Diane Davidson - Chopping Spree

Sawyer tapped his open notebook and gave us a blank look. The other fellow, whose few strands of red hair had been pulled across his balding head, did not acknowledge Hulsey’s request, but merely gave a brusque nod. He informed us he was Detective Collins and his associate was Detective Sawyer, and that this interview was being recorded.

I stated my name and address into the microphone, glanced nervously at the mirrored glass hiding the video-camera, and tucked my cold, trembling hands inside the big pocket of my apron.

Come to think of it, why was I still wearing the apron? I felt for my cell phone: still there. The note from Barry: also still there. But…what in the world was the small plastic jar my right hand suddenly closed over? I swallowed hard and cautiously moved the jar lower into my pocket, as deep as it would go. Unless I was very much mistaken, I was gripping a prescription bottle full of pills. Where had it come from?

Unobtrusively, I pulled out my hand and placed it in my lap. There was no way I was going to show these cops what I’d just discovered, thank you very much. Every now and then, it’s important to be smart. Which is what I wish I had been while hunting for Barry Dean in the Prince & Grogan shoe department… at least to the extent of jumping up and screaming for help when I’d first found Barry in the cabinet.

“Take us back,” droned Detective Collins. “Begin with the jewelry party. That was the last time you saw Mr. Dean alive, yes?”

“Yes.” Barry’d been quite visible at the party, I told them. There were security tapes, as well as a professional videotape, of the event. I told them the very last time I’d seen Barry alive had been toward the end of the event. No, I had not actually seen him leave. I told them about Barry’s uncharacteristic wine-guzzling. I started to describe the forcible expulsion of Teddy Fury, and Barry’s heated argument with Liz Fury and Julian, but I hadn’t even completed three sentences before Hulsey shook his head.

Had I received my check, the cops wanted to know. Barry had the final payment, I replied, which was our agreed-in-advance gratuity.

“Is that a set amount?” Collins asked.

“It’s usually twenty percent of the bill. If things go well and the client is feeling generous, sometimes we’ll receive up to thirty percent. But Barry left without giving us anything, which I was certain was an oversight—”

“We found a check to your firm in his pocket. Sorry, we need to keep it for a while. Why were you certain this was an oversight?”

“Barry and I… were old friends.”

“How were you old friends?”

Hulsey glared at me in warning.

“We went to C.U. together,” I answered tentatively. What could be incriminating about that? “He studied architecture. I was a psychology major. He sat next to me in a psych class, shared his notes with me, and asked me out for coffee. We drank a lot of cappuccino together. He called me his coffee buddy.” Collins raised an eyebrow. “We were not romantically involved. Barry told me I shouldn’t marry my first husband, and he turned out to be right.”

“How about lately?” asked Collins, uninterested in the criminal doings of Doctor John Richard Korman, my ex. “Maybe you weren’t involved with Dean in school, but lately, did things change?”

“Don’t be ridiculous.” Both cops gave me practiced blank expressions. “No, Detectives, we were not ever romantically involved. Never.”

“Why did Barry Dean hire an old college friend to do mall catering?”

“Because a mutual friend, Ellie McNeely, recommended me. Plus, I think he might have seen my picture in the paper.”

“Which picture was that? The one from a couple of years ago, when you found another body in Prince and Grogan?”

“No,” I said stiffly. “It was from this February, when I finished a job in Aspen Meadow. Catering for the Hydes. Heard of them?”

Collins’s lips twitched in a distinctly ghoulish grin. “You mean,” he asked, “that photo in the Suburban section, showing you all wet? After you fell into the moat at Hyde Castle?”

“I didn’t fall into the moat, I jumped into it. And that was to get away from someone who was chasing me.”

Hulsey cleared his throat. His eyes drilled into me: SHUT. UP.

Collins shifted in his chair. “But you didn’t get away from someone who hit you with a guitar. Was that because tonight, you recognized the person who was chasing you?”

“Nobody was chasing me, that I know of. I didn’t even hear the person come up behind me. If I had, I might have avoided getting whacked with a guitar.”

“Was that person Julian Teller?”

“No.”

Collins shook his head disbelievingly. “The catered event ended. You and Julian Teller made trips to take your equipment back to your van, yes?”

“Yes. And then I came back and Julian—who is one of my assistants —told me…” I could feel my anger rising. Why had they asked if Julian had hit me? “Actually, Julian handed me a note that Barry had given one of the musicians. It said he—Barry—had my gratuity for me.”

There was a silence. “We need to see that note,” decreed Sawyer.

I fished into my apron pocket, careful not to disturb the prescription bottle tucked there, then pulled out the crumpled note and slapped it on the table. So much for fingerprints, I thought belatedly.

Hulsey asked permission to see the note and to have a photocopy made as soon as possible. The cops nodded yes. My lawyer bent over the paper, pulled out a tiny brushed-gold notebook, and wrote in it. The cops announced that they were going to have the handwriting analyzed. Inwardly, I groaned. Did Barry’s script look like Julian’s?

Collins gave me a puzzled look. “ I have your check, and a tip for you? You called it a gratuity .”

My frustration clouded to confusion. A tip for you. A tip like a police tip? And earlier, after the truck accident: Goldy, could we have our little chat later, at the party?

“I did think the check was our gratuity. Barry had wanted to talk to me. Earlier in the day, he had said he wanted to have a chat.”

“Wanted to chat with you about what, exactly?” Collins rasped.

“Excuse me.” Steve Hulsey’s deep rumble made me jump. “I won’t allow my client to be taken out in a boat to go fishing with you guys. Finish this up.”

Collins’s glum expression did not change. “So you went to the Prince and Grogan shoe department, in search of this tip. Any idea why he wanted to meet you in Shoes?”

“I’m warning you again, Detective,” interjected Hulsey, who moved impatiently in his chair. “Fish again, and I’m reeling in the line.”

“Mrs. Schulz,” said Collins, unperturbed and persistent. “After you received this note, did you go directly to Prince and Grogan to rendezvous with Mr. Dean?”

I had never realized how ugly the word rendezvous could sound. “No. I already told you, I had to pick up my son’s guitar at Westside Music. That took,” I added, before he could ask, “about five, ten minutes at most. After I picked up the guitar, I headed into Prince and Grogan, again, as I told you before. The store was closing and people were cleaning up, counting the contents of cash registers, like that.”

“Who knew you had to get the guitar first?”

“Well, my two assistants. Liz Fury had asked to take off early, because her son had been forced out of the mall, as I told you. She wanted to find him.” Another glare from Hulsey stopped me from elaborating. “And of course Julian Teller knew I had to go back to the music store. He stayed in the lounge and promised to finish packing up. He’s very good that way. Hardworking. Caring. And honest,” I added, pointedly.