Diane Davidson - Chopping Spree

“Did you see who pushed him?”

“Yeah. I did.” He lowered his voice. My skin crawled, and I imagined the dreaded Rhonda with one of her large ears pressed against the thin door.

“So did No-toe,” Victor added, just above a whisper. I waited, heart hammering. “Dean had had a real bad fight with his girlfriend,” he continued. “One of ’em, anyway. Dean was two-timing, see. But if you heard about the ditch thing, you probably heard that, too.” I nodded. Victor squirmed, then finally whispered, “That girlfriend was here the day of the truck thing. Anyway, she didn’t push him down so that he fell into a ditch, she pushed him into the ditch. Right then, Dean screamed, ‘Don’t! Ellie, don’t!’” Victor’s bloodshot eyes squinted at me. “So. Do you know this Ellie?”

CHAPTER 17

At the mention of my friend’s name, I made my face blank and, shivering, tugged my coat around me. The office’s little space heater suddenly seemed woefully inadequate.

“I sort of know her,” I evaded.

“I found out her last name when her car got crashed into Dean’s Mercedes,” Victor told me. “It was in the newspaper. McNeely. Wealthy woman who swears she wasn’t driving.” He grinned in mock defeat. “The rich never have to pay. You and I work our butts off and we get what? Hot kitchens, freezing offices, and no appreciation.” He stopped to pull out a tissue. “Ever notice?”

While he blew his nose, I cleared my throat, and looked around the room again. Plans, charts, and notes were pinned to every bit of wall space. Victor was right about one thing: I’d already decided I wouldn’t want to work in this frigid, disorganized environment.

I asked, “Did anyone besides you and Holden see Ellie McNeely push Barry into the ditch?”

“It was early in the morning,” Victor replied. “Couple of guys might have been around. We were discussing delays on the project, when this woman comes running up and starts screaming at Dean about how he had a commitment to her.” The phone rang and he answered it. “They are?” he said, with a glance at the clock. “OK. Just a coupla minutes more, I swear.” He grinned. “Yeah, thanks. I took ’em.” Clearly, the omniscient and nosy Rhonda was trying to throw her weight around.

As he hung up the phone, I stood. “Victor, I appreciate your seeing me. Did you tell the police the details of this ditch incident?”

He shook his head. “No. They asked me if Dean had any enemies, and I said I didn’t know of any. He had a coupla people he didn’t get along with, I told ‘em, like his two girlfriends and No-toe. But I didn’t want to get one girlfriend over another in trouble. Anyway, Rhonda just called to say the cops are on their way over. They’ve got a coupla more questions, apparently. Do you think I should tell them this McNeely lady pushed Barry?”

“That’s up to you.” I thanked him again, picked up the foam cup, and backed out of the tiny, icy office.

“Real sorry about your friend in jail,” Victor called after me.

I ignored Rhonda’s vicious glare, clomped out of the trailer, and poured the dark liquid into the ditch. Could Ellie really have pushed Barry in there, when it was seven feet deep? Was it possible she could have set up the whole portable toilet incident, just to look innocent in my eyes? I simply could not fathom it.

A sudden icy wind blasted my nostrils with a horrid stench. I gagged and stared at the stinking turquoise portable toilets. They were scribbled with racist graffiti. Wetbacks Go Home!! was scrawled beneath a Spanish retort that I translated, more politely than it was written, as We can’t wait to go back to Mexico, and good luck having an incestuous relationship with your mother. So much for racial harmony on the job site.

Near the plastic fence, a Hispanic man was hovering between my car and the Porsche. He was dressed in the garb of a construction worker, and was putting one of those bright orange ads under my windshield. Just what I needed, an encouragement to do yet more shopping. Before he could put an ad under the Porsche’s windshield, a Furman County prowler pulled up. The ad-placer vanished as the prowler disgorged two men. They were detectives, no doubt… and maybe they would give a ticket to someone illegally distributing ads to parked cars.

The workmen hacking at the ice stopped to stare at the cop car. Bucking the wind, I ignored the detectives, and made my way toward the mall. On the way, I tossed my cup into the overflowing Dumpster with such fury that it bounced up, was caught by the wind, and sailed away.

Tampering with evidence, disobeying my lawyer, and now littering. Pretty soon my charge sheet was going to have more scribbling on it than those toilets.

Inside the mall, I ducked into a women’s room and examined myself. My lips, nose, and cheeks were crimson from the cold. I reached into my bag and pulled out the crocheted cap, a small compact, and a pair of sunglasses. After doing a bit of damage control on my face, I put on the hat and glasses and emerged into the mall. I didn’t know if I was incognito or not, but the sunglasses made everything awfully dark. I headed toward the Shopaholics Anonymous meeting, where I sincerely hoped I’d hear something useful, especially from Page Stockham, such as I’d kill to be able to keep shopping. In fact, that’s exactly what I’ve done!

A handwritten sign was taped beside the entrance to the shoppers’ lounge: Private Meeting in Session. By the time I pushed through the lounge’s massive doors, the group was reciting a posted list of the Twelve Steps. As I skirted the furniture—all put back in place since the jewelry-leasing party—I focused hard through my sunglasses on the attendees, who were clustered on three long couches around a pastry-laden coffee table. No Page. At least, not that I could tell.

One member started reading aloud what sounded like a preamble. We are not so much concerned with debt, as are our colleagues in Debtors Anonymous, as we are with shopping itself, which we use as a drug to avoid dealing with our feelings of inadequacy….

The reader droned on as I looked around the room, where the atmosphere was palpably tense. To my surprise, the nine attendees were comprised of five men and four women. Five men! And here we women were always wondering what men were up to in those long trips to the hardware store. By inserting myself into the group, I created an even division between the sexes. I sat down as unobtrusively as possible and nodded at two welcoming smiles.

“I’m George, and I’m a compulsive spender,” one balding man began, as he lofted an éclair. Before the woman seated beside George could introduce herself, he added, mouth full, “I got a eating problem, too.”

Everyone laughed, and the edgy atmosphere vanished. At my turn, I said I was Gertrude—no lie, as this is my real name—and that I was visiting. A packet of pamphlets was pressed into my hands by George, who left chocolate smears on the top sheet. It began: If you do nothing but shop, you WILL drop. DEAD! Now there was a cheery thought.

“My name is Page, and I’m a compulsive shopper,” someone said.

I sat up so quickly my crocheted hat wobbled and threatened to topple. Through the sunglasses, I hadn’t spotted her. I slid off the sunglasses, put on my patented blank expression, then looked around. Page, who looked as if she, too, had come in disguise, was seated almost out of my range of view, at the far end of the couch. Her long blond hair was tied back in a bun that was concealed by an elaborately tied scarf. She, too, wore sunglasses—hers were of the aviator variety, and boasted pink lenses. Most atypically, she was clad in black tights and a black T-shirt, as if she’d just dropped in after ballet class. I did notice that despite the outfit, she wore a strand of large pearls—diamond clasp in front, so we’d know they were real—and a sparkly bracelet that (with my glasses off) looked like half a dozen strands of pink, yellow, and white diamonds. Why did wealthy women go out looking as if they’d just been to exercise class for hookers? Another unanswered question of the universe.