Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3)

by Angela M. Sanders

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Tony insisted. Clarke tightened his grip on the Reverend’s arm.

  “I know you didn’t. You were set up. That’s why the storage room was jumbled so Daniel sprained his ankle. The real murderer needed time to point the finger at you for the chef’s death at the very least. Wilson’s death could still be explained as a mistake, an allergic reaction.” Joanna’s pulse raced. She looked toward the library again. Was anyone there?

  “So you’re saying I faked my injury,” Daniel said.

  “At first I wondered, but I know better now. Knowing you were planning to ski out, someone arranged the ski poles on the floor so you’d trip and fall.” Joanna paused. “The thing is, Wilson’s death was not an accident, and the chef knew it. He was leaning out of the dumbwaiter on the second floor, smoking a cigarette, and he saw someone put clam dip in Wilson’s sandwich. Outside the dumbwaiter is a clear view to the breakfast room where Wilson, Clarke, and Daniel were playing cards that night. I saw it myself when Portia and I photographed the dumbwaiter. The chef wasn’t too happy about being blamed for a rock star’s death, even if it did appear accidental. He confronted the murderer with an empty carton of clam dip he found in the trash.”

  “This is ridiculous. Why are you wasting our time? We know Tony is the murderer. He attacked me, remember?” Bette sat straight up. Too much champagne puffed the edges of her face, but a pulse ticked at her temple.

  “No. He didn’t,” Joanna said calmly. If this next move worked, she was home free.

  “Oh please. He stabbed me in the neck. There’s no question about it.”

  Tension gripped Joanna’s throat. “Take off your scarf.”

  Panic, then understanding, crossed Bette’s face. “I will not.”

  “Take it off. If you were stabbed, I want to see it.”

  “I showed you. I showed everyone—”

  “Take it off.”

  “You’d better take it off, Bette,” Clarke said.

  Eyes wide, Bette stared at Clarke. “What?”

  “Do it,” he said.

  With a questioning expression, she loosened the knot on her scarf and it fell free. Her neck was unblemished.

  Joanna relaxed. “You faked the wound with a smear of lipstick. Guerlain Habit Rouge, to be exact. You only flashed it to convince us.”

  Clarke stepped back from Bette in shock. “You—you killed Wilson?”

  Bette’s eyes narrowed. She leapt from the couch and grabbed Clarke by the neck. Portia and Daniel yanked her back. “You traitor,” Bette yelled. “He’s the one who killed Wilson. He’s the one who put clam dip in Wilson’s sandwich.”

  “Bette, calm down. Blaming me isn’t going to change anything. Besides, Joanna has no proof there was ever clam dip in this lodge.”

  “Actually, I do,” Joanna said. “I saw the container hidden under the chef’s mattress.”

  “Really? Show me. Show me the container.” His voice was calm, probably the same tone he took when explaining a difficult stock transaction to a client.

  “I can’t. It’s not there any more,” Joanna said.

  Clarke started to shake his head slowly, and he opened his mouth to speak.

  Joanna interrupted him. “But I have the lid.” She withdrew the clam dip lid from her pocket. “It’s a little disgusting, having been in the garbage and all. I guess you forgot about that didn’t you, Clarke? What I find even more interesting is that it’s a brand we don’t have in Oregon. The chef flew into Portland and came straight here. There’s no way he could have bought it. I’m willing to bet we’ll find that this brand is sold in California.”

  “Bette lives in California,” Clarke said.

  Bette lunged for him again but was held back. “You’re setting me up,” she growled. Bubbles started barking, and Marianne pulled the dog into her lap.

  “Relax, Bette. He can’t testify against you. Husbands can’t testify against their wives. Clarke knows that very well.”

  “What are you saying?” Penny stood and grasped the back of the couch.

  “Your mother and Clarke married not long ago,” Joanna said. “It’s true, isn’t it, Bette? You’ve hinted at it all along, and I saw your wedding ring in your cosmetics case. Besides, once Clarke knew you were on to his plan, he decided it would be better to marry you and get your help—and silence.”

  “This—this is ludicrous,” Sylvia said. “And yet plausible, but I can’t quite believe it all.”

