by Leslie Caine
After a long pause, Robert squared his shoulders and rose. “That’s too dreadful to think about. Let’s just focus on the positives. The killer’s been arrested, your work here is finished, and you did a splendid job.”
“Still. It’s just . . . so painful. Two people have died. People can be so cruel to one another.”
He patted my shoulder. “I know just the thing to shore up your spirits. Let’s break out my housewarming present to Henry. It’s one of the finest cognacs on the market.”
“Oh, no thanks. I never drink during the day.”
“I’ll pour one for myself, then.”
“At least I’ll get to tell Steve the good news soon. He’s had nothing but misery ever since Evan Cambridge first wormed his way into his life.”
There was just the slightest hitch in Robert’s motions at Evan Cambridge’s name. The reaction reminded me of how he’d accidentally called him Evan Collins the last time we spoke. We’d been standing here in this ghastly room at the time. Something was suddenly ringing a bell . . . a past comment of Steve’s.
Robert turned with his drink in hand—he’d used one of the hand-blown brandy snifters from Paprika’s that I’d helped Henry select. Robert was watching me, swirling the amber liquid in his glass. “I promise you, it’s the best-tasting alcohol you’ll ever consume. You’re sure you don’t want this?”
“I’m sure. But thank you. Henry no doubt greatly appreciated the gift. He once told me how much he loves a good cognac. That’s why I helped him select the brandy snifters. I knew he’d be putting them to good use.”
Suddenly the ringing bell of my memory turned into a warning siren. Evan Collins. That was one of Evan’s aliases. Steve had mentioned the name to Laura during their argument on her front porch. How could Robert have known it? If Evan had hidden his sordid past from Robert as Robert had claimed, he should have known Evan only as Evan Cambridge!
I swallowed hard but tried to quell my rising anxiousness. This could all be perfectly innocent; Robert probably read about the alias in some newspaper article.
Even so, I needed to make a hasty but inconspicuous exit and call Linda at the police station to discuss this with her. She could be interrogating the wrong man even now.
I forced a smile and rose. “It’s been a traumatic day for me. Would you mind terribly if I just grab my check and run?”
“Not at all, Erin. Not at all. And I know just how you feel. George Wong once saved my life. Now it turns out he’s a cold-blooded killer.” He continued to swirl the contents of his glass, not sipping any of it. He was also not making any moves to actually retrieve the supposedly generous check he’d made out to me.
All of a sudden, my instincts were screaming at me to run.
I took a step toward the door. “Why don’t you just mail the check to me?”
“Nonsense. I’ll get it for you right now. I put it right here in this little table, just before you arrived. I had this specially made for Henry. A second housewarming present. Do you like it?”
I couldn’t answer. I was too terrified. Robert now stood directly in my path toward the door. Had I already missed my only chance to run?
“I’ve got a bonus for you in the table too. A special surprise for you.”
My heart was pounding so hard I could barely breathe.
Robert was saying, “I brought the table over to him today.”
I slipped my hand inside my purse.
“You’re going to want to put the phone down, Erin,” he said, all traces of gentility gone.
He pulled a knife out from the drawer. “I was so hoping it wouldn’t come to this.”
I swallowed hard.
“Sit down, dear. I can strike you dead on the spot, with a knife in the center of your heart. George taught me everything he knew about knives. I can throw them with uncanny accuracy.”
Chapter 24
Not needing to be told twice, I dropped into the side chair. As had been the case with Laura, I’d been fooled by Robert’s charm and attractive appearance. I couldn’t stop myself from asking, “Why, Robert?”
“It was business, darling. I’ve worked too hard to get where I am today to let my employees cheat me. Let alone to steal my money, like Laura did. In my line of work, if I had let her get away with that kind of thing, I may as well have started digging my own grave.”
My mouth was dry. I struggled to swallow. “You were the mastermind behind Evan’s and Laura’s scams?”
