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Masking for Trouble Page 18


  “I remember you mentioning something.”

  Detective Nichols returned from the stockroom. “Were you responsible for that explosion?” she asked Kirby.

  “It wasn’t really an explosion. You thought it was? Cool. That’s what I wanted.”

  “Walk me through what just happened back there.”

  “Sure. Come with me,” he said.

  We followed him into the stockroom. The backstock had thinned considerably. Kirby had set up a six-foot table by the back wall of the stockroom. On it sat a stereo and a microphone to the left, and several Styrofoam coolers on the right. Holes had been cut into the sides of the coolers, and metal pipe had been threaded through them. Detective Nichols slowly walked around the table, touching nothing. When she completed her circle, she stood in front of the table again.

  “Go ahead,” she said.

  Kirby screwed a plastic cap on the end of the pipe that jutted out of the last cooler. He lifted each lid and poured water from a pitcher into them one by one. When he was finished, he moved to the table and fiddled with the stereo.

  “Brace yourself,” he said. He pressed play and held the microphone in front of the small speakers. A few seconds later, a loud BOOM! sounded again. He yanked a handful of strings that were tied to each of the cooler lids and they came off, releasing clouds of smoke. “Cool!” he said. “It worked again!”

  Nichols waved her hand back and forth through the smoke. It floated into clouds around us, dissipating as it rose. Her men looked at her. She looked at Kirby. Kirby had a giant smile on his face.

  “Out front,” Nichols said. “Everybody.”

  Truth be told, I was a little curious to find out how he’d done it myself.

  * * *

  AFTER the scare of the unexpected explosion, Kirby’s explanation of how he did it was anticlimactic: coolers to build up the pressure of the dry ice inside and an iTunes download of special effects magnified with a handheld microphone borrowed from the drama club. I didn’t know if he had the best timing in the world or the worst, but at least, for a few moments, he’d diverted Detective Nichols’s attention from me.

  “Ms. Tamblyn, I’d like to continue our conversation.” She and I stepped to the front portion of the store, right behind the door that led to the window display. “I don’t know how this ties in to my investigation, but one thing is clear. You have motive. Maybe you arranged for that little display to throw me off. I don’t know. What I do know is that Disguise DeLimit is at the center of this homicide investigation.”

  I pointed to the document in the clear plastic sleeve. “You already know I tore my copy up and left it in Paul Haverford’s office, so you know I was angry when I left there. But I’m not the only person who was angry with him that day. Have you spoken to his partner, Bill Perth? He was at the town hall meeting the other night.”

  “Ms. Tamblyn, make things easy for yourself. Stay away from the Alexandria Hotel. Stay away from anything that has to do with the Alexandria Hotel. And if you do plan to go out for Halloween, do yourself a favor and stay among friends. If for some reason I need to check your whereabouts, that’ll make it easier for all parties involved.”

  “You don’t believe anything I’ve told you, do you? You don’t believe that I saw Spider-Man on the fire escape, or that Paul Haverford was in the elevator when I found him. You haven’t followed up on anything I’ve told you about what I saw. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t see it. Just because you don’t believe me doesn’t mean what I’m saying isn’t true. I already told you that Sol Girard rented a Spider-Man costume. And Annette Crowley has a history with Paul Haverford. What about Francine Wheeler? She was poking around the foundation of the Alexandria House Wednesday morning. She could have planted that stuff to make it look like someone was going to harm the hotel.”

  She crossed her arms over her chest. “It’s starting to appear as if you’re conducting your own investigation into this murder. I’m going to strongly advise against that too.”

  Detective Nichols and her team of cops left. Their cars pulled away from the curb out front and were quickly replaced with Ebony’s late-’70s coffee-colored Cadillac Coupe de Ville. It not only put every other car in Proper to shame, it put a few of them off the road too. Inside, I could see Ivory on the passenger side. He was on his hind legs, his paws on the window. His little black nose pressed up against the glass. Ebony climbed out of the car and stared at the police cars, and then turned to me.

