False Premises (11 page)

“What do they expect
you
to do about a kook?”

She shrugged. “Snap my fingers and make the nutcase disappear, I guess.”

I paused, mulling over the protestor’s objections. “We
do
use up too much of the world’s resources in this country, for no purpose except to feather our own nests.”

Hannah let out a bark of surprised laughter. “And this from an interior designer?”

My cheeks warmed a little, and I grinned at her. “I would never admit that to any of my clients, of course.” But I
had
decided not to buy the salad bowls. Until someone invited me to their wedding. Or Christmas rolled around.

“Just like
I’ll
never admit to my customers that I would never shop here myself if it weren’t for the employee discount. Can’t afford our merchandise. Not unless I win the lottery or get remarried to some millionaire. And this time, I’ll make sure he doesn’t hit the jackpot
after
our divorce.”

“You’re divorced?”

She gaped at me. “You didn’t know?”

“Know
what
?”

She rolled her eyes. “Figures my ex and that little floozy would never see fit to mention my name to you. Even when she was flaunting the whole thing in front of me, right in my very own store.”

Caught off guard, I set my cup down carefully on the corner of her desk, rather than risk spilling it on myself. “Are you talking about Dave Holland? Is
Dave
your ex-husband?”

“The one and only. He dumped me for Laura Smith.” She smiled a little and added smugly, “Of course, just last year, he tried to get back with me.
After
she’d dumped him to take up with Steve Sullivan. Though that didn’t last, either.”

“You wouldn’t take him back?”

“Hell, no. Dave and I nearly ripped each other to shreds while trying to reconcile. We wound up hating each other worse than ever. Like I was supposed to just forgive and forget. That bastard started having an affair with the little tramp less than three years after we got married. Then he used
my
ideas for his new company, and struck it rich.”

She paused from her diatribe to study my face. “You looked so shocked, Erin. I guess he and Laura had you really fooled into thinking they were decent people.”

“I got badly fooled, all right,” I murmured.

“What did Laura have to say for herself after her scene with Jerry?”

“Jerry?”

“Jerry Stone. Our protestor turned phony ‘undercover cop.’ I figure she had to have known Jerry from someplace, or she’d never have sent him sprawling in front of everyone like that.”

“She never told me who he was. Just that he’d been stalking her.” I studied Hannah’s eyes. She was normally so pleasant. Now she sounded bitter and almost hateful. “But you obviously haven’t heard the terrible news, Hannah. Laura’s dead. Someone stabbed her last night.”

She set her cup down on her desk so fast that she spilled a little. Drops spattered the beige metal panels of her desk. “My God! Are you serious?”

“Yes.”

Hannah seemed to be sincerely surprised and paused as if to allow the news to register. “Huh. The tramp finally got what she deserved.”

I winced, offended at her harshness.

She seemed to hear herself then, because she straightened her shoulders and held up a hand in apology. “I know
you
were taken in by her, so this must be hard on you. I’m sorry for your loss, Erin.”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

She grabbed her cup and took another sip. “Huh,” she said for a second time, her brow furrowed. “Something about Laura seemed to attract violence. Like the mugging.”

“Mugging?”

Hannah nodded. “Laura was attacked a couple years back when someone tried to grab her purse. That was how she got that awful scar on her neck . . . which she hid beneath those silk scarves of hers.”

I sighed, feeling overwhelmed once again. “This is the third version I’ve heard in the last
two
days about how she got that scar. She told you it was from a mugging?”

“That’s what she told
Dave,
who told me. Some thug down in Denver grabbed her purse and pulled a knife on her when she wouldn’t release the strap. She thought he was going to cut the strap off, but he sliced her throat instead.” She sighed. “When Dave moved out the first time, he tried to explain why he was so infatuated with Laura. According to him,
I
was capable of taking care of myself. Whereas precious
Laura
desperately needed him and his stability.” She grimaced. “She
claimed
she was afraid to go places by herself at night, afraid of crowds. Made Dave feel like her big manly protector.”

She clicked her tongue and met my gaze. “Come to think of it, she undoubtedly embellished the story. Or created it exclusively for Dave’s sake. The scar could have been from a botched suicide, for all I know. That was Laura Smith for you . . . search out people’s tender spots. Then drive an ice pick into them.”

