At the diner the next morning, I eat quickly while going over what James had told me—the Belltower Hotel. Room 608. Photos taken from the right if you’re looking out the window.
The Belltower turns out to be a nice-enough-looking building at the edge of Nob Hill, all white and six stories tall, higher than all its neighbors. It’s also at the top of a hill, built along the slant, so it looks a little crooked from the outside. But inside, the first thought that hits me is how much James has come up in the world. This isn’t the Farallones, with its moldy wall-to-wall carpeting, peeling wallpaper, and one weaselly little guy behind a desk. It had been beige art deco buildings built around a parking lot, like the whole point of the place was to leave it.
Here at the Belltower, the whole point is to stay. High ceilings, tiled floor, and a fancy rug with a sofa and tables with magazines for people who are waiting. Behind the desk is a pretty young woman who beams at me the moment I come in. It’s not the Ritz, but if James is making enough money to stay here regularly, no wonder somebody thought he could afford that blackmail payment.
I approach the young woman at the counter and give her my best smile.
“I’d like a room,” I tell her.
“Of course, sir. For how many nights?”
I cock my head. I could expense a stay to James, but there’s no way I can front the money for even one night. Should have thought of that.
“Is there any way to see the rooms before I pick one?” I ask, making my voice delicate. “I have very specific requirements for my comfort, you understand. My analyst says I need to be high up, for one.”
“Well,” she looks behind her at a door marked OFFICE, then back at me, “that’s unorthodox. We have a few rooms available on the sixth floor, if you’d like. That’s as high up as we go.”
“How about room 608?” I ask. “It’s a lucky number. If I could see it first.” I give her all my charm, but she just blinks nervously.
“Let me get the manager,” she says, and slips away into the office. I peek over the counter at the guest book while she’s gone, but I don’t spot Danny Geller’s name. He’d be using a fake one, but there aren’t any Daniels or Dans. I turn my head like I’m looking at a painting of a boat on the wall when I hear the door click open. A man comes out, sixties, with round glasses, a full head of hair only gray at the temples, and a warm smile. He’s handsome, in that older way. He makes you feel taken care of just by smiling.
“Hello, Mr.—” He pauses, waits for me to fill in the blank.
“Mills,” I say. He reaches across the desk and offers his hand. When I shake it, he puts his other hand over ours and squeezes.
“Sidney Cardwell,” he says. “Shall we?” He gestures to the lounge and then steps out from behind the desk. I follow him over to a corner, but he doesn’t sit, so neither do I.
“So you’d like to see room 608,” he says. “May I ask why?”
“Lucky number,” I say.
His smile doesn’t falter, but I get the impression he doesn’t believe me. “Have you stayed with us before?” he asks. “I don’t remember you, and I’m good with faces.”
“No, I haven’t,” I say.
He looks me up and down, focusing on my shoes, then my suit and tie. I suddenly wonder if a navy suit with a cornflower blue tie was too much. “No … but you’re not police, either.”
“I—”
“Your shoes are, but your wardrobe isn’t staid. The clothes seem like hand-me-down, too, so I don’t think you’re our usual clientele, but you are a friend of Dorothy.”
“Well—”
“Please”—he raises his hands, palms forward—“don’t worry. So am I.”
“Ah,” I say, taking him in again. One of us. “Well, then maybe I can be frank with you.”
“I think it’ll work a lot better than telling me 608 is your lucky number.”
I smirk. “I’m a PI. A client is being blackmailed with photos taken in your hotel.”
He blanches at first, then shakes his head and looks down. He puts his hand to his forehead like he suddenly has a headache, and sits down in one of the chairs. “I knew it,” he says softly, clasping his hands in front of him.
“You did?”
“When you asked for 608 … We recently discovered some holes in the wall between 608 and 606. Small ones, but large enough someone could take photos through them. So we, ah … have those rooms closed for the time being.”
“Well, I wasn’t going to sleep there anyway,” I say with my best smile.
He laughs. “No, I suppose not. You’d like to see them?”
“If I can,” I say.
“Certainly. As long as … we value discretion here, Mr. Mills. You’re not about to report anything you might find to the authorities?”
I shake my head. “They don’t like me very much.”
“I heard about you at Shelly’s,” he says, standing. “The detective. I didn’t think … perhaps I should have called you the moment I found the holes.” He walks over to the elevator and we get in together. “Our clientele isn’t exclusively gay,” he says in a whisper, even though the doors are closed, “but we get some. Often with that boy.”
“Boy?” I ask.
