I said, “Mrs. Peterson, thank you for seeing us.” Did I sound charming? I wondered. “My name is Goldy Schulz, and I attended a three-day conference here eighteen years ago. It was called Setting Up a Medical Practice. Now . . . I’ve lost a friend who was here at the same time . . .” I faltered. Would the memorial-service bit work with her? I soldiered on. “Anyway, my husband, Tom, and my friend Marla”—I indicated them—“and I are setting up her memorial service, and we’re looking for any photos from the conference or people who might have known our friend Holly Ingleby, so we can invite them to her memorial service.”
“You don’t have her address book?” Mrs. Peterson asked.
“We’re going to look for that later,” I assured her. “And I have program notes from the conference all those years ago. But we thought we’d come here first.”
“For a memorial service, you need photos and records of all the activities and all the staff from eighteen years ago?”
I sighed and turned to Tom. He showed his ID to Mrs. Peterson, and began to speak in that convincing-but-authoritative way he had. He just had a few questions that had come up with regard to the suspicious death of Holly Ingleby. The Furman County Sheriff’s Department was pursuing all possible leads. He repeated our request for staff, activities, and any photographic records from a conference held eighteen years ago.
Mrs. Peterson stood. “I want to be helpful,” she said. She lifted her chin and stared down her nose at the three of us. “But I simply can’t violate our employees’ privacy by handing over all our records. I don’t suppose you brought a search warrant, Officer Schulz?”
“If you don’t want to give us the information, that’s fine,” Tom said, in his endearing way that said, You’d better give me what I came for, or I’ll bring a warrant back here and make such a mess out of this place you won’t know what hit it. “We’re only looking for a list of staff people from that conference. We need the lists of activities, and the staff and attendees who participated in them. And any photos. Please.”
“Setting Up a Medical Practice,” she said evenly. “I worked that conference. It was one of the largest we’ve ever done and quite successful. There were classes in billing, affiliation with insurance companies, documentation, hiring a staff, insurance files, training, and uniforms.” She sighed. “You know our staff turnover is high. It is very unlikely that some of the same people are here. And we don’t keep the photos. There are too many of them.” She finally opened the gray file in front of her. We waited while she leafed through it. “There were excursions and unofficial presentations. Do you remember those, Mrs. Schulz?”
“Other presentations?” I said, confused.
“Being given by the doctors’ spouses.” She looked expressionlessly at Tom. “One woman led an exercise class. Another showed us how to paint pottery that you take to be fired. Still another gave a talk on making jigsaw puzzles for children.”
“My friend Holly Ingleby probably gave that one,” I said.
“Yes,” Mrs. Peterson said, gracing us with the first genuine smile since we’d arrived. “A tall, pretty, athletic blond woman? She showed everyone how to make a two-sided jigsaw puzzle for their children that would be ready for Thanksgiving. On one side was Turkey, the country; on the other was a picture of a turkey. She was so enthusiastic, everyone wanted to learn.” She came to a neat pile of papers, but hesitated once again. She’d had it all the time! Kimberly must have warned her of what we wanted. Mrs. Peterson had printed out the sheets in that meticulous office of hers, and now she was waiting for some magic words from us before she would hand it over. “I’m sorry,” she said, “I simply must err on the side of protecting the privacy of our conference attendees.” She closed the file.
This was all finally too much for Marla. She strode forward and slammed her hand down hard on the desk. The lamp, computer, and file all jumped slightly. Marla leaned into Mrs. Peterson’s face.
“Marla,” Tom said. “Don’t.”
But my friend was not to be deterred. “Listen to me, Mrs. Peterson. I understand you run a tight ship here. But I am involved with fourteen different charities in the state of Colorado and am on the board of three. If you don’t give us what we want, I’ll make sure that none of them—none—ever has a conference here at Flatirons.”
Mrs. Peterson began to gasp, which proceeded into a choking noise, which proceeded into a shallow, heaving cough. Dammit, she was having an asthma attack. Tom whipped out his phone to call 911.
Marla turned to me, shaking her head. “Do you remember mouth-to-mouth, just in case?”
