The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries)

by Angela M. Sanders

  “Sorry about that.” Nina patted her hand. “It seemed like a sure thing. I'm still shocked that Marnie could have had a child and given him up for adoption.”

  That Troy even existed was the astonishing part. Adoption was less of a surprise. Then she understood. “Do you have children?”

  Nina fidgeted with the strap on her purse. “No, I was pregnant once, but, well, at the time it wasn't ideal. For a number of reasons. When Gary and I finally decided to start a family, it was too late.” She rested a pink-taloned hand on the tiki bar. “Oh, I'm not complaining. I've had my day, and Gary has been good to me. But I wish I would have thought of it sooner.”

  “I'm sorry.”

  Nina nodded. “Don't waste time. You're pretty enough to find someone. If you want a family you need to get started now.” She looked into the distance, and the animation left her face, adding years.

  Better change subjects. “I saw Troy yesterday. It turns out Marnie left him just about everything in her will.”

  Nina's eyes snapped to Joanna. “Did she? She got around to writing a will, then.”

  “Apparently so.”

  “I guess she knew she was dying, knew she wanted to leave something to her son. At least she had the heart for that.” Nina held a pair of milky blue Czech crystal earrings to her ears and put them down. “I don’t get it, though. If Chick isn’t his father, then who is?”

  Best to keep Don's letter to Marnie under wraps for now. “I've wondered the same thing myself. To tell the truth, I had even wondered if Troy is her son at all. He seemed to come out of the blue.”

  “Oh, I'm not surprised Marnie got herself in trouble. Her life was a land mine of bad decisions, if you ask me. I just wonder...” She stopped short.

  Maybe just one little hint wouldn't hurt. “Troy mentioned that Don gave him his card and wanted to get together sometime. Could Don be his father? Troy is about thirty. Was he still with Marnie then?”

  Nina shook her head. “No, it's impossible. Don would never have let her keep the baby. He knew how to take care of those things.”

  Joanna picked up her mending. “Why not?” she continued. “He seemed to really care about Marnie. Maybe he would have liked having a son.”

  Nina's hand slammed down on the tiki bar. Joanna jumped and the needle pricked her index finger. Wide eyed, she stared at Nina. What had got into her?

  “I said it's impossible.”

  “Nina, I'm sorry—”

  “You can send a check for the clothes to the Wet Spot. I have to go.” The front door's bell jangled violently after her. Joanna stared at the closed door for a moment, then put her finger in her mouth and tasted warm, salty blood.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  At a few minutes after five, Joanna pulled up in front of Don's house. A canopy of chestnut trees sheltered the street, cooling the air and casting a moving pattern of dappled shade on the pavement. As she walked up the steps to the house's wide veranda, she patted the side pocket of her purse. Yes, the key was still there.

  Don didn’t answer the bell. She stepped to the left of the door to the broad window. The open curtains revealed a large living room with a fireplace and two leather couches. Joanna rang again. Surely he hadn’t forgotten their meeting. Maybe he was in the backyard, reading the paper, and couldn’t hear the bell.

  She walked down the steps and to the right side of the house, where a Cadillac dominated the driveway. At the top of the driveway rose an iron gate. Its heavy latch clanked open. In the backyard, French doors topped a deck shaded by a mimosa tree. She hesitated. It was too quiet back here.

  Just then a flutter of fabric ruffled a back window. Or was that a shadow from the tree?

  “Don?” she said tentatively, crossing the yard to the far edge of the deck.

  An orange and white spaniel pushed open the French doors and ran toward her, nails clattering down the steps. She crouched slightly, ready to run, but the spaniel just wagged his stumpy tail and nudged Joanna's hand with his nose. God, she was jumpy. She scratched the dog’s ears and let out her breath.

  A sharp crack exploded the quiet. Once, then twice. Gun fire.

  Joanna closed the distance to the house in a few steps and flattened her back against the wall, her breath coming in ragged gasps. The dog burrowed under the deck. What the hell was going on?

