Pillow Stalk (A Mad for Mod Mystery) (7 page)

He took a step backwards, into the shadow of a dogwood tree.

“I know I’ve been taking advantage of your generosity, but I still don’t have a car, and my ride bailed on me, and I don’t have my phone to call a cab. Can I borrow your phone? Or better yet, can you give me a ride home again?” I stepped forward to see him more clearly.

His mouth turned down, and his eyes were narrow. I moved back, away from him, scared by his expression.

He stepped out of the shadows, and the closer he got, the more clearly I could see anger on his face.

I’d overstepped my boundaries. I’d known him for close to a year but this was now the third time in three days I’d asked for a personal favor. He didn’t look happy about it, but he strode toward the car door all the same.

“Nothing good ever comes from rescuing women stranded on the side of the road,” he said. He got into the truck, gunned the engine, and drove away.

EIGHT

Hudson’s tires kicked up a spray of gravel and dust that swirled around my ankles. My white sneakers had turned the color of powdered Ovaltine and the hem of my dress matched. Sweat trickled between my breasts. I looked down at my knee, now the size of a grapefruit ready to be juiced. And the worst thing was I was still over a mile away from my apartment.

I started walking, slowly. The sun had dropped below the horizon and it was starting to get dark, yet the needle hadn’t moved on the temperature and there was no rain in sight. While I walked, I thought about Hudson. No matter from what angle I approached his reaction, it didn’t make sense. Despite our professional relationship, there had been moments, flashes of something more, I didn’t think I’d imagined. Even if my request had inconvenienced him, it didn’t warrant the hostility he’d flung at me.

As an indication that my luck was turning, a cab drove down the street in my direction. I flagged him down and rested against the sticky vinyl seat while the driver looped around the lake, Buckner, and Gaston. I re-ponytailed my long blonde hair and ran a tube of tinted lip balm over my lips. I was far from fresh but close to home. After close to two hours of walking, the cab delivered me to my front door in seven minutes. I would have been happy about that if it weren’t for the fact that Tex was sitting on my front steps playing with Rocky. I paid the cabbie and did my best to walk without favoring my knee.

“Before you say anything, your neighbor had to leave and didn’t know what to do with your dog. I happened to be waiting here for you. I showed her my badge and she let me in.”

“What exactly is going on here?” I asked angrily, even though Rocky was hopping around my feet waiting for a kiss.

“I wanted to make sure you got home safely after I bailed on you,” he said.

“I am continually shocked by what you claim falls under the title of normal cop behavior.”

“Maybe it’s not cop behavior. Maybe it’s nice guy behavior. Does that shock you, too?” he asked.

Rocky, frustrated by the lack of affection from me, had returned to the ankles of his new friend, who instinctively ran his fingers through Rocky’s long fur.

“Officer Nast didn’t seem to think you were a ‘nice guy.’”

“I’m not going to talk about her.”

“Okay, so talk about me. I’m not a suspect, but all of a sudden I’ve got a lieutenant showing up at my door offering to drive me around, checking to see that I made it home safely?”

“Madison. I told you you’re not a suspect and I meant it. But I do think you’re tied to the murder of Pamela Ritter.”

“Do you have any news on the—that?”

“On the murder? Not much more than a hunch at this point.”

“So why do you think I’m tied to it?”

“Well, there is one other thing. Remember the pillows, the pillow your dog pulled out from under the car?”

“The pillows? From my trunk?” I looked away to a brown patch of grass on the front yard, trying to process what he said. “They’re not that hard to come by, if you know where to look—”

“Madison, listen to me. That pillow was the murder weapon. That’s what was used to kill her.”

Tex’s words bit into my mind. I wanted to tell him not to talk about her, but it was too late. “She was suffocated. Our team found a death mask on it.”

“Those pillows were new old stock. There shouldn’t have been anything on them.”

“A death mask is an impression left behind on the fabric. It’s made by her nose, mouth, eye sockets...”

