That Touch of Ink (9 page)

TWELVE

“You’re not Archie Leach,” I said instinctively.

“I think I know who I am.”

“You’re not the Archie Leach who came to my studio,” I said, though my argument was losing steam.

“Ms. Night, we’re condominium security, and we need you to answer a couple of questions for us,” said one of the two men in black T-shirts.

I hadn’t done anything wrong, but my desire for answers outweighed my desire to leave. Rocky and I followed them down a carpeted hallway. It was a slow procession with Rocky sniffing at the baseboards along the way. We ended in a break room with faux wood tables and folding chairs. A glowing Dr. Pepper machine stood along one wall, next to a flat screen TV, where a sportscaster reported on the potential of the Dallas Rangers.

The four of us took seats. I wasn’t sure where we were going to start, so I took the first step. “I assure you, a man with your name came to my studio a couple of days ago and hired me to design his condo here.”

I looked from one face to the next. Rocky stood on his hind legs and put his paws on the thin valet attendant’s shins. The man pushed his hands deep into the pockets of his pants and stepped away.

“I thought he wanted me to design one room but it turned out he wanted me to decorate his whole apartment. Mr. Leach is going through a divorce—”

“Stop calling him that,” said the thin valet attendant. His face was drawn together, his arms crossed over his chest.

I stopped mid-sentence and looked at the man who claimed to be the real Mr. Leach and apologized. “What would you like me to call him?”

“Call him Cary Grant,” said one of the beefy security officers. When the other men turned to look at him he shrugged. “What? I watch TCM.”

“Gentlemen, I don’t understand why I’m sitting here in this office. Apparently I’ve been duped, and someone who said he wanted to hire me did not. I took no deposit, and, aside from the time I’ve spent on plans for his apartment and the time I’m wasting sitting here with you, I’m not out anything. I accept responsibility for the mix-up. Now, I’ll be on my way.”

I stood up, scanning the faces of the men in front of me. They didn’t seem convinced of my innocence, and while it seemed inevitable that one of them would ask me to sit back down, I figured it would be up to them to say the words instead of up to me to interpret their implied command.

“Harry, you better get back out front and finish out your shift,” said the thin man.

Harry scowled. “My shift ends in ten minutes. I think it can wait.”

“C’mon, man, if the booth isn’t covered, one of us is going to get reported. I’ll take it from here.”

“There is nothing to take from here,” I said. “We’re done. I have to leave.”

“Lady, you’re not going nowhere,” the thin man said. He was starting to make me mad and not because of his grammar.

“Why don’t you show me some identification so I know that you are the real Archie Leach?”

“Want to see my driver’s license?” he asked. “Too bad. I was robbed a couple of weeks ago.”

“So you can’t prove you are who you say you are? How convenient.”

“I didn’t say that.”

He pulled a nylon wallet out of his back pocket and extracted a wad of plastic cards. He maintained eye contact with me while he dealt them in front of me one by one.

I dropped my eyes to the display, just long enough to make out the name on every card, including his photo identification card for work, which showed a bit more hair than he had on his currently receding hairline. Of all of the things I could have commented on, that was the one I had to fight the most.

“Fine,” I said, and stood up. “I’m sorry to doubt you, Archie.”

“Art.”

“What?”

“I go by Art, not Archie.”

“Fine. I’m sorry, Art. Now, I’m going to be on my way.”

“Ms. Night, sit back down.”

“Why? I haven’t done anything wrong.”

With skills befitting a black jack dealer, Art slid his hand over the fanned-out credit cards, corralling them into a neat stack. He fit them back into his wallet and fit his wallet back into his pocket.

“Maybe you’re telling the truth.” Art folded his skinny arms across his chest.  “Maybe not. I don’t know yet.”

“Maybe we can help each other,” I said.

He made no move to speak.

“Okay, I’ll go first. The man I met walked into my design studio two days ago. This is the address he gave me.”

“Describe your guy.”

“He’s a well-dressed, thin man, sort of preppy. He has black hair slicked back from his face and bears a slight resemblance to Rudolf Valentino.”

