by Misty Simon
“That one at least has some potential, even though you again conveniently ‘found something’. How do I know that you didn’t write this? You could have sent it to Waldo anonymously, stun-gunned the poor guy, and then miraculously come across this note to give me like a good little citizen.”
“Are you kidding me?”
He shook his head slowly, clasping his hands on the counter in front of him.
A scream built at the back of my throat, but I kept it locked there. “Do you want me to take this one with me too, then?”
“Oh, no, it’s mine now. And if I find out you have this kind of paper in your possession or have bought something from whatever store this is, then I have you nailed tight for at least one of these things.” He gave me a second to sputter before continuing. “You know the way out. Let me know if you happen to ‘find’ anything else and I’ll certainly give it my full attention.” He walked away as visions of jumping over the counter to tackle him whipped through my mind.
I stared at Suzy with my mouth hanging open.
She shrugged. “I’d be careful, Tallie. He seems to be gunning for you.”
“But I didn’t do anything.”
“But you have before . . .”
My God. I could go to the pokey for murder and assault because I used to play my music too loud and didn’t pay for going forty-five in a thirty speed-limit zone. Icing on my crappy plate.
I parked around back at the Hackershams after I left the police station with the dinner receipt in my pocket. I didn’t want to get yelled at for parking in front. Darla wasn’t alive anymore, true, but I didn’t know how Darren felt about the help and I wasn’t taking chances. I’d do everything by the book, hoping Darren kept me on to continue cleaning. I really couldn’t afford to lose this job, especially if I couldn’t find that money and the dreaded tax bill really came my way.
The thought made me sick to my stomach, so I concentrated on finding the hidden key in the backyard and let myself in.
The house felt different without Darla’s presence. As if the structure was breathing a sigh of relief, although that was ridiculous. The flowers that had been delivered on the day of her death were still on the windowsill, wilting in the full-on sun. I moved them to the top of the piano as I walked through, purposely avoiding the hallway with the closet and headed for the second floor.
Of course, I knew where everything was, but going through someone’s closet was different. It wasn’t as if Darla and I had ever been more than air-kissing buddies. We hadn’t shared secrets, or clothes or even tips on how to get your makeup right. But now I had to think about Darla as a woman, not just a nuisance and a reluctant check signer.
Opening the door of her enormous walk-in closet gave me pause. How in the world was I going to choose just one thing for her to wear out of all this mess? Silks flowed next to satins, brocades cozied up with linens and suedes. She had one of everything and in every color imaginable. I stumbled back in the face of the profusion of color and sat on a chair near the window to assess the situation. I’d known Darla had a ton of clothes. In fact, I’d rarely seen her in the same thing twice, but this was astounding.
And I already knew Darren would be no help. Now what was I going to do? Maybe a picture would help: a place and an outfit Darla had looked happy in could point me in the right direction. I’d looked at pictures like that before at the parlor from helpful relatives who brought in twenty-year-old pictures, hoping the Gravers could make Aunt Beatrice look younger for her final viewing.
After entering Darla’s office, I sat in the chair at her desk. I had just been in here. It felt like a hundred years and a ton of stress later. Stepping over the threshold had reminded me again of the guy with those shoes. And that made me wonder again if maybe he had been the one who had hurt her. If Burton chose not to use that info, I might have to find the guy myself.
Another bouquet of flowers stood on the top of Darla’s desk. If she’d sent these to herself, then it was no wonder she had a huge outstanding bill at Monty’s.
There was a card, though. Plucking it from the arrangement, I turned it over in my hand, catching the familiar logo again and wondering who had delivered the flowers. Was it Max? Had he dropped off the flowers, then shoved a knife in Darla before shoving her into the closet? That was ridiculous, though. He’d explained his reasons for being here. I couldn’t use him being at every incident as a valid reason to doubt him. Hell, if that were enough, I’d have to consider myself a suspect too.
I’d dug in for a little more research last night after I’d gone to bed and I had finally found Max. He was a part of the IRS Criminal Investigation team and he looked awfully good in a pair of swim trunks at the beach. Apparently, he went by the name Bennett Maxwell on social media. Maybe to keep people from knowing who he was. He probably had people who would be out for him because of his job.
Ten minutes passed with me glancing at the card every few seconds and trying to find a picture in which Darla looked truly happy. The flowers had been signed from one of Waldo’s old clients, Mr. Fraller. There could be any number of reasons why he had sent Darla flowers. None that I could think of at the moment, but surely there was some reason he had sent her what I figured was a pretty expensive bouquet. Maybe it was the new rage in the elite set to send flowers all over the place for hostessing.
Leaning back in the chair, I swung back and forth a few times. My whole day stretched out in front of me at this point. With all of my normally scheduled houses cleaned, there was nothing my father would need me to help with at the funeral home, if he knew what was good for him. Even my laundry was caught up.
I kept waiting for inspiration, but it didn’t come, so I started poking around the desk. I could have cleaned as I’d promised Darren, but I made note of only a few things that actually had to be straightened as I’d walked around and then upstairs. The police hadn’t left the mess Darren had insinuated. I’d get to it soon enough.
