Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (2 page)

“Mom, she’s eating with us,” Penny said. Joanna opened her mouth to say she’d be fine taking something in her room, but Penny shook her head.
 

Bette tossed her magazine to the side. “Fine.”
 

“I’ll show you your room.” Penny took Joanna’s arm.

“Where are the others?” Joanna asked. Like Wilson, for instance.

“Getting ready for dinner. Come on, we don’t want to be late.”
 

***

When Joanna arrived at the dinner table, others were settling into their chairs, including Wilson’s brother, Daniel, and his longtime business manager, Clarke. But not Wilson Jack. The salad course came and went, and the tapers burned lower, but still no rock star.
 

Penny seemed unperturbed at her fiancé’s absence and launched into a story about Redd Lodge’s original owner. “He walked off in a snowstorm one night and never came back.” She leaned forward for emphasis. “Murdered. It was January then, too. Nineteen-forties.” Her cocoa-brown eyes sparkled as she relished the horror. “They say his ghost still walks the lodge.”

“Dear, don’t be so dramatic. We don’t know he was murdered,” Bette said, popping a quail egg topped with salmon roe into her mouth. The Papillon poked its head up from her lap.

A gangly man in chef’s whites emerged from the butler’s pantry with a large platter. “
Sanglier rôti
,” he said.
 

“Terrific,” came a voice from the doorway. “I’m starved.” All heads turned. At last, Wilson Jack. Joanna knew her eyes were widening, but she couldn’t help herself.

He was a little older and more gaunt than on his album covers, but there was no mistaking the razor sharp jaw and full lips. He had to be twenty years older than Penny. His hair thinned where it was pulled tight against his temples into a ponytail. He slipped into a chair at the head of the table and unfolded a napkin over his lap.

When the Jackals had announced their last concert years ago, Joanna and her best friend, Apple, then in junior high, had written love notes on the back of a Jackals poster. In mourning, Apple even hacked out a Jackals song, “Bitter Roses,” on the guitar. They’d laughed about it just the month before, when it was announced that Wilson would be breaking a long, self-imposed music fast by releasing a solo album. Why he’d quit performing in the first place was a mystery no one had solved, but Joanna credited Penny with his return to recording.

Glancing nervously at Wilson, the maid lifted a slice of meat from the platter. He didn’t seem to notice her fumbling. After so many years of fame, he must be used to being stared at.
 

“Daddy,” Marianne said.

“Hi honey, Hi Penn. You look beautiful,” he said, his gaze on Penny. She did, too. Her hair shone the brown of the inside of a mussel shell, and her skin was porcelain clear.
 

“Hi.” A happy sigh escaped Penny. “Tonight is perfect. Mom, you did such a great job planning everything. All my favorite people are here, too. Wilson, I’d like to introduce you to Joanna.”

“Oh yes. The dress peddler.” He winked at Joanna, and her cheeks warmed. “Penny’s shown me some nice stuff she bought at your store.” If anyone else had called her a “dress peddler” she would have given him a piece of her mind, maybe even pointed out that she’d turned down a career in law before opening Tallulah’s Closet. Somehow, Wilson made it sound charming.
 

“Penny looks good in everything. She’ll be stunning tomorrow in her wedding dress,” Joanna managed to say.

Down the table, the Reverend lifted his hand. “‘Do not dwell in the past, do not dream of the future, concentrate the mind on the present moment’,” he said. The guests at the table, except Wilson, stared at him. “That was from the Buddha,” the Reverend added. When no one responded, he turned to the chef. “Where are the alternative meals?”

“
Bon, oui
,” the chef said. “In the dumbwaiter.”
 

The chef had prepared quite a spread. The first course was sea bean salad garnished with chive flowers. Now a root vegetable puree—spiked with black truffles, Joanna guessed from the aroma—and a leek gratin were passed around the table, plus the roast boar and poached salmon with huckleberries.

“Isn’t the chef divine?” Bette asked. “He cost a fortune, but
Cuisine Sublime
named him one of the best young chefs in France.”

“He’s been smoking,” the Reverend said when the chef passed into the butler’s pantry. “You know we talked about that. Penny shouldn’t breathe those toxins.” He eyed the platter of roast boar. “It’s bad enough we have to be around all this carnage.”

Joanna helped herself to the leek gratin. If they made his new age aphorisms into a drinking game, they’d pass out before dinner was over.

