The Halston Hit Read online

“He’s been a part of Marquise’s for two decades. Not a lot of people noticed him.” Marquise turned again to the mirror and pulled forward a few pots of eye makeup in blue and silver. “He was dedicated to Marquise’s.”

  “He was dedicated to you,” Alexis said, pulling a nude nylon cap over her slicked-back hair.

  “He was very good to me,” Marquise said. “He gave me credit for saving him, although all I did was give him an opportunity. He saved himself.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He used to sleep in doorways in Old Town. I offered him a job, that’s all.”

  “And a place to live,” Summer, seated just beyond Alexis, added.

  “He had a small room on the other side of the basement.”

  From the end of the dressing table, where Joanna sat, she looked past the darkened area where she’d found VC and into the rows of Marquise’s gowns. Beyond that, it was too dark to see. “He must have been grateful.”

  “I’m afraid I took him for granted,” Marquise said. “He was always here. Reliable. Quiet.”

  Joanna wasn’t sure where Marquise was going with this. She’d called her here to ask something, not to chide her for asking questions about VC. What was it? “The police say Roger killed VC. He was a lot more than quiet and reliable.”

  “That’s it,” Marquise said in a measured voice. Beyond her, Alexis had lowered a curly black wig on her head and was fastening a silk rose in its folds. “There’s no way Roger killed VC. It’s impossible. He was a gentle man.”

  “Someone killed him, though,” Joanna said.

  “I know that.” For the first time, Marquise’s voice was curt. She drew a breath. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean to be emotional.” She paused, then dipped her fingers into a box of false eyelashes, each lash nearly an inch long. “We don’t have a very close relationship with the police department. You, on the other hand” —she shifted her gaze to Joanna— “seem to have something going on. I wondered if perhaps the homicide detective, Crisp, had asked you to collect information for him.” She kept her eyes trained on her.

  She couldn’t look away. Her own father hadn’t spent enough time in her life to scold her, and her grandfather had been a pushover. Her grandmother had given her these kind of looks, though, the kind of look that pinned you like a specimen moth to a board.

  Joanna broke. “He did.” She added quickly, “Nothing big, though. He just wanted to know more about how you work and wondered if there was any scuttlebutt about VC. He had a hard time getting the girls’ story. That’s all.”

  Looking satisfied, Marquise shifted her attention to gluing on her eyelashes, one by one. “That’s what I thought.”

  “Twenty minutes to show,” someone yelled from the dressing room’s edge.

  “I have a proposal for you,” Marquise said.

  KC and the Sunshine Band started in with “I’m Your Boogie Man.” Someone clicked off the player. Upstairs, the house would be filling with tourists, first dates, and curious suburbanites to see the show.

  “Yes?”

  “As I said, Roger didn’t kill VC. I know that, despite what the police say.”

  “Detective Crisp says they have all sorts of evidence—”

  “I don’t care what he says. Roger didn’t do it. He had no reason to, and it wasn’t in his nature.”

  “People’s natures can be surprising.”

  “People have walked through these doors for fifty years now. I’ve seen more of human nature than you might imagine.” She paused to wipe a makeup brush. “I feel that I understand your character a bit, too. I want you to find out where the cracks are in this so-called evidence.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You have a relationship with the detective. See what he knows. Figure out what he missed. We owe it to Roger to clear his name.” Marquise brushed dark streaks under the cheekbones she’d created with pearly peach cream blush. “Given what the police think of Roger, my fear is that they won’t give finding his murderer its proper due. They’re already talking about how it might have been an accident.”

  The kitchen floors were slick. Still, the detective didn’t shirk his duty. And what about the initials the cook wrote as he died? “They were here collecting evidence, right?”

  “Of course. But think about it. They’re convinced Roger killed VC. Now Roger ends up dead. Roger is a nobody to them. The police’s work is done.”

  “So, you want me to get information from Detective Crisp?”

  “And from here. You might find something here you can use to spur the police to action. I told you I was a student of human nature. You notice things.” Marquise turned her face in the mirror to examine the dark line with which she’d ringed her lips. “You have my full support.”

