Tulle Death Do Us Part Read online

  PRAISE FOR

  Skirting the Grave

  “The latest installment in Annette Blair’s Vintage Magic Mysteries brings back all the things I love about this series: great characters, cool vintage fashion, intriguing mystery, and just a touch of magic…Definitely in style for any fan of cozy mysteries.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Five stars! This story is perfect for those who enjoy some romance in their mysteries—and a bit of the paranormal…Whenever I open a book by Annette Blair, the real world fades away, and I am guaranteed to be highly entertained.”

  —Huntress Reviews

  “Blair never disappoints. Her books are fun and light-hearted, even though the subject matter can sometimes be dark—the writing is superb, colorful, and bright, making you want more with each page you turn.”

  —Fang-tastic Books

  “A well-drawn-out mystery featuring likable characters, and offers a healthy dose of humor and even some vintage fashion tips…Annette Blair is a very skilled author, and the story, while complex, comes together nicely at the end.”

  —MyShelf.com

  Death by Diamonds

  “Annette Blair has the magic touch when it comes to entertaining joie de vivre paranormal amateur-sleuth whodunits. The mystery is cleverly constructed.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “A fast-paced, fascinating addition to this dynamic mystery series…A book by Annette Blair is a guaranteed roller-coaster ride, and Death by Diamonds is no exception!”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “It was fabulous—the best Vintage Magic Mystery yet. Full of magic, mystery, and classic Blair style. Maddie’s antics are always fun to read, and the hint of romance is a teasing heat that leaves you wondering and wanting more.”

  —Fang-tastic Books

  “To say Annette Blair has revved up the drama and intensity would be putting it too mildly…One of the most interesting mysteries I have read this year. A magnificent story!”

  —Huntress Reviews

  “An exciting, humorous roller-coaster ride…I cannot recommend Annette Blair’s books enough, and this one is no exception to that. It already has a place on my keeper shelf.”

  —ParaNormal Romance

  Larceny and Lace

  “Another fast-paced novel that keeps the reader entertained from the word go! Annette Blair’s characters are warm and endearing, and you feel as if you’re visiting old friends among the pages.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “Annette Blair’s whimsical and witty writing style is true magic on the page…I love Blair’s use of words and the way she blends magic and vintage clothing into the stories like they are characters themselves, especially the clothes.”

  —Fang-tastic Books

  “A wonderful investigative tale that will have armchair readers spellbound…With whimsy, humor, and Dante to round out the magic, fans will enjoy this entertaining paranormal amateur sleuth.”

  —The Best Reviews

  “A joy to read.”

  —Gumshoe Review

  A Veiled Deception

  “Whimsical, witty, and wonderful…Sure to enchant readers everywhere.”

  —Madelyn Alt, national bestselling author of Home for a Spell

  “A wonderful book…A literary whisper adds to the charm.”

  —RT Book Reviews

  “Not only a good start to a new series but a great example of the supernatural mystery genre.”

  —Curled Up with a Good Book

  “Annette Blair brings her characters to vivid life…Fun, witty, and highly recommended.”

  —Huntress Reviews

  “A smart, funny start to a new series…Cleverly plotted.”

  —The Mystery Reader

  “Phenomenal. Ms. Blair beautifully captures New England’s ambiance and mystique as she weaves a well-crafted mystery into the threads of Maddie Cutler’s life.”

  —Fresh Fiction

  “A funny, engaging read. Annette Blair puts together a mystery with humor, suspense, and quite the engaging plot…The dialogue is witty, there’s humor throughout the story, along with friendship and family, sexual tension without the story revolving around the sex, and the plot just zings along.”

  —ParaNormal Romance

  Berkley Prime Crime titles by Annette Blair

  A VEILED DECEPTION

  LARCENY AND LACE

  DEATH BY DIAMONDS

  SKIRTING THE GRAVE

  CLOAKED IN MALICE

  TULLE DEATH DO US PART

  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

  NAKED DRAGON

  BEDEVILED ANGEL

  VAMPIRE DRAGON

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014, USA

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  For more information about the Penguin Group, visit penguin.com.

  TULLE DEATH DO US PART

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2013 by Annette Blair.

  All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in

  any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy

  of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.

  Berkley Prime Crime Books are published by The Berkley Publishing Group.

  BERKLEY® PRIME CRIME and the PRIME CRIME

  logo are trademarks of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  For information, address: The Berkley Publishing Group,

  a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  ISBN: 978-1-101-62445-6

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / July 2013

  Cover illustration by Ben Perini.

  Cover design by Rita Frangie.

