MANOR OF DEATH: CHAPTER ONE A ghost was on Francine Findley's roof! That was my first thought at spotting the figure in white—almost luminescent in the moonlight outside my bedroom window. My second thought was that the stress I'd been under lately was getting to me. Not a ghost. Just a girl, wearing a white nightgown, her long red tresses blowing in the breeze. Could that be Lisa, up on her mother's roof at this hour? Who else had long red hair like that? No, this girl was taller and older than twelve-year-old Lisa. It was too dark and, with our houses separated by Francine's and my own backyards, too distant for me to be certain, but she looked a lot like Willow McAndrews, the college student who was renting a room in the house next door to Francine's. Willow had short blond hair, though. Still staring out the window, I brushed aside my sheet and comforter, sat up, and struggled to rouse myself from my brain fog. Why would Willow McAndrews don a red wig and climb out onto a neighbor's roof? And how could she or anyone else get onto the roof of the third-floor tower room in the first place? As an interior designer, I was intimately familiar with Francine Findley's octagonal-shaped room. She had hired me recently to renovate her Victorian mansion in preparation for Crestview, Colorado's annual tour of historic homes. Contrary to my advice, Francine had insisted on keeping the wall that sealed off the only staircase to the roof. Decades ago, previous owners had built that wall after their daughter had fallen to her death, a tragedy that later inspired the rumor that the ghost of Abby haunted the "widow's watch"—a flat roof encircled by banisters. The architectural feature was modeled after homes along New England shores where wives of fishermen could watch for their husbands' boats. This afternoon, Francine had mentioned that she was exhausted and planned to "have an early dinner and collapse in bed tonight." She might have suddenly needed to leave home, however, and had asked Willow to stay overnight to watch Lisa. That would at least explain Willow's presence in the house, just not on it. All the windows were dark. Should I call Francine's cell phone? I looked at my radio alarm clock on my nightstand. The red digital numbers read 1:06 a.m.—a horrid hour to call a single mother probably in the midst of a real emergency—to report that her sitter was walking around on the roof. I looked outside again, but the girl was gone. She couldn't possibly have eased herself over the railing and climbed down a ladder that fast. She must have dashed down the stairs and was now in the three-by-twelve-foot walled-off space, getting in and out through the window. That window had been boarded up the last time I'd looked, though. Yawning, I rubbed at my eyes as I lay back down, cursing my insomnia, which had left me addled for a full month now. In desperation, I'd poured a small fortune into my bed: Egyptian-cotton sheets with the highest possible thread count, a silk comforter as light and soft as angel wings, and— Wait! I bolted upright. There was a second—and horrible—means for someone to vanish from a rooftop in an instant! I gasped as my cracked door creaked further open. I could make out my black cat's silhouette in the doorway and see her yellow eyes. My heart pounding, I looked out the window again. No one was on the roof. "Oh, Hildi, I have to go check my neighbor's yard!" I clicked on the small tiffany lamp atop my nightstand, sprang from my bed, jammed my arms into the sleeves of my dusty-rose bathrobe to cover my silk teddy, and grabbed the first shoes I could find—black stilettos. I hoped I wouldn't trip on the two-inch heels if I had to run to assist some badly injured girl. I started for the door, then remembered to grab a small flashlight by my bed. I raced down the stairs, my confused cat darting out of my path. I threw open the back door, crammed my feet into my shoes, and tore across the lawn. My leather soles slipped with my every step on the wet grass, but I didn't slow my pace until I reached the landscape rocks among the row of rose bushes that rimmed our property line. With the stones crunching beneath my feet, I trotted across the hard-packed dirt alley, stepped over Francine's short, decorative wrought-iron fence, and swept my dim beam across her back lawn. "Hello? Is anybody out here?" I asked the silent darkness, my voice barely above a whisper. No groans. No crumpled bodies clad in white nightgowns. No maniacal cackles, either. My presence did, however, set off Francine's next-door-neighbor's dog to barking—Diana Durst's