Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  “I told you I wanted answers about Ronnie’s murder.”

  “So, what? You falsified documents and sent them to me and then set up this meeting, for what purpose? What could you possibly get out of this?”

  “I didn’t falsify documents. Everything I sent you was real. All my life I thought she was the worst mother ever. What people said about her. But somebody murdered her. And then I found those papers and realized maybe it was all a lie, maybe the rumors weren’t true. There wasn’t any gold, so she couldn’t have stolen it. Maybe she knew something and was trying to make it right and somebody didn’t like that.”

  “Where did you find the documents?”

  “Ronnie gave me a box of junk and the stuff I sent you was in the bottom under some old yearbooks.”

  We stood in the lot, face-to-face. Gina’s hair was flat from being under the baseball hat. She wasn’t wearing her usual full face of makeup, and a small red welt marked her right cheek. She caught me staring at it and put her fingertips to the flesh as if to hide it. Too late.

  “You were the one at the final rehearsal. You dressed up like a Domino Diva to practice. You’re the one Jayne slapped.”

  “That slap was the best thing that happened that day. No way anybody would question whether or not I was Ronnie after that.”

  “But where’d you get the costume? I only made enough for the divas and Ronnie had hers on when I found her.”

  “Like it’s hard to make a domino costume. It’s squares and circles, Margo. I’m not an idiot.”

  “But that was the day—”

  “I know.” She bent forward, put both hands up in front of her face, and started to cry.

  The last thing I’d been prepared for was consoling Gina, but despite her ongoing attitude problem with me, tonight her grief was real. I put my hand on her shoulder to comfort her. She shrugged it off. I put it back. Behind me, a car pulled down the ramp of the garage and drove closer. I didn’t need to look up to know it was Tak.

  He parked in the space next to the discarded tarp and got out. “Gina, get into Tak’s car. We need to talk.” I guided her to the door and opened it. Tak put the tarp back over her convertible and then the three of us drove away.

  * * *

  TAK parked alongside the curb to the back entrance of the PCP. The sun had dropped below the horizon while we were at Catch-22. Twilight had vanished, leaving us in a cloak of darkness pierced by the occasional streetlamp. Gina looked at Tak then at me, then back at Tak. “What are we doing here?”

  “We’re talking. And when we’re done talking,” he said, moving his index finger back and forth from her, me, and him, “we’re probably going to the police department to talk some more.”

  “I never agreed to that,” Gina and I said at the same time.

  Tak looked at me with an it’s-the-right-thing look and then focused on Gina. “You agreed to talk to Margo,” he said. “You all but summoned her. Why?”

  She turned to me. “I told you to come alone.”

  “I’m not that stupid,” I said.

  She took a deep breath and then exhaled dramatically, as if she were on stage and needed to be heard by the back row. Again, the resemblance between her and her mother shone through.

  “Come on,” I said. “The police station is only a couple of blocks away.”

  * * *

  THE Proper City Police Department was housed in a sweet little building, white siding with light blue trim and a navy blue awning. If you relocated it to the woods and covered it with gumdrops, it would make a nice getaway for Hansel and Gretel. As I thought about how that story had ended for the children, I questioned the fact that I was going there voluntarily.

  The word POLICE had been stenciled in white paint above the door and on the side wall that faced Main Line Road. A dark blue throw rug sat in front of the door. Since the last time I’d been here, a small cast-iron wiener-dog-shaped door stopper had been set to the right of the entrance.

  Detective Nichols was waiting for us when we arrived. She held the door open and led us to a round table to the right side of the main desk. The lights by the main desk were off, making it difficult to see the interior. A fresh pot of coffee sat on the console. She poured two and handed one to Gina. I found a watercooler in the corner and filled a small paper cup for myself.

  “Who’s going first?” Detective Nichols asked.

  Gina looked miserable. Her eyes were puffy and red and the welt on her cheek stood out like it had been drawn on with a marker, a small purplish oval of skin with a tail after it, like an apostrophe turned on its side. She reached up and pulled her hair back, and then twisted it around her finger several times until she achieved a thick mane that could hang over one shoulder.

