That Touch of Ink (10 page)

FOURTEEN

Our conversation was interrupted by a knock on the door. I was ready to tell whoever it was to go away until I looked through the peephole. It was Tex.

When I opened the door I kept one hand on the frame and the other on the knob, blocking him from entering.

“What are you doing here? I thought private citizens were entitled to come and go as they wished. Or maybe you wanted to drop by, see if I was dining alone?”

“Are you?”

“That’s none of your business.”

“Because if you’re dining alone, I’d be happy to join you.”

“No, thank you.”

“So you’re not dining alone. Anybody I know?”

“Shouldn’t you be getting home to your girlfriend?” I asked abruptly. I stepped into the hallway and pulled the door shut behind me. Before I had it closed, Brad yanked it open.

“Maddy, is everything okay?”

“Everything’s fine.”

Brad and Tex looked at each other. I looked back and forth at the two of them.

“Brad, this is Tex. Tex, Brad.”

Instinct kept me from introducing Tex by rank.

I turned to Brad. “It’ll take just a second for me to finish up here, and I’ll be back inside in a second.” He nodded at Tex, and pulled the door shut behind him. A waft of chicken soup aroma followed me into the hallway.

“Does he know about what happened last year?”

“A little. He read the article from the paper.”

“You didn’t tell him anything else?”

“No.”

“Interesting.”

“What’s so interesting? We have a lot of catching up to do. I’m sure it will come up in conversation.”

“That’s not what’s interesting. I’m talking about the fact that you’re keeping quiet about parts of your life.”

“I’m not keeping quiet. I just haven’t brought it up.” I paused for a moment. “Does Donna know you’re here helping me?”

“Yes.”

“Interesting.”

“Not really. She’s on the force. Anything I do that’s police business, she knows about.”

“Does she know where you slept last night?”

He glared at me.

“I’m not going to keep you long, but I wanted you to know your Romeo checks out. He’s got a couple of skeletons in his closet, but nothing you should be worried about.”

“I thought you said you couldn’t nose around in his background?”

“His name came up in the investigation.” He stepped backward and winked. “I thought you’d like to know he’s clean. If that’s been keeping you from sleeping at night, well, there are better reasons not to sleep.”

Five minutes ago, I’d been ready to say good-bye to Brad for good. There was a big difference between saying good-bye and signing his death sentence. I bit my lower lip and thought about what Brad had said to me.

“You know, Night, somebody once told me that when people are in a relationship, they’re supposed to want to spend time together. You better be getting back inside before he misses you.”

“Lieutenant, Brad didn’t come to Dallas for me. He came for the James Madison.”

“Did you give it to him?”

“I don’t have it.”

“Is it in there?” He pointed at my door.

“No.” I reached out and grabbed Tex’s forearm. “He says they’re going to kill him. We might not have a future but I can’t let him die over this.”

Tex studied my face. “Can you keep him here tonight? I’ll get a team together in the morning.”

I felt an emotional tug toward Tex. We hadn’t known each other long, but I felt like he could see straight through me.

“Thank you,” I said. 

I shut the door behind me and took a sip of my wine. Why had Tex really shown up on my doorstep? Was he was looking to crash on my sofa two nights in a row? I didn’t think so. And worse, he said he wouldn’t break the law to run a background check on Brad. The fact that he’d done so told me one thing: Tex didn’t see Brad as an innocent private citizen any more. He knew more about Brad than he let on.

There was another tap on the door. I whipped it open.

“There isn’t time for this—” I said to Tex, only it wasn’t Tex in front of me. It was Mrs. Young, my newest tenant. 

“I’m sorry. I thought you were someone else,” I said.

“I hope it’s not too late. I wanted to say thank you. My application was approved and my boys already love it here. Even the range hood. They say it sounds like a Pterodactyl. Why are kids so fascinated with dinosaurs?” She pushed her hair off her face with the back of her forearm. “I thought once we found a place it would be brownies and cupcakes, you know, bake lots of sweets and have them fall asleep early in a sugar coma. Not pterodactyls.”

“You should call Hudson.”

“I did.” She looked confused. “I told you I got the apartment, right?”

“Right.” I hesitated. Even though I’d said I’d put in a good word for her and I’d given her Hudson’s number, I felt surprisingly un-centered. It had all gone so smoothly without any effort on my part. Little by little it felt like the life I’d established for myself in Dallas was slipping away.

“That’s not what I meant. Hudson will fix your range hood.”

“I thought I should notify the building owners and let them deal with it.”

“Sure, you can do that too, but they’ll just call Hudson.”

