The Grilling Season (28 page)

T
he Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop had undergone a sea change since Mickey Yuille, my old master baker friend, had bought it, refurbished it, and hired an energetic cleaning service. Lacy, pristinely white European-style curtains now hung in the windows. The glass display cases, formerly messy with weeks of fingerprints, gleamed spotlessly in the dimmed light of the cozy dining room. The former owner had offered a hodgepodge of almost-stale cookies and partially baked pastry shells. These had been replaced by appetizing rows of truffles, chocolate-dipped macaroons, and French cream cookies so buttery, they gave new meaning to melt-in-your-mouth.

Since it was a quarter past two in the morning, I stopped lusting over the offerings in the dark shop-front and looked for movement in the kitchen. An oblong of yellow light illuminated Mickey hustling back and forth. As I sidled across the front window to get a better view, I caught sight of Brandon. He sat at a long table, gesturing as he spoke earnestly to his father. The back door had been left partially
open, probably to bring cool night air into the oven-heated space.

I nipped past the comics shop, the insurance agent’s office, and the Christian Science Reading Room. I rounded the back of the building and came noiselessly up to the back entrance with its open door. Mickey
had
suggested I come by for some fresh, hot cinnamon rolls. Now the unmistakable scent of that most prized of spices, Indonesian cinnamon, came wafting out into the darkness. I pushed the door open and stepped inside.

“Howdy all,” I said brightly, as if I customarily popped into closed bakeries at two
A.M.
“I had insomnia, so I just thought I’d drop in.”

Mickey, balding, shrunken, but with a smile so endearing he always reminded me of a stuffed troll, looked up from the thick layer of golden dough he was rolling out. “Goldy! So glad to see you!” He set aside his marble rolling pin and bustled forward to embrace me. He smelled marvelous, sweat mixed with spice and flour. His long white apron dusted my outfit. I grinned and returned his hug, then looked over at Brandon. His handsome face was no longer set in its usual impish expression. He looked as if a monsoon had arrived at his doorstep.

“Morning, Brandon,” I said pleasantly. “So glad I could run into you here. I’ve been trying to call you to apologize for our misunderstanding at my ex-husband’s office.”

His shiny dark hair fell in his face and he immediately brushed it back. “Sure, okay, no hard feelings,” he mumbled without visible enthusiasm. “Glad to see you.”

“Coffee, coffee, let’s have some fresh,” said
Mickey, obviously glad of my company, even if his son was not.

“Why didn’t you answer my calls?” I asked Brandon as I sat in one of the chairs at his father’s worktable. Out of earshot, Mickey ran water and measured out ground coffee.

“I can’t call you back,” Brandon rejoined. “They are watching me every second. I’m afraid every call of mine is monitored…. “

“Who’s ‘they’? Who would monitor your calls?”

Brandon’s handsome face screwed up in dismay. “The same guys who were here before, from the headquarters office of Human Resources. They’ve come back in from Minneapolis until the preliminary hearing with your ex is over. I’m telling you, Goldy, it’s a bad scene.”

“You think that’s a bad scene? My fourteen-year-old son has
moved out
until the preliminary hearing. That’s how ticked off with me he is over this case. I want to find out what the
hell
is going on with my son’s father a whole lot more than your corporate bigwigs do.” He said nothing. “Please, Brandon. Please help us.”

Brandon exhaled unhappily. “Whatever I tell you, you’ve got to say you didn’t hear it from me.”

“Brandon, for heaven’s sake! You didn’t participate in any illegal activity, did you?”

His smile was a younger, less wrinkled version of his father’s. “Of course not. No illegal activity. I didn’t even kill Suz Craig, as is believed in some circles.”

“What circles?”

His face turned pink. “Oh, you know. The gossip mill.”

“Was she about to be fired by ACHMO when she was killed?”

His father reappeared with the coffee. It was marvelous, dark and hearty. We took grateful sips and showered praise and thanks on Mickey.

“You all go ahead and visit,” Mickey told us. He eyed the rectangle of dough. “I gotta work.”

“Can’t we help you?” I offered. Cloth towels shrouded the domed top of another enormous bowl of risen dough.

“Naw, naw,” Mickey replied, waving a floured paw. “The priest is doing grief work with me. Says I gotta work. Stay busy. Best antidote. I like having you here, though.”

