Death by Inferior Design Read online

  Myra pursed her lips and said nothing. If I was her daughter, as she’d hinted, my refusing her offer like this was a slap in the face when she most needed support. It felt horrible to hurt her . . . and to know that I was simultaneously turning my back on a terrific career opportunity.

  I glanced around at the cluttered room. An ugly black ashtray when neither of the Axelrods were smokers. Ostrich feathers in a copper urn. A table lamp with seashells glued to its base. A faded watercolor of a mallard in flight and an oil painting of a rain-slick street. Did these items have special meaning? Had they been accumulated during vacations? Garage-sale visits? The objects that we choose to keep—to surround ourselves with—reveal our souls. The fibers that formed the tapestry of my biological parents’ lives could very well be right here before my uncomprehending eyes.

  I swallowed hard and met Myra’s gray eyes, trying to remember now if Randy’s had been dark brown, like my own. “I’d really love to do your house, Myra, if only I could. There’s nothing I love more than doing a whole house at once, starting over fresh, but . . . the timing’s all wrong. I’m terribly sorry.”

  “What if you were to just do half of the rooms? Maybe just the rooms on the main floor? Would you have time to tackle that?”

  It felt to me as though I had equally compelling reasons to accept or decline this job. Half the house was a reasonable compromise. I glanced heavenward and asked silently, Right, Mom?

  No answer in my mother’s voice, but no lightning bolts zapping me, either.

  To Myra, I replied, “I’ll think about it carefully. And, no matter what I ultimately decide, thank you very much for considering me for this job.”

  She grinned. “That’s what I was hoping you’d say! That’s why I took the liberty of inviting Steve Sullivan over here. To discuss sharing the duties.”

  “Sharing?” I all but shrieked. There was no way sharing could work. Steve Sullivan would be a distraction; we’d bicker over design decisions when I could be uncovering clues. “I assumed you meant you would just . . . do half the house now and the rest later. It’s very, very difficult for two designers who’ve never worked together before to blend their tastes and also listen to what the homeowner—”

  The doorbell rang. “Ah. That will be Steve now.” Myra hopped to her feet. “You two could be ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’ after all.”

  “Sullivan and Gilbert,” I muttered to myself as Myra went to the door.

  “Hi, Myra. Taylor seems to have things under control now, so I have . . .” Sullivan’s voice faded. “Gilbert. I didn’t know you were here.”

  His obvious disappointment at seeing me made me suspect that he felt our relationship was back to square one. Maybe that was true; my recent epiphany that I couldn’t trust him was wise. I fired back, “Now you do.”

  “Erin and I were cooking up a plan just now,” Myra told him as she reclaimed her seat. “We were thinking that you two could pool your considerable talents and work together on remodeling my whole house.”

  He kept his expression inscrutable but gave me a quick glance. I shook my head at him to indicate that Myra’s wording was a far cry from how I would have described matters. At least I hoped he could gather that from a mere head shake; it didn’t seem prudent to make circular gestures against my temple in attempt to signal that Myra was a bit off her rocker.

  He gave her a warm smile, back to being the charming Sullivan clients gushed about, and sat down stiffly in the icky orange plaid–upholstered chair. “It’s really not a good idea to have two designers on the same project, Myra. You know what they say about too many cooks spoiling the broth.”

  “You two wouldn’t be working on the same broth, exactly. I was thinking separate rooms, or floors, even. Erin could do the main floor, and you could do the upstairs, for instance.”

  “But, you’d surely want Erin to do the bedrooms. That’s her specialty.”

  “Not necessarily,” I interjected. His haughtiness in banishing me to the nonpublic rooms was making me sizzle. “I wouldn’t say that I specialize in bedrooms. If I had to pick a specialty, it would be accessorizing.”

  He grimaced. “Ah, yes. Accessories. Also known as dust catchers. Pillows and throws and bric-a-brac . . . full walls boasting nothing but family photographs . . . big floral arrangements.”

  “I happen to believe that rooms are more comfortable and appealing when they are designed to be lived in, as opposed to having a sterile, museum-like quality.”

