Goldy Schulz 01 Catering to Nobody (27 page)

And with that shred of good news amidst all the bad, I said goodbye to Pomeroy and smiled all the way down the dirt road through the trees, back toward town.

"Mom, I got the batting," Arch announced when I strode into our house and banged the door behind me. "I opened the book to the lich illustration, so you can see what I need to look like. I'm going to wear it to the athletic club. Maybe some of the people will think I'm a midget and not a kid."

I hugged him. "Not likely. Midgets aren't as neat as eleven-year-olds."

He patted my back. "Did you have a good day or something?"

"Do I have to have a good day to give my own kid a hug?"

"Sorry. You just haven't seemed happy lately. Neither has Patty Sue."

No kidding.

"Did you have a snack?" I said.

"Well, they had burritos for lunch at school and I hate them, so I ordered from

the Chinese place when I got home because I didn't exactly want tuna casserole. I charged it. Hope that's okay. Patty Sue came in a little while ago and she was hungry, too." He paused.

"Go on."

"Well," he said as he pushed his glasses back up his nose, "when the guy came with our order and we opened all those

little boxes, I said, Hey, this is like the boxes I used to get my goldfish in from the pet store. I felt real bad because then Patty Sue went into the bathroom and threw up."

"Oh, God. Is she sleeping now?"

"I think so," said Arch with a rueful twist of his mouth. "I knocked on her door and asked her if I could bring her some sweet- and-sour pork on a plate, sort of like breakfast in bed, but she said the smell of it made her sick, and please don't talk about the goldfish."

“Any more good news?"

"Vonette called. She sounded real upset. Said she's a wreck and wants you to call her about the car."

I shook my head and headed down toward my sewing room. I said, "That can wait."

"Good," said Arch as he retreated, "because I need to use the phone and I didn't want to use the business line."

We parted and I reluctantly plugged in the Japanese sewing machine I had bought from a traveling salesman who had failed to mention the all-Japanese instruction booklet. But I had been smart enough to figure out how to go forward and backward, and, staring at the illustration for the lich, I figured that was all I needed.

A robe like a Druid priest's with batting in the shoulders and sleeves like a magician's, the description said; the costume should have a ragged but costly aspect. The lich face was terrifying, like a skull. I drew on the material with a tailor's pencil, then cut and sewed until the hood and shoulders were done and all it needed was a hem. Arch could paint the muslin any colors he wanted, and knowing him, he would.

The picture in the book was black and white. My gaze wandered to the caption, which read:

The lich specializes in vengeful activity. It uses spells, charms, traps and poison potions to punish the wicked. One spell of particular use is raising the dead. By communicating with deceased victims, the lich gathers evidence against evildoers. It carries out its plan of vengeance using small sharp weapons and clerical spells such as deep sleep, fireball, and scaring its victims to death. The lich stops only when the wicked one is dead.

I set aside the costume. Jesus wept, I remembered, before he raised Lazarus. I had no such grand plans. But I wept anyway.

-22- Todd?" came Arch's whisper over the phone, "I can't talk long. I've been trying to reach you since yesterday. " "Our phone's been broken. What's wrong? Does she suspect something?"

"No, she's sewing," Arch replied. "But I've still got to be careful."

I'd wiped my face, blown my nose. Now I breathed oh-so-shallowly as I cupped my hand over the mouthpiece.

Todd said, "I can barely hear you. Do you want me to come over?"

"No," said Arch, "no time before dinner." He paused. "Listen, you're not going to believe this. I got it."

Todd asked, "Got what?"

"A weapon, silly," Arch said with an impatient hiss. "It's better than a knife too, because it's just like in the book. Small and sharp. I found it in a plastic bag in my grandmother's car. We'll have to clean it later. It's under our woodpile now."

"Great!" replied Todd. "What spell are you going to use?"

"How about fireball?"

"Ever done it before?"

"Well," admitted Arch, "not in real life."

"Easy," said Todd, "you could just make a Molotov cocktail. Get yourself a bottle, see, and fill it with gasoline - "

"Who're you talking to?" asked a sleepy Patty Sue as she slouched into the room.

I pressed the receiver back into the cradle.

I said, "Nobody. Just checking to see if the phone’s free so I can call Vonette."

