Sweet Revenge

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “What about the crime scene itself?” she asked, turning to me. “Who’s going to clean that up?” Once again, she appeard distraught. “There was blood on Drew’s chest, and it was oozing…Will the sheriff’s department disinfect the area?”

  “Blood oozing?” When Roberta didn’t answer, I dug out my address book, nabbed a piece of Marla’s lilac-colored stationery, and scribbled the number for Front Range Cleanup.

  “All right,” I said, my voice filled with more confidence than I felt. “When the cops are done, if that corner is still a mess, you place a piece of heavy-duty opaque plastic over the chair and the floor, and seal it all with duct tape. Put a big ‘Do Not Touch’ sign on the plastic. Then you call these guys”—I tapped the paper—“and they’ll come out and fix you up.”

  Roberta drained her teacup and took the paper. She looked dubious. I wondered how she’d feel when she called the cleaning company and they showed up in their white truck with their motto emblazoned in black on the side: “Front Range Cleanup—You Squash It, We Wash It.”

  Only five of the library staff and one of the volunteers ended up at Marla’s, in spite of the library trustees having faithfully called everyone to tell them about the change of venue. I wasn’t surprised, because I didn’t believe just the weather would keep people away. When a violent crime upsets the calm of a community, especially a small town, folks tend to withdraw. They’re afraid, and I don’t blame them. Compound murder with deep snow and unplowed side streets, and you had a recipe for party disaster.

  Still in all, we had a nice breakfast. The food was wonderful, if I do say so myself, and the library folks tried to do a stiff-upper-lip routine. But there were long, glum silences, and in the end, folks didn’t eat very much. The staff assured me they would carefully store all the serving dishes, china, and silverware I had had to leave in the reading room. I promised them that the sheriff’s department in general, and my husband in particular, would get the library reopened with all possible haste, and we could have another party. We’d have it just the way this one was supposed to be. They shook their heads, not comforted. When the last staff member finally traipsed back to her car carrying pans of leftovers, I turned to Marla. I hadn’t had even a minute to visit with her since Roberta had spilled her guts to us.

  “After we revived Roberta, what did you need to talk to me about?”

  Marla crossed her arms. “Cecie Rowley called me back. I’d asked her to find out what she could about Patricia and Drew, and she says she just heard that the two of them were going to get married on New Year’s Eve, in the Bahamas.”

  “That’s interesting. I’ll call Tom and tell him.”

  “He’ll love talking to Cecie, I promise.”

  While I put in a call to Tom’s voice mail, Marla started to clean up. Once I was off my cell, I began to pack up the last pans of leftover food.

  “Forget that,” Marla said. “Just take the desserts. The pies won’t keep, and I’ll freeze the ham. Or maybe I’ll bring ham biscuits to St. Luke’s tomorrow. I’ll say, ‘Have some goodies from the ill-fated library scene-of-the-crime breakfast!’”

  “Please don’t.” When she didn’t answer, I said, “Marla? Come on. Don’t.”

  “You’re such a fuddy-duddy, Goldy. And after all I’ve done for you. ‘Gee, Marla,’” she mimicked, “‘thanks for offering your house for the library breakfast! Don’t know what I would have done without you!’” Her mischievous glance caught mine. “Don’t you have another catering event to do? I’ll see you there.” And with that, she shooed me off to my conference center.

  She was right. I did have the garden-club ladies coming all too soon.

  Fortunately, the weather had cleared, and only a few puffs of cloud moved across an enormous expanse of blue sky. I traipsed along the path made by the fellow Marla pays to use his snowblower on her driveway, then revved up the van. Julian had promised to meet me at the center, thank goodness, and maybe he’d been lucky and found another server. He would also be helping out with tonight’s dinner. And somewhere in there I needed to take a pill that would give me another eight hours’ sleep.

  My cell phone buzzed as I was coming up to the waterfall, where the lake empties into Lower Cottonwood Creek. The top of the waterfall looked spectacular, like an enormous abstract sculpture. In actuality, it was ice that had attached itself to the dam’s cement structure.

