Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3)

by Angela M. Sanders

  “They’ll have to prove it was an accident, though. Until the medical examiner makes a determination, everyone’s under suspicion.”

  “I told you, I just wanted to say goodbye to Wilson.” Penny rolled away from both women and stared toward the window. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

  “In the closet? Wilson wasn’t in the closet. And I saw drawers pulled out, too. You were looking for something.”

  “I was not. Leave me alone. It’s none of your business, anyway. Portia was up there. How come you’re not harassing her?”

  Portia leaned back, hands held up, palms forward. “I admit I was a little curious about Wilson. I shouldn’t have gone up there, but everyone else had seen him—”

  A moment passed. Clearly, neither sister was going to come clean. “I’m sorry,” Joanna said to Penny. “You’re right, I don’t know how you feel. Can’t. I was just thinking of you, wanting to make sure we weren’t getting ourselves into more trouble.” Penny didn’t move. “I’ll leave. You get some rest.”

  “No,” Penny rolled over. “No,” she said repeated with unexpected force. “Stay. I have something to tell you.” Tears streaked her face. Bubbles barked from Bette’s room next door. The dog’s ringing yelp seemed to nudge Penny back into the present. “Sit down, both of you.”

  Joanna obeyed, taking a place on the bed across from Portia.

  “It’s my fault Wilson died,” Penny said.

  “What?”

  “Oh Penny, you can’t—” Portia said at the same time.

  “Listen to me.” Penny pulled up a corner of the comforter to dry her face. Joanna reached to the nightstand to grab a handful of tissues for her. “Listen. I want you to know this,” she said more quietly. “Wilson and I called off the wedding last night.”

  Joanna and Portia exchanged glances. Everything had seemed fine at dinner. “I don’t get it. You were so happy.”

  Penny began to cry again, more quietly. Portia put an arm around her. How strange to see both heads, so similar yet different, bowed next to each other.

  “Hush, Henny Penn,” Portia said. “It’s all right. Whatever silly fight you had, it’s all right. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

  “No. I did it. I called it off. Wilson would never have been so careless about shellfish if everything had been all right between us. It’s my fault he died.” She caught her breath. “I know I wasn’t supposed to see him before the wedding, but I wanted to give him his wedding present early. Besides, he said he had something important to tell me.”

  Joanna could imagine Penny the night before, exuberant, too excited to wait until the next day to give him the present.

  “I gave him a beautiful old bracelet of Hindu prayer beads. Carved from rose agate. Rose agate is all about love and surprise. It was really special.” She slid her hand under the pillow next to her and withdrew a bracelet with beads like marbles of pink cloud. A tail of four beads dangled from it. “He was psyched at first, then he got really mad. He wanted to know where I got it,” Penny said. “It took me and Reverend Tony months to find it. Wilson was so mean, I didn’t know what to do.”

  “Hmm,” Portia said. “Tony helped you, huh?”

  “This was after the poker game, right?” Joanna said. “Remember, they’d been drinking. I’m sure he didn’t mean it.”

  “He threw the beads on the ground. I told him if this was how he was going to be—how he was going to treat me—he could just forget about the wedding. Then I—I left.” She lay her head on the pillow. “It was like he was going back to the way he used to be.”

  “What do you mean, the ‘way he used to be’?” Portia asked.

  Penny sighed. “When we first met, he would barely make eye contact with me. You could tell something damaged him. I never really listened to much of Wilson’s music except, you know, what I heard on the radio, but I knew he’d stopped performing for some reason.”

  Of all the hundreds of thousands of women who’d dreamed of marrying Wilson Jack, wouldn’t you know he’d end up with one who couldn’t pick him out of a line-up, Joanna thought. “How did you meet? I don’t think you ever told me that story.”

  A long moment passed before Penny replied. “My car broke down at an intersection, and he was in the car behind me. He stayed with me while I called a tow truck. He was super polite, but he never really engaged, you know what I mean? But when the tow truck finally came, Wilson gave me his phone number and left. He seemed to want to get to know me, but didn’t want to, at the same time.”

  “You never told me that story, either,” Portia said.

