She picked up the phone. She'd call Ray and fill him in on the details. Maybe if he knew about Franklin and Marnie's affair, he could help break the news to Franklin's wife.
The call bounced to voicemail. “Hi, Ray. This is Joanna Hayworth. Do you have a few minutes? I want to talk to you about Marnie.” It was eleven o'clock in the morning. She figured Ray had been awake for hours. Maybe he was working in his garden, or turning a harvest of tomatoes into sauce for the winter. She hung up and reached for the price gun.
Her body jerked as the doorbell rang.
“Jumpy today, aren’t you?” It was Eve, with a garment bag slung over her shoulder.
She would have to show up now. “Look, if you’ve come to talk to me about your store, I’m not—”
“Relax.” Eve hung the garment bag on a rack near the tiki bar. “I’ve come with a peace offering.” She unzipped the bag. It was the Lanvin coat.
Joanna’s hands leapt to the coat. She peeled back the garment bag and ran her fingers over its shoulders. Marnie’s coat, home at last. Had she been alone, she would have hugged it. It didn’t change the fact that Eve would do her damnedest to run Tallulah’s Closet out of business, but it was a decent start.
“Thank you. I—I should have known you’d never keep a coat you knew had been stolen from someone else. I’m sorry about what I said at the hearing.” She eased the coat completely from the bag and returned the bag to Eve.
“Well...” Eve shifted feet.
“Yes?” Joanna hung the coat behind the counter.
“When I got the coat, the lining was kind of messed up, so I had to have it fixed. Plus, I had to pay the homeless guy who sold it to me.”
She should have known. Eve wanted money. “Of course.” She reached for her checkbook. “How much?”
“About two hundred dollars should do it.”
“Two hundred dollars?” Joanna’s jaw dropped. “I paid less than a hundred when I got it.”
Eve shrugged. “It costs what it costs. That is, unless you don’t want it.”
Joanna capped her pen and pushed the check across the bar. “Here.”
Eve smiled, producing the dimples that had broken so many hearts. “I’ll be getting over to my new space, then. The interior designer’s coming to take some measurements.” She trotted to the front door, then turned. “Good luck selling that thing. None of my clients wanted it.”
With effort, Joanna resisted the urge to run after Eve and chuck a mannequin’s arm at her.
Eve gone, Joanna leaned on the tiki bar and examined the Lanvin once again. So much drama around the coat. Such a beautiful coat, too. She had trouble envisioning Marnie's tiny body inside it. She buried her fingers in a strip of silver fox, then opened the coat to inspect the mended slash near the bottom of its lining. She sighed. What a lot of pain that coat had caused. Well, the coat was hers now, and she wouldn’t let it go, no matter how much money it could bring the store.
She turned at the sound of the front door's bell to see one of the women from the Remmick fundraiser hesitating at the doorway. Joanna summoned her most welcoming smile.
“Come on in.” She hung the Lanvin coat aside. “It's nice to see you. I have a suit that would look terrific on you—it's almost exactly the color of your eyes.”
***
Later that afternoon, Joanna sorted through the day’s credit card receipts. The timber executive's wife had left with two of the store's best cocktail dresses, and to her surprise, an Astrakhan vest. Next to the stack of receipts was a half-eaten tuna melt—no mayonnaise, provolone instead of cheddar—from the bar next door. At the rear of the store, a teenaged customer tried on 1980s pumps. She sat surrounded by shoes on the zebra-striped chair. The soundtrack to Funny Girl played in the background.
From the corner of her eye, Joanna caught sight of a dark, stocky man entering the door. She dropped the receipts, and one hand flew to the phone. She returned the receiver to its cradle and relaxed. It was only Ray.
“Hi there.” Joanna flattened her hands on the tiki bar to calm them. “You must have got my message.”
“Yeah, I saw you were calling from your store, and I thought I'd stop by. Nice place,” he said without looking around. He wore jeans and a tee shirt with the Rolling Stones’ trademark lips across its chest.
“Thanks. Just a minute and I'll catch you up.”
