Fatal Feng Shui (3 page)

Taylor chortled. “Dude! Are you listening to yourself? This is, like,
nuts
!”

“Taylor, let us handle this, please. All right?”

He gaped at me. “Aw, come on, Erin! Next he’s going to be telling us that we’re all gonna croak because we stuck the Porta Potti on the dragon’s toes!”

The front door opened—thankfully after and not before Taylor’s wisecrack—and Michael emerged, closely followed by Shannon. As they headed toward us, I urged my brother, “Please, just go back to what you were doing. We’ll tell you what changes need to be made later.”

“Fine. No problemo.” With a cocky grin on his face, he nodded at Michael before turning and sauntering away.

Michael paused, and once again put his arm around his wife’s shoulders. The energy and exuberance that he always had on camera, which had made him such a hit with Audrey’s audience, was now held in check. That seemed to be the typical dynamic between him and his wife, which was probably fortunate. Shannon had been so emotional lately that if they’d both responded with equal fervor, we might have been tempted to install thick padding on all their walls.

“So, how’s it going, folks?” he asked with a smile.

“Not well, my friend,” Ang replied. “The addition is all wrong, I’m sorry to say. It’s got to be rebuilt from scratch.”

“Oh, my God!” Shannon shrieked. “We’ve wasted all this time and money!”

Michael groaned and turned to his wife. “We’ve got to stop this remodel right now! It’s going to cost a fortune to redo everything!”

“And
then
what will we do?” Shannon demanded. “Leave it half built? Tear it down to the foundation? We’d be stuck with a big hole in the ground.”

“True,” he replied. “And that’s going to be a lot more dangerous than any feng shui poison arrows that you keep insisting Pate Hamlin’s house is flinging our way.”

“We can solve this, Ang,” Sullivan intervened firmly, before Shannon could answer her husband. “You said it’s only off at that one corner by six inches. We can take down the framing for that corner and move it inward…round off the corner, or install triangular glass bricks so the dragon vein will pass right through them.”

Ang smiled. “I was just about to suggest that. And I can show you how to direct the energy, once it’s inside the house, to maximize its power for the occupants.”

Michael grimaced. “Triangular glass bricks? How much is
that
going to set us back?”

“Oh, honey, but just think about how great that’s going to be! We’ll have a
major
dragon vein, running right through our house!”

“Your profit will increase tenfold from such a wonderful thing,” Ang exclaimed.

“Really? Oh, Ang! Thank you so much!” Shannon rushed over to him to give him a hug. “You’re such a godsend!” She dashed back up to her husband and gave his arm a squeeze. “We don’t have to redo the addition. Isn’t that great?”

“Triangular glass bricks?” he said again, his eyes desperate as he looked at Sullivan and me.

Doing some quick geometry, I said, “As long as they’re at least nine inches long and wide, we should be able to use regular glass blocks. They’ll be clear, so their corners won’t affect the energy lines. We’ll just incorporate that contemporary style into our design.”

“And everybody is happy,” Ang concluded, flashing a smile at Shannon and Michael. “This is what happens when you listen to your Mother Earth.”

“Provided we
also
listen to our budget,” Michael countered evenly.

“We’ll get to work on the alterations,” Sullivan said, “incorporating a glass column at the corner. And maybe we can turn your front room into both a gallery and a living space.”

“Wonderful,” Shannon said. But her attention was once again focused on the roofline across the street. “And let’s hope that David can get the reflective window glass installed for us.”

Ang said good-bye to the Youngs and left. Shannon and Michael went back inside with nary a word to Sullivan and me. As they shut the door, I told him, “Kudos for your remarkable restraint at resisting any
Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
jokes.”

He grinned. “That was only because I can never remember which creature’s doing what.”

“Way to pull us out of the fire with the glass bricks idea. Too bad Shannon gave all the credit to Ang.”

“Yeah. Maybe I should start wearing silk pajamas all the time to get her attention.” He frowned. “You ready to go?”

“In a minute. I need to say good-bye to Taylor.”

He pulled out his cell phone. “Take your time. I’m going to tell David about the glass bricks so he can order them and figure out how to frame around them. We need to make sure Ang can’t claim the foundation has to be made of glass, too. Bet the jerk’s charging by the hour…supposedly supervising every minute of the construction. That way he profits every time he throws a monkey wrench into our plans.”

Sullivan was probably right, I thought as I rounded the house once more. Ang was probably bleeding Michael and Shannon dry by creating all this confusion. Taylor was hard at work but stopped and listened as I explained about the column of glass bricks. “From now on,” I told him, “get everything in writing from David and Ang. Have them make a note on the blueprint, and then get each of them to initial any changes.”

