“Is someone there?” A man’s voice, tremulous, outside the door.
I looked at the loose floorboard. No time for that either. I stuffed my gray glove in my pocket, scrambled to my feet, and kicked the rug over the opening. Then I grabbed my crowbar and darted for the French doors.
The bedroom door creaked open behind me.
“A-Arimentha?” the man said. “Darling? Is that you?”
I stopped in the doorway for one instant, frozen by regret and pity. This was Arimentha’s father, a man I hadn’t spared much consideration for. Here he was in the dark, woken from fitful sleep, staring at the silhouette of a girl in his daughter’s room and, for a moment, hoping it had all been a mistake, that his daughter had come home to him.
But she never would.
“I’m sorry,” I said, and bolted out onto the balcony.
I tossed the crowbar and box over the railing onto the ground and swung myself over. I quickly shuffled along the edge of the balcony on my toes and grabbed for the trellis. There was no time for caution now, nor for any fear other than the fear of being caught.
Arimentha’s father would recover from his doubt and shock quickly. He was a federal judge after all, known for his hard sentencing on Prohibition violations. He would be right behind me, and I had to get away before he saw my face, or worse, snatched me back into that room.
I shinnied down a few feet, much faster than I’d gone up. I missed a toehold and slid a foot, thorns scratching my cheek and snagging my sweater.
“Stop there!” The man’s voice was stronger now. He might be leaning over the balcony, but I couldn’t chance looking up at him and letting the moonlight shine on my face.
I climbed faster and finally, when the ground was a few feet away, let go and dropped. A branch of the rosebush jabbed into my shin, and I rolled away and into the crowbar. I snatched it up and shoved it against the ground to leverage myself up faster. The box was a body’s length away, in the wrong direction. I lunged for it, swept it up under my arm, and pivoted, my foot digging up dry grass and sliding.
“I said stop! I’m calling the police!”
I didn’t stop. I ran headlong toward the palmettos and then past them, yelling as I went. “Go! Go!”
Marion fell in behind me and then overtook me. He dodged around the camellias this time and vaulted over the iron fence in one of the clearer areas. He turned back, eyes wide.
“Take them,” I said breathlessly, and shoved the box and crowbar into his hands.
Then I launched over the fence myself, finally managing to land on my feet this time.
“The truck,” I said, bent double.
Bennie was leaning out of the window, watching us with wide eyes. “What happened? Did you get it?”
We didn’t have time or breath to answer. Marion flung open the passenger door of the truck and shoved me inside ahead of him. Then he got in and shut it with a loud clang that didn’t matter now. The jig was up.
All that mattered was getting away.
CHAPTER
19
BACK AT THE apartment, nerves still jangling from the close call, we stared at the box where I’d set it in the middle of our kitchen table, under the single dangling bulb. The box was smooth, dark walnut, so well made that the line where the lid met the body was hardly a sliver.
All the tools we’d used to try to pick the lock or prize open the box lay scattered around it on the table—hairpins, a straightened paper clip, my switchblade, Bennie’s pocket knife, a wire hanger, a letter opener, and a screwdriver. Bennie and Marion had taken cracks at it, too, but the box still sat there, sealed like a pharaoh’s tomb. The lock was starting to look like a taunting mouth to me. The damn box was mocking us.
“What if we run over it with Bennie’s truck?” I suggested.
“It would probably break the axle,” Bennie said.
Marion ran a hand through his hair and blew out a frustrated sigh. “This was supposed to be the easy part.” He shot a look at me. “You said you could crack the lock. ‘Easy peasy,’ you said.”
“That was before I knew it was made by some fancy clockmaker in Switzerland!” I tossed a butter knife on the pile of tools. “You could’ve mentioned that part before I risked my ass breaking in and stealing the thing.”
Marion crossed his arms over his chest. “I forgot, all right? I told you we needed the key!”
“Well, we don’t have it. Why would anyone go to this much trouble for a lousy box to hide her diary?”
Marion groaned. “Her father bought it to keep her jewels in. But instead—”
“Her damn diary.” I sank against the back of my chair.
“You think there are any jewels in there, too?” Bennie said.
I looked at him sharply. “Why? You hoping to take a cut?”
“No.” He blinked in surprise. “I just wanna know how much trouble we could be in for stealing this thing.”
He had a point. I picked up the box and shook it again. The sound was muffled by the thick walnut, but we all heard the book sliding from side to side.
“I could take it to my uncle,” Bennie said. “He’s a pawnbroker. Deals with this kind of stuff sometimes.”
“Or a locksmith,” Marion said.
“No.” I shook my head and plunked down the box again. “I don’t want anybody asking a bunch of questions about what this is and where we got it.”
“Then what’s your idea?” Marion said.
“Maybe I could go back tomorrow night and try for the key.”
“No!” they both said in unison.
“But I’d be quicker this time. In and out.”
“You’re being an ass,” Marion said bluntly. “You know perfectly well they’re going to have the place locked up tighter now, cops watching it, the works. Judge McDonough is probably sitting in the room with a shotgun.”
