Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  I stood in front of him, not saying anything, not moving. After a few seconds, I slowly shook my head from side to side.

  He looked at my face, at the can of hairspray, and then back at my face. “Don’t tell me. Somebody changed their mind again. Was it Ebony? Or the mayor? When I took this job, my only requirement was that I was kept in the loop. And now what—you’re back on the program and nobody told me. That’s just great. How am I supposed to promote this thing when I don’t even know what’s going on?” He tossed the bear head on the table. It landed on its side and rolled off, falling onto the patchy brown grass. Neither one of us made a move to pick it up.

  “Fine,” he said. “You want to practice in the middle of the night? Go crazy. Like I told the other one, don’t bother me and I won’t bother you.”

  “What other one?” I asked.

  “How should I know? In those wigs and masks, you all look the same to me.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “I saw this costume earlier today and came tonight to try it on. A life-sized teddy bear is good publicity for this festival. The lady who runs this booth said the guy who was supposed to wear the costume skipped town and she needed a replacement.”

  “Bobbie told you that?”

  “Is Bobbie the preppy one who makes the bears?” I nodded. “I asked her about the costume and she told me her original idea. I thought it would be a good diversionary tactic.”

  “But you’re the festival publicist.”

  “Sometimes you do what you gotta do.” He untucked his floral shirt and rubbed the tails over his face. “My dry cleaner is going to love me,” he said. He picked the bear costume up off the patchy yellow grass and placed it on the empty padded hanger, and then hung it back on the bookcase where it had been earlier in the day. Next he picked up the bear head and put it on the shelf. He wasn’t acting like a killer who was caught in the act of looking for evidence. He acted like a publicist who was looking forward to his current job being over.

  “Practice your routine all you want, now. The place is all yours.”

  “Where’s security?”

  “Cut from the budget. This festival is bleeding money right now. Some new guy in the mayor’s office red-lined any nonessential expenses. Better not blame me. I did my job.” He turned to look at the empty stage. He rubbed the back of his hand across his eyes one more time and left.

  I stood inside Bobbie’s booth. Something Joel had said didn’t add up. Bobbie had told him that Don had bailed on her? She wouldn’t have done that, not after I told her what was going on. And the only new guy I knew of who worked in the mayor’s office was Tak. He wouldn’t have canceled overnight security. Businesses all over Proper—including his parents’—had brought expensive equipment and inventory here to fulfill the annual expectations of the residents.

  Something else was going on. Why else would the divas be here to rehearse for a performance that was never going to take place? Alone, at night, with no witnesses.

  But Joel hadn’t said that he saw all of the divas. He’d only mentioned one. The wig and mask made him think I was another one. But what if I was accidentally walking into a trap? Something still didn’t add up.

  In the past, when things hadn’t added up, I talked them over with Tak. But this time, it felt like Tak was on a different team. This was the exact reason why I avoided relationships. Getting close to someone made you vulnerable. Start to think someone is there for you, and it hurts more when they’re not.

  I bent down to pick up the head of the teddy bear costume and spotted a set of keys in the dirt. A brass V hung off of the chain. I picked them up and looked around for Joel. He wouldn’t get far without them.

  I grabbed my can of green hairspray and moved out of the booth toward the stage. If there were other divas in the park and there was a cloak-of-night rehearsal, that’s where they’d be.

  But they weren’t. The stage, both front and back, was empty.

  I walked around the setup of white plastic folding chairs and stared at the stage from the back. Less than a week ago, I’d stood here, watching the divas interact. For the rehearsals that Ronnie had shown up for, she’d been argumentative, nasty, inconvenient, late, hostile, and opinionated. Now I knew she was just trying to keep people from knowing she couldn’t perform. She’d hijacked the value of the troupe, trademarked their name, and negotiated with the mayor for the profits to go directly to her.

  But the Domino Divas wouldn’t even be here if not for her. Ronnie had been the one to pull them out of retirement, to find each one of the other five women and convince them that the value of stepping back into the limelight outweighed their comfortable lives fifty years after they’d been stars. By reuniting them, pulling them back onto center stage, she’d made at least one person risk everything, and that one person had killed her.

  I circled around the back of the stage and spotted someone in Bobbie’s booth. Joel, most likely, back for his keys. I crossed the patchy grass and called out to him.

  “Joel,” I called, “I have your keys. I didn’t want to leave them sitting out overnight.”

  I approached the booth with his keys in my hand. Only it wasn’t Joel in the booth.

  Chapter 32

  THE DOMINO DIVA who stood inside Bobbie’s booth was dressed in a wig and blue mask, just like me. She turned around slowly. For a few seconds, we faced each other in silence. The only sound was that of the nighttime breeze rustling the trees above the tents and the canvas snapping back and forth as the wind shifted.

  Considering I was dressed like a diva, this woman should have been surprised to see me. But she wasn’t. Aside from her wig and mask, her body was covered in black clothing and gloves. There wasn’t an inch of recognizable anything. Whoever she was, she’d come here planning to go undetected.

