The Readaholics and the Falcon Fiasco (16 page)

T
he Rocky Peaks Golf and Country Club, known more familiarly as “the Club,” was five miles west of Heaven, several hundred feet in elevation lower than the town. It featured a links-style golf course that had significant elevation gains and losses over the course of its eighteen holes and that cost more to play than my monthly utility bill. This being Monday, the course was closed for maintenance. The pool was still covered at this time of year—it didn’t open until Memorial Day—but there were people thwacking balls on the tennis courts, despite the chilly temps. The main club building, dating from the late 1800s, was built of enormous logs and furnished in lodge style, as were too many of the homes and vacation cabins in the area. Why on earth did living in the mountains mean all the decor had to feature moose, bears, and forest colors?

A broad veranda wrapped around the lodge on all four sides, and I crossed it to enter the lobby. A cavernous room with a stone fireplace big enough
to roast a whole bison provided a focal point on one beamed wall, the logs blackened by smoke, and a bar, all copper and polished wood, took up the opposite wall. Danny, the bartender, waved to me and I waved back. Four huge chandeliers made of intertwined deer antlers lit the room. I didn’t spot Madison immediately and was headed for the restaurant to begin a conversation with the manager about the reception details when I heard Madison’s voice behind me.

“Oh, my.”

I turned to see her staring up at the antler chandeliers.

“How many deer did they have to kill to make those?” She sounded distressed.

“They don’t kill them,” I said. “Deer shed their antlers each year. You can find them in the woods . . . kind of like driftwood.”

“Oh.” She laughed at herself. “That makes me feel better. Although that guy”—she pointed to a snarling grizzly head mounted over the door we’d come in—“is enough to take the edge off any celebration. Do you suppose he was from around here?”

“Half a century ago,” I said. That bear had cost the hunter his leg, so the story went, in the mid-1960s. We still had bears in the area, plenty of ’em, but I didn’t want to make Madison nervous. If she was going to live here with Doug—a big “if”—she’d run into one sometime.

She smiled and tucked her blond hair behind her ear. “Glad it wasn’t yesterday. Anyway, hi, Amy-Faye. Doug says you and he got the guest
list all sorted, so I guess we can move on to the fun stuff. I’ve got to go back to New York at the end of the week, so we need to get it all figured out today.”

I led her across the lobby to the restaurant and introduced her to the manager, Wallace Pinnecoose, a quiet, highly competent man with the calm demeanor of someone who’d dealt with uncounted bridezillas, food poisonings, kitchen fires, and other emergencies too numerous (or well covered up) to mention over the course of his forty years in the restaurant industry. Within minutes, he and Madison were deep in conversation over the menu, table linens, and other details, with me interpolating a suggestion from time to time.

“If you want a reception line, it works best in the lobby,” I said.

“Sounds good. Oh, and I don’t want anyone flinging birdseed or rice at us. None of those fertility rituals.” She laughed. “It’s not like Doug and I want kids anytime soon, or even ever, necessarily.”

I bit my lip. I knew Doug wanted kids, at least three of them. We’d discussed it numerous times while we were dating. Madison was young, I told myself; she’d grow to want kids, maybe after she made partner and felt more secure in her career.
None of my business, none of my business . . .

Wallace intervened with a question about the passed hors d’oeuvres and we got back to the business at hand. Ninety minutes later, we had all the details hashed out, and Wallace escorted us to the bar, where he offered us a drink on the house
and then excused himself. That was his habit whenever I brought a client out here to set up an event. I didn’t particularly feel like having a drink with Madison, but she ordered a cosmopolitan, so I asked for an Angel Ale, one of my brother Derek’s brews that the Club kept on hand.

“We’re selling a lot of these,” Danny said, sliding the bottle and a frosty glass onto the bar in front of me. “I’m looking forward to the brewpub opening.” He presented Madison’s cosmo with a flourish and a smile. She smiled back, not immune to his black Irish good looks and charm. Danny’d been in Heaven for three or four years, now, tending bar at the Club, and I don’t think anyone knew where he’d come from. His skill with a shaker and his popularity with customers, male and female, gave him job security at the Club. He had a way with women and could banter like nobody’s business, but he was careful not to overstep the line or piss off a woman’s husband or date. He could just as easily talk hunting, golfing, or the Avalanche with the men without letting the conversation bore the women they were with. Quite a skill set. He occasionally moonlighted as a bartender for my events when he wasn’t working at the Club.

