Grave Apparel (80 page)

“Are
you all right, sweetheart? Here
you’ve
bagged your lit tle shepherd girl, you really did it,
but
you still sound blue. Can I help?”

She
didn’t
know
where to
begin.
“Um, I’m
fine.
It’s
been a
busy
night,
Vic,
and I just feel so bad for these
girls.”

“Me too. Stay safe, and
I’ll
see you
soon.”

Lacey
promised to stay safe. She
clicked
off
just as Stella and her
crew
presented Jasmine and Lily Rose for her
approval,
in their
nowclean
clothes, still
warm
from the
dryer.
The girls ran to
Lacey
to
show
off
their haircuts. Their hair shone and fell in soft curls around their shoulders.
They
still needed baths,
but
at
least
now
their
hair
and
hands
and
faces
were
clean
and
bright. “My hair feels so
good,”
Lily Rose said. Jasmine smiled

at her little
sister.
They
looked
like
little angels. Mac and Kim
wouldn’t
be able to resist them,
Lacey
thought. Nobody could. The girls admired their reflections in
awe
and slipped
on
their
new
coats.
Lacey
was
a little surprised at their resilience,
how
they
could shift from
grieving
for their mother to
reveling
in their clean clothes and
hair.
But
they
had
known
somehow
that their mother
was
not coming back,
they
had told
her,
and in the weeks since she had left them,
they’d
switched into sur
vival
mode. Pleasures had been hard to come
by,
and
Lacey
wasn’t
about to
deny
them this moment.

“You
come
back
and
see
me
again,
okay,
girls?”
Stella
said
to them.

“We
will, Auntie
Stella,”
Lily Rose promised. “It
was
fun. I
love
my
hair.”

Stella laughed,
walked
them to the door and held her hand out.
Lacey
pulled out her credit card, hearing the
kaching
of
the
register
in her head.

“You
need some good shampoo for the girls. I got just the
thing.”

“Of course you
do.”
Lacey
looked
at the price tag. “Stella, this is twenty dollars!”

“But
don’t
they
look pretty?
It’s
got
conditioner.
And
it’s
cheap, because you
don’t
have
to use so much. Just mix it with
water.”

Two
sets of dark almond
eyes
pleaded with
Lacey
for the shampoo.
Sucker!
She
was
pleased to think Mac Jones
wouldn’t
be such a
pushover
with them. “Oh, all
right.”
The
Eye
was
def initely paying her back for this. Or Mac
personally.

“Thank you,
Stella,”
Jasmine said. Lily Rose
followed
suit after a polite tap from her
sister.

“Thank
Lacey,
girls,”
Stella said,
“she’s
the one paying. I just supplied the
creative
artistry.”

“Thank you,
Lacey,”
Jasmine said.

“Thank you,
Lacey!”
Lily Rose launched herself at
Lacey
and embraced her
tightly.
“I
love
my hair and my pink
coat.”

“You’re
very
welcome.”
Lacey
gently disentangled herself from the girl to
retrieve
her credit card and the bottle of sham poo, which she slipped into her coat
pocket
to
have
one less bag to carry around. It was nearly nine o’clock.
“We
have
to
go
now.”

“Lacey,
lunch.
Tomorrow.”

“Sure, Stel,
I’ll
call
you.”
Lacey
put a hand on each
girl’s
shoulder.

“I’m not on till
two
tomorrow,
so
I’ll
be at your
office
at
twelvethirty
for a complete
report,”
Stella promised. “Lunch is on
me.”

“It’s
never
on you. And
I’ll
be too tired to
talk.”

“Whatever.
I’ll
pump
you
full
of
coffee.”
Stella
handed
each
girl a barrette from Stylettos’ pink feather tree. “Merry Christ mas and
Happy
Hanukkah, and
don’t
forget
to rinse
thoroughly.
And condition!”

Lacey
spied a taxi and dashed out the door to flag it
down.
She
asked
Jasmine
to
give
the
driver
the
address
while
she
checked
her
wallet
to
make
sure she could
cover
the
fare.
Just
barely.

“Where are we going?” Lily Rose said.
“To
see Miss
Charday,”
Jasmine answered.

