“Yes, I remembered the sound of a baby crying in the background on that city street. I mean, who takes a baby to a wedding?”
“You’re sure it was a wedding?”
“No.” I bent to pick a yellow iris, just one, to admire. “Paisley was dressed in the cloak, a little white ruffled gown, diamond-studded Mary Janes, but I’ve been thinking it could have been after a Christmas service.”
“Did it seem like a funeral?”
“If it was a funeral, someone might have been helping her mother into the limo—no, she was definitely shoved. Not a funeral. But I suppose it could have been anything. Thirtyish years ago, the Catholic Church had a lot of dressy special events. I’ll bet there were even more in Paris.”
“About that.” Nick took the iris and slipped it into my hair at my ear. “Gorgeous. Now Dolly Sweet’s in Paris. And on my computer at home is a search for that eighties kidnapping-killing in Paris, as you requested, but you wanna run the reason by me again?”
“I began to suspect Paris after I read the Cassini dress.”
“Define Cassini?”
“Oleg Cassini, Jackie Kennedy’s designer. He designed the dress we found here, in the previously locked closet, remember? You read the tag.”
“Oh, right. Sorry, but for me, designers don’t stick.”
“I forgive you. Paisley’s grandfather was married to a double agent who wore that priceless vintage dress on the Eiffel Tower, where she passed information, or I did, to a bearded courier in a white suit.”
“You mean the dress we found here in the closet where the wall flipped,” Nick asked, “has also been worn to the top of the Eiffel Tower?”
“Yes, do you think we should have looked closer at what was behind the wall?”
“Let’s do that now.”
“Wait, Nick. Tell me how spies and the mob might end up working together, in the event they do.”
“It would be a simple transaction to begin with. A simple exchange of information, a name or location. The first would have been so easy, it might happen again, another exchange, and again, until all those bits led to the worst: Somebody knew too much. After that, ‘pop,’ knowledge erased.”
“So it can happen?”
“Can and does.”
“And the pop was a gun going off?” I winced, waiting for his answer.
He didn’t bother with an answer. He turned me in the opposite direction—straight line for the house, as far away from Paisley as we could get, but we got sidetracked anyway.
Werner argued with a Fed while Johnny Shields and Ted Macri, paramedics, watched. We tried to ignore them but Werner’s voice carried. “That ambulance belongs to Mystick Falls. What happens if someone in my town has an emergency while it’s here?”
“Detective,” the agent said. “Mystic proper, Stonington, and Groton, are taking your Mystick Falls calls.”
“This is New York,” Werner said. “You should have commandeered New York ambulances.”
“Time was an issue. You know darned well that New London was our best and most efficient entry point to this chain of islands.”
Werner raised his chin. “I’m holding you responsible if anybody in my district suffers because of this.”
“Yes, Detective.”
Johnny Shields stood straighter. “Look, over there. That’s Paisley from Mad’s shop.”
“She has six Feds talking to her,” Ted said. “We’re loser fifth wheels.”
“More like seventh wheels, but let’s go anyway,” Shields suggested, Macri right behind him.
“Somebody might make a match here today, but whether any thugs are caught is another matter.”
“Tell me about it.” Nick clipped his badge to his belt, and we made our way upstairs to the hall closet, mostly undisturbed, except for the forensics Feds making small talk as we passed.
Nick closed us inside the closet, and pushed the movable wall just a bit.
I peeked. “Nothing there, thank the stars.” I turned to go.
Nick worked the flashlight on his handy-dandy stylus.
“Oh, scrap,” I said, “there are stairs in there, and cobwebs.” I pulled the string hanging from the ceiling. “Great, a two-watt lightbulb in a cracked enamel socket. It’ll probably go out when we’re halfway down.”
When I heard the rodent-type squeal, I about jumped into Nick’s arms.
“Ah, mice,” he said, “which makes this fun because I have you in my arms. Hey, maybe I am a jackalope.”
