Madeira Cutler is surprised and saddened to receive by
special messenger the gown she'd long ago designed for her
friend and fellow vintage clothing fan, Dominique DeLong.
Receiving the dress can only mean one thing: Dom is dead. A
phone call from Dom's son, Kyle, confirms Mad's suspicions.
Dom died under mysterious circumstances while onstage
performing in Diamond Sands, and the diamonds she was
wearing for the performance disappeared somewhere between
the theater and the hospital.
Dom knew of Mad's ability to "read" clothing worn by
others, and challenges her friend to discover the identity
of her killer. With her best friend as backup, Mad travels
to New York to help Kyle with the necessary arrangements.
There she meets the people Dom considered the parasites in
her life, any one of them with powerful motivations to end
her life. Mad also discovers Dom was keeping a few secrets
of her own, secrets that could easily lead to murder. With
only snippets of seemingly unrelated visions to guide her,
Madeira must discover a killer's identity before she
becomes the next victim.
Annette Blair's DEATH BY DIAMONDS is the latest in
the Vintage Magic mystery series. The story moves along at
a fast pace, helped along by a fascinating history lesson
in vintage couture. Madeira is assisted in her amateur
sleuthing by best friend Eve and the two men in her life,
FBI agent Nick and Police Detective Werner. Her
relationship with the two men continues to become more and
more complicated as the series progresses, and there's no
doubt she's going to have a tough time deciding which of
these two dynamic men is a better fit in her life. A book
by Annette Blair is a guaranteed roller coaster
ride, and DEATH BY DIAMONDS in no exception!
When Madeira Cutler receives a dawn delivery, she never
expects it to be a gown she designed in fashion school for
a Broadway Star, now a dear friend. Neither does she
expect to find a note inside: "Mad, sweetie, if you have
this, and not from my hand, I’m dead." How did Dominique
DeLong die on stage in front of hundreds of people? And at
who's hand?
Excerpt
After I turned the sign to Open, I took a pair of scissors
to the package delivered by a man dressed like a flying
squirrel.
Leery about touching a potential vintage clothing item I
knew nothing about, because of my visions and the unsolved
murders they’d dragged me into, I carefully parted tissue
layers, touching only the paper.
I recognized the dress immediately but could hardly wrap my
brain around having it in my shop. About ten years ago,
while in fashion school, I won the opportunity to design
this awesome seafoam gown, trimmed in pricey cubic
zirconias, for a Broadway actress, now a dear friend. But
since she, too, collected designer vintage and one-of-a-
kind originals, I couldn’t imagine why she would have sent
a dress we both loved back to me.
Dominique DeLong had always been a diehard note writer and
wouldn’t send an email if her life depended on it. So I
fished through the tissue, careful not to touch the dress,
and finally found the familiar embossed parchment envelope
that could not have slipped to the bottom of the box, since
it was taped—aka hidden?—between layers and layers of
tissue.
Keeping my itchy fingers away from the dress in the box, I
opened the envelope carefully and tried to shrug off the
shivering heebie-jeebies raising the hair along my nape and
arms.
Mad, sweetie, Dominique had written. I always
wanted you to have this. I hoped someday to give it to you,
in person. If you have it, and not from my hand, I’m dead.
I wanted to get it to you before it was too late. At any
rate, "Tag. You’re it. Run, do not walk, to the nearest
exit."
Use your talents wisely. Love, Dom.
****
"Is this some kind of sick joke?" I snapped, denial beating
in my chest. "Dominique DeLong is dead?"
"I’ll say." Eve sat forward, waking Chakra so the kitten
stretched and teased the newspaper into playing with
her. "It’s all over the Times," Eve said, holding the paper
from Chakra’s reach. "It says here that the actress
collapsed during an off-Broadway musical performance of
Diamond Sands."
"I don’t believe you." I’d tried to speak emphatically, but
my words trailed off in a telltale whisper.
Denial. Worry. Despair.
The sound of Chakra pouncing on the newspaper like a baby
kangaroo as Eve turned the headlines my way woke me to the
truth and tore at my subconscious denial, until I focused
on the visual: The headlines proclaiming her death and the
picture of Dom at her most glamorous broke me.
For once the newspapers weren’t touting Dominique DeLong’s
downward-spiraling career. The fact that they printed such
a great picture told the story. The first rule of
journalism: The skank cat you clawed yesterday is today’s
Saint Feline, if she’s dead.
Dominique DeLong was indeed . . . gone.
I bit my lip, willed my tight chest to ease and my rising
tears to recede. My trembling legs made it necessary for me
to lower myself to my tapestried fainting couch. "Dom would
rather have died on Broadway than off," I said, more to
myself than Eve, aware I was in shock.
"At least there were witnesses," Eve said. "Hundreds of
them, according to the papers."
