Killer Pancake

Dented on the grille where it could have hit someone. Coroner’s office will match that up with impact marks on the victim.”

I said weakly, “Impact marks? You mean bruises? And wasn’t there any blood on the grille?”

“The body doesn’t have time to bruise.” I closed my eyes. “Sometimes there’s blood on the vehicle, sometimes there isn’t,” he went on. “This time there wasn’t. The only blood was on the garage floor, from when her head hit the pavement. Unfortunately, there’s not a single discernible hair or fingerprint inside the truck. At least so far. Our guys are working on it. We’re grasping for anything.” He paused. “But here’s something. You were the closest person that we know of to the scene of the crime. Relatively near the body, you found that flower.”

“You don’t think—”

“I have no idea, it’s probably nothing. But every now and then you get a hunch. When a flower so perfectly fresh is found by the scene of what we’re now realizing was a homicide, we have to get it analyzed. So I took a picture of it and sent it to the American Rose Association.”

“Sheesh, that is grasping for straws. What do you mean, our guys are working on the truck?”

He measured out white wine and stirred it into the bubbling crabmeat mixture. “As I said, we’re now treating Miss Satterfield’s death as a homicide. State patrol’s out, we’re in.” His big body sighed. “So. Now all we have to do is figure out who would want to kill her. That’s why I’m going to have to talk to Julian as soon as he’s feeling a little better. The team’s working on the evidence too. We need to figure out who could smash into her like that and then leave. Without being seen. We’re thinking the perp either had another car right there, or went right back inside the mall.”

“I don’t believe somebody could do that without anybody seeing.”

“Believe it. People usually are just minding their own business.” He swirled Parmesan cheese into the sauce. “Poor Julian.”

“What about those demonstrators? Think this could be something they’d do out of spite against Mignon Cosmetics? Because Claire worked for them?”

“At this point, nothing can be ruled out. We’re getting the demonstrators’ names and addresses. The usual drill.”

My glass was long empty. I needed something else to do with my hands. So I set about assembling ingredients for a fruit cup—luscious, ripe cantaloupes, strawberries, grapes, bananas. I chopped and sliced and arranged the fruit in concentric circles, trying to bring a similar order to this chaos of news.

At length I poured myself another glass of cider and said, “Remember the guy I dumped the vegetables on?”

Tom’s smile was enormous: back to his old self. “One of your better moments, Miss G. What about him?”

“And remember Frances Markasian?”

“Goldy, how could anyone forget a reporter who looks like a Caucasian Bob Marley and dresses like a class in salvage?”

I told Tom that Frances seemed to have ferreted out the activist to interview him and that his name was Shaman Krill Not only had Frances somehow learned that Julian was only the most recent of Claire’s many boyfriends, but she also seemed, like Tom and the state troopers, to believe Claire’s death was no accident. Tom turned the stove off, held up one hand, and dug out his trusty spiral notebook.

“Other boyfriends. Thinks Claire was run down. How’d she come to these conclusions, did she say? Maybe I should give her a ring.”

“Right, and get an earful about her First Amendment right to protect her sources. Then she’d never tell me a thing. You should have seen her: I hardly recognized her this morning, all decked out in an expensive new dress and tame hairstyle.”

He snorted with disgust. “Why was she at the Mignon banquet? Since when is southeast Furman County the beat of an Aspen Meadow reporter?”

I shrugged and sipped cider. “She said she’d heard rumors about Prince & Grogan having problems. How that translates into attending a cosmetics lunch I don’t know. And please, don’t ask what kind of rumors, because I already asked her and she’s not saying. But I’m going down there day after tomorrow for the food fair, and tomorrow I need to pick up my check from the Mignon people—”

“Oh, Goldy, no—”

“I’m just going to ask—”

“Okay, ask.” He reached over and took both of my hands in his.

“You know I think you have a great mind for these investigations. That’s why I like to talk to you about them. I want your ideas.”

“Sure.”

He kissed my cheek. “I do, doggone it. You love to talk to people and they love to talk to you. Great. You have insights. Also great I just don’t want you getting into danger.”

“You act as if I’m trying to take over your job or something.”

He laughed. “Are you?” Then he answered his own question. “Of course you’re not. Take catering. I help you chop, right? Sometimes you even give me a little scoop to measure out cookie batter. Small jobs. Helpful jobs. ’Cuz that’s all you’ll trust me with, right? I don’t tell you what to serve or who to serve it to. Correct me if I’m wrong here. Because you’re the caterer and I’m the cop.”

“Please, Tom. Let me help Julian by asking around. He loved Claire so much.”

He frowned, then held up a warning finger. “Okay. On two conditions. You don’t go into situations that you know are going to be dangerous. And two, if I tell you to back off, you do.”

“I thought you said your work wasn’t dangerous—”

“It isn’t when I’m doing it. It could be for you.”

I set out the forks, knives, and plates before replying. Then I said calmly, “Okay. But I’m telling you, Tom, I’m going to help Julian. Frances Markasian and I are friends, remember. Or at least sometimes we act as if we are. I have an idea where she might have found out some of these things.” I told him that I’d chatted with Dusty Routt, the Mignon sales associate, at the banquet. I’d even introduced her to Frances. After hearing about Claire’s death, Frances would have felt no qualms about contacting Dusty for information.

“Routt, Routt, that name is familiar. R-o-u-t-t? There was a big bank job done in the early fifties here in Colorado by a guy named Routt. How old is this Dusty?”

“Julian’s age. She lives down the street with her mother, little brother, and grandfather. Maybe the grandfather is a bank robber, although in our little town, that’s just the kind of news folks love to spread, and I haven’t heard a thing. Not only that, but our church helped build the house they’re in. A bank robber doesn’t sound like the kind of person they like to have living in houses built with charity money and sweat equity. But … don’t you remember my telling you Julian had dated Dusty a couple of times? Then she was expelled from Elk Park Prep, and they sort of broke up. At a party on Memorial Day, she was the one who introduced him to Claire.”

“Let me get this straight.” Tom was scribbling in his notebook. “This Dusty … Routt works for the cosmetics people and used to go out with Julian? When Julian met Claire, Dusty had already been dumped? Why was Dusty expelled, do you know?”

I pursed my lips. “Nope. Julian was always too embarrassed to ask her. You know how that school is, it was all kept very hush-hush.”

“Another fact the local gossip network seems to have missed,” he observed. “And Frances mentioned Claire Satterfield, former boyfriends, and the guy you trashed with roasted vegetables in the mall garage, all in the same breath? Like she thinks there’s a connection?” He looked at his notebook and considered. “Sounds like somebody’s doing a lot of speculating.”

I ignored this. “I’m just saying the rumor is, there seem to have been former boyfriends. Would Shaman Krill have had enough time to get back up to the garage and his precious demonstrators if he’d been driving the truck that hit Claire?”

Tom stood up and ladled a spoonful of crepe batter into the hot pan. It emitted a delicious hiss. “Don’t know yet. We’re going to have to pace it out, time it. Are you going to call Arch to eat or should I? Think he should hear us talking about the investigation? Think he’d feel bored? Left out?”

“Talking about the investigation? Boring? You don’t know Arch.” I could well imagine a police-band radio