Nighttime noises are torture. When a midnight wind shrieks
through our window jambs, or footsteps clomp past the
house, I think, It could be anything. Once a snow bank
slid from our roof and thundered onto the deck. I awoke,
heart pounding, convinced I'd been shot.
It isn't logical, of course. But living with terror for
seven years had not made me the most rational of thinkers,
least of all when roused from sleep. A sound could be
anything? No.
It was something.
When I awoke at four o'clock on Monday morning, February
ninth, those years of dread were long over. Still, I was
certain I'd heard a tiny scraping noise, like boots
chafing against ice. Think, I warned myself. Don't panic.
Heart pulsing, throat dry, I waited for my brain to clear,
for the sound to come again. My husband Tom was out of
town. Even when he's at home, noise rarely interrupts his
slumber. Tom is a big hulking cop, and isn't afraid of
much.
I shifted in the chilled sheets. The temperature outside
was close to zero. Frigid air poured through tiny leaks in
our bedroom windows. The noise had come from outdoors,
from below, of that I was fairly certain.
Now all was quiet. No sound emanated from Arch's room down
the hall. Two months from turning fifteen, my son slept so
soundly even a howling blizzard would not rouse him. On
the first floor, our bloodhound, Jake, was not growling or
pacing in his enclosed area next to the kitchen. These
were good signs.
Maybe I was imagining things. I'd gone to bed too late,
after cooking all evening for today's catered event. And I
was stressed out, anyway. In December, our family life had
been in an uproar. Myin-home commercial kitchen had been
shut down, and Tom and I had ended up involved in a
homicide case at a nearby ski area. To make things worse,
on New Year's Eve, right after the official reopening of
my kitchen, I'd catered my first party in months. It had
gone very badly.
Wait. Another unmistakable scrape was followed by a tiny
crack. It was like . . . what? Elk hooves shattering ice?
A pine bough creaking under its burden of snow? Like . . .
someone opening a suitcase across the street?
Who unpacks bags at four in the morning?
Henry Kissinger said, Even a paranoid has real enemies.
With that in mind, I decided against getting out of bed
and peering out a window. My eyes traveled to the bedside
table and I reached stealthily for the portable phone. In
addition to being paranoid, I sometimes suspected I was an
alarmist, or, as the ninth-grade tough guys at Arch's
school would say, a wimp. Now, I bargained with myself.
One more sound, and I would speed-dial the sheriff's
department.
I shivered, waited, and longed for the heavy terry-cloth
robe hanging in my closet, an early Valentine's present
from Tom. Caterers need to rest after cooking, Miss G.,
he'd said. Wrap yourself in this when I'm gone, and
pretend it's me.
Of course, I would have much preferred Tom himself to the
robe. For the past week, he'd been in New Jersey working a
case. There, he reported, the weather was rainy. In Aspen
Meadow, I'd told him in our evening calls, each day had
brought more snow. Arch and I had made a morning ritual of
shoveling our front walk. But daytime temperatures in the
mid-thirties had melted our man-made snow banks, and the
nightly freezes transformed the sidewalk into a sheet of
ice.
So. If someone was on our sidewalk, he or she was on a
very slippery slope.
I propped myself up on my elbow, yanked up the bedspread,
and listened intently. In the neon light cast by the
street lamp outside, I could just make out my own
reflection in our mirror: blond curly hair, dark eyes,
thirty-four-year-old face just a tad round from an excess
of chocolate. It was a face that had been happy for almost
two years, since I'd married Tom. But now Tom's absence
was an ache.
Back in my old life, my ex-husband had often stumbled in
late. I'd become used to the drunken harangues, the
flaunted infidelities, the midnight arguments. Sometimes I
even thought his girlfriends used to follow him home, to
stake out our house.
Of course, I absolutely believed in Tom's fidelity, even
if he had been both secretive and preoccupied lately.
Before he left, he'd even seemed low. I hadn't quite known
how to help. Try as I might, I was still getting used to
being a cop's wife.
Five minutes went by with no sound. My mind continued to
meander. I wondered again about Tom. Six a.m. on the East
Coast; was he up? Was he still planning on flying back
this morning, as he'd promised us? Had he made any
progress in his investigation?
