Silk Stalkings

by Diane Vallere

  Her hands were shaking. She held the chains, and they rattled like a ghost in the attic of a haunted house. Instinctively, I stepped closer to her and put my hands on her shoulders. She didn’t shrug me off. Tears streamed down her cheeks and dripped onto her pastel-pink blouse. She tucked her chin and I gently turned her toward me and hugged her. She held her arms up in front of her chest, as if protecting her heart from a sudden blow. I suspected that blow had come when her daughter went to live with her ex-husband and that the annual pageant had become an unwelcome reminder of the void left in her life.

  Out of the corner of my eye, I caught Jun Wong heading toward us. I tipped my head toward the doors to Material Girl and let go of Violet for a moment to feel around inside my bag for the keys. The petite Chinese woman took them and unlocked the gate and then unlocked the door.

  “Violet, let’s go inside the fabric store. I don’t think you want to be out here on the street.”

  She acquiesced. I kept an arm on her shoulders and guided her inside. Jun set her equipment down and pushed a rolling chair over to where we stood. I lowered Violet into the chair and got her a box of tissues.

  “I miss her so much,” she said. “So much, Poly. I never meant to push her into something she wasn’t ready to do. Why won’t she answer my letters? Why won’t she return my calls?”

  Jun pushed a second chair behind me, and I sat down across from Violet. “I can’t answer that.”

  Violet pulled two tissues from the box and made an effort to get her sobbing under control. In time, the only evidence of her emotional breakdown was the redness around her nose and eyes and the irregular rise and fall of her chest when she breathed. She reached her shaking hands into her handbag and plunged into the sea of tissue and loose dollar bills. “They’re not here. Why aren’t they here?”

  “What are you looking for?”

  She sat up and placed her hand over her heart and closed her eyes. Her chest rose and fell twice, but even though her hand was pressed against the floral fabric of her dress, it continued to shake.

  “Violet, are you okay?” I asked.

  She opened her eyes and held out her open handbag. “My heart is racing. I need to calm down. Look inside and find my nitroglycerine tablets, would you?”

  Thirty-one

  “Violet, when did you last have your pills?” I asked.

  “The garden party. I was looking for money for the tip jar. I set them on the drink station outside.”

  I looked at Vaughn. “Go get the sheriff,” I said.

  “No need to get me. I heard everything,” Clark said.

  Clark came into the fabric store and walked over to Violet. She looked confused by his presence. “Sheriff Clark, what are you doing here?” she asked.

  “Ms. Garden, I think you should come with me. I have a couple of questions to ask you about the murder of Harvey Halliwell.”

  Violet jumped up from the chair where she sat. Her eyes went wide and she stepped backward, knocking the chair a few feet away. “You think— What— No!” she proclaimed. “You can’t possibly think that I killed him.”

  “Ms. Garden, we have reason to believe that Harvey Halliwell was poisoned the night of the party, and you just admitted to having access to his drink. Your anger toward him raises questions.”

  “Harvey was killed on Sunday,” she said.

  “Can you tell me your whereabouts on Sunday?”

  Violet looked up at me. I knew she’d gone to the Waverly House. She’d told me as much when she caught me talking to Nolene. There was no use denying it.

  “I had a meeting with Harvey on Sunday.”

  “We’ve been over Mr. Halliwell’s calendar and there’s no record of a meeting.”

  “That’s because I asked him to be discreet. I didn’t want his assistant to know. All that Nolene Kelly thinks about is that pageant. She doesn’t see what it does to the women who enter.” She dropped her voice to a whisper and looked down at the ground. “She doesn’t think about what it did to my family.”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Garden, but you’re going to have to come with me,” Clark said.

  “But all I wanted to do was something good.”

  “Why were you meeting with Harvey?” I asked.

  Clark shot me a look that told me to stay out of it, but it was too late. Violet was looking for someone to listen to her and I’d given her a platform.

  “I had a proposal for him. A scholarship in Elizabeth’s name. Available to any girl who fit certain criteria: a decent GPA, a desire to pursue an advanced degree, a plan for her future. The Miss Tangorli pageant has become outdated. Harvey’s money could do far more good if it was spread around than if he put it all into the pageant. It was time he made a change. The pageant couldn’t continue forever.”

  I stole a glance at Vaughn, who caught my eyes but then looked back at Violet.

  “What did he think?” I asked.

  “He agreed. I drew up the paperwork and volunteered to administer the scholarship until he set up a nonprofit to take over. I wanted to give him the paperwork from the IRS to prove that we’d met their requirements.”

  “What did Harvey think about your idea?” I asked.

  “He loved it. He knew he was too old to travel to China every year. He had no children, no one to leave the company to. He recognized that the scholarship would establish his legacy in a way the pageant couldn’t sustain, especially after he passed away.”

  She was right. Once Harvey Halliwell passed away—even if it had been in the future and at the hands of natural causes—the pageant would have become less important. He was at the heart of the event, not the young women, not the setting, not Nolene Kelly, not the Tangorli fruit. It was him. He had done such a good job of branding himself as Mr. Tangorli that without him, the exotic fruit was just another version of an orange, and the pageant was just one in a number of events that rewarded the combination of beauty and brains.

