Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (3 page)

“I don’t blame her. She’s had a lot to organize for the weekend. Plus, it’s not like I’m a regular guest or family.” Joanna and Penny enjoyed chatting while Penny was shopping, but they’d never met outside of Tallulah’s Closet to grab a cup of coffee or see a movie or do the sorts of things girlfriends did.

“Just ignore her. Besides, tomorrow is going to be the best day of my life.” Penny stretched her arms over her head and pulled them back. She pushed the box across the bed. “Look what I found in the library.”

“A Ouija board.” Its lid was bruised with white rings from being used as a coaster over the years.

Penny leaned forward. “Let’s do a séance. Let’s see if we can contact Redd Lodge’s original owner, the one who disappeared. We can do it in my room. I have a table.”

“Isn’t a séance kind of grim for the night before a wedding?”

Penny slid off the bed and went to the closet where the Schiaparelli dress hung next to its matching veil.
 

“Careful with that,” Joanna couldn’t help herself. The contract stipulated that Penny would wear the dress for no longer than an hour so her body oils wouldn’t damage the silk.

“I know. I won’t touch it.” Penny reached to the shelf above the dress and pulled down a hat box. They hadn’t been able to find a 1930s Schiaparelli hat for Penny’s honeymoon suit, so Joanna had one made, modeled after Schiap’s famous shoe hat. Penny lifted a fascinator shaped like an inverted high-heeled pump from its box and posed it on her head slightly off-center.
 

“Will you clip this on for me?” she asked. Joanna took a hat pin from the sewing kit on the dresser and wove it through Penny’s hair. The pin wouldn’t quite adhere to her hair’s cornsilk texture, so Joanna dug in the box for bobby pins. “The guys are playing poker. Why shouldn’t we do something fun, too, and play Ouija?” Penny turned her head to both sides to admire herself in the mirror.

“All right. I’m game.” All Joanna had set for the evening were a hot bath and Elsa Schiaparelli’s autobiography. She hadn’t wanted to intrude on the family’s plans. Although she was getting the idea that a few hours with a book beat the heck out of an evening with Bette. Still, this was Penny’s weekend.

“Good.”
 

Joanna reached up to take off Penny’s hat.
 

“No—I want to keep it on. Let’s meet in my room.”
 

“Right now? I want to make a quick phone call.”

“But everyone’s waiting. Can’t your call wait an hour?” Penny swept out the door, leaving Joanna to pick up the Ouija board and follow.
 

***

Fire crackled in the stone hearth. On a summer day, the opened curtains would have revealed a fir-studded panorama of the valley, but tonight the view was of thickly falling snow. The room’s centerpiece was its bed. The bed frame was suspended from the ceiling upside down, with bedposts dripping like stalactites. The mattress rested on a smaller platform beneath it.

“Check that out.” Joanna tugged at the chains attaching the bed to the ceiling. “You’re sure it’s secure, right?”
 

“It’s fine,” Penny said, taking the Ouija board from her. “Besides, I only have to sleep on it one night. Tomorrow I’m spending with Wilson in the tower room. And then it’s on to Bali—a married woman.”

Bette entered through the connecting door and stared at the “
Ceci n’est pas une chambre
” carved into its lintel. “What does it mean, anyway—‘This is not a bedroom’? It
is
a bedroom.”

“That’s the point,” Joanna said. “It’s a door, not a bedroom.”
 

“I don’t get it.”

“The séance is in here?” Sylvia’s British accent rang from the door. A tattoo of the Jackals’ famous logo of Wilson’s guitar crept over her shoulder beneath her bob. “Marianne’s in bed.”

“Just us girls,” Penny said.

As if on cue, Reverend Tony arrived behind Sylvia. “I brought some birch water tea to purify our energy as we communicate with the spirits.” He’d exchanged the Mao-collared jacket he wore at dinner for a Japanese kimono and held up a liter-sized bottle of murky liquid.
 

“Hello, Father,” Sylvia said.

“Master.”

“But you’re a Reverend—”

“Master.” He plunked the birch water on the table.

Bette, wafting Opium perfume, lounged in a different caftan than the one she’d worn at dinner, this one a swirled pink Pucci. Sylvia, poised as always, smiled as if she could have spent every weekend in a surrealist lodge with an upside down bed, but Joanna sensed a little wariness all the same. Reverend Tony might have stepped from a mash-up of
The Godfather
and
The Seven Samurai
. Only Penny looked completely at home. She radiated joy. Joanna’s glance lit on Reverend Tony’s bottle. Birch water? A nip of something stronger would suit her better.
 

