Death by Inferior Design

by Leslie Caine

  “Too late,” Jill replied with a hint of malice. “I saw him drive away as I headed up the driveway just now.”

  Frustrated and finding my confidence-and-optimism mantra increasingly ineffective, I decided to call it a day myself. I thanked Debbie and Carl for all their hard work and headed straight for the Axelrods’ backyard in the hope that Taylor might be there, even though his truck was gone. My lumber was still untouched, neatly stacked by the back door.

  Cursing under my breath, I returned to my van for some plastic sheeting. In the event of an unpredicted storm, there was a small roof that would offer the stack some protection, but I couldn’t risk water damage to the unfinished wood.

  The back doors to my van were unlocked. “Jeez, Taylor! Thanks a lot!” I grumbled as I reached inside and grabbed a roll of plastic.

  I heard an engine idle as a vehicle came to a stop behind me. Whirling around—this job had made me ridiculously jumpy—I saw Sullivan roll down the window in his van. “Hey, Gilbert. How about letting me sabotage our contest and get you drunk tonight?”

  The invitation was totally out of character. Where was the arrogant Sullivan I’d come to know and loathe? I walked up to his van, mulling my response. There was nothing I would like more than to compare notes on our clients. But for all I knew, Steve Sullivan could have known both the McBrides and the Axelrods long before he accepted this job. Maybe, in fact, he’d been in on the whole thing from the beginning. If he was unscrupulous enough to swipe a client, he might have been willing to help rig a high-stakes contest. “Tempting as that sounds, I’d better say no,” I told him coolly.

  “Suit yourself, Gilbert,” he said with a grin, “but don’t go saying I never asked you.”

  He started to roll up his window, and that’s when the panicked, chest-constricting feeling hit me again with the blunt force of a tidal wave. In its aftermath, every iota of my confidence and optimism instantly deserted me. “Steve?”

  “Yeah?”

  What was I thinking? I’d just called him “Steve,” as I would if we were friends, not ruthless competitors. I couldn’t reveal myself to him like this. To mention the photograph meant letting him see through my veneer. Steve Sullivan didn’t need to know that I was adopted. That my father had deserted my mother and me when I was twelve. That my mother’s death was as painful to me as though it had happened only yesterday. That despite all of my mother’s best efforts, a part of me would always ache to know why my birth parents had given me away at eighteen months, as though they’d discovered some irreparable flaw in me that made me permanently unworthy of their love.

  I forced a smile and met his hazel eyes. “Oh, nothing. Have a nice night, Sullivan.”

  “You too, Gilbert.”

  I watched him drive away.

  chapter 4

  “Just before you wrap your gifts, spritz the inner side of the paper with cologne. This will give your loved ones a delightful sensuous bonus as they open their presents.”

  —Audrey Munroe

  Garages and driveways are a rarity in the historic district of Maplewood Hill, but I never complained. Having to park on the street and negotiate the slate walkway always allowed me to fully appreciate the rich grandeur of the late-nineteenth-century house in which I rented a room. My short stroll was especially wonderful now that the grand, stately homes and their tall, majestic spruce trees sparkled with Christmas lights. More than any other season, Christmas was a time of hope and love, when we could loosen the reins on our hearts. I paused on the walkway, took a deep breath of the sweet, crisp air, and looked down the street. Despite the intense challenges this day had brought me, I couldn’t help but smile. The view was glorious. In my mind’s eye, I enhanced the beauty even further: the asphalt was buried in a blanket of glistening snow. Tree branches and roofs were frosted with white powder.

  Still smiling, I entered Audrey’s house through the arched oak door. The magnificent foyer, which I’d decorated myself, was so beautiful that I loved to linger here. Tonight, however, the French doors to the parlor had been left wide open and, at the sight before me, I gasped aloud.

  Audrey Munroe, my petite, sixty-something-year-old landlady, was kneeling on the richly grained antique-pine floor. She’d shoved the furnishings aside, rolled up the exquisite oriental navy-and-claret rug, and laid down a sheet of thick plastic in its place. In some sort of twisted art project gone mad, she was taking a box cutter to the sublime custom wallpaper that I’d custom-ordered for her dining room.

