by Leslie Caine
“They thanked me for the information.” She offered Audrey a wan smile and a quick apology “for barging in on you,” and abruptly turned to leave.
She’d raised my suspicions, and I said, “I’ll walk you to your car,” and followed her without giving her a chance to decline. “So, you told the police you’d seen Pate wiping off the doorknob, Tracy?” I pressed.
“Well, no, not exactly.”
“He might have wiped away the killer’s fingerprints,” I exclaimed. “Did you tell Pate you saw him?”
She shook her head. “He has a bad temper.”
“I’ll tell the police, then, Tracy,” I cried. “Somebody has to! You can’t conceal evidence like this!”
“Fine. But I’ll deny every word of this to the police when they ask me about it!”
“So why did you tell me? Why tell anyone?”
She pursed her lips and used her electronic key lock to open a forest-green Subaru Outback. “I wanted you to know exactly what you were dealing with, Erin. Pate’s attracted to you. But he’s also still steaming over how effective your speech to the town council was. If he realizes he isn’t going to get to first base with you, he’ll do a one-eighty. He’s going to destroy your business, and then he’s going to destroy your life. And, Erin, he has the money and power to do it. There’s nothing you can do to stop him.”
“If that’s true, what good does your warning do for me? I might as well give up and run.”
“Exactly, Erin.”
She continued to hold my gaze with an earnest expression. It all struck me as so absurd, I had to laugh. She was just trying to make me leave town! The woman might simply be one of those I-don’t-want-him-but-you-can’t-have-him types. “Once again, Tracy, thanks for stopping by.”
“I’m dead serious, Erin. It’s time for you to cover your losses and wave the white flag. Now. Before it’s too late.”
She drove away without saying good-bye. I mulled over the situation as I returned to the house. I explained to Audrey that I needed to make a couple of phone calls and went to my room. I dialed my friend Linda and reached her at the police station.
We chatted for a minute, then I asked, “Could I please treat you like my own private police officer for a few minutes and run some things by you?”
“What kind of things?”
“Oh, suspicious behavior and fishy timing from some people involved with both my brother and Shannon.”
She sighed. “In other words, you want me to be your go-between with O’Reilly.”
“That’s the blunt way of putting it. Though I can throw in ‘please’ a half-dozen times.”
“I’ve got too much going on right now. Would first thing tomorrow morning be okay? Seven A.M.?”
I gulped a bit at the early hour, but said, “Sure thing.” We finalized our arrangements, then I sat down and wrote up a list of the goings-on with the circle of people at my deceased client’s house.
A few minutes after seven the next morning, Linda and I sat at The Corner Coffee Shop, a new place within walking distance of my house. Its location was wonderfully convenient for me, but I’d have patronized this place even if it had been clear across town. I’d designed it myself during my last official job as proprietor of Designs by Gilbert. The café owner had wanted to get away from the uniform look of the chain coffee shops, so we’d gone with unique, homey tables and chairs. I’d procured them from garage sales and secondhand shops, and I’d refinished them. The place made me smile. It was like walking into your favorite elderly relative’s house. Everything felt comfy and well loved.
Linda and I were sitting at a circular two-top, and she was studying my notes about the virtual rip-off of Taylor’s workstation design. We’d already discussed Tracy’s claims of seeing Pate wipe off the doorknob at Shannon’s house. At length, Linda said, “An awful lot of the circumstantial clues and motives point not just to David Lewis, but to Pate.”
“I know. I just…have a hard time thinking Pate’s guilty. He just…I don’t know. I can’t explain it. He’s mega-wealthy. I can’t see him firing a nail gun at Taylor or stabbing Shannon with a sword.”
“He’s a gentleman, so you can’t see him getting down and dirty and violent?”
“The logic sounds silly when you spell it out like that.”
She peered at me. “Pate’s great looking and seems really engaging. Just like Steve Sullivan. Therefore you assume he has the same basic decency as Steve.”
