A Masquerade of Muertos (Wisteria Tearoom Mysteries Book 5)

by Patrice Greenwood

  “No, Kris. You’ve had enough.”

  “Then take Mick,” she said as we arrived in the hall.

  Mick stood before us, fiddling with one of his earbuds. He looked up in response to our staring at him.

  “All right,” I said. “Yes, that’s a good idea. Mick, will you escort me on an errand?”

  18

  My Google-fu is not the best in the world, but while Mick fired up his patchwork ride I was able to find Margo’s address from her phone number on the guest list. Her apartment was on the south side of town, not far from Gina’s though in a less pricey complex, a group of blocky buildings in pueblo-brown stucco.

  “I think Margo may have been present when Gabriel died,” I told him. “I want to convince her to go to the police. You don’t need to say anything. You’re here to discourage her from doing anything...ill-advised.”

  He shot me a sober glance. “OK.”

  “You don’t happen to be a martial artist, do you?”

  “Sorry, no.”

  Rats.

  “Well, I don’t think she is, either.”

  I hope.

  Actually, I didn’t know much about Margo. Wishing I’d asked Kris for information, I walked up two flights of stairs with Mick at my back.

  A long pause followed my pressing the doorbell. I was about to knock when the door finally opened and Margo looked wearily out. Her expression turned to surprise as she recognized me.

  “Hi, Margo. I’d like to talk if you have a minute. This is Mick, he works for me at the tearoom.”

  She looked at us both, then shrugged and opened the door. We entered a small living room furnished with a black futon couch and two overstuffed armchairs, also black. A television sat on a table under the front window, which was covered with burgundy curtains. The coffee table in front of the couch was cluttered with books, comics, candlesticks, coffee mugs, and a statuette of a gargoyle.

  The cape that Margo had fetched from the tearoom earlier lay over the back of a chair. My gaze snagged on the silver clasp: it was shaped like a Celtic knot. The same knot that was on Gabriel’s card.

  Margo waved at the couch and sat in one of the chairs. I went to the chair with the cloak instead, and Mick stayed behind me.

  “Is this Gabriel’s cloak?” I asked gently, laying my hand on the velvet.

  Margo looked up at me with the fear of a child caught in mischief. “I made it for him. It’s mine, really. He—doesn’t need it now.”

  She crossed her arms and leaned back, refusing to meet my gaze. I wondered how to reach her.

  “Do you still have your badge from the art exhibition?” I asked.

  She said stiffly, “I lost it.”

  “What about your hat?”

  She froze, then said curtly, “I threw it away. It was ruined.”

  “Ruined? How?”

  She didn’t answer. Her chest rose and fell with her breathing; a bit fast, I thought.

  “Margo, was there an accident?” I asked gently. “Did you perhaps tear your veil?”

  A wave of dismay crossed her face. For a moment I thought she would crumble, but she drew herself up.

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” she said.

  “The police found a scrap of black tulle entangled with the exhibition badge that killed Gabriel.”

  I took the photos out of my folder and stepped closer to lay them in her lap.

  Margo burst into tears.

  It took me a while to talk Margo into calling Tony, but at last she did it, after making me promise to stay with her. Mick was plainly uncomfortable, but I knew I’d get a chewing-out from Tony if I sent him away. I’d probably get one anyway. No need to make it worse.

  Tony arrived within ten minutes of receiving Margo’s call. He shot me an angry glance as he came in, but sat quietly and listened to Margo’s halting explanation.

  “I was mad, and I pushed him away,” she said. “I wasn’t trying to push him over the rail.”

  This was followed by a bout of tears. Tony waited with clenched jaw for her to subside.

  “What were you doing up there?”

  “Gabriel chased me. We—I—we argued, and I left the party, but he came after me. He wouldn’t let it drop. I kept trying to get away from him. I ran into the garden but there were people there so I went up the stairs.”

  “What was the argument about?” Tony asked.

  “H-he dumped me and never told me why. I didn’t know he’d hooked up with Kris until that meeting to plan the party,” she said, looking at me. “Then he writes that he loves me! I was mad.”

