by Leslie Caine
“Wonderful.” She turned on a heel, marched into the kitchen, and said,“Pinot Noir or Chardonnay?”
“Semillon,” I replied, just to be difficult. I’d never known her to have any of that blended type of white wine on hand and, truth be told, I had never as much as tasted that particular vintage.
To my surprise, I heard her open the basement door that led to the wine cellar. “Coming right up,” she called.
Chapter 15
The next day, Henry let out a low whistle of appreciation as he looked at Sullivan’s “safari room” floor plan for his den. Robert Pembrook, however, clicked his tongue. Robert had informed us that he had business in town that day, and so we’d converged in Henry’s comfortable-but-vanillaish temporary quarters—a Courtyard Hotel suite in Crestview—until we’d finished decorating his house. Still studying the design board and ignoring his consultant’s reaction, Henry grinned and decreed, “I like this one even better. My wife would’ve hated it, though.” I was squarely in his late wife’s corner. He’d only just now finished raving about how much he liked my “new and improved” plans for his house.
“Here’s the reason we should go with our first idea, Henry, instead of this one . . . despite our second idea’s merits,” I attempted.
Sullivan kept a bland expression but combed his hand through his hair. Robert, meanwhile, arched an eyebrow. He’d clearly seen through our ploy of “these are our two equally effective plans,” now that I was speaking up in defense of mine.
“The furnishings that you selected all feature bold colors and designs inspired by exotic locales.” Both Pembrook and Sullivan, I knew, recognized my double-speak for “gaudy” and “pseudo-safari,” but I soldiered on. “By spreading them out, as we do in our first plan, we can use them as a unifying thread throughout your home. Also, you’re obviously especially fond of those particular items, or you wouldn’t have gone to such lengths to order them.” You miserable, arrogant little toad, you. “This way, you’ll have at least one of your favorite purchases in each and every room of your home.” With a Vanna White smile and hand gestures, I indicated my own furniture plan.
“True, but . . .” Henry looked longingly at Sullivan’s safari room.
“As they say on the TV ads, Henry, ‘Just do it,’ ” Robert interposed. “This is the very least you can do for Erin after your devious modus operandi has caused the poor girl so much extra work. Trust me, dear boy.”
Henry forced a thin smile but said nothing. With his head of phony white hair and his old-man short-sleeve button-down shirt, too-short trousers, white socks, and black wingtips, he looked about as far from a “dear boy” as humanly possible. This was the first time I’d seen him in casual weekend attire, and I was amazed to discover that I preferred his dime-store cowboy look. In fact, when Robert had first arrived and saw his client’s pathetic attire, he had gasped and declared, “You make me want to weep.” On the other hand, last night Audrey and I had caught a new Hammerin’ Hank commercial produced under Robert’s tutelage, and if I hadn’t known better, I would think that “Hank” was a charming, trustworthy man who sincerely wanted to sell me a good car.
“Okay,” Henry said reluctantly. “We’ll go with Erin’s plan.” But it was with obvious reluctance that he peeled his eyes away from Sullivan’s drawing.
“Good,” I said with a big smile. We all knew, however, that two minutes after we completed the job and parted company, Henry Toben would be rearranging the furniture to enact Sullivan’s plan. I was not about to give Sullivan the satisfaction of hearing me admit that aloud, however.
I watched Sullivan put away the presentation boards in my portfolio case. Our eyes met, and I tossed him the key to my storage unit. His smug smile promptly faded. “We’ve got to take off,” I said, gathering my things. “Steve has to go to our storage unit and mark the boxes for the moving men to use on Monday, then we have a funeral to attend this afternoon.”
“Oh, dear. So do I.” Robert reached over and gave my shoulder a squeeze. “You must have known Laura, too.”
So he had known Laura! “Yes. She was a friend. And she used to live with Steve.”
“You knew Laura Smith?” Sullivan asked Robert. His attempt to make the question sound casual fell far short of the mark.
Robert gave a theatrical sigh. “The woman was one of my first clients, more than a dozen years ago. She was just a young teenager then . . . thirteen or fourteen. Her guardians had brought her to me because, frankly, the child was such a mess . . . so insecure and scared of people, she could barely function.”
