Diva 03 _ Diva Paints the Town, The (17 page)

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Authors: Krista Davis

Tags: #Murder, #Winston; Sophie (Fictitious Character), #Mystery & Detective, #Fiction, #Women Sleuths, #General, #Dwellings

BOOK: Diva 03 _ Diva Paints the Town, The
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But Beth was a split second too late. Natasha appeared on the porch and spied us. She rushed down the steps and took Beth’s arm. “Thank goodness you’re here. There’s so much to do.”
As Natasha tugged her up the stairs, Beth turned to look at me with frightened eyes, and I smiled encouragingly. Though she hadn’t had the moxie to pull away from Natasha’s clutches, she seemed the sort who would be sensible enough to handle most things Natasha might throw her way.
I followed them up the steps and into the swarm of workers. In the family room, Bernie was applying stain to his window seat.
He jumped up when he saw me and gently removed a carved owl from a box. “What do you think?”
I took the bird to examine it. “Did you carve this by hand?”
He beamed. “I like woodworking. Don’t get much of a chance these days. I spent a season working with wood after university. Always found it very pleasing.”
“It’s remarkable.” I held it next to one of the three owls on Mordecai’s ornate built-in shelving. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought they were carved by the same person.
“They’ll help unify the window seat with Mordecai’s woodwork.” Bernie gazed around. “When do you think we’ll start painting?”
“Not until we get some of this junk out of here.”
“As soon as I’m done with the stain, I’ll call Mars. Maybe he and I can lug out some of this rubbish. Hey, have you seen my hammer?”
I shook my head.
“
Argh
,” he grumbled. “Somebody probably borrowed it and forgot to return it. I swear I’m tempted to buy some of Natasha’s robin’s egg blue tools. At least they’d be easy to identify. Maybe they wouldn’t disappear as quickly.”
I left the coffee carafe in the family room and ventured into the kitchen for mugs. Mordecai’s kitchen must have been the height of fashion once. Double ovens with rust-colored doors occupied the brick corner. The cooktop resided in a center island that featured a table-height countertop on three sides. Gold wallpaper matched the laminate countertops and busy linoleum flooring. The cabinets were clearly solid wood, but extremely dark and dingy. A copper exhaust hood hung in the center of the room. Now a mottled verdigris and drab bronze, it featured a bold black eagle.
Natasha already had Beth hard at work, emptying kitchen cabinets. “What’s going to happen to all this stuff ?” I asked.
Natasha stopped throwing canned goods into the trash. “I wanted to have a yard sale, but Mordecai’s attorney insists that it all go to auction. A truck will be here later today to pick up the first load.” She lowered her voice. “Yesterday, I overheard Nolan trying to buy some pieces for his shop.”
Passing Ted and Mike, who thumped cabinets in the butler’s pantry, no doubt in search of their bequest, I peeked into the living room. Little remained of Mordecai’s furniture. Nolan rested in a chair, his shoulders slumped and his head bowed forward. I wondered if Camille had put her foot down about their shop. I borrowed two mugs from the butler’s pantry and returned to the family room, where I poured coffee for Bernie and me.
For the next hour, I plowed through papers. Most of them were easy to throw out. Mordecai had saved unimportant flyers for local businesses as well as stacks of catalogs on woodworking, and building with straw bales.
Ted ambled in from the kitchen and scooted around Bernie, who was stuffing a bulging trash bag. Ted sniffed the air. “Do I smell coffee?”
He waved a mug, sat down next to me, poured coffee, and took a deep drag. “Find anything interesting?”
“Just junk.”
“Poor old Mordecai.”
“Was he a tough professor?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? He was the best. Always won those favorite-professor-type awards. Made the rest of the architecture department nuts. Instead of lecturing, he taught by making his students do things. Oh my gosh, look at this.” Ted held up a magazine about building straw houses. “Mordecai was obsessed with the idea of building with straw. He even arranged a grant so we could build a little straw cottage to exhibit at the predecessor of Rooms and Blooms. It was tiny, but I learned more from that experience than any other class I ever took.”
“Straw?” I pitched a stack of magazines into the trash. “How can you build a house with straw?”
Ted swallowed a sip of coffee. “It’s a time-honored building method. They used it in Europe and here in the States when the settlers went out west. You stack bales of straw and cover them with adobe or plaster.”
“Sounds like an invitation for fire.”
“You’d think so, but straw in bales is compacted, so it doesn’t burn well—not enough oxygen. Plus, the bales act as insulation, and the structures are surprisingly wind- and earthquake-resistant. Mordecai was a nut about it. He thought straw was the answer to providing low-cost housing. He was something of an authority on the subject and was gaining a lot of notoriety, which really irritated other members of the department, who felt straw houses weren’t a legitimate architectural endeavor.”
“So you and the other students were studying architecture?” asked Bernie.
Ted shook his head. “We were design students. Mordecai taught a basic class to introduce us to a variety of architectural concepts, but it was really his fun class. He was always challenging us to come up with creative ideas.”
I tied the top of a trash bag and was handing it to Bernie when Mike wandered in. “I’m beginning to think Nolan was right about Mordecai losing his mind.”
“No luck upstairs?” asked Ted.
Mike perched on the enormous desk. “If he wasn’t completely crazy, then he would have hidden our bequest in something that isn’t what it seems. Like a window seat with a locked compartment that’s only accessible from the inside, so when you look at it from the outside, you’d never know it was in there unless you opened the seat.
Bernie paused, the trash bag in his hand. “That’s not a bad idea. Like a safe hidden in plain sight.”
“Have you looked behind paintings and wall hangings?” I asked.
Mike and Ted cracked up.
“You didn’t know Mordecai well. That’s entirely too pedestrian. Not his style at all,” said Mike.
I dumped a stack of newspapers into a big box for recycling, and Mike offered to carry it outside, but Natasha blocked his way.
Planting her fists on her hips, she said, “I could strangle that Kurt Finkle. We’re three days into this already, and I don’t know if he plans to show up and do the kitchen or if I have to find someone else. I’ve already advertised it on my show, so it’s not like I can back out now. What am I going to do?”
“Let Mike do it. He might get some business out of it. Wouldn’t you like to leave that stifling job running a home improvement store?” Ted yawned and stretched his arms above his head.
“I
need
a professional.” Natasha’s tone couldn’t have been more rude.
Mike looked down into the box he carried, as though he was embarrassed, and for a second I thought we were going to have one of those painful silences when no one knows what to say.
But Ted spoke up. “He
is
a professional. Well, he was once. He and Kurt started out together building kitchens. They were partners.”
“That was a long time ago,” Mike muttered. The skin above his dark beard flushed purple, and he seemed embarrassed.
“Mike was the one with the creative kitchen ideas.” When Mike didn’t respond, Ted continued. “
Aw
, don’t be so humble. I’ll help you. If we don’t change the floor plan, then we won’t have to do any major plumbing or electrical work. We’ll swap out the cabinets and countertops, and it’ll look brand-new.”
Mike’s gaze drifted to Natasha. “Would this be out of my pocket?”
“You’re certain you’re capable of a kitchen remodel? An
elegant
kitchen remodel?”
A smile crossed Mike’s face. “You know, it would be fun to do a kitchen again.”
Ted and Mike followed Natasha into the kitchen to discuss her vision. I went back to sorting garbage—until I found a cardboard box under a stack of newspapers. I opened it gingerly, afraid it might contain moldy food. But when I looked inside, I giggled at Mordecai’s audacity. Inside the box were thousands of jigsaw puzzle pieces. I scooped up a handful. They had to be from dozens of different puzzles. It would be a nightmare to sort through them.
I carried the box into the kitchen and set it on the counter. “I believe I’ve found a clue to your bequest.”
They all peered in the box, and the kitchen filled with their groans.
“You know what’s going to happen, don’t you?” said Mike. “We’re going to sort those stupid things and find the locks that match our keys and when we open them, the big bequest will be a note that says ‘Well done!’ ”
Even if Nolan wasn’t on the hunt for his bequest, I felt we should let him know what I’d found. While they laughed and studied the puzzle pieces, I peered into the living room. Nolan wasn’t there, but Beth stood rigidly just inside the doorway.
She turned around slowly and gasped when she saw me watching her.
SEVENTEEN
From “THE GOOD LIFE” :
Dear Sophie,
 
