Silk Stalkings

by Diane Vallere

  “Did she come back to you after she returned from China? When she went on to the other pageants?”

  “She didn’t come back. I heard she moved to China and worked as a public relations liaison for the man who ran the pageant. I don’t know what became of her.”

  “She continued working for Harvey Halliwell?” I asked. I wondered if any other winners had gone on to find employment in one of his companies. And if so, what would become of them now that he was no longer alive? Had he established a contingency plan for his employees as he had for his money?

  Giovanni and I hammered out the details of our joint project. He was to supply his talented staff of seamstresses and I was to supply the equipment. For the briefest moment I imagined Giovanni driving a truck filled with half a dozen women of Mexican, Polish, and Korean descent, all geared up for a road trip to San Ladrón. I wondered if he knew what he was in for.

  It wasn’t until after I hung up the phone that I realized I was ill-equipped to host a workroom of transplanted seamstresses. We’d be fine from the hours of ten until six, but there were small details like food and housing that I hadn’t thought of. Giovanni might have expected to drive home tomorrow night much as my parents had done for the past two days, but I suspected the work would require more than an eight-hour day. For food, I could count on Genevieve. For lodging, I’d need a different favor.

  I called the Waverly House and Sheila answered the phone. She was clearly stifling sobs. I asked for Adelaide Brooks and was placed on hold. When Sheila returned, she told me Adelaide was unavailable and asked to take a message.

  “Sheila?” I asked. “This is Poly Monroe. Are you okay?” When she didn’t answer, I continued. “You should be happy, not sad. Getting into the Miss Tangorli pageant is a very big deal.”

  She sniffled. “Please don’t tell anybody about the pageant, Poly. If you do, I could lose my job.”

  “I don’t see why Adelaide would fire you for participating in the pageant,” I said.

  “Poly, can you come here tonight? I did something really bad and I need to talk to someone.”

  “Sure,” I said, sensing the distress in her voice. “I’ll there in ten minutes.”

  I changed into a black cardigan and shirtdress and reapplied my lip gloss. The kitties, who had been given a chance to express their particular fondness for exploring the fabric shop, followed me back upstairs. I left the front door of the apartment open and went downstairs. Pins passed me halfway down the stairs.

  “Slow down there, camper,” I said. “Do I have to install speed bumps?”

  Needles thumped his way down the stairs behind me. Paw, paw, jump. Paw, paw, jump. He made up for what his brother lacked in caution.

  “That’s more like it. A little decorum,” I said. “Pins, why can’t you be more like your brother?”

  Needles reached the bottom step and took off across the floor. He pounced on Pins, wrapped his paws around Pins’s gray neck, and flipped him over in a move that would make a pro wrestler proud. Low-level growls emanated from both of their throats.

  “Boys,” I said, and left them alone to play.

  I left out the front. I wrapped my cardigan around my body and walked quickly down the street, picking up the pace between streetlights. On the way I passed an older couple whom I recognized as being members of San Ladrón’s Senior Patrol. I nodded and smiled and kept going. If I gave them a reason to question what I was doing or where I was going tonight, it could very easily turn into tomorrow’s gossip.

  I cut through the gas station parking lot by the corner of Bonita and San Ladrón Avenue, glanced across the street at the sheriff’s mobile unit, and kept going. Within minutes, I was in front of the majestic Waverly House.

  Having grown up in an area of Southern California that had blossomed during the tract housing boom in the fifties, I was continually impressed with the majesty of the Waverly House. The Victorian-house-turned-museum was two stories tall, topped with peaked gables, a round turret on the left corner, and at least two dozen windows that faced the street. The siding had been painted Wedgwood blue and the trim in white, like a vintage cameo. The lines of the roof had been trimmed for the garden party in tiny white twinkle lights that had yet to be removed. It gave the building a fairy-tale quality.

