“And that made you mad.”
“Yeah, I guess. Wounded my pride. But I was there with another date. And there are other people I liked, too.” He rubbed the back of his neck, casting me a shy glance through his lashes. “I wouldn’t throw everything away on Minty McDonough. And I wouldn’t have hurt her, or anyone. I . . . I won’t hurt you, Millie. I swear. I just need you to give me back those drawings.”
“What about the club? It was you who vandalized it, wasn’t it? You wrote that threat on the mirror?”
Bennie’s face turned positively mauve. He cleared his throat. “I didn’t want to do that. I followed you and Olive that night you went to the Pelican. I was . . . afraid you were about to figure out I was with Minty, and I knew what you’d think. You might go to the police, to . . . to save Marion. I just wanted you to stop.”
“So, you destroyed the place I work. Destroyed the place that my aunt loves and I love and Marion loves.”
“I didn’t destroy it! I didn’t damage anything too expensive. And it wasn’t really my father who sent that case of hooch—it was me, because I felt awful for how bad it looked in the daytime. I didn’t want to really harm you, I just wanted to distract you. Slow you down.”
“It didn’t work.”
Bennie’s shoulders slumped even farther. “I see that. I should’ve known it wouldn’t stop you. I panicked.”
“Why go to all that trouble if you didn’t even kill her?”
“The same reason Marion won’t just turn himself in and hope the cops sort out the truth. Years ago a mob raided the jail and killed a bunch of innocent Italians because they got acquitted of murder. Nothing’s changed. I have no reason to expect fairness from the police or the courts or even the people. They see Italian and think guilty.”
I bit my lip. What he’d said wasn’t wrong. Just like cops see female impersonator and they think guilty. “But you put that drawing in her tomb, didn’t you?”
“Yeah, that was me.” Bennie’s eyes were mournful. “I couldn’t keep it, could I? Too incriminating in case the cops ever came looking. I was going to burn it, but then . . . I couldn’t bear to see another piece of her destroyed. So, I took it to her grave and gave it to her.”
See another piece of her destroyed. Suddenly, I remembered something. “The night of the murder, I sent you and Eddie out the back way. Past the fountain. I told you not to look, but you . . . you saw her, didn’t you?”
Bennie nodded sadly. “I can’t stop seeing her like that. Her face . . . her eyes. She . . . always had so much life in her. Her laugh! And now . . .” The back of his hand quickly flicked at the corners of his eyes.
“I still see her, too,” I said quietly. And I realized, somewhere along the way, I’d started believing him. I could see it right on his face. I knew it the way I knew Marion was innocent, even though so much evidence pointed at him. I knew it because I knew him. And he wasn’t a murderer. The vandalism—that I could believe. Hadn’t Olive pointed out how all the most expensive items had been left untouched? I remembered the contemplative look on her face then. Had she suspected this already?
I still clutched Pearl tightly in my hand, but the hammering of my heartbeat had begun to slow. “Okay. So. Let’s say, for argument’s sake, you’re telling the truth.”
Bennie looked up at me with bright hope in his eyes. “I am,” he said urgently, and took a step toward me. “I swear I am.”
I backed up, reclaiming my space. “If it’s true you’re Romeo and also not the killer, then who is?” I narrowed my eyes. “What else haven’t you told us?”
“Nothing! I don’t know who it is either! I—I would’ve told you if I knew.”
I rolled my eyes. “You talked to Minty a lot the last months she was alive; you probably already knew half of this stuff I’ve found out, but you had me running around asking people like Symphony Cornice.”
“I’m sorry.” It was Bennie’s turn to back up, shooting a fearful glance at my switchblade. “But I promise I didn’t know much else.”
“Much?” I took advantage of his fear and advanced, pushing him to retreat until his back bumped against the door. “Everything could matter, Bennie. Spill what you know.”
He hesitated, his expression doing a complicated dance of emotions. “It’s only—”
“Only?” I prompted.
“It seemed to me like I wasn’t the only one she was . . . seeing. There were times she was secretive about why she couldn’t meet me, and there was just this tone in her voice . . .”
I raised my brows. “A tone isn’t much to go on. She didn’t mention anyone else in her diary.”
“That’s just it. What if she did?” Bennie licked his lips, his eyes bright. “Remember how in the diary, she kept talking about Romeo and Juliette? I started wondering—what if Juliette wasn’t code for Minty? What if it was code for another person? A girlfriend, maybe?”
Romeo and Juliette. Juliette and Romeo. Words from Minty’s diary floated back to me.
“To be twice enthralled is such a delicious distraction.”
“It’s my birthday. I refused both of my invitations.”
What if Bennie was right?
I frowned. “Did Minty ever actually say anything to you about liking girls?”
Bennie thought a moment, then brightened. “One time she made me take her to see The Kiss twice in a row, and she said Greta Garbo was to die for.”
I rolled my eyes. “That’s not exactly concrete proof. But Greta Garbo is to die for, so I can’t fault her taste in ladies.”
“What I was thinking,” Bennie said eagerly, “is if there was a Juliette, Minty might’ve given her the brush-off, too. And maybe she wasn’t so accepting of it as I was.”