“Only the good parts.” Okay, so I enjoyed his roguish attentions, despite the long-tailed squeakers.
“You go first,” I said, pulling from his arms, and making my way to the step behind him. “Scatter them before me.”
He took my hand to lead me down. “The stairs are clear. Let’s move fast.”
In no time, we stood at the bottom, and he flipped a switch which lit four five-watt bulbs. “It’s like daylight.”
“Cut the snark.”
“It’s a freakin’ nursery,” I said. “The painted crib, dressing table, twin bed, and bureau say forties, the bedding is all feed bag prints. On the shelf, those dolls are the Dionne quints—a memento of the thirties. Those other dolls in graduated sizes are pretty, but different.”
“Nesting dolls,” Nick said. “From Russia.”
“For people who never went anywhere, they got around. Dolls from Canada and Russia, gorgeous ones compared to what they let Paisley grow up playing with. You know, Mam or Pap could have been born here, for all we know.”
Nick led me to the door opposite the stairs, which opened easily and allowed a slew of bats to rush in.
“This way,” he said, ducking below them, and when I got into the tunnel with him, he shut the door on the bats. They’ll be stuck in the nursery, because we shut the door at the top of the stairs. On our way back, we’ll see if we can let them out before we go any farther than here, okay?”
“Please,” I said. “Nick it stinks in here.” I gagged.
“Hold that gag reflex, Cutler. We have to follow this lead,” he said, wielding his penlight. “Keep moving, scare anything in our way. And don’t look down.”
“Faster,” I said. “Run.”
Nick ran, and after the longest tunnel sprint of my life, we stood at the top of another set of stairs, also going down.
I sighed. “What did Ethel say about Dolly being as old as the earth’s core? We may find out.”
Nick ran down the stairs fast and shoved at the wooden end but the wall wouldn’t give. Then suddenly it creaked and caved instead, and we found ourselves standing in Bepah’s shack, not far from the fireplace, amid rotted splintered wood.
Nick looked out a window. “No wonder Paisley couldn’t see the shack from the farm. We’re much closer to sea level here. I can barely see the center chimney topping the farmhouse.”
“Hypothesis,” I said. “Suppose Paisley’s Mam con-trolled then killed the old man, and the tunnel and stairs are how she came and went?”
“Maybe the nursery was Paisley’s when she was small?”
“She was about three when her grandfather saved her. That’s the size of the cloak anyway, and she wore it in my vision in front of that church. She was too big for the nursery, unless they expected her to come to them sooner. Possibly another baby lived there, or one was expected to, and maybe never did, but why underground?”
“Good hideout.” Nick whistled. “Mad, on that snowy street where Paisley’s father was killed, didn’t you say that you heard a baby crying?”
I found that I had to swallow a sob.
Maybe there were more lives lost that night than I thought. “Yes, Nick, I did.”
Twenty-eight
I see myself as a true modernist. Even when I do a traditional gown, I give it a modern twist.
—VERA WANG
After a fruitless try to get the bats to move beyond the tunnel, through the shack, and toward the outside, we gave up and left them in the tunnel. At least we’d gotten the
m out of the nursery. Stepping back into the hidden stairwell from the shack, Nick set the wooden door, disguised as a wall, back into place, so the pieces sort of snapped together. “I’ll just bend these two nails,” he said, going he-man on me as he bent them with his hands. “The opening isn’t strong, but unless someone leans on it, it shouldn’t look like there’s a door beside the fireplace, though why I care, I don’t know.”
“Maybe for Paisley’s sake. To preserve her memories?” I suggested.
“That’s right. Her memories are rare and, therefore, sacred. What she has may as well remain untainted by rodent-infested tunnels.”
We made our way back up the stairs from the shack and ran through the tunnel, ignoring the squeals and odor.
“There’s more to sleuthing this one, Mad, than finding out who Paisley really is.”
“I know, I’m sorry. I did get us into the soup this time, didn’t I?”
“No, I’d say Paisley’s arrival did. Or my insistence on renting that boat, but not you, not in particular.”
