by Leslie Caine
“Thank you.” As I studied his handsome features, I realized that the white hair had fooled me. Pate was probably only in his early forties. Maybe even his late thirties.
“Taylor spoke highly of you,” Pate continued. “He told me how much he was looking forward to getting to know you better. I’m sorry the Fates robbed you both of that opportunity.”
Now I had to avert my gaze from his or risk tearing up. I didn’t dare look at Shannon; my brief, civil exchange with Pate Hamlin had no doubt already painted me with the same “traitor” brush she’d applied to her husband. (Although she was correct where he was concerned.) I turned toward Sullivan instead, only to discover that he was glaring at me. I glared back, willing him to telepathically hear me retort: What!? You can cozy up to the designer who’s sleeping with our client’s husband, but I can’t accept the condolences of the homeowner the slut works for? And then I noticed Pate Hamlin was staring at me intently, looking sincerely concerned. Impulsively, I found myself giving him an appreciative smile.
The firefighters emerged from the house. “Everything’s under control. The fire’s out.”
Michael sighed with relief. “Thank God for that much.”
“How bad’s the damage from smoke and water?” Shannon asked.
“Hard to say. Your insurance agent can probably judge that better’n I could.”
“I should head home,” Pate said abruptly. “Good to see you again, Mr. Sullivan.” He nodded at me. “And to meet you, Miss Gilbert. Though I’m sorry about the circumstances. If your family needs any help with funeral arrangements, I’m friends with the best mortician in Crestview. I’d be happy to pull some strings for you.”
“Um, thanks, but…that’s not necessary.”
He searched my eyes, nodded, then turned and walked to his house with a confident stride.
“So we can go back inside now, right?” Michael was asking the fireman who appeared to be in charge.
He rubbed his craggy chin, then frowned. “You can go in and pack up some things, sure. But it’s probably going to be a long time till you can live there again.”
“What!?” Shannon shrieked.
“You need a new roof. ’Fraid you’ll have to move into a hotel. Your homeowner’s insurance should cover it. There’s a place this side of town that has full kitchens and two-bedroom suites. Won’t be home sweet home, but it’ll be better than nothing. And it’s only a matter of time till your place is good as new.”
“But I have to be allowed to work in my studio during the day! Ask my designers. Erin? Steve? Tell them how I have to be here in my workspace! Everyone who’s ever met me knows that much about me!”
“You’ve already got a contractor and his team working here,” Sullivan reassured her. “That’s the one good thing. It’ll cut your repair time in half. At least.”
“It doesn’t look like there’s any damage to the roof over her studio,” I said to the fireman. “So surely she can continue to occupy that space during the day, right?”
“Absolutely.” He turned to face Shannon. “In fact, after the fire marshal’s checked things out, you can have free rein of the place. So long as it passes the safety inspection. And provided you can make do without heat or electricity.”
“Fine,” Shannon sniffed. “I can work in the cold during the day.” She was so flustered she kept dragging her fingers through her windblown hair and getting them stuck in the process. “And…and we’ll just…survive this somehow. What choice do we have?”
Michael shrugged. “It could be worse.”
“Don’t say that, Michael! Whenever anyone puts those kinds of vibrations out into the universe…well, it’s like you’re issuing a challenge. Next thing you know, things do get worse.”
“I just mean that our living quarters didn’t catch fire. Your paintings are fine. Nobody got injured.”
“True.” She clicked her tongue. “At least this time, there are no dead carpenters by the front door, thank God.”
“This is the same house where that guy managed to kill himself with a nail gun?” a fireman quietly asked the police officer next to me.
I balled my fists but kept silent. Overhearing the question seemed to agitate Shannon once more. She stomped her foot. “Officers, you need to find the person who’s trying to destroy me! Don’t go giving us any stories about that Duncan man’s death being an accident, and the house accidentally catching on fire three days later. Somebody’s hell-bent on destroying me. If it’s not Pate Hamlin, it’s got to be some crazed maniac who’s jealous of my artistic successes. My choice of careers tends to appeal to the nutcases in this world.”
