Double Shot

Wait. First I had stopped by the clubhouse to leave brownies for the PosteriTREE bake sale. And Cecelia Brisbane had sought me out. All right, then, while I was in the straw-grasping business, what was it Cecelia had been referring to regarding files on John Richard? I was willing to believe that she was paying someone to listen in on cell phones or calls to the sheriff’s department, so that she’d heard about the Roundhouse break-in, and surmised that the Jerk was the culprit. But what had she meant when she’d said she had different files from the police?

I put in a call to the Mountain Journal. Cecelia Brisbane was not at her desk. I left a message for her to call me, but didn’t hold out much hope for that happening. Belatedly, I thought to dangle the idea of a hot piece of gossip for her column, but the receptionist had already hung up.

I needed to cook, and I still hadn’t finished writing up the events of the previous day. My fingers paused over the incident with the skeleton-faced man waiting in the cul-de-sac. Mrs. Korman, do you have my money? I’d written down that guy’s license-plate number. Surely someone at the sheriff’s department had tracked down the plate by now. Even better, maybe that someone would know what funds the guy had been after.

Who at the sheriff’s department could help me with the license plate? I called Sergeant Boyd, but he was not available. I cursed voice mail silently and left a purposefully vague message for Boyd to please, please, call me back ASAP.

I took a break and tiptoed onto our back deck to feed Scout the cat and Jake, our bloodhound. The chatty reporters had reconvened on our front porch. Both animals seemed to know something was up, and I murmured to them to be quiet. Scout ignored his food and rolled on his back, demanding that his stomach be rubbed. Sometimes I thought that cat could read my mind. My own need for comfort, he seemed to be saying, could be assuaged by comforting him. Jake, meanwhile, gobbled his food, stepped on the cat to get to me, and whined as his tongue slobbered kisses on both of my cheeks. I told him, “Okay, boy, okay,” and turned my face away. He whimpered and started licking my hands and arms. Well, my animals loved me. When you’re a suspect in a murder case, you’ll take affection wherever you can get it.

I went back inside, took a shower, and changed into clean clothes. Reentering the kitchen, I resolved to put the life and untimely death of John Richard Korman out of my mind—for a few hours, anyway. I needed and wanted to prepare food for others. My eyes caught on two things I had not noticed that had fallen out of my bag, along with the guest list: the envelope with Holly Kerr’s check to me, and a recipe. Holly had written:

Thought you might enjoy this. It’s the recipe for the brioche! And thanks again for a lovely lunch in remembrance of my dear Albert. Goldy, I am sure all will be well soon.Holly

That was nice. I glanced over the recipe, which seemed straightforward enough, and would give me the opportunity to work with my hands, as in pretending I was wringing the neck of…whoops! Wasn’t going to think that way for a while. From our walk-in refrigerator, I took out yeast, eggs, milk, and unsalted butter, then searched the cabinets for bread flour, sugar and salt, lemons and oranges, extracts, and a jar of glistening honey from a local producer.

Soon the yeast was proofing and I was creaming the butter, honey, and eggs into a fluffy, fragrant mixture— the beginning of the journey into making bread. I kneaded in the flour, and didn’t pretend it was anybody. I allowed myself to float into the meditative, repetitive movements that cause bread making to be so therapeutic. Soon the dough beneath my wrists was a lovely, silky, smooth texture. It took me several moments to realize the phone was ringing. Marla must have turned on one of my ringers.

“Uh, Goldilocks’ Catering?” My hands, covered with flour and bits of dough, inadvertently let the receiver slip away. I fumbled it as I tried to wipe one hand clean on my apron. The phone banged hard on the floor.

“Goldy!” came Sergeant Boyd’s curt voice from far away. “What’s going on over there? Are you all right?”

“I’m fine!” I called. No question, I was having trouble with phones these days. I picked up the receiver, clutched it to my ear, and made my tone as normal as possible. “Thanks for calling back. Did you find out anything?”

