Sure, she had an hourglass figure with the kind of boobage anybody would envy, especially me. But that wasn’t it. I knew Dante the rogue, and he was not present at the moment. If I didn’t know better, I’d think my eerie friend here better embodied Dante the smitten, a readable emotion he reserved for Dolly, and Dolly alone.
I honestly wished I could ask him, but my new customer gazed at me with expectation. So I extended my hand. “I’m Madeira, call me Maddie, Cutler, and this is my shop. Welcome.”
“Nice to meet you.” Her grip was firm, eye contact on target, nothing to hide. “My name is Paisley Skye. Sounds fake, doesn’t it?”
“Not at all,” I said, taken by surprise and hoping my lie rang true. Frankly, though her question jarred me, I found the image inspiring, in a fashion-designer sort of way. If the sky were paisley, the grass would have to be…dotted swiss.
The bell above the door jingled again, and Dolly Sweet and her widowed daughter-in-law, Ethel, came in. They were regulars and very early risers, no matter what day of the week. During the course of my life—like since I could walk, I’d often counted on them for an early homemade breakfast full of sugary carbs, love, and friendly chatter.
Dolly’s eyes brightened to a mirror image of smitten when she spotted Dante behind the counter.
He winked as only he could, his signature “melt your drawers” gaze still the talk of the senior center, usually inspired by Dolly’s presence.
“Check out Mad’s customer, Doll,” he told his old flame, “and tell me she doesn’t remind you of someone.”
“Dolly,” I said, ignoring him. “This is Paisley Skye. Paisley, this is Dolly and her daughter-in-law, Ethel.”
“Hello, Dolly,” Paisley said, her chuckle reminding me of Dolly’s, in tone and cadence, though their voices sounded nothing alike.
“Paisley Skye, you say?”
“Yes, I came looking for the Mystic Photography Studio, but it’s closed.”
“Dolly tilted her head. “Ethel,” she said. “Does this young woman remind you of someone?”
“Like who?” Ethel asked.
Dolly turned to Dante, her look both knowing and inquiring.
“You,” he snapped. “She looks like you did.”
“It’s true,” Dolly said, her mind clearly working. “Ethel, does she remind you of me when I was a girl?”
Dolly’s eighty-something daughter-in-law/housemate snorted, a form of disdain she’d perfected, especially when aimed Dolly’s way. “How would I know, Mama, what you looked like as a girl? You must have been pushing seventy when I married your son.”
“I was a young fifty-six.”
“Same difference.” Ethel turned to Paisley. “We used to think fifty was old. But my mother-in-law, here, age-wise, she’s running neck ’n’ neck with the earth’s core.”
“Thank you, dear. You’re standing at the cusp of its gravity pull yourself.” Dolly gave great snark. I know. I learned it at her knee.
Dante’s chuckle practically charmed the cherries off Dolly’s straw hat, a highly entertaining sight as Dolly’s cheeks turned a charming pink.
Paisley’s smile so like Dolly’s, and her unique eyes, the same bright periwinkle blue as Dolly’s, swayed me to agree with Dante. “You know, you two do look like you could be distantly related.”
The hand Paisley raised to her temple trembled. “You know, I’ve dreamed all my life of hearing somebody say that.”
Two
We are creatures of imagination, passion, and self-will, more than of reason or even of self-interest. Even in the common transactions and daily intercourse of life, we are governed by whim, caprice, prejudice, or accident.
—WILLIAM HAZLITT
“No one ever said you looked like any of your relatives?” I asked. “You must be from a very small family.”
Paisley sighed. “I’m the last of my family. If there’s a current generation, I wouldn’t know it.”
She momentarily looked lost. “I’m an only child of an only child of an only child, and so on. They made that clear. Nobody but nobody is related to me, according to them.”
I wondered who “they” and “them” were, Paisley acted so curiously vague and disconnected. She raised what I now saw closely enough to identify as a vintage carpetbag to her chest and hugged it as if for support, holding it in addition to her funky, and not in a good way, boxy pearlized shoulder bag.
