Tulle Death Do Us Part (4 page)

Fee tried to look more enthusiastic. “You probably don’t remember the programs, dear, but they’d put the contestant in a comfy chair with a cup of tea and some refreshments, make them sit back, and a voice from the past would come from behind a curtain. Like, ‘Remember me? I took you on your first pony ride.’”

My father huffed. “And the contestant goes, ‘Nanny Carousel?’ Ta-da, here comes old Nanny Carousel, who the contestant hasn’t seen in eleventy-seven years, and they have a teary reunion, and so on. It’s all voices and people from the past ad nauseam.”

“Wow,” Fiona said. “Harry, you sure know how to neutralize the anticipation.”

My father looked contrite. “It
is
more exciting than that,” he admitted to me. “I just wanted it said fast, so we could get down to business with a yes from you, Mad.” His look pleaded with me. “What do you say?”

Fee sighed in exasperation. “Yes, that’s where you come in.”
She gave me a “there, there” pat because she understood my qualms because of my visions. “The event will benefit the foundation that your sister Brandy works for,” she said. The children will get the ticket proceeds minus expenses.”

“The Nurture Kids Foundation.” I remembered. “A good cause, feeding hungry children.” It would be harder to say no now, but not impossible. I’d make a personal donation if my refusal jinxed Brandy’s cause.

“Correct.” Aunt Fee winked “That’s the exact foundation.”

“I told you we’re chairing the event,” my dad snapped, frustrated at repeating himself, except that I hadn’t
been here
in the true sense. “I told you that new members of the country club have to do their share.” He was also probably frustrated with Fee for volunteering them. “Not my idea!” he added, proving it.

Do I know my dad or what?

I chuckled because I had been right, while Aunt Fiona gave him a saucy grin.

He eyed her with false malevolence, though I recognized that twinkle in his eyes. The look predicted a pithy quote. “‘A fine horse or a beautiful woman,’” he said. “‘I cannot look at them unmoved, even now when seventy winters have chilled my blood.’” Dad crossed his arms as if to rest his case. “Not that I’m as old as Sir Arthur Conan Doyle when he said it.”

Aunt Fee laughed, stood, and cupped my dad’s cheeks. “I have a quote, too.” She cleared her throat, not letting go of his face. “‘She would have despised the modern idea of women being equal to men. Equal, indeed! She knew they
were superior.’” Aunt Fee kissed my dad’s cheek. “So said Elizabeth Gaskell, and so say I.”

For Aunt Fee, I applauded. Lord of the Bling, she had him. She had my father in the palm of her hand. By giving as good as she got, she’d been offered his surrendered heart on a gold platter. Quoting him back—a trick my mother had never tried.

That’s what Dad had needed to wake up and smell the latte: Aunt Fee standing alone, separate in his mind, once and for all, from Mom.

I stood, hugged her, and elbowed my frowning dad, as if he and I shared a joke. I loved his stubborn sense of denial. He really did it for Fiona. He filled her heart to overflowing. And in turn, she did the same for him.

For them, I should judge whatever they wanted me to. For myself, well, I should shout “No!” like any normal daughter. “Why exactly do you want me to judge?” I asked, in case I caved, which I hoped I wouldn’t.

Aunt Fee stepped away from Dad, her cheeks rosy as she smoothed her Westwood pencil skirt. “More entrants than we can manage want to participate in the country club’s
This Is Your Life
segment,” she said. “There can only be five participants. So we made you the golden ticket, well…a ‘chosen by Madeira Cutler’ piece of vintage clothing is the ticket. In order to win, the entrant must wear a piece that was worn to the club’s original Golden Jubilee, which we’re modeling our event after. The Golden Jubilee celebrated the club’s fiftieth anniversary.”

Aunt Fiona touched my arm. “We thought those with the best vintage outfits would have had the most interesting lives.”

My father cleared his throat. “You must admit, Madeira, it’s better than putting names in a hat, and the winners will wear their original vintage outfits during the segment.”

“How are you going to discover their life stories to do the segment?” I asked, thinking of my psychometric trip back in time to another Golden Jubilee night—well, the aftermath, anyway—the one Dad and Fee now wanted to replicate with their Very Vintage Valentine fund-raiser.

On the other hand, what they learned about the event’s history could very well help me figure out what was already starting to feel like another mandate from the universe, a sleuthing expedition.

“Fee and I are the show hosts and therefore the researchers,” Dad stressed, teeth grinding as he spoke. “So the entrants are giving us significant dates and family histories, honors and awards, spouses and so forth, the important life points of reference.”

“I think you should ask them to describe the original Golden Jubilee as they remember it, if the winners were actually there,” I suggested. “I wish I could interview them with you. But I can’t see it happening with my schedule. Take really good, detailed notes while doing your research. ’Kay?”

Aunt Fee gave me a double take and hid a knowing grin, though she failed to dim her interest. She knew I’d just been to the past. She knew that I knew…something.

“Mad, they’ll have to give you their winning outfits to refurbish and alter. So you’ll spend time with them, do the fittings, ask some questions. Oh, and you can charge your regular prices, while introducing some very well-to-do people to your shop.”

We both smiled.