  Interior text design by Laura K. Corless.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons,

  living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for

  author or third-party websites or their content.

  With love to:

  Teresa Christina Areia and Scott Christopher Blair, now known as Mr. and Mrs. Scott Blair, on the happy (read delirious) occasion of your wedding. Welcome my new daughter. Welcome my new grandson. Expanding the family is a dream come true. And so are you.

  Author’s Note

  Historic Mystic, Connecticut, is a treat, as is the Mystic River, both well worth a visit. Mystick Falls, to the north, however, is a figment of my imagination, as are the locations of my characters’ homes and of the town’s governing body. I have too much respect for the real governing body to portray them any other way.

  Table of Contents

  One

  Two

  Three

  Four

  Five

  Six

  Seven

  Eight

  Nine<
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  Ten

  Eleven

  Twelve

  Thirteen

  Fourteen

  Fifteen

  Sixteen

  Seventeen

  Eighteen

  Nineteen

  Twenty

  Twenty one

  Twenty two

  Twenty three

  Twenty four

  Twenty five

  Twenty six

  Twenty seven

  Twenty eight

  Twenty nine

  Thirty

  Thirty one

  Vintage Magic Purses

  One

  I’m just trying to change the world, one sequin at a time.

  —LADY GAGA

  Last night, I bedazzled a hard hat. Crystals, and sequins, and bling. Oh my.

  What else to wear to a roof-raising with black tuxedo-cut Hilfiger overalls, a tux shirt, and a pair of black velvet Belgian loafers? I mean, my Vintage Magic dress shop is now a construction zone. I have to be practical and fashion conscious.

  Of course, the unseasonably mild February weather, even for so short a jaunt outdoors, called for a mohair scarf from the English Lake District, and kid gloves, both in maize and neutral.

  According to family legend, I’ve been a fashionista since they cut the cord, anointed me in sweet baby oil, and wrapped me in pink to match the bow in my hair. Then I grew up and became…well…a fashionista, the designing kind. Take that any way you like. I do.

  I sell designer vintage classics, preferably haute couture, and personally design fashion-forward one-of-a-kind originals. Designing also applies to the way I deal with the charming legacy bequeathed to me by my late mother, a discovery with witch I try daily to make a certain peace. That gift is not limited to “listening” to whatever vintage fashions “speak to me” and using those visions to help solve crimes, often as antique as my sources.

  My name is Madeira Cutler, but I prefer Mad or Maddie. Only my dad, Harry Cutler, lit-quoting University of Connecticut professor, uses my full name, whether I want him to or not.

  I expected Dad to join me any minute on the Bank Street sidewalk, across from my corner shop. Meanwhile, on Main Street, crowded with tourists and locals, I noticed an odd duck whose Armani suit might as well have been made of flashing neon. Though I couldn’t get a good look at it, it was still obvious that he so did not fit in.

  Figuring he had a right to be there, I leaned against Mystic Pizza’s dove-gray clapboards sipping hot coffee while my building took on the brightening glow of dawn’s early light.

  Eve Meyers, my pixie-cut strawberry-blonde BFF, a steampunk goth computer genius, snapped pictures of the roof-raising with a tech-forward camera that could do everything but pipe a seam.

  Wearing Blahnik booties and a black corseted jodhpur jumpsuit of my design, Eve had an eye for two things: photography and men in hard hats. Unfortunately, the crew kept their eyes on her, too. She’d nearly been banned from the site twice now. The workers had the injuries to prove it.

  My former morgue-cum-funeral-chapel carriage house, a study in lavender and sage, would have looked positively poetic, except for the swarm of construction workers crawling over it like ants at a cupcake picnic.

  Judging from the salty funk in the air, low tide and dawn had arrived at the same time this morning.

  “Wish I could live in one of your new apartments,” Eve said.

  My third floor would accommodate three. I raised a brow, and she shrugged.

  Her parents came from the old country. In their perfect world, Eve would leave after a traditional wedding and move into her husband’s house. Not gonna happen, given Eve’s allergic reaction to convention.

  Not that she can’t catch a man; she often stands corset-deep in them. She simply likes the challenge of changing them as often as her hair color.

  Me, I needed to move on, and not just because Dad had moved in with Fiona, the second love of his life and my second mom after my own mom passed away when I was a kid. It was practically a proposal, and my dad was selling our historic old tavern house to my brother Alex so he and his wife Trish could raise their kids there. No more traveling. Alex had transferred to a specialized FBI field installation in our area and now came home every night.

