Diane Davidson - Killer Pancake

I tiptoed over to my damp shoes and eased my feet inside. The rubber soles squished noisily as I headed for the door. I can’t escape in this robe, I realized with dismay. But how in the world would I find the dryer where they’d put my clothes? I retrieved the big plastic bag, grabbed the sack with Frances’s purchases, and put it in my purse, which I snapped shut. Clutching my purse, I peeked out in the hall. It was empty. I again thanked the Almighty and began to sneak past closed doors toward the back of the mansion. At each door I listened, but heard only silence, the buzz of the machines, or the low murmur of the facialists as they tortured other clients.

My whole problem, I thought as I moved from door to door down the hall, is that I am not a masochist. If I’d been a masochist, I would have endured all that pain for beauty. Then again, if I’d been a masochist, I would have stayed in my first marriage.

At the last closed door on the hall, I stopped. It was a wider door, the kind that usually goes to some kind of utility room. Inside a machine methodically whirred and thudded. A dryer.

I opened the door and whipped inside a tiny room that held what looked like a closet and a pantry covered with louvered doors. The door squeaked closed behind me. Shelves in the closet held neatly arrayed towels, uniforms, and large bottles of what I assumed to be cosmetic stuff. I creaked open the louvered doors and was rewarded with a washer and dryer. Above them and on each side were shelves filled with a much more haphazard assortment of stored items. These I ignored as I squeaked open the dryer door and reached in for my clothes. They were warm but still slightly damp.

Someone was coming. I nipped into the pantry and pinched my fingers closing the door. I don’t know why I was so afraid of being discovered aborting the facial, but I think it had something to do with the needle. The person who had come in was humming. I eased in behind a couple of white lab coats. Something like animal fur brushed my neck. Through the louvers I could see the hummer reaching for the bottles on the shelves. The fur began to tickle my neck. Sweat broke out on my cheeks. The hummer tapped the closet door shut with her foot and strolled out.

I creaked the door back open and reached behind me to snatch the fur away from my neck before I sneezed. No luck. A tiny but powerful convulsion escaped my lips and left my eyes watering. That would teach me to walk for blocks in the rain. Cursing and sniffling, I stepped out of the pantry clutching the fur thing. Wait. It was a wig, sort of a frosted blond affair. I tossed it down on the dryer, retrieved my clothes, and quickly dressed. As I was about to leave the room, my eyes slewed over to the wig again. Hairpieces frightened me, by and large. They were too much like dead animals. But I had seen this wig before.

I picked it up and examined it. Who had been wearing this monstrosity? Where had I seen her? A memory began to resolve itself. Before the Mignon banquet. I’d seen someone in the garage. A woman, dressed in bright yellow. Yes, I could see her striding purposefully toward the door, then sticking her head out the service entrance and demanding to know what was going on when Tom and I were trying to tend to Julian.

Then I remembered something else: Claire frowning when she recognized someone at the banquet. My saying, What? And her frustration. Her saying: Oh God . And then Dusty, the next day, saying: We saw you. We recognized you. Man, you are going to get into so much trouble .

Yes, I had seen this wig. Slender, good-looking Reggie Hotchkiss had been wearing it when he sneaked into the Mignon Fall into Color Banquet. It was at that banquet that he’d probably picked up the ideas he needed for his autumn catalogue. I just didn’t know what else he’d done there. Run down the very successful sales associate of a rival firm?

Itossed the wig back on the shelf. I slipped out the utility room door and saw illuminated red letters at the end of the hall: EXIT. Ten steps to freedom. No alarm went off as I pressed the door bar, landed on a concrete step, and inhaled cool, rain-dampened air. Here behind the Hotchkiss establishment, a ragtag lawn and overflowing rosebushes ran the length of the pink and blue picket fence. A rusty-hinged gate interrupted the fence between the brambles at the far end of the yard. Praying that I wasn’t being observed, I walked across the wet grass, lifted the latch, and felt a rush of light-headed relief as I escaped into an alley.

Steam misted off the streets of the Aqua Bella neighborhood. Sunlight struggled to cut through the thickly humid air. To the west, clouds lifted along the foothills, leaving trails of creamy fog snaking between dark green hills. To get oriented in the Denver area, the key is to remember that the mountains are always to the west. The mall was situated between the Rockies and me, so I started off at a moderate westward jog down the sidewalk. I hop-scotched over shiny patches of puddle. Behind me, I could almost imagine Lane’s terse, businesslike voice screaming, Stop that unmasqued woman!

But I was in no mood for entanglements. I panted and bumbled along. How could I have walked this far? I touched my forehead. It was still bleeding. Someday, I thought, Marla and I would have a good laugh about my Hotchkiss makeover masquerade.

By the time I slipped behind the wheel of my van, I thought I was going to have a heart attack myself. As I drove back to Aspen Meadow, I inhaled deep yoga-exercise breaths. Claire Satterfield had been dead for three days. Nick Gentileschi had tumbled out of the blind today. His body hadn’t even twitched when it landed.

How long had he been dead? And then there was Reggie Hotchkiss, who had spied at the Mignon banquet, under cover of wig. In addition to all that, tonight I was catering a chi-chi dinner for a couple up to their wealthy ears in the imbroglio: Claire’s presumed lover, Dr. Charles Braithwaite, and Charlie’s wife, Babs, the woman Nick Gentileschi had been covertly photographing in the Prince & Grogan fitting rooms.

How did I get myself into these situations?

When my van chugged off the interstate at the Aspen Meadow exit, the rain clouds had cleared and left an immense bluer-than-blue sky. I passed the country club, where sunlight glinted off the roof of the Braithwaites’ greenhouse at its high point on Aspen Knoll. It was from there that the guests would finish munching their fudge cookies and watch the Fourth of July fireworks display over Aspen Meadow Lake. Which would give me some time to do some snooping around in the infamous greenhouse.

I swung the van up to our house and saw that Julian had returned and left the Range Rover at a slight angle in the driveway. I parked in the one available spot on the street. When I hopped out, Sally Routt, Dusty’s mother, was outside, pulling weeds. Her son Colin was on her back, snuggled into one of those corduroy baby-holders. I didn’t see Dusty, which was probably just as well. I couldn’t take any questioning on how the Hotchkiss facial had gone. Besides, I needed to phone Tom. I called a greeting to them, but Colin seemed fascinated by the mass of long-stemmed purple fireweed. Colin was so thin and tiny, it was hard to believe he was three months old. As he reached for a monarch butterfly on a fireweed stem, his little hand was dwarfed by the butterfly’s dark, outstretched wings. Deprived of his target, his head of gleaming strawberry-blond hair bobbed in my direction. Poor, sweet child, born too early, to a family that could scarcely manage to take care of him. I felt my heart squeeze inside my chest.