Slain in Schiaparelli (Vintage Clothing Mysteries Book 3) (23 page)

“I’m so sorry.”

“I know.” Penny reached over and patted her hand. “Everyone is. No one can help me, but Tony’s trying. That’s why—that’s why when people say he’s a murderer, I know it isn’t true.”

The hard part had only begun for Penny. She still had to go back to a home empty but for memories of her dead fiancé, and now there’d likely be a trial to endure. It was time to stop pussyfooting around. “Clarke had his reasons for suspecting Reverend Tony. Wilson asked Clarke to get a background check done, and Clarke thinks they may have found some things.”
 

“You mean his prison record?”
 

Joanna dropped to the bed. “You know?”

“Sure. Wilson showed me the report the night before the wedding, but I already knew. Tony told me.”

“You knew?” Joanna repeated. “But after the murders you didn’t tell anyone?”

“He was put in jail for forging checks. It was a long time ago. So what?”

“But why—?”

“He needed me. He learned all sorts of spiritual things in jail, and he needed someone to take care of, to prove that he was a different person.”

“He told you that?”

“No, Joanna.” Penny folded her arms in front of her. “I’m not stupid. He was teaching my yoga class, and I could tell he was vulnerable. He had something to prove, but in a good way. I asked him a few questions after class one day, and that led to him helping me with my diet, then my devotions.”

Joanna could understand Penny wanting a father figure. Reverend Tony would have fit that role. But Penny took him on as a project?

Penny looked straight at Joanna. “Sometimes people need to feel they have something valuable to give before they can trust themselves. They need you to let them help you, let them in.”

Joanna looked away.
 

“It made me feel so good to see Tony getting more confident,” Penny said. She could have been talking about a child, not a full-grown man twice her age, not to mention twice her weight. “And he’s taught me a lot. About surrealism, for instance. He knows a lot about art. He’s the one who found out about Redd Lodge. He wants me to be happy.”

And plenty sorry about that now, Joanna bet. “He seems to take being under lock and key pretty well.”

“Why should he fight it?”

“Did you look at the report?”

“Why should I? I know what it says. It doesn’t matter. Reverend Tony’s not a violent man. He knows the police will find out what really happened. He’s probably meditating. Someone else killed Wilson and the chef.”

The women’s breath hung in the frigid air. “I still can’t believe it,” Joanna finally said. “What would drive someone to be so evil?”

“Feelings are like water. You know how when a roof leaks, sometimes the ceiling drips somewhere far away from the hole in the roof?”

She did know. Right before Christmas, Paul had discovered a leak near a garage window and traced it to a patch of faulty roofing way at the back of the garage.

“Well,” Penny continued. “That’s how it is with emotion. Someone is hurt about something that happened years ago—maybe even when they were a baby—and it comes out decades later as an awful anger about a whole different situation. Maybe that person hates people from other countries or becomes an alcoholic. But it has to come out sometime. I bet that’s what happened to the murderer.”

“You’re wise,” Joanna said. “And understanding. It’s an explanation for sure.” An explanation for a lot. But not an excuse. She thought of her mother.

“Reverend Tony taught me that.”

Joanna shook her head. “I know he’s done a lot for you. I hate to say it, but Tony is the one of us with a criminal background.”

“Forged checks. Not murder.”

“But what about the attack on your mother? We found a knife in his room, remember.”

Penny leaned forward. “I’m telling you, he’s innocent. Look at the facts.” She talked like she was explaining the situation to Marianne. “Mom didn’t see him, remember? And the knife was obviously planted.”

“And then there are Wilson’s” —Joanna said his name softly— “and Chef Jules’s deaths.”

“No.” Penny was firm, but she showed no sign of hysteria this time. “Master Tony did not kill anyone.” She shifted on the bed, and pushed the shredded Schiaparelli gown to the side. “Look. I know there’s a murderer here, and I’m not taking any chances. I have my own idea about who could have done it. But it wasn’t Tony.”

Joanna remembered Penny’s silhouette in the downstairs hall the night the chef was killed. Perhaps she knew more than she let on. “Penny, when Chef Jules died, I could have sworn I saw you downstairs, outside Tony’s room. If you were with him, that would explain why you’re so sure it wasn’t him.”

