by Ali Brandon
“Detective Reese,” Hilda greeted him in a frosty tone that out-chilled the weather. “Unless you have news about my daughter, I have nothing more to say to you.”
“Well, ma’am, for the moment we’re finished talking.”
He reached under his coat, and Darla saw in shock the gleam of metal as he pulled out a pair of handcuffs. It took her a moment to register what the detective was doing, for this was one scenario that she’d never actually believed would happen. She still didn’t believe it even when she heard Reese tell Hilda, “I’ll need you to turn around, ma’am, so I can place these cuffs on you.”
Hilda took a step back, the look on her face one of pure outrage. “How dare you say such a thing to me in my own store! What do you think you’re doing?”
“What I’m doing, ma’am, is arresting you for the murder of Curt Benedetto.”
EIGHTEEN
DARLA WATCHED IN DISMAY AS, WITHIN THE SPACE OF A FEW moments, Reese had handcuffed Hilda and, accompanied by the uniformed officer, was walking her toward the front door. After her first protest, the woman had made no sound, until they reached the register.
“Wait, my shop, it’s all I have left,” she cried, her Cuban accent once again slipping past her usually crisp tones as she dug in her heels and halted in midstep. Catching Darla’s gaze, she went on, “Dios mío, I can’t just leave like this! I’ll be robbed blind. Please, Darla, can’t you take care of things for me?”
“Ma’am, I need to ask you to come along,” Reese told her. “We can send an officer back to lock up later.”
“Reese, please let me handle this for her,” Darla urged. “I’ll close the place and set the alarm. You know the problems we’ve been having in this area.”
The detective gave her a hard look but finally nodded. “All right, ma’am,” he told Hilda, “you can let Ms. Pettistone know where to find your keys.”
In a choked voice, Hilda told her where to find her purse in her tiny backroom office and then gave her the alarm code. “It’s 0-6-1-1 . . . Tera’s birthday. The keypad is there by the front door. All you have to do is put in the code and press ‘Enter,’ and you’ll have ten seconds to go out the door and lock it behind you.”
“Don’t worry, Hilda,” Darla assured the distraught woman, though her own voice was trembling almost as much. “I’ll take care of things here, and I’ll let Jake know what happened, too. She can help you arrange bond or find an attorney.”
“My purse . . . I’ll need it.”
“Better you leave your bag with Darla, ma’am,” Reese told her. “I’ll give you a minute to let her find your cell phone and stick a few dollars in your pocket so you’ll have cab fare when you make bond, but the less you have to check in at the property desk, the better.”
Remembering how the woman carried half her life around in her purse, Darla was in total agreement with that. She rushed to the back room and secured the woman’s designer bag, found her phone, and then rifled through her wallet and counted out what she judged would be sufficient for a taxi ride. Returning to the front again, she tucked the cell and the cash into the pocket of Hilda’s suit jacket. She’d give the purse and keys to Jake later to hold for the woman.
By that time, Hilda appeared past speaking; still, she gave Darla a grateful nod as Reese and the officer walked her out the door. Darla followed after them in time to see the uniformed cop loading the woman into a police cruiser. Reese’s own beater was double-parked in front of the shop with one of those flashing lights on its dash. The sight of both vehicles with their strobing lights had drawn a small crowd of neighbors and passersby. Though Hilda had held her head high until the patrol car’s door closed after her, Darla knew that the proud woman must be feeling thoroughly humiliated by the situation.
That was, if she was innocent.
Darla waited until the patrol car with Hilda inside had pulled away from the curb before she rounded on Reese. “Seriously, you’re arresting Hilda for murder?”
“No, Darla, this was just a joke,” he shot back, irritation obvious in his tone. “I like going around pretending to arrest people for crimes they didn’t commit. In fact, I consider it a bad week if I don’t fake arrest at least one innocent person in front of all their friends and neighbors for no good reason.”
“Sorry, that came out wrong,” she replied in a humble tone, realizing that she’d just questioned his professional competency. “I know you wouldn’t arrest her without good cause. I just can’t believe that Hilda could be capable of killing another person.”
