Dark Tort Part 19

How did I feel about taking a suspect's car back home? Guilty? Worried? Actually, I was too tired to have any feelings. We lived less than half an hour away, and Tom would be back soon. Even he seemed to think it would be okay, so I acquiesced. He also murmured that he would call Brewster Motley if it looked as if Vic was going to be charged and needed a criminal defense attorney.

Within five minutes, the boys were again shrieking with laughter, this time at the prospect of yours truly driving them in a convertible with the top down, all the way home! Imagining the windy drive back to our house, I thought I'd be lucky not to get the flu.

As Tom was departing with Vic, the tow truck pulled up, thank G.o.d. It was only a matter of minutes before the driver and Julian managed to hook the truck up to the Rover. I gave the driver my credit-card number while Julian tossed the errant door into the back of his car.

He slapped his hands together and gave me a wide smile. "I never liked that door anyway."

You gotta love the kid, I thought as I hustled Arch and Gus into the rear seat of the convertible. And so I drove us all home, with the boys hollering, "This is so cool! This is so cool!" the entire way.

Once Julian and I were back in our kitchen, I had two things to do: start on the prep for the christening reception, and call the Routts. Make that three things: I needed to start on the dinner dish I'd promised Tom. The sausage-and-potato ca.s.serole was a hearty entree that Tom had adapted from Julia Child, and he loved to dig into it when the weather turned cold. With the thermometer hovering right at thirty-two degrees, that was precisely what it was, despite my son and his half brother's glee at being driven home in an open-air vehicle.

"When the temperatures drop, I don't even drive with my windows down," Julian said, once he'd donned an ap.r.o.n. "I feel as if my ears are frozen to the sides of my face."

"I may never talk again," I said, feeling my chilled lips. "Some people might not see that as a bad thing."

Julian merely shook his head. I told him what I'd planned for the christening reception: Prosciutto Bites, Charlie's Asparagus Quiche recipe from the booklet we'd bought at CBHS, Homemade Breads, and Fresh Fruit Salad. Aspen Meadow Bakery was doing an enormous sheet cake, so I didn't need to bake another Old Reliable. Julian started tapping my computer keys. The printer began spitting out recipes and prep sheets, and the two of us gathered ingredients from the walk-in.

"You might want to make an extra quiche, a small one," I warned Julian as he was grating cheese. "The dinner Tom wants is a meat lover's extravaganza." Julian mumbled something unintelligible about heart disease, but said it was no problem. "Can you manage in here," I asked, "if I go see the Routts?"

"Of course," he said. "But if I'm going to be spending more than just one night here, at some point I need to go get my clothes."

I told him that Tom would like him to stay with us for a while, at least until Dusty's murder was solved, but only if he could swing it with the bistro where he was working. Julian promised he'd be able to switch some s.h.i.+fts. But he still needed clothes, he reminded me, or a car to go get them in. We agreed to go to Boulder the next afternoon, Sunday, after the service.

I rummaged around in the freezer until I found an oblong dish full of spaghetti and meatb.a.l.l.s that I had made for one of the fund-raisers at Christian Brothers High School. I wrote out directions for heating it. Before starting for the Routts' house, I asked Julian to come out onto the front porch and watch me. This he did, and I also looked both ways, because I sure didn't want somebody to mow down my ca.s.serole and me.

Sally answered the door after I'd knocked several times. Her hair looked even more straggly and unkempt than when I'd seen her the day before, and the odor emanating from the house was foul. Maybe she was embarra.s.sed to have me come in, and that was why she'd been reluctant to see who was on her front stoop.

"Do you have anything to tell me?" she asked. Her expressionless gaze skimmed the street. "Why is Vic's car parked in front of your house? Is he over visiting you? Will he be back to see us? I feel so bad about not letting him in the other morning...and he's been so helpful and kind. Is he coming over here?"

"Uh, no," I stammered. I was not going to tell Sally the reason for Vic's sudden trek down to the sheriff's department, as that would upset her even more. "He's with Tom. He'll be back soon." When she didn't say anything, I went on: "Could you let me in? I need to put this ca.s.serole in your refrigerator...and ask you a few questions."

"The police have asked us enough questions to last us a lifetime," she said, but she pulled the door open and I followed her to the kitchen.

The cause of the odor was immediately apparent, as the smell was much stronger by the sink. No one had taken out the trash.

