“Anything that has to do with that darn pageant is news these days. If it weren’t Harvey’s murder, it would be a sneak peek at the pageant setup, or the judges, or a spotlight on a former winner.”
“How do you know so much about this? You’re not exactly the pageant type.”
“If you spend any time in San Ladrón, you learn about the Miss Tangorli pageant. There was a big scandal when one girl lied about her age. They had to incorporate background checks, letters of recommendation, all sorts of stuff.”
“When was that?”
“Ten years ago? Maybe more? It was a big deal. All of a sudden the applicants had to have sponsors, pass psychological evaluations, provide legal documentation of their ages, the works. It’s harder to qualify for that thing than to get a government job. High stakes don’t always bring out the good in people, if you know what I mean. Ask Violet. Not a lot of love lost between her and Harvey. Can’t say I’m surprised by what happened. She’s had it in for Harvey Halliwell for years.”
Seven
“Violet? What’s her connection to Harvey Halliwell?”
“She’s always blamed Harvey for what happened to her daughter.”
I must have looked confused, because Tiki Tom continued without my asking. “Her little girl was a contestant in Harvey’s pageant. Elizabeth wanted no part of it, but Violet entered her anyway. She thought Elizabeth was going to win the pageant and get all kinds of opportunities that she never had herself. That’s all Violet talked about. I used to hear them fighting over it from my shop two doors away.”
“Her daughter could have just said she wasn’t going to participate.”
“Well, truth be told there’s a little more to the story than what I’ve told you.” He took a sip from his mug. “I don’t think it’ll do anybody any good to stand around here gossiping about it. Best let sleeping dogs lie.” He pointed behind me with the hand that held the skull mug. “Besides, looks like you got your first customer.”
I wanted to press Tiki Tom for more information, but he was right. A woman who looked to be in her midthirties entered the shop with a nervous Chihuahua in tow. The woman had brown hair streaked with chunky copper and blond highlights. Large square vintage sunglasses covered her eyes. I followed her and said hello. She turned and smiled a tight-lipped smile that told me she wasn’t interested in small talk. She stopped by a fixture of green-and-white floral cotton twill.
I took a dog biscuit out of a Tupperware container that I kept at the wrap stand and carried it to the Chihuahua.
“May I give him a biscuit?” I asked. The woman nodded. I snapped the biscuit in half and the Chihuahua stood on his hind legs and reached for the treat.
“I’ll take four yards,” she said, handing me the bolt of floral fabric.
I carried it to a cutting station. “I’m Poly Monroe. This is my store,” I said, and held out my hand. “What are you planning to make?” I asked.
The woman held out the hand not holding the dog’s leash. “A tablecloth. I knew I could find something in here that would be prettier than anything I can find in a department store. Did you just open?”
“I inherited the shop from my great-uncle. It’s been closed for ten years, so in a way, yes, I just opened.”
She looked around. “There are so many pretty fabrics in here. Lots of possibilities.”
“Yes. Do you sew much?”
“Oh, I can’t sew!” she said. “I’m going to fold this over to hide the raw edge. When I want something made, I take it to a tailor. There’s a lovely lady on Magnolia Lane who can make just about anything.”
Considering she was buying fabric, which was my trade, I was happy for her purchase. I stooped down and fed the rest of the doggie biscuit to the dog.
“Who’s this little guy?” I asked, ruffling his fur.
“That’s Archie.”
The woman followed me to the register, where I rang up the fabric. I suggested she look at pattern books and notions, but she said she didn’t have the time. After she paid, I thanked her and offered her a discount coupon if she’d sign up for my e-mail list. She wrote her name in and left.
That hadn’t been the first customer who had purchased fabric to take to a tailor. A sale was a sale, but if I could find a way to help people discover the joy of turning their favorite fabrics into something themselves, I’d have a much more loyal customer base and I bet sales would soar. If only I knew how to do that.
