Crushed Velvet

by Diane Vallere

  There was another knock downstairs, this time on the front door. I’d left the gate open because I knew Vaughn would be coming. The color drained from Genevieve’s face.

  “It’s Vaughn. Now listen to me. I want to keep talking to you about this, but I can’t now. You can stay here while I’m gone.”

  “Where is he taking you?”

  “The Villamere Theater.”

  She smiled. “Thirties night. He’s been paying attention.”

  Another knock sounded on the door. “I have to go, Gen, but I’ll be back. Try to relax. Okay?”

  “Have fun,” she said. I ran down the stairs with my handbag in one hand and my cape in the other.

  Vaughn stood on the sidewalk. He wore a dark gray suit with a white dress shirt, unbuttoned at the collar in lieu of a tie. A Black Watch plaid scarf was draped around his neck. The expression on his face was a mixture of concern and surprise. Behind him a row of parked cars lined the street. A shiny silver Porsche was sandwiched between a dirty blue coupe and a black VW Bug from the same era as my yellow one. It would be a challenge for the Porsche to get out of its space, as the VW Bug had parked it in.

  “I’m sorry if I kept you waiting. I was upstairs and didn’t hear the knock. Have you been here long?”

  “Slow down, Poly. You didn’t keep me waiting. I’m early. And even if you had kept me waiting, I’d say it was worth it.” He smiled, erasing the concern and the surprise. “This is for you,” he said, holding out a plant. “It’s a gardenia,” he added.

  I buried my nose in the blossom, inhaling the richness of the soil, the freshness of the leaves, and the sweetness of the blossom.

  “It’s beautiful. Thank you,” I said.

  “I was going to bring you flowers, but I wanted you to have something that would last longer.”

  I looked up at Vaughn’s face for a moment and caught him staring back at me. Embarrassed, I looked at the gardenia. This was stupid. I couldn’t go all night carrying around a plant to avoid looking at the person I was with. I looked back at Vaughn. “Let me put this inside.”

  I crossed the room and set the plant on the wrap stand next to the register. A few months ago Vaughn and I had shared an impromptu candlelight dinner on that very wrap stand. I’d misunderstood his intentions—convinced he was using me—and had asked him to leave. I wondered if another man would have asked me out after that.

  When I returned to the door, Vaughn was still standing on the sidewalk. He took my cape from my hand and held it open while I backed into it. His hands lingered on my shoulders for the briefest moment. I hooked the rhinestone clasp in the front and turned around to face him. His green eyes, rimmed with flecks of honey and amber, sparkled. “Too many people dress down these days. I’m glad you’re not one of them.”

  “We should be going if we want to get good seats,” I said.

  “The Villamere allows reserved seating. I snagged us the best seats in the house when you said yes.”

  I closed the front door, locked it, and secured the gate across the front. Vaughn walked to the black VW Bug and opened the passenger-side door.

  “This is your other car?” I asked.

  “What did you expect?”

  “Not this.” I laughed.

  “I already told you, we’re not as different as you think,” he said. He closed the door behind me and got into the driver’s side.

  We kept up a steady stream of small talk on the way to the theater, mostly about the renovation of Tea Totalers. I told him how much I’d gotten done and joked that I was more productive without him. Neither of us mentioned Genevieve or Phil. I’d expected him to bring it up and was on my guard, afraid to relax and accidentally spill the depth of my involvement.

  When we reached the theater, Vaughn went to the Will Call counter while I lingered in the lobby, studying posters and ads for upcoming shows. The Villamere was an old movie house that had been converted with new equipment. Their schedule varied among movies, bands, and theatrical performances. The original poster for the Mae West movie we were about to see hung between a poster for a big-budget car-chases-and-explosions blockbuster and a sign advertising Babs Green’s next burlesque show.

  Beyond the wall of posters was an office. The door was ajar, and I heard voices. Soon, a striking redhead in a snug, fifties-style black-and-white houndstooth dress walked out, followed by a balding man in a brown corduroy suit. I pretended to study the posters one by one and inched closer to their conversation.

