The Design Is Murder (Murders By Design) (4 page)

Chapter Nine

As James and I watched—with bated breath, for some
reason—Kay Hawkins strode into the living room. Tall, lithe and late thirties,
she had streaked brown hair falling to her shoulders, and though not beautiful
like poor Connie Rae, she was nonetheless stunning. And in her purple dress,
carrying a lime-green straw bag, she was clearly a woman who wasn’t afraid of
color.

At the sight of us she stopped short. “Tea for two. How
charming,” she said in a bitchy tone that meant exactly the opposite.

James scrambled to his feet and held out his arms. “Darling,”
he said in the same voice he used on Charlotte. “What a surprise.”

“Indeed,” she said, eying me without moving into his
outstretched arms. “One doesn’t know whether to leave or to stay.”

Oh heavens. Time to jump in. I stood and held out a hand. “I’m
interior designer Deva Dunne, Mrs. Hawkins. Your fiancé—” I might as well
establish the correct pecking order, “—is planning a surprise for you. And I
seem to be it.”

We shook briefly, fingertip to fingertip. Then I rummaged in my
bag for my card case, removed one and gave it to her. With a show-me frown on
her face, she took the card and glanced at it. Tapping it on a thumbnail, she
turned to James. “You’re planning to redo the house for me?”

“Yes, darling,” he replied, his voice loaded with relief.

“How lovely, Jimmy, but did it not occur to you that I might
like to be part of any changes?”

His face fell. “But that would negate the surprise.”

“Precisely,” she said.

“I thought while we were on our wedding trip, Deva here could
sweep in with her crew and give the rooms a...a facelift. Then when we returned,
you’d have a wonderful new look awaiting you.”

“But, Jimmy,” she said, pointing a cerise fingernail at the
house across the lane, “haven’t we had enough surprises? And besides, how do I
know Deva’s changes would suit me? We may have totally different taste.”

“That would not be a problem,” James said. “I intended to
direct the project from the get-go.” He waved a rather thin arm around the
living room. “As I did years ago when I purchased the property and redid the
interior.” He flicked an imaginary fleck of lint from his shorts. “Pardon me for
boasting, but I do have a gift for this sort of thing.”

Kay shot a quick glance my way, and our eyes locked. We were on
the same page. I knew in that moment we’d work around Jimmy—I mean James—and
that together Kay and I would make a good team.

I fake-checked my watch. “I do have another appointment this
afternoon,” I lied. “So if it’s convenient, shall we begin our tour?”

* * *

Afterward, I drove back to the shop, delighted with the
Stahlman meeting. Decisive and direct, Kay had wasted no time informing both her
fiancé and me about her color preferences. As a concession to James, she would
include cobalt blue as an accent, and loved my idea of combining that with coral
and white and adding touches of black for sheer drama. Recently I’d seen a
gorgeous Thibaut paper in coral with silvery birds that would make a sensational
dining room, especially with James’s silver pieces polished and on display,
perhaps on a mirrored sideboard. We’d agreed to retire two of his brown dining
chairs and replace them with upholstered host and hostess seating, and
re-cushion the others. And that was just for openers.

I was actually humming when I opened the shop and took down the
Closed sign. At my desk, I sorted through the mail, tossing circulars and
opening bills and a few checks. An envelope with a familiar crabbed handwriting
embellished with fancy flourishes caught my attention. I slit it open, removed a
thin sheet of lined paper:

Good news
,
Mrs.
Dunne
,

The parole board finally came through and granted my
release.
Thought you’d want to know in case you need to contact me about the
Help-a-Con Program.

Not to worry.
I
have brochures and price lists for all the prison furniture and will stop by
your shop and drop them off.
That might not be for a few days
,
though.

Once I’m sprung
,
I’m getting in on the last week
of the Python Challenge
,
so I’ll be in the Everglades by the time
this reaches you.

See you soon.
Wish me luck with the snakes.

