A Veiled Deception

by Annette Blair

  The ice in his look told me I was in trouble, and I didn’t doubt it for a minute. “Well,” I said. “You have a guest. I’ll drop by another time.”

  “No, stay. Miss Cutler, is it?” Werner asked. “Mrs. Updike could probably use a friend. Mrs. Updike, would you care to sit?” he asked.

  “No,” she said, bracing herself. “Why?”

  Werner shook his head in regret. “Can you identify the woman in this photo?”

  “Of course. That’s my daughter, Jasmine, with Justin Vancortland, the young man she went to visit.”

  “In that case, I’m very sorry to bring you this news, but your daughter was killed last night.”

  “Jasmine?” The question revealed a veneer of shock but the woman took the news with a stoic lack of emotion, which might be her way. “Wild, that girl,” she said, not really seeing us. “Never could stay out of trouble. Always wanted more than she could have. Reminded me of somebody else I knew once.”

  She glanced at the picture of her and Deborah, her gaze flying to me. With a raised chin, she reached out and straightened the photo.

  Great, my first attempt at snooping and I move something in the home of an obsessive-compulsive . . . though her house and clothes didn’t reveal the quirk.

  Considering my recent “vision” of her and her glance toward the picture, I wondered if she meant that Jasmine reminded her of Deborah.

  Werner opened his notebook. “Did your daughter have any enemies, Mrs. Updike?”

  “A beautiful girl always has enemies,” she said, “but no more than the usual.”

  “What you mean,” I said, “is that she was so attractive that other girls’ boyfriends tended to gravitate in her direction, and the girls blamed Jasmine?”

  The woman gave a half nod.

  Werner and I exchanged quick glances.

  “I couldn’t keep her in money,” Mildred said, resentment in her tone. “She loved men, and parties, and fine things, but I had to fight to get her to work for them.” Mildred rubbed her arms against a phantom chill. “Sometimes the easy way can lead to trouble,” she said.

  Werner cleared his throat and took notes. “Mrs. Updike, can you name any of the girls whose boyfriends strayed Jasmine’s way?”

  Mildred named nearly a dozen girls, but my sister Sherry wasn’t among them. So Jasmine’s behavior was a way of life, a slight Sherry shouldn’t take personally. Cold consolation for a murder suspect.

  Why had Werner said that Jasmine had been killed, not strangled? And for pity’s sake, why didn’t Jasmine’s mother care how her daughter died? Unless she was in shock, and I didn’t recognize the signs.

  Were the Mrs. Sweets correct about a pregnancy? Maybe not. Maybe that’s why Werner didn’t mention it.

  If there was a pregnancy, Justin couldn’t be the biological father, I hoped, for Sherry’s sake. But I didn’t doubt that Jasmine had been cold enough to try to pin fatherhood on Justin like a life sentence.

  Werner looked up from his notes. “This might be redundant after recent revelations, Mrs. Updike, but was Jasmine dating anyone special?”

  “No one in particular. How did she die?”

  The question should have come sooner. And where was her disbelief? Didn’t disbelief normally come before acceptance?

  Plus, she knew Deborah, so she must have known about Justin. “Where did she go on holiday and with whom?” I asked.

  “I’ll ask the questions, Ms. Cutler.”

  Oops. “Yes, Detective.”

  “You really should sit down, Mrs. Updike,” Werner said, waiting for her to do so before he explained that Jasmine had been murdered, though he never used the word “strangled.”

  Mrs. Updike grasped her throat. “My poor baby.”

  Bit tardy for the baby bit, especially after the playgirl revelation, and okay, the throat thing seemed like more than a coincidence, but people did that.

  Werner noted it, too. I saw it in his expression as he took to examining the room at large.

  In one way, I wished I could hand him the picture of Mildred and Deborah. In another way, I wanted to figure out the relationship on my own.

  I wondered why and realized that I wanted to be the one to save my sister.

  “Excuse me,” Werner said. At the sound of footsteps on the porch, he went into the foyer.

  He came back with the officers who’d searched our house—was it just last night?—and a team of Rhode Island officers.

