Double Shot

would run one or both hands through his blond hair. The women had swooned.

I had to stop thinking about this. My knife guillotined the cilantro. Soon I’d made a deliciously scented pile of teensy-weensy green bits. I drained the pasta and set it aside to cool, then chopped fragrant scallions and crunchy daikon. I popped one of the leftover cherry tomatoes into my mouth, and was rewarded with sweet juice, firm texture, and eye-rolling lusciousness. I whisked together fruity olive oil, tangy red-wine vinegar, and Dijon mustard, then set all the salad ingredients aside to wait for the pasta to cool.

I switched gears to the committee breakfast, and began packing up those boxes. Because Sergeant Boyd would be there to guard me as well as help, I had told Liz to take the morning off. Julian was going to be with Arch. My two staffers would be working the picnic, though, and for that I was grateful.

The pasta was finally cool, so I gently mixed the salad together and set the whole thing in the walk-in. It was almost seven o’clock. Time to pack up the van and get cracking. After I loaded the last box, I took four ibuprofen. Then I waved to Julian, who was chugging up our street in his inherited Range Rover. I was so glad he would be with Arch and Tom today. I revved the van and headed toward the lake, where I passed a trio of boys casting their lines into the sparkling water. I wished I was with them. In fact, I’d rather be anywhere than catering to the most forbidding group of women in Aspen Meadow.

A transformation had taken place at the Roundhouse. To my great surprise, a team of workers from Front Range Rental had already shown up, and was putting up the large tent that would be the site for Nan Watkins’s retirement picnic. And I felt secure from early morning attackers, because Sergeant Boyd had already arrived, and he would stay with me to help as well as guard me. The enormous mirrored sidelights of Boyd’s dark sedan shone like beacons in the early morning sunlight. Those lights, and the ominous low-slung sedan itself, seemed to holler Back off! I’m an unmarked police car. And as if that wasn’t enough to deter any would-be assailant, a deputy in a sheriff’s department black-and-white had pulled up next to Boyd, in that way cops do when they’re having an important conference on the highway. Even I was intimidated, and I was just the caterer.

Boyd stopped conversing long enough to hand me the keys to my newly secured domain. I walked around to the side of the Roundhouse. The security cage Tom had had installed around the compressors was truly impressive: A cube of chain-link fencing, secured by a large padlock, gleamed in the sunshine. The awe-inspiring new back door, made of solid oak and sporting two locks, looked equally impregnable. My sore body, two days after the attack, was healing; my soul was thankful for such a great husband.

“See you, Boyd,” called the deputy before he roared off.

“Let’s rock!” I said to Boyd. And we took off for the club.

We parked near the service entry and hopped out of our vehicles. Not far away, the plonk-plonk of tennis balls had already started up. Ambitious Colorado players lost no time getting to outdoor courts, once the snow melted. I wondered if I would see Courtney.

To my dismay, a white Furman County van occupied a space near ours. Not Roger Mannis, I prayed. But I couldn’t be too careful.

“Sergeant,” I murmured to Boyd. “There’s a certain man I’m trying to avoid…” I described Mannis and his secretive tactics, and how much I needed him not to be allowed into the committee meeting.

Ever amiable, Boyd used his carrotlike fingers to smooth the wrinkles out of his white polo shirt and black trousers. “I’ve got it covered, Goldy. Any guy tries to get into the women’s meeting, I’ll demand ID. I turn up a guy named Mannis, I’ll pull rank on him and send him packing.” He nodded emphatically, and I gave him a quick hug. Boyd looked and felt as if he’d gained about twenty pounds since the last time I’d seen him. As I flung open the vandoors, I wondered if he could still pass the rigorous physical regimen that was part of the department’s yearly accreditation program. Still, he looked extremely pleased with himself, weight gain or no.

“Tell me what you need me to do, Madame Caterer!”

I smiled and handed him a box. I automatically headed for the kitchen entry, with the sergeant at my heels. By seven-fifteen, and with no sign of Mannis, we had carried in all our boxes. The club didn’t serve breakfast, so we had the kitchen to ourselves. In the wood-paneled private dining room, Boyd and I pushed together two tables to make one long one for twelve.

