by Leslie Caine
“That’s never going to work,” Stephanie interjected. “Erin needs to get rid of all the old newspapers and magazines, Aunt Helen. She can’t indulge you in the very hobbies which led to your packrat ways.”
“I’ve been scrapbooking for fifty years. Long before it became so popular that the word became a verb. I’m certainly not going to stop now.”
Spinning the conversation, I said, “You’ve kept scrapbooks for the last fifty years? That is so terrific!”
“Thank you. I can remember the least little detail of my loved-ones’ lives this way. Drives everyone else nuts, though. Some people prefer to remember things however it best suits them.”
Stephanie groaned, then said, “On that note, Peter and I have to leave. I’m already late for an appointment with a builder.”
Her well-trained brother dutifully rose.
“Walk us to my car, Erin, so we can talk shop.” Stephanie flashed a smile in her aunt’s direction. “I’ll drop by tomorrow and check on the progress. Take care.”
Peter hugged his aunt goodbye and asked if there was anything he could do for her before he left, which she obviously appreciated. I left on his heels, saying, “I’ll be back in a minute, Helen.”
“Just come right on in whenever you’re ready,” she called after me. Vator trotted up the driveway and brushed past me into the house.
“Oh, sure,” Stephanie grumbled after I’d closed the door behind us. “Treat the designer like a beloved old friend, but shut your own niece in the garage.”
“I warned you my aunt was eccentric,” Peter told me as we made the short walk down the driveway to Stephanie’s Mercedes.
“An epic understatement,” his sister countered, pressing the unlock button on her keychain with unnecessary force. “The woman clearly has incipient Alzheimer’s. If not a full-blown case.”
I protested, “She didn’t seem all that—”
“She is delusional,” Peter interrupted. “She just masks it reasonably well. Most of the time.” He slipped into the passenger seat and shut his door.
“You already made a tactical error, Erin,” Stephanie said. “Aunt Helen claims everything is either a collectible or potential scrapbook material.” She got behind the wheel.
“I’ll make the best of it.” I took a step back toward the house. “Maybe I’ll see you here tomorrow.”
“Count on it,” she replied crisply, slipping designer sunglasses over her eyes.
I suppose she intended the remark as a threat, but I gave her a big smile, said, “Wonderful. See you then,” and turned on a heel. My underlying mood, however, wasn’t nearly as sanguine. Even setting aside concerns about Helen’s alleged break-ins and how jam-packed her home was, her determination to keep the old locks had me deeply worried; convincing her to let go of the myriad useless items in her house was going to be really difficult. I silently repeated my standard mantra: “Confidence and optimism,” as I followed Helen’s instructions and reentered without knocking.
Flanked by piles of flattened Mylar balloons and yet more wrapping paper from Christmases past, Helen was seated at the black spinet piano, thumbing through a photo album. As I drew closer, I saw that this was no mere album, but rather a lovely display of photographs and memorabilia that was suitable for framing. Two pressed columbines graced diagonal corners of the page. Helen had picked up the lavender hues of the petals in the hand-painted borders of the pictures.
She wore such a beatific smile as she gazed down at the pages that I decided not to interrupt her thoughts even to compliment her book. Her smile faded the moment she gently turned to the next page, however. She glared at an old photograph of a police officer. Mounted alongside the photograph were newspaper clippings. She slammed the book shut.
“Handsome man,” I remarked, curious, but mustering a measure of tact. “Of course, I’m a sucker for a man in a uniform.”
“Aren’t we all?” Helen replied under her breath.
“Who is he? A friend or relative?”
She wedged the scrapbook ankle-high into the stack. As she rose, she brushed her hands as if done with a dirty task and answered sadly, “That’s the man who killed my sister.”
Chapter 3
“Your sister was killed by a police officer?”
She seemed to be taken aback by my question as she turned to face me. She gave my wrist a quick squeeze. “Oh, no, dear. I don’t mean that he literally killed Lois himself. Much as I suspect the louse was capable of murder.” She glanced down at the stacked albums. “That was George Miller in the picture, you see. My late brother-in-law.”
