Diane Davidson - Sticks & Scones

STICKS AND SCONES

DIANE MOTT DAVIDSON

LABYRINTH DONORS’ APPRECIATION LUNCH

Hyde Chapel, Aspen Meadow, Colorado Monday, February 9, noon

Chicken Croquettes, Dijon and Cranberry Sauces

Winter Salad of Chčvre, Figs, Filberts, and Field Greens, Port Wine Vinaigrette

Shakespeare’s Steak Pie

Steamed Green Beans with Artichoke Hearts

Elizabethan Manchet Bread, Butter

Chocolate Marble Labyrinth Cake

Merlot, Sparkling Water, Teas, and Coffee

-1-

Nighttime noises are torture. When a midnight wind shrieks through our window jambs, or footsteps clomp past the house, I think, It could be anything. Once a snowbank slid from our roof and thundered onto the deck. I awoke, heart pounding, convinced I’d been shot.

It isn’t logical, of course. But living with terror for seven years had not made me the most rational of thinkers, least of all when roused from sleep. A sound could be anything? No.

It was something.

When I awoke at four o’clock on Monday morning, February ninth, those years of dread were long over. Still, I was certain I’d heard a tiny scraping noise, like boots chafing against ice. Think, I warned myself. Don’t panic.

Heart pulsing, throat dry, I waited for my brain to clear, for the sound to come again. My husband Tom was I out of town. Even when he’s at home, noise rarely interrupts his slumber. Tom is a big hulking cop, and isn’t afraid of much.

I shifted in the chilled sheets. The temperature outside was close to zero. Frigid air poured through tiny leaks in our bedroom windows. The noise had come from outdoors, from below, of that I was fairly certain.

Now all was quiet. No sound emanated from Arch’s room down the hall. Two months from turning fifteen, my son slept so soundly even a howling blizzard would not rouse him. On the first floor, our bloodhound, Jake, was not growling or pacing in his enclosed area next to the kitchen. These were good signs.

Maybe I was imagining things. I’d gone to bed too late, after cooking all evening for today’s catered event. And I was stressed out, anyway. In December, our family life had been in an uproar. My in-home commercial kitchen had been shut down, and Tom and I had ended up involved in a homicide case at a nearby ski area. To make things worse, on New Year’s Eve, right after the official reopening of my kitchen, I’d catered my first party in months. It had gone very badly.

Wait. Another unmistakable scrape was followed by a tiny crack. It was like … what? Elk hooves shattering ice? A pine bough creaking under its burden of snow? Like… someone opening a suitcase across the street?

Who unpacks bags at four in the morning?

Henry Kissinger said, Even a paranoid has real enemies. With that in mind, I decided against getting out of bed and peering out a window. My eyes traveled to the bedside table and I reached stealthily for the portable phone. In addition to being paranoid, I sometimes suspected I was an alarmist, or, as the ninth-grade tough guys at Arch’s school would say, a wimp. Now, I bargained with myself. One more sound, and I would speed-dial the sheriff’s department.

I shivered, waited, and longed for the heavy terry-cloth robe hanging in my closet, an early Valentine’s present from Tom. Caterers need to rest after cooking, Miss G., he’d said. Wrap yourself in this when I’m gone, and pretend its me.

Of course, I would have much preferred Tom himself to the robe. For the past week, he’d been in New Jersey working a case. There, he reported, the weather was rainy. In Aspen Meadow, I’d told him in our evening calls, each day had brought more snow. Arch and I had made a morning ritual of shoveling our front walk. But daytime temperatures in the mid-thirties had melted our man-made snowbanks, and the nightly freezes transformed the sidewalk into a sheet of ice.

So. If someone was on our sidewalk, he or she was on a very slippery slope.

I propped myself up on my elbow, yanked up the bedspread, and listened intently. In the neon light cast by the street lamp outside, I could just make out my own reflection in our mirror: blond curly hair, dark eyes, thirty-four- year-old face just a tad round from an excess of chocolate. It was a face that had been happy for almost two years, since I’d married Tom. But now Tom’s absence was an ache.

Back in my old life, my ex-husband had often stumbled in late. I’d become used to the drunken harangues, the flaunted infidelities, the midnight arguments. Sometimes I even thought his girlfriends used to follow him home, to stake out our house.

Of course, I absolutely believed in Tom’s fidelity, even if he had been both secretive and preoccupied lately. Before he left, he’d even seemed low. I hadn’t quite known how to help. Try as I might, I was still getting used to being a cop’s wife.

Five minutes went by with no sound. My mind continued to meander. I wondered again about Tom. Six A.M. on the East Coast; was he up? Was he still planning on flying back this morning, as he’d promised us? Had he made any progress in his investigation?

The case Tom was working on involved the hijacking - on a Furman County road - of a FedEx delivery truck. The driver had been killed. Only one of the suspected three hijackers had been arrested. His name was Ray Wolff, and he was now in the same cell block as my ex-husband, Dr. John Richard Korman. The Jerk, as his other ex-wife and I called him, was currently serving a sentence for assault. During Arch’s weekly visit, John Richard had boasted to his son of his acquaintance with Ray Wolff, the famous killer-hijacker. How low things had sunk, I thought, when a father reveled in his own criminal infamy.

I shivered again and tried not to think of the threats my ex-husband had sent from jail. They’d been both implied and overt. When I get out of here, I’ll set you straight, Goldy. To Arch, he’d said, You can tell your mother your father has a plan. I guess I wasn’t surprised that those tiny signs of remorse John Richard had shown at his trial had all been for the benefit of the judge. I jumped at the sound of a third, louder crack. Downstairs, Jake let out a tentative woof I hit the phone’s power button as an explosion rocked our house.

What was that? My brain reeled. Cold and trembling, I realized I’d fallen off the bed. A gunshot? A bomb? It had sounded like a rocket launcher. A grenade. An earthquake. Downstairs, glass crashed to the floor. What the hell is going on?

I clutched the phone, scuttled across the cold floor, and tried to call for Arch. Unfortunately, my voice no longer seemed to be working. Below, our security system shrieked. I cursed as I made a tripping dash down the unlit hall.

The noise had been a gunshot. It had to have been. Someone had shot at our home. At least one downstairs window had been shattered, of that I was certain. Where is the shooter now? Where is my son?

“Arch!” I squawked in the dark hallway. Dwarfed by the alarm, my voice sounded tinny and far away. “Are you all right? Can you hear me?”

The alarm’s wail melded with Jake’s baying. What good did a security system do, anyway? Alarms are meant to protect you from intruders wanting your stuff - not from shooters wanting your life. Yelling that it was me, it was Mom, I stumbled through my son’s bedroom door.

Arch had turned on his aquarium light and was sitting up in bed. In the eerie light, his pale face glowed. His toast-brown hair had fanned out in an electric halo, and his hastily donned tortoiseshell glasses were askew. He clutched a raised sword - a gleaming foil used for his school fencing practice. I punched the phone buttons for 911, but was trembling so badly I messed it up. Now the phone was braying in my ear.

Panic tensed Arch’s face as he leaned toward the watery light and squinted at me.