“He never checks in. But I remember faces. I always see him in the lobby after someone I think might be one of us books room 608. They’re discreet, and the money is for a night, not an hour. We’re not that kind of hotel. But these things happen even at the best places. I suppose I could have stopped it, but … I feel for those men.” He chuckles. “And the boy is good-looking, too, so I don’t want to stop them from getting their money’s worth.”
The elevator clanks open and we walk down a long hallway of anonymous doors and dark carpeting. When we stop in front of 608, Sidney takes out a key from his pocket and opens it. I walk in and turn on the light, and he follows me. The room is nice and vague in the way hotel rooms are. There’s one window looking out at the city, a bed, a chair and a desk, an ashtray with matches that have the Belltower logo on them.
“You ever spend time with him?” I ask. “The boy?”
Sidney gasps. “Mr. Mills. I’m not that sort. I have a longtime … paramour. We live together.”
“I’m sorry,” I say. “Didn’t mean to offend.”
He laughs. “Honestly, it’s flattering, thinking someone my age would have the wherewithal for him.”
“Have you seen him in here recently? The boy?”
“No, not for a few weeks. But he doesn’t have a set schedule.” He laughs again.
“He’s got dark hair, pretty face?” I ask, as I look around the room. The photos were taken from the right, James had said. I walk over to the wall, and there, small, and blending in with the pattern on the wallpaper, and just at the corner of a framed picture on the wall. Another boat.
“Yes, that’s him. And I see you’ve found … ah.”
I stare at the hole. It’s big enough to stick a small lens through, with the right camera and attachment. I’ve seen something similar before, back on the force, though in that case it was the hotel manager himself who’d drilled the holes.
“If you straighten the picture out,” Sidney says, “it covers the hole. Same on the other side. I guess our decorating style didn’t help.”
“Folks like this know how to hide the holes,” I say, poking the hole with my finger. “They would have found a way even if the walls were bare. The question is how they knew what was happening in this room in the first place.”
“Wouldn’t the boy have been in on it?” Sidney asks.
I turn to him, and nod. “Or someone else who was here all the time, noticed things, figured out what was going on, how to make an easy payday.”
He frowns. “Mr. Mills, I know you’re a private detective, but there’s no need to talk like a dime-store novel. I assure you, I had no idea.”
“None?” I ask, turning on him. “Someone must have been coming in around the same time as the boy to take the photos. Someone who knew. You already told me you noticed him, so it could be you, or maybe someone on your staff who noticed him, too. That’s the most likely explanation.”
He turns red, then white. “I…” He sits down on the bed, shaking, and for a moment, I think I’m about to get a confession, that he’s going to say it’s all him. But he swallows and looks up at me, eyes wet. “I would never, Mr. Mills, I assure you. And the staff … I can’t imagine any of them. None of them are … like us, for one. They’re all young, a little naive if I’m being honest, but good people. Even the bellboys.” He sounds pleading, but sincere.
I sit down on the bed next to him. “Then tell me, who checked out 606 whenever someone had 608? You must have noticed someone, the way you clocked the kid. Otherwise, it’s probably someone here.”
“No, no…” He swallows, looking down again. “No one here. I would notice if they were gone for long, too.” His back turns straight, and he looks up at me. “There was a young woman who would come in, yes, and take room 606. But she’s … a woman, Mr. Mills. She’s not going to … She seems so sweet. She’s not a modern girl. Her hair, her clothes…”
“Dark hair, full figure?” I ask.
He nods. “She was so charming whenever she checked in. Said she liked 606 because she and her husband had stayed there once, and now that he was gone, she could get lost in the memories of that trip … but I never put together that she was always there when he was. It’s only been a few months of her showing up, you know. The boy has been coming and going for over a year.”
“I think they only decided to cash in recently,” I say, standing up and going back over to the hole. I feel the inside of it with my finger. It’s still a little rough. Probably been there a few months, but not so long it’s turned smooth with age.
“I just can’t believe it. A woman. Involved in … not just criminal activity but … our criminal activity.”
“If it helps, she’s one of us, too.”
He looks up at me, confused. “Really? I can usually spot that.”
“Just saw her drinking last night at Cheaters,” I say. “I’m told she’s popular.”
He sighs. “I feel like such a fool.” He shakes his head. “No, I was being indulgent, because I knew if I exposed the boy or those men that they’d just go somewhere else. Here, at least, if the police came in, I could send someone up to knock on their door. I was ready. I mean, I don’t approve of prostitution, but I understand … it’s so risky. Terrible things can happen. I wanted to look out for them.”
