Cloaked in Malice

by Annette Blair

  The vehicles reminded me of an eighties thriller—limos, Jags, Bentleys, BMWs, all black, except for the DeLorean, all with dour chauffeurs in drab uniforms standing guard. What would they do if I made a wrong move?

  The fast-departing crowd flaunted designer gowns and gaudy diamonds, and somewhere in the distance a baby cried.

  I was supposed to be happy today. Mama said so, but the man shoving her into a limo made her scream a name. Why didn’t anyone help her? Why did they just get in their cars and rush away, tires screeching, like they’d never been here?

  I knew the name my mother called was mine, but it didn’t sound right to my ears. I wish she’d call me again, so I could remember…my name and her voice.

  I started crying, too, and I screamed, “Mama!” Little good it did me, until a man lifted me in his arms and gently covered my mouth. “Shh, baby girl, shh, so they don’t notice you.” This was a man whose arms I could trust. I recognized his voice and his special hand.

  Love—I remembered in that moment what it felt like.

  While I wanted to get closer to my mother, the man carried me farther away from her instead, but this man, this guardian angel with a missing finger, he loved me, so I trusted him, even as the car carrying my mother pulled away from the curb.

  Where and why were they taking her?

  Couldn’t they see that she didn’t want to go?

  And why was my daddy lying in the gutter while something ate up the snow and grew a big red puddle beside him?

  Four

  Once upon a perfect night, unclouded and still, there came the face of a pale and beautiful lady. The tresses of her hair reached out to make the constellations, and the dewy vapors of her gown fell soft upon the land.

  —KIT WILLIAMS

  If I close my eyes, I can still see my mother’s face, thought the child whose skin I was being torn from. And this was surely the first time the universe pulled Madeira Cutler from a vision before she was ready to go.

  It was enough to make the little girl in me weep.

  I snapped out of the push-pull of my exit with my ears ringing, as if I’d roller-skated into a brick wall. Unfortunately, I knew what that felt like.

  Still overwhelmed by grief, I shook my head from the proverbial headfirst body slam, and focused on my guest standing across from me, her eyes wide, the mink-trimmed child’s cloak I’d been holding now clutched to her breast.

  “When the meat cutter said you read vintage clothes,” Paisley whispered, “he wasn’t kidding, was he?”

  “No,” I snapped, my denial too strong. “No. He meant it the way you took it, believe me.”

  Paisley Skye may have been no older than twenty-five or so, but her eyes held the wisdom of the ages. “Because your meat cutter godfather doesn’t know, does he, that you read clothes the way a palm reader reads palms?”

  Vintage clothes, I thought. I only read vintage clothes.

  I stood, found I was dizzy, and sat again. “No, Paisley, you’re wrong.”

  The blue-striped, watered-silk walls of my shop looked beautiful to me, bright, welcoming, not dark like the place I’d been sent, but I couldn’t let my relief show.

  “Don’t worry,” my mystifying guest said. “Somewhere in my DNA, I think I have an embedded chip that forces me not to tell—anything.”

  “Or remember anything?” I asked.

  Paisley winced, paled, and her chin came up. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

  “Right,” I said softly, “you’re not blocking.” And I’m nothing more than a vintage dress shop owner.

  Paisley bit her lip. “You mean blocking like what? Memories? I’ll have to look up that concept on the Internet tonight and get back to you, because, you see, I have only the memories I don’t want, and can’t find the ones I crave. I will say that I read a lot about psychics on that old farm.”

  “It surprises me that your Mam and Pap let you.”

  “They had no idea what knowledge those books held. Though the newest copyright I found was from the six-ties.”

  “Like your dress patterns?” I asked. “Great sewing job, by the way.”

  She curtseyed and gave me a two-dimpled smile. “From you, I’ll take that as a compliment.”

  “It was one of my mother’s favorite patterns,” I admitted. “I’ve made it dozens of ways.”

  “I’d love to see some of your versions.”

