Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (22 page)

"Be naive and reckless at the same time? Would you even recognize naive if you saw it?" I plopped back on the pillows. "Tell me, Pom. Do your students ever say, You are driving me crazy? You are driving me up the wall?"

He blushed, but for once I was impervious to the charm of vulnerability.

I said, "And while I've got you to myself, tell me what Laura Smiley's science text was doing in your backseat."

Now he turned really red. My guess as to the ownership of that book had paid off.

He said, "We used to work together sometimes."

"You were friends, or what?"

He let out breath that was deeper than a sigh. "What difference does it make?"

“A lot."

He said, "Friends, yes. We'd started working together on that spring project for fourth and fifth grades. Some of the students enjoyed working with the bees. Answer your question?"

"She and Arch were close," I said. "You know that. He's taking her death real hard. You know anything else about her?"

He paused. I waited. "It doesn't matter now, I guess," he said. He looked out the window. "We were in AI-Anon together. You know what that is?"

Sundays, noon, Episcopal church. Of course. I nodded. "Sure. It's the support group for relatives and friends of alcoholics. Can you tell me what she said in there?"

"No."

"Can you tell me anything about her?"

"Like what? I don't want to betray her- whatever you'd call it - memory."

"She's dead. I don't believe it was suicide, mainly because things just don't fit." I adjusted myself on the pillows. It felt as if the pain pill had turned my bed into a kind of boat floating in a big tub the size of the room. I said, "Do you know anything about her relationship with or to Fritz Korman?"

"Why?"

"Because of that mess with the rat poison, I'm suspected. The health department closed me down. No cooking, no income.

“Aren't the cops looking into it?"

"For heaven's sake, Pom, they're slow." I stopped talking long enough to take a whiff of the plant. "I'm trying to get myself cleared before the holiday season. Here's this nice teacher gone, my catering operation down. I'm trying to open a cleaning business instead, needing for Patty Sue to learn to drive.. . . and then Patty Sue does one of her spaceout routines and my van gets destroyed. So yes, I'm interested in knowing as much as I can about both Dr. Korman senior who somebody tried to kill and Laura Smiley who somebody may have. Which includes anything you might know," I finished, again out of breath and with my head swimming inside the bed-boat.

Pomeroy said, "What are you looking for, background?"

"Anything."

He said, "Laura Smiley's father was an alcoholic. It's what killed him, finally. He drove himself and Laura's mother into the back of a pickup over near Conifer. Alcohol level in his blood was three times what they consider to be intoxication."

"What does this have to do with - "

"Just hold on a sec," he said and readjusted himself in his chair. "By that time Laura was long gone. She had moved to Illinois to go to school. She had some family, that aunt who was at the funeral, there. She taught high school when she finished at the U. of I. - that's how she met the Kormans. She came out with them one time on a ski vacation, while they were friends, to be their sort of guide and babysitter, even though she was only twenty-one or -two.

"Not long after," he went on, "the Kormans left Illinois. Moved to the spot Laura had shown them."

"Did she know they were here?"

He shrugged. "She knew they had moved to Colorado. She didn't know they'd moved to her hometown. When her parents died they left her their place, and she moved back. A big coincidence which probably didn't feel too great to anybody."

"When she moved back here," I said, "did she see the Kormans? Have contact with them?"

"Not socially, as far as I know."

"What do you mean?"

He thought, then said, "Laura avoided the Kormans because there was bad blood between them."

I said, "Bad blood from what?"

He was still looking out the window. After a minute he said, "That's something you'd better ask Vonette, I think."

"Great. What about Patty Sue?" I asked. “Apparently she and Laura had at least one earth-shattering chat."

"Yes," he said, "they did."

“About what?"

"You talked to Patty Sue?"

"I tried, Pomeroy, but that's not saying I got any answers."

"Yes, well." He shrugged again.

"Why would Laura avoid the Kormons?" I asked. This was the real puzzle to me. "It's too small a town to try to do that. Did she actually use that word, avoid?"

