Suede to Rest

Book 1: A Material Witness Mystery

by Diane Vallere

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

Unraveling family secrets can be murder . . .



When Polyester Monroe was young, she loved playing in her family's textile store. But after a fatal tragedy, Land of a Thousand Fabrics was boarded up and Poly never expected to see the inside again. These days her time is spent designing prom dresses from cheap fabrics and covering the flaws with a glue gun.



When her great uncle passes away and leaves her the fabric store, she sees it as a sign to change her life. But when a man connected to her family's tragedy is found dead in the parking lot behind the store the day after she moves in, her illusions of reopening the glamorous fabric store are shredded. Poly pulls at threads to unravel the truth, but can she keep herself out of the fray?

Release date: November 4, 2014

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 304

Sample

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

One

A breeze rippled through the trees to the left and the right of the storefront. I stood across the street, taking in the blacked-out windows and the once-magnificent sign now covered in bird poop, decades of grime, and spray-painted curse words. Land of a Thousand Fabrics, it said. I wondered briefly if that had ever been true, if my great-aunt, Millie, and great-uncle, Marius, had ever actually counted the bolts of fabric in their inventory or amassed that number in order to avoid false advertising. And now that it had been left to me, I wondered if that would become my concern.

“Do you want to go inside or are you going to stand here all day?” asked Ken Watts. He looked very official in his navy-blue double-breasted blazer with Watts Realtor Agency embroidered over the left breast pocket in gold threads. More official than I remembered him looking the last time I saw him: at our high school graduation ten years ago, when he wore his football uniform under his cap and gown.

“Nobody’s been in there for years, right?”

Ken flipped through the pages on his brown clipboard. “Right. Since Mildred Monroe was murd—” He stopped talking midsentence. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought that up.”

“Don’t be sorry. Nobody in my family ever wants to talk about Aunt Millie, but I don’t mind.” I took a deep breath and lowered my head, preparing myself to march across the street, into the store. Times like these I wished I had a cascade of hair to hide my face, but my short reddish-brown hair, so overdue for a maintenance cut that it was starting to look like a shag, did little more than tickle my forehead when the wind blew.

“Poly, you don’t have to do this if you don’t want to. I can arrange for you to sell the store without ever having to go inside.” He stared at me. “You probably didn’t even have to make the trip. I could have faxed the paperwork to your office in Los Angeles. You could have signed it, faxed it back, and it would all be over and done with.”

“I wanted to come back. I would have come back ten years ago for Aunt Millie’s funeral or memorial service, only there wasn’t one. And now that Uncle Marius is gone, the store is the only thing left of them.”

“A lot of people were mad at your uncle because he didn’t have a service for her.”

“My parents said he couldn’t admit she was gone. That’s why he never sold the store.”

“He wasted a lot of money paying down the mortgage on this place when there was no income. Turned down a lot of solid offers on it, too.”

“If it protects your memories and keeps your heart from breaking, can it really be considered a waste of money?” I asked, looking again at the once-glamorous sign.

“That’s one way of looking at it.”

“He’s my great-uncle, and that’s my way of looking at it.”

“Suit yourself.”

A truck loaded down with ladders, orange cones, and men in yellow construction hats drove past us, obstructing my view of the storefront. A thin old man with a cane approached from the left. He stopped in front of the store, studied me for a few seconds, then nodded at Ken and continued past us.

“Who was that?”

“Mr. Pickers. He’s head of the Senior Patrol. They’re a group of retirees who keep an eye on things around San Ladrón.”

I watched the man continue down the street. It was just after four, between the lunch and the dinner crowds I expected would fill up the restaurants on the street, and, now that the head of the Senior Patrol had moved on to other pressing matters, it was just Ken and me.

“Can I have the keys?”

“You know she was murdered in the store, and you still want to go in? I have the paperwork right here. You don’t have to see a thing if you don’t want to.”

“Isn’t that my name on the will?”

