Decorating Schemes

by Ginny Aiken

  Dad met my gaze and held it for a moment. I couldn’t tell for sure, but I suspected he also sent a brief prayer heavenward.

  “I can’t think of a better activity for you,” he finally said.

  When Bella’s smile put in an appearance, I knew I was in for a rocky ride.

  “You know?” she said. “This sounds like it’s right up my alley. And I can’t let our Haley girl go off and do something so risky without someone looking out for her.” She bustled to the door. “Wonder what kind of cute clothes you get to wear for scuba diving.”

  The door slammed as she trotted off.

  “No—”

  “Don’t even try,” Dad said, a mischievous sparkle in his eyes. “You know better than to get in the way of Hurricane Bella. I just want to be around to see the divers’ faces when she takes them on.”

  I dropped into a chair. “Lucky me. It looks like I get a front-row seat.”

  Whether I wanted one or not.

  The next day I got an early call from Dutch. He’d set up an appointment at the Marshall home with the pool installer. In spite of the tragedy at the outset of the job, I couldn’t shut down my excitement over the designs we were working on, especially the nonpink elements.

  At 2:30 I drove up to the mansion, parked, and rang the doorbell. Deedee answered.

  “Hi, Haley.” She gave me a hug—surprised the daylights out of me. “It’s so good to see you. I loved the furniture showroom, but this is going to be so much more fun. I can’t wait for my tropical-paradise pool to go in.”

  Furniture shopping with Deedee was... interesting. The more shiny chrome and steel any piece had, the more she liked it. Sparkly stuff, pink on pink, and geometric lines all over the place didn’t really excite me, but the design challenge those restrictions presented did.

  “I’m glad. Is the pool guy here yet? How about Dutch?”

  “They both got here about two minutes ago. I took them out back. Let’s go see what we can come up with.”

  I experienced a weird sensation as we took the same path as on the day we found KC. At the kitchen door, I shuddered. But mercifully, when we stepped outside we only saw Dutch and a chunky, red-ponytailed guy. Each man had a hand pointed at a different end of the yard.

  “Uh-oh.” I shook my head. “Not a moment too soon, Deedee. It looks like a testosterone match is on out here. Let’s go bring some sanity to your pool project.”

  Deedee giggled as we walked up to the posturing males.

  “Hey there, Dutch.”

  He nodded his greeting.

  Then I held out my hand to the redhead at his side. “I’m Haley Farrell, the designer on the project. Pleased to meet you.”

  “Good to meet you.” The chunky guy’s paw tightened like a vise around my fingers. “I’m Doug Carter. I specialize in tropical styles. Perfect Pools assigned me to your project.”

  My hand would never be the same. I shook it out as discreetly as I could. “Let me tell you what we’re doing with the house. That way you’ll have a better idea what we can and can’t do with the pool.”

  Although the pool guy frowned, I knew I couldn’t let him just plunk his hole in the ground wherever he wanted. I showed him my preliminary sketch for the rear elevation of the house and made sure both he and Dutch realized the kitchen’s glass wall had to take center stage.

  After a bit of verbal wrangling and some horse-trader-type compromise, we came to an agreement. The pool would sit thirty-five feet away from the new Pennsylvania bluestone patio, just in front of the first evergreens in the northernmost corner of the yard. Doug would stack under the trees themselves the boulders we needed for the waterfall into the lagoon-style pool. I could already envision their gray tones in perfect contrast with the deep emerald foliage.

  Once the men were done and on their way back through the house, I turned to Deedee. “I still need a couple more measurements in the kitchen. Do you mind if I stay behind while you show the guys out?”

  She gave an airy wave. “Of course not. Go ahead and do what you need, Haley. I just, like, want everything to be perfect. Of course you need to do your measurements over and over to be sure it all turns out the way I want it...”

  Her fluffy, feathery voice carried back as she followed the men. I grinned. Who’d have thought I’d one day redesign a home for the up-to-date cross between Marilyn Monroe and Barbie?

