Silk Stalkings (16 page)

After several breaths, someone in front of me cleared his throat. I opened my eyes and saw the silhouette of a man in an expensive business suit standing next to the mannequin draped in a luau print.

Vic McMichael was paying me a visit.

I jumped up from my chair and smoothed out the creases in my cargo pants. Threads from the cuttings of tropical printed fabrics clung to my T-shirt. I brushed at them but there were too many to wipe away.

“I imagine that's a side effect of running a fabric store,” Mr. McMichael said.

“When it comes to work attire, I can't win. At the dress shop in L.A. it was grease stains and glue guns. Now it's thread from frayed fabric.”

“Which is perfectly acceptable for the job you have.”

“I always heard I should dress for the job I want. I guess I am.”

“Ms. Monroe, it was my understanding that your business day ended at six. If you don't have any pressing engagements, there's something I'd like to discuss with you.”

“Does this have to do with the loan on my fabric store? The first payment isn't due until September.”

“No, this doesn't have anything to do with that. I'm here to talk to you about Lucy Rains . . . and about my daughter, Charlie.”

If there had
been one thing I didn't expect Mr. McMichael to say, that would have been it. I stood, speechless, staring at him. He stepped closer and held his hand out until it touched my sleeve.

“Ms. Monroe?” he said.

“Poly. Call me Poly.”

“Fine, Poly.” He didn't ask me to call him Vic, which was probably for the best, as I wasn't sure I could do it if he did.

“Mr. McMichael, can you give me a few minutes to finish closing the store? I think we would both prefer not to be interrupted during our conversation.”

He nodded once, slowly, and closed his eyes in a long blink. I held out an open palm and gestured toward the chair. He stepped closer to it but didn't sit down.

As intimidating as Mr. McMichael could be, I refused to let him know his visit shook me up. I walked to the front door at a normal pace, turned the
Open
sign to
Closed
, and
pulled the hinged green gate across the opening and secured it. When I turned back toward Mr. McMichael, I saw Needles on the wrap stand behind him, one paw out, swatting at his sleeve.

“Needles!” I said.

Mr. McMichael's eyes went wide. “Excuse me?”

“Needles is behind you.” I crossed the room and scooped the orange kitty up from where he stood and set him on the ground. He meowed at me.

“Are these the kittens from the Dumpster? My son told me about them.”

“Yes, this is Needles. There's a gray one around here somewhere. His name is Pins.”

“Cats in a fabric store. I imagine it's great fun for them. Have they caused you any trouble?”

“Not after I moved the chiffon and netting to the top shelf,” I said. He smiled. “I may not know everything there is to know about running a fabric store, but I'm a quick study.”

He glanced at the display of tropical fabrics and the tiki bar at the front entrance of the store. “I can see that.”

“Mr. McMichael, you didn't come here to find out what kind of promotions I'm running. I don't really have much of an office down here in the store. Would you like to follow me upstairs? We can talk in my living room.”

A troubled expression came over his face. I knew that once upon a time, when he had been married to Adelaide, he had been friends with my great-aunt and great-uncle. A falling-out over money had resulted in the loss of friendship and from there had eroded into the belief that Mr. McMichael had something to do with my great-aunt's murder. It had been a long time since anyone invited him to ascend those stairs and relax in that living room.

But this whole move to San Ladrón had been about new beginnings for me. I'd left my boyfriend, my job, and my postcollege friends so I could reopen the fabric store. I made a new
set of friends with Genevieve and Charlie and Vaughn and the Lopezes, and more people than I could list. Maybe in the spirit of new beginnings, Mr. McMichael deserved one, too.

I powered off the cash register and then pulled a heavy canvas cover over it. On a normal day I'd finish up by sweeping, but that could wait. Mr. McMichael followed me to the stairs. Halfway up Needles bolted past me, then sat by the front door waiting for me to catch up. The door was open a crack. I pushed it farther, trying to remember the last time I'd cleaned.

A quilt lay in a pile on the sofa with Pins in the middle of it. His head was on his paw. He opened one eye and looked at us. I gave him a gentle wake-up nudge and tugged on the quilt. He stood up, stretched, and hopped from the sofa to the coffee table. I tucked the quilt on the bottom shelf of the maple end table next to the sofa and turned back around to face Mr. McMichael.

He stood, formally, by the front of the room, framed by the wood molding that surrounded the door. His eyes scanned the interior of the room. I hadn't done much in the way of decorating since moving in, so I knew what he saw was what my Uncle Marius had left behind when he passed away. And knowing that Uncle Marius had mourned my Aunt Millie's murder for the last ten years of his life, I suspected he hadn't spent much of his alone time decorating.

