A Disguise to Die For

by Diane Vallere

  Behind the interior of the shop was a long, narrow room set up with various sewing machines and a table for cutting out fabric. Two forms stood like sentries at the end of the room: a male and a female. Large, round metal trash bins held bolts of fabric that protruded out like giant flower stems without blooms.

  I didn’t know when my dad had first taught himself to sew. I imagined that my mother had been the one to make most of the costumes while he watched the shop and fabricated what needed to be made from wood or sheet metal, but as far as I remembered, our costume assortment had been limited only by what he could create. At an early age I learned how to adapt already-made clothing into costumes by shortening hems, narrowing pants, and hand-sewing patches on secondhand castoffs. We shopped the local thrift stores for items that we could use and, with dye and imagination, created wizards, princesses, hobos, animals, and a whole lot more. By the time I’d graduated high school, I was a pro at turning flea market finds into high-ticket costumes. My Chicago collection had been rented by seventeen different groups by the time I moved to Vegas.

  It was close to eight when we finished our list. I’d collected items from throughout the shop and had a list of the few remaining props we needed.

  “Dad, you look exhausted. Let me wrap things up here and we can finish tomorrow.”

  “Fine. I’ll start dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs sound okay to you?”

  “Sounds perfect. Give me fifteen minutes to get things organized and I’ll be up to set the table.”

  The doctors had recommended the wheelchair, and I knew my dad hated it. I watched him wheel himself to the back stairs, lift himself out of the chair, and slowly ascend the staircase. It wouldn’t have mattered if we did have a ramp or an elevator. In his mind, the chair was temporary, and he wouldn’t allow himself to get used to it.

  I found a large plastic bin of hangers and clear garment bags on a shelf behind the cash register and assembled each costume in a bag. Because of the short window of time, we’d expected each person to wear their own footwear, but I made a note with suggestions on index cards and taped them to the front of the hanger with the name of the costume.

  Behind me, the door rattled. Blitz Manners was on the sidewalk, surrounded by a gaggle of men around the same age as he was. He stumbled inside. He wore a crooked smile and reeked of beer and cigarettes. He reached out and put a finger under my chin and grinned. A tall man with hair the color of freshly minted pennies and the blue eyes and freckles to go with followed him into the store. The rest of his entourage stayed on the sidewalk out front.

  “Let’s see what you got for me, babe,” Blitz slurred.

  “Our store is closed for the night. You can come back tomorrow to see what we’ve put together.”

  “I wanted to keep you on your toes.” He swayed forward and back, but I didn’t think he knew he did it. I looked at the redhead. He grinned and shrugged, like he was used to Blitz doing whatever Blitz wanted to do. I smiled back, and he winked at me.

  “The costumes that we finished are over here.” I walked him to the ballet barre that held the numbered garment bags. “I think we came up with a nice assortment for you. We have Hercule Poirot, Columbo, Kojak, and Jim Rockford. I assume you’ll be inviting women to your party too, right? There’s Miss Marple, two Nancy Drews, Cherry Ames, and Veronica Mars. And four different Sherlock costumes: BBC, steampunk, CBS, and a custom classic Sherlock that my father made this afternoon.” I bent backward at the waist to put distance between the scent of happy hour and my nose. “Personally, I think it’s a standout.” I picked up the hanger with the tweed cape and deerstalker.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” he asked. He grabbed the hanger from me and threw the costume on the ground. “I thought I told you to keep it hip. These are costumes for an old person’s party,” he said.

  “This is exactly what you asked us for,” I said defensively, and bent to scoop the clothes from the ground. “This very costume is the one you saw when you came into the store.”

  He looked over his shoulder at the guys standing on the sidewalk out front, and stepped back and gave me a full-body scan from my face to my boots, and back up to my face. “Things don’t look like they did when I was here earlier. Maybe I didn’t communicate clearly enough what I wanted.”

