The Decorator Who Knew Too Much

by Diane Vallere

  “No, you don’t understand.” She pulled away from me and swiped at her eyes with her fist. “My marriage is over. I’ve been having an affair, and I’m pretty sure he’s the body you found in the river.”

  TWELVE

  Emma’s confession was unexpected. I knew she was upset about the fight with Jimmy and now the police being at her house. Her guilt seemed to cause the two incidents to blur.

  She put her hand on my arm. “I shouldn’t have said anything, but I can’t keep it in anymore. Don’t tell anybody. Not even my brother.”

  “I don’t want to keep secrets from Hudson.”

  “Please?”

  “Fine. The affair is your personal business, and other than that, I’m not sure there’s anything to tell. What makes you think you know the victim?”

  “While you were inside, the officers were talking about a bag they found on the pier. When he and I used to meet, he always had a bag with him.”

  I noticed that she refrained from using her lover’s name, but I didn’t press for details. “What kind of bag?” I asked. People carried all sorts of bags with them and Emma overhearing that the victim was found with a bag was far from a positive ID. I’d seen the bag myself, on the pier the day I originally saw the body. I’d know from her details if it was the same one.

  “It was olive drab, canvas. Like the kind you get at an army surplus store.”

  It sure sounded like the same bag.

  “They said it was empty,” she continued. “I—I’ve seen that bag before, but it was full of pills. He’s a—he’s a doctor, and one time, when he was here, I told him one of my prescriptions was low. He said he’d bring me a refill. He wanted the empty bottle and I gave it to him.”

  Emma was obviously upset, and having confessed her deepest, darkest secret to me was having a cathartic impact on her. Warning bells were going off in my head, indicators that the behavior of her doctor friend seemed far from ethical, but I didn’t think it was the time for a lecture.

  I didn’t like being in a position where I knew more than I should, especially when it involved the police. “If you’re sure it’s him, then you need to tell the detective,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I can’t. I mean, what am I supposed to say? They haven’t identified the body yet, and nobody knows about us. Hudson told me you have experience with this kind of thing. How long do I have to pretend everything is normal?”

  “The police are under no obligation to report in to us. Once they confirm the identity of the body, they’ll notify his family.” I hesitated for a moment. “Was he married too?”

  “Not anymore.”

  “The job of the police is to investigate the crime. They’re a little behind because of the amount of time that lapsed between the murder and discovery of the body, so they have to do what they can now.”

  “So how will I know what’s going on?”

  “You won’t.”

  Her eyes, still damp with tears, bounced back and forth between my own. I sensed her desperation, but didn’t know if it was rooted in fear of having her affair discovered or something worse. She’s Hudson’s sister, a voice in my head said. She has a daughter and she’s opened her home to you.

  “Have you tried calling him?”

  Emma shook her head. “He told me not to call him. We always met at the antique marketplace by the Moroccan baskets. Otherwise, it was too risky.”

  “Then all you can do is wait.” I took her hands in mine and squeezed them. “When the police identify the body, they’ll notify his family. After they do, they’ll release his identity to the media. You watch the local news. You read the paper and the internet. There will be updates as they happen. Once this becomes public knowledge, the community will demand information and the police will have to answer to them.”

  “I’m so scared,” she said. She started to cry again and I hugged her. “If anybody finds out what I did, my life will be over.”

  After Emma, Jimmy, and Heather had turned in, Hudson and I stretched out in the hammock out back, him at one end and me at the other. Mortiboy sat on his chest and Rocky curled up by my side. Hudson’s fingertips were just inside the hem of my dress, strumming gently on my thigh. To make room for the four of us, he left one leg on the ground and, with his toe, slowly moved the hammock back and forth. The only sound was that of the animals’ even breathing and a couple of crickets chirping in the grass near the house.

  Hudson hadn’t asked for details about my conversation with the detective or the attack at the quarry, but I felt his unspoken questions in the air. “There were four men,” I said quietly. “I don’t know where they came from or how they knew I was there. The police said the body was found at the quarry, and I keep thinking maybe the men thought I saw something or knew something.”

  “Did they hurt you?”

  “They scared me.” I stared up at the dark midnight blue sky. It was like a swath of velvet draped over the top of the trees, speckled with stars that looked like glitter. “Maybe that’s all they wanted to do. I didn’t wait around to find out.”

  “Did you tell the police?”

  “Yes.” I lapsed into silence again. “You know what’s weird?” I said. “I think I was happier when I started to believe I was wrong about what I saw.” I stroked my hand over Rocky’s fur. He shifted his tiny furry body and his back paw popped through one of the holes in the hammock. He opened his eyes, tipped his head, pulled his foot out, and rolled onto his back with his paws in the air. I moved my hand to his belly and kept petting.

  “I hate to say it, but I think we all were. Not because anybody wanted you to be wrong, but…” Hudson’s voice trailed off. He put his hands behind his head and stared up at the stars. The sun had dropped, but the hot desert temperature had barely changed. “I don’t think I’ve seen Emma this shaken up since Jimmy put a frog in her sleeping bag at camp.”

  I laughed. “I didn’t realize they went back that far.”