“Mrs. Peterson!” I called through her heaving and gasping. “Where is your inhaler?”
Mrs. Peterson pointed to the floor. I dove down and located a sensible black leather bag deep under the desk. I fumbled open the closure, found the inhaler, took off the cap, and handed her the apparatus. She gave herself a puff of the medication.
“Breathe it as slowly as you can,” I ordered, my elbows on the desk. I stared deep into Mrs. Peterson’s watery blue eyes. “Breathe it all the way in.”
Tom was on the phone with the emergency operator, explaining Mrs. Peterson’s symptoms. But within ten seconds, it appeared that the woman was recovering from her attack.
She removed the inhaler from her mouth and glared at Marla. “How dare you come in here and threaten me?”
“Easily,” Marla said, straightening her shoulders. “I dare all the time. Next time, why don’t you act more helpful to law enforcement?”
Mrs. Peterson ignored her, and turned to me. “I owe you an apology.”
“Oh?” I said, confused.
“I initially doubted you were a doctor.”
Come to think of it, I hadn’t mentioned that I was at the conference with the Jerk. “Oh, I never—”
“You’re very good at your job,” said Mrs. Peterson warmly.
“Thank you,” I said. Well, I was a good caterer.
She took a shallow breath. I leaned toward her, as if to help. But she picked up the pile of papers and handed them to Tom. Then she quietly asked us to leave.
“Today I learned some important lessons,” Tom said as we walked back to my van. “In interrogation, that is. Try a bribe. If that doesn’t work, threaten the person you’re interrogating. Bring her to the brink of death. Then pretend you’re a doctor who helps her back to life. Too bad the sheriff’s department doesn’t allow this stuff.”
25
Tom asked if I could drive back to Aspen Meadow. When Marla complained that we hadn’t had lunch yet, he said we could pick up something on the way back. She grumbled, but Tom said he wanted a few minutes to look through the sheets that Mrs. Peterson had given us. He shook his head. “Broome, check. Ingleby, check. Unger, check. ‘Excursions and classes offered by Boulder Fitness,’ ” he read. He tried to call the department to see who was working there, but since we were once again driving along the Hogback, there was no cell reception. He went back to reading aloud. “Presentations by blah, blah, blah, nobody we’ve heard of, except for Holly Ingleby, who did her jigsaw puzzle shtick. ‘With Thanksgiving puzzles for sale,’ it says on here.”
I was staring at the road, thinking about Mrs. Peterson. Then one of those dark bits flashed across my mind, and I gasped. “Oh, my God.”
“What?” demanded Marla. “Did you see a deer? By the road?”
“No, no,” I said, as we zoomed onto the interstate. “We have to go to Holly’s. Right now.”
“To Holly’s?” Tom asked. “What, the rental?”
“Yes, yes,” I said. “The puzzles she left? The one she gave Audrey and the one on her living room table?”
Tom said warily, “Yes, Hunan Province. So?”
“They’re like the Turkey puzzle. The country is on one side. The bird is on the other. China is a place. It is also dishes. And Holly has plenty of them.”
“So?” said Marla.
“I am willing to bet that some of those dishes we saw weren’t just th
ere for decoration.”
“Goldy,” said Tom, “you’re reaching.”
“But, Tom, she loved jokes and word games and puzzles, and she gave a puzzle, also of China, to Audrey the day she died. She wanted Audrey to give it to Father Pete if something happened to her. She had no idea that Father Pete would be stabbed, thus depriving us of the key to what she was trying to tell us.”
“Why not leave us a message,” Tom persisted, “saying, so-and-so is threatening me?”
“If she was blackmailing somebody,” Marla said, “she couldn’t be that obvious.”
“Look,” I said, “the China thing might be a message to us.”
Tom said, “I was in that house, Goldy. I didn’t see dishes that would contribute to solving a murder.” His cell phone beeped, indicating a message. He looked down at it and began tapping out a reply.
Marla said, “The only dishes I ever saw in Holly’s house in Aspen Meadow Country Club were her Limoges.”
