A Veiled Deception (15 page)

I could sense Cort sinking, sinking into the past, or into grief.

“You were playing in the snow together,” I said to pull him back. “So did you take the picture?”

My ploy worked. He saw me again. “I did, and it’s always been a favorite.”

“She’s naturally photogenic, but really, she looks like a young woman in love.”

“It was the camera,” Cort said. “Pearl always made love to the camera.”

“Judging by her expression, she cared a great deal about that camera.”

“You think so?” His voice cracked.

I pretended not to notice. “I’d love to sketch the coat at some point. It’s such an exquisite example of the times. Would you mind? I’d do it when you weren’t working here. You name the day and time.”

I did want a sketch of Pearl, because I got the strangest feeling that learning about her would tell me something about the murder . . . and here I’d been pronounced sane only two minutes ago.

I also wanted to take the picture from its frame to see if there was anything written on the back, like on the photo in the Updike sitting room. Somehow, in my skewed psychometric mind, it all seemed connected. Or, to quote Eve, I was a nutcase. To my utter shock and delight, Cort took the picture off the wall and handed it to me. “Take your time with it, Madeira, but I would like it back when you’re finished.”

“You’ve got it,” I said. “Thank you so much. The sketch of the coat will make a wonderful addition to my vintage fashion portfolio.”

Nick, Sherry, and Justin, it seemed, had been eavesdropping, for I don’t know how long, and waiting to go back downstairs.

Nick grabbed my arm as we started down and held me back so we’d be the last to go down. “You’re coming home with me.”

I scoffed. “You smooth talker, you.”

He gave me a look of pure Italian exasperation. With very little effort, I can make him swear an Italian blue streak. Or would that be a red, white, and green streak?

“I mean that I’ll drive you home,” he said, “so we can talk in the car.”

“Pity,” I said, chuckling and running ahead of him down the stairs. Well, what good was a boy toy if you couldn’t taunt the scrap out of him? Besides, I was celebrating. I had not only found the illusory bride, I had her picture. It was a perfect size to slip into Nick’s pocket when he caught up with me. After my sewing-room vision, which Deborah quite possibly interrupted in the past
and
present, I didn’t think Deborah would like to see me with a photo of Pearl. A dessert buffet waited for us on the patio. Coffee, tea, hot and iced, after-dinner drinks, and quite the assortment of French pastry.

“Did you get this from the cake lady?” I asked, choosing from the decadent morsels.

“Of course not,” Deborah said. “Our pastry chef is perfectly capable of making dessert.”

Ah, I’d fallen out of favor by touring the servants’ quarters. I raised my éclair in a salute. “Yummy. My compliments to your pastry chef.”

Werner walked in—or out—to the patio from the house, and he had two uniformed officers with him.

My heart went into overdrive, and I scanned the room to locate Sherry safe in Justin’s hold. “Joining us for dessert, Detective?”

Please don’t be here to arrest Sherry.

“Honestly,” Deborah said, turning on my sister. “I wish you’d keep your scandals to yourself. I don’t need you bringing all of Mystic’s gossip and scrutiny down on
my
head.”

Justin and Cort turned on
her
, literally, and she raised her chin, a clear case of false bravado, though none of them said a word.

Werner tilted his head. “Is there some reason you prefer not to be scrutinized, Mrs. Vancortland?” He studied her as he slipped his hand into his inside breast pocket.

“Look to your own house,” he added, as he removed his notebook. Deborah stepped back, absently clutching her emerald-cut diamond pendant, though she no longer held Werner’s attention.

I sidled over to peek at his notes from behind—a list of those present. He turned and tilted his head my way, so I lowered myself to the chair behind me as if that had been my intention all along.

He didn’t buy it.

I didn’t care.

He turned to my sister. “You still can’t leave the state, Ms. Cutler,” he said.

“Young Mr. Vancortland, you can’t, either. I’m here to ask you some questions, and I suggest that you cooperate.”

Deborah hit the floor in a dead faint.

Sherry shouted, “No!”

For a surreal moment, half a second, we all stared down at Deborah, then everyone moved at once to get her into a chair.

Werner told one of his officers to call 911.

Deborah came to and gave me such a look of hate, I stood up and moved away from her.

With his mother settled, Justin hooked an arm around my sister. “It’ll be okay.”

He turned to Werner. “There must be a mistake.”

