Werner raised our clasped hands, kissed my knuckles, and eyed me like a prime rib. I had a whole-body reaction.
“For the record,” I said, my stomach growling, “I sensed that Nick and Paisley needed to give the kind of blessing they’d like to receive, and I intend to give it to them.
“You sensed it, did you? That doesn’t surprise me.”
Fiona and Eve hooted as we rounded the wall behind the counter where they waited impatiently. “Good veggie pot stickers,” Eve said, pointing to her chipmunk cheeks.
“Glad to be of assistance, Ms. Cutler,” Werner said to me with a grin. “Anytime.” He winked at me. “Anytime.” And he tipped back a Dos Equis, while I watched, sort of mesmerized. This having permission to watch and everything, was heady stuff. It allowed for all kinds of acceptance and hope. Until this second, I hadn’t realized I’d been holding back. “Wait, did you buy dessert, Lytton? ’Cause I smell chocolate.”
“Nope.”
Mom, then. Telling me I’d finally hit my mark. Werner.
“I need to go underwear shopping,” I said to no one in particular, though Werner stopped drinking to eye me, and Fiona and Eve giggled and elbowed each other.
I guessed I’d been sort of down since Nick’s disappearance into the worldly jaws of the FBI. They were glad to see me come out of it.
The bell above the door tinkled, and a woman with a garment bag came in. “They said at the country club that it wasn’t too late to get this outfit to you because the entries just got here today?” She’d phrased it in the form of a question, behind which I heard an unspoken, Did I make it, did I, did I, huh? Huh?”
“Bambi-Jo,” I said, recognizing her voice immediately.
I got double takes all around, and wished shrinking to invisibility was an option.
“Do I know you?” a stumped Bambi-Jo asked.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. “Ah, somehow, at some point, I got a visual of the fiftieth. Pictures, I suppose. Guess I remembered because your name’s so unique. You don’t seem to have changed at all.” Of course, I couldn’t really see you. I just huddled there inside you. They would put me in a padded cell for that admission.
Bambi barked a laugh. “I’ve changed forty years’ worth, but thanks.”
And she’d found her strong voice, though I’d had a peek of the meek girl when she asked about her entry.
I’d thought she and I were kindred spirits and could be friends…back when she had been my age. Now she was old enough to be my mother. I introduced her all around and accepted the garment bag, which I handed to Eve, her eyes round, pupils dilated; she so knew I’d goofed because I saw this woman in a vision.
Fiona’s head tilt said she suspected as well.
Werner looked confused, and before we stepped beyond underwear-shopping, he needed to know everything, and I mean everything, about the psychic, daughter-of-a-witch me.
That’s how I’d gotten Nick and Werner mixed up. Nick knew and accepted facts. Just the facts, ma’am—a regular Joe Friday, letter-of-the-law kind of guy. The high school jock who liked the rush of crowds cheering; a great catch for a Cutler girl. Now outgrown by a Cutler woman. Paisley, or someone like her, if Nick ever stopped to choose a mate, would heap praise on him and polish his medals. She’d travel the world with him, as hungry for adventure as he. Whoever Nick Jaconetti chose would live his life.
I had to live my own.
I’d gone to grammar school with my choice; he’d baited me, and I’d called him Wiener.
He knew and embraced the essence of Madeira Cutler, even the brat, and he wanted the real me beside him, here in Mystic and as far away as Mystick Falls. I knew that deep in my soul.
Bambi-Jo cleared her throat. I turned back to her. “It’s a wide-skirted gown, right?” I said. “Did you bring the crinoline?”
“Ah, no,” Bambi-Jo said. “I thought if my gown was chosen, I’d bring the crinoline for the fitting.”
Aunt Fiona cleared her throat. “I’m sorry, Bambi-Jo, but you’re disqualified. Madeira, here, is our judge, and she’s not supposed to know who the formals belong to.”
I turned to Fee. “I only remember the Southern belle–type hoopskirt, nothing more, and we have a lot of those back there. I have no recollection of even the color. Just take it out while I’m not looking, hide it among the stock we haven’t perused, and I won’t know the difference.”
