Fatally Flaky

TWO HOURS LATER, Tom was in a deep slumber beside me, and I should have been fast asleep, too. But this was one of those times when, despite my physical exhaustion, my mind was wide awake. Too wide.

You failed Jack, my hyped-up brain accused. He wanted you to figure something out, and you’re not doing it.

I’m trying, some other part of my brain protested.

Not hard enough.

Finally, I gave up on sleep and crept down to the kitchen. What did the accusatory voice in my head expect me to do? Since that voice was now resolutely silent, I made myself another Summertime Special. What the hell, I had to get up in five hours anyway, why not just stay up all night?

I moved restlessly around the kitchen, picking up a cup here, checking my knives there. Something was indeed niggling at the back of my mind now, but what?

It was something I’d said to Tom. When I used the keys to get into Jack’s house…

I rummaged around in the living room until I found the ring of keys Jack had wanted me to take, as well as the crumpled paper with Jack’s scribbled notes: “Gold. Fin. Keys.”

What was I missing? I sipped my coffee, and turned over Jack’s keys, which jingled in my hand. The key to his house was there, plus the key to his car, which as far as I knew was still out at the spa. Maybe the cops had impounded the car and were searching it. Tom hadn’t mentioned anything about that. There were keys to I-knew- not-what. Jack’s liquor cabinet? A storage compartment I didn’t know about? Maybe I should have given Tom these damn keys.

I turned over one, a smaller one, then turned it back. On one side were the initials amcc. On the other was a letter and a number: m-71.

Omigosh, my golly, I thought. The brand-new golf clubs had been in Jack’s living room, along with the old- new travel clock. But Jack eschewed clocks, and he had constantly complained that his bursitis had made it impossible for him to keep playing golf. I was having the clock examined and dissected, but I’d practically forgotten about the stupid golf clubs.

I glanced at the key again. It didn’t belong to a liquor cabinet and it certainly wouldn’t open a storage container. The key was from the Aspen Meadow Country Club, the AMCC.

Jack had given me the keys, I was willing to bet, and set up the clubs in his living room, in case something happened to him. He had safeguarded something, I had no idea what, and he’d wanted me to figure it out—a final puzzle for his godchild. That was why he’d given me the keys. He’d put what ever he wanted me to find in locker number 71, on the men’s side of the changing rooms at the country club.

I didn’t stop to think. Aspen Meadow Country Club served fancy dinners and offered dancing until two in the morning. The dining room did not close any particular night, Marla had told me, because members were required to eat there five times a month. I knew some of my clients found this requirement onerous, but then they’d reluctantly bought the diamonds and dresses to make it all possible.

If I went back upstairs, I’d awaken Tom, and I definitely didn’t want to do that. I’d already put another change of clothes in the van, which was in the driveway. I wrote Tom a note: “Gone to Aspen Meadow Country Club, back by three.” Then I disarmed the house’s security system, grabbed my purse and Jack’s and my keys, and was off.

IN THE PARKING lot of the AMCC, I changed into my catering uniform, which I hoped looked similar enough to the club’s servers’ uniforms for me to fit in. The parking lot was, dishearteningly, less than a quarter full. I certainly hoped the cars belonged to patrons, and not just worker bees.

I came in through the kitchen, where a couple of long-suffering workers were washing pots and pans and speaking in Spanish.

I said, “Busco los clientes,” which I hoped meant that I was looking for the clients, and not, I’m searching for my long-lost parents. I’d once asked the male manager of a Spanish grocery store, “?Tiene huevos?” Which I thought meant “Do you have eggs?” but instead meant, “Do you have balls?” and not the the kind you bounce around on the playground. I never went back.

But one of the dishwashers nodded and said merely, “Alla.” He pointed in the direction of the dining room, the location of which I knew very well. I nodded my thanks and took off through the kitchen doors. But instead of heading upstairs toward the dining room, from which some waltz music was playing too loudly, I headed downstairs, to the darkened locker rooms.

When I got to the side marked men, I opened the door, which creaked ominously. I called, “Hello? Maid service?” When no one answered, I turned on the overhead lights, which flickered gray, and then finally came on. I made my way cautiously inside.

I was gripping Jack’s keys so hard that my palms were beginning to sweat. The locker numbers danced in front of my eyes, a function, no doubt, of my extreme fatigue. I told myself to relax, I’d be in bed soon enough, and I’d have the satisfaction of knowing what Jack and Doc Finn had been up to. That thought gave me a pop of energy, and I slowly began to peruse the lockers until I found number 71.

No sooner had I put the key in the lock than I heard the locker room door creak open. I cursed silently, and for once wished that I had Boyd back by my side to protect me.

“Maid service!” I called loudly. “We’ll be done cleaning in here in fifteen minutes! Can you come back, please?”

To my very great relief, the door creaked back closed. Probably some inebriated fart had wandered away from his wife. He’d gotten confused and figured it was time to play golf.

I tried to downplay paranoid thoughts that I had been followed. No way, I told myself. What, was someone parked outside our house, ready to follow my van in the middle of the night?

I certainly hoped not.

I swallowed hard and turned the key in the lock. Just get what ever it is and get out, I told myself. Go back through the kitchen, where the dishwashing staff will still be at work. I’d ask one of them to accompany me back to my car. Would my crappy Spanish yield me the right phrases? Well, one problem at a time.

I opened locker M-71. I don’t know what I was expecting, but a single piece of paper was not it. The writing was old-fashioned, not Jack’s.

O’Neal—dehydration

Parker—thyroid

Druckman—rotator cuff

Foster, White, Katchadourian—Symptoms of addiction withdrawal. All were told they were stressed out, should go back for a week or more. Once there, they said, they felt better. Home two days, more symptoms of withdrawal. Again told to go to back. Etc.

I reread the paper. Symptoms of withdrawal? From what? They should go back for a week or more? Go back where? To Gold Gulch Spa? And what were Foster, White, and Katchadourian, none of whom I knew, withdrawing from? From the stuff in the fruit cocktail? From the smoothies? From something I had taken out of the Smoothie Cabin?

I wanted to scream at heaven: The next time you leave me a puzzle, Jack, make the solution clearer, won’t you?

I heard nothing but silence.

23

I tucked Jack’s keys and the paper into my pocket and walked quickly, watchfully, back to the kitchen. I saw no one, and the band in the dining room was playing “Good Night, Ladies,” the cue that the dancers’ evening was winding down.

One of the workers kindly accompanied me to my van. My spotty memory of Spanish yielded up the phrase, “Tengo miedo.” I’m afraid. Which I was. Alone, in the men’s locker room, in a country club I didn’t belong to, in the middle of the night, trying to figure out why someone had killed a kindly doctor and