Free Shoot to Thrill by P.J. Tracy

a wedding dress carrying around a handle like Sweet Cheeks messed with his head. He squirmed a little in his chair, trying to pick a pronoun. It was hopeless. “The body was found in the river this morning. We believe it was homicide.” This brought on another round of tears, which made him feel bad for not saying right up front what he was supposed to say, what he always said and always meant. “We’re very sorry for your loss. You two were obviously close.”
    Camilla nodded, blotting at her eyes with a tissue. “Thank you. We were very close,” she sniffed. “Not in the way you’re probably thinking, of course, not as partners. We were just dear friends.”
    “You mentioned that he . . . uh, she”—Gino corrected his pronoun—“was in here last night. Do you remember what time you last saw her?”
    “I think probably around ten-thirty. She was extremely . . . compromised.”
    “Compromised?” Gino asked.
    “Drunk. Poor Sweet Cheeks. She lost someone very close to her years ago, and never got over it. She was almost always drunk. Oh, good Lord, I can’t believe she’s dead.”
    “I take it Sweet Cheeks was not a legal name.”
    Camilla shook her head. “No, just a stage name. Her legal name is . . . was . . . Alan Sommers.”
    Gino scrawled on his notebook. “Is that Sommers with an o ?”
    “Yes.”
    He pulled out his cell. “I’ll get an address from DMV.”
    “No need for that. She has a couple of rooms over the Stop-and-Go Market on Colfax. That was her day job. I have a key if it will help.”
    Magozzi said, “We appreciate that. Were you aware of any plans she might have had after leaving here last night?”
    “Her only plan was to go to my condo to sober up before the big drag show last night so she could perform. I often give her my key on nights when she’s had too much to drink. Sometimes she just passes out until the next morning, but often she’ll sleep a few hours and come back to the club, or go elsewhere—you never know with Sweet Cheeks. I didn’t get home until 3:30 a.m. last night, and she wasn’t there. I didn’t think anything of it, of course. She has always been unpredictable in that regard.”
    “Was there any indication that she ever made it to your condo last night?”
    Camilla frowned and tapped a long cherry-pink fingernail on her cherry-pink lips. “Come to think of it, not really. The bed she normally uses wasn’t mussed, there were no dishes in the sink . . . but that doesn’t mean she didn’t straighten the bed, although that would have been out of character.”
    A sad portrait of Alan Sommers was filling in fast for Magozzi—an obviously troubled man living a high-risk lifestyle, drunk out of his gourd, stumbling along the river at night. Homicide would normally have been the last conclusion in this case, but for the film Grace had pulled from the Web. A perfect victim. And maybe, a perfect crime. The thought sent chills down his spine. “Do you have any idea if she left with anyone?”
    “None. But we have security cameras at every door. I have the tapes if you think they might help.”

CHAPTER 9
     
     
     
    IT HAD TAKEN CAMILLA LESS THAN HALF AN HOUR TO ISOLATE the security footage that showed Alan Sommers in full bridal regalia entering and leaving the Tiara Club the night of his murder—alone both times—which eliminated all hope of an easy conclusion with a slam-dunk suspect.
    “Why don’t we ever pull a case where our perp is so stupid he gets caught in the act on surveillance tape wearing his work uniform with the name tag in plain view?” Gino complained as Magozzi pulled the Cadillac away from the Tiara Club’s flashing neon and headed north toward Alan Sommers’ apartment. “You read about that stuff all the time, but it never happens to us.”
    “That’s because the really stupid felons are almost always bank robbers.”
    Gino sighed. “We should move over to Robbery, then.”
    “I thought you were angling for Water