False Premises (16 page)

This place tugged at my memory banks. I’d visited a very similar room before—some Founding Father’s mansion that I’d seen during a school field trip; such excursions had been the highlight of my grade-school years. Livingston Manor perhaps? What a phenomenal re-creation this was! It could have been a drawing room straight out of an aristocrat’s late-nineteenth-century home, and yet every stick of furniture appeared to be brand-new. The wallpaper was a rose-colored toile that would have been in high fashion in the late 1800s.

For all its glory, however, the furniture was out of balance. The matching mirror on one wall hung above a brilliantly crafted cabinet, but the mirror on the opposite wall hung above a blank spot. The pattern of the wallpaper there was slightly more intense. A large, rectangular piece of furniture had been removed recently. Perhaps it was being repaired.

This whole place seemed surreal to me. A master craftsman had built the nicest waiting room I’d ever seen, simply to serve as a storefront of a furniture workshop in the boonies of Colorado. Why? And what was to stop someone from wandering in and stealing this gorgeous furniture or the absent receptionist’s computer? There had to be a hidden camera and a security man watching a closed-circuit TV; the camera was probably masked in a lighting fixture.

I tried the door behind the desk: locked. I tried the other door. This one was unlocked. The hinge creaked as the door swung open, and the scent of fresh-cut lumber— an aroma I adore—greeted me. I called out, “Hello? Is anyone here?”

No answer.

Judging from the L-shape floor plan of this freestanding building, it was possible that the locked door behind the receptionist desk led to a private residence. As I entered this second, enormous room, I was abruptly pulled from nineteenth-century-America gentility and into a massive modern-day workshop. There were at least a dozen lathes, power saws, and other woodworking equipment. The stations were all shut down and deserted, but ahead of me was a half wall of cinder blocks with sliding glass partitions above the cinder blocks, and the fluorescent ceiling lights were all on.

As I made my way along an alley—so designated with yellow tape on the concrete floor—I could see into the office. A large man of Asian descent seated there saw me, too, and he gestured through the glass for me to come to the door. When I stepped into the office, he rose. I stifled a gasp. The man was enormous. It was difficult for me to guess his age, somewhere between forty and sixty, but in his youth, he definitely could have been a sumo wrestler. He said to me in careful diction, “May I help you?”

“I’m looking for George Wong.”

“You found him. May I help you?” he repeated.

“I hope so. I wanted to discuss a mutual former client of ours. A woman named Laura Smith.”

His expression did not change; no sign of recognition flickered in his dark eyes. “Yes?” he asked mildly.

“Um . . . my name is Erin Gilbert.”

He initiated a handshake but said nothing, and my own hand had never felt so small. Afterward, he looked at me expectantly.

“May I sit down?” I asked.

“Yes.”

We both took a seat. His was a substantial gray desk chair befitting his large frame, but mine was chrome and molded blue plastic, a style found in many school cafeterias. I suddenly realized this powerful-looking stranger and I might be the only two people in the building, way out in the middle of nowhere. Suddenly I wished I’d paid a little more attention to John’s suggestion that I notify the police that this was a person they may want to interview, and stay out of their way myself. Really, though, what was George Wong going to do? Attack me just for asking him a few questions? That’d be one heck of a bad way to build up a client base. And even though we were off the beaten path, passing motorists would surely see my Interiors by Gilbert van, parked right near his unlocked Finest Furnishings door, where customers could enter at any given moment.

“I’m an interior designer,” I began. “Five months ago, Laura Smith hired me to help decorate her home in expensive antiques. I visited her house again yesterday. That’s when I discovered that all the wonderful pieces I’d purchased on her behalf had been replaced with reproductions.”

“Yes?”

“I’ve since learned that those reproductions were supplied by your company.”

“Yes?”

His laconic queries were making me feel more ridiculous by the moment, but I soldiered on. “I was wondering if you could tell me anything about how that came to pass.”

He regarded me impassively, and I desperately tried to formulate a reasonable response to give if he asked me why I was asking. Keeping his hands pressed flat on the surface of his desk, he said, “Miss Smith asked me to duplicate her antiques as close as possible to the originals. She sent me digital photographs, and I sent pictures of my products back to her. I visited her house to see the furniture for myself only one time. We arranged to have her purchases delivered. She paid her bill.”

He stopped, so I could only assume he felt that was all he had to say on the subject. I blundered on, “Did you hear that she was murdered last night?”

“No.”

The news of her murder—if it
was
news—seemed to leave him untouched. He continued to hold my gaze. Now I felt totally idiotic. The man was definitely skilled at giving nothing away. I, on the other hand, was clearly no Miss Marple. I heard myself babbling, “I’m sure it’s unrelated, but the whole business of the duplicated antiques was so puzzling to me that I wanted to find out what was going on.”

“Yes?”

I squirmed in my prepubescent plastic chair. “Didn’t
you
find it . . . puzzling?”

“It is not my job to ask why customers want the products that they purchase from me.”

“Of course not, but still . . . didn’t it seem odd? Have you ever had a customer ask you to duplicate their furniture before?”

“Miss Smith told me that she’d decided to keep the antiques locked away and sell them again in another ten years when they were even more valuable. Many people make a profit by reselling antiques.”