  “Maybe we can arrange that.” Since I now had a murder, or at least a shooting, and possibly a kidnapping, to solve, I knew we’d be staying in touch, whether I wanted to or not. “Paris,” I said, “early nineteen hundreds. That’s when that cloak was hand-stitched. You weren’t the first to wear it. But I’m betting you were the last.”

  “What makes you think I wore it?” she asked, narrowing her eyes.

  “I don’t know, I just assumed, since you brought it to me.” I frowned, picking up on the noise. “Wooly knobby knits, those sirens sound close.”

  “Oh.” Paisley covered her mouth for a second. “I forgot. I called for help.”

  Johnny Shields and Ted Macri ran in, and stopped dead, paramedics who happened to be friends I went to school with, K through twelve.

  “False alarm, boys,” I said, but they weren’t looking at me, they were tripping over each other to get to Paisley.

  “Hi, I’m Ted Macri. Athletic director slash hockey coach at Mystick Falls High, and part-time paramedic.”

  “And you haven’t changed a bit, Cassanova,” I quipped.

  “Oh, hi, Mad, sorry.” Ted took out his False Alarm paperwork and called it in on his two-way.

  Johnny Shields elbowed Macri out of the way. “Full-time paramedic and volunteer fireman. The name’s Johnny, Johnny Shields. Maybe we could have supper sometime?”

  “Nice to meet you all,” Paisley said.

  The guys, damned near to displaying their colorful plumage, barely cared.

  “Paisley, I went to school with the peacocks here, but I seem to be invisible today.”

  “Ah, no, Mad,” Ted said, keeping an eye on Paisley.

  “You sure have a lot of false alarms, Mad,” Johnny said, wiping the metaphorical drool off his chin.

  “My fault,” Paisley said. “The false alarm, I mean. I buried my parents recently. They would never let me call for help. Now, I get trigger happy when someone hyperventilates.”

  “Is that what happened?” Detective Lytton Werner asked as he came through the front door of the shop. “You hyperventilated, Madeira? You didn’t OD on brownies and make yourself sick?”

  The detective had given up using my nickname when I broke up with him to go back to Nick Jaconetti, my on-again, off-again since forever. Werner tried to keep our current relationship impersonal, but so much debris had gone over the bridge between us as to be laughable. “You know, Detective, you’re still cute when you worry about me.”

  “Watch that cute stuff,” Nick said, arriving practically on the detective’s heels.

  “And who called you?” I asked, standing to greet my guy with a quick kiss.

  Nick held the kiss longer than I’d intended, then he claimed me by sliding an arm around my waist. Nevertheless, he and Werner managed to give Paisley a quick once-over.

  I should have been insulted, but I was comfortable in my skin.

  “I called Nick,” Werner said with a “don’t sass me” raise of his chin. “Calling for reinforcements is knee-jerk when I don’t know whether to worry about you or wring your neck. Matter of getting you some protection. From me.”

  Whoa, loaded statement, considering our past. I shook a finger Werner’s way and forced him to turn to Paisley, or had he done that on his own? “Detective Lytton Werner here, at your service,” he told her, and I half expected him to click his heels and kiss her hand.

  I tried to temper my snicker. “As you see,” I said, “I have just one big gaping wound. No need to worry.”

  It took Paisley’s admirers about ten beats to drag their gazes from he
r to me.

  “I was kidding. Get the ambulance back on the road.

  “See you later, boys,” I said, and they all stepped toward the door, even Nick. But I grabbed his hand and pulled him back. “No, you stay.”

  Werner’s lips firmed as he left. I’d probably always regret the one who got away, but hey, he deserved better than she who called him “Little Wiener” in third grade, because well, it stuck. Even I slipped once in a while, and Eve, my best friend, she called him that all the time. Which was nothing to what she called Nick, but that’s a story for another day.

  After the drooling stumble-squad left, I introduced Paisley, officially, to Nick and made us each a cup of tea.

  “Do me a favor, Paisley,” I suggested, “spread your outfits on the fainting couch so I can look them over.”

