“Oh, well. Besides Vonette, how’re you doing?” I asked with a bright smile.
He said, “Why do you care?”
So much for social interchange. I said, “I don’t know,” and walked back to my ex-mother-in-law.
“How’s your coffee, Vonette?” I asked. It was on the table, and it looked untouched. Under the table was the purse that held the flask.
“Think I need it?” she asked, her voice still full of self-pity. Her head of wild red hair shook slightly. I waved my hand at the dessert and beverage tables, where Arch and Patty Sue were now feverishly trying to keep up with the flow of people finished with the main portion of the meal.
“No,” I said, “but everyone’s lining up for shortcake now, and they’ll be wanting coffee, too. I brought you some so you wouldn’t have to get up.” But of course she needed it. This day was upsetting enough without another trip to detox.
Arch was looking frantic by the coffee machine; I joined him.
“Mom,” he said, “I need more lemons. I don’t know why everyone wants lemonade all of a sudden.”
“I’ll do it. Just keep them going with the coffee and wine, if they want it.”
Out in the kitchen, I located my manual squeezer and extracted the juice from a dozen lemons, then cut paper-thin slices from two more using a knife from a wall mount. After a few moments Arch came in.
“Now what?” I asked. He was opening cupboards and looking through them.
“Well,” he said as he pulled over one of the kitchen chairs to climb up for a better view, “now somebody wants herb tea. All we’ve got out there is that Lipton stuff.” He strained to look in the high cupboards. “So I have to find some.”
I left the lemons and joined Arch in his search. In the process I finally found Laura’s sugar in a canister with a magazine picture of Sugar Ray Leonard taped on the front. But there was no herb tea.
“See if whoever it is will try this,” I said as I handed him Postum. “I’ll be out in a minute with the lemonade.”
He left. The running water foamed up over the sugar and juice. When I brought the pitcher into the living room, Arch had disappeared again, and there were only a few people left in the food line. I hoped the lemonade shortage would be our last crisis of the day.
Within twenty minutes people were nearly finished with the last of their plates. Conversation settled into small pockets around the room. Quietly I began to gather plates and ashtrays to take out to the kitchen. Clients do not like to have dirty plates around at a party, but they don’t want to hear you wash them either. Luckily there was a door between the kitchen and the main room, and I could begin the cleaning unobtrusively.
Hot water and suds were just churning over the silverware when I heard a sound that made me shudder. Someone was moaning.
I turned off the water. From the living room came the same loud sound, the kind of deep groaning you associate with…
Associate with…
I didn’t even want to think. If someone vomited at a function I catered, that would be the end of the business. Or close to it.
I pushed through the door to the other room. The groan became a howl. There was a crowd gathered around the sound, and several people were walking quickly toward me uttering names of things they wanted.
“Water—”
“Phone—”
“Towel—”
My face was suddenly cool with the sweat of fear, as I prayed, Please not Arch, please let him be all right. I made my way past tables and chairs as if in slow motion. Please let my child be okay. At the outskirts of the crowd I could hear Vonette’s high whine, words like What is it, honey? Oh what is it, honey?
“Let me through,” I begged the people I was elbowing past, darting my head all around to find Arch. The first thing I saw was the jar of Postum on the coffee table. Let him not be hurt. Let him not be in pain. The guttural groan of agony did not quit. It was too deep for a child.
I gasped and pleaded to be let through, then at the front of the crowd asked, “What is it?”
Fritz Korman was on the floor. His large frame was writhing on the blue rug. He was holding his stomach. Horror and distress surged through me—Fritz was family, or had been. And he was in terrible agony.
“Get back, get back!” my ex-husband was yelling above the general buzz and the groaning from Fritz, which continued unabated. John Richard was waving his hands to move people away from around Fritz, who was now curled up on his side like a fetus. Arch was tugging on my apron. I clutched him to me.
“What is going on?” I asked into the general melee.
John Richard started screaming as soon as he saw me. “You did this, you bitch! You poisoned my father! Did you mean it for me and then do him by mistake?”
