Joanna couldn’t even raise a smile. “I’m selling them for charity.” They’d returned to the central display case, and Joanna’s hand automatically went to the Murano dish.
“I’ll make you a deal on that ash tray, if you want.”
Joanna felt the ashtray’s cool, heavy weight once again before setting it on the counter. “No, thanks. My dresser can’t hold another one.”
Ricky waved at a customer who entered, to-go coffee cup in hand. “How about if you set the cup on the counter while you look? That will free up your hands.” Plus keep an expensive accident from happening, he didn’t need to add. Then, to Joanna, “Forget about Adrian and Gucci. I bet the funeral home holds a secret or two.”
Secrets. He was right. If Barry or Adele played a role in either murder, the evidence would be at the funeral home. She laid the Adrian suit over her arm. The evidence—spray paint, or better yet, the Alaïa. One thing was sure. Whoever VC’s ghost was, he had the Alaïa.
The customer was flipping through a rack of blouses by holding the fabric rather than the hanger. With delicate silk and cotton batiste, this was a sure way to shredding. Joanna let Ricky go. “I’ll see you soon, I hope.”
The seed of an idea had been planted.
Once again, Joanna parked Old Blue down the street from Marquise’s, but this time she passed the theater and went to Hobo’s, the bar down the block. A dozen or so people milled near the bar waiting for the Shanghai Tunnels tour. She found Marquise and Foxy seated at a two-top in the dining room.
To Joanna, Hobo’s felt as calm and comfortable as a grandmother’s house. Its brass light fixtures, oak trim, and framed posters drew the older gay set from throughout Portland to enjoy the happy hour steak sandwich. It was the sort of place a young gay man might take his parents without shocking them or breaking the bank, or an older couple might chat with the bartender, an old friend. Everyone knew that Marquise and Foxy regularly ate their pre-show dinners at Hobo’s.
Tonight, Marquise was in drag, with a wedding cake of a blonde wig, but no jewelry. Her heavy earrings had to pinch. She was probably saving them for the show.
“Pull up a seat, honey,” Marquise said. “Tell me what you’ve found.”
Joanna told her about the meeting with Crisp and his insistence that Roger Bing killed VC, as well as his theory that Bing’s death was accidental.
Marquise stared at her a full minute before speaking. “Isn’t there something else you want to tell me? About your store?”
How had Marquise found out about that, and how much did she know? “That’s right. Last night someone spray-painted ‘killer’ on my shop’s front window. The security camera caught a person dressed like VC.”
“Is that all?” Marquise fixed Joanna with her stare.
Honestly, Marquise must be part swami. “No. There was a note.”
The old drag queen’s expression softened, as if she’d been waiting for her confession. “Yes?”
“It accused me of killing VC.” Joanna choked out the words.
“Just a moment,” Marquise said.
A nervously smiling couple approached from the group waiting for the tour. “We love your shows,” said the woman. She could have been a Botticelli angel with her high forehead and long curly hair. Her drab Pacific Northwest sportswear killed the impression below the neck.
“I mean,” her husband added, “it’s been probably ten years since we’ve seen it, but we loved it.”
“Wonderful, wonderful. Well, you kids enjoy the tour. Hope to see you at a show soon.”
The couple, stealing glances back at Marquise, left.
“You don’t believe it, do you? The note?” Joanna asked.
“Of course not, darling.”
She relaxed back into her chair. “That’s not all. I went to VC’s visitation this morning, and VC’s brother, Barry, threatened me on the way out. Told me not to come back and to stop asking questions.”
“I recall VC saying he had some trouble with his family accepting his drag life,” Marquise said.
“Not that that’s so unusual,” Foxy added.
“A common story,” Marquise agreed. “Sometimes I feel like the den mother of the craziest Boy Scout troop in town.”
“True,” Foxy said. “Although it used to be worse.”
“Men would come to me with no other place to go. We could usually find them somewhere to sleep and maybe an odd job or two around the theater.”
Joanna imagined the family that had grown around Marquise over the decades. He was known for being generous, and still worked shifts dishing out dinners at homeless shelters.
“Roger Bing was one,” she said.