beagle. Diana's attic window was aglow with a yellow light. Was that lamp on earlier, or had I wakened her? Or could that be the room that Willow McAndrews was renting from Diana? Diana had once told me that Willow was a rock climber. She was also self-absorbed and immature; perhaps pretending to be the red-haired ghost of some long-dead soul was her idea of humor. Hildi joined me, her soft fur now brushing against my bare shins. "Let's go back home," I told her over Bugle's ruckus. At least it was reassuring to realize that if anyone had fallen off Francine's roof, Bugle would already have been barking. Come to think of it, his shrill barks were what had originally awakened me. * * * Though typically hot and dry in mid July, Crestview was doing its best impression of Seattle the next afternoon as I walked to Francine's home. I held my London Fog overcoat closed, careful not to crush the rolled-up four-foot lengths of wallpaper angled into my inner pockets, and luxuriated in the soothing, steady patter of raindrops on my umbrella. When I'd called Francine this morning and reported last night's disturbance, Francine insisted she'd been home all night and that "it is absolutely impossible that anyone was on my roof." She sounded as though she thought I was as flaky as old paint on a picnic table. Could I have dreamt the whole thing? I'd never had such a vivid dream, if so. Maybe my struggles with the neighborhood association and with my beloved landlady, Audrey Munroe, were wreaking havoc with me, even during my sleep. While stepping over a puddle, I silently repeated my personal mantra: confidence and optimism. In so many ways, this was my all-time dream assignment—an interior-design job within my own astonishingly lovely neighborhood of Maplewood Hill at the Victorian mansion that I'd lusted over for two years now, ever since I'd first moved to Colorado. Granted, my work to date at the mansion had met with a series of snags and brick walls, but that goes with the territory—the better the job, the bigger the challenges. And my optimism was already being affirmed; just last week Audrey had told me she understood and supported my decision to accept this assignment at Francine's—that I couldn't very well give up a major career opportunity without as much as knowing why Audrey didn't "wish to associate with Francine." (Nor was Audrey willing to elaborate on the matter, even now.) Furthermore, soon the neighborhood association would approve of our plans to install three picture windows within the octagonal tower room. Better yet, if they rejected them, I'd have more ammunition to convince Francine to remove the blasted inner wall, which not only blocked the staircase but made the room lopsided. Her sole argument was that she had "a severe fear of heights" and didn't want Lisa to be able to get onto the roof. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why she refused to remove both the wall and the staircase to the roof. Be that as it may, when it comes to interior design, the customer is always right; she or he is the one who will live with the final results. However, some customers need more nudges than others to discover their own good taste and sound decision-making skills. Francine Findley required a nice, firm shove, and fortunately for her, she'd hired just the right designer to give her one. Speaking of shoves, a chilly blast of wind encouraged me to increase my pace. Francine's and Audrey's backyards bordered each other, so it was a thirty-second walk between our back doors. Today, with the lawns drenched, I'd taken the more-formal front-door route, which required me to circle to the opposite side of our block. Even as I picked my way across a veritable river forming alongside Francine's walkway, I was so taken by the looming presence of the tower room that I tilted my umbrella and looked up through the raindrops. The curtains were quivering, as though someone had spotted me and ducked out of sight—Francine's daughter Lisa, no doubt. Protected by the roof over the Findleys' stoop, I shook off my umbrella and closed it, enjoying the wonderful damp air, a delectable pine scent wafting from the majestic evergreen in the front yard. I rang the old-fashioned twist-key doorbell and, after a brief wait, Francine, a pretty woman in her late forties with auburn hair like mine, threw open the door and greeted me with a gusty, "Good afternoon, Erin." "Hi, Francine." I stepped inside her marvelous foyer and took a moment to silently appreciate the regal, understated grace of its maple parquet floor, ivory-colored walls, and carved archway. "We're