Sticks & Scones Read online

  Eliot treated me to a dazzling grin. “You are ready to do the lunch today, aren’t you? We should probably chat.”

  My mind swam. The lunch would start in five hours. I was earlier than I’d be for a wedding reception, which required much more labor-intensive preparation. But he was my employer. And my host, I reminded myself. “I am ready,” I replied dutifully. “I brought the ingredients with me. You won’t mind if I use your kitchen?”

  “Certainly not,” Eliot replied. “But … I never heard from the table people. Was the rental company supposed to call me when the tables arrived?”

  My heart sank. The food might be ready, but if the notoriously unreliable folks at Party Rental had screwed up … “You don’t know if they showed up? At the chapel, I mean?”

  Eliot frowned. “I don’t know. Oh, God! A glitch in our first event!”

  “It’s not a glitch—” I said weakly.

  “I will call the table people,” Sukie offered, “as soon as we get Goldy and her son up to their suites and I can bandage my hands.”

  Eliot crossed his arms and stared at the ceiling, always the first sign that a client was going neurotic on me. He pleaded, “I beg you, Goldy, tell me you remembered to bring all your recipes and notes with you.”

  Crap and double crap. My recipes and notes. I’d brought my laptop, but not, I suddenly realized, the disk with all my Hyde Castle recipes and the research I’d done over the past two weeks on the history of English cuisine. “No. I’m sorry. I’ll go home for them the minute we get settled.” I added apologetically, “I mean, if that’s all right, and the cops allow me in. And,” I promised with a nod to Sukie, “I’ll check on the tables at the same time.”

  Eliot circumnavigated the kitchen island, tapping his left hand pensively on the wood. I could almost see the wheels in his head turning. At the Hyde Chapel luncheon, Eliot intended to pitch the audience on his plans to transform the castle into a conference center. If that didn’t go well, then the guests might think that he was just an academic who couldn’t make the move to real business … that he was a failure in this, too….

  “Let’s move you two up to your suites,” Sukie interjected, as she wiped her hands. “I have a very special room for you, Arch. Right next to your mom.”

  “We’re not sure how long we’ll be here,” I murmured.

  “We are practicing on you!” Sukie said cheerfully. “Our first guests in the refurbished rooms!”

  Relieved to be out of Eliot’s tranquilizer-needing presence, we followed Sukie down another marble hallway to carpeted steps leading to the castle’s second floor.

  The second story featured floors of darkly polished cherry wood. Matching English-club cherry paneling on the walls gave the place an elegantly homey look. Floor-to-ceiling leaded-glass windows lined the side of the hallway overlooking the courtyard. I peeked out at the garden. In the early-morning light, the iced pattern of plants had taken on a pearly cast.

  We skirted a sawhorse and a splotch of dried beige paint on the floor. Sukie murmured something about Eliot and one of his new messes. Next we passed a closed door and rounded a corner, where Sukie opened another door. This, she announced as she switched on more electrified brass wall sconces, would be Arch’s room. Awed, Arch walked into the palatial space, where a black-and-gray Aubusson rug set the decor for a mahogany four-poster bed and silver-tasseled spread, black wingback chairs, a long gray couch, and an ornately carved desk beside a fireplace. Pen-and-ink drawings of ships hung on walls that looked as if they’d been papered with silver silk. A subdued set of black-and-gray nautical-theme fabrics had been used for the floor-to-ceiling draperies.

  Sukie led me through a set of wooden doors in the corner of the room, through another corner drum tower and another set of doors, then into the bedroom whose door we’d passed earlier. This place, equally spacious, was an homage to lime and coral.

  “This will be your suite,” she announced with a smile.

  The lofty space reminded me of those magazine photos featuring Europe’s most elegant hotels. The walls were covered with glowing pale green silk. A pink-tinted marble fireplace graced the wall facing the massive four-poster bed. Between the bed and the fireplace, Chardé had thoughtfully grouped a pair of rose-and-lime chintz-covered wingback chairs. Against a wall with new windows looking out on the moat stood a long cherry-wood desk.

  “Gorgeous, Sukie, really,” I gushed, overwhelmed.