“What brewpub?” Madison asked, sipping her drink.

I told her about my brother and his new business venture. “Oh, fabulous,” she said. “Of course Doug and I will be there, unless we’re in New York that weekend.” She pulled out her phone and put the pub opening on her calendar.

I suppose I should have been grateful, for
Derek’s sake, but I found myself growling inwardly at the way she was already taking over their social calendar, making decisions without consulting Doug.
None of my business, none of my business . . .

“So, A-Faye,” she said. “Do you mind if I call you A-Faye? It’s how Doug refers to you and it’s just so
cute
. Tell me—”

“I prefer Amy-Faye, actually,” I said.
Only my friends call me A-Faye.

“Oh, well, sure.” She accepted my correction with a smile. “I totally get it. I hate when anyone except my dad calls me Maddy. So tell me about Doug when he was in high school. I know he can’t have been as perfect as he and his mom make out. I mean, it’s high school and he was a jock.” She smiled conspiratorially and leaned in so her hair swung forward in a golden swath. “Surely there’s a good story or two? You must know them all since you were so close.”

I worked at the bottle label with my thumbnail, trying to think of a response that wouldn’t make me look like a total jerk. I didn’t feel like sharing any of my memories of Doug with his bride-to-be, no matter how pleasant and engaging she might be. I didn’t want to be her friend. Not yet, anyway. Maybe by the time they were celebrating their thirtieth anniversary. I pulled up a couple of lame recollections of pranks Doug had played on folks, and a story about the time he and a friend had sent a portapotty from a house construction site tobogganing downhill to its final resting place in the Club’s swimming pool.

“Was anyone in it?” Madison asked, wide-eyed.

“The pool or the portapotty? Neither, actually. It was midnight.”

“Goodness, that just doesn’t sound like my Doug,” she said.

That’s because he was my Doug back then.

“Why, if something had gone wrong, he could have been sued. What if someone had gotten hurt? I’m sure it cost a lot to clean out the pool.”

“Mr. Elvaston and Charlie’s dad made Doug and Charlie do all the cleaning,” I said with a reminiscent smile. “Took them two whole weeks of after schools and weekends.” I’d been pretty sure Doug was going to smell like chlorine forever. The memory made me smile.

“You still care about him, don’t you?” Madison asked, studying my face.

“Of course.” I tried a carefree laugh. That didn’t come off, so I chugged some beer and choked. Through my coughing, I said, “We’ve been friends forever.”

“So you don’t mind that he’s marrying me? I know you guys have history, and if it’s too painful, well, we’ll completely understand if you want to back out of organizing the wedding. I’m sure there must be someone else we could hire, especially now that you’ve got it on track.”

The “we, we, we” really got to me.

She gave me a kind and understanding look, full of sympathy—real or feigned?—and I squared my shoulders. I’d be damned if I was going to melt into a maudlin puddle of unrequited love in front of her.

“Madison, don’t be ridiculous. It was over years
ago.
Years.
I’m sure there were men in your life before Doug, but you’re not pining for them. You’re probably relieved, like I am, that you didn’t make the mistake of marrying one of those men when you were too young to know what real, lasting love was. Is. I feel really lucky that Doug and I are still friends and I’m glad he’s found you. As a matter of fact, I’m seeing someone myself.” I couldn’t remember the last time I’d strung together so many lies at once. I emptied my beer.

“Really?” Madison perked up. “I didn’t know. Who is he? I’ll put him down as your ‘plus one.’” She pulled out her phone, ready to make a note of my new boyfriend’s name, and looked at me expectantly.

“His name’s Lindell,” I heard myself say. “Lindell Hart.”

