perhaps been an evil side to Suz Craig, too? I thought of the rumors Marla had gathered about the dead woman. No, no, no, I chided myself. Don’t get into this. So what if she fired Amy Bartholomew, the nurse who supposedly had gambling problems? So what if she fired Ralph Shelton? I preheated the oven and rolled out the biscuit dough into a soft, rectangular pillow.
Suz, after all, was a boss-type person, and a boss-type person sometimes had to fire people. As sole proprietor of my business, I was thankful I’d never had to perform that particular function myself. I brandished the puck-size biscuit cutter I’d finally found at a baking supply store and cut the dough into circles. Then I arrayed them carefully on a cookie sheet.
I was not going to get dragged into this. Suz had an unpleasant visit in July from Ralph Shelton. Do you remember him? John Richard’s sarcastic voice echoed in my thoughts. Of course I remembered Ralph Shelton the doctor, the hockey fan extraordinaire. We used to be friends. Like John Richard, Ralph had specialized in ob-gyn at the University of Colorado Medical School. Another buddy of theirs had been Patricia McCracken’s ex-husband, Skip. Skip had moved to Colorado Springs, and I hadn’t seen him in years.
Ralph Shelton. What was his history? I set the timer for the biscuits and thought back. Ralph had divorced his first wife, a petite, very erudite teacher, and over her pained objections, obtained sole custody of their daughter, Jill, who was Arch’s age. Problem was, Ralph hadn’t been able to take care of Jill when he’d gone on business trips, had late meetings, or had to deliver a baby. So he’d turned to me to take care of his daughter, over and over and over. Meanwhile, Jill’s own mother was desperate to have the girl down in her new place in Albuquerque. With mounting problems in my own marriage and young Arch unable to shake a string of ear infections, I’d finally told Ralph I couldn’t take care of his daughter three or four times a week. Combined with my separation from John Richard, this had meant the end of the friendship with Ralph Shelton, unfortunately. The worst part was that Ralph had finally sent his daughter to live with her mother in New Mexico. Arch and I had missed Jill terribly. She’d been a fun-loving child with such an infectious laugh that our house had felt empty for weeks after she moved away.
The timer beeped. I slapped the cookie sheet out of the oven with an overenthusiastic bang, then rolled and cut out another batch of biscuits. I stared at the cutter in my hand. I’d been so proud of myself for finding the cutter. When the biscuits were baked, they were the exact dimensions of a hockey puck. Perfect for tonight’s party.
Ralph’s a big hockey fan, Marla had told me. No kidding. Back in the medical-school days, the only way Ralph Shelton could relieve his academic anxiety was to go to hockey games at McNichols Arena, where he’d bought lifetime season tickets for our ill-fated first NHL team, the Colorado Rockies. I had never understood how Ralph could vent his frustration by cheering for such a poorly performing team. Glumly reporting their losses whenever we got together, Ralph’s face had been ruddy and lined. What little hair he had had turned prematurely gray around a widening bald spot. Whether the hair loss resulted from the pain of being a Rockies hockey fan or the prospect of practicing medicine, I knew not…
When the franchise had moved on, Ralph had been disconsolate. Whether his enthusiasms had subsequently shifted to baseball, when the new team named the Rockies were swinging bats and setting homerun and attendance records at newly built Coors Field, I knew not. By then, Ralph Shelton had passed out of my orbit. And I’d had my hands too full with the divorce from John Richard to care.
Wait a minute. Sometimes a girlfriend will dye .J her hair, and become virtually unrecognizable. I . watched my oven timer ticking down the seconds until this batch of biscuits would be done. I remembered Ralph Shelton; I’d seen him quite recently. I just hadn’t recognized him out of context and with a new look. His bald head had been covered by a billed cap. He’d exchanged his sports-fan garb for gardening clothes. He’d grown a mustache that was prematurely white. I watched my clock. What else? He’d been eager to see what the paramedics were doing. This morning, my oId friend Ralph Shelton had been one of the gawking neighbors on Jacobean Drive.