  “Sylvia is right. You’re delusional.” Clarke said. “It is true that Bette and I are married, but it wasn’t for any mercenary reason. We love each other.”

  “You beast.” Bette shot Clarke a look of pure hatred.

  “We didn’t want to upstage Penny’s wedding by announcing it,” Clarke said. Daniel and Sylvia exchanged a look, and Daniel moved closer to Clarke. Clarke continued. “Besides, what do I have to gain from Wilson’s death? He left nothing to me in his will. You seem to have everything figured out. Explain that to me.”

  “You stand to gain nothing from his will,” Joanna said. “Sit down.”

  Clarke looked momentarily confused, then smug. He stepped back and sat on the arm of the couch. “Exactly.”

  “But you’ve been skimming from his estate, possibly for years. Bette figured that out, didn’t you? You looked into Wilson’s finances and uncovered a few regularities. Clarke wasn’t happy when he figured out you were on to him. He knew the only way he could silence you was by marrying you.”

  “That’s not true,” Bette said. “He loves me. Right, Clarke?”

  Clarke’s gaze darted through the room.

  “Right?” Bette repeated. Clarke didn’t reply. She turned away from him. “I might have a few things to say about that—that beast.”

  “And so did the investigators who went over Wilson’s accounts. I saw the bill for the hours they spent on it, but not the report. My guess is that we’ll find it in Clarke’s luggage.”

  The tension in the room was palpable. Wow, this Poirot stuff really did work. But nothing moved in the library. Maybe she should have waited, made sure before she opened this Pandora’s box. Please let him be there.

  “What are you saying?” Bette asked.

  “You and Clarke are going to jail for murder.”

  The room was silent. Joanna glanced again at the library, but nothing moved. Where the hell was Crisp? She’d laid out the murders once she got his signal. Had she been mistaken? Now what? She cleared her voice and opened her mouth to call out for Crisp.

  In a flash, Clarke leapt the two steps from the couch. He pulled Joanna’s arms behind her back and pressed a hand over her mouth. She tasted salty skin as she bit him. He jerked her arms back again. She screamed, but his hand sealed her mouth shut. Sylvia stood abruptly, and Daniel laid a warning hand on her arm.

  “Except for her” —Clarke yanked Joanna’s arms again and pain shot through her shoulders— “we’re all family. Tony—the Reverend,” he added with a sneer, “will be back in prison soon, where he belongs. As family, we need to stick together. It’s true, I locked the chef outside. As if his stupid reputation was more important than this family’s.”

  “I don’t care. You killed Wilson,” Penny said. She raised her hand, calm and firm, still holding Portia’s camera. “She has photos of the sandwich. She has photos of everything. With the clam dip lid and the financial report, you’re finished.”

  “Penny, honey,” Bette said, her voice all sweetness, “What’s done is done. Nothing we do will bring Wilson back. What matters now is that we get past all this unpleasantness. Someone will come to get us soon, and we’ll leave this wretched lodge behind with everything that happened here.”

  “You and Clarke killed Wilson. Say it to my face. You killed him. Say it to me and I’ll throw the camera into the fire. We can get rid of the report. The evidence against you will be gone. It will be Joanna’s word against ours,” Penny said.

  Joanna groaned through the hand pressed over her mouth,
and her heart plunged. Penny would do that? She’d let her fiancé’s killer go free? Joanna had been so wrong to trust her. One of Clarke’s hands dropped to her neck and tightened. She winced.

  Portia watched, transfixed, not even moving to save her camera. Penny held it a few feet from the flames. Clarke’s grip on Joanna loosened just a notch.

  “All right,” Clarke said finally. “It’s true. I killed him. But it was for your own good. For all of our good—as a family. Now put the camera in the fire.”

  Her head still locked by Clarke’s hand, Joanna’s eyes met Tony’s, and the Reverend nodded. Joanna steeled herself, then stomped on Clarke’s instep. His knee made an audible cracking sound as she followed up with a sharp kick to the inside of his leg.

  At the same time, Penny dropped the camera to her side and pulled a burning branch from the fireplace. Clarke grabbed at Joanna but only caught the edge of her caftan. Penny held the branch from its unburned end, but the lit side scorched the flyaway hair around her face.