I
n the van twenty minutes later, after escaping from Madison, I banged my head on the steering wheel.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
Why had I let her goad me into telling her I was dating Lindell Hart? One lunch didn’t exactly add up to a hot romance. Twilight had closed in while we strategized for the reception, and the evening’s chill seeped through my sweater. I started the van and cranked up the heater. Maybe I could tell Madison that Hart couldn’t come to the wedding because it was against his religion. No, the service was nondenominational, so that wouldn’t work. I could tell her he was on duty that day. Or . . . the thought came to me as I made the turn onto Paradise Boulevard: I could actually ask him to go with me. The more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea. I wouldn’t have to tell him we were supposedly “dating.” I’d just casually mention the wedding and suggest it might be a great opportunity for him to get to know folks. The more I thought about it, the better I liked the idea. It would be far,
far better than showing up at Doug’s wedding all by my lonesome.

Flashing lights caught my attention. They strobed from partway down a side street. What was going on? I slowed and craned my neck as I passed the turning. A fire truck was parked halfway down the block and firefighters were coiling up a big hose. Water puddled on the street. The truck blocked my view of the buildings and I rolled down my window to ask one of the gawkers what had happened. The acrid stench of smoke drifted in.

“It’s the police station, Amy-Faye,” the man, a friend of my father’s, said. “I don’ think it was anythin’ big, though. Didn’t take ’em but a couple minutes to put it out.” He sounded a shade disappointed that there hadn’t been a major conflagration.

“Was anyone hurt?”

“Nah. Closed up this time of night.”

I’d forgotten that the station wasn’t staffed at night. There was an officer or two on duty, I thought, but they were in patrol cars, not the station, and emergency calls were routed from somewhere else. Mesa, maybe. “Well, thank goodness for that,” I said. The man waved, collected his wife from the ring of looky-loos, and headed up the sidewalk. I continued on my way home, trying to fight off the uneasy feeling that seemed to have worked its way into me with the smoke.

My phone rang as I got out of the van, and I looked at the display. Maud. My uneasy feeling intensified.

“Did you hear about the fire at the police station?” she asked when I picked up.

“I drove past it.”

“Well, I heard about it on the scanner and made some calls. Care to guess what caught fire?”

“No.”

“The evidence room,” she said. “And I’ll bet you my new Toshiba that the ledger page burned up. It’s toast. Tell me you think that’s a coincidence.”

“Was it arson?”

“Looks like faulty wiring, although obviously they haven’t done a full investigation yet.”

“Faulty wiring sounds like a coincidence.”

“Oh, Amy-Faye.” Maud’s weary sigh implied I was too naive for words. “There’s no such thing as coincidence. Wait and see.” She hung up.

*   *   *

Disproving Maud’s theory that there are no coincidences, I found myself in line behind Detective Lindell Hart when I stopped in to the Divine Herb for coffee Tuesday morning. His curly brown hair was damp at the hairline and an image of him in the shower popped into my head, flustering me.

“Heard you had some excitement at the station last night,” I said after we exchanged greetings. “In fact, I drove past as the firefighters were finishing up. Will you be able to work there?”

“It reeks, but yeah. Only a couple of rooms were affected, the evidence room and one office. My office and the chief’s, as well as our waiting area, are fine. Smoky, but fine.” He peeled the lid off his cup and blew on the coffee while waiting for me to pay for mine. I dug out my wallet, and when I did, something fell to the floor. Hart bent and came up with the Baggie of tea.

“Your stash?” he joked, holding it out to me.

I spilled coffee on my hand. “Ivy’s,” I said. “Ivy’s tea. She brought it to my house for the book club, the night before she died. She must have left it by accident. Brooke found it night before last—it had gotten shoved behind my flour canister—and I was planning to give it to you. I put it in my purse this morning and was going to swing by your office later.”

Hart gave me a look that seemed to question my story. Taking an evidence Baggie from his pocket, he put the tea Baggie into it. “Might as well test this, too,” he said, voice neutral. “Just to be thorough.”

Was I imagining it, or did the look he gave me say he was having the tests run because he doubted my story?

“She said she felt sick when she left my house,” I remembered aloud.

Hart nodded. “You said that. Like I said, we’ll test this. I’ll put a rush on the test. This is turning into the case that never dies. Just when I think I’ve put it to bed forever, something new comes up.” He patted the pocket where he’d stowed the evidence bag. “There’s no other piece of evidence you’ve ‘forgotten’ to tell me about, is there?”