Our dining room is on the north side of the house, always cold, and a gorgeous tree prevents sunlight from coming through the window. Against my husband’s wishes, I insisted we paint it a bright yellow to cheer it up, but now it feels like we’re dining inside a lemon. Help!
 
—No Lemons in Citrus Springs
 
Dear No Lemons,
 
Sometimes it’s easier to embrace a negative and work with it. Instead of brightening the room, consider painting it a warm, dark color, like cranberry or curry. Most of us tend to use our dining rooms in the evening, when it’s dark outside anyway. And if you’re not sure which way to go, you might consider the fact that red walls stimulate the appetite.
 
—Sophie
In a whisper Beth said, “Do you think Natasha would be upset if I grabbed a cigarette outside?”
Now, I can be blind to the obvious, but Beth wasn’t any good at lying. “As long as you don’t blow smoke in the windows.”
With a wan smile, she headed for the door like an express train, leaving me to wonder why she really wanted to escape.
I returned to the family room but stopped short in the doorway. I hadn’t realized just how much Bernie and I had already managed to clear out. Except for one stack of papers in the corner, only the enormous desk and the window seat remained. I still had to look through the desk drawers and the numerous cabinets, drawers, and cubbyholes in the wall unit, but we’d made remarkable progress.
The room featured two windows to the west, but I doubted that it ever got much sun. The built-ins that Bernie liked so much weighed the room down. They were enormously practical, though, even if the ornate carvings weren’t to everyone’s taste. Maybe once the walls were painted, the woodwork wouldn’t be so overpowering.
I was thinking about a gingery yellow, in an earthy Tuscan vein, when Bernie said, “I’ve been imagining something cozy, like a rich butterscotch. A color with just a hint of an orange hue that will blend nicely with the wood. We’ll have to wash the walls first, though.”
Years of dust and grime had built up on them, and I had a hard time imagining what color they had been. The current dirty gray certainly did nothing for the room.
“Would you have time to help me take down the curtains after lunch?” I asked.
“Sure.” Bernie smiled at someone in the foyer. “Could I be of assistance?” he called out.
An elderly woman in bright colors wandered in. Five chunky necklaces hung on her purple tunic, and vivid pink lipstick had been carefully applied beyond the edges of her lips. I recognized her as Iris’s grandmother from her signature piece—enormous white-framed glasses. “I’m just having a look around.” She held out a gnarled hand to Bernie. “Bedelia Ledbetter, sweetheart, and who might you be?”

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