Dior or Die (Joanna Hayworth Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 2) (24 page)

"He won't like it. Too cheap looking."
 

Cheap? Sure, if Rita Hayworth at the Mambo Room was "cheap." "Wait. I have a Peggy Hunt with a chiffon yolk and sleeves. It's a great combination of revealing and concealing. Should be your size. It's black, though."

"Let me see it." Eve grabbed the hanger from Joanna and passed one hand over the bodice, pausing to run a finger over the crystals woven into the chiffon. "Perfect. I'll try it on." She carried the dress to the dressing room and closed the curtain.

Joanna slid the Marty Robbins record back into its sleeve and flipped through the LPs until she found the one she wanted. The harmonies of the Andrew Sisters soon filled the air.

"You must really miss not having Paul around," Eve said from behind the curtain.

Joanna dropped the stereo's cover with a bang. What did she know? "I'm not sure what you mean."

"You know. He's always at my studio. Late, sometimes. It seems like every time I turn around, there he is." She emerged from the dressing room and posed, hand on hip, in front of the mirror. She turned to check out her profile. "Of course, not that I'm complaining. The man is easy on the eyes."

Joanna's stomach dropped. No. It couldn't be. Eve couldn't have the gall to march into her store to buy a dress to wear for Paul. Or would she? "This man you're seeing, the one for the dress, is he—is he anyone I know?" She held her breath and willed Eve to say no.

Eve's smile widened. "You don't know? That's funny, I thought you would." She turned toward the dressing room. "I guess I won't say then."
 

Joanna's heart beat so fast she could barely hear above the rush in her ears.
 

Eve pulled the curtain shut, then opened it again and stuck out her head. "You can write up a receipt for the dress. I'm taking it."

***

To pay her bills, Joanna had to get at least a few of Vivienne's things displayed on the floor at Tallulah's Closet. Besides, why go home? She’d only beat herself up over Paul. And Poppy. The funeral was the next day. An aching emptiness seemed to have taken over where her vital organs should have been.

She sighed. First step, inventory and tag some items. She'd start with jewelry. She flipped the "open" sign to "closed" and turned off all of the store lights except a gooseneck lamp over the glass-topped jewelry counter.
 

She spread out a tumble of rhinestones, gold chains, and pastel beads. She'd been so taken by Vivienne's dresses that she'd hardly paid attention to the accessories. But the trunk's drawers surrendered several parures, at least a dozen pairs of earrings, and more bracelets, brooches, and necklaces than she could count at a glance. Shreds of yellowed tissue showed that at one point they'd been individually wrapped, but over the years they'd worked themselves loose and would require patience and tweezers to untangle.

That was fine. The events of the past week, culminating with Eve's visit that afternoon—could she really be seeing Paul?—rattled her. Sorting through the jewelry would be a distraction. She pulled Joni Mitchell's
Court and Spark
from the shelf and and set it on the turntable. She lowered the hi fi's needle. A faint crackle gave way to guitar and Mitchell's sinuous voice.

An hour passed as Joanna filled her notepad with a list of Vivienne's jewelry. Night fell. She worked free a Miriam Haskell brooch mounted on Russian gold with seed pearls encircling square-cut crystals. She tilted it under the lamp, and it threw a rainbow of light against the ceiling. She'd be willing to bet its matching earrings languished somewhere in the tangle. She put the brooch to the side and set to releasing a necklace of black baroque pearls.

The necklace was stuck on something. She eased her fingers into a knot of beads and shook loose a gold locket the size of a quarter. Etched on the outside was "A Maman." She pried it open with her fingernail. Inside was a photo of a curly-headed boy barely old enough for kindergarten. The boy's serious eyes gave him away. Gil.
 

She set the locket next to the brooch to give to Helena. Helena seemed so nervous about her husband lately. Maybe the locket would bring back better times.

As Joanna turned to put on a new record, the phone rang. Memories of the call she'd received before the auction flashed back. But that had been about the diamonds. That was all over now. She hesitated, then picked up the phone.

"Joanna," a harsh whisper said. "I warned you."

She inhaled sharply. "Who is this?"

"I'm watching you. Working all alone. That jewelry must be quite interesting."

