Masking for Trouble Page 19

  “Mrs. Hoshi—Lynn—please don’t think that. I can’t speak for the people who organized the party in previous years. I’ve been living in Las Vegas for the past seven and wasn’t here to participate in the party. But this year is different.”

  “I understand from my son that this year’s party was supposed to be a private affair.”

  “Yes, it was. A businessman had purchased several businesses around town and was going to restrict participation in the event solely to them.”

  “I’m familiar with this man. He made an offer on our restaurant.”

  “Paul Haverford bought Hoshiyama Steak House?” I asked, stunned. Why had Tak not mentioned that?

  “No. My husband would not sell. This is a family business, and in our world, family is more important than money. From what I’ve learned about you, I believe you understand.”

  “Yes, I do.”

  “Tell me, Margo, why are you calling so close to the event? What do you expect us to be able to contribute?”

  Until that moment, it hadn’t occurred to me that my phone call could be misconstrued as an insult. I felt a tap on my shoulder and whirled around. Ebony stood opposite me. She held out a piece of paper, which I scanned quickly.

  “Until a few hours ago, we didn’t think there was a chance that we could have a Halloween party this year, but a bunch of us—the people who know how much it means to everybody here—are doing whatever we can to make sure the party happens. Please consider saying you’ll participate. It would mean the world to all of the families who look forward to this event every year. It will send a clear message to anybody who thinks our town is for sale that we believe more in who we are and what we can offer each other than how many movie theaters we have or whether or not we can increase city revenue by bringing in gambling.”

  “I need to talk to my husband about this. You’ll have our answer by the end of the day.”

  “Thank you.”

  I ended the call and looked at Ebony. “Where did you come up with that?” I asked, waving toward the paper.

  “There are two types of people in this town. The ones who were on board with Haverford, and the rest of us. If the Hoshiyamas said no to him, then they’re good people. I know how to make my case with good people. You speak from the heart. It’s worked on six other businesses already.”

  I looked over her shoulder. She had left her lined notepad on the table. A list of restaurants, caterers, retail shops, and entertainment had been written under the word YES. The second column that said NO was empty.

  I hugged her. “What would Proper City do without you?” I asked.

  “Girl, I’m just building up good karma so the spirit world won’t mess with me tomorrow night.”

  My cell phone rang. I looked at the number and then at Ebony. “Let’s hope your karma spills over onto me. We’re about to find out if the park is a go.”

  I took the call. “Did you talk to your boss?” I asked instead of saying hello.

  He laughed. “I did. He’s drawing up city permission documents as we speak.”

  I let out a whoo-hoo! Ebony caught my enthusiasm and did a couple of dance moves out of Saturday Night Fever. Ivory, who had been sleeping on one of the dining chairs, woke up, climbed onto the table, and let out a howl. We sure knew how to party.

  “Thank you, Cooper. This is big—huge. I don’t know how to repay you.”

  “I do. How about we go to the party together? And just in case there’s any confusion, I want to be clear. I’m asking you out on a date.”

  “Sure,” I said. I mean, after all that, how could I say no?

  * * *

  ONCE Ebony was able to leverage the information about the PCP to the businesses around town, the yeses came flooding in. Within an hour, she had a full lineup of contributors. Food stations and party games were on the agenda, as was the annual costume contest. She even had a list of more than fifty people willing to turn out tomorrow and help assemble the whole thing. At the rate she was going, she was going to help Proper City have its best Halloween yet.

  I excused myself from the kitchen and went downstairs to the store to work on the teddy bear costumes I’d promised Bobbie. I cut out the fabric needed for ten pairs of small black trousers, and then added small patches from scraps of plaid, polka dot, and tweed to them. When I was done, I assembled the pants and set them into a pile. Miniature hobo pants, like the ones I’d worn the day Paul Haverford came into the store and delivered those papers. As comfortable a costume as it was, I remember how awkward I’d felt, sitting in his office while he and Bill Perth had argued while dressed in their own rich businessman costumes.

  I hadn’t thought much about that argument in the past few days. Bill Perth had been at the town hall meeting, and he had claimed to be an equal owner in Haverford Venture Capital and Havetown. In fact, while a whole lot of other people were pushing to shut it down—Francine Wheeler and Annette Crowley leading that charge—if what Bill Perth claimed was true, then he stood to benefit a great deal from the plans going forward.

  But what had he said? They had a verbal agreement. How did he plan to prove that anything he said was true? Maybe it wasn’t. The one person who could deny his claims was dead. And if Havetown went forward as planned and Bill Perth could establish his initial 50 percent investment, he’d be a very rich man. With no partner to split the profits with.

  It seemed that perhaps Bill Perth had as much of a motive as the people who wanted to stop Paul Haverford.

  I’d followed Bill home from the town hall meeting, so I knew he lived in Christopher Robin Crossing. I knew one person who lived in that development. Grady O’Toole. I hadn’t talked to him much since his best friend had been murdered a few months ago and I’d helped expose the killer, but things had been left on a friendly note. I found his number and called.

