Chopping Spree

by Diane Mott Davidson

  Or steals, I added silently, but said nothing. I rinsed the field greens and set them aside to drain. What else could I ask Liz before it was time to take off? “Know anybody who might have pushed Barry down, causing him headaches?”

  Super Spenders’ Strawberry-Rhubarb Cobbler

  Fruit:

  ½ to ⅔ cup sugar, depending on the sweetness of the strawberries

  2 tablespoons cornstarch

  1½ pounds strawberries, washed, trimmed, and halved

  ½ pound rhubarb, washed, trimmed, and cut into 1-inch pieces

  1 teaspoon vanilla extract

  Topping:

  ¾ cup all-purpose flour

  ⅜ teaspoon baking powder (High altitude: ¼ teaspoon) ¼

  ⅛ teaspoon salt

  11 tablespoons (1 stick plus 3 table-spoons) unsalted butter, softened

  ¾ cup sugar

  1 egg

  ½ teaspoon vanilla extract

  Vanilla ice cream or heavy cream

  Preheat the oven to 375°F. Butter a 9 × 13-inch pan or 2-quart au gratin pan.

  For the fruit: In a small bowl, mix the sugar with the cornstarch. Place the trimmed fruit in a large bowl and pour the sugar mixture and vanilla over it. Mix together gently and pour into the prepared pan.

  For the topping: Sift together the flour, baking powder, and salt; set aside. In the large bowl of an electric mixer, beat the butter until creamy and light. Add the sugar gradually, beating until light and smooth. Beat in the egg until thoroughly combined, then mix in the vanilla. Turn off the beater and with a large wooden spoon, stir in the flour mixture just until all the ingredients are well combined. Using an ice-cream scoop or other large spoon, drop the dough in large, even spoonfuls onto the fruit in the pan.

  Bake for 35 to 45 minutes, or until the topping is golden brown and the fruit is bubbling. Test for doneness by spooning up a small section of the middle of the topping. If it is like cake, it is done. If the topping is still a liquid yellow, bake until it is like cake. Serve warm with best-quality vanilla ice cream or heavy cream, either poured or whipped.

  Makes 6 large or 8 small servings

  Liz finished a creamy swirl of whipped white potato and smiled at me. “What are you talking about?”

  Nothing, I said. After all, if she or Teddy had had enough physical strength to push Barry Dean down, I was pretty sure that she would have at least blushed when I mentioned it.

  Two new inches of heavy, wet snow plastered the sidewalk, trees, and streets by the time Liz and I set out. My new van boasted not only four-wheel drive, but new snow tires, also taken care of by Tom. Gosh, but it was nice to have a husband who actually cared about me.

  Liz told me that she, too, had new tires. But she wasn’t nearly as gleeful about it. Teddy had had new radials put on her van right after he got out of jail for his latest shoplifting offense. It was to say he was sorry, Liz explained, as we trudged through the cementlike white stuff with our last boxes. Of course, he’d charged them.

  I led the way to the Stockhams’ place. The Aspen Ranch area was situated just at the foot of the Aspen Meadow Wildlife Preserve, a sprawling hundred-thousand-acre wooded refuge for elk, mountain lions, and all other manner of wildlife. Hunters, hikers, fishermen, Scouts, and nature lovers shared the Preserve and gloried in the Aspen Meadow itself, reputedly one of the largest living organisms on earth (a stand of aspens is actually one tree that has developed an extensive root system and become many trees). The Aspen Meadow was also the namesake for our town, which benefited from the tourism that the Meadow itself brought.

  Four years ago, the sale of the ten-thousand-acre Burdock Ranch abutting the Preserve had provoked the usual hysterical conflict between Colorado’s pro-and anti-growth folks. After two years of vicious wrangling, Aspen Ranch, a luxurious subdivision featuring five-to ten-thousand-square-foot homes on ten-acre lots, had been approved. The builders swore they were preserving the character of the Wildlife Preserve. We could put up ticky-tacky condos, they’d threatened the planning commission, who eventually denied their application. But the county commissioners—all of whom had received huge campaign donations from the builders, it was later reported, and not just in the Mountain Journal—unanimously reversed the decision of their own planners and approved the project.

