Killed by Clutter

by Leslie Caine

  “Oh, dear. You’re thinking that they truly might arrest me on the spot, too.” She was on the verge of tears. “I’d get a lawyer, except Peter was the only lawyer I knew personally.”

  “Let’s just hope for the best and see how this goes, okay?”

  I helped her from the car and ushered her inside the imposing cement structure. With my heart pounding and Helen cowering behind me, I approached the dispatcher at his oversized desk in the lobby. I gave him a nervous smile and said, “Hi. Is Officer Linda Delgardio or Officer Mansfield here?”

  “Just a sec,” he said and spoke into his headset. A few moments later he said, “Officer Mansfield will be right out.”

  I felt like leaping for joy, but whispered to Helen, “This is good. We’ll give Mansfield the egg, and maybe he’ll let us leave right away.”

  Helen nodded, grim-faced, and sank into one of the drab, blue-gray seats. I was too tense to sit. Mansfield soon lumbered down the hallway toward us. While watching him through the glass door and plastering an inane smile on my face, I reached into my purse and grabbed the egg. My nerves were making me almost woozy. If my decision to bring Helen here with me led to her arrest, I’d want to drop dead on the spot.

  We greeted one another, and I did a hot-potato thrust into his hand with the Faberge egg, blathering, “We came to give you this. Helen didn’t realize it at the time, but her sister had hidden it in her bedroom, and now we think it’s stolen property from the Crestview Art and History Museum. A theft occurred there about forty years ago, when George Miller was the security guard.”

  “Er, let’s go inside and have a seat for a minute,” Mansfield said.

  “Sure thing,” I replied, but was inwardly cursing. He opened the door for us. I gave Helen what I hoped was a reassuring smile and took her arm. Mansfield ushered us toward the desk that I knew he and Linda shared with other on-duty uniformed officers. I held a chair for Helen, who sat down.

  While Mansfield rounded his desk, Helen announced, “I think the Faberge egg could be what my nephew, Peter, had really been searching for in my house when he was killed.”

  I cringed, but silently took a seat beside her in one of their omnipresent straight-backed chairs—slightly padded and upholstered in a coarse black-and-blue fabric.

  “Was your nephew and Jack Schwartz friendly?” Mansfield asked.

  Helen frowned a little, either at the question or the bad grammar. “No. I don’t think they ever even met. But then again, I would never in a million years have guessed that Peter and Rachel Schwartz would form a partnership, so I’m obviously unreliable.”

  Please don’t say another word, I silently willed, trying to catch Helen’s eye.

  Mansfield examined the egg, rotating it on its base in his hands, the gold and the jewels sparkling in the florescent light from above. “Wonder how much this thing is worth.” He looked at me. “Got any idea?”

  “Uh, well, I guess it’s been speculated that it’s worth more than two hundred K.”

  He widened his eyes, then set down the egg, gingerly. “Thanks for bringing it in.”

  “Can we go now, officer?” Helen asked.

  He continued to stare at the egg, not much larger than my fist but worth a fortune. “Yeah, just let me write you out a receipt.” He scribbled something on a printed form, handed it to Helen, and said, “We’ll be in touch.”

  Hallelujah! I thanked him and hurried Helen out of there before he could reconsider, or O’Reilly could happen to stroll by.

  As we reached her car, Helen said, “I guess I should feel relieved. But this is all so sad. Tomorrow’s my nephew’s funeral. I remember holding him, at the hospital, on the day he was born.” A tear trickled down her cheek. “Now here I am, having outlived both his parents and him. Gone before their time. Maybe all because of a decorated pink stone, shaped like an egg.”

  Helen dried her eyes and drove us to her house in silence. When we pulled into her garage, she said, “Thanks, Erin. This whole thing is aging me rapidly. And I wasn’t all that young to begin with.”

  “I’m so sorry, Helen. You’ve had more than your share of woes lately.”

  “I have to admit that I always suspected that George really was the thief in that shoplifting scam from years ago, not Teddy.”

  “You think George framed Teddy?”

