Pillow Stalk Read online

  A week ago, my life had been business as usual. Swim in the morning, open the studio afterwards. Shop estate sales, flea markets, and second hand stores for inventory, and take Rocky for a walk, two times a day. In the wake of my last relationship, a shook-me-to-my-core affair that had ended abruptly, I’d given up on love. The day-in, day-out life I’d designed had been enough. I had my own business, I had my own building, I had my own life. I was independent. Like Doris Day’s character in Pillow Talk. But the biggest problems she had were a playboy neighbor and an overly-forward client. I was in the middle of something horrific—a murder investigation—and I was very much alone.

  Doris Day movies had taught me how to recognize a womanizer. She had shown me, time and time again, how to stand up for myself and resist the advances of single men who were interested in one thing. Fifty years had passed since she’d made those movies, but the messages were still viable. Protect yourself. Spot a wolf in sheep’s clothing, and treat him like a wolf. And when all else fails, storm out of a room and slam the door behind you.

  But there were no Doris Day precedents for homicide. When one of her leading men turned out to be someone other than who he pretended to be, she one-upped him and proved her worth. When one of them threatened her idyllic lifestyle, she stood up for herself. No matter how attractive they were, she took care of herself, first. That’s what I had done when I moved to Texas. I pushed painful memories deep down inside and moved on without looking back. It was time to do that again. I would take care of myself and move on. That was the only option.

  It was a fitful night of sleep, peppered with knee pain and nightmares. I woke at four thirty, barely rested. I showered and booted up the computer. It sat on a Danish modern sideboard that had been beyond repair when I found it. The top was in good condition, but the sliding panels in the front were severely splintered. I had removed them, allowing room for my knees when I sat in my molded fiberglass desk chair. I loved this office, unconventional as it might seem to many people. But unlike most mornings, today it didn’t comfort me. Too many things were spinning out of control. A murder investigation. An old unsolved murder. A suspect who I’d trusted like a friend and business partner for a year. Tex had cautioned me, told me to be careful, but I hadn’t wanted to think about his warning. I didn’t want to think that I was connected.

  I had to find something to take my mind off the murders. I had to take control of something. I opened my Doris Day files and started working on the proposal. There was peace with Doris Day. I understood her, recognized her in me. Nothing bad could happen while I remained focused on Doris. My knee was stiff and swollen despite the anti-inflammatories. I bent it a few times to loosen it up, with only limited success.

  I fleshed out the details of the film festival and wrote blurbs for the movies that I’d selected, formatted the bones of the thing, and emailed it off to Richard sometime around six. The sun was coming up and I was stiff in twenty places other than my knee. I needed to work out. Badly. And with Crestwood still closed, there was only one other option. The Gaston Swim Club.

  I changed into a bathing suit and stepped into a white polyester dress that zipped up the front. I slid my feet into red patent leather flats and took Rocky out for a quick sprinkle on the front lawn, then set him up inside his crate.

  “I’m sorry, honey, I can’t take you to the Swim Club. Not today.” I kissed the top of his head and bribed him for forgiveness with a dog biscuit.

  It was darn close to ridiculous to call a cab to take me to the Gaston Swim Club, less than a mile from my apartment, but the pain in my knee didn’t leave me with much of a choice. I waited out front for the driver who arrived within minutes and shook his head in disgust when I told him my destination. I tipped him too much to make up for my embarrassment.

  When I arrived at the Gaston Swim Club, the sharp pinch of chlorine stung my nose. I wasn’t surprised to find a couple of the Crestwood regulars already in the lanes. Their familiar presence comforted me. Old habits die hard, and for some of these folks, this was a routine so set in stone, to break it would be to give up the will to live. True to form, aside from a wave hello, we each concentrated on the reason we were there.

  The pool felt like bathwater, too warm for lap swimming. The Crestwood pool was kept at a steady seventy-eight degrees, refreshing but not too hot. It would be hard to complete three miles here. But each time I reached the wall and somersaulted into a flip to turn around, my knee became a little more limber. Pushing off the wall gave me the chance to stretch. By the second mile, my mind was clearing. By the third mile, my mind was alert.

