Cloche and Dagger Read online

  Mrs. Abbingdon gave me a dubious look and only took my hand with the tips of her fingers.

  “Would you care for some tea and biscuits, Mrs. Abbingdon?” I asked.

  “I’m feeling a teeny bit peckish,” she said.

  “Fee, could you—?” I began, but Fee interrupted me.

  “Right away,” Fee said. Her thick-heeled shoes almost left skid marks on the floor, so fast was her departure.

  My offer of tea was twofold. First, I was starving and second, whenever I dealt with clients at the hotel, I always fed them. People were more at ease over food, plus, they felt you went the extra mile if you fed them, which made them infinitely more manageable.

  “You’re Vivian’s cousin?” Mrs. Abbingdon asked.

  “Yes, our mothers were Mim’s daughters,” I said. “I grew up in the States, but I spent all of my vacations here with Mim.”

  “So, you’re half British?” Mrs. Abbingdon asked.

  “The good half,” I joked with a wink.

  Mrs. Abbingdon chortled and I knew we were going to get along just fine. While we waited for refreshments I told her stories about how Viv and I used to play in the shop while Mim greeted customers and designed her hats. I ruefully admitted that I had no talent at millinery but that Viv was a genius.

  Mrs. Abbingdon patted my hand and assured me that I was probably more talented than I knew. I knew it wasn’t true, but I let her comfort me anyway.

  Fee brought a tray loaded with tea and a plate of shortbread as well as cheese, crackers and a pile of grapes.

  “Nice job,” I whispered to her.

  “I was about to say the same to you, yeah?”

  Fee left the tray with me and disappeared into the back room again. Once Mrs. Abbingdon had noshed her way through two cups of tea, half a plate of cookies and a good portion of the cheese, I managed to direct her back to the topic of the hat.

  She was going to be wearing a lilac suit with purple trim and we determined that her hat ought to match. I was certain that Viv could match the swatch Mrs. Abbingdon brought from her dressmaker and we determined that her best look would be a hat shape reminiscent of the one the Queen wore to the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge’s wedding.

  By the time Mrs. Abbingdon left, the tea had grown cold and I was feeling the teensiest anxiety that I was taking on work of which Viv wouldn’t approve. I’d also felt my phone vibrating during our chat and it had about killed me not to check it. What if it was Viv? I suspected it would drive Mrs. Abbingdon away, however, so I waited.

  As soon as the door closed after Mrs. Abbingdon, I checked my phone. It was my Aunt Grace who had called, and she left a message that essentially said it was no big deal that Viv had up and left before I arrived. Like Harrison, she seemed to think that was just how Viv was and I shouldn’t worry. Still, I couldn’t shake the bad feeling I had about it.

  • • •

  I hauled the tray back into the workroom, which housed a small kitchenette in the corner. I set the tray on the counter to be dealt with later and approached the workbench where Fee was embroidering a cluster of five-petal, pale blue forget-me-not blossoms onto a narrow dark green hatband.

  “That’s lovely,” I said.

  Fee glanced up from her work and grinned.

  “I have to ask,” she said. “How did you manage to keep your patience with Mrs. Looksee?”

  “Mrs. Looksee? You mean Mrs. Abbingdon?” I asked. “The patience part was easy. She’s like a chicken on a nest, she just needs to fuss a bit and then she’s fine. She’s really very sweet, but I did agree that Viv would make her a hat for her son’s wedding, lilac with a purple trim. Is this doable?” Fee’s eyes went wide and she goggled at me as if I suddenly suggested we give away all of our hats for free.

  “Oh, no, I overcommitted, didn’t I?” I asked. “Viv is going to kill me.”

  “No, no,” Fee said. She kept staring at me as if in shock. “It’s just, well, in all the years Mrs. Looksee has been coming into the shop, she’s never actually bought anything. That’s why we call her Mrs. Looksee.”

  “Never?”

  “According to Viv, never, not once,” Fee said. “What sort of magic did you work on her?”

  “No magic,” I said. “Just, you know.”

