I tried to extract myself gently from her grasp and snatched one of the old circus playbills from the bar. “I’ll tell you later. Promise.”
“But you said it might be a murder. Who was killed? You said we don’t know her, but then Marion—”
“We don’t know her.” I said it more sharply than I’d meant to, and Olive leaned back, her eyes flashing to the color of whiskey. I sighed. I didn’t want to make Olive mad, but I didn’t have time to explain it, and more than that, I didn’t want to. Not till I sorted it all out in my own head. Not till I talked to Marion again.
“Look, Olive,” I said, softening my voice, touching her arm. “I need you to get yourself home safe. There could be a killer out there. Let Frank walk you, just this once?”
Olive’s eyes were still narrowed, but she nodded, finally, grudgingly. “All right.”
“I have to go,” I said, already turning toward the stage and folding the playbill into my pocket. The customers deserved a warning, too. Police could get billy-club-happy in bars with reputations like ours. I had to get them out of here, especially the Red Feather Boys, who would attract the most attention from the cops.
“Millie!” Olive’s voice called after me, a few beats late. I turned and walked back, brows raised in question. “Get yourself home safe, too.” Her hand rested on my arm, ever so lightly.
I forced a smile. “Always.”
* * *
I stood onstage in the same spot I had earlier, but this time a sparser audience stared back. Now their eyes were wide, anxious, and above all, curious. Was it possible a murderer was still here among them? Most of them were liars. All were criminals, if you counted the ones who’d broken laws that shouldn’t be laws. Maybe even one or two had killed someone before, in the name of love or war or bootlegging.
“Good evening again, folks.” I cleared my throat. What could I say that wouldn’t set off a panic? The smoke haze was thinner now, and I could see all the familiar faces in the room—Bennie looking around at the crowd as if counting them, the Red Feathers at their tables, Zuzu hastily putting on her purple coat and hat, Olive scrambling to gather abandoned glasses from the tables and empty them of their incriminating contents. What would happen to them if I got this wrong?
“As you might’ve noticed,” I said, trying to keep my voice light, “we’ve had . . . an incident. And it’s the kind of thing the cops can’t overlook. So—”
The sharply rising tide of voices drowned mine out.
“Wait, wait—hold still.” I raised both hands. Faked a grin. “Here’s the thing. We don’t like the cops around here, do we?”
A few in the crowd tittered. A few jeered, their eyes shining from drink and the fake orange glow of our electric candelabras.
“In the Quarter, we like to sort things out for ourselves, don’t we?”
Some murmured agreement. Some snorted.
“There’s no getting around calling the cops eventually. But it doesn’t have to be right this second. If you want to leave before they get here, I can’t stop you.”
Chair legs squealed against the floor, and the hum of voices doubled. Everywhere, customers knocked back drinks and flooded toward the front door. Olive piled glasses on her tray as quickly as people set them down, and Zuzu chased after her with her coat, trying to get her to quit and put it on. Duke shoved open the tall windows we normally kept shuttered to protect our customers’ privacy and started waving folks through them into the alley.
“What happened out there?” Bennie’s loudmouth friend, Eddie, called out over the noise.
I waved a hand. “You’ll read about it in the paper tomorrow.”
Arimentha’s blank eyes and slack face hovered at the back of my vision, and I rubbed a hand across my own eyes. What if someone here had seen what happened to her? What if I was shooing away our best chance to find out?
It was too late to fix that now, even if I wanted to. Everyone was busy draining out of the club like whiskey out of a jug. A woman stumbled, and the people behind her would’ve trampled her if Duke hadn’t grabbed her arm and helped her up. So much for an organized evacuation.
“Wait a goddamn minute!” I yelled into the microphone. “Don’t jam up at the doors!”
Maybe on another night they would’ve listened. But tonight was not my night.
“Cops!” someone yelled. “They’re here!”
Over the heads of the crowd at the front door, I saw a half dozen white hats shoving their way into the club, their billy sticks raised.
Run fast, Marion, I thought, and then the real hell broke loose.
CHAPTER
6
SHOUTS AND DUST and drinks flew as customers pushed and scrambled, knocking over tables and one another. Frank leaped out of the way, clutching the cash box under his arm like a football, and let the crowd shove and punch to get past the cops. The rest veered, shrieking madly, toward the windows Duke had opened, the one exit the cops weren’t blocking.
At least, the one exit the customers knew about. There was still the courtyard, the escape route the Cloak employees used when Aunt Cal rang the alarm bell and made us practice what to do in the event of a raid. But it wasn’t ideal, considering there was a potential crime scene out there.
“Stop where you are!” the cop in front bellowed, but nobody listened or stopped. “It’s not a raid, you fools! Stop!”
Frank met my eyes where I stood on the stage, above the fray. I pointed him toward Olive and Zuzu, so he could gather them up on his way out. He nodded and started barreling through the crowd toward them.
“Millie!”
I looked down and saw Bennie Altobello on the first step, holding up a hand to me.
“Come on!” he said, his dark eyes urgent. “Let’s go! We can get out through the courtyard!”