  Wending my way through the wide, snow-blanketed streets of Aspen Ranch, I quickly lost my way. Lots of snow-covered trees and meadows looked like lots of other snow-covered trees and meadows. Plus, for all their money, the builders had messed up pretty dramatically on the street signs. They were long, slender, wood-carved affairs now completely frosted with ice and snow. Unfortunately, the numbers for the houses were also carved in this same style, and despite their placement at the end of each driveway, were illegible. I wasn’t having fun trying to find Thirty-two Aspen Ranch Lane, even though I’d been there before.

  I finally got a clue from the mailboxes, grand wood-and-metal boxes painted with birds, pine branches, stagecoaches, and—thank you, Lord—Dr. and Mrs. Turner Macalester, 18 Aspen Ranch Lane lettered on the side. I slowly rumbled past Dr. and Mrs. William Knapp, Dr. and Mrs. Bachman Wilson, Dr. and Mrs. Paul Cardero…and wondered why the developers hadn’t built a hospital at the entrance to the Wildlife Preserve. It would surely shorten up everybody’s commute.

  I slowed as we climbed Aspen Ranch Lane. I knew we were only about a mile from the Preserve, but the white expanse of trees did not look familiar. I’d visited the Stockham place when the ground had been clear and the wooden street signs legible.

  Finally, I drew up to a long, gently ascending driveway that looked vaguely familiar, not because of the trees and rocks or snow-covered sign, but because a familiar vehicle was blocking the driveway.

  Marla had told me at the jewelry party about Pam Disharoon’s white Audi, with its license plate GOGIRL. I groaned.

  I hadn’t anticipated having to ask a very early guest to move her car, especially not a guest who reportedly had an unstable relationship with her sister, the volatile Page Stockham, my client. Still, would this give me a chance to question the elusive Pam on her relationship with the hapless Barry Dean?

  Another question formed in my brain as Liz and I sat in our vans, plumes of exhaust spiraling upward through the cold, moist air. Was Pam here to attend her brother-in-law’s cash-raising lunch?

  Or was she here to disrupt it?

  CHAPTER 14

  Are the keys in it?” Liz demanded, banging on my windshield. When I shrugged, she raked her hair with her gloved hands, traipsed through what must have been ten inches of snow—it always snowed more west of town, here by the Preserve—and peered into the Audi.

  “Think you should call them on the cell phone?” she cried.

  I shook my head and jumped out of my van. “By the time I reach them, and they argue and debate until somebody decides to get dressed and come down here, I could have made it up there and put pressure on Shane to drive me back down.” I arrived at her side. Despite the fact that I wore a wool jacket, I shivered in the biting cold.

  “OK. While you go up, I’ll stay and guard our stuff.”

  I began the long tramp up the driveway. There was only one set of footprints in the snow, undoubtedly Pam’s. The uphill walk itself was actually very pretty, like being transported into a set for The Nutcracker. Trees high and low were hung with glittering ribbons of snow. The ground was thickly frosted, and was still a pristine, crystalline white. Sunbeams slanting through the pine and aspen branches winked off errant flakes. I would have had more inclination to appreciate all this if I hadn’t been worrying about how we were going to do the lunch without being able to drive up to the house. We really needed someone to move Pam’s damn car.

  After what must have been a mile of trudging, the large log house came into view, a pretty-but-oversized two-story affair that Shane had smugly informed me was in the style of Swedish Country. By the time I arrived at the carved front door and rang the bell, I felt as if I’d traipsed across
Sweden by way of the North Pole.

  “Where have you been?” Shane demanded even before I began shaking off snow in his foyer. “I was expecting you twenty-two minutes ago.” His face was flushed, his tone accusing. I told myself to count to ten. While silently ticking off numbers, I took in his outfit: cream-colored silk shirt, suede Western riding jacket, leather cowboy pants and boots, Stetson hat. Shane was apparently going to make his pitch costumed as a high-flying cowboy. Well, I’d seen weirder.

  “There’s an Audi blocking your driveway,” I pointed out. “We can’t get in. And I need payment before we start.”

