by Terri Thayer
I had reached the top step when I heard footsteps behind me. I stopped short, left foot dangling near the edge, and felt the hairs rise up on the back of my neck. A tickle set up in the small of my back. Was Sanchez coming to get me?
Not knowing was worse. With trembling knees, I forced myself to turn. Myra was framed in the doorway, holding my phone. I yelped with relief.
“I’m so glad it’s you,” I said.
“Are you okay? I saw you leave. I wanted to make sure you were all right.”
“I’m going home. Let them come and get me.”
Despite my tough talk, my legs were wobbly and I didn’t trust them to navigate the stairs. I sat down on the top step.
“Here we are again,” Myra said as she came alongside of me, handing me my cell. The two of us sat facing the ugly stained driveway. I felt so stuck.
“Yeah, another day at the quilt show, another murder,” I said.
“What do you mean?”
“The EMTs said Justine was shot,” I said.
“But Claire had an accident, Dewey.”
Me and my big mouth. I’d forgotten that Myra didn’t know Claire had been killed deliberately.
“She tripped and fell with the cutter in her hand,” she persisted.
I grasped my cell, wishing I could call Buster. The button in my hand reminded me I couldn’t.
“What? Do you know something? Tell me,” Myra said.
She deserved the truth. I laid my hands in my lap. Without looking at her, I explained. “I was talking to Detective Healy earlier about the different kinds of rotary cutters. He realized that the type of cutter found by Claire was the safety cutter.”
A look of recognition passed over Myra’s face, and then another. She was familiar with rotary cutters and got the meaning immediately.
“So she was murdered?” she said, sounding strangled.
“Someone,” I continued, “had to have held that cutter and cut her with it.”
Myra exploded up. She took several long steps away from me, then wheeled back at me. Her face was contorted with anger. I felt sick that I’d been the one to tell her.
She was walking close to the edge of the dock. There was no guardrail here, just the edge of the concrete and then the drop. I looked down—it would be a nasty fall. I was afraid that with one slip of her foot, she would go over.
I pushed myself off the step and approached her tentatively. I put a hand on her elbow. She pulled away from me and, off balance, teetered near the edge. I felt my own feet get unsteady. I stiffened my knees to hold my ground.
“Just watch your step, Myra.” I backed up, afraid we would both fall. Myra was still standing too close. I hoped my words would be enough to settle her down.
“Look, I’m sorry if I upset you. I know this is craziness. It’s not fair that Claire’s gone and now Justine. It’s not fair at all.”
I felt the cold seep up through my ankles from the damp concrete floor as her eyes bore into mine.
“Dewey, now another person is dead. Don’t you see?”
“I get it, Myra. Probably the same person killed both of them. Maybe if someone had figured out who killed Claire earlier, Justine would be alive.”
Could that someone have been me? If I’d talked to Justine earlier, told her I knew she had borrowed from Claire, that I’d seen her walking away from Claire’s door, would she still be alive? I would never know.
But who killed her? Maybe her partner had been mad enough to kill her. It would take passion to shoot Justine, and Eve had plenty of reasons to be angry with Justine. I remembered her scathing toast of Claire in the bar.
“Did you see Eve around the auditorium before the rehearsal started?” I asked.
Myra looked at me quizzically. “What are you thinking?” she said.
“What if Eve confronted Justine about stealing and ended up killing her?”
“Do you really think that might have happened? Whoa.” Myra stopped to think, her brow furrowed with concentration. “I wasn’t around earlier. I was at the lawyer’s this afternoon, and I had to get the dress; it was back at my loft. I had only just gotten to the fashion show when you saw me.”
I felt the button in my hand, pressing into my palm. I was going to be imprinted with the detail from the design if I wasn’t careful. I tried to relax my fingers.
“Myra, this button …” I held my hand open for her inspection, moving the cell aside. “It matches the ones on Claire’s jacket.”
Myra picked it up and looked at it. “Yes, it does. Where did you find it?”
“On the stage. Way back. But there are no buttons missing on the outfit. I checked.”
“So what? Claire usually put an extra button on the inside seam. It must have fallen off when you knelt down.”
“But it was so far away. I found it way back, almost to the back of the stage.”
“So it rolled.” Myra studied the button as though she could figure out its trajectory.
I flinched as the door banged open again. I jumped out of the way of the swinging metal, and Myra steadied me. Sanchez took a step outside.
“I need you two back inside. Now,” he said.
I heard disdain in his voice, through the veneer of courtesy. His face was locked down tight. As he held the door open, I caught a gleam off his manicured nails.
“I won’t go back in there.” I was surprised how weak my voice sounded. In my head, that statement had been strong.
Sanchez held the door open wider. He looked past me, his eyes scanning, taking in all of the dock and the driveway beyond. A car went by and he studied it, not turning from it until the sedan was out of sight. When his eyes finally lit on me, I could see his eyes were narrowed with barely controlled rage.
“Ms. Banks,” Sanchez said to Myra without looking at her, “please go inside. There’s an officer waiting to escort you to be questioned.”