  “Six months ago Ronnie incorporated the divas. I don’t know why,” she started. “But once the paperwork went through, she approached the mayor about performing. After that, it was one big publicity thing after another. She made sure everybody who’d ever heard of the divas knew they were reuniting.”

  “Were you and Ronnie on speaking terms at that point?” I asked. Detective Nichols turned on me and glared, wordlessly indicating that this was her investigation, not mine. I looked back at Gina, expecting her to continue.

  “Ronnie didn’t want to be my mother any more than I wanted to be her daughter. I knew what people said about her, stealing the gold, running off to Vegas, leaving everybody and everything behind. I grew up in a trailer. When I turned eighteen, she gave me the keys, told me to have a good life, and left. The next day the trailer was repossessed. At least they gave me twenty-four hours. To this day, I think she knew it was going to happen that way. That’s how life was to Ronnie. Always a game, always a gamble. You win some, you lose some.”

  “Why’d you go to see her on opening day?”

  “Because she asked me to. She said something would happen when the divas had their comeback and it wouldn’t all be good. She didn’t trust anybody. She didn’t even trust me, but she said I was blood and that meant something. She gave me a box of junk and asked me to keep it for a while and not tell anybody about it.”

  “The information that you sent to me,” I said. “Why’d you bother?”

  She glared at me. “You dig around in everybody else’s lives, I figured you could do it for me too. Look where that got me.”

  I leaned forward. “You’re giving me a whole lot of reasons why not to help you, but the funny thing is, you keep showing up in my life. Why don’t you tell me the real reason you want my help?”

  Gina glared at me. If we’d been the only ones in the room, I suspect she would have expressed her thoughts verbally, but having an audience of Tak and Nancy Nichols, she kept her behavior in check. Tears overflowed from her eyes. She swatted them away with the back of her hand and stared at the table in front of her.

  “Ronnie couldn’t dance anymore,” she said in a quiet voice. “She needed me for that part of the act. When she first contacted me, I thought if I ignored her, she’d go away. But she didn’t let it go. She called and sent letters. Newspaper clippings from the time she was gone. She begged me to come visit her, said I owed her at least a chance to talk face-to-face. So I went.”

  “When was this?” Detective Nichols asked.

  “A couple of months ago. She said she wanted to catch up with me, make up for lost time. I got the feeling she was sick, but she wouldn’t say that she was. One time I saw her medicine cabinet. It was filled with prescriptions, but I never saw her take any. She’d ask me about the store, about business, stuff like that.”

  “Sounds innocuous. Like she really wanted to reconnect with you as a mother and daughter.”

  “That’s what I thought too, until she hijacked the bid for the festival out from under me. Candy Girls had the entire thing locked down. We were going to provide and sell costumes. It was going to put us out front as the be
st costume shop in Proper.” She glared at me. “Whatever, okay? You think your shop is the best, but there’s lots of stuff we do better. But we never had the chance to prove it because Ronnie stole the bid from us and convinced the mayor to do family game night and hire the divas. Next thing I know, Candy Girls is out. No cut of the box office, no publicity, no word of mouth.”

  “There is no box office cut,” I said. “Every participant is donating their time and their products for the good of Proper City. It’s a nonprofit event.”

  “Except for the Domino Divas,” Gina said. “Good ol’ Mom negotiated that she got a cut of ticket sales. That’s right, she. The rest of the divas got nothing.”

  I already knew about the financial arrangements for Ronnie. The lack of response from Detective Nichols indicated that she knew it as well. Tak kept his poker face on, showing no indication of what he thought.

  “But you said Ronnie couldn’t perform, right? So how was this all going to happen?” I asked.

  “That’s where I came in. Whatever was wrong with her, it hit her hard. I don’t think it ever occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to dance, but Ronnie isn’t the type to set up a get-rich-quick scheme and then walk away from it. The only reason she wanted to reconcile with me is because I’m the only person who could literally fill her shoes. And her costume.”

