by Janet Bolin
He pointed at the bottles of wine. “White or red?”
“Red.”
“We’re having cold fried chicken.”
“Red.”
He grinned. “Good choice. I went a little heavy on the spices.”
“You made it yourself?”
“Yes.”
“It looks heavenly.”
He removed the cork from a bottle of Shiraz. “And probably smells like skunk.”
I repeated, “What happened?”
“Loretta asked me to come over last night and pick up more sketches. She’d gone over to the TADAM carriage house to check on her measurements, but she saw a skunk go into the carriage house, so she stayed outside. And then it sprayed, and Loretta was still too close.”
I had to give him points for honesty.
But I wouldn’t give Loretta any. Had she really been planning to check on measurements? Or had she wrapped sticky stabilizer around Paula earlier, and then gone back to do something horrid to the woman? Maybe I’d maligned Paula by telling Vicki that Paula could have tied herself up.
Clay’s jaw tightened. “Loretta is one of those huggy types, always flinging herself at people and hugging them like they’re her long-lost friends. I backed away, but not far or fast enough.”
‘People’ had been Clay, and only Clay, as far as I’d noticed. “But aren’t you? Her long-lost friend from fourth grade?”
He handed me a glass. “Cheers.” We clinked.
“Cheers,” I repeated, though if Loretta was always flinging herself at Clay, I didn’t feel particularly cheerful. Except that Clay was a witness that Loretta could have been in Paula’s vicinity around the time that Paula ended up with sticky stabilizer all over herself.
Had Haylee and I interrupted Loretta as she was about to do more harm to Paula? Maybe Paula had been too scared to discover she could get out of her predicament by herself. And she’d been confused, too, if, as I’d guessed, she’d told Vicki that Haylee and I had ganged up on her. Maybe she’d thumped her head a little too hard against the carriage house wall.
Clay handed me a platter of crispy, perfectly browned fried chicken. “Loretta says I’m her long-lost friend. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
I bit succulent meat off a drumstick. “Yummmmm . . .” I closed my eyes. Any man who could cook chicken like this had to be kept. And kept safe from skunks. Like Loretta.
He spooned potato salad onto my plate. “I don’t think I met her before the reception at TADAM on Saturday night.”
I wasn’t terribly surprised, but my mouth was too full for me to say anything. The potato salad was delicious, also.
He handed me a large piece of corn bread. “I didn’t think I had, so I asked my mother. She keeps everything I ever brought home from school, and she scanned the class picture from fourth grade. There was no one even vaguely resembling Loretta. No one with hair like hers. Do you think she colors and curls it?”
The corn bread was moist and tasty. “The color and curls look natural, but I’m not sure. It’s beautiful, however she came by it. She’s beautiful.”
“It’s only a facade. It’s not important.” He saluted me with his wineglass. “I like beauty best when it’s inside, also.” He smiled into my eyes.
“Thanks, I think.”
“Why do you think she lied about knowing me before?”
I might as well return the compliment he’d just given me. “Haven’t you ever looked in a mirror?” I began regretting that I’d chosen to sit across the table from him instead of beside him.
“I’ve never had a woman absolutely throw herself at me like that. It’s an interesting approach, but it didn’t work for me. At least not when she did it.”
An invitation? I was tempted to jump up and sit next to him, very close.
But I wanted to hear more of what he had to say. I stayed where I was. “Why would she lie about knowing you? Maybe she knew another kid with your name in fourth grade.”
“We could give her the benefit of the doubt on that, but she couldn’t have known me. My mother checked the class list. There were no Lorettas. And I have not told Loretta where I grew up or the name of my grade school, and she has never said either one.”
“Did you have a best friend named Chief?”
“You caught that, did you? I did, but Chief never brought fire trucks to show-and-tell. He wasn’t allowed at school. He was a German shepherd.”
I couldn’t help snickering. “Maybe she thinks she remembers. What do they call that, false memories?”
