by April Henry
After the chant was over, preparations began for the dancing. A DJ started spinning records (actual records, too, not just CDs) while the hotel staff pushed in a karaoke machine. On the low portable stage that Sawyer had just vacated, Jim began setting up amplifiers and guitars. When Dante went to the bathroom, Claire walked over to talk to Jim. They had to raise their voices to be heard over a medley of Donna Summer hits.
“So are you going to play Louie, Louie tonight?”
He shrugged, but couldn’t hide his smile. Jim was always at his happiest when he was making music or making love - or just about to do either. “Wait and see. We’re not scheduled to start playing for an hour. You won’t hear none of this disco stuff, that’s for sure.” Donna Summer’s voice finished swooping through the last notes of Bad Girls. Jim winced when Olivia Newton-John began popping the notes on the bubble-gum sweetness of A Little More Love.
The Minor Miner waddled by them, high-fiving (or high-fouring) anyone who put up a hand, occasionally swinging his pick. For the most part, he was ignored, although the occasional guy would come up, knock on his foam head and wittily shout “Anybody home?”
“I started thinking about Cindy when I saw the Miner,” Jim said. “She would have loved to have gotten up there, reliving her glory days. She would have had us all on our feet, cheering.”
There was something about his tone. “You liked her, didn’t you?”
He looked away. “Remember when we broke up?”
“Yeah?” Ckaure drew the word out. Jim hadn’t wanted to formalize their relationship at the time by even using the term ‘break-up.’
He plucked at a string. “It was because I was starting to see Cindy.” Jim didn’t have to explain what ‘see’ meant.
Her heart constricting with an old, half-remembered pain, Claire made herself think back. “But she was dating Wade then.”
He shrugged. “It was like a secret thing for both of us. I’d park by Safeway at the end of the shopping center and she would get in my car. We would drive out to the river and go skinny-dipping. I knew she was slumming, but I didn’t care. She didn’t want anyone to know about us. Maybe her parents didn’t, and maybe the teachers didn’t, and maybe even the other girls didn’t, but I’ll guarantee some of the guys at least guessed. Cindy collected guys. She used to sing that Blondie song, you know, the one that talks about a girl putting another notch on her lipstick case.”
What a cliché, Claire thought. Cheerleader slash whore.
She must have murmured the last word underneath her breath, because Jim reacted with a protest, the expression in his green eyes hardening. “She wasn’t a whore. She was just Cindy. Her dad was a doctor who was never around, even when she was really little. And when he was, he criticized her. So you could never tell her enough that she was pretty or funny or had something to say that you wanted to listen to. She needed to hear it all the time.”
It was strange to think of Cindy as vulnerable or insecure. When they were teenagers, Claire had hated Cindy for the way she picked on others, for the way she always had to be the center of attention. Now the perspective shifted. Had all Cindy’s actions been fueled by a deep insecurity?
And there was another facet to Jim’s story. Claire tilted her head to one side, thinking. “OK - so who else?” she demanded suddenly.
“What?” She could tell Jim knew what she was asking, but he didn’t want to answer her question. He pretended to tune his guitar.
“Who else did she sleep with?”
Grimacing, he raised his shoulders to his ears. “What does that matter?”
“It matters because I’m beginning to doubt that the dishwasher killed Cindy. And if he didn’t - well, someone who used to sleep with her would probably have more reason to kill Cindy than someone who didn’t.”
His gaze was an inscrutable as a cat’s. “Does that mean you would put me on the list of suspects?”
Her answer came on the heels of his question. “Of course not, Jim. I know you pretty well, remember? And you would never do that. So who else?
He gave in. “I don’t know everyone besides me and Wade. There was Alex Fogel, and Brian Jones, and a couple of other guys from the football and basketball teams, I think. Oh - and once I saw her with that old buddy of yours, Logan.”
“Logan!” Claire couldn’t believe it. In an odd way, it felt more of a betrayal than learning that Jim had slept with Cindy.
