friends needed to be bailed out of a fix. And the IRS wasn’t asking questions. “How much does he need?”
“About a thousand,” Father Pete said, his tone still remorseful.
“No sweat,” said Julian.
I said, “Why don’t I give him five hundred, and you can do the other five?”
Julian rubbed his now-scruffy chin. “I’ll tell you why not. It takes forever to settle an estate these days, what with filing a will, going through probate, you name it. So a year or more could pass before you’re paid back. And with Arch going off to college next year—”
“Rather than you two arguing over who gets to be more charitable,” Father Pete interrupted, “I’m making an executive decision that Julian will give him the money.”
“Good,” said Julian. “I have my checkbook right here.” He drew a checkbook and pen out of one of his deep pockets and began writing furiously.
Father Pete waited until Julian had ripped the check out and handed it to him. Then our priest said, too casually, “Julian, why don’t you go upstairs with the boys and the sergeant, and help Drew pack? He said all he’s done is get the suitcase down. He also needs to get his phone and charger, finish his laundry, find his hiking boots, and pull together whatever else you, he, and Arch think he’ll need for a fishing trip in Alaska. Goldy and I can go out to the kitchen to discuss arrangements for Holly.”
I shook my head vigorously. I did not want to talk about arrangements for Holly.
“What about this box?” I asked. “Drew said it was a collage for one of Holly’s clients.” I glanced over at the carton. From not far away, the washing machine began to chug. When someone dies, survivors have to deal with the minutiae left behind by the deceased: with their children’s laundry, with their paperwork, with planning a liturgy. Sometimes these tasks can be comforting. Other times, they send survivors like yours truly into a state of bewilderment. Beside me, Julian, too, seemed frozen.
I’d become fixated on the box simply because it seemed like something we could figure out. If Drew was going to be gone for a week, shouldn’t we open it to see who was supposed to get it?
“I’ll ask Drew about it,” I said.
“Let Julian do that, Goldy,” Father Pete said gently. “Please, come out to the kitchen with me. You could help by cleaning out Holly’s refrigerator. If no one is going to be here for a week, food shouldn’t be left to spoil. Then you and I can talk about pulling together a memorial service, for when Drew gets back.”
“Okay,” I said, feeling unsure. But Father Pete was right. I needed to do something with my hands.
“First?” said Father Pete, once he was settled in a kitchen chair. “Could you see if Holly has some of the bourbon I had the last time I was here? It’s in the pantry.” He took a deep breath. “Just because I see death often doesn’t mean I’m used to it. Strokes, heart attacks, cancer in the young, it happens more than you’d think. Plus, Holly was so kind, so funny . . .”
He didn’t need to finish the thought. I located a small bottle of Kentucky’s signature liquor in Holly’s pantry and poured Father Pete what he asked for: an inch of bourbon with no ice, no water, and for heaven’s sake, he added, no ginger ale. I poured myself a tiny bit of the golden liquid and without thinking slugged it down. It hit my brain like fire.
While Father Pete sipped, I opened Holly’s refrigerator. It contained very little: only two opened packages of supermarket cheese; one cheddar, one Swiss, both well wrapped in plastic. A quart of milk felt half empty, ditto a pint of supermarket-brand cottage cheese. The crisper held only a quarter of a head of iceberg lettuce. I guess when you lose your house, you also lose the Brie, the Gruyère, the asparagus, the strawberries, and the fresh fish you always swore by.
Father Pete finished his whiskey and asked me to give him a refill. I’d never seen him have more than a single drink over the course of an entire evening. As he started on his second, he asked if I knew what hymns Holly liked.
“Hymns?” I chucked the cheeses into the trash. “I don’t have a clue.”
Father Pete fretted. “This is why people should plan. It’s good we’re having that dinner. The music director will be making a presentation.”
I took a deep breath. I couldn’t think that far ahead.
I poured the milk down the drain and put all the rest of the refrigerator contents in a large plastic bag that I tied shut and took out to the garage. There, I unfastened the chains on a wheeled bear-proof trash can. With all the bears raiding our neighborhoods, the Denver outfit retrofitting trash containers with hooks and chains must be making a mint. I unfastened the clips and dropped the bag into the half-full can, then dragged the thing to the curb.
Without forethought, I sat down on the pavement. I felt Holly’s passing now like the unexpected ocean waves that used to knock me down when I was a kid. Instead of a mouthful of grit, I felt dizzy. Maybe I shouldn’t have had the bourbon. Maybe I should have had some more. I ordered myself to get up and go back into the house.
Back in the kitchen, Father Pete was refilling his glass. When he saw me, his large face reddened. He began to talk about the readings for the Burial of the Dead, Rites I and II. Was this the way he dealt with his own grief? I wondered.
I was fidgety and simply could not listen. I opened the freezer. It held only frozen spinach, peas, and beans, all supermarket brand, and frozen chicken thighs that had been divided into freezer bags. From the quantities, I guessed Holly had bought everything in there on sale.
Questions about Holly’s financial situation niggled at the edges of my brain. Marla hadn’t known anything apart from the fact that Holly had lost her house in the country club. Our friend hadn’t had time to share what was going on. I saw her pretty face again, heard her earnest words: We’ll get together soon, and talk . . .