I could feel my mouth come open, my head shake from side to side.
John Richard shrieked, “You did it, and I’m going to have you nailed!”
CHAPTER 4
At first, I thought some kind of shock had made John Richard accuse me. But after his outburst; he turned his back and refused even to acknowledge my presence. What was worse, debonair, ever-in-control Fritz was not getting any better. All around, people were turning their heads away and murmuring. Someone was phoning for help; others were applying damp cloths and asking questions. Was it the mayonnaise, the cream, the fish? There was nothing for me to do. That was a good thing, since I couldn’t have done anything anyway. I felt terrible, and dizzy with a vague sense of guilt … Did Fritz have a food allergy, too?
I herded Arch back to the kitchen, found the pack of Kools, and smoked one after another until Patty Sue came out and said Fritz was on his way to the hospital. She added, hesitantly, that John Richard had called the police and they were coming over. Now that my ex-husband had left, I went into the other room. That he would call the police was incredible. What could he possibly have told them? Was he even remotely convincing? Would they believe that I was trying to poison anyone? I, who had, earlier in the afternoon, tried to keep an abusive ex-husband from suffering an allergic reaction to tomatoes? Would they believe me, a caterer? Or would they believe him, a doctor?
I wondered what the food would be like in jail.
Investigator Tom Schulz of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department was introduced to us by another cop, whose reverential tone said, Here’s God. Schulz loomed large in height and bulk. When he came striding through the door of Laura Smiley’s house, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, he looked like one of those old-time movie heroes who use sword and cape to threaten villains, to keep skeptics at bay, to summon up an imposing sense of self-importance. Only the investigator needed neither sword nor cape. He had his size.
In general, I felt powerful with hefty people. They held me in great esteem because I was an expert cook. But within five minutes of watching Investigator Schulz scan the tables, glasses, coffee cups, and the bevy of trembling faces, my confidence melted. He consulted a guest list given to him by Laura’s aunt. Then he cocked an authoritative thumb at the first person to be questioned and hiked up his belt as if it were a holster before he banged through the door into the kitchen, the improvised interrogation chamber.
John Richard had insisted on accompanying Fritz in the ambulance to Lutheran Hospital, I had heard. Lutheran was located in Wheat Ridge, a suburb west of Denver that was forty-five minutes from Aspen Meadow. The Denver Poison Center had recommended this course rather than ipecac or any other treatment. The person who had called the Poison Center had made an announcement: within an hour of Fritz’s entering the hospital, blood and urine tests would indicate the source of distress.
Vonette sat slumped in one of the wing chairs, overcome. I wanted to go and comfort her, tell her maybe Fritz had stomach flu. But the two uniformed policemen who had arrived with Schulz had commanded us not to touch anything and not to talk to each other.
“Us” at that point was the forty mourners for Laura, now witnesses to exactly what, I still did not know. But I was
going to have to find out. I felt sorry for Fritz, anxious for him. He was in pain and possibly in danger. But there was something else. This incident could pose an acute threat to my business. Unfortunately, I could not determine anything when all of us were sitting around looking guilty and being silent, as if this were Adult Detention Hall. One policeman took me aside to say Investigator Schulz had ordered him to call the Colorado Department of Health so that all the food could be seized and analyzed.
Marvelous. What microbes might the Health Department detect? Before I could worry about that, Investigator Schulz called a second person to be questioned, then a third. Some people came out right away: they hadn’t seen anything. Patty Sue went in and came out looking confused. Arch and I were last. When it was Arch’s turn, Tom Schulz’s thumb indicated that he wanted me, too.
“I thought you wanted us individually,” I muttered, once we had settled into Laura’s red wire kitchen chairs, the kind you used to see in ice cream parlors.