10
The food, I scolded myself. Work! I perused my recipe for Vietnamese slaw. Napa cabbage, carrots, very lightly steamed snow peas-all these needed to be julienned. When my hand became tired from slicing, I decided to stop and check the phone book. Ralph and Fay Shelton lived on Chaucer Drive, one street over from Suz Craig’s street. So what had Ralph been doing up so early this morning? Taking a stroll around the neighborhood? I couldn’t wait for Tom to wake up.
The phone rang. Patricia McCracken’s voice zinged across the wire. “I can’t cancel this party,” she wailed.
“You’d better not,” I exclaimed as I stared at the mountains of colorful vegetables I’d already cut into uniform thin slices.
“The police have been here, Goldy. I was so nervous about seeing everybody at this party, my first public appearance since I filed the suits, that I took a sleeping pill last night. I don’t remember a thing.” She took a deep breath and added defiantly, “I didn’t kill that HMO lady.”
“Oh-kay,” I said as I searched my shelves for rice wine vinegar.
“Do you think John Richard killed her?” “I don’t know.”
“See you at five then.” She didn’t wait for me to say good-bye.
What an odd call. I whisked sesame oil with the rice wine vinegar and thought back to the wet spring we’d just come through. I had seen Patricia and her son, Tyler, once, at the library. It had been a momentous spring for our town library, but not because the incessant rain had brought any heightened demand for books. The cause for sensation had been the foxes that had made their den in the rocky hillside behind the windowed reading room. When a litter of five cubs was produced, the births became big-time small-town news. Soon the fox cubs were claiming the early-evening hours to cavort, tumble, and prance through the quartz and granite spillway in full view of an audience of excited children of all ages. Never mind that reading in the high-windowed room became impossible. Any visitor to or from the library was greeted with the same query: “Seen the foxes?”
Paying a visit to the reading room, Arch and I had encountered Patricia dragging a recalcitrant, whining Tyler with one hand and balancing an armload of Dr. Seuss books with the other.
“Did you see the foxes, Tyler?” I’d asked her son happily. “Are they out tonight?”
Tyler had given me a grumpy stare and let out a wail. Patricia had snarled, “We’re not interested in a family of foxes. Not now. Not ever.”
Startled, I’d pulled open the massive door to the library for Arch. When he passed by me, he’d mumbled, “What ? does she raise chickens or something?”
Not even close, I realized now as I folded the sweet-sour dressing into the slaw ingredients. Struggling with the recent loss of her baby, Patricia hadn’t wanted to see the fox cubs playing. The notion of a big, happy family had been slipping from her grasp. I covered the enormous bowl with plastic wrap and popped it into the walk-in refrigerator.
“If you’re making so-good food noises, I want some,” Tom announced cheerfully as he strode into the room. “Oh, man.” He took in a greedy breath. “More biscuits?”
I nodded and removed the last cookie sheet of the golden, puffed rounds, then silently split one, slathered it with butter and blackberry jam, and handed the plate with it to Tom. When he finished, I’d tell him about seeing Ralph Shelton.
While he sat down and began to eat, I put in another batch of biscuits. I iced the dark chocolate cupcakes, which would surround a centerpiece hockey-rink-shaped cake provided by Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop. I placed the cupcakes in covered plastic containers. I wasn’t going to brood anymore. I was in my wonderful kitchen, filled with marvelous scents, and feeding the man I loved most in the world. Then I realized he was watching me.
“Tom? What is it?”
“Final batch of biscuits about to come out?”
“In a little bit.”
He paused, then glanced at the clock. “How’s your time going? When do you have to leave?”
“In about an hour. Why?”
His face grew wary. “I’m worried about Arch.”
“So am I. But what makes you mention it? Did he tell you about the phone call?” Doggone John Richard, anyway.
Tom shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. When I went by his room, he was sitting ramrod stiff in his desk chair, staring at nothing. I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he said ‘Not to you, I don’t.’ “
