Death by Inferior Design (15 page)

Taylor slid open the back door and stepped out. He spat on the ground. “Checking up on me again, Gilbert?”

Carl
had been the one to tell me to come over here and give Taylor the instructions he needed. My paranoia was raging, and I felt a prickle of fear as the muscular young man approached. Today he wore his spiked dog collar again, along with the same overalls and work boots he’d had on all weekend. His scalp, however, was sporting a five-o’clock shadow, as was his chin. “The headboard looks great,” I praised. “Now all we have to do is assemble the rest of the frame,
after
it’s in the bedroom. I’m sure you’ve already noticed that the stairway is too narrow to angle this through otherwise.”

“Yeah. No shit.” The false bravado in his voice combined with the suddenly super-innocent facial expression made me very glad that I’d mentioned it.

“Is the TV stand assembled?”

“Yeah. But it still has to be stained and sealed. I brought that over to Carl’s garage for you this morning, when I was picking up the bed.”

“Thanks.” I couldn’t help but glance at the much heavier headboard as I said, “So . . . this is ready to go
back
across the street now and up to the bedroom, I take it?”

“Yeah, I just brought it over here ’cuz I thought the boards were too long by an inch or so and needed to be cut again. Didn’t want you flipping out again like you did with that TV stand. But, turns out, everything’s gonna fit fine.”

“That’s why I keep a tape measure with me.” I showed it to him. “They’re so portable.”
Especially when compared to a massive headboard with an attached bookcase.
Not to silently beat a dead horse.
“Are you going to be able to help me install the bed and the crown molding this morning?”

“Nah. Still got a shitload of work to do for Sullivan. But I already cut the molding, and it’s all in Carl’s garage, so you can go ahead and get that up yourself. So long as you can handle a nail gun.”

“I can manage.”

“I got Carl one for Christmas last year. I’m pretty sure he’s never used it, though.”

As Taylor brushed past me, another disturbing memory returned to me. The first time we met, Myra had said that she’d caught Taylor poking around in her refrigerator. Maybe he’d been doctoring Randy’s beer. I resisted the temptation to babble to Taylor that I was an excellent shot with a nail gun to give him the impression that I knew how to defend myself.

He turned on his saw and started to cut a chunk off what looked like a piece of scrap board to me, so I was quite certain that this was his gentle way of bringing our little chat to a close. While mulling Taylor’s backward approach to carpentry—for simplicity’s sake, molding is generally cut to size as it’s being installed—I headed through the side yard. The odds that he’d sawed all of my precut crown molding pieces correctly were comparable to my happening across a winning ticket for the Colorado state lottery.

Debbie was standing on the bottom step of Myra’s porch, looking up at Myra. I was about to greet them, but hesitated when I glimpsed their expressions. Both women were obviously very upset with one another. I took a step back, so they couldn’t see me.

“Myra, please. I’m asking you to forgive and forget,” Debbie pleaded.

Her voice redolent with hostility, Myra replied, “I forgive you, Debbie. After all, it’s not like I loved the son of a bitch. But asking me to
forget
is a different matter entirely.”

They fell silent. Deliberately making a noisy approach, I came toward them. Debbie gave me a quick glance, then looked up at her neighbor and said, “Again, Myra, if there’s anything at all Carl and I can do . . .”

“You’ll be the first to know.” In much lighter tones, Myra said, “Erin, don’t hesitate to ask for help with finishing up the room, either. These days, I would just as soon stay busy, rather than allow my thoughts to wander.”

I thanked her, and she said goodbye and went back inside her house. Meanwhile, Debbie Henderson combed her fingers through her red hair and said, “It’s so good of you to come again so soon. We were all so shaken yesterday. . . .”

“It was upsetting, all right, but much worse for you, I’m sure. You knew Randy so much better than I did.”

She pursed her lips as if biting back a reply. “I’m afraid Carl left for work already, so I hope you aren’t counting on his help.” Crestfallen, she added, “He suddenly changed his mind about taking the day off.”