  “Sheriff Clark, there is nothing worse for my plans than for Harvey Halliwell to have been murdered. You must see that. But he and I had a productive meeting. This fund would give all young women a chance at money for their education, providing they wanted it. That’s all I ever wanted for my daughter.”

  “You did that for me?” asked a soft voice behind us. We turned around and saw Betty standing in the doorway, holding Archie to her chest. He squirmed a bit, but then relaxed against her.

  “For you?” I asked. But as I stood there staring at the nervous woman who’d been making repeated visits to our stretch of Bonita since talk of the pageant had taken over San Ladrón, I realized that Betty was no out-of-town stranger. “Betty—that’s a nickname, isn’t it? Short for Elizabeth. You’re Violet’s daughter.”

  She looked at me and nodded, and then looked back at Violet.

  “Elizabeth?” Violet said. She stood slowly and set the used tissue on the cutting table next to her.

  “I—I’m sorry it’s taken so long—”

  Violet ran forward and threw her arms around Betty. Little Archie got squished in the hug, and he yipped a couple of times to make sure we all knew he was there. Violet released Betty and stood back and looked at her, then hugged her again.

  “You came back,” Violet said. The hysteria had left her voice, and tears of happiness streamed down her face. “After eighteen years, you came back,” she said again.

  When their hug ended, Betty seemed to pull herself together. She looked at me and Vaughn, at Clark for a brief second, and then back to me. “My editor says my articles are fine but they don’t connect on an emotional level. He told me to find a subject that I related to and write about that. So I came here to see—to put the past behind me and—to—”

  “To get closure,” I said.

  She smiled. “Yes.” She turned back to Violet. “Mom, did you mean what you said? That you met with Harvey Halliwell t
o establish a scholarship in my name?”

  Violet relaxed her embrace and stepped back, keeping her hands on Betty’s shoulders. “Yes. I couldn’t let my anger over the pageant control me any longer. I couldn’t let other daughters feel what you felt.”

  I thought back to what Tiki Tom had told me about Violet. Before opening the antiques shop next door, she had been an accountant. She would know how to handle money and how to set up the scholarship. She would have been able to advise Harvey on how to accomplish her suggestion. He wasn’t here to tell us if he had said yes or no, but listening to her, I had a strong sense that he had probably said yes.

  “Ms. Garden, do you have any proof of this meeting with Harvey? Anything at all?” Sheriff Clark asked.

  She looked at him as if for the first time noticing that he was in the room with us. “What kind of proof do you need?”

  “Anything,” I said.

  “I met Harvey in the parking lot next to the Waverly House. I wanted to see the gardens one last time, so I walked behind the mansion. Harvey was waiting for me in the lot. I didn’t see his orange car, and when I asked about it, he said he had asked one of his employees to give him a ride in her convertible.”

  I turned to Clark. “Are there cameras in the parking lot?”

  “Yes. They were installed a few years ago when someone thought it would be funny to toilet paper the trees.”

  Vaughn cleared his throat. “The cameras haven’t been operational for at least six months. With the budget cuts, the staff decided to keep the cameras in place as a deterrent but not tell anybody that they weren’t working.” He looked at me. “That’s what happens when your operating budget is at risk.”

  Violet reached into her handbag and pulled out a sheaf of folded papers. “Sheriff, would these do? These are the documents I had drawn up for my meeting with Harvey. As we talked, he made notes, and then he asked me to make the changes and e-mail him a fresh copy.” She held the papers out and Clark took them. Upside down I could see orange handwritten notes in the margins of an official-looking document.

  “That’s his handwriting, for sure. But all this tells me is that you met with him. It doesn’t tell me what condition you left him in.”

  I closed my eyes and tried to remember finding Harvey’s body. “What about the Waverly House employees? Did any of them see you?”

  “They were busy breaking down the serving stations.”

  “What about the garden gnome?” I asked.

  “Ms. Monroe,” Clark said, “I know you’re not asking me to question a garden gnome.”

  “When I found Harvey’s body under the weeping willow tree, I knew it was important that nobody else got close before you arrived. I made a circle around him with Xavier’s tools.”

  “Xavier?”

  “The head landscaper. They were fixing up the garden after the party. I grabbed the rake, the shovel, and a garden gnome, and laid them all end to end to create a barrier. It was the best I could do on short notice. But if Violet met with Harvey in the parking lot, and Harvey was found dead under the weeping willow tree, then wouldn’t the gardeners have had to see him walk past again?”

  “Not necessarily. Ms. Garden, how did you leave your meeting with Harvey?”

  “I went inside the Waverly House for brunch and Harvey excused himself to make a phone call. That was the last I saw of him.”

  All four of us—Jun Wong, Vaughn, Clark, and I—stared at Violet. I wasn’t sure if Jun even knew what was going on, since she hadn’t been a part of so many of the earlier conversations, but she knew that Violet had said something important.

  Jun looked at Vaughn. “Mister Vaughn, if the lady was inside the Waverly House, how could she be outside with Mister Halliwell?”

  Vaughn looked at the sheriff. “I think that’s a very good question.”

