by Leslie Caine
A baby blanket quilt is a lovely idea. In fact, I hope
you're making one of those for your grandson Colin, as
well."
"I am indeed." She went back to her stitching, but
then paused and looked at me."You look a little tired. I
suppose I should quit talking and leave you to your
reading."
"Thanks." I opened my book to the bookmark.
"An Agatha Christie?"
"Yes."
She craned her neck and studied the cover. "I read
that one."
"Yes, I know. I borrowed it from you."
"Is there anything new happening between you and
Steve?"
I gritted my teeth."Audrey, please! Do I have to go to
my room in order to read in peace?"
She glared at me, but mimed locking her lips with a
key and didn't answer. Her silence lasted all of thirty
192 L e s l i e C a i n e
seconds, till she grumbled, "The butler did it, by the
way."
"I'm sure the murder was well justified," I retorted,
knowing she was kidding. "He was probably provoked
by someone giving away the ending to the book he
was reading."
c h a p t e r 1 6
Around mid-morning the following day, Burke's
voice rang out over the answering machine:
"You two are going to want to see Asia's exterior decorating as soon as possible." Sullivan had pressed the message
button in my presence, so we heard his gloomy tone simultaneously.
"Come to think of it," I said, "it's been a week since
Asia gave Burke and Darren a week's notice to take down
their windmills, or else. She must have gone ahead and
hung those plastic flamingos in the trees that border their
joint property line, like she said she would."
194 L e s l i e C a i n e
"Along with all of those hundreds of noisy wind
chimes."
The image of plastic flamingos in evergreens was a
much-needed touch of silliness, and I smiled. Sullivan
was also grinning as we caught each other's gaze. "I wonder if she's put plastic penguins on ice skates on the
pond, too. That would be a nice finishing touch."
"We shouldn't laugh," Sullivan said, although he was
chuckling as he spoke.
"No, we shouldn't. Burke's obviously upset."
"Poor guy," Sullivan said sarcastically, clearly enjoying
the notion of Burke's discomfiture.
"I'm sure he's worried that the ugly lawn and tree ornaments so close to his house will have an adverse affect
on the contest judge."
"On Audrey, you mean," Sullivan said. "Or did you
manage to talk her out of it last night?"
"I wish. I think she's secretly too enraptured at the
thought of helping me to ferret out the killer to say no.
Plus I'm sure it was immensely flattering to her to be singled out as the one and only person who could help keep
the contest going."
"Low self-esteem has never seemed to be an issue with
Audrey."
"Don't make snide remarks about Audrey!"
"Sorry, but it's true."
"I know, but that doesn't mean it's all right to say so."
Sullivan glanced at his watch. "We've got some free
time before our next appointment. Want to head over
there right now?"
"You sound almost cheerful. I thought you were positive Burke was a murderer."
"He's a smart man . . . a doctor. Doesn't make sense
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 195
he'd be so stupid as to shoot Walter in his own backyard.
So, yeah, some of my doubts have returned."
"Good, because I'm still positive he's innocent. Let's
go see what Ms. Crabapple has done to him."
Asia had allowed the front yard's property line to re-
main undisturbed. Burke led us to the side yard, which
bordered the pond, where the three of us stood staring at
Burke's property in unabashed awe. The only thing to be
said for the riot of bright, cheap plastic excess was that it
was infinitely more pleasant than the crime-scene tape
that had cordoned off Burke's backyard two days ago.
"Kind of like being transported to a tourist trap in
Florida," Burke said, "without our snow and ice, that is."
"More like what the artist Christo would do if someone dared him to work with only tacky toys instead of
brightly colored fabric," I said. "Or maybe a yard sale at a
dollar store."
Between her line of trees and her three-rail fence, Asia
had installed what looked like the type of mesh that golf
courses used on their driving ranges. Hers was twelve feet
high and extended from the front post of her side yard to
the pond. A second mesh began at the other side of the
pond and ran to the back corner of the fence. She hadn't
stopped at flamingos and wind chimes, although she'd
used plenty of those. Her rule of thumb seemed to be that
if it was cheap, garishly colored, and plastic, it was on her
fence. She'd stuck a toilet bowl brush on the mesh, along
with combs, an inflatable rooster, a backscratcher, horseshoes, an inflatable Santa with at least four of his reindeer, and several oversized bubble wands. Virtually every
196 L e s l i e C a i n e
square inch had something ugly and gaudy hanging
from it.
"She's trying to get your goat by displaying so many
nonrecyclable plastic products," Sullivan surmised, stating the obvious.
"And she complains about my windmill ruining her
view," Burke said. "This is one hell of an eyesore, for her,
too."
