One

Eve Meyers, my BFF, a gothic fashionista with a steampunk edge, tall in her black and brass Lindi Buckle Leather Booties, invaded my vintage dress shop with mischief aforethought. "Madeira? Did you ever tell Nick about that thermonuclear kiss you shared with Werner the night you and the detective slept together?"

Even though we were alone right now, I grew warm in my fifties Lilli Ann flared-sleeved, cinch-waisted, pencil-skirted suit. I’d purchased it at a miracle of a bargain, though a rabid collector would pay a grand for the set.

You had to love the goods you sold, which I aced, but right now, I wasn’t loving my BFF too darn much.

Eve knew she’d hit home when she turned to face my

beverage buffet. "Caffeine. Gotta have more caffeine. My morning fix has left the building." She chose a zinger of a caramel tea as black and powerful as her outfit.

From the back, her long, straight hennaed hair spilled over the stand-up collar of her cotton point textured faille jacket, same fabric as her skintight cropped pants. For contrast, I’d designed it to be worn with that bold-print girlie top—earth tones hidden among the black—a barely there ruffle flowing just below the cropped waist of her jacket.

Her necklace of assorted copper gears picked up the red sheen from her hair, which she flipped as she turned back to me. "If you didn’t tell Nick," she said, "you’re about to have your chance. I hear he’s on his way home." She sipped her tea and eyed me with calculation over the rim of a blue Wedgewood teacup.

Dropping the subject, I stacked the fifties outfits I’d sold earlier that morning, to be worn at my sister Brandy’s costume fund-raiser this coming Saturday night. "Be right back. Have to top my list of alterations with this lot."

Eve leaned on the doorjamb at the base of my enclosed stairway sipping and watching as I climbed. "If I didn’t know better," she said, "I’d think you’re ignoring me."

What I chose to ignore, I acknowledged to myself, was the amusement in her voice. I hung the items to be altered in my work corner, boxed in by several antique sewing machines and a few of today’s finest technical wonders that did everything but wear the clothes.

Back downstairs in my sales area, I switched out winter purses for summer box bags in straws, metallics, Bakelite, and Lucite, and showcased their funky shapes: rectangle, trapezoid, beehive, hatbox, lunch box, not to mention the fifties icon: the sleek single-clasp, rectangular box clutch, a purse known to endow its owner with ladylike behavior.

"You and Werner can’t escape your scorching past," Eve warned, arms crossed, eyes bright, smile at half-mast. "Neither can you escape me."

Atop the purse pyramid, I placed a white oval Lucite Llewellyn bag, the bottom edged with a two-inch, molded, silver floral band. "Gorgeous," I said.

"Get out, Meyers!"

Eve waved. "Excuses, excuses."

"No, seriously, the FBI takes advantage of their special agents that way. Plus we took an official time-out before he left."

"Still, on or off, you and Nick have always stayed friends. What did you do, lose his cell phone number or something?"

I sighed inwardly. "For your amusement, Meyers, I’ll admit that Nick seems to have changed his cell phone number."

"Of course, I did." Once, after a lonely six-pack of Dos Equis. Bad idea: the call and the beer. Both had come back to haunt me.

"Hah!" Eve did smug well. Probably reading me like a book. "You procrastinated beyond what was reasonable, confession-wise." she said. "Now he’s either pouting or plain old steaming."

I turned on the air-conditioning. "Thanks, Sherlock Poppycock. I never would have figured that out."

I raised a brow. "Your optimistic encouragement is underwhelming."

Her watch alarm rang. "Gotta run. If Kyle’s metallic gold, stretch Lamborghini is already sitting in my driveway, it’s giving my frugal, old-world mother a heart attack."

Eve swallowed, hand on the doorknob. "You’re trying to scare me to pay me back. Sure, he’s practically a record for me, but he’s just a plaything."

"A plaything who’s buying a mansion in the town where you live."

"Let’s hear it for the odd couple," I said.

Kyle’s mother, Broadway actress Dominique DeLong, died under suspicious circumstances this winter, and when we went to the city to help find her killer, cupid struck Eve and Kyle at first sight.

"Have fun mansion shopping," I called, waving her off. "Hey," I added before she closed the shop door and headed for her Mini Cooper parked right outside. "Have Kyle enter the Lamborghini in Brandy’s vintage car show Saturday, as part of the Carousel of Love fund-raiser. The Nurture Kids Foundation is his mother’s kind of charity."

"Great idea. See you around." Eve closed her door but powered down her window. "Please don’t tell Nick about kissing Werner until I get back, ’kay? I don’t wanna miss the fun."

I gave her a dubious look. "Payback’s a stitch." I watched her pout as she drove away.

I’d barely sat when the shop phone rang. "Vintage Magic; how can I dress you?"

"Give me Isobel," demanded a chipmunk with attitude before he/she/it demonstrated, not quite beneath its breath, an impressive and varied case of potty mouth. The obscenities ended with the same demand they’d started with: "Give me Isobel," delivered like Darth Vader on helium, or a squirrel on steroids; take your pick.

As if sensing my angst, Dante Underhill, my shop-bound ghost, appeared beside me. We couldn’t even touch, my friend the resident spirit and I, but I felt safer with him beside me.

The voice, no matter how silly, carried a threat I didn’t know how to answer. "I beg your pardon? Can you repeat that?" I stalled while my heart raced.

"What time is Isobel due?" the now rabid rodent asked. While less threatening than a full-out black-hearted villain, the critter hadn’t yet mastered its audio modulation device.

Panicked humor aside, I gave in to a whole-body shiver. "Who is this?" I asked.

Dante placed his hand on his heart, like he’d protect me, and he meant it, but unless Wrath Vader stepped foot in my shop—which I so did not want—I was on my own.

Well. Not entirely on my own. I could call Detective Werner.

Not.

Two

I placed the phone on its charger and rubbed my arms. Isobel York hadn’t started interning yet, and one of her theoretical relatives—who did not sound the least loving—had already scared the wooly knobby knits out of me.

Brandy, Brandy, Brandy. What do you know about this friend of a friend from the Peace Corps?