Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (23 page)

The hospital wouldn't give Vonette any oral meds, as they called them, so she contented herself with something out of a prescription bottle that she fished from her voluminous purse.

We drove up 38th Avenue in silence. Patty Sue was hushed with what I hoped was contrition. Vonette wasn't talking because she was deep in thought or pain or both. I was quiet because I was trying to figure out what Vonette was thinking.

"Gee, you guys," Patty Sue said thinly into the silence, "my hospital breakfast was awful."

"Mine was better than the other meal I had there," I said truthfully.

"You girls want to stop and get a bite to eat?" asked Vonette. "My treat. I could use something myself, anyway."

"Goldy," Patty Sue said in a husky voice, "are you mad?"

I said, "What? With no business? No car? No money? Me, mad? Yes. Mad as in angry. Heading toward deranged."

"Now, girls," came Vonette's soothing voice, "let's not get all upset. We'll have a little brunch. Couple plates of huevos rancheros and you'll both be doing a lot better."

She signaled to turn right. Her Fleetwood, which maneuvered like a road- bound yacht, glided into the parking lot of a Mexican restaurant built in the shape of a sombrero.

Vonette invited me to join her in a margarita, but I opted for a fruit smoothie. Patty Sue ordered a Coke. She asked the waitress if it was true that the Mexicans had chocolate sauce on their eggs and if so, could she? The waitress gave Vonette a questioning look.

"Oh, sweetie pie," Vonette assured her, "don't you worry about my girls here. Just bring the three of us your huevos and we'll be fine. Oh yes, and make that a pitcher of margaritas. Okay?"

Fine and dandy. It was clear I would be taking the helm of the Fleetwood after lunch. Which reminded me.

I said, "Where is the station wagon you're loaning me, Vonette?"

The pitcher of margaritas had materialized in front of us along with Patty Sue's Coke, my smoothie, and a single salted glass.

"Now remember," Vonette said as she poured and then took a long swig. "We haven't used it as our family car for a long time. We bought it a few years after we moved here."

"Moved here?" I asked. Information might come after Vonette's first drink but before her fourth. I said, "You know, John Richard never talked to me about his life be- fore Colorado. About how you and Fritz met, what your early life was like in Illinois."

My ex-mother-in-law pondered the crust of orange lipstick she had left on her margarita glass.

I said, "Please tell me."

Finally Vonette said, "Oh, well." She began slowly. "We used to work together," she said. "I was Fritz's secretary; Sometimes he'd take me out in the country to help with a delivery. We became very close, but it was all proper, I wanted it that way, being a divorcée and all."

"What?" I said.

"Oh yeah," she said, "I'd been married before, right out of high school in Corpus. My first husband was in the navy. Then I got pregnant, had my baby, and the navy moved us to Norfolk, where Joe was from anyway. You know, in Virginia. There Joe got involved with first one call girl, then another. Then he left for good. I was awfully young, just twenty when Joe moved out." She sighed. "So when I met Fritz I'd been on my own for a while anyway, trying to make do for myself and my little baby girl." She sloshed a large measure of the green stuff into her orange-and-salt-lined glass. "Just breaks my heart the way people don't care about marriage these days. Or those days either. Anyway, there were hundreds of navy wives looking for clerical work in Norfolk, so off I went with a girlfriend and my three- year-old little daughter to Carol ton, Illinois, because my friend had kin there." She paused for a few swallows. "We had some tough times, let me tell you, living in first one and then another trailer court, men always thinking I was available, as if I was. . . loose."

I said, "So how did the doctor fit in?"

"Oh, he was so nice to me when I was looking for work," Vonette gushed. "Treated me so nicely. It was my first regular job. Then after I had worked for him for six years, well, his wife died of cancer. A few months later he asked me to marry him and it took me about two seconds to say 'You bet.' "

"Colorado is a long way from Illinois," I mused.

"Yes, well." Vonette took out her mirror to do a little damage control on the lipstick. "Let me tell you, being a doctor’s wife is not all it's cracked up to be." She thought. "We got married in a little chapel and then started to try, no matter what, to be a family. After I had John Richard I thought everything would settle down but it didn't." She stopped to look out the restaurant window. "My daughter, she, well, she had some problems in school. Not too bad at first, but things got so much worse when she got to be a teenager. John Richard was just about ten then, and I guess I wasn't paying as much attention to her as I should have. She had started out liking Fritz, but their relationship. . . sort of got bad, if you know what I mean."

