A Disguise to Die For

by Diane Vallere

  When we were done, I said good night to Ebony and went upstairs, changed into pj’s, and climbed into bed. I’d hoped that exhaustion would make the transition from awake to asleep seamless, but it didn’t. Without any other distraction, my mind opened up the floodgates of the concerns I’d been able to hold at bay. My dad’s heart attack, Ebony’s history with Blitz’s dad, Tak Hoshiyama’s relationship with Detective Nichols, the robbery at the Manners house . . . It was a never-ending loop that kept me wide awake.

  It was like the whole town of Proper was cut out of cardboard and someone had gotten it wet. Everything—and everybody—was either crumbling or falling apart. I was having a hard time keeping the faith.

  After two hours of staring at the bedroom ceiling, I got up in search of a distraction. I poured a glass of half orange juice and half sparkling water and flipped through the mail, tossing piece after piece into the trash.

  And then, there it was. An oversized, full-color postcard with a photo of Blitz Manners in the center. I flipped the postcard over. It was an announcement of a memorial service hosted by Candy Girls. Below their name was the tagline: Look to us for costumes, catering, and condolences. If it wasn’t so atrociously inappropriate, it would have been laughable. General activities were listed on the card: informal reminiscences and mingling. Food and beverage service courtesy of Roman Gardens.

  Roman Gardens—the location where Blitz had been planning to throw his party. To hear Blitz tell it, when the pipe burst and Octavius told Blitz the party would have to be rescheduled, Blitz canceled everything and redirected his attention—and his money—to Shindig and Disguise DeLimit. You would think Octavius would be angry at the loss of income.

  So why was Octavius Roman involved in Blitz’s memorial service?

  The first reason that sprung to mind involved the kind of grand illusion Magic Maynard liked to attempt. Diversion, he’d said. Get people to believe you’re doing one thing and then you can pull the wool over their eyes. Was Octavius playing the generosity card in order to make the whole town think he was one of the good guys while behind the scenes he hid his involvement in a homicide?

  I leaned back in the chair and thought about Blitz. The more I learned about him, the more of a conundrum I found him to be. So much of his public persona—the brash person who had come to the costume shop and set a ridiculous timetable, the spoiled man-child who threw around $20,000 and insulted Ebony’s integrity, the disgruntled drunk who tossed the custom-made Sherlock Holmes costume on the floor because it wasn’t to his liking—those actions fit one person. But then there was the person Ebony described tonight, a young man who felt alone in his own crowd. That person fit with what Bobbie had said: he donated his money freely to her charity without expecting any sort of return. In fact, he’d asked her to keep it quiet. He resented being popular for his money and he’d never gotten over the death of his dad.

  And while Ebony had gotten out of debt and built Shindig up to an established party planning business and Bobbie had gone to a treatment center voluntarily to confront her problems with drug abuse, Blitz hadn’t fought against his demons. He’d hidden behind his money while withdrawing from everyone around him.

  In ways more than one, Blitz and I were similar. He had acted out for his attention. I dressed in costumes for mine. He never got over the death of his father and I lived with the knowledge that I’d never get to know my mother. Thanks to very different circumstances, we were both isolated. Was this how Blitz had felt underneath the surface? Alone, afraid to trust anybody? Living with the fear of losing the few people who he had? I felt an unexpected sense of loss at the knowledge that someone who might have understood the way I felt was now gone.

  * * *

  I woke to Soot chewing on my hair. At first I swatted him away but, persistent ball of gray fur that he was, he kept coming back. I sat up and looked him in the face. “Leave my hair alone,” I said. He stuck out a paw and swatted at my cheek. The clock told me it was after nine. I scooped Soot out of my way and got out of bed.

  The first thing I did was call the hospital. “This is Margo Tamblyn, Jerry Tamblyn’s daughter. I was there yesterday. How is he?”

  “I’ll connect you with his room and he can tell you himself.”

