Sweet Revenge

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “I thought you had tossed something at the window,” Hermie called to me. “A pot or dish that had somehow frustrated you. Ah mean, Goldy darlin’? How did this happen at our party?”

  “Mrs. MacArthur, I don’t know.” I tore a paper towel from the roll and carefully picked up the knife before someone kicked it or fell over it. The way things were going tonight, either could easily happen. I went on: “This is what took place. Somebody threw the snowball at your window. I think the knife inside the snowball must have made it heavy enough to crash through the glass and set off the alarm.”

  “But what were they aiming for?” Smithfield had returned from seeing off the other guests and now wanted to be in charge again. “Were Neil and Larry actually hitting each other? Were they using knives? Were they throwing snowballs at each other?”

  “They were fighting,” I replied slowly. “I don’t know about knives or snowballs. But it was just…an argument that sounded as if it got physical. Please try to relax until your security people arrive. They’ll know the best thing to do.”

  “I don’t know about that, Goldy,” Hermie said impatiently as Catherine Barclay handed her a moistened, folded dish towel. Hermie immediately applied the compress to her forehead. “Thank you, Catherine darlin’.”

  She turned toward us and explained, “I’m afraid that in times of stress I need…something to bring down my temperature.”

  We all paused in awkward silence, waiting for Hermie’s anxiety-induced body heat to abate.

  “Oh, Hermie,” Smithfield began, “for God’s sake—”

  Hermie removed the compress, cleared her throat, and shot Smithfield a withering glance. To me, she said, “Did you see one of those men throw this…thing through the window? Because then he should replace it! Those secured windows are so doggoned expensive. I want to throw that knife away—it scares me. I don’t want the sheriff’s department messing up my kitchen any more than those men already have.”

  Smithfield shook a finger at his wife. “Don’t you dare do that, Hermie! I want the police here. Our home has been threatened!”

  “But then our neighbors will be wondering why the police are coming here again,” Hermie said, moaning.

  “Our neighbors the Barclays are right here, and the Upshaws are in Florida,” Smithfield replied dismissively.

  “Which is where I wish we were.” Hermie stood up and ran more cold water onto her compress, wrung it out, and then reapplied it to her forehead. “My dear Smitty, don’t you see that people will see and hear the police cars with their lights and sirens, and think we’re just a haven for criminals?”

  Smithfield lifted his chin and arched his pale eyebrows in my direction. “Can you get your husband to hush up the policemen’s cars?”

  “I can call him on my cell and ask him to have them turn off their sirens,” I said, with more confidence than I felt. But I desperately wanted to reassure the MacArthurs, because I wanted to keep them as catering clients. I punched the numbers for our home phone and gave Tom an extremely abbreviated version of what had happened. “The MacArthurs want to know if the sheriff’s deputies can turn off their sirens.”

  “No way,” Tom replied. “If the MacArthurs want help there quickly, then our cars have to run their sirens so drivers on the road will get out of the way. They don’t run their sirens, folks won’t know to move, and it’ll take the department twice as long to get there.”

  “Thanks.”

  “You going to tell me what’s going on there, Miss G.?”

  “When I get home,” I warned him, to let him know I wasn’t in a private place to talk to him.

  He sighed and hung up.

  “Mr. MacArthur,” I said humbly, “the police can’t turn off their sirens.” I explained the reasoning behind what Tom had said, but Smithfield MacArthur was having none of it.

  “Why can’t I get what I want from the police?” he shouted. “It’s my home that was threatened!” When I blinked in astonishment at his rage, Smithfield took a moment to try to pull himself together. Then he turned to the Barclays. “Shall we call the girls?” he asked, forcing joviality. “Think they’ve finished with their beauty session by now? Come on, Hermie, let’s see our guests out.”

  “Oh, Smitty,” Hermie replied with a groan. She reluctantly lifted the compress from her forehead, then looked around at the kitchen with its still-unwashed dishes. She gave me a look: This better be cleaned up, and soon.

