by Misty Simon
I was out the door before a body could sing the “Hallelujah Chorus.” The diary was digging into my flesh, so I yanked it out of my shirt. Aaron, the pool guy, was standing out at the pool house when I came tearing around the corner. Forcing myself to slow down, I tried not to make eye contact. But then he waved and manners demanded I wave back. Unfortunately, I had the small diary in my hand. I jammed it into my pocket and picked up speed. When I got to my car, I tucked the diary into the glove box and started back to the place I called home.
Heading out of the circular driveway, I was not surprised to see Ellen McKay parking and exiting her car with a casserole. As the chairwoman of the Women’s Auxiliary Group, she would be the first of many. Darren had a big freezer. He should be okay, as long as he could fend off the advances of the woman who was famous for her sexual innuendo and trying to get men into compromising positions. Not my problem.
* * *
Back at my quiet apartment, I pulled together the things I had and laid them out on the table. Having made a point to sneak back into the apartment, I locked the door firmly behind me. The last thing I needed to do was call attention to myself. I was in far deeper than I had thought and didn’t know how to get out. I had not deposited the check on the way home because if I needed to tell someone about Darla/Marla then I couldn’t be taken in for accepting a bribe. Besides, I had never really agreed to anything, just given a figure and taken the check.
The three pieces of paper I had used the back of my hand to move had been letters of some sort threatening to tell Darla’s secret if she didn’t cough up some cash. I had no idea how Darren fit into all this, but I was sincerely happy I would not be at the next round of cocktail parties where this would be discussed to death and Darren would be shunned. If anyone found out, that is . . .
I hoped I was up to this one.
Of course, it wasn’t going to be easy. I couldn’t trust the police and that was going to make it hard. Burton had solved his share of crimes in the area. Of course, we’d had murders from time to time, but usually it was pretty cut-and-dried. Someone got killed for taking something of someone else’s. Or a husband or wife got fed up with their life and shot the other. There was little mystery to that.
This might have been the same. Waldo had said Darren was looking to divorce Darla and I could see why now. Still, a knife to the chest had to be in pretty close contact. Darren didn’t strike me as the kind of guy who would want to get his hands dirty. Plus, this room opened a whole other set of complications.
I pulled out my trusty laptop and did a search for Marla, but nothing came up, just like my original search for Max. With the sheer amount of public-domain sites touting that all you had to do was put a name in and know everything you’d ever like to know, I was baffled that I couldn’t find a single thing about this woman before she’d become Darla.
A knock on the door forced me to snap down the lid of my laptop. I shoved all the papers into a plastic bag from the grocery store and stowed it under the table. It couldn’t be my mom—the door handle hadn’t rattled first. And it couldn’t be my dad because I could usually hear him tromping up the stairs from one flight down.
It could be either of my brothers, but something—some tightness in my chest I did not even want to acknowledge—told me it was Max.
“I’m not in,” I called through the door.
“Tallie, you have to open the door. Your mom knows I came up and had me bring you snickerdoodles.”
The curse of the snickerdoodles. I couldn’t resist them any more than I could resist whoopee-pie lattes.
“Just hand the plate over,” I said as I opened the door a crack.
He put the plate behind his back after snatching a moist cookie and sticking it in his mouth. The odd hums of pleasure coming from his throat made my stomach tighten and my palms sweat.
“Give it over.”
“Not until you let me in,” he said after he swallowed. “These are definitely awesome. I might just take the whole plate and sit out on the step. I’ll knock again when I’m done with them.”
“You’ll do no such thing. Get in here with my cookies.”
He sighed and planted a hand on the door. Bringing his other hand out from behind his back, he presented the cookies. I snatched them, then tried to shove the door closed.
“Not going to happen, cupcake.” He was stronger than I had considered and pushed his way in. Though in all fairness, I was going to let him in at some point, anyway. Probably after I’d finished the plate of cookies that I’d now have to share.
“Fine, come in. Make yourself at home.” I gestured at the couch and chose the chair under the window.
“Now come on, bring the cookies over here. I have a feeling we’re going to have a lot to talk about while we polish them off.”
I grumbled even as I did as he asked. Again, his sprawling body on the couch made it nearly impossible not to touch him with some part of me.
“Let’s have a cookie while you think about how you want to tell me what you found out today. You’ve been busy at Darla’s house and the ex’s last night while the cop was there, so spill.”
How did he know all that? Again it occurred to me he had been at most of the places where bad things were happening when he’d had no need to be there. Was I setting myself up for a big fall simply because he’d bought me candy when I was younger?
But looking at him, relaxed and yet ready to pounce if necessary, I couldn’t help thinking my internal radar would have gone off if he really was dangerous. The same radar I had buried deep when it had started chiming that Waldo was not who he presented to the world. I’d chosen not to heed the warning in the interest of living the high life, though. Not a shining moment in my life. I wasn’t proud of it, but I had to own it.
“I don’t know if I can really say I learned anything,” I hedged.
“I can’t imagine why you would have bolted out of Darren’s house if you didn’t have some kind of experience that put that look on your face when the pool guy waved at you.”
