The Whole Enchilada (10 page)

I checked in with myself. How did I feel? My leg hurt. The emotional ache caused by losing Holly was still there, like a bruise you're afraid to touch, but do anyway. You want to see how the pain is compared to the last time you felt it. I was doing only slightly better. I put this down to wanting to be helpful in the investigation into Holly's death. My jaw set.
I owe her that much,
I thought.

I glanced over at Boyd, who wore the green-and-brown uniform of the sheriff's department. He looked uncomfortable with the training facility, but not nearly as out of place as he'd appeared the few times Tom had told him he had to cater with me.

“Bob Rushwood!” Marla called, as if they were old friends. “We need to talk to you for a minute.” Before we could get over to Bob and Ophelia, though, the third man in the gym trotted up to Marla. She squawked, then recoiled and got hold of herself. “Oh, Neil. I didn't recognize you without your clothes on. Your usual clothes, I mean.”

Actually, Neil Unger was wearing workout wear: a white T-shirt and white sweatpants, both emblazoned with the navy-blue logo for The Guild
.
My heart did a nosedive. Why had he stopped us? I did not want to talk again about Ophelia's party. Instead of addressing Marla, though, Neil nodded at Boyd, who gave him a slit-eyed look. Then he turned to me. Like Marla, I involuntarily leaned away.

“I was sorry to hear about your friend,” he said in that raspy voice of his.

“Um, thank you.”

He sighed. “I knew her, you know.”

“No,” I said, trying not to betray sudden interest. “How?”

“Oh, just . . . from the club.” His smile was all charm. “Her death won't affect your ability to do Ophelia's party, will it?”

I tried not to sigh. Even after all my years catering, the narcissism of the wealthy still took me by surprise. “No. We'll be fine.”

“You're sure?”

“Yes, Mr. Unger,” I said, my tone deferential.

“I'll be coming with her,” Boyd said, his tone so low I had to strain to hear it. Now what, I wondered, would possess him to offer that nugget of information?

“Is that necessary?” asked Neil.

“I'm just giving a helping hand,” said Boyd. “As will her assistant, Julian, who has been to your place before, I believe.”

“Took food out to my driver the other day?” Neil said. “Kid from Boulder?” His tone filled with distaste. I waited for him to say that everyone in Boulder was a crook, but he only whispered, “I think maybe you were right.” He glanced over at Ophelia, then back. “I think perhaps she doesn't know about the party.”

“I hope not.”

“Please don't be late,” he said.

“Yes, sir,” I said to Neil's backside as he slid off in the direction of the men's locker room.

“Yes, sir?” Marla echoed. “What, are you an army private now?”

“No,” I said. “The guy just scares me.”

“Come on,” Boyd said jovially. “He's going to clean up America. Let's do what we came here for.”

“Bob?” Marla called. “Can we talk?”

Bob looked up from where he was guiding Ophelia on a machine designed to strengthen biceps. The poor girl's scarlet face streamed with sweat, and she seemed very glad to be interrupted. Her thin dark hair was pulled back in a ponytail from which many strands escaped. She wore oversize dark sweatpants along with a graying NHL T-shirt that I recognized as a giveaway from a Colorado Avalanche game. She certainly didn't
appear
to be a wealthy young woman, excited about her twenty-first birthday, just two days away.

Bob reluctantly let her off the machine. Ophelia looked warily at Boyd, then said she would allow us to talk in peace. She put plugs in her ears and flopped onto a nearby bench, where she picked up an oversize book she'd left tented there. I wondered if the interest in muscle building was hers or Bob's. I suspected the latter.

Still, I wanted to make nice, if for no other reason than that I would be catering her birthday party, and, hopefully, her wedding. I limped over and smiled at her, but she assumed a blank face and pulled out one plug.

“I love to read,” said I. “What book do you have there?”

She reluctantly held up the spine of her thick volume:
Architectural Planning.
Hmm, not on my night table. She didn't want to elaborate, and I couldn't think of anything else to say, so I walked cautiously back over to the others.

“What's the matter with your leg?” Bob asked, worry creasing his handsome face as I approached Marla's side of the machine. He brushed back the dreads and peered into my eyes. “You're in pain.”

“Kitchen accident,” I said, acting grieved at my own clumsiness. “Spilled grease on the floor, slid in it, fell. I'm fine,” I lied.

“We want to talk to you about Holly,” Marla said earnestly. “She was our friend. A dear friend. Did she work out here?”

“Look,” Bob wearily replied, crossing his arms across his black Aspen Meadow Country Club Spandex top. “I had the cops at my place until ten last night.”

“Hi,” said Boyd suddenly, moving forward and offering his large paw. “My name's Sergeant Boyd, also with the Furman County Sheriff's Department. I'm just helping Goldy and Marla deal with the death of their friend. Could you help them out? They want a better understanding of what happened.”