There was an awkward pause. “Was anyone smoking in the attic at any point today?” a firefighter asked.
“No! I never even go up there! This is exactly what I just told you not to do!” She was literally hopping mad. “I did not accidentally drop a lit cigarette and burn my house down!”
“Ma’am,” the firefighter said gently, “you’d really be helping us out here if you all could vacate the premises for the time being.”
“You and your people are going to be tromping through my home once we’re gone?”
“The fire marshal needs to determine the cause of the blaze.”
Shannon started to cry. After just a few seconds she sniffled and asked, “Can’t that wait till tomorrow? Please? I need to recuperate in private.”
He sighed. “Al? Charlie?” he called over his shoulder to a pair of firemen standing near the small rescue trucks. “How ’bout lending the homeowners a hand? They’ve gotta grab some personal items.” He returned his attention to Shannon. “We have to make sure nobody’s going up in the attic till the investigator can check it out. But you can lock up now, and meet him back here around eight or nine tomorrow morning. Okay?”
“Fine, fine,” she said through clenched teeth. She dried her eyes. All but two firemen returned to their truck and drove away. Shannon gestured at the heavens and let her hands flop to her sides. “Michael? We need to pack up my plates.”
“You’re bringing our dishes to the hotel with us?” he asked in dismay.
“No! Not our dishes! The heirloom plates in the family room!” She looked back at Sullivan and me and explained unnecessarily, “My ancestors brought those over from Europe in the early 1800s. They came clear across the country on wagon trains. I’m not going to risk having some fireman knock them off the mantelpiece.”
“I’ll go get them right away,” Michael said. He bustled inside.
Steve and I lingered for a moment; we needed to discuss a course of action in private. Shannon hefted up a painting from the lawn and demanded, “Erin? Steve? And, uh, you two firemen? Help me move my paintings back where we got them.”
The five of us collected her art pieces and quickly fell into a step-march, with Shannon leading the way through the front door. She crossed the foyer toward the studio. “I’m going to deadbolt the door to my studio, as well as to the front door. That way I’ll know that—”
A crash emanated from the family room. It sounded eerily like a plate shattering. Shannon froze, then leaned face-first against the wall, moaning, “Oh, God. Too much. I can’t handle this.” She stayed there, her forehead pressed against the brilliant tomato-red surface. Wordlessly, we all set to work putting Shannon’s paintings against the wall beside her.
After what felt like a full minute or two, Michael finally emerged from the family room. He was hanging his head. His ears were crimson. In his hands were plate shards. I caught a glimpse of yellow-ochre glaze. Shannon had had three plates that showed oak leaves painted on a solid background. The one he’d broken was the most striking of the three. “Er, Shannon?” Michael said sheepishly. “I’m really, really sorry. It slipped right out of my hand.”
She straightened her shoulders, but kept her eyes squeezed tight. “Which plate was it? The lavender, the melon, or the ochre?”
“Well…they all had leaves on them, but this one’s yellow.”
“My favorite!” she groaned. “Perfect. Emblematic for what’s happening to my life.”
“I’m sorry, hon.”
Sullivan caught my eye. He tapped his watch. I winced; we were late for an appointment to discuss a kitchen remodel with a prospective customer. “Unfortunately, we’ve got no choice but to get going,” he said to the Youngs. “We’ll keep in touch on your cell phone. And we’ll come out here tomorrow to discuss the roof construction with David.”
Shannon gave us a vacant stare. “Fine,” she said flatly. “We’ll see you tomorrow then. Meanwhile, we can hope that the earth doesn’t crack open and fill our home with poisonous snakes.”
Audrey phoned as we drove to our appointment to ask what time I’d be home. When I told her five, she said, “Excellent. I’ll see you promptly at five.”
Her “promptly” seemed odd, but I chose not to explain that “five” had been a rough estimate.
To my enormous surprise, when I walked into my house a few minutes after five, there sat Shannon Young, chatting in the parlor with Audrey Munroe. “Hi, Erin,” Audrey said. “We’re holding our meeting of the No Big Boxes cochairs here tonight.”
