“Sorry, Mom. But you are always bugging me.”
How was telling him I was going out “bugging him”? I didn’t know. Lately, it seemed as if there were lots of things I didn’t know. I asked, “Do you want the animals up here with you?”
“I suppose.” He threw off his quilt, revealing his standard nighttime wear of sweatshirt and sweatpants. “That way I can take care of the puppy, in case he gets scared.” He swung his legs over the side of the bed and paused, hunched over. He struggled for words. “Good idea, Mom,” he mumbled.
I’d had a good idea? Where were the Guinness people when you needed them?
While I donned my snow boots, mittens, down jacket, and scarf—with the temperature in the single digits, the wind chill was bound to be horrific—Arch shepherded the two dogs up to his room. Scout the cat, not surprisingly, decided to stay put.
Ellie sat waiting for me in her new SUV, a silver BMW that was the twin of Marla’s. The car was lovely, but in its interior light, Ellie didn’t look very good. Her expensively colored hair had turned waxy, probably from being repeatedly raked by her manicured nails. Her face, usually flawlessly made up, was puffy and still wrought with worry. The whites of her eyes were dark pink. From crying?
“I don’t suppose you’ve heard how somebody or somebodies are trying to smear me?” she demanded as I slid into the cold leather passenger seat.
“I’ve heard some things. That’s why I’ve been trying to call you.”
She revved the engine that she’d kept running while I was getting ready. “I suppose you heard the story about my Lexus being stolen and rammed into Barry’s car.”
“Yeah. But that was a while ago, wasn’t it? Barry took me out for espresso at The Westside Buzz in his new Saab. He loved having a fancy new car, and didn’t seem too upset about losing his old Mercedes.”
“Well, somebody’s upset about it.” She flipped on the overhead light and handed me a typescript clipped to several photographs. “I’ve got a friend who works on the Mountain Journal. She got her hands on copy they’re planning to run tomorrow.”
As she piloted her tanklike vehicle toward Main Street, I peered at four blown-up, grainy photos. The first featured Ellie, clad in a tailor-made suit, which made her look stern and manageresque. The second and third showed Barry. In one, he was smooching the cheek of a beaming Pam Disharoon, whose pigtails bobbed enthusiastically. The third photograph of the bunch showed Pam whispering in Barry’s ear, while he sported an impish, cat-who-swallowed-the-canary grin. The fourth photo was a blurry shot of the county coroner’s van. I turned back to the typescript. The caption read: The Man Who Loved Too Much?
How had the Mountain Journal, which demanded that I submit my ads two weeks in advance, put together a background article so quickly? But I knew the answer to that. Gossip, easily obtained in Aspen Meadow, sold copy. In our small town, it didn’t take long to call dozens of sources and put together a smutty article—full of “alleged’s”—that masqueraded as news. And with computers speeding up typesetting, you could gather enough garbage the day after a murder to put together a story and still meet press deadline.
I hastily skimmed the palaver, with its repeated references to a “love triangle.” The fact that Julian had been arrested for Barry’s murder was glossed over, and for this, at least, I was thankful. I guessed the Mountain Journal brains, such as they were, had figured a detained caterer’s assistant wasn’t as sexy as two women smitten with the same man.
In the Man Who Loved Too Much article-to-be, two incidents were detailed, beginning with: “Last month, witnesses claimed an unidentified woman shoved Barry Dean into a ditch on the mall construction site,” followed by “Mrs. McNeely’s allegedly stolen purse” and her “allegedly stolen Lexus keys,” which had ended up with “the Lexus belonging to Ellie McNeely somehow getting smashed into Barry Dean’s classic Mercedes. The Mercedes was totaled.” The paper proceeded to have a field day with the cuff links ordered by Ellie to be engraved for Barry being found in the out-of-control truck that had almost killed him earlier the previous day, only hours before he was brutally murdered. Who had been their sources on this? How I wished I knew.
