The Grilling Season Read online

  I stared out the window in sullen silence. Hard lesson, indeed.

  “Okay now. Next step,” Marla breezed on, “who’s at home? Somebody to screen your calls? Be with Arch?”

  “Macguire Perkins.”

  “Oh, great. How’s he doing? Is the mono over, or almost over, or what?”

  “He’s sleeping, as usual. Not eating. But he could be good for Arch. You know, be someone to talk to besides me about what’s happening.”

  “Does Macguire do anything that would get Arch out of the house? You know, go out to the movies, whatever?”

  “I suppose,” I murmured. What did Macguire do? Not much. Virtually nothing at all, to be honest. “He’s under doctor’s orders to get mild exercise. And for Macguire ‘mild’ means ‘with as little exertion as possible.’ I urge him to take a walk most days. Sometimes Arch goes along, and they make it as far as John Richard’s office.”

  “Okay, you’ll have to get Arch to go out with Macguire for a stroll today. You want him out of the house for a bit. You know your phone’s going to start ringing.”

  I sighed. “You know you can’t make Arch do anything when he has his mind set on something else. Which he will have when he hears this news. Besides, Arch was supposed to go hiking with John Richard and spend the night with him while I worked the McCrackens’ Stanley Cup celebration party here in the club.”

  “Good,” said Marla bluntly. I wondered confusedly why everything seemed good to her today. She cast an appraising eye at the Rodines’ house. Gail’s face was no longer in the window. “I’ll call Arch’s friend. What’s his name, Todd Druckman?” I nodded, and she went on. “I’ll ask Todd if Arch can go over and spend the night. That’ll get him out of your house. Can Macguire accompany you and help tonight? Is he contagious or anything?”

  “No, he’s not contagious. But I can assure you he won’t have the energy for it.” I stared glumly out the window. “How can you talk about all this now?”

  “Uh. Let’s see. ‘Cuz your husband the cop asked me to take care of you?”

  I touched her forearm and she tilted her head questioningly. “Is this really happening?” I asked my best friend. “Did John Richard finally kill someone?”

  She didn’t answer, because at that moment we both heard a very faint voice calling, “Mom?”

  Arch had come out onto the Rodines’ porch. At fourteen, he was still much shorter than his peers, with tousled brown hair and a generally scruffy appearance. He had changed into khaki cutoffs and a T-shirt printed with the Biocess logo. Biocess was the product of a drug company for which John Richard had been doing endorsements lately. Unfortunately, the only things Arch or I ever got out of John Richard’s high-paying endorsements were ugly T-shirts and pens that leaked all over the place. Arch’s tortoiseshell glasses winked as he shielded his eyes against the sun and frowned at Marla’s and my cars in the street.

  “We’ll be up to get you in a minute, Arch!” Marla called. “You don’t need to come out yet!”

  Without replying, Arch turned on his heel and retreated into the house.

  “So do you think he did it?” I pressed, not able to let it go. “Do you think John Richard Korman actually, finally, went over the edge and killed someone?”

  “Of course I do,” Marla replied evenly. “With ten or twelve drinks in him and something to set him off? No question. You said yourself you saw the bruise marks. And the Jerk had something big to set him off, take my word for it.”

  “What? I mean, besides some money problems.”

  “He didn’t have anything besides money problems, Goldy. He and ACHMO are being sued by the McCrackens, and even with malpractice insurance, he’s going to have costs. I heard the malpractice people hired an attorney, ACHMO had to hire several attorneys, and John Richard had to hire his own separate attorney. You know how much preparation these trials are going to take. My guess is the financial mess of his lawsuit is eating him alive.” She said it smugly. I wasn’t the only one who wanted John Richard to suffer. “Look, you haven’t had any child support for months, right?”

  “Three, to be exact.”

  Marla raised her eyebrows in mock astonishment. Of course she’d heard me complain about John Richard slacking off in this department numerous times. She went on. “You were so eager to get out of that marriage that you took a one-time financial settlement and minimal child support. Now every time you need something for Arch, like, say, tuition money, you have to go back and negotiate, or should I say beg. Right?” I nodded dully and glanced up at the porch. Arch was nowhere in sight. Marla wagged a finger at me to make sure I was paying attention. “My lawyer went for a part of the practice. Ten percent of the gross income per annum. Not that I needed it, but I figured the best way to punish the Jerk was in his pocketbook. If you—”

  I interrupted impatiently. “Marla, a woman is dead. Where is this going?”