  Seconds—and three and a half rings of the phone—later, he answered.

  “Dad? It’s Margo. How are you feeling?”

  “I feel good. Hungry, but good.”

  “If you’re hungry, then eat something.”

  “It’s not that easy. This place seems to own stock in green Jell-O. I’d give my signed Blues Brothers necktie for a hamburger.”

  “You must be delirious. No way you’d part with that for a hamburger.”

  “Maybe not a hamburger. But make it a filet mignon and all bets are off.”

  We chatted for a few more minutes, innocuous father-daughter stuff that had the desired result of leaving me feeling like everything was normal. After half an hour, he said a nurse needed him to hang up so she could use him as a human pincushion.

  There was barely time to get showered and dressed before opening the store. So much for having time to organize the aliens.

  This morning’s smoothie was a banana, a half cup of almond milk, a half cup of orange juice, and a heaping tablespoon of plain yogurt. I added a handful of crushed ice and hit liquefy. While the blender whirred, I wondered if Blitz’s memorial would have any impact on business.

  I dressed in a white T-shirt, black pants, and a pair of red plaid suspenders left behind from a ladies of the ’80s costume. I knotted on a pair of red canvas Converse high-top sneakers, pulled my hair into a side ponytail, and went downstairs to unlock the doors. Gina Cassavogli stormed down the sidewalk toward me.

  “What are you doing?” she demanded.

  “I’m getting ready to open. What does it look like I’m doing?”

  “You can’t open today. You’ll spoil everything!”

  “The store was closed yesterday for—for personal reasons. I have to open today.”

  “Show some respect, Margo.” She thrust one of the oversized Blitz postcards at me.

  “Someone already put one under my door,” I said.

  “Well maybe this time you should read it.” She flipped it to the side with Blitz’s photo and pointed a shiny red talon at a barely legible font that ran down the side. “It says right here that all of the businesses in Proper City are going to remain closed to pay respects to Blitz. Candy Girls coordinated this whole memorial on very short notice and it’s only appropriate for you to acknowledge what we did and support us like everybody else.”

  Heat flamed over my face. “Give me that,” I said, and snatched the postcard from her fingers. I looked closely at the tiny words along the side of the postcard. I’d missed that last night. I looked up and down the street. None of the other stores appeared to be opening. “Everybody agreed to this?” I asked, waving the card.

  “Well, of course they did. At least most of them did. It’s the right thing to do. Besides, it would look even worse if you opened, considering your role in his murder.”

  “My role? I had no role in the murder. Blitz hired us to provide costumes for his guests and we did. If you ask me, it’s a little strange that he didn’t hire Candy Girls, considering his fiancée works for you.”

  “His fiancée? Blitz wasn’t engaged,” Gina said.

  “Maybe somebody should tell that to Amy Bradshaw. She seems to be quite happy flashing a giant diamond ring that she says Blitz gave her.”

  “I already warned you to leave my staff alone. Now, you’re welcome to come to the memorial today. Everybody in Proper is invited. But don’t come if you plan to show up and spread rumors.” She pinched the postcard with her shiny red-tipped fingernails and slid it out of my hand. “You said you already had one, so I’ll take this back.”

  She put the postcard on top of the stac
k she had in her hand and walked away, leaving me on the sidewalk. Her short pink skirt swished back and forth while she teetered on turquoise platform sling-backs. For all I knew, she was policing the rest of the storefronts for signs that other business owners had talked to me and were planning to open as well.

  It was a few minutes before ten. I slipped back inside and called Bobbie.

  “Is this whole Blitz memorial for real?”

  “A lot of people aren’t happy about the loss of business, but once they heard that Candy Girls had the blessing of Blitz’s family, they agreed to stay closed. If I were you, I wouldn’t try to stop it from happening. It’ll draw attention to you in a negative way.”

  “Okay, fine. I have one more question,” I said.

  “What’s that?”

  “Do you mind if we show up together?”

