by Leslie Caine
Now that I was off camera, the next fifteen minutes of listening to Michael and Audrey’s easy banter was actually great fun. Chef Michael was demonstrating how to make a pasta salad, and they were both so warm and witty that I’d soon forgotten my troubles. Michael said, “I want to take this opportunity to reveal a new invention for the kitchen.”
“I can’t wait!” Audrey cried. Michael gave a grin to the camera as though he expected to cut to a commercial, but Audrey said, “No, I mean that literally. Go ahead and show us right now, Michael.”
He chuckled and drew something out of a canvas shopping bag that he’d carried onstage. “When you’re tired of looking around for a pepper mill for your salad, here’s the perfect solution. It’s a combination salad tongs and pepper mill.”
“You’re serious?” Audrey exclaimed.
“Dead serious,” Michael replied, losing his smile. “Let me demonstrate.” With a flourish, he unsnapped the plastic tongs at their pivot point, and then unsnapped the handles from both sides of the tongs. “These simply snap together. You unsnap the spoon side from its handle, and it becomes a shaker for some zesty accoutrement, such as Parmesan cheese or salad spices. You unsnap the handle of the fork and, voilà, you’ve got a pepper mill.” He shook the Parmesan cheese out, he twisted the pepper mill portion, and beamed proudly at Audrey.
She laughed. “That’s wonderful, Michael.” She flashed him her television smile, then glanced at her producer. Sotto voce, she told Michael, “But you’ve got four pieces of plastic that might be coated in salad dressing. You’re going to get that salad dressing all over your fingers as you snap them apart and put them back together, when what you really want to be doing is eating your delicious salad….”
Michael’s face was growing an ominously dark shade of magenta. “But it’s all so handy. You’ve got everything you need to serve your salad in one small utensil.”
“Well, that’s nice, Michael. Except, what if you’ve made a big salad so that everyone can serve themselves? Suppose one guest doesn’t want pepper, and the next guest does? Is each guest going to take apart and then reassemble the salad tongs?”
“It won’t take any more time than passing the salt and pepper does.”
“Which will already be on the table, because you’re not going to have a salad tong sitting there throughout the meal.” She laughed again. “Let’s all give a hand to our wonderful Chef Michael-turned-inventor, shall we?” The audience applauded on cue, and she turned back smoothly to the camera. “We’ll be right back after the next commercial.”
“Not all of us will be,” Michael growled the instant the red light went out on the camera. He yanked off his apron and threw it down on the counter.
“Oh, dear,” Audrey said, grabbing his arm just as he tried to brush past me. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that…your invention is stupid. But we all have bad ideas from time to time. Just ask Erin.”
“Pardon?” I said, bewildered.
“Tell him about how I turned the one bathtub in the house into a terrarium.”
Michael put his hands on his hips and glared down at her. “And did a host make fun of you on TV afterward?”
“Absolutely. Of course, I was the host, so I was the butt of my own joke. Which, granted, isn’t the same thing. Again, I apologize, Michael. You should have told me you were going to be promoting an invention of yours on the show. I would have voiced my concerns then. But don’t worry…I’ll ask my producer to edit my reaction out of the broadcast. Honestly, Michael. Do you truly think the world needs a combination salad tong/pepper mill?”
Michael stormed off the set.
Audrey was unusually quiet during our lunch at the restaurant of her choice, which, as it turned out, was the nicest one in Crestview. I finally asked what was wrong. She said, “I think Chef Michael set me up. I can’t believe that he honestly believed in his ridiculous invention. I’ll bet you anything that, after all his years on the show, Chef Michael is going to dump me in favor of Rebecca.”
“You’re probably right.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said glumly.
“Well, Rebecca is willing to go the extra mile, after all. She slept with him.”
Audrey shrugged. “He’s attractive. Who’s to say I wouldn’t be willing to go that same extra mile?”
“He’s a married man.”
