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Authors: Diane Vallere

Suede to Rest (18 page)

BOOK: Suede to Rest
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“Why are you being so friendly?” I asked, not because I didn't trust him, but because I wasn't used to this. In the neighborhood where I worked, the only thing that came free was the occasional spit shine on the windshield when I was at lunch, and it was often followed by the request for some spare change.

“Ours is a friendly town, but somebody is trying to make you think it isn't. I won't stand for that.”

“Thank you, Joe Lopez,” I said.

Whatever trouble I was in, I felt a shift. Like maybe, it really would all be okay. The bell chimed over the front door. Joe stood up straight and wiped his hands on his apron. “Good morning,” he said to the customers behind me. When I turned around to face them, I realized my trouble was much deeper than I originally thought.

The new customers were my mom and dad.

Twenty

“We saw the
newspaper,” my dad said. “You should have called, Poly, if you were in trouble.”

“But I did call! I called Mom.”

“That is true, John. She called.” My mom turned to me. “But you said nothing about vandalism or a murder. I'd say you left some very important details out of that conversation.” She crossed her arms over her chest, and I looked to Big Joe for a bit of backup.

“You didn't tell your parents about all that stuff?” he asked. Clearly I was on my own.

“Joe, I'd like to introduce Helen and John Monroe. Mom, Dad, this is Joe Lopez.”

“I think we just met your wife at the fabric store. Maria Lopez?” my mother said.

Big Joe nodded. My parents took turns shaking his hand. I looked behind the case for the boys. They were juggling the two large boxes of donuts. Carlos looked like he was dangerously close to dropping them all over the floor. He held his breath as he rounded the corner, walking very slowly, until he arrived in front of me. I took the box and thanked him.

“Are you in trouble?” he asked.

“Why would you ask that?”

“When both of my parents come looking for me, it usually means I'm in trouble.”

He looked past me to my parents and I realized what it looked like to an eight-year-old boy. Plus, the reality was, Carlos had nailed it.

“You know what, Carlos? I am in a little bit of trouble.”

“Are they going to let you have the donuts? When I'm in trouble I don't get donuts.”

Big Joe bent down to Carlos and Antonio's level and chucked both boys under the chin. “How about we take the donuts to Mom and leave Poly here to talk to her parents? Can you help me with that?”

The boys nodded solemnly, but the whole time Carlos stared at me, his dark brown eyes wide with fear for my predicament. “I'll be okay,” I told him.

Joe flipped the
Open
sign to
Closed
. “Not much of a crowd ever since that fancy coffee shop opened up down the street. Won't kill us to close for a couple of minutes.” He picked up the box. “I'll be back shortly. Help yourself to coffee.” The three of them left.

“Poly, after we saw the article, we tried to call. You didn't answer. We drove to the fabric store and found a crowd of women scrubbing the front. Do you want to tell us what's going on?” my dad said. My mom reached a hand up to my hair and flipped the ends between her fingers. I slapped her hand away.

“Maria Lopez and her sisters own a cleaning business. They volunteered to take care of the vandalism from yesterday. I didn't ask them to do it,” I said quickly, before they jumped to the incorrect conclusion that I wasn't prepared to take responsibility for what had happened. “Maria sent me here for donuts, and that's when I met Big Joe. They don't like what's been happening, but they don't blame me. See, whatever it says in that article that you read, it's not true. I didn't bring crime to San Ladrón. The crime was already here. Something about the store was the trigger, but that's the only connection.”

My mom disappeared behind the counter and filled three white paper cups with coffee, which made it hard to stay mad at her. When she returned, she slid into the booth next to my dad. I felt like they were ganging up on me, but I was determined to be an adult about this.

“Poly, your father and I talked a lot last night, about our decision to keep you in the dark about Marius and Millie. Maybe it wasn't the right thing to do, and we're sorry about that now, but the timing was never right. We're both sorry that it's come to this, but we can't go back in time to change that.”

“No, but you can tell me the truth now.”

“I told you the truth yesterday.”

“You didn't tell me the whole truth. I found the letters.” They looked at each other, as though I'd stumped them. “The letters you sent Uncle Marius about me. I found them. There was a box of photos in the closet and in the bottom of the box I found a stack of letters. About me. You told me you sent them to him, but how did they get back into the apartment? You said he never went back.”