“I don’t trust her.” He thinned his lips. “Antonio’s death is being investigated as a possible homicide. I can’t help wondering if Loretta set him up somehow to die, and then made certain she was with me when he collapsed.”
“I wondered the same thing.”
“You didn’t tell me.”
I helped myself to more potato salad. “She didn’t seem to be threatening you.” Except with lipstick. “Besides, if she was a fake, I knew you would figure it out.”
He stared at me for long seconds that made me blush and squirm. “She put that lipstick on me deliberately, almost the first moment we met. She ran right up to me and pressed her face into my shirt. I’d have dodged her if I could have in the crowded kitchen. But that lipstick made you think I was interested in her, and I didn’t help my case by not explaining it to you and everyone else who was present when she offered to remove the stain. And you’ve been keeping your distance from me ever since.”
I gave a noncommittal shrug. “You and I would still be . . . we are friends.”
He opened his mouth as if to say something, closed it, then opened it again and asked, “And we’re a design team, right, along with Ben, Haylee, and Dora Battersby?”
“Right.”
“So you’ll all protect me from her.”
“If you want us to.”
“I suspect you would even if I didn’t want you to. Dora, especially. She’s already warned me that Loretta was . . . on the prowl, I think she said.”
I couldn’t help laughing.
Clay grinned, stood up, and pulled his picnic basket closer. “I brought cake for dessert. Devil’s food with fudge icing, my mom’s recipe.”
“We’re definitely a team.” I scooped up the rest of my yummy potato salad.
He cut us each a square of delightfully chocolaty cake. “Loretta wants to meet me tonight at eight at the carriage house to go over her plans again. But as I said on Tuesday, I’d need the rest of my design team there.”
I paused with a piece of cake on a fork halfway to my mouth. “You’re meeting her at the carriage house at eight this evening?” So much for a long walk on the beach after the delicious picnic.
“Please say you can come along, or I’ll have to postpone it.”
“Um, we’re supposed to have a rehearsal there at nine. Kent wants to turn the space into a theater.”
“Kent and Loretta can battle that one out. I’m not doing any work on that place until I know for certain that I’ll be paid. But if we have two reasons to go there tonight, I guess we’d better.”
“There’s one smallish problem.”
“If you can’t make it tonight, we’ll do it another time. No problem.”
“It’s not that. Last I knew, the TADAM carriage house, and TADAM, for all I know, is a crime scene.”
“Still? Because of Antonio?”
“That was just the mansion, but the carriage house was taped off last night.”
He was even more adorable when his eyebrows came together in a puzzled frown. “What happened?”
I told him the entire story, about Haylee and me finding Paula and calling for help. “And Paula had been sprayed by a skunk.”
He threw me a keen glance. “Was Loretta there?”
“We didn’t s
ee her.”
He pulled at a wrinkle in the plaid tablecloth.
I had to be fair, even though it was Loretta we were talking about. “I suspect that Paula bound and gagged herself, before the skunk sprayed.”
“Bound and gagged herself? Why would anyone do that?”
I told him about the business plans we thought Paula had left in our shops. “I’m not sure, but I’m guessing that Paula told Detective Neffting that Haylee and I had read those business plans before Antonio died, and that if he wanted ‘proof’ that we could have read them, the police should search our shops for them. And of course copies were in our shops, because she had put them there.”
“That’s bizarre.”
“She was probably afraid the police suspected her of harming her husband. And they probably do, for good reason, and so she’s been thinking of ways to throw suspicion on Haylee and me, which, to me, makes her seem guilty. Paula was the most likely person to know what Antonio’s allergies were, and to be able to slip a candy-coated almond into his pocket. And to know where he kept his allergy medicine, so she could hide it.”
“And she staged an attack on herself in the carriage house, and a skunk came along? That’s a first. A skunk administering justice.”
“Unfortunately, that skunk was pretty indiscriminate about the justice it administered.”
