Crushed Velvet

by Diane Vallere

  “Sure.”

  While I waited for Vaughn, I snapped pictures of the renovated interior, adjusting the placement of different items—a tweak here, a nudge there. Twenty minutes later I’d arranged baskets of fruit and flowers in a mismatched collection of glass jars and vases. There was a tap on the back door. Vaughn stood on the other side with a fist of wildflowers in one hand and a bottle of champagne in the other. I tossed my phone on the desk and opened the door.

  “These are not for you. They’re for the tea shop.” He handed me the flowers. “This, however, is for you, assuming you’re willing to share.”

  “This does call for a celebration, doesn’t it? Or should we wait for Genevieve? Oh, heck, she’ll get her good news later today and we can all celebrate again.”

  “How did you find out about the good news? I thought I was doing a good job keeping it a secret.”

  “I’m talking about some evidence I found hidden inside the velvet Giovanni delivered to my store. You couldn’t possibly know about that.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been busy.”

  I walked to the east-facing window and pushed it up to let fresh air inside. “Earlier today I was working inside the fabric store. I knocked over the velvet that Giovanni delivered and found packages of drugs inside the cardboard tubes. I don’t know how it all fits together yet, but like I told Clark, it doesn’t fit at all with the rest of the evidence he has against Genevieve. That’s enough to make him take a second look at the evidence he does have.”

  “Drugs? What kind?”

  “I’m no expert, but they were small bags of dried-up leaves. The construction lead said it looked like hash. Funny thing is, we probably wouldn’t have thought twice about it if they had shown up in a container marked Tea Leaves.”

  “You say it was inside the velvet your boss dropped off?”

  “Yep. Phil must have known. He was planning on double-crossing whoever expected him to bring the drugs back to San Ladrón. There were loose zip ties in the truck by his head, and my fabric was bagged and secured with plastic zip ties. He could have hidden the drugs in my velvet, sealed them up, and left them to be picked up later. The fabric he brought here was labeled 100% Polyester, so he could have played dumb and pretended someone else pulled a bait-and-switch.”

  “Either way, it seems that Phil was mixed up in some illegal business.”

  “And because of it, he ended up a dead man.”

  “We’re going to have to stop talking about the murder before I pop this champagne.”

  “Deal.”

  Vaughn pulled two champagne flutes from the pockets of his blazer and set them on the table.

  “You sure do come prepared,” I said.

  “Boy Scout motto.” He popped the champagne and poured a little into each glass.

  “You said you had good news that you were keeping a secret. Are you going to keep me in the dark?”

  He handed a flute to me and tapped his against it. “As of tonight, Genevieve doesn’t have to worry about her back taxes any longer.”

  I felt a shiver. “What did you do?”

  “I made the payment on her behalf.”

  “But you can’t do that. You can loan her the money and she can make the payment, but if it’s a tax thing, you can’t do anything about it.”

  “I didn’t realize you knew so much about how it worked. Technically, you’re right. Apparently a finance company in Los Angeles approved her for a loan. I paid them off. She’s in the clear.”

  I remembered the missed call from Carson and the shiver turned to a full-on cold sweat.

  “But I took care of that for her.” I felt like I’d eaten a bad piece of fruit. “I didn’t want her to have to owe anybody.”

  “She doesn’t. What do you mean, you took care of this?” He set his flute down.

  “I made arrangements with a finance firm in Los Angeles,” I said.

  “Why didn’t you come to me?”

  “I didn’t want to be another person who came to you for money.”

  “This wasn’t for you. I did it for Genevieve.”

  “I know.”

  “I know a lot of people in the banking business. Who’s your friend? Maybe I know her.”

  “She’s not a friend. She’s not even a she.” I braced myself. “It was my ex-boyfriend. I’m sorry I didn’t tell you, but I thought I could trust him.”

