Skirting the Grave

by Annette Blair

  —COCO CHANEL

  Behind the stage, the back terrace doors stood open, so we went outside into the dark, empty night, Nick calling for backup.

  Before us rolled about a half mile’s worth of sloping lawns to the cliff’s edge, and the Mystic River beyond, with a deadly, rocky drop to the beach.

  A gun went off.

  A scream echoed in the distance.

  “Isobel!” I called.

  Werner and Nick took off at a run across the lawn toward the water.

  I gave Kyle Nick’s keys. “Get the Hummer near the carriage house, and drive it down to the cliff. Headlights would be a big help.”

  “Ack,” Eve said, “Kyle, be careful not to drive over the edge.”

  He chuckled and ran.

  I went back to the terrace and flipped on a bank of light switches, but it wasn’t nearly enough illumination to reach that far. From experience, Eve and I both knew to kick off our shoes before we started running.

  It wasn’t long before I saw a body and swerved toward it.

  “What the hell?” Eve snapped, making a sharp left ahead of me and doubling back.

  “A body,” I said, kneeling beside it, but then I released my breath. “Not a body. A dress and shoes.” I picked them up and continued running.

  “Drop the clothes!” Eve yelled. “You’ll make better time.”

  “I can run as fast carrying them.”

  “Why would you want to?”

  “Armani Privé? Manolos? One of a kind? Worth more than Kyle’s car.”

  “You can be such a fruitloop!” Eve screamed, and took the running lead.

  The lights of Nick’s Hummer came over the hill before the Hummer itself, and lit our way, though Kyle drove like he was drunk. Then I realized he was scanning the area with the lights.

  When everything appeared clear, Kyle gunned the Hummer across Cort’s million-dollar lawn, but who cared? People’s lives were in peril.

  Five people went out ahead of us—Nick, Werner, York, Isobel, and the latecomer—and only one person stood at the edge of the cliff. “Oh God.”

  I stopped to catch my breath and lay the outfit on a wrought iron bench Cort kept down there, the Manolos on top so the gown wouldn’t blow away.

  “Nick,” I called, “where’s Werner?”

  Nick was waving a flashlight. “He’s gone down for Isobel.”

  I looked over the edge. Two young women lay at the base of the cliffs, looking like broken dolls in the sand, though they’d landed a distance away from each other. And they were both wearing black cocktail dresses, when one of them should be in her slip, or less.

  The latecomer must have been wearing two layers. I couldn’t tell which was which. “Oh God. Isobel, are you all right?” I shouted.

  Kyle parked the car and left the headlights on.

  Ambulances and police cars, no lights, no sirens, cut through Cort’s neighbor’s yard for easier access to a set of steps through the cliff rock to the beach.

  I took Nick’s tux jacket off him, stepped out of my dress behind it, and slipped into it. “Here. Hold this,” I said, giving him the dress. Then I buttoned myself into his jacket and made my way down the face of the cliff.

  “Good thing you’re a spider monkey, fruitloop,” Eve called after me. “I’ll put this dress with your stash. You’d better not fall. I’ll never forgive you, if you . . .”

  Her voice cracked, but I kept going.

  I went to Werner, kneeling over one of the girls, the one nearest the water. The gash on her head bled profusely into the sand.

  “Madeira,” the girl said. “I love working for you. I hope this doesn’t change anything.”

  Isobel never called me Madeira, ever. She called me boss so often, I was starting to get sick of it. “You’re Giselle, aren’t you?”

  “Oh, yes. Giselle, that’s the one.” She touched her head. “I’m the favorite. I’m supposed to be the favorite. It’s my turn to have all the money. Giselle lives so far away—no, I . . . I live so far from the family, it’ll be easy to be Giselle. They won’t know. They don’t care.” She groaned. “I have a really bad headache.”

  Not Giselle, I realized then, but Payton trying, and failing with her last breath, to claim Giselle’s life and fortune. I looked at Werner, and he shook his head like he doubted she’d make it. I agreed.

  “Where’s York?” I asked him.

