Tulle Death Do Us Part Page 7

  “What’s it made of inside that’s weighing it down?”

  “First guess? Lead,” he said.

  I set it down.

  “Or,” he added, “solid gold. Something ripe for fencing.”

  “If this is pure solid gold, never mind the diamonds—” I raised a brow. “In today’s market, it’s a new house.”

  “We may be looking at a case of first-degree larceny.”

  “What’s the difference between theft and larceny?”

  “Here in Connecticut? The difference is in the value of the items taken. If those are diamonds, and that’s not a wooden shoe with a weight in it, our thief is a felon.”

  Werner didn’t know the worst of it, like a possible death by drowning, aka murder, but I didn’t know yet if Robin had gone missing that night or made it to shore.

  Seam rippers and pin tucks, I was ashamed that I didn’t even know Robin’s last name.

  “How much money do you think is in the box?” I asked.

  “Count it,” Werner said, his fingers flying over the computer keys. “Wait. Found something here.”

  “Read it out loud.”

  “Looks like a cash box was stolen from the cloak room during the country club’s twenty-fifth anniversary, or Silver Jubilee.”

  I shook my head. “You mean the Golden Jubilee.”

  He raised his hands from the keyboard, turned on the wheels of his I’m-the-boss chair—so big, it doubled as a throne—and looked down at me like I might be a lowly peasant. “Madeira? What makes you so sure it was the fiftieth?”

  I scrounged for an answer that made sense. “Ah…that piece of fabric.” Like the one the box was wrapped in and I lost, I did not say.

  Whew. He bought it.

  What do experts on body language call an instantaneous reaction, the look that escapes before one can school one’s thoughts? Micro expressions, that’s it. And it was too late to pull mine back; I knew it had been filled with shock to hear about the twenty-fifth.

  “Madeira Cutler, what do you know that I don’t?”

  Oh. He didn’t buy it after all.

  Ten

  Only self-appreciation is allowed in the fitting room. Praise your curves and give thanks for those fantastic legs.

  —JANIE BRYANT, THE FASHION FILE

  The twenty-fifth anniversary of the Mystick by the Sea Country Club did not compute, according to my vision. Unless, as I stood in Bambi’s shoes, I had not been given the same box my construction boss found in my attic, but I assumed it was the very same, because it sent me there.

  Could the cash box I was given have been a different one? Or had the box in the belly of the whale been stolen at the twenty-fifth, and, ah, perhaps re-stolen on the country club’s fiftieth? Was taking the cash box some kind of generational privilege, a rich, entitled-family tradition? Theft, really?

  Surely computers would put period to the possibility of stealing a cash box at the centennial at least. People would pay by credit. So why didn’t they at the fiftieth in 1973? Surely credit cards were in use, though I remember Dad saying once that “the average Joe” didn’t start abusing them until the early eighties. Then again, people who belong to country clubs aren’t average Joes, are they? They would have been using Diners Club cards since the fifties. But my dad’s generation was likely too smart to fully embrace the death of solvency. Perhaps.

  “Madeira, I’m waiting for an answer.”

  I sighed. “Scavenger hunts, real ones, were tradition, weren’t they, in the old days? Passed down from one generation to the next? A rite of passage? Maybe that same box was stolen repeatedly—”

  Werner tilted his head like I might have grown horns. “With the same old money in it?”

  “That doesn’t compute, does it? That way it isn’t stealing, is it, if you don’t spend the money?”

  Werner went to his window to look out toward the Mystic River. “It’s still stealing, if you keep it.”

  “Right, and if it was tradition, it might be stored for that very purpose.”

  “Too valuable,” Werner said. “The large bills are old enough to have been used at the country club’s opening thousand-dollar-a-plate event. Or maybe it was five hundred dollars a plate back then, and somebody paid for two dinners with the thousand dollar bill?”

  I got up to cross the room, open the closet, and get a mint from my jacket pocket. Stalling for time. Showing off my legs, giving Werner a look at the wings on my Giselle, Lady Double You spikes.

