“Saw me what?”
“You know what.”
I pushed past him through the doorway, draped Cal’s jacket across the back of her favorite chair, and tossed my shoes in the general direction of our bedroom. Marion dogged my steps.
“Seriously, did you and Olive smooch or what? Is she a good kisser? You have to tell me. I’m cooped up in this apartment with no chance of kissing anyone until this murder is solved. It’s only fair.”
I had a perfect opening to tease him about Lewis, but I flopped flat on my back across our bed and flung an arm across my eyes. “Wouldn’t you rather know if I found out who Minty was meeting at the Pelican?”
Marion grinned. “If you had, you would’ve run right up here to tell me instead of standing around in the fog like Ebenezer Scrooge.”
“Maybe I was waiting for a ghost to tell me who did it.”
“Or you were falling in loo-oove with Olive.”
I felt around on the bed for the handbag he’d lent me and tossed it at him, but he dodged out of the way, laughing. He sat on the bed next to me and poked at my side.
“Come on,” he whined. “You get to have all the fun, while I’m stuck here reading the same three detective novels over and over. The least you can do is tell me the details.”
“There aren’t any details,” I muttered from behind my arm.
“You mean you didn’t kiss her?” Marion sounded deeply disappointed.
“No,” I lied. Maybe because if I told the truth, I’d have to tell him all of it, the stuff about the panic, too.
“But why not?”
“I’m trying to find a murderer. I don’t have time for kissing.”
Marion stretched out beside me and propped his head on his hand. “Kissing doesn’t take that long, you know. Or at least it doesn’t have to.” He giggled, and I turned my head and peeked at him. He had long curly lashes and perfect Cupid’s bow lips without even having to draw them on. I pictured him and Lewis together like this. Maybe it would be easy for Marion to cross the distance between them and turn wanting into a kiss and more kisses and more. But I couldn’t imagine a way through that invisible barrier between me and Olive, between me and Bennie, between me and anyone.
“Later,” I said out loud. “I’ll kiss all the people later.”
“All the people?” Marion said, nudging my side again. “Olive may be sad to hear that. Bennie, too, for that matter.”
I grinned despite myself. “Maybe so. But the rest of the people won’t.”
Marion barked a laugh, and I socked him in the arm, and we laughed some more while he helped me out of the ridiculous beaded dress and showed me how to take off the makeup with cold cream.
But the whole time we were laughing and talking, a part of me was still thinking about that invisible barrier. And wondering if, once this murder was solved and my excuses were gone, I was ever going to get across it.
CHAPTER
26
A LOUD THUD woke me what seemed like fifteen seconds after I finally fell asleep. I pushed myself up on my elbow and checked the switchblade on my night table, lit by a shaft of moonlight coming through the shutters. A second thud followed the first, then a bump and a curse. I relaxed back into my pillow. It was only Mama, home from her date and probably drunk. I heard her soft steps as she padded barefoot across the floor into the kitchen, then the sound of a match striking. And then a little cry. I figured she’d burned herself with the matches, but she ran past my open bedroom door and burst through Cal’s closed one.
“Cal!” she yelled, no longer even trying to be quiet. “There’s someone in the club!”
“What?” Cal said blearily. It was still dark outside, not even a hint of morning yet. She hadn’t been asleep much longer than me.
Marion still snored softly beside me, but I sat up straight, dragging the covers with me. I grabbed my switchblade and hurried across the cold floorboards into Cal’s room.
“What’s happening?” I said.
Mama tugged on Cal’s arm, hauling her out of bed. “Come see,” she said. “In the kitchen, quick before they’re gone.”
“You seeing ghosts, Gladys?” Cal said with a hint of amusement in her tone. I couldn’t see the smirk on her lips but knew it was there.
“No! Someone’s in the club! Maybe it’s the cops!”
Cal shook off Mama’s hands and stood up, amusement gone. “Show me.”
