The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) (14 page)

“You have to admit that things went much more smoothly around there after I cleared that load of Jantzen bathing suits. The toilet started working again, remember?” Apple's bracelets jangled as she lifted a hand to push up her sunglasses. “It can’t hurt.”

“Oh, all right. I’m meeting up with Nina, Marnie’s old roommate, this afternoon, but I guess we have a couple of hours.”
 

“That’s plenty of time. The car’s just around the corner.” Apple picked up her pace.

Joanna was skeptical. Turning around her life now was way too much work for a little bit of herbs.

***

“First, let’s move these mannequins. We need privacy.” Apple lugged two mannequins—one adorned with a sky-blue lace dress with a full skirt and three rhinestone brooches pinned in a cluster, the other in a dusty brown 1950s suit with a thick mink band encircling the wrist of each sleeve—to build a screen between the tiki bar and the wall the store shared with Dot’s. With a rack of hats between them, they shut out the view of the back of the store from the front window.

 
“Where should we sit?” Joanna asked.

“There.” She pointed to the leopard rug near the dressing rooms.
 

Joanna arranged the folds of her broad-skirted sundress around her on the floor. She reached over to straighten the lace hem on the mannequin. “Okay. What’s the plan?”

Apple moved a 1960s
Vogue
from the end table and replaced it with a lunch plate from Dot’s. She pinched some herbs from a tin container in her purse and made a pile on the saucer. “Can’t say. It depends. I’ll clear my mind and see if I get any messages.” She struck a match from an old Brown Derby matchbook—amazing they still worked—and lit the herbs. She sat back and closed her eyes.

Joanna sighed. When Apple was communing with the spirits, it could take anywhere from a few minutes to half an hour. To pass the time, she looked around the store. She didn’t often see it from this angle. The hems of the black cocktail dresses against one wall hung in flounces, lettuce edges, and stiff shantung silk. The feathers on one cocktail hat shivered as if they adorned a head in conversation at a mid-century party. Funny. There must be a draft somewhere.

If Eve had her way, Joanna would be posting a “store closing” sale sign at Tallulah’s Closet soon. Eve didn’t care who paid the price as long as she got what she wanted. Joanna’s chest ached. She didn’t have the money to set up shop somewhere else. And the neighborhood was getting so much better. If she could hang on for another year or two, she might start to see enough profit to build some savings.

She leaned against the zebra chair behind her. The sweet, weedy smell of the mugwort reminded her of the woods where she grew up. Once, when she was ten or so, she lost her way in the forest. At first she didn't care. She sang and threw rocks in the creek. No one bothered her there. Then the woods darkened. She found an old logging road and ran down it, crying, until she heard her grandfather yelling her name in the distance. His flashlight barely pierced the thick night. That’s how she felt now, but no one was in the wings to save her.

She wanted to look at the time so not to be late for Nina, but Apple appeared to be deep in spirit
 
communication mode.
 

“Apple—”

“Hush.” Apple held up her hand. “Marnie. She hasn't yet moved on.”
 

“Moved on?”

“Passed over. She's still here, and she's—well, it feels like she's disappointed.”

“Angry or confused, I understand. But disappointed?”

Apple seemed troubled. “I don't know. I can't say I've ever felt this from a spirit. There was something else, too, but I can't put my finger on it.” She closed her eyes again. “Wait.”

A bus rumbled by. Someone, her voice undoubtedly amplified by too many vodka tonics, came out of the bar next store saying, “—Takes me for granted. Like he thinks I’m just going to sit home while—” The voice faded.

Apple opened her eyes. “Oh Joanna.”

“What?”

She hesitated. “It’ll get worse. Maybe much worse.”

The back of Joanna’s neck prickled.
 

“Something about a baby, too. Something about a baby, and she’s sorry.” Despite the store’s stuffiness, Apple rubbed her arms. “I don't think we should be messing around in this.”

“I thought you said you were clearing energy so that everything could get back to normal.”

“You don’t believe in any of this, uh, hocus pocus anyway, right?” Apple quickly replied. She took a deep breath and exhaled. “We need to leave all of this alone and let the police do their jobs. Give the safe deposit box key to the police. And I’m glad we’re rid of that coat.”

