Crushed Velvet

by Diane Vallere

  When he returned, I was in the front of the café taking the curtain rods down from the walls. Another couple walked up to the front door and tried to open it. The woman pressed her face up to the glass and cupped her hands around her eyes. I climbed down from the bunker where I’d been standing and walked over to the door. I tapped on the glass behind the sign and said, “Renovations.” She said something to the man she was with and they left.

  “I don’t want to tell you how to do what you’re doing, but if you want the renovations to be a surprise, maybe you should block out the windows so people can’t see inside.”

  “Block them out with what? I only brought the fabric I’m going to use. Once the curtains are up, people are going to see them.”

  “I can get you a roll of butcher paper from the hardware store and help you hang it. It’ll take most of the morning, but it’ll give you a bigger reveal once you’re done.”

  I studied Vaughn’s face. As far as renovations went, he had a point. And blocking out the windows might not be a bad idea if anybody came snooping around the shop looking for Genevieve. Win-win.

  “Thanks. Do you want some money?” I asked before remembering Vaughn’s wealth.

  “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever asked me,” he said. “But no, thanks. I think I can cover it.”

  He left out the back door. I didn’t know how long it would take him to return, so I had to act quickly.

  I went to the back office. Genevieve’s inbox was overflowing with invoices. I flipped past half a dozen and got distracted by a flyer announcing a party at the Waverly House.

  The Waverly House was a restored Victorian mansion that housed an exhibit of photos and local memorabilia from the town’s early days as a citrus supplier. The staff held a monthly murder mystery party and boasted one of the best restaurants around. Vaughn McMichael’s seventy-year-old mother, Adelaide, ran the landmark-turned-museum.

  Below the flyer were shopping lists and recipes. The piece of paper Kim had dropped still sat by the keyboard. In light of everything else going on, I wondered if there was another reason she showed up when she did.

  I abandoned the inbox and jiggled the mouse. The files that had been left open were now closed. I launched an Internet browser and searched for a listing for “Special Delivery trucking company.” I couldn’t find a website, but a handful of favorable reviews showed up on Yelp. As I scrolled through the reviews of Rick’s delivery service, I heard a knock on the front door. I waited a few seconds, expecting the person to go away. The knocking became more insistent. I powered off Genevieve’s monitor and went to open the door. A squat man in a navy blue jog suit that zipped up the front stood outside. He had short black hair worn in a Julius Caesar style.

  “The shop is closed for renovations,” I said, pointing at the sign. “Jitterbug is across the street and Lopez Donuts is about a mile down Bonita.”

  He held his hand out. “I’m here to talk to Genevieve Girard about her tea,” he said in a voice that sounded like rusted pipes.

  “She’s not here.”

  “And you are . . . ?”

  “I’m Poly Monroe. Like I said, Genevieve’s not here.” I stepped back and started to close the door, but he put a hand out and held it open.

  “Are you in business with Mrs. Girard?”

  “I’m managing her renovations.”

  “You’re a decorator?”

  “No. I own a fabric shop. What do you do, Mr. . . .” My voice trailed off as I realized I hadn’t caught the gentleman’s name.

  “Topo di Sali.” He handed me a business card with a flourish. “I work in Italian food distribution. I find products that are produced on a small scale like your friend’s tea and I increase the demand to grocery stores throughout California. Ever hear of Presto Pesto? That was me. I took it from a grandmother’s kitchen and now it’s in a hundred and forty grocery stores up and down the coast.”

  “But Genevieve’s whole theme is French. How did you find out about her tea?”

  “Her husband told me about it. Met him on one of my trips. When he learned what I do for a living, he suggested I branch out and get in touch with her.”

  “Genevieve has a lot on her plate and I don’t think the timing is right for her to consider expansion.”

  He stepped forward. “She’s got troubles with money. I can solve those troubles.”

  “What’s your take?”

