by Leslie Caine
Ang arched his brow. “Are you mocking me, Miss Gilbert?”
“No, I’m not, Mr. Chung.”
“Good. Because the key to building a structure the feng shui way is to let the land invite you to interact and participate in its secrets.”
Hadn’t I read that recently in a book? “It’s just that we went through all this before with you when you first started working for Shannon, and you approved our architectural plans at that time.”
“Not this front corner, I didn’t,” Ang declared. “You’ve cut right through a dragon vein! That’s the path of concentrated earth energy from that mountain, right there!” He stabbed his finger at one particular mountain, shimmering some fifty miles in the distance. “Do I really have to tell you people that forcing a vein to end is sudden death? It’s absolutely disastrous for the occupants of any structure located at this point!”
Sullivan stifled a groan. “I take it, then, that the low brick fence we’re going to have built out here to act as our red raven won’t…deflect the vein? So that the vein misses being lopped off by the corner of the house?”
“Of course not! A red raven is never half as strong as a dragon!”
“Well, sure, but you’d think even a bird would be able to tackle a dragon’s vein that’s already fifty miles long,” I said.
Listening in, Taylor guffawed. Ang crossed his arms and glared at him, then at me.
I added, “Sorry, Mr. Chung, but I find it hard to believe that this particular chi line hasn’t already been cut more than once by the numerous homes in downtown Crestview.”
“I assure you, Miss Gilbert, if you look with your heart and your mind and not just your eyes, you can see the severed vein for yourself.”
Taylor chortled. “Dude! Are you listening to yourself? This is, like, nuts!”
“Taylor, let us handle this, please. All right?”
He gaped at me. “Aw, come on, Erin! Next he’s going to be telling us that we’re all gonna croak because we stuck the Porta Potti on the dragon’s toes!”
The front door opened—thankfully after and not before Taylor’s wisecrack—and Michael emerged, closely followed by Shannon. As they headed toward us, I urged my brother, “Please, just go back to what you were doing. We’ll tell you what changes need to be made later.”
“Fine. No problemo.” With a cocky grin on his face, he nodded at Michael before turning and sauntering away.
Michael paused, and once again put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. The energy and exuberance that he always had on camera, which had made him such a hit with Audrey’s audience, was now held in check. That seemed to be the typical dynamic between him and his wife, which was probably fortunate. Shannon had been so emotional lately that if they’d both responded with equal fervor, we might have been tempted to install thick padding on all their walls.
“So, how’s it going, folks?” he asked with a smile.
“Not well, my friend,” Ang replied. “The addition is all wrong, I’m sorry to say. It’s got to be rebuilt from scratch.”
“Oh, my God!” Shannon shrieked. “We’ve wasted all this time and money!”
Michael groaned and turned to his wife. “We’ve got to stop this remodel right now! It’s going to cost a fortune to redo everything!”
“And then what will we do?” Shannon demanded. “Leave it half built? Tear it down to the foundation? We’d be stuck with a big hole in the ground.”
“True,” he replied. “And that’s going to be a lot more dangerous than any feng shui poison arrows that you keep insisting Pate Hamlin’s house is flinging our way.”
“We can solve this, Ang,” Sullivan intervened firmly, before Shannon could answer her husband. “You said it’s only off at that one corner by six inches. We can take down the framing for that corner and move it inward…round off the corner, or install triangular glass bricks so the dragon vein will pass right through them.”
Ang smiled. “I was just about to suggest that. And I can show you how to direct the energy, once it’s inside the house, to maximize its power for the occupants.”
Michael grimaced. “Triangular glass bricks? How much is that going to set us back?”
“Oh, honey, but just think about how great that’s going to be! We’ll have a major dragon vein, running right through our house!”
“Your profit will increase tenfold from such a wonderful thing,” Ang exclaimed.
“Really? Oh, Ang! Thank you so much!” Shannon rushed over to him to give him a hug. “You’re such a godsend!” She dashed back up to her husband and gave his arm a squeeze. “We don’t have to redo the addition. Isn’t that great?”
