Death by Inferior Design

by Leslie Caine

  “That’s okay,” she said, her voice deflated. “You’re obviously too busy for me. We’ll talk when you and Steve come tomorrow.”

  “Good seeing you again, Myra,” Emily said, gracious despite Myra’s bizarre behavior. Myra hadn’t even maintained her pretense of wanting to ask Carl a question.

  Myra gave Emily a long look. “Should I be welcoming you to the neighborhood? You’re not moving in with Carl again, are you?”

  “No, of course not. I was simply helping him out a little. He asked me to run some errands for him and grocery shop. He’s not terribly handy around the kitchen even when all his limbs are fully functional.”

  “That’s true, I suppose. That was one thing he and Randy had in common. Though I don’t need to tell you that.”

  Another hint that it was possible that I was Randy and Emily’s child. Quite an incestuous little community of “friends.” “See you tomorrow morning, Myra,” I said.

  She gave me a pinched smile. “Yes. I’ll be looking forward to it.”

  Feeling Myra’s eyes on me as we walked away, Emily and I headed off together toward the pond. “How did you get to know Randy and Myra?” I asked her. “I thought Carl and Debbie only moved near them five years ago.”

  “They did. But I met Randy through work many years before that.” She gave me a sad smile.

  “You knew one another from work? Do you write for Denver Lifestyles or something?”

  “No. I worked as an aerobics instructor for Randy at his fitness studio.”

  “Randy owned a fitness studio?”

  “Four, actually, before he sold them. Ironic, since he let himself get so out of shape.”

  “How long ago was this, when you worked for him?”

  She hesitated. “I suppose it must have been at least twenty-five years ago, come to think of it. Hard as that is for me to believe.” Although she, too, kept her voice light, her fists were clenched tightly as we walked side by side. “Why?”

  Mentally I screamed at myself: Ask if she’s your mother.

  “Myra claims that she’s my biological mother.”

  Emily made no reply. Her jaw was now clenched as tightly as were her fists.

  “Do you know if that’s true?”

  “If Myra says it is, why would you doubt her?” Her tones were clipped, and she didn’t look at me.

  We’d reached the pond. Some less-ravaged part of my mind could still recognize and appreciated the beauty of the place. The water had iced over in a shade of pearly white that matched the puffs of condensation of our breaths. The wispy shapes of the now-dormant grasses and weeds—thistles, cat-o’-nine-tails, milkweed—stood in resonating contrast to the backdrop of snowcapped mountains and the darkening sky.

  “Myra’s story doesn’t make sense,” I replied abruptly. “My blood type and Randy’s match, yet she claims he wasn’t my father.”

  She stopped walking. I paused as well, and our gazes met. “My son, Taylor, spoke to me about this already, and I talked it over with Carl. We’re all in agreement. You’ve got to leave us alone, Erin. For your own good, as well as everyone else’s.”

  I gaped at her. “What do you mean, ‘leave us alone’? All I’ve done is accept a couple of clients and try to do my job to the best of my ability.”

  She swallowed hard. The chilly breeze ruffled her brown shoulder-length hair. “I realize that, Erin. I’m not saying that you’ve done anything wrong. But someone is playing a very dangerous game with you, and we’re all getting sucked into it. You’re the only one who can put a stop to it.”

  “How?”

  “By walking away from the job at Myra’s.”

  I grimaced.

  “Please, Erin. I’m begging you.”

  I was simply in this too deep to stop now.

  Emily pleaded, “I don’t have a whole lot of money, but I will take out a loan if I have to. I’ll pay you double whatever your personal profit will be from Myra’s job.”

  “Why is this so important to you?”

  “My son’s getting in over his head, thanks to this god-forsaken neighborhood! I know Taylor’s a grown man, and I should let him make his own decisions, but last time I did that, he wound up in jail!”

  “For dealing drugs. Which I never touch. So how could my working in the neighborhood possibly hurt him?”

  She pursed her lips. “It’s too chilly for a stroll. Let’s head back.” Without waiting for my input, she whirled and started back down the path.