Penny’s expression changed subtly. “No.” She held up the Schiap’s bodice and traced her fingers across the print of flayed flesh before letting it drop. Joanna waited, but Penny added nothing to her simple denial. “Sorry about the dress,” she said and left.
 

***

Clarke was back at work at the dining room table with the fire at his back. Joanna placed her hands near the flames. It was much warmer here than in her bedroom.

“I’m sorry to interrupt your work,” Joanna said.

“Just going over a real estate deal. Something Wilson wanted to do, but now, with his death, I don’t know. His estate—” Clarke’s voice drifted off. “I’m executer of his will.”

“You’ll be busy, then.”

“Sure, once we get out of this hellhole.” He took off his glasses. Wilson and Clarke had to be near the same age, but while Wilson had hung onto his rocker image, Clarke had gone the route of traditional prosperous middle-aged man. “I know Wilson and Penny were never married, but I can’t help but think he owes her something from his estate. I don’t know. I’ll have another look at the will once we’re back in town.”

“I wonder if I could look at Tony’s background report?”

Clarke pulled a packet from his briefcase. “Hidden in his luggage. Probably thought no one would even think of looking for it. Take it if you want.” He slipped on his reading glasses and turned toward the papers spread in front of him. “Everyone should know who we’ve been living with these past few days. It might do Penny some good to see what’s in the report, too. I don’t know why she’s holding onto these illusions about him.”
 

“Thank you,” she said as he handed her the packet. This had to be what Wilson wanted to talk to Penny about the night he died. “Penny told me she knew all along about the report and about Tony’s past.”

Irritation crossed Clarke’s face. “What? Then why is she so resistant to the fact that he’s guilty?”

“Can’t say.”

Clarke returned to the papers spread across the table. “I just want to get out of here, get away from this family.”

“Soon, I’m sure.”

“Never—” he started. “Never mind. Be sure to return the report when you’re finished. The police will want it.”

“Definitely.” Joanna carried the folder to the library a few steps away.
 

Only Bette, Sylvia, and Marianne were in the great room now. Bette had wrapped a silk scarf around the bandage over the wound on her neck and was engaged in surprisingly friendly conversation with Sylvia. Sylvia smiled and Marianne rose from her side to slide under Bette’s arm on the couch.

In the library, Joanna pulled a blanket over her knees. The great room’s fire didn’t quite reach here. She cracked open the background report, a quarter-inch thick sheaf of papers, printed on both sides, fastened between sheets of sheer vinyl. “File on Anthony Rosso,” it said. It was dated a few weeks earlier. The cover page summarized the hours spent on the investigation. “Anthony Rosso, 8 hours; financial investigation, 21 hours,” it read. She relaxed into the brocade armchair. Tony’s finances must be complicated.

The file was a compilation of computer-generated reports from a number of different databases. Criminal and driving records from Illinois, California, and Oregon were followed by credit reports from each of the three major bureaus. After that were excerpts from character references, a job history, and, finally, a two-page summary report. Joanna flipped through the report, then settled back at the beginning.
 

 
Although born in the United States, Tony had been raised in Italy, which surprised her. Despite his penchant for kimonos, he had a meat-and-potatoes look about him that Joanna would have pegged for a rearing in the midwest. But it did explain the unusual edge to his accent. He came to the United States to study art at the University of Chicago twenty-five years ago and worked in a printmaking studio for a while before being convicted for forging checks and art posters, including a few Dali lithographs, Joanna noted, that were supposed to be limited editions. The next ten years he spent in and out of jail in Illinois and California, mostly for petty crimes—confidence scams and manufacturing fake I.D. cards.
 

Then Tony appeared to have a clean spell. He spent some time at an ashram, although his employment record was spotty. A few years ago he filed for bankruptcy in Illinois. Then he was busted for counterfeiting lottery tickets. He was on parole right now, and the investigator who filed the report noted that one of the conditions of his parole was that he not leave Illinois.

No wonder Tony was being so quiet, Joanna thought. If he were caught out of state, he’d be tossed back in jail for a long, long time. Even the possibility that he was involved with a murder could be a fatal strike against him, whether he was eventually proved innocent or not. It was true that his crimes were petty, scheming things and not violent.
 