“Cindy always liked a walk on the wild side. The best way to get her to do something was to tell her that she shouldn’t or she couldn’t.”
Claire hardened herself. “Do you know of anyone else?”
“I’m sure there were, but I don’t know anyone else for sure. From the way she talked, I think she was even sleeping with one of her parents’ friends. Some older guy that would really get in trouble if anyone found out about them. A little taste of forbidden fruit.” He looked at her with flat eyes and she could tell that he was angry with her. “Does it make you feel better, knowing all that?”
She answered him honestly. “No. But don’t you care if the wrong person is in jail for killing Cindy?”
“If it’s the wrong person, then yeah, sure I care. But you asked me the wrong question.” His finger slid down a string until it made a low squeal. “You should have asked if I want to see the right person in jail.” Before she could answer him, he turned around, set the guitar down and walked away, pushing through the wine-red curtain that hid the service entrance.
Claire stared after him, unsure of his meaning. In the back of her mind, though, she counted the reasons to link Jim with the crime. He had once been Cindy’s lover. And he had disappeared for a while after they found the body. Had he been disposing of Cindy’s wallet in the casino’s dumpster? And, she realized, there was yet another reason to wonder if Jim was involved. Cindy’s body had been found less than thirty feet from his car. Was that more than just a coincidence?
An arm slipped around her waist. She turned. Dante.
“That Jim of yours didn’t look too happy.”
“You know he’s not ‘my Jim.’ But yeah, you’re right. He thinks I’m asking too many questions about who might have killed Cindy.”
“What did he tell you?”
“That Cindy slept around, which wasn’t really a surprise. She slept with him, though, and I didn’t know that.”
Dante shrugged one shoulder. “Does that really matter now?”
“Sure it does. Someone who once had an intimate relationship with her would probably be more likely to kill her than a stranger, don’t you think? And it sounds like she went through boys like scratch paper, so one of them might still be mad about being treated that way.”
“Who were some of the other guys?”
“Besides Jim and Wade, Jim said Alex Fogle - that guy from breakfast, remember? - and some other guys from the football and basketball teams.” Claire looked down at her feet. “And maybe Logan, once.” When she looked up, Dante was watching her intently.
“Sounds like she had her fingers in every pie of yours. Does that make you dislike her more?”
“What - are you looking at me as a suspect?” Then she turned serious. No,” Claire heard her own answer with surprise, “I guess I’m starting to understand Cindy a little better. I think she was one of those people who lived all on the surface, but underneath she was lonely.”
BWHO UR
Chapter Twenty-nine
During a break in Jim’s set - which had had everyone on their feet, cheering - the DJ put on Chuck E’s in Love . Even thought it wasn’t really a slow song, Dante pulled her into his arms and out onto the dance floor anyway. “Has anyone told you anything interesting about what really might have happened to Cindy? Or have you overhead anything?” she asked him.
“No, but I didn’t know you needed me to be snooping.”
“You’re an outsider here. People might talk more freely in front of you. Kind of like they do in front of a waiter or behind the bus driver. I’ve al
ready noticed that when I join a group, people tend to switch subjects.”
“You’re not exactly subtle, though, are you? You’ve already told a bunch of people that you don’t think the dishwasher did it. Well - who else does that leave? Only the people in this room. They might resent the fact that you suspect them.”
“But I don’t suspect all of them.” Dante pulled back to look at her better and Claire laughed. “All right, I don’t suspect three or four. You, for instance. I’m pretty sure you didn’t do it. But it seems like a lot of other people could have. I wish I were a pillar or one of these stuffed cactuses or even that guy over there with the camera - something or somebody no one pays any attention to.” She pulled Dante back so that they avoided running into the lumbering mascot. He was moving blindly and slowly around the room, pausing every now and then to wave enthusiastically and totally cluelessly. “He reminds me of a presidential candidate,” Claire whispered to Dante.
“I don’t think the mascot can hear you,” Dante said in a normal voice. “He’s got all that padding around his head.” The Minor Miner stopped waving for a moment and turned his big pasted-on felt eyes in their direction.
