Suede to Rest (16 page)

The sun was on its way down past the horizon, throwing the store into a shadow. With the electricity turned off, there was little I was going to be able to see or do inside the store. I carried the turquoise notebook back inside and slid it back into the drawer below the register where it had been for years. I threw my wallet and cell phone into a small cross-chest pouch, locked the front door, and left out the back. It was a short walk through the alley and across the street, until I ended up at Charlie's Automotive.

She stood with her back to me, typing on a computer keyboard. Her long thick hair was clumped into sections, and secured in the back with a green rubber band from an office supply store. Her upper body shielded my view of the computer screen, though I could tell it was black. The cursor bounced from field to field as she tapped the tab key and the up and down arrows.

“Hey,” I said, to let her know I was there. She didn't respond. “You wouldn't believe the day I've had,” I added. Again, nothing.

I thought back about how we'd left things that morning, after she had dropped me off in front of the store where Vaughn and Carson stood. Nothing had seemed strange at the time. But ignoring me while I stood a couple of feet away seemed odd. I reached out and tapped her left shoulder, and she jumped.

When she turned around, I saw a thin white cord running between her two ears, connected in front of the second button on her uniform, and running down the length of her shirt to her pocket. She turned back to the computer and closed out the window, then reached up and pulled the earbuds out and shoved them into her pocket.

“You scared me,” she said.

“I thought you heard me come in.”

“Too much noise out there today. I could have turned up the volume but then the salon next door complains, so I went iPod. Gotta be honest, Eddie doesn't sound the same as he does when he's cranked to ten on the boom box, though.”

I didn't waste time asking for an explanation to whatever it was she was talking about. “Can I borrow a bucket and some rags?”

“Not willing to risk another shower?”

“Somebody threw ketchup on the gate to the store. I think it's better to clean it tonight than to wait until tomorrow.”

“I heard something happened over there. Ketchup, huh? Looks creepy, like blood.” She craned her neck to see past me. “Somebody's testing you. I'm curious. What's it going to be?”

“What's what going to be?”

“You. Are you scared off yet or are you in for the long haul?”

“I don't like being bullied, if that's what you're asking. But everything is still so vague. Is this about selling the store to Mr. McMichael? Then why was Mr. Pickers murdered out back? Are those two things connected or were they two random acts that happened to involve me? And then there's my car, and the shower, and now this.” I waved my hand toward the gate outside. “Those attacks are personal. More than just trying to get me to sell the store. It's like somebody doesn't want me to stay in San Ladrón. But why kill Mr. Pickers to get me to leave? How did my showing up have anything to do with him?”

“Why
are
you staying?”

“Because the deputy sheriff told me not to leave.”

“He can't do that, you know. The whole ‘don't leave town while the investigation is ongoing' thing. Load of bull. You're free to leave whenever you want.”

“What if I don't want?”

“Now we're getting to the heart of the matter.” She tilted her back and bent her leg so her Converse sneaker was resting on her knee. “You're right, though. The attack on the storefront is personal. You know anybody who would play the personal card?”

Yesterday I would have thought no. But today there was somebody else in the picture. Somebody who had been at the store moments before the attack.

Carson.

“I have to make a phone call.” I left the interior of the auto shop and stood on the sidewalk, one finger plugged into my left ear, the other hand pressing my cell to my head. Carson answered on the fourth ring.

“Hey,” he said in a soft voice. “I'm sorry about earlier. You have every right to be angry.”

“Carson, where are you?”

“I'm stuck in traffic on the one-oh-one.”

“You left?”

“I sat at the coffee shop for an hour waiting for you to get my message. When you didn't, I took off.”

“What message? The gate? The ketchup? Did you do that?”

There was a pause on the other end of the phone. “What are you talking about?”

“Did you vandalize the store?” I demanded.

“Have you gone nuts?”

“I'm serious, Carson. Did you do that? Throw ketchup on the gate to scare me into running to you for protection?”

“Poly, I wrote you a note and stuck it in the fence in front of the store you're so concerned with. I told you where I'd be and how long I'd wait.”

“When?”

“After you tossed the keys to me. What is this about?”

“Someone vandalized the store.”

“And you thought it was me? Is that where we are right now?”

“I don't know where we are now, Carson.”

“Maybe you should think about it and call me when you do.” He disconnected.

I turned to Charlie. “Is my car done yet?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Okay, can I borrow your Camaro again?” I asked. “I need to get some stuff to clean the fence.”

“You can't borrow the Camaro, but you can take my truck. Keys are on the pegboard. If I'm gone when you get back, you can take a bucket and rags from the back corner.”

