Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series)

Marla, of course, since she’d made her money the easy way: she inherited it.

She shrugged and tapped a fat finger twinkling with sapphires on the newspaper picture of Laura. “Here’s a mystery you should be working on,” she said. “Why’d she do it? I have a theory.”

“What’s that?”

“Unrequited love.”

I looked at her blankly. “What?”

Marla returned the blank look and started to mumble vaguely about not being completely sure when the shop door flew open, banged against our table, and sent the coffee into a tidal wave across the Formica.

“I figured you were here,” Arch announced triumphantly as he marched in with Patty Sue in tow. “You always come here when you don’t have any work.”

I gave Marla a rueful glance and dropped a pile of napkins on the table’s lake of coffee, then got up to refill our cups and pay for whatever Arch wanted. He ordered a sugar twist and juice. Patty Sue, after noticing she hadn’t brought any money, ordered a Long John, a cheese Danish, and two cartons of milk.

“How do you stay so thin?” demanded Marla. “I mean didn’t they feed you out in eastern Colorado, before you had to come out here to see Fritz, or what?”

“They fed me. And I’m trying to learn to cook,” said Patty Sue in what I viewed as extraordinary understatement. “One time Dad was sick for a long time and then I had to do the cooking because Mom got sick, too. I fixed frozen stuff like Banquet chicken and Sara Lee.”

Marla said, “What did she have, scurvy?”

There was no answer. Patty Sue and Arch were staring at Laura’s picture in the paper. Patty Sue put down her Danish and looked out the window. I reached for the paper.

“Guess what,” I said to distract Arch. “Marla has mice.”

“Oh, cool,” he said with genuine admiration. “Do you have gerbils, too?”

Marla turned her look of distaste on me.

“Arch,” Marla explained as she gestured with her remaining doughnut, “there are good mice and bad mice. Good mice live in cages and children’s stories. Bad mice bite and spread disease after they get into your best cookies and crackers and make a mess. Not to mention that after all your cookies are gone, you have to go to local pastry shops and listen to your best friend ask if you’re using rodent poison on humans.” She paused to swallow some coffee. “And no to the gerbils, too.”

Arch nodded. “Did you call the Division of Wildlife to get rid of them?”

Marla and I both found this amusing. The furrows of confusion in Patty Sue’s forehead deepened. I was not sure, but it looked as if she was about to cry.

“Arch honey,” I said in a voice I hoped was not patronizing, “you call the Division of Wildlife if you have a problem with a bear or a raccoon or a mountain lion. Not for mice and common animals like that.”

Arch said, “I don’t think you’re right, Mom.”

Marla glanced at her watch. “Oh,” she said, her mouth full of doughnut, “the irony of it all. Time for exercise class.”

I nodded. I still needed to find out if Hal was interested in my cleaning offer, so I hustled Patty Sue and Arch along. As they were getting up to leave, I turned to Marla.

“So what’s this about Laura?” I asked in a low voice.

“I’ve seen and heard this and that,” Marla whispered.

“Well, tell me.”

“Not now,” said Marla. She thought. “Let me ask around at the club. That’s where I saw something that made me wonder.”

“Made you wonder about what?”

“Let me call around, will you, Goldy? I hate to gossip.”

Untrue, I thought, as I hastened after her. Marla adored gossip.

We took off for the Aspen Meadow Athletic Club, which occupied the bottom two floors of a streamlined brick building full of glass and sharply angled walls. The other four floors of this incongruously contemporary edifice housed First Bank of Colorado, realtors’ offices, even our own branch of Merrill Lynch. The building and its residents were a sign of the urban future coming to our little town, a sign that was none too welcome to the small population that had moved here to get away from all that.

Inside, the athletic facility was about as close to yuppie heaven as one could find in Aspen Meadow. Plexiglas walls enclosed clean white racquetball courts; an advanced sound system boomed in the exercise room; Nautilus equipment and weights were judiciously spaced in another room, which had the look of a museum exhibit of modem sculpture. For postworkout relaxation there was a steamroom, sauna, and hot tub in a locker room that would have given pause to the architects of the Roman baths.

A cook feels more comfortable putting fat into things than taking it out or off, so belonging to a fancy gym had always felt strange. As I pushed through the glass door and shuffled across the beige-and-burgundy striped carpet, it was Marla’s comment that reminded me of the other reason for feeling out of place here. The club was the one spot in Aspen Meadow where, as if by agreement, all the single people who did not want to resort to either bars or church groups could meet.

I only felt duty bound to exercise, and that not too much. My business had kept me going until a few days ago. Besides splashing in the pool, Arch enjoyed puttering around on the racquetball court, so I also rationalized paying the dues for his sake. But unless some work materialized soon, we would have to quit. I hated to feel poor. It made me resent John Richard even more than usual.

Needless to say, I hadn’t taken advantage of the social life available at the club. There was a small voice of uncertainty in my gut, not unlike the interest in Pomeroy. Over the years some of the muscle-bound fellows had asked me out. I had replied in the negative, claiming to myself that I wasn’t ready.

But I belonged to the club, and like the woman on a diet who stares at the frozen desserts, I had my wild thoughts.

This feeling did not diminish when Patty Sue, Marla, Arch, and I retrieved our locker keys from Hal, a shaggy-haired jock who had metamorphosed from surf bum to club owner without losing his beachboy gestalt. He was on the phone and whispered he would talk to me later. The place was crowded since it was a holiday. Glancing into the Nautilus room the first person I saw, of course, was Pomeroy Locraft. Not teaching today because the high school was closed, no doubt. He gave us a hearty wave which, since I had never received it before, was probably meant for Patty Sue. She waved back while Arch sauntered over to chat, probably about beekeeping.

In the locker room Marla said, “I don’t know if I’m ready for this after two doughnuts and a Long John. What an unfortunately phallic name for an eclair, anyway.” She was struggling into peach-colored tights that made her look even more round and fuzzy than she already was.

“Okay, girls,” shouted Trixie after we had stretched calves and assorted ligaments, “let’s go get ’em!”

This, coupled with the sudden booming of the theme from Top Gun, meant the war on cellulite had been declared. I had not had a class from Trixie in quite a while. I wasn’t sure I was up to it.

Within the first minute of activity it was abundantly clear that too long a time had elapsed since my last trip to class, no matter who the teacher was. The ruthless bank of mirrors in front of us pointed out every fatty pouch. My thighs, next to Patty Sue’s long slender ones, looked as if they were plastered with rice pudding. My stomach was a bombe glacee.

“Come on, girls!” exhorted Trixie. “Get that energy up!” She balled her hands into fists and punched at the air below the ceiling. “Go! Go!”

Beside me Patty Sue was lunging and jumping. Pomeroy and Arch were out of sight. I surveyed the rows of women. I did not want to do this, did not want to do this.

The women were like pasta groupings, I decided. The back row of overweight newcomers wiggled laboriously, manicotti in hot water Next came lasagne, wide-looking one way and thin when they turned. The linguini in front of them possessed the same thin/wide dimensions, only in not so dramatic proportions. Then onward to spaghetti and finally to vermicelli, thin tall tubes like Patty Sue and Trixie. How Patty Sue could eat so much and stay so thin was beyond me. I was an incidental misfit on this row, short and round. An elbow macaroni, maybe.

After class I stretched out on a towel in the steamroom, where I was soon joined by Patty Sue, Marla, and