Sticks & Scones gbcm-10

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “Brilliant!” he exclaimed, slapping the desk. “Penny-prick! Shuttlecock! We’ll use half of the Great Hall for the games! Can you give the food some game-playing names?”

  “We can have the veal roast with …” I frowned, then inspiration struck. “Penny-Prick Potato Casserole. Raisin Rice with … Shuttlecock Shrimp Curry. I don’t know if you can give molded strawberry salads, steamed broccoli, or chutney and curry side dishes Tudor names. But after the meal, we’ll play games and have the plum tart.”

  “Perfect!” he cried. “I am so delighted I employed you!” He beamed, I beamed, the sun beamed in on us.

  Then he announced he had to go figure out how to arrange the Great Hall. He managed another regal wave, this time in the direction of the telephone, and told me to feel free to make my calls. Mi palacio es su palacio, he announced grandly, then departed.

  The Furman County Sheriff’s Department was first on my list. Once through, I pressed the numbers for Sergeant Boyd’s extension.

  “Listen,” I said after he’d asked about Tom and I’d assured him Tom was on the mend, “you know those intelligence files you keep on people?”

  “For crying out loud, Goldy, you know I can’t give you a file.”

  “I just want to know what you’ve got in one. Viv Martini.”

  “Your ex’s new girlfriend? How do you think that’s going to look, somebody hears I’m giving you that information?”

  “Sergeant Boyd, Captain Lambert already told me she slept with Ray Wolff and possibly Andy Balachek. But now she’s doing a complicated real estate deal with John Richard Korman. To be specific, she plunked down a hundred fifty thousand dollars to go in on a condo sale with him in Beaver Creek. He never agrees to joint ownership, so something’s going on.”

  “Where’d she get a hundred fifty thousand bucks?” Boyd’s voice was distant. He was riffling papers.

  “You tell me.”

  “We watched her bank account after those stamps were stolen. Nothing happened.”

  “Well,” I said, “did you all check any stores besides pawnshops after the stamp heist?”

  “I don’t know. Our guys are supposed to, but sometimes they don’t have time to get to specialty places.” He sighed. “Okay, here’s the file. You breathe a word of this, I’m fired. Viv’s been hooked up with Wolff since she got out of high school. But, let’s see… it says here a snitch in Golden put Viv Martini back… okay, seven years ago, she was shacked up with your good buddy there at the castle, Eliot Hyde.”

  “What.?” I glanced around the room. Any listening devices? Where had Eliot gone?

  “That’s what it says.”

  I gulped. “So Andy Balachek and Tom were shot right near Eliot’s property, and Viv Martini, who’s been involved with Andy, possibly, and definitely Andy’s accomplice, Ray, who was arrested by Tom, this same Viv has an old relationship with Eliot Hyde? Did you guys question Eliot after Tom was shot?”

  “Of course we did! He claims not to have seen Viv in years.”

  I shook my head, puzzled. “What possible attraction could there have been between Eliot Hyde and Viv Martini?”

  “For crying out loud, Goldy! She’s good-looking, he’s not bad, he wanted a cute girlfriend and she figured he was loaded. Our snitch says she wanted him to start an illegal casino there. This was just when gambling was legalized, but only for Central City and Blackhawk. The snitch says Viv wanted to accommodate the home-town gamblers at the castle. They could use all those halls and rooms to hide people, in case of a cop raid.”

  Remembering how Eliot had blanched at my mention of wagers, I still felt skeptical. “Was this casino-castle her idea? Or Ray Wolff’s?”

  “Who knows? All I know is Eliot nixed it, said it would make him look bad if he was caught, and he couldn’t afford that.” Boyd paused, and I thought of Eliot’s sensitivity regarding reputation. Boyd asked, “How’d you find out about the condo?”

  “I have my snitches, too, Sergeant.” When he sighed again, I asked, “What about those specialty stores, then? Any stamps show up there?”

  “Why, you got something I need to know?” When I said I didn’t, he went on: “The insurer for The Stamp Fox is hiring a private investigator, and has promised to share anything he gets. We’re concentrating on the investigations into the deaths of the driver and Balachek.”

  “You must have investigated Viv Martini.”

