Werner groaned and for the first time, he looked like the mad Wiener. "Madeira Cutler, you Tasered me!"

"You don't know that for sure." But I was beginning to remember things. I saw Dom's drawer of evil weapons, open a crack, so I backed up to the bed and un.o.btrusively pushed the drawer shut with the back of my leg.

The d.a.m.ned thing squealed closed.

Werner set his cup on the dresser, took me by the arms, set me aside, and opened the drawer. "Your a.r.s.enal?"

"Dominique's, dammit."

Eve took a look and whistled. "She must really have been afraid. I think she knew her life was in danger."

"It looks that way," Werner said, eyeing me.

"I didn't know you were coming," I said. "I was in my dead friend's bedroom and I'd just found . . . that!" I indicated the weapons. "You'd have nightmares, too, if you'd identified her body then got threatened with the same fate." To my utter horror, I started to cry.

I had never seen Werner look panicked before. He took me in his arms and rocked me while he patted my back. "I'm sorry, Mad. I didn't know you'd identified the body. Couple that with the threat, the discovery of a torture drawer, and I can see why you'd have been spooked."

Eve raised a brow as she watched us, but she said nothing.

"Did you get Tasered, too?" Werner asked me. "That might make you forget."

So might zoning into reading a vintage outfit, I thought, but what did I get out of it? Nothing. I had no recollection of the-Wait. Yes I did. I saw Dom switching my pricey cubic zirconias for cheap old rhinestones on the seafoam gown somebody was now trying to steal from Nick's house.

Eve picked up the Taser.

"What I can't figure out," Werner said, taking it cautiously from Eve's hand and setting it gently in Dom's a.r.s.enal, "is why somebody doesn't want you at your friend's funeral."

Before I could warn Eve with a look, she shrugged. "Simple," she said. "Mad's making somebody nervous with her investigation."

Werner turned on me. "Madeira Cutler, are you sleuthing again?"

Twenty-five.

As long as you know men are like children, you know everything!

-COCO CHANEL "I'm a sleuth," I admitted. "So arrest me."

Werner sighed. "Cute. Did you get the phone call before or after you found Dom's ghoulish stash?"

"I found the stash first, and it scared the bejeebers out of me."

Werner squeezed my arm. "You were already skittish when your life was threatened then. No wonder you panicked."

"So you forgive me for Tasering you? Because I remember now that I did."

"I don't suppose I have a choice."

"Good, then see if you can forgive me for this." I opened my purse, took out the note I got from Dom with the dress, and handed it to Werner. "Here. It was taped between the tissue around Dom's dress the other morning."

He scanned it, then tapped it against the palm of his hand for a long minute. "In a way, your friend practically asked you to sleuth. Why didn't you tell me?"

"It wasn't your jurisdiction?"

His nod held a grudging respect. "The caliber of your pretexts are improving. Good one."

I smiled for the first time that day. "Thank you."

"What does she mean by special talents?" he asked. "Are you supposed to design an answer?"

"Mad's intuitive," Eve said. "Dominique knew that." I mentally thanked Eve for her great answer.

"So intuitive," Werner said, "that you don't know whether you cheated on Jaconetti last night or not?"

"That's low," I said, "even for you."

"Yes," Werner agreed. "It was low. I'm feeling the sting of you keeping that note from me. I apologize. If anything happened last night, it would have to have happened under the influence of our double concussive head traumas. I mean, we'd both be smarter than that in our right minds."

"Right." Why didn't I like his tone? "What?" I snapped. "Am I not good enough for you?"

Eve's laughter bubbled forth. "Mad, quit while you're ahead and all that?"

"Right. Listen, Lytton. I did Taser you after, but first I saw the torture devices, heard steps above me, got a death threat, smacked my head, then somebody turns my doork.n.o.b and comes in. Of course my instinct was to zap. I'm just sorry it was you."

"If it had been anybody else, I'd applaud your instincts." He sounded resigned.

"Kind of makes my previous unintentional attacks pale in comparison, doesn't it?" I said.

"Pale yes. A pale blue, because that's the color this bruise is gonna be, blue like my old friend, the mace you carry." He smiled at the reference to one of my past accidental attacks on him.

"Wait till Nick sees your matching bruises," Eve said, "and hears about last night. Where is Nick, by the way?"

"Off on a.s.signment chasing the Pierpont diamonds halfway across the world," I said. "Where's Kyle?"

"Kyle's calling for the limo. The wake starts in-" She looked at her watch. "Oops, half an hour."

"Ack!" I jumped from the bed. I'd been so busy searching for clues in Dom's room last night that I forgot to unpack. "I need to get my dress steamed."