  Silence again. She scanned the backyard but didn’t see any bullet holes. To her left the backyard fence joined the house. To her right were the French doors, now ajar, going into the house. To leave, she’d have to pass by them. Too exposed. Above her was the window where she’d seen movement.

  Her foot touched a plant in a small pot. She dropped her purse, and, sinking slowly, knelt for the pot. Her hand trembled as she hoisted it to chest level. She steadied herself. Now! She hurled the pot across the back of the house. Bullets pierced the fence where the pot shattered.

  Blood chilled in her veins. Don wanted to kill her. He lured her here, and now he would kill her.

  A door slammed, and she jerked her head. The front door, maybe. Someone leaving? Or was it a trick? Nearer, a moan escaped the house. The dog, his belly brown with dirt, squeezed out from under the deck and nosed through the French doors. Joanna heard the gasping moan again.

  Someone was hurt. Heart thumping, she crept up the steps to the deck and peered in the open doors. A waist-high counter separated a small eating area from the kitchen. The counter was cleared except for a full highball glass in a puddle of condensation.

  Joanna stepped around the counter, then backed into the refrigerator. Lying on the floor, face up, was Don. With a bullet hole in his chest.

  She ran for the front door and onto the veranda just as a car peeled into the distance, another car honking at it. The leafy trees obscured her view up the street. Whoever had fired at her, it hadn’t been Don.

  She returned to the kitchen and stepped around Don to reach the phone on the counter. A bullet had left a hole in a cupboard. She steadied her voice. “Please send an ambulance. Someone has been shot.” A sickly sweet smell, almost floral, hung in the stuffy kitchen. After she stuttered Don's address to the dispatcher, she took Don's wrist and felt in vain for a pulse. A stream of blood made fingers down his linen shirt. A ladybug alit on his neck. She brushed it away.

  “Don,” she whispered. “Who did this to you?”

  ***

  Joanna was still in the kitchen holding Don’s hand when the police burst in the front door. Her other hand pressed a cloth napkin over his wound.

  “Officer Riggs,” one of the policemen said. He was large and had a black mustache. In street clothes, he’d still look like a policeman. He took her upper arm and led her to the living room.

  Two policemen rushed past them and another lingered on the veranda, front door ajar.

  “Why don't you tell me what happened?” Riggs pulled a small notebook from his pocket.

  “We need an ambulance.” Joanna looked toward the kitchen.

  “On its way. Name, please?”

  “Joanna Hayworth.” Another officer dropped her purse, smudged with dirt, at Riggs’s side. “I had an appointment to meet Don—you know?” She gestured toward the kitchen. When Riggs nodded, she continued. “Five o'clock. I rang the doorbell and no one answered. I went around the back, because I thought Don might be out there. It's a—was a—beautiful day, and the dog ran out the back door, so I called inside. I heard gunshots. Two of them.” She felt herself getting lightheaded. “That must have been when Don was shot. Why isn’t the ambulance here?”

  “Easy, easy,” Officer Riggs said. “Dugan?” he yelled into the kitchen. “You got a bottle of water? I think there's some in the cruiser.”

  “Someone shot at me then took off out the front door and sped away. I called you.”

  “Did you get a look at him?” The other officer had returned with the bottle of water.

  She gulped from the bottle before replying. “No. I think the car was gray. Small. That’s all I can tell you.” />
  Through a glass panel on the front door stood Detective Crisp—the cop who had come to the store when Marnie died—accompanied by two people with large cases. He knocked twice, then entered. Riggs motioned toward the kitchen, and the new arrivals headed that way. A siren screamed nearby. Finally, an ambulance.

  Officer Riggs turned back to Joanna and picked up his pen. “Nice dress,” he said quietly. “That vintage?”

  She looked at the officer with surprise. Don was shot, maybe dead, and the policeman was commenting on her clothes? “Yes, in fact it is. I have a vintage clothing shop on Clinton.”

  “It's amazing that so delicate a fabric lasted so long. And with lace-edged ruching on the bodice, too.”

  Now she understood. She had a few customers like him. Probably none of his buddies in the police force knew about his hobby. On another day she would have hinted at the larger-sized dresses she tried to keep in stock.