  “Is this the Margo Tamblyn?” he said when he answered. “The queen of Halloween? The countess of costumes? The lady of a thousand faces?”

  “I only have one face,” I said.

  “So it is you. When the phone didn’t ring and the postman didn’t deliver a letter, I started to think you had left all this behind. Gone, forgotten, it’s a tough thing to live with.”

  Grady O’Toole was twenty-six to my thirty-two, six years that felt like the Grand Canyon of age differences to me. He was rich and cocky with just enough charm to get away with almost anything he wanted. He had hair the color of a freshly minted penny, freckles across his nose, and the healthiest dose of self-confidence I’d ever encountered. But despite all of that, I liked him. He and his friend had been like brothers to each other: healthy competition, but with an innate loyalty.

  “I have a sneaking suspicion that you figured out a way to go on,” I said.

  “True. I bounce back from adversity remarkably well. To what do I owe the pleasure of this conversation?”

  Until he asked, I hadn’t known how I was going to approach the question of asking him to spy on Bill Perth. I should have planned this better before making the call.

  I went with the direct approach. “Would you be willing to give me dirt on one of your neighbors?”

  “Anyone in particular or just the general population of Christopher Robin Crossing?”

  “One in particular. Bill Perth.”

  “Ah, so what I heard is true.”

  “What did you hear?”

  “That you’re digging around the murder of Paul Haverford. Is that your thing? Thrill seeker?”

  “More like truth seeker. I was the one who found his body, and the police have suggested that they don’t believe my account of what happened.”

  “You’re a suspect?” He laughed. In a way, it cheered me up. If the idea of me as murderer made someone laugh, then things couldn’t be as dire as Detective Nichols had led me to believe, right?

  “I prefer person of interest,” I
said. “And I’m not a thrill seeker. This is Halloween season, and I would like nothing better than to concentrate on business.”

  “But you don’t trust Detective Nichols to do her job.”

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “You don’t have to. She wasn’t right about Blitz’s murder either. I wouldn’t trust her. Now, what do you want to know about Bill? He doesn’t recycle and he waters his lawn every day even when there’s a water crisis. He doesn’t pick up after his dog, and he leaves his trash can in the street so people can’t park in front of his house. And on the full moon, you can find him naked in the yard, turning into a werewolf. Anything else?”

  “Grady, this is serious.”

  “Maybe I’m exaggerating about the howling-at-the-moon thing, but everything else I said was true. He’s offered to pay every kid in this neighborhood to pick up after his dog. Even my six-year-old sister won’t pick up dog poop for five dollars.”

  “I don’t blame her.”

  Grady laughed. “What is it you really want to know?”

  “What kind of person is he?”

  “He’s the kind of person who takes what he can and thinks nobody else notices. Last year, someone circulated a petition to have the street lamp timers reset. They wanted to add an extra hour so the streets of Chris Cross would be more safe.”

  “Chris Cross?”

  “Christopher Robin Crossing. Keep up with me, Margo.”

  I should have known the rich would figure out a way to hippify their neighborhood name. “Continue.”

  “Perth refused to sign the petition. He said the additional cost would filter down to our property taxes and the expense would outweigh any potential benefit.”

  “Maybe that’s true.”

  “Maybe it was, but there were enough signatures on the petition to get the bill on the ballot and to win the vote. Proper City goes dark when the sun goes down, except in Chris Cross, where we have our own city-funded daylight.”

  “What does this have to do with Bill Perth?”

  “Turns out the reason he didn’t want the bill to pass is because he waits until the sun goes down so he can hook his hose up to his neighbor’s house and wash his car. Every single night.”

  “He washes his car every night?”

  “Ever since the timers changed. And he doesn’t wash it himself, just oversees the process.”

  “Who washes it?”

  “The kids in the neighborhood. He offered them ten dollars for that.”

  I glanced at the clock. “What time does this nightly car washing take place?”

  “Let’s see. The sun sets around six, right? He’ll wait until it gets dark and he hooks his hose up to his neighbor’s house. Ol’ Perthy probably uses more water than anybody else in this whole development.”

  I got an idea. If what Grady said was right, then Bill Perth would be busy with his car washing routine when the sun went down. I didn’t know if Bill Perth was the type to work on a weekend, but it sounded like he was a creature of habit. That meant if I wanted some alone time to poke around Haverford Venture Capital, I’d have a solid window of time.

  “Grady, if I ask you to do me a favor and I don’t want to tell you why, will you do it?”

  “On one condition. You find me a costume for tomorrow night.”

  * * *

  AFTER hanging up with Grady, I spent the rest of the day in the workroom. First, I assembled the balance of the teddy bear costumes for Bobbie. When I was done, I had stacks of miniature hobo outfits, clown jumpers in brightly colored polka-dotted fabric, and white fur yeti costumes. Fitting a teddy bear into a yeti costume had been the funniest thing I’d done in a long time.