Yours truly
,

Mike Hammerjack

Chapter Ten

Egads, the Python Challenge. I shuddered, unable to believe people actually went into the Everglades—the biggest swamp in the world—and searched for Burmese pythons. Just the thought made my skin crawl.

According to the
Naples Daily News
, the pythons were decimating the Everglades’ native wildlife. In an attempt at control, the state was sponsoring a month-long hunt for the critters. Some were seventeen feet long and strong enough to kill an ox or a deer or a grown man, slowly by constriction.

As an incentive, the hunter who caught the most snakes would win a prize of fifteen hundred dollars. Not nearly enough in my opinion. To up the challenge, the pythons had to be killed or captured humanely by snare or net, not by blowing their heads off with a pistol or stabbing them in the throat.

Anyway, since no guns were allowed in the hunt, I guess the fun had been okayed by Hammerjack’s parole officer. Then fresh from tangling with the snakes, Hammerjack would pay a visit to Deva Dunne Interiors. Terrific. Rossi had been so upset about the Hawkins case last night, I wouldn’t mention receiving letters from Florida State Prison. Why upset him further?

On the other hand, Hammerjack didn’t necessarily mean trouble. He could simply be a reformed man wanting to reach out and help others. Wasn’t it a well-known fact that people with the least were the first to offer assistance to those in need? They understood from personal experience what being in harm’s way really meant.

I folded the letter with the prison return address and put it in a desk drawer with the first one. Yesterday, Kay had mentioned she’d like to turn one of the guest bedrooms into a personal study. That would mean installing a computer station, a desk, bookcases. Maybe I could put the Help-a-Con Program to use in there after all.

Pythons.
Funny, I’d lived in Naples for several years now, and the only snake I ever saw was a little black garden runner. The diameter of my pinkie finger, it was maybe seven inches long, but when I spotted it on the lawn I’d screamed like I was in mortal danger and jumped onto a patio chair.

Snakes that were seventeen feet long boggled my mind and raised goose bumps on my arms. I shook my head, relieved when the Yarmouthport bells on the shop door jangled.

A woman who looked strangely familiar stepped in and gave me a radiant oh-there-you-are-again smile. Had we met before? I got up from behind my desk to greet her and realized—no, she couldn’t be—yes, she was—Teresa in the flesh and looking spectacular.

Fluffed-out Big Hair cascaded past her shoulders, and red-tipped nails matched her movie star lipstick. Hugging her curves, a mini sheath careened to a stop just above her knees, and platform stilettos added inches to her height. At her throat a rhinestone leaf sparkled like a Broadway sign at midnight. Va va va voom! A filled up Brassy de Bra in the exuberant flesh. So long, white nylon uniform and sensible oxfords.

“Teresa,” I said, extending a hand as I strolled toward her. “Is this really you?”

She laughed, pleased, I think, at my confusion. “Yes. This is me all right.”

“You’re not deaf, are you?”

She shook her head. “No. I never was.”

“Then why pretend to be?”

“Oh, it’s a game Stew and I...I mean Mr. Stew and I play.”

“Really?”

At my question, or maybe my quizzical tone, the confidence a tight skirt and stilettos can give a girl wavered for an instant. An instant only, then her mouth turned down at the corners. Way down. “I pretended to be deaf when Stew...Mr. Stew was married to that Kay woman.”

That Kay woman.
I recognized female animus when I heard it. Teresa clearly hadn’t liked Kay.

“I don’t understand,” I said.

“They fought so much, shouting matches night after night...oh, it was awful...so I began acting as if I couldn’t hear a thing. It made life easier for all of us. Mr. Stew—” she got it right that time, “—liked me for pretending and kind of made a joke out of it.”

The stilettos must have been killing her. She shifted from one foot to the other then back again as she dug around in her shoulder bag. “I have something for you. From him.”

She rummaged in the purse a while longer, searching for whatever it was. “I can never find a thing in this bag.”

Two women could bond over that alone.

“I know the feeling. Do come and sit down.”