Marquise set down his fork. “Yes, Roger. All that money, saved for us. Dear boy. Foxy and I can’t figure out where it came from.”
“I saw Lorenzo at VC’s visitation. You knew, didn’t you, that he and VC were lovers?”
Marquise patted her hand. “I told you not to worry about it.”
Joanna waited while a waiter removed the remains of Marquise and Foxy’s dinners. “Someone is impersonating VC, and that someone may have had to do with Roger’s death. It gets more complicated.” She looked from Marquise to Foxy. “I’m not saying it’s a fact, but let’s consider it. If Roger did kill VC, he had to have a reason.”
“All here for the Shanghai Tunnels tour,” someone yelled from the other dining room.
“Such as?”
“I’m not sure.” She wasn’t ready to suggest that the cook might have been stealing Lewis Custard’s maps, and she knew Marquise wasn’t ready to hear it.
“I don’t like it that VC’s brother was threatening you,” Marquise said. “It makes me suspicious.”
“Exactly,” Joanna said. “This afternoon, I had an idea. It’s crazy, and it’s risky.”
“Honey, crazy and risky are my middle names. But you’ll have to make it quick, because I’ve got to get next door for the show.”
“Are the girls still willing to help?”
A smile spread slowly over Marquise’s face. “Let’s ask them, shall we?”
22
It’s a truth universally acknowledged that drag queens aren’t morning people. The rental minivan was littered with take-out coffee cups and, given its cargo of extroverts, was unusually quiet.
Marquise had rounded up five of the performers, three of whom were in drag. Mourning-style drag. Alexis wore a black dress and suit jacket, although the dress had a low neckline for a nine a.m. appointment. She said she didn’t have any demure necklines, thank you. The outfit was topped by a black hat with a face-obscuring veil. Summer Seasons and Strawberry Crush wore similar outfits, although Joanna had had to drape a black chiffon scarf to muffle the sequined trim on Strawberry’s blouse.
The other two performers, Hearty Burgundy and Sunset Blush, stayed in street clothes. Except for their meticulous eyebrows and manicured nails, they could have been accountants on their way to work downtown.
Marquise had stayed home, but he said he’d be by the phone waiting for a report.
Joanna wore capris, a dark tee shirt, and flat shoes. She had Paul’s picklocks in her wristlet.
They parked the minivan on the street below the funeral home. Gray drizzle muffled the air and clung to the trunks of the chestnut trees.
“Creepy,” Summer said, looking up at the mansion.
“I’ve only seen this place from the street, but you really can’t make out too much beyond the stone fence,” Alexis said. She popped a mint in her shiny pink mouth and offered the tin around the van.
“Ready?” Joanna asked.
At the words, the van’s occupants straightened and their expressions firmed to alertness. “Ready,” Alexis replied.
“You three first.”
Summer opened the van, and three men in drag strutted to the funeral home’s grand front entrance. They were there for VC’s visitation. They’d take care of matters upstairs.
Hearty Burgundy took a final drag from h
is coffee cup. “Now?”
“Let’s wait for the light to go on in the McKinley Room. That’s where VC’s casket is. See that window up there?” After a few minutes, the McKinley Room lit up, and Summer’s form appeared at the front window. “Okay. You’re on.”
The two men stepped down from the van. Joanna watched them disappear into the funeral home. They were here to work out some elaborate pre-planning for the death of their beloved—and fictional—aunt.
Joanna hurried through the drizzle to the funeral home’s family entrance at the rear. This was it, her chance to find the Alaïa and implicate Barry.
With Adele and Barry tied up with the queens, the kitchen should be quiet. She tried the door. Locked, of course. Adele had said they’d had trouble with trespassers looking for a thrill. She unrolled the picklocks from their felt case and went to work on the bolt. As she plied the picklocks, Buffy, the family’s poodle, leapt from his bed in the kitchen corner and watched her.
“Don’t bark, please,” Joanna muttered. She paused, a picklock stuck in the keyhole, to hold one of Gemma’s dog biscuits up to the window. The dog’s stubby tail wagged in reply. “That’s for you if you keep quiet.”
