“I’m about to ask you a favor that’s going to test the limits of your understanding.”
He raised his eyebrows.
“Can you create a distraction while I get something out of the fireplace?”
“I don’t think there’s a distraction big enough to hide a pretty woman crawling around on her hands and knees on the floor of a restaurant. Why?”
I slid my chair back. “See in the far corner? There are crumpled-up balls of paper. I need to look at them.”
Vaughn stood and walked to the back of my chair. He reached around the side of the fireplace and clicked a small black switch. Within seconds, the fake log glowed orange. He selected the broom from a circular stand of fireplace tools, reached it into the fireplace, and swept the crumpled balls of paper to the side of my foot. I bent down and scooped the balls of paper into my handbag. Vaughn put the broom back on the stand and took his seat.
“Shall we order?” he asked, as if nothing out of the ordinary had taken place.
I stared at him openmouthed as he studied the menu. It seemed I’d found an unlikely accomplice.
Twenty-two
The rest of our meal passed in a blur of filet mignon, lemon meringue pie, champagne, and small talk. Vaughn shared stories of his days at college in Virginia, and I told him about my early days working for Giovanni. The check came far too quickly and I swatted Vaughn’s hand away. I opened the black leather folio to see the damage, calculated a tip, and filled the folio with money.
Vaughn held the front door of the Waverly House open for me and I exited into the cool night air. I wrapped my lace shawl around my shoulders.
“So, your place or mine?” he asked.
“Excuse me?”
“You didn’t think I was going to let you off the hook that easily, did you?”
“It’s getting late.”
“I know. But we both know you won’t even consider sleeping until you find out what’s on those balls of paper from the fireplace. And considering my part in the retrieval process, I think it’s only fair to let me see what you’re up to.”
The Waverly House, aside from being the oldest and most impressive building in San Ladrón, had a particularly disturbing view from the front lawn. It sat directly across the street from the sheriff’s mobile unit. The lights to the mobile unit were out, and I suspected Clark had left for the day. I wondered if the officer who helped him when we found Harvey’s body was still in San Ladrón or if he’d headed back to Los Angeles. I also wondered if Clark had turned up anything of interest regarding the murder investigation.
Vaughn had his hands in the pockets of his suit jacket and he nudged me with his elbow. “Is it really that hard a decision?”
“My place is closer,” I said.
We walked along the sidewalk to the corner. It would have been shorter to cut down the alley and enter through the back door, but I preferred to enter through the front. Every time I walked through the entrance, I felt the pride of running a shop of my own. I pushed the gate to the side and unlocked the door. Dim light illuminated the store interior. I glanced around the shop and saw the rack of garment bags and sketches, grabbed Vaughn’s hand, and pulled him up the stairs.
“You’re a judge. You can’t see what we’ve been working on in here,” I said.
“Top secret, huh? Seems you’ve been bitten by the pageant bug, too.”
“I don’t know how I feel about the pageant, but these young women deserve equal chances to win and it wouldn’t be fair if you got a sneak peek at their gowns before anybody else did.”
“A level playing field,” he said. “Just like Nolene said.”
I unlocked the door to the apartment and shooed Pins and Needles away from the opening. Vaughn followed me inside and we headed toward the living room.
“Do you think there really can be a level playing field? As much as Nolene talks about it, do you really think someone like Lucy has the same chance of winning as someone like Tiffany?” I asked.
“No, I don’t.” He lowered himself onto the sofa. “But not for the reason you think.”
“Okay then, why?”
“Everybody has their own story. No one can change that. Lucy’s story is different from Tiffany’s, and they’re both different from every one of the eighteen other young women who are competing. Add in their appearances. Lucy is exotic. Tiffany—and a lot of the others—are California girls. Blond, blue eyes, tan. Is it better to be the girl who looks different, or the girl who looks like everybody expects a California girl to look?”
“I know you have a point, but that’s not what I was asking. I meant by trying to make things equal financially. Will that really make a difference?”
“I don’t know that it should. Consider your judges. Duke: a local business owner who uses a wheelchair. Maria: another local entrepreneur who helps run two different businesses while she raises her family. And me: a rich kid who probably didn’t have to work a day in his life.”
“But you did. You do. I mean, you’re more like Duke and Maria than a millionaire’s son. You told me how you left San Ladrón to go to William and Mary when your father wanted you to go to his alma mater. You said he was mad so he cut you off and you paid for college yourself.”
“That’s all true, but did it change anything? In the end, I’m back here, working for him. Dad’s in his seventies. He should have retired a long time ago, but the business is his life. Most likely I’ll inherit it when he’s ready to step down. Maria and Duke and Lucy and a lot of people have no idea what it’s like to inherit a business.”
“I do,” I said quietly. I looked up at him. “And it’s not as easy as it might seem.”
I shifted my position on the sofa and my handbag fell from my lap to the floor. The clasp opened on contact and the balls of paper spilled out. Before I could scoop them up, Pins pounced. He swatted one into the hallway and chased after it.
