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.
As I tore across the snow-dusted lot, I tried to imagine why those two had even been in the headmaster’s house. Meetings of all kinds were held in the luxurious residence, with its real Oriental rugs and antique furnishings. But if they’d been at a meeting, where were the other folks? Ellie’s daughter, after recovering from her parents’ brutal divorce, was one of the handful of sophomores in the National Honor Society; Shane’s airhead twin daughters were freshmen. I couldn’t imagine that both parents had been called in by the headmaster because the girls had somehow gotten into an argument. When I was ten yards away from them, I ducked behind one of the Lexuses.
“… trying to tell you that circumstances have changed,” Shane ranted, “and you’re not listening!”
“I am,” Ellie retorted, “but you know very well that all of the financial commitments of the school are made on the basis of those pledges. We offer teachers positions with fixed salaries…Oh, Goldy? What on earth are you doing here?”
The two of them stopped in their tracks. Both looked at me curiously as I stepped out from the shadow of the Lexus. As the snow drifted down, I tried to think of what to say. The freezing can of Mace was making my right hand ache.
“Uh,” I said, “uh, I just saw you two…” I fumbled about for words and squeezed the Mace can. Shane had backed well away from Ellie, and I was unsure of what to say or do. At the far edge of the lot, someone in a silver SUV honked.
“Well!” said Ellie. “That’s my daughter, honking my horn at me. I have to go. Talk to you later, Goldy.” With that, she turned with a sweep of trench coat and walked delicately across the snow to her van.
“Ellie,” Shane called after her, his tone suddenly apologetic—hmm—and calm, even cajoling. “Please, Ellie. Please think about what I’m saying—”
“No-o!” she called, making her voice sweet. She didn’t turn back.
I tried to give Shane a look that was both punitive and sympathetic. I was itching to know about their conflict. Shane rubbed his eyes, tilted his head back, and groaned.
“Goldy, so, did you get my message about tomorrow?”
His question startled me. I shivered as if unexpectedly chilled, tucked my hands hastily into my pockets, and let go of the Mace. Only then did I give him a bright smile. Even if I did have more reason to be wary of him than ever, Shane, after all, was a client.
“Yes, and I left one for you. We’ll be there at ten—” I stopped. My God, I’d forgotten something. In the bustle of last week’s events and the commotion of the last twenty-four hours, I had neglected to obtain Shane’s final payment for the lunch. I emphatically had not received the last six hundred dollars he owed Goldilocks’ Catering … which should have been paid five days ago, before he’d gone on a jewelry-leasing binge with his wife. This was not the gratuity, which I would be picking up after the event. This was the second payment for the food and service. It was just the sort of detail that I’d feared would slip between the cracks, now that I’d become so busy. My heart sank.
“But,” I continued with another blinding smile, “I’ll need the second installment before we can do the party. I’ve got all the food ready.”
“Look, Goldy, I am extremely sorry for what happened yesterday. My wife is… on medication…. Things just sort of fell apart. We’re very enthusiastic about this luncheon party, believe me.”
“I need the check, Shane.”
“There are so many things I need to talk to you about,” he countered nervously, cutting his eyes from side to side, as if looking for someone or something more important to do. “So many things that I don’t know where to begin…”
My hand slipped back into my pocket and I gripped the Mace. As Shane rattled on about how successful the luncheon was going to be, I wondered where he was going with this conversation. Make that, where Shane was going, period. Tonight he’d flailed at Ellie, then he’d asked me whether I’d received his message. Then he’d refused to address the nonpayment issue, and hopped back to yesterday’s event. My skin broke out in a chilled sweat. The only other person who jumped from topic to topic like that—to keep you off guard—was The Jerk, my ex. And he usually started leaping around verbally before he punched me in the face.
“I’m enthusiastic, too, Shane!” I said as I edged away. The last bunch of lacrosse players was straggling down the steep path from the now-deserted field. It was an idyllic scene. Street lamps brightened the parking lot. Slow-drifting snowflakes resembled feathers shaken from a pillow. Behind the gaggle of athletes stumbled Arch. He might be bigger and stronger than he’d been at eleven, but he hadn’t given up his permanent place at the back of the line. “Gotta go, Shane. Remember the check tomorrow, OK? First thing, before we set up.”
To my dismay, he bolted toward me. Should I shriek and make a run for it? I tightened my grip on the Mace.
“Look, Goldy. Don’t run off, please. ‘Cuz I… really want to talk to you. It’s important, I promise.”
If he was going to tell me that he didn’t have the money for the party, that he’d pay me next week, next month, or next year, then I was going to punch him in the face, future clients be damned.
“It’s about the mall, you see,” Shane persisted. “You’re such a great person, Goldy, I feel as if I really could tell you—” He hesitated.
“Shane, please. I’m getting cold. Tell me what?”
