[M. by D. #5] The Design Is Murder

by Jean Harrington

  * * *

  “Naomi’s out back again,” Jane told me when I arrived at You’ve Been Framed. “She spends more time outside than she does over there.”

  “Over there” was a card table set up in a corner of the shop. Samples of Naomi’s calligraphy were pinned to a folding screen behind the table, and as always, the quality of her work stunned me. She made the most mundane address look like a work of art.

  “You can use the back door if you like.” Jane pointed in the direction of her rear workroom.

  I cut through the cluttered work space and pushed open a door that led out to a concrete slab overlooking a couple of trash cans and a small parking lot.

  Seated in a plastic tub chair, taking in the view, was Naomi, the familiar gray pigtail snaking down the middle of her back much as I remembered.

  “Hi, Naomi,” I said.

  She swiveled around, cigarette in hand. “Well, hi there, girl, where you been lately?”

  “Not too far. Busy, mostly.” I sank onto a plastic chair next to hers, downdraft from the smoke. In her thrift store jeans and outsized T-shirt, she looked older and thinner than she had a year ago.

  “You keeping well?” I asked.

  “As you see,” she said, inhaling the mother of all drags. She sucked the nicotine down to her toes and hung onto it for what seemed like forever before exhaling into the beautiful blue morning.

  I pointed to the butt nestled between her stained fingers. “Those things will kill you yet, Naomi.”

  She guffawed, a hoarse smoker’s laugh that ended in a rasping cough. “Your advice is a little late, Deva.”

  I peered at her in the clear, merciless light. Circles of fatigue rimmed her eyes, and the lips that had been pursing around drags for years were sunken in a network of wrinkles.

  I took her hand, the one without the butt dangling from it. “Are you telling me you’re sick?”

  She glanced over at me, her eyes a fresh, startling blue in the wrinkled wreckage of her face. “I’m not telling you anything. You’re asking.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, you didn’t come to discuss my health, so what does bring you here?” She took a final drag, flicked the butt onto the concrete slab and stepped on it.

  Clearly she was sick and didn’t want to talk about herself. For now, I had no choice but to respect her wishes, but later, as soon as I had Jane alone, I’d ask her about Naomi’s health. Though from the look of her, I feared I already had my answer.

  “I have a job for you, Naomi. Some handwriting samples.”

  Her eyes took on a shine. “Great.” She raised her arms and waved them at the ugly back lot. “This place is as good as any. So let’s have a look at what you brought.”

  I took the journal from my bag, opened it to where Connie Rae mentioned Stew and handed the book to her. “Tell me what you see, and then I’ll tell you what I’m looking for. That okay?”

  “Yes,” she said, already nose deep in the book.

  While she perused it, I took in the view. Stare at something long enough and it starts to grow on you. I’d about decided the view really wasn’t ugly but part of the urban landscape when Naomi coughed and laid the notebook on her lap.

  “You want to hear it?” she asked.

  “Of course, that’s what I came for.”

  “All right.” She reached for a cigarette, thought better of it, thank God, and dropped the pack back into her T-shirt pocket. “This is the writing of a young female.”

  “Well, the lilac ink...”

  She shook her head. “Not that. See the little circles over the i’s? No hetero guy does that. Mainly girls and immature women, but despite the emphasis on the middle zone, the writing is too literate to be that of a child. So I’m guessing she’s in her teens or early twenties.”

  “What’s the middle zone?” I asked.

  “Everyday reality.”

  “You lost me, Naomi.”

  She shrugged. “It happens. Think of the writing in Freudian terms—the id, ego and superego. Tall reaching strokes, like d’s and t’s, represent the superego, the spirit. The id, or sexuality, is found in the lower loops, the y’s and g’s. The middle zone, the a’s and o’s and e’s, is the ego or everyday reality. That’s where children live, and this example is written mostly in the middle zone. The writer, though not a child, is naïve and very sweet.”

  “Where do you see sweet?”

  She pointed to a word. “Look at this one. See how the letters are rounded? Almost no sharp edges, no spiky strokes, no long lower loops.”

  “So you’re not seeing much id?”

