ANNETTE BLAIR

       NY Times Bestselling Author

       Magic, Mystery, Laughter...and Happily Ever After

                                               

          

                  HOME

  EMAIL ANNETTE
                    

Annette Blair, NY Times & USA Today Bestseller

 

   

SKIRTING

THE GRAVE

Vintage Magic Mystery 4

EXCERPT

 

One

    She wore a short skirt and a tight sweater and her figure described a set of parabolas that could cause cardiac arrest in a yak. —WOODY ALLEN, GETTING EVEN, 1973

     

Eve Meyers, my BFF, a gothic fashionista with a steampunk edge, tall in her black and brass Lindi Buckle Leather Booties, invaded my vintage dress shop with mischief aforethought. "Madeira? Did you ever tell Nick about that thermonuclear kiss you shared with Werner the night you and the detective slept together?"

Even though we were alone right now, I grew warm in my fifties Lilli Ann flared-sleeved, cinch-waisted, pencil-skirted suit. I’d purchased it at a miracle of a bargain, though a rabid collector would pay a grand for the set.

You had to love the goods you sold, which I aced, but right now, I wasn’t loving my BFF too darn much.

Eve knew she’d hit home when she turned to face my

beverage buffet. "Caffeine. Gotta have more caffeine. My morning fix has left the building." She chose a zinger of a caramel tea as black and powerful as her outfit.

From the back, her long, straight hennaed hair spilled over the stand-up collar of her cotton point textured faille jacket, same fabric as her skintight cropped pants. For contrast, I’d designed it to be worn with that bold-print girlie top—earth tones hidden among the black—a barely there ruffle flowing just below the cropped waist of her jacket.

Her necklace of assorted copper gears picked up the red sheen from her hair, which she flipped as she turned back to me. "If you didn’t tell Nick," she said, "you’re about to have your chance. I hear he’s on his way home." She sipped her tea and eyed me with calculation over the rim of a blue Wedgewood teacup.

"Werner and I did not sleep together!" I snapped. "We were out cold, both of us concussed . . . in the same bed. There’s a difference."

Dropping the subject, I stacked the fifties outfits I’d sold earlier that morning, to be worn at my sister Brandy’s costume fund-raiser this coming Saturday night. "Be right back. Have to top my list of alterations with this lot."

Eve leaned on the doorjamb at the base of my enclosed stairway sipping and watching as I climbed. "If I didn’t know better," she said, "I’d think you’re ignoring me."

What I chose to ignore, I acknowledged to myself, was the amusement in her voice. I hung the items to be altered in my work corner, boxed in by several antique sewing machines and a few of today’s finest technical wonders that did everything but wear the clothes.

Back downstairs in my sales area, I switched out winter purses for summer box bags in straws, metallics, Bakelite, and Lucite, and showcased their funky shapes: rectangle, trapezoid, beehive, hatbox, lunch box, not to mention the fifties icon: the sleek single-clasp, rectangular box clutch, a purse known to endow its owner with ladylike behavior.

"You and Werner can’t escape your scorching past," Eve warned, arms crossed, eyes bright, smile at half-mast. "Neither can you escape me."

Atop the purse pyramid, I placed a white oval Lucite Llewellyn bag, the bottom edged with a two-inch, molded, silver floral band. "Gorgeous," I said.

"Face it," Eve persisted, the kiss did happen. "You and Werner couldn’t both have dreamed it. Besides, he’s the one who called it ‘thermonuclear.’"

"Get out, Meyers!"

Eve’s grin grew. "You didn’t tell Nick, did you?"

I huffed. "First I said I didn’t want to talk about it. Then when I tried, Nick didn’t want to hear it. So first we avoided the subject and then we avoided each other. Fact is, Nick’s been on one secret assignment or another for nearly the entire four months since."

Eve waved. "Excuses, excuses."

"No, seriously, the FBI takes advantage of their special agents that way. Plus we took an official time-out before he left."

"Still, on or off, you and Nick have always stayed friends. What did you do, lose his cell phone number or something?"

I sighed inwardly. "For your amusement, Meyers, I’ll admit that Nick seems to have changed his cell phone number."

Before my eyes, she turned into a member of gossip central. "So you did try to call him?"

"Of course, I did." Once, after a lonely six-pack of Dos Equis. Bad idea: the call and the beer. Both had come back to haunt me.