Pomeroy's head turned. His brown eyes met mine. He said, "You asked what she was doing in AI-Anon. She had a lot to work through, her parents dying in an accident, her relationship with the Kormans going from closeness to alienation. She had sorrow, a ton of it, and a lot of grieving to do. She, yes, said that she needed to avoid these people that being involved with them in any way caused her pain. She said that for her mental health she needed to keep her distance."

I stared at him. I said, "Okay, first, she belonged to the athletic club, to which they also belong. Second, she became very close pals with their grandson, who just happens to be my son. Third, right before she died she went to see Fritz Korman. She made an appointment, Pomeroy. She had an office visit the day she died. The office sent her a bill, for God's sake. Explain how all this adds up to avoidance."

Pomeroy was quiet for a minute. "You know, I don't have all the answers." He shifted his weight in the chair and crossed his arms across his plaid flannel shirt. "It seems to me," he said thoughtfully, "that if you really want to know who would be wanting to get Korman out of the way, you ought to think of who would benefit from his being gone."

"I've already thought of that."

"In a will, it's usually the next of kin who inherit."

"You mean like my ex-husband?"

"Or his mother."

I said, "Vonette would never have the guts to do the old guy in. Besides. I saw her at that reception. She was as drunk as a skunk."

"She had a flask."

"Aren't you the observant one."

"Korman was cheating on her."

I said, "Why, you're just a fount of information. With whom?"

"I shouldn't be the one to say."

"Do it anyway."

He stopped talking and looked out the window, then he seemed to have an idea.

"Goldy. Didn't you say you were out of honey?"

"Yeah, so?"

"Why don't you come out to my place in the Wildlife Preserve and get some. Next week." He stopped to think. "On Wednesday."

"Why Wednesday?"

"You come on Wednesday. If the weather's still warm, you'll get answers to some of your questions."

-17- With Pomeroy gone the room was temporarily quiet. Privacy in a hospital, like silence in a library, is what one expects but only rarely gets. I looked out the window, now filled with the gray light of dusk. Had Laura been involved with Pomeroy? What difference would that make, anyway? I shook my head, which felt as if it was filled with the somber light of painkiller. It was hard to make sense of the whole thing.

The note! When I leaped out of bed my body buckled. Soreness climbed my legs. My arms felt and looked as if they'd been stretched on a rack. The pain pill had apparently only entered my head. I hobbled across the room, reached into my bag, and found the letter.

It was crumpled, leading to the conclusion that Arch had read it before stuffing it in his desk. The beige stationery crackled. Inside were perfect, looping, black letters, the writing of a teacher. It read:

Dear Arch, Thanks for your latest idea, dungeon master! I do like the idea of being a troll. Does that mean I can cast spells? I can't wait!

Unfortunately, we won't be able to play this Saturday as we'd planned. I have something very important I have to do. In a way it's like the thing you talked about in your last letter. Remember how you said most of the kids in sixth grade didn't seem to care about Halloween anymore, how they called that and your role-playing and trivia games kids' stuff? I remember how bad that made you feel. And now you don't know what to do? I have something like that in my life, too. And Saturday I have to do something about it.

How about next weekend for our game? That'll give me a whole week to get ready! Let me know on Monday, okay?

Hugs, Ms. Smiley

But he had not let her know on Monday. Nor had he let me know that he'd had plans with Laura Smiley for Saturday, the day the deputy coroner had indicated she had died.

October the third was beginning to look quite complex.

There was a gnawing in my stomach not brought on by the van accident. I felt uncomfortable with, jealous and suspicious of, the relationship between Arch and Laura Smiley. She had been too close to him. And perhaps to the other student that Schulz had mentioned, the deceased Hollenbeck girl. These relationships smacked of impropriety, somehow. The note brought Arch into a world of adult problems, even if the reference was vague. This in turn might account for his inability to talk about the letter or to deal with Laura's death in an appropriate way.

I looked at the piece of paper in my hand. On Saturday, October 3, something had gone wrong after Laura had walked into town to do something, and then returned by car. But what? This letter raised more questions than it answered.