Bambi-Jo hugged me. “That’s so sweet of you. Thanks.”
Werner became the detective again. “Excuse me, Miss—?”
“My last name is Zeller,” she supplied. “You can call me Miss Zeller.”
“Miss Zeller,” he repeated. “I’d like to ask you a few questions, but since I’m speaking for the law, you have a right to an attorney. Just say so and we’ll put off the questioning until you can have an attorney present.”
“No, that’s…” She sighed. “I don’t need an attorney. Ask away.”
“Did you by any chance take part in the widely publicized scavenger hunt at the Mystick by the Sea’s fiftieth jubilee?”
Bambi-Jo paled to the color of wallpaper paste. Her shoulders sagged for a minute, but her chin came up. “Yes, I took part.” She held out her wrists. “Forty years is too long to keep a secret. Just arrest me and get it over with.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Werner said after a good eye-to-eye with the woman, “but I retain the right to question you, and you retain the right to a lawyer. Fiona, do you have her name and address, since Mad says this event is yours?”
“Yes, Detective, I have it. Sorry, Miss Zeller. But it wouldn’t be a conflict of interest if you retained me as your lawyer. I became a judge and retired, but I can still represent you.”
Bambi-Jo gave Fiona a grateful nod. “For everyone’s information, I discreetly returned what I scavenged years ago, Detective. My conscience is clear, if not my memories.”
Werner gave a noncommittal nod. “You’re not under suspicion. Yet.”
So, she had done the right thing, so…one less piece of the petticoat puzzle to solve. “If your gown doesn’t get chosen for This Is Your Life, don’t forget that you can still wear it to the ball, and that I do alterations. I think you’re a bit thinner than I remember in the picture.”
Bambi raised a brow. “I think you need glasses.”
“Miss Zeller, you’ll call me at the Mystick Falls police station within the next forty-eight hours to make an appointment, and bring Fee, I mean Ms. Sullivan, with you as legal counsel. If you don’t, you’ll find a couple of black-and-whites at your door. Not that I’m accusing you of anything. But we need to talk. Do we understand each other?”
Bambi blew out a long, slow breath. “I didn’t do anything wrong except run with the wrong crowd.”
Werner raised a brow. “Which doesn’t mean that you don’t know anything.”
Bambi gave a sick squeak. “Strictly speaking, I don’t know what happened that night, nothing dire, anyway. But you may understand something that I didn’t. Wind me up and I never shut up, that’s the only warning I’ll give you.”
She closed her hand around the doorknob. “I wanted to hang with the rich, popular clique forty years ago. Stupid pride. Today, I should have accepted that I missed the deadline. Still with the pride, don’tcha know?” She turned to me. “You’d think I would have learned.”
“The detective would have found you within the week,” I said. “He’s reopened the Robin O’Dowd case.”
“It’s a case?”
“A murder investigation,” Werner said.
Bambi’s eyes filled. “I never wanted to hear those words. I was so afraid.”
“Why didn’t you come forward then?”
“I was a nobody. Me? Against all that money power? No way. Not unless I wanted to get run out of town. Or worse.” She eyed Werner. “I look forward to talking to you. I think.” She nodded and left.
The minute the door clicked shut behind her, Werner looked at me with narrowed eyes—like, if he were
wearing glasses, he would be looking at me over them—mouth firm. “And you, Madeira? You just happened to know her name?”
“Remember that I said we have to talk? Well, I don’t need legal counsel, but maybe we should get a couple six-packs of Dos Equis before we do.”
“Underwear shopping first, then we talk,” he said. “There’s nothing you can say to scare me away.”
“That’s what you think,” Eve said.
Fiona silently seemed to agree, though her eyes weren’t half as wide as Eve’s.
I could tell from Werner’s expression that he’d guessed, from our earlier conversation in the dressing room, that I might have some kind of psychic ability. But he sure hadn’t guessed the witch part.
And I’d thought that choosing the formals was going to be the hard part of this assignment.
Twenty-two
If there is no copying, how are you going to have fashion?
