The sight tripped my heart and parched my throat.
“The playhouse is on fire!”
Seven
I want to create theater, clothes are theater.
-JEAN PAUL GAULTIER
“A small fire, thank God,” my dad said, after a second of visual confirmation. “Let’s try to keep it that way.” He took the stairs as fast as my intruder had.
“I didn’t know Harry could move that fast,” Fiona said as she took out her cell phone. “911,” she explained before she spoke to a dispatcher and gave the address.
I caught her arm to stop her as she headed for the stairs. “Smoke with your asthma? You’ll end up in the hospital, Aunt Fee. Wait here.”
“Thank you, sweetie. You’re right.” She slipped her phone back into the colorful Louis Vuitton bag I’d given her.
“Sampson might still be at the playhouse,” I said as Eve and I went downstairs. “His lights were on earlier.”
Broderick Sampson had been baiting the locals worse than usual, lately, with his plan to sell to a department-store chain and, as many had said, “ruin the quaint charm of historic downtown Mystic.”
We cleared Vintage Magic in time to see my father reach the playhouse, where the fire looked worse. “Wooly knobby knits, if the fire doesn’t get him, smoke inhalation will! Dad, don’t go in!” I shouted, but it was too late. If he heard my warning, he ignored it.
Eve and I crossed the street, looked up at the death trap’s top floor, bright with fire, and followed my father in, if only to get him the Hermès out.
Right away, I heard him shouting for Mr. Sampson, and I followed the sound upstairs, while Eve started searching the main floor.
“Madeira,” my father shouted when he saw me, “I have everything under control. Get out of here.” One set of mile-high drapes burned while Dad was pulling down a set that wasn’t. “Go see if you can find Mr. Sampson on the main floor,” he shouted over the fire’s roar.
“Eve’s looking there. I’ll check the basement.”
“Be careful!” we both shouted as I sprinted down the stairs to the faint scream of fire trucks in the distance. I ran through the basement maze calling Sampson’s name and passed a rack of prized vintage costumes. I checked the rest of the basement, but found no sign of Sampson. Then I took a half minute to throw the costumes into laundry carts, roll them out the door, and awkwardly drag them one by one, up the half dozen or so steps that led to the sidewalk.
I left them in the ATM lobby of the bank next door, and by the time I got back, red lights swirled around me, men shouted, the moment surreal and ghastly. Gathering my wits, I ran back to the playhouse and followed the sound of raised voices.
When I reached them, I stopped dead.
My heart hammered as I wiped my sweaty palms against each other and examined the faces around me: Dad, Eve, with tears in her eyes, Detective Werner, my nemesis, and half a dozen sooty firemen.
Tunney, the meat cutter, had blood on his apron and a meat cleaver in his hand, as usual.
Even when I was a kid and Tunney used to get down on all fours and pretend to be my pony, he’d worn a bloody apron. But he’d never looked this scared.
I forced myself to follow everyone’s gaze to the floor and worked hard to resist retreat.
Broderick Sampson looked like he was sleeping.
I shuddered. He couldn’t be—I gazed at my father seeking hope. “He’ll be okay, right? Dad?”
“In on this one, too, Ms. Cutler,” Detective Werner said. “And only home, what? Two hours?”
This one what? I retreated inside myself where it was safe.
“Looks like foul play,” Werner said. “We don’t know yet if anything is missing.”
My father hugged my shoulder. “Mr. Sampson’s gone, honey.”
My stomach lurched. “Not murder. Not again.”
Tunney looked at his cleaver, stood, opened his hand with effort, as if it had stiffened into a death grip, and he let the knife clatter to the floor.
“Was Sampson stabbed?” I asked, staring at the cleaver with disbelief. “He doesn’t look injured at all.”
I’d heard that even Tunney, our beloved butcher, had been loud and angry at the town meetings, but he didn’t have a violent bone in his body. He made kids flowers from butcher paper, for pity’s sake.
He wouldn’t harm a bird . . . except that he did.
Tunney Lague was a big old teddy bear . . . who chopped animals into edible pieces for a living.
