The Decorator Who Knew Too Much

by Diane Vallere

  Jo slipped on a pair of flip flops and grabbed her keys. “Let’s go.” I followed her to the hatchback parked in her driveway. She unlocked the doors and moved a stack of colorful flyers from the passenger side seat to the back. Rocky and I climbed in and I held him on my lap. “You have a place in mind?” she asked.

  “Not really. If you can drop me off at a Starbucks, I’ll boot up my computer and find a motel that takes animals. Honestly, I know this is a bit much to ask of you.”

  “Honey, forget about it.” She backed out of the driveway and took off down the narrow road. Soon we were on East Palm Canyon Drive. “You think I don’t know what Jimmy is like? When I bought the house, I thought we’d become friends. Our girls were the same age and went to the same school. It would have made sense. But there was something off whenever we were together. It was like Jimmy didn’t want Emma and me to spend any time together. Maybe single women intimidate him. I tried to bring it up to her, you know, girl talk, but she acted like it was all in my head. I finally got bored with the whole thing.”

  “I don’t mean to pry, but you mentioned your divorce the other day. Is Gina’s dad in the picture?”

  “Not anymore, thank God.” She rolled her eyes. “I bought the house with money from the settlement. He got off cheap. After the divorce was final I found out he’d slept with his receptionist and at least two different patients.”

  Something Jo had said earlier tickled at the back of my mind, and a series of facts slipped together into an unavoidable conclusion.

  “You said he was a doctor, didn’t you?”

  “Psychiatrist. People say surgeons have a God complex, but psychiatrists are the absolute worst. He used to brag about how he knew everybody’s secrets.” She turned into the parking lot of a Tiki-themed motel. “This looks to be right up your alley. It has a pool too. A couple of friends of mine stayed here last year and gave it a thumbs up. Good price, especially in the off season.”

  “Thanks,” I said. I opened the door. Rocky climbed out, but stayed close to the car. “Jo, when’s the last time you talked to your ex?”

  “Gosh, I don’t know. I cut ties before the ink was dry on the divorce papers. He probably expected me to move out of Palm Springs, but the joke was on him.”

  “What joke?”

  “You’re looking at the new vocalist for the summer concert series at the music hall.” She beamed. “I made sure they delivered a whole stack of programs to Albert’s office too. Wish I’d been there to see the look on his face. One of these days, karma is going to catch up to him.”

  I didn’t say what was running through my head. It seemed to me that something had already caught up with Dr. Albert Hall, and it was far more human than karma.

  FOURTEEN

  As sure as I was that Jo’s ex-husband was the murder victim, I couldn’t be the one to tell her. The police, once they’d determined the victim’s identity, would be knocking on her door. He was the father of her child, but, depending on the nature of their divorce, she’d probably be questioned as a suspect.

  How long would it be before the police reached the same conclusion I had? I’d been privy to snippets of information I’d picked up since arriving in Palm Springs: the detective’s recommendation I talk to the psychiatrist he talked to, Emma’s suspicion that the doctor she was having an affair with was the man who’d been killed, and the row of prescription bottles in Emma’s house. Jo and Emma seemed to have a friendly relationship, too. It was unclear if Jo knew—or cared—that her ex had been dallying with her neighbor. But because of everything I knew, links between confidences were growing and conclusions were being reached. I didn’t like being at the epicenter of everybody else’s secrets.

  I had a choice. Call the police and offer up my theory, or let them investigate the crime themselves. Would it do anybody any good for me to claim to know the victim’s identity? Not when the admission would require me to violate at least one person’s trust. The medical examiner would reach the same conclusion, probably sooner rather than later. Add in what the police would piece together after a day at the river, including the abandoned SUV in the parking lot, and my information would be old news. It would impede the investigation, not help it along.

  And frankly, considering I was standing outside of a motel and hadn’t yet called Hudson to tell him what had happened or where I’d gone, it seemed more prudent to focus on the problem at hand.