—COCO CHANEL
“Okay, lunch, everyone,” I said in all innocence. “Lytton, you want to get two extra barstools from the closet beneath the stairs?”
Fee and Eve had thrown a plastic tablecloth over my countertop and set out everything. “Nobody goes anywhere near the costumes in the back from this moment on,” I declared. “We’ll eat right here, then everybody helps disinfect and clean the counter, then we all take a shower before we touch the formals again.”
“Together?” Werner and Eve asked.
“Go ahead,” I said, “if the two of you so desire.”
Eve made a strangled sound and Werner paled.
Fiona patted his cheek. “Silly boy,” she said. “Hunky, but silly.”
“Do I smell lemon chicken?” I checked the containers. “Oh, and pad thai noodles. They are so much better than lo mein. You know what I like, Detective.”
“Not everything, but I’m an eager pupil and a quick study.”
“Please,” Eve said, “you’re testing my gag reflexes.”
“It’s the peanut sauce,” Aunt Fee said, pretending innocence as she took some for herself.
We settled at the counter, quiet at first, savoring the range of tastes: lemon, ginger, peanut sauce. “Lytton?” I asked. “What did you have to pick up at the courthouse? Is it for the country club case?”
“As a matter of fact, yes. I collected copies of the paperwork declaring Robin O’Dowd dead. It’s a matter of public record, so I can repeat it, but I wouldn’t want it to become fodder for a blog, say. Especially not now.”
If only Werner knew what Eve and Fiona had kept to themselves since my psychometry had come into play, and I started zoning at the touch of vintage clothes and investigating misdeeds on my own, with or without police approval. “I promise you, they can be trusted.”
Werner nodded, seemingly satisfied that they understood. “It seems that Robin O’Dowd’s brother, Wayne, and his wife, Wynona, had Robin declared legally dead seven years to the day after she was reported washed into the ocean by a rogue wave.”
So Robin’s brother had married Wynona, aka Lady Backroom? “Robin drowned on the night of the country club’s Golden Jubilee, right?” I confirmed, refilling my plate.
Werner did the same. “Actually, the time her friends reported the wave taking her was after midnight, so her date of death is listed as the day after the fiftieth.”
“That almost complicates the issue, doesn’t it? I mean, the country club can wash their hands of it, can’t they? Unless it was on their land.”
Werner gave a half nod. “It was on their land.”
I snapped my head up on that. “Now, see. I find that hard to believe.”
“Why?” Werner asked. “Because Thatcher McDowell told us it wasn’t on their land?”
“Their members were scavenger hunting, destroying property, even people, hiding objects”—I caught the questioning looks—“one imagines,” I added, “when things have been scavenged. But that’s not the point. Why go strolling along the shore at the very location you’re desecrating?”
“I’d like to hear more about your imaginary scavenger hunt,” Werner said, as he checked his watch and stood to leave. “Well,” he said, cupping my neck and bringing my brow to his, “back to work.” His fingers sifting down through the hair at my nape as he let me go made me shiver.
“I’ll be here when you get back.”
“Fee, Eve,” he said. “Don’t let her come to harm.”
“We haven’t yet,” Fiona said.
“They know what you’re gonna tell me, right?” he asked.
I nodded. “One or both of them always has my back.”
He turned to them. “Thank you. You don’t know how much I appreciate knowing that,” he said. “You know how she is. She gets on a case and forgets she’s not Wonder Woman.”
That cut a bit close to the bone. “Gee,” I said, tilting my head and furrowing my brows, “you mean I’m not?”
My protectors had the good grace to open ranks and let me in. They literally all turned toward me and invited me to join the conversation again.
I nodded my appreciation. “Lytton, does Robin’s brother have motive?”
Werner shifted gears in a blink, and if he felt any discomfort at the affection for me that he’d revealed, I saw no sign of it. He jumped right back on the case, firmed his lips, and nodded. “About two years after Robin was declared dead, Wayne, his paternal grandparents’ sole heir, inherited the family fortune. He got the docks, slips, warehouses, and more property than any one man could ever need. Since then, he’s turned a lot of it into condos and made millions more doing it.”