Did Drew know what was going on with Holly’s finances? Or had he just picked up on the animosity between his parents, and didn’t want to agitate George or Lena? I doubted that he knew the particulars. I’d learned from experience that the last thing you wanted to trouble a child of divorce with were discussions of your financial problems.
From behind me, it sounded as if Father Pete was talking to himself. He concluded, resignedly, that he supposed he should hold off on setting a date for the memorial service until after Drew returned. No matter what they initially thought the cause and manner of death was, there was that autopsy to contend with. Those always held things up.
I picked up the bottle of bourbon, as much to get it away from Father Pete as anything else. I said, “Why don’t we go out on the deck, where Drew won’t be able to hear us?”
“Good idea. I’ll just go up to his room to tell them we’ll be outside.”
After he left, I poured myself a half inch of bourbon in a plastic cup. It occurred to me that Drew might need me to do errands for him. But if I went up and asked, Arch might glare at me for hovering or intruding. So I glanced at the detritus that Drew had dumped from the shorts he’d needed to wash. It contained a cell phone. Hadn’t Father Pete said Drew needed to take his phone and charger to Alaska? And ha
dn’t Tom told me that Drew had called 911 from a disposable, which deputies had taken down to the department?
I picked up the phone. On the back was a piece of adhesive tape where Holly had penned Mom’s. This was a cell phone Drew had had in his pocket? Or maybe Holly had had it, and he’d used it . . .
Curiosity cut through my brain’s fog. The whole thing had happened so swiftly, and been so odd, so heart-wrenching. Feeling only slightly guilty, I pressed the button for Recents. There were calls to the church, to me, and to Marla. There were no voice-mail messages. I tapped the icon for text messages. What harm could it do? I wondered. Holly was dead.
There was only one: it was from a cell-phone number I did not recognize. I stared at the message. Not another cent. Don’t ask, or you will regret it.
I blinked, then took a small sip of the whiskey. The bourbon burned my throat, then my stomach. I glanced at the lake. Would Tom want to know about this? Yes.
Yet I did not want to call attention to the message, to arouse more grief and curiosity from Drew, by taking the phone upstairs to Sergeant Jones. My own cell was in the van. Better to call Tom from Holly’s cell, I figured.
Would Drew be able to hear me from the kitchen? What if he made a sudden appearance? No matter what, I did not want him to hear me phoning the sheriff’s department. I slid through the glass doors to the upper deck, doubting I would be audible to Father Pete and the boys. The window on the second floor must have been to a hallway. The voices inside were muffled. Outside was better than the kitchen, but I would still have to whisper.
Holly had planted long containers of pink and purple petunia blossoms at the far end of the deck. The blooms fluttered in the breeze, now sharpening with the advent of evening. Sticking up from the planter was one of those plastic holders that florists put in bouquets. Instead of a card, though, was a business envelope.
I punched in the numbers for Tom’s cell as I walked to the planter. Words on the envelope, written in marker pen, were legible: DREW! HERE’S YOUR MONEY! Oh, good, I thought, there was one problem solved.
A few steps onward, there was a horrific cracking noise. What the hell was that? I wondered. Then I felt myself losing my balance. As my body slid sideways, I tried to reach out for something, anything.
But the deck railing was too far away. The boards under my feet gave way.
Down I plummeted, down past the second deck, down past the outside staircases, down, down, down, for what seemed like forever, or a blink. I could hear my own scream, but as in a nightmare, wasn’t sure anyone else could. I choked on my shriek once I plunged into the icy lake.
My leg hit something hard under the lake’s surface. I screamed and inhaled way too much water. Then I blacked out.
7
Julian, that champion swimmer, hauled me out of the water. At least, that’s what the paramedic told me in the ambulance, when I awoke, shivering, with excruciating pain running down my left leg. I was on my stomach, and the medic was tending to my thigh. An IV drip snaked into my right arm.
“How did you know Julian was a swimmer—” I began, before the ambo swayed precipitously. I leaned off the narrow stretcher and was sick.
“Don’t talk,” the medic commanded. His gloved hand offered a wipe for my mouth. Actually, the guy looked familiar. Did I know him? I couldn’t remember.
“There was a note,” I said, defying his command. “On the end of the deck. That’s why I walked out—”
“Stop talking.” He finished taping my leg.
“You have to call the sheriff’s department,” I ordered him. He was right: talking made my leg shriek with pain. “Sergeant Jones was with us.” And . . . what? “My husband is an investigator at the department. Tom Schulz.”
“I know who you are, and I know who your husband is,” the paramedic said, trying to sound kind. I noted that my wet clothes had been cut away and I now was ensconced in a hospital gown and warm blankets.
“Call Tom right now. Tell him there was a note on the deck.” I couldn’t say please. Despite the blankets, my whole body was trembling.
The paramedic exhaled, but used a cell phone to call the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. After a delay in which he was patched through to someone, he relayed the news about the note on the deck, and how I was sure the deck had been sabotaged. After a few moments, he snapped the phone closed and announced, “Your husband is meeting us at the hospital. He said to tell you everyone else is okay.”
