Dominique was a note writer, so I fished through the tissue, careful not to touch the dress, and finally opened the parchment envelope that had slipped to the bottom of the box. “Mad, Sweetie, I always wanted you to have this. I hoped someday to give it to you myself. If you have it, I’m dead. Use your talents wisely. Love, Dom.”
“Oh my stars,” I said. “Dominique DeLong died.”
“No kidding. It’s all over the front page of the Times,” Eve said. “She collapsed during an Off-Broadway performance.”
“She would rather have died on Broadway,” I muttered, aware that I was in shock.
“At least there were witnesses,” Eve said. “Hundreds of them.”
My stomach flipped while Dominique’s note trembled in my hand. “Witnesses?”
“You know the infamous diamonds she wore around her eyes during each performance? They disappeared sometime between her death and her arrival at the hospital. She was D.O.A.”
I removed myself from the vicinity of the dress, my stomach lurching. “When did she die?”
“Evening performance. Last night.”
I lost my breath, looked back at the dress, re-read the note, and considered the feasibility of a legit ten-hour delivery.
Dominique’s words, swimming before my eyes, echoed in her voice. “Use your talents wisely.”
She did not mean dress design.
Two
Americans have an abiding belief in their ability to control reality by purely material means . . . Airline insurance replaces the fear of death with the comforting prospect of cash.
—CECIL BEATON
Eve’s brows furrowed. “Hey, how did you know she was dead?”
I handed her the note and weighed the possibilities. “Why someone would send me the dress, I can’t imagine. Unless the box was already packaged and addressed to me. Though it wouldn’t be, would it, if Dominique wanted to hand it to me herself?”
Eve focused on reading Dominique’s note. When she finished, her head came up fast, her face a mask of confusion. “Huh?”
“Right.”
“Does this mean you’re going to New York?”
“It means that I’m going to Nick’s to lock this gown in the cold storage unit he had installed in his basement for me.”
“Why at Nick’s? Why not here?”
“Because Nick’s an FBI agent who lives closer to me than his partner, my brother Alex, does. Because the storage unit’s a safe, it’s a closet, it’s climate controlled, and it’s where I keep my furs, unless I get a call for them. Because my shop, and my Dad’s house, are too obvious for a safe. Nick’s a Fed, so his house is naturally safer, and because—”
“You keep half your clothes there, anyway, since Nick moved back to Mystic?” Eve had raised a brow, her mouth pursed in disapproval.
I chuckled inwardly at the snarky relationship between my on-again, off-again Italian Stallion, Nick Jaconetti, and Eve, my best friend since kindergarten. “Can you keep an eye on the shop while I go lock this up?” I asked putting on my black, Sonia Rykiel coat with a capelet collar, and going for the box carrying Dominique’s gown.
Eve checked her watch. “Sure, I don’t have to proctor end-of-semester exams until two.”
With the gown box igniting a stress ulcer that felt a bit like the lit end of a ciggy butt in my gut, I’d barely gotten to the door when Detective Sergeant Lytton Werner, my nemesis, walked in. “Miss Cutler, Miss Meyers,” he said, tipping a nonexistent hat.
This was so not the man that Eve and I got drunk with on Mexican beer a couple of months ago. Werner had crawled so far back into his stiff, unfriendly shell—as far as we, the enemy, were concerned—he was going to crack his tail bone bending over backward to be polite.
I so wished I hadn’t called him Little Wiener in third grade. Who knew the name would stick like frickin’ forever? As had the animosity between us, with the occasional foray into a shadowy land of sexual awareness, on the few occasions we were forced to try to solve a crime together.
I pulled myself from my deer-in-headlights trance. “To what do we owe the pleasure, Detective?”
“We found an abandoned Wings truck in the Mystic Seaport parking lot.”
“And that’s of interest to me, because?”
“It’s empty. Key in the ignition. No fingerprints. No cargo. Nothing inside except an Internet map starting in New York City and heading straight to this address. Your name and the name of your shop are written in miniscule handwriting—very unabomber—on the top of the printout.”