“Yeah, right. I got so much power,
I
can tell
them
to write stuff down.”

“
I’ll
tell them that I’m insisting on that procedure from now on.”

“I don’t need my sister to bail me out.”

“Jeez, Taylor! You complain that you don’t have the authority to fix your problems, yet you don’t want me to use
mine
!”

He grinned at me. “I’m getting your goat already, aren’t I? See? This is why siblings can’t work together.”

I had to laugh, and he did, too.

“Hey, Erin?”

Our eyes met, and a rare flicker of emotion registered on his features before his tough-guy mask slipped back in place. I could swear the emotion I glimpsed looked a lot like fear. My heartbeat quickened.

“Earlier?” Taylor said. “What I said about our needing to stick together? I’m…getting set up.”

“Go on.”

“Last week, I walk into Dave Lewis’s office and tell him all about my past, right? How I’m just out of prison and everything…and I’m willing to start at the bottom. And he says, ‘I need a new foreman.’ Puts me in charge of four carpenters. What does that tell you?”

“That David saw something in you. And he wanted to give you a break.”

He chuckled and shook his head. “Come off it, sis. What planet are
you
living on?”

I didn’t answer. In truth, he had an excellent point. Maybe Shannon was right. Maybe David
was
trying to sabotage this job. But why?

“If something feels suspicious to you, for heaven’s sake, Taylor, just
quit
. You’ve been in too much trouble already. If your instincts are telling you you’re getting into more now, why risk it?”

“You figure it’s easy to find work in a town like Crestview with a criminal record?”

“No, but you could—”

“Forget I said anything,” he snarled. “Just do your thing, and I’ll do mine, and everything will be cool.”

There seemed little point in arguing with him about this right now. We had a dragon’s vein to unsever. “Okay, Taylor. Good seeing you again.”

“Yeah. Say hi to Mom when you see her.”

“You’re probably going to see her before I will.”

He shook his head. “I want to wait till I’ve got some money together. It’d be nice to take my mom out to a fancy restaurant…treat her right for once, you know?”

I was touched and meant to tell him so, but he turned on the noisy table saw before I could reply.

The next morning was a Saturday, but Sullivan and I
were working a half day. While Sullivan was driving us to a prospective client’s house, Taylor called me on my cell phone. “Erin. I managed to get some proof. You know, of what’s really going on.” He sounded tense and almost breathless.

“At Shannon and Michael’s house, you mean?”

“Yeah.”

“What is it?”

“I took some pictures. And some other stuff.”

“No, I mean, what’s really going on there?”

There was a thud like a door slam in the background, and Taylor said stiffly, “Yeah, of course I’ve got lunchtime off. I gotta eat, don’t I? Can you be at your office at noon?”

“Uh, sure. I take it someone’s eavesdropping. We’ve moved into Sullivan’s office, you know. I’m still on Opal, but a block farther east.”

“No problem. I’ll see you then.” The line went dead.

Sullivan glanced over at me. “What was that all about?”

“A weird call from Taylor. He says he has proof about some trouble at the Youngs’ house. He wants to meet me at noon.”

“We were supposed to measure that kitchen in Longmont.” I said nothing, and he sighed. “However. Have tape, will measure. I’ll take care of it.”

“Thanks.”

He sighed again. “Sure wish Duncan wasn’t our foreman. Especially not
there.
Shannon’s not the most easygoing of people.”

“No kidding. But I’ve got to say, he seems to really have matured.”

“Prison probably ages a person pretty quick.”

“I think he really is trying to get his act together now.”

“Good. But don’t go getting all sisterly on me and insist that we use him on a regular basis. There are too many good carpenters out there who
don’t
mouth off to clients.”

“Such as
my
regular contractor’s crew. Which is who we should have hired at Shannon’s. I’d already won the coin flip. Remember?”

He raked his hand through his hair. “If it makes you feel any better,
I
wish we’d hired your regular crew for Shannon’s job, too. Lately, David seems to be burned out. I’m thinking this should be his last gig with us, for a while at least. But he’d lobbied hard for this job, so what could I do?”

“You could have assured him that we’d catch him the next time around…but that we needed someone else on this one.”

Sullivan made no reply.

When Taylor still hadn’t shown up at my office by
twelve-twenty, I scanned my list of “incoming calls,” found Taylor’s, and called that number. It was his cell phone. It quickly switched to his message box, which meant his phone was turned off. I left a message that I was waiting for him as we’d agreed.

