A Fatal Slip (Sweet Nothings)

by London, Meg

  • • •

  “I don’t like it,” Francis said later that evening, when they were all having dinner at Arabella’s house. He drew his black brows together. “It sounds to me as if someone spooked that horse on purpose.”

  “Maybe it was meant as a warning,” Priscilla said, taking a delicate sip of her coffee. “Maybe this Joy was getting too close to discovering the murderer.”

  “That’s exactly what I’m afraid of,” Francis said helping himself to another slice of pie. “I’m worried about you, Emma. If the murderer gets wind of the fact that you’ve been snooping around, asking questions, overhearing conversations . . .”

  “The murderer might not even be in the house,” Priscilla said, arching a brow.

  “True.” Francis smoothed his mustache with his index finger. “But they might still find out about it. People like that have their ways.”

  “I really thought Joy had killed her father herself,” Emma said, swiping her fork across her plate to get at the last bit of Arabella’s delicious peach pie.

  “It sounds as if she hated her father enough,” Arabella said.

  “We know someone involved has a gun,” Francis said, pushing away his empty plate. “Hugh was shot before he was shoved off that balcony. The local boys are still waiting on the ballistic reports.” He sighed. “At the rate the lab is going, we’ll have the case solved long before we get their results.” He turned to Emma and shook a finger at her. “That’s why you need to be extra careful.”

  “How is Brian doing?” Arabella cut in smoothly. She poured herself a cup of coffee and stirred in a spoon of sugar.

  They had already cleared the dishes from Arabella’s delicious dinner of fried pork chops with gravy, mashed potatoes and collard greens sautéed with bacon. Emma had stacked the plates in the kitchen, and Francis had offered to put them in the dishwasher after dessert and coffee.

  “Brian is doing very well. He’s being discharged. I’m picking him up in an hour.” Emma glanced at her watch.

  “That’s wonderful,” Arabella said, her face glowing. “Such good news. You’d better be off then. He may need help getting his things together.”

  Emma put down her napkin. “As soon as I freshen up a bit.”

  It didn’t take Emma more than five minutes to wash her hands, comb her hair—Angel had done a really good job on the cut—and dab on some powder and lipstick.

  “Give Brian our best,” Arabella called from the kitchen as Emma headed toward the front door.

  She beeped open the Bug and got in. She had an ulterior motive in heading to the hospital early. She’d called Mariel to check up on Joy. Apparently Joy had been banged up but aside from some cuts and bruises and a minor concussion, she was going to be okay. The doctor wanted to keep her overnight for observation. But even more important, she was conscious and talking. Emma hoped to sneak in to see her. Maybe she would be scared enough to reveal what she knew. Because Emma was quite certain she knew something—something that had scared the killer enough to spook Big Boy. She didn’t know whether they had hoped the accident would kill Joy or whether they had merely hoped it would serve as a warning to her. Emma had to talk to Joy before she put the pieces together and realized that her only safety lay in silence.

  Emma pulled into the Henry County Medical Center parking lot and found a space. The woman behind the information desk didn’t even look up when Emma asked for Joy Granger. She tapped a few keys on her computer and handed Emma a slip of paper with Joy’s room number on it. “You need directions?” she asked, finally looking at Emma. Her slightly protruding blue eyes were crisscrossed with red veins.

  “I think I can find it.” Emma tucked the piece of paper into her coat pocket and headed toward the elevators.

  She got off the elevator, consulted the signs on the wall, and turned left. The door to Joy’s room was ajar, and she could hear the television blaring—some ubiquitous game show. “And now, for the grand prize, answer this final question,” the host yelled excitedly. Emma peeked around the corner of the door into the room. Joy was snapped into a blue hospital gown, propped up in bed. There was an angry-looking purple bruise on her forehead, and Emma noticed a bandage on her left hand along with an intravenous line leading to a bag suspended from an IV pole next to the bed.

  Emma knocked gently and stuck her head into the room.

  “Joy?” she called to the figure in the bed.

