Death by Diamonds (7 page)

I turned to her. “Really? Like crawling the peak of your father’s garage at age seven to catch a baby squirrel?”

“Shut up!”

“I love you, too. Now shush.”

Sometime later, I was going down a safer ladder than I had climbed at the beginning of this crazy trek. I found myself behind a curtain, Eve no longer behind me. Had she not followed me down?

When had we parted ways?

I squeaked when a man in a clean but tattered Victorian suit took my arm and led me to the center of a seemingly empty room, shadows dancing, light to dark and back, again, as my eyes adjusted to the darkness. “Who are you?” I asked. A dead actor was my guess.

“Your husband, of course.”

So . . . my leading man, perhaps, once upon a time?

“There,” he said, pointing to the outline of a body on the floor. “That’s where you lost your beauty and died.” He gave me a double take. “But you have your beauty back.”

Ah, Dom would like that, keeping her beauty for eternity and not having to age in the public eye. But I was losing track of my purpose. I’d never conversed with a vision before, so I should make the best of it.

“I might still have my beauty,” I told this phantom husband of mine, “but I lost the diamonds.” Yes, I was baiting him, trying to draw him out.

“So everyone thinks,” said he, “but you still have them, don’t you?”

“Do I?” In my experience with Dante, I had concluded that ghosts had no reason to lie. But maybe this specter was delusional.

I realized that Dominique had died in this very spot, and I got dizzy again, my world seeming to tilt and flip entirely, my viewpoint coming from somewhere near the ceiling, the stage below me.

I tried not to look but, despite myself, I stared down at the outline of Dominique’s body in the center of the stage floor.

Grief overwhelmed me.

Someone held me while I cried and stood me upright again. Above me, the ceiling. Below me, that terrible stage floor with the chalk outline of Dom’s body.

“Nick!” I said when I realized those were his arms around me, him consoling me, or maybe I knew all along.

As we stood there, he grabbed a cord with a switch at the end, and the curtains parted with a

“whoosh” of sweeping purple velvet, thick silk red and gold tassels bobbing with the movement.

Eve stood on the audience side of the open curtain still wearing the gold Victorian gown. Beside her, Kyle looked dapper in torn jeans and a black V-neck T-shirt, the two of them handcuffed together.

Fourteen

He who would travel happily must travel light.

—ANTOINE DE SAINT-EXUPÉRY

“Are you all right?” Nick asked looking me over like I was a prized porcelain figurine. I pushed back the cloak’s hood to reveal my face and hair. “I’m fine.”

“Good,” Nick said. “Now I can beat you.”

I shook out my hair. “How did you find us?”

“I called Higgins to pick me up, and he told me where he was waiting for three idiots—my words, not his. I had one of the guys from the New York office drop me in front of the theater, and after he left, I came after you by myself.”

“Thank God.”

“No, thank Nick,” Nick said. “Come here, you two putzes,” he told Eve and Kyle. “Do you know how much trouble Mad can get you into?”

“Hey?”

Eve opened her mouth and Nick gave her a warning look.

“Let me rephrase that,” Nick said. “Kyle, do you know how much trouble Eve and Mad can get you into?”

Kyle winked at Eve, but he was wise enough not to tick off Nick, as he, our so-called rescuer, unlocked the cuffs.

When Kyle and Eve were free, Nick rubbed his nose, his eyes bright with amusement. “Go find your own clothes and leave the stolen costumes where they were. No more nosing around on your own.” He narrowed his eyes my way. “This is a murder investigation.”

Eve and Kyle left, but Nick didn’t let me go. As a matter of fact, he held on tighter, making me feel cherished, important. We rarely did that in this relationship, held tight. Too dangerous, clinging.

“You’ve been trying to read vintage clothes again,” he said.

“I think I’ve been hallucinating, instead. Not much I saw made sense. And I’ve never had a historical character, or a ghost, in a vision, converse with me. It was like Hogwarts set in Oz narrated by Doctor Who.”

“Serves you right. Go put that cloak away and let’s get you out of here. Kyle has a schedule to keep, even if he’s too polite to say so.”

We were a quiet group getting back into the limo, but I managed to smuggle a black trench coat with a nefarious past in one of Dom’s big old Marc Jacobs purses, my own purse also stuffed inside, and pass it off as mine. The coat had been worn by someone spying on Dominique, and I needed to find out what else it could tell me. Nick didn’t even notice.

