Death by Inferior Design (22 page)

“That’s what I thought.”

His voice was so sad that I suspected he had come to believe the secreted letters were his wife’s, written by Randy, despite their having been signed
M
, as in Myra.
M
could have been the initial of Debbie’s pet name for Randy, however. “That stationery isn’t all that unique, Carl. Any number of paper companies produce it. There have to be thousands upon thousands of similar-looking boxes of stationery sold here in Colorado alone.”

“Yeah. Sure.” He paused, and we set down the desk on the front porch to rest. His shoulders were once again badly stooped over, and he fidgeted with his glasses as he searched my eyes. “Has Debbie said anything to you about . . . me? Our marriage?”

“Not really. I barely know your wife. And what I do know of her, I like.”

“We’ve only been married for five years.” He rubbed his forehead. “My ex-wife cheated on me. When she started, Emily showed some of the same behavior that Debbie is suddenly exhibiting now.”

“I don’t know how to respond to that, Carl. I’ve never been married myself . . .” I floundered.

“If you’re smart, you’ll keep it that way.”

“You don’t honestly believe that your wife and Randy were having an affair, do you? Debbie’s made it clear to me that she didn’t like him.”

He gave me a look revealing that his answer to my question was yes. “Myra and Debbie got into a spat just a month or so ago. Debbie admitted to me it was because Myra had walked in on her and Randy in a . . . lip-lock. She swore to me that it was just the one time, but . . .”

That indiscretion must have driven Debbie’s apology to Myra that I’d overheard the other day. “Carl, it’s a tough row to hoe, not trusting your spouse. And Randy’s dead, so I don’t see how productive this can possibly be for you.”

He sighed and fumbled again at his glasses. “True. True. I just wonder about this whole mess. Why my wife would suddenly want to keep some office furniture of
his.”

“I’m sure it’s more the need for surface space than anything else.”

“Yeah, you’re right.” He made a derisive noise as he stared at the credenza. “I guess not too many people would get attached to this hunk of junk as a memento of a former lover.” He sighed again. “Anyways, I really appreciate the great job you did with my room. I’m sorry it didn’t land you the feature story you deserved.”

“Thanks. Actually, although the whole thing pales in comparison to Randy’s death, Debbie did mention that since she freelances at
Denver Lifestyles,
she might be able to get an article about your bedroom published after all.”

Carl set the clasp on the pneumatic door closer to keep the storm door propped open. “Debbie’s a lot more than a freelancer. Hell, she practically . . .” He let his voice fade and he grabbed his end of the desk, so I followed suit. “Getting the feature published would be a snap for her to arrange. Now that that windbag Axelrod is out of the picture.”

I tried to let the insult to the man who was probably my biological father slide off me; after all, Carl suspected the man had been having an affair with his wife. “He did strike me as somewhat arrogant,” I murmured when we set the desk down in the foyer so that Carl could shut the door behind us.

“Thought he was God’s gift to magazine writing. But the guy couldn’t spell
cat
if you spotted him the
c
and the
a.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. He claimed it was his spell-checker that let him be lazy.”

That did seem strange. It was also strange that his home had so few books, and that he’d been rather inarticulate for a writer and editor. Not to mention the lack of any interest in interior design, all of which led me to further suspect that Debbie had been ghostwriting for him. “Had he always been an editor? For as long as you knew him, I mean?”

“Nah. He was out of work when we bought the place from him . . . something like five years back. I think he used to be a gym teacher.” He snorted. “I guess they call themselves
fitness instructors
now.” He shook his head and muttered, “Must’ve had one hell of a good insurance package. Otherwise, Myra couldn’t have hired you.”

I helped Carl carry the desk into Debbie’s basement office, and by then it was starting to feel very heavy indeed. Nevertheless, with Carl’s help, we got the credenza nicely situated behind her existing desk.

“Do you mind if I take one more look at the bedroom?” I asked. “I’d like to take some photographs for my portfolio, too, if that’s okay.”

“I suppose that’d be all right. Did you ask Debbie if it was all right with her?”

“If what’s all right with me?” Debbie asked, coming down the stairs to join us.