  With a scan, I took in the teddy bears in Clue costumes that had been thrown to the ground around her feet. It took half a second to realize that many of them had been destroyed, their heads torn from their bodies. The bookcase behind her was half empty. She was looking for something. Perhaps the same bear from Ronnie’s trailer that I’d come for. The bear that Chet claimed to have found discarded on a table.

  I went into the booth and picked up the teddy bear on the end of the shelf. The diva in front of me watched as I turned it over in my hands and then set it back down. I picked up the next one and did the same thing. My mind raced. What was I looking for? And then I saw it.

  Red thread and a bit of gray stuffing jutted out from the neck seam of one of the bears that had been thrown to the ground. Gina had admitted to doing last-minute alterations on the diva costume in Ronnie’s trailer. She’d used the red thread and left the threaded needle sitting on the countertop inside. I’d stabbed my hand on it when I was in the trailer. Someone must have opened his seam and hidden something inside of him, just like they’d done with the teddy bear in the sewer grate.

  But the diva in front of me didn’t know which bear had been tampered with.

  Time to bluff. I tossed Ronnie’s bear behind my feet and reached for the third bear from the second shelf from the ground and held him up. “Is this what you’re looking for? The bear that was in Ronnie’s trailer when you killed her?” It was a risky statement considering the bear I held wasn’t any more special than the rest of them. It was a trick I’d learned while working as a magician’s assistant. Confidence and misdirection. And until I knew the diva’s identity, it was the only trick in my arsenal.

  There were six original divas—one murdered left five—and one stood in front of me. So, which one did she think I was? Of everybody who’d been involved in the murder I could only think of two people who’d donned the costume: Jayne Lemming and Gina Cassavogli.

  But I couldn’t dismiss the possibility that someone had taken advantage of the matching costumes. Someone who wanted me to think that they were one of the six—now five
—performers. Someone who’d had access to the divas’ schedule and costumes back in the ’60s and had robbed the savings and loan. Someone who had a reason to want to keep them from returning to the stage fifty years later.

  Someone who had been on the fringes of their group in high school, who could have easily faked the documents that claimed the gold in the Proper City Savings and Loan wasn’t real. My memory flashed to the trophy case at Proper City High School. Young and ready to take on the world. It wasn’t a headline, it was a caption. Ronnie hadn’t been alone in the picture even though she’d caught my attention. She’d been standing with Wharton Young. He was the “Young” in the picture. She was the “ready to take on the world.”

  My mind raced with pieces of trivia, testing shapes to fit into holes like a giant game of Concentration. Bank robbery in 1968—Wharton Young could have been there. He left Proper City shortly after the robbery, returning years later with Ronnie on his arm. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer. He’d romanced her in order to make sure she didn’t know anything—and if she did, that she wouldn’t tell.

  But maybe, after all these years, after the diagnosis that told her she was sick, she’d changed her mind about keeping the secret. She’d been the one to negotiate the Domino Diva gig from his office. She’d wanted to let Mayor Young know that her time had come.

  Mayor Young had been the one to demand that Ronnie’s trailer not be on festival property. He approved a trailer for her—not the divas, but her—which allowed him to know where he could find her. And the picture in the trophy case at Proper City High School showed a very different Mayor Young than the one who paraded around the festival in his suspenders and belt over a spreading middle. Fifty years ago, he’d been a skinny guy. He could have donned Ronnie’s wig and mask the day the savings and loan was robbed and nobody would have been the wiser.

  And tonight, he could have hidden his spreading paunch under the black sweatshirt and pants of the person in front of me. The jet-black wig and the satin domino mask all but eradicated any hint of his identity. But the pieces all fit. Mayor Young had killed Ronnie Cass. And if I didn’t stop him, he was going to kill me too.

  I dropped the backpack from my shoulder and shoved the wrong bear inside. I put the backpack back on and glanced around for something—anything—that would confirm that I was right. There were no keys, handbags, or otherwise personal items in the booth. And worse—he was dressed in the most nondescript outfit imaginable. No identifying characteristics.

  Except for the feet. Really giant feet in black leather rocker-bottom sneakers.

  I took two more steps backward, moving past the booth into the open part of the park where Bobbie and I had done early morning yoga. “You won’t get away with it, Mayor Young. I know you killed Ronnie Cass,” I said.

  He reached up and pulled the wig from his head with one hand and the mask from his face with the other. “Well, well. If it isn’t Proper City’s resident girl sleuth. Looks like I’m not the only one who decided on a new look for tonight.”

  I’d forgotten that I was dressed in the diva costume too. I pulled off my own wig and mask and faced him. “It’s not the first time you put on that costume, is it, Mayor? You dressed like that to rob the Proper City Savings and Loan fifty years ago.”

  “And why would I want to do a thing like that?”

  “To steal the gold.”

  “I thought I read an exposé in today’s issue of Spicy Acorn that says there was no gold.” He pantomimed unfolding a newspaper and flipping through the pages. “Yep, right there. It says here it was a myth dreamed up by the city planners to instill trust in the town residents.”

  “You faked those documents that said the gold wasn’t real. Why?”