I massaged my forehead, not wanting to believe her theory. “Things also point back at Michael. Despite what Emily thinks, the murders might have nothing whatsoever to do with Taylor’s invention and instead be the classic case of a husband who wants his freedom but also wants the inheritance. Or Taylor discovered David had ripped him off, and David killed him and then Shannon, to cover up his crime. Then there’s Ang Chung, a.k.a. Antonio Scollotti. Did you know that Ang Chung was an alias and that he recently got out of jail?”
“He legally changed his name. And, yes, I did know about his stint for burglary. And that he’d met your brother while they were both incarcerated.”
“Ang’s a burglar? So he used to break into people’s homes? Did he use the same M.O. as in my office break-in and Pate’s? Remember how I found his button in Shannon’s attic?”
“That’s not a strong enough connection to allow us to issue an arrest warrant.” She gave her watch a glance. “I’ve gotta run. Thanks for the info. I’ll pass it along to O’Reilly.”
Shortly after Linda had vacated her chair, the shop owner stopped by my table to join me, bringing me a cup of a new coffee flavor she was wild about. It was delicious. Unfortunately. I’m a caffeine lightweight and would be flying high all day, but I couldn’t say no to a freebie. We chatted about how much she loved my design—always a wonderful, cheerful subject—so I stayed for several minutes.
While I was walking home, a red Corvette pulled into a space in front of my house. Pate Hamlin. He spotted me heading toward him as he emerged and waited for me. He sipped coffee from a green and white disposable cup and leaned against his sports car, looking like an advertisement for Corvette, or at least Starbucks.
In the light of Linda’s professional opinion about the man I tried to size him up as a killer. Could he be a ruthless murderer underneath a genteel veneer? Or had he really been so worried about getting caught pulling a prank that he wiped off his fingerprints? “You should try the coffee at The Corner Coffee Shop sometime,” I said to him.
“I have. Nice place. But Starbucks is right on my way to my office building. Cutting straight to the chase, my ex called last night to rub it in a bit. She says she spoke with you yesterday and, in her words, ‘warned you’ about me.”
“She says she saw you leaving Shannon’s around the time my brother was killed.”
He nodded. “It’s true. She caught me in the act of sneaking over there to play a little mischief.”
“Mischief? Which was so incriminating you wiped your fingerprints off the knob?”
“No, Erin.” He shook his head for further emphasis. “Tracy got it all wrong. I’d been trying to paint over the red dragon on her door. I wanted to make it look like a black bat. Figured that’d freak Shannon out. Then it hit me what an idiot jerk I was being, so I stopped and scrubbed off my black paint.” He spread his arms. “That’s the truth, embarrassing though it may be.”
Did he really come out here this morning simply to correct a bad impression that his soon-to-be-ex-wife had given me? Or was he trying to mop up the damage from having been spotted leaving the murder scene? In any case, I was disgusted. He was either my brother’s murderer, or a callous jackass who’d played sophomoric gags on my client, before someone else took her life. “I’m surprised you felt you had that kind of time.”
“Pardon?”
“Was owning Shannon’s property really that important to you?”
“What can I say? I wanted it. She was in my way. The whole thing got to be a game with me. But I did g
et a grip and tried hard to make nice.”
“A game? Jeez! Your stores drive small business owners out of business! You destroy whole towns! Ruin people’s lives!” I paused from my tirade, distracted. In the corner of my eye, I spotted Hildi. She must have used her cat door to come out here. She was now across the street.
My surprise turned to horror as she started to prance toward us. A car was zooming up Maplewood Hill, going at least twice the posted speed.
I screamed. This felt like a hideous nightmare! Hildi was going to be hit by a car right in front of me!
Pate threw his Starbucks coffee cup at the windshield. The driver swerved and slammed on his brakes. I covered my eyes for an instant, praying for all I was worth. I heard a meow. An instant later, Hildi raced toward me. At that blessed sight, it felt as though my heart started working once more.
