Double Shot

Arch made one of his noiseless entries into the kitchen.

“I have something else to tell you,” he began. When Arch had Tom’s and my attention, he crossed his arms and looked at the floor. “I just don’t want to get this guy into trouble. I mean, he’s old. I can’t imagine he would hurt anyone. I don’t think he would want to hurt me.”

Tom used his best interrogation technique when a suspect began to talk: Say nothing. Reluctantly, I followed his lead.

Arch let out a deep breath. “Todd and I figured out who’s been following me. We tag-teamed our watch at Todd’s house. The car was there, with the guy inside. I used Todd’s telescope to see who it was.” Arch’s brow furrowed above his glasses. “Why would Ted Vikarios be stalking me?”

“Ted Vikarios?” I repeated. I pictured Ted standing, tall and charismatic, at the microphone in the Roundhouse.

“Ted Vikarios?” Tom repeated. “You mean the guy you said gave the long-winded speech at the lunch? Who had the argument with Korman? The one whose wife got ridiculed by the mean women? What’s his background?”

“He’s a former preacher. And a medical doctor.” I recounted the history of Albert and Ted being co– department heads for ob-gyn at Southwest, and how they’d gotten religion. They’d gone their separate ways: the Kerrs to England for seminary and then Qatar for missionary work, the Vikarioses to fame, fortune, and, ultimately, ruin.

“Ruin?” Tom asked.

They’d…had a scandal, I said, with a meaningful look at Tom that said sex.

“Wait,” interjected Arch. “Excuse me, didn’t mean to interrupt. But I’m supposed to call Todd about this birthday party on Saturday. So…does something smell like brownies?”

Tom smiled. “If it looks like chocolate and smells like chocolate, then there’s a pretty good chance that it is chocolate. Thirty minutes’ cooking time. Two hours to cool, if we’re being sticklers. Which we aren’t.”

“Great!” Arch headed toward the kitchen door, his conscience clear, his appetite set. “Call me if you figure out what’s going on!”

“Tom,” I said softly, after Arch was gone. “I may be beginning to see something.” If it looks like a payoff and smells like a payoff, Nan had said, maybe it is a payoff. “Remember I was telling you about the Vikarioses’ ruin?”

He nodded, and I gave him a brief account of the scandal concerning Talitha Vikarios and her out-of-wedlock child by Albert Kerr. The papers had gorged on the fact that Ted Vikarios, a man who made boxed tape sets called Victory over Sin, had a daughter who’d been living in a commune. And then Nan Watkins had told me Talitha was dead.

“If Ted Vikarios and John Richard weren’t arguing about money after the funeral lunch, what were they arguing about?” I wondered aloud. “And most puzzling of all, why would Ted be stalking Arch?”

Tom’s face was understanding as he reached for a squeegee and began scrubbing. “Sometimes if I just rejuggle all the pieces in a homicide, I come up with an answer.”

But the words were not even out of his mouth before I knew. I said, “Albert Kerr had mumps when he was a teenager.”

“And that’s important because…”

I felt so low, all of a sudden. I couldn’t even say the words. The kitchen spun around, and Tom’s soapy hands grabbed me.

“Miss Goldy! What’s wrong?” He eased me into a kitchen chair, then nabbed a cotton towel and filled it with ice. With great gentleness, he held it to my forehead. He whispered, “Don’t try to talk.”

“It’s okay.” In my mind’s eye, I saw the photo of that dear, sweet candy striper as she hugged Arch and held him close. I remembered Talitha Vikarios even better than I had before. She’d been wonderfully attentive, she’d doted on the infant Arch. You’re so lucky, Mrs. Korman! I want to have a family someday, too! If I had a family, I wouldn’t let anything destroy it!

Talitha Vikarios had had one other person she’d adored, though. And she’d been weepy, too, as she held Arch. Inexplicably weepy.

I gazed into Tom’s green eyes. “When a teenage male gets the mumps, it usually renders him sterile. Which explains why Albert and Holly Kerr didn’t have any children. When Talitha Vikarios told her parents that Albert Kerr was the father of her child, she was lying.”

“Whoa. Back up. So Talitha took off to have the child in some commune?”

“Yes. My bet is that when she was discovered by the media, she told what she thought was a white lie. Albert Kerr was far away, and couldn’t be affected. Plus, while the Kerrs were overseas, there would be no way for Ted and Ginger to know that Albert had had the mumps when he was a kid. Holly told me about it when she was reminiscing.”

Tom said, “So Albert Kerr had had the mumps and was sterile. But the Vikarioses, Talitha included, didn’t know. Right? Why would she assign paternity to some guy who was sterile, and out of the country to boot?”

“Maybe I’m doing a quantum leap here, but I think she was protecting me. And Arch. Our family.”

“So…are you saying you think the father of her child was John Richard Korman?”

“I am. I think he seduced her the way he did most pretty young nurses. I think she made the disastrous mistake of falling in love with him. They had an affair, and she got pregnant. She left to have the child, rather than abort.”

“Oh, Miss G.”

And then I moaned. Tom gave me a quizzical look. I said, “Before the Kerr memorial lunch, Ted Vikarios came into the kitchen looking for something. He yelled, ‘Jesus God Almighty!’ and startled us. But he wasn’t calling on a supreme being, Tom. He was looking at Arch.” I clutched the table. “Arch must look a lot like his grandson.”

Tom groaned, but I held up my hand. I was thinking, trying to put it all together…or as much of it as I could guess at.

I went on. “Right then, when Ted saw Arch, I’ll bet he figured it out. No doubt he and Ginger had been puzzling over this for a long time.” I paused. “Let’s say, after the discovery of Talitha’s child, they believed Talitha’s story that Albert was the father. The Kerrs, long gone, probably denied it from afar, in a flurry of correspondence. But let’s say Talitha stuck to her story…and it looks as if she stayed in the Utah commune, too. So the Vikarioses had no relationship with their child or their grandchild, no money because their tape empire had failed, and no more friendship with the Kerrs.”

Tom said, “I’m following you. But how do the Vikarioses end up in a country-club condo in Aspen Meadow?”

I said, “Holly Kerr’s husband was terminally ill with cancer. She’d just inherited millions, but the money couldn’t help her husband. So maybe she forgave the Vikarioses for suspecting Albert. She hated the stories she heard from friends, about how the Vikarioses were suffering. And she wanted to reconcile with them before her husband died. So she started sending them a stipend. The Vikarioses were grateful, but they were still left with the mystery of who had fathered their grandchild and ruined their lives—”

Wait a minute. My kitchen shears had been stolen, and John Richard’s hair had been clipped after he was dead. So Arch thought Ted Vikarios was an old man who wouldn’t harm anybody? Had Ted demanded the truth from John Richard outside the Roundhouse? Had he said, “Are you the man who impregnated my unmarried daughter? Are you the man who ruined our lives?”

I said softly, “Ted Vikarios could have killed the Jerk and then cut a swatch of hair for a paternity test.”

“Now, Goldy, that is reaching—”

“I need to make a call.” I tapped keys to pull up the address book on my computer and scrolled to Priscilla Throckbottom’s number. What do you know, she had given me both her home and cell-phone numbers. It was only half-past eight, so with any luck…

“Priscilla?” I said breathlessly when she answered her cell. “It’s Goldy Schulz.”

“I’m at the country club,” Priscilla announced excitedly. “We’re all still here, all still talking about Courtney