“Can I offer you anything? Tea? Coffee?”

“No, thank you.” He looked at the lace curtains that barely contained the sunlight that spilled in from outside, then scanned the rest of the room. “It's been a long time since I've been in this room,” he said.

“Mr. McMichael, why don't you have a seat?”

He moved to an overstuffed chair that was covered in a floral pattern, set his briefcase down next to it, and sat. I took a seat on the sofa but didn't relax. For a couple of awkward seconds we both stared at Pins, who had decided to clean his
face. When he was finished, he sat for a second and then lifted his leg and started cleaning down below. No!

Mr. McMichael cleared his throat. “Poly, last night a young woman came to visit me. Her name is Lucy Rains. Do you know her?”

“She came to you? Why?”

“It seems she is related to my daughter through adoption. She overheard a conversation between you and Charlie, and it upset her very much. I'd like to know what that conversation was about.”

“With all due respect, that was a private conversation. It would be a violation of Charlie's trust to tell you.”

“My dear, you're dating my son. And you provided a solution to my ex-wife's fund-raising problems while avoiding the almost unavoidable war with me. You made no secret of your suspicions of me when you moved to San Ladrón, and I assume you were not happy when I cosigned the loan for your fabric store. Yet when I told you I wanted to talk to you about Charlie, you let me into your home. You have somehow managed to befriend my estranged daughter and even inspire her trust. I respect that friendship. But after talking to Lucy, I have reason to believe that Charlie might be in danger, and I can't take that chance.”

“What else did Lucy tell you?”

“Her dad has known for a long time that I am Charlie's biological father. He knew when Charlie lived with him. He contacted me for money on more than one occasion.”

“You paid him off to keep your identity secret?”

“No. Had Charlie wanted to know my identity, she would have found out. The paper trail was not sealed.”

“That's not what Ned told her.”

“I'm starting to see that.” Mr. McMichael studied me. “I'm afraid my ex-wife and I had moved into a place where we wanted little to do with each other. The one thing we agreed on was that our baby would have a better life with a
family who wanted to be together than with two people who wanted to be apart. We gave her up for adoption in the hopes that she would grow up in a home more stable than the one we could provide.”

I looked down at my hands for a moment and rubbed my thumb against the rough calluses that had developed from sewing. “When did you find out about the foster homes?”

“Not right away. I knew very little about Charlie's childhood. I felt I didn't have the right to interfere. Vaughn was young, and I didn't want him to feel the repercussions of the divorce, either. I spent most of my time at work, establishing the business so he would have something to inherit.”

I stared off to the side of the chair for a few seconds. “Charlie tried to find you. She left a letter with the adoption agency, filed a petition for her records, and contacted each of her foster parents. Or she thought she did. The only piece of information that ever reached her was from her first foster parents. They sent her birth certificate and that brought her to San Ladrón. If nothing else she did ever reached you, then how did you find out?”

“I received a letter from a Mr. Ned Rains in Encino. I don't know how he found out the truth, but I know he didn't learn it from Charlie. He described her, sent pictures of some personal things that we had given her when we took her to the agency—her baby blanket and a stuffed animal. I didn't want to believe that he was talking about her. I contacted the adoption agency and asked them where she was. They confirmed that she'd been in and out of several foster homes and that her whereabouts were currently unknown. Everything matched what Mr. Rains told me in the letter.”

“What did you do?”

“I was devastated. I'd wanted her to connect with a family and instead she had gone through most of her life alone. And all the while, I'd worked on building up an empire to leave to my son. The guilt was almost overwhelming.”

I studied Mr. McMichael. His voice was strong and steady, and he maintained the appearance of control that I'd come to associate with him. Yet his words spoke of great emotional wounds. Had he come to disassociate himself from what had happened to his only daughter in order to accept his role in her life?

“Soon after I confirmed the truth with the adoption agency, I received another letter from Mr. Rains. Charlie had practically raised herself at this point, but he said he would give her a place to live and teach her a trade. From then on, I received postcards every few months telling me about her skills as a mechanic, her aptitude with cars, her tenacity. He didn't ask me for money until she turned eighteen.”

“The two thousand dollars,” I said quietly. It seemed like such a small amount to ask a man of Mr. McMichael's means.

“Two thousand dollars?” he repeated.

“Charlie told me when she turned eighteen, Ned gave her two thousand dollars and told her it was time for her to move on, to start her own life. That's the money she used to come to San Ladrón.”

