Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  He led me into the bus and about three-quarters of the way to the back. He’d unbolted one of the seats, leaving a one-foot-by-two-foot opening exposed in the floor. Through the opening, I could see the gravel of his parking lot.

  “Did you have to take the seat out to get to the panel?”

  “Nope. I did that so I’d have room to keep my tools close.” His brow furrowed, and he jutted his chin out at me. “I never knew you to be interested in auto mechanics before. What’s this all about? You’re acting like it means something.”

  I stared through the access panel at the ground. “It does. It means Ronnie Cass left somebody a message before she was killed.”

  Chapter 13

  I PROMISED DIG that I’d explain everything when I returned the car, and then I left. I’d spent too much time with him to begin with, but I’d learned something valuable. A trapdoor meant Ronnie could have been the one to put the teddy bear in the grate under the bus. But why? What message could she possibly have hidden in a small, plush animal?

  I’d barely ever heard of Ronnie before the festival. But she’d brought the divas back together and out of retirement, negotiated an unprecedented festival contract, and then someone had killed her. It couldn’t have to do with their performance. There had to be more at the heart of it. I was going to have to find out more about Ronnie Cassavogli. But first, I had work to do.

  I drove Dig’s loaner car back to Disguise DeLimit and found Kirby refilling the bucket of blue water. His hands and forearms were stained, making him look like he was part Smurf. I added a capful of dye to the bucket while he held it, and then waited inside while he carried it back out front. His mood had improved, though not considerably.

  I’d learned firsthand that when money was no object, fun for rich kids was to try to outdo each other. I wondered if Grady’s brother, Angus, had inherited the same sense of competition and if he saw Kirby as his worthy opponent.

  “Did you mean what you said about helping me with Varla’s birthday?” he asked.

  “Of course I did! And Varla is a creative, so I bet she’d be more impressed with what we can all pull together than with Angus’s money. Ebony will probably help too, if you don’t mind me talking to her about this.”

  “Really?”

  “I don’t see why not. You’re practically part of the family. Do you have any ideas?”

  “I’d like to throw her a party.”

  “How many people? Do you have a guest list?”

  For the first time since I’d returned to the shop, Kirby showed a spark of interest in what might happen. He was a competitor and had led the Proper City Prawns to many a championship while he’d been captain. My pep talk seemed to have worked enough to put him into the same competitive spirit.

  “No, but I can make one. It could be a big party, like the whole school could come. Hey, maybe coach can get permission from the principal to let me use the gymnasium?”

  “Find out as soon as you can. If he says yes, call me and I’ll check it out when I return the loaner car to Dig.”

  “Angus would never think of something like this. He only hangs with the jocks and the cheerleaders. Varla’s friends with everybody. She’s like the only person I know who gets along with all of the cliques: the band kids and the debate club and the jocks.” Kirby jumped up in a swift motion. “This is great, Margo. I wasn’t even going to ask for your help because of the festival and the stuff going on with Don. You’re awesome.”

  My stomach turned slightly at the mention of how many other things were going on in my life, and Kirby’s mention of Don let me know that gossip had spread beyond the border of the festival and the conspiracy crowd. Kirby held out a fist, I made my own, and we knocked knuckles, the eighteen-year-old’s version of a handshake.

  I packed the small Clue bear costumes into shoe boxes, carried them to the Le Sabre, and drove to the festival. When I arrived, I stacked the boxes on a handcart and pulled them to Bobbie’s booth. Joel V. and the mayor stood with her. The mayor had his arms crossed over his chest.

  “Margo!” Bobbie called out when she saw me.

  “Sorry it took so long,” I said. I lined the boxes on the table, opened the flaps, and exposed the costumes. Bobbie grabbed a teddy bear, put a Colonel Mustard costume on it, and then knotted a small yellow ascot around its neck and repeated the process. I grabbed a bear and pulled a tiny Miss Scarlet dress onto its body and then draped a small black lace mantilla over its head.

  “This would go faster if you helped,” Bobbie said to the two men.

  Joel’s face lit up as the photographic possibilities occurred to him. “She’s right. The mayor dressing the bears in costumes? That’s perfect for social media. I’ll get pictures.”

  No sooner did Joel speak the magic words than the mayor grabbed a Mrs. White bear. He set a small white bonnet on top and held the bear next to his face.

  Joel snapped pictures. “Keep working,” he said. “I’ll get some spontaneous shots. Keep it natural.” He moved about us and tapped the screen of his phone. At one point he cleared his throat. When Mayor Young looked at him, Joel patted the tummy of his orange and white striped shirt. The mayor sucked in his gut and resumed dressing the bears.

  “Wait a minute!” Joel said suddenly. “I have an idea.” He turned around and left.

  Without a camera pointed at him, Mayor Young lost the motivation to help. Bobbie and I continued dressing bears since they showed no signs of dressing themselves.

  “How’d you meet up with Joel?” I asked Mayor Young. “He’s not local, right?”

  “He comes highly recommended from some celebrity friends,” he said. He placed a special emphasis on the word “celebrity,” as if running in high-profile circles made him more important. “I’ve been pleased with the job he’s done so far.”

