“Leave it.” The bartender cast him a warning look.
Stella stopped short at seeing Joanna. “Hey,” she said, “What are you doing here?” Stella was a semi-regular at Tallulah’s Closet. Joanna knew she was a dancer, but had pegged her for one of the bigger clubs at the edge of town known for cheap steak dinners and a deep stable of girls. Stella sometimes stopped by the store after having a beer or two at Dot’s. Usually she was with a man who happily bought her whatever cocktail dress or fake fur coat she fancied.
“So this is where you dance. It's nice to see you. I'm trying to track down an old manager of this place, Donald Cayle.”
“Don? Why do you want to see him?”
“You know him? He might know a woman who used to dance here. She died, and I'm trying to find her family, or maybe some friends.”
“Really? Don still comes to our summer picnic. Who was the dancer?” Stella leaned against a bar stool.
“This was a while ago. Have you heard of Marnie Evans? I think she danced here mostly in the '50s and maybe the early '60s.” Joanna raised her voice as the jukebox switched to a song with a heavier bass.
“No, never heard of her. Talk to Mike, the manager. He might be able to give you Don's phone number. Hey—do you still have that lemon quartz cocktail ring? The one with the big stone?”
“No, it sold. We have a blue one, though, you might like.”
Stella shrugged and turned toward the main room of the club. “Follow me.” She led Joanna to a small, warm office adorned with a movie-house sized poster of Liza Minelli in Cabaret. A thin man sat on a kneeling chair and tapped at his computer. One hand reached for a mug of herbal tea, its tag still dangling over the cup’s edge.
“Stella, you're late. Monica has had to run over her shift again, and you know the afternoon crowd is cheap.” Then he noticed Joanna. He looked her up and down. “You have a kind of glamour, that's for sure, but you’re not our type. Don't get me wrong, but I'm sensing a little stand-offishness. You have experience?”
“No,” she said, smoothing her skirt. Did she really look like an aspiring stripper? “That is, I'm not here for a job. I'm trying to get in touch with Don Cayle. One of your old dancers died, and I want to find her friends and family, let them know.”
The manager considered Joanna's request as he fiddled with a bracelet of Hindu prayer beads. “We don’t give out employees’ or formers employees’ numbers.”
“I get that. But it’s about someone who danced here ages ago. Marnie Evans.”
“Marnie Evans, huh? No kidding.” The manager leaned back and smiled. “She was big in the late 1950s, you know. A headliner. They called her Goldilocks.”
“Goldilocks?” Marnie's wig had been ash blonde. She must have been a natural blonde at one time.
“Yeah. Let me show you a picture.”
“Mike’s kind of the Mary’s historian,” Stella said.
The manager clicked a few keys on his computer, and a photo of Marnie filled the screen. She wore a silver bikini and high silver heels, and her hair was teased into a large tuft on her head. A ringlet of a ponytail hung down her bare back. One leg perched on a stool, a hand rested on one hip, and her head turned toward the camera. Joanna’s throat tightened as she remembered Marnie’s face as she lay on the floor at Tallulah’s Closet.
“After her show, she'd work the front room. She brought in a lot of money. The mayor used to come to see her. They snuck him in and out through the side door, the door that goes to El Grillo now. She had some other high-toned—” here the manager made quote signs with his fingers “—customers, too.” He picked up his mug. “She died, huh? Too bad.”
“Just a few days ago. I'd really like some of her old friends to know.”
“Tell you what. Why don't I give Don your phone number and have him call you?”
Joanna wrote her home number on a Tallulah’s Closet business card and handed it to him. She started for the door, then turned again to the manager. “One more question. I noticed the mural out there. It's—striking.” Especially for a club catering to straight men.
“Oh, you like it? It was painted a long time ago by a guy named Monty LaMontayne.”
Questioned answered.
“Peace.” The manager returned to his computer.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Apple was at the front of the store, settling the Lanvin coat on a mannequin over a psychedelic-patterned Leonard of Paris dress. She had set a pair of fringed boots at the mannequin's feet for a Janis Joplin effect.
