Dying for Chocolate Page 5

  “I feel light-headed,” I whispered to Schulz. He nodded sympathetically.

  “Here we go,” said General Bo as he strode in with a silver tray. “Brandy and coffee.”

  “General Farquhar,” I said after clearing my throat, “I tried to help the person who was killed. His name was . . . Philip Miller. I’m sorry, I . . . ran the T-bird into a utility pole.”

  “Philip Miller.” The general looked at me with disbelief. “Julian’s shrink?”

  “Yes,” I said, although I had not known this. “And my friend.”

  The general frowned. “Jesus.” He handed me a brandy snifter. “Unbelievable. How did it happen?”

  During my retelling of the accident story, the general shook his head just perceptibly with each detail, as if I were a subordinate commanding officer who had let a battle get out of hand. When I came to the part about the Thunderbird, he asked for its location so he could call to have it towed. And where were the keys? He would pick them up later, as they contained a house key.

  “Has Arch called?” I asked.

  The general lifted one eyebrow above his pale blue gaze. “Yes. He was only told he needed a ride home, he didn’t know about any of this . . .” He tilted his head, and I felt myself drawn into the deep furrows of his forehead. “Goldy. Don’t worry about anything. I have some work to do here, but I’ll pick up those keys and check on the car when I go over to the school later. Adele’s volunteered me to work at the pool site.” His look turned paternal. “Go upstairs and rest now. One of us will bring your son home.”

  And then he rose, as if to dismiss us. I drained my brandy, even though I didn’t want it. I wanted to sleep.

  When no one moved, General Bo said regretfully, “Putting in the garden today,” as if he had to leave momentarily for a meeting with the Joint Chiefs. He rocked forward on the balls of his new high-top sneakers and opened his eyes wide at me.

  Oh, God! I jumped up. Putting in the garden!

  “You have to go, you have to go,” I insisted to Schulz.

  Schulz did not move. Perched on the absurdly fragile pale green chair, he eyed me and then the general. “Nothing so busy as retirement,” he said solicitously.

  I grabbed Schulz’s hand and tugged. “You don’t understand, this is really big, he’s doing some—”

  “Actually,” the general said with great seriousness and a glance at his watch, “what I’m working on is killing two birds with one stone.”

  “Investigator Schulz,” I said in my most pleading voice, “it is imperative that we both leave immediately. Like now”

  Schulz looked at me as if I were crazy. He said nothing and did not move.

  “You see,” the general was saying blandly, “my field is terrorist technique.”

  Schulz mmhmmed as the general glanced at his watch.

  “How much time, how much time?” I demanded.

  The general frowned. He said, “T minus two, I’m afraid.” Then abruptly, to Schulz, he said, “I’m going to have to ask you to leave.”

  This was not the time for something about the general to attract Schulz’s attention. I knew the homicide investigator well enough to see a slight straightening of the spine, a narrowing of the eyes. Some other time, I begged mentally to Schulz, some other time! My eyes darted around the pink and green living room. White pillows dotted the floral landscape like marshmallows that suddenly swam as I struggled to concentrate. T minus two . . . where should we go?

  “Get up,” I said sharply to Schulz as I pulled now on both of his big hands. “Get up, you have to go, we have to get out of here.”

  Finally, Schulz heaved himself out of his chair. I glanced at the general. He was looking anxiously out the window, his forehead again wrinkled, this time in alarm.

  An explosion shook the house.

  “Damn!” yelled the general as he dashed out.

  I lost my balance and fell to my knees. Schulz grabbed his chair. Dust and smoke rose before the living-room windows. A Waterford vase on the mantel teetered and fell. The boom reverberated in my ears.

  “What the hell was that?” Schulz shouted.

  I straightened up and gazed at him.

  I said, “I tried to warn you. You wouldn’t listen. That was Putting in the Garden. Terrorist technique.”

  6.

  “Well,” Schulz said. He looked around the living room, surveyed the dust rising in front of the windows. Then he eyed me and shook his head. He held out his hand to help me up from the floor.