“But we need that key.” I rubbed my thumb over the brass edge of the stubborn lock. And slowly, the nerves in my fingertip sent the message to my brain that they’d felt something like that recently. “Marion,” I said urgently. “What did that key look like?”
He looked surprised. “Small. Size of my little finger, maybe. Brass.”
I pounded my fist on the table, making the box—and the boys—jump. “I wouldn’t have found that key in her room even if I’d had time to look. It was in her handbag, the night she was killed. I saw it.”
Marion sat up straighter. “You have it?”
I chewed my lip and shook my head. “Wish to God I did. I took your picture out of the purse and left everything else. Handed it over to the cops.”
“You’re saying the cops have the key?” Bennie said.
“Looks that way.”
“Great,” Marion said. “That’s perfect. Maybe we should try running over the box. Or throwing it off a building.”
“Or,” I said, looking from Marion to Bennie, “we could go get the key. I bet it’s in Sabatier’s office.”
Bennie made a horrified face. “Just waltz into the police station and steal evidence?”
“Borrow evidence.” I leaned back in my chair. “All we need is a distraction.”
Marion frowned. “What kind of distraction?”
I rubbed the pad of my thumb over my lips. Nothing sprang to mind. The boys looked just as blank, and also aggravated and exhausted, with their usually neat hair sticking up at odd angles from running frustrated fingers through it. I figured that was about how I looked, too. We were all ready to launch this box into the Mississippi and give up.
“Let’s get some shut-eye.” I smacked a hand on each of their shoulders and forced a smile. “Maybe something will come to us in a dream.”
“Maybe,” Marion said wearily.
“Don’t do anything without me,” Bennie said.
“We won’t,” I promised, eve
n though I wasn’t sure I would follow through on it.
“See you tomorrow then,” Bennie mumbled, and gathered up his jacket and pocketknife and left.
Marion and I changed into our pajamas, took our turns down the hall in the john, and dropped into bed, all without saying a word. I was too busy speculating, and his face said he was doing the same.
We lay side by side, not speaking, and it seemed like hours passed before I heard Marion’s breathing slow.
A distraction. What kind of distraction?
All I knew was it had to be a good one.
* * *
The next morning, I told Cal about the locked box and the plan to get the key from Sabatier while I tugged on my school socks and shoes. I couldn’t find my navy beret, so I stuffed a newsboy cap on my head instead.
Mama came swanning in from the bedroom in her dressing gown. “I know him, you know,” she said lazily, draping herself across the sofa.
“Who?” I looked up from buckling my shoe.
“Larry.” She waved a hand. “Your police detective.”
“My police detective?”
“You know who I mean. Larry Sabatier.” She smiled out the window in a self-satisfied way. “I think he had a bit of a thing for me way back when.”
Cal was in the kitchen fiddling unsuccessfully with the lock. “You think everyone had a thing for you.”
Mama shot her a glare. “He did. He brought me flowers after the show for a while.”
I stared at her. How was she only now telling me this information?
“But then he stopped coming, right?” Cal said, giving me a significant look.
Mama focused on smoothing her dressing gown around her on the sofa. “Well, I left not long after that. With Millie’s father.”
I stuffed my foot into my other shoe and shook my head, watching our chance drain away. “You ditched Sabatier, didn’t you? Made him think you liked him, let him buy you dinner a few times, and then ran off with someone else, right? He probably won’t want anything to do with you now.”
Mama shifted huffily on the sofa. “I wouldn’t be so sure of that. I bet I could still distract him.”
I focused on my other shoe buckle, trying not to look interested. “He’s a grown man now. Seems pretty smart. Too smart to have his head turned by an old flame who did him wrong.”
“I was eighteen years old, for Christ’s sake.” Mama pouted and tugged on a lock of her glossy hair. “So was Larry. Nobody does everything right when they’re a kid—you should understand that.”
I kept my face carefully impassive. She hadn’t been a kid when she’d ditched me. She’d been thirty-two years old. But there was no point bringing that up now, not when I wanted—needed—something from her.
“Then you’d be willing to try it?” I said carefully.
“Well, I don’t know,” Mama said silkily, relaxing back into the sofa now. She had the power all of a sudden, and she liked it. “I don’t like the idea of playing a trick on Larry.”
“I don’t either,” I lied, because a not-small part of me really, really did. “But it’s the only thing I can think of to get what we need for Marion.”
“What do you think, Cal?” Mama called over her shoulder. She only asked her opinion when Cal was likely to agree with her.
Cal waved a screwdriver in a circle. “I like it even less than you do. Sounds like a good way to get thrown in jail.”
I opened my mouth to protest, and Cal held up a hand to stop me. “I understand Marion’s predicament, and we want to do everything we can to help him.” She cast a glance toward my room, where he was still sleeping. “But you’ve already gone too far with the breaking and entering. What if you’d been caught? It won’t do Marion any good for you to end up in jail.”
“But I wasn’t caught. And I won’t be caught this time either. Sabatier won’t notice the key is gone right away. And if he comes back while I’m in his office, I’ll say I was coming to talk to him about the case, to ask him if he’s found any new leads yet.”
“Hm,” Cal said, unimpressed, and bent back over the box with her screwdriver.
