Masking for Trouble

by Diane Vallere

  “Kirby has swim team practice this morning, Ebony’s superstitions keep her at home this time of year, and my dad’s flight out of New York was delayed.”

  He looked over his shoulder. “I feel like we’re going to get caught.”

  I returned his smile. “So do I. Let’s not risk it.”

  Tak Hoshiyama was the most interesting man I’d met in recent history. His father was Japanese and his mother was American, and he had the exotic looks that came with such a mix. His longish hair was almost as black as mine, though his was probably not courtesy of a box of Clairol. His lips were naturally red, and his strong, angular chin perfectly matched the lines of his straight nose. In addition to his good looks, there was an unmistakable air of confidence about him. Maybe it was because he was good at math.

  We’d met six months ago when I’d first returned to Proper City, and got to know each other over a homicide investigation. I’d felt attracted to him almost immediately and couldn’t deny the way he seemed to be able to read my mind. But, there were problems with us dating. Namely, his father.

  Tak had been raised in Hawaii, schooled at Princeton, and worked at the Clark County DA’s planning office, where he put his natural skills of planning and spacial relations to work determining zoning laws and reviewing building permits to use. A situation that tested his moral boundaries had led to his suspension and eventual resignation.

  His relationship with his parents, the owners of Hoshiyama Kobe Steak House in Proper City, had been what brought him to Proper City. Those same relations had been strained ever since he’d returned. His father felt that Tak had disgraced the family by being put on leave. And after he’d quit, his father accused him of throwing away his career for something far less important: me.

  We’d decided to keep our relationship a secret—not just from his father, but from everybody. But Ebony—the woman who had practically helped my father raise me—saw Tak’s attention toward me as an indication that my love life had a pulse. She dropped not-so-subtle hints whenever he called or stopped in to say hello. It got to the point where we both realized it would be far easier if we both just moved on. Turns out, neither one of us wanted to.

  When he and I had started our secret liaison, I’d had the bright idea to program each other’s numbers into our phones under “Private Number.” That way if we ever missed a call, nobody would be the wiser. Quickly after that, we’d developed a system for spending time together. We’d text each other with a situation and a destination—bank ATM, diner parking lot, post office—and meet up as if it was purely coincidence. As long as nobody pulled the video feed from the ATM, we were probably flying under the radar.

  I led Tak to the office. “Does the name Paul Haverford mean anything to you?” I asked.

  “Other than the fact that he was found murdered last night?”

  “Other than that.”

  Tak leaned against the desk. “He owns an investment company. They buy old buildings, flatten them, and sell off the land to the highest bidder. His name used to come up in the planning office. I think he was fighting the city council about building on the west side of Proper. Seems there’s a loophole in the zoning regulations out this way. There are a couple of miles of desert that haven’t been accounted for. If he was right, whoever owns that land could make a tidy profit if they interest the casinos in moving out this way or partner up with an outlet mall. Paul was applying for the permits when I left my job. It wasn’t my case, but you hear things. What’s your interest in him?”

  “Paul Haverford was the new owner of the Alexandria Hotel. That’s the old rundown building where all of the Halloween festivities were to take place.”

  “But that’s where his body was found. You’re not going to . . .” His voice trailed off, and he looked concerned.

  “Tak, I’m the one who found him at the hotel. His body was left in an elevator. I was on the sixth floor and somebody put his body in the elevator when I got out, and a whole bunch of people—children and families!—would have found him.”

  “Why were you on the sixth floor? I thought the hotel was off-limits except for the ground levels.”

  “I wanted some water. Whoever set up the food and beverage stations seems to have forgotten that not everybody wants to drink Ghostly Grog. Somebody told me the water was on the second floor, so I went up looking for it.”

  He leaned back against the desk. Tak had an analytical mind, and I could see that his thoughts had shifted.

  “Paul Haverford was here in the shop yesterday. He served us with these papers.” I waved the papers in front of him. “He banned the store from participating in the Halloween festivities and said we’ll be violating his legal rights as property owner if we pushed the issue.” I handed the legal documents to Tak and tapped the paper. “Apparently this says that Disguise DeLimit can have no part in Halloween.”

  Tak looked at the date stamped on the outside of the envelopes. “These were mailed. You said he brought them here yesterday?”

  This was the part I’d been dreading. “These are the documents that have been sitting in my dad’s inbox since they arrived. The copy Paul Haverford brought here yesterday is, at this moment, scattered over the surface of his desk, where I threw them after I tore them up.”

  “Back up.”

  “After I closed the store yesterday, I went out to his office to talk to him. He was arguing with another man, a really tall guy in a camel coat. The guy left and he came in to talk to me—Haverford, not the stranger. He wasn’t a nice man, Tak. He said he was going to make an example out of Disguise DeLimit and run us out of Proper City.”

  “What did you say?”

  “Not much. I tore up the documents, threw them on his desk, and left.”

  “Why didn’t you know about these?” He held up the papers I’d handed him.