“Maybe Hudson is the building owner. Have you ever suspected that?” she asked.

I smiled my most charming smile. “There are times I wish he was.”

Mrs. Young looked past me into the room. Her hand was on the front door, and she pushed it open slightly, angling for a better look. “You have hardwood floors. Do other units have them too?”

“No. This is a mid-century building. The whole thing had hardwood floors when it was built. Only later, in the seventies and eighties, people covered them up with wall-to-wall carpet. The hardwood exists, it just needs to be exposed and refinished.”

“You were allowed to do your own renovations?”

“I hired some people to paint the place. I’m not sure where the confusion happened but when I got home the carpet was gone. All I expected was to have yellow walls.”

I didn’t want her to get too curious or to attempt to contact the Night Company about renovations.

“Nice bonus,” she said.

“Not really. The floors still need to be refinished and that’s going to make a big mess.”

Despite the fact that I was telling the truth, her eyes narrowed, and she stared at me. I felt scrutinized, as though she were measuring what she knew of me against what I told her to make a determination on whether or not she believed me. I didn’t like that I knew nothing about her. I’d have to remember to get the application papers from Hudson the next time I saw him.

“Mrs. Young, thank you for stopping by. It’s been a long day, and it’s time for me to wind down.”

I stepped back, away from the door, and pushed it half-way shut. She put a hand on the front of the door and for a moment we stood there, separated by a sliver of space. Again she rubbed at her hairline. I followed her hand and noticed a succession of small red dots by her temple.

“I changed cleansers and had a reaction.” She smiled. “I should know better, at my age.” She dropped her hand and stepped backward into the hallway.

I smiled and shut the door, locking the deadbolts immediately. I stayed there, waiting for her footsteps to retreat down the hallway. I didn’t hear those footsteps until after I’d counted to seventeen.

I turned around and faced the dining room table, but it was empty. I went to the kitchen. Brad wasn’t there either. The silver stock pot of chicken soup still sat on top of the stove, but the heat was off.

The light was on in the bathroom. I leaned back against the door and thought about Tex’s request. I had a choice here. Move forward or hold on to my anger. I didn’t want to be the kind of person who surrounded herself with anger. I was strong, independent, capable of taking care of myself. I’d proven that. Maybe now it was time to take care of someone else.

I crossed the apartment and tapped on the bathroom door. “Hey,” I said softly.

The door cracked, and Brad looked down at me. “Hey,” he said back.

“I was thinking. It’s late, and I’m tired.”

“Sure, I understand.”

I held the door open for him, and he stepped into the hallway. The white afghan was folded on the end of the sofa and the pillow plumped in place. “You should stay here tonight.”

“Maddy—” He stepped forward, and I put a hand out on his chest.

“The sofa, Brad. I’m offering you my sofa. Nothing more.”

Brad went out to his car and returned with pajamas in one hand and a black plaid overnight kit in the other.

“Do you mind if I take a shower? Will that keep you awake?”

“I don’t think anything can keep me awake tonight.”

I stood by the end of the hallway, one hand on the wall to keep me standing. My left leg bent underneath me, the shin resting on the arm of the low sofa, my weight balanced on the right foot. From his vantage point, I expected that I looked like I had only one leg.

He set his pajamas and kit on the bathroom floor.

“Thank you, Madison.”

He turned back and went into the bathroom, closing the door behind him. I went into the bedroom and leaned against the closed door. I didn’t know how I would sleep knowing Brad was in the living room. Turns out my exhaustion made it a moot point.

When I woke, hours later, it was in pitch blackness, draped in a silence that choked me. I lay still. The clock read three forty-seven.

I have a theory about the hour between three and four o’clock in the morning. It is the dead of night. Too late to catch the remnants of the nightlife in Lakewood and too early to announce the morning people starting their routine. It is the hour when only the troubled are active: those whose thoughts are too filled with anxiety to wind down. Earlier hours might have been filled with a drug-induced sleep, but as drugs wear off, anxiety returns, circling through the brain in an endless loop of worry. I didn’t like to admit it, but I knew anxiety well.

I hadn’t known about the dead of night in the old days, the days filled with daisies, Doris Day movies, atomic kitchens, and refinished retro furniture. In those days, the dead of night might as well have been an exclusive club with an unmarked door and a password.

But somewhere in the past nine months, I had become a card carrying member.

The loneliness of being in my bed without a wriggling Rocky filled me with sadness. I missed him. I didn’t know how early I could expect to hear from Effie, but it wouldn’t be soon enough.

