Pillow Stalk (A Mad for Mod Mystery)

by Vallere, Diane

  THIRTY-ONE

  “Go to my studio. We can talk there,” I instructed. We were close enough that it was a good idea and Tex knew it.

  He parked the Jeep behind the storefront. I climbed out and a beam of pain shot through my knee when my feet hit the ground. I stopped for a second, closed my eyes, and fought to get the pulsating intervals under control before I continued moving. Tex headed to the building without me. When he reached the back door I stood straight up and followed. Even though he knew about my torn ACL, I fought the pain. It had become a matter of pride to hide my injury from the lieutenant even though we both knew it had happened.

  I unlocked the doors and we went inside and sat down on a long, low turquoise and lime green chenille sofa that was framed in silver chrome. It was nine feet long and I was able to put my leg up on the cushions and face Tex without coming close to touching him. I waited. He wanted to talk and he knew I wanted to listen. It was his responsibility to start.

  “I’ve been over that night so many times I don’t know where to begin. I’m missing something, I know that much. But it doesn’t make sense.”

  He rubbed his thumb and index finger along his forehead just below the front of his hair. He’d taken to wearing the cowboy hat while driving his Jeep and his hand knocked the brim back, like James Dean in a thousand promotional photographs. The only things missing were the reed of straw between his teeth and the devil-may-care attitude.

  “Who knows? You might see what I’m missing.”

  His words surprised me. With that one sentence, he gave me respect. He was no longer a cop looking out for a potential victim, and whether or not I wanted to see it that way, that was the relationship we had. But the way he related to me now, sitting in my studio, thinking back over a night that had set into motion a chain of events that couldn’t have been, still couldn’t be predicted, he was letting me into his thought process, his memories. He was hoping I’d see things more clearly than he did. He was treating me like an equal.

  “I’ll try, but I can’t help if you don’t start.”

  “Okay. We were kids. I was in the academy. She and I’d been dating for a couple of months.”

  “Exclusively?” I asked, instantly regretting the interjection.

  He looked up and focused his eyes on me for a moment. “Yes.”

  I nodded. “Sorry. Keep going.”

  “We went to a costume party at a house by the lake. A couple of friends of hers threw the party and wanted people to come as their favorite movie couple. She wanted to go as Rock Hudson and Doris Day. I guess her mom was an extra in a Doris Day movie once and had a lot of clothes that fit the bill. Sheila ransacked the closet and put together an outfit. All I had to do was put some black stuff in my hair and wear a suit and skinny tie and we were set. I picked her up at her mom’s house but she was in a bad mood when we left. She said she and her mom fought about the costume, about her taking things from her mom’s closet without asking. When we got to the party Sheila went straight for the bar.”

  “I’m sorry to interrupt again, but did you know Thelma Johnson? Did they have a good relationship?”

  “I met her a few times but I was a twenty-year old kid. I wasn’t into hanging out with parents. Sheila was a bit of a wild child, so her mom liked the idea of her dating me, you know, since I was in the academy. Thought she was safer that way.”

  I didn’t comment on the elephant in the room, the fact that it was on his watch that she was murdered.

  “So she hit the bottle pretty hard as soon as we got to the party. I tried to tell her to slow down and she got pissed. She told me she didn’t need another parent. She started flirting with the other guys, which made it an awkward scene since everyone there was half of a couple. I didn’t want to stick around and be humiliated but I didn’t want to leave her there in that condition. She wasn’t making good decisions. The last time I saw her we fought on the front porch of the house. She said we were through. She went out back with another guy, someone I’d never met. That’s it. That’s the last time I saw her alive.”

  “You left?”

  “Some of the guys started up a poker game and I stuck around for awhile. It wouldn’t have been a good idea for me to get in a car and drive. Half of me thought it would blow over, like it always did. We had a volatile relationship. Heat. Fire. Passion.” He shrugged. “When you’re young that seems like all you need.” He stared into his hands.

  I didn’t say anything. I watched him press his right thumb into the center of his left hand. He cupped his hand around the thumb, closing in on it. It was like he was trying to make something fit, to find a pressure point that would erase the memories that spilled out of him. The clarity with which he spoke defined how often he’d been over this same memory himself. Just like Hudson. Tex was fighting against a different emotional jail cell. I’d do what I could to help him break free, but again I felt pulled in two directions.

  “Go back to when you drove her to the party. She must have said something about the fight between her and her mom?”

  “They’re women. They fought about clothes.”

  “I resent that.”

  “If you had a daughter who went into your closet and took some clothes for a costume party, how would that make you feel?”

  “Hard to say. I don’t know what it would be like to have to relate to a daughter.”

  We stared at each other, now both aware of the holes in each other’s lives. I broke the silence.

  “I like to think that someone would ask first whether they’re related or not. Just seems polite. I also like to think a fight over borrowed clothes might be a fight over something bigger than borrowed clothes, because that seems a little petty.”

