Chopping Spree

well. I’d heard once of people hiding money in the well, though, so I hefted out the tire, which was as cold and heavy as a frigid boulder. For all my effort, the wheel well was empty.

I slammed the trunk shut and slid into the Saab’s driver’s seat.

I should have guessed the upholstery would be cold, but the icy, hardened leather still sent a chill down my spine. My breath clouded the inside of the car as I poked around, looking in every crevice. I was careful, though. After hearing Heather’s story of her boss’s lunchtime activities, I didn’t want to examine the seats themselves too closely.

At least the cops had not left a mess. The car interior was spotless. On the backseat floor, a thick rumpled towel indicated Barry had probably taken Latte on rides the way he had taken his beloved Honey years ago. Other than that, there were no newspapers, no clothes, no sporting equipment, no clutter of any kind. I groped gingerly under the seats and again came up empty.

The glove compartment yielded the proof of insurance and manual, period. I slammed it shut, frustrated. Then, remembering a trick I’d seen in a movie, I turned the Saab key one click in the ignition, so as to run the accessories. Then I deftly punched the Eject button on both the CD and cassette players. They were empty.

“Dammit!” I yelled, creating another big cloud of verbal steam. Barry had been so proud of this car. The perforated leather seats were ventilated with fans, the turbo kicked in with a blast of power, and he had shown me all its zippy bells and whistles when he’d taken me out for…

Coffee. I smiled. Bells and whistles, indeed. Those inventive Swedes had designed a particularly cool gizmo for holding your coffee. Barry himself had pressed the button that brought down a vertical plastic cylinder that automatically turned ninety degrees to hold my … latte.

Breathing another prayer, I pushed the button. It didn’t move. I cursed silently and pressed it again. The vertical panel squeaked out and opened sideways. Inside the empty circle where my latte had once sat was a key, stuck under plastic tape.

With my frigid fingers barely able to move, I scraped and ripped at the tape until I’d pulled that sucker of a key out of the cup holder. As I stomped back to the house, key ring and new key in hand, I tried to stay calm.

You think this is fun, Barry? my mind growled. Did you ever spend time in jail? Have any of your friends been stuck behind bars? Next time, leave typed instructions with your lawyer. It’ll be easier on both of us.

I ransacked his office, looking for a file cabinet that needed a key. Nothing. Every drawer was unlocked.

Dog File, Barry had written beside my name on the manila envelope. Maybe if I again spread out everything that was in that packet, I’d see a common element that would lead me to the dog file.

I jammed all the keys into my pocket, slammed out the front door, and traipsed over the ice to my van. It was getting late. I was tired, frustrated, and upset. But it was unlikely Darlene, much less the cops, would ever let me into Barry’s house again to look for an imaginary disk. Not only that, but I was running out of time. At my van, I pulled out the manila envelope, then crunched through the packed ice back to Barry’s chalet.

Packet in hand, I settled onto the scratchy, black braided rug in the living room. At eye level, I was surrounded by the mournful faces of needlepointed, painted, and lacquered basset hounds.

“Yeah, yeah,” I muttered to them. “How come your master had to make everything so difficult?”

On the floor, I laid everything out: the compact, lipstick, and blush; the editorial decrying the mall addition; the article on Teddy; the paycheck to Lucas Holden that had been returned by the post office. Next to them, I placed the manila envelope itself, with its scrawled Goldy and Dog File notations written in different colored inks, probably penned at different times. My guess was that the Goldy reminder had come later, once Barry decided after the truck incident to send me on a wild-goose chase, in case he took a powder.

I surveyed the stuff. Some people enjoy creating a tangle for others, so that only the most determined folks will try to figure out the solution. Clearly, Barry was that kind of person. On the day he died, he’d bequeathed his newly named basset hound to me; he’d also assembled some articles and stuffed them in a manila envelope labeled with my name and a reference to an enigmatic dog file. Less than an hour before he’d been murdered, he’d written me a note saying he had a “tip” for me. Since Barry had mentioned both a check and a tip in his note, I had to assume that that “tip” was verbal in nature, and would have explained everything.