As the silence cloaked the night, I stood up and moved to the bedroom door. Brad’s breathing was even. Silently, I crossed the room and drew back the curtains enough to see the moon casting a glow on Brad’s black 1964 Mustang.

Brad was right. He knew me better than almost anybody. I had resentfully been denying the fact, while not acknowledging the obvious counterpoint to his statement. I knew him better than anybody else did too.

I knew he wouldn’t wear a Hawaiian shirt past Labor day.

I knew he thought towels, soap, and underwear should always be white.

And I knew he never travelled for any length of time without a garment bag that held a formal suit, shirt, tie, and shoes.

I looked at the duffle bag sitting inside the floor of my bedroom. There was no garment bag in sight. His car keys were sitting on top of my dresser. Brad’s even snoring sounded from the living room, and, as quietly as I could, I slid the key to his Mustang from the key ring.

I couldn’t help thinking the story Brad told me had been edited to suit my needs. I needed to read the unabridged version. It was time to figure out exactly what kind of baggage Brad had brought with him to Dallas.

FIFTEEN

I devised a plan. It would be difficult, leaving the apartment while Brad slept. Difficult, but not impossible.

I’m not in the habit of going to my parking lot in the middle of the night in my pajamas, but this was a do-it-now opportunity. I knotted the terry cloth robe at the waist and slipped my feet into my slippers. I put my keys in one pocket, Brad’s key in the other. I opened the bedroom and crept into the hallway.

As I tiptoed to the bathroom, Brad’s snores grew louder, until a breath that caught at the back of his throat stopped his breathing altogether. I pressed myself against the wall and waited. A couple of seconds later he coughed twice and started breathing again. I slowly turned the deadbolt until the door was unlocked and slipped out of the narrowest opening I could.

A stiff knee and a need to be quiet made my descent on the staircase slow. When I reached the back door, I listened for a sign to tell me this was a good idea. The building was shrouded in silence so loud it was deafening. I looked out the glass pane on the door into the parking lot. A scraggly alley cat sat in the middle of the blacktop. I turned the door knob and pushed the door open and the cat turned around and ran underneath Brad’s car. Good enough for me.

After easing the door shut behind me, I moved through the lot. Brad had backed into the visitor space, and the trunk of his Mustang butted up against the chain-link fence at the edge of the property. I looked up at my windows and saw nothing other than the lining of my curtains. With a deep breath of crisp night air, I went to the back of his car and plunged his key into the lock. The trunk popped open. A light illuminated the felted wool interior and exposed the contents. The expected garment bag. The expected roadside emergency kit.

And a very unexpected flat, brown leather briefcase monogrammed with the letters PS.

I recognized the initials. They matched the monogram on the handkerchief inside the box from Joanie Loves Tchotchkes.

The acrid odor of a skunk’s spray caught my nostrils. I tucked my chin to my chest and pulled the collar of my robe up over my face. I looked around the lot for the culprit but saw nothing. It was difficult to take a deep breath with the smell hanging in the air, but I couldn’t hold my breath forever. I grabbed the handle of the briefcase and pulled it toward me. I had to see what was inside.

A four-digit spinning lock kept two gold hinged plates in place. Without the code, I was at a standstill. The numbers stood sentry at one-two-three-four. I considered what that might mean.

When Brad and I worked at Pierot’s, we changed the combination of the safe to our birthdays. Mine was April third. Four-three. Brad’s was February first. Two-one. Together we were four-three-two-one. It was one of those silly things that felt special when we were first getting to know each other. Our own birthdays fit together as well as we thought we did. As a joke against the obvious, we kept the Pierot’s lock at one-two-three-four, and shared a secret smile whenever Mr. Pierot commented on it.

I spun the dials to four-three-two-one. The night was so quiet, so still, that I heard the click of the lock popping even before I thumbed the release button.

Inside was an assortment of glass bottles, none bigger than a jar of craft paint. A collection of fine tipped brushes were rubber banded together and sat along the side. Nestled between the jars and the interior wall of the briefcase were stacks of hundred dollar bills rubber banded together. A lot of them. They were dog-eared, crinkled, and looked like they’d been in circulation for a while. And as much as I was spooked by the stacks of hundreds, they weren’t the strangest thing in there.

No, the strangest thing was the sheaf of white paper with James Madison’s image staring up at me from the center of a perfectly-rendered five thousand dollar bill.

Unlike the movies where sheets of uncut bills are confiscated as evidence to a counterfeiting scheme, these sheets each held one image. I picked one up and looked at the back. The reverse side was perfectly lined up with the front. The only thing missing was a very sharp paper cutter.

