Delicious! (26 page)

“Perfect!” Her voice was smug. “I’m guessing you buy most of your clothes in thrift shops.”

Was it that obvious? “I’m pretty hopeless when it comes to fashion,” I admitted.

She handed me a purple silk blouse. “Try this. I know women who’d kill for your body. And I bet you don’t even belong to a gym.”

It was so strange, having her hand me clothes and scrutinize me as if I weren’t there. I felt like a life-size doll. She handed me another blouse. “Put this one on. Green’s a difficult color.” She stood back, eyeing me critically. “But obviously not for you; that’s great. Let’s try this.” A red sweater. A yellow one. “Is there any color that doesn’t look good on you? And you’ve been running around in this.” She scooped the drab oatmeal sweater from the floor and then, as an afterthought, confiscated my khakis as well. I made a little squeak of protest, but she stopped me from retrieving them. “Embrace the change! Wait! I’ve just had a thought. I’ve got something that’s going to be perfect.”

Carrying my old clothes, she left me alone to look in the mirror for the first time. There was a waist I’d never noticed, and in these pants I actually had hips. I turned sideways; had my body changed?

“Try this.” Hermione was back, holding out a gossamer dress of rainbow chiffon so airy I thought of fireflies on a moonlit night; the colors winked and changed with each motion. I put it on: The bodice clung tightly to my breasts and waist, but the full skirt was like a tutu, the fabric brushing my legs seductively. It was the girliest garment I’d ever seen, let alone worn. I loved it.

“Go show Sammy.”

I looked at the price tag. “Oh, I don’t think so—”

“Show him!” She pushed me out of the dressing room.

Sammy was sitting out front, but his eyes were carefully trained on a magazine. The dress gave me courage, and suddenly I wanted to be more than a doll for Hermione’s amusement. I grabbed a gray jacket, cut as severely as a man’s, and put it on over the dress. Hermione’s head jerked up. “Oh, my God!” she said. “That’s perfect! What made you think of that?” She towed me back to the dressing room and made me look into the mirror. “And you said you had no fashion sense!”

The combination was great: The severity of the jacket underlined the fragility of the dress. Hermione was gathering up all the clothes I’d tried on. “Forget these. I want you to go out there and look around. Grab everything you like; don’t worry about size or how you’ll wear it. Just bring me everything that speaks to you. Anything at all.”

Bewildered, I prowled the store for things that appealed to me. I could feel the fabric of the dress brushing against my legs and I began to move by instinct, not editing at all, picking up anything that caught my eye. On the first foray I grabbed a few simply cut but colorful clothes and went back to the dressing room, ignoring Hermione as I layered a short red skirt over a pair of orange leggings with a pearly T-shirt. I added a pair of red sneakers. She stood watching, arms crossed, saying nothing.

Next I tried tight black pants with a soft white linen shirt whose billowing sleeves and lace cuffs covered my wrists. I pulled on a long black Victorian vest and twirled, liking the effect. Hermione smiled. When I’d put on a man’s black shirt with the black pants, I added a red suede jacket so soft it seemed made of air.

“Fabulous!” said Hermione. “Those colors are so good on you!”

“I was just playing,” I said apologetically. “I’d never actually have the guts to wear this jacket.”

“Why not? You look incredible. You’ve got the perfect body for clothes like that. Go show Sammy.”

“You’re kidding, right?”

“No! Please believe me: You’ve got a good eye and a certain style that’s all your own. You just never knew it. Go show Sammy,” she repeated, pushing me out of the dressing room.

“She’s insane!” I said when I saw him. “Utterly out of her mind. She thinks this ridiculous outfit looks good.”

“It does not look good.” Sammy was walking around me, taking it all in. “It looks fascinating and oddly elegant. It looks
pazzesca!
”

“You’re serious?” I touched the soft jacket. It was unlike anything I’d ever worn before, and yet it felt right. Comfortable. As if it belonged to me. I wondered what Genie would have said if she’d seen me dressed like this. But I knew the answer: Genie would have refused to let me leave the house. She would have barred the door and told me not to be an idiot. Then I wondered about Aunt Melba; what would she think of this outfit?

I went back to the dressing room and put on the long white cotton shirt and the Victorian vest. I looked at myself in the mirror, liking what I saw, and went back into the store.