I folded up the floral cotton twill and returned it to the fixture. I thought back to what Tiki Tom had told me. He’d hinted that Harvey had enemies because of the pageant. And here I was, officially employed by the pageant committee. If I could figure out who Harvey’s enemies were while doing the job I was hired to do, then I could divert Clark’s attention from Ned.
But no matter which way things went, one was certain. If I were to get involved with the pageant, the day-to-day running of the fabric store would suffer, and I couldn’t let that happen. Even though things had been running smoothly for the past four months, I wasn’t bringing in enough net profit to cover a second employee’s wages. And that meant there was only one place I could turn.
Family.
I picked up the phone and called home. My mom answered halfway through the fourth ring.
“Hi, Mom, it’s Poly.”
“Hi, Poly,” she said, panting heavily between words.
“Mom, are you okay?”
“I just finished taking out the trash. Almost didn’t make it to the phone.”
“Why are you taking out the trash? Where’s Dad?”
“Your dad and I have swapped household duties for the week. I wanted to prove to him that what I do around the house is just as difficult as what he does.”
“Okay, sure.” Every once in a while my mother flexed her equality muscles and used my dad as her opponent. I would have thought it was funny if I didn’t recognize a little of myself in her actions. “Listen, Mom, I have to ask a favor. Do you think you could spare a couple of days to help me out at the store?”
“Sure, but if you’ve gotten that busy, maybe you should hire someone else?”
“It’s not that.” I gave her a thumbnail sketch of the situation. My parents lived halfway between San Ladrón and Los Angeles. Every once in a while they threatened to up and move to one of the square states in the middle of the country, but I figured if they’d made it this long, mortgage paid off and standing Bunco games with the neighbors on Saturday night, they weren’t going anywhere.
“How’s tomorrow? I told your father I’d change the oil in the Ford this week. I watched a YouTube video on how to do it, but I need him to leave the house before I get started in case anything goes wrong.”
“Mom, I’m friends with the mechanic across the street. Drive the Ford here and I’ll get Charlie to change the oil while you’re working. Deal?”
“I’m not sure that’s the proper way to prove my point.”
“Why not? Dad wants the oil changed. You’re going to have the oil changed. He doesn’t need to know the details.”
“Can you get me a little 10W40 to rub on my fingernails, make it look like I did it myself?”
“Mom . . .”
“You’re right, too far.”
“Do you still have the keys to the shop I made up for you?”
“Right here. I’ll be there after lunch.”
After we hung up, I checked my e-mail. Buried in my inbox among a conversation about tweed in my Yahoo fabric group was my monthly notice about my business loan. The first payment wasn’t due for a few months, but I would need more than a steady trickle of customers to make the payment.
I dug a calculator out from a drawer under the register. Mr. Halliwell had been right about the cost of my fabrics. On average, I had a 60 percent markup from cost. That meant a twenty-dollar-a-yard silk cost me eight dollars a
yard. His proposal would guarantee me the retail price for two hundred yards of silk. That was four thousand dollars, minus a cost of sixteen hundred dollars—click click click—equals a profit of . . . twenty-four hundred dollars.
Not too shabby!
I stared at the calculator for a few seconds, then typed the numbers in a second time to make sure I hadn’t hit a wrong key. Same answer. Same answer! My involvement in the pageant would net me enough to exceed the first payment on my business loan. I stood up and spun around in a circle.
“Good news?” said Vaughn from the doorway. He held a paper take-out bag from Tea Totalers. “I know it’s early but I thought maybe I could interest you in sharing your lunch break with me?”
I was so caught up in my happiness that I forgot my usual reserved nature. I danced across the floor to him, took his hands, and hopped up on my toes. “Halliwell Industries green-lighted my proposal for the pageant!”
Vaughn’s smile froze on his face. “Your proposal?” he said. “I didn’t know you were going to be involved in the pageant.”
“I’m not, I mean, I didn’t know I was.” I dropped his hands. “Why, is that a problem?”
