Double Shot (16 page)

“Our ex-husband did,” Marla and I said in unison. The young woman shrugged, as if to say, See?
“Goldy and Marla,” Lana said softly, rubber-banding the bills. “Do you know when Dr. Korman’s funeral will be?”
“Not yet,” Marla replied. “Probably sometime this week. you can call St. Luke’s Episcopal Church in Aspen Meadow for more info.” And with that, Marla hustled me out the exit.
“Are you out of your mind?” I shrieked at Marla once we were striding along the gritty sidewalk.
“No, I’m hungry,” she said. “By the way, did you notice that Lana never asked who we thought killed the Jer . . . Oh Christ,” she said, when she spotted her car. She grabbed my arm.
I thought she must have gotten a parking ticket, or been side-swiped by a garbage truck, maybe retaliating for that morning. At the very least, the Mercedes must have a flat.
But no. The unattractive bald man. Sandee-the-‘Stripper’s admirer, lay sprawled across the hood of Marla’s Mercedes. Ringing started up in my ears. I trotted across the gritty sidewalk, feeling in my pocket for my new cell phone. As I got closer, I could see blood streaming out of the man’s nose and mouth.
He wasn’t moving.
<11>
Before I’d pressed the 9 in 911, Marla wrenched the phone from me.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” she demanded.
“This guy is bleeding —“
“Forget it. You can’t see that because you’re not here.” She closed my phone and handed it to me, nabbed her own cell from her big Vuitton bag, and punched buttons. As she did so, she leaned down over the injured man and shook his back. He groaned. Marla then held up a warning finger while informing Denver emergency response that a man had been beaten and left on the hood of her car. Yes, he was conscious. Yes, there was blood, lots of it, all over the place. No, it didn’t look like a gunshot or a stab wound . . . well, a wicked bloody nose, not something you could do to yourself. Marla gave an approximation of our street address, then closed the phone while the operator squawked, “Please don’t hang up, ma’am, we need to know your name and the man’s identity if you happen to know — “
The bald man moaned again and struggled to turn his head. I scrambled over to him.
“Don’t move!” I barked while assessing this bloodshot eyes. I tried to make my voice reassuring. “Help is on the way.” The man moaned more loudly.
“Hey!” Marla hollered, her head next to mine. “Who hit you, guy?” When the man didn’t answer, Marla raised her voice. “Whoever beat the crap out of you left you my car!”
With great effort the bald, bloodied man focused on us. He blinked. He burbled something. Marla and I edged closer and said, “What?”
The man wheezed. He announced, a tad louder, “Elvis.”
Marla and I looked at each other.
Marla said, “Goldy, you need to scram. Let Denver PD handle this. If the Furman County detectives get wind of what’s happened here, and that you were involved, they could haul you down the mountain and demand to know why you were here questioning Sandee. As for Sandee, she knows more than she’s letting on. Looks to me as if her jealous boyfriend Bobby could be snagged for assault, end up doing the jailhouse rock.”
“Sandee was checking around that club like a parakeet looking for the house cat. She and Lana both. I should have known something was up.”
“Something’s always up at a strip club,” Marla commented somberly.
“We shouldn’t joke,” I said. “This poor guy: — I gestured at the fellow groaning on the hood of her SL — “probably got beaten up for paying attention to Sandee with two es. Think our ex got whacked for the same reason?”
Marla shrugged. I slumped against our parking meter and tried to think. Why would Nashville Bobby have stolen my kitchen shears? Had he beaten me up prior to killing John Richard, just for good measure? Or my being assaulted incidental to the theft of my kitchen shears and my thirty-eight? The theory of Bobby-Elvis as the killer was intriguing, if mystifying. Then again, we didn’t yet have the autopsy results. Maybe Marla was right, and John Richard had been shot and then stabbed with the shears. I shuddered.
Worry for Arch solidified into a hard pain in my chest. How was he doing? Shouldn’t I be trying to comfort him over the death of his father instead of racing around Denver trying to figure out who had killed his father?
I tried to stand up straight, felt dizzy again, and grabbed the meter. Arch was blaming me this morning. For not locking up my gun. For not calling paramedics. And yet this was the same Arch who saved half his allowance for a soup kitchen. He’s not himself, Goldy, Tom had said. And then instead of feeling dizzy or worried, I realized I was experiencing something else: a rising panic, a raw fear that only figuring out who had murdered John Richard would restore my relationship with Arch.