He looked down at his clipboard again and tapped the form. “‘New owner: Polyester Monroe.’ Your uncle Marius either really loved you or really hated you.” He looked back at the dingy gray storefront. “Right now I can’t tell which.” Ken juggled his clipboard and pen with a set of keys until he found the one he wanted. “I wouldn’t expect much,” he added.

We crossed the road in the middle, blatantly jaywalking. I might have walked to the light and waited for the signal to change if I were alone, but figured there was safety in numbers if any traffic cops decided to make an example out of us. Ken fed the key into the gate, a collapsible metal fence that had been pulled shut over the front door of the store and left locked. The key turned but the gate refused to open. Rust at the intersecting joints left it as stiff as the tin woodsman and here we were, armed with keys, legal papers, and a flashlight, but no oilcan.

“Is there a back door?”

“Let’s see.”

As we hiked down the block then around to the back, I noticed a shiny black Mercedes sedan with dark-tinted windows sitting alone in a parking lot at the corner. The sounds of talk radio blurred as we passed the car, the only indication that someone was inside the vehicle. The front license plate read MCM. Distracted from the path, I tripped over an uneven seam in the sidewalk and landed facedown in the gravel.

I pushed myself back up and slapped the dirt from my black turtleneck and black velvet jeans. I wore black a lot these days. It hid most of the grime I picked up from sketching, repairing sewing machines, and using a glue gun, but it wasn’t so good for hiding evidence of my klutziness.

Ken didn’t notice I was missing from his side until he reached the back door and turned around to look at me.

“I’m okay,” I said, then jogged a few steps to catch up with him.

“Still as uncoordinated as you were in high school. Remember how you tripped over the hem of your prom dress during the ‘Electric Slide’?” He laughed.

“Just unlock the door, please.”

Ken and I had attended the same high school in the neighboring town of Glendora. Upon graduation, he had moved to San Ladrón and gone to work in his father’s real estate agency, while I moved to Los Angeles and attended FIDM. I started working at To The Nines when I graduated and hadn’t been back since.

He turned the key and pushed the door inside. A stench of stale air, mildew, and something I immediately associated with wet metal hit me. Ken, who had been in front of me, stepped back and let me pass through. “I’ll wait here,” he said, waving his hand in front of his face.

“Fine.” I pulled the collar of my turtleneck over my nose and mouth to filter out some of the smell, clicked on the flashlight, and entered.

Tiny dust particles floated through the beam of the flashlight. As I moved farther inside, my eyes adjusted enough to make out large square tables piled high with bolts of fabric. The walls were fitted with shelves about four and a half feet deep, housing stacks upon stacks of round rolls of fabric, too. I only knew the depth of the shelf because I knew a bolt of fabric was generally forty-eight to fifty-six inches long. At least, the fabrics I bought for To The Nines, the downtown Los Angeles dress company where I worked, were that length. The job wasn’t what I dreamed of when I graduated from the Fashion Institute, but it was solid work in the garment district, and as my boyfriend, Carson, liked to tell me, a steady paycheck is worth more than a treasure chest of dreams.

As a little girl, I used to play in the store, and “playing” included climbing the fixtures and hiding between the bolts of fabric. And before I outgrew the fun of playing hide-and-seek in the store, I outgrew the fixtures. By sixth grade I was five feet tall; by graduation I was only a few inches shy of six.

The interior of the store appeared smaller than I remembered, and not just because my memories were from childhood. I noticed a dividing wall that hadn’t been there on my last visit over ten years ago. An unpainted wooden door was in the middle of the makeshift partition. I crossed the room and tried the doorknob. It was locked. I looked behind me for Ken with his janitor-like key ring, but he was still MIA.

“Ken? Can you come here with your keys?” I called out the back door. “I want to see what’s behind this door.” There was no answer.