I nod. “You wanted to do right by our kind of people, I get it, Sidney. Don’t beat yourself up.” He’s doing more than I ever did, after all.
“I wish it were that easy, Mr. Mills.”
I go over to him and put my hand on his shoulder. “It’s not, but I’m telling you, as a professional, this isn’t your fault. Got it?”
He looks up at me and we stare for a moment, unblinking, and he smiles a little. “I do appreciate that. Is there any other way I can help?”
“I want to check out next door, too, if that’s all right?”
“Of course,” he says, standing. We leave 608 and he unlocks 606 next door. It’s practically identical.
“These rooms were cleaned, I assume?” I ask, looking at the perfectly made bed.
“Of course.”
“Anything get left behind?” I bend down to look under the bed. Nothing.
“No, I’m sorry.”
“That’s all right,” I say, standing back up and going over to another picture of a boat on the wall. This one is in a storm. I move it aside, and there’s the hole. This one is bigger, so the camera can fit in, the lens right against the inside of the wall next door. All it would take would be a rod to push the painting on the other side out of the way, then the right kind of lens. The photos wouldn’t be great, but they’d be good enough. And the hole is bigger, but under the painting, no one would have spotted it.
“I should get back down—is there anything else you need?” Sidney asks, from the doorway.
I shake my head. “I’m just going to look around, see if your cleaning staff missed anything,” I say. “If that’s all right? You said the rooms weren’t in use.”
“Oh no, not until we have the repairman in. He has to fill the holes and then patch the wallpaper, which he needed to find. It’s such a hassle. If I see either of those two again, I’m going to give them a bill for all this.”
“If you see them again, call me,” I say, taking out a card and handing it to him. “Don’t do anything else, okay?”
“Oh,” he says, suddenly nervous. “Yes. Do you think they could be dangerous?”
“I don’t know,” I say. “But just to be on the safe side.”
He studies the card, then pockets it. “Let me know if you find anything, please,” he says. “Just in case.”
“Of course,” I say.
He turns and leaves and I spend the next hour or so going through the rooms, even unmaking and remaking the beds, but I don’t find anything. I make sure to put everything back before I leave—Sidney seemed like an okay guy, so I don’t want to make his life harder. In the lobby, I give him a brief shake of my head and he nods. We don’t need to talk more than that.
Donna is her brother’s accomplice. But then why wouldn’t she know where he was?
There’s a clock over the door out, and it’s already after noon. Three and a half days until they ruin James’s life, and I already let her get away once.
I take the streetcar back down to Potrero and let myself into Danny’s building again. When nobody answers his door, I take out some lockpicks and let myself in there, too. Empty, but looks the same as before, a dent in the pillow on the sofa, a perfectly made bed. The only thing odd is a half-full mug of Sanka on the table, still a little warm, like she just ran out. I wait around to see if she’ll come back, but she doesn’t.
Now that I know they’re blackmailers, I don’t feel so bad giving the place a rougher search. I look under the mattress and sofa cushions, push aside clothing in the closet, tap the walls and floors for hidden nooks, but I don’t find anything. Which makes sense. If the photos were here, Donna probably never would have let me search the place the first time.
I clean up, and try waiting awhile, but she still doesn’t turn up, so I let myself out. She’ll probably be back at Cheaters tonight, or someone there will have a clue. And if not, I’ll come back. Unless she’s gone missing, too, she’ll turn up eventually. She was never hiding.
I stop for lunch at my usual place before heading back to the office. Lee is sitting at my desk when I go in, waiting for me. He’s in a dressing gown but no makeup yet.
“You’re here early,” I say to him. “Don’t you usually go on at eight or nine?”
“Elsie said someone canceled, needed a fill-in at five. And I believe as your new girl Friday I get to know what you’ve been up to,” he says, folding his hands in front of him and putting his chin on them. I smile and sit down opposite him.
“What do you want to know?”
“How you know Helen, for one.”
“Oh, it’s a long story. Wrapped up in this case, too.”
“Well, I promise confidentiality, but that means it’s time for you to spill.”
I grin and tilt my head. Lee was helpful last night, and I trust him. “As long as you don’t think I have the money to pay you.”
He throws back his head and laughs. “I’ve heard what you make. I do much better singing,” he says.
“Fair enough,” I say, and I lay out the case for him, including my own past with James and Helen. Lee stays raptly at attention the whole time. “So now I just need to find Donna again,” I say. “And I know her address and where she’s been most nights. So that’s the plan. Sound good?”