She teetered after me and perched on the Eames chair in front of my desk. After a few more seconds of poking, she produced a white envelope and handed it across to me.

“For you. A retainer from Mr. Stew. He wants you to work on his house, but not until this, this...
mess
is over.”

“Mess?” I asked, knowing full well what she meant. Who
was
this woman, really?

She nodded. ‘Yes, his new wife’s death. The police are questioning him, acting as if he caused it. He can’t sleep. He can’t eat. Not even when I cook him his favorites. It’s not fair.”

I tossed the pewter letter opener onto my desktop. “A woman is dead, Teresa. A very young woman. The police want to find out why. For that they have to get at the truth.”

“The truth?” She actually scoffed. “The truth is Stew should never have married that bimbo in the first place.”

Stew.
Interesting. The word
Mr.
was apparently a frill she’d decided to abandon.

While she looked on, I slit open the envelope she’d given me and gasped. Sight unseen, without even hearing a single one of my design ideas, Stew had sent me a check for ten thousand dollars. What a show of confidence. Frankly I was thrilled and wrote him a receipt on the spot.

“Please give this to Mr. Hawkins with my thanks,” I said, handing it to Teresa. “I’ll be awaiting his call after the funeral is over and he’s recovered from his grief.”

“I don’t think there’ll be a funeral. Stew needs to forget all this and get on with his life.” She dropped the receipt into her bag and stood, smoothing the mini over her thighs.

Hmm. Where did she come off displaying an attitude like that? I didn’t like it. I didn’t like it one bit and indulged in something I despised, a nasty female barb.

“When Stew gets on with his life, as you put it, you think he might get married again? With you as his new bride?”

She looked me straight in the eye. “That’s exactly how I see it.”

To that I had no response. Her brass-plated nerve took my breath away. Plus her recklessness. If the autopsy showed Mrs. Connie Rae Hawkins was the victim of foul play, then Teresa had just revealed a perfect motive for murder.

Chapter Eleven

At closing time I was at the computer logging in initial design ideas for the two Whiskey Lane houses when the Yarmouthport bells swung into their happy dance.

I glanced at the door. “Rossi!” I leaped up from my chair and hurried over to him.

He turned the lock in the shop door and took me in his arms right in front of the plate glass window. After kissing me breathless, he said, “I have a surprise for you. So get your purse and close up for the night. We need to leave while there’s still plenty of daylight.”

“This time of year, the sun doesn’t set until about eight o’clock. So what on earth is your hurry?”

“If I tell you, there’s no surprise.”

“You know something? You sound like James Stahlman.”

His hand on the light switch, Rossi frowned. “The guy whose wife disappeared a year ago? The accidental drowning?” His frown deepened. “Accidental until proven otherwise.”

“He’s the one.”

“You know him?”

“We met the other day. He’s my other client on Whiskey Lane.”

“Your
other
client? You mean you’ve taken on Stew Hawkins after I warned you to stay away from him?”

“I hate to be crass, Rossi, but a ten-thousand-dollar retainer trumped your warning. The business needs the cash infusion. I simply can’t afford to turn him down. Besides, Stew hasn’t been accused of a crime, has he?”

Rossi pressed the off switch for the overheads with more force than necessary. “No, I haven’t received the autopsy report yet. But Hawkins’s rep with women is pretty unsavory.”

“He has a housekeeper.”
Boy
,
did he have a housekeeper.
“She’ll be there whenever I am. And except for the first one or two planning sessions, I’ll be meeting tradespeople on the property. I won’t be alone with him.”

“Good. That’s something anyway. Now all I have to worry about is this other guy. This Stahlman.” Rossi held the door open for me. “You know his last wife’s disappearance is still an unsolved case, but are you aware his first wife died of an overdose?”

“No.” I shook my head. “I never heard that.”

“Well now you have. So don’t go swimming with the guy and don’t take any pills from him.”

“Very funny, Rossi. For your information, he’s a consummate gentleman. Even served me tea, for Pete’s sake. From a silver pot.”