  “You haven’t seen your bathroom!” she exclaimed, eyes gleaming.

  I demurred, recalling Eliot’s anxiety over the day’s event. I needed to get organized. And I really wanted to call Tom. “I’ll check the bathroom out later, if that’s okay.”

  Sukie motioned me back to Arch’s room, through the same pair of wooden doors set at a diagonal in the southeast corner of the room. We again moved into the drum tower, which I had now figured out was at the southeast corner of the castle. As in the well tower, the air was icy, although here, glass had been put up on the inside of each of the two small windows that flanked a fireplace built into the far wall. Sukie led me to an opening in the tower wall, then pointed straight along a short, narrow passageway that ended abruptly in a wall with a seat. Wait: There had been one of these in the well tower; Arch had backed up beside it after his mini-meltdown.

  “This is the garderobe where we found the letter,” Sukie declared with a triumphant grin. She threw a rusty bolt on top of the toilet, lifted the lid, and pointed downward. I swallowed a sigh. Our hostess was determined to give me the tour, no matter what. I peered down the hole, way down, and listened, until I heard the slap of moat water against the shaft. I smiled, even though I was desperate to call Tom. “After six centuries,” Sukie said, “even after the shaft was broken into pieces to be moved from England, even after they reassembled the shaft here, the place stank.”

  “I don’t understand why they didn’t clean up the shaft before they sent it over,” I commented. I realized the little hallway smelled powerfully of disinfectant.

  “They weren’t Swiss,” she replied matter-of-factly

  In his assigned room, Arch was running the bathroom fan full blast, a sure sign he was finishing his elaborate hairdressing routine, a regimen that started with mousse and ended with hairspray that acted like plaster of Paris. When he reappeared with his hair cemented into spikes, he was wearing khaki pants, a plaid shirt, and his white Elk Park Prep Fencing Team jacket.

  “Those shafts aren’t dangerous?” I murmured to Sukie as we made our way back to the kitchen.

  She shook her head. “We’re having them all covered with Plexiglas before we open the conference center. The bottom of each shaft has a grille, to keep out rodents and such. The only dangerous place in the castle is the moat pump room. But don’t worry, it’s all locked up.”

  I nodded as we came into the kitchen, where three of my boxes had appeared. Eliot was putting out a dish of crackers and a jar, the dark contents of which looked like homemade jelly.

  “I’m not eating that,” Arch whispered to me.

  “Wow!” I exclaimed over his announcement. “Mr. Hyde, is this another one of your famous preserves? Like the strawberry jam we had with the scones?”

  “This is chokecherry jelly,” he said shyly, with a regal wave. “I also make fig preserves, blueberry jam, mint jelly, lemon curd—”

  At that moment, Michaela Kirovsky clomped into the kitchen toting the last of my boxes. Abruptly, Eliot fell silent and bustled out the door.

  Once again feeling responsible for someone else’s rudeness, I thanked Michaela profusely for her help. She waggled her head and told me not to mention it. I looked closely at her. When I’d first met her at Elk Park Prep and talked about the banquet, I’d judged her to be about sixty. Now I saw that the prematurely white hair made her look older than she was, probably forty-five. She had that slightly pudgy, built-like-a-brick body often seen in high-school athletic coaches. Her wrinkled baby-face was exceptionally pale. Like Arch, she wore the school
fencing jacket and khakis. When she heaved her load up on the trestle table next to my three other boxes, Eliot flowed back into the kitchen, clutching another jar.

  “I’m sure today’s luncheon will go beautifully. And we’re very excited about the fencing banquet. Please remember, though, Goldy,” he said as he placed the new offering—plum jam—on the table, “I want the Friday-night feast to conclude with a plum tart baked with jewels inside.” He swept his hair back with his hand. I sighed: The fencing banquet was four days away, for crying out loud. “The jewels will be zirconia, of course, but the children don’t need to know that. That’s a typical Elizabethan treat,” he informed us with a smile, “to bake treasures into something sweet. Only they used real jewels, of course. And sometimes they put in other surprises, such as, shall we say, four-and-twenty blackbirds? Goldy, how soon will you be able to get your recipes?”

