Rooms to Die For (6 page)

Chapter Eleven

At the bronze entrance portals I said goodbye to Phil the doorman, tossed my tote onto the Audi’s passenger seat and slid behind the wheel. As Claudia’s shiny black Jag zoomed out of the mall parking lot, I sat staring at the roadster’s rear end until it sped out of sight.

Was Claudia having an affair with Oliver Kent? Not unless she had a bad marriage and wanted her husband gone from her life. And there was a very real possibility that might happen if he were charged with murder or deported to Colombia. Could be that was the reason Claudia appeared so carefree. She saw a way out of her marriage.

It was inconceivable she didn’t know he’d been blackmailed and accused of murder. But maybe, just maybe, like her clerk Ted, she
didn’t
know. In addition to Rossi and me, only the police had been present when Beatriz made her startling accusation. But all she’d said was she knew who killed her husband. She hadn’t mentioned a killer’s name, or said a word about the blackmailing. Not until she was alone with Rossi, and later with me. I certainly hadn’t revealed Beatriz’s secrets to anyone, and from the untroubled behavior of Raúl’s wife and his employee, Rossi hadn’t either. Not yet anyway.

I turned on the ignition and swung out of the lot onto the Tamiami. To my relief late morning traffic was light.

Still, it was hard to believe that Raúl hadn’t told his wife the police questioned him about José’s death. What husband could conceal so much from his beloved other?

I switched lanes without looking. The driver behind me leaned on his horn. I couldn’t blame him. What was the matter with me, anyway, taking a chance like that? I slowed down to a forty-five-mile-an-hour crawl and let him pass.

Though painful to acknowledge, husbands did conceal the truth from people they loved. It happened all the time. Maybe for that very reason—love. My late husband Jack never told me I was the one, not he, who couldn’t have children. When I finally discovered the truth, it nearly killed me, but that was another story. The fact was he had concealed the truth. So if Jack, the soul of honesty, could be so deceptive, what of Raúl?

None of your business, I reminded myself again. Besides, if for some reason Claudia didn’t understand the trouble her husband faced, as soon as forensics revealed José had been murdered, she would understand. Rossi would be all over the case, relentless as fire ants at a picnic.

I glanced at my watch. Noon. I had a half hour to get to Gordon Drive in the Port Royal neighborhood. Plenty of time. Thank God I could depend on Lee to keep the shop open and handle drop-in traffic while I ran around town networking.

A few days ago I’d been invited to design a room in a Showhouse at Sprague Mansion on palatial Gordon Drive. All participating designers were members of ASID, the American Society of Interior Designers, and I was thrilled to be included in this project with my peers. For sheer PR, nothing surpassed a Showhouse, where each designer was given carte blanche to transform a room into an expression of his or her personal vision. Some of Naples most prominent names would be taking part as well as—drumroll—Deva Dunne Interiors.

The challenge had me eager to see my assigned room, so I could get the creative juices flowing. I’d be in good company and was determined to do my very best. Both for my business and for St. Martin’s Homeless Shelter, the cause the Showhouse was supporting.

At twelve-twenty, I parked behind several other cars on the Sprague Mansion driveway. Old Florida Style gray board-and-batten siding covered the building’s exterior, and a tin roof extended over the front verandah. Unpretentious but spacious, the house faced the Gulf of Mexico in a paradise of oleander and hibiscus, its lawn shaded by mature palms and mahogany trees and perfumed by late-blooming gardenias. Now let’s see if I could create a room worthy of the lush setting. A room to die for.

I mounted the broad front steps to a verandah embellished with stone planters filled with cascading ivy and spiky succulents. Through the front screen door I could see clear down the central hall to the screen door on the opposite end—the classic cross-ventilation layout of a house built before air conditioning became the Florida norm. No doubt the windows in all the rooms faced each other to catch a breeze from any direction. Clever.

Voices echoed from somewhere inside. I rang the bell. When nobody answered, I tried the doorknob. It swung wide, and I stepped into the hall. The rooms on both sides were empty of furnishings. In the first one on the left, drop cloths covered the wide plank floors, and the odor of fresh paint filled the air. The sparkling white ceiling had obviously just been given a beauty treatment.

