The Hinky Velvet Chair

by Jennifer Stevenson

  This was almost too easy. “Uh, of course not,” Jewel said uncertainly.

  “No, no. You must fit into the decor. Hm.” The turtle head turned from Jewel to Randy and back. “I have it. You shall be psychical investigators. I am considered something of an expert in the history of such matters, so no one will feel any surprise at your visit. Lord Pontarsais can remain himself, but perhaps we should disguise his name a little? Lord, hm.” Thompson looked at Randy’s visiting card.

  Randy’s eyes sparkled. “You might style me Lord Darner. I have a personal interest in supernatural phenomena.”

  Virgil Thompson bowed. “Very neat. And you, my dear? Perhaps you are his hired expert.”

  Jewel set her foot on Randy’s toe and leaned forward. “I’d rather be his hired debunker. Trailing him around the country, keeping him from spending money on fakes and bull — and nonsense.” She smiled another warning at Randy.

  “What fun! A believer and a skeptic. We shall call you, mm, Julia Hess. That way if Lord, er, Darner happens to forget and calls you by your real name, it won’t be noticed.” Thompson rubbed his hands together, looking tickled to death to be in a complicated intrigue. “You should send for some other clothes, however, my dear,” he said, eyeing her polyester. “You look so federal.” Well, that was a new way to describe her wardrobe. He clapped his hands. “How thrilling! You must stay as long as you like. Corner this criminal. He won’t suspect a thing.”

  “Mr. Thompson, you’re being very cooperative.” Jewel shook his hand again.

  “Oh, call me Virgil. Everyone does. And now you must meet my sister Griffy, who keeps house for me.” For a hundred-year-old fossil, Virgil had the sexiest twinkle in his eye.

  Jewel twinkled back at him. She felt like hunting Clay up and singing Nyah-nyah at him. I’m undercover! Woohoo!

  o0o

  Griffy was charmed with the new guests. She guessed right away that they must be Clay’s partners. The man was handsome in a very stiff, English way, and the woman Jewel was tall and righteous-looking, with an FBI chin, exactly the sort of person you could trust to chase away scheming floozies who tried to ruin a good woman’s relationship.

  Virgil introduced them. “Griffy, this is Lord Darner, the prominent British supernaturalist, and his assistant, Julia Hess.”

  “Call me J-Julia,” Clay’s partner stammered, shaking Griffy’s hand.

  Oh, good grief. More secrets. Well, she just wouldn’t worry about it. Who cared what their real names were? “I’ll show you to your rooms.”

  “Room,” Lord Darner said. “One room will suffice.”

  Julia looked grumpy. Griffy wondered if they were getting along. He thinks they’re together and she doesn’t.

  “Our bags will be coming later,” Julia said, showing her teeth at Lord Darner.

  Yup. Trouble. Maybe it was only a tiff.

  “Come with me, Lord Darner,” Virgil said. “The women can put their heads together while you and I have brandy and a cigar in my collection room. I can’t wait to show you my latest toy.”

  “This would be the, er, antique machine?” Lord Darner said.

  Julia looked nervous. “You’re not going to b-buy it, are you, Lord Darner?” she said. She seemed to have a stammer.

  “Not a chance!” Virgil cackled. “I’m going to buy it. Since I’m appraising it, I’ll offer the owner double what it’s worth. I can’t let it out of the house, now that I’ve seen it!” He towed Lord Darner away.

  Julia sighed. “I hope he doesn’t do something stupid.”

  “Men!” Griffy said. “If you saw all the junk he’s got up there. I’ll show you around. You must be good with people.”

  “Well, I like to see justice done,” said Clay’s investigator friend.

  Griffy’s eyes widened. “That sounds strict!”

  “I like to think of myself as cruel but fair.” Julia was looking at the grand staircase in the foyer. “Wow, some house.”

  “The marble kills your knees going up and downstairs. And it’s awful to clean. Oops, I wasn’t supposed to say that. We have all these people from Household Temps now. I can’t keep track of the stuff I can say and can’t say,” she complained. “At least you know I’m not Virgil’s sister. Well, how could I be? He’s twenty-five years older than me!”

  “Mm-hm,” Julia said.

