Armoires and Arsenic (5 page)

“Is there a problem, Miss Granville?” She had so far refused all of Olivia’s entreaties to call her by her first name.”

“Well, yes, you could say that. It seems a body was crammed into an armoire of mine.” Olivia all but gagged on the word body.

“Oh dear. Who is it and how did it get in there?”

“Well, that’s part of the problem. I took delivery of a shipment from Blackman’s shop. Well, when Cody and I opened the armoire, well . . . “ Olivia shuddered. “There he was. Mr. Blackman is the victim. But why and who did it? That’s the puzzle.”

Was it just Olivia, or wouldn’t it have been nicer for Mrs. Harmon to invite her in to sit down for a moment?

Mrs. Harmon fairly sneered at the name Blackman. Her aging vocal chords rasped, “I didn’t know you dealt with those unsavory people.”

“Unsavory? Why they came very highly recommended,” Olivia said, surprise all over her face. Mrs. Harmon had spoken little to her in the few months they had lived in the same building, but she had never said anything negative or backstabbing. Yet, she certainly wasn’t shedding any tears over Mr. Blackman’s demise.

“Recommended? Not by anyone I know.” The haughty response was a side of Mrs. Harmon Olivia had not seen before. Maybe this little old lady wasn’t all sweetness and tea in English china cups after all, as Olivia had assumed from stately demeanor.

“And who would that be, Mrs. Harmon? The people you know?”

Mrs. Harmon smiled blankly as though she hadn’t heard the question, but Olivia didn’t believe that for a minute. She knew she was pushing the bounds of privacy in asking who her tenant socialized with, but Olivia’s timeline didn’t allow for the niceties of waiting until they were BFFs to reveal details of their personal lives. She was on a mission and her own safety was in jeopardy. Someone in town had something on Blackman’s. Was her own life in jeopardy? She had to find out who was behind this murder.

Who could have a grudge against Olivia and implicate her in a deadly plot? In her experience, DV didn’t like newcomers, though the realtor never told her that as she extolled the virtues of the town when Olivia was on the hunt for property. Would someone do this just for spite?

“Mrs. Harmon, I’ll get to the point. The police have asked that I provide a witness to my whereabouts last night and this morning . . . “

Now it was Mrs. Harmon’s turn to show surprise. “Did you have something to do with it . . .the murder?”

“Well, of course not. It’s merely a formality since the body appeared on my property.” Olivia noted how quickly Mrs. Harmon put two and two together and got murder. No slouch she. But why wasn’t she shocked or upset? This seemed to merely be an inconvenience for her. An occasion for Olivia to bother her by knocking on her door.

Olivia heard the phone ring in her office upstairs. “Mrs. Harmon, I’ll get to the point. Did you by any chance hear anything coming from the showroom or my office or even my loft last night or this morning?”

“No, I can’t say that I did. You know my apartment is soundproofed. I can only hear noise coming from upstairs if I am out in the hall, as you are now.”

“Yes, that’s what I thought. Well, I won’t bother you any more. Thank you, but if you think of something, would you let me know?” Olivia gave a little laugh. “My don’t I sound like a TV crime show?”

Mrs. Harmon looked puzzled and started to close her door. Olivia said, “Oh, by the way, how was your dinner with your nephew?”

She knew it was a mean shot. She had been downstairs working in her office and showroom last night and would have heard the nephew’s car drive up and the brass knocker on Mrs. Nichol’s front door announce his arrival.

Mrs. Harmon gave her a cool smile. “We had a lovely time, thank you for asking.”

Olivia excused herself and ran back upstairs, but the caller had hung up. She was amused by Mrs. Harmon’s answer. Of course she would hide the fact that she had been here by herself last night after lying about meeting her nephew. People, Olivia thought wryly. Would she ever figure them out?

