The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries)

by Angela M. Sanders

  “What’s this?” Apple was holding the silk rose Joanna had taken the night she and Paul were at the Reel M’Inn. “Isn’t it from the Carmen costumes? What’s it doing on your mantel?”

  “That’s—nothing.”

  Apple’s eyes narrowed. “Uh huh. It would be nice if you had someone around to watch out for you, you know.”

  “Apple, please...”

  “Paul came by the store today and asked how you were.”

  She ignored Apple and tied the top of the garbage bag. Glass shards clinked as she lifted it from the pail. “I was so sure it was Don who wanted the key. Who else could it have been? He found out he was Troy's father, and he wanted proof. Somehow he’d discovered where Marnie hid the safe deposit box key. I thought for sure I had it all figured out.”

  “Could someone have killed Don for other reasons? I mean, he's been around a long time. Marnie’s obit mentioned mob connections.”

  “The police did, too.” Joanna lifted the bag to carry outside. Its sides bulged with jagged angles.

  “Jo, be careful—”

  “Ouch!” Joanna dropped the bag on the rug and pressed a hand to her calf. “It’s okay. I’ll get a wash cloth.”

  Apple followed her into the bathroom. “The cut doesn’t look too bad. Here—let me get that.” She took the wet cloth from Joanna’s hands and pressed it against her leg. “Really, it’s just a scratch.”

  Joanna’s voice was quiet. “When I left Don's, I was ready to give up. Not now. I need to find whoever did this.”

  Apple shook her head and rummaged in a cupboard for a bandage. “But what about the love child? Shouldn't he be able to get in the safe deposit box? You told me he was named in her will.”

  “He can’t. Marnie's lawyer doesn't know anything about a safe deposit box, either. I asked him. It doesn't matter now, though. The police finally agreed to get a letter from the lawyer to open it tomorrow. I’m meeting Detective Crisp first thing in the morning.”

  Apple leaned against the bathroom door frame and hugged her shoulders. “I don't know, Jo. I don't feel good about this. I get a really bad vibe here.”

  “You already said that.” Joanna tossed the bandaid’s wrapper in the wicker trash can. “Look. Maybe whatever's in the safe deposit box will put the whole thing to rest, or at least give the police a reason to follow up. If these mysterious papers are there, the police should have them.” She wasn't going to let Apple talk her out of it.

  Both women turned at the sound of scratching at the back door. Joanna opened it, and the dog rushed in, then stopped short at the sight of Pepper reclining on an armchair.

  “They had it out in the basement while I was talking to the police,” Joanna said. “See that?” She pointed to a thin line of dried blood on the dog's nose. “Pepper’s work.”

  “What’s the dog’s name?”

  “Don’t know. I only have him until the police track down Don's relatives. In the meantime, what should we call him?” She scratched the spaniel's head. The silky fur on his ears wound loosely around her fingers. “How about Curly? He has a little bit of the Three Stooges thing going on. Plus, it has 'cur' in it.”

  Apple scratched the dog above his tail. “We’re done here. Why don’t you get a few things to take to my place?”

  Joanna led the way to the bedroom. She clicked the switch on the swirled white Murano lamp on the bureau. “I guess I should feel lucky. I mean—Don.” The gun shots. Don’s bleeding chest. Such an unreal afternoon. “At least here no one was hurt.”

  “You weren’t here to hurt. Maybe that’s the lucky part of it.”

  “Maybe. Or maybe they waited until I was gone.” Joanna pressed her palms to her eyes and rubbed. Would this ever be over? “There’s an overnight satchel in the closet. Will you grab it?” She pulled out a dresser drawer and gathered a handful of underwear.

  “Joanna.”

  Something about Apple’s voice stopped her cold. Ice gripped her intestines.

  “The inside of the closet door,” Apple said. “Look.”

  Dread washed over Joanna. Reluctantly, she turned toward the closet. “Oh my God.” Dangling from a boning knife like a dead hare was an ash blond wig. Marnie’s wig.

