Skirting the Grave (11 page)

I looked at the two men in my life, sizing each other up, and thought, Why me?

“Miss York,” Werner said, addressing Isobel. “I need to ask you a few questions about your cousin’s death, if you don’t mind.”

“Should I take off my skates?”

Werner winced. “As long as you leave your dress on, I don’t care.”

Nick grunted.

I made us a pot of tea, just to have something to do. Nice, tummy-soothing chamomile tea. Isobel agreed to be questioned by Werner in the empty dressing room area so they could have some privacy.

“Cupcake?” Dolly Sweet called from the front door. “Are you here?”

“I have to get the bell back up on that door,” I said to no one in particular. “I can’t take all these surprise customers.”

The Sweets dropped in every Sunday like clockwork after twelve o’clock Mass. Personally, I think Dolly would have stopped going to church long ago if the shop wasn’t calling her name.

I knew what she wanted from her visits to Vintage Magic. She wanted, well, magic. She strutted on by me as I went to greet her and Ethel, and she went right to Paris When It Sizzles “to look for a new shawl,” she told her daughter-in-law. Ethel had no idea that her wild mother-in-law had never mended her wayward ways and was still having assignations with her old lover, Dante Underhill, ghost. For some reason Dolly, Fiona, and I were the only people who could see Dante, but I could never figure out why the giggles coming from Paris sizzling didn’t make an impression on Ethel, unless Dolly knew Ethel was too deaf to hear.

Nick winked at me.

“It kills me that you can’t talk,” I said, “and it’s all my fault. Want me to kiss it better?” After all, I had kissed Werner better. What was wrong with me?

Nick raised both hands to ward me off.

“Too mad at me or too sore?”

He opened both hands, like a mime who’s blameless, then he curled a finger in a come-hither way.

Werner came out of the dressing room, walked rudely between us—uber symbolic—raised my chin with a curl of his finger, then pointed his thumb over his shoulder at Nick. “That guy’s got a chip on his shoulder the size of Mount Rushmore carved in your likeness.”

Werner looked straight at me. “You pack a wallop, kiddo, in so many ways.”

He went straight out the door, having demonstrated his lack of fear in poking the tiger. And from the moment he chucked me under the chin to when I realized I was staring at a closed door, I felt . . . special.

I turned away and caught Nick’s disapproval.

“You and I are off again, remember? Friends.”

Ethel’s head came up. “You and Nick are off? Is that true, Nick?”

“He can’t talk,” I said. “His mouth’s wired shut. I broke his jaw last night.”

Eighteen

And by my grave you’d pray to have me back

So I could see how well you look in black.

—MARCO CARSON

I couldn’t have Nick and Werner both. But since Nick was no longer my boy toy, literally, I wanted them both as friends.

Was that weird?

“Sorry, Nick. I guess I shouldn’t have admitted I broke your jaw. Ethel, Nick walked into Fiona’s dark house when I was freaked by threats to my new intern; she was with me. So I attempted to protect her.”

Nick rolled his eyes.

“Where is your new intern, cupcake?”

“Isobel’s in the dressing room, I think. She’ll be out in a minute, and I’ll introduce her to you and Dolly. Nick, I’m not powerful enough to have made a strike to your ego. For the love of Hermès, you’re FBI Special Agent Nick Jaconetti. You fight copperheads in the deadly swamps of . . . wherever copperheads . . . copper.”

Nick raised a brow.

“Well, you don’t see Werner sending me black looks.”

Ethel giggled. “That’s because the handsome-as-sin Detective Werner’s got his eye on you.”

“Really? I hadn’t noticed.”

“What didn’t you notice?” Ethel asked. “How handsome he is? Or that he’s carrying a torch for you?”

“Yeah, that.” I put all my attention into shaping the turquoise ribbon on the tea roses in the yellow Lucite purse with the broken lid on my counter.

Setting vases of flowers in battered handbags calmed my angst over ill-treated purses and puppy-eyed exes.

Dolly made her saucy way back up the aisle toward us between vintage nooks, holding Dante’s arm, looking a little weird, I’m sure, to anybody who couldn’t see the hunky ghost. She cackled as only Dolly could, as if she read my mind. “You did too know about Werner’s interest in you, Madeira Cutler. Everybody in town knows.”

“Fuzzy pink elephant slippers! Tell me it isn’t so. Wait. I’ll bet my father doesn’t know.”

