Of course I could. It was a huge success, too. It was actually Clive who did most of the work. I find the antiques, but he’s the designer. Tiffany had inherited her grandmother’s china, which her mother, Leanna the Lush, said Tiffany loved, and Clive picked up the colors in that for the walls and the accents. We ransacked our showrooms and warehouse for furniture and carpets, silverware, art for the walls. What we didn’t have, I went to auctions and found. Clive and I were both there when Dez and Leanna, who reeked of stale booze, brought Tiffany over, and after she commented on what a smashing place it was, we handed her the keys. Tiffany cried, Dez and Leanna cried, and I could have cried, but with relief, too. Even Tiffany’s brother Carter—Clive maintains that Carter’s real name is Cartier and that he and his sister are named for their parents’ favorite places to shop—asked me if I thought he could mix a few antique pieces with his modern furniture. When I said yes, he came over to the store and bought a huge armoire for his stereo system and another for his kitchen. Soon people Dez had referred to us started buying stuff, too.
“There is one small problem with all this business Dez has sent our way,” Clive said.
“We have no merchandise?” I said.
“Exactly,” he said. “This is a nice problem to have, I know, but we aren’t going to have stock for the Christmas season, which is not good at all. How will we take advantage of that ridiculous time of year when everyone waits until the last minute to shop and is therefore forced to spend obscene amounts of money at McClintoch and Swain if we don’t have anything to sell? We’re okay on the Asian stuff, but Crane and his friends and relatives have almost cleaned out our European collection. I’ve been over to the warehouse, and it’s practically empty.”
“Relax. It’s only August,” I said. “I’ll e-mail our pickers and agents in Europe and head over there next week, assuming, that is, that Detective Singh will let me go. If I do it right away, there’ll be plenty of time to get it here.”
“It’s too bad you have to make an extra trip,” he said. “I know you did double-duty here while Moira was having chemo.”
“I don’t mind,” I said. “I’ll e-mail our people in Italy and France, and maybe Ireland, and see what they can come up with on short notice. I’ll head out as soon as I hear back.”
“I’ve got to hand it to you, Lara,” Clive said. “I thought we were doomed, but you’ve pulled it out of the bag.
“Mmm,” I said. The truth was that while I was publicly rehabilitated, privately I still felt like dirt. A week or two far away from home seemed like a very good idea to me.
That might have been the end of it, had I not become better acquainted with Willow Laurier, Trevor’s last girlfriend. We’d been introduced at Blair Bazillionaire’s ill-fated cocktail party, and I’d seen her briefly at Trevor’s funeral, but we’d not exchanged more than a few words. Still, I knew her well enough to know that it was she who was sneaking into the alley beside Trevor’s former store at about one in the morning one warm August night.
I’d been working very late trying to get everything organized for my trip to Europe and was locking up and heading for my car when I saw her. She wasn’t good at stealth, obviously, because she stood under a street light for a minute or two looking up and down the street in a rather furtive fashion, before darting into the alley. A few minutes later a dim light, most likely a flashlight given the way it moved through the shop, glowed in the window.
There was only one way out, really, either through the back alley which led nowhere but out to the street again, or the front door which deposited you right on the street. I found myself a perch on a stone wall across the road and waited.
At least twenty minutes passed, and Willow had not yet appeared. Worse yet, the roving light was gone. My imagination, already inclined to the macabre where that store was concerned, started working overtime. What if Willow had fallen in the darkness, was lying there, and would be until the landlord showed up, heaven knows when. Or, and this was a really unpleasant thought, a murderer had been waiting there for her. That was ridiculous, I knew. Blair Bazillionaire had not been granted bail, given the horrendous nature of the murder and the fact that with all his money, he was considered a flight risk. Still I wasn’t convinced Blair had done it, so maybe, improbable though it might be, the real axe murderer had returned to the scene of the crime at the very moment Willow decided to enter it. I did not want to go into the store at night, or any time for that matter. But after almost half an hour, Willow still hadn’t shown up.
Very reluctantly, I went down the alley and tried the back door. It was unlocked, which seemed rather careless of her. I hesitated in the doorway for a few seconds, slid my hand along the wall in a vain attempt to find a light switch. By now my eyes were adjusting. There was some street light filtering through the front window, and much to my regret, a light in the basement, which probably explained why I couldn’t see it from the street. Fighting back nausea, to say nothing of terror, I went to the top of the stairs.
“Willow?” I said. “It’s Lara McClintoch.” There was no sound. “Willow?” I said again. Still no reply. There was nothing for it: I was going to have to go down.
She was standing in the back room where I’d found Trevor’s body, and she was crying. “Leave me alone,” she sobbed.
“Willow,” I said. “I am not going to leave you alone. You shouldn’t be here. First of all, it’s illegal, and furthermore, it is not nice down here. You really have to come upstairs. I’m going to take you for a coffee, or maybe something a little stronger.”
“I’ve looked everywhere,” she said. “Even behind the furnace. I’ve looked for signs the floor has been dug up and new floor put down. I’ve looked in every piece of furniture upstairs. I even looked to see if it would be possible to hide stuff in these pipes.”
“Willow,” I said. “What are you looking for?”
“I thought he loved me,” she burbled on as if I didn’t exist. “He said he did.”
“I’m sure in his way he did,” I said in a soothing tone.
“Don’t patronize me,” she said, turning on me. “I know he was a first-class jerk. What I really want to know is where did he put the money?”
“The money?”
“Look,” she said. “You may think I’m naive, but I’m not. I’m not overcome with grief, either. Even if I might have been, I found his packed suitcase and in it the airline ticket: an around-the-world ticket. You know what those things cost? Thousands! Almost exactly what I lent him a week before he died. I know he was planning to make a run for it. He’d only booked the first leg of it, to Orkney via Glasgow, and after that, parts unknown.”
“A fugitive, you mean?” I said.
“Exactly right,” she replied. “So where, I ask you, is the money? He made a big score, didn’t he, with that fake desk thing? Hundreds of thousands of dollars? So where is it?”
“The police say he was a compulsive and unlucky gambler. They think he paid off his debts to a bookie with it.”
“I guess that’s what they meant with all their questions about what Trevor did in his spare time, is it? I knew he played the horses, and he sometimes went to a casino. I went with him a couple of times. I liked the shows. But there had to be more. He was heading out, but not with me. I knew there was something going on, but I never thought he’d run out on me.”
“Maybe he was going to ask you to come with him?”
“There was only one airline ticket,” she said. “He was leaving me.”