Pate and the driver cursed at each other, as Hildi ran straight into my arms. I hugged her while the men exchanged obscene gestures and the driver sped away.
“You saved Hildi’s life. Thank you.”
He gave a small smile as he caught his breath. “That’s me. Wreck a town. Save a cat. All in a day’s work.”
He got into his car and drove off. Still too thunder-struck at the close call to move, I continued to hug Hildi long after his car was out of sight.
Just as I’d finally regained my senses, Steve Sullivan drove around the corner. Baffled, I stared at him. He rolled down the passenger side window. “You ready?”
“For what?”
Audrey came trotting down the walkway toward us, waving her arms at Sullivan. “Oh, good, Erin. You’re finally here.”
“What’s going on?” I asked.
Staring at Audrey, Sullivan began, “Aren’t we—”
“I decided not to tell her, Steve,” Audrey interrupted. “Fortunately for me, she got home in the nick of time.”
“Tell me what?” I continued to cling to Hildi, but now I was the one who needed protection. “What do you mean by the nick of time?”
“Sorry, Erin, but this is an old trick I learned back when I had to take my sons to the doctor for their inoculations.”
Hildi leapt from my arms as Audrey was talking and dashed into the house through the cat door.
“As long as I didn’t give my boys any warning, they weren’t nearly so traumatized. Did you want to sit in the front or the back?”
“What are you talking about?”
She climbed into Sullivan’s passenger seat. “You two are appearing on my show.”
When you’re unsure of how to proceed with a project, it’s often beneficial to bounce ideas off someone with very different taste from yours. That way, you can discover an eclectic balance that you might never have thought of all on your own.
—Audrey Munroe
* * *
DOMESTIC BLISS
The butterflies in my stomach were doing death spirals. In no way was Steve Sullivan’s presence beside me on stage reassuring. The fact that Audrey had refused to clue us in as to the subject matter for our presentations had made me feel faint with fright.
“What we’re going to do on today’s show is called ‘Dueling Designers,’” Audrey announced to her audience. “If you’ve spotted our latest commercials, you already know that we decided it’d be even more fun if we went live with our broadcast.”
I nearly swallowed my tongue at this last bit of news. Live television? How long had she been planning this behind my back? She gave me a wink and continued blithely, “We have the sublimely talented designers who own the prestigious Gilbert and Sullivan Designs, and—”
“That’s Sullivan and Gilbert Designs,” Steve corrected. He gave a sexy smile to the camera. “Wouldn’t want your audience to get confused when they don’t find us listed under ‘G’in the phone book. We’re located up in Crestview.”
“Actually, I listed us as Gilbert and Sullivan Designs too in the white pages to circumvent that problem,” I interjected.
“You did?”
“Yep. It’ll be that way in the new directory. And on the Internet.”
“She’s Gilbert, and he’s Sullivan,” Audrey said. “As no doubt everyone in the audience has already gathered.”
Her adoring audience laughed as if she’d just delivered the all-time funniest punch line.
“The two of them are wonderful at harmonizing living spaces. Just like the harmonies of the original Gilbert and Sullivan.”
I resisted an urge to roll my eyes.
“What we’re going to do now is reveal our special ‘Dueling Designers’ set.” The curtains opened across the large stage, and I stared in surprise. Audrey explained, “As you can see, we’ve got two identical spaces here, with a wall in between them. In the front of the stage are two piles of identical living room furnishings and accoutrements for Gilbert and Sullivan to choose from. Either of those piles could easily furnish a room three times the size of their allotted space. Working with a pair of professional moving men, their task will be to develop the nicest room in the next ten minutes. We’ll then use our sound meters to determine by your applause which design is our favorite.”
“I didn’t realize we were going to be doing reality TV, Audrey,” I said with false cheer.
“What’s the matter, Gilbert?” Steve asked, leaning toward me. “Chicken?”
“Not at all, Sullivan. But this has really caught me completely off guard.”
