Cloaked in Malice (17 page)

“I could if I had a memory,” she snipped defensively.

I hooked arms with Nick. “But no one knows we’re here.”

“The fisherman who rescued me in the
Concertina
knows. You talked to him this morning, Nick. And whoever rented you our boat knows.”

Nick ran a hand through his hair. “That’s what I get for letting my guard down. I left on a case this morning, but didn’t know it, so I wasn’t as judicious as I should have been. You’re right, both men knew where we were headed.”

“Do you think that waterspout whirlpool is normal? Because if it is,” Paisley said, “why didn’t either man warn us about it? Or do you think it had to do with the funky weather we’ve been having? Not to mention the tornados and earthquakes in other parts of the country.”

“She’s right,” I said. “The waterspout and resultant whirlpool could have been a fluke, which doesn’t change anything—”

“Except to cast less suspicion on McCreadie and the man who rented us the boat. We’re still stuck here.”

“Didn’t you ever question your existence here, Paisley?” I’d spoken as quickly as the thought came to me.

She huffed. “What was there to question? Did I see anybody around here living a
different
kind of life?”

“No, I guess you didn’t.” Put properly in my place, I turned to my hero. “If I may be so bold, this is your forte, Special Agent Jaconetti, and I’ve heard that you can get yourself out of anything.”

“Myself period, a man willing to take risks, because he has only himself to hurt, if things go wrong. Getting you two out safely is another problem entirely. It’s taking a chance on hurting two people I care about.”

I was charmed despite myself. “If you want to get technical about it, then, what’s next to get us all back to the mainland?”

He hooked an arm around my neck. “Feel like building a raft, Huck?”

“Er, I think not.”

He reeled me in and kissed my nose. “Then we go back and stay at the farmhouse tonight.”

Paisley screamed, “No!” louder than I screamed my own denial, and between us, we scared the birds from the trees.

Twenty-two

Fashion does not reflect nostalgia for the past, but an eternal present that lies beyond the past.

—BARBARA VINKEN

As we made our way back, Paisley continued refusing to return to the farm where she was raised, however logical the suggestion.

“No, no, no, no!”

Steps behind us, she sang her song, not at all joyful, but grudging, and most definitely not to herself. “I said I would
not
come back here, and you talked me into coming anyway. But I am certainly not
sleeping
here, not that I sleep anywhere, ever, especially not here.”

I turned to wait for her. “We could pass the time by codesigning your wild wardrobe. Do you have drawing paper?”

“I used to do all my artwork on rolls of butcher paper,”
Paisley admitted with a wrinkled nose. “Will that do?”

“Ask Tunney how much butcher paper I snitched from him over the years. One Christmas, he gave me a full roll. My father thought we were both nuts.”

Nick chuckled. “I can picture the exact look on your father’s face,” he said, snapping his revolver back into its holster.

“You must feel safer now,” I said.

Nick gave me a one-raised-shoulder affirmative. “I’m reasonably certain there’s nobody here who wasn’t before. Whoever sabotaged the rope, cut and run.”

“Paisley seems to have calmed down about being stuck here overnight,” I observed as she got sidetracked picking a variety of wild orchids in purples, yellows, and greens.

“Paisley, let’s use those as a print for one of your dresses.”

She relaxed into a smile. “I’d like that.”

Nick brought me close for a hip-to-hip hug-and-walk. “I think designing her a wardrobe was inspired. Good job.”

I got the warm fuzzies from head to toe and not simply from the compliment. “Thanks.”

“While you two are designing, I’m going to try and break the code and get into the computer.”

“I thought that would get you in trouble with the Feds.”

“It’s an emergency now that we’re stranded here. Motivation is everything. Your hair would stand on end if I told you what I’ve gotten away with in the name of making a getaway.”

“I’d probably sleep better if you did tell me. My imagination is pretty wild, and some nights, when you’re on assignment, I sit up worrying about you and conjuring some pretty scary situations.”

That netted me an ear nuzzle.

Paisley stopped beside us and crossed her arms. “You two aren’t going to sleep together at the farm tonight, are you? Because I’m here to tell you…Yuck!”

For some reason, her disgust struck me as funny. “But at my father’s house—”

“No details, no excuses,” Paisley said. “My house, my rules. No doorway is more than a few feet from the next. And don’t suggest a bedroom on a different floor for the two of you. Now that I know those are caskets in the cellar, I’ll swim back before I, or anyone else, sleeps there again.”

“Don’t look daggers at me,” I said. “I don’t plan to sleep. Do you, Nick?”

“Not on your life.”

Paisley’s hiccup turned to a half sob, and she lowered her head, presumably so we wouldn’t see her emotions so clearly. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I think I can get through it if we stay up all night designing clothes.”

Nick used his stylus to get us back in the gates, and he relocked
them once we were safely inside. “Now, Paisley,” he said, “where are your get-in and get-out trees? I want to rig them with some kind of primitive warning signal.”

She led us right to them, one after the other, and my doubts about her started to recede.

“What do you have around the farm that makes noise when jostled?” Nick asked.

“Belled harnesses from the horses that pulled the sleigh wagon in winter?”

I clapped my hands. “Did you go dashing through the snow?”

“Come again?” Puzzled, she led us toward a shed. “We used the sleigh wagon to haul wood for the fire, and any animals that froze overnight.”

Slap of meaty reality upside the head.
“What happened to the hauling horses?” I dared. “Your Pap didn’t slaughter them, too, did he?”