By twelve forty-five, however, I was growing concerned. I debated calling Emily to ask if she had a second number for Taylor, but my being worried was enough; I didn’t want to worry her as well. He’d mentioned that he had “lunchtime off,” as if he was at work. But it was Saturday. He must be moonlighting someplace. On the chance he was at Shannon’s house, I called her number. I hung up when the recorder answered.

Not knowing what else to do and increasingly uneasy about Taylor, I drove out to her house. Taylor’s beat-up pickup truck was parked at the curb.

I rang the doorbell. No answer. Every instinct was screaming at me that something was dreadfully wrong. Unfortunately, all too often of late, even my most irrational fears proved to be justified. I rang the doorbell a second time then pounded on the door for extra measure. It swung open under my fist.

I stepped inside, calling “Shannon?” as I did so.

On the floor near the front door, Taylor’s body was sprawled. His head lay in a pool of blood. A nail gun lay beside him. What seemed to be the head of a nail was lodged in my brother’s temple.

I staggered backward onto the porch. Everything went black.

chapter 3

S
omebody was shaking me and calling my name. I
opened my eyes and slowly realized that Rebecca Berringer—Audrey’s and my rival—was bending over me. It was freezing. My head hurt, and I was lying on a really hard surface. Was this a bad dream? Where was I?

“Yes, she seems to be okay,” Rebecca said into her cell phone. She looked pale and anxious. Keeping her blue eyes riveted to mine, she listened, then said firmly, “No, I
won’t
stay on the line.” She dropped her phone back into a compartment in her purse. “That was nine-one-one. My God, Erin! It’s like a scene from a horror movie in there. How did that poor guy manage to do that to himself?”

“Taylor. Oh, my God.” The hideous memory hit me as I struggled to sit upright. I had stumbled out Shannon’s door. After seeing him. And the blood. My poor brother! Poor Emily! This was going to break her heart!

“I just happened to be leaving Pate’s house when I saw you collapse,” Rebecca told me. “I ran over here, and I…saw him lying there, through the doorway.” She shuddered. “I pulled the door closed.”

“The police…”

“I just told you. I called nine-one-one. They’re on the way. You sure you’re okay? It looked like you had a pretty hard landing. You must have fainted.”

I heard the crunch of gravel beneath tire wheels. I tried to stand up, but thought better of it when my vision swam.

“Oh, here he is,” Rebecca said. “That gorgeous partner of yours has arrived.” She clicked her tongue and muttered, “You are
so
lucky, Erin.”

This is one of my luckiest hours, all right
. I blinked back tears.

She raced down the steps toward him. “Oh, wait right there, Steve. Please. You don’t want to see inside. It’s all just too horrible to believe.” She hid her face against his chest.

Rebecca really
was
the world’s biggest flirt. Just on the other side of the door, Taylor lay dead on the floor. He’d told me yesterday that she’d been flirting with him. If she’d had anything to do with his death, I’d kill her! I glared at the back of her blond head.

“Erin? Are you all right?” Sullivan, despite the fact that Rebecca was pressed against him, was peering at me.

I finally managed to get to my feet. “How did you hear?”

“Hear
what
? You weren’t at our office when I got back, and I figured this is where you’d be. What’s going on?”

Rebecca stepped back, proving herself astonishingly capable of standing upright without Sullivan’s support. “That big galoot you’ve got working over here had a fatal accident with a nail gun. Erin found him and the poor thing fainted dead away. I called the police.” She paused, and the first sounds of sirens in the distance could be heard. “Here they come now.”

“Taylor Duncan is my brother.”
And no way was his death an accident!

She spun around and gaped at me. “You’re kidding me!”

“Does it look like I’m kidding?”

“Oh, Erin. Good Lord! He was your brother? I am so, so sorry. No wonder you passed out.”

She gasped and turned to Sullivan. “Oh, dear God. I just thought of something!” She clenched his arm. “The feng shui! The forces are really powerful. It’s not
my
fault, is it? You don’t think I’m responsible for this, do you? I couldn’t have known…I was just following my client’s instructions!”

“You’re worried that your client’s feng shui arrows did this?” Sullivan looked bewildered. “Nobody’s going to die from having a roofline pointed his direction. I mean, come on, Rebecca.”

“No, you’re right. Of course you’re right.”

Two Crestview police cars pulled into the driveway. I was shivering uncontrollably. I leaned against the house to steady myself. The first officer who started toward us did a double take at her. Was it because he’d noticed how pretty she was? Or because he recognized her from her TV show? “Are you Rebecca Berringer?” His awed tone indicated the answer to my questions: both.