  Our eyes met, hers and mine, and I knew she strongly suspected that I didn’t want to touch them. Well, I could do damage control regarding her supposed knowledge of my psychic gift later. Right now, I wanted to see more of what she had to show me while I tried to figure out a way to get her to leave the valuable treasures overnight.

  I wanted to know what they had to say; I just didn’t want to make a spectacle of myself while I read them. Nick would play a prominent role in my plans. I’d make him the responsible one, the guy who’d hold the hose while I set the pile of dry leaves on fire, so to speak.

  That’s how scary reading vintage clothes had become to me, like a matter of probable death and destruction, both of which came in the form of an often deadly puzzle, snippet by dizzying, nauseating snippet.

  Five

  Shoes and clothing damage our ability to survive naked in the wilderness.

  —STEVE MANN

  While Paisley spread out the children’s outfits, I sought her nod of approval before I related to Nick the gist of what she’d told me so far about her childhood.

  That done, I walked the length of the fainting couch to check out the vintage goods.

  The little white dress, a confection of silk charmeuse with a plain bodice, had a skirt covered in ruffle upon ruffle, from waist to hem. I’d seen a couple of those ruffles peeking out near the hem of my cloak at the horrific scene of my father’s, or someone’s father’s death/shooting, though with that much blood…I supposed it could have been a knifing. And yeah, probably his death.

  I turned to the mysterious man-magnet who’d scared my ghost earlier. “Do you know who originally wore these clothes, Paisley?” Or maybe I should ask who last wore them. I hadn’t quite yet figured out the rules of the universe concerning this psychometric gift of mine.

  “To be truthful, I don’t know,” Paisley said, answering my question, “but the more I look at them, the more I suspect it was me, or someone close to me. Like, maybe, I was there. Maybe. Or they belonged to my mother. Not Mam. I never believed she was my mother. The farm animals had stronger maternal instincts than Mam.”

  “Have you been saving these clothes your whole life?” I asked. “Just to bring them to me now?”

  Paisley straightened, a bit of excitement glinting in her eyes. “That’s another big part of the story. One of the darker memories of my childhood was the way Mam and Pap whispered secrets to each other while they watched me. More specifically, while they watched me pass by this one closet, top of the stairs, almost at the landing, with a padlock on it. I couldn’t go near that door without my constrained parents—if they were my parents—going bonkers. I mean, it makes a girl want to take a look, you know?”

  “Obviously, you looked,” Nick said.

  “Not until they died. I looked, forgive me for the irreverence, about an hour after I buried Mam beside Pap and Spotsylvania. Just to be ornery, I buried the dog between them.”

  Paisley giggled, poor thing. Separating her keepers by their dog had obviously been a rare prank.

  “First,” she said, “I wasted my time looking for a key, then I went down to the cellar and got a giant pair of metal cutters, the ones Pap used on the fence around the property—when the electricity was off, of course.”

  “Wait,” Nick said, “you had an electric fence?”

  Paisley Skye nodded. “It was lethal. Every once in a while we’d find a fried raccoon or squirrel hanging from it. We had that, and an alarm system, that cost a couple hundred grand, which seems a lot to me, considering how frugal we were. I know, because I found the receipt among some papers before I left. Frankly, the farm isn’t worth as much as protecting it cost.”

  “Maybe more than the farm’s original cost,” Nick said. “But if that farm sits on its own island, I’m thinking you’re a rich woman, Paisley.”

  “Oh, I was already rich with money, just not people, though Mam and Pap, they were so tight, Mam made her own bread and butter, and Pap butchered cows for eating.”

  “The closet,” I said, not wanting to get into an animal’s trip to a cleaver.

  Paisley crossed the floor as if she might get caught, and turned to us. “I felt like I was ten and due a strapping when I crept up those stairs—I’m telling you, my whole body shook—but I cut that lock, sure I’d awakened the pair of them from the dead with the sound it made snapping. Thought I broke my wrist, too, but it was just sore for a few days. Every time I looked at it, I could practically hear Mam scolding me and saying it served me right.”