having quite the rainstorm today." "We sure are. Let me take your coat." "Thanks. Just let me empty my pockets. I've got the wallpaper samples with me." I extracted the samples and some double-sided sticky tape. "I thought you looked a little stiff—and wide—around the waistline," she teased. Handing her my coat, I wondered what could have caused such a deep rift between my landlady and Francine in the three short years since Francine had moved to Crestview. She'd been unfailingly charming and gracious to me, though I'd only been in the neighborhood for eight months or so and hadn't known her for long. She slid open a pair of paneled pocket doors. As she grabbed a hanger out of the coat closet, I noticed a Halloween costume. It was a cheap, department-store purchase—a skeleton painted on thin polyester black fabric and a plastic mask for the skull, its elastic cord looped over the hanger hook. "Oh, look, Francine," I said with a grin, "it seems as though you've got a skeleton in your closet." Francine followed my gaze, chuckled, and said, "Well, I suppose we all have skeletons in our closets. But this one in particular must be Lisa's doing. She must be trying to give us a message about the lack of closet space in her bedroom." Francine's twelve-year old had been the friendliest of all my neighbors—up until she learned that I had been hired to turn her would-be bedroom into a studio for her mom. Now, along with my landlady and the homeowners' association, Lisa was a third source of contention. It was my job to ensure that all members of the family were satisfied (and preferably thrilled) with the transformation of their living spaces. "I can design a wonderful, spacious closet for her." Francine scoffed, "Oh, that won't do the trick. Believe me." "She's still hinting that she wants to have the third-floor room as her bedroom, then?" "She sure is. And her hints have all the delicacy of a bull in a china shop. I'm not budging, though. I've told her all along that I was eventually going to convert that room into my music studio." A professional musician, Francine played an electric organ. "But now, after we've lived here for almost three years, she seems to think—" Francine broke off as a door above us slammed, followed by the sound of footsteps tromping down the stairs. Lisa, Francine's only child, sneered at me as she rounded the corner. She wore cutoffs and a black camisole underneath an unbuttoned denim jacket and dragged a black backpack along the gorgeous maple floorboards, making me inwardly shudder. She was a freckle-faced redhead, and I couldn't help but study her now to see if that could have been Lisa on the roof, after all. I was certain, though, that the girl I saw was a young woman and not Lisa. She lowered the earphones on her iPod and grumbled, "Oh. You're here." "Yes, Erin just arrived," her mother replied breezily. "Which you would have realized if you weren't always pumping rap music into your ears." Lisa rolled her eyes and slung a strap of her backpack over one shoulder. Francine explained to me, "Lisa is off to a sleepover before her best friend leaves town for three weeks." Lisa shrugged off her mother's attempt to hug her, muttering, "You don't need to tell the whole world my private business, Mom." "I'm only mentioning it because, at some point soon, the three of us need to sit down together and discuss what we want done with your bedroom." "Jeez! I already told you! I want the tower room as my bedroom! If I can't have that, you might as well do whatever you want to my room!" Lisa stepped into a pair of fire-engine red flip-flops on the closet floor. "We noticed your Halloween costume, by the way, dear." "What costume?" "This skeleton." Francine removed the costume on its hanger to show Lisa. In a voice rancid with disdain, Lisa replied, "That's not mine. I've never seen it before." "Well, it certainly isn't mine. It's six sizes too small, for one thing." Francine examined the tag inside the costume neckline as she stashed it back in the closet and added, "It must be one of your friend's costumes, then." "Nope. Not possible. I'd remember. Bet it's Abby's." "Lisa!" her mother admonished. "Abby's a ghost," Lisa told me, one hand on her hip, which she jutted-out in my general direction. "Our house has been haunted ever since a teenage girl jumped off the roof fifty years ago. Abby lives in the room that you're remodeling. And, I can tell you right now, she is not going to approve of the way you plan to destroy her bedroom." "Lisa! That's enough!" In spite of her current attitude toward me, I liked Lisa and understood