“My hosting it suddenly didn’t seem appropriate.” Shannon mustered a smile.
Hildi meowed at me as she trotted into the room.
“Are you settled in at the hotel, Shannon?” I asked.
“Yes. Me, my husband, and my two remaining heir-looms.” She drained the contents of her wineglass and commented to Audrey, “My husband found an appalling time to suddenly become clumsy with plates.”
Audrey clucked sympathetically. “On top of getting burned out of your house and home. You really should have allowed Tracy and me to handle this thing ourselves.”
Who’s Tracy? Handle what thing, exactly?
“This is hardly an act of martyrdom,” Shannon replied, sounding exactly like a martyr as she refilled her glass from a half-empty bottle of Chianti on the coffee table. “I have more at stake than anyone on the planet…as it turns out.” She grimaced. “Apparently, Pate figured if he couldn’t buy me out, he’d burn me down.”
“A new meaning for the term ‘Fire Sale,’” Audrey cracked. Being sympathetic for any length of time has never been one of my landlady’s strong points.
“Just you two are meeting tonight?” I asked.
They exchanged glances. “Actually, it’s not really a meeting,” Audrey replied.
Uh-oh. Audrey was up to something. Whenever she acted mysterious like this, she was usually gearing up to ask a favor that would put me on the spot.
“And there are three of us,” she continued. Another woman entered the room, from the direction of the nearest bathroom. “Here she is now. Erin, I’d like you to meet Tracy Osgood. Tracy, this is Erin Gilbert.”
The thirtyish woman was pretty, although she was wearing a lot of makeup and too much gardenia-scented perfume. Her smile, however, was warming. “Hi, Erin. We were just talking about you.” She spoke with a Texas twang.
“Oh?”
“Did y’all ask her yet?” Tracy perched on the far end of the sofa.
“I was just about to,” Audrey replied.
“I have a feeling I should sit down before I hear this,” I muttered, as I slipped onto the Queen Anne settee beside me.
“Shannon and I have hatched a plan that involves you, Erin,” Audrey began.
“Do tell.”
“We’d like you to speak at the Crestview City Council meeting tonight. It starts in two hours. And I’ve already got dinner for the four of us in the oven.”
Shannon said, “Yes, Erin. It would help us all out if you’d plead our case to the board. After all, if BaseMart really does put a megastore in the field behind my neighborhood, it’s going to be terrible for Crestview. And you already know what a disaster it is for me personally. At the hotel after you left, Michael was urging me to sell so he could get a new restaurant going.”
“He was?”
Audrey sighed. “He misses having his own restaurant. He’s told me that before…how much he dreams of seeing ‘Michael Young’s’ on the marquee once more.”
“I have dreams, too, you know,” Shannon snapped. “And none of them involve keeping my husband’s business afloat by selling my home and moving into a trailer park. We have a wonderful life that we built for ourselves. I want to be able to enjoy the rewards.”
The image of Rebecca in Michael’s arms appeared front and center in my mind’s eye. Shannon’s husband was seemingly far less invested in their “wonderful life” together than she was.
“So are you willing to help us out, Erin?” Shannon wanted to know.
I grimaced at the thought of public speaking. Tracy was nervously fidgeting with her nails. When our eyes met, she gave me a smile. “The rest of us have already spoken out against BaseMart,” she told me. “And you’re in a profession where you travel to people’s homes, all throughout Crestview. The town board will really respect the opinion of someone with your unique perspective.”
I sighed. “I’ll give it my best shot. I’d feel terrible if I sat back and did nothing. And I do side strongly with you all on this issue.”
“Thank you, Erin.” Audrey was beaming at me. “I knew you wouldn’t let us down.”
Which brought to mind the possibility that I could very well make a blathering idiot of myself and “let down” the entire town of Crestview.
Two hours later, my stomach was doing flip-flops. There were at least a hundred people in the small auditorium at the city building. Worse yet, I would be forced to use a microphone. My every little quaver was going to be amplified. I was going to sound like a sick warbler!
