Tulle Death Do Us Part (14 page)

“You’ll pay it forward, I think.”

“Count on it.”

All too soon, we were pulling up in front of Werner’s…at nearly three in the morning. I sure hoped he’d play at being my brother.

Addy, our rescuer, leaned on the doorbell nonstop.

A grouchy Werner whipped open the door, looking ready to bark or aim a gun at us, cantankerous but yummy in a navy brocade robe with tousled hair and big bare feet.

“Mad, what the heck?”

I threw my arms around him. “You’re such an understanding brother. Try now, pleeeze.”

I stepped back. “Addy, this is my brother, Lytton. Bro, this is Addy. We sort of got lost and drove into her garage by mistake.”

Yeah, he’d buy that.

Addy’s head came up, and she leaned back to look at the house, then toward Lytton’s driveway. “You know, this house looks nothing like mine. It’s not even in a cul de sac.”

“No, but our mother’s is,” I said, and when Werner opened his mouth, I sort of stepped on his bare little toe, easy like.

Werner rocked on his heels, mostly to get away from my brutality, and he gave the woman a half nod. I was so in for it with him.

Addy poked the top of my arm. “This one drove into my garage by mistake—drunk, the both of them. That one,” she said, aiming her thumb toward Eve behind her, “so
much the worse for it.” Addy was a tall woman, broad shouldered and strong, with a kind face and a big, caring heart.

“With the drink, I couldn’t let them drive. You can bring one of them back to my house tomorrow between noon and three, if that’s all right? Is that your car in the drive?” She nodded toward the police car.

“My car’s in the shop,” Werner said, “so I borrowed a squad car for the weekend.”

“He runs the place,” I told her.

“Well, then I’m leaving you in good hands. Don’t let these two drink and drive again, if you please. I don’t want the next time I meet them to be in Lawrence Memorial Hospital.”

Eve hiccupped for good measure.

Werner put his hand on my shoulder. Hard. “Sure thing,” he said. “Mad will reimburse you for your gas when she picks up her car tomorrow, right, sis?” he asked, his fingers digging into my shoulder.

I ducked from beneath his grasp. “Of course, bro.”

We stood in the doorway and waved Addy off. I was thinking of something nice from my shop that I could bring her, along with the gas reimbursement. “Thanks for the rescue,” I called, before she got into her Honda Insight, then we watched her drive away.

Werner shut his door. “Okay, give.”

Of course, Werner couldn’t know about our personal scavenger hunt for petticoat pieces to read for clues and how I’d known where to find them, so I prevaricated a wee bit. “I got a phone call at the shop. A tip from an anonymous source, maybe somebody who saw Isaac find the box
and knew what it was. I don’t know. But he”—meaning Dante—“told me where to find the key to the garage and that I’d find some of the scavenger hunt ‘loot’ in an old piece of drainpipe.”

And from that fabricated beginning, Eve and I took turns telling Werner the truth, every detail, from then on.

“Breaking and entering, Madeira?”

“With a key someone gave me the location of.”

He grumped. “So, what did you find?”

“Oh,” I said. “I didn’t look in the drainpipe.” I opened my bag and took out the double-capped, foot-long piece, but I couldn’t pry off either cap.

“I’ll get it,” Werner said, taking it into his garage.

Eve and I curled up on separate ends of Werner’s sofa to wait.

He had to wake us when he came back with an open piece of drainpipe.

“What’s in it?” I asked

“Like with the cash box, I waited to open it with you.” He set a newspaper on the coffee table. “I’ll shake it out gently, shall I? And we can’t touch, because we’re not wearing gloves.”

First item to slide out: a plastic toy soldier.

“Son of a stitch, he didn’t hide it in a drainpipe after all. He was slow. A boy in a man’s body.”

Werner’s brows furrowed. “What did you say?”

“A boy in a man’s body. He was gonna hide his treasure in a drainpipe with his father’s vintage cars.”

“You met him?”

“No, he was…talkative.”

“Like a man who acted like a boy? Tells too much?”

“You got it.” Scrap, I needed to learn to shut up and sort out my visions from my reality…and from my lies. Lies for the greater good, I told myself. Funny how I couldn’t buy that one.

“Maybe this is his idea of a treasure,” Werner said. “Just not what you were sleuthing for.”

“I’m bummed.” I huffed.

“You’re not gonna hit it every time, but we’re not done.” Werner shook the drainpipe again. Another soldier fell out, as well as some kind of antique decoder ring that hadn’t been listed on the scavenger-hunt list.

“These are just random toys, not from the scavenger-hunt list. Treasures to a little boy, that’s all.”

