Tulle Death Do Us Part

by Annette Blair

  His expression became searching, like…he was trying to search my thoughts, sure I must be hiding something.

  “Sheesh,” I said. “You look like you don’t trust me.”

  He shook his head. “There are times I think you know more than any of us. And though I like working with you—which you will never repeat—I don’t know how I can account for having you with me.”

  “We don’t even know if it was a crime,” I said, knowing better, deep inside. “Tell the country club people that the cash box was found on my property. Finders keepers, you know. If no one makes a claim on the cash box, I get to keep it, right? There’s a record of one being lost at the silver anniversary, but was one also lost at the Golden Jubilee? We need answers, right? Both of us.”

  “Flimsy, flimsy, flimsy,” Werner said.

  “Okay, introduce me as the friend who’s judging outfits for the This Is Your Life segment of their upcoming event, the Very Vintage Valentine ball. I’m working with the chairpersons for the event. I need to see the banquet facilities and ballroom, so we’re killing two birds, and all that.”

  “Well, that’s a bit sturdier than flimsy,” he said on a sigh.

  I curled my arm around his and squeezed. “Thanks, partner.”

  “Detective,” he said, removing my arm. “You’ll call me Detective, Ms. Cutler, or get back into your car.”

  I saluted.

  The banquet manager greeted us and led us to her office. She offered us coffee and even breakfast pastries and settled down to answer our questions, until they got dicey. Werner started small and ticked off his queries on his fingers. “We need a list of attendees who came to the silver anniversary and the Golden Jubilee, their ages and addresses at the time. We need the names of the people who took part in scavenger hunts at each event. The items stolen. Also the ones returned or never recovered. Was there any property damage attributed to the pranks? I think that’ll do for a start.”

  He sat forward. “But most important,” he said, now very focused, “we need to detail the events surrounding the girl who disappeared from the fiftieth and drowned.”

  The banquet manager paled visibly, her hands trembling as she stood. “I think I saw one of our board members heading for the tennis courts a few minutes ago. Please wait here, Detective. Ms. Cutler.”

  Eighteen

  Make tomorrow a new start: Take all the pains of the past and all the disappointments—then pack them in a bag and throw them in the river.

  —AMERICAN PROVERB

  “They’ll soon learn,” I whispered, “that you can’t toss somebody into the ocean and go about your business as if nothing happened. Not forever, at least.”

  Werner raised a brow my way, but he said nothing.

  Elation and energy zephyred through me. Lists, answers, they were all forthcoming.

  Or so I thought

  Time grew long. Werner made a few notes. I got up to pace and found myself near the open door of the room.

  If said board member came to play tennis, he kept in his locker a custom tailored little number in the most exquisite of fabrics, straight from London’s Savile Row. Had he donned it now, just to intimidate the plebs?

  I saw only his navy pinstripe back at first, as he and the banquet manager conversed a distance away from the open door in the hall. And I was duly intimidated, until he glanced our way and back. He would never admit it, but he was Mr. Odd Duck, in the flesh, the man who stood on the sidewalk outside my shop Friday morning—which seemed like a lifetime ago. Why was he there? Did he know what might have been found?

  “He’s gonna be a big help,” I whispered as Werner joined me and saw who I was looking at.

  Werner coughed. “Not.”

  “Not,” I echoed in a whisper. The closer he came, the stronger my sense that this was so not the man to ask about the girl who jumped in the ocean.

  “Detective Werner,” he said, “I’m the club’s chairman of the board, Thatcher McDowell, CEO of East Connecticut Sailor’s Bank. What can I do for you and your associate today?”

  Zavier and Eric’s father. I should have known.

  He had to recognize me from yesterday. Unless he had lousy vision. Then again, maybe he did and that’s why he didn’t remember me speeding by him after I’d ransacked his carriage house. Bad eyes, that was it. I’d take what I could get.

  Sleuthing-wise, however, I call this turn of events a brick wall. Get out of my way, power man in power suit running the show. Sure, his bank was started in East Connecticut for struggling sailors, a fact that their ads milked for emotion. But ECS banks could now be found all over the world, at the top of the food chain, as it were, eating little banks like M&M’S. And this big, powerful man, who had stood across from my shop looking as if he didn’t want something to happen, presided over them all, including kazillions of dollars that billions of little people thought was actually theirs.

