Sticks & Scones Read online

  Hmm.

  She wasn’t so much staring at our house as gazing at the framed crag that had been our living-room window. To keep out snow and deter looters, the cops had put up plywood behind what was left of the glass. If the woman was a crook or even the shooter, she wasn’t acting very smart. A criminal simply didn’t sit out here in the open in a small-town neighborhood, waiting to have her license plate recorded by an armed Neighborhood Watch.

  Further up the street, I pulled into a driveway. I was about to reverse when I heard an engine revving, then groaning, like a sports car being downshifted. I felt a familiar unease. Glancing in the rearview mirror, I saw a shiny gold Mercedes descending our street. A laughing Viv Martini, her luminescent hair rippling in the frigid breeze from her open window, sat in the passenger seat. The driver was the Jerk.

  I hunched over the steering wheel until they’d passed our house. They continued down to Main Street, then turned left, in the direction of the Grizzly Saloon. I waited five minutes and tried to catch my breath. What in heaven’s name were they doing here? Even if the Jerk was looking for Arch, he had to know he was in school. Or had he heard about Tom’s shooting and hoped to find a hearse in our driveway? Maybe Viv would get the flu from exposure to the elements.

  I turned and piloted my van back toward our house. I eased into Trudy’s driveway, hopped out, and headed toward the station wagon.

  The woman in the wagon looked about fifty or fifty-five. She was even more lovely than I’d first thought, with high cheekbones, wide-set eyes, a full, sensuous mouth, and delicate chin. Now she tore her gaze from our front door to give me a perplexed glance. She didn’t look like a crook, she looked like Jackie Kennedy. She certainly didn’t seem like someone who knew her way around a gun. My legs wobbled the last few steps to the car, but I was not going to be scared off my own street.

  “I’m Goldy Schulz,” I announced with a courage I was far from feeling. “Are you from the window repair shop?”

  The woman’s mouth fell slightly open, and the gorgeous face darkened. I peered boldly into the station wagon. She wore a green sweatshirt with jeans, and no discernible jewelry. A newspaper and thermos were perched on the tattered seats. No tools, no plate glass. No weapon. No camera, either, trademark of the tourists who flood our rustic mountain town in the summer. And of course, this was winter.

  So what was she doing here?

  “I’m just waiting,” the woman replied, as if she’d read my mind. Her voice sounded as rusty as the exterior of the wagon, and she spoke in a half-whisper, as if English were her second language.

  Shouting my name, Trudy launched out her front door with our howling bloodhound in tow. Red-haired and pear-shaped, Trudy has the kind of complexion that turns crimson when she is upset. The mystery woman turned the key in her ignition as Jake, bellowing mightily, tugged Trudy in our direction. Before I could think of another thing to say, such as Do you need directions to Main Street?, the station wagon had roared off.

  “What was that about?” Trudy demanded. “What did she say?”

  “Nothing.” I took Jake’s leash from her and ordered him to be quiet. He ignored me.

  “A piece about that Balachek boy’s body in the creek was on TV this morning. All the Denver channels. Did you see it?” When I shook my head, Trudy continued, “They also showed the front of your house and that window. They had a bit about Tom, too. Was Tom investigating Andy Balachek? The reason I ask is that a couple of nosy media people have called me wanting to know if it was a case of vengeance run amuck. Andy shoots out a cop’s window, the cops gun down Andy.”

  “That is ridiculous!” I said fiercely.

  “That’s what I told them.” Trudy nodded, as if to confirm the absurdity of such a notion. She squinted in the direction the old station wagon had taken. “Anyway, after all the fuss in the news, I guess you have to figure you’re going to get some gawkers.”

  Maybe so. But that gal hadn’t looked like a gawker. I couldn’t concentrate to wonder further about the mysterious woman in the wagon, though, because Jake chose that moment to put his paws on my chest and slobber on my face.

  I pulled out of the way to avoid being drowned. “Take Jake back to your place for a bit, would you?” I begged Trudy. “I need something from the house, and I don’t want him stepping on glass and cutting his paws.”

