“You’re lucky. I’m beginning to think good marriages are an endangered species.”
She stabbed the air with her fork. “That’s why you shouldn’t give up on Andy.”
“What do you mean, give up? He’s the one who left.”
“Yes, but you didn’t exactly beg him not to go.”
“What was I suppose to do?” I asked, pulling myself up straight. “Deck myself out in Saran Wrap? Or maybe coat his body with whipped cream and lick it off, very slowly?”
“That might have done the trick. Really, Kate, sometimes you sound like you don’t even care.”
“I’m not sure I do anymore.”
“You can’t mean that?”
“I can, and I do.” Although, until that moment I’d never actually put it in those terms. “Aren’t you going to eat those corncakes?” I asked, pointing to the two thick fritters on her plate.
She shook her head. “They’re loaded with oil.”
I reached across the table and speared a corncake. “May I?”
“Be my guest” She moved her wine glass and pushed her plate in my direction. “What’s so wrong with Andy? He’s intelligent good looking, considerate, fun.”
“And the only person he gives a damn about is himself. He never really even saw me, Daria. It was as though I existed only as a reflection of his own wants and needs.”
“Oh, for God’s sake. Have you been reading some feminist rubbish? You wouldn’t be in Walnut Hills living the good life if it weren’t for him. Nothing is perfect.”
I thought of the men I might have married. Larry, my high school sweetheart, had gained nearly a hundred pounds and lost most of his hair. Jonathan, who’d once told me I was the most exciting woman in the world—a remark I thought, even then, showed limited vision—was now a struggling playwright recently divorced from wife number four. And Bradley, with sorrowful puppy-dog eyes and a girlfriend in every city across the US, was dead of a drug overdose. All in all I could have done worse than Andy, and Daria was certainly right in saying that nothing is perfect. So why was I so increasingly unwilling to give Andy the benefit of the doubt?
“I’m not so sure Andy’s going to be coming back home in any case,” I told her, reaching for the remaining corncake.
“He’ll be back, but he certainly won’t stay long if that’s your attitude.”
The waiter came to refill my water glass and Daria ordered a second glass of wine, then leaned across the table toward me. “You’re not so young anymore, Kate. Being a divorced woman, especially one with children, is no piece of cake. Have you really stopped to consider what it would be like?”
She brushed at an invisible speck in the air and shot me a meaningful glance. “Remember Jane Martin? I ran into her the other day and she looks awful. She’s living in some rented tract house on the fringe of Walnut Creek, working two boring jobs just to afford that.”
“Jane’s experience is hardly typical,” I reminded her. Until their divorce last year, the Martins had lived in a big, Spanish-style house, complete with pool and tennis courts. Jane had dressed like a model, thrown lavish parties and spent the better part of her week at the club spa being coiffed and manicured and massaged. But her husband was not only running around with his boss’s wife, he was dipping into company profits, as well. It finally all caught up with him. Jane had been lucky to walk away with her diamonds, which she promptly sold in order to buy food and clothing for her children. My situation wasn’t exactly analogous. “Besides,” I told her, “money isn’t the issue here.”
“Well, even if you don’t end up in the poorhouse, you’ll still be a divorced woman. A castoff. I hate to sound crass, but that’s the truth.” Daria scowled at the packets of sugar substitute she was busily rearranging. “You know those dreary groups of puffy-eyed women, the kind who spend half an hour with a calculator dividing up their restaurant tab, is that what you want?”
“Good God, listen to yourself. This is the nineties. Things have changed.”
“Some things never change.” Then she smiled broadly and patted my hand. “Just think it through carefully, Kate. I want you to be happy.”
Daria declined dessert for both of us, without so much as a glance in my direction, paid the bill, and then spent ten minutes powdering her nose. And cheeks and eyelids.
“We need to stop by Mrs. Van Horn’s on the way back,” she announced gloomily. “She wants us to take a look at the decor before advising her on art purchases.”
This, in itself, was not unusual. The gallery was more than a shop, it was a service, which was one of the factors that accounted for its success. But it was clear from Daria’s tone that she wasn’t looking forward to this visit.