  I pulled out my hundred-foot tape measure and made for the pantry. The day I returned to take photos and measurements, I’d had the time only to take a quick peek into this area. Now I needed precision to design new storage configurations once we tore down the pantry walls.

  My design would nestle the new breakfast nook in a half-hexagon bay window area we planned to build based on the space we’d gain once we removed the pantry itself. I measured the wall between the pantry and the kitchen, then opened the door to measure the exact depth of the small room.

  Floor-to-ceiling shelves sagged under canned goods, boxes of various cereals, pastas, and every type of tea known to mankind, dozens of pans and baking dishes, serving pieces, and all sorts of other kitchen paraphernalia.

  To reach the back wall, I would have to move stuff out of my way. I began with the shelf right under my nose. The stacked skillets—eight of them in different sizes!—went down on the floor behind me.

  Once those were out of my way, I went to work on the multiple commercial-sized containers of ibuprofen, cold and sinus tablets, antacids, laxatives, vitamins, and prescription-type bottles of medication.

  I moved bottles of Celebrex, Lipitor, Vicodin, and a couple other serious painkillers. Then I froze.

  My hand hovered over a particular pill bottle on that shelf. My heart pounded hard in my chest. My breath grew shallow. Nausea struck. I began to pray.

  The good doctor and his wife had a large bottle of RU-486, the notorious morning-after abortifacient, in their kitchen among a veritable cocktail of drugs, many of them controlled substances.

  Why?

  Like a lightbulb, the idea flashed to life. I scrabbled among the remaining bottles, intent on one thing: did a bottle of Coumadin lurk among the Marshalls’ kitchen stash? I was so focused that I never heard a thing.

  A heavy hand landed on my shoulder.

  “What do you think you’re doing, snooping in our kitchen cupboards?” Deedee’s shrillest tones pierced my eardrums. “And I trusted you. How dare you dig around in our things? We’re not paying you to mess with our private business. You’re just here to decorate the house, not to sniff out every last little thing about us. I should call the police on you. You just wait till I tell Stew—”

  “Chill, Deedee,” I said, anything but chilled-out myself. “I told you I needed to measure the pantry. I couldn’t reach the back wall with all that stuff in the way, so I had to move it around. I put the pans on the floor—be careful you don’t step on them and trip. And I had to make a path for my tape measure between your meds. Everything is stacked so high and tight in here that I couldn’t see the wall, much less take any measurements.”

  “Oh.” She narrowed her eyes. “I guess you could be right. The pantry is full. I had the grocery store restock everything, since it was getting kinda bare now that Domingo’s been gone for a while.”

  Her frown didn’t ease, but she’d at least considered my explanation—which was the truth, of course. I couldn’t have measured if I hadn’t moved things. I didn’t think it prudent to discuss the arsenal of drugs.

  To prove my point, I stretched out my tape measure. “The room’s exactly nine feet and seven and an eighth inches wide and thirteen feet and five and a third inches deep.”

  I made a big deal of the notation in the notepad I took from my portfolio, which I’d propped against the door frame. Then I faced my client again. “All done!”

  That seemed to relieve her. “Good. I’m all stressed out now. I need a nap.”

  Okay. “I’m jealous. I have a ton of things to do, so I’ll leave you to your z’s. I’ll put t
ogether the ideas we’ve talked about and then give you a call early next week so we can go over some initial drawings for the kitchen and sunroom.”

  “I’ll be waiting for your call.”

  I hurried outside, jumped in my car, and didn’t allow myself a deep breath until I reached the brick columns at the end of the drive. There’d been no Coumadin on the shelf—at least, none that I’d found. But I’d only cleared a small area on the one shelf. Who knew what skulked behind the canned shrimp and truffles and lemon-curd jars?

  What really troubled me, though, was that one awful bottle. Why would a plastic surgeon have a container of morning-after pills at his home?

  Did the nice man I’d met at the dive shop have a darker, more dangerous alter ego? Even though I hadn’t found Coumadin, did Stewart Marshall have some stashed away somewhere? Had he given it to KC? And why had Deedee freaked out like that if she didn’t have anything to hide?

  Was she afraid of her much-older husband?

