Deadly Décor (A Caprice De Luca Mystery)

by Karen Rose Smith

  She smiled and asked the teenager, “Is basketball not your game?”

  He narrowed his eyes. “What’s it to you?”

  Maybe she had to tell him exactly what she wanted. Maybe she had to be careful how she did it. But she intended to get a few answers from Danny Flannery . . . today.

  Chapter Six

  Caprice studied the teenager and suddenly realized the designs on his T-shirt and those on his sneakers were hand-painted. Acting on a hunch, she asked, “Did you paint your T-shirt and sneakers?”

  His eyes widened as if he hadn’t expected anything like that. “Yeah,” he answered warily, looking over her tank top, which sported a huge decal of a white Persian cat, and then the fifties-style pedal pushers she’d found at her favorite vintage clothing shop, Secrets of the Past. “But you didn’t paint yours,” he muttered.

  She laughed. “Nope, I didn’t, but I wish I could. I hear animals are tough to sketch or paint.”

  “That depends,” he said with a shrug. “Furry ones are the worst, but they can be done.”

  Talking about art was obviously a lot different than talking about basketball. “Are you helping with the murals on the game room wall?”

  “I was.” He jutted his chin toward the building. “I was banned from there for a while, but I’ve been helping to finish them.”

  Danny was tapping his foot, bursting with indignation about his work being interrupted. That indignation had apparently made him spill something he might not have spilled otherwise.

  “Caught smoking or something?” she asked easily.

  He eyed her again and asked, “What’s it to you?”

  Dropping all pretense, she said flatly, “My sister found Bob Preston’s body.”

  His eyes widened and his mouth dropped open. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “No.” She took out her phone and quickly found a picture of Bella. “If you spend a lot of time around the community center, maybe you can tell me if you’ve seen her here.”

  At first Danny looked as if he didn’t want to get involved, but then innate curiosity must have made him reach for the phone.

  Studying the picture, he gave a quick nod. “Yeah, I’ve seen her around. Were your sister and Preston hooked up?”

  “Old friends,” she answered easily.

  But Danny narrowed his eyes, and he could see through that evasive answer. “Friends with benefits,” he mumbled.

  Caprice was about to protest in outrage when he went on, “He always had a couple of women hanging around. I saw him with a blonde with long, red fingernails and dressed like she didn’t belong in Kismet.”

  That could be Eliza, Caprice thought. She always dressed impeccably in expensive clothes, and long red fingernails were usually part of the outfit.

  “There was a redhead, too. She met him out back last week. Bob was a popular guy.” There was resentment and bitterness in Danny’s tone, and Caprice wanted to get at the reason why.

  “So what did you and Bob fight about?”

  He didn’t seem surprised that she knew. Maybe there had been many witnesses. “Nothing.”

  If he thought that was going to end their conversation, it certainly wasn’t. “Nothing shouldn’t have started a fistfight.”

  Avoiding her gaze, Danny said in a low voice, “We just disagreed about something.”

  “Do you take swings at everybody you don’t agree with?”

  She’d apparently gone too far, because Danny said, “It’s none of your business.”

  It was her business if this teenager had killed Bob, but she wasn’t going to out-and-out say that. Eking out information little by little was probably the best way to go. It wasn’t the fastest, but it was often the surest.

  She switched the course of their conversation. “The murals are looking good. Do you think they’ll let you finish the last one?”

  “I don’t know. Bob was in charge. I already did most of it.” He hastened to add, “Bob was just sort of there. He didn’t actually do most of the sketching and painting.”

  That might be true, but from what she understood, Bob was getting the credit for the murals. Is that why he and Danny had fought?

  Danny pushed himself away from the fence. “I gotta go. Nothing’s happening here.”

  She wondered what he expected to happen here when he didn’t play basketball and couldn’t go inside because it was a crime scene.

  Without another word to Caprice, or anyone else hanging around, Danny sauntered past a group of girls and off the property. When he hit the street, he jogged across and kept jogging.

