Fatal Feng Shui (12 page)

Ang arched an eyebrow. “You’re nervous? You should put yourself in the southwest corner and breathe in the winds of change.”

I oriented myself mentally and realized I was sitting near the north wall. “I don’t feel like moving at the moment.”

“That’s a mistake. Feng shui should never be dismissed out of hand.”

“I use intuitive feng shui myself in my designs, Ang. But I don’t want to be breathing in any winds just now. I’m already feeling blown away by my stage fright.”

He chuckled. “You poor thing. Wish I could help. I’d suggest that you allow me to guide you in some meditations, but I’m next on camera.”

Just then, Audrey’s assistant came in—a rail-thin young thing who seemed overcaffeinated—and informed Ang that they were “ready for him.” The wording gave me an image of an execution chamber being prepared for us, and I nearly fainted.

On his way to the door, Ang patted me on top of my head as though I were a cocker spaniel. “As they say in show biz, break a leg. And reconsider your cavalier attitude about feng shui. You’re up right after me, and you’re running out of time to pull yourself together.”

His smug attitude was intolerable. I snarled at him, “I like your new jacket. You lost a button from your other one, didn’t you?”

“No. Why?”

“I found one that looked like it came from your black robe. In the Youngs’ attic. Right after the fire. I gave it to the police.”

The assistant was now jiggling anxiously. She urged him on with a tight smile. Ang’s dark eyes flashed in anger, but he clenched his jaw and left with her.

Okay, that was mean of me to bring up the button just then. It was also unwise, in general, to prod a potential killer. Figuring it couldn’t hurt, I moved to the southwest corner and breathed deeply. Where Ang Chung was concerned, there was no telling if “winds of change” were truly what I was inhaling, but I could sure smell the cheese danish from the snack tray, and that wasn’t helping my nausea.

I watched on the monitor while Ang lectured the audience in that infuriating calm demeanor of his, demonstrating the nine “rooms” of the “house” in feng shui, and explaining how each can have an effect on a person’s life.

“For example, your next guest is shaking in her boots, she’s so frightened to be out here on stage.”

“Oh, thanks for bringing that up in front of the audience!” I grumbled to myself. Payback for mentioning giving the button to the police, I supposed.

I turned off the TV and sat there, staring straight ahead. After a minute or two, Michael Young arrived.

“Erin! My God. You look like you’ve been running a marathon. What happened? Food poisoning?”

“No. Stage fright.”

“Really? Can’t relate, to tell you the truth. I just pretend Audrey’s the only one there, and there’s nothing to get nervous about around Audrey.”

“But she’s
not
alone,” I reminded him sourly. “There’s an audience. And a camera.”

Miss Pencil stepped across the threshold. “Are you ready to go, Ms. Gilbert?”

I think my heart stopped. “I…no, I’m not.”

She looked confused. “But…that was just a rhetorical question. You
have
to be ready. Nobody ever says no.”

“They
would
if you asked them the right question,” I babbled, stalling for all I was worth. ‘Do you want to fall flat on your face on stage?’ for example. If you asked
that,
the guests would say no.”

She blinked at me. “You
have
to come with me,” she insisted. “Right now.”

Michael rose. “Erin needs a couple more minutes to compose herself. I’ll go first.”

“But Ms. Munroe just announced that it was going to be the interior designer up next,” she whined.

“The show’s taped anyway, so they can just edit the guest appearances in whatever order they want afterward.”

“Okay, I guess, but…”

I got to my feet. “Thanks anyway, Michael. I’d better get this over with now before I talk myself into going AWOL, which Audrey would never forgive.”

“Tell you what, Erin.” Michael took my elbow. “They film your segment in the quote-unquote living room, and they film mine in the kitchen. We’ll both go onstage at once. If you get nervous, just look at me, and I’ll give you the thumbs-up and beam at you for all I’m worth.”

The assistant was peering at my face and, when we stepped into the hallway, she suggested, “How about a quick visit with the makeup artist?”

I agreed, and the “artist,” who doubled as a camera-woman, dabbed artificial tawny colors onto my face.