  “As soon as I pick up my disk,” I replied. I fumbled inside the box containing my laptop to make sure I had my power cord, too. “I promise I won’t take long getting it,” I added firmly, before he could start fretting again.

  “So you’ll return when?” Eliot asked anxiously.

  “I’ll follow Michaela out,” I replied. “Worst-case scenario puts me back here by eight.”

  “Eliot, darling,” Sukie murmured as her husband opened his mouth to protest. “The recipes can wait. You are too enthusiastic, sometimes. And—”

  “That’s all your boxes,” Michaela interrupted.

  “Thanks again,” I said, and meant it.

  She nodded, warmed her hands at the hearth, and grinned at Arch. “Ready to go, mister? Blastoff is in seven minutes.”

  Arch shouldered his pack, nodded a mature farewell to me, and told Michaela he’d meet her by the portcullis. He even managed to thank Sukie and Eliot before making his way out of the kitchen.

  To me, Michaela said softly, “Eliot mentioned that someone took a shot at your house last night?”

  “Yes,” I said. “The police don’t have any leads yet. But I took a call on my cell phone on the way over here. There’s something I need to warn you about.” All three faces became immediately curious. “My ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman, has just been granted an early release from serving a sentence for assault. If he shows up here, please do not let him in. I’m checking on the status of a restraining order,” I added. “He’ll have to see Arch at some point, but we haven’t figured that out yet.”

  Their questions tumbled out as I put the chicken and other perishables into the refrigerator: Was John Richard the one who’d shot at our window? Did he know I was here at the castle? Did he know how to get here?

  “We have no idea what the man looks like,” Eliot mused, his voice concerned. “If we could have a photograph …”

  “Yes, definitely, no problem,” I replied. “I’ll get one when I pick up the disk.”

  The snow had stopped as Michaela, Arch, and I drove off. My van followed Michaela’s Elk Park Prep minibus down the slick, winding driveway. Her tires cut twin black tracks in the pristine trail of snowy pavement. Soon the minibus was out of sight.

  When I came through the front gate and crossed the bridge onto the state highway, I remembered the rental tables that were supposed to be at Hyde Chapel. I pressed the accelerator, determined to see what was going on. Or not going on, as the case might be.

  As I drove up the road, I punched the cell phone buttons for Tom’s Atlantic City motel, on the remote chance he was still there. The man who answered said Tom had left several hours ago. I then tried the main number for Furman County government and entered the buttons for Pat Gerber’s extension at the district attorney’s office. Of course, since it was not quite seven, all I reached was her voice mail. I left a message: My ex-husband got an early release from prison, and a bullet shattered one of our windows at four this morning. With a temporary restraining order in place, what was our next step for visits with our son?

  I disconnected as the chapel bridge across Cotton-wood Creek came into sight. Beyond the bridge, the chapel’s delicate gray spires and arched stained-glass windows looked ethereal in the soft morning light. After auctioning off the Henry VIII letter, Eliot had given the Gothic chapel to the church, to offset his tax burden. In order to make Hyde Chapel a tourist attraction clients would associate with the castle conference center, Sukie had directed an extensive cleanup, and paid Chardé Lauderdale handsomely to decorate the place. The labyrinth had been the crowning centerpiece of the renovation. Saint Luke’s had been thrilled.

  This day’s lunch event had been covered in a fluff piece in the Mountain Journal and in the Saint Luke’s newsletter. Although the church had received lunch confirmations for twenty, the Episcopal Church Women had begged me to make enough food for up to ten more folks, for those donors untroubled by RSVP’s. The ECW was handling the loan of church plates, silverware, and crystal for the lunch. I’d merely replied to the ECW that lunch for thirty or even thirty-five would be no problem.

  I swung the van across the chapel bridge, intent on finding the tables. With the bad publicity generated by the Lauderdale incident impacting my business, it was imperative that the lunch event go without a hitch. If the tables had not been delivered, I would call Party Rental at nine and deliver a blistering harangue. In the catering biz, sometimes you had to get rough.