Sullivan tsked comically to the audience and shook his head. “Like I suspected, she’s afraid to take me on in a direct competition.”
“Untrue. I just hate to be unprepared. I pride myself on being able to understand my clients’ wants and needs. That requires preparation.”
Audrey announced to the viewers, “Maybe Erin’s personality works a bit like Tinkerbell’s. Perhaps if we all give her a little bit of encouragement, she’ll—”
The audience immediately began to cheer for me. A woman’s voice cried: “We believe in you, Erin!”
I had to laugh. I raised my palms in mock surrender and cried, “Okay, okay, I’ll do it. But I do have to point out that interior design really isn’t your typical speed competition.”
In a theatrical aside, Sullivan held up his hand to shield his mouth from me and said, “Note that she’s already building excuses to massage her ego in case you all vote for me.”
“You’re going down, loser,” I said. “The audience is already behind me, aren’t you?” A big cheer went up. “Hear that, Sullivan? I’d be worried, if I were you.”
He mimicked quaking with fright, then straightened and said, “I want to win this fair and square, Gilbert.” Once again in a stage whisper, he held up a hand and said to the audience, “I’ll take my loudest fan to lunch after the show.” He winked and gave a thumbs-up to the audience for emphasis.
The audience was laughing and having a grand time. I heard more than one person egging me on by shouting: “You go, girl!”
Audrey said to the camera, “Our designers are now going to charge forth into their timed challenge. We have to break for a commercial, but we’ll be right back to see how they’re doing. Don’t go away, now!”
My moving men were an attractive twenty-something-year-old named Carlos and a hunky-looking thirty-or-so named Jimmy. They had also gotten into the spirit of the competition, and I was happy to see were nearly as handsome and as big show-offs as Sullivan.
I promptly turned into a whirling dervish. I started the same way I would when designing any living room, and selected the sofa first. There were three choices: a tuxedo-style mohair, a floral pattern damask, and a deep red sectional. Because of the nature of this competition, I only had to concern myself with visuals, not with comfort, so I went with the mohair and centered it alongside the longest wall—the one that separated Sullivan’s and my rooms.
I soon realized that, as Audrey had hinted, there were three choices for every typical living room item. The area rug was a no-brainer—the three rugs had obviously been selected so
that each went with just one of the three sofas, so I opted for the checked pattern, which looked elegant and refined with the mohair sofa. There were six selections for pictures, and again, the color schemes made that selection easy. The modernistic oil painting with its brilliant reds and sunflower yellows really popped above the sofa. I hesitated on the coffee table; any one of the three would look nice. Audrey, meanwhile, had taken her traveling microphone into the audience and was quietly giving the brand names of our selections.
The audience was really into the spirit of the competition, cheering us on, and I played up my indecision over the table and let them choose that item for me. Sullivan must have been doing the same thing for some of his selections, as he was getting raucous shouts on some of his selections and boos over another until, I presumed, he switched. It was awfully tempting to peer around the corner at that point, but I resisted.
Audrey periodically called out how much time was left. For some reason, the audience was in a state of hilarity when we had three minutes left. Sullivan must have been mugging for them big-time.
I hurriedly picked out all the finishing touches—the periwinkle cashmere throw for the sofa, the vase for the end table, a dried flower arrangement in the corner, the sculpture for the bookcase, the blown glass figurines for the end tables, the fresh-cut tulips on the coffee table—
“Time’s up,” Audrey announced. “I’m going to ask our illustrious colleagues to stay on their side of the partition. When we come back, we’ll take our vote.”
The two or three minutes that we were waiting for the commercials to end seemed inordinately long, and I tried to coax Carlos or Jimmy into peeking for me. They jovially declined and left for backstage, after I gave them not at all unpleasant hugs. That was certainly one of the side benefits of this task that Sullivan could not have enjoyed as much as I did.
In conclusion, Audrey said brightly, “Let’s have our designers join me front stage once again, and we’ll view the results together.” I anxiously trotted out to join her, as did Sullivan.