“Where the hell were you?”
“Well, since my cover as flower guy has been blown, I figure there’s no reason to keep the pretense up, so I’ve taken to following you around.”
And I hadn’t even known it. Some super-sleuth I was. “Why didn’t I see you?”
“Because you weren’t looking. You’re very single-minded and wear blinders when you have a mission.”
I couldn’t disagree. I’d often lost sight of a whole forest for marking one tree and going for it. But still, I’d have thought I’d have at least felt someone staring at me.
“Well, you can stop following me. That’s more than I bargained for.”
“I don’t exactly want to do it, but you haven’t invited me along and you aren’t sharing everything with me, so I’m not sure how else to get the information. I want you safe, Tallie, and you’re not. It’s going to be more than you bargained for if we don’t figure out something soon about this money.” He took a cookie and made those noises again. Up close, I almost slid off the couch.
Straightening my spine, I demanded my body knock it the heck off and get back to what we were talking about. Right. Information and what I’d learned.
“Darren has an alibi with work, but I’m not sure I believe it.”
“Why not?” He stuffed another cookie in his mouth. By my count, he was up on me by two.
I snatched two more from the plate and a third for good measure. I told him about knowing Darren’s secretary and how inattentive she was, much more focused on her manicure than knowing if the boss was actually there. How unmoved Darren had seemed by his wife’s death. Along with what Waldo had said about Darren asking for divorce advice.
“Did the cops have anything new that they shared with you?”
“Burton is not going to share anything with me. He only wants info from me or to lock me up. I tried to take him the receipt and the threat and he scoffed at the receipt, then told me the threat had prob
ably come from me and I was trying to pass it off on someone else.” The thought of the Marla/Darla twist and the evidence that the threat had been written on the same kind of invoice I’d found in Darla’s secret closet had me gulping around the sugar and cinnamon coating my throat. How was I going to convince him of anything when he suspected me of assault and murder? What a mess.
“He didn’t believe you?” He took another cookie.
The supply was seriously diminishing. Normally, the plate could have lasted me at least a day. At this rate, they would all be eaten before I even got the whole story out. I grabbed another two.
“Hey now, that’s cookie hoarding.”
“My cookies, my house, my mom.”
“But she had me bring them up.”
“That makes you the deliveryman and nothing more.” I swiped another one and stacked it on the arm of the couch with the others I hadn’t had time to eat yet.
“Back to Burton. Did he straight-out tell you he didn’t believe you?”
I ran down what happened at the station. Max sat with the cookie halfway to his mouth, not moving a muscle until I was done.
“Are you kidding me? You handed him both pieces and he told you that you were trying to pass on the blame to someone else?”
I shrugged. “In his defense, I was a menace for over six years. Maybe this is his idea of payback.”
“That’s bullshit. Tell me you know that’s bullshit. There’s no way you would have done either of those things. He has to know you’re not that kind of person.”
That was a lot of faith in me when we hadn’t exactly been getting along since he’d re-introduced himself to me. “Why do you believe it?” I asked, truly curious after all our underlying hostility.
“Because I can tell the kind of person you are. You care. You do the things that need to be done. You’re loyal. You help even when you don’t want to. That speaks to who you are and that person is not a killer and not even a stun-gunner. You might be tempted to do that last one after all Waldo put you through, but you’d never have actually gone through with it.”
I handed him a cookie because I just didn’t know what to say after that. I knew my family would believe me, but I wasn’t ready to bring them into my latest trouble. I knew Gina would believe me because she was my best friend. But this guy was not only trying to help me stay away from financial ruin, he also believed in me. I’d take any allies I could get at this point.
“I didn’t say that for a cookie, but I won’t turn it down.” He grinned at me and I grinned back for the first time in what felt like a long time.
“So what do I do now?” I crammed a whole cookie in my mouth. I was more worried about this whole debacle than I had let myself believe. His belief in me had opened up a floodgate of worries I’d been hiding behind a wall of disbelief and anger.
“We do whatever it takes to clear your name. I don’t know how much I can do, but I’ll be here for whatever you need. You name it. I’m there. I still have my own investigation, but I believe, even more now, that these two are linked.”
And then he reached over and slung an arm around my shoulder. The weight was reassuring. I leaned in, just a little, to his warmth and muscle, inhaling his scent along with the smell of cinnamon and sugar cookies.
“We need to get all the information we can. But first, why do I have a feeling you’re not telling me everything?” He moved his arm to stretch it across the back of the couch, and I realized how close we were. I missed the warmth, but it was better this way. I was sure I’d come up with supporting evidence of that in just a moment or two.
“I’m telling you as much as I know.” That much was the truth since everything else was speculation. “I’m pretty sure that threat came from Darla, despite the handwriting. I found this room in her house when Darren called me to pick out clothes for her to be buried in.” Clothes she was being stuffed into right now. Well, not stuffed, as my father and brother were much more careful than that, but the thought was the same. Damn, I had meant to look for Darla’s black pearls to complete the outfit. The woman was never without them, even though she hadn’t been wearing them when I had found her body. Had they been stolen? I’d have to ask Burton. When and if I ever talked to Burton again. I didn’t know if that next time would involve my arrest, though.