  Caprice wondered if he was running from her or running away from something he’d done. Hopefully, she could soon figure that out.

  Caprice hadn’t seen or heard from Eliza, and she wondered how her client was faring since Bob’s murder. If they had been dating . . . if they had been close . . .

  She would be passing Connect Xpress on her way home. She might as well stop in and see if Eliza was there. Caprice knew her house with its freshly painted walls and de-cluttered look didn’t feel like home to Eliza anymore. People liked their belongings around them—memorabilia, pictures, and furniture that carried memories of regrets as well as good times. Caprice understood that she was messing with people’s lives when she staged a house because it wasn’t exactly “them” anymore. It wasn’t exactly “theirs” anymore. And that was really the whole point. All Caprice wanted to do was invite newcomers in, newcomers who would want to live there and make that home theirs.

  Even though Eliza was eager for her move to L.A., she’d had trouble with the whole staging concept. But, again, that wasn’t unusual.

  Five minutes later, Caprice drove past the building where her brother lived, an old school now transformed into condos. Downtown Kismet’s charm was rooted in its early 1900s heritage. Red-brick buildings were trimmed in white around windows and eaves. Oval signs on wrought-iron brackets hung in front of many businesses.

  She drove another block, past a deli where Vince often bought takeout and an old movie theater that ran marathon film fests, mostly on weekends. It was a masterpiece of old movie decor inside. In the oldest part of Kismet now, she passed Cherry on the Top and, a few storefronts down, Secrets of the Past. Glancing at the arts and crafts mall on the other side of the street, topped by the Blue Moon Grille, she spotted the driveway for Connect Xpress. Unlike other shops, its red-and-black sign looked almost garish on the front of the building. Huge, it was topped by halogen lights that illuminated the storefront at night.

  No one could miss it. That was for sure.

  Instead of parking in front of the building at a meter, she swerved into one of the spaces perpendicular to the side of Connect Xpress. After she climbed out of her van, she locked it. A few seconds later, she was opening the heavy glass door and stepping inside the video-dating business.

  The reception area carried through the red and black theme with two leather couches, black enamel tables, and dark red carpet that was so plush her footsteps were soundless. Usually, though, someone was at the counter, ready to greet anyone who walked in. Caprice knew the setup because Eliza had shown her around when they’d had one of their meetings here about her house. There were two taping rooms in the back and an office area that veered down a hall to the right.

  As Caprice walked that way now, her sandals clacked slightly on the hallway tile.

  She called into the office. “Is anyone here?” Taking a few more steps, she glimpsed someone sitting at a computer at a long station that accommodated two other desktops. She supposed this was where the editing was done on the videos that Connect Xpress recorded.

  The redheaded young woman at the computer didn’t notice Caprice and didn’t answer. She was just sitting there, staring at the monitor.

  “Excuse me,” Caprice said, a little louder.

  The woman looked up, obviously startled. Her eyes were red, and so was her nose. She looked as if she’d been crying. “Can I help you?” Her voice was thick,
and she cleared her throat.

  “I’m looking for Eliza. Is she here?”

  “No, she said she wouldn’t be in today, and I . . . I shouldn’t be. It’s not as if I’m getting anything done. The guy I was dating . . .” Her voice broke and she turned away.

  Caprice’s radar went on alert. Danny had said Bob had also met with a redhead.

  She approached the young woman and sat at a chair at the computer station next to her. “I’m Caprice. You seem really upset. Is there anything I can do?”

  “I’m Jackie,” the woman told her. “There’s nothing you can do. My boyfriend was . . . Bob was . . . killed.”

  Caprice took another good look at Jackie, with her red hair and very blue eyes. Was this the woman Danny had spoken about? For Caprice, the shock of Bob’s death had been swallowed up with Bella’s involvement in it, but now she felt the reverberations and sadness of it. She could only imagine what Jackie was feeling if she’d been close to Bob.

  “I knew Bob. I stage houses and often used him and his crews. I’m sorry you lost him.”

