The Halston Hit Read online

“As far as I know. I haven’t said anything to the cook.” She dropped her voice. “There’s still the chance he’s here.”

  She didn’t need to tell Crisp who “he” was. The detective drew a handgun from under his western-cut jacket. Joanna had the ridiculous thought that Caramella could have used him—cowboy boots, bolo tie, and all—in her talent number.

  “What’s going on here?” Marquise, her cotton candy-styled wig towering, appeared from the dressing area, the runner at her back.

  “Sit down,” Crisp commanded. “You,” he said to the runner. “Guard the entrance.”

  Joanna shook her head. Crisp would get nowhere with that attitude.

  The runner glanced at Marquise, and on receiving a nod, turned to Joanna. “Can I have my phone?” Joanna, eyes still on Crisp, handed it to him.

  The detective edged toward the other side of the basement’s dividing wall. He flipped three light switches at once. Fluorescent tubes flickered to life, flooding the area in blue light. Nothing moved.

  “VC,” Marquise said. She’d ignored Crisp’s warning and stood over the body. “Darling girl.” Her hem dragged through the blood, and even through thick face powder her face blanched, then reddened. She raised her head, and with the full force of decades on stage, shouted, “Who did this?”

  “Shut up,” Crisp commanded.

  Marquise responded with a stare that lowered the room’s temperature ten degrees. Joanna winced. Marquise deserved more respect than that.

  Crisp crept around the corner. Clothing racks on wheels crammed with ruffles, chiffon, and sequins filled most of the room. Marquise was not petite, and neither were her dresses. An army of murderers could hide there.

  Holding his gun steady, Crisp pushed one rack with his whole body, sending it careening into the other racks like lace-pouffed dominoes. The racks rolled and scattered, some hitting the walls. No one was there. The cement floor was surprisingly clean. A few rat traps, empty, rested at regular intervals along the dividing row of shelves.

  Marquise sat at her dressing table stool, lips clamped shut. It was clear that only pure will kept her from returning to her feet.

  “We’re good,” Crisp said.

  “Here’s Marquise,” Joanna said. “She’ll be able to help.” Joanna begged the detective with her eyes to apologize. Calling Crisp had been a mistake. Any random homicide detective would have had enough sense not to antagonize potential witnesses.

  Crisp ignored her as four uniformed cops filed into the dressing room. “Clear the audience,” Crisp told them. “Get everyone’s contact information, then let them go. The performers and staff stay. And the cook. I’ll talk to him first.”

  “Perhaps I can help,” Marquise said, her voice even. The elderly queen was a gentleman, but her nostrils flared slightly, and her gaze hardened. No one gives orders in my theater, it seemed to say.

  “I’ll tell you when I need you.” Crisp didn’t even make eye contact.

  Joanna edged toward Marquise. “It’ll be all right. Not easy for any of us, but VC….” She nodded toward the floor behind the dressing table. “We don’t have a choice.”

  Marquise leaned her neck forward, then closed her eyes and looked away. She crossed herself.

  An hour later, the theater was empty but for two waiters, the cook, and nine sullen men in demi-drag occupying a row in the audience. Three of them passed a vodka bottle, and two held wigs in their laps. Crisp left the two officers taking statements and led Joanna back downstairs for questioning.

  Crisp steered her to Marquise’s office, away from the crime scene specialists tending to VC’s body, and pointed to an oak office chair with wheels. She sat and took in the room. A wooden desk was pushed against one wall, and an armless oak office chair, the one Crisp occupied, sat nearby. A rain jacket hung from a coat rack. The jacket looked like something an older man would wear—conservative cut, probably ten or fifteen years old—a reminder that Marquise was also a grandfather. A movie poster advertising Mommie Dearest was taped to the drywall behind the coat rack.

  “Start from the beginning,” was all Crisp said.

  Joanna and Crisp had met because of a body Joanna had found at her boutique a year and a half before. Back then, Crisp didn’t trust her. They’d come to a mutual understanding—and respect—since then.

  “You’re messing this up,” Joanna said. “With your attitude, they won’t tell you anything. You can’t bully drag queens.”