The tras.h.!.+ I'd forgotten all about the mess in the back of Julian's Rover. I checked my watch: just after five. I knew Aspen Meadow Imports, where the Rover had been towed, closed soon. I would just have to get it the next day. No wait, that was Sunday. By the time I got it Monday, Julian's vehicle would be permanently infused with the smell of garbage.

Well: to the task at hand. I didn't ask for Sally's permission to remove the trash; I just did it. It had probably been Dusty's job. I toted the bulging plastic bag out to the garbage container, thankful that no bears had been reported in our neighborhood. When I came back inside, Colin's disconsolate crying filled the house. I guessed that he'd just awakened from his nap. But this was only a guess, because Sally remained glued to the couch.

"Let me go get him," I offered. And so I washed my hands and went to fetch the little guy, since Sally still wasn't moving. Colin, his face mottled from weeping, needed a change. It had been well over a decade since I'd changed a diaper, and when I started I realized Colin needed a bath. Poor kid.

"All right, buster, let's go," I said to him in as commanding a tone as I could muster.

Fifteen minutes later, I brought Colin, bathed, changed, and clothed in clean garments, into the small living room. Sally had not stirred. After I put Colin down, I came and sat beside her.

"You know, Sally, maybe we should get a counselor to come here to the house. I can call one, if you'd like. You need help."

"What I need," she said in a monotone, "is to find out what happened to my daughter."

"Okay, okay," I said as I pulled my cell from my pocket. "But may I get somebody here to help you?"

"Do whatever you want."

I walked into the kitchen and put in a call to Furman County Social Services, steeling myself for the usual bureaucratic runaround. To my astonishment, I was only transferred once, and the office said they would send a grief counselor up that evening. I also put in a call to St. Luke's. Thank goodness some foresighted soul had thought to put in confidential voice mail for Father Pete. He'd just been over here the previous day, but hopefully he could manage another visit. I added that if he was aware of anyone in the Episcopal Church Women who knew the Routts, and would be willing to stop in once a day to do some cleaning and cooking, that would be great.

"Have you eaten today, Sally?" I asked when I came back out to the living room. No to that, too. Which probably meant that Colin was hungry, as well. Where was Sally's father? Perhaps he napped in the afternoon. But a happy cry from Colin and a rush of hurried baby steps indicated that John Routt had made his appearance from the other side of the small house. For that I was thankful.

Ten minutes later I had heated up slices of ham left by a paris.h.i.+oner, a pan of macaroni and cheese-the ultimate comfort food-and placed these next to small dishes of chilled applesauce. It was the kind of not-quite-balanced meal we used to get in the school cafeteria when I was a kid, but I figured it would do. For Sally and her father, I set up the metal TV tables that had been part of the spa.r.s.e furnis.h.i.+ng the parish had done for the house. Colin slipped easily into his yellow chair-within-a-table, even called out gleefully when he saw the applesauce. I cut his ham and macaroni into bite-size pieces and served them. To my great surprise and satisfaction, they all, even Sally, ate hungrily.

I didn't want to make them uncomfortable while they were enjoying their food, so I washed the two pots I'd dirtied, then cleaned out the refrigerator. I took out two of the church's offerings as well as my ca.s.serole-c.u.m-directions, and put all three into the Routts' small freezer. By the time they were finished eating, I had the counters cleaned and the little dishwasher-but at least they had one, and built in, too-almost loaded. I put in their dishes and silverware, and figured it was time to talk.

With Colin settled in on the far side of the living room to watch Sesame Street on the portable TV, Sally, with some color in her cheeks and looking far less desolate, moved the two living-room chairs over by the spread-covered couch, so she and her father and I could visit.

"I haven't found out much," I warned them. "Just rumors at this point, that kind of thing."

"Was there anything in the computer?" Sally asked.

"Sort of," I said. "I know Julian called you to ask about this, and you said you hadn't heard of it, but are you sure that Dusty didn't have a friend-who-was-a-boy with the first or last name beginning with O?"

"Positive," Sally said. "She had been going out with Vic Zaruski, but that had ended, I'm pretty sure."

"Was he nice to her?" I asked. "I mean, did she ever complain that he was not nice to her?"

Sally shrugged. "She didn't say one way or the other. Why?"

Before I could talk about the face slap, John Routt piped up: "I believe there was more affection on his side than there was on hers."

"Did she tell you that?" I asked.

"No," he said. "But when you're blind you pick up a lot of nuances and att.i.tudes from speech."

