Chopping Spree gbcm-11 Read online

  Enthusiastic honking kept me from having to reply. From between the trucks, I could see a white Range Rover rocketing over the dirt ruts: Julian. He swung in next to my van, hopped out with a bag in his hands, and hightailed it toward the plankway. Meanwhile, Barry and the blond bombshell conversed in low tones.

  “Hiya,” Julian said, once he’d caught up to us. He put down the bag and expertly pulled off one of the boxes I was carrying. He’d cut his dark hair quite close to the scalp. (Not bicked, I wanted to tell Arch.) Julian was also clean-shaven and as handsome as ever. Plus, he was compact and muscled, dressed in balloon olive pants and a black T-shirt, and as usual, had come to work. Seeing Liz and her load, he immediately rejuggled my box so he could take one of hers. The kid was great: mature, bighearted, talented, and kind. I thought of Arch with a pang.

  Julian swung the two boxes to one side as if they were nothing. “Hey, Goldy, I brought you one of those hot lattes made with cream from The Westside Buzz. You know, that drive-through place? I figured you’d be pretty tired by now, and since you gave up coffee, well—” He blushed and turned to Liz. “Sorry. We just met that once. I’m Julian Teller. Actually, I brought two lattes. One’s for you, Liz.”

  “Thanks, Julian, but no,” Liz told him. “You have it. And it’s good to see you again, too.”

  “I’m so bad!” Julian enthused, as he proffered me the bag. “I’ve already had two of those things, and each Buzz latte has four shots. I’m pretty wired, I can tell you that.”

  “We can always use your energy,” Liz said, warming to him with a smile. Julian had that effect on people.

  “Is that the Barry guy?” Julian asked. He lifted his chin at Barry and the blonde. “Down there?”

  Barry Dean tilted his head toward the blonde, roared with laughter, then sauntered toward us. The young woman teetered along behind him.

  “Hey!” Barry called. His grin flashed as he winked at me and opened his arms in greeting. “Speak of the devil!”

  “I certainly hope not,” Julian muttered.

  I introduced Julian to Barry, who in turn presented us to his “dear friend,” Pam Disharoon.

  Pam Disharoon? I thought. Was that a combination of dish and macaroon? I’m a cute dish; my hair’s a macaroon?

  “I’m Liz,” my new assistant politely announced to Pam. But Barry Dean could have introduced her, couldn’t he? Instead, he squinted at Liz and pressed his lips together.

  “Hello, catering team!” Pam’s tone was bright. She lifted her pointed chin, sending the ponytails a-wiggle. “I’m sure you’ll make great chow for our jewelry event!”

  Liz Fury, master of cuttlefish pasta, flourless chocolate cake, and salade composée, turned green around the gills. Chow, indeed.

  “Pam is the star seller in Prince and Grogan’s lingerie department,” Barry announced with pride. “She’s the top saleswoman at the mall.”

  Liz made her voice falsely cheerful as she reshifted her box. “Goldy? Julian? I’m taking this up. See you all in the lounge.” And before I could say anything, she took off.

  “Well,” said Pam into the awkward silence that followed. She gave Julian the once-over. In a coy, seductive tone, she addressed him: “So you’re a caterer?”

  “Pam,” said Barry, “these people are here to work—”

  “Caterer’s assistant,” said Julian, not fooled by Pam’s attempt to flirt. “Goldy, give me your other box. I’ll take this load up and come right back.”

  Pam took a sashaying two-step toward Julian, extended her red-nailed hands, and cupped his cheeks and chin. “Want some help?”

  The well-coordinated Julian slid away from her. “I’ll meet you at your van, boss,” he told me cheerfully, and headed toward the doors.

  I hastened back to my van, eager to retrieve the refrigerator-bound supplies. Through the windshield, I could see Barry and Pam walking across the plankway over the water. Without warning, Barry whirled and held up his index finger, as if to correct her. Suddenly, their conversation didn’t look friendly. Guess that meant Barry wasn’t going to help with the boxes, after all. Thank God for Julian—although maybe Barry Dean felt differently.

  By the time I’d unloaded the shrimp-roll and crab-dip boxes from the van, Julian had returned from the mall. “Liz is guarding the food in the lounge. The jewelry people are already there.”