her frustration at losing out on her favorite space. I smiled at her and said, "Then we'll just have to put all our heads together to come up with a fabulous room that we all approve of." "Yeah. Like that's gonna happen." She returned her headphones to her ears. "I gotta go, Mom. We're riding our bikes and meeting halfway." "But . . . it's pouring outside." "I know," Lisa said. "That's why we're riding our bikes." "Wait!" Francine followed her out to the stoop. Lisa was rolling a bike that must have been leaning upright against the west side of the house. "You shouldn't be wearing sandals while you're riding your bike. Put both straps of your backpack on. And take your headphones off!" The flip-flops stayed put, but Francine managed to pantomime the safer position of the backpack and the removal of her headphones and, although Lisa grumbled something to herself in the process, she complied. Francine sighed and held up a hand, calling, "See you tomorrow," as Lisa rode off. Francine shut the door. "Sorry about that, Erin. Lisa's social skills have been plummeting, ever since her father's and my divorce." "Oh, it's truly not a problem. Lisa's a total sweetheart, most of the time. My half-sister's roughly Lisa's age, and she's equally moody." The fact that I rarely got the chance to see my sister, who lived in California with my semi-estranged father, brought a lump to my throat. Francine rolled her eyes. "I'm just hoping she grows out of this soon." I decided to give the matter of last night's nocturnal visit one last mention. "It's funny that Lisa happened to bring up Abby. Last night when I saw someone on—" Francine guffawed, interrupting me. "Oh, heavens! Is this about the prowler you think you saw on my roof? Erin, you don't actually believe that ghost nonsense, do you?" "No, of course not. I was going to suggest that Willow McAndrews might be doing this as a practical joke, making people think that they'd seen Abby." "What possible reason would Willow have to pull a stunt like that?" She chuckled and shook her head. "Honestly, Erin! You're letting your imagination run wild. You must have been dreaming last night. That's the only rational explanation." If forced to choose, I'd rather believe that I saw a ghost than worry that I was now unable to distinguish my dreams from reality. I held my tongue and studied her green eyes, curious as to why she was so resolute; from her second-floor bedroom, she wouldn't necessarily have heard someone on the tower roof. The doorbell rang. Francine grinned. "Watch. This'll be Lisa's friend. They'll have taken different routes and missed each other." She swung the door open. It was Diana Durst, Francine's next-door neighbor. Diana, a real estate agent who ran the historic homes tour, was in her late thirties, plump but attractive, with dark brown hair and eyes. She wore one of her customary pastel skirt suits—now slightly rain-spattered—and her ever-present broad smile. "Come in, Diana." "Brrrr," she exclaimed to Francine. "Goodness! It's raining cats and dogs out there!" She craned her neck a little to smile at me. "Hello, Erin. I spotted you on the sidewalk a minute ago and hoped you'd be here." "Hi, Diana." I couldn't help but return her smile. The woman was always so upbeat that anything else would feel like scowling at a puppy. Which reminded me: should I admit that I caused her dog to bark at one o'clock in the morning? She touched Francine's arm. "Did you hear any strange noises last night, Francine? Coming from the tower room, maybe?" "Oh, no!" Francine clicked her tongue and put her hands on her hips. "You, too?" "Pardon?" "Erin thought she saw someone on my roof last night." "Oh! Oh!" Diana was actually bouncing up and down as she faced me. She'd once told me she was a former cheerleader, and it was easy to envision her with pompoms now. "Thank goodness someone other than just me saw her! Did you show Audrey, too, by any chance?" "No, I didn't want to wake her, but—" "This is amazing!" In her excitement, Diana grabbed Francine's wrist. "We'll be able to sell twice as many tickets to the tour, once the word gets out." "What word?" Francine asked, in no way sharing Diana's perky attitude. "Why, that the ghost is back, of course . . . the ghost that haunts your tower room!" Francine furrowed her brow. "There is no ghost in my house! Nor on my roof! That's just a silly rumor started by silly people who obviously don't have enough to talk about." Francine peered at both of us as though weighing the notion that we were in a "silly" league together. I too was growing more skeptical by the moment. Diana