  I stopped at the end of the pool to catch my breath and think. Something from yesterday hadn’t been right. Something Tex had said in the car.

  When I was sitting in the Jeep in front of the Johnson estate talking to Tex, he’d tried to get me to talk about Hudson. That colleague you mentioned yesterday, what’s his name? He had known about my connection with Hudson long before we’d gotten to Thelma Johnson’s house. And the article in the newspaper, the twenty-year old murder, I was willing to bet Tex knew about that, too. That’s why he was spending valuable time with me, driving me around Dallas and flattering me with his attention. He was using me to get info on Hudson.

  Anger bubbled up inside me. I wanted to find him, to confront him, ask him what he was really doing hanging around my building, following me around Dallas, acting like—what did he call it—a nice guy?

  But aside from the anger, I was scared. Tex had told me he thought I was connected to Pamela’s murder, and I hadn’t wanted to see the obvious. Pamela had been wearing my robe. She was by my car. She looked just like me. Was it possible, could it be, that someone had wanted to kill me instead of Pamela?

  I felt sick. Tex must have thought as much, that’s why he said we were connected. But by not coming out and saying it, he was checking to see if I’d figured it out for myself.

  I dove deep into the water and swam below the other swimmers next to me until I reached the wall. The water’s buoyancy lifted me to the surface with barely any effort. Before getting out I checked the thermometer. Eighty-four degrees. No wonder my energy felt sapped. I climbed out using the silver metal ladder and crossed the deck to my things.

  “Too bad there aren’t any other options around here for us morning birds, right, Madison?” said a familiar voice. Alice sat on the bottom bleacher, tucking her short white curls under her swim cap. Her radiant smile stripped ten years from her wrinkled face.

  “I tried to take a couple of days off but couldn’t do it,” I said. “Don’t overexert yourself in there. It’s pretty warm for lap swimming.”

  “When we didn’t see you here we all wondered if you knew about some secret swimming hole.”

  “All?”

  “Sure. Jessica is here, so is Mary. Andy, too. It’s a reunion!”

  I looked at the shallow end, where an energetic woman conducted a water aerobics class. Seven women and one man held colored foam noodles over their heads and moved to one of the lesser known Madonna songs. In the deep end young kids did cannonballs even though the lifeguard had whistled at them to stop. All this before seven o’clock.

  “I hate the Swim Club,” I said, towel-drying my arms and legs.

  “It’s better than nothing,” Alice replied.

  “Have you heard anything about Crestwood?”

  “No, but Jessica said she calls the cops every day and they said they should allow the pool to reopen soon. By the end of the week, we’re hoping.”

  I held up crossed fingers, smiled, and stepped into my polyester dress. I’d worked a lot of last night’s tension out of my body, but what I’d realized about Tex had brought on a whole other source of stress. On top of everything else, I was exhausted from not sleeping. No matter how in shape a body is, it refuses to function like a teenager’s once it’s well past that age.

  There was little I wanted more than to go home and sleep, but first things first. I instructed the cab driver to take
me to Budget Rent-A-Car on Ross, and twenty-five minutes later I drove away in a midnight blue Ford Explorer. It was the biggest thing they had. After what I’d learned about Hudson, after how he’d left me on the side of the road, I wasn’t comfortable asking him for help, on Thelma Johnson’s estate or anything else, and this was the next best plan I had.

  I made it home and unlocked Rocky’s crate. His puppy affection warmed me in a way that the showers at the Swim Club would never be able to do. After a quick shower, I dressed in a smocked white cotton tunic and yellow gingham pants, stuck my feet into pink ballerina flats and ponytailed my long blonde hair. I dug through a bin of crocheted handbags until I found a pink one with a silk cord that could be worn across my chest. Inside I put my wallet, lip balm, tape measure and scissors, a small notepad and a tube of SPF 50. The sun was bright, already, and I suspected it was going to be another hot one.

