She watched Trudy gather clothes as she dressed, moving outside of the camera’s view as she did. A few shadows were enough to show she was near the bed for a few brief moments. Shortly after, there was a flash of daylight as the front door opened and closed and Trudy Wilkins left the scene of the crime.
But the part that always bothered Tilley was that the camera kept recording for what felt like a while afterwards; a little more than twenty-two minutes to be precise. Much of which was a video of Charlie Baker’s body tied to the bed. But as Tilley watched the video in its entirety for what was probably the sixth or maybe the seventh time, again she was disturbed when, near the end of the footage, Charlie Baker’s foot moved. A few moments later, a brief flash of light from what had to be the door again; shadows appeared briefly and Charlie’s foot moved again. Not long after, the video stopped recording. Trudy had gone back to retrieve the laptop computer.
Tilley sipped coffee and thought about her morning; about how Marci no longer wanted to sleep at her own house. She couldn’t blame her. To find out your lover killed someone out of sheer jealousy would be hard enough to deal with, let alone having to be reminded of it every single day by still living in the same house filled with reminders. Still sleeping in the same bed you shared. It couldn’t be easy. But six weeks of secretly dating wasn’t enough for Tilley to take a leap and move in together. Three months of dating, maybe more, might have been enough to Dodge and Weatherbee, but Tilley was not the impulsive type. Not when it came to something as serious as living together. And yet Tilley hadn’t felt so energized in her life. Marci Grant was electric, alive, and full of life. She had a zest for living that Tilley had never known, a passion that couldn’t be satisfied. Tilley sometimes wondered if this was what Charlie Baker had been like; a man who just couldn’t get enough, always wanting more. But Tilley figured all men had that dog in them, to a certain degree, of course. Some were great men, like her partner for instance. Turns out he was a one-woman man after all. He was in love and it suited him well, thought Tilley. But six weeks was too fast. It would take a long time for Tilley to want to live with Marci. Mind you, she could stay over often, thought Tilley, smiling to herself at the idea. That would be fine, for now.
Tilley quickly got up from her chair and set her coffee down. Her smile vanished as she fished through her desk for a set of keys and an electronic pass card. After a few locks and security card scans she was in the back storage where the evidence was stored. She located the boxes containing the Charlie Baker evidence. Scanning the listed contents of the boxes, it took a bit of time but she found the box she wanted. She used her key to tear through the tape on the box and opened it. The box contained some of the items taken from Charlie Baker’s apartment. Tilley pulled out an evidence bag containing three smaller bags, each containing pill bottles, and smiled. The seals on the bags were broken, as she suspected they would be, and the pills were gone. Detective Tilley wondered who might have taken the pills. Was it Lemkie, Dodge, or most likely Calvin? Those were her first guesses, although many other men would have had access to the evidence room. She smiled, tucked the bag back into the box, and rifled through its other contents. She took another evidence bag, tore open the seal, and pocketed something before putting the bag back into the box and setting it back where she had found it. Tilley didn’t bother resealing the box. The pill bottles alone were reason enough not to. She wasn’t concerned about anyone knowing she had been in the box, nor would she tell anyone either. She glanced at the time on her phone as she left the station. If she had time, there was an errand she needed to run and as soon as possible, too. Just to be sure.
77
Marci Grant woke in Roxanne Tilley’s bed, only to find she was alone as usual. She closed her eyes and ran her hand over the spot where Tilley would be if she was still in bed. Gone, just like every morning she had slept over. Tilley was an early riser, a genuine morning person. And just like all the other mornings, the coffee machine would be ready, her favourite cup with a single cube of sugar waiting for her. She’d shower and change at home, thought Marci as she collected her clothes which were scattered throughout the house. She finished dressing while brewing coffee, wearing a lazy smile of contentment. Clutching the warm mug in her brown-glove-covered hands and having had the first few sips of coffee, Marci decided she would start her day now. She went to her purse to find her phone to check for messages but instead found a small box with a silver bow on it protruding from her purse. On the box was a note:
These will match so much better.
The note was signed with a slanted drawing of a heart. Marci opened the box to find a brand new pair of fine black leather driving gloves. They looked almost identical to the battered brown ones she was wearing. She scooped one glove out of the box and touched it to her face. Real soft leather and not cheap imitation, this she could tell. She inhaled the aroma, a scent she loved. She hesitated for a moment and decided she wanted to make Tilley happy. She removed the battered brown leather gloves and examined them as if saying goodbye. The gloves had been a gift from the dealership where she had purchased her red Corvette; a car dealer who specialized in older model classics. She slipped on the new pair, caressed and smelled them. They were exquisite to say the least and must have cost a pretty penny. With her high-heeled shoe, which was completely inappropriate for the December weather, she stepped on the trashcan lever, opening it. About to toss in her old gloves, she paused. On top of an empty milk carton was a single brown button. Marci stared at it with a familiarity that made her skin crawl. She looked at her old brown gloves, one had a button and the other didn’t. The button on the glove in her hand was identical to the one in the trashcan before her.
Did Tilley know? How long had she known? The button probably came off when she used the pillow to kill Charlie Baker. He was still alive when Trudy left, but Marci had a sudden opportunity thrust onto her to end the crazy jealousy and get rid of Trudy’s insane obsession she called love once and for all. At the time, it was overwhelming and Marci had been struggling.