Mama led her to the kitchen, and I followed behind. Marion stood in my bedroom doorway now, rubbing his eyes. “Why are we awake?”
Nobody answered him. We pressed ourselves around the kitchen table and looked out the window.
“I was going to smoke a cigarette, so I cracked the window, and I saw it right there.” She pointed toward the single small window in the back hallway of the club. “A light, like a flashlight beam.”
There was nothing but blackness in the window now.
“Are you sure about this, Gladys? You seem a little . . .” Cal wobbled her hand back and forth.
Mama pulled herself up straighter and aimed her unlit cigarette at Cal. “I can hold my liquor better than you, Caledonia. Don’t you forget who’s the older sister.”
I stepped between them. “We don’t have time for squabbling. Mama, are you sure you saw a flashlight?”
“Sure as sin.”
“Okay, then there’s only one thing for us to do.”
“I’m going to check,” Cal said, already turning to leave the kitchen.
“And I’m going with you,” I said.
“Like hell you are.”
“If there’s somebody in there, it’s not safe to go alone, and you know it.” I held up my switchblade. “And I’ll bring Pearl here.”
Cal rolled her eyes, but she didn’t protest anymore. We both threw on trousers, tucked in our nightshirts, and stuffed our feet into shoes. I dressed as quickly as I could, afraid if she got ready first, she’d leave without me. At the door, she checked the bullets in the small pistol she carried and stuck it in her pocket. She tossed me a flashlight.
“Let’s go.”
* * *
The fog was gone, but the air was still chilly and damp, with thick gray clouds blocking out patches of stars. I pulled my jacket tight as we crossed the courtyard and stopped beside the fountain where Arimentha’s body had lain. I looked toward the balcony, uneasiness creeping up my spine. No one menacing stood up there, staring down with murder in their eyes. No one stood there at all, and I didn’t believe in ghosts. But Mama had seen something in the club, I believed that.
“I go first,” Cal whispered. “Keep the flashlight off until I say so.”
I nodded.
The facing around the back door was cracked, the door open an inch. Mama was right; someone was in the club, someone who definitely wasn’t supposed to be there. My body shivered, but one look at Cal’s face steadied me. Her eyes might show a hint of fear, but her jaw was set. She was angry. This was her club. She slowly, silently pulled open the door.
We didn’t need to turn on the hall light or the flashlight; we’d traveled this way so many times, we knew every step of it, every creak of the boards under our feet. We walked carefully, barely making a sound, but then up ahead, something crashed. My fingers curled tighter around Pearl. I didn’t dare open the knife yet, in case I bumped into Cal in the dark, but I wanted it ready.
More crashing came from up ahead, glass shattering in the main room. I wanted to whisper something to Cal, but I didn’t dare break her concentration. Who was in our club? It didn’t seem like the feds—they didn’t bother with sneaking around in the dark; they came loud and fast and padlocked your doors so you couldn’t get back inside the next day. It could be the police detectives, trying to sneak around and find murder evidence they couldn’t get a warrant for. I wouldn’t put it past that Craggy. But when more glass shatte
red, I knew it couldn’t be the cops either. Destroying the club wouldn’t get them more evidence and definitely wouldn’t get our cooperation. That left only the possibility of a thief or a vandal. Maybe more than one. I hoped Cal had that gun held at the ready now. I gripped my switchblade in one hand and the flashlight in the other, ready to use it as a cudgel if I needed to.
We stopped just short of the doorway to the main room. Cal could reach around the wall and press the push-button light switch, and we’d see our vandals. But we’d also reveal ourselves. Give them a warning.
My eyes had adjusted enough to the dark that I could see Cal’s silhouette lean around the doorway and peek into the main room, then jerk her head back.
“One flashlight,” she breathed over her shoulder. “I think it’s just one.”
“We can take him,” I said.
“You stay here.”
“No way.”
“Stay put.”
Before I could argue again, Cal had stepped out into the doorway, her pistol arm raised, steady and straight. “Stop where you are, or I’ll put an extra hole in your head.”
