Drew needs a bit of liquid courage before he can ask the next question. He takes a long sip of his old-fashioned. “Was dancing the only thing the girls did for money?”
Cherry’s eyes narrow.
“I’m trying to understand why she worked here,” Drew says. “She was a really shy person. It seemed … out of character for her.”
“There’s no mystery to it.” Cherry waves a manicured hand. “She was here for the same reason everybody else was. It was a job, one that paid very well if you were willing to put in the work. And it was work. You try dancing all night in five-inch heels.”
He couldn’t imagine dancing in one-inch heels.
“It was like any job, you know? There were nights you hated it, and nights that you had a really fucking good time.” Cherry chuckles. “She wasn’t the greatest dancer, mind you. We had to work on that. What made her special was the way she looked at you. She could look right into a man’s eyes and make him feel like he was the only person in the room. She created a sense of real intimacy. Let me tell you, I can teach a girl to dance, but I can’t teach a girl to do that.”
Drew nods, but the person she just described doesn’t fit the Joey he knew.
“I was so sorry to hear that she died,” Cherry says. “That was a rough weekend. I only had two Asian dancers working here then, and I lost both of them around the same time. It’s not politically correct to say this now, but there was a real demand for girls like Ruby. They weren’t that common. I actually had a theory that—” She stops and finishes her drink. “Never mind, it’s dumb.”
“I love dumb theories.” Drew sets his glass down. “Tell me.”
The owner plucks a cherry out of her empty glass and pops it into her mouth. “Ruby and the other Filipino dancer, Betty Savage, became really close friends. When Ruby started working here, Betty kind of took her under her wing, helped her with her dancing, showed her how to work the room. But unlike Ruby, Betty was difficult. Always late for work, skipping out on shifts; I nearly fired her so many times, but the demand for Asian dancers was so high. Betty was trouble, though. I suspected she was selling drugs to the other girls. Her boyfriend was in one of those Vietnamese gangs.”
“Which one?” Drew asks, his interest piqued even further. He had written a series on Asian street gangs for Toronto After Dark, had actually won an award for it. He knew them all.
“I can’t remember now.” Cherry shakes her head. “Anyway, the drug thing—I didn’t like it, but what could I do about it? A lot of the girls couldn’t work all night without being on something, and as long as they weren’t snorting it in here … I had a business to run.”
Her eyes search Drew’s for any sign of judgment. She won’t find any, not because he agrees, but because he needs her to keep talking.
“So, the night Ruby died, someone thought they saw Betty’s boyfriend lurking around,” Cherry says. “Betty hadn’t shown up for work—again—and the lockers in the dressing room were ransacked that night. Nothing was taken, but everyone’s stuff was all over the floor, as if whoever broke in was looking for something specific.”
Drew waits.
“Betty’s boyfriend had a terrible reputation.” She hesitates. “I wondered if maybe he did something to both of them. Because of the fire, you know.”
“Do you remember the boyfriend’s name?”
She shakes her head. “I never even met him. But I heard about him. He made some of the girls nervous.”
Drew’s mind is working overtime to process what she just said. The fire that killed Joey started in the fireplace, and the fire inspector back then had confirmed it was an accident. Whoever this gangster boyfriend was, he wouldn’t have had anything to do with it.
But Cherry had just said both of them. Implying something had happened to Betty, too.
“The same weekend Ruby died, Betty went missing,” Cherry says. “And as far as I know, she was never seen again.”
Drew’s spine starts to tingle, something that hasn’t happened in a long time. During his years writing for Toronto After Dark, he would feel that tingle any time he was onto something, any time a story he was investigating shifted in a direction he wasn’t expecting.
“You want to see some old photos?” Cherry asks. “I used to take pictures of the girls when they were hanging out. I’m sure I have a couple of Ruby in one of the albums in my office upstairs.”