by Cassie Page
“How could you do this to me,” she blared into the phone. “Do you know what’s happened to me?”
Tuesday answered, “I didn’t get you pregnant, girlfriend. I just told you what was coming.”
Lunch ended and people struggled up off the floor with their paper plates and plastic wine cups. Only Natasha and Holley had chairs. A knock on the door sent Tuesday opening it. “Roger!”
“Is that Mr. Roger?” Squealed Holley. “Where have you been?”
Holley’s happy smile sent a beam of light across the room. Roger followed it to her side and gave her a loud kiss.
“I’m sorry I couldn’t get here earlier. But I have an announcement to make. I’ve just come from a meeting at LACMA. They accepted two more of my photographs for a special exhibit.”
Amid the applause from the joyful guests, Tuesday felt a pall. She had to get to the bottom of this. “Roger, that’s wonderful. But you know, I happened to be in LACMA yesterday,” she lied. “I looked for your photographs but couldn’t find them.”
He had hunkered down next to Holley and was holding her hand. “Oh, you wouldn’t have. Not if you were looking for work by Roger Brand. I use my mother’s maiden name for my photographs. I’m afraid my father was a bit of a scoundrel and I decided I didn’t want my art confused with him, should I ever have any success. Kevin, my actual middle name, Jennings. That’s my public name. Kevin Jennings.”
Tuesday was cleaning up in the kitchen while Tessa made a mess dumping paper plates into the sink instead of the trash and tossing Gregory’s silverware into the recycling. “I never did excel at the domestic arts,” she explained unnecessarily as Tuesday fished forks and knives out of the recycling bin.
“Tessa,” have you told Greg about your, um, history?”
“I will dear, when and if the time comes. Of course I will.” She turned to her daughter and shook her finger in her face. “But if you think you will talk me out of a friendship with this nice man, I will tell you this, my girl. You can take away my tequila, you can take away my cigarettes and you can take away my happy pills. But if you think I’m giving up good looking men, you have another think coming.”
Greg walked into the kitchen at that moment. He gave Tessa a broad smile. “Did I hear someone mention my name?”
Tessa became flirty, batting her eyes outrageously. “Well we were talking about a good looking man. Do you know anyone who fits the description?”
Tuesday excused herself and went into the living room. Clipper was saying goodbye to everyone. She said, “I’ll walk you out to your car.”
He took her hand and kissed it. “Will you write to me?”
“If you mean e-mail, of course.”
That’s all I can mean. My location is confidential.”
“How long will you be gone?”
“Can’t say. The only thing I’m allowed to reveal is that there are many, many bodies. So don’t keep the light on.”
“Well, I’m going to be pretty busy myself. Natasha has booked me for evenings now and is making a special promotion. Can you believe she is giving me a reference? Suddenly she’s all over tea leaf readings. Calls me every other day to do a new reading for her. I say, Natasha, let the meaning of the last reading sink in, but she has a million questions for me. I’ll hardly know you’re gone.”
“Well I hope that’s not true. When do you visit Olivia again? Before the holidays?”
“Yeah. I have my ticket, round trip. I won’t stay long.”
“Don’t forget about me.”
“Don’t you forget about me.”
“No chance of that. Maybe if you had blue hair instead of pink I’d get you confused with all the other blue heads in my life.”
“It may be green by the time you get back.”
“I’ll roll with it. Just remember. We have a lot to talk about. A whole lot.”
Then he gave her a proper kiss.
As he drove off, a text from Olivia came in.
Call me. Something terrible has happened.
The End
Copyright and Disclaimer
October, 2013
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form, or by any means, whether electronic, mechanical, photocopy, recording or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the author.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, situations, scenes, dialogue, brands, media and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this book, which have been used without express permission. The publication or use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with or sponsored by the trademark owners, nor considered an endorsement of such products by the author.
This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This book may not be re-sold or given away to other people. Thank you for respecting the author’s rights.
Translation for those who do not speak legal gibberish:
This book is a work of fiction and solely the product of the author’s warped imagination and twisted sense of humor. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead would be a huge surprise to the author and wholly unintentional. If you feel you resemble any of the characters, honestly, I’d keep it to yourself. You know how rumors start.
All rights reserved.
About Cassie Page
Cassie Page is a prolific writer of tasteful and humorous mysteries set in Northern California and other exotic locations. She resides in a small town in California where she raises rare orchids and perfectly behaved children. Her soufflés rise effortlessly, her skirts are always the correct length and she only tweets with the best people. She fraternizes with gruesome murderers and backstabbing lowlifes and reads quantum mechanics for relaxation. Her editor says she has a breathtaking mastery of the semicolon—the colon not so much. If you pass her on the street, she begs that you do not ask for an autograph. Please respect her privacy; the paparazzi have worn her to a frazzle.
She is occasionally seen in her disguise as a writer of fiction, children’s fiction and cookbooks traveling under the name of Helen Cassidy Page. She claims to teach writing, cooking and maintain a coaching practice using sand tray techniques and can be found online at The Sandtray Coach. To which Cassie Page says, really, darling.
