The duty officer at the station might have her new number. But even so, he wouldn’t give it to a stranger on the phone. If all else failed, I’d ask Rossi to track her down, but he was already so overworked I hated to add to his schedule.
I glanced at my watch. Nearly eight o’clock. He’d been on the job since dawn. I wondered if he’d had any dinner and hopped off the stool to check the fridge. Nope. The barbequed chicken hadn’t been touched nor the Greek salad either. He’d probably feasted on a cup of stale coffee and a bag of peanuts. What he needed now was a meal and a good night’s sleep, not another task.
That settled it. I had to find Naomi on my own. Naples was her home. She’d been born and raised here, and chances were good that she still lived in town. I could go to the Collier County tax assessor’s office, or drop in at a local bistro she used to frequent...
Or...
Or! Wanting to slap myself up the forehead for not remembering sooner, I forgot about the chicken and the greens and scrolled through the cell again. Naomi used to do calligraphy at an art shop, the fancy kind of penmanship people used on bar mitzvah, bridal shower and wedding invitations. She once said she made more money from calligraphy than from analyzing people’s handwriting. How much more was a good question. Naomi pretty much lived on the edge.
At the Art Shops listing, I ran a finger along the search results. What was the name of the last place she’d worked at? No...no...no...then there it was.
You’ve Been Framed.
Chapter Nineteen
The accident victim had died on the operating table before he could be questioned. In light of that, Rossi rose early the next morning tense and troubled and not in the mood for conversation. Seeing him so worried, I was doubly glad I hadn’t added to his problems.
After he left for the station, I dressed more or less effectively in a short tomato-red skirt and a taupe cropped top that matched my cork-heeled slides. The emotional cloud that had darkened the day’s opening dissolved as I drove to work under a glorious blue sky. What a stunning ceiling that sky blue would make in our new home, especially in the bedrooms.
But there I went again, getting ahead of the game. I eased my foot on the gas pedal and rolled down the windows, continuing on to Fern Alley with the scents of gardenia and jasmine floating all around me.
According to its website, You’ve Been Framed didn’t open until ten, an hour from now. I used the time to leave a call-back message for Tom Kruse at Oceanside Finishes and made an urn of coffee that along with cookies we offered to drop-in customers. After Lee arrived, I helped her rearrange the display tables, and then at ten on the dot, my heart pulsing a bit overtime—would Naomi still be there?—I punched in the art shop’s number.
“You’re in luck. She’s here today,” owner Jane Walsh said. Her voice trailed off. “I don’t see her right now. Guess she stepped outside for a smoke. You want me to get her for you?”
“No, that isn’t necessary. Would you just tell her Deva Dunne called? I’m coming right over. Please ask her not to leave until I get there.”
“Sure thing. Will do.”
I hung up and reached into the desk drawer where I’d stashed my bag and the journal.
Busy with our first drop-in of the day, Lee was chatting about the merits of silk pillows over polyester. When I mimed that I had to leave, she nodded and went on talking.
I flung my bag over a shoulder, opened the center desk drawer and took out the two letters Mike Hammerjack had sent from Florida State Prison. If Naomi could shed some light on the journal’s mystery, why not on mystery man Mike? I already knew he’d been convicted for forgery, but what else might his handwriting reveal?
* * *
“Naomi’s out back again,” Jane told me when I arrived at You’ve Been Framed. “She spends more time outside than she does over there.”
“Over there” was a card table set up in a corner of the shop. Samples of Naomi’s calligraphy were pinned to a folding screen behind the table, and as always, the quality of her work stunned me. She made the most mundane address look like a work of art.
“You can use the back door if you like.” Jane pointed in the direction of her rear workroom.
I cut through the cluttered work space and pushed open a door that led out to a concrete slab overlooking a couple of trash cans and a small parking lot.
Seated in a plastic tub chair, taking in the view, was Naomi, the familiar gray pigtail snaking down the middle of her back much as I remembered.