Myra gave me a feeble wave, fist closed over the button. I relaxed, the button out of Sanchez’s clutches for now.
I sensed his impatience with me, his thin lips growing tighter. He frowned, the parallel lines carved deep into his forehead, reminding me of furrows left in the sand, except that these were permanently etched on his brow and wouldn’t disappear with the tide. Buster was on his way to having those same lines.
I didn’t know how to change this man’s mind about me. I thought of myself as a good and honest person who captured spiders and released them. He saw me as a liar and murderer.
“What did you think you were doing, leaving the scene like that?” he said.
“I don’t want to go through this again. I won’t. I can’t.”
“You do not have a choice. This is an official police investigation, and I will not tolerate your interference.”
“Buster …” I began, before I remembered Buster would not help me.
His eyes locked on me and his voice grew even deeper. “I’m aware of your personal relationship with Detective Healy. I understand you lured my detective away from his duties this afternoon.”
“I did not lure—”
He cut me off. “How convenient that you kept him away for hours while someone else was murdered.”
“How was I to know Justine was going to get killed?”
He stared at me, the stare of a leopard trying to paralyze his prey.
I realized what he was saying. “Oh come on. You don’t seriously think …”
“What am I to think? According to Healy, you haven’t looked at him in the twenty-odd years you’ve known each other. Suddenly, you find him irresistible and you choose today to seduce my detective. What am I supposed to think?”
How dare Buster tell his partner we’d been together. Was he truly that suspicious about my attraction to him? My cheeks flushed with
embarrassment. It was mortifying to think this cop knew details.
“Stop. You’ve got no idea,” I said.
“You lead my detective away from the convention center, in the height of an ongoing investigation, and keep him away. Another person dies. If you’re not killing people, maybe you’re protecting someone. Tell me, who?”
My mouth fell open. I tried to conjure up some courage. The courage of the falsely accused.
“I’ve got nothing to hide.” Again, my words sounded weak. Sanchez was draining whatever strength I had.
“We’ll see, Ms. Pellicano. We’ll see. It would not be that difficult to switch rotary cutters next to a dead woman.”
We returned through the hall I had used to escape. I was beginning to understand that talking was not my best option. I clamped my lips tight. We were getting closer to where Justine’s body had landed. A nerve in my thigh twitched painfully. I did not want to go there.
“Follow me.”
Sanchez opened a door and led me across the apron of the stage, in front of the closed curtain. I could hear low voices, feet scraping, and other indistinct noises as people tended to Justine. I could only imagine what they were doing behind the curtain. I shut down my imagination so I wouldn’t conjure up any images.
Lights embedded in the carpet led our way down three steps to a flat area in front of the stage. We stopped, facing the red-
velvet tiered seats. My back was to the spot upstage where I’d found Justine’s body. In the back wall, I could see a high window where the sound and light people were housed. The auditorium looked like it was ready for the next keynote speaker, maybe a financial guru: “buy real estate with no money down,” or a spiritual lama, extolling the virtues of compassion. People sat in these seats in the hopes of changing their lives. Tonight, lives had been changed, but not for the better.
As my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I could see the fashion show models scattered in the seats. Contrasted to the blue-suited police that were standing on the periphery, they looked ridiculously overdressed in their wild outfits. From chic to silly was a short distance.
I felt exposed, standing next to Sanchez as if I were some kind of teacher’s pet. I tried to smile at the other women, but no one would catch my eye. Their expressions were uniformly grim. I sensed resentment toward me as though I, as the common denominator between this death and Claire’s, was somehow responsible for the evening’s turn of events.
Sanchez spoke into the silence, his words thick with authority. “Thank you for your cooperation. Please wait here until we call you. Talk to no one. The officers will be taking your statements shortly.”
I looked around the room. Someone, maybe even someone in this room, was killing off people. The only thing that I could see they had in common was quilting. And money.
Sergeant Sanchez turned on his heel, gesturing for me to follow him. As we went through the doorway into the dressing room, I saw Buster. He had his back to us, huddled with a group of patrol officers. His shoulders stiffened as I passed by.
Eve was sitting on a stool in front of the still-lit makeup bar, her face white and crumpled. Her eyes were downcast, focused on the cuticle she was picking at. By some signal I didn’t see, a policewoman joined Sanchez and me.
Sanchez spoke. “Ms. Pellicano, we will need to take that outfit you’re wearing.”
My anger flared. “Again with the clothes?”
Eve glanced up. My outburst didn’t warrant a glance from Buster.
“You know the drill. There may be trace evidence on your skirt,” Sanchez said. “Please allow Officer Hall to accompany you to the rest room. Are your street clothes here somewhere?”
I nodded, reluctantly pointing toward the hook where I’d left them.
The blond officer followed closely as I gathered my clothes and headed for the bathroom. I had to pass through the doorway where Buster stood, the pile of clothes smelling of garlic in my arms. Tears sprang to my eyes as the horrific turn the day had taken hit me anew. A half-sob escaped from my lips. Buster never looked my way, his head bent to a small woman in an outfit made of tulle.
