Thursday morning I got downstairs early, but my aunt was already at work, as usual.
Gloria had the Benjamin Moore paint deck fanned out on her worktable. She peered down through the tortoiseshell bifocals perched on the end of the nose at the sample cards arrayed before her.
Every now and then, she held a small, clear plastic bottle of sand next to a card, then shook her head sadly.
I tapped my fingernail against the pill bottle. “Just exactly what are you doing?”
She held up the bottle, shifting the sand backward and forward.
“This, my darlin’ niece, is a teaspoon of sand from Grayton Beach, Florida. My dear, dear client Bizzy Davis wants me to find a paint color that is an exact match to this, so that when she lies in bed at her house down there, she’ll see a seamless stretch of sand, from her bedroom walls, right down to the sparkling turquoise waters of the Gulf of Mexico.”
I moved the paint chips back and forth, then tapped one. “This. Cameo.”
“Afraid not,” Gloria said. “I had the whole damn room painted in Cameo. Bizzy hated it. Said it’s the color of dirty white sheets in a cheap motel.”
“She’s nuts. It’s an exact match.”
“Of course,” Gloria agreed. “She’s one ant short of a picnic. One brick shy of a load. All that. But she’s the client. And that’s a six-thousand-square-foot house down there. So I’m gonna match the damn sand if it kills me. Which it might.”
I sat down at my own desk. “I told Will Mahoney we’d take the Mulberry Hill job.”
Gloria held up another paint chip. “Albescent. What do you think?”
“Too pinky. Do you think I’m crazy to say yes to this guy?”
Gloria smiled that smile. “Depends on what you’re saying yes to.”
“The job,” I said. “Get your mind out of the gutter.”
“A woman my age needs to fantasize. All right. If we’re talking about taking on the house project, yes. Absolutely. We need the work. He’s got lots of money apparently. So why wouldn’t we help him spend it?”
“He’s just as whacked as Bizzy Davis,” I said. “He’s fallen in love with some chick he saw once, on a public television pledge drive. Now he wants me to design his house so she’ll fall in love with him. Oh yes. And give up her job at an Atlanta law firm, move to Madison, and become Mrs. Bra Guy.”
Gloria wrinkled her brow. “Really? He really told you all that? He seemed perfectly sane when he was here the other night.”
“I know. It’s impossible.”
“Still,” Gloria said, holding the sand bottle up to the light. “It’s an interesting proposal.”
“It sounds like something from a reality TV show. Design a house. Catch a spouse. It’s warped.”
“But you agreed to do it.”
“Yeah,” I said, sighing. “He took me out to the house last night, damn him. We walked all through it. You know me. How I am about old houses. I was hooked just as soon as I saw the front door. It could be amazing. After all, he’s got the money, and I’ve got the taste. It’s a dream job, in some aspects.”
“Except.”
“For this nightmarish idea of his. This woman. Her name’s Stephanie Scofield. He knows absolutely nothing about her, except that she’s the love of his life.”
“Research,” Gloria said. “Just look at it as a research project.”
“He’s flown off to Sri Lanka. And he wants a proposal by Monday, when he gets back to town.”
Gloria looked over at me. “This is Thursday. Why aren’t you already on your way to Atlanta?”
I called Will and arranged to meet his architect at the house later in the week. An hour later, my Volvo and I were on I-20, headed to Atlanta. I’d done a Google search on Stephanie Scofield. I found a handful of mentions of her, in the Atlanta newspaper’s society column, the Atlanta Business Chronicle, and a slick society magazine called The Season.
It was enough to get me started. I knew where her law firm was located, where she lived, and the fact that she was a sucker for high-profile charity events like the Atlanta Zoo’s Beastly Feast, the Atlanta History Center’s Swan Ball, and the Humane Society’s annual dinner dance and auction.
I had photos of her too; a grainy black and white head shot from the Atlanta paper showing her with upswept blond hair and a strapless black dress and long dangly earrings, and one of those standard “grip and grin” photos from the Business Chronicle showing her standing in a trim business suit with the other partners in the law firm of Tetlow, Beekner, Carrawan, and Sackler.