“Oh,
yeah.
I
forgot.”
Lily
Rose
yawned
and
leaned
against
Lacey.

“What’s
Miss Charday
like?”
Lacey
asked.

“She’s
okay.
She
doesn’t
care what we do as long as
we’re
quiet,”
Jasmine said in a
whisper.
“And
we
don’t wake
her
up.”
“You
won’t
have
to
worry
about that
anymore,”
Lacey
said. “Stella said you stabbed a bad
man,”
Jasmine said.
“With
a pair of scissors?”

“Stella says
you’re
really
brave
and
you’ll
keep
us safe from the Santa
Dude,”
Lily Rose added.

“Did you really stab somebody?” Jasmine persisted.
“How
big were your scissors?”

Thank
you,
Stella.
Lacey
noticed the cab
driver
looking at
her
in
the
mirror,
not
scared,
just
wary.
“You
can’t
believe
everything
Stella
says.”

“She said it
was
selfdefense!” Lily Rose added, and the cab
driver
relaxed.

“Do
you
have a
pair
of
scissors
now?”
Jasmine
said.
“ ’Cause maybe you might need them sometime, you
know?”

“Stella
gave
us
little
bottles
of
hair
spray.”
Lily
Rose
showed
Lacey
her sample bottle. “She said if the Santa Dude gets too close, we should spray it in his
eyes.
Like
Mace.
What’s
Mace,
Lacey?”

“Auntie
Stella
is
very
helpful,
isn’t
she?
Why
don’t
we
put
those
away
now,
girls.”

The girls’ neighborhood
wasn’t
far
from Stylettos, perhaps a mile. The taxi
drove
through blocks of
Victorian
townhouses,
some
renovated,
some
rundown,
others in between. It
looked
prettier at night, with small Christmas trees in
windows,
lit with white lights or colored
bulbs.

The
driver
turned
down
the block past the little stone church with the stable. No
crowd
of
Conspiracy
Clearinghouse
fans
tonight, the cold had
driven
them inside.
They
passed the apart ment
building
where the girls had
lived
and stopped at a plain redbrick
building.
They
wouldn’t
have
to call up to get inside, the girls said. The lock on the front door
was
broken.
If Miss Charday
wasn’t
asleep, Jasmine told
her,
she
would
be
watch
ing their
television.
Or drinking.

Lacey
paid
the
cabbie
and
scanned
the
street.
There
was
nothing on this block
but
apartment
buildings
with
few
lit win
dows.
It seemed empty and deserted. A cold wind swept
down
the street. She hoped Mac and Kim
would
be here, or
Vic.
She
saw
no one.

“That’s
Miss
Charday’s
window.”
Jasmine pointed to
the
third floor on the
corner.
A reflected blue
glow
from the TV flickered through the window and Lacey
saw
the shadow
of
someone
moving
in the apartment. “Look,
she’s
awake.”

“Let me do the talking, okay?”
Lacey
said.

They
followed
Lacey
into
the
small
vestibule.
The
mail
boxes
had old names scratched out and
new
ones
inked
in. As promised, the inner door
was
shut
but
not
locked.
She
didn’t
quite
know
why,
but
Lacey
put
her
finger
to
her
lips
and
quietly
opened the door for them, closing it gently behind them.
They
took the small musty
elevator
to the third
floor.
When the doors opened, Jasmine pointed
down
the hall.

The door
was
ajar and the
television
was
blaring.
Lacey
mo tioned for the girls to stop while she went on ahead. She peered
through
the
gap,
pushed
the
door
open
a
little
wider,
and
took
one step inside. She
saw
a
woman
inside the apartment, sitting in a chair in front of the
TV.
This must be Miss
Charday.
But something made
Lacey
stop. Something
was
very
wrong.

Miss Charday
wasn’t
asleep.

The
woman
inside the apartment
was
dead. The smell of death
was
unmistakable, death mingled with alcohol. One glance told
Lacey
she had died
violently.
In the light of the TV
glow
the
woman’s
head
leaned
far
back
against
a
shabby
gold
recliner.
Slick blood matted the
woman’s
hair and the back of the
chair,
and her
face
was
covered
with blood.