Rooms to Die For Read online

  Chapter Two

  Like a puppet on a string, a body hung in midair, suspended from the third floor railing by a rope. In the mall’s controlled atmosphere, it hung motionless, no swaying, no movement, no nothing. From where we stood, fifty feet below, it was impossible to identify the body, though the figure was unmistakably that of a man.

  A feeling of dread crept over me. I knew most of the shop owners by name, had done business with several. Was he someone I’d worked with? Someone who’d helped me with design problems? Someone who’d been a friend when I needed one?

  Imogene finally caught her breath, and with eyes still skyward, she whispered, “A suicide. How awful.”

  Her ear-shattering cry had brought Sandra running over to us. “Good heavens, what’s the matter?” she asked. All Imogene could do was point. That was enough. “Omigod!” Sandra raced back to the phone at her station.

  Imogene’s screams had brought out the shop owners who’d opened up early, and they were now milling about the atrium in a state of shock. “Who is it?” everyone buzzed. “Do you recognize him?”

  Like the horrified circle of onlookers, I also needed to know who preferred death to life. “Wait here,” I said to Imogene. “I’ll be back.”

  “But, Deva—”

  Before anyone could stop me, I hurried to the elevator and pressed Up. Through some miracle the doors parted immediately and, heart fluttering, palms sweaty, I rode the glass cage to third. Never before had I done so without admiring the view of the mall’s marble atrium slipping away beneath me.

  By now Sandra had undoubtedly summoned help. Either 9-1-1 or the police. Chances were Phil had already called to cancel the ambulance. Even so, they no doubt would respond to another summons, but I hoped Sandra had contacted the police. Whoever hung in the air could no longer be helped by a rescue squad.

  I hurried off the elevator and sprinted along the landing. Sirens wailed in the distance, grew louder, then stopped. I spotted a rope tied to the railing and careened to a halt. A pulse pounding in my temples, I leaned over the rail and peered down, careful not to touch anything.

  Tongue bulging from his mouth, eyes rolled back in their sockets, neck taut and straining in the noose, the sad sight meeting my eyes was all that was left of José Vega, the finest antiques dealer in southwest Florida.

  Behind me the elevator opened and heavy footsteps pounded along the third floor balcony. I didn’t look back. I was staring at the body of a good man, a man whose shop I visited whenever a client’s needs brought me to the mall. A man who had an encyclopedic knowledge of seventeenth—and eighteenth-century Spanish furniture and art. Every item in his shop was exquisite, and talking with him had been a delight and an education. Now this. I gripped the rail as José Vega hung there below me, obscenely still and distorted.

  Tears blurring my eyes, I turned, finally, toward the approaching footsteps. As I suspected, it wasn’t Rossi. Homicide detectives weren’t first responders. I hadn’t really expected him anyway. When he kissed me goodbye two hours earlier, he’d said he’d be testifying today in a hit-and-run trial.

  None other than my old acquaintance Officer Batano in his usual drift of Old Spice walked up to me. Behind him, hidden from view by his bulk came his partner, feminine—but packing—Officer Nancy Hughes.

  With the urge to cry about to overwhelm me, I tried for a laugh instead. “We’ve got to stop meeting like this,” I said to Batano, my voice shaky. This wasn’t the first crime scene we’d been on together, but from his attitude today you’d never know it. All business, he simply nodded, no smile, and leaned over the railing for a better view of José.

  Hughes’s path had crossed mine a few times too, but she didn’t say a word to me or look down at José, just hugged a clipboard to her chest. Why did I think of her as Batano’s secretary? In addition to clutching the clipboard and a pen, she did have a Glock strapped to her hip.

  “Who found him?” Batano asked.

  “My client did. Right after a guy rushed out just as we were coming in. She looked up and—” My voice choked in my throat.

  “You know who he is?”

  I nodded. “Yes, José Vega. He owned the Spanish Galleria.” I pointed along the balcony to a shop door fronted with two boxwood topiaries shaped like mission bells. “That’s his store. Or was his store.”

