Larcency and Lace

by Annette Blair

  “Mr. Carnevale is . . . known to us. I had the relationship confirmed at the station. I think you’re well out of it, Ms. Meyers.”

  “Thank you, Detective,” Eve said. “I think you’re right. Mad, I’m going home. Are you okay to drive? Do you want me to take you home?”

  “Nah, but thanks. I’m worried about my building. I’m gonna stick around until I know it’s safe. Are you okay to drive after finding Sampson and all?”

  “Yes. Call me craven but I want my mother. Oh, Mad, I’m sorry.”

  “It’s okay, sweetie. You’re allowed.” I hugged her. “See you tomorrow.”

  “I can take you home, Madeira,” Werner offered.

  “I have to stay with my building. I’m going upstairs. I’ll be in the room facing the playhouse. You’ll see the light. So before you leave, tell one of the firefighters that if my building does catch a spark, to come and get me, ’kay? But tell them not to let it catch.”

  “I’m not going anywhere,” he said walking me to my door.

  I yawned. “Maybe I’ll see you when it’s over, then.”

  He scratched Chakra behind an ear and nodded.

  “Chakra will protect me. Won’t you, sweetie?”

  I’d seen a bit of a softish center beneath Werner’s hard outer shell tonight. Not as soft as caramel, but nougat, maybe, the kind that looks soft but can pull your teeth out by the roots.

  Upstairs, I turned on the clickety light in the storage room and looked across the street at the playhouse, or what was left of it, through water-lashed windowpanes, thanks to our industrious firefighters.

  Werner used his hands as he spoke and seemed to be directing the firemen to hose down my building.

  The walls of Sampson’s playhouse were falling in. No more top floor, and the main level didn’t look like it would last much longer. For Tunney’s sake, I hoped the local forensics team had come and gone before this second blaze.

  I saw huge sparks, flaming splinters of wood, actually, headed my way, but most of them dimmed and went out before they reached my windows. Not quite insurance, but reassurance. They might hit, but they could hardly smolder on a wet surface.

  Looking for something comfortable, like a padded chair, I went around behind the storage room hearse, a little smaller and a little older than the one Dad had hauled up from the first floor.

  I moved some jadeite lamps, a couple of tall flower stands, more spittoons—clean, thank goodness—and to my surprise, I found a dusty fainting couch in pretty good shape.

  I took the bric-a-brac off of it and pushed it over to the window. Then I took the tuxes from the closet and used them like a sheet.

  “The couch was a cared-for treasure,” Dante said. “It doesn’t have cooties.”

  “I have allergies,” I said, quoting him.

  He chuckled. “Are you tired?”

  “Exhausted. I didn’t sleep last night because I was packing, and after work today, I drove home from New York. Now this.”

  “I can tell you a little about what happened here, earlier, but not much. It can wait until morning if you’re too tired.”

  I got up, toed off my shoes, and nudged the quilt toward the couch. “Just tell me one thing. Did a body come wrapped in this quilt?”

  “Yes and no. Bones only. They’ve been here about twenty-eight years.”

  “How can you be sure about time? How have you counted the years?”

  “I count Christmases. The town dresses up for Christmas, so every time I see a Christmas display, I know it’s been another year.”

  “How creative of you.”

  Dante accepted the compliment as his due. “The man who originally brought the bones was nervous,” he said. “Very nervous. Like he’d killed someone.”

  I nodded. “A simple deduction when a man hides bones.”

  “He dropped some of the small bones on the way up and had to go back for them. All told, he fell down the stairs three times while he was here with very little help from me.” Dante looked rather proud of himself. “On his running out, the guy took the worst tumble I ever saw. Judging by the way he drove away, I think he was scared. He drove right into that telephone pole on the corner. I watched the ambulance take him away.”

  “When he was here, did he see you?”

  “Of course not.”

  “Yet you toyed with him. No wonder he was scared.”

  Dante’s grin held a great deal of wicked pride. No wonder Dolly fell for him. “I got a good look at the bones he dropped before he went back for them. They were clean and dry before he put them in the quilt with the rest.”

