The next morning, Joanna was at Tallulah’s Closet, dusting the top of the jewelry display and pondering the fact that Gene hadn’t returned last night, when Mindy entered the shop. Despite the threat of ninety-degree heat, the girl still wore the buttoned-up coat she had at the library. She stood, frozen, inside the door.
“It’s so beautiful,” Mindy finally said, her voice breathy.
“Come in. It’s nice to see you.”
Mindy’s head turned as she took in the pastel fluff of organdie along the wall of party dresses and the sleek row of black cocktail dresses. A few inches of denim pant legs peeked from under the coat, but that was all Joanna saw.
“You must be roasting in that coat. Why don’t you take it off?”
Her head snapped back to Joanna. “I’m fine.”
Undeterred, Joanna pulled out a full-skirted sundress with a pattern of poodles across its bodice. “I bet you’d look great in this. Want to try it on?”
Mindy reverently touched the poplin skirt and inched closer. “Do you think it would fit?”
After eight years in the vintage clothing business, Joanna didn’t need a tape measure to size up a customer. “Absolutely. It might be a bit long, but it would be a cinch to hem.”
Mindy lifted the dress by the hanger and held it against her coat.
“The mirror’s back there.” Joanna pointed toward the rear of the store.
In a daze, Mindy walked toward the gold-framed mirror. Joanna saw a kid who knew how to shriek with laughter, but probably hadn’t in a while. Mindy was intrigued, though. Joanna could tell. The girl’s fingers rested on the coat’s top buttons.
“Go ahead, try it on. You can lay your coat over that chair.”
All at once, the girl’s smile vanished and her hands dropped to her sides. “Thank you, but no.” She returned the hanger to Joanna. “I need to go home. I just came because I heard you talking about an actress, Callie Rampton.”
“Oh.” Joanna was still puzzled.
“At the library. Remember? You asked about Starlit Wonder and mentioned Edith Head and Callie Rampton. I’m sorry to tell you that Edith Head died a long time ago.”
“In 1981,” Joanna said.
“Yeah. Way long ago.”
“Practically when dinosaurs roamed the earth. What about Callie Rampton?”
“She’s still alive. I found her address for you. You were interested, right? You said you don’t use computers. So I looked it up. No big deal. You gave me your card.” She handed Joanna a scrap of paper with Rampton’s name, an address in Milwaukie—a suburb south of town—and Stamp Gurlz written on it. “Stamp Gurlz. That’s her business.”
“That’s so thoughtful. And you have an amazing memory. Thank you.”
The girl wasn’t finished yet. She stood, absorbed in taking in the racks of frothy dresses. Her visit clearly wasn’t about Callie Rampton’s address alone.
“How are the rest of the Book Bunnies?” Joanna asked.
“Fine,” she said in an emotionless voice.
“And that other team? The smarty pants team?”
“Athena’s Warriors. They’re fine, too. I guess.”
“Well, I really appreciate your trouble with this. Will you let me give you something for your effort? Something small? Not clothes,” Joanna added quickly, afraid she’d scare her off again.
Mindy’s eyes darted toward the door, then back. “Something small?”
Joanna reached into the jewelry display case. “I was thinking of this charm bracelet.” The bracelet, from the 1970s, had a chunky gold-tone chain and wasn’t worth much, but she loved the tiny San Francisco street car and Leaning Tower of Pisa charms.
“Is that a cat on it?”
“With ruby eyes. Isn’t it adorable?” Joanna laid the bracelet on the counter. “It’s yours, if you want it. It’s the least I can do for your trouble.”
Mindy touched its clasp. “Yes, please. I mean, if it’s okay.”
“Want me to fasten it for you?”
“No. I can do it.” She snatched the bracelet off the counter and clipped it around her tiny wrist. She tilted her hand side to side to watch the charms dangle. Her smile returned, bright and genuine. “Thank you.”
“You’re welcome.”
Mindy waved and practically skipped to the door. “Bye.”