Glass shattered again, as if the thief had dropped something. Cal moved slowly forward, and I peeked around the edge of the doorway behind her. The vandal had dropped his flashlight where he stood, somewhere near the bar, and its fractured beam sliced across a sea of glittering glass shards and overturned tables and lit up Cal’s face from below. With the light pointing toward her, she’d have a hard time seeing the person who’d broken in. She’d never be able to aim properly. Meanwhile, the vandal could see her clear as day. What if he had a gun, too? He could be aiming it right now.
I had to do something to even the playing field. Cal had told me to keep our flashlight off until she said so, but she was too occupied now. I raised the flashlight in my hand, intending to shine it on the vandal, but nothing happened when I clicked the switch. I clicked it back and forth twice, beat it against my hand, but still no light. Okay, plan B. I moved behind Cal and said, “Distraction,” in her ear. Then I hefted my flashlight and tossed it hard toward the stage, away from the bar where the vandal had frozen. My flashlight landed with a satisfying crash, and then we heard him moving. His feet kicked his flashlight, knocking its light away from Cal, but then he charged toward her, toward me. Cal jumped out of the way just in time, but then the vandal’s hands were on my shoulders. I hardly had time to scream before he’d shoved me aside and kept running. I fell to the ground and caught myself with my hands on the glass-covered floor. Shards cut into my knuckles on the hand that held the switchblade and my palm on the empty one. Another shard tore the knee of my pants and carved a slice across my shin.
“Millie!” Cal crouched over me. “Are you all right?”
“Fine,” I grunted. “Go get him.”
Cal hesitated.
“Go.”
* * *
Long minutes later, Cal came back breathless and red-faced with rage and frustration. I’d made my slow way to the light switch while she was gone, and she walked into a room that looked like it had been shaken up inside a snow globe. All the chairs were knocked off the tables and strewn on the floor. Most of the tables were overturned, too. The lights winked on shattered glass, scattered like confetti, all over the floor and on top of the bar. It looked like every glass under the bar had been broken, and the whole room reeked of hooch, so the vandal had broken those bottles, too.
“Who was it?” I said. “Did you see?”
Cal shook her head, barely looking at me. She looked hollow, as if whoever had broken into the club had broken directly into her body and pulled out her guts, too. The club was my home, far more than our apartment was, but it was Cal’s baby, the culmination of everything she’d worked for, the place she’d made for all of us from sheer grit and determination and one very lucky hand of poker.
I watched her as her gaze shifted to the smoked mirror behind the bar, the one piece of glass in the place that hadn’t been shattered.
In dripping red capitals, the vandal had painted a message for us. For me.
STOP LOOKING FOR THE KILLER OR NEXT TIME I’LL BREAK MORE THAN GLASS.
Cal looked back at me where I leaned heavily against the wall under the light switch, and now to my surprise, her eyes weren’t angry. They were . . . frightened. For me. She shook herself. “You’re bleeding. Are you—”
“I’m okay. Just sliced up a little.”
She crunched across the broken glass on the floor, some of it stained now with my blood, and took my hands in hers. I was still clutching the switchblade. She studied my cuts, smearing her own hands with my blood.
“Can you walk?”
“Just about.”
“Then let’s get you home.”
“What about the club? What about—”
“Later.” She threw my arm over her shoulders and hoisted me up. “You first.”
* * *
“Ouch!”
“Quit being a baby.” Marion lifted a tiny shard of glass out of my palm with the tweezers he normally reserved for sculpting his eyebrows.
“You’d be yelling, too, if somebody was fishing around in your skin with a pointy object.”
Marion glanced over his shoulder at Cal and Mama, who were hovering behind us in the kitchen. “Can somebody get her a drink?”
Cal didn’t want me touching liquor, but Mama quickly handed over her own flask, ignoring the dirty look Cal gave her.
“It’s medicinal,” Mama said.
