The Grilling Season

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “I need to leave,” I announced to Tom. I darted a sideways glance at John Richard. Tom had directed him to the far end of Suz’s porch, where he perched stiffly on the edge of a white wicker couch. I flinched at the sight of his scathing stare and his silent, enraged face. I cleared my throat. “I need to get Arch.”

  “You do that!” John Richard exploded, but not, I noticed, loudly enough for the nosy neighbors to hear. I looked at him curiously. His outburst contained no sadness. No grief. “Go get Arch!” he yelled, his face shaking. “Tell him why we can’t go hiking! And be sure to let him know what you and your buddy have cooked up here! Arch is bound to just love it!”

  My temper snapped. “Listen!” I yelled back, “I was just driving up—”

  “Save it!” John Richard hissed. The cords in his neck strained. “No more child support if I’m in jail! Think about it!”

  “Look, you.” I tried to stop the angry shaking of my voice but could not. “I haven’t gotten any child support since—”

  “Goldy.” Tom’s passionless tone mercifully stilled the exchange. He waited until he had my complete attention. “Don’t get Arch yet. You need to stay here, make a statement.” His face was calm. “And you should see a victim advocate.”

  “Victim advocate?” John Richard bellowed. “What does she need an advocate for? I’m the damn victim here!”

  I gaped at Tom, dumbfounded. Of course. I had discovered the body. The police had to question me. And the psychologists’ recommendation for a person discovering a body was that that person was traumatized and needed comfort. But this wasn’t the first murder victim I’d found. I’d managed before without an advocate. Still, what was the psychologists’ recommendation if your ex-husband was charged with the murder you’d stumbled upon? I couldn’t think. I swayed as I stood between the overturned geranium pot and the wicker furniture. What had I been doing just a moment ago? Oh, yes. I’d been having an argument with my ex-husband about money. Now I was having a conversation with my current husband about an advocate.

  You must get Arch, my inner voice urged. You must tell him what’s happened before someone else does. Trauma? You bet. Undreamed-of trauma. But like most women, I couldn’t take time out from the other crises of my life to be taken care of. “I don’t want an advocate,” I told Tom. “I’m okay.”

  Even as I spoke Tom was pulling the phone off his belt. “What’s Marla’s number?”

  “Oh, right!” John Richard raged. “Let’s get old Marla over here. One big happy family. Hey! I have an idea! Ask that fat dumb broad how she planted my ID bracelet in that ditch.”

  Tom ignored him as I recited Marla’s number. Should Marla really come, though? I didn’t want this situation to aggravate her cardiac condition. She should not come here, I muttered. When Tom asked, I gave him the address of Arch’s friend, Sam Rodine. It was near enough to Marla’s house that she could meet me there. While Tom murmured into the phone, the coroner’s black van pulled up beside the curb. A warm breeze swished through the aspens. The babble of voices on the street increased in volume.

  “I don’t believe this,” muttered John Richard.

  “No, Marla … Goldy’s fine, just upset,” Tom was saying. “But I need you to take care of her for a while. Meet her over at the Rodines’ house and bring some iced coffee or something. Just be with her, okay?” While he was talking, his eyes never left the two men from the coroner’s staff who were going about their grim work in the ditch. I noticed John Richard’s eyes never strayed toward that spot.

  “Look, Marla, Goldy will tell you what’s going on when she meets you, okay? I need to go,” Tom said in his conversation-ending voice. “She’ll be tied up here for about fifteen minutes, so … Sure you can get dressed that fast. Yes, Goldy is with me now. No, we’re not at home. Marla, please … Okay, look, Goldy and I are over on Jacobean, here in the country-club area.”

  Marla’s squawk through the receiver was audible across the porch. Of course Marla didn’t need to ask where on Jacobean we were. She was the one who had called me seven months ago and in a tremulous, indignant voice, announced the name, address, and all the vital statistics she’d gleaned on John Richard’s latest conquest, Suz Craig.

  “No, don’t come over, we’ve got enough confusion as it is. Goldy won’t be here too much longer….” Tom sighed. “Yes,” he said finally, “John Richard Korman is here, too. Marla, remember what I said. Goldy will be on her way to the Rodines’ place in a quarter of an hour.” Then he muttered, “See you later,” and disconnected. Well, that was one way to get out of a conversation.