  Jake howled mournfully as he was led away. I wanted to comfort him, but was distracted by a pickup now chugging up our street. Large rectangles wrapped in brown paper sat propped in the truck’s rear. Were the rectangles large enough to be picture-window panes? Or would that be too good to be true?

  The grizzled man driving the truck introduced himself as Morris Hart from Furman County Glass. Morris was amazingly bowlegged, with a voice like sand and a wide, deeply wrinkled face. I thought I smelled booze on him, but couldn’t be sure. He asked if I was Goldy Schulz, and could I give him the okay to get started. The job should take an hour or two, he added optimistically. Despite the slight stench of whiskey—it could be on his clothes, I thought hopefully—I replied that he should begin as soon as possible, that I could stay until he was done, if he wanted. Then I zipped up to the door and let myself in.

  The front room was dark because of the plywood. I turned on a light. The sudden sparkle of glass shards gave the place a desolate, abandoned air.

  In the kitchen I retrieved my recipes-and-research disk. Outside, Morris Hart’s ladder creaked open. I touched the blinking button on the message machine. Maybe Boyd had called to say he was on his way. Once our window and security system were fixed, would he think it was safe for us to move back in? Or would he want us to wait until the department figured out who had fired the gun at our house?

  The first message on my tape dropped my spirits back to the nether zone.

  “Goldy Schulz?” Chardé Lauderdale began, her Marilyn Monroe voice high and breathless. “How dare you tell the police that we shot at your house! After all you’ve put my husband and me through, don’t you think it’s time for you to stop your hate campaign against us? You discuss our conflict with anyone, and you can just add a little defamation suit from us to your list of woes. And by the way, we understand you will be doing some cooking for a group of donors to which we belong. This makes us very unhappy. We are demanding that the hosts find someone else to do that job immediately.”

  What was Chardé reading from? A text supplied by her lawyer? Or her child-abusing husband? Hard to believe that the former Miss Teen Lubbock could be so articulately bitchy. When I called the cops after her husband had shaken their tiny daughter to unconsciousness, all she’d managed to screech was, “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  On our tape, Chardé went on stiffly: “If you persist in trying to harm us, we will retaliate. And not just in court,” she concluded breathily, in what sounded like an afterthought.

  Hmm. How ’bout I save this message, I thought, to play for the cops? Ever hear that making a threat of bodily harm is a crime, babe?

  I put in another call to Boyd and was again connected to his voice mail. It was half past nine, I said, and I could wait for him at our house, meet with Armstrong and him in town, or see them later at the castle. His choice. The window repairman was here, I added, and I was grateful to the department for getting the repairs started so soon. Any chance the cleaning team could come in this week?

  Hanging up, I suddenly felt that I had to get back to the castle. Tom might be in pain. But something was holding me back, and it wasn’t just the window repair, which Trudy could supervise, if necessary. That kid was the king of communication. Loved e-mail, Tom had said. Andy Balachek had ended up dead in Cottonwood Creek … and somebody had taken a shot at Tom.

  I don’t love her. Don’t love whom?

  My eyes traveled to the kitchen’s south wall. After dinner most nights during January, Tom had walked dutifully through that door to the basement. In the cellar, he had his own computer to type up reports, write notes on cases, send e-mails…. />
  How much investigating of the Andy Balachek case would Tom be able to do from the castle? Probably not much. Unless, of course, I helped him by downloading his files.

  This is not because I’m nosy, I thought as I headed down the basement steps. I mean, Tom was the one who kept saying he needed to work, that he wanted to get back to the case, right? And there might be files on this computer that he would need. Maybe he even kept an e-mail address book with Andy Balachek’s screen names. This was all data he would need, data I could bring him. To be helpful.

  Uh-huh.

  Tom’s computer sat on a massive, scuffed, department-discard desk that was piled neatly with files and papers. Morris Hart, the window guy, banged and clattered above as I booted Tom’s computer. While the machine hummed, I scanned Tom’s desk for other files he might need. Or, perhaps, that I might want to have a look at.

  What am I doing?

