“No one. Since I’m the milliner who made them, yes, I have to say that,” Viv said.
“Oh, really?” Sue asked. Her delicate eyebrows rose over her pretty hazel eyes. “Are you looking for any more clients? Coco does love her hats.”
Viv glanced from Sue to Coco with a thoughtful look. “Maybe. Stop by our shop, Mim’s Whims in Notting Hill, and we’ll talk.” She strode into the party without another word, leaving Sue staring after her in bemusement.
“Yes, she’s like that with everyone,” I said. “Personally, I’d love to see Coco in a pink hat to match her dress.” I reached into my clutch purse and found a card. “Stop by anytime.”
“Why, thank you,” Sue said. “I think I will.”
I turned and followed Viv into the party, leaving Sue to discuss the merits of a hat with her dog. I had a feeling we’d be seeing them sooner rather than later.
The party was everything a dog cocktail party should be. There were several food stations, some specifically for the dogs in attendance, serving dog-friendly appetizers. There were also several self-filtering water stations.
Just inside the door there was a coat check where Viv and I unloaded our heavy wool coats. I’d been a little afraid we’d be overdressed but we were on point. People were dressed to impress and, in my opinion at least, the outfits worked. This was obviously a high-society event, as diamonds sparkled, shoes gleamed, suits ranged from black to blue to one sassy burgundy number. Viv and I were not the only two women in hats. In fact, hats were most definitely in the majority and everywhere I looked there were dogs. It was glorious!
Tall dogs, short dogs, pudgy dogs, slim dogs, old dogs, young dogs, it was a canine cornucopia. Most of the dogs were leashed and well behaved, sitting or standing beside their person. I could see now why Coco had likely been taken outside to run her wiggles out. Unruly behavior was definitely frowned upon at the party.
“It smells like dog in here,” Viv said. She wrinkled her nose. “I need a drink. How about you?”
“Yes, please,” I said. I followed her, pulling my phone out of my bag to see if Harry had sent me a text. There was nothing. The room was so thick with people and dogs; I couldn’t spot him or Aunt Betty anywhere. For that matter, I didn’t see Andre or Nick either. I wondered if they had Andre set up someplace specific to take pictures of the dogs or if he was wandering around the room with his camera. I looked up and scanned the crowd.
No sign of him. Darn. A skittish whippet leaned against my leg while I sent a quick text to Harry and then another to Andre. I gently disengaged the dog with a smile at her person and found Viv was already at the bar, frowning at a list of cocktails.
“Okay, it looks like our choices are of the canine variety,” she said. “Personally, I’m going to have the Greyhound—and you?”
I blinked and took the list she handed me. It was a list of cocktails all named after dogs, such as the Salty Chihuahua, the Frosty French Bulldog, and the Pomegranate Pomeranian. I smiled at Viv, but she didn’t look amused.
“Sorry, I’ll have the Pink Poodle, please,” I said. It was vanilla vodka, lemon-lime soda and a splash of grenadine. Yum.
Viv was just handing me my drink—it was in a large martini glass with a circular slice of lime impaled on the edge—when we heard a commotion on the far side of the room. I’m not sure why but my intuition told me that our people were involved.
“Let’s go,” I said to Viv. She grabbed her drink, not nearly as pretty as mine, and followed me as I used my elbow to snowplow through the crowd. We crossed the massive high-ceilinged room until we reached the opposite entrance.
The voices got louder and I turned a corner and found Aunt Betty, standing with Freddy, waving her finger in the face of a man who looked like he wanted to strangle her. He was tall and thin, dressed in a black suit that was clearly bespoke, on his wrist gleamed a gold Rolex and on his hand sparkled a ring with a diamond the size of my head. Truly, the guy was wearing enough bling to rival a rapper. His thick head of white hair was unruly in a product-infused way. He was obviously a very wealthy man and there was no dog at his side so I assumed he was one of the sponsors of the PAWS dog show.
People all around them were listening in, but Betty was oblivious, continuing her tirade regardless of the audience. She’d even pushed back her charcoal gray bowler with the exquisite aqua ribbon stitched around the outer edge of the brim, which matched the one Freddy was wearing, so she could give the man her full glare.
