Sweet Revenge

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “The jail?” Grace asked. “Whatever for?”

  “I’m going to see if they’ll let me give them to Patricia.” On second thought, the sergeant in charge of whatever floor Patricia was on would probably veto that idea, although how I’d be able to smuggle drugs or other contraband into frosted Santa bars was beyond me.

  “I thought Patricia was in some weight-loss group,” Julian reminded me as the three of us walked through the kitchen exit.

  We trod gingerly down the snow-and-ice-covered path to the parking lot. I said, “I have no doubt that somebody at the sheriff’s department will eat them.” In fact, if I left them in the department snack room, they’d disappear faster than Sandee Brisbane had.

  Julian, who had keys to our house, said he was going back for a shower and to change clothes. While we offered Grace the same opportunity, she declined and said Marla had invited her to bathe at her house and take a nap, maybe spend the night if she was too tired to drive back to Boulder. Apparently Louise Munsinger wasn’t the only one worried about whether Grace should be catering.

  “Did you find out anything to help Patricia?” I asked. “Something I can report to her when I see her?”

  Grace’s dark blue eyes looked momentarily startled. “Something to help Patricia?” she echoed. “No. But if I do, I’ll call you.” She made no more mention of going into Drew’s place, for which I was grateful. With a quick wave, she guided her old Toyota out of the parking lot and was gone.

  The van’s engine revved, and by the time I’d reached the interstate, the vehicle’s interior was actually warming up. How cold was it, anyway? High teens, low twenties? And the sky had again clouded up and looked ominously dark, which was depressing, as it was only two in the afternoon.

  Arch had left a message on my cell saying he needed to be picked up at four at Regal Ridge, and could Gus and Todd come over for dinner and to spend the night? I groaned, then put in a call to Tom, to ask if, once I brought the boys home, he could fix them dinner and oversee them, whether it was in making popcorn or setting up a DVD. What I didn’t say, but hoped was understood, was that I wanted Tom to keep the kiddos from doing what fifteen-year-olds are tempted to do, and that was to dip into Ma and Pa’s liquor cabinet.

  “Schulz,” he said when I’d finished my message.

  “Can you take care of the boys?”

  “I heard what you said, Miss G. And yes, I’d love to take care of them and fix them dinner. What’s more, I’ll offer them white wine as an aperitif, red wine with dinner, and cognac for dessert.”

  I sighed. “You’re hilarious.”

  “Aw, you won’t even let me tease you anymore. I gotta hop, but tonight I want to hear about the garden-club ladies.”

  I disconnected and thought of what I’d learned, that Drew might have been a crook. I pulled into the parking lot that abutted the entrance to the jail and wondered if Tom had found out the same thing.

  In winter, the Furman County Sheriff’s Department looks like an imposing outpost in the middle of the Siberian hinterland. Its concrete walls soar five stories, but because there is no demarcation between the floors, it appears much taller. Even the bank of wavy-glassed windows, which allows sunlight to flood the interior, resembled a tall block of ice.

  Snow had begun to fall again. I looked at my cell, and decided to try Aspen Meadow High, just to see if they could give me any information about Sandee Brisbane. Would they know about relatives Sandee might have had, besides her parents? Would they tell me who her friends were? Probably not, but I had to start somewhere. I had no idea whether the Furman County public schools were still in session, or if anybody would be there on Saturday.

  The information operator connected me with what she said was the main number of Aspen Meadow High. What I got was the high screech of a fax machine. I tried information again, and my new helper said there was only one other number for Aspen Meadow High. It was another fax machine. When my hearing had recovered, I called information again. This time I asked the operator to stay on with me. I didn’t necessarily want a person at the high school, I said, but I was hoping for voice mail. The operator tried what she said were the two numbers listed for the high school, then said there was nothing more that she could do for me after that. Both numbers were connected to fax machines.

  Your tax dollars at work!

  As the snow thickened, I slowed the van and tried Calhoun, the last name of Bobby, Sandee’s ex-boyfriend. This was an even longer shot; there was no Robert or Bobby or Bob Calhoun anywhere in the Denver metropolitan area. Finally I phoned the Rainbow Club, where Sandee had been a stripper. This time I got a real person, a woman, to whom I politely explained what I was looking for: anyone who had known Sandee Brisbane, who might have been working under the stage name Sandee Blue or Sandee Calhoun.

