Skirting the Grave (22 page)

He knuckled my cheek. “You, Madeira Cutler, are spectacular.”

“I wish you’d stop being so nice.”

“I’m a hard-edged cop, and don’t you forget it.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Go get your guy.” He stepped on the elevator, and our gazes held until it closed. I barely got around the corner to Sherry’s hall before I was pulled up against a hard bod.

“On again,” Nick growled in my ear. “You, me, us. Together.”

“Very, very, very on,” I said and kissed him.

A cheer rose up from the people spilling out of Sherry’s room. A nurse nearly had a stroke as she shushed them.

My family got shoved back into Sherry’s room, and they cheered in whispers when we walked back in.

“Give us our godson,” I said, accepting Reilly, while Kelsey raised her arms to Nick. Look at us, I thought, one of each. How right did that feel?

“Well,” I said to the room at large, “I know what I have to do.”

“What’s that?” my father asked.

“I had time to consult with Reilly and Kathleen in the nursery, earlier, and they’re both amenable to wearing designer christening outfits. Reilly’s will be a tux, of course, and Kathleen’s gown will be white and sweet as spun sugar.”

“What famous designer makes christening outfits?” Fiona asked.

“Why, Madeira Cutler, of course.”

Vintage Bag Tips

I put two of my newest and most favorite vintage bags into this story. One appears on the first morning. Isobel falls for Mad’s single-handled, creamy-caramel-swirlcolored Lucite box bag shaped like a man’s lunchbox, circa 1950s. It’s three and a half inches by six inches deep and four inches high at the curved top. The oval handle stands three inches above that. Box bags come in Bakelite, Lucite, metal weave, even tortoiseshell. I tested this one to see if it was Lucite or Bakelite. If you wet the plastic with hot running water, and it’s Bakelite, it will smell something like formaldehyde. Remember science class? My box bag, I now know, is Lucite.

Box bags are rare and can run into the hundreds of dollars, especially if they have a name like Wilardy on them. Mine says Made in Hong Kong on a clear plastic strip on the unlined inside. It should have a lining. I would call the hardware functional, not fancy. I bought it for a very reasonable price at Somerville Center Antiques, Somerville, New Jersey. It’s a group shop, and I purchased it specifically from Elyse at Kitsch N’ Wear. I saw more vintage handbags here than at any antique store I’ve ever been to. I’d date my caramel box bag as being from the sixties because of the hardware.

The second purse I featured in the story is Maddie’s vintage black Ralph Lauren bag. When I found it in a local SAVERS, I practically danced. Engraved on the strap hook and on the strap’s upholstery tacks is RLL. It has a Y hook with RLL engraved on the top near the ring holding the strap.

Three fobs hang from the zipper by leather laces that are self-wrapped. Ralph’s initials are on one fob in gold, about one and a half inches high. One of the other two fobs is a square of black leather with a gold square on top depicting a stirrup with a horse head on it. The third is a simple stirrup, about two inches high, with Lauren engraved at the bottom. This bag is made of a black fabric with the designs from all three fobs in differing sizes woven into it. It’s zipper-topped, twelve inches square, three inches wide, and the perfect size for my netbook. I’d date this one as coming from the seventies because of its thick, toothy zipper. It was a pure steal.

Look for pictures of these bags and the bags featured in my previous Vintage Magic Mysteries on my website
www.annetteblair.com
under “Handbags” in the table of contents to the left.

Dear Readers,

In regard to my inspiration for this story: My neighbors are identical triplets who inspired me to write my psychic triplet witch series for Berkley Sensation. I engaged one in conversation outside last summer, and she straightened from washing her car and said,

“You think I’m one of the triplets, don’t you?”

Of course I did, but no, she’s their first cousin. I couldn’t tell them apart. In Skirting the Grave, I made the parents of the “dead ringers” twin sisters married to the York brothers for added plausibility. My mother and her sister married brothers, and I defy you to sort the six of us into two correct sets. I connected the dots between the two situations, and this story was born.

—Annette Blair

Turn the page for a preview of

Annette Blair’s next book

in the Vintage Magic Mysteries . . .

Cloaked in Malice

Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!

Even truth needs to be clad in new garments if it is to appeal to a new age.

—GEORG C. LICHTENBERG

My name is Madeira Cutler, and I’d like to invent a ghostly tracking device. I mean, there’s nothing like a dead person dropping into your personal space to set you up for the day. Or to knock you off your Jimmy Choos.

“Dante, you scared the wits out of me,” I said, my heart racing.

“My apologies,” said my dapper Cary Grant clone in tux tails and top hat, “but I just saw a ghost.”

“You are a ghost.”

“Semantics.” He had the wisdom to put some distance between us. “Why so scared?” he asked. “You’re used to having me around. I introduced myself before you moved into my eternal restless place.”

I smoothed and folded the Hermès scarf I’d crushed in my hand at the minor fright. “It’s a Saturday, the shop’s barely open, and the residents of Mystic have the good grace to sleep in. And I was alone, sorting vintage clothes, and thinking about—”

“Nick?”

“Shush. Maybe. And suddenly I have a heart-shocking face-to-face. I’m here to tell you, being startled in that particular way can scare a girl.”

