Just in case the board did give him early parole, I’d obtained a temporary restraining order, to go into effect the moment his release took place. Then, if John Richard wanted to keep me in the dark about his plans, we could go before a judge and decide on parameters for visitations with Arch. But for the Jerk to be presented with a temporary order to keep away from me - just as he was about to taste freedom - probably wouldn’t sit very well. Had it sat so badly he’d felt it necessary to aim a gun at our house?
“Goldy - ” Marla’s voice crackled, then vanished. I stared at the moat. Bizarrely striped ducks - off-spring of discarded Easter ducklings breeding with the wild variety - huddled by the aerator. They looked as miserable as I felt.
“Mom!” Arch protested. “I’m cold!”
“Can you hear me?” Marla demanded so loudly that I winced. “Where exactly are you two?”
“I told you, we’re sitting outside Hyde Castle. I have a job here today.”
“Get inside. I‘11 call the cops about the Jerk. Then I’ll phone my lawyer and anyone else I can find. After that, I’ll come up. Isn’t the church having a luncheon at Hyde Chapel today? I think I got an invitation.”
“Yes. It’s a thank-you lunch for the people who paid for the labyrinth stones installed in Hyde Chapel. I’m doing the cooking.”
“I gave that fund five thousand bucks. Save me some cake.”
She signed off. I stared glumly at the three coats of arms hanging over the gatehouse entranceway. Each represented a baron and his soldiers, Sukie had told me, medieval protectors of one section of the fortress. That?s what I need, I thought, as I pressed gently on the gas. A militia for each part of my life. The van resumed its slow rumble across the wooden bridge.
“Mom? Is Dad out?”
“Yeah.” I kept my tone light. “Did you know he was being released?”
“I wasn’t sure. He hasn’t called me yet.” Arch spoke guardedly. “Viv said he might be out soon.”
“Viv knew he was getting out,” I repeated, for clarification.
Viv Martini, a slender, striking, twenty-nine-year-old sexpot, was John Richard’s current girlfriend. He’d met her in jail, where she’d been the girlfriend of another prisoner, until John Richard had exerted his charms on her. Or so Arch had reported. I’d seen Viv a few times. She wore her platinum hair David-Bowie-style, had breasts the size of cantaloupes, and sported a reputation of having slept with every rich, shady guy in the county. When Viv and the Jerk had become an item, I figured they deserved each other.
“Listen, Mom.” Arch’s voice became earnest. “Dad wouldn’t have shot at us. He’s no good with guns. He tried to learn early last summer, but every time he shot at a target, he missed by a zillion yards. Viv offered to teach him again, when he got out, but he said no. You know how Dad is when he can’t do something. He quits and says it’s dumb.”
The tires made a rhythmic whump whump whump over the causeway’s planks. I wondered, of course, why John Richard would even think he needed to learn to use a firearm.
The castle gatehouse loomed before us. Unlike the later gatehouses of manor houses, Eliot had solemnly informed me, the fortified entry of medieval times is the built-in entrance to the castle itself. The Hyde Castle gatehouse featured two portcullises, those massive wooden grilles raised to let in friends, and lowered to keep out foes. One stood at the front entry, the other could be lowered over the gatehouse’s rear entry facing the courtyard. This was in the event that enemies breached the rear, or postern, castle gate. When that happened, Eliot had concluded with pride, the castle inhabitants holed up in the gate house itself.
A hundred feet in front of the gatehouse, two single-story stone garages mirrored the contours of the twin towers of the gatehouse. To anyone looking straight at the immense stone facade from the bridge, the garages were indistinguishable from the castle itself. Inside the garages, six parking spaces had been marked out for vehicles. I accelerated over the last part of the bridge, pulled into a garage slot next to Eliot and Sukie’s matching silver Jaguars ? hmm - and cut the van’s engine.
The thought of lugging my boxes all the way to the kitchen on less than three hours’ sleep was more than I could bear. Perhaps there was a hidden pulley system that delivered orders. At least I hadn’t been forced into the humiliation of using the servants’ entrance, as I had at the Lauderdales’ modern monstrosity in Flicker Ridge. The castle did not have a separate entry for servants, Eliot had loftily informed me, because the castle’s status as military outpost meant all the needs of the grand medieval household had to be met within the walls. Think self- sufficiency, he’d concluded, as he’d knotted the silk scarf with a flourish.
