Crushed Velvet (10 page)

It couldn't be.
Genevieve had told me she was afraid she poisoned Phil, but she'd never mentioned anything about following Phil to Los Angeles. Why would she confess to an accidental murder and not confess to any surrounding actions that placed her directly in the scope of means, motive, and opportunity?

Clark pointed at my phone. “Ms. Monroe, those pictures indicate that you intend to disregard my request to stay out of my investigation in order to try to help your friend. If you want to help Mrs. Girard, tell her to talk to me. The longer she waits, the worse things are going to be for her.”

I stood as straight as I could, which, at five foot nine plus the heels on my boots, put me eye to eye with Clark. “If I see her, I'll tell her.”

We stood in a Mexican standoff for a few seconds. “I mean it, Ms. Monroe: stay out of this, for your own safety.”

I expected Clark to punctuate his command with an abrupt turn and departure, but instead he approached the building and opened the door. He leaned inside and scanned the interior. After a few seconds, he closed the door, descended the concrete stairs, and walked around the side of the building. I followed a few steps behind.

When I caught up with him, he was running his open palm over the iron table. The mouse sander sat on the sidewalk. Kim wasn't there. Clark looked at the fine white dust that covered his hand, and then smacked both of his hands together. Tiny particles of sanded-off paint exploded from his hands and filled the air. It smelled like chalk. It caught in my throat and I coughed.

“Are you working on this renovation by yourself?”

“No, I have a couple of helpers,” I answered.

“Anybody I know?”

I figured it was as good a time as any to name-drop. “Vaughn McMichael,” I said.

He nodded. “That's right, he mentioned that yesterday. Anybody else?”

“You saw Vaughn yesterday? When?” He held my stare but didn't answer me. “Yes, there is somebody else. Kim Matheson.
M-A-T-H-E-S-O-N
,” I spelled.

He pulled a notepad out of his pocket and jotted the name down. “He? She?”

“She.”

“Is she here?”

“She was. I don't know where she went.” I considered things for a second. And then lowered my voice. “Sheriff, Kim showed up the morning Phil was murdered. When I told her she should try to find other work, she got very insistent that people expected her to be working here. And I don't know if this means anything or not, but she has a parole officer.”

“She told you this?”

“Not exactly.”

He stared at me for a couple of beats. “Ms. Monroe, remember what I said. Stay out of this investigation. If Ms. Matheson returns, have her call me. I'd like to talk to her, too.” Clark pulled a card from his wallet and handed it to me. It had numbers for the mobile sheriff's office and Clark's direct cell.

I took the card. “I'll give her the message.”

I followed Clark around the back of the shop to the other side, and then to the front. He stood back and looked up at the façade. “Place looks different with that brown paper in the windows. Dark. Sad. Be a shame for San Ladrón to lose its tea shop.”

“San Ladrón's not losing anything. Once you catch Phil Girard's murderer, everything will go back to normal.”

Clark left out the front gate, and I locked it shut behind him. He wanted something to investigate? Let's see what he found out when he started digging into Kim's past.

•   •   •

I worked well
into the afternoon. By the time I called it quits, my neck was sore, my shoulders were in a knot, and my stomach was empty. Kim hadn't returned. I wondered if I'd ever see her again. I swept the unfinished hardwood floor and thought about what Clark had said.

Five witnesses placed Genevieve in Los Angeles on Sunday night. If that was true, why hadn't she said anything? And what had she been doing in Los Angeles in the first place? If she'd asked Phil to go to pick up dry goods, then clearly she hadn't been planning to make the trip herself. So what was she doing there?

She didn't trust him.

I'd assumed Genevieve didn't know about Phil's affair, but if she suspected something, she might have tailed him to get confirmation. And if that was the case, things wouldn't look good for her. A lawyer could easily build an argument that
the scorned wife murdered the cheating husband in a jealous rage. Genevieve might be able to claim temporary insanity, but for a woman who was innocent, insanity was a far cry from a desirable outcome.