My mother slid out of the booth and looked at my dad. “I'm going to go help the Lopezes with the store. You and Poly need to talk.” She crossed the store and flipped the lock on the back of the door, then left. When I looked back at my dad, he was staring into the cup that he held with both hands.

“You guys lied to me,” I said. “My whole life, you lied to me. I don't know what to do with that.”

“Poly, why are you still in San Ladrón? Aren't you supposed to be at work today?”

“I'll deal with Giovanni when this is over.”

“When what is over?” asked Dad.

“When I find out who killed Mr. Pickers at the store and what it has to do with Aunt Millie.”

My dad leaned back against the booth. “Marius and Millie were friends with the McMichaels. Even though Vic and Adelaide were younger by about twenty years, they had a lot in common. From what I understand, Vic admired Marius's business acumen and was in the start-up stages of his own business. Marius taught him a lot, about how they'd started the fabric store when they first came to the States, and about how they kept their contacts all over the world so they could offer something unique. But then Vic came into some money, and their friendship changed. Marius wasn't the mentor anymore. They were more like equals. Vic was a generous man who liked to lavish them with gifts just because he could. The rift happened soon after that. The first time the store had some financial difficulty, Vic offered to buy out the lease. Marius wouldn't hear of it. His pride was pretty severely dented. So Vic went to the bank and worked up a private offer. He thought if he was the owner, Marius and Millie's problems would be over. But when Marius found out, there was a big public fight and the friendship broke off.”

“I can see why Uncle Marius was upset, but did he ever tell Mr. McMichael why he was mad? I mean, it's a little weird that Mr. McMichael would be so generous and not have a clue that he was stepping on Uncle Marius's toes.”

“Our family sees it that way, sure, but Vic was just being a friend. Marius had done a lot for him, basically taught him all about business and being an entrepreneur, and when Vic inherited his unexpected wealth, he wanted to say thank you. He thought his money was the only way to do that.”

“Rich people always think they can say thank you with money,” I said, thinking of Vaughn and his elaborate Waverly House dinner. “Money makes a lot of things easier.”

“Money also makes a lot of things harder. After the friendship dissolved, Vic and Adelaide were alone. They had no other friends. The strain on their marriage was too much.”

“Is that when they divorced?”

“They would have, but Adelaide got pregnant. That boy grew up isolated and alone. I think they sent him off to a private school, then to college on the East Coast. He never grew up like you, like a normal kid. He was wealthy from day one, and had to figure out pretty quickly that some of the friends he made were only interested in him because of his wealth.”

“Poor little rich boy,” I said.

“Poly, we didn't raise you to pass judgment on other people before getting to know them. From what I've heard, Vaughn McMichael turned out to be a good kid. He didn't have to come back to San Ladrón. He graduated with honors from William and Mary. He landed a respectable job at an investment firm in Richmond, but when his father had a heart attack, he came back here.”

“I don't want to talk about Vaughn anymore. I want to talk about Aunt Millie and Uncle Marius. What happened?”

My dad stared out the window at a red car that drove past. He took another drink of his coffee then set it down and pushed it away from him. “They almost lost the store in the eighties. Millie went to Vic McMichael. She asked him for help and didn't tell Marius. Town gossip spread about them after that. About Millie and Vic and about the store going under. Vic made a public offer on the store and that was it. As far as I know, neither of them talked to each other after that. Marius changed the way he did business, cut some of his overhead, and was able to keep the store.”

“You said in the eighties. I was alive when some of this was happening?”

“You played a pretty important role, you know. When you were born in the store, Land of a Thousand Fabrics got a lot of press. A little girl named Polyester born in a forty-year-old fabric store? That story brought a bunch of people to see what Marius and Millie had built, and it was just the kind of thing to bring in a new wave of customers and set business back on its heels.”

“Is that why Uncle Marius called me his guardian angel?”

“Yes.”

“I know you probably don't want to talk about this part, but I have to ask. What happened the night Aunt Millie was murdered?”

