Killer Market dk-5

by Margaret Maron

  Going with the flow, we crossed a glass-enclosed walkway and reached the mezzanine. Hallways crowded with people branched off in different directions from a central reception desk where more crowds waited for the two elevators. There was a glass door that led outside and I recognized the street where I’d dropped Drew Patterson an hour or so earlier, which meant that this part of Market Square connected with the String and Splinter.

  For a panicky moment I considered trying to see if Drew was still inside the club and could help us hunt for Lynnette, but then I recognized a familiar face standing near the elevators. “Mr.—Tomlinson, is it?”

  He had switched uniforms and now wore a patch on his sleeve that identified him as an employee of a private security company, but it was my bailiff from the courthouse all right

  “Oh, hiya, Judge,” he beamed at me. “Enjoying Market?”

  “Not at the moment,” I answered. ‘I’m missing a little girl. Did one pass through here a few minutes ago?”

  “Bugs Bunny shirt?” he asked. “Blonde hair in a braid?”

  “Yes! Where did she go?”

  “She took the elevator up to five. You just missed them.”

  “Them?” asked Heather.

  “Kid with her grandma, right? Gray-haired lady in a fancy spring dress? She asked me where the Century showroom is. On five, I told her.”

  Unlike the elevators over in GHFM, the elevators at Market Square were built to hold more than six people at a time. And since they serviced five floors instead of GHFM’s eleven, we only had to wait six very long minutes instead of twenty.

  Of course, it might have been a bit longer if we hadn’t had a chatty Mr. Tomlinson to part the waters for us and escort us to the front of the crowd.

  “Who’d you wind up giving the baby to?” he asked as we waited, and I remembered that there’d been a different bailiff in my courtroom after lunch.

  “The father.”

  “On account of he’s moved back in with his folks?”

  I nodded. “That tipped it.”

  “Figured it would,” he said sagely.

  “So which is your real job?” I asked.

  “Oh, this here’s just temporary,” he confided to me as we waited. “Normally, see, I take vacation days to work the Market, but the guy who was supposed to be working your courtroom today—Sam Dow? He had to take some personal leave ’cause a water pipe in his camper van sprang a leak and he had to wait in for the plumber, so I took Sam’s place till he could get back.”

  “He lives in a camper van?” Heather asked.

  “Oh, no, Sam’s bunking in with a bunch of us Market bachelors for the week, but he didn’t just rent out his house this year, he’s rented out his camper, too.”

  Since the elevators seemed to be taking their own sweet time, I said, “Market bachelors?”

  “Yeah. There’s six of us with houses over near Oak Hollow. Three or four bedrooms from when our kids were growing up. During Market, we can rent ’em to the buyers for three thousand apiece. Our wives go to the beach or go visit relatives and five of us guys squeeze in with whoever’s turn it is to put us all up. Normally, see, Sam sleeps in his camper, but this year, what with him renting it, too, there’s seven of us bunched up at Marvin’s. That many makes it a little hard.”

  “Crowded bathrooms?” I asked sympathetically.

  “Oh, that don’t bother guys. No, ma’am, it’s the poker. See, poker’s best with five guys. Six is stretching it, and seven? Takes too long to go around the table with bets and if you try anything fancier than five-card stud, you run out of cards. Okey-dokey, here’s your elevator.”

  While the car emptied out, I asked Tomlinson to hang around the area for a while. “The little girl’s name is Lynnette and I’m supposed to be baby-sitting. If she comes down before we do, would you hold on to her for me?”

  “What about her grandmother?”

  “That’s not her grandmother.”

  “But yes, please hold on to her, too,” Heather said as we entered the elevator.

  Amiably, Tomlinson promised that he’d do what he could.

  The car stopped at each floor but for every two that got off, three more wanted on and we were still quite crowded when we finally reached five.

  Century Furniture Industries seemed to take up most of the fifth floor.

  “I’m sorry,” said a company employee at the entrance when confronted by this new deluge of potential customers, most of whom seemed to be decorators and interior designers, “but there’s a half-hour wait for a representative if you wish to view our galleries.”

