Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (13 page)

Another pause. I felt a tightness in my chest. Blood pounded in my ears.

"Oh, Todd!" said Arch, irritated. "I can't believe I'm going to have to find the weapon and do the spell and put together the potion. I'm not going to have time for all that."

I knocked forcefully on Arch's partially opened door. Perhaps it was just the pounding in my head that made the noise thunderous. Then I swung the door open all the way without getting an answer.

He had hung up the phone.

"What is going on?" I demanded.

"Mom," he said. He looked at me, hair disheveled, glasses askew. They seemed incongruous next to his baseball-print flannel pajamas. In his lap were a guidebook and folder for his games. "You're home!" A pause. "Uh, I stayed up."

"Yes," I said, suddenly feeling out of place. "I just came in to see if you were asleep yet. I heard you on the phone. Was it for your game?"

He turned back to the papers in his lap. "Yes," he said impatiently. "But I'll call him back tomorrow."

"Okay," I said. I stood by his door, unable to put words together.

"Mom?"

"Yes?"

He set his mouth in a straight line and folded his arms across his chest.

"Please," he said, "don't sneak up on me like that again."

-9- The next day I managed to book two cleaning jobs in the country club area, one for that day and one for the next. Since Fritz was back on his feet, I took Patty Sue to her appointment and instructed her to walk home while I went off to scrub, scour, and vacuum. I talked minimally to Arch before he left for school. If checking on him was considered sneaking up, then asking questions would be prying. I did elicit the promise that he would take me on a role-playing adventure over the weekend. It was time for me to find out what was going on with these games. Or at least try.

The house to be cleaned was one of those rambling ranch-style structures done in all-western decor right up to the walls hung with harnesses, cowboy hats, sombreros, and horseshoes. Maid service of this ranchette took six hours, which included polishing a coffee table shaped like a flatbed wagon. The worst part was that I kept expecting Dale Evans to pop out from behind one of the numerous bathroom doors. She didn't, and when I was done I was very glad to receive forty- eight dollars in cash.

After making a run to a janitorial supply house in west Denver I picked up some groceries and came home to give Patty Sue her first lesson in housecleaning for fun and profit.

"I'll do whatever you say," she said, but it was without enthusiasm.

"Need to be safe first," I said, as I Magic- Markered my name on the gallon bottle of phenol-based cleaning fluid I would use at the athletic club. Then I drew a skull and crossbones on the plastic bottle's backside. Industrial-strength concentrations were much cheaper than anything in the supermarket, but they were dangerous to have around.

"I really don't know much about cleaning or chemicals," Patty Sue said. She wrinkled her nose at the plastic bottle.

"Look," I said, looking directly in her eyes, "if you want to be independent, the most important thing is to be financially self-supporting. Housecleaning is a way. Not glamorous, but reliable."

"Yes I know, but. . ."

"But what?"

"Oh," she said, turning away, "just never mind. Just teach me about it, go ahead."

Begin with proper dilutions, I began, pointing to the ten-to-one and twenty-to- one lines on the plastic spray bottles. When I finished, she gave me another wordless look, as if I'd taught her how to construct an atomic bomb in twenty minutes. I ignored it and cheerily assigned her Arch's bathroom to practice on. This was a particularly dirty trick. But chiseling off all that dried spaghetti demanded retribution. I disappeared to answer the phone.

"How's my little darling doing?" asked Patty Sue's mother over the crackle of long distance. One of her regular checkup calls.

"She's working hard," I said truthfully. "As a matter of fact, she's working right now, so can I have her call you back? Collect?"

"Oh yes, of course," said the mother, disappointed. "I was just worried if she was eating and sleeping all right."

It was difficult for me to see if I in fact overprotected Arch. But I could sure see it in other mothers. Would Arch end up like Patty Sue if I kept worrying about him? This was not a question to dwell on.

"She's eating and sleeping fine," I said. "In fact, she's doing lots of both. And exercising, working, and going to the doctor, so everything's just peachy."

"I called the doctor's office to see how she was doing," she said.

“And?"

"They said she's not improving."

"Well," I said, impatient, "these things take time."

