Larcency and Lace Part 10

"My cat," I said, drifting.

I closed my eyes tight against a new flash of light.

"Chakra? Hey, what have you got, there? Madeira? We have to talk."

"Not tonight, 'kay?"

Werner lowered me, so I had to hold on tight to his neck or fall, then I felt Chakra's fur beneath my chin.

"Tomorrow then," he said.

"Whatever," I whispered, riding a cloud.

More lifting, up and down, drifting. Someone mumbling about keys, me holding tight again.

"Which room's yours?"

"Hmm?"

Light p.r.i.c.ked at my eyelids, so I closed them tighter.

"What is the meaning of this, Detective?"

"Detective who?" I asked, my eyes still closed. "Dad?"

"Madeira, are you drunk?"

I saw my father in his pajamas, shocked out of his socks. Shock didn't come easy to Harry Cutler, a college professor who'd raised four kids alone.

I blinked against the light. Details came to me in pieces.

Why wasn't I standing? I looked at my ride. Werner? "Daddy, he arrested me."

My father crossed his arms. "Why? What did you do, this time?"

I'd never heard Werner's full-bodied laugh before. A real wake-up call. "Sir," he said on a last chuckle, "could you just show me where her bed is?"

"I don't b.l.o.o.d.y well think so."

"She's getting heavy and I'm afraid-"

"I am not heavy."

Werner fumbled me and I slid down his body and landed on my ascot in the hall. "Ouch! That was rude!"

Werner, my father, and Aunt Fiona looked down at me.

"Aunt Fiona, what are you doing in my dream wearing Sherry's old bathrobe?"

My father ran a hand through his hair. "Fee was distraught after being shut in that casket. She couldn't stay alone. She's been having nightmares all night."

I'd never seen my father so discomfited. "How would you know?"

His ears turned red. I'd never seen that happen before, either. "It's not what you think," he said.

"How many times did you believe me when I used those words?"

Was I having a middle-of-the-night conversation with my father in the Wiener's presence? "I'm hallucinating, aren't I?"

"Madeira, do you two know what time it is?" my father asked.

"Dawn," I said. "The playhouse burned to the ground. And I thought my building would, too." Tears slid down my cheeks, but I didn't know how they got there.

"She's sleep deprived," Lytton said, as he and my father each took one of my arms and between them, got me standing.

"I feel like a jellyfish. No legs." I leaned into Werner, who was forced to slip an arm around me.

"Harry," Aunt Fiona said. "She worked a full day in New York, drove home, and hasn't stopped since."

"That's right; I hasn't."

Lytton chuckled. "She's had a hard forty-eight hours, sir."

My father sighed. "This way to her bedroom."

I rode up in Werner's arms, mine around his neck, my head resting there.

He placed me on my bed and I missed his heartbeat. "Who moved my cloud?" The drifty, out-of-body sensation I remembered with fondness had pa.s.sed. So I was forced to curl into myself.

"Fee will take care of her." My father's voice drifted away.

Aunt Fiona's perfume, like a blanket of warmth, covered me. For the first time in days, I drifted in dreamless and endless peace.

"d.a.m.ned light, again," I snapped, opening my eyes, against my better judgment.

"Chill, Mad. It's about time." Eve handed me a latte. "Your dad said you've been asleep for hours. You don't look like you spent the night with the Wiener. Are the gossips wrong about that, too?"

Sixteen.

Elegance is fluid. It consists of desire and knowledge, grace, refinement, perfection, and distinction.

-RENE GRUAU "Me? Spend the night with the Wiener!" I sat up fast. "Are you out of your mind?"

"Shush," Eve said. "They're saying that Fiona and your dad spent the night together, too."

Memory alert. I looked up, saw my dad coming toward the foot of my bed, and wondered how much he'd heard.

"Fiona was shut in a casket last night, Eve," he said. "I think you'll grant that she had a right to be upset."

Eve looked contrite. "Of course."

"I granted it from the get-go, Dad, but you mocked her."

"I've never been more sorry about anything. She's a wreck. That's why she stayed the night. In Sherry's room. I slept in my own."

I winked. "You should have put her in Brandy's room so you could have experienced the full roller-coaster scope of the getaway tree."

Every one of his children who ever sneaked a date up to our rooms-and we all did-sent them home via the tree outside Brandy's room, which is how it became known as "the getaway tree."

Bit of a sore spot with my father.

