Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Page 21

  So that explained how Patty Sue could get down to the pastry shop without my seeing her, as had happened a number of times before. I looked at the doors. A secret. I wondered who else the doctors might have escorted out this way.

  CHAPTER 19

  Pluto to Mom. Come in, please.”

  We were home. How long I had been pressing the button on the coffee grinder I did not know. The beans were pulverized, tit to make hot mud.

  In the distance Patty Sue was running a bath.

  “You okay, Mom?” came Arch’s voice again. “I need to talk to you about Halloween.”

  I looked at the would-be surgical-pack thief.

  He said, “You want me to make you some coffee?”

  “Sure.”

  Arch dumped out the dust I’d made of the beans, measured more, whirred the grinder, lined the filter with paper, ran fresh cold water. Then I remembered that I had not talked to him about what I had taken from his desk. He had been to school today. Had he noticed anything missing? And what was the bigger picture of my son and Laura Smiley, anyway? I studied him.

  “Arch. Halloween. I heard you,” I said. “I need your help to do the party at the athletic club that night.”

  “You look half-dead, Mom.” He grinned. The coffee maker bubbled and popped. He said, “Coffee will be ready in a sec. Raising the dead is my favorite spell.”

  Right, with surgical packs. I said, “You’re not going to go stealing my knives, are you? For some curse or something?”

  “No.”

  “Did you ever play raise the dead with Laura Smiley?”

  “Mom!”

  “Well?”

  He looked out the window. Then he said, “You’re hassling me again.”

  I opened the cupboard. John Richard had given me one of those mugs that said BITCH BITCH BITCH on it. Why I had kept it all this time I did not know. I dropped it into the trash and picked out one decorated with rainbows. Then I turned to my son. His gaze was fixed on the pine trees outside.

  “Well,” I began as I filled the mug, “you wrote letters to her. You’re into those fantasy role-playing games. You were her special friend, her special student … I just thought maybe she would be interested in your game spells, especially if she had someone important to her who had died—”

  I stopped to sip coffee. Arch turned slowly from the window to face me.

  “Mom. What do you think she was, weird?”

  “Well, yes, as a matter of fact.” We were both silent. Then I said, “I found the note she wrote you before she died.”

  Arch snorted. “Great. You get mad at me about borrowing something from Dad’s office, and then you go snooping through my desk.”

  “Arch, this is different. Your teacher called. She’s worried about you, writing stuff like your grandfather has no respect for human life. Why would you write such a thing?”

  He shrugged.

  I said, “You’re too involved in these games, you’re not getting along with your classmates, you’re getting into fights—”

  “You know how you’re always telling me to say what my feelings are? Okay. Now I’m telling you.” He eyed me fiercely and dug his hands into his pockets. His voice broke with the promise of tears. “You’re making me angry,” he cried.

  “Arch. It’s just because I’m worried about you—”

  He turned to walk out of the kitchen.

  “Now where are you going?”

  “To the car. I left the rest of my game stuff out there.”

  “Please don’t leave. I don’t want us to have a big fight.”

  He turned and glared at me. “You don’t want to fight?” I nodded and he went on. “Just make that costume I marked for Marla. Okay? It’s in here.” He riffled through a book of fantasy characters he had left on the kitchen table. “Then after Halloween we can talk about worrying. Okay? I just need to finish this thing that I’m doing right now.”

  “Look, just sit down and cool off for a sec, will you? Tell me why you’re so angry.”

  He sat, then crossed his legs and arms.

  “Mom, why is it okay for you to go through my stuff? I thought you only cleaned for people who wanted you to do it for them. And I don’t.”

  I dropped three ice cubes into a Coke glass for Arch.

  “Archibald,” I said, “listen to me, would you, please?”

  He stared at me from behind the rimmed glasses.

  “You can help. It’s like being a detective. After this we can talk about Halloween, I promise. Maybe we could get your Dad to buy a costume.”

  “Oh, sure.”