I strolled the main downstairs rooms, including the Florida room with its spectacular Gulf views—how I’d love to be assigned that space. Last I took a quick peek at the dated 1930s kitchen. What a disaster with its linoleum floor and obsolete appliances. I doubted the kitchen would be part of the tour. Bringing it up to twenty-first century standards could easily take $100,000 or more. Since each designer donated the cost of refurbishing a room, that meant a large, mainly nonrefundable outlay. Far too much for struggling Deva Dunne Interiors, that was for sure.

My curiosity largely satisfied, I wandered back to the front hall. Voices floated down from the floor above.

“Hello,” I called up the stairs. “Anybody home?”

A woman with salt-and-pepper hair leaned over the mahogany railing. “Are you Deva Dunne by any chance?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“Oh good. I’ve been expecting you. Do forgive me for not greeting you at the door. We got busy up here. Please join us,” she said, her patrician voice at odds with her plump Mrs. Santa look.

I mounted the uncarpeted stairs. In the upper hall, the woman held out a diamond-studded hand. “Welcome to the Showhouse. Or what will be one when it’s finished,” she added with a tinkling laugh. “I’m Marian Stilwell, chair of the event. So happy to have you as one of our designers.”

I murmured a thank-you, but before I could ask which room I’d been assigned, a man strode out of one of the empty bedrooms. Of medium height, he walked on the balls of his feet, giving each step the energy of a coiled spring. He flashed me a Latin lover’s smile and hurried forward, both hands outstretched, reaching for mine.

“Deva! What a delightful surprise.”

Raúl. “The surprise is all mine,” I replied, and boy did I mean it. Too stunned to say more, I just stood there, mouth agape, and stared at him. Like Claudia earlier, he looked carefree and untroubled. The man had been accused of murder, for Pete’s sake. Why hadn’t Rossi arrested him? Or at the very least brought him in for more questioning? What was going on anyway?

Still holding my hands, Raúl turned to Marian and treated her to the same megawatt smile. “Deva is a client of mine and, may I say,” he paused to swivel his attention back to me, “my friend.”

I cleared my throat at that one, but under the gaze of those Valentino eyes, I nodded. What harm to admit I’d been in and out of his shop dozens of times, made many purchases and, actually, had always found him to be a charming, capable businessman. With bedroom eyes.

“Mr. Lopez is donating fans to our cause. Isn’t that wonderful?” Marian gushed.

“Absolutely.”

“In keeping with the house’s history, I had plain white retro in mind,” he said. “Unless a designer has a different request. What is your preference, Deva?” The second time in two days a sexy man asked me the same question—for entirely different reasons.

I cleared my throat again. It was so dry I must be coming down with something. “I prefer the retro look myself, but I haven’t been given a room to redesign yet. I was hoping you could tell me that today, Marian, so I can get started on the project.”

“Of course, my dear.” She hurried over to a folding card table piled high with loose papers and brochures. “Let me check, just to be certain.” She picked up a sheet of paper, and from a chain around her neck, raised a pair of readers to her nose. She ran a finger down a list of names. “Oh here you are,” she said, whipping off the glasses. “You’re assigned to the kitchen.”

Chapter Twelve

You’re assigned to the kitchen.

Well
,
I’ll be damned.
Assigned to the kitchen was I? Put through a meat grinder was more like it.

After managing, barely, to squeak out a polite farewell to Marian, I stomped down the verandah stairs of the Sprague Mansion. All the way en route to the shop, I drove the Audi mad as hell, not even caring that I’d left Marian alone with an illegal who’d been accused of murder. Frustrated to the max, I heaved a sigh and told myself not to worry. If Rossi thought Raúl was a threat to public safety, he’d have locked him up, wouldn’t he?

No, that wasn’t my problem. I’d been set up, that was my problem. I got the room no one else would touch. Not even the top businesses in town. A struggling one-woman operation, and I’d been given the kitchen. Some honor. A rundown, worn-out room that hadn’t had a thing cooked or cooled in it for the past thirty years. I grasped the wheel as if it were a killer’s throat.

What I should do was bow out. Call Marian Stilwell in the morning and, using my best Boston voice, tell her I was terribly sorry, but business constraints, and my very, very demanding client list meant I simply couldn’t devote enough time to the Showhouse. And of course I wouldn’t want to tackle a project so important and not be able to do my very best. Blah. Blah. Blah.

