Double Shot (12 page)

“We’ll bring him,” I said hastily.
Father Pete nodded again, gave Tom a grim take care of her look, and trundled out the front door.
“Would it be possible for you to put this whole rotten day out of your mind for a while?” Tom murmured in my ear.
“I wish.”
“Try.”
I tiptoes upstairs, peeled off my clothes, and took a long, hot shower. When I emerged, the mirror revealed my very red nose and two purple bruises on my lower arms. My back sported a bright pink sore spot. I closed my eyes and gingerly put on a terry robe.
I slipped between the cool sheets and reached out for Tom’s warm body. With a gentleness that brought tears to my eyes, he put his hands on my cheeks and whispered that I should tell him if anything hurt. I nodded. He wiped my tears away, pulled me closer, and gave me a long kiss. It was the kind of kiss that went one and on, passionate, insistent, tender beyond words. It was like drowning — and I wanted to drown. His large, muscled body enclosed mine. He touched me, gently sliding his large hands over my sore neck and bruised arms.
He said, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world. I love you now and forever. I’m . . . sorry I haven’t been a very good husband lately.”
“Shh. You’ve been fine. The best.”
“Well, I’m going to kill the bastard who hurt you.”
“Great. When?”
“Now it’s your turn to hush.”
So. Afterward, Tom held me next to him, unwilling to let me go even in slumber. I listened to his soft snoring, to the beat of his heart inside his big chest. For the first time that day, I felt safe.
Courtney MacEwan had been right. People do have sex after funerals.
   
* * *
A thunderclap jolted me from a deep sleep. Fear gripped my chest as I sent the covers flying. My body’s numerous aches screamed in protest.
Tom reached out for me. “Rain, Goldy. It’s rain. I’ll make sure Arch is all right.” Tom slipped quietly away.
Arch was most emphatically not all right. He was sobbing loudly, uncontrollably. Tom was murmuring, but I couldn’t make out what he was saying. I slipped on my robe, crept down the hall, and peered into the room.
“Arch? Honey?” I tried. A sudden flash of lightning illuminated Arch’s room. Julian’s old twin bed stood flat and empty. Arch, covered by the black-and-gold quilt, lay facedown on his own bed. He was screaming and writhing, yelling something about his fall, his fault . . .
I called to him again. He did not respond to me.
Perched beside Arch, Tom kept his voice soothing. “Arch. You’re going to be all right. This is the worst part. Arch, nothing was your fault.”
But Arch was having none of it.
“It is my fault,” my son’s voice hollered. He pounded his bed, making it shudder. I moved hesitantly into the room. “I never should have gone down to play hockey. If we just could have been there earlier; this never would have happened! Oh, God! It is my fault! Don’t say it’s not my fault when it is!”
Tom motioned me over and mumbled that he was going to get our sleeping bags. I took his warm spot on the quilt and tried a few comforting words of my own. Arch’s body writhed with his sobs.
“Honey, don’t,” I tried. “Please stop crying. You’re going to make yourself sick.” I kept my voice calm, kept repeating the same things, kept hoping Arch would calm down. “Please, Arch. Your dad’s death had nothing to do with you, or when we got to his house. I promise.”
I reached out to rub Arch’s back, but he shrugged me away. Then he lowered one leg and kicked his feet against the floor. The bed wheels creaked and the bed rolled sideways. He didn’t want to be comforted, and that was that.
While I was puzzling over this, a small stone pelted the dark window. My heart jumped into my throat. Soon, another tiny rocket popped against the glass. Then another and another. Handfuls of pebbles were being tossed at the windows. I turned on the lamp by Arch’s digital clock. Another flash of lightning brought on the room and the pine trees outside into sudden focus. A pile of hail was accumulating on the windowsill. The thunder boomed again. So we were at the last of the Colorado season: blizzard, flood, fire, hail. Great.
Tom shuffled back in, clutching a pair of red sleeping bags. Their whispery nylon rustling, combined with the thunder and the drum of hail, startled Arch out of his crying jag. He rubbed his face and reached for his glasses, next to the lamp.
“What’s going on?”
Tom stepped purposefully across the room. “Your mom and I are going to spend the rest of the night in here. It’ll be better if we can all be together tonight. Your mom’ll be over on Julian’s old bed.” He hefted on of the slithery bags onto the empty mattress by the window. “I’ll sleep on the floor. You need anything, look down and yell for it.”
“Has anybody . . . “ Arch’s voice caught. “Has anybody called Julian? To tell him what happened?”
Above the patter of hail, I promised, “First thing in the morning.”