Even from those characterless shots, it was easy to see why Stephanie Scofield had attracted my client’s attention. She had huge, dinner-plate-sized eyes, an enigmatic, slightly turned-up at the corners smile, and a killer figure.
It was nearly noon by the time I’d navigated through midtown Atlanta to the Wachovia Bank Tower where Tetlow, Beekner had their offices, but by then I’d formed a sort of plan of attack.
There was a florist’s shop in the lobby of the bank building. I winced as I shelled out fifty bucks for a vase of deep blue and purple hydrangeas, but I kept the receipt. Will Mahoney would be paying for this little excursion. I scrawled a deliberately illegible message on the accompanying card.
According to the lobby directory, Tetlow, Beekner’s offices were on the eighth floor. In the elevator I removed my pearl earrings and necklace, and deliberately ruffled my hair. I shucked my beige linen jacket and tied it by the sleeves around my waist and unbuttoned the top two buttons of my silk blouse. The impromptu changes didn’t make me look too much like a real delivery girl, but then again I now didn’t look that much like a successful interior designer.
The law firm’s receptionist looked up from the magazine she was reading when I cleared my throat a couple times.
“Flowers for Stephanie Scofield,” I said.
“Just leave them here,” she said, going back to her magazine. Clearly it was no big deal for Stephanie to receive flowers from admirers.
“Can’t,” I said.
She looked up, raised one eyebrow.
“Delivery to Miss Scofield. Personally. That’s what my instructions say. The customer paid extra.”
The receptionist looked down at a clipboard on the desk. “Well, she’s at lunch right now. So I guess you’ll just have to leave them with me. I’ll never tell,” she added, giving me a conspiratorial grin.
“Can’t,” I said again. “How ’bout if I just take them back to her office and leave them? That ought to be good enough.”
Her switchboard buzzed softly, and she picked up the phone. “Tetlow, Beekner. Oh hi! I was wondering when you’d call. What have you been up to?”
I cleared my throat again. “Just tell me which office,” I said. “I’ll drop ’em off and get out of your hair.”
She frowned. “Down the hall, right at the water cooler, third door on the left. Her assistant’s at lunch too. Ms. Scofield is very particular about her office. Don’t touch anything in there. Just leave the flowers and go. All right?”
“Sure,” I said, hastening down the hall before she could change her mind.
I found her office with no trouble, ducked inside, and closed the door behind me.
I set the flowers on a mahogany credenza behind her desk, then stood there for a few minutes, just taking it all in.
The office itself was what I’d expected. Expensive mahogany desk and credenza, generic reproduction Oriental rug over institutional gray carpet. A separate computer table, expensive leather desk chair and matching burgundy leather wing chair facing the desk. Her desktop was neat, with only one file folder in the out basket, and a bud vase holding a single long-stemmed red rose.
Her credenza was crowded with sterling silver–framed photographs. I studied them carefully. Stephanie in the strapless black cocktail dress, one arm around another woman in a black cocktail dress. Stephanie and a handsome, silver-haired older man, both of them dressed in tennis whites. Was he her father? Senior law partner? Sugar daddy? Stephanie laughing into the face of a towheaded little girl she held in her arms, both of them wearing pink fur bunny ears. Stephanie dressed in red running shorts, a white singlet, and a Peachtree Road Race number pinned to her shirt, her hair wet and her face red. There were three more photos, all featuring Stephanie smooching a tiny black and brown dachshund. So she was a dog lover.
With one finger I slid open the bottom drawer of the credenza. Inside was a black gym bag with a plastic ID card dangling from the handle, reading BodyTeck. Feeling only slightly guilty, I unzipped the gym bag. Sitting on top of neatly folded workout clothes was a clear plastic makeup bag. She apparently liked La Prairie skin products and cosmetics. And didn’t mind spending twenty-six dollars for a tube of lipstick. And even though she was clearly a girly-girl, she also played tennis, ran, and worked out at a trendy Buckhead gym. Good to know.
There were gilt-framed oil paintings on the wall opposite her desk. Generic Parisian street scenes, they were reproductions, the kind clueless beginners often chose to lend “elegance and sophistication” to their homes or offices. But they told me something about her; she liked Paris. Or the idea of it, anyway.
