Sticks & Scones (11 page)

We rounded a sharp corner and Tom’s stretcher shook. He groaned but did not awaken.
Andy sent e-mails. Andy called. Andy got himself dead.

Maybe Tom did not blame himself for what had gone wrong in the hijacking investigation. Maybe he didn’t love some other woman. No matter what, it sounded as if he’d gotten himself emotionally connected with hapless, “gotta-talk-to-you” Andy Balachek. And if there’s one thing they teach you in cop school, it’s that you shouldn’t let a criminal live rent-free in your brain.

T
he ambulance made a slow, wide turn onto the castle drive, then moved through the open gates. I checked my watch: eight-ten. We thumped over the causeway across the moat and stopped in front of the gatehouse, where the medics swung open the back doors. With a glance at Tom, I scrambled out. Michaela Kirovsky, her white cloud of hair and pale face the picture of concern, stood by the portcullis. She disarmed the castle security system and helped the medics set up a portable ramp for all the stairs inside the castle. After much grunting, heaving, and clicking of ramp parts, Michaela and one of the medics managed to get Tom inside the castle. An eternity later, they pushed Tom’s wheelchair toward our assigned suite.

Following them, I felt light-headed with fatigue and hunger. I was thankful we had not run into the Hydes. Still, goose bumps raced down my skin. Why did I feel we were being watched? I glanced around for closed-circuit cameras, but saw nothing except stones, windows, and
fading tapestries. Once I thought I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, but whatever it was disappeared before I actually saw anything. Just the day before, though, I’d decided I’d imagined a noise only seconds before our picture window was blown to fragments. I hadn’t believed I’d seen something in the creek, and it had turned out to be poor Andy Balachek. So if I was persuaded I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye, then perhaps I
had.
I stopped and looked all around again: Nothing. Maybe I was just tired.

Michaela told me that Eliot and Sukie were out having breakfast, even though Julian had offered to make them his vegetarian Eggs Benedict. She brightened, and added that Julian was making breakfast, anyway, and had promised to go grocery shopping after he left Arch off at Elk Park Prep.

“I’ll tell you,” Michaela said with a wide grin, as I finished straightening the covers over Tom. “I love having that kid around. He works. You stay here much longer, I’m going to get lazy.”

I smiled. Yes, Julian was a blessing. But hale-and-hearty Michaela drifting into laziness was impossible to imagine.

After Michaela and the medic left, Tom murmured, “I feel helpless.”

“You’re not helpless, you just need rest,” I replied. My hands traced circles on the green-and-pink coverlet. I prayed that Tom wouldn’t start up again on the subject of Andy Balachek.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” he said mildly. “The castle.”

“Investigating a case?” I asked, surprised.

“Not exactly.” He chuckled. “Checking to see if the owner was a loony bird.” He raised his jaunty, sand-colored eyebrows at me.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.” He tried to shift his weight. “You stayed in a client’s home once before,” Tom reminded me. “Didn’t turn out too well, as I recall.”

“That was a family thing,” I replied. Arch’s and my brief stay with Marla’s sister had indeed not turned out well. “This is business—”

My protest was silenced by twin thudding knocks at the door: Arch and Julian. They tumbled into the room, clustered around Tom, and demanded to know how he was feeling.

“Need chocolate?” asked Julian. “I was thinking of making cookies or cake after I get back from the grocery store. Plus I just put a frittata and some rolls into the oven. They’ll be done in about ten minutes.”

“Maybe later.” Tom’s smile was thin. My heart squeezed in sympathy. “Arch.” He tilted his head at my son. “I need to laugh. I need to hear some jokes. It’ll make me feel better.”

“I just had to write a poem for my
Shakespeare and His Times
class,” Arch piped up, straightening his glasses. “I could read that to you, if you want.”

“I do,” Tom said, with a small grin.

