Killer Pancake

I replied that I was on my way and that he shouldn’t wait for me. I scribbled a note to Arch: Back by dinner. How was I going to tell Arch what had happened to Julian or Marla? He adored them both. Stepping out the back door, I glanced around to make sure the Jerk wasn’t lurking in the bushes. That would have been typical of him. I also checked the van’s rear area. It was empty. I locked the doors, gunned the engine, and let the speedometer needle quiver past seventy as I raced back to Denver. I wished I didn’t know as much as I did about the statistics of heart disease running in families.

My best-friendship with Marla had blossomed out of the bitterness of being divorced from the same horrid man. I shook my head and thought of the cloud of brown cocoa powder erupting as it hit the wall. To get emotional control over his cruelty, Marla and I alternately reviled and ridiculed John Richard. But through the years, the relationship between Marla and me had deepened beyond our mutual crisis. We’d formed a discussion group called Amour Anonymous, for women addicted to their relationships. I zipped past Westside Mall and headed for the parking lot at Southwest Hospital.

Our Amour Anonymous meetings had been alternately heartfelt and hilarious. And when the group petered out, as those kinds of groups tend to do, Marla and I remained steadfast to each other with daily phone calls and long talks over shared meals. Moreover, Marla’s generosity with her considerable wealth meant not only that she was one of my best clients, but that she also referred me to all her rich friends. The people in Marla’s address book had provided an endless stream of assignments for Goldilocks’ Catering, including Babs Braithwaite of the upcoming Independence Day party.

My hands clutched the steering wheel. If the Jerk was right and they wouldn’t admit me to the CCU, I was going to have to come up with some way to talk my way in. Just thinking of John Richard made my flesh crawl. How dare he break into my house and blame my cooking for what had happened to Marla? Of course, that kind of behavior was nothing new for him. John Richard Korman, whose mother had been a hardcore alcoholic, frequently had just enough whiskey to release the enraged demon that lived inside.

But there was some truth in what he said. Marla was indeed a large-bodied woman. She ate with gusto, then dieted remorsefully, never for very long or to much effect. Eventually she always resumed her passionate affair with chocolate chip cookies—and cream-filled cakes. But what worried me more than her erratic eating habits was her phobia concerning doctors and hospitals. I wasn’t surprised to hear that she hadn’t seen her general practitioner for years.

I pulled the van into the hospital lot. Southwest Hospital was a subsidiary of a Denver chain of medical facilities. When Westside Mall was in the process of being refurbished, fundraising and construction began on the new hospital. There was another irony: For all her disdain for doctors, Marla had been one of the most generous donors to Southwest Hospital’s building fund.

Inside the hospital, I followed yellow-painted footprints and then blue ones until I came to the automatic doors of the Coronary Care Unit entrance on the fourth floor. A red-haired receptionist wrinkled her brow at me.

“Name of patient?”

I tried to look both innocent and deeply bereaved. “Marla Korman,” I replied.

“She can see visitors only the first ten minutes of each hour, and that’s just past. You’ll have to wait an hour.”

I said quickly, “She’s my sister. Surely I can see her?”

“And you are …”

“Goldy Korman.”

She consulted a clipboard, then gave me a smug smile. “Is that so? When we asked her about next of kin, she didn’t list you.”

“She’d just, had a heart attack,” I said with an enormous effort at long-suffering bereavement. “What do you expect? I really need to see her. I’m worried sick.”

“I’ll have to see some ID.”

Think. I rummaged through my purse and brought out my sorry-looking fake-leather wallet with its wad of credit card receipts and expired grocery coupons.

“ID?” the receptionist repeated serenely.

Wildly, I wondered how I’d talk myself out of this one. Then I had an inspiration. Well, of course. My fingers deftly pulled out a dog-eared card. Good old Uncle Sam! I handed the nurse my old Social Security card.

“Goldy Korman,” she read, then shot me a suspicious look. “Don’t you have a driver’s license or something?”

I bristled. “If my sister dies while you’re doing the Nazi documentation routine, you’ll never work in a hospital in this state again.”