Fatally Flaky

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “I’m not even sure it’ll be edible.” Marla paused, then sniffed. “Tom called while you were in the shower. He’s on his way.” She regarded me closely. “Tell me how you’re feeling.”

  “I’m feeling like crap is how I’m feeling. I just think I should have been able to prevent this.”

  “Whoa, whoa, whoa, Goldy. Your godfather had already had two heart attacks, and he was a heavy smoker and drinker. At the wedding, he was violently mugged and lost consciousness, or at least that’s what Julian told me.” When I didn’t contradict her, she said, “Then one of our church pals from Med Wives 101 called me late last night. She was down at Southwest because her son tore his ACL playing soccer, and they were there until all hours. Anyway, while they were waiting to be seen, she’d been wandering the halls, and stopped in when she saw Jack’s name on a door. She said how awful Jack looked, because he’d stopped breathing and had to have a trake in the ambulance.” Marla took a sip of her own Irish coffee. “That’s a whole lot of stress for an older man to deal with, and you’re wondering how all that could have precipitated another heart attack? Come on.” Marla’s eyebrows rose, inverted commas surprised by my naiveté. “Jeez, Goldy, better to ask why wouldn’t he have had a heart attack?” She rose to make us each another coffee—this time with no whiskey, but with added whipping cream.

  “I should have stayed with him,” I said stubbornly. “If his heart attack was inevitable, then I should have called his cardiologist and told him he had to come down to Southwest Hospital.”

  “You’re going to tell a doctor what to do? Last time I looked, that didn’t work out for either one of us, even when we were married to the doctor in question.”

  “I should have done something for Jack. There must have been something I could have done.”

  “There was nothing you could have done. Sunday was yesterday, so would you please quit with the messiah routine? It’s aggravating.”

  Marla was the only one in the world who could talk to me like this and get away with it, and actually, I treasured her for it. Father Pete had done the right thing to call her, and for that, too, I was thankful.

  “Hey!” I noticed for the first time that the whole kitchen floor was immaculate. “Thanks for cleaning the floor. I’m surprised you could find the mop—”

  “Every now and then,” Marla rejoined as she got up to set the table, “even a blind chipmunk runs into an acorn. Or a mop, as the case may be.”

  “You should let me set the table,” I began, but shut up when Marla gave me a withering glance. I sighed, and suddenly felt tears sting my eyes again. When a sob left my lips, Marla turned suddenly.

  “Okay, okay! You can set the table!”

  I half-laughed, half-sobbed as Marla pulled me to my feet and hugged me. I allowed myself to cry. Into this scenario walked Tom. I hadn’t even heard him drive up.

  “Miss G.,” he said as Marla passed me off to my husband. “I’m so sorry about Jack. I really, really am.”

  “I know. Thanks for coming up.”

  “I’m going to have to go back down in a bit.” He gave me a hooded look that said, Not in front of Marla, which she immediately interpreted.

  “Why don’t you just use your cell to call Goldy from the living room?” Marla queried. She turned to the oven and brought out her puffy, golden pan of whatever-it-was. “Then you could tell her what it is that’s such a big secret.”

  “I’ve gotten used to you, Marla,” Tom said jovially.

  “Oh, hell,” said Marla, as she plunged a spoon into the pan and pulled up a serving of her concoction, only to have a puddle of uncooked egg pool out like batter from the center of the dish. “What did I do wrong?”

  “Not let it cook long enough?” asked Tom. “Want me to fix us some ham and eggs?”

  And so, twenty minutes later, we had Marla’s egg dish in front of us, as well as an enormous ham-and-egg omelet, courtesy of Tom. Unfortunately, I took one bite of Marla’s concoction, and simply could not swallow it. Not that it wasn’t good; it was. I not only wasn’t hungry, I suddenly thought I was going to puke. When I put my fork down, Marla gave me a worried look.

  “That bad, huh?”

  “No, Marla, I’m just not that hungry. Thanks anyway.”

  A worried glance passed between Tom and Marla. I never lost my appetite.

