Fatal Feng Shui (11 page)

The moment we were safely away from the house, I said, “Things are way too strained between David and us. I can’t imagine how we can keep working with him.”

“Yeah. Plus I’m thinking Ang Chung is crossing our names off his Christmas card list, right about now.”

I tried to brake for the yellow light, but nothing happened. I gasped and veered around the car ahead of me to make a hair-raising right turn. I pumped the brakes wildly. Nothing!

“Jeez, Gilbert! Slow down!”

“I’m
trying
to!” I pulled on the emergency brake. Still nothing! There was no pressure there whatsoever! It felt like I’d just adjusted the windshield visor, for all the effect that it had on our speed.

“Oh, God! Steve! The brakes are out!”

chapter 12

S
omehow I had to get away from traffic. The wheels
squealed as I made a right turn. “We’ve got to find a ditch!”

“Shift into low gear!” Sullivan demanded. He grabbed the steering wheel.

“Let go! I can steer! I just can’t
stop!
”

We were speeding toward a clot of cars. We both started cursing.

“Turn! Field!” He pointed across the oncoming lane of traffic. A car was heading toward us. I didn’t have time to wait for it to pass. I jerked the wheel. That car’s brakes screamed, and the driver leaned on the horn. We barely missed colliding. An instant later we all but flew over a ditch and crashed through a barbed-wire fence. I flattened a flimsy metal post in the process.

We bounced across the bumps and ruts in the old corn field at a teeth-breaking pace. A copse of Russian olive trees was up ahead, then a farmhouse.

“Get down!” Sullivan shouted. I ignored him. He again grabbed the wheel and cranked it toward him. We made a sharp turn in the soggy field. He was sending us back toward the intersection!

“What the—”

“I’m trying to stop us on the bank of the damn ditch!”

I screamed as the van started to tip. Steve cursed repeatedly. The van righted itself. We crashed through the barbed-wire fence a second time. All that separated us from traffic was a line of saplings alongside an irrigation ditch.

“The bank’s not steep enough! Keep us off the road!” I cried.

He aimed us directly at the trees. Sullivan pulled me toward him to shield me. A moment later the windshield shattered. The airbags inflated. One hit my forehead with the force of a solid right cross.

Seconds later, the airbags sank away. Mercifully, we’d come to a complete stop.

“Erin. Are you all right?” Sullivan asked.

“I think so. You?”

“Fine.”

I had a vision of the car catching fire, which always seemed to happen in Hollywood movies. I tried to get out. “My door’s stuck.”

Steve climbed out and dashed to my side of the van. He easily opened my door and took my hand to help me down. Our eyes met as I stepped onto the ground in front of him. He pulled me into a hug. I buried my face against his chest. I could hear and feel his heart pounding.

“Is everybody okay?” a man was calling from the road.

Sullivan abruptly ended our embrace and stepped back, as if embarrassed and anxious to get away from me. Affronted, I turned toward the voice. A celery-green SUV had pulled over. “We’re fine,” Sullivan said. “Our brakes failed.”

“I’ve got nine-one-one on the line,” the woman beside the driver said, waving her cell phone.

I glanced at my van. The windshield was cracked, and the bumper was bound to be badly damaged; I couldn’t see it from this angle.

“You sure you’re okay?” Sullivan asked me again.

“I’m doing a lot better than my van is.” At my mention of the van, I remembered something: When we’d left the Youngs’ house, I’d stepped over a puddle, which appeared to have spread from underneath my vehicle. Now that I thought back, I hadn’t needed to avoid any puddles while getting
out
of my van.

“This was no accident, Steve. Somebody drained my brake fluid.”

A pair of traffic patrol officers arrived and took notes as we recounted the incident to them. They helped us to contact an auto body shop, which sent a tow truck. The patrol officers waited with us as the paunchy, grizzled truck operator hooked my vehicle onto his. He was staring underneath the chassis of my van, and he called the officers over to see for themselves. The moment the officers had slipped into their car, I said to the tow-truck driver, “The brake line was cut, wasn’t it?”

“Yep. Cut through, clean as a whistle.”

“I told you so!” I promptly told Sullivan. “Somebody tried to kill us!”