  “Oh, Teddy probably played a part, too. But George was undoubtedly the ringleader, with Teddy ultimately taking the fall.”

  “Teddy’s always so cheerful. He seems to have gotten out of jail with a remarkable lack of bitterness.”

  “Yes. He told Lois and me that getting arrested for theft as a young man was the best thing that could have happened to him. Otherwise he thinks he’d have spiraled.”

  “Gone on to worse and worse crimes, you mean?”

  “Yes. This way, though, he got his act together, wound up running a small carpet-cleaning company that became quite successful. He said at one point he had over a hundred employees.”

  My cynical side leapt to the thought that he might have stolen items from all those homes with dirty carpets, but it was hard to believe he’d have gotten away with such a thing year after year.

  “Are you coming to Peter’s funeral services tomorrow afternoon?” she asked me hopefully.

  “Yes, I sure am,” I said.

  “I’ll see you there, then,” Helen said, opening the door to the kitchen. “Thank you, as always, for going so far above and beyond your decorating duties.”

  My eyes returned to that sofa. I was already late for my next appointment, but another minute of delay wouldn’t make that much difference. “Speaking of decorating, let’s just move this sofa into the living room really quick, all right?”

  The next day was Peter’s funeral. Ironic that Peter hadn’t wanted to come to a funeral for Jack Schwartz. A week later, he had no choice but to attend this one.

  As was the case with Jack Schwartz, lots of mourners were in attendance. That surprised me a little. Peter had struck me as a fairly solitary person, just a step or two from being a recluse. Steve Sullivan appeared at the small church but sat in the back. Now the man wouldn’t even sit next to me. At least lifted his chin in a silent greeting when I looked behind me and our eyes happened to meet. Maybe our rocky friendship was over for good, and our even-rockier partnership would end the moment we completed Stephanie’s game room.

  Though battling her emotions throughout, Stephanie managed to deliver a touching eulogy that brought tears to my eyes several times and caused poor Helen to dissolve into wracking sobs. I found myself unable to listen closely to the proceedings and instead drew up my own list of suspects. All four of them were in attendance: Kay and Teddy arrived together, and although I couldn’t tell for certain from my vantage point, I got the distinct impression that they were holding hands. With the unsolved-theft issue concerning the valuable egg, Teddy was now my prime suspect, with Rachel just a notch below him. Kay was next. Stephanie, despite her very obvious grief, also remained on my list.

  There was a reception afterwards in the “church hall” below us. I spotted Linda Delgardio in a corner of the room. She was watching Helen like a hawk. Helen, meanwhile, was surrounded by a group of people her age, mostly women, including the couple she’d introduced me to at Jack’s service as fellow scrap-bookers. Pleasantly surprised that neither I nor, to my knowledge, Helen had been fully interrogated about the Faberge egg, I avoided meeting Linda’s eyes. I turned and glanced in the opposite direction, intending to wander off that way, only to meet with Detective O’Reilly’s stony glare. Both police officers were here? Were they operating surveillance on both me and Helen now? If so, they were watching the wrong folks!

  I needed to leave before O’Reilly could corner me. I’d already paid my respects to Helen. Stephanie was standing alone near the exit. Our eyes met. Although she probably didn’t want to speak to me, I approached her. “Stephanie, again, I’m so terribly sorry for your loss. It was touching to see that so many people ca
me to your brother’s service.”

  She snorted. “They’re mostly the competition.”

  “Pardon?”

  “Most of the so-called ‘mourners’ are in the real-estate business like me and want to be seen at my brother’s funeral.” She gave me a visual once-over. “It was good of you to come, though, Erin, in spite of everything that’s happened. And, by the way, I realize now that I overreacted. It’s very obvious that you’re not trying to wrangle your way into Aunt Helen’s will. You’re just the goody-two-shoes type who has to come to everyone’s aid in order to feel complete as a person.”

  I cleared my throat and tried to count to ten before responding, but made it only to two. “I think it’d be more accurate to say that your aunt is a dear, sweet person, and I came to her aid when she was scared half to death.”

