False Premises (32 page)

Puffing out his chest like an oversized cookie jar, Henry boomed, “George, this here’s my new lady friend, Audrey Munroe.” Making the introduction in the reverse order for proper etiquette, he continued, “Audrey, this here is my new business partner, George Wong.”

Though Audrey was sure to have noticed the breach, she replied politely, “How do you do, Mr. Wong?”

He not only rose but bowed, deeply. “Just fine, thank you, ma’am.”

She gave him a small curtsy, obviously delighted. “Please call me Audrey.”

“Audrey,” he agreed with a nod. He grabbed an empty chair from the adjacent table and held it for her as she sat down, then reclaimed his own seat. Henry, meanwhile, remained seated, guzzling his beer.
Yet another area where
sessions with Robert hadn’t done much good. Henry might
as well slip himself into the nearest toaster where Audrey
was concerned.

Sullivan slowly angled himself back down into his chair. Audrey looked at Steve’s cast and, feigning surprise, said, “My goodness. What happened to your leg?”

“Crashed through my staircase,” Henry answered for him, and shook his head. “Y ’all sure have been goin’ through hell on this earth, ever since y’all started working for me. Steve’s only got the one good leg now. Two people y’all once knew have croaked. It’s just downright eerie. Makes you wonder if you two are cursed, doesn’t it?” He seemed to think his insulting observations were humorous and laughed heartily.

At the thought that I might now be trapped into prolonged socializing with the man, I sprang to my feet. “Audrey, can I have a word with you?”

“Certainly, dear.” She stood up and grabbed my elbow, saying to the men, “We’re going to the powder room. We’ll be right back.”

“Typical,” Henry remarked, waggling his thumb in our direction. “Notice how womenfolk always got to go to the toilet together? Like they’re ’fraid to go anyplace by themselves.”

Although a couple of choice comebacks occurred to me, I waited to allow Audrey to do the honors. When she not only held her tongue but patted Henry benevolently on the shoulder, I knew for certain she was, once again, feeling that she needed to protect me.

The moment the restroom door swung shut behind us, I exclaimed, “Okay, Audrey. What are you trying to pull?”

She gazed at herself in the mirror and began to reapply her blusher before answering, “Well, my dear, if
you
can play amateur sleuth, so can I. I plan to watch how he handles his steak knife.”

“You’re not serious! You’re going to accuse him of
murder
if he cuts his meat with too much flourish?”

She snapped her cosmetic case shut. “I want to see how he behaves around you. It occurred to me that if Henry’s the killer,
you’re
the one who’s in jeopardy. When it comes to women my age—sixty-five and subtracting— he’s used to his late wife’s behavior. She was apparently of the cater-to-your-husband’s-enormous-ego ilk. Henry hasn’t figured out yet that men his age need wives more than women my age need husbands.”

“What if the knife in the door was actually meant for
you
?”

She arched her eyebrow. “We have the sabotaged stair and the poisoned picture frame to indicate that
you
were the target.”

“True. And not especially comforting, I might add.”

“Come along, Erin. Let’s see how the broth is coming along, once we stir the pot.”

“Stir the pot?” I echoed in alarm, but she was not to be delayed as she sailed across the room, back to our table.

The moment we sat down, she announced, “Crestview is all abuzz with talk of these murders.” She fixed her eyes on Henry. “Henry, you knew Laura Smith a decade ago, from what I understand.”

He squared his shoulders and shot me a withering glare.

Audrey reached over and patted his hand. “Erin and I do talk to each other, after all, dear.”

He shrugged, chuckled, and replied, “I had some real unpleasant dealings with Miss Smith when she set me up for blackmail that would have destroyed my poor, poor late wife.” Interesting: he’d dropped the phony Texan accent. “I paid her off to spare my dear wife any pain. But that’s all long past, Audrey. I never heard from Miss Smith again, and she had nothing on me, now that I’m a widower.” He wiggled his eyebrows at Audrey, leaning closer. “Besides, I’m a changed man,” he said. “Laura taught me a valuable lesson. I’ve never cheated since and never will.”

Perhaps to move the spotlight off himself, Henry shifted his attention to his new partner and asked, “She didn’t try anything like that on you and
Robert,
did she, George?”

“Pardon?” Wong said, not successfully hiding his alarm—a very rare show of emotion from the large, unflappable man.

Henry continued, “Robert Pembrook said the three of you knew one another . . . you, Robert, and Laura. When you were all in Chicago, ten-plus years ago.”

George said evenly, “You must have misunderstood. Till the other day, Robert and I had barely spoken in thirty years.”

“But Robert told me privately that he’d fixed you and Laura up on a practice date, back when he was teaching her how to relate to men,” Henry persisted, frowning.

Wong gave him his patented teeth-baring attack-dog smile. “Robert was pulling your leg.”

“But
you
also told me you started your business in Chicago and . . .” He let his voice fade as he studied George’s expression. “My mistake.
You
would know, after all.” Donning his Texan accent once more, he said, “As I was tellin’ y’all earlier, Audrey, I got us a prime slice of real estate, just a block down from Paprika’s.”

“And as
I
was about to mention,” Wong interjected, “I have been thinking that Wong Furnishings might be a better name than Dwight and Wong. It would be more dignified.”

“But . . . you lose the pun that way.”

“Yes?”

Henry gaped at him, then began in a firm voice, “I’m your full partner, and I really prefer—”

“I have the option of making you my silent partner. I think that would be best, for the sake of the business.”