Bob's forehead furrowed. To me, he said, “To answer your question, Goldy, Holly used to work out here at the club, but then she quit. That was last fall. I know her mostly through her son, Drew, who helped build trails with our crew out in the Preserve last summer. I don't
know
what could have caused her to collapse like that in your driveway, Marla. I mean, she was just, I don't know, strolling along, right?”

“Right,” Marla confirmed. “Was she conscious when you started working on her?”

“No.”

“When she worked out here, did she tell you she had a history of heart disease?” I asked.

“No.” Bob sighed as he rubbed his eyes. “Like I told the sheriff's department investigators, back when I saw her here, she just did strength training. She knew which machines she was planning to use and she kept charts of her progress. She didn't want any guidance from me. I don't know where her charts went, because we clean out the lockers of people who quit the club as soon as they leave.”

“Before the party, when was the last time you saw Holly?” I asked sharply. My leg was beginning to hurt badly, and I wanted to get out of there. “Did she seem ill or tired or anything?”

“I talked to her on the phone on Thursday about doing the presentation for the trails project at your sons' birthday party. But I hadn't seen her in person before the party since the last time she worked out at the club.” Bob gestured in the direction of his fiancée. Absorbed in her book, she didn't even notice him. “That's when I started working out with Ophelia,” he said, a tad too loudly. “And it turned into something else. My sweet girl and her books. She's really smart, you know.”

Ophelia looked up at him, then went back to reading. Most women would have beamed at flattery rained on them, especially from a handsome fiancé. Instead, Ophelia did not look up when she said loudly, “I'm almost done with this chapter.” Aha, maybe the earplugs didn't block out the noise, after all. She asked, “Can we skip the rest of the arm curls?”

“Nope,” said Bob. “But we won't make these as hard.” He winked at us.

Ophelia pulled out the earplugs, inserted a bookmark, and walked back to the machine. Before getting on, she gave us a sour look.

“You know,” I said thoughtfully as I hobbled back to the Mercedes next to Marla and Boyd.

Marla said, “I know what you're going to say.”

“Okay, mind reader, what?”

“That Ophelia, who's reading some book that makes you involuntarily sneer in disgust, is not the kind of person who would willingly forego college.”

“Why,
Marla,
” I said admiringly, “I think you'll do okay in this investigating business after all.”

10

A
re you sure you want to take on the Inglebys?” she asked, revving the engine. “You really do look as if you're in pain.”

“I'm not taking on the Inglebys,” I said lightly. I rearranged my legs so the weight was off the bandaged one. “You and Sergeant Boyd are accompanying me as I deliver blueberry muffins.”

“And what was Ophelia reading?” Marla asked as she whipped her Mercedes out of the country-club parking lot. When I told her, she said, “
Architectural Planning
? I heard AMCC is going to tear down the existing ugly-ass clubhouse, and build something new. Maybe Ophelia could help them out.”

“Just drive.” Meanwhile, I punched in 411, got the number for Aspen Meadow Country Club, where I left a message, asking for someone to call me back.

“Why are you doing that?” Marla asked.

“I want to know exactly when she quit the club.”

“What difference does that make?”

“Presumably she was either beginning to have, or was in the middle of having, a financial meltdown. So what I'm wondering is, when in the fall did that start?”

Marla said, “The club won't tell you anything. But one thing is certain. She sure wanted me to keep what I knew about the foreclosure to myself.”

“Right. I'm just trying to figure out the time frame for these problems starting for her in the financial department. She quit the club. She sold her luxury cars and bought old used ones. In the middle of the year, she pulled Drew out of EPP and put him into CBHS. If an outsider were putting these events together, he or she would say, ‘She's short on funds.' And so she was trying to get those funds, or more of them, from someone who wasn't happy about it, and sent her that text message. Maybe it was George or someone else, a client for the collages, say, or somebody who owed her. It could have been from someone who had loaned her money before.”

Marla decelerated as she approached a curve. “So. Where did all the wealth she used to have go?”

“The woman loved to shop. And then there was a recession. Where did any of our money go?”

Marla shook her head. “She was having severe financial problems. She tried to extract money from somebody. Then she was killed. What does that tell us?”

Grief reemerged and wrapped itself around me like a heavy cloak. I gripped the basket of muffins and said, “I don't know.”

We pulled up to the entrance to the Ingleby mansion fifteen minutes later. Too late, I remembered the last time I had visited Holly here. A high fence surrounded the property, complete with a gate and intercom. To my surprise, though, the gate was open, and we did not have to wait to be allowed entry. At the same time, Marla and I wondered why this was so. Marla zoomed up the driveway. Boyd followed us through.