Arch pulled a sheet of paper out of his backpack. He warned, “It’s, you know,
aa, bb, cc, dd
, like that.” He poised himself at the foot of the carved four-poster bed. He cleared his throat twice, then read:

It was nice to have a laugh; it was great to be together. After a moment, Tom said he needed rest. Julian and Arch raced off for the kitchen, while I sat at Tom’s side. By the time Julian poked his head back into the suite to invite me down for rolls, frittata, fresh fruit, Cheshire cheese, and tea, Tom was asleep. The Elizabethans hadn’t eaten frittata, I was pretty sure. Nor, I’d been surprised to learn in my research, had they drunk tea. But having substituted packaged crackers for regular meals for the past twenty hours, I was ravenous. The heck with food history. Besides, I couldn’t remember what the Elizabethans had for breakfast. That’s what I was going back to our house for, right? To get the disk with all my research. I promised Julian I’d be right down.

When I entered the enormous kitchen moments later, Julian, Arch, and Michaela were already sitting at the oak trestle table. A cozy fire crackled in one of the kitchen hearths. Soon, I was slathering one of Julian’s hot rolls with soft butter and homemade plum jam that Michaela had retrieved from Eliot’s backup stash in the dining room. Heaven. The creamy, custardlike texture of the frittata provided a tangy complement to the sharp cheese. Relishing the delicious breakfast, I recalled that, indeed, Queen Elizabeth herself
had
indulged in enormous breakfasts—before she went hunting. I told Arch, Michaela, and Julian as much as I could remember of one menu: cold sausages and powdered neat’s tongue. Arch asked what a neat was, and I replied that “neat” was an archaic term for cow or ox. Michaela grinned and served us steaming cups of strong English Breakfast tea. I asked Arch how the fencing was going.

“Pretty well,” he answered cautiously, wary of appearing boastful in front of his coach.

“He’s done brilliantly,” Michaela declared as she split
her third roll and piled the center with cheese slices. “I’m going to have him be part of our demonstration Friday night.”

Arch blushed. Julian slyly added, “That’s not because your former girlfriend is on the team? Maybe Lettie—”

“Stop!” warned Arch. His face had turned scarlet. I decided to say nothing. Arch had kept me in the dark about his post-Christmas breakup with Lettie, also fourteen. When he’d told me after the fact, he said that he wasn’t going to tell me the reasons, because then I would try to argue with them. Oh-kay, I’d said. Now I wondered idly if the breakup had been so bad that Lettie might have shot at our window.

I took another sip of tea and told myself not to be ridiculous.

“Couple of messages for you,” said Michaela as she gathered up the dishes. “One, your tables were delivered yesterday morning to the chapel. Or rather, they weren’t delivered. The police turned the delivery guys away. Eliot asked them to come back early on Thursday.”

I sighed. If I hadn’t had so much on my plate, I would have called Party Rental and told them what was going on. “Thanks.”

“No problem. The police have given me the go-ahead to set up the chapel tomorrow. I’ll be unpacking our space heaters, opening our own serving tables and folding chairs, and setting up our screen for Eliot’s slides.” She paused. “Eliot wants to review the menu with you this afternoon. If you’re up to it.”

I nodded. “No problem. And the second message?”

“Two detectives want you to call them.” She handed me a note with the names of Boyd and Armstrong, as well as their office and cell phone numbers. Then she loaded the rest of the dishes into the wood-paneled dishwasher, one of the kitchen’s numerous disguised amenities. I thanked Michaela again for helping. She looked at the
floor and said it was the least she could do, after what we’d been through.

After the boys had been assured that Tom and I would be
fine, just fine
, they gathered up Arch’s gear and Julian’s grocery list—he insisted he was making dinner tonight for everybody—and hustled down to Julian’s Rover. From one of the narrow windows in the well tower, I watched them roar away.

Back in our room, Tom was still sleeping. I knew I had to go back to our house. I needed to check on the animals, too, and so I used the phone—a portable device placed in our magisterial bathroom, which I hadn’t seen when we’d first arrived—to call Trudy. She reported that Jake the bloodhound and Scout the cat were in good shape. She’d collected today’s mail and would continue to do so until we were home again. The police had come by early this morning, she said, and told her that deputies were working hard on the Balachek murder and the window shooting.

“Everybody on the street’s watching the place till then,” Trudy added. “We’re even keeping track of unfamiliar license plates.”

I murmured that that wasn’t necessary. But Trudy interrupted me, her voice insistent. “There’s a strange car out there right now. It looks as if the driver is keeping a close eye on your place.”

“Is it someone from the sheriff’s department?”

“I don’t think an unmarked car would be covered with rust, Goldy. Plus, a cop would be more obvious. This guy is being
very
surreptitious. Actually, it’s a woman.”