  Sheriff Clark looked at Violet. “You wouldn’t happen to have any proof that you were inside, would you?”

  “Would my receipt work? I kept it for tax purposes. After all, we were having a business meeting,” she said, her familiar defensive tone sneaking back into her voice.

  Clark pulled off his hat and wiped the back of his bare arm across his forehead. “Ms. Garden, I’m sorry for the trouble. I’m going to need to see that receipt.”

  She nodded, and then looked at Betty again. I had a feeling a family reunion would take place before Clark got his receipt.

  • • •

  I gave up any hopes of a shower and change of clothes and opened the store. It was well beyond my normal hours, and in a way we’d been lucky not to be interrupted by a customer. In a different way—one that spoke to my potential profits as a fabric store—I was not so lucky.

  “I have to stay here until six,” I said. “I think you should go to the Waverly House and see if you can find out anything—about Sheila, or about the Tangorli juice that Harvey drank, or about anything.”

  Vaughn looked uncomfortable. “There’s a good chance that someone took Violet’s nitro tablets at the party and slipped one into Harvey’s drink. The fact that her pills are missing says something.”

  “I can’t figure those pills out. Ned says he put them in Harvey’s coat after someone fitting Sheila’s description gave them to him. Where did Sheila get them? Did she steal them from Violet, or did she find them on the drink station? And did she think they actually were Harvey’s, or did she know she was setting up Violet? I found them on the ground. I gave them back to Harvey, but Sheriff Clark didn’t find them. So did somebody take them?”

  “What did Harvey do when you gave them to him?”

  “He studied the label and put them away.” I realized why the pills bothered me so much. “The one person who would know that those pills didn’t belong to Harvey Halliwell was Harvey Halliwell. So why would he take them from me? Why not just say they aren’t his and move on?”

  Vaughn shrugged. “I guess we’ll never know.”

  I put my hand on his arm. “That’s just it. Harvey must have recognized the pills. He knew who slipped him one. When he left my shop the day after the party, he was on his way to confront the killer.”

  “But who is that?”

  “I don’t know. We’re right back where we started,” I said.

  “Not really. We’re not on a street corner anymore.”

  I looked at Vaughn like he had two heads before I remembered our conversation less than an hour ago. “I can’t keep up with much more than I already have in my brain. For the next eight hours, my mind is on fabric.”

  “Okay. I’ll be back at six.”

  Vaughn walked out the door, and I turned to Jun. She stood with her hand on the top of her sewing machine. “Miss Poly, is good thing that happened with Miss Violet and Miss Betty.”

  “Yes, it is a good thing.” And if I hadn’t been so distracted by the murder and the running of the store, I might have figured it out sooner. The first day Betty was in the store she hadn’t given her name, and the second time she said she’d been headed for the antiques shop until my mom all but hijacked her. Had my mom revealed her relationship to me then, would Betty have told us the truth? Maybe. Or maybe she’d been so nervous about seeing her own mother for the first time in eighteen years that she would have taken any excuse to postpone the inevitable.

  That was why she said I helped her more than I’d know. My store gave her a reason to keep coming to our stretch of Bonita Avenue.

  Jun cleared her throat. “Miss Poly, I know you no ask me to come here today. I think about your offer and I think I try. Is okay with you if I give trial run like your happy hour?”

  I wanted to hug her. “Jun, it’s more than okay. You can set yourself up wherever you want. I’m going to work on a display of silks. Now that the pageant dresses are done we might get some interest in them. If you need anything, you let me know.”

  “I be okay.” She nodde
d slightly and turned away. Again I marveled at how efficient she was. She flipped the latch on a plastic carrying case and sixteen clear plastic drawers tipped out toward her. One held tape measures. One held her pincushion. One held needles, a few held thread. I’d never seen such a thing.

  “Where did you get the case?”

  “My husband buy for me at hardware store. He say I need easier way to carry everything.

  “I didn’t know you were married,” I said.

  “He passed away many years ago. I support myself now,” she said proudly.

  “You’re an inspiration to the women of San Ladrón,” I said.

  While Jun organized her sewing supplies, I maneuvered the fixture of silk to the front of the store and moved the floral display to the space now left vacant. Unlike the raffia bust form that I’d draped in floral cotton at the beginning of the week, the satins were stiff and serious. To unroll a bolt and drape it over a bust form would create creases that would take far too long to steam out, especially since I knew how important it was to keep water from coming into contact with the silk satin. Spots from water would discolor the fabric and even change the texture. It was one of the reasons silk satin was so expensive, but its luxury couldn’t be matched by any other fabric in the store.

  The pageant contestants had chosen from the colorful bolts, each wanting a color that showed off her skin tone to the best advantage. Their relative youth led them to the pink, purple, and blue palette. One had chosen black. Lucy had selected the green that turned purple in certain lights. But not one of them had chosen the silver or the gold. I fingered the material, letting the smooth, heavy weight of it slide through my fingers. It was a shame the beautiful metallic fabric wouldn’t be represented at the pageant. To my eye, these were the prettiest bolts of the lot. They reminded me of the thirties, when dresses were incandescent; when glamour was paramount.