Chopping Spree

by Diane Mott Davidson

  “I remember…you,” she told me. Her wobbly voice indicated she’d been weeping. “You’re the… caterer. The one who solves crimes.”

  “The very one,” I replied amiably. “How’s it going?”

  “Awful.” It came out like a sob.

  “It’s terrible, isn’t it? Poor Barry. Um, why didn’t you take today off?”

  She pressed a tissue to her eyes, unable to respond. Two of the blinking phone lines went dark.

  “Sorry,” I said gently, “but I do have a catering question that needs an answer. It’s about the lunch event Barry hired me for, this Thursday, the one for the potential tenants.”

  The receptionist—her name was Heather, I finally remembered—stifled another sob. “I wish you could find out what happened to him!”

  “I do, too,” I said softly. “I… I miss him. Barry and I used to be friends, back in our college days.”

  “Really? Way back then? That’s sweet.”

  I bit down on telling her that less than two decades—not glacier-forming epochs—separated me from my college days. Instead, I waited while she reached daintily for more tissues. Truth to tell, Barry’s and my friendship had lasted only a semester, which was four months. Then, after years of silence, he’d hired me to cater at the mall. We had been friends; then we’d gone our separate ways.

  So, I thought suddenly, why the great push to be friendly again?

  Heather blew into one tissue, then dabbed her eyes with another. I realized I was staring at her. Something was bothering me.

  “Uh, Heather? How do you happen to know I’ve been involved in crime investigations? From that article in the paper about Hyde Castle? Did Barry show that to you? He told me my friend Mrs. McNeely had urged him to hire me. How does the article fit in?”

  “Oh, yeah, Barry told me all about it.” She pulled a miniature compact from her bag and patted powder on her nose. “He told me how you dived into this pond to look for a murderer—”

  “It was a moat—”

  “—and how you always were able to find out what a criminal had done, and how good you were, and stuff like that. He was looking at you and about four other caterers, and then he read the article and told me to call you! To see if you could do the jewelry party and the potential tenants’ lunch.”

  The phone buzzed again; this time Heather decided to answer it. I rubbed my temples. This was not what Barry had told me when he’d called. While Heather talked into the phone, I closed my eyes and tried to reconstruct.

  In March, Barry had phoned me out of the blue. He’d been brimming with the charisma and gusto that had made him, well, Barry Dean. We had a friend in common! he exclaimed. His dear friend Ellie McNeely, who knew me so well from our church work together, had recommended Goldilocks’ Catering to him! Where had I been all these years? Why hadn’t I called him? I’d been astonished to hear from my old coffee buddy. I’d offered a précis of Life Since College; Barry had listened patiently. Then he’d poured on the charm and informed me that he wanted to hire me, the famous caterer, for his “lavish” mall parties, because, because, because…

  Heather hung up the phone and snuffled. Then she touched up her lipstick and answered the intercom buzz. I struggled to remember that first call from Barry Dean. I want to hire you… because Ellie recommends you! Because you’re this famous caterer who gets written up all over the place! Then he’d faltered and laughed again, as if overwhelmed by my renown. Because of… of our history, he’d burbled. Because I always prefer hiring a friend, especially a close personal friend like you, Goldy. His flattery, his flair, his sudden intimacy had so befuddled me that I’d never thought to say, But I haven’t heard from you in more than fifteen years. Yes, we like coffee and canines, but… when were we ever close personal friends?

  Heather took another call. If the truth be told, Barry Dean and I had never been close personal friends. But Barry, a mall manager and effervescent marketer, had heard about me from Ellie, yes. He’d been looking at a handful of caterers until he cut out an article on my involvement in an Aspen Meadow homicide investigation. Then he’d told his secretary, to call me so he could book the mall events.

  I blushed to think of my naïveté. Close personal friends, indeed.

  I was willing to wager a side of beef that Barry had hired me because he had a problem. A crime problem, undoubtedly, one he would not or could not share with his bosses at Pennybaker International. A problem that, for whatever reason, was not something he could entrust to his own security people. Maybe he’d been afraid of the publicity, of the sudden truth of his credo nothing-clears-a-mall-like-a-security-threat. Then again, maybe he couldn’t afford to look like a failure.