  “I called him a few days later to thank him, and we got coffee. He had such a bad temper. But I could tell he was really wounded. He just needed someone to be patient with him and give him the chance to trust.”

  Bette was right about her daughter. Penny did have a weakness for stray animals. Fame must have ruined him somehow. Or—the thought of her mother passed through Joanna’s mind—it happened much earlier.

  “But last night he seemed to be slipping away again,” Penny said, her voice breaking. “I don’t want to be married to someone like that. And when he threw the prayer beads on the ground—”

  Portia patted her sister’s back. “You’ve broken up with him before, haven’t you?”

  “Yes,” came Penny’s small voice.

  “And you always got back together, didn’t you?”

  “Yes.”

  “So there,” Portia said. “He knew better than to think you’d not marry him. He knew you belonged together. He was probably on his way back to you to apologize when he stopped and took a bite of the sandwich. By accident.”

  Childlike, Penny pulled a sheet over her head. Her voice came out muffled. “But he was upset. Really mad. Maybe—maybe he even ate it knowing it would kill him.”

  “No. Don’t blame yourself. These things happen,” she said, rocking Penny’s sheet-covered body against hers.

  Maybe Wilson was a bit of a curmudgeon, but Joanna had a hard time imagining him being so rude to his bride-to-be just because she gave him a gift—a gift he initially seemed to like. Penny wasn’t telling the whole story. And she still hadn’t explained what she was doing searching Wilson’s room.

  “Penny,” Joanna whispered. “What were you doing upstairs just now?”

  A long sigh erupted from under the sheet. “I told you. I was saying goodbye to Wilson.”

  “In the closet?”

  Portia glared at Joanna. “Would you leave her alone?”

  “Yes! Leave me alone,” Penny shouted and began to sob again. “Stop going on and on about it.”

  “Can’t you see she’s upset? You’d better go now. I’ll take care of her.”

  “All right.” Chagrined, Joanna rose. She opened her mouth to ask if Penny ever found out what Wilson wanted to tell her, but thought better of it. “I’m sorry. I’ll see you at dinner.”

  She left the sisters huddling together in the snow-darkened room.

  Chapter Ten

  Around the dinner table, the day’s toll showed. Even the flowers drooped in the candlelight. It was hard to believe just twenty-four hours ago they’d sat at the same table so jubilant about the upcoming wedding and party.

  Daniel was quiet and made little eye contact with anyone else, although he did glance down the table at Sylvia and Marianne from time to time. Sylvia was into her second glass of wine and trying to convince Marianne she really needed to eat. Clarke seemed calm, probably turning over some real estate deal in his head. His placid smile bent to a frown when Bette yelled for the chef. Portia’s face was pale in the dim dining room. She glanced at the empty seat at the head of the table—the seat that would have been Wilson’s—and looked away.

  Bette seemed the least affected by the events of the day. She wore a Dynasty-worthy caftan of broad-shouldered cerise silk—Joanna didn’t think she’d ever seen a caftan with shoulder pads before—and had applied a full face of make-up, including blood-red lipstick. The
pink bow on Bubbles’s head popped above the edge of the table.

  Once Reverend Tony arrived and slipped into a seat at the far end of the table, only Penny was absent. Penny and her secrets.

  “I brought Penny some of the greens and made her a broth with herbs I had on hand. She’s resting,” the Reverend said.

  “Herbs. Interesting, Tony,” Portia said. “I mean Father.”

  The Reverend narrowed his eyes. “Master.”

  Joanna decided this might be a good time to derail the conversation. “I found some of Francis Redd’s journals today.” They’d been on her mind all afternoon. She’d planned to spend the hour before dinner looking at them, but Jules had pressed her into service monitoring the gratin in the hearth. Although he’d made it worth her while with another glass of the Bordeaux, she longed to get at those journals. The second that dinner was over, she planned to crack open the secret staircase again.

  “Seems like Portia knows you, Father. How is that, anyway?” Bette said, ignoring Joanna. “Oh, there you are, Jules. We need another bottle of champagne, see-voo-play.”

  With a grimace, the chef set the gratin of leftover boar and vegetables on the table. “Yes, Madame. Although, of course, you already know where it’s kept.” He plunged a serving spoon into the gratin. “And you will find no clam dip at this dinner.” He looked daggers at Clarke.

