Double Shot

damned before I gave him any more information on this case.

After the detective drove away, I went out on our front porch. In the Rocky Mountain summer, the sun seems to hover over the western horizon for hours before setting. The only hint that evening is coming is the gradual cooling and sweetening of the air, as Alpine roses and chokecherry release their perfumes into the coming night. I breathed in, looking up and down the street. The good news was that the reporters seemed to have dispersed. The bad news was that Tom’s sedan was nowhere in sight. Not only did I miss Tom and Arch, I was getting worried. And I needed to talk to Tom. The events and news of the day had been too complex for me to sort out on my own.

I returned to the kitchen, where the clock read 6:45. Could they possibly have decided to play an extra round of golf? Somehow, that did not seem likely. Then again, Arch had taken his hockey gear. If he’d wanted to skate the day after his father died, Tom probably would have indulged him. Although I wished they would let me know what was up, I resisted putting in a call to Tom’s cell. I could just imagine Arch rolling his eyes when the phone beeped.

Must be Mom, checking up on us!

I shuddered, then jumped when our own phone rang. The caller ID said it was my old pal Frances Markasian, pie-deprived reporter of the Mountain Journal. She was calling from home. I had to hand it to the woman, she was persistent.

“No comment,” I sang into the receiver.

“Very funny,” she groused. “The whole press corps is blaming me for not grabbing that pie before you whacked Roger Mannis. The Mountain Journal is still working on the caption for the photo. I think they’re going with ‘Stressed-out Suspect Splats Inspector.’ I preferred ‘Caterer Creams Killjoy.’ ”

“Frances, you all aren’t really going to run an article showing me hitting the district health inspector with strawberry-cream pie, are you?”

“Not if you can give me something more substantive.”

I groaned. “Such as?”

“Such as, Goldy, what the cops have on you. Such as, if they have anything substantive, why aren’t you under arrest? Such as, do you or Tom know if they have any other suspects besides…” She paused, doing her best imitation of being tantalizing.

“Yeah, besides who? Don’t play games, Frances.”

“How about this game? Quid pro quo.”

“What’s your quid?”

“Let’s go with the quo first,” she said innocently. “What do the cops have on you, Goldy?”

I could act innocent, too. And smooth! Oh, baby, I could be silkier than that cream pie Frances never tasted. I cleared my throat and tried to adopt an appropriately rueful tone.

“At the end of the memorial lunch for Albert Kerr, witnesses saw me arguing with John Richard outside the Roundhouse. John Richard was trying to set up an appointment for me to take Arch over, and it wasn’t prearranged. When I finally agreed, he took off.”

“That’s no quo. It’s old news, Goldy.”

“When I took Arch over,” I went on, ignoring her, “I found John Richard in his garage, in his car, dead. Arch was outside. I was alone, so it looks to the cops as if I set the whole thing up to protect my son.” That was as far as I was willing to go. With the phrase potential jury pool rocketing around in my head, there was no way I was spilling my guts to any newspaper about my missing thirty-eight, the errant mice, or the GSR test.

“I heard there was a problem with a firearm,” Frances said.

“Where’d you hear that?”

“Was it a gun of yours that killed John Richard?”

“Good question. Now what’s your quid? I’ve got a lot of cooking to do.” This woman was tiring me out.

“How well do you know Ted and Ginger Vikarios?” she asked.

The question took me off guard. “I haven’t been in touch with them for a long time. Ted was—”

“Yeah, yeah. Co–department head of ob-gyn at Southwest with Kerr more than a decade and a half ago. Then the Kerrs and Vikarioses found religion at the same time and went their separate ways. The Kerrs sold their worldly goods and sailed for seminary in England. Ted Vikarios figured he didn’t need further study or ordination. All he needed was his message of morality and that mesmerizing voice of his. So he set up shop in Colorado Springs, where he constructed a multimillion-dollar tape-and-CD empire, selling Family Values and Victory over Sin for fifteen ninety-five a boxed set. Their own family wasn’t in such good shape, though. You know about this?”

“I know he went under, and that there was some kind of scandal. That’s it.”

“Okay, family values, right? Ted and Ginger insisted their family was a marvel, the gold standard. Their only daughter, Talitha, ostensibly virtuous, was off doing health-worker volunteer work in South America. Meanwhile, when the money began to roll in from the tapes empire, Ted and Ginger mortgaged themselves into the high life— four BMWs, a ranch, a ski condo. That was until oops, one of our competitors in the newspaper biz got hold of the story that their daughter’s sole connection with missionaries was the missionary position.”

“Frances!” I remembered Talitha Vikarios’s shining face and innocent smile. She’d been wearing her candy- stripe uniform proudly. She’d loved little infant Arch so much, she’d become weepy when she doted on him.

“Oh, so you were acquainted with Talitha?” Frances demanded.

“I was, but it’s been a long time. Back when she was a candy striper, she helped out at Southwest Hospital. She was great when Arch was a newborn.”

“Uh-huh. Fifteen years ago? Talitha was, oh, eighteen then? Well, by the time the tabloids unearthed Talitha at age twenty-two, she was living in a hippie commune in Utah. She had a boyfriend and a child without, shall we say, the benefit of marriage? Hello! For the oh-so-pompous Vikarioses, everything went south. They lost the tape empire, their loans were called in, they had to sell everything. We’re talking broke, broke, and very broke.”

“I don’t see how this pertains to John Richard.”

“Background, Goldy. Ted declared bankruptcy four years ago. He and Ginger had been living in a friend’s guest room until ten months ago. Then, what do you know! Guess who gives them cash to buy a country-club condo in Aspen Meadow? Their old friend Holly Kerr, who inherited big bucks, as it turned out, and can’t turn her back on her destitute friends. Christians sharing the wealth, you get the idea. Or is it?”

“Frances—”

“You heard about the Kerrs and Vikarioses having a falling-out, Goldy?”

“I have. I just don’t know what it was about.”

“Neither do I, because nobody from Southwest is talking. But my theory is that Holly is now making up for it with her land-sale money. Whatever it was, Ted and Ginger, according to one of their pals in the country club, are living on a small stipend from Holly. How did the falling-out get resolved, Goldy? Do you know?”

“I sure don’t,” I said. But I wish I did, I added mentally.

“Ted is too old to start a new practice,” Frances went on. “But he can collect on an old debt. So when his former subordinate, Dr. John Richard Korman, gets out of jail, and suddenly gets his picture in the local paper as appearing to have enough dough to start a bakery, well! Let’s say our Dr. Ted becomes curious. Here’s this convicted-felon doctor sponsoring a local golf tournament and driving an Audi and living with a floozy in the country-club area. So! Let’s also suppose Ted figures it’s time to collect.”

Outside, I heard Tom’s Chrysler crunching along the gravel toward our detached garage. Impatience raced up my spine.

“Frances,” I demanded, “what are you talking about?”

“Goldy,” she cooed, “did you ever wonder where John Richard got the fifty-thousand-dollar down payment for your little house? The same house you got in the divorce settlement?”

My entire body went cold. “He told me his parents gave it to him for graduating from medical school.”