  Before I had a chance to head out to Thelma Johnson’s house, my phone jangled. The only reason I kept a land line was because I needed it to provide an Internet connection. The second of a pair of working yellow donut phones sat on the Danish modern hutch-turned-desk, ringing infrequently with calls from the few people who had my home number.

  “Hello?”

  “Madison, it’s Richard.”

  “Hey, Richard. Did you get my email?”

  “Forget the Doris Day thing. It’s not going to happen.”

  No. The idea had started as a tribute to Pamela but had turned into the thing I needed to cling to, the one normal thing I could focus on while surrounded with homicide. I wasn’t giving it up.

  “You don’t make all the decisions for the theater. I’ve done a lot of work on this and I think you should see my proposal before you kill the whole project. In two short days I’ve uncovered some very valuable contacts related to this film festival, contacts that I think you should know about. You at least owe me time at the Tuesday meeting to make my pitch to the committee.”

  “Madison, listen. It’s not me, it’s the cops.”

  “The cops? Why? What do they have to do with Doris Day?” I asked on high alert.

  “They shut down the theater indefinitely.”

  Only yesterday I had told Lieutenant Tex Allen about the film festival and he acted like he thought it was a good idea. It infuriated me to recognize the lengths of his manipulation, and I wouldn’t let him take the project away from me. I needed it more than he knew.

  “Let me handle the Lieutenant.”

  “Madison, you don’t understand. There’s been a murder at the theater.”

  “What?” I asked. Other questions tried to formulate in my head but they all started with what, and I couldn’t make sense of the rest of the sentences. Richard’s voice sounded hollow through the vintage receiver. I held my free hand over my right ear so I could hear him better even though there was no other noise in the apartment.

  “The cops found a body at the theater this morning. I don’t even know what they were doing there, but they came around and there was a dead woman in the parking lot. It gets worse, too.”

  How could it get worse?

  “Who was she?” My voice cracked as I asked the question.

  “Ruth Coburn’s daughter. The one who’s the spitting image of Doris Day.”

  TEN

  I wanted—no, needed—to get to the Mummy. I grabbed the new set of rental car keys and opened the door. Rocky whimpered by my feet, staring up with bulging round eyes like Dr. Pepper-colored shooter marbles.

  “Fine. You better behave,” I said, clipping the leash on his collar. I locked the door behind me and we took the back steps down to the parking lot.

  I wasn’t accustomed to driving such a big truck. The urgency of getting to the theater kept my heart pounding in my chest while we made the trip. Even Rocky, who normally would have hung his head out the window, sat silently on the passenger seat, staring at me. It was as though he knew this wasn’t a simple pleasure ride.

  I pulled the truck into the Mummy parking lot and parked next to Richard’s VW Bus. Cop cars swarmed the lot close to the front door, where blue and red lights whipped around, bathing us in light at pulsating intervals. Several uniformed cops talked to Richard by the front door. A body lay face down in the dirt.

  Numbered yellow plastic tent cards sat by her head and handbag. More were scattered through the parking lot. There were bags over her hands and feet. A dusty round pillow that used to be aqua but was now a dingy greenish-blue sat, discarded, a few feet away. I felt the recognition of the pillow more than I saw it. It was one of the missing pillows from my trunk. My hands started to shake and my stomach turned as I suspected what the pillow was doing here. I gulped three deep breaths but no air reached my lungs.

  Rocky and I got out of the car. I approached Richard and the officers but stopped when Tex materialized from the side of the building. He pulled a cell phone away from his head and held it in his hand.

  “What are you doing here? And where have you been?” he yelled at me.

  “What happened here?” I asked. Rocky barked wildly at my feet, adding to the melee. Three uniforms turned to face us. One was Officer Nast.

  “Allen? Get her out of here!” she yelled.

  Tex put his hand on my elbow and steered me away from the theater.

  “Madison, you scared the shit out of me. I’ve been calling you for the past two hours—your calls started going to voice mail around ten. I sent a car to your place but you haven’t been there. Why didn’t you answer your phone?”

  “I don’t have my phone.”

  “Where is it?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. I looked everywhere and I can’t find it.”