“He’d be the only one,” Dolly said, “but that would be typical of him, since he doesn’t know he loves poor Fiona.”

Isobel came out of the dressing room sometime after Werner left and skated her slow way to the counter, her eyes puffy.

I pretended not to notice, so as not to embarrass her, as I introduced her to the Sweets. Seeing Nick seemed to cheer her up.

Really? Just because I didn’t want him didn’t mean I wanted anybody else to have him.

“Sorry your jaw’s broken,” she said, shaking his hand. “If it’s any consolation, you look a lot better now than you did last night and this morning.”

The Sweets’ radar went up so fast, multiple antennae about poked me in the eye. Isobel had been gathering her emotions together after talking to Werner, but she might also have been listening to us and learning the lay of the land. Meanwhile, the Sweets thought she spent the night with Nick.

To correct or not correct . . .

Aw, let the gossips have some fun. Correcting them will give Nick something to concentrate on when he can talk again, and it’ll boost his bruised ego for his Mystick Falls neighbors to think the young Isobel was interested in him–-and in the process they’ll discover that he and I broke up.

“Isobel gave me a trunk of her grandmother’s clothes from the fifties,” I told the Sweets.

“Ethel, would you like to help us put them on hangers?”

At Vintage Magic, Ethel loved to help.

Dolly loved to canoodle. Her word.

“You know how much I love to help, cupcake.” Ethel said. She took Isobel’s arm. “Don’t be sad to leave your family, dear. Vintage Magic is a wonderful shop, and Madeira’s a sweetie. We helped raise her, you know.”

It was true. The whole town helped after my mother died, Aunt Fiona and the Sweets more than anyone. Before school plays, the Sweets knew the lines better than we kids. And how many sports events can two elderly ladies actually want to attend? Didn’t matter. They attended them all. Bar none. Winter and summer.

Sometimes I thought maybe the Cutlers gave the Sweets a reason to go on, kept them young and all.

Dolly shrugged. “I can’t decide between Paris When It Sizzles and some good old fifties clothes.”

“Hey,” Dante said. “You wanna remember the fifties or relive them?” He wiggled his brows, and she let him take her back to Paris . . . and the fifties.

That nook never sizzled the way it did when they used it.

Dante’s new energy and his ability to move things, like opening and closing doors, might make him more fun, which Dolly would certainly appreciate.

My cell phone rang, and though I didn’t recognize the number, I picked it up because of all the prep going on for Brandy’s fund-raiser this Saturday and Sherry’s baby shower on Sunday.

“The tents?” I asked. “Yes, of course, I still need them. You still have the deposit, don’t you?

No, I don’t want my money back. I want the bleeping tents! What? You can’t cancel on me three days before a nationally advertised fund-raising event.”

I listened to the guy’s excuses with half an ear. “I don’t care if you have to rent them yourself from the wilds of Africa and have them caravanned in by elephant train, I want those tents delivered, as contracted, to the Vancortland estate this coming Friday before eight A.M., or you’ll hear from my lawyer, my sister’s lawyer, the Nurture Kids Foundation lawyer, the Vancortland lawyer—”

“Good idea. You do that.”

I clapped my phone shut. “Amazing how the word ‘lawyer’ clears everything up.”

Nineteen

The erogenous zone is always shifting, and it is the business of fashion to pursue it, without ever catching it up.

—JAMES LAVER

“What was that about?” Isobel asked, though it was obvious everyone wanted to know.

“Oh, Brandy’s fund-raising event. The Carousel of Love fund-raiser next weekend on the Vancortland estate grounds. We need the tents in case of rain, though I’d rather see them used for keeping the attendees and donors out of the sun and to serve up some iced refreshments.”

“When is Brandy coming home?” Dolly asked. “Isn’t she cutting it a bit close?”

Ethel elbowed her mother-in-law. “How well do we know Brandy?”

Dolly chuckled. “Right,” she said. “She often cuts things close, but how could she plan such a big event from the Peace Corps?”

I raised a brow.

“Of course,” Ethel said. “You planned it.”

“To be fair, Brandy’s not with the Peace Corps, anymore. She’s with the Nurture Kids Foundation, and she was able to send invites to their connections and some of her own donor friends from New York, where she currently lives and works for the foundation. From here, I invited my vintage clothing collector friends, like Melody Seabright and Kira Fitzgerald Goddard, who came to my last fashion show. And they invited their friends, the Cartwright sisters, all four, because they have their own vintage clothing shop, the Immortal Classic. I also let all of my shop customers and Cort’s vintage car enthusiast buddies know about the event.”