“I just thought, when I heard about Harvey, and about you finding him . . .” His voice trailed off.
At the mention of Harvey, my enthusiasm evaporated. It felt wrong to be happy in light of his death. “You’re right. I shouldn’t get involved.”
“I didn’t say that. Maybe if you told me about the proposal, it would be different.”
“You’re going to be a judge, right?” He nodded. “So you’re involved with the pageant. But it’s not a secret, and I can’t see how it would hurt to tell you.” I stared at him for a second. “Okay. Really, it was Nolene’s idea.”
I led Vaughn to the wrap stand. He unpacked the paper bag and doled out two roast beef sandwiches on a French baguette, a plastic cup of jus, and a small carton of pommes frites. The scent of the French dip mingled with the salty potatoes.
My mouth watered and I unwrapped a sandwich while I told Vaughn about the agreement I’d reached with Harvey Halliwell.
“When was this?”
“She talked to me on Saturday night, and Harvey and I finalized things on Sunday morning.”
“I don’t want to be the voice of doom here, but in this particular case, a handshake agreement isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.”
“That’s what I thought, but I just got off the phone with Nolene’s secretary, Beth. She promised me a check by the end of the day.”
“I’m surprised. I didn’t expect you to be so excited about participating in the beauty pageant.”
“Mr. Halliwell guaranteed me I’d make retail on two hundred yards of silk. The profit from this one event will help me pay back the first installment on my loan.”
“Your loan,” he finished quietly. He reached forward and tucked a curl behind my ear. “It’s okay. It’s business. I wish you’d come to me for a loan, but I know you have history with other people in the financial world.”
Vaughn was referring to my ex-boyfriend, a financial analyst in the heart of Los Angeles’s business district. Which meant he didn’t know the truth—that his own father had intercepted my loan application from the bank and cosigned it himself. I felt uncomfortable keeping a secret from Vaughn. I already knew the subject of money was a touchy one between us.
“The loan didn’t come from Carson,” I said. “It came from your father.”
“You went to my father for a loan instead of coming to me?” Vaughn asked.
“No. It’s not what you think. It didn’t happen that way.”
Vaughn’s face went pale and his jaw went rigid. “I have to go.” He set down his sandwich and walked out.
I watched his back as he left. There was no good-bye, no Oh, okay, well that explains everything. I wasn’t sure what I’d expected, but whatever it was, I sure didn’t get it.
Between wealth and working class, Vaughn and I had met somewhere in the middle. I never knew if our disparate backgrounds would keep us from sharing anything more than a couple of dates.
I wrapped up what was left of my sandwich and the fries, put the lid on the jus, and packed it all back into the carryout bag. My appetite was gone. Two days ago I’d been getting ready for the Midnight in Paris party and everything had felt perfect.
And it was all because of that accursed dress.
I didn’t know why I’d worn the champagne dress instead of any of the others in my closet. When I first came to San Ladrón to sign the paperwork to inherit the fabric store, I’d been surprised by how inspired the luxurious fabrics inside the shop made me feel. They were a far stretch from the cheap poly satins that I’d grown familiar with at To the Nines, and one night, needing a respite from the drama that surrounded my arrival in town, I had let my mind wander into fantasy territory and I designed a dress for the likes of a glamorous starlet from the thirties. I had set the sketch aside and returned to my real life filled with black, black, and black. Good for hiding grease, dust, dirt, and the glue stick messes that were so frequent in my former life.
Vaughn had seen the sketch. He’d had it made for me. I still didn’t know who the seamstress was who had turned my sketch into a reality. And it struck me that the person he’d hired to make my dress would be perfect for helping with the pageant dresses. Only now, calling him would feel awkward, like I’d made up an excuse to talk to him.
Curses. I felt like I was in tenth grade.
