A Killer Closet Read online

  A Killer Closet is a work of fiction. Names, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  An Alibi Ebook Original

  Copyright © 2016 by Paula Paul

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by Alibi, an imprint of Random House, a division of Penguin Random House LLC, New York.

  ALIBI is a registered trademark and the ALIBI colophon is a trademark of Penguin Random House LLC.

  Ebook ISBN 9781101968468

  Cover illustration: Art Parts

  randomhousebooks.com

  v4.1

  ep

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Acknowledgments

  By Paula Paul

  About the Author

  Chapter 1

  There was a dead woman in Irene’s closet.

  She discovered the body in the small storage space of her store on the first day she opened for business. It was still two hours away from the nine A.M. opening, and she was absolutely certain the body hadn’t been there the day before, which was Sunday, when she was getting the store ready.

  The dead woman sat with her legs straight out, her upper body leaning against the wall. She was dressed in blue silk Prada pants. She wore a brown silk jacket, also Prada. The jacket was bloodstained, the blood having come from the bullet wound in her head. The woman herself had been an attractive blonde, probably in her late thirties, Irene estimated, because she herself was in her late thirties and recognized some of the early signs of aging.

  No, not aging, maturing.

  Of course she called the police.

  Two officers came to investigate. One of them was the chief of police, Andrew Iglesias, an attractive, youngish man with dark hair and eyes. It was not uncommon for the chief to be part of an investigation in a place like Santa Fe, not big enough to be a city, but bigger than a small town. The other one was an assistant in a uniform no less well pressed than the chief’s, young and probably Hispanic like the chief, but Irene didn’t catch his name. It was not like her to miss details like that. She’d been an assistant D.A. back in Manhattan, where she’d excelled in her ability to pay attention to and remember details. However, back then she’d never found a dead woman in her closet, which, she realized, rattled her somewhat.

  “Do you know this woman?” Chief Iglesias asked.

  “I know that her name is Loraine Sellers, and she was a friend of my mother’s, but I wouldn’t say I knew her.”

  “Your mother. That would be Adelle Daniels.”

  “Yes. How did you know that?”

  “Word gets around,” the chief said. “How did she get in that storage closet?”

  “I don’t know.” She hoped he wasn’t implying that she was in the habit of stuffing dead people in her closet.

  “How long has she been here?” he asked.

  “I have no idea. I just discovered her when I opened the closet. I called you right away.” While it was true she didn’t know exactly when the body was placed in her closet, she estimated that the woman had been dead no more than four hours, because the body was still rigid. However, she didn’t mention that to the chief or his assistant, assuming they would see it for themselves. Nor did she mention that the body was dressed in a four-thousand-dollar-plus outfit, although she wasn’t sure whether or not they would realize that.

  “You only recently leased this building, didn’t you?” the chief asked.

  “That’s correct.”

  “You’re new to town.” The chief’s handsome face crumpled into a scowl, as if being new in town might be a crime. “How did you arrange the lease so fast?”

  “My mother helped me with the arrangements,” she said, and started to add that she had actually grown up here. But she stopped, having learned long ago that under most circumstances it was generally best not to volunteer information.

  “You mean she leased it for you.”

  “No, I mean she helped me with the arrangements. I leased it myself.”

  “How long ago?”

  “About a month. Long enough to have a little remodeling done before I brought in merchandise.”

  “What kind of remodeling?” He frowned again, and Irene noticed that he wasn’t writing notes as he questioned her.

  “You probably know the building used to be a restaurant and that it’s been vacant for over a year. I had counters removed and new ones installed, and racks for the clothing.”

  “Would you call the remodeling extensive?”

  “What does this have to do with a murder investigation?”

  He asked again without answering her question. “Would you call the remodeling extensive?”

  “No.” She’d gone back to her resolve not to say more than was necessary.

  “Who did the remodeling?”

  “Someone my mother hired. His name was Russell Something. Sanderson, I think, or Sandoval.”

  “When did he finish the job?”

  Irene hesitated for a moment, wondering if the chief was just incompetent, since he was focusing so much on the building, or if he knew something she didn’t know. “A couple of weeks ago,” she said finally.

  “All right. Thanks,” the chief said in a clipped voice. “Stick around. We may want to talk to you again.”

  The yellow crime scene tape stayed up all day, making it impossible to open the store. At least the body was removed discreetly through the back entrance, but there were investigators of different descriptions in and out all day looking for fingerprints, blood samples, possible means of entry. The only clue the police had for that was that the back door appeared to have been left unlocked. Since there were no broken locks, shattered windows, or holes in the roof.

  “Did you check to see if both the front and back doors were locked when you left last night?” one of the investigators asked.

  “Of course,” Irene said.

  “But you claim the back door was unlocked when you arrived this morning.”

  “That’s correct.”

  “We found no sign of tampering. You must have left it unlocked.”