could have hired her renter to waltz around on Francine's roof as a publicity stunt. Perhaps she'd even encouraged Bugle to bark once Willow was in place, to increase the possibility that their immediate neighbors would look out their windows. "Diana, I've got to say that it didn't look like a ghost to me. It looked like a young woman . . . flesh and blood." "No, no, Erin. Believe me. That's how this particular ghost always appears . . . solid as a rock, then she vanishes into thin air." She giggled. "Isn't this just wonderful news, ladies? Couldn't you just die?" Not willingly, no, I said to myself. In mocking tones, Francine said, "It's quite a coincidence that, according to everything I've ever heard, nobody's seen this ghost in more than ten years, then it reappears right when we're about to show the house on your tour of homes." Missing the implication, Diana happily cried, "Coincidence? Puh-leeze! This is no coincidence. Abby's been haunting the very room you two are now redecorating. She doesn't like anybody to touch that room, and whenever anyone does, she creates mayhem." "Does she?" I asked, amused at the notion of an interior-design-vigilante ghost. "Yes," Diana replied firmly. "Always. And I should know. I took over the real estate company from my mother, who inherited it from her mother, and we've been handling the sale of this house back before it was even haunted." "I'm really very certain that this was a girl I saw. Not a ghost." "Oh, it was a ghost, all right," Diana chirped. "And any talk of its just being a run-of-the-mill girl will nip my publicity right in the bud . . . so that's quite enough of that." "In fact, I thought she looked a lot like your renter, Willow," I persisted. "That isn't possible," Diana countered. "Willow was home with me all of last night. It had to have been the ghost. As a matter of fact, I've heard from more than one source that Willow was the spitting image of Abby Chambers." "Well, Erin," Francine said, an eyebrow cocked. "Maybe you were right, after all. I'm going to ask Willow about all of this. If she is climbing onto my roof, I'm never going to hire her to watch Lisa again." "Don't be ridiculous, Francine," Diana objected. "Why would Willow do something like that?" "Maybe she thought it'd help you and your tour," Francine replied. "It's hardly my tour. It's not as though I'm making a bundle of money for running it every year or get a cut of the ticket sales." "No, but it doesn't hurt your real-estate business to offer your card to everyone on the tour, either." Diana's smile faded at last. Rose-colored splotches formed on her round cheeks. She stomped her foot. "I saw the ghost myself, and I assure you, it was not Willow!" "Frankly, I'm surprised you can even see onto my roof from your little house." I hid my reaction but was witnessing a sharp edge to Francine's personality that might make Audrey dislike the woman. Diana replied evenly, "I can. Easily. From my attic office. I happened to be up there working very late." She cleared her throat and turned her attention to me. "Anyway. Thank you for verifying my ghost sighting. I was going to ask if you'd mind if I send someone over from the Crestview Sentinel to interview you, but maybe I shouldn't." "No!" Francine said before I could even open my mouth. "This is my house, my roof, and I do not want reporters nosing around my property!" Diana started to object, then forced a smile and said, "Mum's the word. Have a nice evening." The moment the door was shut behind Diana, Francine sighed. "Well. I hope Diana doesn't turn out to be on this secret committee that our illustrious neighbors elected," she said, referring to the group that would decide whether or not we could proceed with the remodel as planned. "She'd probably vote to have us turn my room into a gift shop." "Oh, I think she just gets a little caught up in bringing lots of people to the tour. She doesn't mean any harm." "No, nor does Bob Stanley. But you know what they say about the road to hell being paved with good intentions." The situation with Bob, my next-door neighbor, was indeed a bit hellish. Bob manned the architectural-review function of our association and, I was told, rubberstamped his approval of everyone's remodels. Mere hours after he hinted to me that he would give a few words of praise to my "truly stunning design," he instead announced at the homeowners' meeting that my plans to install picture windows would "not maintain the original integrity of a historic house." Caught off guard and armed with insider information (we'd been discussing ideas for his house