Tulle Death Do Us Part

by Annette Blair

  “They couldn’t be more alike or more different, could they?” I asked.

  Fiona shook her head. “No, they couldn’t.”

  “Dad, do you always get Riley?”

  “Yes.” He sighed.

  I wet a towel and came back to wash my father’s face. Fee and I found that highly amusing, and the babies joined in our merriment. Before long, my grumpy father was laughing louder than all of us.

  The scent of chocolate wafted through the room, and I knew that my mother saw her beautiful grandchildren and how happy Dad and Fee were.

  “Mom approves,” I said.

  “I’ve come to accept your mom’s signature scent, but it gets me every time. Happens mostly when the babies are here.” He furrowed his brows. “Or you are.”

  When the babies finished eating, they, too, needed cleaning up. “I want to fix their curls,” I said, and I went for the comb in my purse rather than run upstairs.

  When I opened it, I squeaked. Inside I found the zip bag with the small piece of petticoat from around the diamond snuffbox. Werner hadn’t dropped or fumbled my purse; he’d been shoving the evidence bag in there. Invisible, like it never happened. And I would return it the same way, first thing Monday morning, which meant that I should read it tonight.

  I combed the babies’ hair, played with them, and helped Fiona give them their baths, the two of us alone together for a bit. “Are they staying the night?” I asked.

  “Yes, your sister needed a break.”

  “Obviously she didn’t intend for Dad to keep them by himself.”

  “She’s very cool about us being together,” Aunt Fiona said. “Your dad appreciates that his family accepts us as a couple.”

  I chuckled. “Stubborn man.”

  Aunt Fee raised her brows. “Guess who takes after him?”

  “Who, me?”

  “I need to run something by you,” she said, putting Riley back in his chair. “Sherry suggested that your nieces and nephews call me Nana—when they can talk, of course.”

  I hugged her. “That’s wonderful. What was dad’s reaction?”

  “His eyes filled. I didn’t know if he was happy for me or sad that your mother isn’t here.”

  “Would a bit of both be so terrible?” I asked.

  Fiona’s frown lines relaxed. “I guess a bit of both would be normal.”

  “Face it, Fee, you are Nana to dad’s Poppy, and he likes it that way. Look ahead, not back, and if you do look back now and again, try to focus on Mom throwing you kisses of approval, will you?”

  Her eyes filled, and after another, longer, but silent hug, we each chose a rocker. I rocked my godson—mine and Nick’s—while Fiona rocked Alex and Tricia’s goddaughter.

  After we put them down in the nursery Dad had set up, with cribs dating back to my day, we went downstairs, where Dad watched the History Channel.

  “I have to say good night to the two of you,” I said. “You’ll probably be asleep by the time I get home.”

  “I didn’t think you were going out again.”

  “I didn’t think I was, either. But I realized there’s an outfit I want to get a bead on.”

  “One bead?” My father asked. “You can sew a bead on tomorrow morning in, like, two seconds. Why go out again tonight?”

  I kissed his brow. “To give you two some space,” I said. “And really, I do have to spend some time on a particular piece.”

  I saw the knowledge register in Aunt Fiona’s expression. “Get a bead on,” she repeated. “I get it. You gonna be okay? Want company? The twins are down for the count. Your father can handle them.”

  “It’s a bead, Fiona,” my dad said, patting the space beside him on the sofa. For a lit professor, he could be pretty literal. Of course he was distracted by Aunt Fiona; one look at her, and his metaphors morphed and popped like soap bubbles. Or he was being obtuse on purpose because he wanted me out of there.

  I wanted to ask when he’d traded sitting strictly in that tweed chair, which bore the imprint of his body, for the sofa, but I knew better. “Have a good night, you two.”

  It got dark early now, I thought as I drove to the shop. I liked that I’d had motion-detector spotlights put up around the shop. No more dark parking lot all winter.

  Thank goodness I also had an alarm system now, I thought, beeping myself in and then resetting it after I’d locked myself inside.