I repeated my request to take photographs.

“Heavens. Of course it’s fine with me. I’m flattered. In fact, please give my name to as many people as you’d like, anytime you need a reference.”

She led me upstairs and into the room, leaving Carl to catch his breath on the sofa. “I’ve got to tell you honestly, Erin,” Debbie said. “At first I was so nervous about this! It was just such a shock to see that Carl had done something like this . . . hired a decorator without my knowledge or checking any references.”

“I’m sure he checked my credentials—”

“Oh, probably so. I just meant that it all seemed to be done in great haste. Not at all the way I like to do things. It’s just—”

The doorbell rang.

Debbie hollered, “Carl? Are you getting that?”

She continued to rave about the wallpaper. I heard the low rumbles of male voices downstairs, but ignored them to take my shots and get a 360-degree view of the room. Just two frames into the task, however, heavy footsteps came tromping up the stairs. Carl entered, followed by two uniformed officers.

Debbie cried, “Carl? What’s going on? What are the police doing here?”

“That’s my wife, officer.” He looked at Debbie and explained, “They have a search warrant.”

“A search warrant!
For what? What do you want to search my house for?” she demanded of both officers.

“We need to look inside the north wall, ma’am,” the officer closest to us said. “You’ll be reimbursed for any repairs.”

“Repairs?” she shrieked, and we both stared at the sledgehammer that the second officer was carrying. “Oh, my God! My beautiful bedroom! You’re going to tear it up?”

“We have to search the hiding space for evidence that might help us to identify your neighbor’s killer,” the officer explained, nearing the wall with his sledgehammer. “Sorry, ma’am.”

“There’s no
evidence
in my walls!” Debbie cried.

“Your husband found some items that could be linked to our investigation.”

“Carl?” she screeched.

“I already burned the letters.” He shrugged. “And they picked up the garbage this morning, so the necklace is gone, too.”

Debbie grabbed her head. “But why—”

“We have to check inside the wall, ma’am,” the officer with the sledgehammer interrupted, his eyes gleaming at the sight of my beautiful work.

In what I’ll confess will not go down in history as one of my more dignified moments, I did a spread-eagle against the wall and blocked his path. “Wait! You can get to that space from the other side. By knocking a hole through the back wall of the closet!”

“She’s right!” Debbie cried. “Please, please do it that way!” She looked pleadingly at Carl, who stood motionless by the entrance, as if none of this affected him directly.

The two officers exchanged glances, then peered around the corner into the dressing area. “Looks like they’re right, Tony,” one policeman said to his partner. “So, why do you suppose someone put the opening in the
middle
of the bedroom wall instead of in the
back
of a closet wall?”

“Maybe he didn’t want to get all the clothes in the closet dirty,” I suggested, even though I knew at once that the real reason was that it was easy to hide a hole behind paneling, but not in an unadorned closet wall. “The plaster dust from the drywall is a total bear to get out of clothing.”

“You live here too, miss?” the not-Tony, non-sledgehammer-wielding officer asked me.

“No, I’m the interior designer. I plastered up the hole and hung the wallpaper.”

“Nice,” the officer said with a nod as he studied the wallpapered surface.

“Yes, it is,” I said desperately, “so please be sure not to swing—”

Debbie gasped, and we both jumped back a little as the sledgehammer suddenly slammed through the wall from the other side.

chapter 14

Oops,” the officer with the sledgehamsadly, “. . . too hard.” muttered, just as I continued

“No-o-o-!” Debbie screeched. “My wall, my beautiful wall! The paper is ruined!”

“Sorry, ma’am, but—”

She balled her fists and raged: “Do you people have any idea how long I fought to get this project done?
Five
years! Ever since the day we bought this place, I’ve been telling my husband that I wanted it fixed up. I didn’t even want to move
in
until the walls were painted something other than . . . than primer white, but no!” She pointed at her husband, still standing in the doorway. “Carl insisted that it’d just take a couple of hours to repaint it, and there was no sense holding up the closing date just for that. He promised he would paint it himself, the very next weekend. It has taken me
five
years of
pleading
and
cajoling
to get a bedroom that I love, and I only had the chance to sleep in it
once
! Just
once
! You
idiots
just put a sledgehammer right through my
dreams
!”