“You have to have a full investigation into the process,” Aunt Betty was saying. “A quality control measure is clearly lacking somewhere in the chain. You can’t ignore it when dogs are made ill by your product—”
“You can repeat your lies as often as you want,” the man snapped. “That doesn’t make them true.”
“How dare you! I am not lying,” Aunt Betty protested. In one hand she had Freddy’s leash and in the other a drink, which was tall and clear but stuffed with limes.
“I can assure you that everything you have said thus far is wrong,” the man said, bristling. If he’d been a dog the hair on his scruff would have stood up. Freddy must not have liked his tone because I noticed his ears went back and his fur was beginning to rise. “And if it is wrong then it is a lie.”
“My dog was sick, I tell you,” Aunt Betty said. “Your dog food made Freddy violently ill. I had to throw it all out. A year’s worth!”
“That was stupidly shortsighted on your part,” the man snarled. “My dog food is of the highest quality.”
I gasped. This had to be Swendson, the sponsor of the show. Oh, God. This was bad, so bad. I scanned the area, looking for Harry. He was supposed to be with her. Where was he? He needed to do some damage control on his aunt.
“It’s poison, that’s what it is,” Aunt Betty said. She stiffened her spine and glared at him. “You’d better be careful; some dog owner is liable to do unto you as you’ve done unto their dog.”
“Are you threatening me? With poison?”
I noticed several people were openly watching the exchange with mouths agape and eyes wide. One of them was even filming it with their phone. Oh, no.
“I’d say it’s more of a promise,” Aunt Betty snarled.
“I’m sorry, Ma’am, what was your name again?” Swendson asked. His look was calculating and I knew he was going to use his sponsorship power to check her. This wasn’t going to go well for Aunt Betty or Freddy.
“Time to jump in,” I said to Viv. I gave her a nudge forward, harder than I should have, I suppose, as she careened forward and bumped hips with Swendson, breaking his stare-off with Aunt Betty.
“Hey, there you are,” I said. I looped my arm through Aunt Betty’s and tugged. “Harry is looking for you. Let’s go!”
“Wait, I’m not finished yet,” she said. She turned back to Swendson, whose attention was on Viv and, like most men did when she crossed their path, he stared at her with a slightly slack-jawed look of disbelief. “It is imperative, Mr. Swend—”
He tore his gaze away from Viv and focused on Aunt Betty. I could see the veins in his neck begin to throb. Uh-oh.
“Harry! Yoo-hoo!” I shouted over Aunt Betty, trying to lure Harry in from wherever he was. “Over here!”
“Hello,” Viv said. She placed her hand on Swendson’s arm. “I’m Vivian.” She looked at Mr. Swendson from under her eyelashes. He forgot about Aunt Betty.
“Ginger, there you are!” Harry pushed through the crowd. Nick and Andre were right behind him. Unfortunately, this brought Mr. Swendson back around, too.
“Hey, there, Freddy old chap,” Nick said. “Aunt Betty, where did you go? We were supposed to stay together to protect Freddy.”
I saw Mr. Swendson’s eyes go from Aunt Betty to Freddy. Damn it, even if he didn’t know Aunt Betty’s name, now he knew her dog’s. I was willing to bet he could deduce who Aunt Betty was from
that. If he complained, it could make the judging very difficult for Freddy. Viv’s hats or no, the competition could be lost before it even began.
“You mean Cedric,” I said. I tried to project my voice over the rumble of the crowd toward Mr. Swendson. “That dog’s name is Cedric.”
My friends all looked at me as if I were mental. Why was no one playing along? Clearly, if I had renamed the dog, I had done it for a reason.
“Scarlett, how many of those bevvies have you had?” Andre asked with a half smile. “Freddy is his name; it always has been.”
Mr. Swendson’s eyes narrowed. He removed Viv’s hand from his arm, glared at Aunt Betty and stalked away from our rambunctious group without another word. Damn it.
Chapter 5
“What was that all about?” Harry asked me. With one eyebrow raised in inquiry he glanced from Mr. Swendson’s retreating back to me.