“Sounds like fun,” I said, trying for the enthusiasm befitting a new employee.
“Wait until you meet Mrs. Van Horn.”
Easing the car carefully out of a tight parking space, Daria headed for the Van Horns on the other side of town. She turned the radio on low and hummed along with a Strauss waltz for a few minutes before asking, “What’s the latest on Pepper’s murder? The papers have been useless.”
“Probably because there’s nothing to report.”
She shook her head sadly. “I expect there’s not much chance they’ll ever find him. Some lowlife from Oakland scores a few hundred bucks and it costs Pepper her life.”
“Actually, it might not have been a simple break-in,” I told her. “The police now think it might have been someone she knew.”
“You’re kidding?”
“They found her jewelry and wallet, so they’re pretty sure it wasn’t a burglary. And she wasn’t raped or . . . mutilated, so they have pretty much discounted the thrill killer scenario.”
“What d’ya know,” Daria said, with a high-pitched laugh. “Being a snooty bitch is getting more dangerous by the day.”
“She wasn’t that bad.”
“Maybe not to you.” Daria paused and frowned. “She’d come waltzing into the gallery like it was her own private showroom, send me scurrying off looking for just the right little thing, then wrinkle up that plastic nose of hers and say, ‘No, that’s not really what I had in mind.’ And then at the club, she’d look right through me as though she didn’t have the foggiest idea who I was.”
“Well, she had her faults,” I agreed, “but she had her good points, too.”
Daria looked at me, then back at the road. We stopped at a red light and Daria clicked her nails on the wheel. “So,” she said, after a minute, “who’s on the suspect list?”
“Well, let’s see. There’s Connie.” Daria looked at me like I was crazy. “Because she had a key. And then there’s the gardener.”
“What did Pepper do to him, load up on plastic daffodils?”
“And maybe Robert.”
“Be serious.”
“I know. But the husband is always a possible suspect.” This last I said in my best television-cop monotone, which didn’t elicit so much as a smirk from Daria.
“I’ve never been fond of the man myself,” she confided, “too prissy for my taste. But I can’t imagine him as a murderer. Besides, he was probably at a client dinner or something that night. Airtight alibi and all.”
“He was at work, but apparently no one saw him.”
“Really?”
I nodded.
“Interesting.” She pulled into the Van Horns’ long, tree-studded drive. “You get all this information from that Detective . . . what’s his name . . . ?”
“Stone.”
I must have blushed because she raised a perfectly penciled brow. “This isn’t strictly a business relationship, I gather.”
“I don’t know what it is.”
She gave me one of those chilling looks I’ve never mastered myself. “Just don’t forget you’re married.”
“Married, sort of.”
“Married enough.” She parked the car. “You don’t want to risk all you’ve got just for a quick fling with some hard, sweaty body, do
you?”
I shrugged, but I didn’t find the choice as clear cut as Daria did.
Chapter 11
“This is it?” I asked, when Daria pulled to a stop. I blinked and looked again.
Before me stood a large, imposing castle. Or rather, a Disneyland replica of a castle, complete with turrets and arched doorways. Only instead of ancient stone and finely crafted embellishments, the exterior was a fresh, mauvish stucco embedded with flecks of shiny mica. And replacing the moat and drawbridge were a five-car garage and a flagstone walkway lined with juniper bushes.
“It’s one of McGregory’s creations. There’s another just like it up the road a bit.”
“He found two people willing to buy something like that?”
“Apparently so. And it wasn’t cheap either.”
That much I could believe. “What’s she looking for in the way of art,” I asked as we walked to the door, “a Rembrandt framed in Day-Glo acrylic?”
“Possibly.”
The inside was not much better. Floor-length balloon drapes of heavy velvet, brocade upholstery, crystal chandeliers. And on the wall adjacent to the fireplace, an ultramodern, wall-size home entertainment center of bleached oak.
“Eclectic,” I whispered to Daria.
“Very.”