  A team of paramedics pushed through the front door. A woman in street clothes—a crime scene investigator, maybe—came to the couch and opened her case. “I'm going to swipe your hand for gunpowder, and we'll need your fingerprints, too.”

  “Yes, yes, of course.” Joanna looked down at a crimson stain on the side of her sandal. She must have walked through blood on her way to the front door. Maybe she could she could drive home barefoot. “You don't think I did it, do you?”

  “Just eliminating all possibilities, ma'am.”

  While Joanna was being fingerprinted, Detective Crisp pulled up a chair. He set a large plastic bag containing a manila envelope next to him. “So, it's you again. You and another body.” Officer Riggs handed him his notebook, and the detective glanced at the notes. “Why don't you tell me what happened?”

  Joanna recounted her story. Again.

  “You say you were to meet Mr. Cayle. Was there a particular reason for that? Are you doing business with him?”

  “No, I had something I wanted to give him.” She looked up at Officer Riggs. “May I have my purse? Thank you.” The technician taking her fingerprints handed her a wet wipe. She rubbed the ink off her fingers and reached into her purse's side pocket. “This.” She held up the key.

  Crisp took the key and examined both sides. “That safe deposit key again.”

  The paramedics returned through the living room, this time moving more slowly. The detective made eye contact with one of the paramedics, who shook his head. “Riggs, call the M.E.,” Crisp said. Joanna’s heart sank.

  The detective handed the key back to Joanna. “How well did you know Mr. Cayle?”

  “He’s dead, isn’t he?” It was more a statement than a question.

  “I’m afraid so.”

  She played with the key, pressing its ridges against her palm and pinching it between her fingers. Finally she put the the key on the armrest of the chair and looked at Crisp. “I didn’t know Don very well. I only met him a week ago.”

  “Why did he have this for you?” He lifted the bag with the manila envelope. She saw her name on the envelope’s side in Don’s loose scrawl. As she reached for the bag, the detective pulled it back. “Evidence. When and if it clears, you’ll get it.”

  “I don’t know. He said he had something for me. I assumed it was something to remember Marnie by.” If he knew what was in the envelope, his expression didn’t show it. Joanna picked up the key again. “I think you should take this. Someone wants it, they'll do anything to get it, and I don't know why. I mean, Marnie died in a pretty strange situation—”

  “And we’re following up on that.”

  “Well, now someone killed Don and shot at me, too. Don't you think that makes the key important?”

  The detective looked to the side and pursued his lips, as if thinking, before turning back to Joanna. “I’m only telling you this because Evans—Marnie—was found at your store. We’ve linked Cayle and Evans back to some shady business in the 1960s. Cayle used Evans’s name on some real estate deals and routed another mob gang that thought it had a stranglehold on local gambling. Frankly, I’m not all that surprised to find out someone caught up with them.”

  “But that was ages ago. What could it matter now?”

  “A few deaths, a few people getting out of prison. Sometimes it takes a while to settle all the scores.”

  Joanna shook her head. “No. I don’t believe it. Why would someone steal the Lanvin coat? Why slit its lining?”

  He paused. “The fact that someone moved Evans’s body to your store—I haven’t figured that out yet. But look. Did anyone know you were coming here with the key?”

  “Well, no, but—”

  “Did Cayle know you had the key with you, so that he could have told someone?”

  “No, he knew I had something for him, but—”

  “Even if he did know, why would someone kill him when he didn't yet have the key?”

  She couldn't argue with his logic. She returned the key to her purse.

  “We're going to process the scene, but we'll need to talk to you again.” Crisp examined her. “You have an uncanny knack for turning up when people die.”

  She raised an eyebrow. What was he getting at?

  The detective glanced at the handcuffs dangling from the uniformed policeman's belt, then back at Joanna. “Riggs, the residue test?”

  “Negative.”

  A long moment passed. Finally, the detective tucked the Tallulah’s Closet business card Officer Riggs had taken from Joanna's purse into his notebook. “Can we still find you at this number?”

