The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries)

by Angela M. Sanders

  “Hello?” said a man’s voice close behind her. She pulled back into the store so quickly that she bumped her head against the window frame. A piece of glass knocked loose and clinked to the floor.

  Paul stood outside the bathroom. “Are you all right?”

  She rubbed her skull where it throbbed from hitting the sash. “I'm fine. Don't you ever knock?”

  “You didn’t hear the doorbell? The landlord called and said you'd left him a message that someone broke in, this time through a window. He wanted me to come over and replace the glass. He didn't tell me to bring a first aid kit.”

  Joanna felt her face redden. “Sorry. I guess I was distracted.”

  Paul took a paper towel from behind the counter and wet it in the sink. “Here, let me get this.”

  He put a hand under Joanna's chin to steady her, then with his other hand lifted the hair from the side of her head. “It's bleeding a little. Looks like you scraped it.” A freckle flecked the iris of one eye. He smelled of soap and wood.

  He started to dab the paper towel to her head, but Joanna snatched it from his hand, controlling her breath. “Thank you, but I'm fine.”

  He stepped back and looked at her for a few seconds while she held the paper towel to her head.

  “Aren't you here for something?” she asked.

  “Yes, I am. Unless you'd rather I call the landlord back and tell him to send someone else.”

  “No. I'm sorry. It’s just—I went to Marnie's memorial service this morning.” She looked up. “I took your suggestion and tracked down some of her friends.”

  He smiled. “And they wanted to have a memorial service?”

  “Yes, and before I left for the service, I stopped by the shop and found the window broken. Plus, someone stole one of my coats. Marnie’s coat, actually.”

  “Did you lose much money?”

  “That's the funny thing—other than the coat, nothing seems to have been taken.”

  “You’ve had a rough morning.” His voice was sympathetic, but he kept his distance. “I can take care of the window, at least.” She moved to let him in the bathroom. “Anyone could have pushed the window open once it was broken. There's not even a latch.”

  “Yeah, I can see that now. I'm guessing he came in through here but left through the front door. There’s no way he could have shoved the coat out the window.”

  “You can push a button on the edge of the door and it will lock after you. It’s not impossible to pick, either.” Paul’s body was hidden by the bathroom door. She heard the tinkle of glass as shards hit the trash can.

  She gingerly touched the side of her head where it had hit the window frame. Could this day get any worse?

  The bell at the door jingled. Joanna put on her customer face and turned. Her smile froze as she saw Eve.

  “Hey Joanna.” Eve flipped her hair. “Thought I’d come down and see this Lanvin coat I’ve heard so much about.”

  “You can’t. It was stolen last night.”

  “You’re funny,” Eve said, but she wasn’t laughing. “Get serious. I have a customer who totally goes for 1930s clothes. I could give you a good price for the coat.”

  Eve could give her a gold brick and Cary Grant’s hand in marriage, and Joanna still wouldn’t sell her Marnie’s coat. Not that it mattered now. “It’s the truth. Someone broke in last night and stole the coat.”

  Eve put a hand on her hip. “Someone broke in and took some old coat and didn’t steal the flapper dress?” She pointed to a pale yellow beaded chemise so delicate that Joanna hung it high on the wall and only took it down for serious customers.

  “Uh huh. They—”

  Paul’s voice interrupted. “I’m going to need to get a few tools and then go to the hardware store.”

  Eve looked over Joanna’s shoulder. Her face lit up, her expression sweetening to pure honey. She brushed past Joanna, leaving a trail of jasmine, and held out her hand. “Eve Lancer. I don’t believe we’ve met.”

  Joanna turned to see Paul smile in return. Was that simply a polite smile or something more? Eve held his hand a second longer than necessary. Joanna cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, but there’s no coat to sell.” She forced a smile. “But thank you for your interest.”

  Eve’s eyes narrowed. “Well I don’t really care about the coat anyway. I just wanted to tell you we’ll be neighbors soon.”

  “Neighbors?” No, it couldn’t be.

  “My new store. I’m moving into the theater on the corner.”