  “On an outcropping of rock. He’s been shot by Payton here, but he’s moving. They’re about to bring him up, see?”

  I left Werner with Payton and went to Isobel. “Isobel, you okay?”

  “My sister’s gone, boss. Giselle is the one who died.”

  “I know that now, sweetie.”

  “Payton was the killer all along. Payton bid on my dad; what a joke if she’d succeeded and won him as her father, exactly as she wanted. Except that she also wanted to kill him.”

  “That’s why she had the body cremated. She planned to take Giselle’s place,” I said.

  “Yes, Payton told me as much on our way down here. She thought she should get all the money since she’d never had any of it. It was time, she said. She shot my dad when he tried to reason with her. She didn’t think we’d recognize her in that getup. She said she was sorry about Giselle but only after she fell. She was bringing us to that boat. My dad and I were supposed to drown tonight. Is my dad okay?”

  “It looks like he is. I can see him responding to the medics. He’s moving his hands.”

  Isobel smiled. “He does that.”

  “Looks like you’ve been shot in the shoulder,” I said.

  “And my side, I think, but the shoulder hurts more.”

  “Medics,” I called at the top of my lungs.

  Werner joined me. “I got a statement, but she’s gone,” he said. “That was a self-inflicted wound.”

  Isobel wept. So did I, though I tried to comfort her.

  Werner put an arm around me.

  “You just left Payton, you know? She was the killer. Giselle died on the train.”

  “Isobel and Giselle both worked for Robear,” Werner said. “Isobel as a model, Giselle as a call girl.”

  “What?” I didn’t know he knew that.

  “Robear led a double life. She was literally a madam. I talked to Sevigny in France. The French authorities forwarded his sworn statement. Did you know, Isobel, about Giselle working for Robear, too?” he asked.

  “Robear tried to recruit me as a call girl when I first started modeling for her. Going by the name of Madam C., she sold high-priced models to men who could afford anything. I told Giselle because I was upset—that’s when we lived together—and thought nothing more about it. I modeled, and that’s all.”

  I dabbed at Isobel’s brow with the corner of Nick’s jacket.

  “During the course of this investigation,” Isobel continued, “after the body was identified as me, then Payton, it did make me think of how easy we could pretend to be each other. I thought of Robear’s offer and Giselle’s travels. But Robear had left the country by then, and I couldn’t ask her. I think I subconsciously chose not to believe that of my sister.”

  “Do you think Robear knew that you were two different people?” I asked.

  “I think it’s very likely that Robear didn’t know,” Isobel said. “Giselle could easily have called herself Isobel. Robear paid her call girls in cash, after all, and Robear wouldn’t have made the mistake of identifying the body as me if she knew about Giselle.”

  I sighed. “Rickard and Payton wanted us to think Payton was dead, because Payton intended to take over Giselle’s rich lifestyle, away from the family who could identify her,” I said. “And of course, she told Rickard she’d keep him in money to shut him up about her new lifestyle. He thought he had something on her. And he did, until Giselle was cremated, the proof was gone, and Payton killed him.”

  Werner nodded. “You’re right, Mad; it was like the shell game.”

  I nodded. “Did Payton tell you what s
he used in those syringes to kill Giselle and Rickard?”

  “Insulin, which doesn’t show up in a tox screen, because it’s already in the bloodstream,” Werner said. “What bothers me is that she succeeded, so why come into the open, tonight?”

  “She wanted to be rid of us all,” Isobel said. “My father and I were about to be lost at sea.”

  “When did Payton tell you that?” I asked.

  “On our way down here, but she was talking crazy like Grand-mère had earlier today,” Isobel said, looking pained. “I’m not sure if all this killing wasn’t too much for Payton. She was always the emotional one. I thought it was for attention but maybe not.”

  The medics showed up, and we stood to the side so they could stabilize Isobel.

  After they did, they put her on a stretcher and hauled her up the cliff; I monkeyed my way back up, Werner behind me.

  “Mad, where’s your dress?”

  “On a bench up top.”

  “Nice legs.”

  I stopped and turned to him. “Maybe you should go ahead of me.”

