“Amazing.” Marquise flipped through the index cards, noting the amounts. “What on earth was he planning to do with all this money?”
Joanna handed him the first card, the one with Marquise’s name on it. “It was for you.”
16
When Joanna arrived home, Paul was reading a Raymond Chandler novel on the couch, Gemma at his feet and Pepper stretched along the couch’s top.
He sat up. “Hey, Jo. There’s a plate in the oven for you. I roasted a chicken, and I thought we could have another go at the deadbolt after dinner.”
She refused to have a microwave in the house. Their kitchen didn’t have the room, and, besides, there were plenty of other good ways to reheat food. So, on a night like tonight, warmth and good smells radiated from the kitchen. “Thanks. When are you going to show me how to hotwire a car?” She dropped to the cushion next to him and stretched her arms above her head.
“Locks first. You have to be able to break into the car before you can drive it off.”
“Details.” It was so good to be home.
“So….” Paul started. “What happened?”
Joanna told him about Marquise’s request that she try to find something to clear Roger Bing, about her search of his room, and finding the savings record. “I’m almost positive he was saving for Marquise, for his retirement. The cook was devoted to him.”
It was another reminder that people aren’t always what they seem. She’d walked through Marquise’s kitchen a dozen times, and she had never given the cook a second thought.
“Marquise must have been touched.”
“He teared up.”
She remembered him, just an hour ago, the show over, and his face bare as a scar. He’d taken Roger’s chair and sat to look at the index cards. “I can’t believe it,” he said over and over. You see, his expression seemed to say. He couldn’t have killed anyone.
“Where did he get that kind of money?” Paul asked.
“That’s the big question. His living expenses were low—I doubt Marquise charged him rent, and he could eat from the kitchen. But over the past year he’d made some sizable deposits. Not something a fry cook could do.”
“Did he have another job on the side, maybe?”
“Could have. He had mornings free. I didn’t see anything in his room that indicated it, though.”
“So, you’re going through with it,” Paul said. “Checking the cook out.”
Pepper jumped down to her lap. “Crisp has probably already looked at Bing’s financial records. The only news would be that the money was for Marquise.”
“That still leaves a lot of questions. Just because the cook wanted to give Marquise money doesn’t mean he wouldn’t kill VC. In fact, he might willingly kill anyone who threatened Marquise or Marquise’s world.”
“I’d thought of that.”
“Plus, the money. I know I said it before, but where was he getting all that money?”
“I know.” Joanna sighed and nudged Pepper to the couch. She went to the kitchen and pulled the warm plate from the oven. Roast chicken, polenta, and Brussels sprouts. Nice.
“What are you going to do next?” Paul had followed her and pulled silverware from a kitchen drawer to set her place.
“I guess I’ll tell Crisp. He’s not going to like it.”
“You found good information.”
“Somehow, I don’t see him being grateful for the interference. Plus, I’m still worried about Caramella. Marquise is convinced she wouldn’t hurt anyone.”
“Maybe she was in cahoots with the cook, if the cook really did kill VC.”
Caramella and Roger Bing. An unlikely alliance, but possible, especially given the timing of the gunshot. “Crisp is adamant that the cook shot VC, but if there’s one thing I’ve learned, it’s not to judge people by their appearance.”
Paul smiled. “Are you kidding? You judge people by their appearance all the time.”
“No, I don’t.”
He simply looked at her.
“All right. But you know what I mean.” She tried a bite of chicken. The skin was crisp and meat tender. Paul was getting to be a pretty good cook. “You know, they’re looking for someone in the kitchen at Marquise’s. You could do some digging around for me.”
“No, thanks. But I will help you think this through. Let’s be systematic.”
“All right,” she said tentatively. She knew he wasn’t a fan of her being involved with the case, but he also knew he couldn’t stop her. She kissed him on the cheek, his stubble tickling her skin.
“What have we got for facts?” He folded his arms in front of his chest.
“Roger Bing died in his kitchen. He might have fallen—or been pushed. He wrote ‘VC’ on the floor.”
