Suede to Rest (10 page)

I looked at the coin but didn't pick it up. Just because Adelaide seemed to be done talking to me didn't mean I was done asking questions. “No other parts of the bracelet ever turned up?” I asked as I stood.

“No.”

“And where was this found?”

“In your store.”

“By the police?”

“By my ex-husband.”

“Who is your ex-husband?” I asked.

“My dear, I'm sorry, I thought you knew who I was.”

I felt my face change, my forehead pulling tight and my lips pinching together. She stood up and looked at me, eye to eye.

“I'm Vaughn's mother.”

“I thought Vaughn
told you,” Adelaide Brooks said. “Isn't that why you're here?” Confusion clouded her soft gray eyes.

“I came by to return a few things that he borrowed last night. I didn't want anyone to think I was planning on keeping them.”

“But surely he told you that I arranged for him to bring the Waverly House to you when you couldn't come to the Waverly House. Didn't he?”

They were the same words Vaughn had used. I took a deep breath and exhaled. “I'm sure he would have explained it if I hadn't asked him to leave.” I expected her to ask about my actions, but she didn't. I felt like I owed her more, some kind of explanation for being rude to her son. “I'm afraid I got the wrong impression. I thought he was there because he wanted something from me.”

“And what did you think he wanted?” As she asked the question she stood straighter, as though her motherly instincts were prepared to defend her son's intentions.

“It's not like that, Ms. Brooks. Mr. McMichael wants to buy my great-uncle's store. I got the impression that Vaughn was there to, um, improve negotiations.”

She studied me for an uncomfortable few seconds then smiled, showing a row of very straight teeth. “My dear, the McMichael men are charming, and at least one of them likes to believe he gets what he wants. I am proof that he might get it but he doesn't always keep it. I like to think I've taught the other one a little about that with my actions.”

“When did you and Mr. McMichael divorce?”

She gently closed her eyes. “It feels like it was a lifetime ago.”

“When did he find the charm? Before or . . .”

“I don't know. At the time I cherished it as a memento of a lost friend. As time has passed, I've wondered how he came to have it in the first place.” She looked down at her hands and then back up at me. “Ms. Monroe, I like you, and I applaud your loyalty to your family's past. I wish you would keep the store, but I know that's not very likely. In the meantime, enjoy your time in San Ladrón. Get to know what Marius and Millie loved about our small town. And if there is anything you need while you're here, don't hesitate to ask.”

“Thank you.”

I held out my hand and she took it, resting her other hand on top of it and patting gently. It was when she smiled that I saw the resemblance between her and Vaughn, a familiar curve of the lips and the appearance of dimples. I hadn't taken notice, but I seriously doubted that Mr. McMichael had dimples.

“A word of advice. Don't get lost following ghosts and shadows. Identify what is truly important to you. Make that your priority and everything else of import will find a way to support it. Those who don't care about your goals will only distract you and tear you down. Life is too short to do battle with people who want to destroy your dreams.” Her eyes grew misty, but she blinked several times, halting the tears before they fell.

“Adelaide, why do people suspect your ex-husband? I read some of the newspaper articles, but there must be more to it than the newspapers said.”

“It all came down to Mr. Pickers. There was a very public argument between the two men shortly after the murder, and then Mr. Pickers came forward and made his statement. My ex-husband became very active in his pursuit to buy the fabric store. People questioned his timing and motives.”

“What was the argument about?”

“Mr. Pickers suspected Vaughn's father of being involved.”

“Why?”

“Tom Pickers was the only person who claimed to see something that night.”

“He claimed to have seen a monster.”

“Yes, he did. He also claimed to have seen my ex-husband's car.” She dropped her eyes. “The men who were arrested claimed that they'd been hired to rob the store. When Tom said he saw Vic's car in the neighborhood, a lot of people put two and two together and assumed he was the one who'd orchestrated the whole thing.”

“Was he?”

“I don't know. Vic told the police he had business in the neighborhood. A lot of people owe him their jobs and their livelihoods, and several people backed up his story. Still, Tom Pickers's suspicion was contagious. Vic is a free man, but the court of public opinion convicted him a long time ago. My ex-husband has many friends in San Ladrón. A few enemies, too. He's learned to tolerate both.”

Ms. Brooks dropped my hand and opened the door to her office for me. I got about five feet down the hall when she called out my name.

