Skirting the Grave by Annette Blair

members laughed more than usual, and I recognized it as a coping mechanism, so Isobel’s loquaciousness and hilarity, especially today, didn’t strike me as particularly odd. Besides, Brandy had characterized her as “outgoing,” and that she was. “Pay dirt,” I said. “Skating outfits!”
    “Silly Mad. They’re carhop outfits.”
    “Put the yellow one on to match your skates,” I suggested.
    She pointed to the stash. “There’s the aqua one to match your hat and roller skates.”
    Did I dare try it on? “Oh, you look smashing in yours.”
    I unbuttoned my sailor dress and let it fall to the floor. Then I stepped gingerly out of it, careful not to roll into a split. “So, what does a first selectman do?” I asked, allowing her to release more of her pent-up emotions in any way she pleased, and if that fed my sleuthing instincts, so be it.
    “According to my grandmother, any first selectman—especially my father—walks on water,”
    Isobel explained while skating beautifully. “But on Kingston’s Vineyard in particular, the first selectman is, foremost, the chairman of the board of selectmen. Historically, he’s like a mayor on a smaller scale, with similar ceremonial duties. On the island, he’s the town manager’s boss, town CEO, and chief administrative officer. He’s also a voting member of the board of selectmen and will often cast the tie-breaking vote for the finance and school boards, among others.”
    “So he runs the show?” I said, ready to slip my arms into the aqua miniskirted, button-front carhop outfit.
    “Actually, he does what his mother tells him to, though it’s really his campaign manager who does the dirty work. They’ve been friends since junior high. Ruben would lie, kill, steal, or die for my dad, but you didn’t hear that from me.”
    “I heard it from you,” Werner said. “Madeira . . .” He whistled his appreciation. “I’ll never look at pineapple whip the same way again.”
    “Chauvinist.” Twice in one day he sees my yellow bra. I closed the aqua outfit. “Have you been peeping and eavesdropping?”
    He stole the last brownie from the box, took a huge bite, and made a sound that gave me the shivers. “Mm. Hailey’s Pastries?”
    “You’re changing the subject, but yes.”
    “I wasn’t really eavesdropping,” he said, popping the last of my brownie into his mouth. “If you had looked up, you would have seen me come in. Ms. York, I nearly brought your father. Lock the door the next time you have a ‘you didn’t hear that from me’ moment. And you both might want to lock up before you strip, though I don’t mind in the least.”
    “Good advice,” I said. “You owe me a brownie.”
    “I owe you a knot on the head, too, but you don’t see me paying that back.”
    “Oh.” I heard myself from a wobbly distance. “I’m gonna be sick.”
    Seventeen
    The origins of clothing are not practical. They are mystical and erotic. The primitive man in the wolf-pelt was not keeping dry; he was saying: Look what I killed. Aren’t I the best?
    —KATHARINE HAMNETT
    I think Werner scooped me into his arms, because the next minute he was setting me down in the bathroom. Then I was roller-skating across a field of tarmac, Patti Page singing “The Tennessee Waltz” in the background. I zigzagged past other carhops in aqua outfits, and of course, they were going to and from a parking lot of big-ascot, tail-finned cool cars. I couldn’t be Isobel or any of the cousins. None of us had been alive in that era. And why I was the wearer, rather than the casual observer, like on the boat, I didn’t know. Maybe my placement in a vision had as much to do with the owner of the outfit. Single owner; I became that person. Multiple owners; I became an observer. Who knew? Was there such a thing as a guide to psychometric visions?
    At any rate, I was most likely Grand-mère, herself, since these were her clothes, though this didn’t seem like the job for a hotshot