  Today Ebony was dressed like herself. Brushed-out afro, large gold hoop earrings, crocheted poncho, patchwork bell-bottom jeans, and platform shoes. She reached into the car and called to Ivory. He left the window and went to her, and she scooped him up and tucked him under her arm. Her poncho bunched up on the side where she held Ivory, but neither seemed to mind.

  She stared again at the receding cop cars. “You in some kind of trouble?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure,” I said. We watched in silence as they all but dissolved into tiny dots in the distance. “What’s up? You usually don’t venture out this close to Halloween.”

  “The way things are going, there isn’t going to be a Halloween.” She looked up at the sky and waved her hands around over her head like she was swatting away an angry, invisible bee. “That ghost of Pete Proper has been haunting me for the past week, making a mockery of me. I can feel him watching me. Go away, ghost!”

  A trim couple in matching tennis clothes exited the frozen yogurt store across the street and stared at us. I grabbed Ebony’s wrists. “Shhhhhh! You’re scaring away the customers.”

  “What do you need customers for? Didn’t you hear me? Unless somebody figures something out soon, there’s not going to be a Halloween.”

  I kept my grip on Ebony’s wrist and pulled her into Disguise DeLimit behind me. Kirby and his pals were clustered around a small boom box. Kirby held the microphone that he’d used to magnify the explosion, but this time he held it up to his mouth and made beatbox sounds. Another one jumped in with a rap about swimming laps.

  If they hadn’t been so dependable over the past week, I would have had them declared mentally unstable.

  I dragged Ebony upstairs to the kitchen. She dropped into one of the diner chairs and held her head in her hands. From where I stood, all I saw was the top of her giant, brushed-out afro.

  “Why me?” she said. “This is not my holiday. I’m tellin’ you, give me St. Patrick’s Day. I’ll give you a pot of gold and a rainbow. Heck, I’d even import a leprechaun. Or July Fourth! I could rock that holiday. Nothing says patriotism like the stars, stripes, and soul food. I could deck this place out with sparklers and flags and rockets bursting in red air.”

  “It’s the rocket’s red glare, the bombs bursting in air.”

  “Doesn’t matter. I could do that holiday. I just can’t do this one.”

  I didn’t mind focusing on a different problem for the moment. In fact, I welcomed the distraction. Detective Nichols was not going to ruin Halloween for me.

  “Why is this your problem?” I asked.

  “Because when Paul Haverford was killed, his funds were frozen. Everything that had been planned was put on hold. Now you’re got businesses all over town who thought they were getting paid to participate this year, some who thought they were guaranteed thousands of dollars in media exposure, and they aren’t willing to move forward without their big payoff.”

  “But the annual Halloween party has never had private funding in the past. What happened to the money that was earmarked for the celebration?”

  “There’s money. There’s just not the kind of money these people were expecting. Last year, the cupcake store on the corner of Thumbelina and Main Line donated twenty dozen cupcakes. This year, they said they’d provide them at a twenty percent discount. If I agreed to that, I wouldn’t have any money for decorations, setup, beverages, or any other food. We’d be a bunc
h of people wandering the streets in costumes eating cupcakes. Not that there’s anything wrong with that, but it’s nothing like the kind of Halloween that this town expects.”

  “Not every business in Proper was bought out by Paul Haverford. There have to be some who are willing to participate.”

  “Yes, but how am I supposed to know who to approach?”

  “Wait here.”

  I ran downstairs, past Kirby and his friends (were they doing the “Thriller” dance?) to the office. The envelopes from Haverford Venture Capital were where I’d left them. I took the whole stack back upstairs and shut the connecting door behind me.

  “Open these. There’s a list of the businesses Haverford Venture Capital purchased.”

  “No,” Ebony said. She slid a fingernail under the sealed envelope and pulled out the paper. “Yes!” She set the papers down. “Now what?”

  “Remember you said if you didn’t figure something out the party was going to be held at the PCP?”