I sighed with relief. With her tales of break-ins, be they real or imagined, it would have been terrible for her to believe that a police officer, of all things, had murdered her sister. “He’d already retired from the force before he passed away, right?”
“Before he died, yes,” she replied through gritted teeth. “The phrase ‘passed away’ is too genteel for that stinker.”
“What did George die of?” I asked cautiously, fairly certain I was going to hear another convoluted and paranoid tale of murder.
“A heart attack. Two years ago.”
Natural causes. Thank goodness! I inwardly chastised myself for being happy about hearing of a man’s death and asked in a somber voice, “George made your sister’s life miserable, I take it?”
“You can say that again. Plus his reckless choices put poor Lois in the killer’s path.”
“How so?”
“I’m not going to get into all of that with you, Erin. You’ve got to dig through more than enough of my family baggage as it is. So let’s get going on this ‘action plan’ of yours, shall we?”
“That sounds wise,” I answered with a smile. I felt vindicated in my assessment of her. This wasn’t a case of incipient Alzheimer’s. This woman was as sharp as an upholstery tack.
She sat down again on the padded piano bench and folded her hands in her lap. “I just hope whoever killed George is the same person who took my poor sister’s life. That would mean George had at least sealed his own fate, along with Lois’s.”
I dropped into the recliner and massaged my suddenly aching temples. “But you said he died of a heart attack.”
She wagged her finger at me. “Which was brought on by someone’s messing with his medication.”
Maybe Stephanie was right. Maybe this talk of bell peppers, medication, and break-ins were the paranoid ramblings of an Alzheimer’s sufferer after all. “But, Helen...wouldn’t that be almost impossible? I think heart patients are carefully monitored, and their medication levels are checked regularly.”
“Be that as it may, those pills he was taking at the end sure looked an awful like those little oblong-shaped mints that stores sell at cashier lines.”
“Tic Tacs?”
“Precisely. Not the green or orange ones, though. I’m talking about the little white ones, which look like pills.”
“But they don’t taste like pills! There’s no way anyone could unknowingly eat Tic Tacs in the place of critical heart medication.”
She gave me a blank stare, sighed, then brightened. “Enough of my family sagas. Let’s talk about this plan of yours now, Erin. Where do we start?”
An hour later, I left Helen Walker’s house with a better grasp of the staggering magnitude of the job ahead of me—and with the strong suspicion that her so-called “break-ins” were the product of her over-heated imagination. I now felt the need to decompress in a relaxing, clutter-free space. I drove to my office in downtown Crestview. Although Helen had more or less consented to my “action plan,” she’d been too concerned about the personnel involved to fully realize that we were going to be getting rid of lots and lots of her hoarded stuff. I have talented and reliable subcontractors that I use regularly, but Helen would only allow me to bring in one “worker bee,” insisting that she couldn’t possibly handle more than one person at a time “pawing through” her personal belongings.
The short walk from
my parking space to my redbrick office building was soul-cheering. The mountains in the background were stunning—the craggy rock faces take on the immortalized purple hue, a rich contrast to the dark patches of evergreens. There wasn’t a cloud in the azure sky. I unlocked my office door and admired an even more inspiring sight—the elegant navy-blue and royal-red runner on the stairs that led to my loft-style workplace. The rug was secured to each step with old-fashioned brass fittings, which instantly evoked the image of climbing to the upper rooms of a Victorian mansion. I’d also replaced the painted-pine handrail with carved oak, polished to a glossy sheen.
Recognizing that this was my first form of advertising for walk-in customers, I furnished my office lavishly and changed the decor frequently. The ambience this month was that of a refined English drawing room, with a pair of maroon-and-honey-gold cushy overstuffed chairs facing my mahogany desk and its forest-green Tiffany lamp. The air bore the mild aroma of lemon wax, which mingled with eucalyptus leaves from a striking dried-flower arrangement on the hammered-copper drum table in the far corner.
