Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  Chet handed her the bear. “I bet some kid was playing a prank and swiped him when you weren’t looking.”

  Bobbie took the bear and tucked him into a vacant spot on the bookcase. Chet was doing a poor job of hiding the fact that he was staring at my outfit. “You any good?” he asked.

  “With what?”

  “Tennis. My wife and I used to play doubles but she lost interest. I could use a new partner.”

  “I don’t play tennis,” I said. “I just like the outfit.”

  “Huh.” He turned back to Bobbie. “Well, Bobbie, you take care. I’d better go find my wife. She’s probably mad that I missed her performance, but nothing I could do about getting stuck at the hospital.”

  “Your wife is a diva? Wait, are you married to Jayne Lemming?” I asked.

  “Last time I checked.” He chuckled, as if he’d said something funny. “You know where I can find her?”

  “I haven’t seen her for a while,” I answered honestly. I glanced at Bobbie, who was busy spreading out the remaining undamaged bears on the bookcase. “She probably went home. Did you already check there?”

  “No, I came straight here from work, thought maybe I could catch the tail end of their performance. I guess that’s life. If you see her, let her know I was here.”

  “Sure,” I said. I put my hand on Bobbie’s arm to keep her quiet until I was sure he had left.

  “Why didn’t you tell him about Ronnie or about why the divas weren’t performing?” Bobbie asked. “When she tells him, he’s going to wonder why you didn’t.”

  I held up a finger to silence her. “Hand me the bear he was carrying.” She picked the bear off the bookcase and held him out. I took him and tipped his head.

  “What’s wrong? Chet said he found this bear on a table out front. You don’t believe him, do you?”

  “This is the bear I saw in Ronnie’s trailer.”

  “How can you tell?”

  “The red stitching by his neck is loose, see?” I turned the bear and showed her. “The stuffing is coming out.”

  Bobbie took the bear and thumbed at the torn threads. “How did Chet get it?”

  “I don’t know, but it sure seems like Jayne’s husband was inside Ronnie’s trailer after she was murdered.”

  * * *

  IT had been a long day. I helped Bobbie secure her booth and we went our separate directions. In place of the patrons who had come to see the opening performance were security personnel, dressed in blue T-shirts, yellow reflective mesh vests, and baggy khaki cargo shorts. A few wore baseball hats with a patch depicting a pair of black-and-white dominos on the front. The security guards milled around, holding flashlights and walkie-talkies newer than the one I’d seen Ebony using earlier that day. For the next eight hours or so, the park would be in their hands.

  I drove my Vespa scooter back to Disguise DeLimit. A small Winnebago was parked out front. I pulled up behind it and knocked on the back door. When there was no answer, I drove around back and parked in the space by the door.

  Disguise DeLimit was a two-story building: the first floor being the store and the second being where I lived. The separation between the two often blurred, especially when I forgot to close the door at the top of the stairs, letting my cat, Soot, have the run of the shop. I found him curled up on a black velvet cape that was lined in red satin. Just as well. Nobody rented the Dracula costume in May.

  Costumes filled the walls and racks of the store. Accompanying props sat in adjacent bookcases and shelves. Colorful wigs lined an upper shelf next to a whimsical hat assortment. On the left side of the store—the right if you were entering from the customer entrance on the street—was a chrome fixture filled with bright, fluffy ostrich and marabou feather boas like the one I’d seen on the floor in Ronnie’s trailer. In addition to the occasional gangster and moll parties that were a favorite any time of the year, the boas sold well during prom season. The rack was picked over, and I suspected that more than one high schooler had helped deplete our stock.

  In the year since I’d been in charge of the store, I’d made a few minor adjustments here and there. I’d created a five-dollars-or-less wall for off-season accessories and wired speakers close to the ceiling so I could play music that coordinated with whatever it was I was promoting at the time. I’d painted over the costume ads that had been glued to the walls in the dressing rooms and turned the small spaces into themes: clown dressing room, western dressing room, gangster dressing room, fifties dressing room. I mounted small buckets next to the mirror in each room and filled them with props that were no longer in sellable condition. People could play dress-up behind the velvet curtain, deciding what it was they wanted, and then come find me to locate the very same item in stock so they could buy it.

