Larcency and Lace

by Annette Blair

  —GIORGIO ARMANI

  We took my rental to visit Eve’s skunk du jour so no one could ID the car. Well, maybe we weren’t exactly planning to visit him. If he wasn’t there, we’d search the place, scope it out, or whatever the universe deemed appropriate.

  How’s that for justification?

  We had to pass by the Sweets’ house on the way, and their lights were on. I had that packet for Dolly, and I was pretty sure that if anyone had information that might help me free Tunney of suspicion, it would be the Sweets.

  Dolly once told me that they rarely slept anymore, except for catnaps during the day, so with my usual quick thinking, I pulled into their driveway on two wheels. “Do you want to come in with me?” I asked Eve. “I’ll only be a minute.”

  “No, thanks, Mad. It’s been a draining night. I’ll just close my eyes for a few.”

  “Good. Rest.”

  The front light had gone on and now both Sweets were standing at the screen door waiting. “Madeira? Is that you?” Ethel asked. “Is something wrong, dear, that you’re here so late?”

  Dolly, the older at a hundred and three, was being held up by her daughter-in-law, Ethel, the younger at eighty-plus.

  “Can we talk?” I asked, opening the door.

  Ethel smiled. “Of course, cupcake.”

  I grabbed their arms and insinuated myself between them, where the scent of rose water fought with that of baby powder. I sneezed as I walked them to the sofa and sat them down.

  Dolly had deeded me the Underhill building with Ethel’s approval. Neither of them wanted to pay taxes on it any longer, so that was my price. I’d paid this year’s taxes, which were, of course, for last year, but that didn’t matter. It had been an awesome deal all around. They practically gave me the place.

  “I have something for Dolly,” I said. “And I have a couple of questions for both of you.” I pulled out the envelope from my storage room cabinet that Dante indicated as Dolly’s. “I found this in my storage room, Dolly,” I said handing it to her. “It has your name on it.”

  Dolly’s hand shook as she fumbled with it then she handed it to me to open.

  After I did, she pulled out a card. “Oh!” she said. “Oh, I’ve never been so pleased.”

  Ethel took the card from her mother-in-law’s hand as if it was her due. “A bronze casket and a cemetery plot? Beside your old lover? Are you out of your mind? You know the gossips around here.”

  Dolly cackled. “I won’t be here to care.”

  “So you’re happy about this, Mama? You don’t want to be laid to rest beside your husband?”

  “Your Edward’s father was an idiot, Ethel. I’d prefer to spend eternity beside Dante. Consider it my last wish.”

  “Oh, please, you’ve had so many last wishes since you turned a hundred, I’m keeping a journal collection for your eulogy.”

  I chuckled, despite myself.

  Dolly pulled me down to the sofa beside her and kissed my cheek. “Tell him I said yes.”

  “Mama, are you losing it?”

  “You can tell him yourself whenever you want,” I said.

  “I could,” Dolly said, “though I’d hate for him to see me this way.”

  Ethel made a weak protest, since we weren’t making any sense, but I winked at her, so she stopped.

  “What he’d see,” I said, “is the girl he fell in love with.”

  Dolly giggled, the blushing centenarian, and Ethel rolled her eyes. “You said you had a question for us, cupcake?”

  “A question and a request.”

  “Anything you want,” Dolly said, hugging that envelope to her heart.

  I hated to dim her joy but I needed answers. “Did you hear what happened tonight at the playhouse?”

  “Of course we did. It’s a shame about Tunney.”

  “And Sampson,” I added.

  “Sampson never did fit in here,” Dolly said. “Transplants rarely do. He only lived here for thirty-three years.”

  Ethel nodded. “Grouchy, inhospitable man.”

  “Could Tunney have had a motive to do Sampson in, besides Sampson’s sale to the conglomerate? I mean, since the whole town was mad about that. The playhouse fire started right before Tunney closes his market, and he said that he ran over to help like we did, but he was, unfortunately, still carrying a butcher knife when the police got there.”

  “Was there much blood?” Dolly was one for lapping up the gore.

  Ethel sniffed. “Certain people go to the butcher shop after Tunney closes.”

