“Why not?”
“Because you’ll never know the answer. If you can’t find that woman, ask somebody else. Isn’t there anybody else you can ask?”
“I told you. The photographer doesn’t know who he is, and the other woman is dead.”
“Did the dead woman have any friends who might know?”
“It’s not that simple. You try finding—” Tilda was once again stopped by the realization that her roommate was right about something. “Actually, I do know of someone. Maybe two or three.” She’d already speculated that Louise Silberblatt and Miss Barth could have known the photographer. Then there was Lil—Sandra could have told her about the man. In fact, maybe his identity had something to do with why his pictures had been deleted.
Then she looked at the clock. It was almost ten o’clock, way too late to try to call anybody. “Colleen, I’m tired of working. Do you want to play a game?”
“What game?”
“How about Trivial Pursuit?” Just this once, she’d encourage her roommate to ask questions.
Chapter 29
There’s no place ’round the campfire for a quitter’s blanket.
—DON’T SQUAT WITH YER SPURS ON! BY TEXAS BIX BENDER
MAYBE because she was at least asking the right questions, Tilda slept like a log that night, even sleeping through her alarm. The phone woke her at nine.
She must have sounded bleary when she answered, because the response to her mumbled “Hello” was Nicole snapping, “Are you still in bed?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Are you even planning to get up today?”
“I’m not sure.” She yawned loudly. “I’m still kind of snoozy.”
“Well you better get un-snoozy! Jillian wants you at a meeting to iron out the last-minute details for the fund-r aiser.”
“Where and when?”
“The Ambrose brothers’ suite at one.”
“I think I can manage that.”
Nicole hung up without answering.
Tilda lounged for about five more minutes before remembering she had phone calls to make, then got out of bed to get showered, fed, and dressed before calling Lil.
“Lil? This is Tilda.”
“Hi, Tilda.”
“How are you doing?”
“Getting by. It’s hard, but I think I’m coming to terms with it all.”
“Good for you. I’m actually calling because I’ve got a question.” The next bit was tricky, since she didn’t want to admit that she’d stolen pictures from Sandra’s hard drive, let alone going behind Lil’s back to Bill Hawks. “You know those photos that went missing from your aunt’s apartment?”
“I told you, I’ve got them on the hard drive—I posted them on the Website last night.”
“Oh, good. I was wondering if you knew who any of the men in the pictures are?”
“What men?”
“The camera club members shown on the edges of the photos. Did Sandra know any of their names?”
“How should I know? I never asked her about them, if that’s what you mean.”
“Okay, it’s no biggie. I was wondering about that stocky guy in one picture.” She forced a chuckle. “He kind of looks like one of my grandfathers, and Gramps used to live in New York. It would be funny if it was him.”
“Don’t you think you should ask your grandfather if you’re so curious?” Lil said stiffly.
“I probably should,” she said. “Did you get a chance to call any of my programmer friends?”
“I did,” she said, sounding more relaxed. “Vincent was really nice, too. I’m going to send him my resume and he said he’d see if his company is hiring.”
“That’s great. Vincent is a good guy. He’ll do what he can for you. I hope something comes up.”
“Thanks again for the help, Tilda, but I’ve got to get going.”
Tilda hung up the phone, only a little disappointed. Lil had been a long shot anyway, since Tilda didn’t know if she’d even seen the pictures of the mystery man.
Next up: Louise Silberblatt. “Louise? This is Tilda Harper.”
“Tilda, how goes the Cowtown roundup?”
“Keeping me busy,” she said, “but the reason I’m calling is to ask you a favor.”
“Oh?”
“First off, I want you to know that I have every intention of maintaining confidentiality about what we talked about before.”
“Yes?” Louise said, sounding apprehensive.
“But there is someone you might have known back then that I’m trying to identify.”
“If any of the models prefer to stay anonymous, I’m certainly not going to expose them.”