I hunkered down into the flannel. Yes, we needed Julian. Since he’d helped with the funeral lunch, the cops had probably already talked to him about John Richard. Then again, maybe not. In addition to working for my business a couple of days a week, Julian held down a part-time job in a Boulder bistro. Plus, he was always taking at
 
least one course at the University of Colorado, in pursuit of his degree. He wasn’t the easiest person to find, as the cops would probably discover. Then again, those law-enforcement folks had proved that they could zero in on connections between the murder victim and just about anything they wanted.
The hail continued to hammer the roof Rat-a-tat-tat! Do you own a gun, Mrs. Schulz? Rat-a-tat-tat!
Why did hail have to sound so much like a firing squad, anyway?
   
* * *
The phone started ringing at 6:22. The incessant, demanding ringing seemed to be coming from inside my head. I blinked at the red 6:22 on Arch’s digital clock, and wished I had a baseball bat. The kind you break phones with.
My head ached; my body throbbed. I needed quiet. I needed healing. I scooted down into the flannel and pulled the sleeping bag over my static-charged hair. When the ringing stopped, I again poked out my head.
It was a typically chilly June morning in the mountains. Brilliant sunlight glistened through the windowsill’s melting mounds of hail. Rainbows shimmered across the walls of Arch’s room.
I assumed that the unmoving lump on the neighboring bed, still covered with the black-and-gold quilt, was Arch. Toms’ sleeping bag lay flattened and empty. The phone started up again. Who could possibly be calling at this hour? Like a leaden cloak, the events of the previous day descended on my brain. Who could be wanting so desperately to talk? Let’s see: The cops. The local paper. My new criminal lawyer; who would have bad news.
I sat up. Droplets of water gleamed on the pine branches brushing Arch’s window. The previous day’s fierce, dusty wind had indeed pushed in those storm clouds hovering over the Continental Divide. With any luck, the hail would have smothered the fire up in the preserve. At least one thing around here could be under control, and that would be a welcome change.
Tom appeared at the doorway and motioned for me. I shed the flannel-and-nylon cocoon, tiptoed out to the hallway, and followed him into our room. There, I tucked myself into a fresh sweatshirt and pants.
“Who keeps calling?” I asked.
“Tell you downstairs.”
Our wooden steps creaked more loudly than usual as I headed for the kitchen. I listened for Arch, but heard nothing.
“It’s the paper,” Tom announced ruefully, once we were seated at our oak table and he was revving up the espresso machine. “first Frances Markasian, then somebody else from the Mountain Journal. They want to know how long they’re going to have to wait until they can get a statement from you. Then Frances Markasian two more times.”
I couldn’t help myself; I cackled. Frances Markasian, a legend in her own mind, was a so-called investigative reporter at the Mountain Journal. Sometimes when she wanted information, we were pals. Most of the time, we weren’t.
Suddenly, it was all too much. I laughed as my arm made a sweeping gesture to indicate the entire outdoors. Dazzling remainders of hail sparkled on the aspens, the lodgepole pines, the blue spruce. Our dry grass was spotted with white. The tender shoots of our perennials glistened with unaccustomed wetness.
“Hell was frozen over,” I announced. “But it doesn’t matter. I’m not talking to the Journal.”
Tom added water to the coffee machine. “You’re sounding slightly bitter this morning. Here’s some good news, though. The hail helped the firefighters get that blaze out in the preserve. Unfortunately, with more dry weather on the way, they’re warning that the fire danger is still high. Okay, how many shots of espresso would you like?”
“I’ll take a double, thanks.” Ordinarily I would have had six, but in the last couple of months, I’d been trying to cut back.
Tom warmed a cup and pressed the machine’s buttons. When he set the steaming dark drink on the table, he placed his hand on mine.
“We need to talk. As in, strategy.”
The phone rang again, and I was tempted to throw my luscious cup of hot espresso at it. Reading my mind, Tom checked the caller ID.
“Priscilla Throckbottom?” Tom asked me.
I groaned. Priscilla Throckbottom, head of the St. Luke’s Episcopal Church Women and several other local organizations, had booked me to do the breakfast for her PosteriTREE committee at the country club, to be held the following morning. Now either she wanted to see if I was still doing her breakfast. Perhaps she wanted her own version of what had happened. Maybe she wanted all three. And at six forty-five in the morning, no less.
“Let’s turn off all the ringers,” I proposed. “I don’t want them to wake Arch. The machine can take messages. I’ll Julian at eight or so.”
