Marla strode to the sink and rinsed her glass. “Let’s do it. I know she walks around the lake every morning. Maybe we can catch her.”
“Hold on.” Would Tom count this as a dangerous situation? “You don’t suppose Nan could pull anything on us, do you?”
“Are you asking if a woman in her late sixties, who looks and walks like a large rodent, is going to karate-chop the two of us? The answer is no. Let’s go.”
Marla insisted on taking her Mercedes, as Nan might recognize my van and skedaddle before we could question her. Main Street looked strangely deserted, the stores swallowed in the murky cloud of fire smoke. The lake had turned an ominous, opaque gray, and I doubted we’d see any walkers.
But I was wrong. Marla and I had been huffing along the lake path for no more than ten minutes when we encountered Nan Watkins going in the opposite direction. She was striding along, pumping her arms vigorously. She looked like a short, pear-shaped, gray-haired drum majorette.
“Stop!” Marla called, out of breath. “Nan! I’m dying. Cardiac arrest.”
“Really?” Nan asked, all concern. She halted abruptly on the dirt path and backtracked to us. Her cheeks flamed from exertion, and she was even puffing a bit, which made me feel marginally better.
“No, not really,” Marla retorted. “But our ex-husband is being buried today, and there’s something we have to know before we put him to rest.”
“Something you have to know?” she snapped. “I thought you needed me for a health problem!”
“No,” Marla said, her hands on her hips, suddenly all business. “We need to know the name of the teenage girl he raped at Southwest Hospital.”
“What?” Nan looked nonplussed. “I don’t know what you’re talking about!” She licked her lips and looked at the ground.
“Won’t work, Nan,” Marla replied. “The cops have a note the victim wrote to Cecelia Brisbane. If you don’t tell us who it is, we’re going to the sheriff’s department and have them subpoena the information from you.”
“You can’t!” Nan sputtered. “They can’t!”
Marla said, “Wanna bet?”
“Wait,” I said. I looked straight into Nan’s brown eyes. “Nan, my son needs closure on the death of his father. Please. If this woman or someone close to her shot John Richard, it would help us all put our lives back together if we could find that person and get them arrested. Please help us. Otherwise, this person could go over the edge and kill more people.”
“She couldn’t have done this,” Nan whispered. There was a bench nearby where fishermen sometimes sat as they tended their lines. Nan moved over to it and sat down. She said, “I hate remembering this. Talking about it. Nobody knows about it but me, and I failed.”
“You failed?” I asked gently.
“I failed her,” Nan said.
“Is the woman alive?” I asked.
“I think so.” Nan fixed her eyes on the dark nimbus hanging over the lake. “This all happened, oh, eight years ago? Anyway, I heard she had left town to pursue other endeavors, far away.”
“She was from Aspen Meadow?” I asked. Nan nodded.
“What endeavors did she go pursue?” Marla demanded.
“It…doesn’t matter. Anyway, she’s far away from here and unlikely to come back.” Nan was quiet for so long I thought she’d changed her mind about telling us. Then she let out a resigned sigh. “She was fourteen.” Nan’s voice was just above a whisper. “She was in the hospital for a bacterial infection, which is extremely unusual for a woman so young.” Nan explained, “You may not know that bacterial infections are often transferred from men to women. Anyway, she was very pretty and voluptuous. Dr. Korman…was making jokes about her, wondering aloud what she could have been up to that would have brought on the infection.”
I shook my head. So far, so typical.
“He…he came in one night when it wasn’t his shift. I thought he’d been drinking. He disappeared into the young woman’s room. She had a single because her family had money. A few minutes later, he brought her out and took her into an exam room. I asked him if he needed me to be with him, and he said no, absolutely not. Of course, back then nurses were always required to be in the room during a gynecological exam. So I…I figured he’d taken her in for a bandage or an injection…something. I never thought….” Again Nan lapsed into silence.
“What happened?” I prodded, keeping my voice low.
Nan lifted her chin and closed her eyes. “He left the room about twenty minutes later. You know”—she opened her eyes and gave us an immensely sad look—“I thought I heard him laughing to himself. She, the patient, didn’t come out. Then I heard her crying, so I raced down there. She was crying, and there was semen…oh God.” Nan swallowed, and tears spilled out of her eyes. “He had raped her in the stirrups. And then he’d told her to go back to her room and keep her mouth shut.”
