For an hour, I wasn’t a woman worried about her aunt’s livelihood, stale rolls, or deliveries of lobsters. As I moved, my mind emptied of everything but the music and the strength in my body. I stretched into a split, resting my upper body and face against my leg. When the music stopped, the relaxing sound of the ocean waves curling into shore filled the room.
Timing, I thought. Everything that had happened—from the first threatening letter to the death of Contessa Wells—flashed through my mind. Aunt Gully thought the letters were a joke, but why had they arrived the week of the food festival? Why did the sign appear the morning of the food festival? Were they all connected?
Chapter 12
In the early years of the twentieth century, St. Peter’s Church had been built in a rocky field not far from Mystic Bay. In a moment of spiritual whimsy, the church planners had incorporated a carved statue of Saint Peter in a wooden hull that jutted over the front door of the church. Almost one hundred years later, the fields were gone and the building and Saint Peter were marooned by strip malls and busy Route One. Everyone called the church St. Peter in the Boat.
Saint Peter’s somewhat surprised expression welcomed Lorel and me as we accompanied Aunt Gully into church. During the service, the sound of St. Peter’s well-regarded choir helped relieve the suffering inflicted by the hard wooden seats.
My phone vibrated with a text from Verity.
I GOT THE JOB OF THE CENTURY. COME WITH? THREE OR FOUR HOURS?
Lorel frowned as I texted back. YES. PICK ME UP AT ST PETES. I couldn’t wait to tell Verity my thoughts about Aunt Gully’s threatening letters. She’d help me sort it out.
At coffee hour, I explained that I was going with Verity for a few hours. Lorel rolled her eyes. I was ditching her and at a church coffee to boot. Friends mobbed Aunt Gully, most offering hugs and sincere support, some just angling for news. Finella Farraday cut through the crowd toward Aunt Gully like a shark intent on a kill, eager to say something mean. Strange how such a beautiful woman would always say such ugly things.
“I’ve got her.” Lorel headed off Mrs. Farraday.
I stepped outside, throwing an apologetic glance at Saint Peter.
Verity’s car skidded to a stop in a tow zone. I walked quickly to the car, a gray seventeen-foot-long 1962 DeSoto complete with fins. Even Verity’s car was vintage. We called it the Tank.
I’ve been friends with Verity every since she, Bronwyn, and I were the Three Little Kittens in the St. Peter’s Preschool Snowflake Revue. Verity had insisted that her kitten should wear not only mittens and a matching hat, but also a feather boa. Even as a child, she’d been a fashionista.
“Allie, you’re not going to believe this,” Verity said.
“Tell me!” I slid into the vast front seat of the Tank. “What’s this job of the century?”
Verity grabbed my shoulders. “You can’t tell a soul. Promise.”
“Cross my heart! Tell me!”
“This morning I got a call to buy clothes and”—she sat up straight and pursed her lips—“accoutrements.”
“Accoutrements? Someone actually said ‘accoutrements’?” I laughed. “Who was it?”
Verity tightened her grip on my shoulders. “Juliet Wells.”
“Juliet Wells?” I remembered my conversation with Hector and Hilda. “Contessa Wells’s sister? The crazy lady?”
“One and the same. She wants to sell her sister’s stuff.”
I stared at Verity. “Contessa just died yesterday.”
“I know. She told me she’s having the funeral on Tuesday, if the police allow it. She wants to know if I can pay cash.” Verity’s eyes glittered. “Still want to come?”
Of course I wanted to come. Verity and I discussed the reservations a normal person would have about buying the clothing of a recently deceased movie/Broadway star not even twenty-four hours after she died. But then excitement took hold.
“We’re awful people,” I said.
Cars and churchgoers streamed from St. Peter’s parking lot.
“Just wretched. Think of it this way. What kind of income does a crazy lady have?” Verity asked. “She probably needs the cash. I’m helping her. That’s good karma, right?”
“Hey, speaking of good karma, thanks for taking care of that pesky reporter yesterday,” I said.