“I don't think anybody will ever know the truth about that.” My dad stared into his coffee cup again, like it was a crystal ball filled with answers. “Tom Pickers found Marius sitting by Millie's body. Marius was in shock. He couldn't process that she was gone. He'd been sitting next to her all night.”

“How do you know this?”

“He came to me, years ago. He said Millie had arranged for him to pick up the cash take from the weekend sale so it wouldn't be sitting around. He'd gone but never made it into the store. He said he'd seen something that scared him and had hid. The next morning he went back to check on the store and heard Marius crying. He called nine-one-one, but it was too late.”

“Dad, I heard Mr. Pickers suspected Mr. McMichael was involved in the robbery. That's why he finally came forward and made a statement. People say Vic McMichael hired the robbers and guaranteed that the store would be empty. And the robbers say it was about robbing the store, not about killing anybody. They say they didn't kill anybody. And the only person who saw anything that night—no matter how weird it sounds—is dead, ten years after that night. You don't think there's something off about all of this?”

“I think the robbers were trying to sell a yarn that might lessen their sentence. I think they were after the money and the bracelet and the murder was an accident. I think Tom Pickers had too much to drink, and I think any evidence that says otherwise is probably long gone by now.”

I stared out the window. Across the street a steady flow of people frequented a freestanding newsstand. Cars filled Bonita Avenue, backing up when the light changed. Unlike the quiet of the previous weekend, this morning, people were up and out, headed to jobs, I imagined, the same way I had headed into my job every day since Giovanni hired me five years ago. The longer I stayed in San Ladrón, the more I found out about the backstory of the fabric store and the life my great-aunt and -uncle had created there. I knew I didn't want to go back to a job that could barely get me out of bed in the morning.

“Dad, Vic McMichael made me a good offer on the store.”

“When?”

“Friday night. The first night I was here. I turned it down. And then Carson showed up with his own offer—well, not
his
, but he got together a bunch of investors in Los Angeles and convinced them to buy the store so they could lock horns with Mr. McMichael.”

“He did, did he?”

“I turned down his offer, too. He doesn't understand.”

“So you've had two solid offers on the store in the past forty-eight hours.”

“Sixty hours is more like it,” I corrected.

My dad reached his hand across the table and set it on top of mine. “Tell me this. What is it you're waiting for?”

“A sign, I guess. Something to tell me that it's okay to leave it all behind in someone else's hands. Because I don't want to. Everything I hear about that store, about what it meant to the family and what Uncle Marius and Aunt Millie went through to keep it, it doesn't seem right to sell it to someone who wants to tear it down.”

“What do you think should be done with it?”

“I think it should reopen for business.”

“Land of a Thousand Fabrics is a thing of the past. The world has changed since the store's heyday. It won't ever be the same.”

It was the same thing Mr. McMichael had said. I hadn't expected my dad to say it, too.

“It doesn't have to be the same. It doesn't even have to be called Land of a Thousand Fabrics. But it could be great again. It could be a place for women to shop for fabric to redecorate or for mothers to bring their daughters to pick out patterns for their prom dresses. I have experience with that, Dad, and you know it. I already have an idea for one shop down the street. And I could run classes on the weekend and get sponsors for craft shows and—”

My dad stared down into his coffee. I studied the bald spot on the top of his head for a second, until he looked back up. “Your mother and I were afraid that something like this would happen.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“That store is in your blood. Marius used to say that you were destined to do something that had to do with fabric since you were born in there. You know what he used to sing to you when he rocked you to sleep? ‘Material Girl.' He wasn't surprised when you started working for Giovanni. I think he was a little bit proud.”

A commotion outside tore my attention from our conversation. On the sidewalk, a small mob approached us, led by Carlos and Antonio, who ran ahead. Carlos clutched a white shoe box to his chest. Behind them, Maria and Joe walked on either side of my mom, with Maria's sisters bringing up the tail of their procession.

“We'll finish talking about this later. Looks like it's time for a shift change.” I slid out from the booth and opened the door to the boys who raced in to greet me.

“Poly! We found something!” Carlos said and turned around. “Hurry up, Mom! She's
waiting
!”

BOOK: Suede to Rest
8.64Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
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