  “You thought you could trust him?” Vaughn’s face turned red. “Let me tell you about your ex-boyfriend’s business methods. He called me. He said his firm had acquired a loan for a business in San Ladrón and they were willing to sell it to my father. When he said it was for Tea Totalers, I made the arrangements myself. Acquired the loan at the rate he named—which was above the going rate, by the way—and paid it off from my personal account. I can assure you, that’s not the way my father would have handled it.”

  “I asked Carson for a favor. He was the only person I could think of asking—” I put my hands on Vaughn’s arm and he shook me off and knocked his champagne flute from the counter to the floor. The glass broke on contact.

  “The fact that you didn’t think you could ask me says it all, Poly. Apparently, I was wrong about you.” He turned around and walked toward the back door.

  “That’s not fair!” I called after him. “You told me what it was like to have money, how people expected you to foot their bills. You should have known I wouldn’t be one of those people.”

  He stopped in the door frame and turned back around to face me. “You could never be one of those people. You’re too darn generous to be one of those people. That’s why I wanted to do this—not just for Genevieve, but for you, too. I wanted a chance to show you my generosity.”

  I searched for the right words to say, but none came to my mouth. Vaughn stalked to his car and took off.

  Well, now, phooey. That wasn’t how I wanted that to go. He said people used him for money. I hadn’t. So why did that make me the bad guy?

  But I knew the truth. The reason I hadn’t asked Vaughn for the money didn’t have anything to do with how people treated him. It had to do with me. In my world, money changed the playing field.

  I kicked the toe of my penny loafer against the recycle bin and cursed. As much as I didn’t want to admit it, I knew it was true. Vaughn’s family and mine came from two different worlds. Why couldn’t I get over this?

  My problem was that I was too transparent. I didn’t know how to feel about Vaughn having money. I didn’t know how to act around him without seeming like I was taking advantage of him, which was the one thing I didn’t want to appear to be doing. It wasn’t like I wanted anything from him. He didn’t have anything that I craved other than his company. When you took away the money, the family connections, and the trust fund, we got along perfectly. Resentfully, I confronted the real issue. I didn’t want people to look at me and think I was with Vaughn because of his money. I didn’t want people to see me as that kind of person.

  I finished cleaning up inside the café. The bottle of champagne on the counter was mostly full. I sank down onto the floor by the kitchen cabinets and raised the champagne bottle to my lips. Bubbles overflowed the opening and champagne spilled down the front of my shirt and cardigan. I didn’t care. I kicked my feet out in front of me and set the bottle down next to my left thigh. The blue plastic recycle bin sat empty inside the back door of the tea shop.

  It was exactly where Kim had put it the day she threw away the produce and emptied out the refrigerator. I remember thinking she was trying to hide evidence. If she’d only just told me right from the get-go that Genevieve was doing her a favor by letting her work at Tea Totalers, I would never have suspected her. But she was too busy pretending to be someone she wasn’t. The same could be said for Rick, pretending to own his own trucking company with fake papers and a temporary sign on the side of the van. W
hat did these people hope to gain by pretending?

  I took another swig of the champagne and then stood up. It was late and there wasn’t anything else to do here. I poured what was left in the bottle down the drain, turned off the lights, and carried the bottle to the recycle bin. It was dwarfed by the empty expanse that should have been overflowing with signs of life from a bustling business.

  And then I remembered another recycle bin that I’d seen recently. Overflowing with empty water bottles and cans of tomato juice and not much else.

  That didn’t fit with the story of Babs Green as boozer.

  I straightened up and closed my eyes, trying to remember the rest of Babs’s apartment. She had cut herself on glass in the kitchen and said she had made a fresh drink, but where was the vodka? Her cocktail cart had been full—I saw that when I looked through the window. Her freezer had been empty—I saw that when I got the ice for her head. She had enough trash lined up inside by the stairs to indicate she hadn’t thrown anything out in a week, and she’d said as much. There hadn’t been any booze bottles in her recycling bin.

  I shook my head to clear my thoughts. Must be the champagne, I thought. So Babs didn’t have empty liquor bottles lying around her apartment. So what? That was pretty far from saying she’d killed Phil.