  “I’m sorry, we don’t have anybody by that name,” the woman replied.

  “Well, how about Lana della Robbia or Dannyboy?” I asked desperately. “They both knew her, and they might know who her friends were—”

  “Lana and Danny are both behind bars for money-laundering!” the woman cried. “So if you’re looking for them, you’re either a cop or a criminal.” And with this, she hung up.

  Clearly I would have to find another way to dig into Sandee’s life.

  By the time I got off the phone, a solid curtain of snow was falling in front of the sheriff’s department. Where was Tom? I wondered. No, no, I wasn’t going to bother him again. He might not approve of my visiting Patricia, and I didn’t want to get into an argument about it. I took a deep breath, snagged two bags of cookies, and traipsed through the slushy muck to the imposing entrance to the jail.

  When I told the desk sergeant I wanted to see Patricia Ingersoll, he said, “You’re her attorney?” He sounded dubious. Undoubtedly my caterer’s shirt and pants, printed with pictures of flying pots and sauté pans, and now spotted with salad dressing and who knew what else, did not make me look very lawyerly.

  “Just a friend.”

  The desk sergeant rang up someone and talked in a low voice. After that he handled two incoming calls, disappeared for what felt like an age, and finally came back. His switchboard buzzed, at which point he told me I was free to go up to the fourth floor, the women’s wing, where the desk sergeant would let me through to a bank of telephones, and I’d be able to talk to Patricia while looking through a glass wall. Would I be able to give her anything? I asked. Absolutely not, he said. I handed the fellow the bags of cookies, which surprised him, and told him I was Investigator Schulz’s wife, and to distribute the goodies as he saw fit.

  “Schulz’s wife?” His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. Was I imagining it, or was that a note of fear in his voice?

  I nodded and started up the staircase. Caterers get little exercise beyond racing around the kitchen and serving folks heaping platters of roast beef, potatoes, and chocolate cake. We think this is enough to keep us in shape, but it really isn’t, especially if you have to taste the beef gravy, see if the potatoes need more cream, and swallow a teensy corner of chocolate cake, just to make sure they’re all, as my motto promises, just right. Of course, climbing four flights of stairs probably didn’t qualify as enough exercise either, and by the time I got to the fourth floor, I thought I was going to have a coronary.

  The sergeant on four directed me to a booth with a phone, and soon I was face-to-face with Patricia. No question about it, orange wasn’t her color.

  “Oh God, Goldy,” she said, “I’m sorry you’re not…well, sorry, thank you for coming. I thought you were my lawyer.” She wiped tears away. “These stupid cops! I didn’t do anything. They will not listen when I tell them I loved Drew.”

  “I’m listening.”

  “Thanks.” Her eyes spilled more tears. Her normally perfectly waved platinum hair fell around her face in greasy strands, and her face was blotched from crying. “I just don’t know what to do next.”

  I kept a soothing tone in my voice. “What did they te
ll you about why you were arrested?”

  Her eyes got wide, but her eyebrows did not climb her forehead. Hmm, I thought. Botox. Like the previous night, her voice was pleading. “I’m a scrapbooker, okay? I keep before and after pictures of all the folks in Losers, and everybody loves it. Somebody told the police they should investigate me for Drew’s murder. I told you last night how the cops showed up at my house with a warrant. I managed to get out of there, but my neighbor said she could see them upending tables, dumping out papers, and tossing my scrapbooking stuff all over the floor. I called Brewster, he said to go to your house. Apparently, in the cops’ thrashing around, they did snag one of the X-Acto knives I use for scrapbooking. The cops insist this knife has blood on it. If it did, I told Brewster, it had to be my blood. I always knick myself when I’m doing a scrapbook. Any blood on that knife had to be old. And dry. Plus, I’m AB negative. I don’t know what type blood Drew had, but mine’s very rare. But did the cops believe me? Hell no.” She choked back a sob. “This sheriff’s department is so screwed up. Your husband is working for an incompetent organization.”

