A knock on the front door derailed that particular train of thought. My peephole revealed strawberry-blond Alicia, my supplier since I’d opened Goldilocks’ Catering. She hauled in baskets of fresh wild mushrooms—stunning arrays of everything from chanterelles to Portobellos—plus marbled slabs of standing rib roast, lusciously flavorful greenhouse-grown strawberries and rhubarb, and the rest of the supplies for the next two days’ parties. As she was leaving, she handed me a brightly wrapped compact disc.
“It’s for your kid. I can’t understand this music,” she said with a wink, “but the guy at the store told me this is what they’re listening to these days. Tell Arch happy birthday from me.”
I thanked Alicia profusely, gave her a check for the supplies, and got to work storing the food. Once done, I stood immobilized in the middle of our kitchen. Frustration gnawed at my brain. I needed to cook. Working with food always helped put things in perspective.
On my new computer, I pulled up the menu for Shane’s luncheon party. Yes, I was going to do it. He had apologized; his wife had apologized. Besides, he was the one who’d flown through the air and landed on the lounge floor. Maybe he was quitting coaching lacrosse because he was black-and-blue. Maybe he was quitting because he’d been thrashed by a mom.
I felt my mouth curl into a smile. Finally, finally, I was beginning to look forward to doing the Stockhams’ lunch. I tried to recall the layout of their place. The house itself was a gorgeous log dwelling in a stunning development of executive homes near the entrance to the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve. As my printer spat out the menu, recipes, and schedule, I called Shane back and left a message thanking him for his apology. All was forgiven, I said, while making a serious mental note to bring a can of Mace to the party, just in case he lost it again. In my message, I enthusiastically concluded that my crew and I would start setting up around ten tomorrow.
I searched for and found my Mace, then slipped it into my purse. As I scanned the menus, I tried to recall everything I’d heard from Marla about Shane and Page. According to Marla, Shane’s store, The Gadget Guy, had received an eviction notice from Westside Mall. This notice had to have come from Barry. Complicating Shane’s problems were 1) Westside wanted a million bucks’ worth of back rent from him, and 2) his wife Page had a compulsive shopping problem, an addiction severe enough to warrant antidepressants and group therapy. Moreover, Page was locked in a to-the-death competition with her sister Pam, for stuff.
But how had Shane and Page Stockham felt about Barry? If either one of them had been on bad terms with him, why had they come to the jewelry event? Ah… but I knew the answer to that. More than anything, Page craved whatever big-ticket items sister Pam managed to land. Apparently, Page hadn’t gotten what she wanted. No doubt that was why she and her husband had fought. I’d have to ask Tom if the videotape had shown anything else about the whole Shane-Page-Pam-Barry situation.
I made myself a perfect cup of espresso to wash down a couple of aspirin and two homemade caramel brownies that Alicia had thoughtfully left on the kitchen table. Oh, boy, I thought, as warm fuzzies spiraled through my veins. Nothing like chocolate and coffee to kill pain.
I switched files and typed all I’d learned that day into the “Barry” file. Sipping the last of the coffee, I added my new crop of questions and licked my fingers. Then I read over the file. Why did the image of grasping at straws come to mind? I ignored the image, washed my hands, and rinsed the strawberries and rhubarb.
My fax rang. Since Arch’s short-lived foray into quantum physics had taught me that, indeed, the watched pot never boils, I was sure the same principle applied to fax machines. So I trimmed and halved the juicy strawberries, cut the crunchy emerald-and-ruby rhubarb into tidy widths, and mixed both of them with a judicious combination of cornstarch and sugar. Yum.
I carefully set the bowls of glistening fruit aside, then grabbed the spill of faxed pages. The brief cover letter was followed by a photocopied page from Barry Dean’s medical records. Ha!
I read the doctor’s notes and then, stunned, sat down to read them again.Pt. fought with a friend, who pushed him down. Pt. lost balance, fell into deep ditch, landed on back of head. Headaches ever since. Pt. v. stressed. Thinks he may have tumor. Pain excruciating. Vicodin script, follow in 2w.