I lowered myself onto the step next to him as his voice trailed off. I wasn’t used to hearing the technical terms associated with a murder and I started to shake, even though it wasn’t cold. Tex put his hand on my knee, not knowing how badly it throbbed. I flinched and he pulled it away, mistaking my reaction. I looked at him, searching his face for something comforting. He kept it unreadable.

“Who else knew those pillows were there? Who else had access to your car?”

“I don’t know. It wasn’t a secret. I gave Pamela my keys so she could get a swim cap out of the trunk. The keys were in the lock when I found her. Those pillows have been in there for a week. Anybody who walked past while the trunk was open would see them.”

“When’s the last time you saw them?”

“I don’t remember. I was planning to put them in my storage unit soon, but the trunk of my car has been giving me trouble. Remember? You had to hit it to get it to open at the pool. What does it mean?”

“I don’t know what it means yet, but one thing seems for sure. Someone broke into your trunk and stole the pillows, then used one to murder Miss Ritter.”

After Tex’s news I wanted little more than to collapse inside my apartment. Tex ruffled Rocky’s fur then stood up and said goodnight. I entered the building. The mailbox overflowed with colored circulars from the local grocery stores that I tossed directly into the recycle bin in the foyer. Rocky pulled me up the stairs and stood on hind legs, paws on the door of our apartment. I turned the two locks mechanically and pushed the door open.

Unclipped from his leash, Rocky ran into the bedroom and returned with one of my terrycloth slippers in his mouth. I let him play while I swallowed a prescription strength anti-inflammatory then kicked off my white canvas sneakers and left them in a pile covered with my dirty dress. I took a long shower, ridding my body of dust, dirt, dried sweat, and tense muscles. After drying off, I dressed in a fresh pair of yellow pajamas with white flowers and searched the freezer for a quick dinner option. There was a small Tupperware of frozen jambalaya left over from a big batch I’d made last month. I pulled the lid off and nuked it.

I carried the hot Tupperware to the table and set it down next to the newspaper. While the rice, sausage, and chicken concoction cooled, I unfolded the paper. I was so hungry that I scooped a forkful of jambalaya into my mouth, only to burn my tongue. I ran to the refrigerator and chugged milk directly from the carton.

I turned back to the table. The Tupperware had fallen to the floor and Rocky was lapping up the spilled jambalaya. “
Rocky! No!
” He froze. I crossed the small room, and with a wad of paper towels in my hand, cleaned up the mess that was left. I wasn’t looking forward to finding out what jambalaya did to a puppy’s intestinal tract.

“Go to your crate,” I commanded.

He stared at me with soulful brown eyes that looked like a melted Hershey’s Special Dark and my heart broke a little. But he was still a puppy and puppies have to learn.

I won the standoff and he walked, both tail and head down, to the metal cage that sat along the east wall of the apartment. I pushed the door shut but didn’t bother to lock it.

When I returned to the table it was with a torn off piece of bread that had been sliced open and slathered with butter. I sat in front of the newspaper and smoothed my hand over the creases.

That’s when I saw the headline.

Unsolved Twenty-Year-Old Homicide in Lakewood Back in Public Eye

I scanned the article. Twenty years ago a woman had been left for dead by the side of White Rock Lake. Her body had been found dressed only in white cotton panties and a man’s denim shirt. There was no evidence of sexual assault. Details indicated she’d been killed in a different location from where she’d been discovered, her body moved after the crime was committed. Eyewitnesses saw a stranger drive her to her apartment building that night, providing the only substantial lead.

The reporter had written a piece heavy on nostalgia that begged for the reader’s attention. Attractive, blonde, Sheila Murphy smiled at me from the photo they ran next to the story, side by side the promotional photo Pamela Ritter had used on her real estate flyers. Two blonde women, murdered, twenty years apart from each other. Oddly, both women bore a striking resemblance to Doris Day, but that wasn’t the strangest part of the article. It was the ending.

