The Grilling Season Read online

  The timer beeped. I slapped the cookie sheet out of the oven with an overenthusiastic bang, then rolled and cut out another batch of biscuits. I stared at the cutter in my hand. I’d been so proud of myself for finding the cutter. When the biscuits were baked, they were the exact dimensions of a hockey puck. Perfect for tonight’s party.

  Ralph’s a big hockey fan, Marla had told me. No kidding. Back in the medical-school days, the only way Ralph Shelton could relieve his academic anxiety was to go to hockey games at McNichols Arena, where he’d bought lifetime season tickets for our ill-fated first NHL team, the Colorado Rockies. I had never understood how Ralph could vent his frustration by cheering for such a poorly performing team. Glumly reporting their losses whenever we got together, Ralph’s face had been ruddy and lined. What little hair he had had turned prematurely gray around a widening bald spot. Whether the hair loss resulted from the pain of being a Rockies hockey fan or the prospect of practicing medicine, I knew not. When the franchise had moved on, Ralph had been disconsolate. Whether his enthusiasms had subsequently shifted to baseball, when the new team named the Rockies were swinging bats and setting homerun and attendance records at newly built Coors Field, I knew not. By then, Ralph Shelton had passed out of my orbit. And I’d had my hands too full with the divorce from John Richard to care.

  Wait a minute. Sometimes a girlfriend will dye her hair, and become virtually unrecognizable. I watched my oven timer ticking down the seconds until this batch of biscuits would be done. I remembered Ralph Shelton; I’d seen him quite recently. I just hadn’t recognized him out of context and with a new look. His bald head had been covered by a billed cap. He’d exchanged his sports-fan garb for gardening clothes. He’d grown a mustache that was prematurely white. I watched my clock. What else? He’d been eager to see what the paramedics were doing. This morning, my old friend Ralph Shelton had been one of the gawking neighbors on Jacobean Drive.

  Chapter 10

  The food, I scolded myself. Work! I perused my recipe for Vietnamese slaw. Napa cabbage, carrots, very lightly steamed snow peas—all these needed to be julienned. When my hand became tired from slicing, I decided to stop and check the phone book. Ralph and Fay Shelton lived on Chaucer Drive, one street over from Suz Craig’s street. So what had Ralph been doing up so early this morning? Taking a stroll around the neighborhood? I couldn’t wait for Tom to wake up.

  The phone rang. Patricia McCracken’s voice zinged across the wire. “I can’t cancel this parry,” she wailed.

  “You’d better not,” I exclaimed as I stared at the mountains of colorful vegetables I’d already cut into uniform thin slices.

  “The police have been here, Goldy. I was so nervous about seeing everybody at this party, my first public appearance since I filed the suits, that I took a sleeping pill last night. I don’t remember a thing.” She took a deep breath and added defiantly, “I didn’t kill that HMO lady.”

  “Oh-kay,” I said as I searched my shelves for rice wine vinegar.

  “Do you think John Richard killed her?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “See you at five then.” She didn’t wait for me to say good-bye.

  What an odd call. I whisked sesame oil with the rice wine vinegar and thought back to the wet spring we’d just come through. I had seen Patricia and her son, Tyler, once, at the library. It had been a momentous spring for our town library, but not because the incessant rain had brought any heightened demand for books. The cause for sensation had been the foxes that had made their den in the rocky hillside behind the windowed reading room. When a litter of five cubs was produced, the births became big-time small-town news. Soon the fox cubs were claiming the early-evening hours to cavort, tumble, and prance through the quartz and granite spillway in full view of an audience of excited children of all ages. Never mind that reading in the high-windowed room became impossible. Any visitor to or from the library was greeted with the same query: “Seen the foxes?”

  Paying a visit to the reading room, Arch and I had encountered Patricia dragging a recalcitrant, whining Tyler with one hand and balancing an armload of Dr. Seuss books with the other.

  “Did you see the foxes, Tyler?” I’d asked her son happily. “Are they out tonight?”

  Tyler had given me a grumpy stare and let out a wail. Patricia had snarled, “We’re not interested in a family of foxes. Not now. Not ever.”

