A Veiled Deception

by Annette Blair

  I expected it to be hot in the carriage house without air-conditioning. So I wore a cool, peach Louise Goldin barely there mini, with a cutout circle baring my midriff. One of those desirably funky outfits that made you look like a crew member on a starship. I loved it and paired it with Blahnik raffia beaded mules and a woven-straw flowerpot bag.

  When I arrived, Eve’s car sat empty in the cracked cement lot outside, but my black-garbed friend was nowhere to be seen.

  Two boards lay on the ground out front, and about the time I noticed how they would fit the design crossing the door, Eve opened it and stepped outside. “Welcome to the shack.” She looked me over and rolled her eyes. “Chill, Mad. The fashion police are not waiting inside.”

  Eve had a gift for snark.

  “My outfit isn’t about what I look like, Meyers. Yes, it’s a fashion statement, but I couldn’t care less about what anybody else thinks; it’s about how I feel. Cool. Awesome. Inspired. Confident. Speaking of which, when did you go platinum blonde, and how did you get inside?”

  “I went platinum yesterday. Makes my black clothes more striking, don’t you think?”

  “Yep, just what you needed. A little color in your life. Snort.”

  She stuck her tongue out at me. That’s how long we’d been friends. “As for this place,” she said, chin high, leading the way. “I broke in.”

  “So much for Dolly’s theory about keeping out the riffraff. I’ll have to get an alarm system.”

  “Riffraff?” Eve rounded on me. “You? You’ll have to do what?”

  I heard the echo of my own words the way she must have. “Gee. Don’t know where that came from.”

  “What are you up to?” She followed me inside.

  I flipped on a light and fell in deep doo-doo, otherwise known as . . . love at first sight.

  Talk about secrets. A current of anxiety and expectation crackled around me. I swear that I heard the combined mourning of a century, a humming wail in a sad and unending jumble of loss and death. But beyond that was a thread of celebration and new beginnings. How odd.

  The hair on my arms stood up, while silent cries shifted the air in subtle, sweeping currents, both soft and taunting.

  I shivered and Eve chuckled. “Pretty tucking beautiful for a shack,” she said, borrowing my designer vernacular.

  So beautiful, it should be listed on a historic register, not that I’d suggest it. Under those guidelines, it’d be hell to remodel.

  Remodel? Did I want to do that? Oh, I hoped so. Somebody had to take care of it after Dolly . . . “No wonder Dante and Dolly insisted on preserving it. It’s beautiful.”

  “It’s ginormous,” Eve said. “Bigger than a barn, though it smells like one.”

  “The smell can be fixed.” I ran my hand along the front wall. “How many barns have you seen with polished mahogany walls? I have to say, there isn’t much damage, considering.”

  “Not that you can see,” Eve cautioned. “Don’t discount concealed damage. It could be rotting from the inside.”

  “It’d still be worth fixing.” We’d come in through a people door, but the huge double-wide barn doors, two sets, one to the right and one at the front, opened wide enough for a team of horses to pull a hearse out.

  Speaking of which, not all the “car” stalls were empty. Color me wigged.

  “Nice hearse.” Eve gave me a wink, wink, nudge. “Museum quality?”

  “Talk about vintage. I wonder if Dolly knows it’s here.”

  “Dolly?”

  I told her about old Mrs. Sweet and Underhill.

  Eve hooted. “Dolly and the undertaker. Talk about strange bed partners.”

  At that moment, near the hearse, I saw a shadow brighten . . . or . . . materialize. A vision, a different kind, a man . . . wearing a top hat? I turned to Eve. “This is the new millennium, right?”

  “Did you have another vision?”

  “Guess not.” Ghost not, I hoped.

  The vision disappeared before I could confirm it, but I pretty much had my answer. Top-hat guy didn’t scare me as much as the general atmosphere when we got here. And even that had eased to near-comfortable.

  “Move it, Cutler. Let’s scope out the joint.”

  “Wait. Dolly drew me a map.” I took it from my purse, studied it, and refused to look in the direction of my apparition.