Follow Cassie Page
https://www.facebook.com/cassiepagebooks
http://www.cassiepage.com
@cassiepagebooks
Contact Cassie Page
While Ms. Page has worked tirelessly to execute the perfect murder mystery, mistakes happen. Should you find one or wish to communicate on a higher plane, she would be thrilled to hear from you. You can reach her at:
[email protected]
More Cassie Page Books
If you enjoyed A Corpse In A Teacup: A Tuesday’s Tea Leaves Mystery, look for Tuesday’s debut appearance in the Darling Valley Mystery series featuring designer/clothes horse/sleuth extraordinaire Olivia M. Granville; the winsome if bizarrely dressed Tuesday, the tiresomely righteous Mrs. Harmon and the deliciously distant Detective Richards.
Armoires and Arsenic: A Darling Valley Mystery
Future titles include:
Groundbreaking Bodies
Death is in the Details
A Second Coat of Murder
Tea For Two Murders
Designed for Death
Free Gift and Updates About Future Books
Sign up for a free gift and updates on future books, discounts and tidbits about what the characters in Cassie Page Books and their friends and frenemies are doing, eating, wearing and buying.
Go to the link below to sign up. And remember, we NEVER share your email address with ANYONE. So your secret (email address) is safe with us.
http://www.cassiepage.com/?
page_id=30
Preview of:
Armoires and Arsenic: A Darling Valley Mystery by Cassie Page
Chapter One: The Big Move
What Olivia liked best about moving to sleepy Darling Valley from LA was the absence of crime. No worrying about parking her car on a side street because it might get stolen. Nobody slipping sticky fingers into her purse and lifting her wallet while an accomplice distracted her at the sale rack at Neiman’s. Not having to trip over a dead body blocking the doorway of her office building while the LAPD took their sweet time locking down the crime scene. But the best part of living in Darling Valley was never having to find herself sitting across from Brooks at a dinner party while he romanced his new girlfriend and referred to Olivia as a client.
What she hated about Darling Valley was the 400 miles between its pristine mansions and gritty but happening LA.
Olivia sat in her office in the immaculately restored Queen Anne Victorian that housed her two bedroom loft, her design and antique business and a possibly illegal motherin-law in the basement. The dream house compensated for leaving what she considered the center of the universe, Los Angeles, California.
The motherin-law housed a regal, but reclusive little old lady who barely gave Olivia the time of day, but paid her rent on time. Wait a minute. If the apartment was not up to code, did that qualify as crime? Why didn’t she ask the previous owners when she signed the loan documents containing a contingency that Mrs. Harmon remain ensconced down there for life at the same ridiculous rent? When she thought about it, which she did now over coffee gone cold, that low rent was definitely criminal. And her own fault for overlooking the code issue when renovation was her stock in trade.
Olivia studied the dismal P&L statement that stared back at her from the Excel file on her MacBook. Darling Valley was breaking her bank. But enough S&M. She needed to finish up her impossibly long to-do list for the weekend sale before Cody arrived with the armoire. The success of the sale would determine her future, and the armoire would be the centerpiece of the well-publicized event.
The French boudoir phone rang, startling her out of her catastrophic ruminations. Her arm shot sideways into her coffee mug, splashing her favorite Jamaica Blue Mountain over her desk. This was becoming a cartoon of a morning going very wrong.
She barked, “Cody, you’re late,” while she sopped up the coffee with the sleeve of her hoodie.
“Only by an hour,” Cody replied in an offended tone that Olivia knew masked a grin spreading across his apple cheeks. “How’d you know it was me?”
“Cody, no customers call about a furniture order at 7:00 in the morning. So it was either you or Elgin Fastner from the bank harassing me about my about to be late mortgage payment if we don’t get to work.”
Cody was her twenty-one year old delivery guy and right hand everything. They both knew he got away with murder, but he was Olivia’s only true friend in this strange, new town. As Cody apologized for his tardiness in a nasal but passable Wolf Blitzer imitation, she fingered one of the three antique netsuke she had unpacked earlier, another source of disappointment. Because of her connection to Brooks, Edward de Waal, the famed ceramicist, had appraised them for her. After ignoring them in his studio for over a month, he finally returned the pieces yesterday with a note saying the inch-long, carved ivory toggles for a Japanese gentleman’s purse were indeed late 17th century, but would only command $1,500 each, tops. The shunga, an erotic figure with the iconic nine-tentacled octopus embracing the naked woman, might fetch $2,000. But only from a serious collector. Her dashed hopes for a number three times that raised the stakes on the sale.
“When are you getting here, Cody?” A committed multitasker, she checked the time on her laptop while she playfully harassed Cody and winced. Where did two hours go? “There’s work to do. I’m in big trouble if this sale isn’t a blowout. So get cracking, my friend.”
“Are you going to have the cat and nine tails waiting for me?”
She laughed. If she were fifteen years younger she could have a thing for Cody. But she wasn’t into boy toys.
