Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) gs-1

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “If I had learned to drive when I was supposed to, then we wouldn’t have to be doing this today. And if it weren’t for me, your business would be reopened.”

  Now she really had my attention. We were still stopped, so I said, “What do you mean?”

  “Well, you know, my talk with Laura,” she said plaintively. “If she hadn’t died, then that thing wouldn’t have happened at her house.”

  It was finally our turn, so Patty Sue inched and jerked the Honda along while teens in the passing cars shouted derisively at us. She catapulted us into second and we picked up a little speed.

  “Give it a little more gas,” Pomeroy called.

  Patty Sue obeyed and then said, “I just think if I tell you about it, something bad will happen. Now do I go to fourth?” she asked as she swerved to avoid a cone.

  I was gripping the sides of my seat.

  I said, “Third. Just concentrate on your driving. We can talk about the rest later.”

  But she was off and running. “I’m afraid to tell you about Laura!” she wailed. “I’m afraid of what will happen!”

  Preoccupied with these thoughts, she pushed the Honda into neutral and the engine gasped. Then she put it into fourth and the car sighed until she stepped on the accelerator again.

  “No!” I yelled, as we whizzed by our first set of startled teenagers.

  “Downshift!” came Pomeroy’s remote voice.

  “If I tell you what I told Laura,” Patty Sue shouted as her knuckles turned white on the steering wheel, “you might die! That’s what happened to her!”

  “Don’t worry about it now!” I shrieked over the rushing sound the wind was making in our car.

  “I don’t know how to downshift,” Patty Sue called out the window.

  “Look out!” I howled as a Volkswagen loomed before us.

  Patty Sue swerved wildly and shattered a headlight of the VW. As she turned again my body fell forward, then back, and my feet became jammed underneath the brake bar. I looked out at the timid VW driver, who was stepping gingerly from her car.

  I yelled, “My feet are stuck!”

  We were speeding headlong toward the ice cream place.

  “I can’t brake!” yelled Patty Sue. “I’ll crush your feet!”

  “Take your foot off the accelerator!” I shouted.

  She screamed, “Is the accelerator this one?” She pushed down again on the gas.

  “No, no, no, no!” came voices far behind us.

  Suddenly before us was Dairy Delight, where the tables and chairs were lined up like so many bowling pins. A worker came running out waving a knife. I let go of the dashboard long enough to honk. He leaped out of the way. We hit the plastic chairs and tables with a solid thunk thunk thunk. I tried to loosen my feet but could not.

  “Why don’t you steer?” I cried.

  “Where?” Patty Sue screamed. She wrenched the wheel to the left, then gunned the engine again.

  We came up behind Dairy Delight. Two attendants were disgorging the remains of three huge ice cream barrels. Before us was a mountain of slop. On the other side of that, I knew, was the cement embankment.

  The Honda hit the edge of the ice cream puddle like a water skier going full tilt; the wheels spewed a muddy wave of glop over the attendants. We skidded wildly toward the embankment.

  “Oh God,” I cried, “no!”

  “Help!” called Patty Sue. She began to shriek wildly, then pressed the accelerator again.

  I am going to die, I thought as we hit the embankment. But we didn’t stop. The Honda climbed. We vaulted the concrete. Below us were the cars in the school lot. Patty Sue passed out.

  Unfortunately, I could see our trajectory only too well. We were aiming for a roof, a car roof, that I tried to imagine being soft. A cloud. A trampoline.

  But no. When the Honda landed on my van, it collapsed like a beer can.

  CHAPTER 16

  I really get off on women in hospital gowns,” Investigator Tom Schulz said as he patted my knee beneath the white sheet.

  The room was slightly fuzzy, but then cleared to pale institutional green walls and a window luminous with the apricot light of sunset. I said to Tom Schulz, “Are you here because I broke a law?”

  He gave a low whistle.

  “And here I was trying to be sweet and pay you a nice visit. Look. What’s wrong with this picture?”

  He handed me a photograph, whether made by the police, the school, a bystander, or the Mountain Journal I knew not. It showed the yellow Honda perched atop my van. Someone had attached the caption DRIVER ED?

