Crushed Velvet

by Diane Vallere

  I spent the next couple of hours cleaning up the apartment. I didn’t think of myself as a sloppy person, but living alone in my aunt Millie and uncle Marius’s apartment, as opposed to living with my ex-boyfriend Carson in Los Angeles, gave me the freedom to toss my blazer on the sofa, leave my shoes in the living room, and only do the dishes once every couple of days. Tidying up turned into full-on cleaning. By the time the kitchen floor was scrubbed and all of the dark cherrywood trim had been Murphy-oiled, I knew I wasn’t just keeping up with neglected cleaning. I was burning off nervous energy.

  I went downstairs. I’d been spending a lot of time getting the store ready to open, sorting through the inventory that I had, tagging some things with discount prices and acquiring others from my contacts in Los Angeles.

  Inside the door was a wall of empty shelving. I’d taped a sign there a month ago. Polyester Velvet, it said. I wanted it to be the first thing people saw when they came into the store. But thinking about the velvet brought me back to thinking about Genevieve’s husband.

  I’d seen his body in the back of the truck. He’d been buried under a dozen bolts of fabric. What did that mean? You couldn’t get a body under twelve bolts of velvet unless you started with the body first. That told me whoever had put the fabric in the truck had purposely stacked it on top of Phil. And that meant that person had something to do with Phil’s murder.

  Was he killed over the business opportunity that Rick Penwald had mentioned? Or did his murder have something to do with the food he picked up for Genevieve? Was my fabric a convenient way to hide the body, or had someone known what he’d be couriering? And why had Phil hired another deliveryman to make the delivery to San Ladrón? He could have called Genevieve and told her if he was running late or if something had come up. Why had it been such a secret?

  I picked up the phone and called Sheriff Clark. When he answered, I identified myself.

  “Sheriff, does the medical examiner know if Phil was dead before the fabric was put on top of him?”

  “I’m sorry, Ms. Monroe; that information is part of my investigation.”

  “It’s just that, I was thinking, isn’t there a thing called a death mask? Can’t you test the fabric to see if someone was suffocated with it?”

  “What are you getting at?”

  “If you test my velvet, you should be able to determine if it was used to suffocate Phil Girard or if he was dead before the fabric was stacked on top of him.”

  “And what do you think that will tell us?”

  “I’m not sure, but it should tell you something.”

  “Ms. Monroe, I appreciate the phone call, but I’d like to ask you to leave the investigation to me.”

  “Have you heard from Genevieve?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  That concerned me more than I wanted to admit. I wished the sheriff good luck with the investigation, then hung up, walked downstairs, and headed to Tea Totalers on foot.

  When I reached the shop, it was locked up tighter than a canister of herbes de Provence that needed to maintain freshness. Lights were off and chairs were upside down on top of tables. I checked my watch. It was approaching two.

  It appeared as though Genevieve had come back to the store, but I had a hard time picturing her thinking rationally enough to do much more than turn off the lights and lock the door. But if not her, then who had closed up? And at whose direction?

  Too many questions cropped up in my head. I walked around the back of the store, looking for signs that Genevieve had returned. I found a young woman outside of the building, stacking wooden crates like the ones Genevieve had used to pack the lunches.

  “Excuse me,” I called out.

  The woman looked up. She was a pretty blonde, her highlighted hair pulled into a ponytail on top of her head. Bright blue eyes and skin that seemed untouched by the California sun greeted me. She wore a shrunken aqua T-shirt with a picture of a Troll doll on it over a long-sleeved thermal. Faded jeans hung off her hips.

  “I’m Poly Monroe. Who are you?”

  “I’m Kim Matheson. I work here.” She looked at the back door. “I got a flat tire this morning and ended up running late. I called the store and left a message. Genevieve called me back and said she’d meet me here this afternoon to show me around.”

  “When was that?”

  She checked her phone. “Around nine.” She looked up at me. “She called me half an hour ago and apologized, said she had a family emergency. I told her I was here and she asked me to close up.”

  “Did she tell you what the family emergency was?”

  “No.”

  I looked at the empty crates Kim was stacking. “What are those?”

  She looked embarrassed. “There was a set of keys in the Dracaena plant by the back door. When I got here, there were about a dozen crates of produce sitting outside. I didn’t think Genevieve would want them to go bad, so I unlocked the store and put everything away in the kitchen. I thought it might make up for me showing up late on my first day.”

  “Today’s your first day?” I asked. “Genevieve never mentioned anyone else working here.”

  “I saw the ad on Craigslist when I was on vacation. I’m taking a year off from school and I needed a job. We had a phone interview. We talked for forty-five minutes. Before we hung up, she told me the job was mine and I started today. I got the feeling she would have hired the first person who answered the ad, so I’m glad I didn’t wait until I got home. This place is perfect for what I have in mind.”

  I studied Kim. She seemed sincere, but I wondered what exactly she thought she was going to get from working at Tea Totalers? I didn’t think Genevieve could afford to pay her much more than minimum wage, and it was possible she couldn’t even afford that.

  “That probably sounded funny, didn’t it?” Kim said. “I want to open my own restaurant someday. I can get hands-on experience here, and Genevieve said if I did a good job she’d be willing to write me a letter of recommendation for—well, for what I need it for,” she finished.