  Joanna pulled her chair closer and lowered her voice. “I know you don’t want to think badly of one of your performers, but we need to consider Caramella as a suspect.”

  Marquise wiped a smear of lipstick from her teeth. “No, we don’t. Caramella would never hurt VC.”

  “They’ve been fighting. Plus, the pranks, like the pin in VC’s wig.”

  “Pranks. Exactly.” Marquise’s eyes met Joanna’s in the mirror. “I know both of those girls better than you ever will. No offense, honey, but Caramella is the last person to hurt VC. That subject is closed.”

  Then why all this evasiveness? Why was it so hard to get to the bottom of Caramella and VC’s feud?

  Marquise reached to her feet for the half-basketball foam inserts Joanna had seen VC use to fill her dress. “Do you trust me?”

  “Yes.” She didn’t have to think to reply. Marquise was no murderer.

  “Then forget about Caramella.” She adjusted the inserts and rose. “I’ve talked with the rest of the girls, and they’ll do whatever they can to help.”

  Down the counter, the performers, now in the later stages of makeup, some clipping on earrings, others enlisting help in zipping up gowns, nodded their heads.

  “Yes,” Marquise continued, “We’ll help. We failed VC. We can’t fail Roger. We can’t let this fall away.” Marquise, her lips rich red now, turned to face Joanna. “You’re our best hope.”

  Crisp would crucify her. Despite that firm knowledge, a seed of excitement took root. Sure, the police would have searched Roger’s room, but they were looking for scientific evidence, not the kind of insight Joanna might glean. Plus, Marquise knew Roger’s history. Somewhere, there had to be a link to VC’s death.

  But Crisp. Her smile faded. He’d never forgive her. “Have you tried talking to the police directly?”

  “We’ve always had a good relationship with the police. We don’t put up with bad behavior here, and the police respect that. Until lately. Over the past six months or so, they’ve been hassling us, like they believe something is going on here. They even had the gall to demand ID from a few of the girls.”

  “After a show a month ago, a policeman grabbed me by the arm and wanted proof I was really Summer Seasons.”

  “I can’t tell you why, but they don’t trust us,” Marquise said. “They quit bothering us for a while, but it’s started up again.”

  “Detective Crisp mentioned the police were tracking criminals who come to Portland, then disappear.”

  “See, darling.” Marquise pointed with a pink-frosted finger. “That’s why we need you. You get insider information.”

  “You know I could get in trouble for this,” Joanna said.

  Now completely made up, Marquise stood. “Baby, I can’t bury another one of my family.”

  The dressing table chatter had stopped. All heads turned to watch them.

  Marquise took Joanna by the shoulder. “Come here.” She led her around the corner and flipped on a standing light. She unzipped a hanging garment bag to reveal a floor-length gown. “Look.”

  Rhinestones glittered on a midnight blue background. The dress walked the fine line between glamour and kitsch, with glamour winning by a hair. The neckline’s daring plunge
was matched by a sensible, unadorned hem. All Joanna could think was, Wow.

  Marquise held up the gown. “What do you think?”

  “Is that a Bob Mackie?”

  “A custom design. One of VC’s favorites, too, although it was too large for her.” Marquise pressed the dress to her chest. “A bit too small for me now.”

  The dress had to be more than forty years and an equal number of pounds in Marquise’s past. “It’s incredible.”

  “It’s yours if you help. I know you want to,” Marquise said.

  She did.

  15

  Joanna looked down the line of performers, rising one by one after final assessments in the mirror.

  “Roger.” Marquise capped her lipstick and tucked it in her cleavage, but her mind was clearly somewhere else. She frowned. Then her features relaxed. She shook her head. “No.”

  “No, what?”

  “Take this.” Ignoring her question, Marquise handed Joanna a key. “It’s to Roger’s room.”

  The heavy brass key had “do not duplicate” stamped on it. “Is this a master key?”

  Marquise rose and adjusted her elaborate rhinestone collier. “Yes. Be careful with it.”

  “Two minutes to show,” came over the intercom.