She checked her messages and saw that Detective Richards had called. “Miss Granville,” he said curtly on the voicemail, “would you please bring with you a pair of shoes when you come in this afternoon? We are interested in a specific brand, Jimmy Choo. They style number is,” and Olivia’s mouth dropped when he described the treat she bought for herself upon arriving from LA and suffering her first pangs of homesickness, her last dose of retail therapy. Sling back pumps in a red and yellow striped silk with a two-inch platform. He left no explanation. How he could sound so certain that she owned a pair? Was he stalking her closet?

Olivia stared at the cradle as if it might give a reason for the odd request, or an explanation for Richards’ continuing rudeness. He hadn’t even said goodbye.

Olivia edged her pickup into one of the three parking spaces in front of the Darling Valley Police Department, located at the unfashionable end of Darling Boulevard, a short strip mall with a dry cleaner, pharmacy and ATM for the bank she used. A moment later, Cody steered a Harley Davidson into the space next to her. She greeted Cody and cocked an eye the machine.

“My brother’s,” he explained. “But only for the afternoon.” He pointed to the Jimmy Choo box under her arm. “What’s with the dogs?”

Olivia held the shoes up like a trophy and said, “Got me.” She explained that Richards had requested them.

Cody winked at her and said, “Bet he learned the Cinderella move at Scotland Yard. If you don’t fess up,” now he slipped into Al Pacino in Sea of Love, “you’re never gonna see these babies again.”

Olivia grinned, gave him a two-fingered upside down V salute with a hip-hop dip, then nodded toward the small parking lot. “They don’t do a lot of business, do they? I didn’t realize I had something in common with DVPD.”

Inside, a chunky female officer in a midnight blue police uniform with a visible fresh coffee stain down her front sat at a desk. On it, an old console computer, a desk phone with a few buttons along the bottom, vintage 1970, and a Coffee and Chatter cup smudged with lipstick were lined up to form a barrier between her and the criminal element of Darling Valley that might burst in through the front door.

Like most businesses in DV, the police did their sleuthing in a renovated and repurposed old home, this one a vintage Edwardian with the original pine floors and small rooms made into offices. Olivia had changed into a sedate LBD and ankle boots that thudded across the wood planks. Before she had time to announce her name, Richards emerged from an office behind the woman’s desk.

Olivia couldn’t hide her amazement when she saw that he had changed into a tailor
ed suit and tie, probably with Milan labels. He was serious about dressing up for the occasion. His shoes needed a shine, however, but she chalked that up to the hazards of stumbling around crime scenes.

He nodded to each of them. “Miss Granville. Mr. White. Thanks for being on time. Miss Granville, if you’d like to come into my office,” he gestured to the open door behind him, “And Mr. White, Detective Johnson will see you.”

Cody joked, “Uh oh, O. They’re separating us to see if our alibis match,” but Richards didn’t crack a smile. Instead, he pointed to the shoebox.

“I see you brought your shoes, Miss Granville. Would you mind leaving them with Officer Ridley?” He indicated the woman in the badly fitting uniform at the desk.

Olivia stared at him horrified. He answered the question on her face. “Don’t worry, you’ll get a receipt if we need to retain them.”

“Retain my shoes? What is this, the Keystone Kops?” She meant it as a joke to break the ice, but Richards scowled.

“I assure you, Miss Granville. There is a reason for everything we do. Just part of our investigation.”

Olivia put the box on the officer’s desk and raised her hands in a show of peace. “Whatever you say, detective.” Did he have magnetic fields in those dark eyes? She couldn’t stop staring at them.

Richards, however, had no trouble breaking his gaze. He walked over to a closed door adjacent to his office, knocked, opened it and in a low voice said, “They’re here.”

Detective Johnson came out with one arm trying to find the opening to his suit jacket sleeve and the other sleeve flapping behind him. Without much chat, he nodded to Olivia, finished dressing himself, hiked his slacks under his belly, and ushered Cody into his office.

Richards led Olivia into what she guessed was once an old English-style snug gone horribly wrong. The coal fireplace hadn’t produced any warmth in probably half a century, and instead of the porcelain dogs that were fashionable when the house was built, files and books teetered on the mantel. The designer in Olivia cringed at the white Formica IKEA desk taking up most of the small room. She wondered if she should suggest that the Darling Valley Police Department invest in the Tudor settee she acquired just before she left LA. And then she had that cherry partners desk that was a little large for the room, but if she moved the file cabinet . . .

