Dressed to Confess

by Diane Vallere

  “If I never see another board game, it’ll be too soon,” she said. “Last night, I actually called Elli Lisbon, that foundation director.”

  “The one you read about in Southern Living?”

  “Yeah, that’s the one. Do you know what she told me?”

  “What?”

  “She said if anything looked like it was potentially spiraling out of control, divert attention with food.”

  I looked up at the archway to Candy Land. “Is that why you’re standing here?”

  “You know it. I thought I could look to this board game for inspiration. ‘Peanut Brittle House’? ‘Lollipop Woods’? And get these character names: Grandma Nut and Queen Frostine. This is supposed to be a game for kids. It would take me a month to distill this into something usable.”

  I looked at the board game. “Why not just buy a whole bunch of little candy canes and stick them into cupcakes? People love cupcakes.”

  “Girl, you can’t go jamming candy canes into cupcakes and calling it something special.”

  “I don’t see why not.”

  She rolled her eyes. “You stick with the costumes. Let me handle the party planning.”

  Before I had a chance to talk to her about Kirby’s surprise party for Varla, she stepped backward and surveyed my outfit. “You look like one of them singles from the Seattle scene circa 1992. That is not a costume, that is a big old advertisement that you are not interested in a relationship. Something happen with Tak?”

  “Tak and I are currently on opposing sides of an editorial issue,” I said. I reached into the duffel bag and pulled a wad of newspapers out. “Speaking of which, I’m taking over my dad’s booth today. Send anybody who wants to know the truth.” I peeled off a folded page and handed it to her.

  Ebony had been friends with my dad and Don for a long time, but while he and Don claimed to help expose conspiracies behind much of what we believed, Ebony credited superstition and the will of the universe for what happened around us. She lived her life with karma as her copilot. I knew the only reason she didn’t make a big deal out of the conspiracy theory booth was because of friendship, not because she had empty real estate at the festival. And I knew the only reason Don and my dad had tables set up to play Risk and Stratego was because they respected that Ebony had a theme and they didn’t want to take advantage of her. But this—me using their newspaper to actively bring details of Ronnie’s murder into her festival—might be too much. I held my breath as she scanned the article.

  “This true?” she asked.

  “According to my source.”

  “You trust your source?”

  I didn’t trust Gina as far as I could throw her. “I think somebody out there doesn’t want us asking these questions,” I said. “Besides, what’s the point of having a conspiracy theory newspaper template on your dad’s computer if you’re not going to use it?”

  She folded the paper in half and stuck it into the neckline of her strapless dress. “How many copies do you have?”

  “Enough to rile up a whole bunch of people.”

  “You’d better get started,” she said. “I’ll tell the mayor I got a cupcake emergency on my hands, but that’s only going to keep him detained for so long. Once he hears about this, you’re on your own.”

  I kissed her on the cheek and took off.

  A pack of people hovered around the Spicy Acorn tent, talking among themselves. I bypassed them and untied the flaps to the tent, and then tied each side back so the tent was open. Grady broke away from the group and followed me in. Today he’d left his suit jacket at home. The sleeves to his blue button-down shirt were folded back twice, exposing freckled forearms. A plastic press badge like the one my dad had worn yesterday was clipped to his belt.

  “We weren’t sure if you were showing up today,” he said. “Heard the fuzz caught that cat, tossed him into the pokey.”

  “What is that? Underground newspaper lingo?”

  “I think spending time with these conspiracy theorists is rubbing off on me.” He grinned, the full thousand-watt smile that probably got him anything in life that his money couldn’t. “I heard Detective Nichols arrested Don yesterday.”

  “You heard wrong. Don and Jerry are in Utah looking at golf clothes.”

  “Right. Dig that, sister.” He winked and lowered his voice. “Do you have any more copies with you?”

  “Sure.” I reached into my bag and pulled out a stack. He grabbed the top half and stepped outside of the tent. I followed him.

