Armoires and Arsenic (19 page)

They settled on the couches and tried to pick up the thread of the conversation, but before long, they slid their empty bowls and spoons onto the coffee table, wiped their mouths and fingers with DVD&A cocktail napkins and slipped into ice cream and fudge-fueled comas.

Olivia jerked awake first with a crick in her neck from sleeping sideways on the couch. While she was out, Tuesday had quietly folded herself into the fetal position in front of the fireplace. Olivia didn’t want to wake her friend; the sugar binge probably meant that the overindulgence in alcohol the night before still had a death grip on their metabolisms. She slipped off her shoes, stretched out on the couch and adjusted soft pillows under her head. She stared up at the beamed ceiling and allowed the CD conversation to fill her brain.

What did that all that stuff about drug deals mean for her? How could she use it? How could she hide the fact that she was an accessory to robbery? An idea popped into her head and she did some Googling, read Wikipedia for a few minutes, then went over what she remembered from the CD.

Blackman and Sabrina had a very close partnership that included sleeping together. There is a chance that the wife found out about it. Hell hath no fury and all that. Plus, Blackman was apparently smuggling dope. Who else knows about that? Was he hiding it from the wife to keep the proceeds for himself? Sharing the bounty with her? Or protecting her from the consequences if he got caught? Hmm.  He was smuggling drugs.  Did that involve Roger?

On top of that, Harmon and the shirt couple threatened to sue Blackman, which would not be good for Greta’s social standing. Olivia has heard from several sources now that she’s a social climber. Olivia continued to run the facts or pseudo facts through her head.  From what Sabrina said, it looked like Blackman was dirty dealing in that biotech firm blowup. Tuesday groaned, interrupting Olivia’s thoughts. She rolled onto her back, then sat up.

“Oh,” she moaned, holding her stomach. “Why did you let me do that?”

“Water,” Olivia advised. “Gallons of it to dilute all that sugar. I’m going to get some. Want a glass?” She struggled up and out of the clutches of the soft, down cushions. Tuesday followed her into the kitchen and headed straight for the refrigerator. “I think I’ll have a little hair of the dog,” and snatched the fudge sauce before Olivia could grab it back.

“Tuesday, you’ll hate yourself. You know you will.”

“Maybe,” she said licking her spoon, “but it hurts so good right now.”

Olivia put her hands on her hips and pointed to Tuesday’s collection of pharmaceuticals on the counter. “Is this your idea of a cleanse?”

Tuesday nodded her head, a dreamy look of ecstasy sliding over her face. “You better believe it, Betty Crocker. What have you been up to?”

Olivia with her water and Tuesday with her poison slid onto stools at the island. “Just trying to make sense of it all. Here’s what I’ve been thinking. Stay with me because I’m making this up as I go. The widow’s beloved doctor raises deadly puffer fish and let’s say he has told his favorite patient how poisonous they are. So she gets a brainstorm. She has potential troublemakers in the shirt couple and Harmon who, for the sake of argument, are planning to sue her husband. Oh, think of all the party givers who will strike her off their guest lists if that comes out. So she feeds the sue-ers some puffer fish and their deaths pass as heart attacks. Then she finds out about Sabrina and her husband, and maybe the fact that he’s hiding drug millions from her, and she decides to off her husband, too, and slips puffer fish into his hot milk.”

“Or scotch.”

“Whatever. I’m just saying. According to Wikipedia, the coroner wouldn’t find the puffer fish toxin in the bodies without a special spectrometer. It doesn’t leave a trace and the effects mimic a heart attack. But this isn’t puffer fish country. No fishmonger sells it, no restaurant serves it, and so nobody suspects puffer fish or Greta. The couple accidentally fell into the lake and drowned with no other cause of death and Harmon was running too fast for his age and collapsed. Heart attacks? Makes sense to the ME. Then we find out Greta’s a sailor.”

Tuesday licked her spoon and said, “We do?”

Olivia pulled up the text from the New York Times news alert on her iPad and showed her the extensive story about Greta’s skill and impressive track record in races on San Francisco Bay. “Who would know how to tie those complicated knots that were around the armoire? A sailor. How’s that for a theory?”