She tilted her head at me. "What are you making for dinner? Arch ordered some Chinese stuff but it didn't look that great to me. I am hungry, though."

I said, "You've had a big day."

She nodded, yawned again.

"Sorry we don't have anything to eat," I lied. "In fact I need you and Arch to go to the store for me before dinner - "

"But I haven't even gotten my regular license yet," Patty Sue protested, "and I don't know how I'd drive with a cast." She wandered out of the room toward the kitchen. I turned off the sewing machine and followed her.

"That's okay," I said, "I'll drive." I grabbed a pencil from beside the phone and hastily began to write. Patty Sue was fishing gherkins out of a jar with her pinky. "I have lots to do," I went on, "and you guys can help me out while I do other errands." I called to Arch, and he came clomping down to the kitchen while Patty Sue read the list over my shoulder.

"Now what?" he demanded.

I looked at the two of them and tried to imagine myself as a patient person.

"I have two parties this week, one day after tomorrow for my women's group and one at the athletic club the next day. This means a lot of shopping and cooking. You two," I went on, "will please buy groceries while I pick up pizza and do errands, and then we'll all come home and discuss the news of the day. Okay?"

"Oh, guess what?" said Patty Sue. "Speaking of news.

Dr. Korman's treatments finally worked."

Arch groaned and left to get his jacket.

I stared at her. "What do you mean, his treatment worked? You want to tell me what that treatment was?"

Patty Sue's face turned quite pink.

"Oh, that's confidential, Goldy. All I can tell you is that as of this afternoon, I'm, um, normal."

I shook my head. If the North Pole was normal, then Patty Sue was living in Antarctica.

"The thing is," said Patty Sue, "it's been a long time for me. Since I was normal, I mean. Anyway, I don't feel so good."

Neither, I reflected, did I, as I swung the boatlike Chrysler wagon into the parking lot of Aspen Meadow's grocery, one of a western chain of food stores. The store's dairy selection was pasteurized to the extent that everything tasted scalded; the produce was whatever could make it to Colorado from California without rotting. Nevertheless, I had made the list long enough to keep both Arch and Patty Sue occupied for at least an hour.

Under the woodpile. In September I had stacked a half cord of firewood beneath the house's old deck. Once back home .I put on garden gloves and began to dig and scrape out bits of bark and grass from beneath the freshly split yellow logs. The sky was beginning to darken and the sharp smell of wood smoke was already in the air. I hoped that snakes of all genres had begun to hibernate or whatever it was snakes did in the winter. Black widows, of course, were notorious inhabitants of woodpiles.

A plastic bag crackled in my fingers and I drew it out.

Inside the bag was the soft towel covering for a surgical pack, the kind I knew Fritz and John Richard kept in the storage closet in the room where the nurses drew blood. It was similar to, perhaps even exactly the same as, the one Arch had tried to steal from the office. Had he succeeded after all? I opened it carefully. Rolled up wads of latex, which I guessed to be surgical gloves, were at the top of the bag. They weren't usually in the kit. Tissue forceps, suture set, two-by-two's, other stuff I recognized.

A scalpel, one of the kind that used disposable blades. The blade had dried blood on it.

Now I really had something to tell Tom Schulz. And a few things to discuss with my son.

"Tom," I said into the phone, "I have to talk to you."

"I barely recognized your voice, you sounded so friendly."

"Tell me about the weapon Laura Smiley used on herself."

"Well now, I don't know whether - "

"Come on," I pleaded, "you told me yourself that a suicide case was closed unless some evidence was found - "

"And so far you've given me theories, a tom article, a note, and a missing prescription."

"Tom!"

"Okay, okay. One of those twin-bladed ladies' razors. It had a lot of blood on it, I know that. From the depth of the wound on her wrists, the deputy coroner figured she could have done it with that. Although he's not a terribly sharp guy."

"Not too sharp," I said. "That sounds like something Laura Smiley would say."

"I don't get it."

"Forget it," I said. Then I asked, "So the theory was she was shaving her legs?"

"I guess."

"Dumb. Stupid. Imbecilic."

"It's good to hear you sounding like yourself. What'd you find out from Pomeroy? Did he know anything about Vonette?"

I said, "Hold on. Laura Smiley didn't shave, I'll be willing to bet anything. She was a feminist - "

"Is that like socialist? I don't think they shave either."

