Dark Tort

could hear Tom’s voice inside my head: You have no shame. As delicately as possible, I said, “It’s possible that the person who mowed down your cousin killed my young friend.”

Grace’s voice turned mildly sarcastic. “Then surely the police should be coming to visit me.”

Don’t call me Shirley, my brain mocked, but I said only, “It’s more a hunch of mine. The cops in Furman County are very shorthanded—well, not really—”

“So they’ve asked a young married caterer to help them with their case? What does your son say?”

“My son?” I asked, bewildered. Maybe this woman didn’t work for the CIA, but who was she, Daughter of Sherlock Holmes? “You know I’m a caterer? Married? With a kid? How?”

Grace Mannheim laughed. “I’m a walker, as I told you. You called and asked if you could see me, and I said yes. But I’d already finished my P.M. constitutional, and I just kept walking until you arrived. I came up behind your van. I know every vehicle on this street, and ‘Goldilocks’ Catering, Where Everything Is Just Right’ is not one of them. You wear a wedding ring, and your van has two bumper stickers: ‘My Son Is an Honor Student at CBHS.’ That’s the proud mama’s sticker. The other one? ‘Give Blood, Play Lacrosse!’ I would venture that one is your son’s. How am I doing so far?”

“You should be investigating the death of Dusty Routt, not me.”

“Ah, so your neighbor was Dusty Routt, a member of your church? And you’re an Episcopalian, too?”

“You’re going to have to show me where you keep that crystal ball of yours,” I said, with true admiration.

She smiled, pleased. “I play Colorado Women’s Senior Softball with Meg Blatchford. I also give to Habitat for Humanity, and Meg has told me about the family, the Routts, that St. Luke’s helped support through that program. I don’t know them, though. I am sorry your young friend is the victim in this case.”

“Sounds as if the Furman County Sheriff’s Department could use your help, though.”

“The Boulder Police Department could use my help,” she said, her voice taking on that withering sarcasm again.

Let’s not go there, I thought, and then was thankful that my cell phone started ringing. Grace waved that I should go ahead. It was Julian.

“Are you coming to get me, boss? Or should I take the bus to Aspen Meadow? I might get there sooner.”

“Sorry, sorry, I’ll be there.”

“So did the lady help?”

“Yeah, she’s great. We’re almost done.”

“I’m getting old here.”

“Ten minutes.”

Julian groaned.

“Well, someone wants you,” Grace said. “I’m afraid I haven’t been very helpful.”

“Actually, your cousin might have known that young man who just called. His name is Julian, and he’s an Episcopalian from Utah, too. Sorry, maybe not. I know it’s a big state. A very big state. But not with too many Episcopalians, right? Anyway, Julian was involved in the church there, in Bluff.”

Grace brightened again. “Is he Navajo?”

“No, but he spent a lot of time with them when he was growing up. Much to our son’s amazement, Julian can speak Navajo, too, the way the code talkers did in the Pacific during World War Two.”

“Goodness me.”

Neither one of us moved. Grace seemed to share my disappointment at not being able to give me more substantial information.

Finally I said, “There isn’t anyone up here, or in Utah, who would know more about what your cousin was doing in Boulder, so far away from home?”

Grace’s head made a quick shake. “Believe me, I wanted to know. She hadn’t told me, which was frustrating, and when she was killed, I went down to southern Utah, where she lived. Of course, I had to sell her house and dispose of her effects, but I also wanted to see if there was anyone who could shed light on the purpose of her trip. There was only one woman at St. Stephen’s who seemed to know something, but when I pressed her on it, she said, ‘I’m not allowed to talk about it.’”

“Talk about what?”

“That’s what’s so frustrating; I don’t know. There was no journal, no diary, there were no notes, nothing that Althea had left that would indicate why she would think she had to go to an art show to make sure right was done.”

I pulled a pad from my purse. “Could you give me that woman’s name? It’s a long shot, but my husband is a homicide investigator with Furman County, and he might be able to get the cops down there to ask her a few questions.”

“Frederica Tuller.” It was the first time I’d heard any bitterness in Grace’s voice.

I exhaled heavily. “You went through all your cousin’s stuff.” It was more a statement than a question, but I was just making sure.

Grace canted her head to one side. “She’d specified that all of her clothing be donated. I went through every pocket. She gave me her small amount of furniture. I checked every drawer. There was nothing.”

Dammit to hell, indeed.

“When I got back home, her suitcase was still here. That’s the one thing I didn’t donate. I gave the clothes away and threw out most of the odds and ends—you know, tissues, candy.”

Still feeling dispirited, I did manage to say “Most?”

Grace’s smile was wan. “My cousin loved magazines. There were five of them in her suitcase, can you imagine? I told her she’d rupture a disk in her back carrying such a heavy load, and she told me she liked having reading material on trips, even if I disapproved. I told her I didn’t disapprove, but I pointed out that she hardly ever traveled, and these days, you can get Woman’s Day and Family Circle almost everywhere. That’s when she said I should mind my own business. But she said it in a nice way. That was the way she was. She said I could throw her reading material away as soon as she was done with it; she’d just buy more at the airport. She knows—she knew—I’m not a pack rat. Far from it, I like clear spaces.” Grace sighed. “Really, though, I haven’t had the heart to throw those magazines away.”

My cell rang again: the caller ID said it was Julian. I threw the phone back in my purse.

Grace frowned. “Your young man is impatient. Shall I get you the magazines? You can take them home if you want. In fact, you can toss them—”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” I interrupted, although I couldn’t imagine how women’s magazines would help the investigation. “Thank you. I’ll mail them back to you, I promise.”

She disappeared, and I considered calling Julian and bawling him out. But a moment later, Grace pushed through her screen door holding an old grocery bag. “Thank you for being willing to send them back. I don’t think of myself as sentimental, but I guess I am.”

I stood up and took the bag. Then I hugged her. It was the second time that day that I’d embraced someone who’d lost a beloved relative, and I didn’t particularly like the way it made me feel.

Once I was back in my van, my cell phone began ringing again. What was with Julian, anyway? We had no catering events that night, we weren’t going into H&J in the morning, and we would have plenty of time to prep the food for the next night’s dinner when we got home. I resolved to give him a good ribbing as soon as I picked him up.

Feeling perverse, I reached into Grace Mannheim’s grocery sack and pulled out her cousin’s magazines. Family Circle. Oprah. People. Woman’s Day. And The Living Church, the national magazine of the Episcopal Church. I held each one up and shook it, but no paper with Althea’s reason for attending Charlie Baker’s last show fluttered out. Feeling desperate, I looked for dog-eared pages, too, and in the first four, there were none.

The Living Church did have a dog-eared article, however, and I flipped to it and began to read.

My cell phone began its incessant ringing again. But I didn’t answer it. I couldn’t. I thought my heart had