Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  Joel V. seemed as good a candidate as any to tell the crowd the news. He was on the city payroll and, as far as I was concerned, publicity included damage control. No doubt he’d be better at it than I would be.

  “The divas have to cancel their performance. One of them was”—at the last minute, I decided the details could fall to Detective Nichols—“is dead. That’s why she’s not here. There’s been some tension among the troupe for the past few days, and I think it’s best that you tell them first and then make an announcement to the crowd.”

  “Better idea. You tell the divas. I need thirty seconds to spin this. Go.”

  He didn’t give me a push, but he might as well have. It was clear that I was to do part one of the dirty work if I expected him to do the rest.

  I found the remaining five women behind the stage. Green Mask and Yellow Mask were on the ground, legs stretched out in front of them. They faced each other, feet to feet, and stretched in tandem: one leaning backward while the other leaned forward. Switch. Purple and Orange stood off to the side, talking on their cell phones. Pink Mask paced back and forth. When she saw me, she balled her fists up and approached me.

  “Where is she?” she asked.

  “Jayne?” I asked, trying to remember who was which color. With her short black wig, heavy application of stage makeup, and scrunched up forehead and eyebrows, she looked like Tinker Bell after a day with Cleopatra’s stylist.

  She pulled her mask down. “She is dead to me. Officially. I told her if she messed this up, I would never speak to her again.”

  I reached out to her, more to shock her into silence than anything else. I didn’t know how to tell her what had to be said, but there wasn’t time to mince words. “Ronnie is dead,” I said.

  “That’s what I said. She’s dead to me, she’s dead to the divas. She never cared about us, only herself. And after what she put us through to make this happen, it’s over. I’ve given her too many chances to turn things around.”

  “No, Jayne, listen to me.” I reached out and took her other hand in mine. She tried to pull away, but I tightened my grip and forced her to look at my face. “Ronnie was murdered. In her trailer. That’s why she isn’t here.”

  Whether or not Jayne was predisposed to believe me would never be known, because at that very moment, Joel V. took the stage. “Good evening,” he said, his voice came out amplified by a microphone. “You are a lovely and patient crowd, and on behalf of the City of Proper, we thank you for that. For being both lovely and for being patient. I know you’re waiting to see the Domino Divas. I regret to inform you that they will not be making their scheduled appearance on stage this evening.”

  Green and Yellow stopped stretching and looked up at Jayne. She looked at me. I looked at the stage.

  “To make up for this unforeseen blip in our kickoff festivities, I’d like to offer everyone here a twenty-five-dollar food and beverage credit to the festival.”

  A ripple ran through the crowd, though, without seeing them, it was hard to gauge if it was annoyance, excitement, or something else. I didn’t realize that I was still holding Jayne’s wrists. I released my grip. She stumbled backward. One hand flew to her forehead. “You’re telling the truth. She’s dead. She’s—she’s dead? Ronnie’s dead?” Her eyes grew wide and tears filled them, spilling down her heavily pancaked cheeks. Droplets of makeup—foundation, blush, mascara—swirled together and landed on the domino costume, leaving a stained spot of a cloudy mauve shade on the white fabric. She swayed again and then fell to the ground.

  I rushed to where she’d fallen and put my arm under her head. “Jayne,” I said repeatedly.

  Green and Yellow ran over. Green unscrewed the top of a nearby plastic water bottle with the Domino Divas logo on it. She threw the contents on Jayne’s face. Before I could admonish her for her insensitive actions, Jayne sputtered, shook her head a few times, squeezed her eyes shut and then open, and sat up. Additional streaks of makeup spidered down her cheeks.

  Jayne looked at the woman. “Thank you,” she said. She pushed herself up to a sitting position and then stood. I followed suit. She wiped her face with the back of her sleeve, smearing what was left of her makeup. “Ladies, it’s time for a team meeting. Let’s go.” She left the tent and the rest of the divas followed.

