The Boy in the Red Dress

by Kristin Lambert

  “I’m not here for a room. May I come in?”

  The woman glanced to the left and right over my shoulder, then took a step back and waved me into an entrance hall that had been turned into a lobby. The signs of dust and neglect from the exterior of the house were absent in here. Everything was spotlessly clean, and a cushy orange chair stood behind a large desk in the middle of the floor, which was checkered in wide squares of black and white. The staircase to one side had worn dips in the middle of each step from so many feet over the past hundred years, but the wood was polished to a shine.

  The woman sat down in the orange chair, her ring-bedecked hands perched on its arms like she was a queen and this was her throne. She said nothing but watched me expectantly, waiting for me to explain myself.

  “Ma’am,” I said, because she looked a couple of decades older than me, “I have a few questions to ask you. About one of your . . . guests.”

  Her eyes went flinty, and one hand moved protectively to a large ledger book on the desk. “I’m afraid I don’t answer questions.”

  “I understand privacy is important in your line of work,” I said, easing forward slowly. “It is in mine, too. What’s your name? Can you answer that?”

  The woman looked me over with an appraising eye. “You can call me Mrs. Felix. And just what is your business?”

  “I’m Millie Coleman,” I said. “My aunt owns the Cloak and Dagger club, and I work there, too.”

  Mrs. Felix shifted in her chair, her gaze sharpening. “You’ve had some trouble there recently, I heard.”

  I nodded, glad I didn’t have to explain it all again. “That’s what I’m here about.” I studied Mrs. Felix and decided how to present my case. She wouldn’t care if Marion was my best friend, or a nice person. I had to appeal to her as one business owner to another. “The cops want to pin the murder on our star performer, the one who brings in the big bucks. I’m trying to get him cleared, so he can get back on our stage.”

  “What does that have to do with me?” she said.

  “We think the girl who was killed might’ve come here with someone in the past, maybe more than once. Her name was Arimentha McDonough. Maybe you can look for her in your ledger there.”

  “Nobody gives their real name here.” Mrs. Felix laughed a smoky laugh that set her to coughing. “What else you got?”

  I took out my notebook with Minty’s picture pasted inside and laid it on top of her ledger. “You seen her?”

  Mrs. Felix picked up the notebook and held it at arm’s length to study Minty’s face. She gave me a weaselly look. “I might’ve.”

  “What do you want? Money?”

  She smirked. “You don’t have the kind of money that would persuade me. But your customers . . .” She looked toward the staircase and rubbed her chin. When she looked back at me, her eyes were metallic bright. “You spread the word about this place at your aunt’s club. Tell everybody this is the place to go for an hour or a night, and nowhere else. You promise to do that, and I’ll tell you what I know.”

  I hesitated. Cal wouldn’t like it. She made her own business deals, and for all I knew she could already have an arrangement with a different hotel.

  “Take it or leave it,” Mrs. Felix said, smiling.

  “Fine.” I clenched my fists, making the cuts on my hands protest. “I’ll take it. What you got?”

  Mrs. Felix looked pleased with herself and steepled her fingers together on top of the ledger. “I’ve seen your girl all right. She came here a few times.”

  “With someone?”

  Mrs. Felix gave me a disdainful look. “Nobody comes here alone, sweetheart.”

  I clenched my teeth to stop myself from reacting to that. “Okay,” I gritted out, “so who was her friend?”

  “A kid, like her.” Mrs. Felix waved a hand, her jewels gleaming. “Didn’t dress or talk like her, though. Figured that’s why they were here—a wrong-side-of-the-tracks Romeo-and-Juliet thing.”

  “What did he look like?” I said eagerly.

  “About the same height as you. Black hair, too.” She laughed. “He isn’t your brother, is he?”

  “No.” I didn’t have time for jokes when I was so close. “What else?”

  “He wasn’t as skinny as you. Looked like a strong boy. Big shoulders. Good-looking. Spanish or something like that. Couldn’t blame the girl for slumming with that one.”

  “Got anything more specific? Scars? Tattoos? An accent? An eye patch?”

