Dark Tort Read online

  “Everybody looks cold,” Richard said, his voice gentle but firm. “Let’s go inside and check on Dusty and K.D.” He lifted his chin at Donald, Alonzo, and Louise, to indicate that everyone should follow him.

  “We probably ought to avoid the office,” I managed to say. My breath came out in a ghostlike puff. “I mean, we should wait for the cops.” I wasn’t quite ready to say, Because it might be a crime scene.

  “I have a key to the second conference room,” Richard said, his voice softer than I had ever heard it. “It’s down the hall from our office. We hardly ever use it because it hasn’t been redecorated yet.” He said, “Let’s go, everybody,” then walked purposefully toward the sidewalk.

  “I feel a little dizzy,” Alonzo said, his voice low.

  “Sit down on the ground,” I commanded, quickly putting an arm around him. “Let me lower you.”

  “I’ll help,” Donald offered. His voice cracked, too, but he had enough composure to take on half of Alonzo’s weight and get him down to the curb. “Try to breathe, Claggs.”

  “I’m okay,” Alonzo replied weakly, when he clearly was not. He bit his upper lip and took several deep breaths. “We need to get inside—I mean, to the conference room, where Richard wants us. I just feel so…cold, all of a sudden.” He inhaled several lungfuls of air and then announced that he was getting up.

  “Lean on me,” Donald directed, as he grunted and groaned, and finally hauled Alonzo up from the pavement.

  We followed the others. Our footsteps made gritty sounds as we headed up the main steps to the office. I scanned the parking lot, but there was still no sign of emergency vehicles. I prayed K.D. was having more luck with Dusty than I’d had.

  Once we were inside the building, our little brigade marched past the closed door to the office. There was no sign of K.D. At the far end of the dark hall, Richard ushered us into a dusty, scruffy-looking Queen Anne–style conference room. Dimly lit with filthy crystal chandeliers, the space had an oak floor covered with a navy-and-burgundy Oriental rug, an oval cherry conference table, a hidden sink, and a grit-covered glassed-in cabinet that housed wine and double–old-fashioned glasses, along with cups and saucers. Hanging on the walls between brass-and-crystal wall sconces were Charlie Baker drawings, these presumably less valuable than the actual paintings in the H&J lobby. Despite the grime, I liked this space much better than the cowboy-style insanity of the main office. But maybe clients wanted to be reminded they were in the West.

  Richard began: “This woman I know called me and said she saw someone hurrying over from the law office. She thought maybe you were a burglar. Donald and Alonzo happened to be at my house, discussing a case, and came with me, as did K.D. We called Louise on our way over. Were you hurt? Was there an assailant outside our office? Had he gotten inside?” His gray eyes bore into me, at once concerned and wanting to get at what exactly was going on. “She said you were hysterical.”

  “Well—” I began.

  “This same woman said you banged on the door of that art-and-music store until it broke. Then you demanded that somebody call an ambulance and the police.” Again, his sharp eyes questioned me.

  “I don’t know what happened, Richard,” I began, whereupon Louise Upton loudly cleared her throat. Well, tough tacks. I wasn’t going to call him “Mr. Chenault” when he had repeatedly told me not to. “Richard,” I went on, “I’m just telling you what I saw when I came in to start the bread for your meeting with clients tomorrow. Dusty was lying on the floor of the lobby.” I pressed my lips together and took in all their faces. “I think…I don’t think…I need to say that I very much doubt K.D. will be able to revive her.”

  There was a collective intake of breath. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis exchanged a glance.

  “You don’t?” Richard’s unfailingly polite facade slipped for a moment. “You think she died in this office? Our office? You think our Dusty died here?”

  “No,” Donald Ellis said. His face turned scarlet to the roots of his red hair. “This is our…we’ve been here since…I don’t believe it. Dusty?” Tears welled in his eyes. Stupefied, he turned to glare at Alonzo Claggett. Alonzo covered his face with his hands.

