“I think you have me mistaken with someone else,” I said.
“Margo, you’re so busy watching everybody else that you never noticed me watching you. I knew there was something different about you, but I didn’t put my finger on it until I saw you at Blitz’s party.”
“I was checking out the costumes to make sure everything turned out okay.”
“It’s not just that. You’re aware of everything around you. Do me a favor. Close your eyes and describe this room.”
“Why?”
“Indulge me,” he said.
He seemed to have earned something by way of redesigning our stockroom, so I closed my eyes and kept a hand on the box next to me. “There are white metal shelves mounted to the walls around the perimeter of the room. Boxes filled with wigs and costume accessories are stacked on top of them. Most of the boxes are labeled in black marker. Nobody likes to reach up, so the boxes up top are things that we don’t sell very often. Under the shelves are more boxes. We used to keep fairy-tale characters on the back-left side, and I think they’re still there because I saw Little Bo Peep’s cane on the floor. And two nights ago, Soot caught a mouse back here, but I don’t know where it could have come from.”
I opened my eyes and looked at him. “How was that?”
“Now close your eyes and tell me what you remember from Blitz’s party.”
Whether it was the relative privacy of the stockroom or the fact that Tak had been nothing but nice to me since arriving, I didn’t know, but I did as he asked. The memory was tangible, as if I were standing inside the fire hall smelling the circulating appetizers of roast beef with horseradish dressing.
“There were clusters of people around the interior. Rockford, Nancy Drew, and Kojak. Tom Swift was showing Miss Marple how to work his rocket pack and the Bob-Whites were dancing.” I remembered spotting Tak at the back of the fire hall and appreciating his costume. “You were there, but you weren’t talking to anybody. Charlie’s Angels were by the door and Columbo was talking to Veronica Mars.” My eyes popped open. “But that’s not possible.”
“Why?” Tak leaned forward.
“Because Grady told me he was Columbo, and the person I saw talking to Veronica Mars wasn’t Grady.”
“Maybe there were two Columbos?”
“No. Grady gave me a list of who wore what and Columbo wasn’t on the list. When I asked him about it, he said that was his costume. I’m pretty sure if another Columbo showed up Grady would have asked him to go change.”
“Why did you ask Grady about the Columbo costume?”
I felt stiff and awkward as a new thought about Grady filled my mind. “I—I needed to know who was Columbo, that’s all,” I said.
“What just happened?”
“Nothing.”
Tak and I stared at each other in silence. If I was as easy to read as he claimed, then he would have seen that I’d thought something that I didn’t want to share.
The information about the trench coat found balled up in the kitchen of the fire hall was the one significant clue that said someone other than Ebony had been back there. The trench coat went with the Columbo costume, but now . . . now it didn’t make sense. Grady had made a big deal of saying he was Columbo, and he’d wanted to know why I wanted to know. Had he planted a double at the party, someone to impersonate him while he snuck away and killed his friend-slash-rival?
I broke eye contact first and turned away from Tak to think it through. If what I suspected was true, then Grady could have been anywhere while the fake Columbo was out front. He could have murdered Blitz and left out the back, traded trench coats with the double, and reentered the party in time to be questioned by the police. His double could have disappeared long before anybody noticed.
Nausea twisted my stomach and triggered a wave of dizziness. I put a hand on the box next to me to steady myself.
“Are you okay?” Tak asked.
“I’m fine. Let’s get to work.” When I turned back to face him, he showed confusion and hurt. I put my hand on his arm and looked up at his face. “I can’t talk about this right now. I’m sorry. It’s not because I don’t trust you”—okay, it was a little, but I didn’t say that—“it’s that I’m scared for Ebony and . . . and . . .” I grappled for the next thing to say, but couldn’t figure out how to express what I was thinking without telling him everything. “Please,” I added, immediately aware that it didn’t fit the situation.