“You didn’t report him?” Marla asked.
Nan’s expression and voice became bitter. “He was a doctor. He would have denied everything. And I can assure you, in those days, there would have been no punishment. I’m not even sure there would be any punishment today.” She paused. “The only person who would have lost her job would have been me.”
Marla and I exchanged a glance. I mumbled, “She’s probably right.”
“I know I’m right,” Nan snapped. “Later, I kept wondering why our patient didn’t scream when Dr. Korman first…started in on her.” Nan swallowed. “I think I know now. The rumor is that…her father…had abused her, too. I heard this later. It would explain the infection, anyway.”
“Oh my God,” I whispered. “Who was it?”
Nan gave me a sour look. “Brisbane. As in Walter Brisbane, the owner of the Mountain Journal. You know? Whose wife Cecelia could gossip about everything else because she couldn’t face the truth. And now Cecelia is dead, too.”
“Where is the Brisbane daughter now?”
“I don’t know. Her name was Alex. Alex Brisbane.” Nan took a deep breath. “Last I heard, she was in the navy, far away.”
20
We escorted Nan to her car. Spilling her guts had shaken her up, and she wasn’t in the mood for walking anymore. I didn’t blame her.
“Alex?” Marla repeated to me, incredulous. “That’s what they called her. I don’t have her in my database, that’s for sure.”
“It wouldn’t be anything he’d brag about, I don’t think. Not once he got sober.”
We climbed into the Mercedes. Marla revved the engine and grunted. “So, did you ever know Alex Brisbane?”
I shook my head. “Still, it’s a puzzle. Except for Cecelia, I don’t know of anyone even related to Alex. Maybe Cecelia’s remorse overtook her and she tried to hang herself. That would explain the ligature marks on her neck. When that failed, she drove into the lake.”
“And this Alex?”
“I saw a picture of her at Cecelia’s house. It’s at the library, too. Alex was in Greece.”
“In Grease?” Marla cried. “The Denver producers closed that show two years ago.”
“Greece like the country, silly.”
“Talking about grease makes me hungry for lunch,” Marla countered. “We’ve got to eat before the Jerk’s memorial service. Let’s go.”
At home, Tom and Arch were talking in the kitchen. Tom was in an unusually good mood, asking Arch questions while puttering around the kitchen. He had potatoes boiling on the stove—for potato salad, he said—and he was forming and seasoning large hamburgers from ground beef. Arch, sitting at a kitchen chair, looked shell-shocked. His mouth hung open and his glasses were skewed. What had they been talking about? And how was I going to tell Tom about Nan’s confession when Arch was around?
“Uh-oh,” Marla said, bustling up to Arch and giving him a kiss on the head. “Somebody doesn’t look very good.”
Arch took a deep breath and straightened his glasses. Tom stopped his food prep and flashed us a warning look.
�
��Here’s what happened,” Arch said, his voice dead. “The detectives found one hundred, eight thousand dollars in gold coins in the safety-deposit box. They took it down to the department.” Arch rubbed his cheeks. “So. Do you think somebody shot Dad for that money?”
“Honey,” I said softly, “I don’t know. You did the right thing, though, helping those detectives.”
Arch shook his head. “It didn’t feel like the right thing. Especially since I promised Dad I’d never tell.”
“Come on, Arch,” Tom said jovially. “Lunch in half an hour.”
“I can’t,” Arch said dismally. He raised his eyes to us. “I’m not mad at anybody. But I don’t want anything to eat, and I don’t want to…be with people. I just want to be by myself. Mom, I’m not trying to be rude. Could you just let me be alone until it’s time to go to church?”
“Sweetheart—”
“Mom. Please.” I nodded. He quietly turned and left the kitchen.
While Marla, Tom, and I ate the hamburgers, we told him about our talk with Nan Watkins. He left the table to put in a call to the department. It looked as if Nan would have to talk to the cops, after all. When Tom returned, he served us his hot potato salad, along with a spinach salad that he had tossed with thick, crispy pieces of bacon and a fresh sweet-sour dressing. For dessert, he cut us slices of deep-dish strawberry pie and topped each piece with mammoth scoops of vanilla ice cream.