  Arch poured his soft drink and slurped the bubbles that climbed the sides of the glass. He wrinkled his nose, brought the glass down with a bang. Upstairs Patty Sue was splashing and singing in her bubble bath.

  “She invited you over that Saturday,” I began, “and then said she couldn’t get together after all. Did you go anyway?”

  He said, “Yeah, I rode my bike over later. She had company.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Her blue car wasn’t there. She was having it fixed. She was always having trouble with that stupid car. Anyway, somebody else was there.”

  “What kind of car? Foreign? American? Pickup? What?”

  “I don’t remember. I just, like, heard the engine.”

  “Arch.”

  “I don’t. And don’t ask me what time it was because I don’t remember that either. You’re just like that policeman, acting as if I’m guilty of something.”

  “Sorry.”

  “I got the Good Citizen award in fourth grade, you know.”

  “Okay, okay. You went to her house. Did you see anything unusual?”

  “No, Mom,” he said, exasperated. “I don’t even know what was usual.”

  I paused for a minute. “Do you know about a student of hers named Bebe Hollenbeck?”

  “No. Can I go now?”

  “Bebe was her special friend,” I said, “as you were.”

  “Right.”

  “Maybe,” I went on, “Bebe was shy, like you.”

  “Maybe they wrote letters,” he said, “and maybe they played D and D. Who cares? I wish you would just stick to cooking.”

  “If you want to eat supper, mister, don’t be difficult. I can’t cook until I get this figured out, and I can’t make any money cooking until I get myself cleared in this rat poison mess.”

  Arch sighed.

  “In her note to you, she said she had something important to do. Do you know what it was?”

  He chewed his bottom lip. “Not really.”

  “What?”

  He looked out the window again.

  “Arch,” I said slowly. “Maybe she didn’t commit suicide. Maybe she was—”

  “I gotta go, Mom.”

  I looked at him, and pain filled the area behind my eyes. How much adult eccentricity could he take? From a screwball grandfather, an alcoholic grandmother, a philandering father, a suicidal teacher, and a demanding mother? Poor Arch.

  He stood up and gave me his most bored look.

  He said, “Can I go?”

  “No.”

  He let out a gust of air and flopped back into his chair. “Now what?”

  “Just tell me if you know whether for some reason you think someone wanted Laura Smiley dead.”

  “No.”

  The phone rang.

  “No,” I said, “no one wanted her dead, or no, you won’t tell me?”

  The phone kept on ringing; Arch glared at me.

  “Arch!”

  A sob exploded from him. Then another. Tears sprouted from his eyes.

  “Leave me alone!” he yelled. “I don’t want to talk about Ms. Smiley anymore! Can’t you see that, Mom? So just stop this! Stop!”

  The phone insisted on ringing. I reached out for Arch’s shoulder only to have him whack my hand away. He ran out of the kitchen.

  I grabbed for the phone receiver and yelled, “What is it?”

 
“What is what?” asked Tom Schulz.

  “Sheesh.”

  “Well, well, Miss Goldilocks, I can see you’re in your usual sunny mood.”

  “Why are you calling?”

  “Man,” he said, “it is a good thing that I am such a patient kind of guy. I mean, a very good thing. And that I can inquire how you’re coming along on talking to your mother-in-law—”

  “Ex-mother-in-law.”

  “Sorry there. Ex-maw-in-law. Tell me what she said about her daughter who died. The one who drank.”

  “How did you know about that?”

  “I’ve been on the phone to Illinois; Finally getting some answers around here.”

  I could hear Arch thrashing about in the nether regions of the house.

  I said, “I’m going to have to call you back.”

  “I thought you were interested in solving this.”

  “I’ll call you back,” I said. “I have to work something out with my child.”

  I followed the noise from Arch.

  He had not gone directly to the car to get his equipment, as he had indicated he needed to do. I had heard him clomping down the stairs to the basement, which was the laundry and storage area. Now with the door cracked I could hear him rummaging through boxes and papers. After a few moments he came traipsing back up and I darted into a bedroom I used for filing, sewing, and storing table linens for banquets. On the bed I spread out several yards of unbleached muslin for the costume, in case he came in. Then I heard him clattering around in the kitchen. The noise sounded like the clank of butcher knife blades.