“Triangular glass bricks?” he said again, his eyes desperate as he looked at Sullivan and me.
Doing some quick geometry, I said, “As long as they’re at least nine inches long and wide, we should be able to use regular glass blocks. They’ll be clear, so their corners won’t affect the energy lines. We’ll just incorporate that contemporary style into our design.”
“And everybody is happy,” Ang concluded, flashing a smile at Shannon and Michael. “This is what happens when you listen to your Mother Earth.”
“Provided we also listen to our budget,” Michael countered evenly.
“We’ll get to work on the alterations,” Sullivan said, “incorporating a glass column at the corner. And maybe we can turn your front room into both a gallery and a living space.”
“Wonderful,” Shannon said. But her attention was once again focused on the roofline across the street. “And let’s hope that David can get the reflective window glass installed for us.”
Ang said good-bye to the Youngs and left. Shannon and Michael went back inside with nary a word to Sullivan and me. As they shut the door, I told him, “Kudos for your remarkable restraint at resisting any Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon jokes.”
He grinned. “That was only because I can never remember which creature’s doing what.”
“Way to pull us out of the fire with the glass bricks idea. Too bad Shannon gave all the credit to Ang.”
“Yeah. Maybe I should start wearing silk pajamas all the time to get her attention.” He frowned. “You ready to go?”
“In a minute. I need to say good-bye to Taylor.”
He pulled out his cell phone. “Take your time. I’m going to tell David about the glass bricks so he can order them and figure out how to frame around them. We need to make sure Ang can’t claim the foundation has to be made of glass, too. Bet the jerk’s charging by the hour…supposedly supervising every minute of the construction. That way he profits every time he throws a monkey wrench into our plans.”
Sullivan was probably right, I thought as I rounded the house once more. Ang was probably bleeding Michael and Shannon dry by creating all this confusion. Taylor was hard at work but stopped and listened as I explained about the column of glass bricks. “From now on,” I told him, “get everything in writing from David and Ang. Have them make a note on the blueprint, and then get each of them to initial any changes.”
“Yeah, right. I got so much power, I can tell them to write stuff down.”
“I’ll tell them that I’m insisting on that procedure from now on.”
“I don’t need my sister to bail me out.”
“Jeez, Taylor! You complain that you don’t have the authority to fix your problems, yet you don’t want me to use mine!”
He grinned at me. “I’m getting your goat already, aren’t I? See? This is why siblings can’t work together.”
I had to laugh, and he did, too.
“Hey, Erin?”
Our eyes met, and a rare flicker of emotion registered on his features before his tough-guy mask slipped back in place. I could swear the emotion I glimpsed looked a lot like fear. My heartbeat quickened.
“Earlier?” Taylor said. “What I said about our needing to stick together? I’m…getting set up.”
“Go on.”
“Last week, I walk into Dave L
ewis’s office and tell him all about my past, right? How I’m just out of prison and everything…and I’m willing to start at the bottom. And he says, ‘I need a new foreman.’ Puts me in charge of four carpenters. What does that tell you?”
“That David saw something in you. And he wanted to give you a break.”
He chuckled and shook his head. “Come off it, sis. What planet are you living on?”
I didn’t answer. In truth, he had an excellent point. Maybe Shannon was right. Maybe David was trying to sabotage this job. But why?
“If something feels suspicious to you, for heaven’s sake, Taylor, just quit. You’ve been in too much trouble already. If your instincts are telling you you’re getting into more now, why risk it?”
“You figure it’s easy to find work in a town like Crestview with a criminal record?”
“No, but you could—”
“Forget I said anything,” he snarled. “Just do your thing, and I’ll do mine, and everything will be cool.”
There seemed little point in arguing with him about this right now. We had a dragon’s vein to unsever. “Okay, Taylor. Good seeing you again.”
