False Premises (14 page)

“Yes, indeed,” I replied.

On cue, my new domestic slave, Sullivan, opened the portfolio and set up the easel.

“We’re scheduled to receive the final shipment of furniture tomorrow,” I told Robert.

“I can’t wait!” he exclaimed. To my delight, he then oohed and ahhed over my designs. Hanging over my head like a samurai sword, however, was the realization that, thanks to the cherry-lollipop sofa, the finished product was no longer going to match the
delightful
images on my design board. Also hanging over me was the fact that my “assistant” was really here to glean clues to Evan Cambridge’s whereabouts.

At what I sensed was the opportune moment to bring up the topic, I announced, “One surprise is that Henry felt so strongly about the red Ultrasuede sofa that he changed the order on us.”

Robert gasped and shifted his gaze to Henry. “You
didn’t
!”

Henry shot me a glare, but then said to Robert, “I really preferred it to the brown. That’s just so boring. You know?”

I said, “I only learned about the color switch a couple of hours ago and haven’t had time to reflect that in my artwork. I’ll be changing my accessories accordingly. This is probably going to affect my fee, I’m afraid.”

“I would imagine so.” Robert shook his head sorrowfully and clicked his tongue. “Henry, Henry. What can I say? You hire me to give you advice, but ultimately,
you’re
the one who either takes or rejects it. For example, when was the last time you stood in front of a full-length mirror?”

“Just this morning!”

“And, at the time, had you already put on your dandy-cowboy duds?”

Henry spread his arms and looked down at his clothing as though he’d been doused with cold water. “Hey! This is still a workday for me! I need folks to recognize me from the TV ads!”

“Well, if it were up to me, you and Mr. Sullivan here would swap outfits.” Robert gestured at Steve. “You see this look?
This,
Henry, is what I mean by casual chic for men—a black sports jacket; white, fashionably rumpled shirt with an open collar; jeans. See how sexy this is? Although at
your
age, you would want to tuck in the shirt. Then you would want to add a complementary pocket square to dress it up just a titch for commercials.” He sat back down, openly studying Henry. “Furthermore, for heaven’s sake, get yourself a less flamboyant pair of boots. Something in earth tones, matte finish, square toes.” He chuckled and put his hands on his hips. “Should
I
really be the one telling
you
to be less flamboyant, Henry? Let’s keep your big honkin’ cowboy hat for transition purposes for the next commercial or two, then go without it. I’ll take charge of your wardrobe during the taping of your next advertisement. Trust me. It’ll be fabulous.”

“But I already
tried
that. Shot a sample commercial while wearing a dark suit. I looked like a funeral director.”

The mention of the word
funeral
gave me a pang for Laura’s sake, but the men’s conversation continued without a hitch. Robert sighed and shook his head at Sullivan and me. “Kind of makes you wonder what he’s paying me all this hard-earned money for, doesn’t it?”

“Hey,” Henry said. “On the bright side, I haven’t lost even one employee in the last two months! And a couple days ago, I met the perfect gal, exactly the type you’ve been nagging me to go out with.”

“Fabulous,” Robert replied. “Fabulous! So, in other words, you’ve finally stopped robbing the cradle?”

Henry grinned and sat up straight, giving his dustcover hair a reassuring pat. “This gal’s
my
age . . . in other words, old enough to refuse to say how old she is. But I hear she had a birthday recently, and I do know she’s at least sixty. We’ve got a lot in common, too. We’re
both
local celebrities. Met her at the TV station where I was shooting my last commercial. She gave me her number, and we’re going out Saturday.”

I dug my fingers into the arms of my chair. Just the night before last, Audrey had mentioned that she’d agreed to go on a date next Saturday “with an obnoxious man, during a weak moment.” I forced a smile and asked, “You’re not talking about Audrey Munroe, are you?”

“As a matter of fact, I am.” Henry beamed at me. “How’d you know that?”

“I rent a room from her, and she mentioned she was going out with someone new this Saturday.”

“Well, now. How do you like that!” He reached over and patted my knee. My skin instantly prickled. “So you’re my designer
and
my inside edge with my new lady. I’ll have to be sure and stay on your good side, darlin’.”

