I checked my watch: 4:10. Shouldn’t Arch and Tom be back by now? Perhaps they’d gone out for a snack. Even so, I still had dinner to make. And before I got to that point, a few odds and ends for the next day’s catering remained. Still, I had promised to call Brewster if I heard anything.
My criminal lawyer was in a conference, so I left a message on his voice mail that I’d heard “from a cop friend”—no sense getting Boyd in trouble—that John Richard had been involved in a money-laundering operation. Remember the older man who’d asked if I had his money? He’d been waiting for forty-five hundred in cash from John Richard. So, I concluded, it was possible that whoever John Richard was laundering cash for had killed him. At least, I hoped the investigation was turning in that direction. And if it wasn’t turning that way, maybe Brewster could prod it. Also, I added, Sandee Blue, late of John Richard’s harem, had a jealous boyfriend named Bobby Calhoun. And Bobby was prone to violence, I concluded. Just ask Marla.
I punched down the bread dough, divided it, and formed it into rolls for the second rising. That done, I set a fine-mesh strainer over a bowl and carefully spooned a gallon of vanilla yogurt on top, to drain overnight. I would fold the resulting ultrathick, delicious mass into whipped cream to layer with fresh fruit for breakfast parfaits. The rest of the committeewomen’s muffins and breads I had frozen, so with minimal preparation in the country-club kitchen the next morning, I was in good shape. Trudy, my next-door neighbor, brought over the arrangement, a beautiful bouquet of spring flowers sent by a group of moms from Arch’s new Catholic high school. Trudy apologized for there being no casseroles, but she said everyone was afraid to cook for a professional caterer.
Let’s see. For dinner, I could make a shellfish salad like the one I’d enjoyed at Holly’s. I opened the walk-in and saw something that Tom had made a few days ago, during one of his blue periods. The label read “Happy Days Mayonnaise.” For some reason, this piqued my anger all over again.
I calmly walked over to a cabinet filled with jars to be recycled. I picked out two big ones and threw them onto the floor, where they broke with a satisfying crash. My sneakers crunched over the broken shards as I reached up onto the shelf and nabbed two more jars. These I hurled at the back door.
“Happy? Yeah, I’m happy!” I yelled as I chucked another pair of jars onto the floor. They splintered into a million pieces. “I’m happy now!”
Jake the bloodhound was howling. Immediately remorseful that I’d scared him, I let both animals out through their enclosure door. No way I was letting them into the trashed kitchen. Jake slobbered all over me again, worried that the woman-who-brings-dog-
food was losing her marbles.
I went back into the kitchen and sank into a chair, exhausted. “Happy Days Mayonnaise,” indeed. Happy, what a word. I remembered how ecstatic I’d been when Arch had been born, how it had seemed that every day was as fizzy with delight as a flute of sparkling champagne. After I’d brought him home, I’d proudly shown him off at church, at the library, even at the grocery store. People would look at me and say, “You look so happy!” And I had been. I had thought, This is happiness, the rest of my life will be just like this, this is the beginning of it all!
Uh-huh. I surveyed the layer of broken glass that now covered the kitchen floor. Jake had put his paws up on the exterior windowsill and was staring in at me and the mess I’d made. I didn’t care; I wanted to break some more glass. And then I wanted to drive down to the morgue and shake John Richard’s dead body until it told me who had killed him.
Yeah, well. Then the reporters really would have a field day. And I still had to figure out the evening meal for our family. My tantrum had drained me of all cooking energy. All right, I reasoned as my sneakers again cracked over the shards, I could resort to that great salvation of the American housewife: the frozen casserole.
I pulled out a frosty glass pan covered with foil, labeled “Whole Enchilada Pie.” In a remarkable bit of foresight, I’d doubled the recipe of this favorite of Arch’s and frozen the extra one. The recipe itself had come about one night when Arch had wanted enchiladas and I hadn’t had any tortillas. So I’d thrown together a ton of Mexican ingredients, improvised layers with corn chips, and told him the dish had everything, “The Whole Enchilada”! He’d loved it.