Patty Sue excused herself to go to the bathroom. Vonette let out a very long breath.

"My daughter. . . got involved with a fast sort of gang. She had gone through a lot, and she was only seventeen." Another swallow. "Then one night, she drank too much. The kids dared her, is what came out afterwards. She drank a whole bottle of Southern Comfort, then keeled over dead. Seventeen years old, and everything to live for. It was just awful."

I reached out and held Vonette's hand. I said, "I'm sorry."

"Yes, well," she said, "you wanted to hear this story and now you're hearing it. Just let me finish, maybe it'll do me good to talk." She gripped my hand. “Anyhow," she went on, "that's when I started getting my headaches real bad. Life wasn't good for Fritz then either; he was, well, he couldn't really practice, so we decided to make a clean break of things and move out here."

"Couldn't really practice?" I said. "Why? From grief?"

"Oh, no," said Vonette. She ran her finger over the orange lipstick on her glass.

"Couldn't practice," I prompted.

Vonette signaled the waitress for another pitcher of margaritas. She touched her fiery hair and began to talk slowly again. "It was such a mess." She sighed. "You keep asking why we left Illinois, Goldy. I'll tell you, but the beginning of it goes back even farther, to when my daughter was sixteen. It's awful, so please, don't go around talking about it."

I nodded, although I certainly didn't like the idea of keeping whatever bad news was coming to myself.

"We had to leave," Vonette said in a voice just above a whisper.

The huevos arrived; we ignored them. After the waitress left I said, "Had to."

"Yes." She drained her glass. "The year before my daughter died, a couple of Fritz's patients reported him to some state board. Not only that, but there was a trial coming up. That's when Laura Smiley first got involved. Oh, hell." Another sigh. "My daughter. . . said they'd had relations."

"Who had?" I asked.

"Fritz and my daughter," she said, just above a whisper. "She was sixteen."

"What?" said Patty Sue as she returned to the table. Vonette's voice turned fierce. "I thought about divorcing Fritz then, when John Richard was nine. But he kept saying how much he needed me, and I already felt so guilty about my daughter. Well, I just couldn't leave my son without a father. I felt so confused, and then my daughter began to run with that fast gang and to drink a lot - I thought, you know, to forget - and then she passed away. I was having these terrific headaches, and Fritz was so helpful with that pain. He was so eager to

make amends. It was real tragic. He said he could get certified in another state with no problem, so a month after my daughter’s funeral, we came out here."

We were all silent for a moment.

I said, "What was the trial going to be about?"

Vonette shrugged her shoulders. "It doesn't matter, does it? He helps so many women with their babies, and with their problems. I don't like to think about the bad." She nodded benevolently in Patty Sue's direction. "He does seem to be such a good man that usually I just don't know what to think, so I don't. You know."

She gave me a helpless look.

She pressed on, "I don't want to know. It gives me too much of a headache, having a lot of hate inside me." She stopped talking, then started again. "Sometimes I think, Vonette, just leave. I hate staying. But then, I don't know."

Patty Sue and I looked at each other. Her bottom lip was trembling.

The new pitcher of margaritas arrived. Vonette gave the waitress a grateful look.

Vonette said, "I don't want to burden you girls with this." She picked up her fork and leaned over her plate.

"It's okay," I said.

Patty Sue slowly began on the cold eggs. I started to do the same but stopped when I saw tears falling onto Vonette's plate.

"Vonette," I said, "listen. Come over to my house on the thirtieth, after dinner. I'm having some friends over to talk and have dessert. We can talk some more then. You might feel better."

She sniffed and said, "The thirtieth? I don't know. Call me about it." Patty Sue reached over with her good arm and patted her on the shoulder.

"Oh girls," Vonette said, "it's okay. It was all a long time ago. I'm all right now." As if

to demonstrate how all right she was, she lifted her glass in a mock toast.

I said, "Just tell me one thing. You never told us your daughter's name. What was it? I'm curious. John Richard never mentioned her."