  “Right.”

  What about that black lace teddy with all the erotic holes? Stew’s idea?

  “But the weak id could be the result of illness. She’s a sick girl.”

  “Oh, Naomi, I can’t believe you see that.”

  Her eyes filled with tears. “Sickness always shows.”

  I knew she wasn’t talking about Connie Rae in that moment. Reaching across, I took her hand and squeezed it. I didn’t dare ask any more questions about her own health. Above all else, Naomi was a private person. Nor did I get to ask how she could tell the writer was sick, she volunteered the information. “The writing pressure is uneven. She isn’t maintaining an even hand. See, here and here.” Naomi touched the places where the lilac ink was lighter than elsewhere. “That’s a total giveaway.”

  She brushed away the tear sliding down her cheek. “But none of this is why you brought the girl’s sample to me. What, exactly, are you after?”

  I plucked the notebook from her lap and pointed to the place where Connie Rae mentioned her heart condition to Stew. “In here. Is she telling the truth, or is she lying?”

  Naomi took the book and read where I indicated. A few seconds only and she handed it back to me. “She’s not lying. Absolutely no indication of lies at all.”

  “How can you be sure? It’s important, Naomi.”

  She smiled. “I won’t ask why. If it is, it is. But I can tell you this—in a case of conscious lying, the writing loses spontaneity. The writer hesitates to think up the lie. That creates a longer space between words and a tensing in the strokes.” She pointed to the place. “Take a look for yourself. No wide spaces, no loss of roundness. According to the rules of graphology, the girl’s telling the truth.” She paused, and asked softly, “What happened to her? Did she get well?”

  I shook my head. “No. She wasn’t given the chance.”

  The back door barged open, startling us. Jane poked her head out and said, “A woman in the shop needs some wedding invitations. You want to see her?”

  “Tell her I’ll be right in.” Naomi rose out of the stiff plastic chair with difficulty. “Shucks. I wanted a smoke, but guess I can’t now.”

  “Before you go in, I have another sample for you to look at. No hurry. It’ll wait until you have some free time.”

  “Ha! That’s most always.”

  I handed her the Mike Hammerjack letters. Knowing she usually sold herself short and would refuse payment if it were offered outright, I’d slipped some twenties into the envelopes while she studied the journal. “See what these yield, Naomi, and give me a buzz when you’re through.”

  “Righto.” She turned to go inside.

  “Hey, girlfriend,” I said. “Not so fast.” I caught her in a bear hug. Underneath the loose T-shirt, Naomi Pierce was a bag of bones. I wondered if her calligraphy would reveal that she was dying. I hoped to God it wouldn’t, but one sad thing that had been revealed today—however unprovable it might be in a court of law—Stew Hawkins had lied. He knew his wife had a life-threatening illness but denied it. The question was why. What was he hiding?

  Though Naomi answered a lot of questions, she couldn’t answer that one. No one could except Stew himself.

  Chapter Twenty

  I’d hardly pulled away from the curb in front of You’ve Been Framed when my cell phone rang. Da da da DA.

  Caller ID said Tom K
ruse. Excellent.

  I pressed Talk and when he answered, I said, “Where are you? You sound like you’re in an echo chamber.”

  His chuckle came through the line like a men’s barbershop quartet. “I’m in an empty store in a strip mall. Getting it ready for the new owner.”

  My heart sank. “You’re tied up then?”

  “No just the opposite. I’m about finished here. Things are slow right now, the season and all...”

  “Then the stars are in alignment. I have a question for you.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Do you have two trucks and two crews?”

  “Yeah.” He stretched the word out into a question.

  “Marvelous. I need two trucks the same color and the same size. Two crews with the same number of men in each crew. They both have to arrive at the job at the same time each day and begin work at the same time. Oh, and they have to be dressed exactly alike.”

  “With all due respect, Deva, that’s the daffiest request I’ve ever had. Even coming from you.” His laugh echoed over the line.

  I guess he’d never forgotten the time I gave him a rotten mango and asked him to copy the skin color for a dining room wall. He had, and the room turned out great.

