The Whole Enchilada (24 page)

Boyd gave me a hooded look of warning that I did not think Marla caught. But I remembered Tom's warning:
reveal nothing to anyone but Boyd & Marla, no matter how much you trust him or her.
So neither Sergeant Jones nor Bob Rushwood would hear about the merciful lying and responses to insults. I wondered if Marla had seen Boyd's expression, and would know to keep her mouth shut.

“Bob?” said Marla as she stared at the enormous sandwiches Julian was placing in front of Arch, Bob, and Sergeant Jones. “What about your lunch with Ophelia? The birthday girl?”

Bob Rushwood brushed back his dark dreads. He gave Marla a look of such dejection that I was immediately aware that something had gone terribly wrong. I certainly hoped that helping Arch hadn't meant Ophelia had canceled on him.

“Mom!” Arch cried. “What happened to your neck?”

“Oh, I . . .” I stammered.
Reveal nothing.
I trusted Arch, of course, but I knew better than to talk about being attacked the previous evening. Still, I was aware of the fact that I presented quite a sight: a caterer who looks as if she's survived an angry client trying to choke her to death. “I was trying on a shirt for tonight—”

“Tom was trying to show her how to do a four-square knot for a tie she was going to wear,” Julian lied smoothly. “You know, the way some caterers wear? Anyway, he feels terrible.”

“I never should have asked him in the first place,” I said. Apparently, my gift for lying on short notice had not dimmed over the years. “Arch?” I asked. “Are you all right?”

“I'm fine,” said my son. He sat at the kitchen table, his legs thrust out in front of him. “I'm just ticked off that I went to help build trails, then got a flat, and now have to waste the rest of the day at a tire place.”

I bit back words saying it was a good thing he'd had Sergeant Jones and Bob Rushwood there to bail him out. But Arch would not want to be corrected in front of others.

“I'm glad you had enough turkey in the walk-in for sandwiches
for everybody
,” Julian said, too cheerily. He raised his eyebrows. If there was something else I wasn't supposed to talk about, I didn't know what it was. So I looked at Bob to get a clue.

Bob Rushwood's face was set in a scowl, which I hadn't seen on him before. It appeared he'd washed the dreads, which couldn't be that easy, in preparation either for his lunch with Ophelia, or the dinner that night. Not only that, but the effort he had used to help change Arch's tire had made him sweat. Large circles of perspiration showed dark under the armpits and down the chest of his yellow sports shirt. It was not flattering.

Since we'd just been talking about being careful not to insult people, Marla and I said nothing—not about why Bob was there, or about what had happened to his lunch with Ophelia. An uncomfortable silence fell over the kitchen. Bob picked up half of his sandwich, then peered around Julian.

“Why is there crime-scene tape in your backyard?” Bob asked.

“We had a bear,” I said quickly, glancing through the windows. Thank God the crime-scene techs had left already. “It made a lot of noise and broke some stuff on our deck. At first we thought it was a vandal. So Tom called an investigative team, but by the time they got here, we'd figured out it was a bear, and he was gone.”

“What a relief!” said Marla.

“A bear?” said Arch. “Again?”

But Bob had lost interest. He put down his sandwich, bunched his hands into fists, and pushed them into his eyes. Marla and I exchanged another glance, but kept mum.

“Ophelia's seeing somebody else!” Bob cried. He tried to make his sob sound like a cough. Then he turned his wet, red face to us. “Before I went out to the Preserve—to make sure the kids who hadn't answered my e-mail didn't show up?—I drove over to her house to give her some roses. She wouldn't see me. And there was some
other
guy there. I could see him through the front door glass. He'd parked his stupid BMW in the driveway. It has surfboard and snowboard stickers on it! Like he has to announce that he's
so cool
. So now we all know he's a jock. Duh! Pretty soon I was pleading into the intercom, ‘Ophelia, you already have a jock! And I'm it!' But she wouldn't listen, wouldn't even come out. She finally announced through the speaker that she didn't want to have lunch, that she would see me tonight, and that I should just go away. Go away? Is that the way you talk to someone you're going to spend the rest of your life with?”

