Cloaked in Malice (14 page)

But no longer caught in my throat was the pleasure-sigh I’d released, because—heaven help me—I’d liked where we were going.

This I would never mention to another soul, but Dante Underhill, dead undertaker, was a damned good kisser.

However, I was grateful, oh so grateful, that I would never know what else he was good at.

For two beats, I appreciated finding myself in the shoes of another, outside, where the air was thin, still wearing the Cassini, but this time, I stood somewhere near the top of…the Eiffel Tower?

In this new persona, I saw a man I recognized—let’s call him White Beard—an impatient unnamed courier who looked decades older than his years, frowning as if he’d like for me to take a flying leap
off
the tower, without a net.

Suddenly I longed for Dante’s attentions. No I didn’t, naughty me. That was just a devil-you-knew kind of thing. I trusted Dante. Well, I used to.

White Beard, I now had to contend with, and so I would.

First, I wondered if he would try to make me fly, as in, would he instigate a free fall?

If he did, I might rip and tear his pristine white suit to shreds before I went over, because I’d fight him to the death.
And why I thought that might be necessary, I had no idea.

I understood from my persona that White Beard was here because of something he expected me to give him, and I sure in Hermès wished I knew what that was.

Unsure of how this woman, in whose body I now stood, got here, I deduced that she/I/we must have taken the elevator, because one of our legs felt as if we’d fallen down a set of stairs in the not too distant past. While several of our fingers looked as if they’d been broken at around the same time.

Work injuries, I knew. So…what kind of work? Whimper.

White Beard stepped closer and I got that urge to fight…to the death? But I wouldn’t go quietly.

“Bonjour, monsieur,”
I said, not wishing him to think me rude or mute. Some double agents were both. Losing one’s tongue could be a hazard of the business.

Eighteen

I was at Paris Fashion Week, working on a project where I was taking designers from Paris to Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Manila, to expose them to these markets.

—
DOSE
MAGAZINE, CANADA

What the zip a ma jig? Was I a spy? I mean, if I was working in the fashion industry, that would make sense, but since I wasn’t me, guess not.

Being in this particular body was quite the matter of how far I’d come and how far and low I’d fallen. But first I needed to nail this new decade.

White Beard wore his white suit with a thin tie, his pants, cuffed and pleated. Late fifties, early sixties?

I looked down to examine the Cassini dress in natural light for the first time. “Brilliant” would be the only word to describe the colors. The fitted waist A-lined to a calf-length skirt, its unique print on the chiffon overdress, utterly brilliant in every way, its black strapless under-layer seemingly
invisible, gave it a sheer colorful slit-necked bodice and trumpet sleeves that hung well below my hands, endowing me with both power and femininity.

The hat on my head, a basic muted turquoise pillbox, of Oleg Cassini fame and design, that I could see reflected in the metal rail, incorporated the dress’s colors in a fan dance of plumage to rival the fascinators at the royal wedding, a knowledge that only Madeira Cutler, the interloper in this decade, could bring to the table.

Checking further, and sliding deeper into my host’s skin, I saw that I carried, most appropriately in Paris, one of Hermès’s early Kelly bags, named for Princess Grace because she’d hid her “delicate condition” with one in a famed paparazzi photo.

I checked my shoes, too, as I pretended to search my bag for whatever the courier wanted, a note perhaps?

Little bone buttons, I was packing a nauseating matter of good news–bad news. My persona knew exactly how to use the small revolver in my bag, and her fingers itched to do exactly that. The good news, my fingers were stronger than hers—because hers had been bruised—so White Beard would live to spy another day. Meanwhile, I was wearing a pair of vintage “invisible” Ferragamos from the war years, 1947 to be precise. I recognized the invisible nylon uppers which characterized the famous style. Amazing.

I had dressed in Ferragamo, Cassini, and Hermès; how rich was I? And what price had I paid for my lifestyle?
In life and limb? In self-respect? In the cost to my family?

Who the scalloped-stitch was I that Dolly would have given me a one-of-a-kind designer original Cassini, which in the forties would have cost more than a small house? Not that any of it would matter, if this exchange didn’t go well.

Problem was, I didn’t seem to have a note to give White Beard, and I closed my fist firmly against using the gun. I gave him a seductive look that brought him closer and I spoke in a whisper: “Ferragamo, ’forty-seven. Kelly, ’fifty-seven” (the year Grace’s first child was born). I only hoped the fake-out sounded official.

I trembled and touched my brow for good effect, but the move only seemed to frighten him.

White Beard looked around, gave a half nod, turned, and disappeared.

