A Disguise to Die For (5 page)

I DROPPED THE
smoothie. The lid to the cup popped off on contact with the sidewalk and the murky green concoction oozed out. I bent down to pick it up and saw a scrap of plaid fabric caught on the metal trim by the car's window. I crept closer to the Caddy, feeling broken shards of glass crunch under the thin soles of my moccasins. As I bent forward to get a better look at the fabric, a dark gray RAV4 pulled up behind the car. Tak Hoshiyama hopped out.

Today he wore a blue oxford shirt and khaki pants. The Charlie Chan facial hair was gone, as was the slicked-back hairstyle. His shirt was rolled up a few times at the cuffs, exposing what looked to be an expensive watch on his wrist. His longish hair was pushed away from his face, but a few strands had fallen down and waved loosely by his cheekbone. His strong brows were drawn together in a look of concern.

“Greetings, Pocahontas, I come in peace,” he said.

I stared at him, having forgotten my outfit, braids, and beaded headband. When I didn't answer, he continued. “That was supposed to be a joke. Is everything okay?”

“I don't think so.”

He came around the side of the car and took in the broken windows and the flat tires. “Is this your car too?” he asked.

“No, it's Ebony's. What do you mean, ‘too'?”

“I knew you drove the scooter—that's why I'm here.” He gestured toward the SUV with a hitchhiker-like thumb jerk. “You were about to get a ticket. I loaded it into my truck and brought it here.”

“How did you know it was mine?”

“I saw you arrive at the party yesterday.”

Translation: he saw my wig come off when I took off the helmet and then watched me wrestle a stuffed ocelot from where it had been bungeed to the back of the scooter. My hairline grew damp.

As if he could read my thoughts, he continued, “If I hadn't seen the wig come off, I might not have known it was you in the costume.” I didn't say anything, and an awkward silence grew. “Let me get it now.” He walked around to the back of his truck.

While he was gone, I picked the piece of plaid fabric from the door. It looked familiar, as if it had come from one of the costumes at the party yesterday. But more than one costume had been plaid, so which one? And what was it doing stuck on Ebony's car?

A few seconds later, Tak returned with my scooter. I shoved the scrap of fabric into my fringed suede pouch while he rolled it—my scooter, not the pouch—up the sidewalk, right through the puddle of dumped smoothie. He made a face.

“Sorry about that,” he said.

“It's just a smoothie,” I said. “I dropped it when I saw the car.”

“What's in it?”

“Banana, kale, peanuts, almond milk . . .”

“That's what you eat?”

“For breakfast.”

I took the handlebars from him and rolled the scooter to the front of the shop. He opened the door and I steered it inside and parked it next to the rack of colorful boas that Blitz had fingered earlier that week. A trail of green sludge followed along, growing gradually more faint the farther I went.

“I need to call Ebony.” I looked at the phone on the counter and then back at Tak. “Can you give me some privacy?”

Tak stepped back. “Sure.”

He stepped outside. I pulled the shop door shut and flipped the dead bolt. Even though he said he'd wait, I wanted to ensure privacy.

I could tell from the sound of Ebony's voice that I woke her up. “Margo, girl, I thought that Vegas lifestyle would have made you a night owl. And after yesterday, I'd just as soon stay in bed till noon. What's so urgent?”

“It's your car,” I said.

“I'm not ready to get up and face the day yet. You can drive my car over here this afternoon and I'll drive you back.”

“No, that's not it. I left it parked in front of the shop and someone vandalized it. I was about to call the police, but I wanted to tell you first.”

“Somebody messed with my Brown Sugar?” she asked, instantly alert. “The universe is sending me some kind of
message. What'd they do? Did they key the doors? Don't
tell
me they keyed the doors. I hate that.”

“They didn't key your doors.”

“Thank the man upstairs for that.”

“They punctured your tires, smashed your windows, and spray-painted a nasty word on the hood.”

“Oh,” she said. “What's the word?”

“Murderer.”

She cursed and then immediately apologized for her language, like she'd been doing since I was five. Considering I worked in Vegas, I'd heard much worse. “What did Jerry say?” she asked.

“Dad's not back from his road trip. He doesn't know about this.”

“That's probably good. No use upsetting him in his condition. But I don't want you calling the cops neither,” she said. “I'll come to the store this afternoon. Can you throw something over the car until I get there? No need to advertise somebody's opinion of me.”

“Sure. Are you sure you don't want me to call the police? We should report this.”

“It's not a matter for the police. It's a matter for the insurance company, and my rates are high enough already. I'll handle it.”

I turned around and looked outside. Tak was squatted on the sidewalk, taking pictures of the glass next to the side of the car.

“Ebony, what can you tell me about Tak Hoshiyama?” I asked.

“Why do you want to know about him?”

