“You must be kidding,” I said in disbelief. “Those tires were new this past winter.”
“Boss, it’s okay.” Julian straightened. “He thinks he picked up a nail. Anyway, Sergeant Jones and Bob Rushwood helped him change it. They’re all on their way back here. Bob is following Arch and Sergeant Jones, in case the spare goes flat.”
My mind felt far away. “When did this happen?”
“This morning,” said Julian. He shook his head. “Bob e-mailed the kids doing trail digging today, canceling it. Since it’s Ophelia’s birthday, he was going to take her out to lunch. But each of the kids was supposed to e-mail him back, saying they’d gotten his message. Arch and a couple of other kids did not e-mail him back. So Bob had gone out to the trailhead in the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve, in case anyone showed up. Which only Arch and Sergeant Jones did. When Arch turned around, one of his tires went flat.” Julian shrugged. “Arch said Bob was already late to meet Ophelia, to take her out for a birthday lunch. So when Arch arrives, he and Sergeant Jones are going to eat quickly, then she’s going to follow Arch to the tire place. She left her prowler out front.”
“Dios mío,” Marla murmured. “I feel as if I’m in the middle of an FBI operation.”
Julian gave her a sympathetic look. “I told Sergeant Boyd what was going on. Boyd doesn’t trust anyone, I suppose, even tire guys. Sergeant Jones is going to stay with Arch at Goodyear, while the flat’s being patched. Then you and Boyd and I have to go over to the Ungers’ house to set up—”
Marla rolled her eyes. “I can’t follow this without having something to eat.”
I held up my hand. “Thanks, Julian. The salads look great.”
Julian’s sneakers squeaked as he trod carefully back up the wooden stairs. We set aside our pens and papers and dug into the eggs and sumptuous piles of sweet, crunchy grilled asparagus. I made a mental note to ask Julian how he’d done the latter.
“Divine,” said Marla. She put down her fork and appeared thoughtful. “So, getting back to Warren Broome, psychiatrist extraordinaire. Or maybe not so extraordinary. We still don’t know if Holly was ever in therapy. It’s not mentioned in the notes. I mean, if she’d been seeing a shrink, don’t you think she would have mentioned it?”
“Maybe not, if it was Warren Broome, and they were having an affair. She might have been ashamed.”
“But we were her friends,” Marla protested. “She could have told us.”
“You mean, the way she told us about the other guys she was having affairs with? Which she didn’t? The way she told us that she was having money problems?”
“Okay, point taken. The woman kept secrets.”
“Perhaps she told Father Pete everything. There was that quarterly confession.”
Marla shook her head. “I don’t think so.” She looked down at her notes. “I have lots of stuff in here about her playing in a tennis tournament with this boyfriend, hiking Mount Evans with that one, then skiing Beaver Creek with somebody else. I mean, after she moved back to Aspen Meadow, the woman did nothing but shop, get her hair and nails done, and then engage in sports with an unending stream of guys. And you’re right, there are no names. She certainly didn’t seem unhappy to be divorced from George. In fact, she seemed ecstatic. And this was all before her collages began to get lots of attention and bring in big bucks. So what gives?”
“I don’t know,” I said, for what felt like the fortieth time since we’d started this expedition into the past. “Maybe she wasn’t ecstatic. She had a lot of secrets, Marla. It looks as if she was trying to extort money from someone, which I never would have expected from Holly. And it looks as if she had more conflict in her life than we knew about. Somewhere she stashed some kind of evidence. ‘Notes,’ she called it. ‘A record.’ Whoever attacked me last night thought I had that evidence. And maybe that same person was the one who attacked Father Pete and stole the church file. Perhaps the attacker knew Holly went to see Father Pete on a regular basis. The answers to our questions may be in those notes.”
“And you still think something in your notebooks from our old meetings might give us a clue as to what was going on in Holly’s life?”
“What else do we have to go on? We haven’t even developed any long shots. Right?”
Marla nodded solemnly.
“Holly shared much of her journey with us in those meetings. Maybe she let something slip about the parts of her life she was hiding. Or she could have said anything that might lead us to a clear connection to what got her killed.”
