A Disguise to Die For (Costume Shop Mystery, #1)
Diane Vallere
To Jessica Faust. You know what you did.
Acknowledgments
Many thanks to Yumiko Hoshiyama for the gracious use of her name and to Megumi Higa for being my consultant and helping me understand Japanese-American culture.
Thank you to Josh Hickman, who never questioned my desire to take a vacation in Primm, Nevada, and was adventurous enough to spend a few days wandering around small desert towns in search of a location for Proper City. Also for his help in the fine art of recipe writing, a talent in which I am sorely lacking.
My heartfelt appreciation to Gigi Pandian, whose firm grasp of deadlines helps me achieve my own.
I owe a lifetime of gratitude to Jennifer Schlegel, who reminds me that you can cherish your inner four-year-old self and still be an adult with a cause, and to Kendel Lynn, who inspires me to achieve something new every single day.
Thank you to my editor, Katherine Pelz, whose astute comments made the book even better than I’d hoped, and to my copyeditor Randie Lipkin, cover illustrator Mick McGinty, cover designer Sarah Oberrender, and the rest of the fabulous team at Berkley Prime Crime/Penguin Random House. I am lucky to have them in my corner.
This series would not exist if not for my agent, Jessica Faust. My teddy bear claims credit, but we both know the truth.
Chapter 1
“GIVE ME THE knife,” demanded the cranky man in the wheelchair.
“I don’t think so,” I said.
“I’m not playing, Margo. Give me the knife.”
“Why? I already told you I could do it. It’s just going to take longer than I thought.”
“That’s because you can’t climb the ladder in those silly boots.”
“Why are you so worried about my go-go boots? You bought them for me. Besides, you’re the one wearing two different shoes.”
My dad—the cranky man in the wheelchair—looked down at his feet. He wore one brown wing tip and one black.
“I pay that nurse too much to end up leaving the house wearing two different shoes,” he said. “And this stupid chair makes everything worse. If I can get up and down the stairs okay, then I don’t need it.”
“You’re in that chair because you’re still weak. The doctors don’t want you running all over the place and having a second heart attack. And the nurse didn’t mismatch your shoes on purpose. Most of the nurses don’t expect to have such colorful patients.”
He stuck his feet out in front of him and shook his head at the sight of the mismatched shoes. “I said brown wing tips. How hard is that?”
I was pretty sure my dad wasn’t used to relying on a woman to dress him—nurses or otherwise. He’d been a widower since my mother died giving birth to me thirty-two years ago. While growing up, I’d notice the way women who came into the costume shop looked at him in his paisley ascots, tweed blazers, and dress pants. He was a catch, my father. And now that he was recovering from an unexpected heart attack, he was a cranky, stuck-in-his-ways catch that the nurses of Proper City Medical Care had the distinct pleasure of dressing, at least until I’d arrived. I wondered if the mismatched-shoe situation was payback for his attitude.
“You’re going to have to let me help you. Got that?” I said, pointing an accusatory finger at his nose. He swatted it away.
“It’s not right. I’m your father. I’m supposed to take care of you, not the other way around.”
“I’m a grown-up now.”
“You’re too grown-up, if you ask me.” He glared at my outfit a second time.
“What? We have this exact same outfit in the ’60s section of the store.” I pointed to the back corner of the shop, where a kaleidoscope mural in neon shades covered the walls.
The store in question was Disguise DeLimit, our family’s costume shop. The store had been around far longer than I had, starting sometime in the ’70s by a couple who had worked in the movie business in Hollywood. My dad had started as a stock boy before he was old enough to work legally, and slowly graduated first to salesperson and then manager.
Eventually, the couple decided their time running the store was over. Turns out Dad had been saving for a rainy day and bought them out, inventory and all. Shortly after he became owner he met my mother and they fell in love. They married and planned to start a family and run the shop together. Two years later, the love of his life was gone and in her place was a newborn baby: me.
“Besides, you always said the fact that my outfits are inspired by costumes in our inventory was good for business. Remember?”
He grunted an answer and rolled back to the boxes.