“Guardians?” I repeated.
“Where was this?” Steve interrupted, his muscles so tense and his posture so guarded that I half expected him to pop Robert in the jaw if he said the wrong thing.
“Chicago.”
“Laura was insecure around people?” I asked, remembering how self-assured she was.
“I was working in tandem with her therapist, helping her to gain some self-confidence.” Robert met my incredulous gaze and explained, “Oh, darling. Didn’t she tell you about her tragic upbringing? She got a terrible injury when her father slit her throat. Then he killed himself.”
“But . . . the Smiths . . . Richard and Ethel . . .” Steve stammered. “I spoke to them several times. They used to call her when she was living with me. They said they were her parents.”
Robert nodded solemnly. “You mean Laura’s aunt and uncle. After her parents’ death, they raised her as their own.” To me he said, “I didn’t even realize she’d changed her name to theirs, until I heard about her murder on the news. Dreadful. Just dreadful. Back then, she went by her birth name—Laura Montgomery.”
Sullivan gave me an anxious look. The wheels were obviously turning in his head. Now he would want to research old news stories in the Chicago newspapers, looking for the murder-suicide of the Montgomery family. He asked Robert, “Were you aware that she was in league with Evan Cambridge when they stole from my business?”
Robert peered at him. “Are you sure about that? When I knew her, she was one of the sweetest girls I’d ever met.”
“She grew jaded over time, then.”
“Dear, dear,” Robert murmured sadly. “Laura was so . . . special. Her tragic past must have done her in, in spite of everything she had going for her.”
Sullivan said nothing, his vision riveted on Robert’s face.
Robert hesitated and resettled his large glasses on his nose. “Laura had been living with you? So do you mean that she pretended to be an item with you, and then stole from you?”
“Yeah, that’s exactly what she did.”
Robert clicked his tongue. “You poor thing! That would have made everything that Evan did to you three times worse!”
A vein in Sullivan’s neck was bulging and his fists were so tightly balled that his knuckles were white.
“When was the last time you saw Laura, Robert?” I asked.
“Oh, gosh. It must have been nine or ten years ago, before I moved to Denver. She was doing much better by then.”
“So she was just eighteen or so?”
He nodded. “She’d learned her lessons well by then. I taught her how to dress and handle herself in public. She was bright . . . a very fast study. And, of course, absolutely gorgeous to look at.” He looked at Henry from head to foot. The latter had been listening to all of this in silence, sprawled in the tan overstuffed chair. “I wish all of my clients listened half as well to my instructions as she did.”
Sullivan’s brow was furrowed, indicating that he wasn’t necessarily buying Robert’s story. Even I had to admit that the thin connection between Robert and Laura had suddenly strengthened considerably. And Henry was sure being uncharacteristically quiet, for some reason. To Robert, I said in all honesty, “She was one of the most charismatic people I’ve ever met.”
“Yes. She was. She was, indeed.” He heaved a sigh. “Although, apparently, she used her charisma and natural beauty to become a con artist.” He
shook his head. “What a waste.”
At quarter of four, I was apparently the first mourner to arrive at the small funeral home in downtown Crestview. The interior walls were identical to the blond brick exterior. I made my way down the central aisle between the charcoal-gray upholstered pews. Directly ahead of me, the arched stained-glass windows were generic and yet vaguely Christian, designed not to offend, I surmised. I took a seat in the fifth row. A minute or two later, I glanced behind me and spotted Linda Delgardio, wearing a forest-green blouse and dark jacket, sitting in the back corner. She gave me a slight nod of greeting, which I returned.
Soft and somber instrumental music was being piped into the room, but otherwise, it was completely silent. As time passed and no one else arrived, I began to squirm. Finally, Robert Pembrook arrived, looking splendid in a black Italian suit. Unlike his more casual look at Henry’s a couple of hours earlier, he had buttoned his black shirt and was now wearing a thin purple tie with a matching pocket square. He took a seat on the opposite side of the aisle, a couple of rows back from mine, giving me a grimace while spreading his fingers on both hands, pantomiming: Where is everybody?