  “I can’t tell you how much better I feel now about touching this quilt.”

  “Why would you want to touch it? Does it have anything to do with the way you seem to go into a trance and say things you don’t remember, like when you made your friend almost faint?”

  “Let’s save the whole story for another day, shall we?” I about begged. “In a nutshell, I’d rather touch a vintage clothing item likely to speak to me when I can’t scare anyone by doing it. I mean, I’d rather not touch it at all. But I’m doing it for my friend who was arrested tonight, for poor Mr. Sampson, and for the person the bones belonged to.”

  “Why?” Dante asked.

  “I’ve been involved in one murder investigation. Certain vintage clothes spoke to me then, and I believe that this quilt has something to tell me now.”

  Dante nodded, as if satisfied.

  I got on the fainting couch facing him, my insides trembling at the thought of losing my senses to a dark past. Chakra curled into my middle as I lowered my hand, hesitated, and, finally, tucked it into a pocket of the quilt puddled on the floor.

  “Go to sleep,” Dante said. “I’ll protect you.”

  “How can you protect me?”

  “I’ve gathered a deal of energy over the years. I can make a man trip over his own feet. Which can be fun when he’s committing nefarious deeds.”

  “I’ll bet. What else can you do?”

  “Flicker the lights, break a window, take the cover off a casket when a woman’s tied up inside.”

  “Cary Grant, my hero.”

  His chin dimple deepened with his frown. “My name is Dante Underhill, no matter who you and Dolly think I look like. I might be able to knock you off that couch, but you’ll have to take my word for it, because if I showed you, I might not have enough energy left to protect you, in the event you needed protecting. Close your eyes, sweet friend.”

  “I’m not sweet,” I said, doing as I was told.

  “You were worried about me losing my building. I heard you say my name to that cop.”

  “You listen at windows?”

  “I live for the sound of human voices,” Dante whispered near my ear, and I felt a touch of ice on my brow.

  No wonder Dolly fell in love with him, I thought again, as I spun into a nightmare I resisted, my world dark, my captor rough, my trust shattered . . . my body in a freefall.

  I’ll die when I hit bottom.

  Please let me die.

  Fifteen

  Fashion is as profound and critical a part of the social life of man as sex, and is made up of the same ambivalent mixture of irresistible urges and inevitable taboos.

  —RENE KONIG

  “Madeira, Mad, you’re crying.”

  With the scent of smoke in my nostrils and the hard, cold earth at my back, I felt myself being lifted and rocked against a hard chest.

  Hands large but tender stroked my hair. Strong arms enclosed me in a safe cocoon.

  Maybe I didn’t die.

  I clung to my haven, but as I trembled from the cold, those same hands chafed my arms and my back. I warmed but held no control over my sobs, wasn’t even sure they were mine.

  Did they belong to the lady in the well?

  Isobel.

  Warmth began to seep deep into my bones, awareness, too, just enough to appreciate the heart beating beneath my ear.

  “I’m alive. You
smell like smoke. You should quit.”

  “I hate to disappoint you, Mad, but it’s me.”

  “You hate me.”

  “I hate what you said. Not you. We were kids.”

  “You can be sweet.”

  “You’re talking in your sleep. I’ll ignore that.”

  I didn’t want to leave this new dream. “Nick smells different. Good, too, but different.”

  “You think I smell good, after all that smoke? And you know it’s me?”

  “You wear Armani’s Black Code. You’re taller, broader than Nick.” I opened my eyes, despite myself, and raised my head. “Lytton?”

  “You said you knew.”

  “In my sleep, maybe, but not awake.”

  “Was I at the bottom of that well with you?” he asked, smoothing my hair one last time as his hand fell away. “When you were asleep, I mean. You seemed to think I was.”

  The well? Oh God, the well. “My head hurts.” I sat up. “The fire! My building?”

  “The fire’s out.” Werner straightened, too, but I was still sitting on his lap. “You’re safe. So’s your building and your cat. It’s nearly four in the morning.”