I pressed my lips together, ignored Marla, and tried to look sympathetically at Bob. He was at least ten years older than Ophelia, so maybe the age difference was bothering her. Afraid he could read my mind, I turned away. While Julian carefully placed chips on Bob's plate, Arch loudly cleared his throat. He knew that Brewster drove a BMW with Hobie and Burton stickers on it; we all did. I shook my head, trying to telegraph to Arch:
Don't let on that the guy at Ophelia's place is Brewster.
Arch opened his eyes wide at me, as in,
What's going on?
But I ignored him. Bob, meanwhile, picked up the sandwich half he'd put down and demolished most of it in a single bite.

“Mom
,
”
Arch began, but we were interrupted by a horrendous banging on the front door.

“Goldy Schulz!” a male voice cried. “Get out here!”

Sergeant Jones immediately called for backup.

“Mr. Rushwood? Everybody?” said Boyd, drawing his weapon. “I'm going to have to ask you to stay put.”

“For how long?” asked Bob. “My life's falling apart. I have to see Ophelia again.”

The banging continued on the front door.

“All right,” said Boyd. “Go through the back door. Go now. This minute.”

Bob clutched the other half of his sandwich in midair and gave it a look of longing, even as his frown deepened. Julian, meanwhile, hastily pulled out some waxed paper. He deftly removed the half sandwich, wrapped it along with the chips, and handed the package to Bob.

“We'll get back to trail building tomorrow, Arch,” Bob said hastily. He looked confused, but took the proffered food and hustled out the kitchen door and across the deck. There, if he'd have cared to notice, no furniture or anything else was broken, by either bear or human.

“Goldy Schulz!” the male voice was hollering. “Answer this door!”

“Who
is
that?” Arch demanded, looking around the kitchen. “Why is everything around here so weird? You had a bear last night, so there's crime-scene tape in our backyard? Brewster Motley is sneaking around with Ophelia? You won't tell Bob what's going on?
Mom?
”

“Goldy Schulz!” the shrill voice called again. “Get your fat ass out here!”

“I'm going to kill whoever—” Marla began, starting for the front door.

“You are going to do nothing except stay right here,” Sergeant Jones said calmly. She'd moved quickly to the back door to lock it, then nodded at Boyd.

“Goldy Schulz!” screamed the man. He banged on the front door.

Boyd, his weapon drawn, moved down the hall's right side. Sergeant Jones also had her gun out, and was moving down the left side of the hall. Marla, Arch, Julian, and I clustered around the kitchen door. In the distance, a siren wailed.

“Who's there?” Boyd barked through the door.

“It's Warren Broome. Who the hell are you? Send that damned meddling bitch out here. I have some questions for her. She talked to my wife and now Patsie thinks I'm keeping secrets from her, which I'm
not
. I'm putting my life back together, and now Goldy Schulz is tearing it apart!”

The siren was squawling.
Boop boop boop
. The prowler stopped in front of our house.

“Let me talk to him,” I said.

Sergeant Jones warned me with a look. “Forget it.”

Boyd was speaking into a walkie-talkie. A harsh, low male shout greeted Broome, who had the temerity to yell back, “Oh yeah? Why don't you come up here and make me?”

A moment later, Boyd holstered his weapon and nodded to Jones, then to us. Marla, Arch, Julian, and I raced down the hall and into the living room. We made it just in time to see Warren Broome, M.D., being led down our sidewalk in handcuffs, accompanied by a policeman. When they got to his prowler, the cop put one hand up on the doctor's blond scalp and gently guided him into the backseat.

“Aw,” said Marla, “you should have jammed that big old head into the roof of the car. I mean, after last night, doesn't the guy ever learn?”

I wondered. But there was something else bothering me. Warren Broome had insulted me.
Fat ass
and
bitch
I could probably handle. But I was left wondering.

Like other people who insulted people, did Broome fit Marla's pop-psych analysis and have something to hide? Did he, in fact, have secrets? Say he had a piece of information that I did not yet know. It could be along the lines of
You caused a fight between Patsie and me.
I attacked you last night, and watch me try to attack you today
. In the middle of the day, with neighbors who could hear? Maybe. How about this:
I had sex with Holly Ingleby at the doctors' conference in Boulder and am the biological father of Drew; Holly was blackmailing me and I killed her
.

