The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) (6 page)

She wrapped her silk kimono closer and brought a cup of coffee to the second bedroom she used as an office. She pushed aside the stack of dry cleaning receipts covering her computer and narrowed her eyes at the closed laptop. Apple had insisted she get one to keep track of expenses, but after one frustrating session with a spreadsheet program she gave it up and returned to her ledger book. To the shock of her professors, she’d made it through college with a typewriter and sheaves of erasable paper she found at Goodwill. The words, struck unevenly on onion skin paper, were so much more beautiful than anything a laser printer could produce.
 

Joanna took a fortifying sip of coffee and pushed the laptop’s power button. It sounded a “ta-da” opening chord and the image of a 1940s rainbow suede Ferragamo platform sandal—a photo Apple installed to lure her to the laptop—filled the screen. The computer’s whirr demanded action. What should she do? She dragged a finger on the touchpad, and an arrow circled the screen. One of these programs hooked up to the internet, but which one?

Forget this. She picked up the phone. Letter writing and rotary phones may have largely disappeared, but reference librarians were still on the job.

“Joanna. Long time, no hear. What has it been—a week?” Peter, one of the weekend reference librarians on duty teased her.
 

“I need to find out who used to own a certain house in town. I have the name here,” Joanna said.

“This is a new line of inquiry for you. I was ready for something obscure about stains and rayon crepe.” Clicks from a keyboard traveled the telephone line. “All right, give me the name.”

Marnie’s house had been owned by someone named Donald Cayle and transferred to Marnie in 1962. After a few more prods, Peter came up with more data. Donald Cayle had been the manager at Mary's Club in the 1950s. By the early 1960s his name showed up in business journal articles citing Cayle Investments. Most of his investments were industrial property—warehouses and strips of land along the river where old factories and docks had been torn down. He'd also been a defendant in a few property-related lawsuits and had given the maximum contributions allowed to a number of Republican political campaigns. Joanna wrote his name on an index card and slipped it into her purse.

“Thank, Peter. I owe you,” Joanna said.

“No problem, and you don’t owe me a thing. I’m wearing the tie tack right now that you brought me last month.”

Her first stop would be Mary’s Club. After a moment's reflection by the closet—after all, she didn't dress to visit a strip club every day—she chose a crisp cotton blouse with a sweetheart neckline and a late-1950s Mexican cotton skirt with a hand-painted spray of flowers across its hem. She pulled her hair into a loose chignon and grabbed the keys to the Corolla.
 

***

The sign for Mary’s Club flashed the outline of a busty woman in pink and blue neon. Surrounding the door was a faded mural of a brunette dressed in a cheongsam who waited for a boat full of sailors disembarking in the background.

She pushed open the naugahyde-padded door and stood for a moment adjusting her vision to the club's interior, dim after the midday's brilliant sunlight. The room was long and narrow and much smaller than the club's front led her to believe. Stale cigarette smoke hung in the air. To her right was a small bar, and just beyond that a stage no bigger than the bed of a pickup truck with a pole on one side where a blonde gyrated absently. A juke box hung on the stage’s wall. To the left of the stage opened a hallway Joanna assumed led to the office and dressing rooms for the dancers.

A mural glowed under black light across the back wall. It showed a handful of buff men in tight shirts loading bananas onto a ship. Two women uncannily resembling drag queens adorned the painting’s front, one on each side. Joanna raised her eyebrows. No straight man painted that mural.

Lunch was over, and Mary’s was nearly empty. A few customers drank beer at the bar, and another, his back to the stage, played video poker.
 

“What'll you have, honey?” asked the bartender, a matronly woman in a polo shirt with Mary's Club embroidered over the pocket. Both men at the bar turned to stare at Joanna while the dancer punched another song into the juke box.
 

“I'm here to see the manager, please.”
 

“What for?”

Just as she opened her mouth to reply, a young woman with bright pink hair, wearing a ripped tee shirt and denim miniskirt pushed her way through the front door.
 

“Hi, Stella,” a man at the bar said.

“Leave it.” The bartender cast him a warning look.