“Indeed, indeed.” He pursed his lips. “They’d been my star employees for more than ten years, till Laura became greedy and decided she could become a free agent. When she skipped out on Evan with all the profits, it was my money she was taking. And, alas, Jerry Stone was a mistake from the start. He kept bungling all my assignments. I should have realized he lacked the street smarts to work for me. That’s what led us here today.”
My thoughts raced. Jerry was a hitman? He must have bungled my would-be death on the garage stairs and later with the poisoned picture frame. But why had he made such a nuisance of himself at Paprika’s? Was that a strange attempt to establish a cover for himself—a homeless-but-harmless dreadlocked person who hung out at the Crestview Mall? Or had he used that persona to glean information from Hannah and locate Laura?
“I did try hard to warn you to mind your own business, Erin. You sealed your own fate by ignoring my warnings.”
“You killed Jerry for bungling your assignments?” I asked.
“Not for that, no.” Pembrook smirked. “Jerry, too, was turning traitor. He told you about the poison. Slipped you the photographs I’d kept of Henry and Laura. Jerry left me no choice. I had hoped, though, that finding his body in your office would frighten you off for good.” He chuckled. “You could say that I tried to kill two birds with one Jerry Stone.”
“Jerry killed Laura on your orders?”
He laughed at the question. “No, no. I would never have hired Jerry for something of that magnitude. As if that sorry sap could take anyone’s life. He didn’t have the backbone. Which, unfortunately for you, is not a weakness I share.”
“Did you kill Henry, too?”
“Sound asleep upstairs, darling. I need Henry alive. The poor man’s going to take the blame for all three murders.”
I fought against the cowardly urge to start sobbing. “But . . . why didn’t you just go back to Hollywood, Robert? Nobody suspected you of the murders. There was no reason to involve me.”
“Bad luck there, my dear. I made a slip of the tongue the other day . . . mentioning Evan’s real last name to you. I knew you’d put it together sooner or later.” He held out his brandy snifter. “Take it, my dear. Drink up. You’ve always been loyal to me, so I’ve done you a favor and put a nice strong sedative in the brandy. Worked wonders on Hammerin’ Hank. It’ll be much more pleasant for you to simply drift off to sleep. You won’t feel a thing.”
With a trembling hand, I accepted the glass.
The doorbell rang.
“Damn it,” Robert said under his breath. In a flash, he moved behind me. “That’s got to be Sullivan. You have that man wrapped around your finger so tight, he can barely breathe.” He dug his fingers into my shoulder and pressed the knife to my throat.
My van was parked in the driveway. If this was Steve, there was no way he was going to simply assume nobody was home and leave.
A conversation I’d once had with Laura about judo came back to me with such clarity, I could hear her voice: “The whole key is balance and leverage. You get your weight balanced so that you can use your leverage, then you throw the attacker off balance by using his own momentum against him.”
The bell rang again.
I could see the door from here, could see the position of the dead bolt. The door had been left unlocked.
Robert leaned his face next to mine and whispered, “Stay put. Make a noise, and it’ll be your last.”
I grabbed Robert’s knife hand with my free hand and simultaneously smashed the snift
er into his face with as much force as I could muster. The glass shattered, cutting into him.
He cried out in pain and released his grip on me, the frame of his glasses snapping in two and falling off his face.
I rose and whirled around. Pembrook was clutching at his bleeding face with one hand, the knife in his other hand.
Behind me, the door banged open. Sullivan called, “Erin?”
“Help!” I yelled. My hand was bleeding profusely. Only the stubby stem of the brandy snifter remained in my fist. I dropped that, grabbed the side table by the legs, and swung it at Pembrook’s head with all my might. A corner caught him in the temple. He dropped to his knees.
Despite his cast, Sullivan raced toward us. He dived at Pembrook and flattened him on the floor. Within seconds, he had wrenched the knife away from him.
“Call nine-one-one,” Sullivan shouted.
I struggled to catch my breath and to get my mind around the fact that Sullivan had immobilized Pembrook, that he couldn’t possibly attack either of us now. Then I grabbed the phone and dialed.
