Diva 03 _ Diva Paints the Town, The (24 page)
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Authors: Krista Davis
Tags: #Murder, #Winston; Sophie (Fictitious Character), #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #General, #Dwellings
BOOK: Diva 03 _ Diva Paints the Town, The
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TWENTY-SIX
From “THE GOOD LIFE” :Dear Sophie,I love to entertain but everyone ends up in my kitchen, which is far past its prime. I can’t afford to remodel it. How can I spruce it up without emptying my bank account?—Broke in Beverly HillsDear Broke,Paint is always the quickest fix. A bold red shade on the walls will add instant drama, and a pastel can provide the background for a romantic look. Take the doors off your cabinets and display your dishes on the shelves. Collect colorful dishes at yard sales and hang them together in a display. Add a dried wreath, or vintage trays, and don’t be afraid to use your favorite serving pieces as decoration.—Sophie
“Nina! Stop. He’ll believe you,” I protested.
“He has to know the truth. I can’t go on this way.” Her back straight and her chin up, she faced Kenner. “It was an accident. A terrible nightmare of an accident.”
Kenner’s thin lips pulled into a lizardlike grin. “How did you open the wall unit to push him down the stairs?”
“I didn’t. The last time I saw him, he was lying on the living room floor. He came on to me, and I pushed him away, and he fell. I didn’t know anything about the wall unit or the stairs behind it.” Nina spoke in a matter-of-fact tone, as though she were confident.
Kenner’s gaze drifted to me. “Nice try, Ms. Norwood. But whoever killed him knew how to open that wall and had the strength to pull dead weight inside. Maybe Wolf helped Sophie with that part.”
“No!” Nina cried. “You have it all wrong. How can you be such a dolt when I’m standing here confessing to you? I’m telling you the truth, and it had nothing to do with Sophie or Wolf.”
At the word “dolt” a shadow crossed Kenner’s face. His beady eyes became black with anger. “Somebody threw him down those stairs. Unless you had help, I don’t think you have the strength.”
“Hey! I play tennis. I’m in great shape.”
“Get out of here,” he snarled. “I have work to do.”
Nina walked out with me. “I’m so sorry, Soph. I never expected him to turn on you. I had to clear my conscience and tell the cops the truth. You understand, don’t you?”
Of course I did, though I thought she ought to have consulted a lawyer first. “Do you feel better?”
“Not a bit. That Kenner is just odious.” She paused and turned to me. “We’re going to have to figure out what happened. We can’t leave it to Kenner. There’s no telling what kind of cockamamie story he’ll invent.”
“How are we going to do that? We’ve been looking for Kurt for days. There are only two choices. Either he died when you pushed him and he fell, which means someone popped him into the window seat and then hid him behind the bookcase when I left the house—or he was alive when you left him, in which case anything could have happened. Though if he was alive, it seems like someone would have seen him somewhere before he was murdered and shoved down those stairs.”
“He had to be alive, Soph. He moved his car and made those phone calls to me.”
“Unless the killer did those things.”
Nina’s eyes flicked open wide, and I was sorry I’d suggested the killer had called her.
“Someone knows I killed him and is after me now.”
“Nina!”
“Seriously, Sophie, what if someone else was in the house that night and saw me push him? Ohhh, this is very, very bad. No one has tried to blackmail me, but why else would someone make those frightening phone calls to me?”
I stopped walking and focused on Nina. “Are you saying that someone was hiding in the house, happened to see you push Kurt and leave, then took the opportunity to kill Kurt, and for some reason has been calling you from Kurt’s phone?”
Nina’s face had gone completely white. “That’s exactly what I’m saying.”
I found a hole in her theory. “Then why plant him in the window seat? Why not just throw him down the stairs right away?”
“To scare me.”
I wasn’t sure I believed that. “Why would this mysterious killer think you would be the first to open the window seat? By all rights, it should have been Bernie who found him there.”
Nina glanced up and down our block, reminding me of the way Tara had scanned the street. “It’s blowing snow again, and I have to get vitamins and food for Mom Cat.”
Nina’s abrupt non sequitur made me wonder if she was flipping out, but I figured I’d play along. “I have to pick up something for dinner. We can go together.”
She nodded. “Good. I’m not going anywhere by myself.”
An hour later we were in the grocery store, looking at vegetables, when Nina announced, “It’s Earl.”
“Where?”
“Not here. Earl is the murderer. Don’t you see? Earl suspected that Kurt was having an affair with Tara. She must have been the one who was tailing Tara. Then, to trap Kurt, she told him she was going out of town, but that night, instead of seeing Tara, he went out with me. Earl killed Kurt and Tara, moved his car, phoned me—and I’m next on her list.”
“On whose list?” We turned to find Camille listening in. Several of the store’s take-out containers rested in her cart, including two tall cups of chicken soup.
“How’s Nolan?” I asked.
“He’s home from the hospital and conscious.” She wearily shoved hair out of her face. “The mugger attacked from behind and took his wallet. Thank goodness he only got a few hundred dollars and credit cards. The police have already all but dropped the case, as far as I can tell. There’s just nothing to go on, and a mugging pales in comparison to the murder of a cop.”
“But Nolan will be okay?” asked Nina.
Camille waved a hand. “His ego is more bruised than anything else. He’s supposed to rest a few days, but he’ll be fine.”
