A Veiled Deception (16 page)

“I didn’t live in the apartment with Jasmine,” Justin repeated for Werner’s sake, while he fought Sherry to take her hand. “I spent one week dating Jasmine, but I didn’t spend one night, not one minute, in Jasmine Updike’s bed, car, hammock, boat, or boathouse. Ever.”

Nick snapped his fingers. “Hammock,” he whispered. “Nice.”

Sherry turned to leave but Justin sprinted after her and caught her up in his arms despite her struggle to get free.
“You,”
he said. “I love you.”

Werner closed his notebook. “Then you won’t mind coming down to the station with us right now, Mr. Vancortland, to answer a few more questions, make a formal statement, and give us a DNA sample.”

Eighteen

The most courageous act is still to think for yourself. Aloud.—COCO CHANEL

Early the next morning, I opened my eyes and realized that I was trying to hit snooze on my cell phone.

When I focused, I read the caller’s name and opened my phone. “Aunt Fiona, what’s wrong now?” I asked, sitting up, not sure what time I’d been roused from sleep.

“Everything that was wrong yesterday, dear, I’m sorry to say, but nothing new. I do want to tell you that your father, Sherry, and I stayed with Justin at the police station until one. Your father couldn’t have gotten your sister home until after two, and she was still upset about Justin and Jasmine, so if she finally fell asleep, don’t wake her.”

At least I didn’t have a boathouse tryst to feel guilty about. How could I have followed through with my sister in such a state? But I had taken a rain check. I fell against my pillows. “You woke me to tell me not to wake my sister?”

A chuckle that I loved smoothed my not-so-ruffled feathers. “Forgive me, sweetie, but I seem to remember you making a breakfast picnic out of watching the sun rise.”

“There is no sun in New York, but there are plenty of all-night clubs. I morphed.”

“Ah, well, maybe you’ll morph back while you’re home. At any rate, I did have another reason for calling. You asked me about the Underhill Funeral Chapel carriage house and I wanted to tell you where to pick up the key so you could take a look at it.”

My heart took on the beat of a parade drum. I sat straighter, a John Philip Sousa march in my chest, probably because I was home in Mystic, Americana to the core, where I’d watched so many parades from the sidewalk beside that very building. Home. Maybe deep down, I wanted to stay.

“Who, where, when?” I lowered my legs to the floor as I sat on the side of the bed. Had the building enticed me even then? At parades where I shunned shorts and wore ruffled dresses with shiny Mary Janes, held the perfect purse for the perfect outfit, while devouring cotton candy, my hand in my mother’s?

In memory, it seemed so.

“Let me grab a paper and pencil,” I told Fiona.

“Certainly, dear.”

I looked at the phone. She’d sounded . . . sarcastic. I grabbed a pencil and aimed it at a notebook. “Shoot.”

“All right, listen carefully, because it’s complicated. Take a right out of your driveway, drive a tenth of a mile, and get the key from old Mrs. Sweet.”

I fumbled the phone and caught it halfway to the floor. “Aunt Fiona, are you there?”

“Yes, dear.”

“Old Dolly Sweet owns the Underhill Funeral Chapel carriage house? Is she a granddaughter or something?”

“Something. It was a juicy old scandal when I was a girl. She had an affair with Underhill, who was years older than her at the time, and to make matters worse, he left her the property.”

I grinned. “Goddess bless the Mystick Falls gossip mill! Can we have a scandal sleepover sometime, you, me, and Eve, and you can dish up the dirt?”

Fiona chuckled. “Maybe if you stick around long enough, you’ll unearth some dirt of your own. Take your father to see the building with you, dear, and bring a flashlight. It’s falling down. It could be dangerous. Have a nice day and let me know what you think.”

I smiled, sat back against my pillows, and wallowed in anticipation. Okay, don’t wake Sherry. Good thing I had faith in her love for Justin or I’d feel guilty about doing something for myself, like touring the carriage house, for a couple of hours. I hit speed dial. “Eve, wake up,” I said when she mumbled hello. “We’re touring the Underhill carriage house today. Just you and me.”

She hung up on me. That’s the kind of friends we were. We could flip each other off—metaphorically speaking—and still be BFFs.

A half hour later, my phone rang as I stepped from the shower.

“What time?” Eve asked when I answered.

“Eleven. I have to fit old Mrs. Sweet for a new dress and—”

Eve growled. “You woke me at dawn so I could meet you at eleven?”