“Do we know he wrote it?”
“Good point. I’ll ask Crisp.” A very good point. Anyone might have written the initials to throw suspicion elsewhere. “Bing was killed the night I saw VC, after the memorial service. Now, for tonight.”
Paul leaned back in the chair so that it rested on its rear legs. By now, Joanna knew it wasn’t going to fall, but it still made her nervous. “Ready.”
“Roger Bing was saving money for Marquise, and lately he’d been putting away larger amounts. No one seems to know where the money came from.”
“Good. What else?”
“Someone tried to break in to Lewis Custard’s apartment. He has historical maps up there, worth a lot of money.”
“So, it could be related. Or not.”
“When I visited VC’s mother, she wanted to search VC’s room, but she was vague about what she was looking for.”
“What did she tell you?” The chair tipped perilously far back, then forward.
“That she didn’t want the police to find anything that might embarrass her son.”
“That seems legitimate. If I died, you’d hide my embarrassing things, right?”
“Like your collection of ELO albums? Sure, I’d burn them.”
“Hilarious. Next?”
“Well, there’s VC’s ghost.” That. “It couldn’t have been Roger Bing. He’s too short.”
“You said it couldn’t have been his brother or mother, either.”
She remembered Barry’s trunk of groceries and Adele’s freshly washed, at-home look. “It’s possible, but barely. If it were planned ahead of time, one of them might have been able to pull it off. By a hair.” She cut another slice of chicken. “I don’t know, though. Neither of them had a reason to kill VC.”
“As far as we know.”
“His mother was so upset. Paul, you should have seen her. She has an odd way of showing grief, but I’m telling you, it was real.”
“What about the brother?”
“I get the idea that he didn’t like VC’s drag life, but he seems more the type to sternly disapprove than murder for it.”
“Don’t judge people by their appearances, remember.” Paul eased his chair so all four legs met the floor and went to the living room. He returned with a scrap of paper and a letter-sized envelope. He handed Joanna the paper. “You got a call tonight.”
Since Joanna had a land line, Paul took messages if she wasn’t home. She liked this throwback feeling of community. “Apple?” They had unfinished business. But this phone number wasn’t Apple’s.
“VC’s mother. You’ll have another chance to check things out. At VC’s visitation, at the funeral home tomorrow. VC’s mother thought you might want to drop by.”
So, the medical examiner had finally sent VC home. Adele had said she’d recognize her son. This clinched it. The body was VC’s. “That’s thoughtful of her. I can’t imagine preparing the body of your own son.”
“Maybe she had someone come in and do it.” His fingers played with the envelope. It was addressed to him with a blue pen.
“I hope so.” A gunshot to the head. Joanna put down her fork. VC’s ghost wandering Old Town. Roger’s death. A queer prickling overcame her, followed by a wash of h
eaviness. It had to come sometime. She’d been denying her reaction to VC’s death for the past three days, replacing the emotion first with her response to Crisp’s request for help, then Marquise’s.
“What’s wrong?” Paul asked. He set the envelope on the table.
“I guess it’s all coming home now. VC’s death isn’t just a puzzle.”
He reached over and placed a hand on her arm. “I get it.” He swallowed, then said, “You’ll be careful, won’t you? You promised.”
“Yes. I won’t do anything to put myself at risk. Really.” Gemma nudged her elbow, hoping for a scrap of chicken. “What’s in the envelope?”
“Oh.” Distracted by Joanna, he seemed to have forgotten it. “It’s from my uncle. He might be out of prison in time to come to the wedding.”
The next morning, Joanna walked to Tallulah’s Closet slowly. Her mind was on Roger Bing. Her discussion with Paul the night before had raised more questions than it had answered.
The morning was crisp and overcast, but Joanna wouldn’t be surprised if the cloud cover burnt off to reveal robin’s egg-blue skies and temperatures warm enough to coax the sweet peas from the earth.
