Sticks & Scones (7 page)

This day’s lunch event had been covered in a fluff piece in the
Mountain Journal
and in the Saint Luke’s newsletter. Although the church had received lunch confirmations for twenty, the Episcopal Church Women had begged me to make enough food for up to ten more folks, for those donors untroubled by RSVP’s. The ECW was handling the loan of church plates, silverware, and crystal for the lunch. I’d merely replied to the ECW that lunch for thirty or even thirty-five would be no problem.

I swung the van across the chapel bridge, intent on finding the tables. With the bad publicity generated by the Lauderdale incident impacting my business, it was imperative that the lunch event go without a hitch. If the tables had not been delivered, I would call Party Rental at nine and deliver a blistering harangue. In the catering biz, sometimes you had to get rough.

No spotlights illuminated the chapel. I pulled into the gravel parking lot and swung around to park facing the creek, as close to the building’s carved front doors as I could get. Across the highway in Cottonwood Park, the sun lit the top of the thick cluster of pine trees.

As I sat with the van running, I tried to recollect the combination on the lockbox that held the chapel key. The chapel had been designed as a miniature of Chartres, and boasted some features of that enormous cathedral, including a rose window and, now, a labyrinth. I tapped the
steering wheel and finally recalled that the letters on the lockbox combination were C, H, A, R, T, R, E, S.

There was a Gothic-lettered sign to my right, at the top of the creek bank.
Set your brake!
it warned.
Management cannot pull your car out of the creek!

I smiled at the vision of Eliot and Sukie towing a vehicle out of the water. I pulled up on the brake, then leaned forward in my seat to check how far I was from the creek. Fifteen feet below, the narrow chute of black, gurgling water raced between the icy banks.

I squeezed my eyes shut, heart pounding. I hadn’t just seen what I’d just seen. Or had I? Surely it had been an illusion, my sleep-deprived mind playing tricks with ice, water, stone, sunlight. You think you see something flesh-colored, something bobbing eerily in the water, and it turns out to be a rock.

I took a deep breath, jumped out of the van, and walked carefully to the edge of the creek bank. No, it wasn’t quartz, granite, or even mountain marble. In the creek was a blackened hand. A hand attached to an arm clothed in plaid flannel. A blackened hand? I stared into the water below. The rigid body of a young man lay half in the creek, as if he’d been tossed there.

I looked away, chilled.
He needs help
, my brain screamed.
Help him. Get him out of that water.

I took a few tentative steps down the steep, boulder-strewn creek bank. Then I slid on a patch of ice.

Help him, get him out.
But how could I get to him? I regained my balance and stared at the water. There were rocks in the creek itself, and a sheet of ice that might or might not hold my weight. Even if I got down there, was I strong enough to pull him out?

Now ten feet from the water, I caught sight of the young man’s scalp. What I had thought was thick hair was a dark splotch of blood. I blinked and tried to make out his facial features.

Hold on.

His photo had appeared at least a dozen times in the
Mountain Journal.
I’d heard his voice once, on the phone.

But he wasn’t supposed to be here. He was supposed to be hiding. In New Jersey. Where Tom was looking for him to question him about the FedEx hijacking. Not in Colorado. Not lying in Cottonwood Creek. Yet there was no doubt that Andy Balachek wasn’t gambling at a casino table.

Andy Balachek was dead.

I
t was hard to look at Andy Balachek. He was so young.

Had been.

Where was my phone? Wait: It was still plugged into the van outlet. Heedless of the ice, I scrambled back to my vehicle, and flung myself inside. With numb fingers, I punched in the numbers for the Furman County Sheriff’s Department. My second call to them this morning, I thought morosely, as I glanced back at the creek and tried to find my voice. When the operator answered, I gave her the details of what I was looking at: a young man in lumberjack shirt and jeans, with no hat covering his frozen, blood-slickened hair. His skin was pale in some places, blue-black in others. It was Andy Balachek, I told her. At least, I was pretty sure …

The cell phone’s call-waiting beeped. I told the operator that I’d had an emergency situation myself that morning and I had to take this other call. She snarled at me that I was
not
to hang up, and that I should quickly dump the other call while she waited. That’s the thing about
emergency operators: You’re anxious to get off the phone and deal with your emergency, right? But the operators want you to keep talking and not do a thing. They get especially testy if what you’re dealing with is not a natural gas emergency or a car wreck, but a crime.

“Goldy?”