  Tom leaped off the porch without explaining where he was going. He stopped to talk to someone from the coroner’s van, then hustled back to us. He held up a hand to me: five minutes.

  “Okay, Mr. Talkative,” said Tom to John Richard. He sounded almost cheery as he snapped the phone back on his belt. “You’ve been wanting to talk and now you’ve got your chance. How about telling us exactly what happened here?”

  “That’s Dr. Talkative to you, schmuck.” John Richard tossed his head, suddenly cairn. His changes in mood, of course, were well known to me. “And I’ve been Mirandized. I’m not saying another word until I talk to my lawyer. Just the way you told me to.” Then John Richard turned. His dark blue eyes spit fire at me even as his voice remained hideously even. “But as for you, I know you’re behind this. One way or another, I’m going to find out how. And if you tell my son about this in any way that makes me look bad, I’ll have you hauled into court so fast you’ll think our breakup was a caterers’ picnic.”

  Oh, sure, I thought. But I didn’t want to hear his empty threats. I was leaving. Of course, I wanted to ask John Richard what kind of “mixing up” he and Suz had done the night before. Mixing up. What a euphemism. How about, “I beat up women when they don’t do what I want?” In the near distance, sirens wailed. I shivered and wondered about the ID bracelet that Suz had so proudly given John Richard. And why would John Richard think Suz wanted to call me this morning? The sirens shrieked louder and a police car, lights flashing, burst into view. I knew better than to try to have any further conversation with John Richard.

  The police car squealed to a stop behind the coroner’s van. A uniformed policeman and a tall, dark blond plainclothes woman I didn’t recognize came up to the porch and asked if I was Goldy Schulz, the person who’d found the dead woman. Was I ready to make my statement? they wanted to know.

  Just then, there was one of those unexplained moments of utter silence. The breeze dropped. The coroner’s staff in the ditch was still. The speculative buzz on the street ceased. Even the sprinklers stopped their metronomic splatting. Maybe the quiet was in my head. Maybe I was going to pass out.

  “Mrs. Schulz?” inquired the tall female officer, who had said her name was Sergeant Beiner. She leaned in close. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes,” I whispered. “I need … need to go get my son.”

  “Very soon,” she replied, as she straightened. Sergeant Beiner was fiftyish. Her six-foot height was somewhat mitigated by a humpback, and her narrow face was actually topped with a rooster-style burst of blond and gray curls. “We’re making an exception so you can go in just a few minutes. You should be coming down to the department,” she added, with a wary glance at John Richard. Then her tone turned sympathetic. “But since you have to go pick up your child, Mrs. Schulz, we’ll just ask a few questions now. We know where we can reach you if we need to talk to you some more later. Okay?”

  I nodded. “Later,” I said dully, “I’ll be at home.”

  The sergeant gently led me off the porch, out of earshot of John Richard and Tom. She motioned for the uniformed policeman to stand by her side as she ticked off her questions: How did you get here? What exactly did you see? What did you do? Did you see anybody driving away? Did you see anybody in the area?

  While she made notes, I told her everything: I arrived in Tom’s sedan between six-thirty and seven, I saw a body in the ditch; I
called 911 and Tom. No one drove away. No one showed up except Dr. John Richard Korman, clutching a bouquet. It was a painful recitation. Sergeant Beiner said she or one of the primary investigators would be by to see me later in the day. I walked unsteadily back to the porch.

  “I’m leaving,” I told Tom. He stepped off the porch and gave me a wordless hug. I murmured, “I’ll be okay” into his chest. Then I pulled away.

  Behind me, the grating noises of a stretcher being wheeled across the pavement disturbed the quiet of the neighborhood. Another meow directed my attention to the porch steps. A small calico ball of fur dashed out and clawed at the upended geraniums. It was Suz’s cat, Tippy. I snagged the small feline and was rewarded with a scratch on the arm. Tippy, shivering and terrified, then scrambled up my arm. When I tried to coax her down, she dug her claws in and remained poised on my shoulder. Her little body trembled next to my head.