  I walked down the sidewalk. Small tea light candles sat in glass jars alongside the edges of the path. When I reached the end, I climbed the three stairs leading to the porch that ran around the front and sides of the building. The wooden slats of the patio had been painted white to match the window casings and perfectly set off the porch swing and the wooden rocking chairs that sat to the left of the front entrance. I pulled the door open and let myself in.

  Sheila stood behind a wooden lectern next to the restaurant. A brass lamp was attached to the fixture, curving around from the back and lighting the reservation book in front of her. Many restaurants had transitioned to computerized systems to track guests, but the Waverly House hadn’t. I thought it was a good decision. The clicks and beeps that came with a computer would have ruined the Victorian ambiance that had been so meticulously maintained.

  “Hi, Sheila,” I said.

  The pretty redhead wore her regular uniform of black dress and white pinafore trimmed in white lace. A white cap was pinned to the back of her head, setting off thick red sausage curls and framing her peaches-and-cream complexion. Traces of powder around her nose and eyes barely hid the redness left behind by her earlier tears. She fidgeted with her hands behind the lectern. She looked much like I’d seen her on every other trip I’d made to the Waverly House. What struck me was the one thing I didn’t see.

  I leaned in. “I don’t know how the rules work, but aren’t you supposed to be wearing your pageant name tag?” I asked. “I was told the contestants have to wear them constantly between the announcement and the pageant. I don’t think Adelaide would want you to get disqualified.”

  She looked up at me and her eyes filled with water. A fat tear spilled down her cheek and she made no move to wipe it away. As it tracked its way down her cheek, she took a breath that hiccupped. “Poly, please don’t say anything about the pageant to Adelaide or to anyone else. Please,” she begged.

  “Okay, but why? From what I understand, it’s an honor to pass the entrance exams and be named a contestant. You should want people to know you’ve been selected.”

  This time she swiped her hand against her cheek to wipe away the tear. “But that’s just the problem. I don’t have a name tag because I’m not a contestant. I didn’t pass the entrance exams!”

  Thirteen

  “You’re not competing in the pageant? But you came to the fabric store today,” I said.

  “I didn’t want anybody to know. I’m so embarrassed.” She put both hands up to her face and her shoulders started to shake. I glanced into the restaurant and saw the bartender looking at us. I shrugged, like I wasn’t sure what to do. He pointed to a vacant table for two off to the side.

  I put my arm around Sheila’s shoulders. “Let’s sit down, okay?” I said.

  “My shift isn’t over.”

  “I’ll take care of that.”

  I escorted her to the table and helped her into a chair. She remained hunched over. I took off my cardigan and draped it over her shoulders to hide her uniform. “I’ll be right back,” I said. I flagged down the bartender. “Sheila needs a break. Can you get one of the other waitresses to cover the front for a few minutes?”

  He glanced out front. “The problem’s already solved.”

  I followed his stare and saw Vaughn. He pointed at the lectern and gave me a thumbs-up. I returned the gesture and went back to Sheila.

  Her tears had subsided while I was gone, and she’d turned stoic. She stared out the window into the blackness of the yard. I couldn’t tell if she was aware of my presence or not.

  “Sheila, why did you come to the
fabric store today?”

  “I heard the contestants were going to meet there.”

  “But you couldn’t have checked in if your name wasn’t on the list,” I said.

  “I thought maybe there was a mistake. When you didn’t call my name, I knew I didn’t get in, but by then you’d already noticed me. I was too embarrassed to tell you the truth, so I lied to the man who was checking off names. I pointed to the one badge left on the table and said that was me.”

  I thought back to when the young women had checked in. The energy level inside Material Girl had been high, as had the noise. My dad and I had done our best to maintain the pretense that we were organized and in charge, but Sheila could easily have waited until all of the names were called and then pretended to be the one who was last. Like me, my dad wouldn’t have known who was who. Before I could ask who hadn’t shown up to check in, Sheila continued.