  Sure, Hermie, I thought. Whatever you want. I might not have influence over the sheriff’s department vehicle-sirens-and-lights policy, but when it came to dishes, Julian and I were the whiz kids. At the moment, we were still booked to do Hermie’s luncheon on Monday, and I wanted to stay in her good graces. She was my first client in Regal Ridge Country Club, and the place was full of wealthy, potentially party-giving folks—even if the appearance of a police car was anathema.

  Julian peered through the gaping, jagged hole that the projectile had made. “Y’know, I don’t remember a whole lot from high school physics, even though I liked it. Still, those guys were around the corner, not right below us. And anyway, you’d have to be farther back”—he indicated with his chin—“like, over in the neighbor’s yard or something, to get an arc on that sucker so it would go through this window.” He pulled back and hugged his sides. “Damn! It’s getting to be like a big walk-in refrigerator in here! Let’s finish up, bug out of here, scoot back to your place, and let the MacArthurs deal with the cops, the security guys, and the window.”

  “We can’t leave before law enforcement gets here.” I held up a folded oversize garbage bag and a roll of duct tape I’d found in a drawer. “In the meantime, we need to do something about that window.”

  Together we covered the jagged hole, which looked even worse with a garbage bag over it, but at least the frigid wind wasn’t turning the faucet water to ice cubes. Soon we were back into our normal rhythm of washing, drying, and packing up. A wave of fatigue swept over me.

  “So,” Julian said at length, “who do you think threw the snowball?”

  “A neighbor.” I picked up our first box and headed toward the kitchen door. “Tired of all the noise.”

  “The neighbors are basking in the sunshine of Southern climes, remember?”

  “There are folks all up and down this street, not just next door.”

  “The neighbor could have thrown the snowball at the two guys fighting, Goldy,” Julian said, his tone stubborn. “The neighbor could have called the cops. And I still don’t think either Larry or Neil could have been aiming at the other one. I mean, you’d have to be really plastered to have aim that was that bad.”

  “Julian, I don’t know.”

  “And you don’t want to talk about it, even though you were the one who insisted we go down there and spy on them. What’s up with that?”

  “What’s up with what?” It took me a moment to realize it was Chantal who had shuffled into the kitchen. She had washed the blue stuff off her face, and actually looked younger and more innocent. She had curly black hair with dyed pink stripes, bright eyes, and shiny cheeks that were accentuated by the thick collar of a full-length hot-pink terrycloth robe. “What’s been going on down here? Vix and I heard the alarm go off, and we thought, Omigod, we’re being robbed! We locked my door, but then no bad guy came knocking. Holy crap, what happened to the window?”

  “Somebody pitched a snowball through it,” I said, omitting the bit about the knife. “Did you two see anything?”

  She shook her head. “No. A snowball? That’s it? I’m telling you, nothing exciting ever happens around here. And then something exciting does happen, and I’m not even here.” But then she realized Julian, who was twenty-two, muscled, trim, and extraordinarily good-looking, was in the room. She gave him a demure, flirtatious smile. “Well, every now and then, something exciting happens. Or it could happen.”

  Julian, bless his sweet heart, returned her smile. But he didn’t say anything, so Chantal reluctantly floate
d out of the kitchen.

  “Julian, I want to go look at something, okay?” I asked.

  “Sure, crime fighter. And anyway, I can wash dishes faster when you’re not here.”

  Wonderful, I thought as I made my way back down the steps to where Larry and Neil had been arguing. I looked at their footsteps in the snow, and where the snow was tramped down. It was as I thought.

  What I hadn’t said to Julian, and what I hadn’t divulged to Hermie or Smithfield, was that I really did not think the knife-snowball had been thrown by Larry or Neil, aiming it for the other one. Julian had been right. Judging from where Larry’s and Neil’s voices had come from, down the driveway, and where the snowball had come from—about fifty feet away, some distance from the driveway, if not the neighbor’s yard—the knife had not been thrown by them. Nor, I guessed, had it been meant for them.

  At the base of the steps, I looked over at that side of the driveway, then back up to where I’d been standing by the lit kitchen window. What had I been doing, exactly? Listening. Okay, eavesdropping. And anyone who’d been looking that way would have seen Julian and me standing there, with the light shining behind us.

