Poppy Harmon and the Pillow Talk Killer by Lee Hollis (famous ebook reader .txt) 📗

Poppy’s mind furiously flashed with images from the night before, Linda Appleton at the bar, the salesman from somewhere, she couldn’t recall, eyeing her as Poppy left, getting up from his barstool to go join her.

Was he the last person to see Linda Appleton alive?

What if the salesman was actually the Pillow Talk Killer trolling the bars searching for his next victim?

What if Poppy had agreed to his proposition and gone with him up to his hotel room? Would she have been the killer’s next victim? She shuddered at the thought.

Suddenly a voice made gravelly by too many cigarettes came on the line. “What’s up? Don Juan having a category five star tantrum on the set?”

Don Juan.

That’s what Diane always called Rod.

Don.

That was it!

The name of the salesman at the Roosevelt Bar.

“I know you’re still there, I can hear you breathing,” Diane said, shuffling papers in the background.

“I’m sorry, it’s just that, I don’t know how to say this, Diane, but I think I may have encountered the Pillow Talk Killer last night,” Poppy said solemnly.

This got Diane’s attention.

She spewed out a litany of four-letter expletives before demanding a more detailed explanation.

As Poppy quickly filled her in, Diane was unusually quiet on the other end of the phone. When she finished, there was a few more moments of silence and then another loud expletive.

“Should I go to the police?” Poppy asked.

“What the hell for?” Diane howled.

“To tell them what I know.”

“How can you be sure this sales guy is the killer?”

“I’m not. But any information I can give might help with the investigation.”

“Sure, if you want to do that.”

Poppy could sense Diane’s reluctance.

“You don’t think I should?”

“Look, I would never suggest you not do the right thing, but it’s not like you’re an eyewitness to the actual murder, you just saw the victim out in public, and some random guy trying to start up a conversation.”

“It seems pretty important.”

“Then call them. It’s the right thing to do, I guess. I would just hate for you to get caught up in all this, and it somehow adversely affect your career.”

Now this got Poppy’s attention. “How is that possible?”

“I don’t know, I’m just thinking out loud, but it could taint you, the Enquirer would have a field day tying you to this whole Pillow Talk Killer mess, and you know how the studios hate even the whiff of a scandal.”

“Scandal? But I’m just relaying what I saw.”

“Poppy, I support whatever you’re going to do. Now I have to take this call.”

That meant a more important client was on the other line.

There was a click.

She put down the phone and pondered Diane’s advice.

And instantly tossed it aside.

Poppy was not going to hide potentially key information just for the sake of her career. She picked up the phone again and dialed the operator for the number of the LAPD tip line.

What she did not know at the time was that her phone call would be all for naught because the Pillow Talk Killer would never be caught.

Chapter 20

“My husband was most definitely not the Pillow Talk Killer,” Rosemarie Carter sniffed as she dabbed her ruddy, heavily rouged face with a tissue in an effort to sop up the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“I’m sorry,” Poppy said somberly. “I know this must be difficult for you to talk about.”

Poppy, Iris, and Violet huddled around Rosemarie Carter’s small table with its stained red-and-white-checkered tablecloth in a cramped alcove. The sun streaming through the windows brightened what was otherwise a drab, threadbare kitchen with worn appliances and a scuffed, smudged floor in desperate need of mopping. Poppy glanced over at Iris, whose nose was scrunched up in distaste at the musty, squalid surroundings. Poppy tried signaling her to stop, but Iris failed to pick up on her cue. Violet, however, gamely drank the coffee Rosemarie had offered them when they first arrived and pretended not to notice how unkempt the house was. As for Rosemarie herself, she appeared to have long given up on making herself look presentable, drowning in a shopworn wool sweater despite the hot temperature outside, a faded blue housedress, and slippers. Her hair was matted and unwashed. In fact, her only attempt to gussy herself up for company was the slabs of rouge on both her cheeks, which was incongruous with the rest of her dowdy appearance. Perhaps it was out of habit from when she was a younger woman, or a half-hearted attempt to paint over the cracks of time that were rapidly taking over her face. But the effect was disconcerting, a little too Baby Jane.

What had brought Poppy, Iris, and Violet to this run-down neighborhood in Indio today was the crack investigative work of Iris’s grandson Wyatt, who when presented with the name “Don” by Poppy, the man she had witnessed approaching Linda Appleton at the Roosevelt on the night she was murdered, took only five minutes to come up with a full name from his online research.

“Don Carter,” Wyatt had said at the garage office, pointing to a black-and-white photo on his computer screen. “Is that the guy, Poppy?”

“Yes, that’s him,” Poppy said, shuddering. “After I phoned the police, I heard they brought him in for questioning. After that, I tried to move on and didn’t closely follow the case. I read something later on, how although he had been a focus of the investigation, an arrest was never made.”

Wyatt nodded. “Yup. And according to this Vanity Fair article I found written about the murders back in 2005, since the killer was never caught, there was a cloud of suspicion around Carter for the rest of his life.”

“He died?” Poppy asked.

“Way back in 1994.”

“Oh . . .” Poppy murmured.

“But his wife is still alive and she’s living right here in the Coachella Valley. I found her home address in Indio from public records.”

Poppy had been hesitant to call the woman and possibly reopen old wounds, but she was determined to find out if