"Cutting off her nose to spite her face," Sullivan
agreed.
"Her pond decorations are almost pretty," I remarked
quietly. Both men glared at me. "Well, they are. It's kind
of like a floating conga line of bath toys." She had strung
all sorts of children's floating devices together, from neon
green frogs to electric blue dinosaurs. Together they
formed a straight line atop the iced-over pond, and appeared to delineate the halfway point between the two
properties.
"She didn't secure it very well," Sullivan said. "She
just used tent stakes. The next windstorm we have, that
string of toys could get wrapped around some bush in the
next county."
"I think it's a safety hazard," Burke said. "It's going to
lure kids to try to jump onto the ice, and it won't support
them. We should take the toys down, don't you think?"
Burke was obviously looking for a viable excuse to do
just that, but he did have a point. "I'm going to take a
closer look at the pond," I said.
I made my way down the slight incline and started
walking along the water's edge toward Asia's house.
Something caught my eye in the shallow water ahead of
me, about halfway to the starting point of Asia's colorful
contraption.
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 197
"That's odd," I said over my shoulder. "There's something in the water--between the ice and the bank."
"Probably a dead carp," Burke retorted.
It didn't look like a fish to me; it was dark and shiny
and metallic-looking. My heart started to race. I found a
long
stick. After a few failed attempts, I managed to snag
the object in the pond and drag it to the shore. By then
both Burke and Sullivan had joined me and could see it,
too.
"My god," Sullivan said.
Sullivan grabbed it with his gloved hand as Burke
watched, looking horrified. It was a handgun.
The police finally allowed Sullivan and me to leave
Burke's by the time I'd rescheduled all of my client appointments. In less than an hour, Audrey would have me
chauffeur her to the finalists' homes. Sullivan and I had
agreed that, if there was even a remote chance that my
presence might help to keep Audrey safe and sound, my
time would be well spent.
Matthew Hayes called and asked me to stop by his
store at my convenience. Sullivan was with a client in a
neighboring town, so I made the short drive to Matthew's
store and found a space. His siding looked especially
pretty in the bright sunlight. It was a chalky blue-green,
like the copper patina of the Statue of Liberty.
Inside, a young man with long hair and droopy eyelids
greeted me with a lazy, "Hey, how goes it?" When I asked
for Matthew, he said, "Oh, yeah. He's in the workshop.
Go on back." I thanked him and headed through a
tangerine-colored door. There was a marked drop in temperature between the two spaces, but for me, the scent of
198 L e s l i e C a i n e
fresh-cut lumber was made all the more delightful by the
crisp air.
I found Matthew using a lathe, carving what appeared
to be a pedestal for a table out of a six-by-six piece of yellow oak. As I approached, he spotted me, smiled, and
shut off the motor, the spinning piece of wood gradually
slowing to a stop. Beneath a light coating of sawdust, he
was wearing jeans, a mustard-colored T-shirt, and a black
backward-facing baseball cap.
He promptly removed his safety goggles. "Morning,
Erin. Wasn't expecting to see you quite so soon. You must
have dropped everything and run right over here, eh? It
wasn't anything urgent, you know."
"Sure, but I had some free time."
He wiped the sawdust from his hands and sturdylooking forearms. He truly was a nice-looking guy. Too
bad he was also a major jerk. "I wanted to show you the
desk you ordered. It's almost good to go. Just wanted to
give you the chance to inspect it before I invested a
whole lot of time in the sanding and finishing work." As
he led me toward the desk, he put his hand on my back,
which annoyed me. "I used the boards from the local
lumberyard, just like you and Dr. Stratton wanted, so I
was stuck with pine. There was only so much I could do
with the pine, you understand."
"Of course. But it's a lot better for the environment
when materials are being processed and used all from
within the same small geographic area."
"Maybe so, but it's bad for the craftsmanship. I can do
wonders with mahogany."
"From the rain forest. But Burke would never have
supported that. You'll just have to use a dark stain."
"One that has zero off-gassing. Yippee. Might as well
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 199
hand me a mahogany crayon. Anyways." He gestured at a
desk against the wall. "Here you go."
Matthew was so arrogant and short-sighted that I
wanted to hate the desk. But I couldn't. He'd made wonderful use of the knotty pine and incorporated the whorls
into his overall designs. The rhomboid shape of the desk
would hug the corner of Burke's bedroom. I loved the
lines, the cabriole flair in the legs, the playful echo of
those gentle curves in the front piece and drawers. "It's
beautiful."
He shrugged, but there was no small measure of pride
in his smile. "It's okay. It'll look much nicer as I continue
to sand it between coats of finish. 'Course, if your client
would quit obsessing about off-gassing, I could use the
best varnish on the market . . . make this pine look like
rare wood."