  “Yes?” I barked into the phone. If somebody was asking me for information about Drew Wellington’s murder, they’d get a much more frosty reception than they had from Roberta Krepinski.

  “Miss G.?” Tom’s calm, reassuring voice filled my chest with warmth. “Didn’t it go very well with the librarians?”

  “There was hardly anybody there, but it went fine. Did you get my message?”

  “Y’mean about Drew and Patricia? Apparently there were a lot of rumors about that.” I told him about Cecie Rowley, and he said, “We’ve been hearing that they were going to get married at St. Luke’s and have the reception at the Aspen Meadow Country Club, or else they were going to get married at the county courthouse and have the reception in the Bahamas. According to Drew’s neighbors over in Flicker Ridge, they might have been married already, or at least they sure seemed to be on their honeymoon. One nosy lady has her kitchen window facing Drew’s big house, and she said Patricia was coming out the door early in the morning, every morning. Drew would catch her there on his porch and give her a long kiss. Including yesterday morning,” Tom added. “According to this neighbor, Patricia used to take his face in her hands and rub his cheeks just as she was leaving. She’d laugh and say, ‘Now go shave!’”

  “This neighbor managed to see and hear a lot.”

  Tom grunted. “And was proud of it. She spearheaded the movement to force him to meet clients at the library. But even with his business moved elsewhere, this gal still used binoculars to spy on Drew. She even had a special device from an electronics store that amplifies sound.”

  I braked for a gaggle of skaters who were crossing the road from the lake’s overflow parking lot. Our local rec center ran the skating at Aspen Meadow Lake, and the area where folks were allowed to don their blades was at least half a mile away. This must mean, I realized dully, that the Lake House’s own parking lot was full, which would also mean that skaters would be leaving their vehicles in the lot of my conference center, which was only a few hundred yards from the Lake House. If the garden-club ladies didn’t have room for their cars, I was going to have to call a tow truck to remove the intruders’ vehicles. I rubbed my forehead.

  “Goldy? You there? Did you pick up anything else at that breakfast?”

  “Roberta Krepinski, the reference librarian who found Drew, told me some things. She’s really shaken up by what happened. But I think you already know most of them from her. She said Patricia and Neil were definitely in the library yesterday afternoon—were they on the surveillance video?”

  “I don’t know yet. What else?”

  “Well, Drew Wellington told Roberta he was at the library to meet some people.”

  “Some people, plural?”

  “That’s what he told her. Then he asked Roberta to help him with an atlas around three o’clock, she thinks.”

  “She didn’t tell us about the atlas or that he was having a meeting. She just said that she saw him in the library that afternoon.”

  “I guess she didn’t realize it was important, or she forgot. She’s not in very good shape.”

  “An atlas, huh? Did she say what kind of atlas he wanted?”

  “No, but if you ask her about it, maybe it will jog her memory.”

  “Anything else that might help us?”

  “Roberta seemed pretty worried about how long you’d keep the library closed and what to do about the blood on the carpet. But the big news is that Neil Tharp called her early this morning and said he was representing both himself and Elizabeth Wellington, just the way he did with me last night. He demanded to know two things: w
hat papers of Drew’s they found at the library, and what the surveillance camera showed.”

  Tom paused. “So. We have an atlas and papers we don’t know about, and we have folks being nosy about the surveillance video, all while inviting themselves to an upscale party. Seems folks want to divulge more to you and Marla than they’re willing to tell us.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Tom took a deep breath. “Oh, it’s all premature at this point. They’re doing the autopsy now. Photographing everything they have, that kind of thing.”

  “Photographing everything they have? What do they have?”

  “Miss G.”

  But my curiosity, piqued before and now positively raging, would not be so easily dismissed. When the light turned green, I gunned the engine. The van shot up the hill past the ice-crusted waterfall. “Tell me what you’re talking about. What have they found? And does it explain why Sandee was in the library? Does it tend to exonerate Patricia?”

  “Tend to exonerate, listen to my wife. Ah, I don’t know. The guys didn’t seem to think it meant anything.” He paused. “You know I collect antiques.”

  “Of course I do,” I said impatiently.

  “Well, one of the things we took out of Drew Wellington’s inside coat pocket was a map.”

