backed up the icy driveway. As if that weren’t enough, he then gunned the SUV backward across the causeway, over the moat. I watched from the far side, shaking my head. One error of steering, and Julian would be sleeping with the fishes.
When I caught up with him at the gatehouse, I said, “That’s not a quick path home, Julian, that’s a quick path to drowning.”
He grinned and pressed the buttons for entry to the gatehouse. Once inside, I glanced overhead into the space above the murder holes. No one appeared to be in that empty room next to Michaela’s kitchen. But in the remote event that my paranoia was translating into imagining hidden electronic eavesdropping devices, I decided not to tell Julian about the stamp.
In the kitchen, a note from the Hydes was propped up against the toaster. The luncheon had been fabulous, Sukie wrote, but utterly exhausting. She went on to say that she’d felt so sorry for me, she’d washed all the serving dishes. Now she and Eliot were eating dinner out, and we were to feel free to scrounge whatever we wanted.
“Ah, speaking of going out to dinner, Goldy?” said Julian. “Arch asked me to take him to McDonald’s, after his fencing practice. I know, I know, even the salads aren’t up to your culinary standard. But I figured, what the heck, give the kid a break from the gourmet stuff for one night.”
I smiled, paid Julian for his afternoon of work, and gave him some extra money to treat Arch and himself. Then I asked about Tom.
Julian shrugged. “I don’t know. When I looked in on him, he said he was going to change his own bandage. I have to run to Boulder to get some books before I pick up Arch, so I’m taking off. Why don’t you bring Tom some tea with fixin’s?”
Julian quickstepped away. I looked at my watch: just after three. Tea, goodies, and puzzling over an eight- hundred-thousand-dollar stamp I’d found in Hyde Chapel … was Tom up to it?
Half an hour later, I had baked a fresh batch of steaming scones and set them on a tray next to a plate of dewy butter slices, a jar of Eliot’s chokecherry jelly, and a pot of steeping English Breakfast tea. Making my way up to our room, I noticed that the courtyard looked magical under its fresh blanket of snow. If I lived here, I decided as I disarmed our door, I’d turn it into a school. A cooking school, where we ate our cookies and cakes out in the courtyard, while black-suited butlers served tea and sherry.
“I was just about to ring for all that,” Tom commented as I sashayed in with the tray. He was sitting in one of the wingback chairs doing leg-extension exercises. “I missed you today, Miss G.”
I set the tray down and gave him a careful hug. “Poor Tom. Sorry I had to work. Want to hear about it?”
And so I ran through the whole thing for him, from the early intrusions of Buddy, Charde, John Richard, and Viv, to discovering the stamp from Mauritius in the center of the window. He whistled.
“Tom,” I said when I’d finished, “I think all the stamps might have been there. They were all in the chapel. Then they were moved. By someone in a hurry.”
“Or by someone who didn’t know he’d left one behind.” He gazed into the cold fireplace. “The chapel has that big storeroom. If you were a crook trying to hide something in the chapel, why not put it in the storeroom? Especially since Ray Wolff was arrested while scoping out a storage area?”
“Because it’s too obvious?” I replied. “There’s something we’re missing.” I followed his line of sight to the hearth. “I keep thinking about Andy. Did he find the stamps after they were stolen and hidden away? He indicated to you that he knew where they were, so what’s the deal? How was he electrocuted? If he was shot in the chapel, why couldn’t the sheriff’s department find any evidence there? The stamps were in the chapel, and he was dumped in the creek by the chapel. But the crime scene itself was clean.” I paused, baffled. “I just don’t get it.”
“Here’s one more thing,” Tom commented. “The ballistics report came in on the bullet they took out of me. It came from the same gun that killed Andy and Mo Hartfield. The bullet that shattered our window came from a different gun. No match.”
“Oh, for crying out loud.” Would anything in this case ever add up?
Tom surveyed the tea detritus. “Know what? That just felt like an appetizer to me. Let’s go see what we can find in that big kitchen.”