“You’ll wish that’s all I have waiting for you if you don’t get those beauties over here. Like yesterday!”
She meant the French armoire, library steps and bergère chairs Cody had picked up from Blackman Furniture Restoration and Imports.
“Seriously, we need to get set up to push merchandise this weekend. Unless you’ve been doubling down on your Wheaties, it’s going to take us the rest of the day to sling everything around and make the showroom pretty.
“OMG! What are you worried about?” Olivia could hear the wind whistling in the open driver side window over his voice. “I can rearrange the goods in the showroom with one hand tied behind me. You gotta believe, woman. Believe!”
He said the last like a preacher at a prayer meeting, a place Cody had never frequented in his life. Then he added in all seriousness, “Of course, there is that one armoire that almost broke my back getting it into the truck. What do you have in there, O? Boulders?”
At first, Olivia winced at Cody referring to her stock and collateral, her beloved treasures as mere goods, as though she sold discount plastic patio furniture. Hers was an enviable collection of mostly 17th, 18th and 19th century French and English antiques she had transported up from Los Angeles earlier this year.
Cody racked up his share of screw-ups on the job, but he was her first friend in Darling Valley, and his loyalty to her soon convinced her to cut him some slack. Sure he marched to his own drummer. But so did she.
“What’s your ETA?” she asked.
“I’d say fifteen, maybe twenty, minutes.”
“Does that include stopping for coffee at the shop with the cute new barista? Or is that why you’re already an hour late?”
“Coffee and Danish,” Cody said, slapping his head so Olivia could hear. “I knew I forgot the most important thing. See you in less than an hour, O.
Cody called her O or OMG most of the time, and ma’am when he was innocently flirting with her—neither of them was interested in bridging the 10 year age gap, so the occasional sexy teasing was just fun. Cody reserved her full name, Olivia, though, for those serious times when he had gotten himself into trouble. Like spilling his coffee on the Aubusson carpet in the front of the showroom when he was gesturing about how he had maneuvered into Mrs. Gotrock’s driveway without hitting her prize peacocks who had suddenly decided to display right in front of his truck. Gotrocks. That’s how he referred to her few wealthy clients. If only she had more of them. Of course, he had nicked a lawn ornament when he swerved to avoid the birds, and Olivia’d had to replace it.
He said, “I’ll pick up the usual for you,” and before Olivia could object, the line went dead.
She knew he wouldn’t answer if she called back to remind him to hustle. Oh well. It would give her time to get dressed, a ritual that could extend beyond Cody’s arrival if she wasn’t paying attention to the clock.
Wait a minute, she thought as she shut down her computer. What was that about boulders? And he never explained why he was so late. They had agreed on 6 a.m.
Chapter Two: Special Delivery She stretched her neck to loosen tight muscles for a moment before she headed for the large loft over the shop, the main draw for picking this location on Angel Row, a side street off the highly trafficked Darling Boulevard. She had been at her computer since five a.m., right after her shower, but long before the sun broke through the trees outside her office. Normally, that wasn’t such an early hour for her, except she had turned off the computer at three. Now, at shortly after seven, the small space behind the showroom that she used as her office brightened with the natural light coming through the French doors and bay windows overlooking the Garden Center in her back yard. With chronically sleep-deprived eyes, she had watched the rising sun marble the sky with layers of pink and lavender. Traces of rose and ivory still streaked the clouds and cast a faint glow over the room. To get to the window to view the specta
cle, though, she’d had to climb over the bedlam of sample books stacked to the ceiling, her enormous stock of gilt drapery hardware and plastic wrapped bolts of very expensive French toile.
She loved her little office, the paned windows and pine floors that she finished in a soft ash gray to compliment the putty walls and white woodwork. She felt at home in there, even though it was where she faced her most odious challenge, her P&L sheet. She’d left a lot behind in LA, but some of the best parts were still with her. The two framed illuminated manuscripts said to be from the hours of a forgotten Medieval duchess, a splurge when she earned her first commission; the old, cheap desk from her student days that she had hand rubbed one winter to a dark sheen, her photographs. The Belleek collection that had belonged to her grandmother. These things resonated with warm memories when homesickness and doubt chilled her to the bone. Not like the items on the showroom floor that she bought for a song from an antiques dealer under water on real estate investments. Beautiful pieces to which she was trying to have no personal attachment. But when it came to antiques, she had to admit, she was an easy bounce.
Before she headed upstairs, she entered the showroom through the French doors connecting to her office and arranged the three netsuke on an 18th century cherry wood table that had once resided in the Duchess of Devonshire’s bedroom, the scandalous Duchess, not the modern Mitford one turned shopkeeper. She ran her thumb over the satin finish on one of the ivory trinkets. Are you kidding? Only $1,500 each? Almost worthless, considering her financial needs at the moment. She might as well just add them to her personal collection. Still, fifteen hundred each was nothing to sneeze at these days. She put them back. Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Grasping at a measly 5K.