Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
One
Two
Three
Four
Five
Six
Seven
Eight
Nine
Ten
Eleven
Twelve
Thirteen
Fourteen
Fifteen
Sixteen
Seventeen
Eighteen
Nineteen
Twenty
Twenty-one
Twenty-two
Twenty-three
Twenty-four
Twenty-five
Twenty-six
Twenty-seven
Twenty-eight
Twenty-nine
Thirty
Thirty-one
Thirty-two
Thirty-three
Thirty-four
Thirty-five
Thirty-six
Thirty-seven
Thirty-eight
Thirty-nine
Forty
Forty-one
Forty-two
Forty-three
Forty-four
Forty-five
Forty-six
Forty-seven
Forty-eight
Forty-nine
A Lesson in Fake Designer Handbags
Teaser chapter
Cryptic Crystals
I fished through the tissue, careful not to touch the dress, and finally opened the parchment envelope that had been taped between the tissue in the box. Mad, Sweetie, I always wanted you to have this. I hoped someday to give it to you myself. If you have it, I’m dead. Use your talents wisely. Love, Dom.
“Oh my stars,” I said. “Dominique DeLong died.”
“No kidding. It’s all over the front page of the Times,” Eve said. “She collapsed during an off- Broadway performance.”
“She would rather have died on Broadway,” I muttered, aware that I was in shock.
PRAISE FOR
A Veiled Deception
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The Scot, the Witch and the Wardrobe
“Sassy dialogue, rich sexual tension, and plenty of laughs make this an immensely satisfying return to Blair’s world of witchcraft.”
—Publishers Weekly
The Kitchen Witch
“Blair has crafted a fun and sexy romp.” —Booklist
“Magic. The Kitchen Witch sizzles. Ms. Blair’s writing is smooth as a fine Kentucky bourbon. Sexy, fun, top-notch entertainment.”
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Berkley Prime Crime titles by Annette Blair
A VEILED DECEPTION
LARCENY AND LACE
DEATH BY DIAMONDS
Berkley Sensation titles by Annette Blair
THE KITCHEN WITCH
MY FAVORITE WITCH
THE SCOT, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE
SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH
GONE WITH THE WITCH
NEVER BEEN WITCHED
THE NAKED DRAGON
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DEATH BY DIAMONDS
A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author
PRINTING HISTORY
Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2010
Copyright © 2010 by Annette Blair.
Excerpt from Skirting the Grave by Annette Blair copyright © by Annette Blair.
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This book is dedicated with eternal devotion to the boy who sat beside me in seventh grade and generally annoyed the heck out of me. The blind date I discovered I knew, the man I married, and the father of my children. My best friend, and my heart’s haven. Bob Blair, who makes every book possible, and taught me that love means never having to clean the snow off my own car.
Author’s Note
Mystick Falls and its police department are figments of my imagination situated near the delightfully real Mystic, Connecticut, where Madeira Cutler’s fictional vintage clothing shop is located. Also real are: the World War II spy mentioned later in the book, Ferncliff Cemetery and the stars interred there, and Coco Chanel’s little black dress, as described, though it may not still exist today. Diamond Sands, the off-Broadway musical, is also a figment of my imagination.
One
Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.
—ELSA SCHIAPARELLI
As I drove to work that morning, I remembered the dream I’d had last night: Me as a toddler being passed between my mother and Aunt Fiona, the two of them dancing and chanting in rhyme beside the Mystic River beneath a full and magical moon.
Not a new dream, but an omen. Something in my life was about to change, possibly for the better.
I bit my lip, until from the top of the hill I saw the gorgeous weather vane atop my building, a ship with a mellow copper-green patina, sailing in the wind in whatever direction the universe determined.
The sight never failed to add to my sense of destiny.
No wonder I always arrived jazzed. After all, wearing designer vintage fashions is practically a requirement for a vintage dress shop owner
. Every delightful day.
I mean, how lucky can a girl get? I was home again. No more designing clothes for Faline in New York City. Faline, who took credit for everyone’s designs. She who must be loved and obeyed and agreed with, ad nauseum.
But that was the past. Today, I was looking toward the future.
In deference to my dream, feeling the need to be ready for anything, I’d chosen an eighties Jean Muir “perfect suit” with a flare at the waist and a red that brought ripe raspberries to mind. Given the snow, I wore sturdy boots and carried my fifties Ferragamos with spool heels and gloved-suede arches in the same red.
