Deadly Décor (A Caprice De Luca Mystery)

by Karen Rose Smith

  Bella must have understood the situation and known when to expect Caprice because she popped out of the doorway that led back to the exam rooms and motioned for Caprice to come with her.

  Caprice rushed over without hesitating. “Where’s Timmy?”

  “He’s back here with the nurse. Seth is going to put a temporary cast on his arm. It’s a madhouse today. Of all days . . . I could have taken him to York Hospital, but I knew this would be faster. Maybe I should have gone there. I couldn’t get hold of Joe.”

  Bella was working herself into a state, and she had every right to. But soon she’d be crossing the line into tears, and Caprice knew Bella would hate breaking down here. So she wrapped her in a hug right there in the middle of the hall. De Lucas believed hugs were almost as good as food.

  A nurse flew by. Loud voices sounded from another cubicle, but Caprice paid them no mind.

  Finally Bella pushed away. “I’m all right, really I am. I have to be. The kids need me. Come on, Timmy will be glad to see you. I’m probably making him more scared than he already is.”

  When they reached the cubicle, Seth was there. He’d encased Timmy’s arm in a plastic cast. “There’s your mom now. I told you she wouldn’t desert you. It looks as if she brought reinforcements.”

  His gaze met Caprice’s, and Caprice knew from the bottom of her Capezios she didn’t want him to leave Kismet. But she might not have any say about that. She would, however, have some say over what would happen if he did leave, and what she’d do about it.

  Caprice went over to Timmy and smoothed his hair from his brow. “Hey there, big guy, what happened?”

  She could see the lines of tears on his cheeks, and his uniform was streaked with dirt.

  “I slid into third base. I stole it, but my arm bent under me in a bad way.”

  “It could happen to anybody stealing a base,” Caprice told him seriously. “Does it hurt?”

  He looked her straight in the eye and then said what his dad would probably have said. “Not much.”

  However, she could tell that wasn’t true. He was pale, and having X-rays taken for something that hurt was no fun.

  Seth turned to Bella. “I need your permission to talk to you about Timmy with Caprice here.”

  “Of course, you have it. She’s my emergency number, along with my husband.”

  Seth nodded.

  But a nurse came to the door. “Dr. Randolph, I need you in room two.”

  “Is blood involved?” he asked.

  “No, just an impatient gentleman.”

  “Then I need five minutes. Stall him. Give him a bottle of water or something.”

  Five minutes. How he must hate going from patient to patient like this, not giving them the time he felt they needed. Was this what all of medicine was becoming? Maybe so.

  Seth took a tablet from a drawer and found a pen on the counter.

  He explained, “Fortunately, from what the X-rays show, I think Timmy just has a greenstick fracture. That means the bone isn’t broken the whole way through. But I’m not an orthopedic doc.” He drew a picture on the tablet of the kind of fracture Timmy had. After he asked Bella if she understood and she said she did, he addressed Caprice. “Are you going to stay with her, maybe drive her home?”

  “I can drive,” Bella protested.

  But Caprice understood what Seth was saying. Bella was worried about Timmy. Since she was concerned about him and everything else that was going on, she might not have her mind on what she was doing.

  “I’ll drive her home,” she assured him. “Nikki can bring me back for my car later.”

  From the counter, Seth took a sheaf of papers that were stapled together. On the top, Caprice could see a business card. He handed the papers to Bella.

  “I need you to sign down at the bottom that you understand everything I told you. Do you have any more questions?”

  “No. I just want to get him home.”

  “I know that. But his arm has to be properly taken care of. You don’t want it healing the wrong way. The card on top belongs to the doctor I called. His practice is in York, and he’ll fit you in tomorrow. This appointment isn’t with a P.A., but with him. It’s clinic day there, and everybody will be lined up on gurneys in a long room, but he’s good, Bella. He’ll study those X-rays, and he might ask for more. He’ll make sure Timmy gets the best care.”

  “Oh, Seth, thank you.”

