Double Shot

uniformed girl, who was also beaming. Was she a candy striper? Oh yes, wait. She was Talitha Vikarios, daughter of Ted and Ginger. I barely remembered her.

John Richard, clutching a fistful of blue bubblegum cigars, wore a T-shirt given to him by Drs. Kerr and Vikarios. In capital letters, the T-shirt screamed “PROUD PAPA.” Albert Kerr and Ted Vikarios, beaming in the background, looked as happy as if they, too had just had little boys.

Arch, with his little wizened face and tiny wrapped body, seemed to be giving a puzzled look to the camera. I held the photo closer. Pretty Talitha Vikarios, her candy-stripe uniform setting off her rosy cheeks, clutched the sides of Arch’s baby blanket. I opened my eyes and took in John Richard’s tanned face and arms, how they contrasted with the white T-shirt. I looked closely at Arch. His eyes had been blue then, of course, before they’d turned brown and needed glasses. Was I just reading a look of intense worry on my son’s infant face, or had he seen disaster coming?

I shifted on the leather seat, trying to get comfortable. Spending an hour with Holly Kerr had been too much. The bumps in the road, the shrimp salad and cake, the bleeding bald guy outside the strip club, the strip club itself; they had all been too much. And now these photos. Our beautiful family. Right.

I looked at the last snapshot. Arch, John Richard, yours truly.

What’s wrong with this picture?

I closed the photo album. I shut my eyes, lay my head back on the seat, and let the tears slide down.

12

Half an hour later, the long silver car slid slowly down Main Street. I looked out the window and tried to pull myself together. The plastic flowers in their hanging baskets shook in the fresh, dusty breeze. Tourists bunched and drifted along the sidewalks. They licked ice-cream cones, chewed taffy, and munched on popcorn from paper bags. Out of nostalgic habit, I glanced at Town Taffy, where Arch had pressed his nose against the glass on many a summer afternoon. The subject of his fascination had been the taffy machine’s arms as they stretched and pulled impossibly long strands of bright pink, green, blue, and white candy.

And there he was. Arch was once again standing in front of Town Taffy, his eyes fixed on the mechanical arms moving around and around with their thick ribbons of candy.

What was the matter with me? How bad a bump on the head had I gotten at the Roundhouse?

“Mister!” I called to my driver, regretting that I didn’t know his name. “Do you see a kid, there, a kid!” Unable to describe what I was sure was a phantom, I pressed down the window button. “Hey, Arch!” I screamed. “Arch, over here, in the limo!”

“Lady, do you want me to pull over?”

I watched as the kid, Arch, or whoever he was, moseyed off down the sidewalk, where he met up with an older, dark-haired man whom I could see only from the back. They were absorbed into a group of tourists who were heading up toward the lake.

“No, that’s okay,” I told the driver. “I was mistaken. It’s been a long day.”

“And it’s not even over,” the driver muttered.

He piloted the limo off Main Street and up our road. My eyes searched hungrily for our brown-shingled house. I finally picked out our newly painted white shutters and trim shimmering in the bright June light.

“Mrs. Schulz?” asked the limo driver. “Is this home?”

My mind again blanked as I looked out at the reporters and photographers crowding our small lawn. Was this a vision, too, only a bad one?

“Mrs. Schulz? Do you want me to help you to your front door?”

When he braked, the tires squealed. A sea of hungry journalists surged toward the curb.

“Keep going!” I cried. A wave of eager faces called to me. “Hit the gas!” I hollered.

As we screeched up the street, I tried to think. My reflection in the rearview mirror did not look good. Holly’s dirt driveway and my unwanted tears had left my cheeks a dusty gray. The last thing my business needed—besides my being convicted of murder, of course—was a photograph of my smudged and soiled self sprinting toward our door.

“Turn left and see if you can circle the block,” I said. “There’s an alley that cuts behind our house.” I couldn’t go to Marla’s or anywhere else, because hiding out was not on the agenda. With any luck, the journalists wouldn’t have thought I could sneak in the back without them seeing me. But I had to get into my kitchen. In the Life Goes On department, I was a caterer until further notice.

“Okay, just a quick left,” I told the driver once we’d reached the alley. Even with the drought, profusely blooming branches of Alpine roses arched over the alleyway and almost concealed our brown-shingled garage. Thorny branches scratched the windshield and sides of the formerly pristine limo. “Once we get there, could you run me to the back door?”

The driver nodded assent, then eased in behind our garage. I readied my keys and grabbed my bag. Once we were out of the car, the driver took my elbow and we quickstepped toward the house’s rear door. We were halfway through Tom’s back garden when the shout went up.

“She’s coming in around back!”

Dammit.

“Mrs. Korman, did you kill your husband?”

“What are those papers sticking out of your bag, Mrs. Korman? Do they have something to do with the case?”

Ignoring the shouted questions, I repeated the mantra, “Coffee, coffee, coffee, coffee,” the last few steps to the back door, until I had it unlocked and the security code entered.

“Thanks,” I told the limo driver, and meant it. I suddenly realized I had no money for a tip. I imagined the headline: “Caterer Refuses Fellow Service Person Gratuity.”

He read my mind. “Don’t worry, a twenty percent tip’s included.”

From behind him, a third reporter shouted, “Did you kill your ex-husband, Mrs. Schulz?”

I ignored him and turned to go in the house. The limo driver gently caught my arm.

His low voice murmured, “If coffee is the password to your security system, you better not be saying it so loudly. People could break into your house.”

“It’s okay,” I whispered, and patted his arm. “Thanks for everything. You’ve been great.”

I slammed through the door. Once inside, I raced through each ground-floor room, pulling down shades, curtains, and blinds. Then I took a few deep breaths, fixed myself a double shot of espresso, and used it to down four ibuprofen.

Wherever Tom and Arch were, playing golf or touring Main Street, they were still out. I sloshed a medicinal amount of whipping cream into a second doppio and booted up my computer. Within moments I had opened a document and was assiduously typing the names of all the funeral-lunch guests from Holly Kerr’s photocopied guest list. I didn’t want to call the document “Jerk Death,” in the remote event that Arch went trolling through my database. I finally just gave it the initials “JRK.” Because I had learned a thing or two from Tom, I also typed in every conversation I’d had with anybody—right from the beginning of the previous morning. The memory is a slippery thing, Tom often said. We tend to reshape dialogue after the fact, and details slide away. I was under suspicion for my ex-husband’s murder and I was estranged from my son. I couldn’t afford to let anything slip.

I sat back, reread what I’d written, and tried to come up with some ideas, or at least a strategy, as I’d promised Brewster I’d do. How could I get the cops to investigate Bobby Calhoun? And more pressingly, what intersection of my life and John Richard’s had precipitated the attack at the Roundhouse, and perhaps also John Richard’s death? I returned to the computer and typed in those questions. I noticed one thing: In the department of the Jerk’s mistresses, my memory had not only slipped, it had deleted all those names except the most recent. I didn’t know if that was good or bad.

The fact that I had food to prepare weighed heavily on my mind. I also felt like absolute hell—from my aching body to my throbbing head. But I reminded myself that Furman County investigators were out there gathering evidence, trying to decide whether to arrest me. Maybe they were merely waiting for the firearms report and GSR results. Oh, joy.