I steeled myself for my next question. "Okay, there's an attorney with whom Dusty was friends. They worked out together. Did she ever mention doing exercises or weights with someone, someone whom she might have cared for romantically?"

"She never mentioned anyone," said Sally. "Who is this person?"

The less said about any specific attorney, the better, I figured. I didn't want Sally going on an ill-conceived vigilante mission. "Just a guy," I said, my tone light. "This next part is important. Did Dusty talk to you about working for Charlie Baker?"

"Oh yes, Charlie Baker," Sally said. "She really did like him. He died, but I guess it wasn't wholly unexpected."

"No," I said. "Anyway, she mentions a gift from Charlie. Then another time, just a couple of days before she was killed, one of Charlie Baker's neighbors saw her carrying something out of his house, in a tube. A long tube, the kind someone might use to store paintings. Do you know anything about this?"

Sally shook her head, clearly frustrated that there was so much about her child she hadn't known. But wait. The last entry in Dusty's journal had said: "Now I can compare them." I'd thought she meant boyfriends, but maybe she meant something else. I ran this by Sally.

"Compare what?" Sally asked, hooking her straggly hair behind her ear. "The only thing Dusty cared about was learning the law. I think her dream was to become a lawyer someday. But you can't carry law books in a tube. And anyway, if she had taken anything, the police would have found it when they searched our house."

"All right," I said wearily. "I guess I'll have to go down to Mile-High Paralegal Inst.i.tute to see if she had a locker-"

"Wait," said John Routt. "She might have left them with me."

"Dad?" asked Sally Routt, clearly astonished.

"Let's go into my room." He stood and began tap-tapping his way down a short hall.

I remembered this room: it had been designed as a porch with a separate entrance. And it could have been used as a porch, if it hadn't been a.s.signed to Sally's father, who'd come here after his wife died. The windows were the jalousie type, now tightly shut against the chill. The futon with its striped pillows was still there, as were the mismatched chairs and the small table with the saxophone on top. On summer evenings, John would open the windows and play the saxophone, and we lucky neighborhood folks could imagine we were outside a New York jazz club. In one corner was a s.p.a.ce heater, its orange wires glowing brightly. I didn't see anything that could fit into a tube.

"Are you facing the interior wall of the house?" John asked. "That's where Dusty hung two things. She told me to take care of them, no matter what."

I turned around. And there, suspended from hooks, were two paintings by Charlie Baker.

I stared at them. One was t.i.tled Trustworthy Chocolate Cake. It was an old recipe for an extraordinarily fudgy cake that I knew well. Like the Journey Cake recipe, it contained no eggs, and yet somehow, this recipe looked correct. Was I missing something? My sleep-deprived mind refused to provide an answer.

The other painting was for something Charlie called Plum Kuchen. In the fall, when those small, tart Italian plums are plentiful, I frequently made plum kuchen myself. I stared at the recipe. Here, as with the Journey Cake recipe, reading the ingredient list made me uneasy. Something just didn't look right. I peered at the lower right-hand side of each painting, and there was Charlie Baker's signature.

"Does this help?" John Routt asked into the air.

"It might," I said, not wanting to discourage him.

"Our Dusty wouldn't have stolen anything."

"I know that. Do you mind if I use my cell phone?"

He replied that he didn't, and he would leave me to conduct my call in private.

"I just finished practicing," Meg Blatchford said, after I identified myself. She was panting.

"Meg, do you know if Charlie ever left an ingredient out of his recipes?"

Why should I have been surprised when she said, "Oh yes, always. Didn't you know that?"

"No. Tell me."

I could hear Meg clattering ice cubes into a gla.s.s. "Wait a sec," she said, still gasping a bit. "All that pitching works up a thirst." After a moment, she said, "You know, Charlie's financial success came somewhat late in life for him. Because of that, he became anxious about his work. He...was always afraid of...imitators."

"Imitators?"

"Yes, he was terrified that a guest or intruder would sneak into his studio while he was in another part of that big house, sleeping, or cooking, or whatever. He worried constantly that this unwelcome someone would steal the painting or paintings, before they went to the gallery. He told me once that he was even anxious about someone coming in and taking photos of his works in progress, so they could do an imitation or forgery." Meg stopped to sip water. "But in case someone got the not-so-bright idea to try to sell forged or stolen works before Charlie set them up at the gallery that represented him, he did a little joke. A little joke that made him feel more secure."

"What kind of little joke?"