It didn’t make sense. Five thousand dollar bills had been taken out of circulation in the late sixties. If the internet could be trusted, it was rumored that less than four hundred were in existence. Not only was the Federal Reserve not interested in producing them, but they destroyed them when they were discovered. It was one of the reasons the bill was worth so much to collectors.

But collectors required certification to establish authenticity. I could maybe see a person finding one in a suitcase of a relative’s belongings that had been stashed in the attic, but how would someone go about passing a stack of them? What could possibly be the reason for copying a bill that’s been out of circulation for so long? What did it have to do with the murder at Paper Trail and the missing numismatist, Stanley Mann? Where
was
the missing numismatist? And why did Brad care so much about the bill he sent me when he had a whole trunk of them?

I stood up straight, one hand on the lid to the trunk, and thought about the box from Joanie’s. She said it had my name on it. Was it possible—could it be—that Brad was the one who put my name on the box and left it with her? That would be one way for him to be relatively certain he’d get the contents back—including the wallet that was hidden at the bottom. At least, if he was at my apartment, he could.

No, it couldn’t be. It was too convoluted. The man who dropped off the box had a bad case of poison ivy.

Which might have cleared up in the time Brad claimed he was “giving me space.”

Headlights bounced around the small driveway on the east side of the building that led to the parking lot.

I slammed the briefcase shut, but the paper I held stuck out between the hinges. An explosion of adrenaline shot through my chest, and I closed the trunk too. The latch caught, barely holding the trunk shut. I tried to free the key from the lock but it stuck. The scraggly cat shot past my foot. I stifled a scream and dropped onto all fours.

A dark brown sedan pulled into my lot and stopped in front of the line of parked cars. A door open and shut. A flashlight’s beam danced across the gravel. I looked under the car at two shoes on the other side of the tire axel. Past them, under the next car, crouched a small animal. I assumed it was the cat, who would run away if either of us got too close. As the shoes walked around the right side of Brad’s car, I slowly moved myself around the left, trying to stay quiet.

I reached the front of the car at the same time the trunk popped open. I was unused to having my bad knee bent for so long, and the pain was like a drill bit piercing the soft tissue under my knee cap. I had to stand up and flex it, or I wouldn’t be able to move at all. I stretched my neck to the side and looked at the back of the car. The trunk lid blocked my view of the person. I turned around and looked at the car. It was the same brown sedan that had followed me home from the Polynesian restaurant. The front bumper was bent in two places from ramming the back of my car.

I slowly stood, bent at the waist. I was an obvious, open target in a white terry cloth robe and pink slippers, moving about a parking lot during the dead of night. I had to get back in the building.

Crouching low, I ran to the back door. My foot slipped on the loose gravel and I fought against tripping. I reached the back door and yanked on the doorknob. It was locked. I felt in my pocket for my keys, but they weren’t there. I turned around and saw them lying in the gravel next to Brad’s wheel.

The man from the brown sedan looked up from behind the trunk. His face—his whole head—was covered with a black knit ski mask that left distorted oval circles around his eyes and mouth. In the darkness, illuminated only by the full moon, I could make out little more than the whites of his eyes.

He pulled the briefcase from the trunk of the car and lowered the trunk lid until it snapped into place. His eyes followed mine to my keys, resting in the gravel. He came toward me.

I rattled the doorknob again, irrationally hoping it would jostle open. It didn’t. I heard a hiss and the air filled with the stench of skunk again.

The man in the mask coughed twice. A furry black and white critter ran out from underneath and disappeared through the chain link fence. I pulled my robe up over my face. The man flung the briefcase onto the passenger seat of his car and drove out of the parking lot.

I gagged on the smell that hung in the air. I needed a deep breath but couldn’t take one. I couldn’t get into my car or into my building. I couldn’t do anything without my keys. I had to go back for them.

I dropped to my hands and knees between Brad’s Mustang and my neighbor’s El Camino. My keys were within reach. The skunk spray must have hit the tire in front of me, because the proximity of the scent was sickening. I tucked my face into my robe again, inhaled through the fabric and held my breath as I reached under the car. By the time I succeeded, I was dirty, smelly, and nauseous.

The reasons I couldn’t go back to my apartment were numerous. I unlocked the door to my car, pulled out of the lot, and drove into the darkness.

The roads of Lakewood were dark and lonely, the opposite of what I wanted. I had nothing with me, nothing but the pajamas on my back, the now-filthy terrycloth robe, and the fluffy pink slippers on my feet. I drove to my studio but didn’t pull in. My car was too recognizable, like a yellow highlighter in the middle of a black and white page. I needed a different place to stay. One where nobody would think to look for me. I continued past my studio for about eight blocks and turned left on Monticello.

