you a ring.”
She shrugged. Of course, it was not the doctor who would be able to clear any of this up. Maybe now Schulz would listen to me, even if it had cost me my own prescription to relieve pain.
_____
Monday morning I had the article in my hand and dialed Schulz. He was away from his desk; the clerk took a message.
“Don’t forget I have a doctor’s appointment today,” Patty Sue reminded me.
“I haven’t forgotten,” I replied. “How’s your arm? You sure you want to keep up with this other treatment when you’re in pain?”
She said, “It’s not too bad.”
I looked at poor, thin Patty Sue and felt a surge of pity. “How long’s he going to treat you for not getting your period?” I asked. “I don’t understand why pills don’t work.”
“He says they will,” said Patty Sue. “It just takes time. I don’t question him. He
I shook my head. Several hours later I revved up the wagon and drove over to Korman and Korman to deposit my charge. Indian summer weather was holding, and already the sun was lightening a deep blue sky. I did not see the doctors’ twin Jeeps, with their license plates that said OB and GYN, when we arrived in a cloud of dust. Patty Sue might be in for a long wait.
When I warned her of this, she said, “It’s okay, since it’s warm enough to sunbathe.”
“Go right ahead,” I said, “just be ready after I pick up Arch. I need you to look after him while I try to do a little more digging on this thing with his teacher.”
“Oh, no. Not more school trouble.”
“No. His other teacher. Laura.” I looked at her. She frowned back. I said, “Just sun yourself on the benches outside the pastry shop until I come back.”
She nodded and turned away.
I headed toward Marla’s, down Ponderosa and up Blue Spruce, roads named for the tall trees whose velvet- green arms hugged the occasional bright gold stand of aspens. I rolled down the window. No early snow had trampled down the thick, rebellious field grass or stripped the blood-red chokecherry bushes of their summer splendor. Soon the little kids in town would be dressing up for Halloween and traipsing from house to house demanding sweets. So Arch was not too old for a costume this year, after all. I remembered the lich only vaguely from our role-playing night. Researching the costume might be a pain, especially if the sewing was either complex or expensive. As it was I would be tied up getting ready for the athletic club party and molding my caramel-corn balls for the trick or treaters. The balls were wrapped in cellophane, labeled GOLDILOCKS’ CATERING for advertising purposes. I knew how irresistible Halloween bags were to adults.
My eyes avoided the brass plate on the door of my ex-husband’s other ex-wife. Marla and I had become allies in our dislike of John Richard, but not in our decorating taste. The plaque read Chez Marla.
“Darling,” she said expansively when she came to the door. “I have just made some coffee. Until your son arrives we can have the solarium to ourselves to enjoy it. Then he’s bound to run us off so he can study those damn bugs. Honestly, Goldy, I don’t know how you take the strains of motherhood.”
Tires of flesh rolled and swirled beneath her peach satin robe as she padded in front of me toward her sun room.
“How’d it go?” I asked after we had flopped onto overstuffed green-and-white cushions covering what I hoped was sturdy wicker. Around us were all manner of sweet-smelling plants that Marla took great pride in cultivating. “Did Arch behave himself?”
“Listen here, Goldy,” she said as she handed me a china cup and saucer and poured from a sterling pot next to a Rosenthal dish heaped with sticky buns. “He was great. Bugs and all. He’s so easy to get along with, it’s hard to believe he comes from a long line of bastards. Sweet roll? I took Arch to the pastry shop for breakfast and stocked up.”
I shook my head and glanced at the china dish Marla had filled with goodies. Next to it was a crystal pitcher bursting with stems of fragrant Cape Jasmine. Apparently John Richard had not had as loose a hand with Marla’s breakables as he had with mine.
Marla, resplendent in her queen-size robe, settled back into her cushion.
“Well,” she said, “I’m just going to have one of these.” She paused for a dainty bite. “So,” she went on, “the rumor is that your new roommate is this great driver.”
I said, “Don’t. Don’t even start.”
“Obviously you’ve managed to get other transportation.”
“The Kormans’ old station wagon.” I changed my mind and took a sweet roll. “Politics may make strange bedfellows. But it’s nothing to what poverty makes.”
She grunted and leaned forward to slice another roll.
I said, “I’m dying to know what you’ve learned about everybody I’ve been trying to track down lately. What have I missed? I’d rather have you than the paper.”
“Well. Trixie is making noises about looking for a new job. She called and asked if I knew a lawyer, and I said what for and she said never mind and I said criminal or civil and she said criminal, I think. So maybe Hal is doing more than just making her pay for the mirror. She asked about Friday night, were we still going to meet, and I said of course, if you’re not in jail, and the bitch hung up.”
“Hard to believe that club has put up with her for so long,” I said.
“It’s hard to believe the athletic club puts up with a lot of other stuff.”
“Meaning?”
“Oh, you know,” she said. She picked dead leaves from a plant. “I really hate to gossip.”
“Bull.”
“Speaking ill of the dead, you know.”
“Laura Smiley?” I asked. “What did she do at the athletic club? You were going to check out some theory of yours.”
“Last month I stumbled, and I do mean it was by accident, into her having an intimate tete-a-tete with Pomeroy Locraft, in the hot tub, no less. Talking in hushed tones, mind you, so that I made a crack about it being too bad we had to wear suits in the hot tub, it being coed and all.”
“What does this have to do with anything?”
She said, “I just figured, you know, that she was trying to put the moves on him. He didn’t appear to be responding, so I thought, Unrequited love. She killed herself. Tragic.”
“I don’t buy it,” I said. “He and Laura were friends, that is a fact. But as far as I can tell, it was friends, period. And maybe they were talking in low tones to avoid some of the gossipy people in this town.”
“Yeah, well. After he’d gone, Laura started talking to me about the Jerk, like all of a sudden we’re pals in hating him. She said, ‘Did he ever go after girls?’ I didn’t know what she was talking about.”
Good God. “Did she mention any names? Like Fritz, or someone named Bebe, for example?”
“No. I told her John Richard and I were divorced and I didn’t think about him anymore, which was a lie, but I didn’t really want to get into it with her. Her eyes were bugging out, like it was more than just being nosy. More like—”
“More like …?”
Marla said, “More like she was furious.”
I said, “But about what? It sounds as if she was
“Please don’t use that kind of language,” said Marla, as she poured us more coffee. “With Halloween coming up and all.”
_____
One hour and a dozen pastries later the sound of Arch’s raised voice came through the solarium windows.
“Oh, yeah?” he was screaming.
Two boys bigger than Arch were squaring off against him.
“Wimp!” yelled one. “Faggot!”
One of the big boys pushed Arch’s shoulder and Arch swung back. The boy ducked, and the other boy gave an
