Loose Screws

Nick follows my gaze, turns back to me. “You know that guy?”

“Nathan Caruso. Lives next door.”

“He positively ID’d the body,” Nick says softly. My eyes shoot to his, dread making my stomach burn.

“Who—?”

“Brice Fanning. Your boss, I take it?”

“Shit!”

Nick’s expression goes a little funny, which I guess isn’t too surprising, considering my reaction.

Oh, God. I am a horrible, horrible person. A man is dead, most likely not from natural causes, and all I can think is, “This is so freaking unfair!” Okay, so Brice was a mean, petty little man and I couldn’t stand being in the same room with him for more than five minutes—which made weekly meetings a bit problematic—but he was still a human being and thus deserves some respect, at least, if not an indication of sorrow.

I hold my breath for a second or two…nope, sorry, not gonna happen. Didn’t like the guy when he was alive, don’t much care that he’s dead.

If you want to leave now, I’ll completely understand.

But, God. Brice was Fanning Interiors. I was just a minion among many, one of the small army of designers Brice’s prestige and reputation were able to keep busy. I’d recently begun to get a serious leg up on establishing my own rep apart from Fanning’s, but there is not a doubt in my mind that I wouldn’t be living the lifestyle I was today had it not been for Brice’s taking me on seven years ago. In many ways, I was indebted to the man.

And now he’s nothing but a schmear on an East Side sidewalk. Oy. That poor guy who found him…

“How did he die?” I ask over the constant squawking of the police radio nearby.

Nick’s face undergoes this whole impersonal-police-mask thing, but his jaw is stubbled, as if he hasn’t had time to shave, and there are bags under his eyes. “I’m not at liberty to say.”

For some reason, this irks me. So I tuck one of the many curls that will spring forth like snakes from my French braid over the next fourteen hours and say, “I saw the blood, Nick. Somehow I doubt he was pecked to death by a rabid pigeon.”

Nick gives me this look. “Pigeons don’t carry rabies. And besides, you’re just assuming that was blood.”

I give him a look back. Then he sighs and says, “He was shot.”

I visibly shudder. I don’t much care for guns. Especially when they’ve been used on people I know. I take another sip of latte. “When?” I whisper.

“Real early this morning.”

I look up. “Any witnesses?”

“No.”

“The man was shot in the middle of 78th Street and there were no witnesses?”

“Another assumption. We found him in the middle of 78th Street. Doesn’t necessarily mean that’s where he was shot.”

“Oh,” I say, then frown in concentration, which earns me another heavy sigh.

My brows lift. “What?”

“Please don’t tell me you dream about being an amateur detective.”

“Not to worry,” I say. “I don’t even like to read murder mysteries.” He looks relieved, at least until I ask, “I don’t suppose you know who?”

Nick shakes his head, rubbing the back of his neck. “Nope. Which means we’ve got a lot of questioning to do. Starting with everybody who worked for him.”

“Today?”

“Yeah, today. What did you think?”

I shake my head. “Sorry, but I’ve got a ten o’clock, then appointments straight through the day—”

“Ginger,” Nick says, patiently. “Your boss is dead. Trust me, none of you are going to be doing any decorating—”

I bristle. “Designing.”

“—whatever, today…”

But before we can pursue this conversational track, another cop calls Nick over and I’m left entertaining a sickening sense of foreboding.

People are milling about, looking more put out than concerned. I let out a heavy sigh of my own, then take a tissue out of my purse, spread it on the step of the town house next door, and plunk down my linen-covered tush. Perspiration races down my back.

My poor little brain goes positively berserk. Dead people tend to do that to me. Especially dead people who had help getting that way, even if I couldn’t stand them. Brice Fanning might have been a brilliant designer, but he drove his employees nuts. I have never met anyone whinier, or pickier, or less inclined to give the people who worked for him the respect or recognition they deserved. The only reason most of us put up with him was for the money, as well as that reputation thing. But I think it’s safe to say once the shock wears off, he won’t be missed.

Except then, because my brain is already on overload and I tend to have an overly active imagination anyway, I think, gee, what if Brice didn’t bite the big one because somebody simply hated his guts? What if there’s some crazed person running around who has it in for interior designers? A client displeased with her faux painting job? A homophobe? An architect?

Or maybe his murder is even more random that that. Maybe somebody just did him in for his Rolex or something?

Carole Dennison, Brice’s top designer, joins me, although she doesn’t sit, out of deference to her vintage Chanel suit, I imagine. How can she not be dying in that jacket? She digs in her LV purse for a cigarette, lights up.

“Great way to start the week, huh?”

“Might rain later, though,” I say. “Maybe cool it off a little.”

She laughs, a raspy, braying sound that always makes me feel better. Carole has worked for Brice for about a hundred years, although, if the lighting is subdued and her makeup is thick, she only looks sixty. Ish. I like Carole a lot. She’s a tough, ballsy broad who doesn’t take anything off anyone, while instilling the unshakable conviction in her clients that nothing is impossible, given enough money. I started out at Fanning’s as her assistant, in fact, and learned more from her in one month than I’d learned in all my years of design school. We’re fairly close, enough that I’d even invited her to my wedding. So I’ve known for a long time that one of her major gripes was that, even though she brought in more business than any three of us put together, Brice refused to make her a partner. She’d also confided in me that she didn’t dare go out on her own, that Brice threatened to make her life a living hell if she did.

She crosses her arms, squints over at the herd of police cars. “If you ask me, I think it was that last lover of his.”

I’m not sure what to say to that, so I leave it at, “Oh?”

“Yeah. Bet you anything. Jealousy, pure and simple, since Brice took up with someone new about a month ago.” She looks at me. “Did you know?”

I shake my head. If I didn’t care about the man, I sure as hell wasn’t interested in his love life. Then, for a couple minutes, we make appropriate noises about how shocked we are, how stunned, how grossed out, both of us avoiding the one question hovering at the forefront of our thought:

What does this mean, job-wise?

Finally, because I can’t stand it anymore, I say, “So. Do you have any idea how the business is set up? I mean, in the eventuality of, um…” I gesture lamely toward the chalk mark.

Carol thoughtfully pulverizes the cigarette stub beneath her twenty-year-old black-and-beige Chanel slingback. To my shock, a tear streaks down her carefully foundationed cheek.