  No spotlights illuminated the chapel. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and swung around to park facing the creek, as close to the building’s carved front doors as I could get. Across the highway in Cottonwood Park, the sun lit the top of the thick cluster of pine trees.

  As I sat with the van running, I tried to recollect the combination on the lockbox that held the chapel key. The chapel had been designed as a miniature of Chartres, and boasted some features of that enormous cathedral, including a rose window and, now, a labyrinth. I tapped the steering wheel and finally recalled that the letters on the lockbox combination were C, H, A, R, T, R, E, S.

  There was a Gothic-lettered sign to my right, at the top of the creek bank. Set your brake! it warned. Management cannot pull your car out of the creek!

  I smiled at the vision of Eliot and Sukie towing a vehicle out of the water. I pulled up on the brake, then leaned forward in my seat to check how far I was from the creek. Fifteen feet below, the narrow chute of black, gurgling water raced between the icy banks.

  I squeezed my eyes shut, heart pounding. I hadn’t just seen what I’d just seen. Or had I? Surely it had been an illusion, my sleep-deprived mind playing tricks with ice, water, stone, sunlight. You think you see something flesh-colored, something bobbing eerily in the water, and it turns out to be a rock.

  I took a deep breath, jumped out of the van, and walked carefully to the edge of the creek bank. No, it wasn’t quartz, granite, or even mountain marble. In the creek was a blackened hand. A hand attached to an arm clothed in plaid flannel. A blackened hand? I stared into the water below. The rigid body of a young man lay half in the creek, as if he’d been tossed there.

  I looked away, chilled. He needs help, my brain screamed. Help him. Get him out of that water.

  I took a few tentative steps down the steep, boulder-strewn creek bank. Then I slid on a patch of ice.

  Help him, get him out. But how could I get to him? I regained my balance and stared at the water. There were rocks in the creek itself, and a sheet of ice that might or might not hold my weight. Even if I got down there, was I strong enough to pull him out?

  Now ten feet from the water, I caught sight of the young man’s scalp. What I had thought was thick hair was a dark splotch of blood. I blinked and tried to make out his facial features.

  Hold on.

  His photo had appeared at least a dozen times in the Mountain Journal. I’d heard his voice once, on the phone.

  But he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be hiding. In New Jersey. Where Tom was looking for him to question him about the FedEx hijacking. Not in Colorado. Not lying in Cottonwood Creek. Yet there wa
s no doubt that Andy Balachek wasn’t gambling at a casino table.

  Andy Balachek was dead.

  CHAPTER 6

  It was hard to look at Andy Balachek. He was so young.

  Had been.

  Where was my phone? Wait: It was still plugged into the van outlet. Heedless of the ice, I scrambled back to my vehicle, and flung myself inside. With numb fingers, I punched in the numbers for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. My second call to them this morning, I thought morosely, as I glanced back at the creek and tried to find my voice. When the operator answered, I gave her the details of what I was looking at: a young man in lumberjack shirt and jeans, with no hat covering his frozen, blood-slickened hair. His skin was pale in some places, blue-black in others. It was Andy Balachek, I told her. At least, I was pretty sure …

  The cell phone’s call-waiting beeped. I told the operator that I’d had an emergency situation myself that morning and I had to take this other call. She snarled at me that I was not to hang up, and that I should quickly dump the other call while she waited. That’s the thing about emergency operators: You’re anxious to get off the phone and deal with your emergency, right? But the operators want you to keep talking and not do a thing. They get especially testy if what you’re dealing with is not a natural gas emergency or a car wreck, but a crime.

  “Goldy?”

  “Tom! Where are you? I have so much—”

  “On Interstate Seventy, just past Golden. Took an early flight out. I called the house—”

  “Oh, Tom,” I wailed. He listened in silence as I told him about the gunshot that had shattered our window, about John Richard’s early release, about us having to take refuge at the castle. I told him my current location by Hyde Chapel, and about the young man in the icy water, a young man who was never going to move again.

  “Oh, Tom—it’s Andy Balachek.”

  “Miss G.—where are you exactly?” His voice was calm. “In the chapel parking lot?”