reminded myself.
What would Tom want us to do? I had no idea. I had stayed in the home of clients before, when my ex- husband had been making threats, and before our house had a security system. But those clients had been relatives of Marla’s. Working for Eliot and Sukie Hyde was purely a business arrangement.
Without enthusiasm, I made a decision: I’d just have to pack up my son, myself, and all the food, drive to the castle gates, and give the Hydes a ring from my cellular. If they said they wouldn’t have us, then I’d have to come up with another plan.
As Deputy Wyatt sent out a newly arrived pair of deputies to canvass my neighbors, the video team arrived. I went upstairs to pack a few things and asked Arch, to do the same. My son announced that the first thing we had to do was find someone to take care of Jake and Scout. I called Bill’s wife, Trudy - their lights were all on, so I knew she was up - and made arrangements for our pets. It would only be until I could come up with a repair plan, I assured Trudy, trying to sound confident and also apologetic, for calling at this hour. But she was wide-awake and glad to help. In fact, it seemed as if all the folks on our street were up. They were either entertaining neighbors in their kitchens, clomping up and down the icy sidewalk, or sipping coffee on the curbs while exchanging theories on the shooting. The incident at our home had turned into a predawn block party. Welcome to the mountains.
I tossed my pj’s, toothbrush, and a work outfit into a suitcase, then reentered the kitchen just as Wyatt finished interviewing the canvassing team. The deputy’s face pinched in dismay when I asked if any of my neighbors had seen anything. One woman - the wife of one of the gun-toters - had reported hearing something moving on the ice-slickened street. After the gunshot, she’d glanced out her window and made out someone bundled into a bulky coat hustling away from our house. Judging from the person’s muscular build and swaggering stride, she thought the figure was that of a man. The person she’d glimpsed, she insisted, had had a rifle tucked expertly under his arm.
“We’ll keep working on it,” Wyatt reassured me, in a kindly voice. “By the way, I called Captain Lambert. Since the department employs your husband, and this may be connected to an official inquiry, we’ll handle finding a janitorial service to clean up the glass and an electrician to redo your security system. The department will have the window replaced, too,” he added.
I thanked him and, trying to smile, asked if bulletproof glass was available.
Wyatt’s reply was humorless. “We’ll look into that. And Mrs. Schulz? We’ll need to know where you’re heading.”
“I’m going to show up a little early at a client’s house… . I have a booking today at Hyde Chapel, by the estate,” I replied. Wyatt copied the Hydes’ number from my client directory. “If that doesn’t work out, I’ll give you a call - “
“The Hydes?” Wyatt asked suspiciously. “They live in that big castle up on the hill? Poltergeist Palace?”
“I’ve heard it called that,” I said. “But I don’t truck in ghosts.”
He frowned. “The chapel you’re working at is that one down by Cottonwood Creek where people used to have weddings? Looks like a little cathedral?”
“The Hydes gave the chapel to Saint Luke’s,” I told him, “but they’re still involved in running the place. I’m… just starting to work for them,” I added, wondering at Wyatt’s sudden interest. My paranoia engine must have been in overdrive, though, because Wyatt merely grunted.
Just after five-thirty, Jake was ensconced, but not happily, at Bill and Trudy Quincy’s house. Trudy had promised to take in the mail, monitor the cleanup and window repairs, and care for Scout the cat, who’d refused to leave his post under Julian’s bed. Arch and I tucked two suitcases into the back of the van Tom had bought me for Christmas. My chest felt like stone. I hated leaving our house.
I filled a carton with my mixer, blender, favorite wooden spoons, and assorted culinary equipment. In our walk-in refrigerator, I’d already assembled the ingredients for the steak pies and chicken croquettes, plus their accompanying sauces. After transporting those boxes to my van, I packed up frozen containers of homemade chicken stock and frozen loaves of manchet bread - the sort eaten by Tudor royalty, Eliot Hyde had informed me - and fresh beans and field greens, along with almost-ripe dark Damson plums. Last, I packed two fragrant, freshly stewed chickens.
