Dying for Chocolate (24 page)

I shivered. Scout had not returned. Perhaps if he had, I would not have experienced the unwelcome and ghastly return of my worst fears as Morning Mom. For there, floating face down in the Farquhars’ pool, was Brian Harrington.

25.

I knew it was Harrington from the gray hair floating serenely, like the tendrils of a flower, around his head. I knew him from his clothes. I knew he was dead. What I did not know was who was screaming. The general appeared on the patio in his West Point bathrobe. He grabbed me and shook me, saying,
What is it, what is it?
The screaming voice was mine.

I shouted at the general to call 911 and then Schulz directly. I ran up to check on Arch. He wasn’t in his room. I panicked and stumbled back down to the main floor. Arch was in the kitchen, leaning over a bowl of Rice Krispies to check for sound.

“Don’t go outside,” I said, my voice choking. “Something awful has happened.”

He looked up and straightened his glasses to regard me more clearly.

“You look awful, Mom,” he said. “What’s wrong?”

Before I could answer, one of the phone lines rang. Police, Weezie, who? What would I say? Another of the lines was lit; perhaps General Bo was already talking to the authorities.

“This is George Pettigrew from Three Bears Catering in Denver—” he began.

“Call later,” I said abruptly. “We’ve got a crisis here.”

“Young lady, trademark infringement is a crisis for some of us—”

I hung up. The phone immediately bleated.

“What?” I screamed.

“Stay calm,” said Tom Schulz. “General Farquhar just called here and said you found Harrington. Listen, don’t talk to anybody. I want you to make some excuse this afternoon and come down to the department. I need to talk to you about these people you’re living with.”

I said I would have to find someone to take care of Arch. But I would be there, I promised.

“Mom! What is going on?”

But before I could answer, I heard sirens. The fastest thing about this town was the fire department. I remembered that they always came when there was a suspected drowning. Unfortunately, I was certain it was too late for them to help. There was the buzz for the front gate. A groggy-looking Julian came into the kitchen.

“I overslept. When I went out to do my laps, the general said not to come out on the patio. What’s—”

“Just let me open the gate,” I said to both of them. “Then I’ll get back with an explanation.”

Julian and Arch exchanged looks. I pressed the button that would allow admittance to the fire department. How had this happened? I knew in some corner of my brain that I would have to give a statement, to tell again, as I had with Philip Miller, what I had seen.

But I had not seen anything. I had come outside and there he was. I didn’t even know why he had tried to swim with his clothes on.

“I want to take you out for breakfast,” I announced to Arch. He and Julian traded another look.

Arch assumed his serious tone. “I’m finishing my breakfast, Mom.”

“I want you to come with me into town.”

“Whatever.”

I went on, “It looks as if Brian Harrington might have drowned in the Farquhars’ pool last night.” I looked at Julian. “You can come with us if you want,” I added lamely.

Julian knew I didn’t really want him along. He mumbled a regret. Without eating, he left the kitchen.

Arch finished his cereal. As he spooned mouthfuls in, he swung his feet under the table. Was he sympathetic? Sad? I tried to think how I would feel if a neighbor had drowned when I was eleven. Arch’s eyes made an arc around the room and settled on me. He was afraid.

“I’m going to go talk to the police,” I said, “while you get dressed.” My watch said that it was eight o’clock. It was hard to think. What time did the school office open?

“I’ll call Elk Park Prep and tell them I’m not coming today either,” he said to my unasked question. “But you’ll have to write a note tomorrow.” He got up, rinsed his cereal bowl, then walked over to me. His large brown eyes held mine. To my surprise he hugged me.

“I’m sorry about Mr. Harrington, Mom. I’m sorry about Dr. Miller, too. And I’m sorry I haven’t been doing very well lately.”

I held him close, momentarily wishing he was little again so I could rock him. “Arch,” I said, “you’re doing fine. If you want to go live with your father, that’s okay with me.” That last part was a lie, but I wanted to give him his freedom.