  “Wait til you see this woman,” Griffy said darkly, thinking of that female fiend, Sovay Sacheverell. “She looks like his granddaughter. But I’ll say no more. You’ll make your own professional assessment. It won’t be easy. Virgil is determined.” She caught herself on a gasp and covered her mouth. “In eighteen years, I’ve never seen him like this.”

  Julia came to the top of the stairs and looked down at Griffy with kind eyes. “You love him.”

  Griffy sniffled and blotted the tears away from her mascara. “The old buzzard,” she gulped.

  “I was thinking turtle,” Julia said.

  Griffy felt a warm place in her heart. “I won’t worry anymore. I know we’re in good hands.”

  She tried to smile, and Julia smiled back.

  o0o

  Hm, Jewel thought. It almost sounded as if Griffy knew she was a cop. But how could Virgil have told her the truth already?

  While Griffy went off to get their room ready, Jewel went into the ladies’ cloakroom in the foyer and called Nina. The cloakroom was as elegant as a ladies’ room at the opera house, with a pink silk sitting room and a lavatory beyond.

  “Where have you been?” Nina wailed. “I need girl talk!”

  “Me, too.” Jewel lowered her voice. “I’m undercover. I need a favor.”

  “And I need a big old drink with salt around the rim.”

  “Please, I’m serious. I need you to go to my condo and pick out some clothes for me and bring them to me.”

  “Don’t tell me you’re sleeping around on Randy already!” Unfortunately, Nina knew all about Randy.

  “I’m undercover,” Jewel hissed. “I’m on a case.”

  “So Randy’s all alone in your apartment?” Nina had been one of Clay’s best customers, back when he was selling bogus sex therapy on Randy’s brass bed.

  “Back off. He’s on the case with me.”

  Nina laughed. “Just testing. So I get to dress you up?”

  “Raid my closet.” Jewel thought of her closet and groaned. She had two kinds of clothes: the polyester body-bags she wore to work, and weekend slutwear, which was no longer appropriate. The slutwear would have to do. She gave Virgil’s address. “About a week’s worth. Tell the butler they’re for Julia Hess.”

  “Wow, an alias and a butler! Evening dresses? Jewelry?”

  “Who do you think I am, Kim Kardashian?”

  “Relax, I’ve been wanting to buy you clothes for years.”

  “Nina—” No point asking Nina not to go off the deep end. Nina lived on the high-dive board.

  Her friend gave an evil laugh and hung up.

  Jewel came out of the cloakroom, hoping to find Clay, but Griffy pounced on her for more girl talk.

  Randy didn’t turn up until suppertime. The butler made a noise in the front hall like Ringo Starr beating gently on the biggest garbage can lid in the world, and here came Randy, sauntering downstairs with Virgil and Clay.

  With them slithered a woman who made Jewel feel fat, homely, ill-groomed, badly dressed, badly made-up, poor, and short.

  Short, if you please. Jewel was six feet tall.

  Up close, she realized Sovay Sacheverell was five-ten, tops. Must be the tight gold dress that made her look taller. She had snake hips, fabulous legs, and shoes to kill for: black, shiny, pointy, and strappy, with little bows in the back. Jewel tried not to look at her face. Too depressing.

  Also the English accent.

  “Julia, delightful to meet you, I’ve spent the most marvelous hour with your too exciting Lord Darner. Isn’t he rugged?” Sovay sat beside Virgil and fluttered beringed fingers. “He says he measures psychical vibration
s in antique furniture.” She eyed Randy across the wineglasses and gold plates.

  Sovay’s scarlet mouth curved, and her eyes were a glorious hazel, and her hair was black and thick, and her throat was a miracle of smooth whiteness, and Jewel hated her with every drop of her blood.

  Jewel felt it was too bad that she couldn’t cite Sovay Sacheverell for homewrecking. Griffy was in pain. And charming, dithery old Virgil wasn’t paying attention.

  Maybe she would end up busting Sovay for something else.

  Randy drank Virgil’s wine with a look of deep satisfaction on his too-exciting, rugged, fascinating face. “A nice young claret,” he said, pursing his lips.

  “A connoisseur.” Virgil toasted him. “Drinkable, I think.”

  Randy sniffed the glass. “Oh, very.” He was in his element, surrounded by beautiful women and expensive food. Now Jewel realized she was a poor hostess as well. The most she’d ever given him was a thorough grounding in take-out Thai.

