Dark Tort

My mind erupted with worry: Arch. Marla. Sally Routt. Dusty. “I can’t think about this stuff now, Tom, I can’t—”

“I’m telling you, let me take care of Arch being with Gus. Okay, the catering. You’re done for today, ’cause now that it’s after midnight, it’s officially Friday. The cops will close the firm office probably for the weekend. But what about tomorrow, Saturday?”

“Uh, birthday party,” I stammered. “Ellises. It’s for Donald Ellis, a lawyer in the firm.” But that was tomorrow. And as Tom had pointed out, this was today, Friday, just after midnight. And I had all I could handle.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz,” said Britt. “Wrap it up.”

“I…don’t have a way to get home,” I told Tom.

“That’s why I’m coming down, among other reasons.”

“Listen, Tom. Somebody needs to go be with Sally Routt.” Pain cramped my throat as I pictured Dusty’s diminutive, wan, single mother. In her late thirties and taking care of a toddler son and blind father in addition to Dusty, Sally Routt never seemed to be able to do more than keep body, soul, and family together. Sally had been right to be overprotective of her only daughter. Not that it had done much good.

He let out a long breath. “She’s going to be in bad shape, you know.”

“Tom, don’t.”

“Her father was blinded in prison. Her older son died while he was in custody for a DWI. You think she’s going to trust the cops to find out what happened to her daughter?”

The patrol car swung into the sheriff’s department’s mammoth parking lot.

“I can’t deal with this right now,” I whispered.

“Okay. I’ll see you later. Just think, I could have let Arch drive me down to the department. For practice.”

I took a deep breath. Arch was officially fifteen and a half, with a fresh learner’s permit. So far, he had not proved himself adept at driving. But this was cop humor. It was how Tom and his cronies dealt with the dark side, the misery and death, the evil. And they won’t let up. They will spin something for laughs until your hair turns gray and you’ve forgotten what you were thinking about in the first place.

“Whatever.” The patrol car stopped. Britt, his eyes facing forward, turned off the engine and waited for me.

I closed my cell phone. Dizziness gripped my brain. Without warning, jokes, humor, laughter, hysteria—all these bubbled simultaneously inside my brain. Stop it, I ordered myself as I got out of the car. But my inner ear registered the Hanrahan & Jule attorneys cackling over the gin-laced espresso. I blinked and heard Tom and his department buddies howling when the coroner poked fun at the uninitiated who thought autopsy was a kind of car, artery the study of pictures.

I walked slowly across the paved lot, trying to keep my balance as Britt led the way to the massive steel double door. A blast of warm, metallic air rushed out of the department entrance. I felt like hell.

After I was seated in one of the department’s interrogation rooms, my head began to throb, and I belatedly realized that even though it was the middle of the night, I was probably going through caffeine withdrawal. Britt reluctantly agreed to get me some java.

I assessed Britt when he came back through the door holding a thin cardboard tray with two foam cups. He was thirty, I guessed, since most cops didn’t make detective until then. Still, with his baby face, dark hair, and perpetually puzzled expression, he looked younger.

“Okay, Mrs. Schulz. How did you come to work in that law office? Don’t leave out any details, okay?”

I sipped some life-giving caffeine. Then I began to talk.

From the beginning of July until tonight, I told Britt, I’d been making and serving breakfasts to the early arrivals at Hanrahan & Jule, one of the three law offices in Aspen Meadow. As catering jobs went, I continued, this was a relatively high-stress assignment, not least because I’d never catered to so many talkative, joking, obsessed-with-work folks before. Ordinarily, I’d get there at five every morning, and within an hour, the place would be buzzing. But not on Thursdays. Thursdays I came in at night, since Richard scheduled breakfast meetings with clients on Friday mornings.

There was a knock on the door. A uniformed officer poked his head through and told Britt he was needed elsewhere, but not for long.

“Keep that thought,” Britt ordered, before whisking away.

