Fatally Flaky (9 page)

“Better hurry up,” I warned.

“Will you calm down?” Jack winked again, and was gone.

I eyed a neat display of home-decorating magazines, afraid of mussing them up. Suddenly, I felt overwhelmingly tired. Where was the caffeine-delivery machine in that kitchen? I wondered. Charlotte had offered me some coffee, after all. Did I dare sneak back and look for it?

I did. A moment later I was frowning at an expensive wall-mounted unit with a computer and digital readout. After staring at it for a few moments, in which I was becoming increasingly nervous that Charlotte might reappear, I figured out that the thing ground the beans, then dripped the goods into a thermos.
Damn,
I thought. I didn’t dare mess with it without having a look at the manual.

The phone rang, and I looked around for it. Another wall-mounted unit held both the apparatus and a blackboard. The phone rang and rang. It wasn’t even seven o’clock in the morning. Should I answer the thing, I wondered, and take a message for Charlotte? I moved over to the blackboard just as someone picked up the phone—either a person or voice mail. I stared at the board, with its chalk hanging on a string. Then for some reason—probably lack of caffeine—I got the giggles. Did I dare write “Goldy was here” on the board? I did not.

There was a name that had been written in chalk, then erased.
O’Neal.
I wasn’t aware that the Attenboroughs knew the O’Neals. In fact, I couldn’t imagine them moving in the same, as the phrase went, social circles.

I looked over longingly at the coffee machine, but when I heard Charlotte’s heels clicking along the hardwood floor, I raced back into the living room and flopped onto the uncomfortable sofa.

When Charlotte reappeared, she looked as lovely as she had when she left.

“Where’s Jack?” she demanded.

“Outside.”

“Doing what, may I ask?” When I shrugged, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s hurry up. I don’t want to keep Victor waiting.”

What ever,
I thought,
we’re still an hour early.
But I didn’t want to point this out to the client.

Out on the porch, Charlotte sniffed the air suspiciously, then squinted at Jack.

“You’ve been smoking.”

“Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”

Charlotte turned to me. “Could you work on your godfather, try to get him to stop his unhealthy habit?”

I swallowed. Wasn’t there some law in this country called “I’m not in charge of what he does”? Jack shot me an apologetic glance. Just for good measure, he hit the doorbell. It donged mercilessly in the interior.

“Jack, what in the world are you doing?” Charlotte demanded.

“Trying to wake up that daughter of yours.” He hit the bell again.

“She’s getting married tomorrow! She needs her beauty sleep!” Charlotte protested.

“She needs something,” Jack admitted before opening the sedan’s back door so I could climb in.

Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to let Jack drive the two of us out to Gold Gulch Spa. Jack was teasing Charlotte, and it wasn’t going well. As Tom had pointed out, men teased each other and they thought it was fine. When men teased women, though, we took it as pure cruel aggression.

Well, anyway, while dealing with Charlotte and Jack, I was beginning to feel like one of those spots on the globe that’s set between warring factions. Alsace-Lorraine. Kuwait. Somebody always wants it, and the place ends up getting smashed in every conflict. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to visualize myself as Switzerland.

In the front seat, I could hear Charlotte Attenborough asking again about Finn. Was she trying to find out what had happened, or was she pumping Jack for information? I didn’t know, but it made me uncomfortable. Tom said my paranoia antennae were the best functioning he’d ever encountered.

“I am not controlling,” Charlotte was insisting now. “If anything, I’m too accommodating. I put up with that pigpen you call a house—”

“It’s being renovated,” Jack said calmly. “And no one is forcing you to come over. In fact, if you would call before you showed up one of these times, I’d have a chance to clean it up.”

Charlotte tsked. “I dial your number, but you don’t answer. And anyway, the only person I should be phoning is the county health inspector.”

“That’s going a bit far,” Jack murmured as he turned out of Flicker Ridge and headed back toward the lake. An icy silence descended in Jack’s Mercedes. When he turned, to head west on Upper Cottonwood Creek Road toward Gold Gulch Spa, Charlotte reopened…well, what were they? Negotiations? Hostilities?

“You know, Jack,” she said, “I’m acquainted with any number of contractors who could have had that place of yours completely done, cleaned up, and ready to be lived in a month ago.”

“I like to do things my own way,” Jack replied, his tone stubborn.

