Fatally Flaky Read online

  Jack nodded at me appraisingly. “That son of a bitch? That same guy from all those years ago?”

  I nodded and took a large slug of sherry.

  “All those years ago?” Marla asked in puzzlement. “This is the guy from all what years ago?” Marla shook a bejeweled finger at me accusingly. “Goldy, did you have a fling with Victor Lane and not tell me?”

  I laughed so hard sherry shot out of my nose and I started to cough. Marla took that as confirmation that I had not rolled in the hay with Victor.

  “I wonder why he would ever say that women don’t know how to cook,” Jack said. “Tell that to all the women across America who find themselves standing over a stove for much of their lives.”

  “Look, Jack,” I said soothingly, “if you hadn’t helped me see that Victor was as full of crap as he was of himself, there might well be no Goldilocks’ Catering here in Aspen Meadow.”

  The doorbell rang, and Marla groaned.

  “Just as I’m about to get some truly juicy gossip about Aspen Meadow’s renowned asshole spa owner,” she said, “my car-service guy arrives. Dammit! Now you two need to hold that thought, because I want to hear all about Victor Lane when we get together next.” She eyed the platter. “May I take a couple of crab cakes, Goldy? I’m so hungry.”

  “Yeah, sure. I made lots extra for Billie Attenborough’s shindig. And don’t forget your pie.”

  I loaded her down with goodies, and she took off for the front door, where whoever was there was persistently knocking.

  “Oops, it’s not my guy,” said Marla, as she checked the peephole. “It’s an Attenborough,” she singsonged, “incoming!” She put her platters of food down on the hall table.

  “Already?” I asked.

  “Yes yes,” Marla singsonged again.

  “I haven’t called her all day. She’s going to be angry,” Jack said dejectedly.

  “Charlotte, darling!” Marla swept the front door open. “Don’t tell me you’re not coming to the dessert fund-raiser tonight at my place? Don’t break my heart.”

  “I’m coming, I’m coming,” Charlotte trilled. “What are you doing here, Marla? Don’t you have guests to get ready for? You smell like liquor. Where’s Goldy?”

  Jack uttered a swear word under his breath.

  “In the kitchen!” Marla sang. “Oops, there’s my car service!” She picked up her food platters and sashayed out. “See you later, everybody!”

  I knew I should have been more ready for Charlotte, but I wasn’t. The thought occurred to me that maybe she should tend to Jack. Charlotte Attenborough had been a nurse in her previous life, before her well-insured husband died of his bleeding ulcer. According to Marla, Charlotte had used the insurance money to buy a struggling local magazine with the uninspiring name Aspen Meadow Monthly. She’d transformed the publication into a glossy, widely read and admired lifestyle rag, Mountain Homes. Charlotte herself was owner, editor, and chief pooh-bah, and as such was greatly admired around town. She’d offered me free monthly full-page advertising for a year as an added incentive for doing her daughter’s wedding. I’d joyously accepted … but that had all been nine months ago, and since then, I’d had second, third, fourth, ad infinitum thoughts telling me that no advertising was worth getting a bleeding ulcer myself.

  “Goldy, do you have my new contract?”

  “No. Sorry, Charlotte,” I said. I didn’t offer any excuses, such as having my godfather’s best friend found dead in a ravine, dealing with a combative biological father at a wedding, or even actually having had another wedding reception to cater today. “I’ll get right on it.” I turned to my computer, booted it up, and began typing changes to our contract that would reflect additional guests and a change of venue. “Would you like a drink, or some food?” I asked as I pressed Print. “We have lots of everything.”

  “Jack,” Charlotte said, surprised, “what are you doing here?”

  I stopped what I was doing to turn back to them. I’d told Tom that Charlotte was perfectly preserved. Like jam? he’d asked. I’d merely shaken my head.

  I knew Billie was thirty-six, and Charlotte had made a point of telling me she’d given birth to her only child when she was twenty. But there was no way Charlotte Attenborough was in her midfifties; she was sixty-five if she was a day. She wore her short gray-blond hair swept up in what boys from the fifties would have called a ducktail. She was at least five feet eight inches tall, but the ramrod-straight way she held her slender self, shoulders back, abs tight, made her look more like six feet. This night, she wore a midcalf, dark gray sheath-style dress. Despite its fashionable draping, her attire gave her the look of a drill sergeant.

