A Disguise to Die For

by Diane Vallere

  “Yes. She was one of Charlie’s Angels.” I didn’t really think her choice of costume was relevant, but there it was.

  The detective thanked me and hung up. She made no mention of last night at Hoshiyama Kobe Steak House and neither did I.

  * * *

  KIRBY showed up a little after four o’clock. The first thing I did was run upstairs for a much-needed bathroom break. When I returned, I found him looking at my sketch.

  “Are these for the new window that you did?” he asked.

  “It was just an idea.”

  “They’re great. I bet the drama club would be willing to paint the background for you if you gave them a discount on costumes for their next play.”

  “I didn’t know you were in the drama club,” I said.

  “I’m not,” he said. He kicked the toe of his Converse sneaker against the floor. “Rehearsals are the same time as afternoon swim team practice. I heard some of the drama club talking about fund-raisers on the bus ride home.”

  “Are you friends with them? Would you be willing to ask if they’ll do it?”

  He looked up. “I could ask the girl in charge if you want.”

  “Great,” I said. “I’ll give them a fifty-dollar store credit in exchange for the backdrop.”

  “Man, Varla’s going to flip. Can I call her now?”

  “Varla?”

  Kirby reddened. “She’s the stage manager. She’s cool.”

  “Sure, go ahead and call her.”

  Kirby went into the back room to make the phone call. I suspected Varla was more than just another girl who rode the bus with him.

  I straightened the colorful display of crinolines when the door to Disguise DeLimit slammed open. The door hit the rack of feather boas, knocking it backward into the makeshift wall that separated the store from the stockroom. Feathers from the orange boa came loose and flitted through the air. One caught on the sleeve of the sun-kissed woman who entered. She shook her arm vigorously to free it, and then, when it refused to let go, she picked it off with her thumb and forefinger and flicked it in my direction. Being a feather, it caught the wind and glided away.

  “Are you Margo Tamblyn?” she demanded.

  “Yes. Welcome to Disguise DeLimit.”

  “Don’t give me that crap. I want you to stop harassing my employees and stop talking about my company. Do you understand? My husband is an attorney and if you keep up the smear campaign against us, I’ll press you with defamation of character charges.”

  “I don’t know who you are, but maybe you should mind your own business,” I said.

  “I am minding my business. Candy Girls is the most important party supply and costume store in Proper City and your rumors are chasing away customers.” She turned to leave and tripped over a box of foam clown noses that sat on the floor. Brightly colored balls spilled out around her orange platform shoes.

  She kicked the balls away and turned to leave. She stopped at the door and looked over her shoulder. “And in case nobody’s told you yet, you look stupid in that hat,” she said, and then she left.

  I followed her to the door. She climbed into a sporty blue convertible and drove away.

  Kirby came out from the back room. “Jeez, Margo, what’d you do? I’ve never seen the Casserole lose her cool like that.” He tucked his phone into the back pocket of his jeans and stared out the front door.

  “The Casserole?”

  “Gina Cassavogli. We all call her the Casserole. Behind her back.”

  “Who’s we? The kids at school?”

  He gave me a funny look. “No. Jerry and Ebony and me.” He paused. “And some of the kids at school,” he added.

  “Let me guess. Gina owns Candy Girls,” I said.

  Kirby nodded. “You must have done something big to get her to show up here and acknowledge Disguise DeLimit exists. Normally she acts like they’re the only game in town.”

  “Candy Girls is only five years old,” I said. “Disguise DeLimit has been here since 1975. It would make more sense for us to pretend they didn’t exist than vice versa.”

  “You know women,” Kirby said. “Sometimes they don’t always see what’s right in front of them.” He bent down and corralled the clown noses back into the box. I didn’t ask how his conversation with Varla had gone. I had a feeling I could guess.

