Double Shot

Marla rolled her eyes, then bustled me and my cell phone, purse, and sore kicking foot in the direction of the limo. A tall, smiling driver held the door open. The limo’s plush red interior was frigid from air-conditioning. I shuddered and stared out the darkened windows that filtered what was now murderously brilliant sunshine. Without warning, the limo floated away from the curb. Twenty yards from the Rainbow Men’s Club, we sailed past two shrieking black-and-whites and an ambulance.

There was chaos on the street. I closed my eyes. Again anxiety gripped me. There was chaos in my soul, no question. My life had turned into one big chaos soup, and I was not happy about it.

As we headed west, I tried to think. Form a plan, I told myself. Luckily, I still had Holly Kerr’s phone number and address, off Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive, entered in my Palm. Sometimes I was grateful I’d entered the Age of Technology, I thought as I retrieved my new cell and punched in Holly’s numbers. Yes, her voice crackled, she was back from her class, and she’d be happy to see me now. When I asked for directions, the driver interrupted to say he had an onboard navigation system. I whispered for him to wait as I tapped directions into the Palm—five dirt roads and a curvy mountain turnaround. I closed the cell and informed the driver that the Age of Technology did not extend to finding remote areas and landmarks of Aspen Meadow, Colorado. We’d had whole passels of bewildered tourists toting their handheld Global Positioning Systems as they searched for abandoned gold mines and cowboy hideaways. They invariably became lost. Just last week, the forest service had helicoptered out six rock-climbing orthodontists from New Jersey, and told them never to come back.

Forty minutes later, the driver was cursing under his breath as the limo bounced along a cratered single-lane dirt road that meandered off Upper Cottonwood Creek Drive. Melting hail had rendered the byway an obstacle course of stone-washed gullies, soft dirt, and mud-filled holes. Rocks and gravel scratched mercilessly against the sides and underbelly of the sleek silver vehicle as we splashed through the puddles. I wondered how much paint had been scraped away, and if they’d charge Marla for it. Finally, we ran aground in front of a dirt driveway that climbed upward at a forty-five-degree angle.

The limo guy eyed the steep driveway and shook his head. “Lady, it’s not happening.”

“I can walk.” We both disembarked. The driver squinted in all directions, at aspens, pines, and rocks. There wasn’t another house in sight. “An hour or so, okay?” I asked.

“It’s your dime. Where are we, Wyoming?” He rubbed the toe of one of his formerly shiny black shoes to get off the dust. “There’s something else,” he added.

“Go ahead,” I said, trying not to sound impatient.

“It’s just that I’ve got a job tonight, and I wasn’t figuring on driving all the way up here, and…well…if the lady you’re visiting is passing out extra sandwiches—”

My own stomach was growling, so I understood. “If she doesn’t give me something for you, I’ll fix you an Italian sub at my place.”

He nodded shyly. I began hoofing my way up the driveway, a mile-long affair that led to Holly Kerr’s fabulous home, a manse of the genus Mountain Contemporary. Cantilevered out over granite out- croppings, the wood-and-glass home possessed an unparalleled vista of Upper Cottonwood Creek, the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve, and the plum-shadowed peaks of the Continental Divide. All this made me even more grateful that Holly had decided to have Albert’s memorial lunch at the Roundhouse. Getting supplies up this driveway would have been as the driver said: not happening.

I’d visited Holly at the beginning of May. That was when she’d first moved here, bringing Albert’s ashes with her from Qatar. While we were working on the lunch menu, she told me she’d been able to snag the house in less then a week after her arrival. Word was, the country-music singer living in the big place had just been dumped by his label. It seemed strange that the childless widow of a missionary would want to settle so far west of town, where the snow fell to greater depths and the plows rarely visited. But Holly told me that her one criterion for a retirement home was that she would never again have to live anywhere near the equator. To each her own.

I’d submitted to her enthusiastic tour of all seven thousand square feet of glass, wood, and stone. I’d oohed and aahed over the high ceilings pierced by skylights, the ten fireplaces, the twelve bedrooms. With her photo and Christmas card collections, her Save the Rainforest work (another oddity for someone who’d been living in Qatar), and her many weaving, jewelry-making, and craft projects, Holly had filled up the place with…well, with stuff. Lots of stuff.