  “So you agreed to perform as her. Did the other divas know?”

  “Nobody knew. That’s the reason I came to your store. I wanted to make sure you didn’t know. The morning of the opening, I went to her trailer to get dressed. She wasn’t there, and neither was her costume. I changed into the one I made but it tore. I found some thread and stitched it up, put on the wig and mask, and showed up at the rehearsal. Aside from the slap, everything went exactly as planned.”

  “What about the felt circle? Did one of them come off your costume?”

  Gina scowled. “The fabric glue didn’t work like I expected. I didn’t notice the missing circle until later.”

  Everything Gina told me had a note of truth to it, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that she was playing me.

  “How’d you know not to show up after she was killed? When you came to Disguise DeLimit, you told me you were notified of her death on Sunday morning.”

  Gina’s face turned a purplish-red shade. The mark on her cheek disappeared against her flushed skin. “I went to her trailer after rehearsal broke up. I still had on the mask so everybody thought I was her. I guess I wanted her approval—or to hear her say ‘thank you.’ Someone was already inside. A man. I heard sounds—noises. I hung the blue mask on the doorknob to the trailer and left. I thought she was—I thought they were—but they weren’t. I know now that he was killing her. I heard someone killing her and I didn’t get help.” Fresh tears covered her face. She put her arms down on the table and her head on top of them. Her shoulders and back jumped erratically as she cried.

  Detective Nichols leaned forward and put her hand on Gina’s back. “Gina, do you have any idea who the man in the trailer was?”

  Gina raised her head from the table. “I think it was my father,” she said through her tears.

  “Can you give me a name?” the detective asked.

  Gina surprised us all with her answer. “It was Don Digby.”

  Chapter 27

  “DON CAN’T BE—I mean, I heard that—why do you think—huh?” I asked. It was not my proudest moment of inquisition. I regrouped my thoughts and rephrased my question. “What makes you think Don is your father?”

  “I don’t know. I mean, I think so, now, after what I overheard,” Gina said.

  “Which was what?” Detective Nichols said. Her tone of voice suggested she was not about to accept anything Gina said without concrete proof.

  “When I walked up to the trailer. I overheard their voices from inside. They were arguing. She said, ‘She doesn’t know. I never told her. It’ll be our secret, I promise. Don’t threaten me. For as long as I’m alive, nobody will know.’”

  Detective Nichols, Tak, and I exchanged looks. As suspicious as that sounded, it wasn’t an admission that Don and Ronnie Cass had reignited the flame of romance after she’d returned to Proper City.

  “I’m the ‘her,’ don’t you see? I’m the ‘her.’” Her face twisted into a blotchy mess, streaked with mascara and tears. “I never knew who my dad was. She used me to get whatever it was she wanted, and then he killed her.”

  * * *

  AFTER Gina’s statement at the police station, Tak drove us back to the library. Gina balled up her tarp and stuffed it into the backseat, then pulled out in a squeal of rubber against asphalt.

  I unlocked my helmet from the scooter. Tak held out the takeout bag from Catch-22. “Now that that’s over, what do you say we resume our plans? Impromptu picnic in the park?” he asked.

  “Nothing’s over, Tak. Didn’t you hear Gina? She just involved Don even more than he already was. In the past three days, he’s gone from being a mild-mannered Hume Cronyn type to being a bank robber, a gold thief, a murderer, and a father. Next thing you know somebody’s going to say he’s Batman.”

  “Margo, Nancy has this under control. Let her do her job.”

  “You really expect me to just drop it and walk away?”

  “It’s the smart thing to do.”

  “You sound like a politician. It’s the safe thing, not the smart thing. I thought you knew the difference.”

  We went our separate ways. I didn’t comment on the fact that his loyalty had been toward Nancy, not to me. It might have been the safe thing, but it still felt like a violation of my trust.

