Killer Pancake Part 6

"No."

"Do you know anyone who could have thought of Claire as an enemy?"

Julian rubbed his brow so hard I feared he might bruise his skin. "Look," he said finally, "I just know they were investigating shoplifting at the store."

"Did she report any shoplifters?" Tom asked. He wasn't writing. "No," said Julian with a sigh. "I don't think so."

"What about these other men? Anybody shady that you knew about?"

"Claire just told me she'd seen other guys. But she also said she had admirers. Male admirers," he added dejectedly.

"Who?"

"Oh, Tom, I don't know." Julian gestured helplessly. His bleached hair caught the light, and he looked suddenly childlike. "She used to laugh when she told me men were always after her. She said she was glad to have a gla.s.s counter between herself and them. One time she teased me and said she'd managed to get rid of the guy who pestered her most. But she was so pretty, I guess you'd have to expect ..." He didn't finish the thought. "And as for being bothered, well, sometimes she thought somebody was playing weird practical jokes on her at the counter-"

"Like what?"

"Like getting into her stuff, I don't know ... she just said some of her stuff was missing, that's all."

"Did she say that she suspected anybody?"

"No!" Julian snapped, and Tom backed off.

The oven buzzer went off and I took out the crepes. I requested that we put off the discussion of the investigation. Endless talk about crime can put a damper on the appet.i.te. And we hadn't even told Julian about Marla yet.

The crabmeat in wine sauce was succulent, wrapped inside the thin, tender pancakes. But Julian, who occasionally ate sh.e.l.lfish as part of his not-strictly-vegetarian diet, consumed next to nothing. He had gone from furious to sullen. Over dinner I broke the news to him about Marla. I tried to make it sound as light as possible, with a good prognosis and quick recovery.

Julian's mood went back to anger. "What can we do? Is she going to need us to help her when she gets out? I thought heart attacks only happened to old people."

I felt a wash of relief that he did not react with either a fit of despair or more shock. "Yes, we'll all have to help. You especially, Julian, you know how much she adores you. And she's not old."

I shifted the topic to business. While Tom had a second helping of crepes, Julian and I pushed our plates away and did the final planning for catered events coming in the next three days. Despite the crises breaking all around, or maybe because of them, Julian seemed desperate to be preoccupied with food service. Maybe it was a way of rea.s.serting control. Day after tomorrow he would do a Chamber of Commerce brunch, and we talked about preparing lamb with nectarine chutney and avocado salad. He even asked earnestly if he should be taking notes. I said no; the menu, supplies needed, cooking and serving times were all in the kitchen computer. I wanted to embrace him in his pain. But I had learned from Arch that hugging teenage boys is a precarious enterprise.

When we had finished eating, Julian made a pitcher of iced espresso, a drink we'd all taken to imbibing after dinner in the unusual heat. Since I'd had latte as soon as I got home from the banquet, more caffeine would surely wire me for the night. But worry about Marla and the events of the day ought to guarantee insomnia anyway, I reasoned. I set aside a covered dish for Arch, and took the brownies and peach cobblers that I'd stashed for the banquet out to the front porch.

I loved our porch, although the only time you could use it in Colorado was the summer and early fall. Mercifully, the evening air had complied. Savory barbecue smoke drifted through the neighborhood. As soon as Tom and I were sitting in the old redwood chairs he'd brought from his cabin, baby Colin Routt started to wail again from down the street.

"Poor kid," Tom commented. "I just read an article about preemies. They have a hard life, all the way through."

"Especially when they're born at under one pound and their dad takes off for parts unknown," I said.

Dusty Routt appeared in the tiny dirt-covered yard holding her little brother, or, more correctly, half brother, on her shoulder. She was jiggling the infant up and down, but the motion failed to comfort him. Then the mellow notes of jazz saxophone again floated out of the house's screened porch, and the tiny baby was immediately quiet.

"Music therapy," Tom and I said in unison, and then laughed. When Julian appeared with crystal gla.s.ses filled with espresso and ice, we thanked him and sat listening to the jazz filtering through the dusky air. I sipped the cold, dark stuff and waited for one of them to speak.

Julian popped a brownie into his mouth and pushed off on the porch swing. After a moment he addressed Tom and me.

"She was under a lot of pressure."