“He brought my scooter here from the banquet hall this morning. Now he's outside looking at the car.”

“Don't know much about him, only his parents. They're good people. Go talk to him. I'll be there as soon as I can.”

After hanging up, I went to the storage area to find a tarp. The best I could do was a set of water-damaged Twister mats. I grabbed a roll of duct tape and met Tak on the sidewalk.

“Can you help me make a tarp out of these?” I asked. “Ebony can't get here right away and she asked if I could cover the car.”

His eyes cut to the Twister mats and he looked as if he was fighting off a smile. I braced myself for a snide comment, but none came. He took the Twister mats and the duct tape from me.

“I can handle the tarp,” he said.

“Thanks.” I turned back to the store.

“Where are you going?”

“To get a broom to sweep up the glass.”

“We should probably leave everything the way it is for the police.”

“I didn't call the police.”

“Why not?”

“Ebony asked me not to.”

“You shouldn't listen to her,” he said.

“Why not? She's the second-most important person in my life. If it wasn't for her and my dad, I wouldn't have anybody.”

I was as shocked by my admission as Tak appeared to be. I regretted the outburst. Tak took the Twister tarps and turned away. I went inside for a broom and dustpan. When I returned, he was surrounded by unfolded Twister tarps laid out in a grid. He secured the edges with strips of the durable silver tape while I swept the sidewalk.

“Do you think it's weird that the glass is on the outside of the car and not the inside?” I asked.

He stared at me. The dark brown intensity of his eyes made me uncomfortable, but I couldn't stop myself from talking. “Someone would have had to break the window from inside the car.” I put my hand on my suede pouch, thinking about the torn fabric. For the moment, I kept it to myself.

“Did you look inside the car?” he asked.

“No. You arrived right when I first saw the damage. Why? Did you look?”

He hesitated. “No,” he finally said. I remembered seeing him crouched by the side of the car taking pictures with his phone, and immediately knew he was lying. I just didn't know why.

“I'll finish this up out here if you want to get your store opened,” he said.

“That's okay. I'll stay and help you.” I moved to the far end of the Twister-mat tarp and waited for him to finish taping the last ends together. When he was done, we each picked up a corner and carried the patchworked plastic to the Cadillac. I went behind the car and he went to the front.

The makeshift tarp barely covered the enormous vehicle. I peeled off two short strips of tape and secured the back corners to the undercarriage next to the wheel wells and then did the same for the front. I didn't want anybody—Tak included—poking around Ebony's car before she arrived.

“Thanks for your help,” I said with a small wave. I opened the shop door, but Tak called out behind me.

“Margo—hold up.” He caught the door with his hand. “Were you here last night? All night?”

“Of course I was,” I said. And then added, more tentatively, “Why?”

“I was wondering why you didn't hear this.”

In the section of Vegas where I lived, I'd learned to hear the questions that people often wouldn't ask out loud. My
self-protection walls went up. It didn't seem like a good idea to tell Tak or anybody that I was staying at the shop alone. It also seemed as though I needed to convince Ebony that maybe there was a very good reason for reporting the vandalism to the police.

“My dad's a heavy sleeper,” I said, which was true. I was sure wherever he was sleeping in the middle of the desert, he hadn't woken up once. “And I fell asleep in front of the TV.”

“I guess that explains it,” he said. “But still, you should be careful. Whoever did this might come back, and the next time they might do more than vandalize a car.”

Tak drove off. I propped the front door open, wheeled a rack of fringed ponchos onto the sidewalk, and went back inside to open the register. A petite woman in tennis clothes followed me. A canvas tote, weighed down by something bulky, hung over her shoulder.

“Are you open yet?” she asked.

I glanced at the clock. “Close enough,” I said.

“Oh good. I wanted to get here before I hit the courts.” She went to the counter and pulled a bunched-up garment bag from the tote. “I want to have this appraised.”

I stepped around the back of the counter. “What is it?”

“It's a costume,” she said. She studied me out of the corner of her eyes. “You do buy costumes, don't you? You don't make everything yourself, right?”

“Right.” I hung the garment bag on an empty hook that was mounted to the wall. I'd watched my dad inspect potential costumes hundreds of times, and I'd learned how to back into an offer based on how much we could rent the costume for. I unzipped the garment bag and looked inside.

It was the sweater vest, shirt, and pants from one of the Charlie's Angels costumes at Blitz's party. Judging from the
shoulder-length brown wig that was clipped to the hanger and the large pinkish glasses, I guessed it was Kate Jackson.

“You and your friends did a great job with the Charlie's Angels costumes,” I said. “Do the other women plan to bring theirs in too?”

“We didn't talk about it. After what happened, we haven't talked about much.” She pulled her bobbed brown hair off her face. A sparkling diamond on her left hand caught the light and glittered. It was bigger than any engagement ring I'd ever seen.