He made a pretense of sniffing his arm. “You can say that again.”
I merely grinned.
He caught on. “Wait. You said you and Haylee were nearby. Did you get sprayed, too?”
“We didn’t need to be sprayed.”
“You mean I’m not the only one at this table who stinks?”
“Thanks, Clay! But no, you’re not.”
“Why are we on opposite sides of the table, then?”
I smiled. I wasn’t sure I was capable of anything else.
He unfolded his lanky frame from the picnic bench, came around to my side of the table, and held out his arms. “Come here, Willow, please.”
I stood too quickly, bopped my knee on the table, and had to hop to catch my balance. He reached out, grabbed my arms, and pulled me toward him. “Willow . . .”
It was too much for Tally and Sally. Wagging their tails and barking, they leaped to their feet and nudged their way between Clay and me.
But that wasn’t the only interruption. From the other side of a row of willow trees separating the beach from the parking lot, a woman shouted, “Clay, where are you?”
Loretta.
Between our knees, Sally and Tally barked.
Clay swore, grabbed my chin, pulled my face toward his, and planted a swift and oddly fierce kiss on my lips, then pulled away and murmured, “We’ll continue this conversation later, okay?”
I could barely gasp, “Okay.”
He whispered, “I’ll get rid of her.” Dodging long, trailing branches of weeping willows, he dashed away.
33
"What are you doing here?” Loretta called to Clay.
“Beach.” Clay was not usually terse.
“The beach! Just what I need. I’m so upset!”
The next thing I knew, Loretta was brushing aside willow wands and heading straight for the table. She was in her tight suede shorts again, and the tank top and boots. She wasn’t wearing the cloak, the tights, and the wide belt, and she looked a little less like a superhero or a professional wrestler.
I wasn’t sure what she did resemble, however. Not Clay and me in our jeans, sweaters, and flip-flops, or the couple strolling along the beach in long pants and jackets.
The dogs barked and wagged their tails. Behind Loretta, Clay held his hands out in a helpless shrug. I caught the message. There was no way he could have prevented her from coming out onto the beach without manhandling her or being rude. His deep brown eyes seemed to burn into my skin.
Loretta stopped walking at the sight of me and the picnic-laden table.
She smiled. “Gluttony?” Then she sobered. “That Antonio. What a tease. What a terrible tragedy.” She eyed the chicken, potato salad, corn bread, and cake. “You may not be tempted by gluttony, Willow, but looking at the feast you’ve prepared, I am.” She actually sniffed toward Clay. “I know you’ll excuse my skunky smells, Clay, since I’m pretty sure you didn’t do as good a job of getting rid of them as I did after I accidentally rubbed some of it off onto you.”
Accidentally? Right.
Clay and I traded glances. He winked.
Clay probably knew that I’d be unable to completely repress my early training in Southern hospitality. “Join us,” I offered. “There’s plenty.”
Loretta lost no time plunking herself down on the bench. I was glad she hadn’t sniffed in my direction, or she might have noticed that I smelled skunky, too. Letting her think that my skunky perfume had come from Clay might be a sort of fun revenge. On the other hand, to what lengths might Loretta go to eliminate a rival? While knowing the answer to that might help pinpoint who had arranged Antonio’s death and maybe attacked Paula, I didn’t want to find out the hard way what Loretta might do.
Call me conniving, but I couldn’t help asking her, “Where did you meet up with a skunk?” Maybe she’d say something that would prove that she’d attacked Paula.
She lowered her head coyly and looked up at Clay from the corners of her eyes. “As I told Clay, I went near the carriage house last night hoping to do some measurements, and apparently a skunk was inside. It came out and attacked me.”
That was not, as I understood it, how skunks ordinarily behaved, unless they felt threatened. “Attacked you?”
“You know. Lifted its little tail, and then . . . Did you know that you can’t outrun skunk spray from a determined skunk?”