Eight
Little black dresses first began to appear around 1918-1920 and I have the feeling they came out of the mourning look of World War I.
—KARL LAGERFELD
Broderick Sampson lived around the corner from us in Mystick Falls, a widower rattling around in a big old place alone, until his younger sister showed up to keep house for him. Gossip is that Sampson and his sister didn’t get along and that she showed after the planned sale of his playhouse to a world-class department-store conglomerate made the headlines.
Sampson hadn’t grown up in Mystick Falls, so no one knew the sister, but he’d been here long enough for everyone to know and dislike him. He was a neighbor, but not neighborly, a hermit who barely spoke to anyone, turned off his lights on Halloween, and never bought a Girl Scout Cookie. Which didn’t mean that he deserved to die.
“Did anyone hear or see anything?” Werner asked.
“I heard arguing coming from here when I got home a little after eight,” I said.
“He was always arguing with somebody,” Werner said, and everyone nodded.
“Detective,” Eve said, “I saw someone leave here when I was driving over to meet Maddie. It was dark, though. It wasn’t anybody I recognized.”
“Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?” Werner asked, ready to make a note of Eve’s answer.
“If I had to guess, I’d say a woman, because of the way she moved, but I couldn’t swear to it. Dark pants, dark hat.”
My mental suspect list started with Sampson’s fellow shop owners, most angrier and more formidable than Tunney.
My father kept me up-to-date on local happenings and he’d said that many of the shop owners made veiled threats at the last Mystick Falls town meeting, while Councilman McDowell and the trustees looked fit to kill.
“Blunt force trauma to the head is my guess,” a para medic confirmed, though I didn’t remember when they’d arrived.
Detective Lytton Werner took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket.
“What?” I snapped. “You think Tunney held the knife by the blade to hit Sampson on the back of the head with the handle? He would have cut his hand if he did.” I raised Tunney’s hands, palm side up. “There. No fresh cuts.”
Werner showed me the cuffs. “Madeira, do you mind? I have a job to do.”
I reluctantly released Tunney’s hands, but not before I squeezed them to show my support.
The detective brought one of Tunney’s arms behind his back. “We’ll let forensics find the answers.”
“Tunney’s no killer,” I snapped.
“And what about the woman Oscar’s seen coming and going from here?” Eve asked.
Oscar, from the hardware store, was second only to Tunney when it came to keeping tabs on his neighbors.
“Gossip,” Werner said. “Useless.”
“And what about the fire?” I added. “Shouldn’t we get out of here?”
“Fire’s out, Mad,” Johnny Shields, firefighter, said. “Your dad put it out.”
“Dad, are you okay? You didn’t burn yourself, did you?”
“I’m fine, Madeira. I smothered the burning curtains with the other pair. You saw. It looked worse from across the street. The fire was confined to the ballroom.”
“I’m glad.” The place might have looked like a ballroom sixty years ago, but now it was just a big old empty space with a fancy tin ceiling and peeling wall murals.
Werner got down to business and cuffed Tunney while one of the
uniformed officers bagged the meat cleaver.
Prime suspects didn’t always get cuffed, I knew from my sister’s experience, but Werner wouldn’t use cuffs without just cause.
Though I knew I should keep my mouth shut, frustration got the best of me. “Tunney did not do this, Lytton, and you know it.”
“I can’t discuss a case, Madeira,” Werner said. “Which you know very well.”
“I’m outta here,” I said. “The smoke is killing me.” It was about as smoky as an ashtray full of ciggy butts, but that wasn’t the point.
“You’re a witness, Cutler,” Werner called after me. “Again, dammit.”
“I’m not any happier about it than you are, Lytton.” By his own admission, Lytton Werner, also known as the Wiener, hadn’t forgiven me for the nickname that still dogged him. Probably never would.
“You’re all witnesses,” he added. “I’ll be in touch. You know the drill.” Warning laced the detective’s words.
“Tunney.” I touched the meat cutter’s arm before I left. “I know you didn’t do it. Take care of yourself.”
