She appeared to accept that, though her expression said something about what she thought of my style.
“I won’t keep you long, but I have to talk to you. I know the pawnbroker doesn’t have proof that Ebony pawned Linda Cannon’s jewelry. You took that diamond ring in to his store, not Ebony. Why did you lie?”
“I didn’t lie,” she said. Her voice shook again, worse this time.
“Then you won’t mind telling me what you told the police.” We stood that way, facing each other in the middle of the Candy Girls parking lot, for a few more seconds. I needed to say something to shake Amy up, to either scare her into making a mistake or touch a nerve inside of her so she’d help me.
“I know you were the one to vandalize Ebony’s car. I found a scrap of plaid fabric caught in the car door. The pants of the costume you tried to sell me were torn. I also found an empty can of black hair spray from Candy Girls in the backseat, and I know it’s what you used to write Murderer on her car. Those things connect you to that. So far, only a few people know about the vandalism, and nobody knows about the piece of fabric, but I won’t hesitate to go to the police with it and show them that you’ve been trying to make Ebony look guilty since the day after the party.”
Under the glow of the blue neon sign, Amy’s pale face looked sick. Her eyes were wide, and dark circles under them made her look like she was wearing clown makeup to age her twenty-something face.
“Either you’re guilty or you’re covering for somebody,” I said.
Her face tightened up, and then her eyes filled with tears. She tipped her head back and the tears fell down the sides of her temples. When she looked back at me, more tears spilled down her cheeks. She wiped them away with her fists, leaving smudges of eye makeup to further darken the circles that were already there.
“Nothing that I did to Ebony’s car was permanent. I told you, I caught Blitz with Gina in the back of that car. After I went and put together our Charlie’s Angels costumes, that’s how she repays me! I was so angry. When I found Blitz, we got into an argument.” She wiped her nose with the back of her sleeve. “I left before he was killed. Later that night, when I saw the car parked in front of your store, I—I just snapped. I had the hair spray in my car and I just started spraying it.”
“Why did you write Murderer on Ebony’s car?”
“I didn’t! I sprayed the doors and the roof. And then I smashed empty glass bottles against the side. I was trying to break the window, but it didn’t break. The glass fell all over the sidewalk. I was afraid to walk over it, so I opened the back door and crawled through to the other side to get out.”
“How did the fabric get caught in the window?”
She cursed. “Why can’t you leave it all alone? The vandalism doesn’t have anything to do with the murder!”
“I think the police should be the judge of that,” I said. I stepped backward as though I were leaving.
“Wait,” she said. I turned back. She balled her fists up in the hem of her lime green T-shirt and twisted the fabric until it was stretched out. “I wanted it to look like the window was broken so I rolled the window down from the inside. The hair spray can fell out of my hand and I hung out the window to grab it. I didn’t know my pants tore, but they must have gotten caught on something—a piece of metal trim inside the car or something else sharp—I don’t know what. And then I tossed the cans in the back and I left out the other side. It’s the truth. I’ll tell the police. I promise. I will! I want this all to be over.”
“What about the flat tires?”
“I held the core of the stem in with a screwdriver. My brother taught me how to do that when I was a kid. I’m telling you the truth.”
It wasn’t the time to point out to Amy that a broken window would have left glass inside the car and not outside on the sidewalk or to advise that the next time she uses hair spray to vandalize a car she should take the Candy Girls price tag off the can. Her story explained a lot of things, but not enough. If she hadn’t painted the word on Ebony’s car, then who had? And if Blitz had cheated on her at his party, why had she shown up at Disguise DeLimit the next day pretending they were engaged?
“Amy, where did you get the ring you were wearing when you came to my store on Sunday?”
Her fists dropped to her side and she looked at the ground. “I saw the ring at the pawnshop last week.” She glanced up at me as if to gauge if I was judging her or not. I kept as impassive a face as I could so she would continue. “That night, I asked Blitz about it. He said it couldn’t be his mom’s because that was her most precious possession from his real dad. I don’t know what happened on Friday, but Friday night he came over to my house and gave me something wrapped in several layers of tissue. He said he had just done the most important thing of his life and not to let anything happen to the package.”