  * * *

  CARS lined the perimeter of the park. Bobbie circled around the block twice before giving up and handing her keys to a valet attendant. I stepped out of the car and smoothed the creases out of the black cotton dress that I’d changed into. Ladies of the ’80s suspenders and red Converse sneakers hadn’t felt appropriate for a memorial service, but I was surprised to discover that I was one of only a few people who had chosen to wear black.

  “There’s a valet attendant at a memorial service at a public park?” I whispered.

  Bobbie shrugged. “Everybody has to make a living.”

  The Proper City Park, or PCP as it had inevitably been nicknamed, was a large, flat stretch of public property that was a combination of dirt and patches of yellow grass. It would have taken our entire water supply to grow the kind of lush grass that was popular in less-arid states, so a group of community gardeners had banded together in the ’90s and leveled the ground, created a two-foot-tall rock border, and built small shaded areas out of tall tree trunks and corrugated aluminum.

  Picnic tables filled the area under the aluminum roofs. Small fire pits, blacked with soot, sat at ten-foot intervals, smoking with freshly lit charcoal. Clusters of people stood talking to one another while looking around as if trying to figure out what they should be doing. I kept my round, black plastic sunglasses on and scanned the crowd for familiar faces. Linda and Black Jack Cannon talked to Gina Cassavogli next to a four-foot-tall picture of Blitz that rested on a wooden easel.

  It wasn’t until I spotted Detective Nichols standing off to the side taking note of those who arrived that I realized what I’d overlooked about the occasion. If everybody who was tangentially connected to Blitz was here, then it stood to reason that the person responsible for his death might be here too.

  Detective Nichols caught me looking at her. I looked away too quickly, which I’m sure made it obvious that I’d been watching her. She started toward me and I turned to Bobbie.

  “I don’t want to talk to Detective Nichols,” I said. “Do you mind running interference?”

  “No problem,” she said. She met Nichols halfway while I went in the opposite direction. “Hi, Detective,” I heard Bobbie say. “I’ve been meaning to talk to you about a fund-raiser for the police force. Do you have a minute?”

  When I was clearly out of her line of vision, I stood back and scanned the crowd again. Grady O’Toole waved. I waved back. He said something to the men he was with and then joined me.

  “I was hoping to see you today,” he said. “I have something for you.”

  He put his hand on my waist and guided me away from the crowd. “Grady,” I said. “I don’t think it’s the best idea to sneak off in the middle of a memorial.”

  He reached into his suit jacket and pulled out a sheet of paper. “You asked me about the costumes at the party,” he said. “I made you a list like the one I gave the detective.” He smiled, less thousand-watt smile like before and more aw-shucks. “This seemed kind of important to you the other day. I know you got some bad news and I thought—well, I thought you might rather have this than a bunch of flowers.”

  “Thank you,” I said. I unfolded the papers. His pen must have died halfway through the list because the color of the ink switched between Veronica Mars and Jupiter Jones. The crime scene cleanup crew had said that they found a wadded-up trench coat in the back of the oven, and that trench coat went to one very specific costume. I scanned over the names—including Sherlocks #1–#4—but didn’t see Columbo listed.

  “This list isn’t complete.”

  “Sure it is. I put everybody on there.”

  “What about Columbo?”

  Grady looked surprised. “Why are you asking about him?”

  “I specifically remember making the Columbo costume. He was one of my favorites. It struck me as odd that he’s not on here.”

  “I thought you already knew.” He shoved his hands in his pockets and looked at me sheepishly. “The guy in the Columbo costume was me.”

  Chapter 19

  “YOU WERE COLUMBO?” I asked. I stepped backward to put distance between us and looked around for Detective Nichols, for Bobbie, or for anybody familiar.

  “Sure. Why is that so important? At first I let Blitz think I was going to take the Sherlock costume that he wanted to wear, but that’s too cruel even for me.”

  “When did you give it to him?”