“And,” I said, “if Mama’s keeping him properly occupied, it won’t be a problem at all.”
“Properly occupied?” Mama said, a hand flying to her chest. “What exactly do you expect me to do, Millie?”
I wanted to roll my eyes at her innocent act and say it was nothing she hadn’t done a million times before. But I had to keep making nice if I wanted her help. “He already had the eagers for you once,” I said. “You’ll hardly have to do a thing. Just keep him talking out in the lobby. Or better yet, talk him into going with you for coffee down the street. It’s not even a trick if you actually did like him once. You’re just old friends catching up.”
“Well, I don’t know.” Mama fluffed her hair. “I do have a new dress.”
“See there? Now you have an excuse to wear it.”
“Gladys,” Cal said, straightening. “You aren’t seriously thinking of—”
“Oh, hush, Cal,” Mama said, waving a hand. “You worry too much. Millie’s a big girl. And so am I.” She gave me an almost shy smile. “We can do this, can’t we?”
Me and Mama hadn’t been a “we” in a long time. I didn’t know if I ever wanted to be again. But I made myself smile back.
“Sure we can.”
* * *
After school that afternoon, I met up with Mama on the corner down the street from the police station. She wore a dress the deep green color of magnolia leaves, which contrasted prettily with her stylishly curled red hair. The dress had a low rounded neckline, and the skirt flared out when she walked, showing off her shapely calves. Gladys Coleman knew how to work her assets; I’d give her that.
She posed with a hand on her hip as if expecting a compliment, but she’d have to wait on Sabatier for that.
“You sure you can do this?” I said without preamble.
Mama pursed her lips and arched a single brow, a trick I hadn’t managed to learn though I’d spent many an evening in front of the mirror trying. “Can you?”
I ignored the sense that I’d been checkmated. “Let’s go.”
We entered the police station’s lobby and made our way up to the tall desk at the front. A jowly lady with an iron-gray bun glanced up at us from behind a pair of half glasses on a chain, then bent back over the papers on her desk.
“The position has been filled,” she said in a monotone without looking at us again.
Mama smiled benignly at the top of the lady’s head. “We’re not here for a job. We just need a little help. See, I’m—”
The lady shoved a page across the desk. “Fill this out. Sit over there.” She pointed to a wooden bench already full of people who looked like they’d been waiting since the early twenties. A couple of them were even asleep.
“I’m afraid you’re misunderstanding me,” Mama plowed forward, as if the old bird was actually listening. “I’m an old friend of Detective Laurence Sabatier. I was told he works here now, and I just wanted to stop by and say hello.”
The lady sighed deeply and laid down her pen like it weighed forty pounds. “You do know this is a police station, not a society tea?”
I debated whether punching her would put a damper on our plans. Mama laid a hand on my arm like she knew what I was thinking, and I resisted the urge to shrug it off.
Mama batted her lashes and ducked her head, as if she were embarrassed, but I knew she had no shame. “I’m so sorry, ma’am. I so respect what you folks do here. But Larry—I mean, Detective Sabatier—he’s such a dear old friend, and I’d be ever so grateful if you could just tell him I’m here, and at least give him the chance to say whether he has time to pop out for a teensy little hello.”
The woman at the desk sighed again and picked up the receiver of her candlestick telephon
e. “Sabatier,” she barked into it. “Visitor for you.”
“See now?” I said when she’d hung up. “That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
The lady’s stare could’ve frozen a sewer in August.
“We’ll just be over here,” Mama said, dragging me away toward the wooden bench.
I jerked my arm loose from her grasp when we were out of earshot from the front desk. “I’m going over there to watch which door he comes out of.”
I slouched against the wall on the other side of the lobby, held a newspaper in front of my face, and peeked around it until Sabatier came out of a door on the left down the hall. Quickly, I ducked behind the paper and listened for the sounds of Sabatier’s approaching footsteps, but the station had a tall ceiling and hard floors and too many people to discern one echo from another. Finally, though, I heard Mama’s loud squeal of delight.
“Gladys . . . Coleman?” Sabatier spluttered. “You’re . . . here. What are you doing here? That is, I’m—”
Mama trilled a laugh. “I’m in town for a bit, darling. Staying with my sister, just a visit while I’m between shows, and I thought I’d come catch up with an old friend.”
“Friends.” Sabatier’s voice stiffened. “Is that what we were?”
“Oh, darling, I’ll always consider you a friend.” I peeped around the newspaper and saw her lay a hand on his sleeve and look up at him through her lashes.
“What . . . what brings you here today specifically?” Sabatier said. The mingled hope and doubt were plain in his voice, like mine every time Mama seemed too good to be true. She’d been right about him, though. He hadn’t forgotten her.
“Well, I was shopping right over on Canal, so it wasn’t so far to go. See what I found?” She showed him the contents of a shopping bag I hadn’t noticed. The name in cursive on the side declared it was from a store that specialized in lingerie. Sabatier’s cheeks reddened, and I suppressed a laugh. I’d forgotten how good Mama was at subterfuge, though I shouldn’t have.
The Boy in the Red Dress Page 17