  Richard was having trouble staying composed. He licked his lips and stared at me. “Do you—you said maybe she had a heart attack? We could help K.D. with CPR…Dusty was too young—”

  “I did CPR on Dusty for a long time,” I said. “It felt like half an hour but might have been less. It looked as if she…she had been…attacked.”

  The conference room fell completely silent.

  “She must have been associating with the wrong element,” announced Louise Upton, her voice steely. “Someone had to have followed her into our office. She must not have closed the door completely. Maybe it was a teenager, looking for someone to rob. He ran into Dusty and killed her.”

  I tried not to think of how many times Arch had complained to me that when something went wrong, the first person suspected was always a teenager.

  “Well! When Richard called, I was just leaving the Aspen Meadow Chorale’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance,” Louise went on blithely. “I guess I should have stayed home. Then I could have done something about this. Although I don’t know how I could have possibly envisioned such a thing happening to one of our…” She left the sentence unanswered.

  “Has anyone called her family?” Richard asked, his voice barely audible.

  “No,” I told him. “I just dialed 911.”

  “What in the hell is this going to mean?” Alonzo looked up. His expression was wild; his voice high and querulous. “That is”—he struggled to put together his question—“what will it mean for the firm?”

  “Alonzo,” said Richard, “you need to…” He left the sentence unfinished.

  “Goldy?” Donald Ellis, distraught, was fidgeting in his chair. His flushed face still bore the marks of tears. “Goldy?” Donald said again, placing his restless hands palm down on the rosewood table. “What do you think happened?”

  “I don’t know.”

  My answer hung in the air until finally, finally, sirens screamed in the distance.

  I stood and took in the men’s grim faces. I said, “I have to talk to the cops. Please, don’t anyone go into the office.”

  “Take my keys, Goldy,” Richard said. He handed me a gold key ring. When I looked at him, uncomprehending, he added, “You gave yours to K.D., remember?”

  Louise Upton had left the table and was clanking around underneath the sink in the corner bar. She brought up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and clapped it down on the dusty bar, then squeaked open the cabinet and started pulling out glasses.

  “Goldy,” Louise inquired, “do you suppose you could go get us some ice?”

  I didn’t look at her as I opened the door. Before the door shut, I heard Louise say, “Richard, that girl never does a thing I tell her.”

  I walked down the hall, out the main second-story entrance to the building, and down the steps.

  In the parking lot, red, blue, and white lights flashed in the fog, which had become thicker and more frigid as the night wore on. I hopped onto the grass, and then hugged my sides as the icy blades fingered their way through my shoes, stockings, and pants. Vic had crossed over to this side of the street. He now stood alone next to Dusty’s Civic in the middle of the parking lot. He looked dazed. I walked up beside him and began waving in the emergency vehicles.

  Cops and med techs spilled onto the pavement. When the first pair of policemen trotted up to us, I gave them Richard’s gold key ring and told them to take the medics upstairs, to the office of Hanrahan & Jule. There was a doctor on-site, I added. I asked the cops if they wanted me to come; they said no. As the paramedics traipsed up the stairs behind the law enforcement team, Vic made his way to the sidewalk. I thought he might try to follow the medics into the office, so I went after him. But instead of going anywhere, he stopped at the foot of the outside steps, then flopped onto the cold, w
et grass. I sat down beside him.

  “Vic? Talk to me.”

  “I—I can’t. Is it really bad? Tell me it isn’t.”

  “I’m not sure.” I hesitated. Finally I said, “Can I get you a drink? They’ve got some scotch upstairs.”

  “No, no.” He sighed.

  His voice was shaking. “What happened, will you tell me?”

  I’d told the lawyers, hadn’t I? “I found Dusty upstairs. She…she wasn’t breathing.”

  “You found Dusty?” Vic echoed. “What do you mean? What was the matter with her?”

  “I don’t know, except that she just wasn’t taking any breaths. But a doctor went right up to the office when I came over here. Now they’ve got a whole team of medics in the office.”

  Vic uttered a stream of profanities and ran his large hands through his head of sandy curls. He didn’t seem to want to talk anymore, but I was still worried about him, and scooted over closer to where he was sitting. He abruptly stood and marched over to Dusty’s Civic, where he let out a moan. When I walked to his side, my feet crunched over glass. Great. The cops would say I destroyed one crime scene and mindlessly tampered with another. Gently, I put my arm around Vic. His body shook under my touch.