Mrs. Van Horn patted her extremely blond and perfectly coiffed head. “Please call me Sondra,” she said when we were seated around the asymmetric marble coffee table. “That’s with an o not an a. "
She smiled, revealing a set of even, bright white teeth. “Can I get you ladies anything? Coffee? Tea? Or some pear tart, I just bought it this morning.”
“Thank you,” Daria replied, again speaking for both of us, “but we’ve just had lunch.”
Sondra Van Horn was probably in her late fifties, but, as the saying goes, well preserved. Or well repaired. Her skin had the tight look of a woman who has treated herself to one too many facelifts, and God knows what else. Her figure was trim, if not firm, and her wardrobe conspicuously up to date.
“You can see this is going to be quite a job,” she said, lifting a heavily jeweled hand and gesturing broadly to the four walls. “There is so much empty space.”
In fact, I thought there was not quite enough empty space, but then our tastes obviously differed.
“And it’s not just this room, you know,” she continued. “There’s the entry hall, the dining room, and the rooms at the back of the house.” She laughed, a high, girlish laugh. “We’ll leave the upstairs for a later date. Well, would you like the tour?”
For the next hour she clicked around the house in her backless high-heel pumps, pointing out blank walls and making sure we understood the mood she wished to create. Her taste ran to the traditional, she said, but she was willing to consider almost anything as long as it “worked”—a word she must have repeated at least a dozen times during the tour. Pieces that caught your eye and made a statement, that was what she was looking for.
“Good art can make or break a decor, don’t you think?” she asked, stepping around a life-size porcelain hunting dog. “Of course, we’ll have to consider the color scheme of each room. They’re all different, as you’ve probably noticed.”
Indeed it would have been difficult not to do so.
We ended the tour in the billiard room—family room to us everyday folk—and were just beginning to discuss Sondra’s art budget when a door at the back of the house closed and two balls of white fluff with rhinestone collars—I assumed they were rhinestone, although they might well have been diamond—scurried into the room, yapping loudly.
“Rosa must be back. She’s our maid.” Sondra bent down to greet the new arrivals, clucking at them in a squeaky, singsong voice. “How’s my babies? Was Auntie Rosa good to you on your little doggy walky?”
She stood up then and introduced us to Duke and Duchess, who looked exactly alike except that Duchess had a yellow bow perched on the top of her head. Sondra’s black silk pantsuit, trimmed in gold lame, was now dusted with white hairs, but she seemed not to notice.
The dogs ignored Daria but sniffed at my feet and eyed me suspiciously. “They probably smell Max,” I explained.
“Oh, you have a dog too?” Clearly, I had moved up a notch in Sondra’s eyes. “Is he as cute as these two snookums?”
“He’s . . . uh, different.”
“You know, dear, you look awfully familiar. I think we’ve met before.” Mouth pursed in thought, she studied me. “Ah, the Livingstons’ Christmas party last year. Could that have been it?”
“Possibly, I was there.”
“Kate lives next door to the Livingstons’,” Daria offered, as if my presence at such an elite gathering demanded explanation.
“Terribly tragic, wasn’t it, about dear Pepper?”
While Daria and I murmured our agreement, the dogs fell into a heap at the edge of the doorway.
“These times we live in . . .” Sondra shook her head sadly. “Of course, nothing like that could happen here at our place. We have a state-of-the-art alarm system.”
“That’s what’s so strange,” I said. “The Livingstons have one, too.”
Daria snorted. “Doesn’t do much good if you forget to use it.”
“Pepper was usually so careful about that, though.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake, Kate, she wasn’t infallible.”
“You know,” said Sondra thoughtfully, “she was acting kind of odd during the last couple of weeks. Kind of distracted and short tempered. We were both on the Sunshine House board,” Sondra explained, “and then, of course, I used to run into her quite frequently at the club. Then she took that doozer of a spill, bruised her arm so badly she had to excuse herself from a board meeting to take some aspirin.”
“Any idea what was going on?” I asked.