  “Speaking of stalls,” I said, excitement erasing unease. “Follow me.” I led Eve around behind the stairs, built against an inner wall, and stopped to take in the sight. “Horse stalls,” I said. Gorgeous, with curly black wrought-iron corners and brass trim finials fronting each stall.

  “Would this not make an excellent fitting room? All I’d have to do is clean it up, and the stalls would need full-height doors.”

  Eve placed her hand on my brow. “Not running a fever. Fitting room for what, Cutler?”

  I faced my conscience, raised my chin, and threw back my shoulders. “It’s all coming together, Eve. I believe I want to open a vintage clothing shop. Something so great that I’ll have New York collectors driving north on weekends.”

  “What will you call it?” Eve snapped. “Mad . . . as a Hatter?”

  “Hey, good one. I thought of another possibility on my way over. Mad-Vintageous.”

  “Mad’s Outrageous fits the situation better. Come on, Mad, you gotta think longer than three days and one murder on this.”

  I ignored her. I was good at that. “Let’s go look around upstairs.”

  I hit the light switch at the bottom of the stairs and the second floor lit up as well. Great for now, because I wasn’t ready to come face-to-face with a shadow wearing a top hat in the dark.

  “Note to me for the future, though: ‘Have circuits split.’”

  We climbed the enclosed stairway, pushing each other ahead, until we reached an elbow-to-elbow stalemate at the top, Blahnik mules and Doc Martens hot glued to the last step.

  Finally we agreed to emerge together on the count of three. And we did, pulling, clutching, and tripping each other like cowardly scarecrows.

  I didn’t know what to focus on first, the wide-open floor space, its size and potential—for storage and maybe a couple of apartments—or the selection of vintage caskets displayed on pedestals along the back wall.

  Eve marched toward the front of the building. Gun boots were great for marching. “What the hell is this?” She toed a huge, dull silver, oval metal tub, quadruple the size of those big, old copper boilers, like the one my great-grand-mother once washed me in.

  I went closer to examine it, squeaked, and backed up.

  Eve hadn’t gotten as close, but she backed away as well.

  “You figured it out, didn’t you?” I asked.

  “Nope, I’m following your lead on general principle.”

  “Fine,” I said, “imagine it skirted and filled with ice blocks and sitting in the middle of a Victorian parlor.”

  Eve nodded. “Okaay.”

  I gave her a double take. “With an occupied casket on top?”

  She jumped back. “Holy crap!”

  We turned to run, but we stopped short at the sight of the caskets—light pine, ruddy cherry, golden oak, and dark walnut—with that old-fashioned shape—six-sided but elongated, dead-body style.

  Ancient caskets. All sizes.

  Eve sighed. “They’re closed.”

  “So?”

  “Sooooo, do you think there’s a body in any of them?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Well, undertakers don’t know when they’re going to die, do they?” Eve whispered. “The last one could have been in the middle of . . . somebody.”

  Yeah, like Dolly, I thought. “Don’t you think the deceased’s family would have collected the body?”

  “If the deceased had a family.” Eve nodded. “It’s our duty to open them.”

  “You brat, you’re dying to open them.”

  Eve shivered. “I am?” Her sober expression turned to a grin. “I am. I am.�
�

  I chuckled. “Go for it.”

  As she tiptoed over to the first one, my left side got cold, then my neck, same side, but I refused to turn toward the source of the chill. Obviously Eve didn’t see anything, because she’d just shot me an animated grin.

  An icy draft chilled my ear, like a breath of winter that made me want to cup it to warm it, then . . . “Hello, there” loud in my ear.

  I screamed.

  Eve screamed.

  We ran smack into each other and fell on our asses.

  Eve caught her breath. “I’m gonna get you for scaring me like that.”

  “Mouse,” I said.

  “Yeah, well, if you’re gonna buy this shack, get used to them.” She scrambled to her feet and tiptoed back to the caskets, as if, after our screams, she could possibly disturb anyone.

  “Gee, thanks,” I said, wiping dust from my hands as Mr. Gorgeous and See-Through appeared facing me, arms crossed, enjoying the view.