“Yeah. Say hi to Mom when you see her.”
“You’re probably going to see her before I will.”
He shook his head. “I want to wait till I’ve got some money together. It’d be nice to take my mom out to a fancy restaurant…treat her right for once, you know?”
I was touched and meant to tell him so, but he turned on the noisy table saw before I could reply.
The next morning was a Saturday, but Sullivan and I were working a half day. While Sullivan was driving us to a prospective client’s house, Taylor called me on my cell phone. “Erin. I managed to get some proof. You know, of what’s really going on.” He sounded tense and almost breathless.
“At Shannon and Michael’s house, you mean?”
“Yeah.”
“What is it?”
“I took some pictures. And some other stuff.”
“No, I mean, what’s really going on there?”
There was a thud like a door slam in the background, and Taylor said stiffly, “Yeah, of course I’ve got lunchtime off. I gotta eat, don’t I? Can you be at your office at noon?”
“Uh, sure. I take it someone’s eavesdropping. We’ve moved into Sullivan’s office, you know. I’m still on Opal, but a block farther east.”
“No problem. I’ll see you then.” The line went dead.
Sullivan glanced over at me. “What was that all about?”
“A weird call from Taylor. He says he has proof about some trouble at the Youngs’ house. He wants to meet me at noon.”
“We were supposed to measure that kitchen in Longmont.” I said nothing, and he sighed. “However. Have tape, will measure. I’ll take care of it.”
“Thanks.”
He sighed again. “Sure wish Duncan wasn’t our foreman. Especially not there. Shannon’s not the most easygoing of people.”
“No kidding. But I’ve got to say, he seems to really have matured.”
“Prison probably ages a person pretty quick.”
“I think he really is trying to get his act together now.”
“Good. But don’t go getting all sisterly on me and insist that we use him on a regular basis. There are too many good carpenters out there who don’t mouth off to clients.”
“Such as my regular contractor’s crew. Which is who we should have hired at Shannon’s. I’d already won the coin flip. Remember?”
He raked his hand through his hair. “If it makes you feel any better, I wish we’d hired your regular crew for Shannon’s job, too. Lately, David seems to be burned out. I’m thinking this should be his last gig with us, for a while at least. But he’d lobbied hard for this job, so what could I do?”
“You could have assured him that we’d catch him the next time around…but that we needed someone else on this one.”
Sullivan made no reply.
When Taylor still hadn’t shown up at my office by twelve-twenty, I scanned my list of “incoming calls,” found Taylor’s, and called that number. It was his cell phone. It quickly switched to his message box, which meant his phone was turned off. I left a message that I was waiting for him as we’d agreed.
By twelve forty-five, however, I was growing concerned. I debated calling Emily to ask if she had a second number for Taylor, but my being worried was enough; I didn’t want to worry her as well. He’d mentioned that he had “lunchtime off,” as if he was at work. But it was Saturday. He must be moonlighting someplace. On the chance he was at Shannon’s house, I called her number. I hung up when the recorder answered.
Not knowing what else to do and increasingly uneasy about Taylor, I drove out to her house. Taylor’s beat-up pickup truck was parked at the curb.
I rang the doorbell. No answer. Every instinct was screaming at me that something was dreadfully wrong. Unfortunately, all too often of late, even my most irrational fears proved to be justified. I rang the doorbell a second time then pounded on the door for extra measure. It swung open under my fist.
I stepped inside, calling “Shannon?” as I did so.
On the floor near the front door, Taylor’s body was sprawled. His head lay in a pool of blood. A nail gun lay beside him. What seemed to be the head of a nail was lodged in my brother’s temple.
I staggered backward onto the porch. Everything went black.
chapter 3
Somebody was shaking me and calling my name. I opened my eyes and slowly realized that Rebecca Berringer—Audrey’s and my rival—was bending over me. It was freezing. My head hurt, and I was lying on a really hard surface. Was this a bad dream? Where was I?
