—CHUCK PALAHNIUK
“Slip your hands into the shoes and the muff to see if there’s anything inside,” I suggested to Paisley. I didn’t think I could read shoes or muffs but I was taking no chances.
She did as I suggested, but she came up empty.
I stepped closer. “Now see if there’s a hidden zipper in the muff.”
That netted her a pocket to peek in, and she brought out a small yellowed envelope, folded in on itself, and held it up like a prize.
“Open it,” Nick suggested. “Shop’s having a quiet day today,” he said, looking around. “Good thing.”
I agreed with a nod. “August sale starts tomorrow. They’re waiting for the bargains.”
From inside the envelope, Paisley slowly pulled out a gold pendant, a heart, or half of one, I should say. One of those jagged half hearts, this one made of high-quality gold, with filigreed edges.
“It’s engraved,” Paisley said. “It says ‘Grover,’ I think.”
“It doesn’t say ‘Cleveland’ on the other side, does it?” Nick asked.
“Ha ha. I studied history,” Paisley said. “I’m not a hick, though I was surely raised like one.”
“I apologize,” Nick said. “I wasn’t mocking you, really. It was a disappointment not to find a last name. Does it mean anything to you?”
“Not at all.”
“Slip it back into the envelope and the zippered pocket for now,” I suggested. “Is anybody else hungry?”
We had planned to go to the theater in New York that night, but I really wanted to know more about Paisley, then there was that strange edict from Dolly. Take care of her, Mad. “I don’t suppose I could talk you into leaving your clothes here, Paisley, so I could study them more?”
She looked both torn and frightened. “They could be my only connection to my real family,” she said, clearly not wanting to leave them.
I put the money from the register in my safe. “You never did tell me why you wanted the Mystic Photography Studio.”
“Oh, the picture. I forgot to show you the picture I found in the box. It’s what brought me to Mystic.”
Paisley opened her shoulder bag, a pretty pearl box with a not-so-pretty design flaw. The shoulder handle attached from only the backside, so it hung at an awkward tilt all the time. Open, the bag looked like a square Ms. Pac-Man ready to devour anything in its path.
I wondered if the universe was throwing me a metaphor.
She retrieved her photo from a yellowed plastic sleeve to show us.
“It’s a picture of a child wearing the cloak you found, hood up,” I said.
Same ruffled little dress, a single red rose in the child’s hand. The camera was focused on her, so everyone behind her was cut off at the collar. Off with their heads. “We don’t know if that’s you, right?” I asked Paisley.
“I have no idea who it is.”
“So we can see a half man in a tux, a splash of white that could be a bride, or an adult cloak like yours, a priest, judging from the cleric’s collar, and someone in a red velvet gown carrying a white rose. Pin tucks and little bone buttons, I wish to Hermès that we could see their faces.”
I’d witnessed a lot of what was in the picture in my vision, and like a dope, I, too, forgot to look at their faces. On the other hand, I was in the child’s skin, not my own.
“I’ve been dreaming about nearly seeing their faces since I found it,” Paisley admitted.
Then I suppose it made sense that I only saw what she did.
“One of these nights, I’m going to see who they are,” she promised us, and herself.
“Let me know how that goes,” I said.
“Look here,” Nick said, “there’s the hand of a man with a missing finger.”
Paisley snatched the picture back. “Where?”
I knew, from my psychic visit to the past, that the hand belonged to her savior, or her kidnapper, but did she? “Why do you want to know?” I asked. “Have you remembered something?”
“An eye blink of a memory, just that. The hand. I remember the hand as comforting. I’ve seen it in my dreams holding small fingers. When I see it, I hear a raspy but dear voice saying we’re safe.”
“Paisley, did we tell you that Nick here is Special Agent Jaconetti of the FBI?”
She paled. “Am I in trouble?”
“No, of course not,” Nick said. “But I could help you look for answers. I have access to FBI databases. We may be able to find out why you never felt like you fit in. We could start by looking for a man with a missing finger.”