I was dimly aware, or afraid, that that bit, Your husband is meeting us at the hospital, was one of those good-news, bad-news things. Tom loved me, no question. He would be worried for me. I was also keenly, embarrassingly aware of the look he would give me: Can’t you even take a kid home without getting into a mess? Or plunging into the lake?
I sighed.
A few minutes later the ambo arrived at the emergency room of Southwest Hospital, the closest major facility to Aspen Meadow. That certainly hadn’t taken long. I wondered, How long was I out? When is my leg going to stop hurting? And, most illogically of all: Have I gained so much weight this winter that I could collapse the boards of a deck?
No, no, I told myself. Something was wrong with that damned deck.
But who was the intended victim? Drew?
The ER staff repeated the news that my husband was on his way. A policewoman was already there, they also said, and she would be staying with me. To make sure you don’t get into more trouble was the unspoken message. I breathed again and allowed myself to be wheeled into a cubicle. Not that I could have done anything about it.
A policewoman, tall, thin, with brown hair pulled into a bun, introduced herself. I assumed Sergeant Jones had stayed with Drew. But my mind was so muddled that I couldn’t remember this policewoman’s name thirty seconds after she’d given it. She would be outside the curtain, she said, if I needed her.
A doctor pulled back the curtain, and this time I thought to look for a name tag. Walter Smith, M.D. That was a name I hoped I could remember. Dr. Smith, who was short and wide and had silver hair that he combed back over thick curly black hair, said that the force of hitting the lake and suddenly inhaling water had caused me to lose consciousness. He told me that I had abrasions on my left leg, and that the skin on that leg was badly scraped. Scraped, I thought. Is that a medical term, doc?
Apparently, Dr. Smith went on, my leg had hit something submerged beneath the water. Still, because I’d blacked out when I hit the lake, he wanted to check for a concussion. He also wanted to check my lungs, because I must have inhaled lake water.
I took a blow to the leg, but did not get my leg blown off, I thought again. But I kept my mouth shut.
Smith listened to my lungs and nodded. He had me follow a minilight from one side to the other. I guess I passed, because Smith began speaking in reverential tones about “Investigator Schulz.” Honestly, it seemed as if even the mere mention of my husband had people bowing at his feet.
Smith asked me what month it was, who the president was, and what the main ingredient for bread was.
I answered the first two questions, then said, “Do you mean the most important ingredient in bread? Or the main ingredient?”
He shook his head, smiled ruefully, and said everything he had heard about me was true. I did not find this reassuring.
I asked him for a half dozen aspirin, please. He said he would put something into my drip. Meanwhile, he needed to examine my leg. The medic had wrapped it well, he concluded admiringly, after a moment of painful pressing. They were going to unwrap it, though, put antibiotic cream on it, then rewrap it. All in all, Smith concluded, I was pretty lucky.
“I don’t feel very lucky,” I said.
“The leg will turn black-and-blue,” Dr. Smith said crisply. “It will be sore. Give it a week of rest, and you should be fine.”
A week of rest? Clearly, Dr. Smith had never worked as a caterer.
“You must have hit a rock when you fell into the lake,” Smith mused as he was leaving. �
��Did you see it?”
“You know what? As I fell, I didn’t get that good a look at what was underwater. Now, how about that painkiller?”
Smith disappeared. A nurse swished in and put what I hoped was a very strong opiate into the drip. She then stayed to keep me awake. I told her that Dr. Smith had ruled out a concussion. She flipped through the notes on the clipboard, and said he had not ruled out a concussion, and she was there to keep me awake.
Which was too bad, because within a few moments I wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep. The nurse asked if I liked living in Aspen Meadow, were we really getting a lot of bears this summer, and was climate change affecting us? I finally gave her my full attention only because I was fantasizing about the amount of strength it would take to strangle her with my IV cord.
“Shut up,” I snarled unkindly.
“Oh, dear, they said you were difficult,” she commented.
“They were right!” I cried.
“Do you want another warm blanket?” she asked, unfazed.
I realized I was shaking—from cold, from despair, from stress, I did not know. “Sorry. Yes. I’m so sorry.”
“Miss G.,” said Tom, suddenly beside me. The nurse whisked away, then returned with a warm blanket, which she tucked around me. Was it my imagination, or was she opening her eyes wide at Tom, as if to say, Poor you, to be married to this harpy?
“Goldy,” said Tom, once the nurse had left. “How’re you doing?”
“Better now that you’re here. And I don’t need a policewoman to keep me out of further trouble.”
The skin around Tom’s green eyes wrinkled. This was a small indicator, a tell I had learned, that he was in emotional pain. “The deputy is here because I was worried about keeping you safe. Sergeant Jones found the empty envelope addressed to Drew. It was floating on the lake surface. There was no money anywhere. Then the medic called, telling us that the envelope was what had lured you to the end of the deck. I would have been here earlier, but I wanted to get a look at the structure, or what’s left of it. I also wanted to check out the lake underneath it.”
The Whole Enchilada Page 7