“Damn the Jerk!” I jumped away from the parking meter and started kicking it. “Damn him!” The meter clanked more loudly inside its concrete hole each time my foot whacked it.
“Now what?” Marla cried.
“I hate him! He wrecked my life while he was alive. And now he’s screwing it up from the grave!”
“Take it easy, will you?” Marla cried, inserting her large body between and the meter. “There’s a fine for destroying Denver city property, you know.” She seized my shoulders. “When the Jerk is actually in the grave, you and I can go dance on top of it. In the meantime, go and stand there by the bald guy. Kick my tires if you want.”
I stalked over to the Mercedes, crossed my arms, and fumed. I hate John Richard Korman more than ever, with his schemes, his libido, his lying, and all his excuses and justifications for bad behavior. Now he was dead, and I was the prime suspect in his murder.
When was all this going to end? But I knew the answer to that: when the cops, or I, or someone figured out who had killed John Richard. And why. Oh, yes, and then there was that dancing-on-the-grave bit.
“I just called you a limo,” Marla announced as she snapped her cell phone shut. “They’re right around the corner, and I ordered you an express. In a few minutes, you’ll get transported back to the mountains in style.” She frowned. “You look awful.”
“I don’t care.” I stared at the Mercedes hood and the poor bloodied bald fellow, who was still moaning. “Look, I don’t need a limo. I’ll take an express but to Aspen Meadow and walk the twenty minutes to my house.”
“The hell you will,” Marla retorted. “There’s now way I’m letting you brave those reporters camped on your porch. The driver’s going to escort you right to your door. And I am going to stay here and deal with the Denver police. Not to mention whatever city agency oversees parking-meter destruction.”
I frowned at the meter, now listing toward the street. And then, for the second time in two days, sirens wailed in the distance, and they were coming toward a crime scene that involved yours truly. I kicked the parking meter again.
“Will you stop?” Marla hollered. “Pay attention. I need you to tell me what to say to the cops. Quickly. Should I tell them about this bald guy” — she pointed at the man on her hood — “and his connection to Sandee’s boyfriend, Nashville-Bobby-the-Elvis-impersonator, and Sandee’s connection to the Jerk?”
“You already said you didn’t want Denver PD to connect this to Furman County. So don’t mention Sandee Blue or Bobby Calhoun.”
The guy on her hood moaned. “It was Elvis.”
“Why not?” Marla demanded. “It wouldn’t involve you.”
“Look. If you say anything about this guy somehow being connected to John Richard’s murder, Denver PD will call the Furman County detectives, who will roar down here and demand to know what your connection is to the Jerk and his death. And by the way, they’ll ask, ‘What were you doing here, Mrs. Korman? Who was with you?’ Then they’ll ask, ‘What were you doing here, Mrs. Korman? Who was with you?’ Then they’ll talk to everybody in the Rainbow, demanding to know how long you were in there and if you were alone, on and on until we’re all hauled in for questioning again. This would not make Brewster-the-criminal-lawyer happy. Marla, please. I’m thankful you got me a limo. Trust me with the cop stuff.”
“But — “
“Listen. Let Denver PD do a simple assault report. Tell them this fellow who got beaten up said the guy who hit him looked like Elvis. Then say vaguely that you think the Elvis impersonator hangs out around here, and if the Denver cops go into the Rainbow, they might be able to get the name of the assailant. The end.”
A silver stretch limo rounded the corner and flashed its lights.
“But how will they ever connect the beating of the bald guy with the Jerk’s murder?” Marla protested.
“Anonymous tip. As in, you call Furman County later and leave one.”
Marla rolled her eyes, then bustled me and my cell phone, purse, and sore kicking foot in the direction of the limo. A tall, smiling driver held the door open. The limos’ plush red interior was frigid from air-conditioning. I shuddered and stared out the darkened windows that filtered what was now murderously brilliant sunshine. Without warning, the limo floated away from the curb. Twenty yards from the Rainbow Men’s Club, we sailed past two shrieking black-and-whites and an ambulance.
There was chaos on the street. I closed my eyes. Again anxiety gripped me. there was chaos in my soul, no question. My life had turned into one big chaos soup, and I was not happy about it.
