Double Shot

the idea of a chaperone, but Tom had been insistent. The upside was that Boyd might have new information. The key word there was might.

Meanwhile, once Julian arrived, Tom’s plan to keep Arch busy included picking up Todd Druckman and taking the three of them to one of Denver’s giant public pools. I’ve always felt that those pools, which feature wave- making machines and gargantuan slides, are meant to make kids puke up their hot dogs, chips, and milk shakes. That way, parents are forced to buy twice the amount of overpriced food than they would have anyway. But Tom had ordered me to not worry about what I couldn’t control. After the pool, Julian would come to help me with the picnic, while Tom saw what else Arch and Todd wanted to do. Bless Tom. What would we do without him?

My stomach growled. It was six-fifteen and I hadn’t had anything but coffee. I couldn’t look at the croissants and yogurt. Here again, though, I was saved by Tom.

“Oh, Miss G., do I have a surprise for you.” He swaggered into the kitchen with a sudden confidence that I hadn’t seen for a while. He wore a black polo shirt and khaki pants, and looked utterly spiffy. “I did a very, very big shopping yesterday. Please sit down.”

This I did, while Tom pulled out—from one of the secret corners of the walk-in, where he kept goodies just for the family—thick-sliced applewood-smoked bacon, eggs, and cream. Then, after he perused a new cookbook, he brought the bacon to sizzling and made the lightest, flakiest biscuits imaginable. These reminded me of the biscuits served at the Southern boarding school I’d attended. For some reason, this brought tears to my eyes. I sure seemed to be doing a lot of crying these days.

Tom used his thumbs to wipe my tears away, then gently kissed my cheek and told me to eat while the food was hot. Then he put in a call to someone at the department. After a few “Uh-huhs,” and several requests along the lines of “Well, could you put me through to her?,” and then “Yeah, yeah, hmm,” he signed off. Frowning, he washed his hands and sat down with his own plate of bacon, biscuits, and jam.

“Want to know what the department has so far?”

I almost choked on a biscuit. “Don’t tell me you got through to the coroner.”

“Yup, and not only her. It wasn’t a busy week, and the autopsy’s done. John Richard was killed between one and three P.M. He was shot two times at close range. In the chest and in the genitals.”

The espresso, biscuit, and bacon made a sudden turn in my stomach.

“Strange thing is,” Tom went on, “whoever killed him cut off a big chunk of his hair. Like a scalping.”

“A scalping?”

Tom chewed thoughtfully. “Well, not exactly. More like, I want a chunk of this blond hair as a souvenir.”

Deep breaths, I told myself. I looked outside, where bright sunlight was coaxing dandelion pods to release their seeds. As if on cue, thousands of tiny white fluffs floated toward the sky. They’re like aliens, Arch used to say when he was little, all being launched at once. Another time, he’d said, It’s snowing up. But the tiny, featherlike seeds always eventually floated back down, a gentle precipitation that accumulated in roads, piled up in ditches, and rolled like dust-balls down our dry hills.

“Miss G.?” Tom’s voice seemed far away. “Do you not want me to talk about the autopsy anymore? I mean, not at breakfast?”

I met his green eyes. “I’m not sure. Thanks for the delicious food, though. It’ll help me survive my events today.”

“You know,” Tom said as he rinsed the dishes and gave me sidelong glances, wanting to make sure I was all right, “they do have good people working on this case.”

“Uh-huh.”

“It’s their job, Goldy. They’re not in it for the right or wrong of it. The morality part. All they do is law enforcement. Catch a killer and preserve evidence so that justice can be done—that is, so that a conviction of murder will hold up.”

“Yes, yes, I understand.”

“Okay. That guy you and Marla discovered on her hood? He’s fine. Had a bloody nose, a few bruises. They nabbed that guy Bobby Calhoun, and asked him a bunch of questions, but he denies everything. They can’t make him get his Elvis getup on for a lineup.”

“That figures.”

Tom shrugged. “They had to let him go. He’s a volunteer fireman, and the Aspen Meadow Fire Department is fighting a new fire in Black Mountain Canyon, right next to the preserve. They beeped him several times while he was being questioned. Meanwhile, the bald guy we think he beat up has been released from the hospital and is home with a big bandage on his nose.”

“Thanks for the update. Do you know what they found out about Courtney MacEwan? Did she have an alibi for the time John Richard was shot?”

Tom tilted his head thoughtfully. “Supposedly, around one she was unloading cupcakes for that bake sale. She was in and out until three, according to the lady manning the cash box, who admitted she was too busy to be able to account for Courtney’s every minute.”

“Hmm. Think I could or should talk to her?”

“No, Goldy. I believe if you say a single word to Courtney MacEwan, those hostile detectives will try to get the two of you on conspiracy to commit murder.”

“Come on.”

“Conspiracy after the fact, then.”

“Oh, wonderful.”

Tom finished the dishes in silence and announced that he was going up to get Arch moving. I nodded and brought up my “Nan Watkins Retirement Picnic Prep” file. First I put water on to boil for the pasta that would form the base for the picnic salad. The salad, light and delicate on the tongue, had to be freshly made. Next I hauled out a mountain of cherry tomatoes, rinsed and dried them, and began slicing them in half. When was the last time I’d had my knives sharpened? I tried to remember. Careful, I told myself, be very careful. It was important for caterers to keep all their knives extremely sharp. It was the dull ones that were dangerous.

Dull knives, sharp knives. Neither one had shorn John Richard’s hair. But who had, and why?

The juicy, ripe tomatoes fell into neat halves as I sliced. I didn’t know who or why, but I could guess as to when. Whoever had stolen the thirty-eight from my van had also nabbed the kitchen shears. Within the next couple of hours, the thief had shot John Richard in the heart and the groin and used my scissors to lop off a chunk of his blond hair. And of course, I’d seen something out of place on John Richard’s scalp, I just had not registered it. Something had been strange about his dead body, and the butchered hair was it.

Cherry tomato, slice in half. Tomato, slice. Tomato, slice.

Okay, why? Why would a killer keep a chunk of hair as a souvenir? Had the FBI profiled hair-collecting killers? I knew fans and friends of Beethoven had surreptitiously lopped off chunks of his hair after he died. But presumably, that was because they admired him.

Upstairs, shower water began running. Would Arch find out this horrid detail? I certainly hoped not. I sighed and kept on working.

John Richard had always been very proud of his hair. In fact, the way he felt about his hair brought to mind that biblical term vainglorious, a particular favorite of my Sunday-school class. What did it mean to be vainglorious about your hair? Well, you could use it to great advantage when seducing members of the opposite sex. (Of course, I didn’t talk to the Sunday-school class about that. But they’d guessed what Jezebel was up to.)

I wished Tom had told me exactly where on John Richard’s head this chunk of hair had been cut. Maybe our killer just wanted him to look unattractive in death. Closed casket, that kind of thing.

I shook my head and finished the tomatoes. Then I rinsed the cilantro, patted it dry, and spread it out on the cutting board where it looked like green strands of…

John Richard had always demanded that his gorgeous blond hair be cut just so: He’d have the stylist snip and rework his bangs until they were perfectly cantilevered over his forehead. While leaning toward a woman to ask, “So are you new to this hospital?,” or to offer some confidential endearment, he