“That's a beautiful ring,” I said. “Looks heirloom.”

She dropped her left hand and closed her right hand over it. “It was Blitz's mom's ring. I—I can't bring myself to take it off, even though”—she tucked her head, and fat droplets of tears fell onto the front of her tennis whites—“even though we can't go through with our plans anymore.”

“I didn't know Blitz was engaged,” I said. I studied the woman in front of me. She clearly knew what had happened to Blitz. So why was she trying to pawn her costume the day after he was killed? The timing—if nothing else—was strange, at best. “I'm sorry for your loss,” I added. It was an expression that I'd heard my whole life, from the earliest memories I had of people expressing their condolences to my dad over the passing of my mother. The words felt empty, because I knew they couldn't change what had happened.

The woman wiped her eyes and kept her head down. I waited for her to say more, but she didn't.

I turned my attention back to the costume. The wig was a standard, store-bought brown. The glasses were vintage '70s and had their share of scratches. The long-sleeved blouse was made from stretchy polyester. I took the shirt off the hanger and studied the plaid pants. Aside from the style, they could have passed for brand-new. There were no
pills, no stains, no missing buttons. They were in just about perfect condition.

Except for the tear on the back of the leg that roughly matched the size of the fabric I'd pulled from the window of Ebony's car.

“I'LL TAKE IT,”
I said. I made her an offer, low enough that I'd have wiggle room, but high enough that it sounded respectable. She agreed to it. “How would you like me to pay you? Store credit?”

“Can you do cash?”

I knew I could. But I also knew the cash was locked up in the safe, and besides, if I gave her cash, I'd have no way of knowing her identity.

“How about a check?”

She seemed less happy with this option. “Sure, okay. Can you make it out to ‘Cash'?”

“I'm sorry, I need a name. I have to have a record of the sale, and part of that record is getting your name and contact information. It's our regular policy.”

“I didn't realize that,” she said.

“It'll only take a second.”

She reached up for the outfit on the hook. “I changed my mind. I think I'll keep it anyway.” She threw the clothes and garment bag over her arm and left.

The only explanation I had for her behavior was that she was guilty of something. Could that something be murder? Lover's quarrel or jealous rage? Add in that she was planning on a morning of tennis the day after her fiancé had been murdered, and something was definitely rotten in the state of Denmark—or Nevada, as the case may be.

I regretted not trying to match the square of torn fabric from Ebony's car with the pants when I had them all in front of me. I pulled the fabric from my fringed pouch and looked at it. It was a nondescript plaid in shades of khaki, plum, navy blue, and brown, the same shades of her pants.

In her haste to leave, she'd left the wig and glasses to the costume on the counter. I grabbed them and raced to the front door. A red Prius pulled away from the curb just as I reached the sidewalk. If she saw me waving the props at her, she ignored them. Her little red car turned right at the intersection on the corner, passing the bus that was letting off passengers.

Proper City had established a public transportation route called the Zip. There were four buses in total, going by the simple names of the One, the Two, the Three, and the Four. They circled around the city between the hours of seven a.m. and seven p.m. and were driven by a group of retirees who liked having something to do with their time. The vehicles themselves were repurposed school buses, large and yellow.

Ebony was one of the passengers who got off the Zip-Four. Today she wore a caftan and gold sandals. Her Afro was brushed out to its full dimensions, adding four inches of height to her already tall stature. By the time she crossed
the street, I was on the corner. I threw my arms around her and she hugged me back.

“What's this about Jerry going out of town?” she asked.

“He's with Don Digby. They're scoping out a sci-fi collection somewhere in the desert.”

“You let him go just like that?”

“They left while I was asleep.”

“Those two are trouble when they're together. They turn into thirteen-year-old boys.” She put her arm around me and we walked back to the shop. “Next question: what was Amy Bradshaw doing at Disguise DeLimit? Scoping out the competition?” she asked.

“That woman in tennis clothes? You know her?”

“Sure looked like Amy. Brown hair, button nose, about yay tall.” She held her hand up to approximate the customer's height. “She works for Candy Girls.”

“She wanted to sell her costume from yesterday.” I chewed my bottom lip. “She was wearing a giant heirloom diamond ring and she said it was from Blitz. She made it sound like they were engaged.”

“If they were, it was a secret.”

“Don't you think it's strange that she was in here trying to sell me her costume the day after Blitz was killed?”

Ebony waved her hand back and forth. “I don't spend time trying to understand half the people in this town. All I know is that Amy was the point person for Grady's hustle party, if you can believe it. She can't be more than twenty-two. What would a young thing like that know about the hustle era?”