  I walked back to the desk, remembered what Snake said about the scavenger-hunt list, and wondered if it was still inside the box. Without a word, I started counting the money. Werner came over to help. I lifted the back box that covered the $500 and $1,000 bills. Nervous, I fumbled it, and the whole brass box ended up on the desk upside down.

  That amused Werner, seeing me flustered. “What’s with you?” he asked.

  What I thought I knew and who I thought I wanted were toying with my psyche. “Oddly enough,” I said, putting down another stack totaling a thousand dollars, “I think I know why I presumed it was taken from the country club’s fiftieth. Dad and Aunt Fiona are chairing the country club’s This Is Your Life segment of the Very Vintage Valentine fund-raiser.”

  “And?”

  “I’m picking five formals that were worn to the Golden Jubilee to see whose life will be read. My bad. I guess I had the Golden Jubilee on my mind.”

  Werner hadn’t managed to count all the money, but he’d thrown it all in evidence bags. Also, each in its own evidence bag, were the shoe-shaped snuffbox, the sapphire-and-ruby-studded box it came in, and the piece of petticoat that had wrapped it.

  “What are you doing with that?” I asked, referring to the petticoat piece.

  “Bagging it as evidence?”

  “Really? An old piece of cloth?”

  “We don’t ignore a hair at a crime scene. You know that.”

  I did know it, and my conscience was killing me. “I guess I thought of it as being like…tissue paper. Tossable. Didn’t think of the box as a crime scene, either. Guess that’s why you’re the detective.” Did I sound dumb or what?

  “You reported the robbery, Mad. What’s with you?”

  “That tissue-like piece of fabric reminds me of an outfit I have at the shop. Can I borrow it for tonight, to compare? I’ll give it back to you tomorrow, and it won’t have been touched by human hands.” Only kitty paws, if I lost sight of my crazy cat. And if I didn’t lose sight of her, I might find her original stash. I actually wanted the new piece as bait. Cat bait.

  “If it was anybody else,” he said, “I’d be suspicious. Anyway, evidence is evidence, and don’t you forget it.”

  I huffed. “It’s not like you don’t know where to find me, or think I’m gonna skip town. Pick it up on your way to work tomorrow.”

  “I have the weekend off, unless there’s an emergency. But Monday morning, first stop, the country club. I mean, this has been missing a good many decades, I think it can wait until Monday.”

  “Can I go to the country club with you?”

  “No, but I’ll come by your place afterward, tell you how it went.”

  I resisted huffing a second time. “It’s not like it’s big enough for me to whip up an outfit with,” I grumbled, entertaining him, I saw, so I shut up. Then my mind clicked back into gear. Son of a stitch! Now that the cash box was empty, I realized there was no scavenger-hunt list inside.

  “What’s that?” Werner asked, pointing into the interior of the empty cash box.

  “Nothing. What?”

  He lifted the separators out in one piece and ran his hand over the bottom. Then he grabbed a letter opener from a pencil cup and gently scored the inside edges of the cash box, until a corner of the paper bottom came up.

  “Hey, I didn’t notice that.”

  “Stick with me, kid.”

  We both ignored the echo of those fateful words, the yearning in them, as he slipped the opener beneath the paper bottom,
all along the edges, then deeper under until the false bottom lifted up and out.

  “It’s in three pieces,” Werner said, and we laid them out then moved them around like a puzzle.

  “Yes! The scavenger-hunt list.” It proved that the cash box was also related to the fiftieth anniversary, as I’d guessed earlier, which might not be a good thing. One of these days Werner would realize that I know too much too soon.

  One of these days, maybe I should tell him…everything.

  Unable to do that at the moment, however, I picked up all three pieces of the list.

  “‘Golden Jubilee Scavenger Hunt,’” I read. “Wow, look at the things they listed to scavenge: ‘Cane/walking stick. Double points if the walking stick’s got a blade, firearm, or a flask inside. An engraved flask; double points if it’s full. An antique inkwell, a copper-dipped baby shoe’…” I ran my hand down the list. “Oh, and here at the bottom, an antique snuffbox. I’ll bet the thief didn’t even know what that particular one could be worth,” I added.

