A Disguise to Die For (6 page)

I TURNED THE
can over in my hands. A small white price sticker on the bottom read
CANDY GIRLS
. I shook the can a few times and the ball inside clinked back and forth, the same way an empty can of spray paint might sound.

“Ebony, didn't you say Amy Bradshaw works for Candy Girls?” I asked.

“Yep. Why?”

I held the empty can up. “This isn't paint, it's hair spray. It'll come off with a bucket of warm soap and water.” I pointed to the price tag. “It came from Candy Girls.”

“What does that tell you?” Ebony asked.

“Not much. We sell this stuff by the truckload. It's one of the most popular everyday items. I bet they do too.”

Ebony took the can from me and read the label. I had enough experience with the colored hair spray to know that you needed to spray it in short bursts, otherwise the nozzle would drip and the spray would get on your hands. The user
of this can didn't know that. The black spray had run down the label and spidered around it. Ebony looked inside her car. There was a black splotch on the middle of the camel-colored vinyl interior.

She held the can up in front of her like Hamlet about to address a skull and said, “I'm gonna git you, sucka!” and then handed me the empty can. As long as she was quoting blaxploitation movies, I knew she was taking the vandalism in stride. Better than I was, all things considered.

“I have to get back inside and open the store. Dig, do you have this under control?” I asked.

“Yes, ma'am,” he said. He guided Ebony to the passenger side of his truck and opened the door for her. She looked back at me and rolled her eyes.

I waited until after they'd driven off before digging out my phone. Maybe Ebony was okay with the vandalism in front of the store, but I wasn't. I needed to talk to somebody I could trust, somebody who could tell me if the growing sense of fear was normal.

Soot came out from the stockroom. He skulked across the floor and brushed up against my ankles. I sat down and stroked his fur.

“Hey, Soot. Got a minute to talk?” I dangled my hand back down and he circled around and made another pass at my ankles. He lowered himself and stuck his paws out in front of himself like a sphinx, and then looked up at me and meowed, as if saying,
The psychiatrist is in
.

“I thought it would be fun to help Dad and Ebony out with the party. I don't even know if the two of them could have pulled it off without my help. But now the client is dead and the police think Ebony did it.”

Soot licked his front paw a few times and then tucked it underneath him. I ran my hand over his dark gray fur several
times and he started to purr. “I know I have a tendency to think that the worst will happen to the people around me. I think it's because I'm so scared of losing my dad.” I stopped petting Soot for a moment and he looked up at me. “I think his heart attack shook me up more than I want to admit, but he needs me to hold myself together. So does Ebony.”

Soot stood up and put his front paws on my knee. I bent down and butted heads with him.

“This is a good opportunity for self-growth. Remember how scared I was when Magic Maynard first tried to saw me in half?”

Soot meowed.

“And that turned out mostly okay. This will too. I have to be strong for both of them. But do you mind if, every once in a while, we have a talk like this?”

Soot bumped heads with me again and let out a small mew. I scooped him up and held him close for a second until he wriggled free. He dropped down to the floor and took off for the stockroom.

I guess my time was up.

But what really
had
happened to Blitz? Someone had killed him at his own birthday party. Who? And why? Sure, he'd been obnoxious, but that was hardly a reason to murder someone.

There was a connection between Ebony and Blitz, or more accurately, between Ebony and his father. Blitz had alluded to it the day he hired us to put together his party. When I asked her about it, she hadn't denied it. And when Blitz had used knowledge of that connection to get Ebony to do what he wanted, it had worked. He'd shown her that he had a power over her, a power he wouldn't hesitate to use in order to get her to do what he wanted. I couldn't help her
until I knew what those secrets were and how damaging they would be.

Sunday hours at the store were twelve to five. When no customers had entered by twelve thirty, I started a list of as many items as I could remember using in the detective costumes. Blitz's short timetable had forced me to swipe parts of our existing costumes, and I'd need to get them back in order before being able to rent them out. First I listed the characters, and next to them, the items I'd used in each costume and where those items had come from.

Kojak:
man's suit from '70s, bald cap (general accessories), lollipop from candy store

Columbo:
trench coat from hobo, man's suit from salesman, cigar (general accessories)

Tom Swift:
jetpack and goggles from steampunk, suspenders and knickers from chimney sweep

Miss Marple:
sweater and plaid skirt from '50s sorority girl, glasses from '80s accessories, sensible shoes from church lady

And so it continued. It would have been nice to know who wore which costume, but I didn't know many of the people who were invited. I'd spent more time appreciating the way the characters had mixed and mingled, and no time noticing the individual people under the costumes.

It all went back to the way I felt about myself. I learned early on that there was something special about wearing a costume in public. People in costumes were friendlier, happier, less stressed. It wasn't just something that I noticed with kids, but adults too.

Growing up in the store, I'd had ample opportunity to play
dress-up. Even after my dad stopped providing my school wardrobe from Disguise DeLimit's inventory, I turned to our shelves for my accessories. When I was a teenager searching for my own identity, I found it in the characters who I dressed up as: cowgirl, tomboy, artist, mechanic. There was a costume to suit my every mood, and dressing up in character helped me identify myself and got me through the day.

Maybe that's why I hadn't paid attention to the people in the costumes at Blitz's party. What I remembered were clusters of people talking among themselves. Columbo talking to Veronica Mars. The Bob-Whites talking to Cherry Ames. Rockford flirting with Nancy Drew, who kept her eyes on Kojak. Tom Swift and Miss Marple. Too bad I hadn't paid more attention to the people under each disguise. The only person I remembered was Octavius Roman, who hadn't bothered with a costume. I wondered briefly if that was significant.