To offer some cheer, I said, “I should be able to complete your bedroom today or tomorrow. My calendar’s fairly open. All I’ve got scheduled this week are quick jobs—decorating homes for holiday parties or assisting with furniture shopping for Christmas presents.”

“Myra was under the impression that you were really swamped.”

This is why I hate telling white lies—they darken of their own accord, like unstained cherry cabinetry. “Myra has a major job in mind that would take me well past New Year’s to complete.”

We headed up her driveway. Debbie said, “Myra told me about your hospital visit yesterday. Jill and I went there ourselves, but Myra said Randy wasn’t in any state to see us. She told us to leave.”

“I must have happened to come along at exactly the right time, then.”

“Apparently so.” Her face was inscrutable, but I detected a hint of bitterness in her voice.

“I hope it doesn’t seem as though I’m getting in the way of established friendships here,” I said, feeling sorry for her.

“Not at all. Heavens!” She hesitated as we stepped through the front door. “I can’t begin to imagine how this must all seem to you—a perfect stranger—walking into all this . . . bickering among friends. Not to mention having someone collapse in the room you were working so hard on.” She glanced upstairs, then added, “I know this is selfish of me, but . . . thank God he died at the hospital and not in my bedroom. I don’t know what I’d do. The room is so beautiful now, but I know all I’d be seeing when I closed my eyes would be Randy’s corpse.”

I hadn’t stopped to consider the nightmarish images that she’d been left with in the wake of finding Randy sprawled on the floor of her room. If Debbie now had indelible negative emotional connotations, my design wasn’t going to be successful, no matter how good it might be otherwise. “Are you going to be okay with your new room if we stick with the original design? Or would you feel more comfortable if we started over fresh and tried to get rid of any mental associations?”

“No, absolutely not! I love what you’ve done with the room. It was a horrible coincidence that . . . his heart gave out in my house, not in his own. But I don’t feel as though the room is cursed. And it’s so lovely!”

“Good.” Over the years, something unexpected had happened in nearly every room I’d ever worked on; it was just part of the process. However, truth be told, if ever a project of mine was cursed, this was the one. Among the potential disasters decorators envision,
death
is not high on the list.

I wished I felt comfortable enough with Debbie to ask her for her theories on what had happened. Why had Randy been carrying the letters and necklace? He had to have been in severe pain from the effects of the arsenic. Had collecting those items been so urgent as to be his final action? And what had happened to the letters and necklace afterward? Had Carl collected them and hidden them for safekeeping?

“After the crown molding is up, I’ll need to hang the window treatments and move the furniture in. Normally I have furniture movers do that for me. That headboard is going to be really heavy, and the bed frame needs to be assembled, which requires two or three people. I’m going to have to find someone other than just Taylor to help me.”

“I’ll bet the three of us could manage, don’t you think?”

“Yes, but I just can’t ask you to do that. It seems so . . . unprofessional. This is the one stage where the homeowner shouldn’t lift a finger, let alone a two-ton headboard. It’s unfortunate that Taylor moved it back over there while it was still in pieces, but he thought he might have to make some alterations.” A plausible—if inadequate—explanation for his actions suddenly occurred. “Oh. I’d forgotten about your allergy to sawdust when we were working in your garage yesterday. I hope you—”

“Pardon?”

“Aren’t you allergic to sawdust? That’s what Carl told me.”

She shook her head, her features hardening. “That’s
Emily.
His first wife. Any kind of dust or fine particles makes her sneeze. Supposedly. She’s quite the princess.”

Debbie had such rancor in her voice that it felt as though I’d just let a cat out of the bag, and I automatically did my best to stuff kitty back into place. “I’m sure Carl simply made up the story about your having allergies to explain to me why the workshop was being set up at a neutral site. The men didn’t want Steve and me to know until after we arrived that we were in a competition. Kevin probably gave the same excuse to Steve Sullivan about Jill.”

The sparkle returned to her blue eyes and she chuckled a little. “In
Jill’s
case it would have been accurate. She’s allergic to dirt and messiness. I love her like a sister, but how that woman ever got through the child-rearing years, let alone childbirth, is beyond me.”

“She and Kevin have children?”