My stomach flipped, and while I hadn’t been aware that I
shivered, Dominique’s note trembled in my
hand. "Witnesses?" Until that moment, I hadn’t acknowledged
the need, but the word in print surely implied suspicion
and the need for witnesses.
On the other hand, it was a damned crying crime that Dom
passed away in her forties with scads of untapped talent
and star potential gone to waste.
No real crime had been categorically stated. It was the
embryonic sleuth in me that grasped suspicion and looked
for someone to blame. Wasn’t it?
Chakra sensed my panic, jumped ship, left Eve, and leapt
into my lap, curling against me. My kitten had the ability
to physically soothe the angst in my solar plexus chakra—
hence her name.
It wasn’t long before her uncanny ability to ease the
clutch in my gut had the desired effect. Not that my sorrow
dissipated, but my intention to live reestablished itself.
I sighed and ran my hand down my baby cat’s soft
fur. "Chakra’s grown less yellow with age. Have you
noticed?" I asked Eve, who looked back at me with silent
understanding and soul-mate commiseration.
"She’s more cream now with this hint of a gold-tan in her
forming stripes." Eve’s interest said she understood that
concentrating on Chakra soothed me like nothing else could.
Well, Nick could, in his own way, but he was another story.
Eve looked down at her paper and continued reading, then
she gasped and sat forward. "You know the infamous diamonds
that Dominique wore around her eyes like a super bling eye
mask during the finale of each show?"
"The ones she wore while she sang ‘Diamonds Are a Girl’s
Best Friend’?" I confirmed. "The priceless gems loaned to
the production by its sponsor, Pierpont Diamonds, as a
publicity stunt?" I asked, trying to follow the weird
change of topic.
"Right. They disappeared sometime between Dominique’s death
and her arrival at the hospital. She was DOA."
That fast, I pulled my hands from the vicinity of the dress
box, because this was no time to slip and touch its
potentially brain-frying contents. A dress with a potential
story to tell.
Diamonds, a good motive for . . . No, I wouldn’t speak it,
because saying the word "murder" made it more likely to be
true.
Why the note? Why to me? "When did she die?" I asked.
Eve looked up from the paper. "She collapsed during one of
those late night performances they have off-Broadway, the
ten o’clock show. There seems to be a time issue that isn’t
clear, here, but time of death is estimated at
approximately midnight."
I lost my breath and my heart pounded as if chasing after
it. Winded for no reason, I looked at the dress box, reread
the note that Dom implied she hadn’t mailed, and I
considered the unrealistically short span between her
estimated time of death in New York City and the arrival of
the Wings delivery truck in Mystic, Connecticut.
Dominique’s note swam before my eyes.
Could someone have overnighted it before she died? Someone
who knew she would die that night?
We’d had dinner together in New York a few weeks ago. She
shared some dirt about her ex-husband, a member of the
hangers-on, the entourage she bitingly called "the
Parasites."
I’d told her that night, in strictest confidence, about my
weird ability to read certain vintage clothing items,
angling for a sleepover and a chance to read the original
Chanel dress that once belonged to Coco herself.
Don’t judge me. Who wouldn’t want a glimpse into that
world? Though there was no guarantee I’d see a thing.
Rather than show the excitement I expected, she’d given a
half nod and said maybe I’d get a chance one of these days—
not we’d get a chance. Then she asked if I wanted dessert
and suggested cheesecake, "cholesterol be damned," she said
like someone had taken control over the type-A, size-four
health nut.
Again, I read her note, those final words echoing in her
world-class smoky voice. "Use your talents wisely."
My talents.
Wooly knobby knits. She so did not mean dress design.
****
Eve’s brows furrowed. "Hey, how did you know Dominique was
dead when I was the one reading the newspaper?"
I handed Eve Dom’s note, wondering who could have sent the
dress and how Dom could have anticipated their move?
Unless the box was already packed and addressed to me.
But why would it be, if Dominique wanted to hand me the
dress herself? Though she and her money did have a huge and
magnificent ability to motivate the Parasites, which may be
how Dom knew I’d get the dress one way or another.
I knew Kyle, Dom’s son, who she did not consider a member
of The Parasites, and he pretty much distrusted all of
them, including his father.
I was mostly a trusting person, and Dom’s opinion of them
could have influenced mine, but if the rest were like Ian
DeLong, Dom’s ex and Kyle’s father, her description of the
Parasites were correct, the lot of them were like stick-
figure piggy banks with neon signs on their Botoxed
foreheads that flashed "feed me" whenever they looked Dom’s
way.
Money, always a good motive for . . . anything shady.
Still I could not believe that Dominique DeLong had been
murdered.
Nevertheless, I took the Wings packaging from the trash, in
the event cause of death turned out to be suspicious, in
which case, a handwriting analysis of the label might be in
order.