“Now,” Boyd announced, “I have a couple of surprises for you from Tom.”

“What?”

“This is why we’re called undercover cops,” Boyd announced as he pulled a wrapped package from beneath his shirt. No wonder he’d looked heavier, he’d been hiding a bulky something…. The bundle contained, joy of joys, a new white Battenberg lace tablecloth. We unfurled it across the dark tables. It looked stunning.

Without the hidden tablecloth to slow him down, a greatly slimmed Boyd could move much more quickly. He trotted to his sedan and returned, holding a breathtaking floral centerpiece. There was simply no way that the wealthy-but-penny-pinching ladies of the tree-planting committee had ordered this fanciful arrangement, an abundance of spring flowers ingeniously set into the length of an aspen log. This second gift from Tom, Boyd explained, was meant to add a thematic touch to the breakfast.

“He knew you had some flowers at the house, but he thought you needed another arrangement,” Boyd commented in his usual laconic way as he carefully placed the flower-filled log in the center of the table. “Silverware next.” He about-faced and headed for the kitchen. I stared at the table.

Tom. I pulled out a chair and sat down. Oh, God, Tom.

Back when John Richard and I were engaged, and my mother finally met the ultrahandsome, ultracharming doctor-to-be, she’d trembled with excitement. She’d asked, “What does he see in you?” I hadn’t quite known how to respond to this query, so I hadn’t. My mother had shaken her head, eyed John Richard, and cooed, “Ooh, Goldy! You are so lucky! You must have done something fabulous to deserve such a wonderful man.”

Bulldozing all irony into one of AMCC’s golf course sand traps, I now wondered, truly, what I’d ever done to deserve Tom. Maybe the Hindus were right, after all, and there was some kind of karmic balance to the universe, the good stuff following the bad. My understanding of this theory was that the worse the bad stuff was, the better your good stuff would be. This theory would be harshly criticized by the old guard at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church, I reflected, as I quickstepped to the kitchen to finish setting up for the breakfast. I hesitated, glanced back at Tom’s gorgeous tablecloth and flowers, and thought, To hell with the old guard.

An hour later, when the first ten members of the committee arrived and started berating me, I had to remind myself that I didn’t care about the old guard. They were in fine fettle, I had to say. While I offered trays of mimosas and coffee, the women eyed each other’s casual summer outfits—de rigueur silk and cotton suits—and jewelry— single gold strands, double rows of pearls, and a few tiny gems—and settled into earnest bickering.

They ranged in age from thirty to sixty. I knew most of them from catering events or committee work at St. Luke’s. The church meetings had been much harder than the parties, as parish youth-group parents or Sunday- school teachers or even vestry members often ended up stalking off. Behind their backs, each set of enemies claimed their adversaries weren’t good Christians.

I took a deep breath. It could be a long morning.

Marla, looking gorgeous in a turquoise wrinkled-silk pantsuit adorned with turquoise feathers, came bustling up to me. My friend glowed with good health; tiny turquoise barrettes glimmered in her hair as she bent close to my ear. “The Jerk raped a young girl? How long have you know about this?”

“Look, I don’t know if it’s true. Have you dug up anything? A name, a date?”

“No,” Marla replied, “but I’ve got my spies trolling the hills. Okay, I do have news about Courtney MacEwan. I just saw her downstairs, by the way. She’s on her way up here for the meeting.”

Oh, joy. I concentrated on making Marla on alcohol-free mimosa. “Can you come over to the Roundhouse with me when this is over?”

Marla chugged her drink. “Sure. I could even talk to you here when there’s a break in the action. I’d rather turn my back on a firing squad than give these women the chance to talk about me when I’m not in the room.”

I nodded and moved efficiently around the table distributing the parfaits. The glittering crystal glasses filled with alternating layers of the creamy yogurt mixture and the rainbow of juicy fresh fruit made the flower-bedecked, lace-covered table worthy of a Bon Appetit centerfold. When I was done, Marla held up