“Sounds like you are far too close to all this,” Lee says, arching an eyebrow. “I don’t think you should have taken the case at all.”
“I need the work.”
“Sure,” Lee says. “I get that. But look at you, you haven’t even noticed that Helen is the only one they auditioned for who they didn’t seek revenge on, assuming that bit of cleaning you did the other night was their gift to Elsie. No theft, no break-ins, no graffiti for Helen. Either she’s going to get hit tonight or she knows a lot more than she’s telling you.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he’s right. I should have noticed that, but talking with Helen again felt so comfortable, and James … I’ve been distracted by the past.
“You’re right,” I say. “I should talk to her tonight.”
Lee nods. “I better go put my face on, but I expect updates.” He stands and goes to the door, but as he’s almost out it, the phone rings, and he pauses, lingering.
I pick it up. “This is Andy,” I say.
“Hey Andy, it’s Helen.” Her voice sounds nervous. “Did you talk to Donna last night?”
“Yeah,” I say, looking up at Lee, who’s still watching. “But she got away from me before I could get any useful information out of her.”
“Well, I found her,” Helen says softly. “She’s out by the alley, the side door where we load the booze in. She’s … remember what I said about Suzanne’s husband? She’s in the same condition.”
I swallow and I can feel my eyes go wide.
“I was hoping you might be able to help me out,” Helen says.
“I’ll be right there,” I say, hanging up.
Lee looks at me, curious.
“Donna is dead, in the alley outside Cheaters,” I tell him, putting on my coat. His face goes gray with shock.
“Be careful, Andy,” he says, “Helen could have killed her.”
But I barely hear him, I’m already gone.
The sun is going down when I get there, and the sky is an angry red. When I knock on the back door, tucked in a thin alley, it cracks open, and one of Helen’s eyes—bloodshot—stares out. She opens the door enough for me to come in.
We’re in a storeroom. Shelves of booze line the walls. And in the center, lying faceup in the same old-fashioned black dress she wore when I met her, is Donna.
“I moved her in here,” Helen says. “I didn’t want anyone to see.”
“How was she positioned?” I ask, kneeling down to touch Donna’s wrist. She’s cold. Been dead at least since this afternoon.
“She was curled up. I thought maybe someone had fallen asleep drunk when I saw her.”
I carefully move the body, looking for what killed her. There’s a soft part of her skull that shouldn’t be soft, a little blood there. I swallow.
“Poor Donna,” Helen whispers.
I look her over again. No pockets in her dress. “Was there a purse?” I ask.
“I didn’t see one,” Helen says. “Should I go check?”
I look up at her. She’s in a men’s undershirt and dungarees, her hair pinned back. Her pants are clean, so she hasn’t been kneeling in the alley.
“Sure,” I say.
“Andy, you’re looking at me like I did it,” she says, her voice nervous.
“Did you?” I ask, standing up.
“Andy.” Her face grows hard. “I’ve done things I regret, and I admit I’ll do what I need to to survive. But … Donna was a nice girl. I had nothing against her.”
“She didn’t come back, break in? She’s been doing that with the clubs who turned the act down. If you thought she was a burglar—”
“I swear, I just found her in the alley. She wasn’t there last night.”
I think about last night. How I should have gone back to Danny’s place then, pushed her for more information. I sigh.
“If someone dumped her there,” I say, “they might have called the cops. They could be trying to frame you.”
She goes pale. She was never great in a crisis. Her instinct is always to get clear, even if it leaves the mess for somebody else.
“Okay, so…”
And I guess it works. I’m about to clean up another one. “Go check for a purse. You have a car?”
She nods.
“Bring it around. As close to the door as you can get it. We’re going to have to move her. I don’t know where to, but if this is a setup, getting her gone is most important.”
She nods, and leaves. I kneel down again, studying Donna. Her eyes are closed. Someone did that. I check the rest of her for marks, but there’s nothing. I remember her collar last night—Donna doesn’t keep things in a purse. I carefully feel around her collar, and find a small button on the back of it, just like in the other dress. I unbutton it; there’s some cash inside. So I try the other side of the collar. Another pouch—this one with a key inside. Before I have time to look at it, though, I hear the door open behind me, so I pocket it.
“No purse,” Helen says. “My car is right up against the door.”
“Help me lift her then.”
