Lil came back in, and they spent a few minutes looking at the photos on the Website, but decided that no picture that included that much skin would be appropriate, even if they added a black border.
“How about that last batch of photos?” Tilda said. “The ones the guy from the camera club just sent? Sandra showed them to me and my friend Cooper. Wasn’t there one of her in regular clothes?”
“I remember that one.” Lil went rummaging around the desk, and then the coffee table. “That’s funny. They’re not here.”
“Maybe the police moved them when they were here.”
But Lil shook her head. “They gave me a list of everything they took, and they didn’t take any pictures.” Tilda got up to help, but though the two of them searched the room thoroughly, they couldn’t find the thick envelope of photos Tilda had seen the day Sandra died. Finally Lil said, “I don’t know where they are, but it doesn’t matter. I’d already scanned them to the hard disk.” She went to the computer and started looking through file directories.
Tilda wasn’t so willing to let the matter die. “Lil, maybe the killer took them.”
“Why would anybody do that? Those shots weren’t important.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean they weren’t that good—just amateur stuff. Why would anybody care about them?”
“I don’t know.” But Tilda started thinking about the pictures she’d had the day before, the ones that had disappeared from her bag. Two sets of pictures, two attacks. It wasn’t a comfortable pattern. “Maybe you should call the detective investigating the murder and tell him. He should know that they’re missing.”
“They’re not missing,” Lil insisted. “I’ve got them on disk. So what if the prints got thrown out? Maybe a cop stole them—most of them were men, and you know how men are.” But she wouldn’t turn to meet Tilda’s eyes.
After a minute, she found the photo scan files, and pulled up the shot that Tilda remembered of Sandra in a smart suit and hat. “How about this one?” Lil asked.
“Looks good. And I’ve got some shots Cooper took during that last interview, too. You’re welcome to use one of them. I could e-mail them to you later. No, hang on, I think they’re on the thumb drive I’ve got in my bag.”
Tilda dug a bright red thumb drive out of her bag and switched places with Lil, but before she could insert the drive, started coughing. “Sorry,” she choked out, “just thirsty. Could I have something to drink?”
“I’m sorry, I should have offered before.” Lil went into the kitchen.
As soon as she was gone, Tilda started copying the scanned photos from the hard drive to her thumb drive. Worried that Lil would come back before she finished, she called out, “Do you suppose I could have some crackers or something, too? I’m starved.”
“Sure, no problem.”
By the time Lil came back with a glass of Coke and a bowl of pretzels, Tilda had the files copied and the thumb drive back in her bag. “That’s perfect,” she said, taking the snack.
“Did you find the pictures?”
“No, I’m an idiot. Wrong thumb drive. I’ll e-mail them to you later.”
Tilda felt a little guilty about sneaking off with the files, but since she wasn’t going to publish them, she could live with the guilt. Maybe there really was nothing odd about those photos or the fact that they’d gone missing, but there was something odd about Lil not wanting to tell the police. If that wasn’t enough of an excuse for her to sneak away with them, it would do until a better one came along.
While Tilda ate stale pretzels that she didn’t want, Lil read the piece she’d written about Sandra.
“This is perfect,” she said. “I really appreciate it.”
“So will you be keeping the Website going?”
“I think so, for now at least. I’ve got the new pictures to put up, and the bulletin boards are still active. If orders keep coming in, I may as well fill them.” She looked down at her hands. “Do you think that’s bad, to take advantage of Aunt Sandra’s death that way?”
Tilda figured she needed more than a halfhearted answer, so she said, “Hell no! Of course I may be the wrong one to ask—I write articles about dead celebrities all the time, and that’s no different. But bottom line? Your aunt would want you to make what money you can. Why else would she leave everything to you?”
“You’re right—she would,” Lil said, looking pleased by the thought.
They ate pretzels in silence for a while, and Tilda wondered how much longer she should stay. Then Lil suddenly said, “I guess you’re wondering why I don’t have any friends around to help me. It’s just that I haven’t been in the area that long, and I don’t make friends easily.”
Tilda didn’t know the proper response to that. Should she protest that it wasn’t true? Point out that anybody who didn’t want to be friends with Lil was missing out on something special? Neither struck her as the way to go, so she tried for a nonjudgmental grunt.
“It’s probably because I’m not good at trusting people anymore,” Lil said matter-of-factly. “The counselor at the rape crisis center said that was a common reaction to being a rape victim. I mean, rape survivor. She wanted me to say it that way.”
Now Tilda really didn’t know what to say. Not that she hadn’t met other rape victims—or survivors—before. The statistic she’d always heard was one woman in four, and Tilda knew a lot more than four women. Of course, she hadn’t known what to say in those instances either. Since she had to say something, she said, “God, I’m sorry, Lil. Did they put the bastard away?”
“It was his word against mine. I went out with him a couple of times, and one night at his apartment, he drugged my drink. I woke up and I could tell that he’d—What had happened. The funny thing is, I’d have slept with him if he’d asked me. He didn’t ask.”
“And the police didn’t believe you?”
“There was no evidence. He didn’t injure me, and the drugs were out of my system before I could get tested.” She shrugged. “Nobody believed me.”
