“There was a struggle,” Whisk Broom said slowly, looking back at the floor. “These beads popped off Miss McDonough’s dress. And that chair—see how the dust is disturbed in streaks around the legs? Someone shoved that chair back hard, like they were leaping out of it. Knocked the chair over and later straightened it back up hastily, not quite in the same place.”
I leaned forward, squinting at the marks in the dust. He was right. So that meant . . .
“Someone pushed her,” Whisk Broom said, staring at me now, as if reading the words off my face. His mouth hardened.
This was no accident. It was a murder. And the cops wanted to pin it on Marion.
* * *
I froze where I was, suddenly afraid that even breathing would give away how scared I was for Marion.
Whisk Broom straightened, his eyes never leaving my face. “Miss Coleman, you’re going to have to show us your friend’s dressing room now.”
“Says who?” I said, but with only half the bravado. “You got a warrant?”
“We don’t need a warrant. It’s legal to search the premises if we have reasonable suspicion that a suspect is inside.”
“I told you he’s not—”
“Get out of the way then,” Craggy said, barreling past me. “We’ll bust down all the doors till we find the right one.”
“Wait.” The last thing we needed was them searching Cal’s office, too. We kept the real books at home and a sham copy here at the club for just such an occasion, but I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain Cal hadn’t left something incriminating in a locked drawer. I shut my eyes for a moment so I didn’t have to look at the cops’ stupid faces. “It’s the first door on the right, top of the stairs.” My eyes popped open again. “But I’m coming with you.”
Craggy just laughed, and I scrambled to stay with them as they shoved past me out of the storage room and flung open the door to Marion’s dressing room. Normally, he would’ve locked it before he left for the night, but he hadn’t known he was going to be leaving so early. The door swung open to reveal the usual casual disarray. The smell of his spicy Shalimar perfume wafted out, and Whisk Broom sneezed.
“Ugh, what is all this?” Craggy started pawing through the drawers of Marion’s dressing table. A uniformed cop opened the armoire doors and raked aside Marion’s dresses, while another poked at his sewing machine in the corner.
I didn’t answer. I stood in the doorway with my arms across my chest and teeth clenched, watching them open his drawers, shove aside his bowl of hairpins, toss a white feather boa on the floor. His second-favorite silver-beaded dress slithered off its hanger and puddled in the bottom of the armoire. A spool of black thread rolled across the floor and bumped against my foot.
I ground my teeth, and my hand twitched toward the pocket where I kept my switchblade, as if I could chop off every finger that touched Marion’s things.
“You don’t think this is right, Miss Coleman?” Whisk Broom said curiously.
I turned to look at him. I hadn’t realized he was still beside me. He hadn’t joined in the ransacking of Marion’s dressing room, at least not yet.
“No.” I’d intended to say more, but I found the rest choking in my throat.
“It’s necessary, Miss Coleman. If he is innocent, as you seem to believe, this will only help prove that.”
“Unless one of you tries to plant something. I’m watching you.”
Craggy laughed, a sound as harsh as the lines on his face. “We don’t need to plant evidence. This one sounds pretty open and shut to me.”
“Open and shut? Open and shut!” I clenched my fists against my sides. “Aren’t you even going to look for anyone else before you decide it’s Marion? Aren’t you going to explore all the evidence?”
“Listen to this kid.” Craggy grinned maliciously. “Thinks she can do it better than us.” He took a book off the stack piled precariously on a chair and showed the cover to the other officers. “These yours, kid?”
I stiffened. “Ours.” Marion and I shared detective novels back and forth. We’d read them each half a dozen times. Marion liked the Hardy Boys, but I thought they were stupid. Too many boys.
Craggy and his cronies laughed, but I noticed Whisk Broom didn’t join in.
