Death by Inferior Design (41 page)

To my astonishment, there was a pause. In a choked, small voice Jill said, “You’re right. My God. What am I doing?” There was a metallic click. “I’m putting the safety on the gun and putting it down.”

This was a trap. She’d cocked the gun, I was sure. She wanted to trick me into turning around of my own volition.

In one motion, I brought my arm back and whirled to face her.

The gun was still pointing right at my face. I slashed at her neck and then stabbed her in the chest. My unexpectedly swift pivot distracted her for the fraction of a second that I needed.

Crying out in shock and pain, she pulled the trigger as she staggered backward. The bullet whizzed past my ear.

She dropped the gun and sank to her knees. Screaming in pain, she looked up at me, in an obvious state of shock. “You
stabbed
me. I’m
bleeding.”

I snatched up the gun and pointed it at her. Then I retrieved my cell phone and dialed 911. “Stay right there. The paramedics will be here soon.”

Hours later, I returned home from the police station.
I’d told my story countless times. All I wanted to do now was pour myself a glass of Châteauneuf-du-Pape, draw myself a steamy, lavender-scented bath, and do my best to drown out all memories of the worst day of my life.

Unfortunately, two weeks ago, Audrey had temporarily converted the house’s only bathtub into a terrarium, and I’d brought my last bottle of my favorite red wine to a dinner party two weeks ago and didn’t want to resort to dipping into Audrey’s wine-cellar stock. I would have to settle for a shower. Afterward, I decided I’d curl up on the velvet sofa with a good book, my great cat, and a bottle of Michelob.

There was a padded envelope beside Audrey’s door with UPS handling tags. Probably a Christmas present for Audrey—a book or a couple of CDs—and then I read the labels. The envelope was addressed to me, from a lawyer’s office in Denver. Judging by the contents’ size and weight, there was something bulky inside.

In haste, I let myself into the house, tore open the mailer, and removed a videotape and its accompanying typed note. In legalese wording, the note explained that this had been sent to me in fulfillment of the wishes of Randal James Axelrod upon the event of his death.

I went straight over to the VCR in the den and, still wearing my coat, was soon seated in front of the television set.

After a few seconds, the screen showed an empty Chippendale side chair with celery-and-white striped upholstery. I had not seen such a chair in his house, and the background was a blank white wall. Randy, wearing a short-sleeved shirt and jeans, rounded the camera and sat down in the chair. He looked to be the same age as he was at the time of his death. His hair was neatly combed. He appeared to be a bit nervous as he stared into the camera.

“Erin Gilbert. Hello. You may or may not recognize me by the time you see this tape. If you don’t, that probably means the end came for me sooner than I’d hoped. You see, I have a serious heart condition, and my life expectancy doesn’t look so good right now. Anyway.”

He chuckled a little and shook his head. “Whew. This is even harder than I thought it’d be. Let me introduce myself. My name is Randal Axelrod. My friends call me Randy.” He scoffed and said under his breath, “Actually,
everybody
calls me Randy, at least to my face. I’ve done some things I’m not very proud of in my life, but I’m thinking, maybe there’s time to make amends, starting now. . . . Or maybe not. I can’t figure out how to approach you.”

I tried to merely listen and to quiet the sarcastic voice in my head that was retorting:
Whatever you do, don’t put
my baby picture inside the paneling of a room I’m remodeling.

“See, it’s tough,” Randy’s taped image explained, “because my wife, Myra, isn’t at all well, and sometimes she does stuff to herself . . . hurts herself and makes up these wild stories. But”—he gestured nervously with both hands—“I guess that’s my problem, and you must be thinking, ‘Who is this moron, sending me a tape of himself? ’ ” He smoothed his mustache. “Anyway, Erin, what I’m trying to tell you is . . .”

He leaned toward the camera and stared straight into the lens. “The point I’m trying to make is, Erin, I’m your father. I know that’s a title I don’t deserve. I realized a long time ago you were best off
way
the hell away from . . . me.” Again, he shook his head and laughed. His smile faded quickly. “But you should know I
did
at least arrange to provide a scholarship for you at that school in New York you went to.”

I was so shocked by this revelation, I paused the tape, rewound, and listened a second time. I hadn’t misheard. My full scholarship at Parsons had come courtesy of Randy Axelrod. My eyes misted.

