Oh no, this was getting too weird. Every instinct in her body shrieked at her to get the hell out of Dodge. She’d never pretended to be brave. Or noble. Just needy. She’d just have to find another way to get the proof for Aunt Darcy—and a fat check in return.
Backing up, she bumped into a tall cabinet and glass clinked loudly. She looked around, but nothing looked familiar. She was lost in a maze of dimly-lit showrooms and furniture. An Exit sign had to be somewhere. Let’s see, she’d been standing by a table in the front showroom earlier in the day, looking at glass globes and thinking how Diva would like one of them for her séances or palm reading. That would be—which way? So many damn rooms in this sprawling house now that it’d been renovated, the original two-and-a-half stories altered to a rambling structure that somehow managed to still look artistically cluttered.
She stepped through an open door and found herself in yet another furniture-crammed showroom. Afghans were draped over love seats and fringed ottomans; paintings hung on the walls and were stacked on the floor leaning against chairs and each other. Great. She should have left a trail of bread crumbs to find her way out.
Light slanted into the room to her right, and she moved that way, rounding a corner to see an open door to the cargo area banging in the wind. Relief and a crazy urge to laugh hysterically eased her tension. It was only a door left open. What a wuss she’d become.
She moved to the door, peered out, and saw taillights leaving the parking lot. A white car very similar to Aunt Darcy’s Lexus squealed onto Massey Road. That explained the alarm not being set. But it didn’t explain why Darcy was here when she was supposed to be at her Junior League meeting. Or where she’d parked the car and why she’d carelessly left the back door open. Maybe she’d just forgotten something. Not that it really mattered. The rear parking lot was empty except for the white van. Maybe she’d go ahead and look around instead of giving in to the jitters.
The double doors to the back storage area were open, and she approached cautiously in case Gordon had shown up as well. For a place that was supposed to be empty, Designer’s Den sure was busy.
It was darker inside the storage area, and she reached just inside to find a light switch. It tripped a bank of fluorescent lighting overhead, and she paused a few steps inside the doorway. At first glance, everything looked the same. The big Portuguese chest and a stack of crates stood to one side, and some packing straw lay littered on the floor as if someone had been interrupted in unpacking. No motion or sound intruded on the heavy silence, but she still felt a chill shiver down her spine. It was the same kind of chill her great-grandmother would say meant someone was walking over her grave. Not a nice thought. What little courage she’d mustered promptly disappeared. Time to hit the trail.
She turned around to hit the light switch again, and bumped into Harry Gordon.
“Oh shit!” she yelped, leaping backward. “You scared the crap out of me. I didn’t hear you—hey, are you all right?”
Harry Gordon didn’t answer. He just stared beyond her, his bright blue eyes faded and opaque. His mouth sagged open, and his face was gray as putty—and as unanimated.
Something wet and warm smeared her palm and she looked down, staring blankly for a moment at the bright red stuff like ketchup. Then she looked up at Harry Gordon again. The tip of some kind of animal horn protruded from his chest and, apparently, was all that held him up.
Oh boy. She’d known meeting up with Harry Gordon wouldn’t be pleasant. She just hadn’t thought it’d be fatal.
Four
“How the hell do you do it, Harley?” Mike Morgan shook his head in disbelief. “You’re a magnet for murder.”
“Oh, gee thanks, I appreciate your comfort, but really, it isn’t necessary.” She gulped a big swig of hot coffee he’d brought her, still shivering with reaction despite the night’s heat.
She’d called Mike first, and he’d called in the police. Harry Gordon still hung from an elk horn in the storage area, waiting for the coroner to finish his investigation. Macabre.
Mike peered down at her. “So why are you here alone? I thought you told me you had to do something with your aunt tonight.”
“No, you never listen. I said had to do something for my aunt tonight. This was it. Oh no, not murder—I was just checking on some stuff for her.”
“What kind of stuff?”
“What, are you working homicide now?”
“Practicing.” He shifted position, moved closer, his voice dropping. “These aren’t hard questions, Harley, but someone’s going to ask them. Better be ready.”
“I am ready. Ready to leave.”
Morgan smiled and looked at something beyond her. “Too late.”