  “What exactly is his job? It can’t be all Instagram and Facebook posts, right?”

  “Oh, no. Joel’s been working with my office to raise the profile of Proper for months now. He came on board long before the festival actually started. Actually, he was the one who had the idea to pull the Domino Divas out of retirement for the festival. Once they signed, he put out stories to the media, teasers about their identity, who they were, what they’d won, all the kind of stuff the press loves. He even leaked a few nuggets about their past to spice things up. They picked up on it right away too. I wasn’t sure, you know, that going with them was the right idea, but Joel convinced me that we were sitting on a gold mine. No pun intended.” He laughed, apparently having made a joke that neither Bobbie nor I got.

  Joel returned with two of the actors from Clue. They oohed and aahed over the bears, and then posed with the mayor while holding their plush mini-me versions. Joel tapped away at his screen, pausing every now and then to wave Bobbie and me out from the background. “This is it,” he said. “Exactly what we need to shift gears and blow this thing up.” He turned around and walked away, head down and thumbs tapping the screen at a rapid rate. I was surprised that he didn’t walk into anybody.

  As soon as the publicity shoot was done, the mayor was too. He tossed a half-dressed bear onto the table and nodded at us. “Get these things set up for sale immediately. What’s your cost?”

  “Five dollars each,” Bobbie said.

  “Charge fifteen and we’ll split the profits,” he said. He thanked the actors each and extended his hand for a shake. Colonel Mustard saluted and Miss Scarlet blew him a kiss. The mayor looked confused for a moment, and then he smiled, nodded, and left. The actors headed back toward the stage, leaving Bobbie and me with the balance of the work.

  “Nice math,” Bobbie said. “I pay for supplies and we split the profits. Two fifty profit for me, seven fifty profit for Proper.” She picked up an armful of bears and moved them to an empty shelf on the bookcase. “If he doesn’t use some of this money to fix the pothole on Main Line Road when this is
done, I’m going to put polyester fiberfill in his gas tank.”

  “Bobbie!”

  Once the bears were dressed, I left Bobbie to her booth and went to see if there was an update on Don’s situation.

  The red and white striped tent had twice as many people out front today as it had yesterday. Most of them were reading Spicy Acorn newspapers. I read the headline over the shoulder of a woman in a Proper City sweatshirt. “Truth Teller Detained: Who’s Keeping Secrets Now?” I bypassed the crowd and went into the booth. My dad stood next to a table of newspapers, handing them out to everybody who came in.

  “I thought Spicy Acorn was going to be a monthly thing?” I asked.

  “Special edition,” he said. “Don called me last night. He’s being held because of this thing with Ronnie.”

  “They can’t think he had anything to do with her murder.”

  “They know there’s a connection between them and he doesn’t want to talk about it.”

  “But that was a long time ago, right? That’s what Ebony said.” My dad nodded. “I still don’t get it. So they dated when they were teenagers. I bet a lot of people around here dated way back. Why’s it so important now? And why does anybody care that the divas reunited? They were a big deal in the late ’60s. I see how that would make them a local novelty act, but why would that sell tickets?”

  He sat down on the brown metal folding chair behind the table and gestured for me to sit on the one in front. “Sit down. This could take a while.” He handed Grady a stack of newspapers. “Take over for a few minutes.”

  Grady pushed the stack back toward my dad. “I’m your financial backer, not your staff.”

  My dad pushed the newspapers back at Grady. “You want to be a newspaperman? You need to learn from the ground up. Handle the crowd out front. I need some privacy.” Grady glanced at me, and then shifted the stack of newspapers from in front of him to his side. He nodded, as if my dad had said something profound, and went to work.

  I rested on the chair inside the booth. My dad sat across from me. He wore a white shirt and black tie under a black suit. A small ID card was clipped to the lapel. The word PRESS was in all caps next to his picture and name. On the bottom, it read: SPICY ACORN: CHEW ON THIS.

  “This is a case of something that happened a long time ago. Most people don’t talk about it around Don, so you wouldn’t have heard it.”

  “Is this about the gold robbery?”

  He nodded. “The story has gotten watered down over the years, but to fully understand what’s happening, you should hear the facts.” He cleared his throat and drank some water from a paper cup. “The last time the divas performed, there was a robbery at the Proper City Savings and Loan. Right across the street from their stage. Rumor had it that the robbers knew about the performance and took advantage of the act—used it as a distraction, so to speak, although some people think the divas might have been in on the whole thing.”

  “I heard the only thing stolen was some gold.”

  “That’s right. It was the first gold that Pete Proper struck when mining.”

  “Where was it kept?”

  “In the lobby of the savings and loan, locked under a case. It was on display for the residents to see when they came in. People used to say that Pete wanted people to feel like their money was safe there, so he put his on display for everybody to see.”

  “How much gold are we talking about?”

  “About the size of a brick.”

  “I don’t know anything about the value of gold,” I said. “Is that a lot?”

  “Back in Pete Proper’s day, that much gold was worth about nineteen dollars.”

  “What would it be worth today?”

  “Close to two million dollars.”

