Sweet Revenge Read online

  Wait a minute.

  Somehow Drew Wellington had always managed to get publicity for himself. In a newspaper interview last month, three years after he’d been defeated in his reelection bid, Drew Wellington had first bragged about his business. He’d claimed to be running “the largest and most reputable map dealership west of the Mississippi.” Yeah, right, I’d thought, let’s have a little hyperbole. Unprovoked, he’d then launched into a negative critique of the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. Referring to Sandee Brisbane’s leap into an inferno last summer, he’d said law enforcement officials had “let a murderer get away.” Once again, I’d thought: Yeah, right!

  Alas, nobody from the paper had bothered to mention that a crowd of cops and firefighters had witnessed Sandee’s leap into self-immolation. What did the former prosecutor think we should have done, vaulted in after her? As my mother used to say, “If your best friend jumps into the ravine, are you going to jump in there, too?” Since I was scared to death of the ravine near our New Jersey home, I always shook my head. No way was I, at age five, following anyone into any abyss.

  I cut the dough into twelve pale pieces. The former prosecutor had been a charismatic charmer; my violent, cruel ex-husband, whom Marla and I had dubbed the Jerk, had been cut from the same cloth. I moved the knife with precision. Come to think of it, I liked using a very sharp instrument to slice things when I was thinking about the Jerk. I know, I know, get over it. But sometimes that took a while. In point of fact, I didn’t think I’d ever get over being repeatedly beaten up by the Jerk, any more than I would recover from being so surprised to find his shot-up body in his Audi TT.

  Shot up by Sandee Brisbane, the same Sandee Brisbane I could have sworn had been near Drew Wellington just before he turned up dead.

  If I’d seen Sandee, then why, why, why was she back? Had she killed Drew Wellington? Had she come out of her hidey-hole because Drew Wellington had recently ridiculed the sheriff’s department for not catching her?

  It seemed to me that if a former district attorney was talking about how you needed to have been caught before you jumped into a fire, the last thing you’d do is show up and say, “Hi, I’m not dead! How about prosecuting me for murder?”

  I was startled by someone impatiently ringing the doorbell, then hammering on the door itself with a hand or a fist. Surely the media could not know already that I’d been at the library when Roberta had made her grisly discovery? I washed my hands and quickstepped down the front hall, afraid the incessant banging would disturb Tom. But there was no way I was opening the door until I could see through our peephole who was gracing us with a dinnertime visit.

  It was not a reporter. It was Marla, who was staring at me and mouthing the words open up! So I did.

  “I’m freezing my ass off out there,” she sputtered once she was in our foyer, “and you’re making sure it’s not the bogeyman.” Defying the animal rights folks, she wore a full-length mink coat and mink-trimmed boots. Once she’d shrugged off the fur and hung it on our banister, she sashayed into the living room and turned her supposedly iced-up buttocks to the fire.

  “Damn!” she said, shaking out her mop of curls, held in place tonight by a scattering of ruby and emerald barrettes, a salute to seasonal red and green. “Drew Wellington! I can’t believe it!” Her brown eyes regarded me skeptically. “And you found him.”

  “Actually, Roberta was the one who—” I didn’t finish my thought.

  “Ladies?” Tom, who’d been around the corner in the dining room, was holding his hand over the receiver. “Could I convince you to move this conversation?”

  Marla and I obligingly raced into the kitchen. I closed the door behind us.

  “Who’s Tom on the phone with?” Marla demanded. I shrugged. “Don’t give me that you-don’t-know stuff. It’s the department, isn’t it? What are they thinking? Who’re they suspecting? Patricia, his fiancée? Or Elizabeth, his ex-wife? Maybe both of them, working together? How about that creepy little Neil Tharp, who worked with Drew?”

  “Marla, please. I haven’t a clue and neither does he. They just have to get everyone together to figure out where they’re going to start. Plan a strategy, that type of thing.”

