Death of a Domestic Diva (15 page)

That brought me around to living up to my duties in this investigation. I frowned with concentration, trying to think as I drove on the narrow country roads.

Who were the “Smiths,” really, and why were they in Paradise? Why had Billy suddenly decided to protest Tyra—with the same hatred that Lewis Rothchild had seemed to have for her? It couldn't be just over losing his apartment. Why had Billy hooked up with the Smiths . . . and why would they want to hook up with him? More baffling, how was Paige connected with any of them . . . and why did she apparently leave with them and abandon Tyra, the employer she'd just hours before seemed so dedicated to?

Most baffling of all was why Paige and Tyra had come to Paradise in the first place, since it was now clear that it hadn't been to do a show with me. Somehow, I'd managed to write Tyra at the right time with a show idea that gave her an excuse to come here. But why had she needed an excuse to come here at all? After all, a celebrity coming to Paradise might be unheard of—even a little weird—but it wasn't illegal.

I got so caught up in my thinking, I didn't realize I'd missed a turn and was just a mile from the old, abandoned county orphanage. The T-shirts . . . maybe a closer look at them would reveal some clues.

I pulled up the dirt lane and saw the old white truck the “Smith” couple had been driving, pointing opposite to me, parked on the side of the lane.

I stopped my car, got out, and went up to the truck slowly, just in case someone was crouched down in the truck, hiding. But no one was in or near the truck. Then I saw the rear of the truck was tilted down nearly to the ground. Looked like the suspension was shot.

I guessed that the truck had been abandoned here, but I drove up the rest of the lane slowly and looked around warily. I parked in the shrubby area where I'd parked the last time I was here—that seemed like forever ago, now—and hiked up to the crest overlooking the orphanage. At least this time I was wearing jeans and a shirt instead of a bathrobe.

I took a long look around. I didn't see any activity but it was possible the Smiths were in the orphanage. I doubted it though. It was pretty obvious they'd been here, but had to abandon their truck.

I knew I should go on to the orphanage, check out those T-shirts right away. But I had a little more thinking to do. Maybe because of the mood I was in after my big let down. Maybe because I'd pushed aside the memories on my last visit here, memories I hadn't taken out and examined in a long, long time, even though I come out here every now and again, just because it's peaceful, just to think. I even bring Guy here sometimes because it's one of the few places he likes to go on outings away from Stillwater.

So instead of heading straight to the orphanage, I stared down at the old building. In my mind I was watching something else, too.

Me, age nine. Sitting at the kitchen table after school in the home of the then Chief of Paradise Police. Hearing Mrs. Hilbrink tell me how Chief Bernie Hilbrink had had a heart attack.

Me, sipping milk and eating chocolate chip cookies and taking in the news—not sure what heart attack meant, but sure that it was bad, because Mrs. Hilbrink's face was slick with tears.

Me, not wanting it to be bad, because I'd grown happy with the Hilbrinks. I called them Chief and Mrs. Hilbrink even though I'd been living with them ten whole months by then—after my mama ran off when our trailer burned down and everyone suspected her of arson and she left me and a letter I never got a chance to read on the Hilbrink doorstep. But in my heart I dared to think of them as . . . Dad. And Mom.

And since the Hilbrinks didn't have any kids and had started talking about adopting me, it seemed safe to dream that maybe I could stay with them and be part of a proper family. After all, it was always nice and warm at their house, and Mrs. Hilbrink baked the best chocolate chip cookies, and started making me cute little dresses, and helped me catch up on my reading, so I could go to school for the first time in my life. I loved school. And I loved how Chief and Mrs. Hilbrink were always extra nice to me, like I was someone fine.

But it turned out that “heart attack” was very bad, because a few days later, Chief Hilbrink died. There was a huge funeral at Rothchild's Funeral Home. All of Paradise turned out for it, because everyone loved Chief Hilbrink. And then, the next day, Mrs. Hilbrink said she was sorry, but she just couldn't stay in Paradise without the Chief, and she didn't think she could raise a child by herself, so she was moving on out to California, where she was going to live awhile with her sister.