“We live to serve.” Verity grinned, but squeezed my shoulder. “The whole thing must’ve been awful. You okay?” Verity’s almond-shaped brown eyes were huge behind her cat’s-eye glasses.
“Pretty okay. My dad called to check on us, wondering if he should come home. We told him to wait. Lorel said everything’ll blow over.”
“Lorel’s right, right?”
“Maybe?” I shrugged.
Finella Farraday exited the church. Verity and I slid down in our seats as she power walked past the Tank and Aunt Gully’s van to her car.
“She looks steamed,” I said. “Though she always looks steamed.”
“Yesterday her corgis got away from her and tore through my store, mangled some really sweet old handkerchiefs and she blamed me!” Verity said. “But then one of my customers said something about the mess at the food festival. Finella ran over there like a shot.”
I remembered Finella’s insensitive questions as we’d packed Aunt Gully’s mermaidabilia.
“We’re supposed to meet with the TV people later today. Chick Costa wants them to reschedule the competition,” I knotted my hair into a bun.
Verity’s perfectly arched eyebrows shot up. “After what happened to Contessa?”
“Exactly. Aunt Gully doesn’t want to do it, but Lorel thinks everyone’ll forget about Contessa soon enough. If Aunt Gully did the competition somewhere else and won, having the YUM Network star of approval would be great for the shack.”
“Your sister’s cold.”
Lorel exited the church, texting on her ever-present phone. She exuded a Grace Kelly cool in white linen pants and a soft blue sweater. She drew admiring glances from men and women, but she was oblivious. Business above all else—that was Lorel.
“When do you have to be at the Wells House?” I said.
“Miss Wells said twelve-thirty.”
“We’d better get going.” As Verity steered toward Rabb’s Point, I told her about the letters and the lobster libber sign. “I think it’s all connected somehow. Why would we start getting those letters just days before the competition?”
“Make Aunt Gully so upset she’d mess up her lobster rolls?” Verity said.
I shrugged. “Maybe? Still, I’m going make sure the police know about them.”
“Call my uncle.” Verity’s uncle was Emerson Brooks, Mystic Bay’s chief of police.
“Didn’t you tell me he’s always too busy to take your calls?”
“Yeah, but call him anyway. Use my phone, his number’s programmed in.”
The call went to voice mail. “Hi, Chief Brooks, it’s Allie Larkin. I know you’re probably really busy, but could you please call me back? I want to talk to you about some threatening letters my aunt received. It’s important.” I left my number and hung up. “It’s too bad Aunt Gully didn’t save the letters.”
Verity threw me a look. “You still look worried.”
“I am worried, Verity. Nobody came to the Mermaid yesterday, and today the health and sanitation director has us closed until he can do an inspection. What if people think Aunt Gully had something to do with the poisonings?”
Chapter 13
Verity steered the Tank into Rabb’s Point, up historic Spyglass Hill past several old whaling captains’ houses, and through ivy-covered walls into a property that looked like a movie set.
The Wells House had looked down on Mystic Bay from the top of Spyglass Hill for over two hundred years. The towering white mansion was crowned with an ornate cast-iron widow’s walk. I imagined the view from high above, the anxious ancestor of the famous Contessa Wells watching the harbor, praying for the return of her husband’s ship.
The house had been completely transformed from the Halloween-night haunted house of my memory. Ivy that had choked the walls had been cleared away, the brick repainted, the fountain in the circular driveway cleared of debris and repainted. But still a hushed feeling remained, a feeling of stepping out of time, of a house in the grip of a fairy curse, destined to be reclaimed by twisting vines and thorny branches.
“Wow. I don’t remember this.” Verity parked the Tank next to a small rusted Toyota.
“I remember toilet paper hanging from all the tree branches. This is gorgeous,” I said.
Verity took a deep breath. “Let’s go. But, Allie—”
“Yes?”
“The less we say inside, the better. I just want to buy and go, okay?”
“This is legal, right, Verity?”
