Fatally Flaky (20 page)

If Jack was directing me to go into that mess he called a residence, or more properly, a residence being renovated, then what did he want me to find?

I suddenly and with unexpected vividness remembered Jack coming into the spa kitchen the previous night. He’d asked if he could talk to Boyd. Jack had wanted to talk to Sergeant Boyd, who worked for the sheriff’s department.

About what?

Well. I looked back at Jack’s house. There was no doubt that Lucas, whom I perhaps unfairly thought of as a materialist, would eventually have his way with Jack’s house. Lucas was the son, the heir. Marla had heard he needed money. So Lucas would probably get in, finish the renovation as quickly and cheaply as possible, then put the place on the market. This made me extraordinarily sad. I forced my mind to veer away from this line of thinking.

The problem was, I was having trouble breathing. I didn’t want to have anything in my mind. I didn’t want to feel anything.

I pulled out the keys Jack had told me to take, and without thinking about it, jumped out of the van.

Watery sunshine was breaking through the clouds. Finally. It felt as if we’d been underwater for a month. More sadness: now that it was finally nice, Jack wasn’t here to enjoy it.
Stop,
I ordered myself.

A breeze shuffled through the pines and aspens as I hopped up the steps to Jack’s house, and I wished I’d worn a jacket or a sweater. But if I went back home, my nerve would fail and I would rethink the advisability of going into Jack’s house. I didn’t think it was illegal, but I certainly did not want to consult an attorney on the subject.

The key squeaked as I turned it in the lock, the mechanism itself infected with the humidity that had been our constant summer companion. I tiptoed into the house, and immediately felt as if things had changed. Things had changed? What things?

The interior was as disordered as usual. Jack had apparently left a few windows open, and the fresh scent of recent rain filled the air. Jack’s old sofa was piled with clothes and towels—a dump of clean laundry awaiting folding, probably. The end tables and coffee tables held precariously piled stacks of books and magazines.

I allowed my gaze to travel around the room, thinking the whole time: What’s different? What had Jack wanted me to see in here, if anything? If Jack had been so anxious for me to see something in his living room, then he should have been clearer about it—
wait
.

Beside the door was a set of golf clubs in a beautiful leather bag. Golf clubs? The clubs and the bag looked brand new. But Jack had bursitis in both of his elbows. It had pained him, and he was always rubbing in this or that new anti-inflammatory cream.

Why new golf clubs? Had Jack bought them as a gift for someone? If so, for whom? Were they for Doc Finn, Lucas, or Craig Miller, as a wedding gift? They hadn’t been here when Tom and I had come over to visit the other night.

Jack could not possibly have thought he would be able to play eighteen holes, or even nine, as his aches would have made the outing disastrous. The bursitis didn’t bother him fishing, he always told me, just doing something strenuous, like…sports. And anyway, with whom would Jack have played golf? He and Doc Finn had engaged in fishing and drinking, not necessarily, as Jack had always said, in that order.

Then I saw something else that had not been there on any of my previous visits. A small gold travel clock was folded into the open position, on a tiny end table right in front of the picture window that gave someone looking out a view of our house. If somebody were sitting on the couch, that person would look right at the clock, and then to our house across the street.

Golf clubs, when he didn’t play golf. A travel clock, when he kept no clock in his house. Hmm.

Okay, I was anxious and grief crazed, and who knew what all. But I couldn’t help seizing on the idea that Jack had left the clubs and the clock here because he wanted me to find them. They were one of his puzzles, left for me.

Without thinking about it, I moved across to the table and picked up the clock. It was not telling the correct time, and when I tried to turn the tiny crank on the side, nothing happened. Without thinking, I folded the clock back into a square, and slipped it into my sweatpants pocket. I walked over to the golf clubs, and ran my hands over the golf bag, which was made of a lovely buttery yellow leather. Maybe it belonged to somebody else? But when I looked closely, I saw a price tag dangling from the bag’s handle.

I simply would not accept what other people might have said, that the clubs and bag and nonworking clock were evidence of mental decline on Jack’s part. I supposed it was possible he had bought the golf accoutrements, then remembered he didn’t actually play golf…and then had wanted to return what he’d bought.

As improbable as it seemed, I found myself returning to the puzzle idea. I began to remove one club after another from the bag. I didn’t know what I was looking for, or even if I would recognize it if I found it.

