An explosion shook the house.
“Damn!” yelled the general as he dashed out.
I lost my balance and fell to my knees. Schulz grabbed his chair. Dust and smoke rose before the living-room windows. A Waterford vase on the mantel teetered and fell. The boom reverberated in my ears.
“What the hell was that?” Schulz shouted.
I straightened up and gazed at him.
I said, “I tried to warn you. You wouldn’t listen. That was Putting in the Garden. Terrorist technique.”
6.
“Well,” Schulz said. He looked around the living room, surveyed the dust rising in front of the windows. Then he eyed me and shook his head. He held out his hand to help me up from the floor.
“Interesting folks you’re living with,” he said when I was on my feet again. “Almost as good as a problematic ex-husband. Want to tell me about that?”
I rubbed my bruised elbows and muttered a negative. Schulz shrugged and turned. I followed his saunter to the front door. Schulz’s presence, his great reservoir of calm, were things I was not yet ready to let go.
As if to reassure myself, I said, “I’ll be okay here.”
He shook his head again, took a deep breath. “Is there anyone inside this house right now? Or is everyone tending the aftermath of this garden bomb?”
Before I could answer, the phone bleated in the kitchen. I asked Schulz to wait and went to see which neighbor was going to be the first to complain.
But it was not a neighbor. In her role as vivacious volunteer, Adele was helping to coordinate a church music conference that would convene in Aspen Meadow in July. This call was from an Episcopal church organist and choirmaster in Salt Lake City. In a nasal tone, he demanded to know when Adele would return.
To my surprise I was able to put him on hold and press the intercom button to search out the general. He was not in the house. I got back on the line with the choirmaster.
“I don’t know when she’ll be back,” I said, then imprudently added, “I didn’t know there were any Episcopal churches in Utah.”
The choirmaster yelled, “Listen! I need to know if she got fifty copies of Songs of Praise!”
I said, “This is not something I know about.” Nor did I know why I expected someone who worked for the church to be civil, if not Christian.
“And who are you?” he asked.
“The cook.”
There was a silence, then a groan. Would Adele please call as soon as possible? You bet, I said, and hung up.
Schulz was standing in the hall perusing the panel of buttons that controlled the house security system.
“Neighbor?” he asked without looking at me.
“I wish. It was for Adele. The general’s wife.”
“Should I have heard of her, too?”
“I don’t think so. Remember my friend Marla? Her sister.”
Schulz looked up the stairwell, then at the panel of security buttons. “You’ve got four loops here,” he said. “What—fire, perimeter, back door, first-floor motion detector?”
“Very good,” I said wearily, then added, “I feel awful.”
Schulz put his arm around my shoulders and guided me back out to the kitchen.
“Did I hear you correctly?” he asked as he gave me his patented Santa Claus half-grin. “Do I remember Marla? How could I forget? My ears still haven’t recovered. Why don’t we get Miss Yakkety-Yak over here to be with you?”
I said something vaguely affirmative and Schulz began to paw through the kitchen desk until a phone book presented itself. Muttering under his breath, he stared at the phone with its many buttons, frowned, and then punched. His voice murmured into the phone, echoed off the surfaces of the shiny pots and pans, and reverberated from the brilliant counter tiles. I looked around the kitchen but then closed my eyes. Everything seemed too bright.
With my eyes shut, I tried to look inward. What was I feeling? Nothing. Absolutely nothing.
“Twenty minutes,” said Schulz after he hung up. And then without asking he moved around the kitchen opening more cabinets until he found some tea. He set about boiling water and heating a pot. Eventually he poured steaming amber liquid into thin porcelain cups. The soothing fragrance of Earl Grey tea filled the kitchen. When I thanked Schulz there was a catch in my voice.
He settled onto a barstool and we drank in silence. Only the distant yells of General Bo and Julian punctuated the silence.
“Goldy,” Schulz said finally with that half-smile of his, “tell me more about your general.”
I tsked and sighed. “He was in Afghanistan,” I said, “role of observer or something. Before that he was a demolitions guy.”
Schulz let out a low whistle. “It’s coming back. He’s the guy, taught the Afghanis how to blow up Soviet tanks with rocket-propelled grenades they’d captured. He was the guy! I knew I’d seen him on TV.”
I turned back to my tea. “Nobody could figure out where the Afghanis were getting their recoilless rifles and C4, which is an explosive used by terrorists.”
Schulz smiled. “Thanks. I know what C4 is.”
I shrugged. “Anyway,” I said, “General Bo wasn’t talking. Maybe the army didn’t want him to give specifics. Marla said Bo was supposedly involved with the black market for explosives. Now he’s a civilian and he consults. He experiments. If he survives, he writes about it.” I stopped talking, exhausted by the effort.
“I don’t know if I’d want to be living on the top floor of a house belonging to a former demolitions expert. Emphasis on the former.”
“Thanks loads.”
“Now tell me about John Richard Korman.”
I sipped tea, tried to think of how to put this so it wouldn’t seem like such a big deal. I had told neither Philip Miller nor Tom Schulz—until our ride over here today—about The Jerk’s behavior last month or how it had frightened me. Why discuss John Richard’s behavior? Philip would have tried to explain it and Schulz would have tried to stop it.
Philip. The name brought pain.
I said, “I told you. John Richard was driving by every night. Hassling me about money, about seeing Arch. For about a month.”
“Did you report it?”
I shook my head.
Schulz said, “Did you do anything?”
I said, more sharply than I meant to, “I divorced him, didn’t I? I moved, didn’t I? I’m getting a security system for my house, okay?”
“Look,” he said, “we’ve got a weird call and now a death. Someone you knew. You’ve got a violent ex with a bad family history. I want you to stay in touch with me. You’re not safe. Do you understand?”
I nodded, numb.
The security gate buzzed: Marla, thank God. I looked at my watch. 2:30. Hard to believe. Events and conversations were flowing together, out of my control.
Marla arrived at the front door wearing one of her sequined and feathered sweat suits. Here and there jeweled barrettes held her fluffy brown hair. She looked like a plump exotic bird. In her hands were shopping bags. These were undoubtedly filled with ready-to-eat gourmet delicacies hastily purchased to relieve me from cooking. My heart warmed at the sight of her.
“Oh Goldy, God, I don’t believe this,” she said when she had heaved the bags onto the foyer floor. Her capacious arms circled me. “Are you okay?”
I lifted my chin from her shoulder and said, “No.”
“I’ll bet. Where’s Adele?”
“At a meeting.”
From behind us, Schulz said, “I’m off.”
I pulled away. “No, wait—”
Marla, sensing discomfort in the air, scooped up the grocery bags and mumbled about getting things into the kitchen. Schulz and I walked out the front door.