behind me with a decisive thud. With the guilty enjoyment of escaping duty, I quickly descended the concrete stairway. Once I made it down to the cookbook section, I felt immediately at home. I searched out a recipe for piroshki, then flipped through a marvelously illustrated book on the cuisine of Italian hill towns. Educating Your Palate was the name of one of that cookbook’s subsections. I sat in an armchair next to one of the windows.
My uniform-coated reflection looked back at me, cookbook in hand. Educate your palate, huh? I had never had a formal education in cooking; I had taught myself to cook from books. But I made my living at it. Naturally, the courses I’d had on Chaucer, Milton, and Shakespeare hadn’t helped, although they’d been enjoyable, except for the Milton. And needless to say, the psychological savvy needed for the business had no referent in any of my papers on the early thinking of Freud.
But so what. I was educated, self-proclaimed. Period. With this delicious insight I walked over to the first- floor bank of registers to buy the Italian cookbook, then realized I’d left my purse upstairs. I reached into my apron pocket, where I always kept a twenty in case someone had to run out for ingredients, and had the satisfaction of paying for the book with cash earned from catering.
When I pushed past Hannibal Lecter again, Tom Schulz stood waiting near the door. The speaker said, “One last question,” and moments later the parents were milling aggressively around and standing in line to have their books signed by the expert. Audrey and several other staff members began folding up the chairs.
“I’m glad to see you,” I said to Schulz. I looked around at the breakdown of the room. “I really should help them.”
Schulz shook his head. “The food’s gone, the people are leaving, and you have some disks to give me so I can deliver them to the Sheriff’s department tonight.”
“Oh, my God,” I said suddenly. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why hadn’t I taken them down to the first floor with me? I fled into the kitchen. No purse. I rushed back out to Audrey.
“Seen my purse?” I demanded.
“Yes, yes,” she answered primly, and snapped a metal chair shut. “But don’t ever leave it out like that again, Goldy. Kids at that school have a terrible reputation for stealing. The only time I bring a purse is when I need my wallet with all my cards. Otherwise, I wear my keys.” She went to a closet and returned with my purse. I almost snatched it from her. The computer disks were inside.
I handed Schulz the disks. He hadn’t mentioned coming over to my house later. Perhaps he didn’t want to. I immediately felt embarrassed, as if I’d overstepped some invisible but important boundary.
Once again he was reading my mind. Leaning toward me, he whispered, “Can I meet you at your house in ninety minutes?”
“Of course. Will you be able to stay for a while?”
He gave me such a tender, incredulous look: What do you think? that I turned away. When I looked back he was saluting me as he sauntered out the third-floor exit. Julian had gone, presumably to his friend Neil’s house; the Marenskys and Dawsons had disappeared. Chalk another one up for Greer not helping with catering cleanup. Maybe that wasn’t required for Occidental.
Audrey and I cleared the trash and washed dishes. My heart ached for her as she recited all the latest cruel deeds foisted on her by Carl Coopersmith’s insidious lawyer. Finally, but with some guilt, I told her I was expecting a guest at my home momentarily. With Heather’s begrudging help, the three of us loaded our boxes into the van. In an extremely casual tone Audrey inquired, “What was that policeman doing at the store tonight?”
“I told you, I was giving him those disks.”
“It’s like he doesn’t trust us,” she said darkly.
“Well, can you blame him?” came Heather’s sharp voice from the backseat.
“When I want your opinion, I’ll ask for it,” Audrey snapped.
“Oh, Mom.”
And we drove in unhappy silence all the way back to their house in Aspen Meadow.
Plumes of exhaust drifted up from the tailpipe of Schulz’s car when I pulled up by the curb in front of my home.
“Everyone will see you if you park here,” I said when he had rolled down his window.
“Oh, yeah? I wasn’t aware I was doing anything illegal.” He hauled out a plastic bag. It said BRUNSWICK BOWLING BALLS.
“What did the disks say?”
“Talk about it inside.”
I pushed the alarm buttons and opened the door. The bowling ball bag yielded a bottle of VSOP cognac. In a cabinet I found a couple of liqueur glasses that John Richard had not broken on one of his rampages. As we sat in my kitchen and sipped the cognac, Schulz said he wanted to hear about my evening first. I told him about the bookstore spats, and about Macguire Perkins getting in the middle of it. I also told him about my suspicion concerning Macguire’s use of steroids.
“Was that what Keith’s newspaper article was about?” I asked.
“No,” he said pensively, “it wasn’t.” I toyed with my glass. Relax, I ordered myself. But Arch’s problems at school and Julian’s troubling anxiety seemed to be in the air, even though neither of the boys was at home. And despite the afternoon interlude with Schulz the day of the spider bite, I was not used to being alone with him in my house. At night.
Schulz refilled my glass. “How about Julian? Did he get involved in the argument at the bookstore?”
“Oh, no.” I brightened. “Good news on that front, in fact.” I told him about Julian’s scholarship.
“No kidding.” Schulz seemed both pleased and intrigued. “That’s interesting. Who gave him the money?”
“No one knows. I’m wondering if it’s some kind of bribe.”
He sipped his cognac. “A bribe. For what? Did you ask him?” I told him I had not. He pondered that for a minute, then said, “Now tell me how you got those disks.”
“Can’t, sorry, they were given to me in confidence. Do they contain evidence? I mean, is it something you’ll be able to use?”
“I don’t know how.” But he reached inside the Brunswick bag and handed me some folded papers. “I got a printout of Keith’s article. The rest was notes for a paper on Dostoyevski. The other disk had a list of expenses from his visits to ten colleges. The article sums up the trips.” Seeing my puzzled expression, Schulz added, “That’s what Keith was going to expose, Goldy. His personal views on college education as he’d already experienced it. I wanted you to take a look at it, but it just looks like his opinions.”
If that was all it was, I told him I would read it in the morning. I was too tired even to read the word midterm tonight. “If it’s just Keith’s opinions on what’s going on in higher education in the world at large, what’s the big deal?”
“I don’t know. But nobody I can find seems to have had the slightest idea what he was researching for that article. Sometimes people are more afraid of what they think you’re going to expose than they ever would be if they knew exactly what you were going to expose. You fear what you don’t know.”
“Oh, yeah?” I said as I drained the last of the cognac in my glass. Heady stuff.
“Like with this smoke stunt. Someone wants you to think you’re going to be hurt.”
“Marla broke her leg,” I pointed out.
“She may have gotten off easy.” He put his glass down. His face was very grim. “I know I’ve said this a few times already, Miss G., but I’d feel a lot better if you’d all move out, quietly, until we solve this murder.”
I blinked at him. How many times had I run away in fear? Too many. The running part of my life was over, and 1 was not going to budge.
17
Schulz moved restlessly in his chair. I poured us some more cognac and had the uncomforting thought that if we got really drunk, we wouldn’t even notice if someone smashed another window or stopped up every chimney in the neighborhood.
I sipped and looked at the clock. Ten o’clock. The odd feeling of being alone in my home with Schulz brought full wakefulness despite the fact that catering in the evening usually exhausted me. My mind traveled back to the Marenskys and the Dawsons, Brad Marensky morose and silent, Macguire Perkins embarrassed when ordered to shut up. When our tiny glasses were again empty, Schulz stood and walked out to the living room. I followed. The
