had whipped the placid water into jagged sparkles. At the Lakeview Shopping Center across the road from the lake, a tattered banner, ruffling slightly, announced that Aspen Meadow Health Foods was under new management. Beneath the banner a beautifully painted sign advertised the upcoming doll show at the LakeCenter. BABSIE BASH! the curlicued script screamed. GO BERSERK! I pressed the accelerator and hummed along with the engine. When I thought about Babsie dolls these days, I didn’t think berserk, I thought bread and butter. Starting Tuesday, I’d be catering to the doll folks for two days. The bash organizers had warned me that they didn’t want any food to get on the display tables, the Babsie costume boxes, the eensy-weensy furniture, the tiny high heels, the fanciful costumes, or, God forbid, the dolls. I’d assured them I could do all their meals, including a final barbecue, outside ? complete with finger bowls, if they wanted. They’d said I should find a Chef Babsie outfit to wear. I’d been afraid to ask them if they were kidding.
Once I’d rounded the lake, the sedan started uphill toward the country-club area. Actually, Suz Craig had always reminded me of Babsie. Beyond her looks, though, I had to admit that Suz had a phenomenal mind and a charismatic personality to go with her statuesque, size-six body. I never had been able to understand how the Jerk could attract women like her.
I glanced in the rearview mirror at my slightly chubby face, brown eyes, and Shirley Temple-blond-brown curls. “He got you, didn’t he?” I said to my puzzled reflection, then laughed.
The stone entryway into the country-club area had been graffiti-sprayed by vandals. The vandals’ defacement of property was one of this summer’s ongoing problems in our little town. Still, I knew my way to Arch’s friend’s house without having to decipher the spray-painted street signs. The developer for the old part of the club had been an indiscriminate Anglophile. He’d given the streets names like Beowulf, Chaucer, Elizabethan, Cromwell, Tudor, and Brinsley. As long as you knew a bit about English history, you were in good shape. I approached the turn to Jacobean Drive, where Suz Craig lived, and hesitated. I pulled over and the sedan tires crunched on the gravel. Despite my best intentions, I was suffering a typical Jerk-inspired dilemma. Would he be home yet?
Tom’s cellular was close at hand. I could call John Richard first to make sure he was awake and ready for Arch’s arrival. On the other hand, I didn’t want to wake him up and risk one of his infamous tantrums. If I drove past Suz’s and saw one of his cars in the driveway, I would know to stall on picking up Arch. But stall how? I tapped the dashboard in frustration.
Okay ? I remembered that the woebegone landscapers had been planning three patios, along with a series of steps, on Suz’s sloping property. The vandalism had been so bad in the country club that Suz had confessed to being afraid to have the flagstones delivered and left outside, where they ran the risk of being spray-painted with cuss words. So Suz’s garage was full of flagstones, and if John Richard had spent the night with his girlfriend, one of his Jeeps would be sitting in her driveway. This, in spite of the fact that his house was close by. But John Richard never walked for exercise; he played tennis.
I revved the engine, turned up Jacobean, and immediately knew something was wrong. I rolled down the window and tried to figure out what didn’t fit. The rhythmic, slushy beat of automated sprinklers buzzed across manicured green lawns. On both sides of the road bunches of trim aspens, conical blue spruces, and buttercup- flowered potentilla bushes were all picture-perfect. Picture-perfect except for one thing. In the ditch running beside Suz’s driveway, one of the landscape people had inconsiderately dumped one of the quartz boulders.
One of the quartz boulders? No.
I slowed the sedan, carefully set the parking brake, and got out of the car. Then, feeling faintly dizzy, I walked toward the ditch. Suz’s cheerily painted mailbox had been knocked or driven over and lay in the middle of the street. The block letters of the name Craig gleamed in white paint on the shiny black metal. I looked back at the ditch.
It was not a quartz boulder that lay in the dirt. It was Suz.
Oh God, I prayed, no.
I moved haltingly toward the ditch. Loosely clad in a terry-cloth bathrobe, the exposed parts of Suz’s slender body were blue and white. Her shapely legs were improbably skewed, as if she were running a race. Her blond hair, normally tied back in a pert ponytail, was soaked with mud. It clung to her face like seaweed. Her bruised arms hugged her torso, while her blue lips were set in a silent scream. She did not appear to be breathing.