I swallowed hard. Doggone it. If only, if only, Barry had told his doctor who this belligerent “friend” was. Finding out why Barry had headaches might be the key, but it looked as if I’d have to wait for Mr. Anonymous Phone Call to elucidate that particular datum.
Then again, maybe Barry had told his doctor the identity of the pusher. My girlfriend, who set a P.I. on my tail. My other girlfriend, the lingerie saleswoman. The owner of The Gadget Guy, after he slapped my face with his eviction notice. The construction manager, before he suddenly quit. And those were only the folks who immediately came to mind. Poor Barry.
I nibbled on the brownie crumbs and puzzled over the fax. This fight-with-a-friend tidbit had to get to the cops. Once they knew this, they could question Dr. Louis Maxwell. So how did I pop this information over to law enforcement without getting myself into big-time hot water?
I started working on the Stockham lunch. Shane and I had done the contract at the end of March, when he’d shown me his sumptuously furnished home, including a damask-and-chintz dining room and glassed-in garden room. Did he know back then that he was about to be evicted from the mall? I didn’t have a clue.
I stared at the list of dishes.
Shane had wanted at least some of the food to be in the shape of electronic equipment, he’d told me. He’d shown me a few gadgets, and I of course knew what Arch’s collection of electronic marvels looked like. No matter what the thing did, I decided, it either resembled a remote control or a pancake. For this reason, we’d decided on a first course of Asian dumpling soup, with the dumplings in the shape of portable compact disc players. As I was also set to serve wonderfully flavorful soup at the potential mall tenants’ lunch on Thursday, I’d already made and frozen batches of the oddly shaped dumplings during one of my recent fits of insomnia. I would defrost them early tomorrow before floating them in the boiling broth. The broth, however, still needed to be made.
From the refrigerator side of the walk-in, I pulled out three vats of homemade chicken stock that I’d begun defrosting before starting on the jewelry event. As it heated, I sliced onion and gingerroot, packed fragrant Chinese parsley into measuring cups, and carefully added them to the steaming stock. Within ten minutes, rich scents of the Far East wafted through the kitchen.
Shane had also requested three gourmet salads, to be served plated. I groaned. I needed to talk to Liz Fury, to make sure she could work the lunch with me. As we worked, we could visit about all that had happened. Since I knew she would still be working the wedding reception, I put in a call to her home. “Please give me a ring about the Stockham party,” I implored.
While I was cooking the shrimp for the Today-Only Avocado-Shrimp Boats, Tom unexpectedly showed up.
“I thought you were swamped,” I exclaimed with more surprise than I intended. I turned off the whirring food processor and gave him a hug. “It’s only four o’clock.”
He chortled. “Afraid I’ve been fired, Miss G.? And that’s why I’m home? Actually, I…just decided to delegate that work. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about cutting back to half-time, since my wife is making so much dough with her catering business. And this way, I can go get Arch, if you want.”
I smiled in spite of myself, pulled away, and poured the sweet-sour dressing for the shrimp into a large jar. “I… I went to see Julian,” I confessed. “I know you and Hulsey both said not to. But I was too worried.”
“See what I mean?” Tom replied, with a grim smile. “If you’re not in a mess, you make one.”
“He looks awful,” I continued. “Plus, I was wondering if the lounge videotapes showed any conflict between Page Stockham and her sister, Pam Disharoon, or between Shane Stockham and Barry Dean
…” I stopped talking, suddenly suspicious. “Tom, won’t you please just tell me why you’re home so early?”
“We-ell, since I shoved my work onto others, and since I’m not assigned to the Dean case, I got to worrying about my recently injured wife, and wanted to see if she needed help—”
I turned back to the shrimp, now a tantalizing pink in their lemon-and-herb bath. “I’m fine.”
“Touchy, touchy. Maybe you don’t want to hear this, either, but I think that even though I’m home, you should still go pick up Arch today. He’s worried about you.”
“About his new guitar, you mean. Now wrecked and in police custody.”
“Look, I called down to Westside Music, and they’re going to phone their other stores to see if we can get another one.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Miss G., would you come back over here, please?” I drained the first batch of shrimp, put down the sauté pan, and walked into his open arms. He gently held me as he asked, again, how I was doing.
“Not so hot.”
“Explain.”