The teenaged girl carried two pairs of pumps to the tiki bar. “These will look perfect with the zipper-leg jeans I got last week.”
Joanna wrote up a receipt for a pair of white Nina pumps and a pair of sequined Stuart Weitzmans. She had seen enough episodes of Dynasty in her childhood not to want to wear 1980s clothes herself, but they were too popular not to stock at Tallulah’s Closet. Plus, they were a whole lot easier to find at thrift stores than 1940s house dresses. “Enjoy those.” The teenager left.
When she turned to Ray, he was staring at the Lanvin coat.
Joanna shot him a questioning look. “Do you want to see it closer?” She lifted it from behind the counter and handed it to him.
“Marnie sold you this coat, didn't she?” He touched its red leather waist gently and held it out in front of him as if to imagine someone inside it.
“Yes. She did.”
“This coat used to belong to my aunt. She was wearing it when she died.” He hung the coat on the edge of a rack of dresses and continued to gaze.
“Your aunt wore Lanvin?”
“Great aunt, actually. Her husband was a soldier in World War II in Europe. He brought it home for her.” He tore his glance away from the coat. “It wasn't new when he got it. I think he bartered with a French family somewhere outside Paris. My aunt wore it everywhere, all the time, no matter how hot it was outside. Bowling, church, whatever. It became a little bit of a town joke.”
“Do you want the coat? Sounds like it’s important to your family. I’d be happy to give it to you.” What the hell, the coat seemed destined to travel the city. She vowed she’d never give the coat up again, but it was different with Ray.
“No, no. It brings back memories, but it's not my aunt. She's not with the coat anymore.”
“You must have really loved her.”
“Yes, I did. We all did. She was a community fixture—was even chair of the tribal council when she died.”
“I'm sorry.”
“One night Auntie came home, fell down, and hit her head on a bookcase. There was blood everywhere. Franklin found her. She was getting up there in years, and she must have lost her balance. It was a bad omen.”
They both stared at the coat. Joanna broke the silence. “Funny you say ‘bad omen.’ It’s had a tough history even since I’ve had it. I found Marnie’s body under the coat, for one thing. And it was stolen a couple of days later. I just got it back this morning.”
“Marnie’s body. You said you found her here, but under the coat?” He shook his head. “Too awful. And yet—I have to wonder if the coat was cursed by Auntie’s death. Since my brother died…”
Joanna waited, but he didn’t finish his thought.
He started again. “Not long after Auntie died we had to give up the tribe's application for recognition. Franklin took the coat.”
“And gave it to Marnie.”
He nodded. “He and Marnie were very close, you know. I'm surprised they never married. For a while Franklin had the idea that he was too good to go with a dancer. His business was doing all right, and I guess he thought he was hot stuff. So he married Leona. But I know he never forgot Marnie.”
Joanna remembered the gorgeous beaded chiffon dress Marnie had bequeathed to her. “I used to wonder if Marnie would have married anyone. Maybe she didn't want to lose her independence, or she was just too removed from people. But now I think she never got over Franklin.” She pushed aside the plate with the sandwich and leaned her forearms on the tiki bar. “This brings me to why I wanted to talk to you. Remember Troy, Marnie's son, the one who came to her memorial service?”
&nbs
p; “The kid who was going to law school? Sure, of course I remember him.”
“Well, Franklin was his father.” It made sense now. The family resemblance was clear in Ray's face and coloring.
He stood up straighter. “Can’t be. They broke up years before.”
“I’ve seen the birth certificate. The coat—your aunt's coat—just after Marnie brought it in, a key to a safe deposit box fell from its lining. Naturally I thought it was Marnie's. When my store and house were broken into—”
“Your house was broken into?”
“Just yesterday.” She shivered at the memory. “Anyway, to make a long story short, I figured someone wanted the key. The police agreed to open the safe deposit box, and we found out that the key—and the box—didn't belong to Marnie at all. The box was Franklin's. Your sister-in-law should be hearing about it soon.”
“And the birth certificate was in the box.”
