Seconds later, she recognized the tiny noises she was hearing as coming from the phone, and went back to tell the operator that she needed the police, too.
Chapter 5
Empowering? Some women’s studies PhD candidate asked me about that once. I told her there’s nothing empowering about girlie pictures. I must have posed for thousands of them—if girlie pictures were empowering, I’d be running the whole damned country.
—SANDRA SECHREST, QUOTED IN “QUEEN OF THE PINUPS” BY TILDA HARPER, NOT DEAD YET MAGAZINE
“I can’t believe somebody murdered that poor woman,” Cooper breathed some hours later.
The police had come quickly and questioned Tilda at Sandra’s apartment before taking her to the police station to go through it all once again for a tall, dark-haired man who introduced himself as Detective Salvatore. Naturally the cops were interested in the company Sandra had mentioned, but Tilda didn’t know anything other than what the older woman had said, though she’d assumed Sandra was expecting a man, since she said she wanted to make herself beautiful. Tilda gave them Lil’s name, suggesting that Sandra might have told her niece more details, but that was all she could offer.
Next they asked if she was willing to let them take her clothes and boots for analysis, which was the first time she’d realized that she’d gotten so much of Sandra’s blood on her. It was all she could do to keep from ripping off everything she was wearing.
A combination of modesty and the realization that it was too cold to go around undressed saved her, and she asked if she could call a friend to bring her something else to put on first. Her sister June was all the way out in Beverly, way too far away to come out on a snowy night. There was her roommate, but Tilda hadn’t known Colleen long enough to impose on her. So it had to be Cooper. As it turned out, the police had already intended to talk to him for verification of her description of their interview with Sandra. With snow still falling heavily, Detective Salvatore offered to send a squad car to pick him up.
Cooper brought her a whole set of outerwear—sweatpants, sweatshirt, socks, a worn but serviceable pair of Ugg boots, and a coat he rarely wore. It didn’t fit perfectly, but it was warm and blood-free. A policewoman took Tilda to the bathroom to change, then carried away her things. The cops did let her keep her bag, but asked permission to examine the contents, which she allowed. She even let them check the list of calls in and out on her cell phone, and photocopy her notes from the interview with Sandra.
In retrospect, she wondered if she should have stood up for her rights, whatever they might have been, but it didn’t occur to her at the time. Anybody who had watched as many TV cop shows as Tilda had knew that the person to find the body was always a suspect. If letting the police have what they wanted would convince them that she hadn’t killed Sandra, then what did it matter?
Tilda had thought she’d be able to leave after the bag search, but Detective Salvatore went through the day’s events with her one more time. Then she had to wait while Cooper had his turn. An eternity later, Salvatore told her that they could leave. His manner had eased, which she hoped meant that he didn’t suspect her, and he gave her his card and asked her to call if she thought of anything that might help him. Then he got another squad car, or maybe the same one, to take them both to Cooper’s apartment.
She couldn’t have faced the prospect of going home to her place in Malden—she needed a lot more comforting than she could expect her roommate to provide. When they got back to Cooper’s, Jean-Paul was waiting for them, and had them both on the couch, wrapped in quilts, supplied with hot chocolate in nothing flat. He’d laced the hot chocolate with something warming, too.
“Was it robbery?” Jean-Paul wanted to know.
“The cops don’t think so,” Tilda answered. “The computer was still there, and the TV. Aren’t those the first things thieves take?”
Cooper shrugged. “Maybe they were after jewelry or cash.”
Tilda shook her head. “I heard one of the cops say that the bedroom looked undisturbed, and Sandra’s purse was on the table by the front door, with money and credit cards in it.”
“Then why would anybody kill that sweet lady?” Cooper asked again. “She was so nice.”
“And it was so mean, Cooper. It couldn’t have been that hard to kill Sandra—you saw her. She was old. She could barely use her hands. But he hit her over and over again. You remember that miniature sea chest on her coffee table? That’s what he used. The cops found it all covered in—” Tilda shuddered.