  Marla’s cell buzzed. It was Father Pete, wanting to know how I was doing. Marla said I was okay, considering. Then Marla said, “Well, I’m sure she didn’t mean to hide them. I mean, I’m sure they’re not hidden, they’re just … not where you can find them. There’s a difference.” I could hear Father Pete’s despairing voice on the other end of the line. Then Marla said, “All right, all right, let me come help you.”

  When she disconnected, she said, “Are you going to be all right, Goldy, now that Tom’s here? Because Father Pete says there are letters from the diocesan office he can’t find in the church files, and was wondering if I could go help him try to figure out how the new secretary’s mind works. Since I recommended that he hire this woman, it’s all my fault, apparently, that the diocesan letters were placed in some random file drawer instead of on Father Pete’s desk. I even warned him she had ADD, but he just said he didn’t think that would mean needing CIA assistance to find some random letters from the diocesan office.”

  “It’s fine, go,” I said. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Oh,” she continued, “and Father Pete told me to tell you you should take a few days off from catering, maybe get Julian to fill in, so you can grieve.”

  “Wonderful,” I said, unable to conceal my sarcasm. “That just sounds super, grieving all day. And anyway, I don’t need to take off from work, because I don’t have any catered events until next weekend. And I’ve got plenty of money from all the work I’ve been doing lately, so I don’t have to go out and drum up business.”

  “Do you want some work?” asked Marla as she gathered up her purse. “If we don’t find those diocesan letters, I’ll bet the position of St. Luke’s church secretary will be opening up mighty quick.”

  I said, “Gee thanks!” We hugged again and she rushed away.

  Tom said, “I know how much Jack meant to you, Miss G.” He regarded me with his wonderful sea green eyes, then pulled me in for a hug. “Tell me what I can do to help,” he murmured in my ear.

  I exhaled. “I don’t know. Truly, Tom, I don’t. One thing I do know, though, I don’t want to sit around and grieve.” I pulled away from him. “You tell me—when you have a case that’s really bothering you, that you can’t get over, what do you do? I know you don’t grieve.”

  “People grieve in different ways, Miss G. Some people need to sit around and cry. Other people need to be doing something, something they find meaningful, that will help them deal with a death. I fall in that second category. As do most homicide investigators, I might add.”

  I canted my head at him. “What did you just call me?”

  Tom, genuinely surprised, tucked in his chin. “Miss G. The way I always do. Why?”

  “Because Jack always called me Gertie Girl. He never called me anything but.”

  “And this is significant because…?”

  Where was that piece of paper Jack had scribbled on in the hospital? “Hold on a sec.”

  I raced upstairs and found Jack’s note, and his keys, as well as—oops—his Rolex, which I’d meant to give Tom first thing, except the news of Jack’s death had intervened. I wanted to give Tom the watch and show him the note, but I certainly didn’t want to hand over Jack’s keys until I knew exactly why he had wanted me to have them in the first place.

  With only a small pang of guilt, I stuffed Jack’s keys into my pajama drawer, then brought the note, plus the watch, still wrapped inside my apron, down to the kitchen.

  “‘Gold. Keys. Fin,’” Tom read, after he’d shaken his head, given me a dubious look, and put the Rolex into a brown paper evidence bag. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Wel
l, I don’t know, but he sure was eager to be writing something for my eyes only,” I said. “Lucas called and told me about the trake Jack had had in the ambo, and how he seemed to be wanting to talk to me, because he’d written ‘Gold.’ Lucas thought Jack wanted him to summon Goldy. But Jack never, ever called me Goldy. He called me Gertie Girl.”

  “And what do you think he meant?”

  My shoulders slumped. “I haven’t figured that out. Something gold in his house?”

  “Did he give you keys to get into his house?” Tom raised one eyebrow at me. “So you could go in there and get whatever it was?”

  “I don’t know why he wanted me to have an extra set of keys. I already had a set of keys to his house.”

  “You’d better hand over those keys he gave you, Goldy.” He held out his palm expectantly.

  Tears streamed down my cheeks. “He didn’t want anybody else to have these keys. He wanted me to have them. Don’t make me give them up, Tom. Please.”