  “It was you, wasn’t it, Emily? You’re my mother.” There was a hitch in her step, but she kept going. I had to trot to catch up with her.

  “No.” She shook her head. “Myra and Randy raised you till you were eighteen months old. Then they worked out a private adoption.”

  “Was Randy my father? Did the two of you have an affair? And then he and Myra agreed to raise me as their own, but it didn’t work out?”

  Each word of mine seemed to hurt Emily physically, and she wrapped her arms across her chest. She picked up her pace. “Randy’s dead now. Let the past alone, Erin. Leave Myra’s job. You’re very talented. There will be other opportunities for you.”

  “I can call around, check out the story myself. Even though the adoption was twenty-six years ago, there are records.”

  She stopped walking and turned to face me. “Please don’t.”

  She stood there for a moment in silence, then strode toward a sandstone bench overlooking the pond. I followed at a short distance. She sat and faced the water. Though she said nothing for what had to be two or three minutes, I stayed a step or two away and waited. Finally, her voice deflated, she said, “Myra is telling you the truth, to the extent that she’s capable.”

  “So she is my birth mother?”

  “No. But she’s managed to convince herself that she is, for half of her life now.”

  With a heavy sigh, Emily reached into her purse and extracted the necklace and the letters. Carl hadn’t burned them after all. She held them out and said, “These belong to you, Erin. The letters were written to you by your mother—by me—while I was still pregnant with you. Randy promised me all those years ago that he’d give them to you on your eighteenth birthday.”

  chapter 20

  My heart leapt to my throat. Unanticipated emotions struck me with tsunami-like force, and I started to cry. I dropped down onto the bench beside Emily Blaire. Staring at the letters and necklace still in her hands, I whispered, “Carl gave those to you?”

  “Not exactly. Carl told me he’d burned them in a drunken rage, but I know him too well to believe that, and I finally found his new hiding spot this morning. That’s why I’ve been so eager to help him out these past few days, so I could search his house for them.”

  It felt wrong to take the letters, somehow. As if, once they were in my possession, all of my relationships would deteriorate the way the three households had. “How did you even know he had them?” I asked.

  “Taylor told me that the last time he’d seen them, they were on the floor next to Randy, while Taylor was trying to resuscitate him.” She shoved the letters and necklace in my lap, and I grabbed them before the breeze could scatter them. “Taylor didn’t recognize my handwriting at first. I was just eighteen at the time, and my writing’s changed. The cameo is a family heirloom and was the most valuable thing I owned. It was all I had to give you.”

  She paused as if expecting me to respond, but I couldn’t. Besides, what could I say? Thank you . . . it’s just what I always wanted?

  “Randy insisted he and his wife would give you a much better life than I ever could. That his wife had recently lost a baby and couldn’t have another one, but they were having trouble with the adoption agency. I was just too young and naïve to ask myself why they were having trouble. So we agreed I’d give up my parental rights and never see you again. In exchange, Randy promised me he would give you every possible advantage in life, and that he’d tell you about me and give you my letters when you turned eighteen. I was
so stupid to believe him!”

  So. My birth parents had shuffled me around like an odd-looking table lamp that didn’t quite blend with their home decor. I dried my eyes. “If it’s any consolation, Emily, my mother was a terrific parent, so everything’s worked out just fine.” Although, truth be told, I have some problems with intimacy, thanks to my father deserting us when I was twelve. But there was no need to make her feel as cruddy as I did right now.

  “That’s good to hear, Erin. I’m really glad. You know, if it hadn’t been for a few strange twists of fate, I might never have known that you weren’t still with the Axelrods. If my ex-husband Carl hadn’t bought my exlover’s house . . .”

  I clicked my tongue. “You really think it was a twist of fate that Carl bought Randy’s house . . . not something that Randy contrived?”