  Joanna clapped a hand over her mouth to quell the rising nausea.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Detective Crisp was late. Still shaken from the discovery of Marnie’s wig, Joanna leaned against one of the massive Corinthian columns adorning the bank’s facade. Customers stepped through the wide, bronze-trimmed revolving doors, releasing wafts of cool air.

  She held a large cup of coffee from a cafe down the block. Apple drank mostly tea. No matter how strong she made it, it still wasn't coffee. Tea didn't cut it after sleeping on Apple's lumpy sofa bed with a dog. Especially a dog who snored.

  Finally, the detective strode across the street. A large sterling arrowhead anchored his bolo tie today.

  “Did you bring the key?” he asked without even greeting her.

  Joanna handed it to him. “You've got the letter from Marnie's attorney?”

  He nodded. “Let's go.”

  The detective led her into the bank and across a broad expanse of marble floor toward an information desk at the back of the lobby. No one was at the desk. Crisp rang the bell. As Joanna studied the deco chandeliers hanging two stories above, the detective tapped his fingers on the desk's broad oak surface.

  A bank officer emerged from one of the side offices. “How may I help you?” She wore a gray rayon suit with cheap black heels. Joanna fought the urge to suggest she try a 1940s suit in a warm color, maybe cocoa. With an ivory and navy polka dot blouse.

  “I'm Detective Foster Crisp, Portland Police, and I'd like access to a safe deposit box rented to a Margaret Evans.” He showed his badge, then opened his briefcase and produced a few sheets of paper Joanna assumed was the testamentary letter from Marnie's attorney.

  The woman looked at the papers then at the detective. “Has there been a crime?”

  “That doesn't matter, does it?”

  The bank officer's eyes widened. “Let me see what I can do.” She led Joanna and Detective Crisp to a desk with a computer and sat down. After a minute, the bank officer said, “Margaret Evans doesn't have an account with us.”

  Crisp shot Joanna an “I told you so” look.

  “Maybe Marnie Evans?” the detective asked.

  She clicked a few keys. “No, nothing.”

  Joanna's heart sank. How could this be? She was doomed to live with Apple forever. Maybe she'd better start drinking tea now.

  The detective placed the key on the desk. “This is a key to a safe deposit box at this bank, correct?”

  “Well, yes,” she said after a glance.

  “Who, then, is registered for this box?”

  The bank officer wrote the number from the key on a post-it, then returned to her computer. “Someone named, let's see, Pursell. Yes, Franklin Pursell. He was last in less than a month ago.”

  Franklin. Ray's brother and Marnie's first love. Why would Marnie be carrying around the key to his safe deposit box? Joanna turned to the detective. “An old lover of Marnie's. Died in a construction accident a few weeks ago.”

  The bank officer looked up from the computer, puzzled. “Pursell is the only person listed on this account. There should have been only one key. How did he get in the box without this key?” The bank officer tapped the key against the desk.

  The key was a tiny brass shape on the faux veneer. Franklin was in construction. It couldn't have been that difficult to make a copy if he knew a machinist. Had he hid the key in the coat, or had Marnie? When Marnie brought the coat, Joanna hadn't seen any newly repaired cuts in its lining. Whoever hid the key did it years ago.

  The detective's expression was unchanged. “We'd still like to see the box.”

  She held her breath. If this didn't work, she doubted Crisp would go to the trouble to get permission from Franklin's family, too.

  The bank
officer paused. “I'm not sure. I mean, if he's dead, you're supposed to have a testamentary letter.” Crisp continued to stare impassively. The bank officer sighed. “I guess, I mean, you are the police. Just a moment.” She stood up and walked across the bank, her heels clicking on the marble floor.

  “Do you think she's asking her boss?” Joanna said.

  “Beats me. She doesn't have to show it to us, you know.” He tapped a boot-clad foot.

  Minutes passed. “Marnie’s wig,” Joanna said. “Did you find anything on it?”

  “Don’t know yet.”

  The bank officer returned. “I guess it's okay. Being that you're the police and all. Harry will show you down to the safe deposit boxes.”

  Joanna started to smile, then stopped after a glance at the detective. An elderly security guard strolled across the lobby toward them. He led them to a bank of elevators and descended a floor. They passed through a dim, low-ceilinged room.