  “Don’t use either set to go into his house, Goldy. If he died as a result of this attack on him, then it’s felony murder, and we’ll be going through every inch of that house.” He paused. “Somebody broke into Finn’s house after he was killed.”

  “Oh, no.”

  Tom said, “Oh, yes. We don’t know what was taken, if anything. But at this point, please, please don’t screw things up for us. I’m begging you.”

  “I won’t,” I promised.

  Tom groaned, then looked back at the note. “What do you suppose he meant by Fin? Talking about his pal, Doc Finn?”

  “I don’t know. You know, sometimes you see that at the end of French movies. Fin. It means the end. Maybe he had a premonition he was going to die.”

  “You ever know Jack to go to a French film, read all those irritating subtitles? I sure didn’t. And anyway, I think if he meant End, then that’s what he would have written.”

  “Maybe. Except he was pretty out of it at the hospital.”

  “Out of it enough to misspell his best friend’s name?”

  Tom’s cell phone buzzed, and he answered it. Meanwhile, I stared at the cryptic note my secrecy-oriented godfather had left for me. “Gold. Keys. Fin.” I had no idea what Jack had been trying to say.

  “I’ve got to go back down to the department,” Tom said. He gave me a worried look. “Let me get Trudy over here to be with you.”

  “Gosh, what am I, an invalid? First Father Pete, now you. I’ll be fine.” I glanced at the clock: 7:40. “How about this? I’ll go to church and help Marla with some stuff she’s doing for Father Pete. Finding letters either to or from the diocese, I’m not sure which.”

  Tom appeared unconvinced.

  “I’ll be fine, Tom,” I assured him.

  “Church.” He waggled a warning index finger in my direction.

  “Church!” I replied. “For crying out loud, give me a little credit!”

  He eyed me skeptically. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t give you too little credit, Miss G. I give you too much credit.”

  Once I’d heard Tom’s Chrysler rumble away, I went upstairs, pulled out the set of keys I’d taken from Jack’s jacket in the hospital, and stuffed them into my sweatpants pocket. I slammed my pajama drawer with such violence that it startled me.

  Cool it, I said to myself.

  All right. I needed to think, and to cook. These would help me grieve, not sitting around crying. In any event, going to St. Luke’s was the very last thing I wanted to do, of that I was sure.

  18

  In the kitchen, I located my recipe for coeur à la crème. I’d had to give the one I’d made earlier for Tom to Marla for her shindig, so I needed to make another one. No, I thought after a moment. I’d make another coeur, and then … a plain old cream pie for someone else I’d suddenly decided to see. I sighed, then told myself to get going.

  The walk-in offered up mascarpone and whipping cream, and the pantry held confectioners’ sugar and imported Mexican vanilla. I beat the cheese, sugar, and vanilla to a smooth, delectable mass, then set it aside and whipped the cream. I lined a sieve with cheesecloth, set it over a bowl, folded the two mixtures together, and scraped half of this concoction into the cloth-lined sieve. After I’d placed one of these into the refrigerator to drain, I put the second mixture—the one for the cream pie—into a separate bowl. Then I located fresh berries of all varieties. These would go on top.

  I wanted to offer the cream pie as an attempt to elicit information.

  I hoped offering the coeur to Tom would allow him to forgive me for doing stuff behind his back as I tried to figure out what in the hell had happened to my godfather.

  And, I added mentally, I wanted to find out what had happened to my godfather’s best friend, Doc Finn. Because now the two deaths, one definitely a murder and the other a death possibly as the result of an attack, seemed more and more inextricably linked.

  I made myself a quadruple espresso for a heavy-duty Summertime Special. Then I went out to the living room to think. I unfolded Jack’s note. “Gold. Keys. Fin.” Jack’s clutch of keys jangled as I dropped them onto the table.

  As I’d told Tom, it was extremely doubtful that Jack had meant to summon me to the hospital when he had written “Gold.” So what did the “Gold” stand for? Did he have a stash of gold somewhere that neither Lucas nor I knew about? Was he trying to alert somebody to that stash?

  What other possibilities were there?

  I hiccuped violently and succumbed to a fresh onslaught of tears and sobbing. I wished suddenly for Arch to be here, just so I could hug him and tell him how much I loved and needed him. Maybe I should have let Tom summon Trudy to be with me.