  “No thanks necessary. It’s my job.” He tapped Timmy on the head. “I just want to see you back out on that field, reaching for those fly balls, swinging at the good ones.”

  “But I won’t be able to play,” Timmy complained.

  “Probably not this season. But next season should be great.” He helped Timmy down from the table and said to Bella, “I’ve given you a prescription there for pain medication. Follow the directions exactly. If he says he doesn’t want it, watch him, because if the pain gets too out of hand, and then you give it to him, his discomfort will take a lot longer to settle down. For tonight, use it as directed, and tomorrow talk to the orthopedic doctor about it. Got it?”

  Just then, Caprice heard a voice she recognized in the hall. Joe Santini had arrived, and he wasn’t as quiet as he’d been at their last Sunday dinner. He was full of spurting energy, and growling stress.

  “Where are they?” she heard him ask.

  “Come right this way,” one of the staff informed him. Soon there he was, in the cubicle with them all, face-to-face with Bella. Caprice had never seen him look exactly like that before—over-the-top anxious, ready to break down.

  “Is he all right? What are we going to do? Does he have to go to the hospital?”

  Although Caprice knew Seth felt pressured by waiting patients to move on, he didn’t rush. He stood there and told Joe everything he’d explained to Bella.

  “Take him home and try to make him forget about it for tonight.”

  Joe and Bella exchanged a look, and Caprice wasn’t sure what it meant.

  Then Joe went to Timmy. “I’m sorry I wasn’t at your game, Bud. I know I haven’t been around much lately. That’s going to change.”

  Seth pointed to the paperwork. “Just take that with you, and you can leave. But if you want to talk, just stay right here.”

  Then Seth was gone, moving on, the way doctors did.

  Joe looked at Bella, really looked at Bella, maybe for the first time in weeks. The perfectly coifed, manicured, and made-up Bella was nowhere in sight, and hadn’t been for a while.

  “I can leave, too,” Caprice said.

  But Joe protested. “No need. You might as well know where I’ve been too. You can tell your parents, Nikki, Vince, and anybody else who wants to know. I’ve been talking with Father Gregory at Saint Francis. I’ve always respected him. When I was in high school, he kept me on the straight and narrow.”

  Joe turned to his wife. “I didn’t just meet up with him by chance. I had an appointment with him. That’s why I had my phone turned off. I wasn’t trying to avoid you. I just needed some privacy while he and I talked.”

  Bella’s voice was shaky when she asked, “What did you talk about?”

  “I talked about us. Not the murder. Not Bob. But us. He wants to have a session with both of us. He thinks he can help.”

  When Caprice thought about Father Gregory, she thought about a short, rotund man with kind brown eyes and a practically bald head. Could he possibly put Joe and Bella’s marriage back together again? No, but maybe they could. Maybe it wasn’t too late. Maybe it wasn’t too far gone. Just the fact that Joe was bringing this to Bella meant so much.

  Joe took Bella’s hand—the first sign of affection she’d seen between them since this whole thing had blown up. “Will you come with me on Wednesday? He’s free at two.”

  “But you have to work.”

  “I have vacation time coming. This isn’t the busiest time of the year. I might have to take off an afternoon once a week for a while. That’s what Father’s suggesting. W
ill you make the time, too?”

  Now Caprice felt that she shouldn’t be here. If Bella and Joe had issues to work out, they needed to do it with the priest. Or in privacy. Hovering family could hinder the whole process.

  Still beside Timmy, Caprice dropped her arm around his shoulders. “How about you and I go out to the front and wait. It’ll only be a couple of minutes.”

  “Can I go home in your car, Aunt Caprice? It’s cool.”

  “I’ll be glad to drop you off at home, if your parents want me to.”

  Joe came over to Timmy and gave him a hug. “I know that son-of-a-gun has to hurt, but you think it will hurt a little bit less if you ride in Aunt Caprice’s rad car?”

  Timmy smiled, the first smile Caprice had seen since she’d come in. “It might help,” he agreed.

