Death by Diamonds (6 page)

“No, wherever the universe plants me in a vision, I seem to be stuck there. But if I’m not stuck in the outfit, I can look everywhere. If I’m in the outfit, my point of view is limited to the wearer’s point of view. Simple as that.”

“I do remember your experiences, dammit.” Eve clenched her fists and kicked the sofa for good measure. “Mad, I am so going to get you for this. Kyle, turn around.”

“Remind me not to cross you,” he said, facing the mirrored wall.

“I’m not one to have a hissy, normally, but you don’t know what happens when Mad gets a vision. You’ll have nightmares, I tell you.”

Kyle shrugged. “I’m not scared.”

“You will be.” Eve put her hands on her hips. “Hey, you facing the mirror is sort of defeating the purpose, isn’t it?” She took Kyle by an arm and guided him farther to the right. “The other wall,” she explained.

I shook my head, actually able to smile at their antics, despite our purpose here. “Kyle, can you tell us about Diamond Sands, the story line, brief synopsis?” I asked. “You know, while I help Eve change?”

“Oh sure. It’s a musical about the beginnings of the Pierpont Diamond Mines, and the family, a two-hour commercial in a way, but it’s a romance, too, about the current owner’s Victorian great-great-grandparents, an Australian rags to riches story, which gives it an entertaining edge.”

Eve fidgeted as she buttoned herself into a mostly gold camel-hair wool Victorian autumn gown with three-quarter sleeves, circa 1883. The brocade weave of peaches outlined in brown on a rust background formed the underskirt and over bodice of the dress. The plain brown wool formed the short gathered overskirt and bustle. “Great gown,” I said as I stood back.

“Hot and scary,” Eve said. “So, Kyle,” she added, putting off the inevitable. “People pay to see this commercial?”

“They did because Dominique DeLong played the lead,” he said, still staring at the dressing room door.

“Why was the show closing then?” I asked.

“Pierce Pierpont, the bastard, put a stop to advertising practically the minute his father died. I don’t think Pierce was fond of my mother. I wouldn’t be surprised if he intended to end her career by closing it. But hey, maybe that’s me being paranoid.”

“Your mother died a suspicious death,” I said. “Paranoia seems reasonable considering.”

“Young Pierpont does sound like a bastard,” Eve agreed, her arms crossed over the gold Victorian gown, sort of daring me to come near her.

“So tell us about the show,” I said, again, so Eve would relax.

“At the time it takes place, the female lead is set to take London theaters by storm. But all that ends when she’s forced to accompany her husband, falsely accused of theft, to the Australian colonies. Thinking they were doomed, they served their time but ended up saving the son of the family to whom they were indentured. They were thanked with their freedom and a monetary gift to start a new life. They bought a plot of land that surprisingly yielded a mother lode of diamonds and became the richest family in Australia.”

“Sounds pretty good,” Eve said. “I like a happy ending.”

“Victor Pierpont, Pierce’s father, was a great man. I was happy for him, and I liked and respected him. His son, not so much. The musical had a lot going for it, and my mother played the rich heroine beautifully.”

“Of course she did,” I whispered, wishing to hell that I’d come to see her in it. That’s what I get for thinking a New York show will last forever. “Now I understand why the costumes range from rags to these gorgeous Victorian gowns.”

“My mother wore the gown Eve’s wearing to the cast party the night before she died,” Kyle said without turning.

Eve did a slow turn toward his back. “How do you know what I’m wearing, if you can’t see me? You peeked!”

“Um,” Kyle said, buying time. “Shiny doorknob?”

Thirteen

Costumes are the first impression that you have of the character before they open their mouth—it really does establish who they are.

—COLLEEN ATWOOD

“Get your eyes off that doorknob,” Eve said, “put your hand on it, instead, turn it, and go find some coveralls or jeans in one of the other dressing rooms. You can’t take sink traps apart in that suit.”

“Wouldn’t the police have looked in the plumbing for the diamonds?” Kyle asked.

“Maybe,” I said. “Maybe not.”

I cocked my head to one side and pursed my lips. “Ah, how long have you two been dating?”

“Funny,” Eve said. “I figure it’s been about what, Kyle, an hour since we first laid eyes on each other?”

“I feel like I’ve known you all my life,” Kyle said, “if you count the ride to the Federal building.”