After I finished sweeping, I locked up the shop. I double-checked the front door, the back door, and all of the windows, remembering how the knob had turned easily in my hand that morning. I still didn't know who had unlocked the door, but the contents of the refrigerator and the small bag of leftover croissants were missing. I looked up in the direction of Sheriff Clark. Had he been into the store before any of us were there, bagging and tagging Genevieve's supplies, looking for evidence against her?

I left the red wagon locked up inside Tea Totalers and drove back to the fabric store. There were three hours before Vaughn was due to pick me up for the movie, and since I didn't know if Vaughn's invitation included dinner, I thought it best to take Scarlett O'Hara's lead and eat a little something before the date. I also thought it best to eat before getting dressed so I avoided any unfortunate spills.

I made a quick salad from romaine and radishes, blended olive oil, Dijon mustard, lemon juice, salt, pepper, and oregano in a small cruet, and poured it on. I topped it with a handful of sunflower seeds and freshly grated mozzarella.

It took longer to make the salad than it did to eat it. When I was finished, I stacked the dirty dishes in the sink. Then, feeling guilty, I rinsed them and moved them to the dishwasher. Still not enough for a full load, but the kitchen looked better. Now to transition from my current mental state into something more calm before I could begin to relax in his company.
Calm
meant sewing.

I went downstairs to the sewing workstation and worked on the placemats. First I cut eighteen-by-twelve-inch rectangles from the fabric. I sandwiched batting between mismatched but coordinating pieces, pinned them together
along all four sides, and free motion quilted the layers together by moving them in a random pattern while running the needle. I finished the edges with yellow seam binding. I had a stack of twenty by the time I was finished. I turned off all of the equipment and draped a long length of faded pink taffeta over the sewing machine.

I headed upstairs to the apartment and found the kitties in the kitchen. Needles was swatting a crumpled piece of paper back and forth. Pins was hunched down, his head swinging from side to side, following the path of the paper. Even though he was still young, his face was contorted into one of concentration. Needles knocked the paper out of range with his small orange paw and Pins pounced. I turned around and found the trash can tipped over, leaving behind a banana peel, an empty orange juice container, coffee grounds, and the takeout bag from The Earl of Sandwich. I righted the bin and collected the trash, leaving the small wad of paper on the floor for the kitties to play with.

As I watched them swat the ball back and forth, my mind wandered to tonight.

For the last three years I'd been in a relationship with Carson Cole, a financial analyst in Los Angeles. We'd gone from having drinks with friends, to hanging out, to living together. Soon after that, conversation turned to getting married. I guess that's what life was like for a financial analyst. You project into the future and do what you need to do to stay on track with your expectations.

Carson was a nice enough guy, and if I were judging in terms of previous generations, I'd go so far as to call him a good provider. He had a steady job and a steadier lifestyle. We fell into a routine dictated by the days of the week: Tacos on Tuesday, Wash on Wednesday. If Carson had anything to do with the Villamere Theater, he'd show movies from the thirties on the third
Thursday
of the month. I was glad
he didn't, because just thinking all of those TH sounds made me feel like Elmer Fudd.

The truth was, I stayed with Carson longer than I should have because our relationship, like the rest of my life, was comfortable. Other friends who had wrestled with the same “what do we want out of life?” questions had either pursued promotions or marriage. I'd climbed to the top of the ladder at To The Nines looking for some kind of job satisfaction that I never found.

I chalked my general dissatisfaction up to the fact that Carson and I were dealing with the realities of our lives now that we were officially among the working class. But while Carson embraced his professional life and emulated the senior advisors at his company, I was the opposite. I was restless, as if caught in a temporary world. There had to be more out there for me than designing cheap pageant dresses for a slightly shady shop in the heart of Santee Court in downtown Los Angeles. It was after I learned Great-Uncle Marius had left me the fabric store in San Ladrón that I saw things in a new light. I didn't need the fast pace and urgent buzz of Los Angeles to feel alive. I needed something that felt uniquely me, something I could own.