  She fluffed up her hair behind the barrettes. “You’re going to thank me for this next one. I’ve spared you worrying about where you’re going to have the library breakfast.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  Marla’s look was triumphant. “I called one of the library trustees and offered to have the staff and volunteers’ holiday breakfast at my house! At eight tomorrow morning, God help us. I hate anything happening at that ungodly hour, but I just couldn’t resist…” She hesitated and pressed her lips together. Lately, Father Pete had been giving sermons on the Seven Deadly Sins, but he’d begun by saying that there should be an Eighth Deadly Sin, and that was spreading gossip. Marla had been put out by the lessons. “I don’t want to be a…” She furrowed her brow, looking for a euphemism for gossipmonger. “I just want to hear from folks who were there, you know, what happened. Since you’re not going to tell me anything.”

  “Hey, I’ll tell you whatever you want to know. Roberta found him, and the two of us lowered him to the floor. She did CPR. That’s it.”

  “Oh, please.” She pouted. “There’s got to be more to it than that—”

  We were interrupted by the doorbell’s ringing again. What was going on here? Did everybody in town want to know what had happened at the library? Maybe Tom was going to have his meeting at our house. At least that was what I thought when he answered the door.

  “Do you know if there’s more to it?” I demanded in a whisper. “Something to do with Sandee Brisbane?”

  “With Sandee Brisbane? What are you talking about?”

  At that moment Tom ushered Patricia Ingersoll into the kitchen.

  “You know Marla Korman,” Tom said. “And this is my wife, Goldy the caterer. You know Goldy, right?”

  “She did Frank’s and my wedding reception.” Patricia’s voice was raspy, and her eyes were rimmed with red. “Hi, Goldy, Marla. I…I’m hurting.”

  I walked over and pulled her in for a hug. “Patricia, I’m sorry.”

  “Me, too,” Marla added.

  “Thanks,” she said, pulling away. “I didn’t come here to…to, you know, fall apart.”

  “Sit down,” I said gently, in case she did fall apart. “Marla, could you get some tissues?”

  As bidden, Marla dug into her capacious Prada bag, pulled out a packet of tissues, and placed it beside Patricia, who had slumped into a kitchen chair. Like the former prosecutor, who could have been her cousin rather than her lover, Patricia Ingersoll was slender, good-looking, and blond. But there was no way her hair, with its fashionably dark roots and crinkled masses of waves, was naturally platinum. Tom cocked an eyebrow at me. I shrugged helplessly, and he backed into the living room.

  I didn’t know why Patricia was here. Okay, her boyfriend or fiancé or whatever he was had been an arrogant so-and-so, but she still deserved comfort.

  “Patricia,” I said tentatively, “can I get you something? Fix you something warm to drink? It’s so doggone cold outside—”

  Patricia shook her head and wiped her eyes with one of Marla’s tissues. She bit the inside of her cheek and scanned the counter, with its small mountain of fingerling potatoes, its bowl of brining chicken, and its jar of champagne vinaigrette. The lengthening silence was interrupted only by the ringing of Marla’s cell phone. While Marla excused herself, I put a pot of water on to boil. Marla was murmuring into her phone out in the hall. After a moment she poked her head back into the kitchen.

  “I need to get across town,” she said. “Excuse me, Patricia, Goldy. I’m sorry, Patricia, really I am.” Marla gave me a pointed look: You’d better tell me everything she tells you. Then she whisked away, undoubtedly called away by a gossip emergency on the other side of Aspen Meadow.

  Patricia looked at me and blinked. Her t
hin, angular face was tight with anguish, her lips white with tension.

  “A friend called,” she began, without looking at me. “Her neighbor was in the library when somebody found Drew. She said”—Patricia lowered her voice to a whisper—“that you were there helping, and that he hadn’t made it.”

  “Law enforcement wouldn’t let us back in, but it didn’t look good. I’m so sorry.”

  “Oh, Goldy,” she whispered, “I loved him. I can’t believe this.” She began to sob into the tissue.

  I hugged her again. When her weeping abated a bit, she murmured that she was doing better. I put the fingerlings into the boiling water, then sat down beside her.

  “I’m so sorry, Patricia. After what you went through with Frank, this is unbelievable.”

  She rubbed her temples. “Don’t talk about Frank, please. I can’t…can’t take this all over again.” This brought a fresh onslaught of tears.