  I handed it back to him. “Where are the mountains in the background? There ought to be something pretty about this.”

  “Your friend didn’t try to ski the car, Miss Goldy, she tried to fly it.”

  A nurse swished in and I checked her name tag. I was at Lutheran Hospital. “Am I all right? Is Patty Sue Williams—”

  “You’re just banged up,” she said. She checked my vital signs and shook her head. “You’re lucky you’re not dead. And that nothing’s broken. Want some pain medication?” I nodded and she went on. “You’ll probably only be here tonight. We’re just watching you.” She smiled. “They said it looks like you’ll be discharged in the morning.”

  Schulz winked at me. “Why don’t you let me watch her?”

  She ignored him and left.

  I closed my eyes and made a mental journey through my body. My head throbbed and my back and hips hurt.

  “Do you know about my son?” I asked Schulz. “What time is it?”

  “He went to your friend Marla’s house. When I heard about an accident at the high school, and that you were in it—” He stopped to shake his head. “I went by your house. Your son had already come home and left you a note. On the door, very bad. Tells criminals you’re not home. Anyway, I called the place where he said he was. Talked to that yakkety-yak woman Marla, who says Arch can stay as long as you’re in the hospital.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I wasn’t just touched by his effort. I was overwhelmed. I said, “That’s my ex-husband’s second ex-wife you’re talking about.”

  “Well,” he said while studying the view out my window, “except for his first wife, the guy shows no taste.”

  I said, “How’s Patty Sue?”

  “She got here and asked for your ex-father-in-law. To treat her broken arm.”

  “But he just does ob-gyn.”

  “Pardon me, Goldilocks, but your friend isn’t very smart. Not to mention that her driving needs a whole lot of work.”

  “Forgive me for failing to see the humor in this,” I said to Schulz. “I do appreciate your efforts, but why are you here, anyway? I thought you were investigating bike gangs.”

  “I get around,” he said. “Radios are a wonderful invention. Not to mention that I was supposed to call you.”

  I avoided looking at the closet, which I hoped held my purse with Arch’s letter from Laura Smiley.

  “So you want to talk, or not?” he asked, tapping the sheet.

  I said, “I have no job, no car, no helpers, my son is at a friend’s house, and I don’t have the faintest idea how I’m going to cover the cost of this hospital visit. I’m really not in the mood for talking about the so-called poisoning incident right now.”

  He clucked his tongue. “Spare me. You were going to check out your ex-mother-in-law and your little friend Trixie and get back to me, remember? I was kind of hoping it would be over pizza tonight. In fact,” he went on cheerfully, “I could even go out and get us some right now. Have a supper date right here in the hospital. You like pepperoni?”

  My head began its internal thunder again. As if on cue the nurse swept in with a small tray containing what I hoped was an extremely potent narcotic.

  “Oh thank you,” I said extravagantly, and then to Schulz, “I haven’t gotten much out of Vonette. But I will. Trixie, Patty Sue, and Laura Smiley had a conversation in a steamroom close to when Laura died.” I took my pill,
thought for a minute. “I found an old article about a mistrial back in Illinois. Involving Korman senior. You might want to see what you can dig up. The torn article is by my phone at home. It’s what I’ve been trying to reach you about all week. I’ll get it for you as soon as I get out.”

  “Anything else?”

  “That’s all I’ve found out. I don’t feel too great,” I said honestly. He had been kind to me. And he cared about Arch. I met his gaze. “Thanks again for checking on my son. And on me.”

  “No sweat,” he said. “I’ll want that article. Now, have you found out anything about someone named Hollen-beck?”

  “I saw the name on a photograph.”

  “I got the name of the high school in Illinois where Laura Smiley did her internship,” he said. “Called out there and talked with the one teacher who was there when our departed friend was there. She remembered a student of Smiley’s named Bebe Hollenbeck.”

  “Can we talk to this student? Can she tell us something?”

  “She’s been dead for twenty years. But apparently Laura and this gal were very tight.”

