I heard the barking ten yards from her front door. Actually, it was more like crazed, frantic yipping.
Stephanie jangled her keychain. “I’m coming, sweetie,” she cooed. “Mama’s home.”
She fitted the key in the lock and turned to me, frowning slightly. “How do I know you’re really who you say you are? I mean, do you have any ID or something like that?”
The dog on the other side of the door went nuts at the sound of her voice. He was yipping and yapping and apparently throwing himself against the door in an effort to get closer to his “mama.”
“I have a driver’s license,” I said. “And some business cards, if that helps. I don’t usually carry my business license on me.”
“How do I know you’re really an interior designer, and not some well-dressed freakazoid?”
“Listen. My name really is Keeley Murdock. I’m co-owner of Glorious Interiors, over in Madison. Who would make up a story like this? It’s too weird to be anything other than the truth.”
“How did you find out where I live? Where my office is?”
“Easy. I did a computer search. You’re not exactly a hermit, you know. Several mentions in Peach Buzz, the Atlanta Business Chronicle. And there was that picture of you in The Season.”
“The one at the Swan Ball? You saw that? Was the French twist too severe, do you think? My hairdresser talked me into it, and I was afraid it made me look too old.”
“Not at all,” I said. “You have great cheekbones.” I could feel sweat pouring down my back. In another minute my silk blouse would be completely melded to my body. “Can we discuss this inside?”
“Well, if you read The Season, you can’t be too much of a deviant,” she said, pushing the door open. “Come on in.”
A small brown and black rocket flung itself at her ankles.
“Erwin!” she cried, scooping him up. “Mama’s home, angel.”
Erwin appeared to be some kind of shrunk-down dachshund. He wriggled in her arms and licked her face all over, an experience Stephanie Scofield seemed to really enjoy. She held his snout tightly and kissed him right back.
She held the dog out to me.
“Erwin, baby. This nice lady is…What did you say your name is again?”
“Keeley,” I said, backing away an inch or so. “Keeley Murdock.”
Erwin’s ears perked up. He lurched toward and licked my nose.
Stephanie beamed. “Erwin really likes you. He’s very prescient, you know. Most miniature dachshunds are.”
“I didn’t know that,” I said, resisting the urge to wipe the dog spit off my nose. “He looks, uh, very intelligent.”
She put her keys down on a hall table and set her pocketbook, a nifty little Prada number, right beside it. “Erwin graduated at the top of his class in obedience school. They have his photo on their website. L’Ecole des Chiens. Do you know them? It’s on a farm, out near Crabapple. Very exclusive. Ted Turner’s Rottweiler was in Erwin’s class.” She frowned. “Although, I didn’t see Ted at the last class reunion.”
“I understand he spends a lot of time at his ranch in Montana,” I offered.
“That’s right,” she said. She gestured toward the living room. “Why don’t you sit down? Let me just get us something cold to drink, and I’ll join you in a minute. What would you like?”
“Just a glass of water, please,” I said. “It’s awfully hot outside.”
I did a mental inventory of the room as I moved toward the sofa. It was small, with the walls painted a stark white. The carpet underfoot was white, as were the silk taffeta drapes hanging from a gilded curtain rod in front of a deep bay window that looked out on a tiny enclosed brick patio.
A vaguely French rococo settee was upholstered in tone on tone white damask, and it faced a couple of bergère chairs in matching fabric. There was a small fireplace faced in white marble. Hung over the mantel was a huge gilt-framed mirror. More silver-framed photographs of Stephanie and company were scattered about on ebony-stained end tables and the coffee table. The only bona-fide painting in the room hung over the sofa. It was a large gold-framed oil painting of…Erwin. Or at least I guessed it was Erwin. The painting showed a miniature dachshund, seated on a majestic throne, with a tiny jeweled crown on his head, a scepter clamped between his teeth.
The room and its furnishings had cost money. I scraped the wood arm of the settee with one fingertip. It was a real period piece, worth at least ten thousand dollars, I estimated. The bergères were authentic too. I knew the upholstery and drape fabric was an imported Brunswig & Fils that sells for two hundred and sixty dollars a yard. I couldn’t tell without getting up close, but from where I sat, the drapes looked like a Jim Thompson silk.
“Here we are,” Stephanie announced. She set two ice-beaded bottles of Perrier and two Baccarat tumblers down on the coffee table and seated herself beside me on the settee, with Erwin nestled in her lap.
I grabbed the Perrier and poured myself a glass, gulping it down greedily.
