Diane Davidson - Chopping Spree

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.