Staged to Death (A Caprice De Luca Mystery)

by Smith, Karen Rose

  Bella nodded. “Okay.” After a pause, she filled Caprice in. “Valerie herself talks about who she dates. It’s no secret she’s always wanted to marry up.”

  “Marry someone with money.”

  “Exactly. In fact, Rhonda told me that Valerie let it slip to a client that the man she was seeing was married. Not only that, but she confided that he was going to leave his wife. Valerie’s boyfriend told her she knew the meaning of hot sex, where his wife didn’t.”

  Caprice let out a low whistle. “That’s nasty.”

  She sautéed the onion and pepper for a short while, then slid Bella’s hand grater from a drawer and shaved the garlic cloves over it into the mixture. She allowed it to cook for a half minute before she turned off the heat. “Do you want this in the slow cooker?”

  “Yep, it’s ready and waiting.”

  Bella had transferred the tomatoes from the hot water to the icy mixture in the sink. In no time she had them skinned, squeezed, and dumped into the slow cooker with the pepper, onion, and garlic. Taking a spice container from the cupboard, she shook some crushed red pepper into the mixture.

  Then she said in a low voice, “Don’t you wonder sometimes if all a man wants is hot sex?”

  Was that a rhetorical question? Caprice wondered. Or was she really supposed to answer it? “What makes you ask?”

  “Oh, nothing.”

  Bella was not an oh-nothing kind of woman.

  “Bella?”

  Bella turned to her, her eyes glistening, and announced, “I’m pregnant. Joe’s not going to like it one little bit.”

  Chapter Eight

  After her surprising announcement, Bella glanced into the living room and took two steps toward it. “I hope Megan didn’t hear,” she whispered, her hand over her heart.

  Caprice could see into the living room, which was a good distance away. Megan sat in the middle of the sofa, looking as if she was struggling with the closures on her doll’s clothes. She didn’t look up and didn’t glance their way.

  Caprice moved toward her sister and clasped her arm. “She didn’t hear.” Caprice lowered her voice though, just in case. “You haven’t told Joe?”

  Now Bella almost appeared angry as she pulled away. “No, I haven’t told Joe. We’re living paycheck to paycheck. Every year when Mom and Dad give us money at Christmas, I insist we stow it away for a rainy day and we have that to fall back on. But just one crisis and it will be gone. I was going to find work again as soon as Megan goes to school in the fall. But now—”

  When she stopped abruptly, Caprice realized Bella was almost in tears. “Maybe you’re wrong about how Joe will react.”

  Shaking her head vehemently, Bella blurted out, “We’ve had lots of discussions about kids. I’ve always wanted more, but he always says we can’t afford them.”

  A thought entered Caprice’s mind. After all, her sister was strong-willed.

  But before she could even voice it, Bella’s brown eyes flashed, and she shook her head again. “No, I did not do this on purpose. Joe and I . . . You know Joe and I had to get married. Well, we didn’t have to, but Joe insisted. I’ve always wondered if I hadn’t gotten pregnant, if Joe would have married me.”

  Bella had never expressed this fear before. Had it been eating at her all these years?

  “Joe loves you.”

  “Yes, I believe he does. But sometimes I think he thinks family life is a burden he’d like to escape. I never would have gone against him to get pregnant. It was an accident. Well, not exactly an accident. I was on an antibiotic and sometimes birth control isn’t as effective when you are. And one night Joe wanted to, well, you know—”

  No, Caprice didn’t know. But she wasn’t going to go into that now. “Maybe you could find work until the baby’s born. With summer coming, I know Mom wouldn’t mind taking care of Megan and Timmy.”

  Bella bit her lower lip. “I suppose that is one compromise I could suggest to Joe. But I’m just not ready to tell him yet. I have to prepare a little more. I have to come up with some other ideas. You know how I like to make costumes for kids. I sold a few the past couple of years. Maybe I could sell them online.”

  “Maybe you could,” Caprice agreed. Bella had gone to a fashion-design school and received an associate degree. She’d always liked to sew. But on a weekend visit home, she’d met Joe, so she’d returned to Kismet to be with him and had taken secretarial positions ever since.