“No, none at all. I mentioned it to her once, very casually of course, just so she’d know she could come talk to me if she wanted. But she got all uppity and said she didn’t think I should concern myself with her life.”
“That’s Pepper all right,” Daria huffed. “And I doubt there was anything bothering her. She was probably just preoccupied with spending money and zipping around in that fancy car of hers.”
Sondra appeared to miss the nasty tone in Daria’s voice. She laughed lightly, and said, “Well, she did like to do that. Though I’m hardly one to talk, am I?”
The phone rang and Sondra padded off to answer it, followed by Duke and Duchess. Daria and I measured rooms, took notes and then, mouthing a silent good-bye to Sondra, who was still on the phone, sneaked out the door before the dogs noticed us.
“Whatever are you going to show her?” I asked, thinking of the lovely works which filled Daria’s gallery. None of them seemed the sort of thing Sondra had in mind.
“Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I’m not going to show her anything. You are. This is your first assignment at Courtyard Galleries.”
I looked over to see if she was joking, but apparently she was serious. “Thanks a lot.”
“You’ll manage. Somehow.”
While Daria drove, I closed my eyes and tried to picture each of the rooms again, hoping for inspiration. Nothing.
“It was interesting,” Daria said, slowing for a hairpin turn, “what Mrs.—what Sondra—had to say about Pepper, don’t you think?”
I was still waiting for a revelation from the art god, and merely nodded.
“It made me remember, one day about three weeks ago when we were showering at the club, I noticed Pepper had two big bruises, one on her thigh, another on her shoulder. And a gash on her forehead.”
I remembered the gash, she had slipped on one of Kimberly’s toys and hit her head on the kitchen counter. “So?” The living room would be the hardest, I thought. It called out for big pieces, but the room was already so overdone I didn’t want to add to the jumble.
“She said she fell down the stairs, but I don’t think she was telling the truth.
Something about the way she said it, kind of flip but agitated at the same time.”
Pepper had clearly misled one of us, maybe both, but I wasn’t sure what Daria was getting at. “She didn’t die of internal injuries.”
“That’s not what I meant.” Daria hesitated. “It’s just an idea, probably a stupid one, but . . . but what if the bruises were . . . well, what if someone hit her, roughed her up a bit. And maybe that was just a prelude to killing her.”
“Oh, come on, she’d have called the police if anyone hit her.”
Daria shrugged dramatically. “Not necessarily. Especially if it was someone she knew. Someone she had an ongoing relationship with.”
“Robert?” She had my full attention now.
“It certainly wasn’t her hairdresser.”
“But you said yourself you couldn’t see him as a murderer.”
“I couldn’t, and I’m not sure I do even now, but that was before I realized the police think the killer is someone she knew.”
Daria braked abruptly, barely avoiding the car in front, which had stopped to make a U-turn in the middle of the road. “It makes sense, if you think about it Robert has no alibi for the night she was killed, and they say a large percentage of crimes are committed by the spouse.”
“That’s hardly reason enough to accuse him.”
“I wasn’t accusing him. I’m just saying maybe he should be investigated.” Daria tapped the wheel. “It would explain why the police didn’t find any unusual fingerprints at the scene.”
I nodded, but without conviction.
“And then there’s that car her neighbor, Mrs. What’s- her-name saw.”
“Mrs. Stevenson, but it turns out the car belongs to someone who works for Robert.”
Daria frowned, and then continued in a low, almost whispery voice. “Robert does have a temper, you know. Everyone thinks he’s so polished and urbane, but he can be pretty nasty. Why, just a couple of weeks ago at the Patersons’ party ...” She hesitated, but without Mary Nell’s embarrassment. “You weren’t there, so I know you missed this. Well, there’s this little alcove off the living room, and I was sitting in the comer catching my breath when Pepper and Robert stopped right at the entrance. They were arguing about something. Robert grabbed her wrist and twisted it. His eyes were like steel. The man was angry. Not that he didn’t have his reasons, I’m sure.”
Murder Among Neighbors (The Kate Austen Mystery Series) Page 13