  “We spent Friday going over his invite list and assigning costumes to different people. A couple of the women wanted to do their own thing—you know, the ones who work for Candy Girls—but other than that, just about everybody liked what we picked out.”

  I looked at the list again, this time scanning for Tak’s name. “What about Tak Hoshiyama?”

  “I don’t know what he was doing there. Blitz invited him when he heard he was back in town, but neither of us thought he’d show. He said he’d figure out his own costume. Who was he?”

  “Charlie Chan.”

  “Man, he did a good job with that. I wondered who was under that mustache.”

  The longer I stood at Blitz’s memorial talking to Grady, the more I felt like a mask had been pulled over my eyes, hiding the truth about the people around me. Only it wasn’t so much that the truth was hidden, it was that an alternate truth had been fabricated and fed to me like a fistful of candy corn. If Grady was involved in Blitz’s murder—a fact that I wasn’t yet ready to discount—his current golly-shucks attitude now seemed diabolical. I snuck a look at him from under my curled eyelashes and caught him staring back at me. This time he grinned the same smile that had put me on alert a week ago when he was in the shop.

  I turned around again and spotted Bobbie talking to Black Jack. He wore the same cowboy hat and bolo tie he’d worn when I met him at the gas station.

  “Thank you for the list,” I said to Grady. “I want to pay my respects to Black Jack and Mrs. Manners.”

  “Mrs. Cannon,” Grady corrected. “She took Black Jack’s name when they married. Blitz was pretty angry about that. He stayed at my house for a month so he wouldn’t have to talk to her.”

  “But surely he understood that there was nothing wrong with her falling in love with Black Jack after Mr. Manners passed away, right?”

  “Blitz didn’t see things that way. He never forgave his mom when she remarried.”

  “So Blitz and Black Jack didn’t get along?”

  “No, they got along great. That made his mom even more angry. Black Jack never acted like he wanted to be Blitz’s dad. He let Blitz do whatever he wanted. Even gave him a black Ferrari from the dealership when he graduated high school. That just made things between Blitz and his mom worse.”

  I nodded as though I was listening, but I couldn’t stop thinking about the wrinkled Columbo coat. Could I trust anything that Grady said? I didn’t know. Kirby had said that the friendship between Grady and Blitz was less than perfect. If they did have a deep-rooted competitive rift between them, what would keep Grady from making up stories about Blitz’s family that
would throw suspicion away from himself?

  I thanked Grady again and headed toward the shaded picnic tables. The more I thought about that Columbo coat, the more another question nagged at me. Why hadn’t the police found it when they went over the crime scene? A murder had been committed. Every person at that party had been interviewed. According to the crime scene cleanup crew, the fire hall had been left in postparty state for forty-eight hours because the police wanted to make sure they’d gotten every piece of evidence that had been left behind. So how was it that a rumpled and dirty trench coat, balled up and shoved in the oven in the corner of the kitchen, could have gone unnoticed?

  Either the Proper City Police Department had done a very sloppy job on the investigation or somebody wasn’t telling me the truth.

  I walked across the yellow-green patchy ground and plucked a bottle of water from a large silver bowl filled with rapidly melting ice cubes. Gina Casserole—I mean, Cassavogli—narrowed her eyes at me but said nothing. She hadn’t changed out of her pink skirt and turquoise shoes, and she stood out like an extra from Miami Vice. For a fleeting moment I regretted not adding Crockett and Tubbs to the costumes at the party.

  Water from the wet bottle ran down the palms of my hands and dripped onto my dress. I peeked around to see if anybody was watching me and then ran the bottle over the side of my dress to dry it. When I looked back up, I saw Tak Hoshiyama staring at me from the charcoal pits.

  Figured.

  I would have turned around and walked away except that Detective Nichols was standing beside him. It was the perfect opportunity. Tak and I hadn’t spoken since the fried rice incident, and this would establish to both of them that I was just another person in Proper City who was participating in a Proper City event.