“Hi, Naomi,” I said.
She swiveled around, cigarette in hand. “Well, hi there, girl, where you been lately?”
“Not too far. Busy, mostly.” I sank onto a plastic chair next to hers, downdraft from the smoke. In her thrift store jeans and outsized T-shirt, she looked older and thinner than she had a year ago.
“You keeping well?” I asked.
“As you see,” she said, inhaling the mother of all drags. She sucked the nicotine down to her toes and hung onto it for what seemed like forever before exhaling into the beautiful blue morning.
I pointed to the butt nestled between her stained fingers. “Those things will kill you yet, Naomi.”
She guffawed, a hoarse smoker’s laugh that ended in a rasping cough. “Your advice is a little late, Deva.”
I peered at her in the clear, merciless light. Circles of fatigue rimmed her eyes, and the lips that had been pursing around drags for years were sunken in a network of wrinkles.
I took her hand, the one without the butt dangling from it. “Are you telling me you’re sick?”
She glanced over at me, her eyes a fresh, startling blue in the wrinkled wreckage of her face. “I’m not telling you anything. You’re asking.”
“Well?”
“Well, you didn’t come to discuss my health, so what does bring you here?” She took a final drag, flicked the butt onto the concrete slab and stepped on it.
Clearly she was sick and didn’t want to talk about herself. For now, I had no choice but to respect her wishes, but later, as soon as I had Jane alone, I’d ask her about Naomi’s health. Though from the look of her, I feared I already had my answer.
“I have a job for you, Naomi. Some handwriting samples.”
Her eyes took on a shine. “Great.” She raised her arms and waved them at the ugly back lot. “This place is as good as any. So let’s have a look at what you brought.”
I took the journal from my bag, opened it to where Connie Rae mentioned Stew and handed the book to her. “Tell me what you see, and then I’ll tell you what I’m looking for. That okay?”
“Yes,” she said, already nose deep in the book.
While she perused it, I took in the view. Stare at something long enough and it starts to grow on you. I’d about decided the view really wasn’t ugly but part of the urban landscape when Naomi coughed and laid the notebook on her lap.
“You want to hear it?” she asked.
“Of course, that’s what I came for.”
“All right.” She reached for a cigarette, thought better of it, thank God, and dropped the pack back into her T-shirt pocket. “This is the writing of a young female.”
“Well, the lilac ink...”
She shook her head. “Not that. See the little circles over the i’s? No hetero guy does that. Mainly girls and immature women, but despite the emphasis on the middle zone, the writing is too literate to be that of a child. So I’m guessing she’s in her teens or early twenties.”
“What’s the middle zone?” I asked.
“Everyday reality.”
“You lost me, Naomi.”
She shrugged. “It happens. Think of the writing in Freudian terms—the id, ego and superego. Tall reaching strokes, like d’s and t’s, represent the superego, the spirit. The id, or sexuality, is found in the lower
loops, the y’s and g’s. The middle zone, the a’s and o’s and e’s, is the ego or everyday reality. That’s where children live, and this example is written mostly in the middle zone. The writer, though not a child, is naïve and very sweet.”
“Where do you see sweet?”
She pointed to a word. “Look at this one. See how the letters are rounded? Almost no sharp edges, no spiky strokes, no long lower loops.”
“So you’re not seeing much id?”
“Right.”
What about that black lace teddy with all the erotic holes? Stew’s idea?
“But the weak id could be the result of illness. She’s a sick girl.”
“Oh, Naomi, I can’t believe you see that.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “Sickness always shows.”
I knew she wasn’t talking about Connie Rae in that moment. Reaching across, I took her hand and squeezed it. I didn’t dare ask any more questions about her own health. Above all else, Naomi was a private person. Nor did I get to ask how she could tell the writer was sick, she volunteered the information. “The writing pressure is uneven. She isn’t maintaining an even hand. See, here and here.” Naomi touched the places where the lilac ink was lighter than elsewhere. “That’s a total giveaway.”
