Sleuthing Women

by Lois Winston

  “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. “Yours 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.

  ELEVEN

  “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 L
ivingstons 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 corner 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.”

  “Even loving husbands and wives sometimes fight,” I said. Although I wasn’t sure the observation applied to Daria and Jim.

  Flicking a strand of hair from her face, Daria turned to me, arched her brows and asked, “What does your little police friend think?”

  “Quit needling me, will you?”

  “Aha,” she said with a wide smirk. “You wouldn’t react that way if you weren’t already feeling guilty.”

  I ignored the smirk, and the remark. “Why would Robert want to kill Pepper?”

  “How should I know? Maybe he just got tired of her selfish attitude.”

  I twisted my mouth and rolled my eyes the way Anna does when she thinks I’ve been totally outlandish. “You never give up, do you?”

  “Anyway, it wouldn’t hurt to have the police keep an eye on Robert. You know what they say about these aloof, repressed types . . .” Daria let her voice trail off and finished the sentence with upraised hands.

  Somehow I pictured Robert going for the jugular in divorce court more readily than in the flesh, but then murder was hardly an exercise in rationality.

  I spent the next hour updating the gallery mailing list and mulling over Daria’s suspicions, which I had to admit, were not as outrageous as they at first appeared. If Pepper had been killed by someone she knew, especially by someone with access to the house, it limited the field quite a bit. How many people, even those who profess to loathe you, in the final analysis care enough to kill you?

  Finally, I picked up the phone and called Sharon, whose husband George was an old school buddy of Robert’s. Aside from our mutual involvement in the nursery school, we didn’t know each other well—the unfortunate, but natural consequence of her having a son, and I, a daughter. But I’d always liked Sharon and felt reasonably sure she wouldn’t be offended by my call. Sharon was rarely offended by anything.

  “Can I talk to you sometime, about Pepper?” I asked when she had finally wrestled the phone from Kyle.

  “Sure, you want to come over right now?”

  “I’m at work.”

  “How about coming by for dinner then? George is out of town, and I’m always hungry for adult company when he’s gone.”

  We agreed that I would pick up a pizza from Round Table and she would make a salad. Then, feeling quite pleased with myself, I finished the mailing list, flipped through a stack of paintings, finding two that might “work” for Sondra, then picked Anna up at school, after assuring Mrs. Duval, the head teacher, that Anna did, in fact, know her left from her right, and would, I was confident, eventually learn to write her letters on the line.

  “Guess what,” I told her as we drove home. “We’re going to have dinner tonight with Kyle Covington and his mom.” />
  She gagged. “Yuk and double yuk.”

  “We’re having pizza.”

  Silence.

  “And I’ll get some ice cream and chocolate sauce for dessert.”

  She didn’t look exactly happy, but she was no longer on the verge of a tantrum either.

  ~*~

  Promptly at six o’clock I rang Sharon’s bell, balancing a hot pizza in one hand and a bag from Baskin Robbins in the other. Anna was unable to help me because her own arms were filled with Barbie dolls.

  “I don’t think Kyle likes to play Barbie,” I’d cautioned as we left home.

  “I know,” she’d told me with a wide smile. “He hates them.”

  Kyle opened the door for us and gave Anna a glare which matched her own. He was a gangly, gap-toothed kid with a head of unruly reddish hair. He glared a moment longer, then turned abruptly and left, without a word. Anna’s glare shifted to me as we followed him down the hallway.

  While Anna and Kyle made faces at each other over cheese and pepperoni, Sharon and I talked about the tribulations of raising children in the nineties, compared notes on favorite authors, and delighted in finding that we had more in common that we’d known. Then she put a movie in the VCR and set the children down in front of it, with a strict warning that they’d better behave themselves if they wanted dessert. Handing me a cup of coffee, she led the way to the living room.

  The Covington house was decorated in what could only be called shabby chic. The upholstery was faded, the rugs worn, the wooden furniture amply nicked; and there were books and magazines stacked everywhere. Even the houseplants managed to look weary. But the total effect was one of relaxed elegance. Charm jumped out at you from every nook and cranny. Somehow the same imperfections that made my own house appear pitiful and a touch dingy even when it had just been cleaned, gave the Covingtons’ home character, attesting to the fact that the folk who lived there had more important things to do than decorate.

  Sharon settled herself into an overstuffed chair and tucked her bare feet up under her. She made a feeble effort to brush the hair out of her eyes, but it bounced right back. Her hair was dark, short, and so naturally curly that it tended to have a mind of its own. With her fair, freckled skin and gamine face, she wasn’t what you’d call a beauty, but had looks that were appealing all the same. Sort of the Hollywood director’s dream for the girl next door.