• • •
By the time my mom arrived at the store, I’d placed all of my orders, restocked the thread fixture, and set up a display of bright floral cottons on a round fixture by the front door. Next to the fixture I moved a bust form. I cut two lengths of roughly six yards each and draped them over each shoulder of the form, cinching the fabric around the waist with a triple wrap of inch-wide yellow ribbon. I knotted it off and tied the ends in a big bow. Next to the form I placed a sign that said, How does your garden grow? Summer florals, $9.99/yard.
“That’s a nice display,” she said, and kissed me on the cheek. “But maybe if you actually sewed a dress out of the fabric, people would be more impressed. Who’s going to drape fabric over themselves and tie it with a ribbon?”
I thought about the customer from earlier, who had purchased four yards of floral to use as a tablecloth. “That’s not the point, Mom. Why do people need to start with the pattern? Why can’t they fall in love with a fabric and just buy it and figure out what to do with it afterward?”
She held her hands up. “It’s your store. You do what you want.” She walked to the wrap stand and tucked her small handbag behind the counter. “Do I smell roast beef sandwiches?”
“Help yourself. I have to run an errand and I’ll be right back.”
I pulled my car around from the lot behind Material Girl to the curb in front of Charlie’s Automotive. Charlie was on the floor, knees bent, running a dirty rag over a wrench. Black grime coated her palms. Not all that different from the sewing machine grease that ended up under my fingernails.
“Uncover anybody else’s dirt today?” she said. “Or is that why you’re here. Trying to make your quota?”
“Actually, I’m here for business. Can you squeeze in a secret oil change on a Ford Taurus this afternoon?” She raised her eyebrows. “My mom’s helping out at the store.”
“Tell her to bring it over in the next hour. There’s something I have to do this afternoon and I won’t be back until tomorrow.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“Nope. Solo mission.” Despite our friendship, there was a wall between us that I didn’t know how to scale. I wanted Charlie to open up to me, to trust me, but that wasn’t something I could force.
“I’ll send her over now,” I said. Halfway out the door, Charlie called behind me.
“Yo, Polyester. T
hanks for not asking a bunch of nosy questions.”
“Sure.”
“Keep an eye on Clark for me while I’m gone, would ya?”
“You got it.”
Halliwell Industries was about two miles north of the heart of San Ladrón. The farther I drove, the more I felt like civilization was behind me. Ahead of me was a stretch of green land, and then a mountain range. The sign for Halliwell Industries sat off to the right-hand side of San Ladrón Avenue and marked off a large parking lot. There were several buildings attached to the lot, and Beth hadn’t told me which one to enter. Before parking, I slowly drove around the perimeter and looked for something that would point me in the direction of the main offices where they held my check at the front desk.
No smarter after circling the lot twice, I parked next to a small brown Fiat and approached the buildings on foot. I followed the signs to the main office and approached the woman behind the desk.
“I’m Poly Monroe,” I said. “Are you Beth?”
She nodded and held up a finger and pointed to the phone. I spotted a small earpiece next to her dangly earrings. Today they were lemon wedges that coordinated with her pale yellow dress and matching cardigan. She pressed a button on the phone and looked up at me.
“We spoke this morning about a check for my involvement in the pageant?”
Beth sniffled a few times. “Poly, I don’t know how to tell you this. There’s not going to be any pageant. Nolene Kelly cleaned out Mr. Halliwell’s bank account and disappeared with all of his money!”
Eight
Beth sniffled again. “Nolene was the only one who had control over Mr. Halliwell’s bank account. We all knew it. She came in this morning and said we were to continue planning the pageant as if nothing had happened. When she left for lunch, I noticed a bunch of suitcases in the back of her blue convertible. And when I tried to use Mr. Halliwell’s account to pay the caterer, they said there was nothing left!”
“Try to calm down. There’s a very good chance the police or the bank froze his account because he was murdered.” I fought to keep my tone clinical, but no matter how many times I said the M word, it didn’t get any easier.
Silk Stalkings Page 6