I told Michael I’d be home at the usual time and zipped off to see to my afternoon pet clients, beginning with Billy Elliot.
Tom and Billy Elliot were in the living room watching an old romantic movie on TV. I apologized for intruding, and they both hurried to assure me they were too macho to care about that girlie romantic stuff and that I was a welcome interruption. Billy Elliot did that by kissing my knees, and Tom by clicking off the movie with a very emphatic thumb, as if I’d caught him watching a porn flick.
Tom sported a lilac-hued knit shirt with a yellow polo pony embroidered on its chest. He had the shoulders-back posture of a man showing off a new purchase.
I said, “Nice shirt. Is that new?”
He beamed. “Guess what it cost!”
When somebody asks you to guess what they paid for an item, it’s like somebody asking how old you think they are. You have to guess more than you really think they paid and less than you really think they look.
I said, “Twenty-five dollars!”
“Two fifty!”
I let my jaw drop. “No!”
“Found it at a consignment shop. They had a whole box of them, brand-new, still had the price tags on them.”
“Ralph Lauren shirts for two fifty!”
He grinned. “Well, they had the Ralph Lauren polo pony on them, but the pony’s tail was a little too bushy and the backside of the embroidery was snarled. And when I take it off tonight, I may have lavender-colored skin from the dye. But what the heck, it was only two fifty.”
I held out my wrist. “My Rolex was only fifty dollars.”
“I’m glad you didn’t go for a diamond bezel. Plain is more tasteful.”
“Yeah, and a diamond bezel would have been an extra five bucks.”
He shook his head in mock sorrow. “All we have to believe in now is reality TV. Everything else is fake.”
“You mean the reality shows where a guy’s lost in the swamp, all alone, scared to death, thrashing around though the trees, while a director, a camera crew, a makeup crew, and a recording crew are filming him?”
Billy Elliot nudged me, and I bent to clip his leash to his collar.
Tom said, “They still haven’t identified the murdered woman in the Trillin house. Wouldn’t there be fingerprints they could check?”
I did not say, They know who she is, they’re just not saying!
Instead, I said, “Not unless she’s been arrested for a crime or fingerprinted for a job. Or if she served in the military.”
“Maybe they know who she is and just aren’t telling.”
“Could be. They wait until they notify the family before they release a homicide victim’s name.”
“Still seems like a long time.”
I stood up straight. “Tom, while Billy and I run, would you find out the exact time the Trillins’ flight will arrive? They left from Parma, Italy, a little after midnight this morning, and I think they’ll arrive in Sarasota around ten o’clock tonight.”
Tom’s round black eyes danced with curiosity, but he nodded without comment, and I led Billy Elliot out his front door.
Billy and I did our racer imitation on the track in the parking lot and went back upstairs. Tom was in the living room watching the same romantic movie he’d been watching when I first arrived. This time he only muted the sound when I came in. As soon as I took off his leash, Billy Elliot trotted to sit on the floor beside Tom’s wheelchair and stare at the TV.
I hung Billy’s leash in the foyer closet and grinned at them. “You guys watch the soaps, too?”
Tom said, “The plane you want is a US Airways flight from Rome to Charlotte, then Charlotte to Sarasota. It’s expected to arrive here at nine fifty-five. That could change, but the weather is good, so it probably won’t be off by much.”
“Thanks, Tom. I appreciate it.”
He flapped his hand at me and went back to watching the movie. As I closed the door behind me, I heard movie music swelling to a tear-jerking ending. I was sorry I had ruined the movie for Tom and Billy but glad I had the exact information about the Trillins’ flight. I wanted to talk to Cupcake before the law did. If nothing else, I could warn him that his secret about knowing Briana was going to be exposed.
My next stop was at a house where six cats lived. They were all rescues, and each of them had the grateful eyes that rescues always have. Their humans were two sisters who had a pact that if one wanted to bring another cat home, the other would stop her—by force if necessary. The sisters had gone to visit their ailing mother in Georgia, so for a few days the cats would have to make do with just me as a giver of goodies. With all the running and chasing they did, they gave one another plenty of exercise.
Leaving there, I realized I was on the same street where my grandmother’s seamstress lived. I had taken a few things to Mrs. Langham myself—mostly pants or jeans to be shortened—and I knew she also designed and made women’s clothes. On a sudden impulse, I swung into her driveway.
When I rang the doorbell, I heard her yell, “Come in!”
Hesitantly, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. “Mrs. Langham?”
“Come on in, I’m in the sewing room!”
I followed the sound of her voice and found her in a bedroom converted to sewing room, with a full-length mirror, a dressmaker’s form on a stand, an ironing board set up with a steaming iron at the ready, and a pegboard with about a million spools of thread in every imaginable color on the wall. Mrs. Langham herself sat behind a sewing machine on which she was furiously sewing a narrow hem on a full skirt.
She had a tape measure hanging around her neck, and her pepper-and-salt hair looked as if she’d forgotten to comb it that morning. When she looked up and saw me, she laughed.
“Oh, Dixie! I thought you were somebody else.”
“Mrs. Langham, you really shouldn’t leave your door unlocked like that.”
She laughed. “Been doing it all my life. I’m too old to change now. What can I do for you?”
“Nothing, really. I was just in the neighborhood and thought I’d stop in.”
“Your mother used to do that. Of course, she always had something in mind she wanted me to make for her.”
“You knew my mother?”
She looked exasperated. “I haven’t always been this old, Dixie. She and I are about the same age, actually. Now she was a woman who knew how to dress.”
She cast a dismissive look at my rumpled shorts and tee, as if to say that anybody in her right mind could see that I was not a woman who knew how to dress.
I said, “I remember. I was only nine when she left, but I remember how she dressed.”
I didn’t admit that I sometimes stole into the attic of Michael’s house and lifted out musty-smelling clothes our mother had left in an old trunk. Her clothes were the only things she’d left behind for Michael and me.
Mrs. Langham said, “I made a lot of her clothes. She would see something in a magazine and bring me a picture, and I’d make it. We were both so young then, we had the nerve to tackle anything. Most of it turned out okay.”
“You stole designs?”
She frowned. “I copied designs.”
I reached out and twirled a spool of hot pink thread on its peg on the wallboard. “I guess I don’t know the difference between stealing and copying.”
Like a teacher explaining a simple idea to a dull student, she said, “Here’s how it works: A designer has an idea for a dress or a blouse or a skirt or something. It’s not a better idea than you or I could come up with, but models show it in those big fashion shows where reporters and wealthy women in dark glasses go, and everybody goes nuts over the length of the skirts or the way the jackets have shoulder pads or the way they don’t. Movie stars and wealthy women buy those clothes and pay thousands of dollars for a blouse or a pair of slacks. Counterfeiters rush out and copy the designs, put the designer’s label in them, and sell a blouse or a pair of slacks for hundreds of dollars. Garment manufacturers copy the designs in different fabrics or colors and send them out to department stores, and a blouse or a pair of slacks will cost maybe fifty dollars. Dressmakers like me copy the designs in the same fabric and color as the original, and a pair of slacks or a blouse will set a woman back the cost of the fabric and whatever the dressmaker charged to make it. That’s the difference.”