“Ms. Monroe, you forgot this.” She caught up with me and pressed the charm from the bracelet into my hand. “You're the only rightful owner, as far as I can see. Cherish it. Millie would have wanted you to.”

“I still have questions,” I said as my hand closed around the oversized gold charm for the second time.

“You need to seek out the answers elsewhere. But remember, keep the bracelet in mind. Find the bracelet, and you'll find the answers to more than one question.” Her eyes welled up a second time, and I suspected she'd have a more difficult time of blinking back the tears. I thanked her and said good-bye, then left, walking past the hostess station and out the front door.

I walked down the main street of San Ladrón, not sure where I was going to go next. I passed the visitor's center and the municipal building, two dentists' offices and three hair salons. As I waited for the light to change so I could cross the street, I realized I was standing in front of the Senior Center. Before I had a chance to think things through, I followed a gravel path to the front door, passing a cast iron statue of an early San Ladrón settler on the way.

The front lobby of the Senior Center reminded me of the admissions office of FIDM. To my left was a cork bulletin board covered in notices about the neighborhood. I approached the bulletin board and scanned the notices. A bright yellow sheet of paper was thumbtacked to the right and announced the upcoming Senior Patrol meeting on Thursday. Under
agenda
it said:
new neighborhood watch routes have been posted by water fountain.
I pushed away the corners of the flyers that covered this one and looked for an indication of when it had been posted. Before or after Mr. Pickers's murder? Were the new routes being assigned because his territory was now unaccounted for? Or did they regularly reassign territories?

A hand-drawn map was on the middle of the bright yellow sheet of paper, indicating where the next meeting would be held. There was a star on the page a few streets north of San Ladrón Avenue. I hadn't explored much in that direction, but it was within walking distance. I unpinned the page and folded it down to pocket-sized, shoving it into the vinyl pocket in the center of my tunic.

I wandered farther down the center hallway. Rooms sat on my left and right, like a school, though the interiors of each room were carpeted and furnished with brightly colored sofas and white laminate furniture. Instead of paintings, quilts had been hung on the walls, bringing a collection of hues to each area.

A few ladies sat in the first room I passed. They looked up at me, and returned to their individual projects. Knitting, needlepoint. I stuck my head in.

“Excuse me, is there a water fountain here?” I asked.

“Down the hall, next to the exit,” the lady with the needlepoint said without looking up.

I thanked her and picked up the pace. When I reached the water fountain, I found a clear plastic bin attached to the wall. Inside were sheets of paper with the Senior Patrol assignments on them. I pulled one sheet from the bin. Next to Bonita Avenue East, Tom Pickers's name was crossed off and the word
Open
had been written. I flipped through the rest of the copies. They were all the same.

A small wastepaper basket sat to the right of the water fountain. It hadn't been emptied recently and was close to overflowing. Under an empty juice bottle and a plastic takeout cup was a sheaf of papers that looked like those in the bin on the wall. I wondered if whoever had put the new ones announcing the opening on my street had thrown the old ones away, and if so, was there anything else in there I could learn from?

I looked back down the hallway. I heard movement in one of the rooms, but didn't know which one. Before I had a chance to be spotted, I knelt down and picked up the handles of the trash can liner. I stood up quickly and yanked it out of the metal bin. The bag stuck. I shook it until the bin fell from the plastic and clattered to the floor. I quickly dropped down and righted the bin. When I looked up, a woman stared at me from inside one of the rooms.

“Sorry for the noise,” I said quickly. I turned around and left out the back door.

I carried the trash down the three concrete stairs, then wound around the pebble path back past the iron statue. It was just after noon. I walked through the grounds, which had patches of dry grass, to the sidewalk. To my left was a Circle K. Across the street was a shopping center with a coffee shop, a dollar store, and a couple of restaurants. I was on foot, with a bag of trash that I had every intention of going through when I had some privacy. Tea Totalers was to my right. It was an easy decision.

One bell rang over my head as I pushed the door open. Genevieve was stacking magazines on a bookshelf under the poster of the black cat. “Looks like I got me a repeat customer,” she said in a bad impersonation of John Wayne.

“I considered disguising myself before walking in so you wouldn't think I was developing a dependency issue.”

“In this business? I wish more people were like you. Do you have time to sit today, or are you on the go?”

