Loose Screws

by Karen Templeton

  “Would everybody who works here please go check in with Officer Ruiz?” Nick says, his baritone piercing the burr of voices beginning to make the hairs on the back of my neck stand at attention. I hear a gasp or two, but more out of surprise than actual shock. Or dismay. I don’t hear what Nick says next, or what anybody else says, either, because my stomach has just dropped into my crotch and I’m thinking that shape of the outline was suspiciously…familiar. Like it might have belonged to a shortish, balding gay man of about sixty or so who took great pleasure in regularly making my life a living hell. Next thing I know, Nick is hauling me off to one side, encouraging me to take a sip of the latte. I nearly gag on it, but I manage. It’s at this point that I notice the guy who owns the brownstone next door talking to one of the cops. He doesn’t look so good.

  Nick follows my gaze, turns back to me. “You know that guy?”

  “Nathan Caruso. Lives next door.”

  “He positively ID’d the body,” Nick says softly. My eyes shoot to his, dread making my stomach burn.

  “Who—?”

  “Brice Fanning. Your boss, I take it?”

  “Shit!”

  Nick’s expression goes a little funny, which I guess isn’t too surprising, considering my reaction.

  Oh, God. I am a horrible, horrible person. A man is dead, most likely not from natural causes, and all I can think is, “This is so freaking unfair!” Okay, so Brice was a mean, petty little man and I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him for more than five minutes—which made weekly meetings a bit problematic—but he was still a human being and thus deserves some respect, at least, if not an indication of sorrow.

  I hold my breath for a second or two…nope, sorry, not gonna happen. Didn’t like the guy when he was alive, don’t much care that he’s dead.

  If you want to leave now, I’ll completely understand.

  But, God. Brice was Fanning Interiors. I was just a minion among many, one of the small army of designers Brice’s prestige and reputation were able to keep busy. I’d recently begun to get a serious leg up on establishing my own rep apart from Fanning’s, but there is not a doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be living the lifestyle I was today had it not been for Brice’s taking me on seven years ago. In many ways, I was indebted to the man.

  And now he’s nothing but a schmear on an East Side sidewalk. Oy. That poor guy who found him…

  “How did he die?” I ask over the constant squawking of the police radio nearby.

  Nick’s face undergoes this whole impersonal-police-mask thing, but his jaw is stubbled, as if he hasn’t had time to shave, and there are bags under his eyes. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

  For some reason, this irks me. So I tuck one of the many curls that will spring forth like snakes from my French braid over the next fourteen hours and say, “I saw the blood, Nick. Somehow I doubt he was pecked to death by a rabid pigeon.”

  Nick gives me this look. “Pigeons don’t carry rabies. And besides, you’re just assuming that was blood.”

  I give him a look back. Then he sighs and says, “He was shot.”

  I visibly shudder. I don’t much care for guns. Especially when they’ve been used on people I know. I take another sip of latte. “When?” I whisper.

  “Real early this morning.”

  I look up. “Any witnesses?”

  “No.”

  “The man was shot in the middle of 78th Street and there were no witnesses?”

  “Another assumption. We found him in the middle of 78th Street. Doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where he was shot.”

  “Oh,” I say, then frown in concentration, which earns me another heavy sigh.

  My brows lift. “What?”

  “Please don’t tell me you dream about being an amateur detective.”

  “Not to worry,” I say. “I don’t even like to read murder mysteries.” He looks relieved, at least until I ask, “I don’t suppose you know who?”

  Nick shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nope. Which means we’ve got a lot of questioning to do. Starting with everybody who worked for him.”

  “Today?”

  “Yeah, today. What did you think?”

  I shake my head. “Sorry, but I’ve got a ten o’clock, then appointments straight through the day—”

  “Ginger,” Nick says, patiently. “Your boss is dead. Trust me, none of you are going to be doing any decorating—”

  I bristle. “Designing.”