Sammy turned to Hermione. “Pack it up, please. We shall take all of it. As for those …” She was holding my old clothes. “Burn them!”

“But I can’t afford all this!”

“Am I remembering incorrectly? Did your father not create a trust for you with the proceeds from Cake Sisters?”

“But I can’t touch it till I’m thirty!”

“You have merely to request a small advance from your father.” Sammy reached out to touch the lace cuff. “I am persuaded that he would be very pleased to oblige.” He turned back to Hermione. “Pack it up, please,” he said again, grandly. “And have it delivered to my abode. My friend here is sadly lacking in amenities. No doorman.”

He held an arm out to me. “Shall we? I will be extremely pleased to be the escort of so elegant a creature. You make me feel like a fortunate man. I anticipate a favorable outcome to this day, and I have every expectation that we shall finally find the missing missives from Lulu.”

But what we found, when we got back to the mansion, was a message from Ruby. She wanted me to call her immediately.

“Oh, Billie,” she said, a spark of excitement in her usually placid voice, “Mr. Pickwick just met with his real estate agents, and they’re on their way over. He’s going to sell the mansion!”

I’d been anticipating this moment for the past five months, but, still, it took my breath away. “You okay?” she asked, and I realized I’d been staring mutely at the wall, silently clutching the phone.

“Yeah, fine.” My mind was racing. How much time did we have?

Slightly dazed, I stumbled down to Sammy’s office. “She said they’d be here any minute.”

His face turned ashen. “Their arrival is imminent?” He gave a helpless little gesture, taking in the copper teapot, the rugs, the duck press, and the sword. “How unfortunate that they should catch us unawares. I had anticipated a bit more warning. This affords me a conspicuous lack of time in which to remove my personal effects. What shall we do? It is obvious that I must make myself scarce.”

“Did you keep those ‘unsanitized’ tapes? We’ll put them back up and lock your door. I’ll say I don’t have the key.”

We closed the door and Sammy turned the key, pocketing it as I crisscrossed the door with long strips of the yellow tape. Sammy watched me struggle to make it stick. “I am desolated to abandon you. But I shall scurry off. Do not, under any circumstances, allow those people access to the library. Recall that the key went astray long ago. If fortune favors us, their chosen locksmith will operate with the normal sloth of the New York tradesman. That will buy us a bit of time.”

“Where’re you going?”

“I shall pay a visit to the Fales Library. Despite this regrettable development, I continue to feel fortunate. Fales, as you know, contains America’s largest antique-cookbook collection.”

“NYU? I thought that library at Radcliffe had the great cookbook collection.”

“Old news. Fales has eclipsed Radcliffe, and they specialize in New
York City. It seems propitious; perhaps somebody there will have knowledge of Bertie.”

“Propitious!” His vocabulary could still make me laugh.

SAMMY HAD BARELY
left the building when the bell rang. A patrician couple strolled into the lobby, gazing appreciatively around. “Joan-Mary “Whitfield,” said the woman, stripping off brown kid gloves and holding out a smooth white hand with beautifully manicured nails. The camel-hair coat slung carelessly across her shoulders echoed the color of her hair, which was blown into a rippling pageboy. She’d tossed a silk scarf artfully around her neck, prominently displaying the “Hermès” written on the colorful horseshoe print. Her boots were made of the softest leather, the kind that melts beneath a single drop of snow. I wondered if she had always been pretty or if she was one of those women who become more attractive in middle age.

“And this”—she indicated the man—“is my colleague Christopher Van Patten.”

“Chris,” he corrected, holding out a hand as beautifully maintained as hers. Tall and well built, he looked accustomed to dominating a room. I noticed him appraising my new clothes, and I thought that Sammy had been right; this man in the custom-made suit was eyeing me with respect. I liked that. His eyes moved past me to rest on the chandelier over the stairway. “This is a great pleasure.” His voice was self-consciously deep, as if he’d worked with a voice coach to get that deep bass sound. “I’ve walked past the Timbers Mansion so often, wondering what it would be like inside.”

Joan-Mary moved farther into the lobby. “Would you be good enough to give us a tour?” In contrast to her partner’s, her voice was small and whispery.

“Don’t you want to wait for Mitch?”

The woman made a face. “Given his prices, you’d expect him to show up on time.” She glanced my way, then explained, “We’ve asked an architectural
historian to help appraise the building.” The bell rang, right on cue. “That must be him.”