Vonette put her glass down and looked at me. Her cheeks sagged; her mouth turned down at the edges. Her eyes were solemn and tired and indicated a sadness belied by the wild orange hair and made- up face.

She said, "Joe and I had thought since my name was French we should give her a French name. She was such a cute baby, that's what we called her. Baby. Only in French it's spelled different. So she was our Bebe. That's what I had put on her gravestone, too. Bebe Hollenbeck, 1950 to 1967."

-18- Who said a little learning was a dangerous thing? Was knowledge dangerous, too? If so, what was a lot of knowledge, more or less dangerous? And if the knowledge was related but disconnected, what good was it at all?

I clutched the keys Vonette had given me and slumped behind the wheel of the Kormans' old green Chrysler sta tion wagon, trying to put things in place. Vonette's first child had been Bebe Hollenbeck. Bebe had also been a student of Laura Smiley's when the Kormans and Laura had lived in Illinois. According to Vonette, Fritz Korman had seduced Bebe when she was sixteen. And Bebe had drunk herself to death.

Then, Fritz Niebold Korman had moved to Colorado, bringing with him Vonette and a young John Richard. Was the practice the reason? According to the torn newspaper account in Laura's locker, there had been a mistrial. I had to get home to get the article and give it to Schulz. He'd be able to follow up on it. Whatever Laura's involvement had been in all this, it had ended in her feeling alienation that had not subsided in twenty years of living in the same small town. But why had Laura overcome her alienation- . or had she? This was the most puzzling aspect of all. What did she have to say to Fritz Korman that morning? And even if hostilities had erupted, how could she have put rat poison in Fritz's coffee after she was dead?

And how and why had Laura died, anyway?

"Um, Goldy," said Patty Sue. "What are we waiting for?"

I stared at the keys. It looked as if the only thing that was going to go into place was one of them. Vonette said she had cables if we needed a jump. I had had my share of bad luck with American cars and thus had no hope for a Chrysler. I thrust the key into the ignition, pumped the gas, and turned the key.

It started right up. For once, something went right.

Our first stop was Aspen Meadow Drugstore. The hospital had given me a prescription for pain medication. George Morgan, the pharmacist, looked as old as Gabby Hayes in his last picture. He was reputed to have been in Aspen Meadow since the gold rush in nearby Central City. I noticed with some satisfaction that he finally had hired a new female assistant. As I handed George the prescription I had a thought.

"George, did you fill any prescriptions for Laura Smiley?" I called after him as he was about to disappear between shelves. He turned and shook his head at me like a wise gnome.

"This'll be ready in ten minutes," he said. I went off to call Arch, whom I had missed more than I would have thought possible. One night away from home felt like weeks. Worse, the doctor had recommended that I spend the rest of the weekend in bed, and that Arch stay elsewhere at least until the end of school Monday.

"Not to worry," Marla assured me over the phone. "He loves it here. He keeps telling me how cool all the insects are in my greenhouse. He wanted me to help him with this crazy Halloween costume, but you know sewing's not my thing."

"What Halloween costume?"

"Oh, something from one of those crazy games. Sounds like leech. Wait. Lich. Anyway, I told him to forget it, his mother could handle the seamstress routine. If you pick him up Monday afternoon when the bus comes, I can tell you all the latest news. And not just about bugs." She laughed and hung up.

Back at the prescription counter the new assistant eyed me vaguely. She said, "Did you say your name was Laura Smiley?"

I blinked. "Did you hear me say that?"

She wrinkled her nose at me and looked through the S prescription box. Then she punched some keys on a computer. "Penicillin?" she asked. "That's what you had last time."

"Really," I said, "what did I have the time before that?"

"Can't you remember what your prescription was for this time?"

I shook my head.

This soul sister of Patty Sue punched some more buttons. "Organidin? You had a cough?" I shook my head. "Ornade?" she asked. "Colds?"

"Don't have one now." More punching.

"Looks like that's all you've ever had. Let me go find George."

"No, no," I protested, backing away. "Let me call the doctor. He's sure to clear this all up. I'll have him give you a ring."

She shrugged. Of course, it was not the doctor who would be able to clear any of this up. Maybe now Schulz would listen to me, even if it had cost me my own prescription to relieve pain.