Once I decided I was going to move to San Ladrón, everything else in my life fell into place. I broke up with Carson, gave notice to Giovanni, and spent my first unemployed week moving my meager belongings into storage. It wasn't until I packed up everything of mine from that shared apartment that I realized how little of “our” life was “me.” I said good-bye to Los Angeles, loaded what was truly important into my Bug, and drove to San Ladrón.

Thinking of Giovanni reminded me that I hadn't heard from him today. I didn't know if it was good news or bad news. What I did know was that the surefire way to get on his bad side was to nag him about something he said he'd
do. We'd struck a deal, and I knew I'd sweetened my end enough that he'd want to uphold his.

I moved from the kitchen to the bedroom, stripped down and tossed my dirty clothes in the hamper, took a quick shower, and wrapped myself in a black dressing gown. When the steam cleared from the mirror in the bathroom, I studied my reflection. My fair complexion held a tinge of pink from the hot shower. I smoothed tinted moisturizer over my face and squeezed a blob of styling crème onto my palm. After rubbing my hands together, I raked the product through my hair and combed it away from my face with a wide-tooth comb. I pushed the back forward, found a deep part on the left, and tucked the left side behind my ear, shaping the ends into a curl below my ear. I swept the long front to the right side with my fingers and left it to air-dry in place.

I used a sharpened pencil to define my thin brows, and I dabbed a dark cherry lip stain onto my lips. I finished with an eyelash curler and a coat of mascara. Needles wandered into the bathroom and meowed at me. I closed the lid to the toilet and he jumped up and nosed the belt to my dressing gown.

“I'm going on a date with Vaughn McMichael,” I said in response to his meow. “You remember him, don't you? He's the one who found you in the Dumpster.”

Needles meowed again. Three months ago I stopped worrying about becoming one of those people who talks to her pets. Now I worried about the kind of people who didn't.

I moved to the closet and rolled the doors to the side, exposing feathers, velvet, beads, and silk. Most of the clothes in the closet had belonged to my aunt. It was she who first taught me the importance of learning to make patterns by deconstructing vintage clothes. She'd been a collector herself in the fifties. She taught me that there was always a decade that went out of fashion, and that's when you could
get the best prices. She also taught me that fashion draws inspiration from the past, so what was out today would be in tomorrow.

Among the truly important things I'd packed into my car and moved with me from Los Angeles to San Ladrón was my own collection of vintage clothes from the thirties. I scoured eBay, estate sales, and movie studio wardrobe liquidations for items in my price range. Once I accepted my working wardrobe of black, black, and black, I spent less on regular clothes and more on my collection. I told Carson they were inspiration for my job, but there was a reason I only bought ones in my size. I'd never had an opportunity to wear any of them, but tonight felt like the perfect opportunity.

I selected a sheer black blouse with tiny white polka dots. It tied in a full bow at the neck, and had a series of pleats across the back. I tucked it into a black satin pencil skirt that fell three inches below my knees, a length that only worked with heels. Carson had complained when I wore heels because they made me taller than him. Vaughn was over six feet tall, so that wouldn't be a problem. I added the diamond stud earrings my parents gave me when I graduated from design school and a simple tennis bracelet I'd found in Aunt Millie's jewelry box.

I slid the closet doors shut and the door caught on something black velvet. A cape. It was about twenty-four inches long and lined in a brilliant turquoise silk. A rhinestone clasp by the neckline kept it closed so it wouldn't fall from the hanger. I undid the clasp and slipped the cape around my shoulders. The A-line cut swirled around me. I slipped on my black pumps—a comfortable style despite their pointy toe and three-inch heel—and looked in the mirror. I was only starting to get to know the glamorous stranger who looked back, and that's how I liked it.

Downstairs, there was a knock on the back door. Needles jumped down from the toilet seat and ran into the hallway. I followed. It was six thirty, too early for Vaughn to arrive. I moved to the kitchen and looked out the window above the parking lot. There were no cars other than mine. I took off the cape and left it on the kitchen table, then scampered downstairs as the knocking grew louder. I unlocked the door and pulled it open. Genevieve stood on the other side.