  “His family lived down the street from ours.” He swatted at a fly buzzing around us. “We sure got into a lot of trouble together. There was always something between him and Emma. I didn’t like it at first—my best friend starts to date my sister. Brought out all sorts of protective feelings. But Emma’s got a mind of her own. If she wants to do something, she’s going to charge ahead and do it no matter what the repercussions might be.”

  “Was this in Dallas?”

  “Yeah. Mostly kid stuff, but the older we got, the higher the stakes. After our parents died, we moved in with my grandmother. There wasn’t money for both of us to go to college. You already know what happened to me. Being under suspicion of murder changed a lot about my life.”

  Hudson was referring to his past. Being a good Samaritan had put him in the wrong place at the wrong time, and while no one had been able to prove he was guilty, suspicion of murder had hung over his head for two decades. During that time he’d learned who he could trust and who he couldn’t and maintained a quiet existence in order to avoid town gossip about what people thought he’d done.

  “When you told me about your grandmother raising you, you didn’t mention Emma.”

  “Emma went away to college instead of me. I think my grandmother wanted to get her out of Dallas to protect her from the gossip.”

  “Did it work?”

  “I don’t know. She never came back. Don’t tell Emma I said this, but Gram hoped Emma’s world would open up and she’d see there was something bigger for her out there. But four years later, she and Jimmy reconnected and they’ve been together ever since.”

  We lapsed into silence. The swaying of the hammock became rhythmic, and I closed my eyes. Erratic sleep was taking its toll on me, and the high-low of emotions that came with the visit from the detective had left me on edge. I dozed off, and then jerked awake when fragmented images from the memories I’d tried to block filtered into my
subconscious mind.

  “What happened?” Hudson asked. He sat up on his side of the hammock and put his hands on my calves.

  “Nothing,” I said. “I must have fallen asleep.”

  “Let’s get you inside. It’s been a long day, and it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world to wind things down.”

  Hudson lifted Mortiboy and held him to his chest. I rolled to my side away from Rocky. As soon as I created vacant space, Rocky rolled into the center of the hammock. He scrambled to stand up and his paws popped through the loose weave of the rope again. He tried unsuccessfully to pull his paws back out and whimpered. I scooped him up and kissed his head. The four of us went into the house and locked the back door behind us.

  Hudson showered first. I wandered around the guest bedroom, lining his and my sneakers up under the edge of the bed, moving our dirty clothes into an empty basket we were temporarily using as a hamper, and replacing Rocky’s emergency pee pad with a fresh one. It seemed as though we’d all been stressed out since we arrived in Palm Springs.

  I hadn’t given much thought to Hudson’s stresses since arriving. What I’d originally thought to be a comfortable family arrangement was fraught with trouble: his sister, her husband. Their marital challenges. A nine-year-old girl. Two pets who barely tolerated each other on their own turf, let alone the unfamiliar surroundings of Palm Springs.

  And now, a murder.

  From the first time I’d met him, Hudson had demonstrated a calm demeanor. He rolled with the punches and dealt with drama when it came around. We’d known each other for four years before I even knew about his past. I could think of only one occasion when he’d lost his cool to me, and I’d long forgiven him after learning the circumstances. It might have been the night he introduced me to his own demons that I first realized I was falling in love with him. At the time, I was far from ready for a relationship—I’d pretty much decided it would be me and Rocky for the rest of our lives. My idol, Doris Day, had had her own romantic challenges and had found that happiness came as easily when you surround yourself with animals as when you surround yourself with men. Maybe she hadn’t said it quite like that, but still.

  So Hudson knew about my past and I knew about his, but there was still a whole lot of gray area neither of us spoke about. Even though I was forty-eight to his forty, it felt like he’d lived far more than I had. Both of our parents had passed away. I was an only child turned only woman. I grew up in Pennsylvania, but moved to Dallas when I was forty-five. He grew up in Dallas and told me his grandmother had raised him. He’d never mentioned Emma when he talked about those days. He once asked me why I believed he was innocent when even his friends had thought him to be guilty. Had Emma—and Jimmy, now that I thought about it—been in the camp that distanced themselves from him at a time when he’d most needed their support?

  I didn’t want to tell Hudson, but I was nervous about trying to fall asleep. If anything was going to trigger the nightmares, the reality of having seen a body floating in the river would probably top the list. We switched places, him freshly shampooed and washed, smelling of soap and laundry detergent, and me in need of shower therapy and a bar of Happy soap like Doris Day’s character advertised in The Thrill of it All.

  Freshly scrubbed and dressed in a white eyelet PJ top and matching bloomers, I made a decision. The pills were in case of emergency, and while I’d made a promise to myself I wouldn’t become dependent on them, I knew waking the house up with my screaming, today of all days, wasn’t an option.

  I patted my hands over my belongings. The pills weren’t there. I double checked my makeup case, and then stepped out of the bathroom and rooted through my luggage.

  “What’s wrong?” Hudson asked.

  “I was going to take a sleeping pill, but I can’t find my prescription.”

  “It’s in the medicine cabinet. I found it on the floor. Probably fell out of your bag.”

