The Boy in the Red Dress

by Kristin Lambert

  Rockefeller picked up her hand, white and luminous in a ray of moonlight, and felt for a pulse in her wrist.

  “Is she . . . all right?” I said, feeling a fool even as I said it. There was no way she was all right.

  “She’s dead!” wailed one of the girls. “Her eyes! Just look at her eyes!”

  They were open, staring upward as if into the shadowed face of the dark-haired boy hovering over her. Her head lay at a strange angle against the foot of the fountain. A fine mist beaded and glistened on her pale brow, her beautifully rounded cheekbones, her pink lips, her bright hair.

  It was Arimentha. The girl who’d known Marion. The girl who’d wronged him terribly once, somehow, by her own admission.

  But whatever she’d done, she hadn’t deserved this. To die here on the cold ground, her body left to grow damp with mist and mop water while seventeen versions of “Auld Lang Syne” played around her and the whole Quarter celebrated.

  No one deserved this.

  My eyes pricked with tears I wasn’t expecting. Why should I cry for this girl? Why should I feel bile in the back of my own throat at the sight of her blank eyes, her wasted life? “Do you know what happened to her?” Frank asked, looking around at the rich kids. “Did you see anything?”

  They shook their heads, their eyes wide and staring.

  “I think . . .” Rockefeller spoke up, his voice choked. “I think she fell off the balcony.”

  “Or someone pushed her,” one of the girls whimpered, the brunette who until recently had been screaming continuously.

  “What was she doing up there?” the other girl said. She was almost my height with auburn hair, though everything was washed strange and blue in the moonlight. “Look there in her hand—what’s that?”

  A folded paper lay in Arimentha’s softly curled hand. In two strides, I’d reached her and plucked the paper up into my own hand.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” Rockefeller said, straightening out of his crouch. “The police will want the crime scene to stay as it is.”

  “If it’s a crime at all,” I said. “Like you said, she could’ve fallen.”

  Whether this was a murder or an accident, it had happened at Aunt Cal’s club—my club tonight—and I would decide what we did about it.

  I held the paper up to the moonlight and saw it was a playbill for a circus that had already left town the week before. We had a stack of them still sitting on the end of the bar.

  “What is it?” Fitzroy said, standing, too.

  I ignored him and unfolded the paper. There was writing inside, a brief penciled letter, in a hand that looked like it would’ve been pretty if it wasn’t scrawled in such a hurry. I didn’t have the light or patience to interpret all the words, but I didn’t have to.

  The letter began with “Dear Marion.”

  CHAPTER

  5

  “WHAT DOES IT say?” Rockefeller said.

  “Nothing,” I lied, trying to push down the panic so it didn’t show in my eyes or my voice. “It’s just an old circus playbill.”

  “But why would she—”

  “There’s a pile of them inside. Maybe she didn’t notice the date was old.”

  The girl with the auburn hair stepped forward and thrust out her hand, palm open. “Let me see that.”

  I folded it back in quarters and stuffed it in my trousers pocket. “Think I’ll keep it safe for the police instead.”

  “You can’t do that.”

  “I just did.”

  “We all saw you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and thrust out her chin. “We’ll tell the police you stole evidence.”

  I licked my lips and thought fast. “You should probably be considering your alibis instead.” I narrowed my eyes and looked at each of them in turn, so they wouldn’t miss the implication.

  The brunette girl gasped. “Are you saying . . . one of us did this?”

  I could almost laugh. I doubted anyone in this bunch had ever been accused of anything in their lives. Guilty, maybe, but never accused.

  “It wasn’t one of us.” Fitzroy thrust his pointer finger in my direction. “It was one of your people.”

  I stared at him, struggling to keep my expression smooth. My grip tightened on the letter with Marion’s name on it in my pocket.

  “Who do you think it was?” Rockefeller said, touching Fitzroy’s sleeve.

  “Yeah, who?” I said. Frank moved closer beside me.