Hudson James, longtime Lakewood resident, was taken into custody for the murder of Sheila Murphy, but was not charged with the crime. He declined comment for this article.

Both murders remain unsolved.

NINE

The heat left my body, and I felt like my bones had been dipped in ice water. It was about eighty degrees in the apartment, yet my hands went white and rattling teeth shook my jaw. Somehow I reached Rocky’s crate and opened the door. He bounded out and I scooped him up and held him close. It wasn’t until I felt his wet fur against my cheek that I realized I was crying.

“How can that be?” I whispered. I carried him past the bathroom to my bedroom and set him on the purple and white polka-dotted comforter. In lieu of a headboard, I had a skyline jigsawed out of particleboard, painted lilac, and mounted on the wall behind the bed, backlit with soft twinkling Christmas lights. The glow from the cutout windows illuminated the room. I looked out the back window, half-expecting to see the lieutenant’s Jeep in the parking lot. Instead, a blue pick-up truck patched with primer circled past the parked cars.

Instinctively I backed away from the window, realizing too late that Hudson had seen me. I stood in the shadows with Rocky clutched close to my chest until the truck pulled out of the lot moments later. There was no doubt in my mind that Hudson had been watching my windows to see when I’d arrived home.

Hudson, who had refused to give me a ride.

Hudson, who had a deep, dark secret that had just been exposed.

Hudson, who’d had access to my trunk the day before Pamela was murdered.

I turned off all of the lights except the tall pink and white striped floor lamp that sat inside the front door. I sank to the floor and cradled Rocky close to my chest. I’d been alone so many nights before and it had never felt like this. My loneliness was splintered by fear and distrust. I went to bed with more questions than answers and more doubts than confidence, staring at the early sixties pattern of circles on the ceiling long after I’d turned off the lights.

A week ago, my life had been business as usual. Swim in the morning, open the studio afterwards. Shop estate sales, flea markets, and second hand stores for inventory, and take Rocky for a walk, two times a day. In the wake of my last relationship, a shook-me-to-my-core affair that had ended abruptly, I’d given up on love. The day-in, day-out life I’d designed had been enough. I had my own business, I had my own building, I had my own life. I was independent. Like Doris Day’s character in
Pillow Talk
. But the biggest problems she had were a playboy neighbor and an overly-forward client. I was in the middle of something horrific—a murder investigation—and I was very much alone.

Doris Day movies had taught me how to recognize a womanizer. She had shown me, time and time again, how to stand up for myself and resist the advances of single men who were interested in one thing. Fifty years had passed since she’d made those movies, but the messages were still viable. Protect yourself. Spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and treat him like a wolf. And when all else fails, storm out of a room and slam the door behind you.

But there were no Doris Day precedents for homicide. When one of her leading men turned out to be someone other than who he pretended to be, she one-upped him and proved her worth. When one of them threatened her idyllic lifestyle, she stood up for herself. No matter how attractive they were, she took care of herself, first. That’s what I had done when I moved to Texas. I pushed painful memories deep down inside and moved on without looking back. It was time to do that again. I would take care of myself and move on. That was the only option.

It was a fitful night of sleep, peppered with knee pain and nightmares. I woke at four thirty, barely rested. I showered and booted up the computer. It sat on a Danish modern sideboard that had been beyond repair when I found it. The top was in good condition, but the sliding panels in the front were severely splintered. I had removed them, allowing room for my knees when I sat in my molded fiberglass desk chair. I loved this office, unconventional as it might seem to many people. But unlike most mornings, today it didn’t comfort me. Too many things were spinning out of control. A murder investigation. An old unsolved murder. A suspect who I’d trusted like a friend and business partner for a year. Tex had cautioned me, told me to be careful, but I hadn’t wanted to think about his warning. I didn’t want to think that I was connected.

