The Design Is Murder (Murders By Design) (20 page)

Chapter Forty-Five

With three major projects to complete, a move to orchestrate, new home construction to check on and Charlotte to babysit, I had my work cut out for me. So after Rossi left for a day of sleuthing, I began in earnest with James’s empty house. Superior Home Cleaners was due at nine to wash the windows and polish the hardwood floors in the refurbished rooms. Though not strictly part of an interior designer’s service, I wanted to be there. Such attention to the final details made a renovation shine...and helped enhance the reputation of Deva Dunne Interiors.

I reached Whiskey Lane just as the cleaners were arriving, but Eileen had already left for the hospital. She’d propped a sweet note in quickly scribbled handwriting on the kitchen table, thanking me for taking care of Charlotte.

Poor Eileen, she was stressed beyond belief. If anything happened to James, she would lose the man she loved and her livelihood as well. I wondered what would happen to her if Chez Stahlman were no more.

Anyway, while the cleaning crew did their thing, I sat in the breakfast nook with Charlotte and called my workroom. James’s reupholstered chairs and sofas were ready—
yes!
—so I arranged for a noon delivery. As a special favor for all the business I’d sent them, they agreed to move the rest of the furniture from safekeeping in the guest bedroom and arrange it in place.

The house redo was coming together nicely but was far from complete. While James recovered in the hospital, workmen tramping through the house wouldn’t be a problem...but redoing the master suite when an invalid might need it soon wasn’t a good idea.

I glanced around the kitchen. It too was badly in need of remodeling. But not now. If and when Eileen’s beloved boss returned home, she would want a functioning kitchen to prepare special delicacies for him. So as far as Deva Dunne Interiors was concerned, the Stahlman project had largely ground to a standstill.

I assumed that even without Kay to please, James would live up to the terms of our contract, but—to stare reality in the face—if he died, all bets were off. I couldn’t pretend I’d be as distraught as Eileen if that were to happen, but Deva Dunne Interiors would definitely be affected. No arguing with fate, I told myself, and besides, James had already paid me generously for work rendered. The upholstery bill and today’s cleaning fee, I’d send to his financial advisor and hope for the best...

Woof!

I lowered my hand and let Charlotte lick my fingertips. “Hi, darling, you want something?” Her tail wagged. “I don’t read wags well. What would you like? A dish of water?”

The wagging stopped.

“You need to go out?”

The tail turned into a metronome.

“Okay, let’s get some fresh air.”

Despite the glorious morning, all golden sunshine and salty sea breezes, a shiver of unease slid along my spine when I stepped onto the terrace. I hadn’t been out there since Kay died, and an eerie silence pervaded the lush garden.

Charlotte ran down the stone stairs and headed for her favorite spot, the pool area.
Darn.
I should have put her on a leash. Now I’d have to chase after her, and I had no desire to go anywhere near that pool.

“Where are you girl?” I called. To let me know she’d heard, she popped out from behind the hedge, then disappeared from view again. The little devil.

I jogged down the stairs, calling her name all the way. Heart pounding, and not from the exercise, I rounded the hedge. There she was, digging divots in the grass. The pool, empty of all but water, sparkled aqua blue and beautiful in the sun. Relieved, I turned my back on it and concentrated on Miss Charlotte.

“You having fun, honey?”

She ignored me and kept on clawing at the grass, sending up tufts of the immaculate lawn.

“What would James say if he saw you doing that?”

At “James” she paused, but not for long. She was enjoying herself too much to stop. I bent over to scoop her up, hoping she had accomplished the reason for coming out in the first place. If not, another one of my outfits was doomed. As I reached for her, something shiny caught my eye. A brass button with red threads still clinging to it.
Hmm.
I picked it up and turned it over. The threads looked strong, as if they’d been forcibly snapped off, maybe from the strain of a too-tight pair of pants.

I pocketed the button, and with Her Nibs in my arms, climbed the slope back to the house. The cleaning crew had left the windows sparkling and the washed and waxed floors ready for the next step—staging.

Promptly at noon, the workroom truck pulled onto the drive. I gave Charlotte a doggie treat and left her in the kitchen while I directed furniture traffic. First the rugs. The beautifully faded Tabrizes, with ivory backgrounds and random patches of faded blue and coral, went down first. Then the sofas. Their blue damask repeated the blue of the rugs with the understated echo I’d hoped for. Not insistent. Not overwhelming. Perfect.

In the dining room, we centered the heirloom table under the crystal chandelier and placed the new mirrored sideboard against a long wall where it shimmered like the showstopper it was. Along with the blue-and-ivory-striped host and hostess chairs, the mirrored sideboard dispelled the curse of the average dining room—drab brown furniture.

