A Fashionable Murder (18 page)

Sam asked that they be seated near the window so Josie could look out at the crowd passing.

“It’s marvelous,” Josie said after they had ordered, at their waiter’s suggestion, two Big Apple martinis.

“Having a good time?” Sam asked.

“You know it!”

“This is what I wanted our time here to be like,” Sam said, a bit wistful.

Josie reached across the tiny table and took his hand. “It isn’t your fault that Pamela Peel was murdered.”

“No, but I do keep wondering why she was in my apartment. Except for Mom and a few friends, I don’t have any real contact with the city anymore. Jon keeps asking who hates me so much that they wanted to connect Pamela’s murder to my life, and the only answer I have is that I don’t know,” he ended sadly.

Josie had an inspired idea. “Sam, maybe this had nothing to do with you. Maybe it has to do with selling your apartment. Maybe the body was placed there to be found by someone looking around. Maybe someone doesn’t want that apartment to be sold.”

Sam looked skeptical.

“Sam, it is an idea, right?”

“I suppose, but—”

“So let’s think it through. You told me last Christmas that you were going to sell your condo, right?”

“Yes.”

“Is that when you decided to do it?”

“Pretty much then. I’d thought about it once in a while since leaving the city. There is a certain amount of annoying paperwork that goes with being a landlord. But I had a great tenant who kept the place up and who paid enough rent to cover all the monthly fees and taxes. Real estate prices in this part of town are only going to go up. Keeping the place made financial sense. And, to begin with, it made emotional sense as well.”

Their waiter returned with two huge martini glasses topped with shimmering, thin, sugared apple slices. Josie waited until he’d left to ask another question. “What do you mean, ‘emotional sense’?”

Sam smiled across the table at her. “Josie, the first few days I was on the island, I came close to turning around and running back to New York.”

“Why?”

“Well, in the first place, almost every single person I knew had told me I was doing the wrong thing. Two of the men I worked closely with for years had spent what seemed like every lunch hour for the last month I was here telling me that I was acting like an idiot, that my move was just the result of an exaggerated case of male menopause and I shouldn’t make spur-of-the-moment decisions that could change my life forever. I suppose that may be part of the reason I rented my place out instead of putting it on the market right away. There was a part of me that doubted my decision.”

“Sam, you weren’t running off to Tahiti to paint naked women. You were moving less than two hundred miles away and buying an established business, a business you knew a lot about.”

“But I was giving up my career. And I admit it: I was burned out, not just professionally but personally. I no longer enjoyed living here. But there were days when I thought that my friends might be right, that I was just another male becoming involved in a flurry of activity to try to forget that I was getting old.

“I arrived on the island on a day in early spring when icy rain was falling and the winds were high. I went to check out the store I’d bought and discovered that the roof leaked. Rain had poured right down onto shelves full of expensive imported liquors. My house, which had seemed perfect when I’d bought it less than a month before, looked bleak and inhospitable. I didn’t know anyone on the island. If I hadn’t been so exhausted, and so worried about the strange clanking sound my car had started making sometime around exit fifty-nine on the parkway, I think I would have turned around and come right back.”

“I’m glad you didn’t,” Josie said quietly.

“I’m glad I didn’t too. But, until the day that you came into my store looking for a phone, I had doubts. Serious doubts.” He picked the candied apple slice off the side of his glass and popped it in his mouth. “Anyway, I told myself that I was keeping the condo as an investment, but for a while there it was also my fall-back position. But then my tenant was transferred overseas sometime around Thanks-giving and, after thinking about it for a few weeks, I decided to sell.” He looked up at Josie and smiled. “My future’s on an island a bit smaller than Manhattan.”

Josie sipped her drink. It was slightly sweet and very strong. But she didn’t need it; she was feeling wonderful.

“But I don’t see how selling or not selling my apartment could possibly have anything to do with Pamela’s murder,” Sam continued, and her elation vanished.

“What if a potential buyer had opened that window seat?” Josie asked. “Don’t you think that would have stopped the sale?”