“Thank you,” I said. “Your home is beautiful. And the painting is wonderful,” I offered. “Is that Erwin?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s a Yeardley Frank. She only takes two commissions a year. And she paints strictly from life, no photographs.” Stephanie tipped the bottle of Perrier down to the dog’s muzzle and let Erwin lap from it, before taking a hearty swig herself.
“They have a Yeardley Frank at the High Museum,” she said. “And one at the Ringling Museum down in Sarasota, though I’ve only seen postcards of it. It’s called Dalmatian as Jester. Do you know it?”
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I’m a nut about art,” Stephanie said.
“So I see.”
“Tell me about your client,” Stephanie said, scratching Erwin’s ears. “Is he for real?”
“Absolutely,” I said fervently. “He’s the man who saw you on TV when you volunteered for the public television pledge drive. He made a five-thousand-dollar donation, just so they’d let him ask you out to dinner.”
“Oh him!” she said, frowning. “He’s your client? What’s his name again?”
“Will Mahoney,” I said.
“We’re supposed to go out this week,” Stephanie said. “But I’ve been having second thoughts. I mean, what if he’s this big, hairy creep or something? What if he has bad breath, or hates dogs? What if he’s a Democrat, for God’s sake?”
“I don’t know too much about Will’s politics, or his attitude toward dogs,” I said. “But I can tell you that he’s not abnormally hairy. He’s actually fairly attractive, if you like red hair.” I thought back to that long kiss in front of the convenience store. “And his breath is fine,” I assured her. I left out my rating of his kissing ability, which, if I were being totally honest, would rank him as the best ever.
“Red hair?” Stephanie nuzzled her neck against Erwin’s.
“Well, it’s not Bozo red,” I said. “It’s not aggressively red.”
“What’s he do for a living?” she asked. “Would you call him a successful businessman? I mean, this sounds awful, but so many men can’t handle dating a woman like me who’s got a high-profile mid-six-figures income. Please don’t tell me he’s in sales.” She grimaced. “I don’t do commissioned salespeople.”
“I guess you’d call him an entrepreneur. He owns a lingerie manufacturing business.”
“Lingerie?” she asked, brightening. “Which company? La Perla? Oh God, I just love La Perla, don’t you?”
So she was a panty snob as well as a shoe slut.
“La Perla’s very nice,” I said. “But he owns another company. He just bought it, so he’s totally repositioning the product line.”
“Well, what’s it called?”
I winced as I said it. “Loving Cup Intimates.”
“Loving Cup bras? That’s his company? My God, my granny wore Loving Cup bras. And cotton hosiery and polyester pantsuits.”
“That’s the old Loving Cup bra,” I said, getting defensive on Will’s behalf. “Will is doing a total redesign of the company’s product line.”
“I should hope so,” she said pertly. “But I still don’t understand where you come in on all this.”
“Loving Cup’s manufacturing plant is in Madison. I live in Madison. That’s where our design business is located. Will has also bought one of the most beautiful old homes in the county. It’s an antebellum plantation, Mulberry Hill. I’ve been hired to oversee the restoration and decoration. It’s a huge job.”
“And what has that got to do with me?”
I took another sip of the Perrier. “Will is quite taken with you. I know it sounds crazy, but he’s fixing up Mulberry Hill so that you’ll fall in love with it, and him. So you’ll marry him and move to Madison and everybody will live happily ever after.”
She nodded sympathetically. “I have that effect on men. It’s almost spooky. They see me for a minute, and poof! They think they’ve fallen in love with me. I can’t tell you how many marriage propositions I’ve gotten, just standing in line at the bank, or walking Erwin in the park. Total strangers ask me to marry them all the time. Why do you think that is?”
She fixed her huge brown eyes on me. Erwin’s were watching me too. They were the same shade of chocolate as Stephanie’s. Was that why she chose him? I wondered.
“Keeley?”
“Oh. Well, you’re a very attractive woman,” I said. “With a magnetic personality. That’s what it is. Magnetism.” That, a tiny waist, big boobs, and killer legs probably had nothing to do with men falling all over themselves for her.
“Maybe that’s it,” she said thoughtfully. “So. Will Mahoney sent you to Atlanta to spy on me?”
“Not exactly,” I said. “He’s out of the country at the moment. Sri Lanka. But he wants a proposal for the design by Monday. And I have to design it so you’ll fall in love with it. And him. So I decided to research you.”
“Very clever,” Stephanie said. “I think research is the key to almost everything, don’t you?”
“Absolutely.”
“Tell me,” Stephanie said. “Since you’re such a prodigious researcher, what do you think Will Mahoney’s net worth is? Pretax, of course.”