The Whole Enchilada (7 page)

From behind me, it sounded as if Father Pete was talking to himself. He concluded, resignedly, that he supposed he should hold off on setting a date for the memorial service until after Drew returned. No matter what they initially thought the cause and manner of death was, there was that autopsy to contend with. Those always held things up.

I picked up the bottle of bourbon, as much to get it away from Father Pete as anything else. I said, “Why don't we go out on the deck, where Drew won't be able to hear us?”

“Good idea. I'll just go up to his room to tell them we'll be outside.”

After he left, I poured myself a half inch of bourbon in a plastic cup. It occurred to me that Drew might need me to do errands for him. But if I went up and asked, Arch might glare at me for hovering or intruding. So I glanced at the detritus that Drew had dumped from the shorts he'd needed to wash. It contained a cell phone. Hadn't Father Pete said Drew needed to take his phone and charger to Alaska? And hadn't Tom told me that Drew had called 911 from a disposable, which deputies had taken down to the department?

I picked up the phone. On the back was a piece of adhesive tape where Holly had penned
Mom's
. This was a cell phone Drew had had in his pocket? Or maybe Holly had had it, and he'd used it . . .

Curiosity cut through my brain's fog. The whole thing had happened so swiftly, and been so odd, so heart-wrenching. Feeling only slightly guilty, I pressed the button for
Recents
. There were calls to the church, to me, and to Marla. There were no voice-mail messages. I tapped the icon for text messages. What harm could it do? I wondered. Holly was dead.

There was only one: it was from a cell-phone number I did not recognize. I stared at the message.
Not another cent. Don't ask, or you will regret it.

I blinked, then took a small sip of the whiskey. The bourbon burned my throat, then my stomach. I glanced at the lake. Would Tom want to know about this?
Yes
.

Yet I did not want to call attention to the message, to arouse more grief and curiosity from Drew, by taking the phone upstairs to Sergeant Jones. My own cell was in the van. Better to call Tom from Holly's cell, I figured.

Would Drew be able to hear me from the kitchen? What if he made a sudden appearance? No matter what, I did
not
want him to hear me phoning the sheriff's department. I slid through the glass doors to the upper deck, doubting I would be audible to Father Pete and the boys. The window on the second floor must have been to a hallway. The voices inside were muffled. Outside was better than the kitchen, but I would still have to whisper.

Holly had planted long containers of pink and purple petunia blossoms at the far end of the deck. The blooms fluttered in the breeze, now sharpening with the advent of evening. Sticking up from the planter was one of those plastic holders that florists put in bouquets. Instead of a card, though, was a business envelope.

I punched in the numbers for Tom's cell as I walked to the planter. Words on the envelope, written in marker pen, were legible:
DREW! HERE'S YOUR MONEY!
Oh, good, I thought, there was one problem solved.

A few steps onward, there was a horrific cracking noise. What the hell was that? I wondered. Then I felt myself losing my balance. As my body slid sideways, I tried to reach out for something, anything.

But the deck railing was too far away. The boards under my feet gave way.

Down I plummeted, down past the second deck, down past the outside staircases, down, down, down, for what seemed like forever, or a blink. I could hear my own scream, but as in a nightmare, wasn't sure anyone else could. I choked on my shriek once I plunged into the icy lake.

My leg hit something hard under the lake's surface. I screamed and inhaled way too much water. Then I blacked out.

7

J
ulian, that champion swimmer, hauled me out of the water. At least, that's what the paramedic told me in the ambulance, when I awoke, shivering, with excruciating pain running down my left leg. I was on my stomach, and the medic was tending to my thigh. An IV drip snaked into my right arm.

“How did you know Julian was a swimmer—” I began, before the ambo swayed precipitously. I leaned off the narrow stretcher and was sick.

“Don't talk,” the medic commanded. His gloved hand offered a wipe for my mouth. Actually, the guy looked familiar. Did I know him? I couldn't remember.

“There was a note,” I said, defying his command. “On the end of the deck. That's why I walked out—”

“Stop talking.” He finished taping my leg.

“You have to call the sheriff's department,” I ordered him. He was right: talking made my leg shriek with pain. “Sergeant Jones was with us.” And . . . what? “My husband is an investigator at the department. Tom Schulz.”

“I know who you are, and I know who your husband is,” the paramedic said, trying to sound kind. I noted that my wet clothes had been cut away and I now was ensconced in a hospital gown and warm blankets.

“Call Tom
right now.
Tell him there was a note on the deck.” I couldn't say please. Despite the blankets, my whole body was trembling.

The paramedic exhaled, but used a cell phone to call the Furman County Sheriff's Department. After a delay in which he was patched through to someone, he relayed the news about the note on the deck, and how I was sure the deck had been sabotaged. After a few moments, he snapped the phone closed and announced, “Your husband is meeting us at the hospital. He said to tell you everyone else is okay.”

I was dimly aware, or afraid, that that bit,
Your husband is meeting us at the hospital,
was one of those good-news, bad-news things. Tom loved me, no question. He would be worried for me. I was also keenly, embarrassingly aware of the look he would give me:
Can't you even take a kid home without getting into a mess? Or plunging into the lake?