   
* * *
As we headed west, I tried to think. Form a plan, told myself. Luckily, I still had Holly Kerr’s phone number and address, off Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive, entered in my Palm. Sometimes I was grateful I’d entered the Age of Technology, I thought as I retrieved my new cell and punched in Holly’s numbers. Yes, her voice crackled, she was back from her class, and she’d be happy to see me now. When I asked for directions, the driver interrupted to say he had an onboard navigation system. I whispered for him to wait as I tapped directions into the Palm — five dirt roads and a curvy mountain turn-around. I closed the cell and informed the driver that the Age of Technology did not extend to finding remote areas and landmarks of Aspen Meadow, Colorado. We’d had whole passels of bewildered tourists toting their handheld Global Positioning Systems as they searched for abandoned gold mines and cowboy hideaways. They invariably became lost. Just last week, the forest service had helicoptered out six rock-climbing orthodontists from New Jersey, and told them never to come back.
Forty minutes later, the driver was cursing under his breath as the limo bounced along a cratered single-lane dirt road that meandered off Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive. Melting hail had rendered the byway an obstacle course of stone-washed gullies, soft dirt, and mud-filled holes. Rocks and gravel scratched mercilessly against the sides and underbelly of the sleek silver vehicle as we splashed through the puddles. I wondered how much paint had been scraped away, and if they’d charge Marla for it. Finally, we ran aground in front of a dirt driveway that climbed upward at a forty-five-degree angle.
The limo guy eyed the steep driveway and shook his head. “Lady, it’s not happening.”
“I can walk.” We both disembarked. The driver squinted in all directions, at aspens, pines, and rocks. There wasn’t another house in sight. “An hour or so, okay?” I asked.
“It’s your dime. Where are we, Wyoming?” He rubbed the toe of one of his formerly shiny black shoes to get off the dust. “There’s something else,” he added.
“Go ahead,” I said, trying not to sound impatient.
“It’s just that I’ve got a job tonight, and I wasn’t figuring on driving all the way up here, and . . . well, . . . if the lady you’re visiting is passing out extra sandwiches — “
My own stomach was growling, so I understood. “If she doesn’t give me something for you, I’ll fix you an Italian sub at my place.”
He nodded shyly. I began hoofing it up the driveway, a mile-long affair that led to Holly Kerr’s fabulous home, a manse of the genus Mountain Contemporary. Cantilevered out over granite outcroppings, the wood-and-glass home possessed an unparalleled vista of Upper Cottonwood Creek, the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve, and the plum-shadowed peaks of the Continental Divide. All this made me even more grateful that Holly had decided to have Albert’s memorial lunch at the Roundhouse. Getting supplies up this driveway would have been as the driver said: not happening.
I’d visited Holly at the beginning of May. That was when she’d first moved here, bringing Albert’s’ ashes with her after her arrival. Word was, the country-music singer living in the big place had just been dumped by his label. It seemed strange that the childless widow of a missionary would want to settle so far west of town, where the snow fell to greater depths and the plows rarely visited. But Holly told me that her one criterion for a retirement home was that she would never again have to live anywhere near the equator. To each her own.
I’d submitted to her enthusiastic tour of all seven thousand square feet of glass, wood, and stone. I’d oohed and aahed over the high ceilings pierced by skylights, the ten fireplaces, the twelve bedrooms. With her photo and Christmas card collections, her Save the Rainforest work (another oddity for someone who’d been living in Qatar), and her many weaving, jewelry-making, and craft projects, Holly had hilled up the place with . . . well, with stuff. Lots of stuff.
Later, Marla had told me that Holly had inherited enormous parcels of land in Nebraska and Colorado. For decades, her parents had owned a chain of feed-and-farm-equipment stores. With the profits, they’d quietly bought up defunct farms in both states, and held on to them. When they’d died two years ago, the sale of the land had netted Holly eight million dollars. Not only that, Marla had reported, but Holly had bought the country-music star’s house right after the season’s first forest fire had come raging down from the wildlife preserve. The star had told his real estate agent to make any deal he could. Without irony, Marla said that Holly had gotten the place for a song.
I began huffing and puffing up the driveway again. Unlike most wannabe buyers, Marla had said, Holly had not been spooked by the fire. Still, worry that the whole town would be engulfed in an even bigger conflagration had translated into a flood of homes for sale and a panic within the insurance industry. Within two weeks, companies had stopped writing policies for fire insurance. Holly, Marla repeated, had been lucky.
At the top of the driveway, I gulped air, wiped sweat off my face, and looked longingly down at Cottonwood Creek. Truth to tell, I would have preferred to be in the creek.
“You made it!” Holly cried when she swung open the massive front door. I trudged inside, barely able to murmur thanks. I was immediately greeted by the scent of baking bread threaded with a hint of citrus. My stomach howled, and I worried for my poor limo driver.