  “Whatever. At any rate, Aunt Helen adores you, and Steve insists he wants you as a full partner on my rec room, so—”

  “He does?” I blurted out in surprise.

  She shrugged. “It surprised me too, but I figure, it’s no skin off my nose...I’m paying the same amount either way. Might as well get two designers for the price of one. So, if you can join Sullivan at my house in two hours to pick up where you left off, that’d be fine by me.”

  Strange that she was working on something as frivolous as her game room on the very day as her only sibling’s funeral. “That’s great. Thank you, Stephanie.”

  She gave me a tight-lipped nod and walked away. I scanned the room for Sullivan to thank him and soon found him chatting up a foursome of middle-aged women who seemed to be hanging on his every syllable. Just then I saw O’Reilly making his way across the room toward me. I left promptly.

  Later that afternoon, I arrived early at Stephanie’s house so that I could tell Sullivan I was fully back on the job. I waited in my van till I saw him drive up and walked up to him. He was still wearing the tailored black Italian suit with a navy pinstripe silk tie he’d worn to Peter’s funeral, and he bore just a hint of either cologne or aftershave. He looked and smelled delicious, darn it. “Hi, Sullivan. I wanted to thank you.”

  “You’re welcome. What’d I do?”

  “Stephanie told me how you went to bat for me.”

  “Oh, yeah? In what respect?” He managed to affect a bored and mildly confused demeanor at once.

  “That you told her you wanted my help designing her rec room, so she says I’m fully back on the job.”

  “Oh, good. Actually, though, I just told her I liked using you as a sounding board and getting your input. But it’s great that she rehired you.”

  No need to accidentally give me the impression that he valued me. I said, “I think it’d be wise, under the circumstances, if you handled most of the client interaction with Stephanie, for the time being.”

  “Fine.” He hesitated, then gave me a look that was awfully close to a sneer. “You’re really going to let me do most of the talking?”

  “Yes, I am.”

  “I’ll believe that when I hear it,” he muttered.

  I sighed, but decided to get in a little practice by holding my tongue now. Sullivan rang the doorbell and, as Stephanie ushered us inside, he slipped into his ever-so-competent-designer routine. I allowed Sullivan to take the lead as he went through the final check with her to make certain we were ordering exactly what she wanted. He seemed to be taking my suggestion to handle the bulk of the interaction a little too much to heart; I had to struggle to catch the slightest glimpse of the samples.

  I couldn’t help but widen my eyes when I spotted the too-red hue of the paint. Not to mention the new fabric selection for the sectional.

  Stephanie must have been watching my face just then. “You were expecting a more neutral color, Erin?” she asked immediately.

  “You’d wanted apricot paint. Isn’t this more...tangerine?” I tilted the display board in Sullivan’s hands so that I could finally really see it. “Or tomato, even?”

  “Yeah, but then she remembered she’d painted her den apricot, and she doesn’t like to repeat room colors, so she opted for desert-sunrise red,” Sullivan said crossly.

  Desert-sunrise red? For a basement rec room? With a gold satin sectional? It would look like a honky-tonk bar room. Or a brothel! Was this a test? The moment I objected, was Sullivan going to laugh and announce: I knew you couldn’t keep your mouth shut, Gilbert.

  “Do you have a problem with the color scheme, Erin?” Stephanie asked.

  Sullivan was glaring at me. “Uh, no, not at all,” I lied. “Not so long as you’re sure you like it.”

  She’d picked up on my doubtfulness. Worry lines creased her brow. “It is a bit radical, but I do really like the subdued red palette in my dining room.”

  “Which has those wonderful vaulted ceilings and palladium windows,” I replied. “That’s not going to be the case in your game room.” Not to mention that reds are flattering to food and to complexions, but are dark and dingy in a basement.

  Sullivan cleared his throat. “Shall we move on, Stephanie?”

  “Erin?”

