False Premises

by Leslie Caine

  “If so, he was mistaken. It was nine.”

  “You’re sure?”

  “Positive. If he said it was eight, it was an innocent mistake, Detective. He certainly didn’t kill Laura.”

  The detective held my gaze. “You understand the importance of the times, right, Miss Gilbert? It’s not like the stuff you see on TV, where the coroner can establish the time of death to the minute.”

  “I understand. And I’m certain that I joined Steve in his car a few minutes before nine.”

  The detective nodded, impassive, and referred again to his notes. “The victim was a friend of yours?”

  “I considered her a friend, yes.”

  “You mean . . . back before you learned she’d left the country with the contents of Mr. Sullivan’s bank accounts?”

  “Exactly.” I’d answered quickly, but then it hit me that the detective had emphasized Steve’s name. Had I just implied he was guilty, after all?

  “Okay.” He closed his notebook and stood, giving me another miserly smile. “Thanks for answering our questions. We’ll have an officer drive you home now.”

  “Actually, I’d rather wait until Steve Sullivan can drive me. He can give me a ride to my car.”

  The detective narrowed his eyes. “And where is your car?”

  “Near Laura Smith’s house. In the mountains a few miles west of downtown Crestview. We drove Steve’s car to the storage unit when we saw Dave Holland drive past us.”

  The detective held the door for me. “It’d be best if an officer escorted you, instead.” He gave me a practiced smile and deposited me in the lobby. “I’ll send an officer out who can drive you to your car. But if you think of anything else you need to tell me first, just have our dispatcher give me a buzz.” He nodded at the woman wearing the headphones, pivoted, and left.

  She winked at me while speaking into her phone. I felt like protesting Steve’s and my innocence to her, even though she probably had not the slightest idea who either of us was or how much trouble we might be in.

  It was nearly dawn by the time I got home. A patrol officer had driven me to my car, then followed me to my house. He must have been worried that I would immediately head right back up to Laura’s and tamper with evidence. Or, perhaps, that I would warn Dave Holland or Steve Sullivan that they were prime suspects in a murder/arson investigation. In any case, I was very happy to reach the sanctity of my own bedroom, undetected by Audrey, who I hoped was blissfully asleep.

  My alarm woke me at nine. Audrey, I knew, would have already left for work by then. I rescheduled my appointments for the day, then stumbled to bed again, but was unable to fall back to sleep. My bruised knee and hands were hurting again, and my heart was aching as well. Just two days ago, I’d been looking forward to spending the evening with my friend Laura Smith. Now she was dead. Our friendship had been exposed as a lie. My friendship with Steve Sullivan had probably been permanently derailed. Maybe life in general and the state of humanity in particular were every bit as dismal as Sullivan seemed to believe them to be.

  Hildi squeezed through the doorway and sprang onto my bed, her yellow eyes smiling at me. “Morning, little one. People can be mean and nasty,” I assured her as I stroked her soft black fur. “Cats are much nicer, aren’t they?” She touched her pale pink nose to mine to signal the affirmative and rubbed her whiskers against my cheek.

  Until Laura’s murderer was behind bars, I would be a mass of raw nerves and unresolved hurts. People generally tended to open up to me, so if I asked around, I might be able to provide Linda Delgardio with some insider information. I sat up, my brain foggy and thrumming as though I’d spent the evening downing tequila instead of dousing flames. Paprika’s would be open in less than an hour, and talking to Hannah Garrison seemed a logical first step. I needed to know more about the protestor-turned-pseudo-undercover-cop Laura had confronted that night. Also, Hannah and Laura had had a history that had left Hannah bitter and Laura furious. It would surely be enlightening to hear the story behind the two women’s frayed relationship. Maybe I could find some way to extract a truth or two from the lies Laura had told to the various individuals in her life.

  Paprika’s was, as usual, doing a brisk business, at least in terms of the number of customers browsing the merchandise. Like me, others too enjoyed coming in simply to examine the displays and the new merchandise, with no intent of actually buying anything.

