False Premises (27 page)

He took a seat in the enormous leather office chair behind his desk, and I sat down in the nearest of two smaller, but otherwise identical, chairs across from him. His black eye was mostly back to a healthy color; now it looked as though he might be wearing a bit of mustard-colored eye shadow. “What brings you here, Erin?”

“I had a horrible ordeal this morning. Someone I met recently was murdered in my office.”

He reseated his glasses on his nose. “Jeez. That sucks. Another murder? What the hell’s going on in this town?”

“This death was related to Laura’s.”

“It was? How do you know?”

“They’d had an altercation at Paprika’s. The night before Laura died.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’d followed the two of us from Rusty’s to the store for a presentation Audrey Munroe was giving. They argued, and Laura wound up flipping him onto the floor.”

Dave sprang to his feet, glaring at me, his face instantly so red that I half expected his eyeglasses to steam up. “And you didn’t
tell
me this? Christ! Maybe
he
killed her!”

“I told the police at the time. Meanwhile,
you
nearly ran me down, fleeing the scene the night of Laura’s murder.”

He shook his head adamantly. “That was my brother, not me. I told you that already, at Laura’s funeral. I went through this whole story with the police.” He pointed with his chin at the door, as if signaling for me to leave. “I’m not going to go back over it with my interior designer.” He dropped heavily back into his chair.

“Even if your brother was behind the wheel, it was
your
car.” I leaned forward to capture his gaze. “Dave, my life has become enmeshed in all of this. I need to know if what I told you about the antiques being swapped with reproductions led directly to murder. Maybe then I can figure out if there’s something I can do to protect myself and my friends.”

He balled his fists on top of his desk. “All I know is,
I
didn’t do it.”

“Meaning you didn’t kill anyone, right? But you set fire to the unit, didn’t you? You were angry because you realized she had ripped you off, probably for the second time, and you found out where she’d been hiding all the stuff she’d stolen from you, so you set fire to it.”

“My brother, not me, was going to monitor the blaze, make sure no one else’s stuff got damaged. . . . I just wanted
him
to do a small enough fire that the antiques would get ruined. I didn’t want the warehouse to go up in flames.”

“And you hired Jerry Stone to track down Laura?”

“Who?”

“The private investigator. That’s the name of the man who was murdered in my office this morning.”

Dave rotated his seat a quarter of the way around so that he could stare out the window. He said nothing at all for so long that I worried he wasn’t going to say another word to me. Finally, he muttered, “I didn’t use an investigator . . . didn’t need one. I came home from the bogus errand she’d sent me on and caught her packing. She clobbered me. Said if I followed her, she’d put the car in reverse and bump us both off the road. After you told me about the furniture, I found the bill for her cell phone, called the numbers. Didn’t take an Einstein to put a call to U-Store together with a house full of missing furniture. I got the unit number from the manager . . . told him she was my wife and that it was my stuff and that I’d sue his ass if he didn’t tell me where her unit was.”

“So it
was
you, not your brother.”

He snorted. “I’ll deny it if I’m forced to repeat it in court or to an officer. I was practically insane with anger and started the fire, even though I was the one who’d bought and paid for those antiques. But I didn’t know she was there until I found . . . until I nearly tripped over her.” His words became more forceful as he grimaced and continued, now looking straight into my eyes, “It was such a shock, finding her there like that. I’ve never been so scared in my life. I knew I’d look guilty as hell. There she was, dead on the floor . . . and there
I
was, burning the place down. Shit! I figured the killer might still be around and would kill me, too. I panicked. So I left as fast as I could.”

“You nearly ran me down in the process.”

He scoffed, “I could have driven through a stampede, for all I know. I just wanted to get the hell out of there and pretend none of it ever happened.”

“The killer’s made a couple of threats on my life, Dave. A knife was stabbed into my door. And I got poison injected into me from a jerry-rigged picture frame.”

Even though he’d poisoned me himself, Jerry Stone had
saved my life by getting me to the hospital. Now he was
dead.

“I don’t know anything about that, Erin. You can ask anyone. I’m just your basic Joe Schmoe. I would never hurt anyone.”