  “Of course. She was sleeping with your ex-husband all night Sunday night. And they weren’t getting much sleep, according to your ex. Please don’t interrogate either one of them.”

  “Whatever you say,” I replied, then pretended to ponder a bit. “Listen,” I said, trying to sound thoughtful, “do Buddy and Chardé Lauderdale have alibis for the time Tom was shot? A little while ago, they were both here at Hyde Castle, giving me a hard time.”

  “What kind of hard time?”

  I told him about the incident in the Hydes’ kitchen, to which Boyd replied, “Their alibi is each other. Oh, and we checked on Sukie Hyde’s first husband. One of his guys was on the roof with him when he stepped on a stray wire from a bathroom fan. Nobody seemed to think it was suspicious.” He paused. “But here’s something related to the stamp heist. Our friend Buddy Lauderdale was in The Stamp Fox a month before the theft, asking about values. He said he wanted to invest in stamps, but never did.” When I made a hmm-ing noise, Boyd warned me to be careful, that Buddy Lauderdale was reputedly one of the best shots in the county. I promised him I would be, and signed off.

  One thing was certain. There was no way I was waiting for some faraway insurance company to get around to hiring an investigator. Eliot’s lowest desk drawer yielded a Yellow Pages, and under “Stamps-Collectors,” I found four shops in the Denver area. I blithely let my fingers do the walking while presenting myself as Francesca Chastain, collector of any stamp with a picture of royalty. Price, I said, was no object. Even over the phone, you could hear those store owners’ hearts speed up.

  The first three, general dealers in stamps and coins, said they hadn’t seen a cover with Queen Victoria on it anywhere but at stamp shows. But the fourth philatelic dealer, an estate auction agent named Troy McIntire operating out of his home in Golden, gave me an evasive reply.

  “What exactly are you looking for?” McIntire demanded.

  “I collect anything with kings or queens on the stamps. What I’m especially looking for is covers with Queen Victoria on them.”

  “I might be able to help you,” McIntire said, with a forced reluctance that sounded cagey. “If price really is no object, and the price is paid in cash.”

  I eagerly made an appointment for that afternoon, then leafed through the phone book for Southwest Hospital. I talked to three nurses before I located the flight nurse who had helped Tom. Her name was Norma Randall. She was on duty on the third floor, and said she could talk for five minutes.

  “The cop,” Norma Randall said, remembering. “Day before yesterday? Tom? Couldn’t forget him. Or you, either. He’s doing okay?”

  “Yes,” I replied. “Thanks to you all. You… seemed to be… more experienced than most flight nurses.” Once you passed thirty, I’d observed, being experienced was the euphemism for being older.

  She laughed. “I’ve been doing it a long time. Too long, I think sometimes.” She paused. “Weren’t you married to Dr. John Richard Korman?” When I replied that I was, she went on: “I worked with him one time, after we brought in an Aspen Meadow woman with a retained placenta.”

  I made a noncommittal mm-mm noise.

  “Don’t worry, he did a fine job,” she said, reading my mind. “What can I do for you now?”

  “I don’t want to keep you, Norma, but I’m … trying to locate a cousin who’s a flight nurse. Where did you do your nursing training?”

  “Nebraska.”

  “Well,” I said boldly, “do you know anyone at the hospital who would have gone to The Front Range School of Nursing in the late sixties? I’m particul
arly interested in women who would have had flight nurse training.”

  She said she didn’t know anyone off the top of her head, but her relief had just come in, and she could ask a few people, if I wanted. I thanked her and said I didn’t mind being put on hold.

  “I found one of the older ER techs,” she informed me triumphantly on her return. “He told me there was a flight nurse named Connie Oliver who graduated from Front Range at about the time you’re talking about. He thinks she may have switched to being a school nurse. Denver or Furman County.”

  I thanked Nurse Randall and signed off, then decided to bypass Denver and hope for luck with Furman County , Schools’ central office. I was listening to the choices of an automated phone-answering system when rapping at the study door nearly made me drop the phone.

  Julian cried, “Breakfast! And it came from across the North Pole, via the castle garden!” Flourishing a large silver tray, he pushed through the heavy door. Michaela Kirovsky followed him, holding a coffeepot. Julian’s energy filled the study as he bounced forward. “Hey, boss?” he asked me with a grin. “Don’t give me that look like you can’t eat.” When I hastily hung up, he cried, “Hey! Wha’d you swallow, a canary?”