I put the pan into the microwave, set it to defrost, and grabbed my broom. Of course, I’d managed to make one unholy mess. I swept up shards and dumped them, swept and dumped, swept and dumped. Then I sprayed a disinfectant solution onto the floor and mopped up the tiniest bits of glass with paper towels. With every swipe of the floor, I muttered, “You Jerk. You damn Jerk,” or some variation on that theme.
When I’d finished washing the floor, I leaned back on my aching knees and surveyed the glowing wood. My heart was still pounding. Echoes of the curses I’d been muttering rocketed around in my head. I knew I needed to move from rage to a more productive emotional state, one that would bring rational thought and action. Problem was, I couldn’t because I didn’t want to. Whatever happened to anger, denial, bargaining, grief, acceptance? Maybe Elisabeth Kübler-Ross hadn’t analyzed the emotional aftermath of the death of a jerk. I sprayed additional disinfectant on the floor and began scrubbing even more energetically than before.
Eventually, clouds moving in from the west obscured the sun. A welcome breeze cooled the kitchen and brought in the scent of lilacs. With every muscle aching, I surveyed the spotless floor. It was almost six o’clock, and I was exhausted. I stood up slowly, washed my hands, and slid the defrosted casserole into the oven.
There was a knock at the back door. Again wary of reporters, I peeked through the shade, only to see one of Trudy’s freckled kids holding a covered casserole dish and a plastic bag.
“My mom made this for you, Mrs. Schulz,” the kid—ten-year-old Eddie—said. “She said it’s called Mediterranean Chicken.”
“Thanks for bringing it over, Eddie.”
“Well, my mom said I had to. Oh yeah, she put your mail in this bag.”
“Want to come in for some pie, Eddie?”
“No thanks. My mom says if I want to go fishing tomorrow, I’ve gotta clean up my room. All these jobs, it’s worse than school! Sometimes I hate summer.”
I thanked him again, but he was already trudging back toward his house. I stowed the chicken in the refrigerator. Then I turned my attention to the mail.
It was the usual assortment of bills and ads. A manila envelope from the Mountain Journal, with my name and address hand-lettered, took me aback. It had been postmarked the previous day. But the contents provided a much greater surprise.
I pulled out two pieces of paper. One was a note with the printed superscription: “From the Desk of Cecelia Brisbane.” The scribbled words were in the same handwriting as was on the envelope:
Here’s what I was talking about at the bake sale. Do you know if the authorities ever followed up on this? I got it a couple of years ago, but your ex was already incarcerated. With him getting out unexpectedly, I thought maybe it would bear looking into. Would you please call me? C.B.
Clipped to this was a piece of faded paper, frayed at the edges. A short, typed message, with no greeting, read as follows:
Dr. John Richard Korman raped a teenage girl when she was a patient at Southwest Hospital. It was a long time ago. Are you afraid to research this? Are you afraid to write about it? You could start by asking his ex-wife Goldy if he did it to her, too. Once you get the facts, it’s your JOB to expose him….
Whoa. I read the typed note two more times, then reread Cecelia’s short message. She’d had this typed note for two years and hadn’t done anything about it? That was not like Cecelia. On the other hand, this was an explosive allegation.
Cecelia certainly hadn’t done what the writer recommended: Start by asking his ex-wife Goldy…
I reread the note. This was an allegation of something so awful that it was hard to process. John Richard Korman raped a teenage girl when she was
a patient at Southwest Hospital…a long time ago. I closed my eyes.
Did I believe it was possible that John Richard had done such a thing? I did. He had forced himself on me more than once. But I’d never heard of him being interested in teenage girls.
And yet now this note, which alleged he had raped a very young woman a long time ago, was surfacing. Why would this story emerge right after John Richard had been murdered? Why had Cecelia sent the note to me instead of to the cops?
I was skeptical about the whole thing. Someone was, or had been, trying to frame me. And now suddenly Cecelia Brisbane was throwing suspicion elsewhere.
In any event, this note cast no light on anything I knew about John Richard being killed. Yes, I was going to phone Cecelia.
But my first call went in to Detective Blackridge at the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. He said he’d drive right up to get the note. And doggone it, he told me not to try to contact Cecelia Brisbane.