“You just gave me an idea. Do you have some money - ideally four or five twenty dollar bills - that I can have?” That was the nice thing about going to an event like this. Claire didn’t need to worry about carrying a purse, since everything was already paid for and Dante was keeping the hotel card key in his wallet.
“Yeah. I’m afraid to even ask why.” He pulled five twenties from his wallet and handed them to her anyway.
She tore each bill down the middle.
“What did you do that for?”
“I plan on appealing to the oldest human emotion - greed.”
###
The high school kid wearing the Minor Miner costume hadn’t been able to resist the lure of $100 - even if he only got half of it right away, stuffed into his four-fingered fist. She told him he would get the other half if he let her wear the costume for the rest of the night, and after a moment of silence, he had nodded his giant head.
He had retrieved his things and a big, lightweight black box from the janitor’s closet, then met Claire and Dante in their hotel room as they had arranged. The Minor Miner went into their bathroom, and a skinny high school kid with a buzz cut and a pierced nose and wearing jeans and a T-shirt came out, carrying the costume in his arms. He wouldn’t hand it over until Claire had promised not to talk while wearing the costume, never to act out of character, not to lose or damage any part of the outfit, and at the end of the night to leave the costume, in its trunk, with the front desk. Only then did he set the costume on the bed (all of it neatly folded, with the exception of the head and foam rubber pick), and hold out his hand for the other halves of the bills.
“Thanks,” he said, stuffing them into the front pocket of his jeans. “Oh, and I forgot to warn you not to let anyone take off your head. For some reason, guys like to try it. Once I almost got de-headed by two drunk guys at a football game, but I managed to get away.”
Thinking that she had more motivation not to be revealed than he would ever guess, Claire agreed not to let anyone take off her head.
“And high-five people, because if you shake their hands, they try to take off your fingers. Oh - and watch out if there are any kids around. You can’t really see anything below about waist level, so the first thing you know about there being any kids is when one of them runs into you full speed.”
“Okay, okay. I don’t have to worry about that tonight. The event is adults only.” Claire was impatient to go back to the party and see if her ruse would work. When he started it launch into a recital of the finer points of belly bumping, she opened the door and shooed him out.
Dante helped Claire out of her dress. She let him sneak a few kisses, but she was too eager to get back to the dance to let him do more. First she slipped on the dark blue Lycra pants. They were thick with padding, the outside slick as satin, except where it had been snagged by the various Velcro fasteners that held the costume together. Then came the heavily padded shirt, again dark blue, which zipped up the front. These two pieces formed the backdrop for the miner’s costume. Next came a huge flannel shirt and then oversize denim overalls sized to fit about a four hundred pound man. She was finding it harder and harder to move, so Dante snugged the straps so they wouldn’t fall down.
The Miner’s big black boots had been fashioned over men’s high top tennis shoes. Claire slipped her feet in them, for once grateful that she wore a woman’s size ten. She waddled into the bathroom to look into the mirror. A laugh spurted out of her. Her head looked puny, perched on top of her now outsize body.
She maneuvered her way back to the bedroom (remembering to lift her feet high off the ground so she wouldn’t catch the big boots on the carpet). The dark blue hood came next. It reminded her of a medieval knight’s garb, a single piece that flowed over her head and shoulders, with an oval opening cut out for her face. Finally she lifted the miner’s head and looked inside it. It had been built around a bike helmet. She lowered it in place and fastened the strap under chin. Inside the head, it wasn’t as stuffy as she had thought - the huge eyes were made of some kind of black mesh, with glued on felt dots for the irises. Dante helped her pull on the two four-fingered hands, much larger than her own, handed her the foam-rubber pick, and then they were ready to go.
Claire quickly discovered that she could only see by looking at something at a slight angle, so the pupils of the fake eyes didn’t get in the way. She had no peripheral vision to speak of, and what vision she had was dimmed about thirty percent by the mesh of the eyeholes. The costume probably weighed thirty pounds, and she was beginning to baste in sweat. And as the costume heated up, it began to release the faint but lingering smell of vomit.