By the time I sat down in Audrey’s pseudo living room, I was going through hot flashes and cold chills and could only think that if this had been the Middle Ages, someone would have decided I had the plague and I’d have been dragged off and put out of my misery. Audrey did everything she possibly could to calm me down, and when the assistant asked if there was anything she could get me, I said, “Beta blockers? Valium?”

“Sorry. I can’t give you my prescription meds. It’s illegal. How about some
water
?”

“Could you spike it?”

She raised her eyebrow. “Of course. By ‘water,’ I meant ‘vodka.’ Or would you prefer gin?”

“Never mind. I’ll take the actual water.
Tap
water.”

She trotted away, and I started to worry if “tap water” was a code name for some sort of illegal substance. I never should have joked about pills.

A moment later, the crew turned up the stage lights. I felt like an ant beneath the burning hot ray of a prism. The assistant gave me a dainty cup and saucer for my water. When I tried to take a sip, my hands shook so badly that I sloshed water over the rim. My cup chattering against its saucer sounded as loud as a typewriter.

I dimly realized that Audrey was staring at me as though she’d asked me a question. After a horrifying pause, I mumbled, “Yes, indeed,” figuring I had a fifty-fifty shot at that being a reasonable answer. The flicker of concern across her features and the guffaw backstage from Ang Chung let me know that I’d missed the mark.

“Erin decorated this studio,” Audrey said in an aside to her audience. “Didn’t she do a
fabulous
job?”

There was a nice applause, driven, no doubt by the “applause” light that was flashing. I muttered, “Thank you.”

“Getting back to my question, what are the most common mistakes that homeowners make when they’re decorating their new homes?”

Blank. My God! My mind was a total blank! I was turning into a tawny-painted zombie!

“Other than not hiring you, I mean,” Audrey said, with a wink to the camera.

Still nothing.

“Is it color clashing? Lack of focus? Too much trendiness? Too little attention to detail?”

“Scale can be a big challenge with a new home. The sofa that looked huge in the old apartment can be dwarfed in the new living room, or the table that looks perfect in the showroom can barely fit in your actual dining room.”

“So you recommend that home owners measure everything very carefully?”

“That’s always important, yes. But also, colors can go a long way to fixing the problems in scale and in harmonizing the visuals of the room.” I was sounding as stuffy as a closed casket.

“What do you mean by that? Give us an example.”

With the aplomb of an elephant on roller skates, I trudged on with my answers to her questions. An eternity later, Audrey was thanking me, and I was finally able to leave the stage. There was a commercial break afterward, and Michael promptly gushed, “You did great, Erin.”

“That’s nice of you to say.”

“I’m sure he meant it,” Audrey said, coming backstage to check on me, probably to make sure that I wasn’t trying to hang myself in her greenroom. “You did a fine job.”

“I was shaking like a leaf the whole time!”

“The TV audience won’t notice. They’ll think it was the camera that was shaking.”

“Oh, sure,” I moaned.

Audrey said, “You got off to a rough start, but your information was excellent, and you were charming. The only problem was you shook too much. You’ll do better next time.”

“This was a one-shot, Audrey. There isn’t going to be a next time.”

She gave me a quick squeeze. “Wait for me, dear. We’ll celebrate your appearance on the show with a nice lunch when we get back to Crestview.”

“Celebrate?!”
I squawked.

“You can also look at this as a recovery meal, if you prefer. In any case, it’s a business expense, so you’d be foolish not to take me up on the offer.”

“I’d really rather—”

“Hold that thought. Watch Michael and me do our thing. I’ll be right back.”

Now that I was off camera, the next fifteen minutes of listening to Michael and Audrey’s easy banter was actually great fun. Chef Michael was demonstrating how to make a pasta salad, and they were both so warm and witty that I’d soon forgotten my troubles. Michael said, “I want to take this opportunity to reveal a new invention for the kitchen.”

“I can’t wait!” Audrey cried. Michael gave a grin to the camera as though he expected to cut to a commercial, but Audrey said, “No, I mean that literally. Go ahead and show us right now, Michael.”

He chuckled and drew something out of a canvas shopping bag that he’d carried onstage. “When you’re tired of looking around for a pepper mill for your salad, here’s the perfect solution. It’s a combination salad tongs
and
pepper mill.”