So I came to the Mason County Children's Home and stayed for six months until Uncle Horace and Aunt Clara took me in.

What makes me sad every time I thought about those six months in my life wasn't that the home was such a bad place to be. No one was mean to me. I had some chores, but none of them were hard. I had plenty of food. I had clothes. I even had some toys. There was a big library, where I discovered my love of reading and read most everything, and lots of things twice, like
Black Beauty
and
Little Women
and the
Chronicles of Narnia
. It's just that I was very, very lonely there. And alone. Two separate things, alone and lonely. And I was both. Alone can be okay, if it's for a time, and if it's what you want. But I had thought being alone—and feeling lonely—would never end.

Some of that feeling came back now, as I stared at the orphanage. A big old hungry maw of loneliness, wanting to swallow me whole again.

Then I thought of Elroy, and poor Lewis, and Tyra, and a mix of worry and sadness and anger filled the hole, kept me from tumbling into a pit of self-pity, moved me into action. I walked down the hill, being careful not to slip on the grass that was still wet from the previous night's rain. I climbed over the fence, trying to figure out how I could get in and take a closer look at those T-shirts.

But I didn't need to be clever about how to get in. As soon as I looked up after my climb over the fence and focused on the building, I saw the back door was hanging open.

I stepped in, to the smell and grit of dust and dirt, pulled out my flashlight, and shone it around. And found nothing there except the dust and dirt. The red Tyra Grimes T-shirts were all gone.

9

They were there when I got back to my apartment, waiting for me.

Not the T-shirts, of course.

But—them. A man and a woman, who would end up adding even more trouble to an already stirred-up pot of it.

He was tall, dark-haired, cute. She was petite, blond, cute. They were both in their mid-thirties, and they looked professional even though they just had on jeans and knit shirts and rain jackets. I think it was their shoes. They had on tan leather shoes and white socks—but not chunky athletic socks. Smooth knit socks. Professional people—people of a certain suburban middle class nature—always wear socks and shoes like that with jeans.

I didn't recognize the man or the woman, which meant they weren't from Paradise. (Of course, the shoes were proof of that anyway. Paradisites wear sneakers with their jeans, unless they're going hunting, in which case they wear hunting boots.)

They stood in front of my door, grinning at me with grins that were big and eager and a little surprised, like the grins the scientists in khaki-colored clothes and funny bowl-shaped hats have when they sneak up on cheetahs or orangutans or other wild creatures on those public TV nature shows.

The woman stepped forward, holding her hand out, and said in this tone that was hushed with great reverence and awe, “Are you . . .” she paused to gulp—“are you Josie Toadfern?
The
Josie Toadfern? The stain expert?”

Now, I have to admit that her saying that, in just that way—especially after all the teasing I'd gotten when I first declared my plan to get on the
Tyra Grimes Home Show
, and after all that had happened since Tyra had come just yesterday, and after learning today that she wasn't really going to have me on her show—I have to admit that the woman talking to me like that, all reverent and awed and impressed, got to me.

So when the man stepped forward and said they really, really,
really
needed to talk to me, I said okay. And then I did something really, really,
really
stupid. I invited them into my apartment. After all, I told myself, maybe they were newlyweds and they'd found me because they knew only I, in all of the world, could help them with something important, like maybe how to get a pesky coffee stain out of the heirloom quilt they'd gotten from her aunt.

As it turned out, they were really Steve and Linda Crooks, former investigative reporters, now freelance writers working on a book, one of those tell-all, no-holds-barred, unauthorized biography-type books, about Tyra Grimes.

We were drinking glasses of iced tea at my table when they told me this.

“We'd like your help with the book,” Steve said. “Your insight into Tyra's character, your observations about her, that kind of thing.”

Linda leaned toward me, practically quivering with excitement. “You could really add a whole new dimension to our book. The depth we're looking for. Of course, we're hoping we can quote you . . .”

“Now, Linda,” Steve said. “Don't be too pushy. Maybe Josie would rather be quoted anonymously.”

