Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series) Page 26

  I said, “You know I didn’t.”

  Schulz said, “Did you fix this punch and this food?”

  I floundered. I looked at my shoes. I said, “I’m not saying a word until I talk to a lawyer.”

  When I raised my eyes to Tom Schulz’s silence, his look of disbelief and disappointment was much more difficult to take than John Richard’s anger.

  “I didn’t know this was going to happen,” I said fiercely.

  “Now you listen,” Schulz said, jabbing the air with his index finger, “you get over and stand in that corner by that broken mirror. I need to call the Poison Center again, get this man down to the hospital. The guys in my department aren’t going to believe this happened while I was here. I don’t believe it myself. But that’s not what I don’t believe most of all.” He eyed me. “I think you know what that is.”

  I nodded.

  “Get your things,” I ordered Arch, who had materialized beside me.

  Looking around the room I could see Marla and Trixie in a tête-à-tête. Pomeroy had picked up his mask from beside the table and was heading over toward his net by the jagged mirror. I walked behind him to catch up; there wasn’t any way anyone in that room could have missed the interchange between Schulz and me. But maybe Pom would be willing to ignore it.

  Trixie appeared beside us. She said, “This really pisses me off. I mean, again? Honest to God, doctors.”

  Marla bounced over.

  “Jesus,” she said, “Vonette’s dead. Have you told Arch?”

  “Not yet,” I said. “And don’t you tell him either. We’ve got to find out what’s going on with Fritz first. But there’s something else I need you to do. Call your lawyer. Get him started on extracting money from Korman and Korman for Patty Sue’s maternity care. She’s going to need it.”

  Marla’s face lit up like all of Vegas. “You mean I get to take John Richard to court again? For money? Ha! I’m in heaven.”

  “Arch,” I called, “we’re going with Pom. Lots has happened.”

  Arch said, “That sure was a short party.”

  I touched Pomeroy’s arm.

  “Can you give Arch and me a ride home?” I whispered. “I want to go out the back and avoid all this mess.”

  He nodded.

  Then when Schulz was leaning over the recumbent Fritz, I hustled Arch out behind Pomeroy.

  I did want a ride. But I had absolutely no intention of going home.

  CHAPTER 27

  Outside, a sudden breeze swept over us. The moon was still climbing.

  Pomeroy said, “Why do you need a ride from me? Why don’t you just climb back on the broomstick you rode over here?”

  “Because,” I said impatiently, “I don’t feel so good going anywhere in the car loaned to me by my deceased ex-mother-in-law, whose husband I have just been accused by my ex-husband of attempting to poison. Again.”

  It was lame, but it would get me started on what it was I wanted to do with Pomeroy.

  He smiled and said, “Let’s roll.”

  Arch pronounced Pom’s four-wheel-drive vehicle cool when we climbed in. The tires spewed gravel as we wheeled out of the parking lot, and the wind picked up the dust and blew it into a whirlwind.

  I put my arm around Arch and hugged him close to me. The sad news could wait.

  After a few moments Pom said, “Tell me where you live, Goldy.”

  I took a deep breath. “Well actually, Pomeroy, I don’t want to go home just yet.”

  He continued to drive, very cool, no emotion. “What did you have in mind? Or should I say, where?”

  I said, “I want to go to Laura’s old house. I’ve got an idea of where to look for something. Drive me to her house and I’ll show you.”

  Laura Smiley’s garage was dank and cold and smelled faintly of oil. Arch said he wanted to stay in the car and I didn’t blame him. The wind groaned through the garage window jamb and swished the dry leaves outside. I flipped the switch for the single garage light bulb; it threw a dim light. Groping through the odds and ends on the work-table, I found the box I was looking for and pulled it out to show Pom.

  I said, “The woman loved puns. She left all the clues for us. She put flour in a box with a flower, sugar behind a picture of Sugar Ray Leonard. She was obsessed with punishing Korman and she knew where to keep that ammunition.”

  I took a breath, then went on.

  “She wrote letters to students she loved: And they wrote back. I’ll bet she kept every letter. That was the evidence she had, what she never got to use.”

