A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1)
Read A Motor for Murder (Veronica Margreve Mysteries Book 1) Online
Authors: Valerie Murmel
A Motor for Murder
by
Valerie Murmel
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictionally. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events or locales is entirely coincidental.
Company and product names mentioned herein are the trademarks or registered trademarks of their respective owners.
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment. It may not be re-sold.
Copyright © 2015 Valerie Murmel
. All rights reserved. No part of this text may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the express written permission of the author except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
Contact the author at:
[email protected]
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Original cover art created by Evellean via Behance for Valerie Murmel. Copyright © 2015 Valerie Murmel.
1
I looked up the address on the internet, and did a double-take: the house sold for $4.5M eight months ago. And they've been remodeling and improving it? From the map it looked to be in the most exclusive part of Bellevue. It must be a real castle by now!
Wow, Rita was doing well! I had no idea she and her husband were quite so... loaded! When I saw her for the first time after not being in touch for several years, her engagement and wedding rings did not contain half of the Kimberly mine, and her purse was not ostentatious or readily identifiable as “designer”. So the price of the house where the invite said their house-warming would happen took me by surprise.
I looked over at my cat Bitty, who was busy napping on my pillow, covering it in a debris of black cat hair: “That is some impressive real estate!” Bitty, as always, had an opinion – she lifted her head and made a little affirmative “Urr” sound as she does. I petted her head, and she purred loudly.
I wanted to dress up for the party, seeing how I was going to be surrounded by some expensive real estate – and no doubt people’s net worth to match. It had been a very stressful summer for me, and I did what I always tended to do when stressed – retreated back into my house, and avoided anyone outside my work or the exercise studio I’ve been frequenting. I was never comfortable in big crowds of people, or in large noisy gatherings. In fact, in a party I preferred the role of the hostess, since it gave me clearly-designated duties and always a ready excuse of checking on some food or drink supplies if I felt the need to escape a conversation. So now, looking at myself in the mirror, I was making a solemn vow to come out of my metaphorical shell, at least for the evening, introduce myself to everyone at the party who happened to be in my immediate vicinity, and mingle and make small talk.
During the day, and during the work-week, I was a software engineer working at a security consulting firm, and dressing like every other geek in Seattle – fleece, jeans, hiking boots. My manner of dressing was much to the dismay of my mother, who led a much-more fashionable life back East (ballet premieres, cultural events presided over by European attaches, and such), and didn't really understand how I could go months without wearing a skirt or a dress, or heels. When she came to visit, we would go shopping, at stores across different price points, from TJ Maxx to Neiman Marcus, and huge box stores to small independent boutiques. I didn't particularly enjoy it, but typically gave in. I put up with it as a mother-daughter activity and thought that those couple of shopping days relieved me of the need to go clothes- shopping for the rest of the year. (I did stand firm recently when she tried to get me to buy a designer angora coat costing north of $1300.)
Now, shoes were a different story. Browsing for shoes online was one of my vices. In my saner moments, I looked at my closet and thought that I didn't need to buy any more shoes ever, for as long as I live. And then I saw some leather beauties, and I simply couldn't resist!
So, looking over my shoe assortment, I decided to put on my one pair of Prada shoes with 5'' heels for the occasion. I am not normally capable of wearing such high heels, but these Pradas were perfectly balanced and so comfortable! I saw these at 75% off at a Saks website sale, the only available pair for sale being in my size, and I took it as a sign from the shopping deities and bought them. They were still a little spendy, but I thought worth it. I told myself that the basic black chunky heel style made them more “practical” than the 5'' height would indicate, and that I would wear them often. So far, it hadn’t really been the case, as neither my lifestyle nor my software development job called for high heels (or anything beyond the Seattle-standard Gortex boots) – but I thought a fancy catered party at an expensive house would be the occasion to stomp around in them.