“Yes, she seems to be okay,” Rebecca said into her cell phone. She looked pale and anxious. Keeping her blue eyes riveted to mine, she listened, then said firmly, “No, I won’t stay on the line.” She dropped her phone back into a compartment in her purse. “That was nine-one-one. My God, Erin! It’s like a scene from a horror movie in there. How did that poor guy manage to do that to himself?”
“Taylor. Oh, my God.” The hideous memory hit me as I struggled to sit upright. I had stumbled out Shannon’s door. After seeing him. And the blood. My poor brother! Poor Emily! This was going to break her heart!
“I just happened to be leaving Pate’s house when I saw you collapse,” Rebecca told me. “I ran over here, and I…saw him lying there, through the doorway.” She shuddered. “I pulled the door closed.”
“The police…”
“I just told you. I called nine-one-one. They’re on the way. You sure you’re okay? It looked like you had a pretty hard landing. You must have fainted.”
I heard the crunch of gravel beneath tire wheels. I tried to stand up, but thought better of it when my vision swam.
“Oh, here he is,” Rebecca said. “That gorgeous partner of yours has arrived.” She clicked her tongue and muttered, “You are so lucky, Erin.”
This is one of my luckiest hours, all right. I blinked back tears.
She raced down the steps toward him. “Oh, wait right there, Steve. Please. You don’t want to see inside. It’s all just too horrible to believe.” She hid her face against his chest.
Rebecca really was the world’s biggest flirt. Just on the other side of the door, Taylor lay dead on the floor. He’d told me yesterday that she’d been flirting with him. If she’d had anything to do with his death, I’d kill her! I glared at the back of her blond head.
“Erin? Are you all right?” Sullivan, despite the fact that Rebecca was pressed against him, was peering at me.
I finally managed to get to my feet. “How did you hear?”
“Hear what? You weren’t at our office when I got back, and I figured this is where you’d be. What’s going on?”
Rebecca stepped back, proving herself astonishingly capable of standing upright without Sullivan’s support. “That big galoot you’ve got working over here had a fatal accident with a nail gun
. Erin found him and the poor thing fainted dead away. I called the police.” She paused, and the first sounds of sirens in the distance could be heard. “Here they come now.”
“Taylor Duncan is my brother.” And no way was his death an accident!
She spun around and gaped at me. “You’re kidding me!”
“Does it look like I’m kidding?”
“Oh, Erin. Good Lord! He was your brother? I am so, so sorry. No wonder you passed out.”
She gasped and turned to Sullivan. “Oh, dear God. I just thought of something!” She clenched his arm. “The feng shui! The forces are really powerful. It’s not my fault, is it? You don’t think I’m responsible for this, do you? I couldn’t have known…I was just following my client’s instructions!”
“You’re worried that your client’s feng shui arrows did this?” Sullivan looked bewildered. “Nobody’s going to die from having a roofline pointed his direction. I mean, come on, Rebecca.”
“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right.”
Two Crestview police cars pulled into the driveway. I was shivering uncontrollably. I leaned against the house to steady myself. The first officer who started toward us did a double take at her. Was it because he’d noticed how pretty she was? Or because he recognized her from her TV show? “Are you Rebecca Berringer?” His awed tone indicated the answer to my questions: both.
“Yes, I am.” She sniffled. “I’m sorry. I’m a little…shaken up. This has been such a shock.”
The officer continued to stare, starstruck, or at least thoroughly dazzled, by her. “Understandable, miss. If you can just come with me, we can sit down together in the squad car, and I’ll get your statement. But you take as long as you need. Don’t try to push yourself too hard, Miss Berringer.”
Never had the police treated me as gently as this officer was treating her. With my luck, it would be Detective O’Reilly who’d appear next and insist upon being the one to grill me. O’Reilly was the single most unpleasant policeman I’d met in Crestview. The second officer called to me, “You okay, ma’am?”
Ma’am?! “Yeah, thanks. I’m—”