Stella stopped short at seeing Joanna. “Hey,” she said, “What are you doing here?” Stella was a semi-regular at Tallulah’s Closet. Joanna knew she was a dancer, but had pegged her for one of the bigger clubs at the edge of town known for cheap steak dinners and a deep stable of girls. Stella sometimes stopped by the store after having a beer or two at Dot’s. Usually she was with a man who happily bought her whatever cocktail dress or fake fur coat she fancied.
 

“So this is where you dance. It's nice to see you. I'm trying to track down an old manager of this place, Donald Cayle.”

“Don? Why do you want to see him?”

“You know him? He might know a woman who used to dance here. She died, and I'm trying to find her family, or maybe some friends.”

“Really? Don still comes to our summer picnic. Who was the dancer?” Stella leaned against a bar stool.

“This was a while ago. Have you heard of Marnie Evans? I think she danced here mostly in the '50s and maybe the early '60s.” Joanna raised her voice as the jukebox switched to a song with a heavier bass.

“No, never heard of her. Talk to Mike, the manager. He might be able to give you Don's phone number. Hey—do you still have that lemon quartz cocktail ring? The one with the big stone?”

“No, it sold. We have a blue one, though, you might like.”

Stella shrugged and turned toward the main room of the club. “Follow me.” She led Joanna to a small, warm office adorned with a movie-house sized poster of Liza Minelli in
Cabaret
. A thin man sat on a kneeling chair and tapped at his computer. One hand reached for a mug of herbal tea, its tag still dangling over the cup’s edge.
 

“Stella, you're late. Monica has had to run over her shift again, and you know the afternoon crowd is cheap.” Then he noticed Joanna. He looked her up and down. “You have a kind of glamour, that's for sure, but you’re not our type. Don't get me wrong, but I'm sensing a little stand-offishness. You have experience?”

“No,” she said, smoothing her skirt. Did she really look like an aspiring stripper? “That is, I'm not here for a job. I'm trying to get in touch with Don Cayle. One of your old dancers died, and I want to find her friends and family, let them know.”

The manager considered Joanna's request as he fiddled with a bracelet of Hindu prayer beads. “We don’t give out employees’ or formers employees’ numbers.”

“I get that. But it’s about someone who danced here ages ago. Marnie Evans.”

“Marnie Evans, huh? No kidding.” The manager leaned back and smiled. “She was big in the late 1950s, you know. A headliner. They called her Goldilocks.”

“Goldilocks?” Marnie's wig had been ash blonde. She must have been a natural blonde at one time.

“Yeah. Let me show you a picture.”

“Mike’s kind of the Mary’s historian,” Stella said.

The manager clicked a few keys on his computer, and a photo of Marnie filled the screen. She wore a silver bikini and high silver heels, and her hair was teased into a large tuft on her head. A ringlet of a ponytail hung down her bare back. One leg perched on a stool, a hand rested on one hip, and her head turned toward the camera. Joanna’s throat tightened as she remembered Marnie’s face as she lay on the floor at Tallulah’s Closet.
 

“After her show, she'd work the front room. She brought in a lot of money. The mayor used to come to see her. They snuck him in and out through the side door, the door that goes to El Grillo now. She had some other high-toned—” here the manager made quote signs with his fingers “—customers, too.” He picked up his mug. “She died, huh? Too bad.”

“Just a few days ago. I'd really like some of her old friends to know.”
 

“Tell you what. Why don't I give Don your phone number and have him call you?”

Joanna wrote her home number on a Tallulah’s Closet business card and handed it to him. She started for the door, then turned again to the manager. “One more question. I noticed the mural out there. It's—striking.” Especially for a club catering to straight men.

“Oh, you like it? It was painted a long time ago by a guy named Monty LaMontayne.”

Questioned answered.

“Peace.” The manager returned to his computer.

Apple was at the front of the store, settling the Lanvin coat on a mannequin over a psychedelic-patterned Leonard of Paris dress. She had set a pair of fringed boots at the mannequin's feet for a Janis Joplin effect.

“What? I thought the Lanvin sold yesterday,” Joanna said with a mixture of relief and disappointment. “Didn’t you say Gisele bought it?”

Apple stepped down from the platform that held the window display. “She brought the coat back. Said it just wasn't right. She hadn't even taken it out of the trunk of her car. I think it needs to be smudged. She said her house was broken into last night, too.”