“Which is why double the inheritance worked so much better than half the inheritance,” I snipped. “Sounds like motive to me,” I continued, so glad he’d reopened the case. I didn’t know why I felt this gut-deep imperative to find justice for Robin, but her case had gotten to me like no other. Maybe it was because she hadn’t had closure, and neither had her family. Presumed dead. No body. No headstone to sit beside, no name carved in granite to trace and remember.
On the other hand, maybe the depth of my empathy is the precise reason her case became my universal mandate. Mine specifically.
I wasn’t really throwing Robin’s brother, or his wife, Wynona, to the wolves. Werner could easily disprove either of them as suspects, with my help, of course. What mattered was him looking for the reason she’d gone in the water that night. I wanted us to find the person, or persons, responsible. If in fact she hadn’t gone in on her own.
“I guess we need to investigate Robin herself,” I said. “I mean, suppose her life was unbearable and she jumped willingly into a storm-tossed sea?”
Truth was, I didn’t think Wayne had been among the people at the warehouse that night, though Wynona had. Unless Wayne turned out to be Snake, the slimy one, or even Tuxman, the one who’d hid his loot in the pipes of a ramshackle mill.
On the other hand, Wayne’s family had owned property on the docks, and we’d been in a dark seaside warehouse. Granted, the building had seemed empty and abandoned, but it wasn’t, because there’d been no mistaking the fish smell. Could Wayne or his wife have been the brains behind his sister’s drowning?
Well, not his wife. Wynona wasn’t married to him back then, but maybe she wanted to be and Robin disapproved, or she wanted Robin’s half of the money for herself as Wayne’s wife.
I mean, how could you make someone dive into the ocean in a storm?
But no one had used the word “dive” in the belly of the whale that night, had they?
One could force someone into the water. Or push them in. Most easily done if the victim is unconscious. Or dead.
“Since I reopened this case because of the box your building crew found, I wish I could invite you to question Mr. and Mrs. O’Dowd with me,” Werner said, “but I want them to know we mean business. So, I need to bring a couple of black-and-whites.”
I swiveled on my stool, away from and then back toward Werner. “You will tell me about questioning the O’D
owds later? I can keep my mouth shut.”
“It’s true, she can,” Eve said. “Even when being tickled to within an inch of her life.”
Werner chuckled. “I’ll have to remember that. We have a lot to talk about tonight, Mad. Maybe it’d better be a sleepover.”
Eve perked up. “Like last—”
“Not you, Eve. Just Mad. Me and Mad.”
Butterflies took over my insides. This had started in third grade when he’d called me Glamazon and I’d called him Little Wiener. I wonder if we were attracted then. Yes, I’d maligned his manhood before I knew what manhood was. I was sorry for that, especially since the man’s kisses now made my toes curl. It might be difficult to keep a straight face tonight, under the circumstances, but I was gonna give it my Wonder Woman best.
“I’d stay and babysit the shop if you needed her, Lytton,” Eve said. “But, Mad, you shouldn’t be surprised if, while you were gone, I tried on a few of those gowns in the back.”
“If you tried them on and so much as popped a button,” I told my BFF, “I would do worse than tickle you. I’d double dare you to wear red to the Valentine’s ball.”
Eve gave me a snobby chin up, but she spoiled it with an eye twinkle.
I hooked my arm through Werner’s. “I’ll walk you to the car, Detective. So we can go over your interview strategy.”
Oh, I liked to bring out that grin of his.
One last thermonuclear kiss coming up.
Twenty-three
Fashion adjusts to the speed of the traffic, holds its own in the adaptation to the rapid, fleeting appearance that alone promises the attention, and the gaze, of those passing in continual motion.
—SABINE FABO, 1998
I let myself into Werner’s house through the kitchen door—to the tantalizing aroma of a homemade Italian dinner—and a hunk who made me drool more than the food did.
I’d carefully chosen a strapless electric-blue Versace gown with a left-leg split, trimmed in black leather, like my fashion-forward Ferragamo booties.
Tulle Death Do Us Part Page 13