Chapter 8

After leaving Paprika’s, I walked to my office, thinking that I could at least get some routine chores out of the way and perhaps shore up my spirits in the process. Wedged, as it were, between two trendy clothing stores, my office was on the second floor, the glass doors to Interiors by Gilbert opening to a narrow staircase. Bone weary and bewildered, I trudged up the steps.

Although my mother’s Sheraton chair was on the visitor side of my desk, I shed my jacket and eagerly lowered myself into the seat. I’ve always been emotionally attached to certain pieces of furniture, and this family heirloom was my absolute favorite. Together my mother and I had reupholstered it, using her cross-stitched Victorian floral pattern on the back and the seat cushion. Six months ago, when I’d first moved in with Audrey, I’d felt too transient to place my beloved chair in her home, and since then I’d come to rely on the inspiration that I could draw from gazing at the chair when working up designs for my clients.

I ran my fingertips along the grooves in the mahogany armrests, remembering how often I’d seen my mother sitting in this chair when it was still in our old apartment in Albany, New York. I could picture her, seated in front of the drop-top corner desk, could almost smell the unique aroma when I was beside her in that one specific place— how her delicate perfume mingled with the trace of furniture polish and the tinge of burned dust from the brass floor lamp beside her.

Sitting here now, I liked to imagine that I could channel my mother. Our lives are surely a compilation of the thousands of little things that we do every day. Above all else, my mother had taught me that we need to find joy and love in this world, and that we need to have hope. After a few minutes in her chair, I could almost hear her voice—wonderfully melodic until her breath became ravaged from lung disease. She seemed to be telling me to keep going, to remember that there are many ways to make this so-imperfect world of ours a slightly better place; our surroundings are important to finding joy and keeping hold of hope.

I rose and rounded my desk to my practical, albeit less lovely, red-brown leather office chair. I dialed the number of a furniture manufacturer. A salesclerk, snapping her chewing gum at regular intervals, told me that my client’s sectional sofa was complete and ready to be shipped tomorrow as planned. Just when I was about to hang up, she added, “Far as I know, this is the first time we’ve done this particular model in crimson Ultrasuede, but it looks kind of cool.”

I double-checked my copy of the purchase order just in case I’d lost my mind. This order was a C.O.M.—customer’s own material. Four weeks ago I’d brought the furniture manufacturer deep brown Ultrasuede fabric. “Are you sure we’re talking about the same sofa? Ordered by Erin Gilbert for my client, Henry Toben?”

“Yep. That’s the one.”

“The Ultrasuede that I brought to you was chocolate brown, not crimson.”

“Yep. Originally. But the next day, you put a stop on the order and swapped the brown for the red.”

“I did no such thing!”

I heard some clicks of a computer keyboard to punctuate the gum-snapping sounds. “Yep, okay. Here it is. Henry Toben brought us the fabric. He came in himself.”

“There must be some mistake. Let me call you back, after I talk to Mr. Toben.”

“Sure thing. But I should probably warn you that if you want to switch back to the brown now, you’ll, like, have to pay for the additional labor.”

“I’ll discuss this with my client and get back to you.”

“Yep. Okay.” There was a pause. “Henry Toben is ‘Hammerin’ Hank . . . who hammers out the best prices in town,’ right? That guy who does all those obnoxious car ads on TV?”

“Yes, that’s him.”

“Tell me something.” She lowered her voice, but not the noisy gum chewing. “Is he as obnoxious in person as he is on TV?”

“Oh, no, not at all.” That was true, but only because Henry was much
more
obnoxious in person than on TV. No way would I bad-mouth a customer of mine, although in this particular case, it was actually the image consultant my client had hired to revamp his lifestyle who was paying my fee.

“Good to hear.” Her gum made a wet smacking sound. “His commercials are just so . . . noisy. Figures he’d want his sofa
loud,
too.” She unleashed a booming laugh into my ear.

The instant I got off the phone, I dialed Henry’s cell phone. I gritted my teeth when he answered, “Howdy,” in a Texas drawl. He must have been in front of some customers at one of his dealerships. “Hammerin’ Hank,” the TV personality, was from Houston, Texas. Henry Toben, however, was from a small town in Delaware.

