Absalom was standing close by. He grabbed my arm, and with one hand, lifted me out of the muck.
I looked down and groaned. Mud covered my khakis and caked the once-pristine emerald green shirt I’d worn with them that day.
“You say you had somewhere to go this morning?” Sammi cringed when she looked at the filth that covered me. “I might have something in the car you could put on.”
I knew better than to say yes, but what’s that saying about desperate times and desperate measures?
Within ten minutes, I was wearing a denim skirt that would have been short on Sammi. On me, it was minuscule. On Sammi’s small frame, the purple T-shirt with St. James emblazoned on it would have been snug. On me, it was just about obscene.
I squirmed. “I can’t go out in public like this!”
“I dunno.” This from Reggie, along with an appreciative look that made my skin crawl. “You’re looking pretty awesome!”
“Pretty something. But not awesome.” I tugged at the skirt.
“You’ll be fine.” Absalom had rescued my purse from the mud, and he wiped it down with a wet paper towel. When he did, it opened, and the paper I’d tucked inside it at Garden View fluttered out. He picked it up, looked it over. “Steve Ganley?”
“Steve the Strip Man?” Reggie darted forward and plucked the paper out of Absalom’s hand. “You’re going to see Steve the Strip Man?”
I wasn’t liking the sound of this, but I wasn’t about to back down, either. Not even when Reggie looked me over one more time, whistled below his breath, and said, “You’re dressed just right!”
I was hoping Steve the Strip Man refinished furniture. Or painted cars. Those hopes were dashed when I pulled up to the address on my computer printout and saw a hot pink neon sign that said: THE THUNDERING STALLION, A GENTLEMAN’S CLUB.
I laid my head on my steering wheel and groaned.
It was early, but according to the sign up front, the Stallion thundered twenty-four, seven. When I walked in, there were a couple men sitting at the bar and a girl on stage in a G-string, sequined pasties, and stilettos so high even I wouldn’t wear them. She looked bored, and hardly old enough to be there. The dozen or so guys in the audience didn’t seem to care.
The beefy bouncer at the door pointed me in the right direction, and I found Steve Ganley in a corner pouring over a pile of papers. He was a middle-aged guy with a paunch and a comb-over. There was an open bottle of scotch on the table in front of him.
He looked up briefly when I approached. “Auditions only on Tuesdays,” he grumbled.
I tugged at my skirt. “I’m not here to audition.”
I guess he didn’t believe me. I guess I couldn’t blame him. He sipped his drink and looked me over. This time he paid more attention. To the skirt. To the top. To the way every inch of Sammi’s outfit hugged every inch of my body in ways nobody’s body should be hugged. Unless the body in question belongs to a body who’s selling her body. “You sure?”
At least if I sat down, there’d be less of me to ogle. I slipped into the chair across from his. “I’m here to talk to you about Vera Blaine.”
His eyebrows were bushy and met in the middle of his forehead. They dipped. “She ever dance here?”
“You used to date her.”
In spite of the sign in living color right above his head that said it was illegal to light up in a public establishment in the state of Ohio, Steve pulled out a cigarette and a silver lighter. He fired up, took a drag, and blew a stream of smoke. “She’s dead.”
“I know that. That’s why I’m here. I’m trying to figure out who killed her.”
Anybody else would have mentioned that Jefferson Lamar was convicted of the crime and asked why the hell it was any of my business, anyway. Not Ganley. All he said was, “It wasn’t me.”
“I didn’t say it was.”
“Why else would you be here?” He poured another inch of scotch into his glass, downed it, and plunked the empty glass on the table. “I had an ironclad alibi.”
“Because…”
“Because Vera and me, we hadn’t seen each other in months. She was pissed at me, see. She said I was irresponsible, that I’d never amount to anything.” He looked around and chuckled. “If she could see me now, huh?”
I thought it best not to answer.
“As a matter of fact, though…” He took another drag on his cigarette. “I talked to her that morning. You know, the morning of the day she got killed. Told the cops about it, too. Me and Vera, we were thinking about getting back together again.”
I gave him a level look. “What, so you could beat her up again?”
He stabbed out his cigarette. “Don’t know who’s been telling you that. Ain’t true.”
“Is it true you talked?”
“That morning?” He grinned. “Gospel.”
“And she wanted to see you the next day? She didn’t mention she was coming to Cleveland that evening?”
“Said she was busy. Couldn’t see me that night. That she had a prior commitment.” The way he accentuated the words made me believe he was quoting Vera.
“Do you think she was in town to see a man?”
He sloughed off the thought. “I figured she was seeing somebody else. Otherwise, why would she break up with me? But like I said, we talked. She said she’d had a change of heart. I swear to God, that’s the exact words she used.”
“Did she explain what that meant?”
“Not a clue.” He swirled the ice cubes in his glass. “I figured she was thinking of breaking up with the guy she was seeing. Figured she realized she was missing out on a good thing. So you see…” Ganley added another inch of scotch to his glass and downed it in one gulp. “I didn’t have any reason to kill Vera.”
“Not even because you were jealous of the other guy?”
He shrugged like it was no big deal, and I wondered if he was that nonchalant about the whole thing twenty-five years earlier. “She obviously came to her senses. Too bad she got offed before I got her back in the sack.”
“That’s very romantic.” I hoped he realized I didn’t mean it, but the way his eyes glittered in the reflected glow of the stage lights, it was hard to tell. The dancer made her way around the audience so she could collect tips in her G-string, and Ganley watched her. I had to keep him on task, or he’d start tallying up the total so he’d be sure to get his percentage. “You’re telling me your ironclad alibi is that you loved Vera?”
He swiveled his gaze to me. Or more precisely, to the front of my purple top. When he laughed, it made my skin crawl. “Hell with love! I couldn’t have killed Vera because not three hours after I got off the phone with her, I got nabbed on a drunk and disorderly. I was a little down on my luck at the time and I couldn’t afford bail. So you see, the night Vera was killed, I was in the county jail, locked up good and tight.” He picked up the scotch bottle and offered it in my direction, and when I declined, he poured himself a little more. “Satisfied?” he asked.
I was. In a disappointed sort of way.
I’d already gotten up and turned toward the door when he called after me.
“You’d bring ’em in by the hundreds, honey. If you change your mind about that audition, give me a call.”
In my sweetest voice, I told him I would.
Yeah, right.
When hell froze over, I joined a convent, or I was dumb enough to step out in public again in another Sammi Santiago original.
13
According to the coin dealer I went to see the next day, the silver dollar we found at Jefferson Lamar’s grave wasn’t in the greatest shape. It wasn’t especially rare. It wasn’t famous for some weird minting error like an upside-down date or anything. It was worth exactly thirty-seven dollars.