  “No, I don’t,” Fee said. “But now I see what Viv meant.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “When Viv told me you were coming, I asked if you were a milliner, too, and she said no, but that you had other gifts,” Fee said. She picked up the hatband and resumed stitching. “Now I see what she meant.”

  I didn’t, but I didn’t say as much. I heard the bells on the door chime and the sound transported me back twenty years, and I remembered being a little girl, playing in the shop when a customer came in.

  Mim had the same temperament as Viv. They were artists first and businesswomen second. I’d known Mim to get obsessed with a particular hat style or a color—there had been an infamous chartreuse stage—or if she’d found a vintage hat that she wanted to make over, it positively took over her brain.

  We’d had cold tea and burnt dinner frequently when she was swept up by an obsession of the moment, but neither Viv nor I had minded. There was something spectacular and otherworldly about Mim when she’d been consumed by her creative fire. I’d always admired her devotion to her art. I had tried to follow in her footsteps like Viv, but I didn’t have any talent for millinery.

  Unlike Mim and Viv, I was a people person. I enjoyed talking to people. Everyone had a backstory and they were almost always interesting, which is what drew me to the hospitality industry.

  Thoughts of my ex flitted into my head and I felt my spirits tank. While I’d been helping Mrs. Abbingdon, I’d completely forgotten the rat bastard. I was tempted to see who these other two women were, the ones the girl at the pub had told me about, but I didn’t really want to know. It wouldn’t do me any good, and really, my self-esteem was already at an all-time low as it was.

  Instead, I straightened my back and headed out into the shop to see who had arrived. I was suddenly very grateful that Viv had sent for me. It was a relief to have something to think about besides my personal life.

  “I’ll go see who that is,” I said to Fee and strode toward the door.

  I had just stepped into the doorway when I collided with a solid male shirtfront.

  “Oh, are you all right?” Harrison asked. He grabbed me by the elbows and steadied me on my feet.

  “Sorry,” I said. I glanced up at his concerned green gaze and smiled. “That was clumsy of me.”

  “Not at all,” he said. “It was my fault. I should have called out a hello so you knew I was coming.”

  “Eh.” I shrugged. I really had no idea what I meant or why I had a sudden feeling of awkward between us.

  “You look like you got some rest.” He let go of my arms.

  “Practically slept the day away,” I said.

  “Well, if that’s what it takes for you to sell to Mrs. Looksee then I say you should lie in every day,” Fee said.

  Harrison’s brows rose up on his forehead and he studied me with renewed interest. “You sold a hat to Mrs. Looksee?”

  “Mrs. Abbingdon,” I corrected them both with a look. “She was very sweet. I think she just needed someone to listen to her.”

  Harrison and Fee exchanged a look I couldn’t interpret, but I didn’t get the feeling they were mocking me, so I let it go.

  “So, have you heard from Viv?” I asked him.

  “No, but I didn’t really expect to,” he said. “I take it you haven’t either.”

  “No,” I said.

  “Not to worry,” Fee said. I saw her looking at me in understanding. “Viv’s an artist. She lives life her own way.”

  “Indeed,” I agreed.

  I remembered on my vacations spent with Mim and Viv that I always felt like the stabilizing force. I was the one who liked a schedule and liked to be on time. Viv and Mim were never on time and loathe
d to commit to any sort of itinerary. That was probably where I had first learned to work with challenging personalities.

  It had obviously served me well. Right up until I had found myself hurling cake at the lying, cheating no-good rat bastard I’d been dating. I had to admit I hadn’t managed that one well at all.

  “Well, if all is right and tight here, then I will get back to the office,” Harrison said. “Is there anything you need, Scarlett?”

  “Not that I can think of,” I said. “I haven’t checked the state of Viv’s kitchen but I know there’s a Tesco right down the road, so I can stock up on whatever I need there.”

  “All right,” he said.

  There was an awkward pause where he seemed to want to say something but then thought better of it.

  “Go on with you,” Fee said. “She’s got me. I can help her with anything that might come up.”