  While others drifted over to hear the mini-lecture on how Century’s state-of-the-art robotics could turn out a perfect copy of a fifteenth-century refectory table from a Spanish monastery, I asked the employee if he’d noticed a small girl and an eccentrically dressed woman.

  The man shook his head with a rueful smile. “We’ve been so swamped today I might not have noticed an ostrich in a tutu if it was wearing a buyer’s badge.”

  But he took pity on my obvious anxiety and waved me in.

  I left Heather by the entrance to keep an eye out for them.

  “Take your time,” she said, scribbling on her notepad. ”This is really sort of neat. They buy an antique table for five thousand, use a robot to reproduce every wormhole, scratch, or gouge mark and then sell the reproductions for eighteen hundred a pop. You know something? I may actually get a real article here after all.”

  I cautioned her not to get so caught up in robotically reproduced wormholes that she would miss Lynnette and Savannah.

  Despite my admonition to Heather McKenzie, the Century collection was so stunning that I was in danger of forgetting why I was there myself. There was dignity with touches of whimsy, there was an impeccable attention to detail that shrieked quality, and there were so many people in the long galleries that it was easier to look at furniture than scan for Savannah—especially since a lot of the upholstery was in muted spring neutrals that would camouflage her layers of pastel chiffon.

  I found myself coveting a massive couch, a solid cherry serpentine sideboard, a bombé-based armoire, an eight-foot-tall highboy.

  And then it hit me: these pieces were proportioned for ten-foot ceilings and rooms with twenty-foot-long walls.

  Everything was too upscale and too scaled up for me. Even if I could afford to buy a few pieces, they’d look squashed in any house of mine.

  A few feet away, as if to underline how hopelessly I was out of it, a high-powered blonde dressed in brown linen and shiny gold cuff bracelets imperiously waved away the fabric swatches that a Century representative was trying to show her.

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a voice which held no regret, “but as far as my clients are concerned, chenille is last week. Over. Finished. Dead!”

  The representative immediately laid those swatches aside and reached for another set, and for a silly moment I pictured flocks of amorphous little puffy chenilles keeling over in mortification before the interior decorator’s scornful pronouncement.

  With my furniture envy now in check, I skimmed through the galleries that, altogether, must have covered several thousand square feet. I turned a corner and there ahead of me was a head of blonde hair pulled back in a French braid. I quickened my pace till I was sure it was Drew Patterson, then called her name.

  She glanced around and seemed surprised to see me. “Hey, Deborah. Enjoying the Market? Where’s Lynnette?”

  “I was hoping maybe you’d seen her,” I said and quickly explained how I’d lost her. “I just don’t understand how she even knows Savannah well enough to go running after her like that. Dixie sounded as if last night was the first time anybody had seen Savannah in years, so how would Lynnette—?”

  “My fault, I’m afraid,” said Drew. “She was here with Chan last week and I took her for ice cream. Savannah saw us and came over to our table and wound up charming her. Even on Prozac and lithium or whatever she’s supposed to be taking, Sav
annah is magical the way she can relate on any level to anybody, old or young.”

  I might be curious as to why Drew was the only person who seemed to know current details about Savannah, but the mention of those mind-calming drugs made me more uneasy than ever for Lynnette’s safety and I said as much.

  Drew smiled. “Don’t worry. For some reason she’s convinced that Lynnette’s my daughter. She’d never hurt her.”

  Nevertheless, she joined the search and minutes later we found them seated side by side on an overstuffed loveseat in a corner gallery. Lynnette was almost as big as Savannah and she had leaned her head on the woman’s shoulder to see the sketchpad Savannah held on her lap and to watch the pencil that flashed and darted as ladybugs and humming-birds flowed across the sheet of paper chased by a little girl whose braided pigtail seemed to float on the breeze.

  Savannah’s small face broke into a genuine smile when Drew spoke to her and she even seemed to remember me, but whether as Ms. Sotelli from Newark or Judge Knott from Colleton County wasn’t quite clear.