“What? I thought the Lanvin sold yesterday,” Joanna said with a mixture of relief and disappointment. “Didn’t you say Gisele bought it?”
Apple stepped down from the platform that held the window display. “She brought the coat back. Said it just wasn't right. She hadn't even taken it out of the trunk of her car. I think it needs to be smudged. She said her house was broken into last night, too.”
“Was she okay?” Gisele was a fashion writer for the local weekly. Joanna had been to her house once for a cocktail party after an event showcasing local designers. Gisele had done up the place in glam-rock luxe with a white fake fur couch and a large, arching silver lamp. She had hugged the designers, praised their work, and pressed them to drink up the marionberry Martinis, but she viciously panned the show in the newspaper the next week.
“I guess she was fine. Nothing was even stolen. I bet you fifty bucks it was Tanya at Steam Fittings. She's still fuming over that 'Soviet vacation wear' comment from Gisele's review last winter.”
“Another thing, I saw Eve at the estate sale yesterday, and I mentioned the Lanvin,” Joanna said.
Apple’s hands dropped to her side. “Why’d you do that? Now she’ll try to buy it off you so she can resell it. You know how stubborn she is, too.”
“I know. She made a mean remark about Tallulah’s Closet, and I couldn’t help bragging. Whatever you do, don’t sell it to her.” Joanna tipped a veiled pillbox hat to a more flattering angle on its stand.
“Good Goddess. She must be the only vintage clothing dealer in town who doesn’t even wear vintage.”
Joanna remembered the anguished look of the student Eve had paid to wait in line for her. “The guys sure love her, though.”
Apple snorted. “Sure. She has all the beauty money can buy.”
“She said she’s opening a store. She was kind of mysterious about it, too.”
“I haven’t heard anything about that.” Apple walked back to the counter. “Who knows if it will actually happen, though. Remember Eve’s party planning business? Then her interior design consulting idea?” She picked up a pink phone message slip. Joanna had bought a case of them when a tire store went out of business. “Message for you. Andrew came by with a stack of flyers for the Remmick rally, too. And Paul was here to paint the door where he chiseled out the lock.”
Joanna looked at the phone message. Don Cayle hadn't wasted any time getting back to her. This was turning out to be easier than she'd anticipated.
“Did you hear me?” Apple said. “I said Paul had been by. He asked about you.”
“Yeah, I heard you.”
“What's going on between you two, anyway?”
“Nothing,” she said in a voice that warned not to press the subject. The memory of dancing at the Reel M’Inn and the parting kiss flushed her face. If only Apple knew. “Anything else?”
“Just that guy I told you about. The one lurking around yesterday. I’m telling you, bad energy.”
The bell at the door clanged as a customer came in, and Apple turned to greet her. Joanna returned Don Cayle's call.
***
An old Coasters song droned from speakers hung in the awnings outside the downtown address Don Cayle gave Joanna. She’d have to break her rule about never patronizing restaurants that piped music to the sidewalk. Television sets dotted throughout the restaurant silently showed sports. Toward the back, a waitress rolled silverware into napkins. Other than shoppers, the restaurant was e
mpty but for an elderly man sitting at a booth near the bar.
“Mr. Cayle?” Joanna approached the booth.
Don Cayle stood up and took her hand in both of his. His hands were large and soft, and his nails freshly manicured. A thick gold ring studded with rubies gleamed on his pinkie. He was handsome in a rough sort of way, despite the expensive suit. In his youth a lot of handkerchiefs must have been dropped at his feet.
“You must be Joanna. Please, call me Don. What'll you have?” His voice was gruff but friendly.
She slid into the booth across from him. “Coffee would be great.”
“Cream?” He asked and Joanna nodded. “Glenda, some coffee for the lady, with cream.” His hands clutched a tumbler of brown liquid and ice. Johnny Walker on the rocks was Joanna’s guess.
“You must come here often.” The restaurant didn't look like the sort of place where a person would get to know the servers on a first-name basis.