She perked up to the point that she looked beautiful, as beautiful as Dolly, and at this moment, no one could doubt the resemblance. “And now we have the name ‘Grover’ to go with it,” she said.
Nick shrugged. “The database will probably pull up a small blue hairy guy with a funny accent, but we’ll keep looking.”
Paisley gave him a double take. “A blue who?”
“You have a lot of pop culture to catch up on,” I said.
In view of Dolly’s giving her into my care, with such determination, I might add, I didn’t have any other choice but to watch over Paisley Skye to the very best of my ability. To the “I can fix anything” me, that meant twenty-four/seven.
“I’ve had a brainstorm,” I said. “An alternate suggestion to leaving your clothes with me. Come and stay at my house, well, my father’s house, and bring your find with you? That way I can study the clothes, and you won’t be letting them go. We’ll let my FBI guy stay at the house, too, to protect you. Hey, stud, show her your badge.”
Nick flashed it, his grin and his badge, but she wasn’t satisfied with either. She took it from his hand to read every word. “I feel as if I’ve fallen down the rabbit hole,” she said, “and I’m a little unsure of myself. Do you think you could direct me to the police station, so I could talk to that nice Detective Werner before I decide?”
“Why don’t you follow Nick there?” I suggested. “I’ll keep the shop open. When you get back, whatever your decision, that’ll be fine with me.”
I’d be almost relieved not to have to follow through on the murder-kidnapping I may have witnessed as a child in a small cloak.
On the other hand, I was itching to know the truth about Paisley Skye.
Paisley looked at her vintage clothes with yearning, and at me, like she didn’t want to hurt my feelings.
“By all means,” I said, “pack them up and take them with you to the police station. They mean the world to you. I get that.”
“Mad is crazy for vintage clothes, but she’d never stoop to stealing them.” Nick tweaked my nose.
I did love being on-again with Nick. He was the kind of man who paid a girl a lot of attention, all of it good, and thorough.
I stood in the doorway and watched Paisley in her blue Civic follow Nick in his military discard, camouflage Hummer. He ran it on reagented French fry and doughnut oil, and it belched its way down the street as if it had a good case of well-deserved indigestion.
When I turned back to the shop, Dante was waiting for me, and he looked distraught, in the kind of way I’d never seen. Sauve. Debonair. Hunky. I’d seen them all. But rattled? Never.
“I didn’t think ghosts got nervous,” I said, “but you look like hell.”
“Gee thanks. But I’m having palpitations. Do you think Dolly ran out of the shop today for the obvious reasons?”
“What are the obvious reasons, if you don’t mind my asking?”
“Did I die and leave Dolly pregnant and carrying my baby is the obvious reason.”
“Speak English,” I said. “Though I get your drift. I would have heard the gossip, Dante, like a trillion times. Why, do you think Paisley might be, like…your granddaughter?”
“Did you not see the likeness? Did you not see the way Dolly ran out of here?”
“I’m sure there’s an explanation. Ask Dolly tomorrow when they stop in after church.” I stepped away from the door.
Dante shut the door with his growing energy. “You ask her, Mad.”
He ran a hand through his hair. Another new energy trick. “I don’t want to offend her,” he said.
“Offend her? You’re afraid you knocked her up, and pardon me for saying so, but you couldn’t have done that without her cooperation. I mean, you’re polite to a fault. I don’t think you would have taken advantage of her. You guys got it on, and often, if I haven’t been misreading Dolly’s bragging over the years, no matter how hard I tried.”
“Don’t be crass.”
“This from a man who hovers over dressing room stalls while they’re occupied.”
“It’s my only vice.”
“Oh, I don’t know, now that you’ve acquired energy from my customers, I’m thinking Dolly’s renewed giggles when you two are alone reflect a whole new set of vices.”
“Now you’re embarrassing me.”
“You want to know if you knocked her up fifty-sixty years ago, you ask her. End of discussion.”
“Call her, tell her to come back. I need to know right away. I won’t be able to sleep on this.”
