Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Read online

  “Oh girls,” Vonette said, “it’s okay. It was all a long time ago. I’m all right now.” As if to demonstrate how all right she was, she lifted her glass in a mock toast.

  I said, “Just tell me one thing. You never told us your daughter’s name. What was it? I’m curious. John Richard never mentioned her.”

  Vonette put her glass down and looked at me. Her cheeks sagged; her mouth turned down at the edges. Her eyes were solemn and tired and indicated a sadness belied by the wild orange hair and made-up face.

  She said, “Joe and I had thought since my name was French we should give her a French name. She was such a cute baby, that’s what we called her. Baby. Only in French it’s spelled different. So she was our Bebe. That’s what I had put on her gravestone, too. Bebe Hollenbeck, 1950 to 1967.”

  CHAPTER 18

  Who said a little learning was a dangerous thing? Was knowledge dangerous, too? If so, what was a lot of knowledge, more or less dangerous? And if the knowledge was related but disconnected, what good was it at all?.

  I clutched the keys Vonette had given me and slumped behind the wheel of the Kormans’ old green Chrysler station wagon, trying to put things in place. Vonette’s first child had been Bebe Hollenbeck. Bebe had also been a student of Laura Smiley’s when the Kormans and Laura had lived in Illinois. According to Vonette, Fritz Korman had seduced Bebe when she was sixteen. And Bebe had drunk herself to death.

  Then, Fritz Niebold Korman had moved to Colorado, bringing with him Vonette and a young John Richard. Was the practice the reason? According to the torn newspaper account in Laura’s locker, there had been a mistrial. I had to get home to get the article and give it to Schulz. He’d be able to follow up on it. Whatever Laura’s involvement had been in all this, it had ended in her feeling alienation that had not subsided in twenty years of living in the same small town. But why had Laura overcome her alienation—or had she? This was the most puzzling aspect of all. What did she have to say to Fritz Korman that morning? And even if hostilities had erupted, how could she have put rat poison in Fritz’s coffee after she was dead?

  And how and why had Laura died, anyway?

  “Um, Goldy,” said Patty Sue. “What are we waiting for?”

  I stared at the keys. It looked as if the only thing that was going to go into place was one of them. Vonette said she had cables if we needed a jump. I had had my share of bad luck with American cars and thus had no hope for a Chrysler. I thrust the key into the ignition, pumped the gas, and turned the key.

  It started right up. For once, something went right.

  Our first stop was Aspen Meadow Drugstore. The hospital had given me a prescription for pain medication. George Morgan, the pharmacist, looked as old as Gabby Hayes in his last picture. He was reputed to have been in Aspen Meadow since the gold rush in nearby Central City. I noticed with some satisfaction that he finally had hired a new female assistant. As I handed George the prescription I had a thought.

  “George, did you fill any prescriptions for Laura Smiley?” I called after him as he was about to disappear between shelves. He turned and shook his head at me like a wise gnome.

  “This’ll be ready in ten minutes,” he said.

  I went off to call Arch, whom I had missed more than I would have thought possible. One night away from home felt like weeks. Worse, the doctor had recommended that I spend the rest of the weekend in bed, and that Arch stay elsewhere at least until the end of school Monday.

  “Not to worry,” Marla assured me over the phone. “He loves it here. He keeps telling me how cool all the insects are in my greenhouse. He wanted me to help him with this crazy Halloween costume, but you know sewing’s not my thing.”

  “What Halloween costume?”

  “Oh, something from one of those crazy games. Sounds like leech. Wait. Lich. Anyway, I told him to forget it, his mother could handle the seamstress routine. If you pick him up Monday afternoon when the bus comes, I can tell you all the latest news. And not just about bugs.” She laughed and hung up.

  Back at the prescription counter the new assistant eyed me vaguely. She said, “Did you say your name was Laura Smiley?”

  I blinked. “Did you hear me say that?”

  She wrinkled her nose at me and looked through the S prescription box. Then she punched some keys on a computer. “Penicillin?” she asked. “That’s what you had last time.”

