Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (12 page)

"Thinking about the Christmas parties I may not be giving," I said while he poured tea. "Unless you, we, get this poisoning incident cleared up. Maybe you can pinpoint my ex-husband." I told him about the inheritance configuration.

"Don't you think if a doctor really wanted to poison somebody, he'd do it right? And not in front of a bunch of people?" He went on, still grinning. "Tell me about your Christmas parties, so I can work up an appetite. Maybe talking about food will cheer you up."

I described the almond-turned-cherry cookies as well as the fragrant gingerbread houses I modeled after the hostess's own home. I told him I made a lot of money on these affairs, money that I needed.

He said, "I have never seen a woman so worried about her livelihood." Ordinarily I would have taken offense at such a statement, but his green eyes were soft and kind, the tilt of his head sympathetic.

have to support Arch and me," I said. "My ex- husband's willingness to pay child support on time is tenuous at best. I need to give parties to survive." I fingered the thick jade-colored glass leaves of the table's centerpiece. "There's something else, though."

"Something else."

"Well." I felt suddenly uncomfortable, as if I were offering an explanation when none was needed. "I love my job. It fills a hole. It's hard to have it taken away. It's like the hole's ripped open."

"It won't be for long," he said in a low voice. "I just have that feeling. Go on about the parties."

"One time," I said, "I actually did do a Christmas party for free. For the church. I was still teaching Sunday school, trying to carry on this normal life. Then John Richard started seeing a soprano in the choir. He even nuzzled up to Miss Vocal Cords during the coffee hour. It was sickening." I stopped talking, sipped tea. "I remember the Sunday school party, though. Making miniature baby Jesuses out of meringue kept me up half the night. The kids loved them."

"So you're a churchgoer?" he asked, surprised.

"Not anymore," I replied, picking up my menu. "Let's get on with this, okay?"

"My goodness, you make it sound like being with me is torture." He smoothed out his sweater and perused the menu. "Why don't I order and surprise you? Give you a break from being in charge of the food."

The sleepless nights, the worry, the cooking for and visiting with the Kormans- all these had made me too tired to argue. About the meal, anyway. The waitress arrived and I asked for sherry. Tom Schulz ordered scotch.

Then our food waiter appeared and Schulz ordered egg rolls, a pu pu platter, hot and sour soup, steamed trout, pork with broccoli and bamboo shoots, moo- shu shrimp, and red-cooked chicken.

I said, "How many more people are coming to dinner?"

Schulz looked at me silently for a minute, then stuck his chin out. "Just relax. Okay, Goldy?" The perpetual grin. "We're going to have a nice meal. We're going to talk. I like you, but you sure don't make it easy. Try to remember we're trying to help each other."

"Is that so? Well guess what, I wouldn't give you a nickel for the entire Furman County Sheriff's Department."

The drinks arrived and Schulz sipped his scotch. "Well," he said, "now we're all clear where we stand."

"It's Tuesday," I replied, "and this thing happened Saturday and what have you found out? I need my business reopened and all you have to offer is strange links and barbecued pu pu."

"Take it easy," he said. "Remember our chat with your son saying the Kormans and Laura Smiley didn't get along? I made that callout to Illinois. Turns out Korman senior was not exactly your universally loved medical man. Before he left twenty years ago, that is. Guy I talked to said there's more, but I need to talk to the fellow who was involved in the investigation, and he's gone to a department in another town. Happens to cops in small towns, you know. You arrest a city councilman's son for drunk driving. The next day you start looking for a new job."

I grunted as the banquet of appetizers arrived. "What was the investigation about?" I asked.

Schulz offered me the plate of egg rolls and I took one. He dipped one in brown sinus-clearing Chinese mustard and crunched his way through it before starting in on the skewered beef.

"Don't know that yet," he said as he pulled his eyebrows into a line. "Files twenty years old are put on microfilm, then into storage. Have to have clearance and a microfilm operator to look them up. They're working on it, don't worry. They're going to call me back. Our friend Laura Smiley was involved somehow, though. That's all this guy could remember."

"Is that it?"