I had to find something to take my mind off the murders. I had to take control of something. I opened my Doris Day files and started working on the proposal. There was peace with Doris Day. I understood her, recognized her in me. Nothing bad could happen while I remained focused on Doris. My knee was stiff and swollen despite the anti-inflammatories. I bent it a few times to loosen it up, with only limited success.

I fleshed out the details of the film festival and wrote blurbs for the movies that I’d selected, formatted the bones of the thing, and emailed it off to Richard sometime around six. The sun was coming up and I was stiff in twenty places other than my knee. I needed to work out. Badly. And with Crestwood still closed, there was only one other option. The Gaston Swim Club.

I changed into a bathing suit and stepped into a white polyester dress that zipped up the front. I slid my feet into red patent leather flats and took Rocky out for a quick sprinkle on the front lawn, then set him up inside his crate.

“I’m sorry, honey, I can’t take you to the Swim Club. Not today.” I kissed the top of his head and bribed him for forgiveness with a dog biscuit.

It was darn close to ridiculous to call a cab to take me to the Gaston Swim Club, less than a mile from my apartment, but the pain in my knee didn’t leave me with much of a choice. I waited out front for the driver who arrived within minutes and shook his head in disgust when I told him my destination. I tipped him too much to make up for my embarrassment.

When I arrived at the Gaston Swim Club, the sharp pinch of chlorine stung my nose. I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of the Crestwood regulars already in the lanes. Their familiar presence comforted me. Old habits die hard, and for some of these folks, this was a routine so set in stone, to break it would be to give up the will to live. True to form, aside from a wave hello, we each concentrated on the reason we were there.

The pool felt like bathwater, too warm for lap swimming. The Crestwood pool was kept at a steady seventy-eight degrees, refreshing but not too hot. It would be hard to complete three miles here. But each time I reached the wall and somersaulted into a flip to turn around, my knee became a little more limber. Pushing off the wall gave me the chance to stretch. By the second mile, my mind was clearing. By the third mile, my mind was alert.

I stopped at the end of the pool to catch my breath and think. Something from yesterday hadn’t been right. Something Tex had said in the car.

When I was sitting in the Jeep in front of the Johnson estate talking to Tex, he’d tried to get me to talk about Hudson.
That colleague you mentioned yesterday, what’s his name?
He had known about my connection with Hudson long before we’d gotten to Thelma Johnson’s house. And the article in the newspaper, the twenty-year old murder, I was willing to bet Tex knew about that, too.
That’s
why he was spending valuable time with me, driving me around Dallas and flattering me with his attention. He was using me to get info on Hudson.

Anger bubbled up inside me. I wanted to find him, to confront him, ask him what he was really doing hanging around my building, following me around Dallas, acting like—what did he call it—a nice guy?

But aside from the anger, I was scared. Tex had told me he thought I was connected to Pamela’s murder, and I hadn’t wanted to see the obvious. Pamela had been wearing my robe. She was by my car. She looked just like me. Was it possible, could it be, that someone had wanted to kill me instead of Pamela?

I felt sick. Tex must have thought as much, that’s why he said we were connected. But by not coming out and saying it, he was checking to see if I’d figured it out for myself.

I dove deep into the water and swam below the other swimmers next to me until I reached the wall. The water’s buoyancy lifted me to the surface with barely any effort. Before getting out I checked the thermometer. Eighty-four degrees. No wonder my energy felt sapped. I climbed out using the silver metal ladder and crossed the deck to my things.

“Too bad there aren’t any other options around here for us morning birds, right, Madison?” said a familiar voice. Alice sat on the bottom bleacher, tucking her short white curls under her swim cap. Her radiant smile stripped ten years from her wrinkled face.

“I tried to take a couple of days off but couldn’t do it,” I said. “Don’t overexert yourself in there. It’s pretty warm for lap swimming.”

“When we didn’t see you here we all wondered if you knew about some secret swimming hole.”