  The rest of the drag queens were upstairs now, greeting guests. Unlike the pageant, this was a regular show, and the queens had performed their songs for months. Other than wardrobe changes, there was little reason to rush or be nervous.

  “I have to go up,” Marquise said. Unlike the other girls, she wore flat shoes. Still, she moved slowly. “Roger’s room is in the back.”

  Joanna glanced toward the basement’s inky depths. “The police searched it, didn’t they?”

  “Yes. But they’re not you.”

  The overture, a medley of show tunes, started upstairs. The basement was quiet but for the floorboards creaking and the faraway music and clatter of plates in the kitchen.

  The lights Marquise had turned on to unveil the Bob Mackie gown allowed Joanna to navigate the basement. She passed where VC was found, the dressing table heaped with cellophane-wrapped flowers and her own branches of star magnolia, now shedding petals. A few roses were stuck in an empty jug of chablis. Long racks of Marquise’s gowns, all froth and sparkle, filled the mid-distance.

  A room had been sheetrocked into the corner with an old six-panel door and brass doorknob that had lost its luster years ago. This had to be Roger’s room. Joanna wondered how long the room had been there. Was it a storage closet during Prohibition? Stories of the Shanghai Tunnels went through her mind.

  She tried the doorknob first. Locked, of course. She fitted the key into the new bolt fixed above the handle, and it turned easily. Inside, to the door’s left, was a light switch.

  Roger’s room was small and dark, but more like a cozy nest than a cell. A twin-sized bed backed into one corner with a round side table next to it. Against the opposite wall was a desk with a lamp. Almost all of the rest of the room was filled with bookshelves crammed with books. The books would have been great insulation against the noise upstairs, but judging from the stack near the bed, many with bookmarks partway through, Roger didn’t keep them as insulation. He was a reader.

  Crisp hadn’t mentioned that they found anything in particular in Roger’s room. No computer. If Roger had had one, the police took it, along with any sort of diary he might have kept, although he hadn’t struck her as the writing type. Of course, she wouldn’t have guessed he loved books as he did.

  What was she looking for? Did she really think she could find something the police hadn’t? Her gaze skimmed the room. Yes. The police looked for objects. She was looking for insight into Roger’s character, a crack she could widen to understand why someone would kill him. Or, if Crisp was right, why he’d kill.

  For another perspective on the room, she sat on the bed. What did the room say about Roger? The books looked to be mostly travel guides and histories of other countries. Two shelves held nothing but James Michener novels. A globe sat atop one shelf. Funny. Lewis Custard said he’d talked to Roger Bing about travel. Their worlds were so far apart, but they shared that interest. Joanna did a double take when she realized the book Roger had been reading in bed was Henry Adams’s history of Chartres and Mont Saint Michel. Pretty obscure for a formerly homeless fry cook. She opened the cover and saw Lewis Custard’s nameplate on the flyleaf. The nameplate, engraved, was intricately designed with a replica of the Imago Mundi.

  The room didn’t have a closet. Joanna pulled open the drawers of a small dresser at the bed’s foot. Folded neatly were a few pairs of jeans, some tee shirts, and a few sweatshirts. The biggest part of Roger’s life had been in his imagination.

  She pulled out the wooden chair at his desk. It likely had once done duty upstairs, had broken, then was repaired and demoted to Roger’s use. If she were Roger and wanted to hide something, where would she put it?

  Behind the shelves was the obvious place. Joanna pulled out a volume about a Chinese empress. It didn’t look like Crisp’s crew had bothered to remove the books. They must have felt secure in the evidence they already had. She pulled a few more volumes, then sat on the floor and made stacks of books around her. This was going to take a while. She pulled the last two books from the row and found nothing but the back of the shelf. With the shelf a third empty, it was lighter. She was able to pull it away from the wall to look behind. Nothing.

  Shaking out each volume as she replaced it, she looked for anything—notes, money, receipts—that would give depth to Roger’s life, or to a grudge he might have held against VC. A slip of paper fluttered from one book, but it was part of a Marquise’s program, probably used as a bookmark. Another book yielded a candy bar wrapper.