"I know it's a challenge, but try to take me seriously.

Look at it practically. Have you ever cut yourself with one of those Good News razors? Or some other twin-bladed kind?"

"Strictly an electric man, myself."

"Well," I said, "it's almost impossible, I don't care what the deputy coroner says. You'd have to be trying real hard, because you can barely nick yourself, much less cut, wound, stab, or slash. I'd say your deputy coroner has got a hole in his head."

"Well," Tom said apologetically, "he's new. So you're saying you think she used something else?"

"She or someone else." I fingered the surgical kit. "You'd better come on over. I've got something for you."

Within fifteen minutes he had picked it up. He looked dubious. Wanted to know if this was some kind of kid's joke. Asked if I touched anything, and where I found it.

"Arch got it out of this station wagon, which belongs to the Kormans," I said. "You know Laura's blood type and all that?"

He said, "Yes, we do, Goldy. Now listen. I know it's hard for you to leave the police work to me. But just for a couple of days, try."

Then it was time for me to do the picking up, first pizza with extra cheese, Arch's favorite, then assorted goodies from the pastry shop for the women's meeting. When I arrived at the grocery store both Arch and Patty Sue were shuffling down an aisle wearing fatigued, irritated faces. It was, after all, past dinnertime. I checked their cart for the avocados, carrots, celery, cherry tomatoes, Belgian endive, apples, assortment of cheeses, chicken, eggs, chips, ground beef, cups and crepe paper, and decorative squash and pumpkin I had ordered. Plus Coke and chocolate soda. I was thankful for the fifty dollars from Hal.

"Mom," whined Arch, "this is boring. I'm tired and hungry."

"Just need frozen bread dough," I mumbled, claiming the cart.

"I saw your ex-husband and his new girlfriend over a couple of aisles," whispered Patty Sue, "with the older Dr. Korman and Vonette."

I turned to her as we headed toward the frozen-food section. "Oh, that's just great. What're they doing here?"

But I didn't have to wait for Patty Sue to come up with an answer, for at that moment the Korman entourage came wheeling around to frozen foods.

Patty Sue moaned. She said, "I'm not feeling too good."

"Just do me the favor of not asking for a medical consultation right now," I said.

"Why, look who's here," said John Richard. "Goldilocks shopping for porridge. What are you going to put in it?"

"Hello, Vonette," I announced, as if the girlfriend and two doctors were not present.

"Ho Arch! How's my boy?" asked John Richard as he pinched his unsmiling son on the cheek. With his tall, hunk-type frame, John Richard looked like a benevolent defensive end talking to a young fan. Only Arch was not acting properly adoring. John Richard responded by turning to his girlfriend. "I told you she was a bitch," he said between his teeth. The girlfriend bobbed a head of streaked hair. "Goldy," he went on, turning back to me, "meet Pam Mosser. She teaches geometry at the high school. She's my, er, fiancée."

I was so proud of myself. I smiled politely and said, "How do you do?" The virtue of an eastern upbringing.

"Patty Sue," said Fritz, "how are you getting along?"

"Well," she began, "not too - "

"Please be quiet, Patty Sue," I ordered.

"Now Goldy," Fritz warned. "Don't start up."

"Start up with what?" I asked and gave Vonette a knowing look, from which she shrank.

Fritz turned to stare at Vonette.

"Mom," Arch moaned beside me, "I'm getting tireder."

"I still don't feel so - " Patty Sue began.

My ex-mother-in-law looked at me guiltily and cleared her throat. Patty Sue had disappeared down the aisle.

"Oh, Goldy dear," Vonette said nervously, "I need the car back. I'm sorry, I forgot something, ah, it needs to go into the shop. Sorry," she said again.

I wasn't ready for another loss of vehicle. I turned to beat a retreat past orange juice and toward ice cream, where Patty Sue had arrived and was filling her arms with Fudge Swirl, Double Chocolate Chip, and Rocky Road.

"Couple of days," I promised over my shoulder. "At the club Halloween party. My van should be ready by then. Then I'll give you the Chrysler. See you Friday, Vonette!"

We were almost at the checkout stand.

To my utter delight, Arch turned around and yelled, "What's geometry?"

-23- I got into the car feeling light-headed. But I congratulated myself on one thing: I had survived the encounter.