Double Shot

MacEwan’s arrest!”

“Courtney was arrested?”

“I saw the police come myself. We all did! They took her away!”

“In handcuffs, Priscilla? Did they read her her rights? Or did she just agree to go in for questioning—”

Priscilla’s tone changed. “Is this why you’re calling me when I’m entertaining friends at the country club?” Clearly, she wasn’t going to allow someone, especially a caterer, to water down her story. “You called to ask questions about Courtney MacEwan? Or do you have something else on your mind?”

I took a deep breath, and smelled smoke. It was sweet, and it was…billowing out of our oven. “Just a sec, Priscilla!” I put down the phone and looked around wildly for pot holders. When I pulled out the pie, it was a steaming, gurgling mess. Hot strawberry goo dripped relentlessly from the pie-plate rim. A quart of red lava had already bubbled onto the bottom of the oven, where it was blackening into a smoking island. Tom grabbed his own pair of pot holders and helped me ease the pie onto a rack.

“Goldy?” Priscilla’s voice called from the counter.

“Coming, coming!” I called. I’d made dozens of fruit pies. What had I done wrong?

“Goldy! I’m a busy woman, you know!”

Tom waved for me to return to the phone.

“Sorry about that, Priscilla. Ah…remember this morning, when you and the committee were talking about the Vikarioses?”

“I don’t remember. Is this going to take long?”

“Priscilla,” I stage-whispered, “I could keep you posted on Courtney’s status.” Tom stopped wiping up the mess and rolled his eyes to the ceiling. “What the charges are, who her lawyer is, that kind of thing.”

“Well, then.” I could hear Priscilla salivating through the phone line. “All right, Goldy, so. What were you wondering about the Vikarioses?”

“Remember when the committee was discussing their daughter? The one with the child? I, uh, heard she died. The Vikarioses’ daughter, that is.”

“She did,” Priscilla replied crisply. “Talitha. Last month, in Moab, Utah. A truck accident, was the story I got. Somebody cut off a pickup, which then swerved into the oncoming lane and hit Talitha.”

“Do you…know what happened to the child? Talitha’s child, that is?”

Priscilla snorted. “Ted and Ginger are taking care of the boy. He was hurt in the accident, and he doesn’t have any other family, of course. I think it’s a terrible idea. They’re too old to have children.” She inhaled. “Is that all, Goldy?”

“Um, yes. Thank you.”

She lowered her voice. “When will you know about Courtney? One of the women here said Courtney precipitated her husband’s heart attack by making sure he was having sex with that flight attendant before she stalked into their bedroom and surprised them. That’s how she ended up inheriting all that money that she lavished on your worthless ex-husband.”

I smiled in spite of myself. With Courtney, or with John Richard, nothing surprised me. “As soon as I know anything, I’ll call you.”

“By the way, I’m doing the flowers for your ex-husband’s memorial service. That’s one thing the garden club can’t take away from me. That, and the planting we’ll be doing up in the preserve, if they can ever manage to put out the fire! Did you hear they think some hikers are trapped back there?”

I told her that I had not heard that, then signed off. I asked Tom if he had picked up on a story about the blaze threatening some hikers in the preserve. He cocked a bushy eyebrow and replied that this sounded like more horse manure from Priscilla Throckbottom. Meanwhile, bless him, he had cleaned up the entire pie mess. His brownies had managed to bake alongside the strawberry volcano and were now cooling as he sliced his super-sub sandwich. Arch, sensing that a meal was imminent, had slipped back into the kitchen. To my astonishment, he washed his hands and began setting the table without being asked. The next time I got a big tip, it was going to Arch.

Arch pushed his glasses up his nose, peered around, and sniffed. “Did something burn?”

“It’s okay, hon,” I said.

“Good, ’cuz I’m starving.”

But I wasn’t. In fact, I was desperate to do something else altogether.

“Guys,” I said to Tom and Arch, “I want to go over to the Vikarioses. Now.”

It was the second time that evening that Tom laughed. “Forget it!”

“Mom,” Arch pleaded, “I’m so hungry.”

“Eat,” Tom urged Arch. “Your mother’s hallucinating and will snap out of it soon.”

“Tom, I want to go and I want to go now. If you aren’t going to come with me, then I’m going alone.”

“What happened to your promise not to go into dangerous situations?”

“You can come. And bring a gun.”

Tom put down the knife, then leaned forward on his knuckles. “I’d like to keep my job, thanks. You want, I’ll call the department and Blackridge and Reilly can go over there tomorrow.” When Arch shuffled into the walk-in in search of lemonade, Tom whispered to me, “And anyway, what would you say to Ted Vikarios once you got there?” He brought his voice up an octave to mimic mine. “Ted, did you kill my ex-husband? Could you please wait here while I call the cops?”

“No,” I said calmly. “I’d say we were grieving and we needed pastoral care. We heard he was a pastor, and we’d like to come in and talk.”

“Who is we, white woman?”

Arch had returned and was munching on a large wedge of sandwich. “If you guys go, ask Mr. Vikarios why he’s been following me.”

I chewed the inside of my cheek. I wouldn’t feel comfortable leaving Arch home alone if Tom and I both went. But I truly had no idea what we might be encountering at the Vikarios condo. I wavered. Maybe this idea really was foolhardy.

“All right, all right,” Tom said, his voice resigned. “Let me go call Boyd. I’ll ask him to come here and stay with Arch.”

Thirty minutes later, with Boyd and Arch scooping out vanilla ice cream to make enormous brownies a la mode, I followed Tom to his sedan. My husband was wearing a brown corduroy jacket, which I hoped concealed a shoulder holster, and he was holding a pair of high-powered binoculars. Once we were buckled in, Tom said, “We are not getting out of this car when we get there. I’m parking up on the road and then the two of us are going to see if we can spot anything suspicious. Then we’ll make a decision.” He held up his key chain. “We’re not going anywhere until you promise not to go crazy on me.”

“I promise.” Sheesh! “Before you can say tiddlywinks, we’ll be back home digging into your sandwich.”

We chugged down toward Main Street. Tom said, “I’d rather be back home, thank you very much. On such a beautiful night, I’d rather be working with and devouring food—thank you very much. This very minute, you and Arch and I could be eating that sandwich on our deck, by the light of the pearly moon, instead of traipsing around on a wild-goose chase—”

At the light on Main Street—there was only one, so locals just referred to it as “the light”—Tom eased the sedan to a stop. I turned to him.

“What did you say, Tom?”

“Goose chase. Eat outside. Deck. All of the above.”

“Be serious for a second. Something about the pearly moon.”

The light turned green; Tom accelerated. “All right then. How’s ghostly moon?”

I was reaching for a memory. I’d seen something. Something as luminous as a ghost. Something that hadn’t belonged where I’d seen it.

“The Vikarioses don’t live far from John Richard’s rental. Could you just swing by there?” I begged. “I think I dropped something. In the street, not at the house.”

Tom shook his head. “It’s a good thing I’m crazy about you, Miss G. Then again, maybe I’m just plain crazy.”

The moonlight cast a pale light over the granite-and-moss rock pillars flanking the entryway to the country-