Diva 03 _ Diva Paints the Town, The (29 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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I sipped the sweet liquid. “I don’t know. . . . If I had killed someone with a drug, I think I would prefer to dispose of it far from the body. Throw it in the river or something.”
She nodded. “That would be the smart thing to do. Then why did Mordecai leave it where it would be found?”
“That’s the question. I suspect that’s what was distracting Wolf. The two murders have been a big strain on him.”
“Everybody in town is talking about him.”
“What do you mean?”
“I didn’t want to tell you, but with the rumors about his wife, everyone is speculating about whether he could have killed Tara.”
I must have shown my shock, because Nina stroked my shoulder and said, “It’s just idle speculation.”
“That means they’re speculating about me, too, doesn’t it?”
Nina sighed. “I didn’t want to tell you, honey. Look, in the morning, when we’re fresh, we’ll put our heads together and try to figure this out. I can’t go on being afraid, and you and Wolf deserve to be cleared.”
We trudged up to bed. In spite of the early morning hour, I didn’t think either of us would sleep well—not until the murderers of Kurt and Tara were in custody.
Nina and I slept in the next morning. I’d barely opened my eyes when the phone rang, and the irate convention hall manager at the hotel informed me that the police had removed the yellow tape, and he expected all the exhibits to be removed immediately so they could accommodate the next group.
I skipped a shower, pulled on an oversized denim shirt and stretchy jeans. I woke Nina, who grumbled and flipped over. Fine by me, she could sleep all day. But before I made it to the bedroom door her brain must have engaged, because she sat up and shouted, “Don’t leave me alone!”
“Nina, I have to go.”
“No, no, no, no.” She reached for her cell phone and made a quick call. “Francie is on her way. Please wait until she gets here.”
I agreed and hustled downstairs to feed Mochie, who prowled the sunroom as though he thought Hank might be hiding there. I dashed out the door the moment Francie showed up.
As I walked on the other side of the street, I could see Natasha holding court on the porch at Mordecai’s house. “We’re behind schedule,” she announced. “But if we all work very hard, we can still pull this off.”
Iris sprang up the stairs and said rather loudly, “Who made you queen of the world? Do you not understand the meaning of co-chair? You’ve been ordering everyone around, and I’ve had about enough of your superior attitude.”
I was sorry I couldn’t stick around to see how their spat turned out, but work called. During my walk to the hotel, I started phoning the exhibitors. Most were thrilled that they could pick up their belongings, but some had other plans for the day, and I anticipated the worst.
Shortly after my arrival, local exhibitors started turning up. Natasha sent Beth to dismantle her exhibit, and I couldn’t help noticing that Beth seemed like a different person. She’d pulled her hair out of her face, and moved with confidence, giving directions to a helper.
I hurried in the direction of Ted’s glass house, crossed the bridge, and stepped inside. A couple of guys I’d never met were packing up the curtains and furnishings.
“Is there a problem?” asked one of them.
I smiled reassuringly. “No. How are you going to dismantle this?”
“The panes come apart pretty easily. Some lady bought it, so we’ll be reassembling it as soon as the weather improves and we can pour concrete footings.”
I gazed around, trying to imagine what had transpired. Tara’s killer must have lured her inside. She was looking for Wolf when I saw her. It wasn’t hard to imagine that he could have called her into the glass house—or that I could have, for that matter. No wonder we were suspects. It would have been easy to draw the hazy curtains closed. And then Tara’s killer shot her with the nail gun while her back was turned.
I couldn’t help thinking it must have been someone she knew. Or someone who overheard that she was looking for Wolf. Why else would she have entered the little house? Unless she thought someone needed help. She was a cop, after all.
Surely she’d seen that her killer held a nail gun. They were too big to conceal. But at Rooms and Blooms, no one would have given a nail gun a second thought because so many people were using them. Even on the last night, it wouldn’t be unusual to make a quick fix to something.
If I was right, then Wolf was the least likely culprit. I didn’t believe he had killed Tara, but she would have wondered why he was carrying a nail gun. That meant the killer almost had to be an exhibitor.
“Yowza!” exclaimed one of the workers.
I followed his line of sight to Earl, who apparently thought displaying excessive cleavage was appropriate for exhibit dismantling. She looked around, her hands on her hips, as though she was miffed.
I left Ted’s house and walked over to Earl. “I’m so sorry about Kurt.”
“You,” she sputtered in an ugly tone that left no question about her feelings toward me. “I’ve heard all about your friend with the bird who screams Kurt’s name.”
THIRTY-THREE
From “THE GOOD LIFE” :
Dear Sophie,
 
I’m decorating my first house on a budget. I’m thrilled that I have lots of windows, but I can’t afford curtains for all of them. Any clever suggestions?
 
—Window Woes in Waldo
 
Dear Window Woes,
 
Make your own! Use antique tablecloths from the flea market, or fabric remnants from the budget bin. Anything can be used as a curtain rod, including a straight branch or pole. Sew coordinating ribbon along the top of the fabric, leaving a four-inch loop at regular intervals. Slide the loops over your rod and you’ll have curtains. Don’t cut fabric that’s too long, let it puddle on the floor for a romantic, billowing look.
 