“So,” Marla concluded, “I suppose we have to finish going through these.”
We reluctantly set aside our empty plates and went back to reading.
“Whoa, here’s something,” Marla said. She squinted at the page. “Do you recall a session you and Holly did on something you called ‘merciful lying’? It was in December, and there was a blizzard. I wasn’t there yet, because of the snow. Holly was over here, because the two of you were doing some planning for Arch and Drew’s Sunday School class.”
“ ‘Merciful lying.’ ” I closed my eyes and tried to remember. “I vaguely recall it.”
“You’ll know in a minute, because the evening, if not the meeting, was memorable. According to what you wrote,” Marla said, “you said lying was okay sometimes, if it was merciful. You wanted the group to discuss the idea.”
I frowned. “I did? Just Holly and I were going to discuss that?”
Marla peered down at the notebook in front of her. “Yes. It all started when you saw someone in town, an elderly woman. It made you pose the question to Holly: if it’s an act of mercy, is it okay not to tell the truth? This elderly woman was someone you had waited on in that southwestern accessories store where you worked, before you went down to André’s restaurant and started cooking. An infinitely better choice, I might add. Turquoise-and-silver jewelry is so seventies.”
I thought back. “Yes. That woman’s got to be dead now. I mean, she was in her late eighties back then.”
“Right,” said Marla. She took a moment, reading. “You say here that the woman and her husband had come into the store on their sixtieth wedding anniversary. He had picked out a necklace for her.”
“Navajo,” I said, the memory of the lie suddenly clarifying.
“But you didn’t actually wait on her the first time they came into the store. On the anniversary visit, the owner waited on them. The customer told her husband the necklace was too expensive. He was very disappointed, because he’d really wanted to buy it for her. The next week, he died of a heart attack. Every week thereafter, for months, according to the store owner, the widow came in, usually with her elderly female friends in tow. She was looking for the necklace.”
I said, “I do remember. The owner told me they’d sold the necklace the day after the woman and her husband came in. Not long afterward, I started working there, but I’d never waited on the widow.”
“Until one day . . .” Marla prompted.
“Yes. One day, the store owner was working with me. When she saw the widow and her coterie of friends walking across the parking lot, she quickly told me the story. Then she said she couldn’t face the widow one more time. As she ducked into our storage area, she called over her shoulder that I needed to deal with the situation. The lady came into the store with her pals, and started to tell me about the anniversary visit and the necklace. I stopped her in the middle of her story. I said that I was the one who had waited on her and her husband—”
“You note here that that was a lie,” Marla interrupted.
“Yup. Then I pointed to another Navajo necklace and said, ‘I recall when you and your husband picked this out for your anniversary. But you didn’t buy it.’ She didn’t remember the necklace I showed her. She didn’t remember me. But she was overjoyed, bought the necklace, and went on her way with her friends. And before you ask, I did not work on commission.”
“No, you worked on heart,” whispered Marla. She cleared her throat. �
�But listen, according to your notes, Holly then said, ‘I’ve been lying mercifully for years. To George, and to Drew.’ ”
“Oh, my Lord. Really? Did I write down what she meant?”
“No, you didn’t, because at that point I arrived out front with a bang. My brand-new gold Jaguar slid through the unplowed snow into your next-door neighbor’s pickup truck. The Jag then ricocheted into somebody’s Jeep across the street, then back across the street into another pickup, and it was bumper cars all the way down.”
“Right. How could I forget?” The fierce crack and bam and crunch of Marla’s rear-wheel-drive Jaguar careening into first one vehicle, then another, had sent Holly and me catapulting out the front door. Since the hour had been late and the snow was deepening, we told Arch and Drew to stay in the living room. They were already staring out the front window, trying to see what was going on.
“My ego never recovered,” Marla said wistfully. “Nor did the Jaguar, sad to say. The highway patrol guy said, ‘Lady? How many cars did you hit, exactly? Is this what they mean by a slippery slope?’ ”
I remembered Boyd’s routine: “Traffic Stops I Have Known.” “Come on, Marla. Everyone was just glad you were all right. But your bumper-car routine aside, what follows in the notes?”