The piney smell of gin wafted up from the mouth of the flask, and I grimaced, remembering Minty’s diary and her unfavorable opinion of the stuff. I had to agree.
“Just one,” Cal said sternly.
“No problem.” I held my nose and took a single swig of the strong clear liquor. It burned going down, and I coughed, earning me a glare from Marion, who was trying to extract another piece of glass.
“Be still.”
I scowled at him. “Yes, Doctor.”
Marion stuck his tongue between his teeth and slowly lifted out the glass. He dropped it in Mama’s ashtray with the other shards. “There. Done. Go wash your hands in the sink—thoroughly, and with soap—then come back and I’ll bandage you.”
I obeyed, only limping a little where my leg had been sliced. Marion had already cleaned that up and wrapped it in a long strip of cloth torn from a towel. The cut had bled a lot, but it wasn’t deep.
“So, you really didn’t see who did this?” Marion said behind me.
“No.” I tried to turn on the tap, but Cal leaped forward and turned the handle for me. “All we know is it was just one person. Probably a man, right, Cal?”
“Think so. All I saw was a silhouette.”
“And I felt his hands on my shoulders. They seemed big. He tossed me aside pretty easy, too, though he would’ve had a tougher time if I could’ve seen what I was doing.”
“I’m glad you couldn’t see,” Cal said, “or you might’ve got yourself in more trouble with that switchblade.”
“I know how to use it,” I said defensively, returning to my chair across from Marion. “Wish I’d gotten in a slice of my own with it.”
Marion met Mama’s eyes over my head, and I could tell he was trying not to roll his eyes.
“Just get to bandaging,” I said.
“There’s one other thing we know,” Cal said slowly, meeting my eyes. The message on the mirror. Part of me had hoped to get away with not telling Marion about that at all. “The vandal had something to do with Arimentha McDonough’s murder.”
Marion stopped wrapping my hand in strips of pillowcase and blinked at Cal. “What do you mean?”
Cal glanced from him to Mama and back to me. “He left us a message on the mirror behind the bar.”
Marion’s eyes widened. “What kind of message?”
I look
ed down at my half-bandaged hands and forced a small laugh, trying to make it seem like no big deal. “Essentially stop looking for her killer or else. It must be Romeo. He must have followed me and Olive last night and saw we’d found their meeting spot. Guess we’re getting pretty good at this detective thing, huh?”
“Millie, you have to do what he says.” Marion’s chin trembled, and his eyes filled rapidly with tears. “I can’t let you put yourself in danger for me. This person has already ruined the club, who knows what they could do to you? What if—”
“Stop, Mar. I’ve already thought this through while I was waiting for Cal to get back. I’m not letting this guy scare me off.”
“Maybe he’s right,” Cal said. “Mother Cecilia Marie called me yesterday. She’s worried about you. Said you’ve been missing too much school. You’re falling behind, and you’re too smart for that. Now with this threat, maybe—”
“No,” I said. “I don’t care about school, and you know it. I care about Marion.”
“So do I, but I also care about you.” Cal jabbed a finger at my chest, her voice rising. “Your education and your safety. It’s my job to make sure you get more of both than me and Gladys got.”
Mama looked from Cal’s face to mine, for once keeping her mouth shut.
I shook my head. “I can’t believe you, Cal. You taught me not to sit back and take it when a bully messes with me. You taught me to punch back. How is this different?”
“I just . . .” Cal trailed off, the anger draining from her face. “I worry about you, kid.” She looked at Marion and squeezed both of our shoulders. “I worry about you both. It’s more dangerous out there than you know.”
I pulled my switchblade out of my pocket and twirled it in my fingers. “You forget who raised me.” I spared a glance for Mama, who’d given me this knife and taught me how to use it when I was still in knee socks. The road wasn’t a safe place for a girl, she’d said, and made sure I knew where to kick and stab. Made sure I knew how to scream loud and run fast.
The Boy in the Red Dress Page 24