Death by Inferior Design (31 page)

Audrey blew her nose and said through the tissue, “That’s how you can tell red-wine glasses from white.”

“Right.The stem of a white-wine glass is taller and the bowl is smaller because white wine is chilled, so the glass is held by the stem. Plus red wine needs to breathe, which is why its bowl is less tapered than one for white wine.”

“Whereas champagne glasses are tall, thin, and tapered, to retain the bubbles longer.” Audrey sniffled. “That much I know.”

“Right. I always recommend that people buy two champagne glasses. It’s such a minor expense, and I figure that’ll encourage couples to partake in the occasional romantic any-occasion celebration.”

She snorted.“That never worked on Fred . . . my third husband.”

“The one who died?”

She nodded. “Heart attack. If he’d have drunk more wine and champagne, we’d be happily divorced today. Wine lowers cholesterol, you know.”

“Mm-hmm. Mentioning that fact is a highlight of my glassware lecture.” Unable to resist doing so, I flicked my index finger against the bowl of the nearest, tulip-shaped glass. My fingernail pinged on the glass, which emitted a lovely, pure bell-like sound. “Listen to that, Audrey.” Holding the glass up to the light, I said, “I love your crystal. I have such a thing for glass . . . the way it catches the light . . . how it can be so smooth that it’s soft to the touch, despite having such a hard surface.”

Audrey started to have a minor coughing fit—perhaps to shut me up. When she quieted, I asked, “In any of your travels with the New York City Ballet, have you ever seen an opera singer actually shatter a glass?”

She coughed, then patted her chest. In a gravelly voice, she grumbled, “No, but I’m pretty sure my cough can dent a soda can.” She popped another throat lozenge into her mouth. “Did you once sell glassware, along with curtain rods?”

“No, actually my mom ran a bar and restaurant in Albany for a while. She’s the one who taught me about glasses.”

“What other types of glasses—besides the pair of champagne flutes, I mean—do you think people should buy?”

“That depends on what they personally like to drink or to serve at their parties. If someone’s lucky enough to own a beach house, daiquiri glasses are a must.” I gestured at hers. “Daiquiri glasses are, of course, the ones that look like inverted liberty bells.”

“Minus the crack,” she interjected.

“They’re good multipurpose glasses as well.” I paused, considering what other information might be helpful. “Here’s a tip for your audience: it’s a very nice touch to offer beer-drinking guests frosted mugs or pilsner glasses. Prior to guests arriving at your home, you simply rinse the glasses and tuck them in the freezer.”

She raised an eyebrow.“Provided we’re talking about Americans.”

“Is Domestic Bliss with Audrey Monroe being broadcast across the entire globe now?”

“Not yet. Any other tips for the show?”

“I personally like to own a couple of shot glasses, just because they’re such inexpensive travel souvenirs. I also happen to like having liqueur glasses. They’re so small that they’re difficult to break and easy to store, so when I’m entertaining dinner guests with children, I serve the children grape juice or ginger ale in my liqueur glasses to mimic the adults’ wineglasses.”

Audrey raised an eyebrow. “How sweet. Getting the little ones started early on the road to ruin.”

“I make sure I have the parents’ permission first.”

Facing me, she leaned an elbow on the counter and rested her head on her hand. “Weren’t you scheduled to talk about stemware for a full hour? How did you ever find that much to talk about?”

“Oh, there are other subtopics I haven’t mentioned, like how to recognize quality crystal, brandy snifters, cocktail glasses—which folks are always incorrectly calling martini glasses—pilsner glasses, old-fashioned and highball glasses . . . and I go into such scintillating subjects as how to pour beer.”

“Ooh. That last could come in handy. Do tell.”

Demonstrating with one of her V-shaped pilsner glasses, I said, “Tilt the glass at an angle so that you pour down the side, then gradually bring the glass upright when the glass reaches the half-full point. Then pour the remaining beer down the center of the glass. That gives the beer just the right amount of foam.”

“Did you learn that technique from your mom?”