  I nodded. On the list of catering rules you shouldn’t break was Never leave food where it can be swiped. Sadly, half a dozen of my beef tenderloins had disappeared before I’d learned this.

  “Oh,” Julian went on, “and Barry and what’s-her-name are having a lovers’ spat.”

  “Let’s avoid them.”

  Hoisting our loads, Julian and I avoided the ruts and hurried down the dirt path that led to the plankway. Ahead of us, Pam was stomping away from Barry. Her barely covered rump bounced as she tried to trot in the silly sandals. The plankway jiggled with each of her steps. The construction workers stopped and gaped. So did Barry Dean. Then he turned and again marched toward us. He looked as if he’d swallowed a frog.

  “Goldy,” he said once he’d met up with us on the dirt path, “could you and I have a talk?” Barry’s endearingly handsome face and brown eyes, changed so little from our time together at C.U., beseeched me. “The mall has been turned upside down lately—”

  “Can we just talk upstairs?” I suggested, panting. “I really need to get this food inside.”

  “I’d rather visit now,” Barry insisted firmly, “if you don’t mind. I’ll take one of those boxes.” Julian, who was now halfway across the plankway, turned back and lifted his eyebrows. Want me to rescue you from that guy? Probably sensing my reluctance, Barry implored, “Goldy, please. This is important—”

  He was interrupted by the sound of a revving engine. It was loud, then very loud, like an airplane being warmed up. A short distance away, one of the dump trucks rolled away from the neat line of vehicles. The sun winked off the windshield as the truck plowed through the water. I couldn’t see the driver.

  “Oh, no, I knew it!” Barry cried. “No!”

  “What?” I called to him. He knew a truck was going to start up? “Barry, what’s the matter?” But he’d dropped his box and started running toward the construction gate. Where was he going? Was he going to try to outrun the truck?

  My heart plunged. The truck roared and spewed exhaust. I glanced at Julian. The truck was headed right toward him.

  “Julian!” I screamed. “Look out!”

  Julian reared back and dropped his load. He sprang away from the path of the vehicle, lost his balance, and splashed face forward into the muddy water. The truck charged past him. I watched in horror until Julian’s mud-drenched head, followed by his body, emerged from the water. I looked for Barry. He had stopped running and seemed frozen, watching Julian slosh through the puddle.

  The truck was barreling toward us. Julian, sopping wet and shouting, was running raggedly along behind it.

  I dropped my box, raced toward Barry, and grabbed his shirt. As I yanked him fiercely sideways, the huge, noisy truck swerved toward us.

  “Barry, run with me, dammit!” I hollered. My old friend looked at me, his face stricken. He tried to hurry, but tangled his feet and stumbled to his knees.

  The truck was thirty feet away and closing. With all my strength, I wrenched Barry’s arm and body upward. His legs moved spastically as I pulled him over row after row of ruts. Finally, I tripped on one of the hard ridges and we were both airborne. We hit the dirt hard.

  A foot down in a wide ditch, I could hear but not see the bellowing truck. It, too, seemed to be plowing up and down the ridges. I tugged on Barry, who was groaning as he tried to scoot along beside me. Hopefully, we were also headed away from the path the truck had been taking… a path straight at us. If I could not see the truck driver, I reasoned, then hopefully, he could not see Barry or me. The way it had been bearing down on us, I did not think that enormous dump truck was just a runaway vehicle.

/>   The truck noise rose to deafening proportions. When our ditch narrowed, Barry and I stopped crawling. I eased up to have a peek. Fifteen feet from us, exactly where we had been when we hit the dirt, the truck vaulted the ditch where we now lay panting. All I could see of the driver was the shadowy reflection of a face behind a mud-splattered window.

  Panting, Barry and I rose up on our elbows. I didn’t think the truck driver had actually seen us. Once past the ruts, the truck picked up speed. It crashed through the construction fence with a fearsome clanking of metal. Then it hurtled across Doughnut Drive. With a deafening boom, it slammed into the embankment. The berm exploded. Dirt erupted over the truck. Clouds of dust mushroomed upward as an avalanche of soil poured onto the road. A person wearing a baseball cap and baggy overalls jumped out of the cab, clambered clumsily over the embankment, then disappeared.

