High Country Fall

“How’s Sunny doing?” I asked. “She must be devastated.”

“Yes and no.”

I raised an inquiring eyebrow and Joyce gave a baffled, palms-up gesture.

“It’s weird. The way she’s practically lived in his pocket these last two or three months, you’d expect her to fall apart completely now that he’s gone.”

“And yet?” I encouraged.

Again that baffled look. “Well, on one level she has. You saw them Monday night. That duet they sang wasn’t just an act. They were crazy about each other and she’s wild with grief that he’s gone. At the same time, she goes ballistic whenever anybody tries to link his death with Carlyle’s. It’s like she thinks it somehow demeans Norman’s death, if that makes any sense.”

Her face suddenly brightened and she half stood to wave. “There’s Bobby!”

Bobby Ashe’s progress across the wide terrace was slowed by the many people who spoke to him and whose hands he paused to shake. His sandy hair and droopy sand-colored mustache reminded me of that big goofy cartoon sheepdog that was so popular when I was a kid. You had to smile just looking at him.

“Hey, purty ladies,” he said, taking my hand and leaning over to kiss Joyce at the same time. “Y’all looked awful serious when I first came in.”

“We were talking about Sunny Osborne,” I said. “How she doesn’t think her husband and Dr. Ledwig were killed by the same person.”

His good-natured smile faded and he nodded thoughtfully. “I’m wondering if she’s afraid Horton will think Norman found out who killed Carlyle and that’s why he had to die.”

“Now that makes a little more sense,” said Joyce. “If Norman has to be dead, Sunny would want it to be that he was killed for who he was, not because he happened to get mixed up in whatever reasons there were for killing Carlyle.”

“That would be Sunny all right,” Bobby said as our waiter came over to see what he wanted to drink. He was the type of man who instantly becomes the host as soon as he sits down with two women, and he made sure that Joyce and I were fine for the moment before telling the waiter to bring him a Jim Beam on the rocks. “A double, straight up.”

Then he noticed that Joyce’s glass was nearly empty and said, “Hold up a minute there, son, till I find out whose turn it is to drive home.”

Joyce smiled. “Your turn, honey.”

“Better make that a single then,” he told the waiter. “With a splash.”

“How’s it going down there?” Joyce asked.

“It’s going.” He brushed the ends of his mustache away from the edge of his mouth. “Norman’s people are still in shock, but they’re savvy folks and they’ve got it in gear.”

I couldn’t let it alone. “I don’t suppose Sunny will have anything to do with the partnership once all the paperwork’s done?”

“Lord, no,” said Bobby. “She hasn’t worked real estate since their daughter was born.”

“She said she wanted to get back in it,” said Joyce, “but that was just because she got to where she couldn’t stand not to be with Norman every minute. She was always such a take-charge person—athletic, played tennis or golf two or three times a week, sat on boards, volunteered at the hospital, and then, bang! Almost overnight, she turned into a kudzu vine. Like to’ve worried us to death, right, hon?”

“Oh, she was all right,” Bobby said. “Y’all order yet?”

“All right?” Joyce rolled her eyes. “The way she was always there, asking questions, writing everything down? You were ready to strangle her.”

“Now, Joyce, baby—”

“Well, you were, Bobby. No point in pretending you weren’t just because you feel sorry for her now.” She turned back to me. “I feel sorry for her, too, but you can’t imagine what a nuisance she was. She wouldn’t just sit and watch and listen, she kept jumping in the middle. There were a million details to take care of with this merger and Norman couldn’t concentrate for her running her mouth every minute.”

“And I say let’s stop boring Deborah and get this young fellow here to tell us about tonight’s specials.” He took a swallow of the drink the waiter had brought and leaned back in his chair. “What you got good, son?” he asked.

When our steaks came, mine was just the way I like it: charred on the outside and rare on the inside. Conversation became more general. Bobby clearly didn’t want to gossip about Sunny and Norman Osborne. Instead, he’d heard rumors about the Tuzzolino trial and wanted to know if it was true that they’d really hired somebody to steal for them.

Joyce thought it was funny. “An ex-con for your personal shopper?”

I nodded. “She said that her husband was so down over his Parkinson’s that beautiful and expensive things were the only antidepressant that worked.”

“Sounds like they got screwed by his partner,” said Bobby.

“Well, to be fair, he couldn’t afford the buyout and the insurance only covered the senior partner’s death.”

“Isn’t Parkinson’s a death sentence?”

“Eventually, maybe, but these days drugs can keep you going for years. Clearly he wasn’t going to die soon enough to take the burden off the younger guy.”

“If the practice was that good, he should’ve sucked it up and worked his tail off to keep it going,” Bobby said.