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  I sighed. Marla slipped into the kitchen, holding her throat in a gagging motion.

  “Tell me how I can give this guy the hook,” she said to me.

  “I don’t know,” I said. I was frustrated, too. We had a ton of dishwashing still to do, and it was getting late. “Create a disturbance. Oh, wait. Raise your hand, and ask about the provisions of Charlie’s will. Then ask if he knew if Charlie had planned to change parts of his will.”

  “All right,” said Marla.

  “I’m kidding! I’m kidding!” I called after her, but she was gone.

  Well, she did it. And the question provided such an excruciatingly awkward moment, followed by several more awkward moments, that Richard Chenault ended up jumping from his seat and thanking everyone for coming. He said they’d be getting a formal notification when Charlie’s will was settled, and more work could be done on the site, blah, blah, blah.

  Meg Blatchford, her hands loaded with a stack of plates, followed Marla into the kitchen. “You’ve got guts, Marla,” Meg said admiringly. “I’ll give you that. Do you think you’d ever like to play senior softball?”

  “No, no,” Marla replied, but she giggled at the thought.

  “You better go dump that garbage,” Julian said to me, as he began loading dishes into the Roundhouse dishwasher.

  “What garbage?” Meg asked, puzzled. “Won’t the bears get it if you dump spoiled food at night—”

  I didn’t stay to hear the rest, because I couldn’t go through the same story twice in one day.

  I lugged the bag over to the sidewalk. Inside the Roundhouse, I could make out Meg and Marla, alternating telling Julian stories about how things used to be in Aspen Meadow, how we used to have Aspen Meadow Taxi, one guy with one old car that used to be a hearse, how we used to have a bona fide art-film theater, and it was a regular theater, not a multiplex…

  I stared at the Ellises’ trash and thought about my earlier assessment of going through it being a long shot. What was I looking for? Communications from Utah about Uriah’s illicit past? Evidence of stolen paintings or legal skullduggery? A copy of Charlie’s altered will, unsigned, that Donald might have tossed away? Or maybe a receipt for an opal-and-diamond bracelet…

  I really wasn’t convinced I wanted to go through somebody’s sure-to-be-spoiled trash. But I tore open the sack anyway…and was rewarded with a stinking spill of coffee grounds.

  Okay, I thought as I removed wads of wet, crumpled-up paper. I had resolved to look for some of Bishop Uriah’s correspondence, or notes, or something. Or maybe I was looking for something else. I just didn’t know what.

  Had Nora known that somebody was selling her a stolen painting? I wondered as I began to smooth out the first wad of papers. Had she suspected? Maybe there was a bill of sale in here? And why did the Ellises have to crumple all their paper trash into teensy-weensy balls that were impossible to open? I’d have to go back and check my psych books, see if that was a sign of anal—Wait a minute.

  I was looking at a very wrinkled piece of yellow legal-pad paper that had been completely covered with what looked like shading, done with the side of a pencil tip, not with the point. Whoever had done the shading had revealed writing on a note that had been done on top of it. Well, for goodness’ sake. I didn’t know people did this anymore. Kids, yes. Grown-ups, no.

  I was tired. My body hurt and I knew I didn’t smell very good. But now I was consumed with curiosity. Meg, Marla, and Julian were still merrily conversing inside the Roundhouse as they clattered clean dishes back into the cupboards. Meg was doing most of the talking, it seemed to me, but that was okay. Marla isn’t a particularly good listener unless she’s really concentrating, but maybe that was precisely what she was doing. Julian, on the other hand, is a very good listener and can make anyone feel treasured.

  I needed better light. I eased under one of the outside security lamps I’d had installed, and suddenly the writing was as clear as if it had been written in white ink.

  I swallowed, and all my senses were suddenly alert. The date was October 18, the day before Dusty had been killed.

  Michael,You know I’m a generalist and don’t really handle this kind of thing. I need to talk to you in a professional capacity and don’t want to risk e-mail or telephone. I am seeking a divorce—

  But that was as far as I got in Donald Ellis’s note to divorce attorney Michael Radford. Because suddenly I couldn’t breathe. I gasped. There was a thin rope around my neck, and it was pulled tight. I tried to cough but couldn’t. I simply could not bring any air at all into my lungs. Black spots appeared before my eyes.

