looking for some items to decorate a rather Spartan faculty apartment,” Michael said.
“No better place than this,” she said with a flourish. “Assistance or poking around?”
“We’ll poke for now,” he said, smirking at me.
“I am at your service, just beckon,” she said before disappearing behind a beaded curtain.
“I could use one of these,” I said, fingering the beads. “You know, for the kitchen door.”
“No,” he said. “Your cat will destroy it within a week.”
“I don’t have a cat,” I said. “I think you’re thinking of somebody else.”
“You will. Either you’ll get a cat or you’ll go to prison. One or the other. That’s what I think.”
“Gee, thanks. I really appreciate your support, Michael. With friends like you, who needs the police dragging them to the pokey?” I said.
“Come here,” he pulled me to a corner where a little settee was hidden next to some lush fabric samples and a towering pile of wallpaper books. Vases of all sizes, shapes, and origins were arrayed around the stacks. “Sit. Now, tell me everything that happened from the beginning to the end, when you called me this morning. Everything. Don’t leave out anything. Ready, go,” he said.
And so I did. Estelle, the bald proprietor, joined us after a time, bringing a pot of tea and some cups on an exquisite wooden stand. They listened, rapt, while I relayed my ordeal. I may have embellished the horror of the discovery a bit, especially when I had to repeat it for Estelle’s benefit after she arrived with the refreshments, and when I was done, we all sat and sipped the tepid brew thoughtfully.
“Wow,” Michael said.
“Quite,” Estelle nodded.
“Can I see your fingers?” he asked.
“I tell you all that, and that’s what you ask me?” I said. “Sure, here you go.” I held out my hands, palm up, over the tea tray and Michael and Estelle fingered my digits.
“Fascinating,” Estelle breathed. With her tiny reading glasses perched on the tip of her nose, she examined my fingers almost as closely as Detective Friday had during the previous night’s interrogation.
I’d had enough when Michael rubbed my index finger on the inside of his wrist. Pulling my hand back, I tucked my hands under my arms.
“So, are we going to shop or not?” I asked. “I need some distraction. Let’s spend some money, shall we?”
Estelle shifted gears quickly while Michael tried to get more information about the missing prints. I left him on the couch and followed her shiny head into a maze of carpets hanging from a massive rack.
“You obviously need color to begin the brightening process. I’d say you are a red personality, yes?” she asked. “Maybe purple?”
“Everything in the place is sort of beige-y gray now, so I’d head into the reds,” Michael said, coming up behind me. “Something dramatic, but not too bloody, if you know what I mean.”
I scanned the carpets as she flipped through, trying to avoid the poofs of dust that each swish released into the small room.
“Stop—go back—I like that one,” I said. Estelle and Michael shook their heads as she reluctantly returned to a red and brown-based kilim. “Yes, this one. Do you have any pillows that might go with?”
“Really? This is what you want? It’s so…rustic. How about something more sophisticated, like this abstract?” Michael swept Estelle aside and pulled forward a modernist mess of red and black swirls.
“That one makes me dizzy.”
“I thought you wanted my advice,” Michael pouted.
“Oh, I do,” I said. “So, you think that would be good in my apartment. You’ll have to help me make it work. Let’s find a couple of lamps, maybe a small table or two?”
He smiled. “Of course, you’ll love it, I promise. It’s really you, not that primitive thing you chose.”
“You really think so? It’s the real me?” I smiled. “I would love to bring a therapist over to your apartment sometime.”
“Already been done,” he said. “Now, look at this fabulous little bar cart. Estelle, does this come in any other colors? With some nice glasses, it will look very classy in the dining area. And we’ll need an ice bucket, maybe something silver or beaded…” And he was off, with Estelle jotting notes on a pad. I followed, picking up a piece and looking at prices here and there.
My credit card was considerably taxed when we were finally seated in our favorite restaurant, Number One Chinese. Michael ordered for us and we were well into our soup before he brought up the murder again.
“So, who do you think did the deed?” he asked.
“I have no idea, really,” I said. “I don’t know Neville very well, outside of the group, and even there, I haven’t even been a member for a full year. It’s hard to say. I don’t think it was Kenneth, I mean, they had some issues—doesn’t every couple?—but they just adopted a baby, so that would be crazy, wouldn’t it? And I don’t know much about his business or his finances, so that could be something, I suppose. And who knows, there could be some other conflict in the group, I guess.”
“Well, that’s why the police think you did it, so I wouldn’t share that theory with anyone else,” he said. “You’re pretty terrible at solving mysteries, aren’t you?”
I nodded. “When I read a mystery novel I can never figure out whodunit. I’m always surprised at the endings.”
Our entrees were delivered and we hunkered down to eat. I knew that I had to be quick because Michael would eat his first choice and then move onto mine when he’d vacuumed up every morsel in his dish. I held off his chopsticks until my hunger was sated, then sat back and drank a cup of watery tea.
“It looks like somebody planned the attack pretty well, though,” I said. “And if I was paranoid, I might think that whoever killed Neville was trying to set me up to take the fall.”
“Why do you say that?”
“Well, the fact that the entire living room was covered with the pages of my manuscript, for starters,” I said. “The room looked like we had a fight and somebody—probably Neville— threw the whole thing up in the air. And the murder weapon. It looked, well, kind of familiar.”
“What?” he squeaked. “That’s kind of a big thing to leave out. Oh, by the way, the murder weapon happened to be mine…Duh. No wonder they questioned you all night.”
“I didn’t say it was mine,” I said. “If I did do it, I’d be pretty stupid to leave all that evidence there to implicate myself, don’t you think?”
“That’s true, you’d never leave your manuscript lying on the floor like that,” he said. “It is pretty obvious. So, how was he killed, anyway? You never mentioned that part. Was there a gun? You didn’t pick it up, did you?”
“No, he was stabbed in the throat, and the knife was still….stuck there,” I said.
“Eeew.”
“I know. I lost my supper when I saw all the blood. Spoiled the crime scene a little, I’m afraid,” I tried to smile. “I know my manuscript was there, because that’s what I was going over early to meet with Neville about. The knife, I don’t know. I don’t know for sure about it, but it seems like I’ve seen it before. It all happened pretty fast, you know? One second I found him, and the next thing I knew, the cops were hauling me out of there in handcuffs.”
“Where would you have seen a knife like that? Was it, like, a kitchen knife? A Swiss Army knife?” he asked, pushing the dishes away