The Whole Enchilada (23 page)

“Let me ask you something,” I countered. “Say two parents have a child. The parents get divorced. The father, who's helped raise the child, finds out when the child is a teenager that he did not actually, I'm talking biologically here,
father
the child. Does he still owe child support payments?”

“He does,” replied Marla, the maven of all things not only medical but also financial and legal. “The child was born into an existing marriage. Once the marital knot is tied, all bets are off in the sperm department. The guy doesn't pay, he's going to get hauled into court.”

“Which Holly was trying to do to George—”

“But it usually takes a while—” She stopped talking and gazed at me. “Are you saying that George Ingleby is not the biological father of Drew?”

“He's his
father
,” I said immediately. “That man helped raise Drew, and is devoted to him. But Edith calls Drew her ‘daily miracle,' and won't explain herself. George and Holly only had the one child.” I went on: “What we should have seen is that Drew is tall and lithe, and looks nothing like George, whose shape resembles Stalin's. I'd always thought that those height genes came from Holly.”

“But you're thinking differently now.”

I stared hard at Marla. “Maybe Edith finally got around to telling George that she'd been told he was sterile. She thought Drew's birth was a miracle. Or maybe it came up in a medical test, and that's how George found out. So then imagine Lena saying, ‘Either you cut off funds to that slut, or I'm going public with this story. All of Colorado will know you're sterile.' ”

“That sounds like Lena, actually,” Marla said thoughtfully. “But if what you're thinking is true, then why would they show up at the birthday party, and pitch a fit about not being invited? Why protest about being escorted out?”

“I don't know.”

“Well, when will you know for sure about the fertility thing?”

“I texted Tom. He'd go Chernobyl if we went over to the Inglebys' place again, escorted by Boyd or not escorted by Boyd.”

“So wait,” Marla said at length. “Do you think George and/or Lena are after you? That you ‘know'? Was Holly threatening to expose the truth if George didn't go back to paying child support? Maybe she just pointed out that he'd still have to pay the support because they'd been married when Drew was born, and George and/or Lena didn't like that prospect. But would they crash the party, just to drop the antibiotic into the tortas, to murder Holly? And who is Drew's
biological
father? Do you think he's even aware he fathered a son?”

“I don't have a clue. Drew's biological father might not even live in the state. It could be that Holly never told him. Or he might not care. Then again, Holly might not have known for sure that George wasn't Drew's biological father, since she probably didn't know his being sterile was a possibility.”

Marla said, “There's another question lurking here. With Drew in school up in Aspen Meadow, why exactly did Holly buy a house in Denver nine years ago? Okay, she went to art school. Do you think that's related?”

“Good question.” I walked over to the file cabinets. “Do we know where she lived, so we could ask the neighbors?”

“From a decade ago?” Marla scoffed. “You must be joking. I think she rented first, before she bought the house. And anyway, we never visited her down there.”

“Let me look at one of my files.”

“If it's addresses for Holly,” Marla insisted, “I think you're wasting your time.”

“That's not what I'm looking for. Can you keep going through the notes? We still haven't found any mention of Holly being in therapy. It might be in there somewhere.”

“I can't wait,” Marla said sourly.

I searched the file cabinets until I found the medical-meeting notes from eighteen years ago. Tom's accusation was correct: I kept everything. I leafed through the pages until I found a printed list of the attendees.

“Whoa, wait a minute.” I swallowed. “You'll never guess who was there, giving a talk on getting cut-rate uniforms for medical office staffs.”

“Not Neil Unger.”

“The same. Looks like he wasn't yet smitten with the idea of cleaning up America.”

Marla shook her head. “How old was he back then?”

“Early forties. Athena would have still been alive. Ophelia would have been three-ish. But maybe Neil was on the prowl.”

“Gosh,” said Marla. “Do you think he and Holly could have hooked up?”

“I don't know. I suppose anything is possible.” I went back to the list of M.D.s who'd attended the Flatirons conference. Ingleby, George, Cardiology, was there, as was Korman, John, Obstetrics and Gynecology. As was Broome, Warren, Psychiatry. So. He had been there, too.

