Larcency and Lace

by Annette Blair

  She, it turned out, was wearing the kimono with a Japanese wig, and she was having a conversation with Marie Antoinette and Cleopatra.

  A moneyed costume ball, no doubt about it.

  When I dizzied my way back to the present, I was carrying Virginia Statler’s “train” as she walked around my parking lot, still talking about the Circle of Spirit and her friendship with Fiona. No, she hadn’t seen me zone. I’d evidently been sleepwalking while keeping up with her. Good thing she was one of those women who didn’t need a second person to take part in her conversation.

  In the vision, I’d seen a man who appeared to be looking to marry for money. Why else would his presence there be considered an investment? But I knew better than to jump to conclusions. Whatever happened to the “investor” and the woman in the kimono, I might never know.

  One thing I’d learned from Aunt Fiona, who understood these things as only a witch and an empath could, was that I usually got these visions from particular vintage clothing items when the universe wanted them known. “Usually” being a relative term, because the one time I’d read vintage clothing in the past, the items involved a murder.

  On this particular day—after one murder took place and one was discovered—my question to the universe would be: which murder do my recent visions involve? Sampson’s or the bones? Or were they leading me elsewhere?

  I couldn’t see Isobel or the kimono having anything to do with Sampson’s death. Unless Sampson had been the money grubber investor at the expensive costume party, and the woman in the kimono killed him and set the fire? Random thought. Wild conjecture.

  Someone besides Vinney setting the fire? Gut wise, I didn’t think so.

  Virginia took off the kimono, folded it, and tried to hand it to me. “Can you just set it back in the box?” I asked, afraid to touch it again for fear I’d “see” something more.

  “Too bad about the playhouse and poor Tunney,” Virginia said, closing her Chanel purse, “but he certainly had motive.”

  “He did?” I asked. “What kind of motive?”

  “I don’t subscribe to gossip,” she said as she left. “Have a good day.”

  Nineteen

  Everything in your closet should have an expiration date on it the way milk and bread and magazines do.

  -ANDY WARHOL

  Well, damn, Aunt Fiona’s chatty friend subscribed to just enough gossip to whet the appetite. I only hoped that Virginia Statler didn’t know any more than the Sweets did. As for Tunney’s motive, maybe I should ask Tunney and Suzanne Sampson about that. Separately, of course.

  Turning back to the kimono, I realized something about the woman who probably once owned the clothes in the pristine white file boxes—matching boxes giving the impression they came from the same person. The original owner liked vintage, yet followed fashion trends, and she could afford to do both with panache.

  As I put covers back on boxes I noticed that Virginia hadn’t put the kimono in its original box, giving me the opportunity to see what other clothes had been packed beneath it. What I saw made my fashionista’s heart skip. A cape to die for—capes being my weakness. Beneath it, I could also see a slim black sheath dress to match.

  Without thinking, I threw the cape over my shoulders and fastened buttons, hidden beneath a slimming black placket. In rust linen with black piping along each vertical seam from neck to hem, I adored the padded shoulders, a la Yves Saint Laurent. The cape had no collar and its zippered pockets were aligned with and hidden in its side seams.

  I loved the outfit so much I might keep it for myself. I was wishing I had a mirror when dizziness overtook me, and I barely had time to acknowledge my rash action before I was forced to sit on one of the boxes as my world darkened to match my unfamiliar surroundings.

  A man in a pricey gray pinstripe suit slipped a legal-sized set of old green-and-brown ledger books into a home safe.

  “What are you doing?” a woman asked from behind him.

  At the sound of her voice, his body went rigid. His jaw stiffened, and the tic in his cheek became pronounced.

  Belligerence transformed his movements from furtive to contentious. “I’m doing my job,” he said, his voice as familiar as a newscaster or a weatherman. “Short service today?” he asked.

  “I think Father had a golf game.”

  “Your father or the priest?”

  “Both.”

  The couple spoke with polite indifference, or dislike, either because of a quarrel or out of habit.