The hand was tempting, and not just because it belonged to Bennie. I wanted nothing more than to run away into the night, to reach the safety of my apartment and ring the bell to say we’d made it, then double over laughing, with a stitch in my side and friends all around me, like we had after all the times Cal made us practice.
But this wasn’t a raid. This was life and death. I had to stay and listen to what Fitzroy and the other Uptowners told the cops. Had to tell them something to counter that tainted testimony, as soon as I made up what that something was.
“Sorry, Bennie,” I said. “I have to go down with the ship.”
“What—why?” He took another insistent step toward me.
“C’mon, Bennie,” whined his buxom date, tugging on his sleeve. “Just leave her.”
“Yeah, we gotta get out of here, Ben,” Eddie said, already dancing away. “Your pop’ll kill you if you get busted in a speak.”
Eddie was a jackass, but he was right. If Bennie got arrested, the cops could use him to get to his dad and blow their whole bootlegging operation.
“Go on,” I said, hopping down the steps past him. “I’m all right. But watch out in the courtyard. That’s where—”
Something crashed to the ground, breaking glass and sending up a fresh wave of shrill screams. Bennie’s date yanked at his arm in earnest now, and I gave his chest a gentle shove.
“Just go, fast as you can. Don’t look at the fountain.”
He looked puzzled, but Eddie and their dates were already pulling him away toward the arched entrance to the back hall. Frank was close behind them, his massive arms managing to protect the cash box and Olive and Zuzu.
Olive glanced back over her shoulder at me, and I smiled and waved, pretending not to be afraid.
Even Duke was slipping out a window into the alley now.
I was the only one left to defend the club. The only one left to defend Marion.
I wished hard for one moment that Aunt Cal was there. Then I pasted on a smile and marched over to face the cops.
* * *
As a rule, I crossed the street if I saw a white hat coming. But now I planted myself in front of the two cops who looked to be overseeing this operation. Unlike the white-hatted uniformed officers, these two wore black fedoras and trench coats over cheap suits.
“Hello, Officers,” I said, smiling and leaning an elbow on the bar. “Would you fellas care for a soft drink? The cherry cola is our best seller, but me personally—I think the vanilla is the bee’s.”
“Save it,” said the older cop with the craggy face. “We’re not here about your small-time speakeasy.”
I batted my lashes. “Don’t know what you mean, sir. This is a soda shop, as you can plainly see.”
The bitter fumes of spilled liquor wafted around us. Behind me were the chaotic remnants of the fleeing crowd and the other cops being ignored as they yelled at everyone to stop.
“Sure it is,” the cop said. “And I’m a tightrope walker.”
“So was my granny.”
The cop glowered at me. His younger cohort suppressed a smile under the whisk broom of a mustache on his face.
“Cut the comedy, kid,” Craggy said. “Don’t you know there’s a dead body out in your courtyard?”
I hopped up on a barstool. “You don’t say.”
“If you knew, why didn’t you call the police?” Whisk Broom said.
“If I didn’t call, what’re you doing here?”
The downward-curving lines around Craggy’s mouth creased deeper. “A young man called us from the coin phone down the street. Said something about not trusting the girl in charge of this joint to do it.”
I pressed a hand to my chest. “He couldn’t have meant me?”
Whisk Broom took off his fedora and ran a hand through hair the color of a well-used penny. “Are you really in charge of this establishment, Miss . . . ?”
I didn’t want to tell him my name, but I couldn’t think of a way to avoid it long enough to make it worth my while. “Millie Coleman. And I am for tonight.”
Craggy jabbed a finger at me. “Look here, girlie. It’s in your interest to cooperate with us. We got a witness says your fairy threatened that girl right before she turned up dead.”
I narrowed my eyes at him, bristling at the slur. “Looks like you scared off all the so-called witnesses.”
“Not all of them,” he said, showing a row of yellow teeth. He turned and called over his shoulder. “Bring ’em in here!”
In trooped the rich kids, looking chilled and puffy-eyed. Fitzroy and the auburn-haired girl both glowered at me.
“All we need,” Whisk Broom said, drawing back my attention, “is for you to tell us where Mr. Marion Leslie is right now. We want to have a little chat with him. That’s all. Get his side of the story.”
I reclined against the bar on my elbows. “He left a while ago. This was his farewell performance. He’s been planning for ages to go to New York City, and he finally did it. I expect a letter from him any day telling us all how well it’s going. Hell, I might take off and join him someday.”
Craggy looked at me impatiently. “You expect me to believe that booshwash?”
“Did you ever see Marion’s show? He’s gonna be a big star. Wouldn’t doubt if he’s in pictures one day.”
Craggy whipped off his hat and looked like he’d dearly love to hit me with it. Instead, he pointed it at me. “Look, girlie. Selling liquor is one thing. Harboring a murder suspect is another. You don’t want to get on our bad side, understand? We could make this business dry up real quick.”
“I don’t know what you mean, Officer. We just sell soft drinks here.”
“It’s Detective. And you won’t be selling nothing if you don’t tell us where that boy is.”