“I own it. Folks seem to like it. The burgers are good, anyway.” The waitress poured coffee and set a few plastic containers of half and half on the table. “The club manager called this morning and said that you wanted to talk to me about Marnie. Is that right?” He looked intently at Joanna.
“Yes, she, well—I’m afraid Marnie isn’t with us anymore. I wanted to tell some of her friends in person.” She realized how stupid that sounded. There just wasn't any gentle euphemism for death.
Don’s hand trembled as he lifted his glass and drained it. He raised a finger and nodded at the waitress across the room. “Was it her lungs?”
“No. Or at least I don’t know for sure.” She wasn't sure how to say what she needed to say. “I found her.” She looked up at Don. “I'm sorry.”
“There's nothing to be sorry about, honey. That must have been tough on you. Tell me about it.”
Joanna winced at the memory of lifting the Lanvin coat. “She was in my store. I have a vintage clothing store on the east side. She’d somehow got in overnight, and I found her there the next morning. I can’t figure it out.”
The waitress put a fresh drink in front of Don. He removed the tiny red straw and set it on the paper cocktail napkin before lifting the glass. His hands were steady now. “Marnie. What a shame.”
“I don't—didn't—know her very well, and I don't know if she has friends or family around here. But I'd like her friends to know. I think she should have some sort of goodbye. I hoped you might know some of the people close to her.”
“That's real nice of you.” He leaned back in the booth. “I don't know who she was spending time with lately, but when she was at the club and I was the manager, she was good friends with the cook, Ray. And she used to room with another one of the dancers, Nina. I'm not sure what Ray's doing these days, but Nina comes to the club's picnics every summer. You can find her at the Wet Spot tropical fish shop. She and her husband own it.”
“You were a friend of Marnie's, right?” She didn’t want to stop talking about Marnie just yet.
“Sure. At one time we were close. A long time ago.” Don looked into the distance. From the side he resembled Kirk Douglas, including the cleft chin. “She was something else, that Marnie. A real pistol on stage. Off stage, though, a different person. Private. She and I went together a few years, but half the time I never really knew what she was thinking. One day she called me and told me it was over. That's it. No explanation. I haven't seen her in probably twenty years.” He pulled his gaze back to Joanna.
She responded to the regret in his voice. “I don't know what she was like when she was younger, but Marnie could be difficult to talk to.”
“I suppose it's my own fault more than anything. I was a young man trying to build my business, and I didn't give her the attention she deserved. I left her alone too much.”
“I'm sure she enjoyed going out on the town with you, though.” Don and Marnie would have turned heads back in the day.
“Marnie didn't like going out as much as other girls. She was real self-conscious, embarrassed about being a dancer. I told her that I didn't care—hell, I used to manage the place she danced, and it's not like we were dining with the queen when we went out, anyway.” He paused and then laughed. “Sometimes we went to the Desert Inn over on Stark. I don't suppose you've heard of that place? No? You're too young. This was back in, oh, '57 or '58. They had some gambling in the back room, and the entertainment might have, well, crossed the line from time to time.
“Anyway, they were raided one night when Marnie and I stopped by. While the uniforms were at the front door, Marnie took a little piece of paper from her purse and asked the bartender for the phone. She called the head of the vice squad. Got him out of bed. He was known for enjoying the sights at Mary's Club, see. I guess he didn't waste any time calling police headquarters and telling them to lay off the Desert Inn. A few minutes after the call, another police car pulled up, and the officer came running in like his pants were on fire. He rounded up the other policemen and shoveled them out the door before Mick even had time to freshen up my drink.”
Don's smile faded. “I don't know where she got the idea that anyone was looking down on her.” The waitress swapped Don’s empty glass for another drink, his third by Joanna’s count. Hopefully he wasn’t driving.
“I wish I could have known her then.” She imagined Marnie young, with soft curves instead of the thin, bony frame she knew.
“Are the police following up on her death?” Don asked as pulled out the cocktail straw and laid it next to the others on the napkin. His voice quavered slightly at the word “death.” Whiskey or emotion?