“We made a deal,” she continued, “that you get to display their outfits after the event. You can make the outfits part of your Valentine’s Day display for the church’s candlelight city tour the weekend after the holiday. It was such a smart marketing idea for you to enter your historic building as a stop on the tour.”

That would save me a great deal of fuss at a busy time, this judging thing making it worse. The Valentine house tour was only a few days after this country club event. I gave her a nod of approval. “Thanks.”

“No one will see the outfits twice, because the country-club set aren’t the ones who take the tours,” she said. “They’ll be at home showing off their houses.”

“Well played, Aunt Fiona.” And I meant it in several ways.

She preened. “But their relatives will surely come to your shop to see their family history on display,” she continued. “Which can net you some great new customers.”

“I can trump that,” my father said. “This event is bigger than you think. Everyone who was ever a member of the country club has been invited from wherever they live in the world right now.”

“Why?” I asked. “Is this an anniversary year?”

“No, but in the spring, the country club’s breaking ground for a new building, so they’re creating warm feelings for their contribution to the community, family style. In case anybody wants to ‘invest.’ Friend-raising, you could call it.”

“I should have known it would come down to money,” I grumbled.

Aunt Fee stepped, without thought, into my dad’s arms, and he, without thought, closed his arms around her. “Doesn’t it always?” she asked.

“I suppose.” I crossed the back of the shop and took a bottle of green tea from my mini fridge, offered it around—no takers—and sipped it myself. “So the five people participating in the
This Is Your Life
portion of the evening dress in vintage outfits from the Golden Jubilee, but what does everyone else wear? Vintage clothes from any era?”

“They can wear what they wore to the fiftieth, if they want, or whatever best represents their own history.” My dad chuckled. “I can just imagine the preponderance of academic robes,” he said.

Aunt Fee nodded in surprise. “That’s true. I plan to suggest military uniforms, as well, so I can thank people for their service to our country.”

“Make thanking them part of the event,” I said. “They and their families will appreciate it.”

While my father and Aunt Fee congratulated each other on my brilliance, I realized that attendees would feel safe playing dress-up, because who knew that clothes had tales to tell? “I hope I’ll have plenty of time to examine the outfits submitted for the
This Is Your Life
segment?”

“Of course. Eve and I intend to help you,” Fiona said. “You know, handle what you tell us to.” She gave me that “between us” look, because she knew there would be certain clothing items I might not want to touch.

“Come on, Mad, say yes,” she urged. “We’re also going to have a contest on the night of the event, and there’ll be prizes for the best vintage outfits. Most outrageous, most original, most famous designer, greatest vintage find, best one
of a kind.” Aunt Fee bit her lip. “Will you be on the panel to judge those, too? You’ll love the event! Think of the outfits you’ll get to see and you get to wear your favorite yourself.”

My father squeezed her waist, like maybe she shouldn’t have told me about the second round of judging quite yet. Then he pulled me against his other side. “Nobody can judge vintage clothes like you can, dumplin’.”

“Oh, bring out the big guns. When I’m Daddy’s dumplin’, I’m ruffled and starched.”

“Is that a yes?” he asked.

“No, but you can keep trying.”

“As we said, you only have to choose five
This Is Your Life
rs,” Aunt Fiona said. “That’s all we’ll have time to get into the segment.”

“You have some pretty good arguments, but I have a better one: I can only choose one. I’ll alienate half my local clientele. They’re my bread and butter.”

Aunt Fiona’s grin grew. “You won’t be choosing people, dear. You’ll be choosing anonymously owned outfits.”

I couldn’t stop my shoulders from sagging. It had been a long day, and I was worried about a girl named Robin. I didn’t need this pressure, too.

From her caramel lizard-skin box bag by Nettie Rosenstein, Aunt Fiona took a stack of assorted photos—square, oblong, jagged- and straight-edged, dated and not, with some streaked old Polaroids we had to squint at to see.

Fee didn’t know it, but I probably would have caved sooner if I’d noticed her carrying the bag I gave her for her birthday. In the fifties, that Nettie Rosenstein bag was a pricey sought-after piece of vintage magic.

I perused the photos, some color, some black-and-white, with an unbiased eye and great interest. Several group candids and posed shots, then pictures of attendees dancing in an awesome assortment of gorgeous vintage formals, the kind you wore crinolines beneath. My heart picked up speed, until the sight of one, where just the hint of a chevron pattern made me sit hard on my mom’s old wing-back chair behind me.

I believed in Aunt Fee’s sense that my psychometric gift was a mandate from the universe, but did I have to get hit upside the head with it?

I examined the next photo, one that would literally change the course of my life. Sleuthing always did, and all I needed to see, in its full backlit glory, was a color shot of a gown with a gather of peach and white with that rare chevron striped design appliquéd to it, over an embroidered crepe silk peach gown.

I looked down at the box on the floor beside me and knew—I just knew—that the paler version of chevron stripes on silk moiré-a-pois belonged to that very special petticoat, the one designed—and hand-stitched in Paris, I believed—to be worn beneath that very special haute couture gown.

So…at least one petticoat piece had never been mailed back to Vainglory’s mother.

The existence of the box, in a place that had been an abandoned building at the time, might also indicate that none of the “borrowed” treasures had ever been returned.

How many other trinkets, as Vainglory had called them, and Golden Jubilee outfits were still out there, and what kind of stories did they have to tell?