  Thanks to the fact that only people who have agreed to a vacation where they’re also working for their friends/family appeared to come to Palm Springs in September, the motel was mostly vacant. When the manager heard about the animals, he gave me a suite with two queen-sized beds at the single bed rate. Somehow I knew both Rocky and Mortiboy would end up in whichever bed Hudson and I chose. I checked in, set up a corner for Rocky, and pulled out my phone. I’d missed two calls from Hudson.

  “Hi,” I said when he answered my return call.

  “Madison, what’s going on? I left to get bagels and when I came back the house was empty. All of your stuff was gone. Is there something I should know?”

  So Jimmy had left the house too. That meant Hudson didn’t know about the argument. Jimmy’s accusation of my attention-seeking was still ringing in my ears, so I did the only thing I could to quiet them down. I took the high road. “This is our first getaway, right?”

  “Right.”

  “I thought it should feel more like our first getaway. I packed up and checked us into a motel. I’m at Tiki Tropics on East Palm Canyon Drive.”

  “You’re already there?”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “Color me surprised. Where are Rock and Mortiboy?”

  “The motel allows pets. Rocky’s with me, but I thought you’d like to be the one to bring Mortiboy.”

  “What about Emma and Jimmy?”

  “I think Emma and Jimmy will be just fine on their own.”

  His voice dropped lower. “What about us?”

  “I’m hoping we’ll be just fine on our own too.”

  A beat of silence passed between us, an undercurrent I hadn’t felt since we left Dallas. “The police told Jimmy the river is off limits temporarily while they scout the scene for evidence, so he asked if I’d be willing to head with him out to Salton Springs to pick up some more fixtures and signs. Right about now I wish I’d said no.”

  “We’ll have plenty of time together tonight. The main reason we came here was to help Jimmy. You go with him. There’s a local flea market I want to check out. If we divide and conquer, we’ll both feel better about relaxing tonight.”

  “I didn’t say anything about relaxing,” Hudson said.

  I smiled to myself. “Go do what you have to do. I’ll tell the front desk you and Mortiboy are joining me so you can check in if you get here while I’m out.”

  “You think of everything, don’t you?” he asked.

  “I’m a little rusty on this relationship stuff, but I’m doing my best.”

  “I wouldn’t want it any other way.”

  After we hung up, I cranked the air conditioning and unpacked. The room was a kitschy shrine to Polynesian Tiki culture from the fifties. The bed was trimmed with bamboo, and the headboard was covered in colorful bar cloth that mimicked the island feel. Framed paintings of Tikis hung along one wall. They were numbered and signed by a local artist. While the décor was charming, the size of the room was small. It had been one thing to agree to stay in a house owned by Hudson’s sister. It was an entirely other thing to restrict ourselves to a motel room with little more than a couple of beds. I unpacked my overnight kit on the sink and left my sleeping pills next to the motel water glass.

  Rocky appeared to have been affected by the overbearing heat. He lay on the center of one of the queen-sized beds with his chin resting between his paws and his hind legs spread out behind him. His turned-up little black nos
e whistled quietly as he breathed. I shifted my now-empty suitcase from the luggage stand to the hall closet, and Rocky watched me with mild interest. It was only a matter of time before I abandoned the pretense of moving into the room and joined him on the bed. I pulled my hair up off my neck and reclined, staring up at the ceiling.

  “This is turning out to be quite a getaway, isn’t it?” I asked him. I put my right hand on top of his back and he rolled against me. “I knew things were going to be complicated, but I never thought they’d get this complicated this fast.” I closed my eyes and thought about everything that had happened since we’d arrived. The flipped Jeep, the body in the water, the arguments among Emma, Jimmy, and me, and the confrontation at the quarry. And then there were the bits and pieces of information I’d picked up randomly. Sitting here and waiting for everybody around me to get caught up with information and discover what I already knew was enough to make me want to scream.