  “Vic,” I said, feeling dreadful, “we need to move back over to the sidewalk.”

  “Tell me the worst isn’t true. What did you find?”

  “It looked as if she’d been attacked.”

  He began to sob. I murmured comforting words and guided him back to the staircase.

  The moon had risen and lightened the darkness. I finally thought to look at my watch, which said it was half past twelve. Had it really been two hours since I’d showed up at the law firm? It felt like nothing; it felt like forever. A solitary cop approached us.

  “Which one of you called the department?” he asked, his voice matter-of-fact.

  “I did,” I replied. For the first time, my own voice cracked. “I found her.”

  The cop eyed me, his gaze impenetrable. He was short and stockily built, and he wore a sheriff’s department leather jacket that made him look even wider than he was. He had dark, close-set eyes and equally dark eyebrows. His frown was formidable.

  “I’m Officer Nelson,” he began. “You went into that office first?”

  “Yes,” I said. Nearby, Vic tried to stifle his weeping.

  “I’m going to need to see some ID from you.”

  “I’m Investigator Tom Schulz’s wife,” I said. Officer Nelson flinched. Why? I wondered. Was he intimidated by Tom’s reputation? “In terms of ID, my purse and driver’s license are locked in my van, which is in back of this office building. My cell phone’s in there, too. I dropped my van keys when I…when I made the discovery.”

  “I remember you. The caterer, right?” When I nodded, he went on: “Where did you go after you left here?”

  I paused as Vic shuffled up. The cop regarded him without curiosity. “She came to our place. Art, Music, and Copies. It’s right over there.” Vic pointed across the street.

  “Sir,” the cop said to Vic, “would you please move back across the street, back to your place of business? Someone will be over shortly to take your statement.” Nelson turned his attention back to me. “Was anyone else around? People who could have seen someone leave this office?”

  “Not that I know of.”

  “We had another call to the department from someone who said she was outside the grocery store.”

  I wormed my frigid hands up inside the sleeves of Vic’s sweatshirt. “Officer Nelson, as far as I know, I was the only one over on this side of the street when I…made the discovery.”

  “Let’s go back to my car, okay?”

  Feeling queasy, I followed Officer Nelson to his car. Furman County is one of the biggest counties in Colorado, and their sheriff’s department is impressively large. This cop knew me, but I didn’t know him. That made me even more nervous as I tried to formulate the words to describe what I’d done, and why.

  When we slid into the black-and-white, the cop handed me a sheriff’s department blanket. “So you’re Schulz’s wife. How ’bout that.” I nodded, feeling only slightly less ill at ease. It wasn’t as if Nelson was offering to shake my hand. Instead, he pulled out a clipboard. “When and how did you find this woman?”

  “Is she—?” I demanded. “Did she—”

  The cop shook his head, then continued with his questions. What was the woman’s full name, where did she live? Why did she happen to be here, and why did I? He wrote everything down, then told me not to go anywhere. He stepped out of the patrol car, shut the door, and motioned for Vic Zaruski, who hadn’t moved, to come over. I turned in the seat to watch them. Vic seemed to be explaining that his place of employment was not where he should be headed. After dispersing the waiting-to-see-what-was-going-on crowd, Nelson led Vic to another police car.

  The sheriff’s department’s white criminalistics van pulled into the lot and parked beside the Beemers. Armed with cameras, the crime-scene technicians descended on the office building. I focused my eyes far away.

  Almost four miles distant, the portion of Aspen Meadow Lake that hadn’t yet frozen shimmered in the moonlight. What was the cop asking Vic? I shivered, even though the motor was running and metallic-smelling heat blasted out of the dashboard fans. Actually, I did know what Officer Nelson was demanding of Vic Zaruski. How do you know this woman, Goldy Schulz? When this Mrs. Schulz came into your store to report the crime, how did she act? Did she seem upset? What did she say, exactly? He was asking those questions because I was the one who’d found Dusty, and therefore was automatically the first person whom law enforcement would suspect. This was another thing I wasn’t quite ready to face.

