Tulle Death Do Us Part Read Online Free PDF Page B

a whole, a petticoat, and its match, the gown, as it had once been. A beauty that should not have been desecrated. A haute couture gown—priceless—in the hands of a careless brat.
    Surely my gifts grew stronger over time. Heck, the day Dolly sold me this building for the cost of taxes had to have been key. It was from here that I’d solved mysteries from the past, and just today another began with a box covered in a petticoat from the country club’s Golden Jubilee.
    It didn’t bear trying to figure out. I’d learned not to argue with the universe. I had wanted to say no to judging to begin with, so what does the universe do? It gives me the very dress I’d die to get my hands on. Smack in my lap, if I was lucky. Well, on a hanger, at least. And as long as I could get my hands on it, whether I picked it as a winner or not didn’t matter.
    Given the nature of the last, and possibly current, owner—if it belonged to the same person—I might not pick it on principle. Who needed a customer like Vainglory to try to satisfy?
    I winced inwardly. Who was I kidding? I couldn’t wait to get my hands on the peach gown and the tulle petticoats beneath it.
    My fear? That would be the one dress not entered in the competition.
    First things first. “When can I see the clothes?” I asked my moonstruck parents.
    Fiona had the grace to look chagrined. She had no idea how long they’d zoned. They really needed me to get my own apartment.
    She cleared her throat. “The entries are being delivered to you starting tomorrow, if not sooner.”
    “How did you know I’d say yes? Suppose I didn’t want to judge?”
    “You didn’t,” my father said, “but you caved. We knew you would. For us.”
    Fiona cuffed him.
    “Let’s just call it a mandate from the universe,” I said, which made Fiona prepare to drag my father from the shop. We both knew it was better not to go there with him. I got thanked, kissed, and hugged extra hard before they left, since they’d duped me with manipulation aforethought.
    “Hey!” I called after them. “Where did Eve go?”
    “She had a class to teach,” my father said. At UConn’s Avery Point campus, where Dad himself taught.
    Fiona chuckled. “Soon as we got you to the fainting couch, she ran out of here like she was being chased by a tall, open can of red paint.”
    For years, Eve wore only black, a palette which she had recently stretched to include dark earthy and metallic tones, after she’d tempered her wardrobe with a steampunky edge. Sure, I egged her on. So yes, a giant can of colored paint, any color, would scare her witless and turn her white as a cranky goose; that was a pun, Eve-style. “She’s a wuss, my gothic friend.”
    “Yep, she is.” Fee let my father work a bit to catch her hand as they crossed my parking lot, then she leaned into him to show she was teasing, and I heard his newly enlivened chuckle, a sound that had been absent for so long from our lives.
    I waited to hear them drive away and then called the oneperson who could tell me how the box had gotten into my attic. “Dante?”
    No answer. No tuxedo-clad hunk appeared, top hat askew, wicked smile wide. “Dante, where are you?” My resident ghost, Dante Underhill, undertaker and Cary Grant clone, could not leave my building, formerly his building. He could however drive its new owner crazy. That would be me.
    Not that I found him annoying. More like a perk. He kept me company and helped solve crimes. He watched over me and had saved me a time or three. He also hung around the women’s dressing rooms with a big grin on his handsome face but, hey, nobody’s perfect.
    He made my days brighter and whispered sweet words of love…to his soul mate, Dolly Sweet, age 106, every time she stopped in. Almost daily.
    Most times, Dante materialized when I called. This time, he did not. “I call your lack of attention guilt, my man,” I said. “I’m betting you know something about that box. A tale you don’t feel