All eyes turned to the security guard who watched TCM. “What are you looking at me for?” he asked.

“Does he sound familiar?” I asked.

All three men shook their heads.

“Are you sure? Because I just watched him pull out of your parking lot in a white Lexus. Do you have cameras on the parking lot?”

“White Lexus? That’s Mrs. Bonneville,” said Art. “Her son Grant is visiting. I haven’t seen the guy, but it must have been him.”

“Where is he visiting from?”

“That’s not really our business. Mrs. Bonneville is a long-term tenant. She’s lived here since the sixties. You want to know what I know about her?” he asked.

“Sure.” Whether intentional or not, they were getting my goat. I wasn’t sure how to get information from these men, or how the fake divorcee-slash-client fit into the bigger picture, but I’d take what I could get and sort it out later.

“She has a Pomeranian she treats better than a lot of people treat their own children. She has fresh orchids delivered to her apartment in spring and poinsettias in the fall. White ones, until December, then she switches to red. She has her own driver, her own chef, and her own masseuse. And she tips every one of us a thousand dollars on December thirty-first. Other than that, her business is her business, and I’m sure she’d appreciate if we left it that way.”

“Has her son visited before?”

“Not that I know of.”

I leaned back in the small metal folding chair.

“Gentlemen, I’ve told you all I know. If the man who hired me isn’t who he says he is, then I have no business taking up any more of your time.”

I stood up and adjusted the hem of my argyle sweater. My keys fell from my pocket, and I scooped them up and headed for the exit.

“Where are you going?” Archie asked.

“I’m leaving. I’ve spent enough time here already.” 

I’d apologized enough. The fault of the mix-up lay squarely on the shoulders of Mrs. Bonneville’s son, Grant. I didn’t know why he’d lied about his name or identity. I didn’t even know if he was a real client. The only thing I knew was that I would be bumping Connie’s atomic kitchen up on the priority list.

“Ms. Night. Sit back down. The cops are going to be here any minute now, and I think it’s best if you pass this story off to them.”

“The cops? You called the cops?”

I stopped to think. Calling the cops was a good idea, regardless of their motivation. If Tex took the call, I could tell him what had happened.

“Fine. I have a feeling Lt. Allen will be happy to see me.”

“Then it’s a good thing I took the call instead of him,” said a female voice behind me.

I turned to the doorway, where Officer Nast stood with a scowl on her face.

THIRTEEN

By the time Officer Nast escorted me from the small security office of Turtle Creek Luxury Apartments, hours later, I was convinced the only potential friend I’d made was the security guard with a penchant for old movies.

I repeated, for Officer Nast’s benefit, how I had come to be at the condominium and how I had learned the name Archie Leach in the first place.

The last couple of days had shown me a different side of her that had nothing to do with police business and everything to do with possessive jealousy. I wasn’t sure how the two different aspects of her coexisted on a daily basis, and it wasn’t the right time to find out. So, for all of my forthcomings, there were a few things I kept to myself.

Officer Nast ushered Rocky and me back to my car, never more than a few inches from my left-hand side. It wasn’t until my key was in the lock of the door that she spoke.

“I did you a favor in there, Madison. I’d rather not have to do you another.”

“Officer Nast, this was a simple misunderstanding. Nothing more.”

I opened the car door and lowered myself into the driver’s seat. Nasty blocked the door so I couldn’t close it.

“This boyfriend of yours, do I know him?” she asked.

“How do you know about him?” I asked instead.

“I hear things.” She stood with one hand on my rear view mirror and the other on the hood of my car.

I didn’t know how much Tex might have told her about Brad, but her question made me uncomfortable. “He’s from out of town,” I said.

“What’s his name?”

“Brad Turlington.”

“Are you seeing him tonight?”

“He’s away on business.”

“You sure he’s not a figment of your imagination?”

I fought the urge to get out of the car and address her face to face. “You want proof? Maybe we should double date sometime.” I grabbed the door and yanked it away from her. She jumped backward. I slammed the door shut and peeled out of the lot.

