Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Page 23

  I pressed the receiver back into the cradle.

  I said, “Nobody. Just checking to see if the phone’s free so I can call Vonette.”

  She tilted her head at me. “What are you making for dinner? Arch ordered some Chinese stuff but it didn’t look that great to me. I am hungry, though.”

  I said, “You’ve had a big day.”

  She nodded, yawned again.

  “Sorry we don’t have anything to eat,” I lied. “In fact I need you and Arch to go to the store for me before dinner—”

  “But I haven’t even gotten my regular license yet,” Patty Sue protested, “and I don’t know how I’d drive with a cast.” She wandered out of the room toward the kitchen. I turned off the sewing machine and followed her.

  “That’s okay,” I said, “I’ll drive.” I grabbed a pencil from beside the phone and hastily began to write. Patty Sue was fishing gherkins out of a jar with her pinky. “I have lots to do,” I went on, “and you guys can help me out while I do other errands.” I called to Arch, and he came clomping down to the kitchen while Patty Sue read the list over my shoulder.

  “Now what?” he demanded.

  I looked at the two of them and tried to imagine myself as a patient person.

  “I have two parties this week, one day after tomorrow for my women’s group and one at the athletic club the next day. This means a lot of shopping and cooking. You two,” I went on, “will please buy groceries while I pick up pizza and do errands, and then we’ll all come home and discuss the news of the day. Okay?”

  “Oh, guess what?” said Patty Sue. “Speaking of news. Dr. Korman’s treatments finally worked.”

  Arch groaned and left to get his jacket.

  I stared at her. “What do you mean, his treatment worked? You want to tell me what that treatment was?”

  Patty Sue’s face turned quite pink.

  “Oh, that’s confidential, Goldy. All I can tell you is that as of this afternoon, I’m, um, normal.”

  I shook my head. If the North Pole was normal, then Patty Sue was living in Antarctica.

  “The thing is,” said Patty Sue, “it’s been a long time for me. Since I was normal, I mean. Anyway, I don’t feel so good.”

  Neither, I reflected, did I, as I swung the boatlike Chrysler wagon into the parking lot of Aspen Meadow’s grocery, one of a western chain of food stores. The store’s dairy selection was pasteurized to the extent that everything tasted scalded; the produce was whatever could make it to Colorado from California without rotting. Nevertheless, I had made the list long enough to keep both Arch and Patty Sue occupied for at least an hour.

  Under the woodpile. In September I had stacked a half cord of firewood beneath the house’s old deck. Once back home I put on garden gloves and began to dig and scrape out bits of bark and grass from beneath the freshly split yellow logs. The sky was beginning to darken and the sharp smell of wood smoke was already in the air. I hoped that snakes of all genres had begun to hibernate or whatever it was snakes did in the winter. Black widows, of course, were notorious inhabitants of woodpiles.

  A plastic bag crackled in my fingers and I drew it out. Inside the bag was the soft towel covering for a surgical pack, the kind I knew Fritz and John Richard kept in the storage closet in the room where the nurses drew blood. It was similar to, perhaps even exactly the same as, the one Arch had tried to steal from the office. Had he succeeded after all? I opened it carefully. Rolled up wads of latex, which I guessed to be surgical gloves, were at the top of the bag. They weren’t usually in the kit. Tissue forceps, suture set, two-by-two’s, other stuff I recognized.

  A scalpel, one of the kind that used disposable blades.

  The blade had dried blood on it.

  Now I really had something to tell Tom Schulz. And a few things to discuss with my son.

  “Tom,” I said into the phone, “I have to talk to you.”

  “I barely recognized your voice, you sounded so friendly.”

  “Tell me about the weapon Laura Smiley used on herself.”

  “Well now, I don’t know whether—”

  “Come on,” I pleaded, “you told me yourself that a suicide case was closed unless some evidence was found—”

  “And so far you’ve given me theories, a torn article, a note, and a missing prescription.”

  “Tom!”

  “Okay, okay. One of those twin-bladed ladies’ razors. It had a lot of blood on it, I know that. From the depth of the wound on her wrists, the deputy coroner figured she could have done it with that. Although he’s not a terribly sharp guy.”