  Sullivan turned toward Myra and gestured at me with an upraised palm. “There you have it. Erin and I cannot work together. I admire Erin’s work, and I think she’s perfect for you, even if she’s far too froufrou for my tastes. Neither of us have any intention of being half of Sullivan and Gilbert Designs.”

  Froufrou? Me? I hated to be described as anything that rhymed with doo-doo and snarled, “You can say that again.” And it’s Gilbert and Sullivan, darn it!

  He raised an eyebrow and studied me, as though sincerely perplexed that I’d taken offense. “Gilbert, all I’m saying is that I’m into more masculine a design than Myra would like.”

  “The best solution, then,” I said to Myra, ignoring Sullivan, “would be for you to find a third designer. There are scores of them in Crestview.”

  Sullivan’s jaw dropped a little. “Wait. You’re . . . not interested in accepting the assignment yourself?”

  I said nothing and merely met his gaze.

  He rose and gave Myra a sheepish smile. “Erin and I need to discuss this for a minute, Myra. Could the two of us step outside and rejoin you in a minute or two?”

  “Certainly,” Myra said.

  With our borderline boorish behavior, we would be lucky she didn’t lock the door behind us and refuse to let us back inside.

  The moment we were out of earshot, he snapped, “You’re also turning the job down? Why?”

  “Last night on the phone my father said that my biological parents were dangerous and warned me to stay away. Now someone’s dead. All I have are a batch of unanswered questions about my birth parents and why someone set me up to find my picture.” I hesitated, but while staring into those gorgeous hazel eyes of his, I decided I might as well be up front with him. “I went to the police station last night. According to the detective who’s handling the investigation, Randy Axelrod didn’t die of a heart attack after all.”

  Sullivan raised his brow. “So was he poisoned?”

  “Apparently. But by arsenic, not cyanide . . . unless the detective was just yanking my chain to see if I’d blurt out that it was definitely cyanide. He seems convinced I’m guilty. In any case, I’ve been on the fence between taking Myra’s job and seeing if I can dig up some answers myself in the process, or bugging out of here entirely, like any sensible person would. But there’s no way I can do my best work while constantly looking over my shoulder. So I’ll bow out and let you accept Myra’s job.”

  Sullivan was shaking his head slowly, looking thoughtful. “Here’s what we do, Gilbert. We both accept the job. It’ll take us until after the holidays to get full swing into the assignment. By then, the police should have discovered whoever killed Randy. If not, and things start to get too hot to handle, we’ll back out . . . say that we can’t take on the project after all.”

  “By ‘too hot to handle,’ you mean, for example, that our client has been arrested for murder?”

  He straightened his shoulders and studied my face, his own expression instantly growing somber. He said in a half whisper, “You think Myra killed him?”

  “Maybe. She had the best motive . . . the most to gain. All I know is, I was enjoying life a lot more before I showed up to work here on Saturday morning.”

  He raised an eyebrow and said under his breath, “Can’t say the same’s true for me.” He gestured at Myra’s door. “If we take this job, we might be able to salvage a feature story from the new editor at Denver Lifestyles.” He gave an apologetic shrug. “I know that’s callous of me, but it sure beats l
osing my business.”

  Our gazes locked. It would be so nice to know that I wasn’t in this alone, after all. But Steve Sullivan, of all people? My temporary partner?

  “Besides,” he continued, “the bottom line is, I’ll never feel right about the Cooper account if I were to pull this whole job out from under you as well. We both know Myra asked you first. What do you say?”

  I averted my gaze, which fell on the sled adorned with the evergreen wreath. “I don’t know, Sullivan. It feels as though I’m dragging you into my troubles this way.”

  “It’s a job, like any other job. Aside from Axelrod’s poisoning . . . and your finding your baby picture inside a wall . . . this is as run-of-the-mill as an assignment can get.” He winked at me. “Seriously, what’s the worst that can happen?”

  “One or both of us will stumble onto something incriminating, and we’ll wind up getting murdered, too.”

  He winced. “Ouch, that’s bad. But . . . I’ll be here to watch your back and make sure nothing like that occurs. And hey,” he joshed, “what’s the second-worst thing that could happen?”

