Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Read online

  “Thanks a lot,” Marla said without enthusiasm. “Don’t suppose it could wait until tonight, do you? I mean, if she’s out of danger and they’re still going to come to the party. I suppose that would be beaucoup crass.”

  “I wouldn’t put anything past them. Call me later. I’ll be up to my rear in chips and dip. Almost forgot. Patty Sue’s two months pregnant.”

  “What? Expecting? I didn’t even know.”

  “Neither did she. By Fritz, no less.”

  “Jesus,” Marla said. “That guy never quits. If I were Vonette, I’d want to die too.”

  An hour later I had shooed Arch off to school wearing his lich costume. Asking him tough questions was simply not within my emotional repertoire after the events of the previous night. The house was silent. No clients calling for parties. No Arch sneaking about. No Patty Sue bumping into walls. Still. Questions hung heavily in the air.

  Time to let the mind cook along with the hands. As usual.

  First on the agenda for the athletic club party was the preparation of guy bow, an Oriental chicken-and-egg affair seasoned with soy and encased in a bread shell.

  But as I folded and rolled out the dough, I could not get the image of Vonette out of my mind. She seemed a sudden absence. Prayer had been a difficult proposition since I’d stopped teaching Sunday school. But I prayed now for Vonette.

  I set aside the guy bow and prayed. Please, please. Then I peeled, pitted, and mashed the plump avocados destined for my Holy Moly Guacamole. Once the rich dip was done, I set it aside and tried to think.

  Why had Vonette done it? Had the headaches finally become unbearable? Had something not killed the pain?

  Worst question of all was one that filled my mind like the bowls of silky guacamole.

  Had the messy anger of our meeting the evening before triggered some deep mechanism that had been operating all along, only incrementally, with liquor and drugs? Instead of killing herself slowly, had Vonette gone over the edge because of what the meeting had made her think about? And what about her oath to confront Fritz?

  About that I did not even want to think. But had to.

  Before starting the deviled eggs and empanadas I called the hospital. Patty Sue was okay; her parents were with her.

  A nurse who knew me said Vonette Korman was in a coma. I didn’t ask if anyone was with her. I could imagine her face and her curly orange hair, but she wasn’t there. It was as if the ground around our relationship had suddenly collapsed.

  I tried to focus back on the party. My next task was to arrange concentric circles of the empanadas and deviled

  * * *

  Holy Moly Guacamole

  1 large or 2 small avocados, peeled, pitted and mashed to make 1 cup

  1½ teaspoons fresh lemon juice

  1 teaspoon freshly grated onion

  ¼ teaspoon salt

  1 tablespoon picante sauce

  ¼ cup mayonnaise

  Corn Chips

  Place the mashed avocado in a non-metallic bowl. Mix in the juice, onion, salt, and picante sauce until well blended. Spread the mayonnaise over the top to the edges, cover the bowl, and refrigerate. At serving time, uncover the bowl and thoroughly mix in the mayonnaise. Serve with corn chips.

  Makes 1¼ cups

  * * *

  eggs. With the eggs in the guy bow we’d have a cholesterol-heavy night, but what the hey. Eggs were cheap and looked good. Besides, they filled people up, a key concept in catering.

  My phone rang: Tom Schulz. Yes, I remembered about tonight. I asked if he had heard about Vonette.

  “Yeah,” he said. “I heard the call for the ’copter. Why?”

  “I don’t know. I just feel real bad about it. She could have done it so many times before … Why last night?”

  “Was she at that meeting you were supposed to have?” he asked, suddenly wary. “Your house, right? What happened?”

  “Don’t get suspicious, Mr. Investigator. We just talked. Women’s stuff. Besides, it’s confidential.”

  “Was she upset when she left?”

  I let out a breath. “Well, yes. She was upset. But not suicidal.”

  “That Fritz sure has his problems.”

  I put all the bags of chips in one large bag. “Listen,” I said, “I hope you’ll stay on this case with Vonette.”

  “Take it easy,” Tom responded, “she isn’t dead. Yet.”