His voice cracked. “I love you, Mom.”

I said, “I know.”

After the police questioned me, I couldn’t stay in that house. But I didn’t know where to go. Finally I left a note saying I was taking Arch to church. I felt awful about Brian Harrington. Seeing a dead body is not something you recover from quickly. Arch and I sat in a back pew and whispered.

I said, “I want to tell you again that I’m sorry I hauled you out of the pool. The thought of you down there in the handcuffs was more than I could take.”

“It was just so embarrassing.” His voice wavered. We were on dangerous ground. “And right before that we could all hear you fighting with Brian Harrington.”

“I wasn’t fighting with him!” I whispered fiercely.

“It sure sounded like it.”

My spirits took a dive. The last thing I needed was to be a suspect in a murder. I forced myself to think about something else.

I said, “I finished one of those Poe stories last night.” I started to tell him about “The Purloined Letter” as a dozen or so people began to straggle into the pews for Wednesday’s service of Morning Prayer.

“But what’s a project with a letter?” Arch whispered. “It’s not cool like a heartbeat or a gold bug.”

“We’ll think of something,” I promised as I opened a prayer book and pointed to where the service began. After what had happened to Philip and now Brian, I was frightened and needed comfort. It seemed like the right thing to do.

I had quit going to church when my ex-husband began making beautiful music with a choirlady. Interestingly, our Episcopal priest had seen nothing wrong with The Jerk’s liaison with Miss Vocal Cords. My cynical thought was that The Jerk could afford to give a lot more money to the parish than I could. But that priest eventually had left for greener pastures, and the liaison with the choirwoman had given way to a failed engagement to a high school geometry teacher. John Richard’s new girlfriend, Arch had told me, was Presbyterian or nothing. So I had started going back to my old parish. The new priest had welcomed me, and to my relief, had not asked me—as had his predecessor—to cater free luncheons for clergy meetings.

When the service was over and everyone was gone, Arch and I walked quietly down the nave to the intercession table. We knelt and lit a candle for Brian Harrington.

I called Marla from the church office. No answer. I called two of Arch’s friends who were not going to summer school. I got recordings saying the kids were at camp. Finally, I called The Jerk and asked the receptionist if Arch could stay with his father for the afternoon. Through the receptionist John Richard relayed the firm message that he was leaving the office at lunchtime. Take Arch back to the Farquhars, I was instructed, and Doctor would be over within the hour.

Reluctantly, I took Arch back. Sam Snead Lane was crammed with cars, both official and unofficial. The policeman in charge told me to go on down to the department to see Investigator Schulz. I left Arch in his room with strict instructions to go with nobody but his father.

Then I zipped over to the
Mountain Journal
office and left off my letter before hightailing it down Interstate 70 to the Sheriff’s Department. The van spewed dust when I skidded into the municipal parking lot. With great relief I saw Schulz sitting in the front seat of his Chrysler.

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.

When I opened the doors to the garage I saw only the general’s Range Rover. I eased the van in alongside. When I alighted I noticed something was missing from the walls. I looked around. The snow shovels were in place; ditto the garbage cans, tool shelves, and all the attendant tools. The mulcher, fertilizer, gardening equipment—all were where they belonged. But there was a gap, an empty space usually occupied by. . . I looked around carefully, closed my eyes, and tried to imagine the garage as it usually was.

The camping equipment. I reopened my eyes and scanned the left wall. No tent, no cooker, no backpack. I let out a sigh. Even if running away was his objective, he never would have taken all that paraphernalia. Arch hated to camp.

I pulled the Mace out of the van and went through the door to the kitchen. With my free, trembling hand I used the intercom and heard my voice crackle throughout the house—
Anybody here?

Sometimes you just feel someone is there. In the meantime, I began a room-to-room search.