  “Mr. Halliwell was here at the Midnight in Paris party, and he told me he wanted to talk to me. I thought he was going to tell me that there’d been a mistake—but then I wasn’t able to get away.”

  “How did you find out the truth?”

  “A letter arrived today.”

  “Do you have it?”

  Her eyes darted over to meet mine for a moment, and then she looked down. “No.” She tugged on the edge of the tablecloth for a moment. “It’s gone,” she added.

  A waitress dressed in the same attire as Sheila appeared by our table. “Sheila, you have to get back out front. Adelaide asked where you went and Vaughn said he was covering for you while you went to the restroom. I don’t want you to get into any more trouble.”

  Sheila unfolded the cloth napkin that held the silver utensils and used it to dab at her eyes. She balled the fabric up in her fist and pushed her chair back.

  “I’ll be right out,” she said. When the waitress was out of earshot, Sheila turned back to me. “Please don’t mention this to Adelaide. It’s bad enough that some people know I entered the pageant. It’s so humiliating.” She passed my cardigan to me and walked back out front.

  I watched Vaughn put his hand on her shoulder and say something to her. She looked up at him and smiled thankfully. My view was obstructed by the waitress, returning to the table.

  “Is Sheila going to be okay?” the waitress asked.

  “I don’t know. Has she been upset all day?”

  “She’s been upset for a few days. Ever since she got that packet about the pageant on Friday.”

  “Friday? Are you sure?”

  “Absolutely. It was the day before the garden party. To tell you the truth, I probably wouldn’t have even noticed, except that she acted all weird. It was a document mailer, you know? At first she was excited, but then later in the afternoon, her whole mood changed. She put salt in the sugar canisters and set all the tables with shrimp forks. And then she started a real fire in the fireplace!”

  “Is that so odd?”

  “We don’t burn wood in the summer because it gets too hot. Adelaide had the fireplaces cleaned out because of the garden party. We’ll use the electric logs for ambiance until October. See?” She pointed to the wall behind me where the fireplace was. The illusion of a fire added to the atmosphere of the restaurant, but if the fire had been real, I would have been burning up because of my close proximity.

  “What did Sheila do when you caught her by the fire?”

  “She accused me of calling her crazy and she stormed off. I didn’t see her again until the party on Saturday, and even then she kept disappearing.”

  So not only had Sheila known Harvey Halliwell was at the garden party, but now I knew she had disappeared throughout the night. What if she’d been lying about not knowing that she wasn’t a contestant? What if there’d been something in the mail that arrived on Friday that told her she wasn’t a finalist . . . and more importantly, told her why? If Harvey had been the one to disqualify Sheila, she might have been irrational. Harvey’s body had been found in the gardens outside the Waverly House. With Sheila working here as an employee, had she orchestrated his presence and then killed him?

  I thanked the waitress for her time and stood from the table. If Sheila was lying to me, I didn’t think it would do me a lot of good to stick around watching her. I let myself out a side door and walked around the wraparound porch until I was in front of the front stairs. Vaughn sat on the porch swing. He kept one foot on the floor and slowly moved the swing back and forth.

  “Join me?” he asked.

  “Sure.”

  I sat down next to him and he kept the swing moving back and forth with the toe of his white Stan Smiths. I leaned back against the faded floral cushion and breathed in the scent of honeysuckle and jasmine and a few other flowers that had been planted for the garden party.

  “What brings you to the Waverly House tonight?” He kept his voice light, but I sensed he was looking for more than small talk.

  I closed my eyes and remembered why I was there. “I called earlier to find out if there were any vacant rooms that I could book. My old boss is coming to San Ladrón tomorrow and he’s bringing some of his seamstresses. I don’t know if he planned on them staying over or if he thinks they’re heading back for a day, but I wanted to make arrangements ahead of time so he couldn’t spring a slumber party on me.”

  “And?”

  “And I forgot to find out. Sheila was upset when she answered the phone. She asked if I could come over—she said she needed to talk to someone.”

