Chopping Spree

“I’m enthusiastic, too, Shane!” I said as I edged away. The last bunch of lacrosse players was straggling down the steep path from the now-deserted field. It was an idyllic scene. Street lamps brightened the parking lot. Slow-drifting snowflakes resembled feathers shaken from a pillow. Behind the gaggle of athletes stumbled Arch. He might be bigger and stronger than he’d been at eleven, but he hadn’t given up his permanent place at the back of the line. “Gotta go, Shane. Remember the check tomorrow, OK? First thing, before we set up.”

To my dismay, he bolted toward me. Should I shriek and make a run for it? I tightened my grip on the Mace.

“Look, Goldy. Don’t run off, please. ‘Cuz I… really want to talk to you. It’s important, I promise.”

If he was going to tell me that he didn’t have the money for the party, that he’d pay me next week, next month, or next year, then I was going to punch him in the face, future clients be damned.

“It’s about the mall, you see,” Shane persisted. “You’re such a great person, Goldy, I feel as if I really could tell you—” He hesitated.

“Shane, please. I’m getting cold. Tell me what?”

He lowered his voice. “It’s about Barry Dean.”

I stopped short. I had to restrain myself from grabbing Shane by his sheepskin lapels and shaking him.

“What about Barry Dean?”

“Well, it’s just that…I don’t know how much you know about the way a mall works—”

“Look, can you just get to the point? My son’s waiting for me, Shane.”

He gulped, then brushed melting snow off his handsome, square face. His brown eyes shone with worry. And guilt? I wasn’t sure.

“I got into trouble. I… did a bad thing, but Barry made it much worse. I… cooked the books of The Gadget Guy. The reason I did it was that once we broke a certain level of sales, the amount of rent we owed Pennybaker International, according to the terms of our lease agreement, went way up. With… Page’s shopping problem, and our current level of debt, we just couldn’t pay more rent. Just could not. So… Barry, who had done next to nothing in terms of his promised promotion for mall tenants, offered to do a deal. He wouldn’t evict me if I paid him fifty thou up front in cash, off the books, and another fifty thou at the end of the year. But…I couldn’t. So he pulled the plug on me. There, I said it.” He paused to take a raspy breath and fixed me with his sad stare. “I know you’re going to ask me did I tell the police about this. The answer is no, I couldn’t do that either. Risk going to jail for cooking my own books? Forget it. So I’m trying to get into online ordering now, out of our house. But if any of my potential backers—the people who are coming to lunch tomorrow—find out I messed with the figures at the store, they’ll run away faster than a herd of elk. I didn’t cheat anybody, Goldy, I just wouldn’t pay that mall their extortionary demands. And I couldn’t afford to pay Barry his bribe. I don’t have that kind of money.”

In the near distance, a car honked. This honk came from my van. Arch was honking at me.

“Shane, why are you telling me all this?”

He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. “Because I know your young friend has been accused of Barry’s murder. I didn’t want you to think I killed Barry, in case Barry had told you about our… conflict. I can’t afford negative publicity at this point. And I’ve read how you sometimes get involved in these cases—”

“OK, OK. Is this accounting crime what you were just talking to Ellie about? Because she was close to Barry, too?”

Shane snorted. “No, we have an issue…with the school. But being in that mall, I saw the way things went. I mean, in addition to not doing the promotion he promised, Barry was not the most moral of guys, you know? He had a woman problem, and I think that’s why he wanted the payoff. To keep up his woman habit. Otherwise, he’d have to stay with old stick-in-the-mud Ellie McNeely. For a while, anyway.”

“Mom!” Arch shrieked. “Come on! Let’s split! You’ve got a cell call! I’m starving! It’s cold! Mom!”

“I have to go.” My thoughts were tangled from all the new information. Did I believe Shane, or not? I wasn’t sure. “So you think this fifty thou was for him, then, not the mall?”

“Of course it was for him! What do you think I’ve been trying to tell you here?”

“Shane, tell the cops all this.”

“You mean your husband?”

“No, no, Tom’s off the case. Anything you can tell the cops about Barry will help them get the big picture. If you have any documentation of what… Barry did, show it to them.” I did not say, Documentation of what you say Barry did. But I thought it. “Maybe Barry pulled this blackmail stuff with other store owners. Just call the department and get connected with the assigned investigators. Please? Believe me, it will look much, much better for you if you tell the cops what happened. If they find out elsewhere, they’ll come after you.”

“Mom! Goldy Schulz! Come on!”

Shane pressed his lips together, then backed away. Somehow, I didn’t think he was bolting to a phone.

My stiff, chilled fingers wrenched the driver door open, and I was confronted with my son’s stiff, chilled face. His fingertips pressed hard on the mouthpiece of the cell phone.

“I am so mad at you!” he hissed furiously. “First you get my coach to quit. Then you come to pick me up, only you don’t pick me up, because you get in a long conversation with my former coach. Which is what you always do. Talk, talk, talk. So I sit in here. Cold. Waiting. Starving. And now we won’t be able to go home, because you’re going to have to talk to this person.” He thrust the phone at me.

I gritted my teeth. When Arch acted like this, I didn’t know if he was showing the dark side of teenage temperament—which seemed to be all dark, come to think of it—or if he was following a more troublesome path on the way to behavior similar to that of his Jerk father. The amazing aspect of this little speech from Arch was how articulate he was when he was enraged. Since this was the opposite of his suave father, who became obscenely incoherent when he was angry, I fastened my seat belt and put the car into gear. I was not, I decided, going to respond to Arch.

“I’m so hungry,” Arch growled, as I put the phone to my ear.

I pressed the phone into the front of my jacket to cover the mouthpiece. “Tom is making enchiladas, and —”

“I don’t care!”

Give up, my inner voice counseled, before I reminded him how much he loved Tom’s cooking. So I did. I piloted the van toward the edge of the snow-frosted parking lot. Into the phone, I purred sweetly, “This is Goldy Schulz of Goldilocks’ Catering. May I help you?”

“You must be making a lot of money, to put someone on hold on a cell phone for seven minutes!”

I sighed. Just what I needed today, one more crab. Tomorrow night I would make crab dip.

“How can I help you?” I suddenly remembered the anonymous call I’d received earlier. This voice was deep, too… but I was fairly sure I was being bawled out by a female. Still, you can’t be too careful. “And who are you, if you don’t mind my asking?”

“You can come pick up this puppy. Barry Dean’s basset hound. He’s late.”

“He’s dead,” I countered bluntly.

“I’m looking right at him.”

I paused. Maybe I needed yet more caffeine, even if it was almost dinnertime. “Who is calling, please?”

“Goldy, fer chrissakes,” growled the husky voice. “It’s Darlene Petrucchio. You useta come into my store, and that kid who useta live with you useta come in, too. Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles. And what do you mean, he’s dead? He’s sitting on my kitchen floor, drooling.”

“Barry Dean is dead,” I said, speaking very slowly and distinctly.

“Well, I know that!” cried an exasperated Darlene Petrucchio. “Otherwise, why would I be calling you? Barry called yesterday and said he was leaving you his dog. He’s late.”

OK. I was driving, one-handed, down the slick, snow-covered curves of the Elk Park Prep driveway. I couldn’t stop to talk sense with chain-smoking, raspy-voiced Darlene of Darlene’s Antiques and Collectibles, or my son would explode. I needed a time-out. I needed to get out of this Abbott and Costello routine about dogs and dead guys.