I didn’t like his emphasis on “forgotten.” “I don’t suppose you had a chance to track down that ledger page yet, did you?” I asked pointedly. I accepted my change, and Hart and I moved to the condiments counter, where I added cream to my coffee.

“Actually, I found it at the bottom of the chief’s
in-box, where Ridgway said he stuck it after you turned it in. Sloppy. I followed procedure and logged it into the evidence room before I left yesterday. I didn’t really have a chance to study it—I was going to do that today.” He gave me a rueful look.

“So it’s gone,” I said neutrally, my ears ringing with Maud’s accusations.

“In all likelihood. We haven’t inventoried everything yet, but it probably went up in smoke. I’m sorry. Do you have a copy, by any chance?”

“As a matter—” Something stopped me from confessing that we’d copied the page before turning it in. I wasn’t absolutely convinced that the fire was an act of sabotage aimed at destroying the ledger page, but the coincidence—if that’s what it was—was spooky enough to make me hesitate. “Why would we have a copy?” I asked instead.

He shrugged. “Long shot.”

My brain was racing. Hours after I mentioned the ledger page to Hart, a mysterious fire at the police station burned it up. Would something similar happen to the tea I’d just given him? I stared at his profile as we made our way to the door through the caffeine addicts waiting for their fixes. What did I really know about him? He was new in town—from Atlanta. He was good-looking and seemed kind and competent—all things I found attractive. He had a sister and a brother.
He’d had a brother-in-law who was a firefighter, so maybe he knew all about how to set fires and make them look like accidents
. The thought popped into my brain, a product of my free-associating. He would have no
reason to destroy the page, though, unless . . . unless he was somehow involved in Ivy’s death.

I shook my head to dislodge the unwelcome thought. That was utterly ridiculous. He’d been in town only about ten minutes; he’d have no reason to kill Ivy or want to cover up for whoever did. We emerged onto the sidewalk. The day was sunny and crisp, with a promise of more seasonal temps later in the day.

“What caused the fire? Do they know?” I asked.

“Something electrical, I heard. We’ll probably know more later today.” He didn’t sound worried about it.

I’d been going to mention the wedding to him, but now I hesitated. Oh, what the heck. Attending the ceremony with a possible arsonist/murderer was better than going alone. “Um,” I started. “Um, I’ve been invited to a wedding—in fact, I’m organizing it—and I was wondering if you’d like to go with me. It’s Saturday after next and I thought it might be a great opportunity for you to meet more people our age, you know, get to know more people here in town. I completely understand if weddings aren’t your thing, though, and my feelings won’t be hurt if—”

“Weddings are definitely my thing.” Hart’s eyes smiled down into mine and I felt a heat building that had nothing to do with arson. “I own a tux, can stumble through a fox-trot if I have to, and have caught more garters than anyone I know.”

“Wow,” I said, as if awed. “What a catalog of talents. You won’t need the tux, though; it’s a morning wedding.”

“Too bad. I look devastating in a tux.” He grinned.

I was sure he did. A little disconcerted by my reaction to him, I held up my coffee in a farewell gesture. “We can work out the deets later. I’ve got to get to work. We small-business owners have to scramble to make a living.”

“Unlike those of us on the city payroll.”

“You said it—I didn’t.” I scooted around the corner toward my office before he could get the last word. I passed a gaggle of women descending the stairs from the yoga studio, glowing from the exercise and chatting. Fee Shumer was among them, wearing a lavender and yellow yoga top and form-fitting capris. The top was loose enough to conceal any sign of pregnancy, if there was one. I greeted a couple of the other women, feeling guilty about not having been to a class in more than a week, and continued around to my office.

I came in through the French doors and stopped. Al was kneeling on the floor, khaki-clad butt facing me, painting what looked like a pink hippopotamus onto poster board. He looked at me over his shoulder. “You look cheery today, boss,” he said. “Happy. Jolly.”

“Lighthearted,” I said automatically. “What in the world—?”

“It’s for Alyssa Fenley’s party tonight. She’s the hippo-obsessed about-to-be-eight-year-old who wants to play ‘pin the tail on the hippo.’ I put in an order with JoyGraffics, but they did a rhino instead of a hippo.” He pointed with the paintbrush at a piece of poster board leaning up against the
wall. A two-horned rhino in sunglasses and a tutu twerked on the board. “They don’t have time to redo it today—don’t worry; they’re giving us full credit plus a discount on our next order—so I’m doing my best.”

