Killer Pancake gbcm-5 Page 9

  “Why not talk to him about it? And why will you have to eventually?”

  Tom exhaled deeply. “Goldy, he looked god-awful coming home from the hospital. I just don’t want to upset him anymore. He cried off and on all the way up the interstate. I don’t think I’ve ever seen that kid in tears.”

  “Maybe if he talks about it he’ll feel better.”

  Tom stopped stirring and gave me a half-grin. “Well, Miss Psych Major, I know that’s true. But we’ve got a lot of unknowns right now, and I’m not sure Julian should hear about them just yet.”

  “Unknowns?”

  He whisked broth into the sauce, set it to simmer, and then trundled over to the walk-in refrigerator. A moment later he emerged with two bottles of carbonated apple cider, one of Arch’s favorites. He opened a bottle and poured us each a glass full of spritzy gold bubbles. The icy drink was heavenly after the heat of the day.

  Tom said, “This mess with Claire Satterfield looks real bad. I’m going to be tied up with it for the foreseeable future.”

  “But I thought the state patrol handled traffic accidents—”

  “It wasn’t an accident,” he said curtly. He drained his glass. His deep green eyes regarded me grimly. “The patrolman and I saw acceleration marks on the garage floor. They’re very different from deceleration marks. That’s what you get when somebody’s trying to stop.”

  “You mean you can—wait! Acceleration? Somebody saw her? Somebody saw her and … sped up? Oh, my Lord—”

  He nodded. “And our one eyewitness,” he said, “or the one person who thinks he might be an eyewitness, observed a dark green truck veer out of the garage.” He stood up to check on his sauce. “We found an eighty-seven green Ford pickup parked by the outside entrance of Prince & Grogan. Stolen. Dented on the grille where it could have hit someone. Coroner’s office will match that up with impact marks on the victim.”

  I said weakly, “Impact marks? You mean bruises? And wasn’t there any blood on the grille?”

  “The body doesn’t have time to bruise.” I closed my eyes. “Sometimes there’s blood on the vehicle, sometimes there isn’t,” he went on. “This time there wasn’t. The only blood was on the garage floor, from when her head hit the pavement. Unfortunately, there’s not a single discernible hair or fingerprint inside the truck. At least so far. Our guys are working on it. We’re grasping for anything.” He paused. “But here’s something. You were the closest person that we know of to the scene of the crime. Relatively near the body, you found that flower.”

  “You don’t think—”

  “I have no idea, it’s probably nothing. But every now and then you get a hunch. When a flower so perfectly fresh is found by the scene of what we’re now realizing was a homicide, we have to get it analyzed. So I took a picture of it and sent it to the American Rose Association.”

  “Sheesh, that is grasping for straws. What do you mean, our guys are working on the truck?”

  He measured out white wine and stirred it into the bubbling crabmeat mixture. “As I said, we’re now treating Miss Satterfield’s death as a homicide. State patrol’s out, we’re in.” His big body sighed. “So. Now all we have to do is figure out who would want to kill her. That’s why I’m going to have to talk to Julian as soon as he’s feeling a little better. The team’s working on the evidence too. We need to figure out who could smash into her like that and then leave. Without being seen. We’re thinking the perp either had another car right there, or went right back inside the mall.”

  “I don’t believe somebody could do that without anybody seeing.”

  “Believe it. People usually are just minding their own business.” He swirled Parmesan cheese into the sauce. “Poor Julian.”

  “What about those demonstrators? Think this could be something they’d do out of spite against Mignon Cosmetics? Because Claire worked for them?”

  “At this point, nothing can be ruled out. We’re getting the demonstrators’ names and addresses. The usual drill.”

  My glass was long empty. I needed something else to do with my hands. So I set about assembling ingredients for a fruit cup—luscious, ripe cantaloupes, strawberries, grapes, bananas. I chopped and sliced and arranged the fruit in concentric circles, trying to bring a similar order to this chaos of news.

  At length I poured myself another glass of cider and said, “Remember the guy I dumped the vegetables on?”