“Tom! Where
are
you? I have so much—”

“On Interstate Seventy, just past Golden. Took an early flight out. I called the house—”

“Oh, Tom,” I wailed. He listened in silence as I told him about the gunshot that had shattered our window, about John Richard’s early release, about us having to take refuge at the castle. I told him my current location by Hyde Chapel, and about the young man in the icy water, a young man who was never going to move again.

“Oh, Tom—it’s Andy Balachek.”

“Miss G.—where are you exactly?” His voice was calm. “In the chapel parking lot?”

“Facing the creek and the highway. Across from Cottonwood Park. You know the chapel bridge? Andy’s body is about fifty feet downstream from that. I’m above him, in a parking space, forty feet or so from the chapel doors.”

Before he could confirm that he understood what I was saying, the call-waiting bleeped again. I’d completely forgotten about the emergency operator.

“Get yourself out of there, Miss G.,” Tom ordered me. “Now. Drive back to town, this minute—”

“I … I can’t!” Static invaded the cell phone and I stared at it. For some reason, I suddenly remembered Arch’s Montessori teacher telling us parents that
I won’t
means
I can’t
and
I can’t
means
I won’t.
So … why was I telling Tom that I couldn’t leave? Did it really mean that I
wouldn’t
leave?

I glanced down at poor Andy Balachek and shuddered.
If I left him, somebody might see his body and be compelled to stop and gawk, or maybe mess up the crime scene. They might even steal his body. Not only that, I reasoned blindly, but this could be related to whoever shot at our window. Tom had arrested Ray Wolff. Andy Balachek knew Ray Wolff. Tom was working on the case. Thanks to the newspaper article, virtually everyone in town knew that I, Tom’s wife, would be catering at the chapel today…. I moaned.

More crackling assaulted my ear. Why had
I
discovered Andy? Most folks know a caterer is the first to show up at an event. Was I
meant
to find him?

No question, I was getting paranoid.

The static suddenly cleared and I heard Tom say my name.

“Dammit,” I said fiercely, “Tom, I don’t think I should just drive out of here.”

The call-waiting beeped again. “Tom, I need to go, the emergency operator is holding. I’ve already called the department, I can’t leave. Please understand.”

“Don’t worry about the operator,” Tom said calmly, just as the beeping stopped. Had she given up? Had she decided my call was a prank? “I’ll call the department,” Tom went on. “They’ll have a car up more quickly if I do it. I’ll cut over from seventy, be coming from the direction of Denver. I should be there in less than ten minutes. Do you have a good view of traffic from the east?”

I glanced around. Cottonwood Park slanted steeply to the road all along the other side of the two-lane highway. “Pretty good.”

“Do
not
go near that body, understand? You could fall into the water.”

Oh-kay
, I thought as Tom signed off. A chilly February wind rocked the van and pummeled the spruce trees across the road. A car swooshed past, then another. No
one slowed to gawk. Andy Balachek’s body must have been situated in such a way that it couldn’t be seen from the road. No one gave me a second glance.

Do not go near that body….
What was Tom so worried about, besides my tumbling into the creek? The killer still being around? If you dumped a dead guy, you wouldn’t wait to see who discovered him, would you?

I tried to warm up by snuggling closer to the dashboard heater. According to my watch, it was quarter after seven. Overhead, the charcoal sky was lightening to a velvety blue. Not far away, an engine growled. Less than a minute later, as promised, Tom’s big Chrysler roared into view. It turned left to cross the creek, then roared into the lot and pulled up fifteen feet to the right of my van. Puzzled, I unbuckled and jumped from the van, then trotted toward him.

Tom was walking calmly in my direction. He passed Andy’s body. Without glancing toward the creek, he motioned me back to the van.

A shot rang out.

Tom reeled back, clutching his left shoulder. I screamed. Without thinking, I raced toward him. When I reached him, his right hand grabbed my arm. Another shot fired and pinged off Tom’s car. Then another shot hit one of my van doors.

“Move!” he hollered. Panting with pain, he wrenched me toward the boulders lining the far side of the parking lot. “Get behind those rocks and stay down! See if we can, see if we can …”

Running hard, my heart thudding, I thought he said,
See if we can dig a hole.
Dig a hole? I stumbled; Tom’s hand wrenched me upright. I couldn’t catch my breath. Those shots had not been like the explosion that rocked our house. They’d been higher-pitched, not as loud, more like a firecracker….

I let go of Tom’s hand and leaped above the crevice
between two boulders. When I slid down, Tom pushed himself next to me. Blood from his shoulder stained the rocks. I gasped. How badly was he hurt? Where was the shooter? Why was this happening?

