Double Shot

second soup kitchen. The church is hoping that, in time, people won’t remember what kind of establishment it once was. I wish them well.

Blackridge and Reilly asked why I thought Sandee killed her mother. Because, I said, the mother had failed to protect her daughter. Cecilia Brisbane, who was observant when it came to the faults of those around her, was blind when it came to her husband. She was deaf to the needs of her own daughter, and now both Brisbane parents were dead. Walter had done the irreparable damage, which had been compounded by Cecelia’s complicity.

And then, when Alexandra Brisbane was what—thirteen? fourteen?—John Richard Korman had raped her in a Southwest Hospital room. Nan Watkins had cleaned Sandee up and kept her own mouth shut. The detectives asked, Had Albert Kerr known what John Richard had done to Sandee? Had Ted Vikarios? I countered with, Would they have moved to punish John Richard if they had? I didn’t know, but I doubted it. The only time John Richard’s bad behavior had come home to roost for the Vikarioses was when the Jerk had impregnated their daughter, Talitha Vikarios. And she had left rather than abort the child or have our family embarrassed.

And so the reason for the double murder was—? Blackridge and Reilly asked.

I believed that Alexandra—Sandee with two e s—had not been able to tell her mother directly what Dr. Korman had done. Why would she? Her mother had not believed her before.

So Sandee had gotten out. She’d changed her name, dyed her hair, become a stripper, and saved up enough money for plastic surgery. Sometime before her surgeries, she’d made a trip to Nashville. Here I am, Mom! As Arch would say, Not. And yet Sandee had been the same person inside, with the same pain. Maybe she’d tried confronting her father with that pay-phone call. Rather than face the truth, he had killed himself. What was left of the people who’d failed Sandee?

Well, there was that doctor who had raped her. She’d tried to get her own mother to talk about the Jerk’s misdeeds in the Mountain Journal. But that hadn’t worked. Cecelia had felt…what? Fear? Suspicion as to who had written her an anonymous letter alleging that a longtime Aspen Meadow doctor had raped a teenage patient? In any event, Cecelia had done nothing except mail the note to me.

So Sandee had put all her energy into planning the murder of John Richard Korman. According to Lana, who was working on a plea deal, Sandee had encouraged her to hire John Richard to run the Smurfs, who laundered all that cash that came in to the Rainbow. Sandee had known that John Richard would take advantage, that he wouldn’t be able to resist skimming. As the cops say, “People don’t change. They just get better camouflage.”

You think you know people, and sometimes you do.

John Richard was unable to resist Sandee’s seductiveness. Courtney MacEwan couldn’t possibly compete with Sandee’s years as a stripper. Sandee was good. Most important, she hadn’t forgotten what had happened to her.

She’d had a month to put her plan into action. She’d gathered the materials that would point to other people, acting ditzy the whole time, so we wouldn’t suspect she was up to anything.

Does your mom protect herself? she’d asked Arch. Ooh, a revolver? Where does she keep it?

Where does that pretty Courtney MacEwan keep those pink tennis balls? she’d asked at the tennis shop, during one of her long waits at the golf shop. Ooh, may I see one of those cans?

At Albert Kerr’s memorial lunch, when Ted Vikarios had seen Arch in the kitchen, he’d known immediately that the Jerk was the father of his grandson. The resemblance between the two boys was just too strong. Even I had thought Gus was Arch. So Ted had confronted John Richard in the parking lot, probably just as Sandee was coming back with my thirty-eight tucked in her bag. Aha, she’d thought, one more person to blame this on! She hadn’t had anything of Ted’s to plant at the scene, but she knew what the argument was about: a child whom John Richard had supposedly fathered. So at the last minute, she’d said something like, “Just a minute, honey,” and run back to my van for one more thing: my kitchen shears to cut off a chunk of John Richard’s hair, and make it look as if someone might do a postmortem DNA test.

Maybe it was that argument, the one between Ted and John Richard, that had made Sandee think, Now I have enough suspects. Ginger and Ted Vikarios seemed to be furious with John Richard. In addition to the clipped hair, Sandee could leave pearls that looked like Ginger’s. And of course the very publicly jealous Courtney MacEwan was well known for those pink tennis balls.

And if all else failed, John Richard had a despised ex-wife who owned a gun, easily stolen.

And your theory on the death of Cecelia Brisbane? Reilly asked.

After all that, going over to Cecelia’s house, strangling her, running her car into the creek, all these would have been easy, almost an afterthought. Thanks for nothing, Mom.

What none of this explained, I told them, was the attack on me at the conference center the morning this whole thing had started. I believed I could rule out the Jerk.

There was only one person left: Courtney MacEwan, whose life I had ruined, she claimed. But I hadn’t been to blame for that. As usual, though, John Richard had been as unwilling as ever to take responsibility for his own desires. He’d wanted freedom to live on his own and do what he wanted. So he’d convinced Courtney, I firmly believed, that I was responsible for their breakup. And so she’d hired someone. Marla had even seen her paying him, although I couldn’t prove anything.

Courtney had seen Roger Mannis stalking my events, yelling at me about infractions. It bothered me that I couldn’t say without a doubt that Roger Mannis had messed up my food and attacked me. And yet he knew about the math of spoilage and how to turn off compressors that most people would just ignore. His skinny Uriah Heep body shape certainly matched the one of the person who’d shoved me out of the way and chopped the back of my neck.

What could I do about this? I couldn’t get him fired on a hunch. With John Richard gone, would Roger Mannis become the new jerk in my life? Sort of like Moriarty, running through all of Sherlock Holmes’s adventures as the impersonation of evil?

Courtney and Roger weren’t talking, but that wasn’t the end of it. The next time I catered and Roger Mannis showed up to bother me, I was calling the cops. And I had a new gig coming up: A friend of Brewster Motley had tasted my food and wanted me to come into their law offices to prepare breakfast and lunch. I wasn’t going to worry about Roger Mannis now; I was going to prepare for him. He wasn’t going to hurt me again and get away with it.

And then, after all that, good began to happen.

The day after Sandee Brisbane ran into the fire, I called Ginger Vikarios and told her what I suspected about John Richard being the father of their grandson. Let’s get our boys together, I’d said. Ginger had burst into tears. Fourteen-year-old Augustus Vikarios—Gus—would love to have a brother.

Along with her last will and testament, Talitha Vikarios had left her parents a separate set of instructions. It said that if Goldy Korman ever came into their lives and wanted to see Gus, it was okay, as long as she received the enclosed letter. When I visited Ginger Vikarios that same afternoon, she gave me it to me, along with heart- wrenching photos of Talitha with her little boy, who looked just like Arch, from infant to teenager.

Then, finally, I read Talitha’s letter to me.

Dear Goldy,If you ever do get this letter, it means that I died…not a pleasant thought! But you should know that my Gus and your Arch are half brothers. I don’t imagine they look alike, but maybe they do. Anyway, I didn’t tell anybody that Dr. Korman and I had an affair. I thought I was in love, but never mind. He wasn’t. And the main thing is, I wanted you and Dr. Korman and Arch to be a happy family without me, and without Gus.Oh, Goldy, please understand that I wanted my disappearance to be a gift to you. When I heard you were divorced, I wrote this letter and included it with my will, to be opened only if you somehow found out about Gus. I don’t want him to be a burden to you. I just want him to have a family besides my parents, whose career in the church was ruined by his appearance.I tried to do the right thing, a lot of right things, really, and I’m not sure any of them turned out right. But I have a great boy, and I hope you can find it in your heart to love him.Talitha Vikarios

In-Your-Face Strawberry Pie (I)