  All good questions. But I had no answers.

  Not yet.

  Once I drove out past the wrought-iron gate, I pulled over onto the shoulder of the road and called Tedd. “I hope you’re free right now.”

  “Take a look at your watch. My last client left about ten minutes ago, and we just locked our doors.”

  “Don’t go anywhere. I’ll be there in less than fifteen minutes. Please.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “I’ll tell you when I get there.”

  My hands shook so much I don’t know how I made it to Tedd’s office in one piece. I was a safety hazard on the road, but I had to get away from the Marshall mansion. I had to talk to Tedd.

  She was looking out for me in her waiting room, just inside the glass door. I walked in, she locked up again, and we headed back to her private office. Once we both sat, I met her gaze.

  “The Marshalls have RU-486 in their pantry. They also have a ton of heavy-duty prescription narcotics there.”

  Tedd frowned. “They have the morning-after pill in their kitchen?”

  “In their kitchen. And major painkillers too.”

  She gave me an ironic smile. “That sounds slightly illegal.”

  “Yeah, right. Slightly. Try totally.”

  “So what does it mean?”

  “I’m not sure. And I didn’t find any Coumadin. But I didn’t have a chance to look through everything there, much less other parts of the house. I can’t be sure it’s not hidden somewhere else. Besides, you should’ve seen Deedee. She totally freaked when she saw me moving pill bottles around.”

  “There’s only one use for the morning-after pill.”

  “Yep.”

  “You wouldn’t think a husband and wife would use something that radical for birth control.”

  “Nope.”

  Tedd fell silent, and I sat there and shook. My mind filled with ugly images, from my past and from the scene of KC’s death.

  The longer the silence drew, the more troubled Tedd looked. Finally she said, “I’m not sure how to go about this.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I just thought of something a client told me. It occurs to me that it might help you connect some dots. But I have a problem with confidentiality.”

  I wanted to scream at her, to remind her that murder had happened here. But I had to hold my tongue. She did have an ethical issue to deal with.

  I tried to wait her out, but my patience was nothing to write home about. Prayer helped—only for so long.

  “Come on, Tedd. Give me a break here.” I stood and paced; patience wasn’t getting us anywhere. “We’re talking about a dead kid. Tell me what you’re thinking—whatever you know. Please.”

  Tedd waved me back into my chair. “I know what’s at stake, Haley. But I can’t ignore what’s at the core of what I do.”

  I’d never seen her so troubled. She continued, her voice serious, her gaze intent. “According to a client, and I have no reason to doubt her, we have a local doc who performs illegal late-term abortions. True, the RU-486 has nothing to do with late-term abortions, but how many doctors do we have in town? In little old Wilmont? Then, out of those, how many would even have that med in the first place?”

  Tedd stood, turned her back to me. “Please go out to the waiting room while I make a phone call.”

  When I rose, my knees threatened to give way. I’ve never been able to get my head around the concept of abortion, much less the so-called late-term ones. To me, it’s murder, plain and simple.

  “I’ll be waiting,” I said.

  In the waiting room, I sat and prayed; I prayed for myself, for Tedd, for her client, for KC, for my dad, for Deedee and Stewart Marshall, for Dutch.

  Most of all, I prayed for the little babies who wouldn’t live long enough to breathe, to be held, to be loved, to learn to pray for themselves. Silent tears flowed unchecked.

  I didn’t need anyone to tell me who the local abortionist was. I didn’t need anyone to tell me what had happened to KC’s child.

  I knew. And I wished I didn’t.

  Stewart Marshall had killed KC’s child.

  What I needed to learn was whether he’d also killed KC.

  And why.

  I went straight home after I left Tedd’s office. Dad wasn’t there; more than likely, he and Madeleine had gone somewhere. They’d become inseparable.

  It didn’t matter. What mattered most was that the house would be empty. I didn’t know when the events of the afternoon would hit me, but I expected the hit to be hard when they did. I didn’t want Dad there to see me fall apart again, to wind up worried about me yet another time.