My skin turned to ice. “Trudy, are you sure she’s watching
our
house—”

“Goldy, she’s been sitting in her car for two hours now. She’s hiding behind a newspaper. I know she’s not reading it because when I took out my binoculars, I could see her eyes peering over the top of the paper. I’m telling you, she’s
just staring at
your broken window.”

D
id you c-call the sheriff’s department?” I asked, cursing the choke in my voice.

“Not yet. The woman hasn’t actually
done
anything. I took Jake out there on a leash, though, so I could talk to her. I said we’d just had a shooting on our street and that there were cops all over.”

“What did she say?”

“She asked if anyone had been hurt. I said no and very obviously looked inside her car for a weapon. She didn’t have one, or at least, not one that I could see. She said she was waiting for someone. When I asked who, she just drove away. Then a while ago, she came back.”

It was as if I’d been punched in the solar plexus. Could it be Viv? If the Jerk’s new girlfriend was haunting our street, I would sic Jake on her myself. “Is she skinny, with white-blond hair, big boobs, and a sort of rock-star face? Late twenties?”

“Nah, she’s older,” Trudy replied promptly. “Probably fifty. Dark hair. Pretty face, but weathered. Looks like
she might be tall and slender. Maybe she’s an ex-model who wants Tom to do some investigating for her. Anyway, she doesn’t look like one of John Richard’s bimbos, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

I thanked Trudy and told her I’d be home soon. Then I replaced the receiver, filled a glass of water for Tom, and went back into our room. Holding the glass, I stared out the leaded-glass windows lining the wall of the suite. A snow flurry sent swirls of thick flakes into the moat.
She didn’t look like one of John Richard’s bimbos.
…

“I’m awake,” Tom said from the bed. Was that a suspicious note in his voice, or was I being paranoid again? “Miss G.? Want to tell me what’s going on?”

“I need to get my computer disk with the research for this week’s food prep,” I replied lightly. I didn’t mention the woman lurking on our street. Why worry Tom when he was immobilized? On the other hand, I was
not
going back to our place without giving the cops—that is, the cops who could do something—advance warning. I needed to call Sergeants Boyd and Armstrong. I went on, “I also have to get a picture of the Jerk, so that the Hydes can know not to let him in.”
And I have to check out that woman
, I added silently. Not to mention that my curiosity was demanding a trip down to the creek. If the sheriff’s department was no longer processing the crime scene, I wanted to have a look at the place myself.

“I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go home alone,” Tom replied. “And did you talk to A.D.A. Gerber about visitations for Arch?” So he was worried about John Richard Korman, too. Good old Tom.

“Not yet. On my way over, I’ll call Boyd and Armstrong on the cellular. Not to worry. I’ll be fine at the house. Plus, Trudy will be right next door. How are you doing?”

“I’m bored. I want to get up and call my office. I want to get cracking on this case.”

I kissed his cheek, which smelled of rubbing alcohol.
“I shouldn’t be gone more than an hour,” I promised, as I handed him the water glass and a long straw. “Unless by some miracle the window repair guy shows up. Then I’ll stay and supervise.”

“I’ll be fine,” Tom assured me, stubbornly placing the glass on the end table. “Just find me a portable phone, would you?”

I brought him the phone from the bathroom, then left. As I drove down the castle driveway, I put in a cell call to Sergeant Boyd’s voice mail: I was headed to our house, I reported, since I had to pick up a few things, and hoped to meet him there. Oh, and a neighbor had reported a strange woman hanging out in a car across the street. Could the sheriff’s department check it out?

The snow flurry ended. In its wake, winds in the upper atmosphere had left feathery traces of cirrus clouds. I crossed Cottonwood Creek and waited for the traffic to clear. Below, the narrow stream furrowing through ice banks winked in the winter sunlight. As I passed the bridge that led to the chapel, two uniformed sheriff’s deputies stood outside the yellow crime-scene ribbons, conferring with Eliot and Sukie.

Next to the Hydes’ matching silver Jaguars was another, newer Jag. To my horror, I recognized the car and its driver. Leaning against her sleek black vehicle, her arms crossed, was Chardé Lauderdale. She lifted her eyes and glanced at the road as I drove by. Recognizing me, she immediately turned back to the Hydes.