“Might not have been after
both
of us,” he intoned. “Since it’s your van,
you
were the likely target.”

“Maybe so, but the passenger side isn’t known as the death seat for nothing.”

“Which I came uncomfortably close to discovering,” he muttered, staring past my shoulder at the road. Linda and her partner were walking toward us. They must have intercepted a call from the patrolmen.

After a few minutes of deliberation, Sullivan and I found ourselves in the back seat of Linda’s patrol car as we followed the tow truck. Linda listened to me while her partner “Manny”—Officer Mansfield—drove. I repeated what the tow-truck driver had said about my brake line having been cut. She asked, “How long would you say that the Youngs were out of sight, from the time you arrived to when you left?”

Sullivan and I exchanged glances. “Half an hour, maybe?” he guessed with a shrug.

“At least twenty minutes, for sure.”

“And were they gone separately, or together?”

“Separately,” I answered. “It was like they were on a tag team for a while. One would leave the room when the other arrived.”

Sullivan added, “But neither of them was there when we were in back, talking to David Lewis.”

“The contractor,” Linda muttered as she jotted something down. “So could
he
have slipped away long enough to tamper with your brakes?”

“Easily,” I answered with a nod. “All the carpenters are mostly working in back of the house today. And Ang Chung arrived at some point.”

“Plus Pate Hamlin seems to be home more often than not,” Sullivan said. “And he’s right across the street.”

“He works out of his home office, so of course he’s there.” I felt a little annoyed at how eagerly Sullivan seemed to throw Pate’s name into the circle of suspects. “For all we know, Rebecca Berringer could have spotted my van, done the deed, then left.”

“So could Pate’s ex-wife.”

I frowned. “That’s a stretch. Yesterday was the only time I’ve seen Tracy at the house.”

“But it’s still possible,” Sullivan countered.

Linda was flipping back through her notes, no doubt to reference Tracy Osgood. It felt as though Sullivan had offered her up to the investigators to protect Rebecca. “Sure. And it’s
also
possible that a perfect stranger could have slashed my brake line. But there’s a certain
lack of motive
where either Tracy Osgood or a stranger is concerned.”

“Anyone else you can think of?” Linda intervened, before we could start squabbling. “We’ll talk to all the workmen, too, of course. Have you had any unpleasant encounters with one of them?”

“No,” we said in unison.

“Did Taylor Duncan have troubles with anyone on the crew?”

“Not that I know of,” I replied. “Not counting his prickly relationship with his boss, David Lewis. They were all at his funeral yesterday, though, and spoke highly of Taylor afterward.”

She nodded and said nothing.

“By the way. Detective O’Reilly hasn’t said a word to me lately, though I told him I wanted to know the results of Taylor’s autopsy.”

Linda kept her face impassive, but I thought I saw a flicker of annoyance in her eyes. “He must have forgotten to call you. The tox screens were all negative. No drugs or alcohol whatsoever were in his system.”

I settled on a white Saturn sedan as my temporary
replacement for the van. Sullivan joked that my first order of business should be getting an enormous magnet to stick on the car door that read
Sullivan & Gilbert Designs
. He volunteered to handle the remainder of our appointments for the evening, which I gladly accepted, then headed home.

Some aches and pains in numerous parts of my body were starting to make themselves known as I made my way up the slate walkway. Despite my world weariness—or perhaps because of it—the approach to the house looked extra lovely and welcoming, like a Hallmark housewarming card. The darkening sky formed a striking indigo background for Audrey’s regal stone house. I marveled at how the yellow glow through the transom and sidelights from the crystal chandelier beckoned. The crisp, pine-scented air mingled gently with warm lavender and eucalyptus scent as I stepped over the threshold into the picture-perfect foyer.

Through the French doors, I could see Audrey pacing in the parlor. That was not a good sign. She’d quite possibly reached the limit of her nurturing skills over my loss, and this evening was going to be All About Audrey. It would be wise for me to wait my turn to tell her about my car accident.

She faced me the moment I opened the door. “Erin, I’m in real trouble here. I need your help.”

“Why? What’s wrong?” Hildi, meanwhile, meowed a greeting from her perch on the sofa.