  “Come with me.” He crossed the parking lot to his car.

  I called out to Richard. He waved me away and resumed his conversation with Officer Nast. I wound Rocky’s leash around my right wrist.

  “We have to get you away from here. Hop in,” Tex said, holding the jeep’s door open for me.

  I swatted the door shut. “Stop pretending you’re looking out for me. You don’t care about me, you’re not concerned about me one bit. You’re using me to find out about Hudson,” I said angrily. “You tried to trick me.” A numbness radiated out from my chest. My fingertips tingled and I balled my fingers into fists repeatedly. Like that day at Crestwood, when I found Pamela’s body, a haze clouded my ability to focus. I needed a release and even though rational thought would have redirected my anger, I wasn’t thinking straight. Fair or not, Tex was my target.

  “You read the newspaper?” he asked.

  “I don’t believe everything I read.”

  “There are worse sources for information.”

  “And there are probably better ones, too. What happened here today?”

  “This isn’t the time or the place for that conversation.”

  “Okay, then tell me what you know about the murder in the newspaper.”

  “Madison, I like you. But I’m a cop. Telling a civilian about a confidential police investigation does not rank high on my list of things to do.”

  “I’m not asking for your secret handshake. You’re the one who keeps saying I’m connected. I want to know what happened here, and why you’re using me to get to my friend. I have questions.”

  “You’ll have to figure out another way to get your answers. I’m not getting into this with you.” He took a couple of steps away from me and held out his hand. “Now come on.”

  “Tex, if I’m connected, then I want to know what is going on. If you won’t tell me, I know someone who’s probably all too happy to tell his side of the story,” I said loud enough for the entire group of cops to hear.

  Through the crowd, Ruth Coburn materialized, hysteria and shock evident in her expression and stance. She pointed a finger directly at me.

  “You! You did this to her! She came to see you!”

  “Ruth, I’m so sorry,” I offered. I stepped forward and reached my arms out, wanting to console her.
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  “She wasn’t supposed to be here! She only came here to impress you!” One of the cops put an arm around her waist and kept her from attacking me. “It’s your fault!”

  My breath caught in my throat. Tex turned back to face me.

  “Madison, I’m telling you, stay out of it. Don’t do anything stupid.”

  “This is my life, Tex. Do not tell me what to do.” I turned in a huff and stormed away from the theater. Rocky followed reluctantly, yapping wildly at the chaotic scene in the background.

  Anger propelled me away from the Mummy to the Explorer and out of the parking lot. The venom in Ruth’s words didn’t hit until I was a few blocks away. The trembling in my fingers took over again as her voice echoed through my mind, making it increasingly difficult to keep the large SUV on the road. I pulled over and gulped at the air in an effort to calm down. I punched on the hazard lights. Cars whizzed past me, a few swerving dangerously close to the side of the truck.

  Once I’d gotten the shaking under control, I turned off the hazards and moved the truck back onto Garland Road. If I could go home, go to bed, go to sleep and wake up with this as nothing more than a nightmare, I would. But it wasn’t. It was all too real. Ruth’s words hung in my head, repeating over and over like a record with the needle stuck. It’s your fault. I didn’t know how or why. I couldn’t begin to understand how a mother feels after losing a daughter. I knew it was her grief, her hysteria, that had caused her to lash out at me. Unless she knew something else. Why had her daughter gone to the Mummy? I didn’t want to think about it. I didn’t want to go home. I wanted to go someplace idyllic, to a world where murders didn’t exist. Slowly I drove to Thelma Johnson’s house.

  Seventy-five percent of the population keeps a spare key hidden within three feet of the entrance. I found Thelma Johnson’s under a blue ceramic pot that sat to the left of the front door. I unlocked it and called hello to the empty house. My missing cell phone sat on the dining room table, the battery dead. There was no sign of Steve Johnson, and perhaps he’d made his peace with his mother’s death faster than he’d anticipated. Rocky followed me into the house. It was as I’d left it, like a time warp. The world outside of this house may have held murderers, but inside it was 1960.