Chapter 33
Episode 32: Repent in Leisure
When farmer’s daughter Samantha Crawford is swept off her feet by a visiting gambler, she thinks all her dreams have come true. But then some of her husband’s gambling victims come after him, and she learns he isn’t the paragon she thought he was.
—COWTOWN COMPANION BY RUBEN TIMMONS
WHEN Quentin began to stir, Tilda pretended that she’d just woken up, too. He showered, then went off to fix breakfast while she hit the bathroom. She hadn’t been prepared for a sleepover this time, and felt more than a little ridiculous putting her cowgirl finery back on, but it was all she had. At least she kept the hat off as she followed the encouraging scents into Quentin’s kitchen.
“You cooked breakfast,” she said. “I’m impressed.”
“Don’t be. It’s eggs again. That’s all I can cook well.”
“Maybe someday you can branch out to boiling water.”
“You’ll have to teach me.”
They settled companionably around the kitchen table to eat, and at first, neither of them wanted to bring up the previous night’s events. Finally Tilda could restrain herself no longer. “Quentin, where were you when Miss Barth fell?”
“In the green room. Why?”
“I was just wondering if you saw her fall.”
“You did, didn’t you?”
“How did you know?”
“Something you said during your bad dream last night.”
“Sorry about that.”
“Don’t be. It’s no wonder you have nightmares, between that other body you found and now seeing Miss Barth. In your dream you were telling somebody not to push her.”
“It doesn’t take a genius to figure out why, I guess.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean I think somebody pushed her.”
“Are you serious?”
She nodded.
“Why would somebody do that?”
“I don’t know, but it’s just too much of a coincidence. First Sandra, and now Miss Barth.”
“Sandra?”
“The woman I found murdered.”
“What’s she got to do with Miss Barth?”
“Well—” Tilda stopped herself. It wasn’t that she didn’t trust Quentin, but she’d made a promise to a dying woman. How could she violate that before Miss Barth was even buried? “I can’t explain it,” she said, “but I do think that the deaths are connected.”
Quentin reached over and took her hand. “Tilda, I think you need to get your mind off of death. You’ve had the extreme bad luck to be around two untimely deaths, which has you fixated on murder.”
“Sandra’s death was murder.”
“But Miss Barth fell by accident.”
“Unless somebody pushed her.”
“Did you see someone push her? Did anybody see someone push her? Do the police think someone pushed her?”
“No to all three.”
“Then?”
“I still think somebody pushed her.”
He sighed and pulled his hand back. “I’m sure the police will investigate thoroughly.”
“I hope so,” Tilda said, but she knew she didn’t sound convincing because she wasn’t convinced, and she couldn’t explain her reasoning to Quentin. In fact, she was a little resentful that he didn’t seem to trust her instincts. Sure, they hadn’t known each other that long, and it was true that he didn’t know all the facts because she couldn’t tell him. And of course, neither of them had had a full night’s sleep. And yes, she had woken him up with bad dreams both of the nights they’d slept together. But shouldn’t he have been able to see that she wasn’t a nut job, despite all that? Maybe it was the cowgirl outfit.
They ate in silence after that, and Tilda turned down Quentin’s halfhearted invitation for her to stick around for the day. Instead she manufactured a lunch date with her sister, and left after helping him with the breakfast dishes. To his credit, he did give her a thorough good-bye kiss, and they made tentative plans to get together later that week.
As fuzzy as she was from lack of sleep, Tilda welcomed the cold air that smacked her in the face as she left Quentin’s condo and kept her reasonably aware of her surroundings during the drive to Malden. She tiptoed into the apartment in order to dodge Colleen the question queen, but fortunately for both of them, she wasn’t there. Tilda’s immediate target was her bed, but she stopped by the phone first to set up lunch with June. During her ride home, she’d decided that her impromptu excuse was a good idea. June hadn’t heard about Miss Barth’s death until Tilda told her, but she was smart enough not to press for further details and agreed to come to Malden for lunch.
With that settled, Tilda managed to get in three solid hours of nightmare-free sleep before the alarm woke her. After seeing a possibly terminal case of bedhead in the mirror, she jumped in the shower for the second time that day, and this time had clean clothes to pull on. At some point during her nap or ablutions, she’d missed both the return of Colleen and June’s arrival, because when she went into the living room, she found them deep in conversation. She didn’t know if she should be alarmed or not.
June hopped up to give her a rare sisterly hug, and for once Colleen didn’t ask a single question. She didn’t even hint about accompanying the sisters as they got ready to go to lunch.
“What drug did you put on the dart you shot Colleen with?” Tilda asked as June was driving them to Applebee’s.
June laughed. “She is kind of nosy, isn’t she?”
“Yeah, like a wolverine is kind of cranky. What did you do to her?”
“I just answered her questions.”
“Why? What business is it of hers?”
