Larcency and Lace Part 4

Dante appeared, probably because he was curious about the polish.

When Aunt Fee grinned his way, he winked at her, and she blushed.

Once the nail polish dried, I let the key disappear into my father's stash. G.o.d knew, nothing could be safer.

"Madeira," my father said, stepping away from the doors. "Care to do the honors?"

I tried pushing, until Dante told me to pull. The squeal level of the doors sc.r.a.ping the floor reminded me of fingernails across a chalkboard, or harbingers of doom. I shivered as Eve pulled the other half door in the opposite direction.

When they finally stood open, they revealed a darker pit than any I'd seen tonight.

The last of Nick's fluorescents died as we stood there, unable to see our hands before us.

"Faulty phallic symbols," Eve said into the darkness. "What does that signify?"

Fiona giggled and Dante chuckled.

"Madeira," Dante said. "The switch is a flat-topped, round b.u.t.ton to the right of the doors."

"Got it." Some minutes after I pressed the b.u.t.ton, a pair of long old-fashioned fluorescent bulbs clickety-click-clicked, teasing us with the possibility of light, as they repeatedly glowed and dimmed, while emitting a weird smell.

"That fixture needs a new ballast," my father said.

I was sure the fluorescent tubes would need replacing before we could see the storage room properly, but the fixture finally clicked one last time and shed a modic.u.m of light, however uneven and dim. "Dad, will you add fluorescent bulbs to our list?"

He raised his notebook in a "will do" salute.

At first glance, the room might be someone's attic-cluttered, musty, and dusty. Lots to see in the disorderly, pack-rat stash, including the additional hea.r.s.e that Dolly hinted was here. But I could focus on only one thing: a set of perfectly aligned white enamel body drawers, four by four along the back wall.

"We brought those up for storage," Dante said beside me. "This wasn't the embalming room."

"Do I want to know where it was?" I replied without thinking.

"No, you don't," Aunt Fiona said, a warning in her look.

"Downstairs," Dante said. "In the bas.e.m.e.nt."

My head came up. "I forgot about the bas.e.m.e.nt." The construction foreman said it existed but was inaccessible, and since my funds were limited, I'd told them to stick to the main floor.

"Madeira?" my father asked. "Are you talking to yourself?"

Great, I was so spooked by the body drawers, I'd answered a ghost that only Fiona and I could see and hear. I'd have to get better at ignoring Dante. "Yes and no, Dad. I just realized that the morgue and embalming room must have been in the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"You're right," Dante added. "But you can only get to the bas.e.m.e.nt via the casket lift in this room, behind the debris toward the front. It's sealed on the main floor just below, in your dressing room."

I wanted to tell Dante that he could have warned me, but I guess ghosts lose their people skills after a while. At some point, I'd build a stairway to my bas.e.m.e.nt, beneath the stairs that led up here. After I did, I could enlarge this room and my dressing room . . . and find out what lurked below. Shiver.

Aunt Fiona nudged my chin up with a finger and looked into my eyes. "You knew the building's history, dear, when you accepted Dolly's terms. You shouldn't let a little thing like body drawers throw you. You're thrilled to have the place, remember? And you're in it for the long haul."

She was right, but I had no chance to acknowledge it because a sluice of ice water ran up my spine, as if someone had stabbed me in the back with an icicle. The sensation brought a shivery, stomach-churning knowledge that had nothing to do with body drawers or embalming rooms and everything to do with-I whipped around to look behind me.

Three side windows, with shared frames between them, overlooked West Main Street and the playhouse beyond. In this instance, a nightmare.

The sight tripped my heart and parched my throat.

"The playhouse is on fire!"

Seven.

I want to create theater, clothes are theater.

-JEAN PAUL GAULTIER.

"A small fire, thank G.o.d," my dad said, after a second of visual confirmation. "Let's try to keep it that way." He took the stairs as fast as my intruder had.

"I didn't know Harry could move that fast," Fiona said as she took out her cell phone. "911," she explained before she spoke to a dispatcher and gave the address.

I caught her arm to stop her as she headed for the stairs. "Smoke with your asthma? You'll end up in the hospital, Aunt Fee. Wait here."

"Thank you, sweetie. You're right." She slipped her phone back into the colorful Louis Vuitton bag I'd given her.

"Sampson might still be at the playhouse," I said as Eve and I went downstairs. "His lights were on earlier."

Broderick Sampson had been baiting the locals worse than usual, lately, with his plan to sell to a department-store chain and, as many had said, "ruin the quaint charm of historic downtown Mystic."

We cleared Vintage Magic in time to see my father reach the playhouse, where the fire looked worse. "Wooly k.n.o.bby knits, if the fire doesn't get him, smoke inhalation will! Dad, don't go in!" I shouted, but it was too late. If he heard my warning, he ignored it.

Eve and I crossed the street, looked up at the death trap's top floor, bright with fire, and followed my father in, if only to get him the Hermes out.

Right away, I heard him shouting for Mr. Sampson, and I followed the sound upstairs, while Eve started searching the main floor.

"Madeira," my father shouted when he saw me, "I have everything under control. Get out of here." One set of mile-high drapes burned while Dad was pulling down a set that wasn't. "Go see if you can find Mr. Sampson on the main floor," he shouted over the fire's roar.

"Eve's looking there. I'll check the bas.e.m.e.nt."

"Be careful!" we both shouted as I sprinted down the stairs to the faint scream of fire trucks in the distance. I ran through the bas.e.m.e.nt maze calling Sampson's name and pa.s.sed a rack of prized vintage costumes. I checked the rest of the bas.e.m.e.nt, but found no sign of Sampson. Then I took a half minute to throw the costumes into laundry carts, roll them out the door, and awkwardly drag them one by one, up the half dozen or so steps that led to the sidewalk.

