Cloaked in Malice (30 page)

“I wanted both of you dead, you and your grandfather. A double win, like your parents.”

“Why? Why do you hate us so much?”

“Your grandfather killed my father.”

“And my parents? What did
they
ever do to you?”

“They got in the way, kept me from killing your grandfather.
You’re
in the way; you know too much.”

Paisley laughed. “I never saw you that night.”

Fury rose visibly in McCreadie, and he cocked the trigger.

The double doors to my storage area opened, revealing an eighty-eight-year-old marksman, a U.S. CIA agent, whose appearance disoriented McCreadie.

“I can shoot you to make you hurt and linger,” the old man said, cocking his own gun. “Or—”

Werner, also armed, stepped into view beside him, further distracting McCreadie.

Nick took the trained-in-combat fast track to rearranging the bones in McCreadie’s gun wrist.

McCreadie fell to his knees at the pain, his gun hand going limp. “Why didn’t you stop me years ago?”

“We wanted the ringleader, of course,” Scanlon said. “You’re not in this alone. You’re not smart enough.”

McCreadie snarled. “Ring leader! We’re not in the circus anymore. And I’m not talking.”

“We’ll see about that.” Alex reached for his weapon but Paisley touched his hand to stop him. “For my parents, please,” she said, and he nodded.

She picked up McCreadie gun then handed it to Alex. “I can and will identify you now, Mr. McCreadie, but so will we all.”

The old man chuckled. “Go quietly with these nice gentlemen, McCreadie.” The old man uncocked his gun. “Go and let my granddaughter have her party…and her life.”

Paisley turned on her heel, gasped, as if it couldn’t be. Her emotions ran rampant across her features. At first she looked confused, curious. She examined the lines in his face, until her gaze whipped to the hand he raised.

“I know that hand,” she whispered. “It gentled the baby girl who adored you.” She wept as she spoke.

“I love that little girl with all my heart,” her grandfather rasped.

“Bepah?”

“You look like your grandmother on our wedding day.” His voice shook.

“Bepah!” She was in his arms, a hug worth a life-time.

Werner and Scanlon took a sneering McCreadie away.

“I never thought I’d see it,” Dolly said, her voice un-steady.

Dante stood very close to her, hand-holding close, their clasp hidden behind her skirts. With her lover’s help, she composed herself.

“I could not come back for you,” he whispered against Paisley’s hair. “I got life in prison for being a spy. At one point I nearly died but Dolly sent money for my care and against all odds, I recovered. It took years for my wife’s country, and my own to trust me again. Dolly began to send money to keep my life bearable. It turned out that I could serve my country well from prison, acting as a spy on other inmates, but the job I signed on for took years longer than expected. There was always a reason that I could not come for you. But you were with your great aunt and uncle, so I knew you were safe. I arranged for you to be whisked away at times of danger, and hidden in the tunnel nursery. All these years, I prayed with every breath to see you again.”

“I can’t believe I helped bring my brother and his granddaughter together at last.”

“Aunt Dolly, why couldn’t you get him out sooner?” Paisley asked.

“Grover wouldn’t let me. He stayed away to protect us both,
served two countries by spying on other prisoners, and over the years, he earned his freedom. But it took me going there with someone from the State Department to point that out to the right people.”

Grover chuckled. “Like a little schnauzer, my sister nipped at their heels to make them move faster. They feared our Dolly, I tell you.”

Paisley giggled.

Dolly smoothed Paisley’s hair. “I met you, sweetie, and I moved on it. Just like Grover told me years ago to do if evidence of you ever appeared. But you were such a shock after so long. I never thought it would happen.”

“You frightened me, running like that,” Dante said. “I thought you’d given birth to our baby after I passed, and that Paisley was our granddaughter.”

Dolly laughed, ’til Ted Macri offered to get her oxygen.

“My concern for you both is
not
a laughing matter.” Dante tried to move away, but Dolly won that fight, too. To anybody but me, because Dad and Aunt Fiona hadn’t arrived yet, she must have looked like she was grabbing at air.

“Mama,” Ethel said. “Our house is gonna burst at the seams.”

“Let her rip,” Dolly said. “We have a family, Ethel. Now we have Madeira and more loved ones to cook and bake for.”

“Mad,” Paisley, or Anya, said. “Tunney was right. You
are good. You looked at those clothes and helped me find my past
and
my future.” She didn’t mention the way she grew up. She wouldn’t want to hurt her grandfather. How could he help going to prison, after all?

And when she got smothered in her grandfather’s embrace once again, Mad didn’t blame her.

She peeked from her grandfather’s arms, her periwinkle eyes twinkling.

“Happy Birthday, Auntie Dolly.”

Vintage Bag Tips

The first bag is a warning to handbag shoppers everywhere, who don’t examine their intended purchase from every angle.