  I stood by myself backstage. What had just happened? Joel V. had bought the crowd’s forgiveness with a snack bar credit and had announced—something. I’d missed the second half of his statement when Jayne collapsed. She’d been so overwhelmed by the news of Ronnie’s murder that she appeared to faint, at least until she came back to consciousness and led the divas away like the leader of their cult. For a woman on the verge of passing out, she’d pulled herself together rather quickly.

  I moved closer to the curtain that separated the backstage from the front and peeked out from between the heavy velvet drapery. The crowd had thinned to the point of empty. A few people stayed behind, resting on the benches, talking among themselves, but by and large their attention had moved on.

  Joel’s strategy had worked. Nobody seemed overly concerned that the show had been canceled even though that’s the precise reason they’d been seated in front of the stage. But for as successful as Joel V. had been, he couldn’t change the irrefutable fact that a member of the headlining act had been murdered. Tonight, festival patrons could remain ignorant and enjoy themselves until the booths packed up. Tomorrow, they’d learn the truth of the matter and wonder at the inappropriateness of allowing them to spend their money on game-themed trinkets when a tragedy had taken place so close.

  I exited from backstage and crossed the small patch of grass between the stage and Bobbie’s booth. Regardless of what had happened, I knew I could count on Bobbie to be levelheaded and calm. It was only after I reached her booth that I realized my hands and knees were shaking from everything that had happened since finding Ronnie’s body. I found a white plastic folding chair next to one of the bookcases lined with bears and fell into it—the chair, not the bookcase.

  “Bobbie?” I called. “Are you here?” I tipped my head backward and stared at the seams that made up the tent ceiling. “You would not believe what happened today,” I said. Deep inside the tent, behind the bookcases, I heard Bobbie curse.

  Bobbie Kay was not known to curse.

  I found her kneeling on the ground by a shelf of teddy bears. Two of the bears had their heads torn off. Bobbie looked up at me. She had a bear head in each hand, like Shaquille O’Neal palming a pair of basketballs. “There’s only one type of person who tears the heads off of teddy bears: an evil one. I’m going to report this. Somebody is going down.”

  “Bobbie, wait.”

  “For what? There’s a crazy person running around the festival. Who knows what else they’ll do? Trash the snack bar or vandalize the restaurant booths?”

  “Or commit murder,” I said.

  “I don’t think it’s that bad, but Mayor Young should know.”

  “Ronnie Cass was murdered,” I said. “And Mayor Young does know. That’s why he canceled the performance.”

  Bobbie released the bear heads. They dropped to the grass and rolled toward my sneakers. I scooped the heads up, sat cross-legged, and rested them and their fur bodies on my thighs.

  “When the divas couldn’t find her, you went to their trailer,” she said.

  I nodded. “That’s where I found her. I spoke to Detective Nichols about it and then came back here to tell Mayor Young that the show had to be canceled.”

  Bobbie sat back against the bookcase. I shifted my weight and sat next to her with my bare legs straight out in front of me. We were roughly the same height, and our feet—hers shod in her signature Tretorns, mine in K-Swiss to go with the tennis outfit—lined up next to each other.

  “Earlier today I talked to Ronnie at her trailer. She was in a crappy mood, but maybe that’s because Jayne sla
pped her after their rehearsal. That’s the last time anybody saw her alive.”

  “Ronnie was no princess,” Bobbie said. “She’s always making fun of my nonprofit. There have been times I wanted to slap her myself.” She picked up one of the bear heads off of my knee and stared into his face. “But she didn’t deserve to die.”

  “She had one of your bears,” I said.

  “Ronnie never bought a bear from me. She’s always saying they’re stupid and that women my age shouldn’t be playing with toys.”

  I adjusted the teddy bear head that was on my thigh. “Can you believe Mayor Young isn’t going to cancel the festival? He said there’s been too much invested into promoting it and since the murder happened in the trailer, which was parked across the street, it won’t affect the proceedings. Except for the fact that now there’s no headlining act.”