The case Tom was working on involved the hijacking—on a
Furman County road—of a FedEx delivery truck. The driver
had been killed. Only one of the suspected three hijackers
had been arrested. His name was Ray Wolff, and he was now
in the same cell block as my ex-husband, Dr. John Richard
Korman. The Jerk, as his other ex-wife and I called him,
was currently serving a sentence for assault.
During Arch's weekly visit, John Richard had boasted to
his son of his acquaintance with Ray Wolff, the famous
killer-hijacker. How low things had sunk, I thought, when
a father reveled in his own criminal infamy.
I shivered again and tried not to think of the threats my
ex-husband had sent from jail. They'd been both implied
and overt. When I get out of here, I'll set you straight,
Goldy. To Arch, he'd said, You can tell your mother your
father has a plan. I guess I wasn't surprised that those
tiny signs of remorse John Richard had shown at his trial
had all been for the benefit of the judge.
I jumped at the sound of a third, louder crack.
Downstairs, Jake let out a tentative woof. I hit the
phone's power button as an explosion rocked our house.
What was that? My brain reeled. Cold and trembling, I
realized I'd fallen off the bed. A gunshot? A bomb? It had
sounded like a rocket launcher. A grenade. An earthquake.
Downstairs, glass crashed to the floor. What the hell is
going on?
I clutched the phone, scuttled across the cold floor, and
tried to call for Arch. Unfortunately, my voice no longer
seemed to be working. Below, our security system shrieked.
I cursed as I made a tripping dash down the unlit hall.
The noise had been a gunshot. It had to have been. Someone
had shot at our home. At least one downstairs window had
been shattered, of that I was certain. Where is the
shooter now? Where is my son?
"Arch!" I squawked in the dark hallway. Dwarfed by the
alarm, my voice sounded tinny and far away. "Are you all
right? Can you hear me?"
The alarm's wail melded with Jake's baying. What good did
a security system do, anyway? Alarms are meant to protect
you from intruders wanting your stuff—not from shooters
wanting your life. Yelling that it was me, it was Mom, I
stumbled through my son's bedroom door.
Arch had turned on his aquarium light and was sitting up
in bed. In the eerie light, his pale face glowed. His
toast-brown hair had fanned out in an electric halo, and
his hastily donned tortoiseshell glasses were askew. He
clutched a raised sword—a gleaming foil used for his
school fencing practice. I punched the phone buttons for
911, but was trembling so badly I messed it up. Now the
phone was braying in my ear.
Panic tensed Arch's face as he leaned toward the watery
light and squinted at me.
"Mom! What was that?"
Shuddering, I fumbled with the phone again and finally
pushed the automatic dial for the Furman County Sheriff's
Department.
"I don't know," I managed to shout to Arch. Blood gurgled
in my ears. I wanted to be in control, to be comforting,
to be a good mother. I wanted to assure him this was all
some terrible mistake. "Better get on the—" With the
phone, I gestured toward the floor.
Still gripping the sword, Arch obediently scrambled onto a
braided rug I'd made during our financial dark days. He
was wearing a navy sweat suit—his substitute for pajamas—
and thick gray socks, protection from the cold.
Protection. I thought belatedly of Tom's rifle and the
handgun he kept hidden behind a false wall in our detached
garage. Lot of good they did me now, especially since I
didn't know how to shoot.
"We'll be right there," announced a distant telephone
voice after I babbled where we were and what had happened.
Jake's howl and the screaming security system made it
almost impossible to make out the operator's clipped
instructions. "Mrs. Schulz?" she repeated. "Lock the
bedroom door. If any of your neighbors call, tell them not
to do anything. We should have a car there in less than
fifteen minutes."
Please, God, I prayed, disconnecting. With numb fingers, I
locked Arch's door, then eased to the floor beside him. I
glanced upward. Could the glow from the aquarium light be
seen from outside? Could the shooter get a good purchase
on Arch's window?
"Somebody has to go get Jake," Arch whispered. "We can't
just leave him barking. You told the operator you heard a
shot. Did you really think it was from a gun? I thought it
was a cannonball."
"I don't know." If any of your neighbors call . . . My
neighbors' names had all slid from my head.
The front doorbell rang. My eyes locked with Arch's.
Neither of us moved. The bell rang again. A male voice
shouted, "Goldy? Arch? It's Bill! Three other guys are
here with me!" Bill? Ah, Bill Quincy . . . from next
door. "Goldy," Bill boomed. "We're armed!"