  Huh? I felt like a bloodhound who’d lost the scent. “Really? Why?”

  “You might talk to Sampson’s sister, Suzanne, about that.”

  “Ethel,” Dolly said. “You shush.”

  “I’m only telling our little cupcake.”

  They’d called me that forever, probably because I ate as many as they made over the years.

  Ethel failed to look contrite, though she tried. “It’s true that my suggestion is rooted in gossip. So go to the source.”

  I looked from one of them to the other. “The source of the gossip or the object of the gossip?”

  “The object,” Dolly said.

  Oh scrap. If Suzanne Sampson was visiting Tunney after hours, presumably not for meat-cutting lessons, and she turned out to be Sampson’s heir, Werner might be able to make a case against Tunney for conspiracy at the least. I’d go to the source, all right. Both of them.

  Dolly patted my arm. “Don’t assume anything, cupcake.”

  Hmm. I forgot how long the Sweets had known me. Long enough to read my fast track mind, apparently.

  “Listen, Eve’s waiting for me in the car. Do me a favor? Ask around about Vinney Carnevale? See what people know about him?”

  “Why?” Dolly wanted to know, getting all perked up for more gossip.

  “I know nothing,” I said. “But by the time I do, I’m guessing you’ll be way ahead of me.”

  Dolly chuckled as Ethel walked me to the door and watched me get into my rental.

  “Eve? Wake up. We need to go see Vinney.”

  “Oh. Sure. Right.” She closed her eyes again.

  “You have to give me directions,” I said.

  “Got any toothpicks?” She blinked her eyes open and started directing me.

  Vinney Carnevale lived on the outskirts of Mystick Falls, in an upscale fifties housing development that had seen better days. Among the fixer-uppers, however, his house stood out. “Looks like somebody spent a few bucks to update this place,” I said as I parked the car. “Does he have money?”

  Eve hooted as she got out on her side. “Not that I could see.”

  I’d actually turned off my headlights to drive down his street and up his driveway, until we reached his garage at the edge of his backyard, so we wouldn’t be spotted by the neighbors.

  “This is feeling clandestine,” Eve said, opening my door.

  “Ya think? I should have left the car out front for a quick getaway.” I was either getting cold feet or my lack of sleep was catching up with me. I lay my head against the steering wheel. “There are no lights on inside. Maybe we should come another time.”

  Eve tugged me from the driver’s seat. “I was coming here tonight, anyway,” she said, “until I began to suspect that he was a thief. Just think of this as being for a good cause.”

  I grabbed Chakra and followed her.

  The minute she unlocked the back door, the smell of sausage and meatballs in a spicy tomato sauce that had probably simmered for hours hit me, made my mouth water, and turned me weak in the knees with hunger. I opened the refrigerator at the same time that Eve flipped on the kitchen light.

  “Son of a stitch,” I snapped, sprinting over to turn it off.

  She flipped it back on. “Time to put on your big-girl panties, Mad, and help me search.”

  I opened the fridge. “I’m wearing them. They say ‘kiss my sass.’ ”

  “You should put those snarky puppies into production and se
ll them at your shop.”

  “Maybe I will. I have a T-shirt idea, too.” I watched Eve go through Vinney’s mail. “Is there an all-night hamburger joint between here and home?”

  She opened a cupboard and handed me a box of cereal. “It would be Boo Berry,” I said, downing a handful. “What are we looking for?”

  “An old mailbag of bones?”

  There went my appetite. “That’s what that was. A mailbag.”

  Eve raised her brows. “That’s what I said.”

  I followed her through the house, looking behind parlor furniture, in the bottom of the entertainment unit, inside a window seat.

  In the bathroom, I checked his medicine chest for aftershave, unscrewed the cap, and took a whiff. “It was him,” I said.

  Eve looked from me to the bottle and back. “A million men wear that stuff. It’s a drugstore staple.”

  “Fine,” I huffed. “It could have been him.”

  We’d barely gotten to the bedroom when we heard sirens. “Scrap!”