“Girlie, this ain’t a storybook,” Craggy said. “You leave the investigating to us. And rest assured—we’ll catch this killer.” He snatched down a photograph of Marion tucked into the mirror frame and jabbed his finger at it, just in case I had any doubt who he thought that killer was. “I’m taking this,” he said, and stuffed the photograph into his jacket pocket, then shoved past me out of the door, stomping on the feather boa as he went.
My face flamed with rage and hate. I bent and snatched up the feather boa and clutched it to my chest as the other officers marched out after Craggy. Only Whisk Broom remained, on the opposite side of the doorway from me.
“Marion didn’t do this,” I choked out.
He took a card out of his pocket. “We all want to believe loved ones are innocent, but I’ve seen things go south before. You have to consider the possibility your friend is the killer, Miss Coleman. And if he is, you’re in more danger than you realize. If you need me, here’s my card.”
I found my hand reaching for the card automatically.
DETECTIVE LAURENCE SABATIER
NEW ORLEANS POLICE DEPARTMENT
TEL. MAIN 3579
Sabatier, huh? I still liked Whisk Broom better.
He didn’t wait for me to answer; maybe he knew I had nothing good to say to him. My eyes bored into the back of his head as he followed the others back down the stairs.
All these cops wanted was a simple answer. Blame it on the boy in the dress. Maybe they thought he was weak and couldn’t fight back against the police. Maybe they thought he had no one with power on his side.
But they didn’t know Marion.
And they didn’t know me either.
The words jerked loose from my throat before I even realized I’d thought them. “I’m going to find that killer, Detective Sabatier. And it’s not going to be Marion.”
The cop paused at the bottom of the stairs and looked back up at me. His face was mild. “I would tell you to stay out of it, but I have a feeling my words won’t mean a lot to you.”
I lifted my chin.
“Please just be careful, Miss Coleman.” Concern showed in his brow. “A killer who doesn’t want to be found is a dangerous thing.”
I suppressed a shiver and folded my arms over my chest to hide it. “Don’t worry about me, Detective. I’m always careful.”
That was another lie.
CHAPTER
7
THE PLATINUM-HAIRED GIRL winked at me. Her emerald earrings flashed. We were dancing the tango, she and I. The golden dragonfly stretched its wings across her collarbone as if it might take flight. Behind us, Marion sang onstage about flying.
I spun the girl out into a turn, and she came spinning back to me, throwing back her head and laughing. But something was wrong. Blood trickled from her hair, down across her face. Her laugh turned into a scream of rage. She stared in disgust at my hands on her and shoved me back.
You, she said, eyes blazing. You let him go.
Who? I said, and looked at Marion, but he’d turned his back to us.
It’s your fault, the girl said, and lunged for me, and I was falling, the wind knocked out of me, down, down, down.
I couldn’t breathe. I tried to call for Marion, but he was retreating, out of the spotlight and into blackness. He didn’t turn around.
My scream went silent. No one heard.
Someone took hold of my arm and shook me once, again. I swam upward out of sleep and broke the surface gasping and flailing.
Aunt Cal’s laugh washed over me. “That must’ve been some dream.”
&nb
sp; I opened one eye a crack to find my face was directly in a shaft of sunlight. I threw an arm over my face. “You don’t want to know.”
Cal slapped me on the hip. “Get up. I got something to tell you.”
I chanced another peek through my eyelids. Still too bright, the morning light a wash of white. It couldn’t have been later than ten o’clock, and I hadn’t crawled into bed until the sky was lightening to pale gray in the east.
“Move over about a foot to your left,” I grumbled. School was out for New Year’s Day, so there was no reason to be awake.
Cal obliged, and the shadow of her solid, rectangular body fell across my face. I opened my eyes a little more. She nudged my mattress with her knee and smirked. “How’d it go at the club last night? Frank have to throw anybody out?”
My stomach sank. The fear from my dream sang again in my blood.
Someone was murdered in our courtyard.
The cops think Marion did it.
He didn’t do it. Probably.
I helped him run away.
