eggs. With the eggs in the guy bow we’d have a cholesterol-heavy night, but what the hey. Eggs were cheap and looked good. Besides, they filled people up, a key concept in catering.
My phone rang: Tom Schulz. Yes, I remembered about tonight. I asked if he had heard about Vonette.
“Yeah,” he said. “I heard the call for the ’copter. Why?”
“I don’t know. I just feel real bad about it. She could have done it so many times before … Why last night?”
“Was she at that meeting you were supposed to have?” he asked, suddenly wary. “Your house, right? What happened?”
“Don’t get suspicious, Mr. Investigator. We just talked. Women’s stuff. Besides, it’s confidential.”
“Was she upset when she left?”
I let out a breath. “Well, yes. She was upset. But not suicidal.”
“That Fritz sure has his problems.”
I put all the bags of chips in one large bag. “Listen,” I said, “I hope you’ll stay on this case with Vonette.”
“Take it easy,” Tom responded, “she isn’t dead. Yet.”
“If she dies,” I warned him, “I hope you’ll get on it right away. Toxicology, the whole bit.”
“Don’t worry. That’s my job, Goldy. And the coroner’s back, too, no more new deputy stuff. Are the guys around here happy about that!” He chuckled. “You just concentrate on tonight. I’ll be by at seven to pick up Arch while you finish your cleaning job. Then we’ll dance the night away, and you’ll forget all your troubles.”
“That,” I said before hanging up, “I seriously doubt.”
CHAPTER 26
How do I look, Mom?” asked Arch as he entered the kitchen that evening. Although he had not made up his face for school, he decided for the party to put on the full war paint of the superhuman lich.
I stopped packing the appetizers into plastic containers, took off my witch’s hat and mask, and surveyed him in the painted muslin robe and hood. Around his neck was the heavy gold-plated jewelry Vonette had lent him earlier in the week. The eleven-year-old face glowed with white and black theatrical makeup painted like a skull.
“What am I supposed to say to a lich,” I asked dryly, “you look dreadful? Sorry, lich, I didn’t pack any worms for you to eat. And please don’t get any ideas about installing an alarm system at the athletic club.”
“Don’t worry, Mom,” he replied soberly, “liches are only satisfied when they suck the blood from their victims.”
On that happy note, I whisked off for the club with the Kormans’ station wagon full of food. The last thing I needed was for my soon-to-be escort, who also happened to be the police officer who had closed my business, to know that I was catering illegally.
Twenty minutes later I pulled the station wagon into the club parking lot, which held only two cars. Already the night was quite cool, and the rising moon glowed yellow on the eastern horizon. I shivered.
Pomeroy Locraft greeted me at the door and took one of the boxes from my hands. He was dressed as a beekeeper, complete with mask.
“Now that’s an original costume,” I remarked.
“Beekeeper from another planet,” he rejoined, looking over my shoulder. “Newest offering from Stephen King. Trixie’s here with me. She’s a little drunk, just thought I’d warn you. Seems things got kind of out of control at your place last night.”
“Don’t remind me.”
“Where’s Arch?”
“Coming with Tom Schulz. My date,” I added.
“Bringing the cops to keep your ex-husband in line? Not a bad idea.”
We set about arranging the platters and punch bowl. Pom said Hal was having a fit about someone breaking the big mirror in the Nautilus room. I had every intention of confessing to my part in that accident after I got through some of the more pressing crises.
Trixie told me in a whiskeyed whisper that she had thrown away all the shards on the floor. She was trying to explain more when Arch came bouncing in.
“Where’s Tom Schulz?” I asked. “Please tell me he’s wearing anything but a police uniform.”
“You know, Mom,” Arch said in his serious tone, “you aren’t very nice to Investigator Schulz. He’s not a clown. He’s a magistrate. An enforcer of laws in the human order.”
“Just remember not to mention that I made this food for tonight.”
Arch was nodding doubtfully when Tom Schulz walked in, bedecked in costume and makeup that was somewhere between Bozo and Ronald McDonald. I looked at Arch, who avoided my eyes by surveying the tables laden with food.
“Patty Sue called while you were in the shower,” Arch said. “Said she’ll be back tomorrow. Her parents were going to bring her up. She said she wouldn’t be able to drive for a while.”
Tom Schulz, Pomeroy, and I all said together, “That’s good.”
When Tom and Pomeroy had sauntered off for a friendly glass of punch, I asked Arch, “Do you still miss Ms. Smiley?”
He nodded without looking at me. This was always a bad sign.
“On Halloween,” I went on, “all the ghosts of dead people are supposed to come out, you know.”
“Don’t be weird, Mom.”
“I was just wondering if you’d thought about that.”
He returned my gaze. “Sometimes I miss her. She was the only teacher who ever liked me. But if she killed herself, then I guess she was crazy the way everyone says.”
“If she thought you were a really great kid, and she did, then she was not crazy.”
“Mom? I want some chips.”
I reached for his forearm. “Just tell me, Arch, you’re not taking this lich stuff too seriously, are you? Curses, violent revenge for dead souls, sucking blood, all that?”
“What makes you think that?”
How could I say, From your phone conversation with Todd that I wasn’t supposed to be listening to? He sidled away.
“Arch, old buddy!” Pomeroy called out as Arch approached the tables. “What are you supposed to be, the label on a poison bottle?”
I looked around the club. The place still looked pretty clean. Trixie had done a passable job of cleaning the floor of the Nautilus room.
“A lich,” Arch was explaining to the Martian beekeeper.
Hal whizzed over on roller skates. He was dressed as a Blues Brother.
He glared at me from behind his dark glasses.
He said, “You want to tell me about that mirror?”
I said, “What mirror?”
He skated away. I took protection at Tom Schulz’s side.
“Think the Korman doctors will be here tonight?” he asked.
I nonchalantly rearranged the deviled eggs and the crudites inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.
“Knowing them,” I said, “they aren’t going to sit by the bedside of a woman in a coma. It remains to be seen whether they’re crude enough to come here tonight. They don’t even know about Patty Sue.”
“What about Patty Sue?”
I told him the story of my hapless roommate, and also about what Laura had said to her, indicating she had some kind of power over Fritz Korman.
Tom Schulz picked up two brownies. “She didn’t use it for twenty years,” he said. “But seeing Patty Sue with him, or hearing what Patty Sue had to say, set her off.” He thought. “If the docs come, see if you can find out what Laura was threatening. That’s our missing link. I’m still running the scalpel for prints and other tests, by the way.”
