breakup.” Her full mouth pulled into a tight smile. “There’s a first time for everything, and this is it. And besides, you don’t know how to make the Navajo tacos.”
“Didn’t I just hear you say there’s a first time for everything?”
She barked a laugh. “You don’t want to be learning how to make fry bread when you have a whole party to serve it to.”
“O ye of little faith. Just help me find some dish towels, would you, please?”
It was stupid, really. How could you have a retro kitchen but no cloth towels? Boyd offered to help, but I said it was more important to get the racks of chops open.
“You’ve checked the cupboards?” Yolanda asked.
“Yup.” I began to look along the walls, where Rorry, or Rorry’s architect, had put open shelves. There were no linens anywhere. “I should drive out and get one,” I said.
“I’d say to use towels from the guest bathroom, but all she has in there are monogrammed paper guest towels,” said Yolanda.
“Just give me one more minute,” I said, “and then I’ll go look for a linen closet. Sergeant Boyd, could you go out to the porch and make sure people’s glasses are filled?” He nodded and disappeared. I preheated the ovens for the lamb, then looked up the walls of the kitchen.
Over the center island, Rorry’s architect had used chains to suspend one of those heavy oval rings, the kind that cooks hang all their pots and pans on. Rorry’s were all copper, and polished to a high sheen. A metal net filled with dish towels dangled from the far end. I thought,
And then the whole ring of pots, pans, and dish towels crashed down on my head.
Later, I judged that at least twenty pots came cascading down, along with the heavy metal oval, the screws, even chunks of the ceiling. Two tubs for poaching fish hit me on the head and shoulders, and I careened sideways on the floor. The banging and clattering mixed with the sound of Yolanda screaming. A corkscrew caught the side of my face. When the skin on my cheek tore open, I cursed vociferously and struggled to get up, but could not.
“Goldy!” Yolanda shrieked. “Goldy, are you all right?”
“Listen to me,” said Boyd calmly. When had he returned to the kitchen? He leaned close to my face. “You’re cut. Do you think any of your bones are broken?”
“No,” I said curtly. “I’m fine. Just pissed.”
I blinked back blood and could just make out Sean Breckenridge as he raced into the kitchen. “What the hell was that?” he hollered. He caught sight of me on the floor. His wide eyes fixed on my bloody face. At that point his mouth dropped open, his eyelids fluttered closed, and he keeled toward me.
“Damn it!” I screamed, but it was no use.
“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” Boyd said as he reached out in an effort to catch Sean. With blood dripping into my eyes, I could make out only enough of Sean’s trajectory to hold out my arms.
“Oof,” I cried as he landed more or less on top of me.
Rorry’s voice sounded faraway, I realized, because blood was streaming into my left ear and Sean was blocking my right one. “Sean!” Rorry screamed. “Get off of Goldy! Did he see blood?” Rorry demanded.
As Boyd, Yolanda, and Rorry yanked and tugged an unconscious Sean off me, I wondered how often Rorry had had occasion to holler at her husband to get off a woman to whom he was not married.
Five minutes later, Rorry had revived Sean, although he still lay on the kitchen floor. Rorry kept pellets of ammonia salts in every room and in the car, she told me when I returned from the guest bathroom, pressing a wet paper towel to my cheek.
Yolanda gestured to one of the kitchen stools. “Sit down, Goldy. Let me clean that up for you.”
“I’m okay.”
“Sit
I took a seat. “You sound like Ferdinanda.”
“Stubbornness runs in the family.” She gently dabbed my torn skin.
“Sean?” I asked. “How’re you doing down there?”
He groaned. Rorry said, “When Sean was in middle school? He thought he wanted to be a doctor—”
“Honey, don’t tell this story again,” Sean said, his voice just above a whisper.
“—right up to the point when a friend accidentally sliced his thumb with a knife in biology,” Rorry said, continuing. “When the friend’s blood spurted out?”
“Sweetheart,” Sean whined, “you’re going to make me sick.”
“When the blood spurted out,” Rorry said, her voice raised a notch, “Sean passed out and hit his head on the lab counter.” The look she was now giving her husband was somewhere between disgust and sympathy. “He got a concussion. He dropped biology, studied physics, majored in business in college, then became an accountant.”
“And are you still one, Sean?” I asked as Yolanda carefully rinsed my cheek. “I mean, do you keep up with your certification, or whatever it’s called?”
When he didn’t answer, Rorry said tersely, “He doesn’t.” At this point, Sean, looking dazed, sat up and leaned against one of the cabinets. “He did people’s taxes for a while, hated it, and wanted to become a professional photographer. He, um,
Sean did not look at his wife. He said, “Yeah, that about sums up the life of Sean, according to Rorry.”
Could this marriage be saved? Somehow I doubted it. I glanced around the kitchen. “Where’s Boyd?” I asked Yolanda.
“While you were in the bathroom,” Yolanda said in a low voice, “he asked Rorry if he could get a ladder from the garage. He wants to take that whole metal oval and all the pots and pans and whatnot into evidence.”
“Evidence of what?” I whispered.
“He wouldn’t tell me,” she murmured. “He asked Rorry for permission to take it, and she said yes. He also asked her who had access to the kitchen today, while she was getting ready for the party.”
“And?”
“Just about everybody, apparently, except for Tony and Franny Ramos. They all brought food, wine, even beer, which was from Marla. According to Rorry, it was because they all felt guilty about adding to the dinner party. Except for Venla, of course, who says she always brings her cheese ball. For all these food donors, Rorry said she was either out on the patio setting it up or upstairs getting ready. Etta had already taken off for Beaver Creek with their son. Rorry said she was only in and out of the kitchen from time to time.”
I tried to count. That meant that Kris and his girlfriend, Harriet, Marla, Donna Lamar, the Juarezes, the Quarleses, and Humberto and his young blonde had all been in here. I shook my head.
“Sean?” Rorry put her face in front of her husband’s. “Are you ready to go back to our guests?”
Sean cleared his throat, tried to get up on his own, and couldn’t make it.
“C’mon, Sean honey,” Rorry said, pulling on her husband’s elbow. “Let me help you.”
“I don’t need you!” Sean said fiercely. He jumped to his feet, wobbled, then stopped, perplexed, at the sight of Boyd walking in, carrying a stepladder with one hand. Boyd ignored him and opened the ladder under the hole in the ceiling.
Rorry turned back to me. “If you’re up to it, could you bring Humberto’s champagne out to the porch? He’s been asking about it. And could somebody carry out some more white wine? We’ve finished what we had. And white wine usually helps Sean.”
I nabbed a spare cotton apron I’d brought, placed it carefully over the stopper in the Dom, and cautiously turned it. But it was no use: the champagne had become shaken up in the refrigerator, and the stuff spurted everywhere. Well, tough tacks. I opened the second bottle, which also exploded. I cursed vociferously, if silently, and put both bottles on a wooden tray. Next I looked around for the bottles of Riesling I’d brought.
“I already moved the box with the bottles of white wine out of here,” Boyd said. He was perched at the penultimate step of the ladder and was gazing at the ceiling. “How they survived all that metal crashing down on them, I do not know.” He lifted his chin in the direction of the foyer. “It’s out there.”
“In the foyer?” I asked, gingerly touching the bandage Yolanda had taped to my cheek.