  “I know this is a bad time to intrude, Mrs. Updike, but I have a search warrant,” Werner said, producing it. “We’re looking for anything we can find that might lead us to your daughter’s killer.

  “Start in the victim’s bedroom,” he told his men. “Mrs. Updike?”

  She jumped as if surprised he was there. “Oh, third floor. The attic. It’s wide open and all hers.”

  “I’ll be up in a minute,” he told the officers before returning his attention to the dry-eyed mother. “We’ll have to hold your daughter until the medical examiner completes her report.”

  “How will I know when to make arrangements?”

  “You can make arrangements anytime.” Werner eyed her like a bug under glass. “But you can’t hold the funeral until you have the—until Ms. Updike is released.”

  He turned to me and I felt the temperature drop. “Ms. Cutler, I’d like to question you further. Wait for me outside, please. I’m sure Mrs. Updike would prefer to be alone with her thoughts right now.”

  “Maybe I should stay with her for a while. She’s had such a shock.”

  She looked at the picture I’d moved and her eyes went hard. “My neighbor will look after me. We’re great friends.”

  Werner accompanied me to the foyer.

  “Am I under suspicion?” I whispered.

  “Wait for me,” he repeated beneath his breath as he opened the door and indicated my path through it.

  I went but I wasn’t happy about it.

  Besides my car, there were now squad cars from two states and Werner’s unmarked car parked outside.

  The Updike house centered three mansions on the dead-end circle. The mansion on one side had been turned into a school, now closed. On the other, the neighbor who admitted that she didn’t know the Updikes.

  Why had Mildred Updike lied about knowing her neighbor? To get me the heck out?

  I walked that cul-de-sac in an endless circle for the better part of forty minutes, making notes and trying to make sense of every weird detail, including my newest vision, before Werner and the officers emerged.

  As I approached from the far side of the street, Werner spoke to his men. One of them got in Werner’s car and drove it away. The squad cars followed.

  Uh-oh.

  When I got to him, his eyes hard and promising retribution, Warner opened his hand my way with a gimme motion. “Your keys, please?”

  Scrap! “I’m not too drunk to drive.”

  “I’m driving. We need to talk.”

  “Fine!” I slammed them into his hand.

  “Ouch!” He removed the keys, and I saw that the point of my scissors charm had punctured his palm.

  He looked at the droplet of blood and didn’t seem the least surprised.

  I shrugged. “At least it wasn’t a thorn.”

  “Oh, yes, it was.” Shaking his head, he turned into a gentleman and tried to help me into my passenger seat.

  “I didn’t do it on purpose, and be careful not to get blood on my dress. This fabric is expensive.”

  He looked at his palm, then at my dress.

  “Don’t even think about it,” I said.

  On his way around the front of the car, he wiped his hand with his handkerchief.

  Like a sardine in my driver’s seat, he sat knees to chin, until he grunted and rolled back the seat.

  I’m afraid I let a giggle escape.

  Werner gave me the withering look I’d come to expect.

  “Can I help it if you’re taller? I’m not short but you’re a giant
.”

  He quirked a suggestive brow.

  “Are you coming on to me? Because that might be against the law, since my sister is your prime suspect.”

  “You’ve got a hell of an ego, Cutler. I was silently intimating that you should have called me ‘Giant’ instead of ‘Wiener.’”

  “Oh.” I played with the beading on my bag. “You know, you’ve really gotta let that go.”

  He whipped his gaze my way. “I tell myself that at least once a week, right after somebody reminds me. ‘Hey honey, you remember the Wiener? Want fries with that Wiener? Or ketchup, or onions, or mustard?’”

  I slapped a hand over my mouth. No wonder I was so good at macho-mocking. I’d started really young. I wondered if it ever came up in the locker room—

  Oy, blocking the visual of that pun!

  Lytton sighed, started my car, and pulled away from the curb. I looked back at the Updike house. Jasmine’s mother stepped away from an attic window and let the curtain fall.

  “Mrs. Updike now knows that you and I must have known each other before we ‘met’ inside,” I said.