Clearly, I would have to return at a later time.

I stepped on the accelerator and the tires spun in the snow-frosted road. I needed to see what was going on at our house.

She was alone, sitting up very straight in the driver’s seat of a beat-up, rust-spotted station wagon that had once
been white. The car was parked directly across the street from our house. I drove by slowly and looked at the woman. She had shoulder-length black hair dramatically shot with gray, and Trudy was right: her unmade-up, slender face was quite beautiful.

Hmm.

She wasn’t so much staring at our house as gazing at the framed crag that had been our living-room window. To keep out snow and deter looters, the cops had put up plywood behind what was left of the glass. If the woman was a crook or even the shooter, she wasn’t acting very smart. A criminal simply didn’t sit out here in the open in a small-town neighborhood, waiting to have her license plate recorded by an armed Neighborhood Watch.

Further up the street, I pulled into a driveway. I was about to reverse when I heard an engine revving, then groaning, like a sports car being downshifted. I felt a familiar unease. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw a shiny gold Mercedes descending our street. A laughing Viv Martini, her luminescent hair rippling in the frigid breeze from her open window, sat in the passenger seat. The driver was the Jerk.

I hunched over the steering wheel until they’d passed our house. They continued down to Main Street, then turned left, in the direction of the Grizzly Saloon. I waited five minutes and tried to catch my breath. What in heaven’s name were
they
doing
here?
Even if the Jerk was looking for Arch, he had to know he was in school. Or had he heard about Tom’s shooting and hoped to find a hearse in our driveway? Maybe Viv would get the flu from exposure to the elements.

I turned and piloted my van back toward our house. I eased into Trudy’s driveway, hopped out, and headed toward the station wagon.

The woman in the wagon looked about fifty or fifty-five. She was even more lovely than I’d first thought, with
high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a full, sensuous mouth, and delicate chin. Now she tore her gaze from our front door to give me a perplexed glance. She didn’t
look
like a crook, she
looked
like Jackie Kennedy. She certainly didn’t seem like someone who knew her way around a gun. My legs wobbled the last few steps to the car, but I was
not
going to be scared off my own street.

“I’m Goldy Schulz,” I announced with a courage I was far from feeling. “Are you from the window repair shop?”

The woman’s mouth fell slightly open, and the gorgeous face darkened. I peered boldly into the station wagon. She wore a green sweatshirt with jeans, and no discernible jewelry. A newspaper and thermos were perched on the tattered seats. No tools, no plate glass. No weapon. No camera, either, trademark of the tourists who flood our rustic mountain town in the summer. And of course, this was winter.

So what was she doing here?

“I’m just waiting,” the woman replied, as if she’d read my mind. Her voice sounded as rusty as the exterior of the wagon, and she spoke in a half-whisper, as if English were her second language.

Shouting my name, Trudy launched out her front door with our howling bloodhound in tow. Red-haired and pear-shaped, Trudy has the kind of complexion that turns crimson when she is upset. The mystery woman turned the key in her ignition as Jake, bellowing mightily, tugged Trudy in our direction. Before I could think of another thing to say, such as
Do you need directions to Main Street?
, the station wagon had roared off.

“What was
that
about?” Trudy demanded. “What did she say?”

“Nothing.” I took Jake’s leash from her and ordered him to be quiet. He ignored me.

“A piece about that Balachek boy’s body in the creek was on TV this morning. All the Denver channels. Did
you see it?” When I shook my head, Trudy continued, “They also showed the front of your house and that window. They had a bit about Tom, too. Was Tom investigating Andy Balachek? The reason I ask is that a couple of nosy media people have called
me
wanting to know if it was a case of vengeance run amuck. Andy shoots out a cop’s window, the cops gun down Andy.”

“That is ridiculous!” I said fiercely.

“That’s what I told them.” Trudy nodded, as if to confirm the absurdity of such a notion. She squinted in the direction the old station wagon had taken. “Anyway, after all the fuss in the news, I guess you have to figure you’re going to get some gawkers.”

Maybe so. But that gal hadn’t looked like a gawker. I couldn’t concentrate to wonder further about the mysterious woman in the wagon, though, because Jake chose that moment to put his paws on my chest and slobber on my face.