“Not even your family?”
“They didn’t want me to make waves,” she said. “That’s when I moved up here. I wanted to start someplace new, and Aunt Sandra thought I’d like it in Massachusetts.”
“Do you?”
“It’s good,” she said unconvincingly. “I just need to get a job. Aunt Sandra wanted me to see somebody, like a psychiatrist or something, but I need the job to get insurance.”
“You know, I’ve got some friends in programming. I could give you some names to call.”
“Thanks, Tilda, you’ve really been great. I mean, coming to the funeral, and helping with Aunt Sandra’s things, and everything.”
“I really liked Sandra,” Tilda said. “I can’t believe somebody killed her. I’m still having nightmares about finding her.”
“Oh, Tilda, I’m so sorry.”
Tilda shrugged. “It’ll pass. I just wish we knew what happened. Have the police said anything? Do they have any clue at all?”
“Not that they’ve told me—I don’t have a lot of confidence in the police, anyway.”
Tilda wouldn’t either in Lil’s position, though she thought Detective Salvatore seemed pretty sharp. “I’m still wondering if it would make sense to tell the cops about those missing photos. Maybe there’s a connection.”
“Those pictures had nothing to do with Aunt Sandra’s death,” Lil said shrilly.
Tilda couldn’t help but draw back a little, and Lil was instantly contrite.
“No, no, you’re right. I should tell them. I’ll call that detective later today. Okay?”
“Good,” Tilda said. Let him decide if they were worth worrying about.
Chapter 21
Episode 10: Into Their Own Hands
Since Cowtown has never had a sheriff, the townsfolk have always taken care of their own disputes. Then a local rancher is found robbed and murdered. Finding the killer is the easy part—now they have to decide
what to do with him.
—COWTOWN COMPANION BY RUBEN TIMMONS
AFTER they finished their snack, Lil said, “I think this is about all I can manage for one day. Being here is getting to me.”
Tilda nodded. It was getting to her, too.
“The only thing is, I’ve still got work to do on the Website. Would you mind helping me pack the computer up and load it into my car? I’m going to have to get it out of here sooner or later, anyway, and I’ll feel safer if it’s not sitting in an empty apartment.”
“Sure, I can do that,” Tilda said. It took judicious wrapping with blankets and several trips to get the computer and all the related equipment into Lil’s Mazda.
“Are you going to be able to get all this into your apartment on your own?” Tilda asked.
“I’ll manage. Thanks.”
Tilda was relieved. She couldn’t wait to get away from the apartment and its memories, let alone her increasingly uncomfortable thoughts about Lil. So after promising to e-mail the photos from the final interview with Sandra and the names of some friends in the computer business, Tilda made her escape.
It was well past lunchtime, and the pretzels hadn’t been particularly satisfying, so the first order of business was to find food, preferably with company. In fact, the idea of congenial company was of even greater interest than the food, but though she checked her home number as well as her cell, there was no message from Quentin. By the usual dating customs, calling Friday after a Thursday night first date would have been too soon, but she’d had hopes that by Saturday, he’d have been ready for a second date.
She hesitated before calling him. She hadn’t gotten a firm feel for whether or not he expected to make all the moves in the beginning of the relationship, so she didn’t know if her initiating contact would please him or chase him off. Then she dialed his number. If he was that old-fashioned, she’d rather know sooner than later. Unfortunately, there was no answer, and she left a noncommittal message about wanting to say hello.
Still not in the mood to be alone, she called Cooper, who invited her to join him and Jean-Paul for an afternoon of calzone and videos. After making sure that she wasn’t interfering with marital quality time, which led to his sharing far too much information, Tilda made her way to their apartment.
Though she was exceedingly curious about the files she’d liberated from Sandra’s hard drive, she put it all out of her head for a while. First off, there was the calzone, hot and cheesy and fully deserving of her complete attention. Then she had to referee the dispute between Cooper and Jean-Paul about which movie to watch. Both were up for Westerns, after all the planning for the Cowtown fund-raiser, but while Jean-Paul wanted something traditional, preferably involving John Ford, Cooper was interested in something postmodern, like Pale Rider. Tilda broke the tie by suggesting Little Big Man, which had both scope and political correctness, and a good time was had by all. And of course she couldn’t bring up murder while they were watching Indians attacking settlers, soldiers attacking Indians, or the Battle of Little Big Horn. Once the movie was over, there was sinfully delicious ice cream from Toscanini’s—she couldn’t very well spoil that.
Of course, the real reason she was dodging the issue was that she needed a break. It had been a freakishly stressful week, and spending time with Cooper and Jean-Paul was just what she needed. Cooper was a bud, of course, and there was something sublimely relaxing about Jean-Paul. When he was working as a DJ, he filled even the biggest event venue with energy, but at home he was surprisingly quiet. It wasn’t until he’d left for a wedding gig in Arlington that Tilda even thought about the pictures on her thumb drive.
“Can I use your computer to look at some stolen files?” she asked Cooper.
“Sure. Blackmail material? Secret government papers? Spoilers for the next season of True Blood?”
“Dirty pictures.”
