Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

I squeezed Tom’s hand. “Don’t think about him. In fact, Tom? Don’t talk at all.”

“I want to get on with this.” He spoke slowly, insistently. “I need to get back to - “

“Tom, please. You’ve got to heal.”

“Working heals me.”

“Tom - “

“Where was I?” He squinted at the beige ceiling of the ambulance interior. “Oh, yeah Andy just makes me so damn mad. Made me mad. And now he’s got himself dead.”

I didn’t care about Andy Balachek; I cared only about Tom. Clearly, he wasn’t going to follow doctor’s orders and stay quiet. He didn’t want that. He wanted to talk about the corpse in the creek. “Okay,” I said. “Balachek’s death was avoidable. Why?”

“That kid was the king of communication. Loved e-mail. Sent me a letter with no return address telling me to set up thus-and-such new e-mail address, operated only out of my home. So I did, with the D.A.‘s blessing. Balachek said he’d tell me who killed the truck driver if I could get him off.” Tom’s eyes closed. I clasped his hand in mine.

The ambulance began the winding, westward ascent up Highway 203. When we’d left the hospital, shimmering white clouds had been hovering over the forests blanketing the foothills. Peering through the ambulance’s windshield, I could see that the cloud cover had now turned the color of ash. A freezing fog misted the

pine tops. More snow was on the way.

“Andy wouldn’t tell me who his other partners were,” Tom announced abruptly, startling me. “I mean, besides Ray Wolff. Andy wouldn’t divulge information about the stamps. The home address linked with his e-mail was his father’s, who’d kicked him out when Andy stole his excavation truck. And you know we thought Andy was in Atlantic City when he called last Friday.”

I nodded. Andy, frantic, had called our house from a cell phone in Central City, Colorado, where gambling was legal. He was calling from a bathroom, because he’d stolen some body’s cell phone and wanted to talk to Tom. I’d said Tom was in Atlantic City, looking for him. Andy had bitterly replied that he guessed he’d

have to go to New Jersey to see Tom, because his partner threw his computer into the lake. Then he hung up. With no leads materializing in New Jersey, Tom had decided to come home. And now he was determined to talk about the case. I sighed.

“Did you ever figure out who the partner was?” I asked. “Are there more than three people in the gang?” I paused. “Ray Wolff is in prison. Whoever the third person is, he or she or whoever couldn’t have known Andy was talking to you over the Internet, or Andy would have been killed right then. I mean, if we’re talking about the same person who did kill him in the end.”

“I’m willing to bet,” Tom said with great effort, “that the ‘other partner’ is the third hijacker witnesses saw. Maybe there are more people in the gang, but you usually don’t use the word ‘partner’ unless you’ve only got a couple of them.”

“So somebody got wind of Andy’s e-mails?”

Tom grimaced. “Don’t know.”

Talking had exhausted him. He closed his eyes as the ambulance passed the sign indicating that Aspen Meadow was only ten miles away. I was glad he was finally asleep. Every time he opened his mouth, I was afraid he was going to confess to some terrible sin that I couldn’t bear to hear.

Andy wouldn’t divulge information about the stamps. I felt a pang of envy. Would I ever get to see those Victorian wonders? Like every other eleven-year-old on my block, I’d been a voracious stamp collector. My mother had gotten tired of all the philatelic packets pouring in “on approval,” which meant stamp clubs sent stamps every month and I had to send them back by a certain date, or pay. Unfortunately, I never had the heart to return the beauties, and I’d ended up babysitting around the clock to fund my hobby. When my grades fell and I slept through a baby’s sobbing, my mother canceled all my stamp club subscriptions. Heartless! And that, unfortunately, had rung the death-knell for my stamp-collecting hobby.

We rounded a sharp corner and Tom’s stretcher shook. He groaned but did not awaken. Andy sent e-mails. Andy called. Andy got himself dead.

Maybe Tom did not blame himself for what had gone wrong in the hijacking investigation. Maybe he didn’t love some other woman. No matter what, it sounded as if he’d gotten himself emotionally connected with hapless, “gotta-talk-to-you” Andy Balachek. And if there’s one thing they teach you in cop school, it’s that you shouldn’t let a criminal live rent-free in your brain.

-10-

The ambulance made a slow, wide turn onto the castle drive, then moved through the open gates. I checked my watch: eight-ten. We thumped over the causeway across the moat and stopped in front of the gatehouse, where the medics swung open the back doors. With a glance at Tom, I scrambled out. Michaela Kirovsky, her white cloud of hair and pale face the picture of concern, stood by the portcullis. She disarmed the castle security system and helped the medics set up a portable ramp for all the stairs inside the castle. After much grunting, heaving, and clicking of ramp parts, Michaela and one of the medics managed to get Tom inside the castle. An eternity later, they pushed Tom’s wheelchair toward our assigned suite.

Following them, I felt light-headed with fatigue and hunger. I was thankful we had not run into the Hydes. Still, goose bumps raced down my skin. Why did I feel we were being watched? I glanced around for closed-circuit cameras, but saw nothing except stones, windows, and fading tapestries. Once I thought I caught movement out of the corner of my eye, but whatever it was disappeared before I actually saw anything. Just the

day before, though, I’d decided I’d imagined a noise only seconds before our picture window was blown to fragments. I hadn’t believed I’d seen something in the creek, and it had turned out to be poor Andy Balachek. So if I was persuaded I’d seen something out of the corner of my eye, then perhaps I had. I stopped and looked all around again: Nothing. Maybe I was just tired.

Michaela told me that Eliot and Sukie were out having breakfast, even though Julian had offered to make them his vegetarian Eggs Benedict. She brightened, and added that Julian was making breakfast, anyway, and had promised to go grocery shopping after he left Arch off at Elk Park Prep.

“I’ll tell you,” Michaela said with a wide grin, as I finished straightening the covers over Tom. “I love having that kid around. He works. You stay here much longer, I’m going to get lazy.”

I smiled. Yes, Julian was a blessing. But hale-and-hearty Michaela drifting into laziness was impossible to imagine.

After Michaela and the medic left, Tom murmured, “I feel helpless.”

“You’re not helpless, you just need rest,” I replied. My hands traced circles on the green-and-pink coverlet. I prayed that Tom wouldn’t start up again on the subject of Andy Balachek.

“I’ve been here before, you know,” he said mildly. “The castle.”

“Investigating a case?” I asked, surprised.

“Not exactly.” He chuckled. “Checking to see if the owner was a loony bird.” He raised his jaunty, sand-colored eyebrows at me.

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“It’s a long story. I’ll tell you later.” He tried to shift his weight. “You stayed in a client’s home once before,” Tom reminded me. “Didn’t turn out too well, as I recall.”

“That was a family thing,” I replied. Arch’s and my brief stay with Marla’s sister had indeed not turned out well. “This is business - “

My protest was silenced by twin thudding knocks at the door: Arch and Julian. They tumbled into the room, clustered around Tom, and demanded to know how he was feeling.