  Startled, I’d pulled open the massive door to the library for Arch. When he passed by me, he’d mumbled, “What—does she raise chickens or something?”

  Not even close, I realized now as I folded the sweet-sour dressing into the slaw ingredients. Struggling with the recent loss of her baby, Patricia hadn’t wanted to see the fox cubs playing. The notion of a big, happy family had been slipping from her grasp. I covered the enormous bowl with plastic wrap and popped it into the walk-in refrigerator.

  “If you’re making so-good food noises, I want some,” Tom announced cheerfully as he strode into the room. “Oh, man.” He took in a greedy breath. “More biscuits?”

  I nodded and removed the last cookie sheet of the golden, puffed rounds, then silently split one, slathered it with butter and blackberry jam, and handed the plate with it to Tom. When he finished, I’d tell him about seeing Ralph Shelton.

  While he sat down and began to eat, I put in another batch of biscuits. I iced the dark chocolate cupcakes, which would surround a centerpiece hockey-rink-shaped cake provided by Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop. I placed the cupcakes in covered plastic containers. I wasn’t going to brood anymore. I was in my wonderful kitchen, filled with marvelous scents, and feeding the man I loved most in the world. Then I realized he was watching me.

  “Tom? What is it?”

  “Final batch of biscuits about to come out?”

  “In a little bit.”

  He paused, then glanced at the clock. “How’s your time going? When do you have to leave?”

  “In about an hour. Why?”

  His face grew wary. “I’m worried about Arch.”

  “So am I. But what makes you mention it? Did he tell you about the phone call?” Doggone John Richard, anyway.

  Tom shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. When I went by his room, he was sitting ramrod stiff in his desk chair, staring at nothing. I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he said ‘Not to you, I don’t.’”

  My spirits, briefly raised by my productive work, fell flat. I guessed Macguire had not been successful trying to entice Arch into listening to music. I grabbed a chair and sat. “Tom. Arch wants me to help John Richard. He’s desperate for me to prove his father’s innocence.”

  Tom groaned. “Goldy, you can’t. I told you I’d keep you informed. But this isn’t like that time you found the body in the woods by Elk Park Prep. This time the prime suspect showed up at the scene, started raising Cain, and was arrested. You can’t get involved in this: you’re a witness. Listen, let’s get Arch down here to talk—”

  I held up a hand to stop him. “John Richard called here about a half hour ago.”

  “He called here? Wanting to talk to you? Do you know how illegal that is?”

  “I told him. He claimed he called to talk to Arch. But then he told Arch to put me on. Even from jail he was his usual manipulative self, whining to Arch and demanding to know from me what time Suz died so that he could use his medical knowledge of rigor mortis to prove he’s not the murderer.”

  Tom chuckled cynically. “That guy. Maybe he was trying to reconstruct his timetable.” He frowned. His sandy eyebrows drew into a furry, uneven line. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?” I shot him an exasperated look. “Of course not.”

  “I can just tell,” he said resignedly, “that this is going to be one holy mess.”

  “Listen, Tom, remember when I told you about a doctor Suz had supposedly fired, one named Ralph Shelton? What I didn’t tell you was about John Richard’s and my history with him.” Briefly, I summarized how we’d all known one a
nother years ago, when Arch was small. “Anyway,” I said, “Ralph’s a tall bald fellow with a white mustache. I know he was one of those guys I shooed away from the ditch this morning. I didn’t recognize him because he looked so different with a cap on his head. Plus, his hair used to be gray, not white, and he didn’t have a mustache.”

  Tom narrowed his eyes. “You’re kidding.”

  “I’m not. Ralph was there, trying to see what the paramedics were doing. He was wearing gardening clothes and a baseball cap. Your guys must have talked to him in their neighborhood canvass.” I thought back to the fashionable camouflage-print pants, wide suspenders, dark billed cap, and hand-spun collarless shirt Ralph had been wearing that morning. In retrospect, it was perhaps too studied an outfit to have donned so early in the morning. But something else nagged at my memory. What was it? Something about Ralph hadn’t looked quite right. What? But my tired brain refused to yield any details.

  “I’ll check on Shelton,” said Tom curtly. “But I do think you need to go talk to Arch. I’ll pack this stuff up.”