  “He’s going to ignore Ronnie’s murder?”

  “That’s the impression I got,” I said. I forgot for a moment that I was resting against a canvas wall and leaned back. My weight threw the whole tent off-center. I leaned forward, eyes wide, arms out, hoping none of the bear-laden bookcases would tip. A few swayed, but none fell to the ground. I relaxed my arms and slumped forward. “He’s a typical politician. He should have made a public statement and canceled this whole thing.”

  “A lot of businesses would be out a lot of money if he did. Think about what it takes for them to make the arrangements to run their businesses and also staff booths here while the festival runs. Just yesterday I saw Catch-22 moving in equipment. This year they’re serving scallops.”

  “I know. I sampled some earlier today.”

  “They’re serving them on checkerboards. Imagine the investment in their setup and food prep, and then add in custom checkerboards in bulk so they could fit the festival theme. The exposure to somebody like them is huge. The mayor promised every business a crowd like they’ve never seen, and he got the highest participation rate ever.”

  “His publicist offered the audience a twenty-five-dollar festival food credit. Will that help offset any loss of income for the vendors?”

  “Probably not. I bet he’ll tell the vendors they have to comp it.”

  “How do you know so much about the vendor agreements?’

  Bobbie pulled her knees up to her chest and rested her head against them. “Because I had to deal with the mayor myself. The only way I could be a part of the festival was if I donated teddy bears as giveaways. Publicity for me, added value, and something to add to his press release.”

  I shook my head. “I wish Mayor Young would get over his obsession with giving Proper City national exposure. After what happened at Halloween, he should have accepted that we weren’t destined for rapid growth and big-city problems. Why’d he want to be our mayor anyway? We’re a small town of people who like to throw costume parties. We’re not exactly a metropolis.”

  Several months ago, a developer had worked behind the scenes to change the zoning of Proper City so he could turn it into the next hipster vacation spot. The mayor’s office had green-lighted his plans—overlooking important issues that put the town in danger—all in the name of growth of the taxpayer base.

  It was an ongoing issue with the Proper City town leaders. Our residents were made up of two disparate segments that could be boiled down to the haves and the have-nots. Wealthy residents had moved to Proper City to avoid the expensive state taxes of living in California. Many of them established their wealth through the lucrative casinos in nearby Las Vegas. The city planners responded to the needs of this growing wealthy community by wooing upscale restaurants to open within the boundaries of our tax base. Occasionally talk of a light rail resurfaced, but nobody believed Proper City would warrant a stop on a futuristic transportation system designed to shuttle people between nearby cosmopolitan cities.

  “I think Mayor Young’s plan is to build his platform with us and then move on up the political ladder. First stop: Proper. Final destination: the White House. Make him an Abe Lincoln costume and call it a day,” said Bobbie.

  The thought of Mayor Young in an Abe Lincoln costume caught me off guard and I laughed. But then, the idea of someone from Proper as the president was funny too, for more reasons than one.

  Proper City had been founded in the late 1800s by a prospector named Pete Proper. In his zeal to strike gold before the rest of the miners who were looking for it too, he struck a deal with the big man upstairs: if he found it first, he’d give up all of his vices. He did, and he did. Pete left the ladies, the gambling, and the moonshine behind and established a town for other like-minded individuals.

  Proper City quickly became known for clean, family living until Pete died in 1930. Word spread quickly, and the people who’d gotten rich off the vices that Pete renounced came back and brought their scofflaw friends with them. We were close enough to the California/Nevada state border to attract criminals who wanted an easy way to escape California jurisdiction. Families who’d hoped to put down roots packed up and left. Proper City started a slow decline for the next twenty years.