  “Will she be okay?” he asked.

  I liked that he didn’t ask me to violate her confidence. “I don’t know.” I was quiet for a moment.

  “This pageant makes a lot of people crazy. For the next couple of days, life as we know it will cease to exist. And then, on Sunday night, one of the contestants will be awarded the Miss Tangorli title.” He looked up at the sky for a few seconds, then continued. “Monday will be quiet, and Tuesday, things will go back to normal. If we’re lucky.”

  “Again with lucky. Why?”

  He picked up my hand and traced along the palm side with his index finger. It tickled, but I didn’t stop him. After a few seconds, he folded his hand over mine and rested it on the cushion between us. “Some people put more emphasis on this pageant than they should. Some lives have been changed forever.”

  “Violet’s daughter,” I said.

  He nodded. “How much do you know about her?”

  “Not much. Tiki Tom mentioned something yesterday morning, and both Violet and Lilly have no problem with Harvey Halliwell’s murder.”

  “Harvey used to approach girls and encourage them to enter. One of those girls was only fourteen. He didn’t know and she didn’t tell him. That was Violet’s daughter, Elizabeth. Violet thought Elizabeth would have a good chance if Harvey approached her himself, so she lied about her daughter’s age to get her in. Somehow the press found out and exposed the story. Violet was judged to be an unfit mother and Elizabeth went to live with her dad. Harvey was in the hot seat for a while.”

  “How did the pageant recover?”

  “Nolene stepped up with a very elaborate set of qualifications and stringent background checks designed to categorize applicants. It came very close to racial profiling. Not politically correct at all. Normally it would never have been voted past the board, but they pushed it through to divert attention from Harvey’s indiscretion.”

  “So the background check and psych evaluations are a new thing. Who sees them? Who are the judges?”

  “Halliwell Industries employs a fair number of professionals. There’s a panel of experts who score the tests and advise him on anything that stands out on a profile. The experts’ identities are kept secret for obvious reasons.”

  “Harvey feared retribution.”

  “It’s not a stretch,” Vaughn said. “He’s faced more than one lawsuit over the pageant. One
year someone torched a Tangorli field and ruined hundreds of thousands of dollars of crops. Another year someone cracked a pane of glass in his greenhouse and compromised years of research.”

  “But still, he kept up with the pageant.”

  “He always believed it did more good than harm.”

  I went silent, thinking about Sheila. She had shown up at the fabric store and pretended she was a contestant. Her reasoning had been that she thought there had been a mistake, but that story felt thin. If the other waitress was to be believed, she’d received upsetting news days ago. Were entrants contacted ahead of time to tell them if they wouldn’t be competing? It was too much coincidence to think that Sheila’s disturbing news didn’t pertain to the pageant.

  “Hey,” Vaughn prompted. He squeezed my hand. “You still with me?”

  “Yes, sorry. I was thinking about how much work there’s going to be in the fabric store tomorrow.”

  “That reminds me, I have a surprise for you. Guaranteed to make your day better. But you have to wait until tomorrow morning to find out what it is.”

  “Then that’s my cue to head home and get to sleep.” I stood up and pulled Vaughn to his feet.

  “I’ll walk you home.”

  “I’ll be fine.”

  “When are you going to accept that I just want to spend more time with you?”

  I waited a few seconds, and then reached out for his hand. “I have an idea. Why don’t you walk me home?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  Vaughn’s six-foot-plus height was a nice complement to my five-foot-nine stature, and we matched strides as we walked along Bonita. This time I didn’t feel as though I had to pick up the pace between streetlamps. He kept my hand in his as we walked, and I didn’t pull away. After we rounded the corner onto San Ladrón Avenue, I caught him looking at Charlie’s shop across the street.

  “Have you talked to my sister lately?” he asked.

  “Yesterday. Why?”

  “She’s been avoiding me since the Midnight in Paris party. I think it has to do with that man we saw her with. I was hoping she’d confided in you.”