“Nothing,” Marla said. “You wrote down what Holly had said, that she’d been mercifully lying to George and Drew for years. Because of my accident, the meeting was suspended. Next week it was my turn to pick the topic. I said, ‘How about the cost of car insurance?’ ”
“But what did we actually talk about the next week?” I asked.
“You told me to get serious,” Marla went on, “and then I said, ‘How about when someone insults you? Doesn’t that tell you something?’ At a friends-of-the-library meeting, someone had sneered and called me ‘an armchair liberal.’ Actually,” she said, surprise still in her voice, “I don’t have any political beliefs, and I don’t have armchairs—just wingbacks. But then the man came up to me after the meeting and asked for a check for his charity, which was called Clothes Horse. He said they raised money to buy kids from poor areas of Denver new clothes and shoes for school. I told him I’d think about it. Then I came home and called the people who regulate that type of thing. Regulated. There was no Internet back then. In any event, the regulator told me the charity was bogus. That guy was a crook. Thought he could insult his way into my good graces! What a jerk.”
“And did we talk about that?” I asked.
Marla peered at the notes. “No, because I was the only one who had inherited money that I wanted to give away. Which this crook no doubt knew. But I’ve been on the lookout for people who hurl insults ever since. My experience has been, they’re trying to put you down so they can hit you up for something. And they’re usually hiding a thing or two.”
Arch clomping in overhead shook us out of the memories. Voices, deep and high, agitated and composed, threaded through the air.
“What’s going on up there?” Marla asked.
“Sergeant Jones may be trying to calm Arch down after the flat-tire mess.”
We went up. In the kitchen, Boyd stood in a corner, watchfully listening to Arch, Julian, Bob Rushwood, and Sergeant Jones. Sergeant Jones was indeed trying to soothe Arch, saying things like, “It could have been worse. Much worse.”
Boyd gave me a hooded look of warning that I did not think Marla caught. But I remembered Tom’s warning: reveal nothing to anyone but Boyd & Marla, no matter how much you trust him or her. So neither Sergeant Jones nor Bob Rushwood would hear about the merciful lying and responses to insults. I wondered if Marla had seen Boyd’s expression, and would know to keep her mouth shut.
“Bob?” said Marla as she stared at the enormous sandwiches Julian was placing in front of Arch, Bob, and Sergeant Jones. “What about your lunch with Ophelia? The birthday girl?”
Bob Rushwood brushed back his dark dreads. He gave Marla a look of such dejection that I was immediately aware that something had gone terribly wrong. I certainly hoped that helping Arch hadn’t meant Ophelia had canceled on him.
“Mom!” Arch cried. “What happened to your neck?”
“Oh, I . . .” I stammered. Reveal nothing. I trusted Arch, of course, but I knew better than to talk about being attacked the previous evening. Still, I was aware of the fact that I presented quite a sight: a caterer who looks as if she’s survived an angry client trying to choke her to death. “I was trying on a shirt for tonight—”
“Tom was trying to show her how to do a four-square knot for a tie she was going to wear,” Julian lied smoothly. “You know, the way some caterers wear? Anyway, he feels terrible.”
“I never should have asked him in the first place,” I said. Apparently, my gift for lying on short notice had not dimmed over the years. “Arch?” I asked. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” said my son. He sat at the kitchen table, his legs thrust out in front of him. “I’m just ticked off that I went to help build trails, then got a flat, and now have to waste the rest of the day at a tire place.”
I bit back words saying it was a good thing he’d had Sergeant Jones and Bob Rushwood there to bail him out. But Arch would not want to be corrected in front of others.
“I’m glad you had enough turkey in the walk-in for sandwiches for everybody,” Julian said, too cheerily. He raised his eyebrows. If there was something else I wasn’t supposed to talk about, I didn’t know what it was. So I looked at Bob to get a clue.