“And now who’s being controlling?” Charlotte retorted sharply. “If you just didn’t spend so much time with—” But here she stopped short, and what felt like the refrain of a practiced argument was left dangling. Jack’s face in the rearview mirror turned an ashen gray, and I realized Charlotte had finally gotten to him. Charlotte had meant to say, I was willing to bet, that Jack was spending too much time with Doc Finn. That’s why the house wasn’t getting renovated fast enough; why Jack didn’t answer when Charlotte called—he was fishing with Doc Finn; that’s why Charlotte felt she had to show up at Jack’s house unannounced, and I was willing to bet it was why there was this undercurrent of rancor in their relationship. Charlotte, I was also willing to bet, had only at the last moment remembered that Doc Finn was dead.

At the right-hand turnoff to the spa, I noticed on the left side of the street the forlorn-looking building that had formerly housed Spruce Medical Group. Most of the tenants had long since abandoned these digs for the posh new medical building on the north side of Aspen Meadow. But still. In a raging snowstorm, Doc Finn had set out from here, from this spot, when I’d called about Arch’s fever. He’d overlooked his own peril to bring kindness and healing into our house. I’d be forever grateful to him for it.

But Doc Finn was gone, the victim of foul play. My heart twisted in my chest.

A
h, the prodigal mother of the bride!” Victor Lane cried when we pulled up and disembarked. “I’m so happy to see you, Charlotte dearest!”

While Victor Lane ostentatiously kissed Charlotte Attenborough on both cheeks, Jack inverted his eyebrows, pointed to Victor with his thumb, and gave me his patented
Who-the-hell-is-this-guy
look. I shrugged and shook my head. Let Charlotte introduce them to each other; I knew I was invisible to Victor Lane, too. He just wanted to show me how unimportant I was.

Victor continued to fuss over Charlotte, who cooed back. Victor was a slender, unattractive man with pit-marked cheeks, a shaved head, and virtually no chin. His facial skin seemed to be pulled too tightly over the bones, giving him a skeletal appearance. In truth, I decided, he looked like a reject from the bowling ball factory.

This day, he was wearing a ridiculous-looking pale green sweat suit and black high-top sneakers, which gave him the appearance of being as innocuous as a lime lollipop. Still, I knew not to underestimate him.

In the distance, a bell gonged, and women emerged from the various dormitory doors and began to move along the dirt trails that led, according to signs, to the weeklong-spa check-in, the day-spa check-in, the living room, the dining room, the gym, the hiking trails, the regular pool, and the hot pool. I looked at my watch: seven forty-five. When had all these guests had breakfast, I wondered, and when was lunch? From the longing looks the gals were casting at the dining room, I had the feeling breakfast was in the distant past, and lunch was in the even more distant future.

“This is Jack Carmichael,” I said loudly to Victor Lane, once he’d disengaged from Charlotte. “My godfather.”

“Of course!” said Victor, extending a skinny hand. “The happily retired attorney. Charlotte has told me so much about you.”

“And you remember Goldy?” Jack rejoined, with a smile and exaggerated politeness. He bowed in my direction, then straightened up. “She’s the vastly successful caterer whom you believed couldn’t cook.”

So much for a peaceful visit. I smiled brightly, trying to envision Geneva, or Lake Lucerne, or some other sunny spot in neutral Switzerland.

“Yes, of course.” Victor’s smiling mouth full of yellow teeth and exaggerated enthusiasm made me cringe. “I knew your ex-husband, of course. Great doctor. And, ah, our chef, Yolanda? She’s looking forward to visiting with you.” He turned back to Charlotte. “We want everything to be perfect for our Billie!”

“Our Billie?” Jack asked, but I nudged him.

I interrupted the conversation to ask for directions to the ladies’ room. Victor said it was off the TV room, next to the dining room. He then invited the three of us to come inside. I hustled ahead of them to the TV room, a pine-paneled space with overstuffed faux–Early American sofas. I stared at the far wall: there were four unmarked doors hidden in the paneling. I knocked on one, heard no response, and opened the door, praying all the while that it wasn’t reserved for men, and that one was not lurking inside. Did men even come to this spa? I had no idea.

The restroom was unisex: a one-seater. I opened the window, an old-fashioned crank type, and inhaled fresh, moist, pine-scented air. I closed my eyes, did some yoga breathing, and listened to the sounds of women calling to one another about where they were going: massage? hot pool? aerobics?

Why, this might as well be camp, right?

I had loved camp. I’d gone to the same one on Cape Cod for four years, from age seven to twelve. I’d done swimming and boating, and when it rained, arts and crafts, where I’d made lanyards in every shade of the rainbow. There’d been lots of rib-sticking food, too, and with all the activity, you were always ravenous for it. This was like that, I said to myself, breathing deeply. And the wedding tomorrow evening? Why, I was just fixing a really big dinner for all the campers, who’d be dressed up in costumes.

With my new positive attitude firmly in place, I reached to close the window, and saw Jack hustling off toward the hiking trails, a lit cigarette dangling from his mouth. Apparently he’d had enough of both Charlotte and Victor.