The receptionist knocked, then cracked open Dave’s door. Her expression revealing deep concern, she said, “There’s a detective here to see you. He says it’s urgent.”

Damn. If it was O’Reilly, he was going to be furious with
me for butting in.

The receptionist shifted her gaze to me. “Sorry to—”

“I was just leaving,” I said, heading toward her. “Thanks for your time, Dave.”

There was no escape; Detective O’Reilly was standing right outside Dave’s door. His eyes bored holes into me as I strolled past. “We meet yet again, Miss Gilbert.”

“Yes. Like two carrot peels going down the same drain.” I trotted down the stairs, got into my van, and started the engine. I believed Dave, at least as much as my newfound skepticism would allow me.

Not two minutes into my drive, a news announcer spouted from my radio:
“A man’s body was discovered in a
downtown Crestview office this morning.”
Too agitated to drive, I immediately signaled and pulled over as the reporter continued,
“The business owner, Erin Gilbert, an
interior decorator, made the gruesome discovery this morning when she climbed the stairs to her office. Crestview police are not releasing any names or details at this time, but
have said that the death was a probable homicide
. . . .”

I smacked the steering wheel with the heel of my hand, cursing under my breath. Nobody would want to drop in on a designer whose recent visitor was murdered at her office. At the same time, my thoughts made me feel all the worse, at how egocentric it was of me to consider my own, relatively petty, issues when two people had been brutally murdered.

For reasons I didn’t feel like examining closely, I drove straight to Steve’s house. I parked at the foot of his driveway, headed up the slate walkway, and used his door knocker. A few moments later, he opened the door. One look at his face told me he’d heard the news. It was probably fortunate, in a way, that Sullivan had a broken leg. Otherwise I might have given in to my temptation to do something really stupid, like throw myself into his arms, which would, of course, have been a disaster.

Leaning heavily on a cane, he hobbled aside to let me pass. “I was listening to my radio just now, Erin. Who was it? Did you know him?”

“Jerry Stone.”
What am I doing here? I should have
driven to
John’s
office instead.

Sullivan said sadly, “The guy Laura had the altercation with. I knew this would happen. You’re a target. That’s why I . . . We’ve got to get you out of this. Maybe you should go away for a few days—”

“I don’t want to. Not unless I have no choice. That’s what the killer wants me to do. I can’t run forever, and I if I’m truly a target, I won’t be safe anywhere till the killer’s under arrest. I’m better off helping to find out who it is, while the police are at least still keeping an eye on me.” I tried to collect my nerves. “We were right about Dave, by the way. He admitted to me in private that he set the fire, but says he discovered Laura’s body, panicked, and ran.”

Sullivan limped across the room and eased himself onto his chaise. “I never should have dragged you into this mess.”

I remained standing near the door. “You
didn’t.
I made my own choices.”

“Still.”

I sighed, thinking:
In for a penny, in for a pound.
I sat down in the Windsor chair, as distant a seat from Sullivan’s as was available. “I’m pretty sure it was Jerry Stone who slipped the photographs under my office door. That he was working as a private investigator for someone he came to believe was the killer. He slipped me those photographs to help me along.”

“You’re thinking he gave you the photos because he had a guilty conscience?”

“Essentially. He admitted he tried to poison me by rigging the picture frame, and no doubt the stairs. He could have had an attack of conscience. Maybe Henry Toben or Robert Pembrook . . . or George Wong . . . one of them was behind this and knew that Jerry had become a weak link, so he killed him.”

Steve said slowly, “Henry paid Laura off once, years ago, to save his marriage. He hated her, but . . . bad enough to kill twice?”

“The embarrassing photographs could have been just the tip of the iceberg, Steve. Maybe she was currently blackmailing him for something incriminating that would wreck his life.” I glanced at my watch and grabbed my cell phone. “Linda’s back on shift by now. I want to run all this past her.”
And then call John to tell him what’s
happened.
I’d left my boyfriend in the dark too many times already.