  After we closed the shop, I went upstairs and sat at the dining room table, staring at the envelope of cash. I still couldn’t figure out how it had ended up with Ebony after I’d given it back to Blitz on Wednesday night. But was it the money Blitz had tried to use to pay for the costumes? Or was it money that he was planning on donating to Bobbie’s foundation? It couldn’t be coincidence that the amounts were the same and they were both stashed in envelopes. It had to mean something, only I didn’t know what.

  I traced my finger around the edge of the envelope. “Where have you been?” I asked it. “Did Blitz give you to Ebony after I gave you back to him? Or am I missing something?” I pulled the cash out of the envelope and fanned it in out in front of me, feeling only slightly silly for talking to it. Now would be a great time to discover that money really did talk.

  No closer to answers twenty minutes later, I put the money back into the envelope and set it next to the fabric and the empty hair spray cans. Grady had paid for the costumes, so our fee from the party had been covered. All this time I’d thought that Blitz had stiffed Ebony, but maybe he hadn’t. And if that was the case, then her motive for murder would be gone.

  But she’d told me at the party that she still had to work out the details of his payment. So how was it the envelope of cash had turned up in her possession after he was dead?

  Chapter 14

  I WAS EAGER to leave the store once we closed on Monday night. I hopped onto my scooter and drove to the fire hall where the party had been. It was, by all accounts, the scene of the crime, and even though I’d been there when the body had been discovered, I wanted to look around now to see if there was something I’d missed.

  Several white vans were parked by the curb in front of the building. Two men stood on the sidewalk, smoking. They each had clear plastic shields pushed up on the top of their heads. Remembering how Tak had spotted my scooter, I passed them and wedged the scooter into an available space on a residential street two blocks away.

  A small man with a fringe of hair around an otherwise bald head stood in front of the building. His arms were crossed as he glared at the smokers. I watched from the side of the road as three additional men dressed in blue plastic containment suits came out of the building. They were carrying large red plastic bags marked with a black biohazard symbol.

  I approached the bald man. “Excuse me,” I called out in a friendly voice. “What’s going on in there?”

  “What’s supposed to be going on is crime scene cleanup. It’s bad enough that this—this thing—had to happen in my fire hall. The police wouldn’t let me touch the place until they were done. Can you imagine what that’s going to do to my business? My future rentals?”

  “Your future rentals? Oh, you must be the owner,” I said. “With all due respect, sir, I don’t think you’re thinking of the bigger picture here.”

  He turned his attention from the smokers to me. The anger in his face softened to understanding. “You’re right. That young man’s death is far worse than my loss of income,” he said.

  “Are those men part of the crime scene cleanup crew?”

  “Yes. They’ve been at it for most of the day. Usually it’s the party planner who gets the job of cleaning up the day after. Ebony got lucky this time.” He looked at me again. “I’m sorry. I’m not usually this insensitive,” he said. He raised his hand to his forehead and his eyes fluttered dramatically. “I think I’ve blocked the whole thing out of my mind.”

  “I can see why you’d want to,” I said. It would be hard
for me to reenter the kitchen, having seen Blitz’s body facedown in a puddle of blood. “Do you know how much longer they’ll be at it?”

  “I told them to keep working until the job was finished, but it’s after seven and I expected them to be done by now.”

  “Do you have to stay here?”

  “No, but I want to do a final walk-through before they leave. No sense in having to get them back out here and lose another day of work.”

  “Wait here and I’ll find out for you.” I left the little man before he had a chance to change my mind.

  The smokers watched me approach. One tossed his cigarette onto the ground and stomped it out. The other held his behind his back.

  “Hi,” I said. “The owner over there wanted to know how much longer you guys think you’ll be.”

  “Job’s almost done,” said the taller of the two men. “Everything’s been bagged and bleached. The crew inside is coming out with the waste now. Once they’re clear, we’ll take him for the tour and if he signs off, we’re outta here.”

  The shorter man put his cigarette out on a nearby trash can and then tucked the butt into the pocket of his shirt. “We leave the place cleaner than we found it. Company motto.”