  “Our trash goes out on Monday,” Nora Ellis whispered in my ear. “Imagine my surprise when we hardly had any, especially since we’d just had a party over the weekend. Now walk.”

  No, I was not going to walk. I thrust my hands back, trying to get some purchase on her. I clawed, shoved backward, and tried to slam her with my head. Then I fell to my knees, refusing to budge.

  But I had underestimated Nora and her strong, squash-playing body. She yanked on the rope and deftly moved in front of me, pulling my body away from the Roundhouse with its security lights…and into the shadows. I coughed and choked and tried to get my fingers under the rope, to no avail. Instead, Nora was tugging me into the darkness, toward the lake. The lake, that was already beginning to freeze. If I wasn’t dead by the time I got there, she could push me in and I’d die of hypothermia.

  I couldn’t get my legs to move. I was stumbling forward, unable to see, unable to breathe, across the uneven ground between us and the lake.

  You know I’m a generalist.

  You know, I think she loved Mr. Ogden.

  You know…

  How was she keeping that rope so tight? I wondered even as I felt my consciousness bleeding away. She must have had some kind of knot on it. She was holding the rope with both hands and pulling hard. Was there any way I could get her to lighten up on her grip? My mind groped for answers, but my ability to think was fading, fading…

  Julian had said, She thought Mr. Ogden would leave his wife, but he didn’t…

  Dusty had written in her journal, “I’m afraid this is another Mr. O.”

  Wait, I thought when we reached where the ground sloped down toward the lake. If I push mightily toward one side, that could create slack in the rope. Then I could try to slip away, call for help…

  I stopped stumbling and leaped sideways. The rope went slack for a nanosecond. I managed to take a gasping breath, that was all, not make a cry for someone, anyone, to come to my aid…

  You know I think she loved Mr. Ogden…

  “Goldy?” a faraway voice called. Was it my mother, calling to me, beckoning me to the grave? “Goldy?”

  And then there was a sudden loosening of the rope, and a thud. Nora cried out and broke away from me. There was another thwacking noise, and Nora shrieked and ran toward the lake. Hacking and coughing as my lungs remembered how to work, I looked in the direction of the Roundhouse. I saw a bird, a ball, a rock, what was it? And why was it sailing toward me?

  Actually, it was headed for Nora, who was almost to the path that circled the lake. But the third toss of a baseball-size rock from star senior-softball pitcher Meg Blatchford landed just where the first two had been aimed: on the head of Nora Ellis. She collapsed to the ground and didn’t move.

  Julian called the police.

  CHAPTER 19

  Why did she do it? For one of the oldest reasons: jealousy. And Nora Ellis wasn’t just envious of Dusty, although she certainly was that. She despised what Dusty could do to her, to Nora.

  Dusty had been fifteen years younger than Donald; she’d been wonderfully pretty and optimistic; she’d hero-worshiped him, even though he was an associate with no money of his own. Still, Dusty had adored Donald, and he, in turn, reveled in her infatuation. Donald wanted to change his whole life, to have more of Dusty’s love. And Nora couldn’t stand for that.

  Because Nora had also been je
alous of her place in the community. She didn’t want to divorce Donald because she wanted to be married to him, to be an attorney’s wife, even one for whom she’d have to bring business, to ensure he made partner. And of course, there was that twenty million. She had loved Donald so much, she had insisted her inheritance be made marital property. Later, Nora told the police what I already knew: that she’d made it jointly theirs to show Donald how much she loved him. The downside to that was if Donald divorced her, which he certainly was prepared to do, he’d be taking half of that dough with him.

  Which, in Nora’s mind, was all the more reason to be rid of Dusty.

  But why did she have to run down defenseless Althea Mannheim? I kept wondering. Nora has now hired a criminal defense attorney, who has told her to keep her mouth shut, so I don’t know the answer. But I can imagine. Because Uriah Sutherland had seen Althea at Charlie Baker’s last show at the gallery. Uriah had watched Althea talk with a suddenly anxious Charlie Baker. And he’d been able to guess that the conversation involved Uriah’s stealing Althea’s family’s paten and chalice.