“My apologies, but seriously, you put your designer vintage dress shop in a former funeral home carriage house—horse-drawn hearses, caskets, old embalming room, and all.”

“Wait, this isn’t about me,” I said. “It’s about you being freaked by a ghost. Surely Mr. Undertaker Underhill, you’ve seen your share?”

“Not like this one.”

My shop bell rang, and a curly-haired young blonde entered, fashionably attired in vintage seventies, a stranger, with the most unique baby blues I’d ever seen—well, no, I had seen eyes like hers before.

I shivered deep inside, and Chakra, my cat, catapulted into my arms to soothe me.

“Welcome to Vintage Magic,” I said, stroking Chakra’s caramel-swirl fur coat. She turned a full 360, like a little girl in a candy store. “I’ll take one of everything.” She about swooned over my vintage treasures. By the twinkle and excitement in her eyes, I could see that she loved the possibilities.

“This place is wonderful, just brimming over with— Oh, look, you have street signs. Mad as a Hatter, Little Black Dress Lane, Paris when it Sizzles.” She chuckled and turned back to us—I mean, she turned back to me, though Dante remained beside me, his wide-eyed gaze glued to her.

“What do you think?” he asked me. “Is she a dead ringer or what?”

I wanted to shush him. It’s difficult to carry on a conversation with a ghost and a live person at the same time. No, my customer couldn’t hear or see the hunk in his work clothes. And yes, Dante died of a heart attack during a funeral. Go figure. Evidently, one wears for eternity what one dies wearing.

Dolly Sweet, aged one hundred three and threequarters, planned to die in her Katharine Hepburn gown, the one like the wedding gown in The Philadelphia Story. So of course I had heart palpitations every time she wore it.

No one could see Dante but me, my Aunt Fiona—not really my aunt, but really a witch—nuff said—and Dolly.

Why Dolly? Because she’d had an illicit affair with Dante more than half a century ago. Arguably, Mystic’s biggest secret. Their love had transcended time, as had the gossip. Dolly had been young, beautiful, unmarried and, shall we say, unsullied? Dante, renowned rake, was, and still is, drop-dead gorgeous—the Cary Grant description is not an exaggeration. He’d been at least fifteen, if not twenty, years her senior at the time, and the last living heir to the wealthiest dynasty in Mystic, Connecticut. The gossip might have gone down in history as speculation, if not for the fact that when Dante died, he left Dolly everything, this building included, which she sold to me for the cost of taxes. I love them both dearly, and I love that they’re still attracted to each other, he a debonair fifty-year-old ghost; she a wrinkled centenarian in the prime of her life. Even now, they dallied, every chance they got, in their favorite of my nooks: Paris, making it more of an inferno than a sizzle.

So why could Dante not take his gaze from the young stranger facing us?

I extended my hand. “I’m Madeira, call me Maddie, Cutler, and this is my shop.”

“Nice to meet you.” Her grip was firm, eye contact on target, nothing to hide. “Paisley Skye. Sounds fake, doesn’t it?”

“Not at all,” I said, taken by surprise. Frankly, though her question was jarring, the image was inspirational.

The bell above the door jingled, again, and Dolly Sweet and her daughter-in-law, Ethel, came in. They were regulars and very early risers, no matter what day of the week. I’d often counted on them for an early homemade breakfast full of love and friendly chatter. Dolly’s eyes brightened when she spotted Dante behind the counter.

“Look at Mad’s customer, Doll,” Dante said, “and tell me she doesn’t remind you of someone.”

I wanted to remind Dante that only Dolly and I could hear him. “Dolly,” I said. “This is Paisley. Paisley, this is Dolly and her daughter-in-law, Ethel.”

“Hello, Dolly,” Paisley said, her abbreviated laugh in perfect sync with Dolly’s, in tone and cadence, at least. Their voices sounded nothing alike.

Dolly tilted her head. “Ethel,” she said, “does she remind you of me when I was young?”

“Well, I don’t know, Mama. You looked seventy when I married your son.”

“I was fifty-six.”

“Same difference.” Ethel turned to Paisley. “We used to think fifty was old. But Dolly, now, she’s officially old . . . as dirt.”

“Thank you, dear.”

Dante chuckled, charming the cherries off Dolly’s straw hat.

Paisley’s smile, beside Dolly’s, those unique eyes—periwinkle blue, if I didn’t miss my guess—sure did it for me. “You know, you two do look like you could be distantly related.”

The hand Paisley raised to her temple trembled. “You know, I’ve dreamed all my life of hearing somebody say that.”

Berkley Prime Crime titles by Annette Blair

A VEILED DECEPTION

LARCENY AND LACE

DEATH BY DIAMONDS

SKIRTING THE GRAVE

Berkley Sensation titles by Annette Blair

THE KITCHEN WITCH

MY FAVORITE WITCH

THE SCOT, THE WITCH AND THE WARDROBE

SEX AND THE PSYCHIC WITCH

GONE WITH THE WITCH

NEVER BEEN WITCHED

THE NAKED DRAGON

BEDEVILED ANGEL

VAMPIRE DRAGON

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