  Joe chuckled. “All right. You go with Aunt Caprice, and I’ll drive your mom. I’ll walk back here later tonight and get her car. For now, I’ll settle up at the desk and meet you outside.”

  It looked as if Joe was taking charge again, doing what he thought was best for his family, protecting all of them in his way. Maybe he and Bella could put things back together with a little guidance.

  As Joe spoke to the receptionist who took care of checking out patients, Timmy wandered over to the window to stare outside at Caprice’s yellow Camaro.

  Bella touched Caprice’s arm.

  Her sister looked worn-out and a little shell-shocked, as if her world had suddenly taken a ninety-degree turn and she wasn’t quite ready for it. It had been doing a lot of that lately. “I’m scared,” she almost whispered.

  “Of Joe?”

  “No, of what’s happened to us. What if we can’t fix it?”

  “If you can’t fix it, you’ll find the next best thing to do. Father Gregory can help.”

  “You really believe that?”

  “I do. You know how he used to come over for dinner, and then stay long after we all went to bed?”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “If you think about it, he was there the most when Mom and Dad were having skirmishes with Vince about school. I think he was unofficially counseling them on what to do.” She hoped Joe and Bella could resolve whatever problems they were having so they could welcome Timmy’s brother or sister with open arms . . . so they’d be a happy family again.

  She caught a glimpse of Seth as he came to the front desk to speak with the receptionist.

  And her and Seth? Only time would tell what was going to happen there. Seth was obviously too busy to spend even two minutes with her tonight. That was just as well because she had a presentation to prepare. It wasn’t an official presentation, but an informal one. A builder of midrange model homes, a man who had introduced himself as Derrick Gastenaux, had expressed interest in her services. She was going to inspect those homes tomorrow and hope they could come to an agreement. So tonight she’d be thinking about bare drywall and hardwood floors, and houses families wanted turned into homes.

  She just hoped the Santini home would be peaceful once more.

  The following morning, Caprice didn’t know when she was aware of the feeling that she was being watched. She just knew at some point that she was. She had errands to run before she was supposed to meet Derrick Gastenaux at the model home site. Her calendar reminded her she had a client meeting in York at nine, and she intended to stop at the rental company on the way back to Kismet. She had a few more items to choose for the Sumpter estate open house. Fortunately, she found them at the rental company’s warehouse. A checkerboard alpaca rug along with an old-world chest would fit in with the Wild Kingdom theme beautifully.

  Maybe it was when she exited the rental company and climbed into her car that she noted the white SUV with the tinted windows in the same parking lot. On the road again, she thought she spied it in her rearview mirror. But that was silly. There were a lot of white SUVs on the roads. She really didn’t think a whole lot about it, not then anyway.

  Still . . . she had chills running up her arms that couldn’t be explained. Her Nana had always told her to pay attention to anything her body was trying to communicate to her. Caprice did most of the time, but this watched-over feeling was new.

  Maybe she was just getting paranoid. Maybe investigating Bob’s murder was something she should leave to the police. After all, Grant, Seth, and her family all thought so. She’d had an experience with someone in an SUV when she was investigating the murder several weeks back.

  Maybe it was just SUVs that spooked her . . . or tinted windows.

  Brushing it all off as anxiety over Bella and Joe—or nervousness about the awards dinner or distraction because of the possibility she and Seth could be through before they’d hardly begun—she drove through the countryside outside of Kismet for about a half mile. She couldn’t help glancing in her rearview mirror.

  Now she saw no one.

  Yep, she’d watched too many suspense programs on TV.

  However, when she arrived at the model home site, the property had a deserted feeling. She was supposed to meet the builder at 1 Drury Lane. Numbers 3 and 5 were in the construction process, but number 1 was under roof and almost complete. He’d said he’d be there at noon.

  It was noon. She pulled her car into the gravel driveway and cut the engine. Taking her tablet computer with her—it had her presentation notes—she climbed out of her car and looked around.