  “And your expertise is?” Sovay said to Jewel.

  “Debunking phonies,” Jewel said, sucking down claret.

  “A skeptic! How challenging!” Sovay smiled, and Jewel knew the challenge would be between them. This bitch would get Randy in bed for practice. Because her focus was obviously on Virgil. “Virgil-darling, she would be perfect for our experiment.”

  “What experiment?” Clay said. He was wearing what Jewel thought of as yacht-club casual: boring hundred-dollar khakis and a silky polo.

  Jewel’s brain caught up with her ears. “What experiment?”

  Virgil clapped his hands. “The Katterfelto Venus Machine. It hasn’t been used in more than two hundred years. It’s way out of adjustment, but we’ll tinker. We may get a buzz off it.”

  Jewel knew the whites of her eyes were showing. “Randy?” Call her superstitious, but the mention of two hundred years reminded her of the brass bed. She’d had as much fun as she could stand with that.

  Randy ate a green bean. “Katterfelto boasted that he had enhanced the charms of beauties who later made advantageous marriages. He wouldn’t name them, but everyone knows he meant the Gunning sisters. One of them married two dukes.”

  “Two dukes!” Sovay said, showing him her cleavage.

  Randy’s eyes gleamed. Jewel could have sworn the bitch’s hand was on his thigh under the table.

  “Surely that’s not possible!” Sovay looked as if she would have tried it, if she had known bigamy was legal with dukes.

  “Miss Gunning married her dukes random-tandem, not as a team,” Randy murmured, dangling his wineglass in his fingers and looking at Sovay under drooping eyelids.

  Jewel felt her hackles go up. The butler came by with the claret again and she drained her glass so he could refill it.

  Virgil patted her hand. “Now, don’t spoil our fun.” He reminded her of the family lawyer back in Homonowoc, Wisconsin. Dusty and old-fashioned on the outside and funny and sexy underneath. “I rely on your good sense to offset the placebo effect. We’ll play a few hands of poker and then see how this thing works. Bordeaux?” Before she could answer, Virgil pointed to one of the forest of crystal wineglasses in front of her and asked Randy, “You’re familiar with Graham’s work with electricity?”

  “The Celestial Bed man,” Sovay said, erupting into a fountain of flimflam about the effect of electricity on latent auras and psychic contagion of charismatic individuals on personal property. Virgil, Randy, and Sovay put their heads together and talked newage with great energy.

  Jewel’s eyes glazed over. She tasted the Bordeaux. She tasted more claret. In desperation, she turned to Clay, whom, she remembered now, she was supposed to be investigating. “And what do you do, Mr. Dawes?”

  Clay smiled his crinkly-eyed smile. “I’ve always wanted to explore my theories of sexualis imaginarium with a skeptic. Do you ever dream about sex?”

  He was just like them. She felt tongue-tied.

  “My experiments,” he said with a straight face, “show that partial submersion in REM sleep, or a hypnogogic state mimicking REM sleep, is ideal for those moments of transcendent, extradimensional eroticism that—”

  She felt herself going down for the third time.

  After dinner they all moved into another room and the men, plus of course Sovay, sat down to their poker game with a bottle of old Scotch. Jewel hid out in a corner with Griffy, who hadn’t said a word throughout the meal.

  Griffy looked depressed.

  “Cheer up,” Jewel said. “It can’t last.”

  “I’d like to kill her.”

  Looking at Virgil’s turtle head and his slow fumbling with the cards, Jewel was surprised Griffy wanted to hold onto him. Maybe she didn’t have any palimony paper.

  Griffy watched Sovay. “She doesn’t even like him.” She turned to Jewel. “You’re doing okay. What’s Lord Darner like?”

  “Moody.” The butler brought a tray and glasses to them and, against her better judgment, Jewel accepted champagne.

  Griffy frowned. “But Lord Darner cares about you.”

  “How can you tell?” Jewel put her chin on her hand. Randy was laughing at Sovay. She’d never seen him look so relaxed. Something twinged inside her chest.

  Just then, Randy looked at her. She flushed, as if he’d caught her feeling something about him. He spoke to Virgil.

  Virgil put his cards down. “Julia! Can you play poker?”

  “I suck at cards,” she called back. But Virgil sent Clay over to get her.