To add whimsy to classic perfection, I picked a Lulu Guinness “mansion” bag that looked like a handbag shop with a black-and-white-striped awning and a scattering of red and pink purses in the windows.
As I turned from Main to Bank Street, the architectural beauty and eye-pleasing colors of my shop—sage, eggplant, and lavender—filled me with joy.
I revel in every assurance that my restoration of the former morgue-cum-funeral chapel carriage house adds a certain cachet to the charm of historic downtown Mystic.
I believe it and I wallow in it. I attempt to endow the luxurious enchantment of that confidence into the original fashions I design under my own Mad Magic label.
You see, I’m a recent escapee from the highest levels of the New York fashion industry. You can call me Mad, or Maddie, unless you’re my father, Professor Harry Cutler, in which case you will call me Madeira, whether I want you to or not.
As for the magic halves of my shop and label, I’m also my mother’s daughter, not a witch, precisely, but I have this whole psychic thing going on, which I apparently inherited from her. I can’t ask her to confirm Aunt Fiona’s assertion. Mom died when I was ten, though she still watches out for me, especially since I came back to Connecticut. Mom was a first-class chocoholic, so the sudden scent of chocolate, with no one in sight, is a—you’ll excuse the pun—dead giveaway.
Compared to Mom, I’m merely fudging my way up the sweet-tooth ranks. Besides chocolate, I’m into seeking and selling delectable retro fashions and spreading the joy of the classic lines.
My life seems perfect, doesn’t it, but there’s one drawback: Certain vintage clothes speak to me, in more ways than the norm and often about dead people. I not only “hear” what they have to say, the outfits I touch give me visions, during which I often zone out to view and hear snippets of greed, jealousy, hate, vengeance, secrets, all of which often translate into: means, motive, and opportunity, vintage style.
But since everything’s been quiet on the psychometric front for several months now, I’m hoping that was only a phase.
I pulled into my plowed parking lot rimmed in mounded snow, where a Wings Special Delivery truck sat beside my best friend Eve’s Mini Cooper. Eve, aka the dress-in-black-to-please-myself man magnet, had already taken to charming the driver’s khaki winter socks off.
“Hey,” I said, joining them. “Am I late?”
“No, I’m early as usual,” Eve said, “and glad of it.”
I had in one hand a clear glass vase overflowing with red and white carnations as she filled the other with a mint mocha chip Frappuccino topped with chocolate whipped cream, my newest vice, while she shoved the morning paper between my purse straps and my arm.
With her hands now free, she signed for and accepted the box from the driver before she slipped her business card into Tall, Tan, and Do Me’s pocket. “Later,” she told him with a wink.
I don’t know if he winked back. The fur trim at the top front of his leather aviator hat—earflaps down—tilted a bit too far forward, and his jacket’s knit turtleneck stood zipped straight up to his goggles, presumably to protect him from snow glare . . . at thirty thousand feet, maybe.
Eve and I watched until his truck turned east on Main and disappeared, and I realized that I’d never heard his voice. “You’re my hero,” I said, eyeing Eve’s overall getup. “So, Boobs McCleavage, is that a corset top pushing your assets up and out there? Are you going psychic on me? You’re dressed like you knew a new hunk was coming into your life.”
“Nah, it’s part of my new look. Do you like it?”
“I love it. It’s so not you.”
“Gee, thanks, she who stuffs her A cup.”
I chuckled. “A and a half,” I said correcting her. “Did the guy join your stud-of-the-month club or what?”
Eve shivered, winked, and zipped up her black military jacket to protect her slightly ruffled, goose-pimply cleavage from the snow-swirling elements. “He will.”
Two
After breathing, eating and sleeping—and excluding a couple of delicious optional extras—one of the fundamental pleasures of the human body is to clothe it.
—LINDA WATSON, TWENTIETH CENTURY FASHION
I took Chakra, my guard kitty, from between my Honda Element’s two front seats, where her new cat carrier fit perfectly. I’d designed it for winter or summer. Right now, it was double snuggly with its removable sherpa lambs’ wool cashmere lining—printed with black paws on taupe. An adapter for the also-removable warming pad beneath her plugged into my dashboard.
