Traci Tyne Hilton - Mitzi Neuhaus 03 - Buyer's Remorse (7 page)

“Neveah’s sells your designs. Is everything there local?” Mitzy asked.

“Yes. Fiona has three of us designing for her. She has a pretty good reputation as well. But there isn’t a huge market for gothic and vintage style luxury goods.”
Alice
traced a crooked line on the table top, “It is
Portland
so there is some market. It’s just not huge. Fiona thinks of herself as green. Some of her customers are really loyal because of that. I think she still has room for improvement. She ships product all over the country, which helps the profit margin but loses some of her green cred, in my opinion.”

“I expect she only ships though, right? She’s not receiving truckloads of goods, so she’s that much greener than most places.” Joan offered.

“Yeah.
That’s what she hangs her hat on.”

“I feel like I need to meet the other employee. You said her name is Renata?” Mitzy chewed her bottom lip. “But I don’t want to draw unnecessary attention to myself.”

“Why not?”
Alice
lifted her teacup and took a drink. “Do you have something to hide?”

“She absolutely does not.” Joan sat back in her chair and crossed her arms.

“Why don’t you want to draw attention to yourself?”
Alice
sat back a little as well, “That’s not like the Mitzy Portland knows and loves.”

Mitzy didn’t want to tell
Alice
about her feelings on the murder. To start with,
Alice
had been the only person so far to really care about Lara. How awful to hear Mitzy should have been the one killed. And people who did know her thoughts on it were beginning to treat her as though she were just paranoid.

“I was selling her my condo. If folks hear I am trying to help sort out this murder they’ll think I want something from it. Like money or something. If I can help but keep a low profile, it seems like it would be better.”

“Well that makes sense. Can I help at all? I should go in and see Fiona this week. I can talk to Renata a little and maybe I can hook up with the other designers. We might want to do something in Lara’s memory anyway. It would be a good opportunity to see what they know.”

“Would you really? Oh,
Alice
. That would be fantastic. Thank you.” Mitzy breathed a sigh of relief. “Just talk to them about Lara. Maybe someone knows about her other friends or her family.”

“Of course.
It’s the least I can do.”

“One more thing, though, and it might be a little harder. It seems to me Neveah’s employees are living pretty well for selling clothes. Can you sort of find out about commissions or bonuses or anything that might explain all that money?” The money issue, Mitzy felt, was the one thing that gave her hope the murderer hadn’t actually been after her. If she or Alice found out that Lara and the others earned their money legitimately she’d try harder to convince the Feds that she was the intended victim.

On the other hand, looking into the money issue could lead to the killer.

“Honestly, that’s a harder one. But I’ll see what I can find out. Renata might talk about it a little. Hector might know. Have you talked to him much?”

“I have. He’s pretty shook up still. I’ll give him a couple of days and then come back. He knows what I’m doing. Maybe I’ll have learned something that could help by then.”

Alice
stood up. “I’m really glad that you care so much. I’d hate to think Lara had died and…and …no one had cared about her.” She choked on the words.

A thread of guilt needled Mitzy’s heart. She would do her best for Lara, but in reality, she was doing this for herself.

“Thank you guys for coming. If I want to see Fiona later this week so I need to finish up my summer samples. Please don’t think I’m rude, but I’ve got to get back to work.”

“Not at all.
I totally get it. Will you call me after you see Fiona?” Mitzy said, standing up.

“Yes, absolutely.”

Joan stood up too. “It was good to meet you. Thanks for your help.”

Mitzy looked at Joan. She had probably better let Joan get back to work. Mitzy despised the feeling of vulnerability that left her wanting a babysitter for herself. She needed to stuff it away and let Joan go.

The two women tucked themselves into the Miata and drove away. Joan chattered about how badly
Alice
’s house needed a designer while Mitzy tried to think up reasons for all the extra money at Neveah’s.

Alonzo was in his office when Mitzy and Joan got back. “Did you see this?” he asked Mitzy after kissing her cheek. He pushed a piece of newspaper into her hand.