  “Hot of the press, dig it, man. Little sister came through for us.” The crowd turned our way and Grady dealt the newspapers out like they were playing cards. In a matter of seconds, he depleted his stack and turned to face me. “See? It works. They think I’m one of them.”

  Behind the crowd of eager readers, Joel V. appeared. Today’s ensemble was blue: floral shirt with a matching floral tie, blue striped pants, and blue and white saddle shoes. A straw hat with a blue and white grosgrain ribbon around the crown was perched on top of his head.

  Joel grabbed my upper arm and steered me into the tent. He waved a copy of Spicy Acorn back and forth like he was a menopausal woman with a hot flash and it was his only source of a breeze.

  “What do you think you’re doing?” he demanded. His normal expression of happy-go-lucky spin doctor was gone, and in its place was anger.

  “I’m putting the truth out there,” I said.

  He slapped the newspaper down on the table in front of me. “You’re sabotaging the mayor’s reputation.”

  “I thought your job was to get publicity? I’m handing you a story on a silver platter. The town scandal was built on a lie. You should be finding a way to distance the mayor from that, make him look like a stand-up guy. You should be advising him to forget the incorporation of Proper City for a moment and focus on what’s going on here. You should make him publicly recognize that a woman—not just any woman, but a woman he was once married to—was murdered across the street from his precious festival.”

  Joel’s shoulders tensed and his hands froze, as if he’d been doused with an invisible bucket of ice water. “Mayor Young can’t be connected to the Ronnie Cass scandal. Her trailer was on public property.”

  “That’s all you people can say, isn’t it? ‘The trailer wasn’t on the festival grounds so we have no culpability here.’ What about this? She was a resident of Proper. She was his ex-wife. Mayor Young needs to address that, now more than ever. When people learn of their relationship and see that he hasn’t stopped once to acknowledge her death other than to point out that it didn’t happen at the festival, he’s going to lose a lot of votes.”

  “He’s running unopposed,” he said. “Besides, this city loves Mayor Young.”

  “They won’t when they hear that he’s more concerned with the profitability of his own festival than with the murder of one of the residents.” I gestured toward the stack of newspapers. “And it wouldn’t be all that hard to let them know.”

  Joel put his hands down on the table in front of me and leaned in so close I could smell the bitter coffee on his breath. “If you were smart, you wouldn’t threaten the mayor’s office,” he said. “You never know what might happen.” He swatted the stack of newspapers off the table. They fell to the ground in a cascade of paper, fluttering over the dirty and dead patches of yellow grass. Without another word, he turned around and left.

  Chapter 28

  I DROPPED DOWN to the ground and corralled the newspapers into a pile, and then scooped them up and set them on the table. Grady came inside and helped. “Is everything okay in here?” he asked, all traces of his new underground dialect gone.

  “It’s fine,” I said.

  He called to Finn outside the tent, and he came inside the booth too. Grady said something to him, and then patted him on the shoulder. Today Finn wore a white T-shirt with an ove
rsized marijuana leaf printed on the front. Same big beard, same dirt-colored Birkenstocks. “Who was that guy?” he asked.

  “Festival publicist. He works for the mayor.”

  Finn’s eyes grew wide. “One of the mayor’s minions came in here and trashed the booth?” He turned and looked outside at the group of people congregating by the tent flaps. “You have to follow this up with an article about that.”

  “Or not,” I said. “I’m not the brains behind this operation. I’m just the daughter of the brains.”

  “Don’t sell yourself short,” Grady said.

  Finn tapped the newspaper. “The acorn didn’t fall far from the tree. Which one’s your dad? Jerry or Don?”

  “Jerry. You know them?”

  “They’re legendary in our circle. I’ve been pushing them to start up a newspaper for years but they could never find funding.” He turned to Grady and put a hand on his shoulder. “And then this man came along and answered all of our prayers. Paying production costs and circulation. G-dog is making Spicy Acorn legit, man,” he said. Grady had the decency to blush to the roots of his copper hair. Finn jutted his chin out at my outfit. “By the way, nice shirt.”