“That was Mr. Swendson,” I said. “Of Swendson’s Dog Food.”
Harry’s head snapped in the direction of the man in the sharp suit, and his mouth formed a small O.
“Did Aunt Betty . . . ?”
“Yes,” I said. “With a finger in his face and everything.”
“Oh, no.”
“I tried to distract him by throwing Viv in his line of sight but Aunt Betty was not to be deterred.”
“Thus, the new name Cedric,” he said. A smile lifted the corners of his mouth and I basked in the glow of his amused affection. “Nice try, Ginger.”
I shrugged. “For all the good it did,” I said. Then I downed the Pink Poodle in one big gulp.
“Aunt Betty.” Harry turned to his aunt. “I thought we talked about not confronting Mr. Swendson, knowing that it might adversely affect Freddy’s chances at winning best in show.”
“Pff.” Aunt Betty puffed out a breath. Then she lifted her own glass to her lips. She was about to upend the contents when Nick deftly lifted the glass out of her hands. She protested but he raised it to his nose and gave it a sniff.
“Gin,” he said. “A double, if I’m not mistaken.”
“It was to settle my nerves,” Aunt Betty said. “You know, in case the bad person who left the note showed up.”
“How many?” Harry asked.
“Nerves?” Aunt Betty asked. “Well, quite a few, I’d say.”
“That’s not what I meant, Aunt B, and you know it.” Harrison kept his gaze steady and Aunt Betty tipped her nose up and turned away.
“I’m not a child, Harrison Wentworth,” she said. “And I would appreciate it if you didn’t treat me as one.”
Her indignation, while well played, didn’t move Harry in the least.
“Aunt Betty, I think it would be best if you and Freddy called it a night,” he said. “There’s just too many people to keep track of and I don’t like the risk that someone could slip something to Freddy without us seeing. Plus, Swendson didn’t look pleased and if he points you out to the PAWS chairpersons, you might find yourselves bounced from the competition.”
Aunt Betty blinked. “But we already paid. They can’t do that.”
“Trust me, when money talks—” he began but Nick interrupted him.
“Bulldogs walk.”
We all looked at him. “What? It’s true.”
Viv, who had finished her drink as well, reached out and straightened Aunt Betty’s bowler.
“I’m getting ready to leave, too,” Viv said. “I’ll walk out with you.”
“Me, too,” I said.
“Well, I have to take more pictures,” Andre said. He held up his camera and then stepped back to take a few candid shots of Aunt Betty and Freddy.
“And I have a commitment to drink more at the bar,” Nick said. He and Andre waved as they walked back into the crowd.
“I will escort you all home,” Harrison said. “I have my car and can give everyone a lift.”
“Oh, that’s sweet of you,” Aunt Betty said. She patted his arm and handed him Freddy’s leash. “Be a dear and carry Freddy, won’t you? He’s tired from the long day.”
Harry gave me a wry glance and I tucked my laugh into my cheek. When he bent down and picked up Freddy, the happy corgi took advantage and licked Harry’s face. This time I laughed out loud.
Viv and Aunt Betty walked ahead, leading the way through the crowd, and I fell in beside Harrison. He carried Freddy, who was a sturdy little fellow, as if he weighed nothing at all.
“What say we drop everyone off and you come back to my place?” Harry asked.
Of course I was going to say yes, duh, but I liked to keep Harry on his toes.
“I don’t know,” I said. “I have to sort my socks tonight.”
“I have gelato in the freezer,” he countered.
“Tempting, but I’ve been thinking I need to learn to cook and tonight is the night.”
“All right, I’ll just have to catch up on the latest episode of Bodyguard by myself.” He adjusted Freddy in his arms and heaved a sigh.
“Playing the Richard Madden card is dirty pool.”
A slow grin spread across his lips. “So, you’re in?”
“Natch,” I said. Then I grinned at him and said, “Actually, I was in all along. I just wanted you to work for it a bit.”
“One of the many reasons I love you,” he said. Then he kissed me and we slipped out the door that Viv held open for us and into the night.