  “Or someone skilled with locks opened it,” Irene offered.

  The investigator’s face crumpled into a scowl. “I advise you not to leave town.”

  “Why would I leave town?”

  The investigator didn’t answer. He left, still wearing his scowl.

  It was summer, the height of the tourist season, and there were several curious passersby who tried to see what was going on behind the yellow tape, but all they could see was the shady courtyard leading back to the old adobe building connected to other ancient adobe buildings. Nevertheless, Irene was worried that the yellow tape was bad publicity for her new store. A sign outside, hanging from a pole by wrought-iron brackets, displayed the words Irene’s Closet written in cursive letters and made to look as if the words were on a ribbon scroll. Underneath in smaller letters and a plainer font: A second look at haute couture.

  A day like this was enough to make her wish she’d never left New York. Bu
t she couldn’t have stayed. She’d received the summons several months earlier from her mother, Adelle, telling her she was to come home to Santa Fe—that ancient American city whose rich and terrible history lies beneath a veneer of adobe chic and self-conscious renovation. Not unlike Adelle herself.

  Her mother’s directive to leave New York and return to Santa Fe came to Irene’s apartment in Brooklyn written on handmade paper the color of a sepia dawn and edged in aqua and brown geometric Navajo designs. The scent of piñon escaped, genielike, from the envelope when she opened it. Adelle would never email, but she did follow up with a telephone call.

  It seemed her latest husband had died unexpectedly. Husband number five, Irene thought. Or maybe it was six. The point was, he’d died, and instead of leaving even a small part of his substantial holdings to Adelle as she had hoped, he’d left them to his two sons, who lived somewhere in Nebraska. Adelle had been led to believe the entire family lived in a villa in Italy. Two of her mother’s many marriages had ended with the death of her spouse, and the rest ended in divorce. Irene refrained from criticism since her own one and only marriage had lasted only two years.

  “You want me in Santa Fe? You can’t be serious,” Irene said when she got the call.

  “But I am, Irene, I’m perfectly serious. You have to come help me decide what to do. You know I’ve never asked anything of you before.”

  The last part wasn’t true. Her mother had called on her several times, especially when she was between husbands and sometimes when she wasn’t, but Irene let it pass and instead gave her mother half a dozen reasons why she couldn’t leave her job as an assistant district attorney in Manhattan. She’d managed to hold on to the job for three years while everyone else around her was being let go because of the tough economy. She and most of her colleagues hadn’t seen a raise in two years, but at least it was a job. She’d finally found a decent apartment in Brooklyn she could sublet at a rate even an assistant D.A. could afford, and didn’t her mother know how hard it was to find an affordable apartment, especially one that could be even remotely thought of as decent? And anyway, couldn’t she help her decide what to do over the phone?

  Nothing worked. Adelle continued to insist. Finally Irene agreed to a visit, using the vacation days she’d saved, intending to go to Florida.

  She found Adelle in dire straits when she arrived in Santa Fe. She’d been forced to move out of the nouveau-pueblo-style mansion in the fashionable Las Campanas area just outside of the city that had been her late husband’s home, since it was now owned by the two Nebraska boys she’d never met. She’d moved back into the drafty turn-of-the-century house in Hyde Park that Irene had grown up in. It had been left to Adelle by her first husband, who was Irene’s father, with the caveat that she could never sell it and could only pass it on to Irene. Now that Adelle had lost her only source of income—her fifth (or sixth?) husband—she couldn’t even afford the taxes on the old house. Even if she’d been allowed to sell the place, it would have been out of the question in such a depressed real estate market.

  “You’re just going to have to come and live with me in Brooklyn,” Irene said finally, although the thought of living with Adelle in a small apartment terrified her.

  “I couldn’t possibly live in Brooklyn,” Adelle said.

  “Why not?” Irene sounded testy.

  “Why not? People like me don’t live in Brooklyn.”

  “Must you always be so insulting?”

  “You’re overly sensitive, my dear. All I mean is that your apartment is too small for the two of us.”

  “You’ve never seen my apartment. How do you know it’s too small?” Irene was growing more and more irritated.

  “It’s in Brooklyn, isn’t it?”

  “You are insufferable.” She turned away from her mother, hoping that would keep her from growing even angrier and saying something she’d regret. An awkward silence followed, and when she turned back to look at her mother, she was surprised at how pale and drawn Adelle’s face looked. She was even more surprised at what Adelle said next.

  “I…I need you, Irene.”

  It was enough that Adelle admitted to needing anyone—something Irene had never heard from her—but she also heard genuine fear in her mother’s voice. For most of her life, Adelle had been anything but fearful, but Irene could see clearly on Adelle’s changed face the root of her fear. She had just passed seventy, although she would never admit it. She had always been a strikingly beautiful woman, and she’d always relied on her looks to get what she wanted. She was still attractive, but beauty fades by seventy. Even a fool knew that. Adelle was many things, not all of them flattering, but she was most definitely not a fool.