A minute later, Sullivan arrived and muttered, “Hey,” then sat down next to me. Due, no doubt, to our surroundings, his greeting made me think of my mother, who would always retort, “Hay is for horses.” One time I’d compounded my verbal miscue by wisecracking, “And ‘High’ is for drugheads.” In the wake of the riot act she read to me, I was careful to greet her exclusively with “hello” for the next few weeks.
Dave Holland and a second man, who looked so similar the two men could only be brothers, took a seat in the front row, directly ahead of us. Apparently Bill Gates had two look-alikes in Crestview, Colorado. Dave turned toward me. He was wearing his prescription sunglasses, but even so, the grief portrayed in his features was instantly apparent. I wondered if his black eye had healed.
I glanced back a second time, hoping the room had filled. A half dozen people in their thirties or so had arrived. I didn’t recognize any of them, but they seemed to know one another, and I had the feeling they were Dave’s employees. George Wong now sat alone in the back corner, opposite Linda Delgardio’s seat.
“I’m surprised Wong is here,” I whispered to Sullivan.
“Who?”
“George Wong. He made Laura’s reproductions. He insisted he barely knew her . . . that she was just a customer.” I realized then that I’d done a grossly inadequate job of keeping Sullivan informed about the snippets of information I was gathering about Laura. I peered at Sullivan’s face. His eyes looked glassy. Maybe it was best for me to keep things this way. “I’m sure this is hard on you.”
He shrugged. “I’m fine.” His voice was way too casual.
John Norton entered the room just then, handsome in his black suit with an open collar. He started to head down the aisle, then got a hitch in his step as he spotted Sullivan beside me. “Let’s move over a little so John can join us,” I said to Sullivan, who rose.
“Actually,” Sullivan told me, “I’m going to go sit back by the door. I’ve got a rush job this evening and need to get going the moment this is over.”
The men exchanged a “hey,” and John took Sullivan’s vacated seat. “Sorry I’m late,” he whispered, putting his arm around me. A few seconds later, he glanced over his shoulder. “I didn’t mean to drive Steve clear out of the place.”
“He’s just sitting in the back.”
“No, he left.”
Surprised, I turned. Sullivan indeed was gone. A short, plump, gray-haired couple was coming down the aisle— to the family members’ section. At a glance, it was clear that these were not Laura’s biological parents.
The service was brief, with the eulogist disguising as best he could that he’d never met Laura Smith. He mentioned repeatedly how beautiful she was, so at the very least he’d seen a photograph of her. He announced that there would be a reception afterward in the basement. My heart sank. A reception would make the pitiful turnout all the more acute, I thought.
George Wong and Linda Delgardio had already left by the time John took my arm and we made our way down the aisle. Maybe that was because Linda was keeping an eye on George. Perhaps she was already interrogating him. John whispered, “I wish I’d realized this few people would come to Laura’s service. I’d have dragged some people here from work.”
“I feel so bad for her parents. For her aunt and uncle, rather.”
Dave Holland was standing by the stairwell, and though his eyes were hidden behind his shades, his body English told me that he was waiting for me. “I’m sorry for your loss, Dave.”
“Yeah. Thanks, uh, Erin. Can I . . . speak to you for a sec?”
John said gently in my ear, “I’ll wait for you downstairs.” He gave me a reassuring smile and descended the stairs.
The moment he was out of earshot, Dave blurted out, “The police in Northridge seem to think I’m the prime suspect. I didn’t kill her. I was nowhere near the place.”
I held my tongue.
“I know what you’ve been telling ’em . . . about following my car to the warehouse that night. But you’re wrong. You followed my brother, Alan.”
“What was your brother doing, driving to Laura’s storage unit?”
“I don’t know. But neither of us killed Laura.”
There was an awkward pause. It struck me how radically different this service would feel to me if I’d never gone to Laura’s house Tuesday morning. Then I could have held on to the wonderful, but false, image that she’d so carefully presented to me. “Are you going to the reception?”