  Now Uriah has told the police that of course he informed Nora of why Althea was at the gallery. Uriah said he’d guessed why Althea was so urgently talking to Charlie. In fact, Uriah had told Nora all this right there at the reception. He didn’t know Nora was going to run Althea over, he told the police, how could he?

  So: at that same reception, when Uriah told Nora what Charlie Baker was just now learning, Nora saw Althea Mannheim as potentially spoiling her life. Because if Althea had succeeded in telling Charlie Baker about Uriah’s stealing, then she might tell the world. Then forget the Mountain Pastoral Center: nobody would hire Uriah. Nora would be taking care of her insufferable, thieving father for the rest of her days. The way she saw it, she had to get rid of Althea.

  And she had to get rid of Charlie Baker, too. Because once Charlie Baker learned the truth about Uriah, he would inevitably change his will, which was precisely what he had tried to do. And if he changed his will, everyone would learn why he’d changed his will. Once again, Nora would be stuck with Uriah and be socially embarrassed in the community. So she paid Charlie Baker a visit. Everyone in town knew Nora had scads of money. Had she pretended to be interested in buying a couple of his paintings, to get him up to his studio? It would have been easy to push the frail, cancer-ridden Charlie down the stairs, a fall that would be sure to kill him.

  Two other people had known that Charlie Baker was changing his will: Dusty Routt and Richard Chenault. Richard did admit to the police that Charlie had a new will drawn up that he’d never had the chance to sign and validate. He said he hadn’t tied Charlie’s desire for a new will to his death the next night. It had been none of his business, he told the cops. What he didn’t tell law enforcement was that Charlie’s sudden death gave Richard the idea to lift some of the paintings in Charlie’s house and create a fraudulent inventory to cover his theft.

  For that is what he did. The dual inventories that Dusty kept, plus her journal, helped to prove that. “I am going to FIND OUT,” she’d written. And where had Richard hidden the paintings? Why, in Donald Ellis’s mess of an office, that’s where. People who work on oil and gas leases have to have those large, long, map-size drawers, the same ones Dusty had complained about in her journal.

  Imagine Donald’s surprise, the morning after his wife was arrested, when he opened a drawer to check a map of the Wyoming gas fields Dusty had grumbled about not being able to find. Instead, almost three dozen unfinished paintings of Wedding Cake, Sponge Cake, and Cherry Coffeecake all spilled out. Unlike Louise Upton, when Donald Ellis discovered stolen goods, he reported them to the police. And right away, too. He didn’t even touch the paintings, he just left them on top of the mountain range of paper already decorating his floor.

  Investigators took fingerprints from the paintings, and some matched those of Richard Chenault. With that evidence plus the dual inventories, the cops had plenty of evidence to arrest Richard Chenault for felony theft. He’d also sold stolen property: Nora Ellis was only too happy to finger Richard for stiffing her for forty thou, which was what he’d charged her for the unfinished Charlie Baker painting of Journey Cake. Betraying a client’s trust, felony theft from an estate, and selling stolen property: very dark torts, indeed.

  But why had Richard stolen from dear, deceased Charlie Baker? Well, Richard was jealous, too. Jealous of all the things—cars, houses, vacations, women—his associate Donald had been able to have. Donald even had a wealthy, stay-at-home wife, which Richard had not had. No, Richard had been married to K.D., a successful professional woman who couldn’t abide his infidelity. I treasured K.D., whose care for a dying woman had led to the exposure of Uriah’s thievery and the motive behind the killing of Charlie Baker.

  I’d always suspected the cops didn’t have their man, or woman, as the case was, when they arrested Louise Upton. As it turned out, Dusty had been wearing the bracelet the night she died. It had been an early birthday present, Donald Ellis told the cops later, because opals were the birthstone for October. Donald had given Dusty the bracelet because he really did want to marry her, and he’d wanted her to know the level of his commitment. Maybe the bracelet, Donald’s divorce, and their desire to marry had been what Dusty had wanted to tell me that last, fateful night. But never mind all that, the cops said, because the important thing was that Nora had ripped the bracelet off Dusty’s wrist, once she was dead.