Investigator Schulz adjusted his backside on the too-small chair. He was, I noticed somewhat reluctantly, good-looking as well as charismatic. The other room had been filled with men trying to look macho in their western attire. Tom Schulz was the real thing. Despite his coat, sweater, and tie, he had the commanding aura of a ranch foreman. In the caramel-colored October light filling the kitchen, his hair shone gold-brown. It was cut short, parted on the side, and combed at a jaunty angle above bushy eyebrows. These thick triangles of hair climbed up and dropped down his forehead when he listened or talked. He had a sideways smile that came easily and suggested a sense of humor. His green eyes beheld everything just a moment longer than necessary, as if by concentrating hard enough, he could see through things and people. He grinned widely at me. Fear froze my face.
“Your boy’s a minor. Got to have you here when I talk to him.” The green eyes regarded me. He added, “By law.”
I nodded, but felt sick.
Schulz reached a fleshy palm out to Arch.
“My name is Tom Schulz,” he said as he shook Arch’s small hand, “and I need to ask you a few questions about what happened here today.”
Arch sat in one of the red chairs and straightened his glasses. He said, “Okay.”
Schulz took our full names and address. He showed some confusion over my name, Gertrude Bear. I told him with two other Mrs. Kormans in town I had thought my business would do better under my maiden name.
He said, “What’s Goldy short for?”
“Nothing, really,” I said, feeling my cheeks get hot. “No one’s called me Gertrude for twenty-some years. When I was little I had blond hair—”
“Still do,” observed Schulz.
“It was just a nickname that stuck. I liked it better than Gertrude, anyway.”
He nodded.
I said, “I use Goldilocks for the business. You know, like the story, everything is just right. It’s just an ad, connecting me with the food service.”
Schulz nodded again. He said he would ask Arch only a few questions before he could leave and it would be my turn. Then he put his notebook away.
He asked, “What grade are you in, Arch?”
“Sixth, sir.” Arch’s voice was trembling slightly. He crossed his legs and looked down in his lap before raising his eyes to Schulz.
“Do you play soccer?”
The inevitable subject of sports. A look of pain passed briefly over my nonathletic son’s face. This tack for putting Arch at ease would not work.
“No, sir,” Arch said.
“What do you like to do? Do you like to play any games?”
“Oh yes,” said Arch, brightening.
“Such as?”
“Fantasy role-playing. Have you heard of them? Like Dungeons and Dragons and Top Secret? Do you know about those?”
“A little bit,” said Schulz, leaning back in the chair. “How do they work? Do you play them with your friends?”
“Well, you roll different kinds of dice,” Arch began with characteristic enthusiasm, “like ten-sided, twenty-sided, or thirty-sided, see, to figure out what character you’re going to be. Then you decide on the attributes. Well, I mean, you roll the dice again to see about that stuff. There are charts and things for the different abilities. For the characters, I mean.” He looked at Schulz sympathetically, not unlike the way he had looked at Patty Sue on the drive over. “It can get pretty complicated,” he said.
“Mm-hmm. Then what do you do?”
“Well,” said Arch, “then you, like, go on adventures.”
I thought this must be boring for a police officer, but he repeated, “Adventures.”
“Yeah,” said Arch, “with the other characters. You can play with up to five people. Usually I just play with one. One guy will make up the dungeon or whatever it is you’re going to do, and then you go through it to see what happens to your character. You use the dice for that, too.”
Now Arch was relaxed. Good work, Schulz.
“Do you play with the kids in your class?” asked Schulz.
“Some of them,” said Arch. “It’s really pretty hard. Most kids aren’t interested.”
Schulz shifted in the small chair. He reached down and flicked invisible bits of lint off his oatmeal-colored sweater. He asked, “Did you ever play with your grandfather?”
“Oh no,” said Arch. “He’s much too busy.”
“Your grandmother?”
“No. She’s sick a lot.”
“Your mom? Any other grownups?”
“No.” Arch raised his eyes to me apologetically. “My mom’s really not interested in it. Neither is my dad. Usually just kids like it. Like my friend Todd Druckman. He’s in sixth grade, too.” He thought for a moment. He said, “Ms. Smiley was interested in playing.”