“It’s not a model,” Tilda said. “It’s a photographer. I’ve got some photos that were taken by a different amateur photographer, a man named Bill Hawks. I don’t know if you remember him.”
There was no response.
“One of the other camera club members shows up in several of the shots. Mr. Hawks didn’t know him, and I’m trying to find out who he is.”
“Why do you want to know?”
“It’s kind of complicated, but it’s very important.”
“Important enough that I should betray a man who I may have been friends with? I’m sorry, but I need to know why you want this information. The photographers have just as much right to their privacy as the models.”
“Fair enough. I’ll explain, but since I’m keeping your secret, I want your word in return that this stays off the record.”
“All right.”
“You know that I interviewed Sandra Sechrest the day she was murdered. During that interview, she showed me the pictures that Bill Hawks took. Those photos disappeared.”
“The killer took them?”
“I don’t know for sure,” Tilda admitted, “but it’s possible. At any rate, most of those photos were still on Sandra’s computer, but some had been deleted. Bill Hawks supplied the missing ones, and when I looked at them, I noticed that every one of the deleted photos included this one man. I want to find out who he is.”
“Why?”
“Because maybe this guy is involved in Sandra’s murder. And before you ask, no, I have not gone to the cops because I know it sounds insane. Sandra’s niece Lil told them about the missing pictures, but even she thinks I’m nuts for worrying about them. But the fact is I’ve been having nightmares ever since I found Sandra dead, and the only thing that’s going to make them stop is finding out what happened to her. I can’t do what the cops do, but I can do what I do, and what I do is find people. So I’m trying to track this guy down.”
There was a long pause. Then Louise said, “What do you want me to do?”
“Just look at the photos and tell me if you recognize him. I can e-mail them to you right now.”
“All right.”
Tilda could hardly make her fingers work correctly to send the photos, and then she couldn’t sit still while waiting for Louise to look at them.
“I’m sorry,” Louise finally said. “I don’t know who he is. If it helps any, I’m fairly certain I remember seeing him at some of the camera club shoots, but I never knew his name.”
“I appreciate you trusting me enough to try,” Tilda replied, which sounded better than what she was actually thinking. “Can I ask you another favor? Sandra told me she’d been in touch with some other pinups who were staying in the closet, as it were. If you are in touch with any of them, could you show those pictures to them and ask if they know who he is? I don’t want their names and I’m not interested in outing them—all I need is his name.”
“I can do that.” Then Louise wished her good luck, and hung up.
Tilda wanted to kick something. All that gut-wrenching for nothing! She didn’t know if Louise was going to follow through or not, and now all she had for a source was the enigmatic Miss Barth. She could only imagine how well it would go over if she waved the pirate session photos around at the fund-raiser planning meeting and asked if she
could ID the guy. Maybe she could hold her hand over the parts with the nearly naked women.
Now Tilda was ready to kick herself for being an idiot! The solution was obvious. It only required a little work at the computer, and a small amount of self-deprecating lying on Tilda’s part—nothing she couldn’t handle. She checked the clock. There was still plenty of time before the meeting.
She was at the Ambrose brothers’ suite at the Park Plaza several minutes early, wearing her Cooper-approved coat, with her preparations made. She’d been hoping to steal a few moments with Quentin before things got going, but he zoomed in the door at the last minute, so there was only time for a quick kiss on the cheek. Nicole noticed it, of course, and scowled.
Once again, the Ambrose brothers, Miss Barth, Jillian, Shannon, Nicole, Tilda, and Quentin gathered around the ridiculously sized table and once again the meeting was enough to put Tilda into a coma. Her part, at least, was brief. She reported on the articles written, and the two others she needed to finish. Christopher Hale, Lucas McCain, and Aaron Stemfel had been confirmed as celebrity guests for the fund-raiser, and since Shannon would be acting as liaison to make sure they had everything they needed, Tilda gave her a little background on each plus a description of their personalities. Once that was done, she zoned out.