  “To the bank, honey. Back in the good old pre-managed care days, I got sixty to eighty thou a year, a reliable ten percent of six to eight hundred thousand of the Jerk’s gyn and baby-delivery practice. But things began to change. With more and more of his patients signing up with HMOs instead of half of them being insured and half paying out of pocket, his income started to decline. He supplemented it with endorsing that designer antibiotic for pregnant women with infections. What’s the name of it?”

  “Biocess,” I supplied.

  “Right. Another fifty thou a year there, of which I got a paltry five. Plus he began to work in the hospitals on the weekends, but you know how he hates to have his social life tied up, even if working a weekend shift brought him in another sixty thou a year. All this was getting exhausting for the poor fellow.”

  “Marla—”

  “Wait. Then he got bought out by the Astute-Care Health Maintenance Organization, aka ACHMO, which sounds like a sneeze more than an HMO, but—” She shrugged. “We don’t need to be reminded of that little transaction, which also brought into our lives the now-dead-as-a-doorknob Ms. Craig.”

  Poor Suz. An ache pierced my chest.

  “Goldy, these days, if you want to have a baby in Aspen Meadow, or if you want to have the Jerk as your gynecologist, you or your husband or your significant other has to belong to ACHMO, yes? I mean, God only knows why any sane woman would insist on having John Richard as her doctor. But he does have his supporters, I suppose. How strong that support might be depends on your willingness to pony up with the cost of ACHMO membership.”

  “Marla, I know this. And that ACHMO bought his practice for one point one mil, and he bought the fancy new house in the club over by Suz. So what?”

  Marla said patiently, “So I got a hundred ten thousand when he sold the practice, but in the two years since then I’ve only received thirty thousand dollars the first year, twenty this year. Don’t you get it? His annual income has dropped by more than half. Enough to get him mightily ticked off, wouldn’t you say? First I called that new secretary of his, the sweet young thing? You know who I mean.”

  “ReeAnn Collins,” I said. ReeAnn was a lovely twenty-three-year-old who’d been working for John Richard for the last ten months or so. I’d suspected ReeAnn was half in love with him, of course. I’d thought of warning her off, as I always thought I should. But I never did. I hadn’t warned Suz Craig, either. A stone seemed to form in my throat.

  “ReeAnn didn’t know anything about why my reimbursement was dropping off,” Marla went on smoothly, “so I called AstuteCare. I demanded to know how much money John Richard was due to get and when.”

  “Sheesh, Marla.”

  “Oh, it was fun. I talked to Suz Craig’s secretary and then I talked to some guy named Chris Corey, who handles Provider Relations. Corey used to be a doctor, but now he’s making it big in administration,” she added with a coarse laugh. “He was so-o-o polite, trying to tell me that how much John Richard made was none of my frigging business.”

  “Yes, I know him—” In my mind’s eye, I saw a heavy man tumbling dow
n a flight of steps. “Chris Corey sprained his ankle over at Suz’s.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen him limping around. He lives with his sister, Tina, up here. She’s one of the women in charge of the Babsie show at the LakeCenter.”

  I tried to focus. I didn’t care about the Coreys. “Are you telling me,” I said, “that John Richard has gone from earning up to eight hundred thousand dollars a year down to making three hundred thousand dollars a year?”

  “Sad, ain’t it?”

  “And he supplemented that income by endorsing Biocess and working in the hospital. You’re saying you didn’t like the way your share dropped and you tried to find out if he was stiffing you.” What on earth did any of this have to do with the death of Suz?