  I found a note from Kirby, my part-time employee, on the counter.

  Margo—

  It was a good day. We’re running low on boas and bow ties, both because of prom. Varla’s going to drop off the backdrop for the window tomorrow.

  Kirby

  PS: Remember I have a swim meet tomorrow.

  PPS: I have to talk to you about something.

  I left the note next to the register and yelled upstairs. “Dad? I’m home. Are you up there?”

  “In the kitchen,” he said.

  I climbed the stairs. Dad and Don sat at the 1950s Formica-and-chrome kitchen table that Dad had acquired on one of his scouting trips. He was supposed to focus on costumes, but frequently got distracted by anything free.

  “We’re on a roll,” he said. “Do you mind if we keep working here? Or are you expecting company?”

  “Stay as long as you want. Your bed has to be more comfortable than the bed in the Winnebago.”

  My dad stood. “Margo, you and I have an agreement. Now that you’re back in Proper City, I don’t want you to feel like I’m crimping your style.”

  “Besides, we’re taking the Winnie to Moxie,” Don said. Moxie was a town about an hour to the northwest of Proper. “There’s a meteor shower expected tonight, and we all know that meteor showers are just a thinly veiled diversion for known alien activity. I even bought an Orion SpaceProbe Equatorial Reflector telescope so we can see the buggers clearly.”

  “So you expect people to believe you just because you said you saw them?”

  “Don’t be silly,” my dad said. “We’ve spent the past week rigging a camera to the telescope so we can capture images. With any luck we’ll have next month’s Spicy Acorn cover story before we turn in for the night.”

  “Carry on,” I said, “and tell Mulder I said hi.” I helped myself to a handful of sunflower seeds from the bowl on the table in front of them and then took a shower. By the time I was done, the staff of Spicy Acorn had left the building.

  I headed downstairs and worked on filling our inventory. About twenty minutes into my project, there was a knock on the front door. We were long past regular store hours, but curiosity got the better of me. I pulled the bottom of the retractable shade that covered the front door. A pretty girl with long, straight black hair and a thick sheaf of bangs stood on the other side next to a tall panel of cardboard.

  I unlocked the door. “Hi, Varla, come on in.”

  “I’m sorry it’s so late,” she said. “Is Kirby here?”

  “He left a few hours ago,” I said. She seemed relieved, though I didn’t know why.

  Varla was dressed in her uniform of black. Tonight it was a V-neck T-shirt, skinny jeans, and a thick belt that cinched in her waist. A silver chain with a heart decorated her neck. I studied her face, unsure if she’d been hoping to see him or hoping to avoid him. “Is that the backdrop for the window?”

  “Yes, I finished it this afternoon, but it had to dry.” She leaned the cardboard against a rack of pinstriped suits and unfolded each side to reveal a giant Sorry! game board. “What do you think?”
>
  “Another masterpiece,” I said.

  “Great,” she said. She looked around the interior again. “I, um, I’m going to need a special dress for, um, a date,” she said. “Do you think I can look around while the store is closed?”

  “Sure,” I said. I was starting to understand why she’d asked about Kirby, why she’d shown up after his shift, and most of all, why Kirby said he had to talk to me about “something.”

  Varla wandered the store for about ten minutes, pausing by the eighties rack of big-shouldered suits. She looked at two and put them back, and then picked up a vinyl miniskirt with a race car printed on the front.

  “Are you shopping for something in particular?” I called out to her.

  “I’m not exactly sure what I’m shopping for.” She put the skirt back on the rack. “But thanks for letting me look.” She tucked her long black hair behind her ears and started out the door. “Um, Margo? Don’t tell Kirby that I was looking at dresses, okay?” she said. After I agreed, she left.

