Authors: Annette Blair
I was glad I’d showered late the night before, because we were short on time and my hair always looked better on the second day. I used the chilly dressing room to get dressed in, then I sat at Dom’s dressing table to put on my makeup.
When Werner came out of the bathroom, he whistled.
I took the compliment as my due or actually as owing to my fashion sense. “You don’t look half bad, yourself,” I said. “Navy pinstripes suit you.”
He fingered the feather on my hat, and I believe that we both realized, in that moment, the magnitude of our having slept together—well, slept in the same bed at any rate—I remembered the last place his hand had rested, and I tingled there. For his part, he flexed and fisted that same hand. Why had we tuned in to that together?
Why did our gazes hold and linger while my temperature rose and the February wind outside the window seemed like a serenade?
I shook away my lethargy and looked in the mirror. “Dom’s clothes, her perfume, her jewelry. Why do I get the feeling she engineered this?”
Werner straightened his cuffs. “Are you saying I was part of the plan?”
“You’re never part of the plan, Werner, but you always end up being a critical part of the action.”
“Is that a compliment?”
“No. It’s the reason I should be afraid of you.”
Twenty-six
Black is the color most often chosen to cloak the pious and those devoted to spiritual sacrifice. The flip side of black suggests a darker nature . . . calling up references to mystery, magic, and inevitably, a little bit of sin.
—AMY HOLMAN EDELMAN, THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS
My dear friend was dead, sealed in a horrendously expensive bronze coffin, according to Kyle, that should be sitting on the empty pedestal at the head of the room. Behind the pedestal hung a life-sized picture of Dominique, at her most glamorous, the one in which she’d posed for the cover of Vogue wearing Christian Dior. On the wall beside it hung a picture nearly as glamorous, but so full of life, you expected Dom to step right out of it and hug you. I felt both honored and humbled to be in that candid with her and her son at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, taken more than a year ago.
“I shouldn’t be in that picture,” I told Kyle. “You should have picked one with just you and your mom.”
“Give it up, Mad. She thought of you as a friend and daughter. I started calling you Aunt Mad because I was jealous as a kid, but I saw the error of my ways the minute I asked for your help after she passed, and you came, no questions asked.”
“I’m honored. Sincerely.”
“Yesterday at the train station, I saw in you what Mom saw from the beginning,” Kyle said.
“A kindred spirit, a kind soul. Family. From now on, can I just call you Sis?”
Okay, I thought, he must be sedated. “Of course.” “What will you call me?” Eve asked him in a whisper to tease the sadness from his expression.
“Nothing that I can repeat in polite company,” he said, nuzzling her ear and pulling her close against his side. She had become his weapon against despair. Hardly the stuff of a lasting relationship, but I figured Eve knew that.
Without Nick, I felt lost, and beside Kyle and Eve, a fifth wheel. Ian, Kyle’s ex-dad, must have seen my discomfort and decided to take me in hand, because he stepped up to take my arm.
Attached to him, I felt like I needed a hazmat chemical wash. Ugh. I extricated myself from the man who hurt my friend and made a beeline for Werner. “I don’t belong here in the inner circle,” I said.
He cleared his throat and turned me toward the skating rink picture. “She really was your friend,” he said. “I’m sorry I didn’t get it the other morning.”
“What are you really doing here? I mean, thank you, but aren’t you afraid that Mystick Falls will fall apart without you?”
“Nah, I had some vacation time coming, and I was just looking for a good excuse when somebody got interested in Nick’s house.”
“You were worried about me.”
“Life gets interesting around you, Mad, and dangerous. Very dangerous.”
I may have been ticked, but when he took my arm as Pierce Pierpont approached, turning the unlikable man in another direction, I was relieved to belong to someone. Well, paired off, anyway. I didn’t belong to Werner.
Werner enforced the law while coloring within the lines. Me, there wasn’t a line I hadn’t crossed with crayons, or otherwise, my whole life, except for maybe the law, most of the time. I did try not to break that.
The silence between us became uncomfortable. “What’s taking so long?” I wondered out loud.
“The police are downstairs going through Dominique’s casket,” Werner said.
“On the day of the funeral? That’s odd,” I said. “How do you know that?”
“I’m a law enforcement officer. I made it a point to introduce myself as a friend of the family, offer my services, if necessary, and tell them I’d stay out of their way, otherwise.”