  “Patricia, I’m sure Drew knew you cared—”

  “Wait, you haven’t heard the worst of it. While I was still on the phone with my friend, two sheriff’s-department investigators pulled up. I thought maybe they’d come to tell me about Drew. But they hadn’t.”

  “No?”

  Patricia took a deep breath. “Nope. Two investigators said somebody had seen a car that looked like mine driving away from the library. I said, ‘Well, yeah, I was at the library today.’ I still didn’t get why they were at my house. I mean, I was numb. Then one of them presented me with a search warrant. For my house. Then I got it, duh. They think I hurt Drew. I told them that I loved Drew.”

  “Patricia, if there’s evidence of foul play, the first thing the department has to do is talk to people who knew Drew.”

  “Talk to people? Suspect them? Turn their houses upside down?” I didn’t know what to say, so I just waited for her to go on. “So…I told them to go ahead, and I went out my back door and up my hill to my car. I was so scared, I called an attorney on my cell.” Her bloodshot eyes strayed wildly around the kitchen. “Brewster Motley. He said to come to your place, Goldy, until he could get here.”

  “What?”

  Patricia began sobbing again. “Did I do the wrong thing to call a lawyer? That’s what they do on TV.”

  “I’m sure you didn’t do the wrong thing.” Even as I tried to sound comforting, I thought, What could Brewster have been thinking? Why come here?

  “I know, I know. Maybe I should call Brewster back. Maybe I should talk to Tom. Oh God, I don’t know what to do.”

  “Let’s think for a minute.” I gazed helplessly at the dozen globs of bread dough I’d left on the counter. I imagined them subdividing and growing, then subdividing again, like amoebas.

  “I called my neighbor and she looked out her window. She said the sheriff’s department is making a mess in my house!” Patricia cried morosely, tugging on a handful of her platinum hair. “I suppose I should go back home anyway.” She sounded as if she was trying to convince herself. “But I just can’t watch them tear my place apart. I didn’t want to talk about the man I loved.” Tears spilled out of her eyes again. “The dead man I loved.”

  I picked up the phone and handed it to her. “Why don’t you call the sheriff’s department right now? Ask them if you can go home. Or you could have Tom call.”

  When Patricia shook her head, the mass of her crinkled platinum hair shook at the same time. “I couldn’t face them at home, how can I talk to them on the phone?”

  How old was Patricia, thirty, thirty-five? Younger than I was, or did she just look that way? And act that way?

  “Do you…should you go back and wait at your neighbor’s?” I asked, trying to be helpful. Patricia shook her head. I could hear Tom out in the living room, still on his cell. I felt my shoulders sag as I regarded Patricia, who looked like a wrung-out rag doll. “Let me fix you something to drink, okay? What would you like?”

  Her gaze raked the kitchen. “Could I just have some hot water?”

  “Some hot water?” I repeated. “For what?”

  “To drink,” she said.

  I shuddered, but poured a bottle of springwater into a pan and set it on the stove. Plain heated water? Oh-kay. I resolved to have something myself. Was it too late in the day for espresso? Yes. How about brandy? Hmm. I wasn’t quite ready for that.

  “I would never hurt Drew,” Patricia wailed, hugging her sides. “When they handed me that warrant, I thought, What in the hell is going on here?”

  “Okay, okay! I’m not the one you need to convince.” I searched our liquor cabinet and decided I’d have a sherry in a few minutes. I also decided I needed to get the rolls into the oven. To Patricia, I said, “Do you mind if I work on my dough here?”

  When she snuffled and shook her head, I preheated the oven and poured Patricia her hot water. I drained the potatoes and set them aside, then beat an egg and carefully brushed the bread-dough lumps with it. After I’d set them in the hot oven, I turned back to Patricia.

  “Have you ever dealt with a criminal-defense lawyer before?”

  She looked into her teacup and shook her head. “Of course not. Listen to me, Goldy, if the police showed up at my house with a warrant? Then they think someone did kill Drew. And although I’m not the one who did it, I’m sure Drew was murdered.”

  I pressed my lips together and thought about Sandee’s face in the window. “Can you tell me more?”

  “He had horrible enemies,” she said fiercely, “beginning with that bitch of an ex-wife of his. Oh God, I can’t believe he’s gone!” She put down her cup and wiped tears from her cheeks. “Plus, he was having problems with his business, and he had other woman…issues—” She stopped abruptly.

