Fatal Feng Shui (9 page)

“You’re thinking of putting in a bunch of
condos
now?” Tracy cried. “So
I
lose out either way? How dare you!”

“Give me a break!” Pate glowered at her. “Our agreement states clearly that I can develop the land behind this property. You can stay put in the house in Denver if you don’t approve of my plans for
my
land.”

“I like this house better. Especially now that you built a BaseMart in the backyard of
my
home! I should’ve known you’d go right ahead and destroy this home too! I should have demanded a cash buyout!”

Someone gasped behind me. Shannon was standing in the middle of the street, staring up at us. “Tracy! What are you doing here?”

“My ex-wife is trying to stake a claim on her territory,” Pate declared with a laser-hot glare to Tracy, “which includes half the house, but
not
the land parcel behind it.”

Before Shannon could reply, he added, “I was just discussing my new idea about the condos with Erin, Shannon. I’m afraid your property value has just plummetted. It’s probably worth only about half what it was last week, before my development proposal to the county became fodder for the general public. But I’d be willing to split the difference if you’d like to sell. Shall we say…seventy-five percent of my original offer?”

“I’m going to
kill
you for this!” she shrilled.

I grabbed her arm. “Come on, Shannon. Let’s go back over to your home and discuss strategies.”

Red-faced and cursing, she let me lead her back home. As I ushered her through the door, she wailed, “
Now
do you see what a horrid, hateful man he is?”

“Yes, but there
were
extenuating circumstances. Apparently I interrupted him in the middle of an argument with his estranged wife. So we can’t really expect him to be—”

“Well?
Do
something, Erin! Get me out of this mess! Otherwise, I’m going to have no choice but to cave in and sell my house
and
my soul to that devil of a man!”

“We’re not out of options, Shannon. I’m going to tell Audrey about Pate’s latest plot. She has a lot of influential friends around town. She might be able to get someone with power to pull some strings and rezone that property. Maybe we can declare it as a wetland, or something, and get it protected.”

“Oh, sure.” She rolled her eyes. “A wetland. Which is bone dry. In the meantime, I’ll start packing.”

Her cell phone chirped. “About time!” she said to me as she glanced down at her phone. “It’s Michael calling me back on his cell.” She pressed a button with her thumb. “Hi. What took you so long?” She listened, then told me, “He’s on his way home now.” To Michael, she said, “I was getting some good work done, till Jerk-face Hamlin showed up at the door. If he can’t construct a BaseMart, he’s threatening to build hundreds of condos on his property. Apparently the main entrance would be where his house sits now.” Pause. “
I’ll
say it is! We’ll be facing a heavily traveled T in the road, Michael! That’s hideous feng shui. And he dropped his offer to buy our place to seventy-five percent of his original offer.” She drew a halting breath. “He still wants to put a car repair garage on my property. A
garage,
Michael! Right where I’ve created my artwork throughout my entire life!” She was in tears. To her husband’s reply, she cried, “You should have listened to me! I’ve told you all along he wasn’t a
nice guy
. Ang Chung warned me about Pate’s terrible tao vibrations.”

Tears streaming, she listened, and her wet eyes widened. “You mean, you’re willing to stand up to him, after all? Really?” She gave me a tentative smile. “Okay, then. I will…. I love you, too.” She hung up and gave meher first real smile in days. “Erin, go talk to Audrey like you said. No need for me to start packing. I’m going to build myself a slingshot, instead. We’ll be David, and we’ll take on Goliath.”

“That’s great news. Audrey and I will help in any way we can.” I glanced at the thick plastic sheeting that separated the addition from the rest of the house. “How’s the construction for the new room coming along?”

She grinned. “Oh, Erin. It’s just fabulous! Ang’s idea for the glass column just
utterly
makes the room!”

I pushed the plastic aside and entered the room to see for myself, saying, “It’s great that the column is working so well, Shannon, but I have to say that Ang didn’t…” I let my voice fade, distracted. Indeed, the glass column looked spectacular. It glowed with a nearly ethereal light. However, a rumbling engine outside was only growing louder by the second. And the plywood floor was shaking.

It sounded as if some heavy machinery was headed straight at me. I bolted out of the room, pushing Shannon back through the plastic in the entranceway with me.