But he didn’t order me not to call Marla. Using my new cell, I punched the buttons for her home phone. As usual, I got the machine, to which I posed the first questions I’d written down: Did she know the timing and rationale for John Richard’s breakup with Courtney? What was the cause or even the correlation between the dumping of Courtney and the subsequent involvement with Sandee? And then I dropped the bombshell: Did her list of the Jerk’s sexual conquests include a teenager whom he’d raped? She’d been a Southwest Hospital patient when it had supposedly happened.
If there was anyone who could dig up dirt on the Jerk, it was Marla.
I closed the phone, filled my deepest sink with hot suds, and carefully washed the bowls and beaters from the pie making. Would anyone else know about this allegation against John Richard? Other physicians, possibly, but they were notoriously closemouthed when it came to criticizing their own, even when a crime was involved. I read the typed note again.
A patient in Southwest Hospital would not necessarily have been a patient from the Aspen Meadow practice. The note written—pointedly, it seemed to me—hadn’t said “while I was a patient of his.” And even if the teenager had been one of John Richard’s patients, I knew I’d never get any records out of the doc who’d bought the Jerk’s practice. Nor was Southwest Hospital in the habit of being forthcoming about patient records. On the other hand, would a young woman who’d been raped want this kind of thing in her records?
I set the table and tried to think. Who else would have an inkling about this? John Richard had employed a number of nurses in the Aspen Meadow office he’d shared with his father, but none of them had stayed more than a year. Wait: the deliveries. There was one other person who’d known and worked with John Richard over the past decade and a half: the longtime head nurse of ob-gyn at Southwest Hospital. I was doing the retirement picnic for her the next day.
Would Nan Watkins remember the specifics of any wrongdoings on John Richard’s part? If she did, would she tell me about them? Maybe the cops would have already questioned her. Somehow, I doubted it.
I placed the risen rolls for the committee breakfast into the oven. Then I picked up the phone and punched the buttons to reach Nan Watkins, R.N.
She was not home. Would she talk to me about this allegation at her retirement picnic? I would just have to find out.
I set about cleaning up the kitchen. My stomach growled, so I allowed myself a few bites of Trudy’s Mediterranean Chicken. The meat was tender and juicy, the sauce a delectable mélange of garlic, onion, sherry, and tomato. Yum!
I stowed the chicken and took the hot, puffed citrus rolls out of the oven. They looked as light as clouds, and perfumed the kitchen with a heavenly scent. I turned on all the fans, which meant I almost didn’t hear the doorbell when Detective Blackridge rang. I invited him in and offered him a therapeutically sized piece of cream pie. He declined. I might be able to snow reporters, but cops were another thing altogether.
“I’ll just see the two notes, please.”
I’d put them into two zipped plastic bags. He read them both, his face impassive.
“And you just happened to receive these today?”
I bristled. “Here’s what they came in.” I handed him the manila envelope.
He squinted at me. “So did he?”
“Did who?”
“Did your ex-husband ever force himself on you?”
I exhaled. “Yes. I always just…went along with it. I mean, we were married.”
“It’s all very convenient for you, isn’t it?” Blackridge asked, a ghost of a smile curling his lips. “He’s killed, then an allegation of rape magically surfaces, and so it looks as if—”
“Why don’t you ask Cecelia Brisbane about it?” I retorted.
Detective Blackridge turned toward the door, clutching the plastic bags and the manila envelope. “We tried. She’s not at her office and not at her house. That’s convenient for you, too. Isn’t it?”
He shot a questioning look back at me. I said nothing. But I resolved that I would be damned before I gave him any more information on this case.
After the detective drove away, I went out on our front porch. In the Rocky Mountain summer, the sun seems to hover over the western horizon for hours before setting. The only hint that evening is coming is the gradual cooling and sweetening of the air, as Alpine roses and chokecherry release their perfumes into the coming night. I breathed in, looking up and down the street. The good news was that the reporters seemed to have dispersed. The bad news was that Tom’s sedan was nowhere in sight. Not only did I miss Tom and Arch, I was getting worried. And I needed to talk to Tom. The events and news of the day had been too complex for me to sort out on my own.