  I looked at Pom in the garage’s gray light. I said, “I’ll bet you knew she didn’t drink or take drugs. Someone slipped her a little Valium, enough to calm a person used to drugs, but enough to put a non-drug user, a total abstainer, to sleep. Then that person slashed her wrists with a scalpel blade and put a razor in her hand, except she didn’t shave because she was a radical feminist. She didn’t kill herself, she was murdered for what was in this box. You figure it out.”

  “I can’t.”

  I read the label on the box. “BB’s. In Laura’s handwriting. I doubt she was out shooting western long-eared squirrels, Pom. I’ll bet she never used her BB gun.”

  “You’re way ahead of me.”

  Arch creaked open the passenger side door of Pom’s car. He said, “Mom. I’m tired. Why are we here, anyway?”

  “Just a few more minutes,” I told him. “Take it easy.”

  With hands quivering, I opened the box. Inside was what I expected to find, letters in a large scrawling hand bound with ribbons. I riffled through them. The return addressee was the same on each one: Hollenbeck.

  I said, “You see, she even used puns to hide things. Bebe’s stuff is in the BB box.”

  Pom looked into the box and shook his head.

  I turned to him. “You were looking for it, too, weren’t you?”

  He said, “Yes, but…”

  “I’m not going to worry about that now,” I said. “Listen. She made an appointment to see Fritz the day she died. Saturday. The day I think he killed her. Knowing about Patty Sue, about him seducing a young girl again, made her decide to confront him, made her threaten to bring out the letters after all these years. She could have ruined his practice, a fact he knew all too well. He escorted her out the back door, brought her over here in his old station wagon, maybe on the pretext of talking things through. I’ll bet he brought her in that car because he didn’t want anyone to recognize his Jeep with its customized plates. Then they had tea or something, in went the Valium, and out came the scalpel that he used and the ladies’ razor that she didn’t use. He left the surgical pack in the wagon, never thinking anybody would drive it. But the nurse screwed up and sent Laura a bill anyway, even though she wasn’t a patient. If she was dead, nobody would think to look here for evidence. I mean, if it looked as if she killed herself.”

  I touched the letters, then glanced up at Pom in the darkness.

  “I just need one more thing,” I said. “Please take me to Fritz’s office.”

  He drove, fast but silent. At the office of Korman and Korman I heaved a rock to break the front window, grateful for the things I had learned from Trixie: I climbed in and went to the file I was looking for. I read it and came back to the car.

  “What the hell are you doing?” asked Pom.

  “Just take me out to your place,” I begged him, “and we can go through these letters tonight and call Tom Schulz, maybe get him to arrest Fritz instead of me. Arch can stretch out on your bed. I just can’t go home now, wanted for another poisoning and with a crazed John Richard on the loose.”

  He sighed. “First my car, now my house. Let me know when you want the bees.”

  The four-wheel drive jolted and bounced over the muddy road to the Preserve. In my lap I held the box of correspondence between two women, both now dead. The moon came out from behind a cloud and shone through the pines, which were thickening as we roared deeper into the forest. Maybe coming here hadn’t
been such a great idea. Impenetrable woods populated with deer and elk and other wildlife could not attract trick or treaters. I missed the little neighborhood mites with their bags and plastic pumpkins. They brought Halloween down to kid-size level. Out here, the Eve of All Hallows, with its promise of unleashed spirits, loomed as large as the stands of blue spruce that swung in the evening breeze. Branches of evergreen lining the road fingered Pom’s windshield. I reached for Arch’s hand.

  “You okay?”

  “Yes, Mom. I just don’t understand why we’re going out here instead of going home.”

  I said, “Just wait.”

  When we got to the cabin, I took off my witch’s cape and hat and tried to wash the paint off Arch’s face. I considered waiting until morning to tell him about the death of his grandmother. But I did not under any circumstances want him to hear it accidentally or casually, from someone else. I decided to break the news after I had tucked him into Pomeroy’s cot.

  “I’m sorry, Arch,” I whispered. “I have bad news. Vonette died this evening.”