“Right. You lucked out,” Werner said. “We couldn’t have entered stolen goods into evidence, anyway. Don’t try that again.”

I leaned against his shoulder because I was feeling tired and grateful. “I feel pretty stupid. Thanks for being so understanding.”

He rubbed my back for a minute, put a half a moment’s pressure against it—a wish of a hug, really—and let me go. I pulled away and sat straighter, but the imprint of his touch lingered. Caring, likely not planning his next promotion.

Werner capped the drainpipe and put it and the toys back in my purse, effectively breaking the moment between us.

“Now what?” I asked.

“Wake up Gothzilla,” he said, turning out the lights and making a motion for us to precede him up the stairs. “The whole Mystick Falls force knows your license plate, Mad. If Rhode Island decides to run it, you’re toast.”

“If they got the plate,” I said. “But, we took Eve’s car. So
we may not need to cross that bridge.” I shook Eve, got her standing, and followed Werner. Eve walked into me in the middle of the upstairs hallway when I stopped short. “Where are we going?”

“I’m not driving you home now. What do you want to sleep in, a T-shirt or a button-down?” And then he deadpanned. “My bed or yours?”

“You’d sleep on the sofa for us?” I touched my hand to my heart.

Werner firmed his lips and sighed.

Eve hiccupped a giggle. She really did sound drunk.

I shrugged. “Eve will take the tee, and I prefer a button-down.”

He took us into his room. “Third drawer, Eve. Take your pick. Button-downs in the closet, Mad. Bottom drawer if you want bottoms. Sweatpants in there. Does Nick know what kind of trouble you get into when he’s away?”

“He didn’t have time to listen, said you’d be here for me if I needed you, and you are.” I threw my arms around him for a brotherly hug. “Thanks.”

He held on until I stepped from his arms and left with a purple-striped button-down on my way to the guest bathroom.

“New toothbrushes in the right-hand drawer,” our host called.

“’Kay, thanks.”

I stuck my head out the door. “Eve, are you teaching tomorrow?”

“It’s Saturday, but some of my computer students are competing in the International Collegiate Cyber Shield Competition. It has to do with protecting an ultra classified
network infrastructure, and I’m their coach, so the short answer—too late—is ‘Yes, I am.’”

“Werner, can you take me to pick up Eve’s car around noon?”

“Sure.”

“How am I getting to the Avery Point campus, then?” Eve asked.

“You can take my Element.”

“Werner, can you bring me to Mad’s Element around nine tomorrow?”

“He can do that after he brings me to my shop for eight thirty, can’t you, Werner?”

“Sure, sis. Night, you drunken brats.”

Saturday, I needed to play the pre-holiday—Valentine’s Day—sale game I’d advertised, so no time to think about the case, my stupid sleuthing trip to Bradenton Cove, or the formals I’d have to judge.

Dolly and Aunt Fee took the lunch crowd—usually much thinner—while Werner took me to pick up Eve’s car at Addy’s house.

“Mind if we do a drive-by of your crime scene?” Werner asked.

I shivered. “Must we?” I caught the whine in my voice as I shrank down into my seat while a wash of heat rose up my neck to fire my cheeks. I rolled down the passenger-side window. “Such a fiasco.”

“Trust me, you lucked out. Nobody’s looking for you. I know. I checked first thing this morning.”

“You could’ve called and told me. Set my mind at ease.”

“No, I thought you should stew for a while. No more straddling the knife-sharp edge of felonious sleuthing, Mad. Seriously. My protection extends only so far.”

“I hear you. You don’t have to yell.”

“I didn’t yell.”

“Your voice rose with every word.”

“Sorry. There are some things—and people—I get passionate about.”

What could I say to that? “You get passionate about me?” Okay, I was asking for it. There was something totally me, the essence of Madeira Cutler, that I liked about myself when I was with Werner. No show. No stand-by-your-Fed facade.

He gave me a double take and drove slowly, silently along the main road that fronted Bradenton Cove, so easily visible from up here. The shape of the driveway reminded me of an old-fashioned lock design, with the house and garage beyond it sitting in the circle at the top lock’s giant inverted U.

Along the road, a man of mature years out for a stroll, handsome and gray at the temples, hailed us with his cane.

“Scrap, scrap, scrap!” I scooted down a bit more in the seat. And then I decided I wasn’t made to be invisible. So I sat up and raised my chin.

“Good girl,” Werner said as he slowed and rolled down his window for the guy who’d come right up to it, like he wanted to chat. “There’s a flask hidden in my cane,” he said, with the man’s voice of the little tagalong boy who’d found someone hiding scavenger-hunt treasures in the stair-rail pipe of an old warehouse. “I keep lemonade in it. Day won’t let me have brandy.”