  “Right enough,” Harrison said. “’Bye then.”

  “’Bye,” Fee and I said together.

  “What’s got his trousers in a bunch?” Fee asked. “He’s not usually so knotted up.”

  “I don’t know,” I said. But a bad thought flitted through my head. “You don’t think he actually knows where she is but isn’t saying, do you?”

  To my surprise Fee paused to consider it. I had thought since she knew both Harrison and in many respects Viv better than I did, at least when it came to day-to-day living, that she would reject my idea. But she didn’t, which made me wonder.

  “What is their relationship?” I asked.

  “Relationship? You mean are they seeing each other?” Fee asked. “Romantically?”

  “Yeah, I guess that’s what I’m asking,” I said.

  “Well, he does come around quite a bit,” Fee said. “Of course, a lot of that is because Viv has no head for business. You know, he always has to pull her out of some financial tangle or another. But come to think of it, they do attend some events together, you know, social functions, like the annual milliners’ ball, and Viv gets invited to a lot of fashion events. I expect you’ll be going to those, too, now that you’re here.”

  I felt my chest get tight. I had stopped listening when she said that Harrison and Viv attended a lot of social functions together.

  I reviewed the facts. Viv was missing. Harrison had met me at the Gate in her place. Why would he do that? Oh, sure, he had said she’d sent him, but the note was just a listing of the time and place of my arrival in her handwriting. It wasn’t a personal note asking him to pick me up in her place.

  I felt the blood rush into my ears with a whoosh. What did I really know about Harrison Wentworth? If he and Viv were dating and she went missing, wouldn’t he be suspect number one if there were any foul play? Wasn’t it always the person involved with the person who went missing who was the chief suspect?

  Was Harrison Wentworth not just Viv’s business manager and boyfriend but the reason she’d gone missing as well?

  Chapter 8

  I did not share my fears with Fee, partly because I didn’t want to freak her out and partly because I didn’t want to be perceived as a lunatic just yet.

  I spent the rest of the afternoon familiarizing myself with the shop’s inventory. Viv had obviously been going through a restoring-vintage-hat phase. The workroom had a cupboard full of old hats of all shapes and sizes, and out front one of her floor-to-ceiling display racks boasted everything from narrow-brimmed trilbies to trendy fascinators.

  It seemed mandatory that I try a few on, so I spent a good half hour in front of one of the many freestanding mirrors placed about the shop, trying on hats and turning this way and that. My red hair clashed horribly with the magenta hats, but I found a divine olive green number that I was pretty sure was going to find its way into my collection.

  When I lived in Florida, I had been a sun hat and visor sort of girl. In fact, I rarely went outside without them because I have the genetic predisposition to being part crustacean. In other words, if I spent a half hour in the tropical sun, I was soon red enough to sport claws and a snappy tail.

  I glanced through the floating hat display to the street outside. It was a cozy gray day. Maybe it would even rain. I found myself looking forward to it as a nice change from the land of eternal sunshine.

  Fee left the shop early on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was still a student, slogging through classes in the hope that she would run a shop of her own one day.

  “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she called on her way out the door.

  “I’ll be here,” I said.

  The posted hours for the shop meant we were open for one more hour. I figured I could handle anything that came up. Now here’s the thing about me, in case you missed it: when I am wrong, I am so very wrong.

  Ten minutes before I would have turned the dead bolt, drawn the shades over the windows and door and called it a day, the door was yanked open with unnecessary force, setting its bells jangling and sounding more like an alarm than a pleasant ringing announcement of a customer arriving.

  The woman who strode in was wearing a leopard-print dress that hugged her bodacious curves. She had on matching leopard-print shoes. A Coach bag dangled from her arm and her jewelry was not what one would wear for an everyday errand but rather the stuff of walks down a red carpet somewhere. Unless of course, she considered Mim’s Whims that auspicious an outing but I suspected not. Rather, I think she was what the Brits call a toff, showing off her wealth, well, because she could. We had a lot of those in the hotel industry in Florida as well.