That morning, when she saw Trudy leaving Charlie’s place, she assumed the worst thing she could think of which was that Trudy was cheating on her. And in that moment, instead of anger Marci had a moment of what she would later think of as clarity. She had the sudden realization that Charlie had Trudy on film having sex, providing the perfect opportunity to be rid of her. Something she decided instantly that morning while at the Turlingtons’, after seeing a panicked Trudy leave Charlie Baker’s place. Only, it turned out they weren’t just having sex. Trudy had tried to kill Charlie. She had realized that quickly when she entered Charlie’s place through the unlocked front door. She had every intention of demanding the tape, but when she saw him on the bed with a pillow on his face she knew this wasn’t just a sex tape. The video had captured a murder. But when his leg moved she realized Charlie wasn’t dead. In a flash, she decided she would finish what Trudy had started as she proceeded to disconnect the laptop Charlie had told her about when helping her with her computer. This meant Trudy would be the one on tape, killing Charlie Baker.
Only, once the deed was done, Marci panicked. She had to take the video with her. Wrought with guilt, she found that she just couldn’t go though with it. She loved Trudy, even if she was crazy. In a rash decision, she destroyed the laptop, or so she thought, and eventually got rid of it by throwing it out her car window. But there was no way she could expect Detective Roxanne Tilley to understand any of this. How did she figure it out? Her mistake had to have been locking the door as she left. She had done this without even thinking about it. As a real-estate agent, it was ingrained in her to lock up when leaving a client’s house. That had to have been it, she thought as she stared at the button in the trash.
Marci was awoken from deep thought by the theme to Law and Order emanating from her purse. She retrieved her phone in a hurry and saw that she had gotten a text from Tilley. She had known who it was from by the special ring t
one she had picked out just for her. She opened the text, hoping it was nothing bad.
Hey sexy, I hope you’re not mad, it read. I hope you like them, so you can throw out your old ones. See you tonight.
Marci replied to the text.
I love them, thank you. They’re very soft to the touch, just like you. See you tonight.
Tilley had to know. Marci couldn’t remember when she had lost the button from the glove, but it was long ago, and the only way Tilley could have found it was if it was at Charlie Baker’s place. But that message didn’t seem like someone who was upset. On the contrary, thought Marci as she smiled, grabbed her things, and headed home to shower and change.
78
Standing before the dangling, pantyhose-clad body of the fire chief was a salt- and-pepper-haired senior Detective Franklin Dodge. The much younger Detective Roxanne Tilley just stared in disbelief. Both detectives had struggled with the smell when they first arrived on the scene but now were too shocked to notice it. Before them swayed the short, stocky body of the fire chief, suspended by a pair of pantyhose that had been used to make a noose. The chief’s feet were bound together and his hands were bound behind his back, both with pantyhose used as rope. He was hanging from a partially pulled out hook in the ceiling; the heavy potted plant that used to be hung there had been tossed aside, smashing the pot and scattering its dirt as a result. The finishing touch was the multicoloured Christmas lights wrapped around the fire chief’s body with a note.
Here’s your Christmas bonus, you Fuck!
“What the hell does that mean?” Tilley asked.
Dodge sighed. “I don’t have a clue.”
“Did you call Lemkie?”
“Yup,” Dodge replied. “But I left out the details. I wanted to see the look on his face when he sees this one.”
“I heard Weatherbee got an offer on her house,” Tilley said.
Dodge smiled, knowing full well Marci had told Tilley about it. “Yup, it’s just about sold as long as they can agree on some of the finer details.”
“That’s great news,” Tilley replied.
“Hey, how did you get the call about the chief here?” Dodge asked.
“Agatha called me,” Tilley replied. “She got complaints from the tenants upstairs about a smell and finally got around to checking it out.”
“Fuck me!” Lemkie exclaimed as he arrived, carrying his kit. “Just when I thought things were finally getting back to normal around here.”
“This is normal,” Dodge replied. “Around these parts, anyway.”
Things were very normal, thought Tilley, who decided not to say anything to make anyone think otherwise.
“Emma and her Naughty Knitters are probably already spreading gossip about this as we speak. I need air,” Tilley said.
“Me, too,” Dodge added. They both headed outside, leaving Lemkie to get started.
The End
Author’s note:
Book ideas come from different places for different writers. Mine tend to sprout from many places, depending on where my head is at. December 24th, 2015 I sat at my computer with an itch to start something new; but what to write? I had been told many times by people I knew that they didn’t want to read my books as they didn’t like scary stories. With that in mind, I decided to write something more lighthearted for a change, but I just needed to find the right topic. So I took inspiration from an image on a book cover that sat on a shelf in my office. The image was a set of handcuffs dangling from a bedpost. Now before you get thinking it was a smut book, let me say that it was Gerald’s Game by Stephen King. Which turns out is an amazing book, by the way. But now with that image in my head, I wrote the opening scene for Poplar Falls and if you read this book before this note, then you might understand what I’m referring to.
This book has had many changes of titles over the thirteen months I worked on writing it. The story itself evolved many times before a plan started falling into place and it became what it is today.
As for the cover, I had an idea of what I wanted but sometimes you simply need to admit that others are just way better at some things than we are. So I supplied a professional graphics designer the picture I had taken and gave her a brief idea of what I was looking for. Soon after I found myself collecting my socks from across the room, as her work had blown them clear off. Figuratively speaking of course as this doesn’t literally happen but I use this old adage to illustrate that she simply amazed me with her design skills. She took my suggestions but used her own magic to make this cover better than I had imagined it. The back cover author photo is by photographer Gerard Gaudet. The original front cover photo is taken by yours truly. The magic weaved to turn the plain photo into the amazing work that it is now, is due to the skills of Angella Cormier.
And with that said, I truly hope you’ve enjoyed this book and thank you for letting me entertain you with my story.
Sincerely
Pierre C. Arseneault
Contents
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