“You’re serious?” Audrey exclaimed.

“Dead serious,” Michael replied, losing his smile. “Let me demonstrate.” With a flourish, he unsnapped the plastic tongs at their pivot point, and then unsnapped the handles from both sides of the tongs. “These simply snap together. You unsnap the spoon side from its handle, and it becomes a shaker for some zesty accoutrement, such as Parmesan cheese or salad spices. You unsnap the handle of the fork and, voilà, you’ve got a pepper mill.” He shook the Parmesan cheese out, he twisted the pepper mill portion, and beamed proudly at Audrey.

She laughed. “That’s wonderful, Michael.” She flashed him her television smile, then glanced at her producer. Sotto voce, she told Michael, “But you’ve got four pieces of plastic that might be coated in salad dressing. You’re going to get that salad dressing all over your fingers as you snap them apart and put them back together, when what you really want to be doing is eating your delicious salad….”

Michael’s face was growing an ominously dark shade of magenta. “But it’s all so handy. You’ve got everything you need to serve your salad in one small utensil.”

“Well, that’s nice, Michael. Except, what if you’ve made a big salad so that everyone can serve themselves? Suppose one guest doesn’t want pepper, and the next guest does? Is each guest going to take apart and then reassemble the salad tongs?”

“It won’t take any more time than passing the salt and pepper does.”

“Which will already be on the table, because you’re
not
going to have a salad tong sitting there throughout the meal.” She laughed again. “Let’s all give a hand to our wonderful Chef Michael-turned-inventor, shall we?” The audience applauded on cue, and she turned back smoothly to the camera. “We’ll be right back after the next commercial.”

“Not
all
of us will be,” Michael growled the instant the red light went out on the camera. He yanked off his apron and threw it down on the counter.

“Oh, dear,” Audrey said, grabbing his arm just as he tried to brush past me. “I didn’t mean to upset you. It’s just that…your invention is stupid. But we all have bad ideas from time to time. Just ask Erin.”

“Pardon?” I said, bewildered.

“Tell him about how I turned the one bathtub in the house into a terrarium.”

Michael put his hands on his hips and glared down at her. “And did a
host
make fun of
you
on TV afterward?”

“Absolutely. Of course,
I
was the host, so I was the butt of my own joke. Which, granted, isn’t the same thing. Again, I apologize, Michael. You should have told me you were going to be promoting an invention of yours on the show. I would have voiced my concerns
then.
But don’t worry…I’ll ask my producer to edit my reaction out of the broadcast. Honestly, Michael. Do you truly think the world needs a combination salad tong/pepper mill?”

Michael stormed off the set.

Audrey was unusually quiet during our lunch at the
restaurant of her choice, which, as it turned out, was the nicest one in Crestview. I finally asked what was wrong. She said, “I think Chef Michael set me up. I can’t believe that he honestly believed in his ridiculous invention. I’ll bet you anything that, after all his years on the show, Chef Michael is going to dump me in favor of Rebecca.”

“You’re probably right.”

“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” she said glumly.

“Well, Rebecca is willing to go the extra mile, after all. She slept with him.”

Audrey shrugged. “He’s attractive. Who’s to say
I
wouldn’t be willing to go that same extra mile?”

“He’s a married man.”

“Oh, that’s right! What was I thinking? Shannon’s his wife. No, I’d never go so far as to be with a married man just to keep him on my show. Regardless of the extra viewers his segments bring me. I don’t believe it! That slime bucket,” she muttered, staring over my shoulder.

“No kidding. Here he is, having an affair, right as he and Shannon are undergoing a big remodel.”

“Not Michael. Your partner. Steve Sullivan.
He’s
cheating on you.
And
on me!”

I turned around and followed her steely glare. Steve Sullivan and Rebecca Berringer had entered the restaurant. She was holding his arm and smiling as he whispered into her ear. They looked like longtime lovers.

chapter 13

S
ullivan’s face fell when he spotted us. With the
maitre d’ leading them right past our table, however, he had no choice but to acknowledge us. He gave us a feeble: “Hey, Gilbert. Hello, Audrey.”

