Death by Devil's Breath Page 20

  “Even though that wasn’t true.”

  “Some of the time, I bet it was. But most of the time, no. Most of the time, what they were doing was simply getting your three dollars for a bunch of materials that probably weren’t worth a quarter all told. That was their business, see, preying on people who wanted to try to earn a couple extra bucks, taking their money, then telling them that their work wasn’t up to snuff.”

  “Is that what they did to Noreen Pennybaker?”

  “Never knew the woman myself, but yeah, that’s what I hear. Most people, they’re burned like that, and they maybe get mad. Or embarrassed. Heck, I’d be both if I found out I was played for a sucker like that.”

  “And Noreen?”

  Minnie twirled one finger around her ear. “Like I said, crazy. And must have been to start. I think the craft thing pushed her over the edge. You see, she paid her money and got the materials to make dolls.”

  I sat up. “Like Honey Bunch!”

  “Like Honey Bunch.” Minnie’s smile was bittersweet. “You can take one look at Honey Bunch and know that Noreen’s work was top-notch. Her dolls were perfect, every single one of them. But when she finished that first one and sent it back to the company that commissioned it—”

  “They told her it wasn’t good enough and kept her three dollars.”

  “Most folks would have gotten the message right off the bat. Not Noreen! Instead of realizing that those craft company folks were out to get her money, she decided to try again. She sent them more money for more supplies and she made more dolls. And every time, they told her the dolls weren’t good enough and they sent them right back to her. They didn’t care about the dolls, see, they only cared about the three dollars.”

  “But Noreen kept making dolls.” This was hard to imagine, even though Minnie’s nod told me it was true.

  “Not only that,” the old woman went on, “but she went another whole step. She named each of the dolls she made, and embroidered her name and the doll’s name inside its slip. And when even that wasn’t enough to impress those crooks at the craft company, Noreen started writing little stories to go with each of her dolls. She even drew the pictures in every little storybook. The more dolls she made and the more stories she wrote and the more the company took more and more of her money for supplies, then told her that her work wasn’t good enough . . . well, from what I’ve heard, that was when Noreen really went off the deep end. Those dolls were like children to her. It’s sad, isn’t it? Imagine how her little sons must have suffered, what with their mother not caring about anyone or anything except those dolls. I’ve heard tell she had a house full of them and knew every single one of their names and stories. She ended up losing every penny she ever had, too, because she just kept buying more and more supplies so she could keep making the dolls.”

  I wrapped my arms around myself. “That’s awful.”

  “It is, especially when eventually Noreen realized she had nothing left except those dolls. I hear tell that’s when she went to bed one day and just never got out again. Died of a broken heart, surrounded by her dolls.”

  The very thought made me sick, but I told myself I could wallow in my sympathy for Noreen another time. For now, I had more important things to worry about.

  “Let me guess,” I said to Minnie. “That craft company that took all of Noreen’s money, it was run by a woman named Louise, right?”

  “Louise?” Minnie’s lips thinned. “Well, I’m not as young as I used to be and I can’t say I remember everything like I did back in the day. But Louise? No. That’s not the name I heard.”

  * * *

  By the time I’d wrapped up my work at the Palace the next day and got to the auditorium, it was already chock-full of nervous couples waiting for their big moment.

  Couples dressed as knights and ladies.

  Couples wearing jeans and T-shirts.

  Couples in vampire costumes, and couples in bathing suits, and even a few couples (obviously old-fashioned and with little imagination) wearing tuxes and white wedding gowns.

  Ah, yes, it was time for Reverend Love to officiate at the largest mass wedding ceremony ever performed in Nevada at a Western-themed hotel on a Sunday afternoon.

  When I saw Yancy up onstage, I waved. I was sure he saw me. I was also sure he couldn’t let on so I wasn’t surprised when he didn’t wave back.

  I squeezed between a man dressed in a weird seaweedy-looking toga and the mermaid who would soon be his missus and scurried over to the stage. “You won the contest to sell the most tickets!” I said, and I gave Yancy a quick hug. Truth be told, I wished he hadn’t, but I couldn’t tell him that. Something told me that before the end of the afternoon, he was going to wish he wasn’t up onstage. “I knew you would. You’re the only one around here with real talent.”

  He was dressed in a dapper gray suit and he wore a fedora with a little red feather in the band. Yancy tipped his hat to me. “I appreciate the compliment. Only now that I’m here . . .” Behind his dark glasses, I saw him glance left and right. “When are we going to get started?”

  “Soon.” As if he really couldn’t see me, I gave his arm a squeeze before I walked away. “As soon as Reverend Love gets here.”

  Reverend Love, and a few other very special guests I’d made sure had been invited.

  Since that was another thing Yancy couldn’t know about, I kept my mouth shut, stepped into the wings, and watched and waited.

  A few minutes later, the lights in the auditorium flickered to get everyone’s attention and a hum of anticipation buzzed through the crowd. When the lights came up again, Creosote Cal himself stepped to the center of the stage.

  “Ladies and gentlemen!” Cal glanced around at the crowd and grinned. “Brides and grooms!”

  A cheer went up and Cal had to hold out his hands, palms down, to get the crowd to quiet.