Although my blood was boiling, I kept myself calm until I was two blocks away from Turtle Creek apartments. I channeled all of my attention into the act of driving until I reached a shopping center off Mockingbird. I parked in a space at the end of the lot, cut the engine, leaned forward, and rested my forehead on the top of the steering wheel.

The more I thought about what had happened at the apartment building, the more angry I was over the hostility from Nasty. I’d done nothing to warrant her attitude—I’d done nothing, period. I’d been at the wrong place, wrong time. I was a victim of someone else playing a hoax.

The worst thing about it was that I was sure she was going to tell Tex. As I weighed the pros and cons of calling him first, my phone rang with an unfamiliar number.

“Ms. Night, this is Dennis O’Hara. I’m a real estate agent. Did I catch you at a bad time?”

“No, it’s fine. What can I do for you?”

“It’s what I can do for you, actually. I have a house that’s been on the market for a couple of months, and there’s no interest.”

“I’m an interior decorator, Mr. O’Hara. I decorate houses. I don’t buy them.”

“Well, that’s where this gets weird. The owner isn’t interested in keeping up the taxes on the property, and he gave me your number. He wants you to have the house.”

“I don’t understand.”

“The house belonged to a Thelma Johnson. Her son said you might want it?”

I couldn’t believe my ears. Thelma Johnson was a deceased Dallas resident. My interest in her estate had started a snowball effect that brought a killer out of hiding. “Mr. O’Hara, people don’t give people houses.”

“Technically, you’re right. Her son didn’t give you the house. He gave you a tax bill. The house is paid off, and if you care to make up the back taxes, it’s yours.”

“Free and clear?”

“If four thousand is your definition of free and clear, more power to you.”

I leaned back in the car and stared up at the crisp blue sky. I had a business. I had an apartment complex. I had a studio. What did I need with a modest split level house in the M streets?

“Why me?” I asked the real estate agent.

“He said you earned it. Something about you wanting his mom’s stuff so badly you risked your life for it. I figured he was being. So, what do you think?”

“Can you hold for one moment?” I asked. When he agreed, I held the phone by my thigh and looked at Rocky. “What do you think, Rock? Do we want a secret hideaway?”

He cocked his head to the left like he was considering the question. It wasn’t the first time I’d talked to my dog about major life events and it wouldn’t be the last. Even though he couldn’t answer, I knew what he’d say if he could.

“Mr. O’Hara? I think the answer is yes.”

I made arrangements to meet the realtor to swap a rather large cashier’s check and a couple of signatures for a rather small set of keys. He asked if he could transfer the utilities into my name. I wasn’t sure what I would do with a 1954 house with a flat roof and a pink bathroom, but at least the next time I needed an emergency place to sleep, I had one.

I drove home, my thoughts a jumble of recent and distant memories. Effie was walking toward me in the apartment hallway. She carried her mail in one hand. Rocky strained his leash to greet her, and she dropped into a squat and ruffled his fur, then raised her hand and made him dance in a circle.

“I missed you, Rocky! Madison’s been taking you everywhere!” she said to him.

“I can spare him for about half an hour if you want to get reacquainted. I’m in desperate need of a very long shower,” I said.

“Did you hear that? Did you? Huh? Huh? Huh?” she said.

Rocky danced around on hind legs, trying to snatch an imaginary treat from her fingers. She stood up and took the leash from my hand.

“Thanks, Madison. I’ve been studying for finals all week and it’ll be nice to have a break with Rocky.”

“Thank you, Effie. You’re always so sweet to him.”

“How can I not be? He’s such a good dog.”

The three of us walked up the rear staircase to the building. I unlocked my door, and Effie and Rocky continued to hers, the middle unit on the opposite side of the hallway.

“I’ll come get him in half an hour,” I said.

“Take your time. I’d keep him all night if I thought you’d let me,” she said.

I tossed my keys on the corner of the desk and took off my sweater. My pants followed, as did my lace bra and white cotton panties. I entered the bathroom and cranked up the hot water.