  But her alibi was that she’d been drunk, just like she wanted me to believe she was drunk today. She’d carried a Bloody Mary around with her while I was there. Was that for show? When I asked her about her performance the night of Phil’s murder, she told me the second half of it was a blur. One of the ushers drove her home and stayed there until she was in bed. She claimed not to remember Sunday night, but the only reason anyone believed that was because she showed up still tipsy at the Villamere on Monday morning.

  And the reason she showed up at the Villamere was to get her car.

  Her recognizable car.

  How many people had believed that Babs was at the Villamere all night because her car was there? And once people learned that she’d been given a ride home, how many assumed she was in for the night? Even the statement of the usher who crashed on her couch would have confirmed it.

  I did some quick calculations. On a good day, it took about forty minutes to get from Los Angeles to San Ladrón, but Giovanni had made it even faster when he made the trip at night. Less than half an hour, he said. So thirty minutes to get to LA and however long it took to give Phil enough sleeping pills to make him go unconscious, suffocate him with croissants, and have a couple of strong arms load him into the back of the van and stack velvet on top of him.

  It could have been done, but it wasn’t the spontaneous act of a woman scorned. It was the act of a woman who had a plan—a plan to kill Phil Girard.

  I heard a sound from the front of the tea shop. Like something tearing. I dropped to my hands and knees and crawled from the back to the front of the café. I hid behind the counter and watched a silver razor blade slice through the screen on the window I’d opened. Someone was breaking in.

  I peered over the top of the counter where I’d set up the display of cloth napkins. Gloved hands pulled at the screen, tearing it away from the metal frame. I watched as the same gloved hands grabbed the window frame from the outside. Seconds later, a figure climbed in. Even though she wore a hat over her vibrant red hair, I recognized her. Babs Green.

  I dropped down behind the counter and wrapped my arms around my legs. The old wood floor creaked. She was moving around the café. I felt my pockets for my phone. Not there. Where had I left it? I couldn’t remember. If Babs saw it, she’d know she wasn’t alone.

  A flashlight beam bounced around the floor. Babs headed past me to the kitchen. I dropped forward to my hands and knees and crawled closer. She pulled a drawer open and then slammed it shut. She did the same for the next two drawers. On the third, she chuckled. She reached inside a black pouch that dangled from her belt and pulled out several pill vials. She stared at the labels for a few seconds and dropped the bottles into the drawer. She pushed the drawer shut and sat down at the computer.

  What was she up to?

  The computer was along the same wall I was hiding behind, and short of exposing myself, I couldn’t see the monitor. Days ago I’d had the urge to delete the files that incriminated Genevieve. What could Babs possibly do on the computer that wouldn’t expose her own presence?

  But Sheriff Clark’s case against Genevieve had fallen apart. It was just a matter of time until she was released and came to the store. It was just a matter of time until she came to the store. Whatever Babs was doing could be easily explained as Genevieve’s actions. Nobody would know Babs had even been here, especially if her recognizable car was parked elsewhere.

  Nobody but me.

  Babs jiggled the mouse and typed on the keyboard using only her gloved index fingers. She looked to the left of the keyboard and stopped typing.

  “Well, well. It seems someone forgot their phone.” She rolled the chair backward and looked at the floor. “And a handbag, too. Maybe someone didn’t forget their phone and they’re hiding. Which is it, little Polyester?” she said.

  I crawled toward the kitchen. When I rounded the corner, the chair was vacant. The computer screen was bright with the words Online Pharmacy. I stood up and peered at the screen. A pop-up window asked Confirm Order?

  Babs’s arms closed around me from behind. I struggled against her. I planted my feet on the desk and pushed backward. She let go. I fell. She lunged for the computer and clicked Yes.

  “I knew you were going to be a problem,” she said. “I knew it long before you came to my apartment. I had everything so well planned, it should have been an open-and-shut case against the wife.”

