Crushed Velvet

by Diane Vallere

  “I know of Genevieve’s troubles and I feel for her. If this would help her, then it makes it an even better idea. But Poly, I won’t begin to assume this is happening until I know I have her permission. As it is, I feel just awful for my part in the evidence against her.”

  “Your part? What do you have to do with Phil Girard’s murder?”

  “Nothing!” she said, sitting back. “It’s just that a bit of my advice has worked against your friend.”

  “How?”

  “When she was first getting started, she used to dine at the Waverly House. After several meals, I introduced myself to her and asked what it was that kept bringing her back. She told me she’d always wanted to run a French-themed tea shop and she was getting ideas of items she could add to her menu. She was embarrassed, as if I’d think her a thief. Such a sweet girl. I told her she could steal whatever ideas she wanted. That’s the name of the game when it comes to business. I learned that from my ex-husband.” She smiled ruefully and took another sip of her cordial. “She told me she always thought she’d serve tea and croissants, but she felt like a failure because her croissants weren’t as good as ours. I told her our secret, and that’s where the trouble comes in.”

  I leaned forward again, my lips loosened by the drink. “That’s weird that you brought up the croissants. That’s what brought me here tonight. I wanted to ask you about croissants.”

  “You came here to talk about croissants? That is weird.”

  I laughed at how odd it sounded to hear Adelaide use the word weird. “Please keep going. What’s the secret with your croissants?”

  “That we don’t make then fresh!” She laughed. “We have them delivered from a distributor in Los Angeles. As far as I know, Genevieve uses the same supplier.”

  Twenty-four

  “But that means anybody could have had access to Genevieve’s croissants. Anybody,” I said.

  “Yes, I suppose that’s true. Is that relevant?”

  “Phil Girard was suffocated with croissants. There were crumbs in the back of the truck, and Sheriff Clark knows that Genevieve packed a basket of food for Phil before he left. One of the things in that basket was a sandwich on a croissant.”

  “Oh my, that’s worse than I thought.”

  “What else do you know about Phil Girard’s murder?” I asked Adelaide.

  “What I read in the papers, I believe, and probably not even that much. I don’t like reading about the murder of one of our local residents. He may not have deserved his wonderful wife, but he didn’t deserve to die.”

  “So you knew he was cheating?”

  “I suppose I did. He and Genevieve came here for dinner one evening. Later that same night he came back with another woman.”

  “Babs Green?”

  “Yes.” She took a sip of her drink. “And worse, she dropped her shawl on the way out, which means she’ll be visiting the Waverly House a second time when she comes to pick it up.”

  I thought back to the conversation Charlie had relayed about blackmailing Phil. It didn’t fit. Why did Charlie have leverage with the knowledge of his affair, when Phil was parading his mistress around the Waverly House? It was another piece of information I couldn’t justify.

  “Do you know when Babs is going to pick up her shawl?”

  “I suppose it will be sometime after I call her and tell her I found it. Funny, I never seem to get to that particular task on my to-do list.” She giggled and took another sip of her drink. “But for Phil to bring her here on the same night that he dined with his lovely wife, well, it was an act of a true toad if you ask me. If Genevieve wanted to serve frog legs, she’d have had to look no further than him for supplies.” She giggled again. “Did I say that?” she asked.

  I looked at her, at the almost-empty cordial glass on the desk in front of her, and back at her. “I think the Sauterne might have helped.”

  “Poly, I do enjoy talking to you. You’re a young woman, but you’re an old soul. You don’t make me feel like a seventy-year-old woman. In fact, when I talk to you, sometimes I think I’m talking to my old friend Millie. She was a fixer just like you.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “She saw problems and she tried to fix them. Vaughn notices it, too. I would never violate my son’s confidence, but I suspect he’s intimidated by your generosity and ability to do just about anything on your own. I daresay he doesn’t know exactly how to treat you.”

  “He’s doing okay so far,” I said, immediately regretting it. “Did I say that?”

  Adelaide looked between me and my barely touched glass. “I’m afraid I can’t blame the Sauterne unless you drink at least half of what I poured you.”

  I sipped at my beverage and told Adelaide what else I knew of Phil’s murder: about Rick Penwald and his fictitious delivery business, the empty tea jug in the back of the van, and Mack and the mix-up with the fabric. I told her about Topo di Sali’s pressure to get Genevieve to sell out, and how Kim had faked the life insurance policy that had ultimately been the most incriminating piece of evidence. I kept hoping something would shake loose when I repeated everything to her. It didn’t.

  “I tell you what we’re going to do,” Adelaide said. “I’m going to talk to Sheriff Clark about the croissants first thing tomorrow morning. If you can get Genevieve’s permission to let me use her shop, I’ll get a press release out immediately and do everything in my power to halt the tide of public opinion from harming her while we put together this party.”

  “Then we have a plan?” I asked.

  “We have a plan.”

  “Can I add one more thing to the plan?”

  “What?”

  “You give me Babs’s address and I’ll hand-deliver the shawl tomorrow.”

  “Is there no end to your generosity?” she asked.

  “I might have an ulterior motive, but nobody else needs to know that.”

