Double Shot (3 page)

“Uh, girlfriend?”
Marla lifted her chin and shot me a wary look. Her brown curls had come askew from the sparkling barrettes, and perspiration streaked her face.
“Now what?”
“I’m sorry, but when the cops arrive, I need you to do one more thing.”
“It can’t be worse than this.”
“Would you be willing to go home,” I asked quickly, “take a nice shower, put on something really sexy, and find a county employee named Roger Mannis? I’ll give you his work number and address. Then distract him, seduce him, or do something to keep him occupied over the next few hours.”
“You mean Roger Mannis, the health inspector who hassled you at the garden-club lunch? The subject of Cecelia’s column, he of the muskrat eyes? One and the same?”
“Does that mean you’ll do it?” I asked as a sheriff’s-department vehicle finally, finally drove into the lot.
“You know what, Goldy?” Marla wiped her brow, glanced at the cop car, then put her hands on her hips. “If you weren’t my friend, I would have no excitement in my life.
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She drove off, as they say in this part of the world, in a cloud of dust. The cop, a brawny blond fellow named Sawyer, had me repeat what had happened and show him the scene of the crime. He frowned at the place where I’d fallen, probed the splintered door frame with his finger, and narrowed his eyes at the bullet hole in the floor. He also told me I should see a doctor. I promised I would when the dust settled.
“Still, Mrs. Schulz, I’m going to stay here with you until your help arrives.”
“Feel like carrying some trash?”
His grin was expansive. “Sure.”
With Sawyer at my side, I hobbled back to the kitchen. The two of us grabbed the last of the trash bags — Sawyer insisted on taking three, so I only had one — traversed the lot, and heaved them into the Dumpster.
“I need you to show me the gun you used in the kitchen,” Officer Sawyer said mildly as we made our way back to the Roundhouse.
I veered toward the van, unlocked it, and flipped open the glove compartment. Then I unloaded the gun and handed it to him. He looked at it briefly before giving it back. His expression was inscrutable.
I put the thirty-eight into the glove compartment and slammed it shut. “My permit’s in the kitchen, in my purse.”
“That’s all right.” He waited for me to close the van door, then walked beside me back to the Roundhouse.
The breeze that had been ruffling the lake’s surface died down. Half a mile away, the lake house was deserted. Paddleboat and skiff rental did not begin until ten, and even the walkers and runners had hightailed away to their daily pursuits. The small commuter rush had abated, and

Upper Cottonwood Creek Road

was quiet.
I walked slowly. My shoulders ached. My back throbbed. Our footsteps on the gravel were the only sounds. Things seemed, as they also say in this part of the world, too quiet.
“Officer Sawyer?” I said suddenly. “Have you had this kind of attack around here lately? Somebody in a ski mask, vandalizing commercial establishments?”
Sawyer shook his head. “There’s always a first time. I wish you’d go see a doctor.”
I thought, Sure, right after I find some electric fans, get the bleach, clean out the walk-ins, and start setting up . . . .
“I know that we are all thankful for the life of Albert Kerr,” Dr. Ted Vikarios announced, his voice as authoritative as that of Moses descending from Sinai. Dr. V., as we’d always called him, towered over the microphone, his six and a half feet not even slightly reduced by having reached his early sixties. His long, large-featured face was as imposing as ever, although I was pretty sure he was now dyeing his jet-black hair. He still wore it swooped up in front, like a wave cresting toward shore. “We rejoice in spite of our pain!” his voice boomed, and the mourners jumped in their seats.
Tell me about pain, I thought. My back, neck, and knees were still in a world of hurt. I shifted from foot to foot and glanced out at the people gathered for the memorial lunch. Most of the sixty guest had served in Southwest’s ob-gyn department sixteen years ago, during the time that Drs. Kerr and Vikarios had been co-department heads of ob-gyn. And maybe they wished they hadn’t, because Dr. V. had already been preaching to them for twenty-five minutes.
John Richard Korman, looking breezy, nonchalant, and as devastingly handsome as ever, sat by the French doors. he wore a pink oxford-cloth shirt, patterned gold-and-green silk tie, and khaki pants. Did he look freshly showered? I mean, you would have to fix yourself up if you’d taken time out that morning to attack your ex-wife. At the very least, your naturally blond hair would get messed up underneath that ski mask. Stop it, I ordered myself. You’re not at all sure that John Richard was the culprit.