  “Good. There’s something she’s not telling us. Maybe if she thinks we were pulling some kind of sting op, she’ll be more cooperative the next time I visit. Alone,” he stressed. “Without you, unless you want me to charge you with obstruction of justice.”

  “How did you get the blue off your face so fast?”

  “Changing the subject won’t help. We’ll get back to it, eventually. I found an effective face scrub.”

  “In women’s facials?”

  “Or I could haul you in now for interfering with a murder investigation.”

  “Touché.”

  His expression held a mix of anger and respect. “Why were you there, and what did she tell you before I arrived?”

  “Why hadn’t someone already told her about Jasmine?”

  “No address. We had to run her through the system.”

  The FBI could do it faster, I thought. “But Deborah, Mrs. Vancortland, I mean—”

  “Didn’t know her address.”

  Weird, or a lie. Sure, Deborah and Mildred might have lost touch, but something—my new sixth sense, perhaps— told me that it was more likely that Deborah didn’t want the police near her old friend.

  Werner looked at me, expecting an answer.

  “I went because I wanted to find out why Jasmine came to Mystic looking for Justin. If she hadn’t, my sister wouldn’t be the prime suspect in a murder case.”

  Werner did a double take. “Precisely.”

  “I didn’t mean it that way!”

  “Again, what did the Updike woman tell you before I got there? You’re not obstructing if you share what you know with the police.”

  I made a pretense of sighing so he’d think he won a hard battle, but truthfully I was dying to tell him. “There’s a picture of Mrs. Updike and Deborah Vancortland in the Updike sitting room, so if Justin and Jasmine met at college, it probably wasn’t by accident. Could be, given the state of the Updike house, that Mildred wanted Jasmine to marry up.”

  “Which has no bearing on the case,” Werner said.

  “It would if Deborah didn’t think Jasmine was good enough for Justin.”

  “Where have you been?” Werner asked. “Deborah Vancortland adored Jasmine Updike.”

  “Have you seen Deborah shed one tear? You know the one thing I learned living in New York and working in the fashion industry?”

  “Not to call people names, I hope.”

  “No, to survive, I actually had to learn to do that better.”

  Werner grunted in disbelief.

  “I did learn two things. One: Let go of the past. Two: Life is a matter of straight pins, light filters, packaging, and hype. Nothing is as it appears.”

  Thirteen

  When in doubt, wear red.

  —BILL BLASS

  Sherry came home late that afternoon no longer appearing innocent. A little grass on her shoes, a trail of beach sand, French twist hanging to her shoulders, and a self-conscious sprint to the stairs told the tale.

  I stepped from the ladies’ parlor, Sherry yipped in surprise, and the kitten screamed.

  “Maddie!” Sherry held a hand to her heart. “You scared the hell out of me, and so did wonder kitty here.” She reached over to pet my new baby, relaxing again into the comfort of my arms. “Yours?”

  I nodded. “Chakra Citrine Cutler, a watch cat from Fiona. Go on up before somebody sees you.”

  “Dad?” She looked down at herself and ran.

  I followed.

  In her bathroom, I put Chakra on the floor to further investigate her new home. Then I leaned against the door and crossed my arms.

  Sherry grabbed the hem of her white blouse and stopped. “What? Are you gonna watch me get into the tub?”

  “Afraid I’ll see the love bites?”

  “Shut! Up! Mad!” That was a repeat of her first complete sentence, a family joke quoted regularly.

  I took her black jacket off a hook and put it on a hanger. “What are you wearing to dinner at Deborah’s?”

  “My black—”

  “No, Cherry Pie. You’ve worn enough black. Time to be a scarlet woman. Be bold. Shout your innocence to the world. Well, to Deborah Vancortland, at least.”

  Sherry let her veneer of bravery fall away as she threw herself into my arms.

  Relief swept through me. My hard plastic doll had come to life again. Our bond, forged after the loss of our mother, would hopefully grow stronger in the wake of this nightmare.