  “We’d been dating a couple of months, and I really like . . . liked him,” she corrected herself. “He made me laugh, and he acted as if he cared about me.”

  “Bob could make anybody laugh. He was a charmer, too.”

  “I know,” she admitted. “I’m the one who shot his video here.”

  “Do you mean a dating video?”

  “Yeah. Do you want to see it? That’s what I was watching.”

  Caprice knew Bob didn’t have any trouble getting a date. Had he wanted to expand his dating pool? “Bob shouldn’t have had any problems getting a girl to go out with him. As you said, he was fun.”

  “So good looking too. I couldn’t believe it when he looked my way.”

  “If you’d like to show me his footage, I’d be glad to watch.”

  Jackie moved the mouse and the screen saver went off. The video was right there. She pressed the arrow to start it.

  Sitting on a high stool, Bob smiled into the camera, looking like a model for a TV ad in a crew-neck sweater and khaki slacks, so different from the attire she usually saw him in—a T-shirt and jeans.

  She heard Jackie’s voice as she suggested, “So tell me what you like to do on weekends.”

  “I like to go dancing . . . or canoeing. As long as I’m doing something, I’m good. I work out at the gym. Been a member of Shape Up for years.”

  One thing Caprice knew—Bob liked to keep moving.

  “I work out there, too,” Jackie murmured. “That’s where the two of us really got to know each other.”

  The gym. Another place to explore where she might find Bob’s friends . . . or foes.

  “Tell me about your family,” Jackie’s voice prompted from off camera.

  And Bob did, explaining that he was an only child and his parents had been older. He mentioned they had passed away, and he sometimes missed not having any family. But he had lots of good friends.

  Jackie stopped the video as if it was too painful for her to watch. “He did have so many friends,” she said. “He was always getting a call or texting someone.”

  She said to Jackie, “Bob and my sister were supposed to have coffee together the night he died. Did you know that?”

  “Really?” Jackie asked, looking startled.

  “They ran into each other and had coffee last week, too. They were catching up with old times.”

  “How did they know each other?” Jackie asked casually, but Caprice knew the question wasn’t casual. If Bob had lots of friends and Jackie suspected he might not be seeing her exclusively . . .

  “They knew each other in high school. They were pretty serious at one time.”

  “What happened?”

  “Oh, I don’t know if I should say. Bella was in school in Philadelphia, and a long-distance relationship is tough.”

  “Did Bob go out with someone else?”

  Caprice kept silent.

  “I know he had a reputation. I knew that before I started dating him. When we were out together, sometimes I saw him looking at other women, but I didn’t want to believe he’d cheat on me. I can’t believe he cheated on me.”

  “My sister’s married, so I really think they were just catching up.”

  Jackie’s eyes were stormy, and that pretty blue maybe wasn’t so innocent after all. What if she’d found out Bob was supposed to have coffee with Bella? What if she wasn’t surprised at all by the information Caprice had given her?

  Jackie was at least five-eight. In her Connect Xpress shirt and shorts, Caprice could see that she was fit. Could this pretty woman wield a murder weapon in jealousy?

  Caprice guessed anything was possible. Someone killed Bob, and Jackie’s motive stacked up in the same way Bella or Joe’s would. She’d have to check out the gym and see if she could find out anything there.

  She’d learned a lot today. She’d go home to her pets and take care of work that was mounting up. Also on her to-do list was to post a photo of Shasta on her Web site and send notices to the radio station, the Kismet Crier, and the free community paper.

  Tomorrow she’d continue her investigation. Tomorrow she also should probably consult with Vince and Grant about what she’d learned. After a few more minutes of conversation with Jackie, and with another expression of her condolences, she left the woman at the computer again, suspecting Jackie would be running that video again and again and again.

  In love . . . or with regrets?

  The following morning after breakfast, Shasta wanted to sit at Caprice’s feet and be petted more than she wanted anything else. Better than anyone, Caprice knew she not only needed food and water, she needed attention. For however long she’d been on her own out in the big world, she hadn’t received it.