Above the door was a small square window. I pulled a three-rung folding metal ladder under it, climbed up, and tried to look through, but the glass was too filthy. “You break it, you bought it,” I said under my breath. “Good thing I’m the owner.” I swung the flashlight against the glass. It shattered on impact and fell to the floor on the other side of the wall, creating tinkling harmonies in the process. I looked through the hole but made out nothing of interest, nothing that would have been the reason for closing off a third of the store. There must be something back there, I reasoned. Before I decided whether or not I was keeping the store, I wanted to know what it was.

I jumped down and found a pair of scissors under the dust-coated register. After cutting a long strip of faux zebra fur and throwing it over my shoulder, I sliced off two more strips and wrapped them around each fist. I climbed back on the footstool, punched the bigger pieces of remaining glass to the floor, and threw the larger piece of fur over the bottom of the sill. I fed my head, arms, and shoulders through the opening and fumbled with the flashlight with my fur-wrapped hands. It dropped to the floor and landed on the pile of glass. The light flickered a few times, and then went out.

I leveraged myself against the opposite side of the window with my zebra paws, but the opening of the window was doing direct battle with the size of my hips. My feet lost touch with the footstool as I wriggled, trying to fit through.

“Just what the heck do you think you’re doing up there?” said a muffled voice behind me.

There was little I could do in my Pooh Bear–like pose, other than kick my legs in an effort to reconnect with the footstool.

“Ken? Is that you? Can you help me?” I called. “I’m stuck.”

“Hold on.”

Positioned as I was, halfway through a broken window four feet above the ground, I didn’t really see that I had much choice and considered saying as much, but I bit my tongue. I only hoped Ken was a quick thinker, because the pressure of the windowsill against my midsection was creating an impending need for a bathroom.

The locked door swung open. I heard a click of a switch, and seconds later the secret room was flooded with light. I shut my eyes immediately, too late. I was temporarily blinded and still stuck in the window. Things were not improving.

As my vision cleared I realized the man who stepped into the room in front of me was a stranger. His light brown hair was cut short and parted on the side. He wore a white turtleneck and a navy-blue cotton peacoat over khaki trousers and white sneakers, and looked as if he’d just returned from an afternoon on his yacht. It was bad enough to be caught dangling through a window, even if it was my window, but worse because it seemed I was on the verge of making a very bad first impression.

“Do you think you can fit through the window if I pull you?”

“I don’t—maybe.”

“‘Maybe’ might not be good enough. You could get stuck more than you already are.”

“I can push her from behind,” said Ken’s muffled voice from, well, behind.

“Nobody’s pushing anything!” I said. “You, pull. I’m almost through.”

The stranger stepped in front of me and paused for a second before grabbing my zebra-wrapped hands. My center of gravity had shifted, more of me through the window than not, and I knew there was no going back. As the stranger pulled, my hips popped through the opening and I fell on top of him, knocking him to the floor next to the chalk outline of a body.

Suddenly, I knew why Uncle Marius had divided off this portion of the store.

I didn’t know if Thank you or I’m sorry was the more appropriate response to knocking someone into the scene of a ten-year-old homicide, so I said nothing. For the second time that day I stood up and dusted myself off, then unwrapped the fur from my right hand and offered it to the stranger to help him stand. He ignored the offer and stood up on his own.

“You’re on private property,” he said.

“Actually, you’re on private property, if we’re going to get into specifics, but considering you just rescued me from a tight spot I’m willing to look the other way,” I said. I didn’t know if he’d seen the outline of the body or not, but at the moment I wanted out of that room.

He took a step closer and looked down at me. I wasn’t used to men looking down at me, since I was five foot nine, but he did. “Do you want to tell me what you’re doing on my father’s property?”

I stepped backward. “Who’s your father?” I asked.

“Vic McMichael.”

“Who?”

At that moment Ken burst through the door. His blazer flapped open, the crest on his breast pocket partially hidden under the lapel. “You should have called to tell me you were coming here,” he said to the stranger.

“Which one of you is going to tell me what is going on?” I demanded.

The stranger looked between Ken and me. “Who are you again?” he asked.