  “Not too sharp,” I said. “That sounds like something Laura Smiley would say.”

  “I don’t get it.”

  “Forget it,” I said. Then I asked, “So the theory was she was shaving her legs?”

  “I guess.”

  “Dumb. Stupid. Imbecilic.”

  “It’s good to hear you sounding like yourself. What’d you find out from Pomeroy? Did he know anything about Vonette?”

  I said, “Hold on. Laura Smiley didn’t shave, I’ll be willing to bet anything. She was a feminist—”

  “Is that like socialist? I don’t think they shave either.”

  “I know it’s a challenge, but try to take me seriously. Look at it practically. Have you ever cut yourself with one of those Good News razors? Or some other twin-bladed kind?”

  “Strictly an electric man, myself.”

  “Well,” I said, “it’s almost impossible, I don’t care what the deputy coroner says. You’d have to be trying real hard, because you can barely nick yourself, much less cut, wound, stab, or slash. I’d say your deputy coroner has got a hole in his head.”

  “Well,” Tom said apologetically, “he’s new. So you’re saying you think she used something else?”

  “She or someone else.” I fingered the surgical kit. “You’d better come on over. I’ve got something for you.”

  Within fifteen minutes he had picked it up. He looked dubious. Wanted to know if this was some kind of kid’s joke. Asked if I touched anything, and where I found it.

  “Arch got it out of this station wagon, which belongs to the Kormans,” I said. “You know Laura’s blood type and all that?”

  He said, “Yes, we do, Goldy. Now listen. I know it’s hard for you to leave the police work to me. But just for a couple of days, try.”

  Then it was time for me to do the picking up, first pizza with extra cheese, Arch’s favorite, then assorted goodies from the pastry shop for the women’s meeting. When I arrived at the grocery store both Arch and Patty Sue were shuffling down an aisle wearing fatigued, irritated faces. It was, after all, past dinnertime. I checked their cart for the avocados, carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, Belgian endive, apples, assortment of cheeses, chicken, eggs, chips, ground beef, cups and crepe paper, and decorative squash and pumpkin I had ordered. Plus Coke and chocolate soda. I was thankful for the fifty dollars from Hal.

  “Mom,” whined Arch, “this is boring. I’m tired and hungry.”

  “Just need frozen bread dough,” I mumbled, claiming the cart.

  “I saw your ex-husband and his new girlfriend over a couple of aisles,” whispered Patty Sue, “with the older Dr. Korman and Vonette.”

  I turned to her as we headed toward the frozen-food section. “Oh, that’s just great. What’re they doing here?”

  But I didn’t have to wait for Patty Sue to come up with an answer, for at that moment the Korman entourage came wheeling around to frozen foods.

  Patty Sue moaned. She said, “I’m not feeling too good.”

  “Just do me the favor of not asking for a medical consultation right now,” I said.

  “Why, look who’s here,” said John Richard. “Goldilocks shopping for porridge. What are you going to put in it?”

  “Hello, Vonette,” I announced, as if the girlfriend and two doctors were not present.

  “Ho Arch! How’s my boy?” asked John Richard as he pinched his unsmiling son on th
e cheek. With his tall, hunk-type frame, John Richard looked like a benevolent defensive end talking to a young fan. Only Arch was not acting properly adoring. John Richard responded by turning to his girlfriend. “I told you she was a bitch,” he said between his teeth. The girlfriend bobbed a head of streaked hair. “Goldy,” he went on, turning back to me, “meet Pam Mosser. She teaches geometry at the high school. She’s my, er, fiancée.”

  I was so proud of myself. I smiled politely and said, “How do you do?” The virtue of an eastern upbringing.

  “Patty Sue,” said Fritz, “how are you getting along?”

  “Well,” she began, “not too—”

  “Please be quiet, Patty Sue,” I ordered.

  “Now Goldy,” Fritz warned. “Don’t start up.”

  “Start up with what?” I asked and gave Vonette a knowing look, from which she shrank.

  Fritz turned to stare at Vonette.

  “Mom,” Arch moaned beside me, “I’m getting tireder.”

  “I still don’t feel so—” Patty Sue began.