"Listen. When you do this kind of research, you've got to talk to the detective who worked the case. Even if they read me that file over the phone, it won't tell as much as the cop involved in it could. And I'm going to find him." He ladled out the soup, then said, "There's something else that may be related. Your little friend Trixie has a record for assault. A recent one."

"What?"

He shrugged and swallowed some soup, then gestured with the porcelain spoon. "She was fighting with a neighbor over a dog or something. He, the dog, was barking and driving her nuts. That's what she claimed. So she hauled off and threw one rock after another at the animal until it ran under its owner's deck. Then the fellow who owned the dog came flying out shrieking at Trixie and she beaned him with a hunk of quartz the size of a football." He chuckled. "That woman must be damned strong. Poor bastard had to have eighteen stitches."

I had stopped eating. "What in the world happened?"

"Eat your soup before it gets cold. She pleaded guilty and got a suspended sentence. No priors, and she said because she was pregnant she was on edge or some such."

"Pregnant?"

"Her baby was stillborn a month later," he said. "You said you hadn't seen her around for a while and that's why. I talked to her husband. She had high blood pressure, in spite of all that exercising. High blood pressure, excitable temperament, high-risk pregnancy."

So that was what Marla had meant by You're back. And Trixie's mood. I wished I'd known. Poor Trixie.

"That's as far as I've gotten," he said. "But I am working on it, just wanted to let you know. Oh look, here comes our waiter.

I sighed. At this rate, we might have the answers to what happened last Saturday by Valentine's Day.

Our food arrived. Schulz astonished me by ladling enormous amounts onto my plate. Then, muttering something that sounded like "wimps," he waved away the chopsticks proffered by the waiter. He nodded to me before attacking his trout. I smiled, remembering John Richard's selfishness with food. If he ever did serve me first, it was always in small portions. Usually, though, he served himself large quantities and then passed me what was left while he started eating.

I looked from my plate to Schulz's.

A look of worry crossed his face. "What's the matter!” he said, "don't you like it?"

"It's fine," I said, attempting to get up some pork with chopsticks. "It's great. Really."

He chuckled between mouthfuls. "I'll bet you just cook so much you get tired of food, don't you?"

"Oh no," I said. I speared the pork. "Honestly. I'm just preoccupied."

We ate in silence for a while, making occasional comments on the size and freshness of the fat shrimp, the perfect seasoning of the trout. Again I felt an odd - because unused - trust melting my resistance.

After a while I said, "When I went to visit Fritz and Vonette today, I kind of looked around. I thought I might be able to figure out who their enemies were if I sort of went through their desk."

He washed down his bite with some tea and said, "You sort of went through their desk? When I said you could help, didn't say you could burgle the place, for God's sake."

I laughed in spite of myself. "Well, listen up, copper," I went on. "I'm going to go through some of Laura Smiley's stuff, too."

"Christ."

"Look," I said, "I appreciate your making long-distance calls to find people who have moved and files that are on microfilm." I smiled. "You even got over your reluctance to bring me in on the case. But I need more if we're going to go forward." Then I asked, as much for myself as for him, "Why do you think I'm having dinner with you?"

"Miss Goldy," he said while pouring me some more tea, "excuse me. I thought we were here at least partially for social reasons."

"Dating a suspect? Is that legal?"

He held the teapot in midair. My face was warm. He said, "Tell you what. Let me worry about what's legal. I don't go breaking into folks' desks and stuff, for instance. But I wouldn't have brought you in, as you call it, unless it was legal. I can share information with you about what the department is doing, if I think it'll aid the investigation."

"So what you're saying is that being with me is social and helpful."

He nodded. "Investigators can get information from any source within the law. Which does not include breaking and entering, I might add. It might include keeping closer tabs on your son, however."

I gave him an absolutely sour look.

He finished a bite of pork and shook his head. "Just precautionary. Find out if he's really nuts about these games. Most kids aren't. But maybe there's something he's not telling me, or not telling you." He thought. "There're people involved in this who might talk more easily to you, is all."

"What kind of information do you expect to get from me?"

He shrugged. "Don't mean to offend you, Goldy, but you know how women talk - "

"You're offending me."