  -17-

  You’re going to love this,” Julian announced as he set the tray laden with golden-glazed miniature Bundt cakes on Eliot’s desk. It was actually two trays, one on top of the other.

  “Got multiple orders for room service?” I asked mildly. “When in doubt, Bundt?”

  “I’m putting half of this on the other tray for Tom. He’s still asleep, I just checked. Michaela’s helping because she forgot some equipment and had to come back to the castle.” In addition to the cakes sparkling with orange zest and sugar, there were two plastic-wrapped crystal bowls. Julian pulled off the plastic and revealed snowy yogurt artfully topped with slices of kiwi, strawberry, banana, apple, and plum. “Oh,” he said, “I’m saving that sweet bread you made for later, since it was too hot to cut I made these orange cakes last night while the dinner was cooking.” He glanced around the study and wrinkled his nose. “Man! What decade is it?”

  “Any decade you want, for a price,” Michaela supplied with a wicked smile.

  “Do I detect animosity toward the decorator?” I asked mildly.

  Michaela snorted. “Chardé keeps asking when she gets to do my place. I keep telling Eliot: Never.”

  When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “Thanks for bringing the goodies over, guys. I thought if I didn’t have caffeine soon, 1 was going to pass out.”

  Michaela nodded wordlessly as Julian relieved her of the coffeepot and poured me a steaming cup. I thanked him, took a sip - Zowie! good stuff - and glanced at Michaela. Her pale skin glowed in the daylight. But her eyes remained clouded. She pressed her lips together, and I wondered if she thought she’d said too much about Chardé. But there was something else there What? Did she know something she wasn’t sharing?

  “Michaela, I need to ask you a question.” When I put down my cup, it clattered in the china saucer. “As you know, my husband was shot next to Hyde Chapel. By Cottonwood Creek, near where poor Andy Balachek’s body was found. You live in the gatehouse, with a view of the front of the castle. Did you see anything at all late Sunday night? Or early Monday morning? People moving? Cars parked?”

  She flushed deeply. “No. Sorry. The police already asked me about that, when they came over to talk to Eliot and Sukie. I don’t have a view of the creek. I didn’t see anything.”

  She’s not telling the truth, my mind insisted. Why? “How about Andy Balachek? Did you keep up with him after his father fixed the dam?”

  More blushing. “Yes,” she replied, “I knew Andy. His mother died when he was little. We used to have a small … club, I guess you’d call it, for locals of Russian and eastern European descent. In my father’s time, we gathered here at the castle, for the holidays. We’d visit and make our favorite foods. Peter and Roberta Balachek always brought baby Andy.” She cleared her throat uneasily. “And then Roberta got cancer and died, and little Andy grew up and became big Andy. We got gambling in the state, and Andy - well, his addiction just about killed poor Peter.” She looked at her hands, struggling visibly to compose herself. “I know Andy was found near where your husband was shot. You want to know all you can about him. There just isn’t much.” She inhaled. “My free period’s almost over. I need to get back to school… .”

  “You seem very sensitive to boys. Andy Balachek. My Arch. It’s a gift.”

  She hesitated at the study door. “I didn’t do Andy much good, though, did I?”

  “Whoa,” observed Julian when she’d left. He refilled my cup. “What was that about?”

  “I don’t know. What was she like at Elk Park Prep?”

  A frown wrinkled Julian’s handsome face. “Quiet. Really hard-working. Lonely, it seemed to me, but I didn’t fence, so I didn’t know her very well. One time when we had a senior tour here, we asked her about the baby who’d supposedly been thrown down the well. She said that story was borscht, a mix-up from the ghost story about the duke. She isn’t the most charismatic coach at Elk Park Prep, but she’s, you know, a stalwart. Like Tom. Everybody likes her. Everybody likes Tom. What’s the matter?”

  My ears were ringing. Everybody likes Tom. At this point, I couldn’t talk to Tom, Arch, or gossip-hungry Marla. But I had to talk to somebody I trusted, or the secret was going to explode inside of me. “Julian.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m afraid Tom is having an affair - “

  “Bull!”