I sighed.

A few minutes later the ambo arrived at the emergency room of Southwest Hospital, the closest major facility to Aspen Meadow. That certainly hadn't taken long. I wondered,
How long was I out? When is my leg going to stop hurting?
And, most illogically of all:
Have I gained so much weight this winter that I could collapse the boards of a deck?

No, no,
I told myself.
Something was wrong with that damned deck.

But who was the intended victim? Drew?

The ER staff repeated the news that my husband was on his way. A policewoman was already there, they also said, and she would be staying with me.
To make sure you don't get into more trouble
was the unspoken message. I breathed again and allowed myself to be wheeled into a cubicle. Not that I could have done anything about it.

A policewoman, tall, thin, with brown hair pulled into a bun, introduced herself. I assumed Sergeant Jones had stayed with Drew. But my mind was so muddled that I couldn't remember this policewoman's name thirty seconds after she'd given it. She would be outside the curtain, she said, if I needed her.

A doctor pulled back the curtain, and this time I thought to look for a name tag.
Walter Smith
,
M.D.
That was a name I hoped I could remember. Dr. Smith, who was short and wide and had silver hair that he combed back over thick curly black hair, said that the force of hitting the lake and suddenly inhaling water had caused me to lose consciousness. He told me that I had abrasions on my left leg, and that the skin on that leg was badly scraped.
Scraped,
I thought.
Is that a medical term
,
doc?

Apparently, Dr. Smith went on, my leg had hit something submerged beneath the water. Still, because I'd blacked out when I hit the lake, he wanted to check for a concussion. He also wanted to check my lungs, because I must have inhaled lake water.

I took a blow to the leg
,
but did not get my leg blown off,
I thought again. But I kept my mouth shut.

Smith listened to my lungs and nodded. He had me follow a minilight from one side to the other. I guess I passed, because Smith began speaking in reverential tones about “Investigator Schulz.” Honestly, it seemed as if even the mere mention of my husband had people bowing at his feet.

Smith asked me what month it was, who the president was, and what the main ingredient for bread was.

I answered the first two questions, then said, “Do you mean the most important ingredient in bread? Or the main ingredient?”

He shook his head, smiled ruefully, and said everything he had heard about me was true. I did not find this reassuring.

I asked him for a half dozen aspirin, please. He said he would put something into my drip. Meanwhile, he needed to examine my leg. The medic had wrapped it well, he concluded admiringly, after a moment of painful pressing. They were going to unwrap it, though, put antibiotic cream on it, then rewrap it. All in all, Smith concluded, I was pretty lucky.

“I don't
feel
very lucky,” I said.

“The leg will turn black-and-blue,” Dr. Smith said crisply. “It will be sore. Give it a week of rest, and you should be fine.”

A week of rest? Clearly, Dr. Smith had never worked as a caterer.

“You must have hit a rock when you fell into the lake,” Smith mused as he was leaving. “Did you see it?”

“You know what? As I fell, I didn't get that good a look at what was
underwater.
Now, how about that painkiller?”

Smith disappeared. A nurse swished in and put what I hoped was a very strong opiate into the drip. She then stayed to keep me awake. I told her that Dr. Smith had ruled out a concussion. She flipped through the notes on the clipboard, and said he had
not
ruled out a concussion, and she was there to keep me awake.

Which was too bad, because within a few moments I wanted nothing more than to drift off to sleep. The nurse asked if I liked living in Aspen Meadow, were we really getting a lot of bears this summer, and was climate change affecting us? I finally gave her my full attention only because I was fantasizing about the amount of strength it would take to strangle her with my IV cord.

“Shut
up,
” I snarled unkindly.

“Oh, dear, they said you were difficult,” she commented.

“They were right!” I cried.

“Do you want another warm blanket?” she asked, unfazed.

I realized I was shaking—from cold, from despair, from stress, I did not know. “Sorry. Yes. I'm so sorry.”

“Miss G.,” said Tom, suddenly beside me. The nurse whisked away, then returned with a warm blanket, which she tucked around me. Was it my imagination, or was she opening her eyes wide at Tom, as if to say,
Poor you, to be married to this harpy
?

“Goldy,” said Tom, once the nurse had left. “How're you doing?”

“Better now that you're here. And I
don't
need a policewoman to keep me out of further trouble.”

The skin around Tom's green eyes wrinkled. This was a small indicator, a tell I had learned, that he was in emotional pain. “The deputy is here because I was worried about keeping you safe. Sergeant Jones found the empty envelope addressed to Drew. It was floating on the lake surface. There was no money anywhere. Then the medic called, telling us that the envelope was what had lured you to the end of the deck. I would have been here earlier, but I wanted to get a look at the structure, or what's left of it. I also wanted to check out the lake underneath it.”

“The lake—” I seemed incapable of finishing a thought.

“Our guys found pieces of the deck floating in the lake. But no
supports
for the deck. We've got a certificate of occupancy on file from the architect, plus photos, so there
used
to be supports there. We're thinking whatever had been cantilevering that deck out over the water had been removed. No easy task, but you could do it. And the lake there is very shallow. The rocky bottom hit your leg.”