  “Really,” I said, “what did I have the time before that?”

  “Can’t you remember what your prescription was for this time?”

  I shook my head.

  This soul sister of Patty Sue punched some more buttons. “Organidin? You had a cough?” I shook my head. “Ornade?” she asked. “Colds?”

  “Don’t have one now.”

  More punching.

  “Looks like that’s all you’ve ever had. Let me go find George.”

  “No, no,” I protested, backing away. “Let me call the doctor. He’s sure to clear this all up. I’ll have him give you a ring.”

  She shrugged. Of course, it was not the doctor who would be able to clear any of this up. Maybe now Schulz would listen to me, even if it had cost me my own prescription to relieve pain.

  _____

  Monday morning I had the article in my hand and dialed Schulz. He was away from his desk; the clerk took a message.

  “Don’t forget I have a doctor’s appointment today,” Patty Sue reminded me.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” I replied. “How’s your arm? You sure you want to keep up with this other treatment when you’re in pain?”

  She said, “It’s not too bad.”

  I looked at poor, thin Patty Sue and felt a surge of pity. “How long’s he going to treat you for not getting your period?” I asked. “I don’t understand why pills don’t work.”

  “He says they will,” said Patty Sue. “It just takes time. I don’t question him. He is a doctor, you know.”

  I shook my head. Several hours later I revved up the wagon and drove over to Korman and Korman to deposit my charge. Indian summer weather was holding, and already the sun was lightening a deep blue sky. I did not see the doctors’ twin Jeeps, with their license plates that said OB and GYN, when we arrived in a cloud of dust. Patty Sue might be in for a long wait.

  When I warned her of this, she said, “It’s okay, since it’s warm enough to sunbathe.”

  “Go right ahead,” I said, “just be ready after I pick up Arch. I need you to look after him while I try to do a little more digging on this thing with his teacher.”

  “Oh, no. Not more school trouble.”

  “No. His other teacher. Laura.” I looked at her. She frowned back. I said, “Just sun yourself on the benches outside the pastry shop until I come back.”

  She nodded and turned away.

  I headed toward Marla’s, down Ponderosa and up Blue Spruce, roads named for the tall trees whose velvet-green arms hugged the occasional bright gold stand of aspens. I rolled down the window. No early snow had trampled down the thick, rebellious field grass or stripped the blood-red chokecherry bushes of their summer splendor. Soon the little kids in town would be dressing up for Halloween and traipsing from house to house demanding sweets. So Arch was not too old for a costume this year, after all. I remembered the lich only vaguely from our role-playing night. Researching the costume might be a pain, especially if the sewing was either complex or expensive. As it was I would be tied up getting ready for the athletic club party and molding my caramel-corn balls for the trick or treaters. The balls were wrapped in cellophane, labeled GOLDILOCKS’ CATERING for advertising purposes. I knew how irresistible Halloween bags were to adults.

  My eyes avoided the brass plate on the door of my ex-husband’s other ex-wife. Marla and I had become allies in our dislike of John Richard, but not in our decorating taste. The plaque read Chez Marla.

  “Darling,” she said expansively when she came to the door. “I have just made some coffee. Until your son arrives we can have the solarium
to ourselves to enjoy it. Then he’s bound to run us off so he can study those damn bugs. Honestly, Goldy, I don’t know how you take the strains of motherhood.”

  Tires of flesh rolled and swirled beneath her peach satin robe as she padded in front of me toward her sun room.

  “How’d it go?” I asked after we had flopped onto overstuffed green-and-white cushions covering what I hoped was sturdy wicker. Around us were all manner of sweet-smelling plants that Marla took great pride in cultivating. “Did Arch behave himself?”

  “Listen here, Goldy,” she said as she handed me a china cup and saucer and poured from a sterling pot next to a Rosenthal dish heaped with sticky buns. “He was great. Bugs and all. He’s so easy to get along with, it’s hard to believe he comes from a long line of bastards. Sweet roll? I took Arch to the pastry shop for breakfast and stocked up.”