“Ms. Smiley,” said Schulz, “whose house we’re in.”
“Yeah. She was my teacher last year. She’s dead.”
“Right. And that’s why we’re here, isn’t it? Because Ms. Smiley died and everybody misses her.”
“I guess.”
“Do you like to help your mom with her food business? To work on parties like this one?”
Now it was my turn to cross my legs. I couldn’t imagine where this was going.
“Well,” said Arch slowly, “I don’t exactly like it. But I do it when she asks me.”
“Like today.”
“Yeah.”
“Do you think you’re good at helping her?”
“Oh yes,” said Arch confidently. “I know all about serving.”
“What was your job at this party?” Schulz asked.
“The drinks. Coffee, tea, and lemonade. Not the wine,” he explained as he pushed the glasses back on his nose, “because I’m too young.”
Well, thank God he added that, I thought. At least I didn’t break that law.
Schulz gave me a brief smile.
“Did you stay over at the coffee machine?” Schulz asked. “The whole time, I mean.”
“No. I had to do the lemonade too, see, and we only had two pitchers. So sometimes I had to come out to the kitchen to fill those up.”
“Did you see what your grandfather was eating or drinking?”
Arch thought. “I guess Fritz had some of the food, because he came over for a glass of wine. But I didn’t see him eat. Later he wanted a cup of coffee. I don’t think he likes lemonade.”
“Fritz.”
“That’s what I call him,” said Arch. “My grandfather.”
“He’s always called his grandparents by their first—” I started to explain.
Schulz held his hand up to me.
“Did you see Fritz drink the wine?” asked Schulz. “Did you see what he did with his glass?”
“No,” said Arch, “I didn’t see either.”
“Before Fritz got sick, did he drink anything else?”
“Let’s see,” said Arch. “Okay, now I remember. We were out of lemonade and my mom was making some in the kitchen. A lot of people had been askin
g for it. Fritz was, let’s see, he was talking to Trixie, the woman who teaches the exercise class, you know? And when she came over for coffee …” Arch paused to think. “No, wait a minute, she doesn’t drink coffee. I remember now because she wanted lemonade. We didn’t have any yet so she asked me if we had any herb tea.”
Schulz drew his eyebrows together. He said, “Herb tea.”
“Yes, she asked me if we had any herb tea. I said I didn’t think so. Then Fritz came over and laughed and said Trixie thought coffee was bad for you. He was, like, laughing and saying Trixie thought a lot of things were bad for you. But he said he would have some anyway. Coffee. So I poured her some hot water and him some coffee. And then Trixie said, Well, could I check and see if Ms. Smiley kept any herb tea in her kitchen. So I came in here to check.”
Schulz leaned ever so slightly toward Arch. “Where was Fritz’s coffee then? Did he take it from you and start drinking it?”
“No,” said Arch slowly. “I put them both, the cups of coffee and hot water, next to each other on the table. Then I came out here to look for the tea.”
“The two cups were just sitting there?”
“Right,” said Arch. “I thought I’d just be gone a minute, and they had started talking again.”
“Did you find any tea?”
“No. I was looking and looking, and Mom was helping me.”
Schulz said, “So your mother was in the kitchen then?”
“Yes,” said Arch, “she was busy making lemonade. We looked for some tea/Finally she gave me some Postum instead. And then Patty Sue ran out of strawberries and I helped her with that for a while. And then I saw my mom emptying ashtrays and picking up dirty dishes … I guess I just forgot about the tea. Anyway, when I came back to the table somebody asked me again for lemonade.”
“So how long was it from the time you gave Fritz, or rather, put down Fritz’s coffee and the woman’s water for tea, and then got back to do lemonade?”
Arch shrugged. “I don’t know. A long time, I guess. Twenty minutes? I can’t remember. Toward the end of a party, Mom says, you don’t have to pay as much attention to the guests. But I did forget the tea.” He looked at me. “Sorry.”
Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Page 5