I tried to absorb this information, but could not. They found the envelope . . . the supports removed . . . the rocky bottom in shallow water . . .

Wouldn't someone have seen a person removing the supports?
I wondered.

“Julian,” I said.

“If Julian had not been there,” Tom said, his tone matter-of-fact, “and had not been such a strong swimmer, you would have hit your leg, inhaled even more water than you did, and probably drowned.” He paused. “We don't think you were the intended victim.”

“I was wondering about that.”

“It was probably either Holly or Drew.”

“The envelope was addressed to Drew.”

“Maybe he was a target. But it was a setup of some kind, no matter which of them was the target.” He waited a moment, then said, “We're now treating Holly's death as a homicide.” He lifted the warm blanket and touched my sleeve. “Hey!” he called in the direction of the curtain, using that commanding tone of his. “Can someone please get my wife another blanket?”

“Tom,” I managed to say, “Drew said Holly recently had a break-in.”

“A burglar? Did they report it?”

“I don't know. Whoever it was didn't take anything valuable. Just . . . something about a file cabinet. Then Holly got the seller to install a security system. Ask Drew about it.”

Tom nodded. “Anything else?”

“Holly's cell phone,” I said. “Drew had it. He must have forgotten . . . when he was on Marla's street. It had a threatening text . . .”

“A threatening text,” Tom prompted.

I grasped back into the far reaches of my brain. “ ‘Not another cent. Don't ask, or you will regret it.' Something like that. I was holding the cell when the deck gave way.”

“Miss G.,” said Tom. He squeezed my shoulder very gently. “This is very helpful. Please get some rest.”

I finally succumbed to a half sleep.

Sometime later, I was wheeled away. Nausea rolled through me.
If I can realize these things,
I thought,
then my brain must be coming back.
Did I want my brain back?

My thoughts, such as they were, reverted to Holly. Tears pricked my eyes as I recalled her limp body on the road. Tom had actually used the word
homicide
. But there hadn't been a shot, or stabbing, or . . . would the cops have talked to Drew already? Who, besides George, Lena, and George's mother, didn't like Holly?

Oh, God, I had a headache.

When I opened my eyes, Tom was sitting beside the bed, holding my hand.

“Time?” I asked.

“ 'Bout midnight. Arch is out in the hall with Julian. Do you want them to come in? Arch is asleep in a chair,” he added.

“First,” I said. “Wait.” My mouth felt full of fur. “Cell phone. Holly's.”

Tom said, “Our guys found it in the lake. The lab's working on it.”

I said, “Drew?”

“He's with the foster family now. His aunt will be here today—it's technically Saturday—in the afternoon. Then she'll take him to Alaska. Julian gave Drew a check for a thou, to use as spending money? Said that was what you agreed?” When I nodded, Tom went on, “Drew and his aunt will be taking a flight together, changing planes at Sea-Tac. One of our guys will drive them to DIA. Get this: Drew wasn't sure he wanted to leave. He was worried about
you.
Also, he confirmed your report about a break-in, the sixth of June. Holly did call the department, but the deputy who wrote down the details said nothing of value was taken. The only things that were busted were the back door, which the owner had repaired, and a filing cabinet. Holly told our guy she couldn't tell if anything was missing. After that, the security system was installed. Oh, and she told Drew she was taking out an insurance policy. But the only thing she did was unpack some boxes and put out a bunch of religious statuary.” Tom gave me a puzzled look. When I nodded, he said, “So that makes no sense. We got a warrant, and our guys are going through her stuff now. So far, there's no policy, nor anything else of interest.” Tom stopped talking, then fidgeted a bit in his chair.

I said, “What?”

“We just got an anonymous report that Drew and his mother had a big fight this week.”

“An anonymous report of a fight between a teenager and his mother? Please. Arch and I have disagreements all the time.”

“A friend of mine is an Alaskan state trooper. Used to be one here. He's going to set up camp near the cabin where the aunt, uncle, and Drew will be.”

“To protect Drew?” I asked. “That's good. I'll bet you're right, that note was meant for—”

“Yes, to protect Drew. But there might be something else,” Tom added tentatively.

“What?” I asked.

“It's a long shot, Goldy.” Tom would not meet my eyes. “But we have to consider the possibility that Drew poisoned or otherwise harmed his own mother.”

“That's insane,” I said.

“Really? One of our guys interviewed him at the foster family's house, and couldn't rule it out.”

“Your guy must be new.”

Tom ticked off points on his fingers. “Holly pulled him out of Elk Park Prep, where he had numerous friends and was a star athlete. She put him into a big Catholic high school, where he may or may not have been so adored. Going back to the divorce, Holly dragged Drew out of Edith's mansion in Aspen Meadow, then moved to a place in Denver—”

“You don't know that she
dragged
him. He was a kid, for God's sake. If you move, you move.”

“But a while ago you told me he was all broken up about it.” When I did nothing but nod, Tom said, “Then she schlepped him back to Aspen Meadow, we don't know why—”