Chopping Spree

“First of all,” she said, handing me a check, “here’s a new payment for your gratuity. Rob Eakin cut another check, since the cops are keeping everything. Plus, I found what you were looking for,” Heather continued brightly. She sucked noisily on her straw. “Barry did leave you something.”

“Oh, Heather.” I groaned, thinking of Julian’s haggard face behind the jail glass. “Why didn’t you call me? For crying out loud, this is about a murder case!”

“Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve been busy,” she cried. “It’s been nuts around here, with the crews working day and night, and Rob trying to stave off the potential tenants. Plus, somebody just called here to ask for a comment about our old construction manager turning up dead. It’s like, this mess never stops.”

“Just give me whatever it is, would you please? Then I need to ask you something about Barry.”

“Not again!” she protested as she wedged past her desk and nabbed a manila envelope that was cantilevered off a filing cabinet. “I’ve got a ton of stuff to do!”

I didn’t remark about her seeming to have time for so-called Hawaiian pizza and pink lemonade or for getting her hair done. Instead, I eyed the envelope that had a scrawled Goldy——Dog File across it.

“Where did you find this?” I asked.

“Barry had a file labeled ‘Catering.’ The cops went through it but didn’t take stuff from it, it looks like.” She was peering at the envelope in my hand with undisguised curiosity. “Your contracts were in the file, plus that manila envelope. What’s a dog file?”

“I have no idea, and I doubt I’ll find out anytime soon.” I tucked the envelope under my arm. “Look, I’m sorry to be crabby but—”

“It’s all right,” she said, suddenly contrite. Maybe all this new cheer of hers was just her way of denying what had happened to her boss.

“A friend of ours is in jail—”

“I heard. Your assistant.”

“My assistant did not kill Barry,” I said emphatically. “And I’m trying to find out who did.” When she wrinkled her nose, I persisted. “Will you help me?”

She took a sip of lemonade. She said, “I’ll try,” without much enthusiasm.

“What I need to know now,” I told Heather earnestly, “is about discounts and gifts that Barry received. Say, from stores. Reps. Vendors. Stuff that might, you know, make people jealous.”

Heather’s forehead wrinkled. She didn’t seem to be thinking so much as trying to find a way to say something unsavory. When I cleared my throat impatiently, she eased back into her chair. “We’re supposed to have a no-gift policy….”

“Supposed to?”

She took a bite of pizza and avoided my eyes. After a moment, she said, “Before Barry took over, the only discount we got was at the mall’s fast food places. But when the expansion started, stores were really wild to get in here.” Her hand went to her throat, where she fingered a thin gold chain. “Barry, uh, did take gifts. He gave a lot of them away, though,” she added hastily. “I mean, he didn’t need a woman’s diamond Rolex or a monthly getaway trip to some exotic place like Maui.”

I gripped the lumpy envelope. “Heather, this is terribly important. I have to know the truth. I need to know about specific things he received.” In fact, that was what I’d been mulling over since Page’s outburst at the meeting: Is this true? Or is jealous Page imagining or exaggerating gifts Barry gave Pam?

“All right, all right!” Heather cried, blushing. “Barry… gave me this chain, a free gift from Barton’s Jewelry! And he gave my dad a case of Glenlivet. My mom asked for a Vuitton bag and he surprised her with it. That’s it, I promise! We didn’t take any other gifts from Barry and I don’t know where he got the stuff. So… are you going to turn me in?”

I exhaled and remembered that someone with evidence about Barry’s headaches had hired a lawyer to offer that evidence in exchange for immunity from prosecution. Would that prosecution have been for receiving gifts without paying gift or income taxes? “What did Barry give Pam Disharoon? Do you know?”

Heather’s eyes widened. “Nobody knows that for sure. But lots of people wanted to.”

“Like?”

“That private eye,” she replied, with a dramatic wave of one hand. No question, this girl had seen too many TV crime shows. “The cops. And some tall blond woman who said she was from the IRS, but I didn’t believe her for a second. She looked a lot like Pam, too. Maybe she was her cousin.”

“Do you know exactly what Barry gave Pam?” If it was big, I thought, if it was really, really, really big, then maybe someone had been so angry, jealous, or something, that he or she had felt justified in killing Barry Dean.

Heather shrugged and popped a piece of ham into her mouth. “Barry showed me some of the jewelry. That diamond Rolex I told you about, a diamond bracelet, some emerald earrings. I asked him if he was giving pieces to Ellie, too. He said, ‘Of course! Only her taste is so conservative. And anyway, she’s already got lots of jewelry.’”

“What else did Barry give Pam?”

“He… let her have his Audi, I think. His car got wrecked, and the Audi was in the shop, so he ended up with two problem vehicles, plus he didn’t drive his BMW, usually. He only wanted one new car, the Saab, plus the Beemer racing car. Oh, and he gave Pam tickets for luxury trips, although I’m not sure they had a chance to have sexual relations anywhere but in that new car of his. Barry thought he was being followed on the weekends. Looking back, you know, I figured it was that investigator—you know, the one Ellie McNeely hired—who was following Barry.”

“Barry and Pam had sex in the new Saab?” Was that before or after he drove me out for a latte? Blech! Anyway, I wasn’t sure Heather was telling the truth. She was at that age when imagined sexual details made any story more fun. Come to think of it, I suppose that was any age.

“I’m not kidding!” she protested. “Barry told me about it, along with all the juicy details. I should have sued him for sexual harassment. ‘Ever done it in a car, Heather?’ he used to ask me, after lunch. He was laughing. His clothes were all rumpled; he’d gone out with the emerald earrings and come back empty-handed, so I just knew he and Pam had done it. He said, ‘The car is just the best place. You’ve got leather smells and risk, and then every time you drive it, you can think back to what you did in it a few hours ago.’ I mean, is that sexual harassment or what?” She punctuated her question by taking another bite of pizza.

So much for Rufus Investigations being able to tell Ellie definitively what was going on. Whatever had been going on between Pam and Barry, it had not been a “mental affair,” it had been the genuine article. No wonder he’d missed all those dates with Ellie. I felt a pang of sympathy for my old church friend. “Did Barry give Pam anything else?”

Heather folded up the pizza box and pushed it into her trash can. “Double discount coupons at all the stores, part of a promotion campaign to get mall workers to shop at the mall. He also gave her at least one mink jacket that I know of. I haven’t the faintest clue how he got that. Oh, and he sent her lots of flowers. Denver Floral wanted to lease here really bad.” She arched an eyebrow. “Mrs. McNeely probably got really upset when she found out about what he was doing for Pam, huh? What he was doing to Pam. I mean, that he was doing Pam.”

CHAPTER 18

I thanked Heather and left. Two minutes later, I locked myself into a bathroom stall and opened the envelope. I wasn’t tampering with evidence, I reasoned, because Barry had left this for me. Besides, Barry had always been interested in what dishes I’d be serving. Maybe it was just menus.

It was not menus. The manila envelope contained two newspaper clippings, a business-envelope-size piece of opened mail, and three cardboard boxes from the same high-end line of women’s cosmetics.