Dark Tort (10 page)

Shaking my head, I watched Julian cross from our house. He was carrying two brown paper grocery bags.

“What was he yelling about?” Julian demanded. “He’s just going to upset Mrs. Routt even more.”

“I don’t know.” I frowned. “He wanted to come in, and she didn’t want to see him yet. Vic helped me last night, when I ran away from the law firm and was desperate for a phone. He was very upset when he learned the news about Dusty. Maybe talking to the cops pushed him over the edge—”

Julian shifted the bags and started up the porch steps. In a low voice, he announced, “Word I heard was that he and Dusty had broken up recently.”

“Yes, Dusty told me. She didn’t tell me the reason, though.”

“You know how ambitious she was. She must have been thinking, How far can a guy working his way through vocational school go? Can you open the door for me?”

“Sure.” Was that really what Dusty had been thinking? I wondered.

Twenty minutes later, Colin was shoveling Julian-made, syrupsoaked squares of French toast into his mouth so fast I was afraid he would choke. Julian rolled his eyes at me as he stood guard over Colin’s little table and waited to be told “More!” The dull yellow chair-within-a-table where Colin sat was a thick plastic square with a small seat cut out of the middle. It may have been the modern version of a high chair, but it was so scuffed and worn that I was willing to bet it had served at least four toddlers before it was given to the Routts.

Everything else in the kitchen, and in the house, looked second-, third-, or fourth-hand. In the living room, Sally still lay on the spread-covered couch. John Routt, whose elderly face always reminded me of an enormous piecrust that had spilled over the edges of its dish, tapped his way in with his cane, with Tom by his side. As usual, John Routt had his very thin white hair neatly combed back from his large forehead. He was wearing clean but extremely wrinkled clothing, including a large, formerly white shirt that hugged his copious belly. His much-washed black chinos had shrunk above his ankles.

He had composed himself somewhat, although his skin was still mottled and the area around his blue, sightless eyes was very red.

“Thank you for coming,” John said. “You all have always been very kind.”

“Oh, you’re certainly welcome,” I mumbled.

When I lowered myself onto one of the chairs, Sally sat up. She pressed her hands between her knees and stared down at them. Marla, murmuring reassurances, sat next to her and put her arm around Sally’s shoulders. It wasn’t at all clear if Sally was listening to her. I looked around the living room. The low walls held no pictures. Ranged across the space were an old portable TV on a dented pressed-wood console, a set of TV tables from the fifties, and a dinosaur-era computer on a seen-better-days card table.

After Colin had eaten, Julian and Marla and I all looked at one another: Now what? John Routt stood shakily, and seemed to be asking himself the same question as he swayed, sightless, chin held high, his right ear cocked, waiting for a cue.

“Sarah?” his low, brittle voice inquired. “Where are you, dear?”

“Here, Dad.” Sally rose and gently led him to the couch. Marla hastily stood as the old man felt his way into a sitting position. He set his cane onto the floor. When Sally sat down beside him, he put his right arm around his daughter’s shoulders.

I looked up at Marla, who shrugged. Tom said, “The food is all in the refrigerator, and I wrote out directions on how it should be heated up.”

“That’s very kind of you, Tom,” John said, his voice rusty.

Julian tipped his head toward the door, as in We should split. But I couldn’t just yet. I had to say something to the Routts, offer to help, to ask if I could do something practical besides just saying, “If there’s anything I can do . . .” I’d heard that sorry phrase enough at funerals, when it was offered to the bereaved as an exit line. To me it always meant “Don’t bug me.”

“I’d like to bring in your meals this week,” I announced to Sally. “I can call St. Luke’s, too, if you want, to ask, uh, Bishop Sutherland to come over, help you with the arrangements . . .” I stopped talking when Sally raised her head and gave me a sour look.