I smiled. “We really do need to know who kidnapped Paisley’s mother. Who stabbed or shot her father, or whatever made his blood melt the snow.”
“It also matters who incarcerated her here,” Nick said, “though I vote for her grandfather. He was old and bound to die soon. Do you think he’s the locket’s Grover, since he had the other half with ‘Rose’ engraved on it?”
I bit my lip. “Paisley’s father might have been Grover. The courier Paisley’s grandmother met with on the Eiffel Tower could be Grover, though I think of him as White Beard. Whoa, suppose Rose was two-timing the old man with White Beard?”
“You’re complicating the issue,” Nick said. “Her husband met her there.”
“Met?” I asked. “Or followed?”
“Either way, we have to find Grover, dead or alive. And we need to know who Mam and Pap were, who they worked for exactly. Did they steal the military caskets and the money themselves, or did someone they worked for?”
“It’s hard to tell the bad guys from the good guys. Your kind cut our boat loose, Alex said so. But I can’t help believing that somebody besides the Feds knows about this place, and they’re not on our side.”
“You got that right.”
“The mobsters?” I asked.
“We’re only supposing they’re mobsters, given their names. Forensics will give us answers about Schmooey, Louie, and Screwy.”
“You’re worse than Paisley with the made-up names. It would be funny if they were dogs, all wearing little red polka-dot bow ties.”
“Or horses,” Nick added. “Nah, they would have needed a bigger graveyard.”
We stopped in the nursery to investigate more thoroughly, and despite my better judgment, I opened every drawer and cubby in the place. “Glass baby bottles in a round metal holder that could be immersed in boiling water, tiny spoons, a little cup. Bibs.” I flipped through the generous stack. “Hel-lo,” I held up my find.
“It’s a bib,” Nick said.
“Well, read it, Sherlock.”
“‘Made in the eighties,’” he read. “So? You can write anything on a bib.”
“Trust me, in the thirties and forties, which this room screams, they were painting fabric in Asia, not around here, not baby bibs. If they did write on baby clothes back then, not impossible, they would not have said ‘Made in.’ It sounds too crude for that time period, and they certainly wouldn’t have printed ‘the eighties.’ That’s like us figuring we’ll have kids in 2020 and printing it on a T-shirt.”
“Are we having kids?”
“Please, I’ve only been a life partner for a few hours. I thought if things went well in the next year or so, we’d think about a cute wheel-running-type rodent.”
“Slow down, Roadrunner. You’re moving a bit fast for me.”
“Makes ya’ dizzy, doesn’t it?”
He laughed, caught me around the waist, twirled me, and kissed the living life partner out of me. Visions of picket fences danced in my head.
In one of my spins, I kicked one of the open drawers to the floor, and I came to earth with a thud. Hanging over the back of the drawer was a pink little nighty.
“Oh, Madeira?” Nick called picking it up, as if he held a treat out for me.
I shook my head, clasped my hands together behind me, and backed away. “What can I get out of reading a baby nightie? Coochie coochie coo?”
“Here,” Nick said, picking it up. “I’ll hold you while you read it.”
“I think I’m gonna be sick.”
“Wouldn’t be the first time.”
“Okay, but hold me first, and then give it to me. The nighty, I mean.”
He playfully passed it to me. “Whoa,” he said from far away, “are you gonna pass out?”
I heard nothing but gibberish, but I could see the woman speaking quite clearly, her face pockmarked, her scars severe, no smile, oily fifties lipstick, and pin curls with bobby pin marks on each. Salt and pepper hair. No deodorant. I felt the little one do a nose wrinkle. “The woman who held her wore a high apron with apples on it over a brown feed sack housedress, and though she seemed to be mumbling a lot, I got parts of two words that sounded like “privyetjolie.”
My legs started working again, around the time I returned Nick’s kiss. “Hey, that was a nice way to come back.”
“I pulled the gown from your grasp, tossed it, and tried the kiss. You scared me.”