Verity gathered cardboard boxes filled with large trash bags. “This could be the buy of a lifetime, Allie. Contessa and Juliet were fashion icons, especially Contessa. She ran with the A-list in the seventies and eighties. Studio 54, all that. It’s my big chance.”
Excitement coursed through me as we carried the boxes to the door. Every kid in Mystic Bay had wanted to get into the old Wells place. Now was our chance. The circumstances were beyond sketchy. Would the police show up at any moment? Were Contessa’s clothes somehow evidence? I didn’t care. I couldn’t wait to get inside.
Verity rang the bell. I imagined the door being opened by Contessa’s sister, dressed perhaps in a Chanel suit or movie star lounging pajamas.
Instead, a middle-aged woman holding a broom and dustpan opened the door. She wore baggy jeans and an oversized gray Heart’s Ease Homecare sweatshirt. Everything about her was gray: her thinning hair, pulled back into a sloppy ponytail, her dull skin, her pale lips.
“Yeah?” she said.
Verity and I looked at each other.
“Miss Wells asked me to come over. My name is Verity Brooks and this is my associate, Allie Larkin.”
The woman’s eyes flicked over me. I had the sense she was trying to place me. Perhaps she’d seen the TV footage of me with Contessa. I tilted my chin and let my hair fall forward to obscure my profile.
But the woman simply stepped aside to let us in and shut the door, snuffing out birdsong and sunlight. We stepped through a marble foyer, past a grand carved wood staircase that led to a gallery above. Several flamboyant floral arrangements and potted plants lined a long side table.
One arrangement lay smashed against the base of the stairs, lilies, roses, and broken glass littering the floor.
The woman said, “Leave the boxes by the stairs. This way.”
We obeyed, silently stepping around the mess.
“She’s in the morning room.”
Verity and I looked at each other. It took me a moment to realize that the woman meant “morning.” “Mourning” had come to mind, and I think Verity had heard the word the same way.
The woman opened a door at the end of the hallway. “In here.” She left without a backward glance.
After the dark hallway, the room was a burst of sunlight. Wide French doors opened onto a walled garden where pink azaleas had burst into bloom. The garden made a feminine backdrop for a petite dark-haired woman seated on a powder-blue upholstered couch. She was dressed in an oversized white button-down shirt and black leggings. From her short black bob and high, round cheekbones to her wide red lips, she looked exactly like the woman I’d held in my arms the day before. Déjà vu. I willed myself to take a deep breath.
Rings sparkled on every finger of the woman’s gnarled hands, heavy cuff bracelets circled her wrists. She held an ornate silver vial that hung around her neck on a black velvet cord.
“You’re the clothes girl.” Her voice rasped and made me think of rusty hinges.
“Yes, Miss Wells. Thank you for calling me. This is my, um, associate, Allie Larkin. Um, my sympathies about your sister.”
“Do you know what this is?” She held out the small vial.
Verity nodded. “A lachrymatory. A tear bottle. Used in Victorian times.”
“For holding tears.” Miss Wells covered her face. Her shoulders shook.
Verity and I shared a look. Was she weeping?
When Miss Wells looked up, her shiny red-painted lips curved in a smile. “I have so many tears I’d need a million of these.” She stood abruptly. “Well, come on. Pack up her stuff. I don’t need it. I don’t want it. I need the cash. Okay?”
Juliet didn’t seem particularly broken up about her sister’s death. Well, I’d heard she was a crazy lady and this was a crazy reaction. I tried to keep my breathing steady and make no sudden movements.
“Look.” Juliet pointed to two framed silhouettes on the wall beside the door. “There we are. Two sisters, just two years apart.” Verity and I stepped closer to see the profiles of two little girls with large hair bows and identical upturned noses. Brown braided material ringed each. I stiffened as I realized what the braid was.
“Oh, I love hair art,” Verity cooed.
“We had an old-fashioned governess.” Juliet strode from the room.
We scurried after her, dodging the broken glass and scattered petals, scooping up the boxes, and following her up the grand staircase. She moved quickly for a woman who must be in her seventies.