Sylvia caught Joanna’s eye and seemed to read her mind. “Why don’t Joanna and I see if we can find some glasses and, uh, things like that in the butler’s pantry while you guys set up?”

“Good idea.” It would give her the chance to call Paul, too, just for a minute.
 

Joanna joined Sylvia in the dim hall. Carved hands holding flame-shaped lightbulbs jutted from the walls.
 

“This place is fabulous, but it creeps me out,” Sylvia said. “The tap in the bathroom is a faun vomiting water. Kind of disgusting, really. Marianne loved it, of course. Could have brushed her teeth all day.” She stopped at a door with a lobster carved into it. “Do you mind if I check in on her for a sec? She has a bad habit of sneaking up to read.”
 

Through the doorway Joanna saw a soft pool of light on the dresser. Marianne lay sleeping, her plump cheeks rosy, in the big bed. Sylvia closed the door gently behind her. “Conked out. She’s excited about her father’s wedding. She and Penny really seem to get along.”

Marianne and Penny probably shared a girlish approach to life, Joanna thought. At least Marianne seemed to have a solid mother in Sylvia. Now here Sylvia was, staying on a mountain, waiting to see the father of her child married to a woman several years his junior.
 

Without thinking, Joanna spoke. “Life sure is strange, isn’t it?”

“You mean that Wilson’s my ex and all?” Sylvia said without missing a beat. “It’s not that strange. Not really. I think Penny’s good for him.”

“You’re a stronger woman than most. He seems—settled.” Like nearly everyone else, Joanna had read about Wilson’s struggle with heroin addiction, the destroyed hotel rooms, and the years of refusal to perform despite a shelf of Grammys.

“Yes. I’m surprised. He always told me he’d never marry. He’s done right by Marianne, though, and that’s what counts. Emotionally and financially. I can’t complain.” No bitterness tinged her voice.
 

“I’m sure you have a good child support agreement in place,” Joanna said, remembering family law from school.

“Oh no, no need for that. He’s never shirked his responsibilities. And if I was sore about it, all I’d have to do to feel vindicated is remember he’s getting Bette as a mother-in-law.”

Joanna laughed. “Good point. She was out of line commenting on your daughter’s weight. Marianne’s a darling.”

“I run a center for girls with eating disorders in L.A. Had my own bout with bulimia as a teen. The kind of comments Bette made can be so damaging.”

They passed through the lodge’s great room with its soaring ceiling, through the dining room, then turned right toward the butler’s pantry. “Do you mind if I make a call?” Joanna asked. She’d seen the phone in the breakfast room, off the dining room, earlier.

“Be my guest.” Sylvia knelt at a cupboard below the counter and made a face. “There’s not much here except peach schnapps. A super old bottle, too.”

Joanna turned but only got a few feet before she stopped. “It looks like the guys have the whiskey in the breakfast room.” Wilson, his brother Daniel, and Clarke sat at a round table with two bottles of Jim Beam and some half-full glasses. Each man held cards. Daniel folded his hand. She couldn’t warn Paul about her mother now, not with Wilson Jack listening in. “I guess my call can wait until morning.”

“Is that all right? I’d say you could use my cell, but I can’t seem to get a signal.”

“Morning’s fine.” Relief mingled with her disappointment. She did want to talk to Paul but wasn’t sure what she’d say anyway, how she’d warn him against her own mother without appearing to be some kind of monster.

Sylvia put five crystal tumblers on a tray. “Peach schnapps it is, then. A sober night it will be.”

“For us, anyway,” Joanna said, thinking of the poker party. “Do you smell cigarette smoke?”

Sylvia rose. “From the dumbwaiter, I think. The kitchen’s right below us. Must be Chef Jules sneaking a fag.” A mischievous smile crossed her lips.
 

“I won’t tell the Master if you won’t.”
 

Sylvia lifted a crooked pinkie, and Joanna linked her own with Sylvia’s. “Deal.”
 

“Would you mind taking the tray back yourself?” Sylvia asked. “I want to talk to Wilson. Won’t be a minute.”
 

Through the open archway to the breakfast room, Joanna saw Wilson rise to greet Sylvia. She turned toward the hall. Back to the lion’s den.