  The music upstairs changed to Glen Campbell’s “Rhinestone Cowboy,” one of Marquise’s signature numbers. The performers must have been changing costumes as she worked in Roger’s bedroom. Marquise would now be wearing ostrich feathers, rhinestone chaps, and a marabou vest.

  She moved on to the next bookshelf—the second of five—and passed another half hour emptying, searching, then refilling it. As she replaced the last volume, she heard a bump, then a squeak like metal on metal. It seemed to come from the other side of the wall, behind the bookshelf next to Roger’s bed. Nothing should be behind that wall, except the Imago Mundi basement—and the Shanghai Tunnels, if they truly existed.

  Joanna leapt to that side of the room and began emptying the bookshelf. She piled the books far enough away that she could slide the bookshelf from the wall. This shelf was solid wood, not particle board, and heavy. She pulled it a few inches, then rolled up the carpet remnant that covered the basement’s cement floor so that the bookshelf would move further.

  At last she had a clear view of the basement wall. It looked to be nothing more than a cement basement wall, the corner of Marquise’s basement. She placed her hands against the wall. Cold plaster, nothing else. She pushed and knocked but nothing happened, except that her knuckles were scraped by the wall’s rough finish.

  Sighing, she pushed the bookshelf against the wall. Lewis Custard had a mint’s worth of maps in his building. A secret door would be a good way for a thief to get at them. It had been a good idea to check, anyway. Since the rug was pulled back, she continued to roll it back, with the idea that maybe there’d be a hatch in the floor. Of course, the floor was solid cement. No hatch. She’d probably only heard the clank of the restaurant’s dishwashing machine.

  Stooping to load the books back into the shelf, she noticed an index card jutting from Innocents on the Ice: A Memoir of Antarctic Exploration. The card’s corner was worn. She pulled it out. The card was covered with tiny notations, each showing a date, then a dash, then a number in small, handwritten lettering. She knelt and shook the book, and gasped as index cards rained from its pages. She scooped them up. There must have been a dozen of them with dates going back seven or eight years. What did they mean?

  Joann
a laid the cards by date on the bed. Records of money. That’s what they were. Roger had recorded dates and dollar amounts, along with a running total. The amounts started out small—five or ten dollars a week. The latest card—Joanna picked up one with a starting date a month ago—showed deposits of a few hundred dollars each. Her eyes widened. The amounts totaled nearly fifty thousand dollars. She took in the shabby bedspread and secondhand desk.

  The thought of Lewis Custard’s maps came back. He hadn’t said any had been stolen, but maybe something small in his archive had disappeared without his knowledge. If Roger Bing had stolen and sold a map, why would the money come in regular amounts? It’s not like fences worked on the payment plan system.

  Could this be blackmail money? Maybe Roger had stumbled over some scandalous secret and was collecting on it. VC found out, and Roger killed her for it. An interesting idea. VC’s mother may have had more of a reason than Joanna realized to search her son’s belongings.

  If Roger had a savings account, Crisp would know about it by now. Fifty thousand dollars. Joanna shook her head and began stacking the books back into the shelf. Fifty thousand. That would mean a lot to anyone, but it would be unthinkable riches to someone like Roger.

  Once the shelf was refilled and the room was back to normal. Joanna stacked the cards again and examined them front and back. Should she take them with her or leave them? Then she saw it. On the first card’s corner was a name in tiny writing. She looked at the words for a long time.

  Someone rapped on Roger’s door, and it opened. Marquise, a man again, stood in the doorway. His face was scrubbed clean, and he wore a terrycloth robe. Joanna knew it was late. By now, the theater would be empty, and the girls would be gathered at Imago Mundi for a post-show cocktail or on the sidewalk smoking cigarettes.

  “Find anything?”

  “Only that Roger had saved nearly fifty thousand dollars.” There were so many secrets in this community, and so much support and love. People walked by Marquise’s every day and thought about nothing more than men in drag. A lot more than that happened here. She handed Marquise the index cards.