I was thinking more like a sleuth every day. Nick, my FBI
boy toy would be proud. My nemesis, Mystick Falls’s
Detective Sergeant Lytton Werner would be horrified.
When Eve finished reading Dom’s note, more than once,
apparently, her head came up, her face a mask of
confusion. "Huh?"
"Exactly."
"Did you tell Dominique that you could read vintage
clothes?"
"Afraid so, a few weeks ago, but she promised me she’d take
the knowledge to the grave."
Eve’s eyes widened. "Mad, wake up and smell the crazy."
I caught Eve’s panic but I refused to buy into it. "Oh, for
the love of Gucci, you’re talking coincidence, here."
"I’m not talking anything. You’re reading my mind or you’re
thinking the same thing I am. Take it to her grave? Talk
about a quick turnaround."
"There’s only one way to prove you wrong," I said.
"What?" Eve asked, suddenly wary. "You’re not going to try
on the gown to find out what it knows?" Eve shot to her
feet, combat boots prepared for flight. "Because if you
are, I’m outta here."
"You don’t get it, Goth Girl."
"So if reading Dominique’s dress is not what you planned,"
Eve said, "what are you going to do to find out what
happened to her?"
"Snoop. We’re going to snoop."
"We? Where exactly is my name written on your insanity
plea?"
****
With the gown burning a stress ulcer in my gut like the lit
end of one of Coco Chanel’s own ciggy butts, I made it
halfway to the door before Detective Sergeant Lytton Werner
walked in. "Miss Cutler, Miss Meyers," he said, tipping his
nonexistent hat.
This was not the man that Eve and I got drunk with on Dos
Equis with Mexican takeout some months ago. Lytton Werner
had crawled so far back into his hard outer shell—as far as
we were concerned—he was likely to crack his tailbone
bending over backward to be polite.
Chakra deserted Eve to pounce into Werner’s arms and give
him a little head-rubbing snuggle against his neck.
I could tell that Werner was as delighted as surprised by
the show of trust and affection from Traitor Cat. "Hey
there, little one," he said, giving Chakra his full
attention, which, of course, made it so much easier for him
to ignore me and Eve.
Lytton Werner—I’ll always be sorry that I called him Little
Wiener when we were in third grade—shouted it, actually, in
a cafeteria full of students. Frankly, I didn’t know what I
was calling the bully. A naming-rhyme payback had been my
simple intent. What third grader knows she’s maligning
someone’s manhood before he’s reached it?
Who knew the name "Little Wiener" would stick like frickin’
forever, a glue bonding and solidifying the animosity
between us . . . except when we stepped into the
shadowlands of heightened awareness during our infrequent
investigations.
Werner cleared his throat as if he could see inside my
brain while I shivered and pulled myself from the limb-
prickling trance brought on by our locked gazes.
Eve, too, cleared her throat, but her, I could ignore.
"To what do we owe the pleasure, Detective?" I asked, my
voice an octave too high.
Werner’s eyebrow twitched as if he matched my fake pleasure
and raised it. He cleared his throat. "An abandoned Wings
truck was found in the nearest Wings warehouse parking lot
a short time ago," he said.
My heart began to race but I hoped I hid it well. "And
that’s of interest to me, because?"
"It’s registered in New York. It’s empty. Key in the
ignition. Wiped suspiciously clean of fingerprints. No
cargo. Nothing inside, except this." He handed me a piece
of paper.
"Oh," I said. "An internet map starting in New York City
and heading straight to my shop." A map. A tucking map
leading Werner here.
Werner rocked on his heels. "We found a corner of that map
sticking up from beneath the floor mat. Your name and the
name of your shop are written, as you see, Unabomber-style,
at the top."
I shrugged as if I couldn’t care less. "We did get a seven
A.M. delivery from Wings." There was no need to share my
concerns with him. Even if Dominique’s death turned out to
be suspicious—which to me it already was—the nefarious deed
took place in New York City and not in Lytton’s
jurisdiction: Mystic and Mystick Falls, Connecticut.
"Damn," Eve said. "I guess my date with that driver is off."
Werner’s accusatory gaze snapped from me to Eve. "You saw
the driver?"
Eve and I both nodded.
Lytton put Chakra on the counter as he pulled his notebook
from the pocket of his tan detective-style trench coat, his
investigative antennae quivering. "Hair color?" he asked.
Eve stood. "Er."
"Um." I described his facial cover-up. "So we didn’t see
his hair."
Werner growled deep in his chest.
Unfortunately, Eve was able to describe the rest of the
courier’s body in unnecessary detail, "squeezable tush and
sculpted lips" included.
"Any identifying marks?"
"He wore gloves," Eve said.
I snapped my fingers. "Emporio Armani, logo labeled. Men’s
dark brown, napa leather."
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