“Stay down,” Tom ordered me. His sleeve was wet with blood.

Oh, God
, I prayed.
Help him, help us.
I couldn’t tear my eyes from Tom’s wound. Sometimes I think I learned too much in Med Wives 101.
The subclavian vein.
If that major artery had been hit, Tom could bleed to death in minutes.
Please, God. Not Tom.

With his good hand, Tom pulled the radio off his belt. “Officer needs assistance. Shots fired.” He bit the words, his face contorted with pain.

How could I compress the wound?
Think
, I ordered myself desperately as a voice answered Tom’s call. “Unit calling?”

“X-ray six,” Tom replied. “Location is south side of Cottonwood Creek, by Hyde Chapel, on Highway two-oh-three.” Tom’s involuntary groan sent my heart racing. If there were no broken bones, if the bullet had not nicked a lung, then perhaps I could compress it and stop some of the dangerous blood loss. “Am behind boulders by chapel parking lot,” he went on. “Am now fifty yards from Cottonwood Creek, next to Highway two-oh-three. Do not know mile marker.”

There was static on the other end of the radio, but I prayed the operator was telling him that units were responding. What have I done? Why didn’t I get out of here when Tom told me to? Where had the shots come from? Was there someone on the other side of the road, up in the trees of Cottonwood Park?

“Believe assailant has a rifle, possibly AR-fifteen. My shoulder’s hit….”

“Can you give location of assailant?” the operator’s voice crackled.

“Believe he is on north side of road. Possibly fifty yards up in the trees, judging from sound of shots.”

“Can we land a helicopter there, X-ray six?”

“Don’t know—” The radio fell from Tom’s hands. It was slick with blood. I picked it up and pushed what I hoped was the correct button.

“This is Tom’s wife, Goldy Schulz,” I yelled into the radio. “Send paramedics with your team!” Tom had slumped forward. Static spewed from the radio. I placed it on the ground and leaned in close to my husband. “Tom!” His eyelids fluttered. “I’m going to compress this wound,” I told him. “You have to tell me if it feels like you’ve got a broken bone. You also have to tell me if pressure makes it harder to breathe. Do you understand?” His face paled as he nodded. I couldn’t imagine his pain. If the collarbone was broken, any weight I put on the wound would cause him agony.

I steeled myself. He was losing
an awful lot of blood.
With shaking fingers, I pushed on the area where blood spurted through his once-white shirt. Tom moaned but did not tell me to stop. His eyes sought mine. Tears ran down my cheeks as I pressed on the hot, bloody slash in his left shoulder.

As I gently exerted pressure, I listened. Was the shooter planning to try again? All I heard was the gurgle of the creek.

The blood slowed to a trickle and fanned out into a delta of ripples, first on Tom’s shirt, then on the snow-dusted rock. He blinked and grunted as he reached for the radio.

“Don’t do that!” Hysteria threaded through my voice as my hands, slippery with blood, lost their grip on the wound.

He held the radio up with his right hand. “Talk.” His voice was thick. I composed myself and pushed in again on the wound. “Talk into the radio,” Tom muttered. He
groaned again, a deep guttural sound that didn’t sound human.

“All right, all right,” I promised hastily as I first stabilized my pressure on the wound, then scooted awkwardly to get closer to the radio. “Just don’t move again. Please, Tom—”

“Goldy, I’m sorry …” His voice had descended to a hoarse whisper.

“Don’t worry. Everything will be fine.”

“No … Goldy….”

Fear spiked up my spine. Where was the shooter? My hands began to cramp on the wound. I willed them to relax.

Again Tom said, “I’m sorry….”

“I’m
the one who’s sorry. Somebody will be here soon. Ambulance, cops … they’re on their way.”

“I can feel my right arm, but not my left—”

“They’re bound to be here any sec.”

Tom’s eyes rolled back in his head, then came forward again. “Goldy.” He was struggling to speak. “I have to tell you.” Each word heaved out, like an enormous, painful sigh. “I’m …” With great effort, he said,
“I don’t love her.”

“Tom! Be
quiet.
You’re delirious.”

“I was just … trying to figure out … what was going on. So you’ll understand….” His voice trailed off.

I stared at him.

“Listen,” Tom said again, weakly. “I’m … so … sorry.”

My voice made no sound as I concentrated on stopping the blood still leaking from the ugly wound in his shoulder. But my mind screamed,
“Sorry for what?”