Cloaked in Malice

by Annette Blair

  I dragged Paisley back to the keeping room, where I got bear hugged by my father and maternally squished by Aunt Fiona, his Old Spice mingling with her peachy Trésor, which made me feel like I’d just come home.

  “Dad, we have a guest. Paisley Skye, these are my parents. Oh, sorry, I forgot that referring to them as my parents raises my dad’s blood pressure. See the color of his face? Sort of a muted magenta, wouldn’t you say?”

  Aunt Fiona laughed and extended her hand to Paisley. “I’m Fiona. Mad’s late mother was my best friend. The world has made peace with the fact that I’m dating Kathleen’s widower, but her widower hasn’t.”

  “Will you stop?” my father snapped. “I think Calvin Coolidge said it best,” Dad said, looking from me to the woman he refused to admit he adored.

  She rolled her eyes, and Nick and I smiled, while my dad cleared his throat. “Coolidge said: ‘Perhaps one of the most important accomplishments of my administration has been minding my own business.’” My father raised a brow. “You could take a lesson, Madeira.”

  I wiped Aunt Fiona’s lipstick smudge off his cheek. “So, Dad, what you’re really saying is, ‘Shut up, al-ready’?”

  My father hugged me again. “Brat. Now who is this lovely young lady?”

  Our houseguest was not shy. She stepped forward, and pumped my father’s hand. “Hello, Mr. Cutler, I’m Paisley Skye—the name’s fake, by the way—and I’m an asylum escapee. I’ll be staying with you for a while, until Mad figures out who I really am.”

  Eight

  Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

  —GEORG C. LICHTENBERG

  As quickly as we had said hello to my parents, we said good-bye to them. Dad decided, since I had a houseguest, he’d spend the night in Aunt Fiona’s guest room.

  Yeah, right.

  True, I grew up calling Fiona my aunt—my mom died when I was ten, after all, but as dad had taken to pointing out lately, Fiona wasn’t related to us at all.

  I walked them to the car. “Don’t worry, she’s not nuts.” I focused on Fiona. “She has some vintage children’s clothes she wants me to take a look at.”

  “Have you seen any of them?” Aunt Fee asked.

  “Well,” I said, using the pause for emphasis. “I held a small cloak earlier this afternoon and decided right then that she needed my help.”

  “Gotcha,” Fee said. “Is Nick staying, too?”

  “Yes, he is.”

  Fee patted my father’s knee. “Mad’ll be fine. We can go.”

  My father leaned across Fiona to grab my hand and squeeze. “If you’re playing sleuth again, be careful, baby. I love you.”

  My heart melted. Just when I forgot to give Professor Harry Cutler, best dad in the world, credit, he came through, and turned right back into the big old huggy bear I remembered from my childhood.

  I watched them leave then pull into Fiona’s driveway, four houses up. I waved again, and went inside.

  I found Nick whipping up a light salad with some savory biscuits and Paisley in the gentlemen’s parlor looking at the diplomas on the wall. Lots of diplomas. My parents’, mine and my siblings’, overachievers all, from kindergarten diplomas to PhDs, and everything in between. One master’s degree was never enough in the Cutler family.

  Paisley folded her arms as she turned to me and she stamped her foot. “You lucky brat. School, school, school, and I never went to one. No papers to show for my knowledge.”

  Well…but it wasn’t a “there there” I found, it was an idea. “Would you like to take some college courses?”

  “Would I? But I don’t have the credentials to get into any school. And I’d look pretty foolish in first grade.”

  I picked up my iPhone and hit speed dial for Eve. “Nick’s cooking. Wanna come over for a snack? I have an educational challenge for you. Sure, pj’s are always cool.”

  Ten minutes and the steampunk goth arrived with the pizza she’d ordered.

  “Eve,” Nick said, “your hair is so red, I think I need sunglasses. Looking at you is hurting my eyes.”

  “So don’t look, Fedface.”

  I shrugged at Paisley. “They hate each other.”

  She dipped a mozzarella stick into marinara sauce. “I can tell. Why?”