“Oh, that’s right! What was I thinking? Shannon’s his wife. No, I’d never go so far as to be with a married man just to keep him on my show. Regardless of the extra viewers his segments bring me. I don’t believe it! That slime bucket,” she muttered, staring over my shoulder.
“No kidding. Here he is, having an affair, right as he and Shannon are undergoing a big remodel.”
“Not Michael. Your partner. Steve Sullivan. He’s cheating on you. And on me!”
I turned around and followed her steely glare. Steve Sullivan and Rebecca Berringer had entered the restaurant. She was holding his arm and smiling as he whispered into her ear. They looked like longtime lovers.
chapter 13
Sullivan’s face fell when he spotted us. With the maitre d’ leading them right past our table, however, he had no choice but to acknowledge us. He gave us a feeble: “Hey, Gilbert. Hello, Audrey.”
“Well, hello, Mr. Sullivan,” Audrey called with her fakest of smiles. “And Rebecca.”
“Fancy running into you two here,” Rebecca chirped. “Erin, I heard that you’re appearing on Audrey’s show. I’ll be looking forward to watching your performance when it airs.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, wishing I didn’t have a full afternoon of work ahead of me so that I could order something stronger than iced tea.
She clutched Sullivan’s arm and gazed lovingly up at him. “Our table’s ready.”
As they took their seats a few tables away from ours, the waitress arrived with our entrees. I blurted out, “I’d like a glass of Chablis, please.”
“Make that two,” Audrey told her.
I had a blessedly uneventful weekend. I vowed, no matter what, to steer clear of anything police investigation-or work-related, and, most importantly, not to waste another precious second of my life thinking about Steve Sullivan. Saturday, Audrey and I spent a glorious afternoon perusing the exquisite showrooms at the Denver Design Center, and we went to an estate sale on Sunday. (Granted, those were still design-related activities, but even on camping trips I spend a portion of my time creating an aesthetically pleasing interior to my tent.)
Monday morning, Sullivan and I pulled into our parking spaces at the same time. We exchanged cool “heys” as we emerged from our respective vehicles. I asked how his weekend was while we walked toward our office building. He replied, “I had a good, laid-back weekend. You?”
What I heard, alas, was: “I got laid by Rebecca. You?”
So I ignored the question and asked, “And how was your lunch at the Chez Friday?”
“Good. Yours?”
“Good.”
“Rebecca and I are not dating, you know.”
“Right. You’re just sitting at the same table in a restaurant and eating at the same time. And walking arm in arm as you crossed the floor.”
“I guess she was being a bit flirtatious. But that’s the way she is. It was just a business lunch.”
“And what kind of business were you partaking in, pray tell?”
“Rebecca wants to convince me to join her on her show.”
I stopped walking abruptly. “You do realize how badly you’d be giving Audrey the shaft if you were to agree to that, don’t you?”
“Sure, but I’m playing along till Taylor’s murder is solved. Rebecca’s the best resource we’ve got if we want to keep track of the prime suspect.”
“And by prime suspect, do you mean her or Pate?” I asked as I brushed past him.
“Pate. You suspect Rebecca?”
“I think that woman’s capable of doing almost anything to get what she wants. And, by th
e way, what she wants at the moment is you.”
“No way.”
“She told me so herself!”
“If that’s true, I’ll just have to try and resist her considerable charms. While I cleverly ply her for information.”
“You’d better,” I snapped. “Because she could very well have killed my—” I froze and stared at our front entrance, not believing my eyes. The lock was in pieces. The door had been jimmied. “Oh, my God! Somebody’s broken in!”
Sullivan flung open the door and uttered a couple of quite vivid profanities. “Somebody trashed our office!”
I stepped beside him and surveyed the destruction. The desk and file cabinet drawers had been dumped out. All of our personal belongs—our coffee mugs, photos, and bric-a-brac—were now on the floor. Curiously, at first glance at least, nothing had been broken. The sofa cushions had been pulled off and tossed into one corner and the coffee table upended. Our computers had been left running, as if to announce that they’d been searched. “Jeez,” I muttered. “I hope she didn’t figure out our passwords.”