“Thanks.”

I took the keys with me and headed around behind the auto shop. The truck was parked at an angle several yards from where the shower/shed stood. It was the result of either a hasty park job or a backyard that made it so it didn't really matter. I threw the gearshift into reverse, swung it into an arc, then turned around and made an illegal left turn onto the street, tires screeching as I accelerated.

I should have anticipated the flashing blue and red lights in the rearview mirror.

I pulled over to the curb and waited for a gray-haired man in a uniform to adjust his hat and approach the car. He was older and thinner than Deputy Sheriff Clark and his uniform was a better fit.

“License and registration,” he said as he stood next to my side of the car. My hands shook as I fiddled with my wallet, trying to get the small piece of plastic out from inside the tight sleeve. Once it was freed, I handed it to him.

“I borrowed this car from a friend. She's right back there in Charlie's Automotive. We're so close that if you want we can go back to her store.”

He studied my license. “You're not from San Ladrón.”

“No, I live in downtown Los Angeles. Like I said, I borrowed the car from Charlie—”

“Registration, ma'am,” he interrupted.

I reached across the seat and yanked on the glove box, the universal storage spot for registration papers. It was locked. “Just a second,” I said. The officer had his hands resting by his front pockets, his thumbs hooked into the opening.

I pulled the keys from the ignition and tried each one until I found one that fit the lock. I lowered the glove box slowly and pulled out a wad of papers. “I'm sure it's one of these,” I said out the window, then looked back at the stack. Under two still-sealed envelopes from the bank and an old newspaper, I found the registration card. As I held it out to the officer, I noticed something interesting.

The truck was registered to Vic McMichael.

I pulled the
piece of paper back toward me so I could look at it again.
Vic
McMichael.
Why would Charlie have a truck registered to Vaughn's dad? Was she on their payroll? Was I one of the “favors” she tended to for Vaughn?

“Ma'am?” prompted the officer. Reluctantly I held out the piece of paper and he carried it, along with my license, to his car. I watched in the rearview mirror as he sat down, turned on a small flashlight, and moved it over my license. My mind stung with possibilities of what this might mean.

I'd met Charlie the first day I came to San Ladrón, on Friday. I met her because my car had been tampered with. My bad luck had been her good fortune, or so it seemed at the time. I'd been attacked in her shower, and she was the only person who knew I was in there—at least that's what I thought until Mr. McMichael showed up to help me. But how did he know I was there?

And then there was the ketchup vandalism on the storefront. The chaos had brought out almost every person who was in a one-block radius—every person but Charlie, who claimed her earbuds had blocked out the commotion. She had appeared outside the Waverly House right as I left, after talking to Vaughn's mom. Was this a gigantic conspiracy from the McMichael family?

Was the McMichael family capable of killing an innocent man in order to get me out of the picture and gain control of the fabric store?

And if that was the case, why?

I didn't want to believe it was all about a piece of real estate. I wanted to believe it was about my great-aunt. But what if it wasn't, and what if someone in San Ladrón was using my connection to my family to distract me from whatever was really going on? What if Mr. Pickers's past had come back to haunt him and his murder had nothing to do with me?

I didn't know who to turn to. I had thought Charlie was my friend, but now I wasn't so sure of her motivations. Anybody from the McMichael family was off the list. I wasn't sure if I should count Adelaide as friend or foe—the information she gave me was interesting, but could have been a carefully planted bit of misdirection. I could have asked Carson to help me search the store while he was still in San Ladrón, but he had already left. Besides, I knew that request would come with a very hefty price that wouldn't guarantee his cooperation.

This time, I was on my own.

The officer returned to the truck with my identification and a small clipboard. “Ms. Monroe, you pulled out of that lot like you were in some kind of hurry.”

“I was. I mean, I am.”

“You realize that hurry cost you about ten minutes while I ran your license and plates, don't you?”

I nodded.

“How long do you plan to stay in San Ladrón?”

“I don't know.”

“Days? Weeks? Months?” he prompted.

His insistence on finding out the length of my stay was off-putting. “I'm due back at work this week,” I said, hoping the vague piece of information would serve as an answer.

“I'm giving you a warning. Be careful where you're going. You could have very nearly caused an accident back there by charging ahead. I'll give you a break today, but don't do it again. The next time I won't be in such a giving mood.”

