Murder After a Fashion (21 page)

“I think you’ll surprise everyone.”

“Too much of a surprise?” she asked, the pale gray jacket in one hand and the shoe box in the other.

“Not at all. We don’t want to be taken for granted, do we?”

Before she could answer, the phone rang in the office and Dolce asked me to answer it because some customers had come in.

It was Detective Wall calling, and of course he wanted to talk to me. And it wasn’t a personal call. I sighed and wished I hadn’t answered.

“Were you at the house of Diana Van Sloat last night?” he asked.

I clenched my teeth, expecting to be accused of something. What was it this time?

“I was at a jewelry workshop. Don’t tell me that’s a crime?”

“I understand there was an accident involving a knife.”

“Not when I was there. No accidents. The only knives were used for slicing leather. We made some very interesting bracelets, which I’d be happy to show you. Don’t tell me you’re out looking for danger again.”

“I don’t look for danger, Rita,” he said. “Danger looks for me.”

“You’re not complaining, are you?” I asked. “Because I would think as a cop it goes with the territory.”

“Thanks for that tip,” he said dryly. “Is there some reason you’re being evasive?”

“About what, the dangers of police work? I’m in the fashion business. Now if you want to know what everyone was wearing last night…”

“Stop right there. I want a list of participants.”

“Why don’t you ask whoever told you I was there?”

“I did. It’s called cross-checking.”

“Well, if you want to know about cross-dressing, I could—”

“Are you going to help me or not?”

“If I don’t, you’ll call me in to the station, won’t you?”

“Rita.”

“Okay, okay. There was Maxine Anderson, Patti French, me and Diana, of course, and the jewelry guy, Armando. I don’t know his last name.

“That’s it? What about Mr. Van Sloat?”

“I thought you meant who was in the class. Diana’s husband was there briefly. But he wasn’t—”

“I understand he wasn’t in the class. Anyone else in the house?”

“I don’t know. It’s a big house. There could have been a whole family living in the wine cellar for all I know. It’s huge. You should see it. If you want to see it, it’s on the house and garden tour coming up next week.”

“Are you going?”

“Of course. Dolce and I will be there drumming up business for the shop, in a subtle way, of course. Can I ask why you’re so interested in my making bracelets?” I didn’t have a hope in hell he’d actually tell me anything. He never did
unless he was desperate for information and he thought he could get it from me.

“We had a report that there was an injury at the Van Sloat house last night.”

“What does that have to do with me?” I asked. This was not a rhetorical question. I really wanted to know. And more important, how had he found out? Had Jonathan told the cops about the injury? If so, why? When I’d come in by ambulance with my concussion, no one called the police.

“That’s what I want to know,” Jack said. “Is there something you aren’t telling me? It’s in your interest to tell the truth and the whole truth while you can.”

“I am!”
I said so loudly that Dolce opened the office door and looked in with a worried frown.

I nodded at her and held up my hand. Then I told Jack I had to go to work. “I have a job, you know,” I said stiffly. “And you are interrupting my work.”

“Helping rich idle women spend their husbands’ money,” he said. “You call that a job?”

“That is a sexist remark,” I said. “How do you know it isn’t
their
money? And for your information, I am helping women look their best, which is good for their mental health.”

“So now you’re a therapist as well as a salesperson.”

“I do what I can,” I said sweetly. It was no use getting into an argument with Jack. It was a no-win situation. I wasn’t sure what he wanted from me. What did he think went on at the Van Sloat house last night besides a workshop and a minor accident with a knife?

Sometimes I felt like making up stories to tell him just to lead him astray so that I could then solve the problem myself, whatever it was. This time it had to do with Armando’s
injuries, but why? I was always trying to figure out the answers to Jack’s questions before he asked them. Which was ridiculous. I couldn’t even figure out the answers to the questions he asked. Not without giving away too much information.

“Does this line of inquiry have to do with the death of the chef?” I asked.

“You know I’m not going to divulge any confidential information regarding a pending criminal investigation, don’t you?” he said.

I didn’t want to answer, so I said good-bye and hung up. He couldn’t get away with taking me from my important job of retail therapist to the rich and well-dressed.