Sherry, however, trembled like the last leaf of winter in a Mystic River breeze. Cort got his wife’s maid to tend her and he came to stand by Justin in a show of solidarity, his hand on his son’s shoulder. “May I ask why, Detective?”

“Jasmine Updike died pregnant. Your son could very well be the father.”

“No,” Sherry said. “She couldn’t—I mean it isn’t . . . wasn’t Justin’s. They hardly knew each other. They haven’t seen each other since they were study partners years ago.” Sherry’s voice broke on the last.

Doubt and calculation grew and diminished, circling the room like a saw-toothed gargoyle on clay feet while Sherry begged Justin, with a pleading look, to confirm her faith in him.

He tightened his fist around her hand, his knuckles going white.

“I understand your loyalty, Miss Cutler,” Werner said, “but Justin Vancortland and Jasmine Updike lived together for two years while they attended college.”

Seventeen

Above all, remember that the most important thing you can take anywhere is not a Gucci bag or French-cut jeans; it’s an open mind.—GAIL RUBIN BERENY

With a cry of dismay, Deborah fainted again, but she was already in a chair, her maid wielding smelling salts.

Sherry tore from Justin’s arms, and though he tried to pull her back, she stepped from his reach, shaking her head, her eyes overflowing with horror and disappointment. I wanted to go to her, but my own shock held me captive.

Werner cleared his throat to recapture Justin’s attention. “Where were you at eight fifty-five p.m. on the night of Miss Updike’s death?” Werner asked. Justin gave Sherry a speaking look.

The secret!

“He was with me,” my sister said, a weak alibi at best, given their relationship.

“Doing what?” Werner asked, “and where?”

“Justin,” I said. “Don’t say another word. I’m calling Aunt Fiona.” I hit speed dial with success. After a short conversation, I clapped my phone shut, symbolically putting period to the free-for-all. “Attorney Sullivan’s on her way. Take a break.” I gave Werner a half nod.

“I should have thought to call a lawyer,” Cort said. “Forgive me, son. Shock and all that. Thank you, Madeira.”

Deborah moaned as she came to, her maid wiping drool off her chin, a humbling moment for the self-styled head of Mystic society.

Deborah sipped from the glass of water her maid held, acting weak, but not too weak to send eyeball daggers my sister’s way.

When it came to an unplanned pregnancy, everyone usually blamed the girl, especially the boy’s parents. So why wasn’t Deborah blaming Jasmine?

All Sherry did was agree to marry her son.

So Deborah blamed Sherry for what? Saying yes? Did the pending wedding, ah, or the announcement, bring Jasmine to Mystick Falls?

Speculation, I reminded myself, did not a murder solve, and I had enough speculation to muck up the facts but good. I’d do well to separate my “clues” into two columns, “speculation” and “fact.”

Frustrated by the number of questions without answers and by the charged silence, I offered Werner dessert and coffee.

“Thanks,” he said, accepting both and taking them down to the river. I offered the same to everyone, and most accepted coffee, at least. Even the Vancortland maids were in shock, because they didn’t move to action until I handed one of them an empty pastry tray.

Deborah was clearly not herself or she would have been snapping orders. Fiona arrived in less than fifteen minutes. Werner saw her and crossed the yard to the patio. With his help, we caught Fiona up on what she’d missed. Ready to resume questioning, Werner checked his notes. “Now, young Mr. Vancortland, can you tell me where you were when Jasmine Updike was murdered?”

Sherry raised her chin. “We’d had a misunderstanding and we were making up in my father’s boathouse.”

“We were making
love
in her father’s boathouse,” Justin countered. Ah. Sex. That kind of vanishing act. Bummer. I’d thought of that and dismissed it. I needed a brush-up course.

Nick raised a speaking brow, as if offering his services. I rolled my eyes and he shrugged.

I should have figured it out, but I’d discounted the possibility, because they were keeping it a secret. Everybody expected an engaged couple to have a sex life. There was hardly anything incriminating in the admission. But were they telling the truth? That particular location was a pretty dicey alibi.

While some boathouses were actually buildings, ours was more like a three-sided shack, the open side facing the river and any boaters who happened by. A hard pill and all that.

Werner definitely had trouble swallowing. “You’ll pardon me,” he said, “if I’m skeptical, under the circumstances. Any witnesses?”

“That’s a kinky damned-if-you-do and damned-if-you-don’t question,” I snapped. Werner raised both brows my way.

