Darlene Scalera - Straight Silver

“Cleaning lady found her next to the dumpster behind the club where she was working.”

“Billie’s?”

“No, the Oyster Club.”

I raised my gaze to Detective Alexi Serras. The Greek genes in his hard-boned face gave him an edge to stare strongly at any woman and get away with it. Except me. Corpses and cops made me cranky.

“Cleaning woman didn’t recognize her, but–” Serras lifted the middle of the sheet. “The tattoo jogged her memory.”

I looked at the rose-vined double D high on the buttock. Billie herself had had strict policies on body art and piercing along with other excesses of “tastefulness.” She’d approved Della’s choice, although made it well-known that in her opinion tattoos were for sailors and convicts.

“Cleaning woman remembered one of the day girls talking about a new girl at the club, working prime time. Della Devine. You were listed as the emergency contact in her employee file.”

Classic case of the blind leading the blind.

“It’s Della.”

He reached to draw the sheet over her face. I grabbed his wrist. Serras shot me a look that could have curdled cream. I held on. Great-Great-Grandma LeGrande would have been proud.

“Give me a moment, will ya.”

His expression went bland as if to say, “It’s your dime.” I let go of his wrist.

“She was working at the Oyster?” I asked. When I’d hung up my boa, Della had still been at Billie’s.

“For about three months, according to records at the club. When’s the last time you’d seen her?”

“Eight, nine months ago.” As an emergency contact, I stunk.

“How long did you know Ms. Devine?”

He said her name as if it’d been hers since birth. I’d noticed he had uttered my name, too, without the usual smirking skepticism, although in my case he would have been correct. Baptized Silver LeGrande, I was born with a stripper’s name and a body that past puberty clinched my destiny.

“About four years.” I’d been working the circuit seven years when I came to Billie’s. I’d developed a respectable following and feature status. Della had just been promoted from the floor to the poles. As soon as I’d heard the young girl’s tag, I’d known we’d get along fine. Baptismal advantage aside, I liked gals with the brass to call themselves Della Devine.

“We both worked at Billie’s.” The Oyster wasn’t as bad as some joints, but in the hierarchy of strip clubs, it wasn’t even close to Billie’s. Seems like Della had been working her way down the ladder. I looked at her still body. Looked like she’d gotten there.

“You know why she left Billie’s?” Serras asked.

A greenish tint above Della’s eye spoke of an old bruise. The new bruises along her collarbones said she’d struggled. The purple horizontal stripe across her throat said she’d lost.

“No.”

“You’re no longer employed at Billie’s, either?”

I’d left the daily bump and grind about a year ago and gone collegiate. Maybe that’s why Della had decided I could shimmy to an SOS with the best of them. She’d been wrong.

“Career change.”

Not even Della’s two-pack-a-day habit had etched any fine lines in her face yet. The skin was as smooth as a newborn’s butt with only a slight bluish undercast.

I leaned forward, drawn by a mark on Della’s throat more defined than the other signs of struggle.

“You’re no longer in the entertainment industry?”

“I go to community college.” Let Serras stick that in his Krispy Kreme. I moved in closer, outlining the mark without touching it. Force had branded the shape of a double D into the tender flesh of Della’s throat.

“You see this?”

“Double D,” Serras confirmed. “Bartender at the Oyster Club said she had this gold piece she used to slip on her G-string?”

“A gold double D. Kind of like a signature.” I straightened, looked Serras in the eyes. “Called it her lucky charm.”

Serras was clever enough not to raise an eyebrow.

“Did she have any unusual sexual practices?”

He was referring to the horizontal line across Della’s throat. Cut off the oxygen at the moment of climax and achieve the ultimate orgasm. Unless something or someone went wrong. Then it became a matter of finding a plausible explanation for the well-wishers at the wake.

“Scarfing wasn’t her style.”

“You sure?”

I wasn’t sure of anything at this point.

“Maybe it was someone else’s?” Serras ventured.

I narrowed my gaze. “That how you guys are going to write this off?”

Serras’s pupils dilated. He was getting interested now. He said nothing.

“This was more than a night of sexual fun and games gone awry.” I had just finished my second semester of English comp.

He looked at Della on her steel bed.

I waited until he lifted his gaze. I met the black in his eyes. “She was murdered.”

He played it cop cool. “There’ll be an autopsy.”

Way too much information before lunch.

“What about her family? She have anyone in the area?”

“Her younger brother was in the service. Last I knew he was stationed right near here at Fort Grant. She once mentioned a grandmother in Pittsburgh raised her. Never said what happened to her real parents.”

“She didn’t mention anyone else?”

I looked at Della’s pale lips. Most gals were only too happy to give you a blow-by-blow of how they’d been done wrong or hung out to dry–more times than not by their own flesh and blood, but not Della. She didn’t confide much, but she didn’t bitch, either. Grousing was not her style. She had dignity. If Jackie O had been a stripper, she would have been Della Divine.

“No.” I answered Serras.

“What about boyfriends?”

“Sure.”

“Anybody special?”

“Strippers don’t usually go steady.”

“How ’bout friends, enemies? Anyone stand out?”

I shook my head. I’d never have a career as an emergency contact.

“Ms. Devine have any problems with any of the other girls at Billie’s?”

I shook my head again, returning my gaze to the corpse. I remembered a bright blonde with fake breasts, a whole lotta leg and a corn-pone wholesomeness not usually associated with someone from Pittsburgh. Her specialty had been tassels. I felt lousy.

“What was her real name?” I asked Serras.

“Doris Mickel.”

I reached for the sheet and drew it up over her face.

Serras smoothed a wrinkle in the sheet, then slid Della/Doris back before stepping away from her. If he’d been the pencil-pushing type bucking for Administration, I’d have written the gesture off as anal. But it being not even noon yet and already too long a day, I decided to allow myself the delusion this cop might really care what happened to a twenty-seven-year-old stripper with a violet choker and green bruises for eye shadow.

“Got any other thoughts on what happened to her?” I wasn’t deluded enough to think he’d start spouting out theories, but my motto is “You Can’t Fault a Girl for Trying.”

“We’ll be investigating all possibilities.” He gestured for me to precede him out of the morgue.

I didn’t move. “Maybe someone was trying to rob the Oyster and Della got in the way?”

“How ’bout a cup of coffee, Ms. LeGrande?”

It was July in Memphis. Just breathing made you sweat. Officer Serras wanted more than to extend hospitality. I glanced at my Rolex knockoff. I was taking a few summer courses at the college, catching up on credits. “I’ve got Principles of Macroeconomics in ten minutes.”

Serras didn’t crack a smile. Della could have done worse for a homicide detective.

“Was she killed in the club, then dumped out back?” I probed.