  I shook my head and glanced at the china dish Marla had filled with goodies. Next to it was a crystal pitcher bursting with stems of fragrant Cape Jasmine. Apparently John Richard had not had as loose a hand with Marla’s breakables as he had with mine.

  Marla, resplendent in her queen-size robe, settled back into her cushion.

  “Well,” she said, “I’m just going to have one of these.” She paused for a dainty bite. “So,” she went on, “the rumor is that your new roommate is this great driver.”

  I said, “Don’t. Don’t even start.”

  “Obviously you’ve managed to get other transportation.”

  “The Kormans’ old station wagon.” I changed my mind and took a sweet roll. “Politics may make strange bedfellows. But it’s nothing to what poverty makes.”

  She grunted and leaned forward to slice another roll.

  I said, “I’m dying to know what you’ve learned about everybody I’ve been trying to track down lately. What have I missed? I’d rather have you than the paper.”

  “Well. Trixie is making noises about looking for a new job. She called and asked if I knew a lawyer, and I said what for and she said never mind and I said criminal or civil and she said criminal, I think. So maybe Hal is doing more than just making her pay for the mirror. She asked about Friday night, were we still going to meet, and I said of course, if you’re not in jail, and the bitch hung up.”

  “Hard to believe that club has put up with her for so long,” I said.

  “It’s hard to believe the athletic club puts up with a lot of other stuff.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Oh, you know,” she said. She picked dead leaves from a plant. “I really hate to gossip.”

  “Bull.”

  “Speaking ill of the dead, you know.”

  “Laura Smiley?” I asked. “What did she do at the athletic club? You were going to check out some theory of yours.”

  “Last month I stumbled, and I do mean it was by accident, into her having an intimate tête-à-tête with Pomeroy Locraft, in the hot tub, no less. Talking in hushed tones, mind you, so that I made a crack about it being too bad we had to wear suits in the hot tub, it being coed and all.”

  “What does this have to do with anything?”

  She said, “I just figured, you know, that she was trying to put the moves on him. He didn’t appear to be responding, so I thought, Unrequited love. She killed herself. Tragic.”

  “I don’t buy it,” I said. “He and Laura were friends, that is a fact. But as far as I can tell, it was friends, period. And maybe they were talking in low tones to avoid some of the gossipy people in this town.”

  “Yeah, well. After he’d gone, Laura started talking to me about the Jerk, like all of a sudden we’re pals in hating him. She said, ‘Did he ever go after girls?’ I didn’t know what she was talking about.”

  Good God. “Did she mention any names? Like Fritz, or someone named Bebe, for example?”

  “No. I told her John Richard and I were divorced and I didn’t think about him anymore, which was a lie, but I didn’t really want to get into it with her. Her eyes were bugging out, like it was more than just being nosy. More like—”

  “More like …?”

  Marla said, “More like she was furious.”

  I said, “But about what? It sounds as if she was wickedly furious.”

  “Please don’t use that kind of language,” said Marla, as she poured us more coffee. “With Halloween coming up and all.”

  _____

  One hour and a dozen pastries later the sound of Arch’s raised voice came through the solarium windows.

  “Oh, yeah?” he was screaming.

  Two boys bigger than Arch were squaring off against him.

  “Wimp!” yelled one. “Faggot!”

  One of the big boys pushed Arch’s shoulder and Arch swung back. The boy ducked, and the other boy gave an underhand punch to Arch’s stomach.

  “Hey!” I yelled through the glass. No one turned around. “Hey!” I yelled again.

  “I’ll show you,” Arch was hollering. “I’ll hit you with a fatal curse!” He was bent over, holding his stomach. With his free hand he was feeling along the ground for a rock to throw.

  “Hey, stop!” I yelled again and looked around wildly for Marla, who had gone into the kitchen for more coffee.

  The boys fell on top of Arch. The three of them squirmed and punched and thrashed. I turned, hit my head on an ivy geranium, then tripped over an exotic orchid, and cursed being lost in an indoor jungle for the second time in a week. Finally I made my way out to the front door.

