—ULF POSCHARDT
In the second before Paisley fired the gun, I realized I was doomed to spending eternity wearing unremarkable jeans, not some Parisian designer’s best vintage work, not even my own, and I was pissed.
The gunshot stole my hearing first, while I gathered clichés and thought: My body must be shutting down.
It really doesn’t hurt to die, I discovered, if you die quickly.
Fear’s a wonder; it can make idiots of all of us. I wasn’t dead.
Werner used a string of colorful, if not off-color, words, the kind I’d only heard from him as class bully. No, he and I didn’t become frenemies—his word—until I bought my shop last year.
“Madeira!” he snapped. “You put a hole in my favorite hat!”
Good, I thought. I hated that hat.
“I did it!” Paisley snapped. “You shouldn’t have leaned your hat in the open doorway at a time like that. You scared us!” Her legs seemed to give out and she had no recourse but to land on the sofa Nick had vacated in a gun-blazing blink.
Paisley didn’t care that he was now prying the gun from her frozen fingers.
Most murderers were not petrified by the fact that they’d shot a gun, so I happily knocked Paisley off my list of possible Tuna killers.
Nick seemed as confused as I’d been about Paisley’s intentions.
Me? Who cared? I wasn’t dead. Only my nondesigner pride had been wounded. But then I looked at the bright side: I still had a shot at spending eternity in a Versace.
Relief washed through me. And then my teeth began to chatter.
Aunt Fiona and Eve, of all people, whisked me from beneath the table, lifting me on jelly legs, and holding me up while they kissed and hugged me, and looked for obvious gunshot wounds, and I was too grateful to be alive to ask what the Pucci they were doing there.
“I thought she shot you, Mad,” Aunt Fiona said. “I really did.”
That struck Werner unexpectedly hard; he looked like I felt when Paisley pointed the gun my way—pale, and a bit like he might pass out, so I opened my arms, and he stepped into them.
My poor detective trembled from the inside out.
“Somebody care to tell me what happened here?” Nick shouted, his voice cracking, his face chalk white and dripping sweat.
I’m sure it was difficult for him to be so cocky and affronted, not to mention jealous, when Aunt Fiona pushed him down on the sofa with one finger to his shoulder and made put his head between his legs. Every time Nick tried to lift it, Fee shoved his poor head down there again.
I stifled a giggle while I got my sea legs and circulation back.
I didn’t know the green monster could bite Nick quite that hard, but jean-a-ma-jig, maybe he’d just feared for everybody’s life. The jealousy, that was good for him now and again—for him and our relationship.
But cardiac arrest? Not so much.
“You okay, Nick?” I asked.
“Well, I like that,” Eve said. “Fiona and I were worried sick and you don’t ask if we’re okay.”
Werner hadn’t yet let me go; as a matter of fact, he pulled me tighter against him.
I looked back at Nick, and tilted my head at Werner, silently asking for my freedom.
“Just because we broke up doesn’t mean—never mind.” He let me go, and I went straight to Nick.
I sat on the sofa beside my guy and let Nick reel me in, rogue style.
“You scared the life out of me,” he whispered against my hair, and I sighed, quite happy I didn’t die.
“Does anybody care that I’m okay?” Paisley asked.
I pulled away from Nick, because this was no time to neck, and I gave Paisley a thumbs-up. “My hero, of course you’re okay. You were holding the gun.” Sure, I thought it was aimed at me, but she didn’t need to sense my original terror. “Where did you learn to shoot like that?”
“My grandfather, I think. And if memory serves, the gun I learned on stood taller than me.”
My alarm came back to haunt me. “You did scare me.”
“Never mind that,” she said, taking in our motley rescue team. “How did you three know we were in trouble and stuck here? Are there more of you?”
They all started talking at once, Eve, Fiona, and Werner.
Nick raised a hand, which did no good, so he pointed his gun toward the ceiling and cocked the trigger.
Instant silence.
“One at a time,” he said, “in order of events, please, so there’ll be no backtracking.”