“Yeah, well, that’s pretty much what every friend and relative of every murderer I’ve ever arrested says.”
Then his expression softened. “Believe me, the circumstantial evidence on this one is pretty damning,” he went on. “Pictures, phone messages, that sort of thing. I can’t tell you much, but let’s just say that your buddy Curt had a thing for serial dating mothers and daughters. And I don’t think that Mama Aguilar was too pleased about sharing, if you get my meaning.”
Mothers and daughters?
Abruptly, Darla recalled the last time she’d seen Curt alive. While discussing Tera, he’d made a winking reference to putting the moves on Hilda as well. At the time, she’d dismissed his comments as simply one of Curt’s crude attempts at humor. But if what Reese was saying was correct, then the man’s sly comment about Hilda had actually reflected a previous relationship with the woman. Could jealousy have been Hilda’s motive for murder?
“What about Tera?” Darla asked, more unsettled by Reese’s words than she wanted to let on. “Do you think Hilda . . . that is, could Tera’s own mother actually . . .”
“Do you mean, do I think Mrs. Aguilar killed her daughter, too?” He sighed and scrubbed a weary hand over his face. “I’m not sure. And you might want to remember that we still don’t have any proof one way or the other that the girl is even dead.”
“But what about Tera’s phone that you found in the Dumpster, and the fingernail I found later on? Isn’t that evidence pretty convincing?”
“Just because those two items were in the container, it doesn’t necessarily follow that there isn’t a less sinister explanation,” he replied.
Darla shook her head, recalling how she’d had the identical conversation with Jake just a few hours earlier. Maybe Reese could supply possibility number three.
“So how did the fingernail and the phone get into the Dumpster, then?”
“My best guess at the moment is that Mrs. Aguilar walked in on a little rendezvous between her daughter and Curt there at the brownstone. She’d had it up to there with the two-timer, went ballistic, and offed Curt with the crowbar . . . you know, your typical scorned woman.”
Ignoring Darla’s sharp look at that last sexist observation, Reese went on, “Then she struggles with her daughter—maybe trying to kill her, too, or more likely just trying to calm her down—which is when Tera loses the phone and the fake nail. The girl breaks loose and goes running into the night to escape Mommy Dearest. Hilda spots the phone and fingernail lying on the ground and has the presence of mind to toss them into the trash before she hotfoots it out of there.”
“So you think Tera may still be alive?”
“I hope so, Red.” He glanced at his watch and then gave her an encouraging pat on the shoulder. “I’ve got to head down to the precinct now so I can chat with our suspect some more.”
Then, as Reese headed toward his car, another thought occurred to her. “Wait, what about Barry?” she called after him.
He turned and quirked a brow. “What about your boyfriend?”
Something in his tone made her take on a defensive air as she answered, “Any reason I can’t let my boyfriend know that someone has been arrested for his friend’s murder? You know, common courtesy and all that? He’s headed out to Connecticut tomorrow for the funeral on Monday, and I’m sure he’ll want to update Curt’s family on the situation.”
“You might want to hold off on saying anything,” was Reese�
�s equally cool reply. “Mrs. Aguilar has been arrested, but she’s not officially charged with anything yet. You never know, some judge might decide there’s not enough of a case against her and dismiss the warrant. No need to get the family’s hopes up yet.”
All of which made sense, Darla decided as she watched Reese drive off into afternoon traffic. Even so, his brusque manner rankled. She could only hope that poor Hilda could hold her own against him. For despite the detective’s claim that the circumstantial evidence was significant, something told her that Reese had arrested the wrong person.
She went back inside Hilda’s shop, locking the door behind her lest an unwitting customer drop in before she could finish closing the place down. Then, realizing that she’d been gone longer than she’d planned, she pulled out her phone and called James.
“An unsettling turn of events,” was his determination once she’d told him about Hilda’s arrest. “I must say, I would not have anticipated this end. Is Detective Reese very sure about this?”