“Twins. They’re both college freshmen. They’ll be coming home for winter break soon.”

I smiled and nodded, but shrank a little inside. The nagging questions about my lineage had returned. I tried to stave them off by saying cheerfully, “Let’s take a look at the stand that Taylor built. He said he put it in your garage.”

While we headed toward the garage, she said, “We won’t have any trouble getting another person to set up the room with you. Myra sincerely wants to help. And there’s . . .” She paused, and her eyes lit up. “You know what would be great fun? If I go help Steve Sullivan complete Jill’s room, and she helps you with mine.”

“I’m game. We can see if that works for them.” I flipped on the light and was impressed to see that Taylor—or perhaps Carl—had brought down one of the iceboxes that would form the bottom half of the TV stand. The unfinished piece had been put into place on top. The curved lines of the top ledges matched perfectly, and after the shelf unit was stained to match the icebox, the two pieces would look as though they had always been one complete stand. Remarkable. Once again, despite Taylor’s apparent thickheadedness, his craftsmanship had been superb. The man seemed to be something of a carpentry idiot savant.

Something in the corner of my eye caught my attention, and I took a couple of steps closer to investigate. A paintbrush was sticking out of the open can of polyurethane. Next to that container, the can of stain had also been left open. I grabbed the brush handle, and the can of polyurethane came with it, having hardened around the gray foam brush. My second, smaller brush, intended for touchup work, was ruined, too. “Someone must have forgotten to put this away last night.”

Debbie clicked her tongue. “That was Carl. I reminded him, just before I went to bed.” She stomped her foot. “What the hell is wrong with that man? He’s been in a fog ever since I got back from the spa!”

“I’m in no position to complain. I know better than anyone to put away my supplies, and yet I took off yesterday without giving the work in progress in your garage a second thought.”

“Yes, but Carl and Taylor have been in the garage off and on since dawn today. They
had
to have noticed this, yet nobody said a word to me.
I
haven’t been out here myself today until just now.”

“I’m afraid this does change my schedule somewhat. I’ll have to run to the store and replace the supplies, then the oak needs to be stained, dry for at least four hours, then sealed.”

“I’ll have Carl run out and get the supplies during his lunch hour, to make up for his ignoring the matter last night. We can always stain the wood then, and seal it this afternoon.”

Debbie and I installed the crown molding and remade
the two pieces that Taylor had cut at a reverse angle. The job took all morning, but I had to admit, doing so much of the work myself as opposed to having it done by allied professionals added an extra element of pride to this project. However, it was wreaking havoc on my schedule. I was beginning to suspect that it would be tomorrow, after all, before the job was complete.

Carl came home for lunch while Debbie and I were stitching shut the openings in the pillow seams. He had brought the new can of wood stain with him, but had forgotten the polyurethane. He and Debbie squabbled about whether she’d told him to clean everything up or had told him that
she
would take care of it. I decided to take this opportunity to go see how Sullivan felt about trading homeowners for the finishing touches.

Sullivan’s van was now parked in the McBrides’ driveway. Yesterday he’d bought me a drink and listened to my problems. Today I was worried sick that the police considered me a murder suspect. I so dearly wished that I could trust at least one person. The truth of the matter, though, was that I was in this alone and could trust no one.

A gong resounded when I pressed the McBrides’ doorbell. Moments later, the door was opened by Jill, dressed in black wool slacks and a gray cashmere sweater, a string of pearls gleaming lustrous against the ensemble. Suddenly the khakis and black V-neck sweater under my leather jacket seemed especially shabby.

She ushered me inside with a gracious smile. As I stepped onto her stunning travertine tile, I took in the understated elegance of her foyer—its succulent, honey-hued walls, how the circular mahogany table captured the high sheen of the staircase banister ahead, and that the crystal bowl on the table seemed to lovingly echo the curves of the pendant ceiling fixture.

Jill touched my arm. “You look so tired, Erin. You poor dear. You, too, must have been too rattled by yesterday’s events to sleep last night.”

Normally, being told that I looked tired made me bristle. But this time it was so true that I appreciated the note of sympathy. “It must have been much worse for you and your husband.”