He dragged his hand over his mouth and along his jaw. “Anyway. If we never meet, I just wanted you to know that it’s not like I never did anything for you, all these years. I know, paying for your college anonymously sure wasn’t much. But, well, that Jeannie Gilbert . . . she just seemed like the kindest, most loving young lady I’d ever met, and I knew she’d be a much better parent than . . .”

He stopped, seemingly unable to continue. Finally he cleared his throat and muttered, “You take care, now.” He got up and came toward the camera. The picture faded to black.

I sat there staring at the black screen, stunned, numb, unsure of how to react. Maybe I was just too drained from the events of the day to feel much of anything just now. I decided, though, to simply take his word for it that Myra had injured herself and not continue to believe that he had abused her. Randy Axelrod might not have been nearly as bad a person and a husband as she, and everyone else, had led me to believe.

Hildi, meanwhile, decided to come join me on the sofa, and I welcomed her warm, sleek little body onto my lap. I pressed the rewind button and watched the entire tape a second time, looking for myself in Randy’s features, mannerisms, speech patterns.

Questions whirled in my mind; I knew they would likely remain unanswered. If Randy knew Myra was as unstable as she was, why didn’t he come to my office in private, like any reasonable person would have done? Why play the game of hiding everything in the wall? Maybe he was just so hopelessly stuck in the rut of his own manipulative, controlling behavior that, try as he might, he couldn’t change.

I shut off the tape. Picking up on my vibes that I was about to get up, Hildi hopped off my lap and pranced toward the bedroom. I garnered the strength to remove my coat and hang it up. I picked up the phone and listened. The dial tone indicated that I had a message on my voice mail. Though I silently chastised myself, as I dialed my voice mail I foolishly hoped that the message would be from Steve Sullivan.

“Hi, Erin,” the message began. “I was just thinking about you and decided to call.” My father. “My wife and I were talking . . .”

I rolled my eyes at the “my wife.” He always called Angie that, “my wife,” as though I didn’t know my own stepmother’s name. Which was not to say that I knew much else about her, even after their having been married for thirteen years now.

“. . . if you’d like to come out to Los Angeles for Christmas. I know it’s short notice, with Christmas just three days away, but you might be able to catch a flight from Denver tomorrow or the next day. We’d be happy to pick up the tab. My wife pointed out that it’s been . . . well, that I should have been more accommodating, as far as your getting to spend time with her and my daughter. Anyway, I don’t suppose you can manage to take me up on my offer at this point, but maybe next year. I’ve got to run, but think about it. See if you can get a flight. If not, Merry Christmas. Maybe you could call me . . . us . . . tomorrow, and let us know if you can come out.” There was a pause, then he said, “Bye,” and the message ended.

I returned the phone to its stand. This was a first—an invitation to come visit during the holidays. He was, of course, ambivalent about the idea or he would have made the offer sooner so that I could actually accept. Still, he’d opened the door a crack. . . .

My mother’s words returned to me. Whenever I lamented about having such an absentee father, she used to tell me: “Just because someone doesn’t love you the way you wish to be loved doesn’t mean that they don’t love you with all that they’ve got.” Although it had taken me years, and sometimes the wound still festered, I had finally come to accept that basic truth. My father loved me as best he could.

I curled up on the sofa, hoping Hildi would return to the room and join me. It struck me that finding a family, a home, a safe haven, was really what my life was about—what had motivated my choice of careers. I’d been trying to find a way home, to help my clients find their way home. That might not be as noble an occupation as some, but neither was it as trivial—as driven by image and mere status seeking—as Jill McBride had made my career choice sound.

The doorbell chimed. I swung open the door without looking through the sidelight, figuring it was probably a police officer with yet some more questions for me. On the doorstep stood a young woman. She held an enormous arrangement of exotic flowers in a large porcelain vase. “Erin Gilbert?” she asked.

“Yes.”

“These are for you.”

She handed them to me. Surprised and delighted, I carried them over to the side table in the parlor, near the French doors, saying over my shoulder, “Wow! They’re absolutely stunning!” I stared at the amazing flowers and the outstanding, elegant arrangement—bird of paradise, protea, red anthurium, dendrobium orchids, heliconia. The elegant design looked like something that I might have assembled for my wealthiest of clients. Audrey’s oak table was suddenly boasting some three hundred dollars’ worth of exotic tropical flowers.