“That’s enough talking,” Cooper said, and Jean-Paul brought her a refill on the hot chocolate with even more of the secret ingredient. “You need to get some sleep.”
“I don’t think I can,” Tilda said.
“All right, then I’ll sit here and keep you company.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“Shut up.” He sent Jean-Paul off to bed, refilled his own mug of hot chocolate, and rejoined her on the couch. “If you won’t sleep, we can play Monopoly, or we can read my new batch of comic books, or we can watch TV.”
Tilda picked TV, and they watched Labyrinth to admire David Bowie’s goblin king wardrobe and Hop-scotch to revel in Walter Matthau’s hijinks before she finally dozed off.
Cooper was smart enough to stay with her, so when she had the inevitable nightmare about a pinup queen with her head bashed in, he was there to soothe her back to sleep.
Chapter 6
Episode 35 : Be It Ever So Humble
Newcomer Clay Hollister runs into trouble when he tries to
build a cabin. Every night, somebody destroys the work he’d
put in during the day. Finally he hides to wait and watch, and
catches an Indian boy in the act. When Clay confronts him,
the boy explains that his family has used that spot to burn
their dead for as long as anybody can remember, but that he
didn’t think a white man would understand. Clay agrees to
build elsewhere because, as the voiceover says, “Just as every
man must face life his own way, every man must face death
his own way, and a cowboy respects that. That’s the Cowtown
Code.”
—COWTOWN COMPANION BY RUBEN TIMMONS
THOUGH morning seemed to take forever to arrive, Tilda felt as if she hadn’t slept at all. After they all chowed down on corn muffins from Dunkin’ Donuts, both men offered to stay with her, but she knew Jean-Paul had a meeting and Cooper was on deadline, so she shooed them away. She did agree to get more rest, but after an hour of dozing on the couch, decided that what she really wanted was to go home. Leaving Cooper and Jean-Paul a thank-you note for all their help, she climbed back into the previous night’s borrowed clothes.
By the time she got to the Kenmore Square T station, the rush-hour crowd was thinning, but there were still plenty of subway trolleys running, so it didn’t take long for her to get back to Malden. Even then, she nearly fell asleep on the train. From the Malden Center station, it was only a five-minute walk to the double-decker on Russell Street she’d moved into a couple of months earlier. The landlady, a consultant of some sort who spent more time on the road than at home, lived in the larger apartment upstairs, while Tilda and Colleen shared the first floor.
Normally Tilda would have taken a moment to admire the original woodwork that had sold her on the place, from the built-in china cabinet to the generous moldings around every door and window, but that morning, she could have been walking around a prefab mobile home for all the notice she took. She didn’t even bother to check for mail, phone messages, or e-mail before crawling into bed.
She woke whimpering three hours later.
After that, sleep lost its appeal, so she took a long, hot shower so she would at least look better. Then she grabbed her copy of the Boston Globe from the front porch, warmed up some leftover pizza in the microwave, and ate as she read the paper’s coverage on Sandra’s murder. Though she hadn�
��t really expected the police to have made an arrest yet, she couldn’t help but be disappointed when the article contained nothing more promising than the usual polite code language for “we haven’t got a clue so leave us alone and let us get to work.” Sandra’s niece, Lil, apparently the only family Sandra had nearby, was described as being heart-broken and shocked by her great-aunt’s murder, and Tilda herself was mentioned only as “a friend of the deceased” who found the body.
She didn’t expect her anonymity to last, and there was a chance that enterprising reporters already had her name, which meant that she needed to be prepared for an onslaught of calls. More urgently, it meant that she needed to call her sister before she heard about it from some other source.
She picked up her phone to dial the number. “June? Tilda.”
“Hi, Tilda. What’s up?”
“Well . . .”
“Are you okay?”
“I’m fine, but—”
“Is it your father? Is it Mom?”
“June, take a breath! Everybody you know is fine, as far as I know.”
“Then what’s wrong?”
