The Whole Enchilada (22 page)

He gave me that surprised-expression look. “You're crying.”

“I'm prepping onions.”

Julian sighed. “First, Tom told me about the antibiotic that the killer used at Arch and Drew's party. He thinks it was likely that it was put in the tortas, which they know for certain that Holly and everybody who had weird symptoms ate. I made those tortas special so Holly would eat some. They were one of the main dishes at the party, so it makes sense that the killer would have gone for that, or maybe knew Holly liked them. If I hadn't brought them, maybe she wouldn't have gotten poisoned. A few people had nightmares, but Holly
died
. That's guilt trip number one for me. Number two, or maybe it should be three, is you falling through the deck, and me not—”

“What?” I demanded, savagely quartering the onions, just so I could finish them. “Throwing out a net to snag me? You were inside. And anyway, the department is pretty sure that trap was meant for Drew or Holly. Remember, it was your swimming that
saved
me.” When Julian said nothing, I went on, “What else?”

“Boss.”

“What?” I washed my hands and cut plastic wrap to cover the onions. “Just tell me, and I'll absolve you, even though I'm not technically able to do that.”

“I should have heard Jake!” He held his arms out in a gesture of helplessness. “I should have protected you from that guy who attacked you right outside the back door!”

“My son,” I said, “your sins are forgiven.” I didn't make the sign of the cross. Some blasphemy was beyond even me.

“I'm not your son,” Julian pointed out, but he was grinning. He moved the first pot of spinach over to a giant colander in the sink, where he pushed down on the steaming green mass to extract as much water as possible.

“Speaking of Arch, when is he due home?”

“He and Gus have that trail-building project today, so it'll probably be late.” Julian's brow wrinkled, as if he were trying to remember something. “Wait, I forgot something. Arch sent me a text saying Gus had forgotten he had a physical this morning, so he, Arch, is going out to the project with Sergeant Jones. He'll be hungry when he gets home, so we should leave him some dinner, because we'll be at the Ungers' place. Do you think the sergeant will be with him?”

I sighed. “I have no idea. I'll call Tom later about it.”

Julian and I worked side by side without talking for the next ten minutes. Out back, the second squad of crime-scene guys was checking for any usable footprints, bits of clothing snagged on bushes, or fingerprints on the gate, garage, or back wall of our house—anything the team from the previous night might have missed. I didn't hold out much hope.

Without warning, Julian asked me, “Why do you do this?”

“Catering?” I replied. “Same reason you do. I love to work with food. Most people don't. That translates into money.”

“I'm not talking about catering. Here, let me fix you another espresso.”

“Uh-oh. More caffeine. I might just explode.” But I'd finished prepping the vegetables. I bagged the peppers, onions, and tomatoes separately, then washed my hands again, and plopped into one of our kitchen table chairs.

“I'm talking about getting involved with these crimes,” Julian said as he put two cups of espresso onto the table. I closed my eyes while he dumped sugar into his. “Nobody pays you for it, and for crying out loud, it's dangerous.”

We'll get together soon, and talk.
Holly's last words to me made a fist around my heart and squeezed. “I do it,” I said quietly, “because I care about these people. The Jerk ripped my sense of self to shreds. Helping victims, people I know, helps me recover that self.”

Julian didn't have time to respond, because Marla was banging on our front door. When I heard her arguing with Boyd—“Goldy didn't tell you she invited me over?”—I quickstepped down the front hall.

Boyd gave me a tired look. “You need to inform me when you ask people to come to the house.”

“It's just Marla,” I said.

“You need to inform me—” he began again.

I interrupted him. “Okay. Sorry!”

Boyd pulled the door ajar, and Marla marched through, staring daggers at Boyd. Neither one of them spoke.

Thank goodness Julian had had the good sense to fix Marla that multiple-shot drink I'd promised her. The oversize china cup sat, steaming, on a gold linen place mat. When Marla, who wore a red-spangled black top and matching pants, stormed into the kitchen, Julian was busily slicing Gruyère onto a plate. On any diet, people need to eat. If they don't eat, their blood sugar slips down around their ankles. They get cranky. It was my bet that this was what had led Marla to shout at Boyd.