  I looked at their T-shirts and jeans. “Why aren’t you wearing blue suits like the other guys?”

  “Suits are for inside. Once you leave the building, you dump the suit so you don’t track chemicals outside.”

  “So what happens if you have to go back in?”

  “You put on another suit.” He tapped the pack of cigarettes in his T-shirt pocket. “Expensive habit. Some days I go through five or six suits.”

  A crew of men came out of the fire hall. Each man stripped his blue plastic suit off while standing on the front step, and then shoved it into an additional red bag held open by the first guy who had exited. The men remained gloved, and after the suits were off, they carried sealed red bags to the last white van and loaded them in through the back. If there was any evidence left over that the detective hadn’t found, it would be in one of those bags. I imagined two-day-old goose that hadn’t been refrigerated, bloodstained towels, and bleach-covered rags, and I shuddered. The ick factor was off the charts.

  When the last bag was loaded, one guy slammed the van door shut. “Yo, Bartlett! We’re done,” he called out. Smoker #1, Bartlett, nodded at him and then turned to me.

  “Does your boss want a suit for the walk-through?” he asked me.

  It took only a moment to realize his erroneous assumption that I worked at the fire hall. “Yes,” I said quickly. He reached into the front seat of the van and pulled out a flat square sealed in clear plastic. “And one for me too, please,” I added.

  He grabbed a second package. “One size fits all,” he said, thrusting the packages at me. “Let’s go.”

  I waved the owner over to us and held out a suit. “They’re ready to do your walk-through,” I said.

  “Why do you have a suit?”

  I smiled my most charming smile. “I thought you might like a second set of eyes, you know, to make sure they didn’t miss anything. I mean, no sense in having to get them back out here and lose another day, right?”

  “Good thinking.”

  The professionals didn’t bother putting suits on for the walk-through. I didn’t really expect to find any clues in the fire hall after the professional crime scene crew had done its job, so I wasn’t disappointed when the walk-through netted nothing more than the less-than-flattering blue plastic jumpsuit. The owner accepted that the job had been completed with a high level of satisfaction. He thanked the men and left. I stepped out of my own suit after he was gone and balled it up.

  “Do I need to do anything special with this?” I asked the smoker who shall be called Bartlett.

  “I already told you, the place was clean. We wear them to avoid contact with the chemicals and with any of the biological waste. Chuck it in the trash or keep it as a souvenir.” He elbowed his friend and they both laughed.

  “Are they expensive?” I asked.

  “Why? You planning on making a fashion statement?”

  “No. I run a costume shop, and we don’t have anything like these.” I thought about the alien costumes my dad was bringing back from Area 51, and envisioned a dedicated science fiction display in the store.

  “I thought you worked for the bald guy.”

  “No, I was just helping him out.”

  “Well, if it’s the costumes you want, you can get ’em online. Most medical supply stores have them too.” Bartlett slapped Smoker #2 with the back of his hand. “The game’s starting in twenty minutes. Let’s go.”

  Smoker #2 nodded. “Hey, lady, sorry about the costumes.”

  “What costumes?”

  “We found a couple of costumes shoved into the back of the oven in the kitchen.”

  “Where are they now?”

  He nodded toward the back of the truck. “Incinerated. They went with the first round of stuff we pulled out of the place. Once the crime scene was released, we were told to gut the place and burn everything.”

  He headed around the back of the van and I chased after him. “Wait!” I said.

  “For what? Listen, lady, it’s late and we gotta get out of here.”

  “Before you go, can you tell me anything about these costumes?”

  “Sure. There was a hat, like one of them plaid ones that Sherlock Holmes wears.”

  My heart sank. Blitz was wearing the classic Sherlock costume when I’d found him, but the hat had been missing. It must have come off and rolled away in whatever it was that had amounted to his last seconds of life. “That hat was part of the victim’s costume,” I said. “I guess it fell off before he died.”