I expected a smile to go along with his comment, but there was none. “Thank you, Officer,” I said, taking the papers from him. As I waited for him to get back to his car, I looked at the registration again. The address listed was that of Charlie's shop. I put it on top of the envelopes in my lap, then idly flipped through them. Each one was addressed to Charlie's Automotive. Nothing else in there made mention of the name McMichael. If I hadn't been pulled over, needing her registration, I might never have discovered the connection between her and the McMichael family.

I locked the paperwork back into the glove box and slowly pulled the car onto the street while the officer was watching me.

This time I had no idea what direction I was heading.

*   *   *

I ended up
at Get Hammered, a hardware store five blocks down the street from the fabric store. Under the name of the store was the slogan,
Tools plus more for the DIY crowd
. A sign out front indicated parking in the rear. I pulled into the alley and parked in the last of the six spaces designated for customers. I wandered the aisles, wondering what it would take to clean the gate, what I could buy to make me feel safe and secure. I didn't think a padlock would make much of a difference and I couldn't see myself with a weapon.

I turned the corner from the hunting supplies and found myself face-to-face with an aisle of inexpensive sewing machines. They were starters, on sale for less than a hundred dollars. Compared to the industrial ones Giovanni had at To The Nines, these looked like toys.

As much as I had loved playing with fabric when I was at FIDM, combining swatches to create interesting color and texture palettes, I'd never completely embraced pattern making and sewing. My highest grades had come when assigned to a team project. I picked out the textiles and sketched a concept, and my partner turned my vision into reality. It was why I was so perfectly suited to my job and why I had such a great relationship with the women in the workroom. Even with the Korean-to-English language barrier, we communicated through fabric and sketches.

I loved every one of those ladies. They'd been raised using sewing machines as easily as they used kitchen supplies. Every once in a while one of them would bring me a wedding dress or special negligee that had been left to them by their parents or grandparents. They knew how much I'd appreciate the craftsmanship that had gone into each of those pieces. A couple of those garments had even been tailored to fit me when Giovanni went out of town. I cherished the garments as much as I cherished the camaraderie of the staff. They represented an appreciation, a feeling of family that Carson didn't understand. I stopped trying to explain it after the first couple of times. Maybe he didn't have to understand it. Even if we were going to build a life together, I needed to have some cherished things that were just for me.

I picked up one of the sewing machine boxes and carried it with me as I looked for the cleaning supply section. The box was awkward. I passed the toy aisle and noticed a red wagon. I set the sewing machine in the wagon and pulled it behind me.

When I reached the cleaning section, I added a bucket, box of construction-grade rags, and two gallons of industrial-strength cleaner. I could have borrowed supplies from Charlie, but after seeing the name on the registration, I wasn't comfortable turning to her for help. The wagon filled quickly. A petite Mexican woman with brown curly hair appeared in the aisle next to me, staring at the contents.

“Is this yours?” she asked.

“Yes. I'm sorry, is it in your way? I didn't realize I needed a cart.”

“That's a lot of cleaner.”

“I have a big mess to clean up.”

“You better be careful with that stuff. It stinks to high heaven and the fumes are a killer. Last year my boys Carlos and Antonio knocked over a pail of bluing. Stained the floor, the wall, and the cat. I got two of them clean, but I was in bed for a week recovering from what the chemicals did to my lungs.”

“I shouldn't have to worry about that too much. My mess is outside.” I picked up a box of surgical masks, but put them back on the shelf. “Thanks for the warning. Maybe if I do the grunt work tonight the fresh air will counter the stink by morning.”

“You can't clean tonight!”

“Why not?”

“I don't know where you live, but we have zoning laws around here. If you're outside making noise with a bucket of smelly chemicals, somebody's going to call the sheriff's office on you.”

“The Senior Patrol?”

She smiled warmly. “Most likely.”

“I think they've taken a special interest in me.”

“Then you better wait until morning. No point making enemies while you're here.”

I didn't bother to tell the nice lady that it appeared to be too late for that.

“I'm telling you, wait until tomorrow to do your cleaning,” she said.

“From the sound of it, I don't have a choice.”

“Where do you live? I can help you if you want.”

“No, that won't be necessary,” I said quickly.

She pulled a business card out of a zippered pocket on the outside of her oversized black handbag and held it out.
Neato!
it read, with a picture of a curvy Mexican woman in a
Saturday Night Fever
pose, holding a feather duster in her raised hand. Below the picture was the name Maria Lopez. “Cleaning is my business.”

“I'm sorry, I didn't know. I'm Poly.” I held out my hand to shake hers, a gesture that felt too impersonal for the friendliness this woman was showing me.