  “If she dies,” I warned him, “I hope you’ll get on it right away. Toxicology, the whole bit.”

  “Don’t worry. That’s my job, Goldy. And the coroner’s back, too, no more new deputy stuff. Are the guys around here happy about that!” He chuckled. “You just concentrate on tonight. I’ll be by at seven to pick up Arch while you finish your cleaning job. Then we’ll dance the night away, and you’ll forget all your troubles.”

  “That,” I said before hanging up, “I seriously doubt.”

  CHAPTER 26

  How do I look, Mom?” asked Arch as he entered the kitchen that evening. Although he had not made up his face for school, he decided for the party to put on the full war paint of the superhuman lich.

  I stopped packing the appetizers into plastic containers, took off my witch’s hat and mask, and surveyed him in the painted muslin robe and hood. Around his neck was the heavy gold-plated jewelry Vonette had lent him earlier in the week. The eleven-year-old face glowed with white and black theatrical makeup painted like a skull.

  “What am I supposed to say to a lich,” I asked dryly, “you look dreadful? Sorry, lich, I didn’t pack any worms for you to eat. And please don’t get any ideas about installing an alarm system at the athletic club.”

  “Don’t worry, Mom,” he replied soberly, “liches are only satisfied when they suck the blood from their victims.”

  On that happy note, I whisked off for the club with the Kormans’ station wagon full of food. The last thing I needed was for my soon-to-be escort, who also happened to be the police officer who had closed my business, to know that I was catering illegally.

  Twenty minutes later I pulled the station wagon into the club parking lot, which held only two cars. Already the night was quite cool, and the rising moon glowed yellow on the eastern horizon. I shivered.

  Pomeroy Locraft greeted me at the door and took one of the boxes from my hands. He was dressed as a beekeeper, complete with mask.

  “Now that’s an original costume,” I remarked.

  “Beekeeper from another planet,” he rejoined, looking over my shoulder. “Newest offering from Stephen King. Trixie’s here with me. She’s a little drunk, just thought I’d warn you. Seems things got kind of out of control at your place last night.”

  “Don’t remind me.”

  “Where’s Arch?”

  “Coming with Tom Schulz. My date,” I added.

  “Bringing the cops to keep your ex-husband in line? Not a bad idea.”

  We set about arranging the platters and punch bowl. Pom said Hal was having a fit about someone breaking the big mirror in the Nautilus room. I had every intention of confessing to my part in that accident after I got through some of the more pressing crises.

  Trixie told me in a whiskeyed whisper that she had thrown away all the shards on the floor. She was trying to explain more when Arch came bouncing in.

  “Where’s Tom Schulz?” I asked. “Please tell me he’s wearing anything but a police uniform.”

  “You know, Mom,” Arch said in his serious tone, “you aren’t very nice to Investigator Schulz. He’s not a clown. He’s a magistrate. An enforcer of laws in the human order.”

  “Just remember not to mention that I made this food for tonight.”

  Arch was nodding doubtfully when Tom Schulz walked in, bedecked in costume and makeup that was somewhere between Bozo and Ronald McDonald. I looked at Arch, who avoided my eyes by surveying the tables laden with food.

  “Patty Sue called while you were in the shower,” Arch said. “Said she’ll be back tomorrow. Her parents were going to bri
ng her up. She said she wouldn’t be able to drive for a while.”

  Tom Schulz, Pomeroy, and I all said together, “That’s good.”

  When Tom and Pomeroy had sauntered off for a friendly glass of punch, I asked Arch, “Do you still miss Ms. Smiley?”

  He nodded without looking at me. This was always a bad sign.

  “On Halloween,” I went on, “all the ghosts of dead people are supposed to come out, you know.”

  “Don’t be weird, Mom.”

  “I was just wondering if you’d thought about that.”

  He returned my gaze. “Sometimes I miss her. She was the only teacher who ever liked me. But if she killed herself, then I guess she was crazy the way everyone says.”

  “If she thought you were a really great kid, and she did, then she was not crazy.”

  “Mom? I want some chips.”