Sullivan’s brow furrowed. “She?”
“I…guess that just popped out because we’d been talking about Rebecca. But, yes, that’s who I suspect.”
“Come on! Rebecca’s got too much at stake to do something dumb like this. If she were to get caught, she’d be history. Her TV contract would get canceled, and she’d lose her clients, as well.”
“Maybe she felt she had too much on the line not to do it. She figures she has to find whatever evidence I have in my computer.”
“What evidence?” he demanded.
“Maybe Taylor had more photographs hidden in a different spot. Ones that were more incriminating. In any case, this has something to do with my brother’s murder. I’m sure of that much.”
Sullivan called the police. When he hung up, he warned me that Detective O’Reilly had said that he’d be the one to come out and investigate.
By the time O’Reilly arrived, a half an hour later, we were anxious to restore a little order to our office. Fortunately, no clients had dropped by in the meantime; we’d had visions of having to say: No, really, this is from a burglary. Our workspace is usually much cleaner than this. O’Reilly, however, promptly tried to convince us that we had to leave it in this state until the crime scene investigators could arrive at some indefinite time, “but before the end of the day, for sure.” We insisted that we couldn’t wait and also needed to take inventory of everything, so he grudgingly allowed us to don gloves and then refile all our papers in the cabinets and desk drawers.
Sullivan and O’Reilly quickly fell into a friendly patter as we worked, but it felt like macho posturing to me. When they finally allowed me to speak, I told the detective that it seemed odd to me that there was so little damage and no “significant” theft. He cut me off mid-sentence and asked me, “Did you have an insignificant theft?”
“Yes. I’m missing one of my billing files. As bills come in, I stick them in one file, and then as I pay them, I stick the receipts in a temporary ‘paid’ file.”
“A temporary file?” Sullivan asked.
“Yeah. Which I use for a couple of months. Till I get the chance to file them.”
“That sounds like a wasted step,” O’Reilly said to him.
“My point exactly,” he replied.
“Be that as it may,” I said sharply, “the file is missing.”
“What would anybody want with your receipts?” O’Reilly asked.
“They didn’t take the receipts. I found those on the floor.”
“They just took the empty folder?” O’Reilly asked.
“Yes. It’s this drab olive color, like the others. See?” I opened a drawer and lifted one of the files to show him.
O’Reilly gave me an exaggerated solemn nod and made a notation in his pad. “I’ll put out an APB and alert the media.”
Sullivan, the jackass, chuckled. I growled, “Detective O’Reilly, you need to know what was taken, and that’s what’s missing!”
“Nothing else? No pens, pencils, paper clips?”
“Not as far as I can tell, no,” I replied through clenched teeth.
He grinned at Sullivan. “Are you missing anything? Significant or otherwise?”
“Nope. Not a thing.”
Through a tight jaw, I asked, “Any theories about why someone would break into our office just to steal an empty folder?”
Detective O’Reilly shrugged. “My hunch is it was some teens blowing off steam. Maybe they were clowning around with the folder. Or it was a frat party, having a treasure hunt, and they had to collect a folder marked ‘paid.’”
“A scavenger hunt, you mean? Were there any other break-ins last night?”
“No. Guess it’s more likely that someone cut himself and got blood on your folder…figured we’d run a DNA test and track him down.”
“Oh. So, for that theory to be valid, you’re assuming the culprit is someone who isn’t familiar with the Crestview police. Who might mistakenly think that you’d treat this break-in seriously.”
He glared at me with laserlike eyes. With a chill, I realized I’d gone too far. “I assure you, Miss Gilbert, we are taking this matter very seriously. And if you had wanted us to handle everything by the book, you should have left everything exactly as it was till CSI could arrive.”
Sullivan explained, “We get walk-in customers sometimes. And that would have been lousy for business. Nobody hires interior designers who can’t keep their own office tidy.”
“We’d have put up yellow plastic crime-scene tape,” O’Reilly countered with a shrug.