  Joy looked up, her head swiveling toward the door, obviously startled. “Oh, I thought you were the nurse. You’re Emma, right?”

  “Yes. Do you mind if I come in?”

  Joy shook her head, her hair making a swishing sound as it rubbed back and forth against the pillow. She pointed toward the bedside chair where a plastic, hospital-issue basin sat. It was filled with a plastic cup, a tube of hand lotion, a miniature box of tissues and a clean, folded washcloth. “Sorry, you’ll have to move that stuff. The nurse left it there.”

  Emma put the tub on the window ledge and sat down. “I wanted to see how you were doing. We were all so frightened seeing you lying there in the field like that—not moving or talking.”

  “Fortunately, I don’t remember much of anything about it. I didn’t come to until I was in the ambulance.” Joy winced as she moved sideways on the bed. “I’m a jumble of bumps and bruises, but that’s the price you pay when you ride. This isn’t the first time I’ve fallen off a horse.”

  “You didn’t fall, though.”

  Joy whipped her head around toward Emma. “What do you mean?”

  “You were thrown. Someone spooked Big Boy.”

  Joy’s face relaxed. “Horses are spooked all the time—by the strangest things. I’ve seen a small kitten throw an Arabian a hundred times its size into a tizzy. It doesn’t mean anything.”

  “Peter said he heard a gunshot. Someone shot a gun into the air—on purpose—to spook your horse, hoping he would throw you.”

  A strange look settled over Joy’s face. Emma could see the rapid rise and fall of her chest, and the panicked way her eyes darted about as if she were looking for escape.

  “Do you have any idea who would do something like that? Or why?” Emma persisted.

  Joy’s expression turned mulish, her eyes narrowed and her jaw set. “That’s ridiculous.” She gave a harsh laugh. “I don’t know why someone would do that, let alone who. Besides, being thrown by my horse is hardly going to kill me. Like I told you, it’s one of the hazards of the sport. I’ve probably been thrown a couple dozen times since my mother first sat me on Maximilian.”

  “Maybe the person didn’t want to kill you? Perhaps his intention was just to warn you.”

  Joy stared at Emma for a moment, her face completely white. Before, her look had been unconcerned . . . even cocky. Something had spooked her horse, and she’d been thrown. No big deal. Nothing out of the ordinary.

  Now she looked positively scared.

  • • •

  EMMA left Joy’s room and headed down the hall toward the elevator. The information about the gunshot had certainly had an effect on Joy. Emma had the distinct impression that the word warning had struck a target. And that Joy knew exactly who and exactly why someone was trying to warn her.

  Emma waited impatiently for the elevator. Suddenly she couldn’t wait to get to Brian’s room—to see him up and about and looking normal. Well, relatively normal. His leg would still be in a cast. Finally the elevator doors fanned open on his floor. Emma exited and headed toward Brian’s room. She was already smiling as she neared his door, and she knew she was positively grinning as she walked into his room.

  Brian was in a wheelchair parked next to the bed. A stuffed, blue plastic drawstring bag with Henry County Medical Center written on it in white lettering sat on the empty bed. A pair of crutches leaned in the corner.

  Brian began to grin as soon as Emma entered the room. His broken leg was encased in a cast and stuck straight out, supported by the wheelchair’s footrest, and he had a vase holding a bou
quet of mixed flowers in his lap.

  He held the flowers out to Emma. “These are for you. It seems I missed Valentine’s Day while I was out. I’m sorry.”

  Emma took the flowers and buried her nose in them, absurdly pleased that Brian had remembered, however belatedly. “They’re lovely, thanks.” She noticed a little red plastic card stuck in the flowers and pulled it out. It read Get Well Soon. She showed it to Brian.

  Brian gave a crooked smile and shrugged. “I asked the nurse to get me some flowers from the gift shop downstairs. The messages were limited to get well wishes or congratulations on your new baby.”

  Emma laughed. “They’re still lovely.”

  “I’m glad you like them.” Brian gave a devilish grin. “How about a kiss for all of my efforts?”