  “A gentleman always lets a lady go first.”

  “Some gentleman.”

  At the top, Eve threw herself into my arms.

  “Did you take good care of my dresses?” I asked.

  “Up yours,” she snapped.

  “That’s my feisty girl,” Kyle said, squeezing Eve’s shoulder.

  Eve sobbed and about strangled me with another hug.

  Nick took me in his arms after her, and he held tight, and nobody disputed his right to do so. And me, I felt as if I’d come home.

  “I can’t figure out how the heck Payton expected to get away with this,” I said afterward. “It’s such a public place.”

  Nick turned me and pointed toward the river. “There’s a yacht waiting not too far distant. Could be kidnapping was the plan. A police boat’s on its way out there.”

  “Oh, you’re right. Isobel told us so. I saw a motorboat at the base of the cliffs. Thought it was Cort’s. How’s Candidate York?”

  “He’ll pull through,” Nick said. “Giselle?”

  “Nick, Giselle’s been dead for days. That’s Payton in the sand. She turned the gun on herself and made a success of that, at least.”

  The party in the Vancortland mansion, up over the rise, seemed to continue. Nobody had come outside to see what was happening, and the music continued to drift down toward the water uninterrupted.

  My cell phone rang, and I fished it from Werner’s tux pocket.

  He looked surprised. “When did you put it in there?”

  “When we were dancing. Shh.” I listened to my caller and hung up. “Let’s go,” I said.

  “Where?” Werner asked. “I’ve got a crime scene.”

  “Meet me at the hospital when you’re done, then.”

  “Are you hurt?” Werner and Nick asked together.

  “I’ll be on the maternity ward. Sherry’s on her way into the delivery room.”

  Werner looked skeptical.

  “When you’re there, you can check on Isobel and her father and write your report. As for me, I’m Sherry’s backup coach, in case Justin can’t go the distance.”

  I called my dad and Fiona, Brandy and Cort, and Alex and Tricia, while Nick drove us to the hospital in his Hummer.

  Sherry was still in labor when I got to the maternity ward while Nick parked the Hummer.

  Justin sat in the waiting room, head in his hands. “Ten minutes, and I passed out,” he confessed.

  I rubbed his arm. “No wonder she wanted a second string.”

  Justin groaned. “Because I fainted at the ultrasound.”

  I bit my lip and went in to coach my sister.

  By the time the family arrived, and I mean everyone, I was standing beside Sherry’s bed in her hospital room showing off babies Kathleen and Reilly Vancortland, a boy and a girl, both named after my mom, her maiden name having been O’Reilly. Mostly I did it because Sherry was exhausted, and I liked holding them.

  Sherry and Justin had kept the twin part a secret to surprise us all.

  Justin cleared his throat. “Mad, Nick: Sherry and I want you to be Reilly’s godparents.”

  “Of course,” I said.

  Nick beamed. “You betcha. I’d be honored.”

  “We’re not done,” Justin said. “Alex and Tricia, will you be Kathleen’s godparents?”

  I handed Kathleen to Tricia while Nick and I concentrated on Reilly.

  “Hey,” Nick said, kissing me on the brow. “We have a boy.”

  Werner arrived at that moment.

  Everyone got quiet.

  “Look, Werner,” I said. “Nick and I are going to be Reilly’s godparents.”

  He firmed his lips. “Congratulations. Sherry, Justin, congrats to you, too. I’ll stop in tomorrow.” Werner left.

  I looked up at Nick. “Don’t go anywhere.”

  His gaze held mine. “I wouldn’t dream of it.”

  I gave him the baby and ran after Werner. He wouldn’t turn, but I caught his arm near the elevator.

  “It’s okay, Mad,” he said. “Nick’s practically a member of the Cutler family.”

  “I wouldn’t let my family choose my guy. I chose him a long time ago. I’m sorry that I forgot that for a while.”

  “I’m not. You’re not getting engaged or anything like that, are you?”

  “I guess we’ll see what time brings.”

  “Then there’s hope.”

  “Lytton, I haven’t been fair to you. You deserve somebody . . . spectacular.”