“A copy of it was, along with some letters from Marnie to Franklin. I wanted to tell you to see if—well—if you’d let his wife know before the police do.”
Ray strode to the front of the store and looked out the window. He returned to Joanna. “I suppose that was all that was in the box. No other papers?”
There it was again. The mention of “papers.” “No, that was it. The birth certificate and the letters. Oh, and a pair of cuff links, plus a few ticket stubs and photos. Things like that. The police said they'd notify Franklin's next of kin.”
“Yes.” He seemed to be thinking.
“There’s something else.” He needed to know about Don. She looked at her tuna melt, cold now, and lost her appetite. “I went to see Don yesterday at his house. No one answered the door, so I walked around back and heard shots. I found him lying on the kitchen floor. He’d been killed.” She felt for the stool behind her and sat down.
“What?” He backed into a rack of dresses and grabbed them to steady himself.
“It should be in the papers soon.”
“Joanna, you need to stay out of this. Are you done with this now?”
“Stay out of what? Besides, I don't know what else I could do if I wanted to. I just have to hope that the police get to the bottom of it.” Don's body, one arm stretched out on the kitchen floor. The wig, dangling from a knife. The police had better be busy.
“Something is going on that doesn't concern you.”
“What are you talking about?” She leaned forward. “You know something about that key, don't you? And what is this about ‘papers’?”
“Look.” Ray's voice was low but forceful. He locked eyes with Joanna. She pulled back. “Just stay safe and keep out of the way. Do you hear me?”
This was not the gentle Ray who gardened and made cinnamon rolls. “If you know something, you need to tell me. Don’s been killed. I can't sleep in my own house, and I’m terrified even being alone in the store. For God's sake, Ray.”
“Stay out of it, and you'll be fine.” The words cut cold and sharp. “If you don't, no guarantees.”
She swallowed.
He took a last glance at the coat, then left.
CHAPTER THIRTY
Joanna regained her breath. The threat in Ray’s eyes stayed with her. She was at a dead end. But she had to admit she wasn't, as he demanded, “done with it.”
He’d mentioned the mysterious papers again, too. She knelt by the shelf under the tiki bar to find the price gun to tag some blouses and stopped mid-reach. The bank officer had said Franklin recently visited the safe deposit box. Could he have removed something? The box was plenty big and less than a third full.
The store was quiet but for the hum of the fan and Rosemary Clooney's honeyed voice on the stereo. A few tattooed women in cut-offs wandered into the bar next door. A bus lumbered by. Maybe the shoes the teenager got earlier and the clothes the timber executive’s wife bought would be her only sales of the afternoon. She found that people often didn't want to try on clothes when it was hot outside, and, frankly, if they weren't liberal with their antiperspirant, she didn't want them trying them on either. Body odor on 1940s rayon was almost impossible to get out.
Her thoughts returned to Franklin. Too bad she couldn’t talk to Ray about him. She’d like to know more about how he died. Time to call her friends at Central Library. After a short chat about her cats and a few helpful tips on flea prevention, the reference librarian confirmed the story she heard at the Remmick fundraiser: Franklin Pursell, owner of Pursell Plumbing, had fallen from an open wall in a condo complex under construction above 23rd Street. He had died on impact. Joanna pictured Marnie in her living room, smoking a cigarette, learning about the accident on television.
What the hell. She dragged in the sandwich board with “Tallulah’s Closet” painted on it in Deco script and locked up the store. She wanted to see, firsthand, where Franklin had died.
***
Joanna pulled the Corolla into a rare open parking space in the Uptown neighborhood in front of a spa with a pseudo-French name. Just up the hill loomed the half-finished condo complex.
She stepped out of the car and held her hand above her eyes to shield them from the sun. The complex took up two city blocks. It was a mass of steel and concrete with about half of its windows installed. Five stories of balconies jutted from the building's face, but the railings weren't yet attached. It would be all too easy to fall.
Partway up the block yielded a better view. A few hundred yards of gravel stretched in front of the condo's skeleton, and a scissor lift raised a man to a third story opening where he helped two workers inside the structure install a window.