“I guess that makes sense.”
“Their spray is very forceful.”
If she’d been inside the carriage house when the skunk sprayed, she wasn’t about to admit it. I was no closer to knowing for sure whether she had wound the sticky stabilizer around Paula or whether Paula had done it to herself.
Meanwhile, Clay had been digging around in his picnic basket. He set a plate, napkin, wineglass, and cutlery in front of Loretta.
Clay had brought too much food for two of us, and extra utensils, too? But he truly had not seemed to expect Loretta.
She glanced at her watch. “I guess there’s time for me to eat quickly before you and I go to the carriage house, Clay. Kent wants to use it as a theater for our threadly sins play before we convert it to an apartment. He said that Mona and the rest of you”—she flicked a glance at me—“will be along at nine for a meeting or rehearsal or something.”
Clay sat down beside me. Across from us, Loretta gazed at the beach and the lake. “What a beautiful spot.” Her words came out girlishly wistful. “I hope TADAM can stay here after what happened.”
I passed her the platter of chicken. She helped herself to a drumstick and bit into it. “This is wonderful, Willow. You could tempt anyone into gluttony.” She heaved a huge sigh.
If I’d told her that Clay had prepared the feast and invited me, I would have sounded catty. Besides, if she discovered what a good cook he was, she would probably throw herself at him even harder. If Clay wasn’t going to tell her who had actually prepared the meal, I didn’t need to, either.
Clay offered wine. Loretta asked for white. He opened the bottle and poured some into her glass. “When you got here this evening, Loretta, you said you were upset. Why?”
“It’s terrible, but not surprising, I guess. Antonio’s widow, Paula, has been arrested.”
I stared openmouthed at her, but Clay asked, “Why?”
“Apparently, the police figured out that she killed Antonio.”
“When was she arrested?” I asked.
“A couple of hours ago. I got a call from her lawyer. She must have realized the
y were closing in on her, so she faked an attack on herself to make it look like someone else had been out to get both Antonio and her. After the police put all of that together, it was a piece of cake.” She bit into corn bread. “Speaking of cake, I hope I have room for some of yours, Willow, after all this other delicious food.”
Clay still didn’t admit that he had been the chef, and I only nodded. Immediately after talking to me, Vicki must have told Detective Neffting that Paula had stolen the stabilizer and stuck it to herself. And the police had put that theory with other evidence that they must have found, and had arrested Paula for Antonio’s murder.
Loretta must not have heard about Haylee’s and my involvement, or about where Paula had faked the attack. I told her, “Haylee and I happened along after Paula’s supposed ‘attack.’ It was in the carriage house. Last I knew, that area was still a crime scene, so we won’t be able to go there tonight.”
Apparently, Loretta had saved room for cake. She cut a large piece for herself. “Once the police discovered that Paula had made the whole thing up, they took the yellow tape down. They’d already gotten enough evidence.”
One thing about Loretta’s story struck me as odd. Paula hadn’t seemed to like Loretta. I asked, “Why did Paula’s lawyer call you?”
“Paula wanted clothes from her apartment.”
“And her apartment is not a crime scene now that they’ve charged her?”
“The entire mansion is. So I bought a few toiletries and canvassed the TADAM students in my apartment building who are about her size for a change of clothes. The state police took her to Erie. I didn’t want to cancel Clay’s and my meeting—we need to get started on the carriage house renovations—so one of the students is driving the things to her.”
I asked, “Do you know if Paula spent much time in the carriage house before last night?”
Loretta shook her head. “She refused to go near it. She said it was creepy.”
For once, I agreed with Paula. “And it seems to be the home of at least one skunk.”
Loretta waved her hand in front of her face. “It’s terrible. I only walked near the back of the TADAM mansion last night, and I probably still stink. But the smell will leave the carriage house eventually. Despite a few holes where the siding rotted near the ground, the carriage house is substantial, right, Clay?”