“Thanks for the feast,” Marla declared, lifting a glass of water in salute, “celebrating the demise of one of the worst creeps who’s ever lived!”
The woman was incorrigible.
At a quarter-past twelve, Arch came down the stairs. He still looked green around the gills. I was consumed with guilt for enjoying a prefuneral banquet. Marla, Tom, and I hadn’t meant to rejoice over the Jerk’s passing, it had just happened. And we’d been ultra-quiet, in case Arch had decided to lie down. But I still felt bad.
Tom, looking devilishly handsome in a somber jacket and tie, drove Marla home (in her Mercedes!) so she could change into a black suit. We figured parking would be bad at St. Luke’s, so we were taking as few vehicles as possible. But Marla had flatly refused to arrive at church in Tom’s sedan, or, as she called it, “that disgusting old thing you call a vehicle.”
I’d promised to pick up Sandee for Marla, so Arch and I were taking the van. From the back of my closet, I pulled out a black silk dress that I’d bought to wear to a sheriff’s department dinner, with my pearls…agh!
The jeweler! In all the hubbub of getting Arch off to the bank, making a pie, reading my notes, and intercepting Nan Watkins at the lake, I’d completely forgotten about the pearls I’d picked up on Stoneberry.
“I’ll be waiting in the van,” Arch said as he headed out.
“Two minutes. Just getting bottles of water.” As soon as the door closed behind him, I tapped in the number for the jeweler. While I was put on hold, I scrambled with my free hand to find a canvas bag, into which I put two large bottles of artesian water. “Come on, come on,” I said into the phone. The clock indicated it was 12:20. I was due at Sandee’s at half-past twelve. Finally the jeweler clicked in.
“It’s Goldy Schulz. I was wondering about those pearls I left you!”
“Fake.” His voice was expressionless.
“Not real?” I cried, amazed. “Not genuine pearls?”
“Nope. Bye.”
A man of few words, was our town jeweler. I lugged the water-bottle bag out to the van and revved the engine. Then I tried not to count up all the worthless leads this investigation had engendered. This case was more of a dead end than Stoneberry itself.
Sandee Blue had returned to the condo she’d previously shared with Bobby. It was in a townhouse area very similar to the one at Aspen Meadow Country Club, only this one bordered Interstate 70 and overlooked Denver. I wondered how Sandee’s stripper dollars and Bobby’s music could enable them to live in such a nice place. But maybe the band made more money than one would suspect from listening to their music.
“Thanks for picking me up!” Sandee burbled as she teetered to the van in her black spike heels. Never one for conservative dress, Sandee wore a tight, low-cut black dress and sparkly jet jewelry. She’d teased her platinum hair up in front and then loosely pinned that section off her face. Two walls of long blond hair swung by her ears. She looked very fetching. I wondered if she was trolling for a wealthy new underwriter. No telling what Bobby’s reaction to that would be.
“So Bobby’s out of town?” I asked neutrally as I did a seven-point turn in her steep driveway.
“Nope!” she cried gaily. “He’s out fighting the fire. I don’t know why they call it the Aspen Meadow Volunteer Fire Department. If he didn’t get paid for fighting fires, he wouldn’t be able to afford his house!” She put her arm over the seat and turned to greet Arch. “Hey, buddy! Still playing hockey?”
“Aha,” I said quickly. “So you knew he wasn’t playing golf twice a week.”
“Uh-oh,” came Arch’s low voice from the back. I opened my eyes wide at Sandee, who had turned crimson.
“I wasn’t supposed to talk about it,” she mumbled. “John Richard told me to keep my mouth shut.”
“Really?” I said sourly. “How well did that work out?”
“Oh, Mom,” Arch interjected. “Leave her alone.”
“Sure,” I said. “Fine.”
Sandee turned back to Arch. “So! Did you get that new stick you wanted? Have you used it?”
“I did get it!” Arch exclaimed. “I’m using it for the first time tomorrow morning, at a hockey birthday party.”
“Cool! How’s Todd?”