  “But—but that’s a theater.” Joanna’s mind raced. Profits were slender as it was.

  “It’s going to be a sort of combo vintage clothing store-movie house. High end.”

  “But—” Having another store so near would devastate Tallulah’s Closet. “Don’t you need a special permit or something? It’s been a theater so long.”

  “Approval from the neighborhood association and a lease. That’s it. I’m sure it won’t be a problem. I’m seeing the landlord in a couple days and—” Eve examined a manicured finger “—the neighborhood association meeting isn’t for another month or so.”

  “I see.” A month. At least that was some time to prepare, although she had no idea how. Thanks to family money, Eve had limitless resources. She could buy up the best stock, offer it at rock bottom prices, and lure in every customer who might have wandered into Joanna’s store instead. Then, when Tallulah’s Closet was shuttered—which wouldn’t take long, unfortunately—she’d jack up her prices again. And she’d do it laughing the whole time.

  Eve smiled at Paul, who was pulling out his keys. “Leaving? I’ll walk with you.”

  After they left, Joanna stood still a moment. Maybe Eve’s store wouldn’t be anything all that great, and customers would still prefer Tallulah’s Closet. Maybe people selling clothes wouldn’t stop by Eve’s first before selling the leftovers to Joanna. She looked around the store—the softly lit jewelry case, the red bench where so many people tried on shoes, the racks of cocktail dresses that had danced at parties across town, across the decades.

  Joanna had spent three years building Tallulah’s Closet, but Eve could take it all down in a matter of months.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  While Joanna was showing a customer sundresses for a vacation to Mexico, Detective Crisp and a uniformed police officer arrived at last. Her heart quickened. Why was Crisp here? He investigated homicides, not break-ins. She calmed herself. Maybe it was for the best. She could tell him about the key.

  Crisp, thumbs tucked into his belt, surveyed the store. The younger man, probably his first year on the job, cast an eye at the customer, who was holding up a filmy peignoir and trying to decide if she needed it for vacation, too.

  “Nice store,” the uniformed man said. “You call these clothes, what? Retro?”

  “I usually call them 'vintage',” Joanna said.

  “My grandma had a purse like that.” He pointed to a black Koret handbag with peach silk lining.

  “I hear that a lot.” “My grandma had one of those” was probably the comment she heard most at the store, followed closely by “Everyone sure was small back then.”

  Crisp held out his hand. “You remember me? Foster Crisp. This is Officer Bryce.”

  “Yes, of course I remember you.” She hesitated a moment. “They sent a homicide detective for a robbery?”

  “I needed to talk to you anyway.” Crisp wore a neatly ironed Western shirt, its yoke trimmed in blue piping. Today’s bolo tie featured a polished agate. The fan ruffled the hair around his ears.

  “I need to talk to you, too. Remember the—“

  Impatient, Bryce cut in. “So, what was stolen? A ballgown? I guess it would be easy to get a bead on a fellow wearing an old ballgown around town.” He laughed and slapped his thigh.

  What a joker. “A coat from the 1930s. A Lanvin.”

  Officer Bryce said, “That’s it? A coat?”

  “Nothing else, at least not that I can tell. The stereo is stil
l here, and the credit card receipts are locked in a cupboard under the jewelry case. I put the cash drawer in there every night, too.”

  “Is it a valuable coat, then?”

  “Yes and no. It isn’t in mint condition. It has a new lining, for one thing, so collectors wouldn’t be interested. The leather’s dry and won’t stand up to much wear. But it’s a beautiful coat. From a famous designer. The thing is, I think the burglars wanted the—“

  “Where’d they break in?” the uniformed officer asked.

  She led them to the bathroom. “In here. But I’ve been trying to tell you—“

  This time it was Crisp who stopped her. “The stolen coat. Is it the one that covered Marnie Evans when you found the body?”

  Joanna nodded. “I’d just stopped in to get something to wear to her memorial service this morning, actually. I found the bathroom window broken and a footprint on the toilet lid.”