Okay, but I was being positive. I straightened my back and stepped out of the restroom, where I immediately came face-to-face with a thin, black-haired woman who’d had such a bad face-lift—tight skin, eyes pulled back—she looked like a cat who’d learned how to stand up.

“Didn’t you flush?” she demanded.

“Uh, I was just using the, uh, window.”

She tsked, pulled open the door of one of the other restrooms, and slammed it behind her. Guess she and I wouldn’t be sharing s’mores tonight!

I hustled into the dining room, where one of the staff members was giving a talk to a group of women. Charlotte and Victor were waiting for her to finish, and this appeared to make the speaker nervous.

“Gold Gulch Spa,” the tour-group leader said, flicking her eyes over to Victor, who made a circling motion with his hand to hurry her along, “was at various times a mining camp, a hot springs retreat for the wealthy from Denver, who would make the horse-and-buggy trek before there were roads—”

“All right, Isabelle,” Victor Lane interrupted. “Could you please take the ladies out to the hiking trail that leads up to Mount Red-tail Hawk? I’m sure they’d enjoy that. I mixed up a batch of smoothies about twenty minutes ago. Why don’t you pour them now so the ladies can have smoothies for their walk?” The ladies murmured their appreciation. “When you get halfway up the mountain, you can give them the background on the spa. Here’s the key to the Smoothie Cabin.”

“Yes, Mr. Lane,” Isabelle replied with alacrity. Thin, fine boned, and what my mother would have called “interesting looking” (which meant, not really pretty), Isabelle was about twenty, had thick bunches of curly red hair, and freckles everywhere. “This way, ladies, to the Smoothie Cabin. How do fruit smoothies sound?”

It sounded pretty darn good, apparently, because I wouldn’t have thought that many overweight women could move so quickly.

“We use less than half this space at any one time,” Victor began, sweeping his hands to indicate the huge dining room. “We give our clients lots of individual attention, so the spa accommodates no more than sixty-five weeklong clients at a time, plus staff. We average between ten and twelve day-spa clients, every day except Sunday. On Sunday, we clean the rooms and get ready for a new group of guests, who arrive on Monday morning. So a Sunday wedding is perfect.”

The room contained a collection of extremely large round tables, each of which was surrounded by eight chairs. “We’ll have ten of these moved out, with just enough set up for Billie’s guests. Then we’ll save this side of the dining room for the head table….”

And on and on he droned. He seemed to have thought this out fairly well for someone who had just been asked to have the wedding and reception at the spa. Maybe he’d done it before. I certainly hadn’t heard of Victor giving parties out here, but after all, he used to be a caterer, so maybe this kind of thing came easily.

“But, Victor,” Charlotte protested, “are you sure all these women will be completely gone by Sunday morning?”

I couldn’t help smiling. Maybe she’d noticed how quickly they’d all repaired to the kitchen in search of “smoothies,” which was the term health foodies used for “milk shakes.”

“I absolutely promise,” Victor reassured her. “And I’ve already lit a fire under our staff, saying they have to be done cleaning the whole place by lunchtime, otherwise they don’t eat!”

Great. Starving the staff didn’t usually work as a motivator. Maybe I should see if I could hire a couple of extra cleaning people—

“Oh, Victor,” Charlotte said flirtatiously. “You’re such a card.”

“Well,” Victor continued, all smiles now, “I suppose you have your servers lined up, Goldy?”

Oh my God, the extra servers! I’d forgotten. I said, “I have six servers lined up, Victor. But that was for a hundred people, and Billie has invited an extra fifty—”

“Oh, dear, what a mess,” Charlotte murmured.

“Not to worry, Charlotte dearest.” Victor had that oily way of speaking that reminded one of Uriah Heep. “I will arrange for extra—”

“Mother!” came an all-too-familiar shriek. Billie Attenborough, pulling Dr. Craig Miller, stomped into the dining room. Did Craig Miller have any hobbies besides Billie? This being Saturday, shouldn’t he be playing golf or tennis or being a good Coloradan and hiking up a mountain? Somehow, I doubted Billie allowed Craig to do much of anything in his spare time except take care of her.

Billie was wearing a flaming-red pantsuit, which I thought fit her mood, if not her figure, to a T. “How could you come out here without me?”

“Sweetheart, I thought you’d want to sleep—”

“And how was I supposed to sleep with someone dinging on the doorbell?”

“Well, that was Jack—”

“Jack, huh?” Billie said. “Where is he? I’ll ring his bell for him!”

“Billie dear—”

“So, you’re here,” Billie said to me, lifting her dimpled chin.