“Ghosts don’t sleep.”
“Didn’t I just say that? I won’t be able to sleep on this,” he repeated.
“You’re pacing like a husband outside the delivery room.”
“Because I might have been one, blast it. Except I missed it by being dead.”
“This is a whole new side of you. Emotional, vulnerable, and a little bit funny.”
He looked insulted and disappeared. I worked for a while in comfortable silence, and decided that without customers, I may as well close early.
Dante appeared again. I jumped again.
“Mad, please, we’re friends. Call her.”
“You’ll see her at noon tomorrow. You’ll ask her then. I hear Nick’s rattletrap coming back, and if you’ll excuse me, I’m locking up to go home with my guy.”
“Braggart.” Dante reopened the front door, showing off in the only way he knew how. Must be hard on a studster to be powerless. “That girl’s following him again.”
“Paisley. Her name is Paisley. I sure hope that means I might have a houseguest.”
“That reminds me. Do you know who owned the Mystic Photography Studio until it closed?”
“No who?”
“Dolly’s brother. Good-bye.” My get-even ghost disappeared.
“I’ll get you for this,” I whispered beneath my breath, and I heard Dante chuckle.
Paisley beat Nick inside, a big smile on her face. “Detective Werner vouched for you, Madeira. He told me all your good points before he told me all your bad ones.”
“Goody for me, and I’ll be happy to have you as a guest.”
Nick followed her in, testing his five o’clock shadow, though it was closer to six. “When we get to Mad’s father’s house,” he said, “let’s talk about the reasons you might have been brought up on that island, Paisley. Think about it on the way over.”
“When I was a kid, I thought I was kidnapped, but Mam and Pap wouldn’t do that. They may not have loved me, but they wouldn’t hurt me. Or want me enough to go through the bother of a kidnapping. And heck, they could have run away with all that money in the cellar and left me alone there, but they didn’t.”
I froze. “Say what?”
“Money in the cellar?” Nick repeated, turning it into a question, as if he couldn’t have heard right.
Paisley waved a hand like it was nothing. “Long metal boxes of it, tons of hundred-dollar bills stacked neatly inside.”
Seven
Fashions are like human beings. They come in, nobody knows when; why; or how; They go out nobody knows when; why; or how.
—CHARLES DICKENS
Paisley stood beside us in the circular driveway, looking up at my family’s converted tavern. It was dark, as in unlit, and stained an antique brown fit for its history.
On the way here, we had officially checked Paisley, our new guest, out of the Carriage House Bed-and-Breakfast on Pearl Street. Not because it wasn’t an awesome B and B, but because I needed her and her clothes nearby to read them, Hermès, help me, so I could help her find herself. Literally.
Paisley Skye was the first person I’d ever met who admitted she was a missing person.
She looked toward the third floor of my family’s imposing three-floor home and cleared her throat. “Wer-ner told me that nobody could be a more loyal ally than you.”
“That was nice of him,” Nick said. “It’s true, but he didn’t need to say it.”
“Still.” Paisley bit her lip for a minute. “I know I was raised away from the world, alone, sort of, in an unusual, even scary, farmhouse. But your house scares me more than a little bit, too. It’s very old, isn’t it? Look at the way it casts that eerie shadow across the street, all pointy and sharp, like it’s some kind of beast hovering over us, teeth bared.”
I wondered if her words were the result of memory rather than fear? Not that she’d know it. Maybe just being away from her time, or possible incarceration, on that island would jar her into remembering.
“I guess it’s like the devil you don’t know, isn’t it?” I said. “Because the description of the place where you were brought up scares me.” My attempt to turn her fear to amusement darn near succeeded.
“So here’s the skinny,” I said, searching for my keys. “This amazing house here, where I was raised with my brother and sisters, is a renovated old coach stop and tavern, still standing at the quarter-century mark—depending on which section of the house you’re in. It’s a gracious grand dame of a Connecticut Yankee that spent the better part of her life on the old Boston Post Road as a coaching inn and tavern.
