Chopping Spree

Shane blushed. “Well, yeah. I guess. Sorry. But don’t worry, they always get into such a big fight that they miss dessert. I just wish they’d argue now, and Pam would stomp off before my investors arrive.” He swerved to avoid a pine tree—his driveway was treacherous—and pulled up by Pam’s Audi. From behind her frosted windshield, Liz beeped and waved.

“Just park the Audi on the far side of the garage, near the middle storage shed,” Shane advised. “Then you all can get your vans next to the house.”

I hopped out, mulling over the words middle storage shed. How much stuff could a couple with two ninth-graders have? Enough, apparently, to fill a house and several sheds. I started the Audi on only the second try. Pam wouldn’t have won any awards in the Clean Car Competition, that was for sure. A cereal bowl with hardened flakes clanked back and forth on the carpet in front of the passenger seat; newspapers strewn across the backseat swished forward as I accelerated; a Starbucks cup of long-dead coffee sloshed in the container by the radio. Well, I now knew one thing for certain about Pam: She was a true slob. During the few minutes I let the Audi warm up, I pawed through everything within reach. With Julian in jail, I had no scruples left. Unfortunately, I found nothing about Barry’s murder or anything else that might bear on the case.

I crept up the driveway and pulled Pam’s car carefully to the right of the garage where there were indeed three lovely log storage sheds. Liz piloted my van behind me. Shane trucked her back to her own van while I began unloading supplies. After Liz roared up the driveway and parked beside me, Shane used the plow-blade on his truck to smooth out a parking area in front of the house. Meanwhile, Liz and I quickly trekked the last of our supplies into the kitchen.

One of the gold-and-white-granite countertops held two almost-empty wine bottles. The sisters’ talking and laughing had ratcheted up several decibels. I began to worry. It was only 10:30 A.M. Forget dessert, how sloshed would Pam and Page be by lunch? I shoved this concern aside and relieved Liz of her last box. Within five minutes, we were working side by side in the kitchen.

“If this guy can’t manage to keep a store going, where did he get the money to buy this place?” Liz whispered as we carefully heaved the twenty-plus-pound beef roast into the oven. It would be hot and perfect by the time lunch was ready.

“He inherited it, I think,” I whispered back. “According to Marla, Shane’s gone through a string of bad businesses. Page married him for his money, but the dough’s leaking away. That’s the main reason he’s seeking investors to take his business on-line.”

“Have you ever actually catered an event for Page Stockham?” Liz asked. Her tone indicated that she had, and had lived to tell the tale.

“I thought you didn’t know them,” I protested, still whispering. “I’m only vaguely acquainted with them, through Marla.”

Liz rolled her eyes. “I don’t know them. But I had the misfortune of having to cater for her once.” She hissed: “She is impossible.”

I pressed the button on the nonstick spray can and lightly coated the Stockhams’ indoor grill for the mushroom salad. “I thought you only catered for your corporation.”

“I did,” said Liz, as she organized thirteen soup bowls on large saucers. “But Page was chairing a fund-raising event that my company was hosting. She drove me nuts—nickel-and-diming my department to death, trying to get a more expensive menu for the amount contracted. She kept saying she’d talked to this or that catering company and they could do such-and-such for so much less! Finally I told her I didn’t care, go ahead and hire somebody else. Just be sure to have it OK’d by the corporation. The corporation told her I was their in-house caterer, and she could not hire anyone else and expect them to pay the bills. Plus I was in charge of approving the guest list. I never saw it, and had a floating number of attendees from her, ranging from two to three hundred. In the end, Page invited all her friends, even though they didn’t give a whit about the charity. She acted as if it was her party, thrown just for her and her pals, to whom she talked loudly while the director of the charity made his pitch. ‘Try some of my caviar,’ she urged her pals, once we broke for food. She kept telling them to load up on the barbecued prawns and roast suckling pig, they’d been so difficult for her to get! She used that party to pay off all her social debts, forever.”

“For crying out loud.” The themes of this marriage—of entitlement to money that belonged to others, of treating people who worked for you like slaves, of not paying for what you received—were becoming crystal clear. The Stockhams were arrogant, self-centered rule-breakers who blamed all their problems on others. Had Barry Dean threatened this selfish way of doing things? According to Marla, Barry had discovered The Gadget Guy’s nonpayment of rent, and had demanded compensation. In the parent guidebooks, they call this consequences. Had Barry’s insistence on consequences for the Stockhams cost him his life?

I couldn’t concentrate on this question, because I had to plate up the greens that would form the base for the mushroom salad. Worse, Liz was still regaling me with her tale of Page Stockham.

“So at that point, Bitch Page went behind my back and complained to one of the vice presidents that I’d been uncooperative. She even advised him not to pay my food bills. She claimed I was jacking up the price! She is an insufferable bitch! I hope she doesn’t recognize me today. Maybe my new haircut will help.”

She advised him not to pay my bill…. Well, here we were setting up in the kitchen and I still didn’t have a ring. I glanced around the kitchen: Liz was bringing the Asian stock up to the simmer and unwrapping the dumplings. I drizzled the glistening marinade over the wild mushrooms, and went to look for our host. By golly, I was going to pack everything up and skedaddle if he didn’t pay.

Shane, his mouth drooping, sat in what I hoped was not a drunken stupor on a love seat across the living room from Page and Pam. The sisters’ conversation seemed to be reaching the simmer much faster than our dumpling soup.

“I helped Aunt Linda find the new doctor who did her so much good,” Page was insisting, gesticulating with her wineglass. “I fired that cardiologist who’d misdiagnosed her, and I was the one who ordered new tests and hired her a new cook. You couldn’t be bothered, Pam, because you were too busy trying on nighties for men twenty years your senior—”

“Excuse me, but at least I have a job,” Pam retorted, then slugged down wine. “That’s unlike some people, who live off others’ unearned wealth.”

“Oh, so you’re a communist now?”

“Furthermore,” Pam steamed on, “I didn’t go rifling through Aunt Linda’s cobalt stems until I found the goblet where she hid the diamond pendant—”

“That diamond pendant was stolen!”

“By whom?”

“The cook!”

“Would that be the same cook you hired?”

“I didn’tknow she was a thief!” Page screamed.

Pam took another noisy gulp of Burgundy. “Excuse me, but I think you know all about thieves!”

“Exactly what are you insinuating?”

“You’ve got that pendant and I want to know where it is!”

“Shane,” I said in a low voice. “I’ll need payment before we can proceed.”

Shane’s face was frozen in pain. While the two sisters screamed, he hauled himself out of the love seat and motioned for me to follow him down the hall. Intent on their argument, Pam and Page did not register our departure, which was probably for the best.

“These are the bathrooms, in case clients ask,” he told me, pointing to each side of the hallway. I told him this was good to know. I reached in to flip on the lights of a black-and-silver rest room on one side, and a peach- papered and marble-countered one on the opposite wall. I never broke my stride. I didn’t want to give Shane the chance to get distracted—again.