  What was that about?

  Beside me, Barry gasped and cursed. “I knew this would happen!” He was covered with mud. “I just knew it!”

  CHAPTER 3

  I coughed, spit out grit, and coughed again. Then I inhaled dust, coughed, and inhaled some more. I had the keen sense of having lost moments, maybe even hours—as if there’d been a period of blackness of indeterminate length. Maybe I had passed out.

  I eased back onto the dirt and tried to clear the mental fog. My body lay crumpled between two dirt ridges. A severe aching sensation swept from my shoulders to my legs, slowly at first, then with more depth and speed. I groaned and elbowed up again to a half-sitting position. I gazed vacantly at the nearly lethal path the truck had taken. What had that been about? I had no idea.

  Doing my best to ignore the pain, I took stock of myself. Not only were my legs, arms, and face filthy, my caterer’s outfit was streaked beyond recognition. The remains of several shrimp rolls clung to my jacket. Looking around, I realized that the truck had squashed my box and sent the contents flying.

  How much food had been lost? Would we be able to do the event?

  Why had Barry yelled I knew it?

  I brushed off my formerly white, formerly crisp caterer’s jacket. Shimmering dust rose from the jacket as food strands showered the dirt. I sneezed violently.

  Two yards away, Barry rubbed his face and hacked for breath. He had landed in a deep puddle, and his once-khaki pants were now the color of café au lait. His formerly green shirt clung to his torso like a mossy towel. Julian, his wet clothes stuck to his body, trotted toward us. He was shouting again, this time at the construction crew, something along the lines of getting their asses up here so they could help us.

  Barry looked at me and blinked, then blinked again. He slid sideways in the puddle and reached in my direction.

  “Goldy! Did you see the driver?”

  “No. Whoever it was ran away.” I didn’t state the obvious: that whoever the driver was, he’d seemed intent on mowing us down.

  “Do you know who it was?” I tried but didn’t succeed in keeping the accusatory tone from my voice.

  Barry shook his head and turned away from me. Why was his muttered “No” so unconvincing?

  I studied the dump truck wedged in the embankment. Along Doughnut Drive, lines of cars had stopped. Honking and yelling rose above the throngs of curious drivers who’d left their vehicles and were hustling rapidly along the road. Why else? They were trying to get a better look at the accident.

  We needed state patrol and the sheriff’s department, I decided, and quick. With any luck, one of those drivers was using a cell phone to call for help right now.

  And speaking of cell phones… I usually kept mine in my apron pocket. But I hadn’t yet put on my apron, so I didn’t have it. I sighed.

  I was having a great day.

  Barry was staring at the errant truck. There was blood on his forehead. Julian’s words were finally discernible: Are you all right? I yelled back that we were fine. How are you doing? I wanted to know. Julian hollered that he was fine, then raced down to the construction area and called to more workers. Oh, to be young and able to run around in wet clothes.

  I hauled myself to my feet, then offered a hand to Barry, still stuck in the puddle. He groaned and splattered mud as he righted himself. His hands were icy, his face pale. Once free of the ditch water, he shivered, grasped the back of his left thigh, and cried out in pain.

  Victor Wilson, still wearing his orange hat, raced up the parking lot. Five workers jogged along behind him. The crew did not appear to be paying much attention to Victor’s bellowed orders, commands that were liberally sprinkled with curses. With his red ponytail flapping, Victor swerved away from Barry and me and toward the truck, but not before I’d squinted at the boldly printed words on his sweatshirt. We Got Dirt. No kidding, I thought. Lots and lots of dirt.

  Barry hobbled up beside me and we both spoke at once. What happened, Who could have done such a thing, Are you badly hurt, Do you have a cell phone? Without waiting for my reply, Barry wiped the trickle of blood from his scraped forehead and gazed at Victor, who was now climbing into the truck.

  “No, no!” I yelled. “You shouldn’t be doing that!” Ten minutes ago, the crazed driver of that vehicle had tried to kill us. Or at least it sure had seemed that way. Nobody should be touching anything until the cops arrived.

