Raked Over

by Linda Seals

  * * *

  After a meeting with a client the next morning about designing an additional garden for their property, I decided that I would drive over to Pursgers to try to talk to Barry Correda. The night’s sadness had spurred me to action, and I had settled on a plan.

  I sat in the Binder Enterprises parking lot waiting a few rows away from the “Mr. Barry Correda” reserved parking space near the front of the building. A new black Lincoln Navigator with darkened windows sat in the spot, and if that wasn’t enough to convince me that I had found the man’s car, his license plate shouted CORREDA. A pretty fancy ride.

  I sat reading in my car for about a half hour, hoping I wasn’t wasting my time, hoping that I would have the nerve to find out more from Barry, hoping that I wasn’t being watched on some high-def security camera, and thus be accosted by a suspicious security guard. But Barry Correda showed up before that could happen, and I scurried out of my car and approached him as he was opening his door.

  “Hi, uh, Barry? I’m Lily Raffenport, you know, you talked with me a while back about Shannon?” I started out. At the last minute I remembered my “old lady” act and hunched over a bit, and added a slight lurching hitch to my gait, looking more like a wounded armadillo than a sweet old lady. My acting skills were rusty.

  Startled, Barry Correda whipped around and glared at me. Uh-oh. After a second he seemed to recognize me; his face softened, and he smiled a faint smile. “Yes, yes, Mrs., uh, Gaggenfort. How can I help you?” he said.

  Before I could open my mouth he added, “Although, I only have a minute since I must leave very shortly for a very important meeting.” Barry Correda emphasized the urgency by glancing at a expensive watch shot out from crisp white cuffs showing under his immaculate grey suit. This time, black Italian wingtips with a luxurious matte sheen completed the picture. He tried not to look impatient, but the watch business was still insulting. Was I invisible? Did he not even have to pretend he had good manners? Good lord, that made me sound like I was as old as he perceived me to be.

  “Uh, yeah, uh—” I was floundering from the very beginning.

  “Yes? I really must be off,” he said as he turned to get in his car.

  “Yeah, uh—” My mind was frantically trying to remember my rehearsed story line. “Yeah, I’ve been helping the family create a, uh, a remembrance project for Shannon, and I was wondering how you two met. I’d like to include—”

  The faint smile fell from his face as Barry cut me off. “Family? What family? Shannon didn’t really have any family besides her old aunt.”

  “Oh, you know … her aunt and all,” I said vaguely. “So, you all met in Abiquiu?” I was guessing, but I had to start somewhere.

  His eyes narrowed. “Abiquiu? Who said that?” He glared around the parking lot and then back at me. I could see the bad temper in his face but then, again, I saw him visibly tone down the hard edge of anger into a somewhat pleasant expression. He ran his hand over the side of his head and through his hair, being careful not to muss it.

  He smiled slightly. “I’m sorry. Look, I could use a cigarette.” His shoulders went up in a boyish wince. “I know, they’re bad for me! But if you would step over there to the smoking area with me, I’ll tell you how Shannon and I met. It’s just around here.” He motioned to the area I had seen and heard him smoking and talking with the other guy. He seemed sincere, and the area was in the open and easily seen from the VIP entrance, so I agreed to hear him out.

  As he lit up a Marlboro and inhaled deeply, he looked around and across the lot to the dusky blue mountains in the west. He smiled and looked back at me. “It’s pretty out here, isn’t it?” He was stalling.

  I nodded. I could stall too.

  “Yes, uh, I’m sorry. I was just a little surprised. Uh, our ‘how we met story’ was a little secret between Shannon and I—you know, just for fun. Something we’d share together, just the two us,” he said and smiled, showing very white teeth set off by his gorgeous tan. He turned his full attention on me, and I could see the charm roll out of him. “Have you ever been to New Mexico, Mrs. Gaggenpork? It’s beautiful …” Perhaps he would alight on my right name at some point, but I wasn’t going to help him out. Besides, he was still stalling.

  “So, did you work at Ghost Ranch? Were you part of the peace and justice group, too, like Shannon?” I asked.

  His eyebrows shot up. “I don’t know anything about no peace and justice group!” he said, annoyance in his voice, and then seemed to reconsider. “No, wait—she did say a little something about all that. Yes … yes, some little thing she’d done before she met me, you know, volunteered or something. Just a volunteer, no big deal. But then, she needed a way to support herself. You know, those groups don’t have money. No, I smarter than that; I was in real estate.” He smiled a smile to let me know how very successful he had been and was still.

  “Shannon and I were introduced by a friend in Albuquerque, where she went to school. She was just starting out and I helped her,” he said in a self-satisfied way. “She didn’t know people down there, so she decided to move up here to be with me.” Another satisfied smile directed my way. “And, poor thing, she really didn’t have friends up here, either, because …”

  He let the last sentence hang while his face showed sorrow. Then he cast his eyes down, sighed, and looked up at me. Still an over-the-top actor, I thought. But as he looked over my shoulder Barry Correda’s face changed again—this time to real surprise tinged with wariness. I turned around to see Philip Binder coming down the steps of the VIP entrance.