  Officer Bryce opened his notebook. “When was the last time you were in the store, before today, that is?”

  “I locked up just after six last night, then came in again at about nine-thirty this morning.”

  The men squeezed into the bathroom. Bryce rested his hand on the back of the toilet, and the tissue holder, a pink metal box decorated with poodles, clattered to the floor.

  He snapped his notebook shut and tucked it into his back pocket. They moved back into the main part of the store. “I’m going to be honest with you. We get a lot of criminal mischief in this neighborhood. Graffiti, things like that. Some petty theft, too. None of your neighbors reported break-ins, and this kind of incident is common enough that I don't even think it's worth sending someone in to take prints.”

  Joanna drew a deep breath to quell her rising frustration. “There's one more thing.”

  Officer Bryce opened his mouth, but Joanna put up a hand to signal him to stop. She went to her purse on the shelf below the tiki bar, drew out Marnie’s safe deposit box key, and handed it to Crisp.

  “Remember how the Lanvin coat’s lining was slit? I think whoever did it was looking for this. It fell out of the coat just after I bought it.”

  The detective turned the key in his hand. “What makes you think someone wanted the key?”

  She sat down. “A lot of strange things have been happening since the coat came to the store. First, Marnie died. I found her there.” She pointed at the tiki bar for Bryce’s benefit.

  The younger man leaned back, his leather belt creaking. “How’d she die?”

  “The medical examiner said it was a heart attack—or at least that’s what I read in the paper. But I’m telling you, her death couldn’t have been natural,” Joanna said. “It's too odd. She broke into the store and lay down and died? I don’t think so. Then Apple—she works here, too—saw someone lurking outside. Plus, one of our customers bought the coat, and while she had it her apartment was broken into. The coat was in the trunk of her car the whole time. Nothing in her apartment was stolen. She ended up returning it. And now it’s gone.”

  Joanna glanced toward the back of the store, where a customer was trying on cocktail rings and pretending not to listen.

  The officer folded his arms. “In this neighborhood, it was probably kids on a dare, or someone who had had a few drinks next door and decided it would be fun to see if they could get into your store. To tell the truth, you're pretty lucky.”

  “So you're not going to follow up.” Joanna wouldn't meet the officer's eyes. She knew he heard the frustration in her voice.

  “I'm sorry ma'am. We'll take a report and put it on file. But it sounds like a whole lot of coincidence, and breaking and entering and stealing something of relatively low value isn’t high on the list of priorities. If anything else happens, give me a call.” The officer jotted a number on the back of a business card and put it on the counter. “Here’s a report number if you need it for insurance.”

  Detective Crisp stepped forward. “Slow down, Bryce. Homicide is interested. I don’t know why the murderer didn’t take the coat the first time.”

  “Murderer?” She’d been half expecting something like this, but the word still shocked. The customer at the back of the store had given up all pretense of shopping and listened, slack-jawed.

  “That’s what I came to tell you. The autopsy report showed that when you found Ms. Evans, she’d already been dead for a day and a half.”

  This new information took a moment to sink in. “But I—”

  “She didn’t die here, Ms. Hayworth. She was brought here, already dead.”

  “What?” Joanna reached behind her for the bench and sat down. “Already dead?” A day and a half earlier. That would have been not long after Marnie had called her to demand the coat back.

  Removing a pair of red mules jumbled on the bench, Detective Crisp joined her. “That’s what I’m here to tell you. We’ve been to Ms. Evans’ house. Someone broke in through the back door. Evans died, and the assailant drove her in her minivan to your store and left her here.”

  “But I thought she died of natural causes, a heart attack. You said ‘murder.’”

  The doorbell rang, and two women, one pushing a stroller, came in. Officer Bryce ushered them outside.

  “She did die naturally. Her body was weakened by ovarian cancer. But the stress of someone breaking into her house may have brought on cardiac arrest. That’s manslaughter.”

  Joanna shook her head. “I don’t get it. Why would someone haul Marnie’s body to my store? They had to have a reason for coming here, so they would have had to talk to Marnie first, hear about the store in the first place. She couldn’t have died right away.”