  She winced. “At your age, it’s probably hard for you to believe this, but he was once handsome and charming. I knew he was married, but he told me they had an open marriage, and I wanted to believe him. When I got pregnant, though, Myra suddenly became this tragic figure— a woman who wanted to be a mother more than anything in the world and was willing to forgive her husband and raise his out-of-wedlock child as her own.” She rubbed at her eyes. “I tried hard to forget about you. I moved to Denver and had a fiasco of a first marriage that resulted in Taylor. I met Carl shortly after my divorce.”

  “Carl knew about all of this, right? He had to have known those letters were written by you and that—”

  “There were gaps in what Carl knew,” Emily interrupted. “I only told him that I’d been involved with a married man and that I’d had a baby I put up for adoption. Carl didn’t find out Randy was my baby’s father until recently . . . a month or two ago. Supposedly, he and Debbie got into a row, and she told him in anger.”

  “How did Debbie know?”

  “I’m not sure. Debbie and I are not exactly close friends. I’m hardly in a position to ask.”

  I risked only a darting glance at the letters in my lap, still feeling that they were cursed. “Why did you sign them with the letter M?”

  She pursed her lips and said nothing. Finally, in a half-whisper, she replied, “I was all of nineteen . . . trying to write to my unborn baby, who I knew, by the time she read my words, would’ve grown into a young woman my age who I’d—” She stopped, swallowed hard, and said through tears, “Erin, I knew we’d never see each other, never know each other. I couldn’t bring myself to sign ‘Mom’ and was sure you’d hate me as ‘Emily.’ Signing as M was all I could manage.”

  I turned away and concentrated on breathing in and out to keep myself from sobbing. I believed every word she was telling me, but there were still some ragged edges to her story. After a minute or two, I said quietly, “Carl told me just the other day that he suspected these letters were Debbie’s . . . perhaps written to her by Randy.”

  She frowned. “He read them and knew that they were from me to you . . . to my daughter, that is. He hasn’t figured out yet that you’re that daughter. Once he found out that Randy was the ‘other man’ from my past, he managed to convince himself that Randy had destroyed our marriage and was the culprit behind his current marital woes, and that now Debbie was having an affair with him.”

  “Which she wasn’t? Having an affair with Randy, I mean?”

  “I doubt it.”

  I swept the hair out of my eyes impatiently. “Everyone’s lied to me from day one. Myra said I was her and Kevin’s daughter!”

  “Well, that’s probably exactly what she wants to believe.”

  I stared at the letters and necklace in my lap. “Is this why Randy was killed? Is it because of me?”

  Emily got up and gave my shoulder a quick squeeze. “I don’t know, Erin. But . . . please don’t take that chance. Cut off ties with Myra now and walk away from this job. For your own good, as well as mine and Taylor’s.”

  It felt as though I were trapped inside a tornado, battered and flung about helplessly by forces that far exceeded my strength. Despite my inner turmoil, I managed a bland: “I’ll think about it.”

  Taylor Duncan was my half brother. What a jarring discovery that was. I would have to content myself with the notion that he’d inherited many of his bad traits from his father’s side. “Does Taylor know that we’re half siblings?”

  Emily nodded, her expression grim. “Taylor saw you slip the baby picture into your pocket. He put two and two together and confronted me.”

  Putting two and two together must have been a major challenge for someone who equated counting five boards with higher math. “He figured everything out just from seeing the letters and the picture?”

  “I’d worn the cameo for my high school graduation picture, which has been sitting on my mantelpiece at home for years now.”

  I thought back to Taylor’s statement the other night as he left my office. “Does Taylor think Randy hid the necklace and photograph there so that he would discover it?”

  “Don’t go there, Erin,” she snapped. She glared down at me. “Let’s get one thing clear right away. My son had nothing whatsoever to do with Randy’s death.”

  Surprised and offended, I said, “I’m not suggesting that he did.”

  We walked back in stormy silence. I slipped the letters and cameo in my satchel and watched as Emily drove away. Neither of us waved.

  Good God, but I had no idea what to do now! One thing was certain—I was putting the letters in a safe place and not so much as glancing at a single word unless and until I felt good and ready to read them. I hadn’t been allowed to make one choice regarding my own fate ever since I’d started working here, but at least I could determine when and where—and if—I read a handful of letters from the woman who’d given birth to me. That meant that I was not giving them to the police anytime soon—not even to Linda Delgardio.