“I feel responsible for Julian.” My voice wobbled treacherously. “I feel—helpless, and you know how I hate that.”
“Excuse me, Wife, but I’ve never seen you helpless.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence, Husband.”
He glanced over my shoulder at the counter. “How about if I make us enchiladas? Would that make you feel better?”
I actually laughed, then pulled away from his embrace. “Sounds wonderful. But Tom, there’s something I need to tell you first.”
“You mean besides the fact that you visited Julian against orders? I don’t think I should hear this.”
I began shelling the shrimp while he washed up and readied the enchilada ingredients. Had I turned over the faxed pages so he wouldn’t see them? I couldn’t remember. “Well, it’s like this. I’ve sort of been looking into this whole thing—”
Today-Only Avocado-Shrimp Boats
10 ounces thoroughly washedchilled inner leaves of a head of romaine lettuce
3 ripe avocados
30 cooked, shelled small to medium-size shrimp, chilled
9 ripe cherry tomatoes, chilled
1 cup Champagne Dressing (recipe follows)Prepare the salad just before serving.Tear the romaine into bite-sized pieces and make a bed of them on a serving platter.Carefully peel the avocados, discard the pits and skin, and cut the avocados into halves. Trim a small disc from the bottom of each avocado half so that each one sits flat. Arrange the avocados, cut side up, on the bed of greens. Arrange 5 chilled shrimp in a sunburst pattern in the hollow of each avocado half. Halve the cherry tomatoes and arrange them around the avocados.Generously pour the Champagne Dressing over the shrimp-filled avocado “boats” and tomatoes. Serve at once.Makes 6 servings (1 “boat” per person)
Champagne Dressing:
⅓ cup sugar
⅓ cup best-quality champagne vinegar
1 tablespoon Dijon mustard
½ teaspoon ground celery seed
½ teaspoon salt
¼ teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
½ medium-size onion (3 to3½ ounces), cut into eighths
¾ cup canola oilInto the bowl of a food processor fitted with the metal blade, place the sugar, vinegar, mustard, celery seed, salt, pepper, and onion. Process until the onion is completely pulverized, then slowly dribble in the oil, processing until thoroughly emulsified. The dressing should not be kept more than 3 days.
“Yeah, so I gathered. Sounds more like you’ve been snooping around. Maybe I don’t want to hear this—”
“Somebody called here a while ago, didn’t leave a name. Said I needed to look into why Barry Dean had such terrible headaches. I saved the message. Anyway. Then I, uh, learned that a friend of Barry’s pushed him down a while back. After the fall, he had such bad headaches that he had to take prescription painkillers.”
Tom considered the pan in front of him. The corn oil he’d heated to soften the tortillas sputtered. He lowered the first golden disk into the pan, flipped it, and laid it in a nest of paper towels.
Finally he asked, “And a prescription for painkillers after having fallen during this fight with a friend is significant because…?”
“Well, I just thought if you cops could find who called here, or who the friend was that pushed Barry down, you might find out who killed Barry.”
My ever-observant investigator-husband swept his eagle eyes over the kitchen. Then he washed his hands, moved down to my computer, and turned over the pile of faxed pages.
“Kee-rist. How in the hell did you get these from a—” he raised a bushy, sand-colored eyebrow at the letterhead, “from Barry Dean’s doctor?”
“That’s one thing you really don’t want to know.”
He groaned, then said, “OK, Miss G., I will pass this on to the guys working the case—”
“Please don’t give them those other pages, OK?” I imagined Hulsey’s furious face as he thrust the faxed report in my face, demanding to know how long I’d fraudulently worked under the alias of Dr. Shoemaker.
“Don’t worry,” Tom reassured me. “But I have to warn you, whoever shoved Barry down probably was not a ‘friend.’ People lie when they go to the doctor. ‘How many cigarettes do you smoke a day?’ ‘Oh, doc,’ says the pack-a-day smoker, ‘maybe two or three.’ ‘Who pushed you down and caused these headaches?’ ‘A friend.’ Yeah, right. And especially with our Mr. Dean being as secretive as he was, he’d lie more easily than he’d tell the truth.”
“Oh-kay,” I said, as I peeled fresh Bosc pears for the next salad. “I just thought knowing more about that fight and those headaches might help Julian.”