The bathroom door was shut, so no one could be looking in at her through the back window. She swallowed hard. That left the front. She squinted at the front window, but the intensity of the light from the gooseneck lamp blocked her vision. Heart hammering, she clicked it off, plunging the store in darkness. There was no way the stranger was getting the better of her this time.

The voice laughed, setting the hair on her neck on end. "That doesn't help."

Her eyes slowly adjusted to the dark. Thanks to the streetlights, she could see out better than anyone could see in. All she needed was a glimpse of the caller, to identify him or her. She dropped behind the tiki bar. Her hands shook as she loosened the cord coiled behind the phone.

"What do you want?" Joanna asked.

"I told you to leave other people's business alone. You didn't listen."

Keep the caller talking. "About the diamonds?" Staying low, she moved from behind the tiki bar to the shelter of the red velvet bench.
 

"Don't be coy, Joanna. About the killings, of course."

Her breath caught in her throat. He’d said "killings." Plural. "What do you want from me?" The last time, she’d retreated from the caller. Not this time. No. She crept to the far wall, trailing the phone's cord behind her and pressed herself into a rack of black cocktail dresses. A feathered pillbox hat dropped from the shelf above. She gripped the phone, terrified the caller would see the movement.

"What are you doing?" the voice asked.

"Nothing." Her breath was coming too quickly.

"Don’t make either of us sorry." A pause. "I need you to do one simple thing, or no guarantees."

"What?" The word came out almost a whisper.

"Tell the police you saw Helena Schuyler North leaving the auctioneer's body. Tell them. You were the one who found it."

"But I didn't see anyone."

"Tell them, or you're next."

Only a few feet of phone cord remained, and the door was still a body's length away. The blood pounded in her ears. Staying low, she stretched as close as she could to the windowed door. All she wanted was a look. With Dot’s so close, the caller couldn’t do anything too rash.

A shadowy figure moved in the entrance Tallulah's Closet shared with Dot's. If she could just get a little closer...

"All right." Joanna's voice trembled. "I'll tell them. Whatever you want."
 

Nearly blind with fear, Joanna dropped the phone and sprang to her feet to yank open the door. Before her hand reached the knob, the door exploded. It was the last thing she remembered.
 

The floor was cold under Joanna's back. She opened her eyes to people streaming out of Dot's. A siren wailed in the distance. The store's overhead lights clicked on.

A bearded man in a plaid shirt stepped through the door's window frame, his boots crunching on glass. "I don’t know what happened, but you’re damned lucky that was safety glass," he said.
 

The window lay around Joanna in rounded pieces, some still in sheets, some as small as baguette-cut rhinestones. It was coming back now. The caller. She boosted herself onto her elbows, and her head spun. She lay down again.
 

"Can you help me up?" she said when the room’s spin slowed. The bearded man lifted her to her feet.
 

She'd been so close to seeing the caller. She rubbed the back of her head. She must have smacked it hard on the platform. All she could remember was a medium-sized figure. Not too tall, but not too short, either. Average build. Not a very useful description.
 

"I think someone shot at the door. Did you see anyone?"

"No," the bearded man said. "You okay? You don't look so steady."

"I'd better sit down." Joanna parked herself on the red velvet bench. Nausea rose in her gut. What had just happened? The phone squawked from being off the hook. The bearded man's friend, another bearded man, but bald, put the receiver in its cradle.

Slamming car doors announced the police's arrival. Detective Foster Crisp reached through the door frame and unbolted the door. After a glance at Joanna, he told the uniformed policeman behind him to call a medic. "Ms. Hayworth. What happened?"

Crisp hadn't changed much from the year before when her friend Marnie had died. Same long face and jutting ears, same bolo tie and cowboy boots. Joanna had once made the mistake of thinking he was just another bureaucrat waiting for retirement—a mistake she wouldn't make again.
 

She told Crisp about the caller, then pointed toward the door. "He—or she—must have shot at me."

"You were just on the other side of the door?"

She nodded.

"Then he was a lousy shot."

Two paramedics arrived, and Crisp told her he'd return in a moment. One medic, who looked barely out of training, felt her head while the other, a gray-haired woman, asked questions.
 

