Kendra Clayton Mystery Box Set

by Angela Henry

  Mrs. Carson, my landlady and Mama’s best friend, was sitting in her usual spot on the front porch when I got home. Today, I was surprised to see her dressed not in her usual striped housedress and slippers but a royal-blue warm-up suit and white tennis shoes. Her gray hair was braided in its usual crown on the top of her head. A large tapestry purse with a thick black strap sat on her lap. A big gift bag with a pink pony on the front and a profusion of white tissue sticking out of the top sat at her feet. Mahalia, her Siamese cat, was pawing at the pony’s yarn tail.

  “What you got it that box, missy?” she asked as I approached the porch.

  “I’ll tell you what’s in the box if you tell me where you’re going looking so cute.” She rolled her eyes, but I could tell she was pleased by the compliment.

  “Today’s my great grandbaby’s first birthday. They’re having the party at that Chuck E. Cheese’s place and I’m waitin’ for my ride,” she said with a grimace, which indicated to me that spending time in a restaurant full of screaming kids wasn’t exactly her cup of tea.

  “Which one?”

  “Loreen’s girl, Sienna. I just hope that baby’s sorry daddy stays away. Did you know he was a thief? He’ll steal the wax right outta yo’ ears if you don’t watch him. I’m gonna have my eye on that boy if he shows up. Better not start no mess if he knows what’s good for him.”

  Seeing as how Mrs. Carson’s favorite son, Stevie, was also sticky-fingered, I was amazed she was being so judgmental. I ignored her comments and opened the box revealing the brownies. She reached inside, grabbed the biggest one and took a bite.

  “Not bad. Mine are better, though.”

  “Have fun at the party,” I told her as I walked up the steep steps to my apartment. I had the key in the lock and was about to open the door when Mrs. Carson called out to me.

  “Kendra, that Reverend Rollins came by here lookin’ for you. Said it wasn’t nothing important and he’ll stop back by. I hope you ain’t steppin’ out on that nice Carl, are you?”

  “No. It’s nothing like that,” I called out, opening my door. Since it wasn’t anything important, meaning not about Lynette, then why was he stopping by?

  “Good! ‘Cause that Carl’s a cutie and anyway I heard Morris Rollins was running ‘round with that Winette Barlow. You know, Crazy Frieda’s sister-in-law?”

  Huh? I almost dropped the box of brownies. I turned to ask her to repeat what she’d just said, but a car horn sounded and I watched as my landlady hurried off the porch and jumped into a waiting car.

  I’d met Winette Barlow last year when I’d been attending a funeral. Winette’s deceased sister-in-law, Elfrieda aka Crazy Frieda, whom everyone in town had mistakenly thought to be a bag lady, was also laid out that day in the same funeral home. Much like Rollins, Winette was an attractive fifty-something widow. She was always stylishly dressed and very friendly whenever I’d run into her in public. I didn’t have to think why he’d be attracted to her. I heard a purr that sounded like a busted carburetor and looked down. Mahalia slunk up the steps, leapt gracefully up on my railing, and looked at me with her almond-shaped blue eyes as if to say, “Well, you don’t want him. So, what’s your problem?”

  Damned cat.

  The next day I was back in Springfield. I kept a halfhearted eye out for Lynette, though I knew I wouldn’t see her. I’d called Greg the night before and he hadn’t heard another word from her. He’d lied to Justine and the kids, telling them Lynette was away on an overnight trip for work. He didn’t know how long he could keep the news of Lynette running off from her mother. Greg and I had agreed that if Lynette didn’t turn up the next day, we’d have no choice but to tell Justine. I wasn’t looking forward to that conversation at all. In the meantime, Allegra had indeed come back to stay with me.

  I was sitting on my couch with a bottle of wine and the box of brownies, having a pity party over a man I had no business being upset over, when my door flew open, revealing Allegra with all her crap —again. This time, I refused to give up my bedroom and made her sleep on the couch. My sister was understandably jumpy. Every time she heard a car door slam she would run to the window, convinced it was Harmon and Mercer coming to arrest her. Plus, she polished of the rest of my brownies.

