In A Witch's Wardrobe

by Juliet Blackwell

  Anise gave off no vibration of power, no indication of anything sinister. Her aura was young, innocent. Which was not to say that I couldn’t be fooled, or that innocent souls couldn’t get caught up in anger and jealousy. But she seemed so hapless I couldn’t imagine her putting together a curse strong enough to harm—to put someone into a coma—from afar. And if she had understood the effects, surely she wouldn’t be up-front about the henbane she put into Miriam’s corsage?

  One thing was sure: I needed to make the acquaintance of one Calypso Cafaro, the botanicals expert who’d supplied the apparently clueless Anise with poisonous flowers.

  How could I track her down? I would need an address, obviously, and an introduction wouldn’t hurt. I wondered whether she might be listed in Wendy’s Moonlight Madness phone book—I could just call and ask whether we could get together and talk, one botanical enthusiast to another. On the other hand, if the “awesome,” oh so private Calypso was a renegade poisoner, perhaps arriving unannounced might be the more productive way of going about things, though dangerous. Maybe I needed backup on this one… .

  I decided to return to MJ’s Games. I had a few more questions for Jonathan about his special request for henbane in his girlfriend’s corsage.

  Once again the smell of the boys hit me as I walked through the door; once again several stopped their playing for a moment to assess this alien female form before them.

  “He left already to totally go see Miriam,” said Braidman.

  “I know—I walked out with him. But could I call him? Do you have his cell phone number?”

  “Wouldn’t do you any good. He lost his phone the other day.”

  “Oh, okay. So, you two know Miriam?”

  “Sure,” said Tiko. “She’s real nice. Cute.”

  “But, dude, not right for Jonathan,” inserted Braidman. “Kept wanting him to sell this place.”

  “Yes, he mentioned that,” I said, turning toward the door. “Thanks.”

  “Anytime.”

  I considered tracking Jonathan down at the hospital, but reconsidered. The more I thought about it, I didn’t really believe Jonathan had tried to kill Miriam. The flowers would be an unnecessarily obvious, risky thing to do. It was much more likely they were a message, or part of a curse. I imagined whoever killed Tarra had also assaulted Miriam, and why would Jonathan do that?

  On the other hand, what did I know? There was only one way I could think of to get real answers—I needed to talk to Miriam’s spirit, and fast.

  I called Carlos Romero and got his voice mail. I left a message on it about the henbane and the text message sent by Jonathan—or at least through Jonathan’s phone, now conveniently lost. At this rate, if Carlos followed up on all my visits like a specter of the SFPD, no one in this crowd would be talking to me by tomorrow. But I didn’t want to keep anything from him, however trivial.

  As I headed to my car, I realized that I wasn’t far from Oakland’s Paramount Theater, where the Art Deco Ball had been held. I walked the five city blocks, past Oaksterdam Museum, a convention center, and an old twenty-four-hour newsstand, and finally arrived at the theater, standing tall and proud with its colorful, intricate tiled façade. The marquee advertised the classic film The Philadelphia Story, with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn, playing this Thursday night at eight.

  I almost never went to the movies. But I remembered my mother watching this one on television many years ago. She had a crush on Cary Grant, and said life looked like it had been so much more beautiful back then; she seemed to yearn for the glamour and the wardrobe of a Philadelphia debutante. My mother was a country girl, born and raised in Jarod, and had left only for brief visits to relatives in Galveston and Houston. Being crowned Miss Tecla County when she was twenty had been the most glamorous moment of her life.

  Idly, I wondered if I should send my mother a plane ticket to San Francisco. She cashed the checks I sent her every month but never called or wrote, and I wasn’t at all sure she would relish the idea of a mother-daughter visit. We hadn’t been in touch since I called to tell her I was settling in San Francisco. Mother’s response to this news had been lukewarm; the truth was, she shied away from associating with witches, even one who was her own flesh and blood. My grandmother Graciela did not cotton to my mother’s attitude at all, and insisted on remaining in contact. But then Graciela was so cantankerous she didn’t care what people wanted, as long as she did what was right. Graciela was a force of nature.

  According to people like Sailor, I’d started exhibiting some of those same tendencies. But so far I had respected my mother’s wishes and left her alone.