Tuesday wiped the fudge mustache from her upper lip. “Well, I think that is brilliant, Sherlock. It ties everything up in a neat package. It really does.”

Olivia beamed.

“Except for 27,000 teeny tiny questions. Where does she get the puffer fish? How does she figure out how to use it? How does she get them to eat it? Why does she send the body to you? This has been my question all along, Dick Tracy. If it’s the perfect crime, and feeding puffer fish to a victim sounds like it could be, why does she make it look like murder?”

Olivia put her head down on the table in frustration, then looked up. “You would have to bring that up. Okay. One thing at a time. Let me call Jesse, my favorite authority on sea creatures.”

Her smile faded during her conversation with him. “Thanks, Jesse. Sorry to bother you. Yeah, sure. See you soon.”

“So?”

“Jesse doesn’t know very much about puffer fish, except that you have to be very skilled at preparing it or it’s curtains. Therefore, outside of Japan, where it is a delicacy, no restaurant serves it. He had no idea where somebody would get hold of puffer fish around here. He could ask his suppliers, but doesn’t think it’s available locally. So,” Olivia’s eyes brightened again, “maybe she imported it?”

“But Ols. Why go to all that trouble? Why not make the deaths look like muggings or something and blame them on the drug trade in meth city?”

Olivia corrected her. “Meth park.”

“Whatever. I just don’t get sending the body to you where everybody will know it was murder. Once murder has been established, it’s always the spouse that comes under suspicion if there are no other suspects. Why would she take that risk? And why isn’t your darling detective, pun intended, going after her? I haven’t heard anybody mention her as a suspect. So nobody knows what we know, but also perp-wise, she seems to be clean. I mean, we still don’t know why they hauled your pretty butt in, but if they are down to looking at you as a suspect that must mean they have ruled her out.”

Olivia gave up. “Let’s do something counterproductive for a change. Let’s make new labels for furniture that isn’t going to sell at the sale that nobody in Darling Valley will be caught dead at. Metaphorically speaking.”

Two hours later, with only half of the showroom furniture tagged, Tuesday slumped into one of the wing chairs. “Olivia, why did you make me eat that ice cream?

Olivia opened a new package of furniture tags and undid the knot that held the strings together. “I warned you”

Tuesday closed her eyes, clearly suffering from her overindulgence. “You did not. You opened my mouth and stuffed it down my throat like I was a goose you were raising for foie gras. You probably could sell my liver for top dollar.”

Olivia walked over to her and rubbed her shoulders. “You don’t have to do this, honey. Why don’t you take a break, sit out in the sunshine.” She looked out the window. The fog was drifting in. “What’s left of it.”

Tuesday gave her a pitiful look. “I think I need your doctor. Seriously. I’ll even brave the puffer fish.”

Olivia shooed her out of the showroom. “Go, rest. I can finish up.”

Tuesday did as she was told. Olivia tagged a few more items and then threw down her red pen and tags. Oh my god,” she said to herself. Then screamed, “TUESDAY!  I’ve GOT IT.”

She ran through the showroom, up the stairs to the loft and into the guestroom where Tuesday lay on the bed with her arms crossed over her eyes.

“Tuesday!”

“What?” she asked sitting up.

“It’s not Greta who does the murders. It’s the doctor!”

“What? A doctor is a mass murder?”

“It’s happened before. Who was that guy in England? Howard Shipman? Harold somebody? He killed hundreds of his patients. Anyway, Chandler’s got the puffer fish. He’s tight with the widow so he kills the couple and Harmon because, I don’t know why. Has something to do with that biotech deal. I’d bet on it. And he gets rid of Blackman because, oh, I don’t know. I’ve done this much. You come up with something, Tues.”

Tuesday lay back down, thinking. “Maybe we don’t have to come up with everything. If you go to Richards with your suspicions, he can have the ME sample Blackman’s tissues for puffer fish toxin. The doc has puffer fish and a grudge against Blackman. That should be enough. And one more thing, Olivia.
Chandler’s receptionist made a huge point of telling me that he had a matched pair of those special puffer fish at home because he was breeding them. When we went to his house the other night and he was examining you? I was looking at all of his fish. He had a special tank just like in his office for the puffer fish. But there was only one fish there.”

Olivia said, “You’re kidding.”