Paisley’s expression became wistful. “I once asked point blank where I came from, because I never did connect with my parents. I thought they might be aliens, or I might be. Sometimes I could barely understand them. Anyway, when I asked, my father, and I use the word ‘father’ loosely, he said they bought me from the gypsies.” Paisley shrugged. “That’s as close as the dour man ever came to making a joke. At least it made his belly shake. My mother, also a loose term, not so much. Then they gave me the ‘no relative’ shtick.”
“Goodness,” I said, surprised at the outpouring of personal angst from a stranger.
Paisley touched Dolly’s arm. “That’s why I was so happy you said I look like you.”
Dolly chafed beneath the adoration in Paisley’s smile. “I have to go now,” my old friend said. “Take good care of her, Mad, and I mean that.” Dolly’s look said so much more than her words. “Come along, Ethel,” she told her daughter-in-law, an order not to be disobeyed, since she’d opened the door to go.
“But, Mama, we just got here.”
Dolly left, her hand raised in an afterthought of a good-bye. Weird for the social butterfly of Mystick Falls, who normally liked to linger, if not escape entirely to Paris when it sizzles, where Dante never failed to escape as well.
Now his frown turned to a blank look, a brow raised in speculation.
“I hope to see you again soon,” Paisley called after them.
Ethel turned to shrug her arthritic shoulders. “Mama’s getting these fits and starts lately.” Dolly’s daughter-in-law/companion shook her head. “I don’t know for sure, but I think she might be getting old.”
I chuckled. “I doubt that.”
“Madeira,” Ethel added, “come for a lemon square after work today. Bring Nick if you want. He’s not on assignment, is he?”
“No, he’s in town. As a matter of fact, we have plans later. Can I take a rain check and have that lemon square for breakfast tomorrow? With a nice cup of clover honey tea?”
Ethel got as close to smiling as she could. “Our world-traveling FBI agent is sticking close to home these days,” she observed with a wink. “Guess he’s spooked by the competition. Speaking of which, I saw Detective Werner earlier. He asked if you and Nick were engaged yet.”
“I may choose to be an autumn bride,” I said, making Ethel stumble.
Paisley caught her arm and steadied her.
“Guess I’m not as sprightly as I was at eighty. Thank you, dear.”
“My pleasure,” Paisley said, biting her lip on a smile.
“This autumn, Madeira?” Ethel asked, pushing like the rest of Mystick Falls. “Say yes.”
“Sorry. No.” I cleared my throat, regretting the tease. “I mean that I’ll probably marry in the autumn of my life.”
A car horn blared…and blared, and blared.
“Drat the bossy thing. She can’t wait for anyone.” Ethel went out the door yelling, “Cool it, old woman!”
“She used to wait willingly, and at length, for me,” Dante murmured, a faraway look in his expression.
My gaze met Paisley Skye’s while we tried not to laugh at Ethel’s outburst, but I lost the fight when Paisley did, and frankly, she looked as if her infectious laughter surprised her as much as it did me.
“Now, Miss Skye, since you’ve met two of our more colorful natives, how can I dress you?”
“Oh, I’ll definitely be back to shop, but today I came for a different reason. I have several vintage items I’d like your opinion on.”
“You mean that you’d like to know their dollar value?”
“No, I need to know where they came from. Tunney Lague said that you can tell me the year the style was worn, maybe what type of family would own such clothes. He sings your praises, that man.”
“He’s like my unofficial godfather. Watches out for me. Keeps me in the loop. That’s the kind of man he is, a softhearted gossip. But listen, what made you go to the butcher shop about clothes?”
“No, I was looking for the Mystic Photography Studio. The address is on the back of a picture I found tucked in with the clothes, but the butcher shop’s there now.”
Dante rose from the fainting couch. “I used to know the man who owned the Mystic Photography Studio, until he changed personality and disappeared, that is.”
Okay, quiet information not to exclaim over but to digest and examine later. “Paisley, please have a seat in my little parlor. Can I get you a cup of tea while the place is still quiet?”