  He controlled the Mystick by the Sea Country Club, too.

  He stood about six and a half feet tall, so he towered over both of us. You’d think that his height and suit would make the detective look both dowdy and small. But at six feet, Detective Werner exuded the manly presence and self-confidence of his position.

  As for that presence…on the day I came home from New York to open my vintage dress shop and Werner and I became reacquainted, he wore a discount rack suit. But now he dressed in classic styles of good fabric, because I helped him shop wisely.

  I hated to admit that I’d been both a good and bad influence on the detective, which might serve him well in this case, as he and Mr. McDowell Sr. sized each other up.

  As for me, I held my own in Dior’s revolutionary New Look of 1947. My cinched-waist, soldier-blue wool coat matched my mini pleat dress. The paler pleats of the dress lined the standing shawl collar and peeked from the coat’s waist. My outfit was worth at least three times as much as McDowell Sr.’s, and I think he knew it.

  “If you don’t mind having a seat, Mr. McDowell,” Werner said, as if this were his turf—a bold, positive move. “I’ll need you to answer a few questions.”

  The country club board rep folded his hand over a cane, and I noted the scar on one hand that continued down between thumb and index finger.

  It made me wonder about those whose hands had bled for breaking window glass that fateful night.

  “I understand your purpose, Detective,” McDowell said. “And I speak for the entire board when I say that we’re willing to cooperate with your investigation in every way. We will call for a closed-board meeting tomorrow night, with legal counsel present, and we invite you to attend and present your questions. Sadly, not you, Ms. Cutler.”

  “Sadly,” I echoed. Clearly he was saddened—not. “But why do you need a lawyer if the crimes were committed against you, as representing the country club?” I asked, going for innocence and failing.

  Ah, he allowed a bare flash of a pained expression. He’d had practice hiding his emotions, but he had not perfected his skill. Now I had my answer.

  Did he know that I knew he’d been at my roof-raising, and that I’d caught his focused panic?

  Thatcher McDowell schooled his features and smiled. “As vaguely as our banquet manager outlined your questions when she came for me a few minutes ago, I deem it prudent to make certain that in the ensuing investigation, the country club is not considered liable in any way. Especially given the death of that poor Robin O’Dowd.”

  “Outlined to you by the banquet manager that vaguely, was it?” I firmed my lips for a minute to let my words sink in. “Robin O’Dowd?” I added. “She must have been around the same age as your son Eric.”

  Some unseen force shoved a ramrod up McDowell’s…spine…so he straightened and stared over the top of my head. “Detective,” he said, addressing Werner behind me. “Membership to the country club is indeed the stuff of legend, passed most often from father to son, much like our legacy memberships are. This interview is at an end.” He wrapped his big hand around the doorkn
ob, an indication that we should precede him through the already-open door. “Until tomorrow night,” he said. “Nine. Here at the club.”

  “Stop pouting, Mad,” Werner said as we left the club, its bright green lawns a testament to its groundskeepers.

  “I know, Werner, that this is a murder investigation. I know you figured it out, but you should know that I did, too. Two seconds, and he gives us the name and skinny on the dead girl?”

  “I noticed that. Dead giveaway. Pardon the pun noir.”

  “More like a cover-up,” I snipped.

  “Sorry you can’t be there. But really, Mad, you’ve become something of a squad mascot who gets the occasional great idea.”

  “Hah! I’m so proud, I’d stamp my foot if I could afford to break a Vivier heel.”

  He cupped the back of his neck with a hand. “You are pretty tricked out.”

  “I won’t take ‘tricked out’ to mean ‘in a clownish fashion.’”

  He arched a brow. “I mean, why dress so fine to help solve a crime?”

  I tilted my head. “Because if that man can dress in suits from London’s Savile Row, his wife darned well can afford to shop at my shop.”

  “You little hustler.” Pride belied his words.