  “Hmm. I got up at four to go to work in New York two days ago, and I haven’t slept since, except for now.”

  “Three hours sleep in two days?”

  “Mmm.” I cuddled back into him. “G’night.”

  Slowly, reluctantly, his arms came back around me and he rested his chin on my head. “I couldn’t leave with the light still on up here. Let me take you home?”

  The idea of moving seemed impossible. I shook my head against his chest. “I’ll just sleep here.”

  “In my arms? Or on the sofa?”

  I raised my head. “The sofa. Of course, I meant the sofa.” My eyes closed without my permission. I knew it, but I couldn’t do anything about it. Lytton’s heartbeat began, again, to lull me.

  He stood, carrying me with him.

  “What are you doing?”

  “I’m going to put you in my car and take you home.”

  “Where do you live?”

  His heart beneath my ear skipped a beat. “No. To your home.”

  “My father won’t like that you arrested me.”

  I heard the rumble of a chuckle beneath my cheek as the lights went off behind my eyelids.

  “My cat,” I said, drifting.

  I closed my eyes tight against a new flash of light.

  “Chakra? Hey, what have you got, there? Madeira? We have to talk.”

  “Not tonight, ’kay?”

  Werner lowered me, so I had to hold on tight to his neck or fall, then I felt Chakra’s fur beneath my chin.

  “Tomorrow then,” he said.

  “Whatever,” I whispered, riding a cloud.

  More lifting, up and down, drifting. Someone mumbling about keys, me holding tight again.

  “Which room’s yours?”

  “Hmm?”

  Light pricked at my eyelids, so I closed them tighter.

  “What is the meaning of this, Detective?”

  “Detective who?” I asked, my eyes still closed. “Dad?”

  “Madeira, are you drunk?”

  I saw my father in his pajamas, shocked out of his socks. Shock didn’t come easy to Harry Cutler, a college professor who’d raised four kids alone.

  I blinked against the light. Details came to me in pieces.

  Why wasn’t I standing? I looked at my ride. Werner? “Daddy, he arrested me.”

  My father crossed his arms. “Why? What did you do, this time?”

  I’d never heard Werner’s full-bodied laugh before. A real wake-up call. “Sir,” he said on a last chuckle, “could you just show me where her bed is?”

  “I don’t bloody well think so.”

  “She’s getting heavy and I’m afraid—”

  “I am not heavy.”

  Werner fumbled me and I slid down his body and landed on my ascot in the hall. “Ouch! That was rude!”

  Werner, my father, and Aunt Fiona looked down at me.

  “Aunt Fiona, what are you doing in my dream wearing Sherry’s old bathrobe?”

  My father ran a hand through his hair. “Fee was distraught after being shut in that casket. She couldn’t stay alone. She’s been having nightmares all night.”

  I’d never seen my father so discomfited. “How would you know?”

  His ears turned red. I’d never seen that happen before, either. “It’s not what you think,” he said.

  “How many times did you believe me when I used those words?”

  Was I having a middle-of-the-night conversation with my father in the Wiener’s presence? “I’m hallucinating, aren’t I?”

  “Madeira, do you two know what time it is?” my father asked.

  “Dawn,” I said. “The playhouse burned to the ground. And I thought my building would, too.” Tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn’t know how they got there.

  “She’s sleep deprived,” Lytton said, as he and my father each took one of my arms and between them, got me standing.

  “I feel like a jellyfish. No legs.” I leaned into Werner, who was forced to slip an arm around me.

  “Harry,” Aunt Fiona said. “She worked a full day in New York, drove home, and hasn’t stopped since.”

  “That’s right; I hasn’t.”

  Lytton chuckled. “She’s had a hard forty-eight hours, sir.”

  My father sighed. “This way to her bedroom.”

  I rode up in Werner’s arms, mine around his neck, my head resting there.

  He placed me on my bed and I missed his heartbeat. “Who moved my cloud?” The drifty, out-of-body sensation I remembered with fondness had passed. So I was forced to curl into myself.

