Part 1 (1/2)
DEATH BY DIAMONDS.
by Annette Blair.
This book is dedicated with eternal devotion to the boy who sat beside me in seventh grade and generally annoyed the heck out of me. The blind date I discovered I knew, the man I married, and the father of my children. My best friend, and my heart's haven. Bob Blair, who makes every book possible, and taught me that love means never having to clean the snow off my own car.
Author's Note.
Mystick Falls and its police department are figments of my imagination situated near the delightfully real Mystic, Connecticut, where Madeira Cutler's fictional vintage clothing shop is located. Also real are: the World War II spy mentioned later in the book, Ferncliff Cemetery and the stars interred there, and Coco Chanel's little black dress, as described, though it may not still exist today. Diamond Sands, the off-Broadway musical, is also a figment of my imagination.
One.
Women dress alike all over the world: they dress to be annoying to other women.
-ELSA SCHIAPARELLI.
As I drove to work that morning, I remembered the dream I'd had last night: Me as a toddler being pa.s.sed between my mother and Aunt Fiona, the two of them dancing and chanting in rhyme beside the Mystic River beneath a full and magical moon.
Not a new dream, but an omen. Something in my life was about to change, possibly for the better.
I bit my lip, until from the top of the hill I saw the gorgeous weather vane atop my building, a s.h.i.+p with a mellow copper-green patina, sailing in the wind in whatever direction the universe determined.
The sight never failed to add to my sense of destiny.
No wonder I always arrived jazzed. After all, wearing designer vintage fas.h.i.+ons is practically a requirement for a vintage dress shop owner. Every delightful day.
I mean, how lucky can a girl get? I was home again. No more designing clothes for Faline in New York City. Faline, who took credit for everyone's designs. She who must be loved and obeyed and agreed with, ad nauseum.
But that was the past. Today, I was looking toward the future.
In deference to my dream, feeling the need to be ready for anything, I'd chosen an eighties Jean Muir ”perfect suit” with a flare at the waist and a red that brought ripe raspberries to mind. Given the snow, I wore st.u.r.dy boots and carried my fifties Ferragamos with spool heels and gloved-suede arches in the same red.
To add whimsy to cla.s.sic perfection, I picked a Lulu Guinness ”mansion” bag that looked like a handbag shop with a black-and-white-striped awning and a scattering of red and pink purses in the windows.
As I turned from Main to Bank Street, the architectural beauty and eye-pleasing colors of my shop-sage, eggplant, and lavender-filled me with joy.
I revel in every a.s.surance that my restoration of the former morgue-c.u.m-funeral chapel carriage house adds a certain cachet to the charm of historic downtown Mystic.
I believe it and I wallow in it. I attempt to endow the luxurious enchantment of that confidence into the original fas.h.i.+ons I design under my own Mad Magic label.
You see, I'm a recent escapee from the highest levels of the New York fas.h.i.+on industry. You can call me Mad, or Maddie, unless you're my father, Professor Harry Cutler, in which case you will call me Madeira, whether I want you to or not.
As for the magic halves of my shop and label, I'm also my mother's daughter, not a witch, precisely, but I have this whole psychic thing going on, which I apparently inherited from her. I can't ask her to confirm Aunt Fiona's a.s.sertion. Mom died when I was ten, though she still watches out for me, especially since I came back to Connecticut. Mom was a first-cla.s.s chocoholic, so the sudden scent of chocolate, with no one in sight, is a-you'll excuse the pun-dead giveaway.
Compared to Mom, I'm merely fudging my way up the sweet-tooth ranks. Besides chocolate, I'm into seeking and selling delectable retro fas.h.i.+ons and spreading the joy of the cla.s.sic lines.
My life seems perfect, doesn't it, but there's one drawback: Certain vintage clothes speak to me, in more ways than the norm and often about dead people. I not only ”hear” what they have to say, the outfits I touch give me visions, during which I often zone out to view and hear snippets of greed, jealousy, hate, vengeance, secrets, all of which often translate into: means, motive, and opportunity, vintage style.
But since everything's been quiet on the psychometric front for several months now, I'm hoping that was only a phase.
I pulled into my plowed parking lot rimmed in mounded snow, where a Wings Special Delivery truck sat beside my best friend Eve's Mini Cooper. Eve, aka the dress-in-black-to-please-myself man magnet, had already taken to charming the driver's khaki winter socks off.
”Hey,” I said, joining them. ”Am I late?”
”No, I'm early as usual,” Eve said, ”and glad of it.”
I had in one hand a clear gla.s.s vase overflowing with red and white carnations as she filled the other with a mint mocha chip Frappuccino topped with chocolate whipped cream, my newest vice, while she shoved the morning paper between my purse straps and my arm.
With her hands now free, she signed for and accepted the box from the driver before she slipped her business card into Tall, Tan, and Do Me's pocket. ”Later,” she told him with a wink.
I don't know if he winked back. The fur trim at the top front of his leather aviator hat-earflaps down-tilted a bit too far forward, and his jacket's knit turtleneck stood zipped straight up to his goggles, presumably to protect him from snow glare . . . at thirty thousand feet, maybe.
Eve and I watched until his truck turned east on Main and disappeared, and I realized that I'd never heard his voice. ”You're my hero,” I said, eyeing Eve's overall getup. ”So, b.o.o.bs McCleavage, is that a corset top pus.h.i.+ng your a.s.sets up and out there? Are you going psychic on me? You're dressed like you knew a new hunk was coming into your life.”
”Nah, it's part of my new look. Do you like it?”
”I love it. It's so not you.”
”Gee, thanks, she who stuffs her A cup.”
I chuckled. ”A and a half,” I said correcting her. ”Did the guy join your stud-of-the-month club or what?”
Eve s.h.i.+vered, winked, and zipped up her black military jacket to protect her slightly ruffled, goose-pimply cleavage from the snow-swirling elements. ”He will.”
Two.
After breathing, eating and sleeping-and excluding a couple of delicious optional extras-one of the fundamental pleasures of the human body is to clothe it.
-LINDA WATSON, TWENTIETH CENTURY FAs.h.i.+ON I took Chakra, my guard kitty, from between my Honda Element's two front seats, where her new cat carrier fit perfectly. I'd designed it for winter or summer. Right now, it was double snuggly with its removable sherpa lambs' wool cashmere lining-printed with black paws on taupe. An adapter for the also-removable warming pad beneath her plugged into my dashboard.
”Boy, Chakra rides in style,” Eve said. ”You gonna sell those carriers in your shop?”
”Maybe,” I said, ”though they might be a bit too modern for a vintage dress shop.”
”Yeah, the moonroof's a dead giveaway.”
”Hey,” I said. ”For summer, it has a zip-on Florida room. Highly sought after.”
”What, no pool?”