  But tides turn, and during the boon of the fifties, the Clark County city council announced plans to breathe new life into what was left of Proper. Small, single-family houses popped up like dandelions along streets that were named after storybook characters. Tax incentives were offered to families eager to find affordable housing. Development included the bare necessities of a town looking to grow: a library, a post office, and a grocery store. Soon, a string of mom-and-pop stores opened along the main road. Some made it work, others folded quickly, turning their property over to the next tenant with a product and a dream.

  The thing about making up a town that looked like something out of Grimm’s Fairy Tales was that it was never able to shake the element of make-believe. Families started throwing theme parties based on where they lived: Christopher Robin Crossing, Rapunzel Road, and Thumbelina Thircle. That’s exactly what it said on the street sign and on official road maps: Thumbelina Thircle. It was a pocket of houses built around a circular cul-de-sac. Apparently thumbody in thity planning had a thenth of humor.

  Theme parties soon became costume parties, and thus, Disguise DeLimit was born. My dad, who had started working at the store as a stock boy, saved up his earnings and eventually bought the business from the original owners. Soon after, he met my mom and they fell in love. Their own dream of raising a family and running the store was shattered when she died while giving birth to me. I never knew her. After school, I’d moved away to Las Vegas for several years but came back after my dad’s heart attack. Now it’s just me, my dad, and Soot, my cranky cat, head of the anti-mouse division of the store.

  Personally, I loved the town of Proper. I loved working in a store that made costumes that encouraged people to have fun and play dress-up. But as popular as those pictures were on our city’s website, I suspected they’d undermine the agenda of a mediocre mayor with political aspirations.

  The urgency of getting everything ready for the opening performance had vanished with the reality of Ronnie Cass’s murder, and even though the mayor expected us to carry on, I felt as though something was out of order. I sensed that Bobbie felt it too. For the first time in a week, she ignored the tasks that had to be done.

  Bobbie took the other bear head from me and collected the bear bodies. “No matter how much time and effort I put in to him, he’s never going to be the same as he was. Should I give up and move on?”

  I wanted to lie and say that he’d be perfect, but that was the thing about reality. You learned that sometimes there was no light at the end of the tunnel.

  Before I could think of something to say to console her, the front flaps to the booth pulled open and a man dressed in powder blue scrubs came inside.

  “Bobbie,” he said, apparently startled to recognize her in the booth. “I didn’t mean to eavesdrop, but I couldn’t help overhear your conver
sation. I don’t know who you’re talking about, but people are people. They deserve to be treated like humans, not like something you’re willing to throw out with the trash.”

  Bobbie stood up and I followed. “We weren’t talking about a person,” she said. “We were talking about—” I grabbed her arm and gave it a tug. She looked at me and then her eyes followed mine to the object in the man’s hand. It was the teddy bear that had been sitting on the table inside Ronnie’s trailer.

  Chapter 5

  “IT’S OKAY. THAT must have sounded funny.” She stood up. “Dr. Lemming, this is Margo Tamblyn.”

  He looked back and forth between our faces and then held out his hand. “Call me Chet,” he said.

  I knew from experience that costumes and uniforms could change the first impressions that people formed, and Chet’s scrubs had that effect on me. A small plastic ID card was clipped to the bottom of his top. DR. CHET LEMMING, it read. He had short salt-and-pepper hair. It was neatly trimmed into a style that parted on the side and dusted his forehead. Short, one-inch sideburns defined his face further.

  He smiled, a grin too broad for a first meeting where he’d kicked things off with a lecture about how to treat people. I felt like he was going for “good-guy doctor,” but instead, the vibe I got was “sleazeball.”

  “Where did you get that?” I asked.

  “What, this?” He looked down at the bear in his hand. “I found him out there on one of the tables. Figured some little kid dropped him. I was on my way to lost and found.” He looked up and, for the first time, seemed to take in the bookcases filled with similar bears that lined the walls of the tent. “What is this place? Some kind of stuffed animal factory?”

  “These are the bears I sell to raise money for charity,” Bobbie said. “Somebody came in here earlier and damaged a couple. They might have taken that one, I don’t know. I didn’t see it happen.”