“Yes, I am.” She sniffled. “I’m sorry. I’m a little…shaken up. This has been such a shock.”

The officer continued to stare, starstruck, or at least thoroughly dazzled, by her. “Understandable, miss. If you can just come with me, we can sit down together in the squad car, and I’ll get your statement. But you take as long as you need. Don’t try to push yourself too hard, Miss Berringer.”

Never had the police treated me as gently as this officer was treating her. With my luck, it would be Detective O’Reilly who’d appear next and insist upon being the one to grill me. O’Reilly was the single most unpleasant policeman I’d met in Crestview. The second officer called to me, “You okay, ma’am?”

Ma’am?!
“Yeah, thanks. I’m—”

“She fainted,” Rebecca interjected. “You need to take care of her. I’m fine. The man who was killed…it’s her brother.”

“What’s happening?” a male voice called. Pate Hamlin was striding across the street toward us. “Rebecca? You okay?”

“I’m fine, Pate. There’s been a terrible accident. Involving a carpenter.”

“Go back in your house, sir,” the officer said. “We’ll be—”

Pate ignored him. “He gonna be all right?” he asked Rebecca.

“No, he’s dead. I think his name was Duncan.”

“
Taylor
Duncan?”

“Please, sir! We need to clear the scene so we can do our jobs.”

“He’s Erin Gilbert’s brother,” Rebecca told Pate. “And Erin works with Shannon’s designer, Steve Sullivan.”

Another officer sauntered toward us. With a bearing that signaled he was top dog, he barked, “You people need to move away from the house and stand by the patrol cars. Sir,” he thundered at Pate, “go back into your house.”

“Actually, I’ve got to head into town.” Pate pulled a business card out of his pocket. “If you have any questions, you can reach me at this number. But I won’t be much help. I didn’t know anything was wrong till I saw the police cars. Didn’t hear anything, didn’t see anything.”

He trotted away. Ten minutes later, as Sullivan, Rebecca, and I were being ushered away from the door, Pate drove off in a red sports car—a Corvette, I was guessing. A pair of officers entered Shannon’s house.

While I was answering some questions for the officer who’d called me “ma’am,” a tan sedan drove up and parked in the road. I groaned. Detective O’Reilly’s vision locked on mine. His jaw muscles were working. He was no doubt envisioning himself chewing my head off in an icy cold interrogation room. A uniformed policeman emerged from Shannon’s house and spoke quietly with the detective, probably filling him in on the grotesque scene inside. After their conversation, O’Reilly sauntered toward me. “Miss Gilbert. Again. I might have known.”

“Detective O’Reilly.”
Again! I
did
know!

He shook his head. “Unbelievable.”

“Just what I was thinking.”

“You found the body?
Again?
”

“Yes. It was Taylor Duncan. My half brother.”

“Huh. Figures. We’ve had more than our fair share of run-ins with Mr. Duncan.”

“He’d been trying to clean up his act, Detective,” I growled.

“Uh-huh.”

Shannon’s silver Lexus neared the driveway; Michael’s black BMW followed. At the sight of all the emergency vehicles, they both barely pulled over before deserting their cars in the road. “Oh, my God! Erin? What’s going on?” Shannon called.

“Why are the police here? What’s wrong?” Michael rushed up beside his wife and put an arm around her protectively.

“Do you live here, ma’am?” O’Reilly asked.

“Yes. I’m Shannon Dupree Young. And this is my husband, Michael Young. Why are you here? What’s happened?”

“Apparently one of the men working on your, uh, project had an accident. Do you know why there was only one carpenter here?”

“
None
of them were supposed to be here today,” Michael answered. “It’s Saturday. The crew don’t work on weekends.”

“Oh, honey,” Shannon said. “Didn’t I tell you? The foreman asked me yesterday if he could put in some overtime this morning. He wanted to get us back on schedule. I told him yes, because we wouldn’t be here anyway.”

Michael took in this information without comment, then returned his attention back to O’Reilly. “My wife was the keynote speaker at a luncheon at the Royala. It just ended. Shannon, are you saying you just
gave
this man our key?”

“No,” she said petulantly. “I told him the combination to the garage-door opener. Like I did for Gilbert and Sullivan. And David Lewis. Are you sure it was a
carpenter
, Detective? Not a burglar, or something?”

“It was Taylor Duncan. The foreman,” I said. “He was murdered.”

“Oh, dear Lord!” Shannon cried.

“That real big guy, you mean?” Michael asked.