“Reverend Tony, you take such good care of me,” Penny said. “But I haven’t smelled a thing. My spleen energy feels really vital tonight.”
 

Wilson smiled at Penny. The smile fell away when his gaze passed to the Reverend. He stabbed his fork into a slice of meat.

“Just a little of the boar, please,” Clarke said. He’d been quiet up until now. Back in the day, he’d been Wilson’s manager. Unlike Wilson, he bore no trace of the grunge era and could have passed for a well-to-do university professor with his knife-pleated khakis and Turnbull & Asser shirt. “And maybe a slice of the salmon.”

The passed platter seem to startle Wilson’s brother, Daniel, whose eyes had been on Sylvia. “Thank you,” he said and with his left hand poured himself another glass of wine. He was bearded and huskier than Wilson. When he raised his right hand to the table, Joanna was surprised to see he was missing two middle fingers. Pale pink scars marked where the fingers had been joined to his hand.

“I said, if you wouldn’t mind, some of the boar, please.” Clarke’s voice had taken a cold edge. Without making eye contact, Daniel held the platter for him. Curious, Joanna looked from man to man. There was no love lost there.

The chef returned with a casserole dish.
 

“Gluten-free as I asked?” the Reverend said.

The chef nodded.

Wilson lifted his head. “And there’s no shellfish in any of this, right? No prawns or anything like that?”
 

“No. Absolutely not. Madame Lavange told me you were allergic. I also have the goat milk and kombucha for mademoiselle. And the steak hâché for the dog.”

“The only thing that could make this better would be if your sister were here on time.” Bette’s consternation turned to a smile. “Of course, Andy always said—Andy Warhol, that is—”

“Christ,” Wilson muttered. In the short time Joanna had spent with Bette, she’d already heard three stories of her Studio 54 days. Stretch the drinking game to include Bette’s disco-era stories, and they’d never have made it sober past the salads.
 

“She’ll show up eventually,” Penny said.
 

“Yeah, this elusive sister,” Wilson Jack said.
 

“She’s an artist,” Bette said. “She travels all over the world taking photographs. She’s barely back from Afghanistan as it is.”

Penny seemed to shut out their exchange. In all the time she and Joanna had spent together at the store, she’d never talked about her sister, except to ask Joanna to find her a bridesmaid’s dress.

“You’ll like her, I promise. You’ll want to spend lots of time together,” Bette said to Wilson.
 

“We’ll be too busy for that, Mother,” Penny said.
 

The platter reached Sylvia. She lifted a piece of boar for Marianne, who beamed with a fork held upright in one hand and a knife in the other. “More, Mummy.”

“Don’t give that child too much,” Bette said. “She’s already getting pudgy.”

Sylvia let the platter hit the table with a thud. “I beg your pardon.”

“I like meat, Grandma,” Marianne said. “Besides, Mummy always tells me I’m perfect just the way I am.”

Bette blanched. “What did you say?”

“I said, Grandma, I like—”

“You called me ‘Grandma.’”

“You are her grandmother—her step-grandmother,” Penny said. “At least, you will be tomorrow. I told Marianne she should get used to calling you that.”

The maid entered, now in jeans and a puffy down jacket. She bent near Bette. “Dessert is on the buffet. I want to get into town before the storm gets worse. I’ll be back in the morning.”

Bette waved her off and locked eyes with Penny. The maid straightened and left with a last glance at Wilson. “Penny, dear, watch the attitude.”

“Peace,” Reverend Tony said. “We are here for a joyous occasion. Let’s join our hands together in love and harmony. Come on.”
 

Love and harmony, right, Joanna thought. Freud would have had something to say about this gathering.

Bette lifted her hands, and the Papillon leapt from her lap to run into the butler’s pantry. Penny clasped Sylvia and Clarke’s hands on either side of her. Only Wilson refused to join hands. He tucked into a second portion of boar, seeming not to have heard the Reverend’s request.

It was shaping up to be quite a weekend.

After dinner, Joanna went to her room to settle in. Her room’s theme centered on eyes. Besides the eyes woven into the drapes, eyes—some with lashes or eyebrows and some not—adorned the headboard and bedspread. If she squinted, she could imagine the eyes as an abstract pattern of so many eggs. Hanging above the fireplace was a portrait of a woman in medieval dress. In the place of her head was a giant eyeball with a golden halo.