“Darren wouldn’t even pick out her clothes himself? That’s cold.”
“Hey, now. I’ve done it for other people before. Sometimes the people left behind just can’t bear thinking about it. If we can help them, we do.”
“Seems strange to me. Why did he want to divorce her all of the sudden? The gossip around town is that they were the perfect set of barracudas.”
Was this where I should tell him about the Darla/Marla thing? The problem was I hadn’t had a chance to look over the diary, or truly assess the papers I took. Besides, believing this murder might have something to do with her past was all speculation. I shouldn’t be spouting off stuff I wasn’t sure of. If nothing else, I could be leading us down a completely different path that had nothing at all to do with the money. And the money should be the primary focus.
For that, I’d keep the diary to myself until I could figure out what it all meant. I trusted him to some extent, but I wanted to know what I had before I shared it.
“Have you figured anything out, hotshot?” I asked. He’d taken two more cookies and there were only three left, so I added them to my pile.
“Hey!”
“Just keep talking. I’m sure you could finesse some out of my mom when you leave.”
“You’re right. I bet I could.” He settled in with his arm still across the back of the couch, sinking further into the cushions. “Anyway, I didn’t find out much except that Waldo’s account is very slim compared to how he’s living. Since you left, he hasn’t put much more in.”
“Really?” That was curious. Unless he was putting it all into the business. I had not asked for part of that even though my lawyer had told me I should. I hadn’t wanted to bankrupt him, just get the hell out with as little debt as possible, and now I had the tax thing hanging over my head.
“Really. I was able to get one of my buddies to look into his accounts. They’ve been static ever since you cashed your check. The business account is only getting enough to pay the bills and stay above water. I don’t know where he’s putting it, but it’s not in any of his known accounts.”
I thought about bouncing on the mattress and the safe I hadn’t had time to get into. I might have to go back and see if Waldo was holing it all up in there. Because if he used his low bank balances to say he couldn’t pay taxes, I might just finish what that stun gun had started.
“Well, there might be more, but I’m going to wait until I know more before sharing. I’m not sure what to tell you,” I said as Max took a small notebook out and flipped the page. It was looking worn on the edges. What else did he use it for?
“Was anyone else in Darla’s house when you entered and found her dead?”
“No. I used the key buried in the front garden because Letty had just left to go grocery shopping.”
“And who’s Letty? I need details. Last name? Age? Height?”
That gave me pause. I had no idea what Letty’s last name was. She was as much a fixture of the house as the gaudy cherubs Darla had had painted on the ceiling in the powder room. “Um . . . Letty is the live-in maid. Dark hair, a little shorter than me. She’s been here for the last six years, I think. Mid- to late twenties. That’s all I know. She ducked out to do errands before I arrived.” I shrugged my shoulders, but wondered exactly when Letty had left. Had Darla already been dead?
Max must have been thinking along the same lines, because he drummed his fingers on the pad. “Did they take her in for questioning?”
“I don’t know. If they did, I hope they were gentle with her. She’s a sweet girl who has the misfortune of working with Darla.” I paused. “Had the misfortune.” Wow, it was really hitting me now that Darla was gone. I coul
dn’t believe it. I had found a dead body not fourteen hours after I had found my ex sprawled in an alley. What a weird week and I was only three days into it.
Max went over the finer details and I tried to be as succinct and clear as I could be. Some of it had been impressions. I thought my brain had probably blurred a couple of the details just to let me deal with it all, but I couldn’t tell for certain.
“So where do we go from here? Do you think Darla’s murder definitely has something to do with Waldo? I don’t really know how it all connects, unless she had threatened him when she saw him in that alley and stunned him. Then he had someone get back at her?” It didn’t make sense. “The timing’s too tight for that. Darla had to have been at her party because she is the hostess no one can get away from. And Waldo was in the hospital when she became acquainted with that butcher knife. It just doesn’t make sense.”
“I agree, but unless you have someone else to add into the mix, that’s about the gist of it.”
I got up to pace, forgetting my cookies were still on the arm of the couch until he snaked his hand down to grab two.
I stared and glared at him. I could get more too, but that was underhanded.
“I’ll replace them. It’s just that they’re so good, and they’re helping me think.”
“Right. Make sure you tell that to my mom.”
“I’m sure it will make her preen.”
I shook my head in mock disgust. “You’re playing with fire if you want my mom to preen, but whatever. Look, I don’t know what else to do, but I do know I have to go back to Darren’s in about two hours to finish cleaning for the after-funeral party. I can try to snoop around then since he won’t be there, but I can’t promise I’ll find anything.”
“I don’t need promises. Just the fact that you’re looking is good.”
I almost thought he had said that I was good-looking until I checked my hearing and ran his words through my mind again. There was no need to even go there. He’d help solve this thing, then he’d go back to his life in D.C. The thought of a fling briefly crossed my mind, but honestly, I didn’t even need a rebound guy. I just needed to figure out who I was again as a single person—as Tallie Graver—and a guy didn’t figure into that right now. I was mighty tempted, though.