She didn’t have to look. She knew who it had to be. Bobby Baroni. She turned and put on a bright smile when she saw him stalking toward her. Bobby was tall, well-built, and Italian to the roots of his black hair. His parents were third generation Americans, his grandparents still spoke in their native language at home, and his great-grandparents had never learned English at all. They hadn’t had to, living downtown near the river in what used to be the Italian quarter of Memphis, selling pasta and pastrami to mostly Italians but a surprising number of Irish as well.
“Hi, Bobby!”
“Shit, Harley.” He didn’t look happy. In fact, he looked distinctly grumpy. He gave her a look from his dark eyes that was both wary and professional. Bobby never let friendship interfere with his duties as a homicide detective. Unfortunately.
“Why is it,” he began, flicking his gaze from her to Morgan and back, “that I always seem to find you near murder victims lately? If I didn’t know better—and I’m not sure I do—I’d think you were some sort of aberrant serial killer.”
“Isn’t that redundant? I thought all serial killers were aberrant.”
Bobby’s eyes narrowed. “This is no time to try funny, Harley. How’d this happen?”
“Hell, I don’t know!” she said indignantly. “He was dead when I got here, hanging off that elk horn like a winter coat.” She couldn’t help a shudder. A sick feeling sat in her stomach.
“Did you give a statement yet?”
She nodded. “To that officer over there. You’re not going to make me give it three or four times again, I hope.”
“As many as it takes, Harley.” He wrote something down in his little spiral notebook, then turned to Morgan. “You called this in. Were you with her?”
“No. She called me, hysterical—”
“I was not hysterical!” she protested, but both men ignored her as Mike kept talking.
“—because she’d found the vic. I told her not to touch anything, to wait outside in her car with the doors locked, and then I called it in.”
“Yeah. Well, let’s run this down again, Harley. You said you were doing something for your aunt—what?”
“Uh . . . I have her camera.” She held it up when he looked at her. “I was taking pictures for her. Of furniture. Stuff like that.”
“Right. I’ll just keep it for a while, if you don’t mind. Give it to that officer over there. I don’t suppose you’ll tell me why you’re here after hours? Why she didn’t do it herself?”
“She, uh, had a meeting.” No way was she going to tell them Aunt Darcy had been here.
“A meeting. Why is taking pictures of merchandise so important she’d send you to do it? You’ve never gotten along that well with her. Why so buddy-buddy all of a sudden?”
The bad thing about Bobby was that he remembered too much, and knew too much about her family. It could be damned inconvenient.
Not wanting to lie to Bobby, but knowing the truth would only be worse without proof, she said, “Well, we’re not exactly buddies, but I was, uh, looking at some of the new stuff that just came in. You know. Unique stuff for my apartment.”
Bobby just looked at her. He had a way of ferreting out the truth that was quite annoying, but she held firm. He didn’t believe her, she could see that, so he ju
st waited for her to blurt out everything she knew. This time, it wasn’t going to work. Darcy was family, and blood was thicker than water. Even thicker than friendship, although she felt queasy about it all.
“At wholesale,” she added when he kept staring at her.
“Wholesale?” he finally said in a frankly disbelieving tone. “Your Aunt Darcy? Has she had a recent brain transplant? She’s never given wholesale to anyone, not even her own mother.”
That was true, dammit. She’d gone too far. Why had she added the last? Bobby knew that Darcy Fontaine believed in profit even at the expense of her own family. She’d just remodeled Grandmother Eaton’s kitchen and only gave her a five percent discount. Hardly wholesale.
Fortunately, a female shriek distracted Bobby, so she was saved from having to give a plausible explanation. That could wait until she’d actually talked to Aunt Darcy to find out why she’d been here and if she’d seen her partner impaled on an elk horn.
“Harry! Oh God no, not Harry! Please, you’ve got to let me see him . . . noooo!”
The shrieks rose in volume until Harley’s eyes throbbed and she winced. Two uniformed policemen were trying to contain the plainly hysterical woman struggling to get through their barrier to the warehouse.
“Do you know her?” Bobby asked Harley, and she shook her head.