  In the end, Irene made another concession. She would move to Santa Fe, back to the large, drafty, run-down Victorian where she’d grown up. Never mind that it was on the National Register of Historical Places, it was still old, drafty, and run down, and, she had to concede, still charming. It had been her grandparents’ home, and before that, her great-grandparents’ home, and before that…Well, it was an old house attached in the back to an even older, low-slung, flat-roofed structure that had been the Perez family’s original home in Spanish colonial days. The house had also at one time been the home of New Mexico’s only Jewish governor, Arthur Seligman, a cousin to her grandfather, who died in office in 1933.

  Her grandmother, Teresa Maria Josepha Ortega y Silva de Seligman, Santa Fe’s grande dame, owned the house during Irene’s childhood. She’d stayed with Abuela Teresa after her father’s death and Adelle’s subsequent second and third marriages. It wasn’t an opulent existence, since most of the family money had been lost in the Great Depression, but it was a relatively happy one.

  The old house was there waiting for her, but a way to make a living for herself and her mother was another matter. She wasn’t licensed to practice law in New Mexico. She was confident she could pass the test to gain a license, but getting a job would be difficult. The old patrón system had never completely died in New Mexico, and the family ties she still had were currently of the wrong political party. Working as a private attorney would be out of the question, for a while at least, since she needed money now and had no time to build a practice.

  That’s why she decided to open an upscale consignment store for women’s fashions. She’d had a friend in Brooklyn who’d opened just such a store and made it a success.

  Adelle was appalled when she first heard her plans. “You’re going to open a secondhand store?”

  “You can call it an upscale consignment store, if you prefer,” Irene had said. “See if you can find a decent space to rent while I’m in New York getting everything settled so I can move. Find someplace right on the plaza, preferably. So I can catch the tourist trade.”

  “I will be completely humiliated,” Adelle wailed. “My daughter, selling used—”

  “You’ll be the perfect consultant,” Irene said, ignoring her. “I’ll handle the top brands, most of which I won’t be able to identify. But you will. You know haute couture better than I know the statutes of the sovereign state of New York.”

  Adelle finally gave in, as Irene knew she would, since, as she’d acknowledged to herself before, her mother was no fool, and there had to be some way to keep the gas turned on during a frigid Santa Fe winter.

  It took Adelle several months to find the quaint adobe nook near the centuries-old Palace of the Governors. It sat back from the sidewalk, part of an ancient former dwelling that had to be approached through a shady courtyard.

  As it turned out, when Irene’s Closet finally opened the day after the body was found, the yellow tape and the subsequent story in Santa Fe’s morning newspaper, the Santa Fe New Mexican, proved to be a boon for business.

  “Loraine Sellers? Dead? I can’t believe it!” Susana Delgado said. Her face was pale, and she was obviously disturbed by the news. “Was the body really here, like the paper said?” Susana was one of Adelle’s friends, whom Irene had known sin
ce childhood. Susana, who was closer to her mother’s age than Loraine Sellers had been, had provided some high-quality outfits for consignment. She was going through the racks, but she was probably not looking for anything to buy. More likely, she was searching to see if she recognized anything someone she knew had left for consignment, but she was distracted and obviously nervous. It was clear Loraine’s death had upset her.

  “I’m afraid I don’t know anything more than what you read in the paper,” Irene replied.

  “It’s awful!” Susana said. Her face was Joan Rivers taut and artfully made up, although she lacked the high cheekbones to give her a classic look, and nothing could hide the fact that she was at least Adelle’s age.

  “Is this really a Dolce and Gabbana?” a customer asked, holding up a very short black brocade dress and providing Irene with a welcome interruption.

  “Yes, it is,” she said, recognizing it as one of two of that brand that Adelle had rounded up for her.

  “And only two hundred? Wow, I can’t even get a Liz Claiborne off the rack for that.”

  Irene didn’t tell her the dress was five years old. She was sure it wouldn’t matter anyway. Some things never go out of style.

  On her way to the cash register, she heard another familiar voice, speaking to Susana in a too-loud whisper. “I heard she was having an affair. With someone in government.” Irene recognized the voice. It belonged to Harriet Baumgarten, another of Adelle’s longtime friends. “I wonder if that’s why she was killed?” she added, in another whisper that was loud enough for anyone to hear.

  Harriet was obviously talking about Loraine, but it didn’t distract the other customers, who were mostly tourists and either didn’t care about local gossip or hadn’t heard the titillating story about the body in the closet.

  By the time Irene had the customer checked out and her package wrapped in tissue paper and placed in a ribbon-tied bag worthy of the finest boutique, another customer demanded her attention. She considered herself lucky that she managed to stay busy or could at least pretend to stay busy until Susana and Harriet grew tired of waiting for her and left the store.