  “Promise me you won’t tell anyone about this,” Bella implored.

  “You’re not going to tell Mom or Nana?”

  “No, no one. Not yet. Joe has to be the first one to know . . . I mean after you. I just . . . I just used the third pregnancy test this morning, and I had to tell somebody.”

  Caprice supposed she was glad that she fell onto Bella’s “somebody’s” list. But she didn’t like the idea of keeping this secret. She didn’t like it at all. It was against her better judgment. Keeping this information inside wasn’t good for Bella, either. Yet she could see her sister wasn’t about to listen to reason, not now and maybe not tomorrow, either. Bella was like that. When she got something into her head, it stayed.

  Throwing her arms around Bella, Caprice gave her a tight hug. Her sister leaned into her for a couple of seconds, and then she pulled away and squared her shoulders. “I have to get this sauce on. Talk to me about something that will get my mind off all this.”

  Suddenly Megan came racing into the kitchen with her doll. “Lookie, Aunt Caprice. Isn’t she pretty?”

  Studying the doll that Megan had dressed in slacks, a sweater, and a cute little hat, she answered, “Yes, she’s pretty. Almost as pretty as you.”

  Megan giggled. “She’s gonna go shopping.”

  “What’s she going to shop for?”

  “Jewelry. I’ll get the jewelry Mommy gave me.” And Megan was off again as quickly as she’d appeared.

  “I had an old purse, and I filled it with costume jewelry that I no longer wear. I swear she can play with that for hours.”

  Although Caprice didn’t know if she wanted to talk about it, she knew there was one subject that would take Bella’s mind off her newly discovered pregnancy. At least she hoped it would. “I’m going on a date next Saturday.”

  Bella practically squealed. “Who is it?”

  She knew this was the part that Bella would probably like. “He’s a doctor. He works at the urgent care center.”

  Bella’s eyes grew wide. “Dr. Randolph?”

  “How did you—?”

  “He’s the only single doc who works there. He might be the only single doc in town, for all I know. And he asked you out?”

  That made Caprice feel really good. There was a bit of annoyance in her voice when she asked, “Is there a reason he shouldn’t have?”

  Bella looked chagrined for a few moments. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to make it sound—” She lifted her hands. “You know. I’ve heard talk about him at Curls R Us, and when I went to a PTO meeting a couple of weeks ago. There’s a buzz about him. Actually I heard he never dates.”

  “He said he hasn’t since he came here.”

  “How did you meet him?”

  “I took Roz there. Then I ran into him at Grocery Fresh, and he asked me to play miniature golf.”

  “That’s terrific! Don’t treat him like you’ve treated everyone else.”

  Leave it to Bella to put a damper on things. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Yes, you do. You don’t give men who are interested in you a second chance. You’ve got to get over Craig dumping you by e-mail. And I know Travis did a number on you. He was such a jerk for not realizing he still had feelings for his ex-wife. Men are so clueless.”

  Maybe Joe was clueless, but Caprice didn’t lump all men into that category. She liked men. She liked dating. She just had trouble trusting the men she dated.

  “There’s always an impediment,” Caprice almost said to herself, as she thought about Seth’s profession,
the interruptions he’d cited.

  “For once, don’t think about the future, just think about the time you’re with a man. You’re at a great place in your life, and it’s not going to come around again. Enjoy yourself and just let things happen.”

  Even though Bella was younger, in some ways she sounded world-weary. Did she regret marrying Joe in her early twenties? Had she settled into having a family too quickly? Had she really known the man Joe was when she married him?

  “Don’t tell anyone,” Caprice said. “I don’t want anyone to know about the date until after it’s over. If it doesn’t go well, I’m not going to breathe a word.”

  Bella looked dubious.

  “I mean it, Bella. I’m keeping a secret for you. You keep this one for me.”