  Detective Foster Crisp stepped from behind the library door and pointed his gun at Clarke and Penny. He wore a thick down jacket, but even in the snow he’d kept his cowboy boots. “Drop the branch. Joanna, take it.”

  Shaken and breathless, Joanna moved toward Penny, but Daniel pried Penny’s fingers loose and tossed the wood in the fire. Crisp stepped forward. “You,” he nodded at Sylvia. “Take the child into one of the bedrooms. I’ll come see you later.”

  Crisp drew handcuffs from inside his down jacket and cuffed Clarke with one pair and Bette with the other. Gun in one hand, he unclipped a radio from his belt and clicked a knob. “Crisp here. Bring up the snowcat. We’re ready.”

  “Who are you?” Reverend Tony asked.

  “Detective Foster Crisp, Portland police.” Tony shrank into the couch. “I’ve got your number, Rosso. With your testimony, we might be able to smooth over a parole violation, but you’d better watch it.”

  Tony nodded. He glanced at Joanna. “The gift. You seemed to have figured a lot of things out. Did you—?”

  “I think I do know what your father’s treasure was. It was in the guest log the whole time. The treasure is family.” Reggie stepped out from behind Detective Crisp. “Tony, meet your brother, Reggie. Otherwise known as Regalo, the gift.”

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Nothing had ever beckoned so warmly to Joanna as the frigid interior of the snowcat. It idled outside the lodge’s tower window, its diesel exhaust mixing with the crisp, clear day. Nothing was ever so welcoming, that is, except the sight of Timberline Lodge as the snowcat rounded the bend half an hour later.

  The lodge was a hive of activity. Car doors slammed as skiers, thrilled by the thick powder on Mount Hood’s slopes, swarmed the parking lot and poured into the lodge. Inside, glorious electric light warmed the busy halls. Joanna, Sylvia, and Marianne stood dazed in the lobby.

  “I’ll leave you here,” the snowcat operator said, refilling his travel coffee mug at the check-in desk. “Got to go back for the others.”

  “Can I have a pizza?” Marianne asked.

  “Definitely, and Mummy will join you.” Sylvia took her hand. “Joanna, will you come with us?”

  “No, I want to make a call,” Joanna said. A long overdue call.

  “Then we’ll leave you. I’m sure we’ll see you again. If not here, then at Wilson’s service. But let’s not make it that long.” Sylvia hugged her, and she and Marianne wandered toward the dining room.

  The phone. She needed to find a phone. Surely the reception desk would let her call into town. She’d left her baggage, her purse, everything back at Redd Lodge. A few guests nudged each other and pointed at her caftan and ragged hair.

  “Joanna.” A hand landed on her shoulder and another encircled her waist. Paul. He was here. She turned to bury her head into his chest and inhale his soapy aroma tinged with sawdust. In another second she’d start crying, damn it.

  He led her to a bench along the lobby’s wall. “Crisp gave me a call before he came up the mountain. What’s going on? I knew you were snowed in. I saw the weather report. But the police—” He pushed her back a few inches to look at her face. “What’s wrong?”

  “Do you want to get married?” Joanna asked.

  “Those are your first words? Not ‘hi’ or ‘how has your weekend been’?”

  She clutched a handful of his shirt around his neck and drew him forward. “Do you?”

  “Yes,” he said.

  She relaxed against him. “Good. There’s something else. My mother wrote to me.”

  “You haven’t said much about her.”

  “I know. I’ll tell you everything, but, first, did she happen to show up this weekend?”

  Paul wove his fingers in her hair, pulling apart some stuck curls with his fingers. “No, but there was something strange on Saturday.”

  Her stomach clenched. “Strange?”

  “I went out to get the paper and found a beat-up old stuffed animal on the stoop. With a note. All it said was ‘to Joanna’.”

  “That’s it?” She felt Paul nod. “Was it blue? Shaped like a Scotty dog?” He nodded again. Her Scotty dog. Her mother had kept him, brought him to her. What it meant, she couldn’t know. She’d figure out later whether she wanted to know.

  They stood that way a few minutes while fleece-bedecked tourists milled around them. A tour guide stood near the fireplace pointing out the stonework.

  “Joanna,” Paul said.

  “Hmm?”