I screeched to a halt at a red light. When had that been installed? Ten minutes ago? Telling myself to relax, I loosened my grip on the wheel and blew out a breath. If I bowed out I knew,
knew
, I’d be hearing Nana Dunne’s voice echoing in my brain, telling me no woman in the family had ever been a quitter—to thumb my nose at the bastards who stuck me with an impossible job and make it possible. But how? How? I didn’t have the deep pockets to transform that dinosaur kitchen into a knockout.

The light changed and traffic surged forward. To raise the most money it could for St. Martin’s Homeless Shelter, the Showhouse would open soon to take advantage of tourist season. St. Martin’s had a new building project in the planning stage, one that could care for twice as many people as its current facility, but it needed funding before construction could begin.

If I walked away from that disaster of a kitchen, I’d be walking away from people in need. How could I do that and live with myself? Or with Nana’s voice? After all, I could hear her say, everybody deserved a home. I had to at least try. And I had to smile as I changed directions and headed for one of my favorite vendors, Kustom Kitchens, on Mercantile Way. Irish guilt was a powerful instrument.

* * *

A giant of a man, Tiny Forbes ran the oldest kitchen remodeling business in Naples, and one of the best. If anybody could help me, it would be Tiny. Six-six at least, with a girth so formidable he had trouble finding belts to fit and had given up on them years ago. Today he had on his usual white starched shirt, open at the throat, chinos—in God only knew what size—and a pair of red suspenders.

His face split into a grin when he saw me. “Hey, favorite lady.”

“Tiny, I need you,” I said.

“Sorry, doll. I’d love it too but my wife would kill me if she found out.”

“This is serious, Tiny. I’ve got a problem.” I parked my tote on his sales counter and sank onto a utility stool in front of it. “I’m one of the designers for the Sprague Mansion Showhouse.”

“That’s a problem? I say good for you. Excellent exposure.”

“That’s what I’m afraid of.”

Tiny snapped one of his suspender straps, something he did regularly. A nervous habit I think he’d picked up when he stopped smoking. Whatever the reason, I don’t know how his chest stood up to the strain.

“Being chosen is an honor,” he insisted. “Designers come in here all the time who’d kill for a chance like that. Do you know how many people will see your name, get a glimpse of your style, want to—”

I held up my hands, palms out. “I’ve been given the kitchen.”

“Oh, God. In that old dungeon.” As the weight of what I’d said hit home, he slumped onto a stool behind the counter, the stress causing it to creak ominously. “So you’re here to talk business. I’m disappointed. I thought I was the draw.”

“You are, darlin’. I need your advice. How much can I do with ten thousand...maybe fifteen tops? To be honest, I can’t even afford that much, and I know it’s only about ten percent of what’s called for, but rather than just give up, I thought I’d see what you think.” I waved an arm around his display room. He’d fitted it out with custom kitchen installations in various styles from ultra-sleek to Cape Cod quaint. Each one perfect right down to the carefully selected hardware. “How can I even come close to anything like these?”

“Well, ten’s not going to buy a custom kitchen, that’s for sure.” Tiny’s eyes narrowed as he fumbled with the suspender straps. “You’ll have to fake it.”

“Oh, no.” I groaned. “Not another fake.”

“You got one going already?”

“It’s a long story that I won’t get into. Just tell me what you mean.”

“You want to share the limelight? Put my name on the credits along with yours?”

“In exchange for your help? Of course.” Broad jokes aside, Tiny was a businessman and a darned good one. I respected him for that and for his lifetime of expertise.

He lifted his bulk off the long-suffering stool. “Come on out back. I got something to show you.”

He held the door open for me, and we stepped into his workroom, a combination warehouse and craft shop where a half dozen finish carpenters were busy working various projects. Sawdust drifted in the air, its sweet, woodsy odor mingling with glue and wood polish. A saw buzzed. Rather than shout over its din, Tiny crooked a finger, and I followed him to the rear of the workshop. He led me to a large rectangular object covered with a padded tarpaulin secured with webbed straps.

Mercifully the saw that had all the charm of fingernails on a blackboard stopped shrieking. In the sudden quiet, Tiny, grinning like the Cheshire cat, asked, “Ready for this?”

Mystified, I just nodded. He unbuckled the straps. Why so many? Was what lay under the wraps so valuable?

Like a magician flourishing a cape, he released the last strap and, with a wave of his arm, swept the tarp away, letting it drop to the concrete floor.

The saw started shrieking again, drowning out my shocked intake of breath. And maybe a scream.