  After a minute or two, I found Hannah. She was helping an overly perfumed woman who wore a dress in a garish, primary-colors floral pattern that would have worked better on lawn furniture. Hannah, too, was wearing a boldly patterned blouse, to go with her black slacks. From a distance, the short, buxom Hannah resembled a mini version of the customer—as though they were a pair of nestle dolls. Hannah turned and spotted me, and I held up my index finger to let her know I wanted to speak with her when she was free.

  Now more than ever, I needed a reminder that there were still beautiful things in the world. I tried my best to focus my thoughts on Paprika’s awesome array of salad bowl sets. There is something immensely appealing about the aesthetics of a finely crafted salad bowl, and my vision was drawn to an exquisite hand-carved mahogany salad bowl set. The rich color and dense grain of the wood were amazing. The asymmetrical bowls were so beautifully curved and balanced that they not only looked lovely but felt wonderful to hold—even in my still-tender hands.

  Just as I was vacillating about whether or not my budget justified the purchase of yet another salad bowl set, Hannah joined me. Now that I wasn’t with Laura Smith or being tailed by a gun-bearing Rastafarian imitator, she greeted me with her typical warmth, saying, “Good morning, Erin. Are you shopping, or just looking?”

  “Just looking. And hoping to visit with you for a couple of minutes.” I doubted that she had already heard the news of Laura’s murder down in Northridge. Reluctantly, I returned the salad bowl to its spot on the shelf, then did a double take at Hannah’s lips. She had what was either a slight injury or a cold sore that she was covering up beneath ruby-colored lipstick. “Can you take a coffee break with me?” I asked her.

  “I was just about to suggest that myself. Come on back to the office, and we’ll grab a cup.”

  With Hannah’s typical arm-pumping, no-nonsense walk, she strode up to the counter, told the clerk that she’d be gone for a few minutes, and ushered me out of the immediate area.

  She babbled to me about what “a delightful spring day” this was, and I responded with a few appreciative adjectives, although in truth, the weather this morning hadn’t registered with me. We entered Hannah’s “office,” part of the storage room in the back of the store. Going from the brightly lit and colorful showroom to this dreary storage space with its stack of boxes and bare lightbulbs in the ceiling was like leaving a fabulous kitchen for an unfinished basement. Still chattering about how marvelous the climate in Colorado was, she emptied a Pyrex coffeepot into a pair of checkered aqua-and-dusty-rose mugs and handed me one. I did my best to settle into one of the two wooden slat-back chairs by Hannah’s metal desk, although the seat was so uncomfortable that it was clearly designed for the function of keeping its occupant fully awake. I thanked her for my beverage, blew on the surface, and took a tentative sip. The coffee was half an hour or so shy of having been burned into sludge.

  Choosing to omit the reason for my curiosity, I asked, “Did that man who claimed to be an undercover cop come back into the store yesterday?”

  “No.” She furrowed her brow. “I didn’t want to upset everyone again by saying this at the time, but I can’t believe for an instant that man was really a policeman. He’d been acting like a complete lunatic ever since he first walked into Paprika’s.”

  “You mentioned that you’d had an encounter with him before . . . ?”

  “Oh, it was way more than one.” She took a sip and grimaced, either from the dreadful flavor or from her thoughts regarding the protestor. “I’ve had almost daily visits and the occasional pi
cket sign from the jerk for a whole month now.”

  “Picket signs about what? ‘Make charity donations, not household purchases’?”

  She chuckled. “Essentially, yes. He claims a couple of the kitchen-products lines we carry have unethical practices . . . that the manufacturers use rain-forest woods, and so forth. As a matter of fact, that bowl you were examining was one of his hot points, yet the wood it’s made from is forested in Florida. I tried to tell him that Paprika’s would never sell rain-forest products. . . . In an earth-first town like Crestview, it would be professional suicide. I even double-checked . . . contacted the companies he complained about myself, and I gave him the results, which showed none of his claims are true.”

  “And that still didn’t discourage him?”

  She shook her head. “He just gabbled on about what he calls ‘American gluttony’ . . . how this country uses more resources per capita than any other country in the world. Like that’s my fault?”