My seating area was arranged as a cozy living space nestled against the exposed redbrick wall. There the oak-framed palladium windows revealed the glorious view of the Rockies. On a sea-grass area rug, maroon mohair slipper chairs flanked a sage tuxedo loveseat, where I liked to sit with clients and page through my portfolio.
I’d only just settled into my plush leather desk chair with a sigh of contentment when I heard the downstairs door open. To my surprise, my visitor proved to be my arch rival, Steve Sullivan, looking disarmingly handsome and relaxed in a lime-green polo shirt and jeans.
Our eyes met, and he gave me an annoyingly nonchalant, “Hey, Gilbert.”
Though my stomach clenched at seeing him, I forced a smile and said, “Hey, Sullivan. You’re back.”
“Yep.”
“You were in California all this time?”
“Yeah. A little longer than I first anticipated.”
“Bit of an understatement.” As well as an outright lie. His trip, which he’d originally said would take six days, had lasted seven weeks. We’d been trying unsuccessfully to schedule our first official date at the time. (Technically, it would have been our second date, but the first one hadn’t gone well, so we’d decided to wipe the slate clean.) Furthermore, a girlfriend of mine who worked in the same building as Sullivan had told me that he’d returned from California five days ago, which said more about his ambivalence toward me and our ever-gnarly relationship than words possibly could. “I take it your ‘quick little job’ must have turned into a not-so-quick, not-so-little one.”
He nodded and rocked on his heels. “I’m getting some good connections established out there. One of these days, you should come with me, if you’re interested in an occasional out-of-town job.”
He dragged his hand through his stylishly disheveled light-brown hair. The motion was a poker-player’s “tell,” indicating he was uncomfortable. Join the club. Obviously, Sullivan too had been caught off-guard by the kiss we’d shared two months earlier—immediately prior to his abrupt departure westward. We’d exchanged several emails in the meantime; I’d even joked that he was obviously relocating to California rather than taking me out to dinner. Our notes had progressed from chatty to shamelessly suggestive, and then without warning, suddenly stopped altogether. Somewhere along the line he’d apparently gotten cold feet.
So be it. We bickered compulsively whenever we were together. The smartest thing to do was for us to forget the kiss ever happened and go on with our lives.
And yet here I was, nervously fidgeting with my auburn hair. The silence felt as awkward as a three-legged chair. I had to say something. Either that or start praying for a bolt of lightning to hit me. “Do you have any interesting new assignments?” I ventured.
“Nah. Just a wing of an office building east of town. You?”
“I started work on a packrat’s home this morning.”
He grimaced. Packrats are a major challenge in our profession.
“It’s going to be rough, all right. I have to hire some muscle to help me clear the place out. The stacks of old newspapers alone weigh a ton.”
“At least it’s a good sign that he...or she was willing to hire a designer.”
“Actually, her niece and nephew hired me. They kind of forced me on her.”
He raised an eyebrow. “Was the niece Stephanie Miller, by any chance? The real estate developer?”
“Yes,” I replied, startled. “How did you know that?”
He hesitated, then claimed the nearest lounge chair facing my desk. “Tell you what, Gilbert. You need someone to tote and bail. Hire me. I’ll work on the cheap...same wages you’d give to your regular muscleman.”
“Why?” I’d gone from startled to suspicious.
“Things are slow, with my having been out of town. Plus, I’d like to get back on Stephanie’s good side. She’s a former client of mine. She’d gotten annoyed that I was out of town for longer than I’d anticipated, so she canceled an assignment we’d been discussing.”
“What kind of ‘assignment?’” I asked, wondering if he’d initially been offered the job at Helen’s house.
“I was supposed to design a game room for her. It’s a lucrative job, which, as it turns out, is still up for grabs.”
“Oh, I see.” In other words, he planned to suck up to her while he was supposed to be taking work directives from me.
He leaned forward, forcing me to gaze directly into those dreamy hazel eyes of his. “If Stephanie does hire me for her rec room, I won’t charge you for my work at her aunt’s house. We’ll consider it a tradeoff for helping me to win the job back.”
