Fatally Flaky

he’d written ‘Gold.’ Lucas thought Jack wanted him to summon Goldy. But Jack never, ever called me Goldy. He called me Gertie Girl.”

“And what do you think he meant?”

My shoulders slumped. “I haven’t figured that out. Something gold in his house?”

“Did he give you keys to get into his house?” Tom raised one eyebrow at me. “So you could go in there and get what ever it was?”

“I don’t know why he wanted me to have an extra set of keys. I already had a set of keys to his house.”

“You’d better hand over those keys he gave you, Goldy.” He held out his palm expectantly.

Tears streamed down my cheeks. “He didn’t want anybody else to have these keys. He wanted me to have them. Don’t make me give them up, Tom. Please.”

“Don’t use either set to go into his house, Goldy. If he died as a result of this attack on him, then it’s felony murder, and we’ll be going through every inch of that house.” He paused. “Somebody broke into Finn’s house after he was killed.”

“Oh, no.”

Tom said, “Oh, yes. We don’t know what was taken, if anything. But at this point, please, please don’t screw things up for us. I’m begging you.”

“I won’t,” I promised.

Tom groaned, then looked back at the note. “What do you suppose he meant by Fin? Talking about his pal, Doc Finn?”

“I don’t know. You know, sometimes you see that at the end of French movies. Fin. It means the end. Maybe he had a premonition he was going to die.”

“You ever know Jack to go to a French film, read all those irritating subtitles? I sure didn’t. And anyway, I think if he meant End, then that’s what he would have written.”

“Maybe. Except he was pretty out of it at the hospital.”

“Out of it enough to misspell his best friend’s name?”

Tom’s cell phone buzzed, and he answered it. Meanwhile, I stared at the cryptic note my secrecy-oriented godfather had left for me. “Gold. Keys. Fin.” I had no idea what Jack had been trying to say.

“I’ve got to go back down to the department,” Tom said. He gave me a worried look. “Let me get Trudy over here to be with you.”

“Gosh, what am I, an invalid? First Father Pete, now you. I’ll be fine.” I glanced at the clock: 7:40. “How about this? I’ll go to church and help Marla with some stuff she’s doing for Father Pete. Finding letters either to or from the diocese, I’m not sure which.”

Tom appeared unconvinced.

“I’ll be fine, Tom,” I assured him.

“Church.” He waggled a warning index finger in my direction.

“Church!” I replied. “For crying out loud, give me a little credit!”

He eyed me skeptically. “Yeah, yeah. I don’t give you too little credit, Miss G. I give you too much credit.”

Once I’d heard Tom’s Chrysler rumble away, I went upstairs, pulled out the set of keys I’d taken from Jack’s jacket in the hospital, and stuffed them into my sweatpants pocket. I slammed my pajama drawer with such violence that it startled me.

Cool it, I said to myself.

All right. I needed to think, and to cook. These would help me grieve, not sitting around crying. In any event, going to St. Luke’s was the very last thing I wanted to do, of that I was sure.

18

In the kitchen, I located my recipe for coeur a la creme. I’d had to give the one I’d made earlier for Tom to Marla for her shindig, so I needed to make another one. No, I thought after a moment. I’d make another coeur, and then…a plain old cream pie for someone else I’d suddenly decided to see. I sighed, then told myself to get going.

The walk-in offered up mascarpone and whipping cream, and the pantry held confectioners’ sugar and imported Mexican vanilla. I beat the cheese, sugar, and vanilla to a smooth, delectable mass, then set it aside and whipped the cream. I lined a sieve with cheesecloth, set it over a bowl, folded the two mixtures together, and scraped half of this concoction into the cloth-lined sieve. After I’d placed one of these into the refrigerator to drain, I put the second mixture—the one for the cream pie—into a separate bowl. Then I located fresh berries of all varieties. These would go on top.

I wanted to offer the cream pie as an attempt to elicit information.

I hoped offering the coeur to Tom would allow him to forgive me for doing stuff behind his back as I tried to figure out what in the hell had happened to my godfather.

And, I added mentally, I wanted to find out what had happened to my godfather’s best friend, Doc Finn. Because now the two deaths, one definitely a murder and the other a death possibly as the result of an attack, seemed more and more inextricably linked.

I made myself a quadruple espresso for a heavy-duty Summertime Special. Then I went out to the living room to think. I unfolded Jack’s note. “Gold. Keys. Fin.” Jack’s clutch of keys jangled as I dropped them onto the table.

As I’d told Tom, it was extremely doubtful that Jack had meant to summon me to the hospital when he had written “Gold.” So what did the “Gold” stand for? Did he have a stash of gold somewhere that neither Lucas nor I knew about? Was he trying to alert somebody to that stash?

What other possibilities were there?

I hiccuped violently and succumbed to a fresh onslaught of tears and sobbing. I wished suddenly for Arch to be here, just so I could hug him and tell him how much I loved and needed him. Maybe I should have let Tom summon Trudy to be with me.

You’ve got to move forward, Gertie Girl, Jack had said to me before he’d sent the fifty thousand that had gotten me into my own business and out of the marriage to the Jerk.

I nabbed some tissues, splashed cold water on my face, rubbed it virtually raw, and looked at my tired eyes and red-slapped cheek. Beauty contest? No. Able to move forward? Yes.

I went back to the living room, took a healthy slug of the iced latte, and looked again at the note. “Gold.” Think. Move forward.

Gold could stand for Gold Gulch Spa. Jack had been digging around in the Smoothie Cabin just a couple of days ago. Had he found what he was looking for? And what exactly had he been looking for?

I made a note to talk to Isabelle. Unfortunately, I didn’t even know her last name. What had she and Jack been up to? When Jack had heard someone coming in, he’d grabbed Isabelle and started smooching her. Then at the reception, he’d been snuggling up to her again. Why?

Jack was secretive, that was certain. Maybe he hadn’t told Isabelle anything. Maybe this note didn’t mean anything; maybe it was just, oh, I didn’t know what.

Doubt squeezed my heart again as I looked at the word “Fin.” Doc Finn had been lured out onto the highway at night, hit from behind, and then killed. Jack Carmichael, his closest friend, had been attacked three days later in a robbery-that-wasn’t-a-robbery. I had to believe the sheriff’s department would demand an autopsy on Jack’s body to determine the exact cause of his death. If the injuries sustained in the attack had led to Jack’s death, then it was felony murder, as Tom had said. Maybe the sheriff’s department was already investigating, and I didn’t even know about it.

I exhaled in frustration, then stared at the extra set of Jack’s keys. Why had he wanted me to have them? I saw the Mercedes keys on this set, plus some others I didn’t recognize. Had he wanted me to go back out to Gold Gulch Spa and get his Mercedes? If so, then why not write that down? Had his mind been wandering so much in the hospital that his notes, and his desires, didn’t really make any sense?

A shiver went down my spine. What if his beloved car was not the issue? If he had wanted Lucas, who already had a set of keys to Jack’s house, to go to Jack’s house for some reason, then why insist on my having this set?