"Any cuts or abrasions?" the woman asked.

Miraculously, no. Thank God for the safety glass. "My elbow is a little banged up." She must have broken the fall with her arm.

Joanna winced when the younger medic touched the back of her head. He tipped up her face and looked in her eyes. "Dilated," he said. "Stand up."

The floor felt unsteady under her feet. "Whoa."

"How many fingers am I holding up?" the woman asked. "Any nausea?"

"Two and, yes, but just a little." The younger medic slipped a blood pressure cuff over one arm.

The caller demanded she tell the police that she'd seen Helena leave Poppy's body. Someone was setting her up. Who would want to destroy Helena—or the North family? Someone afraid the police were too close to the truth, maybe. As the cuff swelled over her arm, she looked around the store. The front door was a goner, but the dresses looked to be all right.

"Blood pressure's a little low." The younger man clipped shut his kit. "Slight concussion."
 

And whoever the caller was, it was someone involved with both deaths, Vivienne's and Poppy's.

"Ma'am, pay attention." The older medic pulled Joanna's face toward her with a finger. "You may feel out of sorts, drowsy, over the next few days. Maybe even a little depressed, but that should go away after a week or so. Are you listening?"

She nodded.

"No sudden movements, either. I wouldn't drive for the next few days if you can help it. Is there someone at home to keep an eye on you?"

Paul. "No."

"Then you'll need to stay at a friend's and call your doctor in the morning."
 

"Thank you. I'll see what I can do." Apple was out for the evening, but she'd think of something.

Detective Crisp passed the medics as they left. "No one saw the shooter outside. An evidence crew should be here in a few minutes." Crisp glanced out the door, then back in the store. "This was your second threatening call, wasn't it?"

"Yes. I reported the first one, but I didn't think anyone took notice."

"Show me where you were when the phone rang. Let's walk through this."

Joanna rose slowly. The room wobbled as if she were standing on the deck of a boat.

"Easy there," Crisp said and grabbed her arm.

"I'm okay." She picked up the phone and took it back to the tiki bar. "I was here, sorting jewelry." She clicked on the gooseneck lamp. "The store was dark except for this lamp."

Crisp walked to the front of the store, his cowboy boots tapping on the linoleum, crunching on the odd shard of glass. He turned off the overhead lights and looked first through the plate glass window fronting Tallulah's Closet, then through the door. He flipped the lights back on when he returned.

"What happened next?"
 

"The phone rang." Joanna glanced at the phone now piled on its cord. "It was the same caller as before, the same whisper." Her neck prickled. "I had to see who it was. I knew the caller could see me, so I turned off this light" —she patted the lamp— "and crawled toward the door. I almost saw him, too."

"What did the caller want?"

"To threaten me. To warn me not to try to find Poppy's murderer." She stared at Crisp. "She was murdered, wasn’t she? It wasn’t suicide at all."

Crisp took a step closer. "You’re right. The autopsy showed she’d been strangled, then hung."

Bile rose in Joanna’s throat. She knew it had been true, but hearing the words still shocked.

"You’ve been nosing around in her death?" Crisp asked.

She remained silent.

"Never mind. We'll come back to that in a minute. Tell me again what the caller wanted."

"I did. He threatened me." Should she tell him the caller wanted her to lie? What if the caller found out? He'd killed twice and shot at her. Was it worth the risk? Crisp watched her intently. She touched the tender crown of her skull.

"You're not telling me something," Crisp said.

Poppy was already dead. She wasn’t letting Helena get killed, too. "He—the caller wanted me to lie to you."

Crisp nodded. "About what?"

"To say that I saw Helena Schuyler North leaving the green room when I found Poppy's body." She spoke quietly, as if the caller might somehow hear.

Crisp relaxed back, still nodding. "Got it."

"It's not the truth, though. I didn't see anyone. She couldn't have done it," Joanna said quickly. She glanced anxiously toward the front window. A few patrons of Dot's stood on the sidewalk watching the police work.
 

Crisp marked her distress. "They can't hear us out there. We're fine. As far as the caller knows, you're telling me exactly what he wants you to." He put his hands flat on the counter and leaned forward. "As far as Ms. North goes—"