  “They both love me and they’ve been fighting over me since junior high.”

  “Oh, so, Eve, you date women? I hear that’s big now.”

  Nick laughed so hard, he rocked back on his chair, and Eve pushed it the rest of the way back with her foot. He didn’t even stop laughing while he got up off the floor and stood his chair upright.

  “Nick and I fight over Madeira’s devoted friendship,” Eve said, “The Fed’s not good enough for her and he knows it.”

  “That’s true,” Nick said. “I do know it.”

  Paisley licked her lips and looked from one of them to the other. “Uh-huh. Well, um, what about me going to school?”

  Among us, we gave Eve an abbreviated version of Paisley’s noneducational background. “Eve,” I said, “I figured you could arrange for her to audit your class and maybe a couple that your friends teach.”

  “Sounds good,” Eve said. “Paisley, let’s talk about what you’d like to learn.”

  “Come on, Nick,” I said. “I’ll help you clean the kitchen. We’ll shut the door so you two can talk education.”

  The kitchen had a back entrance, of course, and I shoved Nick through it, into the small back parlor-den.

  “Oh,” he said, “you want to play.” He obliged, took me in his oh-so-capable arms, and kissed me.

  “Well, yeah, I do,” I said, slipping his shirt buttons in and out of their buttonholes, “but I can’t right now. Gotta read those clothes while Paisley’s occupied.”

  “Rats, foiled again.”

  “What, you won’t be able to find your way to my room later?”

  That seemed to cheer him as we made our way to Paisley’s treasures via the back stairs. See, in my house, you can fool about anybody, because we have four sets of stairs. The front stairs, the back stairs, the keeping room stairs, and the stairs that lead to only one back bedroom. Yes, the house had been added to, and renovated, over the centuries regularly, and decades apart, by different families. It was like our very own small, sane, tame version of the Winchester house in California without windows in floors and stairs to ceilings.

  Could a family with four kids have fun here? Oh, yeah.

  Paisley had left her treasure trove of children’s clothes in my room during our presupper, second-floor tour, so I didn’t feel entirely like I was prying, especially since she wanted my opinion. And there appeared to be a murder-kidnapping to be solved.

  Not to mention Paisley’s lifetime incarceration, another crime to iron out.

  “Nick, can you sit on the sofa with me and hand me the ruffled gown, then can you hold me while I read it? If I can read it?”

  “With one exception, there’s nothing I’d rather do, no place I’d rather be, than on a sofa with you in my arms, but psychometric readings always wring you out, and I hate the thought of your physical and mental exhaustion afterward, for your sake.”

  “I never feel as exhausted as confused.” I set the inlaid box on the sofa table, all its vintage treasures inside, and urged Nick to sit beside it. Then I sat against him and enjoyed having him enfold me in his arms. “We’ve never done it like this before,” I said with a chuckle.

  “This is also not the ‘it’ I planned,” he murmured against my ear.

  “Sorry. Hand me the tiny white ruffled dress. The only thing I’ve read so far was the cloak, and I wouldn’t mind giving that another try, but not tonight. Just the dress, please.”

  He gave it to me, the fabric as soft as could be, each ruffle about four inches long, but it was a little damp from the snow, and amazingly, I realized that I’d slipped so easily into this vision, I hadn’t felt the progression. It wasn’t Nick’s hand near the dress anymore but a han
d with four fingers undoing the tie on the cloak and slipping it off my small shoulders.

  I felt a little dizzy then and a lot cold, and I shivered as I looked up at him. He had keen eyes of bright periwinkle that seemed to see everything. I fingered that dear face, all lined and grizzled, and I scraped the white stubble on his cheek with one of my small fingers. He turned his head and kissed that finger.

  I regarded that finger with awe while he moved a soft bright stuffed chair close to the fireplace, where a small fire grew, and he sat me down on it. There he took off my wet velvet shoes and ruffly white socks and slipped a pair of man’s socks on me, up to my knees, then he wrapped me in a quilt, lifted me in his arms, and sat on the chair with me in his lap.

  “I hated bringing you to such a place, but I didn’t have a choice.”