“But the risk, Barry,” I said aloud, thinking hard, “is that when you leave too many clues, no one, not even a caterer-turned-sleuth-with-a-friend-in-jail, no one will be able to figure out what the hell you were trying to say.”

All around the room, the basset hounds looked sadder than ever. I ignored their canine countenances and picked up each item from the floor, examined it again, then set it down.

Nothing.

My back ached. I eased myself up to a chair, propped my feet up on an ottoman, and again surveyed the pattern of items. Still, no ideas popped. If I were an old-fashioned deductive English detective, I reflected, I’d have a nice glass of sherry and ponder. I surveyed the living room. Along one wall, the black lacquered cabinet—complete with a family of basset hounds painted on the front—held a silver tray of crystal sherry glasses and, bless me, a bottle of Dry Sack.

I heaved myself up, crossed the room, uncorked the opened bottle, and poured myself a very small dose. I recorked the bottle and downed a lovely sip. Barry the showman undoubtedly would have preferred offering me a rare wine, and I probably should have checked to see if he had any, but I wasn’t choosy, I thought, as I took another sip. Besides, I thought as I peered downward, the liquor cabinet was… oh, God.

Locked.

I was so startled I turned too fast and sent the sherry bottle flying. I grabbed for it and missed. The bottle didn’t break, thank goodness, but rolled across the living room rug. In trying to catch the bottle, though, I did drop my glass, which crashed and shattered. Exhaling, I stepped over the splinters of glass and the puddle of sherry, tiptoed to Barry’s keys, and nabbed the one I’d extracted from the Saab cup holder. With my heart thundering, I inserted it into the cabinet keyhole.

The heavy door opened easily. Inside were not the bottles of expensive wine I had expected, but a stack of files about three inches high. I grabbed them. Why had the cops not taken the cabinet? I wondered. I could hear what they would say. Because it was extremely heavy, because it was in the living room, because it was a liquor cabinet, because it was locked. As the ace investigator in the department, Tom would have taken it, of course, and broken into it. But he’d been off the case from the beginning.

I danced back across the room and opened up the files.

Inside the first file was a bulkily folded blueprint. I spread it out, stared at it, and finally figured out that the Existing Structure was Westside Mall. Numbers dotted the plan for the addition and lot, but what did that tell me? Not a thing. Someone—Barry?—had penned X’s in three different spots. Barry had been trained as an architect; he’d known what the diagram meant. For me, it might just as well have been in Swahili.

Next in the pile was a banded packet of Polaroids and folded sketches. I laid the sketches—there were three of them—out in front of me like cards. The Polaroids were not of Pam or Ellie, but of concrete and dirt photographed from what appeared to be different angles. At the bottom of each photo were penned dates, all in February. The sketches were in Barry’s hand, and resembled a cross-section of an archeological dig. Where footings should be, he’d written, beside a set of lines. Where they are, he’d written to the left of another diagram, and then added: CHECK PHOTOS!

O-kay. I took a thoughtful breath and plowed on. Next was a sheet: Siblings & Incomes, with two names typed and annotated.

Lawrence. Criminal defense attorney; partner in firm. Annual income: 5 million ++++.

Bachman. Orthopedic surgeon; operates on world-class athletes. Annual income: 3 million ++++.

At the bottom was another Barry-scribbled note. Amount he’s borrowed to build custom home: $520,000. Approximate profit from sale of topsoil from this site: $1,600,000.

And last, there were two more newspaper clippings. One was a piece on a new playground in Aspen Meadow, the other covered the rise in traffic stops for reckless driving. Mystified, I turned them over. Both of them, like the flipped clippings on the floor, included ads for topsoil from We Got Dirt.

OK, so Barry had been on to something. But what? I went back to the Siblings & Incomes sheet. Did I