  “—whatever, today…”

  But before we can pursue this conversational track, another cop calls Nick over and I’m left entertaining a sickening sense of foreboding.

  People are milling about, looking more put out than concerned. I let out a heavy sigh of my own, then take a tissue out of my purse, spread it on the step of the town house next door, and plunk down my linen-covered tush. Perspiration races down my back.

  My poor little brain goes positively berserk. Dead people tend to do that to me. Especially dead people who had help getting that way, even if I couldn’t stand them. Brice Fanning might have been a brilliant designer, but he drove his employees nuts. I have never met anyone whinier, or pickier, or less inclined to give the people who worked for him the respect or recognition they deserved. The only reason most of us put up with him was for the money, as well as that reputation thing. But I think it’s safe to say once the shock wears off, he won’t be missed.

  Except then, because my brain is already on overload and I tend to have an overly active imagination anyway, I think, gee, what if Brice didn’t bite the big one because somebody simply hated his guts? What if there’s some crazed person running around who has it in for interior designers? A client displeased with her faux painting job? A homophobe? An architect?

  Or maybe his murder is even more random that that. Maybe somebody just did him in for his Rolex or something?

  Carole Dennison, Brice’s top designer, joins me, although she doesn’t sit, out of deference to her vintage Chanel suit, I imagine. How can she not be dying in that jacket? She digs in her LV purse for a cigarette, lights up.

  “Great way to start the week, huh?”

  “Might rain later, though,” I say. “Maybe cool it off a little.”

  She laughs, a raspy, braying sound that always makes me feel better. Carole has worked for Brice for about a hundred years, although, if the lighting is subdued and her makeup is thick, she only looks sixty. Ish. I like Carole a lot. She’s a tough, ballsy broad who doesn’t take anything off anyone, while instilling the unshakable conviction in her clients that nothing is impossible, given enough money. I started out at Fanning’s as her assistant, in fact, and learned more from her in one month than I’d learned in all my years of design school. We’re fairly close, enough that I’d even invited her to my wedding. So I’ve known for a long time that one of her major gripes was that, even though she brought in more business than any three of us put together, Brice refused to make her a partner. She’d also confided in me that she didn’t dare go out on her own, that Brice threatened to make her life a living hell if she did.

  She crosses her arms, squints over at the herd of police cars. “If you ask me, I think it was that last lover of his.”

  I’m not sure what to say to that, so I leave it at, “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Bet you anything. Jealousy, pure and simple, since Brice took up with someone new about a month ago.” She looks at me. “Did you know?”

  I shake my head. If I didn’t care about the man, I sure as hell wasn’t interested in his love life. Then, for a couple minutes, we make appropriate noises about how shocked we are, how stunned, how grossed out, both of us avoiding the one question hovering at the forefront of our thought:

  What does this mean, job-wise?

  Finally, because I can’t stand it anymore, I say, “So. Do you have any idea how the business is set up? I mean, in the eventuality of, um…” I gesture lamely toward the chalk mark.

  Carol thoughtfully
pulverizes the cigarette stub beneath her twenty-year-old black-and-beige Chanel slingback. To my shock, a tear streaks down her carefully foundationed cheek.

  Uh-oh.

  One acrylic nail—a subdued cinnamon color, square-tipped—flicks away the errant tear before it leaves a visible track in her foundation. She struggles for obvious control for a minute, then says, “Max told me—”

  (Max Sheffield, Brice’s accountant. And I think Carole’s lover at one time, although I can’t confirm that.)

  “—that he’d tried for years to get Brice to make provisions for the business to continue in the event of his death or incapacitation, especially after it took off the way it did in the late eighties. He suggested making the business a partnership with his senior designers, if not a corporation, or at least leaving it to someone in his will. A friend or family member, anybody.”

  She lights up another cig and shakes her head, her Raquel Welch auburn hair shimmering in the hazy sunlight filtering through the buildings. “He refused. Said when he died, the business died with him.”

  My immediate future flashes before my eyes, and it is bleak. “Which means?”