  “I don’t think I’ve seen this caftan before. And why aren’t you wearing boots? Those slippers hardly seem like a good idea in this snow.”

  “My clothes are infested with black widow spiders.”

  “I see.” Another moment passed. “Is there anything you’d like to tell me? About why Crisp is here? Or maybe a good celebrity story about Wilson Jack?”

  She shook her head against his chest. “He’s dead. Clam dip.”

  “Oh.” The tour guide had moved on to describing the curtains, hand-loomed by out-of-work women in Portland as part of the Depression’s WPA jobs program.

  “There was another death, too. French guy. Froze to death while smoking.”

  Paul was smart enough not to press the point. “Joanna?”

  “Yes?”

  “Would you like to take a bath?” Her head shot up. A bath—lots of hot water, soap, a thick towel. This man knew her. “Crisp said he wanted us on hand for questioning and had the lodge set aside a couple of rooms. Maybe you can fill me in while you relax.”

  He took her hand and they went upstairs.

  ***

  A few days later, Joanna drew a deep breath, lifted the phone’s receiver, and dialed the long string of numbers to London. The line buzzed its curious double ring. She swallowed hard.

  “Costume department, Phillippa here.”

  “Hello, this is Joanna Hayworth. Remember me? I borrowed the Schiaparelli Tears dress for the Wilson Jack wedding.”

  “Oh my God.” Papers rustled and a chair creaked on the other side of the world. “He was murdered. You were there, weren’t you?”

  “Yes, although I can’t talk about it until after the trial. I will say I’m glad it’s over.” She nervously twisted her engagement ring on her finger. Paul had had his aunt’s ring sized for her, and it had been resting in his dresser drawer for more than a month before she blurted her proposal.

  Daniel had been right—the press was at her day and night for her story at the lodge. She stuck to the contract and didn’t say a word, but Tallulah’s Closet definitely benefited. All Joanna had to say was, “I wish I could tell you more…” and customers snapped up wiggle dresses and 1940s suits as they waited for stories that never came.

  Penny had stopped by a few times, and Joanna even accompanied her to yoga, although she took a pass on the après-class birch water. Reverend Tony had returned to Chicago to do the rest of his time on parole, but Penny was planning a visit. She’d said she could “do him
some good” and “give him a reason to keep on” until he was free of his legal obligations. From Chicago, Penny planned to fly to London and take a train to visit Sylvia and Marianne—and Daniel, who’d followed them, undoubtedly with the intention of encouraging them to return to the States.

  Penny mentioned she’d been in touch with Portia, too. While Bette was under house arrest awaiting her trial date, Portia kept her company and reluctantly agreed to care for Bubbles when Bette’s inevitable prison sentence was handed down. Clarke wasn’t so lucky. Not only was he held without bail, other clients who’d caught wind of his stealing were having their own books audited, and it wasn’t looking good.

  As for Joanna’s mother, she’d never surfaced. She had left the battered Scotty dog on her stoop, and that was all. Joanna knew she’d return and dreaded it. But at least Paul knew the story now.

  Joanna pulled the phone closer. “I wanted to tell you about the dress.”

  “Yes, the Schiap. Well, don’t worry about shipping it back right away. By the end of the month is fine.”

  Phillippa wouldn’t be interested in what was left of the Tears gown. Joanna hadn’t recovered a single square, except the one the ski patroller had found and that Detective Crisp had taken as evidence. She still had the veil, but water had damaged it beyond repair.

  “I’m afraid the dress is destroyed.” She stuttered a bit as she said it.

  “A little wear, maybe some makeup marks, we can restore it. No problem.”

  Her stomach burned. She had to close her eyes to say the words. “No, I mean really destroyed. Cut up in little pieces. I’m so sorry.” She braced herself for an outpouring of anger.

  “Well. You must have quite a story.” Phillippa’s voice was surprisingly calm.

  Joanna opened her eyes wide. She wasn’t going to yell? Threaten legal action? “I can’t tell you the details, but it was necessary, I’m afraid.” A pause. “You’re not angry?”

  “Oh Joanna.” The chair creaked again. It must have swiveled. “Bette Lavange sent a stupendous check to borrow that dress, but you didn’t think we’d ship the original, did you? There are only three in the world, after all. I didn’t want to tell you, but—”