  My Bible offered comfort. I read a little, but my attention strayed too often to continue, so I turned to prayer. I poured out my heart to the Lord. I confessed my fear, my lack of courage. I asked for strength, for guidance, for the wisdom to recognize his leading.

  Then I just sat, my Bible held close to my heart. My foot pushed my mother’s rocker into an easy, steady rhythm. By the time the doorbell rang, I’d come to realize that although the afternoon had been traumatic in every possible way, I hadn’t fallen apart. Yes, I felt wrung out, my emotions all on the edge, but I hadn’t plunged into one of the deep, dark pits of despair I’d so often visited in the past.

  Midas and I opened the door for Dutch.

  “Oh,” I said. “Did I forget a meeting or something?”

  “I wish. I just had another run-in with Lila Tsu, and I wondered if you’d come up with anything in the last few days. Can I come in?”

  “I’m sorry. Of course you can.” I stepped aside, dragged Midas away from the open door and doggy freedom, then gestured toward the sofa. “Take a seat. I hope you don’t mind making a new best friend. Midas is not known for shyness.”

  “I’ve met him before, remember?”

  Groan. “And every time I was at a disadvantage.”

  “Seems you’ve left that habit in the past.”

  “What makes you say that?”

  “This time I’m the one in trouble, aren’t I?”

  I thought about the scuba lessons but decided not to mention them. Instead, I said, “What’s the deal with Lila? Does she have new evidence? Anything to tie you closer to the crime?”

  I hoped not; I’d come to accept my attraction to Dutch.

  He ran a hand through his dark hair. “No, not really. I get the sense she’s under pressure to solve the case but isn’t getting anywhere. Since she’s back to square one, she figured it was time to torture me some more.”

  “Sounds like Lila. That’s her modus operandi, you know. At least, that’s how she handled her suspicion of me last year.”

  “I wish she’d quit with me and start to look for the killer somewhere else. It sure wasn’t me, and I want to hurry up and prove it.”

  Should I share what I’d learned? If he was really as innocent as I’d begun to believe, then it wouldn’t matter. If, on the other hand, he was as guilty as he’d initially appeared, as
guilty as Lila believed him to be, then telling him important information would help him cover his tracks even better.

  Another quick prayer went heavenward, and I decided to buy myself some time to chill a bit, get a good handle on my feelings.

  “Can I get you something to drink?” I’d never thought of myself as a Martha Stewart hostess, but this even I could handle. “I have coffee, tea, and lemonade, and I suspect there may be a can or two of soda somewhere in the kitchen.”

  “If you can track down the soda, I’d like that.”

  “Give me a minute, and I’ll be right back.”

  In the kitchen I prayed again. The sodas were way back in the lower cupboard next to the sink, but it took a bit of digging around to reach them. I filled a glass with ice, then, can in hand, returned to the living room.

  I’d come full circle on my fears and suspicions and had realized all I could do was to leave the outcome to God. He wouldn’t let me down.

  “Here you go.” I gave Dutch the cold glass and popped-open can. “I’d like to buy the world a Coke...”

  “I was just thirsty, Haley. I didn’t really need a song-and-dance commercial to go with it.”

  He took a drink.

  “I learned a couple of things, Dutch. For one, KC’s boyfriend did love her, and he swears he’s not the father. He’s really broken up about her death but angry and bitter about her obsession with scuba diving. She spent every possible minute down at the shop, and he barely saw her once she got serious with diving. If you ask me, he loved her enough to respect her. Which tells me he didn’t touch her. He isn’t the baby’s father. And I’m not sure his anger made him snap and...”

  Dutch took his time but then lifted a shoulder and nodded.

  I continued. “There’s a guy down at the scuba shop who’s also crazy about her. He’s just as messed up right now, but I don’t think she encouraged his feelings. Max, the one who was running the shop when I went there, says KC was pretty serious about the real boyfriend. I met Tom, the diver, but I didn’t get a chance to ask him that kind of question.”

  Dutch gave me an “Are you nuts?” look. “Do you really think it works that way? To just go up to a guy and accuse him of fathering a dead teen’s baby?”