Darla snorted. “Well, he about bit my head off when I asked him the same question. So I’d say yes.”
Letting James know she’d be back once she closed down Hilda’s shop, she hung up and went on to the first order of business: locating the audio system and shutting off those chanting monks. Then she followed her nose to the source of the incense. It had almost burned itself to ash; still, as a precaution, she covered the small ceramic bowl with its matching lid. She left the products that Hilda had loaded her down with before Reese’s untimely appearance for another time. All that remained was to check on the back door and shut off the lights before setting the alarm and heading out the front door again.
Without the mumble of the monks to add ambient noise, Darla’s footsteps on the sleek wooden floors echoed in the small shop as she made her way to the office. She confirmed that the rear door was locked, and went to turn off the light, only to hesitate with her hand on the switch. Near the door sat a small wicker trash can, empty save for what appeared to be several torn photographs. On impulse, she stooped and plucked the handful of ragged-edged scraps from the can and carried them to the small desk.
It took but a few moments to piece together what proved to be four different photos. Surprisingly, all appeared to be taken in the same parklike setting as the now-poignant shot of Tera that appeared on Jake’s missing-person flier. And as with that photo, these obviously were of professional quality, so crisp were the colors and so perfect was the lighting. One pose immediately caught Darla’s eye. In composition, it was almost identical to the Tera photo, with its windblown subject gazing over her shoulder and coyly smiling at the unseen photographer.
The major difference was that the woman in that and the other three ravaged prints was not Maria Teresa Aguilar.
Darla turned over the pieces of that particular photograph one at a time until she found what she’d suspected might be there. Written across one back corner in pencil—for the photographer would have known better than to use anything else—was a single charming, if highly unoriginal, phrase: You are so beautiful to me. The penciled date was almost three months earlier. The sentiment was signed Curt.
Darla sighed a little as she flipped the pieces faceup again. Carefully, she fit the jigsaw puzzle that was the torn photo back together once more. Had the picture been ripped at a different angle, it might have been salvageable. As it was, the subject’s elegant beauty now was marred by a tear in the photo paper that divided her pale features perfectly in half from top to bottom.
Too bad, she told herself, for she suspected it would be a long time before Hilda ever looked this happy again.
* * *
“YOU ARE SO BEAUTIFUL TO ME. YEAH, PRETTY CHEESY SENTIMENT,” Jake agreed that evening as she and Darla sat together over a glass of wine in Darla’s apartment while discussing Hilda’s arrest. “I didn’t tell you before, but Curt wrote the same thing on the back of the picture of Tera that Hilda gave me. I noticed it when I took it out of the frame to scan it. Hilda said Tera gave the framed photo to her as a gift, so Hilda probably didn’t even know the writing was there.”
Darla raised her brows in surprise. She had carried the torn photo back with her when she’d left Hilda’s shop, virtuously telling herself that she wasn’t protecting the older woman, but simply preserving evidence. After all, she had rationalized, what if Hilda had a cleaning service? They might come by and tidy up the place—including disposing of the trash—before Reese obtained a warrant to search the store for evidence to back up his arrest. Feeling only a bit guilty, Darla had turned over the pieces to Jake, who had sighed and muttered a few things about chain of custody before putting the torn photo in an oversized envelope to give to Reese later.
“But that’s what I don’t understand,” Darla persisted. “Curt had been dating Tera for at least a month before he was killed. From what everyone indicated, the whole thing was going down right under her mother’s nose. Why would Hilda wait so long to finally go bat-poo crazy and kill the guy?”
“Maybe because she really, really wanted the slimeball back? I hate to say this, but I think the dirt I dug up on him was what convinced her that wasn’t going to happen.”
“Dirt?” Darla echoed, trying not to sound too eager for an accounting of said grime.
Jake stared into her wineglass for a long moment, obviously debating with herself. Finally, she snorted and shook her curly mane. “Since Curt is dead and Hilda is currently in jail, I guess it can’t hurt to tell you. But I need your word that nothing leaves this room. Breathe anything to anyone, and I’ll take a crowbar to you myself.”