  This was one of those times when I most needed to be involved in a solid relationship, but I wasn’t. My two closest friends in Colorado were currently vacationing in New Zealand. I was alone in my little rowboat, adrift at sea, enduring a horrid storm.

  Even so, Myra Axelrod had to be hurting worse than I was. She’d realized that Emily would tell me the truth during our private conversation. Myra must be panicking—terrified that I’d hate her forever for lying to me. She must have a tenuous grasp on reality to begin with, or she never would have spun those lies in the first place. It might break her heart if I did what I so dearly longed to do right now—get into my van and drive away.

  I swapped my satchel for my purse from the van but then stood on the sidewalk, frozen with indecision. I was torn: I felt desperately sorry for Myra, but even so, I was angry at the woman and more than a little repulsed.

  Ahead of me, Jill McBride was crossing the street. She was wearing a beautiful thick white wool coat that probably weighed a good third of what she did. She was all smiles as she approached.

  “Erin, I spotted you out here. I thought I’d bring you the caterers’ card I promised.”

  “Thank you.” She gave me the card and waited as I clipped it onto my Day-Timer’s calendar.

  “My daughters are home from college, and I want to show them off to you. Why don’t you come over now just for a minute? Just to say a quick hello?”

  Much as I didn’t feel up for meeting anyone right now, I could mindlessly bluff my way through a few minutes of idle chatter at the McBrides’ house and give myself time to calm down so that I could do the right thing by poor Myra. I forced a smile. “I’d love to. Thank you.”

  As we started up the walkway, the garage door opened, and someone backed out in a silver Lexus. Two very attractive young women—both blondes—were inside. The driver rolled down the window as we approached and said, “Mom, we’re going over to Kelsey’s house.”

  “Honey, I wanted you to meet Erin Gilbert. She’s an interior designer and is helping me decorate for the party.”

  “Hi,” the two girls said simultaneously. Their faces were identical. “It�
�s nice meeting you,” the passenger called out. “See you later, Mom,” added the driver as she slid the window shut. They drove off.

  “Well, that was certainly a waste of time,” Jill said with a cheery laugh. “However, since I dragged you over here, you might as well let me show you the portion of the house that you’ll be decorating.”

  “Sure. Though I’ll need to take a second look when I’ve had more time to mull over my ideas.” And give myself time to formulate some, I added to myself.

  “Of course.” Numbly, I followed her inside. She changed into her indoor shoes, and I removed mine. Jill was wasting her time showing me her home in my current frame of mind; there was no way I would be able to remember a single thing I’d see.

  She gestured with both arms to indicate the foyer and said, “Now here, of course, I want something really eye-catching, right from the first moment our guests step inside.”

  “As well as something to draw them into the living room.”

  “Precisely. I’ll, of course, have a butler and maid for the evening.” She laughed. “I can always instruct them to give the guests a good shove, right into the living room.”

  Kevin, talking on a cordless phone, entered the room. He looked at his wife, saying into the phone, “Yeah, she just got home.” He put his hand over the mouthpiece. “It’s Rachel. She says it’s urgent.”

  Jill sighed. In conspiratorial tones she told me, “This is one of our biggest benefactors, so I have to take this. I’m so sorry.”

  “That’s all right. We can set an appointment and—”

  “Kevin, be a doll and take Erin on a tour of the public areas.”

  “Public areas?”

  She clicked her tongue. “Show her where we’re going to host the New Year’s party,” she snarled, and yanked the phone out of his hand. All brightness and cheer, she trilled, “Rachel! Darling! How is Bixby?”

  As she wandered out of earshot, Kevin said with a roll of his eyes, “A snippy cocker spaniel,” as if in explanation. Presumably Bixby, not Rachel, was the ill-tempered dog. “Let’s see. We’re inviting a hundred fifty, so we’ll probably have about a hundred guests.”