  “When will Daddy and Mama get here?”

  Bepah’s chest hitched beneath my cheek, once really hard, but it stopped and so did the tears falling down my cheeks. I grew warm and sleepy, and fingered my dress ruffles as I looked about the small kitchen with two little beds in the corner.

  The room had wood walls with slits between the planks where you could peek out at the snow. A scratched table. Mismatched chairs. Boxes of food and supplies, three boxes of bullets. Probably for the gun over the fireplace. Daddy had one there, as well. Bepah and Daddy had other guns, too, small ones that I was never to touch, which they hid about the house. The big beautiful house with gold stairs and lights hanging from the ceiling and this cozy little house just for us.

  I yawned. “Will you take care of me?”

  “Till my very last breath,” Bepah said.

  Nine

  If, in ready-to-wear, a garment is manufactured according to standard sizes, the haute couture garment adapts to any imperfection in order to eliminate it.

  —YVES SAINT LAURENT

  I came back into myself crying again, and Nick had taken the ruffled dress away from me, like Paisley had done with the small cloak. Then he turned me in his arms and comforted me, with his lips and his hands in my hair, and soft words. Words that said I was treasured.

  I wanted to lose myself in Nick but I had to focus. “Let me tell you what I saw this time so I don’t forget anything.”

  He rested his chin on my head and listened patiently, or impatiently, but he listened. “Nothing I can add to the eighties Christmas killing search,” he said.

  I accepted his handkerchief and wiped my eyes. He swooped in for a kiss but I dodged it.

  “Paisley,” I said.

  “I want to be certain that you’re okay first. Sometimes I don’t like this gift of yours.”

  “You think kisses will tell you how well I survived the reading? I get that you don’t like my psychometric ability; sometimes I don’t either. But I’ve helped a few people with it.”

  “More than a few. I’m not disputing that. Doesn’t mean I have to like it. You ended up at the bottom of a well, if I remember correctly, and a few other nasty places.”

  I sat back, but not too far back. “So now you know how I feel when my guy’s on the job, seems to have disappeared from the planet, and could very well be dead?”

  “Ah,” he said against my hair. “All the more reason to celebrate when we’re together.” Which he proceeded to do.

  I accepted his kiss, and returned it, then I stood and pulled him up with me. But when I opened my bedroom door, we found a surprise, a note taped to it from Paisley. “Eve showed me how to lock up then she left. She says good night or good morning. Whatever. I’ve cleaned the kitchen and gone to bed. See you in the morning. And thanks. Paisley Skye.”

  Nick checked his watch for the time. “I’m going downstairs to connect your computer to mine, put a search in for eighties, holiday killings, and/or kidnappings, using as much of the information you have from your first reading as I can, and let it search all night, if it has to.”

  I got ready for bed, then waited there at the door. It didn’t take him long to come back up. And the last thing I remembered was his hand shutting that door above my head, with his lips coming for mine.

  When I awoke, I had only the imprint of his head on the pillow beside me to make me smile.

  I threw on my robe and followed the laughter down the stairs.

  Eve, Nick, and Paisley had made a marvelous breakfast, worthy of a Mother’s Day buffet. For two blinks, I was delighted, then I saw the clock. “The shop, the sale!”

  “My mother helped you set up for the sale; she said she can handle it until after eleven o’clock mass when the hordes arrive, as she put it.”

  “That gives me—”

  “Two hours,” Nick said. “An hour for breakfast with friends and an hour to shower and dress.”

  “Hah,” Eve said, “if she can dress in an hour, I’m a—”

  “Redheaded monkey?” Nick suggested.

  Eve grinned, took the lemon wedge from her saucer, and squirted him with it.

  “Now, children,” I said.

  “Okay, we’ll behave,” Paisley said, giggling.

  “Good to see you survived your first night in the mausoleum.”

  “No, I’m converted. I love the place. It was even nice to me when I cleaned the kitchen alone.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “Did you know that you left the computer on all night?”

  Nick nearly spilled his coffee, and set down his mug carefully, wiped his hand, and looked at Paisley. “You didn’t turn it off, did you?”