She laughed. “Don't apologize. Everybody does something, and I make decent money. It started out me and my sisters, but now we have ten employees,” she said proudly. She winked at me. “I get invited into some of the best houses in San Ladrón, and when you're a maid, trust me, you get to see everybody's dirty little secrets.”

I took the card to be polite. “No wonder you know about the cleaning products. I just have one question.”

“Only one? Shoot.”

“How did you clean the cat?”

Her eyebrows drew together for a moment while she made sense of my question, and then she laughed a high-pitched giggle. “I didn't. I changed his name to Peppermint.”

Her laughter was contagious, and temporarily I forgot my problems. I pulled my wagon to the hardware section of the store and added a two-thousand-candle-watt flashlight to my purchases. Off to the right of the store were a few shelves stocked with soaps and various paper products. I assumed this was the “plus more” that the sign out front had indicated. I added soap and toilet paper to my pile. Tomorrow was Monday and I planned to bring the apartment utilities out of the dark ages. Earlier in the day, I hadn't taken much time to check out what other things Uncle Marius may have left behind, but I had a feeling whatever it was, it hadn't been designed to sit around for ten years before being used.

By the time I arrived at the checkout line, the stack in the wagon teetered like it was going to fall. I unpacked the items from the wagon and set them on the conveyor belt, then scanned the headlines of celebrity trash magazines and local newspapers while the molasses-slow cashier scanned the items of the man in front of me. That's when I saw it.

VISITOR BRINGS VANDALISM TO SAN LADRÓN

I plucked the newspaper from the stand. A photo of Land of a Thousand Fabrics was under the headline with copy to the left. As I read, my stomach twisted into a knot. The article was about me.

Correction: half of it was about me, half of it was about Mr. Pickers's murder.

“You want the wagon, too?” prompted a voice. I looked up at the cashier. He'd finished with the man in front of me and had moved on to my purchases. Behind me a short line was forming, people looking to see what the holdup was.

“Yes,” I said, lifting it so he could scan the barcode. “And the newspaper.”

He keyed something into the register and gave me a total. I was low on cash, so I pulled a credit card out of my wallet and swiped it. After the transaction was complete I realized it had been my To The Nines corporate card. Giovanni was going to take issue with that, I expected.

I set my bags back into the wagon and pulled it to Charlie's truck, then loaded them into the back. Before driving home, I carried the newspaper with me to the driver's seat. The outside air was filled with the scent of mesquite. Somebody was having a cookout. For a split second my mouth watered at the thought of a hamburger like the one I'd had from The Broadside, but the thought triggered the memory of the ketchup-stained gate, which sent a wave of unsettling anxiety through me again.

I started the engine. My hands shook as I unfolded the newspaper and I didn't think it was a good idea to drive. This time I read the article in full. It did little to calm me.

VISITOR BRINGS VANDALISM TO SAN LADRÓN

A storefront on Bonita Avenue was the victim of an act of vandalism not usually seen in San Ladrón, and tenants believe they know the cause. “Things were fine until two days ago, when she moved in,” said one tenant, who prefers to be anonymous. “Our town was always safe, and our businesses were, too. Now that she's here, everything is changing. I don't feel safe in my own store anymore, and I might need to sell.”

The “she” in question is Polyester Monroe, the great-niece of former San Ladrón residents Marius and Millie Monroe. Marius passed away last week at the age of eighty-nine, leaving the defunct family business to his relative from Los Angeles. When she arrived in town, so did trouble.

Mr. Pickers, self-appointed head of San Ladrón's Senior Patrol, was found murdered behind the store the day after Ms. Monroe took possession of the property. Mr. Pickers's interest in the storefront has been longstanding. The onetime successful banker lost credibility in the town after making a statement about a “monster in robes” the night of a robbery at the store ten years ago. Shortly thereafter he lost his job, and now, ten years later, he's lost his life.

“Poly is a nice girl who may be in over her head,” said Ken Watts, the Realtor who had hoped to transact a sale between Poly and another interested party. “She has emotional connections to the store, which are understandable, but she's not prepared to take ownership of a store that's been closed for a decade. Maybe nobody is.”

The store in question is Land of a Thousand Fabrics, a onetime Mecca of exotic silks, satin, and toile, imported from countries all over the world. In its prime, Land brought the glamour of Hollywood to San Ladrón, as fashion designers and costumers made the trek west of Los Angeles in search of something they couldn't find in their own City of Angels. Whether the business would have survived inevitable changes to fabric, fashion, and the online availability of items previously exclusive to them will never be known. The store closed its doors ten years ago after co-owner Millie Monroe was murdered in the store during a robbery.