  “Then what happened?” I asked, sitting literally at the edge of my seat.

  “At first I saw an empty closet, and I thought, well, that was a big to-do for nothin’. Then I noticed it, just sitting all alone in the back corner, almost invisible.”

  “Saw what?” I asked.

  “Oh, the box, ’bout this big.” She used her hands to give us an approximate size. “All shiny with little cutout pieces fitted together into a fancy design.”

  “Was the box empty?” Nick asked.

  “No, it had these clothes and some other things in it.”

  “What things?” I asked. “I don’t see anything but clothes.”

  “I left them in my car.”

  I sat back. “You can drive with that kind of up-bringing?”

  “Pap taught me to drive with the old pickup on the farm. He said if something happened to them, I’d have to know how to drive. I just got my license.”

  “Why didn’t he teach you how to row a boat, then?” I asked.

  “I thought the same thing when I found the water. Well, damn. What good was that old truck gonna do me?”

  Nick nodded thoughtfully, clearly processing the details of Paisley’s life like an FBI agent, as ready to sink his teeth into this case as I was. “I think the man was worried about what would happen to you when you left the island, which he knew you’d do after they died. He figured you’d need to know how to drive.”

  She beamed. “It has certainly come in handy—much handier than knowing how to row a boat would be.”

  I got the feeling that nothing scared her. Or everything did, which was why she was blocking what I’d seen through her eyes.

  “I just brought in the clothes,” she said, “because you’re an expert on clothes.”

  “Can you bring in the other items now,” Nick asked, “before we go any further?”

  “Sure,” she said, running outside.

  The minute the door shut, Nick turned to me. “Give.”

  “I zoned and read the outfit she shoved at me, which is why she called nine-one-one.”

  “I figured. What’d you see?”

  “She may have been kidnapped. I know her mother was, and it looks like her father was murdered. I believe it was her skin I was in—I was wearing that small cloak and gown. Guess I could have been any kid but there’s no way to tell; she has a frustrating lack of memories. Can you check out kidnappings connected to the death of a man in a tux?”

  “Month, year?”

  “Winter, around Christmas, judging by the colors. Sometime in the eighties, judging by the cars. Could have been any city street in front of an old stone church.”

  �
��That narrows the field,” Nick said, cupping his neck. “Not. Witnesses? Say yes.”

  “None who stuck around long enough to be questioned.” I stopped as Paisley returned, and Nick gave me a nod.

  She brought the inlaid box this time, a hefty armful, gorgeous with marquetry and parquetry, woods of varied tones and shades, probably worth a fortune empty. British, Regency, or Georgian perhaps, it would have been called a “trinket casket,” because of its posh satin lining, but I knew clothes better than antiques.

  In the box, the white mink muff matched the cloak, and the box held a pair of the sweetest turquoise velvet Mary Janes I ever held. No wonder the little girl whose skin I crawled inside—shiver—worried about them in the snow. Each tiny shoe had a self-bow on top and, in the center of each, a row of five—

  “Call me crazy,” I said, “but I think those are real diamonds on the shoes. Ten of them. The gloves are turquoise kid and as old as the cloak, also probably from Paris.” Each glove closed at the wrist with a loop that clasped a pearl—real pearls, no doubt. In one of the shoes, I noted a rolled sash, likely for the ruffled dress. The sash was made of the same turquoise velvet as the shoes. If that wasn’t couture…

  “Some child went to one big event,” I speculated.

  Paisley shifted from one foot to the other. “You think it was me, don’t you?”

  “Which you?” I asked. “The one who grew up on an island with Mam and Pap? Or the one I suspect wore diamonds in a big city when she was three?”

  Paisley’s eyes filled, and I wasn’t certain if it was because of something she remembered or because of everything she couldn’t or refused to remember.

  Six

  If death meant just leaving the stage long enough to change costume and come back as a new character, would you slow down? Or speed up?