  “A map?”

  “Yes. Looks to me like a very old and valuable map.”

  8

  Are you sure it’s an old and valuable map?”

  “Could be a doodle. Maybe it’s an abstract painting, one of those things that looks the same whether it’s right side up or upside down.”

  “Tom.” I pulled into my event center lot. I concentrated on weaving the van between about fifteen haphazardly parked vehicles—all left, no doubt, by folks who’d gone to the lake. I shook my head. “Do you think Drew had the map in his coat to sell to these clients he was going to see?”

  “Well, now that we know he was meeting someone or ones at the library, we can try to find out. We’re working on tracing the map and how Drew may have ended up with it.”

  I took a deep breath. “Have you found out anything about Sandee? Has anyone else seen her?”

  “We’re working on it, but so far, we’ve come up empty.”

  “How’s Patricia doing?”

  “Miss G. The jail is not a hotel. The guests don’t call down here to tell us how they’re doing.”

  “Tom,” I said suddenly, “do you know if there’s any other scandal associated with Drew Wellington, aside from him trying to get news of his DUI suppressed?” He paused a bit too long. “Tom? Are you there?”

  “There was something. I’m not sure what.”

  “What do you think it was?”

  Another silence. “Let me dig around. If it had just involved him, then everyone wouldn’t have become so tight-lipped. Miss G., I have to go. Nothing about the map to anyone, okay?”

  “Of course.”

  I signed off, then stared at my event center. It was an old log hexagon, into which I’d—or I should say, Tom and I had—put much work, but which still demanded more. The sloping roof reminded me it needed to be replaced, and new gutters should be installed at the same time. Around the foundation, snow covered freshly graded soil. Beneath that, there was new plumbing that had consumed a sizable chunk of earnings from Goldilocks’ Catering. And now the parking lot was full of vehicles that would have to be towed away before I could make any money on a garden-club party.

  But still. At this moment, when a feeling of pride swelled inside my chest just to see the place, a place I still had trouble thinking of as my catering and conference center, no worries could smash my optimism. The ringing of the cell phone jolted me.

  “Miss G.?”

  “I thought you had to go.”

  “Sorry I had to sign off so quickly. It was nothing. You all right?”

  “As all right as I can be, after pulling into my lot and seeing it full of illegally parked cars.”

  “Want to talk later?”

  “No, no, let me think. I still need to know what was going on with Drew Wellington so I can try to figure out why Sandee is here.”

  “We all need to know about Drew Wellington.”

  “Tell me about that map, would you?”

  “It doesn’t say ‘Pirate Treasure Here,’ if that’s what you mean. I just got a glimpse of the thing, when our crime-lab guys were emptying Wellington’s coat pockets. One of our guys said it looked valuable, and I agreed, but that’s all we know until we call in an expert. The map appeared to have blood on it, too, so I’m not sure what we’ll be able to find out from it, if anything.”

  “And what happens to the map now?”

  “First our guys have to look at it. Then they’ll photograph it and call in somebody who specializes in maps. Right now the team is doing their usual routine. They’re investigating Wellington, backtracking his movements. They’re going to see who his enemies were, that kind of thing. Don’t worry, we’ll try to figure out if this map is significant in some way.”

  “I want to see it.”

  Tom chuckled. “You’re joking, right?”

  “Look, Tom, remember I’m doing a curry dinner tonight at the home of Smithfield and Hermie MacArthur?”

  “Remind me why this is important.”

  “The MacArthurs are map collectors. Serious ones. They’re independently wealthy, and they live in that big place in Regal Ridge Country Club that I told you about. Drew was supposed to be at their dinner tonight, a party celebrating an acquisition Smithfield has made. They’re still going to have it, I’m pretty sure, because no one has called me. Smithfield MacArthur is going to give a dog-and-pony show, with me serving the dinner and maybe helping in some undetermined way. Neil Tharp has invited himself, to replace Drew.”

  Tom muttered something under his breath.

  “Anyway, perhaps Drew had the map in his pocket because he was going to take it to the party.”

  “I promise, our guys will check it out. I need to put you on hold for a sec.”