  Shane heaved a sigh of exasperation. He mumbled, “The ring’s coming, I promise.” Then he hooked his thumb in the direction of female voices bubbling from the interior of the house. I tugged off my boots and shuffled past the dining room, which was beautifully done up with a lavish floral centerpiece, gleaming crystal, Imari-pattern china, and linens in rich red, navy, beige, and gold.

  “Dining room looks good,” I mumbled, and forced a smile at Shane. I really didn’t want to carry my bad mood into a confrontation with Pam Disharoon.

  “Oh, I got the flowers and styling done in exchange for a Palm pilot,” Shane replied. “And the china was one of Page’s many, uh, extravagances.”

  The living room offered more Swedish Country stuff. This seemed to mean lots of tall white furniture, wood sculptures of forest nymphs, chunky tables, and etched portraits of Nobel prizewinners. A fire blazed and crackled in the moss-rock hearth. Still shivering from my trek up the driveway, I longed to warm myself in front of it. But I sensed that wouldn’t go over very well.

  Pam and Page, both lounging in tall, white corduroy wing-back chairs, registered my arrival. Why was I bothering them, their dismayed looks said.

  “There’s an Audi in our way,” I announced to the two women. “We can’t get the vans up the driveway.”

  “Oh, it’s mine,” Pam said offhandedly, reaching into a large Louis Vuitton purse. Was that purse the uniform tote of the yuppie set? And how had she avoided having it snatched by Teddy Fury? “I just had to take that nice long walk up the driveway. It was so…so sensual! Out here in the boondocks, the snow is seductively pretty! Couldn’t you just imagine rolling in it with someone you love?” She treated Shane and Page to a dazzling smile. Then she turned and tossed me an LV key ring, which only my best imitation of Arch snagging the lacrosse ball enabled me to catch. “Here. You can move it.” So much for my hopes of Pam shrieking with embarrassment for causing so much trouble with her car, and then scrambling from the room to move it.

  In my business, pots can boil over. The caterer can’t. Not for the first time, I was having a hard time staying cool. I avoided a glance into the gilt-edged mirror over the mantel. If I did, I was sure to see steam whistling out my ears.

  “I’ll drive you back down,” Shane interposed hastily. “Need me to preheat the oven or anything?”

  I swallowed the words What I need is for you to give me that damn ring this instant, or call Kentucky Fried Chicken for your lunch. Instead, I nodded. “Four hundred degrees.”

  “Done.”

  A few ringless minutes later, we were bumping down Shane’s driveway in his old truck. He had put on a navy cashmere coat to cover his invest-in-me outfit, and his nervousness was increasing to the point that he almost made me jittery.

  “I’m going to get you the ring,” he announced preemptively, “I just need to wait until Pam and Page have settled into one of their little squabbles. Then neither one of them will leave her seat to get wine or whatever, and we can do the deed.”

  “Shane—”

  “I don’t know why Pam’s here,” he interrupted me. “Page told her we were having investors over for lunch, and Pam decided to crash the party. Unless she has a wad of money somewhere that I don’t know about, she’s just another mouth to feed. At best. At worst, she and Page will have a fight.” Slowing the truck, he shot me a worried look. “Do you sometimes have to break up arguments at catered events?”

  You mean, I nearly said, like the tussle between you and your wife just two days ago? Instead, I answered, “It happens. Usually I can find a way to distract everybody’s attention. Like inviting them to come eat dessert. Speaking of which, does that mean we’ll now have thirteen for lunch?”

  Shane blushed. “Well, yeah. I guess. Sorry. But don’t worry, they always get into such a big fight that they miss dessert. I just wish they’d argue now, and Pam would stomp off before my investors arrive.” He swerved to avoid a pine tree—his driveway was treacherous—and pulled up by Pam’s Audi. From behind her frosted windshield, Liz beeped and waved.

  “Just park the Audi on the far side of the garage, near the middle storage shed,” Shane advised. “Then you all can get your vans next to the house.”