  “I’ll explain everything when I see you,” I said. “Want to meet me at Whiskey Lane tomorrow afternoon? Two o’clock?”

  “That’ll work. What’s the number?”

  I didn’t know whether to say 590 or 595, or the middle of the road. But since James seemed more sensitive to slights than Stew, we’d better start at the Stahlman house. “Five ninety.”

  Meeting date agreed upon, we both hung up, with Tom probably shaking his head, and who could blame him?

  At Fern Alley, I found Deva Dunne Interiors packed with shoppers. The minute I put a foot in the door, Lee whispered, “I’m so glad you’re back. There’s a convention at the Ritz. Cosmetics distributors and they love to shop. They’re buying up everything in sight.” She nodded at the line forming in front of the sales counter. “Y’all need to ring up those sales.”

  I hurried over, guilty at having ignored my business for the sake of what might well be called a wild goose chase. To make up for my neglect, I treated each and every customer as if she were a friend who’d just dropped in for a social visit and packed every purchase extra carefully in tissue paper, even tied big wired-ribbon bows on the handles of every gift bag. Guilt is a powerful instrument. Besides, the day’s tally would be terrific after this unexpected bonanza, but what I had to keep in mind was these drop-in purchases, though nice, didn’t keep the business viable. For that, Deva Dunne Interiors needed design customers who wanted far more than a pair of souvenir candlesticks or a sofa pillow from Florida. In short, I needed customers like James Stahlman and Stew Hawkins.

  While trying to fathom whatever mystery surrounded the deaths of both their wives wasn’t part of my job description, redoing their houses definitely was. So as soon as the crowd thinned out and Lee could handle the sales alone, I called first James then Stew and firmed up tomorrow’s appointments with the painter.

  * * *

  When I drove up to 590 the next afternoon, Tom Kruse was waiting for me in his truck. We strolled up the brick walk together and rang the chimes.

  “You’re in luck,” I told him. “You get to meet Charlotte.”

  “Oh really? A cutie?”

  “Yup.”

  She greeted us at the door, all yips and leaps and happy barks. Ignoring James’s request to be a good girl, she licked my ankles and sniffed the cuffs of Tom’s pants.

  “Meet Charlotte,” I said to him, “and not incidentally Mr. James Stahlman.”

  Tom’s face fell at the sight of the cutie, but he recovered fast and shook hands with James who scooped up Charlotte for the grand tour.

  I was somewhat surprised to see James at home. Not young, but not of retirement age either, he seemed never to be busy, never out and about, as if his main occupation were keeping Charlotte entertained. According to the newspaper account of his wife Marilyn’s drowning, he had been a well-to-do stockbroker at the time of her death and was presumed to be the likely heir of her considerable fortune. Which could well be the reason he lived a life of leisure.

  I huffed out a sigh. There I went again, venturing into what was none of my business. So giving Charlotte a topknot pat—her bow was purple today—I accompanied James and Tom, who with his clipboard at the ready took notes as we moved from room to room.

  “Flat white on all the ceilings,” I said. “Classic semi-gloss white on the woodwork throughout, except for the kitchen—Mr. Stahlman and I haven’t yet discussed what he wants done in there—and linen white on most of the walls.” Tom nodded. We had worked together on several projects, and he was familiar with my preferences. “For a color jolt, vivid coral behind the living room bookcases and in the foyer. I’ll give you the manufacturer’s number for that.”

  “Excuse me, Deva,” James said. “You are aware that blue is my favorite color?”

  “Absolutely. I wouldn’t forget anything so important, but blue is a cool shade and if not used carefully can make an interior appear...well, cold. To avoid that, we’ll introduce blue in your upholstered pieces and pillows and in some porcelains. Little blue islands, if you will. I found a gorgeous blue-and-ivory-striped fabric for the dining room chairs. And a silvery blue paper that will be stunning in the powder room.”

  James didn’t object, so encouraged, I went on, “And if we bring an oriental into the dining room, we’ll strive for one with a few blue tones. Faded blue for elegance.” I ventured a smile and pointed to one of the drab living room walls. “Faded blue in orientals isn’t the same as in wallpaper.”