"What kind?" asked Tom without missing a beat, as if we had not stopped talking about Claire twenty minutes earlier. Wisely, he didn't reach for his notebook.

Julian shrugged. "Pressure to sell. That was the main thing. You know, Prince & Grogan carries Mignon exclusively in Colorado. Not only that, but the Mignon counter is the only million-dollar cosmetics counter in the state. If the saleswomen don't sell there, they get fired." He grimaced.

"Pressure to sell," repeated Tom.

Julian sighed. "They live off those commissions. Lived."

"Julian," I said, "don't-"

He waved this away. "Plus what I mentioned. You know-pressure to watch for shoplifters." His tone was resigned. "There was a lot of theft there. It was a big problem in the store. Credit card fraud, employee theft, shoplifting, you name it. Claire introduced me to the guy who was in charge of security. Nick Gentileschi. He was okay, I guess. She was helping him with something."

"What?" Tom said, too sharply, I thought. "Helping the security guy with what? The shoplifting investigation?"

"I don't know!" Julian cried. "If I don't even know the ident.i.ty of this admirer who wasn't bothering her anymore, how do you think I know what she was doing with security?"

Arch made one of his sudden appearances, probably lured by the sound of raised voices.

"Hey, guys! What's going on? Blow-Up was too weird and complicated, I didn't like it. Is that pancakes on my plate out there? Neat. I put them in the microwave."

I nodded and held up one finger: I'd be there in a minute.

"She was afraid," Julian said tonelessly, as if he were speaking from a distant asteroid.

"Who-" Arch began.

I gave him a warning look and shook my head: Say nothing. Arch crossed his arms and waited for an explanation, which he didn't get.

"Afraid of what?" Tom asked Julian gently.

"Just yesterday she told me she thought she was being followed," Julian replied wearily. "But she said she wasn't sure. Oh, G.o.d, why didn't I tell you? I just thought it was some stupid thing, like the unexplained stuff at the counter."

"Wait," I said. "Wait." I thought back through the muddle of the day. Claire, her Peugeot, the helicopter. When I'd swerved the van into the right lane, I'd barely missed a pickup truck. Then when I'd looked again ... the pickup had fallen back several car lengths. "Someone might have been following us on I-70 this morning. In a pickup," I said miserably.

"Make?" asked Tom mildly. "Color? Did you see the driver?"

"No," I said helplessly. "No ... I don't remember any of that. Maybe I'm just being paranoid."

Julian was holding his head in his hands.

"Big J.," said Tom, "why don't we go inside-"

Julian's head jerked up. "There's a part of you that's always alone," he blurted out. "People always have secrets, and you know they have secrets, but maybe they don't want to tell you because they're afraid of your reaction, or maybe they don't want to tell you because they don't want to burden you. She didn't want to be a burden to me. And I didn't want to trouble you with it."

Tom and I exchanged a look. Inside the house, the microwave buzzer went off. My instinct told me Arch and I should leave Tom and Julian alone. Perhaps without an audience Julian would feel more inclined to talk to Tom.

"Let's go," I said to Arch.

"Why can't I eat out here?" Arch asked, perplexed. But he obeyed.

"Mom?" he asked when we were back in the kitchen. He held up his plate precariously. "Should I eat now or not?"

"Sure, hon, they just need to be alone for a while."

He took a mouthful of crepe and said, "So what's going on with Julian? Who was afraid and what's the big secret?"

I told him Julian's friend Claire had been killed in a hit-and-run accident. His eyes opened wide behind his gla.s.ses. "Do they know who hit her?"

I told him they did not but that Tom was working on it. "Arch, something else. Hon, Marla had a mild heart attack jogging around Aspen Meadow Lake today. She's at Southwest Hospital but should be out in-"

Before I could finish, Arch whacked his chair back and bolted from the table.

"Arch, wait! She's going to be okay!"

I bounded up the stairs after him. By the time I got to his and Julian's room, Arch was lying facedown on the upper level of the bunk. I put my hand on the back of the awful tie-dyed T-shirt, but he shook me off.

"Just go away, Mom!"

"They can treat a mild heart attack-"

"I'm not upset about Marla. I mean, I am upset about Marla. Of course I am. It's only that ... Look, just leave, okay?"