Not that she wasn’t impressed by the sheer amount of work that had been done to pull the fund-raiser together in such a short time, but hearing a debate about stocking cocktail napkins versus dinner napkins on the bar was more boring that watching paint dry. Still, mindful of Jillian’s wish for her to be an Entertain Me! team player, Tilda kept a look of interested concern on her face, and when that wore thin, switched to concerned interest.
Finally it was over, and Tilda was ready to put her plan into action. Miss Barth was still sitting down, so she headed for her.
“Miss Barth, can I speak to you for a moment?”
“Of course. What can I do for you?”
“Well, this is kind of embarrassing, but I’ve had a mix-up, and I was hoping you could help me out. I had several folders of photos on my desk, and when my roommate came into my room to borrow something, she knocked the folders onto the floor. Now the photos are all scrambled, and I’m not sure who is who. Could you take a peek at them for me?”
“You really should label your photos, then this wouldn’t happen,” Miss Barth chided, but she was smiling to take the sting out. “Let’s see what you’ve got.”
Tilda pulled out the folder she had ready, put it on the table, and opened it. “I think this is Christopher Hale.”
“No, I believe that’s Emmett Ryker.”
“Is it? I’m so glad I checked.” Tilda flipped the photo over to mark the name on it, then turned to the next one. “But this is William Sonnett, right?”
“That’s right.”
Again, Tilda marked the name.
They went through a couple more before Tilda turned to a photo of the mystery photographer that didn’t include the pirate captain or buxom captive. Tilda had used Photoshop to crop the women out of the original photo, center it around the photographer to make it appear as if he were the subject, and enlarge it. She’d lost some resolution, of course, but the man was still recognizable.
“How about this one?” she said, hoping that she sounded nonchalant.
Miss Barth hesitated, then picked the photo up to look at it more closely. “Was he on Cowtown?”
“I’m not sure. Do you know who he is?”
“No, I don’t believe I do.”
Tilda bit her tongue to keep from saying what she really wanted to say. Then, hoping it might shake something loose, she said, “That one must be from a different project. I interviewed a pinup model named Sandra Sechrest, and I had some photos she’d printed mixed up with everything else.”
“Perhaps . . .”
“Yes?”
“Perhaps if you used different-colored folders for your different projects, you wouldn’t get them mixed up.”
That time Tilda had to bite her tongue twice. “I’ll have to try that next time.”
After that, she had to continue the charade of having Miss Barth identify three more pictures when Tilda knew exactly who they were, even enduring jokes about flighty females when Tucker wandered over and wanted to know what they were doing.
Once the painful exercise was over, she found Quentin, hoping he’d be available for lunch or maybe a quick make-out session, but he had to run back to his office for another meeting and only had time to give her a slightly more thorough kiss than before. She was so glum that even Nicole looking daggers at her didn’t cheer her up, and she stayed gloomy all the way back to Malden.
It was just as well Colleen was at work instead of waiting to ask more questions—Tilda would have said all the words she’d swallowed while talking to Miss Barth, putting up with Tucker’s jokes, and not getting a consolation lunch with Quentin.
The worst part was that Tilda didn’t know who else she could ask. Frankie was the only other pinup she knew, and without her glasses, wouldn’t have noticed if Hugh Hefner himself had been at one of her photo shoots.
Then again . . . Maybe Frankie couldn’t identify the mystery man, but she might know something about Virginia. It was worth a phone call, anyway.
“Hello? Frankie Adams,” she answered, sounding out of breath.
“Hi, Frankie, this is Tilda Harper. I’m sorry—did I interrupt something?”
“No, it’s fine,” Frankie panted. “God, I hate Pilates. Isn’t it awful?”
“Terrible,” Tilda agreed, though her knowledge was purely theoretical. “I’ve got another couple of questions for you, if you’ve got time.”
“I knew you couldn’t resist hearing about Sam Waterston.”
“You’re right, I can’t, but this is about your pinup modeling.”
“My ta-tas were so much bigger then,” Frankie said with a sigh. “Of course they could be that big again if I’d go under the knife, but what’s the use of having those look young when the rest of me looks old?”