  When Caprice stopped at the security gate at the storage-locker center after her visit with Bella and entered her pass code, the gate slid open. After driving down one row, she made a left, drove up that row and down another. She’d rented two storage compartments, both the largest ones the company had to offer. If she wasn’t careful, she’d soon need a third. She didn’t like to pack them to the ceiling like some renters. That would make shifting out furniture, carpets, and artwork much more difficult. When she first entered the home-staging business, her parents had let her use one of their garages. But she hadn’t wanted them to leave one of their cars out in the weather for long. Within a few months, she’d rented a storage compartment, and then, soon after, another.

  After she parked to the side of the asphalt so another car could pass if it had to, she dug into her purse for her key ring. Finding it, she turned it until she grasped the small key for the padlock. In a matter of seconds, she unlocked the first storage compartment.

  Grasping the handle on the door, she began to lift it. The door rumbled, stuck for an instant, then raised the rest of the way. Her gaze took a quick inventory of everything inside.

  Her compartments were ten feet deep, fifteen feet wide. They were stacked high, but not so high that she couldn’t reach everything. Rolled rugs stood in the corners, and labeled boxes lined the edges of the compartment. She kept a path open to walk through. Now she headed to the back, searching for the items she wanted to use for Marge and Grover Gentry’s house. She had a meeting with them tomorrow morning to go over the proposal. She could begin staging on Monday. She’d alerted Bob Preston, whose painting crews she often used and a former classmate of Bella’s, that she might need him on short notice.

  As she was reading a list of items in one of the boxes, she heard a car engine outside. She didn’t know why, but the sound scared her a little. This place was usually deserted. She wasn’t normally skittish, and being alone here usually didn’t bother her. But, of course, she’d left her pepper-spray gun in the car.

  It was probably Ted’s murder that had her spooked. If someone could break into his house and murder him, no place was safe.

  Throwing off a fear she wanted no part of, she stepped outside again, just as the car pulled to a stop at her compartment.

  She recognized that sedan. It was one of those sporty luxury cars where you talk to the console or something, and it either talked back or called someone on your list. The vehicle braked and the engine shut down. Her brother opened the driver’s-side door. He had her personal code to get into the storage-locker center because he’d often helped her lug furniture in and out. Vince worked out, and his muscles had been a godsend. Today he was still dressed in a white shirt with a classy tie and suit trousers.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I called Bella about Mom’s birthday. She said you were headed over here. We have to pick a time to get together to talk about what we’re going to do. My schedule is probably the least flexible, and I was wondering what you were thinking of.”

  Something about Vince’s demeanor told her that wasn’t all he had on his mind. “If we have the party at one of our places, we’ll only need a few days to pull it together. After all, this is what I do,” she said with a sly smile. “But you could have called my cell.”

  He was silent a moment. “Yes, I could have, but there’s something more serious I thought we should talk about face-to-face.”

  “At my storage compartment?” Her question held curiosity he could obviously hear.

  “Roz is at your house.”

  She didn’t like the sound of that. “Is this something she shouldn’t hear?”

  Vince swiped his dark brown hair over his brow and scowled at her. “How did you get yourself mixed up in this?”

  “This meaning a friendship with Roz?”

  “Of course not. How did you get yourself involved in a murder investigation? You should never have gone down to the police station with her. Jones didn’t ask you to come.”

  Be calm, she told herself. Stay perfectly calm. “You should have seen Roz after the murder. She could hardly put two words together. I didn’t want that to happen again.”

  “You’re not her protector.”

  “Someone has to be. I don’t know if Grant wants to be. I tried to call you.”

  “I was in court. There was nothing I could do about that. There’s not much I can do now . . . or Grant, either, for that matter. She needs a criminal attorney, a defense attorney.”

  “We’re hoping it doesn’t come to that.”

  “Hope won’t go very far if the district attorney brings charges against her,” Vince reminded her with a bit of sarcasm.

  “Do you know something I don’t?”

  “No. I know Grant talked to a contact in the D.A.’s office. That’s about it. But they’re not going to tip their hand in this. I just came here to talk some sense into you. Stay away from this. Stay far away from it.”