"Right, Matthew. You could do just that. But if you'd
change your attitude and promote your skill at using
woods from your own backyard, you'd turn a big profit by
appealing to the major green contingency in this town."
"Exotic woods are what sell." He pointed at a lovely armoire a few feet away from us. "I can charge three times
more for that piece of case furniture because nobody can
get it at some 'Cheap Furniture R Us' chain store."
I walked over to the armoire and opened a drawer.
"Nor could you buy this quality dovetail joinery from a
discount factory."
"True, but believe me, exotics are what set my work
apart from other furniture designers."
"Maybe that's because those other designers have a
conscience."
He smirked. "You know, Erin, it's easy for you to be
high and mighty. If your customer requests something
200 L e s l i e C a i n e
that contributes to pygmy hippos dying in Botswana, you
can just tell yourself: 'The customer is always right. It's
his big money and his fat butt that's going to sit on it.'
Meanwhile, the American furniture business is a sixtyfive-billion-dollar industry, with killer international competition. As a craftsman working for myself, I'm either a
cut above, or I'm cut off at the knees."
"So that's why you took it so personally when Richard
Thayers called attention to things like this ivory inlay?" I
asked, testing his reaction.
"Yeah. Of course I took it personally. He was threatening my livelihood! If my sales slip, I go under, and I'm
out of work. Period. And those ecology groups are ruthless."
"Groups like World's Watchdogs, you mean? The one
Walter Emory founded?"
"Yeah. I had a couple of run-ins with Emory. He and
Richard were taking turns harassing me for a while. But it
stinks that somebody offed the guy."
My vision was drawn to a chest of drawers that looked
to be made out of rain forest wood. "I couldn't help but
notice that this wood is merbau."
"Very good. You know your woods."
"I always recognize this deep red, gold-flecked color.
But I steer my customers away from it whenever possible
because of the damage its harvesting is doing to the rain
forests in Indonesia."
"I got it from a legal dealer."
"Within the United States, the dealer was legit, sure,"
I retorted. "But it's doubtful that the original exporter of
the lumber was legal."
He made a derisive noise. "I'll bet if your partner,
Steve-o, were to present you with a diamond one of these
P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 201
days, you wouldn't ask about its exporter, or anything
about its origin. More blood's been shed for diamond
mining than for conflict-wood foresting, as World's
Watchdogs calls it."
"And I'll bet if you were to have a customer ask you to
surround the mirror of a dressing table with a hundred diamonds that you had to purchase yourself on the black
market, you wouldn't hesitate."
"You got that right. Now, that is something I could
make a bundle on. If you can talk one of your rich customers into buying it from me, I'll split the profit right
down the middle."
I started to turn away in disgust and spotted a green label on a can on the shelf along the adjacent wall. I
crossed the room to investigate. Surprised, I turned back
to look at him and exclaimed, "You have one of Richard's
Earth-Friendly Wood Finish products."
"Just bought them yesterday," he said with a shrug that
looked like a forced attempt at indifference. "I knew
you'd want to use a nontoxic product."
"There are others on the market. Why did you choose
to help out Richard's business? I thought you resented his
sales tactics in his class."
"It seemed like the decent thing to do, now that the
guy's dead."
And buying Richard's products was an easy way to gain
access to his labels, then glue one onto the can of toxic
paint that Richard had been tricked into drinking.
c h a p t e r 1 7
some ninety minutes later, I found myself negotiating congested traffic while driving Audrey's
Mercedes. Impatient and annoyed, I snapped, "I should
never have agreed to do this. I shouldn't be showing you
Burke's home. It's a huge conflict of interest."
"No offense, dear, but you're just the interior designer.
The architect and the creators of the products that Burke
uses are much more responsible for his low energy consumption than you are."
"First off, Sullivan and I were the people who sat
down with Burke and Jeremy and chose his e-rated mate-P o i s o n e d b y G i l t 203
rials. We also helped him design some of the specific features of his kitchen and bathrooms that made them so environmentally friendly and functional, such as the
ventilation and exhaust systems. In the second place, you
and I are obviously going to be speaking to each other as
we drive between the finalists' homes, and that conversation could unconsciously affect your overall opinion."
"I'm my own person and always have been. I intend to
pretend that you're simply here as my driver, and that
Burke's house was designed exclusively by Steve
Sullivan."
"That'd be ironic," I muttered.
"Is there a problem there?"
"Sullivan suspects Burke is the murderer."
"He does? And do you agree?"
"Not at all."
She fell silent for several seconds, then remarked,
"That's probably making interactions between you two
