Chapter 4
TESSA
Beatrice's return slip is under the pumpkin when Peggy's phone rings.
The pumpkin is orange glass, heavy enough to keep our invoices from blowing off the cutting table whenever somebody opens the delivery door.
I lift it to check the slip beneath. One moth costume, one silver mask, due back tomorrow.
At the bottom, in the space for accessories, I've written Blue comb. Loan.
Peggy looks at her screen and puts down the chocolate croissant she hasn't finished. “Colette? Hi. Have you heard?”
I stop sorting the receipts.
She turns toward me, and I know who Colette must be before Peggy mouths Beatrice's friend.
Last night she gripped the little metal coat-check token while she asked where Beatrice had gone.
I've been hoping she'll call to say Beatrice's phone died at somebody's apartment, that the whole thing is embarrassing, that she's furious with her.
Peggy's free hand moves to her mouth.
The steamer gives a wet sputter behind me.
I'd switched it on for the black lace gowns hanging along the back wall, where September sunlight picks out every crease.
There are twelve to finish before Wednesday.
This morning I came in pleased about twelve gowns, despite three hours of sleep and a headache from too much music.
“When?” Peggy asks.
I turn the steamer off.
Hem & Havoc occupies the ground floor of a narrow South End building.
Our door is wedged between the upstairs tenant's private entrance and a display window full of things nobody needs but plenty of people want.
We've made the front fitting room look bigger with a tall mirror and pale curtains.
Beyond its archway, the sewing benches face each other across a floor permanently dotted with glitter.
Our office is barely wide enough for two chairs, so most of our business happens at the cutting table, with a folded scrap of cardboard under its short leg.
Peggy sits on the edge of that table now. She never sits there. She knows what happens to the leg.
“I'm so sorry,” she says.
My fingers flatten against Beatrice's slip.
Peggy listens for another minute. When the call ends, she keeps the phone beside her cheek until I say her name.
“They found her.” Her voice is rough. “This morning. She's dead, Tess.”
I try to let go of the slip, but my fingers lock around it. The paper tears beneath my thumbnail.
I look down at the small white split. I've made it right beside the collection date, ruining a form we won't need anymore.
“Where?”
“Charlestown. Colette didn't know much. The police called her.” Peggy slides off the table. “She wanted to tell us before we saw anything online.”
The sweet coffee coats my tongue. I swallow, but the taste comes back sour, and I push my cup away from the return slip.
Beatrice smiled when I lent her that comb. I can remember exactly how her head tilted toward the mirror, how she checked the wings over each shoulder. She'd looked surprised by how lovely she was. I told her I'd built the wings so she could dance.
I want to ask Peggy if Colette is sure, as though she'd pass along something like this without knowing. Instead I pull out both chairs and sit. Peggy takes the one beside me, her knee pressing against mine beneath the table.
My phone lights up between us.
The number has no name attached. Under it, a message fills three lines.
Delete the whole launch video. Original too. Or you're next.
For half a second I think of Lincoln. It's an ugly little habit, putting his face to anything mean that arrives on my phone. He hated being corrected in front of Beatrice last night.
Then I read the last three words again.
He's sent plenty of sulking messages. He's never threatened to kill me.
“Peggy.” I have to brace my shaking wrist on the table before I can turn the screen toward her.
Her knee moves away from mine as she leans forward. She reads it twice, then gets up and crosses the fitting room to turn the lock on the front door.
The little click carries through the workshop.
“Don't answer,” she says.
I haven't touched the keyboard. My thumb rests against the edge of the case so hard the seam hurts.
The business number is my number. We couldn't afford another phone when we opened, and by the time we could, it was on the website, the cards, every receipt we'd ever handed out.
Strangers text me photographs of dresses at midnight.
Until this morning, the worst one wanted a custom fairy costume by lunchtime for forty dollars.
I open my camera roll.
The eight-second teaser sits beside the longer recording I made it from.
In the teaser, Peggy is laughing under her feathered halo.
I'd cropped tightly around her and the cape so people could see the beading on their phones.
The full version includes the platform, our sign, part of the bar, and the doorway beside it.
I tap the longer clip.