  “Of course not. And I didn’t mean to read it but it was flashing a message in large letters.”

  I got nervous, as did Nick, I could see. It wouldn’t be good if Paisley learned an ugly truth about her own past from an FBI database.

  “What does it say?” Nick asked.

  Paisley shrugged. “‘Too many variables. Narrow search criteria.’”

  Nick sipped his coffee. “I’ll try that later. Thanks.”

  And I thought, No more FBI database searches from this house.

  Quick change of subject. “Eve and Paisley are planning a ‘Welcome to Mystick Falls’ party for Paisley, to which they will invite mostly eligible bachelors for Paisley to choose from. We’ll have it here.”

  Nick chuckled. “Paisley, when it comes to men, Eve will be your biggest competition.”

  “No kidding?” Paisley said. “I could have told you that just by looking at her.”

  Eve grinned. “You haven’t looked at yourself in a mirror lately, have you? Get Madeira to pick the right clothing style, or era, for you, and wait for the swarm.”

  “Who made this luscious quiche?” I asked, floating to heaven.

  “I did,” Paisley said. “I aced sewing and cooking.”

  Eve yipped. “Oh, girl, we have got to get you into the dinner and dancing world. You sound too much like a fifties housewife.”

  “That’s the point of a bachelor party in her honor,” I said. “Paisley, Eve will teach you how to play hard to get while reeling them in.”

  Nick choked on his cinnamon bun. I got up, thumped him on the back a few times, and finally gave him a good whack. “Whew, I thought I’d have to perform the Heimlich. You okay, Nick?”

  “Eve never played hard to get in her life!”

  “I did with you.”

  “Like I tried.”

  I went around the table, to the opposite side of the room from the giant stand-in cooking fireplace, headed for the keeping room stairs.

  “Where’re you going?” Nick yelled

  “To take a shower and dress.”

  “Wait, I’ll help.” He caught me halfway up.

  In the keeping room, Eve faked a gagging sound. “Too much in-for-MA-tion.”

  Paisley giggled.

  When we got to Vintage Magic, the placed was hopping, but not in a good way, considering the police cars and ambulance in the parking lot.

  “Mom,” Eve shouted as she jumped from my Element before I came to a full stop.

  “I hope Eve’s mom
is okay,” Paisley said as we went in.

  Olga Meyers was fine. Ethel Sweet, not so much. “What’s wrong, Ethel?” I asked as Werner jotted down some notes.

  “A missing persons case, Madeira,” Werner said. “We think Dolly disappeared last night.”

  “That’s not possible,” I said.

  Dante, the ghost only I could see, postured in the background, his charade an Emmy-worthy performance of “I told you so’s!”

  “What?” I asked. “Did she run away from home? Because she couldn’t have been kidnapped. She’d kill anyone who came near her.”

  “No,” Ethel said, removing her oxygen mask to speak, “last time I saw her, she was sitting in the basement, reading some old papers from her brother’s photography studio. Next thing, it’s morning and I find a note in the kitchen, but she writes too tiny for me to read, even with my glasses, so I brought it here for you to read, Mad. Frankly, I thought I’d find Momma here with you. But Olga had to read it to me.”

  Olga, Eve’s mother, nodded and handed me the note.

  I read it. “She’s gone on the Las Vegas trip with the senior citizens. Last-minute decision. Well, there you go,” I said, mostly for Dante’s benefit.

  Werner bent to her. “May I search your basement, Mrs. Sweet? I presume I don’t need a warrant.”

  “No,” she said. “You need my key. Mad, give him the house key from my purse.”

  Ethel watched and waited until I did so before she continued, “Olga called the woman who runs the senior center. She said Dolly’s not with them.”

  “That can’t be good,” Paisley said. “How old did you say she was?”

  “A hundred and three and nine-tenths,” Ethel said, throwing the oxygen mask at Ted Macri. “Too old for Vegas. Too old to be alive, but that’s an oxymoron.”

  “And too old to run away from home,” I added. “Everybody calm down.”