A Disguise to Die For

by Diane Vallere

  “Amy, isn’t it? Nice to see you again,” I said. I pointed to myself. “Margo Tamblyn, from the costume shop.”

  “I know who you are.”

  “Great. I wasn’t sure if you’d remember me. You were a little flustered the day you came into Disguise DeLimit.”

  She set down her glass and looked from side to side. “What are you doing here?”

  “Probably the same thing as you. Having dinner. If you haven’t already ordered, the Salvadorian shrimp salad is pretty good.”

  “I’m having the scampi.”

  “Okay, well, maybe next time.” As awkward as it felt, standing in the aisle next to Amy’s table, I couldn’t help thinking about how very possible it was that she was involved in the vandalism on Ebony’s car or, even worse, in Blitz’s murder. And if she was, then she wasn’t going to get away with it. She turned her head toward the window—dismissing me, I imagined—and folded her hands in front of her. There was no ring on her finger.

  Bingo.

  I slid into the booth opposite her. “I’m not going to join you, if that’s what you’re worried about. I’m just curious. What happened to the engagement ring you were wearing when you came to Disguise DeLimit on Sunday morning?”

  She curled her right hand around her left and dropped them both into her lap. “What ring?”

  “The giant diamond ring. It was pear shaped, wasn’t it? You said it was from Blitz’s family.”

  “That was all true. The ring belonged to Blitz’s mother. He used to say he was going to give it to me.”

  “But he didn’t give it to you, did he?”

  “Blitz was a selfish man-boy who thought he was the center of the universe. We were together for two years. And then one day he cheated on me. Just like that. I might not have ever known if I hadn’t found them together at his party.”

  “You caught Blitz with another woman at his birthday party?” I asked, surprised.

  “Close enough. I caught him making out with Gina Cassavogli in the back of the big, brown gas guzzler that was parked out front.”

  Chapter 22

  “THE CADILLAC?” I asked.

  “I thought it was a prop for the party. There were so many detective shows in the ’70s that it made sense.”

  “That’s Ebony’s car.”

  Amy looked stunned for a second, and then she recovered with a look of disgust. “I don’t care how much Blitz paid her for the party, she should have shown a little more class about loaning out her keys.”

  That was the thing. Ebony wouldn’t loan her keys to a couple of kids who wanted to make out at a birthday party. Especially not the owner of Candy Girls. Not even if the birthday boy was the one who wanted it. That Caddy was her pride and joy. She’d owned it since high school. In the past forty years she’s probably paid more to maintain it than Black Jack Cannon charged for a brand-new car off his lot.

  But if Amy thought Ebony had loaned out the use of her backseat and she—Amy, not Ebony—caught her rich boyfriend of two years with her married boss back there, she would be angry. Angry enough to confront said boyfriend in the kitchen of the party? Angry enough to wield a knife? Angry enough to stab him and leave him for dead? I didn’t know. What I did know was that it all boiled down to one thing: Amy had a motive.

  I excused myself from her table and rejoined Tak at ours. A small bowl with two scoops of half-melted ice cream sat in the middle of the table. Tak held a spoon in one hand. There was a dent in the side of the scoop closest to him. A clean spoon sat on my place mat.

  “I thought you’d like to split some ice cream,” he said. “Better hurry, though. It’s almost melted through.”

  I picked up my spoon and then set it back down. “Amy Bradshaw is sitting at the booth in the back corner. Sunday morning she came to the store and tried to sell me her costume from Saturday night. She was wearing a giant diamond ring and she made it seem like Blitz had given it to her. Today she not only says that I misunderstood her, but admitted that she caught Blitz and Gina Cassavogli in the backseat of Ebony’s car at the party.”

  Tak stared at me with open admiration. “You found all that out in, like, five minutes?”

  I felt pretty good about it myself. I picked up the spoon and scooped a sizable amount of ice cream into my mouth. I savored the sweet creaminess of it and swallowed. “What flavor is this?”