Tilda didn’t bother to ask how she’d realized there was something wrong. June could always tell. Instead she explained how she’d come to find Sandra’s body, finishing with, “I don’t know if I’m going to be mentioned by name anywhere or not, but I thought you’d want to know.”
“Of course I want to know,” June said, then added an affectionate, “Idiot!”
“Moron.”
“Dingbat.”
“Housewife!”
June laughed. “That’s a new one. You win this time.”
Tilda suspected her sister was letting her off easy for a change, but gracefully accepted victory by saying, “I always win, and I always will.”
“Seriously, Tilda, are you okay?”
“I’ll be fine.”
“You’re not in any danger, are you?”
That was the first time Tilda had considered that angle, but she said, “No, of course not. I didn’t see anything, and I don’t know anything—I’ve already told the cops that. There’s no reason anybody would come after me.”
“Because murderers are always reasonable people.”
“Fair enough, but I don’t know how the killer would even know who I am. I’d only spoken with Sandra three times in person and twice on the phone, so it’s not like we were close. And if it was a serial killer, I don’t exactly match Sandra’s demographic.”
“You be careful anyway.”
“Always.”
“Yeah, right.” They moved on to a discussion about whether or not Tilda should tell their mother or Tilda’s father, but concluded that it could wait until her weekly duty calls. Calling in midweek would imply more urgency than Tilda wanted them to feel. They finished up with the usual status report on June’s kids, complaints about Tilda’s roommate, and curses about the weather.
Now that Tilda had dealt with her family obligations, she couldn’t help wondering about Sandra’s family. What was the appropriate way to express condolences to the relatives of a person who’d been murdered? After a moment, she decided that the reaction should be no different from that for any death. Of course, there was the complication that she’d been the one to find the body. Would that make her wishes more or less welcome? She weighed the idea of a card or e-mail, but finally decided she was wimping out, and looked up Lil’s phone number.
An unfamiliar voice answered the phone, and guardedly said, “Lil Sechrest’s residence.”
“Hi, this is Tilda Harper. I’m a friend—” She paused, because she wasn’t really a friend. “I just called to express my condolences over the loss of Lil’s aunt.” That matched the formula her mother had taught her.
“I’m sorry, what name did you say?”
“Tilda Harper.”
Tilda heard the other person speaking to somebody else, and a second later, Lil came to the phone. “Hi, Tilda. How are you holding up?”
“Aren’t I supposed to ask you that?”
“I guess neither of us is doing too well.”
“I’m so sorry about your aunt, Lil.” Then she departed from her mother’s script. “She was cool as hell.”
“She was, wasn’t she? I just can’t believe she’s gone, especially like this.” She paused. “The police told me you found her.”
“Yeah, I did.” Tilda explained the whys and wherefores of her going back to the condo, and as delicately as she could, what she’d found. “I wish I knew more to tell the cops. Have they got any ideas?”
“They’re not telling me a lot,” Lil said. “I think I’m a suspect.”
“Yeah, I guess you are.” Tilda heard a sharp intake of breath. “Shit! That’s not what I meant. It’s just that everybody knows that cops always look at the family, whether or not it makes any sense.” When Lil didn’t respond, she added, “They were pretty interested in me, too, because I was the one to find her.”
“It’s crazy, isn’t it? They actually asked me about her will and—” She stopped. “Tilda, are you talking to me as a friend, or as a reporter?”
“Jesus Christ, Lil, of course I’m not going to report on this! I mean, it’s not what I do anyway, and—God, I’m screwing this up so badly. Okay, even the worst muckraking, scandal-hunting, bottom-feeding reporters follow one rule. If you ask me to keep this off the record, I will.”
“Tilda, can we keep this off the record?”
“Absolutely.”
“Thank you. I’m sorry to be so suspicious, but I’ve already had a lot of calls from reporters.”
“It’s okay. I don’t blame you. They haven’t come after me, but I’m halfway expecting it.”
“Won’t it be strange, being on the other end of an interview?”