Richards interrupted her design reverie and offered her one of the two swivel chairs in front of the desk, also vintage IKEA. Then he closed the blinds on the window that had been carved into the wall between his office and the anteroom where Ridley sat. This gave him a view of the front door. She settled herself and started to drop her purse onto the floor next to her, but one look at the grit and another at her $2,500 Prada bag and she plopped it onto the vacant chair. Richards didn’t so much as dispense with pleasantries as completely ignore them.

“Miss Granville, tell me about your relationship with Mr. Blackman, the deceased.” He sat ramrod straight, making no attempt to lean in and warm up the space between them.

“I didn’t know him.” Since that was the way he wanted it, Olivia leaned back, creating even more distance, marking her territory with a disinterested smirk.

Richards snapped, “How can that be? You did business with him.”

Her cell phone rang. She ignored Richards’ dark look and reached into her bag. It was Tuesday. Considering the seriousness of the meeting, she should let it go into voicemail, but instead, she held up her finger for Richards to give her a minute and said effusively, “Tuesday!  Babe! Don’t tell me you’re here already. Oh, you’re on the runway about to take off.”

She enjoyed the annoyance on Richards’ face.

“Three-forty five? Perfect. The Veuve Cliquot is chilling, girlfriend. What are you wearing? Oh, I’ve got to see that! I’m rocking Tory Burch. I was going with Stella first, what? Oh you don’t want to hear about Stella.  You’ve got to get over that, girlfriend.”

She decided she had pushed Richards’ buttons enough, said, “See ya! Safe trip, doll,” hung up and without turning off her phone, dropped it back into her purse.

It wasn’t hard to figure out that Richards was biting his tongue and forcing himself to be polite. “Perhaps you’d like to turn off your phone for a few minutes, Miss Granville?” He clipped his words like they were ice chips.

“Am I under arrest?” Olivia was not usually combative, but she wanted Richards to know she had done nothing wrong and was not intimidated by him.

“Of course you’re not,” he answered impatiently.

“Well then, I have a business to run, and my phone is my lifeline. Especially since your, um, people have made a mess of my grounds and scared off customers with that ugly tape.”

She didn’t add that there was slim chance any customers would be calling with new business, anyway, but he didn’t need to know that.

Richards gave her a longsuffering sigh. “Very well. Miss Granville, can you explain how you can do business with someone in this small town and not know them?”

“Mr. Blackman? I knew of him, certainly, but he was always out of town or otherwise unavailable the few times I visited the shop, so I never actually met him. I communicated with Sabrina Chance, his partner. I’d only begun dealing with Blackman’s on this order.”

Richards looked thoughtful. “This order. Yes. Tell me about this order. What was the nature of the transaction?”

Olivia loved talking about her business even, it seemed, under these circumstances. “Well, my business is selling antiques and doing renovations and interiors for my clients. I have an inventory of furniture that I brought up with me from LA.”

Richards interrupted. “And what exactly brought you to Darling?”

His question sounded like an accusation rather than the standard icebreaker Olivia was used to hearing from shopkeepers, new clients, attendees at the few charity events she to which she had been invited since her arrival. The occasional neighbor who condescended to speak to her.

“I, I, . . .” Olivia was a master at small talk, a requirement in her business. But suddenly this detective was turning her brain into jelly. The grim atmosphere and the officer sitting at the front desk hammered home the reality that she was being interrogated about a murder. Was she really discussing murder? That was one of the things she assumed she could say goodbye to when she left LA for bucolic Darling Valley. Somebody in this town was guilty of false advertising.

She took a breath and composed herself, yet she was evasive, not wanting to mention being left at the altar by Brooks.

“I worked in a similar business in LA for a number of years. Actually, I was a partner at my firm. But LA is very cut throat. I felt it was time for a change. I wanted a slower pace. You live here; surely you understand the appeal.”

