With the phone, I gestured toward the floor.
Still gripping the sword, Arch obediently scrambled onto a braided rug I’d made during our financial dark days. He was wearing a navy sweat suit - his substitute for pajamas - and thick gray socks, protection from the cold. Protection. I thought belatedly of Tom’s rifle and the handgun he kept hidden behind a false wall in our detached garage. Lot of good they did me now, especially since I didn’t know how to shoot.
“We’ll be right there,” announced a
distant telephone voice after I babbled where we were and what had happened. Jake’s howl and the screaming security system made it almost impossible to make out the operator’s clipped instructions. “Mrs. Schulz?” she repeated. “Lock the bedroom door. If any of your neighbors call, tell them not to do anything. We should have a car there in less than fifteen minutes.”
Please, God, I prayed, disconnecting. With numb fingers, I locked Arch’s door, then eased to the floor beside him. I glanced upward. Could the glow from the aquarium light be seen from outside? Could the shooter get a good purchase on Arch’s window?
“Somebody has to go get Jake,” Arch whispered. “We can’t just leave him barking. You told the operator you heard a shot. Did you really think it was from a gun? I thought it was a cannonball.”
“I don’t know.” If any of your neighbors call … My neighbors’ names had all slid from my head.
The front doorbell rang. My eyes locked with Arch’s. Neither of us moved. The bell rang again. A male voice shouted, “Goldy? Arch? It’s Bill! Three other guys are here with me!” Bill? Ah, Bill Quincy… from next door. “Goldy,” Bill boomed. “We’re armed!”
I took a steadying breath. This was Colorado, not England or Canada or some other place where folks don’t keep guns and wield them freely. In Aspen Meadow, no self-respecting gun-owner who heard a shot at four A.M. was going to wait to be summoned. One man had even glued a decal over the Neighborhood Watch sign: This Street Guarded by Colts. Although the county had sent out a graffiti-removal company to scrape off the sticker, the sentiment remained the same.
“Goldy? Arch?” Bill Quincy hollered again. “You okay? It doesn’t look as if anybody’s broken in! Could you let me check? Goldy!”
Would the cops object? I didn’t know.
“Goldy?” Bill bellowed. “Answer me, or I’m breaking down the door!”
“All right!” I called. “I’m coming!” I
told Arch to stay put and tentatively made my way down the stairs.
Freezing air swirled through the first floor. In the living room, glass shards glittered where they’d landed on the couch, chairs, and carpet. I turned off the deafening alarm, flipped on the outside light, and swung open the door.
Four grizzled, goose-down-jacketed men stood on my front step. I was wearing red plaid flannel pj’s and my feet were bare, but I told them law enforcement was en route and invited them in. Clouds of steam billowed from the men’s mouths as Bill insisted his companions weren’t budging. As if to make his point, Bill’s posse settled creakily onto our frosted porch. The men’s weapons - two rifles and two pistols - glinted in the ghostly light.
Bill Quincy, his wide, chinless face grim, his broad shoulders tense, announced that he intended to go through the house, to see if the shooter had broken in. I should wait until he’d inspected the first floor, he ordered, pushing past me without further ceremony. Bill stomped resolutely through the kitchen and dining room, peered into the tiny half-bath, then returned to the hallway and cocked his head at me. I tiptoed behind him to the kitchen. He shouted a warning into the basement, then banged down the steps. If the intruder was indeed inside, there could be no mistake that my neighbor intended to roust him out.
Jake bounded up to Arch’s room ahead of me. Scout, our adopted stray cat, slunk along behind the bloodhound, his long gray-and-brown hair, like Arch’s, turned electric from being suddenly roused. Following my animal escort, I silently thanked God that none of us had been hurt, and that we had great neighbors. The cat scooted under the bed used by Julian Teller, our former boarder, now a sophomore at the University of Colorado. Arch asked for a third time what had happened. I didn’t want to frighten him. So I lied.
“It just…looks as if some drunk staggered up from the Grizzly Saloon, took aim at our living-room window, and shot it out. I don’t know whether the guy used a shotgun or a rifle. Whatever it was, he wasn’t too plastered to miss.”
My son nodded slowly, not sure whether to believe me. He shouldn’t have, of course. The Grizzly closed early on Sunday night.
I stared at the hands on Arch’s new clock, a gift from his fencing coach. The clock was in the shape of a tiny knight holding a sword, from which a timepiece
dangled. When the hands pointed to four-twenty-five, a wail of sirens broke the tense silence. I pushed aside Arch’s faded orange curtains and peeked out his window. Two sheriff’s department vehicles hurtled down our street and parked at the curb.
I raced back to Tom’s and my bedroom and slid into jeans, a sweatshirt, and clogs. Had someone unintentionally fired a gun? Was the damage to our window just some stupid accident? Surely it couldn’t have been deliberate. And of all the times for this to happen…
I started downstairs. Today was supposed to herald my first big job in five weeks, a luncheon gig at a Gothic chapel on an estate dominated by a genuine English castle. The castle was one of Aspen Meadow’s gorgeous ? but - weird landmarks. If things went well, the castle-owner - who was hoping to open a conference center at the site - promised to be a huge client. I didn’t want anything to mess up today’s job.
Then again, I fretted as I gripped the railing, I was a caterer married to a cop, a cop working on a case so difficult he’d been forced to search for a suspect two thousand miles away. Perhaps the gunshot had been a message for Tom.
Outside, the red-and-blue lights flashing on snow-covered pines created monstrous shadows. The sight of cop cars was not unfamiliar to me. Still, my throat tightened as I wrenched open our front door. Bill and the other gun-toters looked at me sympathetically.
Why would someone shoot at the house of a caterer.?
I swallowed hard
Did I really wont to know?
-2-
Two cops trod up the icy path to our door. The first was tall and decidedly corpulent, the second short and slight, with a dark mustache set off by pale skin. “Mrs. Schulz?” asked the tall one. “I’m Deputy Wyatt. This is Deputy Vaughan.”
I nodded and shook their hands. I remembered both of them from the department Christmas party, which was actually held three days before New
Year’s, since Christmas and New Year’s themselves are always high-crime days. While the impromptu posse, three neighbors plus Bill, looked on curiously, I thanked the cops for responding so quickly.
Wyatt, who had dark, intelligent eyes,
addressed me in a low, terse voice. “We’re going to secure your house. Then we’ll need to talk to your neighbors.” He took off his hat, revealing a head thinly covered with dark brown hair. “After that, we’ll want to talk to you.”
I let him in while Vaughan stepped aside and talked quietly to the men on the porch. With most of the front window missing, it seemed silly to shut the door firmly behind Wyatt. But I did anyway. Amazing how old habits diehard.
Once I’d turned on the living-room lights, Wyatt stepped toward the window. He frowned at the glass fangs hanging from the casement. Frigid air poured through the hole. The deputy gave a barely perceptible nod and began to move through the house.
Arch’s music wafted down from upstairs. Unrhythmic thumps - Jake’s tail hitting the floor - indicated the bloodhound had stayed with him. Now there was a recipe for comfort: rock and roll, plus a canine companion.
The icy February air made me shiver. I headed to the kitchen, where I could close the hall door against the chill. There, I could also turn on the oven. My oven was to me what Arch’s music was to him.
But heating the oven wasn’t enough. My mind continued to cough up questions, and I moved nervously from one window to the next. Who shot at us? Why would someone do such a thing? Outside, flashes of the police car