  There’s only so much distraction you can get from unpacking a box of feather boas. Even Soot, who normally could entertain himself for hours with the colorful items, sat stoically by the end of the rack, staring at me as if waiting for me to talk. I did some of my best talking with Soot. He was a patient, understanding listener and, usually, allowed me to reach my own conclusions in good time.

  “How was your day?” I asked. He kept one eye open but didn’t answer me. “Mine wasn’t good. You know Ronnie Cass? She’s one of the Double Ds.” I scooped him up and ran my left hand over his gray fur while my right arm cradled him. “She’s dead. Somebody broke into her trailer and murdered her.”

  As if he recognized that I wasn’t just talking about the weather, Soot settled into my arm and started to purr. I rubbed between his ears a little more and then ran my hand over his belly fur. He wriggled around, kicking his feet in the air, until he’d turned himself over and draped his arms over my shoulder. He jumped from my arms and swatted at a stray feather. Seconds later, already bored by the toy, he lowered himself to the ground, put his paws out in front of him, and rested his head on them. For a second I thought he was going to close his eyes and go to sleep, but he kept watching me.

  “She was at the rehearsal at four—well, she was late, but apparently she’s late all the time. But then when she didn’t show for the performance at seven, I went looking for her and found her in her trailer across the street from the festival. That means somebody killed her in her trailer in broad daylight. What does that say about Proper City?”

  I’d been so caught up telling Soot about Ronnie that I’d lost track of the boa display. When I stopped talking, I saw that I’d overfilled the rack. Instead of colors dangling easily, the feathers were squished together. After a few customers flipped through the rack, the feathers would get twisted together, and then tear out when someone tried to separate them. I couldn’t leave it like this.

  I went to the stockroom and assembled a second rack out of chrome components. Kirby had mentioned that the boas were selling well because of prom. No reason we couldn’t maximize that with a boosted display and a promotional price. I rolled the new rack back to the store, moved the pink, white, and turquoise boas to it, and spread the green, orange, black, and yellow out on the original rack. I’d make a sign in the morning and roll one out front. When I was done, I collected the empty plastic cellophane wrappers that had fallen to the floor and carried them to the trash can. On top of the trash was a copy of my dad and Don’s conspiracy newspaper. They’d made notes about the layout and corrections in red marker. After the acorn recipe was an article that suggested the greeting card industry was really a front for the defense department. If this was the kind of hard-hitting news they were planning on reporting, we’d all be safe. I folded the papers together and tossed them back in the trash. That’s when I noticed the writing on the backside. Ronnie C. Saturday, followed by a telephone number.

  The handwriting was Don’s.

  Chapter 6

  THERE VERY WELL may have been another Ronnie C. in Proper City, but the coincidence of this saying Saturday and Ronnie being murdered on Saturday was too much. I cringed internally at the thought that Don wanted to turn the murder into an article for their burgeoning paper. He had to have more class than that. Didn’t he?

  I pulled the pages out of the trash and carried them upstairs. I’d talk to him about this when he got back from Moxie. The last thing I remember thinking was this: What possible conspiracy could Don think was tied to Ronnie’s murder?

  * * *

  THE next morning, I woke to the sound of Ebony’s voice. “Margo! Girl, where are you?”

  The sleep fog slid from my brain and I threw back the covers. Sunlight sparkled through the window, landing on a purple velvet pimp suit I’d worn last week and never rehung.

  “Up here,” I said.

  Ebony had seen me in my pajamas before, so I didn’t bother trying to change out of them for her sake. By the time she joined me in the kitchen—with her bichon frise, Ivory, tucked under her arm—I’d put a half cup of blueberries, a scoop of vanilla yogurt, and a banana into the blender. I added some almond milk and hit liquefy. Ebony set Ivory on the floor and he immediately chased Soot into the hallway. Ebony’s lips moved, but I couldn’t hear what she had to say.

