Catering to Nobody (Goldy Schulz Series)

being redone. None of this was helping me with a possible link between Laura’s death and the attempted poisoning of Fritz Korman, so I piled all the letters back into the box and pushed it into a cupboard.

Above the cupboard was a shelf of books. Beside it was the wall of photographs that I had briefly noted during the funeral reception. Laura’s library reflected sociopolitical issues of the Sixties and Seventies: Susan Brownmiller’s book on rape, works of Tillie Olsen and Adrienne Rich, Pacifism in the Nuclear Age and, of course, Our Bodies, Ourselves. In addition there were some books on alcoholism, including One Day at a Time in Al-Anon. To my surprise there was also a copy of The Dungeon Masters Guide, which I removed and flipped through. No name on the flyleaf, but I made a mental note to ask Arch about it.

The photos on the wall were of grinning family groups and Laura, white teeth, skin tanned to nut brown, and hair summer-sun bleached. She was either clad in hiking gear and leaning against a boulder, or posing with the families by a lake or cabin. Some photos were signed with the same names I had seen in the box. In the bottom-left corner of this display was one picture that gave me a jolt.

It was another youthful photograph of the girl whose picture had been in the Kormans’ desk. Now I remembered why that picture had looked familiar to me—I had seen it in this house the day of the funeral. I immediately removed it from the wall and slid the picture out of the frame. On the back was written “Love to a teacher who is smiley (ha-ha) no matter what! B. Hollenbeck.”

I put this in my purse and tried not to imagine what Investigator Tom Schulz would say about taking things from Laura’s house. I trotted into the bedroom to look around there, if only to figure out where someone could stash some rat poison until an opportune moment presented itself at a postfuneral party. The bedroom was small and neat, with dresses and skirts hung in the closet and a crocheted throw folded carefully at the bottom of the bed. The bathroom was next. Its rows of Jhirmack hair products and Vitabath shower gel and body cream indicated a person who wanted to look and smell good. The medicine cabinet yielded some soap and cream samples as well as a prescription bottle announcing itself as Ornade, a cold medicine I used myself in the winter months.

A car was coming down the driveway. I hurried back through the living room to the kitchen. A quick visual check of both those areas showed no evidence of my prying. The knife was missing from the wall mount. Of course, that was because I had dropped it behind the chokecherry bushes. No point in risking picking it up now and engendering questions from Kathleen.

My eye fell on the pile of old mail by the kitchen phone. I sifted through it quickly, but it was only more ads, a few bills, a postcard from the Singletons. Then I remembered my promise to Kathleen and reached into my purse for the mail I had brought in. Outside, I could hear her opening the car door. I glanced again at the three bills that had arrived that day.

The past due Public Service and dentist’s bills I ignored. The third was a bill from my ex-husband and Fritz’s office. This seemed very odd to me, given Arch’s view that Laura did not get along with the Kormans. Maybe she was John Richard’s patient. Swallowing hard, I opened the envelope. Inside was a bill for an office visit.

It was the date that gave me a start.

Laura Smiley had done errands and seen Fritz Korman on Saturday, October third.

Afterward, apparently, she had come home and killed herself.

CHAPTER 10

I need to talk to you,” I said into the phone to Tom Schulz. I was aware that I was gasping for breath, as if I had just finished running a few miles when all I had done was pick up Patty Sue and drive home.

“What about? You having a heart attack or something?”

“Did you talk to the deputy coroner?” I demanded. “Anything new?”

“Yeah, he said that corpse just jumped out of the grave and told him all kinds of new stuff.”

“Not funny.”

He sighed. “The only thing I found out that I didn’t know already was that there was a foreign substance in her stomach when she died. Looks as if she took some Valium before she did it, settle herself down a little bit.”

“Valium?” I said quickly. “There wasn’t any Valium in her medicine cabinet.”

“Oh boy.” He snorted. “Not in her medicine cabinet, she says. What else did you figure out going through her stuff? Ever occur to you that what you were doing was illegal? Her medicine cabinet. Maybe that’s not where she kept it. Think of that, Detective G?”

“Cool it,” I said angrily. “This is why I called you. I’ll tell you what I found in my search. Another intruder was there when I got there—what do you think of that? I had to scare off burglar number one before I could do my thing. So. Did your fellow check to see if she had a prescription?”

“Just a sec, back up. You just broke into Laura’s house and found someone else had broken in, too? You got a description of this person?”

“I didn’t break in,” I protested. “But the other person drove off in Laura’s blue Volvo. Wearing a ski mask.”

A groan. He said, “Great. The woman kills herself and nobody finds her for two days and once she’s buried her house is like a practice area for B and E.”

“You never answered my question about the coroner.”

“What are you getting at?” he said in a voice edged with irritation. “You have any suspects yet? No forced entry, no sign of a struggle, no evidence of second-party involvement at all, which is what the deputy coroner concluded, by the way. You think she was murdered maybe by someone driving her car? And not only that, but whoever did her in is interested in killing Korman too, is that your theory?”

“I don’t know why there was no forced entry. Gould be she invited the person in, I don’t know. Maybe it was someone she knew,” I said to Schulz’s silence. Then I asked, “Were her legs shaved? Did she have hair under her arms?”

“What?”

“The story is she killed herself with a razor blade. But she doesn’t have any razors. At least, I didn’t see any in her medicine cabinet,” I added apologetically. “And guess what else? She read some feminist literature. Lots of them, us, don’t believe in shaving.”

Schulz said, “Well, no wonder she didn’t have any boyfriends.” I tapped my foot while he laughed. “Sorry,” he said, “this job gives you a strange sense of humor. Look. You can slash your wrists with a credit card if you try. We had one guy down Cottonwood Creek do just that, had a grudge against American Express. She might have bought a razor just to kill herself. She might have kept the Valium in her purse.”

“Might have,” I said, “might have. She was happy, she was funny, she didn’t leave a note, you said so yourself.”

“Yeah, I’m beginning to wish I hadn’t,” he muttered.

“Suicide a big surprise to all,” I went on. “And then somebody, for reasons unknown, tries to poison somebody else in Laura’s house after Laura’s dead. Somebody?” I added with vehemence, “maybe the same person, goes waltzing into her house looking for something after Laura’s dead. And meanwhile my catering operation is down indefinitely.” I stopped. Schulz, after all, was not the enemy. I said, “Tell me this. What do you need to reopen an investigation?”

“What investigation are you talking about? The one into that woman’s suicide?”

“Of course.”

He said, “An investigation is never closed completely unless we get a conviction of some kind. Which of course you don’t with a suicide. But if you’re talking about exhuming the body—”

“Maybe I am,” I said defiantly. “Maybe that’s what we need to get this cleared up.”

“I wish I knew how I ever got you into this.”

“By closing down my business. By taking me out to dinner. By telling me I could help you. Tell me what you need to exhume the body.”

“You need,” he went on wearily, “some evidence you didn’t have before—”

“A neighbor heard a car at Laura’s house the afternoon she’s supposed to have died. This was after the neighbor had seen Laura walking into town in the morning. She didn’t tell the police because she thought it was Laura coming back with her car. There’s more. Laura made an office visit to Fritz Korman the same day.” I didn’t