  “My contract says I get paid whether or not I perform,” she said. “I expect to be compensated at my regular rate.”

  “I put a lot of money into promoting your shows, Babs. Last-minute cancellations put a real dent in my cash take. I rely on that money to keep this theater running.”

  “My shows pay your bills. You’re coming very close to telling me that maybe it’s time for me to renegotiate my contract with the Villamere.”

  “You wouldn’t!”

  I hovered by the poster for Diamond Lil, showing next Wednesday. I couldn’t believe what I’d heard. Babs had canceled her show on Sunday? That meant she didn’t have an alibi.

  “Nice theater, isn’t it?” said Vaughn from my right. I jumped. “Did I scare you?”

  “My mind wandered, I guess.” I looked up at the original elaborate gold ceiling. “This place is amazing.”

  “It’s been restored from when it first opened. I worked here when I was in high school. I’d give you the history, but I don’t think we have time. Would you like anything from the concession stand?”

  “Sure.” After some quick negotiations, we agreed on a bag of popcorn, a split of champagne, and a box of Goobers. I told Vaughn I wanted to look around a bit more. As soon as his back was turned, I turned around and studied the announcement of Babs Green’s performance.

  The date on the poster was for this past Sunday night. The show, billed as adult fare, started at ten and ran until eleven. A second show ran from midnight to one. If she’d performed both shows, she couldn’t have murdered Phil in Los Angeles on Sunday night, but the conversation I’d just overheard led me to believe she’d canceled at least one show. And two shows on Sunday night didn’t provide her an alibi for Monday morning.

  The image on the poster showed Babs in profile, one hand up, tangled in her vibrant red hair, the other holding a thick green boa that draped over her shoulder. Her dress looked like it had been painted on her body, and she wore her expression like an invitation.

  A man in a burgundy uniform approached from the left and secured a velvet rope by a staircase that led to an upper theater.

  “Excuse me,” I said. “Do you know when Babs Green is performing again?”

  He looked me up and down and raised his eyebrows. I guess I didn’t look the type to take in a burlesque show. “She’s here every Sunday. One of our biggest draws.”

  “I guess it’s a shame she had to cancel last week.”

  “What makes you think she canceled? Full house, as usual. Her second show was better than her first.”

  “I must have been misinformed,” I said. I looked over his shoulder toward the office.

  “People are going to remember that show. Things got a little wild. Ms. Green kept us here an hour after her second show ended. She wouldn’t come out of her dressing room until the last of the audience members left the parking lot. She sat in there and hit the champagne. She kept saying she was afraid to drive home in case someone was waiting for her. We drew straws to see who got to drive her home. My buddy won,” he said, looking wistful.

  “Did she say who she was afraid of?”

  “You didn’t hear it from me, but she was having a thing with a married man. I think she was afraid of the wife finding out.”

  This didn’t sound good. “So she left her car here and your friend drove her home?”

  “Yeah, and appa
rently when she showed up Monday morning to get her car she was still tipsy. The manager didn’t want to chance her not sticking around for the Monday walk-through, so he told her to sleep it off in her dressing room.”

  Vaughn waved from the concession stand. “Thank you.” I hurried to the usher and pointed at Vaughn, who had one arm wrapped around the bucket of popcorn and the split of champagne and two plastic coupes in the other hand. The box of Goobers was tucked under his elbow. The usher let me through. I rescued the box of Goobers and the plastic glasses from Vaughn and we ducked into the darkened theater.

  I’d always heard movies were meant to be viewed from the ninth row but was happy we sat in the twelfth, considering it came with an ample amount of legroom. I turned my phone off while Vaughn filled each of the plastic glasses with bubbly. Before he had a chance to make a toast, the rest of the lights went out. We clinked plastic and turned toward the screen.

  We finished most of the popcorn and all of the Goobers during the trailers. When the movie started, Vaughn set the popcorn on the floor and we focused on the screen. It was a good thing I was familiar with the movie, because I had a hard time paying attention.

