Tom shook his head. Todd looked bewildered. I silently put a half-dozen Babsie’s Tarts on a plate, handed Todd a six-pack of soft drinks, and told him to go on up and see what he could do. Todd took the plate along with the pop cans and gratefully excused himself.
“Maybe I should go, too,” Macguire announced in a guilty tone, and left. Minutes later I saw the light on the phone flash red, indicating that Arch was making an outgoing call from upstairs. The call did not last long. Probably Arch had called John Richard’s number and left a message on his machine. My mind immediately leaped to a fresh question: If the Jerk wasn’t home to answer his phone, where was he?
Tom said, “Let me do the dishes, Miss G.”
“You do everything,” I said, disconsolate. “Bring home takeout. Do the dishes. Put up with us. Put up with me.”
“You make a great dinner,” he countered as he started hot water running in the sink. “And you’re the one who tries to do everything. You can’t make everything go smoothly.”
“At least I’d be a better investigator than Donny Saunders.”
Tom chuckled. “Sorry, Miss G., but that’s not saying much.”
While he was doing the dishes, I asked him about the tapes from Suz Craig’s office. He said the department was listening to the tapes they had found and making an inventory of them. I told him about the discussions I’d had with Amy Bartholomew and ReeAnn Collins. He nodded and didn’t take notes, indicating he’d already heard similar information at his office. Then he punched buttons on the espresso machine. A few moments later he placed a demitasse of crema-laden espresso in front of me and sat down across the table.
I sighed. “If I drink this, I’m going to be up all night.”
“Aw, drink it. You’re going to be up all night anyway. You’re going to be up every night until this is over. And trust me, Goldy, these things always come to an end. One way or another.”
I closed my eyes and sipped the rich, satisfying espresso. When Tom placed the last dish in the dishwasher, I slid the golden-brown brioche loaves out of the oven and placed them on racks to cool. Their rich, homey scent bathed the kitchen.
Tom said, “Let’s take some cookies out on the deck: I want to talk to you about the autopsy, but I want to be somewhere the boys won’t hear us.”
“Chocolate, coffee, and death. Dark topics all.” We stretched out on one of my fancy deck-furniture couches that had been in disuse for so long. The night air was sweet, mellow, and filled with the buzz of unseen insects. Just above the mountains’ dark silhouette, Venus glowed like an ice crystal.
We savored the Chocolate Comfort Cookies in silence, curled together in each other’s arms. The! cookies were chock-full of fat chocolate chips and crunchy toasted hazelnuts. The sun-dried cranberries gave a delicious, tart chewiness to each bite.
I asked Tom if the cops had called Shelton’s veterinarian and he said yes. The scratches on Ralph Shelton’s face had been inflicted by his cat but were minor. Then Tom sighed. He asked, “Did you also know Suz Craig had a cat?”
“Yes, a shy calico one named Tippy. Saturday morning, right after you went to talk to the deputies, that cat jumped into my arms. I know Tippy was part of the crime scene, but I was afraid she’d get trampled if I abandoned her. I left her with Tina Corey. Why?”
He didn’t answer right away. I snuggled in close and just enjoyed his warmth.
“Here’s what we found out today,” Tom said at length as he massaged my back. “Suz Craig’s security system was turned off. Also, Suz Craig didn’t die from falling into the ditch. She died of a subdural hematoma. No blood, because she was hit with her cat’s scratching post. It’s a solid metal cylinder covered with carpeting. You know what a subdural ? “
“Yes. A blow causes bleeding into the brain. The bleeding brings on death.”
“Right. It takes eight hours for lividity to fix, and she’d only been in the ditch two, maybe three hours before you found her. It’s very unlikely she could have gotten the fatal blow there. So somebody put her outside. Why, we don’t know. We’re still waiting for the drug screen to come back; that’ll take a few days.”
“Yes, I remember.”
