False Premises (31 page)

Eager to end this conversation, I cried, “Oh, shoot!” and set my cup down. “I just remembered . . . I’ve got an appointment in Longmont at eleven-thirty.”

“You’d better get going, then.”

“Yeah. So, what was it you wanted to talk to me about?”

She shrugged. “That can wait.”

“But you made it sound important in your phone message—”

“Well . . . it’s just that I was so rude the last time you were here. I wanted to apologize in person.”

Strange that she’d felt no burning need to apologize a week ago, when we went out for coffee after Laura’s service. “That’s really not necessary.”

“It is to
me.
What you were saying at the time . . . about Dave’s possible connection to Jerry Stone . . . pushed a button, I guess. See, not long before Jerry started showing up and hassling me, I warned Dave that I was thinking of suing him for more alimony. I started to think maybe that was something Dave would do . . . hire somebody to make my life miserable so that he’d have some leverage against me.” She gazed wistfully at the picture of herself and John. “Now that I’ve got a new man in my life, I’ve begun to realize that it’s time to let go of past hurts.” She reached over and patted my hand. “And also, not to take my minor troubles out on my friends.”

I forced a smile and rose. “We all get brusque from time to time, and I truly didn’t need an apology.”

“Good. Thanks.” She ran her finger along the edge of her desk. I was rooting for a sudden splinter to jab her, but no such luck. “And . . . there’s one more thing.”

“Oh?”

She nodded and gestured for me to sit down again. Reluctantly, I did.

“A couple of business owners came into the store yesterday. They’re scouting the downtown area for space to put in their new furniture store. They were curious about pedestrian traffic and customer bases in the immediate area. I happened to ask if they were consulting with any interior designers, and your name came up.” She paused for my reaction, but I deliberately remained impassive. “You’re working with Hammerin’ Hank? And George Wong?”

“Yes. Why?”

“I was . . . wondering if you’d mind putting in a good word for me, whenever they get around to hiring and are looking for store managers.”

I rose again and said with a fake smile, “I’ll be sure to mention your name.”

She beamed at me. “That’d be great! Thanks, Erin.”

The moment I left the store, my pace slowed. That
photograph of Hannah and John had been taken very recently, at the annual Cottonwood Creek Spring Festival just two weekends ago; I recognized the sign on an artisan’s tent in the background. John had asked me to go to that event with him, but I’d had to work. Later, he told me that he’d gone with friends.

Maybe she’d orchestrated the whole scene between herself and Dave so that, afterward, she could call my attention to the photograph, just to let me know that John was now hers. In fact, she could have lied about John’s saying my birthday gift was intended for his sister. If he’d instead said that it was for his girlfriend who was an interior designer, she might have asked and learned my name. It was even possible that she’d trapped him into posing for that photo with her. For my peace of mind, if nothing else, I had to learn the truth.

Unable to rid my mind of the hideous image of Jerry’s body, I still wasn’t up for going to my office, so I let myself into my parked car and impulsively called John on my cell phone. He greeted me coolly and asked, “What’s up?”

“There’s a framed photograph of you and Hannah Garrison on her desk at Paprika’s. She told me you two have been going out for a couple of months.”

“What?!” He made a noise of disgust at the back of his throat. “That’s bullshit, Erin. We’ve gone out on
one
date, last night. And I doubt there’ll be a second date, now that I know she’s this wacky.”

“Yet the two of you had your picture taken together?”

“Yeah, but not by
my
choice. I was at the festival a couple weeks back with my friends Mark and Julie and bumped into Hannah there. I’m a regular customer at Paprika’s, and she’s gone out of her way to be friendly. She latched on to me at the festival, said she happened to have her camera with her, and asked Mark to take a picture of us. So . . . what was I supposed to do? Tell her to shove it?”

I ignored the understandable rancor in John’s voice and said gently, “That’s precisely what I was starting to suspect had happened. I was getting strange vibes from her. She’s probably just staking out her territory.”

He snorted. “I am
not
her territory, Erin, believe me.”

Thinking aloud, I muttered, “It’s just . . . all so strange. It seems as though everyone even remotely connected to Laura Smith has been . . . comingling, let’s say. You and Sullivan both used to date Laura. Dave Holland was living with her, after divorcing Hannah. Now it turns out that you’re dating Hannah, after me.”