  Drew cupped Lynnette’s chin in her hand and gently scolded her. “You really scared Miss Deborah running off like that, punkin.”

  “I’m sorry,” said the child, “but Savannah-Nana said she’d draw me again next time and I was afraid she wouldn’t see me.”

  “We knew you would find us,” Savannah told Drew. “A mother always knows where to find her daughter.”

  Drew touched the older woman’s hand. “No, Savannah. I told you before. Lynnette’s my friend, not my daughter.”

  “You do not want to talk about it,” Savannah nodded knowingly. “Never mind, my darling. No one cares about such things these days.”

  Bewildered, I looked at Drew, who gave a tiny shrug of exasperation.

  Savannah tore off the two sheets of sketches she’d made, handed them to Lynnette, and said to me with kindly courtesy, “It was very nice of you to call. I hope you will visit us again.”

  I was dying to ask her how my tote bag wound up next to Chan last night and whether my penicillin tablets were still inside my purse when she left it, but my internal preacher was yammering about little pitchers.

  Instead, I said an equally formal goodbye and held out my hand to Lynnette. She started to protest, but Drew forestalled her. “You need to let Miss Deborah take you back to your grandmama before she starts worrying about you, too. I’ll see you in a little while, okay?”

  “Okay.” She slid down off the loveseat, stuffed Savannah’s drawings into her green tote, slipped her arms through the straps, and reached for my hand. A sudden thought made her smile. “Maybe Shirley Jane’ll be there.”

  “Maybe,” I agreed, not looking forward to the emotional scene that was bound to play out when Chan’s sister arrived.

  Drew remained behind and Heather McKenzie was disappointed when I returned to the entrance with Lynnette in tow, but no Savannah.

  “She’s back in a far gallery with Drew Patterson,” I said and pointed in the general direction. “She seems to be in a good mood, too, so maybe you’ll luck out if you approach her now.”

  “She doesn’t like to talk to people,” Lynnette piped up. “Just me and Drew. That’s all she likes.”

  Heather wasn’t much taller than Lynnette and she gave the child a humoring smile. “And why do you suppose that is?”

  “ ’Cause she’s Drew’s other mother,” said Lynnette.

  13

  « ^ » “The firm have in their employ several designers or artists who occupy separate rooms, in different parts of the building, and who do not intercommunicate, each depending upon his own unaided genius in devising sketches for the models.”The Great Industries of the United States, 1872

  “Other mother?”

  Drew smiled when I repeated Lynnette’s words later that night. “I guess it probably sounds like that to a child. I’ve known Savannah since I was a baby and she took me under her wing when I was a bratty kid not much older than Lynnette. She was doing a catalog for Fitch and Patterson and she let me help dress the sets. She was really more like a mentor or a fairy godmother and I absolutely worshiped her to the point that it made my mother a little jealous. When I thought I wanted to become a freelance designer, Savannah let me hang out at Mulholland and taught me some of the basics.”

  “That’s what you do now?”

  “Except that I design exclusively for Fitch and Patterson.”

  A cynical thought crossed my mind and she must have seen it on my face.

  “I may be a Patterson, Deborah, but that doesn’t mean I’m a dilettante. I work pretty damn hard and I have a good eye for fabrics.” She said it as a matter of fact, not conceit. “There are only so many designs for a chair or a couch. It takes fabric and color to keep the product fresh. I was one of the first in the industry to recognize how popular chenille could be. Because of me, we were ahead of the curve, not following it.”

  Again, an absurd image of fuzzy chenilles romped through my mind. “I heard someone today say that chenille’s dead.”

  “Fading perhaps in the premium market but it’ll hold strong in the upper- to mid-range for at least another year or two. Longer in the low end, but by then we’ll be into something else.”