  Griffy said, “I’ll order drinks for upstairs.”

  Clay put his hand on Jewel’s elbow and watched Griffy go with a grim expression on his face.

  “Do I have to do this?” Jewel complained.

  “Yes.” Clay didn’t look happy. But by the time they were seated at the poker table he was the life and soul of the party.

  Jewel expected to hate poker, but a funny thing happened. She started winning.

  “Julia, you brute, you can’t raise again!” Sovay cried. “How long have you been a blonde?” she added, sotto voce.

  “All my life,” Jewel said. Bottle-brave, she said, “Five or fold.”

  “So difficult when the color begins to fade. The choices that beset one,” Sovay said, tossing five dollars into the pot.

  “See you and raise you,” Clay said.

  “I’m in,” Virgil said, and Randy echoed him.

  And where was Randy getting the money to play cash poker?

  Duh. Clay must be leading her sex demon into temptation.

  Virgil poured her a long Scotch. Clay and Randy fawned on Sovay, but Virgil flirted with Jewel. And for the first time in her life, tiddly with three kinds of wine and Scotch and victory, she won.

  Then Virgil proposed they all go take a look at the Katterflibbertygibbet Machine upstairs. “Maybe our hardened skeptic will prove it’s a fraud. Ante up, my dear,” he said, twinkling like her Homonowoc lawyer. Jewel felt at home. “You’re on a winning streak.”

  “Yes, a skeptic is irresistible to a certain type of man,” Sovay said through her teeth.

  “Do you type men, as a rule?” Randy asked Sovay languidly.

  “Oo, what type am I?” Clay asked Sovay, frisking like a damned puppy.

  Chapter Seven

  Which was how Jewel found herself sitting on an elegant green-velvet-padded chair with a curvy gold frame, surrounded by a Rube Goldberg machine made of mahogany and teakwood, copper-inlaid dials, brass switches, and mother-of-pearl buttons in gleaming, important-looking rows. It had more class than her car. She felt underdressed again.

  “What does this thing do?” Her voice sounded far away.

  “In theory, it’ll make you irresistible to men,” Clay said, examining the machine. “It’s in nice condition.”

  “I’ve cleaned it,” Virgil said. He leaped around the machine like an aged spider monkey, twiddling this, unscrewing that, adjusting and clanking and throwing levers. Clay and Randy hemmed and hawed and talked newage. Randy sounded well-i
nformed on supernatural phenomena, as well he should. Griffy came in, trailed by the butler and a drinks cart.

  Sovay accepted a martini from Griffy with a ‘Thank you’ that blended condescension toward a social inferior with a case of sulks, and would have made Jewel want to stab her to the heart with a swizzle stick.

  Jewel lounged on the green-velvet-padded chair, feeling not quite ready to pounce on evildoing.

  “Ready!” Virgil threw the switch.

  She didn’t feel a thing.

  True, getting out of the velvet chair she tripped over a silver-inlaid rosewood potentiometer and fell on her ass, but that was the Scotch.

  “You’ve been had,” she announced to Sovay from the floor.

  “Jew — Julia!” Clay cried. “Are you all right?”

  Randy leaped forward to help her to her feet. It comforted her to see concern on his face. “You’ve suffered no hurt?”

  “Only my pride.” She dusted off her fanny. All three men and the butler goggled at her. “No worse than falling off a donkey.” They stared. “Well?”

  Clay swallowed. “I think this case has sprung a leak.”

  She glared at him. “And I’m looking right at it.” This is the last time I take you undercover anywhere. Had she said that out loud? She’d had too many Scotches. “Can I go to bed now?”

  “I’ll help,” Randy and Clay said.

  But Virgil was at her side before the words were out of their mouths. “My dear, thank you for your cooperation. Perhaps it is time to say good night.”

  “You think I’m drunk,” she blurted. “Well, I’m not so drunk I can’t tell this thing is a big old drunk of junk. Very impressive, but a junk of hunk,” she enunciated.

  “Coffee, Griffy?” Virgil said, putting his arm around Jewel.

  Griffy sent Jewel a wounded look and poured a cup.

  “How do you feel?” Clay said.

  “You’re a phony, too!” Jewel accused, then put her hand over her mouth. Would Julia Hess say that to the person Clay was pretending to be?