Diane Davidson - The Grilling Season

Paying a visit to the reading room, Arch and I had encountered Patricia dragging a recalcitrant, whining Tyler with one hand and balancing an armload of Dr. Seuss books with the other.

“Did you see the foxes, Tyler?” I’d asked her son happily. “Are they out tonight?”

Tyler had given me a grumpy stare and let out a wail. Patricia had snarled, “We’re not interested in a family of foxes. Not now. Not ever.”

Startled, I’d pulled open the massive door to the library for Arch. When he passed by me, he’d mumbled, “What – does she raise chickens or something?”

Not even close, I realized now as I folded the sweet-sour dressing into the slaw ingredients. Struggling with the recent loss of her baby, Patricia hadn’t wanted to see the fox cubs playing. The notion of a big, happy family had been slipping from her grasp. I covered the enormous bowl with plastic wrap and popped it into the walk-in refrigerator.

“If you’re making so-good food noises, I want some,” Tom announced cheerfully as he strode into the room. “Oh, man.” He took in a greedy breath. “More biscuits?”

I nodded and removed the last cookie sheet of the golden, puffed rounds, then silently split one, slathered it with butter and blackberry jam, and handed the plate with it to Tom. When he finished, I’d tell him about seeing Ralph Shelton.

While he sat down and began to eat, I put in another batch of biscuits. I iced the dark chocolate cupcakes, which would surround a centerpiece hockey-rink-shaped cake provided by Aspen Meadow Pastry Shop. I placed the cupcakes in covered plastic containers. I wasn’t going to brood anymore. I was in my wonderful kitchen, filled with marvelous scents, and feeding the man I loved most in the world. Then I realized he was watching me.

“Tom? What is it?”

“Final batch of biscuits about to come out?”

“In a little bit.”

He paused, then glanced at the clock. “How’s your time going? When do you have to leave?”

“In about an hour. Why?”

His face grew wary. “I’m worried about Arch.”

“So am I. But what makes you mention it? Did he tell you about the phone call?” Doggone John Richard, anyway.

Tom shook his head. “No, he didn’t. He didn’t say a word. When I went by his room, he was sitting ramrod stiff in his desk chair, staring at nothing. I asked him if he wanted to talk, and he said ‘Not to you, I don’t.’ “

My spirits, briefly raised by my productive work, fell flat. I guessed Macguire had not been successful trying to entice Arch into listening to music. I grabbed a chair and sat. “Tom. Arch wants me to help John Richard. He’s desperate for me to prove his father’s innocence.”

Tom groaned. “Goldy, you can’t. I told you I’d keep you informed. But this isn’t like that time you found the body in the woods by Elk Park Prep. This time the prime suspect showed up at the scene, started raising Cain, and was arrested. You can’t get involved in this: you’re a witness. Listen, let’s get Arch down here to talk – “

I held up a hand to stop him. “John Richard called here about a half hour ago.”

“He called here? Wanting to talk to you? Do you know how illegal that is?”

“I told him. He claimed he called to talk to Arch. But then he told Arch to put me on. Even from jail he was his usual manipulative self, whining to Arch and demanding to know from me what time Suz died so that he could use his medical knowledge of rigor mortis to prove he’s not the murderer.”

Tom chuckled cynically. “That guy. Maybe he was trying to reconstruct his timetable.” He frowned. His sandy eyebrows drew into a furry, uneven line. “You didn’t tell him anything, did you?”

I shot him an exasperated look. “Of course not.”

“I can just tell,” he said resignedly, “that this is going to be one holy mess.”

“Listen, Tom, remember when I told you about a doctor Suz had supposedly fired, one named Ralph Shelton? What I didn’t tell you was about John Richard’s and my history with him.” Briefly, I summarized how we’d all known one another years ago, when Arch was small. “Anyway,” I said, “Ralph’s a tall bald fellow with a white mustache. I know he was one of those guys I shooed away from, the ditch this morning. I didn’t recognize him because he looked so different with a cap on his head. Plus, his hair used to be gray, not white, and he didn’t have a mustache.”

Tom narrowed his eyes. “You’re kidding.” “I’m not. Ralph was there, trying to see what the paramedics were doing. He was wearing gardening clothes and a baseball cap. Your guys must have talked to him in their neighborhood canvass.” I thought back to the fashionable camouflage-print pants, wide suspenders, dark billed cap, and hand-spun collarless shirt Ralph had been wearing that morning. In retrospect, it was perhaps too studied an outfit to have donned so early in the morning. But something else nagged at my memory. What was it? Something about Ralph hadn’t looked quite right. What? But my tired brain refused to yield any details.

“I’ll check on Shelton,” said Tom curtly. “But I do think you need to go talk to Arch. I’ll pack this stuff up.”

“The last time you packed my stuff I had to make risotto from scratch for a Fourth of July parry. As I recall, you thought it would be funny to substitute ingredients on me, so I wouldn’t go snooping around in a suspect’s house.”

He stood and rinsed his dish. “I thought,” he said without missing a beat, “that I would be keeping you out of trouble by making you do extra work that time, Miss G. Besides, I apologized and you forgave me. No fair hassling me about it now.” He reached into the pantry for several of the large cardboard boxes I used for carting food.

I walked up the stairs, thinking. Shower, change, call Marla – all these I had to do before leaving. Plus talk to Arch, get him smoothed out on his father being thrown into jail under suspicion of committing a brutal murder. Sure.

My son sat slumped in his desk chair. His lank brown hair was uncombed. His glasses perched halfway down his nose. Julian’s cast-off T-shirt hung on his motionless body. I longed to hug him tightly, the way I had when he was small and I’d always been able to comfort him.

“Arch. Hon, please. Let’s talk.”

“About what?” His voice was toneless.

“May I come in?”

His eyes didn’t leave the pile of magazines on his desk. He shrugged. “I thought you had a parry to do.”

“Arch, please, I’m worried about you.”

“Yeah, well, I’m worried about Dad” He whirled and faced me, his brown eyes ablaze. “You just don’t care, do you?”

I sat on the bed. Honesty was the best policy. “You know how when you leave your homework in your room? I don’t snatch it up and go running to school to bail you out. It’s called being responsible for your actions – “

“Oh, Mom!” he yelled, his tone disgusted. He glared at me. “Don’t treat me like a baby! Just don’t start, okay?”

“No, then,” I said frankly, “I don’t care about your father. I only care about you.”

“If you cared about me,” he shot back fiercely, “you’d be willing to at least think about whether he did this murder or not. Dad isn’t lying.”

“Did he tell you that he hit Suz the way he used to hit me? He admitted that to Tom and me, you know. That was one of the reasons Tom arrested him this morning. I’m just telling you the truth here, Arch. I’m sorry if the facts are so painful. I don’t mean to hurt you.”

He pushed abruptly out of his chair. “I need to go. I need to go check some things out.”

“What things?”

“There’s a nurse who runs a health-food store – “