The hot spray massaged my shoulders, neck, and back, until finally I turned the water off. I stepped into a cloud of steam and dried off. When I opened the door to let in some fresh air, I heard a sound from my kitchen.

I pushed the door closed again, leaving it cracked a sliver, and pressed my ear against it. There was someone in my apartment.

That someone was singing
Que Sera Sera
.

The singing from the kitchen stopped. “Maddy? Don’t be scared. It’s me.” Brad’s voice carried from the kitchen.

It was dark outside. The apartment was dimly lit, with only a low wattage glow coming from the mismatched lamps placed around the living room.

I shrugged into my thick terrycloth robe and secured it with a square knot, making sure there was no chance that it would fall open. My bare feet carried me from the bathroom into the bedroom. I opened the bottom drawer of my dresser and pulled out a pair of blue flannel pajamas from my stash. I picked the yellow peignoir set up from the bed and shoved it into the back of the drawer. I wanted to be careful about signals that would trigger unwanted advancements.

I tapped my hand on the outside of the wall before I reached it. When I rounded the corner, Brad stood over the stove, stirring the contents of a large silver pot. He wore a gray and black checked sport coat over a white polo shirt with the collar up. On his head was a Hamburg that had been black once, but was now a varied shade of gray. A small pheasant feather stood out at a diagonal from the band above the brim.

“Chicken soup from scratch. I made it earlier today at my place and brought it over. Is it still your favorite?” he asked and held the spoon out for me to taste it.

“How did you get in here?”

“Your neighbor found me in the hallway. I told her I wanted to surprise you.”

“Which neighbor?”

“The teenager across the hall, the one who’s watching your dog.”

“Effie let you in here?” Effie had a set of my keys in case of emergency, when I knew Rocky needed to go out and I couldn’t get home in time. It surprised me to think that she’d let a stranger in.

Brad stepped closer to me. “She recognized me from the first day I came here. After you kicked me out.” He dropped his head and looked sheepish. “She asked how I knew you and I told her I knew you from before you moved here. She liked that. I guess because she likes you.”

“She shouldn’t have let you in here.”

“She said she was sad that you were going to pick Rocky up because she was having a good time with him. I asked her to keep him for the night so we could be alone.” He watched my face for a couple of seconds and poured the contents of the spoon back into the pot. “It’ll keep. Come here,” he said, and opened his arms.

I stood in front of him, my emotions in a jumble. I needed something, just one thing, to signal which emotion to trust.

“Have you changed so much that you don’t remember what it was like when we were together?”

Exhaustion hit me like a body slam from a professional wrestler and my knees buckled. Brad caught me and held me in his arms. With my head tipped against his chest, I exhaled a deep breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. I inhaled the scent of his cologne, Old Spice. It was the same one he’d worn the night I first met him. The scent took me back to the room in Pierot’s Interiors, when we were falling in love and our lives were less complicated.

“I know I said I’d give you space, but I couldn’t stay away. I’ve missed you so much. This feels right, doesn’t it?” he whispered into my hair.

“It feels familiar,” I whispered back.

“Madison, let’s pick up where we left off. It’s not too late, is it?”

His hands moved up to my arms, and he gently pushed me away so he could see my face. The fingers of his right hand traced down the side of my cheekbone. I stood still, remembering what it used to feel like when Brad touched me.

Everything other than the touch of his fingertips melted away. For a second, it was like it had been when we first met, when I knew beyond the shadow of a doubt that if it were Brad and I against the world, we’d win. The impulse to go back in time trumped everything else in my world. I closed my eyes and leaned in, and his lips brushed against mine.

“Let’s run away, Maddy. Let’s start over. We both left Pennsylvania. I know things will never be like they were, but that doesn’t mean we can’t go someplace new and create something even better together.”

I couldn’t say that I wasn’t the type to run away and start over because I was. Starting a new life had been the single best thing I’d done for myself. I’d never felt rooted. My family had passed away when I was in my thirties. Brad had been my family, until that one day when he wasn’t.

I realized I’d run away from that life because it didn’t fit me. This life did.

“I don’t want to run away, Brad. This is me, this is my life. This is where I want to be. We can never go back to what we were.”