  I hopped out, mulling over the words middle storage shed. How much stuff could a couple with two ninth-graders have? Enough, apparently, to fill a house and several sheds. I started the Audi on only the second try. Pam wouldn’t have won any awards in the Clean Car Competition, that was for sure. A cereal bowl with hardened flakes clanked back and forth on the carpet in front of the passenger seat; newspapers strewn across the backseat swished forward as I accelerated; a Starbucks cup of long-dead coffee sloshed in the container by the radio. Well, I now knew one thing for certain about Pam: She was a true slob. During the few minutes I let the Audi warm up, I pawed through everything within reach. With Julian in jail, I had no scruples left. Unfortunately, I found nothing about Barry’s murder or anything else that might bear on the case.

  I crept up the driveway and pulled Pam’s car carefully to the right of the garage where there were indeed three lovely log storage sheds. Liz piloted my van behind me. Shane trucked her back to her own van while I began unloading supplies. After Liz roared up the driveway and parked beside me, Shane used the plow-blade on his truck to smooth out a parking area in front of the house. Meanwhile, Liz and I quickly trekked the last of our supplies into the kitchen.

  One of the gold-and-white-granite countertops held two almost-empty wine bottles. The sisters’ talking and laughing had ratcheted up several decibels. I began to worry. It was only 10:30 A.M. Forget dessert, how sloshed would Pam and Page be by lunch? I shoved this concern aside and relieved Liz of her last box. Within five minutes, we were working side by side in the kitchen.

  “If this guy can’t manage to keep a store going, where did he get the money to buy this place?” Liz whispered as we carefully heaved the twenty-plus-pound beef roast into the oven. It would be hot and perfect by the time lunch was ready.

  “He inherited it, I think,” I whispered back. “According to Marla, Shane’s gone through a string of bad businesses. Page married him for his money, but the dough’s leaking away. That’s the main reason he’s seeking investors to take his business on-line.”

  “Have you ever actually catered an event for Page Stockham?” Liz asked. Her tone indicated that she had, and had lived to tell the tale.

  “I thought you didn’t know them,” I protested, still whispering. “I’m only vaguely acquainted with them, through Marla.”

  Liz rolled her eyes. “I don’t know them. But I had the misfortune of having to cater for her once.” She hissed: “She is impossible.”

  I pressed the button on the nonstick spray can and lightly coated the Stockhams’ indoor grill for the mushroom salad. “I thought you only catered for your corporation.”

  “I did,” said Liz, as she organized thirteen soup bowls on large saucers. “But Page was chairing a fund-raising event that my company was hosting. She drove me nuts—nickel-and-diming my department to death, trying to get a more expensive menu for the amount contracted. She kept saying she’d talked to this or that catering company and they could do such-and-such for so much less! Finally I told her I didn’t care, go ahead and hire somebody else. Just be sure to have it OK’d by the corporation. The corporation told her I was their in-house caterer, and she could not hire
anyone else and expect them to pay the bills. Plus I was in charge of approving the guest list. I never saw it, and had a floating number of attendees from her, ranging from two to three hundred. In the end, Page invited all her friends, even though they didn’t give a whit about the charity. She acted as if it was her party, thrown just for her and her pals, to whom she talked loudly while the director of the charity made his pitch. ‘Try some of my caviar,’ she urged her pals, once we broke for food. She kept telling them to load up on the barbecued prawns and roast suckling pig, they’d been so difficult for her to get! She used that party to pay off all her social debts, forever.”

  “For crying out loud.” The themes of this marriage—of entitlement to money that belonged to others, of treating people who worked for you like slaves, of not paying for what you received—were becoming crystal clear. The Stockhams were arrogant, self-centered rule-breakers who blamed all their problems on others. Had Barry Dean threatened this selfish way of doing things? According to Marla, Barry had discovered The Gadget Guy’s nonpayment of rent, and had demanded compensation. In the parent guidebooks, they call this consequences. Had Barry’s insistence on consequences for the Stockhams cost him his life?

  I couldn’t concentrate on this question, because I had to plate up the greens that would form the base for the mushroom salad. Worse, Liz was still regaling me with her tale of Page Stockham.

  “So at that point, Bitch Page went behind my back and complained to one of the vice presidents that I’d been uncooperative. She even advised him not to pay my food bills. She claimed I was jacking up the price! She is an insufferable bitch! I hope she doesn’t recognize me today. Maybe my new haircut will help.”