“I need to get your statement, Miss Gilbert.” O’Reilly grabbed my elbow. “Excuse us, Mr. and Mrs. Young.”

“What…do we do now?” Michael asked in bewilderment. “Can we get into our house?”

“No. Talk to one of the officers. They can give you a number for Crestview Victims’ Advocates. They can help get you set up in a hotel for the night.”

Shannon sent a string of protests trailing the detective, but O’Reilly led me away as though he hadn’t heard her. He asked me quietly, “So, let’s hear it: Why were
you
here on a Saturday?”

“Designers work on weekends when that’s what our clients need us to do.”

He cocked an eyebrow as he led me to his sedan. “Okay, but in this case, your clients weren’t even home. Did you come with your brother?”

“No. I was looking for my brother and hoped he might be here.” The police must have pried Sullivan free of Rebecca’s grasp. She was talking to one of the officers in his squad car, while Sullivan and a second policeman stood at the foot of the drive. Sullivan gave me a reassuring smile, but I couldn’t return it.

After what could only be considered a ridiculously
lengthy interrogation, O’Reilly let me go. By then, Steve and Rebecca were sitting next to each other in the back of the van, their legs dangling from the side doorway facing the house. The sight of their too-cozy seating arrangement instantly irked me. Granted, for the sake of our fledgling business, Sullivan and I had vowed to keep our relationship strictly professional. And the man was something of a natural flirt; he was
very
charming, which often worked wonders in winning over new clients. But in
this
case, he was literally flirting with the enemy, and I despised him for it.

They both hopped to their feet as I approached. “Hi, Erin,” Rebecca murmured in a sicky-sweet-I’m-oh-so-concerned voice. “I didn’t want to take off before I knew that you were all right.”

“I’m fine.”

“I just…feel so terrible that I called your half brother a ‘big galoot.’ I never would have been so heartless if I’d had any idea—”

“That’s okay,” I interrupted, though I’d noticed two things. One, that she now knew Taylor was my
half
brother. Two, that she was watching Sullivan out of the corner of her eye.

“As I’ve been saying to Steve”—she glanced over at him with lust-filled eyes—“I hate it that circumstances beyond any of our control have forced us into such adversarial roles. Let’s hope that this tragedy will bring an end to the hostilities between our clients.”

“That’d be great. Will Taylor’s death make Pate Hamlin decide not to buy the Youngs’ house out from under them, do you suppose? Or maybe Pate will stop trying to make Shannon’s life so miserable that he simply drives her from the neighborhood.”

The sharpness of my tone wasn’t lost on Rebecca. She averted her eyes and said gently, “Pate’s not a bad man, Erin.”

“Merely ruthless.”

She gave me a wry smile, squeezed my arm, and announced—I was certain—for the benefit of Steve’s ears more so than mine, “I’m terribly sorry for your loss.” She added solemnly, “Call me if you’d like some company, Steve.”

I glared at her as she strolled down the driveway. Quietly, Sullivan said to me, “Want to go someplace and talk? I’ll buy you lunch.”

I shook my head, unable to meet his gaze. I was dangerously close to tears. “I think I need to take off.”

“Of course. You going home?”

Again, I shook my head. “I’m going to tell our mother about Taylor.”

“Do you want me to come with you?”

“No. But thanks for offering.”

“No problem,” he said sadly. “I just wish…” He didn’t finish the sentence.

I struggled to get my thoughts together as I drove out to
my mother’s house, which was in a neighboring town, twenty minutes from Crestview. I didn’t know what to say to her, but I did know that I had to do this in person.

Emily Blaire was a truly nice woman, if at times a tad self-absorbed. She ran a fitness studio in town, and I tried to get together with her at least once a month. It had been a strange shock last year to meet my birth mother out of the blue for essentially the first time. These days I was working hard at getting Sullivan’s and my new business venture going; Emily was now dating a man who she thought was “the real thing.” Both of our lives were hectic. Taylor, with his drug-abuse problems and constant brushes with the law, had been a source of contention in our relationship. There was no telling whether his death would push us further apart or bring us closer together.

The drive went much too quickly, and I soon found myself walking up to her small but cozy ranch-style brick house. My heart was pounding. I began to panic and now prayed that she wouldn’t answer the doorbell. No such luck. I heard her melodious, “Just a moment,” and she swept the door open moments later. “Erin!” she exclaimed. Then her smile faded. “What’s wrong?”

My eyes were tearing up. “Can I come in, Emily?”

“Oh, my God. It’s Taylor, isn’t it.” It wasn’t a question.