What to do? Call somebody? Tom? No, no, no, there might be hope, if an ambulance could get here quickly. Plus, some logical voice whispered, I needed to call for help as if I didn’t have any idea as to what had happened. Which I didn’t. Which I did. Get into the car. Dial 911. A whirring noise in my ears made thinking difficult as I ran to the sedan. Too late, too late. Emergency Medical Services wouldn’t be able to do anything. I knew it even as my shaking fingers punched 911 and Send on the cell phone. The connection was not immediate, as frequently happens in the mountains. One second, two endless, endless seconds. There was no movement from the ditch. Very faintly, from a distant part of my brain, I could hear Tom’s voice.
He will go too for. Get caught. Be nailed.
3
I told the 911 operator who I was, where I was, and why I was calling. “She doesn’t seem to be alive,” I added. Did I know CPR? the operator wanted to know. No, no, I replied, sorry.
“Just stay were you are, the operator commanded.
For some reason I looked at my watch. Five to seven. I had to call Tom. Although I knew it would irritate the 911 operator, I disconnected and punched the digits for the personal line into our house.
“Schulz,” Tom barked into the phone.
“Listen, something’s happened…” This was a mistake. Even with the worst-case scenario, which I did not want to contemplate, I surely knew they would never assign this-what would he call it? ? this matter, this incident, this case, to my husband.
“It seems… I didn?t … ?
“Goldy,” Tom commanded, “tell me what’s going on. Slowly.”
“I … I was driving up Jacobean in the country-club area,” I began, and then told him bluntly exactly what I was looking at through the windshield ? a young woman. Looked like Suz Craig, John Richard’s girlfriend. Lying half- dressed in a ditch. Not moving. Not breathing.
“Sit tight, ” he ordered. “If you see John Richard, or anyone, say nothing. If someone comes, get out of the car. Don’t let anybody near that ditch. I’ll be there before the ambulance. Fifteen minutes, maybe twenty. Goldy? I’ll be there.”
I closed the phone and felt relief. I scanned the quiet landscape and had a sudden memory of the time a live power line had snapped during a blizzard and landed on our street. Touching the wire meant sure electrocution. The most important job, the fire department had warned, was to keep people, especially children, away from the dark wire that had curved onto the street like a monstrous snake. And how similar was this situation? I couldn’t think. I only knew I had to keep prying eyes and intrusive, questioning people away from what lay in that ditch.
And speaking of children, I had to call Arch. Of course I couldn’t remember the number of the house where he was. People named Rodine. I called Information, got the number, and phoned. Gail Rodine didn’t sound too happy, but I told her tersely that there would be a delay before I arrived.
“I’m leaving to start setting up the doll show at ten,” Gail petulantly announced.”
“I’ll be there long before that,” I said, and disconnected before she could whine any more.
I peered out through the windshield of Tom’s car and wondered how long it would be before someone came along. Tom was right: Sit tight, he’d said. If someone saw me, a stranger, standing in the road looking out of place, that would excite curiosity. My heart quickened as the front door to one of the houses swung open. A chunky man in a dark bathrobe came out, bent to retrieve his newspaper without looking up the street, then waddled back through his columned entryway. I let out a breath of relief that I quickly gasped right back in as John Richard’s white Jeep roared into view from the opposite side of Jacobean.
What should I do? ? Don’t let anybody near that ditch.
John Richard catapulted the Jeep up into Suz’s driveway. Apparently he’d taken no notice of Tom’s car or of me sitting in it. Springing from his own vehicle, John Richard turned and scanned the road. Did he hesitate and narrow his eyes when he saw the toppled mailbox, then my sedan? I couldn’t be sure. The soil between the house and the ditch had been churned up and heaped into a small hillock by the landscapers. The body in the ditch could not be seen from the house. At least I hoped it couldn’t. John Richard turned back to his Jeep, reached into the passenger-side seat, and pulled out a bunch of roses.