  “It was that . . . that boy singer in there!” Fitzroy said, his gaze hopping from face to face. “That boy in the dress! He killed her, I know it!”

  Shit. Fitzroy had seen Marion argue with Arimentha half an hour—or less—before she died, and he wasn’t going to forget it.

  “How do you know it was him?” Rockefeller said.

  “The only reason she came back in the club was to talk to him.” Fitzroy rocked up on his toes, looking agitated. “I tried to tell her not to go. I saw his face when he threatened her! I knew he was dangerous, and I told her—”

  “He threatened her?” Rockefeller said. “What did he say?”

  “He told her to never come back here.” Fitzroy hugged his raccoon coat tighter around him. “Or he’d make her regret it.”

  I tried not to show the shock on my face. I’d seen Marion’s anger for myself, had heard him say through the dressing room door that she was never returning to the club. But Marion couldn’t have done this to her, not even if he threatened it. He couldn’t have killed someone and left her out in this courtyard in the cold, with the damp already settling on her skin. No.

  “If you thought he was so dangerous,” I said, crossing my arms over my chest, “then why didn’t you come back inside with her?”

  Fitzroy ran a hand through his hair, mussing it. “I . . . I was looking for a cab. I thought she’d give up on this silly errand and come back out.”

  “But she never returned,” Rockefeller said, looking soberly down at the girl’s body. “Someone, maybe this female impersonator, brought her out on that balcony and pushed her over.”

  Fitzroy looked stricken. “I should’ve taken her home. This whole night is a mistake. I should’ve—”

  “Don’t cast blame where it doesn’t belong, old bean.” Rockefeller reached an arm around Fitzroy’s quaking shoulders and gave him a manly embrace. “We’ll call the police now. They’ll sort everything out.”

  I looked at Frank, my heart beating fast and my thoughts spinning faster. I didn’t even have time to make a joke about Rockefeller saying “old bean.” What happened if we let them call the police now? Fitzroy’s story looked bad for Marion—the whole scenario did—and that auburn-haired girl wasn’t going to let the note thing drop. Others in the club could’ve heard Marion threaten that girl, and the whole place had seen Marion disappear for half an hour between sets. Plenty of time to shove a girl off a balcony, especially one conveniently located right down the hall from his dressing room.

  Shit, shit, shit. The cops would arrest him for sure. Not to mention what would happen to the rest of us. Cal’s hefty bribes kept the cops out of our hair most of the time, but the presence of a potential murder victim—especially a rich one—might make them feel obliged to arrest everybody who’d served alcohol, plus any of the customers they could lay their hands on. I was supposed to keep this place and these people safe while Cal was gone. Letting them get beaten up or thrown in jail was the dead opposite of that.

  I looked down at Arimentha’s eyes, at her face that had been beautiful and alive an hour before. I certainly didn’t keep her safe.

  But I’d be damned if I let Marion meet the same fate.

  “You’re right,” I said, standing taller, hoping I looked and sounded authoritative enough to keep the Uptowners in line. “I’ll call the cops now. There’s a telephone inside. You five stay here with the—with, um .
. .”

  “Arimentha,” the auburn-haired girl said through clenched teeth.

  “Yeah. Her. And no funny business out here.” I pointed at each of the rich kids. “Don’t touch her.”

  “But—” the brunette said.

  “Don’t touch her, I said! And don’t go anywhere. The cops will need to talk to you when they get here.” I bent and scooped up Arimentha’s beaded handbag in one swift motion. Marion’s photograph was in there. The last thing we needed was the cops finding that. “And I’ll take this inside so you don’t get any funny ideas about tampering with the evidence.”

  “Hey!” Fitzroy said.

  “I don’t know about that,” Rockefeller said.

  “Don’t worry.” I was already backing away. “I’ll put it in the lockbox until the police arrive. Just wait here.”

  I grabbed Frank’s sleeve and tugged him with me back into the club.

  “I don’t trust her,” the auburn-haired girl hissed to her friends as we turned away.