“Was she okay?” Gisele was a fashion writer for the local weekly. Joanna had been to her house once for a cocktail party after an event showcasing local designers. Gisele had done up the place in glam-rock luxe with a white fake fur couch and a large, arching silver lamp. She had hugged the designers, praised their work, and pressed them to drink up the marionberry Martinis, but she viciously panned the show in the newspaper the next week.

“I guess she was fine. Nothing was even stolen. I bet you fifty bucks it was Tanya at Steam Fittings. She's still fuming over that 'Soviet vacation wear' comment from Gisele's review last winter.”
 

“Another thing, I saw Eve at the estate sale yesterday, and I mentioned the Lanvin,” Joanna said.

Apple’s hands dropped to her side. “Why’d you do that? Now she’ll try to buy it off you so she can resell it. You know how stubborn she is, too.”

“I know. She made a mean remark about Tallulah’s Closet, and I couldn’t help bragging. Whatever you do, don’t sell it to her.” Joanna tipped a veiled pillbox hat to a more flattering angle on its stand.
 

“Good Goddess. She must be the only vintage clothing dealer in town who doesn’t even wear vintage.”

Joanna remembered the anguished look of the student Eve had paid to wait in line for her. “The guys sure love her, though.”

Apple snorted. “Sure. She has all the beauty money can buy.”

“She said she’s opening a store. She was kind of mysterious about it, too.”

“I haven’t heard anything about that.” Apple walked back to the counter. “Who knows if it will actually happen, though. Remember Eve’s party planning business? Then her interior design consulting idea?” She picked up a pink phone message slip. Joanna had bought a case of them when a tire store went out of business. “Message for you. Andrew came by with a stack of flyers for the Remmick rally, too. And Paul was here to paint the door where he chiseled out the lock.”

Joanna looked at the phone message. Don Cayle hadn't wasted any time getting back to her. This was turning out to be easier than she'd anticipated.
 

“Did you hear me?” Apple said. “I said Paul had been by. He asked about you.”

“Yeah, I heard you.”

“What's going on between you two, anyway?”

“Nothing,” she said in a voice that warned not to press the subject. The memory of dancing at the Reel M’Inn and the parting kiss flushed her face. If only Apple knew. “Anything else?”

“Just that guy I told you about. The one lurking around yesterday. I’m telling you, bad energy.”

The bell at the door clanged as a customer came in, and Apple turned to greet her. Joanna returned Don Cayle's call.

***

An old Coasters song droned from speakers hung in the awnings outside the downtown address Don Cayle gave Joanna. She’d have to break her rule about never patronizing restaurants that piped music to the sidewalk. Television sets dotted throughout the restaurant silently showed sports. Toward the back, a waitress rolled silverware into napkins. Other than shoppers, the restaurant was empty but for an elderly man sitting at a booth near the bar.
 

“Mr. Cayle?” Joanna approached the booth.

Don Cayle stood up and took her hand in both of his. His hands were large and soft, and his nails freshly manicured. A thick gold ring studded with rubies gleamed on his pinkie. He was handsome in a rough sort of way, despite the expensive suit. In his youth a lot of handkerchiefs must have been dropped at his feet.

“You must be Joanna. Please, call me Don. What'll you have?” His voice was gruff but friendly.

She slid into the booth across from him. “Coffee would be great.”

“Cream?” He asked and Joanna nodded. “Glenda, some coffee for the lady, with cream.” His hands clutched a tumbler of brown liquid and ice. Johnny Walker on the rocks was Joanna’s guess.

“You must come here often.” The restaurant didn't look like the sort of place where a person would get to know the servers on a first-name basis.
 

“I own it. Folks seem to like it. The burgers are good, anyway.” The waitress poured coffee and set a few plastic containers of half and half on the table. “The club manager called this morning and said that you wanted to talk to me about Marnie. Is that right?” He looked intently at Joanna.

“Yes, she, well—I’m afraid Marnie isn’t with us anymore. I wanted to tell some of her friends in person.” She realized how stupid that sounded. There just wasn't any gentle euphemism for death.
 

Don’s hand trembled as he lifted his glass and drained it. He raised a finger and nodded at the waitress across the room. “Was it her lungs?”