  He hadn’t done very well with his problem, had he? After the incident with the out-of-control dump truck, Barry I-knew-this-would-happen Dean had refused to talk even to me. Instead, he’d rushed back to his office. This office. He’d gone to the jewelry event, which had involved ejecting a shoplifting teen and dealing with a potentially violent conflict between the feuding Stockhams. At some point, he’d scribbled a note about having a tip for me, and needing to meet up in the P & G shoe department. But I’d arrived too late.

  “Heather,” I asked cautiously when she hung up the receiver, “did Barry leave me anything?”

  To my horror, a fat tear splashed down her cheek. “You mean,” she said, as she again started to sniffle, “like in his will?”

  “Oh no, of course not! Just… like a letter or note or something.”

  “You mean about the tenants’ lunch? Or about one of his little hunts that he likes, liked to send people on?”

  “Little hunts?”

  “Like the one for Mrs. McNeely and her engagement ring?”

  “Yes, like that.” I was intrigued. Ellie had not mentioned a quest, much less one that involved an engagement ring. “Were they engaged?”

  “Well, no,” said Heather. “She hadn’t found the ring. The riddle or whatever it was was too hard.”

  “The riddle.” Had he sent Ellie in a convoluted pursuit of her ring, as he’d sent me searching for those long-ago psych notes?

  “I don’t know anything about it, it was some kind of game.” Heather frowned. “And in terms of him leaving something for you, I haven’t found anything. But the filing today is like, pfft, forget it. I haven’t been in Barry’s office since the police went through everything.”

  “Of course. Well…” I was thinking furiously. “Heather, if you should come across anything, even something small and seemingly insignificant, would you call me?” When she nodded, I went on: “I need to know about tomorrow’s lunch. When will Mr. Eakin be available?”

  Heather cut a sideways glance at the glassed-in office. “Nine people have already asked to see him, besides those guys. You’re probably looking at two hours or more.”

  With parties to prep, calls to make, and Arch to check on, I didn’t have two hours to spare. I quickly wrote Rob Eakin a note expressing my sympathy for the loss of Barry and asking for someone to call if the potential tenants’ lunch was not still on for Thursday. Mr. Dean had already paid for the food and labor, I added. Heather placed my note on top of an unpromisingly large stack of paper and swore she’d deliver it as soon as possible. Seeing my worried look, she told me that if Mr. Eakin couldn’t handle my request, she’d let me know herself about the Thursday lunch. Meanwhile, from the glassed-in office, the raised voices were suddenly audible.

  “You need to do some damage control, Eakin! We don’t figure this thing out, we’re going to lose half our tenants!” howled a male voice.

  “I’ve got two-thirds of them already screaming!” shrieked a young woman in a white shirt, black blazer, and black bow tie. Her face had turned scarlet; her brown hair, pulled into a tight bun, strained at its riggings. “They want twice as many security guys as we’ve already got!”

  Eakin closed his eyes and rubbed his temples.

  Heather’s eyes widened. “Look, I promise I’ll call you if I
find anything Barry left you,” she stage-whispered. I nodded, not hopeful. If the cops had been through everything, it was unlikely there’d be anything left for Heather to find.

  I thanked her and started to leave. Then I turned back. “Where is Victor Wilson today? I went out to the site. I had something to ask him, but he’s not there.”

  Heather clucked disapprovingly. “Not a clue. Not that I would care about that asshole,” she added.

  “You don’t get along with Victor? How come?”

  Once again we were interrupted by arguing from the inner office.

  “You’ve got to get the cops out of here!” the bunned bow tie lady squealed. “They’re driving customers away!”

  “They can’t leave until they figure out what happened!” Rob Eakin yelled back.

  Heather waved her hand. “Victor Wilson orders me around like I’m his secretary not Barry’s. He hires and fires workers whenever he feels like it, which gets us into a real mess with the worker-comp people and the unemployment-benefits people. And the Civil Liberties guys claim he treats Hispanic workers badly and pays them less than we do the other workers. For our office, the worst thing is that he keeps everyone dangling about when these stores are going to be finished. Victor’s a major-league asshole.”

  “Did Barry get along with him?”

