Dark Tort

Chapter 2-2

There was a collective intake of breath. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis exchanged a glance.

“You don’t?” Richard’s unfailingly polite facade slipped for a moment. “You think she died in this office? Our office? You think our Dusty died here?”

“No,” Donald Ellis said. His face turned scarlet to the roots of his red hair. “This is our … we’ve been here since … I don’t believe it. Dusty?” Tears welled in his eyes. Stupefied, he turned to glare at Alonzo Claggett. Alonzo covered his face with his hands.

Richard was having trouble staying composed. He licked his lips and stared at me. “Do you—you said maybe she had a heart attack? We could help K.D. with CPR … Dusty was too young—”

“I did CPR on Dusty for a long time,” I said. “It felt like half an hour but might have been less. It looked as if she … she had been … attacked.”

The conference room fell completely silent.

“She must have been associating with the wrong element,” announced Louise Upton, her voice steely. “Someone had to have followed her into our office. She must not have closed the door completely. Maybe it was a teenager, looking for someone to rob. He ran into Dusty and killed her.”

I tried not to think of how many times Arch had complained to me that when something went wrong, the first person suspected was always a teenager.

“Well! When Richard called, I was just leaving the Aspen Meadow Chorale’s performance of The Pirates of Penzance,” Louise went on blithely. “I guess I should have stayed home. Then I could have done something about this. Although I don’t know how I could have possibly envisioned such a thing happening to one of our …” She left the sentence unanswered.

“Has anyone called her family?” Richard asked, his voice barely audible.

“No,” I told him. “I just dialed 911.”

“What in the hell is this going to mean?” Alonzo looked up. His expression was wild; his voice high and querulous. “That is”—he struggled to put together his question—“what will it mean for the firm?”

“Alonzo,” said Richard, “you need to …” He left the sentence unfinished.

“Goldy?” Donald Ellis, distraught, was fidgeting in his chair. His flushed face still bore the marks of tears. “Goldy?” Donald said again, placing his restless hands palm down on the rosewood table. “What do you think happened?”

“I don’t know.”

My answer hung in the air until finally, finally, sirens screamed in the distance.

I stood and took in the men’s grim faces. I said, “I have to talk to the cops. Please, don’t anyone go into the office.”

“Take my keys, Goldy,” Richard said. He handed me a gold key ring. When I looked at him, uncomprehending, he added, “You gave yours to K.D., remember?”

Louise Upton had left the table and was clanking around underneath the sink in the corner bar. She brought up a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and clapped it down on the dusty bar, then squeaked open the cabinet and started pulling out glasses.

“Goldy,” Louise inquired, “do you suppose you could go get us some ice?”

I didn’t look at her as I opened the door. Before the door shut, I heard Louise say, “Richard, that girl never does a thing I tell her.”

I walked down the hall, out the main second-story entrance to the building, and down the steps.

In the parking lot, red, blue, and white lights flashed in the fog, which had become thicker and more frigid as the night wore on. I hopped onto the grass, and then hugged my sides as the icy blades fingered their way through my shoes, stockings, and pants. Vic had crossed over to this side of the street. He now stood alone next to Dusty’s Civic in the middle of the parking lot. He looked dazed. I walked up beside him and began waving in the emergency vehicles.

Cops and med techs spilled onto the pavement. When the first pair of policemen trotted up to us, I gave them Richard’s gold key ring and told them to take the medics upstairs, to the office of Hanrahan & Jule. There was a doctor on-site, I added. I asked the cops if they wanted me to come; they said no. As the paramedics traipsed up the stairs behind the law enforcement team, Vic made his way to the sidewalk. I thought he might try to follow the medics into the office, so I went after him. But instead of going anywhere, he stopped at the foot of the outside steps, then flopped onto the cold, wet grass. I sat down beside him.

“Vic? Talk to me.”

“I—I can’t. Is it really bad? Tell me it isn’t.”

“I’m not sure.” I hesitated. Finally I said, “Can I get you a drink? They’ve got some scotch upstairs.”

“No, no.” He sighed.

His voice was shaking. “What happened, will you tell me?”

I’d told the lawyers, hadn’t I? “I found Dusty upstairs. She … she wasn’t breathing.”

“You found Dusty?” Vic echoed. “What do you mean? What was the matter with her?”

“I don’t know, except that she just wasn’t taking any breaths. But a doctor went right up to the office when I came over here. Now they’ve got a whole team of medics in the office.”

Vic uttered a stream of profanities and ran his large hands through his head of sandy curls. He didn’t seem to want to talk anymore, but I was still worried about him, and scooted over closer to where he was sitting. He abruptly stood and marched over to Dusty’s Civic, where he let out a moan. When I walked to his side, my feet crunched over glass. Great. The cops would say I destroyed one crime scene and mindlessly tampered with another. Gently, I put my arm around Vic. His body shook under my touch.

“Vic,” I said, feeling dreadful, “we need to move back over to the sidewalk.”