  Batano upped his chin at Hughes. “Tape off the area. Looks like a suicide, but the lieutenant will want to check out the scene.”

  As Hughes walked back to the elevator, Batano pointed to a battered utility stool rammed up against the railing. I hadn’t noticed it until that moment. “This must be what the jumper used,” he said.

  Painted a funky neon blue and scarred from repeated use, the crudely made stool caused my breath to catch. I shot a startled look at Batano. “That stool needs to be dusted for prints. This is no suicide. José was murdered.”

  Chapter Three

  “There’s something I have to tell you,” I said to Rossi the minute he stepped off the elevator.

  “Deva, don’t start,” he said, striding toward the crime scene. Even though my legs are as long as his, I had to hurry to keep up.

  “But I’m on to something.”

  He stopped so abruptly, I nearly stumbled over my own feet. “Not now.”

  Since kissing me crazy two hours earlier, these were the first words out of his mouth? The nerve of him.

  “Are you always this impossible?” I asked. A rhetorical question. I already knew the answer.

  “Always. I do the detecting—you do the decorating.”

  “Designing.”

  He shrugged, sending the shoulders of his Hawaiian shirt into a hula. He’d worn his best one today, the Tori Richard we’d bought in the Pink Palace in Honolulu. I loved it on him, yellow moons and stars riding the breeze over green ocean swells. Actually it was scary the way I was buying into his Miami Vice look—white slacks, casual shirts—a disarming ploy he assumed to throw suspects off guard. Not that I was fooled by his laid-back look, not for a second. Rossi was sly as a fox.

  I stood beyond the crime scene tape where he’d shooed me. Forensics arrived shortly after Rossi and photographed what was left of José suspended over the atrium. They raised him to the third floor balcony and laid him on his back, a sheet covering all but the toes of his Bally oxfords. Always, in everything, José had exquisite taste.

  I leaned over the tape. “Rossi, you have to listen to me on this. José didn’t kill himself.”

  Busy texting, Rossi looked up from his cell phone and sighed. “I said not now, Deva.”

  “Rossi, listen. You have to.” Earlier he had kissed me as if he wanted to reach my very soul. Now he was too busy to hear me? No way. Even with the memory of those kisses fresh on my mouth, I couldn’t let him do that.

  I leaned so far over the tape, it sagged forward. “Back, Miz Dunne,” Batano ordered.

  I stepped away and let the tape snap into position. “Come on, Rossi. You need to hear this.”

  He pocketed his phone and strode over to me, bringing a trace of his musky aftershave along with him. “All right, what do you want to talk about?”

  “That!” I pointed to the blue monstrosity.

  He gave the stool a cursory glance. “Mr. Vega probably used it to jump from.”

  “No. No way.”

  “You know?” Rossi had adapted his pained, patronizing voice.

  I’d heard that same tone before and didn’t let it stop me. He hauled it out every time I tried to weigh in on one of his cases. You’d think by now he’d listen to me. After all, I’d helped him in the past. Though I really wasn’t good at detective work, at times I had flashes of insight. Like now. So even if I irritated him, I had to insist he listen to me.

  “José Vega was the most tasteful person I’ve ever met, in all facets of life�
�food, clothing, art, antiques. Never in a million years would he have used that ugly thing—” I jutted my chin at the stool, “—to end his last moments on earth. Go have a look at his shop and—”

  “I intend to.”

  “Good. You’ll see stools in there fit for royalty. He would have chosen one of those if he’d wanted to leap to his death. If he had wanted to. Which I don’t for a second believe he did.”

  “Why not?” This time Rossi sounded like he really wanted to know.

  “He was a gentle man. Literally. He wouldn’t have had the guts to jump like that. Someone lifted him up and flung him over the balcony.” I pointed to the outline of José’s sheet-covered body. “Look at how small he was, Rossi. A hundred pounds soaking wet. How hard would it be to raise him onto the stool and from there plunge him over the railing?”

  “He simply allowed that to happen? Against his will?” That voice again.