My thumb rubbed the hilt of my switchblade as I contemplated the options. Daphne, Symphony, every regular that had passed through the doors of the Cloak on New Year’s Eve. I scrubbed a hand over my eyes, exhausted with the possibilities. There had to be a way to narrow them down. A way to find out Juliette’s identity without tracking her all over the city like I had to do with Romeo.
Olive. She noticed everything that happened in the club. Knew everyone who’d been a regular since she started working there. We’d talked about the regulars a couple of times right after the murder, but so much had happened since then. Maybe if we talked again, something fresh would rise to the top.
“I’m leaving now, Bennie.” I held up both hands, so the knife was pointed at the ceiling instead of at him, and the drawings fluttered in the slight breeze from the window. “I’m taking these with me as insurance.”
“But—”
“And I want to see you at the club tomorrow with a broom in your hand.”
He looked at me anxiously. “Are you going to tell Cal? That it was me?”
He was right to be scared. She would kill him, or at least he’d wish he was dead. She would cancel the contract with his father, too.
I wasn’t sure what I would do. She deserved to know. He deserved to pay. But maybe not today. I had bigger fish to fry.
“I won’t tell her.”
Bennie sagged with relief. “Thank—”
“Yet. I won’t tell her yet.” Bennie visibly quaked, and my shoulders relaxed. “Now step aside, you criminal mastermind. I have a murderer to catch.”
* * *
I went straight to the club, hoping to find Olive there working on repairing the damage Bennie had done. I wasn’t ready to forgive him for that, and I knew Olive and Cal would be even slower to forgive, if they ever did. Olive never liked Bennie much, even when everyone else did, including rich debutantes. A picture flashed in my mind of Bennie and Minty in a room together at the Felicity Inn, and I had to squash down a twinge of jealousy. I’d been friends with Bennie for four years, and I could admit I’d been attracted to him lately. But if there’d been anything romantic betw
een me and Bennie, it had to be over now. And I found I didn’t really regret that. My feelings for Olive were bigger; that seemed obvious now, and I picked up the pace of my steps, eager to see her again.
As soon as I went in the back door, I heard the piano tinkling in a melancholy melody, the kind Lewis only got to play when no customers were in the club. Cal always said this club was for forgetting our troubles, forgetting how hard life could be for us in the world out there. In here, we could laugh and dance and feel sexy. Sadness was best left outside the door.
Of course, that was easier said than done. It certainly hadn’t worked for Minty.
In the main room, Lewis paused his playing long enough to give me a wave. Olive was at a table unpacking a crate of glass tumblers. She looked up and saw me and didn’t smile, but she didn’t scowl either. I could work with that.
“Where did those come from?” I said, picking up a glass printed with the words KAYSER & CO—LOVELY FROCKS FOR ALL YOUR COSTUME NEEDS.
“One of the regulars brought them by. And another brought those over there.” Olive gestured to a stack of two crates against the wall. “Said they wanted to help get the Cloak back up and running as fast as they could. Said the world’s too bleak without us in it.”
My heart swelled. There was nothing I wanted more than to give the club back to them, to give Marion back to them and let him do what he did best again.
But then I dropped back to earth. “There’s something I’ve got to tell you.”
Olive considered the expression on my face. “Should I sit down for this?”
“Maybe we both should.”
We sat at the table, surrounded by the donated glasses, and I told her everything I’d learned at the Felicity Inn, and what I’d done next. What I’d found in Bennie’s room and what happened when he caught me snooping. As I talked, she didn’t interrupt, but her eyes went wide, and her hands trembled. Her knee jumped against mine under the table. But it stopped abruptly when I told her what Bennie had confessed to, and what he hadn’t.
“And you believe him?” she said, her tone incredulous, angry even. “Just because he’s Bennie Altobello.”
I spread out my hands. “Well. Yeah. Not right away, of course, and I still kept the drawings just in case.”
“Hmph.”
I realized in her skeptical silence that the piano had stopped. Lewis was watching us now, listening. This mattered to him, too, of course. The club mattered, and even more than that, Marion mattered. They hadn’t gotten to see much of each other while Marion was in hiding, and Lewis wanted this resolved as much as we did. I gestured for him to join us, and he pulled out a chair across the table and folded his long limbs into it. I looked from him to Olive and back.
“I believe Bennie because he’s family. Just like Marion and both of you.”
“Family, huh?” Olive said.
“Yes, and sometimes we want to punch family in the face. God knows I want to punch Mama about six times a day. But she’s not a murderer. And neither is Bennie.”
“Then where is this paragon of virtue?” Olive said. “I’d like to have a little conversation with him myself.”
“And you will. And so will Cal. But not now. Now we have to focus. Now I need your help.”
She sat back in her seat and narrowed her eyes. “With what?”
“Ever since the club got vandalized—”
“By Bennie.”
I ignored her. “We’d ruled out the killer being a woman.”
“Remember how he knocked you down?” Olive said, eyes like slits. “Remember how your hands got all cut up?”
“I remember. But listen—Bennie suspects Minty was seeing someone else besides him. A female someone.”