“As a courtesy then?”
“And to find out what was happening.”
“So you could keep me apprised?”
“You, I’m going to keep out of trouble.”
I stepped away and huffed.
“Per Eve’s request,” Werner said, “I’m also supposed to protect you from the worms in the Big Apple.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sakes, there are worms everywhere, even in Mystic. Haven’t we proved that?” But I looked back at the empty stand for the casket and shivered.
“Are you cold? Do you want me to have them turn down the air-conditioning?” Werner suddenly looked like the protective, sensitive guy who’d once saved me from a fire and carried me home in the middle of the night.
Twenty-seven
It is as if each of us has one titular robe, and it is that special black dress that is both chic and armor.
—EDNA O’BRIEN, MIRABELLA
Restless, in the lush foyer parlor, Broadway and Hollywood greats were milling about waiting for a nod to file in beside the missing coffin. In other words, they wanted to pay their respects to Dominique. Never mind that some of them, not all by any means, didn’t know the meaning of the word “respect.”
A few I had designed clothes for under Faline’s label during my years here in the New York fashion industry. There were several greats, who, under less serious circumstances, I might be tempted to fan-slobber over.
Thank the occasion for dignity.
There were also designer mourners, with ruthlessly cold blood, who I already suspected could have murdered Dom.
“Who do you think killed her?” Werner asked, suddenly beside me.
“Have you been reading my mind?”
“Mind reading. I thought that was your territory.”
“What?” What the hell did he know? I’d definitely never mentioned my visions to Werner. He already thought I was a scatterbrain. I didn’t want him to question my sanity.
“You said you were here because Ms. DeLong trusted your intuitive instincts.”
Oh. Whew. “Okay, here are my prime suspects so far, because they all had means, motive, and opportunity,” I whispered. “At first look, Ursula Uxbridge, understudy, who got Dom’s starring role in Diamond Sands. The morning papers said she was a hit last night, better than Dom, the best ever to play the role, sad to say. Though I’m not sure she has the smarts.
“Second suspect, Ian DeLong, ex-husband, ex-dad, brilliant, if greedy, business partner, who will probably inherit the other half of Dom’s business interests because of the sheer genius partnership contract that couldn’t be broken, even in the divorce.
“Three, Zander Pollock, world-class private chef. Dom died from a lethal dose of peanuts, and that allergy is why she hired Pollock in the first place. She couldn’t smell a peanut without her throat tightening.”
“The chef is too obvious,” Werner said.
“Gee, thanks.”
“I hate to tell you, but so’s the ex and the understudy. Got anybody else?”
“Shudup!”
Werner shook his head and walked away.
I peeked into the waiting area, again. Dominique had friends in high places who thought that being seen at her wake and memorial service would help their careers. Or they might meet someone here who could.
The outfit of the day was the little black dress; the subject of much fashion study, primarily credited to Coco Chanel, and was responsible for my fashion nook, Little Black Dress Lane, a very busy place in my shop.
While Kyle talked to the funeral director about the missing casket, Eve stood on tiptoe behind me, peeking into the luxurious cream, gold, and blue foyer waiting room at the stars gathered there. “Hey, Mad, I see a dress that says, ‘Take me, big boy.’ ”
“What?” I asked, craning my neck. “Mae West is here?”
Eve gave me a raised brow.
I shrugged. “I’m just saying.”
She returned to her gawking.
“Eve, that angry woman in the scanty black Oscar de la Renta looks familiar. Do you remember who she is?”
“Angry woman?” Kyle asked. Now behind us, he stood a head taller and had a clearer view.
“Oh, that’s Galina Lockhart, remember? Mom’s primary rival. Galina’s dress and stance say she’s pissed at being kept waiting. She’s also jealous that Mom is in here and she’s not.”
“Huh?” Eve said. “She wants to be dead?”
“No, Galina has always simply wanted to be more important than my mother in any situation, and if she doesn’t get her way, move over or she’ll mow you down.”
Twenty-eight
The consciousness of being perfectly dressed may bestow a peace such as religion cannot give.
—HERBERT SPENCER
As Eve moved away, I saw two people coming through the celebrity throng who warmed my heart. “Dad?” I called. “Aunt Fiona?”
They saw me, headed my way, and I let them in, ignoring the grumbles from the people I closed out.