  Emma braced herself on the arms of the wheelchair and leaned in close until her lips met Brian’s. They stayed like that for several long moments until the sound of someone passing in the hall made them pull apart.

  “It looks like you’re all packed,” Emma said a little breathlessly, indicating the plastic bag on the bed.

  “I’m more than ready to get out of here. Shall we go?”

  Emma retrieved Brian’s jacket from the cupboard at the foot of the bed and helped him into it. She hung the plastic bag from the handles of the wheelchair, while Brian held the flowers and the crutches in his lap.

  “All set?” Emma released the brakes on the wheelchair.

  “Yup. Let’s blow this place.”

  She wheeled Brian out of the room and into the hall. A nurse passing by waved, and he waved back. “Good luck,” she called over her shoulder before disappearing into a patient’s room.

  The elevator was large enough to fit a gurney, so Emma had no trouble maneuvering the wheelchair into the space. All the exterior doors were equipped with door openers so that was no problem, either.

  “The air feels so good,” Brian said as Emma wheeled him onto the sidewalk alongside the parking lot.

  She found the cutout and smoothly pushed him down the rows of cars until they came to her Bug. She had just beeped open the doors when the realization struck. How on earth was she going to get Brian into the car?

  Brian must have noticed the look on her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know how to get you into the car.”

  Brian laughed. “We’ll manage it. If you can give me some support, I can stand on my good leg easily enough, but I think I’d better get in the backseat if you don’t mind.”

  Emma stood by while Brian got himself to a standing position. He put a hand on her shoulder for balance, and at one point, Emma was terrified he was going to fall over. But somehow he managed to get into the backseat. The problem then became what to do with his leg? He couldn’t bend it, and she couldn’t shut the door the way it was.

  Brian started to laugh and so did Emma.

  “I should have borrowed Liz’s station wagon,” she said, wiping her eyes.

  “How about if you roll down the window, and I just stick my foot out.”

  Emma opened the window.

  “See,” Brian said, “this will work.”

  The sight of Brian’s leg sticking out the window sent Emma into fresh gales of laughter. “We need a red flag to hang on the end of your foot.”

  “Just don’t get too close to any parked cars.”

  Emma got behind the wheel and slowly drove out of the parking lot. “Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine. It’s just a little . . . breezy back here.”

  Emma cranked up the heat. “How are you going to manage at home?”

  “I should have told you sooner. Fortunately we’re going in the right direction. I’m staying with Liz and Matt for a couple of weeks.”

  A few minutes later, Emma pulled into the driveway in front of Liz’s house. Matt came running out the front door.

  “Need some help?” He couldn’t help grinning when he saw Brian’s foot sticking out the window of Emma’s car.

  “If you could give me a hand,” Brian said.

  Matt opened the back door, and Brian stuck his arm out, grasping Matt’s. Matt pulled him out of the car and onto his good leg. Brian was standing, albeit unsteadily. He got his crutches under his arms, and with Matt’s help began to make his way into the house.

  Liz welcomed them all with open arms and led them into the living room, where a fire was burning and spitting in the stone fireplace. She had a bottle of wine open on the coffee table alongside a plate of cheese and crackers.

  They got Brian settled in a chair with his leg on an ottoman, and Emma took a seat by the fire, holding her hands out toward the flames. Driving with the back window open had chilled her to the bone.

  Suddenly Brian’s cell phone rang. He dug in the pocket of his jeans, pulled it out and glanced at the caller ID. “I’m really sorry, but it’s John Jasper. We’re doing some renovations on his house—very minor, the big projects are already done—but I’d better see what he wants.”

  “No problem,” Liz said as she poured Emma a glass of wine.

  They heard a bunch of uh-huhs from Brian followed by a startled exclamation as he half bolted from his chair.

  Brian clicked off the call and turned to Emma, Liz and Matt with a startled face.

  “That was John Jasper,” Brian said. “Well, I guess I already told you that.” His face still bore a look of shock and surprise. He turned to Emma. “Do you remember he told us he’d been buying a few pieces from Hugh Granger?”

