The Decorator Who Knew Too Much

by Diane Vallere

  Tempting…

  “Wow,” he said. “You sure clean up nice.”

  I adjusted one of the earrings and pointed at the bathroom. “Your turn. Hurry up and we might have time to swing by Elvis’s house before we eat.” I kept my tone light, hoping that we’d eased past any awkwardness. Jimmy’s reception had been lukewarm at best, a far cry from yesterday.

  “We’ve got all the time in the world,” he said. He leaned down and kissed me, long and soft and tender and sensual. I put my hands on his naked torso and he drew me close. The kiss lasted long enough to make me forget about dinner. When we pulled apart, he smiled. “Can’t keep Elvis waiting,” he said. He kissed the tip of my nose and then went into the bathroom.

  I packed the map of landmark houses into my handbag and dug a soft yellow leash out of my suitcase. Rocky stood still while I clipped it on and then stood in front of the bedroom door ready to go. I’d thought he’d played with Heather, but maybe he’d been in the bedroom all day. I already wasn’t popular with the crew. I wondered what they’d think when I started showing up with my dog.

  We arrived at Marrakesh, a Moroccan-themed restaurant, about fifteen minutes after we left the house. The interior of the restaurant was undergoing renovations, but they’d set up small round tents in the parking lot. The tents enclosed semi-circular seating covered in red velvet cushions and small tables with luxurious gold tablecloths. The tent fabric had been pulled together and knotted off with thick gold rope, allowing us a view of the sunset. The opposite side allowed us a view of the empty parking lot. It was a casual restaurant with an elegant vibe. Twinkle lights had been strung in the trees, helping to transform the exterior view.

  The three of us approached the hostess station. A pretty brunette in a black shirt and trousers greeted us. She wore a gold nametag that said “Lora” pinned to her shirt.

  “We have a reservation for two,” Hudson said. The hostess glanced at Rocky. “Okay, for three. The name is Hudson.”

  She picked up a couple of menus and turned. “Follow me,” she said.

  Rocky led the way. We were seated at a table for two. The hostess unknotted the cord on the side of the tent and arranged the loosened fabric to give us more privacy.

  “I hope you weren’t expecting to sit inside,” she said. “The builders finished their portion of the interior renovation, but the decorators are running behind schedule. It’s going to be amazing when they’re done. Are you new to Palm Springs? You need to come back and see it.”

  “We live in Texas,” Hudson said.

  She looked at me and made a silly face. “You picked a heck of a time of the year to vacation in Palm Springs. Most of the businesses are closed for the off season. That’s why the renovations won’t affect our business too much.”

  “We’re out here on a job,” I said.

  “Madison is a decorator. I bet she’d love to see the inside if you could arrange that,” Hudson said. He winked at the hostess, who blushed.

  “Sure. Come with me,” she said.

  Hudson leaned back and stretched his arms across the back of the circular booth. “I’ll wait here with Rock. You go get inspired.”

  I smiled to myself. I’d named my dog after Rock Hudson, but soon after adopting him, “Rock” had morphed into “Rocky.” Most of the men I knew continued to call him Rock. I suspected it was a show of masculine solidarity.

  I slid over the red velvet cushion and out of the tent, and then followed the hostess inside. “Wow,” I said.

  “I know, right?” she said in a manner that, to my Pennsylvania-turned-Texas ear, sounded very Californian.

  The interior walls of the restaurant were painted in a metallic turquoise. At four-foot intervals, thick purple velvet drapes hung from the ceiling to the floor. They were pulled together and knotted with gold cord similar to what had been used on the tents out front. Low tables covered in gold tablecloths were scattered around the interior. Bench seating, so close to the ground that it appeared to hover, sat on either side of the tables. Rich tapestry fabric in shades of silver, gold, purple, and turquoise had been used to cover the cushions.

  “It’s amazing,” I said in awe. “I have no idea if this is what it looks like in Morocco, but I don’t even think I care. If we lived here, I’d want to visit every single night.”

  “If the owners have anything to say about it, when we reopen there’ll be a waiting list for reservations. You’re actually pretty lucky. The kitchen is working on a couple of new items and you might get to be a taste tester. Good thing you guys made reservations. It’s usually pretty quiet in Palm Springs in September, but there’s a business convention in town. They’re coming in about an hour and they reserved the rest of the tents.”

  I wandered closer to the wall and studied the paint, and then ran the velvet wall panels between my fingers. “Maybe I’ll do a Moroccan room someday.”

  “You should.” She led me back to the exit and to our tent. “Sorry I couldn’t give you more time, but I think my boss was starting to wonder what you were doing.” She set down the menus. “It might be a second before your server comes over. Can I get you started with something to drink?”

  I ordered a glass of Sauvignon Blanc and Hudson ordered a Hefeweizen. Neither one of us said a word until after she’d returned with both of our drinks and a bowl of water for Rocky.

  “This is nice, isn’t it? Just you and me.”

  “You made reservations after what happened today, didn’t you? Jimmy was annoyed and you thought it was best for us to do our own thing.”

  “I thought it would be nice to take you out. Make this more about us than about the job.”

  “When did you call the restaurant?”