  He overenunciated his words. I didn’t doubt that he was well on his way to passing out, but I also didn’t doubt that this was a regular occurrence. It wasn’t my problem if Blitz was blitzed. I just wanted him out of the store.

  The cowbell over the door clanged and another man entered. He was tall and had broad shoulders. Longish straight black hair was pushed away from his face. There were traces of a beard and mustache that looked more like the product of a couple of days without shaving than a conscious decision to wear facial hair. His features were Asian with a mix of Roman. Black-brown eyes studied me from under strong eyebrows. Aquiline nose. Naturally red lips. I smiled a cautious greeting—cautious because I was alone and didn’t want to encourage the rest of the group to enter too—and turned my attention back to Blitz.

  “I’m sorry to disappoint you, but this is the best we can do on short notice.” I put my hands on the rolling rack and moved it away from him. I picked up the envelope of money from the counter where Ebony had left it and held it out. “Here’s your deposit back,” I said.

  The redhead snickered. “You were right, Blitz, she’s not like the rest of them. All the girls we know would have kept the money.”

  “Shut up, Grady,” Blitz said. He kept his eyes on me. The solicitous drunk who had come into the store had turned into a sullen one. He shot a nasty look at the third man who had entered, snatched the envelope of cash from my hand, and turned around and stormed out the door.

  Grady leaned forward. “Don’t admit defeat yet. He’ll change his mind. He always does.” He stared at me for a few seconds and then turned and followed Blitz outside.

  The third man was gone too. I gave the crowd a couple of seconds to start down the street, and then popped my head out and looked left and right. Blitz’s crowd had gone one way, the Asian man was by himself, walking in the other direction. He turned around and caught me watching him. I froze. He pulled a hand out of his jacket pocket and waved tentatively. I waved back in like fashion.

  I locked the door, pulled the shades down, and turned out the lights. After moving the rack of costumes to the back of the store by the register, I headed upstairs. Dad was in the kitchen, stirring a pot of marinara sauce.

  “What kept you? It sounded like I heard voices,” he said.

  “Blitz Manners showed up after you left. I told him the store was closed but he didn’t seem to care.”

  “Customers like Blitz don’t pay attention to store hours. So how’d it go?” he asked. “Was he impressed with our work?”

  “Not really.” I dropped into a red vinyl kitchen chair, part of a ’50s diner set my dad had scored on one of his flea market trips. “He had a bunch of his friends with him. He said he didn’t like what we pulled together. Is this normal? People throw money at you to spend your day working for them and then they insult your work?”

  “No, it’s not normal. Last week Molly Cunningham came in and bought five princess costumes for her nieces to wear to her wedding. And the week before that, Black Jack Cannon had a Maverick-themed poker party and rented our best Western garb. It’s not all bad, Margo. At least Blitz paid in advance.”

  “When he said he wasn’t happy with what we’d pulled together, I gave him back his money.”

  My dad studied my face. I knew it had been the right thing to do and I knew he knew it too. But I remembered what he’d said about medical bills and I wondered again if there was more—or less—to the store’s financial situation than he was letting on.

  Chapter 3

  A SMOKE-GRAY CAT sauntered up from under the table and ran his head against my dad’s pant legs. My dad s
et down the spoon and sat in a diner chair.

  “Is this Soot?” he asked.

  “Yep.”

  “He was just a kitten when I last saw him.”

  Soot jumped into my dad’s lap, turned three circles, and settled into a curled-up position. I ran my hand over the top of Soot’s head and he started to purr. The cat, not my dad.

  When I moved away from Proper, I’d experienced homesickness in a big way. No family, no friends, nobody to talk to. I adopted a gray kitten from the owner of a candy store next to my apartment building and named him Soot. He had grown from a playful kitten into an ornery cat, but had a sixth sense when it came to sharing his affection with those who needed it. Turns out he was a whiz at catching mice too, which was less than thrilling when I found his catch of the day in one of my shoes. When I left Vegas for Proper City, I packed a suitcase and strapped it to the back of my scooter. And then I hired a taxi to follow me with Soot—in his carrier, of course—in the backseat.