“Okay, but in the rental,” I said, “there was china in her hutch that I didn’t recognize. There was a collage of Drew on the wall. I want to look at it again. Plus there was a bunch of religious statuary and whatnot when Julian, Father Pete, and I took Drew home,” I replied. “Drew said his mother had just put it out recently. Remember that break-in she had earlier in the month?” When Marla asked what that had to do with anything, I answered, “With all her valuable antiques around, the only thing the burglar took was files. She was probably afraid that if she left written information about who was threatening her, that person could just destroy it. So she left it for . . . Father Pete, or for us . . . or for whomever, in a way she thought we might unravel.”
“If you have indeed unraveled it,” Marla said, her voice dubious.
“Do you have any other ideas?”
Marla said she didn’t, and we went back and forth, spouting theories. “Something’s off,” Tom said. “I just don’t know what it is.”
The wind had picked up even more when we arrived at Holly’s rental at half-past one. Dust blew in great clouds across Aspen Meadow Lake, and a gray mantle of cloud rose above the Continental Divide. Marla was still complaining bitterly about not having any lunch, but she stopped when I said this simply could not wait. I had to find out if Holly had left something for us that would not be apparent to the casual observer. Tom did not even roll his eyes when he said he would indulge me.
The narrow road up to the house was nerve-shattering to drive. I was so frazzled by the time we arrived that I couldn’t remember the code to the security system. Tom called the department, which sent it to him as a text: zero-nine-zero-four to get in; zero-four-one-five once we were inside.
When we arrived, Tom took all the necessary precautions. He told us to stay in the locked van while he entered both codes and went through the house. The steady wind lashed the yellow crime-scene tape over the busted deck and the boulders of the cliff. The broken staircase banged incessantly. The garbage had been picked up; the can lay on its side. Otherwise, the place looked forlorn.
After Tom had secured the house, he motioned for us to enter.
“The only thing I’m seeing that’s actual china are some of these dishes, and these religious statues that you say are new,” he said, doubt in his voice. “I can tell from looking at them that they’re porcelain.”
We stood at the entry to Holly’s living room and took it all in: the religious statues, the crosses, the collage, the furniture, including the hutch.
“Hold on,” I said. I pointed to a statue of a saint—I had no idea which one, Episcopalians aren’t big on them—that was situated away from the other ones. He held out his arm in a blessing sort of way. Or a pointing one. “That saint is pointing toward the hutch.”
So we all went over to the hutch and stared at the grooved rows where Holly had propped up a dozen plates.
Tom said, “Yes, these are all dishes. But you can’t eat off of three of them. And they’re not antiques. Nor are they Limoges.”
“What do you mean, not Limoges?” Marla demanded hotly. Holly herself told me they belonged to her grandmother.”
“She called it ‘Granny’s Haviland,’ ” I added. “The ones with the pink flowers, I mean. And I’ve eaten off of them.”
Tom carefully removed the flowered plates from the grooved rows and placed them on the open shelf in front of us. He smiled. “True Limoges porcelain, ladies, is made from kaolin, a type of clay that can be fired at very high temperatures. True Limoges china, of which Haviland is one manufacturer, also has feldspar in it. When fired, feldspar gives the porcelain a shiny, almost transparent quality. That’s why it always looks as if you’re staring at the pattern through a layer of glass.”
We all peered at the peculiar arrangement of the newer dishes that remained propped on the grooved rows. Each was painted with religious symbolism: a lamb, a fish, and an angel. I hadn’t looked closely at them before, and Tom was the expert on china. But if Holly had deliberately displayed the plates with some of her grandmother’s Haviland, that had to be significant.
I turned toward the collage of Drew that Yurbin must have done in the earlier days of his partnership with Holly. The portrait was full of bits of Drew’s past, plus photos and playful painted images.
“Okay, wait,” I said. I moved to the other side of the room and glared at the collage. “I’m seeing a painted margin around the photographs, the badge, and the toy car. It’s a pattern that repeats: A pair of fish. A ram. An angel. Then the fish again, and so on.”