“I’ll start,” Aunt Fiona said. “Mad, I got worried when you didn’t come home, so I called you, without luck, then Nick’s house phone and cell, and got no answer at either.”
“Where was Dad?” I asked. “Is he here?”
“It’s just us three. Your dad’s asleep, snoring like a steam engine climbing Mount—” She pointed a finger my way, then she turned and wagged that same warning finger at everyone. “You didn’t hear that description from me, or he and I will be divorced before he figures out that he wants to marry me.”
I firmed my lips at the TMI meeting all my hopes and dreams.
Fiona smoothed the sweater set she wore with tan slacks. “I dressed and went to your shop, in case you were hurt, Mad, and my sleuthing there,” she stressed, “gave me an idea what happened.”
Her sleuthing at the shop, as in: Her talk with Dante revealed our planned “boat to island jaunt” conversation.
When Aunt Fee opened her mouth to continue, Werner indicated with a raised finger that it was his turn to talk. “That’s when Fiona came to me,” Werner said, “and I got a warrant to search Nick’s house.”
Nick rose from the sofa. “You searched my house?”
“Not really,” Werner said. “We searched your computer.”
“Which,” Eve said, “they called me to do, because I’m a computer genius. And wow, you’ve got some neato-slick computer programs. Can I have copies?”
“Sure, we’ll both love the cuisine in prison after we get taken down for copyright infringement. The law’s really taking a bite out of that.”
“That was a knee-jerk reaction from the early, uninformed, days. Sorry,” Eve said. “Whoever wrote the programs deserves to get paid for them. I’ll just make a list so I can go and buy them.”
“I’ll not only give you a list, I’ll tell you which ones are best and why.”
“And should I trust your recommendations, Fedhead?”
“When it comes to computer programs, yes.”
“Thanks. Anyway, back to how we got here,” Eve said, “not that our clothes don’t tell a story.”
“I was gonna say: You…jumped out of a plane and did a tuck and roll through a briar patch?”
“Shush. I tracked your search history and found that you’d looked up the Concertina, then rented a boat for yesterday morning. After we went and talked to McCreadie, the Concertina’s skipper, he mentioned taking the girl you had with you off this island a few months ago and giving you directions here yesterday.”
So the captain had seen us. Scrap, he’d even identified Paisley. I shivered.
“Then the three of us discussed it,” Werner said, “and it seemed likely that you got stranded here, so we followed your lead to the boat rental company, and here we are.”
“I wish you hadn’t talked to McCreadie or used the same rental company,” Nick said.
“Why?” Werner asked.
“Gut hunch. I don’t like that guy.”
Double scrap, I thought, their boat could have been cut loose, too.
Twenty-four
I thank you for your kind invitation to introduce me to the president of the Republic. Since I have not been out of my atelier for two months, I have no appropriate costume for this circumstance.
—CAMILLE CLAUDEL
“What’s Dad going to think when he wakes up and you’re gone, Fee?”
“And you and Paisley and Nick are gone, too?” Aunt Fiona said. “He won’t be happy until he knows we’re oka
y, but for goodness’ sakes, shut up about the whole ‘gunfire on arrival’ fiasco, or we’ll be force-fed literary quotes to the end of our days.”
“Blockin’ it,” I said. “Oh, baby, blockin’ it big time.”
“This is a strange place,” Eve said, wrinkling her nose.
Oops.
“I grew up here, thank you very much.” Paisley’s tone said “miffed” like when I put down her toys.
Werner got out his notepad. “You grew up in a house surrounded by an electric fence?”
I looked back at him. “How did you know the fence was electric?”
Eve giggled. “We were climbing this tree, and a branch fell. Zap!”
Fiona cleared her throat. “Gave me a bit of angina, I don’t mind saying, like hanging over the electric chair.”
“It wasn’t so bad,” Werner said.
Eve rolled her eyes. “There were some lovely bells on the tree.”
Werner paled. “Which I thought would beget a spotlight and a firing squad.”