  Before this trickle of self-doubt could become a deluge, I stared at the demand for a password, then blithely typed in chocolate, the password Tom and I had laughed at when former clients had used it for their security gate. To my astonishment, the hard drive opened instantly. I slipped in my food-research disk and began to copy Tom’s files. I wouldn’t look at them—not without his permission. Not yet, anyway, I added to myself. I did, however, read the titles of the subfiles: Balachek e-correspondence. Criminalistics course. Current cases. History.

  “Mrs. Schulz?” Morris Hart cried from above.

  Startled, I composed myself and called that I was in the basement and would be up in a few minutes. But Hart schlepped across the kitchen floor, following my voice, then traipsed down the basement stairs. I clicked madly to finish my copying.

  When he was two steps from the basement floor, I made my face impatient to hide my guilt. “I’m just going to be a minute or two longer.”

  “Sorry to bother you, but I have a high-powered vacuum to get up those glass shards. It has a tendency to blow fuses in older houses. Just wanted to warn you.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, resigned. “Just go ahead and start it.” I worried briefly about our walk-in refrigerator. But with its surge protector and backup power source, it should be okay.

  He grunted and tramped back up. Copy, copy, copy, the computer repeated as my disk filled up. I won’t read this material, I kept telling myself. I’m just being helpful here.

  I couldn’t help it: I glanced back at the names of Tom’s files. What did the file named History cover? Tom really wouldn’t mind if I took a quick peek, surely?

  I clicked on the file, which contained subfiles with dates. “S.B., January 1.” And “S.B., January 3.” “Follow-up, January 4.” Then, “Conv. W/State Dept., January 5.” The State Department? U.S. or Colorado? And who was S.B.? I opened the file from the first of January, when I’d been dealing with the aftermath of the Lauderdales’ party. The file contained an e-mail with the following text:

  Do you remember me? You said you’d love me forever. Your S.B.

  My throat was suddenly dry. I should not be doing this, I thought. Curiosity can kill a cat … or a marriage. Still, I had to know. Without reading more, I copied all the rest of the e-mails onto the disk. My mission complete, my heart aching, I quit the program, ejected the disk, and slipped it into my jeans pocket.

  I was shutting down the computer when there was an explosion behind me. Or was it on me? A cold, dark pain filled my head. I realized that someone had hit me, was hitting me, again and again and again. My skullbones reverberated in agony.

  My sight clouded, then went black. I screamed for help and tried to cover my head, turn around, anything. I couldn’t catch my breath. I’d been listening to the roar of the vac upstairs, reading Tom’s personal correspondence—

  My attacker hit me again and my chin slammed into Tom’s desk. My knees crumpled and I was sliding, helplessly, whimpering, trying to cover my head, my body afire with pain. This isn’t fair. Was I saying it or thinking it? Damn, damn, my inner voice supplied. My knees and then my body banged onto the basement’s cold floor.

  John Richard had never said he’d love me always. But Tom had. The day of our wedding. I’ll love you forever, Miss G. Forever and ever.

  As unconsciousness claimed me, I remembered Tom’s handsome face that happy day, and the sound of his warm promise.

  I’ll love you forever.

  CHAPTER 12

  Getting banged up is bad. Gaining consciousness is worse. From my years with the Jerk, I was acquainted with sledgehammer-wedged-in-the-skull pain. The worst part is that you suspect that if you’d used the brain inside your head in the first place, this might not have happened to you. I’d been told that an independent janitorial service was going to clean up the glass. Not some guy masquerading as a window fixer. Damn again, I thought. You idiot.

  Yeah, yeah, Tom had said something about not blaming yourself when you screwed up. So: Wracked with pain, lying sprawled on our basement floor, drowning in self-recrimination, I tried to talk myself into getting up on my feet again and calling for help. After agonizing minutes of thinking about moving, then searching for the least painful way to stand, I fought off nausea, trembling, and visual black clouds to get to my feet. Once upright, I gingerly touched my head until I found the beginnings of a lump. Agh! I sighed and looked around. Tom’s desk was clean, as in, nothing on it anymore. No papers. No files.

  No computer.