  “I could discover that my birth father was abusive to me and to his wife, and that my birth mother is a murderer.”

  “My God, Gilbert. For someone who designs such warm, soul-cheering rooms, you’ve got a hell of a lot of gloom hidden inside you.”

  “You think my rooms are warm and soul-cheering?” I exclaimed. “What happened to being too froufrou?”

  “You caught me.” He spread his arms. “Yes, that was a compliment. Which I don’t give very often. Now you expect me to repeat it?”

  “I’ve always really admired your designs, too. They’re—”

  The door creaked open and Myra called, “Aren’t you two starting to freeze out here by now?”

  “We’re almost through discussing our options,” I replied promptly.

  Sullivan said, “Tell you what, Myra. Let us work up some initial thoughts on what we’d like to do, and we’ll see how it goes. If you’ve decided to go in a different direction by then, that will be perfectly understandable, and there’ll be no hard feelings.”

  “Which will be something of a change in pace for you two, apparently,” she replied, studying us. “It sounds to me as though you two have had bad blood between you for quite some time.”

  Sullivan and I exchanged guilty glances. It was distressing to think that I’d made it so obvious that I had some problems with a fellow designer.

  “Gilbert and I share a healthy competitive spirit that will actually work out in your favor, Myra. We’ll give collaborating on your home our best effort.”

  They were both looking at me, awaiting my reply. “Absolutely.” I could only wish that I felt the enthusiasm that I’d put into my voice, but my intuition was screaming at me to walk away from this assignment. If I’d listened the last time my instincts had advised me to decline a job, I never would have been in this neighborhood in the first place. And Randy Axelrod might still be alive.

  “Wonderful,” Myra said, smiling. “Where do we begin?” She held the door for us, and we went back inside. Now that we’d come in from the crisp air, the musty odor of the house hit me. If nothing else, we needed to replace this worn, blah-brown wall-to-wall carpeting.

  Sullivan replied, “We’ll compare schedules and make an appointment with you so that we can take some photographs and measure the rooms.”

  “Wonderful,” she said again. “If you’ve got a few minutes right now, I can take you both on a quick tour. That way, you can get a running start later.”

  Again, he and I exchanged glances. He said, “Fine,” and I nodded.

  “How about if we begin with the upstairs bedrooms?” I suggested in as happy tones as I could muster. “I’d like to get an idea of what Steve has in mind.”

  There was a hitch in his step. “We’ll work out all the details of who’s doing what as we get a little further along . . . before we develop a working plan.”

  Myra ignored my suggestion to begin upstairs, and we instead started in the family room, where Randy’s dusty exercise equipment still held court. A five-foot-high Christmas tree, decorated with popcorn strings and numerous tiny teddy bears, had been placed on the treadmill. Almost none of the furniture was salvageable, except the wing chair, which had good bones.

  Myra led us to a second room and opened the door. “This was Randy’s office,” she said.

  If you needed one word to describe Randy Axelrod’s office, that word would definitely be hideous. The furniture looked to be discards from a scratch-and-dent sale. No attempt whatsoever had been made to balance or harmonize the area; it looked more like a room-sized storage bin than a place to work in, surrounded by lovely and meaningful possessions that give the soul sustenance.

  “Terrific natural lighting in here,” I said, looking at the bay windows. It’s always best to voice the positives. Keep the negatives private until they can be framed in terms of how the new design will eliminate them.

  “Was this office your husband’s exclusively?” Sullivan asked. “Do you want to keep the computer and shelves and use it as your own office?”

  “Or we could convert it to any type of room you’d want,” I said. Myra had a strange, tense expression on her face when I turned to face her, but I continued. “A library or sitting room, or if you have any collectibles you’d—”

  “Actually, the more I think about it, the more I’m thinking that maybe this is the one room I don’t want anyone to touch.”

  “Fine,” Sullivan said easily, not at all thrown by her sudden change of mind. “And I’m assuming you aren’t thinking of doing anything with the basement, either, right?”

  “Right. We’ll leave that unfinished.”

  “Do you have a ballpark budget in mind?” he asked, stepping aside so that Myra could lead the way.