  “The last time you packed my stuff I had to make risotto from scratch for a Fourth of July party. As I recall, you thought it would be funny to substitute ingredients on me, so I wouldn’t go snooping around in a suspect’s house.”

  He stood and rinsed his dish. “I thought,” he said without missing a beat, “that I would be keeping you out of trouble by making you do extra work that time, Miss G. Besides, I apologized and you forgave me. No fair hassling me about it now.” He reached into the pantry for several of the large cardboard boxes I used for carting food.

  I walked up the stairs, thinking. Shower, change, call Marla—all these I had to do before leaving. Plus talk to Arch, get him smoothed out on his father being thrown into jail under suspicion of committing a brutal murder. Sure.

  My son sat slumped in his desk chair. His lank brown hair was uncombed. His glasses perched halfway down his nose. Julian’s cast-off T-shirt hung on his motionless body. I longed to hug him tightly, the way I had when he was small and I’d always been able to comfort him.

  “Arch. Hon, please. Let’s talk.”

  “About what?” His voice was toneless.

  “May I come in?”

  His eyes didn’t leave the pile of magazines on his desk. He shrugged. “I thought you had a party to do.”

  “Arch, please, I’m worried about you.”

  “Yeah, well, I’m worried about Dad.” He whirled and faced me, his brown eyes ablaze. “You just don’t care, do you?”

  I sat on the bed. Honesty was the best policy. “You know how when you leave your homework in your room? I don’t snatch it up and go running to school to bail you out. It’s called being responsible for your actions—”

  “Oh, Mom!” he yelled, his tone disgusted. He glared at me. “Don’t treat me like a baby! Just don’t start, okay?”

  “No, then,” I said frankly, “I don’t care about your father. I only care about you.”

  “If you cared about me,” he shot back fiercely, “you’d be willing to at least think about whether he did this murder or not. Dad isn’t lying.”

  “Did he tell you that he hit Suz the way he used to hit me? He admitted that to Tom and me, you know. That was one of the reasons Tom arrested him this morning. I’m just telling you the truth here, Arch. I’m sorry if the facts are so painful. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

  He pushed abruptly out of his chair. “I need to go. I need to go check some things out.”

  “What things?”

  “There’s a nurse who runs a health-food store—”

  “Don’t you even think about doing your father’s investigative errands, young man. His lawyer will hire an investigator on Monday.”

  “So now you’re going to say I can’t go to the health-food store?”

  “What are you planning on doing there?”

  “I don’t know yet.” He stood in front of the mirror and frowned at himself. Apparently going to the health-food store did not warrant clothes changing or hair combing. “Don’t worry, Mom.” His voice carried a hint of conciliation. “I’ll get Macguire to go with me.”

  “He’s asleep,” I said, hoping this was true. I hadn’t heard a peep out of Macguire since he’d shuffled out of the kitchen carrying his soft drink.

  “I’ll wake him up! It’ll be good for him to walk again, anyway.”

  “He’ll pass out.”

  “Mom!” Once again I got the angry, indignant stare. “Will you stop bugging me? Why won’t you at least admit Dad might be down there in jail for no reason? Whatever happened to innocent until proven guilty?”

  I rose from the bed, walked to the door, and assumed a quiet tone. “I love you, Arch. I just don’t want to see you getting involved in your dad’s problems.”

  He pushed past me. It was an unconscious, but more gentle, imitation of his father’s shove by me that morning. “Sorry, Mom. I already am involved. I wish you would help him. He really needs you.”

  Well, great. I quietly made my way to Tom’s and my room to get ready for the evening party. My heart ached.

  Fifteen minutes later I’d showered, changed, and punched in a call to Marla’s answering machine. When I went out the door, luminescent gray clouds billowed just at the edge of the western horizon. Even this early in August, snow would be falling each morning on the highest peaks to the west. When the afternoon sun warmed and wilted that ephemeral white blanket, the mountain towns on the Front Range would get a brief, deliciously cooling rain. But first the moisture would build into luxuriant cumulus towers that resembled fantastic, brilliant mushrooms. Once these clouds completely filled the western sky, they would spill eastward over the hillsides.