  Werner took the list from my hand. “There’s a point value for each item, including the cash box,” he said. “And get this, scrawled at the bottom—we’ll have to have the penmanship analyzed, and the paper dated, and checked for prints—‘let a pet loose, set a boat adrift, move a car to the beach, entice a spouse not your own from the dance, a hundred points.’” Werner whistled.

  I took the list back. “‘Kiss someone else’s spouse, five hundred points’? ‘All the way with someone else’s spouse, five thousand points.’” I gasped. “All the way?”

  “I presume you know what that means,” Werner deadpanned.

  Enough to know why Robin might dive into a stormy sea—if her enticer was going for the five thousand points. If she fought him on it, that might be the way Snake or Grody got bloodied up. “Sick game.”

  “The people who joined this particular scavenger hunt were thieves and worse,” Werner said.

  “I just can’t believe they all agreed to it.”

  “Peer pressure’s a bitch, and who all are you talking about?” Werner asked. “You act like you know them.”

  “Whoever went along with it,” I said. “I mean, if I ended up with that cash box in my building, people actually did go along, didn’t they?”

  I sat across from Werner once more. “So, it didn’t get stolen from the country club’s twenty-fifth jubilee, hey? It says the fiftieth at the top, right? But that red thousand dollar bill has to be from as far back as the twenty-fifth. Do you think they re-steal the box every anniversary? Maybe stealing the cash box is like a symbol of the event. Maybe somebody so rich they didn’t care what was in it, kept the box and passed it down from father to son to keep the tradition alive. Too far-fetched?” I asked.

  “I still think it’s fishy that you were right,” he grumbled, scrolling down his computer page of information and reading further. “Okay, here we go. Assorted items are stolen from the club and its guests regularly, but they’re usually returned. A stupid rich-people ritual.”

  “Can you pull the files on the country club thefts from that far back, for us to peruse?” I asked.

  “Joining the force, Ms. Cutler?”

  “C’mon, Lytton. I brought you the box. I didn’t play finders keepers. You know what a good sleuth I am. I could help you.”

  “You could distract me.”

  “Really?”

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know how beautiful you are when you flirt to get your way. It’s the thing I like best and least about you.”

  “Depending on?” I asked.

  “Whether you and Nick are on again or off again.”

  “Off,” I said nonchalantly. “Thanks. I think. And by the way, no woman ever thinks she’s beautiful. I can list my flaws for you if you’d like.”

  “No need. I’m sure I can list them myself.”

  “Gee, thanks.” Like what? I wondered. Mousy hair, problem skin, knobby knees, big feet.

  “Ma-dear-ra, hell-lo-oh?”

  “Uhm, what?”

  “Where’d I lose you? Or to who?”

  “I was trying to solve the case. Like…why would they hide that box in my building and forget about it, if they planned to steal it again at the next anniversary?”

  “That’s why we investigate.”

  “We? You’re going to let me help?” I reached for him then lowered my arms. “I can’t thank you enough.”

  He regarded the evidence bags all over his desk, picked up the phone, and called Billings to come and get them. “You could thank me enough. We’ll discuss how later.”

  Urp.

  “You can be my silent, invisible partner.”

  Bummer. “So let’s do some more research. Have there been any other juicy happenings at any other country club events? A catfight or cockfight? Somebody steal somebody else’s porch swing?” Toss somebody in the ocean?

  “Yes. Before you distracted me, I found an actual scanned police report, here, from 1973, about a minor who stole her mother’s Parisian gown, insured at half a million dollars. But most of it was returned.”

  “Most of it?”

  “Missing petticoat, worth a paltry seventy-five thou, though losing it reduced the value of the ein-sum-blech. That’s a quote. Stupid word.”

  He pronounced “ensemble” with entertainment value, so I chuckled on cue.

  He looked insulted.

  “It’s not like you to do fashion descriptions. You suck at it actually.”