  “I needed them more than you,” she’d told me when I spotted the empty bakery box. I’d only been out of the room a few minutes. She must have inhaled those last three brownies. Then I watched as she picked up the half-full wine bottle and chugged the rest of it wiping a trickle of wine from her chin with the sleeve of her shirt.

  “Allie, it’s going to be okay. Carl’s a damned good lawyer. You have nothing to worry about.” I gave her hand a reassuring squeeze.

  “Yeah, I have to admit he looks like he’d be damned good,” she’d said with a sly smirk, then let out a small belch.

  “He is,” I’d told her rather frostily. Then, having nothing left to say, I had gone to bed and dreamt about catching Allegra and Carl in my bed feeding each other brownies.

  My sister was actually the main reason I was back in Springfield. I wanted to know what was in the box that Kurt had given Donald Cabot, and if it could possibly have anything to do with Vivianne’s murder. I knew I had to help my baby sister no matter what, even if she did annoy the hell out me and was after my man. Once this mess was cleared up, she could go back to L.A. and leave me to live my boring life.

  This time, when I arrived at Cabot’s Cave, the door was open. As I walked in, I could hear Percy Faith’s “Theme from a Summer Place” coming from an old record player sitting on the shop’s front counter. A slight breeze was coming from one of the shop’s large open windows. Cabot’s Cave wasn’t cavelike at all. It was a large, light and airy space with a high ceiling, bright white walls and same the gleaming blond woodwork that the front door was made of. The shop was filled almost to the gills with old movie posters, vintage records, toys and other odds and ends connected either to the movies or television.

  Under one glass-topped display case there were vintage lunch boxes from the fifties, sixties and seventies. The two dozen or so boxes included the Flintstones, Howdy Doody, Star Wars and Scooby Doo. I even spied a yellow Josie and the Pussycats lunch box identical to the one I used to carry as a kid. My mouth fell open when I saw the price, and I wished I’d held on to mine. Who knew old lunch boxes would be so valuable?

  I flipped through the albums and was inspecting a plastic-encased soundtrack to the movie West Side Story when Donald Cabot emerged from another room and greeted me with smile. Today he was dressed in a red-and-black two-toned bowling shirt with the words Daddy O stitched on the front pocket, and jeans cuffed and rolled up past his ankles. Red Chuck Taylor high-topped tennis shoes were laced tightly around his skinny ankles and made his already big feet look huge. The shop’s lights made his bald spot look shiny and his eyes squinted at me from behind his thick horn-rimmed glasses. If pressed to describe what look he was trying to capture I’d have to say it was Revenge of the Nerds meets Grease.

  “Hello. Are you finding what you’re looking for?” he asked with such hope and enthusiasm I wondered how many customers he actually had on any given day. Was there a big market for memorabilia?

  “You’ve got a lot of good stuff here,” I replied, ignoring his question and making a sweeping gesture around the shop.

  “Thank you,” he said, grinning and turning slightly red. I could tell he was as proud of his shop as any mother would be of their child.

  “You know, if you can’t find what you’re looking for here I can always try and track something down for you from another collector.” I was about to tell him that wouldn’t be necessary when I happened to glance over his shoulder and noticed a poster on the wall. I brushed by him and stared at what looked like an original poster for the movie that launched Vivianne DeArmond’s career, Asphalt City.

  The poster depicted a very young and beautiful Vivianne dressed in a tight black skirt, slit thigh-high on one side, and a yellow halter top. A bl
ack scarf was knotted around her neck. Black open-toed, high-heeled sandals graced her feet and large gold hoop earrings dangled from her ears. Her hair was long and wavy with one side falling over her right eye. Lush red lips pouted seductively as she leaned suggestively against a lamppost with her voluptuous breasts thrust out and straining against her top. The movie’s tagline, “Love Her at Your Own Risk,” screamed in red letters across the top of the poster, underneath the title.

  “It was her most famous role,” said Donald Cabot walking over to stand beside me. “Her other film work was quite special, as well, but she could never quite capture the intensity of emotion she projected as Pearly Monroe,” he continued wistfully. I wondered what he thought about Demon Kitty.