  “Other woman issues?” Like with Sandee Brisbane? Should I mention her to Patricia? No, I decided. If there was anything to the Sandee Brisbane situation, as I was thinking of it, then when the investigators talked to Patricia, they could ask her.

  Patricia bit the inside of her cheek again. “Maybe I should just wait to talk to Mr. Motley.” She buried her face in her hands again. “Oh God, I hope he didn’t suffer! Drew said I was the only one who understood him and cared about him…and now he’s gone.”

  When I couldn’t take it anymore, I said, “Excuse me for a couple of minutes, Patricia.”

  I nabbed the sherry bottle, walked out to the dining room, and poured a hefty dose of the golden liquid into one of the few remaining crystal glasses that my grandmother had left me. I had only a few remaining because the Jerk had broken most of them. The occasion had been when I’d told him that some of the women he’d had affairs with had come to our house to tell me how he’d complained about me. My wife doesn’t understand me, but you do. I’m not in love with her anymore. You make me feel young again. I’m in love with you. You’re the only one who cares about me, so please, please don’t ever leave me…And at that point they were hooked, until he dumped them and went on to a new conquest, complaining about how I didn’t understand him. Point of fact, I’d been one of the people who really did understand him. Who had understood him until Sandee came along and stopped his complaining forever…

  I took a deep breath and a medicinal swig of sherry, and walked back into the kitchen.

  “Goldy, what is it?” Patricia held the cup I’d given her in both hands. “Do you know Elizabeth Wellington? Have you ever had to cater for her?”

  “I know her from church. And yes, I’ve catered fund-raising parties for her.”

  Her blue eyes sought mine. “D’you think she’s really awful?”

  “Actually, I always—” I’d been on the point of saying always felt kind of sorry for her, but stopped myself. I may not have liked Drew, but Patricia, poor fool, had clearly adored him.

  “I feel as if I’m interrupting your dinner.” Patricia’s tone was guilty. “I don’t know why Brewster had me come here.”

  “Stay, please.” I felt dizzy from drinking the sherry on an empty stomach. We all needed to eat. When Brewster finally got
here, maybe he’d join us for dinner, too.

  The buzzer went off for the rolls and I brought them out to cool. I drained the brine from the chicken, rinsed it, and placed it in a baking pan. Then I figured, what the hell, poured some sherry over it, sprinkled it with salt and pepper, and popped it into the oven. I smashed the fingerlings with butter and cream, mounded the resulting cloud of mashed potatoes into another buttered dish, and set the timer for when the potatoes would go in next to the chicken. Which reminded me. I still had to make the gingerbreads for the garden-club door prizes.

  “I’m telling you,” Patricia said again, her tone stubborn, “Drew was always worried about these people he said had it in for him.”

  I pulled my work schedule up on my computer. “Why don’t you let me get Tom in here so you can tell him what you know?”

  “No, no, I’m not ready for that. I need you to help me.” She sat up straight in the oak kitchen chair, as if she’d found some resolve within. “I want to know what happened to Drew, and who’s responsible.”

  I stared at my computer. Okay, first I was a mom and a wife, second I was a caterer, and third, every now and then people wanted me to figure out what had happened to their loved ones, loved ones who were victims of crimes. Unfortunately, at the moment I had to concentrate on number two, the caterer bit.

  Plus, I had to think. I hit the print button for the gingerbread recipe. The luncheon and exchange would be followed by the MacArthurs’ curry dinner and dessert, for which I’d already piled creamy lime filling into graham-cracker pie crusts. Once the printer had spat out my gingerbread recipe, I turned back to Patricia.

  “Patricia, I would like to help you. Really I would. But right at this very minute, I need to cook. May I please try to get somebody over here to be with you? Should I call Marla to come back? She’s my best—”

  Patricia snorted again. “Omigod, not that Marla Korman. I’m so glad she left. Talking to her is like putting your conversation in the Denver Post.”

  “Well, I wouldn’t go that far—”

  Tom poked his head in the kitchen. “You gonna be here for a while, Patricia?” he asked mildly. “I’ve got some calls to make, and then I’ll be out.”