I put on a not-new-but-still-presentable light cashmere sweater. (Although it was a clear and comfortable September evening, the Pacific Northwest weather could turn cold and rainy). To that I added a black skirt and noted that it was still a bit tight. Chocolate was another one of my vices, and I recently started working out an an aerials studio nearby in hopes of getting muscle definition and burning off some flab. Looking at myself in the mirror, I thought that my mom would call this a step in the right direction. I grabbed my house warming gift and headed for the door. “Urr” Bitty called out after me, meaning “Bring me some tasty left-overs!” My little cat was rather food-focused, the result of time spent as a stray.
I met Rita about 7 years ago at a party given by a co-worker, and we bonded over our common love of comical mistranslations of obscure quotations from obscure authors, European travel and Dorothy Parker. Rita spoke 5 languages and was writing her dissertation on 16th century Polish poets, waiting tables, as well as teaching English as Second Language classes to recent immigrants. Back then, she was dating a friend of my co-worker at a software company. We would run into each other regularly in our common social circle, and go see plays or off-beat theater around Pioneer Square or Capitol Hill. Then she broke up with the guy, and I changed jobs, and we had not been particularly close the last three years or so. I ran into her at Redmond Farmer's Market a month ago, in mid-August. We caught up on our recent lives, and I learned that she recently married – a car-dealership owner (and not any car dealership – Mayfair Motors, the premier luxury car dealership in Bellevue; or, as their advertisements proclaimed, in the “entire Pacific Northwest”!). We promised to stay in touch, and she invited me to her up-coming house warming party. I was planning to go, ogle her new house, maybe meet some moneyed people, and enjoy the fancy party!
The house sat high on the hill and commanded a view over its neighbors. I was slightly disappointed to see that the house only had a 2-car garage – until I turned the corner and realized that it was a 2-level garage, with 2 cars on first level and 3 on the second. The upper driveway and the street by the house were full of vehicles – a lot of high-end German, Italian and British cars. I thought the entire line-up of what Mayfair Motors sold was represented there. I had to park a block away and climb the hill towards the brightly-lit front door in my 5'' sandals.
Rita was standing at the door with a wine glass in her hand, her long dark hair loose. She was wearing a burgundy dress and dark-red heels, and smiling wide. She gave me a hug with her free hand.
“Veronica, so nice to see you! This is George, my husband.” The guy next to her was in his late thirties, slightly taller than average, with dark hair, bright blue eyes and a self-satisfied smirk on his face. He was wearing jeans, a light-blue shirt, and held both a full martini glass and an un-lit cigar in the same hand. We said hi. The smirk and the cigar were the only things that connected him to being a car salesman in my mind. Overall, he seemed to give off a Cary Grant impression of being suave, charming and always enjoying life. He was laughing loudly at snippets of conversations among the guests and seemed to be having fun.
After meeting the host, I decided to implement my plan of mingling and nibbling, and wandered in the general direction of the kitchen. There were lights and lots of motion inside, with the noise of laughter and conversation floating over the music. The house smelled pleasantly of fresh bread and rosemary, and it made my mouth water and my imagination conjure up all sorts of delicious goodies (I had to admit, this interest in food was something that me and my cat definitely shared). In the spacious kitchen I came across a group of people discussing skiing. The man was talking about heli-skiing in Whistler last season; according to him, on the rare occasions he wasn't off-piste, he was all over the double-black diamonds. A small woman next to him chimed in a couple of times. Another couple was listening and nodding. We had all agreed that Whistler has gorgeous views, superb skiing and great amenities for winter or summer.
It turned out that the man was John Sargent, George and Rita's business and estate lawyer; wearing what I was sure was an expensively-cut suit (in my engineer circles, the only time I saw expensive suits is when we were consulting for a client, helping them deal with aftermath of a network break-in that resulted in theft of millions of credit card numbers). Next to him, his wife, Teresa Lin, a petite and graceful Asian woman, even when wearing high heels was at least a foot shorter than him. (I got the impression that she skied the double-diamonds as well, but didn't talk at length about them.) She was tastefully and expensively dressed with a touch of avant-garde – a black dress with an orchid print on it that seemed to have just come off the pages of a fashion editorial. It was something Vogue would describe as “feminine yet cerebral”, and my mom would analyze with the same dedication as the the latest dance-world scandal (
Prada? Dries van Noten? I wasn't sure, never having shopped for clothing in those rarefied designer circles. I made a mental note to tell my mom over e-mail, to show that I, just as she, was capable of appreciating designer fashion; and perhaps to go to Nordstrom over the weekend, to browse
). She had an edgy asymmetrical haircut and understated jewelry around her wrist, neck and ears. She was introduced as another attorney. I said I was pleased to meet them. We proceeded to talk the usual small talk, as I sneaked glances at the people in the room around us.