I was about to move in to Thelma Johnson’s house.

Aside from the glow of an almost ripe moon, the M streets were dark. Thelma Johnson’s house had a garage, and I remembered it to be empty. I used a key on my keychain to unlock and haul the door overhead, then returned to the car and pulled it in. One problem solved, temporarily, at least. After lowering the hinged door into place I threw the locking mechanism. I took off the skunk-scented robe and tossed it into the neighbor’s trash bin, then scampered to the side entrance of the house.

Thelma Johnson had kept her house in the style to which she’d become accustomed sometime in the late fifties, I’d guess. Most of her belongings were in a storage facility behind my studio. Had I known that one day I’d seek refuge here, I would have left the furniture untouched, but it was too late to think about that now. It was too late to think about much other than a shower and sleep, both of which I desperately needed.

I found a half-empty bottle of liquid dish detergent by the sink and carried it upstairs. I stood under the hot spray of the shower far longer than usual and lathered twice. By the time I got out, my fingers and toes were wrinkled and I’d replaced the scent of skunk with lemons. The color of my normally pale skin was only slightly lighter than a third degree burn.

I wrapped a sheet around my torso like a toga and washed my pajamas and undies in the tub with the remainder of the dish detergent. The water bubbled up like a malfunctioning washing machine and seeped over the edge of the tub onto the floor. I hung my garments over the shower curtain rod and headed toward the bedroom.

From a hall closet that I’d yet to empty, I pulled a canary-colored blanket trimmed in satin along with a set of white sheets printed with faded flowers in pink, blue, and yellow. I carried them to the larger of the two bedrooms and set up camp in the middle of the floor where the four poster bed had once sat.

I was too keyed up to fall asleep, but there was nothing I could do until morning. The best thing for me to do was think. I stared at the ceiling for what felt like hours. My mind raced with implications and accusations based on the suitcase of questionable contents I’d seen in the trunk of Brad’s car.

What did it mean? I didn’t know. What I did know was that Brad’s surprise visit to Dallas was a main course that came with a side dish of hidden agenda. Worse was the only thing I had for my snooping were more questions.

Which was the truth: the repentant former lover who wanted to pick up where we left off? Or this new Brad, who had secrets and a muddy past and was somehow connected to a counterfeiting plot I couldn’t quite comprehend? Which version of the man I once knew was spending the night at my apartment?

Had Brad been watching me and my apartment since before he knocked on my door, bringing some unknown danger into my life? I’d invited him into my house. He was asleep on my sofa. Had he manipulated me into accepting his version of events, all the while vying for access to my apartment so he could search for the five thousand dollar bill?

The longer I lay there, the more I knew I had to do something. My mind raced a thousand different directions, and I couldn’t begin to comprehend how Brad would react when he woke up and discovered I was missing.

I wasn’t the only thing Brad would notice was missing. His key was missing from his key ring. If the masked man hadn’t take it, then it was still in the trunk of his car.

I didn’t know what Brad was up to, or whether he was one of the good guys or the bad.

By the time the sun came up, I’d dozed through fits of memories and nightmares. The sun filtered through yellow gingham curtains, painting the room with an innocent glow. And despite the idyllic colors of Thelma Johnson’s bedroom, I was in a dark place.

I pushed myself into a sitting position, then stood up and flexed my joints. I was stiff in seven different places from sleeping on the floor again. The memory of the skunk’s scent hung in my mind despite last night’s shower. I moved to the bathroom and splashed water on my face. I wasn’t sure what I was going to wear considering the only thing I had was a pair of not-quite-dry blue flannel pajamas.

I took another shower, this time using a squirt of pink liquid soap that sat on the edge of Thelma Johnson’s bathtub. As the scalding spray massaged the kinks out of my muscles, I scrubbed my body like I wished I could scrub my life. I turned off the water and stepped into a room filled with steam.

Water was still running. I double checked the hot and cold nozzles, but that wasn’t it. I dripped onto the yellow and white tile floor and moved to the window, looking for the source of the sound.

I found it in my front yard.

Tex stood in front of the flower beds with a hose in his hand, watering my garden.

I threw the lock on the window and pushed it open. “What do you think you’re doing?” I yelled through the screen of the window. His head snapped up to look at me.

“Who is that?” He shielded his eyes. “Night?”

“Wait right there.” I wrapped a towel around my otherwise naked body and descended the stairs. When I reached the front door, Tex had it open and was starting to come inside. I pushed him backward with my right hand and slammed the door with my left.

The towel dropped to the floor.