  “Never mind that. Tell me what you saw. What brought you to Marquise’s, anyway?”

  She told him how she’d met Bo Milton, also known as Vintage Chablis, through Summer Seasons, one of the drag queens who regularly patrolled her shop for pieces to complement their costumes. Lately, VC had stopped by with crazy ideas for Joanna’s wedding: a pasha on a camel for the reception; a bouquet of feathers instead of flowers; a soundtrack of disco favorites.

  For tonight’s pageant, she’d lent VC a valuable Halston evening gown, something she never would have done for a customer she didn’t know and trust—or care about, frankly. She’d stayed around to take it back to the shop later, to hand wash it so it would be ready to hand off the next day.

  “Tonight. What time did you arrive?” Crisp said.

  Joanna filled Crisp in on what she’d seen of the show, and how she came downstairs to help VC with her headdress for the showgirl number. As she talked, she walked through the scenario in her mind, her steps through the dressing room, what she saw, what she heard.

  “Anything else?” Crisp asked.

  “The only entrance to the basement is through the kitchen. The cook would have seen everyone who came through.”

  “If he was paying attention. The house was full, and he had orders to fill,” Crisp said.

  “Plus, the girls and their runners would have been going up and down all evening.”

  “That’s what he said. Told me he doesn’t even notice anymore, his kitchen is overrun with strangers. He seemed a little resentful.”

  “But VC? He wasn’t upset about her death?”

  “He was upset, all right.” Crisp leaned to brush something from his lizard-tipped cowboy boots. “He seemed more upset by the attention it would bring to Marquise’s than anything else.”

  “He’s an odd one,” she said absently.

  Crisp leaned back in his chair. “I’m surprised there isn’t another entrance straight to backstage.”

  “I know,” Joanna said. “It would make sense. It’s an old building. I guess ‘code’ meant something different then.”

  “Maybe there’s an entrance through the shanghai tunnels,” Crisp said.

  “You aren’t serious?” Rumor had it that a network of tunnels running underneath Old Town had been used to kidnap drunk tavern patrons to sell to crew-hungry ship captains, but that myth had been debunked years ago. Regardless, tourists lined up to visit unfinished basements where liquor had been stored during Prohibition and the Chinese had maintained gambling operations a century earlier.

  “No entrances down here. Nothing obvious, at least. That’s it, then?” Crisp said.

  “Well, there’s one more thing. VC had some sort of running feud with Caramella, another of the performers. She was onstage when VC was killed. She did a routine to the old song “Frankie and Johnny.” Joanna looked up to see if Crisp knew that one. He nodded. “At one point during the song, she shot into the air, and she’d edited the sound of a gunshot into the tape. A loud one.”

  “You think it could have been coordinated to cover the sound of the shot?”

  “Maybe. She would have known VC was downstairs changing costumes. Alexis—one of Marquise’s performers—said they were all warned about the sound effects.”

  Crisp appeared to think it over. “It’s possible. The ceiling isn’t soundproof. But it could be a coincidence, too. With the audience and the music, no one would have heard a firearm with a silencer. Do you know what the conflict was about?”

  Joanna shook her head. “VC wouldn’t ta
lk about it. Said it was beneath her notice.”

  Crisp stood. “We’ll see about that. That’s all?”

  “Not quite.” Crisp was used to barking commands and getting his way. That wasn’t going to work here.

  He waited. Last year, he would have been annoyed. “Go on.”

  “Your attitude tonight is alienating Marquise and the girls. I can see it in how they won’t make eye contact with you. You’re on their turf.”

  “They’re getting the same respect we give everyone. Why should they be different?”

  “I’ve heard a few of the girls say that the police haven’t been treating them fairly, that they’re getting harassed. What’s going on?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Officers have been parked outside, and a few of the girls have been pulled aside and questioned.”

  Crisp made a note. “It hasn’t come up in homicide. I’ll look into it.”

  She pulled his arm as he made to leave. “Promise me you’ll be more respectful.”

  “Come on.” This time he pulled away.

  Upstairs, nothing had changed but the level of the vodka bottle’s contents.

  “They won’t say anything,” a policeman told Crisp. “Nothing.”