  * * *

  THE next day I dressed in a yellow sweater, khaki skirt, and cowboy boots. I pulled my hair into two low ponytails and put a yellow cowboy hat on my head. I wrapped a belt with two holsters on it around my hips and filled the holsters with plastic pistols. Nobody would think twice about my outfit as long as I was working in the costume shop. When I wore this same outfit to the Whole Foods store last week, I got a couple of stares.

  There was a note from my dad on the kitchen table that said he and his buddy Don Digby had taken off for Area 51. What was he thinking? He was recovering from a heart attack. He had no business taking off for parts unknown with Don.

  I grabbed my phone and called him. “Where are you?”

  “Somewhere on Route 66. Hard to tell.”

  “I want you to turn around and come back here. I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to be out and about. You need to rest.”

  “I talked to my doctor last night and he saw nothing wrong with this trip as long as I took it easy. Don’s here, and he was a registered nurse for thirty years before he retired.”

  “But why now? Why today?”

  “I’ve been in touch with a sci-fi fan who lives in Area 51. He has a collection of costumes that he’s been wanting me to appraise. With you there to run the store, the timing was perfect.”

  “I came back to Proper City to take care of you while you get better. Magic Maynard only gave me through the weekend. When are you coming back? I can’t take care of you if you’re not here.”

  “If you take care of the store, it’s like you’re taking care of me. I’ll be back tomorrow, or maybe the next day. If things get busy, call Kirby Grizwitz. His number is taped to the wall to the left of the register. He’s in high school now, and he’s been working part-time.”

  “Dad, I don’t know about this. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I can’t let this stuff end up on eBay, Margo. Besides, what’s going to happen? We’re driving five hundred miles through the desert. There’s not another car in sight.”

  “Just be careful,” I said.

  He left the address and phone number of the hotel where he was planning to stay. We briefly discussed what I needed to know to run the store and made arrangements to talk the following day. We had talked every day since I moved to Las Vegas, even if our conversations sometimes were shorter than the length of time it took one of us to answer the phone.

  Scouting out costumes had always been my dad’s favorite part of running the store: meeting with people who owned costumes and learning the history of the garments. We had a few collectibles in our inventory and they rented for top dollar. Sometimes the items were in too sad of a state to be worn, but he’d either repair them—people called it “the Jerry Touch”—or use them as templates to make copies. He taught me to sew using a damaged clown costume as a template, which explains why we had a surplus of clowns in our inventory.

  I started the day the way I always did, with a smoothie for breakfast. I dumped almond milk, yogurt, a banana, and a few glugs of orange juice into the blender. After adding a scoop of protein powder, I hit liquefy. The resulting product was healthy, plus it matched my outfit.

  I poured the smoothie into a glass and carried it downstairs and outside. The thing about Proper City weather was that it was always hot and always dry. The thermometer hit the eighties in April and climbed to over a hundred in the summer. One hundred degrees in a dry climate wasn’t the same as one hundred degrees in a humid climate. Sunscreen was essential, as was water, but a constant breeze kept it comfortable. We rarely had to use the air conditioner, and most days I could shape my thick hair into a flip with my fingers and let it air-dry. Today was a typical hot, dry August day.

  Before I had a chance to finish my smoothie, Blitz’s friend Grady walked into the store. The bright sun illuminated his copper hair. He flashed a megawatt smile, much like the one Blitz had used on me yesterday. I didn’t trust men with megawatt smiles. They were a dime a dozen at the casinos and it usually meant they were about to ask you for something not defined in the employee handbook.

  “I hope you didn’t lose too much sleep over Blitz,” Grady said. “He really tied one on last night. Pretty sure he’s still sleeping it off.”