  Reverend Tony ignored the exchange between Bette and the chef. “I repeat, that’s Master, not Father. We all evolve during our lives—at least, those of us who wish to achieve spiritual growth do. The title Master was something I earned after years of devotion, meditation, and intensive introspection.” He rested a hand on Chef Jules’s sleeve as he passed by. “I commend you, son, for not smoking indoors. We are very grateful.”

  Neatly sidestepped, Joanna noted. The chef snapped his arm close to his body and disappeared into the butler’s pantry.

  “Where did you spend these years of introspection, Master?” Bette asked.

  “San Quentin, I bet,” Portia muttered. Joanna raised an eyebrow. “Reverend Tony used to live in Chicago,” Portia said. “I met him when I went to the Art Institute. I don’t think he remembers me, but we all knew him in the print lab.” She speared a stuffed mushroom, its crumb topping now soggy.

  Tony looked alarmed. “Many great buildings rise from the ashes of weak foundations.”

  “You were in architecture?” Bette asked.

  Daniel rolled his eyes and Sylvia suppressed a smile, but Joanna went on alert.

  “Penny told me she had a spiritual advisor. Imagine my surprise last night when I came in and saw him here.” Portia calmly spooned a few more mushrooms to her plate before passing the platter.

  “If he’s spiritual, I’m the Virgin Mary,” Bette said.

  Daniel raised a hand. “Look. I know people are getting testy, but there’s no call to be rude. Tomorrow morning we’ll radio out, and with any luck our time here will be just a memory. Let’s not make it worse than it is.”

  Chef Jules returned with a bottle of champagne for Bette. “I assume you know how to open it?” He didn’t pause for a response before returning to the butler’s pantry.

  “The journals were in a hidden staircase,” Joanna tried again. “Francis Redd’s journals.”

  Daniel set down his fork. “Excuse me, Joanna, but there’s something I need to tell everyone. Please, don’t go, Chef. As I said, we won’t be here more than another day, but our firewood and candles won’t last forever. If we have to be here beyond noon tomorrow—”

  A chorus of moans went around the table. The sharp whisk of wind and snow against the dining room window underlined their plight. Joanna shivered.

  “We have plenty of food for three, maybe four days. Hors d’oeuvres, but nice quality ingredients,” Chef Jules said.

  Bette’s champagne glass hit the table with a thunk. “You’re joking. You think we’re stuck here that long?”

  “Mom, it’s not that big a deal. It’s just a day. Remember? We’re radioing out again tomorrow. Good thing no one sent you to war zones to take photos,” Portia said.

  “Are you implying I’m soft? I used to party all night and not take a shower until noon the next day. At Studio 54, Halston once—”

  Oh lord, here we go again, Joanna thought.

  “Bette, please,” Clarke said. Maybe he did have some backbone. Bette’s face dropped.

  “I think he means we’re all so jealous thinking of the wonderful times you had in New York,” Sylvia said.

  Bette appeared placated but wary. “It really was a once-in-a-lifetime experience. Like when Bianca rode a horse across the dance floor. Did I ever tell you about that?”

  Heads nodded around the table. Daniel rose and tossed a log into the fireplace.

  “Did the horse have hay?” Marianne asked.

  “Honey,” her mother said.

  “They had a horse in a building, Mummy.”

  At this rate, they’d never finish dinner, and she’d never get to see the journals. Joanna raised her voice. “I found something interesting today in the library. A hidden staircase.”

  “A hidden staircase? Why didn’t you say so?” Reverend Tony hovered above his chair. When he noticed everyone looking at him, he lowered himself and returned his napkin to his lap.

  “You never did show me that staircase,” came Penny’s voice from the doorway, in a late entrance that recalled Wilson’s the evening before. She’d made an effort to dress for dinner and wore the grass-green velvet sheath dress Joanna had found and had tailored for her honeymoon farewell. Her skin was sheer as white tissue. She slid into the chair next to the Reverend.

  “How are you, darling?” Bette asked.

  “I didn’t want to be alone.” She smiled at Tony and laid a hand on his arm. “Thank you for everything you’ve done to comfort me.”