  “And you shouldn’t,” I muttered under my breath.

  If I had anything to do with it, these swells would be waiting on the cops for a long time.

  * * *

  Sure, I was going to call the cops. But first, I had to get Marion out of there. And second, I had to protect my people.

  I sent Frank to the front door to start quietly shuttling out the customers nearest to it. Marion stood by the piano, slightly out of the spotlight, with Lewis’s gray suit jacket draped across his shoulders. The band behind him half-heartedly played a dance tune, but nobody was dancing. Everybody was murmuring, waiting for news.

  I paused behind a brick column and opened Arimentha’s handbag. The corner of the photograph poked up, and I snatched it and stuffed it in the back pocket of my trousers with the note written on the playbill. What else might Arimentha have that could incriminate Marion? Quickly, I glanced around, but no one seemed to be watching me, so I rifled through the rest of the bag’s contents. A small brass key, a compact, ten dollars folding money, and a fancy enameled tube of lipstick—nothing that looked immediately interesting, so I clicked the handbag shut.

  Now for Marion. I took a breath and tried to smooth out my face as I approached him. It didn’t work.

  “What’s wrong?” he said as soon as he saw me. “What happened back there?”

  Lewis rose to stand beside Marion, abruptly cutting off the music. I turned my back to the audience so they couldn’t read my lips and angled my head closer to the boys. “A girl has died in the courtyard.”

  “Died? No! How?” Marion’s fingers gripped my arm. “Who was it?”

  I studied his eyes for signs of guilt, malice, fear. What I saw there was unclear. “She fell—or was pushed—off the balcony. Looks like she hit her head on the edge of the fountain on the way down.”

  “Oh God, that’s terrible.” Marion wrapped his arms around his middle. “And Cal’s not here! What are we gonna do?”

  “You’re going to leave. Now. And take this with you.” I slid out the photograph and the note on the folded playbill and pressed them into his palm. He stared at them, uncomprehending.

  “But—”

  “Marion, the girl who died was the girl. Arimentha.”

  He flinched at the sound of her name. His fingertips rose slowly to his mouth, and his eyes widened and widened until the whites showed above the dark blue irises.

  “No.” His head swung back and forth, and he sagged into Lewis.

  That was when I noticed the necklace. The dragonfly trimmed in gold, spreading its translucent green wings across Marion’s collarbone. I’d never seen it before on Marion—only on Arimentha.

  An image of the girl’s dead face rose in front of me, her hair darkened with blood, her white throat silver in the moonlight. Her bare white throat.

  The necklace had been missing. Someone had taken it.

  “Marion,” I said, barely breath left in me to say it. My stomach swirled. “Tell me . . . tell me you didn’t.”

  Marion swiped away tears with his thumbs and saw where my eyes were focused. He flung up a hand to cover the necklace, or protect it. I couldn’t tell. Maybe I’d never really known anything about him. Maybe everything had been a lie. The note, the balcony, the argument, the necklace—all of it added up to Marion.

  His eyes went glassy, panicked. “She gave me the necklace, I swear!”

  “When?”

  “When we were . . .” He trailed off, swiping at his eyes again, more roughly.

  “When you argued?” I said.

  He swallowed hard. “I . . . Oh, Millie. I told her . . . I told her to never come back or . . . or . . .”

  The expression on his face was anguished, guilty. But not in the way of a murderer, or at least I didn’t think so. I shook myself. This was Marion, my Marion, trembling under a suit coat and Lewis’s long skinny arm, his eyes big and wet and innocent, red lipstick chewed ragged on his bottom lip. No matter how bad things looked, there was a reason I’d stolen that note, hidden that photograph, and handed them both over to Marion. I believed him. Of course, I did.

  “I know what you told her.” My fingers found my now-empty jacket pocket. “You said she’d better not come back or else. Her date, Fitzroy, already told everybody outside, and he’ll tell the same to the cops. That’s why you’ve got to leave. Now. Before I even call them.”