“Never seen her before in my life, but I don’t think I’ll forget that voice. It grates like fingernails on a chalkboard.”
Bobby’s faint smile told her he agreed with her assessment, but he only said, “Come to the precinct in the morning to give an official statement.”
“So,” Morgan said while Bobby walked toward the crime scene in the warehouse, “why were you here again?”
“I already told you—”
“Yeah, and I don’t quite believe you.”
Indignant again, she said, “I have never lied to you!”
“Maybe not, but you have an annoying habit of not telling me the entire truth. So technically, it’s the same thing.”
“Not quite.” She really hated it when he got technical. He was so often right.
“Oh yeah. Quite. You went to Catholic school. Isn’t there a sin of omission as well as a sin of commission?”
“How should I know? I slept through catechism classes, and I’ve forgotten everything I had to learn anyway. Look, thanks for coming to my rescue. I feel better now. Think I can go?”
“Better ask Baroni about that. He’s the primary on this one.”
“Chicken.”
“Oh no, I’m not about to lay the egg. Let Baroni handle you. I’ve done my rescue bit for tonight.”
Her brow arched. “That mean we won’t be having a late dinner in bed?”
“Hey, I said I’m not into any more rescue, but I’m not crazy. We’re definitely on for a late dinner in bed.” Reaching out, he snagged her arm, pulled her against his hard chest, and bent his head, kissing her until little lights exploded behind her eyes and she forgot they were in the middle of a crime scene. Then he let her go, grinning when she breathed a long sigh and stood unsteadily for a moment. “Your place. I’ll be waiting on you.”
Still groping for equilibrium, she said, “Yeah. Later.”
“I’ll bring dinner. No, not Taco Bell. Branch out. Try new things.”
She blinked, but the protest went unuttered. He was already walking away anyway. Wow. The man curled her toes.
The screech that split the air curled her hair.
Jerking around, she stared at the woman still fighting the police to get a glimpse of Harry Gordon. Dark hair that frizzed into some kind of curly mess flopped in her face so that Harley couldn’t get a good look at her, but she definitely made herself heard.
“Harry can’t be dead, I just talked to him,” the woman screamed, and Harley saw that the officers had finally gotten her to stand up instead of sag between them, though they still had to support her. She seemed so genuinely distressed that Harley knew Harry Gordon had to be more to her than a fellow employee. The woman’s shrieks were so loud she had no trouble hearing her, even across fifty feet of parking lot illuminated by strobe lights and security lamps.
“Ma’am,” one of the cops said to the woman, and Harley thought she recognized Officer Delisi, who had questioned her just last week after Mrs. Trumble’s death. “You need to calm down. If you want to help us, you’ve got to answer some questions. Did you know the deceased well?”
Nodding and shuddering, the brunette indicated her willingness to comply, but she looked up at them through her lashes, a swift assessing glance that caught Harley off-guard. It was so—so calculated. Hm. Maybe she wasn’t as grieving as she seemed. Had the officers even noticed?
“Sha-ree Saw-say,” she said when asked her name, then spelled it “Cheríe Saucier.” Harley thought it sounded like a topless dancer’s stage name. Still, the petite brunette wore clothes no dancer would wear, an expensive line Harley recognized from shopping with Tootsie. The simple lines of the pantsuit were elegant, Dolce & Gabbana at odds with her K-Mart navy pumps.
If there was one thing she’d learned from Grandmother Eaton, it was that a true lady paid scrupulous attention to her footwear, even if she couldn’t afford expensive clothing. Still, this was the twenty-first century, not the era Grandmother Eaton obviously preferred. Etiquette rules of the past no longer applied. Even the ironclad rule about not wearing white before Easter and after Labor Day had been abused in the past few years. Yet her adolescent lessons were difficult to ignore, so Harley regarded the woman curiously as she walked to where the woman and officers stood.
It was no surprise to hear her say she worked closely with Harry Gordon, that he’d hired her as a designer and consultant. This was the woman Aunt Darcy disliked so intensely and had called a “wretched woman.” She could see how they’d clash. Darcy Fontaine could spot a female fraud a mile away and had no doubt pegged Cheríe Saucier the moment she’d laid eyes on her. Oh yeah, she was willing to bet there had been some interesting fireworks a time or two.