I left them in the ATM lobby of the bank next door, and by the time I got back, red lights swirled around me, men shouted, the moment surreal and ghastly. Gathering my wits, I ran back to the playhouse and followed the sound of raised voices.

When I reached them, I stopped dead.

My heart hammered as I wiped my sweaty palms against each other and examined the faces around me: Dad, Eve, with tears in her eyes, Detective Werner, my nemesis, and half a dozen sooty firemen.

Tunney, the meat cutter, had blood on his ap.r.o.n and a meat cleaver in his hand, as usual.

Even when I was a kid and Tunney used to get down on all fours and pretend to be my pony, he'd worn a b.l.o.o.d.y ap.r.o.n. But he'd never looked this scared.

I forced myself to follow everyone's gaze to the floor and worked hard to resist retreat.

Broderick Sampson looked like he was sleeping.

I shuddered. He couldn't be-I gazed at my father seeking hope. "He'll be okay, right? Dad?"

"In on this one, too, Ms. Cutler," Detective Werner said. "And only home, what? Two hours?"

This one what? I retreated inside myself where it was safe.

"Looks like foul play," Werner said. "We don't know yet if anything is missing."

My father hugged my shoulder. "Mr. Sampson's gone, honey."

My stomach lurched. "Not murder. Not again."

Tunney looked at his cleaver, stood, opened his hand with effort, as if it had stiffened into a death grip, and he let the knife clatter to the floor.

"Was Sampson stabbed?" I asked, staring at the cleaver with disbelief. "He doesn't look injured at all."

I'd heard that even Tunney, our beloved butcher, had been loud and angry at the town meetings, but he didn't have a violent bone in his body. He made kids flowers from butcher paper, for pity's sake.

He wouldn't harm a bird . . . except that he did.

Tunney Lague was a big old teddy bear . . . who chopped animals into edible pieces for a living.

Eight.

Little black dresses first began to appear around 1918-1920 and I have the feeling they came out of the mourning look of World War I.

-KARL LAGERFELD Broderick Sampson lived around the corner from us in Mystick Falls, a widower rattling around in a big old place alone, until his younger sister showed up to keep house for him. Gossip is that Sampson and his sister didn't get along and that she showed after the planned sale of his playhouse to a world-cla.s.s department-store conglomerate made the headlines.

Sampson hadn't grown up in Mystick Falls, so no one knew the sister, but he'd been here long enough for everyone to know and dislike him. He was a neighbor, but not neighborly, a hermit who barely spoke to anyone, turned off his lights on Halloween, and never bought a Girl Scout Cookie. Which didn't mean that he deserved to die.

"Did anyone hear or see anything?" Werner asked.

"I heard arguing coming from here when I got home a little after eight," I said.

"He was always arguing with somebody," Werner said, and everyone nodded.

"Detective," Eve said, "I saw someone leave here when I was driving over to meet Maddie. It was dark, though. It wasn't anybody I recognized."

"Could you tell if it was a man or a woman?" Werner asked, ready to make a note of Eve's answer.

"If I had to guess, I'd say a woman, because of the way she moved, but I couldn't swear to it. Dark pants, dark hat."

My mental suspect list started with Sampson's fellow shop owners, most angrier and more formidable than Tunney.

My father kept me up-to-date on local happenings and he'd said that many of the shop owners made veiled threats at the last Mystick Falls town meeting, while Councilman McDowell and the trustees looked fit to kill.

"Blunt force trauma to the head is my guess," a para medic confirmed, though I didn't remember when they'd arrived.

Detective Lytton Werner took a pair of handcuffs from his back pocket.

"What?" I snapped. "You think Tunney held the knife by the blade to hit Sampson on the back of the head with the handle? He would have cut his hand if he did." I raised Tunney's hands, palm side up. "There. No fresh cuts."

Werner showed me the cuffs. "Madeira, do you mind? I have a job to do."

I reluctantly released Tunney's hands, but not before I squeezed them to show my support.

The detective brought one of Tunney's arms behind his back. "We'll let forensics find the answers."

"Tunney's no killer," I snapped.

"And what about the woman Oscar's seen coming and going from here?" Eve asked.

Oscar, from the hardware store, was second only to Tunney when it came to keeping tabs on his neighbors.

"Gossip," Werner said. "Useless."

"And what about the fire?" I added. "Shouldn't we get out of here?"

"Fire's out, Mad," Johnny Shields, firefighter, said. "Your dad put it out."

"Dad, are you okay? You didn't burn yourself, did you?"

"I'm fine, Madeira. I smothered the burning curtains with the other pair. You saw. It looked worse from across the street. The fire was confined to the ballroom."

"I'm glad." The place might have looked like a ballroom sixty years ago, but now it was just a big old empty s.p.a.ce with a fancy tin ceiling and peeling wall murals.

Werner got down to business and cuffed Tunney while one of the uniformed officers bagged the meat cleaver.

Prime suspects didn't always get cuffed, I knew from my sister's experience, but Werner wouldn't use cuffs without just cause.

Though I knew I should keep my mouth shut, frustration got the best of me. "Tunney did not do this, Lytton, and you know it."

"I can't discuss a case, Madeira," Werner said. "Which you know very well."

"I'm outta here," I said. "The smoke is killing me." It was about as smoky as an ashtray full of ciggy b.u.t.ts, but that wasn't the point.