“What?” I said under my breath.
“You need to explain who Boy is and why he’s here. Somebody just said that as soon as Cecelia Brisbane got here, she was going to tell Ye Olde Gossip Columnist that you were having an affair with a guy who thinks a mimosa is a flower.”
I blew out air and glanced around the room. Maybe I should have called in sick.
At ten to eight, the women decided not to wait for their three missing members. As they sat down to eat, I introduced Sergeant Boyd as one of my new helpers. The women squinted at him. Boyd and I set about serving coffee, iced tea, and juice, then began fielding demands for low-cal sweetener and skim milk, apple juice instead of orange, and no fresh fruit in the parfait, but on the side.
No question about it, Priscilla Throckbottom — actually one of my longtime catering clients — was in a bad mood. I knew from experience that she could be difficult without trying very hard. Plus, I had forgotten to call her back the previous day. When elegantly coiffed, white-haired Priscilla, dressed in an exquisite red linen suit with white piping, began to lay into Boyd about something, I quickly stepped in.
Priscilla was holding up her parfait glass by her fingertips, as if it were a dead snake. “Goldy! Please bring me some eggs and bacon.”
Boyd, immobilized, gave me a blank look. We didn’t have eggs and bacon. I tilted my head knowingly toward the kitchen; Boyd followed me. I told him we weren’t a restaurant and not to worry about any off-the-wall demand. This kind of thing happened. You just nodded, ignored the request and went on with the event. If possible, you also stopped serving booze to whoever was making demands.
Boyd smiled and saluted.
Within moments, Boyd and I were again circling the table, this time with platters of the hot slices of quiche and the crab-and-cheese croissants. All the food was a huge hit. Courtney still hadn’t shown up, and I didn’t care. But I did feel sorry for Cecelia Brisbane and Ginger Vikarios, the other two missing members
of the committee. Cecelia came for the gossip — that was why she’d been at the bake sale — and the women were afraid of what would be printed about them if Cecelia wasn’t included. Poor Ginger Vikarios was the one who’d asked Holly Kerr to join. Holly, dressed in a black suit and looking miserable, undoubtedly wondered how a group of women could be so famished that they wouldn’t wait for all the guests to arrive before plunging into their food. And really, it should not have surprised me that these women did not wait before plunging into something else.
“Goldy!” called Priscilla when I appeared with a pitcher of iced tea for refills. “We have some questions for you!”
Winks raced around the table. Only Holly Kerr appeared perplexed. Marla opened her eyes wide in warning. Too late, I realized I should have sent Boyd out with the tea.
Priscilla adjusted her oversize eyeglasses to get a good look at me.
“Do the police know who killed your ex-husband?” she demanded.
“No.”
”But surely your new husband, that . . . that policeman” — she waved a hand — “has told you something,” Priscilla persisted. “Or at least has provided you with some theories. Some ideas.”
The women waited, forks poised.
I stared at the pitcher in my right hand and the glass in my left. I resolutely poured tea. “Ah, no. I wish it were so, but it is not.”
“I heard John Richard Korman fathered half a dozen bastard children in several states,” Priscilla hissed to her colleagues. “I also heard he owed over two million dollars to creditors, and that there was a malpractice suit pending against him.”
Say nothing, I ordered myself. Keep your eyes down. Avoiding eye contact, I’d always noticed, was the best way to become invisible. Not only that, but a humble, servantlike pose was a good way to learn interesting facts. But were these stories fact or fiction? I hoped for the latter. Still, in matters pertaining to the Jerk, I’d learned to expect the worst.
Holly Kerr’s face was drawn into a look of horror. Her hands had gone to her throat, as if she were chocking on a chicken bone. I noiselessly walked over to her.
“Holly, are you all right?” I whispered.
“More tea, please?” she squeaked. I poured some more into her almost-f glass.
“Now,” Priscilla went on, “has anybody else heard about Dr. Korman’s outstanding house loan — “
“Uh, ex-cuse me!” Marla’s voice was shrill. “Whatever happened to our agenda? I thought we were here to discuss planting trees! How about a few aspens along that ugly concrete wall they’ve put up next to those new condos — “
“And that reminds me, speaking of bastards!” Pricilla interrupted. Her eyes widened behind the huge glasses. “Will someone please tell me who appointed Ginger Vikarios to his committee? I thought I was the chairwoman, and then Ginger showed up at the bake sale with baklava, and I didn’t know what to do!”
Marla interjected, “Oh, Priscilla, for heaven’s sake! Ginger is trying hard to reconnect with the community since Ted’s empire went belly up. Let’s not be uncharitable.”