  “Which means, as far as I understand it, we’ll all get whatever is currently due us and that’s it. Whatever’s left goes to pay outstanding bills, and if there’s anything left after that, the money goes to some obscure charity.”

  My blood runs cold. “But what about our clients?”

  Pale, glossed lips quirk up in a humorless smile. “They’re outta luck. And so are we, unless we all manage to find jobs with other firms.” She shrugs. “Get out your cell, honey, and start making calls.”

  A great tiredness comes over me, followed almost immediately by a lightbulb flashing on in my head. “Hey—why don’t you start your own firm?”

  Carole huffs out a stream of smoke that mercifully blows away from me. “Even ten years ago, I might have. But I’m going to be sixty-five in November. Way too old to start a business now. But why don’t you go into business on your own, designing accessories or something? The Jorgensons are still talking about that set of iron and marble tables you designed for them, Jesus—how long ago was that? Four years? You know your talent is wasted picking out wall colors.”

  I smile wanly. “Hell, I haven’t designed anything in probably two years.”

  “Well, you should.” She hisses out her smoke, tosses the second butt out past the curb. “You want to work for someone else the rest of your life?”

  “Forget it, Carole. This gal doesn’t do Struggling Artist.”

  “Chicken,” she says.

  “But a chicken who eats.”

  Of course, after today, that may not be true, which is why I suppose we both go silent for a little bit. Then Carole says quietly, “This hasn’t been a very good week for you.”

  There’s an understatement.

  “Although—” she looks in the direction of the outline, her mouth pulled into a grimace “—I suppose Brice’s week has been worse.”

  I grunt.

  For reasons I can’t begin to decipher, Nick decides to question me last. Since it has been decided that the entire building needs to be considered the crime scene—the firm’s offices took up the bottom two floors and the basement, while Brice lived in a very posh apartment on the third floor—we all had to schlep to the substation for questioning. I’ve never been inside a police station before, hope to hell I never have the privilege again. As far as the decor goes, suffice it to say it looks like every colorless, utilitarian police station you’ve ever seen on TV. In other words, not worth describing.

  It’s now nearly noon. I’ve made my dreaded calls to cancel my appointments, sidestepping the real reason for standing up my clients—as per Nick’s instructions—by alluding to a personal emergency. Which wasn’t exactly a lie, since, although the situation clearly had more of an impact on Brice than it did me, I was definitely facing a real emergency.

  My stomach growls—the latte is long gone, and I hadn’t eaten breakfast. Carole’s in with Nick now; I decide the world won’t collapse if I run down to the restaurant on the corner and snag a sandwich to bring back with me. The sergeant at the desk has other ideas.

  “Uh, no, Lt. Wojowodski says you’re to stay put until he’s done with you.”

  I sigh. “Can I order in?”

  His face screws up for a second, then says, “Yeah, I s’pose so.” He pushes a couple of mangled photocopied menus in my direction. “Here. Live.”

  I pick a deli a couple blocks away, order a roast beef on rye with mustard and a cherry Coke, then decide to order another sandwich and a coffee for Nick. Why, I have no idea. Just one of those seize-the-moment kind of things. And, natch, I no sooner hang up the phone when Carole emerges from the interview room and Nick gestures me inside.

  “I’ll call you when your food comes,” the sergeant says, and I nod.

  “Have a seat,” Nick says as I enter, so I do. Again, we’re talking boringly typical, here. Table, couple of chairs, a two-way mirror. At least the air-conditioning is decent, for which I’m very grateful.

  Nick sits down on the other side of the table, flipping over a page in his notepad. I frown.

  “You look beat,” I say, and his head snaps up. Then he drags one hand down his face, muffling a wry laugh.

  “They called me in at five-thirty. I wasn’t supposed to be on duty until eight, but with summer vacations and everything, they’re short-handed. I’d just gotten to sleep around three-thirty, four.”

  “Up because of another case?”

  After a far-too-lengthy pause, he says, “No.”