“Pleased to meet you, Madame Eye,” Joanna said. “You and I may need to get better acquainted this weekend.” She’d picked up the habit of talking to paintings when she was a child and her grandmother had hung a framed church bulletin illustration of Joan of Arc in her bedroom. At home, an anonymous mid-1960s pastel portrait Joanna had named Aunt Vanderburgh played this role, although since her boyfriend Paul had moved in, she and Auntie V’s conversations had dwindled.

Joanna kicked off her shoes and settled on the bed. At last she’d be able to see what her mother wanted. Money, was her first guess. Joanna spread the day’s mail on the mattress. On top was a coupon for high-speed internet—if only they knew she didn’t even use a computer, and why should she when ledger books still worked fine?—and a postcard announcing a friend, Tranh’s, art show. She tucked the card into her Filofax. It was nice he was finally getting the recognition he deserved after last spring’s fiasco.

And now for her mother’s card. Joanna paused, holding the thick paper a moment before tearing it open with a thumb. She took a fortifying breath and unfolded it. “Dear Joanna,” the note read. “I need to see you. I’d call, but I don’t have your phone number” —and for good reason, Joanna thought— “but I found the address of your store. I’ll be in Portland this weekend. Love, Mom.” That was it.

This weekend? She’d be in town this weekend? Apple was taking care of the shop and knew better than to pass on Joanna’s home address, but maybe she’d put her mother in touch with Paul. Once Paul met her mother—well, she shuddered at the thought. Her mother wanted something. She always did. The worst part was that if she succeeded, she’d never leave them alone. They’d be picking her up at the county detention center, dragging her from drunk tanks, listening to her “poor me” stories.

The last time Joanna had seen her mother was at her college graduation. She’d been drinking and probably taking prescription drugs, although likely no one else could tell—until she passed out in the car and stopped breathing. In a panic, Joanna had driven her to the emergency room, where her mother was monitored. When Joanna finally returned home, in the small hours of the morning, she discovered that somehow in the melee her mother had stolen the little bit of money she’d had in her wallet.

Joanna rose from the bed and pushed back a curtain to watch snow fall to the moon-like surface of the mountain. She didn’t have a cell phone, not that it mattered, since Bette had been complaining about not getting reception anyway, but in a few minutes the great room would have a cleared a bit, and she could use the telephone in the breakfast room to call Paul, give him the heads-up. He didn’t know about her mother. Her stomach dropped at the thought that this might be their introduction.

Despite the whirling white, the snow was quiet. The lodge, not so much. Down the hall Bette’s voice shouted, “Bubbles! You naughty girl, get in here.” Hopefully the dog hadn’t left them another “present” like the one in the butler’s pantry earlier. She let the curtain fall.

She heaved her suitcase on the bed. Sure, she’d only be staying a night, but packing for a wedding with a rock star and Chef Jules’s food had been something to savor. She’d considered going with a 1960s-in-Biarritz look: off-white leggings, fox-lined boots, a chunky sweater, and a round, mink hat, but she much preferred dresses. Besides, the hat, though a chic Hattie Carnegie model, made her look like a fur lollipop.
 

So she’d decided on something inspired by Sonja Henie’s 1930s ice skating movies. For the drive up, she kept the fur-lined boots, but added thick tights, a full wool skirt, Fair Isle sweater, and ivory sleigh coat. For the wedding tomorrow she’d wear a simple charmeuse shift that would fade into the background and let Penny shine.

No. Unpacking could wait. She needed to call Paul. Now. As she reached for the doorknob, someone knocked.
 

“Joanna?” Penny said. “Can I come in?”
 

She pulled the door open. “Of course. Is your sister here yet? She needs to try on her bridesmaid’s dress.”

“Nope. Maybe she won’t make it. It’s snowing pretty hard.” Penny had a box tucked under one arm. She dropped herself on the bed and arranged the flower-sprigged folds of her 1940s dressing gown around her. Joanna had set it aside for her as soon as it arrived at the store. Its exuberant colors mirrored Penny’s personality.

“You sound like that wouldn’t bother you.”

Penny shrugged. “Whatever. If she gets here, fine. If not, I don’t really care.” She wouldn’t meet Joanna’s eyes. “I hope you didn’t let Mom’s snottiness tonight bother you. She’s just tense. I told her to take a Xanax.”