A horrific crash resounded behind us. I whirled around. Shannon let out a piercing scream. The wood supporting the plastic sheeting snapped, and the plastic fell away, giving us a clear view of the devastation.

As if the sturdy new walls were merely balsa wood, the room crumpled. An enormous bulldozer burst through the wall. The seat of the huge yellow machine was empty. And it was heading our way.

chapter 10

H
uddled together, Shannon and I watched
helplessly as the north and west walls and the ceiling of the new room collapsed. The glorious column of glass bricks shattered. The plywood subflooring buckled.

I had to find a way to get to the controls! Just then a man bolted inside through the gaping hole where the glass-brick corner once stood. Cursing profusely, he scrambled up into the seat and fumbled with the controls. The growling machine fell silent.

We stood there in shock as the dust settled. It looked as though we stood inside a gingerbread house and some giant ogre had taken a big bite from one corner.

“Is everybody all right?” the bulldozer operator asked. If I remembered correctly from the six weeks ago that we’d been introduced, his name was Hal. Or maybe Hank.

“I think so,” I answered.
Except that all of our hard work is now in ruins.

“Thank God for that much,” he muttered as he jumped down from the machine. The color had drained from his face. His belt was unfastened. He’d apparently been indisposed when someone had started up the heavy vehicle’s engine.

A pair of workmen trotted partway toward us and silently surveyed the damage from the front yard, perhaps afraid to come closer. Hal or Hank turned and yelled at them. “Who the hell turned on my dozer and set the throttle lock?”

Both men pleaded innocent. Michael suddenly charged inside through the garage door. “My God! I heard the crash from the garage. I thought a bomb had dropped! Is everybody all right? Shannon?”

“We’re fine,” I answered. His wife was still clinging to me, trembling. She made no move to go to him.

“Who’s responsible for this?” he demanded of the workmen.

Hal or Hank said, “It’s my dozer. But it was turned off.”

David Lewis arrived on the scene. Panting, he shoved his men aside and stepped into the wake of the bulldozer’s damage. “Jeez! What the—”

“Where’ve you been?” Michael snapped at him.

“I was outside on a ladder, inspecting the work on the roof. What the hell happened here? Hank! How could you plow into the house like this?”

“I
didn’t
! Somebody started it up and engaged the throttle lock.”

“And where were
you
?” David shouted. “Why’d you leave the key in the ignition?”

Hank’s beet-red cheeks colored another ten percent. “Er, I…was in the can.”

“So nobody saw anything? Somebody just hopped into the dozer and started it up?”

The men all muttered excuses to their boss, shuffling uneasily under his furious glare. In the meantime, the trauma finally sank in for Shannon. “Oh, Michael,” she whimpered. “First our roof. Now this! Look at our house!”

He put an arm around her shoulder protectively. “It’s okay. It doesn’t matter. It was just the new construction. We’re not even staying here at night. The team will rebuild. That’s all there is to it.”

“Erin and I were in that room
seconds
before it happened. A bulldozer nearly mowed us both down, Michael! This is outrageous!”

“You’re right, Shannon,” David interjected. “It is.” He glared at Hank and stabbed a finger at the yellow bulldozer. “Get that thing out of here.
Now!
We’re all working overtime and getting this mess cleaned up and rebuilt pronto. So you’d all better call your families and tell ’em you’ll be late for dinner. And maybe for breakfast tomorrow morning.”

The men exchanged anxious gazes. “But…we were shutting things down an hour early today,” Hank protested. “The funeral. Remember?”

Oh, jeez! Taylor’s service! I’d lost track of the time! I’d promised Emily I’d pick her up!

David winced, then nodded. “Right. Of course.”

“You can’t all leave me with this mess!” Shannon protested. Just then, both Rebecca Berringer and Pate Hamlin approached, stopping at a respectful distance at the edge of the lawn. “What do
you
think you’re looking at!” Shannon shrilled at them.

“We just wanted to make sure everyone’s all right,” Rebecca called back.

“Yes, we’re fine. You missed me again, Pate,” Shannon sniped.

Rebecca snorted and turned away. But Pate stayed his ground for a moment, gazing at me. He looked sad.