  Everything was locked up at the Paramount this afternoon; no one answered my knocks on the main doors. I walked around the side of the building and tried the stage door.

  To my surprise, a woman answered. She was about Bronwyn’s age and shared her coloring, but she was the suburban version—her hair was a neat close-cropped helmet, and she wore coral lipstick that matched her cardigan twinset.

  “May I help you?” she said.

  “Hi. I don’t mean to barge in, but I was wondering if there’s a lost and found I could check?”

  “Of course, but they’re closed now. What are you looking for?”

  “A corsage I might have dropped during the Art Deco Ball. It had teal ribbons, pale pink and violet flowers. I know it sounds silly, but I wanted to keep it as a memento of the evening. I don’t get to Oakland very often. Would it be possible to check while I’m here?”

  She shook her head. “I’m sorry. I don’t have access to that office. Tell you what. Why don’t you leave me your address and I’ll check in the morning. If it’s there, I’ll mail it to you.”

  “You would do that for me?”

  “Of course.”

  I gave her my card, surprised that a perfect stranger would go above and beyond. But perhaps she was just being nice to get rid of me.

  “One more thing,” I said, though aware that my question might ruin my chances of her wanting to help me. “Have you ever heard of any ghost stories related to the Paramount?”

  “Of course.”

  “Really?”

  “There are always ghosts in theaters.” Her response was so matter-of-fact that I was thrown off. I thought of Sailor’s story about the ghost lamp. I half thought he’d been pulling my leg. “In fact, we offer a ghost tour once a month. I’m a docent. I give historical tours on Saturday mornings. But I hear the ghost tour leader is very good.”

  “But nothing… recent? Nothing new?”

  She laughed. “Not that I know of, but I don’t spend a lot of time here at night.”

  “Well, thank you for your time.”

  “It’s no problem. I’ll look for your corsage in the morning. Those can be such precious keepsakes. And I hope you come back for the tour. Saturdays at ten.”

  “Thank you. I’ll try.”

  I headed back to the car, my mind filled with images of poisonous corsages and theatrical ghosts. But then it turned to much more prosaic demands—my stomach growled, reminding me that I needed to shop for tonight’s Cajun dinner I’d promised Wendy.

  I stopped in at a place called the Historic Housewives’ Market. Independent stands sold everything from freshly butchered meats to condiments—the kinds of shops that offered a choice of ten different kinds of mustard, from classic yellow to organic stone-ground concoctions from France. I found sassafras file gumbo and some tasty-looking New Orleans hot sauce. Then I bought some beautiful sausage for the jambalaya and shrimp —they had crawfish, but it was frozen—for the étouffée. The seafood merchant even packed the shrimp on ice for me when I told him I was headed back over the bridge.

  Finally, I purchased a loaf of crusty sourdough. A sweet boutard would have been more traditional, but in cooking, as in spell work, it was good to be flexible. The pride of the Bay Area bakeries, fresh sourdough bread was hard to beat.

  At the last minute, I stopped to grab a bag of Ghirardelli chocola
te chips to make dessert. Chocolate chip oatmeal cookies were Oscar’s favorite.

  The chocolate turned out to be a mistake. I had skipped lunch, and there was a backup at the tollbooth at the base of the Bay Bridge. That bag of chocolate chips was open before you could say abracadabra.

  While I was inching along and munching, I noticed a billboard for DOM: JUDGMENT WILL BE CAST UPON THOSE WHO ADHERE TO THE EVIL OF MAGICK AND ALL IT ENTAILS. BROUGHT TO YOU BY DOM: PRESERVING OUR WAY OF LIFE.

  The so-called Defenders of Morality were putting up billboards now? And leaving flyers in stores, warning them about their “wicked ways”? Well, if that didn’t beat all. What kind of resources did these people have? And perhaps more important, exactly how far were they willing to go to impose their beliefs on others?

  Once I got through the tollbooth, traffic moved along at a good clip. The first exit at the foot of the bridge advised drivers to get off for Union Square, reminding me that Jonathan had mentioned the vintage store where Miriam bought her dress was on Union Street. Suddenly I was curious about my competition. I pulled off and followed the signs to the shopping mecca.

