Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

Tom’s eyes, when he turned back to me, were the lucid green of sunlit seawater. “Goldy, I love you. I’m married to you. When I woke up in that hospital, I didn’t know whether I’d dreamed that she’d come back or not. They warned me that the pain medication might be hallucinogenic, so I put it down to that. Then I woke up here, and I thought I saw somebody run out of our room.”

No wonder he’d been looking so full of pain. My heart ached. “A man or a woman was running out of our room? Didn’t you have your door armed?”

“The door was armed.” There was more than a hint of irritation in his voice. “It didn’t look like a man or a woman. It looked like a kid in a suit of armor, like that ghost story last night. It looked like a hallucination, except the armor clanked pretty loudly.”

“But Sara Beth O’Malley isn’t a hallucination, right?”

He shook his head. “No, I think she’s alive. All these years of silence, then she starts sending me e-mails. I was trying to figure out what was going on when I was shot.”

He looked so forlorn that I took his big hands into mine. “Since it’s full-disclosure time,” I said hesitantly, “I want to tell you that I downloaded her e-mails, plus the one you received from the State Department. I also downloaded Andy’s e-mails, because I thought it might help figure out who shot the two of you. I put all the e-mails on a disk before our computers were stolen.”

He lifted a sandy eyebrow. “Let me get this straight. You not only read my personal, private e-mails from Andy Balachek, you also read my personal, private electronic correspondence from and about Sara Beth?”

“I’m sorry. It’s just that when you told me that you didn’t love some woman, I was sure she was the one who’d shot at our house and shot you. I was trying to figure out who it was, too.”

“But I’d already told you I didn’t love her.”

“So, you haven’t actually seen her yet?”

“No.”

“Well, I have to tell you, I have.”

“What?” Tom’s face furrowed. “Are you sure? You saw her? Talked to her?”

“Both. But not for more than a minute. The day after you were shot, she staked out our house. I looked at an old photograph of her from your album. She looked like the same woman, only older.”

“Uh-huh.”

I tried to control my trembling voice. “I’m wondering if she shot out our window, and then she shot you, because she’s the jealous type.” I forced myself to stop talking.

“My, my.”

I paused, then went on: “Look, Tom, I’m terribly sorry about prying into the Sara Beth thing. Can you just please tell me what’s going on?”

He lifted his left shoulder. “She didn’t die. Or else, I figured, someone was doing a great hoax job. But if you saw her and talked to her, I don’t know. I do think I should try to meet her. She said in her e-mail she has a dentist’s appointment Friday morning … .”

I swallowed. Did I trust him meeting with that lovely, enigmatic woman? What were my choices? I could hear the reluctance in my voice when I said, “I won’t do anything else about her if you don’t want me to. But here’s one more thing I’ve been wondering about … although it’s a bit far-fetched.”

“Don’t worry, Miss G.” His voice was grim. “I’m used to far-fetched these days.”

“The owner of The Stamp Fox insists any stolen philatelic material can be easily fenced in the Far East. Do you think there’s a possibility Sara Beth could be part of the stamp robbery?”

He considered the crumbs on our plates, then shook his head. “It’s not like her. Or at least, not the way she used to be. Obviously, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”

“As long as this is truth time, you should know I’ve been doing some poking around on a related matter.” Tom groaned and I continued hastily, “I’m not sure it’s safe for us to stay here. Sukie was treated by John Richard for cancer, and didn’t tell me - “

“That makes her dangerous?”

“The Lauderdales hate me, and Chardé is the castle decorator. She can get into the castle anytime she wants.”

“Now there’s an indication of guilt.” “And Eliot Hyde had an affair with Viv Martini, who is John Richard’s new girlfriend and was Ray Wolff’s - “

“You have been busy. Listen, I want to go home, too. And we will, soon. Meanwhile, I think it’s fine for us to be here. Eliot Hyde is so afraid of looking bad in the public eye he wouldn’t dare try anything, and Sukie knows where her bread gets buttered.”

“I’m not so sure - “

“You’ll have to trust my judgment. Of course, you haven’t been doing too well in the trust department lately.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Still, my brain buzzed with unanswered questions. The minutes ticked by. I had lied to Tom by not immediately ‘fessing up to my e-mail snooping; he had lied to me by covering up the whole resurrection-of-Sara-Beth problem. We sat in silence, not sure how to react to one another. The room shadows lengthened. Finally Tom said he was going to rest a while, and would meet us in the Great Hall at seven.

I preheated the oven and washed the tea dishes. Then I rubbed the thawed lamb roast with garlic, put it into the oven, and started the potatoes boiling. When I was washing the green beans, Boyd called.

“There was no sign of Troy McIntire when we got to his house,” he began matter-of-factly. “Neighbors say, about half an hour after you left? Old Troy came out of his house lugging several big suitcases. We’re hoping for a search warrant, but I’m sure that even if we get one, we wouldn’t find anything incriminating. As for your ex-husband, he’s not at home. I should know more about your computers tonight.”

“Thanks for trying,” I told him, then returned to my culinary duties. After the exchange with Tom, my mood had dropped. With no good news from Boyd, it plunged to a new low. To distract myself from the worries that seemed to beset us on every side, I decided to make the plum tarts for Friday’s banquet dessert.

The thought of laboriously wrapping the zirconia stones in foil with no accompaniment besides my own thoughts - the Hydes either didn’t have a stereo or I just couldn’t find it - was abhorrent. In one of our hastily packed boxes, I remembered seeing Arch’s Walkman, so I poked around until I found it.

I inserted the labyrinth-background tape from Eliot’s desk, washed my hands, and assembled the ingredients for the tart crusts. Eliot had wanted me to bone up on labyrinths so that I could field questions during the next day’s lunch. What he didn’t realize was that except for the dieters, no one ever asks the caterer much. The dieters have two questions: “What’s in this?” and “Is it low-fat?” They can be tiresome clients.

The labyrinth was a very ancient form, the tape began. It differed from a maze, a laid-out puzzle where you had choices as to which way to go. A labyrinth led only one way, but unless you paid attention to every twist and turn, you wouldn’t make it to the center. The oldest surviving labyrinth formed a stepping-stone path laid into the floor of the nave of Chartres Cathedral. The distance to its center from the front door was used as a mystical measurement, and mirrored the distance from the door to the center of the rose window. At the center you will find God, the tape informed me. Pilgrims now walked the labyrinth only once a year, but in medieval times it might have been walked often. These days, chairs covered the Chartres labyrinth.

As I sliced the dark plums into juicy slices, the taped voice launched into a discussion of labyrinth symbolism, which, in fact, was similar to that of the maze. Theseus had wound into the maze of the Minotaur, slain him in its center, then found his way back out to safety with the help of thread, thoughtfully provided by Ariadne. Christians walking to the center of the labyrinth could only get lost if they weren’t paying attention. By treading the path of the labyrinth, Christians took a spiritual journey to the death of Christ, and his temporary descent to hell. By symbolically descending and then ascending again, a pilgrim retraced the messianic journey, found God, and, hopefully, figured out all his or her life problems along the way. The idea of a walking meditation was appealing, but I wondered what happened if you got stuck in the