Diane Mott Davidson - Dark Tort

I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt

As I slipped down the embankment on my way to

The detective, who identified himself as Britt, handed me my

Tom was waiting for me in the department snack room.

When we arrived, Marla marched up the cement steps and

Our kitchen clock said it was just eleven, aka back-to-reality

Julian offered to clean up. He said it would help

When Marla swung into the driveway of Aspen Meadow Imports,

So tell me about them, I said.

Tom was back within half an hour, with no Louise

Its Vic, Tom said as he crunched through the snow

I gathered the papers together quickly, as Julian and I

So: Two days before Dusty was killed, she had carried

Eighty-six on the glass plate, Julian commented, once hed retrieved

I raised Tom on his cell. He had been investigating

I took the paintings down from the wall. They werent

Once Id had a shower, I fairly flopped on our

The article, from February of this year, was entitled The

Why did she do it? For one of the oldest

I tripped over the body of my friend Dusty Routt at half past ten on the night of October 19.

At first I thought it was a joke. Loaded down with bread-making supplies, I had just pushed through the heavy wooden door of Hanrahan & Jule, the boutique law firm in Aspen Meadow where Id been catering breakfasts for several months. My foot caught and I stumbled forward. I thought, Those H&J clowns are up to something. Again .

The bag of flour I was carrying slid from my hands and exploded on the carpet. Two jars of yeast plummeted onto the coffee table, where they burst into shards and powder. My last bottle of molasses sailed in a wide arc and cracked open on the receptionists cherrywood desk. A thick wave of sweet, dark liquid began a gluey descent across the phone console. My steel bowl of bread sponge catapulted out of my arms and hit the wall.

I wasnt sure Id be able to change my own trajectory toward an end table. It was one of two rough-hewn, cabin-style monstrosities that the decorator had thought necessary to make Hanrahan & Jule look like what it claimed to be: your Rocky Mountain neighborhood law firm!

I hit the end table, ricocheted over to the desk, cried out, and finally landed on my stomach. I had tripped over I-knew-not-what in a spectacular manner, and now I was prone on an imitation Native American rug. I shrieked, Very funny, fellas! But the lawyers who pulled these pranks didnt appear.

I wiped flour out of my eyes and waited for the guys to reveal themselves. When they didnt, I tried to focus on what I could see of the small lobby space. Lamps made of elk horns sat on the clunky tables. The bentwood couches, which were placed beneath homey paintings of food, were empty. I was lying on a sponge-soaked picture of a tepee. The pain assaulting my tailbone was excruciating.

Gritting my teeth, I figured I was about as upset as any caterer could be, when the bread for the following mornings breakfast has been wrecked the night before. I still hadnt seen what had caused my fall. Nor was there any telltale noise. In fact, the law firm of Hanrahan & Jule was completely quiet.

Id ended up on the far side of the massive coffee table, a thick column of wood carved, Id been told, from the trunk of an ancient blue spruce tree. I rubbed my behind and stared at the dark lacquered bark. Had I just stumbled over my own feet? No, I was sure the small cadre of lawyers who were not in Maui this week, ostensibly engaging in continuing education, was responsible for this mishap.

I heaved myself onto my back, wondering if the guysand thats what all ten H&J lawyers were, guyswould think this was more funny than when theyd put green food coloring into the cheddar omelettes. Or how about the live moths that had fluttered out of one of my folded tablecloths? And then, oh Lord, thenthere was the gin-switched-for-water in my espresso machine. Soon after that trick, Id seen one of the partners pouring vodka into the very same machines water well. Id used my tray to whack him from behindaccidentally, of courseand spewed forty dollars worth of Stolichnaya across the firms huge kitchen.

Staring at the ceiling, I sighed. Now that my flour, yeast, molasses, and sponge were kaput, was the partner whod ordered the breakfast going to run out and buy freshly baked loaves for his Friday-morning meeting with clients? I doubted it very much. I wrenched my body around to survey the damage.

And there, sprawled on the far side of the coffee table, was Dusty Routt.

In addition to being a friend, Dusty was our neighbor. She was also in training to become the firms second paralegal, and she often got drafted into playing a part in these high jinks. At the very least, she was sometimes pressed into trying to cover them up, as Id discovered after the spiked-coffee affair, when Id caught her disposing of a plastic bag holding two empty gin bottles. Orders from King Richard, Dusty had whispered conspiratorially. He says I have to get rid of the evidence. Without you catching me, that is, shed added with a characteristic giggle as she slammed the Dumpster lid shut. Since King Richard was Dustys uncle, Richard Chenault, the same partner whose Stoly I later disposed of, I knew a confrontation was out of the question. Just this past August, Richards secretary had been summarily fired when shed had the audacityor stupidityto send a locket engraved for Richards mistress to his, uh, wife. Richards wife, a doctor named K.D., had promptly filed for divorce.

I stared at Dustys back, waiting. I couldnt see her face. Still, I knew it was Dusty. There was her highlighted-at-home hair; there was the like-new beige Calvin Klein suit she was wearing. Id actually found the suit for her at Aspen Meadows secondhand store. Now I wanted to hear her high, joyful voice as she jumped up to cry, Surprise! I anticipated a trio of attorneys leaping out from behind the receptionists desk and squealing, Gotcha!

But I still couldnt hear anything at all.

Dusty! I whispered hoarsely. Get up. Gags over.

She didnt move. I did finally hear something, but it was only the steady plink plop of beaten egg dripping onto one of the end tables. My gaze shifted from Dusty to where the sponge liquid had first landed, on Charlie Bakers painting of peach pie, one of three of his famous pictures of food that adorned the lobby walls. The frame was broken. Had I done that to dear, departed Charlie Bakers artwork?

Charlie Baker . I swallowed. Dont go there, I ordered myself. But then I squinted at some splotches and drips that had stained the painted pie, with its list of ingredients meticulously penned underneath

Fear scurried down my back. I hauled myself up onto my hands and knees. Dusty Routt, the pretty, ambitious twenty-year-old whose family had lived across the street from us for the last three years, lay a foot away. She still wasnt moving.

Oh God, Dusty! I yelled. Get up !

Dustys body was twisted, I saw now, and that was why her face was turned toward the carpet. Her twenty-first birthday was the next day, shed excitedly informed me. The carrot cake Id made for her still sat wrapped in my caterers van. But she hadnt even twitched since Id tripped over her.