  My ex-mother-in-law looked at me guiltily and cleared her throat. Patty Sue had disappeared down the aisle.

  “Oh, Goldy dear,” Vonette said nervously, “I need the car back. I’m sorry, I forgot something, ah, it needs to go into the shop. Sorry,” she said again.

  I wasn’t ready for another loss of vehicle. I turned to beat a retreat past orange juice and toward ice cream, where Patty Sue had arrived and was filling her arms with Fudge Swirl, Double Chocolate Chip, and Rocky Road.

  “Couple of days,” I promised over my shoulder. “At the club Halloween party. My van should be ready by then. Then I’ll give you the Chrysler. See you Friday, Vonette!”

  We were almost at the checkout stand.

  To my utter delight, Arch turned around and yelled, “What’s geometry?”

  CHAPTER 23

  I got into the car feeling light-headed. But I congratulated myself on one thing: I had survived the encounter. Every little success helped.

  “Have some pizza,” I said to Arch. “It’s either next to you or you’re sitting on it.”

  Patty Sue found the pizza box. She and Arch began to tug out hot triangular slices stringy with mozzarella. The smell was inviting, but I wasn’t hungry. The last two hours had been too draining. Arch opened the soft drinks and offered me one. When I refused, I noticed that my hands were shaking.

  I said, “Let’s go home.”

  After getting Arch to bed and carefully placing the food supplies onto the pantry and refrigerator shelves, I still felt unsettled. It was bad enough to have to live in the same town and hear of John Richard’s many exploits. Bad enough to have to endure his arrogance and new wealth. But to have to endure him at the grocery store was almost too much.

  The next few days were going to be hectic. There was cleaning the club, cooking for the meeting Friday and the party Saturday, plus trying to follow up with Schulz on the scalpel and Arch and his eccentricities. If that was all they were.

  The key to the athletic club beckoned. Work. That was the ticket. It had helped when I was preparing for Laura’s wake. With decorating supplies and heavy-duty cleaners I could do something useful and work off industrial-strength stress at the same time. Friday night, I could make a recheck for a spot cleaning before the party. Even athletes couldn’t completely mess up a place in a couple of days, could they?

  My key turned in the latch and echoed loudly in the darkness. I flipped on the lights. The empty Nautilus machines sprang into view like a chamber of horrors. They flashed silver in the minors. Without jocks pumping iron and exercycling and running in place, the air between the club’s cream-colored walls and gray and burgundy carpet expanded, thinned out.

  I shook myself. The place had a new life when one was in it alone. The walls, shelves, machines seemed to undergo a metamorphosis at night, like toys in nursery stories. I gritted my teeth to haul the vacuum and bags of supplies across to the front desk.

  Standing in the middle of the open area, I puzzled over where to put the table with pumpkins, punch bowl, and party munchies for Halloween. I could put the long tables by the walls overlooking the racquetball courts, then cover them and the columns in the dance area with orange and black crepe paper.

  The closet next to the bank of mirrors flanking the Nautilus equipment, when I had found its one light, yielded four long tables that would work for the snacks. I placed all the chemicals on the closet floor and started setting up.

  During a break I peered down the stairs and saw that all traces of the exercise-room mirror, the one Trixie had shattered, were gone. Oh, how replacing the old mirror with fun house-style trick ones to make all the skinny people look fat would have been hilarious. But I was not in the practical joke business.

  I dusted, vacuumed, decorated. It was after midnight when I mixed the solutions for disinfectant and tub-and-tile cleaner and trotted downstairs to start on the locker rooms.

  There were some jogging suits and open lockers on the men’s side, and despite the staff’s once-over on the sinks and showers, the vague odor of sweat still hung in the air. I sprayed the diluted disinfectant into one sink and heard music go on in the aerobics room.

  “Just give me money …”

  It was a jazzed-up version of a Beatles hit. I knew I was the only one who was supposed to be here. Was this a burglar with a sense of humor? One who needed rock and roll to steal hand weights and towels?

  I pushed back fear by reasoning that the music camouflaged any noise I could make. I crept out of the locker room. Looking around the corner I could just see the movement of someone … exercising?