  Kismet was located in an area of Pennsylvania where rolling hills were the norm. From all angles of the development, green fields led into the distance. It really was a bucolic setting. These homes weren’t mansions, but they looked to be anywhere from three to five thousand square feet and were designed for families with upper middle incomes. She knew staging them would be her best advertisement for future work.

  Walking around the side of the house, she did see a pickup truck parked out back. Maybe that belonged to Derrick Gastenaux. Possibly he was doing something inside and waiting for her.

  She walked to the front door of the house. It was one of those overly expansive doors with a row of windows across the top. She turned the knob and found it unlocked.

  Stepping inside, she was met by newly framed rooms and the smells of lumber and fresh drywall.

  She called, “Mr. Gastenaux?”

  There was a hollow echo, and she didn’t hear any response. Stairs in the foyer led up to the second floor. It never really entered her head to hesitate or to first go outside and call to see if the builder was out there. After all, he could be doing something upstairs.

  After she climbed the stairs, she peered into one of the four huge bedrooms. The master suite was going to have a gigantic bath with a whirlpool tub and step-in shower. Wandering back through the bedroom, thinking about what she wanted to do next, she heard a noise downstairs. Maybe Gastenaux had seen her car and was ready to start their meeting.

  She called out again, “Mr. Gastenaux, I’m up here.”

  But no one answered.

  Now she was getting those chills up and down her arms again. A sixth sense? Or just fear.

  She supposed the best thing to do was to return downstairs, right?

  But what if—

  No what-ifs.

  Taking her pepper-spray gun from her heavily macraméd purse—a girl never knew when she might need such a thing—she slipped her tablet under her arm with her purse and held the spray gun. Descending the steps slowly, she listened but didn’t hear a sound. Not right away. But then she heard the purr of an engine and the crunch of tires on gravel, and she hurried down the rest of the stairs.

  The door was closed. Hadn’t she left it open? She hadn’t heard it bang shut.

  Rushing to it, she opened it, and there was a white SUV surging down Drury Lane away from the model home development. Had someone followed her here?

  If so, who? More important . . . why?

  Chapter Eleven

  “You could have painted stripes on the piano,” Denise said as she nudged Caprice’s elbow on Sunday.


  Guests had arrived at the Sumpter estate even before the official four o’clock open house began. Quite a property, the estate boasted a high security gate, a long driveway, and a sprawling floor plan. It had sunken rooms, modernized bathrooms featuring neutral-bowl sinks, a pool, and a pool house that was bigger than any studio apartment. Caprice and the estate’s owner, Colin Sumpter, had decided a Wild Kingdom theme would be perfect. Colin had told Denise, as well as Caprice, that he didn’t care what they did to the house as long as they sold it. The estate had once been his home base, but now that he was making more frequent trips abroad, he’d decided he’d rather own a villa in Tuscany.

  “Stripes would have been over the top,” Caprice remarked, as one of the guests commented on the metalwork wall hanging that depicted a savannah with lions, as well as the low-slung, off-white sofa decorated with leopard-print pillows.

  “You do over-the-top quite well. I really doubted you could pull this one off—the color scheme is almost theatrical.”

  Caprice understood what Denise was saying. She’d used a palette of rich rusts, golds, black and white, and deep chocolate against an off-white background. There were black and white striped lampshades as well as caramel and chocolate colored, rich faux-fur throws. In the bedrooms, she’d mixed gold and brown brocade comforters with lighter tan fabrics that almost resembled burlap. After searching high and low online, she’d found unique pieces—for instance, the three-foot-long sleek panther statue that stood in the archway to the dining room like a sentinel. In alcoves and on shelves she’d employed pottery in various sizes in red and orange and black. Against a cream backdrop, they were well placed and uncluttered. The overall scheme made a statement that this house was indeed special.

  Denise gestured to the wall near the stone fireplace.

  “Just where did you get that sisal hanging? It looks as if you brought it in straight from Kenya.” The hanging portrayed a trio of elephants heading toward a water hole.

  “You won’t believe it, but I found that in one of those little shops in Peddler’s Village.”