  You’ve got to move forward, Gertie Girl, Jack had said to me before he’d sent the fifty thousand that had gotten me into my own business and out of the marriage to the Jerk.

  I nabbed some tissues, splashed cold water on my face, rubbed it virtually raw, and looked at my tired eyes and red-slapped cheek. Beauty contest? No. Able to move forward? Yes.

  I went back to the living room, took a healthy slug of the iced latte, and looked again at the note. “Gold.” Think. Move forward.

  Gold could stand for Gold Gulch Spa. Jack had been digging around in the Smoothie Cabin just a couple of days ago. Had he found what he was looking for? And what exactly had he been looking for?

  I made a note to talk to Isabelle. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know her last name. What had she and Jack been up to? When Jack had heard someone coming in, he’d grabbed Isabelle and started smooching her. Then at the reception, he’d been snuggling up to her again. Why?

  Jack was secretive, that was certain. Maybe he hadn’t told Isabelle anything. Maybe this note didn’t mean anything; maybe it was just, oh, I didn’t know what.

  Doubt squeezed my heart again as I looked at the word “Fin.” Doc Finn had been lured out onto the highway at night, hit from behind, and then killed. Jack Carmichael, his closest friend, had been attacked three days later in a robbery-that-wasn’t-a-robbery. I had to believe the sheriff’s department would demand an autopsy on Jack’s body to determine the exact cause of his death. If the injuries sustained in the attack had led to Jack’s death, then it was felony murder, as Tom had said. Maybe the sheriff’s department was already investigating, and I didn’t even know about it.

  I exhaled in frustration, then stared at the extra set of Jack’s keys. Why had he wanted me to have them? I saw the Mercedes keys on this set, plus some others I didn’t recognize. Had he wanted me to go back out to Gold Gulch Spa and get his Mercedes? If so, then why not write that down? Had his mind been wandering so much in the hospital that his notes, and his desires, didn’t really make any sense?

  A shiver went down my spine. What if his beloved car was not the issue? If he had wanted Lucas, who already had a set of keys to Jack’s house, to go to Jack’s house for some reason, then why insist on my having this set?

  I needed to think some more. First I checked for my keys. Thank God for Juli
an, who had returned my van during the night, and taken back his Rover.

  Then I quick-stepped into the kitchen and made a graham cracker crust. Then I spooned the luscious filling into the crust, scattered blueberries on top, and melted some apricot preserves on top of the stove. Once I’d strained the liquid from the preserves onto the pie, I carefully placed the pie in the bottom of a cardboard box, stabilized my offering with crumpled newspapers, and placed the box in my van.

  Then I took off for the Attenborough haunt in Flicker Ridge.

  CHARLOTTE ANSWERED THE door. I’d called on the way over, saying we’d never finished our business the previous evening. Charlotte, confused, had said she didn’t know what I was talking about. As delicately as possible, I had reminded her that I had not received the last payment for the wedding reception.

  “Oh yes, yes, of course,” Charlotte had replied. “I thought you meant, that is, I thought you were talking about Jack.”

  “Yes, it’s very sad. I can’t stand to stay in my house. Is this, is it a bad time?”

  Her breath caught when she sighed. “No. Come on over, you might as well. I’m just getting packed to go to the spa. I … have to get away. I guess I can’t stand to stay in my house either.”

  “I’m bringing you something,” I said, which sounded lame, even to me.

  “I hope it’s not flowers.” She exhaled so forcefully, I didn’t have the heart to ask her to explain herself.

  When Charlotte ushered me into her living room, I knew immediately what the flower comment meant: at least twenty bouquets from the banquet tables were ranged around the immense living space. The place looked like a funeral parlor and smelled like a perfume factory.

  “Well,” I said, unsure of what words to use.

  “Horrible, isn’t it?” asked Charlotte, as she swept an arm to indicate the room. She wore a bright pink pleated blouse and designer jeans. But her face was a wreck: deep, dark bags creased the area under her eyes, her eyes were bloodshot, and her skin was mottled.