  “Before they rewired everything, I used to have to come down here to turn on lights for the whole bank. I hated it. Back there,” the guard gestured toward a hall by the elevators, “are rows of smaller vaults. Years ago a lady had a heart attack in one and died. They say some nights you can still hear her working her adding machine.”

  He led them to a hall that let into a vault the size of a small house. A round steel door at least two feet thick stood open at its entrance. Inside the vault, photographs of past Rose Parades hung on bare patches of wall between rows of numbered boxes. “We used to keep the Rose Queen's crown here. Now the Rosarians have it.”

  The security guard stopped by one of the rows of numbered steel drawers, checked the key, then strode partway down the aisle. Joanna and Detective Crisp followed. The guard ran his finger down a column of bronze-fronted boxes, each with two key holes. He inserted a key chained to his belt into one of the locks midway down the column. It wouldn't turn. Joanna held her breath. The guard looked up and laughed nervously. “Just a minute. Sometimes they get stuck.”

  After a few more jiggles, the key completed its rotation. He inserted the key that had fallen from the Lanvin coat into the adjoining lock. This one turned easily. Harry drew out a steel drawer. “That's it. You can look at it here,” he gestured to a table at the end of one of the rows of safe deposit boxes. “Or we have a room just outside.”

  Detective Crisp turned to the door. “Let's take this to the room.”

  Outside the vault, opposite the hall they first entered, was a windowless cubicle with a table, two beat up office chairs, and a dusty plastic plant. “Just let Diane upstairs know when you're finished.” The security guard left.

  The detective tapped the the box on the table between them. “Well, go ahead.”

  She touched its metal surface. The lid was cool and heavy in her hand. Someone was willing to kill for what was in this box. What would it be? Jewelry, maybe? Some kind of incriminating evidence? She looked up at the detective.

  “What are you waiting for?”

  She lifted the lid. Scattered across the roomy compartment were envelopes with handwritten addresses. She lifted them—maybe ten in all—onto the table. Mixed in with the envelopes were a piece of paper, some photos, a pair of cuff links with “F M P” engraved on them, and a yellowed stub from an airline ticket.

  She picked up the photocopy first. A birth certificate. “Franklin was Troy's father. That's what this says.” The detective didn't respond to the incredulity in her voice. So Don was wrong—he wasn't Troy's father at all. The private detective he hired must have come to the wrong conclusion.

  But if Franklin was the father and knew it, what was the secret? Why was someone so eager to get into the safe deposit box? Franklin was dead now, so he wouldn't have any reason to hide his paternity. She started to speak, then hesitated. The letters in the box were addressed to Franklin with Marnie's name in the upper left corner. The detective picked up a few of them, glanced at their contents, and tossed them on the table.

  “Are you satisfied? Is this what someone killed Marnie and Don and broke into your store and house for—a birth certificate and some love letters?”

  “I'm sorry. I—I just don't understand it.”

  The detective shook his head, but his voice softened. “I've got to get back to the station. If you want to look at the letters, fine. I'll get in touch with Pursell's family.” He pushed himself back from the table. “Don’t let the ghosts get you.” The sound of his footsteps on the linoleum floor echoed through the vault then muffled as they hit the carpet.

  Joanna sat alone with the letters spread on the table. The busy streets of downtown rumbled with traffic above her, but here it was quiet but for the steady vibration of the massive building's ventilation system. The distant hum of the elevator's motor started, then stopped. She sorted the letters by the postmarked dates on their envelopes and began to read.

  Marnie's first letter, to Franklin at a post office box on Sauvie Island, was from Oysterville. Her handwriting was proper and careful, and she formed her letters as Joanna imagined she learned in school. The paper was pale yellow with a bottom border of blue and pink tulips. It was a teenaged girl's love letter written to a boy who had moved to the city. She must have missed Franklin terribly. She had enclosed a photograph of herself in shorts and a cotton sleeveless blouse holding a tabby kitten. Behind her was a lush hedge of rose bushes.