To my surprise, Higgins took us to a forensics morgue. “I thought we were supposed to go straight to Dominique’s,” I said.

“I’m sorry, Mad,” Kyle said, guilt skewing his “I’m okay” expression. “I couldn’t do this alone,” he admitted.

“Do what alone?” I asked, dreading the answer.

“Identify Mom’s body.”

Higgins turned in his seat, his face a mask of concern. “Young Mr. DeLong needs a friend. Everybody else in his life right now wants something. He needs someone willing to give rather than take.”

“I’m here for you, Kyle,” I said, squeezing his arm.

“Let’s go inside,” Nick said. “Higgins, thanks for putting Kyle’s situation into perspective for us.”

“Thank you,” Kyle said, speaking to everyone but no one.

One by one, we were given IDs in a sterile, nondescript lobby, and when the elevator doors closed us in, Nick took me in his arms. “Prepare yourself, ladybug. You, too, Kyle.”

“What’s a forensics morgue?” I asked, never having heard the distinction. Nick examined the toes of his dress shoes and slipped a hand in one pocket. “Let’s just say that Dominique would be in a regular morgue, if the law didn’t think she died under mysterious circumstances.”

I nodded, my throat too tight to speak.

With every floor the elevator climbed came a stronger smell of disinfectant. We got out on the sixth floor where no amount of the stuff would be able to cover the smell of death.

Kyle began to pace the length of the mahogany-trim waiting room, circa 1930. Hands behind his back, he was so focused on the black-and-white floor tiles, he seemed to forget our existence.

“Kyle,” I said. “Why didn’t you identify your mom last night?”

He closed the space between us and wrapped his arms around me, his body wracked with one tightly wound shiver. “That would have made it real.”

I had no control over the sob that rose in me.

Maybe I was older than him, after all. On the other hand, maybe when we lose our mother, we’re all ten years old inside.

“Jaconetti?” a suit across the room called. “Is that you? I heard you were in town today.”

A couple of men in FBI-type suits came to shake Nick’s hand. “Did the Bureau send you?” a fed with a buzz cut asked.

Nick performed the introductions, but I was so freaked at being in a forensics morgue, Dom’s body stiff and cold nearby, I keyed into Kyle’s fear of making it real. Foul play had contributed to Dominique’s death, I thought, absorbing the info, maybe for the first time, and as I did, I saw her switching those jars. Why?

Then I realized the intros were over and I had no names to put with faces. So I examined Nick’s cronies, specifically their hair, or their lack thereof, and dubbed them Buzz and Shinola.

“DeLong,” Buzz said to Kyle. “So you’re family? My condolences. We’re looking into the lost diamonds. The boys in blue over there are investigating cause of death. Don’t worry. We’ll compare notes.”

Hah. I knew from Nick and Werner that these two diverse arms of the law both wanted to come out on top. Both wanted to be the ones who solved the case. In other words, they wouldn’t like sharing info, and there would be no fraternizing without persuasion. Nick gave me a reassuring look. I gave him a trusting nod.

A woman in medical whites came out and motioned Kyle forward. He hesitated, looked back at me, and I took his arm to accompany him into a smaller office. When we got there, Nick came up beside us.

Eve waved through the glass from beside the elevator. I didn’t blame her for standing as far back as she could.

The assistant medical examiner, according to her badge, showed us a photograph that I didn’t at first recognize.

When I did, I found myself floaty and leaning hard into Nick at my back, his hands tight on my arms. He squeezed them harder and harder. The uncomfortable constriction was the only thing that kept me from passing out. Smart fed.

“Can we have a glass of water over here?” he asked.

Man, he knew me well.

Even as I sipped the water, I tried to talk myself out of floating to the floor in blessed oblivion. This is not about you, Cutler, I told myself. Get a grip. In the photograph, the blotches on Dominique’s face ranged from burgundy to purple, the skin around her eyes the worse, her nose, cheeks, and lips triple their normal size. That ghost hadn’t been kidding. She had lost her earthly beauty in a very big way. Sadness took over my weakness and the sight of her made me mad. I was gonna find the sonofabitch who did this to my friend.

Kyle cleared his throat more than once and swallowed hard before he could get his jaw to work. “She looks like she was stung by bees.”

“Can you give me a positive ID?” the woman asked. “Is this Dominique DeLong?”