when he'd complimented me over Francine's design), I blurted out, "How can Francine Findley's picture windows damage the house's 'historical integrity,' whereas the bay window you're planning on installing in your historic home is fine?" A massive argument ensued. The homeowners sided with either Francine or Bob, and the debate grew so contentious that a private committee was formed by a secret ballot. Until a decision was reached, "no architectural changes are to be permitted by either party." Francine's brow was creased with worry-lines. I told her, "I'm confident and optimistic that the committee will approve of our plans as is. But if they don't, we'll make some revisions that can work every bit as well." Better, even. "You mean, removing the wall and the staircase?" She scoffed, "Maybe I should do that. Just to see if 'Abby'" —she drew finger quotes "—can still levitate onto my roof." I ignored her crabby tones and said happily, "Whether or not we go with the picture windows, removing that one elongated wall would be a major improvement." She shot a glare at me. "Actually, Francine, according to—" I hesitated, realizing I shouldn't mention Audrey's name to her enemy "—the grapevine, we'll hear the decision no later than tomorrow. That's why I want us to go ahead and select the wall treatments, and once we know our square footage, we can place our order and go from there." "Sounds like a plan to me. And you're going to hang the sample pieces now?" I explained that I was going to use easy-to-remove double-sided tape, and she excused herself to make some phone calls. I climbed the stairs with growing energy; seeing the empty canvas of a room and envisioning how it would soon look was one of my favorite phases of my job. I hurried past the four upstairs bedrooms to the second staircase, which led to a small attic where my work would begin. This windowless attic was illuminated solely by an unremarkable pendant light fixture centered over the stairwell. The white plaster ceilings were so steeply slanted that, at five-foot-eight, I had to duck as I rounded the banister to reach the tower room. Francine had balked at the expense of rebuilding the attic roof to eliminate this neck-craning approach, but my minor improvements would work wonders toward revitalizing the space. I would upgrade the banisters and the ceiling fixture, install an octagonal window in the opposite wall, paint the walls a buttery yellow, refinish the heart pine flooring to restore its natural warm red hues—and presto! An entrance worthy of a magnificent room. I turned the boring doorknob that would soon be replaced with octagonal glass and strode into the center of the room. I indulged myself with a slow twirl. In my mind's eye, the black base color and Pollock-esque paint splatters were gone from the floor and the heart pine floorboards were polished to a natural warm sheen. The scuffed, cracked, and dirty lavender walls were papered over in a delicate pale-yellow floral print, perfectly accentuated with snow-white trim. The baby-blue curtains were gone, and the too-small and too-boxy windows were replaced with fabulous large arched ones on each of the seven outer walls. Oh, what I could do with the planes of the ceiling in such a room—if only I could remove the inner wall and restore this space to its original dimensions! Francine was a musician, for heaven's sake! Why couldn't she see what an ethereal symphony of light the sunbeams would make as they slanted through glorious windows! Forced to honor my client's wishes, I frowned at the eyesore of a wall, which, in an architectural nightmare, butted against two windows to its either side. Those off-center windows would be removed, and three of the five remaining walls would become picture windows. "And it will look terrific that way," I assured myself aloud. The inner wall with its relatively-smooth surface was where I would now hang the wallpaper. Its surface was oddly warm to the touch, considering that there had been so little sunlight today. I chuckled at the notion that my adversarial wall had read my mind and was now simmering at the concept of being demolished. I hung the four pieces of the wall coverings at even spaces. Wallpaper fades in direct sunlight, so all of these patterns featured subtle, light hues that would work well in the room. Even so, I had a clear favorite and hedged my bets by taking down all the curtains and strategically placing the best pattern in the prime spot—likeliest to show the best in the natural lighting and the first piece that Francine would see as she entered the room. Francine