  The April night was so mild that my light sweater was warmth enough. We were sitting in white wicker rocking chairs on Pell Austin’s screened side porch where we could see the steady stream of people coming and going from Dixie’s house. Market people, Fitch and Patterson people, people who had known Chan and who cared about Dixie—it looked as if half of High Point had come to pay their respects to Chan’s mother-in-law and sister tonight

  A local TV van had been there earlier, in time for the 5:30 news. Dixie had made a statement So far, my name had been kept out of it. Since she was Chan’s mother-in-law and the one who called 911, the reporters seemed to assume she was the one who found him. So far, everyone who’d spoken on-camera—including Jay Patterson, Kay Adams and Jacob Collier—was profoundly shocked and everyone was just devastated by his death.

  At least that’s what they were saying for publication.

  Lynnette and her cousin Shirley Jane were sound asleep on my bed in Pell’s guest room and I wasn’t quite sure where I myself would wind up sleeping, but for the moment, it was my job to keep an ear out for them. Drew, probably at Dixie’s suggestion, had come over to bring me a plate of chicken salad and some iced tea, and she seemed grateful to get away from the grief and gloom that wrapped Dixie’s house now that Chan’s sister was here.

  Upon arriving this afternoon, Millie Ragsdale had immediately announced that there would be no traditional funeral.

  Despite her misgivings, Dixie was deferring to her wishes.

  “Not my wishes,” Millie Ragsdale said. “Chan’s wishes. He wrote them down and sent them to me the same time he sent me a copy of his will. Right after Evelyn died.”

  I had no memory of Chan’s sister, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance. Nor her determination to carry out her brother’s instructions.

  “Chan hated funerals,” she said. “He always said, ‘Millie, don’t let them stick me in a box and then stand around looking at me for three days,’ and I promised him I wouldn’t.”

  That’s why tonight would be the closest thing to a real wake that Chan would have. The Medical Examiner had released his body this afternoon and as soon as she heard that, Millie had asked her husband Quentin to make arrangements with a crematorium.

  “Next month, when the worst of our pain is over,” she’d said tremulously, “we’ll have a memorial service in Frederick and scatter his ashes somewhere along the river.”

  By this time, for all I knew, Chan’s body had already been committed to the flames. Even now, all that was corporeal of him might be cooling somewhere in Guilford County.

  “Did Savannah kill him?” I asked Drew abruptly.

  “Savannah!” Drew sat upright and turned so quickly in her chair to face me that the rockers scraped the wooden po
rch floor. “What makes you think Savannah had anything to do with Chan’s death?”

  Dixie had been told that penicillin had brought on Chan’s anaphylactic shock and I assumed Drew knew, too.

  She nodded. “That’s what David told me.”

  “David?”

  “Detective Underwood. His daughter works for us in our billing department. I’ve known him since he used to direct Market traffic in uniform.”

  I should have realized that there’d be a connection. Everybody in High Point seemed to have direct links to the furniture industry.

  “Did you tell him where Savannah’s staying?”

  “But I don’t know! She won’t say. She just suddenly appears when I least expect her.”

  “But you did tell him you could put him in touch with her?”

  “I said I’d try,” she answered patiently. “But I still don’t see the point of it.”

  “But didn’t Underwood ask about my tote bag?”

  “He asked if I saw Savannah take it. He didn’t say why.”

  “So did you see her?”

  “With one of our tote bags? Sure. And everybody else, too. We’re giving out three hundred a day. Every time I turn around I see one. What difference does it make anyhow?”

  “Because the one she walked out with was mine. It had my purse in it and in my purse was a bottle of penicillin tablets. Detective Underwood found my tote near Chan last night but the pill bottle was empty. If Savannah didn’t take them, who did?”

  “It was your penicillin?”

  For some reason, her tone made me defensive. “I had a strep throat last week.”

  “Perhaps she left your bag there before Chan came. Perhaps someone else found your tablets.”

  I took a sip of iced tea and thought it over. “I don’t see how there’d be enough time. She was wandering around High Point with my cell phone a little after nine and I found Chan less than an hour later. Someone would have had to take my bag away from her, see the tablets, know Chan was allergic, crush them into the brownies and then somehow lure him down to Dixie’s floor and get him to eat them. All that in fifty minutes? I don’t think so.”