  Tom’s smile was enormous: back to his old self. “One of your better moments, Miss G. What about him?”

  “And remember Frances Markasian?”

  “Goldy, how could anyone forget a reporter who looks like a Caucasian Bob Marley and dresses like a class in salvage?”

  I told Tom that Frances seemed to have ferreted out the activist to interview him and that his name was Shaman Krill Not only had Frances somehow learned that Julian was only the most recent of Claire’s many boyfriends, but she also seemed, like Tom and the state troopers, to believe Claire’s death was no accident. Tom turned the stove off, held up one hand, and dug out his trusty spiral notebook.

  “Other boyfriends. Thinks Claire was run down. How’d she come to these conclusions, did she say? Maybe I should give her a ring.”

  “Right, and get an earful about her First Amendment right to protect her sources. Then she’d never tell me a thing. You should have seen her: I hardly recognized her this morning, all decked out in an expensive new dress and tame hairstyle.”

  He snorted with disgust. “Why was she at the Mignon banquet? Since when is southeast Furman County the beat of an Aspen Meadow reporter?”

  I shrugged and sipped cider. “She said she’d heard rumors about Prince & Grogan having problems. How that translates into attending a cosmetics lunch I don’t know. And please, don’t ask what kind of rumors, because I already asked her and she’s not saying. But I’m going down there day after tomorrow for the food fair, and tomorrow I need to pick up my check from the Mignon people—”

  “Oh, Goldy, no—”

  “I’m just going to ask—”

  “Okay, ask.” He reached over and took both of my hands in his.

  “You know I think you have a great mind for these investigations. That’s why I like to talk to you about them. I want your ideas.”

  “Sure.”

  He kissed my cheek. “I do, doggone it. You love to talk to people and they love to talk to you. Great. You have insights. Also great I just don’t want you getting into danger.”

  “You act as if I’m trying to take over your job or something.”

  He laughed. “Are you?” Then he answered his own question. “Of course you’re not. Take catering. I help you chop, right? Sometimes you even give me a little scoop to measure out cookie batter. Small jobs. Helpful jobs. ’Cuz that’s all you’ll trust me with, right? I don’t tell you what to serve or who to serve it to. Correct me if I’m wrong here. Because you’re the caterer and I’m the cop.”

  “Please, Tom. Let me help Julian by asking around. He loved Claire so much.”

  He frowned, then held up a warning finger. “Okay. On two conditions. You don’t go into situations that you know are going to be dangerous. And two, if I tell you to back off, you do.”

  “I thought you said your work wasn’t dangerous—”

  “It isn’t when I’m doing it. It could be for you.”

  I set out the forks, knives, and plates before replying. Then I said calmly, “Okay. But I’m telling you, Tom, I’m going to help Julian. Frances Markasian and I are friends, remember. Or at least sometimes we act as if we are. I have an idea where she might have found out some of these things.” I told him that I’d chatted with Dusty Routt, the Mignon sales associate, at the banquet. I’d even introduced her to Frances. After hearing about Claire’s death, Frances would have felt no qualms about contacting Dusty for information.

  “Routt, Routt, that name is familiar. R-o-u-t-t? There was a big bank job done in the early fifties here in Colorado by a guy named Routt. How o
ld is this Dusty?”

  “Julian’s age. She lives down the street with her mother, little brother, and grandfather. Maybe the grandfather is a bank robber, although in our little town, that’s just the kind of news folks love to spread, and I haven’t heard a thing. Not only that, but our church helped build the house they’re in. A bank robber doesn’t sound like the kind of person they like to have living in houses built with charity money and sweat equity. But … don’t you remember my telling you Julian had dated Dusty a couple of times? Then she was expelled from Elk Park Prep, and they sort of broke up. At a party on Memorial Day, she was the one who introduced him to Claire.”

  “Let me get this straight.” Tom was scribbling in his notebook. “This Dusty … Routt works for the cosmetics people and used to go out with Julian? When Julian met Claire, Dusty had already been dumped? Why was Dusty expelled, do you know?”

  I pursed my lips. “Nope. Julian was always too embarrassed to ask her. You know how that school is, it was all kept very hush-hush.”