“No, thank you, on the tea. I couldn’t swallow a thing. I’m too nervous.” She sat at the edge of my overstuffed tapestry chair, her legs crossed at the ankles, near the chair’s leg, her back straight, while she fidgeted with the Bakelite butterfly clasp on her carpetbag.
She intrigued me so much, I forgot about tea for myself. “Nervous, why?” I sat facing her at the foot of my tufted blue fainting couch, most recently the place where Detective Werner and I had necked during my experimental period, before Nick and I were on again, and I said good-bye to the detective…more or less.
“I…don’t know who I am,” Paisley said. “I don’t believe what I’ve been told about my background,” she admitted, voice soft. “I’m hoping you can help me find out.”
She really didn’t believe that Paisley Skye was her real name. She hadn’t been kidding about it sounding fake, which it did.
“Can you start at the beginning?” I asked, leaning gently forward, treating her like some kind of skittish colt.
“I wish I knew the beginning,” Paisley said, her face going pink, “but here goes. As far back as I can remember, I called the people who fed and clothed me Mam and Pap. Hick-retro, right? We lived on a farm, acres of land, no neighbors in sight, distantly surrounded by an ocean I never saw, until after my mother, my remaining parent, that is, died a few months ago.”
“My condolences. I’m sorry for your loss.”
“Don’t be. Love wasn’t something I knew. Neither was the touch of another human being. No hugs in our house, though Pap patted me on the head now and again, just like he patted the sheep. Frankly he saved his embraces for Spotsylvania, our Dalmatian. I think even Mam was a little jealous of that dog.”
I faked a smile.
“Anyway, I had warm clothes by day and heavy quilts at night in winter, hearty food, and farmwork, lots of it. Oh, and endless schoolwork. I’ve learned that’s called homeschooled. I gave my embraces to the rabbits and sheep, the live ones, and to the stuffed animals and dolls I made myself as I got older. Sewing became one of the lessons I embraced as much as reading.” Paisley raised her right thumbnail to her lips, then slid it to a tooth, and watched for my reaction, a range of fear and hope fighting for prominence in her insecure expression.
“Turns out, we lived on an island,” she said. “I inherited it. A fact I discovered when I found Mam and Pap’s will.” Her head came up. “But I never did find my own birth certificate, and nowhere in the will did they refer to me as their daughter. Never in my life has anyone done that.”
“In your memory,” I said, giving her hope. “Maybe when you were a baby?”
“It’s true!” Her dimple came out. “I suppose I had to slide down somebody’s birth canal.”
Three
Fashion is what you adopt when you don’t know who you are.
—QUENTIN CRISP
How Paisley Skye managed to make being born sound like good news, I couldn’t say, but I felt better about it myself. “I get that you didn’t know your parents as a babe. But you didn’t know you lived on an island growing up?”
“The water surrounding us wasn’t visible from the farm. And I couldn’t go beyond the fences, that was the rule. I never left the property. Though I heard the gulls, it wasn’t until I read about them that I knew where they came from, so I suspected the sea couldn’t be too far away, but I had no concept of the distance.”
“What about television? The telephone?”
“We lived in the last century. No TV, no telephone, no computers, no means of communicating with the outside world.”
“Did you never get sick?” I asked. “Need a doctor?”
“Mam practiced medicine her own way. I don’t think they needed to die so young, but they seemed to accept that as their fate. They would never talk to me about doctors or hospitals. It was like they were afraid of the outside world. I don’t get it. I never did, and I broke out as quickly as I could, once they were gone.”
“Where have you been staying?”
“At a bed-and-breakfast, the Carriage House, on Pearl Street, here in Mystic. I’ve been watching television and catching up with the world.”
“Television is a far cry from the real world,” I cautioned her, trying not to let my shock over her life show, but she read my horror anyway while I caught the scent of chocolate—my mom telling me to tread lightly. Or that’s how I took the sign of my dead mother’s unexpected presence. She had only ever showed herself, like Dante often does, at the one momentous family occasion, my sister Sherry’s wedding. Mostly, the scent of her favorite indulgence in life told me of her presence in death.
She’d passed when I was ten. But I still missed her.
