A Disguise to Die For (16 page)

She put the postcard on top of the stack 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.”

“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.

It was also the perfect opportunity to ask the detective about the Columbo coat, and since Tak had been at the party, maybe he could contribute something to the conversation.

“Detective Nichols, Tak, nice to see you both,” I said. My voice came out higher than usual.

Tak stepped toward me, putting himself between us. “I heard about your father. Is everything okay?”

It was the one question I hadn't been prepared for. The ground shifted underneath me and I swayed. Tak put a hand out around my waist and stabilized me. I looked over his shoulder at Detective Nichols, who had focused her attention on the grill.

“He's in stable condition,” I said. “The hospital in Moxie is keeping him. They don't think it's a good idea for him to be in a car for the amount of time it'll take for him to get home. Not yet. How did you know?”

“Word gets around. I saw that the shop was closed yesterday and I was worried.”

“I don't think you should be worrying about me,” I said. I cut my eyes to Detective Nichols again, who had joined a crowd of people by the poster of Blitz.

“I can't help it.”

The tone of his voice caught me by surprise and I looked back into his eyes. For the first time since I'd met him, I noticed how dark brown they were, how the color almost dissolved into the iris. I felt the same way I did the first time Magic Maynard held his spinning wheel up in front of me and told me to focus on the center. Disoriented and dizzy and a little bit drunk. I hadn't realized how close we were standing to each other, but all of a sudden Tak was the only person I was aware of.

“Your dad's going to be okay,” he said gently. And with that, my eyes filled with tears like they had at the hospital and overflowed down my cheeks. He brushed them away. I stepped back and his hand dropped.

“Will you be at the store later tonight?” he asked. “We should talk about what happened at the restaurant.”

“I don't think there's anything to talk about.”

“I do.”

“Why? I didn't know, but now I do, so it's fine.”

“It's not fine. Whatever you think you know, you don't.”

Just what I needed in my life. Another person who spoke in riddles.

“Tak, I came over here to talk to Detective Nichols. She was here a second ago. Do you know where she went?”

“She's sitting at the picnic table with Linda Cannon.”

“Okay, thanks.” I turned away and he reached out and caught my hand. “Tonight. Eight o'clock?”

“Fine.”

I left while I still had most of the control over my emotions. I wasn't the only person shedding tears—it
was
a
memorial—but having known Blitz Manners for less than a week made my tears seem forced. I didn't want to talk about my dad's heart attack in this crowd. It felt private, like if I kept it a secret from the rest of the world, I could pretend it never happened.

Detective Nichols was finishing up with her burger when I reached her. It struck me as an odd choice to serve hamburgers and hot dogs at a memorial service, but who was I to criticize? Several hundred people had shown up to pay their respects. I suspected everyone in the town of Proper felt unease over the murder of one of the residents. On some level, this was what everyone needed.

I sat across from Detective Nichols before she stood up. “Don't leave. I want to talk to you.”

She crumpled up a black paper napkin and rolled it into a ball between the palms of her hands. Finally, she leaned back and set the ball down in the middle of the empty, black paper plate. Everything that Candy Girls had provided—the cups, napkins, plasticware, and plates—was black. The only color in the area was the floral arrangement that sat next to the photo of Blitz, a three-foot-wide burst of oranges, reds, and yellows that had been donated by Packin' Pistils.

I leaned forward. “There was a crime scene cleanup crew at the fire hall yesterday. Did you know that?”

“I'm not surprised. Once we process a crime scene, it's up to the businesses to decide how they want to handle things.” She shook her head and made a face like her hamburger wasn't sitting well. “It usually doesn't take that long to clear a scene, but with that many people at the hall when the murder happened, we wanted to make sure that we didn't miss anything.”

“Do you feel confident that you didn't?”

“Ms. Tamblyn, maybe you want to stop beating around the bush and ask whatever it is you came over here to ask me.”

I rested my elbows on the table and propped my face in my hands. To anyone watching, I was just a regular person having a conversation with a patron of the event.

“You say that you processed the crime scene, and you're confident that you didn't miss anything. But the crime scene cleaners found the trench coat from the Columbo costume and the deerstalker hat that Blitz wore shoved into the back of the oven in the kitchen. They said you released the crime scene. If that's true, then how did those items get there?”