My guard automatically went up. Audrey knew about my adoptive mother’s death and my semi-estranged father, but little else in my personal life. In fact, to date I’d given her only an impersonal and very brief account of the poisoning of my client’s neighbor, and nothing more. Audrey Munroe hadn’t struck me as the shoulder-to-cry-on type. “Yes, I did.” Returning to the safer topic, I quickly said, “And I also talk about how to line the rim of the margarita glass with salt . . . or daiquiri glasses with sugar.”

She managed a sincere-looking smile, despite her illness. “How do you do that?”

“To salt the glass, you spread a tablespoon or two of salt on a plate and slice a fresh lime into small sections.” Because she didn’t have margarita glasses, I grabbed her cocktail glass to demonstrate with an imaginary lime and salt plate. “Dampen the glass rim by lightly running the fruit of a lime piece around the entire rim of the glass. Place the glass facedown in the salt.” I gave my glass a twist on its virtual plate, then returned it to its upright position. “Lastly, pour your margarita into the salted glass.”

“Do you use a lime for rimming sugar on a daiquiri glass?”

I shook my head. “I use the fruit of the drink itself, such as a strawberry for a strawberry daiquiri. Yummy.”

She sneezed, then beamed at me. “Wonderful, Erin. This will be enormously helpful for both of us.” She hopped to her feet, showing a sudden burst of energy.

“Both of us?” I repeated, suspicion bringing an edge to my voice as I watched her round the island. She opened an over-the-sink cabinet that had been ajar and removed a video camera.

“Yes, dear.” She pressed a button on the camera. “I videotaped our conversation . . . as the first step toward helping you conquer your camera phobia.”

Instantly livid, I grabbed the edge of my bar stool to prevent myself from storming toward her. “So you’ve been faking sickness just to—”

“Not at all. I really am sick as a Labrador with a bad cold. I often tape my rehearsals. So when I heard you come in, I merely adjusted the position of the camera and pressed the record button.” She wagged a finger at me. “Use whatever’s going on in your life to best advantage in your performance—that’s an old acting tip.” She peered at my slack-jawed face.“You’re very photogenic, Erin, and you’ll make a terrific expert guest for occasional appearances on my show. And as I’ve told you before, it will be splendid publicity for your business, as well.”

“But . . . but . . .”

“Just wait and see.” She popped the tape out of the camera and presented it to me as though it were a trophy. “In a month or two, I’ll have molded you into the Katie Couric of interior design!”

chapter 19

Later that afternoon, Myra was, for some reason, a bundle of frayed nerves as we sat on her sofa and looked at her photo albums. With each page that I turned, she ducked her head and peered anxiously on the flip side, then relaxed momentarily. These particular pictures were from five years ago. I’d asked to see this house as it looked when she’d first moved in, which can be insightful for my designs and, in this case, might allow me to ease into asking to see pictures of myself as a newborn.

“This was at a barbeque more than four years ago,” Myra said of the current spread. “It rained, so we moved everything inside.”

“You’d never know it was that long ago. Everything looks exactly the same. You had that nice All-Clad stainless-steel teakettle back then, I see.”

“That was a housewarming present from the McBrides, just for moving across the street,” she replied. “It probably cost more than all of my cookware and utensils combined. But all you have to do to tell it was four years ago is look at how much darker my hair was. Randy forbade me to color it. Maybe now I’ll indulge myself.”

“I don’t know if you should,” I said honestly. “It looks nice.”

She primped a little. “Thank you, Erin, but white hair on a woman is just not appreciated in our society. Maybe I’ll dye it blond. I’ve always wanted to be a blonde, like Jill.”

With Myra so uneasy, I flipped through two more pages of shots from this same party, which showed the six of them—the Axelrods, McBrides, and Hendersons. Every room was identical to how it looked today—just with four or five fewer years of wear and tear on the house and all the occupants. For three couples who claimed to despise one another, there were a lot of sincere-looking smiles.

As I turned the next page, Myra snatched the album from my grasp and slammed it shut. But not before I caught a glimpse of a photograph which stunned me. It was of Myra with a black eye. She’d been holding the camera herself, at arm’s length. “We’re getting into more recent history now, which won’t do you any good as far as the house goes,” she explained.

What a bizarre picture to preserve in an album, along with vacation shots and mementos from happier times! Had Myra kept the shot in this album as some sort of passive-aggressive warning to Randy never to hit her again? I shuddered.