“Boy, Chakra rides in style,” Eve said. “You gonna sell those carriers in your shop?”
“Maybe,” I said, “though they might be a bit too modern for a vintage dress shop.”
“Yeah, the moonroof’s a dead giveaway.”
“Hey,” I said. “For summer, it has a zip-on Florida room. Highly sought after.”
“What, no pool?”
I elbowed Eve as I unlocked my shop’s lavender door and the bells in my wreath made of handmade purple and magenta hearts—no two alike—tinkled.
Inside, Dante Underhill, former undertaker and hunky housebound ghost, waited for our usual morning chat. He even saluted when Chakra, at the sight of his ghostly self, banshee-howled “Ma-dei-ra,” as always, at the top of her overdeveloped kitty lungs, her version of my name never failing to make Dante smile and shake his head. I opened Chakra’s carrier so she could begin her morning rounds.
Dante had seventy years’ worth of juicy gossip to share and tended to serve it to me in detailed, breakfast-sized portions that set me up for the day.
I had never enjoyed gossip more, mostly because I knew some of the aging players, or at least I’d heard of them from their descendents. Mild- mannered neighbors, or their ancestors, with checkered pasts. Who’d a thunk it?
Today, however, Dante saw Eve, saluted, and disappeared. Eve didn’t often join me at the shop mornings, because she taught computer science at UConn, but when she came, she stuck around for a while.
Eve didn’t know Dante existed, and since she got a bit edgy where ghosts and magic were concerned, I’d never mentioned my ghostly Cary Grant clone.
None the wiser, she relaxed in what I thought of as Dante’s chair to read the morning paper, and before long, after I’d traded my boots for my Ferragamos and hung my coat, Chakra curled up on Eve’s lap.
First order of business, find a vintage purse in unsaleable condition to decorate my counter. Today it was a Badgley Mischka crocodile in jungle red into which I set my overflowing vase of red and white carnations and baby’s breath. Gorgeous. A yummy conversation piece, vintage style.
Basically, I tortured myself every few days by breaking my heart over what people did to classic vintage purses but I consoled myself by using them as Vintage Magic bouquet holders.
Chakra jumped to the counter to sniff, circle, and generally check it out before she meowed her approval, hopped to the floor, and strolled over to catapult into Eve’s embrace.
After I turned the sign to Open, I took a pair of scissors to the package delivered by a man dressed like a flying squirrel.
Leery about touching a potential vintage clothing item I knew nothing about, because of my visions and the unsolved murders they’d dragged me into, I carefully parted tissue layers, touching only the paper.
I recognized the dress imme
diately but could hardly wrap my brain around having it in my shop. About ten years ago, while in fashion school, I won the opportunity to design this awesome seafoam gown, trimmed in pricey cubic zirconias, for a Broadway actress, now a dear friend. But since she, too, collected designer vintage and one-of-a-kind originals, I couldn’t imagine why she would have sent a dress we both loved back to me.
Dominique DeLong had always been a die-hard note writer and wouldn’t send an email if her life depended on it. So I fished through the tissue, careful not to touch the dress, and finally found the familiar embossed parchment envelope that could not have slipped to the bottom of the box, since it was taped—aka hidden?—between layers and layers of tissue.
Keeping my itchy fingers away from the dress in the box, I opened the envelope carefully and tried to shrug off the shivering heebie-jeebies raising the hair along my nape and arms.
Mad, sweetie, Dominique had written. I always wanted you to have this. I hoped someday to give it to you, in person. If you have it, and not from my hand, I’m dead.
I wanted to get it to you before it was too late. At any rate, “Tag. You’re it. Run, do not walk, to the nearest exit.”
Use your talents wisely. Love, Dom.
Three
Design is a revelation to me. It’s like taking something that is not alive and giving it form, shape, substance, and life.
—GEOFFREY BEENE
“Is this some kind of sick joke?” I snapped, denial beating in my chest. “Dominique DeLong is dead?”
“I’ll say.” Eve sat forward, waking Chakra so the kitten stretched and teased the newspaper into playing with her. “It’s all over the Times,” Eve said, holding the paper from Chakra’s reach. “It says here that the actress collapsed during an off- Broadway musical performance of Diamond Sands.”
Death by Diamonds Page 1