Pillow Stalk

by Diane Vallere

  “I know that Hudson was the one who called the cops after I was attacked. You can ask your friend Officer Nast. He wouldn’t do that if he was guilty.”

  “Guilty people call the cops all the time.”

  “Don’t try to change my mind. I know everything I have to know.”

  “Do you know that Sheila Murphy was suffocated twenty years ago, just like Pamela Ritter? And that we never found the murder weapon?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Or that she was at a costume party the night she died, dressed up as your favorite actress?”

  “No, I didn’t know that either. But it still doesn’t prove anything.”

  “How about this one. Did you know Sheila Murphy was Thelma Johnson’s daughter?”

  THIRTEEN

  The room started to spin, and I put my hands down on the ivory-tiled counter to get my bearings. An unexpected breeze blew the aqua curtains away from the kitchen window and stopped as suddenly as it had started, turning the curtains back into a motionless wall of fabric.

  “How is that possible?” I asked.

  “Different marriage, different last name. Happens all the time.”

  “No, I meant the coincidence of it. And why wasn’t anything about it in the paper?”

  “We suppressed a few details from the public because of the investigation.”

  “But—”

  “No buts, Night. Face it. You don’t know what you’re doing.”

  “You told me I wasn’t a suspect.”

  “You aren’t a suspect. You have no motive, and to the best of our knowledge, you never even met Thelma Johnson. You lived in Pennsylvania when Sheila Murphy’s murder took place. You were nowhere near this.”

  “So stop treating me like I’m involved,” I said, fists balled up on the countertop.

  “Being a suspect and being involved are two very different things and you’re definitely involved, that much I know for sure. First, someone wearing your robe, who looks a lot like you, is killed with a pillow stolen from your trunk and left behind your car. Then you get a threatening message at the theater. Then you make arrangements to go to Thelma Johnson’s house and another person dressed up like you is murdered with one of your pillows. And now you tell me you were attacked.” Tex said, readjusting his weight on the barstool. He looked more comfortable on it than most people would. “We got four dead bodies. And you’re in the middle of it all.”

  “Wait, four bodies? I thought there were three.” My stomach turned. “Sheila, Pamela, and Ruth Coburn’s daughter.” Embarrassed, I realized that I didn’t know the young girl’s name.

  “Carrie. Carrie Coburn.”

  “Okay, that’s three. Who’s the fourth?”

  “Thelma Johnson.”

  “That’s insane! She was seventy-eight and died in her sleep. I have the article here somewhere.” I crossed the room to the makeshift sideboard-desk and pushed small pieces of scrap paper and newspaper articles around the surface, looking for the one with the obituary. “It’s here, I just can’t remember where I left it.”

  “Madison, stop looking. You won’t find anything in the article.”

  I stopped what I was doing but didn’t look at him. I stared at the clock in front of me, a radial with colorful balls on the end of each of the twelve arms. The second hand snapped forward, ticking off seconds of silence while I kept my back to Tex.

  “Night, I told you, we’re working with the press. We withheld information from the public. Thelma Johnson didn’t die in her sleep. She was suffocated. Just like the others.”

  The news knocked the wind out of me and I swayed forward. I steadied myself with a hand palm-side down on the top of the desk. Without looking at Tex, I walked down the hall to the bathroom and locked the door behind me.

  I took a long shower. When I finished, I dug around inside a bin of rarely needed bathroom-stuff in the closet and found a small pair of scissors, then did what I could to even out my hair. In light of everything, it didn’t feel right to schedule a trip to the stylist.

  Next I rubbed my knee with steroid cream and wrapped it with an ACE bandage. I could barely bend it, but the restriction subdued the throbbing enough to allow me to move. Temptation wanted me to stay at home with Rocky, take a painkiller, and hide out in bed, but obligation would force me to deal with business first.