Delighted to see that his appetite was back, I followed him down to the kitchen, where we feasted on leftover meat pie, reheated green beans, manchet bread, and labyrinth cake. Arch and Julian came home, as did Sukie and Eliot. My son joyfully announced that because tomorrow, Friday, was a half school-day, and this Saturday was Valentine’s Day, the teachers were assigning no homework for tonight or the weekend.
“That calls for a toast,” decreed Eliot. “To our successful donor lunch, and to no homework.” He breezed out of the room and returned with a bottle of port.
“I think we have something special in the refrigerator, too,” murmured Sukie. Sukie brought out a chilled bottle of bubbly nonalcoholic cranberry stuff. Arch rewarded her with a murmured thanks and one of his suppressed smiles.
While we were sipping our drinks and nibbling on cake, I guiltily remembered Michaela. Shouldn’t we have invited her to join us?
But when I suggested it, Eliot waved this away. “Sometimes you see Michaela. Usually you don’t.”
Sukie added, “We don’t try to force it.”
I nodded and didn’t pursue the question. I wondered if I’d ever figure out the dynamic between Eliot and Sukie on the one hand, and between Eliot, Sukie, and Michaela on the other. Was she sort of an employee, sort of a tenant, sort of a neighbor, sort of a pain in the behind, or all of the above?
I didn’t know and was too tired to try to find out. We all loaded our dishes into the dishwasher, said good night, and headed our separate ways.
Before we went to bed, Tom told me we should be back in our own house by Sunday. “They put in the glass, finish the cleanup, fix our security system, and we go back.”
“Uh-huh. And what about the person who shot it out?”
“They’re still working on it,” said Tom. His green eyes sought me out. “I’m not feeling up to seeing Sara Beth at the dentist tomorrow.”
“Whatever feels right to you,” I said stiffly, as I snuggled into bed. He told me he loved me and that he hoped I slept well. I guess he wasn’t in the mood for one-armed lovemaking.
I lay there, staring at the dark ceiling, and made a decision. Sara Beth O’Malley may have been expecting Tom. But she was going to get me.
Friday the thirteenth dawned very cold and bright. I moved through my yoga routine while Tom slept. In the kitchen, Michaela and Arch were having miniature sugared doughnuts and tiny cans of a chemical concoction that claimed to be better than chocolate milk.
“Don’t get upset, Mom,” Arch begged as he stuffed a doughnut into his mouth. “Julian let me get these goodies last night. He was up late studying, and said you should wake him when you need help this morning. Otherwise his alarm is set for eleven. Julian is great, man. I can’t remember the last time I had two junk-food meals in a row.”
Michaela’s indulgent smile stopped me from scolding. At least Arch was amusing someone.
When they left at a quarter to eight, I made a swift overview of the fencing-banquet preparation. I’d already baked the plum tarts. The veal had only to be rubbed with oil, garlic, and spices, then roasted just before the banquet. The potato casseroles I could easily put together in the afternoon. That left the molded salad, shrimp curry, and raisin rice. I looked over my recipes. If I moved ahead with the salad and curry sauce, the former could jell while the latter mellowed before the arrival of the shrimp. With any luck, I could finish those dishes and take off for the dentist ahead of schedule.
While the pineapple juice for the gelatin was heating, I sliced bananas and more fat, juicy strawberries - bless Alicia - and reflected on everything I knew about the events of the past week. There were those acts someone - or ones - had committed. Shoot out our window. Kill Andy. Shoot Tom. Steal the computers. Murder the man who steals the computers. Somewhere in there, hide a multimillion-dollar stamp haul in the center of a rose window. Then move the loot. But accidentally leave one behind. The sequence of those acts, I realized, had to be part of the solution to the puzzle.
I wondered about Sara Beth. If jealousy were the motive for all this activity, could you remove shooting out our window and shooting Tom as being related to the stamp theft? If so, then how could you account for those acts being done by two separate guns?