Chapter 25
Whenever you’re faced with a hopelessly complex task, concentrate exclusively on performing the first few steps to absolute perfection, and the rest will follow.
—Audrey Munroe
Audrey didn’t acknowledge me as I entered the kitchen, apparently too focused on the recipe cards she was thumbing through. Much as I adored every square inch of this room, tonight not even the sweet, tantalizing aromas emanating from the oven could cheer me. I chucked my drawing pad onto the counter and dropped onto a wooden bar stool in front of her. These caned seats were a new purchase and were wonderful; painted the same snow white as the cabinets and trim, they brought the casual elegance of the classic country kitchen chair into the space.
Audrey swept back her bangs.“You’re looking a little down, Erin. Are your injuries still bothering you?”
“No, just the bandages.” Pembrook’s knife had nicked my neck at the shoulder. The wound was, thankfully, shallow, and had only required a butterfly adhesive. It was the cuts from the glass shards in my right hand that had required stitches and splints and would take longer to heal. With Audrey at last granting me a willing audience, I whined, “They’re driving me nuts! It’s been two days now! I can’t draw . . . I can’t grip a pencil or a brush. And the worst thing is, I’m going to be like this for at least a week or two, and that’s assuming everything heals properly. In the meantime, I’m going to be unable to work.”
“I thought John Norton was helping you.”
“He is.” To my surprise, John Norton had insisted upon taking time off work and serving as my “right-hand man.” Furthermore, last night he announced that he’d decided he wasn’t giving up so easily, that he’d fight even his good friend Steve Sullivan for my affections. “But by next Monday, he has to get back to his own job, and I’ll be completely on my own.”
“In that case, this will be an excellent opportunity for you to concentrate on all the other aspects of your job,” Audrey said with a one-shoulder shrug. “Surely the first few steps to designing interiors have nothing whatsoever to do with putting your plans down on paper. Don’t you visualize, plan, find creative solutions to your clients’ problems, all in your head before you begin to draw?”
“Yes, of course,” I retorted, a little annoyed at how she’d dismissed my troubles as though they were mere specks of lint on a velvet pillow. “And then I draw the design. With this!” I held up my useless, bandaged hand.
“So you’ll have to adjust your schedule such that, by the time you need to put pencil to paper, your bandages will have been removed.” The timer on the stove dinged. She donned her poppy-patterned oven mitts and opened the oven. “In the meantime, you’ll have been forced to put all your energy into those ultra-important initial steps of design. I’m telling you from experience, Erin, your end results will only be the better for all of this.”
“From experience?” I mocked; the woman hadn’t worked a single day as a professional interior designer. Instantly I felt a pang for taking out my frustrations on her. Noting the splendid dessert she was removing from the oven, I said, “Your lemon meringue pie looks like something off the cover of a recipe book! I’m thoroughly impressed. I can make a delicious lemon pie, and my meringue looks great with its fluffy white peaks as it’s going into the oven. But it always comes out all sunken and runny and pathetic.”
“This is what I’m saying, Erin.” She removed her oven mitts and wagged her index finger in my face. “You’ve got to concentrate on getting the initial steps absolutely flawless. To make meringue, for example, you have to chill the bowl first. You have to get fresh eggs, straight from the farm.”
I frowned and sighed, certain that even if I did those things, my pie would still look nothing like Audrey’s.
“You’re obviously not convinced.” She arched her brow and crossed her arms, regarding me for a moment. “How old do you think I was when I had my first dance lesson?”
I leaned my elbows on the cool, glassy surface of the counter, anticipating a story, which, truth be told, I yearned to hear; I was so sad about how things had ended with Robert Pembrook that I was sorely in need of some old-fashioned, home-and-hearth family connections at the moment. “I don’t know. Five or six?”
“I was sixteen.”
I sat up.“You’re kidding me!”