  Chapter 14

  I WHISTLED. TWO million dollars was a lot of money. “Was there any evidence?”

  “There was too much evidence. The interior of the bank looked like someone had dumped the contents of a trash truck on collection day. It took the police weeks to sort through what they found inside the lobby. A surprisingly large amount of it was traced back to residents of Proper—envelopes, receipts, the kinds of things that people throw out without thinking too much about it. Remember, this was 1968. Forensic science wasn’t what you hear about today.”

  “The robbers buried the scene in evidence to hide their own tracks,” I said, understanding the genius behind such a plan. An investigator would be required to bag and tag whatever was found at the scene, just like Detective Nichols had bagged and tagged my phone, the felt circle, and the teddy bear from the sewer grate. The team would waste precious hours sorting through what was found and cataloging everything. If anything could be traced back to someone’s trash, that person would have to answer questions.

  “Did they ever link anybody to the crime?”

  “They found a domino mask among the trash and concluded that one of the divas had been in on the robbery. Their performance was supposed to start at five, and because one of them was late, they didn’t go on until 5:42. The robbery took place at 5:23.”

  “How do you know the exact time?”

  “The clock was unplugged. The cord was torn off and used to tie the doors open. It was one of the only solid pieces of evidence that they had.”

  I crossed my legs and brushed some dirt off of my gold shoe. “Let me guess. The mask they found was blue and the diva who was late was Ronnie.”

  My dad nodded and the two of us grew silent. I didn’t know what he was thinking, but I suspected it was something close to what I was thinking. That it was hard to ignore the fact that Ronnie was murdered before the first performance of the divas since their implication in a bank robbery when they were teenagers.

  “So people think the divas had something to do with the robbery. What does that have to do with Don?” I asked.

  “The day of the robbery was the same day Don proposed. He had the ring in a safe-deposit box at the savings and loan and he took it out that morning. The bank manager confirmed it. That was a sticking point in the investigation: Why did he take it out that day? Did he know something about the robbery? It was suspicious timing.”

  “Don’s a smart guy. If he was going to rob a bank, he wouldn’t make a mistake like that. Besides, if he was going to rob the bank, he’d get his stuff back anyway, right? So why take it out first?”

  “That’s the argument he used, but it didn’t exactly paint him in the most innocent light.”

  “What happened with him and Ronnie?”

  “Speculation about their involvement put a lot of pressure on the relationship. Don wanted to elope, but Ronnie seemed to like the attention. Instead of getting engaged, they broke up. Ronnie left the divas and moved to Las Vegas in search of fame.”

  “As what? A performer?”

  “A personality. She wanted to be a star. It started on the small stage, her telling her story, and then slowly, her audience grew. She used what happened in Proper, turned Don into fodder for her act. She used to sell T-shirts that said ‘My Boyfriend Robbed the Savings and Loan and All I Got Was This Lousy Shirt.’ It practically destroyed his reputation.”

  “What did he do?”

  “Don enlisted in the army and tried to put it behind him. Eventually the story died down. People lost interest in Ronnie when they saw that there wasn’t much more to her act than exaggeration. She moved away for a while. When she moved back, the gossip surrounding her started up again for a whole other reason.”

  “Why, because she’d done something scandalous when she was in Vegas?”

  “Depends on your definition of scandalous. When she moved back to Proper City, she was Mrs. Wharton Young.”

  Chapter 15

  “RONNIE WAS MARRIED to the mayor?” I asked.

  He nodded. “It was a short-lived marriage. I don’t know the details. Back then, there were lot
s of rumors around town, but Don distanced himself from it all. And as his friend, I thought it was better to ignore the gossip instead of participating in it.”

  “But you must know something,” I said.

  My dad was quiet for a few seconds. He picked up a stack of newspapers, flipped the top one around so it was facing the same direction as the others, and then lined up the edges. When the stack was neat, he set it back down on the table in front of him. He’d never been overly concerned with neatness, so I knew it wasn’t a compulsion toward right angles that made him straighten the pile, but he was conflicted. His loyalties were toward Don, but whatever had happened all those years ago might be threatening Don’s freedom today.

  After close to a full minute of silence, he spoke. “They split up. Ronnie did her thing in Vegas, and Don enlisted in the army. It got to the point where it seemed as though she and Don had wanted different things all along. She was driven toward a level of notoriety and fame that he didn’t understand, and he pulled away from everybody except for his closest friends. He grew suspicious about a lot of what was happening around him.”

  “Don was always suspicious though, right? I mean, he’s a conspiracy theorist. That’s his nature. He didn’t just wake up one day and say, ‘Hey, maybe the world really is flat and the government’s been lying to us all along.’”

  “He always had a curious side. That’s why we got along so well. We liked to question what we were told. But that was the defining year for him. Maybe, in a way, it’s easier to believe in a vast conspiracy against the public than to believe that some people are inherently evil. Before the robbery, Ronnie was a good foil for Don. She laughed off his theories but accepted that he questioned everything. They complemented each other. I think a part of him believed that if someone like her could see him as he was and still love him, maybe he needed to let go of some of his suspicions and start trusting the world.”