  I froze, knees up; his dimpled smile was so wide, I squeaked and scrambled to my feet. Of all the days to wear a pair of lucky panties—mint green silk briefs with clusters of clovers and “Nice Shamrocks” written on the front. “That was rude,” I told him.

  “Hey,” Eve said. “Sometimes you need to hear the truth.”

  “I guess.” I’d been talking to McShadow, of course, but she didn’t know that.

  I went to look out over Bank Street and, as I expected, a freeze rolled up my right side. No more putting it off; I turned toward the chill, and icicles shot through me. “Dante?” I whispered beneath my breath.

  He tipped his hat. “At your service.”

  “I don’t think so.”

  “Nice panties.”

  “Peeping Tom.”

  “Even a dead man needs the occasional thrill.”

  “Afraid to come and watch?” Eve called, goading me.

  I turned to her. “Believe me, I’m not squeamish. Go ahead. Open one. I dare you.”

  “I will. Okay, I am. Now.” She pulled the cover up about a quarter of an inch and sniffed.

  My bark of laughter echoed through the cavernous top floor.

  Eve shot me a disgusted look and threw the cover back so fast, she screamed like a maniac. When she stopped, she looked inside. “It’s empty.”

  “I’m going to look around downstairs a bit more,” I said. “Scare yourself silly.”

  “Okay, I will.”

  I headed back to the fitting room—I mean to the horse stalls—where bits of hay still lingered. Dolly obviously had the exterminator in regularly, because I hadn’t seen a mouse. Otherwise, the horse stalls would be overrun with them and the place would be in much worse condition, if only from vermin, termites, and carpenter ants. I’d have the building inspected, of course, but I thought it looked pretty sound. More so than I could have imagined.

  I turned to find Dante leaning against a stall, like a playboy of old, though I could see a brass finial through his shoulder. Handsome as sin, he exuded charm in his tux with tails, top hat, and gray pinstripe pants.

  Eye candy.

  Maybe Dolly’s mention of The Philadelphia Story colored my thinking, but between his twinkling blue eyes and the gray at his temples, Dolly’s ghost sure made me think of a certain dimple-chinned icon. On the other hand, maybe Dante was the reason Dolly loved The Philadelphia Story so much. “She never forgot you,” I said. “Dolly, I mean.”

  “I never forgot her. Where did they plant her?”

  I couldn’t help my smile. “She celebrated her hundred and third birthday yesterday.”

  “She’s still alive? Good for her. Give her my best.”

  Yeah, right.

  “I thought sure she’d passed the torch when you showed up.”

  “I’m thinking of buying the place. You have someplace else you could haunt?”

  “No. I can’t seem to get out of here.”

  “You probably left something undone.”

  “Dolly?”

  A witty, slightly bawdy ghost. I smiled despite myself. “The ghosts I live with don’t talk. How come you do?”

  “Undertakers make peace with death. No sober hang-ups about where I am or what state I’m in. I know I’m dead and stuck here, but it’s been too quiet. What do you plan to do with my carriage house? Something that’ll get the place humming, I hope.”

  “I’m thinking of opening a vintage dress shop. This would be a ladies’ fitting room. Could you live, er, exist with that?”

  He gave me a bold and thorough, eye-twinkling once-over, the same way he’d looked up my skirt, stroking me, literally, with his gaze. Wow. I couldn’t believe he saw my lucky panties.

  “Love your shamrocks?” he asked, brow raised.

  “What are you, a mind reader?”

  “No, but I’m aces at reading panties. And I must say if that’s an example of what women are wearing these days, I’m sorry I’m dead.” He reached toward my circle of bare midriff but I shivered from the cold and stepped back.

  “Your customers won’t have much to take off in this dressing room,” he said, “but I’m game. The truth is: You may never get me out of here.” His chin dimple deepened.

  I wasn’t really having this conversation, I told myself, until Eve screamed again, reminding me that I must be. Two caskets open.

  “Dante, how much do you know about murder?”

  “I never killed anybody.”

  “But you must have buried a few people who were murdered.”

  “More than a few.”

  “That doesn’t instill confidence. Are you the only ghost in residence?”