“Well, hello, Mr. Sullivan,” Audrey called with her fakest of smiles. “And Rebecca.”

“Fancy running into you two here,” Rebecca chirped. “Erin, I heard that you’re appearing on Audrey’s show. I’ll be looking forward to watching your performance when it airs.”

“Thanks,” I mumbled, wishing I didn’t have a full afternoon of work ahead of me so that I could order something stronger than iced tea.

She clutched Sullivan’s arm and gazed lovingly up at him. “Our table’s ready.”

As they took their seats a few tables away from ours, the waitress arrived with our entrees. I blurted out, “I’d like a glass of Chablis, please.”

“Make that two,” Audrey told her.

I had a blessedly uneventful weekend. I vowed, no matter
what, to steer clear of anything police investigation-or work-related, and, most importantly, not to waste another precious second of my life thinking about Steve Sullivan. Saturday, Audrey and I spent a glorious afternoon perusing the exquisite showrooms at the Denver Design Center, and we went to an estate sale on Sunday. (Granted, those were still design-related activities, but even on camping trips I spend a portion of my time creating an aesthetically pleasing interior to my tent.)

Monday morning, Sullivan and I pulled into our parking spaces at the same time. We exchanged cool “heys” as we emerged from our respective vehicles. I asked how his weekend was while we walked toward our office building. He replied, “I had a good, laid-back weekend. You?”

What I
heard
, alas, was: “I got laid by Rebecca. You?”

So I ignored the question and asked, “And how was your lunch at the Chez Friday?”

“Good. Yours?”

“Good.”

“Rebecca and I are
not
dating, you know.”

“Right. You’re just sitting at the same table in a restaurant and eating at the same time. And walking arm in arm as you crossed the floor.”

“I guess she
was
being a bit flirtatious. But that’s the way she is. It was just a business lunch.”

“And what kind of business were you partaking in, pray tell?”

“Rebecca wants to convince me to join her on her show.”

I stopped walking abruptly. “You do realize how badly you’d be giving Audrey the shaft if you were to agree to that, don’t you?”

“Sure, but I’m playing along till Taylor’s murder is solved. Rebecca’s the best resource we’ve got if we want to keep track of the prime suspect.”

“And by prime suspect, do you mean her or Pate?” I asked as I brushed past him.

“
Pate
. You suspect
Rebecca?
”

“I think that woman’s capable of doing almost anything to get what she wants. And, by the way, what she wants at the moment is
you.
”

“No way.”

“She told me so herself!”

“If that’s true, I’ll just have to try and resist her considerable charms. While I cleverly ply her for information.”

“You’d better,” I snapped. “Because she could very well have killed my—” I froze and stared at our front entrance, not believing my eyes. The lock was in pieces. The door had been jimmied. “Oh, my God! Somebody’s broken in!”

Sullivan flung open the door and uttered a couple of quite vivid profanities. “Somebody trashed our office!”

I stepped beside him and surveyed the destruction. The desk and file cabinet drawers had been dumped out. All of our personal belongs—our coffee mugs, photos, and bric-a-brac—were now on the floor. Curiously, at first glance at least, nothing had been broken. The sofa cushions had been pulled off and tossed into one corner and the coffee table upended. Our computers had been left running, as if to announce that they’d been searched. “Jeez,” I muttered. “I hope she didn’t figure out our passwords.”

Sullivan’s brow furrowed. “
She?
”

“I…guess that just popped out because we’d been talking about Rebecca. But, yes, that’s who I suspect.”

“Come on! Rebecca’s got too much at stake to do something dumb like this. If she were to get caught, she’d be history. Her TV contract would get canceled, and she’d lose her clients, as well.”

“Maybe she felt she had too much on the line
not
to do it. She figures she has to find whatever evidence I have in my computer.”

“
What
evidence?” he demanded.

“Maybe Taylor had more photographs hidden in a different spot. Ones that were more incriminating. In any case, this has something to do with my brother’s murder. I’m sure of that much.”

Sullivan called the police. When he hung up, he warned me that Detective O’Reilly had said that he’d be the one to come out and investigate.