She brushed away the tear sliding down her cheek. “But none of this is why you brought the girl’s sample to me. What, exactly, are you after?”
I plucked the notebook from her lap and pointed to the place where Connie Rae mentioned her heart condition to Stew. “In here. Is she telling the truth, or is she lying?”
Naomi took the book and read where I indicated. A few seconds only and she handed it back to me. “She’s not lying. Absolutely no indication of lies at all.”
“How can you be sure? It’s important, Naomi.”
She smiled. “I won’t ask why. If it is, it is. But I can tell you this—in a case of conscious lying, the writing loses spontaneity. The writer hesitates to think up the lie. That creates a longer space between words and a tensing in the strokes.” She pointed to the place. “Take a look for yourself. No wide spaces, no loss of roundness. According to the rules of graphology, the girl’s telling the truth.” She paused, and asked softly, “What happened to her? Did she get well?”
I shook my head. “No. She wasn’t given the chance.”
The back door barged open, startling us. Jane poked her head out and said, “A woman in the shop needs some wedding invitations. You want to see her?”
“Tell her I’ll be right in.” Naomi rose out of the stiff plastic chair with difficulty. “Shucks. I wanted a smoke, but guess I can’t now.”
“Before you go in, I have another sample for you to look at. No hurry. It’ll wait until you have some free time.”
“Ha! That’s most always.”
I handed her the Mike Hammerjack letters. Knowing she usually sold herself short and would refuse payment if it were offered outright, I’d slipped some twenties into the envelopes while she studied the journal. “See what these yield, Naomi, and give me a buzz when you’re through.”
“Righto.” She turned to go inside.
“Hey, girlfriend,” I said. “Not so fast.” I caught her in a bear hug. Underneath the loose T-shirt, Naomi Pierce was a bag of bones. I wondered if her calligraphy would reveal that she was dying. I hoped to God it wouldn’t, but one sad thing that had been revealed today—however unprovable it might be in a court of law—Stew Hawkins had lied. He knew his wife had a life-threatening illness but denied it. The question was why. What was he hiding?
Though Naomi answered a lot of questions, she couldn’t answer that one. No one could except Stew himself.
Chapter Twenty
I’d hardly pulled away from the curb in front of You’ve Been Framed when my cell phone rang. Da da da DA.
Caller ID said Tom Kruse. Excellent.
I pressed Talk and when he answered, I said, “Where are you? You sound like you’re in an echo chamber.”
His chuckle came through the line like a men’s barbershop quartet. “I’m in an empty store in a strip mall. Getting it ready for the new owner.”
My heart sank. “You’re tied up then?”
“No just the opposite. I’m about finished here. Things are slow right now, the season and all...”
“Then the stars are in alignment. I have a question for you.”
“Shoot.”
“Do you have two trucks and two crews?”
“Yeah.” He stretched the word out into a question.
“Marvelous. I need two trucks the same color and the same size. Two crews with the same number of men in each crew. They both have to arrive at the job at the same time each day and begin work at the same time. Oh, and they have to be dressed exactly alike.”
“With all due respect, Deva, that’s the daffiest request I’ve ever had. Even coming from you.” His laugh echoed over the line.
I guess he’d never forgotten the time I gave him a rotten mango and asked him to copy the skin color for a dining room wall. He had, and the room turned out great.
“I’ll explain everything when I see you,” I said. “Want to meet me at Whiskey Lane tomorrow afternoon? Two o’clock?”
“That’ll work. What’s the number?”
I didn’t know whether to say 590 or 595, or the middle of the road. But since James seemed more sensitive to slights than Stew, we’d better start at the Stahlman house. “Five ninety.”
Meeting date agreed upon, we both hung up, with Tom probably shaking his head, and who could blame him?
At Fern Alley, I found Deva Dunne Interiors packed with shoppers. The minute I put a foot in the door, Lee whispered, “I’m so glad you’re back. There’s a convention at the Ritz. Cosmetics distributors and they love to shop. They’re buying up everything in sight.” She nodded at the line forming in front of the sales counter. “Y’all need to ring up those sales.”