“None whatsoever, but it didn’t hurt me to talk to her. Some day, she’ll figure out that most people’s lives are at least as tedious as hers, and stop asking about them. Having to hear the details of the PTA battle over whether or not to include Bratz books at the school book fair might cure her for a little while. The meeting about that was so boring that I nearly nodded off while telling her about it.”
“You mean I could have stopped her at any time by giving her too much information?”
“Immersion therapy,” June said smugly.
“Damn. I never thought of that.”
“I supposed you never considered the irony of a professional asker of questions being besieged by questions in her own home, either.”
“I did so.”
“Did not.”
“Did so.”
“Did not.”
That continued until they pulled into the parking place at Applebee’s, and Tilda got in the last triumphant “Did so!” as they got out of the car.
That ended learned discourse until they’d gotten inside, been seated, and had ordered.
“So what are we discussing today?” June asked. “Bad dreams again? Because you’re still not looking your best.”
“Last night was pretty much designed to bring on nightmares,” Tilda pointed out.
“Fair enough.”
“But actually, what I’d like to discuss is patient confidentiality.”
“Excuse me?”
“I know you aren’t a clinician, but didn’t you do some sessions with people during college? And when you were researching, you interviewed subjects, and that’s covered by patient confidentiality, isn’t it? How seriously do you take that?”
June cocked her head. “Extremely. I’m not saying I’d never break it. If somebody threatened Glen or the kids, I’d tell everything I knew, but otherwise my subjects’ secrets are safe.”
“What about me?”
“Maybe you, too, depending on how threatened you were. Is there some reason for the ethics lesson?”
“Hypothetically, yes.”
“Oh, goodie, I love hypothetical conversations. Like the time you wanted to know what could happen if you’d hypothetically dented my new car.”
“Your reaction wasn’t exactly hy
pothetical.”
“Neither was the dent.”
“Okay, forget the hypothetical stuff. I’ll go for vague instead. As you know, sometimes I’m given information that is off the record.”
“Right.”
“And I take that pretty seriously.”
“Of course.”
“Lately, I’ve been trusted with more secrets than a hairdresser, and I’ve figured out even more. One secret in particular was one I figured out, so technically it wasn’t off the record. But the woman involved knew I’d figured it out and asked me not to tell anybody. I promised I wouldn’t. Then she died.”
“Did that secret cause her death?”
“I don’t know. Her death could have been an accident.”
“But you don’t think it was.”
“It would have been a hell of a coincidence. You remember the woman I found dead before? The two women had a connection.”
“What kind of connection?”
“The kind that I promised not to tell about.”
“Did this connection have anything to do with the first woman’s death?”
“I think so, but I don’t have proof.”
“Are the police involved?”
“Two sets of police. Two different cities.”
“And they have no reason to compare notes unless you make this connection known. Correct?”
“Correct.”
June considered the matter. “Let’s look at possible scenarios. Scenario One: The second death was an accident, so the connection is meaningless.”
“That would simplify matters.”
“Scenario Two: The second death was also a murder, but for totally different reasons. The connection is a coincidence.”
“That would be my second choice.”
“Scenario Three: The second death was a murder, and the connection has something to do with it.”
“That’s the one that gave me nightmares last night.”
“No wonder you look tired. Anyway, that third scenario is the only one we have to worry about.” Then June snapped her fingers. “No, wait! I’ve got a fourth. Do you suspect the second dead woman of having killed the first?”
“I did. Not now, obviously.”
“What if she did, and then killed herself out of remorse?”
“That would make all kinds of sense,” Tilda said, almost happy at the idea.
The waiter brought their burgers, and Tilda let him and June arrange the table while she thought it through. By the time he left, she was shaking her head. “Suicide isn’t going to fly.”
“Why not?”
“It comes down to psychology, if you don’t mind my poaching in your patch. Pardon me if I start using names now. The vague thing was getting on my nerves.”
“Fair enough. I take sister confidentiality seriously, too.”
“Anyway, last night Miss Barth was in her element. The fans were treating her like a star again, probably for the first time in years, and I just can’t imagine her cutting that short.”
“People have been known to kill themselves at the top of their game, before it can end.”
“If she’d wanted to do that, she wouldn’t have used such an undignified method. This was one carefully controlled woman. I can picture her slitting her wrists like a Roman senator, or with some fast-acting, non-nausea-inducing poison. Maybe drowning, if it was somewhere that she could be sure no fish or crabs would snack on her body. But she wouldn’t have thrown herself down a flight of stairs, not when she was wearing a dress.”
“What does her dress have to do with it?”
“It was flapping all over while she fell, and one of the first things she did when she came to was push her skirt down. She would not have worn a dress and then killed herself that way.”
“Okay, I see your point. That gets us back to Scenario Three. The connection between the two women had something to do with their deaths.”
“Right,” Tilda said unhappily.
“Will the cops find the connection on their own?”
“I doubt it. It’s pretty deeply buried. Besides, the Saugus cops are leaning toward accident on Miss Barth’s death, so they’ve got no reason to dig.”
