Lilah beamed at us from the top of the stairs with a smile like a shark’s. “I thought I’d better give Loos here a heads-up you might be coming round. Didn’t want you to catch her on the hop, did I?”
Bloody hell. So much for the element of surprise. That’d teach us to stop for lunch en route. “Lilah, good to see you again so soon,” I said cautiously as I reached the landing. I was having real trouble working our esteemed client out. Did she want us on the job or not?
I shot Phil a glance as he joined me, but he had that stony expression he always wears when he wants to hide the fact someone’s just bogged up his best-laid plans.
Standing next to each other, Lilah and Loos—Loos?—looked exactly like before-and-after pictures of some poor woman who’d been stretched on the rack. It was well weird. The sister was, I realised once we were on the same level, no more than a couple of inches shorter than me, but in all other respects she was eerily like Lilah. Even down to clothes size, in anything that didn’t come with long sleeves or legs. Except . . . somehow the figure that was so voluptuous on Lilah seemed average and nondescript on the sister.
Phil recovered before I did, and stepped forward to offer his hand. “Phil Morrison. And this is my partner, Tom Paretski. We’re investigating Jonathan Parrot’s death.”
“Where are my manners? This is my little sister, Tallulah Lovett.” Lilah smiled. Mzz Lovett didn’t, although she did shake Phil’s hand while giving him a thorough examination. Apparently big, built, and blond was her thing too.
But ye gods, Lilah, Tallulah, and Lola? I was struggling to see what Axel thought he had to complain about, name-wise. And while Lilah was every inch Sampson’s temptress (hey, I paid attention in Sunday School. Until they kicked me out), Tallulah’s name didn’t seem to fit her, as if she’d borrowed it from her sister.
If I’d had to guess, I’d have put Tallulah as the elder, and not because she was taller. There were hard lines around her mouth, and the cords in her neck stood out, ropy and taut above the designer scarf she was wearing in a failed attempt to make her jeans-and-blazer outfit less boring. I also got the distinct impression she wasn’t half as fond of her big sis as Lilah seemed to think she was, although fair dues, it could have been down to the godawful nickname. Oh, Loos smiled to Lilah’s face all right, but her expression soured as soon as Lilah turned away. She noticed me noticing that, and sent me a glare of my very own that seemed to say Keep your nose out of my family business if you know what’s good for you.
Or maybe she just didn’t like me. Actually, come to think of it, I was fairly sure there was something personal about it. I say personal, but maybe it was men in general she didn’t like. Or gay men. Or plumbers, come to that—you get a few who’ve been ripped off once by some cowboy, and think we’re all like that.
I wondered what the word for it would be, if there was one. Plombist? Mariophobic?
“Lilah told me about you,” Mzz Tallulah said, proving me right with a curl of her thin, imperfectly bleached upper lip. “I told her it was all a big con.”
Okay, maybe she simply had a natural aversion to anything that smacked of mystical bollocks, which was fair enough. Her accent was a weird mix—her consonants were all present and correct, but the vowels kept wandering off to somewhere less reputable when she wasn’t paying attention. She and Lilah might have left the East End behind, but it hadn’t left either of them, and whereas Lilah was happy to display her origins in her front window, in Tallulah’s case they might as well be a nasty smell coming out of the cellar. I flashed her a smile I wasn’t feeling and put on a chipper tone. “Found him, though, didn’t we?”
“You gotta admit, Loos, he’s got a point.” Lilah turned to us with a rueful smile that tugged on the old guilt strings. “I’ll be buggering off now. You must be getting sick of the sight of me.”
“Course not, love,” I assured her. “What bloke would ever get tired of looking at you?”
And yeah, I was laying it on with a shovel, but Lilah’s eyes sparkled at the compliment, so clearly she wasn’t complaining. “Watch out for this one, Loos, he’s a right charmer.”
Phil coughed. “We’ll need to ask you a few questions, Ms. Lovett, but we hope not to take up too much of your time.”
Tallulah gave a tight little smile. “Of course, I’ll be happy to give you any help I can in finding out what happened to poor Jonathan.” Her face called her a liar. “Although I don’t see—”
“Laters, Loos,” Lilah cut her off. “And don’t forget you’re taking Axel out on Sunday, yeah?” She gave my arm a squeeze as she went past, heading for the stairs.
“I won’t forget.” Tallulah watched her sister leave with narrowed eyes and not a word of farewell. I hoped she was nicer to her nephew. “You’d better come on through,” she told us snippily. “I’m not doing this here.”
Tallulah strode off briskly in her sensible heels to a small office set right at one end of the building. With me and Phil in it as well as Mzz Lovett, it threatened to burst at the seams, particularly as she didn’t bother to go sit behind the surprisingly modern desk. It could have been politeness, seeing as that was the only chair in the room, or it could simply have been a natural desire not to get loomed over.
I mean, I could relate.
“Well?” she asked, folding her arms in an I’m far too busy to bother with minor matters like the murder of a brother-in-law way.