By the time O’Reilly arrived, a half an hour later, we were anxious to restore a little order to our office. Fortunately, no clients had dropped by in the meantime; we’d had visions of having to say: No, really, this is from a burglary. Our workspace is usually much cleaner than this. O’Reilly, however, promptly tried to convince us that we had to leave it in this state until the crime scene investigators could arrive at some indefinite time, “but before the end of the day, for sure.” We insisted that we couldn’t wait and also needed to take inventory of everything, so he grudgingly allowed us to don gloves and then refile all our papers in the cabinets and desk drawers.

Sullivan and O’Reilly quickly fell into a friendly patter as we worked, but it felt like macho posturing to me. When they finally allowed me to speak, I told the detective that it seemed odd to me that there was so little damage and no “significant” theft. He cut me off mid-sentence and asked me, “Did you have an insignificant theft?”

“Yes. I’m missing one of my billing files. As bills come in, I stick them in one file, and then as I pay them, I stick the receipts in a temporary ‘paid’ file.”

“A temporary file?” Sullivan asked.

“Yeah. Which I use for a couple of months. Till I get the chance to file them.”

“That sounds like a wasted step,” O’Reilly said to him.

“My point exactly,” he replied.

“Be that as it may,” I said sharply, “the file is missing.”

“What would anybody want with your receipts?” O’Reilly asked.

“They didn’t take the receipts. I found
those
on the floor.”

“They just took the
empty
folder?” O’Reilly asked.

“Yes. It’s this drab olive color, like the others. See?” I opened a drawer and lifted one of the files to show him.

O’Reilly gave me an exaggerated solemn nod and made a notation in his pad. “I’ll put out an APB and alert the media.”

Sullivan, the jackass, chuckled. I growled, “Detective O’Reilly, you need to know what was taken, and
that’s
what’s missing!”

“Nothing else? No pens, pencils, paper clips?”

“Not as far as I can tell, no,” I replied through clenched teeth.

He grinned at Sullivan. “Are
you
missing anything? Significant or otherwise?”

“Nope. Not a thing.”

Through a tight jaw, I asked, “Any theories about why someone would break into our office just to steal an empty folder?”

Detective O’Reilly shrugged. “My hunch is it was some teens blowing off steam. Maybe they were clowning around with the folder. Or it was a frat party, having a treasure hunt, and they had to collect a folder marked ‘paid.’”

“A scavenger hunt, you mean? Were there any other break-ins last night?”

“No. Guess it’s more likely that someone cut himself and got blood on your folder…figured we’d run a DNA test and track him down.”

“Oh. So, for that theory to be valid, you’re assuming the culprit is someone who
isn’t
familiar with the Crestview police. Who might mistakenly think that you’d treat this break-in seriously.”

He glared at me with laserlike eyes. With a chill, I realized I’d gone too far. “I assure you, Miss Gilbert, we
are
taking this matter very seriously. And if
you
had wanted us to handle everything by the book, you should have left everything exactly as it was till CSI could arrive.”

Sullivan explained, “We get walk-in customers sometimes. And that would have been lousy for business. Nobody hires interior designers who can’t keep their own office tidy.”

“We’d have put up yellow plastic crime-scene tape,” O’Reilly countered with a shrug.

“That’s not exactly a big draw for potential customers, either,” I muttered.

He scowled at me, then grumbled in Sullivan’s direction, “My fault. I should have insisted. Miss Gilbert here has so many dealings with the police, I tend to cut her slack. Kind of like a repeat-customer’s discount.”

I gritted my teeth to keep my mouth from getting me into deeper trouble.

O’Reilly scanned the room. “You have a cleaning crew come into your office?”

“Every two weeks,” I replied. “They’re scheduled to come in again tonight.”

“Damn. We could get someplace if they’d come Sunday, instead. Got a rough estimate of how many people would have been in the room in the past two weeks?”

Sullivan and I exchanged glances. “Twelve, maybe? We had those reps here last week.”

O’Reilly’s scowl deepened. “The door and most of the furniture’s going to be useless, in that case. We can test for fingerprints on your files, though. Maybe something will show up there. Got to warn you. Procedure’s messy. And we’ll need to boot you out for a couple of hours. I know that won’t sit well with all your…walk-in customers.”