  “Interesting folks you’re living with,” he said when I was on my feet again. “Almost as good as a problematic ex-husband. Want to tell me about that?”

  I rubbed my bruised elbows and muttered a negative. Schulz shrugged and turned. I followed his saunter to the front door. Schulz’s presence, his great reservoir of calm, were things I was not yet ready to let go.

  As if to reassure myself, I said, “I’ll be okay here.”

  He shook his head again, took a deep breath. “Is there anyone inside this house right now? Or is everyone tending the aftermath of this garden bomb?”

  Before I could answer, the phone bleated in the kitchen. I asked Schulz to wait and went to see which neighbor was going to be the first to complain.

  But it was not a neighbor. In her role as vivacious volunteer, Adele was helping to coordinate a church music conference that would convene in Aspen Meadow in July. This call was from an Episcopal church organist and choirmaster in Salt Lake City. In a nasal tone, he demanded to know when Adele would return.

  To my surprise I was able to put him on hold and press the intercom button to search out the general. He was not in the house. I got back on the line with the choirmaster.

  “I don’t know when she’ll be back,” I said, then imprudently added, “I didn’t know there were any Episcopal churches in Utah.”

  The choirmaster yelled, “Listen! I need to know if she got fifty copies of Songs of Praise!”

  I said, “This is not something I know about.” Nor did I know why I expected someone who worked for the church to be civil, if not Christian.

  “And who are you?” he asked.

  “The cook.”

  There was a silence, then a groan. Would Adele please call as soon as possible? You bet, I said, and hung up.

  Schulz was standing in the hall perusing the panel of buttons that controlled the house security system.

  “Neighbor?” he asked without looking at me.

  “I wish. It was for Adele. The general’s wife.”

  “Should I have heard of her, too?”

  “I don’t think so. Remember my friend Marla? Her sister.”

  Schulz looked up the stairwell, then at the panel of security buttons. “You’ve got four loops here,” he said. “What—fire, perimeter, back door, first-floor motion detector?”

  “Very good,” I said wearily, then added, “I feel awful.”

  Schulz put his arm around my shoulders and guided me back out to the kitchen.

  “Did I hear you correctly?” he asked as he gave me his patented Santa Claus half-grin. “Do I remember Marla? How could I forget? My ears still haven’t recovered. Why don’t we get Miss Yakkety-Yak over here to be with you?”

  I said something vaguely affirmative and Schulz began to paw through the kitchen desk until a phone book presented itself. Muttering under his breath, he stared at the phone with its many buttons, frowned, and then punched. His voice murmured into the phone, echoed off the surfaces of the shiny pots and pans, and reverberated from the brilliant counter tiles. I looked around the kitchen but then closed my eyes. Everything seemed too bright.

  With my eyes shut, I tried to look inward. What was I feeling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.

  “Twenty minutes,” said Schulz after he hung up. And then without asking he moved around the kitchen opening more cabinets until he found some tea. He set about boiling water and heating a pot. Eventually he poured steaming amber liquid into thin porcelain cups. The soothing fragra
nce of Earl Grey tea filled the kitchen. When I thanked Schulz there was a catch in my voice.

  He settled onto a barstool and we drank in silence. Only the distant yells of General Bo and Julian punctuated the silence.

  “Goldy,” Schulz said finally with that half-smile of his, “tell me more about your general.”

  I tsked and sighed. “He was in Afghanistan,” I said, “role of observer or something. Before that he was a demolitions guy.”

  Schulz let out a low whistle. “It’s coming back. He’s the guy, taught the Afghanis how to blow up Soviet tanks with rocket-propelled grenades they’d captured. He was the guy! I knew I’d seen him on TV.”

  I turned back to my tea. “Nobody could figure out where the Afghanis were getting their recoilless rifles and C4, which is an explosive used by terrorists.”

  Schulz smiled. “Thanks. I know what C4 is.”

  I shrugged. “Anyway,” I said, “General Bo wasn’t talking. Maybe the army didn’t want him to give specifics. Marla said Bo was supposedly involved with the black market for explosives. Now he’s a civilian and he consults. He experiments. If he survives, he writes about it.” I stopped talking, exhausted by the effort.

