Chopping Spree

inside the door, a bulky woman in her sixties silently thrust her formidable chin in my direction. Using a pencil, she scratched her scalp through her thinning black hair. She was watching my every move.

“Victor,” she said in a low voice, “have you taken that sinus medication I gave you?”

“Not yet, Rhonda. I just need to have a bit of a visit with—”

Rhonda’s fleshy jowls jiggled as she addressed me. “No reporters yet, miss. We’ll have a big press party in six weeks, and then you can—”

“I’m not a reporter—”

“It’s OK,” Victor interrupted. “We’ll only be a few minutes.”

“Mall management said no journalists, Mr. Wilson,” she scolded him loudly, the edginess provided for my benefit. “And I have six urgent messages here for you.” She waved a handful of pink slips and sent another glower in my direction. Rhonda’s look said Every one of these is more important than you, bitch.

Victor ignored Rhonda’s protectiveness and handed me a foam cup of muddy coffee that he murmured might not be fresh, but was definitely hot. Huddled beside one of the space heaters, I thanked him gratefully. He gestured toward diet sweetener and nondairy creamer, non-food inventions that I wish could be relegated to kindergarten projects involving glue and construction paper. I declined and grinned in Rhonda’s direction, tempted to ask for real cream. Sensing a demand, she narrowed her eyes and jutted out that scary chin.

“Let’s go in my office,” Victor mumbled. I followed him into a walled-off cubicle, where he shut the plywood door, removed his hard hat, and shrugged out of his filthy overcoat. Then he nodded to a metal chair on the near side of his paper-strewn desk.

“Thanks,” I said again. “I really won’t be but a few minutes. Here you go,” I added, pulling the zipped plastic bag of cookies out of my purse. “My thanks for helping the other day.”

“No problem,” he replied cheerfully as he settled into his own squeaky desk chair. He unzipped the bag, put in a hand so dirty I shuddered, and brought out half a dozen cookies. Pushing a whole one into his mouth, he nodded, mumbled gratitude, and washed the crumbs down with the coffee.

As I watched him, I wondered why I’d ever thought catering was so demanding. Construction had to be much worse. Victor’s haggard cheeks glowed with grime, and his bloodshot eyes made me wonder if he was getting any sleep. After he finished a second cookie, he reached for a foil packet, probably Rhonda’s sinus meds. Pulling off the foil, he popped the pills into his mouth, then washed them down with more of the dark swill in his cup. He winced and said, “’Scuse me.”

“You probably shouldn’t be working if you’re sick.” Would my controlling-mom voice never shut up?

Victor gave me a half-grin. “Fat chance. Listen, I never got a chance to apologize about that truck situation. We figure it was a guy from the old crew, a misfit that No-toe Holden, our former construction manager, fired. The guy’s name is Jorge Sanchez. Sanchez is your standard disgruntled worker. Sometimes they come back, try to steal equipment or vehicles. Anyway, I’m really sorry about that, if you’re here looking for someone to take the blame.”

“No, that’s not why I’m here.” I smiled. “You’ve been on this project, what? A year?”

Victor blew on his coffee, took a sip, and let out a long breath. “From the beginning. Eleven months. Got promoted when Holden quit.” He furrowed his brow. “Hey, sorry about Rhonda, too. You’ve got to understand we’re under a ton of pressure here. We’ve got a drywall contractor refusing to send a crew out and landscapers claiming they can’t put in bushes until the snow melts. Half of the interiors were painted the wrong colors. The portable toilets haven’t been cleaned in two weeks, and I’ve got guys passing out from the stench. And that’s just today.”

Hey, don’t talk to me about portable toilets. I pretended to sip some of the viscous black liquid, then set the foam cup on a grubby plastic table. “Actually, the problem is a… this friend of ours ended up in jail after Barry Dean was killed—”

Victor nodded and rubbed his filthy forehead. “Yeah, I know. Poor Dean. He really wanted to see this project finished.” He drank more coffee, then sighed. “And I’m sorry about your friend. I know one of our guys said that the kid who was with you was driving our truck when Dean nearly got killed. I never did see who exactly was driving that truck. I still think it was Sanchez.”

Since I was quite sure that someone, if not several people, would come forward and say that Julian had been running up the parking lot, and not driving the truck, I let this pass.

“You know, if I just could have more crew,” Victor was explaining, “we could have had more supervision of the—”

“Victor,” I said quickly, to forestall more apologies, “there’s going to be something in the newspaper, probably in a few days. Lucas Holden has been found dead.”

He dropped his coffee cup. “Oh, Christ!” Shaking his head, he rolled back his chair and stared at the mess at his feet in disbelief. Then he grabbed a handful of tissues from a dusty box and threw them onto the floor. “Did he kill himself?”

Now it was my turn to be surprised. Suicide was not a possibility I’d even contemplated. And Helen Keith certainly hadn’t mentioned it.

“Heart attack, I think,” I stammered. “But… I guess I was hoping to find out about his background. I’m thinking maybe there’s something in it that could help our friend in jail.”

“I’ll bet it was suicide. No-toe was just so damned depressed,” Victor continued gloomily, as if he were thinking of offing himself, to end his own remorse about everything. “One day, he just said, ‘I quit.’” He shook his head in disgust. “Some guys just can’t take the pressure of construction.”

“I need to ask you about the time before Holden quit. About a month ago. Was Holden the one who pushed Barry down, so that he landed in a ditch out here on the construction site? Or did he see who pushed Barry?”

Victor’s thin eyebrows rose. “No. It wasn’t No-toe. But how did you hear about that?”

“Oh, you know, some gossip was reported in the paper…”

His voice turned cautious. “Well, Barry told us to keep our mouths shut about that incident. If it got out, he said, things would get worse for him. That’s what he said. They’re putting pipes and cables in that ditch now, but it was about seven feet deep before.”

“Did you see who pushed him?”

“Yeah. I did.” He lowered his voice. My skin crawled, and I imagined the dreaded Rhonda with one of her large ears pressed against the thin door.

“So did No-toe,” Victor added, just above a whisper. I waited, heart hammering. “Dean had had a real bad fight with his girlfriend,” he continued. “One of ’em, anyway. Dean was two-timing, see. But if you heard about the ditch thing, you probably heard that, too.” I nodded. Victor squirmed, then finally whispered, “That girlfriend was here the day of the truck thing. Anyway, she didn’t push him down so that he fell into a ditch, she pushed him into the ditch. Right then, Dean screamed, ‘Don’t! Ellie, don’t!’” Victor’s bloodshot eyes squinted at me. “So. Do you know this Ellie?”

CHAPTER 17

At the mention of my friend’s name, I made my face blank and, shivering, tugged my coat around me. The office’s little space heater suddenly seemed woefully inadequate.

“I sort of know her,” I evaded.

“I found out her last name when her car got crashed into Dean’s Mercedes,” Victor told me. “It was in the newspaper. McNeely. Wealthy woman who swears she wasn’t driving.” He grinned in mock defeat. “The rich never have to pay. You and I work our butts off and we get what? Hot kitchens, freezing offices, and no appreciation.” He stopped to pull out a tissue. “Ever notice?”

While he blew his nose, I cleared my throat, and looked around the room again. Plans, charts, and notes were pinned to every bit of wall space. Victor was right about one thing: I’d already decided I wouldn’t want to work in this frigid, disorganized environment.

I asked, “Did anyone besides you and Holden see Ellie McNeely push Barry into the ditch?”

“It was early in the morning,” Victor replied. “Couple of guys might have been around. We were discussing delays on the project, when this woman comes running up and starts screaming at Dean about how he had a