My thoughts raced as Myra put away her album. Myra and Kevin might have been lovers. A bottle of arsenic had been found in Kevin’s workshop. Could he have grown tired of waiting for his lover’s husband to pass away and decided to hasten things? Had he been willing to commit murder and leave his wealthy wife for Myra?

“Could I see some of your . . . earlier albums?” I asked.

She gave me a warm smile. “Of course you can.” She grabbed another album. “This is clear back from when Randy and I first got married.” She handed me the album and sank into the seat beside me.

Her nervousness was now gone as I scanned the first few pages of these pictures—wedding photos. I thought I glimpsed a little of myself now in Randy’s young face. He’d been trim then, and athletic-looking. In one shot in particular—his head was tilted and he was laughing— the resemblance was striking.

“Do you have any baby pictures of me in here? I’ve never seen pictures of myself as an infant.”

She frowned and said quietly, “Randy destroyed them. All of them that he knew about, that is. I’d hidden a couple . . . that one that you discovered in my chemistry textbook, and the one that Jeannie took with you standing by the umbrella stand. Randy must have found that one.” Her voice was thick with emotion, and her eyes suddenly brimmed with tears. “I’m so sorry, Erin! He claimed the pictures of you were too upsetting for me to have around the house.” She took the album from me. “All the while,
he
was the one who couldn’t stand to have photographs of a child who wasn’t—” She broke off and rose, stuffing the album back in the bookcase along with the others.

I
had
to have been his child; the matching blood types and facial characteristics between Randy and me were impossible to refute. What other ending could there
be
to that sentence
—who wasn’t cute? Blond? Bilingual?
Worthy?
Too confused and tense to remain seated, I stood up as well. “Who wasn’t what ?”

She shook her head and said quietly, “I shouldn’t have gotten into this subject, Erin. It’s too painful.”

“Who wasn’t
his
? Is that what you were about to say?”

Myra frowned and nodded. She balled her fists. “I never should have married that man in the first place. But you just can’t believe how easy it is to settle for things, Erin. How you can keep telling yourself that things will improve . . . that they’re not really so bad.” She released a halting breath. “It was just a fling, but that’s what opened my eyes. I should have run away before I had you. After all, Jeannie made it as a single mom. She even managed to buck the odds and get approval to adopt you.”

Myra got that sad yearning in her eyes again as she looked at me. “You were just a baby when you were taken away from me. I thought you’d be gone forever . . . but here you are. I tried to believe that you’d remember me. You weren’t even two by the time Jeannie graduated from CU and left for New York. That’s when I lost track of you. But Jeannie and I agreed it was best kept that way—no contact whatsoever.”

“Why?”

She spread her arms. “Fear of reprisal from Randy. He forbade me to contact you, ever. At the time . . . I didn’t dare defy him. You’d recently had that accident, which gave you the scar under your chin.”

I ran my thumb along the underside of my chin. My scar there was tiny and not noticeable.

“You’d slipped on some ice and landed so hard you needed stitches, poor thing. I was hysterical—demanded they do a blood test. I guess I actually thought you might need a transfusion. Anyway, that’s when we both found out that . . . that Randy—my husband—wasn’t your real father.”

“I see,” I murmured, though none of this was making any sense. Randy’s and my blood types were the same. Myra was lying. It was impossible for blood tests to have revealed that Randy was
not
my biological father. She sank into the turquoise chair; shaking, I reclaimed my perch on the sofa. The slate-colored walls of this ugly room were closing in on me.

“I never told Kevin about you,” Myra said wistfully.

“Kevin?”
My stomach turned. All those leering looks he’d given me! “Are you saying that Kevin McBride is my . . .”

She nodded. “Kevin was a student of mine at CU. In my Intro to Chemistry class. Randy and I were having troubles. Already. If only I’d listened to my heart then . . .” She sighed. “But Kevin was just a kid.
I
was the married lady. It was my fault, not his. I never even told him that he was your father.”

I rubbed at my aching temples, struggling to make sense of this, and failing. “So Randy knew all along that . . . that you’d had a child with Kevin McBride? And you lived just a couple of houses down the street from one another?”