I hurried over, guilty at having ignored my business for the sake of what might well be called a wild goose chase. To make up for my neglect, I treated each and every customer as if she were a friend who’d just dropped in for a social visit and packed every purchase extra carefully in tissue paper, even tied big wired-ribbon bows on the handles of every gift bag. Guilt is a powerful instrument. Besides, the day’s tally would be terrific after this unexpected bonanza, but what I had to keep in mind was these drop-in purchases, though nice, didn’t keep the business viable. For that, Deva Dunne Interiors needed design customers who wanted far more than a pair of souvenir candlesticks or a sofa pillow from Florida. In short, I needed customers like James Stahlman and Stew Hawkins.
While trying to fathom whatever mystery surrounded the deaths of both their wives wasn’t part of my job description, redoing their houses definitely was. So as soon as the crowd thinned out and Lee could handle the sales alone, I called first James then Stew and firmed up tomorrow’s appointments with the painter.
* * *
When I drove up to 590 the next afternoon, Tom Kruse was waiting for me in his truck. We strolled up the brick walk together and rang the chimes.
“You’re in luck,” I told him. “You get to meet Charlotte.”
“Oh really? A cutie?”
“Yup.”
She greeted us at the door, all yips and leaps and happy barks. Ignoring James’s request to be a good girl, she licked my ankles and sniffed the cuffs of Tom’s pants.
“Meet Charlotte,” I said to him, “and not incidentally Mr. James Stahlman.”
Tom’s face fell at the sight of the cutie, but he recovered fast and shook hands with James who scooped up Charlotte for the grand tour.
I was somewhat surprised to see James at home. Not young, but not of retirement age either, he seemed never to be busy, never out and about, as if his main occup
ation were keeping Charlotte entertained. According to the newspaper account of his wife Marilyn’s drowning, he had been a well-to-do stockbroker at the time of her death and was presumed to be the likely heir of her considerable fortune. Which could well be the reason he lived a life of leisure.
I huffed out a sigh. There I went again, venturing into what was none of my business. So giving Charlotte a topknot pat—her bow was purple today—I accompanied James and Tom, who with his clipboard at the ready took notes as we moved from room to room.
“Flat white on all the ceilings,” I said. “Classic semi-gloss white on the woodwork throughout, except for the kitchen—Mr. Stahlman and I haven’t yet discussed what he wants done in there—and linen white on most of the walls.” Tom nodded. We had worked together on several projects, and he was familiar with my preferences. “For a color jolt, vivid coral behind the living room bookcases and in the foyer. I’ll give you the manufacturer’s number for that.”
“Excuse me, Deva,” James said. “You are aware that blue is my favorite color?”
“Absolutely. I wouldn’t forget anything so important, but blue is a cool shade and if not used carefully can make an interior appear...well, cold. To avoid that, we’ll introduce blue in your upholstered pieces and pillows and in some porcelains. Little blue islands, if you will. I found a gorgeous blue-and-ivory-striped fabric for the dining room chairs. And a silvery blue paper that will be stunning in the powder room.”
James didn’t object, so encouraged, I went on, “And if we bring an oriental into the dining room, we’ll strive for one with a few blue tones. Faded blue for elegance.” I ventured a smile and pointed to one of the drab living room walls. “Faded blue in orientals isn’t the same as in wallpaper.”
James placed Charlotte carefully on the floor and clapped. Actually clapped. “Bravo, Deva! Bravo. I like everything you’re suggesting.”
“So do I.”
We all swiveled around to the source of the voice. It was Kay in high-heeled sandals and a drop-dead bikini. The bra consisted of white stars on a blue ground and the bottom of red and white stripes. It was enough to make you want to salute. The sheer blue pareo cruising her hips didn’t conceal much either.
The Design Is Murder (Murders By Design) Page 9