  I ignored this. “So now they’re testing the blood on your knife?”

  “Yes, Goldy, that’s what I’ve been trying to tell you!” Patricia was practically shouting, and I held the phone receiver an inch from my ear. “As soon as they get the test results, I’ll be out of here and able”—she whacked the Plexiglas window between us with her free hand—“to sue this department for false arrest. That’ll serve them right.”

  “If it’s your blood,” I said confidently, “then they’ll release you. Listen, you told me last night how Drew was having problems with several people—Elizabeth, Neil Tharp, and Smithfield MacArthur. Do you know more about what was going on with them? Or do you know anyone else who had a beef with Drew and a motive to kill him? If you and Brewster can offer the police a plausible theory, then it would help clear your name.”

  I was hoping she’d bring up Drew’s stalker, who I still believed was Sandee Brisbane. But instead she said, “Neil Tharp. He was trying to take over Drew’s business. Drew hired him last year because the business had gotten too big and he couldn’t keep it afloat on his own. He needed help keeping in touch with investors, getting back to them quickly, finding the exact maps they were looking for. You know how rich folks are. You don’t coddle them, they get pissed. Some collectors were beginning to have temper tantrums, and it was Neil’s job to calm them down.”

  “Was Smithfield MacArthur one of those temperamental clients?”

  “He’s a baby like the rest of them. You have to take their calls, sweet-talk them, reassure them that they’re going to make money, not lose it. Do you know if the library surveillance camera recorded any of Drew’s investors?”

  “I don’t know what the investigators are seeing on the surveillance stuff. They’re probably reviewing it now.” I thought of bald, angry Larry Craddock…and of Sandee. “Roberta Krepinski, the librarian, told the police you were there yesterday afternoon.”

  “Oh, jeez, why can’t that woman mind her business? Her own business?” Patricia shrugged. “I was meeting someone from Losers. Ralph Shelton, the cops can check.” I nodded; I knew Ralph. He’d never looked overweight to me, but sometimes people have an unusual idea of what it means to look healthy and fit.

  “Did you talk to Drew when you were at the library?” I asked. “The cops thought he might have been meeting a client there. Did he mention if he was?”

  “I didn’t know Drew was there and I didn’t talk to him. I didn’t see anybody who would have been meeting Drew at the library, either, except for maybe that damn Larry Craddock. I avoid him more than I would a carrier of bubonic plague.”

  Having had two unpleasant encounters with the man, I shared her feelings, but still I asked, “Why?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Larry Craddock was always whining about how he taught Drew everything about map collecting, but Drew was way more successful than he was, and should take Larry on as a partner, and stuff like that. He had a store with the most ridiculous name—Larry’s Map Lair. Would you buy something in a store with that name? Well, anyway, he had to close it. He sort of blamed Drew for that, too.”

  “Why did he think it was Drew’s fault?”

  “Larry claimed that Drew kept undercutting him with clients. But mostly I think he was just jealous.” She waved her free hand. “Larry says he loves maps more than anyone in the world, and he’s a great dealer, and people should come to him because he has such a great appreciation for what he’s doing, blah, blah, blah. We sometimes ended up at the same cocktail parties, given by the big map collectors? Larry would bug Drew to do business with him, and I had to listen to Larry rant and rave about how much he loved maps, he had adored them his whole life, et cetera, et cetera. You could be bored to death listening to him. I’ll take the plague any day. It’s quicker and less painful.”

  “Oh, dear.”

  “I also told the cops all about seeing Larry at the library yesterday, and my meeting with Ralph. I dropped off some old cookbooks for their book sale. Last time I looked, that wasn’t illegal.” She paused. “Goldy.”

  My shoulders sagged. “What?”

  Patricia leaned forward, so that her small, perfect nose was almost touching the Plexiglas. “You have to help me find out who killed Drew.”

  “Look, Patricia, I was asking questions about Drew because I was trying to help you. But as soon as they have the blood test from your knife back, you’ll be cleared. The police are good at their job, Patricia, we should let them handle it.”

  “Excuse me, but the police are not good at their job. If they were, I wouldn’t be here!”