  Her black hair was scraped back from her flawless face, a face that left even me staring at her in wonder. It wasn’t a face that had been manufactured by nips and tucks and injections of toxins. No, it was a perfectly oval face with arching brows over luminous aqua-colored eyes, a narrow nose and perfect full pink lips.

  “May I help you?” I asked.

  The woman looked me up and down. “You’re not Vivian.”

  “She’s on vacation,” I prevaricated. That sounds so much better than saying ‘I lied,’ doesn’t it?

  The woman turned and handed her purse to the man behind her. He was handsome but not overly so. In fact, he was of medium height, medium build, with pale skin, brown hair and hazel eyes and made an impression about as exciting as a glob of mayonnaise as he stood in the shadow of the beauty beside him.

  “Vacation?” the woman asked.

  I gathered from her tone that this was unacceptable. I wondered if Viv had a special order for the woman and I hoped like heck that there was a paper trail for it.

  “When will she be back?” the woman asked. Her voice was curt and it was easy to see that she was irritated.

  “Any day now,” I said. Not a total lie because for all I knew it could be any day.

  “You obviously don’t know who I am,” the woman said.

  I wasn’t sure if she was slamming me for being a foreigner or for being ignorant shop help, but I didn’t want Viv to lose an account because of me.

  “Of course, I know who you are,” I bluffed.

  One of her thin eyebrows rose higher than the other and I knew I had messed up somehow.

  “Of course she knows you, Lady Ellis, or should I say The Right Honorable Countess of Waltham, adored wife of Earl Ellis of Waltham and beloved by all,” the man beside her said. He put his hand over his chest and gave a mock bow.

  He rose and stared at me in amusement. He licked his overly large lips as if I were a tasty morsel about to be devoured. Ew. I assumed from his mocking tone that he was Earl Ellis and he knew quite well that I had no idea who they were.

  Nuts! The first customers I have to help all by myself and they are members of the peerage. I knew from my training at Mim’s side that the proper address for Lord and Lady Ellis would be to address them first as “Lady Ellis” and “Lord Ellis” and then as “my lady” and “my lord.” I scanned my brain trying to think of a way to save myself.

  A quick glance at the woman, who was a beauty but also imm
aculately groomed, led me to believe that she logged a lot of time in front of her mirror. Anyone who spent that much time gazing at her reflection was definitely vain. It was easy for me to deduce that the best way to manage this woman was to appeal to her narcissism.

  I inclined my head and said, “Lady Ellis, it is a pleasure to have you in our shop. My cousin mentioned you particularly when we discussed the business during her absence.”

  “Did she?” Lady Ellis’s eyebrow lowered and she looked intrigued.

  Vivian is a wild card, but like Mim, her hats have always been sought after by those who can afford them, because she is a gifted milliner. To have a favored designer like Viv talk about her would do more for Lady Ellis’s vanity than any hollow praise I could offer her.

  “She did,” I said. “She was quite effusive in her praise of how beautifully shaped your head is.”

  I glanced at her through my lashes to see if she was looking mollified by my words. I saw her raise a hand to her head and pat the hair that was scraped back into a tight bun at the nape of her neck. Then she smiled.

  “Vivian said that? How interesting.” Her eyes met mine and she said, “My garden party is in four days. I’d like to pick up my hat now.”

  “Certainly,” I said. There was no need to ask if it was a special order. Lady Ellis was not the type to buy off-the-rack. Whatever she had requested, I was quite sure it was one of a kind.

  We kept a computer out front that was networked to the computer in the workroom. I opened the file on the desktop where Viv kept all of her accounts. It was a straightforward system that had a special-order file. Within the file the clients were listed alphabetically, then the hat they ordered and the price and whether they had paid or not.

  I scanned the list, looking for Lady Ellis. I checked under the “L’s” and the “E’s” and the “V’s.” There was nothing. I could feel Lady Ellis watching me, and my heart began to pound. There was no help for it, without Fee or Viv to consult, Lady Ellis was just going to have to come back.

  “I am so sorry, my lady,” I said. “But there is no listing for any hat on order for you.”