  “Half.” He bent over and coughed a few times. When he spoke again, his voice was as raspy as before. “She doesn’t even have to make the stuff. She can sell me her recipe and I’ll make it happen. Or sell me her name and let me work up the recipe. The girl’s got options.”

  I looked at the business card again. There was no address on the card, only a phone number. His name, Topo di Sali, was above the phrase “The Italian Scallion,” and along the bottom it said, “Serving the Greater Los Angeles Area.” The back of the card asked the question, “Who says you can’t buy good taste?”

  “Like I said, I don’t think she’s interested in selling out.”

  He put his hands in his pockets and rocked back on his feet. “You might want to let her make that decision. From what I’m hearing on the street, she might not have much of a choice.”

  Six

  I didn’t like the insinuation. “The next time I see Genevieve, I’ll tell her you were here.”

  “I’m on my way to San Fran for business. If I don’t hear from her by the time I return, I’ll be back.” He stared at me with eyes the color of glass cleaner. “You tell your friend to remember it’s a two-way street.” He held my stare for another second and then left.

  I didn’t doubt that, in Genevieve’s current vulnerable state, she’d agree to just about anything Mr. di Sali offered her. I needed to get her back on solid footing before she made a very bad decision. And what exactly did he mean by that “two-way street” comment?

  I called Sheriff Clark. “Hi, Sheriff, this is Poly Monroe. Have you found anything else out about Phil Girard’s death?”

  “Hold on,” he said. I heard a click. A couple of seconds later, Clark returned. “Why are you so interested?”

  I thought it best to keep Genevieve’s name out of my conversation. “I feel somewhat responsible. Phil went to Los Angeles to pick up fabric for me. I know they say there’s no such thing as bad publicity, but I’d rather the fabric store not be linked to another homicide.”

  “It won’t be. Is that all?”

  “How did he die? Was he shot? Knocked out? Drugged?

  “I’m still waiting on some information from the medical examiner.”

  “Like what?”

  “Tox screen.”

  “Why are you running that? Did you check my fabric for the death mask like I suggested?”

  “Call it a hunch, Ms. Monroe.” He sniffed, like he had a cold and no tissues handy. “I’m still trying to reach Mrs. Girard. You wouldn’t happen to know where I can find her, do you?”

  “Sorry, Sheriff. She arranged for me to handle renovations at the tea shop this week. I don’t know where she’s going to be while I’m here.”

  I said good-bye and hung up. The only new information I’d learned wasn’t good. The medical examiner was running a tox screen. If Genevieve had accidentally poisoned Phil, Clark would discover it.

  I’d assumed that Phil had been suffocated, but had he been alive when someone buried him? And if so, had he ingested something to keep him from fighting back? I shuddered. If Clark wasn’t going to talk, then I needed to track down the van driver, Rick. He’d been in Los Angeles with Phil. He had to know something.

  That led me to thought number two. Phil Girard wasn’t a small man. He was easily six inches taller than Genevieve, and he carried enough weight on his frame to put him in “beefy” territory. He’d lost weight recently—vanity weight, I guessed, now that I kne
w about his affair with Babs—but still, the man wasn’t a pushover. Unless the push came from a very strong force.

  So how had someone gone about getting him under my velvet?

  If he’d been sedated, he wouldn’t have had the energy to fight back. Again, my mind trailed back to the tea. What would Clark find on that report from the medical examiner? I remember hearing somewhere that the lab tests would only show certain chemicals, unless the medical examiner had a reason to look for something suspicious.

  I looked in the fridge. The something suspicious they would be looking for might be inside. I could dump all the tea, eliminating anything they could use to draw a connection between Genevieve and her husband’s murder. Or should I leave it and assume her innocence?

  Knuckles wrapped on the back door. I jumped and slammed the refrigerator door shut. Kim stood on the landing. She looked different today. Nervous. She fidgeted with her hands, moving them from the front pockets of her jeans to the back pockets. She then crossed them in front of the Care Bear on her T-shirt, and instantly uncrossed them and let them dangle.