  “Yeah, um, you too,” I said, pointing at his marijuana leaf.

  He leaned back and grabbed the hem of his T-shirt and pulled it down so the image was stretched flat against his chest. “Forget kale, man. Okra, that’s where it’s at.”

  “Okra?”

  “Yeah, I farm okra in my spare time. What did you think this was? Marijuana?”

  I didn’t want to appear that square. “Poison ivy?”

  “Leaflets three, man, leaflets three.” He shook his head at my feigned ignorance and left.

  Okra farmers and underground circles in Proper City. The town never ceased to amaze me.

  Now that Grady and I were alone, I turned to him. “What about you? Do you think there’s something to what I wrote?”

  “I wouldn’t quit your day job, but it’ll sell free papers.” He grinned.

  “Can you do me a favor?” I asked. “I need to talk to somebody about what just happened with Joel. Can you get those people inside the tent so they stop drawing attention?”

  “My job is to lend the paper an air of respectability and pay the bills,” he said.

  I put my hands on my hips. “Fine. I’ll get Finn to do it.”

  Seconds later, I heard Finn’s voice out front. “Got questions? Spicy Acorn has the answers. Sometimes you gotta get nuts to find out the truth. Wanna get nuts? Come on, let’s get nuts.”

  I snuck out of the booth while Finn and Grady ushered people inside for a game of Conspiracy, ignoring whatever the code was for maximum number of people in a festival booth. I had a feeling I’d created a monster.

  * * *

  I made my way to Bobbie’s booth. Of everything that I’d learned since Ronnie’s murder, I couldn’t shake the fact that there was something big I was forgetting.

  When I rounded the corner to Bobbie’s booth, I saw exactly what I’d forgotten. The giant teddy bear costume that Don had promised to wear. It hung on a plastic hanger in the back of Bobbie’s booth. The teddy bear head was on the ground behind one of the bookcases filled with bears. Bobbie held a small teddy bear out in front of a crying child. The parents were off to the side, playing with the props on the back of the selfie table.

  I snuck around the back of the booth and untied the swags. When nobody was looking, I removed the teddy bear costume from the hanger and raised the bottom of the tent so I could grab the teddy bear head. A teenage couple stood in the alley, watching me. I put my finger up to my lips, stepped into the bear costume, and set the head on my shoulders. Thankful for the relative comfort of the T-shirt and jeans that I’d worn, I took a second to adjust the head so I could see out the small mesh screens by the mouth, and then sauntered around the side of Bobbie’s booth.

  I wasn’t sure who I surprised more, Bobbie or the parents. The crying child, however, was delighted by my sudden appearance.

  I hopped from one foot to the other, holding my hands out to the sides. Most people don’t consider that teddy bears often aren’t equipped with elbows. I continued my jig until the little girl had forgotten all about her tantrum, and then I took her hand and led her to the table with the small festival bears. I tried to pick one up—unsuccessfully, thanks to my lack of experience with paws—which made the girl smile and clap even more. Finally, I scooped one and held it out. She took it, hugged it to her chest, and ran back to her parents.

  Bobbie approached me slowly. As tended to be the case when people wore costumes, I forgot that I was dressed like a giant teddy bear and that she didn’t know it was me.

  “Don? Is that you?” she asked. She stood on her tiptoes and tried to look inside the bear’s mouth. “Mitty! Where’d you come from?”

  I put the paws on either side of the head and pulled it off. “Don’s on a costume-scouting trip with my dad. It occurred to me that you were left out of that conversation.”

  “No he’s not. I saw him at the grocery store earlier today.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Sure I’m sure.” Her expression changed from cheerful to serious. “He said he needed some distance from what’s been going on here. You think he’s going to be okay?”

  “Truth? That’s the real reason I’m here.” I set the teddy bear head on the table. “It wasn’t like I set out to get involved, you know? But there’s all of this information. Too much information, if you ask me. And none of it relates to anything but Ronnie.”