“We rented the house out for years but my sister kept many old family things in these rooms, which”—Juliet stepped into a room—“were locked to keep the renters out.” She pulled the door closed as I caught sight of a portrait over a fireplace. A woman in a crimson gypsy dress, a black mantilla over her wild black curls. The walls matched the color of the woman’s dress, intensifying her look of triumph. It was a portrait of Contessa Wells in her most famous role in The Gypsy’s Daughter. Verity caught my eye. She’d seen the portrait, too.
Juliet unlocked a door across the hall. Unlike the cleaner lines and more modern style of the room downstairs, this room’s décor had old-fashioned sophistication and glamour. Velvet swags topped large windows through which Mystic Bay glittered in the distance.
We followed Juliet through another door. Verity swayed. “Oh, my stars.”
“We made this room into a walk-in closet,” Juliet said.
The term “walk-in closet” didn’t do the vast, clothing-lined room justice. It was twice the size of the large bedroom we’d walked through. Floor-to-ceiling shelves were jammed with wigs, shoes, and hatboxes. A shelf running the length of the room held dozens and dozens of handbags. A chandelier hung in the center of the room over a gold-upholstered pouf. It was California Closets by way of Versailles.
Juliet opened a drawer in a tall chest and said, “Jewelry.”
Verity walked to the drawer like a woman sleepwalking through the best dream of her life. “Miss Wells, I’ll have to come back, this is far beyond what I expected—”
“You brought the cash, right?”
Verity handed Juliet an envelope. “Yes,” she whispered. Verity looked stunned. I was stunned, too. We were surrounded by gorgeous clothes, accessories, and jewelry of every description. Just one of the Birkin bags on a shelf would sell for more money than Verity had paid Juliet.
Juliet took the envelope without looking inside.
“I’ll have to pay you more, for the jewelry,” Verity stammered. “I’ll come back on Tuesday after the bank opens.”
“You girls can come to the funeral. Tuesday at three at our family mausoleum in the burying ground. Come back Wednesday morning. You can take all this stuff then.”
This was a gold mine for Verity but still I shuddered at the way Juliet called her dead sister’s things “stuff.”
“The police came, you know. To tell me about my sister.” She turned to face me. “I saw you. You’re the dancer.”
I nodded, not sure what to say. She
must have seen me on the news.
“I saw you when we visited once, years ago, when Broadway by the Bay did Brigadoon. You were in the chorus. I knew you’d be a ballerina.” Her voice softened. “We dancers can tell. You have a gift, my dear.”
I remembered that Juliet had also been a dancer and actress. “Thank you. You’re a dancer, too.” Her carriage was unmistakable. Her posture was perfect, her neck long, her back straight.
“I still do a barre every day. Well, what I call a barre.” She spun slowly to my right, her movements surprisingly graceful. She stopped and ran her fingers along the sleeve of a velvet jacket. “I love dancing.”
“Me, too.”
She jutted her chin at my walking boot. “I hope you’re healed soon.”
“Thank you.”
“Is that your sister?” Juliet pointed at Verity.
Hadn’t Verity just introduced us? “We’re friends.”
“Friend.” Juliet said the word as if tasting a strange new fruit. “Friends keep sending flowers. Theater friends.” Her voice rose. “I’m tired, I need to lie down.”
The gray woman stepped into the room. “Is everything all right, Miss Wells?”
“Where are my manners? Susan, will you get our guests some tea?” Juliet said. “And open the windows for some air.”
Susan slid open a window as Juliet continued. “Susan, they’re taking the old clothes. They’ll come back for more the day after the funeral.”
“Yes, Miss Wells.”
“No more visitors today. Even the police. They can go pound sand.” Juliet left the room.
Susan took a rag from her back pocket and passed it over a desk. Verity and I exchanged glances as we stepped back into the closet.
“No tea for us,” I whispered.
“I guess she’s here so we don’t slip the stuff into our pockets,” Verity whispered.
Curses, Boiled Again! Page 7