  She reached into a basket on the floor behind her desk and picked up a sheer black shawl with bright pink, blue, and green flowers on it. Long black piano fringe hung from the border. Adelaide handed the shawl to me. “Your secret is safe with me. Good luck.”

  Unlike when I arrived, Adelaide’s eyes now sparkled brightly. She seemed to have forgotten about her battles with her ex-husband temporarily, or maybe it was because she viewed me as a new general in her army. That thought sent a shiver down my spine. It was one thing to help Adelaide find a way to host the annual benefit she had always hosted. It was quite another to feel like I was taking sides between two very important people in my new hometown, both of whom happened to be the parents of the man I’d kissed three times in the past week. Not that I was counting.

  Adelaide and I walked to the front of the Waverly House. I was energized with ideas for the possible party at Tea Totalers. What we’d already done at the store would work perfectly for everyday, and with only a few modifications I could take it up a notch. It would be the kind of glamorous event I’d always wanted to attend. From what I’d been told about the annual parties at the Waverly House, this would be more than a night out for the town. It was something special. And because I was interested in becoming a part of San Ladrón, I was eager to be a part of the planning.

  It had become dark while I visited with Adelaide. Instead of taking the shortcut down the alley that connected to the back parking lot of the fabric store, I walked to the gas station on the corner and turned right, keeping a brisk pace between streetlights. Most of the lights of businesses along Bonita were off, with the exception of Antonio’s Ristorante and the Broadside Tavern. Both Tiki Tom and the Garden sisters had long since locked up their stores. A few cars passed me as I hurried along the sidewalk, past the local bank branch and an insurance storefront. I kept my eyes on my final destination, easy to spot thanks to the crack in the sidewalk where the heavy metal sign had landed earlier in the week.

 
; I hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about that sign since Phil’s murder, but I couldn’t put it off indefinitely. I flipped through the recently dialed numbers on my phone and found the foreman. A machine clicked on after four rings, and I left a message.

  “This is Polyester Monroe of the fabric store on Bonita Avenue. This sign removal and installation job needs to be finished tomorrow. I open for business on Sunday!” I stared up at the rusted bolts protruding from the façade. “Call me back.” I left my number and hung up.

  My business plan had included a loan to cover things like the sign removal and new sign installation, the acquisition of new inventory, and the expenses of running the store for six months while I built up momentum and generated a sales revenue. I had a little money in a Vanguard account, thanks to my ex-boyfriend constantly harping that it was never too early to start investing for the future, and that’s what I relied on for daily expenses. The beauty of the fabric shop was that I could live in the apartment above it, which saved me money on rent, but there were obvious expenses I had to plan for: food, water, electricity, kitty litter.

  I was a firm believer that if you created goodwill with the people around you, it would come back to you when you needed it. Karma, some people called it, but karma probably wasn’t the immediate concept people thought it was. If it were, the people who cut you off in the grocery store line would be punished by their shopping bags splitting open on the way to their cars. Whatever it was called, I hoped it would come to me in spades when I needed it, as in, when the building inspectors took note of the crack in the sidewalk in front of the store and threatened to write me up for destruction of public property.

  I heaved the gate open and unlocked the front door. A faint beeping sounded from the apartment. The microwave timer!

  I’d forgotten all about the voile and the vinegar while talking to Adelaide. I ran upstairs to the washing machine and checked on the fabric. The scent was gone and the panels were all but dried—into the most wrinkled mess I could imagine. It would take hours to iron the creases out of them. Instead, I measured out a cup of detergent and ran the washing machine a second time. Hopefully, I’d get a do-over, as long as I decided to stay put. The clock said it was going on ten. No chance I was leaving again.

  As much as I wanted a shower, I didn’t want to compete with the washing machine for hot water. I waited out the cycle and moved the voile into the dryer and added a dryer sheet. I set it on cool tumble dry. Pins and Needles were nestled together on the bed, their heads sharing a watered silk pillow with marabou trim that Aunt Millie had made several decades ago. I ran my open hand over each of them. Pins raised his head off the pillow and croaked out a scratchy meow, and then went back to sleep. When the dryer beeped, I folded the voile and draped the panels over plastic hangers. When I was done, I took the long-awaited shower. Too tired to root around my closet and look at dresses, I slipped into a long black nightgown and pulled the sheets over me, my thoughts dissolving into dreams.

  • • •

  The next morning was cool. I pulled on a white cotton men’s shirt, black cardigan, and black jeans. I found a pair of black-and-white argyle socks in the dresser, pushed my feet into well-worn black penny loafers, raked some styling gel through my hair, added a tinted sunscreen, mascara, and cherry red lip gloss. I stuffed Babs’s floral shawl into my messenger bag and left. I was at Charlie’s Automotive by nine thirty.

  Charlie was drinking from a large red coffee mug when I walked into her auto shop. “What makes a better gift: a transmission flush or a lube job?” she asked.

  “Those are car terms, right? Because they sound dirty.”

  “That’s okay. It’s for a man.”

  “What did this man do for you?”

  “It’s not what he did, it’s what he’s going to do.”