  Eve put her arm out in front of me, as if we were taking a sharp corner, and I might fall off the passenger seat and hit my head on the dashboard. “Don’t move,” she whispered. “They might not be coming here.”

  The knock at the front door made us both jump.

  “We might as well be back in fifth grade hiding beneath Fiona’s window,” I whispered, tugging my hand from Eve’s clammy grasp.

  “Shush,” Eve snapped. “And don’t pee your pants this time.”

  “Brat.”

  Chakra hotfooted it from the bedroom. Oy. Then I heard her wildcat yowl, bombastic and echoing, a capacious version of my name that astounded my father every time he heard it.

  “Mystick Falls police,” someone announced.

  They’d come in through the back door, which we left unlocked.

  Are we smart burglars, or what?

  Thirteen

  Problems are only opportunities in work clothes.

  -HENRY J. KAISER

  “Climb out the window,” I whispered to Eve as I made a running motion with my fingers before I went to meet the police.

  In the kitchen, my nemesis, aka the Wiener, was aiming a gun in my general direction, so I stopped in the doorway between the kitchen and the hall. “Should I raise my hands?”

  He scanned the room behind me. “Are you alone? Are you safe, Madeira? You’re not being held hostage or anything?”

  “I’m alone, but am I safe from you?”

  He lowered his gun. “Never. Sometimes I dream of getting my hands around your throat.” He holstered the gun with a look of pure annoyance. “But in the dream, I’m a superhero whose voice hasn’t changed yet, and you’re carrying a Barbie lunch box.”

  I smiled fondly. “She always had the best clothes.”

  “What the hell are you doing here?” he shouted, making me jump. “I knew it was you the minute I heard that cat roar your name. Breaking and entering, Madeira? That’s a new one, even for you.”

  Eve stepped up beside me. “This is my boyfriend’s house.”

  Werner raised a brow my way. “You said you were alone.”

  “Eve hardly counts.”

  “That’s true.”

  She rolled her eyes and held up her key. “We didn’t break in. We’re doing a sleepover.”

  Lytton smirked. “The three of you?”

  “Of course not. Vinney works the night shift.”

  Lytton took out his notebook. “Where?”

  “I really don’t know,” Eve said in all truth. “But honest, Lytton. I keep some of my clothes in his bedroom closet. Wanna see?”

  “Sure. Why not. It’s been a slow night.”

  I caught his sarcasm while Chakra jumped into my arms.

  Eve waited for Werner and his officers to enter the bedroom, her hand on the closet doorknob. “I have two pairs of black jeans and three tops in this closet, and some undies in a drawer. Want to know what my sleep shirt says?”

  “No,” Lytton said, fingering a pillowcase. “This has blood on it.” He signaled an officer and the guy confiscated the pillowcase and bagged it. “Why the blood?”

  “Vinney cracked his head open something fierce last night. I took him over to Lawrence and Memorial for stitches. Check with the hospital. I signed him out.”

  Werner nodded to his officer to do just that. “Open the closet, Ms. Meyers.”

  Eve opened the door with a flourish, but the closet stood empty. “Hey,” she said. “I liked those jeans!” Then she ran to the honey maple bureau and opened four empty drawers, bottom to top, not closing any. “Vinney stole my clothes, the rat! Arrest that man!”

  Laughter caught in my throat and I coughed.

  Werner started taking notes. “Mr. Carnevale’s neighbor reported this break-in. He said that Carnevale told her he was going away early this morning, for an extended period of time, but he didn’t say where or when he’d be back.”

  The gears in my mind started working as if they’d been oiled. Carnevale had moved out this morning, almost as if his last goal in Mystic was getting into my shop. But why would that be so important? And why was it necessary for him to run, because whether he got into my shop or not, he had planned to relocate.

  “I slept here last night,” Eve said with no thought but to exonerate us.

  “Congratulations,” Werner said. “You may well be sleeping in jail tonight.” He urged us toward the kitchen.

  At least he hadn’t taken out his handcuffs. Yet. My father was not going to like bailing me out of jail. “But we had a key,” I reiterated, “and Vinney knew she was coming here tonight. It’s not our fault the guy’s a lousy communicator.”