When we got out of our cars, Boyd came over to us. “Now remember,” he said, “we didn't let Drew come over here, because George and Lena had a fight with Holly right before she died under mysterious circumstances . . . and you fell through a trap into the lake. So if they push you to know why Drew isn't staying with them, you just let me say it was department policy, okay?”

“Sure,” I said.

Marla complained, “This investigation work doesn't allow me enough latitude to dig for gossip.”

Boyd smiled. “Deal with it.”

Meanwhile, the answer to the open-gate question came in the form of the sleepy-looking woman who answered the front door of the immense house, built from red brick in complete defiance of Rocky Mountain style, which deemed that all houses above the elevation of Denver should look either like ski lodges or Mexican restaurants.

“I'm the maid,” the woman said, blinking. She was tall, white, midfifties, with gray hair like steel wool. She did not seem hostile so much as exhausted. “Who are you? How did you get in here?”

Boyd stepped forward, showed his ID, and introduced himself. “I'm from the sheriff's department. We drove through the open gate.”

The maid eyed Marla and me before saying, “Don't tell me you're from the press.” She wore jeans and a faded T-shirt that had been silkscreened with a picture of a red Ford Mustang.

“We're not,” Marla replied. “But why would you think we were?”

The maid, who had not given her name, stifled a yawn. Then she stared at the firearm in Boyd's holster. “Some other deputies from the sheriff's department were here until late last night. They said journalists might start poking around because George—Dr. Ingleby,” she immediately corrected herself, “used to be married to Holly. You still haven't told me who you are.”

We introduced ourselves as Goldy Schulz and Marla Korman, friends from the church who'd brought blueberry muffins. Sergeant Boyd was accompanying us to be helpful, I added, although it was clear that bringing muffins did not require a law enforcement escort. We wanted to speak to George, Marla said. We did not mention we were friends of Holly. The maid said her name was Sally, and if we wanted coffee, she would make us some in the kitchen. Oh, I got it: Mustang Sally.

I said we would
love
some coffee. Tall, thin Mustang Sally led the way to the kitchen. My enthusiasm prompted her to say the only coffee Edith would allow her to buy was a discount brand called Frank's. I tried not to groan.

The kitchen was not large. Maybe Holly's energy and vivacity had so filled the place when I'd visited before that I hadn't noticed how dated the house was. I did know one thing: this particular residence had not changed in seventeen years, and maybe it had been this way for the past three, four, or five decades. Laminate wooden cabinets were peeling. Some pulls on those cabinets were missing; the ones that remained featured ceramic roosters and other barnyard animals. I averted my gaze when Marla rolled her eyes at me.

I sat in a chair with red vinyl splitting up the seat. It was one of six at a wood-laminate table beside the kitchen wall. Boyd pulled out the chair opposite mine for Marla, scraping the metal legs across the puckered, pale lime linoleum floor. Then he walked purposefully to the far, shadowy end of the kitchen, where he stood stock-still.

“I've never been here,” Marla said under her breath. “Do you think it's changed since 1958? No wonder Holly wanted to be an artist. She could start by fixing this place up.”

Mustang Sally began purposefully preparing coffee in an ancient drip machine that sat, tilted, on a buckled laminate counter. “Dr. Ingleby,” she called into the chipped plastic intercom. When George didn't respond, Sally waited for the coffee to finish, then poured the dark, viscous fluid into two ceramic mugs emblazoned with the words
Frank's Discount Coffee,
probably free when you bought fifty pounds' worth. When George Ingleby did not answer the intercom a second time, Sally glugged nondairy creamer into a little glass pitcher and put it out with a bowl of sugar.

“I don't think he heard you,” Marla said brightly. She sipped her coffee. Her lips formed a moue of despair, and she kicked me under the table. Well, I'd already had my caffeine for the day anyway.

“Dr. Ingleby,” Sally said loudly into the ancient box on the wall. “You've got visitors from the church.” She turned to us, her face registering surprise for the first time. Clearly, she hadn't had any of Frank's finest caffeine-delivery system yet. “Why do you want to see him? It's his mother who—”

But it was too late. Edith Ingleby slammed open the door to the kitchen. “What are
you two
doing here at this hour?” she cried. Edith Ingleby, whose short curly hair had been frosted, had a frosty disposition to match. Even at this early hour, she wore a floral suit that looked as if it, too, had come from 1958. I recalled Marla had said Edith was eighty-four. But even wearing low heels, she moved quickly across the floor, as if she were used to its wrinkles and dips. “Already out collecting for St. Luke's? The dinner's not until tomorrow night. And in any event,
I
am in charge of fund-raising for the columbarium.”

“Mrs. Ingleby, they've brought you blueberry muffins,” Sally said meekly. The hapless maid seemed to be trying to avoid a storm. “Your favorite.”

“Your husband,” Edith Ingleby said as she shook a gnarled, beringed finger in my face and advanced toward me with reptilian speed. I leaned back.

