The Lanvin Murders (Vintage Clothing Mysteries) Read Online Free Page A

that’s all right with you.”  
    As he came closer, she smelled the soap he'd used to shower that morning. She opened her mouth, but no words came out. Must be lack of sleep. “Your shirt looks like an old Pendleton,” was all she could think to say.
    He slipped off the shirt to look at the label. The tee shirt he wore underneath showed strong shoulders and a tiny scar on his upper arm. She saw half-dressed women all day at the store, but this felt distinctly—different. Apple would have a heyday if she knew he was here. Paul slung the shirt over an arm. “Yeah, you're right. It was my uncle's.” He smiled, revealing a gap between his front teeth. “Well, until later then.”  
    Her gaze followed him out the door and past the front window. Where it landed, again, on the Lanvin coat.
    ***
    Joanna closed the store an hour early. True to the twists of weather that make up a Portland summer, the rain had stopped, and the sky shone brilliant blue. She lived in what a real estate agent might have once called a “G. I. dream house”: two tiny bedrooms, a bathroom barely larger than something found on a train, but a comfortable kitchen and a living room with a fireplace.  
    “I'm home. Godfrey, prepare my Martini,” she commanded the imaginary butler. “And make it snappy. I’ve had one hell of a day.”
    She tossed her purse on the down cushions of the chaise longue near the front window and piled the mail on the end table next to a stack of Depression-era Vogues . She kicked one shoe, then the next, across the faded oriental carpet, and saluted the mishmash of amateur portraits on one wall. “Hello, Aunt Vanderburgh,” she said to a pastel of a tight-lipped woman.  
    In the bedroom, Joanna slid off her dress and hung it on a satin-padded hanger. She pulled a loose 1940s housedress over her head. Its cotton skirt swished about her legs as she made her way to the kitchen.  
    She took a hefty ribeye steak from the freezer. With a pile of mashed potatoes and a handful of green beans from the garden, her dinner would be as close as she could get to Valium on a plate. No pre-fab meal here. People were always surprised when they found out she refused to have a microwave or even a cell phone. If Carole Lombard didn’t need them, why should she? Joanna laid the steak out to thaw.
    Her hand paused over a salt shaker that had belonged to her grandmother. On the face of it they couldn’t be more different, but her grandmother was a lot like Marnie. Like Marnie, her grandmother knew how to take care of herself. When Joanna was six years old, after her grandparents had taken her in, she had heard the saying that “dogs are a man's best friend,” but also that “diamonds are a girl's best friend.” She complained to her grandmother she understood how dogs could be a friend, but wasn't claiming diamonds as a friend going too far?
    Her grandmother had put down her dish towel and laughed. “Honey,” she’d told her, “If you've got a diamond you can buy all the dogs you want.” Could have come straight from Marnie’s mouth.
    Joanna’s smile faded. The accident. After her grandmother’s death, her grandfather had sunk into a depression. She would sit for hours reading in their closet with the comfort of brightly colored house dresses hanging around her, still redolent of Moondrops perfume. She’d tamped down the memory of the accident for years. Now, after this morning at the store, it was back. Without thinking, her fingers sought her grandmother’s pearl ring.
    Joanna pulled a saucepan from the row of well-used pans hanging above the stove and filled it with water. She carried a porcelain bowl to the backyard and pinched green beans from vines covering a bamboo teepee. Back inside, while the potatoes boiled she poured a glass of Languedoc and set the table with a linen napkin and a plate painted with buttercups.  
    Why did Marnie come to the store after hours? Yes, she was frail, but would she really have pulled