The desk yielded nothing worth noticing. It did, however, lead me to begin poking around the room in general. Darla had all the classics stacked on the built-in bookshelves, along with some of the more contemporary bestsellers. Not that she had read any of them. I knew for a fact she hated reading. She kept them for show, just like the rest of her house and her life. All for show and now it was over, the curtain called.
I hadn’t exactly hated Darla. I had certainly disliked her, but I’d also tolerated her, and while not devastated at her demise, I was a little sad she was gone. Being honest with myself, though, I admitted I was more curious as to who had hated her enough to end her life and so up close and personal. Someone would have to touch the person they were killing to hit that kind of mark, I figured. How had it happened? Where had it happened? I doubted it had been in the closet itself since I hadn’t seen blood on the floor. And there would have been blood on the floor, I had no doubt about that.
Running my finger along the spines of the books on the chest-level shelf, I again tried to picture how it could have happened or even where. But my imagination was not that fertile and had never been, according to Waldo. I wasn’t creative, according to him, and only good to make his parties sparkle with the help of a professional hostess.
I shook my head and shoved those thoughts out. They weren’t doing me any good and had no bearing on what was currently going on. Not to mention Waldo wasn’t going to be using that particular equipment anytime soon, regardless.
Leaning against the shelving unit, I enjoyed a moment of pure, unadulterated glee that his second-most prized possession was going to be out of commission for who knew how long.
Something shifted behind me. I nearly stumbled as the wall moved back, then slid into the section beside it. I stood there, stunned. This was way too much like a Scooby-Doo episode for me.
That didn’t stop me from ducking into the little room, even though I had no idea what I might find.
“Huh.” The walls were lined with boxes and boxes. Hatboxes, shoe boxes, boxes with
shipping-company labels on them and personal labels. There was no rhyme or reason to the way they were arranged or what was in each of them. It occurred to me that I probably shouldn’t move anything. Several times, Burton had very pointedly told me not to touch anything. But honestly, I just couldn’t help myself.
Reaching into a shoe box, I pulled out gobs of costume jewelry in every blingy design you could think of. In the next was bow tie after bow tie. In a third, silks scarves ran through my hands like a clown continuing to pull them from his sleeve. What the hell did she need with all this?
A crinkle in the scarf box caught my attention and I pulled out a receipt for over two thousand dollars in merchandise. For a moment, something caught at the back of my mind, though I couldn’t figure out what. Until I looked at the bottom of the paper and found the same blue lines and font as the half piece of paper the threat to Waldo had been written on.
I took a step back, because this confirmation only raised more questions, and stumbled into the far wall. Stacks of paperwork fell on my neck and shoulders like mounds of snow dropping from laden tree branches. What the hell was all this?
I used the back of my hand to shuffle papers around so there would no prints. I wasn’t dumb. The first pass showed me taxes from years past, paperwork Darren kept on hand per tax guidelines, I guess. But under that was more paperwork, official paperwork to change a person’s name with the state seal of Tennessee on it.
I shoved a few things into the top of my baggy shirt. This stealing thing was becoming a habit. But I wanted to read more about Darla and I was hoping the little diary I’d taken, along with the paperwork I’d found, would tell me details to help find her killer.
Holy hell, there was a whole lot more than murder going on here. Darla being dead might only be the tip of the iceberg.
Right now, that might be the least of my problems, though. I tried to move from under the paperwork and found I was stuck. There was no moving the avalanche of paperwork that had come down on me. Every time I tried, another pile would slide in to fill the space I’d created and I was stuck again. I was a half-second away from trying to dig out my cell and call for help when a shadow appeared outside the wall panel.
Should I yell for help or hope the person didn’t notice me? Being caught in a compromising position would not be a good thing, but being stuck here all night when I really had to pee wasn’t exactly my first choice, either.
“Help me out, please. I feel almost buried alive.” I said the words very calmly, but inside I was quaking. I wanted out of here and wanted to honestly scrub my brain and eyes with Clorox. I could have done without this in my already-ridiculous last forty or so hours.
Someone reached down a very masculine hand. Part of me hoped it was Max because that would be the least worrisome choice. It could also be very bad, since he would, yet again, be where he wasn’t supposed to be without being asked. Just as I was. I grabbed on gratefully and let him yank me out of the mess I had created. After dusting myself off and taking far longer than I should have, the man cleared his throat.
“Was there something specific you thought you might find in here that you didn’t see in Darla’s closet?”
Oh, man. Darren. He would have been second-to-last on my list of people I wanted to rescue me, right after the actual killer. How was I going to explain this? “I was looking for . . .” I stopped talking when he just raised an eyebrow. “I was trying to find a picture of Darla happy so I could match it to the mounds of clothes in her closet. I was looking at her books and I leaned against the bookshelf and it opened on its own.” I raised my hands in a gesture of surrender, hoping that I wasn’t shifting anything I’d stuffed down my shirt. If the book or the paperwork dropped out of the bottom of my top to fall at my feet, I would definitely not have any explanation for that. “I swear to you I did not go looking for anything. I was trying to do as you’d asked and then this.” I gestured back behind me as if he wasn’t already staring intently at the motley mess of stuff on the floor, spilling out of the hidden room.
