Murder in the Dressing Room, page 2
* * *
—
After the show, Misty was in the Queens’ Room sitting at a makeup station next to Amour. The dressing rooms at Lady’s Bar were a stingy affair. There were three: the Queens’ Room, the Kings’ Room, and the Lady Lady’s Room. Her room was bigger than the other two put together. She even had a fridge-freezer in there and freestanding rails of costumes that glided on wheels across the floor whenever she was deciding what to wear. Luxurious.
It was time for them all to de-drag, to end the individual fantasies that had been created, and to become their regular day-to-day selves. Everybody has their own process for this, what products they use, which part of the face they attack first, and Misty always began by taking the lashes off, even before the wig. But today, she didn’t want to. She wanted to keep it on as long as possible, to stay Misty for a few extra moments before becoming Joe again, a hotel accounts assistant who spent their empty evenings binge-watching noughties crime shows with their boyfriend Miles.
Don’t think about it now, she told herself. Don’t think about the day job.
The job at the hotel was as bleak as a picnic in a graveyard. And as much as Joe loved curling up with Miles on the sofa to plow through six episodes of CSI: Miami, they loved something else more: drag.
Drag, to Misty, was freedom. Freedom to wear whatever she wanted, to perform whatever she wanted, to be whoever she wanted. It was a superpower. She felt like one of the older drag queens on the scene, at the ripe old age of thirty-four. Like sprinters or figure skaters, a lot of London drag performers retire before the age of thirty. Then they might abandon the capital and move to Margate or some other queer-friendly seaside resort, where they get jobs in marketing and adopt Hungarian rescue dogs. Only a few stick around, and fewer still continue performing until the ripe old age of forty. A rare treasure indeed is the successful middle-aged drag queen or king. Youth, in the drag business at least, is a prized commodity.
But with age comes experience, and with experience comes higher performance fees and the confidence to host a room and control a crowd. Misty knew that while some of the younger performers might dismiss her as being past her prime, she was on a path to success, thanks to Lady Lady’s guiding hand. She’d started drag five years earlier, at the age of twenty-nine, out of a desire to change something, to burst through the dirge and repetition of their daily work. And ever since she’d started working with Lady Lady, she’d been more inspired than ever to rise through the ranks of the London drag scene and become a performing star, just like Lady Lady herself. She had seen potential in Misty and had helped her discover a life outside of the nine-to-five that was exciting and magical. Her thoughts drifted again from Lady Lady to the next day, to going to the windowless hotel office and processing invoices all day. No, not yet. She pushed down the thoughts of her non-drag work life and focused instead on Lady’s Bar: the beautiful place she called her second home.
Moneypenny and Plimberley were on the other side of the room gossiping, so Misty turned to face them, procrastinating. She desperately wanted to talk to Lady Lady, to ask her what was the matter, why she had been behaving so strangely during tonight’s show, but Lady Lady didn’t like to be disturbed in her dressing room right after a performance. Misty studied Moneypenny instead, watching as she sipped a drink and chatted with Plim, waiting for the right moment to talk to her mentor. Under the gray wig and grandma makeup Moneypenny was nerdy-looking with a handsome face and a strong jaw. Misty knew Moneypenny was extremely intelligent, and if Misty had been single, and ten years younger, she would have probably been her type.
“Did you see the guy with the diamond Rolex?” shouted Plimberley. “Bought me three gins.”
“Three gins?” replied Moneypenny. “There’s no way that was a Rolex, Plimberley, don’t mean to burst your bubble.”
“It was from Argos, Plim!” shouted Len from the Kings’ Room across the corridor.
“He wishes he could afford Argos,” snarked Moneypenny.
“All right, all right,” laughed Plimberley, “maybe it wasn’t a Rolex, but he was nice, you know.”
“Three gins kinda nice,” said Misty. “Not bad, Plim, not bad.”
Plimberley grinned, her glossed lips reaching upward to reveal a set of teeth that were bright white. She was young. Twenty-two. And Misty knew she had a difficult life: unsupportive family, not much money, no stable accommodation. Moneypenny had taken Plimberley on like a sister and was helping her out a lot, but Misty felt sorry for her. She had, on a few occasions when the fallings-out with her family had been serious, slept on Misty’s sofa, and Misty had listened to Plimberley crying late into the night about her viciously homophobic father.
“Oh my God,” said Plimberley, suddenly remembering, “did you hear Lady Lady forget my name? My fucking name!”
“Sshhh, Plim,” urged Moneypenny, lifting a finger to her lips, “she’ll hear you.”
It’s true the walls of the dressing rooms were thin, and Plimberley was certainly not holding back.
“Did one of you lot have a row with her tonight or something?” Misty’s spidey-senses were tingling as she thought back to how Lady Lady had seemed off since the interval.
“Not me” was the muttered consensus from the queens.
Misty got up. “I’m just going to ask her.”
“You can’t!” gasped Amour, laughing. “You nosy fucking bitch.”
They all laughed raucously as was tradition when insulting one another in the dressing room. For the others, Misty knew that the idea of knocking on Lady Lady’s dressing room door was an impossibility, a privilege allowed to very few. For Misty, however, Lady Lady’s drag daughter, it was permitted—even welcomed.