Joanna turned the page, then flipped back. No financial report. Wilson must have thought it wasn’t important enough to show Penny. She puzzled again at how many hours the financial investigation had taken, especially since the background report said the Reverend had declared bankruptcy.

A wave of gratitude passed over her that Tony was sequestered downstairs. People learned awful things in prison. It wouldn’t be the first time someone was locked up for a relatively minor offense and emerged ready to do worse. Prison could change a person’s basic character, maybe make a killer out of a thief, even if Penny didn’t think so.
 

Penny had denied being in Tony’s room the night the chef was locked out in the cold and left to die. But maybe it hadn’t been Penny after all, but her twin, Portia. Portia, who’d said she knew Tony in Chicago. One good thing about being stuck in this place, it wasn’t too hard to find anyone.

Muffled voices came from behind Portia’s door. One was definitely Portia’s. It had some of the cadence of Penny’s voice, but was more forceful. Curt. Joanna knocked above the pyramid carved into the door.
 

Portia opened the door a crack, then seeing it was Joanna, let her in.
 

Bette sat on the hearth draining a champagne glass. She must have come in while Joanna was in the library. “God, what I wouldn’t give for a decent pinot gris. I’m sick of this fizzy crap.” She rose and went to the window. A gust of icy air burst in as she pushed the casement open and reached for the green bottle chilling in the snow outside.

“Mom, shut that. We don’t have heat anymore, remember?”

“Whatever.” Bette returned to her place at the hearth. She still wore a fur coat over her caftan, and a cobalt blue silk scarf wound up her neck. Her eyes were slightly unfocused. The champagne bottle was nearly empty.

Portia made sure the window was closed tight and sat on the bed. Portia’s room was done up in a fantastical Egyptian style with asp-shaped curtain rods and a Cleopatra headdress holding wool curtains over the top third of the bed. Lotuses were woven into the rug. “I wish you’d let me clean out that wound, Mom.”

Bette touched her neck. “I took care of it, honey, I told you. It’s fine. I’ll have the plastic surgeon look at it when we get back to L.A.”

Portia’s gaze reluctantly left her mother and settled on Joanna. “What can I help you with? I never did see the bridesmaid dress, by the way. Was it a Schiaparelli, too?”

The Schiaparelli. What was Joanna going to tell the curator? “No, but same era. Bias-cut watered silk with a diagonally cut wrist.” It would have looked terrific on her, too. “Penny chose it.”

Bette snorted. “We wrote a huge check to the Victoria and Albert to borrow that Schiaparelli. Can’t even get a charitable donation credit since the damned museum’s in London.”

Portia ignored her mother. “Penny’s not here, if you were looking for her.”

“I wanted to talk to you about Reverend Tony,” Joanna said.

Portia dropped her gaze. “Why? I have nothing to say about him.”

“Penny’s convinced he’s innocent.”

“Excuse me,” Bette said. “He attacked me, remember?” She pointed at the silk scarf twisted around her neck. “There’s no question about him. Plus, Clarke found out he just got out of jail. I can’t believe we’re stuck in the boonies with a killer.” She poured the last of the champagne into her glass.

“But you said you didn’t see the person who grabbed you.” Noting Bette’s face gather fury, Joanna added, “That scarf looks very Liza Minelli, by the way.”

“I don’t know why you want to talk to me about Tony. I can’t help you out there,” Portia said.

“I’m telling you, it was that God damned Reverend who tried to slit my neck.” Bette staggered to her feet. “Where’s Bubbles?”

“In the great room with Marianne. Portia, you greeted Tony when you arrived. You knew him from somewhere.”

“She’s probably feeding that dog weenies again. I’m going to get more champagne. God damned minister. Trying to slit my neck.”

“Okay, Mom.”
 

“Remember what I told you, all right?” Bette said. “You won’t forget?”

“No. I promise. Better go save Bubbles from the weenies. Wait—” Portia softened. “Mom?” Her mother stopped, eyebrows raised, the strain of the day and the surfeit of alcohol etching lines into her forehead. Portia quickly kissed her cheek. “Take care of yourself, okay? Don’t let things bother you.”

When the door closed behind her, Joanna turned to Portia. Day was draining away. It wouldn’t be more than half an hour before they’d have to light candles. “You know Tony. You greeted him the second you got to the lodge, even before you said hi to your own mother. What’s going on?”