“I’m not. I can’t believe I even noticed it, but I didn’t want to stare when he was checking you out so I looked at his fish. It didn’t mean anything to me at the time, but I swear to you, babykins. There was only one fish in that tank.”

Olivia spoke slowly. “He fed the other one to the deceased.”

Tuesday nodded her head. “That’s what I’m thinking. Tell Darling Valley’s finest that when you saw Chandler’s puffer fish, you remembered seeing a customer die of what looked like a heart attack at the time, but later was determined to be puffer fish. Let police figure out the rest. This way, you won’t have to say anything about what we heard on the CD. What difference does it make whether Blackman was a drug dealer. You just need to find out who killed him. And why he was sent to you.”

Olivia went into the kitchen, dug into her purse for her cell phone and a business card, then dialed a number. A moment later she said, “Detective Richards, please.”

“Coffee?” said Richards. Without waiting for an answer he offered chairs to Olivia and Tuesday, closed the door to his office and took his seat behind his desk. “Now, what is all this puffer fish business about?”

Olivia explained her theory and then backed it up with more of her argument. “I’ve been going crazy trying to figure out how I’m involved with this man’s death. And I still don’t understand, but a big piece of the puzzle is what killed him. Your reports to the press are inconclusive, except there are no signs of violence. The easy poisons are traceable, so last I heard, poison was ruled out and you were looking at some kind of sex thing gone wrong that gave him a heart attack.”

Richards nodded. “Nothing’s conclusive, but it has been put forth as a theory.”

“Well, I never would have put two and two together if Tuesday and I hadn’t been in a West Hollywood restaurant last year when a customer collapsed and died of his puffer fish entrée. Huge scandal in the restaurant scene.”

Tuesday added, “Which, in LA, is not to be trifled with.”

Olivia continued without missing a beat, twisting her hair into a ponytail when she saw a tray of rubber bands on Richards’ desk. She grabbed one, “Do you mind?” He shook his head, no, and she got on with her tale while she anchored her hair.

“Well, it was hard on me because I’d never seen a dead body before. You know, in the restaurant. I mean,” she grimaced, “he was at the next table.”

Tuesday added a throwing up gesture.

“So when I got curious about the puffer fish, I checked out Dr.
Chandler on the internet. I was flying blind, and it took some digging, but I found out that he was aced out of a juicy development deal with Blackman back when they both worked in Silicon Valley for a biotech company.”

Richards was busy making notes with his Bic and yellow pad. “What else?”

Olivia gestured with her hands. “Well I don’t have anything else.” She looked over at Tuesday for confirmation. “Except for this. I’ve mentioned to you that I had a stomach ailment.” She described the scene she and Tuesday had witnessed when Greta Blackman let herself into to Chandler’s house.

Richards’ shook his head. “Interesting. You’re sure it was her?”

“Detective, I’m sure I’d recognize a woman who has publicly accused me of murder.”

Richards whistled the air out of his cheeks. “I’m going to have to do some more investigating. But I can tell you this because
it will be on the Internet before nightfall. We have pretty good evidence that Blackman was involved in smuggling drugs. Roger Hatfield, an employee of his, finally admitted to us that he found a stash of drugs when he unknowingly unpacked a table or something that he found in Blackman’s office. The guy threw a fit, threatened to fire him and expose his drug use—Hatfield is an addict—if he didn’t keep quiet. Blackman kept his mouth shut by supplying him with drugs. You’re new here, but Darling Valley has just as much of a drug problem as any other city in the country. But we are on it and, while we have a small police force, it’s highly trained. When we heard that, we had Hatfield as a suspect. Plus, someone gave us a tip that he had done the murder.”

Curious, hot with suspicion, Olivia leaned closer. ”Who would that be?”

“A guy name Forrest Gotshalk.”

Olivia gave an I thought so look to Tuesday. “Yes, I know who he is. His mother is a client of mine.”

“Well, he overheard something at a club and wanted to do his civic duty. But we checked out Hatfield and it didn’t fit. Especially when he told us that he had swept the porch before he left work the night before Blackman was killed. He left the shop and never saw him again.”

“So what does that mean?”

“Well, we were careful to keep this out of the press, but we found two sets of prints where the chest, your amory was left on the porch.”