  “You don’t strike me as the type to do preemptive gift-giving to a man.”

  “I just want to be prepared when the moment comes, that’s all.” She spun around and leaned back in her desk chair. She wore a cream Exxon gas station attendant shirt buttoned from the collar down to her ribs. The bottom four buttons were open, allowing the shirt to create an inverted V that showcased her pierced bellybutton. The waistband had been torn from her jeans, making them an even lower rise than they’d started out. The legs expanded into a boot cut that all but covered dingy square-toed motorcycle boots with silver rings and harnesses across the instep. Judging by the looks of them, they were almost as old as my VW Bug.

  “Any news on Frenchy?” Charlie asked.

  “Yes. The whole life insurance policy is another mess. Phil’s brother Sam kept a policy drawn up in case they ever changed their minds. Kim forged the signatures and left a copy at Tea Totalers. That’s what Clark found. Once Kim tells what she did, Clark has to acknowledge that maybe he doesn’t have such a solid case against Genevieve.”

  “I wish I could be there to see the expression on his face when he finds out.” She tipped back in her chair and rested the heels of her motorcycle boots on her desk. “Any word from the truck driver or the Italian Scallion?”

  “I talked to Topo di Sali last night. He asked if my boss got his message, and I thought he was talking about Giovanni.”

  Charlie dropped her feet to the ground and leaned forward. “You think the Italian Scallion jumped your boss?”

  “Ex-boss,” I said automatically. “It’s kind of a blur. He keeps saying to make sure Genevieve knows it’s a two-way street. What’s a two-way street? It’s like he thinks he did her a favor and she owes him. I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “You didn’t ask him to clarify?”

  “He hung up. But something else happened last night and I don’t know how to tell you about it.”

  “Shoot.”

  “It has to do with your mother.”

  Charlie didn’t want to talk about the fact that Adelaide had given her up for adoption when she was born. It was a secret that I’d only recently uncovered, and even though Charlie and I had established a friendship, we never spoke of it.

  She scowled. “If you’re talking about one of those two rich people who claim to run this town, she’s not my mother.”

  I leaned against the built-in desk by the printer. “You really don’t want to start a relationship with either one of them? Isn’t that why you came back here when you found out you were adopted?”

  “I wanted to know who the people were who gave me away. Now I know.”

  Secretly, I suspected there was more to Charlie’s attitude. When she discovered who her birth parents were, she moved back to San Ladrón and established her auto shop. She didn’t tell anyone who she was. I think she wanted to observe from afar, to try to understand what had happened all those many years before to make them make the decision they did. When she learned they were involved in more of a civil war than a relationship, I think she saw some of herself in both of them: the stubbornness and the desire to fight for what they wanted. She might have left town when she learned the true nature of their relationship, but I don’t think she expected to find a brother in Vaughn.

  “If I talk about her like she’s a person in this town that you live in, can you handle that? Because it pertains to Genevieve.”

  “Shoot.”

  I shoved my fingertips into the front pockets of my jeans and kicked the heel of one penny loafer against the toe of the other. “Apparently Genevieve asked Adelaide’s advice about running Tea Totalers and Adelaide let her in on a secret. She orders the Waverly House pastries from a supplier in Los Angeles. Including the croissants.”

  “So Frenchy doesn’t make the croissants. That’s good news, right?”

  “Yes. Adelaide is meeting with Sheriff Clark today to let him know. That should explain at least one piece of evidence against Genevieve.”

  “You have something else up your sleeve, don’t you?”

  I pull
ed the colorful floral fringed scarf out of my messenger bag and swung it around in a circle. “It just so happens Phil took Babs to the Waverly House last week and Babs dropped this.”

  “So why do you have it?”

  I opened my eyes wide. “I’m new in San Ladrón. When I found out that one of our local celebrities was missing her shawl, I thought the neighborly thing to do was to deliver it to her.”

  “Babs agreed to this?”

  “I didn’t make the arrangements with her. I made them with Adelaide.”

  I saw a flicker of emotion cross Charlie’s face, a flash of vulnerability. I wondered if she really was okay with me building my own relationship with her estranged mother. I wanted to put them in a room together, lock the door, and not let either of them out until they’d figured out how to start over, but I knew this wasn’t like a fabric project, where I could match up the edges and trim off any loose threads. It wasn’t the kind of thing I could fix. The only thing I could do was respect Charlie’s feelings and hope that in time, she’d come around. And if she didn’t, I’d have to accept her decision.

  “You want some company?”

  “Considering the conversation I saw you two having, I’m not sure you’d be an asset.” I grinned. “I’m hoping to find out what Phil was into. Clark is so sure Genevieve killed Phil that he’s set on ‘crime of passion.’ But if Gen didn’t do it because she was mad at her lying, cheating husband, then the question isn’t just who killed him, but why?”

  “Are you counting Kim out of the suspects?”

  “Not yet. She’s certainly had trouble with the law, so it’s not out of character. Phil knew about her past. Maybe he was using her, trying to get her to do something illegal, and she flipped. Think about it. The one thing we’ve established by now is that Phil Girard wasn’t exactly a good guy. That’s the worst part for Genevieve.”