  “Cherry vanilla.”

  “Mmmmmm.” I took another scoop and closed my eyes. When I opened them up, Tak was grinning.

  “What would you have had for dinner if we weren’t here?” he asked.

  “A bowl of Fruity Pebbles, probably,” I said. “Daily supply of vitamins and minerals.”

  “I don’t think the son of a restaurant owner can be seen in public with a woman who eats Fruity Pebbles for dinner.”

  “Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it.”

  We finished off the ice cream and the waiter brought the bill. I snatched it from the table before Tak could get to it and made a show of leaving cash in the black folder.

  “I thought this wasn’t a date?” he asked.

  “It’s not. If it was a date, we’d go dutch.”

  The tension from the spilled water incident had dissipated and Tak and I were back to the comfortable getting-to-know-you feeling from earlier at the store. Sadly, the tension came back when he pulled his SUV up in front of my store, because someone else was already parked there.

  Detective Nichols.

  She was dressed in a pair of black stretchy yoga pants, a sports bra, and an open zip-front sweatshirt. As if she hadn’t already won the employment round (detective trumps magician’s assistant in almost everybody’s world), she pulled ahead in the body-fat round too. As in, a lot less than I had. Whereas I was far from comfortable in my own skin, the detective proved she was not only comfortable in hers, she wanted everybody to see it. She unpacked my scooter from the back of an old, beat-up pickup truck.

  “Tak,” Nichols said.

  “Nancy,” Tak said.

  Detective Nichols turned to me. “How’s Jerry?” she asked.

  “He’s still at the hospital in Moxie. I’m hoping he comes back by the end of the week.”

  “Are you going back up there to visit him tomorrow?”

  “No, I need to be here to open the store. I didn’t count on the lost business from today.”

  She nodded as if she understood. “I finally had a chance to get your scooter.”

  “Thank you. You didn’t have to bring it here.”

  “Don’t mention it,” she said with a wave of her hand.

  I looked back and forth between Tak and Detective Nichols—Nancy—and felt more tension than I had when I’d knocked over the glass of water at Catch-22. Whatever the terms of their breakup were, I sensed they were unresolved. Now hardly seemed the time to get on the officer’s bad side.

  “Thanks for helping me out in the store tonight,” I said to Tak. I pulled out my keys. “Detective Nichols, do you have a couple of minutes? I think we need to talk.”

  Tak looked surprised but recovered quickly. The same could not be said for Detective Nichols, which caused me, at least internally, to smile. Tak climbed back into his SUV and drove off, leaving us two gals hanging out on the sidewalk. I unlocked the store and she followed me inside. I turned on the lights and set my keys on the counter.

  “If I remember correctly, the reason you were at Christopher Robin Crossing on Monday was because somebody robbed Black Jack and Linda Cannon’s house, right?” I asked.

  “Hold up,” she said. She put her hands up, palm-side out. “You want to talk to me about the investigation?”

  “What did you think I wanted to talk to you about?”

  She looked at the door and then back to me. “Yes, that’s right. Linda Cannon called the police when she came home. The place had been t
ossed.”

  “Do you know what was missing?”

  “Her jewelry. Why?” She turned her head to the side and assessed me out of the corner of her eyes.

  “Amy Bradshaw came here on Sunday morning. She was wearing a giant diamond ring and, when I commented on it, she led me to believe she and Blitz were engaged. I ran into her tonight and she wasn’t wearing it anymore. When I asked her about it, she said it was Blitz’s mother’s ring. She never told me why she had it in the first place. I don’t know what happened to it now but it seemed odd, that Amy would even have a piece of jewelry that belonged to Blitz’s family.”

  “Describe this ring,” she said.

  “It was a big, pear-shaped diamond. I’ve never seen a ring that big before.”

  “This all happened on Sunday morning when she came in here and tried to sell you her costume?” she asked.