  Sudden shouting startled me. A moment later, a very upset Richard Chenault, his face set in frustration, his cashmere coat billowing around behind him, loped ungracefully down the steps from the building’s upper level. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis, unsure of anything except that they probably were supposed to follow, hurried fast on Richard’s heels. Louise Upton maneuvered down after them, then immediately marched purposefully over to the nearest policeman, who happened to be standing on the sidewalk directing the crime-scene techs. Louise raised her voice so high I caught every word, unfortunately.

  “Mr. Chenault is a very well-respected member of this community,” Louise cried, shaking her finger in the unsuspecting cop’s face. “It’s his office, and he deserves to know what is going on in there! Now, did someone break in? Is his niece dead? We need to know these things! Also, we have many valuable items and irreplaceable files inside—”

  The cop interrupted her, speaking words I couldn’t make out. Louise Upton promptly stopped talking, pressed her lips together, and stepped back a pace. The cop leaned in toward her and raised his forefinger, talking all the while. Louise ducked her chin, pressed her lips together, and listened, looking humbled, for once. I thought, Oh, man, if only I had a camera.

  Donald Ellis and Alonzo Claggett, meanwhile, shook their heads as they spoke to two other policemen. Richard Chenault, his voice subdued and his face stricken, talked to a third cop.

  Two more cops were leaning in to stare at the area in front of Dusty’s old Honda. I squinted at the Civic. Dusty had been fond of telling me that she left her car, a donation from a St. Luke’s parishioner, as far from the office building as possible, to get a bit of extra exercise walking to the law firm. Once summer was over, she’d started working out at the rec center with Alonzo. Then they’d drive separately over to H&J. At the office, she changed into whatever suit she was wearing at the office that day. I sighed.

  So, what was going on with Dusty’s Civic? It was parked right under a streetlight. Dusty had been as meticulous about the appearance of that little car as she was of her own person. But the paint job was a wreck, and the rear lights had been…what? Smashed? I got out of the patrol car, motioned to a nearby cop, and pointed to the car. In a garbled voice, I informed him it was D
usty’s, and that it had been vandalized.

  He nodded, then looked at me sympathetically. “She was a friend of yours, this girl?” I nodded. “For long?”

  “A few years.”

  The cop closed his eyes and raised his eyebrows, as in, Too bad. He told me the detectives would want to talk to me after a bit, and I shouldn’t go anywhere. Then he walked away.

  I swallowed and watched him. Why hadn’t he asked more about Dusty? I knew what questions I’d face once the detectives arrived. The same ones I’d gotten from Officer Nelson. And then there were the questions that were important to me, questions the cops were very unlikely to ask.

  Why was Dusty so special to you? Because I still thought of her as a high-school kid. Because she and her low-income family lived in a Habitat for Humanity house, just down the street from us, and people in town still made fun of them. Because until her uncle Richard, who didn’t believe in handouts, had agreed to pay off her student loans for community college, foot the bill for her paralegal training, and hire her, she’d never seemed to have a bit of luck.

  She’d been a scholarship student at Elk Park Prep. Julian Teller, my part-time assistant and our occasional boarder, had been a classmate of Dusty’s at EPP. He, too, had been a scholarship student, and he and Dusty had been boyfriend-girlfriend for a while. He said Dusty had been smart…not just bright, but brilliant. And then she’d been expelled from Elk Park Prep because she’d become pregnant…not by Julian.

  That spring, I’d been dealing full-time with the Jerk, who, even though we were divorced, managed to make my life miserable. I had taken meals over when Dusty had miscarried, but the Routts hadn’t offered any details of the misbegotten pregnancy. Nor had I asked any. I did know that Dusty had managed to get her GED after the Elk Park Prep meltdown. The next time I’d come in close contact with her, she’d been working at a cosmetics counter at a department store.

  “Those bastard Routt children,” the mean-spirited had snorted. “We wonder if Dusty is selling those free samples she gets.”