  I dropped into the chair and ran my fingers over the stack of unopened envelopes. “Apparently my dad has the utility companies turn off our bills for the month of October so he can concentrate on running the store. Kirby thought these were bills. He filed them in the unpaid bill box.” I put my hand on the aluminum box. “I should have known about them, shouldn’t I? I should have told Kirby to give me everything that came in to the store. If I had opened them myself, I would have known what was going on. All of this could have been avoided.”

  Tak picked up the envelope and studied the address. “Not necessarily. This is addressed to Jerry Tamblyn and marked confidential. It even says here ‘To be opened by addressee only.’ So technically, you did the right thing.”

  “Except that somebody killed Paul Haverford last night.” I unscrewed the cap from my flask and took a drink of smoothie. When I finished, Tak was staring at me like I’d lost my mind. “What?” I asked.

  “I know you’re upset, but I don’t think you should be drinking in the morning.”

  I tipped the flask at him so he could catch a whiff of blueberries. “It’s a prop. I filled it with my breakfast smoothie.”

  He shook his head at me. “You’re an odd bird, Margo Tamblyn.”

  “That’s what you like about me.”

  “Aye, matey, it is.”

  “Pirate? I’m a gangster. A wiseguy, see?” I stood up and modeled my outfit. “Get your costumes straight.”

  We bantered a bit, enjoying the relative privacy of the unopened store.

  “Do you want to go through exactly what happened last night?” he finally asked.

  “I just did.”

  “Not the confrontation. The other part. At the Alexandria.”

  I remembered the way Detective Nichols had thrown me off by already being at the party, and how the atmosphere at the house had heightened my sense of fear. But Detective Nichols wasn’t just Proper City’s police detective. She was Tak’s ex-girlfriend. I didn’t want to bring her up to Tak. Soot and I could address that later.

&
nbsp; “Not now. I have to get the store ready to open.”

  Just then the door to Disguise DeLimit rattled. Through the shades that filtered only a minimal amount of light from the already bright sun, I recognized the detective. She was flanked on either side by uniformed police officers. This time they weren’t costumes.

  “You didn’t park your car out front, did you?” I asked Tak.

  “No, I took the Zip-Three.”

  “Leave out the back door. I’ll call you later.”

  Tak looked torn but disappeared into the back before she spotted him. I unlocked the door.

  “Good morning, Detective.”

  “Ms. Tamblyn,” she said, glancing only briefly at my gangster outfit. “We need to talk.”

  “I gave you a pretty thorough statement last night and you said you got everything you needed.”

  She looked me directly in the eyes. “That was before I learned you might have motive to see Mr. Haverford out of the picture.”

  Chapter 6

  “EXCUSE ME?” I asked. “I might have been angry with Mr. Haverford when I went to his office earlier in the day, but that doesn’t mean I wanted to hurt him.”

  “So you admit that you were in his office,” Detective Nichols said.

  “I’d be foolish not to. That building must have security cameras, plus I’m probably the only visitor who ever graced that office dressed like a hobo.”

  One of the officers behind the detective tucked his chin as if he were hiding a chuckle. Nichols glared at him. He drew his mouth into a line and stood up straight, all traces of humor gone from his face.

  “I admit that it wasn’t my finest hour to tear up his legal notice and throw it on his desk, but that’s a far stretch from committing murder.”

  “Ms. Tamblyn, I think it would be best if we had this conversation someplace else.”

  “Can I make other arrangements for the store first? This is a big week for us and my dad trusted me to run the place while he was gone. I don’t want anybody to think we’re not opening.”

  She looked at her watch. “How long is that going to be?”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  The last thing I wanted to do six days before Halloween was have an unexpected conversation with Detective Nichols about Paul Haverford’s murder. But it did seem as though I was one of the last people to have interacted with him, and there was a chance that something I had seen could help her do her job.

  I called Ebony and begged her to check on the store, and then left a brief note for Kirby that an emergency pulled me away but that I’d be back. There wasn’t really any other way to explain my not being there during our crucial time.

  Detective Nichols gave me the option of riding with her or driving myself. Easiest decision of my life. I drove behind her and parked in a visitor spot.

  Much of Proper had been built in the ’40s and ’50s, which lent itself to the storybook charm that matched the streets. The police station was no different. It was a small building with white siding and blue trim. A navy blue awning over the front door shielded anybody who cared to enter from the desert sun. The word POLICE had been stenciled above the door and on the side wall. A dark blue throw rug sat in front of the door. It was faded in the center and showed faint signs of having been used by people with dirty soles.

  I followed the detective into the station. An orange candle in a glass jar sat on the raised counter in front of a woman in a bulky sweater with a black cat in the center. Behind her, a wall of beige filing cabinets lined the wall, topped with white metal trays filled with blank forms. A potted ficus tree sat in the corner next to a water dispenser.

  The scent of pumpkin filled the air. A bulletin board to the left of the front lobby held an assortment of colorful notices tacked on with equally colorful thumb tacks. The bright colors gave off a kindergarten vibe, until I spotted a cage of dingy, chipped metal bars to the left. The county jail cell, scented by the Yankee Candle Company.