“Don’t tell her I was slagging her!” said Plimberley, panicked.
“I’ll tell her about Mr. Three Gins,” laughed Misty. “She’ll love hearing about the Rolex.”
* * *
—
Misty walked up the long, narrow, and pristine corridor to Lady Lady’s room. The door was closed, and Lady Lady’s name glistened in swirly writing. Misty thought in passing about how she barely knew Lady Lady’s non-drag name. In the drag circuit, you could be best friends with someone for years and never know what was on their birth certificate. But Misty liked it that way; it was freeing. And it would be so strange now for any of the kings or queens to call her Joe. She was Misty here, always Misty.
She was about to knock on the door when, from behind it, she heard hushed voices arguing inside the dressing room.
“We don’t have any other choice, Mandy,” Lady Lady was saying. “We are all out of options now.”
Misty was intrigued. Her inner nosy neighbor was well and truly peeking through the net curtains. She pressed her wigged head closer to the door to hear better.
“Yes, but this is dangerous, Lady,” replied Mandy, the club’s co-owner and Lady Lady’s business partner of twenty years. Misty would have recognized her Scottish accent anywhere.
Oooh, an owners’ quarrel! Like a lovers’ tiff, it wasn’t something that should be eavesdropped on by a curious drag queen, she knew, but she just couldn’t help herself. She readjusted her hair and listened again.
“Get out of my dressing room,” said Lady Lady. “I need to get out of this fucking dress.”
“You’ll regret this, mark my words,” snapped Mandy. Her voice sounded hard and cold. “We’ll all end up regretting this.”
Suddenly the door swung open, and Misty found herself face-to-face with Mandy White. She had tears in her eyes, and her face was like a bright tomato behind her excessively large glasses. The thick black rims always reminded Misty of prison bars.
“Were you listening?” she asked.
“No, listening to what?” said Misty.
“You nosy fucking bitches,” muttered Mandy as she walked away to the club’s office in the room next door. “Can’t even have a private conversation behind a shut door.”
No sooner had Mandy disappeared into the office, than Lady Lady burst out of the dressing room after her, strutting straight past Misty, shouting out into the corridor between the Kings’ and Queens’ Rooms.
“Okay!” she shouted. “Who’s been in my dressing room?”
Misty trotted quickly behind her, careful not to step on the jewel-encrusted train of the elaborately decorated dress. The queens and kings gathered in the doorways and looked at one another in confusion. Everybody knew that nobody was supposed to go into Lady Lady’s room when she wasn’t there, and nobody did. Ever.
The performers braced themselves to feel the wrath of Lady Lady for this apparent dressing room invasion when she unexpectedly broke into a broad smile.
“Thank you for my chocolates,” she said.
“Chocolates?” asked Moneypenny.
“One of you left chocolates in my dressing room, right?”
“Not me,” said Plim.
“Nor me,” said Den.
Everyone else shook their heads.
“Well,” announced Lady, “whoever did it is absolutely marvelous.” She lifted up her hands and revealed to the room a beautiful red box that looked as though it were covered in silk. The top was adorned with a giant black bow. Nobody was under any illusion that Lady Lady would share them.
“Lovely!” said Misty. “And there wasn’t a note?”
“Nope! Just the gorgeous chocs sitting on my dressing table.”
“Well, enjoy them, mawma,” said Plimberley, in an American accent that was more terrible than amusing.
“That’s exactly what I’ll do,” said Lady Lady. “Now get your slap off and go home, the lot of you.”
Lady Lady walked away, and Misty noticed how quickly her smile dropped from her face as she dragged the crystal-covered train of her dress down the corridor back to her room.
“Does she seem okay to you?” asked Amour quietly so the others wouldn’t hear.
“You noticed it too?” replied Misty. It was a relief to know she wasn’t going crazy.
“Forgetting Plim’s name,” said Amour. “That’s not like her.”
They were interrupted by a thud on the other side of the wall, followed by the sound of a glass smashing. It was loud enough to raise the alarm, as though somebody had picked up and dropped a chair on the floor.
“Ooh, she’s mad tonight,” said Plimberley, nodding toward the wall that separated the Queens’ Room from Lady Lady’s room.
Misty rushed back down the little corridor. She took a deep breath and knocked on Lady Lady’s door. There was no response.
“Lady Lady?” called Misty.
She knocked again and the door swung open a little way. She pushed it farther and poked her head into the room.
Lady Lady was lying on the ground, her heels swapped for fluffy pink slippers, her face contorted in a silent scream. Dead.
2
It was less than ten minutes before the police and paramedics arrived. Misty and the other performers, along with Mandy, Jan the barman, and the rest of the club’s staff sat in the auditorium in small groups. The performers had stuck together. They weren’t allowed to finish de-dragging, weren’t allowed to collect their things and go home. Not yet. They were all required to give statements.
Misty thought she must be in shock—she didn’t even feel like crying. Plimberley was inconsolable, sobbing and sniffling, and Amour and Moneypenny were all over their phones as word was already spreading on social media.