I scanned the interior of the store. The surrounding empty seats, bad for Genevieve's business, were good for my need for solitude. “I have a little time,” I said. “Do you have any more of those blondies?”

“You wouldn't like lunch?”

“I didn't realize you served lunch.”

“I'm trying to branch out, expand my menu. Today I have avocado and crab soup and radish crostini. I'd love a taste tester. . . .”

“That's your experimental menu? I was expecting ham and cheese.”

“Ham and cheese, good idea. Maybe I'll try that tomorrow.”

Genevieve disappeared into the back, behind a curtain of blue and white check, and I carried my bag of trash to the powder room.

I locked the door behind me and, after considering the options, moved the braided rug to the door and sat on it. I opened the bag and picked through the trash, transferring bottles, cups, and Styrofoam take-out containers to the small wicker wastepaper basket in the corner. Something red and sticky coated my fingers. At the bottom of the bag I found a half-empty packet of duck sauce stuck to a bar tab from The Broadside. Something was written on the back of the receipt. I turned it over and saw the name
Tommy Pickers
underlined twice. When I looked back at the receipt, I realized it was dated for the day I'd arrived in San Ladrón.

I rinsed my
hands and looked around for paper towels or a hand drier. There were none. I dried my hands on my leggings. Was this Mr. Pickers's bar tab, or had someone who frequented The Broadside had a reason to make note of his name? I didn't know. I'd seen Mr. Pickers Friday night. Ken and I had been in front of the store. The old man could have been going to the bar, or coming from the bar. Either way, why was his name on this piece of paper I'd found at the Senior Center? Why had it been buried under an avalanche of trash, where it might never have been found?

There was a tap on the door. “You okay in there?” asked Genevieve.

“I'll be out in a sec,” I called through the door. I pushed the rest of the trash into her basket and wrapped the sticky receipt in toilet paper, then pushed it into the vinyl pocket on my tunic. I opened the door and found her in front of me, holding a wicker tray by two handles. On the tray was a small teapot, a mug with no handles, a cup filled with green soup, and three small pieces of French bread coated in something creamy and white, topped with thin slices of white radishes outlined in pink.

“Follow me,” she said. We reached a small table and she set the tray on the wooden surface. “There's sweet butter on the crostini under the radishes, and fleur de sel sprinkled on top. Let me know what you think.”

“You haven't tried any of this?”

“I've tried too much of this,” she said, and glanced down at her tummy. “I may be biased. I figure if the recipe came from France, it must be good.” She filled the mug with tea and set it on the table, followed by the soup and the plate of crostini.

“Genevieve, did you know Mr. Pickers?” I asked.

“Not well. Why?”

“I was just wondering about him.” I bit into the crostini and let the sweet butter melt in my mouth. “Mr. Pickers was head of the Senior Patrol and he kept watch over the stretch of Bonita that my store is on. I feel like maybe I should know something about him since he was—he won't be—someone else is going to be assigned to my street instead.”

“Around here, nobody gets assigned to anything. The Senior Patrol is made up of volunteers. They had a meeting here once, but it was a short meeting after they realized I only served tea.”

“They wanted dinner?”

“They wanted booze. I think they started meeting at The Broadside Tavern after that.”

I stiffened at the mention of the bar. “The Broadside is across the street from the fabric store.”

“Close. Across the street and down a couple of storefronts.”

“Who runs it?”

“Why do you want to know?”

Our conversation was interrupted by the shrill ring of my phone. I pulled it out of my pocket. It was Charlie. “I have to take this,” I said.

Genevieve nodded and went back to the counter.

Charlie didn't waste time on small talk. “You're not in a hurry to leave town, are you?”

“Why?”

“Your car's going to take a few more days to fix. Whoever did the damage took the job seriously. Those wires are a mess.”

“So what's it going to be? This afternoon? Tonight?”

“I finally found a guy who has your ignition switch, so it's going to take at least another day. Maybe two.” She paused. “I'm going to pick it up now. Wanna come?”

“Sure. I'm at Tea Totalers.”

Genevieve looked up from the register at the mention of her store.

“Be there in twenty,” Charlie said.

I set the phone back on the table and took a sip of my soup. Genevieve approached the table. “Everything okay?”

“Not sure,” I said.