“Dad,” I said, my eyes welling up. “I’ve never been happier to see anyone in my life.”
Kyle turned away, but I caught his arm. “Kyle, I want you to meet my parents.”
My father paled.
“I mean, this is my dad, Professor Harry Cutler.”
“Professor,” Kyle said, shaking his hand. “Your daughter’s a marvel.”
My dad preened just a bit. “I know.”
I hooked my arm through Aunt Fee’s. “And this is my aunt Fiona.”
“We’re not married,” my father rushed to say, “or related . . . or anything.”
Aunt Fiona elbowed him.
“Aunt Fee is a family friend who was there for us after my mother passed. I was ten. She’s not one of my parents, strictly speaking.”
“Well, Aunt Fee, if I may,” Kyle said. “It seems to me that Mad and her siblings were lucky to have had you.”
“We still are,” I said, “lucky to have her. Aren’t we, Dad?”
Dad the Professor cleared his throat. “ ‘One never can tell from the sidewalk just what the view is to someone on the inside, looking out.’ That’s a quote by George Ade from Knocking the Neighbors, and it’s particularly salient to this disconcerting turn in the conversation.”
Aunt Fiona patted his arm. “Well said, dear.”
“Oh no. You called him ‘dear’ in public. Aunt Fee. He may need smelling salts.”
My father blustered but not for long. “ ‘How sharper than a serpent’s tooth it is to have a thankless child!’ ”
“Shakespeare, we know,” Aunt Fiona whispered.
I chuckled, and so did Kyle as he excused himself and walked away.
“Dad? Do you need to lie down?”
“Stop it,” he snapped. “Both of you.”
I thought we’d better heed his warning. “So, Aunt Fiona,” I said hugging her. “Who’s watching the shop?”
I could feel her squaring her shoulders beneath my embrace. “Now, we’re only staying for the day, so don’t worry, but Olga Meyers, and Ethel and Dolly Sweet are at the shop, with Tunney Lague on call in case of an emergency.”
Eve hooted. “My mother’ll clean and make sure all the customers are happy, and if she can figure out how, she’ll feed them, too.”
“And Ethel, the cranky octogenarian, will complain,” Werner said. I chuckled. “While our Dolly, allowed at a hundred and three years old, will lounge on the fainting couch and issue orders.” But I knew better. Dolly would also flirt with Dante, my hunky ghost and her one-time lover. No secret, there. Dante Underhill, undertaker, left her his fortune with the funeral carriage house, the building she more or less gave to me for my shop—for the price of taxes.
“Sounds like everything back home is in good hands,” I said.
Did you see that crowd out there?” my father asked. “They’re half naked at a funeral. ‘Never in the history of fashion has so little material been raised so high to reveal so much that needs to be covered so badly,’ ” he quoted. “Cecil Beaton,” he said, giving due credit.
“Quite the who’s who of celebrity land,” Aunt Fiona said. “I feel positively nobody.”
By then the funeral directors were coming in and herding our little circle into a small anteroom so they could set the casket in place.
This made my heart race. Seeing Dom in her coffin would make it real. I didn’t want it to be real.
My father and Aunt Fiona flanked me, as if to protect me, as we made our way to the small parlor.
“What took so long?” I asked Kyle when he joined us.
“The police were tearing up her coffin lining, looking for the diamonds, and I refused to send her to her eternal reward in torn satin.”
“She would never have forgiven you if you tried,” I said.
“Right, so I had her put in a fresh coffin. It took a good argument and a lot of time.”
“Why did the police wait until she was inside the coffin?”
“They thought the fact that we were burying her so fast with no announcement at all was suspicious—they just didn’t get me trying to avoid ten thousand fans parading through—and they figured the placement of her body would indicate which coffin needed to be searched.”
“Like she was gonna take the diamonds with her?”
“No,” Kyle said. “Like her murderer was going to dig her up later and retrieve the diamonds.”
“Gross.”
Kyle straightened his tie. “Tell me about it.”
Werner rocked on his heels. “I’ve seen it done. Caught the murderer digging the old lady up. Casket’s memento drawer full of stolen jewelry.”
Every one of us looked his way.
He simply shrugged.
Finally, when they let us into the room with Dom, the casket was open, temporarily. We alone were being allowed to view the body before they closed it for her wake and memorial service.