  “You claimed to love him,” I said. I grabbed the door handle from one of the lower cabinets and pulled myself up to a standing position. Dry tea leaves scattered around the floor. I turned around and faced her. The desk chair had coasted backward and sat on the floor between us. She crept to her right and I moved, slowly, keeping her from getting too close.

  “That was an act. You’re so busy looking for integrity in the world, I gave you integrity. When you showed up, I knew it would be an uphill battle becoming sympathetic with you. The friend of the grieving widow. The one person in town who didn’t believe she killed him. I had to play to that same need to see the good in people and it worked.”

  “Why did you do it?”

  “I gave Phil twenty-five percent of what I made moving hash through San Ladrón. Twenty-five percent was more than generous. But he wasn’t happy with our arrangement. He was pressuring me for a bigger piece of the action. There was no way I was going to go fifty-fifty with him. All he had to do was drive to Los Angeles, make the pickup, and drive back. Just like he’d been hired to do.”

  “But he didn’t, did he?”

  “No, he didn’t. I’ve been moving hash through San Ladrón for years. My mistake was approaching him. His wife’s tea shop would have made the perfect cover for us to move our product. All these leaves lying around in bins. Add in his van, and I wouldn’t need anybody else to pick up the product. We could keep it between the two of us. But he knew the whole setup. And then he found out my contact and demanded an equal split. That’s when I knew I had to get him out of the picture.”

  Babs deserved an acting award for how well she’d strung me along. She was still doing it. “What did you do?” I asked.

  “I wanted out, but I needed a cover story. Something that told my contacts I’d been double-crossed—not them.”

  “You followed Phil to Los Angeles so you could kill him. You planned it all along.”

  “I gave him one last chance to back down, but he got greedy. He told me he knew his wife’s tea shop was the cornerstone to my operation. He called me before he left on Sunday morning and said he’d expose me if I didn’t agree to his new terms. I told him to book a room for us in Los Angeles an
d said I’d meet up with him at the hotel.”

  My eyes were trained on her, dressed in a black turtleneck, pants, and gloves. Her trademark red hair was pulled back in a thick braid that hung down her back. A black knit cap was over her head. I backed up against the cabinets and felt my breaths coming faster and faster, keeping pace with my racing thoughts.

  “But you weren’t there. Genevieve found him ready for—he thought you were coming, but you never showed up.”

  “I didn’t know that. Wifey found him naked? That’s an extra bonus. From the moment I hung up that phone after telling him I’d meet him, I set about establishing my alibi. Two shows at the Villamere. I pretended to be drunk and got a ride home from a starstruck usher. The kid slept on my sofa. Taxi ride to the Villamere the next day, then slept in my dressing room. I even had a fight with your little mechanic friend. Rock solid, I’d say. Nobody ever realized that I slipped out right under their noses. Left by five forty-five on Monday morning while the usher was asleep on my sofa. I even took the poor boy’s car. I got to Los Angeles in time to see Phil load the fabric into the van.”

  “But the fabric in the van wasn’t the right fabric. He called another deliveryman to drive that truck back to San Ladrón.”

  “I didn’t know that at the time. I assumed the hash was already in the truck. I waited until he finished loading it and then I made him an offer he couldn’t refuse.” She smiled devilishly. “In the back of the van, can you believe it? I even convinced him to take a performance-enhancing drug so it would be spectacular.”

  My mind whirred. Did Sheriff Clark have the results of the tox screen yet? Was there evidence of this drug in Phil’s system?

  “The dummy didn’t even question the pills I gave him. Prescription sedative stronger than a horse tranquilizer. The perfect performance. He was out cold in five minutes.” She laughed.

  “The police are running a tox screen on Phil Girard. If he took something, they’ll know.”

  “Oh, I’m counting on that.” She looked over my shoulder at the computer screen. I followed her stare and saw more clearly that she’d placed an order for a prescription sleeping pill on an account for Genevieve Girard. “Do you know how easy it was to set up the account in her name? And poor, poor Phil. When he gave me her personal information, he never knew it would come full circle back to him.”