“But . . . Hammerin’ Hank
isn’t
the silent type,” he protested. “
I’m
the big man around town. I got the name recognition. I got the connections.”

George said, “We’ll continue the discussion sometime when we won’t be boring your lady friend.” He rose and bowed graciously to my landlady. “It was nice meeting you, Audrey. I will leave you all to your evening now. Good night.”

The waitress arrived moments later and asked if we wanted a second round. Henry quickly replied, “Audrey and me were fixin’ to rassle up a nice, thick steak and have dinner. Lemme buy you all dinner, too. It’s the least I owe you, after all the challenges you’ve been through fixin’ up my place. What do you say?”

Sullivan looked at me and said, “It’s up to Erin.”

“Actually, I’m pretty tired and would like to”— I got a swift kick in the shin from Audrey’s direction—“call it a night, just as soon as I’ve had dinner.”

It did seem ungracious of me to leave her stuck alone with Yammerin’ Yank like this. Even though she’d brought it on herself.

By wolfing down my dinner and leaving at the earliest
opportunity, I managed to beat Audrey home. Though she’d shot me a glare as I made my excuses for having to eat and run, she didn’t kick me again. Sullivan, obviously every bit as eager to leave Henry’s company, had scarfed down the last of his steak and offered to walk me to my car, and we actually had a good laugh at Henry’s expense about our hasty exit.

But just as I headed for Audrey’s yummy sofa to await her return, the phone rang with the two double-short rings that indicated it was a call placed after hours to my office. I answered, “Interiors by Gilbert. Erin speaking.”

“Erin, hi. It’s Dave Holland.”

I instantly tensed. Dave hadn’t contacted me before. When working on his house, it had always been Laura who called. “Hi, Dave.”

“Hey. I wanted to touch base . . . and to tell you I’m sorry about that nonsense at Paprika’s. It’s just a lot of bad blood between Hannah and me, and I let her get under my skin every time.”

“I understand, Dave. It’s okay.”

“Good. I was wondering. When all this first started, you said you’d appraise the junk in my house for me. Are you still willing to do that? I’ve decided I’m probably just going to try to sell it back to the guy who made it. I don’t want to get ripped off completely, though.”

I shut my eyes and cursed in silence. I really did
not
want to put myself into an adversarial role with George Wong. “Did you find out who made the furniture?”

“Yeah. The name showed up on my Visa statement. Guy’s name is Wong. I already talked to him. He’s coming Monday afternoon to make me a formal offer. Says it’s only going to be twenty cents on the dollar, but I’m willing to take a big loss to get everything out of here.”

“I can imagine how you feel.”
Talk about owning furniture that carried negative associations.

“Yeah. I’ve got the salvaged furniture from the storage unit, too, and some of it’s fine. I was hoping you’d take a look at everything, help me get a handle on what it’s worth . . . what I should keep and what I should maybe sell to Mr. Wong.”

“Okay.”

“But there’s this one chest that’s new. I mean, new to me. It wasn’t here when I left for Atlanta. And it’s kind of nice. Did you order a chest for Laura just before she . . .” He hesitated and amended the question to “. . . after I left town?”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Huh. It looks to me like it’s a nice piece, and I think it’s old.”

“Can you describe it to me?”

“It’s got all these, like, carvings and little pieces of wood in it, like a parquet floor?”

“An inlay?”

“Yeah. And it looks like a big ol’ cedar chest except for that. And there’s all these Chinese symbols. Then there’s this hidden drawer. I wouldn’t have even found the drawer, except it was left open an inch.”

“Sounds like a Chinese wedding chest.” Something was tugging at my memory.

“It’s in the back bedroom. I can’t figure out why Laura would have hidden something that nice in a room where nobody’s likely to ever see the thing.”

“That’s puzzling, all right. She might have stashed it in an underutilized room if she wasn’t sure she wanted to keep it.” As soon as the statement left my lips, I knew it was nonsense. Although that was generally true of furniture buyers, Laura hadn’t been like most people; the woman had been utterly certain about every little stick of furniture she bought.

Curious to see the chest and thinking that I could make an excuse and have Linda accompany me for protection, I made arrangements with Dave to arrive early on Monday afternoon, an hour before George Wong was scheduled to meet with him.

The moment I hung up the phone, it hit me—a Chinese wedding chest. That was how George Wong had been smuggled into this country as a child. The unfaded rectangle on Wong’s wallpaper had been the right size for a chest.

But what would Laura Smith want with a chest that resembled something George Wong had once been a stowaway inside?

After mulling over the question, I snatched up the phone and called Linda Delgardio.

Chapter 22

There is an undeniable appeal in owning a fine antique. Maybe it’s simply due to the knowledge that we can behold something that was here before us and will exist after we’re gone. Antiques makes us feel a part of history, somehow.

—Audrey Munroe

“So, there you are.” Audrey peered into my eyes as she waltzed through the kitchen door. I’d been pacing in the kitchen ever since ending my conversation with Linda. “I, too, finally escaped from that obnoxious windbag. That was a less than enjoyable evening, but we’re both still alive and well. If older. Much, much older. But alive and well.” She arched an eyebrow. “I was impressed with how quickly you can eat and how fast your Mr. Sullivan can walk in his cast when bolting from a blowhard dinner companion.”

“I apologize, Audrey. That was rude of me.”