  Barry Correda abruptly said, “Can we talk later? I’m late for a meeting,” and hurried toward Phil Binder, who had stopped on the sidewalk when he had seen us talking.

  As I turned to walk away, I glanced back and saw them in animated conversation. Phil Binder grabbed Barry’s arm as if to make a point before both of them climbed into the back seat of the waiting limo. Neither one of them looked particularly happy.

  I walked back to my car thinking once again Barry Correda was playing roles, but which one was the real one? Once again he misrepresented Shannon’s life, this time suggesting that she would just drop her life’s passion without a thought, that that abandonment would be of no consequence to her. Once again he portrayed himself as friendless-Shannon’s rescuer.

  Was Philip Binder involved? Was Barry responsible for the errors in Shannon’s accounts and he was afraid Binder would find out? Did Barry Correda screw up his own accounts? Why did he squirrel around and not directly answer how he and Shannon had met? Was there a reason to keep that secret? I wasn’t buying his lovey-dovey version. He didn’t know where she went to school, and then lied about it. Why was that? And why had the mention of Shannon’s family upset him?

  Thinking so much made me ravenously hungry, so I made a beeline to Hammett’s for a late lunch. Liz had left a text on my phone with an update on the office park cleanup she was supervising that day and, as all was well on that project, I could relax and enjoy lunch. More or less.

  It was Vicki Sinclair’s day off so Jean, friendly Jean, was cooking and serving meals. She wasn’t happy about it, and hadn’t been happy about it for the fifteen years the arrangement had been in place. Vicki had to have a day off, and Jean was too cheap to hire someone to fill in for her—not even minimum-wage Kelsy, Vicki’s niece—so Jean did both. I tried to avoid the place on those days. But I was starving, so it was worth the abuse for a meal.

  Just as I started to sit down Jean Georgopoulos bawled out from the kitchen, “By god, you come over here to the window! Do you think I can come out of this blasted kitchen every time someone walks in? By the lovin’ god, I swear—”

  “Oops, sorry. Yeah, I forgot,” I said, approaching the kitchen window. Thinking of New Mexico, I continued, “I’ll have the green chile chicken with jack cheese, melon salad, ice tea. Please.”

  “Only ‘Merican cheese today, no fruit salad, some lime Jell-O for you instead, okay? Yes. I’m makin’ tea, it�
��ll be ready when it is, I’ll let you know, just sit down,” she said and whirled back to the flat top grill to berate Randy, her long-suffering night cook dragged in for the day. I sat down before she could turn on me.

  At my table, I gazed out the window, staring absently at a colorful bike rack at the curb, one of many installed as gifts to the town by our local and famous craft brewer, until my lunch was ready. My brain was working in the background, though. As I was eating I knew I was starting to think about taking a little trip to New Mexico; actually just considering moving up an already scheduled one for a-later-in-the-month pottery buying trip for clients.

  The time Shannon Parkhurst had spent in northern New Mexico after college until she arrived in Colorado with Barry Correda was a piece of time that was blank, at least for me. It seemed that Shannon met Barry at that time and that, at least I thought, there would be some history there for both of them. Barry sure seemed ready to gloss it over—something to hide? Perhaps there was something I could learn that would give me the missing pieces about the whys of Shannon’s death. Pieces that would be logical to me, and then I could let the whole thing go. I knew that Liz had the office park project under control, and that I could leave for a few days, and decided right then to make the trip.

  It wasn’t easy to decide to re-visit the place I’d lived years ago. Any trip to New Mexico, even fun buying trips for clients like this one, dredged up painful memories. My life there had been a mess—I was still drinking—and just about everything I touched turned to disappointment, if not downright disaster: jobs, relationships, life. But that experience had me wondering if the same thing had happened to Shannon Parkhurst. Had a hard life in New Mexico allowed alcohol to seize her as it had me? That’s what I wanted to find out.

  I flipped out my phone and called Betty Huckleston at work. When she picked up I asked, “Hey, Toots, ready for a road trip? Wanna go visit Hannah?” knowing the temptation to visit her daughter in New Mexico would be difficult for her to resist, and a road trip to boot.

  She thought a moment and said, “Let me check on who can finish the back section. When I find somebody who owes me a favor, I’ll call you back. I bet I can get an extra day or two if I tried,” and rang off. So much for resisting temptation, I thought.

  I next called Liz Burzachiello and went over the work schedule with her for the next few days. She was interested in what I could find out in New Mexico, and said she could handle things for a couple of days. Just as I was saying goodbye to Liz, I saw Jean start to come out of the kitchen. There’s no good place to be when Jean Georgopoulos comes out of the kitchen for any reason—and I knew she wouldn’t be pleased I had left the lurid lime and cottage cheese Jell-o on my plate—so I paid the tab at the table, and pushed out the heavy wooden door.

  “By god, by my lovin’ god, Randy! Did I, or did I not, tell you to—” The rest was lost as I scurried down the sidewalk towards home. I had to get back to work. With the crew busy at the office park, at another location I had a whole afternoon’s perennials planting to do by myself.

  CHAPTER TEN