I could imagine him cycling over to her house and I ringing the bell. Hearing no

answer, he would have come back home. But why had he mentioned none of this to me or to Investigator Schulz? What was he afraid of? Maybe Laura Smiley hadn't been all there in the upstairs department, after all. Maybe this desire to help; students she liked had flipped her out. The problem was, whatever this drama was we were involved in, it wasn't over.

"My little Goldy," Vonette said after she walked in the next morning and gave me a smooch on the cheek. She smelled of Estée instead of gin: a good sign.

I said, "Thanks for coming, Vonette. Another meal of hospital food and I would have taken over the kitchen by force. Patty Sue know you're here?"

"Oh yes," Vonette replied as she checked her creamy orange lipstick and curly same-hue-of-orange hair in my bathroom mirror. "Got that arm set and everything. She's going to be great. Six weeks she'll be out of that thing, good as new, able to help you with the catering."

"Cleaning, Vonette," I corrected, "until we or the police figure out what happened to Fritz."

Vonette sauntered out of the bathroom. "Let's not get into that again. Gives me a headache just thinking about it."

"Tell me," I said while gingerly pulling my slip over my head, "since I'm still mulling that funeral over in my mind. Did you get to know Laura Smiley well when she was your vacation nanny?"

Vonette sat down in the room's only chair, brought out a pack of Kools, and inserted one in the newly lipsticked mouth. So much for the hospital's No Smoking policy.

"Yes and no," she said. She paused to light and inhale. “Anyway, I can loan you a car. That old station wagon of ours. Used to use it to pull the boat down to Lake Powell. Before the engine gave out. Boat engine, that is. I don't know about the wagon, probably been a year or more since it's been started, might need a jump."

"Do you know if Laura Smiley had any enemies?"

She laughed quietly and took a deep drag. "More enemy talk."

"Do you know someone who just plain didn't like her?"

She said, "Well, there again, yes and no." She raised one thin penciled eyebrow at me. "I did know her for a long time, though. I mean not that we were close. Nothing like that. You know."

Dressed by then, I sat down on the bed. "No," I said, "I don't."

"Well," said Vonette. "Well, well." She stood up. The cigarette drooped from her mouth. "I'll tell you all about it sometime."

"According to Fritz," I said, "John Richard would inherit the practice if he died. Doesn't that bother you?"

Her eyes narrowed. "You sure?"

"No."

"Well, I don't really know either, I guess. I thought if something happened to old Fritz, like he had a heart attack while he was doing an abortion, God punishing him, y'know . . ." She raised her eyebrows at me.

"Vonette!"

"Well? That's still a hot issue in the church, after all."

"It's too bad they worry about that more than they do adultery," I said evenly.

"Now, now," she said. "Don't start in on John Richard. Let's not get into that again, please. I'm beginning to feel a headache coming on. Anyway." She crushed the cigarette underneath one of her open-toed sandals. So much for hospital hygiene. "You know his daddy isn't much better. I try not to think about that. Although," she said as she felt around in her purse, "I have to admit, sometimes I've thought about killing the old lech myself."

"Really."

"Yeah." She eyed me sadly. "But you know I don't mean that. What the hell, I've made it this long, I can take it, right?" She gave me a confused look. "Oh yeah, the practice. I thought in that kind of situation, it was split between John Richard and me. I mean the Accounts Receivable. I don't know what happens to the equipment and the patients. Who'd want to kill him to get his patients?"

I had been putting on my makeup; I paused to look at her.

"You mean, the good ones are all gone?"

She sighed. "Well, you always lose a few. You know babies die sometimes before they're born. The patients blame Fritz. Now and then they sue, if they can stand all that agony."

"Anybody sue lately? That you know of?"

"Nope." She looked around the room. "My head hurts. S'pose they'd give me something here?"

"What are you taking for your headaches now, Vonette?"

She said, "Demerol."

"Demerol? With your orange juice?"

"Don't laugh, Goldy. You don't know how bad the pain is. I have to have injections when I just can't stand it."

"Sorry. I know how much you've suffered."

In truth I did not know the extent of her suffering. But I was determined to find out.