“True, but not many people duplicate nearly every stick of furniture that they own.”

He said nothing, merely sat there meeting my gaze, his palms still pressed flat on either side of his leather desk pad.

I cleared my throat, briefly mulling over the notion of pointing at the dingy, barren wall behind him and shrieking, “Oh, my God! What
is
that?” and bolting from the room when he turned. Instead, I replied, “One of my thoughts when I saw what she’d done was that she might have intended an insurance fraud . . . to burn down the house and then to sell off the antiques.”

“Yes?”

I stared at his face, blank as an unadorned wall. Well, this little interview was not exactly turning into a Barbara Walters–style exposé. Then again, it couldn’t get any worse. “Did you get to know Laura at all?”

“She was my customer.”

“Was she a repeat customer?”

“Repeat?”

“Was this the second or third time that she bought furniture through your company?”

“No. Only the one time.” He smiled. His expression reminded me of a dog baring its teeth before it attacks. “Is there anything else, Miss Gilbert?”

“No.” I got to my feet. “Thank you for your time, Mr. Wong.”

I headed for the door.

“It was nice to meet you, Miss Gilbert. Say hello to John Norton for me.”

I froze, my heart in my throat. Telling myself to stay calm, I turned and asked, “You know John?”

He nodded. With his chilling grin, he replied, “John Norton’s a repeat customer.”

“And how did you know that
I
know him?”

“He said your name the last time he was here.”

“When was that?” I tried to sound casual.

He flipped the pages of his desk calendar. “January. How time flies, as they say. Yes?”

I forced a smile. “It sure does. Nice meeting you, Mr. Wong.”

“Yes, Miss Gilbert. And be sure to tell Mr. Norton that I said hello.”

“I will. Bye.” I let myself out of his office and crossed the cavernous room and forced myself to maintain a casual pace, certain that he was watching me through the glass.

John and I hadn’t even met each other in January.

Chapter 11

Nothing establishes ambience faster than the way a room smells. For pet owners and the occasional less-than-vigilant cook, potpourri can cover a multitude of sins. After all, sometimes the nose only thinks it knows.

—Audrey Munroe

My stomach was still churning from anxiety by the time I arrived home. As I slipped through the French doors, I grimaced at the sight of the parlor, still in its future-square-dance motif, with the furniture rimming the walls and the center of the room bare. A lovely, sweet scent in the air distracted me from the visual chaos, however, and I followed my nose to the kitchen. There, Audrey was standing at the island and concocting a potpourri blend. She tended to have too much energy to spend much time sitting, which must have suited her well in her ballerina days.

The potpourri was in various stages of production—from fresh ingredients to final results. Arranged on her glorious black granite countertop were fresh-cut flowers yet to be sorted or dried, dried flowers with unpicked buds, ingredients to size that were yet to be measured, and blends in dozens of half-full jars that must have already been suitably aged.

“Oh, good,” she said as she glanced up at me standing in the doorway.“A fresh pair of nostrils.”

“Not the usual greeting after a rough day at the office. But I gather you want me to help you rate the aromas?”

“Good deduction. It’s the subject of tomorrow’s segment. And we’re having fish tonight, so the potpourri is doing double duty.” She winked at me. “Pull up a chair and prepare to breathe deeply.”

I grinned in spite of myself. At times like this, when Audrey’s charm and her fascinating domestic projects allowed me a respite from my troubles, my good fortune at living in her home felt like nothing less than a gift from God. For the time being at least, my feeling of abject humiliation over my exchange with George Wong was forgotten. I’d called the Northridge lead detective and told him about Wong, but our conversation had made me feel even more like a dingbat.That, too, I decided, was now behind me.

“Okay,” I said, eagerly perching on the elegant bar stool beside her at the kitchen island. “What’s on the olfactory menu?”

“The completed concoctions are categorized according to the room they’re to be placed in.” She paused and grimaced. As if in a personal aside, she muttered,“I’m going to have to make a mental note not to say‘categorized completed concoctions’during my show.I’ll sound like I’m coughing up a hair ball.” She waved her hand over three sealed jars. “This first group, nearest you, is for closets. They’re your basic walk-in-the-forest aromas . . . heavy on the pine boughs and cedar chips . . . using your more powerful crushed leaves and essential oils.”

“Yep,” I joshed her,“those oils are essential, all right.” She gave me her patient smile. “Actually, the essential ingredient in potpourri is the fixative to capture and retain the aromas. Otherwise you’ll find yourself needing to replenish the stuff as fast as you can make it.”

She waved her hand over the next set of three jars.“In the middle here are ingredients for sachets . . . to be used in bedrooms—the relaxing lavenders and sleep-conducive scents, the rosebuds and petals, the—”

I scanned the entire array before me and interrupted, “You collected this many flowers just from your garden?”

“Florist shops. I drive around town and ask for their discards, then I dry them.” She indicated a third collection of potpourris. “What I’m working on right now is the final blend in the kitchen category of potpourri, which for obvious reasons leans more toward fruit peels and spices. And lastly, on the far side of the counter, we have our public-spaces scents. These are designed to lightly enhance the air, never to overwhelm. Your job, Erin, is to rank the blends within each category.”