“You’re offending me.”
“Tell you what,” he said, “let me try to make it up to you by taking you out to dinner again.”
“No, I don’t think so …”
“The movies?”
“No…”
“Bronco game?”
I hesitated.
“They’re looking awfully good this year. Beat Green Bay last Sunday. Department has a pair of tickets. Let me know which Sunday. When you’re free, that is.”
“Wait,” I said. I felt my head swimming. I wasn’t ready for all this. I needed to talk to my group. “I am not looking for a social life,” I told him. “For now I just want to solve this crime and start making money again.”
“Then let’s solve it.”
“How? We’ve, I’ve, got a huge problem, and you’re acting like getting some information on this is some long- term project.”
He waved to the waiter for our check.
“What do you want to know?” he asked.
I took a deep breath. “Okay. A, someone tried to poison Fritz. B, that same someone did it in Laura Smiley’s house after Laura Smiley’s funeral. C, nobody seems to know why Laura killed herself and she didn’t leave a note to tell us, and D, Laura and the Kormans didn’t get along. Now E, you’re telling me, this history between them goes way back. So maybe the two events, Laura dying and Fritz being poisoned, are related.” I closed my eyes and nodded. It sounded logical, didn’t it? “I told you before, it might help to know what that deputy coroner said about Laura Smiley’s death. If she didn’t leave a note, why are they calling it suicide?”
“My dear,” said Schulz as he looked at the bill, “a note doesn’t mean squat. I’ve seen suicide notes that were photocopied, for God’s sake. With blood all over the room. I called the deputy coroner. She slashed her wrists, and there was no sign of a struggle, no burglary, nothing. That’s what I know. We treat a suicide like a murder until we know differently. In this case, suicide was the deputy coroner’s conclusion. Now granted, the guy is new. And before this he was out in some small town on the western slope.” Schulz rubbed his temples.
I said, “Well, would you be willing to look into it some more? I mean if you really want to cooperate on this thing. And I’ll work your women’s angle. Talk it up, find out about Trixie and if the reason she works out with weights is so that she can exercise her aggression on people. Deal?”
He nodded.
“By the way,” I said, “did the Health Department find anything?”
“No. It’s probably like sending it down to the crime lab.” When I looked puzzled, he said, “You’ve got to tell them, look for this, look for that. If you’ve got some white powder that’s cocaine and you say, Check for heroin, they’ll send your coke back to you and say, It’s not heroin. Same principle.”
I smiled. “Thanks for dinner.”
He said, “Hey. Something else. I need to know more about Vonette. Something’s wrong there, I don’t know what. And you’re welcome. Let’s do it again soon.”
I nodded, although eliciting more information from Vonette was unappealing. I took a fortune cookie from the tray that held the check.
“Look,” he said as he ate his cookie and tossed away the fortune, “we may have a bigger problem. Especially if whoever put the stuff in Fritz’s coffee is really trying to kill him.”
“Why is that?”
“Because,” he said patiently, “if somebody’s trying to kill him, they’re going to try again.”
“At least they’re not going to do it at one of my catered functions,” I replied, then remembered the Halloween party in three weeks. I wasn’t actually being paid for it, just getting my club dues. Still. Better not mention that to Schulz, stickler for legality that he was.
“We’ll have all this cleared up soon,” Schulz said confidently. “Trust the sheriff’s department.”
I unfolded the paper fortune in my hand.
It said, “Faith is your greatest present need.”
Like Schulz, I tossed it.
At home I noticed miserably that the leftover spaghetti mess in the sink matched the red and white decor of the kitchen. Honestly, that Patty Sue. If she could run all afternoon, why couldn’t she make a minimal effort to cook or clean? I tried to remember myself at twenty. Had I really never had the big picture of running a house before I had a child? Probably not.
The house was quiet. Before going to bed I crept down the hall to make sure Arch was safely asleep. This had been my habit since he was born. John Richard had given me the title Helicopter Mom: I hovered.
Arch was not asleep but was murmuring excitedly on the phone.
“That sounds great,” he was saying. “But what about the potion?”
A pause.
“No, you have to use milkwort for that. It’s all that’s available for lethal missions.” He listened for a moment, and then said, “You mean I’m going to have to find that, too? Don’t you know anything about getting rid of opponents?”
Another pause. I felt a tightness in my chest. Blood pounded in my ears.
“Oh, Todd!” said Arch, irritated. “I can’t believe I’m going to have to find the weapon
I knocked forcefully on Arch’s partially opened door. Perhaps it was just the hammering in my head that made the noise thunderous. Then I swung the door open all the way without getting an answer.
He had hung up the phone.
“What is going on?” I demanded.
“Mom,” he said. He looked at me, hair disheveled, glasses askew. They seemed incongruous next to his baseball-print flannel pajamas. In his lap were a guidebook and folder for his games. “You’re home!” A pause. “Uh, I stayed up.”
“Yes,” I said, suddenly feeling out of place. “I just came in to see if you were asleep yet. I heard you on the phone. Was it for your game?”
He turned back to the papers in his lap. “Yes,” he said impatiently. “But I’ll call him back tomorrow.”
“Okay,” I said. I stood by his door, unable to put words together.
“Mom?”
“Yes?”
He set his mouth in a straight line and folded his arms across his chest.
“Please,” he said, “don’t sneak up on me like that again.”
CHAPTER 9
The next day I managed to book two cleaning jobs in the country club area, one for that day and one for the next. Since Fritz was back on his feet, I took Patty Sue to her appointment and instructed her to walk home while I went off to scrub, scour, and vacuum. I talked minimally to Arch before he left for school. If checking on him was considered sneaking up, then asking questions would be prying. I did elicit the promise that he would take me on a role-playing adventure over the weekend. It was time for me to find out what was going on with these games. Or at least try.
The house to be cleaned was one of those rambling ranch-style structures done in all-western decor right up to the walls hung with harnesses, cowboy hats, sombreros, and horseshoes. Maid service of this ranchette took six hours, which included polishing a coffee table shaped like a flatbed wagon. The worst part was that I kept expecting Dale Evans to pop out from behind one of the numerous bathroom doors. She didn’t, and when I was done I was very glad to receive forty-eight dollars in cash.
After making a run to a janitorial supply house in west Denver I picked up some groceries and came home to give Patty Sue her first lesson in housecleaning for fun and profit.
“I’ll do whatever you say,” she said, but it was without enthusiasm.
