Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series)

CHAPTER 6

Monday morning arrived gray and chilly. From my bedroom window a nimbus of fog was just visible shrouding the far mountains. Gray fingers of cloud drifted down to caress the yellowed treetops of the Wildlife Preserve. The wooden window stuck in its track when I pulled; eventually it shuddered open and let in a flood of air as cold and sweet as the cherry cider Colorado farmers sell off the backs of their trucks this time of year.

Arch was out of school because it was Columbus Day. Since Fritz was home recovering, Patty Sue would not see him until Wednesday. As the sole person awake, I did not want to have to face the possibility of another first- strike telephone call from John Richard. I closed the window and slipped into a turtleneck and jeans before heading out for the warmth of Aspen Meadow’s pastry shop.

The fresh air hit my face like a slap. Perhaps it was not such a good idea to spend money on someone else’s cooking, I reflected as my boots crunched over the frosted gravel of the driveway. I headed down Main Street past the Grizzly Bear Restaurant and Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles. But the lure of hot rolls and coffee won out. The walk took twenty minutes. To my relief the small shop held no one I knew.

“Sorry about your business,” was the mournful greeting from Murray, the master baker.

I said, “I love living in a small town.”

Murray looked puzzled. “Listen,” he said defensively, “it’s gonna hurt me, too. Somebody kills that doctor, I’ll lose half my customers.”

I nodded. The shop was on the first floor of a long two-story wood-paneled building. Upstairs, Fritz and John Richard practiced obstetrics and gynecology. It would be a couple of hours before John Richard came in. But within fifteen minutes of his opening, the pastry shop would begin to fill with pregnant women. I knew the pattern: they would eat nothing before weighing in for their appointment. After seeing the doctor they’d waddle down the wooden staircase outside the building and burst into the pastry shop, starved. I often wondered if that was why Murray had located his bakery-haven in this particular spot.

“Don’t worry,” I said before ordering, “he’s going to be just fine, and so is your business.”

Soon I was dipping one finger of that western oversized baked good, the Bear Claw, into coffee and reading in last week’s Mountain Journal of Laura Smiley’s death. The new issue would not be out until later in the week, and it would undoubtedly cover the postfuneral fiasco. That was something I could wait for. Now I read of Laura Smiley, the much beloved teacher at Furman Elementary, who had been born in Denver and raised in Aspen Meadow until she went to the University of Illinois. After that she had become an elementary teacher in Carolton, also in Illinois. There was something familiar about that name, that place. After Laura’s parents were killed in a drunk driving accident on Highway 285 near Conifer, she had moved back to the family home, and had been a teacher at Furman Elementary ever since.

I stared at the picture. Between the black dots of newsprint, Laura was caught in a sunny grin. Suddenly, the dots clouded.

You’re depressed, I told myself. Drink some coffee. I looked up at Murray, who gave me his best version of a sympathetic wink. I held the paper in front of my face. Ms. Smiley, the Journal went on to say, was found by fellow teacher Janet Heath, autopsy ordered, new deputy coroner performing. Funeral Saturday, in lieu of flowers, donations to Pacifists United or the National Organization for Women. But some people had sent flowers anyway. And not only to her.

The rest of the article was what I already knew. But the words “came as a great surprise to her students and those who had known her” were difficult to handle. I thought once again of the cheerful punning magnets and paintings of serene landscapes in Laura’s small home.

Out the pastry shop’s picture window old wooden storefronts broke the cloudy view of distant snow-capped peaks. Most people moved to the mountains for this vista and for the slower pace. Now Homestead Drive and Main Street were silent. The only noises were the gentle gushing of Cottonwood Creek and the occasional ding-ding of cars announcing their presence at a nearby gas station.

Maybe Laura had been looking for serenity when she stayed in Aspen Meadow after her parents’ death. She had taught third grade at Furman Elementary. Arch had been in the class; it was the first time I felt a teacher had appreciated him. The beginning of their friendship, she had related at the first parent conference, had come from a technological advance.

