Chopping Spree

know either Lawrence or Bachman? With a sinking feeling, I pulled out one of the cards that my—and now Julian’s —lawyer had handed me. Underneath Hulsey’s name was the listing of the firm’s partners.

“Oh, Lord,” I breathed. I scurried over to a lacquered end table that held a phone and directory. Flipping through the Aspen Meadow section, I looked for the name and address I’d seen right near the Stockhams’ gorgeous place. Brother Bachman, too, had done very well, moving into one of the ritziest areas of Aspen Meadow. And he’d dated Marla!

This was just like Pam and Page, I thought, as I punched buttons. Like Kim and Teddy. One sibling can’t stand having less than the other. And then he or she just can’t stop competing for stuff, no matter what gets in the way. No matter what.

Tom’s number had not connected before a large hand closed around my neck. In a split second, another hand wrenched the phone away, and pulled it so hard the cord snapped. The phone went flying. I twisted away from the choke hold with all the energy I could muster. The second hand closed around my throat. I gasped for breath and kicked backward instinctively with first one, then the other foot. Black clouds formed in front of my eyes as a distant voice reminded me, The abusive husband always tries to silence the wife, to make sure she has no voice….

With a surge of furious energy, I simultaneously clamped my own hands onto the choker’s, turned my head, and bit as hard as I could into my attacker’s palm. The choker screeched with pain as blood spurted into my mouth. I yanked myself free and dived toward the front door. Two fists banged into my back, and I reeled onto the couch.

Above me, Victor Wilson tried to hit me again, but I rolled away, scrambled to my feet, and screamed bloody murder as I raced the other way, toward the back door.

“Hey!” he bellowed, sprinting after me. “Get back here!”

I slammed into the back door and fumbled frantically for the doorknob. Victor crashed into me, grabbed hand-fuls of my hair, and jerked me so brutally that I almost passed out.

“You aren’t going anywhere!” he snarled as he flung me down. I staggered sideways into the liquor cabinet and bounced off it onto the floor, the breath utterly knocked out of me.

“Stay there! And shut up!” Victor yelled, as he kicked me viciously in the back.

Again black spots spiraled in front of my eyes. I whimpered and panted for breath.

“You’re a thief,” I gasped. Victor placed his booted foot on my thigh. He was pressing hard as he looked for something. Pain ratcheted into every cell of my body. “You followed me here!”

“Shut up, you nosy bitch! Or I’ll smack you again!” He was groping, I realized dimly, through a filthy sack.

Not for a knife, I prayed. Please, not for another knife.

“You killed Lucas Holden! And Barry, too!” Talking might slow him down, might give time for Darlene to figure out that the racket she was hearing next door was not the noise from some TV show.

“Shut up!”

Squirming, I looked around desperately for something—anything—to distract him. His boot pressed down firmly, pinning me to the floor. Where in the hell was my cell phone?

I wheezed, “And… and you were going to let our friend Julian, or Ellie McNeely, take the rap. Ellie never crashed her car into Barry’s, you did. What’d you do, pull her purse with the jewelry receipt and car keys out of the Dumpster where Teddy threw them? Ellie never pushed anyone into a ditch. She never killed anyone. What were you going to do after you trapped her in the toilet tank, kill her and dump her body under some cement at your construction site?”

Victor, still rummaging for something, grunted, “Something like that. Now shut up before I choke you again!” He pushed down harder on my thigh. I winced. There was a lot more to say, but I knew now it wouldn’t help. They teach you in self-protection classes to talk to criminals if they attack you. You’re supposed to call them by name, you’re supposed to appeal to their soft side. Crap to that. Talking doesn’t change the mind of a greedy, vicious man.

Victor finally found what he was looking for in the huge bag: a long coil of thick rope.

“What’s that for?” I gasped.

“I’m gonna bury you under the foundation for our last store,” he said matter-of- factly.

My adrenaline soared and I desperately scanned the room. How could I get away from him? Applying more pressure to my leg, he leaned over me. Double crap.

“Victor,” I screamed, “I know about your brothers! I know what you’re doing! And I brought you cookies, you bastard!”

This took him back for a millisecond. And in that millisecond, I kicked away his boot with my free leg, and crab-scrambled a yard away. With an angry roar, he vaulted after me. But by that time I had something in my right hand. When he pounced around the corner of the couch, I hit him square in the face with the Dry Sack bottle.

He squealed and reeled backward, his face a bloody mess of glass shards, liquor, and torn flesh. While he howled, I scooted over to Barry’s door and snatched up the doorstop with its needlepoint picture of a basset hound. Under the decoration, thank God, was a heavy brick. While Victor screamed, “You bitch! You bitch!” I slammed it into his stomach with all the strength I possessed. He wheeled forward, bellowing with pain, spun around, and landed hard on top of all the papers Barry had meticulously assembled to prove his excavator’s wrongdoing. Then, because I’d learned about this in self-defense and because I didn’t want to risk Victor waking up before I could get the cops here, I hit him once more, very, very hard. With the brick.

Where it really hurts.

CHAPTER 20

It’s called overexcavating,” Tom informed me, as he broke eggs carefully into a bowl late the next morning. “Most of the builders in the Denver area are honest. But there are some crooks, and they love to brag. That’s probably how Victor Wilson heard about the way to do it.”

It was Arch’s birthday. Tom had taken the day off, he said, so he could take care of me and bake Arch’s cake. After my violent struggle with Victor Wilson, I was definitely out of cooking for the next couple of days. Tom was happily taking over so I could recuperate. And I was determined to let myself rest and heal. I’d even handed my next client over to Liz Fury.

Meanwhile, Arch—otherwise known as the Birthday Boy, which we of course could not call him to his face—was ecstatic that Elk Park had another in-service. My son was sleeping in.

“Overexcavating?” I asked Tom, as I chased four ibuprofen with a double espresso. Every part of my body ached. I was determined to think about, to talk about, anything except how I was feeling.

Tom measured sugar, then dumped it into the whirling mixer. “Works like this. Guy either is or is not in cahoots with the soil and building inspectors. Sometimes inspectors are just stupid, which is what we had with the Westside Mall addition.”

“Oh, great.”

Tom checked the bittersweet chocolate he was melting in the top of our double boiler. “Remember you told me about that lake of drainage water by the back entrance?” he asked.

“You mean, the one that Victor was so helpful bringing my boxes across?”

“The very one,” Tom replied with a grin. He lifted the pan with its pool of melted chocolate off the heat.

“OK. So there’s a lake of drainage water by the mall’s back door. How is that so important?”

“Drainage problems, which that project had in the worst way, often come from improper grading. With overexcavation, your crook is going to sell over a million dollars of extra dirt. The grading is never going to fix the problem. Lotta rain, lotta snow? That water’s gotta go somewhere. It can’t drain back into the earth, because the impervious surface of a parking lot won’t let it. So it just becomes a puddle, a pond, or one of the Great Lakes.”