  Two more police cars wheeled up Jacobean, red and blue lights flashing. I walked to my van with Tippy the cat perched resolutely on my shoulder. I knew the cat was part of the crime scene. But she would be ignored and abandoned if I didn’t care for her. So I took her. Three more uniformed Furman County deputies crossed Suz Craig’s lawn to Tom. Two more hauled equipment toward the ditch. No one noticed me.

  The video team began to record the scene. I averted my eyes and opened the van door. The cat leaped into the back. I stared at the keys in my hand. My ring was just like Tom’s: keys to the house, keys to the sedan, keys to the van. I tried hard to remember what it was I was supposed to do with these keys. It could have been me. After a moment of fumbling with the ignition, I started my van, and stepped hard on the accelerator. It could so very easily have been me in that ditch, if I hadn’t gotten out all those years ago.

  The dozen people gathered on porches stared with avid interest as my van chugged down the street. One man shook his head at my noisy progress. His red scalp blazed in the warming sun. Along the street, the velvety lawns glowed like chartreuse carpets.

  Suz Craig took my place. But it could so very easily have been me.

  Chapter 5

  The cat howled the two miles to Hadley Court. I pulled up in front of a three-story, white-brick-and-blue-gingerbread-trimmed Victorian-style mansion that was about as far from a mountain contemporary as it was from Mars. Marla’s Mercedes squealed around the corner as I eased to the curb. Behind her tinted windshield I could see she was talking excitedly on her car phone, which she quickly hung up when she spotted me. She threw open her door and came bustling toward the van.

  Marla’s raspberry-colored sequined sweatsuit did not flatter her portly figure. In one hand she held a covered glass and in the other a paper bag. My dear friend always brought something that she thought would make you feel better. Usually the only thing I needed was to see her, and as usual, the sight of her rushing toward me, her rhinestone-studded sunglasses jiggling up and down on her concerned face, brought a wave of relief.

  Wealthy by inheritance, talkative by nature, and pretty in an unconventional way, Marla had endured being married to John Richard for six years less than I had. After John Richard’s first few rampages, Marla had also shown much more confidence than I had when it came to ridding oneself of a burdensome spouse. She’d shoved an attacking John Richard into a hanging plant and dislocated his shoulder. She’d then managed to cut the marital knot with great expertise. She and I had become fast friends when her divorce was final, proving that even the worst marital experiences can hold some redemption. Last summer she’d survived a heart attack. Earlier this summer, she’d survived a disastrous breakup with the one guy she’d been serious about since divorcing the Jerk. We had a history, the two of us. And I loved her dearly.

  “Okay, tell me,” she began without preamble when I hopped out of the van to greet her, “are you okay? Probably not,” she added with an opulent, scarlet-lipsticked frown.

  I fought off an unexpected wave of dizziness. “I don’t know. No. Probably not.”

  “Let’s get back in your van, so people don’t come out and start asking a bunch of questions. Jeez, this town—I’ve already had two calls on my cellular.” Her brown eyes softened with sympathy and she proffered a plastic-wrapped crystal glass. For the first time, I noticed her hair was damp. “Look, Goldy, I brought you an iced latté. Well, actually half espresso and half cream dumped over ice. Very naughty, but oh so good.” She held up the brown bag in her other hand. “And here we have a whole bunch of meds that I just dumped out of my medicine cabinet. They’re mostly tranquilizers. Which do you want first?”

  “Coffee and downers?” I asked incredulously. I sagged against the van door. I wondered if any Furman County victim advocates carried lunch-bags full of prescription tranquilizers. Probably not.

  “Come on, back in you go.” Marla hustled me into the van, where the air was even warmer than it was outside. But the interior of my vehicle was familiar and smelled faintly, even pleasantly, of cooked food. The cat was uncharacteristically quiet. I rolled down my window; Marla did the same.