  Disregarding my protest, Victor tried to start the truck anyway. The engine groaned, clicked, and refused to turn over. With another cascade of curses, he finally got the engine going. The behemoth truck revved and erupted into an insistent beep beep beep as it growled back from the embankment and swerved to miss the mountains of displaced berm dirt. The gaggle of spectators standing on Doughnut Drive moved aside en masse.

  Julian, still sopping, sprinted over to us. He assessed me, then Barry, and asked if we needed to go to the hospital. We both said no. Just call the cops, I told him. Julian replied that he was calling the cops and an ambulance to have us looked at.

  “No!” screamed Barry. “No cops! They’ll drive away shoppers.” He looked at me and swallowed. “Important saying in our business, Goldy. Nothing clears a mall like a security threat. We simply cannot afford to lose shoppers.”

  “Look, Barry.” I raised my voice to match his. “More shoppers would avoid this place if somebody actually had been killed a few moments ago.”

  Barry groaned as he watched the line of cars along Doughnut Drive grow. The honking and shouting intensified.

  Julian tersely ordered us to stay put. He was going to the Rover for some supplies. When I asked if he’d been able to make out who was driving the truck—man, woman, race, build—he shook his head. The first thing he’d seen was the truck’s backside as it catapulted out of the muddy lake and careened toward us.

  When Julian roared up in the Rover a few minutes later, he had already changed into a spare sweatshirt and pants. He leaped out and retrieved a battered first-aid kit, a roll of paper towels, and his own cell phone. I noted the smooth, peculiar-to-Julian ability to do two things at once with complete calm. He punched in 911, cradled the phone between his ear and shoulder, and pumped disinfectant onto his hands. Then he instructed Barry—in the low, soothing voice Julian always assumed in a crisis—to lie down. He had to get off his injured leg, Julian explained.

  Barry protested. He’d be just fine if he could get into some clean clothes and make a few calls. “And you, Goldy,” Barry said, his scraped face wracked with pain. “I’m hoping you can just go inside and get going. The mall really, really needs to have this event go off smoothly.”

  “Mr. Dean, please.” Julian spoke in a low voice. “You’ll be much better off if you just let me help you. For a few minutes. Come on.”

  Barry’s insistence that we all needed to get the hell out of here subsided. Groaning, the mall manager lay down as bidden.

  Julian smoothed disinfectant onto Barry’s face and arms, wiped away blood and muck with clean towels, and gently touched Barry’s injured thigh. All the while, he murmured into his cell phone, telling the emergency operator what he’
d seen happen. When Julian told the operator where in Westside Mall’s parking lot we were, Barry abruptly wrenched away from my assistant’s ministering hands. He struggled to a standing position, snarling that he didn’t want any help from the cops, he just needed to get back to his office.

  What was it with Barry Dean? First he wanted to talk to me privately and urgently. Then, after we’d nearly been run down by a truck, he’d submitted reluctantly to Julian’s care, and told me to go inside and work on the event. Now he was back to yelping that he needed to get back to work.

  While Julian walked after the hobbling Barry, trying to convince him not to leave, that he needed to be seen by a medic, I took stock of my own injuries. I’d had the misfortune to land on my kneecaps, which burned when I whisked off the tiny stones that had embedded themselves there. Blood spurted through a network of dirty scratches. My support hose, of course, were ripped and filthy. Other than my knees, I seemed to have emerged with some arm pain that would no doubt turn into a disgusting bruise. Still, no matter what the intentions of the truck driver, I had survived.

  So now, I thought as I continued to massage my kneecaps, I only had to clean up, change outfits, figure out how much food we’d lost, and get on with the event. I knew the party would take place; Barry was determined. Thank God I had learned to keep an emergency pack of catering clothes in my van. I tentatively put one foot in front of the other, immediately registered acute pain in my back and hips, and sternly ordered myself to block it out. I had work to do.

  Apparently Barry had again changed his mind about rushing to his office. He limped back to my side. Julian spoke earnestly into his cell phone. No, no ambulance after all, the injuries were slight. Police, yes. Yes, he went on, the attack had looked intentional, please send both state patrol and the sheriff’s department. Yes, he would wait for them to arrive.

  Barry’s skin was ashen. He squinted, clearly miserable.

  I asked, “You still want to talk? You want to tell me how you knew that was going to happen?”