Diane Davidson - The Main Corpse

Tom appraised the bag. “Not in the laundry? Not contaminated with other scents? Nobody else in the family touched it?”

Arch shook his head vigorously; the wet baseball cap slipped down over his forehead. He straightened it. “Can we leave? Please? I’m getting worried about Todd. You know, out in the rain. He has a poncho to keep him dry, but he is my friend.”

“We’re ready.” Tom picked up a thermos backpack bulging with what I guessed to be sandwiches, trail mix, and (of course) homemade dog biscuits. He pointed to a tangled piece of leather on the counter. “Hey, buddy, can you hold on to your plastic bag and bring the working harness out to the car? You’re going to be amazed at Jake, Arch. Bloodhounds are renowned for their intelligence.” Tom held up one hand in farewell, winked at me, and opened the back door. The rain beat down. Jake’s howling increased in volume. “You know the word we don’t use prematurely? Remember, Arch? Don’t even use it in conversation?”

“F-i-n-d,” my son spelled knowingly, then dashed out after him.

“Don’t get near the creek edge!” I yelled after them, but I doubted they heard me.

Moments later, Jake fell abruptly silent. The blessed I absence of barking was followed the dull roar of Tom s Chrysler. I looked out the rolling room window and saw the dark blue car move slowly past. In the backseat, Arch and Jake pressed their noses against the rain-smeared window. Both looked gleeful.

5

When I returned from the first service at St. Luke’s Episcopal Church and a quick visit to the grocery store to pick up supplies for the Aspen Meadow Women’s Club dinner, I found Macguire Perkins sitting on my doorstep. Rain still washed across my waterlogged front yard and ran in rivulets down the sidewalk. Yet Macguire wore no rain gear, and his hair was as sopping as his sweatshirt and torn blue jeans.

“Macguire,” I said impatiently, “why don’t you put on …” Oh, forget it, I thought. It was hard enough trying to be mom to one kid who did his best to ignore me. I unlocked the door and disarmed the security system – needed protection against the Jerk’s periodic rampages – and shooed him into the house.

Macguire snuffled, tilted his head backward, and shook his hair. Raindrops sprinkled across the room. Taking lessons from Jake, apparently. “I’m okay.” He snuffled again. “The rain’s not too bad, you don’t really need a coat.” His long strides propelled him, camel-like, toward the kitchen. “Besides, I brought my uniform stuff in the car. It’s not wet. In the car, I mean. I’ll be all right.”

Well, fine. We had work to do. I put vats of thick, tomato-rich Bolognese sauce on for a last simmering. Macguire washed his hands, grated hillocks of gold-threaded Parmesan and creamy fresh mozzarella cheeses, then looked around for more work. The pizza dough I’d taken out to rise before church had come to room temperature. He carefully punched it down. As the Bolognese sauce began to bubble, the phone rang. Mrs. Kirby-Jones, no doubt. Clients invariably feel duty-bound to call on Sunday morning. They want to make sure you’re not sleeping in. They expect you to be slaving away in the kitchen for their evening shindig. In fact, they expect you to have been working there since dawn.

“Goldilocks’ Catering,” I said with agonizing sprightliness as I reached for a package of the frozen green lasagne noodles I’d made the week before. “Where everything is just right!”

“It’s me,” Marla said morosely. “I’m in hell. I feel so damned guilty. Tony just phoned, and he’s on his way over. I am about the farthest thing from just right that you could possibly imagine. Matter of fact, I’m sitting here thinking about what I’m going to say when I get a call from Albert Lipscomb’s lawyer.”

I cradled the phone against my ear and tried to un-wrap the noodles. Whenever Marla plunged into precipitate action, she ended up in exaggerated remorse. “For heaven’s sake,” I soothed, “why do you feel so bad? Didn’t Tony talk to Albert?”

“Oh, I doubt it. Tony went straight to the Aspen Branch Bar after the party and got plastered. Now he’s nursing a hangover. He has a conference tomorrow morning, so he can’t be in on our meeting.” I heard her bite into something. I hoped it was one of the lowfat lemon muffins I’d given her. I also prayed her use of the term our meeting didn’t mean she was counting on me for tomorrow’s confrontation with Lipscomb. She went on: “Okay, I’ll tell you what I’m worried about with Albert. He throws around those terms like year-over-year and same-store sales and technical support. Now he’s all ticked off, so he’ll probably treat me like a dummy.”

“But how can year-over-year data or same-store sales have anything to do with a mine being reopened?”

“Ooh, Goldy,” she whined, “I don’t know. I guess I should have just hashed it out with Tony, or called my lawyer or the state consumer fraud people, or somebody, instead of going after Albert like that yesterday. It’s just Episcopal guilt. You know, you worry about how you’re handling your money.”

“Wait, wait,” I said with a glance at the clock. By the time we got through a litany of her worries, hours could pass, and I only had ninety minutes to finish the preparations for the Kirby-Joneses. Much as I loved Marla, I didn’t have time for a party postmortem now. “Can we talk about this later?”

“Please, please tell me that it’s going to be later, as in tomorrow morning later,” she pleaded between bites. “As in, when you come down to the Prospect office with me?” I tried to block out the vision of Marla and Albert squabbling viciously in one of Prospect Financial Partners’ plush Cherry Creek offices. “Please, Goldy? Don’t say no.”

I opened a plastic container of fresh basil leaves and inhaled their flowery scent. “Oh, Marla, I’ve got this new booking for a dinner to do tomorrow night – “

“Come on, you can help me stay calm. It’s bad for my health to get upset. We won’t be there for an hour, even. We’ll go have brunch afterwards – my treat.”

“But why do you want me there?” I measured out olive oil, Parmesan, and pine nuts and prayed that I could do my pesto recipe from memory. “The only thing I know about business is that I don’t have much at the moment.”

“I’ve invested a hundred thousand dollars just in the mine venture, Goldy. With that money, I could have put my dear nephew Julian through Cornell. Twice.” Her husky voice cracked.

“You’re already putting him through,” I reminded her gently, and started the food processor whirling.

“Yes, but still, a hundred K!” she fumed. “I could have… well, let’s see, I could have… put in a few new windows at the cardiac rehab center. Then I’d have a nice view of the hospital grounds while I’m on that damn treadmill.”

And wouldn’t Lyle Gordon, M.D., have loved that, I thought. The pesto ingredients had turned into a brilliant green, fragrant paste. “Marla, please. I need to cook. Are you feeling okay?”

Ignoring my question, she demanded, “Remember what I did to John Richard’s shoulder? Think Albert knew about that? Maybe I intimidated him.”

I groaned. My assertiveness was a behavior I’d learned only after my disastrous marriage to Dr. John Richard Korman ended. But Marla had stood up to him, and consequently had managed to be married a lot fewer years, and with much less grief, than I.

I said truthfully, “You didn’t actually hit Albert yesterday. You just yelled at him and called him names. There’s a difference,” I added, sneaking another look at the clock. Macguire was almost done punching all the air pockets from the dough.

“Okay, look,” she said reluctantly, “I know you’re busy. In addition to crying on your shoulder and begging you to come with me tomorrow, I just wanted to tell you that Tony and I are leaving for our fishing trip on Friday night, and we were hoping you could do that other favor for us before we go.”