"Tell you what," he said, "let me try to make it up to you by taking you out to dinner again."

"No, I don't think so. . ."

"The movies?"

"No..."

"Bronco game?"

I hesitated.

"They're looking awfully good this year. Beat Green Bay last Sunday. Department has a pair of tickets. Let me know which Sunday. When you're free, that is."

"Wait," I said. I felt my head swimming. I wasn't ready for all this. I needed to talk to my group. "I am not looking for a social life," I told him. "For now I just want to solve this crime and start making money again."

"Then let's solve it."

"How? We've, I've, got a huge problem, and you're acting like getting some information on this is some long-term project."

He waved to the waiter for our check.

"What do you want to know?" he asked.

I took a deep breath. "Okay. A, someone tried to poison Fritz. B, that same someone did it in Laura Smiley's house after Laura Smiley's funeral. C, nobody seems to know why Laura killed herself and she didn't leave a note to tell us, and D, Laura and the Kormans didn't get along. Now E, you're telling me, this history between them goes way back. So maybe the two events, Laura dying and Fritz being poisoned, are related." I closed my eyes and nodded. It sounded logical, didn't it? "I told you before, it might help to know what that deputy coroner said about Laura Smiley's death. If she didn't leave a note, why are they calling it suicide?"

"My dear," said Schulz as he looked at the bill, "a note doesn't mean squat. I've seen suicide notes that were photocopied, for God's sake. With blood allover the room. I called the deputy coroner. She slashed her wrists, and there was no sign of a struggle, no burglary, nothing. That's what I know. We treat a suicide like a murder until we know differently. In this case, suicide was the deputy coroner's conclusion. Now granted, the guy is new. And before this he was out in some small town on the western slope." Schulz rubbed his temples.

I said, "Well, would you be willing to look into it some more? I mean if you really want to cooperate on this thing. And I'll work your women's angle. Talk it up, find out about Trixie and if the reason she works out with weights is so that she can exercise her aggression on people. Deal?"

He nodded.

"By the way," I said, "did the Health Department find anything?"

"No. It's probably like sending it down to the crime lab." When I looked puzzled, he said, "You've got to tell them, look for this, look for that. If you've got some white powder that's cocaine and you say, Check for heroin, they'll send your coke back to you and say, It's not heroin. Same principle."

I smiled. "Thanks for dinner."

He said, "Hey. Something else. I need to know more about Vonette. Something's

wrong there, I don't know what. And you're welcome. Let's do it again soon."

I nodded, although eliciting more information from Vonette was unappealing. I took a fortune cookie from the tray that held the check.

"Look," he said as he ate his cookie and tossed away the fortune, "we may have a bigger problem. Especially if whoever put the stuff in Fritz's coffee is really trying to kill him."

"Why is that?"

"Because," he said patiently, "if somebody's trying to kill him, they're going to try again."

"At least they're not going to do it at one of my catered functions," I replied, then remembered the Halloween party in three weeks. I wasn't actually being paid for it, just getting my club dues. Still. Better not mention that to Schulz, stickler for legality that he was.

"We'll have all this cleared up soon," Schulz said confidently. "Trust the sheriff's department."

I unfolded the paper fortune in my hand.

It said, "Faith is your greatest present need."

Like Schulz, I tossed it

At home I noticed miserably that the leftover spaghetti mess in the sink matched the red and white decor of the kitchen. Honestly, that Patty Sue. If she could run all afternoon, why couldn't she make a minimal effort to cook or clean? I tried to remember myself at twenty. Had I really never had the big picture of running a house before I had a child? Probably not.

The house was quiet. Before going to bed I crept down the hall to make sure Arch was safely asleep. This had been my habit since he was born. John Richard had given me the title Helicopter Mom: I hovered.

Arch was not asleep but was murmuring excitedly on the phone.

"That sounds great," he was saying. "But what about the potion?"

A pause. "No, you have to use milkwort for that. It's all that's available for lethal missions." He listened for a moment, and then said, "You mean I'm going to have to find that, too? Don't you know anything about getting rid of opponents?"