Diane Davidson - Chopping Spree

Page ran out of the room.

Silence fell over the group.

George said, “Next?”

I wanted to follow Page, but my inner voice warned me to stay put. At this juncture, she’d be in no mood to chat. So I listened sympathetically to two more people talk, or as they called it, “share.” One man was a bargain-hunter with six storage sheds full of stuff he never used. He said the seller always represented his mother, who’d withheld love from him as a child. By ruthlessly bargaining, he tried to outsmart the seller, so he could “get love for free.” Except he never got the affection he needed, just lots of fishing rods and motorcycle parts. The final speaker, a very large woman with a pointed chin, announced that she was a codependent spender. She fingered her plastic dark glasses and tried to straighten her very crooked curly-haired wig. She said she had a compulsion to spend money on others. By giving people huge gifts, she was hoping they would love her. The previous year, she’d won fifty thousand dollars in the lottery, now all gone on presents for which she had not received a single thank-you note. Now she had to work a crummy job that caused her no end of stress.

I squinted at her thoughtfully as the group broke up. “Why, Rhonda!” I whispered to myself, then hightailed it out of there.

In the mall, shoppers scurried or moseyed past, many of them with that hungry, pinched look that said they were rushing for a bite to eat. Monday morning, I’d bemoaned the fact that I never had time for lunch out with Marla; now I was so stuffed with pastries and water that the idea of a midday meal made my very full stomach holler in protest.

I pulled off the crocheted hat and found a chair. I needed to sit and think. Just down the staircase, the window of Westside Music displayed a painted banner: Open Late! With a start, I recalled that Arch’s birthday was tomorrow. Tom had bought him a new lacrosse stick, helmet, and official-size goal, which he planned to put up in our backyard, snow be damned. He’d also promised to look for another guitar, since the much-desired one was dented, and not done being inspected by the cops. Still, I knew Arch well enough to be sure of this: The gift he would most cherish would be to have Julian at his party. So it was in the free-Julian department that I needed to continue to bend my efforts.

I ran my fingers through my hair and reflected on the shopaholics’ meeting. Page Stockham had confessed to a sister problem , a problem that appeared to have been very much aggravated by the presence of discount-supplying Barry Dean. My mind circled back to one of its many questions. Had Tom spurred the investigators to find out exactly where Page—and Ellie too, for that matter—had been after the two women split from Marla? Would the desires to a) have revenge on the man who evicted her husband’s profitable store, and b) deprive a sibling of her ride on the gravy train, be sufficient motive to kill Barry?

There was one person I had not been able to talk to, but who, in light of the shopaholics’ meeting, I now desperately needed to see. I headed toward Prince & Grogan. With Julian facing formal charges the next morning, I might have to buy a hundred dollars’ worth of nighties from Barry Dean’s onetime girlfriend. But wait—there was one detail of Page’s story that I needed to check out first. I turned and quickly headed toward the mall management office.

Heather the receptionist looked quite a bit cheerier than when I’d seen her earlier in the week. She’d had her hair colored with bright pink streaks and cut in a new, spiky do. New fluorescent pink nail polish and lipstick matched her hair. She looked like an ad for pink lemonade, which she happened to be drinking from a plastic cup. When I entered the office, she set down the lemonade by her half-eaten personal pizza, which, I shuddered to see, was topped with ham and pineapple.

“The caterer!” Heather exclaimed, then clapped her hand over her mouth. “Oops! Did I forget to call you?”

For a horrid, sinking moment, I thought Rob Eakin, the interim mall manager, might have changed his mind about the canceled prospective tenants’ lunch, originally scheduled for that day. If so, and Heather Featherbrain had forgotten to notify me, then all my worry about success would be something I’d laugh about as my business went under. You simply do not fail to show up to cater an affair.

“First of all,” she said, handing me a check, “here’s a new payment for your gratuity. Rob Eakin cut another check, since the cops are keeping everything. Plus, I found what you were looking for,” Heather continued brightly. She sucked noisily on her straw. “Barry did leave you something.”

“Oh, Heather.” I groaned, thinking of Julian’s haggard face behind the jail glass. “Why didn’t you call me? For crying out loud, this is about a murder case!”

“Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve been busy,” she cried. “It’s been nuts around here, with the crews working day and night, and Rob trying to stave off the potential tenants. Plus, somebody just called here to ask for a comment about our old construction manager turning up dead. It’s like, this mess never stops.”

“Just give me whatever it is, would you please? Then I need to ask you something about Barry.”

“Not again!” she protested as she wedged past her desk and nabbed a manila envelope that was cantilevered off a filing cabinet. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do!”

I didn’t remark about her seeming to have time for so-called Hawaiian pizza and pink lemonade or for getting her hair done. Instead, I eyed the envelope that had a scrawled Goldy——Dog File across it.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“Barry had a file labeled ‘Catering.’ The cops went through it but didn’t take stuff from it, it looks like.” She was peering at the envelope in my hand with undisguised curiosity. “Your contracts were in the file, plus that manila envelope. What’s a dog file?”

“I have no idea, and I doubt I’ll find out anytime soon.” I tucked the envelope under my arm. “Look, I’m sorry to be crabby but—”

“It’s all right,” she said, suddenly contrite. Maybe all this new cheer of hers was just her way of denying what had happened to her boss.

“A friend of ours is in jail—”

“I heard. Your assistant.”

“My assistant did not kill Barry,” I said emphatically. “And I’m trying to find out who did.” When she wrinkled her nose, I persisted. “Will you help me?”

She took a sip of lemonade. She said, “I’ll try,” without much enthusiasm.

“What I need to know now,” I told Heather earnestly, “is about discounts and gifts that Barry received. Say, from stores. Reps. Vendors. Stuff that might, you know, make people jealous.”

Heather’s forehead wrinkled. She didn’t seem to be thinking so much as trying to find a way to say something unsavory. When I cleared my throat impatiently, she eased back into her chair. “We’re supposed to have a no-gift policy….”

“Supposed to?”

She took a bite of pizza and avoided my eyes. After a moment, she said, “Before Barry took over, the only discount we got was at the mall’s fast food places. But when the expansion started, stores were really wild to get in here.” Her hand went to her throat, where she fingered a thin gold chain. “Barry, uh, did take gifts. He gave a lot of them away, though,” she added hastily. “I mean, he didn’t need a woman’s diamond Rolex or a monthly getaway trip to some exotic place like Maui.”

I gripped the lumpy envelope. “Heather, this is terribly important. I have to know the truth. I need to know about specific things he received.” In fact, that was what I’d been mulling over since Page’s outburst at the meeting: Is this true? Or is jealous Page imagining or exaggerating gifts Barry gave Pam?