  Tex suspected Hudson. I didn’t. But if I was wrong, then I had put myself in a very vulnerable position last night. If I was right, then the killer was out there. And he wanted something. I didn’t have a clue how each of these women were connected. Sheila and Thelma were connected, related, by blood. But Pamela Ritter and Carrie Coburn? How did they factor into this? And was I just an innocent bystander who was getting caught in the middle of the tornado of murder?

  I belted the robe around me. My clothes were in the bedroom and I was going to have to leave the safety of the bathroom behind. My cell phone sat on the back of the toilet where I’d left it charging last night. The screen said the battery was full. I unplugged it and the screen changed, alerting me to several voice mails and text messages. Two days without a cell phone left me feeling popular in a way that didn’t matter.

  I leaned against the pink ceramic sink with my back to the mirror, and listened to the voice mail. Tex. Demanding that I call him. They ranged from Madison, call me back to Damn it, Night, where are you? His voice had changed from anger to frustration to something I didn’t yet recognize. I’d heard the anger and frustration first hand but the later messages held a different edge. Whatever it was, he hadn’t used that tone of voice with me before.

  After listening to the voice mail messages I cued up the texts. Again, Tex. Same degrees of concern, six in all. I deleted each one as they appeared on the screen.

  Call me back

  Where r u?

  meet me at the mummy tonight

  call

  call

  CALL

  I wanted out. Out of the murder investigation, out of range of being used. I tightened the knot on my robe and opened the bathroom door. Tex stood in the hallway, in front of the door, his hand raised to knock.

  “You’ve been in there a really long time,” he said.

  I held up the cell phone. “That was almost an obsessive amount of messages and texts,” I said, and walked past him to the bedroom. He followed.

  “I’m in the middle of a murder investigation, Night, and part of my job is to find the killer, and the other part of my job is to protect the people who might become victims.”

  “Tex,” I started.

  “You seem to show up at all the right times.”

  “Because you’re telling me to! It’s like I’m your puppet!” I waved the phone in front of his face. “First you tell me to go to the Mummy, then you make me leave as soon as I get there. Stop trying to use me!”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “Make up your mind. Did you want me to go to the Mummy, or did you want me to stay home? If I wasn’t supposed to be there, why did you tell me to go?” I stepped backward and tripped over a pair of shoes lying on the floor.

  Tex’s hands flew out and grabbed my forearms, preventing a fall. “Night,” he started.

  I balled up my fists and tried to shake him off.

  “Listen to me. I didn’t tell you to go to the Mummy.” The intensity of his voice made me go ice cold.

  “If it wasn’t you, then who was it? Who texted me six times? ‘Call me? Where r u? Meet me at the mummy?’” I punched the cell phone in the air as I repeated each message, but before he had a chance to answer I knew I had been wrong. At least one of those messages hadn’t come from Tex. Someone else had texted me to go to the theater last night.

  Someone had been waiting there to kill me.

  FOURTEEN

  As quickly as I realized what had transpired, Tex figured it out in half the time and had been waiting for me to catch up. Rocky jumped around our feet. His joy in light of my crisis was jarring.

  “
Madison, I’m going to need to ask you a lot of questions about what you know and you’re going to have to answer me. Honestly.”

  “I need a minute here.”

  “Okay. Get dressed and meet me in your living room.” He walked out of the room and pulled the door shut behind him.

  I sat, shoulders hunched, on the bed, and stared at the small TV cart in front of me. The plastic case to The Glass Bottom Boat sat on top of the television, where I’d left it after I’d first gotten the idea for the film festival. I felt further from Doris Day and her kind of idyllic life than I could have imagined possible, yet, somehow, it all matched. Rock Hudson’s character had tricked her, had made her think he was someone he wasn’t. He gained her trust with his lie, and, because she’d wanted to believe so badly that this smart, handsome man who she was falling in love with was the real deal, she left her blinders on and didn’t see the truth. As much as I wanted to be like Doris, I couldn’t afford to wear blinders. The lieutenant had been hitting me with his one-liners and pretend attraction since we met, to throw me off guard. He wasn’t looking for a date for Saturday night, he wanted to know my connection to four murder victims. I had to look at the situation clearly, to see past his come-ons, past Hudson’s friendship, to what was really there. I didn’t want to believe my life had been spared because of a lost cell phone and a missed text message.