  I prayed. After a few more minutes of racket he slammed out the front door. I crept back to the kitchen and counted my knives, every one of them. They were all there. Whatever it was he wanted, he apparently hadn’t found it yet.

  I hurried to the front of the house and scanned the driveway. Arch had left the station wagon door open and was throwing the books and bags of stuff he had amassed at Marla’s onto the ground. He was closing the door when he stopped and bent in again, as if he’d seen something he’d forgotten. His head emerged from the car. He looked in all directions to see if he was being watched. I leaned back from the front window. After a few seconds I looked back: he was reemerging from the car, tucking something underneath his shirt. Then he gathered up his paraphernalia from the ground and started back toward the house. I trotted out to the kitchen, picked up the character book, and slipped into the sewing room.

  After a few minutes I had the bobbin filled with beige thread and I went to knock on his door.

  “I’m getting started on your costume,” I called in. “Want to take a look at it?”

  “No, Mom,” he said. “Just go away. Please.”

  CHAPTER 20

  It certainly is a good thing you’ve got a crack civilian detective working on this case,” I greeted Tom Schulz when he answered his phone. “Although she can be difficult, she comes up with remarkable info.”

  “Goldilocks? ’Zat you? Must be.”

  “Such enthusiasm.”

  “Hey,” said Schulz, “besides close you down, what did I ever do to you? Except be nice? Don’t give me a hard time. Let’s start over.”

  With as much patience as I could muster, I told him about my conversation with Vonette. Then I asked, “What did you find out from the neighbor and the doctor? About the day Laura died?”

  “Not a whole lot. She saw the doc when she went into town.”

  “What did he see her for?”

  “Routine visit, so he says. Not much more I can go on than that. The neighbor heard a car, not a gunshot. But I did find some things out from Illinois.”

  “Such as.”

  “I found the guy who worked the case. Twenty years ago there was this huge brouhaha over Korman.”

  I said, “But it all ended in a mistrial.”

  “Did you call Illinois, too?”

  “No, it was in this article I told you about. I found it in Laura’s locker, but I ripped it trying to get it out.” I read him the fragment.

  “That’s what I like about you, Goldy—you’re not bothered by technicalities like search warrants.”

  “What was the mistrial about?”

  “Sex.”

  “Gee, copper, thanks a lot. Even Vonette told me that.”

  “Korman was brought to trial on charges of having sex with a minor. Our Bebe Hollenbeck. This guy said that Korman was then also under investigation by the Illinois Board of Medical Examiners for taking liberties with patients, which would explain the rest of the article you ripped.”

  “Sorry about that.”

  “That’s the difference between you and Laura Smiley,” said Schulz. “She was careful with evidence, that cop told me. She was going to be a witness against Korman. She was a young woman, then, a new teacher, in her twenties this guy thought.”

  “So why the mistrial?”

  “It was 1967. Supreme Court passed down the Miranda ruling in 1966. Cops weren’t used to it yet. They forgot to advise Korman—of his rights, you know.” He paused for a minute, and I could imagine him drinking coffee, shaking his head. “Anyway,” he went on, “Korman was under a cloud. Then this young Bebe, on her seventeenth birthday, mind you, drinks an entire bottle of liquor and dies on the spot. More bad publicity, so Korman moves out here to get a fresh start.”

  “And how did Laura Smiley get involved after that?”

  “Now that’s what the cop remembers, clear as a bell. After the mistrial, the D.A. decided not to attempt another trial. So this young teacher comes strutting into his office and throws one holy fit. Turns out her father is an alcoholic. Bebe’s mother is headed that way, so Laura wants to protect her student.”

  “What happened?”