The guests were well-dressed (almost no-one wore jeans or hoodies, the usual daily attire of me and my techie friends; women wore strappy high heels – Manolos, Choos, some Alaias) and behaved with ease of the well-moneyed. It was easy to imagine any of them being clients of the rarefied Mayfair Motors. I thought that mingling with this crowd should help my manners. The waiters moved noiselessly among us, offering delicious nibbles of food.
After some more people have joined the party, Rita gave the newly-arrived a house tour. The house was on a hill, looking out to downtown Seattle, which allowed for the afore-mentioned two-level garage. On the basement level, next to the lower garage, there was also a game room, a home theater with a humongous TV that looked to be the size of a city bus, a bathroom and a mud & laundry room. The first floor (corresponding to the upper garage) contained a living room, dining room, and a huge kitchen with access to a basement wine cellar that apparently had room for 2 000 bottles. There was an elevator in the back, going all the way down to the lower garage. Ahead was a bathroom and a covered outdoor area with its own stone-mantled fireplace in front of what looked to be an Olympic-size swimming pool beneath a transparent roof. The Pacific Northwest is not California, so a cover from the rain was prudent, I thought. The top floor opened off the wide stairwell into another, slightly smaller, living room. A corridor led towards the master bedroom, a giant bathroom with a marbled spa tub and another laundry room. A smaller but well-equipped kitchen (I spied a coffee machine and a fancy toaster), and several more bathrooms and bedrooms lie ahead, two of which were used as the adjacent offices of George and Rita. There were several balconies – those off the living room and off the master bedroom looked out towards the west and framed the view of Seattle and the mountains beyond. One more off another bedroom looked over the swimming pool roof, currently open. There was also a back yard to the side of the swimming pool, but since it was already dark outside, I couldn't make out much there, even with solar-powered lights placed in a wide arc around it.
We all ooh-ed and aah-ed over the multitude of rooms and the up-to-the moment remodeling trends surrounding us, and expressed all the due admiration for the new house of our hosts. My sentiment was fully genuine – I had never before been in a private house (I.e. not a museum) of such scale and expense. My own house was much smaller, and my wine cellar was a couple of boxes of wine bottles under the dining table – to be extricated during a party, as necessary.
Rita had decorated the house herself, she said, consulting home décor magazines and going to antique stores, but without any interior decorators’ or designers’ help. The big rooms were mostly in neutral colors (the kinds called by shelter catalogs names like “greige”, “oatmeal”, “windswept sail”, or “rustic barn”); the furniture was modern (but not all new – I noticed a small Danish Modern table in the upstairs living room and what looked like some original Eames chairs in the offices) and seemed a good proportion for the rooms, with a few color splashes. I thought a bright-blue couch in one of the living rooms suited the space well, and the rooms weren't too crowded with objects and “stuff”. Rita seemed to have enjoyed her decorating undertaking, and the result looked pleasant enough – maybe not my style (in my own house I had the living room painted turquoise and the bedroom sky-blue), but something I could live in for a year and not be annoyed at.
After the tour, the small group broke up in the downstairs living room, and I headed for the food. Catering had set up several stations with yummy concoctions of edible artistry. I saw goat cheese and tomato bites on the low coffee table; next to a dish of oysters with assorted sauces. Forget Bitty – I needed to figure out how to bring home these left-overs for myself! As I stood in the corner of the dining room and grabbed 2 of each and was trying to figure out how to hold my drink without spilling (the glass was dangerously tipping over), I heard a voice behind me.