  “Guess so.” He climbed into the driver’s side and started the van. “Did his costume include a trench coat?”

  “No. Why?”

  “Found one of them too. The coat was in worse shape than the hat.”

  The van pulled forward. I put my hand on the door handle and jogged alongside. He slowed to a stop. “Lady, you gotta let go of the car.”

  “Just one more thing,” I said. “Can you describe the trench coat?”

  “Yeah. It was rumpled and it was dirty. That mean anything to you?”

  It did. It meant Columbo had been involved in Blitz’s murder. Now all I had to do was find out who had worn the Columbo costume.

  Chapter 15

  I WAS HALFWAY to Grady’s house in Christopher Robin Crossing before it occurred to me to think up an excuse for showing up unexpectedly and asking about who wore what to the party. Payment wasn’t a valid excuse. Plus, I’d already made it clear that the costumes weren’t returnable if purchased, so I couldn’t offer to buy the costumes back without undermining the store’s return policy.

  Police sirens sounded behind me. I glanced in my rearview mirror and saw the flashing lights. Fine time to get a ticket! I pulled over to the shoulder, my heart racing. The police car shot past me and turned into the development. I followed. The flashing lights disappeared around the corner. I took the same turn. There was no question where the police were headed. Two black-and-whites were parked willy-nilly in front of Blitz Manners’s house on Pooh Corner.

  Blitz’s mom stood out front. Again she was tastefully dressed, today in a somber black skirt suit. Her driver stood next to her, his arm on her elbow. She hugged her body and kept her eyes focused on the ground. Even though the sun had descended, she wore heavy black sunglasses. Considering her son had been murdered only a few days earlier, I suspected she was hiding the evidence of her grief.

  Among the officers who got out of their cars was Detective Nichols. Today she wore a snug black T-shirt under her black blazer. Her blond hair hung loose in soft curls. She’d parted it on the side and tucked it behind her ears.

  I watched from the
side of the road. The detective approached Mrs. Cannon, who looked up and pointed at the house. She shook her head in answer to something Detective Nichols asked. The detective went inside the house. Mrs. Cannon and her driver stayed behind in the driveway.

  A car with dealer plates screeched into the development and pulled up behind the police cruisers. Black Jack hopped out and raced over to his wife and she crumpled into his arms.

  “If I didn’t know any better, I’d say you were spying on the rich and famous.” I recognized Grady’s voice before turning to confirm my suspicion.

  “Maybe I was just out for a nighttime ride,” I said.

  “Pretty bold of you, considering you got lost in our development only yesterday.”

  “Lost seems like such a strong word, don’t you think? Temporarily disoriented is better.”

  “Okay, so what does your temporary disorientation have to do with the scene in front of the Cannon house? That is why you’re here, isn’t it?”

  “Actually, I came out here to see you.” At the surprise on his face, I smiled. “I wanted to talk to you about the costumes from Saturday.”

  He waved his hand in front of me. “Forget about it. You made it clear that they weren’t refundable. I’m not going to fight you on that.”

  “That’s not what I meant,” I said. “I was hoping you could tell me who wore which one.”

  “Why do you want to know?” he asked.

  I searched my mind for something—anything—to say and I came up empty. I wasn’t comfortable enough to tell him the truth.

  “Listen, I get it. What happened to Blitz at the party was horrible and I can’t shake it either. The police have a list of everybody who was there. If they needed to know who was dressed as each character, they would have asked. You have to try to let it go.”

  I nodded as if he’d figured me out. “I can’t help thinking that one of those people is a killer. You know? A dress-up party is supposed to be fun, but one person saw an opportunity to hide their true identity so they could get away with murder. It doesn’t make it any better that everybody was dressed up as a good guy. I mean, who was it? One of Charlie’s Angels? Charlie Chan? Or maybe it was Kojak or Columbo?”