  “I know you’re upset about what happened. But the department has to follow every lead.”

  She took a deep breath. “Listen, Goldy, I’m really scared. I told you Drew had lots of enemies…and I started to tell you the rest of it last night.” I waited. Patricia went on: “There was something worse going on. Somebody was stalking Drew. A woman. She was sending him threatening e-mails, and she left a dead mouse on his doorstep.” She screwed her mouth to one side. “Well, actually, Drew said it was a vole.”

  My skin prickled. “A woman was stalking him, and left a rodent on his doorstep?”

  Patricia nodded. “Young-looking, maybe late twenties. Brunette.” Patricia lifted her chin. “Okay, well, I didn’t want to bring this up, but it’s somebody you know.”

  I tried to make my face passive, but Patricia, probably used to reading the lies in the faces of cheating dieters, caught it right away.

  “You know who it is, don’t you?” she said quickly, her face angry, triumphant. “You know who I’m talking about. I saw her once parked at the end of Drew’s road. I thought, Hmm. That face looks familiar.” Patricia’s manicured index fingernail tapped hard on the glass. “I’m not a dumb blonde, you know, Goldy. I can read the newspaper just like anyone else.”

  The desk sergeant entered from Patricia’s side. “Miss Ingersoll?” his muffled voice announced. “The blood test just came back.”

  “That was quick,” I muttered.

  “You’re free to leave the jail now, Miss Ingersoll,” the sergeant said.

  Patricia said, “Yeah, no surprise, eh, Sergeant? You gonna give me an apology?” But he had gone. Patricia turned back toward me. “Goldy, I know you talked to the cops. They must have told you about Drew’s stalker. I told you about it last night.”

  “You hinted at it. And how did you get a blood test done so quickly?”

  “Brewster insisted on it. Anyway, you and I both know who this stalker might be, and how dangerous she is. What if she decides to come after me, too? Or what if it was one of the others—you know, Elizabeth or Larry or Neil or even Smithfield, in a disguise?”

  “Well, I—”

  “I can’t keep looking over my shoulder, waiting for this killer to strike. Look, I’ll pay you to find out who killed Drew.”

  “I’m not going to tak
e money for looking into this, Patricia,” I protested. “Maybe you should hire a private investigator to help you, someone who does this for a living.”

  “I’ll hire you to cater our big Losers New Year’s banquet,” Patricia went on, undeterred. “At New Year’s, everybody goes on a diet, so we have a low-cal banquet to celebrate. I charge a hundred bucks a pop, and the profit is almost forty percent for whatever caterer does it. Plus, I pay cash.”

  “Patricia, come on. Did you tell the cops what you’ve told me? Did you tell the cops what you know about Drew’s stalker? About who you think it is, and the vole, and everything?”

  “Of course I told them. But I don’t really think they believed me. After all, Sandee Brisbane’s supposed to be dead, isn’t she? So to them, I just looked like someone who was trying to pin the blame on a ghost.”

  I pressed my fingers between my eyebrows. I was getting a colossal headache. “Drew reported the e-mails and the police were taking it seriously. And maybe this stalker isn’t who you think it is. Maybe you’re just imagining you saw her.”

  “Sandee Brisbane killed your ex-husband. I didn’t imagine that. Now she may have killed my fiancé.” Tears again spilled out of her eyes. “Drew and I were going to get married at Christmas. Our gift to each other.” She bit her lower lip. “I’m sure the woman I saw was Sandee. She didn’t die in that fire, and now she’s come back here, and she went after Drew just the way she did your ex. What if she comes after me now? Maybe she’ll stalk you or your son. You have to help me, Goldy. We both have a stake in this! Please think about it.”

  With that, Patricia hung up the phone. She moved quickly out of her chair and toward the door that led back to the women’s section of the jail. I sat there, pondering the implications of what she’d said. Sandee might have come back to hurt me. Sandee might have come back to hurt Arch.

  Of course, I’d been having nightmares about both possibilities since the twenty-fifth of November.

  But I was still stuck with the overwhelming question, Why had Sandee come back to Aspen Meadow, anyway?