  He was very still, his eyes locked into mine. The shadow of the silver greasepaint that had not yielded to the washcloth gave him the aspect of a ghoul. When his tears began I wiped his face on the sleeve of my witch costume.

  “And,” I went on slowly, “somebody’s tried to poison Fritz again. Except whoever did it probably didn’t put enough in again. That’s what I think.”

  A few moments later he murmured, “Why are we here?”

  “Well,” I said with a sigh, “your dad’s feeling really crazy right now. His mother’s dead and his dad’s sick. And you know how your dad can get when he’s angry, throwing dishes around and all. So I thought we’d be safer out here.”

  He said nothing for a long time while tears continued to well up. He opened his mouth to speak, then closed it, opened it again.

  He said, “Is Vonette in heaven? With Laura Smiley?”

  I felt the tears prick behind my own eyes as I took my son into my arms.

  I said, “Absolutely. They are up there together, taking care of each other, right now.”

  Within half an hour Arch was breathing the comforting shallow wheeze of a child asleep. Pomeroy placed a mug of hot chocolate in front of me and we began the long work of opening letter after letter and reading them in silence. Outside, the wind howled and groaned. The waves of air would start and stop, and once after the sudden cessation of sound I thought I heard a car engine being turned off.

  “Did you hear that?” I asked Pom.

  He shook his head. “Out here you hear all kinds of stuff. You learn to ignore it.”

  “Listen to this,” I said: I kept my voice low so Arch would not awaken. “Bebe writes, ‘He came in this morning when Mom was still asleep. After he did it to me again he wanted to know who I’ve told. He says this is just supposed to be between us. He says people who betray secrets die. I’m afraid.’ ”

  “It’s bad, all right,” said Pom, who was slouched down between the cushions of his homemade sofa. His beekeeper suit was crumpled; he looked like a tired ghost. “I just read where she was bleeding and was afraid to go to a doctor, least of all her own stepfather. So she just waited for it to go away.”

  Now there seemed to be sticks breaking outside. Perhaps it was a solitary elk moving through the forest. Pom noticed nothing. He was intensely involved in reading the letters. I thought I must be getting paranoid.

  I read again, “ ‘Miss Smiley, I have stopped going to church because I know God doesn’t like me anymore. Fritz said—’ ” I paused and looked up at Pom. “You see, there she uses his name. I’m sure that’ll help with laws about evidence.” I looked back at the sheet in my hand. “ ‘Fritz said Mom knows. What does that mean, Miss Smiley? What does Mom know?’ ”

  I shook my head. “Pom. No wonder this kid drank a whole bottle.”

  “Yes,” came a voice from the door, “that’s why she did it, all right.”

  And in walked Fritz Korman still in his black Zorro suit. He had a small gun in his hand.

  “Put that thing down,” demanded Pomeroy. “Goldy’s kid is asleep over there.”

  Fritz’s bald head shone in the soft yellow light of Pomeroy’s lamps. He was leering at us. A broad self-satisfied smile stretched across his handsome face. The devil’s own, out on Halloween night. My heart turned to ice.

  I said, “I thought you were so sick.”

  He brought his nose up in a wrinkle and kept the gun pointed at us.

  “Goldy, honey,” he said, “that’s why we have ipecac. To get poison out of people’s systems. And since I figured it was Pomeroy or you or one of your buddies who tried to do me in, I’ve come to find out. And look at what else we’ve found.”

  I said, “You bastard.”

  “Now don’t go waking up my grandchild, Goldy. He’s going to find your and Pom’s bodies out in that garage shed after your little lovers’ quarrel. Now let’s all go out slowly.” And he motioned us with the gun to move over to the door.

  “Did you kill Vonette?” I demanded without moving. “She knew about these letters, didn’t she? She threatened you, is my bet. How’d you make it look like suicide this time? And what about Laura Smiley?”

  He gave me a rueful smile. “Well now, aren’t you full of questions?”

  I pressed on, “Arch found an opened surgical kit in the Chrysler. Is that why you wanted your car back so badly, because of what you had left in there? Was that the car a neighbor heard at Laura’s that Saturday morning?” He smirked at me. “What I want to know is, how you got in and out of that house without the police finding any prints.”