“You should go ahead, just in case,” I said. “As long as you’ve already taken the suspects’ prints.”

“
Suspects
?” he barked at me. “You mean for your brother’s apparent accidental death?”

“My brother was murdered, Detective,” I said firmly.

“Actually, we
do
have some fingerprint evidence. So we’re going to want to pull the prints here, just in case.”

My thoughts raced. There was only one location at my brother’s murder scene in which fingerprints could be significant. “You mean you found someone’s fingerprints on the nail gun?” I asked.

“That information is on a strict need-to-know basis,” O’Reilly snapped. He headed toward the door. “I’ll get CSI down here ASAP.”

My mother called the office later that morning. I immediately
felt a pang of guilt. I hadn’t done a single thing toward finding a marketing representative for Taylor’s workstation design. When I confessed as much to her, she said, “That’s not why I’m calling. But I do have another favor to ask of you.”

“By all means. What do you need?”

“Taylor’s landlord called me. She wanted to know when I could…clean out all of his things so she can rent out the apartment again. I just…can’t bring myself to—”

She broke off, and I knew she was crying. “I’ll do that for you,” I promised. “I’ll go first thing this evening.”

We chatted for a few minutes, then said our good-byes. I’d barely gotten back to work when the pretty little brass bell over our door jingled. I smiled as I waited to greet whoever had opened it. My smile swiftly faded as Rebecca Berringer breezed in. “Oh, good morning, Erin. I was in the neighborhood and thought I’d drop by. Have I missed Steve entirely?”

“’Fraid so. He’s in south Crestview till two. Shall I tell him you dropped by?”

“Yes, please do. I was actually hoping to take him out to lunch. I’ll just have to do it the conventional way and call him up for a date.”

“Apparently so.”

She narrowed her eyes at me, then said, “I was so sorry to hear about how your on-air anxiety attack spoiled your television debut.”

“How did you hear about that?”

“Oh, I have my—” she ran her fingertips tenderly along the edge of Sullivan’s desk “—sources.” She gave me a triumphant grin. “I’d offer you some advice, but I’ve never really been intimidated by large audiences. They say that public speaking is the biggest phobia in America, so you’re in good company.” She chuckled. “My, my, Erin. First you fainted at the sight of blood, then you nearly fainted in front of a TV audience. And people are always assuming
blondes
like me are the weak ones.”

“And what a ridiculous notion
that
is. To assume that hair bleach could wield that kind of power.”

She froze. “Oh, my. The kid gloves have come off in a hurry, haven’t they?”

“I wasn’t aware that either of us was ever wearing them.”

“Don’t underestimate me, Erin. You had your chances with Steve Sullivan, and you didn’t capitalize on them. I’ve no intention of making the same mistake with mine.”

Apparently I’d surpassed my witty-comeback quota. My mind was a complete blank, and I could only watch her sweep triumphantly out the door. My cheeks felt blazing hot and tears of anger stung my eyes. After the door had shut behind her, I said, “Well, la-de-da.” That was never going to earn me a place in
Bartlett’s Familiar Quotations.

I used the speed dial to call Sullivan. Before he could as much as say hello, I demanded, “Did you tell Rebecca about my stage fright on Audrey’s show?”

“What? No!”

“She
implied
that you did!”

“Maybe you misunderstood her.”

“No, I think it’s pretty clear that I’m not the one misunderstanding her. I get where she’s coming from loud and clear. Which is more than I can say about you!”

“About
me
? What did I do? I
told
you I was seeing her casually to try to keep up with Pate’s connection to your brother.”

“You’re so sure you’ve got to keep an eye on Pate. But all the while Pate’s not acting half as suspicious as
she
is. And you can’t see that because you’re too busy being attracted to her!”

“Hey! You’re the one who’s always batting her eyes at Pate!”

“You’re jealous of Pate Hamlin?”

“No. But you’re jealous of Rebecca Berringer!”

“The woman’s a viper! You cannot continue to date that woman! Not if you want to stay business partners with me! If that makes me sound jealous, then so be it!”