  “Arch! Arch!”

  “You’ll see!” he was yelling. “Just wait!”

  “Na-na-na-na-na-na!” the boys mocked back. They disappeared down through the evergreens.

  “What in the hell—”

  “Let’s just get out of here,” Arch said without looking at me. He dusted off his shirt and rubbed his knee where his pants were torn.

  “Just tell me why you’re having so much trouble,” I said.

  “I don’t know, Mom,” he said. “They hate me. I’m small, so they can pick on me. Can we go home? I need to call Todd. It’s very important.”

  After hasty thanks to Marla, we swung down toward Korman and Korman where I prayed Patty Sue was waiting on the pastry shop bench engaged in the peaceful activity of sunbathing. No luck. I went into the shop. No Patty Sue and they hadn’t seen her. We drove back up to the front of the building and the office entry.

  “I’ll go in and get her,” Arch volunteered.

  He returned in a few minutes with the look of a young canary-swallowing cat.

  “No Patty Sue,” he announced.

  The nurse-receptionist whom I had disrupted when I went searching for the files came charging out the front door of the office.

  Arch and I both groaned. I said, “Patty Sue’s probably dead.”

  “I hope she is,” muttered Arch. “Then she won’t be able to wreck any more cars.”

  The nurse banged on my car window.

  “I want to speak to that young man,” she said. “I want him to give back what he took.”

  Arch moaned and climbed out. He and the nurse stepped away from the car and began a low-pitched but heated discussion. Then Arch withdrew a packet from inside his shirt and handed it to her. The nurse stomped off and Arch skulked back to the car.

  “You want to tell me what that was all about?” I asked.

  “Oh,” he said in a bored tone, “I just wanted to borrow one of those surgical packs from Dad’s office for Halloween. Big deal.”

  “Why?”

  “I thought I could use one of those tools for, like, a weapon. Not to really do anything, but to scare people. That dumb nurse wouldn’t let me take it. I even told her my father was one of the doctors but it didn’t work.”

  “Judas priest,” I said, “that nurse is going to think we’re a bunch of nuts.” I got out of the car and went into the office, demanding to know from the loony-detector if Patty Sue had finished her appointment.

  “I don’t know,” she said crisply. “Here’s her bill. If s
he went out I didn’t see her.” She gave me a withering look and I left.

  “Damn that Patty Sue,” I said when I slammed back into the car.

  “Why don’t you check around the other side?” asked Arch.

  “I already did,” I said. “You were just thinking so hard about what you were going to lift from your father’s office that you didn’t notice.”

  “Not down below,” said Arch. “On the deck on the other side. By the back door.”

  “Where, smarty-pants? I’ve only been coming to this office since before you were born. There is no back door.”

  Arch gave me his exasperated look. He said, “Mom, you can drive to it.”

  “How?”

  He pointed. “Don’t you even know where Dad and Fritz park when they get here early? There’s a little paved part over on the right side that goes through to the back.” He laughed under his breath. “Dad says sometimes he plays hooky that way, going out for a snack or something while a patient waits.”

  A snack or something. I started the car. All this time, and I had never known about this other parking area. Perhaps the Jerk had not wanted me to know how he got out for his snacks. I pointed the Chrysler in the direction Arch had shown me.

  The OB- and GYN-plated Jeeps glistened in the sunlight. And there was Patty Sue sitting on a bench, her chin lifted to the sun.

  “You could have told the receptionist you were leaving,” I said as I walked up. “You haven’t even paid your bill.”

  “I don’t have any money to pay a bill,” she answered me. She got up.

  I said, “How’d you get out here, anyway?”

  “Through there,” she said. She waved a hand at the back doors of the office.

  “Well, how about that,” I mused softly as I studied the exits. There were two doors, one coming out from John Richard’s side, one from Fritz’s. I remembered now from my visit to Fritz’s plant-bedecked office. There had been a back door, but it had been draped with ivy.

  “He usually lets me out that way,” Patty Sue offered. “It’s like a secret.”