  “Another fact the local gossip network seems to have missed,” he observed. “And Frances mentioned Claire Satterfield, former boyfriends, and the guy you trashed with roasted vegetables in the mall garage, all in the same breath? Like she thinks there’s a connection?” He looked at his notebook and considered. “Sounds like somebody’s doing a lot of speculating.”

  I ignored this. “I’m just saying the rumor is, there seem to have been former boyfriends. Would Shaman Krill have had enough time to get back up to the garage and his precious demonstrators if he’d been driving the truck that hit Claire?”

  Tom stood up and ladled a spoonful of crepe batter into the hot pan. It emitted a delicious hiss. “Don’t know yet. We’re going to have to pace it out, time it. Are you going to call Arch to eat or should I? Think he should hear us talking about the investigation? Think he’d feel bored? Left out?”

  “Talking about the investigation? Boring? You don’t know Arch.” I could well imagine a police-band radio becoming the next craze. When I called to the TV room that dinner was ready, Arch pleaded loudly that he was watching a rerun of Antonioni’s Blow-Up and could we just save him some on a plate?

  “It’s a real complicated film,” he yelled helpfully.

  Before I could say anything, Tom called back that that would be fine. I murmured that the crêpes might toughen with microwave reheating, but he shrugged my worries away.

  “What about Julian?” I asked.

  “What about me?” said Julian from the doorway. He slumped into a kitchen chair. He still wore his serving outfit, and his face was gray with exhaustion. I had not heard his customary footsteps on the stairs. “This looks good,” he said in a tired voice as he regarded the fruit tray. “And before you ask, I’m okay.”

  I tossed a salad while Tom filled the crêpes and put them in the oven. While I poured more cider, Tom said, “Julian? How much of our conversation did you hear?”

  Julian’s face reddened. “Oh, probably most of it.”

  “Then I need your help,” Tom said matter-of-factly. “If you know the worst already and you’re not going to pass out on us, then maybe you can answer some questions.”

  “I don’t know the worst already,” Julian shot back fiercely. He glared at Tom. “The worst I know is that she’s dead and we don’t know who did it, okay? That’s the worst so far. What else is there?”

  Tom continued calmly. “Do you know if Claire had other boyfriends?”

  “Yeah, she had some. I don’t know who they were. But she was here on a twelve-month visa, do you think she was just going to spend all day behind the Mignon counter and then go back to her apartment and sit around?”

  “Julian, please.” I set a glass of cider in front of him. He ignored it.

  “Well, do you think I knew her every move? I mean, come on!”

  “Do you know any former boyfriends who were jealous of your relationship?” Tom asked.

  “No.”

  “Do you know anyone who could have thought of Claire as an enemy?”

  Julian rubbed his brow so hard I feared he might bruise his skin. “Look,” he said finally, “I just know they were investigating shoplifting at the store.”

  “Did she report any shoplifters?” Tom asked. He wasn’t writing. “No,” said Julian with a sigh. “I don’t think so.”

  “What about these other men? Anybody shady that you knew about?”

  “Claire just told me she’d seen other guys. But she also said she had admirers. Male admirers,” he added dejectedly.

  “Who?”

  “Oh, Tom, I don’t know.” Julian gestured helplessly. His bleached hair caught the light, and he looked suddenly childlike. “She used to laugh when she told me men were always after her. She said she was glad to have a glass counter between herself and them. One time she teased me and said she’d managed to get rid of the guy who pestered her most. But she was so pretty, I guess you’d have to expect …” He didn’t finish the thought. “And as for being bothered, well, sometimes she thought somebody was playing weird practical jokes on her at the counter—”

  “Like what?”

  “Like getting into her stuff, I don’t know … she just said some of her stuff was missing, that’s all.”

  “Did she say that she suspected anybody?”

  “No!” Julian snapped, and Tom backed off.

  The oven buzzer went off and I took out the crepes. I requested that we put off the discussion of the investigation. Endless talk about crime can put a damper on the appetite. And we hadn’t even told Julian about Marla yet.