  Mrs. Felix shook her head. “He was just a regular kid. He was even nice to her, not like a lot of folks I get in here. Looked at her like she was made of gold.” She winked broadly. “Which I’m betting she was.”

  “Did she ever say his name?”

  Mrs. Felix considered. “I don’t think so. But he called her some kind of nickname.”

  “Maybe you wrote it in the ledger?”

  “Come to think of it . . .” She started flipping pages. “Of course, they always used fake names, like everybody. And they were always different, but . . . ah.” Her finger stopped on a line, and she spun the book around so I could see. “The girl’s names were always birds.”

  I leaned over the book. The line said Dove Jones and Romeo Catalano.

  Mrs. Felix flipped back another page and pointed again. Sparrow Bells and Lorenzo Alto. Another. Fanny Cardinal and Sal Romeo. Another. Robin LeJay and Romeo Benini.

  “Four times? Are you sure that’s all?”

  Mrs. Felix flipped a few more pages and shook her head. “Looks like it.”

  I listed off all the names again in my head. All Minty’s names were for birds; all Romeo’s names sounded Italian. Did that mean he was Italian? That narrowed down the selection somewhat, but not much. There were Italian families on every block of the French Quarter, not to mention the rest of the city.

  “Oh,” Mrs. Felix said, “and there’s one more thing.”

  I looked up at her, mind spinning. “What?”

  “That boy always had a smell about him, like he worked in a stable or something.”

  “He smelled like horses? Maybe an ice delivery guy? A truck farmer?”

  “No, no.” Mrs. Felix shook her head. “He smelled like hay.”

  I gaped at her blankly. My insides swayed as the dots connected in my brain. Dark hair, good-looking, broad shoulders, the same height as me, polite, smells like hay—like the hay packed around bottles of bootleg liquor.

  Romeo could be lots of people. Could be anybody.

  Or . . .

  Suddenly, the names clicked into place.

  Sparrow Bells and Lorenzo Alto. Sal. Benini.

  He had been at the club that night. Had I even questioned him about where he was when Minty died? Or had I just assumed he was innocent? I backed toward the door. “I have to go.”

  Mrs. Felix laughed. “Figured it out, have you?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  I ran out the door and let it slam shut behind me.

  * * *

  I turned down Decatur, back into the heart of the French Quarter. Back toward Altobello’s Grocery. My heart hammered. I told myself I was probably wrong. Bennie had tried to help me get out of the club the night of the murder. Bennie had gathered Marion’s stuff from his grandmother’s rooming house. Bennie had driven us to Arimentha’s house and helped us try to break into the diary box.

  But . . . what if he did those things because he was the murderer? What if he searched through Marion’s things to find incriminating evidence against him? What if he wanted to see the diary in case his own name was in it?

  If Bennie was the killer, then he was the one who vandalized the club and wrote that threat on the mirror.

  If Bennie was the killer, he knew where Marion was, knew where my whole family was. All he had to do was knock on the door and they’d let him
in.

  What if they were all in danger?

  My heart beat even faster, and I picked up my pace until I was running, ignoring the pain in my leg, dodging around pedestrians, even darting into the street to get more room. What if Bennie was there at the store now? What was I going to do? Would I be able to pretend everything was all right? Would I be able to trick him into confessing?

  By the time I got close to the grocery, I knew I needed evidence. I’d never been inside Bennie’s bedroom, but I knew where it was—in the back of the storage room, with its own entrance, so he could do late-night deliveries without disturbing the family. I was going in, if not now, then later tonight.

  I slowed when I got to the corner across from the grocery. I went around the block to the back, where they loaded the delivery truck, and peered around the corner. The truck was gone. Bennie was off making a delivery. I let out a breath. I had time, though there was no way of knowing if it was five minutes or an hour.