I returned to the kitchen, where the clock read 6:45. Could they possibly have decided to play an extra round of golf? Somehow, that did not seem likely. Then again, Arch had taken his hockey gear. If he’d wanted to skate the day after his father died, Tom probably would have indulged him. Although I wished they would let me know what was up, I resisted putting in a call to Tom’s cell. I could just imagine Arch rolling his eyes when the phone beeped.
Must be Mom, checking up on us!
I shuddered, then jumped when our own phone rang. The caller ID said it was my old pal Frances Markasian, pie-deprived reporter of the Mountain Journal. She was calling from home. I had to hand it to the woman, she was persistent.
“No comment,” I sang into the receiver.
“Very funny,” she groused. “The whole press corps is blaming me for not grabbing that pie before you whacked Roger Mannis. The Mountain Journal is still working on the caption for the photo. I think they’re going with ‘Stressed-out Suspect Splats Inspector.’ I preferred ‘Caterer Creams Killjoy.’ ”
“Frances, you all aren’t really going to run an article showing me hitting the district health inspector with strawberry-cream pie, are you?”
“Not if you can give me something more substantive.”
I groaned. “Such as?”
“Such as, Goldy, what the cops have on you. Such as, if they have anything substantive, why aren’t you under arrest? Such as, do you or Tom know if they have any other suspects besides…” She paused, doing her best imitation of being tantalizing.
“Yeah, besides who? Don’t play games, Frances.”
“How about this game? Quid pro quo.”
“What’s your quid?”
“Let’s go with the quo first,” she said innocently. “What do the cops have on you, Goldy?”
I could act innocent, too. And smooth! Oh, baby, I could be silkier than that cream pie Frances never tasted. I cleared my throat and tried to adopt an appropriately rueful tone.
“At the end of the memorial lunch for Albert Kerr, witnesses saw me arguing with John Richard outside the Roundhouse. John Richard was trying to set up an appointment for me to take Arch over, and it wasn’t prearranged. When I finally agreed, he took off.”
“That’s no quo. It’s old news, Goldy.”
“When I took
Arch over,” I went on, ignoring her, “I found John Richard in his garage, in his car, dead. Arch was outside. I was alone, so it looks to the cops as if I set the whole thing up to protect my son.” That was as far as I was willing to go. With the phrase potential jury pool rocketing around in my head, there was no way I was spilling my guts to any newspaper about my missing thirty-eight, the errant mice, or the GSR test.
“I heard there was a problem with a firearm,” Frances said.
“Where’d you hear that?”
“Was it a gun of yours that killed John Richard?”
“Good question. Now what’s your quid? I’ve got a lot of cooking to do.” This woman was tiring me out.
“How well do you know Ted and Ginger Vikarios?” she asked.
The question took me off guard. “I haven’t been in touch with them for a long time. Ted was—”
“Yeah, yeah. Co–department head of ob-gyn at Southwest with Kerr more than a decade and a half ago. Then the Kerrs and Vikarioses found religion at the same time and went their separate ways. The Kerrs sold their worldly goods and sailed for seminary in England. Ted Vikarios figured he didn’t need further study or ordination. All he needed was his message of morality and that mesmerizing voice of his. So he set up shop in Colorado Springs, where he constructed a multimillion-dollar tape-and-CD empire, selling Family Values and Victory over Sin for fifteen ninety-five a boxed set. Their own family wasn’t in such good shape, though. You know about this?”
“I know he went under, and that there was some kind of scandal. That’s it.”
“Okay, family values, right? Ted and Ginger insisted their family was a marvel, the gold standard. Their only daughter, Talitha, ostensibly virtuous, was off doing health-worker volunteer work in South America. Meanwhile, when the money began to roll in from the tapes empire, Ted and Ginger mortgaged themselves into the high life—four BMWs, a ranch, a ski condo. That was until oops, one of our competitors in the newspaper biz got hold of the story that their daughter’s sole connection with missionaries was the missionary position.”
Double Shot Page 17