He had come to her shyly one snowy November morning before school. A neighbor with a new car had driven Arch along with his own kids to avoid a late bus. At school Arch had asked Laura how a door could be a jar. A voice in the neighbor’s car had said, “Your door is ajar!” Then she’d told him once she’d eaten a strawberry moose. Kindred spirits. They’d written little jokes and poetry verses to each other, and later letters, and they were partners in laughter even after he went on to fourth grade. The next year, in one of those moves peculiar to elementary school administrations, Laura was transferred to teaching fifth grade. Arch had ended up with her again.

Sometimes I had thought they spent too much time together. He had come home with some peculiar stories. Ms. Smiley had made fun of the President. Well, who didn’t. But with a fifth grader? Then when her street wasn’t plowed, she told Arch she was going to hire dump trucks to leave a ton of snow in front of the county commissioners’ office. When I asked her about these stories, she just laughed them off. It never occurred to me that Laura Smiley was truly off-balance. With the suicide, of course, I had begun to wonder.

And poor Arch. This year he had slammed into the hostile environment of a large sixth grade. He had reacted by becoming more secretive and serious, more committed to the complex fantasy games, more rebellious in the slide to adolescence. He had no teacher who could talk about dumping fantasy snow on newly cruel peers.

I looked down at the newspaper on the table, then back out the window. The sun had burnt off the fog and shone now in a liquid expanse of blue. It was hard to imagine someone looking at the Colorado sky before making that last trip into the bathroom.

Marla broke the silence by plopping into the chair across from me.

She hummed as she spread out her fare, two buttermilk-glazed doughnuts and a cream-filled Long John—the western version of an eclair—and a cup of coffee, which she immediately began to douse with sugar and cream. She stopped humming to give me a baleful look.

“You shouldn’t eat alone,” she warned. She shook pillowy jowls that resembled the Pillsbury doughboy’s. She had on a sequined sweat suit. Half of her brown frizzy hair was held by a ponytail. The rest spilled out every which way. Her face, however, was perfectly made up. She bit carefully into one of the doughnuts so as not to smear the scarlet lipstick,’ then went on with her mouth full. “It’s like drinking alone. A bad sign, very bad.” She dabbed around her mouth with a napkin. “Especially in the morning.”

“Then why are you here?” I asked. I took a sip of coffee before biting off another Bear Claw finger.

She narrowed her eyes and munched thoughtfully, then tongued a small glob of cream that had oozed out of the center of the Long John.

“I’m used to eating alone,” she replied. “You’re not.” She looked at the paper spread out in front of me and shook her head again. “Good God. Eating alone and reading about suicide.”

“Give me a break, Marla.”

“Hey! I’m trying to cheer you up.”

I smiled and looked down at her doughnuts. “What are you doing here, anyway?” I asked. “I thought your larder was full.”

“Well,” she said hesitantly, “you’re not going to believe this, but I can’t eat at home. Mice.”

“Mice?” I said, staring at her.

She gulped her cream-colored coffee again and touched her free hand to the frizzy mass of hair. “Yeah, so what? It’s getting cold outside. The mice come in. They’re hungry. They scare me. I call an exterminator. Is there something wrong with that? You sure seem to be on edge this morning.” She gestured at the paper. “Stop reading about Laura. That’ll only make you feel worse.”

I frowned at her. She was my friend.

I said, “Whoever tried to do in Fritz Korman used rodent poison.”

Marla closed her eyes, then opened them. “I didn’t do it, Goldy.”

“Sorry,” I mumbled.

She leaned across the table. “Listen,” she said. “I don’t even care about Fritz. And neither should you. The more involved in this you become, the more depressed you’re going to get. It’s like hanging around John Richard. It just makes things worse. Let the police do their job.”

“I have to help them,” I said. “My business and livelihood arc on the line.” This would not have occurred to