  Schulz said, “Laura screamed that Fritz Korman was a menace to all women. Said she had evidence that could curtail his practice of medicine permanently. Said if the cops wouldn’t get him, she would. She tried to get the Board of Medical Examiners to do something too, but Korman decided to move out here, and rather than revoking his license, the board said, Just don’t come back to this state. Are you ready for this? Our friend went back to the cops, banged on this investigator’s desk. She said this will happen again over her dead body. Then she marched out. Laura Smiley.”

  I said, “But then the Kormans, not knowing her feelings, you’d have to assume, picked Aspen Meadow to live in. Vonette told me back then there was medical licensing reciprocity with Illinois. They liked the place when Laura brought them here, back when they were all getting along.” I thought for a minute, then went on, “Nobody figured on Laura’s parents being killed. She moved back. Her parents were gone, Bebe was gone, and the Kormans were already settled in her hometown, where she had a house and friends. She must have decided to put it behind her.”

  “Appears that way. Then after twenty years, something snapped.”

  “If she had something on him, why wait? Maybe she was blackmailing him.” I paused. “I don’t think so, though. She wasn’t that type. And it goes against what she said in a note she wrote just before she died.”

  “Oh God. I don’t even want to hear how you got that. Why don’t you just tell me the rest of what you’ve been up to.”

  I dug out the note to Arch and read it aloud. Then I told Shulz that Laura had been friendly with Pomeroy, that they had been in an Al-Anon group together.

  “And speaking of that, there was this weird thing with the drugstore,” I said.

  “You break in there, too? If somebody’s listening in on this line, you’re going to have to get back into business. Then you can hire me as a caterer after they fire me from being a cop.”

  “Are you interested in the drugstore or not? This’ll go a long way toward getting that body exhumed.”

  “Don’t tell me,” he said. “You found the murder weapon on aisle B.”

  “Your new deputy coroner said Laura had a foreign substance, Valium, in her stomach. She didn’t have a prescription for Valium or an
y other tranquilizer. And if she belonged to one of the AA organizations there’s a good chance she didn’t drink or take drugs at all.” I hesitated. “Come to think of it, there wasn’t any liquor in her house, either. Odd stuff like flour in a flower box—”

  “What?”

  “Just her sense of humor. Puns.”

  Schulz clucked his tongue.

  I said, “I’m wondering if that person in Laura’s house the day I set off the alarm…” I was thinking. “Was, maybe, looking for that evidence?” I stopped. “In the living room—” I began, remembering something. “Vonette—”

  “She was in there?”

  “No. She had a flask. At the reception. She added something to her drink.”

  “You’re thinking she may have fixed Fritz’s drink, too? Remember any pellets, Goldy, or just a flask?”

  I said, “Pomeroy Locraft says Fritz was cheating on Vonette. If she knew he was up to his old tricks, maybe she’d take some kind of corrective steps.”

  “Hmm.”

  “Pomeroy saw the flask, too. Maybe she spilled her guts to him the way she did with us.” I chewed my nails for a second. “I’m going out there tomorrow—I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  “I wish you’d quit saying dig up to a homicide investigator,” said Schulz. Then, “You still going out with me on Halloween?”

  “Saturday night? Oh yes.” How was I going to hide the food for the athletic club party from him? I didn’t want to have to explain illegal catering. “I was wondering if you could pick Arch up and I’ll meet you there. I have a late cleaning job,” I fibbed. “But what made you think of Halloween?”

  “I’ve seen the way you go goo-goo eyed over this Pomeroy fella. I want you to remember our date. Just in case he flirts with you when you go out there investigating.”

  “Aha,” I said, pleased. “The jealous sort.”

  “Maybe so,” he replied evenly. “But look at it this way. It’s better to be with a great investigator than an incompetent driving instructor.”

  The road to the Wildlife Preserve was actually a wide, bumpy, mud-and-rock affair that was not officially open to the public between mid-September and the beginning of June. The altitude was about a thousand feet above town, and it snowed in greater abundance there, both early and late. I already knew how to lift and pull the swing gate to enter in the off season, since it had only been last April that Arch had done his beekeeping project with Pomeroy.