  I refused to move in with either couple, though I’d been invited. Fiona, better known as Aunt Fee, is not my biological aunt. She was my mother’s college BFF, her sister witch, and later, a “mom in a storm” for four motherless Cutler kids. Still is—twenty years after my mother’s passing. She and my dad fought for most of those years—it was the witch thing—but over time, the fighting took a 360. Fiona, well, she’s loved Dad since before he met my mother. Nuff said.

  As a result, I was building three third-floor apartments above my shop. I’d live in one and rent the other two for the income.

  The gathering crowd gasped, bringing me back to my new digs while Eve’s camera snapped a soothing soundtrack. The misplaced executive type, like an ad for five-grand suits, stood so intensely focused on my roof, I had to wonder what he thought he’d see.

  Could he be one of Eve’s latest? He sure didn’t seem the type to dance at the end of one of her man-strings, though she’d brought home worse and scarier.

  In a traffic-stopping stunt, my roof was being raised above my building, held aloft by long-armed orange whirligigs, while a prefab third-floor outer wall was slipped beneath it to meet my attic floor.

  “Almost there,” Eve whispered, as if she might jinx it by speaking too loudly.

  Dad and Aunt Fiona joined me, with my little Chakra in her cat carrier for safety’s sake. Fiona came up behind me and slipped a black velvet cape over my shoulders. My father hooked it beneath the scarf at my chin.

  Aunt Fee beamed. “I told you, Harry, that she’d need it.”

  “It was your mother’s, Mad,” my father said, knuckling my cheek. “Fee’s been keeping it for you. I agree, it’s time for you to have it.”

  Whoa. I stroked the full-length cape, one surely worn for Wiccan rituals, and I pulled it tight around me. “It’s like Mom’s hugging me, Daddy.”

  He pulled me into his arms, and I inhaled the comforting scent of cherry pipe tobacco.

  “Stop!” Isaac, the construction boss, shouted, getting our attention in a big way.

  “Stop!” an assortment of foremen echoed, one after another.

  “Something’s in the way,” Isaac shouted.

  And didn’t the exec across the street jump like the boogeyman just said “Boo!” and then stop breathing and moving…frozen, like somebody had stabbed him in the back with an ice pick?

  Unexpectedly, our gazes locked—mine and Odd Duck’s—and, looking stricken, he disappeared into the crowd.

  I stopped breathing myself, for two reasons: The man spooked me royally, and my roof-raising had come to a dead halt. “Inches away and they can’t make it work?” I snapped, stepping off the curb to cross the street.

  Dad caught my arm. “Wait,” he said. “‘Fools rush in’ and all that. Hear what Issac has to say first. It’s dangerous over there.”

  Lip-biting and silent, I nodded and stepped back onto the curb, while the workers jostled a fragile puzzle consisting of heavy equipment and assorted building parts.

  One mistake and they could wipe out my savings account, like, forever.

  At the Main and Bank Street corner of my attic, Isaac knelt, looked my way, and raised a wait-a-minute finger.

  While my heart beat like an Olympic runner’s, I saluted my response. Never let them see you sweat.

  Eve kept snapping pics, the reliable cadence of clicks combined with the lullaby of mom’s cape flapping around my legs to have a reassuring effect on me.

  Isaac tugged something from the corner rafters, his shout one of success, and with both hands, he held up a package. The crew cheered, as did the watching crowd. Even strangers took pictures, reminding me that, once again, I’d changed the face of Main Street. I’d already turned a derelict eye
sore into a vintage beauty that graced brochures. And now I was giving it stature.

  Rubberneckers pumped their arms out of car windows, horns blaring. In the distance, boat whistles seemed to respond, adding to the omnipresent whoosh of Amtrak’s Acela rushing, as if on cue, nonstop through Mystic.

  Isaac conferred with his second in command and disappeared from the top of the mark.

  When he stepped out my front door, he grinned and cupped a hand around his mouth. “Hey, Mad, bit of buried treasure for ya.” He could make himself heard, that man, and people listened. That’s why I hired him. That and he worked cheap in winter, because after he walled the third floor, he’d only show up when he had no other work. For that, I got a great price and a great contractor.

  I was so focused on the “treasure,” I didn’t realize I missed the rush of getting a third floor, until half the town of Mystic applauded. I looked at Eve in shock, but she raised her camera with pride, and I knew the moment wasn’t lost to me after all.

  I hitched up my gloves and closed my cape against the wind. Traffic had picked up speed, but the cars turning onto Bank were stopping, so we could cross to my parking lot.

  I thanked Isaac as he shoved the package into my hands while Chakra swiped her bare claws out the window of her carrier, to claim, or annihilate, the find.