“Even better.”
They retired to the spare bedroom he and Jean-Paul used as a combination home office and comic book storage facility, and Cooper obligingly let her load in the photo files from her thumb drive. Then she opened up all the files, and went from one to the other.
Cooper said, “Those look like the pictures Sandra showed us, the ones from the camera club member.”
“They are.”
“So why did you bother to steal them?”
“Curiosity. Somehow that batch of printed photos disappeared from Sandra’s apartment, and I don’t think the cops have them.”
“You think the killer took them? Why?”
“No idea. And if that weren’t odd enough, Lil didn’t seem to care that they were missing.”
“What does that mean?”
“Once again, no idea. Which is why I copied the files and absconded with them.”
Together they looked at the files quickly, then more slowly.
“Do you see anything?” Tilda finally asked.
“Nothing but female pulchritude, which as you know, is not my favorite flavor of pulchritude. Why don’t you try printing them out? It’s easier to see details on paper.”
“Sure it’s okay to use your printer? Nicole won’t swoop down and accuse me of misusing valuable resources?”
“She’s not that bad.”
“Are we talking about the same person? Scrawny, red-haired, pointy nose? Sure she’s that bad.”
“Seriously.”
She turned to look at him. “What brought this on?”
“I’ve just been thinking that if you’re going to work at Entertain Me!, you need to come to some sort of understanding with Nicole.”
“I guess,” she said grudgingly.
“Just think about it, okay? And if you’ll print the pictures, I’ll get us something to drink. Want a snack?”
“Sure. Anything but pretzels.”
He showed up with glasses of Dr Pepper and a bowl of grapes, and they munched while waiting for the pictures to print. Once they had them all, they divided up the stack to look at them under the bright light Cooper used for copyediting.
They saw nothing suspicious.
They switched stacks.
Nothing.
Nearly an hour later, the grapes had disappeared and Tilda was ready to throw something.
“I can’t see why anybody in their right mind would care enough to steal these, let alone kill for them!” Seeing Cooper’s face, she warned, “I know, I stole them. Don’t go there!”
“Not going there.”
“Anyway, these aren’t that different from the ones the pro photographer took that day, and those pictures have been published and posted and even printed as calendars.”
“Do you want me to take another look?”
“Please.” She pushed her stack toward him.
He thumbed through all the photos. “Did women have pointier breasts back then or what?”
“It was the way the bras were made,” Tilda said.
“They look as if they could take an eye out if you weren’t careful.”
“Focus.”
“I am focusing.” Cooper moved to his computer desk. “In fact, I’ve got an idea.”
Tilda pulled up a chair to sit behind him and watch as he went to Sandra’s Website and clicked through the list of photos. “Okay, here’s the official pirate wench pictures.”
“What are you doing?”
“I’m playing ‘spot the difference.’ ” He displayed the first online picture, then thumbed through the stack of printouts until he found the shot that was closest to it. “Same pose, just a different angle. The pro was in front, but our guy was off to one side.”
“That makes sense. The pro would pick the best vantage point.”
“On the plus side, the pictures from the side show a clearer view of the threatened maiden’s heaving bosom. I think the pro photographer was more of an ass man—the amateur was a breast man.”
“Do I want to know what kind of man you are?”
“No. On the minus side, the amateur ended up with ot
her guys with cameras in the frame.”
“Those must be the other camera club members.”
“Having them there definitely destroys the illusion of a pirate at sea.”
“As if that set could fool anybody!”
“Special effects were more primitive then.” Cooper made the same comparison with several more shots, each time spending a few minutes looking for differences, but as far as Tilda could tell, all it did was to verify the facts that the amateur wasn’t as good a photographer as the pro and that he had an inordinate fondness for breasts.
“Is this showing us anything?” she finally asked.
“Not me, anyway.” He made another pass through the pictures, but Tilda could tell his heart wasn’t in it. Then he started reordering the photos.
“What are you doing?”
“Putting them into chronological order, as best I can.”
“Why?”
“Because I have an orderly mind.”
“How can you tell which comes first?”
“The clock on the wall, the movement of the models, the level of liquid in that glass. Plus comparing them to the pro shots.”
“You’re good.”
“Of course.” He fiddled with the stack a little longer. “Okay, I think I’ve got it.”
“Now what?”
He riffled the pages. “You know, I could make a pinup flip book.”
“There’s probably a market for it.”
“Definitely. But now I do see something. Is this all of the pictures that camera club member took?”
“That’s all that Lil had on the hard drive. Why?”
“I just noticed that the amateur was a lot slower than the pro. Look, they both took a shot of the pirate with the maiden over her knee.”
“Right.”
“Then the pro has shots of the hand midway down and then with her hand firmly on rump. The amateur missed the spanking action, which I would think was a big deal.”
“This is a very strange conversation,” Tilda pointed out. But now that Cooper had mentioned it, there were other places where the amateur had missed good shots. “Maybe the amateur had a slower camera or had to reload. Maybe he took too long to focus. Maybe he culled the shots that didn’t come out right. Maybe he went to the bathroom—”
Who Killed the Pinup Queen? Page 12