Darla nodded her agreement and did Robert’s zipped-lips pantomime. “Spill away. I’m all ears and no mouth.”
“Apparently, that was Curt’s thing, seducing mothers and daughters. His ultimate goal was a ménage à trois, but he was okay with sleeping with them one at a time, too. I managed to track down a couple of his previous girlfriends”—she gave that last word finger quotes—“and they were pretty explicit about how he went about finding and managing his victims. One of his hobbies was photography, and as you can see, he actually was pretty damn good at it. That was his usual ‘in,’ so to speak.”
“Creepy,” Darla said with a shudder of distaste.
Jake nodded. “I’d say he’s definitely in the running for Jerk of the Century in the posthumous category. He targeted Hilda first. She was a willing enough victim on her own—apparently, the jerkoid could be pretty charming when he wanted to be—but she didn’t really get what it was he was after. For all her sophisticated air, I have the impression that she’s pretty naïve when it comes to sex. Even when I explained it to her, she had a hard time understanding that’s how he liked his relationships . . . and then, you should have seen her face. Mama T-Rex on the loose!”
“What about Tera?” Darla asked, something more than the prickly surface of her horsehair sofa making her shift uncomfortably in her seat. “Was she into that threesome scene? I mean, why would she want to date a guy who’d dated her own mother?”
“Who knows? Maybe it was one of those one-upsmanship kind of things . . . you know, proving she was hotter than her mom. Or maybe she was so thrilled at the idea of an older guy hitting on her that she didn’t care. Anyhow, I think it had reached the point that both of them were ready to give him the heave-ho.”
Darla nodded, relieved. Not that her acquaintances’ sex lives were any of her business, but it was good to know that the two women had had some standards, even though both had stooped to dating Curt. “So what happens to Hilda now?”
“She called me this afternoon from the jail, and I arranged for a bail bondsman I know to work with her. Since you brought me her purse, I had her credit card number, which made things easier. With luck, Luis will spring her in the next few hours, and she can spend most of the night in her own bed.”
But where, Darla wondered, would Tera be spending the night? And that brought to mind something else . . .
“At
least I’ve got one bit of good news,” Darla told her friend. “James agreed to let Robert stay with him for the next few nights, until we figure out a permanent place for him to stay.”
“You mean, as in a forever home?” Jake asked with a smile, using the familiar pet-adoption term. “Poor kid, you make him sound like he’s a stray dog.”
“Well, given what his father did, he might as well be,” Darla replied, unable to hide a note of bitterness in her voice. “But James is putting out the word to some of his friends at the university in case they know any new graduates looking for roommates.”
“Tell Robert to check out the bulletin board at the deli, too. That’s as good a place as any to get the word out. And speaking of word”—she paused and gave Darla a significant look—“with all the hoopla, I never did hear word one about your date with Barry. C’mon, kid, your turn to spill.”
Feeling herself blush a little, Darla recounted the evening out for her, up to and including the good-night kiss. Jake listened with a maternal look of satisfaction on her face. When Darla had finished, the other woman gave her a small toast with her now-empty wineglass.
“Good for you for finally getting back on the horse,” she said with approval as she set down her glass and poured them both more wine. “Do you think you’ll go out with him again?”
“Probably. I won’t see him for a few more days, though. He said he’s headed out first thing tomorrow for Connecticut. Curt’s funeral is on Monday, and he wants to spend some time with the family helping them through this.”
“That’s decent of him. This has got to be almost as tough on him as it is on them. I just hope none of Curt’s exes show up for this eulogy. That could get pretty nasty.”
Fortified by their second glass, the two of them devolved into an exchange of black humor regarding some of the speeches that might result from outraged female funeral crashers. They were still laughing when Jake’s cell phone let loose with the nasal falsetto of Barry Gibb. “Hi, Reese,” she said as she pressed “Talk” and silenced the “Stayin’ Alive” ring tone. She listened a moment and said, “Actually, I’m up in Darla’s apartment. Do you want me to come meet you?”