“Shannon, Michael,” I said gently, “I’m so sorry, but I have to go pick up my mother for Taylor’s service. I hate to leave you now, but—”

“We’re fine. Just go. We were planning on going, too, but now…” Michael stared at the gaping hole in the wall. “Looks like we’ll be filling out insurance forms all afternoon instead.”

“And talking to the police,” I agreed. “This had to have been deliberate.”

The Gilbert and Sullivan tune “Little Buttercup” had begun to play. I realized with a start that the song had to be coming from
my
cell phone; Sullivan must have sneaked my phone out of my purse yesterday and downloaded the song. I’d mentioned to him a few weeks ago that I’d been searching for that particular ring tone, because the tune “never failed to make me smile.” I’d spoken too soon; that was before Taylor had been murdered. Now I dashed to my purse and swept up the phone. Sullivan’s name was displayed as the caller, and my “Hello” was crankier than I’d intended.

“Hey, Gilbert. Your mom…I mean
Emily
called the office just now, looking for you. I told her you were on your way to get her.”

“I’m just about to get into the car now. I ran into a delay. A bulldozer, actually.”

“Pardon?”

“Shannon’s house got hit with a renegade bulldozer…right while we were standing in the room.”

“Jeez! Are you all right?”

“Yeah.”

He sighed. “A runaway bulldozer. Just another day in the life of Sullivan and Gilbert, Incorporated. Did you want me to go pick Emily up for you?”

I thanked him but declined his offer and disconnected. Next, I reiterated my sincere apologies and regrets to my dazed clients for having to desert them. Then I dashed into my van.

As I drove to my mother’s house, I tried to calm my shattered nerves by mentally replaying my recent phone call with Sullivan. That had been so thoughtful of him to load the “Buttercup” tune without even mentioning that he’d done it. Rebecca had been right about one thing: Steve really was an amazingly good business partner. Make that
two
things she’d gotten right. I also truly
did
want to keep her “out of the picture.” Far, far away from the picture
gallery,
even.

Taylor’s funeral proceeded without incident. I’d met
only about a dozen of the attendees beforehand, a list which included David Lewis and his employees. In the receiving line, David praised Taylor at length to Emily, which she tearfully appreciated.

She and I had decided to forgo the usual sad gathering afterward. After thanking the thirty or so attendees, she and I went on a long walk together instead. We’d chosen one of Crestview’s lesser-known trails, one that looped around a rather uninteresting hill east of town, not all that far from Shannon’s house.

Drying her eyes, Emily told me softly, “I can’t help but wonder if Taylor would have been better off if I’d put him up for adoption, too. You turned out so well, and he just…could never make the right decisions…could never stay out of trouble.”

“Emily, please don’t be so hard on yourself.”

“I tried my best with Taylor.” She sighed. “I guess I just wasn’t up to the task.”

“You could have been an absolutely perfect mother to him, and he
still
might have fallen in with a bad crowd and gotten into drugs. There’s no direct connection between being a perfect parent and raising a perfect child.”

“Oh, I realize that. Believe me, Erin. I’ve been around long enough to see plenty of good kids from semi-negligent parents, and vice versa. But I knew all along that I had to be an extra-good parent to compensate for his father. He was not the best of people, let’s say.”

I’d never met the man, but she’d told me yesterday that she’d finally managed to locate him to tell him about his son’s funeral. He was living in Anchorage. He’d told her he was “sorry to hear that,” but there was no way he could afford to come all that way just for the service. He offered to pay for half of the tombstone, which she told me was “generous, by his standards.”

“I just wasn’t up to the task,” she repeated. “Taylor was my responsibility. I couldn’t protect him the way a parent needs to.”

I had no way of measuring how accurate her harsh self-appraisal was. I felt chilled, nevertheless. How different might my life have been if Emily had retained custody of me? Although my adoptive father had pretty much removed himself from my life when I was twelve, my adoptive mother had been a gentle, loving soul. Not a single day went by when I didn’t miss her. “It all seems so random…a person’s lot in life,” I told Emily. “Some people never seem to have a fair shot.”

She nodded, reaching for her handkerchief again. “That’s why I couldn’t stand to have a gathering afterward. I don’t care for many of Taylor’s friends. The majority of them are in worse shape than
he
was before he got sent to jail.”

I had no response.

After a weighty pause, Emily cleared her throat. “Erin, maybe you can do something for Taylor now, for his memory.”