  “Diversion and publicity for Proper City. When people start to see us as the city with gold that wasn’t gold, they’ll forget about the robbery. I need them to forget so I can finally cash in.”

  “You’ve been sitting on the gold all this time? Where is it?”

  “I’ve already said too much. Besides, you’d have a hard time proving any of these accusations this far after the fact,” he said.

  “Ronnie knew all along. She was part of it. That’s why you killed her. After fifty years of silent agreement, she let you know that she could destroy you with one press conference.”

  “I killed Ronnie Cass. She won’t be holding any press conferences now.”

  “She won’t have to. She left enough evidence behind to lead the police to your office.”

  “That’s why you have to give me the bear, Margo,” he said. He reached under his sweatshirt and pulled out a pistol. “Give me the teddy bear and nobody gets hurt.”

  Movement to my right caught my attention. I turned and saw the giant teddy bear walking toward me.

  “Joel!” I called out. “Can you come here and help me?” I yelled. I stepped further into the clearing.

  “Joel?” Mayor Young said. “My Joel?” He stuffed the pistol back into the pocket of his sweatshirt and ran his hand over his thinning hair. The giant bear stalked toward us. As he grew closer, I saw his hands—paws—curling and uncurling. Joel V. worked for the mayor. Was he in on the mayor’s illegal actions? Had I bought his innocent act earlier, and if so, was I alone in the park with not one but two killers?

  As the bear approached, Mayor Young’s face settled into an unnerving smile. “Joel, I need you to do me a favor. I caught this woman pillaging from the festival. Please escort her off the property.”

  No way was I walking away from Mayor Young—not if it meant taking a bullet in the back. “Don’t do this,” I said. “He’s a killer! You don’t have to be a part of this. Help me,” I pleaded. “He killed Ronnie Cass!”

  The mayor pulled the pistol out again. It fell from his gloved fingers. He reached down. The giant teddy bear pushed me out of the way. He tucked his head and charged like a bull seeing a red flag, knocking Mayor Young to the ground. The teddy bear straddled the mayor and pinned his arms to the ground.

  “Call the police,” he said. His voice was muffled by the teddy bear head.

  “I can’t. I don’t have a phone.”

  “Reach into the back pocket of the costume.”

  I approached the teddy bear and pulled a cell phone out of his pocket, and then called 911. “This is Margo Tamblyn. This is an emergency. I’m at the PCP with Mayor Young. He has a gun. He killed Ronnie Cass. Send the police as soon as possible.”

  The emergency operator kept me on the line while she alerted the police. She asked me a series of questions: What happened, was I alone, was I in danger? I refrained from telling her that a giant teddy bear had overcome the mayor and was holding him until the police arrived. I suspected it would damage my credibility.

  Sirens alerted us to the arrival of the police. Thick beams of light slicked through the darkness, moving up and down, back and forth, as if painting the festival with broad, temporary brushstrokes of illumination. “Over here,” I called. The beams of light played on the three of us as the officers grew closer.

  Detective Nichols led the group. She flashed her light over me first, and then the two men on the ground and the surrounding mess of decapitated stuffed bears. “What’s going on here?” she asked.

  “Mayor Young admitted to killing Ronnie Cass,” I said. “He pulled a gun. Joel’s been holding him since I called.”

  “Is this true?” Nichols asked the giant bear.

  “She’s telling the truth. I heard the whole thing.”

  Detective Nichols knelt down and secured cuffs on Mayor Young and then tapped the bear on the shoulder. “I’ll take it from here,” she said.

  The bear stood up and swung his head to the left and to the right. “One question,” he asked. “Who’s Joel?”

  “I thought you were Joel,” I said.

  The bear reached up and pulled off the bear head,
revealing bright, copper-colored hair.

  “Grady? What are you doing here?”

  Chapter 33

  GRADY RAN THE back of his arm across his forehead, freeing a lock of red hair that had stuck thanks to perspiration. “I had to chaperone my little brother on a date tonight. I’m killing time until their movie is over. Bobbie recruited me to wear the costume at the festival tomorrow. I came over to try it on.”

  “But Joel said— Where is he?”

  “Is Joel the skinny guy in the floral shirt?”

  “Yes. Did you see him?”

  “I caught him trashing the Spicy Acorn booth.”

  “Where’s he now?” I asked.

  He looked at me oddly. “I have a financial stake in the success of Spicy Acorn. That guy was trying to destroy what they’d worked for. You didn’t think I was going to let him get away with that, did you?”

  “Um, Detective Nichols? Before you leave you might want to check on the striped tent on the other side of Candy Land,” I said.

  She looked at Grady and at me. “I don’t suppose either of you have any proof that what you’re telling me is true?”

  I stepped into the booth and picked up the teddy bear with the loose head. I looked him in the face. “I’m really sorry about this,” I said, and then I put pressure on the red stitches that held his head to his body. After they popped, I reached inside the opening and felt around the fiberfill until my fingers closed on a small, hard item. I pulled out a miniature camera and held it toward the detective. “I’m pretty sure this is the proof you’re looking for.”

  She took the camera, turned it over, and pressed a few buttons.