“Come back soon,” Joanna yelled to the khaki twill of her retreating back. What was that about? Mindy had gone to special effort, made a special trip.
Joanna relented and turned on the air conditioner. She preferred to stick to the fan, but it was too hot. Back at the tiki bar, she looked at the address again. Bradley Stroden had told her Callie Rampton had worked on the set of Starlit Wonder. Maybe she had a copy of the script—or could at least shed some light on the scandal behind the movie.
She’d call Detective Roscoe. He’d want this information. Maybe he already had it. In any case, it was the excuse she needed to dip her toes back into the investigation.
Joanna’s call bounced into Detective Roscoe’s voice mail. “I have a possible lead for you,” she said. “Someone who knew Bradley Stroden. You have my phone number.” She hung up feeling unconvinced she’d left a tantalizing enough message to merit a return call. The newspaper hadn’t even mentioned that Stroden had been murdered. Could the police have dropped the case already?
It wasn’t ten minutes later that Roscoe pushed open the door. He couldn’t look more different than Mindy had earlier that morning. His hair puffed in frizz to rival Albert Einstein’s. His tank-style T-shirt was clearly visible under the thin plaid of his button-down shirt.
“I’m glad you called,” he said. “I was planning to get in touch with you, anyway.”
“You were?” Joanna said. “Did you find out anything more?”
“Let’s start with you. Why did you call?” He glanced over the store. “Anywhere to sit in this place?”
Unlike most visitors to Tallulah’s Closet, Roscoe seemed unmoved by the shop’s mélange of color and texture. Joanna pointed to the red bench at the room’s center, and the detective positioned himself to take maximum advantage of the air conditioner.
Joanna leaned over the tiki bar. “When I was at Bradley Stroden’s, he briefly mentioned an old colleague. I discovered she lives just south of town. I thought I’d pass along her name and address.”
She copied the address from the paper Mindy had given her and pushed it across the bar. Roscoe looked at it but didn’t rise to take it.
“Why is this name so helpful to me?”
“If she spent time with Stroden recently, she might have an idea if someone had threatened him, or if he’d been in some kind of trouble.”
“Like maybe he knew someone with access to cyanide?”
Joanna pushed out from behind the bar and joined Roscoe on the bench. “Cyanide? Was that what was on the pastilles?”
“Let’s back up a second. I want you to tell me about your visit to Stroden, starting from when you first saw him. Step by step.”
“We already went through this. I won’t have anything new to tell you—”
“Never mind that. Now, you first saw him downstairs, right?”
“Yes.” She thought back to that morning, the sun washing the walnut trim with golden light, the roses and marigolds on the side table. “I was in what they called the ‘morning room’ at the far south side of the ground floor. Bradley Stroden came through the dining room—that’s the room just off the foyer—”
Roscoe nodded. “Got it. Go on.”
“Anyway, he hadn’t quite got dressed yet. Despite the heat, he was wearing trousers” —meticulously pressed, she remembered— “and a smoking jacket, red brocade silk with chartreuse lining, also silk. The left sleeve had ‘B. S.’ embroidered on it in black. And glove leather slippers, probably Turkish.”
The detective waved a hand. “We know what he was wearing. What else?”
“He invited me to come upstairs to see some clothing Edith Head had designed. He asked Luke to bring up coffee for two.”
Roscoe held up a hand. “What did he say? Be as exact as you can.”
“Let’s see.” She bit her lip and released it. “Luke asked if he was ready for his coffee, and he said to bring it to the dressing room and to include a cup for me.”
“Did you see the coffee things?”
“Not then. Not until they came upstairs. Why? Do you think they were poisoned? You found the pastille, right?”
“Stroden’s blood showed signs of cyanide poisoning, but we’re not sure yet how it was ingested. The pastille’s at the lab. But, go on. You said the coffee and cups were brought upstairs.”