I had just put a five iron on the floor when I felt a slight movement of air behind me. I started to turn around, but I wasn’t quite fast enough. For all my worry and care about why Jack had given me his keys, I was rewarded with a glancing blow off the side of my skull.

My knees crumpled. My mind’s eye brought up my dear Arch and Tom. But then pain exploded on the side of my head, and I thought,
What the hell?

T
HE FIRST ODDITY
facing me as I sputtered, blinked, and coughed uncontrollably was to figure out who was waving spirits of ammonia under my nose. This person had to be stopped. I screamed that I hadn’t blacked out, I was perfectly conscious, thank you very much. The ammonia disappeared.

The second problem had to do with my mother’s pet bird, a canary named George who’d lived in a cage in our New Jersey home while I was growing up. George the canary had not died, as I had been told, but had grown as large as a human and now was fully alive, leaning over me. What kind of badly scented alternative universe had I entered?

Eventually the big canary resolved into the avian facial features and yellow hair of Lucas Carmichael. Next to him were two policemen. I was looking up at them from a prone position on the floor.

“Would you please get my husband? Tom Schulz?” I asked one of the policemen, a fellow with sparse red hair who looked familiar. Then again, I’d just thought the son of my godfather was a canary, so maybe I did not in fact know this guy. Still, in as authoritative a voice as I could muster, I said, “Please call Tom Schulz. Right now. He needs to be here. Please,” I added again.

“Oh, Christ,” said the other policeman, who had dark, slicked-back hair and a youthful face. “Schulz? This is Schulz’s wife?” He looked down at me. “This isn’t Schulz’s house, is it?”

“No, it isn’t,” said Lucas Carmichael.

I narrowed my eyes at Lucas. “Please tell me you weren’t the one who hit me on the side of the head.”

“I didn’t know it was you,” he said, his tone humble. “I’m sorry. I just didn’t recognize you from the back.”

While the policeman I had spoken to summoned Tom on the radio, the other one glanced up questioningly at Lucas.

“She did break in,” Lucas protested defensively.

From my ignoble position on the floor, I fastened my gaze on Lucas. “Don’t you watch any TV, Lucas? You’re supposed to say, ‘Freeze, asshole!’”

“I am not an asshole,” Lucas said. “And do you ever think not to break into people’s houses?”

“I wasn’t breaking in, and I wasn’t calling you an asshole. Sorry, Lucas.” Suddenly, I felt consumed with guilt. Lucas appeared bleary-eyed and defeated. He’d just lost his father. “Sorry,” I said again. “I was—”

“Mrs. Schulz?” the sandy-haired policeman interrupted. His name tag said his name was Katz. “Your husband will be here directly. He was in the area and shouldn’t be long.” Officer Katz smiled at me. “So I’m finally getting to meet the infamous Mrs. Schulz.”

“She’s infamous?” Lucas asked.

“Hey, buddy?” Katz said to Lucas. “Don’t talk unless I ask you a question, okay?” To me, he said, “You want to tell me why you’re in this house?”

“Will you help me up first?”

Katz offered me a strong hand, and soon I was sitting on Jack’s couch. The dark-haired policeman, not wanting, I figured, to be bawled out by Tom for being unhelpful to his wife, scrambled to get me a glass of water from the kitchen. I felt dizzy and in pain. On the floor not far from where I’d fallen was a small brass lamp with a broken bulb and smashed shade. It was the bulb and shade, I figured, that Lucas had swung at the side of my head, leaving me stunned, confused, and lying on the floor. I wondered if he could be arrested for assault.

“I’ll tell you exactly what I was doing here.” I felt in my sweatpants pocket that held the keys, not the one with the travel clock. Seeing Katz’s immediate look of alarm, I pulled out my hand. “I’m not going for a weapon,” I assured him. “You want to feel in my pocket? I was getting the keys Jack gave me, and the note in his handwriting saying he wanted me to have them.” I gave Lucas another angry look. Lucas shrugged and stared at the ceiling.

“It’s okay,” said Katz, “I trust you. Get out the keys and the note. I’m not going to go feeling around in the pockets of the wife of my superior officer, thanks.”