“It’s that dreadful Rebecca Berringer’s fault. Or at least her hyperactive publicist’s.”

I clucked in an advanced show of sympathy and settled into the comfy Ultrasuede cushion beside Hildi. I stroked her soft, black fur. She rumbled with a contented purr.

“They’ve been advertising Rebecca’s show everywhere,” Audrey continued. “The
Sentinel,
the
Post,
the
News,
the sides of buses, magazines, store windows…you name a large, vertical surface in this town, and Rebecca’s face is on it. My numbers are dropping. The station says that’s because her show is hipper and fresher than mine. Which, by the way, is their way of tactfully pointing out that she’s forty years younger than I am.”

“But you’re the one she’s copying. You’re the Domestic Bliss Goddess herself. There’s no way she can overtake your loyal audience and your credibility.”

“True, but let’s recap, shall we? Forty years younger than me. A
television
show. She’s got the higher percentage of eighteen-to-twenty-eight-year-olds. That’s the market everyone wants. It has the most clout because of its high percentage of disposable income. The advertisers consider it their bread and butter.”

“But for a show about interior design, airing at nine in the morning, your and Rebecca’s audience is basically the same as Martha Stewart’s. And she’s
your
age.” More or less. Lately Audrey had vowed to assign herself negative numbers for her birthdays, so she was supposedly getting younger with each passing year.

Audrey put her hands on her hips and lifted her chin. “Be that as it may, my numbers are dropping, Erin, and either I get them up or the station drops
me
.”

“Uh-oh,” I muttered, now certain that I knew where this conversation was heading.

“I have to bring in younger, fresher guests. I need you to get over your silly TV phobia, Erin, and do a segment on the show. Immediately.”

I had fought off this request mightily ever since we’d first met. One glance at her face told me that this was her Waterloo. (Or was that her Alamo? I meant whichever battle was shorthand for
I won’t take no for an answer.
Sadly, my knowledge of history began and ended with architecture and furniture periods.)

“Okay, Audrey. If it’s that important to you, I’ll do my best,” I promised. “But let’s please start me out with as short a segment as possible. That way, if my stage fright forces me into a state of shock, your viewers will only have to stare at your catatonic guest for a couple of minutes. You can wheel me out of there afterward during a commercial break.”

“Fine. I’ll put you on with Chef Michael, who’s always popular. He agreed to bring along a feng shui expert that Shannon knows. I’m sure he’ll be a big hit as well.”

I grimaced. “Ang Chung?”

“Yes. Why the face? Doesn’t the man speak English, or something?”

“Perfectly. He’s an American. He doesn’t seem to have any Asian whatsoever in him. I think he changed his name when he started practicing feng shui because it was good for business.”

“You don’t sound fond of him.”

“I’m not. I think he might have killed Taylor.”

“That’s a problem. Well. Murderer or no, it’s too late to change my guests around for tomorrow’s taping. I’ve got everything confirmed already with the producers.”

“Tomorrow!?”
I shot to my feet, Hildi emitting a
rr-r-r
of protest. “You scheduled me for
tomorrow
? Before you even
talked
to me about it?”

“I knew I’d be able to count on you when the chips were down. Which they are now.”

“I just hope I don’t lay an egg. Heaven knows Rebecca Berringer is far from one of my favorite people. I’d love to see your show outshine hers and drive her back into the B-leagues, where she belongs.”

Audrey grinned at me. “There’s the spirit! So let’s sit down and discuss what your topic will be for tomorrow.”

Sullivan okayed my forcing him to cover for me yet
again. That was my last hope for bailing out on Audrey. The next morning I rode down to the TV studio with her. Ang was in the greenroom when I arrived. He was wearing all black silk, but his Nehru jacket was an upgrade from the usual one. Audrey’s greenroom was literally that; she’d requested that the walls here be painted a lovely mint green. Ang did a double take as I entered. He studied my features as I took a seat in the exquisite over-stuffed beige jacquard chair across from him.

“Erin? Are you all right?”

I tried to force a smile, but felt too nauseated to be successful. “I guess they call it the greenroom because the future TV people can get so nervous that they turn green.”