The delivery girl stepped into the foyer. “Here’s the card.” She handed me an unmarked envelope in the standard two-by-three-inch size. She smirked. “The guy who sent them insisted that the plastic spear we stick into our arrangements would ruin the lines or something, so he wouldn’t let us use one.”

My God! There was only one person I knew would possibly care about a removable card holder ruining the lines of a floral arrangement. I opened the envelope and read:

Hey, Gilbert—Keep in mind that my
offer to form sullivan & GILBERT
Designs stands.
Have a merry Christmas.
Sullivan

I beamed at the card. Compared to the bottle of cyanide on my birthday from my ex-boyfriend, this was the proverbial gift of the Magi.

The delivery girl fidgeted with a lock of her spiky maroon-dyed hair and said, “My shift ended a while ago, but, you know, everyone loves flowers. I just figured I could make one last trip before I called it a night.”

A hint for a tip, if ever there was one. “Thank you so much for bringing this out tonight. Let me just grab my purse.”

As I fetched my bag, I glanced over the girl’s shoulder at the darkening sky. “Oh, look! It’s starting to snow! And the forecasts all week call for the temperatures to stay below freezing. This is going to be just what I pictured . . . a white Colorado Christmas!”

She gave a quick glance back and shrugged. “Nah. We never get a white Christmas in Crestview. It’ll prob’ly quit in another ten minutes.”

She gestured with her chin at the flowers. “Your boyfriend insisted on doing the arrangement himself, so he came in the shop first thing this morning and did it. You’re lucky. He’s really
hot
.”

I found my wallet and extracted a five-dollar bill, saying, “He’s not my boyfriend.”

“He
isn’t?”

I met her gaze. She had a glint in her eye. Aside from her unnatural hair color and excessive body piercings, she
was
attractive. I knew at once that she was thinking about getting Steve’s number and address off the receipt and contacting him. Almost simultaneously came the realization that I wanted to discourage her from doing so.

I raised my eyebrow and said with artificial significance, “Steve is an interior designer.”

“Oh,” she said casually, then said, “Oh,” again in a lower, disheartened voice.

I felt guilty enough to grab a second five from my bill-fold and double her tip, but not so guilty as to correct for having deliberately misled her. The man had just sent me flowers; I was under no ethical obligation to fix him up with the delivery girl.

I lost track of the time as I stood and stared out Audrey’s front window at the falling snowflakes. The sky had turned from royal blue to black. A halo of light from a streetlamp in the distance carved its own miniature world of falling snow out of the darkness.

Before I could make any excuses and change my mind, I retrieved the handful of letters Emily Blaire had sent me, the child she had never known. I brought them downstairs, and curled up on my favorite sofa. Hildi promptly hopped onto the far cushion, then tucked herself into my lap. I unfolded the first letter.

My hands were trembling. I took a calming breath, murmured to myself, “Confidence and optimism,” and began to read.

about the author

Leslie Caine was once taken hostage at gunpoint and finds that writing about crimes is infinitely more enjoyable than taking part in them. Leslie is a certified interior decorator and lives in Colorado with her husband, two teenaged children, and a cocker spaniel, where she is at work on her next
Domestic Bliss
mystery,
False Premises
.

If you enjoyed the debut of the
Domestic Bliss
mystery series, DEATH BY INFERIOR DESIGN,
you won’t want to miss the next mystery featuring
the design team of Gilbert & Sullivan—and their
wonderful decorating tips!

Read on for a tantalizing early look at
Leslie Caine’s second Domestic Bliss mystery

FALSE
PREMISES

a domestic
bliss mystery
by
Leslie Caine

Coming summer 2005
in paperback from Dell

FALSE PREMISES

On sale summer 2005

For the second time in the past thirty minutes of our girls’ night out, the waitress arrived bearing drinks that Laura Smith and I hadn’t ordered and didn’t want. Within those same thirty minutes, we’d also been approached by two less-than-sober men asking if we were sisters. With Laura’s drop-dead-gorgeous looks, that question was, at least, flattering to me, and, thankfully, Laura hadn’t paled in horror. However, this latest drink offer was an unwanted interruption of a serious conversation.