  Mr. Incongeniality slammed the safe door, twisted the dial with a nervous move, and let a painting slip into place, possibly a Monet, though it could be in that style by a lesser-known artist. A good one.

  “I wish you would trust me,” he said.

  “I might say the same. Why do you bring the books home, slave over them when you have a bookkeeper to do that, and lock them away from me? Or are they a second set of books that no one else knows about? The real story?”

  “Nice talk.”

  They stood in a room paneled in dark walnut. An old-fashioned male-only study with an antique Tiffany lamp in greens and golds.

  From a round, gaudy-legged marble-topped table, he took an etched, square decanter from its brass carrier and poured himself a snifter of brandy.

  “Isn’t it a bit early for that?” she sniped.

  Still keeping his back to her, he shrugged. “Whatever it takes.”

  “To drown out my voice?”

  “Those are your words.” He hadn’t once looked at her.

  The glass-fronted bookshelves lining the room revealed pricey leather-bound books. I couldn’t read titles but I suspected vintage from their muted colors and gold leaf. Autographed pictures of men shaking hands dotted the walls between, and there was no mistaking the White House in the background on at least one.

  The place reeked of money and good taste, but not class, given the fact that Mr. Hostile needed an attitude adjustment. He slipped behind a huge desk, putting even more distance between him and the woman, a body-language slap in the face. I nearly saw his face then, but he bent to look through a drawer, avoiding eye contact, insulting her further. His ebony hair curled in waves that he tried but failed to tame. He wore a scent I knew well, because my grandfather had worn it, which wasn’t enough to make me like him.

  “I have work to do,” he said in dismissal.

  The woman stepped boldly forward, close enough to touch his desk, so close Old Spice mingled with Chanel No. 5. Her hands were milky smooth, long fingered with perfect, clear-glossed oval nails. Her engagement ring in platinum, like her wedding ring, had an emerald-cut diamond the size of Texas.

  She leaned forward, an aggressive move, and as she did, a rust linen garment with black piping rested diagonally against her forearm. A cape. “You work,” she said with sarcasm. “I’ll go to the fair by myself.”

  “That quilt will never win,” he said, without looking up.

  She gave a bitter laugh. “Neither will you. I’m meeting Daddy at the club for drinks at six. I’ll make your excuses. He and I have a lot to talk about. In case you care.”

  “I don’t.”

  “I know.”

  I opened my eyes and looked into Eve’s.

  She’d parked her car to shield me from the police going in and out of my shop’s front door.

  I blinked against the glare of the sun. “When did you get here?”

  Twenty

  I have no desire to give lectures on the subject of fashion. I put my money on feelings: Wear it and enjoy it.

  —GIANNI VERSACE

  “That was a long zone out,” Eve said with concern as she sat beside me.

  “My second since I got here, and frustrating. The woman in my vision was wearing this, but I never saw her face.” I touched the cape, shivered despite the sun, and stuck my icy hands in its unzipped pockets. “I might have seen the same couple in my first vision. I’m not sure.”

  Eve held up a caramel latte to tempt me.

>   I shook my head. “Not right now. Thanks.” I was still too connected to my vision to cut the psychic cord.

  “By the way,” she said, “you just put period to any doubts I might have harbored about your psychometric ability.”

  “But you’re a scientist.”

  “Yes, well, I’m a scientist who believes in you.”

  “Thanks, sweetie.” My warming fingers closed on a sharp-edged piece of plastic in one of the pockets, so I took it out and held it in my palm for both of us to see.

  “A leopard fingernail,” Eve said. “It’s awfully long.”

  “Takes a certain kind of woman to wear fingernails like this,” I said. “Were animal-print fingernails in vogue at the same time as this cape? I’ll have to ask Aunt Fiona.”

  With fear still wrapped around me, and a strange fingernail in my hand, Eve put the latte’s sippy slot to my mouth and about poured it down my throat.