  “Well?” she said to Jack.

  As if on cue, both of our family’s animals—a big, floppy, exceptionally affectionate bloodhound named Jake, and a long-haired feline named Scout—made their presence known at our back door. I’d called them to come in when I’d first arrived home, but neither had been interested then.

  “I’ll let in the pets.” Jack leaped up from his chair and went to the back door before I could say, Careful, they’re going to be muddy!

  Which, in retrospect, would have been a very good idea, but not nearly as much fun. Charlotte, who clearly did not like dogs, flinched when Jake came bounding in. She screamed when he jumped up on her and muddied her impeccable sheath. The thick mud on his paws might not have done so much damage to Charlotte’s dress if she hadn’t then shrieked, “Stop, you!” and tried to whack Jake away. Even though I called him and tried to snag his collar, Charlotte’s recoiling move made Jake want to be friends even more, so that he sprang up again on Charlotte, who tried to bat him away. “You stupid dog!” she cried. “Go away!”

  Jake, who didn’t like to be called stupid, began whimpering, and again vaulted up on Charlotte, who had turned her backside on him, which meant Jake’s paws landed on the reverse side of the sheath, which I figured was now pretty much ruined.

  “I’m so sorry, Charlotte, I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” I kept repeating. My godfather, who had tried less successfully than I had to contain Jake, slumped in defeat on a kitchen chair.

  When I finally managed to snag Jake’s leash, I led him out of the kitchen. Scout the cat, who was much better at figuring out when he wasn’t wanted, had already slunk away. I managed to corral the two of them in the pet-containment area, where I gave them a perfunctory drying off with fresh towels that I kept in their little home for just this purpose.

  Oh, Lord, but I wished Tom would come home.

  “Well, Charlotte,” I said in my conciliatory voice when I returned to the kitchen, “again, I’m sorry. Would you like to see the contract?”

  She was at our sink, where she was rubbing her muddied dress with a wet paper towel. When she faced me, her eyes were slits. “This is a disaster,” she said, and a cold finger of guilt ran down my spine.

  “Dogs do get muddy when it rains,” Jack said, attempting mournfulness. “It’s, what do you call it? A force of nature.”

  “Stop it,” Charlotte retorted. “I’ve been trying to phone you all day, too, but you won’t return my calls.”

  Now Jack’s voice was genuinely mournful. “My best friend was found dead in a ravine, Charlotte.”

  She turned to him, startled. “Who, Finn? What was he doing in a ravine?” Her tone implied that death could be avoided if one could but stay out of ravines. Jack just shook his head.

  “It was a car accident, Charlotte,” I said in a low voice.

  “Was anyone else hurt?”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “This is a tragedy,” she said to Jack. “I’m so sorry.”

  “Thanks,” said Jack disconsolately.

  Nobody said anything for a few minutes, and so I took a deep breath. “Now, Charlotte, here are the contract changes.” I handed her the sheet.

  She perused the paper. “This looks fine.”

  Charlotte kept glancing at Jack, who would not meet her gaze. I reflected o
nce more on how much beyond me it was to know how or why these two had managed to keep a relationship going for a day, much less four months. Charlotte was elegant, perfectionistic, and expected to get her way, even if she had to pay for it. Her house in Flicker Ridge looked like a furniture showcase. Jack was generous, openhearted, and a slob, and the house he was renovating looked like a tornado had blown off the roof and thoroughly jumbled the interior … and no one had bothered to clean up since.

  From the beginning of their odd relationship, I’d suspected that there was more desire to keep things going on Charlotte’s side than there was on Jack’s. He told me he’d been gentle, but firm, when she said she wanted him to stop spending so much time with Doc Finn. Doc Finn was his friend, and Jack wanted to go fishing and do … well, whatever his friend wanted. Charlotte had said he should want to spend more time with her.