What was left of the week flew by. Sales picked up, which was good for business, and Dolce looked happier. A week from Sunday we met at the shop in the morning for the house and garden tour. First we admired each other’s outfits. Dolce looked great in her slim gray suit with the dynamite shoes. The unicolored outfit made her look taller and thinner than usual, which is what I told her.

She smiled and said that the print wide-legged pants were made for me. Before we left, she chose an eye-catching necklace with three graduated gold-plated brass tubes to hang around my neck, which was just what I needed against my black sweater. I thought about wearing my handmade bracelets, but decided not to.

Dolce drove up Van Ness to the breathtaking Pacific Heights neighborhood where gazillion-dollar mansions, painted Victorians and faux chateaux like Diana’s lined the wide streets. On Jackson Street, Dolce miraculously found a parking space. It was a gorgeous warm fall day, which would have reminded us of summer anywhere else. But June
and July summer days in the city are likely to be foggy. On our way to the first house on the tour, we stopped to admire views of the Golden Gate Bridge, Alcatraz and the sparkling blue waters of the Bay.

“The neighborhood was first developed in the 1870s,” Dolce read from the brochure. “With small Victorian homes. But after the earthquake in 1906, they were replaced with larger, more substantial houses.”

“You mean mansions,” I said, gazing at the houses on both sides of the street.

“There are a few Victorians left,” she said, pointing to a tall pale green three-story house with a steep roof and lots of gingerbread detail. “But the rest are Edwardian, Mission Revival and Chateau.”

“Wait until you see Diana’s house,” I said. “I believe they call it Grand Tudor Revival. It’s not as old as the Italianate Victorians or the ordinary Victorians or the Queen Anne’s, but it’s…well, you’ll see.”

“Here’s the description of their house,” Dolce said, consulting her brochure. “‘Built on four levels. Vast formal grounds. A sense of privacy.’ Is that what you liked about it?”

“I liked everything,” I told her. Everything except for Weldon, her husband. “But I really didn’t see much except for the kitchen and her craft room, which are both wonderful. Even a person like you who doesn’t do crafts would appreciate what she’s done to the house.”

But first we visited an enormous mansion up the street from Diana’s, built in 1910 but recently remodeled by some famous architect. We joined some other women who were well-dressed, though we’d never seen them at Dolce’s. I couldn’t help staring at their outfits trying to decide who the designers were while Dolce’s eyes were on the details of the living room, like the
molding around the French doors, the gigantic fireplace, which was blazing even today, and the floor-to-ceiling leaded glass windows. We checked out the morning room across from the formal dining room.

“I don’t know what I’ve done without a morning room all these years,” Dolce said with a twinkle in her eye. We faced the fact that some people lived lives beyond the dreams of ordinary folks. Of course we knew that, but today we had a glimpse into the lives of the really, really rich. I appreciated Dolce’s world view. Though she dealt with the super rich every day, she appreciated her good fortune in owning a house where she worked and lived under the same roof, and never seemed to envy the women who had enough money to afford fancy cars, multiple houses, and the expensive clothes they bought from her. I hoped someday to be more like her, because sometimes, like today, a wave of jealousy crept up and threatened to undermine my equilibrium.

We walked all the way up to the fourth floor of house number one where we stepped out onto the sun-drenched terrace facing west. I gasped at the view, at least one hundred and eighty degrees. The green trees of the Presidio, the historic military base; the bridges; the Bay were all laid out before us. Dolce saw someone she knew, so she went to speak to the woman while I braced my arms against the railing and stared out across the water to the Marin Headlands.

“Nice view.” A familiar lightly accented voice interrupted my dreams of living like this. I whirled around. I should have known I’d run into someone I knew, but Meera? On a house and garden tour?

“I’m surprised to see you here,” I said.

“I always attend historical tours,” she said. “To see what they’ve done to the old houses in the name of modern comfort.” She wrinkled her nose to show her disapproval. I assumed that meant she thought everything should be left as it was one hundred years ago to match the clothes she wore.

“Your dress is authentic, I suppose,” I said, taking in the long dark brown satin gown, the bustle and her leather lace-up shoes. “And it suits you.”

