didn’t you?”
Danny fell backward on the board and stretched out. “I guess I’m just an inconvenient truth.”
“Like global warming.”
“Yeah. Like global warming. Jessie’s the globe, and I’m the warming.” He closed one eye against the rays of the sun. “And by warming, I mean me being one more guy she’s not sure she can trust.”
Riggs dug his fingers into the fur at the back of Frank’s neck and clicked his tongue. “Man, if she can’t trust you, I don’t know who the guy is that she can.” He thumped a couple of pats to Frank’s large back. “So we on for this weekend, or what?”
Danny thought it over. “Yeah. I guess so. Yeah, sounds like a plan. I’ll call my folks in a bit.”
“All right then. When will you call and invite her?”
“Sometime next month?”
“C’mon. The place is a monster. Jessie and Allie can take the big room. With you and me up in the loft on the other side of the place, she’ll never know you’re there.”
Danny looked out into the horizon. “I’ll sell it to her just like that.”
* * *
“Mother liked to organize her closet according to designer,” Francesca announced as she tugged open the double doors to a massive walk-in closet and flipped on the light, drenching them in opulent elegance.
Amber and Jessie exchanged fleeting wide-eyed glances before Amber dug her fingers into Jessie’s arm until she winced.
“Probably my imagination,” she whispered, “but do you hear angels singing?”
“Mm-hmm,” Jessie muttered before addressing Francesca. “This is really amazing.”
The woman placed a hand on one bony hip and looked around as if seeing the closet for the first time. “I suppose it’s a little ostentatious, isn’t it? But then Mother was an extravagant person by nature.”
Jessie had met Stella Dutton a time or two before her death. She wouldn’t really categorize her as extravagant as much as . . . impeccable. The first time they met was the Women of Excellence in the Arts benefit tea at the Marina del Rey Ritz-Carlton. Piper had chaired the event planning committee, and Jessie had volunteered to staff the registration table as a courtesy to her friend. She’d noticed Stella the instant she stepped into line at her table in a vintage Chanel suit, a double strand of pearls, and two-toned slingback pumps. In a different time, she might have been mistaken for Jacqueline Kennedy.
“The first time I met your mother,” she commented, “she was wearing the most exquisite Chanel—”
“Double-breasted?” Francesca interrupted.
“No. No, it was an off-white wool with black seam detailing and gold-tone buttons.”
“Yes, of course,” she said, heading to the far end of the closet. She unzipped one of the clear garment bags. “This one.”
Jessie’s hand flew to her heart, and she and Amber released appreciative sighs in perfect harmony.
“She did look lovely in this, didn’t she?”
Jessie nodded. “I remember thinking she eclipsed every other woman in the room just by wearing that suit.”
“Mother loved Coco Chanel. She said the designer wasn’t just stylish; she also created the very concept of personal style.”
“I’d have to agree.”
“What do you suppose you could get for something like this?”
Jessie stepped forward to examine it more closely. “The logo buttons are still pristine and the stitching is unblemished. We could easily put a price tag on it for, say, nineteen hundred.”
“And for consignment, the store takes twenty-five percent when it sells?”
Jessie discerned a sense of desperation in the question that their surroundings didn’t convey. “Yes, twenty-five percent.”
“All right. Put that one aside. I’ll have Elyse bring up a garment rack for us while you take a look to see what else you might like. Let’s start with maybe ten or twelve primary items and another dozen from the shoes and handbags, shall we?”
“That’s more than generous,” Jessie told her. “It will give us a solid look at whether my customers will be interested in purchasing as well as lease options.”
Once Francesca’s Prada heels clopped down the hall and to the stairs, Amber and Jessie shared muted squeals from inside the closet.
“Do you believe this closet?” Amber squawked.
From the elaborate crystal chandelier to the subtle lavender fragrance enveloping them to the three inches of thick white carpet Jessie smoothed with the toe of her shoe, the term closet seemed slightly . . . inadequate to describe their surroundings.
“It’s bigger than my whole apartment.”
“Never mind the size of the closet,” Jessie whimpered as she floated toward a section of floor-length gowns. “May I escort you to the bling section?”
Amber gasped as Jessie removed an ethereal strapless evening gown with a sweetheart neckline, banded waist, and draped ruffle skirt. A stunning blue-and-grey print seemed to flutter over layers of airy, semi-sheer silk organza.
“Is that—” Amber breathed.
Together, they confirmed the label. “Badgley Mischka.”
“We’ve got to have this one,” Jessie declared.
“We can’t leave here without it.”
Over the next ten minutes, they found about twenty different garments they couldn’t leave without and, while Amber joined Francesca in the sitting room to fill out the consignment paperwork, Jessie arranged each one on the crystal hook on the back of the closet door and shot a digital record with Amber’s small camera of the four dresses, two jackets, six suits, and three gowns they’d agreed upon.
Elyse helped by enclosing each article in its own garment bag and hanging them on a wheeled rack while Jessie took additional pictures of the six immaculate pairs of shoes, seven like-new handbags and two exquisite wraps Francesca had agreed to include. After the accessories had been packaged and stacked, it took the both of them to roll the cart out of the closet into the sitting room where Amber and Francesca sat at a carved walnut table.
“You know,” Jessie said, pausing to consider how best to broach the subject tactfully. “I have a deal in place with several benefactors where they’ve given me items to lease out and collect a sort of royalty on each rental. If you’d like me to take more from the closet for that purpose, we’d be happy to do that.”
“How exactly would that work?” Francesca asked, and Jessie noted a mist of grief in her mahogany eyes.
Jessie sat on the