  “Or maybe he was having an affair and broke it off.” I choked. “I think he might have been shot by this other woman, who could be his ex-fiancée. Then again, unless she was somehow involved with Andy Balachek, she couldn’t have guessed he would show up at the chapel, right?”

  “Tom’s ex-fiancée? What are you talking about?”

  “Her name is Sara Beth O’Malley. She was a nurse who supposedly died at the end of the Vietnam war.”

  “What?”

  “She reportedly died in a helo crash on the Mekong Delta, but she didn’t. I’m telling you, she’s not dead. She sent him e-mails.” I gulped. “And she was watching our house, too.”

  “Watching the house? When? Did you tell the police?”

  I tore my gaze away from his face: His concern and love tugged at my heart. Outside, the moat reflected the sky. “I told the investigators a woman was there, not who she was.”

  He plopped into one of Eliot’s leather armchairs and softened his tone. “When did you first think this woman wasn’t dead?”

  “After Tom was shot, he said, ‘I don’t love her.’ Then he passed out. Since he got out of surgery, he hasn’t talked about who he meant. I’m not even sure he remembers saying anything.” I felt blood seep into my cheeks.

  “And you saw this same woman outside the house?”

  “Trudy next door saw her first, the morning after our window was shattered. This woman parked outside our house and kept staring at it. I tried to talk to her, but she refused to talk to me. She just took off. From old photographs, I thought she looked just like an older version of the woman Tom was once engaged to. She’s very pretty… And her name’s Sara Beth O’Malley. Those old photographs? Signed just like the recent e-mails: ‘S.B.’”

  “So she didn’t die over there. Incredible. And now she’s back. But why?”

  “According to her e-mail, she’s here to get supplies. To get her teeth fixed. To hook up with her old flame. All of the above, or none. Besides e-mails from her, there was one from the State Department. Tom had written them to see if there’d been any old or new reports of Sara Beth O’Malley surviving the attack that supposedly killed her. State said no.”

  Julian was pensive. “Goldy … do you want me to ask Tom about it?”

  “No!” My hands clenched. “I just don’t know what to do.”

  Julian stood, picked up the top tray, then moved a silver place setting and the coffeepot to
the bottom tray. Using tongs, he transferred one of the miniature Bundt cakes to a small plate, then set out a place mat and silverware on the desk.

  He hefted up the tray and studied me a moment. “Boss, you’ve got a sleep debt the size of a jumbo mortgage. You need to rest, have something to eat, wait until you can think again. There’s too much going on to keep it all straight. Why don’t you just concentrate on Tom, Arch, and our catering jobs this week? We’ll get Tom better, then we’ll ask him.” When I said nothing, he headed for the door. “Look,” he said over his shoulder, “how ‘bout I tell Tom about one of my old high-school girlfriends who showed up at C.U. We broke up and she got cancer, supposedly. Then it turns out she got better and decided to go to college, where she looked me up.” He balanced the tray and opened the door. “See what he says.”

  “An old girlfriend of yours? With cancer? Is that true?”

  He flashed a smile back at me. “I wouldn’t tell you, Miss Nosy, if it was.” “Thanks, Julian.”

  “Don’t mention it.” I swigged the rich coffee, spooned up the yogurt, downed half of the succulent cake, licked my fingers, and redialed the Furman County Schools’ central office. After maneuvering through the options network, I was finally connected to an administrator in charge of student medical care.

  “I’m from Aspen Meadow, and I’m looking for a school nurse named Connie Oliver,” I began pleasantly. “I need to check on an outbreak of strep.”

  When I was put on hold, I scanned Eliot’s elegant office. To the right of the glowing bay window, Chardé had placed an Oriental-style silk screen. On the other, I noticed, was a molding-framed opening. With sudden recognition, I realized it was one of those wall indentations that indicated a garderobe. Sheesh! Those medieval folks must have had to go to the bathroom a lot –

  “What strep outbreak?” I was rudely asked. I’d almost forgotten I was on the phone.

  “It was reported in January at our middle school,” I shot back. I knew about the strep outbreak from the Mountain Journal. After several more long minutes of holding, the administrator returned.