“Hmm. I don’t know, Sullivan. Maybe she’d rather hire me. I’d be a fool to help you out at my own expense.”
He sat up and squared his broad shoulders. “Hey. Fair’s fair. Who do you think recommended you for her crazy aunt’s place?”
“You gave Stephanie my name?”
“How else could I have pulled up her name like that?”
Maybe by listening to Stephanie talk about her aunt, the notorious packrat. I decided not to press the point. “Helen isn’t crazy. She’s just set in her ways. I like her.”
“Glad to hear it. What do you say, Gilbert? I’ll work hard...move mountains of newspapers at your beck and call.”
It did solve my dilemma about hiring only one reliable “worker bee.” And having Sullivan at my “beck and call” was the least the man owed me for sneaking back into town nearly a week ago. Not to mention for acting like we were mere professional acquaintances now. Heaven knows he deserved whatever grunt work I could dump on him.
“When you put it that way, it’s irresistible. Fine. You can start by picking up the moving truck Stephanie rented for me.” I pulled the receipt out of my drawer and jotted down Helen’s address. When I looked up at him, he was watching me intently.
He cleared his throat as our eyes met. “Didn’t mean to stare. But you look really hot today.”
“Hot?” What a very un-Sullivan-like descriptor. Had he been conked on the head by a surfboard while he was in L.A.? Did he mean “hot” as in sexy, or as in sweating profusely? I actually wasn’t perspiring, but then, my outfit was far from sexy; I was wearing a professional-businesswoman outfit, aimed to please a seventy-five-year-old woman.
“I thought about you a lot while I was gone. I think you’d have really liked the house I designed. It had this amazing deck, overlooking the Pacific Ocean. Sometimes I pictured you there, being caressed by the breeze, your auburn hair putting the colors of the sunset to shame.”
Sullivan? Waxing poetic about me? Not even a substantial concussion could explain that. What the heck was he trying to pull? I’d been wrong earlier when appraising my reaction to the sight of him; that wasn’t my stomach clenching: it was my heart—against the expectation of being broken.
He rose. For a panicked moment, I was certain he was going to round my desk a
nd approach me. My pulse was racing. I had to struggle to keep a lump from forming in my throat, but I managed somehow to ask evenly, “And how much were you thinking about me five days ago when you got back into town and couldn’t be bothered to pick up the phone?”
He said nothing, but stayed where he was.
I handed him the receipt and Helen’s address. “Meet me there at nine tomorrow morning.”
He stared at the slips of paper, smirked at me, then turned on his heel and descended the stairs without another word.
Chapter 4
“You look tired, my dear,” Audrey, my beloved landlady, remarked as I sank into my favorite seat in the den—a blue-and-gold damask wingback. My seat perfectly fulfilled my desire to cuddle up in a mega-soft chair with my cat and a steaming cup of mint tea. Although the wingback and the teacup were picture perfect, Hildi snubbed me in favor of the Sheridan in the corner. The white tip of her tail was flicking angrily at me. She’d probably detected the scent of Ella and Vator on me and felt betrayed.
I massaged a crick in my neck and glanced at Audrey. The pile of knitting on her lap was growing, dwarfing her petite, sixty-something frame. Audrey was expecting her first grandchild any day now. She had recently taken up this craft, intending to create booties and a baby blanket. First, she was “practicing” by producing a spring-green scarf. “My day felt as long as that scarf you’re knitting,” I told her with a sigh
“Dealing with difficult clients?”
“Oh, I guess you could say that.” It was actually my encounter with Steve Sullivan that had taken the bounce out of my step, but there was no way I’d bring up his name. Never one to pull her punches, Audrey had told me repeatedly that the two of us “were made for each other.” I’d tried to point out how wildly off the mark that particular Cupid’s arrow would be, but my landlady was also never one for listening to an opposing viewpoint. “I started working on a packrat’s house today, and it looks like we’re going to have a major tug of war every time I try to get her to dispose of her...disposables.”