“But, Josie, it didn’t get that far. And it wouldn’t have. No apartment goes on the market without all sorts of inspections. Someone would have found the body before a potential buyer did.”

“So why was the body there?”

“Josie, you know why. It was placed there to implicate me in her murder.” He leaned across the table and stared at her. “What else?”

“I don’t know,” Josie admitted.

“There can’t be any other reason,” Sam insisted, sounding angry.

Josie bit her bottom lip. They had been having such a nice time and it was unlike Sam to respond in this manner. “How many people knew you were going to be selling your place? The man who was renting it from you?”

“No, he told me he was leaving the place vacant. But he never asked if I had any plans for it. He’s been in Singapore since the first week in December. I think we can assume he is out of the picture.”

“Did your Realtor list it anyplace?”

“Not yet. I wanted to come clean everything out before she even looked through it. I didn’t think I’d left anything of value here, but I wanted to check before it was officially put on the market.”

“Why did you leave those photo albums in the closet? I would have thought that you would have had to clean everything out before you left.”

“I did. They weren’t there when I left. That closet was empty.”

“Then where were they?”

“You know, I think I may have left them in the window seat.”

“Where I found Pamela?”

“Exactly.”

“You know,” she said slowly, “it’s a perfect place to hide a body. It’s almost as though someone built it for that reason.”

Sam chuckled. “I used to keep records, case files and the like, in it. Before the place was redecorated, I had four old oak file cabinets in the living room. Pamela hated them. Said they made the place look like an office in a trashy noir detective film. The window seat was built so I’d have a place to store paperwork. Anyway, I put a lot of my personal things, records and so on, in my storage locker in the basement when I rented out the place. But I didn’t want to leave photos down there. It’s supposed to be dry and all, but photographs deteriorate so easily. I brought most of them along with me to the island. But I think I left some of them, the most recent albums, in the window seat.”

Josie picked up her glass and peered at the remaining golden liquid. She realized the import of what Sam had just said. He had brought many of his photo albums to the island with him, but not the ones he had most recently filled. Not the ones with photographs of Pamela Peel.

“You had your hair cut, didn’t you?” Sam asked, changing the subject.

“Yes. Do you like it?”

“Sure. You know I always like the way you look.”

“Speaking of looks, did you really like what Pamela did in your apartment? It’s so different from your place at home,” she added.

“Well, it’s not me, that’s for sure. But, Josie, you know me. I don’t pay a whole lot of attention to things that don’t matter to me. And the way that apartment was decorated was one of those things. I chose it because of the location, the building, and because I could afford to buy it. And, when I lived there, I furnished it pretty much the way I’ve furnished my house. I bought things when I needed them. I sure don’t buy anything I think is ugly. But when I buy furniture, I care how functional it is—whether it fits my spaces, whether it will do what I need it to do.”

“I guess that’s not the way Pamela liked things,” Josie said. She was a bit hesitant. This was the closest they had come to actually talking about Pamela.

“I don’t think many decorators furnish a place the way I do. Even the ones that claim to be interested mainly in functionality want to buy all new functional things. And, remember, my apartment wasn’t exactly like the house you know. My house now is nice because I can afford nice things. When I was starting out, I bought mostly junk because that was what I could afford. And, to tell the truth, once I live with something for a while, I don’t really see it. What I replaced, I replaced because it fell apart, not because it was ugly or in bad taste. But all that changed when I started seeing Pamela. I’m afraid she took my apartment as a personal affront. And I could see what she meant. After all, every time anyone came over, they commented on the fact that the hand of a talented and well-known designer had rather obviously not been at work in my home.”

“So she got tired of hearing those comments?” It was something Josie understood. Sam was not only furnishing his house in the dunes, but also remodeling it. And he didn’t always ask for her expertise.

“Yes. And then she gave me the decorating job as a Christmas present.”

“That’s what your mother said. She also said that Pamela announced the present at a party . . . in front of all your guests.”