“Maddie,” Tunney said. “I saw the fire and came running like you and your father did. Get me out of this, will you? Solve this case like you did your sister’s.”
“I didn’t solve Sherry’s case,” I said, backing up, not daring to look at Werner. “Detective Werner did.”
Tunney shook his head. “That’s not what I heard.”
“Then the Mystick Falls Information Network is as unreliable as ever,” I said. Wooly knobby knits, I knew without looking that Lytton must be shooting daggers my way. Daggers? Oy. Bad pun. Bad Madeira.
“Tunney,” I said. “You know town gossip. It’s ruthless and useless. Besides, the case isn’t mine. It’s a police matter. I can’t help you.”
I had fallen into my first sleuthing experience when my sister Sherry, a bride-to-be, became the prime suspect in the murder of the woman trying to steal her fiancé. In my determination to set Sherry free, ghosts and skeletons fell, literally, out of closets everywhere and I didn’t much like it.
Frankly, if I started digging in the dirt, again, I was afraid of what I’d discover about the deceased, the suspects, about the murderer, and most especially about myself.
A uniformed officer escorted Tunney to a squad car, while my dear friend looked back at me, still silently begging for my help.
I shook my head in denial. “Get a good lawyer,” I called after him. Poor Tunney.
Poor Sampson!
“Speaking of lawyers,” Eve said, “Fiona must be wondering what’s taking us so long.”
“Tunney didn’t do it,” I told Eve as she followed me to the bank. “Are you all right?” I asked her.
“I’m shaking in my Docs,” she said. “Queasy, too.”
“I can imagine. I was a wreck after I found my first dead body.”
“Your first? Are you planning to find more?”
“We should both bite our tongues.” I shoved a cart her way.
She caught it and tilted her head. “You saved the costumes ?”
I was pleased to have put a hint of amusement in her eyes.
“Thanks,” she said. “I needed a reason to smile.” Except that she wasn’t smiling, quite.
Together, we pushed the carts across the street toward my shop. “I figure that I saved a slice of history. I also thought that Mr. Sampson would appreciate having the costumes, even if he lost the building.”
“He’ll never know,” Eve said.
“Whoever inherits the playhouse might. His sister, I guess.”
“He has a child somewhere,” my father said as he came up behind us. “His wife gave birth after she left him. I’m not sure Sampson ever knew whether it was a boy or a girl. If he kept in touch, he wasn’t saying.”
“Of course he wasn’t saying; he didn’t say much, did he, unless he was arguing. He was so closemouthed that I thought he was a widower.”
“The Sweets tried to set him up with a date once,” my father said, “and Sampson confessed that once divorced was enough.”
“I’m surprised the Sweets got that close.”
“Please,” Eve said. “Dolly and Ethel Sweet could sweet-talk a stump. Pun intended.”
“Whoever is Sampson’s heir,” my father added, “if he or she doesn’t want the costumes, they might sell them to you.”
“Flirty draped silk! I didn’t save them for myself. I respect vintage clothing. So sue me. If they come up for sale, I’ll offer a fair price.”
“Hey,” Eve said. “Maybe Sampson’s heir won’t sell the playhouse to the chain store conglomerate and spoil the flavor of the historic district.”
“I dearly hope that wasn’t the point,” my father said soberly.
That would be a good motive, I thought, though there could be others. The heir could have done it for the inheritance. Nah, too cliché. Who’d be so obvious?
Back at Vintage Magic, I wondered about Fiona when the second floor appeared so eerily quiet.
“Here,” Dante said. “I’ve been talking to her to calm her down and keep her from jumping from her skin.”
Neither my father nor Eve saw or heard our resident ghost, of course, but the minute he spoke, a casket in the darkest corner of the room erupted with sound and movement.
Eve screamed and backed up until she hit the stair wall.
I headed Dante’s way and found Aunt Fiona a bit tied up, literally, inside that noisy casket, her arms and legs bound with clothesline, duct tape over her mouth, a dingy T-shirt blindfold, and Chakra licking her cheek.