So far, so good. After the movers left, I sprung Charlotte and let her explore the furniture and sniff out the interesting new scents. While she played, I took notes. The bones were in place; now to flesh out the skeleton—I needed to have the windows measured for draperies, shop at Clive-Daniel Home for lamps, design custom pillows, look for Limoges boxes and tabletop bronzes, and check James’s preferences in oil paintings.

Before we left, I wrote a note to Eileen. When she found time, the mahogany pieces needed waxing and the sterling hollowware should be polished before going on display. My mouth fairly watered at the thought of how the silver would glow on that mirrored buffet—each piece adding luster to the other. I signed the note and propped it on the breakfast nook table where she’d be sure to find it.

I attached Charlotte’s collar to her pink leash. “Come on, girlfriend, we’re going across the street. I have another client to take care of, and some tight red pants to check out.”

I hoped Teresa hadn’t taken the pants to Puerto Rico. If not, they should be hanging in her clothes closet. I was dying to see if the button I found belonged on them. If so, what was it doing down by James’s pool? To my knowledge, the only time Teresa had stepped foot on the Stahlman property was the morning Kay died. But she hadn’t gone anywhere near the pool that day. Or had she?

Chapter Forty-Six

“High time you got here,” Stew said, yanking open the door to 595. He stood in the entryway and upped his chin at 590. “You’ve been camped out over there for hours.” He pointed the lit end of his stubby cigar at Charlotte. “What’s that mutt doing in my house?”

“She’s no mutt. She came in second at the Westminster Dog Show.”

“A second-rater huh? Make sure she doesn’t—”

“She won’t,” I said, cutting him off at the pass. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here for you. But with Mr. Stahlman gravely ill, I needed to finish what I could before he’s discharged from the hospital. I hope you understand.”

“What’s to understand? My wife died over there.”

“Actually your ex-wife, Stew,” I said as gently as possible.

“A technicality. She was mine. He should have taken better care of her.”
As you should have of Connie Rae.
“So no, I don’t give a damn about his place. Or him. Come in, come in,” he urged, waving his cigar around. The moment I stepped inside, he slammed the front door so hard the whole house shook.

“Concentrate in here now,” he said, barging ahead of me into the great room. “So far all I’ve got is a half-done paint job.”

“Three-quarters done. As soon as your master bedroom is completed, the painters will be back to tackle the other bedrooms.”

He took a few puffs but wasn’t ready to give up. “Where are those leather couches you ordered and the big chairs?”

“Your great room furniture is being custom designed, and that takes time. I know the wait’s frustrating, but it’ll be worth it in the end, you’ll see.”

He mulled that over as he sucked on the stogie, then, “What about all that Western-themed crap you mentioned?”

I stifled a sigh. “No point in bringing in accessories before the major pieces are in place. Have a little faith, Stew. You’ll like the finished product. Guaranteed.”

“I hope the hell so.”

“There is one bit of good news. Your bedroom furniture is due for delivery tomorrow. And didn’t the color in there turn out well?” A dangerous question. In his current mood, Stew wasn’t likely to be positive about anything, but I couched my query in a way that almost forced him to agree.

Almost. “I’ve seen brown before.”

“What?” Client or no client, I couldn’t let him get away with that. “The color’s not brown, it’s terracotta, a warm version of the hallway tone. Haven’t you noticed how the shade deepens from the great room, to the hall to your bedroom? Kind of like an escalating scale with the bedroom as the...ah...climax.”

His eyes narrowed, but a little amusement flickered around his mouth. To my relief, he ground out his smoke in an ashtray. “That’s flowery B.S. You’re good at it, you know that? So yeah, the bedroom color’s okay. Anything in there would be better than pink. Keep on the job, you hear? I don’t want to hire somebody else to step in. Not now that you’ve gotten this far. Just finish up ASAP.”

He arched a thumb in the direction of the master bath. “I need those guys out of the house before Teresa comes back. So make sure they don’t leave until they’re finished.” He stuck a fresh cigar in his shirt pocket, yanked out his keys and stomped toward the front door. “I have to get to work. My business is going down the tubes while I babysit the damn house. That’s your job, not mine. So do it.”

“Wait a New York minute,” I said, but too late. With a bang, the front door slammed shut and he was gone.

The nerve of him. I should abandon the project, let somebody else put up with his attitude. I heaved a sigh. What about the contract I’d signed? If I walked off the job, Stew was just the type who would sue me. Hoist on my own petard. Damn.

Charlotte was looking up at me with those big browns of hers. “You’re smart, aren’t you? You know something’s amiss. Well, we won’t let it bother us, will we?” I dropped my tote on the sofa and unclasped her leash. “Go ahead, run around, have fun. Pee on the floor if you want to.”