  “Scrap silk and little bone buttons! Businesswomen are not referred to as hustlers these days. I’m skillfully savvy and no slouch in the marketing department.”

  “You’ve got a heck of a Taser arm on you, too, not to mention your dexterity with indigo-blue pepper spray.”

  “How rude of you to mention my mistaken attacks on you.”

  The air between us became charged with sexual tension, because my Taser arm had led, circuitously, to our first thermonuclear kiss. No memory for me to haul out now, I told myself, as I checked the time on my vintage Lady Hamilton watch. “Well, that didn’t take long. I guess I can go back and unveil the outfits Aunt Fiona sent to my shop this morning.”

  “What’s the point?”

  “I told you. I promised to judge them. The owners of the outfits I pick get to participate in the country club’s This Is Your Life segment at the upcoming Very Vintage Valentine ball. You know, the winner gets his or her life read, and gets surprised with people from his or her past. Everybody wanted in. Dad and Aunt Fiona only have time for five, so they had to devise a fair way to eliminate people.”

  “Do you have an escort for the event?” Werner asked, opening my Element’s door after I unlocked it with the remote.

  “Of course I don’t. My ex is in Europe.” He waited until every bit of my vintage outfit was safe inside before he closed me in.

  “I’ll rent a tux. You can help me pick it out.”

  I rolled down my window. “Thank you, Detective. I’d love to go to the Very Vintage Valentine ball with you. We’ll request a couple of rock and roll songs.”

  He tipped his hat and winked. “Good day, Ms. Cutler.”

  “You’ll share your clues?” I called as he turned away.

  He stopped and nodded, barely turning his head. “Perhaps, since you expressed it as a request and not an order.”

  “I did tell you that the outfits I’m going back to the shop to judge were all worn to the fiftieth jubilee?”

  He turned back to me. “Not today you didn’t. You might have yesterday, but it didn’t resonate then.” He furrowed his brow. “Because we covered several other, more important subjects then. And yet I find that anything to do with the Golden Jubilee interests me a great deal at this point. Scene of the crime and all that.”

  “Care to join us at the shop?”

  “Exactly who is ‘us’?”

  “I’m calling Aunt Fee and Eve to help me. Mrs. Meyers will leave when I get back, but I’m not sure about Dolly and Ethel.”

  He chuckled. “I’ve noticed that they act as if Vintage Magic is their own private country club.”

  “If I’d had to pay full price…I shudder to think. Dolly practically handed it to me on a silver platter. You know that, right?”

  “I get your drift. It’s her country club if she wants it to be.”

  “So, wanna come see some outfits worn that night? I hear that as many men entered the competition as women.”

  “You’ve reeled me in.”

  We both winked, and as he got in his car, I realized I was smiling. A smile that remained as I called Eve. Fiona was on her way to meet me, Eve said, and she made me promise not to start without her. She’d come right after class.

  Werner pulled his car alongside mine, driver’s window to driver’s window. “If you’re ordering takeout, I’ll have Chinese.”

  “Okay. We can eat before we open the garment bags. Wanna pick up the food? You get to pick what we eat.” I rifled through my purse and hung a fifty dollar bill out the window.

  He took it, focused on it, growled, and dropped it back inside my window.

  “Great, now I’m gonna have to crawl around on the floor to find it.”

  Werner’s grin grew. “That I’d like to see. Lunch is on me. I could hear your stomach growling in the country club. First, though, I need to stop at the courthouse to pick up some paperwork. Please wait to go fishing for that bill until I get back.”

  “Lunch for at least four, maybe five. And, Lytton?”

  “Yes, Madeira?”

  “Why do you think McDowell wanted a lawyer?” I hesitated about giving away my thoughts, but only for a minute. “His kids would have been the right age to participate in that scavenger hunt.”

  “I’ve noticed that men in expensive suits like his have a special way of squirming,” Werner said. “I caught the tick in his cheek. If I hadn’t thought there was a crime before speaking to him, I would think so now. And you’re right. It’s worse than we thought. Robin O’Dowd was a murder victim whose death was pronounced accidental. Her case needs reopening, and about time.”

  Satisfaction rushed through my veins, and my eyes widened involuntarily.