  I reached for his forearm. “Just tell me, Arch, you’re not taking this lich stuff too seriously, are you? Curses, violent revenge for dead souls, sucking blood, all that?”

  “What makes you think that?”

  How could I say, From your phone conversation with Todd that I wasn’t supposed to be listening to? He sidled away.

  “Arch, old buddy!” Pomeroy called out as Arch approached the tables. “What are you supposed to be, the label on a poison bottle?”

  I looked around the club. The place still looked pretty clean. Trixie had done a passable job of cleaning the floor of the Nautilus room.

  “A lich,” Arch was explaining to the Martian beekeeper.

  Hal whizzed over on roller skates. He was dressed as a Blues Brother.

  He glared at me from behind his dark glasses.

  He said, “You want to tell me about that mirror?”

  I said, “What mirror?”

  He skated away. I took protection at Tom Schulz’s side.

  “Think the Korman doctors will be here tonight?” he asked.

  I nonchalantly rearranged the deviled eggs and the crudités inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.

  “Knowing them,” I said, “they aren’t going to sit by the bedside of a woman in a coma. It remains to be seen whether they’re crude enough to come here tonight. They don’t even know about Patty Sue.”

  “What about Patty Sue?”

  I told him the story of my hapless roommate, and also about what Laura had said to her, indicating she had some kind of power over Fritz Korman.

  Tom Schulz picked up two brownies. “She didn’t use it for twenty years,” he said. “But seeing Patty Sue with him, or hearing what Patty Sue had to say, set her off.” He thought. “If the docs come, see if you can find out what Laura was threatening. That’s our missing link. I’m still running the scalpel for prints and other tests, by the way.”

  “Glad to see the cops are doing their job. Don’t eat any more brownies until more people get here.” He gave me a quizzical X-ray look. I’d blown it. I said, “You see, I’m still a caterer at heart. And I don’t know how you expect me to find out what Laura was holding over Fritz’s head.”

  “Well,” said Tom, licking his clown fingers, “you’re going to be a detective, you figure things out. Detect.”

  At that moment the Jerk made a grand entrance with the teacher on his arm. He was dressed as a doctor. Not very original. She was dressed as a nurse. Poor thing, I hoped she was well stocked with bandages.

  Trixie reappeared from the bathroom, where I assumed she had been either drinking or being sick or both, and for the first time I noticed she was also dressed as a witch. We could have passed as nonidentical twins. Marla swept in, despite the fact that John Richard was here. Maybe that meant she was getting over him. She was dressed as a Las Vegas showgirl, plump but very charming in her net stockings and low-cut leotard. She made a beeline for the food table.

  Then, to my shock, came a stocky bald man dressed in black. His gait and swagger gave him away: Fritz Niebold Korman. I heard an explosion of laughter near him, as someone who had apparently asked what he was screamed, “Oh no! Fritz Korman’s dressed as Zorro!”

  I surreptitiously began refilling the punch bowl with ginger ale and fruit juice. No one was talking about Vonette, which was probably a good thing. She would pull through, I was sure.

  In a little while the guy bow and guacamole were almost gone. The empanadas lay untouched. You never could tell what people were going to eat. I resolved to pay no more attention to the status of the food and drink. I didn’t want to get into more trouble with Schulz, and Hal had treated me rudely enough that I felt justified in not doing any actual serving.

  One of the club staff put on an aerobics-class tape and men, women, witches, wizards, doctors, nurses, clowns, and showgirls all began to gyrate enthusiastically. Perhaps, like Pavlov’s dog, they were used to working hard to this music.

  “Where’s your date, the cop?” Pomeroy asked when I was munching the last of the guy bow.

  I waved my hand. “He’s out there somewhere,” I replied. “I’m not keeping tabs on anything or anyone tonight.”

  “Poor Goldilocks,” Pomeroy said, “nothing is ever just right. Why don’t you come dance with a lonely beekeeper?”

  The music had turned slow. One of the cool-down songs usually reserved for the end of an aerobics class moaned from the speakers. Some astute staff member lowered the lights and as Pom took me into his arms to start dancing, I noticed that I was feeling anything but cooled down. Just the opposite, in fact.