  I said, “Laura kept pictures of her.” I thought. “I’ll ask Vonette, maybe she’ll talk about that time in Illinois.”

  “Okeydoke.” He gave me a wide grin. “You still not sure about going out with me? It’s one way for me to keep tabs on you, to make sure you stay safe.” He smiled. “If that’s possible.”

  I returned his smile, which was difficult because pain was still knotting up my back. I said, “The athletic club Halloween party. Trick or treat. We can go together, if you’d like.”

  The nurse gave Schulz an ominous stare, and he left. But not before he had nodded to me. And winked.

  “There was another fellow who wanted to see you a little while ago,” the nurse said when we were alone. “He went away when he saw you had a visitor, but I imagine he’ll be back.”

  “Please don’t tell me it was a doctor.”

  “I don’t think so,” said the nurse. “Tall? Good-looking? Claimed he was the one responsible for this mess.”

  Great. I couldn’t wait to throttle that stellar driving instructor, Pomeroy Locraft. Perhaps my window was high enough off the ground so that I could ask the nurse to throw him out.

  The nurse was saying, “Do you have someone to pick up you and Miss Williams tomorrow?”

  “I’ll work something out,” I assured her. “Just let me deal with one crisis at a time.”

  I called Marla; Arch was fine. They were on their way out for burgers after Arch used the last of her Brie to finish constructing an elaborate trap for the resident mice.

  Next I called Vonette Korman. It was past five, but she was still coherent. I reminded Vonette that I’d taken in Patty Sue at her request, that Patty Sue was a patient of her husband’s, and that it was her son who had treated me so rottenly in the first place that I had to do catering and cleaning in a van that Patty Sue had wrecked. And furthermore, I added before she could do more than make sympathetic murmuring noises, now the two of us were at Lutheran Hospital and we needed her to come and pick us up tomorrow morning. Early.

  “That’s awful,” said Vonette.

  “Right,” I said. My door was opening again; I needed to get off the phone. “And may I borrow one of your cars, Vonette? I’ve got to get around somehow.”

  She mumbled something about seeing what she could do and I hung up.

  A sweet-smelling Persian violet preceded Pomeroy Locraft into my room. He held the plant like a shield, which was probably a good thing. Patty Sue was in a cast, but my arm was in good shape. I looked around for a suitable projectile. Luckily for Pomeroy, there wasn’t one.

  “Bees may like the smell of Persian violets,” I said sharply as I whacked the pillows behind my back, “but I don’t. Even if my nose isn’t broken.”

  He smiled. “Actually, bees prefer wild daisies and clover. Patty Sue thought you’d like these.”

  “What’d you bring her, fudge?”

  “Honey candy.”

  “I should sue your ass for negligence,” I snapped, “or gross incompetence as an instructor, or something along those lines.”

  He placed the plant, a pale purple-and-green cloud of fragrance, op the movable tray near my head. Then in one slow motion he unfurled his lanky body into the room’s only chair. His face was pinched with stress. His hand cut wavy furrows through his dark hair. Finally he looked at me.

  “Goldy, I’m sorry. The school insurance ought to cover the repair to your van. Patty Sue, I don’t know. I really didn’t think she’d—”

  “Be naive and reckless at the same time? Would you even recognize naive if you saw it?” I plopped back on the pillows. “Tell me, Pom. Do your students ever say, You are driving me crazy? You are driving me up the wall?”

  He blushed, but for once I was impervious to the charm of vulnerability.

  I said, “And while I’ve got you to myself, tell me what Laura Smiley’s science text was doing in your backseat.”

  Now he turned really red. My guess as to the ownership of that book had paid off.

  He said, “We used to work together sometimes.”

  “You were friends, or what?”

  He let out breath that was deeper than a sigh. “What difference does it make?”

  “A lot.”

  He said, “Friends, yes. We’d started working together on that spring project for fourth and fifth grades. Some of the students enjoyed working with the bees. Answer your question?”

  “She and Arch were close,” I said. “You know that. He’s taking her death real hard. You know anything else about her?”

  He paused. I waited.