“I always scare me.”
“Sorry. Get anything?”
I described the woman. “She called me/the child jolie, which, I think, means ‘pretty’ in French. There were a lot of other words, garbled, but I made one out pretty well. Privyet.”
“Maybe she meant ‘pretty happy baby,’ though jolie could also be a first name, but not for Paisley.” I covered my tummy. “I’m still nauseous.”
“No more clothes reading for you today, Ladybug.”
“Thanks, Jackalope, I’m kinda wiped. If you want to know the truth, being a little one is hard work.”
“Did you feel younger than outside the church?”
I thought about that. “Maybe, because she held me like a babe, but I felt as confused.”
He kept his arm around me as we crossed the nursery, and he made me go upstairs ahead of him. “In case you feel faint, so I can catch you.”
“I might fake it so you can catch me.”
“You think we can leave Paisley with your folks later and spend the night alone at my house?”
I looked coyly at him over my shoulder. “To discuss the case in private?”
“Yeah, that.” He slid his hands along my hips.
“I like.”
We stepped into the closet—the one Paisley found the inlaid box in—turned off the stair light, sealed the wall, turned off the flashlight, went for a last kiss, blinked at a sudden light, and came face to face with my brother.
Alex looked dumbfounded, then he raised his hands. “I’m not even gonna ask.” He shut us inside, but of course, the mood was broken.
I threw open the door. “Hey, bro, I remember when you were dating Trish. I could tell a few tales.”
“Alex, get a team in there,” Nick said on a chuckle, letting my brother off the hook.
“Why? To dust an empty closet for prints?”
Nick opened the movable door, and tilted his light toward the stairs. “There’s a nursery down there, baby clothes, crib, dressing table, the works.”
“So…you two were…sleuthing?”
“In a manner of speaking,” I said, while Nick’s “absolutely” sounded so fake.
“We have got to get our stories right,” I said, shoving his arm.
Alex rolled his eyes and disappeared down the stairs.
Nick pulled me into Paisley’s old bedroom. “The thing is, Mad, I really would like to spend the night with you at my place, believe me, but for now, you have to get Paisley out of here.”
“Why?”
“They�
��re going to exhume the bodies, including those of the people who raised her, including her grandfather behind the shack. They need IDs, times, and causes of deaths, whatever the bodies can tell them. Paisley won’t be up to seeing any of it, especially not Bepah being exhumed.”
“You got that right. She may not have felt a connection to Mam and Pap, but despite herself, she thought of them as her parents. Is somebody prepared to take me and Paisley home?”
Alex appeared in the bedroom doorway, removing his latex gloves. “I just called for a forensics crew to get down there. Tunnel leads to an old shack—you knew that, right?”
“Right,” Nick said.
“Sis, I’ll take you and Paisley myself, and to make everything seem normal, I’ll go with you to New London, drive you to Mystick Falls, say hi to Dad, then I’ll go home for the night to spend some time with Trish.”
When we got outside, Paisley came running up to me. “I thought you left me.”
“No, sorry, sweetie. We were inside.”
“They’re gonna dig them up, I think. I don’t like the way it looks.”
“It’s okay,” my brother said. “I’m taking you and Mad back to Connecticut right now.”
Paisley began to tremble, and not a little bit, with a full body-quake kind of terror, so I drew her into my arms to console her.
Too late, I realized that my empathy had outweighed my prudence, just now, and I’d reached for the zenith of stupidity, her clothing against me. My self-recriminations, “dumb, dumb, dumb,” pounded like a hammer in my head as I shot into an eerily familiar spin.
I couldn’t pull away from Paisley to disconnect myself from her vintage outfit. I could only go with the rise and fall of the choppy sea beneath a small boat…as I watched the whirlpool made by a different waterspout waiting to swallow all onboard, unprepared to see what appeared to be Bepah throwing Paisley’s body overboard.
Twenty-nine
Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it’s an open mind.
Cloaked in Malice Page 14