"I'm sorry, I don't want to trouble you."

"You're not."

Next I phoned a real estate agent.

"Kathleen," I said breathily when I got through to the one person I knew at Mountain Realty. "I'm interested in buying Laura Smiley's house."

"Oh, Goldy, the kitchen is marvelous," replied Kathleen. "You'll love it."

I knew darn well that the kitchen had minimal counter space and old appliances, but never mind. While Patty Sue grunted and scrubbed and rinsed in Arch's bathroom, Kathleen and I made an appointment to go through the house the next day. She said that since Laura had left the house to her aunt it would be a while before we could close, but I told her not to worry, it would be a while before I had any money.

Next I phoned Marla and asked her to fabricate a real estate emergency for the next morning so I could be rid of Kathleen once we got to Laura's. She gleefully acquiesced. Marla hated real estate agents.

It was still unseasonably warm for October when Patty Sue and I loaded the van the next morning. Overhead the sky was a deep periwinkle blue, as if a celestial housecleaner had spilled a bottle of bluing agent to the four comers of the earth. A few aspen leaves clung to the tops of slender bone-white branches: the last stage of autumnal undress. I swung the van around a comer toward the house Patty Sue was going to clean and wondered if we would have Indian summer through Halloween instead of our usual late-October snow. After I parked, Patty Sue gingerly pulled out all the cleaning equipment while I promised to pick her up in a few hours.

"I heard your ex was getting married again," Kathleen greeted me when I ground the van to a halt at the top of Laura Smiley's driveway. I tried to find my tongue. If Marla had already put in her call, I would be out of luck.

Kathleen was standing beside a silver Mercedes with a REAL ESTATE FOR SALE sign emblazoned on the driver side door. Surely there were better ways of

advertising than wrecking a 450 SL. A sudden beeping interrupted my stare. Kathleen slipped back into her car to answer the mobile phone. There was much heated talking. Kathleen set her fine features into a frown.

"Listen," she said when she was back out of the car, "I've got a problem with an appointment from Denver showing up early. How about if I just give you the key and come back to finish showing you the house in about half an hour?" She smiled hopefully, and I blessed dear old Marla.

I knew that Kathleen knew she would get her commission as long as she showed me the house at some point, so I smiled back and nodded, seeing as how I had no intention of ever being the supplier of the commission.

"Oh," she said over the roar of the Mercedes, "one more thing. I told that aunt I'd do a change-of-address form for Laura but things have been so crazy." She rolled her eyes as if this explained everything. "Anyway. I've been taking the mail in and putting it on the kitchen table when I show the house. Take it for me this time, will you?" she hollered.

I nodded as she gunned her engine away. Would I? You bet.

A breeze lifted the black smoke from the Mercedes' tailpipe and dispersed it into a stand of chokecherry bushes heavy with scarlet berries. Once the car was gone the wind was the only noise. It whispered and sighed through the pines and spruces and aspens of the hilly neighborhood. I put the house key into my pocket and walked over to Laura's rural delivery mailbox, the only kind we have in Aspen Meadow besides those at the post office. It creaked open after I pulled on the rusty cover. Inside was a small assortment of bills and ads. No letters.

I looked through the bills. Here were people who thought Laura was still alive. Public Service of Colorado, a dentist whose name I did not recognize, a doctor whose name I did. I put the mail into my purse.

As I started down the sloping driveway to Laura's house, the wind kicked up again and sanded my eyes with dirt. Dread, sudden and unexpected, throttled me. I stopped and stared at the small house with its green-stained paneling and redwood deck.

The wind stopped. Everything was very still. I pursed my lips and braced myself, then trotted the rest of the way down the driveway. After all, I wasn't the first Goldilocks to go into an empty house. But at the open garage I came up short again. Had this car been here before? It was familiar.

Then I remembered: it was Laura's blue Volvo, which I had seen many times in the elementary school parking lot. It called attention to itself via its blaring bumper stickers: WOMEN MAKE GRFAT LEADERS, YOU'RE FOLLOWING ONE and HAVE YOU HUGGED YOUR TEACHER TODAY? and EASY DOES IT.

I did not know where the car had been the day of the funeral, but someone had put it back now.