  Marion hugged his arms around himself. His eyes were on my face, but they looked uncomprehending, far away. Maybe they were still seeing Arimentha’s crumpled expression when he’d spat those words at her. I had so many questions to ask him—why seeing that girl had upset him so much, why she gave him her necklace, how he knew her before—but there was no time for that now.

  My gaze shifted to Lewis over Marion’s head. His focus was sharp, like mine. His arm tightened around Marion’s shoulders. “I’ll get him out.”

  I didn’t like trusting Marion to anyone else, but if it had to be someone—and Aunt Cal wasn’t there—I figured Lewis was the next best thing. At least he cared about Marion. He’d keep him safe the best he could.

  I grabbed Marion’s wrist and made him look at me. “Go with Lewis now. I’ll take care of everything here. We’ll figure out the rest tomorrow.”

  Marion’s eyes filled. “Okay,” he whispered. For once, he didn’t joke or argue about me bossing him around. I almost wished he would.

  Finally, he heeded the pressure of Lewis’s guiding hand on his arm. I watched them slip through the crowd and past Frank through the front door. I had to hope Lewis would keep my best friend safe tonight.

  It was up to me to handle the rest.

  Even if he killed her? a voice whispered in my mind.

  He didn’t, I whispered back firmly.

  It was true I had no idea what had happened for the half hour between when I left his dressing room and when he came back out onto the stage. It was true he’d had motive and opportunity.

  There was nothing but my gut to tell me Marion wasn’t the killer.

  And I’d still chosen to help him slip through the door.

  * * *

  The band hightailed it out behind Lewis and Marion, and a steady trickle of customers followed them, though there were still a good many waiting around to find out what had happened. Before I told the rest of them to run for it, I had to deal with Cal’s other employees. They were the ones most at risk if federal Prohibition agents showed up with the cops; it was a bigger crime to serve alcohol than to drink it.

  I gathered them up in a small knot behind the bar—Frank, Duke, Olive, and Zuzu—and explained that a girl had died in the courtyard.

  “Who was it?” Duke said, eyes bugging.

  “A girl. No one we know.” Frank remained silent; he was loyal to a fault to Aunt Cal and the club, and I knew he wouldn’t speak up and spill more than I wanted him to.


  I looked around at the others. Zuzu had gasped at the news and was now hugging her plump arms around her middle. Olive touched her mouth with her fingertips, her eyes unfocused. A girl our age was dead twenty yards away.

  “How did she—” Olive started to ask.

  “We can’t worry about that now,” I said, blinking away the images of Arimentha’s face that were crowding into my head. “Our problem is if we don’t call the cops soon, one of those rats outside will. So our first priority is getting everybody out of here.”

  “Then I should take the cash box with me,” Duke said, recovering quickly from his shock about the death. “You know, for safekeeping.”

  “I don’t think so,” I said. “Frank, you take it.”

  “Aren’t you leaving with us?” Olive said.

  I shook my head. “I’ve got to stay here this time. Duke, you dump the booze.”

  “What?” He looked appalled. “Why?”

  “Just do it.”

  “But you said the cops were coming, not the Prohibition agents.” Duke crossed his arms over his chest. “What’s the point of all those bribes if we still gotta be scared of the cops?”

  “Cal bribes beat cops and captains, not murder detectives. They could report us to the feds without even blinking.”

  “So we give the detectives some cash now.”

  “This might be a murder, Duke. A girl is dead. This isn’t like breaking a law nobody cares about. Somebody could hang for this, and I don’t want it to be one of us.”

  Duke blew out a frustrated breath. “Cal’s not gonna like this.”

  “You let me worry about Cal.”

  Duke shook his head but finally moved to slide the liquor bottles down the old coal chute. They’d smash against the cobblestones in the alley, eliminating most of the evidence of our illegal business—and at least a hundred dollars’ worth of hooch.

  Olive took my arm and pulled me aside behind the same column we’d leaned against what felt like hours ago. “I know there’s something you didn’t tell us.”