“Oh no, you can use my name,” I said hastily, then stopped. What was I saying? I was agreeing to something without really thinking it through . . . but me, Josie Toadfern, in a book? Maybe
that
would be important enough to help get Paradise back on the map, since I obviously wasn't going to get Paradise any attention by going on the
Tyra Grimes Home Show
.

Plus I have to admit that the thought of being in a book made me feel important. Special.
Somebody
. I'd loved books all my life.

And there was another thing, too, which I'm not proud of. A little bit of me wanted to get back at Tyra, for not really planning to have me on her show. And for stirring up the town so much. Not to mention my lingering snit over her wanting to transplant the orange thread in my heirloom quilt with white thread. “Simply wonderful. . .” Hmmph.

“We wanted to get to you first, before the others,” Steve added.

“The—others?” I asked.

“Oh yes,” Linda said. “Journalists. From newspapers. Magazines. TV stations. With what's happened here, this town is going to be swarming with reporters from all over the country by tomorrow morning. We were really, um, really hoping that you'd give us an exclusive.”

I didn't say anything for a moment, while I turned this proposition over in my mind, and Steve added, “She means not talk to any other reporters, just us.”

Now, all this big talk about a book and exclusives, as exciting as it was, hadn't turned my head from the fact I needed any information I could get to help me figure out why Tyra was really in Paradise . . . who had killed Lewis, and why. These two might just have information that would lead me to the answers.

“I know what you mean by exclusive,” I said. “But I'm thinking . . . if I'm going to give you something, you ought to give me something, too.”

They both looked alarmed and glanced at each other, exchanging one of those looks that somehow gets across a secret message. Then they gave each other a tiny nod.

“What do you want?” Steve said. “We can't offer any percentage of the royalties we'll get from our book—”

“I'm not interested in that. I want information. If you've been researching Tyra Grimes for your book, you must already know a lot about her. There are some things I'd like to know.”

“Like what,” Linda said.

I had to think about that for a moment. There were lots of things I wanted to know. What Tyra's connection with Lewis Rothchild had really been. Why her assistant had apparently run off with my cousin Billy and two strangers who spoke Spanish. Nah, they couldn't tell me any of that. What else?

How about—a little voice whispered from the corner of my mind, a voice that I swear sounded like Mrs. Oglevee's—how about what's up with those red Tyra Grimes T-shirts? And what about the TV news report that Tyra was going to be investigated for having illegal aliens working for her? These two, especially as former investigative reporters, should know something about that.

I took a deep breath, then told Steve and Linda about the TV news report I'd heard. Then I told them about the red T-shirts that had popped up around town. I left out how upset Vivian Denlinger had gotten over them, since that didn't seem anything except just weird, and I left out the part about Billy and his two new friends who were strangers to town and their comings and goings at the old orphanage where there had been boxes and boxes of the T-shirts, until they were moved. Or stolen. Something just told me—maybe the way both Linda's and Steve's eyes got all narrow and intense and drilling at me when I just mentioned those red T-shirts—that I'd be better off not mentioning all those details just yet.

When I finished, Steve said, “Here's what we've heard, from, er, some unnamed but reliable sources. Tyra Grimes has a labor camp out in California—”

“A labor camp?” I jumped in. “You mean like a prison?” It was hard to imagine what a Tyra Grimes prison would look like. Maybe lace valances over the jail cell doors. Or cute handcuff stencils on the bars. Toilet paper roll crafts out in the yard, right after basketball. . .

Steve smiled. “Not a prison like you're thinking of. But, yeah, kind of like a prison. A forced labor camp where the employer uses illegal immigrants, who are terrified of being sent home. The camps are illegal, and the conditions are bad. Long hours. Little pay. Unsanitary conditions. Poor nutrition.”

I could hear the outrage in Steve's voice . . . felt the outrage rising in me, too.

Linda shot Steve a look like she thought he was saying too much. She leaned forward to me and said in a near whisper, “Anyway, that's what we've heard—from, um, someone who knows someone who used to work there. A Mexican fellow. But he and his wife broke out, stole a truck, took off—apparently with several boxes of T-shirts that are just like the ones you've described.”