I really didn’t begrudge Sandee’s and Arch’s friendship. In fact, I was glad for it. Before John Richard was incarcerated, he had largely ignored Arch during the weekly visits. Arch’s visits to John Richard’s house were often made more bearable by the presence of John Richard’s chatty, immature girlfriends. And now here was Sandee blabbing almost flirtatiously with Arch. At least it was diverting his attention from the upcoming service. Sandee might not be terribly intelligent, I thought grimly, but at least she was good at lifting a mood.
When we arrived at the church, the parking lot was not even half full. Had John Richard really been so disliked? He’d treated hundreds of patients in Aspen Meadow over the years his practice had been here. Would so few come to remember him? Fewer even than Albert Kerr, who had practiced only at Southwest, and that had been fourteen years ago?
That’s the problem with the arrogant, I thought as Arch, Sandee, and I scanned the small crowd for Marla and Tom. John Richard had thought he was much more powerful and popular than he actually was. Not to mention that over the past few years, he’d spent a good bit of his time behind bars. If his prison pals could have come, maybe the church would have filled up.
“You look very upset,” Father Pete said, coming up beside me. He touched my arm. “Are you all right?”
I signaled for Arch and Sandee to go on up to the pew from which Marla was waving madly. “I’m fine,” I said curtly. “It’s Arch I’m worried about.”
Father Pete let go of my arm. “I think your son is in better shape than you are. Goldy?”
“I’m here, aren’t I? Thanks, Father Pete. I’m going to sit with my son now.” And I scuttled away.
In the few minutes before the service started, I scanned the crowd. Courtney was there, giving everyone her cold gimlet eyes. So she hadn’t been arrested after all. She wore a black dress that was somewhat more stylish than, but certainly as revealing as, Sandee’s. Instead of pearls, she wore a gold necklace, a strand of what looked like miniature tennis balls. Why did I get the feeling that both she and Sandee were trolling for cute young doctors? Unfortunately for them, 99 percent of John Richard’s doc buddies had abandoned him when he’d been convicted of assault. Not that they hadn’t known what he was like. They knew, because I’d told their wives. But getting caught and sent to jail—that was taboo.
&
nbsp; “Goldy!” Marla whispered. “Look in the back. Recognize anybody?”
I turned slowly. Well, well. Holly Kerr was sitting with Ginger Vikarios. I didn’t know where Ted was. And it looked as if John Richard still had some loyal friends in the stripper community. Besides Sandee, there was Lana, who winked at me, Dannyboy the Lion-Maned, Ruby of the Dead Husband, and half a dozen other women whom I might have recognized if they’d taken off their clothes. Ruby Drake, I thought. Marla had thought Ruby and the Jerk were dating, and yet Ruby had told us she hated John Richard. Not only that, but the same gun had been used to kill her husband and the Jerk. Were the cops looking at her as a suspect? Should I?
Arch turned to see what we were looking at. His eyes bugged out at the sight of so many curvaceous women.
Tom stifled a laugh and said, “Hey, buddy, what are you going to give your friend for his birthday tomorrow?”
And then, finally, the music and talking ceased. Father Pete, as imposing as ever, preceded the coffin. I did not know the four men who were pallbearers, probably that 1 percent who’d stayed loyal to the Jerk. Their procession down the nave was slow and deliberate. I checked Arch: His face was very pale.
“I am the resurrection and the life,” Father Pete intoned. We all opened our service leaflets and began to read along with him. Arch dashed tears out of his eyes. Marla gave him a tissue and I put my arm around him.
“ ‘Blessed are they who observe justice, who do righteousness at all times,’ ” we read from Psalm 106. After that we recited Psalm 121, “ ‘I lift up my eyes to the hills, from whence does my help come?’ ”
I began to feel painfully, overpoweringly ill. How embarrassing would it be for Arch if I tried to slip out? Tom, sensing my discomfort, put his arm around me.
“I know what you’re feeling,” he said under his breath.
“What I’m feeling is sick.”
“Close your eyes, see if you can feel something.”
Since Tom was about the least New Agey person I’d ever encountered, I did as bidden. After a moment, I got it. What I felt was a struggle. The more I focused on it, the clearer it was. I opened my mouth in surprise. “What is it?” I asked him.
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