That Touch of Ink (4 page)

FIVE

The car behind me sped up and swerved across the stripe in the middle of the road. Just my luck to be followed by a drunk driver. I tightened my grip on the steering wheel and accelerated, trying to keep a cushion of space between us. I wasn’t successful.

There were no other cars around, and the drive from the Polynesian restaurant back to my apartment included a couple of relatively familiar surface streets. I turned right on Turtle Creek Boulevard and snaked down the hill, did a practiced dogleg over the creek before approaching Greenville Avenue, and then made another right. When every pair of headlights eventually turned away except for one, I got nervous. The car behind me wasn’t acting like a drunk driver anymore.

The dark sedan closed the gap between us and rammed my back bumper. My head bounced forward, then back. I tried to brake, but the car behind me pushed me forward. My handbag fell onto the floor and the contents spilled out. My phone slid under  the passenger side seat. I looked into the rear view mirror but couldn’t see the driver. The windows were tinted. All I saw was a dark blob behind the wheel. I hit the gas, speeding up again.

Semi-warm air from the open window, the closest I could get to a fall breeze in Dallas, pushed my hair away from my face and fought against the nervous sweat that had broken out on my forehead. I turned onto a narrow side street, double-backed on the last turn before hitting a cul-de-sac, and returned to Greenville. I slowed and looked in the rearview. The car was a brown sedan.

I sped up and turned into a neighborhood I knew well. The sedan followed. I turned right, then left, then right, then left, then two rights, then a left, then three rights. My Alfa Romeo swung wide on the turns. I fought to straighten it out when I hit a dark street. I checked the rear view mirror. He was still there. The traffic light ahead of me turned yellow. I was too far away to clear it, but I hit the gas and sped through the intersection after the light turned red, accelerating until I reached my apartment. The assigned parking spaces were in a lot behind the building. I pulled into the entrance on the east side of the building, swung the car around and cut the lights, and backed into my space. No other cars pulled in.

I glanced up at my bedroom windows. I lived in the back unit on the second floor. It overlooked the less-than-glamorous parking lot. Soft light filtered through the floor to ceiling pale pink curtains I’d installed in January. I must have forgotten to turn the light off in my haste to meet with Brad.

When I opened the car door and slowly stood up, a flash of pain shot through my left knee. I’d been tense through the drive home, and I felt it. I pulled an umbrella from behind the driver’s seat and used it as a cane, distributing my weight off the injured joint while I hurried inside.

I climbed the back staircase and knocked on the door of Effie’s apartment. I heard Rocky bark on the other side of the door.

“That was a short dinner,” Effie said when she opened the door. She wore an oversized Batman sweatshirt and bright yellow leggings. Her feet were in fuzzy slippers shaped like bear paws. 

“I wasn’t feeling well and had to leave early. Was Rocky any trouble?”

“Nope. We spent a couple of hours at White Rock Lake. He made friends with a Chihuahua. We came back here and he played with my bear feet. He’s pretty pooped right now.” She looked over her right shoulder to where Rocky laid on his stomach with his feet thrust out behind him like a frog. He opened his eyes and lifted his head slightly. Effie picked up a leash from a white bookcase and clipped it onto his collar. Rocky stood up and padded over to me. She handed off the leash.

“Where are you two staying tonight?”

I felt my face tense. “Who two?”

“You and Rocky. You’re not going to sleep in your apartment, are you? I don’t think it would be a good idea with the paint fumes.”

“What fumes? What paint?”

“You had the apartment painted, right? There was a guy in there earlier. I haven’t noticed any fumes but it’s probably not dry yet.”

My hand closed tightly around my keys, the sharp, jagged edges cutting into my palm. Rocky pulled me toward the door, winding the leash around my left leg. My hands shook as I reached down the length of the leash to straighten it out.

“Effie, what did this man look like?”

“I couldn’t tell. He was wearing a mask.”

“What kind of mask?”

“Paint mask,” she answered in the tone of a college student who thinks she’s talking to an idiot. “But he had a black knit hat on, and safety glasses, so I guess I didn’t see very much of him. Why?”

“When did he leave?”

“About half an hour ago. He hurried out of here pretty fast too.”

I didn’t like it. Half an hour ago I’d been at the restaurant with Brad. If someone had been in my apartment, they’d arrived after I left. My early return would have been unexpected. There was only one person who knew I would be out to dinner, the person who had surprised me with an invitation. Things were starting to add up, but I didn’t like the sum.