  “Well,” Heather said with a sniff, “would you, if you were mall manager? Victor makes fourteen tons of paperwork for us, gives us a bad name in the Hispanic community, and won’t tell us when the damn stores are going to be done.”

  “Were he and Barry enemies, then?”

  Heather snorted a laugh, the first time she’d looked amused all morning. “You are bad, girl. Is this how you get crimes solved?” She giggled some more, then slid her eyes over to the contentious meeting. “The cops asked me about each and every person who worked closely with Barry. I looked up everyone’s schedule, even the security guys’. For Victor, I called Westside Community College. He teaches a class there on building your own house addition. Every Monday. Last night, Victor was giving a test.” She giggled again, unable to control herself. I began to worry about the hysterical tone creeping into her voice. “I tried to take that class and gave up. Victor said, ‘While the little woman’s making you an apple pie, you can be the big man building her a brand-new kitchen.’ So I said, ‘I am so out of here.’”

  My eyes strayed to the glassed-in office, where all of the participants in the altercation were talking into cell phones.

  “Did, uh, Victor try to order the previous construction manager around?”

  “Lucas Holden? Noto? He was the last construction manager.”

  “Was that his name?” I asked. “Lucas? Who’s Noto?”

  “That’s just what we called old Lucas. No-toe. On account of a girder that fell on his big toe once, so he lost it. I’m like, Call a toe truck, yo! But nobody thought that was funny.”

  I sighed. Heather definitely needed some time off.

  “So what happened to this Lucas Holden?” I asked resolutely.

  “He quit. Another asshole,” she declared vehemently.

  “And where did Lucas go?”

  “Oh, the letter he wrote us said he was going to Arizona someplace. Nobody ever called him Lucas, though. Strictly No-toe.”

  “Do you have an address for… Holden?”

  Heather swiveled in her chair toward her files. “I’ll look, if you’d like. But you don’t want to get mixed up with No-toe, trust me. He’s the reason we’re in the mess we’re in, with the new stores not ready, construction loans to pay, a drainage mess to clean up, a shortage of workers, blah, blah, blah. Don’t get me started on No-toe.”

  I didn’t, even though I was increasingly eager to find out if Lucas Holden, aka No-toe Holden, had gotten along with Barry and everyone else at the mall.

  Heather frowned over one file, then stuffed it back in the drawer when she read the concern in my face. “Look,” she said. “I’ll try to get No-toe’s phone number for you. If I can’t find it, I’ll ask Victor if he has it somewhere.” She grabbed for her tissue box and muttered, “Victor. What an asshole.”

  Since we’d already traveled that particular loop, I nodded a good-bye. From the inner office, the voices rose again.

  “If you can’t hire more security, then maybe we need a new acting manager!” the first man howled at Rob Eakin.

  “Great idea!” screamed Eakin.

  “Find out who killed Barry, would you?” Heather implored, as she crumpled her latest tissue and dabbed her eyes.

  “I’m trying,” I said gently, over the noise of the office fight. “Take care of yourself, Heather.”

  Then I backed out the door.

  CHAPTER 9

  As I gunned the van toward Aspen Meadow, Julian’s face stayed in my thoughts. He was emotionally and physically strong; anyone who knew him knew that. Surely he’d be able to handle whatever the jail experience offered, from bad cellmates to horrid food. When Julian did get out of jail, he’d probably start a campaign to bring fresh vegetables to inmates.

  I tried to smile, but couldn’t. The memory of Julian’s haggard face and downcast spirits was too strong.

  Barry, I reminded myself, as I raced onto the interstate. Barry is the key. My thinking was getting clearer in this department. My assumptions began with the theory that Barry had gotten himself into some kind of trouble. Ellie McNeely and I had been friends for a long time. When Barry was looking for a caterer, Ellie had told her boyfriend-who-hadn’t-given-her-a-ring-yet about me. But Barry hadn’t decided on a caterer until he’d read the article about the debacle at Hyde Castle. Somehow, that article had clinched it. Barry’d figured if he hired his old pal, amateur crime-solver Goldy Schulz, she could straighten things out. But his attempt to fill me in on his dilemma—or even tell me what the dilemma was—had gone terribly awry.

  The snow-capped peaks and plum-purple shadows of the Continental Divide came into view. I pressed on the accelerator.