  Similar letters followed. Her childlike language, straightforward and unashamed, told that Marnie was crazy in love. She wrote of people and places—Roberta, the Clam Digger, Mr. Dee, Uncle Tony—that must have once been the everyday fabric of Franklin's life, too. She wrote about moving to Portland as soon as she graduated from high school, although her mother didn't approve. She missed Franklin and worried he would forget her.

  The last of the older letters was dated June 1956. That must have been when Marnie moved to Portland to be with Franklin. Soon after, she began working at Mary's Club. A gap of twenty years passed before the next letter. In the meantime, Marnie would have broken up with Franklin and begun seeing Don, although she must have continued her affair with Franklin even after his marriage.

  In this letter, Marnie wrote Franklin she had left Don, and she was pregnant with Franklin's child. Her writing was now more stiff, angular. She said she couldn't bear the infrequent meetings they'd had since he'd married. She wrote she wanted to be with Franklin for good, or never see him again. Joanna could almost hear Marnie's voice reading the words.

  The next letter was in a manila envelope which must have also contained the copy of the birth certificate. The timing, six months later, was about right. The letter was more of a note, really, asking for help with medical bills. It also said that she'd given the baby, a boy, up for adoption and that she didn't know, and couldn't find out, who the baby's new family was.

  From the fresh ink and crisp white paper of the last letter, Joanna knew without looking at the postmark that it was recent. She drew the letter to her nose. Cigarette smoke.

  She read. “Dear Franklin. I don’t know where to send this letter, so I’m mailing it to your old office address. Maybe they'll forward it. I know it’s been a long time since we’ve been in touch, but I’m writing because I've met our son. He's a good kid. He's studying to be a lawyer.” Well, what she didn't know couldn't hurt her. “I'm giving him a little money to help him get by. He doesn't know that you’re his father. Also, I wanted to tell you that I have ovarian cancer and the doctors say it's terminal. They want to do all sorts of things to me to make me live longer, but I say, why bother? We've all got to go sometime, and I've had a decent run of it. I may live years, who knows? After all this time, Frankie, I think of you every day, and I wish you well. Love, Marnie.”

  Joanna put the last letter back in the safe deposit box. Each of these letters, so flat in the hand were full of emotion—hope, love, and, eventually, loss. How strange what love makes you do. Marnie wanted to be with Franklin, and Franklin chose his wife instead. But he couldn't give Marnie
up completely, and he kept these letters locked away, all told over fifty years. Marnie wanted stability and chose Don, then repaid his care with an on-again, off-again affair with Franklin.

  Joanna stood up and stretched. She'd been reading for over an hour. The letters told a sad story, but as engrossing as they were, they didn't explain how the key to Franklin's safe deposit box ended up in Marnie's coat. Or why someone wanted it so badly.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  On her way back to the store, Joanna stopped by her house to check on the cat. He was sleeping on the newly-straightened couch, and after a few sniffs Joanna recognized Fleurs de Rocailles on his fur. He must have been hiding in the vanity cabinet when the intruder broke in. The living room felt bare without the portraits above the couch. Instead of camouflaging the warning, broad smears of glaring plaster drew her memory back to it.

  She dumped some kibble into Pepper’s bowl, kissed him on the head, and quickly left. The dog was at Apple's house, probably digging a hole in her goddess garden. He didn't seem worried to have lost Don—his appetite was good, and he had pulled at the leash on his morning walk. If only people were as resilient as dogs.

  Before unlocking the door at Tallulah’s Closet, Joanna peered through the plate glass window. Mannequins hulked in the dark. But that was normal. She probably shouldn’t be alone here, either, but she found comfort in the thought that a yell would draw someone from Dot’s in seconds.

  Inside the store, she dawdled as she flipped the light switches and clicked on the lamps on the shelves at the room's perimeter. The morning's revelations had left her feeling pensive. Sometime today Franklin's widow would find out her husband had a child with Marnie. Her heart sank as she imagined a police cruiser showing up unexpectedly at Franklin's house and the creak of the policeman's leather holster as he sat down to tell the widow about the safe deposit box. It wasn't that long ago Franklin died. And now this.