“Poly Monroe,” I answered and held out my hand for the second time. This time he shook it.

“Vaughn McMichael.” The intensity that I’d seen in his features moments ago melted into an expression that was just shy of a smile. His eyes, a mixture of green flecked with gold, held my own for a second longer than felt comfortable, but I fought the urge to look away. His handshake was firm enough to mean business, but the softness of his hand cocooned my own. I returned the pressure of the handshake equally. I didn’t know why, but I sensed that Vaughn McMichael wasn’t sure what to make of my presence. As we shook hands, a roll of pink-and-white gingham fell from the table behind him and landed on the floor. It rolled halfway across the room and came to a stop by Ken’s foot.

Vaughn dropped my hand and looked at Ken. “Sorry if I jumped the gun. Take your time. I’ll be in touch.” He turned around and left through the wooden door that had kept us from being inside the hidden room.

I followed him out of the store, keeping a few steps behind and watching to see where he headed. He approached the black sedan that had been idling in the adjacent parking lot, tapped twice on the back window, and the door opened up. Before he got inside he turned around and looked directly at me. I went back into the store as the car pulled away.

“What was that all about?” I asked Ken.

“That, my friend, was the son of the man who owns half of San Ladrón.”

“How did he get in? And why was he here? And why did he say that I was on private property, and that his father owned the store?”

Ken ignored my questions. “Come with me.” We walked to the front of the store and Ken unlocked the door from the inside. Again the metal fence kept us prisoners inside the store. In the distance, I heard the rapid-fire rhythm of a jackhammer against asphalt.

Ken cursed. He led me out the back door, around the block, and back in front of Land of a Thousand Fabrics. “See that?” he pointed to the vacant building on the left of the store. “Mr. McMichael owns that.”

“So?”

“See that?” He pointed to the building on the right of the store. “Mr. McMichael owns that, too.”

“Okay, I get it.”

“See that?” Ken continued, ignoring me. “And that? And that?” he said, pointing to various buildings around the fabric store. “He owns them all. In fact, there’s only one building on this street he doesn’t own. Care to guess which one?”

“Okay, so he’s interested in buying the fabric store. Why did his son act like he already owns it?”

Ken pulled a folder out from the bottom of the clipboard and balanced it on the back of a metro bench next to us. He flipped through a few sheets of paper until he reached a piece of thick stationery with a monogram on the top. MCM, it said, just like the license plate.

“When Mr. McMichael heard you’d inherited the store, he made an offer. A generous offer. I know you’re only here through the weekend, so I took the liberty of drawing up the paperwork.”

Ken was either the most efficient real estate agent I’d ever met, or I was being rushed into making a decision. Not one to be bullied, I crossed my arms and dug in for answers.

“What does Mr. McMichael plan to do with the store? Is he connected to the fashion industry? Does he even like fabric? Can he tell the difference between wool challis and gabardine? Did he know Uncle Marius and Aunt Millie? Or my parents? Does he know my parents? Has he talked to them about this?”

Ken signed. “Are you going to stop for a breath? Poly, this is business. He’s not asking for your hand in marriage. Mr. McMichael is a developer, and this property is worth a lot to him. He can’t do anything with the rest of the block unless he has this one location.”

“How does he know I own it?”

“It’s public knowledge. Besides, this isn’t the first offer Mr. McMichael has made on the property.”

“So Uncle Marius wouldn’t sell to him?”

“Apparently not.”

I looked across the street at the bird-poop-stained façade. “Then maybe I shouldn’t sell, either.”

“Don’t be stupid. What are you going to do—give up your job in Los Angeles and move to San Ladrón?” He stepped back and scanned my outfit, from boots to turtleneck. “No offense, but you don’t seem like the small-town type.”

“I probably don’t seem like the type to make a rash decision, either. Give me the night to think it over.”

Ken folded the letter into thirds along already-established creases and handed it to me. “Mr. McMichael has brought a lot of jobs to the city by the properties he’s developed. This would be no different. Consider that along with his offer. It’s not all about you, but it’s partially about you. That money might give you a chance to quit producing pageant dresses and do something real with your life.”