  “Yes,” I said, chewing my lower lip the way I did when something bothered me. “And she let something else slip. Not Sunday, but tonight. She said she caught Blitz and Gina Cassavogli—the owner of Candy Girls, who is married, by the way—in the back of Ebony’s Cadillac at the party. Amy and Blitz had been dating for over two years. I can’t figure out why she’d act like they were still a couple—not just a couple, but pretend that they were engaged—when she came here on Sunday, unless she was trying to cover something up, you know?”

  Detective Nichols stared at me. Her fingertips were in the pockets of her yoga pants, with her thumbs hooked on the outside. “The timing on the ring doesn’t make sense,” she said finally. “The robbery was on Monday.”

  “What if someone who had every right to be in that house has been stealing from them all along? If Amy was dating Blitz, nobody would have questioned her being there. She could have stolen the ring. She could have stolen a lot of things. But now that Blitz is out of the picture, there’s no reason for her to be there anymore. What if she staged it to look like someone came in and robbed the place on Monday so she’d be off the hook for the missing jewelry?”

  “Seems far-fetched.”

  “Do you have any other theories?”

  “With all due respect, it’s not in my job description to discuss ‘theories’ with the locals.”

  “With all due respect, I think this information gives you a reason to follow up with Amy Bradshaw and talk to her about her relationship with Blitz.”

  “I’m curious. What took you out to the Cannon house the day of the robbery? Seems like you were there just in the nick of time.”

  “I went to see Grady,” I said.

  “Any particular reason?”

  “I wanted to know who wore which costume at the party. I already told you about the trench coat that the crime scene cleanup team found in the kitchen. Did you check into that yet? Or is there a reason you’re ignoring the information I’ve been giving you?”

  Detective Nichols cocked her head to the side for a second and then righted it. “Okay, I’ll check this out. Thank you for the tip.”

  “You’re welcome. Thank you for bringing my scooter.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  After she left, I went upstairs and stared again at the collection of items I’d amassed on the kitchen table. The empty hair spray can that I’d found in Ebony’s Cadillac. The scrap of plaid fabric. And the $20,000. Was I withholding evidence? Technically, I thought no. The hair spray and the fabric were in Ebony’s car, which had been parked out front of the store. That crime of vandalism hadn’t been reported. And the money . . . well, I still needed to ask Ebony about that.

  * * *

  THE next morning I dressed in a black T-shirt with a ruffled shirt, bow tie, and tux lapels printed on the front and wide-legged black trousers. I fed Soot and called the hospital.

  “Margo! Good news. They ran out of green Jell-O so they’re letting me leave.”

  “Today?” I asked.

  “Tomorrow. I’m pretty sure Don had something to do with it. When he’s not with me, he’s out there playing poker with the hospital staff. They’re probably tired of him taking their paychecks.”

  My dad and Don had bonded over three things: card games, the blues, and conspiracy theories. I wanted to call up the nurses’ station and tell them they were lucky Don was in a poker phase. Otherwise they’d be listening to his argument about how we never actually landed on the moon.

  “When will you be here?”

  “As soon as they let me go, we’re leaving. I don’t like being cooped up in this bed all day. I want to get home and take a look at those costumes I bought. Did you unpack them yet?”

  “No. I’m in the middle of reorganizing the stockroom. Once that’s done, we can tackle the aliens together.”

  “As long as they’re not armed,” he said and then laughed at his own joke.

  When the call was over, I made a cherry and banana smoothie to go and left by quarter to eight. I hopped on the Zip-Two and got off in front of Dig’s Towing.

  Today Dig was dressed in a turquoise bowling shirt with red flames on the back. The sleeves, as usual, had been torn out, and the anchor tattoo on his formidable biceps was on display. His jeans were dark wash, wide leg, and cuffed over CAT boots. Dig didn’t seem to care that the temperature in Proper was ninety degrees in the shade. Dig was so cool the heat didn’t touch him.