The thundercloud himself handed me one of my mother's plates bearing one of Fiona's famous homemade cinnamon rolls. Hmm.

"It's three o'clock, Madeira. And Eve," he added, "for your information, Madeira spent a few hours at Vintage Magic last night, and after the playhouse fire was under control, Detective Werner brought her home."

A shred of memory rolled in, and I sat straight up to dislodge it, nearly spilling my latte. "Uh, where's Chakra?"

My cat jumped on the bed. "Oh, sweetie, thank goodness."

"No worries. She rode in with you and your knight. He's waiting downstairs to see you."

"Nick? Nick's home already?" I put my cup on the nightstand and jumped out of bed.

Eve chuckled. "Do you remember nothing about last night?"

"It's fuzzy, and what's with the gossip?"

"Jump in the shower," Eve said. "And come down as soon as you can."

Fifteen minutes later, wearing a black tent dress and two-tone flats, I sat across from the Wiener and my father in the gentleman's parlor. "I thought Nick was here," I muttered.

Eve shook her head almost in warning. "He's on a.s.signment, remember?"

"Oh, you wanted to see me, Detective?"

"Ms. Cutler," he said, "before we left your shop last night-"

"We left my shop last night?"

Eve shook her head at me.

"What?" I asked.

"Selective memory. It's so accommodating. Mad's blocking it," Eve told Werner as she sat on the arm of my chair.

Werner looked confused, an emotion I embraced, then lightning struck. "That was you last night!"

Werner rubbed the side of his nose. "Guilty."

"For what?" I asked suspiciously.

"Please remember that I wasn't up there alone," he said.

What did I do, kiss him or something? Had I called him a Wiener? If not, I probably should have. I held on to the chair's arms as memory tried to rush me, but I managed to push it away. "Eve, what did you say about gossip? Never mind. Screw the gossip. I have to think."

I got up to pace, the heat in my face making me want to open a window, October or not.

Werner obviously took my movement as a sign to continue. "As I was saying, last night I saw your cat batting around an object of great interest. It seemed to come from beneath the body drawers in your storage room. Do you know what was under there?"

My heart stopped as I turned, but when Werner opened an evidence box, and I saw the skeletal appendage inside, some kind of trip switch got hit that restarted my heart double time.

I'm afraid it said a lot about our knowledge that neither Eve nor I ran screaming from the room, because my father sure looked poleaxed.

"Before you say anything," Eve warned, her hand on my shoulder. "He already interrogated me, and I caved like a kid caught with crib notes at a final exam. Detective Lytton Werner knows all."

Werner wore a look of smug satisfaction.

I crossed my arms. "Why ask me questions you know the answers to?"

"Details," he said. "Different people notice different things."

Okay, so if I told him the truth, I'd be fine. "Fine. Ask away."

"What I didn't tell Ms. Meyers," Werner said, "is that a body, charred beyond recognition, was found in the rubble of the playhouse."

"That's horrible." I swallowed hard.

"The bones, most of which have been broken, have to be sent to an FBI lab for DNA testing, but judging by the pelvic bone, a local forensics team was able to identify the remains as female between the ages of twenty and thirty, never had children. Death happened approximately thirty-five years ago. Cause unknown."

Nausea rose in me. I stood. "I need a cracker or I'm going to be sick." Wishing I'd eaten that cinnamon roll, I ran for the kitchen, but Fiona met me with a cracker box. I dug in, grabbed one, and inhaled it, letting it fill the caffeine-raw hole in my quivering stomach.

Werner watched with concern. Sc.r.a.p, so did everyone else.

I ate another, and another, until the nausea pa.s.sed. I took a deep breath, kept the box, and returned to the sofa. "Sorry." I looked at the contents of Werner's evidence box and turned to Eve. "Probably not from a dinosaur, a bear, or a bizarro dog, then."

Werner raised both brows. "You thought it belonged to an animal?"

I could either nod here or be honest. "We hoped it belonged to an animal. We hoped hard."

"Hard enough," Eve said, "to go looking for Vinney Carnevale to ask him if he broke in, instead of calling you about them, because the guy who broke in looked a lot like Vin. I suspected," Eve added, "though I didn't say so, that he took the rest of the bones that belonged to that . . . set you've got there. We did plan to call you after we confronted Vinney."

"Animal bones." Werner closed the box and put it aside, praise be. "Puts a different spin on obstruction of justice and tampering with evidence and a crime scene," he muttered as he made a few notes.