I had a choice. Defend my crappy job with the steady paycheck or admit that I wanted to do something more with my life. I did neither. Instead, I folded the paper in half again, and tucked it into the back pocket of my dusty jeans.

“The keys?” I asked.

Ken removed three keys from his full key ring and dropped them into my open palm. “I’ll call you tomorrow. Noon?”

“Sure,” I answered.

“Poly, just because your uncle got caught up in what the store meant to him doesn’t mean you have to get caught up in it, too. Do the sensible thing.” Ken turned away and unlocked his shiny black Lexus by remote. He drove away seconds after getting into it and left me standing on the sidewalk, staring after him.

I watched him drive away. Maybe Ken was right. Maybe the sensible thing was to sign away the store and go home. It had been ten years since I’d last been in San Ladrón, and it had changed a lot in that time. I looked up at the façade of Land of a Thousand Fabrics. To the right of it was an antiques store that specialized in Polynesian collectibles. To the left was another antiques store divided into cubicles of stuff left over from a hundred different garage sales. I didn’t remember either of those stores being there the last time I was here. I looked up and down the street, at a hardware store, a salon, and a gas station. The only thing I remembered from this vantage point was the traffic light at the intersection of San Ladrón and Bonita Avenue.

I walked down the block to the meter where I’d parked my own car, a semiautomatic yellow VW Bug from the early eighties. I’d bought it with the first thousand dollars I’d made at To The Nines. Even though Los Angeles was filled with people driving perfectly maintained luxury cars, I liked everything about the one I owned: the ecru leather interior, the chrome handles, the small round gearshift.

But at the moment, there was something new about my car, something I definitely didn’t like. The cluster of colored wires dangling from the steering column.

Two

I stuck the key into the ignition and turned it, even though I had a pretty good idea what would happen. A whole lot of nothing. And a whole lot of nothing was exactly what I got. I pulled my AAA card from my wallet and called the number. As I waited for the phone to connect, I noticed a faded sign farther down the street, Charlie’s Automotive.

I disconnected and hopped from the car, pulling a man’s black oversized suit jacket from the backseat and shrugging into it before slamming the door shut. The door required slamming. After a minor encounter with a particularly narrow parking space, I’d dented it by the hinges and never bothered having it fixed. And now the dent in the door was certainly not my priority.

I looked up and down the street for signs of vandals. Should I call the cops to report the crime? That’s what Carson had done when his car had been vandalized last year, but it hadn’t done any good. Vandalized cars fell pretty low on the scale of crime, and as far as I could tell, nothing was missing. I looked back at the automotive shop. Getting the car fixed seemed to be the higher priority.

The afternoon sun was behind the auto shop, casting the building in a shadow. I hurried to the lot in front but saw no cars. If it weren’t for the pair of legs sticking out from under a car in the garage and the Van Halen blaring from the small CD player, I would have considered it closed and walked away.

“Excuse me,” I said. “My car’s about half a block up the street and it looks like somebody got creative with my wiring.”

The round toes of the heavy black work boots moved slightly, as did the blue pant legs above them. I leaned down, closer to the bumper. “Hello? Can you hear me?”

I would have walked away if it weren’t something of an emergency. Instead, I crossed the concrete floor and unplugged the CD player. When I turned around, the person under the car was halfway out. Seconds later I was staring down at a woman in a dirty blue zip-front jumpsuit.

“Oil changes for twenty-five dollars. Barely pays the rent on this place.” She wiped the back of her arm across her forehead and left a grease stain on her pale skin. “You got a problem with your car or are you looking for directions?”

“My car. It’s parked across the street. Looks like someone tampered with the electrical while I was otherwise engaged.”

“Where were you?”

“In the fabric store.”