  He wiped his brow with the back of a hand. “Thank God for small favors.”

  I chuckled. “Any other blips that night?”

  “Yes and no. It’s not a blip. It’s serious. An attendee went out drinking with her friends after the event,” he said. “They took a walk along the water at high tide and a wave swept her off the rocks. Witnesses say the waves were big that night, but that rogue wave came from nowhere.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “Presumed drowned.”

  “Oh,” I whispered, staring down at my gloves, my vision blurry.

  Werner looked surprised. “Did you know her?”

  “You didn’t give me a name, so…no. It’s just…sad. What about her friends? Are their names listed?”

  He shook his head. “No, they were minors.”

  They were not minors. They were lying adults who probably thought after all these years that they’d gotten away with it. Except maybe…the man who stood watching my roof get raised?

  “Wait,” I said. “Presumed drowned?”

  “Her body was never recovered. Her name was Robin O’Dowd. Seven years later, she was declared legally dead.”

  “By who?”

  Eleven

  The shoe that fits one person pinches another; there is no recipe for living that suits all cases.

  —CARL JUNG

  Robin had died. She had not swum successfully to shore. I would not have wanted to read the morning papers the day after the country club’s fiftieth.

  I wanted answers to the questions the vision left me with, and if I couldn’t get Werner to reopen the case, my only hope was that Deborah’s gown would offer up a few clues. Or some of those old petticoat pieces would, wherever they happened to be forty years later—if they survived.

  “Sarge?” Billings called after we heard a door open—it sounded like the kitchen.

  Werner grunted. “Billings,” he called. “We’re in here.” He waited for the officer to appear.

  Billings tipped his nonexistent cap my way.

  Werner had put everything back in my Vuitton case after he’d called Billings.

  “Enter this in evidence—”

  “Everything but my Vuitton case. You can return it to me when you’re done with it, okay?”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “Billings, we need to reopen the case file mentioned here.” Werner handed Billings the printed page. “Find the original paperwork.”

  “I want the cash box and everything in it dusted for pr
ints, even the scavenger-hunt list. Count the money, have it checked for forgery, try to find a match, prints, the works. See if you can get both cash box and snuffbox authenticated and valued. Were either of them, or any of the items on the scavenger list, reported missing in the past ninety or so years?” Werner slipped the list into a plastic zip bag, too. “Ditto on the two biggest bills. Try to find us a rare currency collector or expert to give us some history on these.”

  We watched Billings leave the house, heard him drive away.

  Werner got up, came around his desk, and went to the closet for my jacket and purse. “Oh sorry, dropped your purse.” He fumbled around. “Your stuff’s probably mixed up inside it now.”

  I bit my tongue, and did not remind him how valuable Vuitton purses were.

  Finally, he handed me my bag and held my jacket out for me to slip into. Message loud and clear: Go home, Madeira.

  “I guess that’s all the justice we can give it right now,” he said. “Thanks for turning in the box, Mad.”

  “Glad to help,” I said, the phrase “obstruction of justice” weighing me down like a funeral dirge in my limbs. Darn Chakra and her preoccupation with petticoat pieces.

  I wondered if I could be charged for holding back the piece the attic box had been wrapped in. I mean, if Werner interviewed Isaac, he’d know I received the box covered in fabric, then I’d be screwed, and not in a good way.

  I nibbled my lip over losing that petticoat piece all the way home.

  All the lights were on at Dad’s, a nice change. He and Aunt Fiona were at our house and not hibernating.

  I heard the screams and laughter before I opened the door. “Are you two babysitting?”

  “What do you think?” my father asked as he was hit in the face with strained peas.

  Babies Kathleen and Riley, my sister Sherry’s five-month-old twins, were sitting in high chairs at the table, and it looked like Dad and Fee needed help.

  Riley, our bouncing baby boy, aimed those peas with loud amusement, his laughter like a bubble of joy, especially when they hit my father’s face. While Kathleen, our strawberry blonde charmer, ate hers with one pinky raised.