“Okay, make it ten. I’ll go right over to the Sweets. They’ll feed me breakfast.”

Eve did that metaphorical thing again with a mumbled “up yours,” which of course meant she’d be there.

In New York, morning communication, which ranked right up there with taxicaband commuter-eze, had no bearing on the language used by the working population during the rest of the day. Evidently we’d brought a mild case home with us. At the Sweets, I followed the scent of cherry pie to their back door and knocked on the screen, though I could see them drinking tea and bickering, their favorite sport. They’d been up for hours, the ambitious old things, and by the scents and clay flowerpots lined up out here, one had been gardening and the other baking. My breakfast consisted of vanilla hazelnut tea and cherry pie. Yummers. Old Doll tried to feed me a lemon square in addition, but her daughter-in-law slapped her hand.

“Leave her be, Momma. I’m sure she wants to keep her figure to find a man.”

I nearly spit out my tea and ended up having a coughing fit. More tea was their prescription. By the time we finished breakfast, I had enough caffeine in me to fly over the Underhill building.

In her bedroom, afterward, I made old Doll strip to her slip, so I could take her measurements. “Now what kind of dress do you want?”

“I want one like Katharine Hepburn wore in
The Philadelphia Story
.”

I sat back on my knees. “Which scene?”

“The wedding scene, of course.”

“Of course,” I said, remembering a pale pink swath of silk organza in my collection, a gown she might like better than a stylish new dress, but I measured her anyway. Might as well be sure the vintage layered pink confection would fit. “Mrs. Sweet, do you remember
all
the brides who wore the Vancortland gown?”

She chuckled. “I’m old, but I don’t have amnesia. The first bride to wear it married the year I was born, cupcake, but I remember the rest, and I’ve seen pictures of the first.”

“Deborah showed us pictures of them last night, but, you know, I have the strangest sense that I didn’t see them all.”

“You saw five albums?” she asked as I made her raise an arm.

“I did, but one of them was Justin’s baby pictures. Deborah couldn’t find her wedding album, but we saw the rest.”

“Well, it’s five brides with Deborah. Far as I know, only one other girl might have tried on that dress.”

Hel-lo! “How long ago was that and who was she?”

“She was the maid who ran away. Bit of a scandal, that.”

I looked up from the floor, measuring tape forgotten. “Why?”

“Because she was Vancortland’s first love. Vancortland Four, I mean—Cort—not your Sherry’s man. I think her name was Ruby or some such. She and Cort were engaged and she broke his heart when she left. He married Deborah on the rebound. Maybe that’s why she’s so sour.”

Okay, okay, suspicion confirmed, but what did it mean and how did it fit into the murder—if it did fit into the murder? I added this new information to the scraps I’d snipped from various sources since Jasmine’s death. So far all I could do with them was make a crazy quilt.

I got off my knees. “Measurements finished. Want to look at dress designs, though I didn’t bring any that look like Tracy Lord’s wedding dress.”

“I really had my heart set on that one.”

“Fine. I’ve got a couple of design ideas and I’ll bring them around later. I have another errand to run first, though. Did Fiona tell you I was coming?”

“No, sweetie, you told us you were coming.”

Sharp as a tack, my father called her, and with good reason. “Okay, did Fiona tell you that someone was interested in the Underhill building?”

“Yes, and how stupid are they? It’s older than me, though my memories of it are as vivid, glorious, and sweet as ever.”

Okaay. I cleared my throat. “It’s me. I’m the stupid one. I mean, I fell in love with the building when I was a little girl. I found myself going right to it the night I came home.”

“You want Dante’s building?”

“Dante?”

Dolly’s eyes went all starry. “Dante Underhill, the undertaker’s son who became the undertaker.”

A sweet-talking undertaker, evidently, one she still missed. “I don’t know if I want the building yet. I do know that I need to look at it.”

“What would you do with it?”

“I’m not sure, but I’m thinking vintage clothes might play a role.”

“You mean like for a museum?”

Hmm. “I hadn’t thought of that.” But I shouldn’t dismiss it. Some of my finds were museum quality. “Maybe. Why? Does what I do with it matter? I mean, if I was interested, I’d
buy
it from you.”

“Oh, I understand that. I’d have only one stipulation to the sale. It was in Dante’s will that I never tear it down, and I’d want to sell it with the same stipulation.”