She pulled a chair away from the table and sat across from me. “Why were you asking me about The Broadside? Are you planning on going in there and asking questions about the Senior Patrol?”

“Maybe,” I said.

“I don't think it's going to do you any good.” Her chin tipped up and she looked down her nose at me. I fought the urge to fidget. “Mr. Pickers was a drinker. There was a whole stretch of bars down there and he used to hang out at them. Rumor has it he lost a lot of money betting on billiards at The Broadside and never paid. Can't imagine that made him too popular. Course, you don't hang out at that bar because you want to be popular.”

“I went there my first day here.”

She looked at me funny. “You're a braver woman than I am. Tough crowd hangs there. I'd be afraid to walk in by myself.”

“I wasn't by myself,” I said. I hesitated for a second. “I was with Charlie, the mechanic.” I cut my eyes to my phone for a second, and then back to my food.

Genevieve wiped her hands on her apron. “I like Charlie. She likes to act tough herself, but underneath the motor oil she's just a woman on her own, trying to make a living.”

“How do you know so much about everybody?”

“My husband and I thought this tea shop would be our livelihood, but the store hasn't taken off the way we projected. Now I run the store alone. He had to go back to his day job of driving a truck, and when the economy crashed a couple of years ago, he picked up a taxi route in addition to the truck. We had to make ends meet, and as bad as that stretch of nightlife was for San Ladrón, it was good for a cab driver.”

“Could your husband tell me anything else about Mr. Pickers?”

She looked up at me and smiled a tender smile. “You'd do better asking Duke. He owns the place but he doesn't advertise it. You can usually find him there during happy hour. Midfifties, gray hair, voice kinda raspy like he smokes too much. He's a good guy. The kind people look up to, or would if they could figure out how.”

“Genevieve, yesterday you said something about people from San Ladrón turning gossip into an Olympic sport. Was it hard for you to move here, being an outsider?”

“Oh gosh, no. I moved here a couple of years ago after I got married. My husband is from here. We met a few years ago at the World Tea Expo. After we married, it was either live in California or Arizona. Not a hard decision for me.”

“So people accepted you? They were friendly?”

She laughed. “You mean your membership application to San Ladrón's social circle was rejected already? That was fast.” She stood up and pushed the chair under the table. “Sometimes it feels like a private club around here, but I had a ready-made membership card in the form of a marriage license. Still, people aren't rushing to support my tea shop the way they do other local restaurants. I'm not complaining—well, I guess I am, a little, but I shouldn't. There's a lot of people who have it worse,” she added.

“Maybe you should throw some kind of party here. An open house. Invite everybody you know and everybody you don't. People should be lining up to drink your proprietary tea blend and eat your blondies and scones. And if this is any indication of what you can do for lunch, forgeddaboudit,” I finished, in my best Tony Soprano. If she criticized my impersonation, I figured I could blame her for introducing accents to begin with.

“If only it were that easy.”

“Think about it. If people start to associate Tea Totalers with getting together, they might start planning to meet up with each other here, and that would be good for business, right?”

She picked up a piece of my crostini and bit into it. After several crunches she swallowed and dabbed at the corner of her mouth with a paper napkin. “I don't think I'm ready for that. People would laugh at me. Why come here when they can go to the places they've been going their whole lives?”

“You have to give people a reason to change their habits. Otherwise they're going to keep doing whatever it is they always do. It's easier than trying something new.” I thought about my relationship with Carson, with the routine we'd fallen into. Maybe that was the problem. Maybe somewhere along the line we stopped trying.

“I like the way you think, Poly. Maybe instead of worrying about these fuddy-duddies who've lived here forever, we should start our own club. Outsiders. Only people who've lived here for less than a decade can join.” She stood up and carried the wicker tray to the counter. I took a bite out of the last crostini and finished off the last of the avocado soup. It was better than the last ten meals I'd had in Los Angeles.

I ducked my head under the long strap of my messenger bag and approached the counter. “I should get going,” I said. “How much was lunch?”

“Lunch is on the house.”

“Genevieve, that's not the way to run a business.”

“I insist,” she said. “But it'll be fourteen dollars for the tea,” she added with a smile.

I paid her and left. When I reached the sidewalk, I saw Charlie's Camaro idling at the traffic light to my right. I wondered if what Genevieve had said was right, if Charlie played into her tough-girl image to protect her privacy and ward off gossip. I called her name and waved. When the light changed, she turned left, drove past me, then hung a U-turn in the middle of the street and pulled up to the curb next to me.