  A lot of people thought Asphalt City was a masterpiece. I thought it was one of the most depressing movies I’d ever seen. Vivianne played Pearly Monroe, a prostitute who seduces a naive young policeman, Sam Hart, and talks him into robbing and killing her vicious pimp and lover, Johnny Desmond. Instead, their plan backfires and Desmond kills the cop in self-defense. Pearly rats Desmond out to the cops and testifies against him in court. Desmond is sent to the electric chair. After his execution, a destitute and guilty Pearly realizes she loved Desmond after all and can’t live without him. The movie ended with her throwing herself off a bridge. The credits rolled as her trademark black scarf fluttered in the wind. Not exactly an uplifting tale, but Vivianne’s performance was excellent. Plus, the fact that Vivianne was rumored to be romantically involved with the movie’s very French and very married director, Jacques St. Marchand, didn’t exactly hurt ticket sales.

  “She deserved an Oscar for that role,” Donald Cabot declared indignantly.

  “Yes, she did,” I agreed. “I saw you at the award ceremony for Vivianne DeArmond this past Saturday, didn’t I?” I asked matter-of-factly. Cabot swung round and gave me a startled look.

  “You were there?” he asked, surprised.

  “Of course I was there. I’m a huge Vivianne DeArmond fan. I can’t believe she’s really gone.” I shook my head and tried my best to look distraught.

  “I cried like a baby when I heard about it on the news. Hollywood has lost one of its brightest stars. I just wish she could have done one more movie.” He looked as if he was about to cry and I pressed on.

  “And to think there was a killer roaming around the auditorium,” I said to gauge his reaction. Just how much of a fan of Vivianne’s was Donald Cabot? Did he try and approach Vivianne in her dressing room and get angry when she rejected him again? Could he have killed her?

  “You know,” he said, looking around as though the shop was filled with people and he didn’t want to be overheard. “I tried to see Vivianne in her dressing room and that horrible assistant of hers was guarding that room like a sentinel. I wonder where in the world she was when Vivianne was murdered. If you ask me,” he murmured, looking around again. “I bet she killed Vivianne.”

  SEVEN

  “Why do you think that? Did you hear them arguing or something?” I asked hopefully.

  “Oh, no, nothing like that,” he said quickly. “But I never saw that woman leave Vivianne’s side the whole time she was at the ceremony. It’s strange she would have left Vivianne alone and she’s sure mean enough to be capable of murder.” He was certainly right about that, I thought, as an image of a raging Harriet Randall being wrestled to the ground by the police flashed in my mind.

  “Why were you trying to see Vivianne?” I asked.

  “I wanted to personally invite her to my unveiling,” he said, rubbing his hands together excitedly. “Of your shop?”

  “My new display. Come and see,” he replied, ushering me toward the back of the shop from which he’d emerged only moments before.

  I allowed him to lead me into a small room just off the shop’s main area. He flipped a switch on the wall and I felt as though I’d stepped into a shrine. The entire room was wall-to-wall Vivianne. The walls were adorned with posters from every one of her movies, including Demon Kitty. There were mannequins dressed in her movie costumes. I recognized the black skirt and yellow halter top from Asphalt City, and the midnight-blue evening gown she wore as torch singer Ginger Nolan in the movie Club Savoy. There were autographed pictures and movie props: the silk cushions she lounged on as scheming harem girl Yasmeen in the movie Arabian Adventure, the sparkling silver crown she wore during her guest starring role as alien Queen Zenobia on an episode of Star Trek, and the nunchacku she used as ass-kicking private eye Sassy Parker in the early seventies blaxploitation movies Sassy Mama and Sassy Mama’s Revenge. There was even a crate full of copies of her unmemorable one and only album, ViVi Sings, which one harsh music critic said should have the word badly tacked on the end of the title.

  I wondered what Vivianne would have thought of her entire career laid out in this little room. Would she have been flattered or, like me, wondering if Donald Cabot had a cage in his basement with her name on it? I could feel Cabot’s eyes on me awaiting my reaction. I certainly didn’t want to disappoint or offend him since I’d yet to get the information I’d come for.