“It looks great. I didn’t know you had artistic talents.”

“I’ve got all sorts of talents, boss.” He laughed, dipped his brush into a vase full of water, and began to paint extravagant eyelashes on the hippo. “Remember I’ve got to leave by noon today. Class.”

I left him to carry on and was almost to my office when he called after me, “Oh, your brother called.”

I remembered guiltily that I’d told Mom I’d phone Derek and I’d forgotten. Plunking my purse onto the table, I dialed Derek’s number. There were five of us kids in the family, but he was the only boy. In high school, I think he’d deliberately gone out for every sport, taken auto shop, and hung with a bunch of guys who smelled like locker rooms and diesel exhaust to make sure no girl stink—nail polish, hair products, basic soap and water—clung to him. Next in line after me, he was four years younger, but we’d always been close.

“Hey, brudder,” I greeted him when he answered. “How’s the brew biz?”

“Frustrating.” He bit out the word. “Gordon has been surlier than a wolverine the last few days. I don’t know what’s up with him. The temperature gauge on my vat went haywire and I lost fifteen hundred gallons of a new brew. And the building inspector says the handicapped stall in
the women’s room isn’t up to code. It’s gonna be a cool two thou to redo it. I don’t know, sis. Sometimes I feel like this venture is cursed.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, wishing there were something more concrete I could do to help, but my bathroom-remodeling skills were nonexistent, and what I knew about brewing beer could be inscribed on my pinkie nail. “Want me to have a talk with Gordon?”

That was a joke—Gordon and I did not see eye to eye. He’d asked me out a couple of times after Derek introduced us, but since he was twenty years older than me, had already seduced half the women in Heaven (according to the rumor mill), and was only separated from his second wife, I said no. We were polite to each other for Derek’s sake, but that’s as far as it went.

“Nobody can talk to Gordon these days,” Derek said morosely. “I think his first wife’s sicced a lawyer on him—something about nonpayment of alimony—and I don’t think his recent trips to Vegas have been lucrative.”

“How ’bout I pick you up and we go for ice cream? That’ll make you feel better.” Ice cream was our panacea for all woes. It had started in high school when he was a pitcher on the baseball team. I consoled him with ice cream whenever he lost a game. It had taken a whole gallon to help him get over the disappointment of not getting the baseball scholarship to CSU that he wanted. He returned the favor by taking me out for ice cream when I didn’t get the part in the play, or when I tubed a test, and whenever Doug and I broke up.

“It’s nine in the morning.”

“So?”

“You’re on.” He sounded a shade more cheerful, and I was glad I’d called.

*   *   *

We had to go to the City Market to buy pints since none of the ice-cream parlors were open yet, and we ate them up by Lost Alice Lake, watching a second grade field trip group get a lesson in the area’s geology. By the time I got back to the office, it was after ten and I was behind. It had been worth it, though; Derek looked considerably more relaxed when I dropped him back at Elysium Brewing than when I picked him up.

I worked like a demon until noon, fighting the urge to call Maud and ask if she’d made any progress on the code. She’d been somewhat daunted by the number of books Clay kept in his office and said it might be a couple of weeks before she found the right one. She’d call when she had anything to report. I gnawed on a hangnail. I didn’t want to sit around and do nothing about Ivy’s murder while Maud tried to crack the code. I still didn’t know why Doug and Fee Shumer had visited Ivy’s house the day after she died. It might be useful to know what they’d been doing there.

The only place I ever saw Fee was at yoga. We never said anything more than “good morning” to each other, but maybe I should plan on attending class tomorrow morning. I put it in my calendar with a note to bring my yoga gear. It would be easier to bump into Doug, but harder, in some ways, to grill him about what he was doing at
Ivy’s. I didn’t want him to think I thought he had anything to do with murdering her. I knew he hadn’t. No way. Still, he might know something. I thought about how to approach him, how to engineer a meeting and ask the questions I needed to ask without pissing him off or making him clam up. An idea hit. I phoned and asked him to meet me at Bloomin’ Wonderful.