“Well, yes, he did, some time ago, when they were aging, and he fed them to the other animals.”

Barf.
“Too much information.”

“It amounted to sending them to the glue factory, Pap said back then, and you asked.”

Nick coughed as he sorted belled harnesses. “She’s got you there, Mad. You asked.”

“More fool me. Remind me to keep my mouth shut from now on.”

Nick opened his mouth to respond, and I cuffed him on the shoulder. “Not one word.”

“Where’s that old truck you learned to drive on?” Nick asked. “In case we need a quick getaway. Not that it would get us far, but it might keep us ahead of trouble.”

“In the shed behind the barn, in pieces. He was fixing it when he died.”

“Great.” Nick sighed. “Before you two go inside and start designing clothes, Paisley, can you get me into the computer room again? I plan to try and e-mail for help.”

“Who will you e mail?” I asked. “I mean, I can give you Eve’s, Fiona’s, and Werner’s addresses if you want.”

“Write them down,” he said. “I’ll take anybody who’ll get Werner to rescue us from this island.”

After Paisley gave him access to the computer room, she took a roll of butcher paper from the table outside the meat locker. And I, stupid me, peeked into the locker to see the meat hooks hanging from the ceiling. Unfortunately, I could imagine Smoots and Teets as humanoids hanging from them. “I wanna go home.” I’d whined and I knew it.

“You think you’ve got problems?” Paisley snorted. “For me, this
is
home.”

“Well, don’t worry about me sleeping tonight. I’d be afraid to shut my eyes.”

“Good,” she said. “We’ll keep each other awake.”

At the house, she led me to her sewing room—yellow wallpaper with tiny pink rosebuds, white eyelit curtains, bureau scarves, and doilies—upstairs front room, opposite her bedroom.

She chose her favorite patterns as starting points. Her fashion eye wasn’t designer, or even her own, but it was classic, and I had some ideas that got her excited.

I was right about Butterick Pattern 2919. And I realized that I’d recently seen a version of it in a fashion magazine captioned “Lights! Glamour! Style!” on a certain TV personality wearing “Haute Couture” from a
major
design house, to a screening afterparty.

The difference between 2919 and the Haute Couture version: contrasting capped sleeves, hem above the knee, no neck slit, and four added pockets—two gothic, two zip diagonals.

Moral of the story? Classic is classic is classic…forever.

My drawings of miniskirts, fitted tops, and pleated, straight-leg slacks had Paisley over the moon and looking like a guilty little girl because of it.

Was she never allowed to be happy?

She nearly fainted when she saw the bathing suit I sketched. “It’s so you.” Of course, she never went swimming. “I can’t wait for you to start classes with Eve,” I said. “She’ll help me whip you into the new century, and we’ll take you out clubbing, and for a lobster bake on the beach.”

If you’re not a psychopath and didn’t off every living thing on the funny farm, I added for my own benefit. Of course, I couldn’t dwell on the worst-case scenario, or I’d be looking for an ax to defend myself.

So we talked style, while I designed pieces to her fashion taste, which, with a little bit of prodding, was becoming more unmistakably “Classic Paisley, Vintage-style.”

We worked until we went looking for food around ten that night. I couldn’t eat any of the meat Pap butchered; it was the horse thing. But we shared peanut butter sandwiches from the preserves jar she let me choose, just one of many.

Yes, homemade peanut butter on homemade bread, the choice of which sliced, frozen loaf also being mine. We then pan-seared the slices to a warm thaw while the peanut butter melted—yum. And then we each added a piece of frosted chocolate cake, also my choice from a veritable bakery of frozen “confections,” as Paisley called them.

We prepared the same repast for Nick, for when he came in, and went back to designing.

Nick called my name around two in the morning, the interruption of our focused silence jump-starting our mutual fear factors.

“Up here,” I called.

He came, holding up his sandwich with a nod of thanks.

“You look beat,” I said. “Who answered your call? Who’s coming for us?”

“Nobody. I couldn’t break the code. That computer’s got more passwords than Homeland Security, and it’s nearly as well protected. I’ll try again tomorrow. I need some shut-eye. I’ll go throw myself on a sofa downstairs.”

“No!” I quickly said while Paisley bit her lip. “There’s a sofa in this room, and we want to be with you.”

“We want to know that you’re here protecting us,” Paisley added. “You promised not to sleep, remember?”

“Right. You want me to
rest
in here, with the light on, while you’re working?” he asked, getting our reasonable request straight.

“I’ve seen you
rest
on a folding chair at an outdoor band concert with my niece Kelsey using your nose as a gear shift.”

“She’s a cute kid.” He chuckled. “You got me.”

I held up a piece of butcher paper. “Look what we—”

His snore broke the sound barrier.

“Boy, you weren’t kidding. He can sleep anywhere. You know, he sounds like a pig at feeding time.”

“He’ll be happy to hear that.”

She balled up a vintage shoulder pad and tossed it at him.

His snort changed tone and he readjusted his position.

Every few minutes, one of us wadded something and threw
it at him—fabric, pattern pieces, butcher paper, something light and amusing.

Nick swatted everything like dream flies and slept on.

At about dawn, Paisley and I must have fallen asleep, until some thud made us raise our heads from the sewing table at the same time.

Paisley took a pencil to the butcher paper. “Voices,” she wrote. “Somebody’s outside.”