She held it away from her face, disturbed to think she might need reading glasses. “What is this?” she asked.

Alonzo shook his head and thwacked the paper with his finger.
“News on the murder from the neighborhood paper.”

She read the headline. “Oh no,” she said quietly to herself. The murder weapon had been found. Directly under the patio there was a deep indentation in the grass where something heavy had fallen, which had led the police to look for a blunt object in the area. And all around them on the wall were newly installed concrete faux stones. One of the stones, freshly cemented to the wall, not far from the dent in the dirt, was bloody. Mitzy sat down. The police were contacting all of the men who had worked on that section of wall. 

“They think someone who was working there went upstairs, smashed Lara’s head in, dropped the stone, and then hid it by sticking it into the wall?”

Alonzo nodded. He wrapped his arm around Mitzy’s shoulder. “You probably know what I’m thinking,” he said.

“Were these men who had ever worked with Maxim Mikhaylechenko?” Maxim was still in prison but he had also worked construction, which was how she ran into him in the first place.

“I can’t answer that positively,” Alonzo said. “But I do know the teams working on your condo and yes, Mitz. I’ve chatted with them. At least one team is Russian. But I know them Mitzy. They are really good guys. Could someone else have come by the condo in the night? I don’t know. I can’t speak for all of them. But I would have staked my business on them being straight.” Alonzo gave her a quick squeeze and stood back again. He stared out his window. “But what can we ever know about the people we work with?”

“Between that and the phone call…” Mitzy said. She turned and stared out the window too. “Did Marge take a message for you? From two guys this morning?” she asked suddenly.

“No,” Alonzo said. “What two guys?”

“I saw two guys I thought were watching me earlier. They came in here. Joan was in her office and she was sure they came into your office. She was paying attention because she liked the looks of one of them.”

“Of course she did,” Alonzo said. He opened the door to his waiting room, “Excuse me. I’ll just ask Marge about it.”

Mitzy followed him into his reception area.

“No one came in.” Marge was saying. “I did hear someone come up the stairs but since they didn’t come in here, I assumed they went to Joan’s office.”

“Did they stay long?” Mitzy asked.

“No. They didn’t. I knew Joan was in her office so I was surprised by how quickly they went back downstairs. My door was open so I could hear well, but I can’t see the staircase or Joan’s door from here.”

“Joan must have had her door closed because she said she saw them cross the street and come inside, but she thought they stayed upstairs.”

“Well where did they go?” Marge asked. What were they doing here?”

“They must have just come the wrong way,” Alonzo said, but his eyes looked worried. “Give me your keys
Mitz,
I want to check out your office.”

Mitzy put her hand over her pocket. “Not without me.”

Alonzo shrugged and headed out the door.

Mitzy headed downstairs. She met Alonzo at the door and hooked her pointer finger through his belt loop. She leaned in close for a second. Alonzo reached back and swatted at her hand. Mitzy stuffed her hands in her pockets but kept close to Alonzo. Alonzo stuck his hand out behind him without looking at Mitzy, and shook it a couple of times.

“Can I have your keys, Mitzy?” Mitzy said, mimicking Alonzo’s deep voice.

Alonzo grunted. Mitzy put the keys in his hand. Mitzy rested her hand on his shoulder and leaned in again, “Relax,” she whispered. Alonzo shook his shoulders a few times.

He stopped before putting the key in the lock. “I’ll relax when I know you’re safe.” He unlocked the door and let them in.

Mitzy released a deep sigh. Things looked fine.

“What’s all this?” Alonzo asked. The computer mess was in the middle of the office floor.

“That’s just the server junk I bought,” Mitzy said. “Our server was having trouble so I decided I needed to set up my own system.”

Alonzo grunted.
“Stone age.”
He walked across the office and went into the men’s room. He came out immediately and went into the ladies’ room.

