Free Death by Inferior Design by Leslie Caine

pinecones dusted with glitter. These items were obviously intended as decorations to augment the gift boxes. She had also preserved some oak and maple leaves, which she would probably spray-paint gold; the telltale paint can was nearby.
    “I’ve cut some photographs out of old magazines and calendars to do decoupages in interesting designs,” Audrey informed me as she refreshed her water glass. “And lastly, I’ll show my audience how to make those dear little fabric gift bags. So charming, don’t you think?”
    Knowing what was coming, I gripped the cold, smooth edge of the beautiful granite countertop as she retrieved several squares of fabric from another room. All had been cut from the elegant toile drapery fabric that we’d special-ordered from Christopher Norman. Her eyes sparkled. “Oh, and Erin? Just wait till you see how pretty the fabric for the sheers is now that I spray-painted it! I’ve turned those sheers into the loveliest ribbons imaginable!”

chapter 5
    The next morning, I awoke in a foul mood. By accepting Carl Henderson’s job, I’d given up one of my precious, leisurely Sunday mornings spent wrapped in my feather-soft angora afghan with Hildi curled in my lap as we perused the home and garden section of the newspaper and furniture-ad fliers.
    My night had been dreadful, my inadequate sleep interrupted with unpleasant dreams. To make matters worse, I’d been awakened at dawn by what sounded like a town hall meeting in the den, only to stagger into the blinding lights of what proved to be a film shoot for Audrey’s show. Although her fictitious living room in the Denver television studio had a marvelous, lavishly decorated blue spruce (I should know; she’d had me select the tree and decorate it myself on-site just three days earlier), Audrey had decided she preferred the backdrop of our actual Christmas tree and den for her alternative-wrapping-paper show. She apologized for forgetting to warn me about the crack-of-dawn photo shoot and soothed, “You’ll have the whole house to yourself for the rest of the day, dear. After this, we’re filming a segment in Vail, where there’s actually some snow. I’ll be lucky to get home before midnight.”
    While grumbling to myself such nasty remarks as “Domestic bliss my ass,” I smeared on makeup to hide the dark circles under my eyes and compensate for my plain lavender turtleneck and blue jeans, stashed my baby picture in my back pocket, in case the opportunity arose to confront anyone about it, and left for work.
    To my surprise, Taylor’s pickup truck was already in the Axelrods’ driveway when I arrived. The sharp growl of a table saw buzzed away behind the house. I crossed the street and rounded the house, greedily inhaling the intoxicating scent of freshly cut lumber.
    Taylor had his back to me as I approached, but my initial pleasure at finding him at work on the oak television stand faded when I saw where he was making his cuts. “Taylor, stop!” I shouted over the noisy saw. “Stop!”
    He shut it off and said, “Yo.”
    “These lengths don’t look right to me.”
    “They’re what you told me,” he said with a shrug.
    I ran my tape measure along the length of the board. “This is four inches too short!”
    “Hey! You told me you wanted ’em thirty-six inches! That’s what I cut ’em at.”
    I checked my sketch, which I found on a folding table he was using as a flat surface, a claw hammer serving as a paperweight. Sure enough, my measurements had been correct for the two-shelf stand. “I told you forty inches, just the way it’s written here on my drawing.”
    “That’s not what you said.”
    “It is too!”
    “Is not!”
    Be nice to the carpenter, Erin. I sucked in a deep breath of chilly air, but the aroma of newly sawn lumber had lost its magic. We certainly sounded like siblings, if nothing else.
    “Anyways,” Tyler said, “you were coming out short one board if I’d made this four inches higher. So you