  “This afternoon.”

  “After—”

  “Madison, last night you woke up screaming. I thought maybe you and I should talk about it.”

  I took a sip of my wine and followed it with a gulp of water. I wasn’t used to confiding in someone else, but if Hudson and I were going to have any kind of relationship, I needed to let him know what was going on with me. As if he understood my need for support, Rocky wound himself around the leg of my chair and laid down next to my foot.

  Sleep hadn’t come easy for me since the night five months ago when I’d committed vehicular manslaughter. My hometown had been terrorized by a police impersonator, and I’d been in the wrong place at the wrong time. Surveillance footage had been pulled from the convenience store, and there was enough on that tape to clear me.

  It wasn’t fear of the repercussions that kept me awake at night. It was the memory of having killed a man. Now, I suffered from horrible nightmares, reliving the experience with varying outcomes.

  “I’ve been having nightmares ever since April. I saw a doctor about it. He says it’s a classic sign of post-traumatic stress disorder. He recommended I talk to a psychologist and he gave me a prescription for sleeping pills. I didn’t want to take one last night.”

  “Why not?”

  “Being in an unfamiliar bed, in an unfamiliar house, I was afraid to completely relax.”

  “I don’t want you to be afraid to relax around me,” he said. “We’re going to have to work on that.”

  “You can’t erase bad memories.”

  “No, but I can help to make good ones.”

  I’d gotten too close to the impersonator case for a multitude of reasons and had almost ended up a victim myself. Add to that a newfound distrust of authority figures and an overwhelming desire to latch on to someone or something, and you found me in completely unfamiliar territory. The illusion of my formerly valued independent lifestyle had been shattered.

  My kneejerk reaction was to keep myself busy so I wouldn’t think about what had happened. I gave up the role of landlord and listed my apartment building for sale. Hudson, who had repeatedly declined my offers of partnership in Mad fo
r Mod, had bought the building. And while I’d volunteered to help him restore it to its former 1957 glory, he declined that offer too.

  I picked up with business at Mad for Mod and moved into a house that I’d inherited. Drive-bys of the apartment building showed me that he’d torn out the carpets and replaced the light fixtures. As much as I wanted to see what he was doing the place, I needed distance from the building that held so many bad memories, so my skeleton key went unused.

  “What does Tex have to say about this?”

  I looked up from the table at him. “Why would you ask that?”

  “He was as involved as you were. In a different way, but he was. He probably has to deal with this all the time.” He reached across the table and put his hand on top of mine. “I know you two are friends. I just assumed—”

  “I haven’t talked to Tex since we—since then.”

  “I never asked you to cut him out of your life.”

  “I know.” I pulled my hand away from his and dropped it into my lap. “It’s complicated.”

  Hudson pulled his own hand back and took another pull on his beer. When he set his beer down, he looked at me with concern. “Maybe you should talk to a professional. It might help.”

  After a dinner of Moroccan chicken and saffron couscous and complimentary samples of red onion confit and fig tarts with cardamom orange cream sauce, we drove around Palm Springs admiring the architecture, the plant life, and the sense of color. We agreed that any formal sight-seeing should wait until daylight hours. Even Rocky seemed to accept the fact that Elvis’s house wasn’t going to happen tonight.

  We drove back to Jimmy and Emma’s house, tucked away on a side street a few blocks behind the main road of Palm Springs. I was oddly thankful that last night’s interrupted sleep had left me looking forward to sleep tonight. Having told Hudson what was going on felt like a giant weight had been lifted. I braced myself for the inevitable tension that would come from seeing Jimmy again. But as we pulled into the driveway, the shouting that spilled out from inside the house erased everything. Hudson was halfway to the front door when we heard a crash.

  SIX

  The front door flew open before Hudson reached it and Jimmy stormed out. Hudson grabbed his upper arm, but Jimmy shook off Hudson’s grip. Jimmy yanked the door to his truck open, slammed it shut, and backed out of the driveway at a dangerous speed. The truck spun backward in a semicircle and then took off down the road.

  Hudson was in the living room with Emma when I went inside. His arms were around her and she sobbed into his shirt. It sounded to me like she was trying to say something, but her erratic breathing made her words unintelligible. I carried Rocky to the bedroom and told him to behave, and then shut the door behind me.

  I went to the kitchen and discovered the source of the crash we’d heard outside. A large clay pot lay broken in the middle of the kitchen floor, surrounded by scattered dirt and an assortment of succulents that had been uprooted. I collected the broken pieces of pottery and set them in the trash, and then found a dustpan and broom next to the refrigerator. I repotted as many of the small succulents as I could in bowls I found under the sink and left them on the counter.

  When I finished, I filled a glass with water from a plastic jug in the fridge and carried it out front. Emma sat on the sofa. Hudson sat in the chair adjacent to her.

  “Has he ever hurt you?” Hudson asked.

  “No—never. We argue, but that’s all.”

  “For how long?”

  “Off and on for a year,” she said. She looked up at me, and I held the glass of water out. “Thank you,” she said. She sipped it and then held it between both hands. “I never know what’s going to set him off. I thought—I hoped having the two of you here would make things easier.”