Bob Rushwood’s face was set in a scowl, which I hadn’t seen on him before. It appeared he’d washed the dreads, which couldn’t be that easy, in preparation either for his lunch with Ophelia, or the dinner that night. Not only that, but the effort he had used to help change Arch’s tire had made him sweat. Large circles of perspiration showed dark under the armpits and down the chest of his yellow sports shirt. It was not flattering.
Since we’d just been talking about being careful not to insult people, Marla and I said nothing—not about why Bob was there, or about what had happened to his lunch with Ophelia. An uncomfortable silence fell over the kitchen. Bob picked up half of his sandwich, then peered around Julian.
“Why is there crime-scene tape in your backyard?” Bob asked.
“We had a bear,” I said quickly, glancing through the windows. Thank God the crime-scene techs had left already. “It made a lot of noise and broke some stuff on our deck. At first we thought it was a vandal. So Tom called an investigative team, but by the time they got here, we’d figured out it was a bear, and he was gone.”
“What a relief!” said Marla.
“A bear?” said Arch. “Again?”
But Bob had lost interest. He put down his sandwich, bunched his hands into fists, and pushed them into his eyes. Marla and I exchanged another glance, but kept mum.
“Ophelia’s seeing somebody else!” Bob cried. He tried to make his sob sound like a cough. Then he turned his wet, red face to us. “Before I went out to the Preserve—to make sure the kids who hadn’t answered my e-mail didn’t show up?—I drove over to her house to give her some roses. She wouldn’t see me. And there was some other guy there. I could see him through the front door glass. He’d parked his stupid BMW in the driveway. It has surfboard and snowboard stickers on it! Like he has to announce that he’s so cool. So now we all know he’s a jock. Duh! Pretty soon I was pleading into the intercom, ‘Ophelia, you already have a jock! And I’m it!’ But she wouldn’t listen, wouldn’t even come out. She finally announced through the speaker that she didn’t want to have lunch, that she would see me tonight, and that I should just go away. Go away? Is that the way you talk to someone you’re going to spend the rest of your life with?”
I pressed my lips together, ignored Marla, and tried to look sympathetically at Bob. He was at least ten years older than Ophelia, so maybe the age difference was bothering her. Afraid he could read my mind, I turned away. While Julian carefully placed chips on Bob’s plate, Arch loudly cleared his throa
t. He knew that Brewster drove a BMW with Hobie and Burton stickers on it; we all did. I shook my head, trying to telegraph to Arch: Don’t let on that the guy at Ophelia’s place is Brewster. Arch opened his eyes wide at me, as in, What’s going on? But I ignored him. Bob, meanwhile, picked up the sandwich half he’d put down and demolished most of it in a single bite.
“Mom,” Arch began, but we were interrupted by a horrendous banging on the front door.
“Goldy Schulz!” a male voice cried. “Get out here!”
Sergeant Jones immediately called for backup.
“Mr. Rushwood? Everybody?” said Boyd, drawing his weapon. “I’m going to have to ask you to stay put.”
“For how long?” asked Bob. “My life’s falling apart. I have to see Ophelia again.”
The banging continued on the front door.
“All right,” said Boyd. “Go through the back door. Go now. This minute.”
Bob clutched the other half of his sandwich in midair and gave it a look of longing, even as his frown deepened. Julian, meanwhile, hastily pulled out some waxed paper. He deftly removed the half sandwich, wrapped it along with the chips, and handed the package to Bob.
“We’ll get back to trail building tomorrow, Arch,” Bob said hastily. He looked confused, but took the proffered food and hustled out the kitchen door and across the deck. There, if he’d have cared to notice, no furniture or anything else was broken, by either bear or human.
“Goldy Schulz!” the male voice was hollering. “Answer this door!”
“Who is that?” Arch demanded, looking around the kitchen. “Why is everything around here so weird? You had a bear last night, so there’s crime-scene tape in our backyard? Brewster Motley is sneaking around with Ophelia? You won’t tell Bob what’s going on? Mom?”
“Goldy Schulz!” the shrill voice called again. “Get your fat ass out here!”
The Whole Enchilada Page 24