Sherry covered her face and started to cry.

Justin grinned. “A boatload of tourists. A riverboat full.”

Sherry all out wailed.

Werner kept his head down as he took notes, but I’m sure I caught the corner of his mouth turn upward for an instant. “We’ll see if we can trace any of the riverboat passengers who were on that tour,” he said.

Justin grinned. “The tourists did plenty of cheering, hooting, wolf-whistling, and clapping. I’m sure there are a few snapshots out there as well. I don’t care if you plaster my face, though maybe it should be my bare ass, all over the six o’clock news, just find us a witness.”

Deborah looked ready to faint again, but she rallied, her gaze snapped my sister’s way.

Maybe I should worry about Sherry’s safety.

The paramedics arrived and took Deborah’s vitals, pronounced her fit, and left. Deborah would always land on her feet.

Nick pulled me aside. “Why didn’t Sherry tell us where she and Justin had been?”

I straightened his Hugo Boss tie. “She’s mortified.”

“I wouldn’t waste those bragging rights.”

Neither would I. “Meet me at midnight.” I winked.

“Date.” He rubbed his nose. “Wear your lucky panties,” he whispered. I got closer. “Which ones?”

“Hot lips.”

Ah, white silk and lace with mouth prints in red “lipstick” and “Kiss My Sass” on the back. “Done.”

“For what it’s worth,” Nick said, “I think Justin and your sister are telling the truth.” He grinned. “You can’t make up something that kinky.”

“I’m glad you have faith in them.”

“And I admire them, too.”

I tugged Nick off the patio and around to the side of the house. I couldn’t wait any longer to ask him for a favor. Werner’s latest round of questions had shot my sense of urgency into overdrive. I needed to do some serious investigative work.

“Why wait till midnight?” Nick asked, pulling me into his arms. “Let’s give Cort’s boathouse a practice run.”

With both arms, I elbowed my way out of Nick’s hold and stayed a safe distance away. “You have a one-track man-brain. How
do
you solve FBI cases?”

“I’m normal . . . when you’re not around.”

“Glad to hear it. Now try being normal when I am.”

“It was worth a shot, and Cort’s got a great boathouse.”

I huffed. “I need a background check.”

Nick aped my huff. “Fine, a background check on who?”

“Anything on a maid who worked here about twenty to twenty-nine years ago. Her first name was Pearl. She grew up here and stayed to work for a few years. Her mother was Cort’s nurse. I don’t know their last name but her mother came from New Orleans.”

“Nurse? Was Cort sick as a kid?”

“No, she was his nanny. You know, she took care of him in the nursery. It’s a richpeople thing.”

“Gotcha. Why do you want to know about this Pearl, precisely?”

I cringed inwardly at the question. Fiona believed the universe sent me information for a reason. I wasn’t sure what I believed. My visions came from the wedding dress, though, and solving Jasmine’s murder seemed somehow linked to my sister’s wedding or the dress. In any case, I wasn’t ready to tell Nick about my psychic visions. I might never be. “Let’s say I’m playing a hunch.”

“That sounds like you,” Nick said. We returned to the patio with his hand at my nape and my mind on our midnight date.

Werner stood front and center with Justin as his target. “How can you explain a two-year lease for an apartment in walking distance of Harvard signed by you and Jasmine while you were both enrolled there?”

Justin’s guilty expression begged Sherry to understand. “You had dumped me, Sherry. I was mad and on the rebound. Our relationship—mine and Jasmine’s, if you can call it that—didn’t last a week, but she was on scholarship and her credit sucked.” He shrugged. “I cosigned as a ‘thank you’ to her for tutoring me in Bio.”

“Bio! Great,” Sherry snapped. “I’ll bet you aced it and got stuck for a bundle. Oh!”

She started to cry again. “You cheated on me.”

“You broke up with me. I wanted to get you back, but I only hurt myself. One week out of a six-month breakup. It was awful being with anybody else. I only wanted you. Sherry, you have to believe me.”

“I don’t know if I can. I’m not sure there will be a wedding.”

Deborah perked up at that.

Sherry’s stubborn Cutler chin came up. “
Was
Jasmine’s baby yours?”

“Of course not!”

My sister was not a crier, but she’d been weepy since the murder. True, she had reason; the Jezebel trying to steal her fiancé had died in our house, and Sherry was the prime suspect. Now she finds out that her true love once lived with the Jezebel.