“No, I’m perfectly serious, Erin. I was sixteen years old and fully grown.” She grinned and gestured at herself in her slinky gold-and-indigo silk caftan.“That is, if you consider five foot two as fully grown. In any case, I was the same height then that I am now.”
“That’s . . . amazing, Audrey. Aren’t many dancers already starting to realize by sixteen that they don’t have the talent to make it professionally?”
“Oh, absolutely. In fact, George himself used to comment about that very point. He would—”
“George?” I asked, thinking this was probably some ex-husband that I hadn’t yet heard her mention.
“Balanchine. He used to—”
“Wait.You knew George Balanchine?”
“Of course.There’s only one New York City Ballet company, and George was its prominent figure.”
I furrowed my brow, worried that she was pulling my leg. “So you were on a first-name basis with George Balanchine? With the greatest choreographer of the twentieth century?”
She clicked her tongue. “You’re really interfering with the flow of this story, Erin, and I do have a point.”
“Sorry. Go ahead.” I tightened my one good fist under the table to force myself to concentrate on not blurting out a host of questions that had popped into my head about her days of hobnobbing with such a famous person.
“Mr. Balanchine used to ask me, ‘How did you do it, Audrey? How did you get so accomplished at dance when you started so late in life?’ I had to tell him that I honestly didn’t know, but that it probably all boiled down to the fact that, by the time I finally began to learn dance, I knew that I simply did not have the time to unlearn any bad habits. So you know what I did?”
Not wanting to again be accused of interrupting her, I waited a beat and then said cautiously, “No. What?”
“At the dance school, they tried to enroll me in a class with beginning adults, and I said,‘Absolutely not. Put me in with the youngest students. Those are the ones who are going to be getting the best instruction on all the basics.’ After all, at age five or six, virtually every student has a chance at becoming a prima ballerina. Not so in an adult-beginners class. Granted, the teachers and the little students would give me funny looks . . . this young woman in a class with girls ten years younger than she. But I went into that class determined to learn the fundamental steps of ballet to absolute perfection. I knew that then, and only then, could I get to where I needed to be.”
“Huh,” I muttered, impressed and surprised by her tale. I thought a moment about the very design that I was working on now and realized t
hat she was right. Half of those clients’ problems stemmed from a slight flaw in the foundation in their house, which then led to a crack in the wall. I was now working on a furniture plan for the very room with the cracked wall, but what really needed to be done was to rebuild that wall with a new foundation. I could do that by extending the dimensions of the room a little—and thereby give them that reading nook that the wife so craved.
“That is truly unbelievable, Audrey. So, you somehow managed to—” I glanced at my watch as I was speaking and leapt to my feet when I saw that it was already a couple of minutes past six P.M. “Oh, shoot! I’m late for a meeting!”
“With a client?”
“No, with Steve Sullivan.”
“Oh, good. I’m glad you won’t be alone tonight. I’m going to an old friend’s house for dinner. And by ‘old friend,’ I mean both literally and figuratively. You’d be bored out of your mind.” She nodded at her perfect pie. “I’m bringing dessert.”
I retrieved my purse from where I’d dropped it, gingerly angling the strap onto my right shoulder with my left hand, and headed for the door. “I’ll see you in the morning, then, Audrey.”
“Take care. And I mean that literally, Erin. Do not get into trouble!”
“I’ll be fine.” I smiled at her as I snatched my keys, again in my left hand, resisting an urge to hug the dear woman.
“I hope so.” She narrowed her eyes at me, apparently not confident that I was not charging off to once again confront a murderer. “Between Sullivan’s broken leg and your bandaged hand and neck, all you’ll need now is a fife and a drummer boy with a bandaged head.”
I chuckled and said goodbye, then made the short drive downtown, deciding I’d be better off parking at my office and walking than looking for a space at this hour. Ever since the arrest two days ago, I’d barely spoken to Sullivan. He’d suddenly dropped by my office early this afternoon and insisted that I join him at Rusty’s this evening. Frankly, though, I was a little hurt that it had taken him that long to get in touch with me.