  I felt sorry for Wink Calhoun, because after Nora was apprehended, Wink’s conscience went into overtime. In one of their oh-so-friendly squash games, Nora had asked Wink if anyone in the firm was in dire financial straits. Wink had confided that Louise Upton needed money, and how. This was the data Nora had been seeking. Unfortunately, Wink then had taken the enormous guilt leap that this knowledge had helped Nora conceive her plan to kill Dusty, and blame Louise in her place. But I told Wink no. No: it had been Donald’s desire to get out of his marriage that had made Nora kill Wink’s dear friend.

  So: Nora had been aware that Louise Upton was strapped for money. This was why Nora had hired Louise to “help” with the party at her house. Once Louise was inside the house, Nora had easily dropped the opal-and-diamond bracelet through a slightly open window into Louise’s car. Louise, thinking a wealthy guest had lost the obviously valuable piece of jewelry, had tried to pawn the thing that very day. Also, when Nora was supposedly out running a few errands, and Louise was safe at the Ellises’ house setting up for the party, Nora had zipped over to Louise’s townhouse complex and left the sledgehammer she’d used on Dusty’s Civic in Louise’s Dumpster.

  But Louise wouldn’t, couldn’t, have killed Dusty. She might have been envious of the young, perky paralegal-to-be, but she was too protective of H&J to have its image sullied with a murder. Meanwhile, she’s planning on suing the cops for false arrest.

  Perhaps most inscrutable in all this was Donald Ellis. Who was he? He’d had affairs with both Wink and then Dusty, young women who had adored him. And maybe that was what he had been jealous for: adoration. Dusty had had no material goods, and had worshiped Donald because he represented what she was passionate about: the law, or maybe just being attached to a rich lawyer. He loved her, he said. That’s why they’d made love every lunch hour, with him hidden inside Dusty’s car as she drove it into Charlie Baker’s garage.

  I wondered. Dusty, judging from her journal, had only wanted to learn about the law, and to be in love. Donald, on the other hand, had wanted a new wife. And his note to his neighbor, divorce lawyer Michael Radford, had sealed Dusty’s fate. Nora Ellis had known about Dusty the way she had known about Wink; she’d just looked the other way. But then she’d sketched over a pad to find a note Donald had written to a premier divorce attorney. Facing a divorce and losing half of her inheritance—well, Nora just couldn’t have that.

  And now, ironically, Donald was getting just what he wanted. First, freedom from Richard and his envy and criticism. And he was getting,
finally, freedom from Nora, whom he was divorcing, against whom he was testifying, and whose money he now had to spend. But he wasn’t getting just what he wanted. He hadn’t gotten Dusty.

  The cops never did find Jason Gurdley, the fellow who tried to mow down Vic. Vic is doing better now, and we have him over to dinner sometimes. At least, he’s doing a lot better than when he almost was killed holding Dusty’s computer. In any event, I was certain that Nora had hired Gurdley to watch the Routts’ and later our house. When Vic came out of the Routts’ house with a computer, Gurdley had decided to play it better safe than sorry, and attempted to destroy the computer.

  Gurdley also could have tried to sideswipe K.D.’s car, since Nora might have worried that K.D. knew something about Uriah, based on her reaction to meeting him at the birthday party. K.D. returned from her hideout in Santa Fe, shocked to learn that what she’d suspected about the bishop had turned out to be true—and that her own husband was also a thief. On the bright side, she no longer has to fight with Richard over the divorce, and seems ready finally to get on with her life. She moved out of the house in Flicker Ridge and into a gorgeous townhouse right near Southwest Hospital.

  As for Nora Ellis…she was indeed that very wealthy lady who’d wanted, as Julian had characterized her, “the best-quality stuff, but only at a steep discount.” Facing grand larceny charges, Richard Chenault is now working on a plea bargain that begins with him sharing information. The first thing he told Detective Britt was that Nora Ellis had wanted to buy a Charlie Baker painting for Donald’s birthday present. Nora had asked Richard if he could “help her out,” as she put it. Since Richard had stolen a number of Charlie’s paintings, he’d sold Nora the one for Journey Cake at a huge discount. Nora, gleeful, hadn’t questioned the price, nor had she questioned the recipe, which had been one of the ways that this whole puzzle concerning Dusty’s murder had unraveled.