  Horrified, I crossed the room toward Audrey. My sleek black cat, Hildi, had been sitting beside her but, accurately assessing my mood, promptly pranced out of the room.

  Audrey glanced up at me, then did a double take. “Don’t worry, dear. I’ve decided not to hang this wallpaper after all, so I’m putting it to good use elsewhere. Much as I love it, I’ve decided instead to go with wall treatments based on renewable resources . . . sea grass on three walls and cork on the fourth. We’re doing a Dom-Bliss segment on sustainable resources in January.”

  Dom-Bliss was Audrey’s nickname for the local television show that she hosted: Domestic Bliss with Audrey Munroe. Audrey was the first to admit that her morning show was “your basic Martha Stewart knockoff.”

  I struggled to find my voice.“Audrey. I ordered twelve double rolls for you. We had the manufacturer alter some of the colors in their pattern to match your window treatments.That paper cost an ungodly amount of money. We won’t be able to return any of it. I explained all of that to you. Remember?”

  “Of course I do, dear, and I wouldn’t dream for one minute of cheating those lovely people who make such delicious designs. I had no choice but to use their paper as gift wrap.Tomorrow’s show is called ‘Wrapping Paper Alternatives.’ I find store-bought wrapping paper to be so . . . unimaginative, don’t you?” She studied my still-horrified expression, then returned to her wanton slicing.“Two of my wrapping paper alternatives are wallpaper and fabric remnants. So I checked the contents of my storage room, and alas, I’d cleared out all of my scraps.”

  “But why didn’t you ask me for some? I have enough wallpaper scraps to cover every carton and box in Crestview. I would have been more than happy to give you all the wallpaper you possibly could have wanted.”

  “Oh, well.” She brushed back the bangs of her ash-blond highlighted hair.“I enjoy spending my money on fabulous wallpaper, regardless of how it eventually gets used.”

  I sank into the closest chair, a Martha Washington upholstered in lustrous leather. “Buy all the wallpaper you like, Audrey; that’s terrific. But please don’t hack it to bits like this. Chopping up untouched Scalamandré wallpaper for Christmas wrapping in my presence is like . . . like lopping a calf’s head off in front of a Hindu.”

  “My goodness.” She reached over and patted my knee. “I had no idea you’d get so upset. Do you feel as strongly about that shiny metallic paper you ordered for the accent wall?” she asked innocently.

  Through gritted teeth, I asked, “The hand-hammered copper paper from Farrow and Ball? The paper that we put the rush order on . . . which had to filter all the way to their craftsmen in China? Do you mean that shiny metallic paper?”

  “Well, I can tell by that unpleasant shrillness in your voice that the answer’s going to be yes, so you may want to avert your eyes whenever you go past the Christmas tree in the den.”

  “Oh, dear lord,” I murmured. I gripped the sturdy mahogany arms of my chair and watched as Audrey marked the dimensions of a shirt box on the back side of the amazing work of art that she was blithely mutilating. “Not to criticize, Audrey, but that wallpaper is too stiff to fold easily. Not to mention that the cost of the wrapping paper is going to exceed the cost of the gift inside it. You’d be better off wrapping the present in an Hermès scarf.”

  She sat up and gave me a big grin. “As they say, ‘Great minds think alike.’ That is precisely one of my alternatives! A gift within a gift, if you will.” She rose—barefoot beneath her elegan
t black-and-gold kaftan—and did some sort of plié to stretch her muscles. Many years ago, Audrey Munroe had been a dancer with the New York City Ballet. Nowadays, the woman metaphorically brought her own stage with her wherever she went. Audrey had an innate gracefulness and flamboyance that I greatly admired, although she conquered every room she entered so thoroughly that, even inside this cavernous room with its twelve-foot ceilings and just the two of us present, it sometimes felt crowded. “Let me show you the results, sweetie.”

  She headed toward the kitchen, and I trailed after her, detecting a faint scent of onion, as well as pine, in the warm air. Unlike me, Audrey loves to cook extravagant meals. Her kitchen, like her foyer, is absolutely stunning. The design and contents of all the other rooms in the house, including, sadly, my sitting-room-cum-bedroom, were subject to her whimsical changes of mind and spur-of-the-moment purchases. Not to mention her tendency to treat the materials that I’d purchased for her home at her behest as though they were dime-store ingredients for one big sloppy science project.