  James placed Charlotte carefully on the floor and clapped. Actually clapped. “Bravo, Deva! Bravo. I like everything you’re suggesting.”

  “So do I.”

  We all swiveled around to the source of the voice. It was Kay in high-heeled sandals and a drop-dead bikini. The bra consisted of white stars on a blue ground and the bottom of red and white stripes. It was enough to make you want to salute. The sheer blue pareo cruising her hips didn’t conceal much either.

  Tom stared at her, mouth agape, and lost his grip on the tape measure he’d been extending along one of the walls. It zinged back into its metal holder with a loud whack! No wonder. For forty Kay looked good. For thirty she looked good. Ditto for twenty...well, twenty-five.

  “Kay,” James said, his tone cool with disapproval, “a cover-up?”

  “Hardly necessary, Jimmy. I’m heading for the pool. Ta-ta, everyone.”

  So there was a pool on the property. I glanced outside. The terrace steps led down to a clipped lawn that ended in a carefully pruned boxwood hedge. The pool had to be discreetly hidden behind the hedge.

  Anyway, Kay slipped through the sliders and started down the terrace stairs.

  Carrying Charlotte, James hurried outside. “Careful, darling, those stairs are wet and—”

  Too late. Whether James distracted her, or her ankle twisted, or the stairs really were slippery, Kay lost her balance and tumbled down the length of the stone steps, landing at the bottom with a thud.

  “Here,” James said, dumping Charlotte in my arms and hurrying to Kay, who lay unmoving.

  He knelt beside her. “Darling,” he murmured. “Darling.”

  She had landed on her side, one arm raised in an instinctive gesture to protect her head. At the sound of his voice, she stirred and attempted to sit up while tucking a breast back under the stars. James helped her with both attempts then sat holding her and murmuring into her ear.

  Cradling Charlotte, I called down, “Do you need 9-1-1?”

  Kay shook her head.

  “No,” James replied. “She’s fine. Just needs a minute to rest.”

  I watched them for a while longer until Kay, with James’s help, got to her feet and together they started up the stairs.

  “I’ll make this fast,” Tom said to me quietly. In
command of his tape again, he went back to measuring, calculating the amount of materials and man hours he’d need to transform the interior into what I intended to be a showstopper. In this opulent neighborhood, a stunning redo might result in some good word-of-mouth PR, exactly what Deva Dunne Interiors needed. Especially now, with that empty Calista lot waiting for its new house.

  I gave Charlotte’s bow a pat. “How about I put you down?”

  Woof.

  “Is that a yes or a no? Help me out here. I don’t speak your language too well.”

  I bent down and set her on the floor. The instant her paws touched wood, she barked out several woofs in a row and stood on her hind legs. Crisis or no crisis, she needed attention, so I picked her up again. I guess I did understand Maltese speak. Besides, James had enough to deal with at the moment. With Kay in tow, he’d nearly reached the living room sliders.

  Once inside, leaning heavily on his arm, Kay limped over to the sofa and stretched out. Alert but somewhat pale, she appeared shaken by the experience. No wonder, a fall like that could kill a person. She’d been lucky, the only damage appeared to be a rapidly swelling left ankle.

  “Deva,” James said, taking Charlotte from me and looking as pale as Kay. “Would you please go into the kitchen and tell Eileen we need an ice pack?”

  “Of course.” I hurried to the back wing and pushed open the swinging door to a kitchen that could be called retro or mid-twentieth century or just plain shabby. Whatever. It was slated for a redo, but for now I had a more pressing task. I was on an errand of mercy.

  Standing at the sink, as sturdy and reliable as I remembered, Eileen glanced over at me and managed a little smile. “I saw Mrs. Hawkins take that tumble and thought she might be needing this.” She held out an ice pack nestled in a soft white towel. “I wish Mr. Stahlman would do something about those stairs. They’re treacherous.”

  “I’ll mention it to him.” I took the ice pack from her and hurried back to the living room. James tenderly draped it over Kay’s ankle as Tom, looking a little goofy with Charlotte in his arms, tried not to stare at the bikini.