  “Genevieve’s great,” I said. “You’ll love working here.”

  “Do you work here, too?”

  “No, I own a fabric store down the street.” It still gave me a thrill to say those words. “If you get a chance, you should come to the grand opening. I inherited the store a couple of months ago and it’s been closed for a long time.” I pulled a coupon out of my pocket and handed it to her. She folded it without looking at it and pushed it into her jeans pocket.

  I helped her move what was left of the crates to the kitchen. She locked up and looked around, confused. “Should I leave the keys in the plant?”

  While I knew that San Ladrón had the appearance of a small, cozy town, I’d lived through my own nightmare and wasn’t as trusting as others might be. “Why don’t you give them to me? I’m going to see Genevieve later today.” I hope, I silently added.

  “Okay, thanks. You’ll tell her I was here, right? And that I put the produce in the kitchen? And cleaned up a little, too, because it looked like she left in a hurry.”

  “Sure, I’ll let her know.”

  “Okay, thanks. Bye!”

  I said good-bye and slipped the keys into my pocket. Kim walked around to the front of the store. She pulled a bicycle from alongside the restaurant and shook a few leaves loose from the handlebars. She pulled on a pink-and-white helmet and straddled the bicycle. A piece of paper fell from her back pocket and fluttered to the ground.

  “Kim, you dropped something!” I called. She flipped up the kickstand and walked the bike forward until she reached the path in front of the store. “Kim!” I called again. She didn’t appear to hear me.

  I jogged forward and stumbled over an exposed tree root. Kim turned around and looked at me, and then glided down the path out front of Tea Totalers and into a break in traffic.

 
The paper rested in the dirt. I picked it up by the corner and it unfolded. Along the top was the seal from the city of San Ladrón. Before I could stop myself, I scanned the page. It was a notice of a date and time to meet with a parole officer. The letter was addressed to Kim Matheson.

  Three

  I folded the paper back up and tucked it into my pocket next to the keys, then thought better of it. It wasn’t mine to take. I let myself into the back of Tea Totalers and went to Genevieve’s desk. I pulled a blank sheet of paper out of her printer and wrote her a note: G—I came by to check on you. Your new employee dropped this after she left. Call me—Poly. I considered adding a note about the produce in the fridge, but didn’t. There was more than just a report of activities for me to talk to Genevieve about, and I’d tell her when I saw her.

  I left the note on the keyboard and set Kim’s letter, folded, on the side. I drew an arrow as if there was any mistaking what I was referring to. When I set down the pen, my hand bumped the mouse. The computer made a chugging noise, and the monitor lit up.

  Files had been left open. One was a database of the costs of running the tea shop. Expenses were listed in red; income was listed in black. I had no business snooping around Genevieve’s financial situation, so I closed the file and turned the monitor off.

  I moved to the first of three large refrigerators that lined the wall inside the kitchen and looked inside. Plastic tubs were stacked on the shelves. Small labels identified the contents of plants and herbs I knew Genevieve used in her various blends of tea. A large bin labeled “catnip” surprised me. Did she grow it herself or buy it at the local pet store?

  I closed the door and looked inside the second fridge. Two dozen plastic dollar-store pitchers of iced tea stood like an army ready to attack. The third fridge had been hastily packed with fruits and vegetables. Lemons, limes, oranges, and tomatoes filled uncovered plastic tubs like the ones used in the first fridge. Apples, pears, carrots, and celery jutted out from shelves. Bunches of radishes were pushed along the interior wall, and avocados filled the door. This must be the produce Kim had brought inside, because Genevieve would have known better than to refrigerate half of these items.

  Having grown up in California, I knew how abundant different fruits and vegetables could be. I also knew how to store them until they were ready to eat. Half of the produce in the refrigerator needed to be removed and stored differently. If it had remained in the refrigerator overnight, most of it would have been worthless by morning. How did someone who wanted to work in a restaurant not know that?

  I tucked the avocados into a brown paper bag, folded it up, and set it on a shelf next to a set of silver mixing bowls and then transferred the lemons and limes to a blue and white ceramic bowl that had been empty on the counter. The tomatoes went on a flat tray with an inch between them. I spaced out the remaining produce on the now-empty refrigerator shelves and checked my phone between storing each different fruit and vegetable, rebooting it between the limes and the tomatoes. Still no calls from Genevieve.

  When I was done, I surveyed the kitchen. A plastic bag filled with individually wrapped croissants was tucked in the corner under the cabinet. I didn’t know that there was a proper way to store croissants, but since Genevieve had been the one to pack the lunches for the crew at the store, I assumed she’d been the one to put them away. Everything else seemed to be in order.

  The paper Kim had dropped was still there. Feeling slightly guilty, I unfolded it and snapped a picture with my phone, folded it back up, and locked the store up behind me.

