I told him about the incident in the Hydes’ kitchen, to which Boyd replied, “Their alibi is each other. Oh, and we checked on Sukie Hyde’s first husband. One of his guys was on the roof with him when he stepped on a stray wire from a bathroom fan. Nobody seemed to think it was suspicious.” He paused. “But here’s something related to the stamp heist. Our friend Buddy Lauderdale was in The Stamp Fox a month before the theft, asking about values. He said he wanted to invest in stamps, but never did.” When I made a hmm-ing noise, Boyd warned me to be careful, that Buddy Lauderdale was reputedly one of the best shots in the county. I promised him I would be, and signed off.
One thing was certain. There was no way I was waiting for some faraway insurance company to get around to hiring an investigator. Eliot’s lowest desk drawer yielded a Yellow Pages, and under “Stamps-Collectors,” I found four shops in the Denver area. I blithely let my fingers do the walking while presenting myself as Francesca Chastain, collector of any stamp with a picture of royalty. Price, I said, was no object. Even over the phone, you could hear those store owners’ hearts speed up.
The first three, general dealers in stamps and coins, said they hadn’t seen a cover with Queen Victoria on it anywhere but at stamp shows. But the fourth philatelic dealer, an estate auction agent named Troy McIntire operating out of his home in Golden, gave me an evasive reply.
“What exactly are you looking for?” McIntire demanded.
“I collect anything with kings or queens on the stamps. What I’m especially looking for is covers with Queen Victoria on them.”
“I might be able to help you,” McIntire said, with a forced reluctance that sounded cagey. “If price really is no object, and the price is paid in cash.”
I eagerly made an appointment for that afternoon, then leafed through the phone book for Southwest Hospital. I talked to three nurses before I located the flight nurse who had helped Tom. Her name was Norma Randall. She was on duty on the third floor, and said she could talk for five minutes.
“The cop,” Norma Randall said, remembering. “Day before yesterday? Tom? Couldn’t forget him. Or you, either. He’s doing okay?”
“Yes,” I replied. “Thanks to you all. You… seemed to be… more experienced than most flight nurses.” Once you passed thirty, I’d observed, being experienced was the euphemism for being older.
She laughed. “I’ve been doing it a long time. Too long, I think sometimes.” She paused. “Weren’t you married to Dr. John Richard Korman?” When I replied that I was, she went on: “I worked with him one time, after we brought in an Aspen Meadow woman with a retained placenta.”
I made a noncommittal mm-mm noise.
“Don’t worry, he did a fine job,” she said, reading my mind. “What can I do for you now?”
“I don’t want to keep you, Norma, but I’m … trying to locate a cousin who’s a flight nurse. Where did you do your nursing training?”
“Nebraska.”
“Well,” I said boldly, “do you know anyone at the hospital who would have gone to The Front Range School of Nursing in the late sixties? I’m particularly interested in women who would have had flight nurse training.”
She said she didn’t know anyone off the top of her head, but her relief had just come in, and she could ask a few people, if I wanted. I thanked her and said I didn’t mind being put on hold.
“I found one of the older ER techs,” she informed me triumphantly on her return. “He told me there was a flight nurse named Connie Oliver who graduated from Front Range at about the time you’re talking about. He thinks she may have switched to being a school nurse. Denver or Furman County.”
I thanked Nurse Randall and signed off, then decided to bypass Denver and hope for luck with Furman County , Schools’ central office. I was listening to the choices of an automated phone-answering system when rapping at the study door nearly made me drop the phone.
Julian cried, “Breakfast! And it came from across the North Pole, via the castle garden!” Flourishing a large silver tray, he pushed through the heavy door. Michaela Kirovsky followed him, holding a coffeepot. Julian’s energy filled the study as he bounced forward. “Hey, boss?” he asked me with a grin. “Don’t give me that look like you can’t eat.” When I hastily hung up, he cried, “Hey! Wha’d you swallow, a canary?”
-17-
You’re going to love this,” Julian announced as he set the tray laden with golden-glazed miniature Bundt cakes on Eliot’s desk. It was actually two trays, one on top of the other.
