Page 61 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

“Sure did. Not very much, mind. A bunch would likely kill you doornail dead, or at least make you puke your guts up, but a little tad didn’t hurt us.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” I promised. “Thanks!” I hurried toward the door he’d indicated, trying to envision how that remedy had gotten started. Somewhere, someone had thought, “Boy, my throat hurts! I think I’ll get some kerosene and drink it. Bound to help. I’ll put it on sugar, though; make it go down better.”

The world amazes me.

The first person I saw when I went through the door was Sally, perched on a ladder, wiping down the top of a huge carved headboard that was leaning against the wall. It was a gorgeous piece, the wood blackened with age, and if it fell on anyone it would likely kill them. No way would I have sex with that thing looming over me, though I guess going out with a bang isn’t a bad way to go.

She didn’t look around, so I had to go over and knock on the headboard to get her attention. “Blair!” Her mobile face expressing both pleasure and concern, which isn’t an easy thing to do when you think about it, Sally left her rag draped over the top of the headboard and climbed down the ladder. “Tina told me about your condo, and your throat, and everything. Poor baby, you’ve had a rough week.” Once on the floor, she hugged me tightly in sympathy.

Sally was about five-two and weighed maybe a hundred pounds, a tiny dynamo who was never still. Her dark red hair was stylishly shaggy and spiky without being over the top, and she’d had interesting blond streaks put in it to frame her face. The broken nose that she sustained when she drove into the side of the house while trying to hit Jazz had left a tiny bump on the bridge of her nose that somehow looked good. She had worn glasses before, but the glasses were actually what had broken her nose when the air bag deployed; since then she’d switched to contacts.

I hugged her in return. “Is there somewhere we can talk? I have something to show you.”

She looked interested. “Sure. Let’s go over here and sit down.”

She indicated some folding chairs that were haphazardly grouped in the middle of the auction floor. Later they would be arranged in neat rows for the bidders. We took two of them, then I reached in my tote bag and pulled out the invoices from Sticks and Stones and handed them to her.

Puzzled, she looked at them for a couple of seconds before it registered what they were, then her eyes widened in shock and fury. “Twenty thousand dollars!” she yelped. “He paid…he paidtwenty thousand dollarsfor thatdreck?”

“No,” I said, “he didn’t pay that for the dreck. He paid that for you, because he loves you.”

“Did he send you over here?” she demanded furiously.

I shook my head. “I’m interfering all on my own.” Well, also because Wyatt had forced me to, but that was between us.

She stared down at the invoice, trying to get her mind around the amount. To her, the furniture and artwork Monica Stevens had used to replace Sally’s prized antiques were worth maybe a couple of thousand, tops. To say the two looked at style from the opposite ends of the spectrum was to understate the case.

“Heknewhow much I loved my antique pieces,” she said, her voice breaking a little. “And if he didn’t, he should have! Why else would I have put so much work into repairing them and refinishing them? It wasn’t as if we couldn’t have afforded different furniture if I’d wanted it!”

“But he didn’t know,” I pointed out. “For one thing, you didn’t work on the pieces when he was at home. And for another, I have never in my life seen a man more clueless about style and decorating than Jazz Arledge. That orange couch in his office—” I broke off, shuddering.

She blinked, distracted. “You’ve seen his office? Isn’t that placehorrible?” Then she shook off the disturbing image. “That doesn’t matter. If he’d listened to meat allduring the thirty-five years we’ve been married, if he paid any attention to the house he lived in, he couldn’t possibly have thought—”

“That’s just it, he literally has no clue about different decorating styles. He didn’t know different styles existed. To him, furniture is furniture is furniture, period. I think he sort of gets the concept now, but only in the vaguest way, like he knows there are different styles but he has no idea what they are or how any of them look. It’s a language he doesn’t speak, so he doesn’t understand what you’re saying when you talk about antiques.”

“Surely to God he knows that ‘antique’ meansold.”

“Maybe,” I said doubtfully. “Look, can he tell the difference between navy blue and black?”

She shook her head.

“Most men can’t. They don’t have the necessary number of color rods in their eyes to tell the difference, so even if you put a navy blue sock beside a black sock they look the same to a man. It’s the same principle. It isn’t that Jazz isn’t interested, that he’s ignored what you like, it’s that his brain isn’t wired to see style. You don’t ask a wingless bird to fly, do you?”

Tears glittered brightly in her eyes and she looked down at the invoices in her hand. “You’re saying I’m wrong.”

“I’m not saying you’re wrong to be upset about the furniture. I would have been, too.” Understatement, there. “But you were definitely wrong to try to hit him with the car.”

“That’s what Tina said.”

“She did?” Mom was in my corner! When had that happened?

“When you were in the hospital,” Sally said, as if she’d heard my thought. “She said that seeing how much pain you were in even though you hadn’t actually been hit by that car changed her mind. She said that hurt feelings were one thing, but physical injuries were way more serious.”

I sighed. I’m not one to downplay hurt feelings, but considering everything that had happened the past couple of months I had to agree. “She’s right. You didn’t catch him in adultery, you know. He bought furniture you don’t like.”

“So get over it.”

I nodded.

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