“Yes, so, of course, I couldn’t refuse.”

“Sounds a little manipulative,” Josie responded without thinking.

“Oh, I think she was just trying to be generous. It was really very sweet of her.”

Josie wasn’t about to change her first opinion, but she wasn’t going to speak up again. “So you liked the way it turned out?”

For the first time, Sam hesitated before answering. “Not particularly. I did hate the whole decorating process. To tell the truth, after Pamela had tried to drag me to furniture showrooms two weekends in a row, I protested and refused to go. So Pamela did what she wanted without any input from me. Well, not a lot of input. I did tell her that I needed to have files somewhere in the place and a few other things. I really have no one to blame for how depressing that place turned out but myself. Every time Pamela asked me a question, I told her to go ahead and make the decision herself. She was the professional, after all. Now, of course, thanks to you, I know that I placed a real burden on her.”

“What do you mean? Thanks to me?”

“Josie, you’re always complaining about clients who can’t, or won’t, make up their minds. I put Pamela in that exact same position and then I was critical of the decisions I forced her to make.”

“So you don’t like the way she decorated your place?” Josie asked again.

“Not really. But it’s not as though I lived there for very long. I probably would have made some changes if I hadn’t retired and moved away.”

“I always feel uncomfortable when a client doesn’t like my work. And I would think it would be even more difficult if the work I was doing was for someone I knew,” Josie said, thinking she was being subtle.

“Like the deck you designed for my house?” Sam asked, a twinkle in his deep blue eyes.

Josie laughed. “Yeah, like that. And one day you’re going to discover that my design is superior to the one you came up with.”

“Can I get you another drink?” Their waiter materialized by the side of the table.

Sam raised his eyebrows at Josie.

“I’ll have one if you will.” She wasn’t really interested in more alcohol, but she didn’t want this evening to end.

“We’ll have two more. And perhaps something small to munch on.”

“We have a bar menu.” The waiter pulled a stiff cardboard rectangle from his pocket and offered it to them with a smile.

“What do you think?” Sam asked Josie, their heads together as they read through the list.

Everything looked wonderful. “Whatever.”

“We’ll have the Venetian tower,” Sam announced.

“What’s that?” she asked when their waiter had gone off to the kitchen.

“A fancy name for all sorts of little Italian munchies. They bring it out on a three-tier plate, hence the tower. They also have a Japanese selection called Tokyo Rose Tower. Or Mexican—Bandito Tower. I don’t know who names these things,” he added.

She smiled at him.

“Josie, you’re more interested in Pamela than in my apartment, aren’t you?”

“I . . . I’m worried that you’re going to . . . to get involved in her murder. Oh, hell, Sam. I’m afraid you’re going to be arrested.”

“I wish I could tell you there’s no possibility that will happen.”

“You mean . . . ?” It was too horrible for Josie to even say out loud.

“I don’t know what’s going to happen, Josie. I am getting special attention. After all, I worked with the police in this city for decades. And there was no physical evidence to connect me with the murder, no DNA or fingerprints. But she was found in my apartment. And we weren’t getting along well right before I left New York. . . .”

“Sam, that was years ago. You haven’t seen her in years!” She glanced across the table at Sam. “You haven’t, have you?”

“I saw her the first morning I was in town. The day before you arrived. Probably forty-eight hours before she was killed, as it turned out.”

NINETEEN

THEY TALKED ALL night.

At first, Josie, feeling betrayed by Sam’s admission that he had visited an old flame as soon as he found himself within range of her heat, had been less than her usual receptive self. Sam had already told her that he was coming to the city a day early to make sure that his place was ready for them. He’d mentioned getting in a few groceries, coffee beans and the like. He had not mentioned getting together with Pamela Peel. But Sam had explained that he had run into Pamela in the local deli when he was doing exactly what he had told Josie he was going to do.

“She was as surprised to see me as I was to see her,” Sam said. “She suggested we go back to my place for a cup of coffee. I didn’t see any reason to refuse.”