He stood up suddenly and turned his back on me. He pushed the lace curtains aside and stared out the window in the direction of Charlie's Auto. He didn't turn around when he spoke.

“No, it wasn't two thousand dollars. It was fifty thousand dollars in a trust fund. I didn't want it to be traceable back to me so I called in a favor from a friend.”

I could think of only one friend of Mr. McMichael who would be willing to do a fifty-thousand-dollar favor.

“Harvey Halliwell?”

He turned back toward me. “Yes. I wrote him a check and he set up an account for Charlie under Halliwell Industries.”

“So Ned thought
the money came from Harvey?” I asked.

“That was the intent. When I set up the trust, I told Harvey I was not to know the details of the account.”

“Meaning what?”

“It was far too late for me to try to get involved in Charlie's life. The money was there. She could take it out in a lump sum, or refuse to take any of it. I didn't want to know.”

“Does Adelaide know anything about this?”

“Adelaide knows nothing about this. I handled the details of the adoption. Our divorce was not what you'd call amiable, and I felt no need to inform her of the terrible mistake we'd made.”

“And now it seems like Ned never told Charlie about the account.”

“Yes, it seems like that's a possibility. Please understand. For me to expect anything from Charlie would have been wrong. I had given up my rights to be a father to her. Ned Rains
offered her a home and that's what I wanted for her. But I felt it was not my place to interfere in her life, not at this point. I don't know what became of the money, but it was given with no strings attached.”

“Mr. McMichael, if you set up an account with fifty thousand dollars and Ned only gave Charlie two, what happened to the rest of the money?” I asked.

“At this point I have to assume he kept the money for himself. Even more troubling is, after speaking to his daughter Lucy, I suspect she did not benefit from the windfall. She came to me because she thinks her father confronted Harvey Halliwell over money the night before he was murdered.”

“He was there,” I confirmed. “They argued. Harvey collapsed on the ground and Ned took something from his jacket.”

“You are sure of this?”

“I saw it with my own eyes. Vaughn was with me but he didn't. I've played that night over and over in my mind and I can't figure out if I'm missing something. What I don't understand is that Harvey regained consciousness within about a minute. He left before we could call the police.”

“And he was found murdered the next morning.”

“Was Harvey prone to fainting? Did he have a preexisting medical condition?”

“Quite the contrary. When I suffered my heart attack, Harvey was the picture of health. Almost overnight I became dependent on medication to regulate my pulse while Harvey charged around China like a youngster. Nothing makes a man feel old like the knowledge that he can no longer keep up with his friends. Harvey claimed it was the Tangorli juice he drank all of the time.” He chuckled to himself. “He sent me cases when I was recovering.”

I flashed back to the night Harvey had passed out and remembered him drinking something orange. Was it possible that Ned had put something in the juice that made Harvey faint?

“Did he arrange for there to be juice at the Waverly House garden party?”

“I imagine so. He arranged for all of the social events to stock pitchers of Tangorli juice for him. Most of the time he donated cases for free publicity.”

My mind started buzzing. Ned had been at the party, but so had Sheila. As an employee of the Waverly House, she would have had access to the food and beverage.

“I think we need to talk to Sheriff Clark and tell him what you told me,” I said.

“Sheriff Clark has been privy to everything I've told you today.”

“So he knows about Charlie?” I caught myself.

“Yes. I asked him to keep it confidential, but in the interest of protecting both her and Lucy, I wasn't willing to keep a secret that could possibly save a life.”

“Where is Lucy now?” I asked.

“She spent the night in my guest room.”

I thanked Mr. McMichael for confiding in me and walked him to the front door. During our conversation, the sun had started its descent, creating long shadows behind the cars parked by the curb and alongside the streetlamps and benches that lined the road. I looked left and right for the silver BMW I expected to see. It wasn't there.

“Where's your car?” I asked.

“In light of circumstances, I suspected you would not want my car to be parked in front of your store.” He waved his hand at the yellow taxi idling by the curb across the street. “My car is parked in my space in front of my office.”

The taxi pulled around to the front of my building. Mr. McMichael shook my hand. “My son is a very good judge of character,” he said. “Thank you for inviting me into your home.”

We shook hands. “Thank you for confiding in me,” I replied.

He shut the door behind him and the taxi sped off down the street.

I stole a peek at Charlie's shop. The bays were closed and the lights were off. If Lucy had returned that morning, the two of them had a lot to talk about. I went inside the fabric store and swept half of the interior before taking a break to think over what Mr. McMichael had told me.