“Thanks for watching him.” I said goodnight, picked Rocky up, and walked to the front of the building to check my mail and the status of the rent box. Carlos, a retired mechanic who lived in the unit next to mine, stood in front of the building, smoking. The tip of his cigarette pierced the night like a fat firefly. He nodded when I approached and I nodded back. The rent box was still padlocked shut. I scanned the street in front of the building. Across the street, a car idled next to the curb. The only evidence that the engine was running was the soft cloud of exhaust that floated from behind the car. I couldn’t be sure, but it looked like the same sedan that had followed me home.

I turned around, slowly climbed the stairs, and unlocked my unit. The scent of oil paint hit me. I choked back a cough and leaned in. The rug was pulled back from the far corner, exposing half of the unfinished hardwood floor. Paint trays and rollers were scattered around the room, as if the project had been abandoned unexpectedly.

I descended the back stairs, carrying Rocky under my arm. I ducked out the back door, crossed the parking lot, and let myself out the padlocked gate that served as too little deterrent to keeping our property secure.

I felt a little like I’d fallen down a rabbit hole. My entire reality had been flipped on its ear, and I didn’t know what end was up. It was a five block walk from my apartment to my studio. Physical therapy had improved the condition of my knee after it had been reinjured, but this would test the limits of the newly-healed joint. Best case scenario, I’d do more damage to an already chronic injury, but would get to my studio undetected. Worst case, I’d be caught while walking down one of the dark residential streets that completed the maze-like path I took to get from here to there. I was willing to take my chances with my knee.

It was slow going at first. Every couple of steps I looked over my shoulder to see if we were being followed. Rocky pulled me forward. Once we were more than a block into the walk, I cut down a different street. I knew I’d have a variety of sofas on which to sleep and a freezer filled with ice packs for my knee, and right now, that was enough.

I didn’t allow myself the luxury of mental distractions while I made my way. I coached myself to keep moving, keep moving, keep moving. The chant worked. I reached the alley that runs behind my studio and ducked into the opening next to the Dumpster. A stray cat scrambled out and triggered Rocky’s barking. I shushed him and unlocked the door at the back of the building, locking it behind us once we were inside.

Afraid to turn on any lights, I felt my way along the wall to my office. Light from the street hit the furniture I had staged inside the studio and cast weird images around the walls of the room. I wished the windows had been blacked out, or that I’d installed shades to be drawn during off hours, but I hadn’t, and tonight, I paid the price in privacy.

Inside my office was a custom desk, a white leather office chair, and a couple of Barcelona chairs for customers. Rocky went directly to his dog bed in the corner and curled into a ball. I wished I could do the same. But for me, it was either sleep on a sofa in the showroom, where anyone passing by could look inside and see me, or sleep on the floor of the office. Despite the guaranteed kink in my neck and promise of pains in various parts of my body, it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure out which was the better plan.

I found a crocheted blanket draped over the side of a raspberry-colored sofa. I grabbed the blanket and a pillow with an atom embroidered on the center of it and carried them back to the office, assembling a makeshift bed on the floor.

I spent the next four hours staring at the ceiling.

Someone had terrorized me on the way home from the restaurant. It could have been Brad. It could have been anyone. But while I was at the restaurant, someone had been in my apartment. It was entirely possible that Brad had orchestrated the opportunity for someone else to get inside while I was out.

The question was why? Why would someone want to get into my apartment when I wasn’t there? With the exception of a closet filled with vintage dresses from the fifties and sixties, and a modest collection of furniture I’d cherry picked from the Mad for Mod inventory, I had little worth stealing.

Unless the thief was after the five thousand dollar bill.

Which made even more sense when I thought about where it had come from.

I was starting to think Brad’s reasons for seeking me out in Dallas had less to do with the promise of a bright future and more to do with the deep, dark secrets in his past.

SIX

Two years ago I would have trusted Brad with my life. Today, he was a stranger. He’d been the genesis of my trust issues, and now I had a hard time getting past them.

The brass starburst clock that Hudson had rewired for me ticked off the seconds, the minutes, the hours. It wasn’t the first thing Hudson had fixed for me, and I’d started to wonder if I should trust him with fixing more than just inanimate objects. Truth was, Hudson was more than a handyman; he was a friend. He could have been more if I was willing to drop the walls I’d put in place after my breakup with Brad.

When I left Philadelphia and moved to Dallas, I bought an apartment complex and hung out a shingle for my own mid-century modern interior decorating business. I busied myself with flea markets, estate sales, and other more creative ways to obtain inventory that included obituaries and the recently deceased. I pretended my past didn’t exist. At the time, I thought it was the best way to function. Start over. Start fresh. Take care of myself. Move on.

I met Hudson six months after moving to Dallas. I was interviewing carpenters who could repair the damaged furniture I’d found in dumpsters and trash piles. He was the one who suggested I adopt a puppy. His artistic temperament and Johnny Cash good looks made a combination that, under normal circumstances, would have caught my interest, but a relationship would have complicated my life in ways I didn’t want. And now, with Brad turning up in Dallas, the complications had complications.

