Isobel continued roller-skating.
Bette? “I just wondered.” . . . how she would sound through a voice modulator. Lizzie? I’d just carhopped in Lizzie’s roller skates. “Isobel, does your grandmother travel in a chauffeured powder blue stretch limo?”
Isobel stopped dead. “Oh, no. Has she been checking up on me again?”
“She has if Bette is an alias.”
“That’s her. Making sure I don’t screw up her plans and shame the family.”
I shook my head, gave Nick a meaningful look, and smoothed my bodice. “This carhop outfit I’m wearing used to belong to Isobel’s grandmother. I believe she was a carhop in her youth, right, Isobel?”
“Absolutely, at three different diners, actually.”
I’d learned from that vision that Grand-mère was self-made, and one man had given her a key wrapped in money. It didn’t seem connected to the first vision at all, but then, most early visions seemed disconnected.
Understanding lit Nick’s expression. He knew I zoned when I got a reading on a vintage outfit. Werner, however, did not know about my psychic gifts, and he never would. Nick had kept my secrets since we were kids, even the weird ones, like psychometry later in life. As for Werner, well, him mocking me by calling me glamazon in third grade, which inspired my “Little Wiener” comment, sort of put him out of the running for secret keeper. After Eve, Nick had been my second-main confidant, many times in a romantic way. Now, as a friend.
Werner was, and always had been, as he put it, my frenemy. As in “keep your frenemies close.” And I was certainly doing that today; yellow lace, front hook, push-up bra close. But these days, Werner and I were mostly leaving our polite, if distant, frenemy relationship behind, eerily rising above it toward a “What a messy, seam-ripping clustertuck this is. And give me the pinking shears so I can slit my throat, in a bloody jagged-edged sort of way.”
I looked at the two men in my life, sizing each other up, and thought, Why me?
“Miss York,” Werner said, addressing Isobel. “I need to ask you a few questions about your cousin’s death, if you don’t mind.”
“Should I take off my skates?”
Werner winced. “As long as you leave your dress on, I don’t care.”
Nick grunted.
I made us a pot of tea, just to have something to do. Nice, tummy-soothing chamomile tea. Isobel agreed to be questioned by Werner in the empty dressing room area so they could have some privacy.
“Cupcake?” Dolly Sweet called from the front door. “Are you here?”
“I have to get the bell back up on that door,” I said to no one in particular. “I can’t take all these surprise customers.”
The Sweets dropped in every Sunday like clockwork after twelve o’clock Mass. Personally, I think Dolly would have stopped going to church long ago if the shop wasn’t calling her name.
I knew what she wanted from her visits to Vintage Magic. She wanted, well, magic. She strutted on by me as I went to greet her and Ethel, and she went right to Paris When It Sizzles “to look for a new shawl,” she told her daughter-in-law. Ethel had no idea that her wild mother-in-law had never mended her wayward ways and was still having assignations with her old lover, Dante Underhill, ghost. For some reason Dolly, Fiona, and I were the only people who could see Dante, but I could never figure out why the giggles coming from Paris sizzling didn’t make an impression on Ethel, unless Dolly knew Ethel was too deaf to hear.
Nick winked at me.
“It kills me that you can’t talk,” I said, “and it’s all my fault. Want me to kiss it better?” After all, I had kissed Werner better. What was wrong with me?
Nick raised both hands to ward me off.
“Too mad at me or too sore?”
He opened both hands, like a mime who’s blameless, then he curled a finger in a come-hither way.
Werner came out of the dressing room, walked rudely between us—uber symbolic—raised my chin with a curl
Bette? “I just wondered.” . . . how she would sound through a voice modulator. Lizzie? I’d just carhopped in Lizzie’s roller skates. “Isobel, does your grandmother travel in a chauffeured powder blue stretch limo?”
Isobel stopped dead. “Oh, no. Has she been checking up on me again?”
“She has if Bette is an alias.”
“That’s her. Making sure I don’t screw up her plans and shame the family.”
I shook my head, gave Nick a meaningful look, and smoothed my bodice. “This carhop outfit I’m wearing used to belong to Isobel’s grandmother. I believe she was a carhop in her youth, right, Isobel?”
“Absolutely, at three different diners, actually.”
I’d learned from that vision that Grand-mère was self-made, and one man had given her a key wrapped in money. It didn’t seem connected to the first vision at all, but then, most early visions seemed disconnected.
Understanding lit Nick’s expression. He knew I zoned when I got a reading on a vintage outfit. Werner, however, did not know about my psychic gifts, and he never would. Nick had kept my secrets since we were kids, even the weird ones, like psychometry later in life. As for Werner, well, him mocking me by calling me glamazon in third grade, which inspired my “Little Wiener” comment, sort of put him out of the running for secret keeper. After Eve, Nick had been my second-main confidant, many times in a romantic way. Now, as a friend.
Werner was, and always had been, as he put it, my frenemy. As in “keep your frenemies close.” And I was certainly doing that today; yellow lace, front hook, push-up bra close. But these days, Werner and I were mostly leaving our polite, if distant, frenemy relationship behind, eerily rising above it toward a “What a messy, seam-ripping clustertuck this is. And give me the pinking shears so I can slit my throat, in a bloody jagged-edged sort of way.”
I looked at the two men in my life, sizing each other up, and thought, Why me?
“Miss York,” Werner said, addressing Isobel. “I need to ask you a few questions about your cousin’s death, if you don’t mind.”
“Should I take off my skates?”
Werner winced. “As long as you leave your dress on, I don’t care.”
Nick grunted.
I made us a pot of tea, just to have something to do. Nice, tummy-soothing chamomile tea. Isobel agreed to be questioned by Werner in the empty dressing room area so they could have some privacy.
“Cupcake?” Dolly Sweet called from the front door. “Are you here?”
“I have to get the bell back up on that door,” I said to no one in particular. “I can’t take all these surprise customers.”
The Sweets dropped in every Sunday like clockwork after twelve o’clock Mass. Personally, I think Dolly would have stopped going to church long ago if the shop wasn’t calling her name.
I knew what she wanted from her visits to Vintage Magic. She wanted, well, magic. She strutted on by me as I went to greet her and Ethel, and she went right to Paris When It Sizzles “to look for a new shawl,” she told her daughter-in-law. Ethel had no idea that her wild mother-in-law had never mended her wayward ways and was still having assignations with her old lover, Dante Underhill, ghost. For some reason Dolly, Fiona, and I were the only people who could see Dante, but I could never figure out why the giggles coming from Paris sizzling didn’t make an impression on Ethel, unless Dolly knew Ethel was too deaf to hear.
Nick winked at me.
“It kills me that you can’t talk,” I said, “and it’s all my fault. Want me to kiss it better?” After all, I had kissed Werner better. What was wrong with me?
Nick raised both hands to ward me off.
“Too mad at me or too sore?”
He opened both hands, like a mime who’s blameless, then he curled a finger in a come-hither way.
Werner came out of the dressing room, walked rudely between us—uber symbolic—raised my chin with a curl
Similar Books