  Emma nodded her head. “Yes. I got the impression that Hugh was helping him build his collection.”

  “Well it seems that one of the pieces he purchased—the big piece by Mark Rothko, he said—has turned out to be a forgery.”

  Chapter 18

  THEY all sat in stunned silence for a moment.

  “I think I know the painting,” Brian said. “It’s in their living room. It’s massive with thick stripes of red, white and a sort of grayish color against a black background.” He shifted in his chair. “It’s the pride of their collection. He must be distraught.”

  “I’m surprised,” Liz said, nibbling on a cracker. “Hugh Granger has always had a good reputation. At least I’ve never heard anything against him. There are a couple of paintings hanging in the Memphis Brooks Museum that he donated. I remember seeing them when I was there.”

  Matt leaned forward and plucked a piece of cheese off the plate. “Granger might not have known it was a fake. From Brian’s description, it doesn’t sound as if it would be hard to produce a forgery.” He shook his head. “I guess I’m just a country bumpkin. I don’t get this modern art stuff. I want to know what I’m looking at when I look at something.”

  “Perhaps if we could find out where the painting originally came from,” Brian suggested. “If it comes from another reputable source, then obviously several people have been fooled.”

  “You can fool some of the people all of the time . . .” Matt said and laughed.

  “You enter all that information into the computer database, don’t you?” Liz turned to Emma.

  “Yes. The title, date, measurements and what they call the provenance of the painting or where it came from.”

  “Can you check tomorrow? See where the Grangers got it?”

  “Good idea.” Emma finished the last bite of her cracker. “Unless they’ve been holding on to it for a very long time, it can’t have come from Rothko himself. He died sometime in the early seventies. I’ll need the name of it though, and the year and so forth.”

  “Let me get John back on the phone.” Brian pressed a button on his cell.

  John must have answered immediately. Matt handed Brian a piece of scratch paper and a pen. Brian nodded as he wrote down the information. He said good-bye and clicked off the call.

  “I’ve got it all here.” He handed the paper to Emma.

  Liz looked thoughtful. “Maybe this isn’t the first fake that Granger has sold.” She turned to Emma. “Could it be the re
ason why someone murdered him?”

  • • •

  ARABELLA was late arriving at Sweet Nothings the next morning. Emma stood by the window, a mug of tea in her hand, watching for Arabella’s Mini to turn the corner into the parking lot. She wanted to tell her what they’d learned about Hugh’s art business before Arabella heard it from anyone else.

  Finally, Emma saw Arabella’s Mini come down the street, and moments later Arabella herself stepped into the shop.

  “Good morning, dear,” she called out cheerfully as she unclipped Pierre’s leash.

  He made a beeline for his dog bed, but Bette had already discovered it and was curled up fast asleep. Pierre gave a low, warning growl that soon had her scampering for safety by Emma’s feet. Emma bent down and scratched the puppy’s ears consolingly.

  “I’ve got something to tell you,” Emma said as Arabella poured herself a cup of coffee and stirred in sugar and creamer.

  “Oh? What?”

  “Do you remember meeting the Jaspers at Hugh’s party?”

  “Of course. She was quite beautiful—wearing a very unusual pair of earrings. I would be interested to know where she got them.”

  “Her husband has bought a number of artworks from Hugh.” Emma fiddled with a button on her blouse. “One of them has turned out to be a fake.”

  “Really?” Arabella stopped with her coffee mug halfway to her mouth. “Do you think that’s what Francis and the TBI are after—art forgeries?”

  “I don’t know. But if he cheated someone else and then refused to give them their money back . . . well, that person might have been mad enough to shoot Hugh and push him off that balcony.”

  “But Hugh would hardly have invited them to his party.”

  “It was fairly common knowledge around town that Hugh was giving this party. Even Angel knew all about it. The killer could have just walked into the Beau and waited for the right moment.”

  Arabella put a hand on Emma’s arm. “Now I’m really getting nervous about you going over there.”

  Emma smiled reassuringly. “Don’t worry. I’ll be careful.”