  “That was a joke.”

  “Why? It’s a central location. It’s owned by the city. Nobody’s going to say we played favorites. And once we make it official, we can ask the other businesses—the ones not owned by Paul Haverford—to pitch in and be a part of it. Proper City has always been about community. Haverford wanted to ruin that by dividing us into the Haves and the Have-Nots.”

  “Girl, you make a good point. But it’s a little late to contact the zoning office and get approval to throw a massive public party there tomorrow night.”

  “Not if you know the right people, it’s not.”

  I picked up my cell and flipped through the recent calls until I found what I was looking for. Cooper’s number. I stared at it for a moment before checking to see if Ebony was watching me. She was.

  “I’ll be right back.”

  I left her in the kitchen and moved to my bedroom. There was absolutely no reason I should be nervous about calling Cooper. The way Tak and I had left things, it was clear that he was resuming his relationship with Detective Nichols. And it wasn’t like I was calling Cooper for a date, I was calling him to make arrangements with the city of Proper. It was all very on the up and up.

  Before I had a chance to second guess my actions, I hit dial. Maybe he was a call screener. Maybe he was driving and would let it go to voice mail. Maybe he left his phone on his desk. Maybe—

  “Cooper Price,” he answered.

  “Cooper, hi, this is Margo Tamblyn. From the costume shop?”

  “Margo. Hi.” He paused. “This is a surprise. I wasn’t sure I’d be hearing from you after you gave me the brush-off.”

  “That wasn’t the brush-off,” I said quickly. “I had a lot on my mind that night. I wouldn’t have been good company.”

  “You should have let me be the judge of that.”

  If I’d doubted whether or not Tak was right when he said Cooper liked me, I didn’t doubt it anymore. His friendly banter had just enough flirtation to it to let me know if I was interested, so was he. And between Detective Nichols’s accusations and Tak’s choice of her over me, my ego was wounded, and Cooper’s attention felt good. Maybe relationships weren’t supposed to be clandestine and difficult and fraught with secrets.

  “I have a feeling your call isn’t purely social,” he said.

  “You’re right, it’s not. I’m conducting official Halloween business.”

  “Official Halloween business? Sounds important.”

  “It is.” I hesitated for only a moment. Turning to Cooper instead of Tak definitely said something about how I felt about our relationship, but there were bigger things at stake here than my love life. “Remember how I told you we might need help finding a new location for Halloween? Paul Haverford had made arrangements for the annual Halloween festivities to take place at the Alexandria Hotel. Part of his plans were that only businesses that he owned could benefit from anything connected to the party.”

  “Let me guess. The murder has taken the Alexandria off the market as a potential place to party and you need a new location.”

  “Bingo. Ebony Welles, the owner of Shindig, has been trying to coordinate some kind of party on short notice. I don’t know how well you know Proper, but we always have a Halloween party. Now it’s crunch time and we don’t have a venue.”

  “Why call me? Shouldn’t you be calling every restaurant and banquet hall in your town?”

  “Nobody is willing to say yes on such short notice. In the past, everybody chipped in and made it happen. This year, Paul Haverford bought a bunch of businesses and promised them a big payoff. Those very businesses aren’t willing to donate their food and drink anymore. Ebony’s calling the ones who aren’t affiliated with him, but it would probably go a lot more smoothly if we knew where we could hold the party.”

  “Back to my question. Why call me?”

  “Because you work in the planning office, and you might be able to get us the authorization to hold the party in the Proper City Park.” The words rushed out of me in a gush of syllables and hope. As soon as I’d finished my request, I held my breath and crossed every set of fingers I had.

  “The PCP? You want to hold the party there?”

  “It was a thought.”

  He was silent. I don’t know what I’d been hoping—not true, I’d been hoping that he’d immediately say it was a great idea and that he’d pull whatever strings were necessary—but his lack of response said the opposite. I’d asked for too much, and now I’d burned a bridge.

  “Maybe it wasn’t a very good thought. I don’t know what I was thinking. Forget I asked.”