  Tom had loaded my supplies and announced that he was going to the hardware store, one of his favorite Saturday-afternoon occupations. He seldom came home with more than a dollar’s worth of washers, screws, and nails. Sometimes Arch accompanied him. But I found these excursions deadly boring. Guy stuff. Not surprisingly, Arch had declined accompanying Tom, and my husband had rumbled off alone in his dark sedan.

  Arch. I revved the van and backed out of the driveway. It was early, a good thing since I needed to drive around a little bit to think. At the end of our street, I turned and headed along the creek. When I passed Aspen Meadow Nursery on the left and Aspen Meadow Barbecue on the right, I chewed the inside of my cheek. Arch couldn’t forsake his father. I didn’t really want him to. Despite John Richard’s coldly selfish behavior, Arch clung fiercely to the hope of getting love from his other parent. And John Richard spoiled Arch enough with material things—usually when he felt guilty over reneging on a promise—that Arch’s longing for a relationship remained like a sharp hunger, seldom fed.

  I made a U-turn, drove back through town, and headed up toward the lake. Perched on the edge of the waterfall between the lake and lower Cottonwood Creek, a gaggle of shiny black cormorants arched their backs and eyed the water beneath for fish. Arch used to love to go down to the lake when he was little and feed the waterfowl, now strictly prohibited, as human feeding messed up the birds’ willingness to migrate. Arch had known distress back then: the pain of the playground, the agony of his parents’ divorce. Then as now, I had tried to soothe and protect him. But his distress this time didn’t change the fact that Dr. John Richard Korman, batterer of women, had finally been caught. And then, in front of a street full of nosy neighbors, he’d resisted arrest. I dreaded Arch hearing about that scene.

  What was painfully inevitable, I knew, was that John Richard would maintain his innocence to his son and anyone else who would listen until the proverbial bovines came home. No matter what he did or what folks he hurt, John Richard would insist to the end that he was not responsible for his actions. Well, we would just see about that.

  I passed the lake. In the near distance cars sent up a nimbus of dust as women from the Aspen Meadow Babsie Club drove into the LakeCenter parking lot on their way to set up for the doll show. Wha
t Arch couldn’t see was that this crime—this event with Suz Craig—was going to change everything. The publicity surrounding the arrest, the breadth of the investigation, the preliminary hearing, the trial, the conviction, the sentencing—these would alter his relationship with his father forever. Perhaps it was this coming change that Arch sensed. So he’d plunged into denial. Who wouldn’t?

  I passed a solitary rower at the edge of the lake and turned the van in the direction of the country club. Since I was still a bit early, did I dare swing by Aspen Meadow Health Foods, to see if Amy Bartholomew, the nurse-without-a-poker-face, was in? No, I’d had enough crime for one day. Besides, Arch and Macguire might be headed over there. If my son thought I was checking up on him, he would have a fit.

  Dread made my heart heavy, the way your chest hurts when an election is going to the wrong people and all you can do is watch the numbers mount. I swung through the entryway to the residential part of the country club, where a crew dressed in white overalls and white billed caps was busy at work eradicating the vandals’ painted handiwork from the stone walls. I shook my head. I felt helpless watching Arch’s dilemma, which was sure to end worse than any election. The best I could hope for was that it would all be over soon.

  It was this idea of expediting things that made me turn onto Jacobean and from there chug left on Sheridan, then on to Chaucer, where I eased up in front of the Shelton place. The house was a massive, out-of-proportion two-story neo-Georgian. White-painted brick contrasted with shiny black shutters and window boxes lush with bright red geraniums and artfully dripping variegated cream-and-green ivy.

  What exactly was I doing here? Trying to disprove John Richard’s theory, whatever it was, about Ralph Shelton? Trying to remember what it was I had seen this morning? I didn’t know. I parked behind the Sheltons’ van and hopped out of my own. I knew the rules: Anybody who might testify in a case is a witness. Not only had I witnessed all that had transpired between John Richard and Tom, I’d seen, or thought I’d seen, Ralph Shelton this morning. If I ever had to testify, I didn’t want to think about how I could be challenged because of the contact I was now making with Ralph. I also tried not to think about how upset Tom would be with me for making this little sleuthing side trip.