—Sophie
Earl continued in a scathing tone. “Talk about incriminating. I hear she can’t shut that bird up. Tara told me how your friend, Nina, killed Kurt and you cleaned up the crime scene. I suppose you thought no one would ever discover your clever hiding place, and that we would never know the truth.”
“Tara told you?” I’d dismissed Nina’s theories about Kurt and Earl, but maybe she’d been right. How could I find out more without sounding like I suspected her of murder? “You knew Tara?”
“Our shop is—was—in her sector. She used to stop by to dream about the kitchen she would have in her house one day.”
I had to take a chance if I wanted useful information. “Did you know she was seeing a married man?”
I expected Earl to be angry at my intimation that the married man might have been her husband, but she seemed sad. “Why do women have to go after married men? Why did your friend, Nina, have to take my Kurt from me? She has a husband, a filthy rich one from what I understand. She didn’t need Kurt. She should have left him alone.” Her demeanor changed, and she poked a finger at me. “I’ve told that nice Detective Kenner all about you and your friend. He knows everything. You won’t get away with this.”
I figured she’d get huffy, but I asked anyway. “Have you been calling Nina from Kurt’s phone to torment her?”
She laughed maniacally.
“So it was you!”
Earl didn’t deny it, and strode away smiling. At least she’d inadvertently explained one other thing. I now knew how Tara found out Kurt was missing. I had an inkling that if she hadn’t pursued it as a favor to Earl, Tara might be alive today. If that were true, then it meant Tara had discovered something that made Kurt’s killer very nervous.
I wished the coffee bar hadn’t managed to shut down and move out so fast. I needed a jolt of java—and a Krispy Kreme doughnut, which I figured I deserved since I’d been under so much stress. Didn’t stress burn calories?
I took the escalator up to the lobby and ran into Camille DuPont. “How’s Nolan?” I asked.
Camille looked terrific, as always. Her cream-colored suit nipped in perfectly to accent her waist, and her hair brushed her shoulders in a natural, unsprayed way. “Milking the mugging for everything it’s worth. I left him with the nurse, who”—she checked the time on her watch—“is probably cozying up to him at this very moment.”
I forced a little laugh. “You don’t mean that?”
“Unfortunately, I do.” She tweaked the bridge of her nose like she thought it might ease some sort of discomfort. “Listen, Sophie, I’d like to unload some of the furniture in the store. You and the other designers can take anything you want on loan for Mordecai’s house. Maybe we’ll be able to sell some of it that way.”
“That’s very generous of you. What I need, though, is a huge sofa.”
“No problem.” She pulled out an elegant leather-encased notepad and scribbled an address. “Ask for Victor and tell him I sent you.”
I thanked her again and asked, “Is there anything I can do for you? Are you here about Rooms and Blooms?”
She sighed. “I’m here to meet with the man selling the bulldozer. Nolan was the idiot who bought it, and now I have to beg to get out of the contract.” She tucked the notepad into her purse. “Just between the two of us—I’m through cleaning up after Nolan.”
I watched Camille ride the escalator to the exhibit level and couldn’t help thinking that her wealth didn’t protect her from problems.
Posey passed her, going in the other direction on the escalator. They nodded at each other, but from what I could see, Posey didn’t ask about Nolan. She arrived at the landing and said, “Do I file a claim for my losses with you or the Guild?”
“Losses?”
“The police confiscated my cordless nail gun.”
“I’m sure you’ll get the nail gun back.”
“What am I supposed to do in the meantime? If you recall, I have a dining room to finish.”
I should have been nicer, but I blurted, “As I recall, you weren’t nailing anything.”
“I have to do something about curtains. I was going to build valances.” She stalked off in a huff.
Okay, so that wasn’t kind of me, but she could use a hammer, couldn’t she? I chalked my rudeness up to hunger. But my caffeine-deprived brain went one step further. Why hadn’t Posey asked how Nolan was doing? She’d known him for a long time. It was common politeness if nothing else. Unless Posey feared the answer. Or feared she’d been seen. Surely Posey hadn’t clobbered Nolan in an effort to obtain his key?
I could understand her eagerness to find the bequest. Mordecai had made a game out of it, and his heirs had fun looking for it. But even Posey wouldn’t have attacked Nolan to steal his key—would she? I followed Posey out and headed in the same direction, trailing several yards behind her as she made her way up King Street. She paused to peer in Nolan’s shop window, and I wondered if she’d been eager to find the bequest because she needed money. My own business had suffered when people cut back on events. I could well imagine that her trompe l’oeil business wasn’t in great demand. But she would have to be in dire straits to have conked Nolan over the head just to obtain his key and speed things up.
Posey continued on her way, and I ducked into a store that I thought might have a Krispy Kreme doughnut. But I darted out to the sidewalk again. I could still see Posey, not that it mattered, really. What if her objectives in obtaining the key had nothing to do with the bequest? What if she knew what we would find behind the wall unit and she needed the key so we wouldn’t have enough keys to open it?
Reeling from that revelation, I staggered back into the shop and said to a saleswoman, “I am in urgent need of coffee and a Krispy Kreme doughnut, preferably with chocolate icing.”
The woman smiled at me as though she understood completely. “All the way in the rear.” She chuckled when she said, “They’re fresh.”
“The back? You should put them out here where everyone can see them. You’ll sell more.”
“Are you kidding? This way we force you to walk through the store, so you’ll see other merchandise and buy more.”

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