  Heat stings my cheeks. “Oh,” I say, completely unable to stop the images that flash through my head. So I clear my throat and say, “Am I under suspicion for real this time?”

  Nick’s expression turns just this side of blank. “No more than anybody else who worked for Fanning. This is just a preliminary investigation. Information gathering, y’know?” He straightens. “Although I can’t prevent you from having an attorney sit in on this with you, if you want.”

  I laugh. “Let’s see…do I own a gun? No. Do I even know how to fire a gun? No. Was I anywhere around 78th Street at the time of the murder? No, again.”

  A half smile tilts one side of Nick’s mouth. “This guy have any family that you know of?”

  Something—his lack of enthusiasm, maybe—tells me Nick’s asked these questions a dozen times already. “Never heard him mention anyone, although I don’t suppose that means anything.”

  “No.”

  “There were lovers, I know, but nothing long-term.” I hesitate. “I suppose you know he was gay?”

  “Yeah, kinda figured that out from the earlier interviews. You know any of these lovers’ names or their whereabouts?”

  “Haven’t a clue. Brice never…entertained during work hours. He didn’t keep his homosexuality a secret, but he didn’t make an issue of it, either. I guess he figured it wasn’t anybody’s business but his own.”

  More notes. Then, “You know anybody who might have it in for him?”

  “As in, an enemy?”

  “That’ll do.”

  “Well, nobody liked him much, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  He writes that down. “Did you?”

  “Hell, no. He was a total jerk.”

  His gaze meets mine. “That could be incriminating, you know.”

  “Like I’m worried. Look, he treated his clients like gold and his employees like dirt, and everyone in the industry knew it. Maybe he didn’t have any actual enemies, but he sure as hell didn’t have many friends, either.”

  He nods, as if he’s heard this before. “How long have you worked for him?”

  “Seven years.”

  Nick narrows his eyes at me. “You worked seven years for a man you didn’t like? Why?”

  I shrug. “The money. The prestige. A healthy survival instinct.”

  A knock on the door interrupts us; it’s the sergeant, saying
my food’s here. I go out, pay the delivery man, bring the bag back inside.

  “I got you a roast beef on rye,” I say, emptying the contents of bag onto the table, “and a coffee. Hope that’s okay.” The resulting silence makes me lift my head. “What?” I say to the obviously dumbfounded male in front of me.

  “You got me lunch?”

  “Yeah. So?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s lunchtime and I figured you were probably hungry?”

  He continues to stare at me, then cracks a grin. “You tryin’ to influence an officer of the law?”

  “No. Trying to feed one.” I push the wrapped sandwich toward him. “There’s a pickle, too. Which I’ll take if you don’t want it—”

  “No, no, I like pickles.” He stares at the sandwich, much like Adam must have the apple.

  “Hey.” I lean over, nudge the sandwich an inch closer. “I’m Jewish and Italian. You don’t stand a chance.”

  After a moment, another slow grin slides across his face. Chuckling, Nick unwraps the sandwich, takes a huge bite. “You know—” he manages to say with his mouth full “—if you turn out to be the perp, I’m gonna be real ticked at you.”

  The interview lasts another ten minutes, maybe. I tell Nick what I know about Brice and his life, which isn’t much. Slouched back in his chair, silently chewing, he watches me—for telltale body language would be my guess—occasionally jotting down something I say. Something tells me he’s good at what he does. Dedicated. Focused. I sure as shootin’ wouldn’t want to do it, but I have to admire his selflessness.

  Suddenly he leans back in his chair with his arms crossed over his chest. “Okay, that’s it.”

  “We’re done?”

  “For now.”

  I reach behind me to unhook my purse from the back of the chair. “Hey,” Nick says softly. “You okay?”

  His expression, when I turn back around, is thoughtful. “More or less,” I say. “I still think I’m maybe a little in shock, that it hasn’t sunk in yet.”

  “I’m not talkin’ about this. I’m talking about the other.”