Since being uncharitable was just a stone’s throw from being called un-Christian, the women frowned. They seemed deep in thought, pondering ways to gossip about Ginger while still appearing charitable.
Priscilla said, “In her column a few years back, Cecelia said Ginger Vikarios had a child out of wedlock.”
“Goldy?” Holly Kerr squeaked from nearby. “Do you know where the ladies’ room is?” I gestured, and she tip-tapped away.
Another woman announced, “Ginger didn’t have a child out of wedlock. Her daughter did. Not many people in Aspen Meadow remember, although some of us think they should.”
Marla, sensing approaching chaos, sighed and flicked a glance in my direction. I quickly busied myself with the rolls and butter.
“Hey, girls!” Courtney MacEwan called from the door. “Who said you could start without me?”
There was a collective intake of breath as the women gaped at Courtney, who looked sexy and chic in a black linen pantsuit with an embroidered bolero jacket. Her shiny brown hair was swept up in a French twist, and she was draped with more gold chains than a professional wrestler. After pausing a moment for effect, she strutted to an empty seat and glared at me. I gave a questioning look, as in, What can I bring you? In response, she held out a muscled arm and snapped her fingers at me.
“Get me a mimosa and black coffee. Now.”
I stared at her, immobilized. Back in my doctor’s wife days, Courtney and I had played tennis together. We’d gone to hospital parties with our then-spouses. Even the day before yesterday, at the Roundhouse, she’d joked with me about having sex after funerals. And now she was giving me orders?
I aid, “Whatever,” then turned and walked toward the kitchen.
Priscilla Throckbottom began to hyperventilate. “Girls! Girls! Has anyone else heard this rumor about the Vikarioses — “
The kitchen door swung closed. I turned on the fans — I was sure steam was coming out of my ears — and wondered if Boyd could finish the breakfast. No, I couldn’t do that to him . . .
“You bitch!” Courtney hissed from behind me. “What do you mean, whatever?”
“Get out of this kitchen.” I faced her and made my face impassive. “You’re violating county health regulations.”
Her cheeks flared. “You implicated me to the cops. Who do you think you are? I didn’t kill John Richard!”
I picked up one of the cookie sheets we’d used for the croissants and checked it for crumbs. “Then you have nothing to worry about. Now leave.”
“You’re the one who made his life miserable,” Courtney insisted. She placed her hands on her hips. Clearly, she’d determined to have a fight and wasn’t planning on going anywhere.’
I said, “You shouldn’t have believed his lies, Courtney. He made his own life whatever it became.”
“That’s not the way I heard it. I loved him. We were going to get married. Then you screwed it up with your threats to cut off his visitations with Arch.”
“Is that why you sabotaged my food and attacked me?”
She turned scarlet. “You’re crazy.”
“How did you manage to steal stuff from my van?”
“I didn’t take anything of yours and you know it.”
“Right. But John Richard took something from you, didn’t he? Marla thought it was a hundred thou, but she was going to ask Cecelia Brisbane if it might have been more — “
“Shut up!”
“And while we’re at it, Courtney, where’d you go after the funeral lunch, exactly?”
That did it. In a cloud of bolero jacket and gold chains, Courtney wheeled around, whacked through the swinging doors, and was gone. By the time I’d picked up a crystal pitcher of iced tea and moved back into the dining room, Courtney had stalked out. The committeewomen snickered, exchanged murmurs, and gave me questioning looks.
Holly Kerr, looking only slightly revived, had returned to her seat. The women, unwilling to move to their agenda, tried to remember the last thing they were complaining about.
“I still haven’t heard a satisfactory reason for Ginger Vikarios to be invited on to this committee,” Priscilla huffed.
Holly Kerr looked earnestly around the table. “How can you say such a thing? She asked me to join so we would have time to work together and raise money — “
“I should think Ginger Vikarios’s time should be spent raising money for a better wardrobe,” Priscilla interjected. “Did you see what she wore to your husband’s memorial, Holly? She looked like an orange Popsicle!”
Holly Kerr gasped, I wasn’t sure she was going to make it through this meeting.
Priscilla continued, “Denver has any number of dress boutiques — “
“God dammit, Priscilla —“ Marla interrupted.
“Now regarding swear words,” Priscilla threatened, “I announced at the beginning of our work together . . . “
I moved noiselessly around the table, serving seconds on rolls and butter, offering refills on coffee, sugar, cream, iced tea, and lemon. No more mimosas for these ladies.