“Okay,” she says. We carry the body to the door. She opens it, and parked right in front of us is a small red car, the trunk open. The trunk is lined in black fabric and looks endless. It hits me what we’re doing. Hiding a body. Hiding a murder. Donna wasn’t good, but she was one of us. And I’m about to help erase her. I taste bile on my tongue.
“Andy?” Helen asks, and I realize I’ve been staring too long. I put the body in the trunk and slam it closed. I look up at Helen. Her hair is falling out of her bun in pale strands. She looks on the verge of tears. “I should leave a note,” she says. “Tell the girls I’m just checking … something. I’ll make something up. Warn them we might have a raid.”
“Good idea,” I say. “I’ll wait.”
“Andy.” She looks at me and there are so many emotions flying over her face. “Thanks.” She goes inside before I can respond.
I’m sweating and take my coat off, getting out a handkerchief. My nose is running, too.
Helen comes back a minute later and gets behind the wheel, and I sit next to her.
“I thought of a place,” she says, and starts the motor. I watch her, but she keeps her eyes ahead. How would she know a place to dump a body?
We’re quiet, and neither of us turns on the radio at first. She heads down along Mission, driving out of San Francisco and to South City, where the smokestacks rise up like bars of a cage.
“This is a good place,” she says.
“How do you know?”
“It just is,” she sighs. “No one is here at night. Water and warehouses.”
If we could go to the police, I would, but they’d just use it as an excuse to shut down Cheaters and then once they found out Donna was a regular, would have just never bothered. I saw it enough during my time on the police. They called it a “homo-cide.” Said it was justified. When I tried actually investigating one, trying to solve that case, my chief told me to let it ride or people would get the wrong idea.
So I did.
I was supposed to be better now, I was supposed to help gay people now. And all I can do is stuff the body of one in a trunk and drive away. Outside the houses fade, and I can smell the water turn dirtier. I used to have faith in something as an inspector. After I’d done the long work of finding the murderer, gathering the evidence, I’d turn it over to the DA, and I’d trust that justice would be done. Not every case led to a conviction, but I still always believed there was something to the system there. Some reason for what I did. But that’s not how it is for us, and now I’m actively taking away the chance for the system to even try to do its job.
I’m taking justice into my own hands, I realize. I’m making myself a promise that I’ll find out who killed Donna. I’m not sure it’s one I can keep. It’s definitely not one I’m getting paid for.
Out the window it’s mostly factories and warehouses. She drives close to the water. So that’s where we’re putting her.
“How’d you think of this place?” I ask.
“I just did,” she says, her eyes on the road, cheeks flushed. “And I know what you’re thinking, and yes, there’s something I’m not telling you but it doesn’t matter now. It can only hurt. So just help me. For old times’ sake?” Her voice gets higher at the end. Scared.
“Sure,” I say, but we both know that’s not the end of it.
We don’t pass anyone on the street for a while, and then we’re up against the water. It’s dark now, too. She pulls to a stop and kills the motor, then turns to look at me. Her eyes are dry now.
“Before we do this, I want to make sure you know it wasn’t me,” she says. “I swear it, Andy, this one wasn’t me, and I need you to believe that.” She holds out her hands for me. “So check my hands, her body, whatever you need to. You always saw things no one else did. That little sonar, the ways other men and women would stare, or not. So look me over, Andy. Tell me you believe I didn’t do this.”
I look her over. Her hands aren’t clean—she picked through the trash for the purse. Her pants and shirt are clean, though. No blood, but she could have washed, changed before I got there. And that’s if there was any splatter to begin with. Head injuries, if the object is blunt, can crush the skull without very much blood at all.
“I have no reason to have wanted her dead,” she says. “She wasn’t breaking into the club in that dress, either, so it wasn’t me thinking she was a burglar. Someone just left her there.”
“Who?” I ask. “Who’s out to get you and Donna?”
She shrugs and drops her hands. “I don’t know. Maybe there was a fight back there, or maybe someone just figured it was the best place to drop her because she’s been in so much. Maybe someone wants to frame me and just picked her at random. I don’t know, Andy. I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know.”
Her voice gets higher again and I take her hand. She goes quiet, and looks at me.
“I don’t think it was you,” I say. And I’m mostly sure I’m right. “But you are hiding something.”
She takes a deep breath and a single tear leaks out of her left eye. She brushes it away with her wrist as she turns away from me. “I’m hiding so much, Andy. It would take years to tell you all of it.”
“Helen…”
“If you believe me about this, then that’s what we need to focus on now, all right?”
I pause. It’s my last chance to stop, to take the body to the police, to make sure she finds her way home. But then Helen will probably end up in prison. So will I.