  “Right!” Marla said firmly. “So finally I called my lawyer about the drop in income and told him about all the people I’d talked to. My lawyer made some more calls and then let me know that the Biocess endorsement was in some kind of limbo. Plus John Richard hasn’t yet received the latest bonus he was supposed to get from ACHMO. A bonus in the big fat neighborhood of two hundred thousand dollars. When the bonus does come through, I should see some more cash. I would love to have my cut of that, Goldy. But mainly I did all this just to annoy John Richard, because I knew it would get back to him that I was nosing around. The guy is up to his ears in debt from the good old days, what with payments to you, and payments to me, and payments on his condos, and payments on his new house, and payments on his cars, and dealing with the McCrackens. So. I wanted the Jerk to know I was on his case. I wanted him to squirm.”

  “And the connection to Suz Craig is …”

  Marla raised an eyebrow. “Didn’t I tell you? Suz was the one who decided whether or not he got the bonus.”

  Chapter 6

  Marla and I were prevented from further discussion of John Richard’s plummeting finances and mounting problems by the sudden reappearance of my son. Arch bounded awkwardly off the Rodines’ porch and frowned as he lugged his overnight bag toward us. I had the sinking feeling that the overnight had not gone well. Marla asked if I wanted her to stay and I said no. After giving Arch a quick, wordless hug and me a bright, reassuring smile, she va-voomed off in her Mercedes.

  “Why was Marla here?” Arch asked as he clicked his seat belt in place. He had the thickened voice and strong boy smell that always seems to accompany the morning-after of slumber parties.

  “Just visiting,” I said lightly.

  “Do you think Dad’s up yet? I haven’t had any breakfast.”

  “You don’t seem very happy,” I observed, more as a probe to see if anyone had called the Rodines to report the situation on Jacobean Drive.

  “Oh, well.” His tone was disgusted. “I mean, we were going to have breakfast, we were supposed to, but then something happened.” He shook the hair out of his eyes. “You know Clay Horning?”

  “Yes.” Clay Horning was the resident hooligan of the Elk Park Prep eighth grade. I kept my opinion to myself, however.

  “Clay took half a dozen of Mrs. Rodine’s Babsie dolls off a chair. He couldn’t understand why Mrs. Rodine had them there. I mean, she never plays with them, but they’re on the chairs, on the tables, on the sofas, on the beds, on the bureaus, everywhere! You ask me, Mrs. Rodine is a doll junkie! Anyway, Clay wanted to see how the heads from some of the dolls would look on the bodies of others. He pulled off all the heads and was switching them around—I mean, they pop right on—when Mrs. Rodine had a hissy fit. She swung her frying pan at him. Clay jumped out of the way, but all the uncooked bacon slid out on those headless Babsies. Do you believe that something so stupid could ruin a slumber party?” He shook his head. “Some people.”

  I didn’t reply. After a few seconds Arch pushed his glasses up his nose and squinched his mouth to one side. “Mom? I don’t mean to complain.” He waited for me to speak. “Are you upset about Mrs. Rodine and the frying pan? Or are you mad that she didn’t give me anything to eat? I’m really not that hungry.”

  “Mrs. Rodine is not an easy person to deal with,” I said softly. “But I don’t want to talk about her, Arch. Let’s just sit here a minute. I need to think.”

  He shrugged. “Ohh-kay. What-ever.”

  I watched my son and felt my heart ache with love, with my inability to communicate, and with foreboding. In the last year Arch had finally adjusted to a new family life. He adored Tom, while maintaining a ferocious devotion to his father. But John Richard did little more than tolerate Arch and use him in arguments with me. When Marla’s nephew, our much-loved boarder Julian Teller, left for Cornell, the resulting hole in Arch’s life had been filled by an adopted bloodhound, Jake. Lately, Arch and Macguire Perkins had become friendly. The two boys liked to listen to music and—as they put it—hang out at John Richard’s office. All of which now seemed charmingly innocent and faraway. It was unlikely that they would still hang out at the office of a doctor who’d been accused of murder.

  Before I could phrase what needed to be said, a forlorn feline howl erupted from the back of the van. Another quickly followed. Arch whirled.

  “Mom? Is that Scout? What’s going on?”

  “No.” I sighed. Tippy wanted out. “I’ll be right back.” When I hopped from the van, Gail Rodine, a top-heavy, matronly brunette, stood glaring on her spacious porch. Holding a clipboard to her chest, she scowled at me, as if my presence at her curb was intrusive. At Gail’s side was a tall, similarly heavyset woman with long blond braids. The blonde appeared to be wearing a doctor-type jacket. I yanked open the van’s rear door and caught sight of the little calico cat lurking behind my spare tire. “Come on, Tippy,” I urged. “Out you come.”