Tuesday was putting the pieces together. “Yeah, but lots of people work in that shop. I’d think you’d find many fingerprints.”

Richards spoke slowly, stretching out the suspense. “I didn’t say fingerprints. Prints. Footprints. Shoe prints to be exact. A man’s shoe and a woman’s.”

Olivia snapped her fingers. “My Jimmy Choos!”

“Exactly. Well, I was going over some of this with Tasmania, you remember meeting her at the auction, right?”

Olivia’s stomach didn’t know what to do with this information so she just let it flutter a bit. “Sure, we remember her, right Tues?”

Tuesday smiled at Richards. “How could we forget?”

“And she told me to check with Shoe Candy. That store on Darling Boulevard.”

“Oh, I know it, detective.”

“I know you do, Miss Granville.”

Olivia wondered if they would ever get on a first name basis. But then with Tasmania on the scene, what did it matter?

“We had someone from the shoe store look at photos of the woman’s prints and they narrowed them down to a few brands and styles. Then we asked who had bought them recently and among others, apparently it is a popular style, you, Ms. Chase and Mrs. Blackman showed up in their customer database.”

Olivia’s face fell. “Is that why Detective Johnson arrested me yesterday?”

Richards apologized. “I’m sorry about that. Your shoes were the wrong size. I’d told him that but he got hung up on those thefts. We still can’t figure out who is responsible but, he’s top notch at his job, but that’s what he was putting together. When I found out, I was out in the field when he brought you in, I told him to let you go.”

Olivia chuckled. “In no uncertain terms as I remember.”

Richards said, “Mistakes happen.”

Tuesday broke in. “So who did the dogs fit?”

Richards squinted. “Dogs?”

“The shoes.”

“Oh, yeah. The three of you wear different sizes. They fit Mrs. Blackman.”

The name hung in the air.

Richards explained. “She would have every reason to be in the shop and have her footprints there. We never figured her for this. But now, after what you’ve told me? We need to talk to the widow. Why were her prints around the armoire after Mr. Hatfield had swept the porch?”

Olivia chewed on her bottom lip and considered the consequences of withholding information in a murder investigation. After all, she watched Law and Order and NCIS, too. “Detective, I can’t reveal my sources, but I think there is a possibility that Blackman and his partner, Ms. Chase, had a, shall we say, special relationship.”

Richards waved her statement away. “Oh, we know all about that. Hard to keep that kind of thing quiet in a small town.”

Olivia didn’t know specifically what he was referring to, but she decided she was off the hook about stealing the CD and reporting what she and Tuesday and heard on it.

“I think that’s it, Ms. Granville and Miss Tuesday. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”

Olivia and Tuesday got up to leave, then Olivia stopped. “Detective, can I take down the crime scene tape.”

He shook his head. “Sorry. We’re not finished here.”

“How about my shoes?”

His face was impassive. “Have a nice day.”

Finally, Olivia got some Internet love. By six o’clock the cable news blog texted that there was a break in the case. Olivia called for Tuesday to come into the den. “Hurry!”

Then she flipped on the TV. The cable station’s newest anchor, all fifteen inches of blond hair, half-inch of makeup and killer biceps shown to advantage in the requisite sleeveless dress female TV news personnel wore these days, was announcing that doctor to the billionaires, Ross Chandler, was being held for questioning. Details not yet available. The program buzzed with speculations as to why the doctor was implicated, none of them correct. At 6:27 the station flashed huge Breaking News banners across the screen. The blond shared a split screen with a young man standing in front of an official-looking building that Olivia knew for sure was a fake set. “What do you have for us, Trevor.

The field reporter, with looks that would qualify for People Magazine’s Worlds Sexiest Man issue, announced that, “Behind me, Aurora, in bucolic Darling Valley’s city hall, the deceased’s wife, Grace Blackman, was being arraigned for the murder of her husband, former Silicon Valley venture capitalist and reputed Darling Valley drug smuggler.

“Shocking, Trevor. What do we know?”

Olivia flicked off the TV. “The only thing that’s real in that segment is the drug smuggling. Darling Valley’s city hall doesn’t look like a 1960’s communist apartment block. Blackman was never a venture capitalist, but a high level financial officer. Briefly. The wife’s name is Greta not Grace and the hair, boobs and teeth are fake.”

