Double Shot

“I don’t know. I did not do it. So I’m begging you, please, give me a copy of the list of guests before you give one to the cops. I need it more than they do, trust me. Could you?”

She groaned. “Oh, of course. Lord! And he looked so happy with that girl! She was awfully young for him. Do you think it could have been a jealous husband?”

I swallowed and remembered the hot breath in my ear at the Grizzly Bear Saloon. Sandee Blue is my girlfriend. “I don’t think so.” How would Sandee’s other boyfriend look in a black scarf, heels, and black raincoat?

“My dear, the aerobics class is going to start without me. The police are coming back this afternoon at four.”

“I’ll be there in the early afternoon,” I promised, and signed off. I grabbed a pad of Arch’s school paper and a pen, and headed down the stairs. On the way out, I pushed past three reporters, one of whom identified himself as being from the Furman County Monthly.

“Mrs. Schulz—

“We’ve heard—”

“Do you have any—”

“Hurry up!” Marla cried, beeping her Mercedes horn. At least she didn’t scream, We don’t want to be late for the strip show! I trotted to the Benz and tucked myself inside. We peeled away from the curb with a squeal of tires and another long beep, for good measure.

Overhead, a thick cloud cover made the morning sky smooth and bright, as if someone had pulled luminous gauze across the heavens. A wire strung across the lake’s waterfall provided a flock of newly arrived cormorants with a place to preen, flutter, and stretch their wide wings. Not a hundred yards from the lake house, a heron lifted himself up and up, while a crowd of birders pointed and focused their binoculars. Ahead of us, a small herd of elk seemed to be waiting to cross the street. Beside them, a boy who looked just like Arch was looking both ways, as if he intended to hold up traffic to allow the elk to pass.

“Hey!” I cried involuntarily. I pointed. “Arch told me he was going to play golf with Tom!” The elk chose that moment to make a mad dash across the street. The boy scampered across beside them.

“Where’s Arch?” Marla cried as she hit the brakes. The Mercedes skidded sideways, into the oncoming lane. Two elk bolted across; three more balked and cantered back to where they’d come from. “Damn elk!” Marla shouted. She hit the gas a bit too hard, which made the Mercedes roar forward. The trio of elk that had made it back to their starting point gazed in surprise. Marla honked, buzzed down her window, and shouted at the elk, “Where are the hunters when you need them?” The elk lumbered back toward the water, while Marla, still furious, overcorrected her steering and sent the Mercedes careening toward the ditch on the right side of the road.

“Goldy, would you quit distracting me while I’m trying to drive?” Marla reprimanded me, once we were back in our lane. “I didn’t see Arch.”

“Okay,” I said with as much calm as I could muster. “Where were we?”

“Looking at something that wasn’t there. Before that, the Jerk’s exploits. Don’t worry, I already e-mailed Brewster my old catalog.” She tilted her head and gunned the engine again. “What I still can’t figure out is why someone would sabotage your food, whack you out of the way, and then steal your kitchen shears. Was our killer going to hack the Jerk to death after shooting him?”

“Who knows? And anyway, who could hate both John Richard and me?”

“I’m going to have to ask around about that one,” Marla mused. “I don’t suppose you have any theories.”

“Holly Kerr wondered if Sandee might have a jealous significant other hanging around,” I told Marla about the hostile fellow whispering in my ear while I was stumbling around the Grizzly. “Maybe he thought the Jerk and I were colluding to keep Sandee away from her boyfriend.”

“Hmm. Need to check in with the gossip network on that one. Can you hand my cell over, please?”

I did so. Marla glanced at her phone, punched in some numbers, and nearly sideswiped a garbage truck—all in the space of fifteen seconds.

By the time we reached the Rainbow Men’s Club in Denver, Marla had learned that Sandee had dumped her boyfriend, Bobby Calhoun—aka lead singer of Nashville Bobby and the Boys—in favor of the Jerk. Marla’s sources asserted that Bobby’s black pompadour was a wig. But the muscular body that he rubbed with Vaseline before unbuttoning his satin shirt at performance time was real. Reportedly, Bobby Calhoun loved three things: singing, firefighting, and Sandee. When he’d saved up enough money, he was going to pack up his sequined suit, steal Sandee away from the Rainbow, and head back to Tennessee.

“And where did John Richard figure in this little scenario?” I asked. “Or me?”

“Apparently, neither of you did. None of my people seems to have heard Bobby complain about the Jerk or you.”

“But I’ll bet anything he was the guy at the Grizzly who warned me away from Sandee.”

Marla raised her eyebrows.

“Since John Richard was killed, our little Sandee has moved back into Bobby’s condo, outside Aspen Meadow.”

Marla stopped talking as she peered through the windshield at the club door. “Doesn’t the Rainbow have valet?” When it was apparent that they didn’t, Marla started backing the Benz into a metered parking space. She cursed as she hit the bumper of the pickup behind us, jumped her car forward into the rear lights of a Subaru wagon, and came to a halt a foot from the curb. “Think I should leave a twenty under the wiper, in case a cop comes?” she asked.

“It’ll get stolen.”

With immense relief, I got out of the car and glanced up and down the street. The previous night’s hail had cut shallow gullies into the curb’s detritus. Remnants of torn paper cups, newspapers, and pizza boxes lay in the mud. We were less than two miles from the glass atria, sidewalk cafes, and bustle of suits that characterized downtown Denver. But here, everything looked scruffy, from the black fronts of bars to the shifty-looking men and women prowling the sidewalks.

Marla had finished clinking coins into the meter and was already bustling through the Rainbow door. I followed as quickly as my still-sore legs and neck would allow, and tried not to think about what we were doing, where we were going, and what we hoped to accomplish.

The Rainbow entryway was darker than a cave, and I had the sudden paralyzing thought that my only experience with an abundance of naked women had been in gym locker rooms. For crying out loud, I was a Sunday-school teacher. What if Father Pete saw me? What if I saw Father Pete?

As Marla leaned over a dark glass counter, I blinked at the large display of signs telling what you could and could not do inside the Rainbow. One sign screamed that “Public Fighting Is Illegal in Denver.” Thank God for that!

I gaped at the older woman who was manning the cash register. She was the same heavily made-up, raven- haired lady from the funeral lunch, the one who’d asked me if I’d played a trick with a glass, when I almost dropped one. And she still looked vaguely familiar, but I was trying to focus on her question and couldn’t place her. She said, “You know this is a men’s club, ladies?”

Marla retorted, “We’re coming in anyway, because we both belong to ACLU, thank you very much. My pal here even caters for them sometimes. So! We’ll take two all-you-can-eat buffet tickets, and before you say it, I can read that there’s a two-drink minimum. Not to worry, we’re going to need all the booze we can get. And before you ask, no, neither of us has video-recording equipment stuffed in our purses.” Before I could say anything, Marla asked, “We want to see Sandee with two e s. Where would she be?”

“The table closest to the buffet,” the woman replied, smiling. She stashed a huge wad of cash in the register, looked up at us, and hesitated. “Don’t either one of you remember me?”

“I do,” I said suddenly as a memory flashed. The Jerk had treated her. “Sorry. Lana Della Robbia, right? You were one of John Richard’s patients.”

She nodded. “And Dr. Kerr’s. Dr. Kerr delivered my babies. Fifteen years later, Dr. Korman removed a cancerous growth from my female plumbing. I owe him my life.” She smiled. “I was at the service for Dr. Kerr