  I hated walking into an empty shop. I had gotten used to having someone there to greet me, even a spectral someone. “Dante Underhill, I don’t like it when you stay away. Are you hiding? I find that hard to believe. Like, what can I do if I’m upset with you, kill you?”

  I put on some soft lighting in the sitting area, a couple of my mother’s favorite lamps. “Anyway, I’m here to read a piece of fabric, so I might talk like a dead person or something, just so you don’t get scared.”

  I chuckled. “Little tidbit for you to chew on: I miss you. I liked hearing you chuckle a couple times before. I knew that at least you were not upset with me.”

  I felt his feather touch on my cheek.

  Then he was there, my Cary Grant clone in tux and top hat, looking into my eyes and caring that I missed him. “Thanks for not leaving that blasted music on every night, after all,” he said.

  “Despite your flamboyant past, you have integrity, so I figure there’s a reason you’re not talking.”

  “The name of the person who left the box doesn’t matter to your case, Mad. I promise you. But it would matter to the quality of his life to be named. He was used. I need you to trust me on this.”

  Twelve

  I love reading people. I really enjoy watching, observing, and being able to figure out a person, the reason they wore that dress, the reason they smell the way they do.

  —RIHANNA

  “I haven’t even talked to you about the case, Dante,” I said. “And you were dead when he showed up to hide it here, right?”

  Dante nodded.

  “So, how can you make that judgment?”

  “We were kids together. He always got the short end; I can’t even describe how. If I tell you who it is, it’ll send you his way.”

  “But if he’s not guilty, why would it matter?”

  “He wouldn’t hurt a fly. He cried as a kid over roadkill. He was used, I tell you.”

  “Who would have used him? They might be the guilty parties.”

  “The world was less enlightened then. People were not seen as being created equal. He was marked, and everybody had good aim. That’s all I’m going to say on the matter. He might have been five when I passed, but I know that the publicity of being interviewed, singled out, would destroy him. I saw how scared he was when he left that box. He’d been threatened, and he believed the threats.”

  “You’re sure, Dante, that he could be of no use to me?”

  “None. I’ve heard you on the phone with Werner. Heard you with Eve. The piece of petticoat around the box and the peach gown are connected. I lived in this town. I belonged to the country club. I refused to take part in the scavenger hunts.”

  “They had them from the beginning, then?”

  “They did.”

  “Anybody at the country club you don’t feel any allegiance to?”

  “Who aren’t dead? Let me think about who was most likely to commit larceny. But, Mad, this is a lot of hullabaloo about a scavenger hunt and some missing baubles.”

  “Someone died the night that box was taken.”

  Dante’s head came up. “Now that’s a yardstick of a different shape. But you’re smart. You don’t need my help.”

  “I’ll tell you what I do need.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Your friendship. I need you reading my paper when I come to work in the morning, your snarky comments when a woman squeezes into a dress two sizes too small. I miss our banter.”

  “I’m back, as long as we understand each other on this issue. And I won’t hang you out to dry, Mad. If, in the end, knowin
g who left the box will solve the case, I’ll tell you.”

  “Thanks, my friend.”

  “So what are you doing here so late?”

  “I came to get another reading.”

  “Why didn’t you bring Eve?”

  “I’m afraid to give her a stroke.”

  “Let me sit with you while you read whatever you have, then.”

  I’m sure my doubt showed in my expression. “If I get into trouble, what could you do?”

  “I could set off the alarm. That’d bring the police and an ambulance.”

  “Yes, it would. Thanks. I like knowing you’re here.” I took off my suit jacket, and, still wearing my gloves so as not to smudge any fingerprints on Werner’s petticoat piece, I lay on my side on the fainting couch.

  Dante sat beside me while I unzipped the evidence bag, turned it upside down and let the fabric, smaller than the piece wrapped around the box, waft down against my arm. “I got a reading only after the wind blew the first piece against my chin and cheeks outside,” I said. “I can’t get my prints on it, so I hope my bare arm will be enough for a psychometric connection.”

  “How do you feel?” Dante asked.