  On our way out the door, Werner behind us, I saw a quality sweater on the back of a kitchen chair, Armani, maybe. I didn’t dare touch it, though I wanted to. “Eve, you forgot your sweater.”

  She stopped and I walked into her, pressing a finger into her ribs.

  “Oh, right. Thanks, Mad.” She turned back, saw it, and grabbed it.

  Werner took it from her and looked it over: V-neck cardigan, primo label, black, thank goodness, and handed it back to Eve.

  Yay, something of Vinney’s to wrap my psychometric mind around. It certainly looked old enough to be readable. Older than Vinney, maybe.

  Werner put us in the backseat of a squad car, the Wiener. How mortifying. “Can one of your officers drive my rental, Detective? I have to return it in good condition.”

  “Anybody else but you, Cutler—” He opened his hand. “Keys?”

  Chakra caught his hand in a playful swipe. She liked him. Go figure a cat’s taste in men.

  He took her paw and shook it. “Nice to meet you. Again.”

  I gave him my keys, and he threw them to an officer, gave his own to another, stood a distance away to use his cell phone, then he got into the passenger seat of our squad car. “I want to keep my eye on the perps,” he told the driver.

  Did he wink? Nah, he couldn’t have. Too human, though shaking Chakra’s paw leaned in that direction and gave me a little flutter.

  He’d saved Chakra once. Nick had dropped her the first time they heard her roar, but Lytton caught her. On the other hand, she was a cat. She would have landed on her feet. But Lytton had recognized her yowl as sounding like my name, like Fiona and I did, and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.

  Too bad I had the unique ability to suck the nice right out of this man. I leaned my brow against the window beside me wondering if this would be a bad time to report my two break-ins. Probably. But the longer I waited, the mad der the Wiener was going to get.

  Guess I should stop worrying about whether to try to solve Tunney’s case for now. I not only had break-ins against me to worry about, I had to deal with a breaking-and-entering charge of my own.

  If I couldn’t help myself, how could I help Tunney?

  How could I not?

  I wondered again who, or what, the foot bones belonged to. And why had I said “Isobel” without knowi
ng it, when I was about to look in a well?

  I shivered involuntarily and Eve tried to hand me the sweater. I reacted with horror by leaning as far back against the corner of the seat as I could, while I regarded her as if she had two heads.

  “Oh,” she said, realizing it’d be embarrassing if I zoned and called Isobel—or Ingrid, or Irmingard—in front of the Wiener.

  “Oh, what?” Werner asked, but before either one of us could form a lie, a call came over the radio that he took, speaking in tongues, though I thought I caught the word “inferno.”

  “Detour,” he told his driver, who seemed to get his drift.

  Werner also took a call on his cell phone, gave them an “affirmative,” and hung up.

  At one o’clock in the morning, West Main Street beamed as bright as day. Brighter.

  Fiery bright.

  “My building!” I shouted and burst into tears.

  Fourteen

  Every single item you put on your body literally shouts out your unconscious dreams and desires to the entire world.

  —CYNTHIA HEIMEL

  “The playhouse is gone,” I said on a sob as we parked at the far end of my parking lot. “My building is next. Those flames, they’re licking their way across the street. Look at them!”

  “Madeira,” Werner said, a bit too gently for my comfort as he helped me from the squad car. “At least two fire crews are hosing down the buildings around the playhouse. See?”

  “Mine will catch. It’s old. I just got it, and I love it. And Dante, I mean, you know, it’s like an inferno.” I wiped my eyes in a bid for sympathy, though, truth to tell, I was scared shirtless about the very good chance that Vintage Magic, and Dante’s essence, were both in danger of going up in flames.

  Where did ghosts go when the haunts their spirits were bound to disappeared?

  Werner helped Eve out, too, and slapped the squad car roof. The driver backed out and took off.

  “Ms. Meyers, I just got confirmation that you’ve been dating Vincent Carnevale for the past couple of weeks, so you didn’t break any laws by using the key he gave you. The two of you are free to go.”

  “How did you find out so fast?” I asked. “It’s the middle of the night.”