  “I found the body. I saw what someone did to Ted. No, he wasn’t my favorite person, but nobody should die like that.”

  Although Vince’s brows still furrowed, his expression softened somewhat. “You care too much.” That was a criticism, but the way her brother’s voice gentled, it didn’t sting like it might have.

  “Vince, isn’t that the Italian way?”

  He gave her a cockeyed smile. “I won’t even go there. Just promise me you’ll call me if you get called in for questioning.”

  “Grant is handling it.”

  “No. Roz is his client. You’re not. I doubt if the cops will even look your way. But I’m serious. Don’t you say anything to them unless you have me with you.”

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that.” She wasn’t about to tell Vince she was going to Curls R Us and the pharmaceutical company to check around. He wouldn’t like that idea one little bit. But a girl had to do what a girl had to do.

  “Did you pick up the wine yet for Sunday?” she teased.

  “One of these times I’m going to bring a bottle of the cheapest Chianti, then we’ll see how much everybody appreciates me.”

  She laughed. Her brother could be a bear sometimes and a real pain at others. Yet he could be charming too, and they loved him. “Seriously, what did you find for Sunday?”

  “I’m going to drive up to Adam’s County Winery on Saturday. I’ll find something good.”

  Adams County Winery, north of Gettysburg, had a variety of wines to choose from, and she knew Vince would find something terrific. Since this Sunday was Mother’s Day, it was a little more special than most. Her mom and Nana still insisted on cooking, but the kids had a tradition too, one they’d started when they’d gotten their first cameras. Every year she, Nikki, Vince, and Bella pooled photographs they’d taken over the year and created albums for their mom and Nana. They rotated the responsibility. This year Nikki was doing their mom’s, and Vince was supposed to put together Nana’s.

  “Is Nana’s album ready?”

  “I finished it last night. I know I sometimes wait until the last minute, but not this year.” Vince motioned to the storage compartment. “Do you need help with anything?”

  “No. I’m good.”

  He focused on the c
ontents of the shed, then turned his attention back to her. “I’m glad you’re doing so well. Then Mom and Pop don’t have to worry about you.”

  “And you never worry about me?”

  He just gave her one of those big brother looks and walked to his car.

  She waved as he drove off and then went back to taking inventory. She’d make a list. That way she wouldn’t waste time if the Gentrys signed the contract. She hated wasting time. Right now, she didn’t have any to spare.

  Roz looked a combination of flustered, sad, and angry when Caprice returned home. The first thing she said was, “The police won’t even let me get Ted’s suit out of the house.”

  For a moment Caprice wondered why Roz needed Ted’s suit, and then the fact hit her—Roz needed it for the funeral.

  Dylan was winding in and out of Roz’s feet as she paced across the living room. They looked as if they were doing some kind of odd dance, but Roz didn’t seem to be bothered by the little dog almost tripping her.

  “I called Grant, and he said he would see what he could do. But the police wouldn’t budge. They won’t tell me when they are going to release his body, either, but Grant seems to think that will be by Monday. He did say you can pick up your car at the police station. Mine might be available tomorrow.”

  Roz had so much to think about and so much to feel. Caprice saw Sophia had been keeping her friend company too. She was stretched out on Nana’s afghan on the back of the sofa. Nana had crocheted the zigzag-pattern in the colors of Caprice’s room. In the winter, she loved having a fire going in the fireplace while she curled up in the afghan with Sophia beside her.

  Sophia’s golden eyes seemed to follow Roz on her trips back and forth across the room.

  “Now what are you going to do?” Caprice asked.

  “I called the men’s store, Just for Him. They do custom work. I told them I wanted a nice blue tweed and gave Ted’s measurements. They’re supposed to have the suit ready for me tomorrow afternoon.”

  She sighed and brought troubled eyes to Caprice’s. “What worries me is that I can’t seem to control my reactions. When Grant told me what the police said, I wanted to just yell and scream. Logically, I know that would do no good. Not only that, it would be totally out of character for me. I don’t know what’s happening. I feel a little bit crazy.”