“All?”

“Sure. Jessica is here, so is Mary. Andy, too. It’s a reunion!”

I looked at the shallow end, where an energetic woman conducted a water aerobics class. Seven women and one man held colored foam noodles over their heads and moved to one of the lesser known Madonna songs. In the deep end young kids did cannonballs even though the lifeguard had whistled at them to stop. All this before seven o’clock.

“I hate the Swim Club,” I said, towel-drying my arms and legs.

“It’s better than nothing,” Alice replied.

“Have you heard anything about Crestwood?”

“No, but Jessica said she calls the cops every day and they said they should allow the pool to reopen soon. By the end of the week, we’re hoping.”

I held up crossed fingers, smiled, and stepped into my polyester dress. I’d worked a lot of last night’s tension out of my body, but what I’d realized about Tex had brought on a whole other source of stress. On top of everything else, I was exhausted from not sleeping. No matter how in shape a body is, it refuses to function like a teenager’s once it’s well past that age.

There was little I wanted more than to go home and sleep, but first things first. I instructed the cab driver to take me to Budget Rent-A-Car on Ross, and twenty-five minutes later I drove away in a midnight blue Ford Explorer. It was the biggest thing they had. After what I’d learned about Hudson, after how he’d left me on the side of the road, I wasn’t comfortable asking him for help, on Thelma Johnson’s estate or anything else, and this was the next best plan I had.

I made it home and unlocked Rocky’s crate. His puppy affection warmed me in a way that the showers at the Swim Club would never be able to do. After a quick shower, I dressed in a smocked white cotton tunic and yellow gingham pants, stuck my feet into pink ballerina flats and ponytailed my long blonde hair. I dug through a bin of crocheted handbags until I found a pink one with a silk cord that could be worn across my chest. Inside I put my wallet, lip balm, tape measure and scissors, a small notepad and a tube of SPF 50. The sun was bright, already, and I suspected it was going to be another hot one.

Before I had a chance to head out to Thelma Johnson’s house, my phone jangled. The only reason I kept a land line was because I needed it to provide an Internet connection. The second of a pair of working yellow donut phones sat on the Danish modern hutch-turned-desk, ringing infrequently with calls from the few people who had my home number.

“Hello?”

“Madison, it’s Richard.”

“Hey, Richard. Did you get my email?”

“Forget the Doris Day thing. It’s not going to happen.”

No
. The idea had started as a tribute to Pamela but had turned into the thing I needed to cling to, the one normal thing I could focus on while surrounded with homicide. I wasn’t giving it up.

“You don’t make all the decisions for the theater. I’ve done a lot of work on this and I think you should see my proposal before you kill the whole project. In two short days I’ve uncovered some very valuable contacts related to this film festival, contacts that I think you should know about. You at least owe me time at the Tuesday meeting to make my pitch to the committee.”

“Madison, listen. It’s not me, it’s the cops.”

“The cops? Why? What do they have to do with Doris Day?” I asked on high alert.

“They shut down the theater indefinitely.”

Only yesterday I had told Lieutenant Tex Allen about the film festival and he acted like he thought it was a good idea. It infuriated me to recognize the lengths of his manipulation, and I wouldn’t let him take the project away from me. I needed it more than he knew.

“Let me handle the Lieutenant.”

“Madison, you don’t understand. There’s been a murder at the theater.”

“What?” I asked. Other questions tried to formulate in my head but they all started with
what
, and I couldn’t make sense of the rest of the sentences. Richard’s voice sounded hollow through the vintage receiver. I held my free hand over my right ear so I could hear him better even though there was no other noise in the apartment.

“The cops found a body at the theater this morning. I don’t even know what they were doing there, but they came around and there was a dead woman in the parking lot. It gets worse, too.”

How could it get worse?

“Who was she?” My voice cracked as I asked the question.

“Ruth Coburn’s daughter. The one who’s the spitting image of Doris Day.”