  Bryce came back into Tallulah’s Closet and flipped the sign to “closed.”

  Joanna raised a finger. “Couldn’t the broken window have come later? Maybe someone—someone totally different—realized Marnie wasn’t home and broke in to steal something.”

  “I see what you’re getting at,” Crisp said. “But nothing was stolen as far as we could tell. The last time we talked, you said you’d called her, correct?”

  “Sure. She never picked up.”

  Crisp looked thoughtful. “I wondered.”

  “What?”

  “The messages were erased on her answering machine. But that’s the only thing out of place we noticed. No fingerprints, nothing stolen.” He toyed with a pillbox hat near the bench. “It’s the one piece I haven’t figured out—why he didn’t just leave the body at home.”

  The air in the store stifled. Joanna rose and turned up the fan another notch. Still standing, she faced Crisp. “Marnie sold me the Lanvin coat and some other clothing Tuesday morning. She called that afternoon and insisted on getting the coat back right away. Thursday morning I found her. So she must have died Tuesday afternoon or evening. Does that sound right?”

  “Yes. That’s correct.”

  “This is how I see it. Someone went to Marnie’s house and demanded the safe deposit box key.” She lifted the key to chin level. “Marnie called me to get the coat back because the key was in it, but I couldn’t bring it. Maybe she was intending to come get the coat herself, but she didn’t. She died. The—the person who was with her decided to break into the store himself to search for the coat and dump off Marnie’s body.” Yes, it was all coming together. “It’s the safe deposit box key. I’m telling you, someone wants it.”

  “I think you’re making too much of the coat. Why not steal it right away when he brought Marnie to the store? Why wait to come after the key?” Crisp asked.

  “Well.” She bit the corner of her lip. “Could there be two people after the key?”

  Crisp shook his head. “So now you suspect two people.”

  “Think about it. The second person—the one who broke in—he might have called Marnie, but she was already dead. He erased the answering machine’s messages so no one could track them back to him.”

  Crisp rose. “Look, I’m going to put all this speculation to rest right now. I see where you’re goi
ng, but it’s a dead end. Yes, someone stole the coat, undoubtedly to hide something—maybe hair or skin—that gave away his identity. We should have taken the coat as evidence right away.”

  “But the key. What about the key?”

  “I told you, we’ve been doing some investigating, and we have a few promising leads. I can’t tell you more than that.”

  “No. I’m not convinced.” She folded her arms. Didn’t he get it?

  “Listen to me, Joanna.” For the first time, Crisp let irritation cross his placid face. “We’ve been doing a lot of investigating, including Marnie’s financial records. Marnie Evans didn’t have a safe deposit box.”

  ***

  The customer shopping for her trip to Mexico emerged from the dressing room and handed two sundresses to Joanna. Officer Bryce and Detective Crisp parted to make way for her.

  “No peignoir?” Joanna tried to sound upbeat, but the thought of Marnie dead in her minivan, then driven to the store and dumped, rattled her.

  “Not this time.”

  She packaged up the customer's purchases while the policemen started for the door.

  Just then, Paul walked in, carrying a bag from the hardware store. As Paul and the detective passed, each stopped in his tracks.

  “Hello, Crisp.”

  “Hello, Paul.”

  Curious at the strained greeting, Joanna glanced up from the tiki bar.

  The detective spoke first. “How’s your uncle?”

  “You probably know better than I do.”

  Crisp turned back to Joanna. “Does he have a key to the store?”

  “I don't know. Maybe. I suppose so.” Confused, she looked from man to man.

  “Do you know him very well?”

  Now alarmed, Joanna focused on Crisp. “What do you mean?”

  He fixed his eyes on Paul. “No, I suppose you’ve always kept your hands clean.” He turned to Joanna. “As for you, I'm just saying you need to be careful who you give access to the store. If you have any more problems, you have our number.”

  Officer Bryce backed up a step and knocked two pairs of pumps off their display rack.

  “Uh, sorry,” he said.