Well, technically
I
had served him, but that was beside the point.

I locked up and, tucking my arm in his, Rossi escorted me down Fern Alley to Fifth Avenue where he had parked his party wheels. Usually for everyday events like work or picking up a pizza and a bottle of Chianti, he drove his old, deliberately unwashed Mustang. Like his Hawaiian shirt theory, his dirty car theory aimed at disarming suspects into thinking he was an inept flatfoot. For special occasions though, like this apparently was, he rolled out his vintage Maserati. Sleek, silver and shined to the max, the car had been a gift from his late Uncle Beppe and Rossi loved it. No wonder. It was a special vehicle for a special guy and made me feel special too each time I slid onto the red leather passenger seat beside him. Like now.

So he did have a big surprise in mind, and I was aware of a rising excitement. What could it be?

We drove to his secret destination with the car windows open. Through some miracle of Mother Nature, humidity didn’t clog the air. Instead, a dry Gulf breeze with a hint of jasmine and oleander wafted over us and riffled my red Irish curls. But I had terminal frizzies anyway, and Rossi actually liked my hair on the wild side.

I tried to compensate for it by wearing rather conservative clothes—no super minis, no sky-high platforms, no XS sweaters. After all, I
was
in the taste business, although I’ve been known to tell my clients that style begins where the rules end, at least as far as interior design is concerned. But I digress.

From Fifth Avenue we headed north on the Tamiami Trail, past the street leading to the Naples Beach Hotel, then past the Community Hospital and through two stop lights until we reached a set of stone markers that read Calista Sands. Rossi turned in between the markers and drove slowly along a lush, curvy street lined on either side with gracious, low-roofed houses of a comfortable but not ostentatious size.

Quietly residential yet near enough to Fifth Avenue and Old Naples to be centrally located, Calista Sands was one of the neighborhoods in town I most admired. Too bad I couldn’t afford to live there.

In fact, driving by one well-groomed property after the other, with their manicured lawns that even in the torrid midsummer heat were as green as if it were early May, I was drooling mentally.

“Look at that one, Rossi,” I said, pointing to a house I especially liked. “And that one. It’s beautiful in here.”

“I know,” he said, taking his attention from the road for a second to glance across the front seat and treat me to a big, white Chiclets grin.

He was happy about something. That much was plain. But
what?

Rossi never drove fast, always five miles under the speed limit, never five miles over it. Tonight he was outdoing himself, driving the Maserati as slowly as if it were a sightseeing bus loaded with tourists. For some reason, he didn’t want me to miss a thing.

We kept heading west, toward the setting sun, or more precisely, toward a wide finger of water, an inlet that marked the end of Calista Sands and the beginning of the Gulf of Mexico. At an empty waterfront lot covered with stubbly sawgrass and sprouting a For Sale sign, he stopped and turned off the motor.

“What do you think?” he asked, turning to me. “Do you like it?”

Though a light bulb had popped on in my head, I said, “Like what?”

“The lot. It’s empty.”

“I can see that.”

A frown replaced his grin. “You’re not making this easy for me.”

“Rossi.” I took his hand in mine. “Are you saying you want to buy this lot?”

“Yes.”

“And build a house on it?”

“Yes.”

“Am I in the picture?”

“Triple yes. You’re the reason I’ve been looking.”

“You
have?
I didn’t know that.”

“The surprise,” he said.

“Oh. Right. How long?”

“Three hundred feet deep by one fifty wide.”

“No, I mean how long have you been looking for land?”

“Since the day you proposed.” The grin was back.

I had to smile, remembering how the duvet cover had slipped and... “I
did
propose to you, didn’t I?”