“It has the distinction of having hosted George Washington, the father of our country, and Thomas Jefferson, as well, at different times in its history, but both early in their respective careers as land surveyors. I used to think that Benjamin Franklin slept here, too, but my father says I was wrong about that.”
“It seems I’ve read that a lot of old houses make that claim,” Paisley said. “About George Washington sleeping there, I mean.”
“I’ll show you the proof when we get inside.”
“Wow, you know the history of your house, and I don’t know the history of myself.”
I squeezed her shoulder. “We’ll fix that. I just don’t want you to be afraid of the house.”
“Thanks, it helped. Tell me more.”
“There isn’t much. When the old place was moved, early in the last century, from the well-traveled Boston coaching road, it was deposited and rebuilt here, across the river from Mystic Seaport. See how it towers over the neighborhood? I like to think of it as a sentinel standing watch and protecting us all.”
Paisley tilted her head. “That is a comforting thought.”
Sure, I’d seen the old tavern ghosts from the cradle, but most people never did, so I left out that little detail. “It’s really old and drafty,” I added for good measure, “so if a door squeals open and no one’s on the other side, don’t freak.”
The front door opened as if to prove me right and we both yelped.
Paisley elbowed me, and I rolled my eyes. “I know, neither of us listened to me.”
Nick stood on the inside and opened the door the rest of the way, indicating that we should enter.
I gave him a peck on the cheek. “I didn’t see you leave us standing there.”
“You were too busy recalling the house’s history, so I ran around back and took our favorite route.”
Paisley cleared her throat. “Your favorite what?”
“The getaway tree,” I said. “That’s what I call it.”
Nick grinned. “I like to think of it as the sneak tree myself. I’ve been using it as my own special entry since the two of us were in high school.”
I turned on the light in the front hall, then in the keeping room, in time to see Paisley’s eyes go wide. “You two have been a couple that
long?”
“On and off,” we said together.
She eyed us. “So Detective Werner, he was just a—”
“Blip,” I said.
“Wake-up call,” Nick countered.
Kewl. He’d gotten it.
Paisley’s eyes twinkled at the difference in our statements, and then she lowered her shoulders, and sighed heavily. “I’m a virgin.”
“TMI!” Nick said, escaping to light the rest of the house, thereby giving me a minute alone with our guest.
I hooked my arm through Paisley’s to lead her on a first-timer’s tour. “I’ll throw a party to introduce you to the neighborhood, though it’ll have to be after Dolly’s hundred-and-fourth birthday party, where you’ll meet some of the neighbors anyway.”
“Won’t people wonder what I’m doing here?”
“I’m sure Tunney’s alerted gossip central by now of your mysterious presence. Between Dolly’s party and your own, let’s call yours a bachelor party, we’ll see if we can’t get you a couple of dates. Gotta start somewhere, but, er, in case your mam didn’t cover this in her homeschooling, it’s probably not smart to sleep with the first person you date, and especially not with all the guys you date.”
Paisley laughed, a truly lighthearted sound. “If Mam covered anything, she covered the facts of life, the ‘never sleep with a man till you marry him’ version.”
I wiped my brow. “Glad we don’t need to have that talk.”
“I’m a little too old to be just stepping foot into the cold waters of the dating scene at this point, aren’t I?”
“Nah, this way, we’ll only invite the guys who’ve been weeded out. You won’t have any clunkers to choose from.”
“Clunkers?”
“You know, married guys, two-timers, chauvinists, narcissists, that kind of thing,” I said. “You missed the worst part by starting late: Dating duds for fits and frustration.”
We reached the oldest part of the house, the tavern. I slid open the window beneath the portico. “How’s this for a Mickey-D-type drive-through, colonial style? Oh, and these are known as Indian shutters, for back when the natives didn’t like us stealing their land, so they shot their arrows to get us the Hermès out of here. And I don’t blame them. Wait, is that my father’s voice? Dad, Aunt Fee,” I called. “Is that you?”
Cloaked in Malice Page 4