  “It doesn’t matter now, I guess,” he said. He looked out the window. “We were in Al-Anon together. You know what that is?”

  Sundays, noon, Episcopal church. Of course. I nodded. “Sure. It’s the support group for relatives and friends of alcoholics. Can you tell me what she said in there?”

  “No.”

  “Can you tell me anything about her?”

  “Like what? I don’t want to betray her—whatever you’d call it—memory.”

  “She’s dead. I don’t believe it was suicide, mainly because things just don’t fit.” I adjusted myself on the pillows. It felt as if the pain pill had turned my bed into a kind of boat floating in a big tub the size of the room. I said, “Do you know anything about her relationship with or to Fritz Korman?”

  “Why?”

  “Because of that mess with the rat poison, I’m suspected. The health department closed me down. No cooking, no income.”

  “Aren’t the cops looking into it?”

  “For heaven’s sake, Pom, they’re slow.” I stopped talking long enough to take a whiff of the plant. “I’m trying to get myself cleared before the holiday season. Here’s this nice teacher gone, my catering operation down. I’m trying to open a cleaning business instead, needing for Patty Sue to learn to drive … and then Patty Sue does one of her spaceout routines and my van gets destroyed. So yes, I’m interested in knowing as much as I can about both Dr. Korman senior who somebody tried to kill and Laura Smiley who somebody may have. Which includes anything you might know,” I finished, again out of breath and with my head swimming inside the bed-boat.

  Pomeroy said, “What are you looking for, background?”

  “Anything.”

  He said, “Laura Smiley’s father was an alcoholic. It’s what killed him, finally. He drove himself and Laura’s mother into the back of a pickup over near Conifer. Alcohol level in his blood was three times what they consider to be intoxication.”

  “What does this have to do with—”

  “Just hold on a sec,” he said and readjusted himself in his chair. “By that time Laura was long gone. She had moved to Illinois to go to school. She had some family, that aunt who was at the funeral, there. She taught high school when she finished at the U. of I.—that’s how she met the Kormans. She came out with them one time on a
ski vacation, while they were friends, to be their sort of guide and babysitter, even though she was only twenty-one or -two.

  “Not long after,” he went on, “the Kormans left Illinois. Moved to the spot Laura had shown them.”

  “Did she know they were here?”

  He shrugged. “She knew they had moved to Colorado. She didn’t know they’d moved to her hometown. When her parents died they left her their place, and she moved back. A big coincidence which probably didn’t feel too great to anybody.”

  “When she moved back here,” I said, “did she see the Kormans? Have contact with them?”

  “Not socially, as far as I know.”

  “What do you mean?”

  He thought, then said, “Laura avoided the Kormans because there was bad blood between them.”

  I said, “Bad blood from what?”

  He was still looking out the window. After a minute he said, “That’s something you’d better ask Vonette, I think.”

  “Great. What about Patty Sue?” Tasked. “Apparently she and Laura had at least one earth-shattering chat.”

  “Yes,” he said, “they did.”

  “About what?”

  “You talked to Patty Sue?”

  “I tried, Pomeroy, but that’s not saying I got any answers.”

  “Yes, well.” He shrugged again.

  “Why would Laura avoid the Kormans?” I asked. This was the real puzzle to me. “It’s too small a town to try to do that. Did she actually use that word, avoid?”

  Pomeroy’s head turned. His brown eyes met mine. He said, “You asked what she was doing in Al-Anon. She had a lot to work through, her parents dying in an accident, her relationship with the Kormans going from closeness to alienation. She had sorrow, a ton of it, and a lot of grieving to do. She, yes, said that she needed to avoid these people, that being involved with them in any way caused her pain. She said that for her mental health she needed to keep her distance.”

  I stared at him. I said, “Okay, first, she belonged to the athletic club, to which they also belong. Second, she became very close pals with, their grandson, who just happens to be my son. Third, right before she died she went to see Fritz Korman. She made an appointment, Pomeroy. She had an office visit the day she died. The office sent her a bill, for God’s sake. Explain how all this adds up to avoidance.”