Chopping Spree

Journal. She got her hands on copy they’re planning to run tomorrow.”

As she piloted her tanklike vehicle toward Main Street, I peered at four blown-up, grainy photos. The first featured Ellie, clad in a tailor-made suit, which made her look stern and manageresque. The second and third showed Barry. In one, he was smooching the cheek of a beaming Pam Disharoon, whose pigtails bobbed enthusiastically. The third photograph of the bunch showed Pam whispering in Barry’s ear, while he sported an impish, cat-who-swallowed-the-canary grin. The fourth photo was a blurry shot of the county coroner’s van. I turned back to the typescript. The caption read: The Man Who Loved Too Much?

How had the Mountain Journal, which demanded that I submit my ads two weeks in advance, put together a background article so quickly? But I knew the answer to that. Gossip, easily obtained in Aspen Meadow, sold copy. In our small town, it didn’t take long to call dozens of sources and put together a smutty article—full of “alleged’s”—that masqueraded as news. And with computers speeding up typesetting, you could gather enough garbage the day after a murder to put together a story and still meet press deadline.

I hastily skimmed the palaver, with its repeated references to a “love triangle.” The fact that Julian had been arrested for Barry’s murder was glossed over, and for this, at least, I was thankful. I guessed the Mountain Journal brains, such as they were, had figured a detained caterer’s assistant wasn’t as sexy as two women smitten with the same man.

In the Man Who Loved Too Much article-to-be, two incidents were detailed, beginning with: “Last month, witnesses claimed an unidentified woman shoved Barry Dean into a ditch on the mall construction site,” followed by “Mrs. McNeely’s allegedly stolen purse” and her “allegedly stolen Lexus keys,” which had ended up with “the Lexus belonging to Ellie McNeely somehow getting smashed into Barry Dean’s classic Mercedes. The Mercedes was totaled.” The paper proceeded to have a field day with the cuff links ordered by Ellie to be engraved for Barry being found in the out-of-control truck that had almost killed him earlier the previous day, only hours before he was brutally murdered. Who had been their sources on this? How I wished I knew.

“It’s unbelievable,” Ellie said, her voice just above a whisper. Her tone was resigned, despondent. “My boyfriend-who-wasn’t-quite-my-fiance was infatuated with a lingerie lady. Now he’s dead, and I’m implicated. I can’t even grieve, because the cops are showing up on my doorstep, at my office, you name it. They ask things like, ‘After you picked up the cuff links, Mrs. McNeely, how did you get them into the truck?’ And worse, ‘Have you had medical or military training, Mrs. McNeely? Did you learn how to stab someone so that they’d be certain to die?’”

“Oh, no.”

“I’m going nuts! I think they’re just holding Julian Teller until I crack! Then they’ll arrest me!”

“OK, first of all,” I said, shaking the typescript, “forget our local rag. People leak stuff to it all the time, their own version of how they want something to read. The staff never checks a single fact, because they don’t have time once they round up their material. How come nobody calls them ‘alleged reporters’?” I was hoping Ellie would laugh, but she didn’t. I tossed the packet into the backseat and turned off the light. We were now chugging past the Bank of Aspen Meadow, where the thermometer read two below zero.

Hunched over the steering wheel, Ellie shook her head grimly. “Not to be materialistic,” she went on woefully, “but the gold cuff links I bought for Barry are in police custody, and I don’t have that engagement ring Barry promised me—”

“So you were engaged?”

She squirmed. “Well, not really. We’d been talking about it. He told me he had a big surprise for me, and he eventually said it was ‘the ring I’d been hoping for.’”

“How long ago was this?”

She shrugged. “About a month? He gave me a riddle I couldn’t understand, though. He promised to help me with it. I ordered him a pair of cuff links, and paid almost three thousand dollars for them. But then I saw him with Pam, in the mall, having lunch. He’d told me he had a meeting with the Pennybaker people, and there they were, acting like lovebirds. That’s when I hired Rufus.”

“Did you push Barry into a ditch?”

“No.”

“Do you know why he had headaches?”

She sighed. “I only knew that he did have headaches. He told me he’d been fighting with someone who worked in the mall. I thought, a fight, like, argument. I didn’t think he meant a real physical fight.”

“You never picked up the cuff links?”

“My purse was stolen! My car was stolen, then wrecked! I had no ID, no credit cards, no driver’s license! Remembering the cuff links was way, way down on my list.” She sighed, but it came out like a sob. “Now the cuff links are being held by the cops as evidence in a murder. It’s like I tried to do something nice for a man I believed really cared about me, and the whole thing backfired. Backfired beyond belief.”

I murmured, “Yeah, it sure did.”

“Dammit, Goldy!” Ellie’s voice turned strident. “Say something that’s going to make me feel better! Why do you think I came over? I thought Barry Dean loved me! And now my life has gone to hell!”

“Well…,” I ventured. “I don’t know if this will make you feel better, but in the You’re-Not-Alone Department, I was married to a man who, even though he was a well-paid doctor, gave me only two hundred dollars, in cash, to spend on Christmas. Because I wanted him to care about me—even though I knew on some deep level that he didn’t—I spent a hundred and fifty dollars of that tiny hoard on a Seiko watch. I’d even felt lucky to find it on sale! But the Seiko wasn’t a Rolex, and the day after Christmas, I found the watch in the trash.”

Ellie managed a wry smile. Then the smile turned bitter. “What am I going to do? How can I keep little Cameron from being humiliated by all this?”

“Your daughter will be OK,” I assured her. “She knows you’re a good mom.” I remembered Arch’s brusque declaration: I don’t need a babysitter. “Anyway, Ellie… Cameron’s in tenth grade now. Maybe she’s not so little anymore.”

“And here I was thinking what a loving stepfather Barry would make.” She sighed. “I’m just worried the other kids will read this trashy Journal article and make fun of Cameron. I hate to think of those Elk Park Prep bitches hurting her feelings.”

We whizzed by the lake. Wind-blown pebbles of snow pelted the ice. Under the bright night lights, a few brave skaters were taking advantage of the late burst of freezing weather. Just the thought of skating made me shiver.

“Ellie, where are we going?”

“Well, if you don’t mind, we’re going to Elk Park Prep. I… I forgot something.”

I knew she was lying. “The school will be locked up, Ellie.”

She waved one hand. “Doesn’t matter. I’ll explain when we get there.”

“Speaking of Elk Park Prep, can you… explain to me why you were arguing with Shane there tonight?”

She exhaled and slowed around a curve. “Board business is supposed to be confidential.”

“Ellie, I promise, I’m not going to get on the phone and call people about board business.”

“Shane… is having financial problems.”

“I know about the eviction from Westside.” I gnawed the inside of my cheek. I know he was holding back on his rent. I know his wife has a bad spending problem. And worst of all: I know I haven’t received final payment for this lunch I’m doing for him tomorrow.

Ellie squinted into the darkness. “Shane’s blaming his problems on Barry. I don’t believe this story about Barry demanding a kickback for ignoring the rent issue, by the way. In any event, Shane’s broke. And in debt. So… he and Page are pulling their girls from Elk Park Prep. They’re demanding their two-thousand-dollar deposit for next year back. I tried to explain that we simply can’t do that. The deposits are nonrefundable. But you saw how Shane was tonight; he wouldn’t listen. If you heard about the car accident, you probably know how Page intercepted his loan money.”

“I do.”

“I can’t bend school rules for him. I can’t help him at the bank, either. But he just refused to believe that I can’t.”

We pulled through the school’s massive stone gates. Elegant street lamps lit the drive like luminarias. The