Beads of perspiration were forming on Marla’s forehead. She glanced longingly at the flip chart Aspen Meadow Nursery had set up at the far end of the private dining room. When I leaned in to fill her iced tea glass, she whispered, “Can’t you do something to get these bitches onto their agenda?”
“Like what?” I whispered back.
“Announce that it’s time! Don’t you think this damn country club has a dinner bell somewhere?”
“Sorry. The only bell Coloradans use is for calling in cows.”
Priscilla interrupted by asking Sergeant Boyd how she was supposed to stir sugar into her iced tea if he didn’t bring her an iced-tea spoon? He swallowed, his expression somewhere between bemusement and dismay, and asked what an iced-tea spoon was. I quickly murmured to Priscilla that I would get one from the kitchen.
“Whitewash,” Pricilla was proclaiming when I returned. She waved with one hand and adjusted her glasses with the other. “We still don’t know what really happened. And Cecelia really is so odd, isn’t’ she? We invited her to this meeting, and yet she can’t be bothered to come. Maybe Walter wanted a woman who would be more like a real wife, not a silly gossip columnist.”
“Walter Brisbane was such a charmer,” another woman commented. “It must have been over another woman, don’t you think?”
“Maybe another man!” Priscilla squealed.
A sudden banging and rush of footsteps kept me from dumping the pitcher of iced tea on Priscilla’s head. The discussion came to an abrupt halt. Ginger Vikarios, her orange-red hair disheveled, her stockings askew, her appearance incongruously froufrou — she was wearing the same orange taffeta dress and matching orange heels she’d worn to the memorial lunch — stepped timidly toward the table.
“I’m terribly sorry to be late.” Her voice cracked as she eyed the leftover crumbs on the woman’s plates. “I hope . . . you haven’t begun to discuss our work together. I’ve been looking forward to it — “
Priscilla Throckbottom fidgeted with her fork and knife. “Of course we’ve been waiting for you, Ginger.” She eyed Ginger’s outfit. “You know, my dear, I can take you to Denver — “
“Priscilla!” Marla shrieked. The women jumped in their chairs, startled. Priscilla drew her mouth into a moue of protest.
“I . . . thought the meeting was at eight-thirty.” Ginger fidgeted with her too-large double strand of pearls and glanced apologetically around the table. “And then I looked at my calendar, and said to Ted, ‘Oh, no . . . ‘ “
“We all make mistakes,” said Priscilla, with a knowing glance around the table. “In fact, some of us have made many mistakes over the course of our lives.”
Ginger blushed and slithered into a seat. Marla caught my eye, and in that awkward moment, hollered, “It’s time to get to our agenda!”
I headed for the kitchen.
Okay, there was one good thing that had come out of my divorce and involuntary demotion from the country-club set to the servant sector.
I’d been able to quit every committee I’d been on.
<15>
I ignored the scathing looks I received when I brought Ginger Vikarios a fresh plate of parfait, quiche, croissants, and rolls. She was almost pathetically grateful. As Boyd and I began to clear the rest of the dishes. Priscilla Throckbottom grabbed my elbow and pulled me down next to her.
With her mouth next to my ear, she whispered, “Ginger arrived too late to be served breakfast.”
Balancing two stacks of dishes, I tried in vain to release myself from her pincer grip on my arm and hot breath in my ear. It occurred to me that even though I’d quit my committees, and even though I’d learned to handle aggressive men, I was a tad behind the curve in handling aggressive women. I resolved to ask Tom about this.
My pal Marla, however, knew how to handle aggressive women because she was one. Sensing I was in trouble, she bustled around the table and grabbed Priscilla’s forearm. The dirty dishes in my relapsed hand made a precipitous slide toward another woman’s frothy hairdo and pale pink suit.
Dear Lord, I prayed, help me out of this.
And He did, using my best friend as his instrument. Marla murmured a few choice words to Priscilla about exhibiting Pharisaic hypocrisy regarding feeding Ginger Vikarios. We didn’t want that to get out, now did we? Especially since one of Marla’s pals was the current editor of the St. Luke’s newsletter. Of course, there was no way Father Pete would allow Marla or anyone else to put a bitchy tidbit into the church newsletter. But the women had all seen the power of Cecelia’s gossip column, and Priscilla was properly intimidated, for once. She harrumphed and turned away. Boyd, again taken aback, cleared the rest of the dishes with miraculous swiftness.
But Marla was not finished with Priscilla, because she held on to her arm the way that Priscilla had held on to mine. She must have threatened something truly damaging, because Priscilla cleared her throat and stood up. Then she walked timidly in the direction of the flip chart.