  He knuckled my cheek. “You, Madeira Cutler, are spectacular.”

  “I wish you’d stop being so nice.”

  “I’m a hard-edged cop, and don’t you forget it.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “Go get your guy.” He stepped on the elevator, and our gazes held until it closed.

  I barely got around the corner to Sherry’s hall before I was pulled up against a hard bod. “On again,” Nick growled in my ear. “You, me, us. Together.”

  “Very, very, very on,” I said and kissed him.

  A cheer rose up from the people spilling out of Sherry’s room.

  A nurse nearly had a stroke as she shushed them.

  My family got shoved back into Sherry’s room, and they cheered in whispers when we walked back in.

  “Give us our godson,” I said, accepting Reilly, while Kelsey raised her arms to Nick. Look at us, I thought, one of each. How right did that feel?

  “Well,” I said to the room at large, “I know what I have to do.”

  “What’s that?” my father asked.

  “I had time to consult with Reilly and Kathleen in the nursery, earlier, and they’re both amenable to wearing designer christening outfits. Reilly’s will be a tux, of course, and Kathleen’s gown will be white and sweet as spun sugar.”

  “What famous designer makes christening outfits?” Fiona asked.

  “Why, Madeira Cutler, of course.”

  Vintage Bag Tips

  I put two of my newest and most favorite vintage bags into this story. One appears on the first morning. Isobel falls for Mad’s single-handled, creamy-caramel-swirlcolored Lucite box bag shaped like a man’s lunchbox, circa 1950s. It’s three and a half inches by six inches deep and four inches high at the curved top. The oval handle stands three inches above that.

  Box bags come in Bakelite, Lucite, metal weave, even tortoiseshell. I tested this one to see if it was Lucite or Bakelite. If you wet the plastic with hot running water, and it’s Bakelite, it will smell something like formaldehyde. Remember science class? My box bag, I now know, is Lucite.

  Box bags are rare and can run into the hundreds of dollars, especially if they have a name like Wilardy on them. Mine says Made in Hong Kong on a clear plastic strip on the unlined inside. It should have a lining. I would call the hardware functional, not fancy. I bought it for a very reasonable price at Somerville Center Antiques, Somerville, New Jersey. It’s a gr
oup shop, and I purchased it specifically from Elyse at Kitsch N’ Wear. I saw more vintage handbags here than at any antique store I’ve ever been to. I’d date my caramel box bag as being from the sixties because of the hardware.

  The second purse I featured in the story is Maddie’s vintage black Ralph Lauren bag. When I found it in a local SAVERS, I practically danced. Engraved on the strap hook and on the strap’s upholstery tacks is RLL. It has a Y hook with RLL engraved on the top near the ring holding the strap.

  Three fobs hang from the zipper by leather laces that are self-wrapped. Ralph’s initials are on one fob in gold, about one and a half inches high. One of the other two fobs is a square of black leather with a gold square on top depicting a stirrup with a horse head on it. The third is a simple stirrup, about two inches high, with Lauren engraved at the bottom.

  This bag is made of a black fabric with the designs from all three fobs in differing sizes woven into it. It’s zipper-topped, twelve inches square, three inches wide, and the perfect size for my netbook. I’d date this one as coming from the seventies because of its thick, toothy zipper. It was a pure steal.

  Look for pictures of these bags and the bags featured in my previous Vintage Magic Mysteries on my website www.annetteblair.com under “Handbags” in the table of contents to the left.

  Dear Readers,

  In regard to my inspiration for this story: My neighbors are identical triplets who inspired me to write my psychic triplet witch series for Berkley Sensation. I engaged one in conversation outside last summer, and she straightened from washing her car and said, “You think I’m one of the triplets, don’t you?”

  Of course I did, but no, she’s their first cousin. I couldn’t tell them apart.

  In Skirting the Grave, I made the parents of the “dead ringers” twin sisters married to the York brothers for added plausibility. My mother and her sister married brothers, and I defy you to sort the six of us into two correct sets. I connected the dots between the two situations, and this story was born.

  —Annette Blair