“Got multiple orders for room service?” I asked mildly. “When in doubt, Bundt?”
“I’m putting half of this on the other tray for Tom. He’s still asleep, I just checked. Michaela’s helping because she forgot some equipment and had to come back to the castle.” In addition to the cakes sparkling with orange zest and sugar, there were two plastic-wrapped crystal bowls. Julian pulled off the plastic and revealed snowy yogurt artfully topped with slices of kiwi, strawberry, banana, apple, and plum. “Oh,” he said, “I’m saving that sweet bread you made for later, since it was too hot to cut I made these orange cakes last night while the dinner was cooking.” He glanced around the study and wrinkled his nose. “Man! What decade is it?”
“Any decade you want, for a price,” Michaela supplied with a wicked smile.
“Do I detect animosity toward the decorator?” I asked mildly.
Michaela snorted. “Charde keeps asking when she gets to do my place. I keep telling Eliot: Never.”
When she didn’t elaborate, I said, “Thanks for bringing the goodies over, guys. I thought if I didn’t have caffeine soon, 1 was going to pass out.”
Michaela nodded wordlessly as Julian relieved her of the coffeepot and poured me a steaming cup. I thanked him, took a sip - Zowie! good stuff - and glanced at Michaela. Her pale skin glowed in the daylight. But her eyes remained clouded. She pressed her lips together, and I wondered if she thought she’d said too much about Charde. But there was something else there What? Did she know something she wasn’t sharing?
“Michaela, I need to ask you a question.” When I put down my cup, it clattered in the china saucer. “As you know, my husband was shot next to Hyde Chapel. By Cottonwood Creek, near where poor Andy Balachek’s body was found. You live in the gatehouse, with a view of the front of the castle. Did you see anything at all late Sunday night? Or early Monday morning? People moving? Cars parked?”
She flushed deeply. “No. Sorry. The police already asked me about that, when they came over to talk to Eliot and Sukie. I don’t have a view of the creek. I didn’t see anything.”
She?s not telling the truth, my mind insisted. Why? “How about Andy Balachek? Did you keep up with him after his father fixed the dam?”
More blushing. “Yes,” she replied, “I knew Andy. His mother died when he was little. We used to have a small … club, I guess you’d call it, for locals of Russian and eastern European descent. In my father’s time, we gathered here at the castle, for the holidays. We’d visit and make our favorite foods. Peter and Roberta Balachek always brought baby Andy.” She cleared her throat uneasily. “And then Roberta got cancer and died, and little Andy grew up and became big Andy. We got gambling in the state, and Andy - well, his addiction just about killed poor Peter.” She looked at her hands, struggling visibly to compose herself. “I know Andy was found near where your husband was shot. You want to know all you can about him. There just isn’t much.” She inhaled. “My free period’s almost over. I need to get back to school… .”
“You seem very sensitive to boys. Andy Balachek. My Arch. It’s a gift.”
She hesitated at the study door. “I didn’t do Andy much good, though, did I?”
“Whoa,” observed Julian when she’d left. He refilled my cup. “What was that about?”
“I don’t know. What was she like at Elk Park Prep?”
A frown wrinkled Julian’s handsome face. “Quiet. Really hard-working. Lonely, it seemed to me, but I didn’t fence, so I didn’t know her very well. One time when we had a senior tour here, we asked her about the baby who’d supposedly been thrown down the well. She said that story was borscht, a mix-up from the ghost story about the duke. She isn’t the most charismatic coach at Elk Park Prep, but she’s, you know, a stalwart. Like Tom. Everybody likes her. Everybody likes Tom. What’s the matter?”
My ears were ringing. Everybody likes Tom. At this point, I couldn’t talk to Tom, Arch, or gossip-hungry Marla. But I had to talk to somebody I trusted, or the secret was going to explode inside of me. “Julian.” I looked him straight in the eyes. “I’m afraid Tom is having an affair - “
“Bull!”
“Or maybe he was having an affair and broke it off.” I choked. “I think he might have been shot by this other woman, who could be his ex-fiancee. Then again, unless she was somehow involved with Andy Balachek, she