  We passed the cell and the front desk. Detective Nichols offered me a cup of coffee and I declined, mostly because I was suddenly nervous and uncomfortable and unsure what to do with my hands. This was my first time in a police station at the detective’s request and I wasn’t sure how to act. The detective led me into an empty room. The carpet was the same shade of blue that had been used to paint the exterior of the building. A large round table occupied the center of the room. Wooden and vinyl chairs on castors sat at varying positions around it, as if the last people who had been in here had gotten up suddenly. Detective Nichols extended a hand toward one of the empty chairs. I sat down. She pulled a chair out away from the table and sat next to me.

  “Ms. Tamblyn, let’s go over your statement from last night again. Tell me what happened, starting with you going to the sixth floor. Don’t leave out any details.”

  I went back over it all—from Sol pouring me a ginger ale at the downstairs bar, to one of the men in black telling me the water was on the second floor, to the elevator not stopping until it reached the sixth. It was the same information I’d given her when it happened, the same info I’d been over a hundred times since last night.

  “You claim that you were looking for water. Several of the people we spoke to had water bottles from a station outside.”

  “I didn’t spend much time outside. When I arrived at the hotel, I went inside to look around. I—I wanted to see the costumes,” I finished.

  “Let’s get back to the man who told you the water was on the second floor.”

  “He was one of your guys. His name was Scott.”

  “Not him. The first guy.”

  “The one who wouldn’t let us check out the blue blob?”

  She raised her eyebrows at me and a series of horizontal wrinkles appeared across her forehead.

  “He was dressed as a man in black, like you. Black suit, white shirt, black tie. Hair parted on the side and slicked back. White curly cord running from his ear down to the back of his shirt.”

  She made a note on her tablet. “What else can you tell me about him?”

  I tried to remember details but came up empty. “He was the first man in black. Then there was Scott. Other than the fact that they scared me, I don’t remember anything else about either one.”

  “They scared you, how?”

  “The first guy was all business. He got right up in my face and told me to go away. Then I asked the second guy about water and he said it was on the second floor. He said he’d come with me and he grabbed my arm. Right there, he violated rule number one of a Halloween party: don’t touch strangers.”

  “There are rules to Halloween parties?” she asked with notable sarcasm.

  “There are rules to running a haunted house,” I said with dignity. “By nature, it’s a creepy setting. You expect the patrons to suspend their disbelief and enter a building filled with spirits and monsters and people pretending to be undead. The understanding is that even though it’s scary, nothing bad is going to happen to you because it’s entertainment. Nobody’s going to grab you, and you’re not going to have to defend yourself. If you think about it, a haunted house is one of the safest places you can go in your life.” An unwelcome image of Paul Haverford’s last moments popped into my head. “Or it should be.”

  “Did you have something to do with the planning of that event?”

  “No.”

  “So why were you there? From what I’ve learned, that was a closed event for the planners and volunteers who put the week’s festivities together.”

  “Disguise DeLimit has always been a big part of Proper City’s Halloween. There’s a costume contest every year, and for the past twelve years we’ve provided the winning costumes. That costume gets used in the city’s social media campaign leading up to Halloween, and it draws a lot of last-minute customers to our store.”

  “But you were advi
sed not to attend the party, correct? So technically speaking, you had no official reason for being there.”

  “Did someone complain?”

  “With all due respect, the person who might have complained isn’t alive to do so.”

  I didn’t like what she was suggesting. Defensive denials sprung to my lips, but I pressed them together and stayed silent. I couldn’t see as how it would do any good.

  “Tell me about these annual Halloween parties,” she said.

  “There’s been a designated haunted house every Halloween that I can remember. Volunteers put in time to convert it so the children of the neighborhood get a treat. This year it was the Alexandria Hotel. Last night was the Halloween kickoff party, so the house was open. Everybody knows that some of the people are volunteers who’ve been positioned around the interior to make the place seem scarier. That’s what I thought the men in black were. But now I’m confused,” I said. “If you were in a costume, then you must have been off duty.”

  She leaned back. “Ms. Tamblyn, if you were going to create a costume where you dressed up as me, what would that costume entail?”

  I shifted in my seat and cut my eyes to her outfit. When I looked back up, I met her stare directly. “Black pant suit, white shirt. Gold watch on a black band, and a gold identification bracelet, both worn on the left wrist. Long, sandy blond wig. Badge on a black lanyard hanging around my neck. Gun at my left hip.”

  She nodded once. “Very observant.”

  “It’s my job to know how to make a costume.”

  “Describe what I was wearing last night.”

  “Black pant suit, white shirt. Gold watch on a black band—” I stopped. “But you were in a costume. Your hair was styled differently, and you had those sunglasses on. And the white cord that ran behind your ear.”

  “Before taking this job, I heard about Proper City and the costume parties. I have to say, it intrigued me. A town filled with people who like to dress up. It’s like something out of Grimms’ Fairy Tales.”