This is Paisley’s shoulder bag, the one she comes to Vintage Magic with the first time she appears in the story.
Not
the tapestry carpetbag. I mean the pretty pearly beige box with a not-so-pretty design flaw. Well, several design flaws. The bag is six inches by eight inches around and two-and-three-quarters inches deep. The side opens completely to the floor of the bag with fan-fold sides as part of the lining.

The flaws: The single shoulder handle attaches only at the back of center, so it hangs at an awkward forward tilt
all the time. On my shoulder, it catches at my hip, so gravity could open it and allow it to dislodge its contents, without the wearer’s knowledge. However, ninety percent of the population is taller than I am, so that might not matter. Still, if the shoulder strap hook were one-quarter inch closer to center, it might work better.

At any rate, hanging on one’s shoulder open, like if you were looking for your money, the bag looks like a round-edged, funky—and not in a good way—boxy Ms. Pac-Man, ready to devour anything in its path.

Think hungry shark, no teeth.

It has a flap that comes over the top to clasp, but the base of the clasp is too tall. The flap doesn’t touch the bag. There’s a half-inch spread between the clasp and the bag. The more I look at it, the more it looks like it might have been made with surplus hardware.

The bag itself is beautiful. I’d date it as coming from the eighties. Someone put a lot of design into the body of the purse, which is why it’s so sad that you can’t use it. This pearlized bag was purchased at a yard sale. Not an expensive mistake to make, but it might have been. Shop carefully, especially for purses or anything vintage.

The second bag does not come with a warning. It is Ethel’s tall, narrow, black jersey, bow-crossed handbag “hooked on her arm at the elbow,” which she sports while waiting for Madeira Cutler, our sleuth, to pick her up.

I love the looks of this bag. It’s nine inches tall. Seven inches
wide at the top. Nine inches wide, but curved inward at the bottom, so it looks like a very tall narrow bag, but it’s deceptive, given its shape. The flat of it, so you can stand it up, looks like a wide oval.

This, too, opens like a huge yawn to the floor of the bag with fan sides as part of the inner lining. Inside, halfway down, it has a center pouch with a small zipper to close it.

Its depth is three-quarters of an inch at the top and two-and-a-half inches at the bottom. On the front is the diagonal cut or implication of a bow, with a “tab” in the center of the bow design, and an oval brass broach of sorts.

The handle is short and jersey like the outside of the bag. I love the look of it. This purse “speaks to me.” It was purchased at an antique shop in Kingston, New Hampshire.

It’s reminiscent of the forties or fifties—I can see it paired with a pillbox hat and kitten heels—but I think it’s a retro knockoff because the sturdiness of the body makes me think there’s plastic or even cardboard inside. Still it’s a fun, pretty bag. It has no label but the zipper pull has an engraved pine tree on it. If you know what that pine tree engraving means, e-mail me from my website and let me know. The zipper’s teeth are medium-sized metal, so seventies or eighties. Newer bags have plastic zippers. Older ones, metal zippers.

I tried to find specific dates for types of zippers—metal
versus nylon/plastic—and know only that in 1937 zippers beat buttons for the first time in the “Battle of the Fly” on men’s pants.

Yes, we came full circle, back to the first quote of our story, and we didn’t even try.

Look for pictures of these bags and the bags featured in my previous Vintage Magic Mysteries on my website,
www.annetteblair.com
, under “Vintage Magic Mysteries,” then below that “Featured Handbags” in the Table of Contents on the right side.

Read below for a preview of
Annette Blair’s next
Vintage Magic Mystery …

Operation Petticoat

Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

And now, I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.

—LADY GAGA

Last night, I bedazzled a hard hat. Crystals, and sequins, and bling. Oh my.

What else to wear to a roof-raising with black tuxedo-cut Hilfiger overalls, a sparkly tux shirt, and a pair of black velvet Belgian loafers? I mean, my Vintage Magic dress
shop is now a construction zone. I have to be practical
and
fashion conscious.

Of course the unseasonably mild February weather, even for so short a jaunt outdoors, called for a generous mohair scarf from the English Lakes district, and kid gloves, both in maize, and therefore neutral to the overall effect.

According to family legend, I’ve been a fashionista since they cut the cord, anointed me in sweet baby oil, and wrapped me in pink to match the bow in my hair. Then I grew up and became…well…a fashionista, the designing kind. Take that any way you like. I do.

I sell designer vintage classics, preferably haute couture, and personally design fashion forward-one-of-a-kind originals. Designing also applies to the way I conceal the
charming
legacy bequeathed to me by my late mother, a discovery with—witch—I try daily to make a certain peace. That gift is not limited to “listening” to whatever vintage fashions “speak to me” and using those visions to help solve crimes, evils often as antique as my sources.

My name is Madeira Cutler, but I prefer Mad or Maddie. Only my dad, Harry Cutler, Lit-quoting UConn Professor, uses my full name, whether I want him to or not.