By twelve forty-five, I couldn't stand the idea that I was trapped behind the counter for the next five hours. I found Kirby Grizwitz's number where my dad said it was and called.

“Kirby, this is Margo Tamblyn,” I said.

“Hey, Margo. How's Jerry?”

“He's recovering faster than anybody expected.”

“Did he take off to go see those alien costumes?” he asked.

“How'd you know about them?”

“He's been wanting to go check them out for months. He keeps asking me to take on full-time hours so he could get away.”

“He and his friend Don took off Thursday morning. I don't know when they're coming back.”

“That sounds like Jerry,” he said.

“Are you calling with my schedule for the week?” Kirby asked.

“Sort of. I know this is short notice, but can you work today?”

“Sure.”

“Great. Come over as soon as you're ready. I'll be waiting for you.”

*   *   *

KIRBY
arrived at the store a little after one. He went straight to the register and signed in on a time card.

Kirby Grizwitz was a freckle-faced teenager who worked part-time at the shop. He was captain of the Proper City Prawns, the local high school swim team. He maintained a year-round tan from early-morning practices and lived in T-shirts from swim meets around the country. He had a typical male swimmer's build: broad shoulders and lean muscles, which made him popular with the girls in his class, despite his obvious prioritizing of sports over dating.

“Sure is crazy what happened to Blitz Manners yesterday,” he said.

“How did you hear?” Kirby wasn't known for being up on current events since he spent most of his time in a swimming pool.

“After practice this morning, I went to the gym. Grady O'Toole was bench-pressing without a spotter. He was struggling with the barbell and I jumped into place just in time.”

“That's unusual, right? Isn't it standard to bench with a partner?”

“Yeah. I don't think Grady was too happy to hear me say that, but he could have hurt himself. He stormed off afterward. I said something at the registration desk, and they told me what happened to Blitz. Guess Grady was working off some steam.”

I thought about the turmoil of emotions that Grady must be feeling in the wake of his friend's murder and wondered if the steam he was working off had come from residual anger or frustration.

I took the empty hair spray can I'd rescued from the back of Ebony's car and went upstairs, where I set the can on the dining room table next to the torn square of plaid fabric. My own little evidence collection. Evidence of what, I still wasn't sure.

I sat down at the table and stared at the two items. I might never have connected the vandalism to Blitz's murder if not for the word
Murderer
that had been sprayed on the hood of Ebony's Caddy. Someone was either convinced that she was guilty, or was trying to influence the tide of public opinion against her.

I set the hair spray can and the torn fabric on two separate sheets of paper and labeled each individually:
HAIR SPRAY, CANDY GIRLS
and
CHARLIE'S ANGELS COS
TUME?
I turned the piece of fabric over in my fingers. Maybe it hadn't come from the Charlie's Angels costume. There had been a lot of plaid at the party: Nancy Drew's skirt, Sherlock's cape, the deerstalker worn by Roquefort, the mouse from
The Aristocats
. I had a list of all of the costumes downstairs by the register. Again, I wished I'd paid more attention to who wore what.

But there was one thing I did know that, until now, I'd overlooked: Grady O'Toole had said he was keeping the classic Sherlock costume for himself. So why had Blitz been wearing it when he was found murdered? Had Blitz been the intended victim, or had this been a case of mistaken identity gone horribly wrong?

Downstairs, I found Kirby at ease behind the register, reading a copy of
Dune Buggies and Hot VWs
magazine. Ever since I'd known him, he'd talked about getting a dune buggy, and it appeared that the fantasy remained unfulfilled.

“Are you any closer to getting one?” I asked, gesturing toward the magazine.

“Not allowed until after Nationals,” he said. “Can't risk injury this late in the season. If I'm lucky, I'll have enough money by graduation.”

“You better be sure there's enough undeveloped land around here to make it worth your while.”

“Shoot, there's twenty miles of desert past the edge of Proper,” he said. “Nobody's going to develop that. Not when they can keep putting money into Primm and Las Vegas.”

Kirby was right. Our small town was the last that had benefited from a developer's imagination, and, despite the money he'd poured into it, the population growth remained constant. For every family that moved in, another moved out. We were the even steven of real estate.

Proper City was named after Pete Proper. Legend had it that Pete vowed to give up all of his vices if only he'd strike gold. Sure enough, he did. Overnight, he swore off drinking, women, and gambling—a big deal in a state where most of it was legal. He built a house in the desert in the late 1800s and encouraged like-minded folks to join his new community. And thus, Proper City was born.

After his death in 1930, the town fell into decline. Its one feature—location, location, location—worked to its disadvantage. Proper City was close enough to the California state line to attract vagrants and scofflaws looking to escape California jurisdiction. Soon enough, the only people looking to develop in Proper were the very bootleggers and gamblers Pete Proper had renounced. Families left and Proper City all but imploded.

In the '50s, the Clark County Council announced plans to reinvent Proper City as a census-designed town. Small, square, pastel-colored tract houses popped up along street names
picked out of children's books. The town was approved for a library and post office, and retailers were offered tax incentives to move in. These days you can still see the remnants of the early layout of Proper City in the same small houses and the old movie theater downtown. New restaurants came and went and a few old ones stuck around.