I wasn’t awake enough yet for that conversation. I’d have to think of the right way to tell her, and I needed coffee for that. “Thought you had something to tell me,” I said, rubbing my face with both hands to coax it back to life.
“I do,” Cal said, but then fell silent again. There was something odd in her voice that sounded almost like a lie.
“What is it?” I pushed myself up and studied her. With the sun at her back, her square-jawed face was softened with shadow. Between that and my own bleary eyes, I couldn’t read her expression.
She hesitated, chewing her lip. Something was definitely wrong. Cal believed in drinking whiskey straight and pulling out splinters before they got infected. What could make her hesitate?
“Did something happen in Baton Rouge?” I said, kicking my legs over the side of the bed. “How was the show?”
Cal’s eyes steadied on mine. The muscles in her jaws worked. “There was no show.”
I glanced at the chair in the corner, where I’d tossed her tailcoat and top hat when I got home. This explained why she’d left them behind. A feeling close to anger began to build in my chest. We were lawbreakers. We were liars. But we didn’t lie to each other.
“What was so important in Baton Rouge that you left me alone to run the club on a night like that? I had to—and Marion—and that girl—” I shut my eyes against the pictures of her dead face, but they didn’t go away.
“Now, Millie,” Cal said, sounding baffled, “you’re always saying you want to take charge more. I know it was New Year’s Eve and a little hectic . . .”
I pushed off the bed and past Cal to the dresser, where my glass of water from last night stood half full. I took a long drink and slammed it back down. The contents of my pockets were spread across the scarred surface of the dresser where I’d dumped them—my switchblade, my money clip with two dollars in it, and the business card from Detective Sabatier.
I’d told that cop I was going to find Arimentha’s killer. I’d told myself I would.
But I hadn’t thought about what that meant. How I would go about proving my best friend wasn’t a liar. And now my aunt had been lying to me, too.
She came up beside me and tried to catch my eye in the mirror over the dresser, but I stared down at the matchbook instead.
“What were you doing in Baton Rouge?” I said.
“I was . . . helping someone.” She shoved her fingers through her short, pomaded hair, tracking streaks in it. She usually kept it meticulously smooth. “I was bringing someone back home. Here.”
Alarm bells clanged in my head. Back home. Like this person belonged here, was a part of us already. Cal and her girlfriend, Rhoda, had been together six years now; could this be about her? But no—Rhoda had a nicer apartment than this and a so-called better address, too. Why would she move to a place with a shared bathroom down the hall? And she certainly wasn’t hiding out in Baton Rouge. . . .
There was only one other person she could mean.
“Please tell me it’s a goldfish,” I said, and Cal rolled her eyes. That was somewhat comforting. Maybe I was wrong. She wouldn’t be rolling her eyes if this was the terrible news I was anticipating, would she?
But then she reached out and squeezed my shoulder, her mouth pinched small and grim. “Millie.”
I didn’t want her to tell me any more. I wanted to go back to sleep. To wake up in two hours and find out this conversation was just another nightmare.
“She’s downstairs now,” Cal said, her eyes drifting away from mine, as if they, like me, wanted no part of this news. “She’s going to stay here awhile.”
My stomach felt like someone had wrenched a knot in it. I wrapped my arms around my waist and hunched against the side of the bed, staring at the old newspapers pasted over the cracks in the wall.
“Who?” I rasped, my voice barely forcing its way up my throat.
But I already knew before she formed the words. I didn’t hear the sound of them—only saw them on her lips as a rushing sound came up in my ears like a hurricane.
“It’s Gladys, Millie. It’s your mother.”
“Why?” I gritted out through my teeth. “Why did you bring her here?”
Cal heaved a heavy sigh.
“She’s my sister, Mill. She needed me. I know she’s made—”
“Don’t you dare say ‘mistakes.’”
Cal held up her hands, like someone trying to calm a skittish horse. “I know how you feel, babe. Truly I do. I know what it’s like to have parents who shove you out to fend for yourself. But that doesn’t change who Gladys is to me. She isn’t only what she did to you.”