  The woman was paying for my advice and experience; I couldn’t just sit here and nod like a bobble-head doll. “Could we possibly take a quick look at the apricot walls in your library, then take a peek at the game room for comparison purposes?”

  “Maybe that would be a good idea,” she said, rising.

  “Great.” I grinned at Sullivan, but he was avoiding my eyes. “There’s undoubtedly a compromise color we can select that will be right in between these hues.” Then we can rethink the fabric for the sectional! She escorted me into her den, and I instantly fell in love with the Tuscan ambience of the thick, hand-applied texture on the walls and the cherry desk and cabinets. The palette, however, would have been all the more striking with a darker base color—at three-hundred percent or so. “Lovely room,” I said, my eye immediately drawn to the marble fireplace and the built-in shelves to either side, which were filled with books.

  “You see how bright this room is?” our client asked derisively. “The walls look practically like Plaster of Paris. Apricot can get a little washed-out in the afternoon sun.”

  “Which it wouldn’t be on your downstairs walls with your east-facing windows. If anything, you could consider reversing the paint selections in the two rooms...painting the rec room this color and using the desert-sunrise red in here.”

  “Gilbert, I don’t—”

  “Actually, Steve, that’s a great idea.” Stephanie was eyeing the walls triumphantly. “It won’t cost me that much more to have the painters do this one extra room.”

  “True,” he said, instantly donning a positive attitude, the first requirement of being a good designer. “Although there will be a lot of prep work. Removing the books alone will take a while.”

  As I surveyed the array of books on the nearest shelf, I grinned. “You have a lot of albums. Are you into scrapbooking, too, Stephanie?”

  “Years ago, but it became too time-consuming for me.”

  Even as she spoke, I did a double-take. One of the binders was a different shade of brown from the others. The oddball album was vinyl and looked like a cheap imitation of the others, which were covered in matching, high-quality leather. “Can I take a quick peek at your work?” I started to remove the vinyl binder from the shelf.

  “No, Erin! I’m paying you to design my rooms, not to nose into my private albums!”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to pry.” Except I did, actually, and my curiosity was already driving me nuts; my glance at the edge of the book revealed that about a third of the pages were a slightly different size and shade than the first two thirds. Why would Stephanie keep one odd duck with mismatched pages among her set of albums?

  Dutifully, I returned the scrapbook to its place, but now I was dying to find a way to examine its contents. While Sullivan and Stephanie chatted about the precise wall color for this room, I slipped my small tape measure from my pocket and set it on the shelf.
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br />   We went downstairs, and when Sullivan’s interactions with Stephanie were in full creative rhythm, I feigned surprise at no longer having a tape measure, muttered that I must have “dropped it upstairs,” and slipped away.

  Back in the den, I grabbed the album, confident that Sullivan would realize that I needed him to keep Stephanie engaged. I flipped to the oddball pages. My vision fell on the photograph of George Miller in his police uniform I’d first seen at Helen’s, complete with her unmistakable borders. Stephanie had the stolen pages from Helen’s scrapbook!

  I rifled through the remaining pages and came across three sheets of stationery that had been placed, unbound, in the album. My heart pounding, I scanned the opening and closing of the letter; it was sent to “Hell’s Bell” and signed “Love, Lolo.” That had to be to Helen from Lois. The letter began:

  I don’t know how long I can continue to live a lie. George is such a hypocrite. I know he is a thief and a conman, and I can barely sleep at night, thinking about how much jeopardy he’s put himself and his family—

  “Hello, Erin. Thought I’d find you here,” Stephanie said coolly.

  Mortified, I jumped and foolishly tried to hide the letter behind my back.

  “Finding some interesting reading in my private album?”

  “I’m sorry, Stephanie. But...your aunt was extremely upset about the pages of her scrapbook disappearing. I couldn’t stop myself from looking when I realized that you had them.”

  “I told Helen I’d be borrowing them. She must have forgotten.”

  “Borrowing them? By taking them out of her album and putting them in yours?”

  “Yes, actually. They were dangerous, now that she had them out in the open. Most of her things never see the light of day, as you know.”