I damned near passed out, with the sheer loss of blood to my head, given the depth of my relief and inner trembling.

As I searched for an elevator with my gaze, and I finally spotted one, the doors parted revealing the man I adored. My husband. Gray at the temples, suave, sophisticated. And as we met halfway, and kissed, he wove our fingers together.

That’s when Madeira Cutler realized that the spy’s approving husband had only four fingers on his right hand.

White Beard watched from behind a beam while I urged my husband into the elevator. When the door closed us inside, a million questions tumbled toward me, and as I tried to decide what to ask first, everything went dark.

I swallowed rather than choked, and recognized the taste of cola.

“Not blood?” I said, opening my eyes to see Nick propping me up on a bed with a bright quilt in a drab room.

Of course, I recognized the loose weave prints on the quilt. More scattered florals had been turned into stars for this quilt. Tonal aquas to blueberries. Soft pinks to raspberries.

On most farms, every quilt, apron, diaper, bonnet, dress, nightgown, dish towel, even the pillowcases, since some bags had scalloped edges, had arrived containing sugar, animal feed, or seed.

Paisley looked so “at home” in this “teen girl’s” bedroom, and as pleased with her surroundings, as she’d been in her toy room, this must be her room, the one she’d most recently occupied. “The quilt is beautiful,” I said, making up for my toy room faux pas.

She beamed. “I made it myself.”

“Good job. No, great job. Wonderful sense of color.”

“Thanks. Now what did you see when I touched you with the dress?” she asked.

You’re a bold one, I thought. And wouldn’t she freak if I said I was her grandmother in that scenario? Or
someone
very much in love with her grandfather.

She held up her right hand, touching her ring finger with her thumb. What a stinker; she was trying to read my expression, like she’d catch my eyes going wide at the knowledge of his missing finger.

Yes, I thought, stone-faced, I saw a man with a missing finger, but you’ll never know.

“Was my grandmother beautiful? I know that was her dress. I think she married Bepah in it.”

Whoa, hard not to look surprised that time. From my glimpse in the mirrored rail, I’d seen beneath the hat that she had black hair sleeked back with a perfect bun; out of style in that respect only. So maybe not as rich as I surmised. Maybe she’d borrowed Dolly’s dress for the wedding, as she may have borrowed the entire outfit I wore that psychometric trip.

I got the feeling that Paisley’s grandmother, Rose presumably, must have been very French, because I realized now that I’d had to wait for her to do her thinking in French then translate so I could understand.

“What happened?” Nick asked me.

I looked at Paisley, refusing to reveal my ability to read clothes, though she’d seen me zone enough times.

“I can take the truth,” she said. “I’ve been locked up my whole life. I have a right to know about my grandmother’s
wedding dress. It was Bepah’s prized possession.”

Maybe she did have a right to know, but not from me, and not at the risk of exposing my gift, or upsetting her, because frankly, we still didn’t know if Paisley carried a gun in her own purse. Family loyalties often ran deep. The sins of the ancestors and all that.

“Why does everyone treat me like a child?” Paisley shouted, a bit dramatic, and stomped down the backstairs like an eleven-year-old. Though maybe that was how she got attention here.

I remember Aunt Fee saying that I might live and work in New York—back when I did—but the minute I walked into my father’s house, I became his little girl. In other words, I expected him to fix my problems.

Paisley might simply be falling into type.

“Give,” Nick said.

“I sensed that her grandparents were spies,” I whispered, “or at least her grandmother was, likely with her grandfather’s knowledge.”

Nick sat straighter.

Because Paisley could be creeping up the near front stairs at this very moment, I didn’t mention the double agent part, which might mean cutthroats from more than one side would like to get their hands on Ms. Paisley Skye, or us for harboring her, or for family secrets, like whatever she might have witnessed in front of a dark church one night in the eighties.

Come to think of it, Paisley might have been in Paris the night her father was shot. “Hey,” I snapped. “Dolly’s in Paris. She—” I stopped.
She owned the Oleg Cassini dress before Paisley’s grandmother did.

Nineteen

This is my costume. I’m a homicidal maniac. They look just like everyone else.

—WEDNESDAY ADDAMS, THE ADDAMS FAMILY

“Nick,” I whispered so Paisley wouldn’t hear. “Next time you do a computer search for the location of our instigating crime, Paisley’s father’s death and her mother’s kidnapping, I mean, try doing a search for it in Paris. Also, I heard from a reliable source that Dolly’s brother owned the Mystic Photography Studio. Maybe Dolly went to France to find him or what’s left of his family.”