  “Is that a regular habit?”

  “Sometimes the guy likes to blow off steam. Besides, he’s still jealous because he can’t outdo my party.” Things were beginning to make sense. “We weren’t formally introduced yesterday. Grady O’Toole,” he said, extending his hand. “Sherlock Holmes enthusiast, hustle expert, and best friend to the spoiled rich guy.”

  I raised an eyebrow. “That’s quite a combo.”

  “I’m quite a guy.”

  Where did these guys get their self-assurance? I needed an Annie Oakley outfit to make me feel like I was somebody special.

  “You look different than you did yesterday,” he said.

  “Yesterday I went mod. Today I went Western.”

  “Is that a regular habit?”

  “Sometimes a girl likes to change things up,” I said, more playfully than I’d intended.

  “I bet you always get your man too.”

  Heat climbed up my face. “Did you have any luck convincing Blitz about the party?”

  Grady looked disappointed at my change of subject. “That’s why I’m here. Blitz was embarrassed about how he treated you after you did so much work.”

  Blitz Manners hadn’t impressed me as the type to get embarrassed about the way he treated people, but I saw no benefit to accusing Grady of lying on his friend’s behalf.

  “So you’re here to smooth things over?” I asked.

  “I’m here because Blitz asked me to buy the whole lot.”

  I glanced at the rack of costumes and did some quick math in my head. Costumes usually rented for $150 each, with $50 of the deposit being refunded when the costume was returned in good shape. That left $100 a costume for us. Forty costumes at $100 rentals would be $4,000, with a possible two grand more if the costumes came back damaged—which I suspected they might. Not bad for a day’s work.

  But to buy them? I didn’t know what to quote. Our income came with repeat rentals. One costume could be rented over and over and earn us thousands of dollars minus the cost of cleaning. Blitz’s had said that the $20,000 was supposed to get us started, but $500 a costume would take up the whole amount. Ebony would have nothing left to offset the costs of the party execution. If I cut the price by much less than $500, I’d be giving away potential long-term profits, not only of the costumes we’d assembled, but also the ones we’d pillaged to come up with these so quickly.

  “Once costumes are sold, they’re nonreturnable. Rentals are for five days, which would get you through the weekend. They’d have to come back on Sunday. Would you rather do that? Blitz won’t be out as much if he doesn’t have the party.”

  “Nope.
” He pulled a black Amex out of his billfold and handed it to me.

  “Don’t you want to know the price first?”

  “Not necessary. I’ll square it with Blitz’s stepdad. Present for Blitz.”

  “It’s going to take me a while to tally up the contents of the costumes.”

  “Take your time. I’ll look around.” Grady wandered into the front of the store. A round silver rack held double-breasted suits for men and fringed flapper dresses for women. Low bookshelves painted to match the wall held tommy guns, headbands, long strands of pearls, cigarette holders, and fake cigars. We rotated the inventory every few months according to popularity, but the 1930s Mafia section stayed in the front. The old-school mob look remained consistently popular regardless of the season.

  Grady disappeared behind the rack of pinstriped suits to the shelves where we kept the colored hair spray and face paint. I wrote up a description of each costume on a receipt pad. The last costume was the classic Sherlock. I added the hat, the pipe, a magnifying glass, and a pair of gloves, zipped it all into a clear garment bag, and set about determining a price for everything.

  There was a price list in a binder behind the register. The binder was divided into costumes for men, women, children, and pets. The system wasn’t much more organized than that. Names of costumes had been written on each line, with a price for rental and a price for purchase. In this day and age, it surprised me that my dad still relied on handwritten price lists and a calculator instead of a website and database. I backtracked through the pages until I had a feel for the pricing, kept a running tally on the calculator, and finally named a figure for the whole lot. Grady didn’t blink. I punched it into our credit machine, swiped his card twice before remembering the black Amex had to be keyed by hand, and asked for his signature.