“Christ, it’s on all the Drag Race fan accounts already,” said Amour.
“And Reddit,” said Moneypenny. “How did they find out so quickly?”
A bubble of snot burst on the rim of Plimberley’s left nostril, and she wiped it away with the back of her hand.
The only person Misty had been in contact with was her boyfriend. Miles would be waiting for her to get home safely, so she’d needed to let him know she might be late. At least she was with friends.
Or was she?
A sneaking voice sounded an alarm somewhere in the back of her mind. The chocolates must have been left by somebody who had access to the dressing rooms. She looked around the table at Amour, Moneypenny, Plimberley, Len and Den. Could one of you…? Misty and Miles were halfway through a rewatch of the American FBI series Criminal Minds, and Misty tried to think the way the profilers of the show’s Behavioral Analysis Unit thought. One at a time she studied her colleagues’ faces, their behavior, the micromovements of their hands and bodies to see if any of them might give away the fact that it was them, that they had left the chocolates. Could one of them really be a killer? Could it be Plimberley, the hard-done-by kid who went from sofa to sofa? Could it be Den, one of Misty’s oldest friends? What about Amour, community icon and activist? Surely not. But it could have been…it could have been any of them. One of her friends. Her stomach turned at the thought of it.
None of them seemed to be showing signs of being a crazed murderer, but then what would that look like? Anybody who had the cool mind and cold heart to leave a box of poisoned chocolates might very well be extremely calm under pressure. Oh yes, a poisoned-chocolate murderer was a cruel murderer indeed.
* * *
—
About half an hour later two detectives in suits arrived in a hurry. They both looked tired, as though they’d been busy elsewhere or had been called back to work, having already finished for the day. Their suits were cheap and shiny from being over-ironed at home instead of dry-cleaned. One of them introduced himself to the group as Detective Inspector Davies. He was a broad man who looked to Misty to be in his early forties, scruffy, and a little tired-looking, as if this were the end of a very long day. The other detective said her name was Detective Sergeant Linda Hughes—she seemed friendlier and had a patch of dry skin on the back of her hand that made Misty’s own hand feel itchy.
“Performers,” said DI Davies, in a sort of sneer, “you won’t be able to go back to the dressing rooms tonight, so I’m afraid you’ll be going home in your…costumes. We’ll arrange lifts for you all. I realize that you’ve been waiting for a little while already, but you’ll be here a bit longer as we look at the crime scene. Once we’ve done that, DS Hughes and I will come back and take your statements, and then you can be on your way.” He was matter-of-fact, plain as day. They would simply have to sit and wait.
Misty felt relieved by the thought of going home, of seeing Miles. She didn’t want to be here anymore. In this room, in this bar. She was longing for fresh air and to feel the night breeze on her face. She thought about Lady Lady’s face, tight and twisted and foaming. It was horrible.
“Oh my God,” said Plimberley, annoyed and still crying. “Can’t we just tell you what happened now? She was given some chocolates by someone. She ate one and she fucking died. That’s what happened. What else do you need to know?”
“Plim, no,” said Moneypenny quietly, putting her hand on Plimberley’s. Moneypenny was good for Plimberley, Misty thought. Since Plim had moved into Moneypenny’s flat in World’s End, she’d been more professional, had shown up on time, had been ready on time. Moneypenny’s calmheadedness was clearly rubbing off on the younger queen, and it made Misty warm to her greatly. Seeing her now, taking care of Plimberley like a younger sibling, gave Misty a lot of respect for Moneypenny.
But she could be Lady Lady’s killer, said the quiet voice. Either of them could be.
“Will we be here long, DI Davies?” asked Misty, trying to brush away the uncomfortable feeling that one of her friends might be a murderer.
He tutted and looked toward the dressing room like he couldn’t wait to get away from them. “It’s difficult to say. It’ll take the time it takes.” He was dismissive, as though their time was irrelevant.
“Well, can I at least get a blanket or something? I’m freezing like this.” Plimberley was wearing a low-cut, high-hipped leotard and nothing else. Not even her wig to keep her head warm.
DI Davies performed an exaggerated roll of the eyes. A blanket for near-naked Plimberley was a huge personal inconvenience apparently.
“We’ll see to it,” said DS Hughes.
DI Davies and DS Hughes walked away toward the dressing rooms and left the performers alone again.
“I want to go home,” said Len.
Den took his hand and squeezed it.
Misty looked at the others one at a time: Shivering, sniveling Plimberley. The calm assertiveness of Amour. Moneypenny was still in her grandma costume. Len and Den still sported their drag too, beards and prime ministerial wigs still on.
Could one of them have really left the chocolates? Why would anyone want to poison Lady Lady, of all people?
Across the room, Mandy White was crying hysterically, and her short aggressive bob bounced with each heave of her breath. You argued with her, thought Misty as she looked at Lady Lady’s business partner. Jan the barman had his arm around her shoulders, with the bar staff all sitting together in their little bow ties, like a table of penguins, and the security guards, with head bouncer, Tess, sitting separately again.
One of you might have killed Lady Lady. One of you could have done this.
