Double Shot

Marla said she hadn’t seen anything else. She hugged me and took off, while I fought the knot in my stomach.

After checking that the committee meeting was finally on track, I asked Boyd back into the kitchen. I shared what I’d heard from Marla, and my questions. How much had Courtney resented me for supposedly breaking up her affair with John Richard? Could Mannis have been the one who’d attacked me outside the Roundhouse? He would certainly know about sabotage, or he could have tutored Courtney in what to do. And then perhaps Roger, or Courtney, had driven over to John Richard’s house and shot him.

“Could be,” Boyd mused. “You always have to be open to theories.”

“Do you think I should say anything to Reilly and Blackridge? They’ve been really hostile to me.”

“Let me do it.” Boyd nodded decisively. “They know I’m here guarding you, and I can say one of the women saw Ms. MacEwan give Mannis an envelope. Then it’ll be up to them. You probably don’t want them knowing you’ve got this information, anyway.”

Plus, I thought, I sure didn’t want Courtney MacEwan to know I had even more reason to suspect her. That woman was dangerous.

An hour later, the committeewomen began to wrap up their meeting. Boyd and I were in the last stages of cleaning up from the breakfast. Priscilla Throckbottom did not give me an extra gratuity for Boyd, despite his hard work. I would do it myself, I resolved, when he departed from the Roundhouse this afternoon. And he was going to be there, he’d insisted. He’d informed me he was sticking with me until Julian and Liz arrived to help with the picnic. Ordinarily I would have bristled at being chaperoned, but I really did not want to go back into the Roundhouse alone, thank you very much.

At the end of the meeting, two things surprised me. First of all, the women actually did agree to do something. Lot purchases of trees were to be had at half price at Aspen Meadow Nursery, this week only. With their many donations and the success of the bake sale, PosteriTREE was buying sixteen dozen blue spruce, twenty dozen aspen trees, and fifty dozen lodgepole pines. They were going to organize volunteers to plant them in the burned areas of the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. Since the canyon fire had just jumped over to the preserve, the women thought a replanting scheme would be a worthy goal. I didn’t know what volunteers would be willing to work for these women, but no one was asking me.

Tipping the emotional scales over to misery was the second surprise: the sight of Ginger Vikarios sobbing in her battered Taurus. The meeting had not yet ended when I’d finished cleaning and slipped out the service entrance with the trash. The food inspector’s van was gone, of course, but I did spot a desolate Ginger when I rounded the corner to the club’s Dumpster. Her flyaway orange hair was bent over the steering wheel; her body heaved with sobs. I tossed the trash into the Dumpster and headed in her direction to see what was wrong, to comfort her, something. But she heard my footsteps on the gravel and glanced up. Startled and gasping, she turned the key, pushed the old car into gear, and took off.

When Boyd and I finally finished, we were dismayed to see that two Cadillacs had been carelessly parked in such a way as to block the service lot exit. Cursing under my breath, I climbed into my van and revved the engine. With Boyd guiding me, I did a sixteen-point turn to get around the Caddies. Chuckling, Boyd hoisted himself into the passenger seat and we took off. As we drove up toward the tennis courts, we both saw Courtney MacEwan racing toward us. Oh, hell, I thought. Not again.

Courtney was wearing a skimpy white tennis dress that showed off her muscled arms and long legs. But she also had those strong arms raised, and each of her hands clutched her signature pink tennis balls. She did not look happy.

“You bitch!” she screamed at me. “You wrecked my life!” Before she could go on, she caught a glimpse of Boyd and clamped her mouth shut.

I gunned the engine to get up onto the club’s main road. As we whizzed past Courtney, she gave me a hostile stare. I pressed the accelerator to go even faster. “That woman is a piece of work,” Boyd commented, his voice amused.

Boyd reminded me not to speed, so I carefully slowed the van to make the turnoff to the lake. I needed to check on the tent setup, use my new keys to get through the Roundhouse’s reinforced kitchen door, and generally make sure that everything was proceeding well for the next event. I certainly hoped Courtney MacEwan had not been invited to Nan Watkins’s picnic.

After the mess at the club, the Roundhouse was a positively serene spot. The tent was up. Boyd gently took my new keys, opened the Roundhouse, and thoroughly checked the premises. He declared them clear.

We had just begun to haul out the boxes for the picnic event when my eyes caught on a sheriff’s-department tow truck on the far side of the lake. It was the exact spot where I’d seen Trudy’s son, Eddie, fishing with his pals earlier in the day. My heart turned over.

I remembered when Arch was nine and had come to the lake to fish by himself, because John Richard would never take him. I hadn’t found him for hours and was sure he had drowned. I shook my head and walked even faster up the path to the kitchen door.

“Mr…. Sergeant…” I couldn’t get the words out.

“What is it, Goldy?” Boyd asked calmly. He stopped unloading his box and came over to me. “Talk slowly.” He nodded encouragingly. “Tell me.”

“Lake,” I said. “Here. Come!”

He accompanied me outside, and I pointed to the truck, which was now flashing its lights and backing up to the bank. With the truck reversing, I could now see two sheriff’s-department vehicles and a state trooper’s gray sedan near it.

“Oh, God!” I wailed.

“Goldy,” Boyd said calmly. “Tell me what you think it is.”

“Eddie!” I gasped. “Eddie from next door. Please. Call and find out.”

Boyd told me to stay where I was, then unhooked his radio and walked ten paces away from me. His radio crackled as he talked into it.

I thought I was going to be ill. I was suddenly excruciatingly worried about Arch. About Eddie. About everything. I told Boyd I was going over to where the sheriff’s-department cars were parked and see if Eddie was okay. Boyd relocked the Roundhouse and hustled along behind me. I pressed the buttons for Tom’s cell phone and resumed trotting toward the far side of the lake.

Tom, happy to hear from me, said Arch had had one shaky period on the way to the giant pool. Tom had taken an exit off the interstate and found a church where he knew the pastor. The pastor had listened to and comforted Arch while Todd and Julian had waited patiently. The three boys had spent the morning riding man-made tsunamis in the wave pool. After that, they’d had banana splits, and then it had begun to rain, hard. Denver’s weather could be entirely different from ours, no question. Anyway, Arch and Todd had decided to go back to the Druckmans’, and Julian was on his way to the Roundhouse. I asked Tom if Arch had mentioned the non-golf lessons with John Richard.

“That’s a negative, Miss G. My guess is that his guilt will catch up with him, and he’ll offer the info to you. He…had a bit of a paranoia attack, too. He thought we were being followed. He said he thought somebody had followed him to the rink in Lakewood on Tuesday, too.”

“Who could have been following him?” I glanced back at Boyd, who was talking into his radio.

“I don’t know, but I made damn sure I watched for somebody once we got back on the interstate. There wasn’t anyone.”

“Tom, have you heard about a drowning at Aspen Meadow Lake?” I blurted out.

“No, I haven’t. You want me to call in and find out? Is that where you are?”

“Yeah. Boyd’s on the radio. I’m walking toward the recovery operation. Eddie from next door was going fishing today, and I’m so scared I’m sick.”

“I understand. Boyd still checking?” Tom asked.

I glanced back and said he was. Talking, talking, talking. What was going on?

Tom said, “Tell me about your breakfast.” I told him that Courtney MacEwan might be up to something with Roger Mannis. Tom chuckled. “Girls will be girls.”

“I’m going to pretend I didn’t hear that.”