Tom continued thoughtfully. “Here’s the odd thing. She definitely has the same pattern of bruises that you used to have when John Richard attacked you. If he’d beaten her up and killed her immediately, the bruises wouldn’t have shown up on the corpse. Bruises take about three or four hours, minimum, to develop, unless the victim’s one of those rare people who show a bruise within an hour. So what happened between the time Suz Craig got beaten up and the time she died of a blow from the cat’s scratching post? And how did she get into that ditch?”
“The vandals say John Richard left that night and then came back. Or somebody in a Jeep just like one of his, no lights, came there.”
“Yeah.” Tom sighed wearily. “I know what they said. We’re checking to see if any white Jeeps were rented anywhere in the Denver area. And we’ve got the drug screen to wait for. Plus the skin under her nails has been sent to a crime lab. So we’ll know more by the end of the week. If it’s Korman’s skin, at least we’ll have him for assault.”
But not necessarily for murder. Would he walk? I didn’t want to think about it.
As Tom had predicted, I did not sleep well. At one point I crept down to the kitchen and typed into the computer my own notes on what ReeAnn Collins, Amy Bartholomew, Donny Saunders, and Tom had told me. I didn’t nave a photographic memory. But then, after what I’d been through when I lived’ with the Jerk, I’d prayed never to have a photographic memory.
20
Despite the fact that Tuesday morning dawned with a bright sun and jewel-bright hummingbirds whirring past my downstairs windows, I did not feel the least bit cheered. Tom had left early. I went through my yoga routine trying to empty my mind ? not easy. Today, among all the other crises, I was set to begin catering to the doll people. I’d read recently about the necessity of going into a zone of enjoyment when doing your work, especially if you expected to derive pleasure from your career over the course of a lifetime. I tried to see the zone and imagine Gail Rodine not in it.
I sliced the cooled brioche loaves and then began making the box lunches. Each lunch would contain four sandwich triangles: cucumber, smoked salmon, Swiss cheese, and the pesto-tomato-chcvre combination that Donny Saunders had gobbled up so ravenously. I shuddered and fixed myself an iced latte. Something Donny had said kept swimming up just below my consciousness as I smoothed cool mayonnaise over the bread slices and laid out the sandwich fillings.
When I finished wrapping the sandwiches, I tucked a miniature bottle of white wine, wrapped cheese straws, a cup of plum, orange, and banana fruit salad, and a plastic bag with a Babsie’s Tart and a chocolate cookie in each box. As I closed the last cardboard box, my eye fell on the computer. Computer, disks, tapes. Tapes. If Luella had told anyone about the taping, she would have lost her job. How significant were these meetings that Suz had taped? I didn’t know, and I’d promised Tom I wouldn’t go nosing around at ACHMO. I put in a call to Brandon Yuille’s office. I would apologize for snapping at him at John Richard’s office, then pump him for info. When his assistant asked suspiciously who was calling and I told her, I had to wait two minutes for her cold response that Mr. Yuille was unavailable. I asked if I could call back at a more convenient time. She responded icily that there just was no convenient time. Fine. I hung up and called Chris Corey’s office.
His secretary put me right through. “Goldy!” His deep, rumbly voice sounded surprised. “What’s going on? Korman hasn’t come over to bother you, has he?”
“He wouldn’t dare. Listen, Chris, something one of the investigators said has been bothering me.” I hesitated, remembering I’d promised not to mention that Luella was the one who had spilled the beans to Donny. “It relates to what we were talking to Frances about Sunday at the cafe. You said ACHMO was going into John Richard’s office looking for notes about the McCrackens’ suit.”
“Well … yes.?
“It’s just that I heard there were some missing tapes, too.”
Chris grunted. “Don’t remind me.”
I persisted innocently, “What’s going on? Why would Suz keep tapes of meetings in her office?”
He lowered his voice. “Look, Goldy, it’s a huge crisis. Everybody’s upset about it. Nobody seems to know why