  * * *

  I went to bed with questions and woke up with answers—well, not so much answers, but with a plan. Someone was going out of their way to make it look like the gold robbery was connected to Ronnie’s murder. They were trying to create something out of nothing. I’d hit upon the idea yesterday while talking with Soot, but it hadn’t really gelled until after hearing Gina’s story. Someone was creating a diversion and putting Don in the middle of it. For all of the years he’d spent tracking conspiracy theories, here he was in the middle of one himself.

  And I had a way to help him.

  I showered and changed into a pair of jeans and the T-shirt Don gave my dad for Christmas last year. It was white with blue trim and had the words THERE WAS A SECOND GUNMAN printed across the front. I opened the top drawer in the bathroom and ran my hand over an assortment of fake eyelashes, glittery makeup, and pancake foundation—all left over from my time as a magician’s assistant. It felt like years ago that I’d donned sequins and fishnets and paraded around onstage with a pair of doves. I shut the drawer, pulled a black knit cap over my wet hair, and went downstairs to the computer. It only took seven minutes for me to find the template for Spicy Acorn.

  I pulled up the most recent file and then saved it as Spicy Acorn Special Edition. Lead story: “Gold Robbery a Hoax?” And then I started typing.

  Fifty years ago, a robbery at the Proper City Savings and Loan resulted in the theft of a brick of gold that, in today’s market, is worth close to $2 million. Rumors about the robbery have followed certain residents of Proper for years, but a source close to the mayor’s office comes clean: the gold that had been on display in the S&L was just a cheap prop supplied by a movie company.

  Documents from the archives of Proper City’s early development corroborate these claims. The planning commission determined that residents would be more apt to trust this city-funded institution if it had a story behind it. A prop of gold was commissioned from Hollywood. One can surmise that confidentiality agreements were signed to keep the story under wraps.

  The mayor’s office has a long-standing reputation for putting the image of Proper City ahead of its residents. Are we seeing an example of that tradition played out in real time?

  The last time I’d needed to write any kind of
article for anything was a high school class in journalism, and that had been so long ago it was a distant memory. Besides, this was a conspiracy newspaper. Wasn’t the point to get people asking questions? To stir the pot?

  In keeping with the ground rules that Don and my dad had set up with Spicy Acorn, I searched the Web for an acorn recipe, copied it, and pasted it into the sidebar. Since this was a special edition, I didn’t bother with any additional articles. I set the printer on low resolution, fed a stack of paper into the tray, and printed until I ran out of paper. I folded each one with the headline facing out, bundled them with rubber bands, and stuffed them into an old mailbag.

  When Kirby arrived at the costume shop, he was peppier than I’d seen him since the Varla/Angus development.

  “Guess what?” he said. “Angus failed trig. His dad took away his driving privileges.”

  “And this makes you happy why?”

  “Because now he’ll either have to ask Varla to drive on her own birthday or get a chaperone.” He grinned. “Buzzkill.”

  “What about the school? Did you hear Principal Stanley said yes?”

  “Ebony told me. She came up with a whole Back to the Future thing. It’s Varla’s favorite movie. I’m going to be George McFly and my science teacher is going to be Doc. Ebony’s going to turn the gymnasium into the ‘Enchantment Under the Sea’ dance. It’s going to be epic. Can you help with costumes and setup?”

  “Sure. I think I can stop by the high school later today. What about the DeLorean?”

  “Already got a call in to Dig.”

  I left Kirby with instructions to dress the mannequins in the windows in the new Rubik’s Cube costumes and then headed out to the park.

  Ebony stood by the entrance to Candy Land, surrounded by six women dressed as giant playing cards. Today Ebony was wearing a red tube dress and platform wedge-heeled sandals. A small red heart had been painted on the side of the wedge. Her hair was held back with red and white combs, and her lips were a shiny cherry red. A collection of red and white plastic bangle bracelets clinked against each other on her left wrist. She matched the Candy Land sign so well that I wondered which came first: the sign or the outfit.