Linda came to Steve’s house, arriving less than an hour
after I’d called her. After I finished telling her my theory, she looked at me with weary eyes. “All very interesting, Erin. Thanks. Now, do me a favor. Go home and stay there. For the next few days, at least. Let things cool off for you, and let
us
do our job.”

“I can’t just stay home and not work, Linda. That’s one of the problems with owning a one-woman business—no paychecks during days off.”

“Listen to me, Erin. I’m warning you, not as a cop, but as a friend. Whether the killer is Henry Toben or someone else, the person’s vicious. And on the loose.”

Chapter 19

I had called John’s work number shortly after calling Linda, but he wasn’t in, and he called me back on my cell phone just as Linda was leaving Sullivan’s place. “I just got your message,” he said, sounding slightly out of breath. “I found someone to cover for me and left, but you’re not at your house.”

“I’m at Sullivan’s.”

“Office?”

“House.”

“Tell him to come over, too,” Steve said.

“Why don’t you come here? Steve said to invite you.”

His voice testy, John said, “I don’t want to be a third wheel.”

Through a tight jaw, I said, “The
police
have just left. Sullivan and I are kind of focused right now on anything we might have missed that could help
get the murderer arrested,
if you get my drift.” I added in silence:
Enough
with the jealousy, already!

“Okay. I’ll be there in fifteen or so.” He hung up.

Guilt was shading my mood darker by the moment. John had already told me he was jealous of my relationship with Sullivan. If John’s and my situations were the exact reverse, I wouldn’t like this any better than he did. “He’ll be here in a few minutes,” I said to Steve, slipping my phone back into my purse and reclaiming my seat on the Windsor chair on the far side of the room from him.

It’s so much easier to fix a home’s interior than one’s own interior, I mused as I scanned my surroundings. This one-bedroom bungalow in the foothills of the Rockies was a mouthwatering space. Sullivan’s architectural elements were extraordinary—a wraparound deck, vaulted ceilings, a picture window with a fabulous view, oak floors. “Your walls are still bare. Haven’t you been painting lately?”

“You mean
wall
paint?”

“No, oils. You once told me that was your major hobby.”

“It was, but I got a good price on my art supplies . . . so I sold them, too. I’ve gotten to like the place this way. Easy maintenance. Hardly anything to collect dust. Plus, it comes in handy when you’re trying to get around in a leg cast . . . less stuff to bump into.” He gave me a darting glance. “You know, Gilbert, when I found out about the sabotaged picture frame, it hit me that we’re not doing a good job at keeping each other informed. We need to compare notes.”

“Okay,” I muttered, thinking he wasn’t going to be happy to hear for the first time about the knife in Audrey’s front door. “You go first.”

“I’ve been slowed down a bit”—he tapped his leg cast—“but I made some calls to Chicago and South Bend, and I found out that everything Pembrook says is legit. He was a head honcho for a retail clothing company at one point, but served eighteen months at a low-security prison for a cooking-the-books conviction. Also, Laura’s birth name was Montgomery, like he said, and it
was
a murder-suicide that took her parents’ and younger brother’s life.”

I nodded. “I verified that, too. I talked to the Smiths at the reception. Her adoptive father thinks
you’re
guilty, by the way.”

He grimaced. “I know. I spoke to him, too, after the service. It’s no easy feat to find ‘Mr. and Mrs. Smith’ in a hotel, but we finally hooked up. Didn’t do much good. He still thinks I did it. Cleared
my
conscience a little, though. I shouldn’t have taken off like that from the service. I’d intended to do what I’d said . . . sit in the back . . . but I just couldn’t take it all of a sudden. Anyway. I also checked into Hammerin’ Hank’s background, but didn’t uncover anything we don’t already know. He’s your basic sleazeball womanizer, who married a nice, sweet woman he unfortunately outlived.” He gestured at me. “That’s it for me. Your turn.”

He certainly hadn’t gotten any earth-shattering revelations. Neither had I, but I seemed to have had more personal contact with the people in Laura’s life. “Um, did I tell you about George Wong visiting my house the day after I spoke to him at his workshop?”

Sullivan peered at me. “No,” he said, dragging out the word. “Nor that you went to his workshop.”