  “What?” I asked when I turned the blender off. I poured the contents into two tall glasses and handed her one. She pulled a brown bottle out of her pocket, unscrewed the top, and squeezed an eyedropper of something into her smoothie. “B-12. For stress. You want some?”

  “No thanks.”

  Ebony found a spoon in a drawer and swirled the supplement into her smoothie. “What are you doing in your pajamas? It’s after nine.”

  “It won’t take me long to get ready. What’s up?”

  “This festival. The whole thing is spiraling outta control. It’s like that publicist unleashed a family of squirrels around a support group for people with attention deficit disorder. Now I’m dealing with live-tweeting and Instagramming and Facebook updates—all in the form of a festival scavenger hunt that doesn’t exist. Who said I could implement a scavenger hunt in addition to everything else? And do you know that flowered freak set up a selfie station? Complete with a festival backdrop. With dominos printed all over it. Now I gotta invent half a dozen things to keep people from thinking about the fact that one of those Domino Divas died. What a world we’re living in.” She reached up and took hold of the gold medallion she wore around her neck. Her thumb ran back and forth over the surface in a spot that was shinier than the rest. Ebony had been rubbing her medallion for luck for as long as I could remember.

  “Do you have another act lined up to take over the entertainment?”

  “Exactly how many local acts are named after board games? Go on. Take a guess. And if you can come up with more than one, eliminate any that don’t include the word ‘domino.’”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  She didn’t answer, at least not out loud. She tipped her head and looked down at my hips, and then tipped her head to the other side and pursed her lips. “What are you looking at? Ebony, why are you here?”

  “You’re about her size,” she said.

  It took only a moment to realize what she was about to suggest. I set my glass on the counter and crossed my arms over my pajamas. “Oh, no. I’m not taking her place. That’s weird. And wrong. And I’m not a sixty-eight-year-old dancer.”

  “You got to help me out here,” she said. “The mayor is breathing down my neck.”

  “Think about what you’re asking me to do.

  “I’m asking you to put on a costume. You wear some kind of costume every single day. If you hadn’t told me you were still in your pajamas, I might have thought that was what you were planning to wear today.”

  “I don’t wear pajamas in public.”


  She acted like I hadn’t said anything. “True, you’d have to make your costume, since Ronnie, well, took hers to the great dance floor in the sky, but you can do that in no time.”

  “It’s not right on so many levels. It’s icky.”

  Ebony put her hands on her hips. Today she wore a cropped black sleeveless top covered in suede fringes. Soot and Ivory ran out of the bedroom, through the kitchen, and down the stairs. Ebony’s stare never left my face. “If you wanted a job as an office assistant and another office assistant died and somebody offered you the job, would you turn it down because it was ‘icky’?”

  “I’m not an office assistant and it’s not the same thing. She was murdered, Ebony. Somebody killed her in her trailer while she was getting ready for her performance. Why?”

  “Aha!” Ebony said, pointing her finger at me. “I knew it. You’re not going to just walk away from this. You want to be involved.”

  “I should walk away from it. Murder is dangerous business. I should not get involved, and I should let the police investigate it and do their jobs.” It was like we’d temporarily traded places.

  “I agree with everything you just said. Stepping into the routine in Ronnie’s place is you helping me out when I really need it. It’s not you being involved in her murder investigation. In fact, it’s probably safer than you being involved in her investigation because you’ll have to practice with the divas, and between working in the store and performing, you won’t have any time to get into trouble. So?”

  I looked away from her and my eyes landed on the Spicy Acorn newspaper I’d found in the trash. If I was involved in the routine, I’d know if Don tried to talk to the rest of the divas and exploit the murder in the name of conspiracy. I’d also be able to keep an eye on Jayne Lemming and, therefore, her husband, Chet, who found the teddy bear from Ronnie’s trailer.