  Guilt pinched Joanna’s conscience. She shouldn’t have pushed Penny so hard on being in the tower room. At least maybe Portia had talked Penny out of her ridiculous idea that she caused Wilson’s death.

  “Have a glass of wine.” Portia pushed her glass across the table and filled it from the bottle of pinot noir.

  “I don’t think alcohol is the answer—” the Reverend began.

  Penny took a gulp and coughed. She set the glass in front of her and topped it off. A drop splashed to the white linen tablecloth, spreading scarlet.

  “What staircase, Joanna?” Daniel asked.

  “In the library, behind one of the bookshelves.”

  Penny’s dull eyes livened slightly. “I want to see it.”

  At last, Joanna would get to see those journals. “Marianne tipped me off to it.”

  “Me?” Marianne gripped her spoon like a drumstick, and a couple of peas rolled off.

  “Careful, babe.” Sylvia righted the spoon.

  “You pointed out the carved hornet. Remember? Right up near the ceiling. I pulled on it, and part of the wall unlatched.”

  “Vespa! Vespa!” Marianne sang.

  “The secret latch was a hornet?” Penny asked.

  At least Penny was interested in something. “Plus, behind the faux bookshelves is a whole set of real bookshelves. They’re loaded with red-bound books. I think they’re the original owner’s journals. We can look at them after dinner, if you want. I’ll show you.”

  “Yes. Please,” Penny said. “Maybe we can figure out what happened to Francis Redd.”

  “It’ll give us something to do until the storm blows over, anyway,” Clarke added. “I’m starting to feel like we’ll never get out of here.”

  ***

  After dinner, the lodge’s guests crowded the library, except the chef, who sullenly cleared the dining room after a fight with Bette. The brief shouting match ended in her agreement to pay him a bonus for additional duties. Taper candles flickered from the end tables and fireplace mantle. Like a tour director, Joanna stood in front of the faux bookcase.

  “Marianne noticed the carved hornet up there.” Joa
nna pointed. “I pulled it down, like this” —she stretched to the hornet and tugged its stinger— “and voilà.” The bookcase cracked open, more easily this time.

  Reverend Tony stood at the front of the group. He pulled the bookcase the rest of the way open. He’d been remarkably nosy, Joanna noted. Digging through the trunk in the attic, wandering the lodge at night, and now this.

  “The door to the hidden staircase is against the wall. Here.” Joanna pointed out the latch. Tony pushed open the door and stepped up into the passageway. “It’s narrow,” Joanna warned.

  “Let me see.” Marianne slipped under Daniel’s arm and squeezed next to the Reverend.

  Sylvia caught her by the shoulders and led her back. “No, honey.”

  “Very interesting,” Portia said. Her hand reached for where her camera would have been, around her neck, then dropped.

  “Well, I’m not surprised at all,” came Bette’s voice from the back of the room. “The guy who built this place thought he was so clever. Can’t even tell the damn time with all the clocks running backwards. You guys can puzzle over this all you want. I’m going to my room. Come on, Bubbles.” She grabbed the candlestick from Clarke’s hands. Her champagne bottle clunked against the doorframe on her way out.

  Tony backed out of the staircase and shut the back panel to the passage. The bookcase remained open. “It goes upstairs?”

  “Yes, lets out in the tower room’s closet. Hasn’t been used in years. It’s super dusty. This afternoon when I—” Joanna said.

  “What are those?” Penny pointed at the half dozen red-bound books hidden behind the faux shelf.

  “The books I told you about. As I was saying, when I—”

  Penny interrupted her again. “He hid them, so they must be important. Let’s look at them.”

  Joanna turned to her and nodded. Penny clearly didn’t want Joanna to say she had found her upstairs. She hesitated only a moment. “Sure. We’ll take them to the great room where there’s more light.”

  Penny loaded a few volumes onto her arm and led the way to the table in front of the great room’s fireplace. “Maybe he talks about a plot to kill him. You know, about threats, things like that. Maybe he left clues.” She raised her head, and Joanna thought she glimpsed a hint of her old sparkle. “You know, I saw his ghost this afternoon.”