“Yes,” Kyle said with a catch in his voice. “That’s her.”

“And you are?” the examiner queried, as she filled out a form.

“Kyle DeLong, her son. May I ask what killed her?”

“I’m sorry. It’s not up to me to say. I do the preliminary lab report. My boss does the official medical examiner’s report. The FBI and the police put that together with officers’ and detectives’ reports, witness statements, and evidence, and then maybe they tell you what happened.”

I tore my gaze from my poor beautiful friend’s marred face. “But you do think it was murder?”

“It doesn’t matter what I think, Ms. DeLong.”

I didn’t correct her assumption that I was family. What did it matter?

She turned to Kyle. “I can tell you that with your ID of the deceased, we’ve finished and we’ll be releasing Ms. DeLong to the funeral home within the hour.”

“Good,” Kyle said. “I made arrangements this morning.” He took out his cell phone and called the funeral parlor. Closing it, he said, “The wake and interment service are tomorrow.”

“Why so soon?” I asked.

“I want it dignified. It’ll be more respectful and less like a circus, if we keep the spectators down to a minimum. The longer we take, the more fans show up.”

“Right. Of course.”

Nick continued to hold me as we went to meet Eve in the waiting room. “Who would want to harm Dominique?” I asked.

Kyle made a mocking sound. “I’m afraid the list is as long as my arm.” Then he opened that arm, and Eve walked into it.

Fifteen

They came as if there might never be anything like it again: They were in mod clothes, Victorian suits, and granny gowns, old west outfits, pirate costumes . . .

—CHARLES PERRY

The doorbell to Dom’s Fifth Avenue mansion overlooking Central Park began to ring at seven, and frankly I feared that it would never stop.

The characters who came to offer Kyle their condolences outlandishly attempted to outdress each other, and would once have been called the “radical chic.”

At another time in fashion history, the faux-grieving rubberneckers vying for a glimpse at the twisted steel of Dom’s metaphorical but deadly “car accident” were known as Bohemians.

As far as I was concerned, they were slimy, scaled predators leapfrogging each other to reach the lower rungs of the ladder to success.

However typed, there were some legitimate artists and designers, interspersed with leeches and, for the most part, no-talent hangers-on. Some had genius, some had style, but most had their claws bared in one form or another in an industry that chewed up wannabes and spit them on dirty sidewalks to be tread upon by the uncaring hordes. Speaking of which, I’d managed to secure my brother-in-law’s family home, Cortland House in Mystick Falls as the venue for the Dominique DeLong Memorial Vintage Fashion Show for charity. Hordes would attend that, too, just to get a look at Dominique’s things, not to mention getting inside the gaudy Vancortland palace, which, to be fair, my sister’s husband hated, though that’s where he was brought up.

Kyle pulled all the right strings so that Dom’s vintage collection fashion show would be advertised in the news tomorrow, along with all the gory details of her death. It seemed irreverent, but Dom herself had said she wanted it done while she was still news. So I went ahead and set it up.

I sighed and looked around, feeling like I’d become one of them. To think that someone in this room might have killed Dom for money, or sport, or for a step up that infamous ladder with the razor sharp rungs.

I saw very few signs of sincere grief, except in one poor soul weeping in the guest bath off the foyer. “Can I get you a glass of water or something stronger?” I asked.

“Oh!” She wiped her eyes with a tissue as if she shouldn’t have been caught there. “No, thank you. I just . . . miss her. We talked, her and I, about everything.”

“I’m sorry,” I said, extending my hand. “I should introduce myself. Maddie Cutler. I’m a friend of Dom’s.”

The grief-stricken woman’s eyes widened and she curtseyed. “Ms. Cutler, I’m Ms. DeLong’s personal maid, Kerri O’Day, and I’ll be at your service while you’re here. They’ve given you her room, you see. It’s not my place to grieve openly so I apologize.”

“Well, Kerri, I find it refreshing to see someone other than her son and I grieving. Feel free to let your feelings show. I respect you for them. Do you think that you might be up to answering some questions about Ms. DeLong later?”

The freckle-faced girl curtseyed again. “Thank you, Ms. Cutler. Of course.”

I hooked my arm through hers. “Don’t ruin your knees on my account with curtseys. I’ve never had a maid in my life. No need to wait on me. Think of me as a friend. We have something in common, our friendship with Dom.”