  “Sheila was mad at her mom because of the man she was dating. Sheila’s dad had passed away when she was thirteen. She didn’t have a father figure, and as soon as she could, she sought out male attention. Her mom started dating when Sheila started dating and I don’t think that was a great thing for either one of them.”

  “Did she say anything specific about the fight? She must have.”

  “When she came downstairs, her mom almost passed out. She asked Sheila where she got the outfit. Sheila said it came from her wardrobe. Thelma grabbed her wrist and dragged her into the next room, the one with the green and blue floral wallpaper. I think she didn’t want me to hear what she said.”

  “Did you?”

  “Stupid stuff. Lecturing a child. She said she had something valuable in her wardrobe and she couldn’t take a chance—” Tex’s answer was cut off by his pager buzzing from his hip. He unclipped it and looked at the small display, then glanced at the yellow donut phone on my desk.

  “Use it if you need to. It works,” I offered.

  “I’m not sure I can conduct police business on that phone.”

  “Do what you have to do.”

  He picked up the top half of the circle that made up the donut and dialed the number from his pager.

  “Allen. You paged?” He paused for a moment. “I’m in the neighborhood. Be right there.”

  He put the phone back on the cradle and walked out of the room. I wasn’t sure if he expected me to follow or not. A few seconds later he came back to the door.

  “You coming?”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Thelma Johnson’s house. There’s been a break-in.”

  Thelma Johnson’s neighbors were aware of the break-in long before Tex and I arrived on the scene. Three cop cars with lights in full swing were parked in front. Two along the sidewalk and one in the driveway. Kids and parents stood in their front lawns at a couple of neighboring houses, watching the action with interest. I had to admit, I was interested, too. Tex’s story was incomplete, but something was nagging at the back of my mind. I just wasn’t sure what it was.

 
Tex hopped out of his Jeep and approached the front door where the uniformed officers stood in a group. One of the cops was Officer Nast.

  I hesitated. I didn’t know my place here, arriving in Tex’s car, whether I was a trophy or a decoy. Could be I was neither. The suspicious nature of my thoughts indicated I might want to learn a thing or two about how normal people relate to each other when this was all over.

  “Night! Get over here,” Tex called to me. His invitation, née command, clarified a few things. I walked up to the group of cops.

  “Hi officers,” I said, trying to be friendly. “Nice to see you again.”

  “It’s not a party, Night. Listen,” Tex shoved the cowboy hat back on his head. “When’s the last time you were here?”

  I waited a couple of seconds before answering, not sure if he expected me to lie. Too much was at stake for that.

  “A couple of days ago.”

  “How did you get in?” asked Officer Nast.

  “I found a spare set of keys in the back under the Dracaena tree in the blue pot.”

  “You still have them?” Tex asked.

  “No. I left them here the day I ran out.”

  “So the place has been unlocked for days? Good job,” said Officer Nast. Her attitude toward me had eroded since our first meeting.

  “Listen,” I said, taking a half a step forward and positioning myself directly in front of her. “I thought I was here legitimately, conducting my business. It’s while I was here that I discovered someone was hiding in the attic. I fled because I was instructed to flee by your superior, Lieutenant Allen. If the Dallas Police Department was aware that someone was here, then the Dallas Police Department should have followed up with that and made sure the perpetrator was found. That is not my fault. As far as I can tell, you’re the officer in charge of this investigation, and if you intend to imply that I somehow interrupted the rather sloppy job that you’re conducting, then I’ll be sure to clarify that when I speak to your police chief.”

  “Nice little spitfire you got yourself, Lieutenant,” she said, and stepped away from the group.

  The men stood around, looking at their shoes and their watches and anything but me and Tex, both collectively and individually.

  Before I had a chance to consider if an apology was in order, Tex put a hand on the back of my elbow and propelled me away from the group.

  “Nice scene.”

  “I’m sorry. I was out of line. But I told you already that I don’t intend to be made a fool of by you and whatever it is you want people to think about us.”

  “So you’re allowing for there to be an Us. That’s progress.”

  “Lieutenant!”

  “Seriously, that was great. Nobody’s ever stood up to Nasty like that. The uniform scares a lot of people into behaving. I didn’t know you had that in you.”

  “Why am I here?” I asked.

  “I want you inside.”

  I raised an eyebrow.

  “Like you said, you were one of the last people here. You went over the house with that decorator’s eye of yours. You’re probably better than a lot of my men at figuring out if anything looks out of place, if anything’s been taken.”

  “You really want my help?”

  “I might as well make full use of you as long as you’re in a cooperating kind of mood.”

  I was just as curious as Tex to get inside and see what had been taken from Thelma Johnson’s estate. I’d cleaned out as much as I was capable of doing on my previous trip, but Tex had brought it back. Boxes and bags of knickknacks lined the wall just inside the house; Tex hadn’t bothered trying to put things back where they went.

  As we walked through the house, it became evident that someone had been here since me, someone who didn’t believe mid-century furniture was a work of art. Somebody who’d been willing to flip the floral chair in the sitting room and slash through the fabric. Wads of stuffing were scattered across the rug.