  “So he’s an anti-consumerism activist?”

  “I guess that’s what he calls himself.” She snorted. “Apparently the guy’s trying to save the world by impacting Paprika’s sales revenues.”

  “Yeesh. That must be really frustrating for you.”

  “Mm-hmm.” She frowned and took another sip of her coffee, then emptied a third packet of sugar into the murky liquid. “It’s not winning me any popularity contests with Paprika’s owners, I can tell you.”

  “What do they expect you to do about a kook?”

  She shrugged. “Snap my fingers and make the nutcase disappear, I guess.”

  I paused, mulling over the protestor’s objections. “We do use up too much of the world’s resources in this country, for no purpose except to feather our own nests.”

  Hannah let out a bark of surprised laughter. “And this from an interior designer?”

  My cheeks warmed a little, and I grinned at her. “I would never admit that to any of my clients, of course.” But I had decided not to buy the salad bowls. Until someone invited me to their wedding. Or Christmas rolled around.

  “Just like I’ll never admit to my customers that I would never shop here myself if it weren’t for the employee discount. Can’t afford our merchandise. Not unless I win the lottery or get remarried to some millionaire. And this time, I’ll make sure he doesn’t hit the jackpot after our divorce.”

  “You’re divorced?”

  She gaped at me. “You didn’t know?”

  “Know what?”

  She rolled her eyes. “Figures my ex and that little floozy would never see fit to mention my name to you. Even when she was flaunting the whole thing in front of me, right in my very own store.”

  Caught off guard, I set my cup down carefully on the corner of her desk, rather than risk spilling it on myself. “Are you talking about Dave Holland? Is Dave your ex-husband?”

  “The one and only. He dumped me for Laura Smith.” She smiled a little and added smugly, “Of course, just last year, he tried to get back with me. After she’d dumped him to take up with Steve Sullivan. Though that didn’t last, either.”

  “You wouldn’t take him back?”

  “Hell, no. Dave and I nearly ripped each other to shreds while trying to reconcile. We wound up hating each other worse than ever. Like I was supposed to just forgive and forget. That bastard started having an affair with the little tramp less than three years after we got married. Then he used my ideas for his new company, and struck it rich.”

  She paused from her diatribe to study my face. “You looked so shocked, Erin. I guess he and Laura had you really fooled into thinking they were decent people.”

  “I got badly fooled, all right,” I murmured.

  “What did Laura have to say for herself after her scene with Jerry?”

  “Jerry?”

  “Jerry Stone. Our protestor turned phony ‘undercover cop.’ I figure she had to have known Jerry from someplace, or she’d never have sent him sprawling in front of everyone like that.”

  “She never told me who he was. Just that he’d been stalking her.” I studied Hannah’s eyes. She was normally so pleasant. Now she sounded bitter and almost hateful. “But you obviously haven’t heard the terrible news, Hannah. Laura’s dead. Someone stabbed her last night.”

  She set her cup down on her desk so fast that she spilled a little. Drops spattered the beige metal panels of her desk. “My God! Are you serious?”

  “Yes.”

  Hannah seemed to be sincerely surprised and paused as if to allow the news to register. “Huh. The tramp finally got what she deserved.”

  I winced, offended at her harshness.

  She seemed to hear herself then, because she straightened her shoulders and held up a hand in apology. “I know you were taken in by her, so this must be hard on you. I’m sorry for your loss, Erin.”

  “Thanks,” I muttered.

  She grabbed her cup and took another sip. “Huh,” she said for a second time, her brow furrowed. “Something about Laura seemed to attract violence. Like the mugging.”

  “Mugging?”

  Hannah nodded. “Laura was attacked a couple years back when someone tried to grab her purse. That was how she got that awful scar on her neck . . . which she hid beneath those silk scarves of hers.”

  I sighed, feeling overwhelmed once again. “This is the third version I’ve heard in the last two days about how she got that scar. She told you it was from a mugging?”