Within a minute, the bolt was open. The door handle took less time than that. Joanna was in. She silently thanked Paul for his patient instruction, then knelt to pet Buffy and hand him the biscuit, which he took to his bed. She stood still a moment and listened. Faint organ music drifted down, but it wasn’t yesterday’s funereal tunes. It was—could it be?—the Village People’s “YMCA.” Closer, a faint murmur of voices droned. Must be from the meeting room.
In other words, the coast was clear.
Joanna knew where VC’s bedroom was, and she’d seen other doors along the basement hall that had to be Adele’s and Barry’s bedrooms. She opened one door to a clawfoot tub and white-tiled floor with blue trim. The bathroom.
The next door on the left opened to Adele’s bedroom. She pulled the door closed behind her. Adele’s bedroom was peaceful as a pictorial in a yoga magazine in the muted oranges and browns of Tibet. A simple, unadorned bed lay toward the window, with a nightstand holding a candle and a handmade earthenware vase with a single branch of apple blossom. Joanna lifted the candle to her nose. Sandalwood. The wood floor was bare but for a shearling rug by the bed. It was so different here than the antiques-laden atmosphere upstairs. Very different, too, from VC’s glam dressing room down the hall. Maybe she needed it that way.
Scratching from the door made Joanna jump before she realized it had to be Buffy wanting to get in. She moved to the door and whispered, “Hush.” The dog stopped pawing.
Joanna reached under the mattress but felt nothing but cool cotton. The nightstand didn’t have a drawer. The closet was empty, too, except for the stately but laid-back dresses and tunics Adele wore, with a neat row of shoes beneath. The vague scent of vetiver wafted from them.
There was nothing here that pointed to VC’s or Roger’s murderer.
Next, she’d try Barry’s room.
Buffy was waiting for her when she opened the door. The dog leapt at her feet, wagging his tail, watching Joanna’s hands to see if she’d produce another dog biscuit. She’d only brought the one.
With Buffy at her heels, Joanna tried the door next to VC’s bedroom. A linen closet. She closed the door silently, then tried the next door. Locked.
Buffy gave a low whimper.
“Sorry, pooch, no more biscuits,” Joanna whispered. She unwrapped the picklocks again, and was in the bedroom in seconds. Man, she was getting good at this. Again, she closed the door behind her. Curtains cut off the dim daylight, so she clicked on the overhead light. Barry’s bedroom—and this had to be it—was at the back of the funeral home. The light wouldn’t be seen by anyone coming to visit.
Unlike his mother and brother’s carefully staged rooms, Barry’s bedroom was simply a place he slept and stored his clothing. It was neat, but impersonal. The bed was tidily made, and a paperback thriller with a bookmark halfway through sat on the nightstand next to a half-full glass of water. Its drawers yielded nothing but tissues and a small flashlight.
Buffy started scratching at the door again. Joanna was tempted to open it, but Barry clearly didn’t let the dog in, and he’d be able to tell if Buffy left fur or jumped on the bed. The scratching was quiet enough that no one upstairs would hear. She hoped.
Joanna crouched to look under the bed and made out a dark, hooked form. Her breathing quickened. She reached out and touched one end, then yanked back her hand. A revolver.
Buffy’s scratching had becoming whining, then short yaps. Joanna shot to her feet. The yaps were now full-fledged barks. Joanna rushed to the door, but it was too late. She heard a voice from down the hall.
23
Getting caught in Barry’s bedroom could be a fatal mistake.
After a final bark, Buffy’s nails skittered down the hall. Almost without thinking, Joanna slipped from the bedroom to the linen closet next door and shut herself in among the lavender-scented sheets and towels. She had to suck in her breath to squeeze the door closed, and her bloodstream barely had enough oxygen to satisfy her racing heart. She closed her eyes and listened.
“Buffy, I have clients upstairs. What are you doing down there? Do you need to go out?”
The dog whined in reply. Joanna knew the dog could easily sniff her in the linen closet. In a second, he could scratch at the closet’s door, and it would open, leaving her face to face with a man with a gun under his bed steps away.
The next few moments felt like hours.
“Come on,” Barry said, finally. “I’ll let you out back, but hurry it up.” His footsteps, accompanied by the clicking of Buffy’s nails, sounded down the hall.