“It’s unbelievable,” Ellie said, her voice just above a whisper. Her tone was resigned, despondent. “My boyfriend-who-wasn’t-quite-my-fiancé was infatuated with a lingerie lady. Now he’s dead, and I’m implicated. I can’t even grieve, because the cops are showing up on my doorstep, at my office, you name it. They ask things like, ‘After you picked up the cuff links, Mrs. McNeely, how did you get them into the truck?’ And worse, ‘Have you had medical or military training, Mrs. McNeely? Did you learn how to stab someone so that they’d be certain to die?’”
“Oh, no.”
“I’m going nuts! I think they’re just holding Julian Teller until I crack! Then they’ll arrest me!”
“OK, first of all,” I said, shaking the typescript, “forget our local rag. People leak stuff to it all the time, their own version of how they want something to read. The staff never checks a single fact, because they don’t have time once they round up their material. How come nobody calls them ‘alleged reporters’?” I was hoping Ellie would laugh, but she didn’t. I tossed the packet into the backseat and turned off the light. We were now chugging past the Bank of Aspen Meadow, where the thermometer read two below zero.
Hunched over the steering wheel, Ellie shook her head grimly. “Not to be materialistic,” she went on woefully, “but the gold cuff links I bought for Barry are in police custody, and I don’t have that engagement ring Barry promised me—”
“So you were engaged?”
She squirmed. “Well, not really. We’d been talking about it. He told me he had a big surprise for me, and he eventually said it was ‘the ring I’d been hoping for.’”
“How long ago was this?”
She shrugged. “About a month? He gave me a riddle I couldn’t understand, though. He promised to help me with it. I ordered him a pair of cuff links, and paid almost three thousand dollars for them. But then I saw him with Pam, in the mall, having lunch. He’d told me he had a meeting with the Pennybaker people, and there they were, acting like lovebirds. That’s when I hired Rufus.”
“Did you push Barry into a ditch?”
“No.”
“Do you know why he had headaches?”
She sighed. “I only knew that he did have headaches. He told me he’d been fighting with someone who worked in the mall. I thought, a fight, like, argument. I didn’t think he meant a real physical fight.”
“You never picked up the cuff links?”
“My purse was stolen! My car was stolen, then wrecked! I had no ID, no credit cards, no driver’s license! Remembering the cuff links was way, way down on my list.” She sighed, but it came out like a sob. “Now the cuff links are being held by the cops as evidence in a murder. It’s like I tried to do something nice for a man I believed really cared about me, and the whole thing backfired. Backfired beyond belief.”
I murmured, “Yeah, it sure did.”
“Dammit, Goldy!” Ellie’s voice turned strident. “Say something that’s going to make me feel better! Why do you think I came over? I thought Barry Dean loved me! And now my life has gone to hell!”
“Well…,” I ventured. “I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but in the You’re-Not-Alone Department, I was married to a man who, even though he was a well-paid doctor, gave me only two hundred dollars, in cash, to spend on Christmas. Because I wanted him to care about me—even though I knew on some deep level that he didn’t—I spent a hundred and fifty dollars of that tiny hoard on a Seiko watch. I’d even felt lucky to find it on sale! But the Seiko wasn’t a Rolex, and the day after Christmas, I found the watch in the trash.”
Ellie managed a wry smile. Then the smile turned bitter. “What am I going to do? How can I keep little Cameron from being humiliated by all this?”
“Your daughter will be OK,” I assured her. “She knows you�
��re a good mom.” I remembered Arch’s brusque declaration: I don’t need a babysitter. “Anyway, Ellie… Cameron’s in tenth grade now. Maybe she’s not so little anymore.”
“And here I was thinking what a loving stepfather Barry would make.” She sighed. “I’m just worried the other kids will read this trashy Journal article and make fun of Cameron. I hate to think of those Elk Park Prep bitches hurting her feelings.”
We whizzed by the lake. Wind-blown pebbles of snow pelted the ice. Under the bright night lights, a few brave skaters were taking advantage of the late burst of freezing weather. Just the thought of skating made me shiver.
“Ellie, where are we going?”
“Well, if you don’t mind, we’re going to Elk Park Prep. I… I forgot something.”
I knew she was lying. “The school will be locked up, Ellie.”
She waved one hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll explain when we get there.”
“Speaking of Elk Park Prep, can you… explain to me why you were arguing with Shane there tonight?”