  “I didn’t leave the place like this.”

  “So someone was looking for something. Did they find it?”

  “Not here. The bedroom.”

  The fake Steve Johnson entered the room while my words hung in the air. Tex looked at him, then back at me, then back at him.

  “It’s not what you think,” Tex said to him.

  “Go to the bedroom.” I commanded.

  Tex took the stairs two at a time with fake Steve right behind him. I ascended the staircase, too, as fast as I could, but my knee put me at a disadvantage. When I reached the room that only days ago had been filled with lemon yellow sunlight bouncing off floral wallpaper, hitting the beautiful walnut dresser that had been overflowing with vintage lingerie, scarves, silk stockings, and ribbon tied letters that Thelma Johnson had thought to keep for so long, I gasped.

  The dresser had been smashed. Splinters of wood stuck out at corrupted angles, contrary to the simple ninety-degree angles of the original piece. Three of the legs were on the bottom of the dresser, snapped. The fourth sat alone, on the floor, on a monogrammed white cotton handkerchief. The doors that had at one time folded, accordion-like, over the front of the piece now hung from their hinges. Empty drawers had been thrown on the carpet and smashed. There was no repairing it.

  “Why did they have to ruin the wardrobe?” I asked.

  Tex stopped in front of the broken wood and slowly turned around.

  “What did you just say?”

  “It was a beautiful piece of furniture. Not worth that much, really, but it was in great condition. You can’t find things like that anymore. The lines of it, the wood, the right angles, they were calming. I’ve always found right angles calming. And now it’s scrap wood.”

  “No, not that. You called it a wardrobe.”

  “Dresser, wardrobe, some people might have called it an armoire, but they’d be wrong. Why?”

  “That’s what Sheila and Thelma fought about that night. Her wardrobe. She said she had something valuable…” his voice trailed off while he followed his memory back to that night.

  “Did she say she had something valuable in her closet or her wardrobe?”

  “Wardrobe. She said wardrobe.”

  We stared at the destroyed pile of wood. The room was hot and my gingham shirt stuck to my back. I fanned myself with a hand, but it made no difference.

  “Sheila was found in her underwear. Someone took her clothes. What if what we’re looking for wasn’t in her wardrobe,” I waved my hands in circles over the dresser, “but was in her wardrobe?” I waved my hands up and down the length of my outfit. “As in, her clothes?”

  Tex had a faraway look in his eyes. He processed my question, running my take on his story against what he’d already concluded.

  “You took more than what I returned to the house, didn’t you?”

  I nodded.

  “And I bet the first thing you went for was the closet.”

  I nodded again.

  “That’s it, Night. You have whatever it is this killer is trying to find. It’s somewhere in your wardrobe now. I’ll get a warrant if I have to, but you don’t really have a choice.”

  “A choice in what?”

  “Looks like I’m going to be getting into your drawers after all.”

  THIRTY-TWO

  I couldn’t begin to count the number of reasons I didn’t want Tex to drive me back to my apartment. They started with the notion that I had something worth murdering for and ended with the furry ball of terror trapped in my closet. I couldn’t readily explain Mortiboy’s presence without tipping my hand to how much I knew about Hudson’s leave.

  Hudson. From the minute my mind processed the broken dresser and the one single wooden leg that had been snapped off and laid delicately on the pristine white handkerchief, I knew he’d been th
ere. He remembered what I said about the table legs and he’d set this one off to the side as a message to me. He was out there, somewhere, trying to figure this out, too, so he could move on with his life, away from the accusations, the arrest warrant, the gossip, the lies, and the innuendo. But he probably didn’t know what Tex and I had figured out. He was operating on his own without the same information. And that put him in danger.

  I followed Tex halfway back to the Jeep before making up an excuse to go return to the inside of the house.

  “I have to go to the bathroom.”

  “Night, we’re going to your apartment. Can’t you wait?”

  “No, I can’t. And if you were a gentleman you’d not make this any more embarrassing than it is. I’ll be right back,” I said, and headed into the house.

  “Not by yourself, you’re not. Nasty!” he hollered.

  I didn’t wait to see if he was really going to direct her to babysit me. I went as fast as my knee would allow me up the stairs and into the bedroom.

  The curtains blew into the room with a slight breeze. I moved to the open window and looked out at the row of dogwood trees that defined the property line.

  That’s when I saw him. Wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, with a red bandana that matched my own tied over his head. Hudson’s hair curled against his tanned neck just like it had when I watched him in the garage, working on the table legs. He looked up at me and our eyes connected. My hand reached out, as did his, and although two stories and one withering vegetable garden separated us, it was like we were touching.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing up here?” said a female voice behind me.

  “I was going to go to the bathroom.”

  “Funny detour you’re taking,” Officer Nast said. She pushed me out of the way of the window and looked around. “What’s that?” She pointed at the lawn.

  I held my breath, hoping she wasn’t pointing to Hudson, hoping he’d gotten away before she had the chance to identify him.