  He was bent over the engine of his tow truck. When I said hello, he jumped and banged the back of his head on the raised hood.

  “Where’d you come from?” he asked, rubbing the back of his bald head.

  “The Zip-Two.”

  “Something happen to the scooter?”

  “No, I thought it would be easier to scare you if you didn’t see me coming.”

  “You got your dad’s sense of humor, that’s for sure. How’s Jerry doing? Ebony told me he’s back in the hospital.”

  “He’s going to be fine. I talked to him this morning and he said the doctors expect to release him in the next day or two.”

  As comforting as it was to know how many people in town cared about my dad, it was hard to keep answering the question that I was only barely allowing myself to think about. I hoped if I repeated “he’s going to be fine” enough, it would become true.

  “Jerry’s not ready to cash in his chips yet,” he said. “Not until he gets to Florida.”

  “Florida? What’s in Florida?” I asked. I’d never once heard my dad mention an interest in going to Florida.

  “He’s got a pen pal out there who has a collection of pink flamingo costumes. Can you believe that? Apparently there was some kind of stage production and a local artist made ten of them. Adult sized. Now who else in this whole country would be interested in ten life-sized flamingo costumes? I don’t know. Those pink flamingos have Jerry Tamblyn written all over them.”

  “If it takes pink flamingos to keep my dad going, then pink flamingos are my new favorite bird,” I said.

  “Word,” he said. He stood back from the truck and crossed his arms over his chest. Now I could see half of both of his tattoos: the anchor and the Tweety Bird on the other side. “You didn’t come out here this early to give me an update on your dad’s health, did you?”

  “No, I didn’t. I wanted to talk to you about Ebony’s car.”

  He lowered the hood of the truck and wiped his hands on his jeans. “You’re talking about the vandalism, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Let’s go inside.”

  I followed him to the open garage. He went straight for a small table that held a fresh pot of coffee and an assortment of powdered creamers. “You want some?” he asked. I shook my head. He poured himself a mugful, dumped in a ski-slope-sized amount of powdered creamer, and stirred it all with a brown plastic stirrer. He ran the stirrer through his lips and tossed it before turning back to me.

  “What do you know about that vandalism?” he
asked.

  “Not much. I came out of the shop and there it was. The window was broken, the car was spray-painted, and the tires were flat. I thought I knew who did it, but now I’m not so sure.”

  “Turns out you’re not so sure about a couple of your facts. The paint, as you figured out, was hair spray. Came off with soap and water just like you said.”

  “That’s only one fact that I was wrong about,” I said, knowing that he was building up to something.

  “The window wasn’t broken.”

  “Yes it was. I saw it.”

  “Somebody wanted you to think the window was broken.” He drank from his cup, made a face, and added more creamer. “There are two things I know that you don’t. The back lock on the passenger side of Ebony’s car doesn’t work. Looks like it’s locked, but if you try to open the car and jiggle the handle, the door pops right open.”

  “So anybody who wanted to get into her car could.” I thought about what Amy had said about Blitz and Gina in the backseat at the party. That explained how they’d gotten in there. “But what about the broken glass?” I asked.

  “That’s where somebody got creative. Ebony’s window was rolled down and glass was inside and outside of the car. Whoever did the vandalism wanted you to think that the window was broken.”

  “So you just rolled the window up?”

  “Pretty much. The crank sticks a little, but if you know the trick like I do, you can get it to work.” He flashed a proud smile at knowing how to work Ebony’s car. It was cute.

  “Why would somebody do that? Make it look like her window was broken when it wasn’t?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t figure that part out. The whole thing is off if you ask me. The paint washed off, the window wasn’t broken, and because the back door wasn’t locked, she can’t claim somebody broke in.”

  “What about the flat tires? Somebody sliced them.”

  “Nope. Somebody let the air out, but the tires were intact.”

  “You mean you just filled them back up with air and they were fine?”