  I gazed at Aspen Meadow Lake, where ice fishermen sat expectantly beside their drilled holes. The lake, now covered with snow, had been the scene of a gruesome discovery six months ago: the body of Cecelia Brisbane, Sandee’s mother, had been found inside her car, under the water. It was the theory of law enforcement that Sandee had killed her mother for not protecting her from her predatory father, and in particular, for not believing her story about what the Jerk had done to her.

  Wait a minute. Earlier I’d wondered if Drew had been at the library trying to track down or get in contact with his stalker. What if, big if here, Drew hadn’t been planning to met with clients yesterday, but with Sandee? He’d been critical in the press about how the cops had handled Sandee’s case. Could it be that that article had somehow led Drew directly to Sandee? Perhaps they’d been in communication. Maybe Sandee or her look-alike had been trying to find Drew at the library when I saw her. But if Tom thought my theory about the link to the MacArthurs and map collecting was pie in the sky, he’d think the theory about Drew attempting to meet with his stalker was pie on Pluto.

  “Sorry, Miss G. I really need to go this time.”

  “Fine. You don’t think Drew Wellington could have made an attempt to find Sandee by himself, do you?”

  Tom snorted. “Unlikely. If our guys couldn’t find her, it’s very unlikely a D.A. no longer connected to law enforcement could locate her, I don’t care how good a map he had.”

  I exhaled. “But you’ll tell me what you find out about the map that was on him?”

  “I’ll see what I can do.”

  I told him I loved him and signed off. Then I called Gary’s Garage and reluctantly requested a tow truck to get rid of the skaters’ cars. As I hopped out of the van, another vehicle, what looked like an old Toyota, rumbled past the other cars in the lot. As the Toyota made its way toward where I was standing, I checked my watch. Nine o’clock? Could a woman in the Aspen Meadow Garden Club really be so eager
to come for lunch that she’d show up three hours early? I set a discouraging frown onto my face, ready to tell this early arrival that her presence was not okay. As Tom had pointed out, I had work to do.

  But it was not an early-arriving member of the garden club. It was Grace Mannheim, a woman I had met this past summer. She jumped out of her car and approached me with her springy step. All of her prematurely white hair fluffed out around her elfin face as she smiled at me and waved.

  I liked Grace. Her sister had been killed in a hit-and-run accident in Aspen Meadow that had been anything but accidental. In working to solve that and a related crime, Grace and I had become sort-of friends. I’d learned that she was single, lived in Boulder, and played women’s senior softball. I admired Grace. When I’d visited her in Boulder, she’d come up her street after I’d parked and carefully noted my van and its bumper stickers. She’d been able to tell me all about myself, my business, and my family. I thought of her as the Daughter of Sherlock Holmes.

  Just after Thanksgiving, Julian had started renting an apartment over Grace’s garage. He said she inspired him, with her dedication to senior softball—Grace was fifty-eight—demanding a year-round physical-fitness regimen. I knew what he meant. There was no question in my mind that Grace Mannheim was in much better physical shape than I, more than twenty years her junior.

  This opinion was confirmed as Grace strode quickly toward me, arms pumping. She wore a ski vest over a simple white shirt and black pants, black tights, and black thick-soled shoes. The wind puffed out all the downy hair around her head as she approached me. Hup-two, hup-two. I felt tired just watching her.

  “Grace!” I called. “What brings you here?”

  “Julian said you needed help with your garden-club luncheon!”

  I doubt even Noah had felt the flood of relief that washed over me at that moment. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.” I hugged her. “Come on inside.”

  She followed me to the French doors leading to the dining-room section of the center. As I turned the key in the lock, I felt momentarily embarrassed. Grace’s house had been immaculate and spare. Had I left everything in order here, in my space? Okay, yes, I was proud of having my own venue for events. Still, sometimes I thought I was exaggerating when I described this oddly built log building, formerly a restaurant, as an event center. When we walked inside, I noticed once again how the smell of grilled meats and thousands of wood fires still lingered in the air. This was true no matter how much air freshener I sprayed in the place. But when I turned on the twinkling lights that festooned the small forest of artificial Christmas trees, Grace gasped.