All the time I was talking, Nick ran a finger up and down my spine, a sensation I adored, and he knew it. His silent seduction didn’t last long, because I shivered, and Dolly silently chided him.

Nick reclaimed his hand.

“Brandy will be here after six tonight,” I said, ignoring their looks. “And she’ll run with the rest of the prep.” No need to be catty and tell the truth, that she’d still probably leave it to me.

“What does she have left to do when she gets here, for the event, I mean?” Isobel asked, hanging another carhop minidress, this one hot pink with a black poodle on the skirt. My mind worked in one direction while I answered in another. “She has to call the VIP

invitees, personally, to remind them about the importance of the weekend. Everything else is done—from getting Cort’s vintage auto club buddies to bring their cars, to the fifties clothes for the models who’ll show off each car like they did in the fifties, matching them for style and looking pretty. OMG,” I said. “Let’s put three of them in carhop outfits. How utterly pulled-together that would look, though I didn’t know we’d have carhop outfits at our disposal.”

Nick put his arm around my neck and pulled me back against him. I turned in his embrace, wrapped my arms around his waist, and laid my head on his chest. “Thanks for the sign of approval. I’m so very sorry I hurt you.”

He pulled me around the corner between the counter and the door, grabbed a notebook, and wrote, “Sorry I didn’t trust you.”

“That kiss dream happened months ago, but I’ll forgive you if you forgive me for beating the scrap out of you last night?”

“Done,” he wrote.

“On again?” he printed, looking hopeful.

I sighed. “Friends, remember? There’s too much I want to do with the shop. Faline ran the show in New York. The shop’s my chance to do it my way. Little hint, though: I like to be appreciated. Not pampered or catered to, but not forgotten for months on end, either. And I’m not talking about your job but your attitude. Think about it.”

“I will,” he noted on his pad. “Werner appreciates you, doesn’t he?”

“He does. I’ll bring you some hot homemade broth to sip through a straw later, after I pick up Brandy at the train station, ’kay?”

His eyes twinkled, though he couldn’t smile.

“We’ll talk,” I said.

He frowned.

“Sorry, bad joke. Just don’t go getting any ideas.”

He wrote, “Moi?” on the paper, touched his lips, then mine, and left. I watched him cross the parking lot. The silent hunky type practiced in turning my knees to jelly. “You should get some rest,” I yelled after him, and he raised his arm, his thumb and forefinger forming an O for “Okay.”

When I got back to my worker bees hanging clothes from the trunk, so much more of Elizabeth Kingston York’s clothing had been unpacked. Ethel may not have Dolly’s sparkling personality or adventurous, try-anything attitude, but that woman could outwork a Fembot on speed.

“Is that a mink coat?” The animal lover in me fought with the fashionista. I read the label on the marvel of matched pelts. “Isobel, you’re giving me a 1952 Christian Dior full-length mink coat?” I reached for it with both hands.

“Do not!” Eve shouted. “Touch that coat!”

I whisked my hands away and held them behind my back. “When did you get here?”

“Just this minute, thank the stars. I must be psychic. Oh, crap, no.”

Isobel frowned. “Why can’t she touch it?”

Eve’s eyes widened. “She’s . . . allergic . . . to mink. She found out at a . . . fashion show . . . in New York . . . I was there.” Eve tilted her head, her expression focusing on me, her eyes conveying something like, “Help me, you time-traveling freak.”

I had made peace with my psychometric gift. Eve had not.

Yes, I knew her well, though her fashion look of the week surprised me. She’d had her hair cut into a perfect pageboy with bangs, dyed white, with a blue streak braided near her face on one side. The braid was tied with a cluster of bright feathers and beads.

“Like the do?” she asked. “Kyle dared me.”

“Kyle is good for you. I love the blue streak, the bright beads and feathers. You’re actually wearing colors instead of all black. But really, did you have to euthanize a goldfinch, a cardinal, and maybe a hummingbird for that bouquet of feathers?”

“First of all, my new gothic steampunk look isn’t all black. I wear earth tones now, mostly black and tan, it’s true, with gold, brass, copper, and silver gears and stuff. The feathers and beads, they’re man-made and come from a craft store. So, no dead birds, she who adores the hides of ittle bittie minks, leopards, bunnies, gators, and—”