  “No. Of course not. He must have been drugged. Can’t you have José...the remains...tested?”

  Rossi sighed. Deeply. “We can, and we will. It’s standard procedure. Now if you would please return to what you do best...” he paused, allowing himself a quick grin “...second best...I’ll go back to my job.”

  Before I could think of a retort, Officer Batano approached us. “Lieutenant, a woman claiming to be the deceased’s wife is here. A Beatriz Vega. Hughes is with her in the antiques shop.”

  “Have Hughes bring her out,” Rossi said.

  I waited unmoving behind the crime tape, hoping I wouldn’t be ordered to vacate the scene. Poor Beatriz had been devoted to José. They had been one of the closest couples I’d ever known, living for each other, together day and night and happiest that way. What Beatriz would suffer without her beloved José I could well imagine and wanted to be here when she saw him, in case she needed someone to lean on. Someone to cry on.

  With Officer Hughes as her escort, she plodded along the third floor balcony as if dreading what she had to face. At the sight of her bowed down with sorrow, I wanted to rip the crime tape apart, run over to her and hold her close. But I didn’t dare. Rossi would have me removed in an instant. So, tears in my eyes, all I could do was send Beatriz a wobbly smile, though given her deep distress, she probably didn’t even notice I was there.

  In a black pantsuit that set off her silver hair to perfection, she was sadly but appropriately dressed for the occasion. José would have liked that. And he would have enjoyed seeing his mother’s fabulous string of black pearls clasped around Beatriz’s throat. He had taken great pride in his wife’s appearance and his own, and in their exquisite shop. No, he would never have used that rough old stool to put so much as a box on a shelf, never mind to propel himself into another world.

  Reluctance and fear glittering in her wet eyes, Beatriz stopped at the crime tape. Rossi lifted it out of her way, and taking her hands in his, he introduced himself and offered his condolences.

  With Hughes supporting her on one side and Rossi on the other, step by step she walked up to her husband’s body. Rossi nodded, just once, and Batano lifted the sheet from José’s face.

  Beatriz gasped, half choking on a pent-up sob, and covered her face with her hands.

  “Can you identify him?” Rossi asked gently. She already had, but he needed the words.

  For a long moment, as if by not answering she could change the hateful truth, Beatriz didn’t respond. Then her hands dropped from her face and she nodded. “It’s him, my José.” Raising a shaky finger, she held it in the air, pointing at the shadows, at the wall, at nothing in particular. “But José did not jump like you say. He was killed, my José. And I know who killed him.”

  Chapter Four

  “Deva, do you think I should get rid of the glitter on my toenails?” Imogene asked on our way back from the mall.

  “What?”

  “My pedicure? If we’re not too late, and Phong will still take me.” She peeked at her watch. “It’s nearly eleven o’clock. Can you drive a little faster?”

  “I’m five miles over the limit already. And how can you think of a pedicure at a time like this? A man just died.”

  “Well it isn’t as though I knew him or anything.”

  “I knew him, Imogene. And I know his wife...widow. Besides, no man is an island.”

  “I’ve heard that saying before. It’s downright silly. Of course, no man is an island. Everybody knows that.”

  “True.” I tried not to sigh. I had just left a despairing Beatriz in the care of Hugo, her shop assistant, and hoped he could comfort her. The sight of her stricken face wouldn’t leave my mind, nor the memory of her finger wavering in the air as she claimed José had been murdered.

  At her outburst, Rossi had sent me a quick, quizzical eyebrow lift. With his usual thoroughness he would investigate the possibility of murder until he was convinced he had arrived at the truth—a big part of which was discovering the person Beatriz was accusing. For now, I needed to do as Rossi asked, concentrate on my job and leave him to do his. At the moment, my job was dealing with Imogene. I glanced across the front seat. She sat stiff as a piece of wood, staring straight ahead.

  Though I tried to put myself in her mind-set, her problem wasn’t even pinging on my radar screen. In fact, I found her attitude infuriating, but still she was a client, and the morning had been a hideous disaster. I reined in my irritation and pressed my foot on the gas pedal.