To herself, Olivia snarled, LA is a meditation center compared to what you have going on in Darling.

Richards ramped up the hostility. “I don’t live in Darling, Miss Granville. My job doesn’t call for gazing out over the lake.”

Olivia didn’t know how to respond. Was that somehow her fault? Was he referring to having to live in Marin City, the working class community just north of the Golden Gate Bridge? Most of the people who worked in DV couldn’t afford to live there and Marin City still had reasonable rents and housing prices. It wasn’t so much what he said but the way he said it that sounded like she should apologize for the opportunity to reside and pay impossibly high property taxes in this idyllic town. She bristled at the suggestion that she was somehow privileged. She had invested her life savings into establishing herself here, a boon to Darling’s economy. And so far, Darling wasn’t showing her any love.

“Anyway, I moved to DV several months ago and I’m just getting established. I acquired some new pieces recently at an estate auction in Seacliff in San Francisco and they needed some restoration work. I had a team to do this for me in LA, but up here I needed to find a new shop. A friend in the city recommended Blackman’s to me. There were four pieces, no five, that we, Cody and I delivered two weeks ago. The doors on the armoire needed fixing, the side tables needed refinishing and the
bergère
chairs needed upholstering. I supplied the fabric, a heavy damask that matched the period perfectly.”

“The what chairs?” Richards said, raising his eyebrows in a question.

Instantly, Olivia realized she was giving him TMI, a habit of hers whenever interiors were involved.

“
Bergère
, Detective. It’s a wood and fabric chair and the legs were also nicked. Actually, I’ve been on pins and needles waiting to see the quality of the work. Sometimes the shops with the best reputations can make a mess of things. I still haven’t had a chance to inspect the rest of the order. And as for the armoire, that’s going to need more work after struggling with those doors.”

Richards was unsympathetic. “How well do you know the people at Blackman’s,” he asked with an edge in his voice. “Apart from Mr. Blackman.”

“Well, I’ve spoken with Sabrina Chance a few times. She invited me to a fundraiser soon after I moved here. As if her exorbitant prices weren’t enough. It was for a fund to repair the grounds around the lake.”

“I remember,” Richards said. “My department provided security.”

“Did that include keeping an eye on the gropers going after the cute servers?”

If Olivia had had any illusions about the propriety of the philanthropists and venture capitalists of Darling, she saw they had just as much trouble keeping their hands in their pockets as did the movie moguls in LA.

Richards didn’t reply. Was this a test of some sort, or was there a virus in Darling Valley that made people hostile and antagonistic to newcomers?

“You were telling me about Ms. Chance.

A vision of Sabrina came back to her. The little Chloe number that was sumptuous even by LA standards, the House of Graff baubles hanging from her ears. Olivia had guessed the furniture refinishing was a hobby. The shop, even with its astronomical prices, wouldn’t keep her in Christian Louboutins for very long. She didn’t wear a wedding ring, so Olivia assumed there was a nice alimony settlement in her past.

“Sabrina introduced me to a number of her clients and we had a drink together at the party but that was it. I was left on my own after that. I chatted with a few people . . . in fact I met Mrs. Blackman there and we said little more than hello. It was so fleeting, I doubt she’d even remember me.”

Olivia paused to reflect on the widow.

“Poor woman. Anyway, I told her that I knew her by reputation and that Sunset Antiques in the city had referred me to her. Mr. Blackman wasn’t there. I think she introduced me to a doctor or somebody. She paused. That was who showed up at the house wanting to examine the body. Then I found Sabrina and thanked her for the invitation before I left. She thanked me back for coming and made sure I had filled out my pledge card. Since then, Sabrina and I have had a few business chats, run into each other at some local events. In fact, I’m supposed to deliver a donation for an auction she’s running tomorrow night. Though I bet, after all this, she’ll cancel, or have someone take her place. I certainly would.” Olivia shuddered at the thought of having to put on a brave face after a death, something she had to do when her grandmother died.

“And Mr. White? Tell me about your relationship with him.”

Olivia could not repress a smile. “Cody is my life saver.”