I didn't move. "Claire, then? You didn't really know her, although I know you worry about Julian-"

He shot upright suddenly, his brown hair askew, his face pale with rage. "Why are you so nosy? Why do you have to know about everything?"

"Sorry, hon," I said, and meant it. When he dropped back down on the mattress without saying more, I asked, "Want the curtains closed?" He didn't answer and I backtracked toward the door.

"Wait." His voice was m.u.f.fled by the pillow. Slowly he sat up. He looked at the wall with his fifth-grade drawings of wildflowers, made during an intensely lonely period, the painful time before Tom came into our lives and well before Julian became Arch's personal hero. "Could you close the door, Mom?"

I did as directed. Arch gave me a fierce, guilty look.

"I wanted Claire to leave," he said harshly. "I hated her."

"Why? You met her only once-"

"So? Julian was always with her or thinking about her or on the telephone with her, or something. We never had any fun anymore. I wanted her to go back to Australia." He faced the drawings again. "Now I'm being punished for wanting her gone."

I hate feeling so helpless. "I may not know much, Arch, but that doesn't sound like the way punishment works." He shook his head and refused to look at me. I went on. "Claire's death wasn't just a terrible accident. Somebody ran her down on purpose."

He was silent, his eyes on his drawings, his face expressionless. Then he muttered, "I still feel bad."

"Then help Julian over the next few days, especially when I go down to work the food fair. He'll need your company now more than ever."

He hesitated, then said in a resigned voice, "Yeah, okay." After a moment he asked, "Do you think Julian will ever find another girlfriend? I mean, sort of the way you found Tom after things didn't work out with Dad?"

It was so tempting to give him an easy answer. I said softly, "Arch, I don't know."

He shook his head mournfully. "Okay, Mom," my son said finally, "it's not helping to talk to you. Would you please just leave?"

Storms ripped through the mountains that night. Thunder boomed overhead, echoed down Cottonwood Creek, and seemed to shake the walls of our home. I woke and saw lightning flicker across our bedroom. The flashes were so constant that it was difficult to tell when one ended and another began. Rain pelted the roof and washed noisily down the gutters. I slipped out of bed to close our bedroom curtains, and found myself mesmerized by the storm. Torrents of muddy water gushed around the vehicles parked on our street, including a pickup truck blocking the end of our driveway.

As a lightning flash faded, I hesitated. Did a light turn on and then quickly off in the pickup? I narrowed my eyes. The storm slapped rain against the window. It was an unfamiliar truck; I didn't recognize it as belonging to one of our neighbors. But people had summer guests all the time, especially in Colorado, where we were usually spared the heat that afflicts the rest of the country. In the midst of the storm's violence, the truck was dark and still. I stared through the slashes of raindrops and decided the light was something I'd imagined.

A wave of water spewed up over the curb and surged toward Aspen Meadow's Main Street. This summer gullywasher would dump tons of mud and gravel on Aspen Meadow's paved roads. It would leave in its wake deltas of stone and a river of caked dirt. Driving after one of these torrents is invariably slow and treacherous. I sighed and wondered if Alicia, my supplier, would be able to get her truck up the street, to park anywhere close to the house in the morning. Especially if the pickup was still blocking the driveway.

When the tempest seemed to be abating, I glanced at the digital clock. But the clock face was dark. The storm had probably taken the electricity out. I fell into bed next to Tom's warm and inviting body. Incredibly, he had slumbered sonorously through it all. But when I inadvertently woke him by touching his foot, we had a deliciously stormy half-hour to ourselves.

With the power out, the usual artificial reminders of morning-ringing alarms, the aroma of fresh-brewed coffee-were absent. Luckily, Tom seems to possess an internal clock I dimly registered his departure when watery morning sunshine slanted through the bedroom windows. During a homicide investigation, he always leaves at sunup for the investigative team's strategy meetings, and returns home late. He phoned after a few hours, when I was moving slowly through the end of my yoga routine. He wanted to make sure I was okay, and that I knew the electricity was off. Yes, he'd been able to back out of the driveway, he said when I asked about the pickup, but I should be careful to avoid the mud on Main Street. I caught sight of my own short-statured, disheveled-haired, stupid-happy reflection in the mirror when I hung up. Living with someone who tried to take care of me still brought unexpected pleasure.