She exhaled and slowed around a curve. “Board business is supposed to be confidential.”
“Ellie, I promise, I’m not going to get on the phone and call people about board business.”
“Shane… is having financial problems.”
“I know about the eviction from Westside.” I gnawed the inside of my cheek. I know he was holding back on his rent. I know his wife has a bad spending problem. And worst of all: I know I haven’t received final payment for this lunch I’m doing for him tomorrow.
Ellie squinted into the darkness. “Shane’s blaming his problems on Barry. I don’t believe this story about Barry demanding a kickback for ignoring the rent issue, by the way. In any event, Shane’s broke. And in debt. So… he and Page are pulling their girls from Elk Park Prep. They’re demanding their two-thousand-dollar deposit for next year back. I tried to explain that we simply can’t do that. The deposits are nonrefundable. But you saw how Shane was tonight; he wouldn’t listen. If you heard about the car accident, you probably know how Page intercepted his loan money.”
“I do.”
“I can’t bend school rules for him. I can’t help him at the bank, either. But he just refused to believe that I can’t.”
We pulled through the school’s massive stone gates. Elegant street lamps lit the drive like luminarias. The BMW rolled smoothly over the snow-rutted road.
“What’s bothering you most, then?” I probed gently.
She exhaled again before replying. “Bothering me most? You mean apart from the fact that a man I loved and was hoping to marry might have been betraying me, but we’ll never know because now he’s dead?”
“Ellie—”
“Let’s see. The cops aren’t making my life easier. I’ve told them over and over, I hired Rufus because I thought Barry was cheating on me. Whether he was having a bona fide affair with Pam or was just infatuated, having a mental fling, Rufus never did find out. That’s what’s so funny! But those detectives are obsessed. I told them I was having a massage when somebody tried to drive over Barry. They don’t listen. I swore Marla, Page, and I left Prince and Grogan just before nine, but they won’t let go of it. I got a ride home with Elizabeth Harrington. So what? The cops just keep insisting and poking into my life. OK, here we are.”
We drove into the parking lot we’d just left a few hours earlier. Lights rimmed the asphalt and lit the sidewalk angling steeply up to the lacrosse fields. The place looked desolate and forlorn. Ellie reached for the door handle, then hesitated.
“Ellie, where are we going? The headmaster will be fast asleep.”
She gnawed her bottom lip and hesitated. “Apparently, there’s some evidence that will clear me. Somebody called, said they’d leave it for me at the lacrosse field. And I don’t know who it was, so don’t ask.”
“Said they’d leave evidence at the lacrosse field?” Was this like Barry leaving me his puppy? “Who left evidence at the lacrosse field?”
“I don’t know.”
My eyes followed the shadowy sidewalk up to the dark, bleak playing field. Under dimmed lights, the empty bleachers looked like the skeleton of some prehistoric beast. The portable toilet looked like a gloomy, abandoned outpost.
I asked, “Why not leave this evidence at some warm, populated place like the library, for crying out loud? Why not give it directly to the police?”
“Who knows? Look, you can see that there’s nobody up there. We’ll just run up and get it.” Ellie popped open her glove compartment. I was thinking she’d be reaching for a flashlight, but no. Her hand emerged with a small twenty-two, a woman’s gun.
“Oh, Ellie, no.” As much as I was curious about what someone might have left for Ellie, I didn’t want to be a part of anything involving a gun. “This is ridiculous. The sun will be up in, what? Six hours? Seven? We’ll go get the ‘evidence’ then. Let’s go home.”
Ignoring me, she grabbed her cell phone with her free hand and stuck it into her coat pocket. Still gripping the ugly little gun, she said, “I told you, Goldy, I’m desperate. Let’s go before this wind blows whatever it is away.” She inhaled, gripped the pistol, and slipped from the car.
Crap, crap, crap. Why had I come out with her in the first place? And why couldn’t she be a liberal and believe in gun control? I powered up my own cell and hit the automatic dial for Tom’s phone. If he was at the department or at home, it would be on. If he was between the two, we might be out of range. When the messaging service answered, I cursed silently. Then I announced that I was at Elk Park Prep with Ellie McNeely, and that if we weren’t back by eleven, come get us. While Ellie stamped her boots and gestured impatiently to me with the pistol, I reached into my bag and pulled out the Mace. Did everyone in Aspen Meadow carry a weapon? I followed her, but didn’t feel a bit comfortable.