He lowered his voice. “It’s about Barry Dean.”
I stopped short. I had to restrain myself from grabbing Shane by his sheepskin lapels and shaking him.
“What about Barry Dean?”
“Well, it’s just that…I don’t know how much you know about the way a mall works—”
“Look, can you just get to the point? My son’s waiting for me, Shane.”
He gulped, then brushed melting snow off his handsome, square face. His brown eyes shone with worry. And guilt? I wasn’t sure.
“I got into trouble. I… did a bad thing, but Barry made it much worse. I… cooked the books of The Gadget Guy. The reason I did it was that once we broke a certain level of sales, the amount of rent we owed Pennybaker International, according to the terms of our lease agreement, went way up. With… Page’s shopping problem, and our current level of debt, we just couldn’t pay more rent. Just could not. So… Barry, who had done next to nothing in terms of his promised promotion for mall tenants,
offered to do a deal. He wouldn’t evict me if I paid him fifty thou up front in cash, off the books, and another fifty thou at the end of the year. But…I couldn’t. So he pulled the plug on me. There, I said it.” He paused to take a raspy breath and fixed me with his sad stare. “I know you’re going to ask me did I tell the police about this. The answer is no, I couldn’t do that either. Risk going to jail for cooking my own books? Forget it. So I’m trying to get into online ordering now, out of our house. But if any of my potential backers—the people who are coming to lunch tomorrow—find out I messed with the figures at the store, they’ll run away faster than a herd of elk. I didn’t cheat anybody, Goldy, I just wouldn’t pay that mall their extortionary demands. And I couldn’t afford to pay Barry his bribe. I don’t have that kind of money.”
In the near distance, a car honked. This honk came from my van. Arch was honking at me.
“Shane, why are you telling me all this?”
He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “Because I know your young friend has been accused of Barry’s murder. I didn’t want you to think I killed Barry, in case Barry had told you about our… conflict. I can’t afford negative publicity at this point. And I’ve read how you sometimes get involved in these cases—”
“OK, OK. Is this accounting crime what you were just talking to Ellie about? Because she was close to Barry, too?”
Shane snorted. “No, we have an issue…with the school. But being in that mall, I saw the way things went. I mean, in addition to not doing the promotion he promised, Barry was not the most moral of guys, you know? He had a woman problem, and I think that’s why he wanted the payoff. To keep up his woman habit. Otherwise, he’d have to stay with old stick-in-the-mud Ellie McNeely. For a while, anyway.”
“Mom!” Arch shrieked. “Come on! Let’s split! You’ve got a cell call! I’m starving! It’s cold! Mom!”
“I have to go.” My thoughts were tangled from all the new information. Did I believe Shane, or not? I wasn’t sure. “So you think this fifty thou was for him, then, not the mall?”
“Of course it was for him! What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you here?”
“Shane, tell the cops all this.”
“You mean your husband?”
“No, no, Tom’s off the case. Anything you can tell the cops about Barry will help them get the big picture. If you have any documentation of what… Barry did, show it to them.” I did not say, Documentation of what you say Barry did. But I thought it. “Maybe Barry pulled this blackmail stuff with other store owners. Just call the department and get connected with the assigned investigators. Please? Believe me, it will look much, much better for you if you tell the cops what happened. If they find out elsewhere, they’ll come after you.”
“Mom! Goldy Schulz! Come on!”
Shane pressed his lips together, then backed away. Somehow, I didn’t think he was bolting to a phone.
My stiff, chilled fingers wrenched the driver door open, and I was confronted with my son’s stiff, chilled face. His fingertips pressed hard on the mouthpiece of the cell phone.
“I am so mad at you!” he hissed furiously. “First you get my coach to quit. Then you come to pick me up, only you don’t pick me up, because you get in a long conversation with my former coach. Which is what you always do. Talk, talk, talk. So I sit in here. Cold. Waiting. Starving. And now we won’t be able to go home, because you’re going to have to talk to this person.” He thrust the phone at me.
I gritted my teeth. When Arch acted like this, I didn’t know if he was showing the dark side of teenage temperament—which seemed to be all dark, come to think of it—or if he was following a more troublesome path on the way to behavior similar to that of his Jerk father. The amazing aspect of this little speech from Arch was how articulate he was when he was enraged. Since this was the opposite of his suave father, who became obscenely incoherent when he was angry, I fastened my seat belt and put the car into gear. I was not, I decided, going to respond to Arch.
“I’m so hungry,” Arch growled, as I put the phone to my ear.
I pressed the phone into the front of my jacket to cover the mouthpiece. “Tom is making enchiladas, and—”
“I don’t care!”
Give up, my inner voice counseled, before I reminded him how much he loved Tom’s cooking. So I did. I piloted the van toward the edge of the snow-frosted parking lot. Into the phone, I purred sweetly, “This is Goldy Schulz of Goldilocks’ Catering. May I help you?”