I withdrew the note and the keys, which Katz studied. If he wanted to make sure the keys worked, then he could go and test them on the door. But I had the feeling he believed me.

The dark-haired policeman came over and handed me the water. His badge indicated his name was Allen. He furrowed his eyebrows at Jack’s handwriting.

I had, of course, left the travel clock securely in the bottom of my other pocket.

“This your father’s writing?” Katz asked Lucas, who stared down at the note. “These his keys?”

“Yes,” said Lucas. “I’m sorry I panicked and hit Goldy—”

“All right, then,” Katz interrupted noncommittally as he handed the keys and the note back to me.

“Don’t give those keys back to her,” pleaded Lucas. “She doesn’t belong here.”

“Could you give it a rest, please, Lucas?” I asked gently. I trained my gaze on Katz. “Let me explain. We live across the street.” My breath hitched, and I fought to maintain calm. “Jack Carmichael was my godfather.” Tears began their unwanted streaming down my face. “He…died last night, in Southwest Hospital,” I managed to say. I cleared my throat and paused to compose myself. As they’re taught to do, the two cops waited patiently. Lucas was shifting his weight from foot to foot. I went on, “Here’s what happened. Last night, Jack Carmichael was attacked at a wedding I was catering out at Gold Gulch Spa. He actually died early this morning. Our priest came to tell me, and I thought, since Jack had insisted in the hospital that I take the keys, maybe he wanted me to…I don’t know, water his plants, feed a pet—”

“But he has no plants and no pets,” Lucas interjected. “As you very well know, Goldy.”

“Lucas,” I began again, “could you please just stop? Why are you here, anyway?”

He reddened. “Well, I do have keys to the house.”

I asked, “So what were you doing here, then?”

“Hold on, kids,” said Katz. He and Allen exchanged an unreadable look. Before Lucas and I could keep arguing, there was a sharp knock on the door. Lucas and I both jumped. Allen held up both hands, indicating everyone should stay where they were. Then he walked over quickly and opened the door. When Tom strode into the room, my shoulders relaxed in relief, while Lucas groaned even louder.

“Schulz,” said Katz. “Thank God.” He was clearly relieved not to have to sort out what was going on between Schulz’s wife and the dead man’s son.

But alas. Tom did not seem relieved. I recognized the attitude he assumed, but was usually successful at concealing, when he was mightily ticked off. He gave me a bitter look, and I could just imagine the questions he’d pepper me with as soon as we got back to our house: So, how’d you do with Marla at St. Luke’s? Get those diocesan letters straightened out, did you? Oh, wait, you didn’t do that.

The cops briefed Tom as to Lucas’s phone call to 911: he’d heard an intruder in the living room, who had been me, and he needed law enforcement to come as quickly as possible. Then he proceeded to sideswipe me with a lampshade.

“I want this house sealed,” Tom said to Katz and Allen. “Nobody else comes in except our guys, understand? We’re looking into a suspicious death, and this residence is off limits to anyone not involved in the investigation.”

“Oh no, you are not going to seal this house,” Lucas protested. “My father had a history of heart attack and he had another, fatal one early this morning. It is simply not fair for you to—”

Tom’s stance—not menacing, but not even close to conciliatory—his penetrating green eyes, his lifted chin, all these he trained on Lucas Carmichael, who closed his yappy mouth. Thank God.

“Okay, everybody out,” Katz ordered, and I was only too glad to meekly follow Tom out of Jack’s house.

“G
OLDY
,”
SAID
T
OM
, once we were in our kitchen and I had downed some aspirin for my sorely aching head. “What were you thinking?”

“I wasn’t really thinking.”

“That much is obvious. Down at the department, they’re going to have a field day with this. ‘Schulz’s wife broke into the house of a guy whose death was suspicious. What d’you suppose she was looking for?’”

“Katz and Allen will say all that? Why?”

“Because they’re cops, Goldy, and they’ve got to talk about something when they come off their shift. And the more trouble you get into, the more news you make, Miss G.”

“I wasn’t getting into trouble! I just wanted to find out why Jack left me his keys!”

“And did you?” Tom moved over to the espresso machine.

“No.”

There was a pause while we looked at each other. Then Tom exhaled, smiled, and shook his head. “You want some coffee?”

“I’ve been thinking I should switch to decaf.”