  “Normal, and hoping I don’t have to put it against my face. It’s dirtier than the other.” And there were brown spots on it. Blood? I shivered at the thought. I suspected that it had touched the floor of the whale belly as Vainglory took it off beneath her gown, which meant it hadn’t been washed in at least forty years. Yuck.

  Then I flew, without a broom, straight on until morning. I hadn’t needed to put it against my face after all.

  I found myself back in the belly of the whale, alone with a man, with the sun beginning to rise. I saw his back, the span of his shoulders, gauged his height. I watched him search as I hovered near the ceiling. My visions often happen this way. Sometimes I become a watcher without a body. Who knows why?

  The lone searcher kept peeking into small places. He tucked something above a ceiling beam, walked around to look up there from every angle, swore, and took it down. He felt above the windows, the doors. Looked beneath the open stairs.

  As the sun began to rise, what I had assumed was the belly of a boat—or maybe I wasn’t even in the same place—turned into an empty brick mill or warehouse. The faded word “steam” was painted on the brick inside wall in capital letters about two feet high in Britannic Bold, or as near as, if I didn’t miss my guess. Pieces of other words had been obliterated by replacement bricks. The rise and fall of the tide remained a constant if more distant sound. I surmised it to be low tide now, given the cleaner scent and the gentle wash of tides in the background. Certainly the storm had passed. Maybe by hours. Likely, this was the place they’d gathered after the scavenger hunt to determine who won the “game.” I distinctly remembered not needing my sea legs, and this place did indeed smell of the briny sea.

  I could see better now—a dilapidated warehouse, rubble on the floor, like a couple of broken old chairs, one overturned, an old rubber tire with a cat curled inside, an ancient filthy sink in the corner. Likely the same gathering place, the loner’s tux suggested it could be the same night, or perhaps he’d been to a wedding. One indisputable fact: time was definitely toward morning.

  For certain, the others were gone; they’d left the jubilee that had taken place the night before.

  Tuxman paced and swore. “Just one small hiding place?” he begged loudly toward the rafters in a voice I did not recognize from my previous visions. His cry echoed and bounced as if pummeling him with the mayhem of the night.

  He punched a column, bent over and swore at himself, and examined his bloody knuckles. Proof of self-recrimination, to my mind.

  He touched the same column, felt along the joint he’d smacked, turned toward the center of the rancid depot, and shouted as if his favorite team had scored.

  He fetched a wooden toolbox, or carrier, from a closet with a door split vertically down the middle. He moved like he knew this place. He then made for the center stairs.

  As he climbed, he cackled—no other way to describe the self-satisfied sound—as he caressed slapdash handrails made of fat, jointed pipes, maybe three inches in diameter. The construction of the railings reminded me of anything made with Tinkertoys. Or metal plumber’s pipe.

  In some cases, two pieces made one upright or two formed one span from upright to upright. Likely built during the Depression, they were a good indication of the way people made do with whatever they could get their hands on. In our neck of the woods, you never discounted anything built in this piece-by-piece way as having arrived in parts, over time, from the subbase.

  Tuxman looked nefarious, working in tails on a T joint halfway up a dirty, worn, raw-wood stairway. He’d chosen a spot where two pieces of handrail met an upright. He cursed plenty until the T finally gave and fell, clunk, clunk, clunk down the stairs then with a pipe-meets-cement clang onto a dust-caked, greasy floor.

  Another string of curses ensued as he failed to access the inside of the pipe. The two handrail pieces met atop the upright, blocking his access.

  I saw his dilemma.

  “The idiots who built this should be shot!” he snapped.

  I really did not recognize Tuxman’s voice.

  A distant whistle scared the fiberfill out of us both. Tuxman jumped like he’d nearly had a heart attack, which caused him to fall halfway down the stairs. One leg caught around a rail and his head hit the floor. Then a whoosh shook the rafters and grime rained down on him, as he lay there in openmouthed shock.

  I’ll confess to a spark of amusement as he spit and coughed and swore, and then pulled himself up and together and got back to work.

