Dark Tort

Otto in our class, and he was gay.” He thought for a minute. “I don’t know any guys our age in town with a first or last name beginning with O.” He pulled out his cell. “Let me phone a friend who went to Elk Park Prep.”

Meanwhile, I put a call in to Wink Calhoun, who so far, hadn’t seemed to know very much about her best friend. After I identified myself, I asked, “Do you know of a Mr. O. whom Dusty might have been involved with?”

“Mr. O.? Um…no. Wait. Donald Ellis has a client named Rock Ode, if you can believe it. He’s gorgeous, very flirtatious, but also recently married. Dusty and I called him Rock ’n Roll.”

“Do you think Rock ’n Roll and Dusty might have had something going besides flirting and working?”

“Goldy. Rock ’n Roll’s just married a model.”

As if that answered everything, I thought, smiling. I’d catered for a fashion photographer a while back, and the models had been the least scintillating conversationalists I’d ever met. “Look,” I said, beginning to feel anxious about the upcoming party, “could you just think about it? When will I see you again?”

“I’m coming to Gus’s christening. If I think of anything, I promise to tell you.”

I gnawed at the inside of my cheek. “How about if we do it both ways. If I think of anything, I’ll call you, too.”

“Whatever you want.”

I thanked her and nipped back into the kitchen to work on the boxes. Julian, still on his cell, wrote me a note saying he’d called two friends who hadn’t gone to Elk Park Prep, but instead had graduated from Aspen Meadow High School. No O. His tone at the moment was compassionate. He scribbled, “Now I’m on with Sally Routt.”

“Just a couple of quick questions,” he murmured. “No, no, we’re just trying to clarify one thing.” Hearing this, I grabbed his note to me and wrote, “Ask her if she knows whether Charlie Baker gave Dusty something, and if so, what?” He posed the question, furrowed his brow, and waited. Then he thanked her for her help and came back out to the kitchen.

“There were four guys with first or last names beginning with O in the last three years at Elk Park Prep,” he announced. “One was the Otto I told you about. The other three were O’Meara, O’Laughlin, and Orck. O’Meara died in a car accident last year. O’Laughlin’s in the army serving in Germany. His wife and two-year-old twins are with him. And she didn’t know what happened to Orck, but she thinks he moved to California.”

I closed the flaps on the box with the cake. “Maybe this O-guy is someone she met in paralegal school.”

“That’s why I called Sally Routt. She’s never heard of anyone with a first or last name beginning with O. It took her a few minutes, but she went to check the photograph of Dusty’s first-year night class at Mile-High Paralegal Institute. No Os in there. Sally says Dusty met Vic at paralegal school. He dropped out because it was too boring, he said. So he’s trying to make it again as a musician. Also, Sally doesn’t know of a single thing that Charlie Baker gave to Dusty.”

So there’d been no one at Elk Park Prep or Aspen Meadow High School with a first or last name beginning with O. There was no one at Dusty’s paralegal school or at Hanrahan & Jule with last names beginning with O. There was only a flirtatious, wealthy, married H&J client named Rock Ode, which sounded like the title of a compact disc. Great.

But oh my, Dusty was dying to cook for this person. She was in love. Her life had started over, she was a changed woman! If Dusty had acquired a new boyfriend, especially one who was hungry for gourmet meals, and rich enough to afford an expensive jeweled bracelet, wouldn’t she have told somebody?

Maybe she was planning on telling me, and then she was killed.

Which left me with a question: Who in the world was this New O.?

CHAPTER 12

I gathered the papers together quickly, as Julian and I needed to hustle if we were going to have time to visit with Meg Blatchford. Since we were going in the Rover, and that was an SUV, another SUV thought flitted across my mind: What if I was wrong to suspect Vic had concocted the story of almost being mowed down by an SUV? After all, there had been that honking horn, and Vic did seem genuinely shaken up, and worried that the computer had been damaged. What if the person who’d killed Dusty had been watching the Routts’ house last night and had seen Vic coming out with the computer? Thinking the machine might contain incriminating information, had this watcher tried to run over Vic and his load so as to destroy any electronically stored data?