“All right,” I say.
“Thank you,” she says softly. “Now we should … do it.”
I nod, and we both get out of the car and open the trunk. It’s quiet and we don’t speak as we do the awful thing. Watching Donna go under, her eyes still closed, I think of the bodies I’ve seen brought out of the water, about how once I thought of killing myself by throwing myself into the bay. She sinks slowly, but she’ll bounce back up again soon. Helen wades in and pushes Donna farther out, and I watch her vanish and hope that despite everything she’s done, whatever is next for her is better.
Helen wades back out of the water and stands next to me.
“They’ll find her soon,” she says, “and think she floated down from the city.”
“How do you know that?”
She doesn’t say anything, just gets back in the car, passenger side this time, slamming the door.
I get behind the wheel and start the car up, heading back to the city.
“If the world were just, I could have gone to the cops,” she says, her voice matching the engine’s growl.
“I was thinking the same thing,” I say.
“I don’t know how you ever could have joined up with them,” she hisses.
“Do you want to fight right now?” I ask. “I’m out. I’m trying to help people. I just helped you.”
She sighs, then slams the side of her fist against her window. “I know,” she says finally. “Sorry. I just … hate this. Our lives are criminal because they make us criminals. It’s why we can’t go to the police, why Donna won’t…” She hits the window again, but it’s weaker this time, and the sound rings out empty in the fog.
I don’t say anything, and she reaches forward and turns on the radio. “Can we play the old game?” she asks. “To take my mind off it?”
“Sure,” I say.
She turns on the radio. It was something we used to do together, something she and James used to make fun of me for. The radio plays a few bars and she turns it off again.
“‘Mockin’ Bird Hill,’ Patti Page,” I say. She turns it back on and the song continues playing. It takes her a moment before she realizes I’m right, but then she laughs.
“I’m glad you can still do that,” she says. “You wouldn’t be you, otherwise.”
“I might lose my hearing one day,” I say.
“Maybe.” She leans her head on my shoulder, the radio keeps playing. Outside, the smokestacks are a forest, but we’re soon out of it, and driving back into the neon of San Francisco. The fog is strong tonight, almost like cotton candy, the way the light hits it. I pull up next to the alley behind Cheaters, and Helen sighs.
“I need to change. I’ll probably get sick from this.”
“I don’t see any police. I don’t think you’ve been raided yet.”
“We’ll see,” she says. “But you should go. You shouldn’t get wrapped up in this if there is a raid.” She squeezes my arm. “I don’t want to know what your former colleagues would do to you.”
“They broke some ribs on my left side last time,” I say. “I guess they could do the right, make it a matched set.”
She laughs. “Don’t joke. After what you did tonight for me, Andy … thank you.”
“Just let me know if you learn anything else—if you get raided, or don’t, or you find something, okay? This is linked to my case, somehow.”
“I will. You should come by for a drink after the decommissioning ceremony. If we’re still open and I’m not in prison.”
“The what?” I ask.
She raises an eyebrow. “James didn’t tell you? They’re decommissioning the Bell.” She pops open the glove compartment and shows me a formal navy invitation.
“I’ve changed addresses, if they even sent me one…” I reach out and touch the seal on the invitation, feel something heavy in my chest. The Bell, decommissioned—embossed right there.
“Some of the girls mentioned it the other day—the ones who risk coming in, I mean. I had them get me one. I can get one for you, too, I’m sure.”
“I didn’t know,” I say. I feel like all the breath has gone out of me.
“Well, I thought I’d stop by. I know I wasn’t on the ship, but … you were. James was. It was part of the family, too.”
“Yeah,” I say. “A family funeral.”
We’re quiet at that. Wrong joke to make.
“I’ll try to be there,” I say. “Thanks for telling me.”
“Come on, go home,” she says, opening her door. “You’ve had a long night. We both have, but I have to put on my face and sing in a few hours, unless that place is already swarming with cops.”
“Well, without the body, they have nothing to use to shut you down permanently.”
“I’m sure they’ll come up with something.”
We get out of the car and she heads inside and I wait for a few minutes, then walk around to the front. A few people are going in and out. Looks like a normal Sunday night. If the body was dumped there, whoever did it either didn’t call the cops or the cops didn’t believe them. But then why leave Donna there at all? And if she was murdered in that alley, why was she there? In that old-fashioned dress? Too many questions.
I fish in my pocket and take out the key and look at it in the dim light. It’s a locker key. Number 34. But what does it open?