  No, the knife hadn’t been aimed at Larry or Neil or even Julian. It seemed to me—in fact, I thought it was a virtual certainty—that someone actually had been aiming that crude weapon at me.

  13

  I didn’t have a whole lot of time to ponder these questions because a sheriff’s department deputy showed up. Despite Hermie’s worries, he had arrived so quietly that neither of us had heard him. First he interviewed Hermie and Smithfield. When it was clear they knew little, the officer asked to take statements from us. He was an older fellow, large and beefy, with a nameplate that said “Yerba.” He asked about Larry and Neil, then took the knife away in a bag. He said there was no way to look for footprints in the dark, when so much new snow had fallen, and with more coming down so rapidly. But the department would try to send out a team the next day.

  Julian and I, meanwhile, had to pack up and leave. I turned on the floodlights so Julian could back the Rover right up to the side steps without hitting them. The snow was still coming down thick and fast, and neither of us could have faced another mishap that evening. He opened the tailgate, and together we began loading up our boxes. But before we were halfway through, a security car with a yellow light flashing on its roof reversed, beeping loudly, down the driveway, effectively blocking our route out. It was almost eleven at this point, and if the skirmish between the rival map dealers or the policeman’s lights hadn’t awoken the rest of the folks on the street, the rhythmic horn tooting surely would.

  “Look, could you question us first?” Julian asked as a young man wearing a dark uniform and a billed cap stepped out of the car with its painted sign: ROCKY MOUNTAIN SECURITY SYSTEMS. “We’re the caterers,” Julian was saying, “and we’re gonna pass out from fatigue if we don’t get out of here.”

  The security fellow’s shirt was emblazoned with the name “Alan,” but he said, “Please call me Al.” I thought he was joking, but I only nodded, and back up the staircase the three of us trooped.

  “Do the home owners know I’m here?” he asked, once he’d taken off his hat and revealed a thin, pale face. I immediately wanted to give him something to eat, but I knew Julian would have a meltdown if I started hauling food out of the MacArthurs’ refrigerator. Julian really did look exhausted, and since he’d done the lion’s share of the work at the party, I just pulled out three stools surrounding the breakfast island and invited the two of them to sit down. Al refused, so Julian and I sat and waited to be interrogated.

  “I don’t know where the home owners are,” I told Al, “but it’s a huge house, so they may not have heard you come in.”

  “I’ll find them,” Al assured us. He pulled a small notebook from his pocket and began methodically questioning us. When had the altercation begun, he wanted to know, had we seen the men carrying out anything that belonged to the home owners, when had the window been broken, and who did we think had broken it? By the time Julian and I had given our replies, I was so tired I was ready to be cooked for Christmas pudding myself. Which made me realize something I hadn’t thought of when we were talking to Officer Yerba: Did I need to check with Hermie regarding the Monday party, or should I just try to get out of there without further crises?

  It was the latter, as it turned out, because Smithfield MacArthur shouted to us—didn’t these people believe in an intercom?—wanting to know if the security people had arrived. When I traipsed out to the museumlike living room, where Hermie and Smithfield were drinking liqueurs by their twinkling Christmas tree, and told them Al was indeed here, Smithfield stormed back to the kitchen ahead of me, grumbling about my not telling him sooner. First I hadn’t moved the panorama properly, now I was failing as a butler. But I’d decided that unless the client asks you to have sex on the kitchen floor between courses, you have to do what they ask—and figure out a way to add your extra services to their bill.

  Smithfield’s face turned from pink to red as he summarily bawled Al out for not getting to their house before the sheriff’s department. What was Smithfield paying Al’s company for? he wanted to know. Not having sirens? I wondered. When Smithfield stopped for breath, Julian asked if we could skedaddle, and Al nodded, apparently used to this kind of abuse. Julian walked quickly back to the kitchen. But I was not going to go until we were paid.