Joanna stood to return the mannequins back to their original places. “Well, I’m not glad about losing the coat. It was special to Marnie, and it’s special to me. Plus, I tried to give the key to the police, but they didn’t want anything to do with it.” She fluffed the skirt of the blue-dress clad mannequin.
 

Apple turned a glass over the mugwort to extinguish its smoke. “Then don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Driving across town, Joanna pondered Apple’s warning. The “baby.” Surely that meant Troy. She wanted her old life back: calm evenings with a novel, a good dinner, a hot bath. Marnie’s safe deposit box had to be at the crux of her troubles. If she could figure out what was in it, who wanted it, all this trouble would go away.
 

She pulled into a parking spot on the street around the corner from Pal’s Shanty, a seafood bar not far from the Wet Spot. The emergency brake squawked as she yanked it. Nina was so nice to suggest they meet again. Maybe she’d even know something about Troy’s father.

Nina was already seated at a bar-high table when Joanna arrived. A beer and a tin bucket of clams sat in front of her. The murmur of friendly conversation drifted from the bar running across the other side of the room. Nina raised a hand in greeting, the charms on her bracelet glinting.

“Have some clams. Garlic bread is on the way. It’s just a beer bar, but they have a decent house white wine.” Nina waved at a waitress. She’d twisted her coal black hair into a side bun and planted a silk orchid in it.

“Glass of house white for me, thanks.” Joanna perched on a bar stool. “More fish eating?”

“You got it. Every time I see a fish stick hit the pie hole, I smile.” She seemed relaxed. “I thought the memorial service went pretty well, don’t you?”

“I do. Thank you for everything you did to make it happen.”

“I was glad to do it. It was nice to see everyone together again. Been a long time.” She focused on Joanna. “What’s with you? You seemed kind of worked up. I thought the service would calm you down. Isn’t it what you wanted?”

“Yes. Sure.” White wine in a thick glass alit in front of her. She took a sip. From a box—the bubbles, if not the taste, were a dead giveaway—but passable. “Yesterday I found out Marnie had already been dead at least a day when I found her. That means—”

“Somebody brought her, dead, to your store and dumped her. Honey, I’m sorry.” She reached out and patted Joanna’s arm. “It just gets stranger, doesn’t it?”

“It was strange enough when I thought she broke in, then died. But now....” She took another sip of wine.

“Now you’re wondering why you were chosen?”

“That’s it.”

Nina shook her head. “Marnie’s life has been a cipher. Always. She couldn’t even die in a normal way, poor thing.”

“It’s funny, but I—” She paused, feeling embarrassed. “I feel like she chose me somehow. Like I was special to her. The last time I saw her she called me ‘family’.”

Nina leaned back and examined Joanna. “I don’t want you to take this the wrong way, but you come off as a little reserved. Maybe even stand-offish. So was Marnie. She might have connected with that.”

“Maybe.” Nina’s remark, though true, stung.
 

“She made a lot of choices that alienated her from people, but those choices never seemed to get her anywhere.” Nina signaled to the waitress for another beer. “Not that you’d do that, honey.”

“Like what?”

“Her choices? Well, moving to Portland to dance at Mary’s Club for one thing. Her father disowned her, and her mother had to sneak away to write letters to her. She lost family, friends, to do what she did.”

 
“Marnie reminded me a little of my grandmother. I always kind of wished they could have met. Grandma even grew up somewhere near Marnie, I think.”

Nina touched her hand. “What was her name?”

“Helen. Helen Miller.” Saying her grandmother’s name warmed her. “Pretty common name, I know.”

“Funny. I heard Marnie talk about a Helen. Who knows?”

Nina was humoring her, but Joanna appreciated the gesture. “She moved to Portland for Franklin, her boyfriend, right?”

“Sure. But look how far that got her. You’d think if he really cared for her he wouldn’t have let her dance. Or he would have married her. Instead, he went and married someone else and left her—”

“To hook up with Don.”

“Among others.” Nina played with her beer bottle. “Don wasn’t the only one, you know.”

The regulars along the bar, mostly retirees, chatted. Talk about the Trail Blazers basketball team drifted over. “And then there was Troy. I wonder who his father is?”

Nina pressed garlic bread into the juice left behind by the clams. “I’ve been wondering about that, too. You know, I even wondered if it might be Chick Remmick.”
 