Since that was a question Tilda wasn’t prepared to address, she said, “There’s another model I want to find. She used the name Virginia Pure.”
“Esther! I remember her. Whatever happened to her anyway?”
“That’s what I’m trying to find out.”
“Hell, I don’t know. She left modeling before I did, and I heard she went back to ole Virginny.”
“I don’t suppose you know what town she was from, do you?”
“She told me once, and I felt bad because I laughed, but it was a funny name. Dumb-bunny, dim-bulb, dinsdale . . . Dinwiddie!”
“Dinwiddie? Seriously?”
“Dinwiddie, Virginia, which just happens to be the county seat of—wait for it—Dinwiddie County.”
“I guess Dinwiddie is no worse than some of the town names around here.”
“Hyannis always struck me as a good one,” Frankie observed.
“Do you know anything else about Esther that might help me find her? Family members, anything like that?”
“Nope, sorry. I only spoke to her a couple of times, and after I laughed about Dinwiddie I wasn’t her favorite person.”
“One other thing. Have you got contact information for any of the other models or the photographers from back then?”
“You mean somebody who might have known Esther?”
“Not necessarily. You remember I told you about that guy I’ve got the picture of? I’m hoping there’s somebody who might know his name.”
“You’re a persistent cuss, aren’t you? I wish I could help, but I only modeled for a few months, and after I stopped, I lost touch with every one of the other girls before a year had gone by. Most of them felt funny about having done that kind of work, so we didn’t exactly form an alumni group. And like I said, I didn’t know any of the photographers then, let alone now. This guy you’re looking for? Was he good-looking?”
“Not bad.”
“Damn. I w
ish I’d worn my glasses more often. Anything else?”
“Not today, but I’ll be talking to you about Waterston someday soon.”
“Any time!”
Not that she didn’t trust Frankie, but she was a little doubtful about finding a town named Dinwiddie—Frankie could have heard it wrong all those years ago. But when she hit the Web, it took only a few seconds to verify that Dinwiddie, Virginia, was an honest-to-God place. It was named for Robert Dinwiddie, and it really was the county seat of Dinwiddie County. With fewer than twenty-five thousand people living in the whole county, she might just have a shot at tracking down Esther after all.
Two hours later, she was back in the dumps. She’d spent most of that time on the phone with a remarkably helpful librarian at the Dinwiddie Library who was amazed that a national magazine like Entertain Me! was interested in somebody from Dinwiddie. She would probably have been less amazed if Tilda hadn’t fudged the facts a bit.
The librarian told Tilda to call her Smiley and, from the cheerful way she talked, she’d earned the name fairly. Smiley had searched through archived newspapers to find reviews of Esther Marie Martin’s triumphant performances in several high school plays and an article about the bon voyage gala her parents threw before Esther headed to New York to become a star. Unfortunately, there was no companion piece about Esther returning, or any other references to her. She wasn’t even mentioned in the obituaries for Esther’s parents, an item that shocked the smile right out of Smiley’s voice.
Tilda was about to thank her for her efforts when Smiley asked her to call back in about half an hour, which would give Smiley a chance to check one last source. Thinking that she meant another database or archive, Tilda agreed and spent thirty minutes tending to e-mail and playing games. But when she called back, it turned out that Smiley had been talking to her mother, one of a long line of Dinwiddie natives, who knew where all the bodies were buried. Or in this case, weren’t buried. Smiley’s mother was certain that Esther had never returned to Dinwiddie.
Though she’d written faithfully for the first few months after she got to New York, at some point, the letters had stopped coming. Eventually the Martin family had talked to the New York police to try to find their daughter, but had had no luck. There had been no money for a private investigator or a trip up to New York, so the Martins had just waited, patiently, for the rest of their lives. Esther had been an only child, and the parents were long gone, so there was no home for Esther to come to anymore.
Who Killed the Pinup Queen? Page 18