  “For the most part. The others, they come and go, and they don’t say much. Me, I miss people. Conversation.”

  I’d lived with spirits for years at home and taken the gift for granted, until my mother told me that not everybody saw them, and if I mentioned it, people might not believe me. I could as easily live with them here and say nothing about it.

  But a talking ghost? New territory. Dante would certainly pose an interesting, if not a seductive, challenge. “I’m investigating a murder,” I told him. “My sister is the prime suspect. I don’t really know where to start.”

  Dante rubbed his square chin, his dimple deep. “The killer is in the details,” he said.

  “What?”

  “In my undertaking days, I tracked plenty of investigations waiting for the police to release the bodies. The cops, they start with the obvious suspects, but the fact is, it’s never obvious. Start at the bottom and work your way up. Let the tiniest details string together like links in a chain that will get stronger. That’s my take.”

  “Pretty insightful, if you ask me. Then again, I’m the kind that usually tries to go for the quickest approach; starting slow will drive me crazy.”

  Oh, Lordy, his grin. Be still my heart.

  Eve screamed again. Three caskets open.

  “She nuts or what?” Dante asked.

  “Eve, she’s brilliant. A computer geek.”

  “A who what?”

  “Never mind. I’ll explain another time.” Oy. What am I, nuts for promising to explain computers to a ghost. “Why can’t Eve see you?”

  “You have the sight. One plumber in the last seventy years saw me, and when I said ‘hello,’ to him, he dropped dead of a heart attack. I can’t hurt you. Just talk to me. I can’t even touch you, and you look pretty damned touch-able.”

  Hmm. A ghostly compliment. “I understand. Our house is haunted. Never bothered me, but you and I, we can only talk when nobody else is around. Got that?”

  “Deal. Now, when are you moving in?”

  “I’m not . . . at least, I don’t think I am. This place would be for my shop.”

  He winked. “Think about moving in.”

  Wooly knobby knits; I must be nuts for being flattered to have a ghost flirting with me. I’d best talk to Aunt Fiona before I thought another minute about buying the place.

  I heard Eve coming down the stai
rs and went to meet her. “Did you open them all?” I asked. “I didn’t think I heard enough screams.”

  “Yes,” she croaked, pointing to her throat. “Sore.”

  “No wonder. Any bodies?”

  She shook her head in disappointment.

  “Hot tea with honey and lemon would help your throat.” I was thinking of all the places to start from the bottom. Tunney’s butcher shop. Bartleby’s, the Harp and Hound, Mermaid’s Cove, and Whyevernot, to name a few. Then there was the Cake Lady. All very unlikely places, but the cake lady had one thing we needed. Hot tea. “How about we grab tea and pastries at the Cake Lady while I ask a few questions?”

  “Why the Cake Lady?” Eve rasped.

  “To see if she saw anybody disappear from the party the other night.” I could hardly explain McShadow’s suggestion to start from the bottom suspect of the list during a murder investigation, now could I?

  I didn’t believe that I was taking advice from a ghost.

  Twenty

  It’s all about good taste.

  —GIORGIO ARMANI

  The Cake Lady served pastries filled with meats and cheeses, tiny ones, so you could get an assortment that included dessert pastry and make orgasmic noises through the whole meal if you wanted.

  The place smelled of almonds, chocolate sin, honeyed nuts, and strawberries. The soft ambiance welcomed customers with pastels . . . in the icings, the pastry box ribbons, robin’s egg walls, the multihued check-print valances, and the wildflower bouquets on each round table.

  You could see your reflection in the curve-top glass case. If you concentrated, you could also feel the expansion of your girth and the clench of your arteries hardening.

  Nevertheless, Eve and I both wore our invisible pig-out bibs. Their presence had to do with a look neither of us could pinpoint but we recognized in each other, and when we wore them at the same time, watch out.

  I went up to the counter and ordered the patisserie sampler for two. Oink. “Oh, and tea, hot tea right away, please. My friend’s throat is raw.”

  “Tea with honey, then,” the cake lady said.

  I hated that I couldn’t remember her name, but it would be rude to snap my fingers to get her attention later.