  “Hold on. I’m just thinking things through. It might work. It’s a public area, so there’s nothing to restrict people from coming together there. I’ll have to ask around about food and beverage. What else would there be?”

  “We usually have some kind of haunted house, which I don’t think we could do, but maybe a maze? We could set it up with partitions from the hardware store. There are also games for the kids and a costume contest at the end of the night. Other than that, it’s mostly mingling.”

  “Tell you what. Let me call my supervisor at home and see what he thinks.”

  “Thank you,” I said.

  “Don’t thank me yet.”

  After I hung up, I went back to the kitchen. Ebony was on the phone. “We’re still working out the location, but rest assured, the party is going to happen.” She looked up at me. I crossed my fingers and held them up. “So, can I count on you? Great. How many? Great. I’ll call you back as soon as I have more details.” She hung up. “Cheesus Crust is in for twenty pizzas. They said you’ve been a good customer this week and they want to help you out.”

  “Remind me to thank Kirby for that.” I lowered myself into the chair next to hers. “Who else? I can make some of the phone calls for you.”

  “Sure. Take this one.” She handed me the phone number for Hoshiyama Kobe Steak House.

  Chapter 27

  I STARED AT the number, even though I already knew it by heart. “Have the Hoshiyamas ever participated in the Halloween party in the past?”

  “Nope.”

  “Then maybe since this year is such a crisis, we should concentrate on businesses with a track record.”

  She jabbed her pointy fingernail on the scattered papers in front of her. “So far four of those businesses belong to Paul Haverford. Say good-bye to your falafel station, your cake pops, and your slider burgers.”

  “That’s only three.”

  “Love ’em or hate ’em, Candy Girls used to donate props for the photo booth.”

  “We can do that.”

  “Margo, I need you to donate the fog machines and juice. And to wrangle that swim team into helping pull this whole thing together. Even Disguise DeLimit has a limit. You can’t do everything.”

  I slumped down a few i
nches. Even if Cooper did call back with the go-ahead, we had a lot of work to do in a short amount of time. And even though I’d be willing to pull an all-nighter, I knew that once the moon came out, Ebony would be as far away from the PCP as possible. Even if I did arm her with silver bullets and a garlic necklace.

  She tapped the paper in front of me. “Make the call. We need every yes we can get.”

  I tapped the number out on my phone.

  “Hoshiyama Kobe Steak House, how may I help you?” said a female voice. In the background, I could hear the snappy notes of the koto being played. It was a harplike instrument that I’d come to associate with hibachi chicken, miso soup, and Hoshiyama fried rice. Even though the sounds were faint, my mouth started to water all the same.

  “Hi, this is Margo Tamblyn, from Disguise DeLimit.”

  “Margo, are you calling for Tak? Hold on, he’s in the kitchen.”

  “No!” I said too quickly. Ebony looked up at me. I stood up and turned my back to her. “Is this Mrs. Hoshiyama?”

  “Yes, but please, call me Lynn. Is something wrong?”

  “No— I mean, yes, but it doesn’t have to do with Tak. Did I call at a bad time?” I snuck a look over my shoulder at Ebony. She had her chin propped on her hand and was watching me as if I were the nightly entertainment. I rolled my eyes and turned my back to her again. There was no point in leaving the room this time. Even if I did hole up inside of my bedroom for the duration of the call, I knew she’d grab a glass and hold it to the door so she could hear our conversation.

  “I’m working with Ebony Welles from Shindig to coordinate the Proper City Halloween party for tomorrow night. I don’t know how much you know about it, but the businesses in the city donate food and beverages to the party, usually something specific to Halloween. I know it’s last minute, but I was wondering if you would be interested?”

  “One moment, please.” She placed me on hold for a few seconds. When she returned a few seconds later, the music was absent from the background. “I am familiar with the Proper City Halloween party, but we have never been approached to participate in the past. I have always assumed that it was because people still consider us outsiders.”