“Then I’m sorry I tracked you down and I’m sorry I interrupted your life. Why don’t you give me the James Madison? I can’t leave until you give it back.”

I stiffened. The five thousand dollar bill was sealed in an envelope in the rent box in the front of my lobby. I knew it was evidence—to something—and I couldn’t risk Brad finding it. I couldn’t risk anyone finding it.

I took a step backward, away from him. Did I still know this man? How much had I ever known him? What secrets did he hold that I didn’t understand?

“That’s all it’ll take. Give me the bill and I’ll leave.” He put a finger under my chin. “Or let me stay and give me a second chance.”

He stared at me, his smoldering gaze reminding me of the feelings I thought I’d buried. It had been years since I felt the touch of his hands, anybody’s hands, for that matter, and after the way it had ended, I thought I’d turned that part of myself off forever.

I wasn’t the same person I’d been when Brad and I had been together. I shut people out and discovered my independence. I got my affection from a Shih Tzu, and I let my business keep a barrier between myself and the most reliable men I’d met since moving to Dallas—Hudson and Tex. Even owning the apartment building in secret was a way for me to protect myself.

I didn’t like facing how much Brad’s betrayal had scarred me, and so I spent much of my time alone, not analyzing the person I’d become. But with Brad’s return came self-analysis.

Tex had questions about his homicide. Nasty had questions about Tex. Hudson had questions about his future.

And I had questions about my past.

It was time my questions got answered.

“We need to talk.” I set my spoon down and walked into the living room.

Brad followed me and sat in a chair opposite the sofa. He put his elbows on his knees and folded his hands in front of him. When he rested his chin on his knuckles, once again, I stared at his watch. He noticed.

“This watch tells me that time goes on. And now’s the real test, just like the inscription says. ‘Only time will tell.’” He dropped one hand to the face of the watch and traced the second hand as it swept in a circle.

“I wondered if this day would come,” he continued. “I used to lie awake imagining what it would be like to have to answer to you. To explain what happened.” He looked down at his Converse sneakers. “I stopped wondering after a year. I knew you hated me.”

If he wanted me to say I didn’t, I didn’t. I couldn’t. A part of me had hated him. A part of me still did. What he didn’t realize was that I hated him for all the wrong reasons.

I hated him for lying to me, even if he said he lied to protect me.

I hated him for not coming to see me when I was hospitalized with my knee injury.

I hated him for driving us apart. If he hadn’t lied to me, we might still be together, sharing that bed in the back of Pierot’s. I might never have developed the life I had now.

And after the break, when I finally was on the verge of dropping my guard, when I was ready to move forward instead of fighting so hard to block the past, I hated him for the hidden message, the apology, and the explanation telling me everything I’d come to hate about him wasn’t true.

I hated him the most for that.

As much of a release as it might have been to yell at him, to slap him ten times harder than Connie slapped Tex at my studio, to push him out of my life for good, I needed answers to questions that would otherwise haunt me. I also needed to tell Brad the truth.

“Brad, there’s something you don’t know. That first year, when you were waiting for some kind of response or reaction from me, I didn’t know the truth. I didn’t find the message you left for me until a couple of months ago.”

“But—”

“I had no reason to think you were lying. When you told me you were married, you hurt me—badly. You damn near scarred me. I don’t ever want to feel like that again.”

“Your knee. Is that what happened in the skiing accident?”

“I’m not talking about my knee.”

“Madison, I never wanted you to get hurt.”

“But I did get hurt, Brad! You can’t take that back. I don’t care if your lie was a lie. I don’t care if you claim you were trying to protect me. I’m a different person because of you. I’m not open anymore. I don’t trust people. The damage is done.”

“Then give me the bill, Madison. Give me the bill and I’ll leave.”

“No, Brad. No. Even if I could give you the bill, it wouldn’t change anything. I need closure, and finding out the truth about that bill is the only way I’ll get it.”

“You don’t have it?”

“It’s not here.”

He stood. “That’s too bad, Madison. Without that bill, I’m a a dead man.”