  I was burning with curiosity to know why Myra had such a bewildering change of heart regarding this room. She’d made no secret of the fact that she was eager to expunge her recently deceased husband’s things from her home. There wasn’t one item in here that was worth holding on to for anything other than sentimental reasons. And sentimental reasons were precisely what this woman seemed to lack. . . .

  Just as I turned to close the door behind us, I saw the ugly blue-and-green checkered umbrella stand in the corner.

  chapter 11

  You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” Sullivan said to me as we left Myra’s house.

  “No, I’m just . . . distracted, I guess.” Although my past was haunting me. Myra had whisked us out of that office to prevent my spotting that umbrella stand. She must have forgotten its significance until she saw me standing near it—that it was in my mother’s earliest photograph of me, and so I was likely to recognize it.

  He peered at my face, then grabbed my elbow and ushered me across the street and out of sight of the Hendersons’ and Axelrods’ front windows. I was too surprised to object. “Out with it, Gilbert. What did you see in Randy’s office? Another baby picture?”

  “Why do you ask?” I snarled.

  “Because I don’t want to see you get . . . Because I’m nosy.”

  I clicked my tongue. “You were about to say that you didn’t want to see me get hurt. Which would have been nice for me to hear. You know, Sullivan, just because you got screwed by a con man doesn’t mean you can’t be nice to anyone ever again. It’s not like everyone is looking to rip you off. You don’t have to go around being the big bad wolf.”

  He laughed. “If I’m the big bad wolf, does that make you one of the three little pigs?”

  “Nice avoidance tactic,” I snapped.

  He pointed at me with his chin. “Back at you. So what exactly did you see in Myra’s house?”

  I frowned and held my tongue, but Sullivan’s probing eyes were relentless. “There was a checkered umbrella stand behind the door of Randy’s office. It’s the same one that was in the photograph, I’m sure of it.”

  “Jeez. No
wonder she acted so weird all of a sudden. Do you think she might be your mother?”

  “Maybe. I wish I didn’t have to think about it. Everything was just fine by me with never knowing who my birth parents were.”

  He combed his fingers through his light brown hair. “What the hell’s going on? Taylor Duncan’s had a big chip on his shoulder toward you from the get-go. I get the feeling he knows something and is just playing dumb.”

  “Yeah? Well, I’m pretty sure that’s not an act.”

  He chuckled. “Maybe you’re right, on second thought. But, you know, once he gets going on some carpentry project, he’s not half bad.”

  “I’ve noticed that, too.”

  We shared an awkward silence. Sullivan said, “There’s not much more I can do here till Taylor finishes a project or two. I’m calling it a day. How ’bout you?”

  “I have about two thousand feet of garland to hang this afternoon for a Christmas bash in Foothills Park.”

  “Decking the halls, hey?”

  “Something like that. Which reminds me, Jill and Debbie agreed to act as our assistants when we install our rooms. Debbie’s going to work with you, and Jill with me. Tomorrow morning at eleven thirty.”

  “Eleven thirty, hey? The time of day is already scheduled for me?”

  I’d forgotten to get his approval for our plan, which was rude of me, and he would probably chew me out now. I shrugged. “Jill’s rather . . . efficient.”

  “So I’ve noticed. Okay, then. I’ll fit my schedule around it.” He took a couple of steps in the direction of the McBrides’ house. “I’ll see you tomorrow. Maybe we can get together for dinner afterward.”

  “Are you asking me out?”

  “Not dinner like on a date. I’m not your type, remember? I just meant we could eat while we discuss Myra’s home.”

  “Oh. Sure. That’d probably be okay.” To my surprise and annoyance, I wasn’t nearly as repulsed by the notion of dating Sullivan as I knew I should be. The guy was probably not even interested in women, for crying out loud! And, even though he was now being nice and Evan’s betrayal made Sullivan’s recent bad behavior understandable, that didn’t explain his initial shabby treatment of me. This was the man who’d stormed into my office three months after I’d set up shop and snarled, “Let me give you some advice, Miss Gilbert. You want to succeed, you’d better learn to do so on your own merit, not by tricking Sullivan Designs’ clients into hiring you!” The memory still rankled.