in an upstart club in Jackson. I’m five-eleven with a yard of crayon-red hair and miraculously not one freckle plus big breasts that even unsupported still look happy. She promised me one-third more than my current nightly take. By the time we finished, she’d guaranteed double my salary and headliner status. I have the attitude to match my assets. The next night I was on her stage.
“You hear about Della?” It was a rhetorical question. Billie had probably known about the murder before I’d even gotten down to the morgue. Part of being a successful club owner was keeping the cops happy…and vice versa.
The dance in her eyes disappeared. “Bit of bad business, this with Della.”
She reached for a candy from an inlaid bowl on her desk. She pushed the bowl toward me. I shook my head. Normally I ate like a linebacker, but a dead body did wonders to suppress the appetite.
“I didn’t know she’d left the club. You have to let her go?” Della had been known to dabble—coke, crystal meth mostly, but besides a four-day toot when the rest of us girls covered for her, she’d kept her act together and her vices limited to off-club hours. Still, little went on in the club that Billie didn’t know about and would only tolerate to a point.
The huge gold hoops in Billie’s ears jangled as she nodded. “She’d been on a bender since her brother’s death—”
“Her brother’s death?” My breath seemed to go. I sank back into the chair.
Billie reached for another candy, unwrapped the foil slowly and slipped it between her lips. “Ugly incident. Not far from where the child was stationed.” Billie sucked on the candy.
“What happened?”
“Seems he was out with the boys, whooping it up. You know G.I.s, give ’em a weekend pass and they think they’ve got a one-way ticket to Sodom-and-Gomorrah land. When the others decided to call it a night, the boy, Della’s brother, either hadn’t had enough yet or maybe he just got separated from the others. When he was ready to go home, he must have decided to walk back to the base. He either got lost, stumbled and fell or passed out on the train tracks. By the time the conductor saw him, it was too late.”
“He was run over by a train? Lord.” The breath left my body again.
“I turned a blind eye to Della’s behavior the first couple months, but when things began to get worse instead of better, I realized I wasn’t doing the child no favors. I gave her a choice. Get herself into a program and clean herself up or I’d have to let her go. She left. Ended up at the Oyster.” Billie’s nostrils flared wide. I thought of Flo.
“It was the last time I saw her.” Billie tapped an inch-long acrylic fingernail with a crystal in its center on the candy dish’s edge.
“Until today I hadn’t seen her since I’d left the club. She had me listed as an emergency contact at the Oyster. Makes a little more sense now that I know about her brother.”
“Doesn’t surprise me. She always did look up to you. After I confronted her about her drug use, she felt the girls here had betrayed her. You know a junkie.” Billie’s fingernails skimmed the air. “They’ve always got someone else to blame for their own messes.”
“I had to go down this morning, identify the body. A Detective Serras called me.”
Billie brought her hands together, steepled her fingers. “Ahh, Lexi.”
“You know him?”
Billie gave me a tolerant look. “Father was an officer, too. Killed during a robbery attempt. In his own home.”
“His own home?” I echoed.
Billie waited to see if I was finished interrupting. “Royce had just made sergeant then, took the boy under his wing.”
Royce was Royce Ealy, now chief of police with, according to the newspapers, an eye toward running for police commissioner next fall.
“What kind of a cop is he?”
“Some say if it wasn’t for Royce, Serras would have been busted back to flatfoot years ago.”
“Truth or jealousy?”
“Little bit of both. He’s got a reputation as a wild card. Hasn’t learned to play by the rules yet.”
I myself was a work in progress along those lines. Serras and I would have no problems in that area.
“Got busted early on for excessive force. Charges didn’t stick. But be careful, chère, he’s a dangerous man. Not hard to look at.” Billie smiled slim, sly. “You look, chère?”
“I looked.”
Billie released a luxuriant laugh. “You’re still one of my girls, you know that, darlin’?” Billie’s smile disappeared into sadness. “Della was, too. Despite everything. One of my girls ends up like this. I don’t like it.”
“What do you think happened?”
Her eyes on me, Billie reached for another candy. “Drugs, the Oyster Club…”
“She was strangled with her own G-string.”
Billie sucked silently, for the second time showing no surprise. With her pipeline to the police, she probably knew more details about the murder than I did.
“Kind of an eloquent statement.” My English comp acted up again.
“Or a practical one if the killer needed a weapon.” If Billie did know anything about the murder, she wasn’t telling.
The phone rang. I stood. Billie motioned me to sit as she glanced at the number on the caller ID screen. “The machine can get it.”
I stayed standing. I only had one question left—who killed Della Divine? Billie either didn’t have the answer, or if she did she wasn’t sharing.
“I’ve got to go, Billie.”
She leaned her impressive bulk back against her chair and nodded as if she understood, just like the first time I’d told her I had to go. She got up to walk me out.
“How’s school? Getting straight A’s?”
“I’m getting by.” I wasn’t ready to admit that a dyslexic going to college is equal to a stripper wearing her thong backward onstage–fully exposed and no idea what the hell you’re doing.
“Good girl. You do my taxes after you become legit?”
“If you give me the real set of books.”
Her laughter became richer. “Still one of my girls, Silver.”
She made my name sound like a symphony.
We embraced at the back door. “You hear anything about this thing with Della, you give me a call?” I asked her.
Billie put her hands on my shoulders as if to steady me. “Sometimes, chère, a thing like this happens. And there’s nothing you or I could have done to stop it.”
I