The wind died for a bit as our feet crunched over the snow of the parking lot. Ellie glanced around; I kept my eyes on the field. On the bleachers, I could just make out a pile of lacrosse sticks, loaners the school kept on hand for practice. A crumpled athletic bag sat atop the players’ bench, abandoned or forgotten. Then again, maybe it contained evidence that would clear Ellie of innuendo…or murder.
“Actually,” Ellie said, with a nervous laugh, “this is sort of like one of Barry’s little games. You know, follow the clues.”
The wind picked up again, and I shivered inside my jacket. “Heather the receptionist told me you hadn’t been able to find the engagement ring.”
“Heather told you?” she asked, shaking her head. “What, was Barry so embarrassed by my stupidity that he laughed at me with his secretary?”
“I… I don’t know.” Actually, it did sound sort of smarmy, as if Barry not only had been playing games with Ellie, but looking down on her as well. He’d even made jokes about her behind her back.
We climbed over a plow-made drift at the edge of the lot. Ellie tried to make her voice cheery. A cover for fear?
“The clue for the ring went something like, ‘When we fight, and then we…go to bed, that’s how you’ll find your ring.’ So I thought it had to do with sex or foreplay, and I ripped through sheets and box springs and pillows, with Barry laughing the whole time. I never found any ring.”
I slipped on the ice, dropped the Mace, and grabbed for the handrail at the side of the walkway. I also cursed Barry Dean, because it looked as if he’d poked almost relentless fun at a woman he supposedly was committed to.
“You all right?” Ellie asked.
I grabbed the rail. “Let’s rest for a sec.”
“Sure. Anyway, I wanted to believe he was sincere,” Ellie went on. Her breath was coming out in steaming gasps. “I believed I’d find the ring eventually. So that’s why I bought him the gold cuff links and left them to be engraved.”
“You left them to be engraved, and then what happened?”
She sighed. “I tucked the jeweler’s receipt into my purse, bought a cup of coffee, and sat down by t
he tot lot. That was when the purse was ripped off. In the mess that followed, I spaced out about the receipt. Not very smart, huh?” She paused. All was silent, except for the wind rushing through the trees above the playing fields. “Later, when the cops were trying to cut a deal with Teddy Fury, that teenage brat admitted he’d stolen my purse along with twenty or so others. He claimed he dumped it—he remembered the Louis Vuitton pattern, and was afraid of being caught with it—after taking the cash. According to Teddy, somebody else must have picked my purse out of the Dumpster, and lifted my car keys and the receipt. Just like later that same day, Teddy claims, somebody else crashed my car. Later in the week, Teddy also swears, somebody else used the receipt to pick up the cuff links. Then whoever did that conveniently placed the cuff links in that damn truck.” Her eyes watered as she smiled at me. “Are you ready to go?”
We made our way slowly up the sidewalk. I had a new appreciation for all the walking Arch had to do in a day. And he carried a heavy bag.
“What do you think?” Ellie demanded, when we were halfway up the steep ascent to the field.
“I think my lungs are going to burst.”
“What do you think about Teddy Fury’s story?”
Ellie seemed determined to downplay the fact that we were out in the freezing wind, at night, chasing after elusive evidence on a deserted school field. Fine. We soldiered on.
“What about the jewelry clerk?” I asked. “Did he remember the person who picked up the cuff links?”
“Nope. And whoever it was didn’t have to sign anything. The clerk who handed over the cuff links looked at a sheriff’s department photo of Teddy Fury and said Teddy wasn’t the one.”
We were finally at the bleachers. Gusts of snow swirled up and around the field. Only two halide lights, one by each net, lit the shadows. Ellie traipsed in front of the bleachers, which held nothing but the sticks, and then over to the players’ bench, where she set down her pistol and dumped out the contents of the bag. Socks, Gatorade bottles, a jersey, pads, and a book fell onto the snow. Ellie stooped and pawed through them, then straightened.
Chopping Spree Page 19