I fought back a smile at the thought of how swiftly Audrey would pound this joker into the turf if she ever heard him call her his
lady
. “Yes, you will.” Not that he’d ever
been
on my good side.

“What other changes have you made to Erin’s orders, Henry?” Robert asked.

Henry held up his palms. “That’s it. Just the one sofa.”

There was a plastic quality to Henry’s facial expression that made me nervous, but if Robert noticed, he didn’t reveal it. “Good, good,” he said. “In that case, we’re all set. Though, remember,
you
will ultimately be picking up the tab for Erin’s having to increase her fee.” He grabbed my hand and gave it a squeeze. “Erin, I’ll be checking on your progress in Henry’s home periodically.” Grinning, he ran his eyes over Sullivan. “And, Steve, welcome to the team!”

“We’ll need to double check Henry’s new furniture
that’s been delivered to my storage unit,” I said to Sullivan as we left the hotel parking lot.

“Yeah. He might have switched around half your orders. I don’t trust that dime-store cowboy as far as a petting-park pony could throw him.”

I chuckled at the image. “They’re delivering the sectional tomorrow. Let’s stop at U-Store now. Even if I trusted Henry, which I don’t, I need to make sure there’s no smoke damage. My unit’s just three doors away from Laura’s . . . too close for comfort.” I shuddered.

Sullivan was silent. I knew he was even less fond than I was of the concept of going back to the scene of the recent, harrowing crime, but Henry’s furniture needed to be examined. Sullivan muttered, “I don’t trust Robert Pembrook any farther than that pony could throw him, either.”

“You
don’t
? I like the guy immensely!”

“Granted, he’s infinitely more likable than Henry, but come on, Gilbert. He’s a convicted criminal, and—”

“Which he’s already paid his debt to society for.”

“
And
he used to work with Evan Cambridge.”

“You were partners with Evan!”

“Until the bastard
ripped me off.
Yet he
didn’t
rip off his ex-con former boss. What does
that
tell you?”

“That Evan knew better than to cross someone who’d done jail time,” I fired back.

“
Or
that Pembrook taught Evan everything he knew that
landed
him in jail in the first place.”

I sighed, deeply annoyed. If only Sullivan could keep quiet, he’d be wonderful eye candy, but he insisted on opening his mouth and ruining the effect every time. “Robert came right out and told his client that he’d once been convicted of a white-collar crime. He isn’t putting up any false fronts . . . quite the contrary. And if the government is willing to consider that his debt has been paid in full, it seems to me that
we
should be, too.”

Sullivan said nothing, so I glanced over at him. His brow was deeply furrowed, and I was sorely tempted to tell him that if he didn’t cut out all that frowning, his face was going to get stuck that way. He must have felt my eyes on him, because he said, “Two days ago, I might have agreed with you, Gilbert. Not now.” He didn’t have to explain that two days ago he hadn’t known that Laura Smith was back in Crestview.

A horrid pang of guilt hit me. That one piece of information—the news that Laura had returned to town— could have been the catalyst to Laura’s murder.

Our path to my storage unit took us past Laura’s. The
outer walls were blackened but still standing. It was cordoned off, but otherwise the place had its usual austere, giant-building-blocks appearance. The odor of charred wood hung in the air.

I started to unlock the door to my unit. Something immediately felt wrong with the lock. I felt a surge of panic as the knob moved freely before the key had fully clicked into place. “Oh, damn it! It’s unlocked!” I cried to Sullivan. “I’m supposed to have the only key and I definitely locked it!” Terrified that there was going to be another dead body inside, I flung open the door and made a cursory inspection from the doorway. The contents seemed to be the same as when I’d last left it, the unit still about two-thirds full. “Things could have been stolen. We’ll have to check off every item.”

Sullivan started to brush past me to go inside, but I grabbed his jacket. “Wait. There could be evidence in here, fingerprints or something.” Then I sighed. “Never mind. Too many people have been in here for fingerprints to matter.”

“Could anyone else have the key?”

“Nobody but the U-Store manager. And our phantom security guards. Damn it all! If anything’s missing, I’m going to sue these idiots for all they’re worth!”

“Which probably isn’t much,” Steve pointed out.