I closed my eyes. Only an occasional siren, far in the distance, punctured the otherwise silent hours. I readjusted my position somewhere around four thirty. I finally fell into a tortured sleep somewhere after five.

The rattling of the studio door woke me up. I was disoriented, stiff, scared, and alone. Sometime during the night, Rocky left the comfort of his dog bed and joined me. The knocking woke him,too.

Sunlight flooded the studio. When I stood, several joints popped like a cheap package of explosives on the Fourth of July. I had slept in my dress, which had ridden up to my waist. I pulled it down, tried, unsuccessfully, to smooth out the creases that had developed overnight, and ran my fingers through my short hair. The knocking on the front door resumed. I peeked my head out of the office. A thin man with Mediterranean features stood in front of the door. He was dressed in a navy and white checked shirt, navy and white v-neck sweater, and navy blue trousers. A skinny navy tie was visible at his collar.

I balled up the pillow and blankets and tossed them in the powder room behind my desk. After pulling the door shut behind me, I walked to the front of the studio.

“Welcome to Mad for Mod,” I said, as I unlocked the door from the inside. I held the door open. “Technically I’m not open, so you surprised me.”

“I’m sorry. I drove past and saw your windows. The sign on the door says Open. I can come back if you’d prefer,” he stammered.

I looked at the door. I didn’t remember flipping the sign, but he was right.

“No, it’s fine. I’d be opening in a few minutes anyway. I’m Madison Night,” I said, and held out my hand.

“Archie Leach,” said the man, returning my handshake.

Archibald Leach was the real name of actor Cary Grant. The nervous man in front of me couldn’t have been further from his namesake.

“How can I help you, Mr. Leach?”

“I like your style. I mean, your decorating style.” He blushed as though he’d said something inappropriate. “I recently moved into an apartment in Turtle Creek. For the past five years, it’s been my wife and me, but now it’s just me.”

“I’m sorry,” I said automatically, though I wasn’t sure what I was apologizing for.

“Me too. Seems she wasn’t so interested in me as a husband. Now, I’m back on my own.”

“Once you get past the sting of it, you might find this is an exciting time.”

He looked at me as though I were speaking another language. “How does this work? Do you want to see the apartment?” he asked.

I seriously doubted that Mr. Leach would come back to see me if I said it was as bad time. “Let’s start with your contact information and address. We can get some of the paperwork out of the way.”

We went to my office. Mr. Leach sat in one of the Barcelona chairs, while I pulled a New Client form from a drawer.

“The first page is contact information: name, address, phone number, email. The next two pages get into what room you’d like to have designed and any specifics you like. Designers, textures, textiles, et cetera.”

He looked at the wall covered in paint chips, fabric swatches, pages from magazines, and stills from Doris Day movies. Thanks to a lifelong obsession with the actress, after discovering that we shared a birthday, I found inspiration in her vast body of work. From
Calamity Jane
to
With Six You Get Eggroll
, the precision and beauty of mid-century design was caught on the sets of her films, and, by studying it, I had perfected my eye.

I caught my reflection in the glass of a framed set of Eichler floor plans. I looked worse than I thought. The front door chimed and I excused myself. “I’ll give you a couple of minutes.” I stood from my desk and stepped out front.

A petite woman with jet black hair was bent over a Rat Pack-era portable bar that I used to house cleaning products.

“Connie? Is that you?” I asked.

She stood up straight and broke out in a smile. “I’m glad you opened early. I have news,” she said dramatically.

Connie Duncan and her husband Ned were two of my newer clients. They’d recently bought a small house on Mockingbird Lane, a stretch of flat-roofed ranches that were among the cheaper properties in Dallas because of their unfortunate eighties remodel. The Duncans were interested in undoing the damage and reviving the original mid-century style. They claimed my method of using original pieces I’d amassed from estate sales, flea markets, and dumpsters had caught their attention. I suspected it had more to do with my new-client friendly rates and willingness to work with their shoestring budget.

“I wanted you to be the first to know. Well, not the first because Ned’s the first, but the second, but really Ned’s the second because I’m the first, not counting the insurance company—”

“Connie,” I said and patted the air with my hand, prompting her to lower her voice. “I have a client in the office. Give me a second to finish up.”

I left her wandering around the studio while I went back to see Mr. Leach. He was hunched over the application, the end of the pen in his mouth, deep in thought.

“How are you doing?”

“I’m having a hard time deciding.”

“On what?” I asked. “Maybe I can help.”

“You want me to list the room I want you to work on, but I want you to do the whole apartment. I can’t decide where I want you to start.”

