Double Shot

slight angle between the heavy doors of the saloon’s two restrooms. A stern admonition posted on the wall forbade long-distance calls and asked for coins to be left in a wooden honor box. I dropped in quarters, lifted the receiver, and pressed buttons. When Marla answered, our connection was rough and full of static.

“Marla? It’s me. Marla?”

“ ‘Trash!’ ” sang the band. “ ‘Trash! That’s all I am.’ ”

“Goldy?”

“Marla!”

“ ‘Trash!’ ”

“Goldy, where the hell are you calling from?”

“ ‘Trash!’ ”

“I can’t talk about the case over my home phone!” I hollered. Three cowboys turned a baleful eye in my direction. Embarrassed, I turned toward the wall, where my nose scraped a map of the immense Aspen Meadow Wildfire Preserve. Raccoon Creek, Cherokee Pass, Cowboy Cliff: These were just a few of the landmarks connected by fire roads and hiking trails. Things could be worse, I realized. I could be out fighting that fire.

I realized I was still wearing my apron, the pocket of which bulged with still-warm cookies. Most of them had probably broken in my journey through the crowd. But at least I had an emergency sugar-carb supply.

“For crying out loud, Goldy!” Marla screeched. “Tell me what happened at the sheriff’s department! Do they know who killed the Jerk? Was it the same person who assaulted you?”

“I don’t know anything—”

“You’re holding out on me!”

I pulled the phone’s cord so I could get the receiver inside the swinging wooden door to the ladies’ room. A massive cement column separated the two stalls. The wood-paneled interior, dimly lit by a solitary hanging lightbulb, also revealed two stained sinks, a large cracked mirror, and an enormous black garbage can.

“Don’t start, Marla!” I warned her. “This has been one of the worst days of my life!” I tried to get comfortable. This was difficult since I had to grip the phone while my knuckles were getting flayed on the rough paneling. I softened my tone. “Listen, thanks for sending Brewster. He was great.”

“So tell me about it, would you? I’m dying over here without any information. Tom wouldn’t breathe a word and neither would Brewster, damn him.”

“Oh, Marla, I can’t go into detail. The bottom line is that I don’t know anything new. I can’t talk because Arch is at home and he’s a wreck.” But she insisted, so I gave her the shortest possible precis of the day’s events, including the cops finding my gun not far from John Richard’s body. “At the lunch, you didn’t happen to see any suspicious folks around my van, did you?”

“No,” she said. “Sorry. But I did find out something that might be significant.” My heart leaped. Or was it my stomach growling again? Hard to tell. Marla went on: “Sandee with two e s does not work at the golf shop. She never did. She’s a stripper at the Rainbow Men’s Club in Denver.”

“What? How did John Richard meet her?”

“As they say, ‘One can only presume.’ But I didn’t. Presume, that is. I asked Courtney. John Richard met Sandee at the Rainbow. That is how low the Jerk had sunk. Picking up girls at strip clubs!”

“You called Courtney? But she’s…”

Words failed as my stomach howled again. I didn’t care about Courtney; I didn’t care if the Jerk had sunk to hell. Despite the bites of steak, I was ravenous. I groped in my apron pocket, pulled out a warm cookie, and popped it into my mouth. The crunch of toasted almonds and the pure, buttery flavor made my head spin. I stuffed in another two.

“Of course I called Courtney,” Marla retorted. “And whatever you’re eating, I want some as compensation for my legal bills. Goldy?”

“Mmf.” My mouth was full. I didn’t really feel guilty, but what was going on here? I’d been attacked; my food had been sabotaged; renegade rodents had caused me to fire my gun. I stuffed two more cookies into my mouth and didn’t answer Marla. Our ex-husband had been murdered. At this point, I was the prime suspect in his murder. I shoved in a few more cookies and realized I was beginning to feel a bit better. Well! This was how low I had sunk: crammed into a stinking saloon toilet, I was discussing strippers on a grimy phone while stuffing myself with nut cookies. Close by, Bobby and his boys launched into “I’m Just Roadkill on the Highway of Love.”

“The main reason I called Courtney,” Marla went on, “was to tell her the Jerk was dead. Wanted to see what kind of reaction I’d get.”

I finished the cookies. “Brewster says we can’t call our ex the Jerk anymore. Even in death.”

I guess I couldn’t really blame Marla for rapping her fancy phone against her tiled kitchen wall. But it did hurt my ear.

“Goldy? Brewster takes orders from me, not vice versa. And are you listening to my story here? Courtney was stunned to hear about the Jerk. It was either total disbelief or a great acting job. She exploded. We’re talking nuclear. We’re talking nova. She screamed that you’d prevented them from getting married, because of some custody problem. Plus, she’d loaned John Richard a hundred thousand dollars at the beginning of May, and two weeks later he dumped her for Sandee with two e s. How’s she supposed to get her money back now? she screamed. So! The Jerk owed her money, the same way he owed the man at his house,” Marla concluded triumphantly.

“Wait a minute. Courtney loaned him that much money? How stupid is she?”

“You got me.”

“And the gent at John Richard’s house didn’t look as if he could have loaned John Richard anything—”

“Let’s go down to the strip club tomorrow!” Marla squealed. “We can question Sandee, just the two of us.”

I slumped against the rough wall. “I can’t. I have your PosteriTREE meeting and Nan’s retirement picnic to prep, and the cops and Brewster told me to stay away—”

She rapped the phone again. “Girlfriend! Tom is not working this case. Without him, the sheriff’s department will never find out who shot the Jerk. They need us! So I’ll pick you up at eleven. Then we—”

Without warning, pain racked my wrist as Blondie barged through the restroom door. The phone cord sprang away like a bow-string. I grabbed for it, but ended up seizing Blondie instead. Her warm, drunk breath said, “Erf?,” while she struggled mightily for balance. I tried to hold her up, snag the phone, and reach for the swinging restroom door all at once. I failed on all counts.

Blondie had not been expecting a sudden embrace. Her high-heeled boots clattered backward. Her leather- fringed arms wind-milled away from me as she tried to get her balance on the slick floor. The phone cord wrapped around the wire suspending the lightbulb and boomeranged in a high arc toward the ceiling. I gargled for help as Blondie’s cowgirl-skirted butt crashed into the cement post separating the two stalls. Marla’s distant voice shrieked, “Goldy?” Unfortunately, the laws of physics were already sending Blondie catapulting into the yawning trash can, where she promptly threw up. Following the same laws of physics, the returning restroom door smacked me in the face just as the phone cord finished its downward trajectory and Marla’s screaming voice splashed into the toilet.

I grabbed my nose, sure that blood was streaming out of it. Black spots clouded my vision. I groped with my free hand in the direction of what I hoped was the saloon. I bumped into a body, a man’s body, and prayed it was not a catering client.

“Sandee Blue is my girlfriend,” the man’s voice whispered in my ear as he swung me around and clutched my shoulders. “And don’t you forget it.”

“Okay, okay,” I mumbled, suddenly fearful. Was this the person who’d beaten me up that morning? “Who are you?” I struggled against his viselike hold. “Could you please let go of me?”

“Go on, get out of here,” he said, pushing me roughly away. I fell onto the filthy floor. By the time I could turn around, he was gone.