Dim scraping sounds and the muted voices of Tony and Mike came from the direction of the master bath. Since Stew was anxious that they finish up today, I wouldn’t bother them, though I was curious to see the decorative tile frieze. I was also curious about those red pants.

The pants won out.

“Want to come with me?” I asked Charlotte. “I think you should. You might not get another chance to see Teresa’s wardrobe.”

No
woof
of agreement? As I went to reach for my tote, tiny nails clicked along the tiled floor. I glanced over a shoulder.

“Hey, what’ve you got?”

She scampered past me, but I grabbed her en route and lifted her into my arms. “Come on, let it go. Be a good girl. Open your mouth. Come on.” With a lot of coaxing and more than a little tugging, I finally convinced her to open up and release the billfold. I kissed her topknot. “Good girl. This is your day, isn’t it? One treasure after another.” I put her down but held onto the wallet. Stew must have dropped it on his way out. I’d leave it on his dresser for him to find.

I only planned to take a quick look at Teresa’s clothes, but for some reason, guilt at snooping maybe, I tiptoed along the hall to the master bedroom. If I were quiet enough, I could be in and out in a minute or two without the tile guys even knowing I’d been there. As silent as if she were a cat, my new friend padded along beside me. No doubt about it, she had an adventurous streak.

I cracked open the master bedroom door. We slipped in, and I closed it behind us. The odor of new paint filled the empty room, pleasantly so. I knew I was weird that way but to me the aroma of latex paint was right up there with Chanel No. 5 and Prada Candy—providing the wall color had been well chosen. And despite Stew’s nasty crack, the terracotta would be a great foil for the platform bed I’d ordered in a he-man rough-hewn pine.

With her paws on the French doors, Charlotte stared outside at a squirrel romping up and down a palm tree. I hurried over to the walk-in closet and, pulse revving up a bit at what I might find, swung open the double shutter doors.

Oh, I’d forgotten. The closet was empty. After the python nearly scared her to death, Teresa had transferred her clothes and Stew’s to the guest room across the hall. I should have remembered.

“Come on, girl, we’re hitting the road,” I said to Charlotte.

As we strolled along the hall, I could hear loud voices coming from the bathroom. Or mostly one voice, Mike’s. Didn’t he ever keep quiet? Apparently not. All incensed about something or other, he was rattling on nonstop. We went into the larger of the two guest bedrooms. I closed the door, surprised that the room’s hideous, snaky vine wallpaper hadn’t given Teresa nightmares. Tomorrow after the master bedroom was complete, we’d start in here.

Charlotte hopped up on the unmade bed and settled down on the duvet with a contented little sigh. I laid the wallet on the dresser and opened the closet doors, hoping I had the right ones this time.

Bingo.

Stew’s clothes filled the left side and Teresa’s colorful duds hung on the right like a rainbow about to explode. Of all the people I knew, only Rossi had a closet as full of color as this one.

Red.
Look for red
. I riffled through the hangers. Blue, purple, cerise, chrome, floral, stripes, black. Black? How did that get in there? And then I found them. Three pairs of bright red pants.

I placed them on the bed next to a dozing Charlotte and looked them over carefully. Not one pair was missing a single button, brass or otherwise. So there went my theory about Teresa’s guilt.

Pleased she’d been saved by a button and yet a little deflated that my sleuthing had been so far off the mark, I hung the pants back in the closet. Charlotte seemed so comfy nestled into the duvet, that on an impulse I kicked off my shoes and stretched out next to her. Just for a minute, I told myself.

* * *

A loud thud brought me to with a start. Where was I? Oh God, I’d fallen asleep on Stew Hawkins’s bed. Unbelievable. Long shadows fell through the French doors, the light softer than at midday. What time was it anyway? I glanced at my watch. Egads. Late afternoon. I leaped off the bed and gave Lazy Bones a little pat. “Come on, girlfriend, let’s go see what the tile job looks like. I’ve got that decorative frieze on my mind.”

Charlotte stood on the duvet and shook herself awake. Then she leaped off the bed and scampered straight for the French doors.

“You need to go out?”

A rhetorical question. She didn’t even bother to answer, the urgency of the moment all that mattered. I’d left her leash in the great room, but the yard was enclosed by a six-foot-tall fence, so she wouldn’t be able to scamper away.

“Okay, I’ll leave the door open so you can come back in. Be good now.”

She ignored me and, tail high, ran outside.