  “This is amazing. How in the world did you get all of this stuff? Is all this authentic?”

  Cabot had been grinning until I asked about the authenticity of his display, then a frown eclipsed his face and he got a little huffy. “Of course it’s all authentic. Most of it came from memorabilia auctions, and the rest I bought from private sellers.”

  I noticed some of the items weren’t movie-related and must have been Vivianne’s personal things. The movie stuff didn’t have prices, but the personal items had tags on them. I looked at the tag on a cream-colored lace slip and had to keep my jaw from dropping. Donald Cabot was charging an arm and a leg to anybody who wanted a piece of Vivianne.

  “I didn’t realize this kind of stuff would be so valuable,” I said.

  “To be honest, there hasn’t been much interest in Vivianne’s memorabilia in quite some time. But now that’s she’s dead there’s been renewed interest in everything to do with her. You’re looking at the single largest collection of Vivianne DeArmond memorabilia in the world and it’s only going to get bigger,” he announced beaming.

  “Really. Why is that?”

  “Let’s just say I’ve tapped into a new source,” he said coyly. Based on what I’d witnessed yesterday, I knew who the new source must be.

  “Am I the first one to see this new display?”

  “Actually, I was quite honored to have Vivianne’s ex- husband and former manager, Cliff Preston, attend a private viewing of the collection. He even brought his wife and son with him. He was quite impressed.”

  “Wow. When was this?” I asked excitedly. My enthusiasm may have been fake but not my interest in his answer.

  “Hmm. Let’s see,” he said concentrating. “It was last Friday evening, the night before the awards ceremony. I was hoping he’d bring Vivianne with him but no such luck.” He shook his head sadly.

  “How’d he even know about your display?”

  “Oh, I contacted him months ago when I first heard the Starburst Film Festival was going to be honoring her. It was long overdue in my opinion,” he sniffed. “Anyway, I wrote and told him I was putting together a display and invited him to view it. I wrote to Vivianne, too, of course, but she never responded. I just know that assistant of hers probably never even gave her my letter.” I nodded in commiseration.

  I’d witnessed Kurt Preston and Noelle Delaney selling a box to Donald Cabot. It had obviously held some of Vivianne’s things. I wondered if Kurt had known his mother’s memorabilia would become so valuable once she was dead. Did he get tired of her refusing to give him money and come up with a deadly plan after seeing this display? Was Noelle involved, as well? She certainly needed money, too. If I was right and Kurt and Noelle had something to do with his mother’s murder, I knew Harmon and Mercer would want proof. Even if they didn’t believe me, at least they’d have someone else to be suspicious of besides m
y sister.

  “To be honest, Mr. Cabot, I’ve come here because I have a small collection myself. I collect items owned by local stars. I’d like to buy something for my collection. Is everything here for sale?” I said looking around the small room.

  “Everything is for sale. What would you like?” Donald Cabot said his face glowing with excitement.

  “I’m not quite sure. Do you have any suggestions? Are these all of Vivianne’s things or do you have more that I haven’t seen?” I asked carefully.

  “This is everything. I think I may have just the thing for you, it came in yesterday. Vivianne was said to be quite the collector when it came to purses, although this is the only one I have,” Cabot said gesturing toward a small black beaded evening bag perching on top of the white dresser used in Vivianne’s romantic comedy Nightie Night.

  I walked over and picked the bag up. It was an unusual triangle shape. The sides and bottom of the bag were stiff, silk-covered, and heavily beaded. The top was soft black cloth and closed completely when I pulled the velvet drawstring. It sort of looked like a small ornate laundry bag. I examined the price tag. Ouch. At a hundred and fifty bucks it wasn’t cheap. Not surprisingly, it was the least expensive thing on display and I knew I had to buy it to prove to Cabot I was serious. Plus, the bag was pretty cute and I needed a new black one. I’d been looking on my usual trips to Deja Vu thrift store without luck.

  “I’ll take it,” I said holding the bag out to Cabot. He grinned like a Cheshire cat.