  Barry’s dying and Julian’s arrest were not my fault. Still, I felt responsible. If only I had tried harder to make Barry talk to me… If only I had been less obsessed with my catering event….

  Barry had tried to reach out to me. But he had been too proud, too scared, too something to just blurt out what was bothering him. And now he was gone.

  Ringing from my cell phone made my heart jump. It was Alicia, my supplier. Was I ready to receive this week’s food order? Yep, I replied, you bet. Alicia promised to be at our house in thirty minutes. So much for stopping by the Bank of Aspen Meadow to see if Ellie could visit. I called the bank to try to set up an appointment with her, but was told she was being questioned again by someone from the sheriff’s department. A detective had taken Ellie to the bank’s conference room, and had asked not to be disturbed. Yes, I was told, a message would be left for Mrs. McNeely, asking her to return my call.

  Barry might have thought I was an ace amateur sleuth, but it looked now as if my reputation was becoming a drawback. Maybe I was paranoid, but Pam Disharoon wouldn’t or couldn’t see me; ditto Rob Eakin, Ellie McNeely, and Capetown-bound John Rufus. Well. No matter what, I was going to find a way to get Julian out of jail.

  And then—surprise!—my cell phone rang again.

  “Goldy, it’s Page Stockham.”

  “Uh, well. Yeah.” I couldn’t even stammer out a proper greeting. “What’s up?” I asked feebly. “How are you and Shane, uh, doing?”

  “I really, really want to apologize to you.” Her breathy voice cracked. “So does Shane. He’s going to call you later. Look, it’s all my fault. I started the fight at the party. I’m sorry. Oh, God. Please, please say you’ll cater for us Wednesday. We need this lunch wicked bad.”

  “I don’t know what to say. Maybe we should think it over,” I murmured. Excuse me, but it was Shane who’d started to attack his wife. Page had prodded and ridiculed him, yes. But instead of charging her, Shane could have walked away. In fact, they both could have.
But Page hadn’t rung me up for marital advice.

  “Don’t abandon us,” she pleaded. “Marla told me you’d probably cancel, and I needed to call you and eat dirt. Please, please don’t cancel on us. We’re under terrible stress financially, and we’re going to a counselor, because money is, the lack of money is, well, killing us.”

  I turned off on the Aspen Meadow exit and tried to think of what to say.

  “Let me think about it,” I said to Page.

  “Please, Goldy. I’m really, really sorry. We both are.”

  “We’ll talk later,” I promised. We signed off.

  The first thing I did when I slammed into the kitchen at home was check the fax machine. Empty. The voice mail, though, announced that five folks had called.

  The first message was from Tom. He was swamped, so could I pick up Arch today after all? Please call him if I could not, and he’d shuffle things around. I smiled. Of course I would get Arch. By the way, Tom added, Marla called and demanded that he look into Shane Stockham, to see if Stockham had any reports of, or arrests for, domestic or any other kind of violence. No, Tom said. Shane was clean.

  The second message was from Arch, who’d checked his cell phone voice mail between classes—strictly forbidden at Elk Park Prep—and was calling from the boys’ bathroom. Flushing sounds punctuated the static as Arch sullenly announced that Mr. Stockham was not coaching lacrosse anymore, and had I gotten him fired? My son went on to say that he would be going to practice no matter what, and Tom wasn’t coming to pick him up, so he needed me to be there right at five o’clock. And please don’t tell him when to go to practice and when not to go. I sighed as his phone slammed shut.

  The third call was in a husky voice. “Find out why Barry Dean had headaches, lady. Then you’ll get all your answers.” I sat up straight, taken aback. The caller had hung up without leaving a name. I played the message four times, but could not recognize the voice. My caller ID said the number was unavailable. I saved the message and moved on.

  Shane Stockham’s contrite tone was next. “I am so sorry we had a problem yesterday, Goldy. It was all my fault. And by the way, I’m quitting coaching at Elk Park Prep. We’re just having too many problems. Anyway, I hope you won’t press charges against me for coming at you yesterday.” He paused, and I almost felt sorry for him. Almost. “If you’re not too mad at me, Page and I are still hoping to have this party tomorrow. At our place, at noon. Come by whenever you need to set up. Goldy… I hope you can forgive me.” He signed off.