“Tell me the worst isn’t true. What did you find?”

“It looked as if she’d been attacked.”

He began to sob. I murmured comforting words and guided him back to the staircase.

The moon had risen and lightened the darkness. I finally thought to look at my watch, which said it was half past twelve. Had it really been two hours since I’d showed up at the law firm? It felt like nothing; it felt like forever. A solitary cop approached us.

“Which one of you called the department?” he asked, his voice matter-of-fact.

“I did,” I replied. For the first time, my own voice cracked. “I found her.”

The cop eyed me, his gaze impenetrable. He was short and stockily built, and he wore a sheriff’s department leather jacket that made him look even wider than he was. He had dark, close-set eyes and equally dark eyebrows. His frown was formidable.

“I’m Officer Nelson,” he began. “You went into that office first?”

“Yes,” I said. Nearby, Vic tried to stifle his weeping.

“I’m going to need to see some ID from you.”

“I’m Investigator Tom Schulz’s wife,” I said. Officer Nelson flinched. Why? I wondered. Was he intimidated by Tom’s reputation? “In terms of ID, my purse and driver’s license are locked in my van, which is in back of this office building. My cell phone’s in there, too. I dropped my van keys when I … when I made the discovery.”

“I remember you. The caterer, right?” When I nodded, he went on: “Where did you go after you left here?”

I paused as Vic shuffled up. The cop regarded him without curiosity. “She came to our place. Art, Music, and Copies. It’s right over there.” Vic pointed across the street.

“Sir,” the cop said to Vic, “would you please move back across the street, back to your place of business? Someone will be over shortly to take your statement.” Nelson turned his attention back to me. “Was anyone else around? People who could have seen someone leave this office?”

“Not that I know of.”

“We had another call to the department from someone who said she was outside the grocery store.”

I wormed my frigid hands up inside the sleeves of Vic’s sweatshirt. “Officer Nelson, as far as I know, I was the only one over on this side of the street when I … made the discovery.”

“Let’s go back to my car, okay?”

Feeling queasy, I followed Officer Nelson to his car. Furman County is one of the biggest counties in Colorado, and their sheriff’s department is impressively large. This cop knew me, but I didn’t know him. That made me even more nervous as I tried to formulate the words to describe what I’d done, and why.

When we slid into the black-and-white, the cop handed me a sheriff’s department blanket. “So you’re Schulz’s wife. How ’bout that.” I nodded, feeling only slightly less ill at ease. It wasn’t as if Nelson was offering to shake my hand. Instead, he pulled out a clipboard. “When and how did you find this woman?”

“Is she—?” I demanded. “Did she—”

The cop shook his head, then continued with his questions. What was the woman’s full name, where did she live? Why did she happen to be here, and why did I? He wrote everything down, then told me not to go anywhere. He stepped out of the patrol car, shut the door, and motioned for Vic Zaruski, who hadn’t moved, to come over. I turned in the seat to watch them. Vic seemed to be explaining that his place of employment was not where he should be headed. After dispersing the waiting-to-see-what-was-going-on crowd, Nelson led Vic to another police car.

The sheriff’s department’s white criminalistics van pulled into the lot and parked beside the Beemers. Armed with cameras, the crime-scene technicians descended on the office building. I focused my eyes far away.

Almost four miles distant, the portion of Aspen Meadow Lake that hadn’t yet frozen shimmered in the moonlight. What was the cop asking Vic? I shivered, even though the motor was running and metallic-smelling heat blasted out of the dashboard fans. Actually, I did know what Officer Nelson was demanding of Vic Zaruski. How do you know this woman, Goldy Schulz? When this Mrs. Schulz came into your store to report the crime, how did she act? Did she seem upset? What did she say, exactly? He was asking those questions because I was the one who’d found Dusty, and therefore was automatically the first person whom law enforcement would suspect. This was another thing I wasn’t quite ready to face.

Sudden shouting startled me. A moment later, a very upset Richard Chenault, his face set in frustration, his cashmere coat billowing around behind him, loped ungracefully down the steps from the building’s upper level. Alonzo Claggett and Donald Ellis, unsure of anything except that they probably were supposed to follow, hurried fast on Richard’s heels. Louise Upton maneuvered down after them, then immediately marched purposefully over to the nearest policeman, who happened to be standing on the sidewalk directing the crime-scene techs. Louise raised her voice so high I caught every word, unfortunately.

“Mr. Chenault is a very well-respected member of this community,” Louise cried, shaking her finger in the unsuspecting cop’s face. “It’s his office, and he deserves to know what is going on in there! Now, did someone break in? Is his niece dead? We need to know these things! Also, we have many valuable items and irreplaceable files inside—”

The cop interrupted her, speaking words I couldn’t make out. Louise Upton promptly stopped talking, pressed her lips together, and stepped back a pace. The cop leaned in toward her and raised his forefinger, talking all the while. Louise ducked her chin, pressed her lips together, and listened, looking humbled, for once. I thought, Oh, man, if only I had a camera.