came upstairs to check on my progress just as I'd finished. Her eyes widened a little. "Oh. You put the paper over the wall that blocks the staircase." "Is that a problem?" "No, not really. Not necessarily. It should be fine." Her voice was not convincing, but I couldn't fathom why she objected. She smiled as she studied my favorite pattern. "Ooh, that looks really nice." "Doesn't it?" I replied with a grin. "I'm going to leave you with a second color copy of my furniture plans, to help you visualize the room in its completed state." "Could you hang your plans on the walls, too? If you don't mind." "Not at all. It'll be inspiring." "Or depressing, if the vote goes against us and we have to go back to the drawing board." She sighed as she left. The woman could use my confidence-and-optimism mantra. I quickly hung up my drawings and happened to glance out the window facing Audrey's and my home. The rain had stopped and the sun was making an appearance. To my surprise, Audrey was standing next to her one-car garage, a hand shading her eyes as she stared up at Francine's house. I waved, and she gestured for me to come home. Curious as to why Audrey was beckoning, I left soon afterward and dashed across the soggy lawns. Audrey was pacing near the back door in the kitchen when I arrived. "Oh, Erin," she said by way of greeting. "I got the most exasperating news today. Hugh is back in town." "Hugh?" "Hugh Black. Husband number four-and-a-quarter." She opened her refrigerator, saying over her shoulder, "I need a glass of wine. Anyway. He claims to be a changed man and wants to reconcile with me." "I thought you were only married four times total." "We weren't married long enough to warrant my designating Hugh a whole ordinal number just to himself." "I'm sorry you're exasperated, but . . . is he on his way over here or something? Is that why you wanted me to come straight home?" "No. It's not an emergency." She poured herself a glass of Chardonnay, holding out the bottle to me in an unspoken offer to pour me a glass, but I shook my head. "Then why did—" "I was merely waving hello to you." Audrey was up to something, which would no doubt be revealed to me soon enough. I got such a kick out of her that I couldn't help but smile, and I slipped into the white slat-back barstool at her kitchen island. I took a deep breath, gaining sustenance from this magnificent space, so bright and airy with its copper accessories and white trim against the maize-tile and pale-yellow walls. "So tell me about Hugh." "There's not much to tell. We were married, very briefly, three years ago. I dumped him because he was a skirt chaser." Aha! Francine and her soon-to-be-divorced husband had also moved in three years ago. "By any chance, was Francine Findley wearing the skirt that Hugh was chasing?" Audrey arched an eyebrow, held my gaze, and said evenly, "Now that you mention it, I believe she was." She took a sip of her wine. "As I was saying . . . or would have been, had I not gotten distracted, I've been trying to get a feel for which direction the wind is blowing regarding the committee's decision on your design, and it appears that they're going to announce some sort of compromise." "A compromise? Such as: Francine can install one-and-and-a-half picture windows, and the Stanleys can install half of a bay window?" "There's really no point in speculating if you're going to be facetious." Audrey continued, "I had a long talk with the Stanleys this afternoon about your rift. Bob now admits that he acted rashly in suddenly not hiring you in favor of your handsome friend, Mr. Sullivan. Cassandra felt—" "Wait. You talked to them about this? After I specifically asked you not to?" Hildi trotted into the room and greeted me with a meow. I took that as a feline reminder that I needed to watch my tone of voice with Audrey; though all was forgiven, I didn't want to touch off another quarrel. Audrey flicked her wrist and replied, "It came up in conversation." "I see," I muttered, unhappy. Immediately following the association meeting at which Bob rejected my plans for Francine's house, he also reneged on our verbal agreement and hired someone else to spruce up his house for the tour. Out of the dozens of designers in this large, picturesque college town, he chose Steve Sullivan, my fiercest professional rival. The man was supremely talented and sexy as hell, but brought out the worst in me. The doorbell rang. Audrey glanced at the clock and announced, "Ah. That will be Mr. Sullivan, right on time." © Leslie Caine Buy the book from Barnes & Noble or an independent bookstore.