“Can I help you?” came a voice behind her.
Startled, she turned to see a tall man wearing a hard hat. With the noise of the construction, she hadn't heard him approach. “Oh, I knew Franklin Pursell, the man who died here, and I was thinking about him today.” Maybe she'd never met Franklin, but it wasn't a complete lie. She was beginning to feel she did know him.
“I see. I thought you might be from the City. A building like this, we get a lot of inspections. Of course, you don't look much like an inspector.” He eyed her 1950s ivory cotton dress bordered with orange and blue flowers.
A few construction workers had stopped working and were staring at her and the man with the clipboard. Was the one on the right Paul? Her fingers went to her grandmother’s ring. The man in the crew turned. No, someone else. Her grip relaxed. The man caught her glance and smiled.
“I wonder—would it be too much trouble to see where he worked?” Joanna asked.
The man in the hardhat pointed at her red 1940s platform sandals. “Those shoes aren't exactly regulation. You're not one of those crime scene fiends are you? Get a thrill out of seeing where people died?”
“No, believe me. If anything, the opposite is true.” If anything, she'd trade every Bakelite bangle in the store never to encounter a dead body again. “I saw Franklin's brother this morning, and, well, I thought it would, you know, bring closure to know where Franklin spent his last days.”
“All right. I guess it will be okay just this once.” He held out his hand. “Dan. Foreman. Come with me into the office and we'll get you a hardhat.”
She followed him into the side of the structure through an opening that looked like it would become the entrance to a multi-level parking garage. Inside was cool and dark. They mounted a stairway lit by lamps strung on orange extension cords and entered an office framed and sheet-rocked into a corner of the third floor.
Three men sat around a long folding table in the middle of the room. Two of them seemed to be arguing about wooden flooring with another man with a Russian accent. Beyond the table, a coffee pot put out an acrid odor. A large whiteboard scribbled with notes covered one wall, and a grid of dirty file holders spanned another. Dust powdered the floor.
“Hey boss,” one of the men at the table said to Dan, but his eyes were on Joanna.
“This is a friend of Franklin's. I'm going to show her his office.”
&nb
sp; “Family?” He turned to Joanna.
“No, but a friend of the family.”
“She knows Ray.” The walkie talkie on Dan’s belt erupted in staticky voices, and he lifted it to his mouth as he wandered to a desk in the corner of the office.
“Ray?” a man at the table said, his fingers gripping a Styrofoam coffee cup. When Joanna nodded, he said, “That couldn't be easy.” He looked at his coworkers and raised his eyebrows.
“Yeah, those two could barely stand to be in the same room.”
This was interesting. Nothing she could remember that Ray did or said led her to think he had a problem with his brother. “I'm sure Ray feels awful about it now.” She gave what she hoped was a knowing look.
“Put this on and follow me.” Dan had returned and handed her a pink hardhat. “Visitor's hat. Smaller size for the ladies. I'll show you his office.” He led her into the parking garage again, then to a smaller office framed in nearby. He opened the door to reveal boxes of equipment leaning against a wall and a man in jeans, a tee shirt, and dirty work boots hunched over a well-used desk.
“Roberto, I'd like you to meet Joanna, a friend of Franklin's. She's interested in seeing his office. You taking a break?”
“Sure, I have a minute.” Roberto stood and shook Joanna's hand as the other man left. Roberto was short and muscular, and his curly hair was flattened around the edges where his hardhat normally sat. He leaned on the desk and folded his arms, studying her. “I don't remember seeing you before.”
“I haven't been here before.” She shifted on her feet.
Roberto stared at her a minute. “What do you want to see?”
Good question. What was she here for? What did she think she’d find? She sneezed from the building's dust. “Oh, I don't know—I—I guess I just wanted to get a feel for what his life was like here.”
“You don't know Franklin, do you?”
Damn it. She brushed a speck of plaster from her skirt before meeting his eyes. At this point she didn't have anything to lose by being honest. “You're right. I'd never met him. But I've heard so much about him over the past few weeks, and I know his brother, Ray.”
The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) Page 19