“I think you're going to have to let that go.” I stared down the street in the direction that Amy's little red car had gone. There was something off about her story, but I couldn't put
my finger on it. “Do you want to go inside for something to drink?”

“No, I want to take care of this car situation. This is your idea of a tarp?”

I nodded.

Ebony inspected the taped joints of the Twister mats. “You didn't do this,” she said. “This is precision work.”

“That guy Tak stayed and helped me after I talked to you.”

“That was nice of him.”

“Not really. I told him to leave but he wouldn't. And he wanted me to call the police. And he took pictures of the glass before I swept it up. I think he was up to something.”

“Or maybe he wanted to see you again,” she said. She reached under the wheel well and freed the duct tape. “Let's see the damage.”

Reluctantly, I helped her fold the Twister mats up so she could see the extent of the vandalism. The word
Murderer
had smudged under the tarp and was less legible than it had been when I first saw it. She reached inside the broken window and unlocked the door. Inside the car were a couple of empty cans of paint. More shards of glass were inside between the seat and the door.

“Maybe Tak was right. Maybe we should call the police,” I said. “If this was random, they wouldn't have sprayed that word on. This is related to what happened to Blitz.”

“Margo, this attack connects me to that murder, just like being in the kitchen with a knife connects me. Three strikes and I'm gonna be out.”

“That's not how it works,” I said. “I know you didn't kill Blitz, and that means someone else did. And someone else did this. Maybe
those
two things are connected. Did you think of that?”

“Trust me, Margo. There are things that I don't want to come out in public, and the only way to keep that from happening is to keep my mouth shut.” She pulled out her phone and scrolled through her contacts until finding the one she wanted. “Yo, Dig? This is Ebony. I need a tow. Uh-huh. Uh-huh. Uh-huh.” She gave the address to the costume shop and said thanks.

“Dig Allen is on his way. How about you go make me one of those smoothies you're always drinking.” She pulled a brown vial out of her purse. “Put this in it. Lemon balm oil drops. Helps calm the nerves.”

I left Ebony on the sidewalk and went inside and upstairs. Since my smoothie had landed on the sidewalk, I blended up enough for two people. By the time I made it back downstairs, Dig and his tow truck had arrived.

Dig Allen was a bald black man who favored bowling shirts with the sleeves torn off, boxy black work pants, and a wallet on a chain that was hooked to his belt. He had a tattoo of Tweety Bird on one muscular biceps and an anchor on the other. He was half a head shorter than Ebony even if you didn't count her Afro. Even though she was ten years older than he was, he asked her out every chance he got.

Today Dig looked like he'd stumbled onto the mother lode of rescue fantasies. Not only had Ebony called him, but she needed him. He had a hand on the small of her back and was in the middle of offering to replace and balance all four of her tires—though only two were flat—when I returned.

“Margo Tamblyn! Long time no see. You come here to tell Jerry to take it easy after his heart attack?”

“Something like that.”

“Is he listening?”

“He's somewhere along Route 66 chasing down government conspiracies and alien costumes.”

Dig laughed. “That sounds like Jerry. How long do we have you for?”

When I asked my boss, Magic Maynard, how many days I could take, he grumbled about finding a replacement before he could make a decision. My roommate, a former employee at one of the older casinos, had volunteered to step in for me while I was gone so my job wouldn't go to someone else permanently. I hoped she was doing a good enough job to keep me employed when I didn't return to work on Tuesday.

“I have to go back soon,” I said, “but not yet. Not until I feel like Ebony and my dad are both going to be okay.”

Dig looked at Ebony with concern. “Margo's got a point. You might need a man to look after you for a few days.”

“Ain't no man who can take care of me like I can take care of myself,” she said. “But I tell you what. You help me out with those tires and the removal of the paint and I'll take you out to dinner to the restaurant of your choice. Within reason.”

“What are we waiting for?” Dig said. He fumbled with something by the dashboard, and after a series of loud noises, the back of the truck tipped down. He freed a large hook and secured it under Ebony's Caddy and then went back to the dash and did something else that made the hook retract. The Caddy resisted, but with enough force, finally lifted from the ground. By the time Dig was done with the process, the front two wheels of the Caddy were resting on the tilted bed of the truck. Sadly, this made it even easier to read the word that was painted on the car.

“Will it be hard to get the paint off?” Ebony asked.

“Nah, little bit of turpentine'll do the trick. Besides, it's still fresh. See?” Dig dragged his finger over the paint and left a streak through the
M
.

“That doesn't make any sense,” I said. “I found the car like this around ten o'clock this morning. Spray paint dries in half
an hour. Hour, tops.” I stepped closer to the car and looked in the window. The cans of paint had rolled to the far side of the car. I walked around and reached in and picked one up.

It wasn't a can of spray paint at all. It was a can of temporary hair color, like the kind we stocked in the costume shop.