  A steady stream of cars lined up behind the traffic light at San Ladrón and Bonita Avenue. Between cleaning my apartment and rearranging food at Genevieve’s, I’d burned up a fair portion of the day. Rush hour was officially on. I latched the gate in front of Tea Totalers and turned right. It was four blocks to the fabric store. I crossed the street and stopped off at The Earl of Sandwich, ordered a cucumber and avocado with sprouts on whole wheat toast for me and a side of sliced turkey for the cats. I added a bottle of water and waited while the woman behind the counter wrapped the turkey in tinfoil and put it and my sandwich in a brown paper bag. She handed it all to me and I left.

  As I waited at the crosswalk for the light to change, I overheard a raised female voice come from Charlie’s Automotive, next door to the sandwich shop. A fiery redhead in a skintight leopard-print dress and red stiletto heels stood on the sidewalk in front.

  “He wasn’t afraid for people to know. Why would he be? Half of San Ladrón would have killed to be in his shoes,” she said.

  The traffic light changed. I had been planning to cross the street, but curiosity kept me where I was. I approached a wooden bench in front of one of San Ladrón’s many hair salons and ignored the Walk sign. The woman out front hadn’t seen me, which I thought was for the best.

  Charlie, local mechanic and all-around tough cookie, stood facing the redhead. Charlie was dressed in standard blue coveralls. She wiped her hands on a rag that had long ago lost any semblance of color and smiled at the angry woman. Her lips moved, but her voice was lower than the redhead’s, so I couldn’t make out what she said. I uncapped my bottle of water and took a swig while watching the scene.

  The redhead pointed a finger at Charlie. “Don’t mess with me, Charlie,” she said loud enough for her voice to carry to me. She pivoted on her high red heels and got into a shiny green Mustang. Seconds later the engine sprung to life and the car pulled out, cutting off traffic and causing an explosion of angry honks. I took another swig of my water, recapped the bottle, tucked it back into the bag, and stood up. Charlie noticed me and headed my way.

  “One of these days I’m going to learn to leave well enough alone,” she said.

  “Who was that?

  “Babs Green. San Ladrón’s local showgirl.”

  “I didn’t know San Ladrón had showgirls.”

  “She has a burlesque show at the Villamere Theater. Pretty racy stuff for this town. She’s not happy because she found out I have some dirt on her.” She wiped her hands with the soiled rag.

  “I thought you’d be the type to mind your own business?” I said as a question.

  “Nah, I’m as opportunistic as the next person.” She jutted her chin toward the front of the fabric store. “You couldn’t leave well enough alone, either, could you?”

  Since meeting her, I’d come to learn that Charlie wasn’t big on hello, good-bye, or small talk in general. With her it was either straight to the point or the tail end of a conversation we’d started days ago. If she wanted to talk about something, we’d talk about it. If not, I’d have to wait until she was ready.

  I liked Charlie. She wore her hair in thick braids, mostly black but currently some colored in shades formerly only known to Crayola, her eyeliner heavy like Cleopatra, and her lipstick burgundy. She had at least nine piercings: seven in her ears, one in her right eyebrow, and one in her navel. I hadn’t seen any others and didn’t really want to know about them if they were there. You’d never know she was the daughter of one of the wealthiest men in San Ladrón. She’d tried her best to keep it a secret from the town, and had been mostly successful.

  “I wish I could say I knew what you were referring to, but today’s been the kind of day where you could be talking about a number of things,” I said.

  “The sign.” She pointed to it like her hand was a gun.

  We both turned and looked at the front of the fabric store. The words had been removed, but the rusted bolts that had held them in place still jutted out like the ones that protruded from the neck of Frankenstein’s monster’s. The exposed façade looked dirty and bare without signage, and the sidewalk was buckled from where Land had, well, landed. Traces of the construction crew in the form of scaffolding and a few yellow hard hats left behind were still there, despite my attempts to clean up after the men on the job.

  “I had the permits. I had the c
onstruction crew. Everything was in place to get that sign down today.”

  “What happened?”

  “Phil Girard happened.”

  “What did that idiot go and do now?”

  “He got himself killed.”

  Charlie looked at me, her normal quick comebacks temporarily silenced. When she found her voice, the tone had changed from tough girl to concern. “You, me, details. Give me a sec to lock up and I’ll come to the store.”

  “I’ll wait here.”

  Being new to San Ladrón, I knew that most people knew more about everybody in the town than I did. Charlie’s reaction reiterated that feeling. She knew something about Phil Girard that I didn’t. If she was willing to tell me what it was, I wasn’t going to give her the chance to change her mind.

  About a minute later Charlie slammed down the gate to the auto shop and locked it from the outside. She’d changed out of her coveralls and now wore a cropped Billy Idol T-shirt that showed off her belly button piercing, and a pair of baggy blue jeans. She yanked on the other exterior door, checking that it was locked, too. The light changed and we crossed the street. Charlie stepped over the crack in the sidewalk and waited as I unlocked the gate and the door. I headed upstairs. It wasn’t until I reached the kitchen that I realized I’d lost her somewhere along the way.

  “Charlie?” I called.

  “Give me a minute,” her muffled voice called back. A few seconds later I heard the flush of a toilet and the sound of running tap water.

  I unpacked my cucumber sandwich and sat down at the table to eat. Charlie poured herself a glass of water and sank into a chair opposite me. “The Earl of Sandwich?”