I looked back at Brandon, who shrugged. He murmured, “Just let him. He knows what he needs. I’m here for company. When I help him, it’s usually on the weekends.”

“Was Suz about to be fired?” I asked Brandon again. “Or had she been submitted to some kind of disciplinary action?”

Brandon sipped his coffee and was silent. For a moment I feared he’d decided not to answer. “Not exactly reprimanded. She was … being observed. In her dealings with people.” I waited for him to go on. He shifted in the wooden chair. “Headquarters had had a lot of complaints.” He seemed to go into a trance as he watched his father spread butter on the rolled dough.

“Complaints from whom?” I prompted.

Brandon blinked and shrugged. “Everybody who’d ever had to work with Suz Craig.”

When he seemed in danger of going into another trance, I said, “Amy Bartholomew said the
same thing. She said Suz set a trap for her. Amy wanted to control her own destiny, as she put it, and Suz had other ideas. Suz accused Amy of compulsively feeding the slots up at Central City. Then Suz tried to make it impossible for Amy to buy the health-food store.”

Brandon’s eyes were on his father as he sprinkled dark cinnamon sugar over the golden dough. “Yeah, I know. I’m the very young, very unsuccessful head of Human Resources, remember?”

“Amy said Suz criticized you for spending too much time here with your father and for coming into the office too tired to do good work. She criticized Chris Corey, too.”

“Oh, boy, don’t remind me.” He looked at the ceiling. “Chris was putting together a new Provider Relations Manual. He’s very thorough, and Suz kept changing the language of certain guidelines. It was her fault he missed the deadline. But she threw a fit anyway, in front of everybody.”

“Did she criticize Ralph Shelton?”

“Of course,” he said simply. “She told us she was putting together a file of patient complaints, plus a critical letter from her, into a packet to go to MeritMed.”

“Why would she do that? He already told me that was why he was fired.”

“Who knows? Plus, Goldy, I’m not convinced she should have fired him. Every doctor gets unhappy patients. Last year, the state board of medical examiners received over seven hundred and fifty complaints. Eighty-five percent were dismissed.” He sighed. “And then Shelton was so pathetic, calling each of us after she fired him, to see if we could
stop her from sending the packet of complaints on. We all suspected Shelton was trying to renew his old friendship with Korman to get
him
to prevent her from sending the packet to Shelton’s new employers at MeritMed. But apparently Korman repeatedly gave Shelton the brush-off through that cute secretary of his.”

“Sort of the way you gave me the brush-off today.”

“Sorry. I really
was
in a meeting.”

“Did Suz criticize and threaten John Richard, too?”

Brandon’s large brown eyes and narrow face suddenly seemed overcome with sadness. “She could be the warmest, most loving person you could ever imagine.” He paused and looked away. “She could also be vicious. Every day when I drove into that parking lot, my stomach would clench. What kind of mood was she going to be in today? What would she try to do to me? How could I fend her off?”

“Did she want to have control over John Richard?” I persisted.

He frowned, then shook his head. “Who knew? He didn’t share much with us, you know, the administrators. Suz’s control of
information
was what concerned her, and she was good at it.” His forehead wrinkled. “I did hear that Korman’s billing was problematic, and that he didn’t automatically qualify for a bonus he was expecting.”

“Who told you those tidbits?” When he shrugged, I went on. “Where do the ACHMO honchos come in? Why were they here last month? One of them told me they were fighting fires.”

He sighed again. “I might as well tell you.
We’re
the ones who complained about Suz to headquarters. Naughty us. Amy didn’t tell you about that?”

“She said something was planned.”

“The department heads did an end run. We called Human Resources at headquarters. ‘This woman is killing us,’ we said. ‘You have to get rid of her.’ “

“Wow.”

He jabbed the air with his finger. “But listen! HQ is always telling us: ‘Our vision is to build a cooperation-based organization! We want to have open lines of communication! Call on us
anytime
for help!’ ” His scowl deepened. “Did that ever backfire.”

“How?”

“They came, they listened, they left. You catered a nice lunch for them their last day, after we’d been meeting with them all week telling them how horrid our boss was. That next-to-last day, guess what? They met with
her.”

“Uh-oh.”