I took a steadying breath. This was Colorado, not England
or Canada or some other place where folks don't keep guns
and wield them freely. In Aspen Meadow, no self-respecting
gun-owner who heard a shot at four a.m. was going to wait
to be summoned. One man had even glued a decal over the
Neighborhood Watch sign: This Street Guarded by Colts.
Although the county had sent out a graffiti-removal
company to scrape off the sticker, the sentiment remained
the same.
"Goldy? Arch?" Bill Quincy hollered again. "You okay? It
doesn't look as if anybody's broken in! Could you let me
check? Goldy!"
Would the cops object? I didn't know.
"Goldy?" Bill bellowed. "Answer me, or I'm breaking down
the door!"
"All right!" I called. "I'm coming!" I told Arch to stay
put and tentatively made my way down the stairs.
Freezing air swirled through the first floor. In the
living room, glass shards glittered where they'd landed on
the couch, chairs, and carpet. I turned off the deafening
alarm, flipped on the outside light, and swung open the
door.
Four grizzled, goose-down-jacketed men stood on my front
step. I was wearing red plaid flannel pj's and my feet
were bare, but I told them law enforcement was en route
and invited them in. Clouds of steam billowed from the
men's mouths as Bill insisted his companions weren't
budging. As if to make his point, Bill's posse settled
creakily onto our frosted porch. The men's weapons—two
rifles and two pistols—glinted in the ghostly light.
Bill Quincy, his wide, chinless face grim, his broad
shoulders tense, announced that he intended to go through
the house, to see if the shooter had broken in. I should
wait until he'd inspected the first floor, he ordered,
pushing past me without further ceremony. Bill stomped
resolutely through the kitchen and dining room, peered
into the tiny half-bath, then returned to the hallway and
cocked his head at me. I tiptoed behind him to the
kitchen. He shouted a warning into the basement, then
banged down the steps. If the intruder was indeed inside,
there could be no mistake that my neighbor intended to
roust him out.
Jake bounded up to Arch's room ahead of me. Scout, our
adopted stray cat, slunk along behind the bloodhound, his
long gray-and-brown hair, like Arch's, turned electric
from being suddenly roused. Following my animal escort, I
silently thanked God that none of us had been hurt, and
that we had great neighbors. The cat scooted under the bed
used by Julian Teller, our former boarder, now a sophomore
at the University of Colorado. Arch asked for a third time
what had happened. I didn't want to frighten him. So I
lied.
"It just . . . looks as if some drunk staggered up from
the Grizzly Saloon, took aim at our living-room window,
and shot it out. I don't know whether the guy used a
shotgun or a rifle. Whatever it was, he wasn't too
plastered to miss."
My son nodded slowly, not sure whether to believe me. He
shouldn't have, of course. The Grizzly closed early on
Sunday night.
I stared at the hands on Arch's new clock, a gift from his
fencing coach. The clock was in the shape of a tiny knight
holding a sword, from which a timepiece dangled. When the
hands pointed to four-twenty-five, a wail of sirens broke
the tense silence. I pushed aside Arch's faded orange
curtains and peeked out his window. Two sheriff's
department vehicles hurtled down our street and parked at
the curb.
I raced back to Tom's and my bedroom and slid into jeans,
a sweatshirt, and clogs. Had someone unintentionally fired
a gun? Was the damage to our window just some stupid
accident? Surely it couldn't have been deliberate. And of
all the times for this to happen . . .
I started downstairs. Today was supposed to herald my
first big job in five weeks, a luncheon gig at a Gothic
chapel on an estate dominated by a genuine English castle.
The castle was one of Aspen Meadow's gorgeous-but-weird
landmarks. If things went well, the castle owner—who was
hoping to open a conference center at the site—promised to
be a huge client. I didn't want anything to mess up
today's job.
Then again, I fretted as I gripped the railing, I was a
caterer married to a cop, a cop working on a case so
difficult he'd been forced to search for a suspect two
thousand miles away. Perhaps the gunshot had been a
message for Tom.
Outside, the red-and-blue lights flashing on snow-covered
pines created monstrous shadows. The sight of cop cars was
not unfamiliar to me. Still, my throat tightened as I
wrenched open our front door. Bill and the other gun-
toters looked at me sympathetically.
Why would someone shoot at the house of a caterer?
I swallowed hard.