  I went back into the bathroom and slid the medicine cabinet open. My prescription sat on the second shelf between a bottle of aspirin and an unopened package of Q-Tips. I took the prescription bottle out of the cabinet and the back of the shelf fell forward, revealing a secret compartment. I shifted the rest of the items out of the way and revealed a cabinet filled row upon row with amber pill vials similar to mine except with prescriptions in Emma’s name.

  Curiosity took hold of me. I took a bottle from the shelf and checked the label. The prescriptions were for Valium. There were easily thirty bottles. They were all full. I’d never seen so much Valium in one place in my life.

  The prescribing physician was Dr. Albert Hall, the same doctor Officer Buchanan had suggested I talk to in order to deal with my stress. Emma had said her affair had been with a doctor who offered to fill her prescriptions, and it seemed like they were one and the same. If Emma was correct about the identity of the victim, the doctor’s days of counseling were over.

  THIRTEEN

  The sleeping pill dropped me into a deep slumber and left me groggy and lethargic the next morning. I had a vague memory of Hudson waking me, only for me to roll over and fall back asleep. Palm Springs was turning out to be more than a vacation from my life in Dallas, it was a break from my entire routine. Creature of habit that I was, I wasn’t sure I liked it.

  I pulled my blonde hair back into a high ponytail and changed into a turquoise and white sleeveless dress with a wide pleat down the front (McCalls 8755). I tied a turquoise ribbon around my head to hold my hair back, and then led Rocky down the hallway and let him out the front door. He raced a few feet and then did his business next to a small row of succulents. He’d had a chance to run around the backyard the previous day, but like me, he was sorely off his exercise regimen. Already the temperature felt like the inside of an oven.

  “Tomorrow,” I promised him. “I’ll get up early and we’ll go for a walk.” He sniffed a row of plants and then ran back into the house.

  Jimmy sat at the dining room table typing on a laptop. “Help yourself to coffee,” he said. “Hudson went out for bagels.”

  “Where’s Emma?”

  “She took Heather to school.”

  I filled a mug with coffee and removed an English muffin from the package on the counter. “What’s the plan for today?” I asked. “Back to the river?”

  Jimmy looked up from his computer. “The river is off limits.” There was a hard edge to his tone. “The police went this morning to look for evidence connected to your body. The whole project is on hold indefinitely.” He looked back at his computer screen.

  I fought to keep my tone light. “It’s not ‘my body.’”

  He looked up at me. “Yeah? Well, whoever’s body it is, it’s costing me money I don’t have. If you hadn’t seen it, probably nobody would have known it was there and we’d be making time on the job right now.”

  Jimmy’s insensitive tone set me off. “Is that what you’re worried about? Your timetable? A man was killed,” I said, stressing the last word. “I had a moral obligation to report it to the police and they have a professional obligation to investigate the crime. I know you’re not suggesting things would have been better if I had kept my mouth shut.”

  He slammed the laptop shut. “I know your type. I’ve known your type my whole life. You’re just out for attention. You think we’ll all find it cute you like Doris Day so much you dress like her. Ever since you got here it’s been one thing after another. You got my wife looking at you and Hudson and thinking our life should be more like yours or like something out of a movie. You think you’re the first woman to come along and catch Hudson’s eye? Think again. I’ve known him since we were kids. There’s been a long line before you. You better not play the victim card for too long or he’s going to get bored.”

  “Is that what you think? I played a victim so Hudson would pay attention to me?”

  “If you didn’t want attention, you wouldn’t be st
anding here in a stupid outfit some woman wore fifty years ago.”

  It took everything in me to remember I was in Jimmy’s house, a supposed guest of his and Emma’s hospitality. But I had control over my circumstances. Jimmy’s words bit into me in a way I wasn’t prepared to deal with. I set the mug down on the counter. “Thank you for making it clear how you feel.” I walked down the hallway and threw everything I’d unpacked back into my suitcase. Seventeen minutes later, Rocky and I left.

  Righteous indignation didn’t carry me far. I knew approximately seven people in Palm Springs. Ruling out Jimmy, Emma, and anybody related to law enforcement, I ended up knocking on the door of the next-door neighbor.

  Jo answered. Today she wore a white T-shirt and khaki Bermuda shorts. Her close-cropped hair was slicked down to her head in a way that suggested she’d recently showered. Her feet were bare.

  “Madison, right?” she said.

  “Yes. I’m sorry to bother you, but I have a—well, a pretty embarrassing favor to ask. Do you think you could give me a ride into town?”

  She glanced at the giant turquoise suitcase next to my feet. “Trouble in paradise?” she asked. “Maybe it’s contagious.”

  “Paradise is fine,” I said, “but I think there’s been a little too much togetherness. Hudson and I might be in town longer than we initially thought. I think the decent thing is to get a hotel room.”

  “If only all visitors were as considerate as you. Let me put on shoes.”

  I didn’t know if Jimmy watched me walk to Jo’s front door or not, and truthfully, I didn’t care. I knew he was angry about the change to his timetable and the loss of money, but there were other ways to express his frustration. He’d been nothing but rude to me since I arrived, and I’d been independent for too long to sit back and take it.

  Victim, my ass.