Which reminded her—why had Aunt Darcy returned to the store? And what had she really meant when she’d said, “I’ll take care of Harry”? No. Not Aunt Darcy. She might be a ruthless pest and one of those annoyingly determined women, but she wasn’t a murderer. It’d be too untidy. Besides, Harry had been impaled on a horn, and it took strength to do that. The heaviest thing Aunt Darcy lifted was a bottle of gin.
Well, Saturday was lunch at Grandmother Eaton’s, and she intended to ask her aunt some of those questions.
“You need to talk to Darcy Fontaine,” Cheríe Saucier spat at one of the officers, and the calculating look in her eyes belied her previous hysteria. “She had a huge fight with Harry earlier today.”
Uh oh. This didn’t bode well for Aunt Darcy. Harley sidled closer to eavesdrop, earning a narrow glance from Officer Delisi.
“I heard her tell him she’d kill him before she’d let him ruin her business,” Cheríe added, to Harley’s dismay. “And she would, too. The woman is a total bitch. I wouldn’t put anything past her.”
“Funny,” Harley piped in, “she says the same thing about you.”
That earned her a longer stare from the closest officer, an unfamiliar face.
“It’s true,” Harley defended Aunt Darcy, though God only knew why, since she had the sinking feeling there was a lot more to this than dear old auntie had confided in her. “They hate each other, so I wouldn’t be taking Miss Saucer’s word as gospel.”
“Saucier,” Cheríe snapped, emphasizing the last syllable as say, and Harley just smiled. If that was her real name, Aunt Darcy was a Republican.
Glaring at Harley, Cheríe ground out, “And every word is true. They had a huge fight and Darcy Fontaine threatened Harry. I was standing behind the door and I heard her.”
“Snooping? Besides, that’s hearsay, isn’t it, officer?”
“Look, Miss Davidson, if you’ve already given your statement, you need to go home now. We’ll call y
ou when we need you,” the officer replied, and she saw on his little brass name tag that his name was Logan.
“Certainly, Officer Logan. Uh, have we met?”
He grinned. “Not officially. But I know who you are. And I’ll take that camera.”
“Oh.” No doubt half the police force could recognize her now. That could turn out to be a huge drawback. “I’ll just be running along then,” she said, and gave him the camera. With a last glance at Miss Saucier, who’d crossed her arms over her chest and narrowed her eyes, she went to find her car and try to get out of the now crowded parking lot. Vans and police cruisers littered the lot, looking ominous and final. A television crew pulled up beside the coroner’s van, and she recognized one of the Channel 3 reporters. She walked a little faster, and crushed seashells crunched under her feet. Her Toyota seemed miles away, but she got to it before the reporters saw her. She felt safer once she was inside with the doors locked. Cameramen turned on more lights to add to the surreal image of electric fireflies.
This looked really bad for Aunt Darcy. Should she call her? Try to warn her? What if the police were already there questioning her? Well, only one way to find out.
Her new cell phone lay on the car seat, still plugged into the charger. She punched in the number of Aunt Darcy’s cell phone and waited. Two, three, four rings, then the automatic system came on to invite her to leave a message. She hung up and dialed her house, but no answer.
For several moments, she just sat there. Aunt Darcy should answer her phones. She rarely let the system take messages. Unless she was avoiding someone.
Harley got a really bad feeling in the pit of her stomach.
After going to the police station the next morning to give her official statement, Harley felt a need for a distraction. Family usually provided that in spades. She hadn’t yet broached the subject of the luncheon at Grandmother Eaton’s tomorrow with Diva. It could go either way.
Cami—Camilla Watson, her best friend since junior high and partner in many youthful crimes—said it was because Diva had never forgiven Grandmother Eaton for disapproving of Yogi. Ancient history now, but the rift between them remained. It wasn’t that they never spoke, it was just that they spoke to one another like acquaintances instead of mother and daughter. Maybe one day they’d settle it, but for now, family reunions and holidays were the only times they saw one another.
Harley Rushes In (Book 2 of the Blue Suede Mysteries) Page 5