Sally snorted. “Please don’t insult me, Goldy. After Father Pete had his heart attack and that guy came in, I went to see him. Just to say hi, introduce myself. He asked if I was there for money. Before I could reply, he asked if I’d availed myself of the job-search services available through the county. I said no, because I had a three-year-old and a blind father to care for. I was so embarrassed, and I so wished I’d never stopped by. But it got worse. He sat there wearing his expensive, hand-tailored clothes—believe me, I can recognize fancy garments, even if I don’t wear them—and said our house had been paid for by the church, and he didn’t have the authority to give us any more funds. Goldy, I wasn’t there for money. But I was so taken aback, I just shook my head. My voice wouldn’t work, so I turned around and left his office. Later, of course, I thought I should have said, ‘Nice to meet you, too!’ ”

My brain muttered, God help us. “I, uh, I’m sorry—”

“You see, Goldy,” Sally said, her voice suddenly fierce, “that’s what you don’t understand.” She lifted her chin, and her thin face quivered. “I know you’re married to a cop, and Tom, I know you’re a good man. Julian, thanks also for your help.” She took a deep breath. “But as far as the rest of the world goes? We’re trash. I learned that when my dear—” Her voice cracked. “When my sweet son Edgar died in custody, who cared? Nobody, except us. I learned it again when Dusty was going to Elk Park Prep. One of her teachers gets her pregnant, and whose fault is that? Who gets kicked out? Not the teacher! He claimed she was lying, but she wasn’t.”

One of her teachers got her pregnant? Now this was a part of the Elk Park saga that I had not heard. “I—I’m sorry.” I faltered. “I didn’t know—”

Sally’s voice didn’t drip with sarcasm, it was a veritable waterfall of sarcasm. “Oh yes, the cops are going to find Dusty’s killer. Just like they found Edgar’s. The cops will find out what happened!” She rubbed her forehead with stiffened fingers. “Like hell.”

I said firmly, “You know our phone number—”

Sally shook her head. She stood up, as if to usher us out. Tom, Marla, and Julian responded with alacrity, hustling to the front door. Colin, sensing that another dramatic change was taking place, began to whine to be let out of his chair. But my feet were glued to the living room’s thin, faded rug.

“We’ll wait for you outside,” Julian announced as he held the door open for Marla and Tom.

“Sally,” I repeated, my voice hopeless, “I just feel so awful—”

Sally kept rubbing her forehead, her face down. “How did my baby look?” she whispered. “Did she look as if she suffered?”

I thought of Dusty’s bloodied forehead, of her darkened cheek, of the broken glass of the picture frames. Her neck had been very red, too red, when I was doing CPR. Had she been strangled? I remembered from Med Wives 101 that it took four minutes for the brain to be deprived of enough oxygen to die. Four minutes of having some-one’s hands grasping your throat so tightly that you can’t breathe.

Four minutes of struggling with a choker’s deadly grip. Four minutes of being swung around an office, getting your face smashed into glass and your legs and torso whacked mercilessly into desks and furniture. Four minutes.

“No,” Sally interjected. “Don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear about it. I want to imagine her the way she was. Trying to grow up. Trying to get ahead in the world.” Sally’s bloated eyes sought mine. “But you know what? The world didn’t want her. When she was down, that’s what she’d say. ‘The world’s against me, Mom,’ she’d say. And then she’d start over on some new project. Some new job. Some new boyfriend.” Sally exhaled again in disgust. “And for what? For nothing.”

“Oh, Sally.”

Sally put her hand on her hip. “I don’t need meals, Goldy. What I need is for you to find out what happened to my baby.”

“ What?”

“I read the paper. I know you help Tom sometimes.”

“Well, I . . . the police are—”

“You really think they’re going to help the welfare people? The way Bishop Sutherland did, for example? Please. That law firm was a nest of vermin. Vermin, all of them. Dusty knew it. Something was going on, I’m sure of it. I know my ...I knew my daughter. The past month, she’d been acting really secretive. Something was going on, and that’s what got her killed.”

“Did you tell the detectives this?”

Sally’s laugh was shrill. “No, Goldy, I didn’t tell the detectives this, because then the next thing you know, they’ll start spreading rumors about Dusty, and who she was going out with, and what she was up to, and then oops! All of a sudden some dark facts will come out. They tried to say my son Edgar was a violent drunk. Goldy”—her eyes implored me—“he was a kid. And I don’t want to be hearing that my daughter did this or that, she was involved with so-and-so. And by the way, wasn’t she expelled from Elk Park Prep, and oh yeah, didn’t she use her wiles to try to break up the marriage of one of her teachers? And on and on, until in the minds of the public, she deserved to die.”