  The crabmeat in wine sauce was succulent, wrapped inside the thin, tender pancakes. But Julian, who occasionally ate shellfish as part of his not-strictly-vegetarian diet, consumed next to nothing. He had gone from furious to sullen. Over dinner I broke the news to him about Marla. I tried to make it sound as light as possible, with a good prognosis and quick recovery.

  Julian’s mood went back to anger. “What can we do? Is she going to need us to help her when she gets out? I thought heart attacks only happened to old people.”

  I felt a wash of relief that he did not react with either a fit of despair or more shock. “Yes, we’ll all have to help. You especially, Julian, you know how much she adores you. And she’s not old.”

  I shifted the topic to business. While Tom had a second helping of crepes, Julian and I pushed our plates away and did the final planning for catered events coming in the next three days. Despite the crises breaking all around, or maybe because of them, Julian seemed desperate to be preoccupied with food service. Maybe it was a way of reasserting control. Day after tomorrow he would do a Chamber of Commerce brunch, and we talked about preparing lamb with nectarine chutney and avocado salad. He even asked earnestly if he should be taking notes. I said no; the menu, supplies needed, cooking and serving times were all in the kitchen computer. I wanted to embrace him in his pain. But I had learned from Arch that hugging teenage boys is a precarious enterprise.

  When we had finished eating, Julian made a pitcher of iced espresso, a drink we’d all taken to imbibing after dinner in the unusual heat. Since I’d had latte as soon as I got home from the banquet, more caffeine would surely wire me for the night. But worry about Marla and the events of the day ought to guarantee insomnia anyway, I reasoned. I set aside a covered dish for Arch, and took the brownies and peach cobblers that I’d stashed for the banquet out to the front porch.

  I loved our porch, although the only time you could use it in Colorado was the summer and early fall. Mercifully, the evening air had complied. Savory barbecue smoke drifted through the neighborhood. As soon as Tom and I were sitting in the old redwood chairs he’d brought from his cabin, baby Colin Routt started to wail again from down the street.

  “Poor kid,” Tom commented. “I just read an article about preemies. They have a hard life, all the way through.”

  “Especially when they’re born at under one pound and their dad takes off for parts
unknown,” I said.

  Dusty Routt appeared in the tiny dirt-covered yard holding her little brother, or, more correctly, half brother, on her shoulder. She was jiggling the infant up and down, but the motion failed to comfort him. Then the mellow notes of jazz saxophone again floated out of the house’s screened porch, and the tiny baby was immediately quiet.

  “Music therapy,” Tom and I said in unison, and then laughed. When Julian appeared with crystal glasses filled with espresso and ice, we thanked him and sat listening to the jazz filtering through the dusky air. I sipped the cold, dark stuff and waited for one of them to speak.

  Julian popped a brownie into his mouth and pushed off on the porch swing. After a moment he addressed Tom and me.

  “She was under a lot of pressure.”

  “What kind?” asked Tom without missing a beat, as if we had not stopped talking about Claire twenty minutes earlier. Wisely, he didn’t reach for his notebook.

  Julian shrugged. “Pressure to sell. That was the main thing. You know, Prince & Grogan carries Mignon exclusively in Colorado. Not only that, but the Mignon counter is the only million-dollar cosmetics counter in the state. If the saleswomen don’t sell there, they get fired.” He grimaced.

  “Pressure to sell,” repeated Tom.

  Julian sighed. “They live off those commissions. Lived.”

  “Julian,” I said, “don’t—”

  He waved this away. “Plus what I mentioned. You know—pressure to watch for shoplifters.” His tone was resigned. “There was a lot of theft there. It was a big problem in the store. Credit card fraud, employee theft, shoplifting, you name it. Claire introduced me to the guy who was in charge of security. Nick Gentileschi. He was okay, I guess. She was helping him with something.”

  “What?” Tom said, too sharply, I thought. “Helping the security guy with what? The shoplifting investigation?”

  “I don’t know!” Julian cried. “If I don’t even know the identity of this admirer who wasn’t bothering her anymore, how do you think I know what she was doing with security?”