“What can you tell us about Jonathan Parrot?” was Phil’s opening salvo.
She parried it with a snapped, “What do you want to know?”
The adversarial approach wasn’t working. Phil, ever adaptable, put on his sympathetic face. “Do you think he was happy in his marriage?”
“Course he bloody wasn’t. If he had been, he wouldn’t have left her, would he?” Tallulah’s accent was rapidly losing its middle-class polish. “I thought you were working for Lilah, anyhow?”
“We are, but that doesn’t mean—”
“So what does the state of their marriage have to do with his death? Unless you think my sister killed him?”
She was sharp, you had to give her that. Phil was sharper, mind. “I’m trying to establish if there could have been another reason for him leaving his job and his wife,” he went on calmly. “Something—or someone—he was scared of, maybe?”
Tallulah’s face went an unattractive shade of pink that really didn’t go with her lipstick. “I don’t know no—anything about that.”
Phil changed tack. “What happened the day he left?”
“Nothing. He came to work as usual, left as usual, and didn’t turn up next day. It was a ri—it was very inconvenient. I had to get Hazel to come in full-time after that.”
“How many people work here apart from you?”
“Why?”
Bloody hell, it was like pulling teeth. “So we can be sure we’ve spoken to everyone,” Phil told her patiently.
“Oliver and Hazel. That’s it. And Brian, I suppose, but he doesn’t deal with the day-to-day running of the business.”
“Brian?”
“Brian Tarbox. My business partner.”
Phil nodded. Either he’d come across the name before or he was taking a mental note of it. “Everyone here get on all right with Jonathan?”
“Of course.” She was lying. I could tell. Not by any sixth sense, or seventh, or whatever number I’m up to these days. I just had a feeling in my water that her and Jonny-boy would have hated each other’s guts.
Or would they? Maybe she wasn’t a lot like Lilah, personality-wise, who our Mr. Parrot had presumably been at least a little bit fond of or he wouldn’t have married her, but thinking back to how he’d been when I’d met him . . . I couldn’t see him being bothered about Tallulah enough to hate her.
Which would have made her hate him all the more, if I was any judge. And let’s face it, she was easily tall enough to have knocked old Jonny on the head and shoved him in the water.
“Was he good at his work?”
She hesitated. “Obviously there was something of a learning curve, but he was a reasonably good salesman.” Speaking well of the bloke clearly didn’t come naturally to her.
“And he was happy here?”
“As far as I knew. I was his employer, not his friend.”
“Yeah, but he was family,” I couldn’t help butting in.
“He was married to my sister. That’s not quite the same thing.”
Phil changed tack. “Did your sister’s first husband also work with you?”
Tallulah made an impatient gesture. “I already told you about Brian.”
“Wait, Brian?” I blurted out. “Your business partner is your sister’s ex?”
Her mouth went tight. “And?”
“And he was okay with employing her current husband?”
“Lilah and Brian split up years ago,” Tallulah said dismissively.
That must make for some interesting family get-togethers. Then again, glass houses, stones, don’t throw.
Maybe I should ask her for tips.
“So they’ve stayed friends?” Phil asked.
“Of course. They have the children to think about.” Her lip curled so slightly she probably didn’t even realise she was doing it.
“Some men find it hard to see an ex-partner moving on,” Phil commented.
From the way her face darkened, Tallulah clearly wasn’t deaf to the subtext. “You don’t know what you’re talking about. There was no strong feeling there.”
Presumably she meant Brian and Jonny. Or did she mean Brian and Lilah? And if so, did she mean ever?
“Not the jealous sort, then?” Phil said mildly.
She snorted. “With Lilah’s ‘profession’?”
Ouch. You could hear the quotes around profession. Maybe that was the cause of the sisterly ill-feeling I’d picked up on.
Tallulah unfolded her arms. “Are we done? Because I’ve got work to do.”
“One last question: is there anything else you can tell us that might be relevant to Mr. Parrot’s death?”
“No.”
“Then do you mind if we have a word with your employees?”
I could tell she was itching to say yes, actually, she did mind, but controlled herself womanfully. “I suppose you can. But please remember I have a business to run here.”
Phil nodded. “Thank you for your time.”
“Yeah, cheers, love,” I smiled, but could have saved myself the effort. She barely waited for us to shift out of her way before barging out of that tiny office and back onto the shop floor.
“Well, she loved us and left us,” I muttered. “Except without the loving us part. Or anyone else, for that matter. Didn’t sound like she’d be crying at old Jonny-boy’s funeral, did it?”
Phil shrugged. “Families. Never easy when money gets involved.”
“Money?”
“I’d hope she was paying him. Maybe she resented getting him foisted on her by her sister.”
“Nah, he was a good salesman. She said it herself. I’d reckon the bottom line’s what it’s all about, with her.” I grinned. “She definitely got the short straw when it came to nicknames, didn’t she?”
“What would you shorten Tallulah to, then? Tall? That’d look like she was taking the piss. Come on, then. Work to do.” Phil led the way out onto the shop floor.