“Your mother requested my presence,” I said, trying to keep the defensiveness out of my voice.

“And I suppose you’re charging us for your time?” Billie’s eyes blazed at me.

Come to think of it, that wasn’t a half-bad idea.

“Billie, my sweet,” Craig Miller began, pushing his mop of dark curly hair out of his face with his free hand, “Goldy has been more than generous with you, for numerous extra hours of planning.” He held up his hand when she began to interrupt him. “And your mother has been the soul of kindness—”

“What about me?” Victor Lane’s high-pitched voice caught me off guard. “Got any kind words for me, Doc?”

Craig Miller actually laughed, a wonderful snuffling noise that made me smile. He wore a navy polo shirt and khaki slacks, looking casual, relaxed, and not at all worried about the upcoming nuptials. Well, if he was relaxed about it all, he was the only one present who was. “How about,” Craig addressed Victor, “if the two of us guys let the women work things out in here?”

“Great idea,” agreed Victor Lane, smoothly following Craig Miller out of the dining room.

I wanted to scream,
No, no, don’t leave me here with the Harpies
! But I didn’t. Plus, we hadn’t exactly worked out the flow issues.

“I think I need to get to the kitchen to meet with the chef,” I said quietly.

“You’re not going into that spa kitchen without me!” Billie cried. “I want to hear what you two talk about!”

Y
OLANDA
G
ARCIA LOOKED
up in surprise when an unexpected trio of women—yours truly, plus Billie and Charlotte Attenborough—invaded her culinary space. Yolanda, who was Cuban, wasn’t just pretty, she was beautiful, with creamy brown skin, lots of dark hair that she had pulled up under a hairnet, liquid brown eyes, and a smile that would break your heart. If the smile didn’t do it, her cooking would. Her homemade Cuban Bread, which she served with a Tomato-Camembert Salad, made even Julian swoon.

“Yolanda,” I said apologetically, “is this a good time for us to talk to you about the wedding plans for Sunday?”

“Goldy, sweetie,” Yolanda said, “so good to see you! It’s a fine time for you to come. Come whenever you want.” She wore a brilliant white, starched uniform and apron, and moved quickly to embrace me in a hug. “I’ve got some flan that you’re just going to love, and none of the women here—”

“Who the hell is Yolanda?” Billie Attenborough demanded. I was pretty sure Billie knew full well exactly to whom I was talking.

Yolanda drew herself up straight. She couldn’t have been more than five feet tall, but she was imposing nonetheless. “I am Yolanda. Who are you?”

Aw jeez,
I thought. Was there anyone Billie Attenborough came in contact with whom she
did
get along? I wished Craig Miller would come back.

“Wait, wait,” I said. I felt in my purse for the flash drive with the menus and recipes. On the counter on the far side of the sink, there was a computer, thank goodness.

“Are you the cook?” Billie demanded, pointing a finger in Yolanda’s face. “Because we have a very big wedding coming in here tomorrow!” Billie cast a derogatory look all around. The other kitchen workers, sensing fireworks, had made themselves as scarce as Craig Miller. “This is your kitchen? How in the hell can you work in such a small—”

“Hey, chica!” Yolanda retorted, one hand on a hip, the other picking up a frying pan that she held in a somewhat, ah, aggressive manner. “This is my space! My kitchen!”

“Do you know who I am?” Billie demanded, pointing a finger in Yolanda’s face.

Yolanda frowned in mock horror. “Do I look like I care who you are? Do you know who I am? Now, if you don’t mind, I need to talk to Goldy—”

Billie turned to her mother and fell against her chest. “I can’t work with this woman!” she wailed. “And I can’t call everyone again and have the wedding changed one more time, to some new place!”

“Now, Billie dear,” said Charlotte, patting her daughter on the back, “you know perfectly well who Yolanda is, and you’ve told me how well you do with the diet here, so this is no time—”

Oh, dear, I thought, when’s the next flight to Anchorage? Maybe Julian could handle the whole Billie wedding. No, I wouldn’t do that to him.

Craig Miller burst into the kitchen. “What in the world is going on in here? What’s all the yelling about? What is wrong, for heaven’s sake?”

I waved in Billie’s direction, and managed not to say, “Craig, if you want to keep your mental health, you should cancel your wedding.”

Craig Miller eased Billie’s heaving body away from her mother and onto his own chest. “There, there, dear,” he soothed, patting Billie’s back. “Everything’s going to be all right. We probably shouldn’t have come here and worried your pretty head about details. Let’s go out in the hall.”

Great idea,
I thought as Billie allowed herself to be led into the hall. In fact, forget the hall and just get Billie out of here, period.