I smiled sweetly. “I did tell you. Aren’t you listening? He’s on his way to New York City.” I said it slowly, as if to a three-year-old child.
Craggy’s face turned the color of an overripe tomato, and his teeth clenched so hard he looked apt to chip one.
Whisk Broom stepped forward, a little black notebook in his hand. “The kids outside told us you took the victim’s handbag and some kind of paper found in her hand, possibly a letter? Is that so?”
I hesitated only a beat. “Sure, I got it right here.” I pulled the handbag out of the back waistband of my trousers. Craggy’s eyes got keen, and he snatched it out of my hand.
“Why did you take it?” Whisk Broom said, keeping his eyes on me, as Craggy rifled through the handbag’s contents.
“Figured it was important evidence. Thought I’d keep it safe for you.” I faked an expression of wide-eyed innocence. “After all, who knows what those friends of hers might be capable of?”
“There’s ten dollars in here,” Craggy said. “Was there more?”
“Don’t know. Didn’t even open it.”
“So, you’re not worried your fingerprints’ll be all over it?” Whisk Broom said.
“I might be if your pal here wasn’t rubbing his mitts on it right now and covering them up.”
Craggy started to sputter, but Whisk Broom cut across him. “What about the paper?”
“Oh, sure.” I whipped a fresh playbill out of my back pocket and tossed it on the bar.
Craggy snatched it up before Whisk Broom got the chance and unfolded it. “Thing’s blank inside.” He showed it to Whisk Broom.
“Why wouldn’t it be?” I said. “It’s just a playbill. Maybe the poor kid liked the circus.”
“One of the witnesses seems to think there was a note of some kind written on it.”
“Not that I ever saw.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels. “But it was dark out there.”
“Look there,” Whisk Broom said, pointing. “There’s a stack of these at the end of the bar.”
“Must be where she got it from,” I said lightly. “Too bad the circus already left town. We should’ve tossed those already, but our soda jerk can be a little lackadaisical.”
Whisk Broom studied me carefully, eyebrows raised. It looked a little too much like he saw straight through me, so I fished a maraschino cherry out of the jar on the counter for some misdirection.
“What about the necklace?” Craggy said. “Girl over there says Miss McDonough was wearing a necklace. Some kind of butterfly thing.”
“Dragonfly,” Whisk Broom corrected, checking his notebook.
“Whatever.” Craggy waved a beefy hand. “Was it in this bag? Have you seen it?”
I chomped the cherry to delay answering the question. “Nowhere except on that girl’s neck when she came in the door.”
“You met the deceased before she died?” Whisk Broom leaned forward, eyes widening.
I twisted the cherry stem around my fingertip. “‘Met’ might be too strong a word, but I saw her. I was running the door.”
Whisk Broom glanced significantly at Craggy, but the other detective was walking in a circle now, staring at the ceiling.
“Maybe the necklace came off up on the balcony,” Craggy said abruptly. “Show us.”
I didn’t care for his tone, but I didn’t want to let these cops see anything they did bothered me. So I hopped off the stool and said, “Right this way, fellas.”
I led Craggy and Whisk Broom past Fitzroy and his pals being interviewed by the other cops. The auburn-haired girl was still staring at me, but I pretended not to see her. I had enough on my plate without piling her on it, too.
The detectives snagged a couple of extra officers and followed me up the narrow staircase, all of them clomping and breathing loudly behind me. At the top,
I breezed past Marion’s closed dressing-room door and turned right, toward the storage room. Its door was half open.
“Dust that doorknob,” Craggy ordered, and one of the uniformed cops squeezed past me to do the job.
I watched with some curiosity as the officer dusted white powder on the age-darkened brass knob and all along the edge of the wood door. I held my breath as he straightened, but then he shook his head.
“Nothing usable.”
“Figures.” Craggy slapped his hat against his thigh and turned to me. “You, girl, what’s in there? Any surprises?”
“No birthday parties, if that’s what you mean.” I slipped past the uniformed man to pull the chain on the light bulb, revealing piles of extra chairs, crates of dusty glasses, a cracked mirror. The door that led to the balcony was shut, and after a moment of staring around at the flotsam in the room, Craggy sent his underling to check that one for fingerprints, too.
I sighed loudly. At this rate, I wasn’t getting to bed anytime soon.
The cops strongly suggested I stay in the storage room while they looked around on the balcony. But they left the door hanging open, so I crept closer and closer while they were busy talking about trajectories and dusting the wooden railings and the arms of the two metal chairs. Whisk Broom took a flashlight from one of the uniformed cops and shone it in slow arcs across the floorboards, looking for the necklace, I guessed. I knew he wouldn’t find it because it was on Marion’s neck somewhere, hopefully far away and safe. But Whisk Broom stopped, crouched, and pinched something out of a crack in a board. He held it up, and it winked in the dull light.
“What is it?” I said before I could help myself, rushing forward the rest of the way to the door.
Whisk Broom cocked his head as if debating whether to tell me, but it didn’t matter anyway. In the light of his flashlight were more of the same objects scattered across the boards—tiny gold beads the exact color of Arimentha’s dress.
The Boy in the Red Dress Page 5