  There was another thought bothering me. My decision to get a motel room meant closer quarters for Hudson and me than at Emma’s house. There would be no kitchen to escape to if I wanted to get up and avoid the nightmares. I wasn’t going to want to take a sedative in order to sleep. But would the nightmares come back? Would I suffer through a replay of what had happened in Dallas yet again? Was everybody right in telling me I wouldn’t start to get past the memories until I faced them head on, acknowledged what I’d lived through, and dealt with the emotional carnage surrounding the outcome?

  I dug a business card that I’d been carrying around for several months out of my handbag. It had been given to me by Captain Washington before he’d retired. He’d been the first to suggest I seek counseling and had made arrangements for me to talk to the same psychiatrist the precinct used. Even though I wasn’t at home, I felt like if I didn’t set up an appointment now, I might never take the step. I was alone in a motel room. Nobody would know if I made the call.

  I made the call.

  A woman answered. “Good morning, Dr. Randall’s office.”

  “Good morning. I’m Madison Night. I was given Dr. Randall’s name for possible”—I paused, seeking the right word—“sessions.”

  “I’m sorry, Dr. Randall isn’t accepting new patients at the moment. I can refer you to another doctor if you’d like.”

  “I was referred by the police captain,” I said quickly. “He probably expected me to set something up before now, but he made the arrangements after what happened with the Lakewood Abductor.”

  “Can I place you on hold for just a moment?”

  “Sure.”

  I put the phone on speaker and wandered the room. Soft jazz filtered through the phone. I opened the floor-to-ceiling curtains, exposing the view of the motel’s pool two floors below. Lush green tropical plants were scattered about the pool deck next to Tiki-inspired planters and carved wooden statues. A few people reclined on bright orange poolside folding loungers, and a cluster of children jumped around the shallow end of the pool. I unlocked the balcony door and slid it open, immediately hit with a wall of heat. Rocky hopped past my feet to the balcony and stuck his nose between the white iron bars, and then turned around and went back inside. Perhaps when the sun went down, it would be nice to sit out here. Not now. I went back into the room and slid the door shut.

  The jazz music was replaced with a male voice. “Ms. Night?”

  “Yes, this is Madison Night.”

  “This is Dr. Randall. I understand you’d like to start working with me on your issues?”

  Work. That’s what therapists called the process of exploring the deep dark corners of our minds. “Yes,” I said. “I don’t know if you know who I am. Police Captain Washington suggested I talk to you. He arranged it after the abductions. I understand he made it mandatory for everybody on the force to talk to you about what happened, and because of my involvement he said he arranged for me to have the same privilege.”

  “Captain Washington retired last week. I don’t foresee a problem, but I’ll have to clear it through his replacement.”

  My breath caught in my chest. I should have seen this coming. After months of not talking, after the countless times I’d picked up the phone but hung up without dialing, after pretending nothing had changed while everything had changed, it seemed my mental wellbeing lay squarely in the hands of the former Lieutenant Tex Allen.

  FIFTEEN

  Tex

  Tex sat on the sofa, waiting for the doctor’s return. He’d been reluctant about starting therapy, wondering if the other guys on the force would talk. But when Captain Washington retired, he’d made it mandatory that every member of the precinct get a psychological profile and follow up with a minimum of two sessions with Dr. Randall. Now, nobody could talk behind anybody’s back because they were all in the same boat.

  The public outcry after the string of abductions and murders around town had demanded the police force make changes. Like many of the other officers, Tex assumed Captain Washington’s job was about to get a lot harder. The force had a unified mission to reestablish trust in the community, and that trust leveled a lot of attitude and testosterone. When Captain announced his retirement, it hadn’t come as a surprise to anybody.

  When Tex was named his replacement, it had.

  Any time scandal hit a public office there were repercussions, and this was no different. The fact that Tex had been at the center of the scandal had been hard. Regardless of the emotions he’d cycled through, his vow to protect and serve the residents of Lakewood, Texas was stronger than ever. He had a front-row seat to how deep the community’s trust in the police had been and how damaged it was now. When he stepped forward as a candidate for the position of Captain, it was with the full knowledge his job would become more about the image of the police force than being in the field. It had been a hard adjustment, but things change, life goes on. His own life had forked and he’d been on the brink of the dark side: alcohol, women, violence. As much as he hated to admit it, the sessions with Peter were helping.