“No.” He pressed against his temples with the heels of his hands and stared at his shoes. “Laura once told me if she died first, she’d want me to go out on the town and celebrate her life, not sit around in a black suit mourning her death.” He straightened. “So that’s what Alan and I are going to go do. He’s waiting in the car. Besides, her parents are here. I’m sure they suspect me. I just wanted you to know I’m innocent.”
“Okay. Take care, Dave.”
“Yeah. You too.”
Shoulders sagging, he turned and left. I went downstairs to the reception. I believed Dave about not killing Laura, but was still certain he’d set the fire.
Loudspeakers were playing the same piped-in orchestra music as upstairs. This low-ceilinged room had roughly the same square footage as the chapel. At the opposite wall, a row of rectangular tables dressed in royal blue tablecloths held enough platters of finger food to feed fifty. Six circular tables with eight chairs apiece were evenly placed on the remaining floor space. One table was occupied by all six of the mourners who were unfamiliar to me. At the silver coffee urn, Robert Pembrook was bending John’s ear. The two men’s posture and bearing indicated that they didn’t know each other, but had no one else to talk to. Laura’s adoptive parents, looking lost and despairing, sat at a round table nearby.
I walked over to them. “Mr. and Mrs. Smith? I’m Erin Gilbert, a friend of Laura’s.”
Although her husband didn’t acknowledge me, Mrs. Smith looked up at me with vacant eyes. “Won’t you sit down?”
I murmured my thanks and slipped into the chair next to hers.
“Kind of you to come,” she said on a sigh. “Not many did.”
“Laura hadn’t been back in Crestview very long. Not long enough to get to know many people.”
Mrs. Smith frowned and said softly, “It would have been the same story if we’d held the service in our new home in Kansas. Or in South Bend, where we moved from. Laura had a hard time getting close to people. Whenever she did . . . well, she was afraid she’d come to love them, only to lose them, you see. She told you about what happened to her birth parents?”
“Yes, she did. I’m sure that was unfathomably difficult for her to handle.”
Mrs. Smith nodded with pursed lips and dabbed at her brimming eyes. Angry red splotches were forming on Mr. Smith’s cheeks, meanwhile, and he
was studiously avoiding my gaze.
“I was adopted, too,” I said. “Not under anything like Laura’s circumstances, though, of course.”
“He was my brother. Her father was, I mean,” Mrs. Smith replied. “We tried our best to raise her right.”
“You did everything you could for her,” I replied. “You got her into therapy. And you even took her to see Robert Pembrook.”
“Who?” she asked.
At the mention of the name, her husband regarded me with fierce, bright eyes, but said nothing.
“The image consultant. He’s right . . .” I glanced behind me to point him out. John was now speaking to the eulogist, and the two of them were the only people in the room other than those of us at the two tables. “He must have left. He was at the service.”
“Oh, yes. Robert Pembrook. In the black shirt and purple tie. I’d forgotten his name. Laura did that on her own.” Mrs. Smith’s voice and expression were inscrutable.
“You mean she smartened up her self-image on her own, or that she chose to see Mr. Pembrook on her own?”
“That queer ruined my daughter’s life, you ask me,” Laura’s father said with a snarl.
“Well, nobody did ask you!” his wife fired back.
“Are you some sort of undercover cop?” he demanded, glaring at me.
“No. Like I said, I was a friend of Laura’s.”
“Yeah? Well, you were sitting right next to her killer.”
“Oh, Richard . . .” his wife moaned.
Shocked, I asked, “You don’t mean John Norton, do you?”
“I mean the bastard you were sitting with first. The one who took off before I could confront him.”
“Richard! Stop! You don’t even know that that was the same man! You just have that one photograph that Laura sent us last year, back when they were living together.”
“Steve Sullivan?” I had to struggle to keep my voice down.
“That’s the one,” Mr. Smith promptly replied over his wife’s protests. “He kept calling us, demanding to know where she was, making all kinds of ridiculous accusations. I warned her. When she told us she’d moved back to Crestview, I told her it was a big mistake. That she was going to wind up dead at that crazy man’s hand. But she wouldn’t listen to me.”