Arch and I jumped from the van. Dwarfed by the spotlit portcullis, we walked gingerly over the frost-slickened gravel. One of the Hydes must have registered our presence, for the portcullis rose smoothly even before we arrived. Behind the portcullis stood two formidable wooden doors.
I glanced at my son as our boots cracked across the icy gravel. Did Viv offer to teach you to shoot, too? Unfortunately, Viv was also an accomplished tae kwon do practitioner and fencer. Feeling more inferior than I cared to admit, I had signed up for the free weekly fencing lessons Michaela Kirovsky had offered team parents. I told myself it was to keep up with Arch, but deep down I suspected it was to keep up with Viv. Which I couldn’t do, as it turned out. My first three lessons, I’d suffered claustrophobia from the mask, thighs so sore I’d been unable to walk, and confidence so shattered I’d dropped out of class.
Come to think of it, could Viv have shot out our window? Why would she do that?
A speaker on the security keypad beeped. The massive doors creaked open.
“Gol-dy!” Sukie Hyde’s cheery, familiar voice made a ringing echo on the ancient stones. “You’re here!”
“Yes, we are!” I called back with what I hoped was a self-assured voice. “Thanks for having us!”
Sukie, wearing a full-length, forest green coat, cooed at Arch and me as she bustled toward us. “Look at you two!” she exclaimed. Worry furrowed her rosy-cheeked face as she assessed us for damage. Looking younger than her late thirties, unpretentiously cheery and
always happy to see you, Sukie was plumply appealing, like one of those happily voluptuous women painted by Rubens. Her wavy golden hair drifted out in all directions, giving an incongruously disheveled air to the superbly organized gal beneath. “Welcome to Hyde Castle. Eliot and I were so shocked to hear what had happened! Imagine, your windows shot at!”
“It was only one window,” I assured her. “The food’s in the back of the van, if you’d like me to bring it in.”
Sukie beamed and said Michaela could do that. “It could spoil,” I started to protest.
“Don’t worry about it, Gol-dy.” Sukie’s voice was richly comforting, like vanilla custard. “Please, you have just had a terrible shock. Soon there will be warm coffee cake in the kitchen,” she said. “Come on, both of you, we will get you some hot drinks. I am making the coffee cake myself. From a mix, of course,” she added with a giggle.
I smiled in spite of myself. Sukie could make the castle as tidy as a Swiss hotel, but she could not so much as toast bread. She had what we in the food biz gleefully call a cooking block. According to Marla, Eliot abhorred the kitchen, too, except for the jams and jellies he made in the middle of the night, when he couldn’t sleep. Well, at least he wasn’t canning okra. Before Sukie had changed Eliot’s life, he’d subsisted first on frozen dinners, then SpaghettiOs, and finally, just when Sukie came into the picture, enormous casseroles of beans and rice. These cheap repasts were not, of course, suitable for the suddenly wealthy. Nevertheless, the Hydes soon wearied of eating out. On my first visit, I’d brought Sukie and Eliot a dinner to tuck into their refrigerator and reheat. They’d found my culinary powers awesome, and their praise had warmed my heart.
At the far side of the entryway, new plate-glass doors looked out on the courtyard. Sukie switched on spotlights and drenched the interior space in a blaze of glory. The previous summer, a landscaper had followed Eliot’s directions for planting a Tudor garden. Eliot had used the strawberries and chokecherries for his jams. But it was all I could do to keep from laughing when Eliot had gone on to tell me they’d given the cabbages, cucumbers, radishes, parsnips, and even the freshly grown herbs to Aspen Meadow Christian Outreach, since neither he nor Sukie knew what to do with their cornucopia of ripe goodies. In the spotlights, the geometric layout of ice-burnished twigs sparkled.
To surround the courtyard, Theodore Hyde had replaced the crumbling interior walls with an Italianate arcade made of new Colorado granite. The lights illuminated dazzling silver rapiers set beneath the support for each arch. Above the arcade, more spotlights, their lenses tinted hues of orange and pink, bathed new stone walls and courtyard-facing windows with a welcoming glow.