“Hi, Henry. It’s Erin.”

“Hey, there, li’l darlin’. What-all can I do you for?”

“Did you go to the sectional-sofa manufacturer and supply them with red Ultrasuede instead of the brown that we’d agreed upon?”

There was a pause. Hammerin’ Hank drawled, “Tell me somethin’, missy. If ’n I was to plead guilty, is the court likely to show a kindly ol’ cowboy like myself some leniency?”

I counted to ten. Then to fifteen. I hadn’t gotten enough sleep last night to suffer this pseudo-Texan fool gladly. Our communication was hampered by an even worse obstacle than Henry’s on-again-off-again Texas accent; we had to reach through a layer of management. Henry’s image consultant, Robert Pembrook, had hired me to design Henry’s house, and both men, who were often at cross-purposes, had to approve my design. “The three of us went over this twice. Remember? With Robert Pembrook?”

“I do indeed, darlin’, but as y’all might recall, I was on the fence at the time.”

“Actually, Henry, I remember our conversation distinctly.” I kept my voice even, despite my ever-increasing agitation. “When you said you wanted the red, Pembrook said it was ‘too much,’ and you said, ‘Yes, you’re absolutely right. Let’s go with the Hershey’s Kisses color.’ ” Henry had then gone on to say that he “might get lucky with the chocoholic babes,” but if I continued to quote him, disgust was bound to creep into my voice. He’d said, “You betcha, darlin’,” every time. And yet both of those conversations had taken place well
after
he’d already put a stop on the order and, unbeknownst to me, he had swapped our customer’s-own-material at the manufacturers.

“The trouble is, Henry, I designed the entire room around the brown sectional, as the room’s focal piece. Everything’s already purchased, and almost all of it’s been shipped to my storage unit.” I fought back the image of Laura’s oh-so-still body that the mention of the warehouse had invoked. “Tomorrow they’re shipping the red sofa . . . and one full room’s worth of surrounding furniture is now going to clash with it.”

“Well, missy, what can I tell you? That dog just don’t hunt.”

“Pardon?”

In a slightly muffled voice, Henry said with a chuckle to someone in his vicinity, “ ’Scuse me, y’all. I’ll be back in three shakes of a coon-dog’s tail.”

While waiting for Henry to continue our decorating squabble in private, I silently reminded myself that when it came to interior design, the customer
was
always right; the interior of the owner’s home had to be to his or her complete liking, not to mine. However, it was also my job to ensure that five years later, when fads change, the customer wasn’t stuck with a white elephant. Henry could always reupholster his sofa at some point in the future. In the
present,
however, he was going to get a headache looking at red glaring against all the greens and violets I’d selected for accents and companion pieces.

“Back with you.” Henry had switched to his Henry-from-Delaware voice. “I meant to tell you about that red. But I guess I’ve been so busy working my ass off at my dealerships, it just slipped my mind, honey. And, by the way, thanks for keeping me posted on where you got the cloth and everything. All I had to do was call the fabric store and buy the exact same thing, ’cept in a cherry lollipop color.”

“But why didn’t you tell me what you were doing? Or tell Robert?”

“I couldn’t bring myself to tell him that I really, really wanted my couch to be red when he was sold on the brown.”

“Why
couldn’t
you? You’re a major tycoon who owns three successful dealerships in Crestview County.”

“Four, actually. But who’s counting?”

“Surely you don’t need assertiveness training.”

“It’s not that. It’s just that this Pembrook gay sca—” He stopped abruptly and then corrected himself. “The guy scares me.”

That had to be a Freudian slip; Henry must be uncomfortable around flamboyant, openly gay men, such as Robert Pembrook. “Remember that Robert works for
you,
not the other way around.”

“It sure never feels like I’m the boss when he’s telling me what I need to do with every last little thing in my life. In any case, I want
you
to handle this, Erin. That’s part of what I’m paying you for. Just tell him that you agreed with me at the last minute, and we went with the red. Understand?”

“The thing is, Henry,
he
hired
me.
Technically,
he
is my boss. According to my contract with him, he has to sign off on my floor plans, or I don’t get paid.”