Tom nodded, fussed with the buttons on the kitchen phone — our home line and my business number had separate ringers — then left to silence the receivers throughout the house. I sipped Tom’s dark brew and felt a bit better, even though my body still ached from the previous morning’s attack outside the Roundhouse. The question of who had sabotaged and hit me, and why, was like a puzzle locked inside a rock. Who hated me that much? Somebody trying to divert attention from himself as the Jerk’s killer? A competitor? Who? The only other catering competition I’d ever had in Aspen Meadow had all switched over to being chefs of the personal (forty or so clients) or private (one big, demanding client) variety. As far as I could see, I posed no threat. Maybe Marla would have a lead on it this morning. You didn’t make all that mess at the Roundhouse and not brag to somebody.
Recalling the detectives’ interrogation, I wondered why they hadn’t asked me if I’d set up a friend to assault me. They clearly though I’d planned the accidental-shooting incident. Maybe they speculated that the bruises on my arms were self-inflicted. I should have given them a good look at my neck.
And of course, I wanted most of all to know who had killed my ex-husband. I had concern for myself, as a suspect. And perhaps I did, after all, have concern for him.
A sudden vision of John Richard’s bloody body loomed. I resolutely put it out of my mind, but it popped up again. Something had been wrong . . .something apart from the fact that he’d been dead, of course. I swallowed more coffee, closed my eyes, and went over the mental image. The blood, his face, his hair . . .something had been off, or strange, or at the very least, out of place. I hadn’t spotted my gun, so that wasn’t it. Still, something had struck me as weird, and I was fairly sure this was beside the fact that John Richard had been shot. But the observation, or realization, or whatever it was, flashed just out of reach, like a silvery trout wriggling off a hook.
At least I could remember John Richard’s body, or what I’d been able to see, given its skewed angle. Who could have done such a thing? Was it the same person who’d attacked me? And how was I going to find out these things?
I put my cup in the sink and did a few gentle yoga stretches. Blood flowed to my bruises like an anesthetic. If Yogi Berra was right, and 90 percent of baseball was half mental, then perhaps the same was true of pain. I took more cleansing breaths before stretching, breathing, and stretching some more. I had another double shot of espresso and felt restored. Ready to face the day, I booted up my computer.
Tom lumbered back into the kitchen, full of purpose and resolve. Overhead, the shower water began running.
He rubbed his hands together. “Miss G.?” You seem to be feeling better.”
I nodded. “So do you, Tom. Are you doing better?”
“Last night was great.”
“Besides that.”
His face darkened and he turned away. “Sometimes. It feels good to help you and Arch. I wish I could work on this case, but the department actually told me to take some time off, to help the two of you.”
“Well. Thanks.”
His smile was rueful. ”All right, then. I still need to get Arch out of here. If people can’t get you to answer the phone, they’ll come to the door. Believe me, I know.” He pulled out a kitchen chair and sat down. “I want to get him somewhere safe, as in emotionally safe. Do you have plans for today?” I told him about the two events I needed to finish prepping. Then Marla was taking me out to lunch. I omitted the strip-club part. “Let me tell you what I’ve been thinking,” Tom went on. “Call Trudy next door, and ask her if she can take in cards, flowers, casseroles. Meanwhile, Arch and I are going out.” He looked at the ceiling. “Maybe we’ll play golf.”
“Golf? The day after his father’s been killed?”
“It was my idea. And he doesn’t want to sit around.” He stood, reached into a cupboard for a tray, and set it with a plate, napkin, and silverware. “The fresh air will do him good. Miss G., trust me — you don’t want him here if reporters start swarming.”
Tom poured a glass of juice for the tray. I smiled. He had called me Miss G. twice this morning. Maybe he was getting better.
“Since I don’t belong to the country club,” he went on, “I suggested the municipal course by the lake. It’s not a bad course, and its’ unlikely he’ll see anybody he knows. No embarrassing questions that way.”
I shook my head, dumbfounded. Whenever someone close to me had died — a grandparent, an uncle I hadn’t seen in years — I’d felt numb. Even throwing myself back into whatever work needed doing had been an emotional chore. Then again, until the last two years, I hadn’t had Tom to help me through a crisis. Maybe I would have been willing to go play golf with him, too.
Tom popped two slices of brioche into the toaster and gave me a sidelong glance. “Couple more things.” He handed me a new cell phone and an index card. “Use this instead of your old one. Brewster Motley’s guy brought it by this morning. Also, the home phones are secure.” He smiled. “He also swept the place for bugs, if you can believe it. More important, I called a buddy of mine and ordered a chain-link fence and gates, complete with heavy-duty locks, to be put in around your compressors and switches outside the Roundhouse. Boyd will bring your new keys by later. He also promised to call either you or Marla, strictly on the q.t., if he heard any details about the investigation. Okeydoke?