“That’s not a toy,” I called after him. I stood to follow but couldn’t move. I looked down and saw Vaughn’s foot on the hem of my dress. I grabbed the carwash fringe and tugged at it. He moved his foot and Needles showed up and pounced on Vaughn’s shoelace.
“You take Needles and I’ll take Pins?” I asked.
“Deal.”
I found Pins in the hallway. He had swatted the ball of paper under the armoire that held the towels and sheets and lay on his side, paws extended, trying to reach it. He turned his gray striped head toward me and mewed.
“That’s what you get,” I said. I squatted down and pulled the ball of paper out from behind one of the curved wooden legs. Pins jumped up and sniffed the paper. I pulled it away from him. “This isn’t yours,” I said.
“And it isn’t yours, either,” said Vaughn. “This is Sheila Bonham’s background check.” In his hand he held a very wrinkled piece of paper. “Does this have something to do with why she was so upset the other night?”
“My guess is yes.”
“This is private information. We shouldn’t even be looking at it.”
I stepped forward and took Vaughn’s hand in mine. “Sheila was working the drink station where Harvey Halliwell got the glass of Tangorli juice he drank before he passed out. She lied about when she was notified about the pageant. One of the other waitresses told me she received upsetting news by mail on Friday. That was before Harvey was murdered and before the finalists were to show up here. And she started a real fire in the fireplace even though they only run the gas log over the summer. I don’t know how many pages she managed to burn, but these were left behind. It’s not a straight line to murdering him, but it raises a lot of questions.”
“Is this why you invited me to the Waverly House for dinner?”
“I invited you to dinner because I wanted to go to dinner with you. I invited you to the Waverly House because I wanted to snoop around the fireplace.”
“Poly, I don’t know how I feel about this.”
“What if Sheila was so angry about not qualifying that she poisoned him on Saturday night and finished the job Sunday morning? She pretended to be one of the pageant contestants even though she knew she wasn’t. The only reason nobody picked up on it was because Lucy didn’t show, so we still had twenty.” I paused for a moment. “I still don’t know how Sheila knew that Lucy wasn’t going to show.” He remained unconvinced. “Vaughn, this isn’t snooping. This is trying to find out what happened to Harvey.”
He stared at me, his green eyes darkened by the lack of light. There was no smile to his face. He didn’t drop my hand.
“If this is evidence, it should go to Clark,” he said.
“We don’t know if it’s evidence or not. What I know is that this is information about Sheila. She asked me—begged me—not to tell your mom. And I didn’t. But if she represents a threat to anybody—your mom and Charlie included—then we should look at these pages before we turn them over to anybody.”
He turned around and walked toward the living room. When I didn’t follow, he looked back at me. “Well? What are you waiting for?” he asked.
“The light in the kitchen is better.”
We took seats opposite each other and worked at unballing the crumpled-up wads of paper. Two were badly singed, the information compromised by the fire. Vaughn turned the pages around and slid them across the table to me.
“I’d rather you look at them first. I’ve known Sheila for several years, and that’s her personal business. If there’s something there that disturbs you, tell me. Otherwise, I think it’s best to keep her secrets secret.”
I nodded and scanned the pages. It took a few minutes to figure out what I was looking at. Sheila’s name and address were listed on the top of the piece of paper. The fields for date of birth and social security number were crossed out. A bold line had been drawn across the page, the indentation of the pen still present even though the pages had been crumpled into balls. There was one line of handwriting along the bottom of the page:
Entrant #47 does not pass background check.
Twenty-three
“Is it bad?” Vaughn asked.
I looked up at him. “I don’t know. How long have you known Sheila?”
“Four years. That’s when she started working at the Waverly House.”
“Do you have any idea what kind of background check they run?”
“The usual. Credit, referrals, follow-up with former employers. Why?”
I put my hand over the document. “How easy would it be to fake that stuff?”
“You could probably fake the referrals and the former employees, but not the credit check. Why?”
“It says here that Sheila didn’t pass the background check.”
Vaughn reached for the pages and I pulled them away from him.
“You said you didn’t want to see these.”
“I changed my mind.”
“Okay, fine. Help me understand what this means.” I passed the page to him. While he looked over the info I’d already read, I moved on to the second page. It showed the overall results of Sheila’s psychological profile. Comments below the scores cited concerns about her mental instability. Under general comments were the words: We do not recommend entrant #47 be chosen to participate in the pageant.
Entrant number 47. That’s who Sheila was to the people who did the screening. But who would be able to connect those numbers to the names of the test takers?
“Do you think Harvey had access to this information?”
“I don’t know. Why?”
“It says something here about mental instability. That’s not something she would want to get out. What if she confronted Harvey at the garden party about this? What if she snapped when she didn’t get in?”
“Sheila is thin. Harvey was a pretty sizeable man. It wouldn’t exactly be a fair fight.”
“Harvey was stabbed. You don’t have to be strong to stab someone. You just need the element of surprise.”
“Do you really believe Sheila is the killer?” he asked.
“Do you really believe she couldn’t be?”