Later, Marla had told me that Holly had inherited enormous parcels of land in Nebraska and Colorado. For decades, her parents had owned a chain of feed-and-farm-equipment stores. With the profits, they’d quietly bought up defunct farms in both states, and held on to them. When they’d died two years ago, the sale of the land had netted Holly eight million dollars. Not only that, Marla had reported, but Holly had bought the country-music star’s house right after the season’s first forest fire had come raging down from the wildlife preserve. The star had told his real estate agent to make any deal he could. Without irony, Marla said that Holly had gotten the place for a song.

I began huffing and puffing up the driveway again. Unlike most wannabe buyers, Marla had said, Holly had not been spooked by the fire. Still, worry that the whole town would be engulfed in an even bigger conflagration had translated into a flood of homes for sale and a panic within the insurance industry. Within two weeks, companies had stopped writing policies for fire insurance. Holly, Marla repeated, had been lucky.

At the top of the driveway, I gulped air, wiped sweat off my face, and looked longingly down at Cottonwood Creek. Truth to tell, I would have preferred to be in the creek.

“You made it!” Holly cried when she swung open the massive front door. I trudged inside, barely able to murmur thanks. I was immediately greeted by the scent of baking bread threaded with a hint of citrus. My stomach howled, and I worried for my poor limo driver.

“I made brioche yesterday and was just heating some up,” Holly said, her friendly, sun-aged face smiling. Her petite frame was clad in a gray sweatsuit that matched her short, bouncy gray hair. “Are you hungry? I never eat before class and am always famished afterward. I was just making a late lunch.”

“Sounds divine.”

I followed Holly as her tiny gym shoes bounced forward over plush, burgundy-patterned wool rugs. She and Albert had “picked some up in Saudi Arabia,” she’d told me offhandedly the last time I’d visited. After the inheritance came through, it seemed Albert and Holly had made numerous jaunts throughout the Middle East, picking up “stuff,” as Holly called it. The “stuff” had been in boxes when I’d visited before, but now it was everywhere. And I do mean everywhere.

Tapestries and artwork bedecked the wood-and-rock walls. Holly had arrayed ivory and wooden knickknacks over a dizzying number of wooden shelves. Afghans and coverlets spilled off leather couches, leather chairs, even leather ottomans that traversed the huge living room like a line of tugboats. The artwork, I noticed as Holly began banging around in the kitchen, consisted mainly of nineteenth-century prints, hammered gold-and-pearl jewelry, and antique china plates. Holly had shown me one of her own craft pieces on my first visit, an intricate weaving involving silk knots, pearls, and gold beads. I’d never seen anything like it in any macrame class, that was certain. Now there were at least a dozen of these bejeweled masterpieces hanging on the walls. Holly had told me that without kids or work, she’d had lots of time for craft work. No kidding.

After a mile hike on an empty stomach, I didn’t want to look at artwork. I joined Holly in her pale yellow kitchen, where high walls, maple cabinets, and gold-streaked granite counters were mercifully free of ornament. While Holly prepared plates of warmed brioche rolls, shrimp salad, and tomatoes vinaigrette—ah, how I loved it when somebody else prepared food for me!—I washed my hands.

“Marla hired a driver to bring me up here,” I said, accepting a towel from Holly. “Any chance I could take him some food?”

“Of course.”

“And something else,” I said as I placed an envelope on her counter. “Here’s your check back from yesterday. I’m not cashing it, since we didn’t have the menu you ordered.”

“Don’t be ridiculous!” Holly exclaimed. “Now eat your salad!”

I shrugged and dug into the salad she placed in front of me. It featured fat, succulent shrimp combined with fresh dill, diced celery, scallions, and artichoke hearts, all wrapped in a velvety homemade mayonnaise, salmonella be damned. The light, feathery brioche rolls, their centers folded around a smear of orange marmalade, were a perfect accompaniment. After I’d polished off a second helping of salad, two more rolls, and several glasses of iced