  Finding photos she’d taken of Shasta on her computer, she chose a few she liked and wanted to add to a page on her Web site. She sent them to her Web mistress, along with copy. Afterward, she thought about everything she’d learned about Bob and possible suspects. She really should talk to Grant or Vince about what she’d discovered. The thing was, Shasta seemed particularly needy today. Pregnancy hormones?

  Picking up the phone on her desk, she called Grant’s and Vince’s receptionist/secretary/Girl Friday while she played with Shasta’s ears and petted her. She and Giselle were more than acquaintances and less than friends, but they had a good relationship. She asked if either Grant or Vince were free.

  Giselle said easily, “Grant is free for the next hour.”

  “So if I just show up, he’ll let me in?”

  “I’ll make sure he does. Lawyers need breaks, too.”

  “This is business,” Caprice assured Giselle.

  “Even if it wasn’t, I’d let you in.”

  Caprice envisioned Giselle, with her spiked gray hair and stylish glasses, winking at her. After Caprice ended the call, Shasta whined at her feet. The dog was well behaved. Caprice considered something she might not usually consider. Just maybe Giselle would let the two of them in.

  Fifteen minutes later, with Shasta following happily on her leash, she climbed the steps to the first floor of an old house turned into professional offices. Vince rented the first floor for his law practice. A staircase in the foyer led to the second floor. She bypassed that and opened the door into Vince’s space.

  Giselle sat at her desk and waved to Caprice. She’d spiked her hair with enough gel to make it stand up straight. Today she wore rectangular blue eyeglasses and had lined her eyes with the same blue. Even though she was fifty-four, she was fashion-conscious.

  Whenever Caprice walked into Vince and Grant’s reception area, she had to shake her head at the decor. Vince believed in being practical. A wool rug covered the floor, and he’d ordered nondescript chairs from an office supply store. A chrome lamp sat on an objectionable laminated table. Caprice knew she could make this area in this old house look elegant and welcoming. But Vince wanted no part of her ideas.

  Giselle
suddenly spotted Shasta. Her eyes widened, and she said, “What a cutie. Is it friendly?”

  “She’s everybody’s best friend.” And to prove it, Shasta went over to Giselle for a head rub.

  The office manager laughed, then murmured, “This ought to be interesting. But . . . nothing ventured, nothing gained!”

  Proverbs were part of Giselle’s personal philosophy, and she often quoted them. “Did you tell Grant I was stopping by?”

  “I didn’t get a chance. He’s been on the phone. But I’ll buzz him now.”

  Hardly two seconds after she’d pushed the button, Grant opened his office door, stepped into the reception area, and spotted Caprice. Then he saw Shasta.

  He didn’t even blink. Dressed in a navy suit, with his steel-gray tie straight, he was nothing if not unflappable . . . at least usually. By now, Vince would have been exclaiming that a dog didn’t belong in his office. But Grant just motioned her into his.

  Unlike Vince’s office, Grant’s had character. It hadn’t been professionally decorated either, but he obviously had good taste. Positioned facing his desk were two wine-toned leather club chairs with brass fittings. A painting of the Grand Canyon was centered on one wall, accompanied by two sand-art plaques with Native American motifs. His desk, like Vince’s, was a laminate, but his wine-colored leather blotter complemented the chairs. The pencil holder on his desk was a nice piece of pottery hand-painted with images of wolves.

  Instead of going to the chair behind his desk, he sat in one of the chairs in front of the desk and motioned to Caprice to do the same.

  When she did, Shasta rubbed up against his leg and plopped at his feet. Grant shook his head and gave Caprice an I-can’t-believe-you look. “You had a good reason for bringing your new stray dog to my office? Does she need a lawyer?”

  Shasta raised her head and looked up at him with adoring eyes. He reached down and scratched her behind her ears.

  Caprice already knew Grant was an animal lover. He just didn’t admit it. She wondered again how the two stray kittens—Creamsicle and Stripes—he’d helped place were doing with his divorced next-door neighbor. She decided not to ask.