  “Traffic’s light. We should get there in time.”

  “Oh good.” She hesitated then said, “I haven’t wanted to mention this before. I was afraid I’d jinx everything. But the reason I need this pedicure and a manicure too is I have a heavy date tonight. Very heavy. If you know what I mean.”

  “Sounds exciting.”

  “Oh, he is! He’s the most exciting man I’ve ever met.”

  Out of the corner of my eye I caught her biting her lower lip like a worried little girl. She half turned in her seat to face me.

  “Can I tell you something in confidence?”

  Uh-oh. Here it comes. Over and over again, so often it couldn’t be accidental, clients confided in me, telling me stuff they wouldn’t tell their own mothers. I might have an eye for color and proportion, but I was no shrink. In fact, there were times when I needed one. So why did they tell me their secrets? The only reason I’d ever figured out was that a home was an extension of the self, and when you allowed someone to tamper with your home you might as well go a step further and let them probe your dreams and desires. Seal the relationship, so to speak.

  “The problem is I’m in over my head with this guy, Deva. Out of my league. He’s so smart, so classy. Went to Harvard. Harvard! I’m afraid I won’t know what to talk about.” Her lower lip trembled. “I can’t even figure out why people are islands. How can I talk to someone like him?”

  “Well, you obviously already have. He’s asked you out.”

  “But I don’t want this to be another one-night stand. This is the real deal. I’m in love.”

  She was so tense, so desperate, I couldn’t help but feel for her. “What have you talked about so far?”

  “Not much. I’m new to the neighborhood. He dropped by the other day to say hello, and we mainly talked about my house. At least he did. I mostly listened. He has wonderful ideas about modern architecture. What’s cutting edge...that’s what he called it...and why. You’d like him, Deva, I know you would, and you’d have so much in common.” Her voice trailing off, she stared out the windshield.

  “Who is this marvel?”

  “His name’s Harlan Conway.”

  I nearly let go of the wheel. “The Harlan Conway? The famous architect? The one who’s on the short list for Florida’s Caldwell Prize in architecture? That Harlan Conway?”

  She nodded, indecisive. “Could be. He said he was in some kind of competition. S
aid it would help his career if he wins. After we have dinner tonight, he wants to show me his house. He told me it’s full of innovative ideas.”

  “Oh, I’ll bet. I’d love to see it. Postmodernism is his specialty. It must be cutting edge.”

  Imogene groaned. “It looks pretty small and boxy to me, but how would I know? I’m too stupid.”

  Poor Imogene, her chin was lower than her shoes. To make her feel better, I upped the speed and passed a soccer mom’s SUV. “You’re just not into the latest architectural trends. Nothing strange about that. You’d have to work in the field to know who Harlan is.”

  She shook her head and frowned. “Maybe, but what really has me worried is the lie I told him.”

  That forced my eyes from the road for a second. “What about?” We sailed by the upscale Waterside Shops on the right without giving them a second thought.

  “About the way my house looks. I could tell from his expression that he didn’t like it. So I told him the previous owner had picked the color.”

  “Pink walls are not for everybody, Imogene.” I didn’t mention that according to Luscher’s Color Theory, pink was a sign of immaturity. As in little girls’ bedrooms.

  “I guess not,” she said.

  “With his background, he might be a teak and taupe kind of guy.”

  “Whatever.” Imogene shrugged. “Anyway, I told him I hated the color and planned to change it as soon as I found a good contractor.” She heaved a sigh. “He’s going to give me a few names tonight.”

  “That’s just a little white lie. Nothing to beat yourself up over.”

  She shook her head. “You don’t understand. It gets worse. He wanted to know what changes I had in mind. I was afraid to say anything, so I asked him what he thought. He said he wouldn’t want to impose his taste on me.” Her voice dropped. “How sweet is that? Then he said I was the one living in the house, so the choices should make me happy.” Another sigh. “Actually, pink walls do make me happy.”

  “So what are you going to do?”