He said testily, “What are you saying? That my going out on
one
date with Hannah Garrison makes me a
murder suspect
?”

“No, just that it all feels so weird to me. Even George Wong and Robert Pembrook were apparently once a couple.”

“Robert who?”

“Oh, that’s the image consultant who hired me as a subcontractor. To work for Hammerin’ Hank Toben, who keeps asking Audrey Munroe out. So there’s yet another prospective couple. This is like a soap opera. It boggles the mind.”

“Yeah,” he snorted, then added sadly, “meanwhile, the only two people who
belong
together just broke up.”

I said nothing, and the silence grew heavy.

“Anyway,” John said, “thanks for the heads-up. Hannah’s got to be manipulative as hell to have put our picture on her desk at work after just one date. What a weirdo.”

“You’re welcome.”

We said our goodbyes and hung up.

Though I detested the fact that my suspicions were still running wild, I couldn’t seem to keep them at bay. It was vaguely possible that John was in league with Hannah in some evil plot hatched back before I’d ever arrived on the scene. Maybe Hannah was a homicidal maniac who killed her rival Laura and now had her sights set on me.

Much more likely, though, maybe I’d dumped the one decent guy who’d come into my life in months.

Already out of the house and on the go on what, for me,
was a rare Saturday off, I decided to call a couple of friends and suggest a matinee. We wound up going on a leisurely late lunch as well, and the afternoon proved to be wonderfully restorative. Even better, when I arrived home, I discovered that the parlor had been restored to its pre-centerpiece, pre–coffee-table-sofa-arrangement condition. I felt like singing the Hallelujah Chorus at the top of my lungs.

Audrey was chatting on the phone as I entered through the French doors, and she gave me a wink as she completed her conversation. The moment she hung up, I enthused, “I love what you’ve done with this room.”

“You mean what
you’ve
done with it. All I did was put everything back the way you had the room originally.”

“True, and I love it. This is a first, isn’t it? The first time you’ve restored a room to exactly how it was, prior to a Dom Bliss experiment?”

“Maybe so. Well,
that
can’t be good. My creativity must be slipping.”

“
Or,
maybe my taste in interior design is starting to rub off on you.” Hildi pranced over to me, and I swept her into my arms. “See, Hildi? Isn’t this nice? Our favorite sofa is just where it should be.” I carried her over to said sofa and sank triumphantly into its plush down cushions, feeling immensely better than I had this morning.

“By the way, Erin, that was your and my least-favorite pseudo-Texan on the phone just now.”

“Hammerin’ Hank? Asking you out again?”

She grimaced. “For a late dinner tonight. He was so persistent . . . just will
not
take no for an answer. But eventually he’ll learn that even when he extracts a maybe out of me, it’s
still
just a no.”

I grinned at her. “How can you say ‘maybe’ to a date that’s supposed to take place in just a couple of hours? Is he going to arrive tonight and see if you’re willing to get into his car?”

“Essentially.” She fluffed up her ash-blond hair. “He’s going to be attending a business meeting over cocktails this evening, where I’m invited to join him, should I change my mind. Which, of course, is never going to happen. Do
you
have any plans tonight?”

“None. So I was thinking that—” I broke off as the phone rang, the double ring indicating that the call was for me. I’d been on the verge of proposing that Audrey join me for a marathon evening of watching the home designing shows on cable, during which I loved to play armchair quarterback. “Let me get this. Just a sec.” I picked up and said hello.

“Hi, Gilbert.”

Sullivan, I realized, and my pulse quickened at the surprise of his calling me on a Saturday evening.

“It’s me,” he continued before I could respond. “I’m meeting with Henry and George for drinks at Rusty’s in an hour. Can you make it? They want to negotiate the conditions of our contract as their consultants.”

A little disappointed that he was calling for mere business reasons and even more annoyed that Henry had obviously contacted Sullivan alone in an attempt to cut me out, I snapped, “
Our
contract?”

“Yeah, Gilbert. No way am I accepting money from those yahoos unless it turns out they’re both innocent
and
that you get half of everything.” He let that settle in for a moment, then asked, “So, are we in or out?”