I heard voices in the hall outside and froze, for just a moment. Then I opened the door a crack and peeked out. I recognized her immediately, from the photos. Her blond hair was in a ponytail today, and she was wearing well-tailored black slacks and a crisp white shirt under a beautifully tailored jacket. The suit was Escada. The black pumps were Prada. I’d seen them in the latest issue of Vogue, and they’d cost four hundred dollars. Bitch. She was down the hall, bent over the water cooler, laughing at something a woman with her was saying.
I ducked out of the office and walked rapidly down the hall. Stephanie Scofield straightened up, looked directly at me, a question in her huge brown eyes. But I walked right past her, gaze straight ahead, around the corner, past the receptionist, and over to the elevator, which thankfully opened its doors just then.
The doors slid shut and I exhaled loudly with genuine relief. I’d boldly gone where others dared not follow. And most importantly, I hadn’t gotten caught.
Sitting in my Volvo, in the baking heat of the parking deck, I made some quick notes for myself. Stephanie Scofield liked red. Clothes and flowers. She was something of a Francophile. She liked expensive stuff. Sterling silver, La Prairie, Prada. The art and office furnishings were kind of a puzzle. Maybe her taste wasn’t so hot. Or maybe she just hadn’t had the time or inclination yet to personalize her office space.
Clearly, there was more work to be done. Clearly, I needed to see where and how she lived. I looked down at my notes. Her address was on a street I wasn’t familiar with, named Lombardy Way. I’d looked it up on an Atlanta map, it was a small side street in Ansley Park, a quiet but ritzy midtown neighborhood only a few blocks away.
I passed the High Museum of Art, the Alliance Theatre, and the Fourteenth Street Playhouse on the way to Stephanie’s address. Was she a bona-fide culture nut, or was she just interested in a prestige address? I wondered.
The Lombardy Way address proved to be across the street from a back entrance to the Piedmont Driving Club, Atlanta’s best-known and most exclusive country club. Number 86, Stephanie’s, was the third townhouse in a row of six dark gray stucco townhouses with a vague Spanish Colonial influence. Black wrought-iron grillwork covered the arched front windows, and a black and cream striped awning covered each arched doorway. They’d been built in the 1920s or 1930s, I thought. Each unit was fronted with a little patch of emerald green grass and vividly colored impatiens.
I sat in the Volvo and stared at Stephanie Scofield’s front door for a long time, trying to gather the nerve to do something outrageous. In a neighborhood like this, there would be people at home during the day. There would be burglar alarms. Barking dogs.
There would be…police.
Somebody tapped on my window. I must have jumped six inches in my seat.
Stephanie Scofield stood in the street, bent down, staring in at me, those saucer-sized eyes shooting sparks, her hands on her hips.
“Hey! Do I know you?”
“Uh.” It sounded dumb to me too.
“What are you doing hanging around here? What were you doing in my office earlier? Who the hell are you?”
“I, uh…”
She held out a tiny black cell phone, the receiver flipped up. “I’m about to call the cops if you don’t tell me what you’re up to.”
I swallowed hard, tried to think of a logical explanation of what I’d been trying to do. The trouble was, there wasn’t any logical way to explain my mission.
“It’s about a man,” I started. “He’s my client. And he thinks he’s fallen in love with you. So he’s hired me to find out what you like. So you’ll fall in love with him.”
“Really?” She frowned, twirling the ends of her ponytail absentmindedly between her fingertips. “Is this guy some kind of freak or something? Did he just get out of prison, anything like that?”
“Nothing like that,” I assured her. “He’s a successful businessman.”
“What’s he want with me? Do I know him?”
Sweat beaded on my upper lip. It must have been closing in on ninety, and I’d been sitting in my parked car for at least ten minutes. My blouse was drenched with perspiration.
“Could we talk about this inside?” I asked. “I think I’m about to have heat stroke.”
“Okay,” she said, looking me over carefully. “You don’t have a gun or anything, do you?”
“I’m an interior designer, not a private eye.”