  “He wrote you a letter? Do you have it?”

  I tried to catch his eye, shaking my head slightly.

  “No,” Margo said.

  “The badge,” I said softly.

  She turned an incredulous look at me. “How the hell did you know?”

  “He wrote a note on the back of mine, too. Not a love note.” I turned to Tony. “Did you get my text?”

  “Yeah.” Tony pulled the evidence bag with the badge out of his jacket and held it up in front of Margo. “This yours?”

  More tears.

  “You checked the back?” I asked softly.

  Tony nodded. “It just says, ‘Love always, Gabriel’.”

  “Why did he write that when it wasn’t true?” Margo cried, banging her fist on the arm of her chair.

  “How did the badge get around his neck?” Tony asked her.

  “I p-put it there. I told him I was giving it back. But he didn’t understand. He couldn’t see what it was because of that mask. He kept after me to go back to the party so I pushed him away. I felt my hat falling off and grabbed it. There was a tug and then it let go.”

  She paused, giving little short, gasping sobs.

  “At first I didn’t see him. It was like he just disappeared. Then I saw his mask—the jewels were glinting in the moonlight.”

  I shivered, thinking of the gleams of light I had seen there. Would Tony even try to understand, if I told him? I tried again to catch his eye, but he wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  “I thought about jumping after him,” Margo added, “but I wasn’t sure it was high enough to kill me.”

  I put a hand on her wrist. “You made the right choice.”

  “Where’s the hat?” Tony said.

  “I threw it in a dumpster out back of the plaza. Then I went back to the party. I didn’t know what else to do.”

  “I need you to come to the station and make a statement.”

  Fear came into Margo’s face. “No—”

  “They’ll have a counselor you can talk to,” I put in. “Right?” I added, looking at Tony.

  “We’ll get you some help,” he told her, nodding. His attitude was not quite grudging, but not very enthusiastic.

  Tony got up and went into the kitchen where he made some phone calls. I sat with Margo, trying to beam a bit of courage to her. She stopped crying, and sat staring at nothing. I overheard Tony telling someone to look for her hat.

  When Tony’s backup arrived, we walked Margo out to the parking lot. Mick followed silently, subdued. Once Margo was in the back of the squad car, Tony turned to me.

  “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Would you have arrested her if you’d confronted her before I did?”

  “I could arrest you right now for interference. I ought to.”

  “If you must.”

  He was silent. I could tell he was deeply angry by the flare of his nostrils, by his rapid breathing.

  “I apologize for interfering,” I said. “But I stand by my action. She didn’t mean to kill Gabriel. Berating her won’t help.”

  He took three more sharp breaths, then met my gaze. “I’m not the bastard you think I am,” he said, then stalked away.

  I watched the squad car pull out and Tony follow on his bike. My sense of accomplishment had turned bitter.

  Still in silence, Mick drove me back to the tearoom. When he parked and shut off t
he engine, I turned to him.

  “Thank you. I’m sorry it was so...dramatic. I didn’t mean to make you sit through a scene.”

  “S’OK,” he said. “Want me to come in and keep cleaning up?”

  “If you’re willing.”

  We went in and found Kris carrying a chair into Dahlia. She put it down and looked at me, half hopeful, half fearful.

  “I need tea,” I said, sighing.

  I offered Kris a week off. She declined, but eventually ended up taking a couple of days to deal with the details of Gabriel’s estate. I was prepared to offer the tearoom for the wake, but she wisely chose to have it elsewhere. No need to remind all of Gabriel’s friends of his tragic final evening. I, for one, would never forget.

  I attended the memorial service, feeling I owed it to Gabriel. It felt to me like a reunion of the Halloween party, except that Margo was not present. Nor were any of Gabriel’s family, though Kris had invited them. Perhaps they had felt the trip from New Hampshire was too far.

  Cherie, however, was there, looking pale but sane. She wore black, and the infamous ankh, but kept the dramatics to a minimum.