Carl, his face reddening, reseated his glasses, but maintained his stubborn post by the door. “Debbie, calm down. It’s—”

“Shut up, Carl! Do you know how infuriating it is to be told to calm down? As if I hadn’t realized all on my own that I was upset! As if that would make me go”—she smacked her own forehead—“ ‘Oh,
that’s
what I need! I need to
calm down
! Thank heavens my husband was here to tell me that, or I might have
raised my voice
!’ ”

“It’s really okay, Debbie,” I interjected desperately. “I have an extra roll of this paper with the same dye lot in my van. I always overorder by at least two lengths, in case of disaster—”

“Oh, thank God,” Debbie exclaimed, pulling me into a hug. “I love you. I will adopt you right now on the spot.”

The words were unnerving. I said as evenly as I could, “We’ll just plaster over the hole again, let it dry overnight, then I’ll pull down the one sheet and put up another—”

Another blow reverberated, promptly ending our hug. Debbie shrieked again. A second hole appeared in the wall. This time, a second panel of wallpaper was ruined.

“Jeez, Tony!” his fellow officer complained. “What did you go and hit it that hard for?”

“What are you doing?” I hollered at the sledgehammering officer. “That’s a good two feet over from where the cubbyhole was located!”

“Figured we’re going to have to check the whole inside of the wall. That means we’re going to have to bust through all the sections between the studs.”

“I’m going to be sick,” Debbie wailed. “I can’t watch this.”

“Neither can I,” I agreed, but watching the wall destruction was something like spotting the aftermath of an accident at the side of the road: my eyes seemed to be glued to the scene of their own volition.

I glanced at Carl to see if he was going to go comfort his wife, but he’d averted his gaze and pretended to be transfixed by a magazine that had been lying open on her side of the bed. Debbie shuffled down the stairs alone. I waited through one more blow from the closet wall and gasped as the hammer merely dented the wallpaper this time and just missed banging into the back corner of the chest.

“Watch it!” I shouted through the wall at Officer Tony. “This chest is worth thousands of dollars! I can repair the freaking wall, but not the furniture!”

“Sorry, miss,” he called back, unrepentant. “It won’t happen again.”

I studied the dent in the paper. That section of Sheetrock would also have to be repaired. The wallpaper would need to be removed, the Sheetrock patched or perhaps replaced, and the wallpaper rehung. If the store happened to be out of this dye lot, I’d have to exchange my emergency roll and start over again, replacing the paper for the entire wall.

I went downstairs to console Debbie. She was the picture of a woman in a deep state of shock. She was seated at the table in the kitchen, staring straight ahead with unfocused eyes. She didn’t even blink when I came into the room and pulled up a chair across from her.

“I’ll get another double roll of wallpaper, and we’ll send the bill to the police. If I have to, I could do a patch behind the chest that—”

“No. There’s no point. I should have known better. It wasn’t meant to be. There’s no way to build the bedroom of your dreams when you’re sharing the bed with a man who doesn’t love you. He can’t even keep me straight from Emily. I’m in a sham of a marriage that was over before it even started!”

“Oh, Debbie. I’m sure you don’t really mean that!”

“I do.” She gave a sardonic laugh. “Ironic choice of wording.” She sighed. “It was the
first
time I said ‘I do’ that was wrong.”

We said nothing for a full minute or two. “What are you going to do now?” I asked at last.

“Move out, I suppose. Maybe I’ll ask Myra if I can stay in her guest room for the time being.”

Her statement shocked me. Carl strongly suspected that Randy and Debbie had been lovers. If that were true, she surely wouldn’t want to move in now with his widow. Unlike me, however, Carl had actually read the love letters; he was in a far better position than I to know who the author and the recipient were. “Those love letters . . . were they yours?” I asked Debbie gently.

“No.” She brushed her red hair away from her face brusquely and clenched her jaw. “I’m sure they were Emily’s. Carl probably couldn’t bear to part with them, so he brought them with him to our new home and hid them. And then he forgot about them.”