Tuesday said, “On which one?”

Olivia said, “Both. And this station is number one in the ratings?”

A few minutes later she turned the TV back on to a local station. There was a shot outside the Police Department. Olivia recognized Officer Ridley looking out through the lobby window at a reporter interviewing Detective Richards.”

“There’s not a lot I can tell you at this moment, Jay. We have a person of interest that we are questioning. But I do want to thank the great citizens of Darling Valley for their unbelievable cooperation during this investigation. Now if you’ll excuse me.”

Richards ducked back into the police station through the door that Officer Ridley held open.

The reporter stared into the camera. “KTZV, your number one place for news in Darling Valley, has learned that one of the citizens who was particularly helpful to the police in this case was our own Ms. Violet Granville, along with her partner, Miss Tuesday. We don’t have a last name for Miss Tuesday. Ms. Granville, I’m sure you all know, is the owner of Granville’s Antiques on the west side of town.”

Olivia threw the remote at the TV and shouted into the plasma screen. “VIOLET? GRANVILLE”S ANTIQUES? I’M ON THE NORTH SIDE OF TOWN YOU IDIOT. AND TUESDAY IS NOT MY PARTNER.”

Tuesday picked up the remote.  “But it’s nice to know that finally Darling Valley is claiming you as its own.”

Later, after Tuesday opened a Pinot Grigio and they toasted the end of Olivia’s nightmare, Olivia remembered her towels in the dryer. Tuesday was heating water for tea. “No reading,” she promised, “just a cuppa.”

Olivia shouted, “I’ll be right back, “and she ran down the stairs. Before opening the door that led down to the laundry and Mrs. Harmon’s inside door, she stopped at her desk. It had been what, four, five days since the grisly discovery in her armoire? It seemed like a lifetime. She decided that she and Tuesday would order pizza from the Italian place with the brick oven and super thin crusts as good as Mozza’s and have a quiet night. There was nothing more she could do. It wouldn’t take long to finish up labeling the furniture for the sale, and tomorrow she would corral Cody, he had been noticeably absent since yesterday, and they would arrange the showroom and plan what they would put out on the lawn. She would sell her soul to the devil if necessary, but she was determined to convince Richards to remove the crime scene tape, still flapping on the front porch, if only for the duration of the sale.

If Tuesday were not waiting for her upstairs, she would stop and sit at her desk and sketch some ideas she had for the elusive Mr. Bacon’s garage. Should he ever return her calls. As soon as she left the police department after her arrest, she apologized profusely into her phone about missing yet another appointment with Mr. Bacon, without mentioning the reason for her standing him up yet again. But he had not returned her calls. Probably, he had written her off as a flake.

Working at her desk, this beloved desk that had followed her from college to Manhattan Beach to LA and here to Darling Valley, gave her a sense of security she could not describe. She believed that people should do what they were born to do. And making the world both functional and beautiful is what made her feel whole, human and ultimately at peace. But she had to finish her chore. She owed Tuesday a long soak in her sumptuous, standalone bathtub and a stack of soft, lavender-scented towels.

The one part of the house that never felt completely hers was the basement and laundry room, in part because it had been renovated to accommodate the unit for Mrs. Harmon before she bought the house. There was no room to put her unique stamp on the space., so she left it as is. Part of this unease was the fear of being discovered there by Mrs. Harmon, childish she knew but a real feeling nevertheless, perhaps connected to the reality that Mrs. Harmon and Darling Valley did not make her feel that she belonged. So she slipped off her shoes so Mrs. Harmon wouldn’t hear her. Barefoot, she opened the door to the basement and continued on down.

The new appliances were quiet in all respects, and she was sure Mrs. Harmon, should she be in her kitchen, near the door, or just out and out eavesdropping, would not hear her open the dryer door and lift out the cloud of warm, ivory towels. She tiptoed over to the folding table and was making order out of her tangled laundry. She quickly became lost in thought about what the next few days would bring. Possibly a murder indictment against the doctor and a successful sale on the weekend. But then, if this week had taught her anything, it was that things were almost never what they seemed and she should quit thinking she had the future nailed down.