I finger-combed my hair and slid into my shoes. My skirt was hopelessly wrinkled but nothing to be done about that. So much for literally sleeping on the job. A peek in the mirror told me I could use some lip gloss, but I’d left my tote in the great room. Only Stew’s billfold sat on top of the dresser. Brown and beat-up, it didn’t strike me as the kind of accessory you’d expect a wealthy man like Stew to keep in his pocket. Well, he was a one-of-a-kind type of guy. Still...I picked the wallet up and flipped it open. Ah, it wasn’t Stew’s at all. The wallet belonged to a Tony Pavlich—the same Tony Pavlich who was installing tile in the bathroom down the hall. And in a plastic sleeve next to his ID was a photograph. My heart thrumming in my ears, I stared at a smiling image of Connie Rae in her high school graduation cap and gown.

Whoa!

The snapshot looked to be at least three or four years old. I slid it out of the sleeve and turned it over. In purple ink, in a broad, childish hand, I read,
To Tony with love.
C.R.

Omigod.
Tony had known Connie Rae all along and never said a word to anyone. Why not? Whatever the reason, somehow I doubted it was a good one. What good reason could there be in shrouding their relationship in secrecy? None that my stunned mind could come up with. Only fear of being implicated, somehow, in her death. Or...because he had caused it.

A door opened and banged against a wall. I dropped the wallet in a dresser drawer and stood there, too scared to move, too upset to think.

“Hey, watch it. Don’t bust up the place.”
That was Tony.

“You know something? I’m sick of you telling me what to do. No more orders. Got that?”
Mike.

My hand on the bedroom doorknob, I stood frozen, listening.

“If that’s your attitude, take a hike. You do more talking than working anyway. Who needs it? Go find another job. If anybody’ll hire you.” Tony guffawed, an ugly, throaty sound.

“You can’t fire me. I’m yours for life, buddy. Or until I walk. Or decide to talk.”

“Don’t threaten me, you punk.”

Something heavy hit the floor. Or the bathroom wall. I couldn’t be sure. Another thump and a muffled shout. Or was it a groan? Whatever it was, it wasn’t good.

They were closer now, in the hallway right outside the bedroom door, scuffling and banging against the walls.

“Get your hands off me.” That was Mike, gasping out the words. “Save the rough stuff for your women.”

Tony’s women?
What did that mean? I thought he lived with his mother.

A loud crack, like a fist against bone, then a thud that sent the walls shuddering.

“You got a glass jaw?” Mike yelled. “One sucker punch and you’re down? Hell, you’re no challenge.”

A groan.
That must be Tony.

“Wake up, Tone. You can’t be out after that. I hardly touched you.”

Oh yeah?
The walls were shaking
. I hoped the new paint job hadn’t been wrecked. That’s all Stew would need.

“You son of a bitch.”
Ah
,
Tony was coming to.

“Nah. I’m your pal, Tone. Your only one. You have to learn not to dis me.”

A muffled moan. “Why don’t you shut up once in a while? Your yammering is driving me nuts.”

“Aw, you don’t mean that. Come on, let me help you up. We’ll call it a day. Stop off someplace for a couple of beers and relax. Forget all about this.”

“No, we have to finish the job first. I want my money, and Hawkins is getting antsy.”

Somebody, maybe Mike, whistled through his front teeth. “He wouldn’t be so tear-assed if you hadn’t put that python in the bedroom.”

What!
I pressed my ear to the door, anxious to catch every word. Mike had said
he
accidentally released the snake, not Tony.

“I had to do it.”
Tony again.

“No, you didn’t. There’s women everywhere. You can’t have one, you find another.”

What did women have to do with this?

A deep, loud sigh. “You don’t get it, do you? Connie Rae and me, we were talking marriage, then Hawkins waved his money in her face. That’s all it took. A few bucks.”

“Tone, she told you the reason. You couldn’t afford that operation she needed so—”

“She was sleeping with him!”

“What did you expect?” Mike asked. “They were married. You shouldn’t have done it.”
Done what?
“A hell of a way to go if you ask me. Scared to death by a monster snake.”

“Who’s asking you?”
Omigod
,
Tony had deliberately released the snake while Connie Rae was alive.
He had caused her death
,
and Mike had covered up for him.
“The case is closed. She died from natural causes. Nobody can prove otherwise.”

“You got lucky that time, but killing the second one was dumb.” Mike barked out a short laugh. “That flag bikini was too good to die.”

“If it wasn’t for you, nothing would’ve happened.”

“My fault, huh? You’ve got a helluva nerve. I never laid a finger on her.”

“Blame your big mouth. Talk, talk, talk, that’s you. Bringing up Connie Rae while we were working on those stone steps. After the broad in the bikini heard you shooting your mouth off about the python, how could I let her go? Next thing you knew, the cops would’ve been swarming all over me.”

“It would’ve been her word against yours.”