She made no secret of the once-over she gave me, looking at my riding boots, my dirty velvet jeans, my turtleneck, and my oversized man’s blazer. I ran my fingers through my auburn hair, tucking a few tendrils behind my ears while she stared at me. I’d long since chewed off my trademark cranberry lipstick, but at least I knew my eyeliner and mascara had been applied as generously as hers.

“How’d you get into the fabric store?”

“The back door.”

“I mean, how’d you get permission? I don’t think anybody’s been in there for ages.”

“I inherited it.”

“Who are you again?” she asked. She sat upright.

“Poly Monroe.”

“As in Pollyanna?” she asked.

“As in Polyester.”

“I’m Charlie.” She held out a hand and I pulled her up. Her thick, wild black hair was held in a messy ponytail on the top of her head. Her features were angular but sexy, full red lips and dark eyes. Her eyeliner was heavy on the upper lids, drawn into a point at the edge of each eye, Cleopatra-like. She wiped her hands on an already filthy rag and extended her hand a second time, which I shook.

“Polyester Monroe.” She tipped her head slightly as she considered this. “Related to Marius and Millie Monroe?” she asked.

I nodded.

“You say your car was vandalized?”

“Looks that way.”

She craned her neck and looked outside. “Yellow VW Bug?”

“That’s the one.”

She slammed the hood on the car she was working on, unzipped her jumpsuit, and stepped out of it. She wore a faded chambray shirt and jeans underneath. She hung the jumpsuit on a hook by a calendar of half-naked firemen. “It’s time for me to close up. Watch the joint while I take a powder?”

“What about my car?”

“I’ll fix it in the morning.” She pulled down the hinged metal doors in the front of her shop and threw the locking mechanism. Before I could answer, she disappeared behind a small door on the back corner of the garage. I stood in the front, not sure exactly what it was I was supposed to be doing. I heard a knock on the front door and turned around to find two men in the doorway. The one in front wore a dirty white T-shirt and faded jeans and steel-toed boots. The second one was dressed the same except his T-shirt was black. They both held yellow hard hats.

“Can I help you?” I asked.

“I don’t know. Where’s Charlie?”

“She’s closing up. If you want to talk to her about a job, come back in the morning.”

“Sure, yeah, that’s why we’re here. About a job.” They laughed.

The air felt crisp with tension. The two men stayed at the door, but I sensed if I weren’t there they would have come inside. I crossed the shiny garage floor and stepped directly in a trail of oil that led to the drain. The guy in the white T-shirt stood in the doorway.

“Like I said, she’s closed for business.” I put one hand on the door and the other on the frame. I was the same height as the guy in front of me and I looked him straight in the eyes. I kept my voice steady. I pointed over his shoulder to a gas station where a black-and-white police cruiser was parked. “Looks like there’s an on-call mechanic across the street. If it’s an emergency, they can probably accommodate you.”

White T-shirt stepped back. He looked at his friend. “It can wait.”

We stood face-to-face. The guy in the front stepped backward and the two of them started down the street. I waited out the better part of a minute before I stepped back and locked the door. It was then that I realized how hard my heart was pounding in my chest.

“I asked you to watch the place, not lock the doors,” Charlie said behind me. She unlocked the door and poked her head out. I suspected the two guys were within her sight, but didn’t know for sure. She stood upright, then shut and relocked the door.

“They came here?”

“They said they had a job. I said you were closed and recommended the mechanic across the street.”

She looked out the front door at the police cruiser parked in the gas station lot. “You told them to go there? That’s rich.”

“Why? Who were they?”

“Our very own local bad boys, or at least that’s what they’d like you to think. They tend to fly under the radar with small stuff that nobody reports.”

“Like tearing the wires out of my car?”

“Could be. That’s their idea of fun.”

“What did they want from you?”

“I’ve got flies buzzing around me all the time. The more you swat ’em away, the more they keep coming back. Comes with the territory,” she said, tipping her head toward the interior of the auto shop.

“If your flyswatter doesn’t work, you can always get one of those electric bug zappers. Might leave m