“I gather you’ve heard about Kurt?” I asked.
She hadn’t, so Nina filled her in. Camille gripped the handle of her grocery cart so hard that her knuckles shone white.
“What’s happening to us? It’s as though the Guild were cursed. Of course, some woman probably killed Kurt”—Camille lowered her voice—“if not his wife. He was such a womanizer. You know Iris refused to work with him. She even brought charges against him once.”
Nina seemed appalled, but I wanted to know more. “What happened?”
Camille shot me a knowing look. “She claimed he groped her, but honestly, I always wondered if it wasn’t the other way around—she groped him and he rebuffed her. After all, she did drop the charges, so I always suspected they might have been trumped up.”
That explained a lot about Iris’s behavior. But it also made me wonder if she could have had anything to do with Kurt’s death.
“Good heavens,” said Camille, “look at the time. I’d better get back before the nurse wonders what happened to me. She suggested I make chicken soup for Nolan from scratch. Can you imagine?” Chortling to herself, she hurried toward the checkout counter.
Nina and I moved on. I selected a lovely leg of lamb for dinner, red-skinned new potatoes, and fresh springtime asparagus. The avocados looked so gorgeous, I decided to make a salad with red onions, strawberries, and avocados, topped with a balsamic vinaigrette. I didn’t want to spend a lot of time on dessert and hoped I could locate my recipe for Grand Marnier pound cake.
We checked out, and after a quick stop to buy pet food, we wound our way through Old Town and back to our neighborhood just in time to see a covered body, Kurt’s body I assumed, being removed from Mordecai’s house and placed into an ambulance. Snow flurries blew around Wolf, who watched the process with a group of cops.
I longed to invite him to dinner, but knew he would only say no. Too bad. He would have enjoyed a roast leg of lamb.
In spite of all the police vehicles cluttering the street, I lucked into a parking space in front of Francie’s house. Nina refused to go home alone, and when she spotted Francie watching the activities at Mordecai’s, she recruited her as a bodyguard. I was shaking my head over her paranoia when Posey showed up unexpectedly and grabbed my arm with such vigor that I nearly dropped the bag of groceries I carried.
Her eyes flaming, Posey growled, “Tell me everything, or I’ll go to the police.”
TWENTY-SEVEN
From “THE GOOD LIFE” :Dear Sophie,I hate cluttered kitchen counters. Between the mixer, food processor, coffeemaker, toaster, and bread machine (and that’s only the beginning), I feel like I live in an appliance store. My kitchen designer suggested appliance garages, but the mixer and food processor are too big and I’ll lose counter space. Any suggestions?—Too Many Appliances in ApalachicolaDear Too Many Appliances,I’m very fond of under-counter pop-up storage. Sometimes called mixer cabinets, they’re the perfect solution for large appliances. The appliance rests on a shelf that pulls out and raises to countertop level. A huge benefit is that they leave the countertop clear for ingredients, even while you’re using the appliance. When you’re done, the shelf and appliance lower back into the cabinet, out of sight.—Sophie
I tried to wrest away from Posey. “What on earth are you talking about?”
She followed me to my gate. “You’re at the root of this, Sophie. You’re the only one who knows what’s going on.”
That was an exaggeration. I didn’t even understand what she was talking about, and I told her so as I unlocked the door to my kitchen.
“There were five of us in the beginning.”
“Five?” I asked, setting the groceries on the counter.
“Five of Mordecai’s students were invited to the bequest party. Kurt was knocked off first. Then someone went after Nolan but didn’t succeed in killing him. That means Mike, Ted, or I will be the next victim.”
I slid the leg of lamb into the refrigerator, thinking there must be something in the water that was causing everyone to be so paranoid. “Oh, that! Before his death, Mordecai and I had a long talk about murdering everyone invited to his bequest party.” I felt guilty for being sarcastic when I turned around and saw the frightened expression on her face. “Posey! I didn’t know anything about the bequests or that you five were Mordecai’s students once.”
“Are you sure Mordecai is dead?”
“That’s my understanding.”
“Did you see his corpse with your own eyes?”
“Why would I? I didn’t even know Mordecai very well. All of you knew him much better than I did.”
“Why would he bring us together and kill us one by one? Why would he strike that kind of terror in us? Either he’s alive, or he contracted with someone to kill us on his death.”
“I think that’s unlikely. Isn’t it possible that Kurt’s death and Nolan’s mugging had nothing to do with Mordecai?”
She winced. “Please, Sophie. You seem like a nice person. Isn’t there anything you can tell me?”
“I don’t know anything,” I insisted. “Maybe you can tell me something. Why the five of you? And why would you even imagine that Mordecai would want to harm you?”
Posey sagged into one of the chairs by the fireplace. “I always thought Mordecai liked us. Maybe he came to hate us because of the cottage we built.” Posey rubbed her face with both hands. “We got so much publicity. It was tiny, of course, but we left it in stages so people could see how it was constructed. One wall didn’t have any plaster on it, so the straw showed. I painted my first trompe l’oeil wall there, and Mordecai’s wife, Jean, helped me enormously. I learned so much from her. TV crews came to interview us while we worked, but the attention we got was nothing compared to Mordecai. He was the envy of his entire department. We thought we were golden—the toast of the town. What a great item on our résumés.”
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