“Right,” Eve said, “I forgot that we dropped off the arch idiot.”

“Eve, stop talking about Nick that way,” I said. “Honestly, you’d think you were carrying a torch for him or something. You know what they say about love and hate being two sides of the same coin.”

Eve faked a dry heave. “Quick, give me a barf bag.”

Kyle looked entertained, and under the circumstances, he needed that. And he needed to keep busy. “Clothes for examining the depths of sink pipe traps, Kyle,” I said.

“You really think the diamonds are in the plumbing?” Eve asked when his steps faded.

“No, but they could be, and he needs to be doing something.”

“Ah.” Then she started fidgeting with the dress ruffles. “Are you sure you should touch this gown?” She stepped as I reached. “On second thought, don’t touch.”

“You know, my friend, you’re going to have to get over your psychic-phobia around me. I’m not going to change.”

“You already did change,” she pouted. “You didn’t used to read vintage clothes and scare me spitless.”

“That’s true. I wonder what the universe has in store for me next.”

“As long as it doesn’t involve me. Yikes, you put your hands in my pockets. Mad? Madeira?

Where did you go? I hate when you pop out and forget to tell me you’re leaving!”

I could hear Eve calling me but she seemed far away compared to the Mod Squad living room in which I found myself. Seventies striped walls in blue, lime, turquoise, and mauve, a modern half sofa with huge, almost-bouncing 3D-type polka dots and rings in nearly the same colors. Close enough in colors not to make me seasick, anyway. The whomp-whir of a Hula-hoop snaked in and out of my peripheral vision. Had I gone back in time, or had someone failed to move with the times?

The scope of the picture didn’t matter. I knew one more thing about my visions. I could look behind and around me but I couldn’t see around corners. That kept me from seeing who was using the hoop. I assumed it was a teenager.

I saw Dominique’s face exactly as I remembered her from our December lunch as she looked at pictures in a scrapbook, mostly of her with a handsome, mature man, arm in arm, smiling at each other and for the camera.

So this was her rather recently and not back in time. However, just to complicate matters, she was wearing the rust-and-gold brocade Victorian gown, but why she’d dress in costume, in a seventies den, during the new millennium, I couldn’t imagine. Unless the den was a set here in the theater. But the biggest oddity was the Hula-hoop. I’d heard there was a resurgence of use for exercise and physical therapy, but it didn’t fit the scene, despite the fact that I stood in the midst of it.

“So why did you call me over in the middle of an obsessively unnecessary dress rehearsal?”

she asked the person around the corner, the one wielding the green-striped hoop.

“Your director is a nutcase,” came a strange raspy voice from the Hula-hoop corner. A voice some might consider a threat.

It reminded me of old Mrs. Thompson after her throat surgery.

“I called you because I had a brilliant idea,” Deep Throat said. “I think we should steal the diamonds you wear in the play and run away together. Live life to the full, no holds barred. It’s about time we came out of the closet.”

Yikes, I thought. Didn’t see that coming. The speaker, aka the Hula-hoop user, could have been male or female, young or old, but he/she remained around that corner and out of my line of vision.

Sure, I could look all around the room, even behind me, because I wasn’t wearing the dress inciting the vision, but I still couldn’t propel myself, nor the object of my vision, into my line of sight. Scrap!

“I love you, but you’re nuts,” Dominique told Deep Throat. Love? Really? “We’d never get away with stealing the diamonds,” she declared. “And you know it.”

“Sure we would. Who’d suspect us of all people? Now that my throat cancer is gone, we could go anywhere, travel the world,” he/she rasped.

“Why bother stealing them?” Dom asked.

“Just for the fun of pissing off that greedy phony. He’s just like his mother. We’ll leave a tell-all note and leave Kyle to run the show. You did a good job with that boy, Dom. I’m proud of him.”

“You should be. He’s just like you.”

Huh? What? They were feeding me puzzle pieces that didn’t fit, or they fit a different puzzle than the one I was trying to put together.

Someone grabbed me and pushed me, face-first, against a wall. I thought tobacco voice had caught me invading his seventies den. I mean, Dominique would have known me, so it had to be the room’s other occupant.