  “Hi, Kim, come on in,” I said.

  “Hi, Poly. I saw the sign out front. Genevieve didn’t say anything about renovations. Is she here today?”

  I studied the young girl. “Kim, do you watch the news? Read the paper?”

  “Not really,” she said. “Sometimes I watch TMZ,” she added.

  “Do you know what happened in San Ladrón yesterday?”

  The color drained from her face. “I left San Ladrón right after we talked.”

  I didn’t understand her response. “Have a seat.”

  Kim sat in Genevieve’s chair, and I turned a wooden crate upside down and used it as a stool. The crate was lower than the chair, but I was five nine and she was barely over five feet tall, so we ended up eye to eye.

  “Genevieve’s husband died yesterday.” I paused. “Somebody killed him.” I focused on keeping my voice steady, even though the phrase “somebody killed him” left me shaken.

  “Genevieve is going to take a few days away from Tea Totalers. I’m going to spend as much time here as I can, but I can’t be here all the time. My store opens this week, and I have to take care of that, too. You said you took this job so you could learn about the restaurant business, and I don’t think you’re going to learn much about that from me.”

  Kim looked as if someone had knocked the wind out of her. “I need this job,” she said. “There are people who are expecting me to be working here. I can’t risk them knowing I’m not.” Her face went from already pale to ashen and dark circles appeared under her eyes.

  Whatever reason Kim had for working at Tea Totalers, it seemed to me that restaurant experience had little to do with it.

  “Tell you what. This job at Tea Totalers is bigger than I originally thought. Can I count on you to help with the renovation here? Technically it’s still working at Tea Totalers, even if the café is closed. If you’re game, you can help me until Genevieve comes back.”

  She exhaled, making an O with her lips. Her cheeks puffed out like a blowfish. “That would work,” she said after all the air was exhaled. She set her pink backpack on the floor under the desk. “Are we starting today? What do you want me to do?”

  “Start by carrying the chairs from the front yard to the back. Then you can work on getting them ready for a new coat of paint.”

  “I thought I’d be working inside the store,” she said. She spun the chair around and put her hands on the desk to stand up. The folded piece of paper she’d dropped fell to the floor. She squatted and picked it up. “I’ve been looking all over for this. What’s it doing here?”

  “You dropped it yesterday when you were leaving. I called out after you but you didn’t seem to hear me. I figured you’d be back and this would be as safe a place as any.”

  “Did anybody see it?”

  “I don’t think anybody’s been here since we left. Except for Vaughn, but I doubt he looked at it.”

  “Who’s Vaughn?” she asked.

  It took me a second to decide how to answer. “Vaughn’s a regular of the tea shop. He’s also a friend of Genevieve.”

  “Is he here?” She looked over my shoulder like she expected to see a third person in the small room.

  “No. He went to the hardware store. Don’t worry about him. If we want to get anything done today we should get started.”

  “Okay,” she said. She folded the paper in half again and slid it into the outside pocket of her backpack, zipping it shut when she was done.

  I had all of the curtains removed from the windows and the furniture pushed to the center of the tea shop by the time Vaughn returned with the butcher paper. He carried four rolls of the brown paper inside and laid them on the floor by the counter.

  “I see you picked up a helper while I was gone. Didn’t think I was coming back?”

  “I don’t know you well enough to know what you’re going to do,” I said with a smile. “That’s Kim. She’s supposed to be working here. I told her the shop is going to be closed for at least a week and she said she wants to stick around and help with the renovations. I’m not sure what Genevieve’s going to say when she finds out she has to pay an extra salary on a week when she has no business.”

  “Are you going to tell her when you see her tonight?”

  “Who said I’m going to see her tonight?”

  “I figured, with you spending the day here, that you might report in to her when we’re done.”