  “There’s nothing to tell,” said one of the queens—Sunset Blush, Joanna thought her name was. “We did our show. The pageant was going along fine, then this.”

  “Which one of you is Caramella?” Crisp asked. He stood with his feet shoulder-width, looking strangely at home in the theater. Both he and the theater could have been transported from a Mae West movie.

  “That’s me, officer.” Caramella handed the vodka bottle to the girl next to her. She had been dressed for the showgirl segment. Her massive head dress and shoulder piece leaned against the wall shedding orange feathers. Orange fluff stuck to her sequined leotard.

  “I understand you and the deceased didn’t get along.”

  “The deceased,” Caramella said. “Listen to the sheriff.”

  “Bo Milton,” Crisp said. “Vintage Chablis.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about. We’ve worked together for simply ages.” The drag queen mopped her crocodile tears with a paper napkin. “I’m all torn up about her death.”

  Caramella’s emotional outburst was clearly an act, but Joanna swore she saw something deeper in her trembling hand. Did she care about VC more than she let on? Or maybe it was fear. Or guilt.

  Joanna’s own emotional exhaustion must have shown in her face, because Marquise, now a man dressed in a terrycloth robe, his wig removed, set a hand on her shoulder. “Honey,” he said, “you’ve had a tough evening. I’m sorry.”

  “We’ve all had a tough evening,” she said. Marquise was a kind, kind man. She understood why his performers were so loyal to him. “Can I go home now?” she whispered to Crisp.

  The vodka bottle traveled once more down the row of drag queens.

  “Fine,” Crisp said. “I’ll catch up with you later. It’s going to be a long night.”

  3

  Tallulah’s Closet wasn’t due to open for another hour, but Joanna came in early. She’d had a restless night, seeing VC’s lifeless foot with its leopard stiletto askew every time she closed her eyes. Paul couldn’t help much. He’d tried, bringing her a tiny, frosty martini, but it tasted like ashes. She’d read from Pride and Prejudice before bed, but the familiar words didn’t give their usual comfort. Crisp is going to mess this up, she kept thinking. Unless he could solve the case on forensic evidence alone, he was screwed.

  Spending time at Tallulah’s Closet would calm her. She’d spent eight-plus years making the shop into her approximation of a starlet’s dressing room, complete with velvet-upholstered furniture, brocade draperies tying off the dressing rooms, and even a chandelier. A few funky touches remained: a zebra-upholstered chair awaited bored husbands, and a tiki bar was the checkout counter. If she couldn’t find comfort here, at least she’d find something to do. Keeping a vintage clothing boutique going was a marathon of laundry, repairs, and finding stock.

  She turned her key in the shop door, then halted. Apple, her best friend and coworker, was already there. “Good morning. What are you doing here so early?” Joanna closed the door behind her.

  Apple’s colorful caftan gave her the look of a gypsy. A gypsy washerwoman, that is. She was scrubbing the baseboards near the dressing rooms at the store’s rear with an old washcloth. “I could ask you the same.”

  Joanna took a thermos from her bag. “I couldn’t sleep.” She told Apple about VC’s death while she poured half-and-half-laced coffee into a porcelain mug painted with roses.

  “Oh, no.” Eyes wide, Apple tossed the rag in a bucket. “Vintage Chablis. I adored her. Oh, Joanna.”

  “I know. It still doesn’t feel real.”

  “Wow.” Apple shook her head. “Do they have any idea who did it?”

  “None. I left Detective Crisp talking to the performers. I doubt they got very far.” Joanna remembered VC complaining about the occasional unmarked—but easy to make—police sedans parked outside Marquise’s. “Crisp kept ordering Marquise around, acting like he owned the place.”

  “Who would hurt VC, let alone kill her?” Apple said. “I mean, there must be some reason.”

  “I didn’t hear all the questioning, but earlier VC said that another of the girls, Caramella, had it in for her. VC even found a pin in her wig and swore Caramella put it there.”

  “A pin is a long way from a bullet.” Apple picked up a string of blue crystals and turned them in her palm, pressing the faceted beads into her flesh.

  “True. There must be something behind it, though.”