Joanna was lightheaded with relief. Barry had to use the back door in the kitchen, which only gave her seconds to make her escape. She wouldn’t have the chance to search Bo’s bedroom or dressing room—she was getting out of there. When Buffy came back in the house, there was no guarantee he wouldn’t blow her cover.
She hurried down the hall as quickly and silently as she could, to the kitchen where Barry’s black-clad body stood, back to her, in the doorway to the outside. She held her breath as she passed into the stairwell in the kitchen’s corner. Please don’t turn around, she willed him. She made it.
The stairwell, an old service staircase from when the funeral home was a private residence, led up to the main floor where Barry had been meeting with Summer and Strawberry. Joanna had to continue another floor up. Barry would be coming this way in seconds. She moved quickly, barely breathing, praying the stairs wouldn’t squeak.
Heart in her throat, she crouched on the second floor landing and listened. As she’d anticipated, Barry came into the stairway and closed the kitchen door behind him. Hearty Burgundy and Sunset Blush’s voices rose from the ground floor meeting room, and, amazingly, even without Barry, they were arguing about their fictional aunt’s funeral.
“I’m just saying, she wouldn’t want an open casket. You know how vain she is about her looks. She won’t want anyone seeing her looking less than her best,” Hearty Burgundy—easy to identify from his Jersey accent—yelled.
“They’ll make her up. Besides, how are we going to say our goodbyes?” Sunset Blush replied.
Barry’s steps sounded below her. He closed the first floor door, muffling the conversation. Joanna was dizzy with relief.
Other than let Marquise’s girls practice their acting ability and satisfy Joanna’s nosiness, this idea had been a bust. No Alaïa, no nothing. Except the revolver. But Crisp was sure that it was Roger’s gun that killed VC, and they surely held that one as evidence. Carefully, she rose to standing.
She checked her watch. In another ten minutes, the crew would reassemble in the parking lot to leave. She was on the second floor. If she passed through to the hall, past the mansion’s old bedrooms that were now visitation rooms, including the McKinley Room, she might slip down the main stairc
ase and out the front door without being seen.
She opened the door, expecting to be in the hall, but she was in a dark laboratory-like setting with a running fan and a strong smell of formaldehyde. Her eyes widened. The embalming room, had to be. Shoot.
The blinds were drawn, and through slivers of light she made out the room’s features. A long porcelain-enameled table lay near the wall to her left. Thankfully, it lay empty, and the counters lining the wall behind it were tidy, too, with only a stainless steel tray with a box of latex gloves and a few tools that looked curiously like picklocks. On her right was a gurney and another row of shelves. She tiptoed closer. “Dancing Queen,” barely muffled by the fan, drifted in from the McKinley room’s organ next door. Undoubtedly, Summer was at the keyboard. On the shelves were a curling iron and a couple of bottles of hairspray. This had to be where they made up the bodies.
Repelled, Joanna backed up, knocking over a freestanding metal table. She gasped as large glass bottles labeled LyfLyk crashed to the floor, spilling carmine red, rich pink, and flesh-toned liquids across the tile floor. The Mardi Gras waves of color were violent, but nothing compared to the noise that echoed through the tile and stainless steel room. Joanna froze. How would she get out of this one?
The organ music halted, and, at the same time, steps ran up the back stairs. Joanna looked from doorway to doorway, unsure of which way to run—back to the service staircase, or through the embalming room to the hall?
The visitation rooms. That was the best direction. She’d rather face Adele than Barry, and the girls visiting VC in the McKinley Room would help. Trembling, she leapt toward the hall door and felt a foot give way on the cosmetics-slickened floor. She flailed for something to steady her and grabbed the edge of some kind of machinery on a rolling tray just as both doors to the embalming room opened. She crashed to the ground, taking the machinery with her. Pain stabbed her right knee.
Barry stood between her and the backstairs entrance, his face lit with rage. Adele, now backed by three drag queens, stood at the hall entrance. Adele clicked a bank of light switches, and the antiseptic glare of fluorescent light flooded the room.
The Halston Hit Page 14