I said, “Well now, isn't that interesting?”

“What is?”

“Warren Broome was indeed at the Flatirons conference eighteen years ago.”

“Are you saying he was her lover,” Marla asked carefully, “or she was his patient, and they had sex that way?”

“I'm not sure what I'm saying, because I don't know.”

19

I
exhaled and tried to think. What else did Holly and Warren Broome have in common?

Audrey Millard
, I remembered suddenly.
The other jigsaw puzzle map.
I raced up the steps, with Marla calling behind me, wanting to know where I was going. I didn't answer. In Tom's and my bedroom, I dumped out the contents of our hamper. I pulled out the pants I'd worn the night before, then retrieved the folded map from deep in the right pocket.

I opened it, smoothed it out, then held it carefully as I descended to the basement.

“Goldy,” Marla said in a singsong tone, without looking up, “you're beginning to scare me.”

“I'm trying to find out how Holly and Warren could have been connected.”

“And?”

“Okay, check this out,” I said as I pressed the map down, right next to the one I'd photocopied from the atlas.

“Hunan Province,” Marla read aloud. “Both of them. If Holly meant for us to distill meaning from either of these maps, that meaning is eluding me.”

Frustrated, I flopped into one of the basement's metal chairs. Whatever it was Holly wanted all of us to see, it just
was not
visible
—not to Marla, not to me, not to Tom, nor to any other member of the sheriff's department investigative team.

I couldn't face the Amour notes anymore just then. We hadn't found any mention of Holly being in therapy. I knew we should be looking, but the chicken scratch of my notes was giving me a headache. I asked myself if there was anything else I hadn't yet followed up on.

As I tortured my poor brain with questions, Julian clattered down the basement steps. He clutched a large tray with plates of much-welcome field greens topped with poached eggs and pan-grilled asparagus. He poured sparkling water into frosted glasses. “Hate to mention this while you're doing your note taking, ladies.” He looked over at us nervously as he set place mats and napkins on the one long worktable that wasn't papered with our notes. “In about an hour, we need to shove off for the Ungers' place. Also, Arch called the house line. The Passat had a flat.”

“You must be kidding,” I said in disbelief. “Those tires were new this past winter.”

“Boss, it's okay.” Julian straightened. “He thinks he picked up a nail. Anyway, Sergeant Jones and Bob Rushwood helped him change it. They're all on their way back here. Bob is following Arch and Sergeant Jones, in case the
spare
goes flat.”

My mind felt far away. “When did this happen?”

“This morning,” said Julian. He shook his head. “Bob e-mailed the kids doing trail digging today, canceling it. Since it's Ophelia's birthday, he was going to take her out to lunch. But each of the kids was supposed to e-mail him back, saying they'd gotten his message. Arch and a couple of other kids did
not
e-mail him back. So Bob had gone out to the trailhead in the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve, in case anyone showed up. Which only Arch and Sergeant Jones did. When Arch turned around, one of his tires went flat.” Julian shrugged. “Arch said Bob was already late to meet Ophelia, to take her out for a birthday lunch. So when Arch arrives, he and Sergeant Jones are going to eat quickly, then she's going to follow Arch to the tire place. She left her prowler out front.”

“Dios mío
,
”
Marla murmured. “I feel as if I'm in the middle of an FBI operation.”

Julian gave her a sympathetic look. “I told Sergeant Boyd what was going on. Boyd doesn't trust anyone, I suppose, even tire guys. Sergeant Jones is going to stay with Arch at Goodyear, while the flat's being patched. Then you and Boyd and I have to go over to the Ungers' house to set up—”

Marla rolled her eyes. “I can't follow this without having something to eat.”

I held up my hand. “Thanks, Julian. The salads look great.”

Julian's sneakers squeaked as he trod carefully back up the wooden stairs. We set aside our pens and papers and dug into the eggs and sumptuous piles of sweet, crunchy grilled asparagus. I made a mental note to ask Julian how he'd done the latter.