"Well. When he hand-lettered the recipe under the painting, he would always leave out the very last ingredient. However! He always put it in the margin, to remind himself of what it was. When he got to the gallery to help set up his paintings, he would always go around and hand-letter the very last ingredient of each recipe. You remember my stew painting? Did you see the merry little sticks of b.u.t.ter running all around in the margin?"

"Sure," I said, still puzzled.

"Well, if you look carefully at the very last ingredient that's hand-lettered in there, it's a stick of b.u.t.ter, that you put in for enrichment of the stew. Charlie was very old-fas.h.i.+oned in the area of cholesterol."

I stared hard at the margin of Trustworthy Chocolate Cake. It was filled with cheerful little cups of water, prancing around the edge of the painting. And the last ingredient on the hand-lettered recipe was "1 cup water."

What was missing from Charlie's recipe for Plum Kuchen? All I had to do was look in the margin, right? And there were spoonfuls of sugar, cavorting happily all around the edge of the painting. Of course. You made the b.u.t.ter-rich batter, spread it into a springform pan, laid on the plums, and finally, sprinkled them with a couple of tablespoons of sugar before the lovely concoction went into the oven.

And what had been missing from the Journey Cake recipe? I asked myself. Baking soda, I realized just as quickly. Baking soda, baking soda, baking soda. Without eggs, you definitely need an acid and a base to make the cake rise. Julian and I had had the acid, which was the cider, but not the base, soda. My inner ear provided Arch saying "Duh, Mom."

I thanked Meg, signed off, and again looked at the paintings. Trustworthy Chocolate Cake was a complete painting. Plum Kuchen was not complete. And the Journey Cake recipe, the one on the painting Nora had given her husband, had not been complete. "Now I can compare them," Dusty had said in her journal. Indeed.

I punched in our home numbers, praying that Tom had returned from the sheriff's department. When he answered, my shoulders slumped in relief.

"Tom," I said breathlessly. "How did Vic do?"

"Okay, I suppose. Our guys took his statement and released him. We don't have enough evidence to charge him. Yet."

I swallowed. "Well, listen. I need you to drive over to the Routts' house."

"Wait," my husband said. "I just saw Vic off, and now you want me to get in my car and drive across the street?"

"Yes," I said, "I don't want anyone to see what I'm taking out of this house and bringing to our house. I...I think whoever killed Dusty may be having her house watched somehow. Or our house watched. That would explain why Vic was almost hit bringing the computer over."

"I still haven't told you about my line on that, by the way."

"Tom! This isn't like my bringing a ca.s.serole across the street, okay? Would you please just drive over?"

"I could get some cops to park at both ends of the street. Create a roadblock down on Main."

"Are you going to make fun of me, or are you going to come help me smuggle some key evidence out of the Routts' house?"

"Key evidence that you're touching, no doubt."

"In four seconds, I am walking out of this house."

Tom said, "I can't believe I'm doing this."

CHAPTER 16.

I took the paintings down from the wall. They weren't suspended from hooks, as I'd thought, but were attached with plastic clothes hangers. Once I had them both down, I started rolling them up, carefully, very, very carefully. But it was difficult, because something was making the paintings bulky...

On the backs of each of the paintings was a form, with several typed sheets attached. I probably shouldn't have, but I delicately lifted the tape holding the papers in place.

The form began: "In the matter of the estate of." And then someone had typed "Charles Baker." I skimmed down to the t.i.tle of the form itself: "Inventory." Hmm.

While I was waiting for Tom, I scanned the rest of the first page, which contained a summary of "Schedule A (Real Estate)," "Schedule B (Stocks and Bonds)," and so on through "Schedule F (Miscellaneous Property)." One portion of the form was highlighted in yellow: "Decedent's estates: a.s.sets shall be listed and the fair market value given as of the date of the decedent's death. The inventory shall be sent to interested persons who request it or the original inventory may be filed with the court..."

I frowned at the form taped to the back of the other painting, the one I now knew had an incomplete recipe. The form appeared to be the same as the first, with the same area highlighted. A four-page printout had been stapled to both forms. My eyes crossed trying to read the single-s.p.a.ced typing. "Chairs, Sculptures, Crystal, China..." I just couldn't do this with any kind of understanding right now. Which was a good thing, because that was when Tom's sedan crunched over the gravel and ice in the Routts' driveway.

To his credit, Tom did not grumble or complain when I crept out the back door of the Routts' house carrying a large trash bag filled with my loot. I got into Tom's sedan and began the arduous one-second trip across the street.