I shrugged. “We did get a seven A.M. delivery.”
No need to share my concerns. If there was a murder, it took place in New York City, not Lytton’s jurisdiction.
“Damn,” Eve said. “I guess my date with that driver is off.”
“You saw the driver, then?” Lytton pulled out his trusty notebook.
We both nodded.
“Hair color?” Lytton asked.
“Er.”
“Um.” I described the whole face cover-up.
The detective growled.
Fortunately, Eve had the uncanny ability to describe the rest of his body, his “squeezable tush and quarterback shoulders” included, in detail.
“Any identifying marks?”
“He wore gloves,” Eve said.
“Emporio Armani, logo labeled. Men’s dark brown Nappa leather.”
Eve and Lytton looked at me like I had two heads, both designer originals.
After giving me a double take, Eve turned back to Werner. “He had a tat at the edge of the glove on his right lower arm. I wouldn’t have seen it if I hadn’t nearly dragged the glove off, trying to pull him closer. It was a capital B or an 8, in blue with red and yellow fire around it.”
“Why so interested in an abandoned truck?” I asked.
“A.P.B. It was stolen last night around midnight in New York.”
Oops.
My thought processes were having a parting of ways. Should I admit that I knew Dominique, a Broadway star, not a movie star, or that I was carrying a dress that might—if one had a wild imagination—be construed as evidence? Or should I let it ride because the crime, if there was one, had been committed in New York City?
My decision: Shut up, Mad. “If we’ve answered your questions, Detective, I have an errand to run.”
Werner nodded toward my package. “Is that the box the pseudo driver for Wings delivered?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Eve slip the note from Dominique into the folded newspaper.
I handed Werner the box.
He opened it and whistled. “This is primo designer, isn’t it? Big bucks?”
“Why thank you, Detective.”
“Why thank me?”
“I designed it for Dominique. That’s why she wanted me to have it.”
That took Werner aback. If I didn’t know better, I’d think he suddenly regarded me with a touch more respect. “It must have cost her a fortune.”
“Today, it’d cost a fortune, because of its age and provenance, not the least of which was the linking of Dominique’s name with mine, and our resultant friendship.”
“That’s why your eyes are red,” Werner said.
I hated that my nemesis noticed these small, personal things about me. I raised my chin. “Yes, I lost a dear friend last night, and she left me this dress to remember her by.”
“Too bad somebody felt the need to steal a truck to bring it to you.”
Scrap. “There is that.”
I’d never been so grateful to hear my cell phone ring. I answered right away.
My caller identified himself and shocked the Hermes out of me. “Kyle,” I said. “I’m so very sorry to hear about your mother. She’ll be deeply missed.”
Werner kept mouthing “speaker phone,” so I had no choice but to set the phone down so we could all hear it.
“It’s chaos here, Miss Cutler, but Mom left strict instructions about what she wanted after she died.”
“Funeral arrangements, you mean?”
“Uh, no, not that. They’re not releasing the b—her until the investigation is cleared up. No, this has to do with her vintage clothing collection. She wants the collection to make the charity rounds, fashion shows and such, while she’s still news, and she wants you to arrange the events. She left a list of locations and causes. Can I count on you Aunt Mad?”
Oh, sure, play the Aunt card in front of Werner. Damned kid’s nearly as old as me. “Of course, Kyle.”
“After the charity events, I have permission to sell her collection at a private auction—all except for a dress she wanted you to have. And don’t worry, I’m sure I’ll find it eventually. Mom included a list of the people she wanted to invite to the auction. Your name’s at the top. She wanted you to have first pick before you hosted the event.”
“Kyle,” I said, “it sounds like your mother knew she was going to die.”
Magic or destiny, Annette Blair’s bewitching romantic comedies became her first national bestsellers. Now she’s entered a world of bewitching mysteries and designer vintage, a journey sure to be Vintage Magic. You can contact her through her website at www.annetteblair.com.
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