  “I don’t know if I’d want to be living on the top floor of a house belonging to a former demolitions expert. Emphasis on the former.”

  “Thanks loads.”

  “Now tell me about John Richard Korman.”

  I sipped tea, tried to think of how to put this so it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. I had told neither Philip Miller nor Tom Schulz—until our ride over here today—about The Jerk’s behavior last month or how it had frightened me. Why discuss John Richard’s behavior? Philip would have tried to explain it and Schulz would have tried to stop it.

  Philip. The name brought pain.

  I said, “I told you. John Richard was driving by every night. Hassling me about money, about seeing Arch. For about a month.”

  “Did you report it?”

  I shook my head.

  Schulz said, “Did you do anything?”

  I said, more sharply than I meant to, “I divorced him, didn’t I? I moved, didn’t I? I’m getting a security system for my house, okay?”

  “Look,” he said, “we’ve got a weird call and now a death. Someone you knew. You’ve got a violent ex with a bad family history. I want you to stay in touch with me. You’re not safe. Do you understand?”

  I nodded, numb.

  The security gate buzzed: Marla, thank God. I looked at my watch. 2:30. Hard to believe. Events and conversations were flowing together, out of my control.

  Marla arrived at the front door wearing one of her sequined and feathered sweat suits. Here and there jeweled barrettes held her fluffy brown hair. She looked like a plump exotic bird. In her hands were shopping bags. These were undoubtedly filled with ready-to-eat gourmet delicacies hastily purchased to relieve me from cooking. My heart warmed at the sight of her.

  “Oh Goldy, God, I don’t believe this,” she said when she had heaved the bags onto the foyer floor. Her capacious arms circled me. “Are you okay?”

  I lifted my chin from her shoulder and said, “No.”

  “I’ll bet. Where’s Adele?”

  “At a meeting.”

  From behind us, Schulz said, “I’m off.”

  I pulled away. “No, wait—”

  Marla, sensing discomfort in the air, scooped up the grocery bags and mumbled about getting things into the kitchen. Schulz and I walked out the front door.

  Birds squawked and flitted between the pines. The sun was warm. A bird darted into a well of sunlight and flashed a white underbelly. It was getting on to late afternoon. Snow melted noisily all around us as we made our way to the car. Tree branches dripped and the earth sucked and popped in absorbing the wet. Here and there on the lawn and in the general’s new flower pots were clods of dirt that had been blown over the roof by the backyard garden-explosion. At Schulz’s car, I thanked him for bringing me home. Avoiding his eyes, I said, “You’ve been kind. Thanks.”

  He waited for me to say more, to say something about seeing him again or wanting to. But I did not.

  He said, “Goldy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Call me if you want to talk about the accident. Or anything else.”

  “You need to come home,” Marla was saying into the kitchen phone when I returned. She hung up. “Adele,” she explained, rolling her eyes. “Wanted to know why I was answering the phone in her house, so I told her about you and Philip and the accident. Talk about stunned. She was speechless.”

  “Where was she?”

  “Still at Elk Park Prep. My sister, the storm-trooper fund-raiser. It’s like putting General Bo into one of those paint-pellet games. God help the school.” She paused for a moment, then pulled a clear plastic container filled with salad from one of the bags. “Speaking of Bo,” she said, “I bought something that sounds like a uniform. Field greens? Think you can get them on the black market, too? Anybody done a study of terrorist food?”

  I turned to her with my mouth open. “Field greens?” I didn’t get it. Suddenly the absurdity of everything swept over me. I gagged. Marla reached out to hold me.

  “It’s okay,” she said.

  Firmly, Marla sat me down. With the efficiency I admired so much in her, she made some espresso. She knew I loved the stuff, and she even remembered not to ruin it with lemon peel or sugar. I liked it better than tea anyway. When she set the tiny cup down, she glanced out back.

  “What’s the general doing? Putting in a gold mine?”

  “No, a garden.”