“And what is this?” He gestured around. I didn’t have to look again to know that there was a ton of stuff. But it did look like maybe Darla had not always been Darla, and that could be sticky, indeed.
“Um, I’m not sure what this is exactly, but if you could step back then maybe I could help clean up?” Not the smartest response, but I really did have to buy time. Did Darren know Darla had once been Marla and that someone was trying to blackmail her? Honestly, I didn’t want to know, but I had a sick feeling in my stomach it was going to be a conversation I couldn’t avoid.
He took exactly one step back as I wobbled on my feet. If he wasn’t blocking the doorway I might have bolted. Instead, he’d crossed his arms and planted his feet. It didn’t look like he was going anywhere any time soon.
“Did you find anything interesting?” he asked, an edge to his voice I had never heard before.
Could Darren have actually killed her? Sure, he had an alibi for the murder, but he worked in an office with a back door from what I remembered from my one visit. And he also had a secretary who was more worried about the finish on her nails than she was about where Darren went.
“Define interesting?” Still buying time, but the thundercloud that passed over Darren’s face told me that the time was almost up. Lordy, I didn’t want to be the one to tell him about the Darla/Marla thing. Yet, if he found out and wondered what I knew, then I did not want to be in his crosshairs. Especially if he had killed Darla. This just kept getting worse.
“I’m guessing somehow you stumbled over the fact Darla does not exactly have the lineage she told everyone about.”
It wasn’t a question. Reckless me, I answered it anyway. “I just saw a sheet that said she had changed her name.”
“Changed her name.” Darren laughed, but did not sound happy. “Yeah, she changed her name, and her appearance, and her background. I had no idea until last year that she was anyone but a high-society dame from outside Philadelphia.”
“I still don’t know that she is, and I’d rather you not tell me. That way I won’t know anything and can just be blissfully ignorant.” I was banking on Darren remembering me as one of his contemporaries instead of just the help. I couldn’t afford to be taken out with the trash.
Darren sighed, his posture relaxing while he scratched his five-o’clock shadow. “Tallie, I need you to keep this to yourself.”
Great, one more thing I did not want on my plate. That sucker was going to crash to the floor at any moment.
My first thought was to tell Burton, anyway, no matter if I lost my job or not. But then I remembered that he had essentially challenged me to come to him with anything else I happened to ‘find’ on my own. Damn.
I kept my mouth shut and didn’t promise anything. Burton wouldn’t be thrilled if it came to light later, but I owed him nothing at the moment and I was going to figure this thing out on my own. He had already made up his mind about my guilt, and anything I tried to give him was more proof in his eyes that I was trying to shove the blame on someone else.
Right now, though, I had more at stake than worrying about making the chief of police happy or not. I had to keep my wits about me because Darren was still blocking the door.
When I didn’t say anything, he dragged his hand down his face and reached behind him. My mind went blank and the urge to run made my legs burn. I was not going to die in some secret closet filled with papers and boxes.
But all he did was pull his checkbook out of his back pocket. “What’s it going to cost me?”
“Cost you?” I squeaked, then cleared my throat. “Cost you for what?” I asked, trying again to sound more like myself.
“For you to keep your mouth shut. I can’t afford too much. I wouldn’t be able to explain the amount away, but fortunately you’re the cleaning lady. I can just say I gave you a bonus, if my accountant asks during tax time.”
Tax time reminded me of the whole Waldo tax-evasion thing, which made
me gulp. Darren, having no idea what was going through my head, took it wrong.
“I don’t have cash on hand, so we’re going to have to make this work this way. Now, how much?”
How much? How much? To keep it together and get out of here in one piece, I had to come up with a number that wasn’t too high but not too low. It had to make sense, but not be greedy. I put on my old Mrs. Phillips’s thinking cap, no matter how much I now detested that I had been that person. “Let’s say five hundred.”
He didn’t even raise a brow, simply put the checkbook up against the wall and wrote it out, signing it with a flourish.
“You’ll keep your mouth shut?” He thrust the check at me without releasing it.
“I have no one to tell and nothing to tell, as far as I’m concerned. If you want people to know, then that’s up to you.” Of course, I didn’t promise to keep from giving Burton a nudge in the right direction if he asked. I just wouldn’t be the one to bring it up.
“So, this is where all my money was going.” Putting his checkbook back in his pocket, he looked around with a grimace. “I could have sworn she had signed on as someone’s sugar mama, but instead I find a bunch of crap I’m going to have to give to the local shelter.”
“It looks like most of the receipts are here. You might be able to return most of it.”
“I don’t have time for that and this way it’s a tax write-off. Jesus, what did I ever see in that woman?”
That was my cue to leave. “I’m just going to grab something out of the closet and take it to my dad. I’m sure he’s wondering where I am. I can come back later and do the cleaning if you want.”
“Yeah, yeah. I have a dinner meeting, so any time after six is fine. If you don’t mind going through all this too, I’d appreciate it.” He rubbed his hand over his head. “What a mess.” And he left without a backward glance.