Killer Market

Again, an absurd image of fuzzy chenilles romped through my mind. “I heard someone today say that chenille’s dead.”

“Fading perhaps in the premium market but it’ll hold strong in the upper- to mid-range for at least another year or two. Longer in the low end, but by then we’ll be into something else.”

The April night was so mild that my light sweater was warmth enough. We were sitting in white wicker rocking chairs on Pell Austin’s screened side porch where we could see the steady stream of people coming and going from Dixie’s house. Market people, Fitch and Patterson people, people who had known Chan and who cared about Dixie —it looked as if half of High Point had come to pay their respects to Chan’s mother-in-law and sister tonight

A local TV van had been there earlier, in time for the 5:30 news. Dixie had made a statement So far, my name had been kept out of it. Since she was Chan’s mother-in-law and the one who called 911, the reporters seemed to assume she was the one who found him. So far, everyone who’d spoken on-camera—including Jay Patterson, Kay Adams and Jacob Collier—was profoundly shocked and everyone was just devastated by his death.

At least that’s what they were saying for publication.

Lynnette and her cousin Shirley Jane were sound asleep on my bed in Pell’s guest room and I wasn’t quite sure where I myself would wind up sleeping, but for the moment, it was my job to keep an ear out for them. Drew, probably at Dixie’s suggestion, had come over to bring me a plate of chicken salad and some iced tea, and she seemed grateful to get away from the grief and gloom that wrapped Dixie’s house now that Chan’s sister was here.

Upon arriving this afternoon, Millie Ragsdale had immediately announced that there would be no traditional funeral.

Despite her misgivings, Dixie was deferring to her wishes.

“Not my wishes,” Millie Ragsdale said. “Chan’s wishes. He wrote them down and sent them to me the same time he sent me a copy of his will. Right after Evelyn died.”

I had no memory of Chan’s sister, but there was no mistaking the family resemblance. Nor her determination to carry out her brother’s instructions.

“Chan hated funerals,” she said. “He always said, ‘Millie, don’t let them stick me in a box and then stand around looking at me for three days,’ and I promised him I wouldn’t.”

That’s why tonight would be the closest thing to a real wake that Chan would have. The Medical Examiner had released his body this afternoon and as soon as she heard that, Millie had asked her husband Quentin to make arrangements with a crematorium.

“Next month, when the worst of our pain is over,” she’d said tremulously, “we’ll have a memorial service in Frederick and scatter his ashes somewhere along the river.”

By this time, for all I knew, Chan’s body had already been committed to the flames. Even now, all that was corporeal of him might be cooling somewhere in Guilford County.

“Did Savannah kill him?” I asked Drew abruptly.

“Savannah!” Drew sat upright and turned so quickly in her chair to face me that the rockers scraped the wooden porch floor. “What makes you think Savannah had anything to do with Chan’s death?”

Dixie had been told that penicillin had brought on Chan’s anaphylactic shock and I assumed Drew knew, too.

She nodded. “That’s what David told me.”

“David?”

“Detective Underwood. His daughter works for us in our billing department. I’ve known him since he used to direct Market traffic in uniform.”

I should have realized that there’d be a connection. Everybody in High Point seemed to have direct links to the furniture industry.

“Did you tell him where Savannah’s staying?”

“But I don’t know! She won’t say. She just suddenly appears when I least expect her.”

“But you did tell him you could put him in touch with her?”

“I said I’d try,” she answered patiently. “But I still don’t see the point of it.”

“But didn’t Underwood ask about my tote bag?”

“He asked if I saw Savannah take it. He didn’t say why.”

“So did you see her?”

“With one of our tote bags? Sure. And everybody else, too. We’re giving out three hundred a day. Every time I turn around I see one. What difference does it make anyhow?”

“Because the one she walked out with was mine. It had my purse in it and in my purse was a bottle of penicillin tablets. Detective Underwood found my tote near Chan last night but the pill bottle was empty. If Savannah didn’t take them, who did?”

“It was your penicillin?”

For some reason, her tone made me defensive. “I had a strep throat last week.”

“Perhaps she left your bag there before Chan came. Perhaps someone else found your tablets.”

I took a sip of iced tea and thought it over. “I don’t see how there’d be enough time. She was wandering around High Point with my cell phone a little after nine and I found Chan less than an hour later. Someone would have had to take my bag away from her, see the tablets, know Chan was allergic, crush them into the brownies and then somehow lure him down to Dixie’s floor and get him to eat them. All that in fifty minutes? I don’t think