  “Fee will take care of her.” My father’s voice drifted away.

  Aunt Fiona’s perfume, like a blanket of warmth, covered me. For the first time in days, I drifted in dreamless and endless peace.

  “Damned light, again,” I snapped, opening my eyes, against my better judgment.

  “Chill, Mad. It’s about time.” Eve handed me a latte. “Your dad said you’ve been asleep for hours. You don’t look like you spent the night with the Wiener. Are the gossips wrong about that, too?”

  Sixteen

  Elegance is fluid. It consists of desire and knowledge, grace, refinement, perfection, and distinction.

  —RENE GRUAU

  “Me? Spend the night with the Wiener!” I sat up fast. “Are you out of your mind?”

  “Shush,” Eve said. “They’re saying that Fiona and your dad spent the night together, too.”

  Memory alert. I looked up, saw my dad coming toward the foot of my bed, and wondered how much he’d heard.

  “Fiona was shut in a casket last night, Eve,” he said. “I think you’ll grant that she had a right to be upset.”

  Eve looked contrite. “Of course.”

  “I granted it from the get-go, Dad, but you mocked her.”

  “I’ve never been more sorry about anything. She’s a wreck. That’s why she stayed the night. In Sherry’s room. I slept in my own.”

  I winked. “You should have put her in Brandy’s room so you could have experienced the full roller-coaster scope of the getaway tree.”

  Every one of his children who ever sneaked a date up to our rooms—and we all did—sent them home via the tree outside Brandy’s room, which is how it became known as “the getaway tree.”

  Bit of a sore spot with my father.

  The thundercloud himself handed me one of my mother’s plates bearing one of Fiona’s famous homemade cinnamon rolls. Hmm.

  “It’s three o’clock, Madeira. And Eve,” he added, “for your information, Madeira spent a few hours at Vintage Magic last night, and after the playhouse fire was under control, Detective Werner brought her home.”

  A shred of memory rolled in, and I sat straight up to dislodge it, nearly spilling my latte. “Uh, where’s Chakra?”

  My cat jumped
on the bed. “Oh, sweetie, thank goodness.”

  “No worries. She rode in with you and your knight. He’s waiting downstairs to see you.”

  “Nick? Nick’s home already?” I put my cup on the nightstand and jumped out of bed.

  Eve chuckled. “Do you remember nothing about last night?”

  “It’s fuzzy, and what’s with the gossip?”

  “Jump in the shower,” Eve said. “And come down as soon as you can.”

  Fifteen minutes later, wearing a black tent dress and two-tone flats, I sat across from the Wiener and my father in the gentleman’s parlor. “I thought Nick was here,” I muttered.

  Eve shook her head almost in warning. “He’s on assignment, remember?”

  “Oh, you wanted to see me, Detective?”

  “Ms. Cutler,” he said, “before we left your shop last night—”

  “We left my shop last night?”

  Eve shook her head at me.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Selective memory. It’s so accommodating. Mad’s blocking it,” Eve told Werner as she sat on the arm of my chair.

  Werner looked confused, an emotion I embraced, then lightning struck. “That was you last night!”

  Werner rubbed the side of his nose. “Guilty.”

  “For what?” I asked suspiciously.

  “Please remember that I wasn’t up there alone,” he said.

  What did I do, kiss him or something? Had I called him a Wiener? If not, I probably should have. I held on to the chair’s arms as memory tried to rush me, but I managed to push it away. “Eve, what did you say about gossip? Never mind. Screw the gossip. I have to think.”

  I got up to pace, the heat in my face making me want to open a window, October or not.

  Werner obviously took my movement as a sign to continue. “As I was saying, last night I saw your cat batting around an object of great interest. It seemed to come from beneath the body drawers in your storage room. Do you know what was under there?”

  My heart stopped as I turned, but when Werner opened an evidence box, and I saw the skeletal appendage inside, some kind of trip switch got hit that restarted my heart double time.

  I’m afraid it said a lot about our knowledge that neither Eve nor I ran screaming from the room, because my father sure looked poleaxed.