  I asked, “The Sunday comics are going to be another alternative wrapping paper, I presume?”

  “Exactly. After I cover them in clear cellophane. And, of course, I’ll be doing a segment on using vegetables to turn that plain, boring tissue paper that clothing stores use as box liners into beautiful handmade wrapping paper, and—”

  “Vegetables?”

  “Yes. After they’ve been carved into ink stamps.” She started to hand me a potato that had been sliced in half, the white surface cut into the silhouetted shape of a teddy bear, which I recognized as having originated from one of her cookie cutters. Then she hesitated. “You’re not . . . unnaturally connected to potatoes, are you, dear?”

  “No, Audrey, I have no ethical problems with cutting up vegetables. Making ink stamps out of raw potatoes is a terrific idea. I used to do that myself as a kid.”

  “I’m doing some abstract designs with celery stalks too. I was already in the kitchen to collect the potatoes, and I thought, why not use vegetables as paint-brushes?” She gestured at the stove, where some half-full pots were burbling. “So then I decided to make some natural paints—red from sugar beets, amber from onion skins, and green from spinach.”

  “Nice.” On her Caledonia granite countertop, she had spread out fragrant boughs of cedar and fir trees, along with pinecones dusted with glitter. These items were obviously intended as decorations to augment the gift boxes. She had also preserved some oak and maple leaves, which she would probably spray-paint gold; the telltale paint can was nearby.

  “I’ve cut some photographs out of old magazines and calendars to do decoupages in interesting designs,” Audrey informed me as she refreshed her water glass. “And lastly, I’ll show my audience how to make those dear little fabric gift bags. So charming, don’t you think?”

  Knowing what was coming, I gripped the cold, smooth edge of the beautiful granite countertop as she retrieved several squares of fabric from another room. All had been cut from the elegant toile drapery fabric that we’d special-ordered from Christopher Norman. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, and Erin? Just wait till you see how pretty the fabric for the sheers is now that I spray-painted it! I’ve turned those sheers into the loveliest ribbons imaginable!”

  chapter 5

  The next morning, I awoke in a foul mood. By accepting Carl Henderson’s job, I’d given up one of my precious, leisurely Sunday mornings spent wrapped in my feather-soft angora afghan with Hildi curled in my lap as we perused the home and garden section of the newspaper and furniture-ad fliers.

  My night had been dreadful, my inadequate sleep interrupted with unpleasant dreams. To make matters worse, I’d been awakened at dawn by what sounded like a town hall meeting in the den, only to stagger into the blinding lights of what proved to be a film shoot for Audrey’s show. Although her fictitious living room in the Denver television studio had a marvelous, lavishly decorated blue spruce (I should know; she’d had me select the tree and decorate it myself on-site just three days earlier), Audrey had decided she preferred the backdrop of our actual Christmas tree and den for her alternative-wrapping-paper show. She apologized for forgetting to warn me about the crack-of-dawn photo shoot and soothed, “You’ll have the whole house to yourself for the rest of the day, dear. After this, we’re filming a segment in Vail, where there’s actually some snow. I’ll be lucky to get home before midnight.”

  While grumbling to myself such nasty remarks as “Domestic bliss my ass,” I smeared on makeup to hide the dark circles under my eyes and compensate for my plain lavender turtleneck and blue jeans, stashed my baby picture in my back pocket, in case the opportunity arose to confront anyone about it, and left for work.

  To my surprise, Taylor’s pickup truck was already in the Axelrods’ driveway when I arrived. The sharp growl of a table saw buzzed away behind the house. I crossed the street and rounded the house, greedily inhaling the intoxicating scent of freshly cut lumber.

  Taylor had his back to me as I approached, but my initial pleasure at finding him at work on the oak television stand faded when I saw where he was making his cuts. “Taylor, stop!” I shouted over the noisy saw. “Stop!”

  He shut it off and said, “Yo.”

  “These lengths don’t look right to me.”

  “They’re what you told me,” he said with a shrug.

  I ran my tape measure along the length of the board. “This is four inches too short!”