  After half an hour of fruitless searching, a very pleasant uniformed doorman outside the St. Francis Hotel informed me I had made a common outsider’s mistake: Union Street was an entirely different trendy shopping district, clear across town, not far from the Marina.

  Twenty minutes later I was searching for a parking space. Though not as upscale as the überchic Union Square, Union Street was nonetheless full of wine bars and pricey boutiques, art galleries and designer pet stores, soap stores and baby stores. I walked to the corner of Union and Filmore and spotted the shop: Vintage Chic.

  On display in the twin bay windows were several mannequins clad in exquisite 1930s cocktail gowns in cream and gold. In fact, the whole motif was a symphony of cream satins and silks, with distressed gold gilt touches in the form of candlesticks and an antique French provincial vanity. An over-the-top distressed crystal chandelier hung overhead, and opaque cream-and-gold glass bubbles covered the floor so the mannequins looked as though they were surging out from a bubble bath.

  I wasn’t often given to feelings of professional inadequacy, but Aunt Cora’s Closet would have to step it up a little if we wanted to compete with the likes of this place. On the other hand, Union Street set a different bar, chic-wise, than the Haight.

  A bell on the door tinkled as I walked in. Though it didn’t carry the scent of herbal sachets like Aunt Cora’s Closet, Vintage Chic shared the pleasant aroma of clean laundry.

  The shop was smaller than mine, less than half the size, but I could tell from a quick once-over that Vintage Chic carried a more expensive, exclusive inventory. There was a preponderance of silks and satins, and I didn’t see any item—other than, possibly, jewelry—from later than the early sixties.

  The cream-and-distressed-gold motif of the front display windows continued inside. It felt a bit like walking into a fashionable boutique in Paris.

  I knelt to pet a little dog lying in an ornate gold pet bed topped with a crown—I had just seen the bed in the window of the designer pet store down the street. Good thing Oscar hadn’t caught sight of this, I thought, or there would be no living with him.

  A child sat cross-legged behind the counter, in an upholstered chair, reading a hardback novel. The big chair broke the subdued color scheme: It looked like something out of Alice in Wonderland, asymmetrical and covered in an orange-and-pink harlequin pattern.

  “Hello, welcome,” said the child, and I realized this was no girl, but a grown woman. “I’m Greta, the owner. Feel free to look around.”

  “Thank you.” Upon second look, I realized the woman was older than I, probably in her forties. Blond hair was cut in a wavy pageboy. She was super petite, not skinny but proportional. She was probably about the size and shape of the average American ten-year-old, as though she’d never really gotten that pubescent growth spurt. What must it be to go through life like that? I wondered.

  What I couldn’t understand was why she wasn’t wearing her own vintage clothing. Unlike most modern women raised on plenty of protein and vitamins, she was small enough for even the tiniest-waisted Victorian numbers my customers always lusted after. Instead, she wore a matching cardigan and shell—rather like the middle-aged docent I met at the Paramount—and a skirt that was clearly modern, probably purchased from a nice mall store. Inoffensive, but uninspired.

  “Nice dress,” Greta said, looking me up and down with an assessing eye. I was wearing one of my favorite styles today: a sundress from the early sixties, sleeveless, with a fitted bodice and a full skirt. It had vertical stripes of shell pink and pale orange against a cream-colored background. I had tied my ponytail with a pink-polka-dotted scarf, and my Keds were a soft ginger.

  The little dog started yapping the minute I stopped petting him. He was one of those expensive breeds, small and high-strung, with long glossy hair tied with a ribbon atop his head.

  “Oh, ignore him. He’s purebred shih tzu.” Greta scooped up the dog and cradled it to her chest, cooing at him in baby talk. “Aren’t you? Aren’t you my purebred beauty?”

  The dog licked her on the mouth, but she just laughed. Now I was doubly glad Oscar wasn’t here to witness this, lest he get any untoward ideas about how the proper pet is supposed to act in public.

  As I flipped through the merchandise, my suspicions were confirmed: Vintage Chic’s prices were much higher than mine, but the inventory more selective. I had a hard time saying no to people who needed cash, or who brought in clothes that, while not spectacular, nonetheless carried lovely vibrations.

