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“Think I’m going to get a bottle of water from the fridge,” Calvin said, also completely at ease. The little break room tucked into my storage area had a mini fridge, a place where I kept some bottled water and any leftovers I might have brought to work for those times when I didn’t feel like getting takeout for lunch.
“Sure,” I replied with a smile. Maybe he really was thirsty…but I thought it far more likely that he wanted an excuse to position himself as close to the rear entrance as possible so he’d be able to head out quickly once the blackmailer came back down the stairs.
I wasn’t sure what excuse I’d need to concoct to explain why I would go running after him in that event, but I supposed I’d figure it out on the fly.
As it was, I had to do my best to act natural as I went over to the front door and unlocked it, then took down the “be back at” sign in the front window. That task done, I headed over to the counter where the cash register was located, and mentioned casually to Melanie that she might as well dust the crystals while the shop was still quiet.
She nodded, retrieved the feather duster, and went to the crystal display. During all of this, I was intensely aware of the minutes ticking past, my mind racing as it conjured scenarios of what might be happening in Victoria’s studio right overhead. Was the blackmailer threatening her? Was she pleading with him to understand that her wedding was now only a week away, and there was nothing about Archie that warranted this kind of terrible threat?
I didn’t know. All I knew was that when my phone rang from inside my skirt pocket — I’d stashed it there so I wouldn’t have to go running back toward the place where my purse was hidden under the counter — I felt like I jumped about a foot.
That iPhone was in my hand so fast, I might have conjured it with a snap of my fingers.
Victoria’s number.
“S-Selena?” she said, her voice shaking.
“What’s the matter?” I replied at once, fear thrilling along every nerve ending as I imagined the worst. “What happened?”
A pause. Then she said, still in those tremulous tones, “I-I think you and Calvin had better come up here.”
Victoria never sounded like that. Sometimes I thought it would take a bomb going off in the immediate vicinity for her to lose her cool. That was why I didn’t ask any questions, only said, “We’ll be there in a sec.”
“Thank you.”
I ended the call, stuck my phone back in my pocket, and looked over at Melanie, who was carefully swishing away any dust that might have collected on the minerals clustered on their display table. “I need to go upstairs for a minute,” I said. “Just be a sec.”
“No problem,” she responded sunnily, clearly unaware of whatever drama might have gone down in the studio upstairs.
I hurried toward the back of the store. Calvin, who was drinking from the bottle of water he’d fetched a moment earlier, lowered the bottle from his mouth and looked at me in surprise.
“Victoria needs us upstairs,” I said briefly.
No questions, because Calvin was just like that. Instead, he followed me out of the shop as I hurried up the flight of steps that led to a small landing just outside Victoria’s design studio. The door was shut but not locked — usual for business hours — so I opened and it went inside, my husband still on my heels.
Immediately inside the door was a small waiting area, what used to be the dining room when I’d lived in the apartment. Victoria had downsized the kitchen but kept a small refrigerator, sink, and cabinets, presumably so she could offer her clients refreshments when they came in for an appointment.
The former living room had been set up as a conference area, with a round table in the center of the space and open shelving on the wall facing the fireplace. Victoria stood in front of that table, her face utterly white. On the polished wood floor just off to one side lay the prone body of a man, a blue-glazed coffee cup still clutched in one hand, with pale mocha liquid spreading out beneath both the cup and his head.
“I don’t know what happened,” she said simply.
6
Non-Dairy Screamer
Henry Lewis wore the expression of a man who would have liked nothing more than to kick Calvin and me right out of the room. However, since Victoria had insisted on us being present during this interview, he couldn’t do much more than shoot the two of us a narrow gaze out of his flinty gray eyes, eyes that almost matched his short-cropped hair.
They had already carried away the victim on a stretcher, thank the Goddess. I’d only caught a quick glimpse of a sharp-featured man who looked as though he was probably in his early or mid-thirties, with dark hair and a thin dark mustache above his mouth, before the EMTs took him out of Victoria’s studio…presumably to the medical examiner’s so they could figure out just what the heck had made him drop dead on the spot like that.
The four of us were standing in what used to be my master bedroom when Victoria’s studio was still my apartment, although it was now clearly the place where she did most of her creating. A drafting table with a sketchbook open to a half-finished living room design occupied the wall where my bed had once been placed, and the wall opposite it was covered with mood boards and tacked-up swatches of fabric. Since there was only one chair, the one placed in front of the table, we’d been forced to awkwardly occupy the center of the space.
“You said the man was blackmailing you?” Henry inquired. “Why?”
“I — I don’t know,” Victoria replied. She pressed her lips together and pulled in a breath. “He said he knew something about me and Archie, which is just ridiculous. We have nothing to hide.”
I had to reflect that she was an excellent actress, because her current air of utter mystification would have fooled me if I hadn’t known exactly what Archie was hiding. Chief Lewis only nodded, which didn’t tell me very much.
Had he bought her innocent act?