  “We hit pay dirt, Mad. Now all we have to do is be careful not to damage the landscape or alert the natives while we dig.”

  Nineteen

  Style is independent of fashion. Those who have style can indeed accept or ignore fashion. For them fashion is not something to be followed, it is rather something to be set, to select from or totally reject. Style is spontaneous, inborn. It is gloriously deliberate, unpremeditated but [a] divine gift of the few.

  —“SPOTLIGHT ON STYLE,” VOGUE, SEPTEMBER 1, 1976

  Eve, Dolly, and Ethel were waiting for me when I got back to the shop. Fee had left to bring Mrs. Meyers home.

  My three friends looked pretty guilty.

  “What did you do? Did you open the garment bags?”

  “Of course not,” Eve said. “You said not to.”

  “Then what are you all hiding?”

  “It’s about a blog,” Eve said.

  “A blog?” That was the last thing I’d expected to hear. “Who cares about a silly blog?”

  “This one’s not silly,” Dolly said. “I’ve been reading it the past few days. It’s called Vintage Dirt by someone who calls himself the Mystick Falls Masque. Seems to be a rabble rouser who outs local secrets. I believe it’s relatively new. I can’t identify the two people with their heads together in that grainy picture at the top, but I once wore clothes like theirs.”

  “Dolly, will you print out the page with the grainy picture for me?” I asked.

  “Oh, I did, dear.” She fished it out of her bright orange Jaclyn-ette purse—square, stand-up, very seventies—and handed it to me.

  “Yep, grainy.” Without one identifiable face, so I’d have to study it for clues. I slipped it into my pocket. “Thanks.”

  “I’m lucky the Internet wasn’t around when I had my fiery fling with Dante,” Dolly proclaimed or bragged.

  And somewhere nearby, I heard him chuckle.

  “Mama!” Ethel snapped, foolishly shocked. “You didn’t really do all that?”

  “I did everything everybody ever said
and more.” Dolly’s pride was as genuine as the rose in her cheeks and the gleam in her eyes.

  “Let’s get back to this blog, shall we?” I asked. “Eve? I assume you’re the one who found it.”

  “No, dear,” Dolly said. “It was an anonymous tip we got on your shop phone about fifteen minutes ago. Someone told me to ‘write this down,’ so I did.”

  “A web address?” I asked, and gave it to Eve. She looked it up on my computer.

  “Was the anonymous caller a man or a woman?” I asked Dolly.

  “Yes. Well, I couldn’t tell, not at all. It sounded more like a robot.”

  “Gotta love the technological age,” I said.

  Eve turned the monitor to face us, so we could read it. “The headline is ‘Just Dug Up.’”

  “That sounds grisly.” I read it to myself, and then I read it out loud. “‘Just between us and the roof rafters,’” it says, “‘the long-lost cash box belonging to a certain country club known for keeping its members squeaky clean—even if they reek—turned up again like a bad penny. Like nine hundred thousand bad pennies come back to bite the greedy, soulless rich brats who done a whole lot of somebodies wrong.’”

  I shook my head. “It’s both cryptic and damn near incriminating.”

  “Makes no sense to me,” Ethel said.

  “It sort of does to me,” I admitted, and continued. “‘In this phantom reporter’s opinion, somebody should fry.’”

  Dolly tsked. “That’s harsh.”

  But I thought that whoever had written this knew the whole story, including Robin O’Dowd and why she ended in the ocean in a storm. “Okay,” I said. “Here’s more of the blog: ‘This rover is here to reveal what will soon come out anyway. Said country club confidentially reported to their insurance company that the amount they lost in the robbery was precisely double the actual loss.’”

  I whooped. “A good case of insurance fraud will make the country club, aka Mr. Holier Than Thou McDowell Sr., accountable,” I said. “That’s my opinion, not the blog’s.” I paused, then continued reading. “‘But don’t focus on the larceny, find Robin’s O’Dowd’s murderer.’” Now if, as a result of dredging all this up, we could find Robin’s murderer, or murderers, and make them pay…Not that we knew for sure that it was murder. Except that the Masque said so.