“My husband what?” I said.

“He sent my baby away before we could say good-bye.” Edith Ingleby fished a muffin out of the basket and put it on the plate that Sally quickly slid underneath. “I don't know why I put up with this. Gone. Gone.” She sighed dramatically, then sat down and turned her attention to the muffin. “My daily miracle.”

“Your daily miracle?” asked Marla, genuinely puzzled. “Goldy's muffin?”

Edith had sunk her large yellow teeth into the muffin and merely nodded. Marla turned to me. “That's an endorsement for baked goods with blueberries.”

“Mother?” exclaimed a startled George Ingleby from the doorway. His black hair stood on end.
Bedhead
, Arch would say. George wore wrinkled khakis and an equally wrinkled yellow golf shirt. He blinked and took us in. Well, it wasn't quite eight o'clock on a Saturday morning. “Why are you here? Something to do with the church?” His voice was calm, but his eyes accused, much as his mother's had.

I introduced Sergeant Boyd, and said we were here to bring muffins to Edith.

George's voice went very quiet as he said, “That's not what it looks like. It looks like you're trying to confuse my mother.”

“We have no intention of confusing her,” Marla said smoothly. “We were just sitting here, drinking coffee that Sally made for us, and your mother came in and—”

“Oh, it's you all,” Lena Ingleby said from the doorway. Her tiny mouth pulled itself into a pout. “Plus a police escort? Why are you here, so early in the morning?”

“Gosh,” said Marla, shaking her head at me. “Can't anyone in this house make us feel
welcome
?”

“Here's the deal,” I said, aiming my words at George. “We were friends of Holly's—”

Pain crossed George's face, but he only said, “I know.”

Lena sighed and held her fingers out at her side. “You haven't answered my question. Are you here to say you really
meant
to invite us to Drew's birthday party last night? And you forgot?”

“Lena dear,” George began, but again could not find words.

“But you wanted to go, sweetheart,” said Lena, her voice trembling. “And they didn't invite us. You were so hurt.”

“It's all right,” said George.

Lena dropped her hands and shook her head. “Goldy? Marla? You two should be ashamed. Then there's your friend Holly. That
slut.
And you call yourselves
Christians
.”

Boyd, I noted, moved out from the shadows beside the cabinet. Alert and suddenly more present, he took in the scene now unfolding.

Even if we were there too early, even if our appearance was unexpected, even if Holly had spitefully left George and Lena off the guest list, what Lena had said made my mouth hang open. Our friend Holly was
dead
. Yet here was Lena, whom I only knew as a receptionist who had once worked for George, criticizing her.

Lena's verbal blow was too low for Marla. She stood up, put her mug into the dented, stainless-steel sink, and turned to go.

“You're washing that cup!” Edith said, raising one hand, as if she'd just scored a goal. Mustang Sally raced out of the kitchen. It was as if she believed her duties had been discharged, and nobody could make her stay. Or else she couldn't take any more conflict for one day. Meanwhile, like Marla, I wondered about the common courtesy that seemed to be absent here. What was I missing?

“Let's go,” Boyd commanded. But for whatever reason, I couldn't move.
“Now,”
he added. Marla stood expectantly, waiting for me. I reluctantly scraped my chair back.

“Darling,” George said to his wife, attempting to pacify in that quiet way of his. “Please don't worry about me.”

“But I do worry about you,” Lena said, her voice low. She turned to us. “Failure to invite father, stepmother, and grandmother to birthday party.” She used her fingers to tick off points. “Arriving uninvited, early in morning, at
my
house, to collect money for the church.”

When Edith stood, her chair fell over. “This is
my
house!” she howled. “Not yours!”

“Of course it's your house, Mother,” said Lena, squatting quickly to right the chair.

“I am not your mother!”

“Let's go outside,” George said calmly, pointing to Marla, Boyd, and me.

“Gosh, that was interesting!” Marla said, once the four of us were out in the fresh air. In an attempt to clear my head, I inhaled deeply, once, twice, three times. I was wondering if I should say,
Remind me why things didn't work out between you and Holly, George?
But of course no such words issued from my mouth, because we were there to obtain information, not offend people. Which we'd managed to do anyway, apparently.

“I am not going back into that kitchen to wash a mug, George,” Marla warned. She looked at me. “If I did, that would be a miracle. Like Goldy's muffins, right? What was your mother talking about?”

“Nothing,” said George, rubbing his forehead. “She gets addled,” he said in that low voice of his. I wondered if he used it on cardiac patients. “First the cops came last night. Then the three of you, arriving this morning, just . . . made it worse. And Lena really is very nice. She's just always been protective of me.”

“Look, George,” I said, trying to match his soothing tone, “we're only here because we were friends of Holly's, and we're trying to understand how she could have—”