  Pom must have sensed my reaction. He pulled me in a little tighter, and even in the darkened room I could see the Jerk giving me the Evil Eye. Ha! Let him suffer.

  “I wish you’d take that mask off,” I whispered to Pomeroy. “Then I could give you a kiss and make my ex-husband feel terrible.”

  “Hey, please don’t think of me as a sex object.”

  “You know what Laura would have said about that?”

  “No,” said Pomeroy.

  “She would have said that a beekeeper should make a stinging reply.”

  “She had a way with words, didn’t she?” Pomeroy said as he pulled me closer. My heart went zing! But I was determined to stay rational.

  When the music finished he steered me back to the food table as the couples began to disperse to get refreshments.

  “What did she have on Fritz Korman, though?” I asked as I ignored my own resolution to do nothing, opened a fresh bottle of fruit juice, and sloshed it into the punch bowl.

  He said, “I don’t know. I think maybe it was something from that student of hers.”

  The empanadas had disappeared during the last dance. Pomeroy was looking around the room.

  He said, “Still don’t see your date, sweets, so you’re going to have to put up with me for a while. Here they come—your ex-husband and his father. Now you can kiss me.” He took off his mask and put it on the floor while I pretended to be busy replenishing brownies.

  “I’m not going to eat a thing you fix,” the Jerk said defiantly when I offered him the platter.

  Laura Smiley would have said, Then no brownie points.

  Laura Smiley would have said …

  Laura Smiley would have said …

  I thought of jokes. Laura-type jokes. Why didn’t the gunslinging prosecutor shoot down the defendant? Because he didn’t have enough ammunition. Why did the little girl eat dynamite? Because she wanted to grow bangs. Why dynamite? Why not gunshot? Or some other kind of ammunition?

  Ammunition.

  I turned away from my ex-husband. Two people dressed as bats began to play racquetball. The ball thwacked against the wall with the same regularity that my mind was making one step, then another. Finally, I had the weapon to shoot the bad guy down. Now all I needed was to load that weapon.

  But not yet. After the party, after everyone had gone home.

  Tom Schulz was dancing with Marla. I slid up beside him and whispered, “I figured it out. What she had on him. I even think I know where it is. And I have an idea of who might have put the stuff in
Fritz’s coffee.”

  He shook his clown stomach and said, “At least give me until the end of this song, okay?”

  Marla rolled her eyes at me.

  What the hey, after all this time and effort. I took a deep breath and strolled back to the snack table where Pomeroy, Fritz, and John Richard were engaged in some uneasy conversation. I still hadn’t kissed Pomeroy, and my chance was at hand.

  “Better go get your girlfriend,” I said to the Jerk, “looks as if she’s trying to set up another date.”

  And indeed, there was the fiancée on the club’s desk phone. She had a serious look on her face. After a moment she came over and whispered something to John Richard, who turned to his father.

  “Dad,” John Richard said. His voice cracked. Fritz turned to look at him.

  “Dad,” he said again, “she died.”

  Fritz, who was drinking punch, brought his hands up to his face. But then, just as suddenly as John Richard’s announcement had come, Fritz began to cough. It wasn’t just regular coughing, but hacking and wheezing, and he was holding his throat. He slumped to the floor and John Richard knelt down with him.

  “Dad!” John Richard bellowed. “What is it?”

  “That stuff, that stuff!” he cried, pointing to his punch cup.

  I was frozen, statuelike, still in shock from the news of Vonette, but there was John Richard sniffing Fritz’s punch cup and giving me an unholy look of rage. John Richard ducked underneath the food table and just as quickly brought out my bottle of phenol-based industrial-strength disinfectant concentrate. There was my name in black marking pen, as clear as could be next to where I’d written POISON with the telltale skull and crossbones.

  John Richard glowered at me. “You!” he screamed. “Again! Schulz! Get over here! Put this bitch under arrest!”

  “Now wait a minute,” I murmured, but Schulz was already there talking to John Richard, trying to get him to calm down.

  Schulz leaned over the table.

  He said, “You didn’t do this, did you?”