“Divine,” said Marla. She put down her fork and appeared thoughtful. “So, getting back to Warren Broome, psychiatrist extraordinaire. Or maybe not so extraordinary. We
still don't know
if Holly was ever in therapy. It's not mentioned in the notes. I mean, if she'd been seeing a shrink, don't you think she would have mentioned it?”

“Maybe not, if it was Warren Broome, and they were having an affair. She might have been ashamed.”

“But we were her friends,” Marla protested. “She could have told
us
.”

“You mean, the way she told us about the other guys she was having affairs with? Which she didn't? The way she told us that she was having money problems?”

“Okay, point taken. The woman kept secrets.”

“Perhaps she told Father Pete everything. There was that quarterly confession.”

Marla shook her head. “I don't think so.” She looked down at her notes. “I have lots of stuff in here about her playing in a tennis tournament with this boyfriend, hiking Mount Evans with that one, then skiing Beaver Creek with somebody else. I mean, after she moved back to Aspen Meadow, the woman did nothing but shop, get her hair and nails done, and then engage in sports with an unending stream of guys. And you're right, there are no names. She certainly didn't seem unhappy to be divorced from George. In fact, she seemed ecstatic. And this was all before her collages began to get lots of attention and bring in big bucks. So what gives?”

“I don't know,” I said, for what felt like the fortieth time since we'd started this expedition into the past. “Maybe she
wasn't
ecstatic. She had a lot of secrets, Marla. It looks as if she was trying to extort money from someone, which I never would have expected from Holly. And it looks as if she had more conflict in her life than we knew about. Somewhere she stashed some kind of evidence. ‘Notes,' she called it. ‘A record.' Whoever attacked me last night thought I had that evidence. And maybe that same person was the one who attacked Father Pete and stole the church file. Perhaps the attacker knew Holly went to see Father Pete on a regular basis. The answers to our questions may be
in those notes
.”

“And you still think something in your notebooks from our old meetings might give us a clue as to what was going on in Holly's life?”

“What else do we have to go on? We haven't even developed any long shots. Right?”

Marla nodded solemnly.

“Holly shared much of her journey with us in those meetings. Maybe she let something slip about the parts of her life she was hiding. Or she could have said anything that might lead us to a clear connection to what got her killed.”

“So,” Marla concluded, “I suppose we have to finish going through these.”

We reluctantly set aside our empty plates and went back to reading.

“Whoa, here's something,” Marla said. She squinted at the page. “Do you recall a session you and Holly did on something you called ‘merciful lying'? It was in December, and there was a blizzard. I wasn't there yet, because of the snow. Holly was over here, because the two of you were doing some planning for Arch and Drew's Sunday School class.”

“ ‘Merciful lying.' ” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “I vaguely recall it.”

“You'll know in a minute, because the evening, if not the meeting, was memorable. According to what you wrote,” Marla said, “you said lying was okay sometimes, if it was merciful. You wanted the group to discuss the idea.”

I frowned. “I did? Just Holly and I were going to discuss that?”

Marla peered down at the notebook in front of her. “Yes. It all started when you saw someone in town, an elderly woman. It made you pose the question to Holly: if it's an act of mercy, is it okay not to tell the truth? This elderly woman was someone you had waited on in that southwestern accessories store where you worked, before you went down to André's restaurant and started cooking. An infinitely better choice, I might add. Turquoise-and-silver jewelry is so seventies.”

I thought back. “Yes. That woman's got to be dead now. I mean, she was in her late eighties back then.”

“Right,” said Marla. She took a moment, reading. “You say here that the woman and her husband had come into the store on their sixtieth wedding anniversary. He had picked out a necklace for her.”

“Navajo,” I said, the memory of the lie suddenly clarifying.

“But you didn't actually wait on her the first time they came into the store. On the anniversary visit, the
owner
waited on them. The customer told her husband the necklace was too expensive. He was very disappointed, because he'd really wanted to buy it for her. The next week, he died of a heart attack. Every week thereafter, for months, according to the store owner, the widow came in, usually with her elderly female friends in tow. She was looking for the necklace.”