“It’s hard to think that someone I’ve known for years could do something like this,” he said.
“I think the bigger question is: What’s stressing her out so much that she’s on the verge of losing it?”
• • •
It was after eleven when Vaughn and I reached Material Girl. Any sense of romance that had lingered from our date had left in light of the information about Sheila. We said good night, and he headed back to the Waverly House, where he’d left his car.
After a sleepless night filled with questions upon questions, I got up at five thirty, fed the cats, and considered what I’d discovered in the past few days.
I’d learned the truth about Charlie and the story of her sister Lucy. And then there was Ned, Lucy’s father. He’d been talking to Harvey Halliwell at the garden party. I was still certain that I’d seen him take something from inside Harvey’s jacket. Knowing that Charlie herself suspected Ned of wanting to capitalize on her connection with the McMichael family only made my suspicions worse. Charlie owed Ned a lot for giving her a home after the years she’d spent bouncing around foster homes, and for giving her the money to start her own life. I imagined those four years were the only time Charlie had let down her guard when she was growing up. But Ned had put her in a difficult position. He had asked her to make amends with her biological father in order to help her sister. That was bound to change any fond feelings Charlie had for Ned.
Then there was Sheila. She’d lied about her application and had been rejected over a background check. Was whatever she was hiding big enough that she’d kill to keep it quiet?
And Violet Garden. She blamed Harvey for losing her daughter. She said she was going to put a stop to the pageant once and for all. Had that threat included murder of the pageant’s founder?
But Harvey had been paranoid. What had he said when I tried to help him? They’re all out to get me. Me and my money. So who would have the best chance of getting his money? One of his employees. And I knew three of them: Inez Platt, Beth Fields, and Nolene Kelly.
First, there was Inez. Once the face of the Tangorli advertising campaign, she now spent her days in a greenhouse with plants she referred to as her friends. Was she really the faithful employee of Halliwell Industries, happy to move from the limelight to the privacy of the Halliwell laboratories, or had she held a grudge all these years—one that she finally acted on?
Beth and Nolene worked in the corporate side of Halliwell Industries. But why would either woman kill her employer? Nolene had admitted to having financial control over Harvey’s accounts. He was worth more to her alive than dead. And Beth was so distraught over Harvey’s murder that she could barely keep the phone lines straight at the front desk.
It was all so confusing, I should have stayed in bed.
But I didn’t. I took a quickie shower, slapped on minimal makeup, and dressed in a black T-shirt and cargo pants. As soon as I saw Charlie raise the hinged doors in front of the bays of her garage, I ran across the street and joined her in her office.
On any given day, Charlie had a rolled-out-of-bed appearance that was equal parts out-all-night and don’t-mess-with-me. When she made an effort, there was a dash of hot rod pinup girl in the mix. Today her thick dreadlocked hair had been pulled back in a low ponytail. Dark circles under her eyes, caused from lack of sleep, not leftover eyeliner, gave her a weary look. A black bandana was tied around her forehead and worn low like the host of Pimp My Ride. She already wore her standard blue coveralls and her black leather motorcycle boots.
“Any word from Lucy?” I asked.
“Nada. When she wasn’t back by midnight, I went out looking for her. I think I got five minutes of sleep.”
“What about Ned?”
“What about him? He went home and left Lucy in my care. What could I possibly tell him? Lucy’s eighteen. She’s the same age I was when Ned told me to go start a life of my own. I understand that. If she felt like she had to leave, then I’m not going to be the one to stop her.”
“Lucy isn’t reliving your life. She grew up with parents. She’s had one home, one family. It isn’t like when Ned encouraged you to start your own life.”
“She doesn’t know that. Did you think at all about what we were in the middle of when she overheard us? I said I thought her father was using her to help me get to McMichael’s money. I practically accused him of it. If she heard that, she’d think she was a burden. Or that she didn’t have any chance of winning the contest on her own. Or worse. Maybe she never wanted to be a part of this contest. Maybe her father pushed her into it because he’s hoping she gets a big payoff.”
“Have you told anybody else that she’s missing?”
“Like who?”
“Anybody. Big Joe, Duke, Vaughn, Genevieve—”
“No. Maybe I should. She doesn’t know anybody here. She doesn’t know where anything is. She already got lost once. I can’t imagine where she’d go.”
“She does know somebody. She knows Nolene.” I reached for Charlie’s phone.
She put her hand on top of the receiver. “If you let Nolene know Lucy hasn’t been staying with me, she’ll be disqualified.”
“I have an idea. Trust me.” I kept my hand on the phone and stared down Charlie until she moved her hand away. I called Halliwell Industries and asked to speak to Nolene’s assistant, Beth.
“Hi, Poly. Is everything fine with the dresses?”
“Yes. They’re all complete and hanging on a rolling rack at my shop. That’s why I’m calling. Can we coordinate a time and place for me to hand them over to the young women?”
“I thought they would have taken them when they were done. Hmmm.” I heard a clicking sound from the other end of the phone, and imagined her fruit earrings clacking against the receiver. “What are your store hours?”
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