“Boyd was just doing his job, Marla,” I murmured.

She had already sat down and was sipping gratefully from her cup. She shut her eyes, waiting for the combination of caffeine and cream to hit. When she opened them again, she inspected my face.

“You look even worse than you did yesterday.”

“That's what everybody keeps telling me.”

“I want all the details of this attack on you last night.”

I told her. Fatigue threaded through my voice when I finally said, “Let's talk about something else.”

She took a bite of cheese and then regarded her cup. “This is gorgeous.”

“The cappuccino?”

“The cup, silly.”

I smiled, and told her that it was from a set that Tom had given me for our most recent anniversary. A drug dealer had shot a police officer, and was on his way to prison. His assets—undoubtedly bought with drug money, since the criminal had no income—had been seized. At the forfeiture auction, Tom had picked up a dozen place settings of French porcelain decorated with an intricate blue-and-gold design. It wasn't the kind of thing you pictured a drug dealer going for, but apparently, this one had.

Marla picked up the saucer and turned it over. “It's by Bernardaud,” she said appreciatively. “The pattern is called Grâce.”

“I know that.” When Tom had given it to me, he said the china reminded him of me, that I was a slice of capital-
G
Grace in his life. I was suddenly glad that Julian had pulled the cup out for Marla.

“Gruyère, boss?” Julian asked me.

“Sure. Thanks. But no more coffee.”

“Boyd knows me,” Marla was complaining. “I'm here before eight in the morning, and he thinks I'm going to attack you?”

“Eat your cheese, will you?” I told her, then put one of the slices Julian had set before me into my mouth. It was salty and creamy at the same time, and tasted sharply of smoke. I always tried to picture the caves in France where they aged Gruyère, and usually only got as far as seeing the cheeses hanging upside down from dark ceilings, like bats.

“All right,” said Marla. She sighed. She'd eaten; she felt better. “Should I go apologize to Boyd?”

“If you want,” I said. “It's just that he has to keep track of who visits, and let the department know.”

Julian offered to wash the cups, saucers, and dishes by hand, but I told him I would do it. While I rinsed the china Julian said we were done until tonight, except for the saffron rice. So should he start on it? I said yes, and thanked him.

“Act of contrition complete,” said Marla as she reentered the kitchen. “I suppose we're off to the basement again?”

“Don't you
want
to keep looking through the notes?” I asked anxiously, as I felt an unexpected jolt of guilt myself.

“Of course I do,” said Marla, although she didn't sound convinced. “I'm just tired from doing that dinner last night. I'll revive.”

We descended to our lair. Marla started in with six months' worth of notes from later meetings; I took earlier ones. My handwriting, or at least the ink from my cheap ballpoints, had faded on one side of each sheet, and then, perversely, bled over from the other side. Sometimes even I couldn't make out what I'd written.

It was hard to concentrate. I was tired and in pain. But that wasn't entirely it. I had realized something that morning, while we were cooking. It had been important. But the insight had flashed by like a dark shadow. It reminded me of a mouse you see out of the corner of your eye. In Aspen Meadow, the little buggers come inside in October, when we're enveloped in our first chill.

Holly's words in my nightmare:
Why can't you see it?

See
what
?

My brain had seized up, and nothing was forthcoming.

So I went back to reading that Holly and I had realized that we'd probably become pregnant at the same time, at that conference over in Boulder.

I sat back in my chair, remembering. Holly and George and the Jerk and I had attended the same three-day meeting eighteen years ago, with the gloriously interesting name Setting Up a Medical Practice. What I recalled about the conference was that the sessions had been so stultifyingly boring, I'd had a hard time focusing, just as I was now. In order to keep my attention sharp, I'd forced myself to make up acronyms: BAD, for
Billing
,
Affiliation
with insurance companies, and
Documentation
, and UHIT, for
Uniforms
,
Hiring
a staff,
Insurance
files, and
Training
a staff to protect privacy.