  I’d seen Sherry through every milestone, toddler to teen to teacher. But being a murder suspect was the biggest hurdle she’d ever encountered and hardly something that I could kiss better.

  The floodgates opened and between us we released a waterfall of fear, confusion, and for my part: guilt for disliking Jasmine so intensely. Whatever our combined emotions, and there were plenty, I needed a good cry as much as Sherry did.

  When we parted, Sherry wore a harder shell than the one she’d shed in tears. Scrap! A new sadness weighed me down as I offered her a tissue before I took one for myself.

  Sherry may have firmed her spine, but if I planned to fix this, I needed to be stronger than her and smarter than the killer. Nothing a shot of tempered steel, and a boatload of luck, wouldn’t provide.

  I wondered if Aunt Fiona had a luck spell, if she worked spells at all. A witch, apparently. But spells? That question remained as yet unanswered.

  Still, I’d always believed that we made our own luck. So be it. I cleared my throat. “What happened when you disappeared with Jasmine the night she died?”

  Sherry tossed her tissue. “Jasmine went upstairs and I went outside.”

  “And?”

  “And . . . nothing.”

  “You vanished?” I asked, being facetious.

  “In a manner of speaking. Subject closed.”

  Vanished . . . in a manner of speaking.

  How many ways could one vanish? In dreams, day or night. In . . . visions, I had recently learned. In music or the arts. In a feast for the senses—sex, alcohol, drugs.

  Determined to force an answer, I stepped back, faced the question, and my sister, head on. But she looked so fragile with tear trails running through her peach blush, eyes like a raccoon—breakable, like fine porcelain—that I couldn’t push her over the edge.

  I couldn’t break her, not when she needed to be strong enough to face Deborah this very night.

  Whatever secret she and Justin were keeping, it couldn’t be that bad, unless—No. No way. Impossible. Sherry and Justin had nothing to do with Jasmine’s death. Of that I was certain.

  Three hours later, I was still pondering ways to vanish when my father stopped his Volvo at a marble arch, guarded by twin lions and centered by gates too decadent to be heaven’s. A proud sign read: Cortland House.

  While I imagined shocking Deborah by painting the lions’ lips and toenails red, a whirring, searchin
g video camera from a pricey, albeit aging, burglar alarm system focused on us.

  A hidden robot asked my father to identify himself, and after Dad did, a pair of gold filigreed gates began to part in clockwork approval, the reflection of the bright setting sun off the gilt temporarily blinding us.

  As the gates opened, a central pair of kissing swans parted, breaking the heart made by their necks, and allowing us into a world where one could vanish.

  Riding in the backseat, Sherry sat forward, probably looking for Justin.

  We approached the monstrous waterfront structure with its glossy marble façade and tall, Gothic-arched diamond-paned windows that caught the setting sun in a sinister wink.

  “Wooly knobby knits!” I said. “What the Hermès? Cortland House belongs in a horror movie.” Despite a pastel flower garden, centered by an angel fountain, a rainbow in its mist.

  I turned to Sherry. “Now, that’s just trying too hard.”

  She actually smiled. “Justin’s always been so embarrassed by it that in tenth grade, he told the whole class that his parents rented it for his birthday party. The day he got his trust fund, he bought a house downtown.”

  “We’re poor in comparison,” my father said, slowing, as if he’d rather turn the car around and forget the whole thing.

  “Justin’s not ashamed of our house, Dad. He feels more at home there than here.”

  I could see why. A third-world country could be fed for a week on the cost of gardening alone, as my sister Brandy would say. She believed that wealth should be shared with the needy, and I respected her for it.

  Off to the sides, spiral sculptured shrubs and weeping cherry trees lived beside pristine gardens in symmetrical designs and showy colors.

  As we approached the front door, and the uniformed valet waiting to park our car, I half expected my father to quote from Don Quixote about tilting at windmills as he charged through the portico and kept going. But to my surprise, he stopped, without quote, for Sherry’s sake, I’m sure.

  Looking embarrassed to have the car door opened for him, Dad cleared his throat as he handed the valet his keys. “Please tell the Vancortlands that their hapless future relatives have arrived.”