I returned my attention to the lunch. The only way I was going to get through this event was not to care that he was present. Make that not to care insofar as possible, since I had already noticed how he was charming the women at his table with sly grins, winks, and an occasional backward flip of his careful-to-look-casual bangs. It did seem that he was studiously ignoring me. not that I gave a slice of salami about that, either . . . at least until I could prove or disprove that he was the one who’d attacked me.
Anyway, I certainly wasn’t going to confront him. Not here. Not now.
“We need to focus on gratitude!” Dr. V. shouted. He opened his long, thin arms to their full width, like one of those hang gliders you’re always seeing taking off from
Colorado
peaks.
Okay, I could focus on gratitude. Clutching a glass of water, I backed into one of the Roundhouse’s dark corners and swallowed four more ibuprofen. I believed that I was more thankful than Ted Vikarios. If I hadn’t been choking on the pills, I would have been giving fervent praise to the Almighty that Julian, Liz and I had somehow, somehow, pulled this lunch together after all.
“We miss Albert!” Dr. V. moaned, and the mourners groaned in response.
I swallowed hard and wondered if I missed Albert Kerr. Before Albert’s wife, Holly, had returned to Aspen Meadow with Albert’s ashes the previous month, I hadn’t seen either one of them for over fourteen years. But they had doted on Arch when he was a newborn. It hurt not to see someone for a long time. I had liked the Kerrs, and had felt a pang to hear Albert had died of cancer while serving as the priest for a small Anglican congregation in Qatar, of all places. Still, Albert’s lovely wife — widow — Holly had called me to do this event.
We had been close to both the Kerrs and Vikarioses when Albert, Ted, and the Jerk had worked together, Holly had reminded me.
I had gritted my teeth and promised Holly we would have a lovely lunch. And whether we had an anonymous attacker, a herd of mice, or a four-figure cost overrun, I was going to finish this luncheon, by golly. I took a deep breath, which was not a good idea.
Had anyone else noticed that the Roundhouse smelled like a pine forest? I stepped out from the corner and tried to avoid looking at the Jerk, who had around his new girlfriend. Girlfriend, shcmirlfriend, my main question was whether anyone was sniffing the air and making faces. The scent, Organic Pine, could have been called The Woods You’ll Never Get Out Of. It certainly smelled like denser forest than anything Hansel and Gretel had dealt with. Okay, Liz and Arch had gone too wild with their enthusiastic spraying. They’d coated the kitchen with the stuff, emptied a can each into the refrigerators, and squirted the fragrance into every corner of the old restaurant.
I blinked at Cecelia Brisbane, who was seated close by. Her wide body spilled over the chair seat as she hunched over the table, her thick glasses perched on the edge of her bulbous nose. She was taking notes, for God’s sake! If she made fun of the Roundhouse’s pine odor in her next column, I’d tell her to be grateful the folks hadn’t inhaled what had preceded it.
I focused on the rest of the guests. Gray-haired, squirrel-faced Nan Watkins, a longtime ob-gyn nurse at
Southwest
Hospital
, nodded to me and gave a thumbs-up. I was doing her retirement party this week, so it was a good thing she was enjoying the lunch. In fact, all of the guests looked satisfied — at least with the food, if not with Ted Vikarios’s droning on. I’d been gratified by the way they’d slurped down Julian’s herb-topped chilled asparagus soup. After that, the mourners had dug into our quickly assembled assiettes de charcuterie. Amazing how a long church service can stimulate the appetite.
And speaking of church, God, and things we were thankful for, I’d also been grateful to the Almighty that Liz had been able to muster Arch our earlier than I’d requested. Looking over at Arch, now quietly filling water glasses at a far table, I was filled with pride. At fifteen, my son was finally getting taller. His shoulders were broadening, he’d cut his toast-brown hair short, and he’d traded in his thick tortoiseshell glasses for thin wire-rimmed specs.
But there was another change in Arch. Toward the end of the school year, I’d finally had enough of my son’s self-centeredness and obsession with having stuff. I’d barely been able to deal with a stream of demands for an electric guitar, a high-tech cell phone, a new computer, and other paraphernalia. Worse, his annoying behavior was increasingly expressing itself as verbal abuse directed at yours truly. I’d lived in denial for all those years with the Jerk, I said to myself one particularly sleepless night, was I going to do the same with Arch?