She leaned across the passenger side and jutted her chin in my direction. “Hop in,” she said.

It was after one. I had arranged to meet up with Carson in two hours but on the off chance that he had returned to the store early, I didn't care to know about it. My mind was abuzz with information and I half wanted silence to think about what it all meant, but I needed to talk to Charlie about the shower incident. I climbed into the passenger side and buckled the seat belt. She U-turned again and headed north, to a section of town I hadn't yet explored.

“I'm sorry about your shower,” I said. “When did you find out?”

“This morning. I was out all night.”

“How bad is the damage?”

“I should be asking you the same thing.”

“I'm okay,” I said, then realized I kind of wasn't. “I have a couple of bruises around my ribs, but they'll heal. I finally got warm after spending an hour at the police station.”

“Sheriff's office,” she corrected.

“Whatever.”

“What exactly happened?”

“It's kind of a blur. The shower felt really good, but you said I had four minutes. When the water started to turn cold I tried to turn it off but the knob came off and I couldn't. Then the door wouldn't open, but you said it stuck, so I kept trying to unstick it.”

“I thought you'd know the difference between stuck and sabotaged.”

“Who else knew I was back there?” I asked.

“Nobody. Why?”

“Because somebody trapped me in there. And if they didn't know I was in there, maybe they thought they were trapping you.”

Charlie took a sudden left turn and my body slammed against the inside of the door. I didn't know what kind of a life she lived or whether or not something like this had ever happened to her before. All I knew was that I wanted to talk to somebody about some of the things that I'd experienced since arriving in San Ladrón, and I didn't have a lot of options.

She swung the Camaro into a U-turn midstreet and pulled up to a small building with a pile of tires stacked alongside the right exterior wall. “Wait here,” she said. She went inside while I sat in the car. I touched my fingertips to the bruises on my ribs and my shoulder and winced. Better to sit completely still and pretend the bruises weren't there.

Charlie returned a few minutes later. She tossed a brown paper bag on the seat behind me and started back.

“You've lived here awhile, right?” I asked her.

“Nope . . . Moved here a couple of years ago. Thinking about moving out again. I don't think I'm the type to stick around any one place, and this town might be over for me.”

“Do you know the McMichaels?”

“Who doesn't?” she replied. “Old man McMichael owns most of this town and tries to buy what he doesn't own. I'm not interested in selling the shop, so I'm not one of his favorites, but what's he going to do with that little stretch of real estate? It's small potatoes to him, so he leaves me alone. Not like your situation.”

“So you know he wants the store?”

“Polyester, everybody knows he wants the store. And a lot of people want him to have the store.”

There was an endearing, no-bullshit quality to Charlie's manner and calling me by my full name fit. Usually when people called me Polyester it was in jest, a way to mock me. I didn't get the feeling Charlie was doing it to get a reaction, so I didn't mind.

“Why do a lot of people want him to get Uncle Marius's store? It can't be solely because he's going to put a megastore there, right? There are antiques stores and small businesses all along that street. If he knocked them all down, those stores would go out of business. A lot of nostalgia and collectibles would go back into a lot of attics.”

“Who said he's going to knock it all down? He could turn the whole block into an antique mall. Take the plot behind you and level it and start hosting a monthly flea market. The Rose Bowl brings a lot of people to Pasadena. There's no reason he couldn't do that for San Ladrón—bring people here and put us on the map.”

“That's a good idea. Is he considering that?”

“I doubt it, but he should.”

I leaned back against the torn interior of the muscle car and let the wind slap my face. Maybe if I knew what Mr. McMichael wanted to do with the store, it would be different. Maybe I'd consider selling and going home. Maybe Carson had been right and I would never fit in to this small town. Maybe—

“You okay over there?”

“Yes, why?”

“You keep saying ‘maybe.' Maybe what?”

I didn't realize I'd been thinking out loud. “What do you think about Vaughn?” I asked, changing the subject.

“My first impression? Spoiled little rich kid.”

“That's what I thought, too.”

She took a hard left and again I swayed against the door to the car. “Turns out he's not. He's done good by people around here, people who would have lost their properties when the housing market went south a couple of years back.”