I scrubbed scalded milk off the bottom of the pan and made guttural sympathetic noises.
She sighed. “I’m going into the study where I can hear myself think, and call Paramount.”
If you have money, I guess you can do anything. I was the last person to try to talk her out of doing battle with Hollywood. I couldn’t even make hot chocolate.
She said, “What’s wrong with Arch?”
“He wants to swim. Says the pool is heated, so why not? Now he’s angry because I said no.” I rinsed the pan and dried it. “I hate to have him mad at me. He’s all I’ve got.”
“Well,” she said in a sympathetic tone, “you know what the psychiatrists say. No matter what you do for your children, they don’t appreciate you.”
In my many readings on parenting, this was not something I had ever heard.
I said, “What psychiatrist said that?”
“One who had to raise children.”
I put down the dish towel and thought for a minute. “Well, actually,” I said with my best sarcastic laugh, “I never knew a psychiatrist who had to stay home and raise children.”
“That’s what I mean, Goldy,” she said before she tapped off.
With my arm wrapped, preparations for the Audubon Society picnic the next day proceeded slowly. The hail shower ceased with great suddenness. Piles of silver-tinged clouds dissolved like pulled-apart netting. Sunlight flooded the kitchen around four, as I sliced kiwi, cantaloupe, and strawberry for a fruit salad to go with the Farquhars’ Sole Fillets Silvestre. Julian had a date with Sissy and would be gone for dinner. Arch yelled through his door that he did not want to go to Tom Schulz’s for dinner and he did not want to eat fish that belonged in the ocean.
“What do you want, then?” I had asked through the wood.
“For you to leave me alone,” he said. “I’ll fix my own grilled cheese.”
“Arch,” I pleaded, “don’t be angry. I just didn’t want you to get sick from swimming in the hail.”
“Go away.”
“Let me know if you change your mind about going to Tom Schulz’s.”
“I’m not going to change my mind.”
The heck with everybody, I thought as I put the strawberry pie in a container and walked out to the van. I had done the best I could. I strapped the pie container on a shelf with bungee cords, opened the security gate, and walked slowly back up the driveway. With my wrapped arm I could just manage to change the gears in the van. I ground into reverse and closed the gate. Then, pedal to the metal. I couldn’t wait to get out of that damn country club, even if I’d already been out for lunch.
It would have been nearly impossible to find surroundings less like the tended lawns of Meadowview than the long dirt road to Tom Schulz’s place. He lived in a spacious three-room log house six miles west of Aspen Meadow. Of course, since Aspen Meadow was unincorporated (and proud of it), just about anything past two miles from Main Street was considered outside of town. In the absence of institutional government, real estate agents set the geographical boundaries.
Light from the setting sun glinted behind wet aspen leaves. The trees looked as if they were hung with emeralds. Melting hail had made recent tire tracks shiny ribbons of mud. As the van bumped along, overhanging trees shed branchloads of ice on the windshield. I turned on the wipers. When I arrived at his cabin, Tom Schulz was shoveling hail from the stone walk.
He scooped the last shovelful and heaved it over a gray rock outcropping that looked like a sleeping elephant. I unfastened the pie and carefully stepped out to avoid deep mud. The cool evening air was redolent with the sweet scent of chokecherry blossoms.
Schulz leaned against his shovel. “Something wrong? What happened to your arm?”
“Everything is wrong.”
He put down the shovel and came over to help me.
“I was attacked at Aspen Meadow Café.” I told him briefly about the mugging, including the admonition to let Philip Miller rest in peace.
“1 can’t believe you didn’t call me.” Schulz took the pie from my hands and laid it on a rock. “I cannot believe it, Miss G.” Schulz hugged me tenderly, carefully, to avoid inflicting more pain. I loved the rough feel of his jeans against my legs, the freshly laundered smell of his Izod shirt that had been yellow once.
When we disengaged, his face took on a puzzled expression. He said, “Where’s Arch?”
“At home. Angry that I wouldn’t let him swim in the hail.”
Schulz picked up the pie container, made appropriate mm-mm noises, then put his free arm around my shoulders as he led me up the stone path. “If you would take more care of yourself and less of Arch, everybody might be a lot better off, Goldy.” He looked down at me with an apologetic smile. “No offense.”
I made a gesture toward the pie. I said, “You want to eat that or wear it?”
“I’ll eat it, thanks,” he said as he swung it just out of my reach. “Come on in. I need to talk to you before we get into the business of food.”
The door to the house sported an elaborate carving of a naked woman involved in some kind of dance. The sculptor who had had this place built had thought of the woman as his muse. The sculptor, long gone, had been caught for back taxes. The house had been sold at one of those 1RS auctions for a fraction of its worth, and Schulz had lucked out. I had always been happy that he lived here. After long days working homicide, an investigator needed a remote place with a big fireplace inside and a porch swing that looked out on the mountains. Smoke from the backyard barbecue drifted around front as I pushed through the sculpted door.
It had been a while since my last visit. Stenciled lampshades shed warm light over the handmade cedar paneling and two-story moss-rock fireplace. Schulz knew quite a bit about antiques, and had furnished his house with a spare grouping of expensive pieces, including a cupboard that was called a sink. He had started to tell me about them, but I’d told him I still thought Chippendale were two chipmunks Arch used to watch in cartoons.
While I stood admiring the living room, Schulz called to me from the kitchen. “I figured after all that fancy cooking you’ve been doing for the Farquhars, you’d be ready for a steak.”
“Am I ever,” I said. He handed me a bottle of my favorite brand of nonalcoholic beer, then got one for himself. “Did you buy this especially for me?” But I knew he had. “Gee, am I ready for somebody to be nice.”
“I take it you saw the paper.”
“Change the subject, please. So we’re having steak? I thought you liked fancy cooking.”
“I like so many things, you can hardly imagine.” He winked. “Let’s go sit.”
I went back out to the porch and settled tentatively on the swing. It was one of the old-fashioned kind with slats.
“Wait here a sec,” he said as he took my fake-beer bottle and put it on the deck railing. He returned with an alpaca blanket, which he unfolded and carefully tucked around me.
I said, “Thank you, Daddy.”
“Shut up and drink this stuff that means I don’t have to worry about you driving home.” He handed me the bottle and lowered himself to the other side of the swing.
“You really are wonderful, you know,” I said without looking at him. The drink was cold and fizzy; my chest warmed in response. The scratchy alpaca felt snug and safe.
“Yeah, aren’t I something. Goldy, I want you to report this attack, whether anybody saw the guy or not.”
“Will do.”
“You can bet we’re not going to let any aspect of this thing rest in peace now.”
I nodded. Silence enveloped us as the sun sank behind the mountains. The air was gauzy from the melting hail.