“The congressman? You’re joking.”
 

“They knew each other. Had an affair, even, when he was district attorney.”

”Wow. I’m surprised—and yet, not really surprised after all.” Chick Remmick and Marnie. That would explain Laura Remmick’s interest in Marnie. “I went to Remmick’s rally this morning. I admit, the same thought crossed my mind when I saw him on stage, but I couldn’t believe it.”

“Their affair was no secret. Didn’t last long, but still.”

Coming to see Nina had been a good idea. Nina was the first square lead she’d had about the key. Joanna lowered her voice. “Marnie sold me a coat, and a safe deposit box key fell out of it after she left. I keep thinking she must have put a birth certificate in the safe deposit box. Something proving who Troy’s father is. And now—”

“Now with the election—”

“Exactly.” Joanna tapped the table. “The election is tight. If it got out that he fathered a child by a stripper, he’d be toast.”

Nina pushed her now-empty plate away and leaned forward. “This key. Do you still have it?”
 

Joanna hesitated a moment before responding. No. It couldn’t be Nina who broke in. What would be her motive? “It’s in my purse right now.” At some point, though, whoever wanted the key was going to figure out she had it. She dropped the clam shell she held on a napkin and pushed it away. “Detective Crisp, the one investigating Marnie’s death, says she didn’t have a safe deposit box.”

Nina shrugged. “Marnie was no dummy. If she had something to hide, she would have figured out a way to have a safe deposit box that didn’t tie straight back to her name.” Nina leaned back and nodded. “A shame, really.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s a good congressman, and he’ll be a good senator. Why should something that happened years ago get in the way? I mean, Remmick was a bachelor then. It’s not like he was cheating on his wife.”

“But what about Marnie? Someone killed her and moved her to my store then stole the coat.”

“Killed her? The papers said she died of natural causes. A heart attack.”

Joanna remembered Nina’s outburst at the memorial service. She hadn’t been so sanguine about Marnie’s death then. She’d insisted Marnie was murdered. “But moving her to my store?”

Nina took a long draw of her beer. “Maybe he wanted her to be somewhere someone could find her. Not leave her alone at home for God knows how long.” She tucked the silk flower firmly behind her ear. “Honey, I’ve seen a lot in my years here on planet Earth. I wish we could say that good and bad are as clear as black and white, but they aren’t. Take marriage for instance. Gary wasn’t my first choice, but you know what?”

“What?” Joanna answered as expected.

“He’s done right by me every step of the way.” She waved a hand in front of her. “Oh, I’m not easy. No sir. I’ve put him to the test, but Gary has been there for me. Sure, maybe he’s no Alan Ladd, but I can count on him. You know what I mean? In the end, that’s what matters. After all, passion dies.” Nina’s beer was empty. Maybe that accounted for her lost look. “Right?” Nina prompted.

“Right.”
 

“If Chick Remmick had a kid by Marnie, well, good by him. I wouldn’t hold it against him. It was a long time ago.” She sighed. “And look at the alternative. That bigot, Mayer. Now that one. I could tell you stories about that one.”

Nina went on to regale her with a story about Mayer’s indiscretions at the clubs in the 1960s, but Joanna’s thoughts were on Remmick. Nina might be right. Perhaps Marnie had a child by him, put the baby up for adoption, and locked up the birth certificate. With the election, Remmick wanted to make sure no one found out about Troy. Sure, in this day and age it wouldn’t matter to most people, but a surprise love child could definitely be a distraction. Remmick may have visited Marnie, and in her weakened condition she died. Maybe Marnie had told him about her, and he brought her to Tallulah’s Closet so she’d be found. It could have happened that way.

If Remmick were Troy’s father, what was the harm in giving him the safe deposit box key? Then her troubles would be over. Then everything could go back to normal.

***

Back home, Joanna reached for the phone and wandered to the front window, the phone’s cord dragging behind her. She dialed Andrew's number.

“Hey there,” Andrew answered. “Calling to pledge receipts from every disco dress you sell to the Remmick campaign?”

“Funny.” She didn’t laugh.

“Did you make it to the rally?”

“Sure did. It was inspirational.” Or would have been had she stayed for the whole thing. “I didn't know if you'd answer the phone, you're so busy these days.”