  She shook her heavy cheeks. “Too bad he’s never gone hand to hand with The Jerk.” She giggled and sat down next to me in a flurry of feathers and sequins. She said, “There are a lot of people we should call. About Philip.”

  I nodded. In Aspen Meadow you had to call people in times of crisis. You had to let them know they’d be needed. She found pencil and paper and asked for numbers, which I read to her from our slender town phone book. At Elizabeth’s house she got the answering machine. Next she tried a neighbor of Elizabeth’s in the hope that we could get somebody to be with her. There was no answer. Marla then tried Aspen Meadow Health Food. She told the clerk what had happened, asked her to put up a sign closing the place for the next few days, and left our numbers to be called.

  When I had finished the coffee we put away the food Marla had purchased: there was enough for several days. She asked me about the evening meal. Chicken salad, in the refrigerator. I could not imagine eating. I looked at my watch.

  Where was Arch?

  “Goldy.” Marla touched my shoulder. “What is it?”

  “Find out where Arch is,” I said in a whisper.

  Marla turned crisply and called the school, was put on hold, fumed and fussed, and eventually had an answer. She held her hand over the receiver. “Adele offered to bring him home when the general comes by later. But she’s not authorized to take him, so Arch is still there, and Adele is coming home early with somebody else. Want me to go?”

  I shook my head and got on the phone with the minor bureaucrat, said General Farquhar would be by later and he had my authorization to pick up Arch.

  Marla asked if I wanted more coffee or what. I shook my head as she took out lace place mats and English china for the evening meal, then searched out the general. I wanted Arch to be home. I wanted this day to be over. When Marla returned, she moved between the kitchen and dining room to set the table. I furiously began to wash the teacups. Work was always the best antidote for frustration.

  Also the best antidote for . . .

  With a pang I saw Philip’s face crinkled with laughter the last time we’d gone out. I’d told him Arch had bought a copy of The Anarchist’s Cookbook and refused to yield it to me when I’d demanded it. Philip had found this amusing.

  “Censorship,” he accused. “Even if it is a cookbook.”

  “For bombs,” I said. “I’m not sure the g
eneral’s influence is good for him.”

  “You know as well as I do,” he said, “that the more upset you get about it, the more he’s going to want it. Just talk to him. Don’t lose your cool. He’s been in therapy; he can always go back. And you’ve got me.”

  A teacup slid through my hands and broke to smithereens in the sink. Marla rushed over and ordered me to sit down. She said the general had gone in his Range Rover to check on the T-bird and get Arch. Just relax, she kept telling me, everything is going to be okay.

  I looked out the west-facing kitchen window. Gray clouds had again billowed up over the mountains. On the hills below, lodgepole and ponderosa pines absorbed the sudden darkness. Stands of white-skinned aspens stood out like skeletons. The aspens’ tiny cupped green leaves held the light and turned a fluorescent lime color as the gloom gathered.

  “Goldy!” Adele Farquhar’s voice rang down the hall. “Marla? Who’s here?” The wooden hall floor echoed her familiar tap-step, tap-step. “Where are you?” Adele appeared at the kitchen doorway. Her thin, made-up face was pinched into lines of dismay. Her strawlike hair, dyed dark to hide the gray and cut into a severe pageboy, set off her navy-blue silk dress. Her hand gripped her cane so tightly her knuckles were white. She swept forward to embrace me; her voice cracked. “Thank God you’re alive.”

  “It was awful,” I said, my voice muffled by her shoulder. Adele smelled like floral powder mixed delicately with sweat. Her hair brushed my cheek; her pearls pressed into my neck. I could feel the bones of her thin shoulders under the layer of silk. After a moment I pulled away.

  She said, “At the school they told us what happened.” She shook her head in disbelief, her hazel eyes filled with questions. “He was a nice man. And a good psychologist. It’s unbelievable. Philip was helping Julian so much . . . I don’t know. God! This weather’s so unpredictable.”

  I looked at her, a taller, thinner, older version of Marla. She was glancing around the kitchen in a distracted way, as if something contained in the polished, professional space could provide the cure for cold spring weather.

  Her eyes found her sister. “Marla!”