How to Succeed in Murder by Margaret Dumas

down I finally saw who my third guest was. Chip. And I finally realized what the furniture was.
    “A table!” I ran my fingers along the richly polished surface. “It’s gorgeous!”
    “It’s a handcrafted, solid cherry, artisanal dining room table in a modified Arts and Crafts style,” Paris informed me. “Built by my very own Gabriel as a gift from us to you. And by the looks of things, not a minute too soon.”
    I ignored his last comment and hugged him. “Thank you! It’s perfect!”
    “Of course it is,” Paris agreed.
    “And it’s heavy,” Chip volunteered.
    “Oh, thanks for bringing it,” I said. “And, um…” I looked at the dining room door.
    “Yes, darling.” Simon gave me a perfunctory kiss on the cheek. “We’ll take it the rest of the way.”
    Chip was a lot smaller than the other two men. Fidgety and kind of squirrelly. Not what you’d look for in a mover of large furnishings. But he grabbed an end and hoisted, and the three of them got the thing into the dining room.
    “Right in the center…yes.” I directed, dashing in ahead of them to pick up the candlestick, which had remained in the middle of the floor. “Or…” I looked at the table once it was positioned. “Maybe no. Maybe we should angle—”
    “No.” Paris buffed a fingerprint away with the sleeve of his long grey coat. “It goes straight down the center of the room. Dead center lengthwise with the middle of the fireplace, and dead center widthwise with the middle of the bay window.” He made karate-chopping arm movements to illustrate this axis of perfection. “At least, until you get a sideboard or something that would balance it.”
    “Or chairs, maybe?” Chip looked around the room.
    “I have something better!” I placed my perfect candlestick in the center—dead center—of the table, and stood back to take in the effect.
    “Yes, darling,” Simon murmured. “Much more original than chairs.”
    ***
    So, instead of meeting to pick the remaining play for next season in the chilly offices of the Rep, we found ourselves having an early lunch on Union Street.
    We wound up at Betelnut, sharing a dozen or so small plates of things like chili calamari, hoisin pork in pancakes, and green papaya salad. And since the bar specializes in Asian beers…well.
    At one point I remembered my manners and thanked Paris again for the table. “Did Gabriel really make it himself?” I knew Paris’ partner was some sort of cabinet maker, but I hadn’t realized the extent of his talent.
    “Designed it and made it,” Paris informed me, not without a touch of pride.
    “Could he make more things?” I asked. “I mean, the house is pretty big, and I haven’t really—”
    Simon’s snort cut off the rest of my words. I gave him a squinty-eyed look, and he took a sudden interest in a red lacquer bowl on a small shelf behind me.
    “Girl, do you know how long it takes to make a piece of furniture like that?” Paris always brought out the remaining Texas notes in his voice when he wanted to make a point.
    “A long time?”
    “Let me put it this way—your babies would be having babies by the time he was through furnishing that house.”
    What the hell was it with people and babies these days?
    I took a deep swallow of Tsingtao. “Never mind.”
    ***
    Predictably, it was the single-minded Chip who brought us back to the purpose of the get-together, and it was the borderline-workaholic Chip who stayed back at the house with Simon and me after Paris left us with “I don’t care what show y’all decide to put on next year, as long as it has nice juicy sets.”
    So the three of us got comfortable and indulged in a heated debate about the relative merits—or lack thereof—of the fifteen manuscripts we’d read.
    Which is how Jack found us.
    “Pumpkin, should I ask why you’re in bed with two men?”
    This is not something I’d ever expected to hear my husband say, and particularly in such a casual tone. But since the only