  “We got us somethin’ here that’s goin’ to put all of us in the record books,” Cal said.

  Another cheer erupted and he waited.

  “Today, you’re all going to be part of Las Vegas history. Today . . .” Cal shot a grin around the room. “You are all going to be newlyweds!”

  This time, the cheering lasted a minute or two, and by the time it died down, Linda Love stood center stage right next to Yancy. That afternoon, she looked like she belonged in the record books: steel gray suit, pearls at her throat, a sprinkling of white lace on the neckline of the cami that peeked from her jacket. Reverend Love was ready for her close-up, that was for sure, and when the photographer I’d seen in the bar the other night, the one from the Review-Journal, stepped forward, Reverend Love put an arm around Yancy’s shoulders and told him to smile.

  The moment captured for posterity, she stepped forward and glanced around the crowd. “Hold hands,” she said, and when all those brides and all those grooms didn’t pick up on the command fast enough, she motioned. “Hold hands,” she said again, and couple by couple, the lords and ladies and clowns and vampires clung to one another and stepped closer together.

  “Dearly beloved,” the reverend said, and a hush fell over the crowd.

  Ask Sylvia, there’s nothing I like better than disrupting a little bit o’ quiet.

  I looked across the stage to where Nick waited in the wings opposite from where I stood, and on his nod, I stepped out onstage and strolled up to the reverend.

  She was so intent on studying the crowd, a half smile lighting her face and reflecting back all that dewy-eyed pathetic emotion coming from the audience, it took a moment for her to notice me.

  When she did, Reverend Love froze. For like half a second. Then she smiled. “Maxie, you’ve changed your mind! I’m so glad. You do have someone special and you’ve decided to tie the knot today!”

  Across the stage, Nick stepped out of his place in the wings.

  “I knew it.” Reverend Love waved a
finger, then looked from me and Nick to the audience. “These two pretend that they’re not really fond of each other, but I knew it. I knew he’d be the one. Join me,” she said and clapped, then raised her voice when the audience applauded, too. “Join me in congratulating them for recognizing the power of real love.”

  Nick’s cheeks got red.

  Me? I think I held it together pretty well considering what I really wanted to do was toss my hands in the air and tell these people they were so far off base, they weren’t even in the ballpark.

  Finally, the noise died down and Reverend Love grabbed Nick, who was standing on her left, and dragged him over to where I stood on her right.

  “You can pretend all you want,” she said, plopping Nick’s hand in mine, “but it’s hard to hide that look of love that passes between you.”

  “That’s not all it’s hard to hide,” I told her.

  And I guess for a second, she didn’t know what I was talking about, not even when the detective in charge of Dickie’s murder investigation strolled out onstage with three burly uniformed cops.

  Reverend Love’s smile never wavered. “Well, I can’t imagine you officers are here to get married. Unless . . .” She put a hand up to her eyes and scanned the audience. “Are there brides out there waiting for their handsome grooms?” she called.

  No one answered.

  The audience stirred with anticipation and a low grumble, like thunder, curled through the crowd.

  “Give us a minute,” I told all those brides and grooms before I turned back to Reverend Love. “We’ve got a couple things we need to clear up.”

  “Like . . .?” she wanted to know.

  Thank goodness the Las Vegas cops were willing to play along. When I signaled, a cop stepped forward with an evidence bag.

  “My doll!” the reverend crooned with a look at the rag doll inside the bag. Then she frowned. “No, it’s not my doll. The dress is similar but the hair—”

  “Yeah, the hair is different.” The cop handed me the evidence bag so I could show it to Reverend Love. “This doll has black braids, and your doll, Tout Sweet, had a brown bob. That’s pretty much why I didn’t think anything of it the first time I saw the picture of the doll the cops took out of George Jarret’s hotel room.”

  “Jarret!” The reverend’s top lip curled. “How that man could have been so cruel and so awful! He’s a murderer.”

  “Or not,” Nick commented.

  She turned to him. “Are you saying—”

  “What Nick’s saying,” I interrupted, “is that you almost pulled it off. You almost convinced everyone that Jarret was guilty. But there’s this doll.” I lifted the bag so that the audience could see it, too. “See, every one of Noreen Pennybaker’s dolls has a name and a story,” I told them and reminded the reverend. “So this doll with the black braids should have had her own dress and her own name. But when I asked the cops to check, they confirmed what I suspected. This isn’t Tout Sweet, but she’s wearing Tout Sweet’s dress. See.” Actually, it was kind of hard, but I tipped the bag anyway, to give the reverend a look. “That’s Noreen Pennybaker’s signature embroidered in baby blue inside the dress. Right above the doll’s name. Tout Sweet. But this . . .” I ran a finger across the bag and the doll’s dark braids. “This isn’t Tout Sweet. That’s because you pulled the ol’ switcheroo.”