Bad U Hit
, indeed. The Jerk and I had had a furious fight before we arrived, and I was all set to file for divorce once I'd pulled together a little money. But at the conference, the Jerk had been at great pains to convince me that the argument was my fault. To keep the peace, I'd agreed. We made up. During the day, to show my devotion, I'd sat through the sessions and taken notes, as the Jerk requested. One of the nights, I'd become pregnant with Arch. And that was that. There would be no divorce, I told myself. I would stick it out, “for the baby.” I could do it. At that point, I thought I could do anything. At that point, I was twenty years old.

I'd never seen Holly at the conference, she'd laughingly told me later, because she'd gone off to hike the Flatirons, a set of peaks that erupt at a steep angle west of the flat plain of Boulder. She, too, had become pregnant at the conference, she'd said, blushing. But she and George had made love because she'd felt so guilty about not going to a single presentation. George, studious and dedicated, had gone to all of them.

And then the dark shadow flashed again. I had knowledge from Med Wives 101.
That
was where the insight had come from. I knew, or suspected, something.

Yet even a suspicion had to be confirmed. Telling Marla I had to stretch my legs, I walked over to the computer Tom used for the Internet.

From the notes I'd already taken, I remembered that Holly and I had talked about how our first attempts at cooking had met with disgust. The Jerk had tossed the tomato aspic I'd made into the trash. Why hadn't he told me before then that he was allergic to tomatoes? He said that he had, and I'd forgotten.

Edith Ingleby had ground up a molded salad that Holly had made, one with hard-cooked eggs and homemade vegetable stock. I'd kept trying to perfect my cooking for the Jerk. Holly, on the other hand, had thrown in the kitchen towel, the spatula, and every pan she owned.

Then, last night, at the conference center, when I'd cleared the dishes, I'd noticed that George hadn't even touched the strawberry molded salad. It didn't have vegetable stock or hard-cooked eggs. Yet he hadn't even tasted it. Why?

I tapped into a medical search engine that Tom used from time to time.
Allergy to gelatin,
I wrote, and soon was rewarded.
An allergy to gelatin usually reveals itself when a child has the first shot for measles, mumps, and rubella. The mumps vaccine is made with gelatin, so a child with an allergy to gelatin should not have the booster shot for mumps.

Okay, so far, so good. Then I typed in
Boys who contract mumps.

Boys who contract mumps,
the search engine spit out,
will sometimes become irreversibly sterile.

Even though I'd known what I was looking for, I sat back from the computer, stunned.

Who knows?
my attacker had demanded.

I picked up my cell phone and tapped out a text to Tom:
Ask George Ingleby if he is sterile.

Tom texted back:
Why?

I wrote:
Because I think he is. Based on scientific evidence.

Tom:
What evidence?

Think he's allergic to gelatin,
I typed.
Ask if he contracted mumps when he was young.
After a moment, I reflected on Lena's rage, which had seemed so out of place. I recalled Edith saying “my daily miracle” when we visited the Inglebys on Saturday. She'd nodded when Marla asked her if she meant the muffins I gave her, but she hadn't been paying much attention to us . . . and right before that, she'd complained about Tom sending Drew away.

Tom had found out Holly was suing George for back child support. Lena had made a crude suggestion about having sex with Tom.

I typed,
Ask when he found out he was sterile.

Tom's text said:
Will do. Remember
:
reveal nothing to anyone but Boyd & Marla, no matter how much you trust that person.
A moment later, he texted,
We talked to Broome again. He's not happy.

He didn't say anything else, so I had time to think. Marla stopped reading and said, “Okay, I'm over here busting my butt trying to read your squiggles, and you're secretly doing something, checking the computer, sending texts. So what in the world is going on that you're not telling me?” When I turned to her, she said, “Uh-oh. You found something out.”