She rounded the corner and waited for a bus full of commuters to clear Clinton Street before she could cross to Tallulah’s Closet. When the bus pulled away, Joanna’s jaw dropped. Spray painted in pink across the boutique’s front window in knife-jagged letters was KILLER.
Joanna ran to the store, her hand flying to the door knob. Locked. From outside, the darkened boutique looked quiet, undisturbed. Struggling to regain her breath, she stepped back to examine the graffiti once again, and the janitor from Dot’s, next door, joined her.
“New publicity campaign?” he said, lighting a cigarette.
“No.” VC’s ghost had written the same word at Imago Mundi. Here it was again.
Her hand shaking, she unlocked the door. Everything seemed to be in place here—the mannequins posed in flowered silk cocktail dresses, the usual faint scent of lavender. VC’s ghost. Joanna dialed Detective Crisp’s number.
17
“Did you touch the door knob?” Crisp asked.
“Of course. I had to get in,” Joanna said.
Someone from the Police Bureau photographed the shop’s front window from various angles, attracting pedestrians and the occasional barfly stopping by Dot’s for a pre-lunch fix.
Crisp sighed. “Whoever did it probably wore gloves, anyway.”
From the inside of Tallulah’s Closet, the graffiti, fuzzy and backward, cast a shadow on the floor.
One of Crisp’s colleagues strolled in the open door, a laptop under his arm. “We got the surveillance tape.”
“Put it here.” Crisp pointed to the tiki bar. He raised an eyebrow at Joanna, and she cleared a sewing kit from its surface.
The policeman opened the laptop. “Right there,” he said, pointing to the screen. Joanna, behind the laptop, couldn’t see what they looked at, but Crisp squinted and kept his gaze focused. “It was at the edge of the bar’s security camera. I enlarged it and ran a program to compensate for the graininess.”
Joanna hadn’t known Dot’s had installed a security camera, and normally she would have pooh-poohed the effort. Why not just put in a good lock and be done with it? Today, she was grateful.
“Play it again,” Crisp said. “Joanna, come here.”
The footage was black and white and jolted, as if the camera snapped photos every half second instead of continuously.
“Just a second. Now,” Crisp said.
The figure moved choppily across the screen. Joanna held her breath. There she was. VC. Joanna gripped the edge of the tiki bar. VC’s long legs scooted sideways in front of the window. The street behind her was dark, quiet, and the bottom of the screen flicked “3:37 a.m.” She withdrew a canister from a tote bag. Her arm waved wide as she painted.
“Amazing,” Crisp whispered.
“Hold that,” Joanna said. “Can you go back a few seconds?”
The technician moved a finger on the laptop’s touchpad, and the film started where VC removed the spray paint from her tote bag.
“That’s the Alaïa. That’s VC’s dress—I saw it in her dressing room at home.” There was no mistaking the dress’s jersey butterfly sleeves.
“You’re sure that’s VC’s?” Crisp asked.
“You don’t stumble over pristine 1980s Alaïa dresses every day.” For a moment, she was too shocked to act. VC spray-painted her shop’s front window. What did it mean? Then Joanna straightened. “Just a minute.” She grabbed a pair of scissors and sliced the packing tape sealing the boxes of VC’s clothing from the funeral home.
“VC’s gowns. I recognize them,” Crisp said.
“I’m impressed.” Within a few minutes, she was surrounded by vibrant piles of fabric. The last box emptied, she stood. “It’s not here. VC’s Alaïa.”
“When did you get these clothes?”
“The night I saw her, after the memorial service. She was probably wearing the dress that night, come to think of it.” Yes. She hadn’t seen the sleeves or back, but the dress’s body-hugging fit was pure Alaïa.
The technician closed the laptop and waited for instruction from Crisp.
“You can take that back to the office,” Crisp told him. Then, to Joanna, “You’re sure nothing was disturbed here, inside the store?”
“Everything looks the same as always. As far as I can tell, she didn’t come in.”
“Roger Bing wasn’t so lucky.”
Joanna turned to Crisp. “I don’t get it. Why the graffiti? Why me?”