I stepped around it carefully. There were some nicks in the flat blue paint, and the wheels sported a set of new, but muddy, radials. I did not know what I was looking for, except that it did seem odd that someone who wanted to kill herself would prepare for winter with the purchase of new tires. The doors were unlocked, but there was a decal on the window that read This Car Protected by Ungo. I had had one of those alarms installed in the van, just in case a guest at a catered function tried to filch a few dozen filets. On the side window I saw the small piece of plastic with its wire lead. If a thief tried to jam his way in through the window when the car was locked, his eardrums would never survive.

We had had a rash of car thefts in Aspen Meadow over the past six months. The rumor was that a ring of teens took the cars and a smart mechanic managed to get them fenced down in Denver before the cops could catch him. This was another indication of unsuccessful law enforcement from the sheriff's department which I would have to bring to Schulz's attention.

I hugged myself in the cool air of the garage. Outside, the wind whipped and shot through the trees. Time to go into the house. But not yet. The car ought to be able to tell me something. I walked around to the hood. There was a smell of either exhaust or oil in the garage. Odd. If the car had been sitting here for a week, shouldn't things be odorless and blanketed with dust? But then I noticed that the clay - red mud was fresh and wet, and that it clung to the car's grille as well as the tires. I reached out to touch the hood.

It was warm. Well, well. I clenched my teeth. Catering was safer than this, and sometimes you couldn't be sure about catering. I needed to be quiet, I knew that. In fact, I needed to skedaddle.

But my feet stayed cemented to the cold garage floor. I had come here. I was going to go into Laura's house, and in two days I was going to go through Laura's locker. Kathleen had left me at the top of the driveway; if there was someone in the house, that someone probably would be unaware of my arrival. I was going in. And if I saw somebody I would scream bloody murder and apologize later. I could even arm myself, the way they did on TV. Unfortunately there was no .22 slung across my chest, and I was at least fifteen steps from the kitchen and the nearest meat cleaver.

I looked around the garage. There was a large workbench. Maybe the woman who

claimed to be a leader had bought herself a nice heavy hammer or wrench or even a drill. My feet made gritty echoes as I tiptoed over.

The bench was large and long and had two shelves above it and one below. Paint thinner, caulking, and a tool box rested on the first shelf. The tool box yielded a small wrench. I was about to enter the house with it when I saw the edge of something else on the top shelf. I reached up.

It was a BB gun. I recognized this type of firearm from the time I had volunteered as a counselor at Arch's Cub Scout day camp. Many local people used them to shoot bothersome blue jays or rabid squirrels. I ducked down to check the shelf underneath, but there was only a large cardboard box marked BB's.

I was not going to load the gun. For one thing I couldn't exactly remember how to do it. It looked menacing enough, a lot like a rifle really, and I would just have to do a good impersonation of Annie Oakley if the need arose.

I crept through the unlocked door to the

kitchen but stopped short before heading through to the living room. In that room, someone was rustling papers.

My body went numb. The unloaded BB gun felt cold and inadequate. I backed up noiselessly, grabbed a long knife off a wall mount above the counter, and turned back toward the garage.

The blue Volvo was still there. I locked its doors, jammed the knife into the edge of the window and pushed down with all one hundred twenty pounds.

The alarm split the air. I jerked the knife out and ran back around to the front of the house. The door between the kitchen and the garage banged open. After a moment the alarm stopped. Whoever was down there had the keys to the car, and wanted the alarm off so as not to attract attention.

From the top of the driveway came an unexpected female voice, followed by a robe and a head of hair neatly rolled in cylinders.

"Hoohoo! Kathleen, is that you, dear?"

The Volvo engine started and revved. From where I was crouched behind a thicket of chokecherry bushes I could not see who was driving. Worse, the driver appeared to be wearing a ski mask.

"Hey!" yelled the robed woman to the car. The driver ignored her and gunned the Volvo back up the driveway. I wanted to stand to get a better look, but I didn't want the driver to see that I was the one who had set off the alarm.

"Kathleen!" the woman in the driveway was calling again, now that the Volvo had gone. "Are you in there?"