“You must be making a lot of money, to put someone on hold on a cell phone for seven minutes!”
I sighed. Just what I needed today, one more crab. Tomorrow night I would make crab dip.
“How can I help you?” I suddenly remembered the anonymous call I’d received earlier. This voice was deep, too… but I was fairly sure I was being bawled out by a female. Still, you can’t be too careful. “And who are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“You can come pick up this puppy. Barry Dean’s basset hound. He’s late.”
“He’s dead,” I countered bluntly.
“I’m looking right at him.”
I paused. Maybe I needed yet more caffeine, even if it was almost dinnertime. “Who is calling, please?”
“Goldy, fer chrissakes,” growled the husky voice. “It’s Darlene Petrucchio. You useta come into my store, and that kid who useta live with you useta come in, too. Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles. And what do you mean, he’s dead? He’s sitting on my kitchen floor, drooling.”
“Barry Dean is dead,” I said, speaking very slowly and distinctly.
“Well, I know that!” cried an exasperated Darlene Petrucchio. “Otherwise, why would I be calling you? Barry called yesterday and said he was leaving you his dog. He’s late.”
OK. I was driving, one-handed, down the slick, snow-covered curves of the Elk Park Prep driveway. I couldn’t stop to talk sense with chain-smoking, raspy-voiced Darlene of Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles, or my son would explode. I needed a time-out. I needed to get out of this Abbott and Costello routine about dogs and dead guys.
“I can’t take care of this hound another night!” Darlene shouted, coughing. “He howls and cries and he’s driving Gus and me nuts! Come and get him, will you? He’s late.”
“Who is late?” I tried again, with deliberate loudness, like an American bellowing English at a European.
“Jesus H. Christ, Goldy! The puppy is late! That’s his name! Late! How many times do I have to tell ya?”
“Thanks, Darlene!” I sang into the phone. Studiously avoiding the word late or its cognate, later, I said, “I’ll be over… after dinner… say, half past seven. Where do you live?”
“Where do you think?” she shrieked, as a dog howled mournfully in the background. “Next door to Barry Dean, fer chrissakes!”
To save us further miscommunication, she slammed the phone down and broke the connection.
Maybe I could bring Darlene and Gus a box of chamomile tea. She seemed to need it.
Regarding the central question now running my life, who murdered Barry Dean, I now had new input. Barry Dean had left me his dog. No question, that would really clarify my thinking on this case.
CHAPTER 11
Ia met Tom’s hearty greeting at our front door by falling into his arms. “I need help!” I gargled. The reason I didn’t add “My son’s driving me crazy!” was that Arch was right behind me.
“I’ve got a glass of sherry waiting for you in the kitchen,” Tom replied, without missing a beat. “Driving to Elk Park Prep can be awfully demanding.”
Arch grunted before announcing: “I’m starving!”—in case I hadn’t recalled that crucial information.
“Dinner’ll be ready in less than five!” Tom replied, his voice jovial.
Arch hefted up his backpack, lacrosse stick, and bag, and vaulted up the steps two at a time. The door to his room slammed resoundingly.
“I can’t drink sherry,” I told Tom as I plodd
ed into the kitchen. “I have to drive somewhere tonight.”
“Tell me you didn’t take on another catering job. Tell me you’re going to stay and enjoy these enchiladas.”
“After dinner, I have to go get a dog. His name is Late. Wait a second. I’ll tell you all about it later, while we eat.”
Tom smiled, winked, and wisely decided not to ask me how I’d become ensnared in canine rescue. Instead he peered into the oven, nodded approvingly, then removed a large pan of fat enchiladas. A thick layer of melted Cheddar cheese bubbled over the dark, pungent enchilada sauce that in turn smothered the rolled and stuffed tortillas. Tom called upstairs.
“Hey, Arch! The enchiladas are done! In fact, they’re overdone! Next time don’t let your mother take so long!”
Arch roared with rage.
When Tom turned back to the kitchen, chuckling, I said, “Don’t start. He already blames me enough for… oh, everything. And please don’t use the word late. It has to do with the dog that I need to go pick up.”
Tom ignored me, which was a good thing. Two minutes later the three of us were digging into sour cream-topped enchiladas bursting with Tom’s mélange of spicy beef, beans, onions, garlic, black olives, and picante. I moaned with pleasure. Arch shot me a disapproving look which said Even at home, Mom can embarrass you!
My mind returned to the parking-lot confrontation between Shane Stockham and Ellie McNeely. Later, when Arch had gone upstairs to do homework, I would tell Tom about it, to get his ideas. In any event, I was back to feeling uncomfortable about catering at Shane and Page’s mini-mansion the next day. Maybe I’d feel better if I could talk to Ellie and find out why she’d argued with Shane.
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