“You want me to set up some sort of memorial in his name, you mean?”

She shook her head. “Did he ever mention the big project he’d been working on for the past year or so?”

“No. Tell me about it.”

“I’ll show you when we get back.”

She’d raised my curiosity. When we returned to her house, she led me down to her unfinished basement. There, she unfurled a rolled-up blueprint. “This is some sort of a computer desk?” I asked as I bent over the drawings.

“It’s a full-function computer workstation,” Emily explained. “It’s especially good for people with back problems. Taylor put quite a bit of money…which was mine, actually…into getting the design checked by an orthopedic doctor.”

These blueprints were much more precise and professional than anything I would have expected from Taylor’s hand. Having worked with him a year ago, Sullivan and I had concluded that my half brother was some sort of carpentry idiot savant; he ignored instructions and measurements, but he eventually managed to build what you wanted.

Emily seemed to be almost holding her breath as she waited for my reaction.

“I have to tell you honestly, Emily. There are a zillion different designs for workstations already out on the marketplace….”

“I know that. And so did Taylor. But what makes his unique is that the desk and the seat and footrest are all easily adjustable so you can customize it for your exact body dimensions. He was envisioning an advanced model having memory capability so that it would switch between the settings for two users with the push of a button.”

“The price points would have been a big problem for him. It’s bulky and awkward, and the manufacturing would be complex. So the challenge would be finding an investor willing to assume the considerable up-front costs. And then hiring someone who could market it to the stores.”

She searched my features, and I knew her well enough to cringe a little; she was about to ask me for a big favor. “That’s where I’m hoping you can come in, Erin…convincing furniture-store owners to stock Taylor’s invention. I urged him to go to you for advice before, but he was too shy.”

I doubted that it was shyness as much as pride and obstinacy that had prevented him, but that was no longer the point. “This is way out of my area of expertise, Emily. I wouldn’t have the first idea how to go about finding an investor and a manufacturer, or even how to develop a prototype.”

“Oh, the prototype is already done,” she assured me, brightening.

Inwardly I kicked myself. Of
course
building the prototype would be the phase that Taylor would complete on his own. “That’s great, but frankly, this isn’t nearly as big a hurdle as everything else is. With this type of product…with any product, really, the key is mass production…developing something that can be built on an assembly line at a low per-item cost.”

Ignoring me, Emily said, “It’s right here, in the corner of the basement.” She pointed. “Underneath the tarp. Taylor hadn’t wanted to keep it out in the open. He used to like to tell his friends about it, then bring them down here and whisk the tarp off, saying ‘Tah-dah’ like a magician. He was so proud of it.”

She was starting to cry again. She crossed the relatively tidy concrete floor toward her son’s prototype. Although I was beginning to feel like a total heel, I desperately didn’t want to get involved with this. Any start-up venture is risky by its very nature. A terrific design wasn’t enough these days; the concept of an adjustable workstation just wasn’t sexy enough to sell big.

I had a horrible vision of Emily losing all of her personal savings in an attempt to redeem Taylor posthumously. It would kill me to be the one who couldn’t pull off this venture for her. “I’m really not the right person for—”

“Please, Erin. Just think about it. If you really can’t help me, all I’ll really need from you is a name or two of someone who can. After all, you work with furniture manufacturers and distributors all the time. Surely you can come up with someone I could talk to who can take this to the next level.” She jerked the army-khaki green tarp away and chucked it to one side.

At first glance, Taylor’s creation was high on mechanical adjustments and low on aesthetics. But beneath the rawness was a surprisingly brilliant design. Emily showed me how both its desktop and the keyboard stand could be quickly and independently adjusted for height. As she’d claimed, the range of heights was astonishing. It would work for a six-foot man to set this up at his standing height—with no chair whatsoever—or equally well as a miniature computer desk where a ten-year-old child could be seated with his elbows and knees at the ideal angles. A third flat surface could also be independently set to serve as a shelf for a printer or a writing surface. Emily explained that the bookcase that was currently atop this surface was removable and could be placed on the floor as a small freestanding shelf unit. Taylor had ingeniously managed all of this versatility with a combination of levers and metal rails that looked like big Erector set pieces but were more likely salvaged from adjustable exercise equipment.