"Hah!" Eve did smug well. Probably reading me like a book. "You procrastinated beyond what was reasonable, confession-wise." she said. "Now he’s either pouting or plain old steaming."

I turned on the air-conditioning. "Thanks, Sherlock Poppycock. I never would have figured that out."

"Hey." Eve tapped her lips with a finger. "Ever think that maybe Werner told Nick about the kiss?"

I raised a brow. "Your optimistic encouragement is underwhelming."

Her watch alarm rang. "Gotta run. If Kyle’s metallic gold, stretch Lamborghini is already sitting in my driveway, it’s giving my frugal, old-world mother a heart attack."

"I can’t believe you’re still dating Kyle DeLong. Multibillionaires are so not your style."

Eve swallowed, hand on the doorknob. "You’re trying to scare me to pay me back. Sure, he’s practically a record for me, but he’s just a plaything."

"A plaything who’s buying a mansion in the town where you live."

"Because having him stay at my house would kill my mother, literally."

"Let’s hear it for the odd couple," I said.

Kyle’s mother, Broadway actress Dominique DeLong, died under suspicious circumstances this winter, and when we went to the city to help find her killer, cupid struck Eve and Kyle at first sight.

"Have fun mansion shopping," I called, waving her off. "Hey," I added before she closed the shop door and headed for her Mini Cooper parked right outside. "Have Kyle enter the Lamborghini in Brandy’s vintage car show Saturday, as part of the Carousel of Love fund-raiser. The Nurture Kids Foundation is his mother’s kind of charity."

"Great idea. See you around." Eve closed her door but powered down her window. "Please don’t tell Nick about kissing Werner until I get back, ’kay? I don’t wanna miss the fun."

I gave her a dubious look. "Payback’s a stitch." I watched her pout as she drove away.

My Out to Lunch sign and the click of the shop lock became an imperative to release my breath. I needed, at the very least, a thimbleful of control and a bit of downtime to sort some sticky issues, Nick being only one of several.

I’d barely sat when the shop phone rang. "Vintage Magic; how can I dress you?"

"Give me Isobel," demanded a chipmunk with attitude before he/she/it demonstrated, not quite beneath its breath, an impressive and varied case of potty mouth. The obscenities ended with the same demand they’d started with: "Give me Isobel," delivered like Darth Vader on helium, or a squirrel on steroids; take your pick.

Isobel York? I wondered. The intern I was taking under my Vintage Magic wing, despite my strong—and growing stronger—reservations?

As if sensing my angst, Dante Underhill, my shop-bound ghost, appeared beside me. We couldn’t even touch, my friend the resident spirit and I, but I felt safer with him beside me.

The voice, no matter how silly, carried a threat I didn’t know how to answer. "I beg your pardon? Can you repeat that?" I stalled while my heart raced.

"What time is Isobel due?" the now rabid rodent asked. While less threatening than a full-out black-hearted villain, the critter hadn’t yet mastered its audio modulation device.

Panicked humor aside, I gave in to a whole-body shiver. "Who is this?" I asked.

"Her brother," came a deeper, more cavernous voice, followed by a charged pause. "Ya hear me?" Deep Throat asked. "I’m her brother!"

So . . . I was hiring an intern I didn’t want, whose brother best aped James Earl Jones and tiny striped rodents. Fact is, his emphasis on the word "brother" made me wonder if it might not be a woman. Voice changers could easily be set to mask gender. They were computers, after all, so Eve studied them in grad school when we lived together in New York. They could make inexperienced users sound like deep-voiced, slow-talking drones or fast-talking chipmunks. This caller was all over the map.

Dante placed his hand on his heart, like he’d protect me, and he meant it, but unless Wrath Vader stepped foot in my shop—which I so did not want—I was on my own.

Well. Not entirely on my own. I could call Detective Werner.

Yeah, that Werner. The one I slept with.

Not.

Two

    Only the minute and the future are interesting in fashion—it exists to be destroyed. If everybody did everything with respect, you’d go nowhere. —KARL LAGERFELD

     

I placed the phone on its charger and rubbed my arms. Isobel York hadn’t started interning yet, and one of her theoretical relatives—who did not sound the least loving—had already scared the wooly knobby knits out of me.

Brandy, Brandy, Brandy. What do you know about this friend of a friend from the Peace Corps?

 

Amazon  B&N 

reviews

 home

top

Hit Counter

Awards

 

fan quotes

       
       

 

   

© Annette Lague Blair, Last website updates: 08/08/2017 11:01 PM