“It’s a beast!” I shouted over the clamor. And it was—a custom-designed La Cornue stove, the most gorgeous kitchen beast imaginable.

“A beast all right,” Tiny said when the saw stopped once more. “A white elephant’s more like it...well, a burgundy one.”

“What’s it doing out here?”

“Last year a customer asked me to special order it. Then her husband’s business went belly up, and she cancelled. She lost her down payment, but I’m out a bundle anyway. Maybe if somebody sees it in the showroom they’ll take it off my hands.”

“The woman must have been heartbroken to lose this,” I said, looking at the La Cornue with lust in my eyes.

“Yeah, she was pretty bummed out. Me too,” Tiny added, snapping his suspenders for emphasis. “It retails for forty-six thousand. I’d let it go for twenty-three.”

I stepped forward and ran my hands over the slick surface. A La Cornue stove in the flesh with double ovens—one electric for dry roasting and baking and one gas for damp roasting and casseroles—gas jet burners on the top surface, a center grill, warming pans and every other bell and whistle a stove could possibly have. That it would also perform with calibrated finesse all the while looking absolutely glorious, I had no doubt. What movie star could do as much?

“I’m in love,” I murmured.

“With me?” Tiny pretended to be hopeful.

I arched my eyebrows at him. “Do you have a burgundy finish, solid brass hardware and knobs of stainless steel?”

“No knobs of steel.” He snapped his suspenders. “Not anymore.”

“Doesn’t it hurt your chest when you do that?”

“Nah, makes me remember I have one.” He thought a moment. “Had one.”

“Why did you show me this?” I asked, nodding at the stove. “It’s way out of my range. No pun intended.”

He shrugged. “Ten grand, even fifteen’s not going to get you very far. I thought if you want to borrow the beast, I’d loan it to you for the duration of the show. A month or so?”

I nodded, and he added, “We’ll strictly fake it. No hook up, no performance. These babies—” he leaned over to pick up the tarp and toss it back over the La Cornue, “—are installed by official factory reps only. So this’ll just be for showbiz. I figure it’ll upstage the rest of the kitchen. Be the starring attraction, so to speak. Then maybe you could get away with spending less on the rest of the room.” He paused, “Depending on what you have in mind, of course.”

As I helped him cinch the straps back in place, he asked, “You have a plan?”

“Not at the moment. I need to give it some thought. Once I do, I’ll sketch out my concept and fax it to you for approval. How’s that sound?”

“Excellent.”

Though Tiny didn’t say so, I knew he wanted to be sure of my ideas before he’d let his name be used in the credits. To earn the privilege of this world-class stove, I had to place it in a kitchen that would do it justice. And for under fifteen thousand. What a challenge.

Before I could decide if Deva Dunne Interiors was up to the task, my cell began an insistent chirping. I rummaged in the tote, grabbing the phone on the fourth ring.

“Don’t expect me tonight,” Rossi said. “Things are heating up. I don’t know when I can get away. So I’ll crash at my place.”

Phone to my ear, I took a few steps away from Tiny. “Sounds serious.”

“Could be.” He paused, weighing what he should and shouldn’t tell me, then finally took the plunge. “Forensics found alcohol in José Vega’s body.”

“He didn’t drink. Teetotal all the way. I knew something was fishy!”

Rossi huffed out a sigh. “There you go again, jumping to conclusions.”

“But you just said—”

“Maybe he fell off the wagon.”

“Then there was no foul play.”

“I didn’t say that either.”

“Rossi, the problem with you is that you’re too conservative.”

“Oh really?” Icicles dripped off the cell. “In religion, politics or sex?”

“Not sex,” I whispered, glancing over my shoulder, hoping Tiny hadn’t heard me. But a quick glimpse of his face told me he had. I turned around and clutched the phone even closer. Where was that saw when a girl needed it?

“What I meant was, you’re too conservative in your conclusions. Afraid to leap off the cliff, so to speak.”

“Right. That about sums me up. Now if you’ll excuse me, Mrs. Dunne, I have to look for a Mr. Lopez. We’re having a little trouble locating him today.”

Ah, so the police did suspect Raúl. “I can help you find him, you know.”

“At the risk of repeating myself, there you go again.” He sounded beyond annoyed, but this was my turn to be annoyed.

“I know where the suspect is, or at least where he was a half hour ago. But if you don’t want any insider information, I’ll hang up.”

“Don’t you dare, or I’ll send a cruiser after you.”