  Mrs. Altobello’s house loomed black against the deepening lavender sky over the muddy loading yard. Two upper windows faced this way, but no one stood at them. One of them was Marion’s, and I knew his room hadn’t been let again yet. Bennie had said Mrs. A was holding it for him. What would she think if her precious grandson turned out to be a murderer? What would Bennie’s parents and sisters do? What would I do? I pushed that worry away for now. Two more windows in the apartment over the Altobellos’ store looked down on the yard. White curtains covered them, and I could only hope no one in his family was peering through them at this very minute.

  I stepped out from behind the corner and strolled casually across the dusky yard. Then I ducked under the little lean-to protecting Bennie’s door from the elements. At least there, I wouldn’t be visible while I picked Bennie’s lock.

  I took out my lock-picking tools but tested the doorknob first, and it turned easily under my hands. Maybe that was a good sign. People who had stuff to hide locked it up, didn’t they?

  I stopped thinking and slowly pushed open the door, still half expecting to see Bennie inside. But there was no one in the narrow room. Only a small, scarred desk and mismatched chair, a washstand with a ceramic pitcher and bowl, an old armoire, and a single bed along one wall, covered with a gray wool blanket and a pancake of a pillow. One window over the desk was open a crack, and a damp breeze twirled around me.

  I went to the desk first and looked at the few objects there. There was a candlestick telephone and a lamp with a pull chain. The day’s light was almost gone, and very little of it reached into the corners of this room, so I took a risk and turned on the lamp. It illuminated a cigar box containing a pen and a bottle of ink, a rubber eraser, a stubby pencil, and a short knife to sharpen it with. I picked up the knife, pushed the dull side against the pad of my thumb, and set it back down again in its place.

  Underneath the desk was an old apple crate filled with papers. I crouched down and flipped through them one by one, but they were all receipts related to the business. Bennie must do the paperwork for his father. I didn’t see a calendar anywhere and definitely no love letters or journals.

  I straightened up and moved on to the washstand. The cabinet contained a stack of thin white towels and a glass jar with a two-inch layer of coins inside. The drawer contained a razor, shaving brush, box of extra blades, and a small bowl for the shaving cream.

  Nothing.

  Next, the armoire. I opened its double doors. One had an oval mirror on it, and the other had pictures pasted on the inside of beautiful movie stars cut from newspapers, not dissimilar to the ones Marion had stuck around his dressing room mirror, except I imagined Bennie had a different use for them. Inside was a hanging rod on one side and a stack of drawers on the other.

  I cocked my head toward the door and stopped to listen. No voices, and I was certain I hadn’t heard the truck pull up. Quickly, I pulled out each drawer, rifling through the contents, mostly Bennie’s clothes. I managed to feel a little ashamed of myself when I got to the underwear drawer. I’d found nothing so far—maybe Bennie was innocent, and I’d jumped to conclusions and was violating his privacy for nothing. But if I hurried up and got out of here, he’d be none the wiser, and I wouldn’t even have to be embarrassed about it. I emptied the pockets of Bennie’s shirts and pants and his two suit jackets but came up with nothing more interesting than another nub of a pencil and a stray handkerchief.

  I shut the armoire. Still nothing.

  All nothing.

  I turned around and looked at the narrow bed. It was the only place left, unless he had some secret hidey-holes in the walls or under the floorboards. I knelt on the bright rag rug next to Bennie’s bed and peered under it. There weren’t even any dust bunnies. The room was plain but neat, everything in its place, which fit what I knew of Bennie much more than his being a murderer. Maybe this long day had me jumping to conclusions.

  I stood back up and looked under Bennie’s pillow. I reached inside the pillowcase and found more nothing. I stopped and listened again. Still no truck engine or voices. Now for the mattress. I lifted it up at one corner and reached between it and the box springs, sweeping my arm back and forth. When I found nothing, I moved to the end of the bed and stuck my arm under there. A sliver of paper sliced into my finger. I yelped in shock, adrenaline pumping. I shoved my shoulder under the mattress and pushed it higher, not caring that the blankets were getting mussed. There on the box springs lay a thin stack of scattered papers of different sizes. Facedown.

  My breath caught in my throat. Those papers could be anything—could be something he just didn’t want his mother to see. Hell, they could be nudey pictures. But I had to know.