  I blinked and swayed dizzily. My watch said ten-thirty. I walked—slowly, taking steadying breaths—up the stairs, into my kitchen. I called and looked all around; no attacker in sight. Did we have any painkillers in the house? My brain offered no answer. In fact, my thinking was extremely fuzzy, even as to the location of the Cognac I used to make Cherries Jubilee. Everything in the kitchen seemed turned around … or different.

  Wretchedly, I realized that things seemed unfamiliar because the smashed monitor of my kitchen computer lay on the floor beside the keyboard. The kitchen computer itself was also missing.

  I started to cry. Then I yelled and cursed. Of course, there was no question that folks on the street might hear me. But I didn’t care what the neighbors thought. My own shouted curses miraculously seemed to clear my brain, at least until I could pour myself a glass of Cognac from the dining-room cabinet. Of course, I’d learned in Med Wives 101 that you didn’t treat a head injury with alcohol, but my brain was screaming for reprieve from the pain. I had just taken a first naughty swallow when the front doorbell bonged, making my head spin. Great, I thought, things couldn’t get much worse.

  I peered through the peephole at the smiling faces of Sergeants Boyd and Armstrong. Not exactly in the nick of time, were they?

  “Somebody broke in,” I announced bluntly as Boyd, his barrel-shaped body somewhat rounder than the last time I’d seen him, came through the door.

  “Here? Just now?” asked Boyd, eyeing me, my trembling hand, and my glass of brandy.

  When I replied in the affirmative, Armstrong, whose towering frame and fierce face contraindicated what I knew to be his gentle demeanor, said, “You look as if you’re in pain.” Since I’d seen him last, he’d lost a few more of the sparse brown hairs he combed so diligently over his bald spot.

  I said, “I am. Got knocked over the head. But … come on out to the dining room. I know the two of you won’t have a glass of booze while you’re on duty. Before lunch, no less. But I’m treating a nasty bump.”

  Boyd and Armstrong told me to wait. In the front hallway, they insisted on separately assessing my noggin, which involved painful pressing on my head, then unblinking assessment of my eyes. Both decreed I should see a doctor that day.

  “I can’t. I have to go back to Tom. He’s resting at Hyde Castle.”

  “You need to get attention,” Boyd insisted.

  “Look, thanks, but I’m aware of the symptoms of severe head injury,” I replied. “Blurred vision, slurred speech, nausea, loss of memory, fainting, and sleeping too much. If I show any of those signs, I’l
l call for help. Scout’s honor.”

  Armstrong’s scowl deepened. “Show us where this happened.”

  “I was sitting there,” I said after I’d led them to the bottom of the cellar steps. I indicated Tom’s swivel chair. “I was whacked from behind.” I felt inside my jeans pocket and repressed a sigh of relief. The disk was still there. I knew I should mention to Boyd and Armstrong that I’d downloaded Tom’s files. But I couldn’t. Not yet, anyway. I couldn’t even think. In fact, I did feel a bit dizzy. But I’d be damned if I was going to any damn doctor on this damned day. Was rage a symptom of brain injury?

  “Can we go back upstairs?” I asked them. “I need to sit down. You might want to look in the kitchen, because whoever it was stole that computer, too.”

  “You pass out on me, I’m gonna get fired,” Boyd announced glumly as we headed up the stairs. In the kitchen, Boyd called for help on his radio while I tossed out the rest of the brandy and made myself an espresso. The computer thief wouldn’t have left prints on my coffee machine, would he?

  “To process a crime scene,” Boyd concluded to the dispatcher.

  To process a crime scene at the Schulzes’ house, again.

  “Can we sit in the dining room?” Armstrong asked me. “We need to get through some questions.”

  In the dining room, Boyd opened what looked like the same smudged notebook he’d carried for years. I wondered if he ever bought new ones.

  “So what were you doing in the basement?” he began gently. “I mean, what were you doing when you were sitting at Tom’s desk? Working on his computer?”

  His black eyes bored into me. I swallowed. “No, not on the computer. I was … looking on Tom’s shelves, for our photo albums. I need a picture of John Richard Korman. You know, my ex. He was released last Friday. The Hydes want a photograph of him, since they need to know what he looks like in case he tries to get into the castle.”