  Jack had demurred. But Charlotte had persevered. In fact, the previous month, she had confided to me that she expected to become engaged to Jack very soon. After a couple of weeks had gone by, I’d gently hinted around to Jack about this, as in, “Do you think you’d ever be wanting me to do your wedding reception?” He’d shaken his head at the suggestion, and told me he had no plans to get married again. His first wife had died of cancer before I’d known her. All this made me think that there were no nuptial festivities for Jack and Charlotte in the foreseeable future.

  “I suppose that’s the cleanest I’m going to get it.” Charlotte had put the contract down and was working on her dress again. Now she turned away from the sink and gave me a forlorn look, as if the dog, and Jack’s unhelpfulness, had hurt her deeply, and I was supposed to do something about it.

  But I didn’t know what to do. “So, Charlotte, what do you think of the figures?” I tried again.

  “They’re fine.” But she’d spent only a moment looking at them. She pulled out her checkbook and wrote me a check. “Goldy?” she asked. “Can you be out at Gold Gulch Spa at eight o’clock tomorrow morning, so we can do the walk-through, and you can figure out how to use their kitchen?”

  “Sure,” I replied, although I didn’t feel too sure of it, frankly.

  “Yes,” said Jack, “I’ll bring her.”

  “That’s not necessary, Jack,” I said.

  “Jack,” said Charlotte, attempting to be mollifying, “you don’t need to be there. I want to spend time with you, but not there, not tomorrow. If you need to grieve for your friend, then you should do that. Out at the spa, you’ll just get in the way, sweetheart.”

  Sweetheart?

  When nobody said anything, Charlotte said, “Will you call me tonight, Jack, if you need me?” He looked up at her hopefully and nodded. “Well then,” she went on, “I guess I need to go home and change before the fund-raiser.”

  When the door had closed, I turned to my godfather. “Jack, you don’t have to take me out to Gold Gulch tomorrow. I can manage.”

  Jack made his face blank, a practice I’d seen him do before. “No, but I want to go. To protect you from this Victor Lane character.”

  “I don’t need protecting, thanks.”

  “Uh-huh. Last time I looked, your first husband disproved that particular theorem.”

  “Oh, Jack, don’t—”

  “Now,” he interrupted, “tell me why Tom is investigating the death of my best friend.”

  “I have no idea that that’s what he’s doing.”

  “Bull. When I had too much to drink and hit a tree with the seventy-one Mercedes I had before I got the seventy-three, the whole thing was handled by state patrol. That’s how they do accidents in this state. I know, ’cuz I asked.”

  “Jack, I don’t know—”

  “Yeah, yeah, you said that already.” He stood up. “All right, I’m walking across the street to my own house.”

  “Jack? You’re not angry, are you?” I asked anxiously as I walked him to the door. “I really don’t know what Tom is doing now. But I want to help with … with you feeling better about Doc Finn.”

  “Uh-huh.” He heaved on his jacket and opened the front door. “Let me tell you something I learned in the years before I became a recovering lawyer.”

  “Jack—,” I began, but he held up his hand.

  “I always know when a witness is lying.”

  DOGGONE IT, I thought, as I cleaned up Marla’s dishes. I wasn’t lying. Okay, I did suspect that Tom’s disappearance from the O’Neal wedding was related to the discovery of Doc Finn’s body. But I knew no more about the situation than Jack did.

  When Tom finally came home, it was almost nine o’clock. I’d kept the ragout going on a low simmer, just in case.

  “Miss G. You should have gone to bed. I’m sorry I’m so late.”

  “Did you eat?”

  “No. I’ll fix myself a plate.”

  “Sit,” I commanded. Tom washed his hands and slumped at the table. He shut his eyes tight, either from exhaustion or to block out what he’d seen that evening. When I put a dish of cooked penne, steamed broccoli, and ragout in front of him, you’d have thought it was steak on the QE2.

  “Oh my,” he said. “This looks wonderful.”

  While he ate, I gave him an animated account of the rest of the day after he’d left, the reception, packing up with Julian, the visits from Marla, Jack, and Charlotte Attenborough. He shook his head and smiled briefly. But then the smile vanished.