“We weren’t running from the Nazis,” Eve said.
“Obviously, because they would not have appreciated your rendition of ‘Jingle Bells.’”
Nick’s grin about split his face. “Why didn’t we hear the bells?” he asked.
Paisley and I shared a fit of the giggles.
“Because you snore too loud and sleep too deeply,” Paisley said. “You probably drowned out the sound.”
“I do not.”
“I’ll play you my recording sometime,” I said, and things got awkward, because, well, I’d heard Werner’s snore one fateful night, as well. Perfectly innocent situation, of course, if you didn’t count our thermonuclear kiss—story for another day.
“About Paisley living on a farm surrounded by an electric fence,” I said, choosing a safer topic than “the males whose snores we know,” “her time here was more of an incarceration. It’s a long story, and, Werner, I know I promised not to step on your jurisdiction but—”
“This isn’t his jurisdiction,” Nick said. “We’re in New York.”
“Really?” Paisley brightened. “I grew up in New York? How metropolitan of me. Who knew I was so worldly?” She actually strutted a bit in her homemade second- or third-generation jeans, so old and worn, they could qualify for retro pop culture, though never designer. Her princess top, an undoubted hand-me-down as well, had that grain bag weave. Unfortunately, I just realized that her handmade leather moccasins had probably been fashioned from the hide of an animal they’d killed here for food.
Dry heave alert.
Turning my thoughts, I’d bet Paisley was more worldly than she thought, since I suspected that she spent her early years in Paris with her parents and grandparents.
I came to that conclusion sometime during last night, after having given the ancient architecture on the church where her father was killed, and the width of the street beyond it, another thought, a Parisian thought, but that was only a guess.
Hardly a good time to speculate, though I did have good reason to connect those particular dots. “Anybody hear how Dolly’s doing in Paris?” There had to be a reason Paisley looked like Dolly, a connection to what was happening here. There had to be—
My universe, the one that handed me vintage clothes to read in a timely fashion, didn’t screw around for no good reason.
What a scraptastic clustertuck. Was Dolly being a spy the reason why, at nearly a hundred and four, she was so much more worldly than her daughter-in-law, Ethel?
Dolly didn’t look like a spy. I nearly laughed at that thought. What spy looked like one?
“Nobody’s heard from her,” Eve said. “Dolly’s gone silent, and Ethel may never speak to her again.”
“Would that be so bad?” I asked, “For them and the rest of us, I mean.”
“Can we get out of here?” Eve asked. “This place gives me the flying heebie-jeebies. How did you sleep here?”
“Paisley and I couldn’t, but Nick did.”
“I kept one eye open the whole time,” he said.
“Sure you did.” I gave him a wink.
“I was skeeved out by the caskets in the basement,” Paisley said. “I thought they were metal boxes. I didn’t know they were military caskets until Nick identified them. Wanna see them before you go?”
“Caskets?” Fiona paled. “I’m outta here.”
She turned to go, but I hooked her arm and pulled her close. “I’ll protect you.”
“Oh, Fee, don’t go before you see where Smoots and company are planted,” Paisley said, like we were at an amusement park all of a sudden.
“What kind of farm is this?” Fiona asked. “I mean, like, what did you grow here, fish?”
“It’s definitely fishy, but there’s a whole crop out there that needs looking into,” Nick muttered.
“As a matter of fact, we named it today,” Paisley said. “Coffin Farm. I’m gonna get it put on the map.”
I personally thought the Feds would see to that, but I kept my mouth shut for a change.
Fiona shuddered and paled. So did Eve a little bit; hard to tell, given the contrast of alabaster skin against neon-red hair.
Suddenly an ascending sound cut into our tenuous peace, however angst-ridden, a sound like a herd of buffalo charging up the stairs, front and back.
Guns! Guns pointed at us from both sewing room doorways, the one leading from the front stairs and the one leading through the den, from the back stairs.
“Drop your guns and hit the floor!” demanded one of the thugs in shiny black metal superhero gear, his voice dull behind his gas mask.