“Yes.” Remembering, she could almost smell the heavy scent of coffee mixed with the violets that clung to the air. “I don’t suppose you want a description of the coffee set?”
“Not necessary, thank you. Did he take sugar? Cream?”
Cyanide in the sugar bowl. Classic. “No. Just the pastille.”
Roscoe nodded. “Okay, the pastilles. Were they on the tray?”
“Not on the tray. Luke brought them up.”
“The secretary, huh?” He made a note.
“Yes. He said they’d come in the morning’s mail, and Stroden mentioned they weren’t his usual brand. I figured Mr. Stroden probably ordered them. Violet pastilles aren’t easy to find in the United States. He opened a new package and offered me one—which I declined—before taking one himself. He set one on my saucer.”
Roscoe put his hands on his knees and pushed himself up. “You’re probably right. It was probably the pastille. You both drank the coffee. We’ll have the lab results back soon.”
“Do you run into a lot of cyanide cases?” Joanna asked. “It sounds so—so old-fashioned.”
“It is. Cyanide, arsenic, and strychnine used to be a wife’s favorite way to become a widow, but you can’t march down to the hardware store these days, complain about rats, and leave with a box of arsenic. Oh, we still see the odd canister of Cyanogus in the back of someone’s garage, but most of the time the house’s owner didn’t even know it was there.” He scratched his head, displacing a gray curl. “Well, until lately, that is. The Internet has made it easy again. No, most homicides these days are at the end of a gun.”
“Somehow, old-fashioned seems right for him.”
Roscoe fidgeted with his pen and stared beyond Joanna. “If the candy tests positive for cyanide, Stroden’s death was premeditated, no two ways about it.”
“He told me he had a habit of eating pastilles. Had for years. Said he always had a tin.”
“Somebody else knew it, too.” He pulled keys from his front pants pocket. “Lucky they’re not a habit for you.”
“Have you figured out why someone would kill him?” Joanna nodded toward one end of the red bench, hoping Roscoe would follow her lead and sit again. After hesitating, he did.
“That’s not the approach I take. Motive is too far ranging to consider right away. People kill because of anything from a knee-jerk reaction to an insult to a long-planned strategy to get the family jewels.”
Thinking of Uncle Gene, Joanna winced.
“First, I examine means and opportunity,” Roscoe said. “Who could have had the means—”
“In this case, poison.”
“Right. And who could have administered it.”
“Motive matters, though,” Joanna said. “If you isolate why a person was killed, can’t it help limit the pool of suspects? For instance, Stroden was writing a memoir.”
“You brought that up before, and we’ll certainly examine it. But, look. Chances are that most of the people he wrote about are dead. His memoir might make good reading, but it’s old news. Money is probably a better motive.”
“So, he’s rich?” Joanna asked. “He lives like it.”
“We’re not there yet. Like I said, right now we’re focusing on means and opportunity.” Again, he heaved himself to standing. “There’s one more thing.”
“What is it?”
“Your name came up a few times in our homicide records.”
“That was just by chance,” Joanna said. “I just happened—”
Roscoe put up a palm. “I know, I know. You weren’t convicted of anything. But you insinuated yourself into a couple of investigations. I appreciate you giving me Rampton’s name and address, but we already have it. That’s what we do. Getting involved in a homicide case is a sure way to sour our work and put your own safety at risk. Got it?”
Joanna stared at him without responding. He was telling her to back off. Her pulse remained even, but defiance rippled through her bloodstream. How dare he condescend to her? The police might have labs and computers on their side, but she was observant. She had a knack for the telling detail. If she hadn’t asked a few questions over the past couple of years, the police’s cold case files would be a lot fatter.
“Understand?” he repeated. “Crisp was more patient than I am.”
“I understand all right.” She fastened him with her gaze. “Definitely.”
“You promise you’ll back off?”
She widened her lips in a smile she was afraid looked more like a grimace. “What would be my motive for getting involved?”
“You have the means and the opportunity. That’s enough for me.”