Tom listened to the tape with the anonymous message several times. He did not tell me what he planned to do about it. After that, he and I worked side by side, but mostly in silence, for the next half-hour. When I finally asked if he had found out any more about the Dean case, he shook his head. He did remind me, however, that because Julian’s fingerprints were on the murder weapon, he would face arraignment no matter what.
“How can they charge him on so little evidence? Who made that nine-one-one call alerting the police to Barry’s murder, anyway?”
“They’ve listened to it a hundred times. It was from a pay phone outside Prince and Grogan. They can’t even tell if it was a high-voiced man or a low-voiced woman.” He shrugged. “If something comes along to clear Julian, he’ll be out.”
“Somehow I don’t feel reassured.”
“Miss G. What we do know is that someone tried to mow Barry Dean—and you—down, and didn’t succeed in killing him, and then someone knifed him, and did succeed in killing him. And that person left evidence of himself or herself somewhere. We just need to find it,” he concluded. I was thankful he hadn’t added a comment about needles or haystacks. “That’s we meaning the sheriff’s department, Miss G. Not we as in Goldy, Marla, and Tom. OK?”
“Of course,” I replied sweetly. He groaned again.
CHAPTER 10
I finished the pears, dropped them into a simmering, barely sugared syrup, and gave directions to Tom for the poaching and finishing. Then I grabbed my coat and announced I was off to pick up Arch. Tom grinned and swore he’d have dinner ready when we got back.
In the gathering twilight, I held my husband’s smile in my mind as I zipped toward Elk Park. Maybe he wasn’t too mad at Dr. Gertrude Shoemaker, impostor neurologist, after all. I knew it irked him when I tried to insert myself into his cases… but I never did it when I didn’t have some kind of personal stake in solving the crime. Someone shoots out our window, poisons a client at an event I’m catering, or kills a fellow and exults when our family friend is arrested for the crime—yes, I was going to get involved. As they used to say in my native New Jersey, Whaddayathink I’m gonna do?
Darkness blew in along with charcoal clouds from the west. The high hills covered with pine trees turned to black velvet. A whirl of sn
ow fogged the windshield; I flipped on the wipers. I thought of the scantily clad, hapless lacrosse players. Welcome to springtime in the Rockies!
I turned through the massive stone gates and gunned the van up the winding driveway that led to Elk Park Preparatory School. A caravan of four-wheel-drive vehicles, their lights on, sped down the driveway in the opposite direction. The kids must have been dismissed early. A lot of parents actually watched the practice, then called the coach later to offer unconstructive criticism. I wondered if that was why Shane had quit.
Snow swirled into the parking lot. Half a dozen Lexuses and BMW’s, their engines running, clustered by the pathway that came down from the fields. High above the lot, by the portable toilet at the edge of the fields, a few camel’s-hair-clad parents stamped their feet and clapped with mittened hands. Arch would die of embarrassment if I even showed my face at lacrosse practice, so I stayed put.
And that was how I saw Shane Stockham threaten a woman. Again.
The two figures first attracted my attention when they whacked open the thick wooden doors of the headmaster’s house. They paid no attention to the resultant crash or echoing bang of hinges. Shane Stockham I recognized instantly: His stocky body, rigid stance, and distinctive gait were unmistakable. He wore a ten-gallon hat and a sheepskin jacket—de rigueur Colorado wear for the upscale wannabe cowboy. Raised voices indicated things weren’t going well between him and his companion, a fashionable-looking woman wearing a mid-calf trench coat and leather boots. A twisted Burberry scarf held her blond-brown hair in place. She walked swiftly and gave off an assured, regal air. At one point, she stopped by an electric lantern to listen to Shane. After a moment, she reached out to touch his shoulder. He slapped her hand away and vigorously told her to shut up. The woman, momentarily thrown off balance, recovered and yelled at Shane to back off. I squinted to see her face in the gloom.
It was Ellie McNeely.
I groped through my bag for the Mace. I clutched it with my right hand and vaulted from the van. Shane might apologize on the phone all he wanted, but if he thought he was going to hurt my pal Ellie, he had, as my mother used to say, another think coming.
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