  What shook the building had been a train that had rushed by, of course. First of the morning would be my guess. The mill must sit alongside the tracks, as most of Mystic’s old mills did. Once upon a time, the railroad would have been their prime shippers.

  Tuxman wiped his face, pulled on his tails, got all dignified again, and hung on the upright like a monkey. With his whole body, he pulled the top toward him while pushing against the bottom, and when it moved the slightest bit forward, he took something from his pocket, a small item that looked to be wrapped in a petticoat piece, and slipped it into the pipe. Then he added two more objects, both wrapped, to the hollow pipe, one longer and narrower than the others.

  With a relieved sigh, he pushed it back into place, and resecured the T joint with the tools. Good as new, except he’d tarnished the natural grungy patina on the old silver pipes. So he went from upright to handrail, tarnishing pipes all the way up to the third floor. Neatness did not count. I assume he wanted to make them all look equally distressed.

  A single round of applause echoed in the empty place, another mocking sound.

  Tuxman and I whipped our gazes toward the intruder.

  “You scared me,” Tuxman said. “I thought you went home with your brother.”

  “Nah. I’m not scared,” a new voice said. He stood on the verge of adulthood but looked to be stuck there. His voice hadn’t yet changed, and he gave the impression of insecurity, like a tagalong unsure of his welcome, acting younger than his size and voice implied. Too young to be part of a murder.

  “Nothing scares you,” Tuxman said, patronizing the lanky boy. “Did you hide yours yet?”

  “Nah. Saw you hide yours, though. I might hide mine with Day’s toy cars.”

  Tuxman slapped the kid on the back. “I’m not sure that a hiding place as close as Bradenton Cove is a good idea. You’d be better off to hide it on the Yachtsee.”

  “I scavenged more junk than you. But I don’t got stair pipes to hide it in. I could stuff ’em down a drainpipe?”

  “A heavy rain’ll wash ’em to the ground.”

  “Oh.” The intruder’s shoulders went up, then fell in a dejected manner. “I would have won the scavenger hunt, if not for—” Quick switch of emotion, like a younger child, off to the next subject.

  Tuxman clamp
ed a bony hand on the young shoulder and squeezed visibly.

  “Ouch.”

  “Sorry. Listen, kid, you did win. But you can never, ever tell.”

  “Ohh-kay! Kin we play again tomorrow?”

  Play? Like an innocent. Dante’s words came back to me. Someone who had been used.

  What a misinterpretation of that night’s events.

  Thirteen

  I would like to say that I am not pessimistic about the future. Our assets are unrivalled. Inside this issue you will see some of Britain’s amazing new achievements. Some of them are frivolous. All are wildly exciting. I am one of them.

  —JEAN SHRIMPTON, VOGUE, SEPTEMBER 15, 1964

  “Am I not brilliant?” I asked.

  Eve made a show of huffing and turning to face me from the passenger seat of her black Mini Cooper, since sleuthing made her too nervous to drive. And my Element was too big, boxy—and purple—to be inconspicuous.

  “Madeira, you heard, in a psychometric stupor, a childlike scavenger say he’d hide something at Bradenton Cove. So forty years later you find the place and we, like idiots, head out to an estate that may, or may not, be the same Bradenton Cove?”

  I knew for certain that it was one and the same. When I woke from my psychometric vision, I told Dante about it. He said the famous Bradenton Cove in Watch Hill, Rhode Island, known for their vintage car collection, was situated just the other side of Stonington and Mystic.

  A founding country club family had owned the estate for generations. Dante gave no names. I asked for none. He’d played there as a boy and suggested removing the fifth chimney brick from the bottom left at the back of the garage for a key that should be used on the cellar door at the bottom of a dug-out stairway as a quiet means of entering the area where they kept the classic cars. But I couldn’t tell Eve that. She didn’t know that Dante existed. And she didn’t want to.

  I dressed to sleuth in a Kamali jumpsuit, python bomber jacket, and a funky pair of Converse sneakers, the easier to climb around and run in, if necessary.