  Gabriel’s ashes were displayed in an elegant white marble urn at the service. I had expected something more elaborate, dark and Victorian, but the moment I saw it I realized the white was perfect. I also knew that it wouldn’t be buried, that Kris would give it a place in her home, at least for now.

  The service was brief; testimonials would be shared at the wake, which I did not attend. Instead I went home and lit a candle for Gabriel on the table in the upstairs sitting area.

  How do you tell when a Goth is in mourning? No jewelry.

  Kris wore black every day now, with minimal makeup. After the memorial she began to wear one necklace, a string of jet Victorian mourning beads with a pendant, that Cherie had given her.

  November flew by. Nat returned from her honeymoon in buoyant spirits. I offered Dale the job he’d applied for, and he accepted. Preparations for the holiday season kept me and Kris busy. That was a blessing, for both of us.

  Tony had stopped answering my texts, my calls, my emails. I was hurt, but I couldn’t be surprised. Apparently I had gone too far. Still, I didn’t regret going to Margo’s apartment.

  She was charged with involuntary manslaughter. I felt pity for her, and sadness. I bought more candles and kept them lit, both for Margo and for Tony.

  Just before Thanksgiving, the White Iris Gallery mounted its exhibit of Gabriel’s art. Kris invited me to the opening. I went, more to give her moral support than because I wanted to see Gabriel’s artwork again.

  I sent Tony a text about it for form’s sake, but planned on going stag. I suspected that Gina’s personality might be a bit too energetic for Kris, yet. Nat agreed to close the tearoom for me so that I could leave early.

  The evening was calm and cold. We’d had snow a couple of times, but not enough to stick. I wore a gray knit dress and boots under my long wool coat. Black hat and scarf. I parked in the public lot and walked down Canyon Road to the gallery in twilight.

  The street was notoriously narrow, meandering its way east into the foothills of the Sangre de Cristos, and lined with quaint, old, adobe houses, some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Most of them were now commercial properties, the majority being galleries. Canyon Road was the art Mecca of Santa Fe.

  White Iris Gallery was in an old adobe house, smallish and linear, with rooms obviously added over time. A small fire burned in a brazier outside the front door, a harbinger of the holiday season to come. I paused in the foyer to sign the guest book and enjoy another fire in a corner kiva fireplace. The house had low ceilings, wood floors, white walls, and candles in nichos making it warm and bright inside.

  I entered the first room and was met by the sight of “Calculation.” I’d been uncomfortable when I first saw the painting; now I was dismayed. The crouching female—Gwyneth—had no good choices, none at all. The shattered red glass took me back to Cherie’s suicide attempt. Pain, of all kinds, in all directions. Somehow, in my heart, that tied into Gabriel’s tragic death. I felt my throat tightening, then I noticed a small stand to one side holding a single sugar skull, with a card labeled “La Princessa.” With a shock, I recognized it as one of the skulls Gabriel had decorated at Julio’s party.

  Beyond the skull hung another painting, an abstract in shades of cream and pale blue that I remembered from the exhibition. Beside this was another sugar skull on a stand, this one labeled “Night.”

  Three more paintings hung in the first room, each paired with a skull. I didn’t remember all of the skulls, and as I moved to the second room and saw more of them, I began to suspect that Gabriel had made additional skulls after the decorating party.

  My attention was arrested by “The Seventh Chamber,” Gabriel’s visualization of the end of Poe’s story. Rather stunned that Kris had included it, I looked from the painting to the paired skull, “Harlequin,” the one that Gabriel had made three-dimensional with layers of icing. Why pair a figure of fun with the dark triumph of the Red Death? Was it to point out that Prince Prospero was, in the end, an object of ridicule?

  A green diamond on one cheek of the skull triggered a memory from the decorating party:

  You are part of the masque.

  “There you are!”

  I turned to see Kris, sleek and elegant in black velvet with long, close sleeves, the jet beads hanging almost to her waist. She reached for a hug.

  “Thank you for coming. Want some champagne?”

  “Yes, please.”