  When Genevieve told me she went to Los Angeles and caught Phil dressed for a romantic interlude that didn’t involve her, I was sure he’d been expecting his mistress Babs. But how would that have been possible? She’d been in San Ladrón. She’d performed two shows to a full house—two full houses—filled with witnesses. A theater employee had driven her home. A taxi had driven her back the next morning. She’d been too drunk to drive, so the manager had told her to sleep it off in her dressing room.

  Not good for Genevieve’s story.

  After the movie, Vaughn and I strolled through the lobby. He pointed out details in the interior architecture I might not have noticed. Try as I did, I still couldn’t focus. I feigned interest in a subject I would normally love to hear about, but I could tell from the expression on his face that he knew my mind was miles away.

  “Is everything okay?” he finally asked.

  He’d been nothing but nice all night, and while I wasn’t comfortable telling him the whole truth, I felt I owed him something. “I’m sorry I’m so distracted. The truth is, I have a lot on my mind.”

  “Your store opens on Sunday. Are you ready?”

  “No,” I said. “I mean, yes. I mean, I’m ready to open the store. In some ways, I think I’m more ready for that than anything. But that’s not what’s worrying me. I can’t stop thinking about Genevieve.”

  “That’s why you’re working so hard on the fabric renovation for her, isn’t it? It’s not just about the renovation. You’re trying to do something nice for her to make up for what people are saying.”

  “What are people saying?”

  “That she poisoned her husband.”

  “But she didn’t. I proved as much today. When I tried to show Sheriff Clark how I knew Phil didn’t drink the tea Genevieve gave him, he said he already knew that.”

  Vaughn’s face froze. “How do you know about the tea?” he asked.

  “Clark came to Tea Totalers today.” I didn’t want to tell Vaughn about my tea spill experiment or the photos I’d taken to prove Phil hadn’t ingested the tea. Admitting to that would be too close to telling him that I was trying to figure out what happened, and that would be too close to admitting that I’d spoken to Genevieve.

  “Can we go someplace to talk?” he asked.

  I knew I couldn’t invite him back to the fabric store because Genevieve might still be there. And I didn’t want to suggest we went back to his place, because not only did I not know where his place was, I didn’t want to seem forward. I opened my clutch handbag and stared at the keys inside. “Let’s go to Tea Totalers. I have the keys. We can talk there.”

  Vaughn drove at a fast clip and parked behind the shop. I unlocked the back door and he followed me to the front. I unfolded a large piece of toile and laid it on the floor like a blanket. I unclipped the cape and draped it on the counter, then kicked off my shoes and lowered myself to the floor, tucking my feet in beside me. Vaughn sat across from me. I braced myself for his questions, questions that would force me to either admit I’d talked to Genevieve or to lie to Vaughn. Until he asked, I didn’t know which direction I’d go.

  “When you knocked that glass of tea out of my hands yesterday morning, I knew what you thought,” he said. “You were afraid there was something in the tea that killed Phil and you didn’t want me to drink it.”

  I neither confirmed nor denied his suspicion.

  “I assume you were protecting Genevieve, and I can respect that. And if there was something in the tea, you kept me from drinking it, so I guess I owe you a thank-you for that, too.”

  “Vaughn, I can’t tell you why I reacted the way I did.”

  “I don’t want your explanation. There’s something I need to tell you.” He sat Indian-style and looked down at his feet. His highly polished black wing tips crossed over each other. I noticed how the knots in his shoelaces weren’t centered on top of his foot, but were closer to his instep, as though he’d crossed his foot over his knee to tie each shoe. His socks had a small chevron pattern in black and forest green.

  I reached across the short distance between us and put my hand on his knee. “What is it? What’s so important that you have to tell me?”

  “After you cleaned up the spill, you put the paper towels and the broken glass in a bag and you put the bag out back. I took the bag to the police to analyze.” He looked up. “That’s how Sheriff Clark knows the tea wasn’t poisoned.”