Then I began to focus from without, rather than from within, and the water stain in the shape of New Hampshire caused by the likewise-seventies air conditioner was replaced by Eve standing in front of me, shaking me until my teeth rattled. I caught her in a bear hug. “Eve, I’m so glad it’s you.” Unfortunately, by hugging her, I grasped the dress again and put myself into a different vision surrounding the same dress. I found myself backstage this time, curtain closed, lights on, and from the conversation around me, this was an after-show party, which is why the cast was still in costume. The actor dressed like a traveling preacher hit a gong and waited for silence to speak.

“Pierpont the younger has something to say,” the actor announced, and a handsome man dressed in an uber-expensive suit climbed a set of five stairs to tower over us and rock on his heels, hands behind his back. Wielding power and reveling in it. Even though the news must be bad, he rode the rising wave until his toadies stirred and shifted, out of patience.

“I’ll get right to it,” he said. Too late. “You’re good at what you do. Talented. You put on a hell of a show, but we’re not making a profit, and let’s face it, we’re not in the business to lose money.”

The cast groaned. Their expressions of horror told the story. They knew what was coming.

“Tomorrow night will be our last performance,” Pierpont the younger said. “We’re closing the show.”

I guessed that this was a pre-cancel-the-show party. The company broke up while the grumbling in general continued. Pierpont descended the steps, head higher, if that were possible, and disappeared into a dark hall.

Dom—or, I, in Dom’s body—headed for her dressing room, but she stopped when she saw her ex-husband close himself in her leading man’s dressing room.

“Ma-dei-ra!” She shook me and I went limp, my focus returning to the present.

“Eve! You hit me.”

“You wigged out again, and we’re no longer alone in the theater. Get me out of this thing. It’s like the dress that ate Chicago. No, I’m a nutcase, you’ll sail off to la-la land if you do. Don’t touch it. I’ll get out of it on my own. If you leave me, again, I might have to beat you.”

“Good start,” I said, rubbing my cheek. Then I heard footsteps and voices. “I wonder what happened to Kyle.”

“Damn, there’s no time to find out or change. Let’s just get the hell out of Oz.” Still wearing the dress, Eve pried open the door and peeked out while panic shivered through me and I grabbed a black trench coat off a door hook to conceal my red suit and make myself less conspicuous.

I barely took a step before I knew that I should never act in panic, especially when it came to donning a piece of unknown clothing. Dumb, dumb, dumb. My head ached like a shimmer of rising desert heat, and I no longer stood in Dom’s dressing room. Instead, I stood just outside said room, carefully opening the door a silent crack.

Dom paced while the unaddressed box that came to me carrying the seafoam gown sat on the floor beside her purse. She glanced at the door, and I leaned back, so not even my shadow could cross her threshold. Then she looked furtively around her dressing room before she glanced back at the door. The theater seemed as dark and deserted on that occasion as it had upon our arrival.

After seeming certain she was alone, she took a small glass jar of clear gel-type liquid from her purse and switched it with the one already on her dressing table. Satisfied that I’d witnessed the switch, though not sure why, I shut Dom’s dressing room door as silently and successfully as I’d opened it, and I came back to myself. It happened so fast, I felt like the door changed places with me.

“Mad!” Eve pulled on my arm. “Are you coming? The voices are getting closer.”

I shed the trench coat like it was made of spiders.

Succumbing to desperate times, I grabbed a black opera cloak from the costume rack, long enough to hide my red shoes, aware this time that it might be a vision maker. I raised the hood to hide the cinnamon highlights in my hair and found myself wishing for a certain wizard’s invisibility cloak. Fiction aside, this was as close as I could get to blending with the unlit theater.

God forbid the cloak had something to say; it should speak fast, because our time alone was coming to an end.

I turned off the light, pushed Eve from the dressing room, and urged her away from the approaching footsteps. Problem: We didn’t know where the hell we were going, and not so much as a glimmer lit the end of this tunnel.

We did, however, find a ladder. “Climb,” I said.

Eve whimpered.

We ended up crawling along a wide paint-stained plank walkway above a bottomless black well that might be a stage or a crocodile pit. Note to me: cloaks, not made for crawling; cloaks made for idiots. After catching myself up short with it, I grabbed the two bottom corners, one in each fist, and continued across the plank.

“Madeira Cutler,” Eve whispered right behind me, her whisper shaky though she meant to be strong. “You get me into the stupidest trouble.”