  “I don’t think there’s any need for reporting. She needs some time and space to deal with what happened. I’m giving her time.”

  “And space, apparently.”

  My skin prickled with Vaughn’s implications, true as they may be. I didn’t think it was a good idea for anybody to know where Genevieve was, at least until we knew what the police would find from the tox screen.

  “Have you been working nonstop since I left?”

  I thought about the food distributor and the conversation with Sheriff Clark, but I wasn’t ready to talk about either of them to Vaughn. “Pretty much.”

  “I don’t know what’s fueling you, but I thought you might like lunch.”

  “Lunch? I guess we could root around in the kitchen for some leftover croissants and jam,” I said.

  “Why eat leftovers?” He pointed to a picnic basket that I hadn’t seen him carry inside. “Fresh from the Waverly House. My mother suggested it.”

  “How is Adelaide?” I asked.

  “She’s good. She misses you,” he said. “She told me to tell you to visit sometime.”

  When I’d first returned to San Ladrón, I’d made Adelaide Brooks’s acquaintance, but in the months that passed, as I separated myself from my life in Los Angeles and slowly prepared for a life in San Ladrón, I hadn’t taken the time to return to see her.

  “I will. I should.” I thought about the fact that she had been friends with my aunt and uncle. “I will,” I repeated. “So things at the Waverly House are fine?”

  “Mostly. She’s been planning Midnight in the Garden, the annual Waverly House spring party.”

  “I saw a flyer about that on Genevieve’s desk. It’s a pretty big deal, isn’t it?”

  “It used to be. It’s a fund-raiser. The Waverly House opens their gardens for a night. The admission fee goes directly to the annual operating expenses. Everything else is donated: music, food, drinks, decorations. But there’s been a complication this year. Someone high up on the city council is saying the Waverly House is in no condition to hold the kind of party they used to. Now they’re sending over a building inspector to determine whether she has to cancel it or not. Mom’s not happy. She’s been fighting city council for months while making plans. The party planning should be in full swing, but now it’s on indefinite hold.”

  “Isn’t your father on
the city council?” I asked. Vaughn nodded. “Can’t he do something?”

  Vaughn looked down at the toes of his Stan Smiths for a few seconds, and then back at me. “He’s the one who’s holding things up.” He picked up a rubber stress ball from the desk, tossed it about eight inches in the air, and caught it. The second time he did it, I shifted my eyes from the ball to his face and watched him concentrate on the path of the rubber blob. He clearly didn’t want to talk about it.

  After the third toss and catch he set the ball back on the desk and looked at me. “So . . . lunch?”

  “Sounds great.”

  We carried two large picnic baskets into the center of the store and lined the floor with butcher paper. I found Kim in the front yard and asked if she wanted to join us. She declined, saying she’d packed her own lunch and preferred to keep working. There was something odd about her behavior, but I couldn’t figure out what it was. I left an open invitation for her to come inside if she changed her mind.

  Vaughn flipped the top of the first basket open and pulled out two glass bottles of Perrier. He set them between us and extracted several clear food containers with snap-on lids. I found glasses, silverware, and napkins in the kitchen and joined him on the floor.

  “Today’s special from the Waverly House: peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.” He unsnapped one of the lids.

  “You’re kidding!”

  “I’m kidding. How’s rosemary sourdough, an assortment of cheeses, smoked salmon, and fresh fruit?”

  “It’s no peanut butter and jelly, but it’ll do.”

  “Next time. It’s on the children’s menu.”

  I sliced a sliver of brie and layered it with apple on a piece of bread. “Is the Waverly House kitchen always so available to you?”

  “To tell the truth, I waited until the chef wasn’t looking and I snitched from the fridge.”

  Vaughn poured sparkling water into the glasses and handed me one. I speared a piece of salmon, added a sprig of grapes and a slice of rosemary sourdough, and handed the plate to him. He added a wedge of blue cheese. For the next couple of minutes, we ate in silence.