“Oh, it’s too beautiful. I’d never—” I stilled. “Why? Is there a body buried under it?”

Old Dolly laughed so hard, I had to help her to a chair. When she caught her breath, she cupped my face. “You think it’s beautiful.” She’d spoken with awe.

“Everybody else thinks it’s an eyesore. A shack. I’ve fought for years to keep it there. I kept it up to building and electrical code standards, so it wouldn’t be condemned. Pissed off the Mystick Falls town council once a year. A real perk!”

Her grin was contagious. “You mean it has electricity and running water?”

“Sure does.”

“Why is it boarded up, then?”

The old girl blushed and giggled. “To keep kids from breaking in and using it for a love nest.”

Oh, Lordy, I wanted Dolly Sweet’s old love nest.

Nineteen

Success is often achieved by those who don’t know that failure is inevitable.—COCO CHANEL

I expected it to be hot in the carriage house without air-conditioning. So I wore a cool, peach Louise Goldin barely there mini, with a cutout circle baring my midriff. One of those desirably funky outfits that made you look like a crew member on a starship. I loved it and paired it with Blahnik raffia beaded mules and a woven-straw flowerpot bag.

When I arrived, Eve’s car sat empty in the cracked cement lot outside, but my black-garbed friend was nowhere to be seen.

Two boards lay on the ground out front, and about the time I noticed how they would fit the design crossing the door, Eve opened it and stepped outside. “Welcome to the shack.” She looked me over and rolled her eyes. “Chill, Mad. The fashion police are not waiting inside.”

Eve had a gift for snark.

“My outfit isn’t about what I look like, Meyers. Yes, it’s a fashion statement, but I couldn’t care less about what anybody else thinks; it’s about how I feel. Cool. Awesome. Inspired. Confident. Speaking of which, when did you go platinum blonde, and how did you get inside?”

“I went platinum yesterday. Makes my black clothes more striking, don’t you think?”

“Yep, just what you needed. A little color in your life. Snort.”

She stuck her tongue out at me. That’s how long we’d been friends. “As for this place,” she said, chin high, leading the way. “I broke in.”

“So much for Dolly’s theory about keeping out the riffraff. I’ll have to get an alarm system.”

“Riffraff?” Eve rounded on me. “You? You’ll have to do what?”

I heard the echo of my own words the way she must have. “Gee. Don’t know where that came from.”

“What are you up to?” She followed me inside.

I flipped on a light and fell in deep doo-doo, otherwise known as . . . love at first sight.

Talk about secrets. A current of anxiety and expectation crackled around me. I swear that I heard the combined mourning of a century, a humming wail in a sad and unending jumble of loss and death. But beyond that was a thread of celebration and new beginnings. How odd.

The hair on my arms stood up, while silent cries shifted the air in subtle, sweeping currents, both soft and taunting.

I shivered and Eve chuckled. “Pretty tucking beautiful for a shack,” she said, borrowing my designer vernacular.

So beautiful, it should be listed on a historic register, not that I’d suggest it. Under those guidelines, it’d be hell to remodel.

Remodel? Did I want to do that? Oh, I hoped so. Somebody had to take care of it after Dolly . . . “No wonder Dante and Dolly insisted on preserving it. It’s beautiful.”

“It’s ginormous,” Eve said. “Bigger than a barn, though it smells like one.”

“The smell can be fixed.” I ran my hand along the front wall. “How many barns have you seen with polished mahogany walls? I have to say, there isn’t much damage, considering.”

“Not that you can see,” Eve cautioned. “Don’t discount concealed damage. It could be rotting from the inside.”

“It’d still be worth fixing.” We’d come in through a people door, but the huge double-wide barn doors, two sets, one to the right and one at the front, opened wide enough for a team of horses to pull a hearse out.

Speaking of which, not all the “car” stalls were empty. Color
me
wigged.

“Nice hearse.” Eve gave me a wink, wink, nudge. “Museum quality?”

“Talk about vintage. I wonder if Dolly knows it’s here.”

“Dolly?”

I told her about old Mrs. Sweet and Underhill.

Eve hooted. “Dolly and the undertaker. Talk about strange bed partners.”

At that moment, near the hearse, I saw a shadow brighten . . . or . . . materialize. A vision, a different kind, a man . . . wearing a top hat? I turned to Eve. “This is the new millennium, right?”