“Here you are.” I handed her a key. “Twenty dollars deposit.”
She continued babbling about her key rings—apparently she had three or four, each containing a slightly different assortment of keys. I waited until she’d rummaged around in her purse and found two fives and a ten—none of them in her wallet. I wrote out a receipt, handed her the top copy, and put the money and the carbon in my locked cash box.
Randall Shiffley strolled in while I was completing this transaction.
“I’m soooo sorry,” Violet said, as she tucked the key into her purse. “I’ll try to hang on to this one.”
She scurried back upstairs.
“Can you get a few more keys made?” I asked Randall.
“More keys? We must have enough keys floating around for half the town to have one.”
“I suspect we could find most of them if we searched Violet’s house, her car, and her purse,” I said. “Let’s just make sure the place is rekeyed as soon as the show house closes.”
“Already on my punch list.”
That was one of the things I liked about Randall. His punch list was the equivalent of my notebook, and I knew that anything on it was going to get done, and on time.
“The bank had a lot of problems with squatters and vandals before we started working here,” he went on, “so they’re pretty hyper about security. Speaking of vandals, is Clay still here?”
“I chased him out.”
“Sorry, Stanley,” Randall called. “Not here.”
I turned to see Stanley Denton, Caerphilly’s leading (and only) private investigator, standing in the foyer.
“I’ll check on that damaged wall,” Randall said as he headed upstairs.
“Hey, Stanley,” I said. “What do you need Clay for?”
“Got some papers to serve on him.”
“I didn’t know you did process serving,” I said.
“Not my favorite kind of work,” he said. “But it pays the bills.”
“What’s Clay getting served for, or are you allowed to say?”
“No big secret,” he said. “Clay and one of his former clients are suing and countersuing and filing charges against each other like crazy. Almost a full-time job lately, serving papers on the two of them. She says he didn’t finish her house and what he did was all wrong; he says she rejected work that was done according to her orders and hasn’t paid him.”
“He’s a jerk,” I said.
“Well, she’s no prize either, but I have to admit, the whole downstairs of her house is a sorry mess.” He shrugged. “It’s for the courts to decide. All I need to worry about is finding him for the latest set of papers. He wasn’t at home last night, and his office hadn’t seen him but said to come over here.”
“He left here maybe half an hour ago,” I said. “Not voluntarily. I’d offer to call him, but he might misinterpret it as me backing down from kicking him out. Maybe you could get Randall to call him.”
“Thanks,” he said. “I’ve got his number.”
“By the way,” I said. “Any chance you could get Randall to hire you to do a little detecting here at the show house?”
“Detecting what?”
“Someone’s been stealing packages,” I said. “Stuff the decorators have ordered. None of the packages have been fabulously valuable, but there have been so many of them that it probably adds up to hundreds of dollars by now. And the whole thing’s got some of the decorators at each other’s throats.”
“Not that I’d mind investigating, but have the police done what they can?”
“Now that’s a good question,” I said. “I keep telling the designers to make a police report about it, but who knows if any of them have done so. I’ll talk to the chief tomorrow.”
“Good,” he said. “And I’ll talk to Randall about hiring me to supplement their efforts.”
He headed upstairs after Randall.
I looked at my watch. Almost time for me to leave, to meet Michael and the twins for an afternoon of caroling, Christmas shopping, and eventually dinner. But with so much going on, I couldn’t leave my post unguarded. I’d asked my cousin Rose Noire to fill in for me this afternoon. Where was she?
Probably out delivering more of the customized, organic herbal gift baskets that she sold by the hundreds over the holiday season. I was still getting used to the notion of my flakey, New-Age cousin as the owner of a thriving small business. I’d have felt guilty, asking her to take the time away from her work, if I hadn’t been sacrificing so much anvil time myself.