I found General Farquhar sitting on the covered porch. He was gazing out at the mountains. In front of him was a bottle of scotch. A half-full glass of whiskey shook ever so slightly in his hand, like a bell that had only just stopped ringing. I put the can of Mace on the table.

“General Bo!” I said, and shook his shoulder. “Are you all right? Where is everybody?”

He shook his head slowly from side to side.

“Gone,” he said in a low voice. “All gone.”

I came around in front of him and got down on my knees. I wanted to get some visual contact. His face looked terrible. The circles under his eyes were darker than usual, and his air of dejection made him seem older.

“Where’s Arch?”

“Gone!”

“Gone where?”

He closed his eyes, whether to get me out of his sight or search his mind I knew not.

“Where is Arch?” I demanded, more loudly this time. I put my hands on his free one. “Where is Julian? Where is Adele?”

He winced. My heart said,
Talk, talk. Please.

He opened his eyes. Liquid brimmed out.

“Gone, gone, gone,” he said.

“Gone
where
?”

He sighed, reached for the scotch, shakily poured some. “The camping equipment is gone.” He sipped, then slugged it down. “They didn’t leave any written indication of where they were going. There’s nothing on the tape. Your ex-husband came, but I didn’t let him in. I could see with the scope he didn’t have Arch.”

I got up. My knees cracked. I was having a hard time not losing my temper.

“Could you please tell me,” I said evenly, “what has happened since the police left? Is everyone out shopping?”

“They’re not out shopping. Adele said her back was bothering her and she was going to lie down. I went out to look for that damned detonator in the storage area. When the garage door opened I saw Julian headed out with all the camping equipment. I called after him. He ignored me, started running down the driveway.” His forehead was a mass of wrinkles; he shook his head. “It was almost as if he couldn’t hear me or he was ignoring me. I kept hunting for the detonator, between the boxes—” He broke off and emptied his glass. “Later I heard the car starting. I looked out and there were Adele and Sissy. They were getting into the Thunderbird.”

“Did you see Arch?”

He wrinkled his brow, his eyes unfocused in my direction. “No. Did I call? Yes. Did I ask where they were going, when they would be back? Yes. Did they answer? No. It was the same hurry routine.”

“I don’t get it.”

The general refilled his glass, sipped the scotch, and looked out at the mountains.

“Snap out of it,” I ordered. “Did you and Adele have a fight, or what? Where would she go with Sissy?”

He tipped up the glass and drained it. He asked softly, “Where’s the detonator?”

“I don’t know,” I said firmly. I picked up the bottle of scotch and walked out to the kitchen. I tried the intercom again.
Arch? Arch?
My voice echoed through the whole house. There was no note on the desk, the refrigerator, or anywhere else that I could see.

I ran up the stairs. Up, up to the third floor, my heart thudding in my chest the whole time. Arch’s room was a wreck. Nothing unusual about that; he had been a neat child until this past year. I went into the bathroom. No note. But his bathing suit was not hanging on the shower curtain rod where he usually left it.

I called Andrea’s house. Was Arch over there, had he called, had they seen him? No to all of the above. What was I getting upset about? He went places all the time without telling me. But not the day of a drowning, and especially not when I had told him specifically to stick around. Where would he have gone?

I looked around my room. No note on the mirror. No note on the bed. I allowed myself to collapse on the comforter. I looked at my watch. It had been three hours since I had left him here.

I tried to focus on a mental image of him. My heart said,
Where are you?

It was then that I looked down at the rug, a warm speckled mix of Easter egg hues—purple, pink, green. The pattern swam before my eyes.

Near the edge of my bed was a playing card. I bent over to look at it. I had not brought a deck of cards when I moved into the Farquhars. Where had it come from? I stared at it in disbelief.

Someone had been with Arch. Someone had been watching him. Someone had prevented him from leaving a note. But like a magician, he had used sleight of hand, distracting his watcher so that he could surreptitiously drop a card, a careless act, apparently unnoticed.

A note. A card. A signal of distress. I lifted the seven of spades from the floor.