I said, “I do remember. The owner told me they'd sold the necklace the day after the woman and her husband came in. Not long afterward, I started working there, but I'd never waited on the widow.”

“Until one day . . .” Marla prompted.

“Yes. One day, the store owner was working with me. When she saw the widow and her coterie of friends walking across the parking lot, she quickly told me the story. Then she said she couldn't face the widow one more time. As she ducked into our storage area, she called over her shoulder that
I
needed to deal with the situation. The lady came into the store with her pals, and started to tell me about the anniversary visit and the necklace. I stopped her in the middle of her story. I said that
I
was the one who had waited on her and her husband—”

“You note here that that was a lie,” Marla interrupted.

“Yup. Then I pointed to
another
Navajo necklace and said, ‘I recall when you and your husband picked this out for your anniversary. But you didn't buy it.' She didn't remember the necklace I showed her. She didn't remember me. But she was overjoyed, bought the necklace, and went on her way with her friends. And before you ask, I did
not
work on commission.”

“No, you worked on heart,” whispered Marla. She cleared her throat. “But listen, according to your notes, Holly then said, ‘I've been lying mercifully for years. To George, and to Drew.' ”

“Oh, my Lord. Really? Did I write down what she meant?”

“No, you didn't, because at that point I arrived out front with a bang. My brand-new gold Jaguar slid through the unplowed snow into your next-door neighbor's pickup truck. The Jag then ricocheted into somebody's Jeep across the street, then back across the street into another pickup, and it was bumper cars all the way down.”

“Right. How could I forget?” The fierce
crack
and
bam
and
crunch
of Marla's rear-wheel-drive Jaguar careening into first one vehicle, then another, had sent Holly and me catapulting out the front door. Since the hour had been late and the snow was deepening, we told Arch and Drew to stay in the living room. They were already staring out the front window, trying to see what was going on.

“My ego never recovered,” Marla said wistfully. “Nor did the Jaguar, sad to say. The highway patrol guy said, ‘Lady? How many cars did you hit, exactly? Is this what they mean by a slippery slope?' ”

I remembered Boyd's routine: “Traffic Stops I Have Known.” “Come on, Marla. Everyone was just glad you were all right. But your bumper-car routine aside, what follows in the notes?”

“Nothing,” Marla said. “You wrote down what Holly had said, that she'd been mercifully lying to George and Drew for years. Because of my accident, the meeting was suspended. Next week it was my turn to pick the topic. I said, ‘How about the cost of car insurance?' ”

“But what did we actually talk about the next week?” I asked.

“You told me to get serious,” Marla went on, “and then I said, ‘How about when someone insults you? Doesn't that tell you something?' At a friends-of-the-library meeting, someone had sneered and called me ‘an armchair liberal.' Actually,” she said, surprise still in her voice, “I don't have any political beliefs, and I don't have armchairs—just wingbacks. But then the man came up to me after the meeting and asked for a check for his charity, which was called Clothes Horse. He said they raised money to buy kids from poor areas of Denver new clothes and shoes for school. I told him I'd think about it. Then I came home and called the people who regulate that type of thing.
Regulated
. There was no Internet back then. In any event, the regulator told me the charity was bogus. That guy was a crook. Thought he could insult his way into my good graces! What a jerk.”

“And did we talk about that?” I asked.

Marla peered at the notes. “No, because I was the only one who had inherited money that I wanted to give away. Which this crook no doubt knew. But I've been on the lookout for people who hurl insults ever since. My experience has been, they're trying to put you down so they can hit you up for something. And they're usually hiding a thing or two.”

Arch clomping in overhead shook us out of the memories. Voices, deep and high, agitated and composed, threaded through the air.

“What's going on up there?” Marla asked.

“Sergeant Jones may be trying to calm Arch down after the flat-tire mess.”

We went up. In the kitchen, Boyd stood in a corner, watchfully listening to Arch, Julian, Bob Rushwood, and Sergeant Jones. Sergeant Jones was indeed trying to soothe Arch, saying things like, “It could have been worse. Much worse.”