Sullivan was acting the complete gentleman, so I quickly softened my tone. And my attitude. “It certainly won’t hurt to see what they’re offering. I’m not going to sign up for some sort of commission deal where they’ll expect us to work as salesmen on the floor.”

“Me neither. But I think I made that clear enough. This is consulting work on the initial setup of their showroom only.”

“Sounds promising. Maybe we can teach them about feng shoe, while we’re at it,” I joked, poking fun at Henry.

Sullivan laughed, then asked, “So, can you make it at seven?”

“I guess. Sure. See you then.”

“See ya, Gil.” He hung up. I glowered at the earpiece for a moment before returning the phone to its stand. I’d come to rather enjoy how he called me Gilbert, but there was no way I would let him nickname me after a fish part.

Audrey was studying me with a cocked eyebrow. I said to her sadly, “Guess I’m not home yet for the night, after all.”

“Oh, dear. Where are you headed?”

“Ironically, I’m meeting
your
Henry Toben, plus Sullivan and George Wong, for drinks at Rusty’s in an hour. Turns out
I’m
one of the parties of Henry’s business meeting tonight. Albeit as your basic tagalong little sister. The men are cooking up a deal and actually want to just hire Sullivan, but he’s dragging me along as a conditional clause: ‘You want me, you’re stuck with her, too.’ Really makes me feel ten feet tall.”

Audrey furrowed her brow. “Aren’t all three of those men suspects in these murders? Every
one
of those names is on the list on the refrigerator that we drew up after that knife was hurled into our door.”

“Actually, only two of them are. At the time, I hadn’t realized Henry Toben knew Laura, too.”

She put her hand on her hip. “I added Henry’s name in big red letters after you were poisoned at his house. Don’t you
read
my notes on the fridge?”

Wanting to sidestep the issue that I had a personal policy of
not
reading refrigerator bulletin boards, I said, “This is just an innocuous business meeting.”

“With possible double murderers.” She crossed her arms. I suddenly realized that we were seeing nearly eye to eye, and looked down to see that, uncharacteristically, she was wearing significant heels.

“Rusty’s is always crowded. There’s going to be a ton of possible witnesses to any . . . funny stuff. Besides, I
know
Steve Sullivan is innocent. He can be my bodyguard.”

“Doesn’t he have a broken leg?”

“Well, yes, but—”

“What good is a bodyguard in a leg cast?”

“He’s not going to need to do any running or chasing,” I said brusquely. Audrey continued to look worried as she studied my face. “It’s just a
business
meeting, Audrey. At a downtown
restaurant.
It’s not like I’m suddenly going
skydiving.
”

“Obviously not,” she fired back. “Skydiving is
fun.
”

Ninety minutes later, I was nursing a margarita and
attempting to read over a contract in the dim lighting, Sullivan on my left, Henry on my right, and George Wong straight across from me.

“You know, I just realized something,” I announced to Sullivan. “It’s in my contract with Robert Pembrook that I won’t accept any additional design work from Henry on his house for a period of twelve months, or I have to pay a finder’s fee to Robert.” Looking at Henry, I continued, “This isn’t your
house,
so I’m probably in the clear, but I’m going to have to check with Robert before I sign anything. We’ll be seeing him Monday afternoon. I can discuss it with him then.”

Steve pushed back from the table. “We’re a team on this one, so I’ll have to hold off signing, as well.”

A melodic voice behind me sang, “Well, look who’s here!”

I swiveled in my seat and couldn’t believe my eyes. “Audrey! What are you doing here?”

“Just felt like stopping in to see if there were any familiar faces.” She gestured regally at our table in a way that included the four of us, and gave a friendly wink to George Wong, whom she’d never met. “And here are two and a half.” She bestowed a magnanimous smile upon Sullivan. “Please don’t be offended at being accused of having just half of a face, Mr. Sullivan. I merely mean that we’ve only met once, and quite briefly.” They’d happened to cross paths at my office, before my semi–ill-fated introduction to John Norton.

“Not at all.” Sullivan rose on his good leg and said, “Good to see you again, Ms. Munroe. Why don’t you join us?”