I sighed, unable to think of anything to say. She was right. I’d seen it again and again. A low-income person without power is blamed for a crime and goes to jail on scanty evidence. A wealthy person who’s guilty as hell impugns the job the police are doing, impugns the victim, impugns whoever’s around, and gets away with rape . . . or murder.

“You want to help us?” Sally asked, her voice both defiant and pleading. “Then help. I’m not saying you’re a bad cook. We think you’re a great cook. But if you really want to help me? Find out what was—what is going on in that scumbag law firm. Then you’ll be able to tell us who killed my baby girl.”

I looked her in the eye and licked my lips.

“Please,” she begged me. “Please find out what happened to my baby.”

I nodded. I thought, What the hell am I doing? But I said, “Okay, Sally.”

As I walked carefully back across the street, I again saw Dusty’s lifeless body. I remembered her eager expression as she learned to cook. I recalled how disappointed she’d been when one of her own cakes had fallen. I remembered how her face had lit up when I found her the vintage Calvin Klein suit.

I thought of the birthday cake I’d made her.

And then I remembered a joke Marla had told me when I’d started working at Hanrahan & Jule.

Q: Who’s the only kind, courteous person at a law-association breakfast?

A: The caterer.

Well, I thought as I entered our house. Not anymore.

Our kitchen clock said it was just eleven, aka back-to-reality time. Or at least, that’s what I tried to tell myself. I stared at the phone. What did I need to do? Oh yes, call Nora Ellis to see if she still wanted to throw a birthday party for hubbie Donald the next day.

She wasn’t there, so I left a message. Even if the sky falls in, never assume a client will cancel a party, André, my mentor had told me. Feeling numb, I moved mechanically over to my computer to check the prep schedule for my three upcoming events: the party, the christening, and the ribbon cutting for the new Mountain Pastoral Center. That last was supposedly going to be held at my catering and conference center, the Roundhouse. The plumbers had assured me they would be done by then. I had too much on my mind to call them for the fifteenth time and bug them.

In the hallway, Tom, Julian, and Marla were talking in low tones about Dusty’s friends, who should be called, who else in the church could bring in meals and run errands for the Routts. I should have been helping them. But somehow talking about the Routts, after all I’d been through during the last eighteen hours, was more than I could handle at the moment. I walked into the kitchen.

Nora had handed me the recipe for the birthday cake she wanted for her husband. It was from one of Charlie Baker’s last paintings, she said, The Cake Series II. She’d bought the painting for Donald and was giving it to him for his present. Charlie’s recipe, Nora claimed, was an historically accurate version of Journey Cake, a confection the pioneers had baked on a board and eaten as they journeyed across America in their covered wagons. Actually, what Nora had given me was just a list of ingredients, which was all that my good old pal Charlie Baker, for whom I’d catered and with whom I’d cooked for the St. Luke’s bazaar, had ever put at the bottom of his paintings. I made myself a latte and remembered Nora’s happy expression when I said I was an old hand at Journey Cake, also known as Johnny Cake.

I pulled out flour and spices and thought about tall, cheerful Nora Ellis, whose straight blond hair fell in a perfect curtain around her head. When we first met, she told me she’d had good and bad luck with caterers. She’d already been burned, figuratively speaking, by both a Denver and a Boulder caterer. Worrying about these mishaps must have been why she was so stressed out when she was running the charity event Julian had catered, I reasoned now. Anyway, my talks with her had always been very amicable. To avoid a repeat of her two unfortunate events, she wanted tastes of the dishes I proposed to serve. I’d acquiesced. In point of fact, most party givers wanted a taste test these days. Problem was, you couldn’t measure efficiency of service, politeness of wait staff, heat of the food, and myriad factors that were just as important as how things tasted. Nora had told me she’d heard that unscrupulous caterers often made blatantly dishonest substitutions. At the Boulder party, her guests were supposed to be served poached salmon. Instead, they’d gotten choulibiac, an infinitely cheaper dish made from leftover bits of salmon. The Denver caterer had unabashedly offered up pork loin instead of the promised roast suckling pig.