  It was Trixie. She was kicking her legs out and shrieking along with the singers.

  “Muh-huh-honey … that’s what I want!”

  I waved my spray bottle to indicate my presence.

  “Hey, Trix!”

  She gave the startled cry of a person discovered naked. Which, of course, she was not.

  “Goldy! I thought you were coming tomorrow.”

  “What are you doing?”

  She began to cry and crumpled onto the rug. I hurried over.

  “I just wanted to be alone,” she said finally. “I just wanted everybody to quit bugging me. You … don’t understand.”

  “Try me.”

  She took deep breaths to try to calm herself, then hiccuped. “You can’t, because you have a child.”

  “I am sorry about your loss. You know that.”

  Her voice was bitter. “That man took mine away from me.”

  “Fritz?”

  “He knew I had high blood pressure. That the placenta could break down. It did. I lost the baby while I waited for him. What was he doing? Why didn’t he hurry? Now everybody just feels sorry for me. And he goes on with his practice.”

  She began to cry again. I hugged her and eventually her sobs subsided. The tape ended; we were enveloped in quiet.

  “Are you still coming to our group the day after—or I guess”—I took a look at my watch—“it’s technically tomorrow?”

  She gave that harsh laugh. “You really think that’ll help?”

  “What would help?”

  Trixie gulped and said, “If Laura were still alive. She had some information on Korman she was going to show me. I told her my whole story one day after class. She said it wasn’t the first time he had messed up. She was planning on doing something—”

  We were interrupted by a noise upstairs, someone walking across the open room I had just cleaned and decorated. I put my finger to my lips.

  I whispered to her, “Are there any weights down here?”

  She nodded.

  “Could you throw one at a burglar, if that’s—?”

  She nodded again. “I have a very strong arm.”

  “Let’s go.”

  We crept upstairs. Trixie had picked up some weights and was warming up her triceps with two-pounders in each hand. To my chagrin the intruder had turned the lights off. Only the outd
oor parking lot lights cast a pale neon glow on the room.

  “Where is—” Trixie began.

  “The closet,” I whispered back.

  The closet door was partly open. A wedge of light shone out its door, casting a huge triangle of gold-gray on the carpet. The wrapped pillars looked ghastly.

  “Can you hit the closet door?”

  “I think so,” she hissed. “Hold this one.” She let go of one of the weights and damned if I didn’t drop it.

  “Eeyah!” I shrieked when it hit my toe.

  The closet light went out.

  “Uh!” shouted Trixie as she heaved the other weight through the darkness.

  CRASH! went the Nautilus room mirror.

  “Oh no!” screamed Trixie.

  Someone rushed past us in the blackness.

  I tried to run but fell over on my pain-wrenched toe.

  “Turn the lights on!” I commanded Trixie. “Hurry! Run outside! See if you can tell who it is, or see their car!”

  Trixie cursed and careened through the dimness. She hit the light switch and then stumbled out the front door.

  Across the way the Nautilus room mirror looked like an avant-garde glass sculpture. I would have to remind Hal of this when he sued me. What the hell. He hadn’t exactly provided a high-security place to work in, had he?

  “I saw the car,” Trixie gasped when she came trotting back.

  “And?”

  “Kinda weird,” she said. “It looked just like Laura’s old blue Volvo.”

  CHAPTER 24

  Hopping down my well of sleep came frog-faced doctors holding scalpel blades. Hot on their trail were gargoyle-faced liches in unhemmed robes, and behind them roared a phalanx of honking blue Volvos. The Volvos crashed against the well walls; the liches and frogs in robes scampered down toward me to escape the wailing horns. I had the frantic thought: Have I disinfected those walls yet?

  Br-r-ring! Br-r-ring! went the Volvo horns.

  Br-r-ring!

  The phone.

  I sat up. My right toe was throbbing. What Laura would have said: Call a toe truck.

  The clock read ten-twenty. I’d gotten home at two-thirty, I remembered, after finally driving an exhausted Trixie home. Except for this ringing, my house was quiet—a sure sign that everyone had decided to let me sleep after my wee-hour janitorial stint. Everyone, that is, except this nut calling me.