“You never heard any of this from me.”

“Sergeant Who?”

“All right. Looks like your ex was in the money-laundering business.”

“What?”

Boyd blew out air. “We don’t know for whom, and we don’t know how much cash we’re talking about, because we only caught that one Smurf.”

“That one—?” Balancing the portable phone against my ear, I moved the dough into a buttered bowl, placed a cloth on top, and transported the whole thing out to the dining room.

“That’s what we call them. Smurfs, like the toys. You met one at Dr. Korman’s house right before you found the body. The Smurfs deposit chunks of cash their captain gives them. Korman was captain of we don’t know how many Smurfs, and we don’t know who he was working for. That’s the whole point of hiring these Smurfs to work for you. You keep them out of the loop.”

I looked out the window over the sink, the only one that had no shade or curtain. Had I detected a movement in the lilac bushes outside? I’d cracked the window before starting to knead the bread. This was summer, after all, and the kitchen was hot. The hail had evaporated, and our dry, dusty, fire-feeding weather had returned.

“Wait a sec,” I warned Boyd. I tiptoed into the first-floor bathroom, where the window was shut and covered by a curtain. “Okay, now I can talk. You mean, my ex-husband was running a money-laundering business out of his country-club home? Did he set up this business while he was incarcerated? Was it drug money? Proceeds from illegal gambling? Could a Smurf have shot and killed John Richard?”

“Hold on, hold on. We don’t know anything. That Smurf you met doesn’t know anything, either. He was supposed to pick up his usual forty-five hundred dollars, and that didn’t happen. The investigators are looking at all of Dr. Korman’s known associates, the guys he hung out with in jail, that kind of thing. Someone had a lot of cash that they didn’t want to pay taxes on, that’s for sure.”

Hold on. I gripped the towel bar. Duh. I’d seen lots and lots of cash, you bet I had, all over the place, because businessmen didn’t want their wives seeing these bills on their credit cards. And yes, John Richard had had some known associates in that business, the business where women didn’t wear clothes. Was this grasping at straws, too? Or could it be true?

“Listen,” I said, “this is a stretch. A big stretch. But John Richard’s girlfriend, Sandee, works for the Rainbow Men’s Club. It’s a Denver strip joint run by a woman named Lana Della Robbia, a former patient of John Richard. Her sidekick is a mean-looking, muscle-bound guy named Dannyboy. Anyway, Lana worshiped the ground John Richard walked on. And the Rainbow was swimming in cash when I visited today.”

There was a pause. “This is when I’m supposed to ask you what you were doing at the Rainbow strip club where Dr. Korman’s girlfriend works. What you were doing there today.”

“Watching the show,” I said innocently. “Look, I’ve got a lot of cooking to do.”

“You’ve always got a lot of cooking to do when I start asking you questions.”

“Could you get back to me when they have the autopsy and ballistics results?”

“Oh! She wants autopsy and ballistics results! Why, yes, ma’am.” But there was affection in his voice. When he signed off, I knew his only challenge would be figuring out a way to say that someone had tipped him off to the remote possibility that the Rainbow Men’s Club was laundering cash through Dr. John Richard Korman, deceased.

Even I thought it sounded a bit ridiculous. Still, Lana Della Robbia had been rolling, drowning, really, in currency. Also, Marla should have called in her anonymous tip by now, so Furman County investigators might even be on their way to the Rainbow at this very minute, to search for an Elvis impersonator. Did possible money laundering plus a possibly jealous boyfriend add up to homicide? I had no idea.

I put in another call, this one to the Rainbow. After asking my name and putting me on hold for five minutes, the woman who answered said Lana Della Robbia was unavailable. When I told this gal I didn’t believe her, she hung up. Not to be outdone, I slammed my phone down, too. What had clammed Lana up? Was she getting nervous about the case? Had the cops been asking her too many probing questions? And more important, how could I find