"Not bad at all," Conroy said, rising, placing the empty coffee cup on the dressing table. "Delicious, in fact."
Almost as good,Conroy thought, as catching Tera Jameson in another lie.
In the dimly lighted, smoke-swirling cathedral of skin that was Showgirl World, Catherine Willows-in a black leather coat, canary silk blouse and black leather pants-stood at the mirrored bar and waited, her silver field kit on the floor next to her.
The music pounded and a blonde pigtailed dancer in a schoolgirl micro-mini-skirt outfit was up on stage, toward the start of her set, and a few other girls in lingerie were meandering through the audience, even though the place was barely a quarter full, an early evening lull.
The bartender, a fiftyish guy in gray-rimmed glasses, came back from the telephone. "Mr. McGraw will be right out."
"Thanks."
A blade of light sliced into the darkness from the left, bouncing like a laser off the mirrors, and then as quickly disappeared. Stocky Rick McGraw-in a dark blue suit and lighter blue shirt without a tie-emerged from his office." "What can I do for you, Detective?"
"Crime scene investigator," she said, handing him the search warrant. "I'm here to search the dressing room."
The stocky club manager slipped the folded paper into the inside pocket of his suit without a glance. "Sure."
Catherine lifted one eyebrow and showed him half a smile. "You told Detective Conroy you wouldn't let her search the place without a warrant."
A small shrug. "And you brought one."
"Tera Jameson been in today?"
"Here now, but doesn't go on for a while. Wasn't scheduled-filling in for a sick girl." He gestured. "She's working private dances. You need her?"
"No. The night Jenna Patrick died, over at Dream Dolls-Tera worked that night, right?"
"Yeah. I told the cops all about it."
"Tell me again."
"Well, she was here, all right. We were kind of shorthanded, and she wound up doing sets at the top of every hour, for a while there."
"Do you have any kind of record of that? Is there a sheet that logs which dancers went on and came off when…that sort of thing?"
"What do you think? They sign in, they sign out; that's the extent of it."
"But you would testify she was here all night?"
McGraw nodded. "Six P.M. to three A.M."
Shaking her head, Catherine sighed and asked, "Dressing room in the back?"
"Yeah." He gestured toward the back with his head. "Don't you want me to round up Tera for you?"
Glancing this way and that, not seeing the Jameson woman anywhere, she shook her head. "Just the opposite. I wasn't planning on her being here…. Keep her out, while I'm in there, if you can."
"See what I can do…. No promises."
Only two dancers occupied the dressing room when Catherine-lugging the silver field kit-entered. Back here, the accommodations weren't much better than those of Dream Dolls. It didn't matter how nice a club was, the dressing rooms were all the same.
The nearest dancer was touching up her makeup. She gave Catherine a noncommittal nod in the mirror, her wide brown eyes sizing up the competition.
Catherine asked, "Tera Jameson's table?"
The dancer nodded toward the back. "She has the whole rear stall-she's a star, y'know." Turning from the mirror to look Catherine up and down, rather clinically, she added, "I didn't know she had a new squeeze."
Catherine said, "I'm with the police," and flashed the CSI I.D.
"And that makes you straight?"
Catherine arched an eyebrow. "The Jenna Patrick homicide?"
Now the woman got it, but she didn't seem to much care. "I didn't know her," she said, turning to herself in the mirror.
The other dancer had flopped onto one of the sofas, on her back, and was smoking a cigarette; she looked bored beyond belief.
At the far end, Tera had given herself some privacy by moving in a small clothes rack of her own, which she'd positioned as a wall between her and the next station. A window onto the rear parking lot was next to her table and obscured from view of the rest of the dressing room by that same clothing rack. Her makeup table and mirror was at right, while across the way-where there had once been another makeup station-another small rack of clothes was hanging with shoes below.
Tera's station itself was neatly organized. The chair was pushed in under the table, makeup case closed and sitting on the left side of the table, a box of tissues on the right corner nearest the mirror, a towel folded in quarters in front of it, another draped neatly over the back of the chair. The routine was readily apparent to someone who had once been in the life. Catherine eased into the latex gloves and went to work.
The makeup kit looked more like a jewelry box with a lid that flipped up and three drawers down the front. The top opened to reveal some small jars and brushes, and lipsticks laid in a neat row in a padded section on the right side.
But among the jars of nail polish and makeup, Catherine found a bottle of spirit gum.
Pleased, she bagged that and moved to the top drawer, where she found more lipsticks, rouges, bases, and powders. The second drawer contained much the same thing and Catherine wondered how much makeup one dancer needed. In the bottom drawer, she saw a stack of fashion magazines; she almost shut it again, then stopped and removed the magazines, and-crammed down under them-found a fake mustache and beard.
The beard/mustache combo looked as though it could match the rayon fibers they had found at Dream Dolls. With a satisfied sigh, Catherine bagged this major find and set it on the makeup table.
Catherine casually flipped through the garments on the rack nearest the station. She knew how it improbable it was that the Lipton Construction jacket would be hiding out here in plain sight, but she had to look. The circumstantial evidence was mounting, but she could already hear some lawyer saying Tera had decided to imitate her friend Jenna's old man act, and that's why she had spirit gum and blah blah blah.
But if that jacket turned up here, that would really sell a jury….
She tried the other clothes rack and found nothing but stripper attire; however, when she checked down below, looking through the shoes, hoping to find a pair of man's boots, she noted a small suitcase and a matching train case. Pulling them out from where they'd been tucked away, Catherine snapped the suitcase open and found various street clothes; the train case held, among other things, the cosmetics that had been missing from Tera's bathroom this morning.
Suddenly Catherine knew this was Tera's final night at Showgirl World. The woman would gather her last night's wages-and this week's check, due tonight-and book it out the window to the parking lot.
Catherine punched Sara's number into her cell phone.
"Sara Sidle."
"It's me. I found spirit gum and the fake facial hair. There's even a damn window right by Tera's dressing table, for her to slip out of."
"Wow! Why did she keep that stuff around? Why didn't she dump it?"
"She's here now," Catherine said. "Maybe I'll ask her. You touch base with Conroy lately?"
"Yeah, I'm in the car with her now, heading your way. Conroy wants to question Jameson."
"What do you have that's new?"
"Greg's done with the tests on the evidence from the woman's apartment," Sara said. "Seems the sex toy has Jenna's DNA on it, and the menstrual blood stains from the mattress? They're from both women-Tera and Jenna, sharing a bed."
"So Tera's lover dumped her for a guy," Catherine said. "Ray Lipton, a homophobic hypocritical hothead. Tera decides to get even and kill her unfaithful lover, then frame the interloping boyfriend."
"She could have it all," Sara said.
"It's a motive," Catherine said, "but we still need something to tie her directly to the killing-beard isn't going to be enough."