Killer Pancake

“Are you deaf?” He lowered his voice, sat down at the kitchen table, and assumed his all-knowing tone. The mood-switch was both predictable and frightening. “She was trying to jog her lard-assed self around the lake. She got home, didn’t feel well, and called her g.p. He hadn’t seen her in five years, of course, so when she described her symptoms, he sent in some paramedics, and they called for the Flight-for-Life copter.” The phone on the counter rang again. The muscles in John Richard’s face locked in anger. I knew the look. Now he was just a time bomb. He sat at the kitchen table and said too calmly, “I would like to talk to you without interruption.”

My throat constricted with the old fear. My palms itched to answer the insistent rings. But I knew better than to defy the Jerk. As the phone continued to ring, John Richard made no move to answer it. He crossed his legs. Ever smooth, ever urbane. But I was watching. He said, “You won’t get in to see her without me.”

“That’s not true,” I said, trying to sound unruffled. “Look, you’ve been drinking.” It didn’t take much to set John Richard off. Two ounces of scotch was enough to ignite him for at least four hours. “Why don’t you just —”

“Are you interested in Marla or not?” His eyes blazed and he tightened the formidable muscles in his arms. “I mean, I thought she was your best friend.”

The phone rang and rang. I didn’t take my eyes off John Richard. “Have you seen her?”

“No, no, I was waiting to take you down,” he said with mock sweetness. John Richard leaned forward. A hard pain knotted in my chest. “Whether you like it or not, Miss Piss, as an ex-husband, I am a relative.” The phone shrilled. Tears pricked my eyes. I hated to be so paralyzed with fear. Marla. Forty-five years old. A heart attack. The Jerk, unheeding, talked. “You, as the friend who fed her all the cholesterol-filled crap that blocked her arteries, are not a relative. Friends might not be able to get into the Coronary Care Unit whenever they want. Relatives can. Are you with me so far? So if you want to see Marla at the hospital, I’m going to have to go in with you. Am I getting through to you?”

Any moment, I thought. Any moment and this man who worked out with the fanaticism of an Olympic athlete could take hold of one of my wrists and shatter it against the table with such force that I wouldn’t be able to knead bread for a year. I kept my eyes on his maniacally composed face and picked up the receiver. “I’m okay,” I said without my customary greeting. On the other end, Tom noisily let out air, a sound somewhere between a sigh and a groan. “Thanks for calling back, Tom. He’s just leaving.”

“Just leaving?” Tom yelled. “You mean he’s still there? I’m staying on this phone until he’s out of that house and that door is locked and bolted. Turn that security system back on. If you can’t do that, get out. Understand? Goldy? You listening? I can get the 911 operator to call your neighbor. Have a department car there in ten minutes.”

I turned to my ex-husband. “Please go,” I said firmly. “Now. He’s going to send in the authorities. They’ll be here in ten minutes.”

Dr. John Richard Korman leapt to his feet, grabbed the box of cocoa I’d used for the cookies and flung it against the wall. I screamed as brown powder exploded everywhere. John Richard dusted his hands and gave me a look: Now why did you make that necessary?

“Get out,” I said evenly. “Leave. Nine and a half minutes, and you’re in a lot of trouble.” He’d thrown something because he was thwarted. I wouldn’t go to the hospital with him, and I had paid.

The Jerk assumed an attitude of nonchalance and shrugged. Then, without another word, he withdrew from the kitchen and sauntered his Bermuda-shorted self through the front door. I followed, pressed the bolt into place and armed the system, then ran back to the phone.

“Miss G.?” I broke out in a sweat from the relief of hearing Tom’s old term of endearment. “Will you please talk to me?”

“He’s gone,” I said breathlessly. “Can you tell me where, I mean, how long ago did she … how is she?” I remembered all too vividly Marla’s sad history, that her father had died from a heart attack when she was very young.

“She’s okay. In the Coronary Care Unit at Southwest Hospital. She had a mild heart attack this morning either before or after jogging around Aspen Meadow Lake. Since when is she a jogger?”

“Since never,” I replied angrily, “and she’s on some weird lemon-and-rice diet—”

“Not anymore, she isn’t. You coming down here or what? I probably won’t be able to stay. The investigation of the death over in the mall garage is getting under way.”

I replied that I was on my way and that he shouldn’t wait for me. I scribbled a note to Arch: Back by dinner. How was I going to tell Arch what had happened to Julian or Marla? He adored them both. Stepping out the back door, I glanced around to make sure the Jerk wasn’t lurking in the bushes. That would have been typical of him. I also checked the van’s rear area. It was empty. I locked the doors, gunned the engine, and let the speedometer needle quiver past seventy as I raced back to Denver. I wished I didn’t know as much as I did about the statistics of heart disease running in families.

My best-friendship with Marla had blossomed out of the bitterness of being divorced from the same horrid man. I shook my head and thought of the cloud of brown cocoa powder erupting as it hit the wall. To get emotional control over his cruelty, Marla and I alternately reviled and ridiculed John Richard. But through the years, the relationship between Marla and me had deepened beyond our mutual crisis. We’d formed a discussion group called Amour Anonymous, for women addicted to their relationships. I zipped past Westside Mall and headed for the parking lot at Southwest Hospital.

Our Amour Anonymous meetings had been alternately heartfelt and hilarious. And when the group petered out, as those kinds of groups tend to do, Marla and I remained steadfast to each other with daily phone calls and long talks over shared meals. Moreover, Marla’s generosity with her considerable wealth meant not only that she was one of my best clients, but that she also referred me to all her rich friends. The people in Marla’s address book had provided an endless stream of assignments for Goldilocks’ Catering, including Babs Braithwaite of the upcoming Independence Day party.

My hands clutched the steering wheel. If the Jerk was right and they wouldn’t admit me to the CCU, I was going to have to come up with some way to talk my way in. Just thinking of John Richard made my flesh crawl. How dare he break into my house and blame my cooking for what had happened to Marla? Of course, that kind of behavior was nothing new for him. John Richard Korman, whose mother had been a hardcore alcoholic, frequently had just enough whiskey to release the enraged demon that lived inside.

But there was some truth in what he said. Marla was indeed a large-bodied woman. She ate with gusto, then dieted remorsefully, never for very long or to much effect. Eventually she always resumed her passionate affair with chocolate chip cookies—and cream-filled cakes. But what worried me more than her erratic eating habits was her phobia concerning doctors and hospitals. I wasn’t surprised to hear that she hadn’t seen her general practitioner for years.

I pulled the van into the hospital lot. Southwest Hospital was a subsidiary of a Denver chain of medical facilities. When Westside Mall was in the process of being refurbished, fundraising and construction began on the new hospital. There was another irony: For all her disdain for doctors, Marla had been one of the most generous donors to Southwest Hospital’s building fund.

Inside the hospital, I followed yellow-painted footprints and then blue ones until I came to the automatic doors of the Coronary Care Unit entrance on the fourth floor. A red-haired receptionist wrinkled her brow at me.

“Name of patient?”

I tried to look both innocent and deeply bereaved. “Marla Korman,” I replied.

“She can see visitors only the first ten minutes of each hour, and that’s just past. You’ll have to wait an hour.”

I said quickly, “She’s my sister. Surely I can see her?”

“And you are …”

“Goldy Korman.”

She consulted a clipboard, then gave me a smug smile. “Is that so? When we asked her about next of kin, she didn’t list you.”

“She’d just, had a heart attack,” I said with an enormous effort at long-suffering bereavement. “What do you expect? I really need to see her. I’m worried sick.”

“I’ll have to see some ID.”