They both saw it at the same time. The corner of a white envelope stuck from under the platform at the store’s front. Crisp, his cowboy boots sounding as he walked, sheathed his hand in a handkerchief and pulled the envelope from under the platform. It was sealed. Nothing was written on it.
“Is this yours?” Crisp asked.
Speechless, Joanna shook her head. “It must have come through the mail slot, then slid under the platform.” The chill of foreboding crept over her.
He held the envelope against the light. “Hand me those scissors.” He sliced the envelope open at the narrow end and slid out a folded piece of plain white paper. Using the handkerchief again, he opened it. Joanna crowded next to him. He glanced at Joanna before unfolding the paper.
“Hurry up,” Joanna said. Her thumb worried at the back of her engagement ring.
“You did it,” the note read in the indifferent type of a computer’s printer. “All for a few dresses. You won’t get away with it.”
Crisp examined both sides of the paper. “That’s all.”
VC’s gowns. This note accused her of killing VC for a few boxes of dresses. Unbelievable. She was too mad to speak.
Detective Crisp refolded the note and slipped it into an evidence bag. Joanna knew it wouldn’t do any good for her to protest, to insist that she’d never kill someone for vintage dresses, no matter how fabulous they were. She spent the next few painful seconds waiting for his inevitable questions.
At last he met her gaze. “This is about the victim’s clothes.”
“Her show gowns, yes.” She lifted a pair of leopard stilettos from the pile of dresses and set them on a shelf above the tiki bar. She’d tell Apple they were keeping them there to remember VC by. “Bo’s mother said I should have the dresses. I’m giving the proceeds to a youth group.”
“Show me again.”
Still biting her tongue, she stepped aside. The dresses were heaped from Joanna’s earlier search for the Alaïa.
He stooped to look at the gowns, but straightened again right away. “I don’t see the point of going through these again. You told us the dress VC’s imposter has been wearing isn’t here.” He lifted a Fiorucci dress by its spaghetti strap. “Are these valuable?”
“If you know where to sell them, yes.” She waited. Was he going to accuse her, or not?
“How much would I pay for the lot of them?”
/>
“They’re too small for you, Crisp, but I appreciate your open mind.”
“Ha ha. How much are they worth?”
She knew where he was going with this. She did some quick calculations. “If I sold them from Tallulah’s Closet, probably $5,000 in all. I might get more if a dealer in New York showed interest.”
He nodded. “Who knows you have them?”
“Bo’s mother, of course. Maybe his brother, Barry. Adele might have told anyone who came to pay their respects.” She lifted her chin. “For instance, Caramella.”
“You just can’t leave her alone, can you?”
“I don’t think she’s—”
“Listen. I know you didn’t kill Bo Milton for a few boxes of gowns or anything else. A defense attorney wouldn’t be as easygoing about it. Keep your head low. And remember. The last time anyone saw VC, somebody died.”
18
Joanna watched Detective Crisp’s unmarked Crown Victoria pull away from the curb. “Keep your head low,” he’d said. Yeah, right.
She rubbed her eyes and looked at Tallulah’s Closet’s front window. This wasn’t the first time the shop had suffered a few carousers with spray paint, although it had never been like this. She fetched a razor blade, rag, and some glass cleaner from the back and got to work.
“You cleaning off that graffiti?” It was the janitor from Dot’s again, a cigarette dangling from his mouth.
Joanna’s patience was wearing thin. “What does it look like?”
“You don’t want ‘killer’ spray painted across your window?” “Ha ha ha” came his Gatling gun of a laugh.
She straightened and forced herself to smile. “Not unless it’s true. Got a weapon handy?”
The janitor disappeared into Dot’s, and Joanna let out a long breath. Too bad she didn’t have work gloves. This scraping took time.
The janitor returned with a spray bottle of blue liquid. “Try this.”
Surprised, she took the bottle. He waited while she spritzed part of the “K.” The paint melted, and she caught its pink-stained run-off with her rag.
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