  They had an agreement. Peter would treat Tex’s drop-in visits like those of a friend. They’d talk over coffee or lunch, occasionally over a beer at the local pub. The doc kept track of their time and billed the department accordingly, but Tex found it way easier to relax his guard when he acted like he was hanging out with a buddy. Occasionally, like now, Peter was called upon as Dr. Randall to handle emergency phone sessions with a patient, and that interrupted Tex’s time. He didn’t have a problem with it, because it maintained the illusion that allowed him to keep coming back.

  Peter came back into the office. “Sorry about the interruption. New patient.”

  “I thought you weren’t taking new patients?” Tex asked.

  “Now that I’m busy treating the entire staff of the Lakewood Police Department, I don’t have time for new patients.”

  Peter pumped a squirt of hand sanitizer into his palm and rubbed his hands together. For a psychiatrist, he had plenty of quirks, not the least of which included being a neat freak. Tex had gotten used to Peter’s almost unconscious habits of wiping condensation from the bar, dusting off his chair with his handkerchief before sitting down, and tending to his numerous plants at exactly eleven fifteen. A couple of the other guys on the force referred to Peter as Felix Unger, but Tex kept that to himself. His shrink didn’t have to know everything.

  “Remind me when we’re done I have some official police business to ask you about,” Peter said.

  “Fire away. I’m all out of issues for today.”

  “You might change your mind when you hear my question.”

  Tex leaned back and put his hands behind his head. “What’s up? Is somebody giving you a hard time about their psych eval?”

  “Not exactly.” Peter picked up a stack of papers from the corner of his desk and tapped them a few times, lining up the edges. “That new patient I mentioned—she’s a referral. From Captain
Washington.” Peter slid the stack of papers into a clean file folder and set it on the shelf behind his desk. “One of your female friends.”

  “She?” Tex could think of only one female officer who his old captain would go to task for. His former sometimes girlfriend Donna Nast. She’d left the force a year earlier and started her own security company. “Nasty? Just don’t schedule her anywhere near me. This town is entirely too small for the both of us.”

  Peter shook his head slowly and smiled. “Wrong one.”

  “Huh?”

  “I wouldn’t bring it up, except your position as Captain puts you in the unique position of approving or denying her request to start counseling.”

  “Who are you talking about?”

  Peter’s grin was a little too much like the Cheshire Cat. “Madison Night,” he said. He waited a second. “You still think you’re all out of issues today?”

  SIXTEEN

  I had two choices: find another psychiatrist, or bite the bullet and call Tex. There was probably a third option in there somewhere, but I was an adult, and as such, I could tackle this head-on. The doctor said his office would follow up with me after confirming my request, but I couldn’t just sit still and let this all transpire without reaching out to Tex myself. It was a phone call I should have made months ago, but seeing as I was alone for the next several hours, there appeared to be no time like the present.

  I called Tex’s cell. He didn’t answer, which made things both easier and more strained. I’d been so worried about what to say to him that I hadn’t rehearsed what I might say in the message. I disconnected the call and immediately regretted my action.

  There was a good chance my psychological issues extended beyond PTSD.

  I redialed the number. Four rings, and then the beep. “Hi,” I said. “This is Madison. It’s been a long time. I hear congratulations are in order. Good for you.” I glanced at Rocky, who was back asleep. “I’ve been having some issues since, well, you know, and Captain Washington said he’d set things up so I could talk to the department psychologist. I understand the doctor has to get your approval now, so I’m hoping you’re not mad about the fact I haven’t called in five months. And if you are, please accept my apology. And if you’re not,” I paused again, “you should be, because if the tables were turned, I’d probably be mad at you. Because we’re supposed to be friends or something, right?” I paused, feeling like the conversation had gotten away from me. “Okay, well, I have to run. Congratulations, Captain.”