  Hand shaking, finger bleeding, I reached for the papers and picked them up. They were drawings, all of them, done in hesitant gray strokes. I recognized the man on the corner behind his cart of oranges. Two girls walking arm in arm under a streetlight, their shadows stretched out long behind them, like me and Olive. Our cornetist with his lips pressed to the instrument and his cheeks puffed out. The river choked with boats.

  And birds.

  Lots of birds.

  “What have you got there?”

  My heart froze. Slowly, I turned my head.

  Bennie stood in the open doorway, watching me.

  CHAPTER

  30

  I SQUEEZED MY eyes shut. No. No, no, no, no. He’d sneaked up on me. How?

  I opened my eyes and turned toward him, still holding the papers in my hand, a drop of blood from my finger blotching them.

  I swallowed, tried to breathe. “I didn’t hear the truck.”

  “I took it to the repair shop,” Bennie said slowly. “Walked back.”

  I nodded, like this was a normal conversation, like he hadn’t caught me literally red-handed in his room, snooping through his things. Finding evidence against him.

  I was alone in a room with a murderer.

  He stood in the doorway with his hand still on the knob. I could shove him, knock him off balance, slip past, hold tight to these drawings, take them to the police.

  But the next moment, he came inside and shut the door behind him. Without turning his back on me, his fingers slid the bolt shut. The only light now came from the small lamp on the desk, and his face was in shadow.

  I reached inside my pocket for my switchblade.

  “Don’t do that, Millie. Please.”

  I glanced at the window. It was big enough to jump through, but I’d have to waste time climbing over the desk and shoving up the sash. The only way that would work was if Bennie was down. Really down. And then I could just go through the door.

  I swallowed hard again and slid out my knife, squeezing it so tightly the cuts on my knuckles stung. I didn’t want to stab him, even now. I had never actually stabbed anyone, despite all my talk. Especially not someone I knew. Someone I’d worked with, laughed with, beat up bullies with
, sat shoulder to shoulder with and plotted with.

  “You,” I said, and was surprised and annoyed to find my voice shaking. “You’re Romeo. You killed her.”

  “No.” He held up his hands but didn’t advance toward me. He didn’t pull out a weapon, but the pencil knife was still on the desk where I’d left it. The washstand drawer was full of razor blades. And he was bigger than me by at least thirty pounds.

  I shook the drawings at him. “These . . . you . . . you did . . .” Where were my words? My lies? My best tools? They’d abandoned me.

  “I didn’t kill her, Millie. I swear.”

  I stuck out my chin. “I went to the Felicity Inn tonight.”

  Bennie ran a hand through his hair, rumpling it. His shoulders sagged. “You know then?” He looked pained. “About me and Minty?”

  I gestured with the drawings. “These helped me put it together. How did you even meet her?”

  “The Roosevelt Hotel, when I filled in for Eddie that time. She . . . she liked me. She . . .” His gaze drifted away from mine toward the window.

  Anger flared, pushing down some of the fear. “She what? Seduced you? I’m sure it was somehow her fault, right? Then what? You fell in too deep, and she told you to get lost, and you pushed her off the balcony? Let Marion take the fall for it? Hung around with us, ‘helped’ us, all so you could save your own neck?”

  “No. Yes . . . no, not all of it. I didn’t kill her. I didn’t even talk to her that night.”

  “I’m supposed to believe that? You’re at the club and your lover—or ex-lover—walks in with another man, and you’re just copacetic?”

  “The last time I talked to her was the week before. She finally told me about the old friend she was looking for, and I realized he might be Marion. So I told her about the club, told her he’d be there, and I would take her. But she told me no. She said she wasn’t looking to be my date, or anyone’s. She said she was broken and wouldn’t be fixed until she fixed something she’d done. She left me at the Felicity Inn, and I didn’t see her again until that night at the club. But I didn’t even talk to her, I swear. I let her be. I liked her a lot, maybe even could’ve loved her, but when she showed up with that rich kid, I figured she’d just been lying about being broken. I figured the real truth was she didn’t want to be seen with some Italian bootlegger.”