I shook my head. Unbelievable. Why not just label myself obsolete?
“Anyway,” Schulz was saying, “Arch told me what I’d already heard from a parent, that Dawson fellow, that Julian and Keith Andrews had had some kind of argument a few weeks ago. I guess things got kind of out of hand. Keith’s windshield ended up getting shattered, but not at the time of the argument.”
“When, then?” Why didn’t Julian ever tell me things like this?
“Before one of the bigwig college reps showed up at the school, is what I was told.” He paused. “Do you think Julian’s ashamed of being raised without money, his parents down in Utah, him having to work for and live with you his senior year, anything like that? Something Keith Andrews could have made fun of?”
“Not that I know of,” I said firmly. Julian’s financial situation caused him pain, but he had never mentioned students’ ridiculing him for it. “I do think they had a girlfriend dispute,” I said lamely. “Remember, Julian told us about it.”
“This argument was different. This took place last week in front of the Mountain Journal offices. Arch was in the Rover, didn’t hear the whole thing, said that it had something to do with schools. Seems Julian was worried that Keith was going to write something negative about Elk Park Prep, when everyone was uptight enough already about the college application process. All they can say over at the paper was that Keith was doing some kind of expose. They were going to read it before they decided whether or not to print it.”
“Expose about what?”
“About Elk Park Prep, I think.” He gestured at the stuff in the trunk. “About test scores. About using Cliff’s Notes. About a professor who thinks he’s a Romeo. About taxes, for God’s sake.” Before I could ask him what he meant by that, he picked up a typed letter that had been done on perforated computer-printer paper. The letter looked like a draft. Words had been crossed out and new words hand-printed above. Mr. Marensky, it read, I’d be more than happy to pay you your two hundred dollars if you’d call the director of admissions at Columbia for me. Or maybe you’d prefer I call the IRS? IRS had a line through it, and Internal Revenue Service had been neatly written above it.
“I don’t get it.” Schulz shrugged. “Stan Marensky had Keith do some yardwork for him. Marensky gave Keith a check for six hundred dollars for a four-hundred-dollar job with the agreement that Keith would refund him two hundred in cash. That way, Marensky could claim a six-hundred-dollar expense on his taxes. Petty thievery, not all that uncommon, and Marensky owned up to it pretty quick.”
“So much for Saint Andrews. This is a pretty dark side. Maybe it explains why he wasn’t universally liked. I mean, an expose? Blackmailing a powerful parent?”
Schulz’s hand grasped the trunk lid, making it creak. “Well, Marensky thought the blackmail was a joke, since he’d gone to Columbia so many years ago, and didn’t have any influence there. He says. Claims he never got his two hundred dollars back. I asked the headmaster about Marensky, and he said he was like a, a, now, let’s see, what did he say…”
I punched Schulz lightly on the shoulder. “Don’t.” Looking down at the jumble of papers in the trunk, I shivered. “I can’t look at this stuff anymore. Let’s go have some of your shrimp enchiladas.”
“You peeked.”
“Hey! This is a caterer you’re talking to! Every meal someone else slaves over is a spy mission.”
“Just tell me if you know whether Julian and Keith had any real animosity. Before I question Julian again myself. You think he’d break some body’s windshield?”
“He’s got some hostility, but I doubt he’d do that.”
“Do you know whether any of the teaching staff were Romeos?”
I felt my voice rising. “No! I don’t! Gosh, what is the matter with that school? I wish I could find out what’s going on.”
“Well, you’re doing those dinners for them. You hear stuff. I want to know about anything that sounds strange, out of place.”
“Look, this murder happened at a dinner I was catering! It’s my window that was broken and my son’s locker that was vandalized! For crying out loud, Tom, the Andrews boy even looked like Arch. You think I want my kid in a school with a murderer on the loose? I have a stake in finding out what’s going on out there. Believe me, I’ll keep you informed.”
He tilted his head and regarded me beneath the tentlike brows. “Just don’t go off half cocked, Miss G.”
“Oh, jeez, give me a break, will you? What do you think I am, some kind of petty criminal?”
Schulz took large steps ahead of me back to the house. “Who, you? The light of my life? The fearless breaker-and- enterer? You? Never!”
“You are so awful.” I traipsed after him, unsure how I felt to be called the light of anyone’s life.
Schulz settled me at his cherrywood dining room table, and then began to ferry out dishes. He had outdone himself. Plump, succulent shrimp nestled inside blue corn tortillas smothered with a green chile and cream cheese sauce. Next to these he served bacon-sprinkled refried black beans, a perfectly puffed Mexican corn pudding, and my fragrant Irish bread. A basket of raw vegetables and pot of picante made with fresh papaya graced the table between the candles. I savored it all. When was the last time I’d enjoyed an entire dinner that I had not exhausted myself preparing? I couldn’t remember.
“Save room for chocolate,” Schulz warned when the room had grown dark except for the candlelight flickering across his face.
“Not to worry.” Twenty minutes later, I was curled up on his couch. Schulz lit the enormous pile of logs. Soon the snap and roar of burning wood filled the air. Schulz retreated to the kitchen and returned with cups of espresso and a miniature chocolate cake.
I groaned. “It’s a good thing I’m not prone to jealousy. I’d say you were a better cook than I am.”
“Not much chance of that.” He had turned on his outside light and was peering into the night. “Darn. It’s stopped snowing.”
So we had had the same thought. Once again I veered away from this emotional territory, the way you leap onto a makeshift sidewalk when the sign says HARD HATS ONLY!
Schulz wordlessly cut the cake and handed me a generous slice of what was actually two thin layers of fudge cake separated by a fat wedge of raspberry sherbet. Unlike my ex-husband, who had always had a vague notion that I liked licorice (I detest it), Schulz invariably served chocolate ? my weakness.
Of course, the cake was exquisite. When it was reduced to crumbs, I licked my fingers, sighed, and asked, “Does Keith Andrews’ family have money?”
He shrugged and leaned over to turn off the light. “Yes and no.” He picked up my hand and ran his fingers over it lightly. The same gesture he had used with the credit card, I remembered. “Thought any more about my name-change offer?”
“Yes and no.”
He let out an exasperated chuckle. “Wrong answer.” The firelight flickered over his sturdy body, over his hopeful, inviting face, and into eyes dark with a caring I wasn’t quite willing to face.
“Goldy,” he said. He smiled. “I care. Believe it?”
“Yeah. Sure. But… aren’t you… don’t you … think about all that’s happened? You know, your nurse?”
“Excuse me, Miss G., but it’s you who lives in the past.” He took both of my hands in his, lifted them, and kissed them.
“I do not live in the past.” My protest sounded weak. “And I have the psychotherapy bills to prove it.”
He leaned in to kiss me. He caught about half of my mouth, which made us both laugh. The only sounds in the room were fire crackle and slow breaths. For a change, I was at a loss for words.
Without unlocking his eyes from mine, Schulz slipped one hand to the small of my back and inscribed gentle circles there. How I wanted to be loved again.
I said, “Oh, I don’t know…”
“You do care about me, don’t you?”
“Yes.?
And I did, too. I loved having this beautiful meal, this hissing fire, this lovely man whose touch now made me shiver after all the years of self-righteous celibacy. The wax from the lit red candles on the dining table melted, dripped, and spiraled. I took Schulz’s hands. They were rough, big hands, hands that every day, in ways I could only imagine, probed questions about life and death and feeling morally grounded in your actions. I smiled, lifted my hands to his face, and corrected the angle of his head so that when I brought his lips to mine, this time they would