* * *
* * *
I arrived home from Harry’s bright and early. The shop wouldn’t open for a few hours but Viv and Fee were already in the workroom. I could hear the radio broadcasting BBC 2—we all enjoyed the human-interest aspect to the reporting—and I tried to slink to the stairs before Viv or Fee saw me.
I glanced across the shop at my grandmother’s favorite cabinet. It was an old wooden piece with a bird, I called him Ferd, carved across the top with wings open and head pointed down. He had freaked me out when I was a kid. In truth, he still gave me the shivers. I swear, he watched everything that was going on, but I had begun to talk to him when I first moved back and the habit had stuck. I held my finger up to my lips in a shh gesture. Ferd said nothing, so I figured we understood each other.
“G’mornin’, Scarlett,” Viv called from the back. “Have a nice night with Harry?”
I slumped over, glaring at Ferd as if it were his fault. Hoping that Viv had a pot of coffee or tea going, I trudged to the workroom. I knew I looked a wreck with no makeup and a scorching case of postshower, air-dried hair, but at least I kept some of my clothes over at Harry’s so I had a fresh outfit on and wasn’t arriving in last night’s cocktail dress. That would be entirely too walk-of-shame-ish.
“Cup of coffee?” Fee asked me as I entered the room.
“Yes, please.” I nodded. All was forgiven.
I dumped my purse on the table and slid onto one of the short stools that were scattered around the steel-topped worktable where Viv sat. She was attaching a large rosette in a pale pink silk onto a delicate straw hat of the same color. Ribbons had already been fastened and the rosette sat atop the bows. I knew that this particular hat was being made in a variety of spring colors for the Easter crowd. I also knew these hats would go for five hundred and twenty-five pounds each or, at the current exchange rate, six hundred eighty-one dollars American. For. A. Hat. It boggles, doesn’t it?
Fee poured me a cup of coffee from the carafe on the counter and slid it across the table to me along with a spoon. Then she delivered the cream and sugar containers. I do love her so.
I had slept late at Harry’s and was still fuzzy, as I’d raced out of his apartment without any magic bean or leaf juice. Harry drank tea in the morning, which was all right but it just lacked the punch to the face that coffee offered. I had yet to bring him over to the dark side of java, but I had cracked Fee and Viv, so I knew it was just a matter of time.
“Did Harrison come with you?” Viv asked. “I was hoping he’d feel like cooking us breakfast.”
“No, he hurried off to rugby practice,” I said. “We’ll have to make do with cereal.”
None of us could cook. Technically, I suppose we could if we wanted to but so far none of us were inclined to learn.
“I’m so tired of cereal.” Viv pouted. “I clearly need a spouse.”
It was on the tip of my tongue to point out that Alistair probably loved to cook, but given how snappy she’d been about it before, I decided not to say anything.
“Or a live-in cook,” Fee suggested. “Much less annoying than a spouse, yeah?”
Viv let go of her hat and tapped her lips with her index finger. “You might be onto something. Especially when Scarlett moves out to live with her hubby.”
“Or you could date someone, say a hot, rugby-attorney-type someone,” I said. Okay, my filter is clearly faulty, and I really didn’t mean to say that out loud. I swear.
“Are you talking about Alistair?” Fee asked. “He was spectacular on the pitch, wasn’t he?”
“Yes, he was,” I said.
Viv shrugged and looked back down at her hat. She was obviously ignoring my suggestion. So annoying.
Fee was fiddling with the velvet trim on the brim of the hat she was working on. It was another spring creation. The white straw hat had been shaped into a fedora style and then she’d attached a lavender velvet ribbon around the brim, which complimented the spray of multihued feathers that decorated the crown. It really was spectacular and I marveled at how her talents had developed in the years she’d been Viv’s apprentice and now assistant.
“So, are you not interested in Alistair?” Fee asked. She gave Viv a side-eye as if she didn’t want to look her directly in the eyes when she asked.
I sipped my coffee and stared over the rim of the mug at the two of them. Was Fee interested in Alistair? What would Viv make of that? Oh, dear, this could get seriously complicated.
Buried to the Brim Page 5