Setting aside the attack on me and what we still didn't know about Holly's secrets . . . what questions did this psychiatrist, who disliked Father Pete and had known Holly, perhaps intimately, have for me? Did they start with Audrey Millard and end with Holly Ingleby? Maybe, maybe not. I'd told him I had a message from Holly for him, and I hadn't delivered it. Oh, dear, I felt guilty for that lie. And now the shrink was losing it.

“Okay, crisis over,” Boyd announced. He nodded in my direction. “Just do what you would normally do now.”

“What did Broome want?” I asked.

Boyd lifted his chin. “I didn't wait to find out. He's on his way down to the department, where he'll sit and wait a bit. Maybe our guys will throw some charges at him, like disorderly conduct or threatening and intimidation. See what he has to say.” He turned a kindly eye to my son. “Arch, Sergeant Jones is going to accompany you to the tire place now.”

Arch gave me a concerned look. “Mom? Are you okay?” When I said I was fine, he said, “Gus has invited me to spend another night. Is that all right? Sergeant Jones can come again. I think Gus's grandparents liked her. We'll go together to the trail-building site tomorrow.”

“If it's okay with Sergeant Jones,” I replied, “it's fine with me.”

“I'll go get some clean clothes.” Arch regarded Marla and me with skepticism. “I hope there aren't any bears at Gus's place.”

“There won't be,” Marla assured him. “And just look at it this way, Arch. At least you don't have to help cater Ophelia's birthday party tonight. We could see a fistfight between Bob Rushwood the trainer and Brewster Motley the attorney.”

“That might actually be kind of cool,” said Arch.

I packed up the Julian-made sandwiches for Arch and Sergeant Jones. After seeing the two of them off, I put the marinating kebab ingredients into the box, then stared inside. What was I forgetting? The skewers! I placed them in doubled plastic bags and packed them. Julian, meanwhile, fluffed the cooled saffron rice and spooned the cucumber-and-yogurt salad into a plastic container. Marla gently wrapped the birthday cake.

While snapping on lids, Julian said, “Did I ever tell you what happened that one time I worked for Neil Unger?”

“Remind me,” I said. “How was it?”

“Awful. Guy is a control freak and a cheapskate. I was ready to strangle him by the time I skedaddled out of there.”

Everyone thought Julian was just cute and easygoing. But like most caterers, he missed nothing. “What was the problem?” I asked.

“Neil and his wife, Francie—Ophelia's stepmother—stayed out in the kitchen the entire time I was trying to work. At first I thought they were afraid I was going to steal their stuff. Let me tell you, by the time I finished, I was ready to pull out a cleaver and break all their damn stuff.”

“Easy there, boy,” Marla said.

But Julian was having none of it. “Neil asked me a bunch of leading questions about politics. In my apron, do I
look
political? I answered his questions as mildly as I could, but forget it. Neil disagreed with me, point by point. Meanwhile, I was trying to manage a dinner for eight, using two ovens, heating twice-baked potatoes and making lemon vinaigrette for the salads, flipping fillets, and trying to figure out when to put in the baked Alaska. The whole time, Neil's giving me his views. I mean, the guy's a bully. Acts like he knows everything about running any type of business—”

“That's rich,” said Marla as she placed the cake and candles into their own box. “Neil inherited his uniform-making business from his father. He doesn't know the first thing about business, except how to send jobs overseas.”

I said, “Does he only make medical uniforms, like for the conference in Boulder all those years ago?”

“No, they make any kind of uniform,” said Marla as she rolled out plastic wrap for the candles and matches. “Maids' uniforms, mechanics' uniforms, you name it. The only thing Neil Unger has ever done is go to Mexico and the Philippines to build sweatshops where underpaid workers make uniforms day and night. Do you not know this? It was all over the country club.”

“I rely on you for country-club news.”

“All right, then, I'll tell you,” Marla said, taping up the box. “Neil Unger was indicted for bribing foreign officials.”

“Indicted?” I asked dumbly.

“Charges dismissed,” Marla said with an exaggerated shrug. She was relishing her role as deliverer of bad news. “And of course then everyone was wondering what U.S. official he'd bribed to make
that
happen.”