“Would knowing the connection help them find the murderer?”
“I don’t know.” Tilda ran her fingers through her hair. “Suppose I tell the cops there’s a connection, but not what the connection is?”
“And of course, they’d take you at your word.”
“You don’t think they would?”
“More likely they’d give you the third degree until you cracked.”
“As if!”
“It took me three minutes to get the story of the dented car out of you.”
“That was a totally different situation.” Before June could argue the point, Tilda said, “What if I send an anonymous tip to both departments? Even if the police didn’t find the connection, they’d look at the deaths differently, and I’d be in the clear, ethics-wise.” But June was giving her the eye. “What?”
“Let’s assume that this link is so deeply hidden that the police never find it. Might they find some other link?”
“There’s only one link.”
“Really?”
“Really.” Then it hit her. “Shit! Me. I’m a link.”
“Which would make you a suspect.”
“So what?” Then she remembered the uneasy guilt she’d felt when Detective Salvatore still had her on his list. “Okay, I wouldn’t enjoy it, but since I didn’t kill either of them, it’s not like I’d be in real trouble.”
“No? Your being taken in for questioning wouldn’t affect your life or your work? Not to mention your pocketbook, from hiring a lawyer? Eventually you’d have to spill the beans.”
“At which point, my reputation would be mud forever. I’d never get another story assignment, and would have to go to work at Dunkin’ Donuts and live in your attic.”
“You may be exaggerating a bit,” June allowed, “but being a murder suspect would not be pleasant.”
“Been there, done that, hated the T-shirt,” Tilda said. “Plus investigating me could distract the police long enough for the real killer to get away.”
“That, too.”
“So what do I do?”
June shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“That’s a big help.”
“I mean, I don’t know why you’re asking. You knew before you got me to come to lunch that you were going to continue snooping around, didn’t you? So do you want me to try to talk you out of it, or encourage you to do what you intended to do all along?”
“I had not made up my mind.”
“Yeah, right.”
“Okay, I did think about it, but I figured you’d talk me out of it.”
“The way I talked you out of taking my car the day it got dented?”
“Oh, right. You really suck at this, don’t you?”
The waiter’s visit to check on them prevented June from answering in kind, but once he was gone, she said, “Listen, Tilda, I know you’ve been snooping.”
Tilda opened her eyes as widely as possible, trying to look innocent.
June snorted. “Note my lack of surprise. I also know that you’re going to continue, and since I have no chance of stopping you, I am going to insist on two things. First, as I said before, be careful. If this person has already killed two women, I don’t think he or she will hesitate to take you on.”
“I’m not a seventy-year-old.”
“And your age made such a difference when you got pushed into Boylston Street.”
“Granted,” Tilda said. “I’ll be careful. What else?”
“Call me if I can do anything to help.”
“You’ve already helped. You listened, you helped me think things through, and you took me seriously.” Something Quentin had not been able to do, she thought wistfully. “Not to mention buying my lunch.”
“When did I say I was paying for lunch?”
C
hapter 34
A photograph can be an instant of life captured for eternity that will never cease looking back at you.
—BRIGITTE BARDOT
AFTER June paid for lunch, she dropped Tilda off at her apartment, where Tilda found Colleen folding laundry in the living room.
“How was lunch?” she wanted to know. “Where did you two go? What did you have? Did June go back home?”
If June’s diagnosis was correct, all Tilda had to do was answer every question with a flood of extraneous detail, and eventually Colleen would stop. She opened her mouth to do just that, but somehow, all that came out was, “Very nice. Applebee’s. Cheeseburgers. Yes.” Giving in to Colleen’s nosiness just didn’t come naturally.
Tilda headed for her bedroom, shut the door firmly behind her, got a pad of paper and a felt-tip pen, and sat cross-legged on her bed. Though she’d never had writer’s block, there were times when she just couldn’t figure out what to do about an article, when she had plenty of facts but no narrative to tie them together. One method that helped her get past that was to doodle. Why she could think better while she was doodling was a mystery she’d never tried to solve. She was just hoping it would work with murder.
So she started doodling.
Why would anybody want to kill two ex-pinup queens? If she went back to Joe’s Lost Pinups site and reported that a second pinup had died under mysterious circumstances, the conspiracy theorists would duke it out with those convinced that a serial killer was lurking. But both of those solutions implied that somebody knew both women had been pinups, and while it had been no secret that Sandra was Sandy Sea Chest, as far as Tilda knew she was the only one who’d known that Miss Barth was Morning Glory. Then again, why was she assuming that she was the only one? Tilda had a good eye, but so did other people, and there were some devout pinup fans out there.
She abandoned the doodle and went to her computer to search for references connecting Cynthia Barth to Morning Glory. Forty-five minutes later, she’d found absolutely nothing. It wasn’t proof positive, but Tilda was reasonably convinced that Miss Barth’s past had been known only to a few.
Who Killed the Pinup Queen? Page 21