“I suppose so. The detective said the medical examiner decides if the death was suspicious, and if there should be an investigation.” She recalled the detective's questioning. The police hadn't called her. Yet.
“You don't happen to remember the officer's name, do you?”
Joanna pulled his card from a pocket on the side of her purse. Her fingers touched Marnie’s cash and the safe deposit box key that had fallen from the coat. “Detective Foster Crisp.”
Don nodded. “Yep, she was quite a gal. They don't make them like that anymore.”
CHAPTER NINE
The Wet Spot was just off a busy stretch of Sandy Boulevard in a squat 1960s storefront. A bell jingled when Joanna pushed open its door. The humid room glowed eerily from row upon row of lit fish tanks. Scores of filtration systems hummed and burbled, muffling the noise of the traffic outside.
“May I help you?” An Asian man stood behind the counter polishing the walls of an empty tank.
“Yes, I'm looking for Nina.”
“Nina? May I tell her who wants her?”
“My name is Joanna Hayworth. I understand she knows—or knew, at least—Marnie Evans.”
“Marnie? Old Goldilocks?” He cocked his head slightly and yelled toward the back. “Hey Nina. There's a friend of Goldilocks out here.”
A woman built along the lines of Jane Russell emerged from the back. She towered over the Asian man. She wore a wrap dress tied high on the waist that emphasized her bust, and her hair was dyed the color of charcoal briquettes. Only as the woman walked nearer did Joanna notice the crepey skin on her chest and lined face that told her age. “I'm Nina. How can I help you?” she asked in a low, silky voice. The scent of gardenias rose above the chlorine.
Joanna told her about Marnie's death. It hadn’t got any easier since she told Don that morning.
Nina tucked her hand under Joanna's elbow and turned her toward the door. “Gary,” she said to the man, who was now sprinkling flakes into a large tank full of long-finned fish, “We're going down the street for a little while. If the lady comes by for the Ink Fin Kapampa, it's in tank thirty-nine.”
Nina led her out onto the sidewalk and a few blocks to Poor Richard's, a restaurant and bar known more for its stiff drinks than fine cuisine.
Happy hour had just started at Poor Richard's, and a few seniors were enjoying the early bird special of roast beef in the d
ining room. Nina and Joanna sat at a booth in the Almanack Room, a dim bar with faux beams straddling the ceiling, stamped-brass platters displayed on a plate rail, and a large TV tuned to a baseball game.
Nina extracted a pack of cigarettes from her purse and tapped one out. She lit it, her fingers tipped with long, frosted pink nails. A charm bracelet dangled from her wrist. She pointed the cigarette at Joanna. “Is that blouse an Alex Coleman?”
Joanna was surprised. “Yes, it is. You know your labels.”
“I used to have quite the wardrobe. Marnie and I both did. I may have had a blouse exactly like yours.”
A waitress came over from the bar. “The usual?” she said to Nina, who nodded. “And you?”
She could order another coffee, but it was getting late in the day and her nerves were on edge.
Nina said, “You need a drink, honey.”
Joanna glanced toward the bar where a young guy pulled a beer. He wore a stringy beard but had a face straight from a Botticelli. Could he possibly know how to make more than a rum and coke?
“She’ll have what I’m having. Bring us some garlic bread, too, and some fried clams. Sound good?” Nina directed the last part to Joanna.
She realized she was hungry and nodded. She hadn't eaten since breakfast. As for “what I’m having,” she feared it would be a glass of white Zinfandel, but too late now.
“So, Marnie was murdered,” Nina said.
“They don't know that it was murder.” Joanna stifled a shocked laugh.
“Found dead in your store, and you didn’t let her in. Doesn’t sound like the Marnie I know to do something like that.”
“I admit I've wondered myself. She wasn’t dressed to leave the house—didn’t even have on her wig. But who would kill her? And why?” Her thoughts flashed to the story Don had told her about the head of the Vice Squad. So much of Marnie’s life was a mystery to her.
“Lots of people. Some folks might even say I'd do it.”
“You?”
The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) Page 5