Mitzy could tell he was a man on a mission. But she could see nothing wrong in the office. She picked up the phone to check the message. Though she knew her voicemail message said she was on vacation her hand was shaking. She breathed a sigh of relief that there was nothing to hear. Alonzo went from the bathroom to the contract office.

Mitzy spun in her chair. She turned to her bookshelf. Something was off.  She stood up and looked at it more closely, running her fingers down the spines of her books. She didn’t read them, but they looked nice in the office. It looked like they were all there. She turned around again. Maybe the shelf was fine. She turned back to it again. Something was missing.

Alonzo came back in from the private conference room, a shard of something in his hand. “What’s this?” he asked. He tossed the chunk to Mitzy.

“My platter,” she murmured. “I couldn’t put my finger on what was missing from the bookshelf. Where did you find this?” she asked.

“You’d better come back with me.” He grabbed her hand and led her into the back room.

She squeezed his hand, but it unnerved her. He didn’t do the touchy feeling thing for no reason. The platter was in pieces strewn across her meeting table. It was a big, obvious mess.

“How did Ben do this?” Mitzy asked.

“Okay. Ben was here. That’s good.”

“Yeah…I think he was here.”

“Why don’t you call him and ask if he was?”

“I can’t. I mean. No one is supposed to know he comes here.”

Alonzo rolled his eyes. “If Jenny doesn’t know he’s been doing work for you still, then she’s dumber than she looks.”

“You knew?”

“Um, yeah.
You aren’t very quiet on the phone you know.”

“Well for now I need someone to do what he does and he’s already doing it. If I want him to keep doing it I need to not tell Jenny.”

“So you can’t call him and ask him how he broke your plate?”

“I guess not.” She picked up a shard of the ceramic platter. “I liked it because it was peaceful,” she said. “I guess I can buy another one from Tabby, but I would hate for her to know this one broke.”

Alonzo walked into the main part of the office and looked around. “What did he do when he was in here?” he asked.

Mitzy followed him back out, a piece of the platter in her hand. “I don’t know. Do you see any new equipment? He didn’t want to work with this old stuff so I said he could go get what he really needed. But I don’t see anything new.”

“I don’t either. Where were you keeping that platter?”

“It was on the bookshelf.”

“So how did Ben break it?” Alonzo asked.

“Maybe he bumped the shelf bringing in the new server?”

“Then where is the new server and why is the platter in the other room?” Alonzo walked back into the private office. He began to put pieces of the platter back together like a puzzle.

“Maybe he moved it and then dropped it on the table?”

“Why would he move it?”

“I don’t know,” Mitzy said. “I guess I do have to ask him. I will when he comes in again.” She rubbed the piece between her thumb and her finger. Then she kneeled down and looked at the carpet. “There aren’t any pieces on the floor.” She rubbed her fingers across the floor. “The ceramic dust gets on my fingers when I touch the broken edge of this shard, but there isn’t any dust on the carpet. Do you think Ben vacuumed?”

“Doesn’t sound like Ben,” Alonzo said. “There is plenty of dust on the table, but not all of the pieces.”

“I have one. Maybe some fell off the table.” Mitzy crawled into the smaller office, looking under all of the furniture as she went. “Ben would’ve called if he had broken something.
Probably.”

“Maybe.
Look here,” Alonzo said, indicating the center of the walnut conference table, “It’s scratched. I think that is where the plate landed.”

“But how?”
Mitzy looked up and around her. Unless someone threw the plate at the table it really couldn’t have landed right in the middle. She stepped back to the door and then walked forward pretending to trip. She let the shard of platter fly from her hand toward the table. It landed near the edge and skidded across. “I know that’s not a whole platter, but it doesn’t look possible to break it there by accident.” She straightened herself out and tried one more time but with a book she pulled from the shelf. But again, the book just skidded across the tabletop. Ben might have tripped and dropped the platter on the table, but it didn’t look like it would have landed in the middle and left scratches. Mitzy turned to Alonzo, but he was on the phone. She puffed some hair out of her eye and listened in.