  The reverend clasped her hands at her waist. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Science is a wonderful thing,” Nick told her, and that was okay with me; we’d already talked about this part of our little reveal and figured that if I started spouting off about forensics, nobody was going to believe it. “After Maxie presented her theory to the local police, they did a little testing and realized there was ash residue on the dress of the doll they found in George Jarret’s room. That’s not all they found. I won’t muddy the waters with all the scientific evidence,” he told the reverend and the audience. “We’ll leave that for the trial. Let’s just say that there are places in the desert outside of town that have unique soil structures. The cops found that, too. Some of that unique soil. And they knew exactly where to look for it. That’s when they went out to the middle of nowhere and found the charred remains of the dolls you burned.”

  “Me?” The reverend might have been more convincing if her voice didn’t crack. “How could you possibly think that it was me?”

  “Because you’re the one who owns Tout Sweet,” I told her. It was a no-brainer, and she should have figured it out herself, but hey, maybe she was playing dumb in the hopes of covering her reverendly ass. “See, here’s the way I think it went down. You followed me the night I found all those dolls in that old trunk of Dickie’s. But then,” I added quickly when it looked like she was going to butt in, “that’s not a surprise. You’d been following me for a while, ever since that evening I stopped at the chapel and asked if Dickie was blackmailing you. That’s when you figured out that I was onto something even though . . .” I had to point it out, just to get to her. “At that point, I really wasn’t. So you see, rigging that neon heart to come down and whack me really was way overboard.”

  She sucked in her bottom lip. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “What I am talking about are Dickie’s dolls. Which were really Noreen’s dolls, of course, but Dickie got them all after his mother died, and when he moved out of his apartment, he brought them over to Cal’s storeroom. And that’s where you followed me that night and that’s when you realized you had to get rid of those dolls. That’s why you conked me on the head and took them, and when you did, the cops here tell me you took them out to the desert and lit a bonfire.”

  The reverend stood as still as if she’d been made of stone, but that didn’t stop me. I had plenty to say and, for once, the platform to say it. “That’s probably when it hit you,” I told Linda Love. “You could use one of the dolls and plant it as evidence. You’d seen me talking to George Jarret so he was probably the first sucker who popped into your head. He was a doll collector and a doll dealer. It would make sense that he might kill Dickie to get those dolls. But by the time you thought of all that . . .”

  I put a hand to my chin. Not for any particular reason except that I’d seen detectives on TV do stuff like that, and hey, it did draw out the moment, and the drama.

  “By that time, that bonfire was blazing and all those precious dolls of Noreen’s were roasting like marshmallows. What did you do, pull out one of them near the edge of the fire? That would have been this one.” I held up the bag. “The one with the dark braids. But her dress was ruined, right? And the cops were sure to question it if you put a doll with a burned dress in Jarret’s room. So you saved the doll body and switched her dress with Tout Sweet’s. You didn’t imagine that anyone would know the difference because you never thought that the doll you pulled from the fire would bring along a little ash and a little soil with her. What you didn’t know is that evening I was at the chapel, I got a good look at Tout Sweet. I saw the name inside her dress. That’s how I knew this doll wasn’t on the up-and-up.”

  “Charming theory.” The reverend’s top lip curled. “But why would I want to waste my time killing a nobody like Dickie Dunkin? And how did I do it anyway?” She glanced around the stage, the site of the Devil’s Breath contest and of Dickie’s way-too-ugly demise.

  “Nick tells me datura, the poison you used, is easy to come by,” I told her. I think that was about the same time I realized I was still hanging on to Nick’s hand. I untangled my fingers from his, shook out my hand, and went on. “It grows in empty lots all over Vegas, and with the downturn in the economy, there’s not nearly as much building around here these days as there used to be. It would be easy to pick some of the plants, dry them, and keep a baggie of the powder around, maybe in your purse or in your pocket. I’ll bet the morning of the Devil’s Breath contest you had some with you just waiting f
or the perfect moment to slip some to Dickie. You couldn’t have possibly known that he and Osborn were going to play right into your plan. That hassle they had with each other? They had that whole thing down pat. They did it to get attention. What it also did was provide you the perfect opportunity to slip some poison into the bowls the judges would use. Once Nick jumped in and stopped the tussle, you put those bowls next to Dickie’s seat. Tumbleweed . . .” He was standing in the wings and I smiled his way. Believe me, I’d already told him what I was going to say and he knew nobody was going to blame him, but I knew he felt lousy about the whole thing anyway.

  “Tumbleweed grabbed the bowl and the contestant filled it with Devil’s Breath and the poison did its work.”

  “Ingenious,” the reverend purred. “And so ridiculous, I can’t even begin to tell you how wrong you are.”

  Honestly, I didn’t want to hear it, and to prove it, I turned to all those brides and grooms, who were now staring, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, at the stage. “See, Dickie,” I told them, “was not only a lousy comedian, he was a blackmailer. Don’t pretend it’s not true.” I tossed the comment over my shoulder to the reverend. “A couple other people, I won’t say who . . .” And I refused to look in Yancy’s direction and tip anybody off. “A couple other people have already given the cops their statements. They were being blackmailed by Dickie. And that’s what he was going to do to you, too.” I turned back to the reverend. “He found out. That you used to work here at Creosote Cal’s. That you were one of those slick types who guess people’s weight and age and pull it all off and make it look like magic. And that made Dickie think exactly what it made me think. You, Reverend Love, can be a very tricky person.”