  Still hugging her dog to her chest, Greta watched me like a hawk. I didn’t want to feel like a spy, so I told her I was owner of Aunt Cora’s Closet.

  “I’ve heard of your store,” she said. “There was an article about you a while back, about a vintage wedding?”

  “Yes, when I first opened. Susan Rogers from the Chronicle came with her niece’s wedding party. It was such fun.”

  “Must be nice. You know people over at the Chronicle?” There was a little sensation of envy, just a whiff. But in this business that sort of thing was hard to avoid.

  “I do now, but originally it was pure chance. Susan happened on my shop one day. There are dozens of fabulous resale shops in the city, obviously.”

  Her smile froze, her head tilted to one side. “I’m not a resale shop. I’m a specialty boutique.”

  “Oh, of course. I, uh…”

  Just then the phone rang, rescuing me. My lucky day. But not for the telemarketer on the other end of the line, to whom Greta read the riot act. She slammed the phone down and remained behind the counter, seething for a moment. Finally, appearing to remember she wasn’t alone, she looked back at me and gave me a tight smile.

  “Don’t you just hate phone solicitations?”

  I returned her smile and nodded. They did annoy me; that was true. But as they would say back in Jarod, Greta got her gussie up awful fast.

  “You’re more selective than I am,” I said. “You have some really fine things here. I have some items of this quality, but I also carry a lot of more ordinary clothes.”

  Greta seemed to warm under my compliments. “I know a shop owner near you on Haight Street, Peaceful Things? Sandra Schmidt?”

  “Oh yes, of course. Sandra’s my neighbor. She’s a friend of yours?”

  “I know her. I’ve seen her shop.”

  I nodded. She didn’t embellish.

  The dog yapped as a pair of giggling teenage girls entered the store, and the petite Greta fixed them with a challenging look. As a shopkeeper myself, I knew by instinct what she did: The girls were not here to buy, but to pass the time. Still, I always enjoyed having people roam the aisles of Aunt Cora’s Closet, whether or not they were in the mood to buy. It seemed to me that the more people in the store, the more welcoming the atmosphere. I had the distinct impression Greta would not agree.

  The gi
rls ceased their giggling, browsed halfheartedly for a few moments, then left, seemingly chastened.

  “Would you happen to remember a woman who bought a dress from you for the Art Deco Ball?” I asked after the girls left. I crossed over to the display counter and played with some colorful tangerine and pink Bakelite bangles hanging on a tiny mannequin. I slipped them onto my arm, admiring the way they picked up the pink and orange stripes on my dress. “It was sea-foam green, drop-waist, beaded, sleeveless. From the midtwenties.”

  Many of us vintage clothing dealers remembered outfits better than the clients who purchased them. It made sense: We worked with those garments, unearthed them, vied for them, inspected them, cleaned them, repaired them, and sometimes lived with them for months. I imagined that even those who didn’t have my special relationship to clothing might well feel as though they have an almost magical connection to the garments in their care.

  “I remember her,” Greta said with a small nod.

  “Was there anything unusual about her, or her boyfriend, that you remember?”

  Her big eyes narrowed with suspicion. “Why do you ask?”

  “The woman who bought the dress, Miriam Demeter, fell into a coma the evening of the ball. I’m just trying to figure out what happened… . I thought if I retraced her footsteps in the days preceding the dance, something might occur to me.”

  “If she’s such a close friend, how come she didn’t buy the dress from you?”

  “I wouldn’t call her a close friend,” I said, realizing that Greta was far too suspicious—some might even say cynical—to simply respond to my questions like most people. Witch or no witch, I didn’t seem to inspire warm and fuzzy feelings in her. “I’m simply trying to help her father.”

  “Sounds like a problem for the doctors, or the police if you think there was foul play. I don’t see how my dress could be involved.”

  “No,” I said, holding her hostile, closed-off gaze. “No, you’re right.”

  “Whatever happened to the dress?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “You said she was in a coma. I’ll buy the dress back if she’s not going to use it anymore. Not for full price, of course. This isn’t a rental shop. Where’s the dress now?”