“‘Uh-oh’ is right! Open communication? Sounds more like
betrayal
, don’t you think? They told Suz, ‘Brandon Yuille says you criticize him too much. He can’t get his work done hiring new people if he has to listen to complaints about you all day.’ And to this Suz said, ‘You know, Brandon’s just lost his mother. I’ll take him out to lunch this month.’ “

“Oh, no.”

“Oh, yes. The very last day, those HR people had the nerve to tell us about their conversation with her, and all she’d promised. They said they’d solved
our little
personnel
problem. So you can see why our lunch showed a few cracks of tension.”

His father slid a baking sheet from one of the large black ovens along the wall. Inside I could see flames. I had a fleeting vision of Hansel and Gretel.

Brandon went on. “And then the following week Suz called each of us in. To me she said, ‘You ever complain about me again, I’ll fire your ass so fast you won’t know what hit you. I’ll make sure you never get another job in Human Resources anywhere in Denver, or anywhere in the country, in an HMO.’” His laugh was empty. “Then you won’t believe what else she said. ‘Brandon, I swear I’ll have your medical records altered so it says you’ve got cancer just like your mother.’ “

“Oh, come on. Surely—”

“Gome on yourself. You don’t think she had access to our medical records? How naive are you?”

“I just can’t believe it.”

“Goldy, believe it.”

At this point Mickey interrupted us by setting blue plates of hot pastries in front of each of us. He beamed like a magician.

“Oh, my gosh,” said Brandon, “bear claws.”

I did not know if this Danish-style pastry shaped like a giant claw was indigenous to the Rocky Mountains. I’d never heard of it before moving out here. I bit off one finger of the almond-paste-filled delicacy. Butter oozed between the flaky layers. A light, sugary glaze and crunchy sliced almonds complemented the rich filling. Another luscious reason to live in Colorado.

“Thank you so very much,” I told Mickey. “You can’t imagine how much I appreciate this.”

He poured me more hot coffee. “Of course I do. Food-service people are the last ones to sit down and actually enjoy
eating
anything. Besides, I love the company, as Brandon can tell you. I’m about to make some sour-cream cakes now…. You two need anything else?”

“Thanks, Dad. No,” said Brandon warmly as he squeezed his father’s hand. For the first time I noticed the bags under Brandon’s eyes. His schedule must be brutal, I thought. He’d told the cops he went to bed at eight
P.M
. every night so that he could be here by two
A.M.
It wasn’t a regimen I would want to follow on any long-term basis, especially since I’d tried it for the last few nights and now felt like a walking zombie.

“I’m going to leave in a few minutes,” I told Brandon. “I think I understand better now why everyone, especially my ex, had trouble with this woman. It’s hard to believe that Suz would threaten you with changing your medical records, though. Couldn’t anybody call her on trying to intimidate people? It sounds so much like blackmail.”

Brandon chewed the last of his bear claw. “Great idea, Goldy. Now we know those meetings she had with us in her office were taped. When I called headquarters the week after HR left, they said to me, ‘You get proof she’s threatening you and we’ll fire her.’ Not that I would trust them. But I checked the labels on the tapes Luella Downing found. None were from the Monday after the HR people left, when Suz went on her threatening rampage.”

“That’s it?” I said, astonished. “Monday—what would it have been, July 14? The tapes from that day are missing?”

“Why? You know where they are?”

“No,” I said with a sudden yawn I couldn’t suppress. “I don’t have a clue.”

When I crawled back into bed at four, Tom rolled over and said, “I’m beginning to think there’s someone else.”

I started to laugh and couldn’t stop. They were the kind of giggles you get when you’re very young, at camp or a slumber party, and can’t contain, no matter how valiantly you try.

“Uh-huh,” he said. “You got another statement to make? Some wrongdoing you encountered out on your prowls?”

“I can’t …” I said between giggles, “help it … if I can’t … sleep.”

“Soothe me, then. Tell me where you went.”

“To the pastry shop. Had a bear claw. Sorry, I didn’t bring you any.”

He put his arms around me and growled. “Promise me the next time you go on one of these excursions, you take me with you. I feel like a kid who always gets left behind.”

I snuggled into his arms. “Okay. Whither I go, thou goest. Or words to that effect.”

“So did you find out anything about Korman at the pastry shop?”