I dismissed this idea as paranoid. Then again, some folks say paranoids, like pessimists, are realists.

I pressed my fingers to my temples to forestall a headache. If such a theory was even marginally true, could that errant driver now think we had the computer? Had he seen Tom go out with it? I reminded myself to turn on the security system before Julian and I left. Then I clipped together the printed-out papers from Dusty’s computer and shoved them under the skirt of our living-room couch. Once we were out on the street, I’d see if any of the parked vehicles looked unfamiliar.

Julian had transported all but two of our boxes out to his Rover. I put on my parka and boots, and with a last heave-ho, Julian and I picked up our big cartons and pushed through the back door.

Outside, I was momentarily blinded by sunshine reflecting off the snow. Blinking, I reshifted my box and tried to bring the deck into focus, because I most decidedly did not want to catapult down the steps and send fifteen pounds of cake, frosting, plates, and candles skittering across our backyard. Each piece of our deck furniture, I saw, bore a thick white cap. I’d forgotten all about my poor geraniums; they were probably done for. Oh, well. I had bigger problems. Much bigger.

I put my box down on the picnic table and pressed the buttons to set the security system. Any intrusion would summon the security company, Tom, and Tom’s .38.

Turning toward the garage, I shifted my box again and glanced overhead. Caterers always worry about the weather: Will there be trouble getting to the event? Will people arrive late and screw up the food-serving schedule? If the driveway is slippery with snow, will either Julian or I slip and break an ankle while retrieving the boxes from the Rover? I prayed that the Ellises would have an empty bay in their garage that we could use.

Shiny white clouds sporting gray underbellies raced across the sky from west to east. As soon as a nimbus obscured the sun, the light quickly went from bright to dark. It didn’t look as if more precipitation was imminent. Still, we’d received enough snow that mud could be a problem. All around our backyard, pine and aspen trees were heavily laden with the white stuff. Explosive thumps signaled loads of snow sliding off branches and landing on the ground. In many ways, it was a typical autumn day in the high country. “Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness”? As Arch would say, I don’t think so.

Julian and I stomped through the snow toward the Rover, which he had turned on to warm up. When I stopped to rest—I was still suffering from a sleep deficit the size of the national debt—I could hear brave song from the few remaining birds. Well, I consoled myself, at least it wasn’t winter yet. Not technically, anyway.

When Julian eased the Rover to the end of our driveway, I looked up and down the street. Unfortunately, every single vehicle bore a thick hat of snow, making the cars unrecognizable. But nothing looked suspicious, and I couldn’t imagine that any wannabe hit-and-run driver would have spent the entire nineteen-degree night parked by our curb, waiting for something to happen. At least, I hoped not.

The roads were treacherous, with a thick mixture of ice and slush plastering the pavement. As we headed up Main Street toward the lake, I was glad we were in the Rover. Furman County’s gargantuan plows had swept the snow into a mountain range of mire bordering the sidewalk through town. Shop owners, eager to entice customers driven inside by the storm, were out brushing new white hats off their jack-o’-lanterns, giant black felt spiders, and witches.

Two of the merchants had thrown in the towel on Halloween. Instead, they’d hastily festooned their storefronts with garlands of twinkling red and green lights and signs announcing the numbers of days and weeks left until Christmas, a holiday Dusty Routt would not see. I sighed. But then the SUV in front of us skidded sideways on the uphill approach to the lake. Julian, who had allowed plenty of room for such an eventuality, gently pressed the brakes.

I was tempted to holler at the SUV driver. Apparently he hadn’t heard, or didn’t care to know, what longtime Coloradans knew well: four-wheel drive helps you go in snow, but it does not help you go,