Marla and Tom turned away from the china cabinet and crowded in next to me. They saw the same things I did: a pair of fish; a ram; an angel.
I said, “Let’s go back to the china. We retraced our steps to the hutch with its trio of dishes.
Two of the three were on one row. Another was below those. All three dishes had gold rims, deep blue backgrounds, and symbols at their center. There was the angel, then the lamb, a symbol for Christ—only it wasn’t, on closer inspection, a lamb—and a fish, another early sign for Christ. Problem was it wasn’t actually one fish, but two.
Tom picked up the angel plate and turned it over. “The Morgan Library and Museum,” he read. “Virgo.” He screwed his mouth to one side. “The image is from a book of hours attributed to Venturino Mercati, from about 1473.”
“Astrology,” said Marla.
I said, “Oh, my God. Not Catholicism, after all. Are they all from the Morgan? By this Mercati fellow?”
Tom gazed at the other plates. “Looks like it. They’re not valuable. The images from the book of hours have been transposed onto the plates, that’s all.”
“Then put it back,” I said impatiently, “so we can try to see what she was telling us.”
On the top row was the symbol for Pisces—the two fish. Holly’s birthday was in February. Also on that row was Virgo, which I had thought was an angel. Well, Mercati had given her great big wings, what was I supposed to think? Plus, in my head I’d had the religious story, not the astrological one. In the middle, on the next grooved row down and directly between the two, was the ram, which in my sadness and stupor, I had glanced at too quickly and initially thought was a lamb. When I’d seen all the religious statuary, I’d just assumed the symbols on the plates were religious. I hadn’t seen its horns. Silly me.
The animals and symbols were the ones Holly or Yurbin had painted in the margin of the collage of Drew.
“The ram is Aries,” I said. I felt disgusted with myself for not seeing this sooner.
Tom’s cell buzzed, but the reception in the house was fuzzy. He announced that he was going out on the front porch to take the call.
“That’s Drew’s birth sign, Aries, the one for April the fifteenth,” I remarked to Marla. “And Holly is Pisces, the fish.”
“So who is the third one supposed to represent, the Virgo sign? Drew’s biological father? Or George?”
“George isn’t a Virgo, if I’m remembering right. I’m guessing it’s Drew’s f
ather. It’s not any evidence that would hold up in court, but if we could figure out which one of our suspects is a Virgo, we might—”
Outside, a tree branch banged against the house. Did I hear someone grunting? I looked out onto the busted deck. No one was there.
“Did you hear something?” I asked Marla.
“Yeah, a branch. Or a ghost”
“All right, let me—”
“Let you nothing,” Marla said. “I’m getting the heebie-jeebies. Let’s go get Tom and skedaddle.”
I stared at the plates and said, “It’s the wind. We’re fine.”
Two jigsaw puzzles. China. There was something here. But what?
Holly: Pisces. Father: Virgo. Drew: Aries.
Holly had said, I’m in a relationship mess. She’d also said to someone, I’ve got you, you bastard! There’s a record!
Holly was truly an artist. She thought in images and symbols: the puzzles that meant both China and china plates, the plates that meant astrological sun signs and the relationship of three people born under them, signs that she’d had Yurbin repeat on the collage of Drew, to symbolize where he’d come from. Drew had always been the center of Holly’s world.
I picked up the Aries plate and turned it over. And there—taped to the back—was a piece of dotted cloth. It matched a piece of dotted cloth in the collage of Drew.
I said, “We have to open that collage of Drew.”
Marla exhaled. But across the living room we went again, and this time we lifted the collage down from the wall. It actually had an easily removable back. Tucked into one corner, near the edge, was taped a sewn finger puppet. Everything else was flat, so I carefully pulled the tape off the puppet. There was something hard inside it. I slowly extracted a flash drive.
“Oh, Lord.” I held the drive carefully. “Remember when Holly said there was a record? Well, it looks as if what we’ve been looking for—” What I was going to say was—“is right here,” when a man in a mask erupted from the kitchen. He wore gloves and was holding a gun in one hand.
The Whole Enchilada Page 33