  “Just drink this,” she commanded, thrusting the glass into my hand. “Tom said to bring you—” Abruptly she stopped. She blinked. “One of my friends on Jacobean called. Suz is dead? Are they sure? Lynn Tollifer, you know her? She and her nosy teenage son, Luke, live across the street from Suz. Luke told Lynn that Suz’s body was in a ditch at the end of her driveway. Who found her? You?” I nodded and took a tiny sip of the chilly liquid. It tasted like melted ice cream. Marla clutched the top of her frizzy brown hair. “Suz dead! I don’t believe it, but I do believe it.”

  “It should have been me. But he got Suz Craig instead.” My voice cracked. I sagged against the headrest. “Gosh, I’m feeling—” John Richard’s glare, his anger, haunted me. And I’d had such a strong feeling that he’d been acting, playing a part, but why? And what part? Why come over the morning after you’d had a fight with your girlfriend, bearing flowers, if you’d hurt her badly? If you’d killed her? But he hadn’t meant to hurt her badly. At least that’s what he always said. He probably hadn’t meant to kill her, either.

  “Do you think he beat her up so badly she died?” Marla asked.

  “Yes, I do. Suz had a black right eye. And bruises on her arms—” I choked.

  “Mother of God.”

  “I don’t know what to do.”

  “Drink your coffee,” Marla ordered sharply. “We can talk about all this later. If you don’t look better in five minutes, I’m calling an ambulance for you and taking Arch home myself.”

  The air inside the van, despite the open windows, felt stifling. Marla slid toward me smelling of floral soap and powder. She’d obviously just jumped out of the shower when Tom called her, and I felt a fleeting sense of regret to have caused her trouble. Then the weight of the morning’s events smacked me like one of those Jersey-shore waves you’re not expecting, and I didn’t know whether I wanted the espresso or enough tranquilizers to put me out for a few days.

  “Okay, Goldy, look at me,” Marla commanded sharply. “Keep drinking that coffee.” I took another sip and stared into her large, liquid brown eyes. “Still feeling light-headed?”

  “I’m doing a little better,” I replied in a voice that didn’t even convince me.

  “Your first problem is Arch. Think what—”

  The sob that nearly choked me turned into another and then a whole barrage that wouldn’t quit. Marla hugged me and spoke soft words of no import. Still crying, I glanced up. Gail Rodine was staring out her front window. She probably wasn’t expecting to see two women, one with a Mercedes and one with a beat-up van, hugging each other while one sobbed effusively, out in front of her elaborate Victorian cottage. On second thought, Gail Rodine probably was about to call the vice squad.

  “I have to get my act together,” I croaked.

  “Yeah, you do,” Marla replied hopefully. “What you need is some medication. Chill you out a little.” She thrust the brown bag into my hand and I peered tentative
ly at bottles of Librium and Valium, foil-encased capsule samples of God-only-knew-what, even a hypodermic. I carefully pulled out the needle, which was labeled Versed. From Med Wives 101, I knew this was a high-potency tranquilizer.

  “Where on earth did you get all this?”

  “Goldy, with the legion of doctors who are either treating me or going out with me, and an ex-husband who’s a doctor, you wonder that? Which one do you want?”

  “None. I need to parent, cook, cater, and drive this van without benefit of altered states of consciousness. I won’t be able to perform any of those tasks if I’m floating inside a drug-induced cloud somewhere in the stratosphere.” And just as uncontrollably as the sobs had begun, they ended, and I giggled. Marla shrugged philosophically, dropped the needle back into the bag, and shoved the bag into my glove compartment. Then she started to laugh herself.

  “Look, Goldy, I promised Tom I’d help and that’s what I’m going to do. Okay, here’s what you tell Arch. You say there’s been an incident and his father might be in trouble. Dear old Dad’s gone down to the sheriff’s department to talk to the folks there. Dear old Dad will be talking to his lawyer over the weekend. With school out, with no town paper until Wednesday, and with the Denver TV stations covering their own murders, Arch won’t hear about the arrest except from the Jerk himself, maybe tomorrow.” Marla exhaled triumphantly.

  “It’s going to be awful….”

  “Yep,” she agreed matter-of-factly. Again she ran her bejeweled fingers through her tangled, damp hair. “But let me clue you in to something, kiddo. You are not responsible for the Jerk’s problems. He is. A hard lesson that took both of us a lot of years to learn, but there it is. Right?”