Thursday, July 2, my kitchen calendar informed me, was a preparation day for the events ahead-the food fair and the Chamber of Commerce brunch on Friday, the Braithwaites' party on Sat.u.r.day. Thinking of the Braithwaites, I groaned. Babs had been as snooty at the Mignon banquet as she'd been after she'd rear-ended Julian in her Mercedes and claimed it was his fault. But her personality wasn't about to stop me from making a splendid profit on the seated dinner she and her husband were giving for July Fourth. The two of them threw this celebrated annual party on their manicured five acres atop Aspen Knoll, the high point of the Aspen Meadow country club area. Supposedly the knoll had the best view of the fireworks over Aspen Meadow Lake. Perhaps if the guests plowed through their curry early enough, I'd even see part of the display. On second thought, with Julian's partic.i.p.ation now uncertain, I might have to clean up until dawn.

I checked my watch: eight-forty. Alicia should arrive with seafood, meats, and produce around nine. The power came back while I was wondering about the best time to visit Marla. With her angiogram scheduled for first thing, perhaps I could visit in the early afternoon ... then stop at Prince & Grogan to get the second half of my check, final payment for the banquet ... that is, if Tom didn't object to my presence there....

The phone rang. It was Tom again. "Look, Goldy, I'm sorry about last night-"

"What about it? It got kind of fun around four A.M. Of course, I couldn't see the time ..."

"Well, I've just been thinking about it." He paused. "Look, Goldy," he said seriously, "you know I want you to ... think about this case. It always helps to have your input."

"Think about the case," I repeated.

"You know I respect your intellect."

"Uh-huh. My intellect. My charming personality. And my cooking, don't forget that."

"Be serious. Fabulous cooking, charming personality, and a great intellect."

"Gee, Tom. I wish you'd been one of my professors. Great intellect. La-de-da."

"All kidding aside-I just don't want you to interfere, get yourself in a compromising position. Believe it or not, Miss G., there is a difference. For example, you should ignore a demonstrator. Not dump vegetables on him."

I glanced into the walk-in for ingredients that would make a show-stopping bread for the food fair. "Okay, no more vegetable-dumping. Promise. How'd your meeting go? Speaking of the Spare the Hares people, have you found out anything? Did Shaman Krill complain about me?"

"The strategy meeting took two hours. And how can I find out about demonstrators when I'm making conciliatory phone calls to my wife?"

"Just answer the question, cop."

"The guy didn't make a formal complaint. And n.o.body from that mall is being overly helpful. Sometimes your prime suspect is always around, bending over backward to give you advice and guidance. That's when you have to expect to be deceived." He made a grumbling noise. I could imagine him considering his cup of bitter sheriff's department coffee. "So are you and I okay?"

"Of course."

He grunted. "Julian up yet?"

"I was about to check on him. Aren't you always telling me how the first forty-eight hours of a homicide investigation are the most profitable? I'm making bread. We're fine. Tom, please, I can't bear not to know why someone would do that to Claire Satterfield. Go investigate."

As I tiptoed up the stairs to the boys' room, his words echoed in my ear. I've just been thinking about it ... I'm sorry ... don't want your interference. The many, many wrinkles of two single lives, of separate ways of communicating, were taking a while to smooth out. Every aspect of our entwined experiences was under scrutiny. Even the way we referred to possessions was a challenge, I thought as I caught my reflection in one of the old-but-not-antique mirrors that Tom had collected over the years. He'd hung them just last week on the wall above the stairway. Tom's pictures, my stairway. His stove, my refrigerator, his deck furniture, my bed, his car, my house. Now I was learning to say our, our, our. I sidestepped Scout the cat, curled into a furry ball on one of the steps, and gazed into a mirror. A short, slightly plump, thirty-two-year-old woman with curly blond hair and brown eyes looked back. Our mirrors. Our life. Goodness, even our cat.

I eased the boys' bedroom door open. Arch's slow, regular breathing from the top bunk indicated he was still asleep. There was no noise from Julian's bed. In the morning, his muscular limbs usually sprawled from under the covers on the lower bunk. But at the moment the navy-blue bedspread covered his inert form from head to foot. I hoped he was asleep. Somehow, though, I doubted it.