  I pulled on a pair of lime green polyester knit pants and a white V-neck pullover trimmed in the same shade. The pants had always been loose and I needed the room for my knee now wrapped in the bandage. I slid my feet into yellow Keds and tied them, while my brain raced with thoughts that wouldn’t leave me alone. I grabbed a straw hat from my closet, a tall wicker cone with yellow straw tassels hanging from it, and pulled it over my chopped up hair.

  Rocky sat by Tex’s feet when I returned to the living room. Tex punched buttons on my cell phone.

  “That’s an invasion of privacy,” I said, trying to make a joke. It fell flat.

  “Who else has this number?” Tex asked, holding up my phone.

  “Lots of people. It’s on my business card,” I said.

  “Let me see it.”

  I pulled a card out of my wallet and handed it to him. He studied it.

  “This address, is that your studio?”

  “Yes.”

  “When’s the last time you were there?”

  “Yesterday, I think. No, the day before. The Thelma Johnson project kept me away yesterday.”

  “The Thelma Johnson project is over. Your new project is working with me.”

  “You can’t do that!”

  “You’re right. I can’t shut down your business or put you under house arrest for your own safety.” He stood up and shook his left leg until the wrinkles in his jeans gave out. “But, if you’re going to insist on putting yourself in danger, I can make sure I’m there.”

  “What do you mean by that? You can’t be everywhere I am all the time.”

  “Trust me, I can.” He tucked his thumbs into his back pockets, his elbows pointed behind him, his chest swelled out.

  “What do you mean by that?”‘

  “It’s pretty simple. You’re looking at your new partner.”

  I pulled the blue Explorer out of the lot and drove down Greenville Avenue to my studio. I needed to finish emptying out the back of the truck. Last night, under a cloud of fear and wine, I thought I’d ask Hudson to help me like I had in the past, but today, with my new side kick, I wasn’t looking to complicate matters. I knew Tex still considered Hudson a viable suspect, a threat. I didn’t. But if Tex was right and I was wrong….

  I shook my head involuntarily and the yellow tassels on my hat bounced. I was not going to think about that, I was not going to let my mind go down that path. It couldn’t be. Hudson’s story held so much truth, so much honesty, so much pain, it would be difficult for me to discount it completely. I had to believe in the good of the people around me. It was the only way I knew how to function.

  We arrived at the studio and I set Rocky up in my office. He raced to his makeshift bed, and bit into his rope bone. With a fresh bowl of water and a hollow rubber toy filled with peanut butter, he’d be self sufficient for hours. I locked the door and Tex followed me out the back exit.

  “So you’re a decorator, huh? How’d you get into that?”

  “It’s a job, just like any other job,” I said.

  “It’s creative without creating anything.”

  “Who says I don’t create anything?”

  “Whoa. Calm down.” He put his hands up in the air, like he surrendered. “I’m just saying, you know, painters have paintings when they’re done. Writers have books. Musicians have—”

  “Music. I get it. You don’t respect the talent needed to design a room.”

  He leaned back against the side of the Explorer while I pulled two brass clocks from behind the seats. “I just don’t get it. How does someone choose to be creative like this instead of painting or singing, or writing?”

  “You know somebody who teaches you. You develop an eye, a way to look at things. You not only see what should be in a room but what shouldn’t. You have a decent memory bank, so you remember lots of different things that came from lots of different places, and you figure out how to put them together into something fresh.”

  “So you’re a problem solver,” he said.

  “At times. You know, our jobs aren’t all that different.”

  He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned a shoulder against the door. “How’s that?”

  “You look at the big picture, too. You see a bunch of pieces of a crime and try to figure out what belongs and what doesn’t. You inundate your brain with information until things fall together into a solution that works.”

