“I was replacing the lamp.” He pointed to a floor model topped by a fringe-draped shade. “There’s supposed to be an outlet
under the bed, but I can’t find it.”
“I guess it’s tough not to have Beth Blanchard around to direct the displays.”
“You must be kidding. Nobody misses that woman but the Grinch Who Stole Christmas. Now I can get some real work done, instead of undoing everybody else’s at her command.” He gave Temple a pointed look.
“I’ll leave you to it. We do want Maylords nice and shipshape for tonight’s gala.”
“At least it’ll bring the press in. They always show up when there’s free food. As for customers, looks like the only steady clients we had were the ones ripping off the place from the loading dock.”
“Do I take it you won’t be working for Maylords long?”
“Oh, they won’t can me. I do the daily grunt work around here when I’m allowed to, and I don’t have any stockpiles ofcustomer names to feed into the computer for the Furniture Fairy to download.”
Temple nodded. Rafi had told her the same thing. The interior designers had been hired only to be ripped off and abandoned.
One could have figured that out, and decided to get even.
She edged away from Jerome’s area. It was like talking to prussic acid, he was so bitter. Part of his irritation was no doubt because she was Matt’s friend, and he was just an old acquaintance.
Temple started down the beige brick road, and then stopped at the next vignette.
This one had busts of Caesar and his legions everywhere, with rounded columns marking its boundary.
And around one column a string of pearly fingertips protruded.
Temple stopped. Watched. Someone had been watching her. Someone was still there, lurking. Inside accomplice? Temple
edged right to see more of the barely visible hand. The fingers slid left and out of sight.
Temple edged farther right, following the fingers. They kept retreating.
This was ridiculous!
She leaped left, into the travertine pathway.
And saw a hunched, suited form cowering behind the pillar.
It edged farther away, then glanced over a wrinkled polyester shoulder, showing a red face surmounted by a thinning tuft of
gelled curly hair.
The eyes beneath that unattractive poll finally noticed her watching his undignified, posterior-backward retreat.
He decided to embrace his embarrassment and wrapped both arms around the pillar. Struggling to lift it enough to move, he nodded at her and shuffled it sideways three inches.
That moved it half up on the area rug, so it tilted like Pisa’s Leaning Tower.
He gave her an ineffectual grin. Stepped back. Dusted off his hands as if he had actually accomplished something other than spying on her from behind a featherweight Styrofoam pillar.
Mark Ainsworth was the manager of this store and creeping around like a frat boy on a panty raid?
Not executive material except in a Three Stooges movie! So … not a murder suspect?
Temple gave him a withering look and turned her back.
Even incompetents can kill. If he was this interested in her movements, he might very well have a lot to hide, besides his
unappetizing profile.
Temple gave up on wandering the aisle and headed for the central area.
Beyond the foyer atrium, and the customer caf� with its wrought-iron fence and another Amelia Wong fountain, lay the Accessories area.
This was Temple’s favorite, because everyone could afford a lamp, or a vase, or silk flowers, or a hip-high statue of a sitting black panther, which is what Temple’s lustful eye was really on.
Or … a piece of wall art, framed.
Framed.
Hmmm. Could Janice be a suspect?
Just because Molina, and Matt, knew her didn’t exempt her.
She was a sturdy woman. She was an artist. She used picture wire. She probably matted and framed her own sketches and paintings. That took strength. Upper body strength.
She had been hassled by Beth Blanchard, who probably recognized and went after the one other woman of power employed by Maylords. Some of the women interior designers had looked hard, but none had looked strong like Janice did.
Darn. She looked a lot stronger than Temple herself.
Maybe that was why Matt … but she would not go there.
Also, if Janice were the murderer, she certainly was centrally located enough to slip to and from any vignette with no one
the wiser.
The minute Temple spotted Janice in her long linen Blue Fish dress laying prints out on the handsome work island, she knew she didn’t want her to be guilty.
She was a craftsperson … well, personified. Temple watched Janice’s total absorption in her task, an enviably childlike concentration despite her innate adult dignity.
Drat! She liked the woman. Janice could not be the inside tipster. What she could be shortly was unemployed again. Temple felt a twinge of anger with the Maylords system, that hyped its employees’ hopes and best visions and then callously bled them dry and threw them away.
Such a policy could easily result in bloody murder, and Temple had to wonder where it came from. And from whom? Kenny Maylord? He was CEO. But it didn’t mean he was in control.
So then … who was?
Janice must have sensed Temple’s scrutiny, because she looked up.
“Hi. Hear about the mess last night?”
Temple just nodded. She didn’t want to explain her inglorious part in it. First she’d lost her weapon. Then she’d lost her verticality for an ignominious exit rear-up on a motorcycle.
“What an operation.” Janice didn’t even look around to see if anyone was eavesdropping. Way too straightforward for a crooked joint like Maylords. “No wonder they had so many private security people on the payroll. Drugs. I thought this place was paranoid-you had to fill out a form to check out a Band-Aid if your mat cutter slipped-but I guess the management had reason.”
Temple struggled up on one of the high stools provided for customers and hooked her ankles around the top rung.
“What’s the word around the floor? Was it really just the security force themselves who was in on it?”
“Oh, yeah. One of the guards who was let go just yesterday was taken away by the police. Plus this whole biker gang. They were the … middlemen, I guess you’d call them. Mark Ainsworth is strutting around here like the head cop on Law and
Order. He says it was his ‘sting’ operation that revealed the smuggling plot.”
“What does Kenny Maylord say?”
“Haven’t seen him. Or his Barbie-doll wife. He’s always been a lame-duck leader anyway.”
“Then Ainsworth is the real big cheese around here?” Janice laughed and pushed away a print of a tearful clown holding a bouquet of balloons. “Little Mozzarella Lite? Yeah, I’m afraid he’s it. Sad, isn’t it? I haven’t been handed my walking papers like three-quarters of the design department, but I’ll be shuffling on too. I’m an artist. I don’t look back. And I don’t take direction easily.”
“I thought you needed the job.”
Janice’s level hazel eyes studied Temple. “Matt’s been tattling. Ex-priests. They don’t really understand girl dynamics, do they?”
“So what has he been tattling to you?”
Janice stood, towering over Temple. “I’m not sure he knows, and I’m not sure you could handle it.”
“Oh.”
“Right. Well, your job here is over after tonight. I envy you freelancers. I need to stick out the full week so I get a last paycheck. Boring but realistic.”
“That’s so sad. This store concept has a lot of promise, particularly in the people it hired. And will apparently fire just as
fast.”
“And a lot of problems.” Janice shook her head as if dislodging cobwebs of hope and disillusion. ” ‘Of all sad words of tongue or pen, the saddest are these: “It might have been!”’ “