But I was temporarily incapable of holding any thought. I sipped more coffee and allowed the memories to surface.

By the beginning of October, I’d become worn out from the H&J job, although I’d been trying to convince myself that I wasn’t. Every morning, after moving through my yoga routine and getting dressed, I’d give myself a pep talk in our bathroom mirror. A slightly plump, slightly weathered early-thirties face, with brown eyes and unfashionable Shirley Temple–blond curls, would stare back. Admit it, I’d say to myself, you’re not quite ready for the lawyers today. But I’d button up my white caterer’s shirt anyway. I’d bustle containers of eggs whisked with cream and fresh herbs, applewood-smoked bacon, breakfast sausage, fresh-squeezed orange juice, fragrant homemade bread, and sliced fruit out to my van. And I’d tell myself to buck up, drink a latte, and pull myself together.

Besides that, I’d reassure myself, I wasn’t alone. The lawyers of H&J also catered. Unlike yours truly, though, these guys were paid extremely well to work at coddling extremely wealthy clients. Here we shared another trait, as I’d often experienced the crankiness of well-moneyed people. Rich folks’ quirks and caprices often cost caterers time, money, and endless aggravation. But unlike the attorneys, I wasn’t paid by the hour. And every whim an enraged H&J client wanted dealt with in the next twenty-four hours meant Billables, baby! Billables, aka hours billable to the client, were what the guys lived for, what they assured one another they were generating tons of as they scarfed down Cuban sandwiches I sometimes brought in at suppertime, long after a CEO with a trophy wife or a silk-suited octogenarian had huffed out of the office.

“I want to cut my children out of my will” was a frequent threat.

“I’m bequeathing everything to the new Anglican mission” was another one. “I don’t ever want to be hugged in church again.”

“My niece hasn’t written to me in two years, Goldy. Who do you think I should give my pearls to?”

Aw, give ’em to your niece anyway, I wanted to say as I pressed focaccia loaded with garlic-infused pork between the metal plates of my indoor grill. But as the attorneys were so very fond of saying, “What you pay for the advice is what it’s worth.” Unfortunately, any counsel doled out by yours truly wasn’t worth a grain of my favorite hand-harvested sea salt.

I’d been referred to H&J in June by a criminal attorney named Brewster Motley. Unlike his not-a-hair- out-of-place colleagues, Brewster was well tanned and laid back. He’d warned me, though. “Listen up, Goldy,” he’d said as he ran his hands through his mop of blond hair. “H&J lawyers do mostly estate law, but they’re still uptight as hell. Watch your kitchen equipment, okay? Ditto the food. I don’t need to act nuts to relieve stress, but they do. You don’t want to be serving cheesecake flavored with soy sauce. Okay? Be cool.” He’d pointed his thumbs heavenward, which in Brewsterese meant anything from “Stay calm” to “Surf’s up.” Anyway, Brewster had helped me out of a jam recently, when I’d desperately needed help. When he’d referred me to H&J, I’d felt obligated —but also grateful—to take on the firm as a client. How hard could it be to make early breakfasts, cater occasional meetings, and be on call to deliver a tray of sandwiches at six in the evening, every now and then? Wouldn’t the hungry attorneys and assorted staff be supergrateful for my proffered goodies?

Sometimes I’m amazed I have any naivete left.

In any event, I’d become their caterer. At the beginning of September, Dusty Routt, our pretty, enthusiastic neighbor, had asked me to teach her to cook. Because of her class and work schedule, we met every Thursday night at ten in H&J’s beautifully outfitted kitchen, to plan and prep Richard’s Friday-morning meetings. We would chat, roast rashers of bacon so that they would just need a quick heating in the microwave, mix up bread to rise overnight, cut creamy chevre into dot-sized bites, check for jams and preserves, count croissants and slices of prosciutto…I’d enjoyed Dusty’s company, and I’d taught her to flip omelettes with the best of them.

So.