“How convenient for him,” Lewis said, exchanging a skeptical look with Olive.
“Don’t you think he’s just trying to throw the blame off himself?” she said.
“I don’t know. That’s why I need your help, Olive. You’ve got the sharpest eyes I know. You know everyone that comes in or out of this club, and you notice things other people don’t bother to see. Not to mention, you’re always sober, unlike the rest of the clowns in here.”
The tiniest of smiles crept across her lips. Despite rumors to the contrary, flattery got you somewhere with everybody, even Olive.
“So,” I continued before she could bring up Bennie again, “I know we already talked about some of this, but maybe there’s something you forgot about back then. Or that we didn’t know was important. I need to know if you got any sense from Minty that she was interested in one of her female friends that night? Or if they had an interest in her? Or maybe you saw a regular looking at their group particularly hard?”
Olive held up both hands. “Slow down. Let me think.” She fiddled with her earring, staring off across the club toward the place where the Uptowners had sat on New Year’s Eve.
“It was so chaotic that night . . .” She shook her head. “I saw that girl Symphony drawing Marion, and Arimentha staring at him, too. Daphne was the kind who couldn’t stop jiggling her leg and tapping her fingers. Like somebody else I know.” I grinned and stopped pecking at the side of a glass with my fingernails. “Anyway, I didn’t notice Daphne looking at Minty particularly much. If anything, she kept her back turned to her, like she was miffed at her.”
“They did argue that night,” I said. “Though Daphne could’ve lied to me about why. It could’ve been a lovers’ spat.”
“What about the regulars?” Lewis said, scooting closer to the table.
“Lo was the most vocal about her interest in Minty,” Olive said. “But she has an alibi.”
“And we never did figure out who that other girl was that Duke saw talking to Minty at the bar.” I flipped my notebook back to that early page and read aloud: “‘Kid with brownish-red hair. Maybe five foot eight. Femme. Hadn’t seen her for a while before New Year’s.’ Does that ring any bells for either of you?”
Olive looked into the middle distance for a long moment, as if she were flipping through a mental photograph album, but she finally shook her head. “Duke said he hadn’t seen her in a while, so maybe she was a regular back before I started work.”
“That’s true . . .” I said slowly. “What brought her back to the club after months away?”
“Minty?” Lewis said.
“Bingo.” I pointed at him, then lowered my finger. “Well, maybe. But how do we figure out who she is?”
“Question everybody at the club again?” Olive said. “Surely somebody knows her.”
I huffed out a frustrated breath. The answer felt so close, but there could be another two weeks’ work in rounding up all those regulars one by one, and then what if we ran into another dead end?
“Goddammit,” I said. “We’ve found our Romeo. Now we need a Juliette.”
“Romeo and Juliette?” Lewis said. “Like the symphony?”
“No, like the—” I glanced at Olive, and she was sitting up straighter, too. “Wait—the what?”
Lewis shrugged. “There’s a symphony, based on the play. By Berlioz.”
“A symphony,” Olive breathed.
“Lewis,” I said, grabbing his arm, “how does that Berlioz guy spell Juliette?”
He looked at my hand on his arm in surprise. “The French way, of course. J-u-l-i-e-t-t-e.”
Olive and I looked at each other, eyes wide. “Could it be—” she said.
Lewis looked puzzled. “Yes, it’s a symphony. I can play you a bit if—”
“But she claimed to have a ‘gentleman friend’ in St. Louis,” I said.
Olive raised her brows at me. “Minty had a ‘gentleman friend,’ too, if you count Bennie as a gentleman.”
“What’s the significance here?” Lewis said.
“Symphony Cornice,” I said quickly. “But the name could be a coinc
idence.”
Olive tsked. “Maybe you just don’t want to believe you overlooked her.”
“I didn’t overlook her—I was going on false information that we had only one artist in love with Minty. When she showed me her drawing next to Romeo’s, I knew it couldn’t be her.”
“But now we know there’s a Juliette—” Lewis said.
“And,” I said slowly, trying to catch the idea trying to gather in my brain, “Symphony is pretty tall, almost my height. Red hair—that could’ve looked brownish to Duke in the dark bar. What if she used to come here to meet girls, but then she and Minty started fooling around and she stopped?”
“Until New Year’s Eve,” Olive said.
We all looked toward the stairs that led to the balcony.
“If it’s her, we’ll need proof,” I said. “She’s rich and well protected from the law. We could break into her house. Try to find her own diary.”
Olive held up a hand. “Won’t she have destroyed evidence like that?”
“Then we go talk to her head on,” I said. “Try to trick her into confessing.”
“Even if we manage that, her confession to us would be meaningless. The cops would never believe us.”
She was right. Of course. It was infuriating. “Well, what do you suggest then, Olive?”
She opened her mouth to speak, and then the telephone rang. Lewis stood to answer it, and Olive leaned forward to whisper something to me, but then Lewis turned, eyes wide. “It’s for you, Millie. He says it’s about the cemetery.”
I hurried to the telephone, a frown creasing my brow. Olive followed me and wedged herself beside me. “You’re not leaving me out of anything this time, Millie Coleman.”
The Boy in the Red Dress Page 28