The nine council members were seated in front, facing the rows and rows of arena-style seats. The microphone stand was at the front of the center aisle, just five or six feet away from the council president. The good thing about the seating arrangement was that the members of the audience, including Audrey, Shannon, and Michael, would be behind my back. To keep my nerves at bay, I decided to engage myself in some heavy-duty denial. I would pretend that there was no audience, and that I was merely making an appeal for a design job to a family of nine. All of whom happened to be middle-aged and seated in a straight row like judges. And that a couple of them had short-term memory loss, so they were simply recording my voice, and hence the need for a microphone. And this family had such a short attention span that my presentation had to take sixty seconds or less…. Yep. Just one big, bizarre, dysfunctional family.
When Audrey rose and announced that I, as a “highly regarded interior designer,” would be speaking on behalf of the group, I took a couple of gulps of water and made my way to the microphone. I wished I’d forgone the water; I felt the sudden need to run to the bathroom. A quick confidence-and-optimism mantra did the trick. Introducing myself, I said, “It’s easy enough to discover what’s happened in the towns that BaseMart has moved into in the last ten years since the chain’s inception. A few minutes of research on the Internet will paint a dismal story for you.” I was speaking too rapidly, I realized, and scolded myself to slow down. My knees were trembling so badly that I was afraid I’d set my whole body in motion—clatter my way right out the door like a windup toy. “When BaseMart moves into a town, all of the momand-pop stores are driven out. BaseMart employees are paid minimum wage, and often as part-timers, so the corporation doesn’t have to pay their fair share of benefits.
“What happened to every single one of those towns will happen to our beloved Crestview. In exchange for our thirty pieces of silver—or rather, for our tax-base incentives—Crestview’s identity will be destroyed, including the quaint charm that’s made it a tourist spot. When we say ‘No Big Boxes,’ the ultimate ‘big box’ is the coffin that Crestview will be building for itself.”
I took what felt like my first breath of air since I’d started talking, and returned to my seat, between Audrey and Michael Young. Audrey whispered, “That was very good, Erin. Well done.”
“Thanks.”
Michael whispered into my ear, “I think you convinced the majority of holdouts on the board.” He patted my hand, which made me cringe.
“Oh, come now,” Pate cried, rising. He didn’t go to the microphone and was clearly speaking out of turn. “If BaseMart was such a terrible thing for Colorado, why would I be putting the store in my own backyard? I know better than anyone else the congestion and decrease in property value that the store will cause. That’s why I’ve offered to buy out my neighbor’s property.”
He’d fallen for my trap! I sprang to my feet. “Is that so, Mr. Hamlin? Maybe, then, you can explain why it is that this is the fifth house that you’ve owned, which borders on the property line of the fifth upcoming store. In each case, you bought the house a year or two before the proposed store site was announced. Then, three of those four previous times, you bulldozed your own house!”
Pate’s jaw dropped. He stammered, “I don’t intend to do that this time. Those places were different. Crestview is my home.”
The audience mumbled and stirred in their seats as if with collective skepticism.
The president pounded his gavel and told us to take our seats. I felt too giddy to listen as a dozen other citizens rose to speak against BaseMart; nobody spoke in its favor. After several minutes of deliberation, the council voted to give the county officials “our strongest recommendation” that BaseMart not be allowed to erect a store in Crestview. Tracy Osgood shrieked with joy, hugged each of us, then all but skipped ahead of us and out the double doors. Pate, all the while, sat glowering at her. I avoided his gaze and tried to leave quietly while the board meeting continued to other matters.
I sensed a man’s forceful strides catching up to me as I crossed the lobby. Before I could reach the door, a deep voice said, “Congratulations, Erin.” I stopped and turned. Pate’s handsome features were stony. “Quite the effective speech you gave just now. How did you get your information?”
I squared my shoulders. “Power of the Internet. I looked up the street addresses of the neighborhoods where you’ve built your stores and compared them to phone directories. Then I placed a couple of phone calls. Local residents were all too happy to tell me precisely what went on in their neighborhoods.”