“That’s not exactly a big draw for potential customers, either,” I muttered.
He scowled at me, then grumbled in Sullivan’s direction, “My fault. I should have insisted. Miss Gilbert here has so many dealings with the police, I tend to cut her slack. Kind of like a repeat-customer’s discount.”
I gritted my teeth to keep my mouth from getting me into deeper trouble.
O’Reilly scanned the room. “You have a cleaning crew come into your office?”
“Every two weeks,” I replied. “They’re scheduled to come in again tonight.”
“Damn. We could get someplace if they’d come Sunday, instead. Got a rough estimate of how many people would have been in the room in the past two weeks?”
Sullivan and I exchanged glances. “Twelve, maybe? We had those reps here last week.”
O’Reilly’s scowl deepened. “The door and most of the furniture’s going to be useless, in that case. We can test for fingerprints on your files, though. Maybe something will show up there. Got to warn you. Procedure’s messy. And we’ll need to boot you out for a couple of hours. I know that won’t sit well with all your…walk-in customers.”
“You should go ahead, just in case,” I said. “As long as you’ve already taken the suspects’ prints.”
“Suspects?” he barked at me. “You mean for your brother’s apparent accidental death?”
“My brother was murdered, Detective,” I said firmly.
“Actually, we do have some fingerprint evidence. So we’re going to want to pull the prints here, just in case.”
My thoughts raced. There was only one location at my brother’s murder scene in which fingerprints could be significant. “You mean you found someone’s fingerprints on the nail gun?” I asked.
“That information is on a strict need-to-know basis,” O’Reilly snapped. He headed toward the door. “I’ll get CSI down here ASAP.”
My mother called the office later that morning. I immediately felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t done a single thing toward finding a marketing representative for Taylor’s workstation design. When I confessed as much to her, she said, “That’s not why I’m calling. But I do have another favor to ask of you.”
“By all means. What do you need?”
“Taylor’s landlord called me. She wanted to know when I could…clean out all of his things so s
he can rent out the apartment again. I just…can’t bring myself to—”
She broke off, and I knew she was crying. “I’ll do that for you,” I promised. “I’ll go first thing this evening.”
We chatted for a few minutes, then said our good-byes. I’d barely gotten back to work when the pretty little brass bell over our door jingled. I smiled as I waited to greet whoever had opened it. My smile swiftly faded as Rebecca Berringer breezed in. “Oh, good morning, Erin. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by. Have I missed Steve entirely?”
“’Fraid so. He’s in south Crestview till two. Shall I tell him you dropped by?”
“Yes, please do. I was actually hoping to take him out to lunch. I’ll just have to do it the conventional way and call him up for a date.”
“Apparently so.”
She narrowed her eyes at me, then said, “I was so sorry to hear about how your on-air anxiety attack spoiled your television debut.”
“How did you hear about that?”
“Oh, I have my—” she ran her fingertips tenderly along the edge of Sullivan’s desk “—sources.” She gave me a triumphant grin. “I’d offer you some advice, but I’ve never really been intimidated by large audiences. They say that public speaking is the biggest phobia in America, so you’re in good company.” She chuckled. “My, my, Erin. First you fainted at the sight of blood, then you nearly fainted in front of a TV audience. And people are always assuming blondes like me are the weak ones.”
“And what a ridiculous notion that is. To assume that hair bleach could wield that kind of power.”
She froze. “Oh, my. The kid gloves have come off in a hurry, haven’t they?”
“I wasn’t aware that either of us was ever wearing them.”
“Don’t underestimate me, Erin. You had your chances with Steve Sullivan, and you didn’t capitalize on them. I’ve no intention of making the same mistake with mine.”
Apparently I’d surpassed my witty-comeback quota. My mind was a complete blank, and I could only watch her sweep triumphantly out the door. My cheeks felt blazing hot and tears of anger stung my eyes. After the door had shut behind her, I said, “Well, la-de-da.” That was never going to earn me a place in Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.