  “You’re likening police work to decorating?”

  “I am.”

  “That’s a bold statement I’m not sure the boys in blue would appreciate.”

  “See? Maybe that’s a problem. Pride gets in the way of you seeing things from a new perspective.” I shoved the two brass clocks at him and picked up a box of china printed with a light blue and light green pattern of starbursts. “Now, if I haven’t hurt your feelings, follow me. We have a lot of work to do today, partner.”

  I shut the door to the SUV and walked around the corner to the storage locker. He followed a few steps behind.

  I set the box by my feet and unlocked the door. Unlike the organized minimalism I maintained in the studio, this nine-foot by nine-foot cubicle was stuffed to the gills. At one time I’d lined the perimeter with cheap second-hand bookcases that now held all of the smaller knickknacks I found. The middle was a carefully arranged chaos of sofas, chairs, tables, and wardrobes stacked as tightly as possible. Throw blankets and pillows were wedged between wood surfaces to protect them. Framed pictures sat in upright stacks along the far wall next to canisters of film and colorful sets of glassware.

  When I needed something unique, this was the first place I came. I could do a room with what was offered at most retailers today, and I could keep it in budget, too. But these effects were the ones that made the difference. They were original, had probably sat in the same house since they were bought, and were easily repaired. They came cheap because of their condition, but Hudson helped me deal with that small detail.

  I stole a look at Tex’s face. He took in the room with a sweeping glance and I could tell he was looking with his cop’s eyes. He might like to play the flirtatious bachelor, but he was on a case, and I was part of his investigation. Watching him take it all in, what I’d amassed, where it had come from, and how I’d kept it organized, made me feel like he was seeing an aspect of me that I normally kept from the world, that he was looking through a window into my mind. I flashed on the moment days earlier when he’d seen through my pajamas and realized this was yet another way Lieutenant Tex Allen made me feel exposed.

  “Where did you get all this stuff?”

  “Around. I shop estate sales,
auctions, flea markets, dumpsters….” my voice trailed off. I wasn’t sure how much he already knew.

  “How can you tell when something’s going to be valuable?”

  “I have to be decisive. That’s why it’s good to know what I’m looking at.”

  “So tell me what you see,” he said.

  “Here?”

  “The murders. If our jobs are so much alike, then tell me what you see when you look at the details. Because everywhere I look, I see Hudson James.”

  “What’s his motive?”

  “Maybe none. Maybe serial.”

  “You don’t believe that,” I said defensively.

  “It fits, though, doesn’t it?”

  “No, it doesn’t. Explain the twenty-year lapse between Sheila Murphy and Pamela Ritter’s murders. Explain the fact that he stayed in Dallas instead of moving somewhere else. Explain his ability to get people to trust him again.”

  Tex looked at my face, then the top of my head, then back to my face. “You know, I could take you a lot more seriously if you took off that hat.”

  “I’m serious, Tex. Hudson isn’t your guy.”

  “There’s something’s not right with his story. I just can’t figure out what.”

  “Ah-ha! So you are doing it. You’re seeing all of the components separately. Seeing what matches. You’re trying to force a connection between Hudson and Thelma Johnson, and Hudson and Sheila Murphy, and Hudson and Pamela Ritter.” I headed back to the truck with Tex on my heels.

  “Carry these,” I said, thrusting a pair of squat oval lamp bases at him.

  He stared at them for a couple of seconds, then looked up at me. “Where did these come from?”

  “Thelma Johnson’s house. I took them after you left me the day we met with her son.”

  “You did what?” Tex demanded. He pushed the lamps back at me, then pushed his fingers through his hair. “Did anybody help you?”

  I was angry at Tex, so angry that at first I couldn’t speak. I clamped my teeth shut and glared at him. “By ‘anybody’ you mean Hudson, right? No, he didn’t. And he knew I was going there, too. That should prove his innocence.”