Chopping Spree

“The dogs are in with Arch,” he whispered.

“I know. I told him it was OK. You know how he loves dogs. And at least Late isn’t howling. He must feel protected by Arch and Jake.” Tom was silent. “Why am I talking about a basset hound?” I said. “I just rescued a friend from a frozen toilet tank, for crying out loud!”

Tom’s laugh shook the bed. He enclosed me in a bear hug, then planted a passionate kiss on my neck. And that was just the beginning.

Lovemaking, like food, can be wonderfully healing.

Wednesday morning, an even stronger icy wind battered the house and shrieked through the trees. Brilliant pink clouds shone along the eastern horizon. I’d lived in Colorado too long not to know this was a winter storm front announcing itself. I made French toast for Tom and Arch. While Tom was rinsing the dishes, Arch offhandedly lifted his shirt to show me his tattoo.

“All the lacrosse guys have ‘em,” he explained. “And sometimes they come in handy in identifying corpses, Tom told me.”

“Arch, please. A mom would like to start the day knowing her son is focusing on school, not corpses.”

“Oh!” he said, brightening. “That reminds me. Todd is going to pierce my ear so I can wear one gold earring.”

My stomach turned over. “Please, Arch. Please don’t pierce your ear.” I was suddenly desperate for another espresso. “Isn’t it time for you guys to take off?” I asked, trying not to sound exasperated.

“Yup!” Tom said with cheer, as he put on his jacket and Arch hoisted his backpack.

“Don’t you want your lacrosse equipment, buddy?” I asked. Then I remembered that they’d be missing a goal, the one I’d hacked to pieces. Plus, the snow-covered field was about to be turned into a crime scene.

Arch sighed. “There’s no lacrosse today. You’re one of the moms taking us on the field trip to dissect a cadaver at Lutheran Hospital. Don’t you remember?” I rubbed my forehead, baffled. “You were going to pick up Todd and me and a couple of other guys in the parking lot at four. Are you still going to be able to do it, or should Todd call his mom to take over?” His tone said that he suspected I would once again let him down.

“I will be there,” I promised through clenched teeth.

As Tom hustled Arch out the door, I pulled myself a triple shot of espresso and took a long sip. Heavenly. Before starting to cook, though, I turned my attention to the animals. I brought Jake’s and Scout’s bowls in from the deck, filled them with food and water, and put the dishes back outside. On the deck, I stared down in confusion at two of my Minton bone china bowls, now crusted with dog food and ice. Arch had either ignored or forgotten the bag from Darlene, and had poured some of Jake’s food into my expensive china bowls to feed the puppy. Shaking my head, I filled the china bowls with soapy water, then reached into the grocery bag from Darlene that held Late’s dishes.

I pulled out one, then the other. When I felt tape on the dish bottoms, I casually turned each over, then gaped at them in disbelief. When I recovered, I put them down carefully and filled some old bowls of ours with more of Jake’s food for Barry’s puppy. When all the dishes were outside, I called the animals. Scout was, as usual, no place to be seen, but Jake and Late came bounding over and began gobbling.

Back inside, I put in a call to Darlene Petrucchio. I kept staring at the two dishes she’d given me. They both looked as if she’d hastily applied masking tape to them, then penned in the name.

“Darlene!” I said when she picked up. “It’s Goldy Schulz—”

“It ain’t even eight in the morning! I don’t wanna hear what you gotta say! I ain’t takin’ that hound back!”

“Darlene, please. This is very important. Did Barry Dean tell you to write the puppy’s name on the bottom of these two dishes?”

“What? Lemme get some coffee.”

I waited, then asked her my question again.

“Yeah, yeah, he told me to write the name just the way he spelt it. He said tape it on the dishes before I gave you the puppy. I said, ‘Why don’t you do it yourself?’ He just laughed. He said he couldn’t spell. And I said, ‘No kidding.’ He also said you’d get a kick out of it.”

“Hold on a sec. So has this always been the puppy’s name?”

“No, no, no,” Darlene corrected me. “Barry was going to call him Honey Boy or Honey Hound, something like that. But those sounded too girly, you know? Or maybe it reminded him of his old dogs, I don’t know. So we just called the puppy Puppy. Until Monday afternoon when he called. He said jes’ to put that name on. He said he knew the spelling was wrong. But I should just write it the way he spelt it, and tape it onto those bowls. So I did.”

I thanked her and hung up, troubled. The dogs had finished eating, and were eager to come in from the cold. I settled them in their pet condo and washed and dried their dishes. Then I studied Darlene’s block letters, penned in blue ballpoint on masking tape.

I thought Barry had named the hound Late. But staring up at me from both dishes was the word LATTE. Latte, the coffee drink.

So. Was this a joke? Or was this Barry’s little good-bye puzzle to me?

What had Barry and I had in common? Psych class. A love of dogs. Coffee.

Barry hadn’t been a very good boyfriend to either Ellie or Pam—at least, not in my opinion. But he’d been a regular old good friend to me once, and we’d drunk a lot of coffee together. So was Barry saying, Take care of my dog, and you’ll love him since he’s named after a coffee drink? I supposed so.

It wasn’t much, and it was sappy to boot. But it made me cry anyway.

At eight, the phone rang. To my surprise, it was Rob Eakin, now acting manager of Westside Mall.

“Sorry to be calling so early,” he apologized. He sounded hurried. “I’m in early, trying to get a million things straightened out.”

“What can I do for you?”

I heard him take a deep breath. “We’re postponing the Prospective Tenants’ Lunch,” he said timidly. “Ah, indefinitely. When there’s a crime in a mall, potential lessees get cold feet,” he rushed on. “Half of the prospective tenants who were coming to the lunch have already canceled. We’re expecting the rest to be no-shows. And with the drainage problem still delaying completion of the addition, we don’t have much to show folks who might want to locate here. Frankly, we can’t take the chance of turning them off permanently.”

My heart plummeted. I tried to take a yoga cleansing breath and ended up gasping. The twenty pounds of aged prime rib in my side-by-side would last two, three days at the most. I could freeze it, of course. However, the chances of finding another client with the same menu were slim.

There was something that worried me more, however. With mall traffic down because of Barry’s unsolved death, and with construction on the much-touted addition delayed, would Rob Eakin expect a refund for the Tenants’ Lunch? By contract, of course, the money was mine, and we were talking over a thousand dollars. Despite my new prosperity, this was not a sum I could afford to see disappear, especially since I’d already spent most of it on Arch’s trashed guitar.

“You’re going to, I mean, do you have another date—”

Rob Eakin sniffed. “We’re sorry to be canceling within twenty-four hours of the event. But you’ll have all that food left over that you can use elsewhere, not to mention a whole day off, courtesy of the labor cost we’ve already paid for.” He cleared his throat, and a voice in the back of my head snarled, Hang up on this dolt right now. But I didn’t, and Rob Eakin raised his voice. “We’d like to rely on your honor and have you refund us seventy-five percent of our payment.”

“Mr. Eakin. I have also paid for that food. In the labor department, my staff will expect to be paid, whether they show up or not.” I inhaled to steady myself. “Goldilocks’ Catering pays its bills for food and labor. We don’t want to get a reputation for reneging on our commitments. In fact, we have an excellent reputation for servicing the best-heeled clients in both Furman County and Denver. Perhaps you’ve seen some of the articles about us in the newspapers.” When all else fails, threaten media exposure. Especially in the Mountain Journal.

Rob Eakin hesitated. “Barry did tell me you’d been in the news. We… don’t want you to speak negatively of