Diane Davidson - Dying for Chocolate

When I climbed out of the van, he got out of his car. He said, “You find someone to take care of Arch?”

“He’s at the Farquhars with all kinds of cops around. His father’s going to pick him up shortly.”

“Goldy, I know I’ve said this before, but I don’t know how I feel about you living in that house.”

“Brian Harrington lived next door.”

“Uh-huh. Crime lab’s already turned up a note in his pocket with my name and number. You wouldn’t know how he got that, would you?”

“Brian bared his soul to me last night,” I replied, and gave him the details of the party: Weezie’s rage, Brian’s defensiveness, Philip’s cryptic message to Brian before his death, Brian’s 911 call. And, I added lamely, my suspicion and anger that Brian had been my anonymous critic in the Mountain Journal.

When I had finished talking, Schulz said, “We already have a handful of people who’ve told us the two of you had a loud argument in the kitchen.”

“We did. Before he told me about Philip’s warning, I thought he was trying to hit on me.”

“Where were you between midnight and five this morning?”

“in bed. Reading, writing, and sleeping.”

“Gotta ask, you know. Did you push Brian Harrington into the pool?”

“No, I did not.”

He put his arm around me. “You look awfully tired, Miss G. Have you had anything to eat today?”

I laughed. What a question, after the other ones! No, I had not eaten. I couldn’t. He asked if he could get me something from the department vending machines. Chips, crackers? I told him I would have a drink of water.

We walked inside the department in silence. The fountain water tasted metallic. But a distant part of my brain cleared. When we sat down on the one couch in the reception area, Schulz asked if I felt better. I replied in the affirmative and looked out the ground-floor window. A clinging haze had turned the sky powder blue.

After a long silence, Schulz said, “I want to talk to you about Julian Teller.” More silence. “Real name Julian Harrington.”

My heart felt as if it had stopped beating.

• • •

“Philip Miller,” Schulz began, “was a very interesting fellow. Well-off. Cautious. Hardworking. Wanted to unlock human behavior. Poor guy.” He sighed, raised his bushy eyebrows, and puckered his mouth. “The files said Julian turned eighteen this year.”

“So?”

“Julian was adopted.”

“This isn’t news, Tom.”

“Miss G. Give me a chance. In some states, if you’re adopted, you can find out who your biological parents are when you turn twenty-one. Other states, like Utah, it’s eighteen. According to Philip’s records, Julian’s issue in therapy was finding out who his biological parents were.”

“I know this,” I said. “Sissy told me.”

But I felt distracted, confused. Brian Harrington had shown no interest in Julian, and Julian had been openly hostile to the erstwhile real estate agent on more than one occasion. I said, “But Julian’s adoptive parents are in Utah.”

“According to Philip Miller’s records, they were opposed to him going on this quest.”

“So—”

Schulz lifted his jacket flap and took out a folded slip of paper. He said, “Take a look at this. I got them to fax it up to me.”

I opened the slippery, shiny sheet of paper. It was from the Bureau of Vital Records, State of Utah. The words and numbers swam before my eyes.

I said, “Who else knows about this?”

Schulz said, “Don’t know who does. Don’t know who does not.”

The paper said that Baby Boy Harrington had been born eighteen years before in Salt Lake City. Parents listed were Brian Harrington and Adele Louise Keely, her name before she married General Farquhar.

26.

Call it intuition. Call it projection.

Call it fear.

I had to see Arch. I felt like a fool leaving him in that house. Too much was happening; too much was coming to light. Someone he trusted could hurt him before John Richard got there. He could be in terrible danger from people who had been around him—Julian, Weezie, Adele, the general. Or whoever had murdered Brian Harrington.

I said to Schulz, “Ï need to go get Arch.”

“But I thought you said your ex had him. I don’t want you alone with John Richard Korman.”

I thought for a moment. What had John Richard said? Lunchtime. I checked my watch: two o’clock. All the warning signals about John Richard’s unreliability went off at once. I bolted for the van.

Schulz trotted to his car and then to the van. He handed me a can of Mace and a house key. He said, “Get Arch and go to my place. Then call me on the mobile line.”

I stashed the key and the Mace, then revved the van. I said, “What are you going to do?”

“Call the coroner. See if he has any idea yet how Brian Harrington died.”

I waved and spun the van through a corona of dust. Terror gripped my heart so acutely that when I took the Aspen Meadow exit off 1-701 could not remember where I was headed. After our divorce, John Richard had moved into a house in the older section of the country club area. I set the van in that direction and broke speed limits.

The new girlfriend answered the door. She pulled the collar of her bathrobe around her neck and gave me an impassive face.

“What do you want?”

“My son. Arch. Is he here?”

She let out an impatient breath.

“I don’t know where he is. Or John Richard, either. His secretary told me he left the office twenty minutes ago to get his son. What’s going on?”

I did not stay to answer.

When I pulled up at the end of Sam Snead Lane, John Richard’s Jeep was sitting outside the Farquhars’ security gate. There were no cars in the Farquhars’ driveway. There was no sign of Arch. I hated to think what kind of mood my ex-husband would be in if he had been here waiting even for ten minutes. The driver-side door of the Jeep flew open. I gripped the Mace.

I knew better than to get out of the van. I rolled up my window and locked the doors.

“Get out of that damn car!” he shrieked at me. He pounded on the glass. His face was livid, contorted with rage that I knew only too well.

“What do you want?” I screamed back.

“Arch isn’t here! Nobody’s answering. I’ve been here for fifteen minutes. If somebody was here, don’t you think they’d open the gate? You bitch! You didn’t give me the damn code ! Do you want me to take Arch or not? Because I have better things to do—”

I let go of the Mace and waved him off, then started the van and eased it slowly from the curb. I took care to wait until John Richard had stepped away from my window. Much as I would have liked to run over his feet, that only would have made matters worse.

My fingers trembled when they pressed the correct buttons to get through the gate. John Richard said he had rung the buzzer, to no avail. Where everyone was I did not know.

I took comfort in one thing. Arch knew I worried about him; he knew it only too well. There was one admonition I had drilled into him since the time he could write. It was: Always leave Mom a note. Even if you’re just going to play, going to the convenience store, circling the block on your bike. Let Mom know what’s up.

I prayed that he had.

The gates opened with their smooth buzz. Talk about magic. John Richard trotted up beside the van. I cautiously rolled down my window.

“Do you want me to stay or not?” he demanded. Heat and anger had made his face shiny with sweat.

“Not, thank you,” I sang out, and accelerated up the driveway. I don’t know why I had called him in the first place. In any given situation The Jerk was more liability than asset.