  “That’s what she told Dave, who told me. Some thug down in Denver grabbed her purse and pulled a knife on her when she wouldn’t release the strap. She thought he was going to cut the strap off, but he sliced her throat instead.” She sighed. “When Dave moved out the first time, he tried to explain why he was so infatuated with Laura. According to him, I was capable of taking care of myself. Whereas precious Laura desperately needed him and his stability.” She grimaced. “She claimed she was afraid to go places by herself at night, afraid of crowds. Made Dave feel like her big manly protector.”

  She clicked her tongue and met my gaze. “Come to think of it, she undoubtedly embellished the story. Or created it exclusively for Dave’s sake. The scar could have been from a botched suicide, for all I know. That was Laura Smith for you . . . search out people’s tender spots. Then drive an ice pick into them.”

  Chapter 8

  After leaving Paprika’s, I walked to my office, thinking that I could at least get some routine chores out of the way and perhaps shore up my spirits in the process. Wedged, as it were, between two trendy clothing stores, my office was on the second floor, the glass doors to Interiors by Gilbert opening to a narrow staircase. Bone weary and bewildered, I trudged up the steps.

  Although my mother’s Sheraton chair was on the visitor side of my desk, I shed my jacket and eagerly lowered myself into the seat. I’ve always been emotionally attached to certain pieces of furniture, and this family heirloom was my absolute favorite. Together my mother and I had reupholstered it, using her cross-stitched Victorian floral pattern on the back and the seat cushion. Six months ago, when I’d first moved in with Audrey, I’d felt too transient to place my beloved chair in her home, and since then I’d come to rely on the inspiration that I could draw from gazing at the chair when working up designs for my clients.

  I ran my fingertips along the grooves in the mahogany armrests, remembering how often I’d seen my mother sitting in this chair when it was still in our old apartment in Albany, New York. I could picture her, seated in front of the drop-top corner desk, could almost smell the unique aroma when I was beside her in that one specific place— how her delicate perfume mingled with the trace of furniture polish and the tinge of burned dust from the brass floor lamp beside her.

  Sitting here now, I liked to imagine that I could channel my mother. Our lives are surely a compilation of the thousands of little things that we do every day. Above all else, my mother had taught me that we need to find joy and love in this world, and that we need to have hope. Aft
er a few minutes in her chair, I could almost hear her voice—wonderfully melodic until her breath became ravaged from lung disease. She seemed to be telling me to keep going, to remember that there are many ways to make this so-imperfect world of ours a slightly better place; our surroundings are important to finding joy and keeping hold of hope.

  I rose and rounded my desk to my practical, albeit less lovely, red-brown leather office chair. I dialed the number of a furniture manufacturer. A salesclerk, snapping her chewing gum at regular intervals, told me that my client’s sectional sofa was complete and ready to be shipped tomorrow as planned. Just when I was about to hang up, she added, “Far as I know, this is the first time we’ve done this particular model in crimson Ultrasuede, but it looks kind of cool.”

  I double-checked my copy of the purchase order just in case I’d lost my mind. This order was a C.O.M.—customer’s own material. Four weeks ago I’d brought the furniture manufacturer deep brown Ultrasuede fabric. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same sofa? Ordered by Erin Gilbert for my client, Henry Toben?”

  “Yep. That’s the one.”

  “The Ultrasuede that I brought to you was chocolate brown, not crimson.”

  “Yep. Originally. But the next day, you put a stop on the order and swapped the brown for the red.”

  “I did no such thing!”

  I heard some clicks of a computer keyboard to punctuate the gum-snapping sounds. “Yep, okay. Here it is. Henry Toben brought us the fabric. He came in himself.”

  “There must be some mistake. Let me call you back, after I talk to Mr. Toben.”

  “Sure thing. But I should probably warn you that if you want to switch back to the brown now, you’ll, like, have to pay for the additional labor.”

  “I’ll discuss this with my client and get back to you.”

  “Yep. Okay.” There was a pause. “Henry Toben is ‘Hammerin’ Hank . . . who hammers out the best prices in town,’ right? That guy who does all those obnoxious car ads on TV?”