There was a name that had been written in chalk, then erased. O’Neal. I wasn’t aware that the Attenboroughs knew the O’Neals. In fact, I couldn’t imagine them moving in the same, as the phrase went, social circles.
I looked over longingly at the coffee machine, but when I heard Charlotte’s heels clicking along the hardwood floor, I raced back into the living room and flopped onto the uncomfortable sofa.
When Charlotte reappeared, she looked as lovely as she had when she left.
“Where’s Jack?” she demanded.
“Outside.”
“Doing what, may I ask?” When I shrugged, she said, “Oh, for God’s sake, let’s hurry up. I don’t want to keep Victor waiting.”
What ever, I thought, we’re still an hour early. But I didn’t want to point this out to the client.
Out on the porch, Charlotte sniffed the air suspiciously, then squinted at Jack.
“You’ve been smoking.”
“Last time I checked, that wasn’t a crime.”
Charlotte turned to me. “Could you work on your godfather, try to get him to stop his unhealthy habit?”
I swallowed. Wasn’t there some law in this country called “I’m not in charge of what he does”? Jack shot me an apologetic glance. Just for good measure, he hit the doorbell. It donged mercilessly in the interior.
“Jack, what in the world are you doing?” Charlotte demanded.
“Trying to wake up that daughter of yours.” He hit the bell again.
“She’s getting married tomorrow! She needs her beauty sleep!” Charlotte protested.
“She needs something,” Jack admitted before opening the sedan’s back door so I could climb in.
Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to let Jack drive the two of us out to Gold Gulch Spa. Jack was teasing Charlotte, and it wasn’t going well. As Tom had pointed out, men teased each other and they thought it was fine. When men teased women, though, we took it as pure cruel aggression.
Well, anyway, while dealing with Charlotte and Jack, I was beginning to feel like one of those spots on the globe that’s set between warring factions. Alsace-Lorraine. Kuwait. Somebody always wants it, and the place ends up getting smashed in every conflict. I took a deep breath and closed my eyes, trying to visualize myself as Switzerland.
In the front seat, I could hear Charlotte Attenborough asking again about Finn. Was she trying to find out what had happened, or was she pumping Jack for information? I didn’t know, but it made me uncomfortable. Tom said my paranoia antennae were the best functioning he’d ever encountered.
“I am not controlling,” Charlotte was insisting now. “If anything, I’m too accommodating. I put up with that pigpen you call a house—”
“It’s being renovated,” Jack said calmly. “And no one is forcing you to come over. In fact, if you would call before you showed up one of these times, I’d have a chance to clean it up.”
Charlotte tsked. “I dial your number, but you don’t answer. And anyway, the only person I should be phoning is the county health inspector.”
“That’s going a bit far,” Jack murmured as he turned out of Flicker Ridge and headed back toward the lake. An icy silence descended in Jack’s Mercedes. When he turned, to head west on Upper Cottonwood Creek Road toward Gold Gulch Spa, Charlotte reopened…well, what were they? Negotiations? Hostilities?
“You know, Jack,” she said, “I’m acquainted with any number of contractors who could have had that place of yours completely done, cleaned up, and ready to be lived in a month ago.”
“I like to do things my own way,” Jack replied, his tone stubborn.
“And now who’s being controlling?” Charlotte retorted sharply. “If you just didn’t spend so much time with—” But here she stopped short, and what felt like the refrain of a practiced argument was left dangling. Jack’s face in the rearview mirror turned an ashen gray, and I realized Charlotte had finally gotten to him. Charlotte had meant to say, I was willing to bet, that Jack was spending too much time with Doc Finn. That’s why the house wasn’t getting renovated fast enough; why Jack didn’t answer when Charlotte called—he was fishing with Doc Finn; that’s why Charlotte felt she had to show up at Jack’s house unannounced, and I was willing to bet it was why there was this undercurrent of rancor in their relationship. Charlotte, I was also willing to bet, had only at the last moment remembered that Doc Finn was dead.
At the right-hand turnoff to the spa, I noticed on the left side of the street the forlorn-looking building that had formerly housed Spruce Medical Group. Most of the tenants had long since abandoned these digs for the posh new medical building on the north side of Aspen Meadow. But still. In a raging snowstorm, Doc Finn had set out from here, from this spot, when I’d called about Arch’s fever. He’d overlooked his own peril to bring kindness and healing into our house. I’d be forever grateful to him for it.
But Doc Finn was gone, the victim of foul play. My heart twisted in my chest.
9
Ah, the prodigal mother of the bride!” Victor Lane cried when we pulled up and disembarked. “I’m so happy to see you, Charlotte dearest!”
While Victor Lane ostentatiously kissed Charlotte Attenborough on both cheeks, Jack inverted his eyebrows, pointed to Victor with his thumb, and gave me his patented Who-the-hell-is-this-guy look. I shrugged and shook my head. Let Charlotte introduce them to each other; I knew I was invisible to Victor Lane, too. He just wanted to show me how unimportant I was.
Victor continued to fuss over Charlotte, who cooed back. Victor was a slender, unattractive man with pit-marked cheeks, a shaved head, and virtually no chin. His facial skin seemed to be pulled too tightly over the bones, giving him a skeletal appearance. In truth, I decided, he looked like a reject from the bowling ball factory.
This day, he was wearing a ridiculous-looking pale green sweat suit and black high-top sneakers, which gave him the appearance of being as innocuous as a lime lollipop. Still, I knew not to underestimate him.
In the distance, a bell gonged, and women emerged from the various dormitory doors and began to move along the dirt trails that led, according to signs, to the weeklong-spa check-in, the day-spa check-in, the living room, the dining room, the gym, the hiking trails, the regular pool, and the hot pool. I looked at my watch: seven forty-five. When had all these guests had breakfast, I wondered, and when was lunch? From the longing looks the gals were casting at the dining room, I had the feeling breakfast was in the distant past, and lunch was in the even more distant future.
“This is Jack Carmichael,” I said loudly to Victor Lane, once he’d disengaged from Charlotte. “My godfather.”
“Of course!” said Victor, extending a skinny hand. “The happily retired attorney. Charlotte has told me so much about you.”
“And you remember Goldy?” Jack rejoined, with a smile and exaggerated politeness. He bowed in my direction, then straightened up. “She’s the vastly successful caterer whom you believed couldn’t cook.”
So much for a peaceful visit. I smiled brightly, trying to envision Geneva, or Lake Lucerne, or some other sunny spot in neutral Switzerland.
“Yes, of course.” Victor’s smiling mouth full of yellow teeth and exaggerated enthusiasm made me cringe. “I knew your ex-husband, of course. Great doctor. And, ah, our chef, Yolanda? She’s looking forward to visiting with you.” He turned back to Charlotte. “We want everything to be perfect for our Billie!”
“Our Billie?” Jack asked, but I nudged him.
I interrupted the conversation to ask for directions to the ladies’ room. Victor said it was off the TV room, next to the dining room. He then invited the three of us to come inside. I hustled ahead of them to the TV room, a pine-paneled space with overstuffed faux–Early American sofas. I stared at the far walclass="underline" there were four unmarked doors hidden in the paneling. I knocked on one, heard no response, and opened the door, praying all the while that it wasn’t reserved for men, and that one was not lurking inside. Did men even come to this spa? I had no idea.