I was not. No matter whose “fault” his behavior was — I blamed the brats at
Elk
Park
Preparatory School
, Arch blamed me — I decided to pull him out of EPP. Unfortunately, there was no Episcopal high school in the Denver area. So I told Arch he could go away to military school (I was bluffing) or he could attend the
Christian
Brothers
Catholic
High School
, not far from the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. After much yelling and door slamming, he chose the Brothers.
Once Arch had been admitted, the school had phoned and invited him on a class retreat. Arch had had a fantastic time. He had made a slew of new friends who now invited him to skate, play guitar, or just hang out, something he had never, ever been asked to do by any student at Elk Park Prep.
And then my son had started required community work in a Catholic Workers’ soup kitchen. Chopping fifteen pounds of onions on Saturday mornings to go into stew he then helped serve to two-hundred-plus homeless people — this had changed his materialism, but quick. Now he put away half his allowance for the Catholic Workers and begged me for paid work so he could help more people eat.
Well, I was all for helping people eat. I mean, just look at this lunch! It might be costing me a mint, but it was happening. Right from the start. Liz and Julian had commandeered Arch into an assembly line that would have left Henry Ford in the dust. They’d zipped around the kitchen prep table, placing slabs of creamy Port Salut cheese beside delicate rosettes of spicy imported salami. Because I was hurting, they’d given me the meager job of rolling the delicately smoked Westphalian ham into thing cylinders. They’d placed these next to slices of a heavenly homemade goat cheese Liz had nabbed at the farmers’ market. We’d all pitched in to pile Liz’s salad — crisp, tender field greens mixed with crunchy slices of hearts of palm and coated with her scrumptious vinaigrette — into pyramids in the middle of each assiette just as the first cars wheeled into the gravel driveway. Right before the lunch had commenced, when we’d been finishing the last of the plates, Dr. Ted Vikarios had burst into the kitchen. Apparently, Arch wasn’t the only one with matters religious on his mind.
“Jesus God Almighty!” Ted Vikarios yelled.
The four of us had jumped. After recovering, I’d reminded him of who I was. Goldy, from the old days, remember? Limping along, I’d led him back out to the dining room and asked him what I could do to help him. When he’d mumbled microphone and podium, I’d carefully shown him where he’d be giving his speech after the meal. Seeming preoccupied, he’d wandered off.
After that inauspicious kickoff, however, the lunch itself had been stupendous. The guests had devoured every morsel of food, right down to the baguettes, the butter — even the gherkins. Moving through the tables, I’d noticed a few members of the crowd making sandwiches from leftovers and tucking them into purses and sacks — a sure sign of success, if not good manners.
And now the guests were devouring the swoon-inducing slices of the flourless chocolate cake I’d made for Marla. We’d topped them with Häagen-Dazs vanilla ice cream, quickly purchased by Julian as our homemade batch had melted when the compressors were shut off. Julian had handed the portable mike — at least I’d set that up the previous day — to Albert’s widow, Holly. Short, gray-haired, as vibrant and energetic
 
at fifty-five as she had been at forty, she’d given an enthusiastic thanks to everyone who’d come. She’d added that there would be one tribute only, from Albert’s old friend Ted Vikarios.
As Ted now proclaimed into the microphone, his wife, Ginger Vikarios, smiled nervously at the crowd. Like her husband, Ginger, slender and overly made up, had taken unsuccessful steps to look as if she had not aged. She’d dyed her hair orange, the lipstick on her downturned mouth was orange, and she had bright spots of orange blush on each cheek. She looked fragile and unhappy, like a sad clown. I certainly hoped Ginger had not heard the insensitive comments on the way her curly orange hair matched her unfashionable orange taffeta dress. Whatever had happened to people wearing black to funerals? they wanted o know. I hadn’t the foggiest.
John Richard Korman’s late arrival with his blond, nubile new girlfriend, Sandee Blue, had caused a ripple in the crowd. Sandee, her platinum curls swept forward in a sexy do, ignored Ted Vikarios as she giggled and nuzzled John Richard’s ear. Smiling, John Richard pulled away, ran his fingers through his long hair, and winked knowingly at Sandee. I wondered if he was technically old enough to be her father.
Marla and I met Sandee two weeks before, when we’d delivered Arch to John Richard’s house prior to a golf lesson. Clad in a bikini (to the best of my knowledge, the Jerk had not installed an indoor pool in his country-club rental house), she’d opened the heavy door, looked us up and down, and introduced herself.