And poor Paisley, she had no one to miss. “What’s the name of your island?” I asked.
“I couldn’t find it on a map, but it’s small—nothing there but our farm. The nearest charted island is Fishers Island, so neither is far from here.”
“How did you get off your island?”
“I walked the beach every day until I found a fisherman offshore who heard my shout. I grabbed the bags I’d packed, and here I am.” Paisley released the double clasps on the carpetbag and opened it wide, different types of fabric spilling out, all white. Satin, fur, silk ruffles. Seeing them made me as nervous as a cat, excited, too, with new vintage treasures to feast my eyes upon, and lose my soul inside.
Chakra returned to me, jumped to my lap, rubbed her head against my solar plexus, and played with my fingers. Then she settled into my arms like a babe for a snooze, both paws on her little pink kitty nose.
Chakra’s comfort became a good excuse not to touch any of Paisley’s clothes and take a chance on getting a psychometric reading that could embarrass us both. That often happened when I touched something vintage, I zoned straight to a fixed point in the item’s past, checking out of my own mind like a tuckin’ zombie.
In the process, I’ve been known to do anything from speaking in someone else’s voice to slinking to the floor, with no recall of those acts, and only the shock of scary once-upon-a-time’s to show for my freaky mind-trips.
According to Fiona—my mother’s fellow witch, who’d hugged me regularly, after Mom’s passing, unlike poor unhugged Paisley—I have a psychic gift, bestowed by a universe that decides which significant events I get to see. Now what I do with the visuals is up to me, but it’s usually connected to some obscure, often illegal episode, of some import to people like Paisley Skye herself. So I’d best get to it, in case she was in trouble and didn’t know it any more than she knew her real name or parentage. “Were there albums with baby pictures of you in your farmhouse?” I asked.
“Not a one. Not even a camera.”
Chakra sleep-scratched her left back paw with her right while I thought about Paisley’s answer. “That’s almost like…if a tree falls in the woods and you don’t hear it, do you have a past?”
“Exactly. I’m as mixed a metaphor as you say. So here.” Paisley shoved a froth of rich white satin into my arms, smothering Chakra into a literal flipping departure, her striped tail lead
ing her pink nose.
“What about that?” Paisley asked of the tiny white cloak. “It says ‘Paris’ on the label in gold.”
“Couture,” I said, hiding my trembling hands. “Mink trim on crepe-backed silk satin. Likely for a two- or three-year-old,” I said, losing the me I tried to be.
Overcome with a grief I couldn’t contain, I began to weep, while Paisley, asking if I was okay, queried from a growing distance through a narrowing tunnel.
I became a child wearing the cloak over a long-skirted lavender gown at a quiet dinner party where the women around me wore narrow dresses with raised waists, in the Empire style. Turn-of-the-century chic, those clothes. Paul Poirot came to mind as their designer. The nineteen hundreds, I’d bet.
But I didn’t belong there.
I made a quick shift to the roaring twenties, in my stomach and my head, a dreaded ride through the ether. Now I stood, a different child in the same cloak, my gown a bright red, as celebratory as the flappers around me, in a lush, eccentric art nouveau living room, the gilding alone worth a fortune.
Just as fast and way less comfortably, I became a sapling in a forest of giants, a child surrounded by frightened and frightening adults. I came into my own in that incarnation. I had found the place marked for me by the universe during this trip. This cloak had served generations.
How did I know for sure that I’d landed? The souls of my feet touched ground this time.
The stone steps I climbed—surrounded by towering adults, all silent and scared if I didn’t miss my guess—were dark enough to scare the bejeebers out of me, and once outside, the gothic building behind us cast elongated shadows across a snow-slick road, blacking the dim-lit scene to sharp deadly points.
“Deadly” being the operative word; I glommed on to fear and couldn’t get away from its dismal clutches.
Still I was a child, and in the back of my mind I worried that my velvet Mary Janes were getting wet—I looked down, surprised at how small they were. Looking up made it impossible to ignore the line of cars before me, like sentinels of death, across a wide sidewalk.
Cloaked in Malice Page 2