A chicken in every pot, Herbert Hoover had promised, when speaking of the delights of the prosperous household. What would Hoover have said about being forced from one’s home, clutching the cooked birds in a box?
-3-
My new van chugged the short distance to Main Street. There, darkened shop windows and ice-crusted pavement mirrored the gloomy glow from our town’s rustic street lamps. Exhaust-blackened heaps of snow clogged the gutters. A rusty van and what looked like an old BMW were parked across from the bank. Both had a forlorn look about them. I prayed that no homeless people were sleeping in those vehicles on this frigid morning. Not only did our small mountain town have no motels, it also possessed no shelters. The occasional homeless person who attempted to brave the winter at eight thousand feet above sea level usually gave up and hitchhiked to California.
My tires crunched up to the icy curb. On the north side of the street, the Bank of Aspen Meadow’s digital numerals blinked that it was three below zero at thirty-eight minutes after five. Beside me, Arch scrunched down in his jacket. Heat poured from the humming engine while I stared up at the sky and tried to plan what to do next.
Furry, impenetrable clouds obscured the stars. The light of the rising sun would not begin creeping over the mountains for nearly an hour. I tugged my hat down over my ears and struggled to work out the logistics of a predawn appearance at Hyde Castle.
I’d first visited the Hydes during a freezing, mid-January fog. At the time, I’d been grateful for Sukie Hyde’s call. Ever since the unfortunate New Year’s party at the Lauderdales’, I’d been low. When the police had refused to bring an assault case against me - Buddy had claimed I hit him when I tried to wrench little Patty away from him - the Lauderdales’ lawyer had begun calling me, threatening civil suits. Self-proclaimed friends of the Lauderdales had either snubbed me or scolded me for dragging the name of a longtime Saint Luke’s Episcopal Church and Elk Park Prep supporter through the mud. Forget low. Until Sukie called, my mood had been subterranean.
I’d known Sukie casually for the past two years, through Saint Luke’s. A widowed Swiss emigree, she had married the reclusive Eliot Hyde a little over a year ago. Her call to me in January had been to announce that she and Eliot intended to turn his family castle into a retreat center for high-end corporate customers. They’d been remodeling the castle for months, and now Eliot was eager to move ahead with his plans for historic Elizabethan meals - meals that would eventually be served to conference clients. Was I interested?
I practically choked saying, You bet, yes, please, absolutely, I adore history and the food that goes with it!
I was desperate for the booking; I was also curious to see the lavish work on the castle redo. Rumor had it that Eliot and Sukie had already spent several million dollars. Everyone in town knew that Sukie was a cleaning and organizing whiz. And good old Eliot Hyde must have thanked his lucky stars, rabbit’s feet, and four-leafed clovers when Sukie’s reputation had proved true.
When Sukie first arrived in Aspen Meadow, the story went, she was bored. Her husband, Carl Rourke, had owned a successful roofing company that many local high-school students, including Julian, had worked for. Sadly, Carl had died on the job, in a freak electrical accident. After a year of widowhood, Sukie’s loneliness had made her restless. Figuring her obsessive tidiness ought to be worth something, she’d advertised to work as a personal organizer.
Her first and last client was Eliot Hyde. Never married, virtually penniless, Eliot was a former academic who had retreated to the castle he’d inherited after being denied tenure at an East Coast college. The castle itself, built in Sussex, had been bought by Eliot’s grandfather, silver baron Theodore Hyde, on a trip to England in the twenties. Belonging to a line of earls, the castle had been uninhabited since the time of Cromwell. Like the parvenus making social splashes with their enormous palaces in Newport, Rhode Island, silver-baron Theodore had apparently hoped his castle would give him the social cachet of an actual baron. He had the castle disassembled in England, then he hired a team to reassemble the royal residence in Aspen Meadow. He dammed up Fox Creek that flowed down the hill to the castle, to make a moat. He hired a fleet of servants to keep the place sparkling. Among his employees were a Russian fencing-master to teach him historic martial arts, and a butler to bring him tea and scones each day at four o’clock.