“Positively, and I accepted. So don’t try to wiggle out of anything.” His grip on my hand tightened. “You’re mine, and I want you. I’ve wanted you since the day we met. I think it was those little green shorts you had on that did it. And your sorrow over losing Jack. I knew in that moment you were a woman for a lifetime and...” his voice faltered, “...I’ve never told you this, but I envied Jack that day. And there’s something else, too...I was grateful to him for dying and leaving you free for me.” He let go of my hand and stared into my eyes as if he could still look but had lost the right to touch. “Do you hate me for that?”

Tears sprang into my eyes. I swiped at them with the back of my hand. “No. Never. I love you for your honesty.” And I did. Life had taken Jack, my first love, but had given me a second chance at happiness. I’d be a fool to let it slip away. I retook Rossi’s hand and squeezed hard, letting my fingers tell him what I was too soggy to say. We spent the next several minutes acting like teenagers in love before he said, “Shall we get out and look around?”

“Yes, let’s.”

We made our way over coarse patches of scrub grass. On both sides of the lot, well-cared-for houses faced the shimmering blue Gulf, their screened-in lanais taking advantage of the view. In front of the one on the left, a glistening Chris-Craft was moored to a small wooden dock.

“The inlet has Gulf access,” Rossi said, pride of place already clear on his face.

“It’s wonderful. The view, the neighborhood, the surrounding houses. Only one thing is bothering me.”

“What’s that?” he asked, sounding faintly alarmed as if I had noticed something he hadn’t.

“It’s so perfect, it has to be expensive.”

He shook his head, visibly relieved that I had no other objection. “No, not really. It’s been on the market since the beginning of the housing crisis. The owner is eager to sell.”

“May I ask the price?”

“No.”

“Or how you intend to pay for it?”

“No, ma’am.”

Like the Cheshire cat’s, his grin reached both ears. He was enjoying himself. On the other hand, I was getting ticked. Halfway back to the car, I stopped mid-stride. “If you trusted me, you’d answer my question.”

“Of course I trust you. Implicitly. But—”

“Nothing matters until you reach the ‘but.’ So why won’t you answer the question?”

“As you pointed out, this location is perfect for us, and I have no intention of risking a ‘No, Rossi, it’s too expensive.’”

He took my arm. Though I tried to shrug away, he held on tight and together we wended our way over the rough grass back to the Maserati.

Once inside the car, he said, “Let’s watch the sunset for a while.”

“Fine.” I stared straight ahead at a frieze of palm trees lining the shore and beyond at the blue Gulf water.

“You asked if I trusted you,” Rossi said softly.

“It was a logical question.” Ice frosted my tone.

“Now I’m asking you the same question.”

I half turned to face him. “You’re very good at interrogation. I’ll have to remember that.”

“You’re not going to give an inch, are you?”

“All I want to hear, Rossi, is what the damn lot costs. What’s wrong with that? You said you’re buying it with me in mind.”

“Even in Dorchester I’ll bet people don’t ask the price of a gift.”

“Oh.” I put my hands on my hips, letting my left elbow jab him in the ribs. “So now you’re insulting my background.”

He laughed. Out loud. “God, you’re impossible.”

At his laughter, my anger fizzled out like a wet firecracker. “I think we’re having a lover’s quarrel.”

“Those are the best kind, the aftermath is so great. This parcel of land is my gift to you. Your name will be on the deed. And on the house I want to build here.” His gaze left the view to focus on me. “You spend your life creating beautiful houses for other people. Isn’t it time you had one of your own?”

“And for you?”

“Yes, for the both of us.”

I exhaled and nodded, partly satisfied and partly not. Rossi’s gesture was beautiful. How could I not love him for it? But dammit, I did want to know how much the lot cost.

I eyeballed the For Sale sign. I could call the listing agent and ask the price. That would be sneaky, though, and I couldn’t cheapen Rossi’s gift that way, but I did huff out a sigh.

Like Kay Hawkins, I wasn’t sure how I felt about being surprised and wondered, suddenly, if James Stahlman had any more in store for Kay. And if Rossi had any more for me. I didn’t know how Kay might feel about that, but I knew secret surprises weren’t easy for a redhead from Dorchester.