  Kirby and his pals came in and out of the store, working through the balance of the last minute costume deliveries. Today they were dressed in black clothes. They’d each slicked back their hair and dusted baby powder on their skin to appear more pale. Dark kohl rimmed their eyes, and plastic vampire teeth were the final accessory. I mostly ignored their comings and goings and worked on the final touches of the lab rat costume. It was down to the wire, but after seeing the laboratory that Kirby set up with the explosion, I knew that particular costume had a chance to blow everybody away—not to mention what it would do for Kirby and his chemistry grade.

  At a quarter to five, Kirby returned to the store alone. “Are you almost done? Mr. Smythe was expecting me by five thirty.”

  “Just about. How does it look?” I pulled the rat head over my own. Additional ventilation by the neck area kept it cooler than it had originally been. I’d also increased the size of the eye holes, so Mr. Smythe would be able to see more clearly. I reached up and tapped both of the tap lights that were secured to the inside of the head.

  “Whoa,” Kirby said. “That’s going to blow everybody’s mind.”

  I turned to the mirror. Yep, it was definitely a winner. I pulled the head off and set it on the counter while Kirby assembled the white fur rat suit and furry white feet into a large garment bag. He lowered the head into a cardboard box, sealed it, and carried the whole thing out to the small Disguise DeLimit van. Seconds later he pulled away from the curb and headed west.

  Getting together the last of the costumes had kept me from worrying about Detective Nichols and her warnings, but now that I was alone in the store, it was hard to think of anything else. I wandered the aisles and pulled out a pinstriped double-breasted suit, a plastic tommy gun, a fedora, and a pair of spats for Grady. He’d probably substitute a designer suit for the one I was supplying, but the rest of the accessories would pull his costume together. Besides, didn’t every twenty-six-year-old guy want to dress like a gangster?

  The text message came through at 6:17. Perth car wash has started.

  I changed into the black zip-front jumpsuit that I’d worn under the spider costume and filled a small black backpack with gloves, flashlight, camera, baseball hat, and a ring filled with castoff keys. Lastly, I switched my phone to silent and left.

  It was time to do some stealthy snooping around Paul Haverford’s offices.

  Chapter 28

  HAVERFORD VENTURE CAPITAL occupied a one-story building that extended the length of the parking lot. Spaces by the door had been marked for visitors and employees. I was neither. I also didn’t have to worry about parking a car, since I’d ridden a bike and stashed it behind a row of hedges two blocks back.

  The parking lot was empty. I approached the building from the side and kept to the shadows. When I reached the front doors, I pressed my face up to the glass and looked inside. The lobby area where Bill Perth and Paul Haverford had argued was as it had been. Two sofas perpendicular to each other, with a square coffee table in the center. A carefully lined-up row of magazines in the middle of the table.

  To the right of the lobby was the door to Haverford’s office. I pulled my flashlight out of my backpack and shined it through the glass doors. Haverford’s office door was ajar. A sliver of light spilled out from the crack. Who would have been in here since the murder? Why leave on a light, and why leave the door open?

  The light inside the office went dark for a moment, and then returned. A chill washed over me, like I’d been blasted with fog from Kirby’s dry ice chest. The reason the door was open and the light was on was because someone was in there. Right now.

  I turned my flashlight off and backed into the shadows. Whoever was inside had had the same idea that I’d had, but why? And how had they gotten in without a key? Gingerly, I tested the front door. Locked. There had to be another entrance.

  Stealthy behavior came easily with the costume. I crept backward until I was pressed against the front of the building, and then turned and jogged silently around the side, and then to the back. A service door had been propped open with a concrete block. Before I could decide whether to enter or call the police, a woman in a khaki uniform came out.

>   Francine Wheeler.

  She looked the opposite direction first, and then bent down to move the concrete block. As the door was closing, she stopped and slowly turned to face me. I was two feet away from her.

  She pulled an electronic device out of her pocket and aimed it at me. I jumped backward and screamed. She dropped the device and grabbed my arm, and then pulled me into the dark interior of the office.

  “Margo, right? You scared the crap out of me. Are you here for the maps?”

  “What maps?”

  “For Havetown. These clowns think they’re going forward with that development. Ha! Not while I’m around.”

  I looked at the door behind her and back at her. “How did you get in here?”

  She held up a set of keys. “If anybody asks, Haverford gave them to me.”

  “But why would he— Oh,” I said. I didn’t like the implication, but seeing as I was alone with her in a building and nobody knew where I was, it didn’t seem the time for accusations.

  I tried a different course of action. “Francine, at the town hall meeting, you said something about changing zoning laws so the Alexandria wouldn’t be an issue. You said you had evidence of the active fault lines that ran under Proper City. Was that all true?”

  She looked at me as if talking to a child. “There is a real risk here. I’ve been running tests in West Proper for years. If builders come in here with jackhammers, they’re going to trigger a quake. It’s that simple. That project cannot happen, and I’ll do whatever I have to do to stop it.”

  “Why are you here?”

  “To find the maps for Havetown.” She gestured to a stack of round cardboard shipping tubes behind her. Next to the tubes were labels with HVC and a return address. “I’ll drop these in the post office drop box tonight and they’ll be delivered to me tomorrow.”

  “What are you going to do with them?”