  “Like she’s the wooden wheel at the center of a cluster of Tinkertoys and there are all kinds of radials sticking out from every side.”

  “Sure, that’s one way to put it.”

  She ran her hand over the furry teddy bear head. “It’s too bad he won’t be here to wear the costume. This could have been a really great way to get exposure for the teddy bears.”

  “The teddy bears,” I repeated. “That’s what we forgot!”

  “The teddy bears are right here,” she said. She looked at me funny. “Are you okay?”

  “Not these bears, the other bears. The bear that was in Ronnie’s trailer—that Chet said he found out front. And the bears that had their heads torn off. Why so many bears? What do they have to do with anything?”

  “You don’t really think the bears took out Ronnie when nobody was looking, do you?”

  “I’m serious.”

  She settled onto a white plastic folding chair. “Okay, let’s talk teddy bears.”

  “First, there was the bear that I saw in Ronnie’s trailer. Later on, Chet had it and he claimed he found it out front.”

  “You think Chet did it?”

  “He’s not above suspicion.” I told her about my visit to the hospital and how he’d told the nurse to get rid of me. “He seems to have something to hide.”

  “Speaking of hiding, don’t forget the bear in the sewer grate,” she said. “What happened with that?”

  “Detective Nichols still has it. She still has my phone too. Which I think she’s keeping to spite me.” I stood up. “Maybe a surprise visit will net me some information.” I got about ten feet away from Bobbie’s booth when she called my name.

  “Don’t you think you’re forgetting something?” she asked.

  “What?”

  She pointed to her torso and I looked down. “Right,” I said. I went back to her booth and stepped out of the teddy bear suit, hanging it back on the rear bookcase where I’d found it, and then left.

  It was inevitable that I’d end up back at the police station. Before entering, I bent down and measured the wiener-dog door stopper with my hands, and then stood back up. Resist the urge to make it a costume, I told myself. Detective Nichols didn’t deserve it.

  I turned the knob and let myself in. A bowl of min
iature candy bars sat on the raised counter in front of a woman in a yellow tank top and matching denim jacket. Behind her, beige filing cabinets topped with white metal trays lined the wall. A plant, suspended by a macramé holder straight out of a ’70s craft class, hung next to the ficus tree in the corner. Judging from the bright leaves on both plants, someone in the office had a green thumb.

  “Can I help you?” the woman asked.

  “I’m Margo Tamblyn. I’m here to pick up my phone.”

  “Margo,” I heard behind me. I turned around. Tak and Detective Nichols stood in the doorway to a small office at the front left of the building. “You should have told me you were coming,” Tak said.

  “She’s not here to see you. She’s here to see me.” Detective Nichols tipped her head to the side, raised her hand, and tucked a loose lock of blond hair behind her ear. She fingered her small gold earring with her thumb and forefinger for a moment, and then dropped her hand to a matching gold pendant. The entire display of body language—no more than two seconds’ worth—held more feminine cues than I’d ever seen her show. She caught my eyes and held them for a second. A warning flare went up inside my brain: Tak must have told her about our argument last night and now she’s trying to get him back. I knew with 100 percent certainty that it wasn’t mere jealousy; it was a fact.

  “Detective Nichols,” I said. “You’ve had my cell phone since Sunday. I’m pretty sure you’ve ruled out any connection between me and Ronnie Cass’s murder, so I’d like to get it back.”

  “It’s not that easy. Your phone was taken in as evidence. I can’t return it to you without a release from the district attorney. This is an ongoing investigation. I doubt your request will be granted, but you can pick up the necessary forms from the front desk.”

  Nancy Nichols and I had maintained a polite yet impersonal relationship when around Tak, and today was no different. She hadn’t said anything that was untrue, even if her intent was to piss me off. I bit back my initial response and glanced at him to see whose side he was on. He crossed his arms over his chest and leaned back against the wall. His black hair fell to the side of his face. He crossed one foot over the other and winked at me. It was all the encouragement I needed.