***

In Penny’s room, Joanna found the Ouija board set up. “Good, you’re back,” Penny said. She should have looked ridiculous in her dressing gown and hat made of a turned-up shoe, but she fit right in. “Where’s Sylvia?”

“On her way.” Joanna set the tray on the hearth.

“Reverend Tony is there.” She pointed across the table. “Mom can sit there, next to the fire so Bubbles stays warm. You sit here, and we’ll put Sylvia on my other side.” She patted the seats on both sides of her own.

Bette rose and turned off the overhead lamp, leaving only the fire and a small glowing lobster on the dressing table for light. She poured herself a slug of schnapps. “All right. What’s the program?”

The door opened. “Sorry to hold things up.” Sylvia took the empty seat next to Penny.

“We’re just getting started. Let’s try to contact the guy who built Redd Lodge. His name was Francis, Francis Redd. They say that one night—one snowy night in January, like tonight—he put on skis and went out.” Penny’s gaze swept the room, catching each of their eyes in turn as she let the significance of her story sink in. “He left his wife and baby son, as well as a housekeeper and his invalid father, at the lodge. He never returned. The official story was that he got lost and froze to death, even though his body was never found.” Penny paused for dramatic effect. The firelight flickered orange against her face. “But some people say he was murdered, and his ghost still walks the lodge.” She leaned back triumphantly.

The Reverend looked uneasy. “He might have left residual kundalini, but there’s no such thing as ghosts,” he said. “That’s superstition. Have some more birch water.”

“Why murder?” Sylvia asked. “Was it money, maybe? This place must have cost a bundle to build.”

“Exactly,” Penny said. “Some people say he had a mistress in France, a famous artists’ model, and was planning to leave his wife. The wife killed him before he could take his fortune with him. Maybe his body’s in the attic right now.”

“It’s hard to believe he’d leave the lodge behind. He put so much work into it. So much detail,” Joanna said, her fingers resting on octopus tentacles carved into the chair’s arms.
 

Bette topped off her peach schnapps. Bubbles’s collar jingled as she scratched an ear. “I met the son,” she said as she settled back into her chair. “Said the lodge hadn’t been regularly used since the 1960s. He did a little maintenance on it now and then, but that’s it. Another mother wouldn’t have gone to so much effort for her daughter’s wedding.”

Bette must have spent thousands raising Redd Lodge from the dead. Its fireplaces burned for the first time in years, and its beds would be slept in after decades unused. The son was probably counting his money right as they spoke.

“You didn’t tell me you met him,” Penny said.

“Sure. He owns the place now. Lives in Denver, of all things. He was a son-of-a-bitch to negotiate with, but we worked it out. He seemed to think Wilson would catch the draperies on fire or something.”

“Did you ask him about his father?”

“No. Why should I have? Let’s get on with this. It’s late, and I’ve got to get up at six for wedding prep.” She swirled the schnapps in her glass as if it were a fine brandy. “Of course, back in the seventies I often stayed up until sunrise.”

“Your Studio 54 days,” Joanna helped.

“All right.” Penny rested her fingertips on the Ouija board’s planchette. “Everyone, put two fingers here.”

“This is ridiculous, honey. I’d prefer to sit back and watch.”

“No, Mom. We all have to do it. Put your fingers next to mine.”

Bette scooted her chair closer. After a moment, five sets of fingers rested lightly on the planchette. The room’s dark corners crept inward.

“It’s moving,” Penny said in a low voice. The planchette scratched to the letter “H.”
 

“H,” the Reverend said.

The planchette hovered, then skittered to “O” then “R.”

“O and R,” the Reverend added. “HOR.”

Joanna’s breath caught.
Horror?

“N” came next.
 

“HOR—” he started.

“We got it, Tony,” Bette said. “We can spell, too.”

The planchette finished “HORNET” and paused. “Amazing. I really feel it moving,” Sylvia whispered.

Reverend Tony’s face blanched. He sat back and gripped his glass of birch water.

“Freaky,” Penny said. “Hornet? What does that mean?”

A shiver darted down Joanna’s arms. The planchette jerked up to the exclamation point once, then twice, then three times. Sylvia yanked her hand away and clutched it in her lap. Bubbles began to bark, shrill and loud.

Just then, the bedroom door opened, letting in a burst of cold air. A tall brunette shook snow off her coat.
 

“Portia.” Bette set her schnapps glass on the table and rose, open-armed. “You made it.”