  She led me into the next room, larger than the first two. In one corner a Latina woman perhaps a few years older than I was standing beside a small refreshments table. Her dark hair was nicely coiffed in a French twist, and her black cocktail dress was simple and elegant. Beside her a younger woman, in caterer’s attire, filled champagne flutes with Gruet Blanc de Noir. A platter of cheeses, adorned with almonds and a scatter of pomegranate seeds, sat on one end of the table.

  “Ellen, this is Theresa Cortez, the gallery’s owner. Teri, this is Ellen Rosings, owner of the Wisteria Tearoom.”

  Teri shook my hand, then put a glass into it. “Nice to meet you. I’ve been meaning to go by there.”

  I set down the glass and dug one of our new promotional cards out of my purse. “Bring this. Good for tea and a scone on the house.”

  She accepted it with a smile and a word of thanks. Kris and I strolled away with our glasses.

  “Kris, it’s a wonderful show. All the sugar skulls....”

  “Yes. Gabriel fell in love with the idea of pairing them with his art. He got Julio to give him a bunch of leftover skulls and spent a couple of days decorating them.”

  “It’s stunning.”

  She smiled softly. “Fortunately Teri liked the idea. The skulls are for sale, too. They can be preserved, or allowed to go back to dust.”

  We strolled around the room, Kris giving me time to admire each of the paintings, several of which I’d seen before. I spent a couple of minutes looking at one of Gwyneth, almost nude in a swath of white gauze, standing amid the distinctive dunes of White Sands. Her head was turned to the side, her expression severe. The sky overhead was an intense blue that made me think of Georgia O’Keeffe. It was striking and lovely. The card gave the title as “Venus of the Apocalypse.”

  “This wasn’t in the exhibition,” I said.

  “No,” Kris said. “Gabriel didn’t want to show it. They broke up over the photo shoot. Gwyneth got sunburned. That’s why she looks so pissed.”

  “What a shame,” I said, hoping that Kris wouldn’t take it the wrong way.

  “Yes, well. They’d been rocky anyway. And Roberto was waiting in the wings. We all knew it.”

  The skull paired with “Venus” was decorated in black. I remembered it from the party. Intricate scroll-work, reminding me of the Renaissance. It was titled, “Cara Mia.”

  “Did Gabriel title the skulls?” I asked.
/>   “Most of them.”

  We moved on to the next room, where a life-sized painting of Kris from the waist up made me gasp. She stood with her back against a pillar draped in violet satin, light reflecting from the folds in a way that reminded me of water. Kris’s head was tilted back, eyes gazing skyward, expression mournful. The painting was unfinished; the background around Kris and the pillar was lightly sketched in with a few brushstrokes of neutral tones, but the rest of the canvas was blank. The title on the card was “Ophelia,” and it was listed as “Not for Sale.”

  “Gabriel’s title?” I asked.

  “Yes. He knew I liked the subject.”

  I slid my arm around her waist for a hug. She reciprocated, and we stood gazing at the painting. Then I noticed the sugar skull and gave a surprised laugh. It was pink with an orange Van Dyke, and titled “Hamlet.”

  The last room was dark, and at first I thought it wasn’t part of the show, but Kris led me toward it. I stopped in the doorway, emotions flooding through me.

  The room was draped in black. A mannequin stood in one corner, wearing Dee’s “Red Death” costume and wig and a blank white mask. The mannequin was flanked by two red candle lanterns. Kris must have found a replacement for the broken one, because they were exactly as they had looked at the party, once again turning the silver highlights on Dee’s costume to blood.

  On the opposite wall, subtly lit, a series of concept sketches for the costume were displayed in simple frames, along with several of Owen’s photos of Dee in the costume and makeup. On the adjacent wall was a large photo of Gabriel in his golden costume, also Owen’s, obviously taken in the tearoom on Halloween night. My mantel clock was visible over his shoulder. Gabriel stood with arms akimbo, Prospero in his prime. Beside the portrait was a card with a short paragraph about his death. The only other thing on the wall was an eight-by-ten photo of Gabriel’s face in the sun paint. The slight smudges told me it was one of the police photos.

  I gasped. “How did you get hold of that?”

  “Dee talked to one of the investigators, and he got a duplicate for me.”