  I stood quietly beside a chair while Al apologized to the MacArthurs for the delay. He didn’t point out that snow had made driving difficult, that the snowpacked byways had probably been clogged with abandoned cars, or that he’d been with us in the kitchen doing his job for the last ten minutes. Instead, he began to ask questions in low tones.

  After a few minutes, during which I said nothing but only stood beside a chair, Smithfield looked up at me. “What do you want now?”

  “To be paid,” I said quietly.

  “Oh yes, of course.” Hermie levered herself out of her chair, squared her shoulders, and walked ahead of me to the kitchen. And lo and behold, she did have a check already written out to us in her kitchen desk. She handed it to me and I thanked her and said I’d see her Monday.

  “All right, then,” she said sadly. Her tone implied her hope that the next catered event would go better. But she said no more before returning to the living room.

  I whipped out my checkbook and wrote Julian a more-than-generous check for his participation in this train wreck of a party.

  “Boss, you don’t have to do this now.”

  “Yes, I do. And as soon as you take this money, we’ll finally be able to get out of here.”

  He pocketed his check, thanked me, and together we packed up. I could not wait to get out of that house. In fact, I was tempted to grab my last box, race down the snowy steps to the Rover, and yell Woohoo! But I didn’t.

  The way home was slow going. The roads through Regal Ridge had not been plowed, and no cars had been down the MacArthurs’ road since the sheriff’s-department and security-company vehicles. To make matters worse, an additional six inches of snow had fallen since the end of the party. But Julian was a painstaking driver, and I knew I was in good hands.

  “Had any thoughts on who could have thrown the knife-ball?” I asked once he reached the interstate.

  “I still think it was someone on that street. I mean, who else? Somebody was mad that those two guys were arguing, and he thought the fastest way to stop the fight was to set off the MacArthurs’ alarm.”

  I shook my head. “I don’t believe it.”

  “You’re paranoid.”

  “Hey, Miss G., Julian,” Tom greeted us when we finally traipsed through the back door. “I was getting worried about you. Successful evening?”

  “Eventful,” Julian replied, “but I’m going to let Goldy tell you about it. I promised the boys one of us would get them over to the RRSSA tomorrow to snowboard. We can do the logistics later, if you want. But I’ve got to get so
me sleep or I’m going to be toast.”

  “I’ve already set up your sleeping bag in the boys’ room,” Tom assured him. “Arch wouldn’t have it any other way.”

  Julian nodded and bade us good night. As he was plodding up the stairs, I watched his face, and sure enough, he broke into a huge smile. Julian’s parents were dead, and he had no siblings. He didn’t actually want to tell us how much he enjoyed being embraced as part of our family—I’d learned the hard way that young men didn’t like to show their emotions. But he secretly reveled in being reminded of how much we all cherished him.

  “So, Miss G.” We’d moved into our living room, where we sat beside the Christmas tree. Loaded with lights that Tom and I had both accumulated during our unmarried years, it could have lit up the neighborhood. “I gather the party at the MacArthurs didn’t go particularly well?”

  “It was hell,” I said, then stood up to warm my hands by the fire Tom had built. “Don’t get me wrong, the food was fine. But two of the guests—Larry Craddock and Neil Tharp, to be specific—started arguing, then ended up taking their fight outside, where they were pushing and shoving each other around. Then somebody, maybe one of them, threw a knife inside a snowball that broke one of the kitchen windows.”

  “A what?” Before I could answer, he said, “I hope you called the department.”

  “The MacArthurs did. Fellow named Yerba came out?”

  Tom nodded. “Good man. Any idea who threw it?”

  “Not yet. But wait, there’s more. While the MacArthurs and their guests were stuffing themselves with curry, I took a vegetarian dinner up to their teenage daughter and her friend. They’re about fourteen, I’d say. And they claimed that Drew Wellington used to give them booze. At least one time, they told me, somebody called the cops to break up the party.”

  Tom got up and headed for the kitchen. “I think I’m going to need coffee to hear this one. You up for an espresso?”

  “If you’re fixing. Have to tell you, though, I don’t think it’ll keep me awake. I’m too tired.”