“Why don’t we decide that together after a walk through?”

He set the pen down and exhaled, as though I’d presented the solution to the biggest problem in his life. I had a feeling his divorce was taking more out of him than he would have liked to admit.

“Thank you, Mrs. Night.”

“Call me Madison.”

“Thank you Madison.” He stood up and held out a hand. “When will you be in touch?”

“How’s tomorrow?”

“Great.”

I walked him to the door and watched him leave. He walked down the block and turned onto one of the narrow side streets, disappearing from sight.

“Connie?” I called. “I’ll be out in a second.”

She popped up from an orange ottoman. “No rush.”

I went back to my office and picked up the receiver on the yellow donut phone that sat on the corner of my desk. I dialed Tex’s number from memory.

“Lt. Allen,” he answered.

“Lieutenant, it’s Madison. I need to see you.”

“One of these days I’m going think you mean that in a different way.”

“Something happened after I saw you at Trader Josh’s.”

His voice took on an edge. “Where are you?”

“My studio.”

“I’ll be right there.”

“Wait. I need a favor first.” I paused. “Can you go to my apartment and bring me a couple of things?”

“Night, the citizens of Dallas don’t pay me to be your personal assistant.”

“Fine, I’ll do it myself.”

“Does the personal assistant gig come with perks? Because maybe I’ll reconsider.”

I slammed down the phone.

When I wandered out of the office into the studio, I found Connie studying a shelf of mid-fifties kitchen appliances in shades of yellow and aqua. She didn’t hear me approach and jumped when she saw me.

“What’s your big news?” I asked.

“I finally got reimbursed for a car accident two years ago. Totally not my fault, by the way, so don’t let that affect your decision to let me drive your car some day. Anyway, Ned agreed that we should use the money for the kitchen. I’ve got one word for you:
atomic
! Can you fit me into your schedule?”

“Sure,” I said. Immediately, I pictured Rod Taylor’s kitchen in
The Glass Bottom Boat
. I hoped both Connie and Ned knew what they were in for.

Connie was the closest thing I had to a girlfriend in Dallas. The rest of my friends were either still in Pennsylvania or people I’d befriended over the Internet through decorating forums and volunteer work at the theater.

“Come to my office. I’m having a hard time getting started this morning.” I ushered her in front of me and trailed behind her.

“No offense, but you don’t look so good,” Connie said when she reached my desk.

She wore a fitted baby doll T-shirt with a picture of a pin-up girl on the front, dark denim jeans with a two inch cuff, and black penny loafers. Her black hair was held back with a pair of cat eye sunglasses, and her bangs, trimmed to land above her eyebrows, hung perfectly straight across her forehead.

“I had a rough night,” I said.

“I can tell.” She handed me a Styrofoam cup of coffee that had come from one of the many 7-Elevens in Dallas. “I couldn’t remember if you had a coffee maker here or not, and I don’t really function until after I’ve had at least three of these.”

“Thank you.”

“It’s black,” she warned.

“That’s fine.” I sipped the bitter beverage out of necessity, not desire.

“You need something, I can tell. I’m good at reading people. What is it?”

“I need a change of clothes, but I don’t want to go back to my apartment.”

She leaned forward. “You spent the night here?”

“I’d rather not get into details, if you don’t mind.”

“I can bring you clothes. I have a whole closet full of them. Anything else?”

“Knock on the door when you’re back. I’m going to lock up behind you.”

“Madison, are you in some kind of trouble?”

I considered the truth, but I knew too little about my situation to know what the truth really was.

“I’m avoiding someone, that’s all.”

“Ex-boyfriend?”

“Something like that.”

“I knew it had to be juicy. Listen. Stay put and I’ll be back in a jiffy and you can tell me all about it.”

That’s what I was afraid of.

Connie returned with a change of clothes and an overnight kit. I freshened up in the powder room behind my office, changed from the wrinkled peony printed dress into a tight red pencil skirt and a short sleeved sweater with a scoop neck. A pair of red patent leather kitten heeled pumps was in the bottom of the bag. Connie didn’t understand the reason I wore ballerina flats and canvas sneakers most of the time had as much to do with functionality as it did style. Judging the rockabilly style of both of the Duncans, I wasn’t surprised by her taste.

“If I looked that good in a wiggle dress, I’d wear one all the time,” she proclaimed when I returned to the room. “Here, tie this in your hair.” She handed me a red and white polka-dotted chiffon scarf. I handed it back.

The door chimes sounded again. “Madison?” called Tex.

Connie put one hand palm-side out toward me and held the other in front of her mouth, motioning for me to be quiet. She stepped into the studio.

“You bastard!” she said.

I followed her into the studio just in time to see her slap Tex across the face.