Nick set his gun on the table as we all hit the floor.
Twenty-five
Once you embody the language, the character comes really naturally, especially when you put on the costume.
—LUCY LIU
“This is stupid,” Eve whispered, facing me, both of us flat on the floor.
“Any particular reason why?” I whispered back, remembering some of the dangerous, wild, and/or weird pranks she and I had pulled in the name of sleuthing.
“Because we supposedly dropped our guns and now we’re down here with them. And we could have more hidden down here.”
“This is not an Easter egg hunt, Meyers.”
“I’m just saying.”
“Well, I’m scared,” Paisley admitted between hiccups, her “tell” for that particular emotion.
“Where’s the contingent from the New Haven office?” one of the thugs asked. “I thought they were right behind us.”
Paisley whimpered. “Even mobsters have offices? I gotta get outta the last century.”
“New Haven contingent, sir. Bringing up the rear, as commanded.”
Nick sat up and drew the aim of a half-dozen guns. “Boy, are you gonna look stupid in a minute,” he said, and a couple of those guns got cocked.
“Nick, shush,” I commanded. “Don’t taunt them.”
“New Haven here and accounted for, sir,” a black robotic type said.
They all looked and sounded like space cowboys in those things. Voice inflections or differences hardly mattered, except for—
“New Haven, Special Agent—”
“Cutler!” I snapped, doing a sudden jack-in-the-box-style face-to-face. “Alex Cutler!” I ordered. “Take off that Halloween costume and stop scaring us, you big bully. And that goes for your friends as well.” I eyed them. “Who’s the dork who said, ‘Drop your guns and hit the floor’?”
One guy cleared his throat.
I grinned. “New on the job, hey?”
“Yes, ma’am.”
My brother got off his head gear and I jumped into his arms.
“Uh, Mad,” Eve said, gently patting me on the shoulder. “I forgot to tell you something.”
“Forgot to tell us what?” Nick asked with that I’ll-get-you look, almost-always reserved for Eve, though this version bore certain threat.
“I called your brother, Alex, Madeira, and plea
se remember that I’m your best friend. I called him between home and breaking into Nick’s computer, to see if he knew where Nick could be, him being Nick’s FBI partner and all.”
Nick flashed his badge in a half circle, so the armed watchdogs could see that he was one of them, and they stood down. “Special Agent Nick Jaconetti,” he said, while picking up his revolver, checking the safety, and slipping it into his holster.
“My partner, sir,” Alex said.
“What’s with the deferential treatment toward these thugs?” I asked Alex. “I mean, you and Nick are usually in charge, aren’t you?”
“When we’re on our own assignments, sis. This is different. DC and New York contingents have been watching this place for a long time, which I didn’t know when Eve called.”
Paisley hiccupped. “Watching with me inside?”
The Feds’ guns came out again, except for Nick’s. He lowered the ones nearest him with one arm. “This is Paisley Skye and she’s been incarcerated here since she was a toddler, with no concept of why.”
Paisley did a hell-lo double take. “Incarcerated? Really? I have?”
“It appears that her nightly warm milk had been drugged. We assume that while she slept, the owner made contact with the outside world, accepted supplies and such, night boat deliveries, people coming and going.”
She hiccupped. “Could those drugs be fatal?”
“The shaking at bedtime,” Nick said, turning to the guy that acted as if he were in charge. “My partner can vouch for her withdrawal symptoms.”
Alex frowned. “I don’t know anything about—”
“I mean my life partner. Tell ’em, Madeira.”
“Oh, it’s true. Paisley had the shakes for several hours last night.”
Now I had the shakes, because Nick called me his life partner. Werner noticed, too; I could tell by the purple tinge to his skin.
Life partner—good or bad? I’d have to think about that later. Tomorrow. Next month?
Yeah, just call me Scarlett.
“Now, gentlemen,” Nick said. “How could you arrive this morning, since it’s clear that my family didn’t know we were missing until a few hours ago?”
Cloaked in Malice Page 12