  Fourteen

  Heat rushed into my head and my heartbeat thumped in my ears. I pulled my hand away from Vaughn, sat up straight, and looked around the interior of the shop for a way out. Even though I’d spent most of the day here, tonight I felt like an animal trapped in a cage.

  “How could you do that to her? I thought you were Genevieve’s friend.”

  “I am her friend. Poly, listen to me—”

  “No, I won’t listen to you.” I cursed the narrow skirt that made it impossible to stand gracefully. Vaughn jumped up quickly, anticipating my flight. My right foot twisted around my left ankle and, halfway standing, I tipped and started to fall back down. Vaughn’s hands shot out and caught me by the waist. He righted me but didn’t let go. Our faces were inches apart.

  “Yes, you will listen to me, because you asked me how I could do something like that to her. I did it because she asked me to.”

  I tried to pull away from the grip he had on my waist, but when his words sank in, I stopped. He must have sensed that the fight had left me, because his hands relaxed. His left hand reached up and he tucked his index finger under my chin and tipped my face so I was looking directly at him. “Did you hear what I said?” he asked softly.

  “Genevieve asked you to take the tea to the police?”

  “Genevieve asked me to find out if she’d put something in the tea that could have killed Phil.”

  “That’s a pretty big risk, taking it to Clark to answer her question.”

  “If that’s what I’d done, then yes, it would have been a big risk. I wasn’t willing to take that chance. I took it to a private lab and had them run up a chemical panel on the contents. After I knew for sure she was in the clear, I took it to Clark.”

  I didn’t know what to say. Here I was, trying to re-create the stain in the back of the truck while Vaughn had a private lab at his disposal. It was Trixie Belden vs. Bruce Wayne.

  “I don’t know what to say.”

  The side of his mouth raised into a shy smile. “I told you we’re not all that different.”

  I stepped backward and this time his hands lost contact with me. “But we are different, Vaughn. I’m out here with carpet scraps and green food coloring trying to prove Genevieve’s innocent and you’ve got private labs at your disposal.”
I hadn’t told him about the carpet experiment and, judging from the expression on his face, he was confused. Humiliation warmed my cheeks and throat, restricting my breathing. I wanted to turn around and leave, bury my head in a pillow and try to pretend I hadn’t said anything, but it was too late.

  He’d used the resources he had to help Genevieve, just like I had. I was being irrational about the methods he’d used to get there, but I was too far gone to let it be.

  Vaughn stepped toward me and I stepped backward. He stepped toward me again, and this time I stayed put. “This isn’t about what I did for Genevieve, is it?” he asked in a soft voice.

  “I don’t think it is.” I felt myself shaking.

  Vaughn must have seen it, because he stepped closer. “Come here, Poly. Shhhh.” He folded his arms around me. We stood like that until the shaking stopped. When I pulled away, Vaughn relaxed his embrace. “Do we need to talk about this?” he asked.

  “No. I’m sorry I overreacted.”

  “You didn’t overreact; you reacted the way that was natural for you to react. I can’t say I understand it, but it was real and it was honest.”

  I reached out and took his hand and led him back to the toile floor covering. I sat down first and Vaughn followed.

  “First things first,” I started. “Genevieve asked me to help her. No, that’s not true. She didn’t ask for my help. She thought she accidentally poisoned Phil. I volunteered to help her, because I knew she needed it. I remember how it felt a few months ago, when I didn’t know anybody and people were saying things about me.”

  Vaughn nodded and I continued.

  “I told her to stay away from the store. The renovation with fabric, this whole project, was supposed to be a surprise for her. I got the idea a while ago, back when I first came to San Ladrón. The first time I sat in this tea shop after she told me how she wanted it to feel like a French café, I knew the fabrics at the store could make a world of difference. I started working on things a little bit here, a little bit there. In secret, between planning to reopen the fabric store and moving from Los Angeles.” I shrugged. “After Phil’s murder, we thought it was best for her to close the café for the week. We agreed to tell people it had been scheduled for a while. It was as good an excuse as any for her to stay a way while we figured this thing out.”