  Suz’s cat did not need to be coaxed. She leaped from the van, crouched on the Rodine lawn, then dashed to one of the blooming pink rosebushes encircling the porch. The cat tried frantically to claw her way up a rosebush. Gail Rodine squawked. The woman with the blond braids swiftly descended the porch steps, arms outstretched. Between Gail’s angry yelps, the soothing words the blond woman offered the panicked cat were barely audible. The cat, sensing a friend, leaped from the destroyed rosebush into the open arms of the woman. Then she clawed her way up to her shoulder.

  “Mom?” said Arch. “What is going on? Whose cat is that? It looks like Ms. Craig’s.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said, approaching the blond woman, whose hand reached up to stroke the cat on her shoulder. “It’s not mine, it’s … somebody else’s.” Her wide blue jacket had “Dr. Babsie” embroidered in dark blue script over her heart. “I know you, don’t I? Do you practice in our town? I’m Goldy Schulz.”

  The woman let out a strange, eager laugh. She gave me an intense blue-eyed look. “You’re the caterer, right? You’re doing several meals for us next week. I’m Tina Corey. Head of the Aspen Meadow Babsie Doll Club. How do you know me?”

  “From church?” I guessed, without adding that her face was only vaguely familiar. But St. Luke’s had three services each weekend and it was possible to go for years without knowing another parishioner’s name.

  “Mom?” Arch called from the van. “We need to go or Dad’s going to be really upset.”

  I signaled to him to wait. “I … I’ve met your brother, Tina. Chris. At ACHMO. Are you a doctor, too? I mean, it says … on your jacket …”

  She chuckled again. “No-o, this is just the adult-size Babsie-as-Veterinarian costume. Do you like it?”

  “I … uh … sure. I need to go. Want to give me the cat? She’s not mine.” But when I reached out to Tippy, the cat hissed at me.

  “Animals always love me,” Tina assured me. “Want me to return her to her rightful owner?”

  “Actually,” I said, desperate, “if you’d just be willing to take care of her for a while until we can get her turned over to the Mountain Animal Protective League—”

  Tina opened her eyes wide. “Never! I’ll keep her! I have a bunch of cats already. What’s her name?”

  “I think the owner called h
er Tippy.”

  Murmuring, Tina reached up and gently removed the cat from her shoulder. Gail Rodine glared. “Sweet baby!” crooned Tina, “I’ll have you fixed up in no time.”

  “Thanks, Tina,” I said, not waiting for the cat’s reply. “See you next week. At the doll show.” I trotted back to the van, not daring to glance at Gail Rodine. I hopped back into the driver’s seat and cleared my throat. There was no easy way to do this, despite what Marla had said. “Listen, Arch,” I said. “Dad’s in trouble.”

  He moved impatiently in the seat next to me. “What?” Behind the thick lenses his eyes grew wary. “Is he okay?”

  “Not really. I mean physically he’s okay, but—”

  “What do you mean, then? Dad’s in trouble?” Anxiety cracked his voice. I was desperate to comfort him even as my own voice trembled with each revelation. Dad’s down at the department with Tom and Looks like he and his girlfriend had an argument and Actually, nobody knows exactly what happened, but Suz Craig is dead. Arch’s reaction—dumbfounded denial—was followed by panic.

  “She’s dead? Suz is dead? Are you sure?”

  “Yes. I saw her body lying in a ditch when I drove by her house this morning. And your dad’s under arrest.” I took a deep breath. “He’s been accused of killing her.”

  Arch looked out the window. Gail and Tina were seated, conversing, on the porch. The cat was in Tina’s arms. “But … that doesn’t make sense.”

  “Hon, I know.”

  He was silent, then said: “When will I get to see him?”

  “I’m not sure.”

  “But, why were you driving by Ms. Craig’s house in the first place?”

  “Arch, please. I just wanted to avoid taking you to an empty house.”

  He faced me again. His voice rose with confusion. “Whose empty house? Why? What are you talking about?”