  Her action made me want to chuckle, but I didn’t dare, because I didn’t want to spill coffee on the cape. However, my sweet friend and her sweet, life-giving shot of inner warmth made me feel like myself again. Alive. Happy and in control. No, I didn’t know who killed who, but Eve put things into perspective for me.

  All in good time. I had to live my own life while I worked to make the puzzle pieces of other people’s lives and deaths fall into place. Prepared to do just that, I slipped the fingernail into the cape pocket, zipped it, took the cup from Eve’s hands, and let it warm my own.

  She nodded. “Glad you’re coming out of it.”

  “Thanks to you.”

  “Do you think the fingernail belonged to the woman who owned the clothes?”

  I shrugged. “Note to me: check local nail salons to see who does nails like this and how long they’ve been in style.”

  “You’re smart to look for the ‘artist,’ rather than the canvas. You could find out who has them done that way with some small talk while you’re getting your own nails done.” Eve smirked. “You’d look great with pumpkins on black for Halloween.”

  “Don’t put it past me. I had ladybug fingernails one of the times Nick came to New York. That’s how I got my nickname.”

  “I can’t stand it anymore,” Eve shouted, as if she’d snapped. “I have to ask. What and who did you see in your vision?”

  I sighed. “The back of a man’s head, the top of it, though I think his actions mattered more.”

  She finished her coffee. “So what were his actions?”

  “I believe that the woman suspected him of cooking the books, by his reaction to getting caught putting ledgers in a home safe. She practically accused him of it.”

  “An embezzler? Who caught him? Who is the woman?”

  “His wife, I think. Lots of animosity between them. She was going to a fair where, I believe, she had a quilt entered into some type of craft contest. Can we search for award-winning quilts on the internet?”

  “A contest like at a country fair? Sure, but I’m not sure we’ll find anything from that far back. Do you know what it won? And, hey, I’m no fashion expert but those clothes are here because they’re vintage, right? How long ago was this contest?”

  I slipped from the cape and remembered how long Dante said the bones had been here. “Try late seventies, early eighties.”

  Eve scoffed at the outfit. “She wore that to a fair?”

  “Fashion snark from the woman in black?”

  She chuckled. “You’re wearing black.”

  “Sure. A Mary Quant mini tent dress, black-and-tan Lagerfeld pumps, and a matching two-tone Chanel bag. I have a look. You have a color. Mine is one choice in an unending palette.”

  Eve wrinkled her nose like a kid. “Mine is my favorite.”

  Nobody could make me laugh like Eve.

  “The woman could have changed for the fair.” Whatever clothes she was wearing likely went the way of the meat on her bones. I shivered. I was making myself nauseous with speculation.

  “Okay,” Eve said. “I’m ignoring the was, because you think she was killed, right? Never mind. Don’t answer. Names to plug into the search?”

  “Mr. Hostile and Mrs. Courageous, though I fear her courage was misplaced.” I sighed. “What if she’s Isobel,” I said, “and that’s her quilt upstairs?”

  Eve crushed her coffee cup and tossed it in the backseat of her top-down convertible. “It’s upstairs, if the cops didn’t take it as evidence.”

  “Right,” I said, clenching my fists at the thought of not getting another shot at it. “I’m beginning to believe Aunt Fiona. There is a reason I get signs from the universe.”

  “Two people have died. Sounds like two reasons.”

  “But none of my visions seem related to a specific murder.” Why?

  My cell phone rang. “Nick! How’s it going? Are you all right? How’s Alex?”

  “Your brother’s fine,” he said. “But I checked the Mystick Falls paper on the net this morning. You had quite the night last night.”

  I wondered if my ears were red after having Werner carry me out of there. “How do you know?”

  “Front page, the two fires, the charred body, you trying to rescue Sampson; you staying with your building to protect it.”

  “Oh, for the love of Gucci. They put that in the paper? I don’t suppose they mentioned my near arrest?”

  “What?”

  “Yeah. Half the story. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers. Can you access FBI files from where you are?”