I put Chakra on the floor and removed the blindfold. “Aunt Fiona,” I said, looking into her panicky eyes and stroking her brow. “I think we should get your hands free first so that you can take the duct tape off your mouth yourself. I’m afraid to tear the skin.”
Aunt Fiona nodded, sought Dante with her gaze, and gave him a grateful look.
He tipped his hat. “You’re welcome.”
My father bent over the casket. “What did you do, Fee, piss off a ghost?”
Nine
You know, one had as good be out of the world, as out of fashion.
—COLLEY CIBBER
If my father hadn’t jumped out of Fiona’s way so fast, she would have kicked him in the gut for that remark, or lower, with both feet.
“Dad!” I snapped. “I know you and Aunt Fee like to bait each other, but that was a rotten thing to say.”
“Bound or not,” he said, “Fiona Sullivan packs a wallop.”
Had I caught a touch of respect in his tone?
Dad tried to help us untie her but Aunt Fiona wouldn’t let him near her.
“My deepest apologies, Fiona,” he said, standing back. “That was unforgivable of me.”
She growled beneath the duct tape and indicated, with snapping, angry eyes, that he would be better off if she stayed tied up.
“Are you all right, Eve?” I asked as she paced beside the casket.
She shook her head, looking a bit green. I’d never known Eve to be out of words.
“You’re sick over finding Sampson, aren’t you?”
She gave a half nod, her eyes bright.
I hugged her. “Stick around and we’ll talk, ’kay? Been there. Done that. Hated it.”
She blotted her eyes with the back of a hand, pulled herself together, and tried to help us.
“Poor Aunt Fiona,” I said, tugging on the tightly knotted clothesline. Judging by the scuff marks on the casket lid, it looked like she might have been closed inside for a while, but she fought a good fight.
Eve gasped, shook her head, and whipped out a pocket-knife. “Sorry, I was distracted.” Having the rope cut helped move things along.
Fiona sat up as quickly as possible, even before her legs were free.
I winced when she began to remove the tape, though she removed it slowly and only ended up with a split lip. I’d feared it would be much worse. “Dad, you have to lift her out.”
“First, she has to promise not to knee me.”
Fiona touched her jaw, exercised it, and raised her brow. “No promises.”
Dad shook his head and bent over to lift her out anyway, brave man.
From the corner of my eye, I caught a stealthy movement in the storage room. “Stop!” I shouted and ran, in time to find an intruder straddling a window with a sack in his hand.
He threw the sack out the window.
“Vinney!” Eve yelled from behind me. “Don’t. You’ll hurt yourself,” but he dropped from sight.
Eve and I ran to the window and looked down, but that fast, he’d disappeared. “Are you sure that was Vinney?” I asked. “Your Vinney?”
“Yes. No. I don’t know.”
“Vinney or not, I wonder if he could have been the same guy who broke in earlier?”
“It’s possible,” Eve said.
Probable, I thought, feeling personally bruised. My building and the vision I had of its future had been violated. I turned to take in the room, looking for answers, for a reason that Vinney, or anyone, would do such a thing.
What had he put in the sack? Had he taken something valuable? Whatever it was, it would have shattered on impact, unless it was soft and pliable. If you wanted something badly enough to steal it, I couldn’t imagine that you’d want to break it.
“Damn,” I said. “The guy wouldn’t have gotten in, if not for the fire.
Eve shook her head. “Vinney might steal something, but I don’t think he’d shut someone in a casket.” She rubbed her arms and raised her chin. “Besides, I’m not sure it was Vinney.”
Was she protesting too much? I wanted to share my theory with my father, but he and Fiona were arguing, years of animosity stiffening their stances, though they kept their voices low. This was the longest conversation they’d had since my mother died. And as long as Aunt Fiona was in fighting mode, she wasn’t freaking over being shut in a casket.
Who knew, they just might clear the air between them.
“I’m probably just overthinking the situation,” I told Eve. “Call it panic.”
Larcency and Lace Page 4
