his share of big fish, but I’m willing to bet he doesn’t do it with a rod and a reel from his boat. Considering that most of his clients are women athletes, I’ll concede a rod, but not a reel.
At any rate, all of us know it’s a fish tale, but wouldn’t you know that Nelson takes down all his details, which are sketchy at best. He’s so awed by Jack’s circle that he just nods when Jack, with a nervous glance at me, assures him he’ll have the office call with the client’s number later.
As Drew is walking me out, I hear Jack tell Nelson he won’t consent to an autopsy. He says it’s against his religion. I have the utmost respect for religion and religious traditions, but how religious could he be with no mezuzah on the door frame? I kind of tap the doorjam where the little prayer holder ought to be, but, not being Jewish, Drew probably misses my subtle hint. I don’t believe that Jack doesn’t want that autopsy on religious grounds. I think he’s hiding something, or wants to, and I’m suspicious.
Oh, hell, let’s face it. I’m suspicious of every husband, and Jack’s no prize. Still, that doesn’t make him a murderer, does it?
Alone in my car I carefully back out, listening to my own breathing, and I realize that Elise will never breathe again. In my chest I feel my heart lub-dubbing. My blood is pounding relentlessly in my veins. A headache has settled into my left temple and my ankle itches where my jeans tease it. It seems I am taking inventory of everything that makes me alive.
Halfway down the street I realize I can’t see through my tears and I pull over. The thing that bothers me most about Elise’s murder—beyond the obvious—is that it happened in her own home. I don’t know about you, but if I ever get murdered I want it to be in some dark alley that I should have known better than to go into in the first place. Home is where you are supposed to be safe. And I wouldn’t want to get murdered there.
I wipe my cheeks with my bare arm but the tears continue to stream down my face. I think about calling Bobbie, but I don’t know what I expect her to do. I don’t want to talk. I just want to crawl under the covers and cry.
If only I hadn’t used up all my Go Back To Bed Free cards last year….
CHAPTER 2
Design Tip of the Day
Fabric is the self-decorator’s best friend. Done right, a couple of coordinating fabrics can pull a whole house together. Just by covering a pillow in the living room, a bench in the hall and a couple of kitchen bar stools in one fabric and making a dining room tablecloth, a photo mat and a second pillow in the living room in a companion fabric, you can move items from room to room and have them look as though they always belonged there.
—From TipsfromTeddi.com
I can’t help crying. I may be woman, I may be strong, but at the moment I’m not roaring. I’m just grateful that no one can see me. I cry until I hiccup, and I hiccup all the way down Jericho Turnpike, where I hang a right into the parking lot of Precious Things because I don’t want to go home. Who wants alone when they can have hot coffee and a sympathetic ear?
“Did he call you?” Helene, who owns the shop where just yesterday I picked up Elise’s custom-covered bar stools, asks before I’ve got one foot in the door. “I told him to call you last night. If he didn’t, he’s in big trouble.”
He is her brother, newly single, just squeaking past the Dr. Joy one-year rule. According to Helene, he is my soul mate. In fact, he did call and he does sound nice. And if I was the least bit interested in ever allowing a man into my life again, I would consider him.
“Elise Meyers was murdered this morning,” I say just as the phone rings. Helene tilts her head slightly, as if she is having trouble processing what I’ve said, and chirps a greeting into the phone. While she talks, she keeps one eye on me, rearranges some ebony candlesticks on the counter, and weaves a stray strand of her highlighted brown hair into her French knot at the same time. Her makeup is flawless and her short nails sport a perfect deep red manicure. In the last week I have popped two acrylics, which makes my left hand look like it’s missing the ends of two fingers, and the last time my makeup looked as good as hers, I was leaving the Bobbi Brown counter at Bloomingdale’s.
She points at the receiver, gives me a knowing glance and then says into the phone, “Well, Audrey, I could certainly sell it to you direct, but it will cost you the same thing as paying for it through your decorator. I can’t very well undercut her and expect her to keep doing business with me, now can I?”
Audrey Applebaum. Just yesterday she told me she changed her mind about redecorating.
“I’m not saying I charge people who come in off the street more, Audrey. I’m saying I charge decorators less. It’s how business is done. You redecorate one house every few years. They redecorate several houses every month….”
Helene rolls her eyes at me while she points to some new glass-and-wrought-iron stacking tables she thinks I might like.
Only I’m more interested in her telephone call than her telephone tables. I grab the phone out of her hand and shout into it. “Don’t you feel any obligation to your decorator? Don’t you think you ought to pay for her advice, her expertise? You think she can pay for her kids’ braces with your thanks?”
I want to slam it down, but portables don’t give you that satisfaction, so I just hit Off and throw it toward Helene, who barely catches it. For a minute Helene doesn’t say anything.
And then she begins to laugh, saying between the bursts how she can’t believe I did that.
I can’t, either. I don’t know what the connection is to Elise’s murder, except that it pushed me over the edge. When I don’t laugh, too, Helene studies me.
“Teddi, what’s wrong?” she asks, leading me toward the only piece of furniture in the shop not covered with swatch books or cords of trim. It’s a red plush chair in the shape of a spiked heel and it has a big Sale sign on it, marking it clearly as a mistake in judgment.
I sit on the instep.
“I told you,” I say flatly. “Elise Meyers is dead.”
“Oh my God!” she says, covering her mouth. There’s a silent beat. Another. Then, “Which one’s Elise Meyers?”
I remind her that Elise is the customer who couldn’t wait for Gina, Helene’s assistant, to arrange for the delivery of her furniture. Elise is the woman who had to have everything yesterday, always, all the time. I don’t mean to make her sound difficult. She was, but still, that doesn’t mean she deserved to be murdered.
“Murdered?” Helene whispers, as if not saying it aloud gives it some dignity. I think of Elise in that hot-pink satin job and dignity goes out the window.
I start at the beginning because, except for the police, I really haven’t told anyone, not even Bobbie. I tell Helene how I’d just hung up with Bobbie—whom she knows almost as well as she knows me—turned off my cell phone and got out of the car, when I noticed the dog on the lawn. At this point in my story, Gina, the twentysomething young woman who works for Helene, comes out from the back of the store with some swatches of fabric for Elise that have just come in. Helene tells her about Elise and she says how awful it is. They want to know everything, not so much because either of them care but because there’s something about being the first to know, to know before it’s on the six o’clock news, that appeals to people. I tell them everything I know and then Gina