  He raised his eyebrows, again in mock surprise. He said, “Amazing invention, surgical gloves.”

  “Look, Fritz,” said Pomeroy evenly. “Cut the crap. Take the letters and go. You don’t need to kill us, for God’s sake, there’s been enough dying already. Just go.”

  Fritz cocked his head at Pomeroy, the same leer fixed on his face. For the first time, it occurred to me that my former father-in-law, a man I had liked for so long, was insane.

  “Pomeroy Locraft, you are offending me. You have offended me already. You have accused me of immorality.”

  “You mean,” I said, “for performing an abortion on his wife who was an alcoholic?”

  “Well, Goldy. You’ve been reading those files,” said Fritz. He turned back to the beekeeper. “Poor Pomeroy, wanted to be a daddy so badly. Came into my office all upset. But it was too late.”

  Pomeroy was shaking his head. He said to Fritz, “I wouldn’t go outside in that outfit if I were you—”

  “Fritz,” I babbled, “where will you go? They’ll catch you, you know.”

  He snorted. “By the time they figure out I’m gone, I’ll be the proprietor of a little hotel in Mexico.”

  “What about Vonette?” I demanded, stalling, anything. “How much Demerol did you have to inject her with to kill her? Don’t you think the cops are going to figure that out?”

  Fritz looked from one of us to the other. “Vonette’s better off now. The police will find nothing. I am tired,” he announced, “of listening to you two. Walk.”

  And out we shuffled. I gave a last long look at the lump on the bed that was my son.

  Halfway to the shed, Fritz called to us to stop.

  “Almost forgot,” he said over the breeze stirring the trees. “If you and your boyfriend here are going to kill each other, we need another gun. So turn left, boys and girls, and we can go to my car and get one.” And then he laughed, a horrible high-pitched sound that made my stomach turn over.

  We turned and marched through the dry grass toward what I could dimly see was Fritz’s Jeep. The evening was still cloudy and the moon was high in the sky. Occasionally moonlight swept the meadow. Pom’s cabin, the honey shed, the silvered grass would appear—and then be gone. I kept glancing back to see some movement in the cabin. Had Arch awakened? But if he had, what good would it do? Would he have heard? How cou
ld he get help? Would he be too terrified or confused to do anything? I had noticed a rural fire number posted on one of the trees near the cabin, an indication that someone had Pomeroy on a map somewhere. Fat lot of good that would do us.

  Fritz was muttering and thrashing through his glove compartment.

  “Goldy,” whispered Pom, “when we get down to the shed, I’ll try to hit him. If we’re in the back of the shed, go out the back door. Then run back to the house and get Arch and take off in my car. The keys are in it.”

  “What about you?” I whispered back.

  “Shut up, you two,” hollered Fritz. He had come around the car and now held two firearms. “Turn around and get down to that shed.”

  We obediently turned and started back over the rocks and grass in the direction of the shed, Fritz behind us. I walked on tiptoe, trying to avoid holes. At one point I stepped on something that felt like eggshells. Then suddenly the clouds parted again and gray-white moonlight flooded the meadow.

  Jesus God in heaven. There was a small figure making its way to the creek, and it was carrying something. A bottle? I couldn’t tell. There was something else I could discern, but did not want to accept.

  It was Arch.

  CHAPTER 28

  When the three of us reached the shed, Fritz ordered Pom to go in first and turn on the light, with the warning that I would be shot immediately if the light did not come on. Pom did as he was told and we walked in. Surprise. Between the shelves loaded with supplies there was just enough room for a car. A blue Volvo.

  “I knew you had her car,” I said to Pom.

  “I was supposed to be fixing it,” he said.

  “I already figured out that you were looking for the evidence she had against Fritz. Just tell me what you were doing at the athletic club the other night,” I said.

  “I told you two to shut your mouths,” said Fritz.

  But then I scanned the shelves in the shed, and I knew what Pom had been looking for Thursday night.

  “Okay, this is how it’s going to work,” Fritz announced. “Goldy, you get over—”