The policewoman held the door open, searching my eyes. I pulled my shoulders back, and sucked in a deep breath.
“This is the second time in two days that my clothes are going to the police,” I said, trying to make a joke. She kept a poker face. I wondered if I could shock her by telling her about the times I’d taken my clothes off voluntarily with Buster.
She told me to keep the stall door open and didn’t look away as I began to undress. I laid the phone on the floor.
I fiercely attacked the buttons on the jacket, suddenly anxious to be free of everything associated with the doomed fashion show. The top button snagged and I tugged at it, nearly breaking the threads that held it on. I handed the officer the jacket. I reached over my head and grasped the zipper on the dress, pulling it part way down. I asked the policewoman to help me with the zipper. As she unzipped me, I let the dress fall to the floor.
She asked for the cell.
I didn’t want to let go of the phone. “Can’t I make some phone calls and let people know where I am?”
She nodded. “One.”
We left the bathroom and stood in the hall outside the dressing room. I could hear murmurs from officers working on the scene. I called Dad’s cell. After two rings, a mechanical voice informed me that customer XJ-70 was not available. Figures. Dad had never wanted the phone in the first place.
Who else could I call? The booth was closed for the night; I didn’t have Ina’s cell number in my phone. Vangie was out of the question; the store would be too busy and her attitude toward the police would not be helpful. I dialed Kevin.
“Punk?”
“Yeah, Kev. It’s me.” I had to talk around the lump in my throat. He hadn’t called me that in a long time. It was a shortened version of Punky Dewster, that had sprung from his little-boy crush on the star, Punky Brewster. I’d gotten the love he felt for her in that nickname. That one word made me realize how much I missed my little brother.
“There’s been another death—at the fashion show. Justine Lanchantin was shot dead.” The words came out, tumbling over each other.
“Slow down, I didn’t understand a word you said.”
I took a breath. I cradled the small phone. This was Kevin. Once upon a time, I could tell him anything. I needed him to be that brother again. I had to take a chance and see if he would step up.
“Justine Lanchantin is dead,” I said.
I heard a whine in the background. “Kevin, come here.”
“Hang on, Kym. She died? Another accident, Dewey?” Kevin sounded incredulous.
“No.” I heard Kym demanding to know who was dead. He repeated what I’d said.
“Dewey, is Ben there?” Kevin asked.
Buster? “He’s here.”
Kevin’s voice was thick with relief. “Good, stick with him. He’ll know what to do. Promise me you’ll stay close to him.”
I thought of Buster’s face, closed off as he pursued his investigation. “Sure, Kev.” There was no point in telling Kevin how it really was between us.
Kym was asking questions. I hung up quickly. It had been a mistake to call him. I thought I would get some strength from him. Instead, I felt completely alone. I handed the phone over to the policewoman and prepared myself to be taken back to the auditorium, girding myself to sit for hours, waiting to be called in and questioned. I sighed with the unfairness of it all.
We stepped back into the dressing room. Sanchez was helping Eve to her feet.
Sanchez crooked his finger at me. “Come with me.”
“Where are we going?” I asked.
“Mission Street. To my office.”
My heart thumped in my chest. “Why do we have to leave? Can’t you
just talk to me here?” I protested.
Sanchez’s face was hard as he shook his head. “Two deaths in the last two days. That calls for you and Ms. Stein to come to my office where I can talk to you properly.”
He pointed out the door. My stomach muscles clenched as though protecting themselves from a blow.
“Healy!” Sanchez called. “I’m taking these two ladies to my office. I want to talk to them in relative quiet.”
Buster turned and nodded. I thought his expression was unreadable, then I realized the message was loud and clear: I was on my own.
Eve and I got into Sanchez’s car without exchanging a word. Eve seemed fragile, so unlike the woman I’d seen in action yesterday and today. Her outfit looked like something culled from several of the fashion show items. She wore red pants with a shiny satin stripe down the leg and a black low-cut sweater. We stopped at a light on First. I admired the front yard of a large craftsman-style bungalow on the corner. It was full of wild and unruly plants just like I hoped my lawn would be someday. My heart sunk as we started up again and passed the big sign stuck in the hostas—“Bad Boy Bail Bonds.” Would one of us be needing their services tonight?
I glanced over to see if Eve had noticed, but she was staring out the opposite window, her body crammed against the door as far away from me as she could get. I reached out to her, brushed her arm lightly.
She recoiled. “Leave me alone, Dewey,” Eve said.
Sanchez looked at me in his rearview mirror, frowning. His phone rang and he answered it. A fire truck screamed by, horns blowing as it slewed through the intersection.
I settled back on the seat.
At the police station, Sanchez led us to a large office space with cubicles that reminded me of every high-tech company I’d ever worked in. Standing in the midst of the gray speckled panels and blue computer screens, I had a surreal sense that I belonged here.
Other officers were scattered about the room, talking on the phone, working on the computers. No one looked up as we passed.