  “Can you tell me what kept you down at the department?” I asked.

  “I can, but you can’t mention a word of it to anyone, especially that nosy lawyer godfather of yours.”

  “Don’t worry.”

  “Last night, a driver going west up the canyon spotted a reflection in the rain. Called in that she thought a vehicle might have gone off the road and landed down in that deep ravine where folks dump trash sometimes.”

  “Yeah, I know the spot.” Despite the no dumping sign, people didn’t chuck their unwanted furniture and garbage down that hillside sometimes; they did it as a matter of routine.

  “Last night, state patrol had their hands full with accidents in the rain, but they finally got around to checking that ravine. And there was Doc Finn’s Porsche Cayenne, on its side.”

  “Did he slide off the road?”

  “The mud has made it impossible to tell exactly what happened. But state patrol called us after they’d spent about an hour down in the ravine.”

  The taste of acid filled my mouth.

  “Somebody,” Tom continued as he pushed his plate away, “came down into the ravine and used a rock to break the driver’s-side window. It looks as if whoever the person was then used another rock, or something, to smash in Doc Finn’s skull.”

  “The rocks couldn’t have come loose somehow, when the Porsche slid into the ravine?”

  “No, Miss G. That’s why state patrol is good at what they do.” He shook his head. “Doc Finn was murdered.”

  7

  I slumped into the kitchen chair closest to Tom. My feet and hands were suddenly freezing. “So, what are they up to now, down at the department?”

  “The ME’s been called. They’ll try to do the autopsy as soon as they can. And our department is analyzing the contents of Finn’s car, to see if that will give us any leads. There are only a couple of houses nearby, and our guys have canvassed the whole area. But nobody saw anything.”

  “Do they have any idea where Doc Finn was going?”

  “Yeah. He had his cell in the car. According to the Received Calls on there, he got a call from your godfather last night, but that went straight to voice mail. Before that, there was a longer call. It came around half past seven Wednesday night, from Southwest Hospital, from inside a patient’s room. He saw a neighbor as he was backing his car out of his driveway, and he said he was off to see an old patient. Only problem is, that room is on the maternity ward, and the patient in that room was out with her husband looking at their baby at the time. And she’s never been a patient of Doc Finn’s. She’s never even heard of him
.”

  “No security cameras recording the goings in and out of the patient’s room, I take it.”

  “Nope. My gut tells me we’re talking about a clever killer here. Of course, during visiting hours there are all kinds of people in the hospital, so basically it could have been anyone.”

  “Did Doc Finn even have any patients in Southwest Hospital at the time?”

  “That’s something we’re checking on.”

  I hugged my shoulders, but that couldn’t dispel the chill I was feeling. “You know Jack’s going to be devastated that his pal was murdered.”

  Tom nodded. “I figured.”

  “He really wanted to talk to you tonight. He waited here a long time, wondering where you were, asking questions. Said when he hit a tree, remember, not long after he got here? State patrol handled the whole thing. He kept asking me why you were down at the department. It was almost as if he knew something was wrong with Doc Finn’s accident.”

  Tom pulled out his small notebook. “Almost as if he knew something was wrong, huh?”

  “Oh, Tom, for heaven’s sake. Doc Finn was Jack’s best friend.” My tone grew hot and defensive. “And anyway, Jack wanted to talk to you.”

  Tom pushed his chair back from the table. “Well then, maybe we should oblige him. Care to take a walk across the street?”

  “You’re going to interrogate my godfather?”

  “I’m just going to ask him a few questions.”

  “Tom!”

  “Trust me, Goldy, your godfather is a wily old coot. He can read people the way preachers recite Bible verses. If he even sniffs this is an interrogation, he’ll lawyer up faster than you can say, Glory Be.”

  I gritted my teeth and reached for my trench coat in the hall closet. While Tom waited for me on the porch, I felt a pang of guilt that we were going over to Jack’s with the intention of … well, whatever it was we were intending to do. I dashed back into the kitchen and grabbed a bottle of Sauternes, a little seventy-five-dollar-a-bottle number that a grateful client had given me. So far, I hadn’t had the heart to open it.