  She released her breath. “Yes. I'm at the shop most afternoons.” The spaniel at the other side of the living room lay down on the floor. He raised his head when he saw he had Joanna’s attention. “What are you going to do with him?”

  The dog stood and wagged his stump. “We'll call the county to hold him. The deceased's family can pick him up.”

  “Do you think I could take him home? At least until you find someone to take him permanently? I hate the thought of a dog going to the pound when he could be with a person. I'm pretty sure Don lived here by himself.” Even as she said the words, she knew she was crazy to take on a dog.

  The detective looked at Officer Riggs, who raised his eyebrows and shrugged. “We don't normally do this, but I guess, given that we'll be in touch with you, that would be all right. It will save us the hassle of getting animal control out here.”

  “Are you all right now? Feeling okay?” Riggs asked.

  “Yeah, I'm fine. Thanks.” She stood up slowly. As she untethered the dog from the armchair where one of the officers had tied him, she looked back through the dining room toward the kitchen. Someone knelt over Don's body. The dog trotted toward the front door the police officer held open for them. A wave of lightheadedness started again, and Joanna put a hand on one of the veranda's cool cement pillars to steady herself until it passed.

  She walked down the steps of the porch to her car, and the dog jumped into the seat next to her. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. She wished she had never seen the safe deposit box key. She was finished with the key now. She didn't care how it got in the coat, what it unlocked, and who wanted it. Elvis Presley could be Troy's father—she didn't give a damn. In the morning she would drop the key off downtown then post a note in the window of Tallulah’s Closet to “the person who lost the safe deposit box key” saying the key was now at the bank. Yes, that's what she would do. Her breath steadied.

  Looking for attention, the dog dipped his head under her arm. “Some faithful companion you are.” Joanna turned the key in the car's ignition, once and then twice before its engine sputtered to life. “I hope you like cats.”

  ***

  Holding a bag of dog food under one arm and the dog's leash with the other hand, Joanna struggled to fit the house key in her front door. When the key finally slid in, the bolt wouldn’t turn. It was already unlocked. Remembering the scene at Don’s, Joanna’s hand hesitated on the door knob.

  Inside, she gasped and dropped
the bag of food. Aunt Vanderburgh and the other portraits lay broken and scattered, a butcher’s mix of flesh tones on the rug. Her gaze shot to the wall where they’d hung. Crudely carved into the plaster were the words LEAVE THE PAPERS ALONE.

  The blood rushed from her head. She grabbed the door frame for balance.

  The dog shot down the basement stairs after Pepper, dragging his leash behind him.

  “God damn it.” She picked up her phone and for the second time that day called 911.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Hours later, after the police left, Apple smeared plaster on the words carved into the wall, blending a white trail over the cream paint. Joanna swept up bits of glass from the broken portraits. The spaniel was in the backyard. He had dug a bed in the pea gravel and basked in the waning sun.

  Apple dampened a rag and feathered the plaster’s edge. “You won’t be able to sand it until tomorrow, but when it’s done and painted, no one will ever know what happened.”

  “I’ll know.” Joanna leaned the broom against the wall and picked up the dust pan. “Who would do this? I feel so—violated.”

  “I do sense a lot of anger here.”

  “Duh.” She tipped a dustpan of glass shards into the garbage pail.

  “Not yours. I mean angry energy. In the air.” Apple stepped down from the ladder. “And you’re not staying here, that’s for sure. You’re coming with me tonight and for as long as you need.”

  “Oh Apple, thank you.” Detective Crisp had said the same thing—she shouldn’t be alone until she could get a security system installed.

  “I wonder where they are with the investigation?”

  “I don’t know.” Joanna sighed. “They didn’t get any fingerprints here, and whoever broke in apparently used the front door.” For a few minutes, Joanna had even wondered if the detective thought she defaced her own walls. Her terror was too real for him to suspect her for long. “With Don’s death, though, I’m sure they’ll step it up.” She ripped a fresh garbage bag from its roll. “The message on the wall, it said to leave the papers alone. I wonder what papers they mean? A birth certificate is just one sheet, not papers.”