Charlie believed that Ned Rains had put a roof over her head and put food on her table. She thought of him as the skilled mechanic who taught her how to work on cars, the generous man who gave her the money she used to start a life of her own when she turned eighteen. But she was starting to doubt all of that, with good reason.

According to Mr. McMichael, Ned had known about Charlie's real past. He established contact and communicated about Charlie's life with some degree of regularity. For four years. And then, when the money arrived, it was in a trust marked Halliwell Industries. That trust linked Mr. McMichael's wealth to Harvey Halliwell's company.

Soon after Charlie left, Ned and his girlfriend married and had a daughter: Lucy. Had Ned planned all along to tap Mr. McMichael for more money? Or more probable, had he used up the trust fund that had been established and gone back to the well—not the McMichael well, but the Halliwell well?

I followed my train of thought. Harvey had been instructed to keep Mr. McMichael in the dark about the activities of the account. What if Ned had continued to go to Harvey for money? What if Harvey never learned that Charlie had left? As a goodwill gesture on behalf of his friend, he might have continued to make payments. If that was the case, there had to be a record of those payments.

The only question was how would I gain access to Harvey's accounts? And then I remembered one person who would know: Nolene.

Considering I'd had suspicions about Nolene before I knew about Ned, I wanted the element of surprise when I talked to
her. It was after eight and she told me she was at the office until nine most nights.

I headed to Halliwell Industries. Traffic had thinned to only a few drivers, and I pulled into the parking lot about ten minutes later. Unlike the last time I was here, I counted seven cars in the lot. One of them was a blue convertible. I parked under a lamp and headed toward the path that led to the main building. A golf cart chugged its way around the back and the driver waved. Even though the driver's face was covered in a surgical mask, I recognized Inez's long black hair and tanned skin. I waved back and she stopped the cart.

“You coming to see me?” she asked.

“Not tonight. I'm hoping to catch Nolene,” I said, and pointed up to the main building.

“She's been burning the midnight oil since Harvey died.” She pulled a lanyard from around her neck and handed it to me. “Security's pretty sparse at night. Take my pass key and go to the ninth floor. She's the first office on the left.”

“Don't you need this?”

“In the past thirty years I've lost half a dozen key cards. Harvey never considered me a security threat since I spend most of my time in the greenhouse. He had extras made for me.” She reached inside her white lab coat and pulled out another orange lanyard like the one she'd handed me. “I think he wanted me to be available whenever he wanted a glass of fresh Tangorli juice.”

“He called you for that?”

“Why not? The greenhouse is next to the field of trees. What could be fresher than a pitcher of juice made from freshly picked fruit?”

Inez drove the cart away. I turned the key card over in my hands. It was a white rectangle with a hole along one end. An orange cord had been clipped to the hole. “Halliwell Industries” was printed on the front of the card. On the back was a magnetic strip. I approached the building and tugged on the
front door. When it didn't open, I looked around until I found a freestanding box with a small slot. I fed the card into the slot, “ACCESS” appeared on the screen in green digital type, and the door released with a quiet
click
.

Inez had been right about the security booth being vacant. I activated the elevators with the key card and rode to the ninth floor. Locked glass doors with the words “Halliwell Industries Corporate Offices” met me when the elevator doors opened. Once again, the key card gave me access. After a few steps down the carpeted hallway, I was outside an office with Nolene's name out front. The door was open but Nolene wasn't there.

I turned around and scanned the rest of the floor. Closed doors painted in citrus shades lined the perimeter of the floor. Cubicles sat in the center of the space.

“Nolene? Are you here?” I called. No answer. I stepped inside her office, put my hand in my sleeve, and tapped her keyboard through the fabric. The screen remained dark. A peek at the tower told me the computer had been powered off. Had she left for the night? I rolled her desk chair back and found her handbag on the floor by the foot of her chair.

She was still here, somewhere. I stepped back out front and called her name again. No response. It appeared that for now, I was alone in the executive offices. There was no telling how much time I had. I used the flashlight app on my phone to illuminate the shelves in Nolene's office and zeroed in on a shelf of notebooks marked “Financial Records.”

Bingo.

The spines of the notebooks were each labeled with a range of years. On the third shelf up the dates corresponded to the years Charlie lived with Ned. I wedged my phone under the bottom of a binder on the second shelf and aimed the light down at the pages. It was slow going, first figuring out how the notebook was organized. I was halfway through the third notebook when I heard a sound in the hallway.