I stiffened, wanting to cover my ears with my hands like a kid pitching a tantrum. The last thing I wanted to hear was anything about Mama’s so-called redeeming qualities.
“No,” I said, shaking my head hard. “She can’t come here.”
“You don’t get to decide that!” Cal snapped, a familiar flinty edge in her voice. It was her take-shit-from-no-one voice. Her I-am-the-boss-and-don’t-you-forget-it voice.
She blew out a breath and swiped a hand over her face, and when she spoke again, all trace of hardness was gone, replaced with a note that was almost pleading. Not for my permission, but for my understanding, my forgiveness.
“This is why I told her to wait downstairs. I wanted to prepare you first. She’s in bad shape, bruised up. That man she was with—”
“I already know this story,” I said, getting to my feet. “You forget I was with her for almost thirteen years. You forget I’ve seen this before.”
Cal looked at her hands. “I didn’t forget.” Her voice was quiet now, her eyes drooping with exhaustion and sadness and—I hoped—guilt. I pushed my advantage.
“She can’t stay here, Cal.” I let my voice break on her name. “She can’t. I can’t—”
“It’s just for a little while.” Cal tried to plunk a hand on my shoulder, but I dodged out of the way. Her mouth hardened into a flat line. “It’s happening, so you might as well get used to it.”
She turned on her heel.
“Where will she sleep?” I called after her. “Not with me, I guaran-damn-tee.”
Cal answered without turning around, her hand on the doorknob. “She’ll sleep with me.”
“And just how long is this torture supposed to last?”
“I don’t know.” Cal sounded bone-weary, like the long night spent on buses and bus station benches was catching up with her. If I were a kind and dutiful niece, I would cease the ruckus, let her bring Mama up, tiptoe around the apartment while they got some much-needed shut-eye.
But I was tired, too, goddammit. And I wasn’t kind and dutiful. Who would have taught me? Not Mama. Not Cal. They’d taught me how to skirt around the edges of the law, how to get what I wanted without g
iving anything in return. They’d made me exactly who I was. Now they could reap what they’d sown.
“Shouldn’t be long,” I spat. “She’ll split the second she finds another lowlife.”
Cal’s hands curled into tight fists at her sides. “I’m going down to fetch her now. Get yourself sorted.”
She banged the apartment door shut behind her, and I started grabbing clothes out of my dresser drawer. “I’ll get sorted all right,” I muttered, yanking off my pajamas. “I’ll sort you.”
I stuffed my legs into fresh underwear, undershirt, and trousers. I threw on a shirt, but my fingers were shaking too hard to button it. None of my socks seemed to be where they were supposed to be, and I didn’t have time to find them. I shoved bare feet into my oxfords and snatched my newsboy cap off the hook on the wall, grateful boys’ clothes were so much faster to put on than girls’. These were the clothes I’d begun to wear after Mama was gone and I was free to do what I wanted, to be the opposite of her in every way that mattered, without hearing her pointed comments.
Last, I stuck my money clip in my side pocket and Sabatier’s card in my back pocket and my wristwatch in my side pocket to put on later. My fingers hesitated over the pearl-handled switchblade. Mama had given it to me, told me it was my father’s, even taught me how to use it. I’d named it Pearl, like it was a friend, and it had been a better one than her. Maybe I should leave it on the dresser. But then she might see it here and know I still had it, and I wouldn’t give her that satisfaction, so into my pocket it went.
I yanked open the apartment door, and there she was.
Mama. Gladys.
My body stopped still, like she’d turned me to stone. The punch to my chest made it hard to breathe. The ache in my throat hurt worse than I’d remembered.
Mama’s eyes met mine for the first time in fifty-four months. Her hair was brown now instead of dyed red, the waves hanging limp under her felt hat, and a bruise was already turning green and purple under one eye. She had a split lip that quivered at the sight of me.
The Boy in the Red Dress Page 6