I went to the door, surprised to find a familiar figure standing on the steps. For a minute I just stood there, smiling. What was he doing here?

“It’s not him,” I called over my shoulder.

There stood Mr. Complainer, in worn blue jeans, sneakers, and an old peacoat. He had a knapsack slung across his back, his hair hadn’t been cut in a while, and his beard was thick, giving him the appearance of a sailor who’s come ashore for the first time in months. He seemed happy to see me, but if he was surprised he hid it well. It made me wonder if Rosalie had sent him as a belated April Fool’s joke. “How’d you get here?” I asked.

“Walked.” He made no move to come in, and I saw that he was now wearing a slightly baffled expression. Maybe she hadn’t sent him? Then he said, “You look very different when you’re not wearing an apron. Wait—you are different. You aren’t wearing glasses!”

“I got contact lenses.” Apparently he thought I always dressed like this, and the idea pleased me. To Sammy I was a caterpillar who’d metamorphosed into a butterfly, but to Mr. Complainer this was the way I was out in the real world. He was contemplating me with open admiration, and it made me feel confident, even a little giddy.

Behind me, Joan-Mary called impatiently, “I hear you out there, Mitchell Hammond. Don’t keep us waiting.”

“It’s not your historian,” I repeated, just as Mr. Complainer was saying, “I’ll be right in.”

I jumped. “You?” It came out like an accusation. “That’s what you were teaching in Cambridge?”

He gave an awkward nod and put out his hand. “Mitch Hammond, Architectural History 346. My brilliant powers of deduction tell me that when you’re not playing SuperCheeseGirl you turn into Billie Breslin, girl reporter. I should’ve guessed it, but I’m a bit slow. Wilhelmina: Billie—it all makes sense.”

I took his hand, as uncomfortable as he was. We were both remembering
what I’d written about him. But he gave me a solid shake, and I could feel him putting whatever he’d felt about the article behind him. It had been a while.

From inside, Joan-Mary called again, “Mitch!” She sounded more urgent now.

“We’d better go in,” he said. “After you.”

“There you are!” Joan-Mary kissed him once on each cheek, and Chris shook his hand. “Can we please get started? We’ve got a lot to do.” She looked at the staircase. “No elevator?”

Conscious of Mr. Complainer standing behind me, I replied, “No. I’m sorry,” and then wondered why I was apologizing.

“Thank God,” he said.

“But it would make the building more valuable,” Joan-Mary pointed out.

“It would ruin the building,” he said curtly. “Like that Federal mansion you destroyed last year.”

“You can’t blame me. The clients didn’t want to climb stairs.”

Chris pulled out a small leather notebook and wrote something in precise, square handwriting. “If we’re going for a professional sale, they might want to put an elevator in.”

“Please don’t say that!” Mr. Complainer took a turn around the lobby. “It would ruin this room.”

“This argument”—Joan-Mary was staring at the banister—“is premature. Let’s see what we’ve got before we make any drastic decisions. Lovely carving.”

“Right.” The two men followed her up the stairs. As we went from floor to floor, they were extremely businesslike, and Mitch seemed determined to put as much distance as possible between us. I remembered the blonde he’d brought to Fontanari’s and wondered if she’d been with him in Cambridge.

Joan-Mary rattled Sammy’s doorknob, asked about the key, and Chris made a note.

Did the fireplaces work? I told them that I knew Jake’s did but wasn’t sure about the others. Another note.

“Beautiful proportions,” Joan-Mary said when we walked through the photo studio. “Think what a spectacular dining room this would make!”

When we got to the kitchen, Joan-Mary looked around for a long minute. I couldn’t tell what that meant, and all she said was, “We’ll need to spend some time in here, but there’s no point in wasting yours. Let’s go upstairs.” She headed back to the stairway. “What’s up there?”

“It used to be the art department,” I told her.

She nodded, but when we reached the door to the art department, they each took a small, shocked step backward. I thought they were reacting to the fluorescent lights and scuffed metal furniture until Mitch said, “It’s criminal!” in a voice so angry I knew it was something more. He walked into the center of the room. “They knocked down all the walls! Originally this would have been a series of small rooms. Servants’ quarters.” He pointed toward the library door. “But I can’t figure out what that is. The door could be original, but it doesn’t belong up here.” He eyed me for the first time. “What’s in there?”