I pulled out of the way to avoid being drowned. “Take Jake back to your place for a bit, would you?” I begged Trudy. “I need something from the house, and I don’t want him stepping on glass and cutting his paws.”

Jake howled mournfully as he was led away. I wanted to comfort him, but was distracted by a pickup now chugging up our street. Large rectangles wrapped in brown paper sat propped in the truck’s rear. Were the rectangles large enough to be picture-window panes? Or would that be too good to be true?

The grizzled man driving the truck introduced himself as Morris Hart from Furman County Glass. Morris was amazingly bowlegged, with a voice like sand and a wide, deeply wrinkled face. I thought I smelled booze on him, but couldn’t be sure. He asked if I was Goldy Schulz, and could I give him the okay to get started. The job should take an hour or two, he added optimistically. Despite the slight stench of whiskey—it
could
be on his
clothes, I thought hopefully—I replied that he should begin as soon as possible, that I could stay until he was done, if he wanted. Then I zipped up to the door and let myself in.

The front room was dark because of the plywood. I turned on a light. The sudden sparkle of glass shards gave the place a desolate, abandoned air.

In the kitchen I retrieved my recipes-and-research disk. Outside, Morris Hart’s ladder creaked open. I touched the blinking button on the message machine. Maybe Boyd had called to say he was on his way. Once our window and security system were fixed, would he think it was safe for us to move back in? Or would he want us to wait until the department figured out who had fired the gun at our house?

The first message on my tape dropped my spirits back to the nether zone.

“Goldy Schulz?” Chardé Lauderdale began, her Marilyn Monroe voice high and breathless. “How
dare
you tell the police that we shot at your house! After all you’ve put my husband and me through, don’t you think it’s time for you to
stop
your
hate
campaign against us? You discuss our conflict with anyone, and you can just add a little
defamation
suit from
us
to your list of woes. And by the way, we understand you will be doing some cooking for a group of donors to which we belong. This makes us
very
unhappy. We are demanding that the hosts find someone else to do that job
immediately.
”

What was Chardé reading from? A text supplied by her lawyer? Or her child-abusing husband? Hard to believe that the former Miss Teen Lubbock could be so articulately bitchy. When I called the cops after her husband had shaken their tiny daughter to unconsciousness, all she’d managed to screech was, “Who the
hell
do you think you are?”

On our tape, Chardé went on stiffly: “If you persist in
trying to harm us, we
will
retaliate. And not just in court,” she concluded breathily, in what sounded like an afterthought.

Hmm.
How ’bout I save this message, I thought, to play for the cops? Ever hear that making
a threat of bodily harm
is a
crime
, babe?

I put in another call to Boyd and was again connected to his voice mail. It was half past nine, I said, and I could wait for him at our house, meet with Armstrong and him in town, or see them later at the castle. His choice. The window repairman was here, I added, and I was grateful to the department for getting the repairs started so soon. Any chance the cleaning team could come in this week?

Hanging up, I suddenly felt that I had to get back to the castle. Tom might be in pain. But something was holding me back, and it wasn’t just the window repair, which Trudy could supervise, if necessary.
That kid was the king of communication. Loved e-mail
, Tom had said. Andy Balachek had ended up dead in Cottonwood Creek … and somebody had taken a shot at Tom.

I don’t love her.
Don’t love
whom?

My eyes traveled to the kitchen’s south wall. After dinner most nights during January, Tom had walked dutifully through that door to the basement. In the cellar, he had his own computer to type up reports, write notes on cases, send e-mails….

How much investigating of the Andy Balachek case would Tom be able to do from the castle? Probably not much. Unless, of course, I helped him by downloading his files.

This is not because I’m nosy
, I thought as I headed down the basement steps. I mean, Tom was the one who kept saying he needed to work, that he wanted to get back to the case, right? And there might be files on this computer that he would need. Maybe he even kept an e-mail address book with Andy Balachek’s screen names. This was
all data he would need, data I could bring him. To be helpful.

Uh-huh.

Tom’s computer sat on a massive, scuffed, department-discard desk that was piled neatly with files and papers. Morris Hart, the window guy, banged and clattered above as I booted Tom’s computer. While the machine hummed, I scanned Tom’s desk for other files he might need. Or, perhaps, that
I
might want to have a look at.