  “Hey! You told me you wanted ’em thirty-six inches! That’s what I cut ’em at.”

  I checked my sketch, which I found on a folding table he was using as a flat surface, a claw hammer serving as a paperweight. Sure enough, my measurements had been correct for the two-shelf stand. “I told you forty inches, just the way it’s written here on my drawing.”

  “That’s not what you said.”

  “It is too!”

  “Is not!”

  Be nice to the carpenter, Erin. I sucked in a deep breath of chilly air, but the aroma of newly sawn lumber had lost its magic. We certainly sounded like siblings, if nothing else.

  “Anyways,” Tyler said, “you were coming out short one board if I’d made this four inches higher. So you head back to the lumberyard, or I make your table thirty-six inches high ’stead of forty inches.”

  “There’s no way I’m short a board.”

  “Search the yard if you don’t believe me. Frisk me if you want, Gilbert, but I promise you, you ain’t finding no missing board. Face it. You underordered your materials. Tough luck.”

  I was too sleep-deprived to be nice, and I was itching to strangle the guy, even if he was eight inches taller than I and outweighed me by some one hundred pounds of solid muscle. “I bought five of these boards, Taylor, and all five were here last night when I covered them with plastic. How many boards did you start with this morning?”

  “I dunno, Gilbert. Nobody told me I was supposed to count boards. I’m a carpenter, not a mathematician.”

  And counting to five is hardly calculus! I closed my eyes and let out a quick growl to vent before replying.

  This stand for Carl’s thirteen-inch TV had been the only aspect of my design that Carl had commented on when he’d nixed my armoire design—tiger maple to match the night table with knobs that were identical to the alder chest’s. With it, the entire room would have created a fabulous, unified feast for the eyes. Carl, however, had objected. “My TV can’t be closed in, or I’ll lose emergency access to the rabbit ears when the cable’s out!” He wanted me to simply stack their two oak reproduction icebox nightstands and set the TV on top of them. This forty-inch-tall oak stand was my compromise between perfection and an eyesore.

  Slightly calmer, I decided to reason with my carpenter. “Okay, Taylor. Explain something to me. If you didn’t add up the total length of the boards you had available, how did you know you were going to come up short?”

  “That was just experience talking, plus a bit of luck.” Pride lurked in his voice.
“I remembered you told me yesterday to make ’em thirty-six inches high.”

  Breathe, Erin, I reminded myself. Take nice deep calming breaths. Then grab a two-by-four and smack the guy upside the head.

  I looked at the lumber he was using. There did indeed appear to be only four boards. It was extremely unlikely that some random thief had stolen a single board. Randy or Myra could have taken a board into their house, but why? Then again, I seemed to have been asking myself that question nonstop ever since Carl Henderson first walked into my downtown office last month.

  Taylor tapped his wrist, indicating an imaginary watch. “Time’s wasting. What’s it gonna be? Do I fall behind schedule and start over once the lumberyard’s open—in, like, three hours—or do I make this hunk of junk thirty-six inches high?”

  I decided to let the “hunk of junk” remark slide, largely because, in my exhaustion, my wittiest comeback would have been—Oh, yeah? If that’s a hunk of junk, you’re a hunk of punk— and I had too much pride. That darn board had to be someplace. Maybe Taylor had simply misplaced it. More likely, Steve Sullivan or Kevin McBride was trying to get a leg up on the Super Bowl bet by messing with his competitor’s plans.

  “Well?” Taylor prompted.

  “You can wait the two minutes it’ll take me to try to locate the missing board, then I’ll let you know.”

  “Suit yourself, Gilbert, but it’s too late now. I already cut up two of those boards.”

  Nothing under the table. No boards wedged alongside the concrete pad by the back door. This backyard was roughly half an acre, but there was no place for an eight-foot board to get misplaced. “At this point, I just have to know what happened to the thing, even if it’s too late to get what I want.”

  The only reasonable possibilities were that (a) I was losing my mind; (b) Taylor had recognized his mistake earlier and had chopped one board into shims and tossed them to avoid having to admit to his error; or (c) someone had maliciously removed one board from my stack of supplies to mess with my design and my head. The first option was probably something of a given, but I’d never let a mild case of insanity stop me before. Options b and c were in a dead heat.