“Thank you,” she said. “If I may quote Thomas Carlyle, who was an acquaintance of mine some time ago, ‘The first purpose of clothes was not warmth or decency but ornament. Warmth was found in the leaves of the tree or in the grotto, but for decoration, one must have clothes.’” She paused and looked over my outfit, which she didn’t seem too excited about, but then, it was hard to read Meera. “Don’t you agree?” she asked.

“Definitely, since I’m in the clothing business,” I told her. “So you knew this Carlyle?” I probably shouldn’t have asked because she was bound to bring up the past, and with Meera, the past was definitely the long-ago past and went on and on. Sure enough, she had to tell me about it.

“Yes, I knew him. He was one of a group of my friends in Scotland.”

“I didn’t know you’d been to Scotland.”

“There is much you don’t know about me,” she reminded me. Meera loved being mysterious, which was why I didn’t buy her vampire story; it was all part of her act.

“I didn’t stay long,” she said, “much too cold up there. I like California better. I think if Carlyle could have come, he wouldn’t have suffered so much from his ailments and wouldn’t have been so cranky.”

“I suppose you knew the people who used to live here too,” I said, meaning the house.

“No, I didn’t,” she said. “I thought I might get some familiar vibrations from the walls, but I felt nothing. So I would have to say I’ve never been here before. But I am looking forward to visiting the other houses. Perhaps they will have some stories to tell.”

I hoped that Meera hadn’t heard about the incident at Diana’s house. In any case, she bustled off a few minutes later, much to my relief.

I watched her flounce away, and then I went to look for Dolce.

“Who was that strange woman in the Victorian dress?” Dolce asked. “Is she one of the docents in her period costume?”

“No docent. No costume. That was my friend Meera. You remember her.”

“The one who thinks she’s a vampire,” Dolce said, rolling her eyes.

The less said about Meera, the better. Dolce and I took the winding staircase down to the first floor, stopping to look into the bedrooms, the study, the library and the large projection room along the way. We walked out through the salon past a small group of women. We knew them all and stopped to say hello before we continued down the street to the house that belonged to the Van Sloats. I was curious to see how the kitchen looked in the light of day after all the blood had been cleaned up. Had there really been an incident? Or was it just a rumor? After the confirmation story from Jonathan, how could I doubt it?

I wanted to see the rest of the house today, and of course, so did Dolce. I took her around the back to see the sparkling
turquoise pool and the gardens, and she was just as impressed as Patti, Maxine and I had been. In fact, Patti was there at the pool house with some friends who were also house-tour hostess volunteers. Dolce went to the bar they’d set up to get us some drinks from a punch bowl. I hoped the punch contained some alcohol, because I always needed a drink after a tête-à-tête with Meera. That was the effect she had on me. Patti left her friends and came up to speak to me at the edge of the pool.

“Rita,” she said, “did you hear about Armando?”

“No, I mean, I don’t think so.” I had a nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach. “Why, what happened?”

“There was an accident,” she said. “And a dispute. Someone got hurt.”

I felt the color drain from my face. I didn’t want to hear about this. Not again. I wanted to pretend nothing happened.

“Who was it—Diana?”

I thought I knew who’d gotten hurt, but I had to be sure. Why would Armando and Diana get into a dispute? I mean, she was crazy about him. Couldn’t say enough good things about him. She’d acted as his assistant for our entire lesson. I couldn’t see her starting a knife fight. The very idea was ridiculous. In fact, I started to smile nervously.

“Not Diana,” she said.

My smile faded. “Then who?”

“Who do you think?” she asked.

I was drawing a blank. No time to think or answer her, because the patio was filling up with people we knew from the shop I had to say hello to. We all oohed and ahhed about the house even though we hadn’t seen much yet. Still, just the patio with the pool and the gardens and the view were
enough to impress even the most jaded socialite. And I was neither jaded nor a socialite.

“I want to show you the kitchen and the craft room,” I said to Dolce, who’d handed me a glass of punch. I was trying to forget what Patti had said and even more, what she hadn’t said. “It’s where we had our class.” Before I had even a sip of the punch, a waiter came out with a tray of champagne. “Compliments of the host and hostess,” he said.