When they reached the door of the Westward Ho! banquet room, Dante went on ahead of her, to deflect suspicion. Claire tried to open the door herself and found that first, she couldn’t see the knob, and second, that after she finally found it that she couldn’t open it with her outsize hand.
“Let me help you with that, good buddy,” a voice said. She turned. Wade. He opened the door, then propelled her forward by slapping her on the back.
At first, Claire found herself smiling at people whose gaze met hers. A social smile, lips pressed together, accompanied by a little nod. All of it invisible under the costume. The costume required broad gestures, she began to find. The big wave. Chopping her pick wildly. Arms held out wide for a hug. A certain walk seemed right, too, exaggerated, pumping the arms, raising the knees a little higher than necessary. The head was already growing unbearably heavy. The weight certainly encouraged her to stand up straight - her back hurt too much if she did otherwise. You could break hardened criminals down by simply making them wear the costume for a few hours, she thought as yet another man punched her playfully on the shoulder, almost knocking her over. Didn’t people realize that there was someone underneath the foam rubber?
Claire remember seeing rainbow-haired clowns forced to wave at intersections to draw attention to store openings, or avoiding the Fred Bear who occasionally roamed the Fred Meyer store, dressed in an oversized blue shirt. Next time the Fred Bear guy wanted a hug, she would give it to him. It was too embarrassing to find yourself acting for someone you thought was standing right next to you, only to turn your head and figure out they had left.
But all the downsides of the costume were balanced by one giant upside. While she walked around the perimeter of the room, occasionally accidentally running the edge of her miner helmet into the wall, her fellow graduates treated her - or her alter ego, the Minor Miner - as if she were invisible.
Claire saw Alex Fogel lay down a twenty-dollar tip for one of the barmaids, as a woman looked on admiringly, and five minutes later she saw him come back and pocket the tip before the barmaid got to it.
She overheard Cherie and Todd Walter, the pet psychics, arguing about whether Cherie had had
too much to drink. Todd left the room, and a few minutes later Claire saw Cherie sweet-talking another man who didn’t seem to mind her half-mast eyes and the way she slurred her words.
From the other side of the room, Claire saw Tyler answer his cell phone. He didn’t say more than a few words, but his expression froze and his face turned purple. Before she could make her clumsy way in his direction, he hurried out of the room.
Hidden inside her costume, Claire was free to wince as Tomisue tried her hand at karaoke, warbling off-key through Stand By Your Man.
Claire watched Maria and Sunny, who sat in one corner of the room, turn down every request for a dance, preferring to reminisce with each other. She saw Wade leaning in close to whisper to Rebecca. And Claire witnessed Jessica flirting with Richard, laughing up at him, touching his shoulder and then the nape of his neck, leaving him with a slightly stunned look that mingled dizziness and delight. Layers within layers, Claire thought, as she caught sight of Martha watching Richard fawn over Jessica. Martha’s open face was unable to hide a faint frown of envy. And all the while, she saw Dante circling from group to group, person to person, trying to get someone to confide secrets in a stranger.
People treated Claire as if her costume was reality, as if there was nothing inside the foam, no human being with ears. Now as the evening wore on and the drinks flowed, they wanted to include the Minor Miner in their festivities. They made chopping motions with imaginary picks whenever they saw her. One guy she didn’t recognize pulled her on to the dance floor, and she danced for a few minutes while Jim growled out “Satisfaction” in a passable imitation of Mick Jaggar. Some of the men, the drunker ones, began to shout and grab at her and bang on her head. Claire realized she had no way to indicate distress, that her mascot face would keep right on smiling happily no matter what they were doing to her.
When it got particularly bad and she began to worry about losing her head, Dante rescued her by inviting the ring of men around her to accompany him back to the bar for a free drink. Afterward, her bladder sent up a distress signal, the same one it had been making for at least an hour, increasingly urgently. She would have to take a break and go to the restroom. With luck, she could manage to pee without taking off too much of her costume.