  It had been only the week before that VC, as Bo, wandered into Tallulah’s Closet for one of his biweekly perusals of her inventory. He was drawn to dresses from the 1970s, often polyester crêpe de chine and stretchy. They hung well from his broad shoulders. That day, he’d been considering the merits of a white jumpsuit that might have graced an Abba album cover when he saw the Halston hanging behind the counter.

  “What’s that? The gold lamé number?” he asked.

  “It’s for Penny to wear to some life achievement banquet for Wilson in L.A.” Penny’s fiancé, a musician, had died the winter before. Joanna pulled the gown from the rack and unzipped its garment bag. “A Halston.”

  “Magnificent.” He held the gown against his body and looked in the mirror. “Absolutely killer.” He hung it on a rack and examined its skirt. “It’s cut on the bias, isn’t it?”

  “Halston’s famous spiral cut. He used extra-wide lengths of fabric so he could fold it at an angle, then sew along the folds for a long spiral hem. And look” —she came around the counter and touched the simple tie across the gown’s bust— “this is the dress’s only fastener. No zippers or buttons.”

  He touched the tie reverently. “What stunning craftsmanship.”

  “Halston worked side by side with Charles James. You should see the layout for Halston’s pinwheel gown. Amazingly complex, but it looks like nothing on the hanger.”

  Bo couldn’t peel his gaze from the gown. “You don’t think—”

  “Not a chance,” Joanna said. She knew where this was going. “Penny’s event is a week from Tuesday.”

  Bo smiled shyly. Uh-oh. He was turning on the charm. He sidled to the counter. “The Fille Fantastique pageant is this weekend. Summer Seasons made me a gown, but this one would be so much nicer.”

  “No way. It’s couture Halston. Penny already bought it. Penny’s flying to L.A. Monday afternoon. There’s no time.”

  Bo lowered his eyelashes, then gave Joanna a melting look. “Maybe I could talk to her. Wouldn’t the gown be that much nicer if it helped a girl like me win the crown?”

  The dress would look good on him, no doubt about it. But if anything happened to it…. “No. It’s too risky, Bo.”

  He kept up the seductive purr in his voice. “Why don’t you give her a call? All she can do
is say no.”

  Joanna had sighed. She’d dialed Penny’s number and had handed Bo the phone.

  But that was last week. So much had changed since then. A gentle shudder ran over her arms and back, and she leaned against the tiki bar. Emotional exhaustion settled in, a metabolizing of the evening’s shock.

  “I’ll have to call Penny, I guess,” Joanna said.

  “Are you all right?”

  “Just remembering last night. I’m fine.” Joanna tilted her head. “You’re not getting one of your ‘feelings’ about the death, are you?”

  “No.” Apple’s voice was curiously flat. She turned away.

  Joanna picked up the necklace Apple had dropped on the counter and rehung it. “But you still haven’t answered my question. Why are you here so early? And cleaning baseboards?”

  Apple retrieved the washcloth and knelt by a baseboard. “Oh, you know.”

  “Know what?” Joanna could usually count on Apple to speak her mind. It was one of the reasons she so happily agreed when Apple offered to plan her and Paul’s small wedding ceremony. Today she was bizarrely evasive. Not like her at all.

  Apple stood suddenly. “Drat. The catering. The caterer for the wedding called last night and pulled out. She had a family emergency and has to leave town.”

  “Oh, no.” Joanna sat down. “Does she have a backup?”

  “No. She’s a one-woman operation. Don’t worry, though. I’ll call around. It’s only twenty-five people.”

  Joanna had chosen the caterer for her enthusiasm about using seasonal food. For lunch they’d settled on poached salmon—the Chinook run had just started—on spring greens with tiny pansies and chive tips and a huckleberry compote on the side. The caterer even had an arrangement with a Native American tribe on the Columbia for the freshest fish. Now, no lunch. She should have known. It was too good to be true.

  “If worse comes to worst, MacClay’s Smokehouse will make up some ribs,” Joanna said.

  “I do have some good news,” Apple said.

  “Bring it on.”

  “The ad I put online is getting results. Yesterday, someone brought in a wedding dress that would be perfect for you.”