  “What’s it to you?”

  “Missing persons case, probably this area, late seventies, early eighties.”

  “Who am I looking for?”

  “Isobel. Approximately thirty years old.” In the event those were Isobel’s bones. “No last name.”

  “Is that a positive on the Isobel?”

  I hesitated.

  “Madeira? Not another vision?” Most people had one conscience, I had three, my own plus Nick and Eve, the two who annoyed, mocked, and sometimes saved me.

  “Please, Nicky,” I said in my most seductive tone.

  Eve faked a gag.

  Nick sighed. “No fair. No phone seductions in the middle of a . . . phone call. And most people don’t get to request random FBI searches, you know, so keep this query to yourself, would you?”

  “Always.”

  “You’re a pest, but you’re my pest. I’ll give the search a shot. Let me know if you get a vibe on any other details.”

  “She was rich,” I added, ignoring the warm fuzzies from Nick’s claim, likewise my guilt over Werner’s early-morning rescue. “An heiress, maybe.” One who could make talking to her father sound like a threat.

  “A kidnapping?” Nick asked, his computer keys clicking in the background as he took my information. “Might there have been a ransom note?”

  “I never thought of that.”

  “That’s why I’m the professional, ladybug. I’ll narrow it down to a missing person, possible name Isobel, possible age twenty to thirty, in southeastern Connecticut, that time frame.”

  I bit my lip. “And see if there are any abandoned wells around here that have been dry for like half a century.”

  “Hunch or vintage outfit?” Nick asked.

  “Both?”

  “Ah, ladybug, sometimes you scare me.”

  “I hope I do more than that to you.”

  Eve rolled her eyes and started looking through some other boxes.

  “Oh, if I could get my hands on you now,” Nick threatened.

  “What would you do if you could?”

  “Don’t talk so loud!” Eve yelled, fingers in her ears.

  Nick growled. “Use your imagination.”

  “Can I call you?” I asked.

  “About what your imagination comes up with?” He was using his bedroom voice. “Please do.”

  “Nick. Be serious.”

  “Call, but I turn off the phone when I don’t want to give away my location, so I might not answer.”
r />   “Are you and Alex in danger?”

  “Gotta go, ladybug.”

  My phone went dead. “He hung up on me!”

  Eve headed back my way. “A missing person?” she asked.

  “A hunch based on the well. I didn’t tell you, but I’ve seen it more than once.”

  “So,” she said, thoughtfully. “Not a ‘wishing’ well. A nightmare well?”

  “Deep. Dry. Isolated.”

  Twenty-one

  I am always returning to one piece of cloth—a rectangle—because it is the elementary form in clothing.

  -ISSEY MIYAKE

  A couple of Werner’s officers took the new boxes of clothing donations inside and left them in a hearse stall. I mean, a designer nook. So I wouldn’t have to touch the cape and dress again, I had Eve put them in her backseat before I got in. “I’ll try the dress on later and see if I can get anything more on the couple.”

  Eve looked in her backseat. “You shouldn’t do that alone.”

  “Are you volunteering to be there, or should I ask Aunt Fiona? I do need to talk to her.”

  With a finger to her chin, Eve pretended she had a dilemma. “Oh, I think Fee should have a turn.”

  I needed Eve’s humor. “Chicken.”

  “Cluck. Don’t we have a car to return? What time does the rental place close?”

  “Oy. Let’s go. I don’t want to pay for another week.”

  Two seconds before the rental place closed, Eve waited while I turned in my car. “I’m beat,” I said, getting into her passenger seat.

  “You’ve only been up for a few hours.”

  “I have two night’s sleep to make up for. Take me back to the shop to see if the cops are gone.”

  She turned her car in that direction. “Do you know what kind of car you want?” she asked.

  There was only one car dealership in Mystick Falls, and I liked to support the locals. “Tomorrow, after school, you can drive me to Goodwin’s. I want an Element.”

  “You just returned an Element.”