“Maybe I’ll grade their techniques—I can even hold up scorecards.”
Lil snickered, and Tilda bet it was the first time she’d done that all day, so maybe calling her had been the right thing to do.
“Lil, I know you’ve got things to take care of, but I was hoping you’d let me know when the funeral is. I’d like to be there.”
“That’s really nice of you. The police haven’t released the body yet, but as soon as we get things settled, I’ll let you know.”
“I’d appreciate that. Is there anything I can do?”
“I don’t think so. The family has been gathering around. It’s getting crowded around here, to tell you the truth. But thanks for asking.”
Tilda felt better when she hung up, despite the awkward spots. How awful for Lil to have to suspect Tilda’s motives, and for her to be suspected by the police in turn. Admittedly, there was statistical evidence for why the cops looked at relatives first, and certainly Lil was strong enough to have killed her elderly aunt. From what Lil had said, she was mentioned in Sandra’s will, and she must not have an alibi or the police wouldn’t still suspect her.
Tilda shivered, as if she could shake the thoughts out of her head, but she was stuck with two of them. One, she was ecstatic that she didn’t write crime stories, and two, she no longer felt so good about the phone call.
Chapter 7
Episode 59 : The World’s Best Tracker
Hunters, Texas Rangers, and Indian scouts converge on Cowtown to compete for the title of World’s Best Tracker. Then a young boy trying to emulate them goes missing, and with all those experts, it’s his mother who finds him. The judges give her the prize as the voiceover says, “The best tool any tracker can ever have is love.”
—COWTOWN COMPANION BY RUBEN TIMMONS
TILDA figured that since she’d spoken to June and given Lil a condolence call, she was free to get to work. It was only when she got to her computer that she remembered that she had one last obligation. She needed to break the news to the group that had led her to Sandra in the first place.
While idly surfing the Web, Tilda had come across a site about former pinup queens. Joe, the guy who’d started the site, had begun by searchi
ng for Bettie Page, a popular quest for many years. Though Page had been a huge celebrity in the 1950s, when she left the public eye in 1957, she did so thoroughly. New celebrities took her place, but enough of her pictures remained that people remembered her. Somehow she became a cult figure in the 1980s, and the speculation began. Why had she disappeared in the midst of her popularity? Had she been assassinated, kidnapped, enslaved, imprisoned, undergone a sex-change operation? No possibility was too outlandish.
Of course, Page eventually resurfaced, and it turned out her celebrated disappearance was an intentional exit due to a combination of reasons: new laws making her photos illegal, her concern that at age thirty-four she was getting too old, and a newfound devotion to religion. Her actual death in 2008 had only given birth to a new set of conspiracy theories about the circumstances of her death and whether or not she was really dead.
Joe still regretted that somebody else had found Betty before he could, and since he’d developed an intense interest in all pinup models, he decided to track down as many as he could. A community of pinup fans had formed around his site, and they’d given Tilda the clues it took to find Sandra.
She owed it to the fans there to tell them about the woman’s death, so as soon as she’d booted up her computer, she logged onto the bulletin board for Joe’s Lost Pinups, and checked to see if the news had hit.
There was the usual brand of postings, most of which Tilda skipped. Page-Boy had a new idea for where Bettie Page was hiding, Bettie-Fan wanted comments on her new short story about a sexual encounter between Page and all three of the Cartwright boys from Bonanza, Pinned-Up was panting for somebody to argue with about the underlying feminism of fetish photos, and Joe had posted his weekly update to the list of ongoing pinup searches. Plus Di was chiding somebody for using a harsh tone in a post, which was totally inappropriate for a group of loving friends, while Deb detailed her latest medical issues. Tilda didn’t know why, but every online community she’d ever observed had one member who adopted the role of peacekeeper and at least one who had serious health issues and needed lots of emotional support from the group. Since the former often took it upon him or herself to tend to the latter, Tilda usually ignored them both.
Who Killed the Pinup Queen? Page 4