Music bursts from the speaker. Peggy's recorded voice rises over it, selling October as she spreads the red-sequined lining of a black cape. I lower the volume until I can barely hear her.
Beatrice enters the background while Peggy changes capes.
There are her wings. They catch the light as she turns sideways to pass a man in black. He's wearing the cheap skull mask I noticed last night, with deep molded teeth and a crooked elastic strap. He steps toward the side doorway. Beatrice follows him.
I touch the screen to stop it.
The image holds her halfway through a step. One wing tips toward the camera as she turns to clear the doorframe, its fine wire keeping the silk spread above her shoulder. Her hand is lifted near her face. I keep my fingertip on the glass as if I could stop her from taking the next step.
“That's what I saw,” I say. “I told them she went through there.”
Peggy bends closer, bracing herself on the table. “Can you see his face?”
I enlarge the picture with two fingers. The skull grows grainy. Behind its eyeholes is darkness, and a fold of black fabric covers his neck.
“No.”
We both keep looking anyway.
I'd assumed he worked there. Black clothes, carrying himself as though he knew where to go. Half the people helping with the launch wore costumes. I never asked who he was, because nobody asks the man moving through a service door whether he belongs on the other side.
My phone vibrates in my hand. An email notification makes me almost drop it, but the sender is The Ninth Masque's security office.
Beneath it is an earlier request from a few hours ago, unopened while I slept.
They want the full recording from the launch, with anything I filmed before or after it. The follow-up gives a number to call.
The officer who took our details last night gave me a number too.
I reach into my bag for the policeman's card.
I remember the stranger's hand around mine as I freed my costume tail from beneath my heel, his palm warm and the ring cool against my knuckle.
I'd wanted his number when I left that bathroom.
I wish I had it now, too. A suited man had approached him at the bar, and one word sent him away.
I liked how easily he did that. I find the card behind my lipstick.
Peggy holds the card steady while I dial.
I'm passed to Detective Alison Durham after I explain the recording and read the message aloud. Having to say the words makes them worse. My voice fails on next, and I start the sentence again.
“Don't delete anything,” she says. “Are you somewhere you can stay with someone?”
“Our workshop. Peggy's here.”
I give her the address. She tells me she'll come to us, then asks whether anyone has approached the building or tried to get inside. Nobody has. I check the window while I answer, although the only person close to it is me, reflected faintly over a velvet witch hat.
After we hang up, Peggy pulls the front curtain across the fitting-room archway. It doesn't cover the shop window, but it stops anybody looking straight through to our table.
I leave Beatrice's return slip where it is.
There isn't a sensible task for the time before the detective arrives. I move a packet of beads from one end of the table to the other, then put it back because I've carried it away from the dress it belongs to. Peggy opens our booking calendar and closes it without changing anything.
The workshop smells of hot fabric from the steamer. Usually I like that smell. It means something is nearly finished, something somebody will try on and turn around in. This morning the cooling machine stands beside a row of empty gowns, and I can't make myself touch them.
“Ethan's bringing the launch proofs at eleven,” Peggy says. “I'll tell him we're speaking to the police.”
I nod. He took the photographs for last night's event. We'd arranged to choose the website pictures here this morning because Sunday was the only gap before the next round of fittings.
Peggy types, then leaves her phone facedown beside mine.
When the knock comes, she checks through the glass before letting the detective in.
Alison Durham wears a dark jacket over trousers and carries a flat bag close to her side. She shows us her identification, then asks us to call her Alison. Her attention moves from Peggy's unfinished breakfast to my phone without lingering on either.
I stand and clear a place at the table. There's a loose pin beside the chair I offer her, and I pick it up before she sits.
“Is it true?” I ask. “About Beatrice?”
“Yes. She was found at a commercial yard in Charlestown early this morning. We're investigating her death as a homicide.”
Peggy takes hold of the back of my chair.
The last thin hope I've been keeping to myself goes. Someone killed the woman who stood still while I fixed her hair. My knees fold, and I reach for my chair but catch only air until Peggy pushes it against the backs of my legs. I sit hard, a jolt traveling up my spine.
Alison lets me settle before she asks to see the message.