I dialed the U-Store central office on my cell phone, and they sent out a security guard and a manager in no time. Both were unable to say how or when someone had managed to break into my rented space, but they did give me plenty of obvious advice about making sure nothing was missing and reporting anything that was.

Glowering at the U-Store personnel as they left, Steve said to me, “I’m never using this place again. The security here is either inept or corrupt.”

“Or both,” I grumbled, and reached for my cell phone again. “I’m going to call our little cowboy on his cell phone to discuss this. And maybe play a hunch.”

Henry answered, “Howdy, y’all. Hammerin’ Hank speaking.”

“This is Erin. I’m at the storage unit I rented to house your furniture, and I discovered that someone other than me has a key to the place.”

“Is that right?”

“Yes. There were no signs of a break-in, yet the door was left unlocked. Did you pay off a U-Store employee to slip you a duplicate key, Henry?”

There was a pause. In his Henry-from-Delaware voice, he replied, “Technically, you realize, it’s
my
storage unit. I’m the one picking up the tab. And everything inside it is mine.”

“True, and you’ll be very lucky if everything inside it is still here, since you forgot to lock the place!”

“Hey, now hold your horses, honey. It must have been one of my employees who did that. I always keep doors locked. You can’t trust anybody anymore.”

“No, you can’t,” I snarled. “But why on earth would you give an
employee
access to a storage unit containing your
home
furniture?”

“Ah. Well, I had some furniture to move around in there. See, I needed to wait till after our meeting with Pembrook to tell you this, but I’ve made a few more adjustments to your design. No sense in my going head-to-head with a
convict
to get my own house the way I like it, you know? And you’re so talented and creative, I’m sure you can fluff things over just fine.”

Enraged, I reached for my confidence-and-optimism mantra
and
a quick count to ten. I was interrupted by a familiar voice from the doorway, saying, “Hey, guys.”

I whirled around. It was John, looking handsome as always, but with a somewhat sheepish expression on his face. To Henry, I snapped, “I’ll do my best. I’ve got to go. Bye,” and hung up. “John,” I said. “Hi. How did you know we were here?”

“I didn’t. I’m setting up a couple of demo homes and have space rented here myself.”

He seemed to sense that I didn’t want him to greet me with a kiss, and to my relief, he hung back. “The police contacted me this morning, and I heard about Laura . . . and the fire. I was checking my furniture for smoke damage . . . happened to spot your van as I was about to head home.”

John gave Steve a darting glance, then walked over to me, put his arm around me, and said quietly, “I’m so sorry about Laura. She had some severe shortcomings, but she sure didn’t deserve
this.
”

Not wanting to discuss his relationship with Laura, I merely nodded and asked, “Is all your stuff okay?”

“Yeah. Thanks. Is that what you’re doing now, too? Checking for smoke damage?”

“Running inventory,” Steve quickly interjected. “Haven’t had a chance to start yet, though.” He raised his eyebrow and gave me a look. Was he trying to signal me that he was considering
John
a possible suspect? No way! If he was going to consider his good friend a suspect, Sullivan was truly losing all perspective.

“Was
your
storage unit properly locked when you got here?” I asked John.

“Yeah. Why? Wasn’t yours?”

“No. Someone left the place unlocked.”

“Jeez.” He took a moment to let the news sink in. “Let me help you take inventory. Where are your shipping lists?”

I retrieved one set of copies from the inside of the door, where I’d taped the plastic envelope for safekeeping, handed him a sheet, gave Sullivan a second, and kept the last one for myself.

A moment later, John shined the beam of his pocket flashlight through a hole in the box made from punchouts for handles and said, “Hmm.” He opened the box. “What line of work is this client of yours in?” he asked me. “Leading African safaris?”

I stared at the ottoman in disbelief. The leopard-skin upholstery appeared to have been made of real fur. “That’s
got
to be a mistake.”

“You think the
factory
screwed this up?” Sullivan peered into a tall, thin box. “Huh. An African mask. Henry, or some lackey of his, must have swapped in all this circa-George-of-the-Jungle merchandise, then left the door unlocked.”

“You’ve got to wonder why he’d bother,” John said, peering into more boxes. “Seems so childish. Did he honestly think you’d never
notice
that the furniture wasn’t what you ordered?”