  “What was the problem tonight?” Hudson asked.

  Emma glanced up at me a second time.

  “It was me, wasn’t it?” I said. “It was what happened today at the river.”

  “He said you cost them a full day’s work. I told him if you thought you saw a body, then you had an obligation to report it. He was mad that I took your side. He said I’m always on the other person’s side and never his.” She started to cry again.

  I put my hand on Hudson’s shoulder. His muscles were tense. I’d only seen Hudson truly angry on a few occasions, but I suspected this would be one of them. Regardless of the friendship in place between him and Jimmy, Emma was his sister. She and Heather were the only family he had.

  “I’m going to leave you two alone,” I said quietly. “Rocky and I will be in the bedroom.”

  “Madison, wait,” Emma said. She brushed the tears from her face. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”

  Hudson put his hand on top of mine and then stood up. “I’ll take Rock out one last time,” he said. He went into the hallway and returned with Rocky hooked to his leash. Neither Emma nor I spoke until the door closed behind him.

  I ignored the empty chair and sat on the sofa next to her. I put my hand on her back and rubbed up and down in a comforting manner. “You don’t have to talk if you don’t want to,” I said. “We can just sit here.”

  “I need to talk to somebody,” she said. “But not Hudson. And I can’t take a chance that he’ll overhear us.” She sniffled a few times, her breath still catching occasionally as her lungs caught up with her.

  The front door opened and we both looked up. Hudson bent down and let Rocky off his leash. Rocky bounded over to us, but Hudson remained in the hallway. I tipped my head toward Emma’s. “How about tomorrow morning? I was planning on getting up early for a swim before the day got started. Do you want to join me?”

  She nodded. We said goodnight and I joined Hudson in the bedroom. He stood on his side of the bed. Tonight it was Mortiboy who took up the space smack in the middle of the comforter.

  “This whole trip was a mistake,” he said. “Our first getaway should have been a getaway. Not a job, not under somebody else’s roof. You’re dealing with issues. My sister and her husband are at war.” Rocky jumped up onto the bed and Mortiboy hissed at him and swatted his nose. Rocky turned tail and jumped back down on the floor. “Hell, our animals can’t even get along.”

  “If this is anybody’s fault, it’s mine,” I said. “You heard your sister. Jimmy was mad because of what happened at the job site today.”

  “Emma was right. If you thought you saw a body in the water, then you had an obligation to notify the police.”

  “Do you believe me?” I asked.

  “I believe you because I know you. As morbid as it sounds, I wish there had been a body. None of this would have happened.”

  “There was a body. I don’t know what happened to it, but it was there.” I pulled my pajamas out from underneath my pillow. “I think it might be a good idea for me to swim tomorrow morning. My knee’s been pretty swollen since the flight, and it might be wise to do something familiar, try to find a routine while we’re here. I told Emma she could come with me if she wanted. Are you okay with that?”

  “Sure. It might do her good to get out of the house. I’ll stay here and have breakfast ready. When Jimmy comes back, we’ll need to clear the air if we expect to work together.”

  Our plans were for naught. Neither Jimmy nor Emma were home when I woke up the next morning.

  Hudson left messages on both of their phones. I cleaned Mortiboy’s litter box and took Rocky outside. He ran to the neighbor’s house and peed on a low shrub by the corner. Giggling spilled out from inside the house and then two girls’ faces appeared in the window. “Rocky came to visit!” Heather said through the screen of the house next door. “Come on!”

  I called Rocky back to me, but as soon as the front door opened, he took off for the girls. A woman in an oversized 49ers T-shirt and leggings came out after them. “Girls! Keep it down. It’s six o’clock in the morning!”


  I walked over and introduced myself. “Hi, I’m Madison Night. I’m staying with Emma and Jimmy for a little while.” I pointed to Rocky. “I’m afraid he’s to be blamed for your wake-up call. He’s mine.”

  “Don’t worry. He didn’t wake me up. When you host a slumber party for nine-year-old girls, you sacrifice your sleep. I was hoping to get in some Pilates before they woke up, but I should have known better.” She wiped her hands on her shirt and then held one out. “Jo Conway. Nice to meet you.”

  I shook her hand. “How long was Heather expected to stay?”

  “That’s the beauty of a sleepover at the neighbor’s house. We never really set things in stone. The school bus comes at eight thirty, but I was going to drop Gina off on my way to work. If Emma’s too busy, I can take Heather too.”

  I didn’t think it prudent to mention the fight or the fact that both parents were gone this morning, but I also wasn’t prepared to take care of a stranger’s daughter in an unfamiliar town. “I can’t speak for Emma, but I think the girls would enjoy the extra time here to play with Rocky.”

  “Rocky? Like the Sylvester Stallone movies?”

  “Like Rock Hudson.” I smiled. “The Y came later. There are some who would say that I was born in the wrong decade.”

  She smiled and took in my turquoise, yellow, and tangerine vertical-striped top with the zig-zag hem and white cotton shorts (Simplicity 5439). “What do you do for a living?”

  “I own a decorating business that specializes in mid-century modern design.”

  She laughed. “Sounds to me like you know exactly who you are.”