When I put my bag on the bed and opened it, however, I found Nick's clothes, instead of my own. "I knew that getting matching luggage was a stupid idea." We'd been at the mall and the sale was too good to pa.s.s up for either of us. Black Tumi Alpha luggage. Figures any time we did something that smacked of being a couple it backfired! I shook my head. "Thank G.o.d I keep my makeup in my purse."

"Nick's gonna look hot in vintage Versace," Eve muttered. "I'll tell Kyle to hold the limo for an extra half hour," she said. "They won't start without him."

Werner picked up both his garment and overnight bags. "I'm going to take a shower and get dressed."

"Uh, can I have a minute in there first?"

"Oh, sure."

"Why are you here, again, exactly?" I asked before going into the bathroom.

"Besides seeing if Nick's attempted housebreaks are related, I'd say it's to keep you out of trouble, and to keep people safe from your Taser- happy trigger finger. And Nick did hint that you might need someone."

I slammed the bathroom door in Werner's face. "I'll beat you both later," I yelled.

When I came out, Werner disappeared into the bathroom for his shower.

Dom's everyday closet was still open from the night before. I looked at the outfits lined up there, shook my head, and opened her walk-in closet of vintage clothes, actually an adjoining bedroom that had been converted.

In the chill air of the climate-controlled room, I picked out the dress that had been Coco Chanel's personal little black dress, the one she wore herself when she was photographed in 1936 by Man Ray. It was practically the crown jewel of Dom's vintage collection, and since I was prepared to buy it-having first pick and all-I felt safe wearing it.

I know I'd teased Dom about my wearing this dress and reading Coco, but it was the only dress I could be sure not to read Dom herself in, because she'd once told me it was too precious to wear. As for reading Coco, it wasn't likely. Aunt Fiona, our very own Mystick Falls witch, had told me that my gift was a mandate from the universe. Simply put, clothes that spoke to me did so for a reason, usually in reference to an event that shot negative energy into the universe like fireworks begging metaphysical a.s.sistance. Enter the psychic daughter of a psychic witch-moi!

I'd be safe from my visions in this.

A simple round- necked, long-sleeved shirtwaist, this historically exciting little black dress had a four- inch neck slit that tied together at the center top with a bow.

With its mid-calf hem, it was perfect for a funeral. I paired it with a jaunty Chanel hat from Coco's very early days in France, its curled feather placed to cover the gash on my head. To go with them, I chose 1995 black suede Louboutin pumps trimmed in grosgrain ribbon, its heels designed after the curves of a woman's body. I topped the outfit with Dom's multistrand pearls.

I was glad I'd showered late the night before, because we were short on time and my hair always looked better on the second day. I used the chilly dressing room to get dressed in, then I sat at Dom's dressing table to put on my makeup.

When Werner came out of the bathroom, he whistled.

I took the compliment as my due or actually as owing to my fashion sense. "You don't look half bad, yourself," I said. "Navy pinstripes suit you."

He fingered the feather on my hat, and I believe that we both realized, in that moment, the magnitude of our having slept together-well, slept in the same bed at any rate-I remembered the last place his hand had rested, and I tingled there.

For his part, he flexed and fisted that same hand. Why had we tuned in to that together? Why did our gazes hold and linger while my temperature rose and the February wind outside the window seemed like a serenade?

I shook away my lethargy and looked in the mirror. "Dom's clothes, her perfume, her jewelry. Why do I get the feeling she engineered this?"

Werner straightened his cuffs. "Are you saying I was part of the plan?"

"You're never part of the plan, Werner, but you always end up being a critical part of the action."

"Is that a compliment?"

"No. It's the reason I should be afraid of you."

Twenty-six.

Black is the color most often chosen to cloak the pious and those devoted to spiritual sacrifice. The flip side of black suggests a darker nature . . . calling up references to mystery, magic, and inevitably, a little bit of sin.

-AMY HOLMAN EDELMAN, THE LITTLE BLACK DRESS My dear friend was dead, sealed in a horrendously expensive bronze coffin, according to Kyle, that should be sitting on the empty pedestal at the head of the room.

Behind the pedestal hung a life-sized picture of Dominique, at her most glamorous, the one in which she'd posed for the cover of Vogue wearing Christian Dior.

On the wall beside it hung a picture nearly as glamorous, but so full of life, you expected Dom to step right out of it and hug you. I felt both honored and humbled to be in that candid with her and her son at the skating rink at Rockefeller Center, taken more than a year ago.

"I shouldn't be in that picture," I told Kyle. "You should have picked one with just you and your mom."

"Give it up, Mad. She thought of you as a friend and daughter. I started calling you Aunt Mad because I was jealous as a kid, but I saw the error of my ways the minute I asked for your help after she pa.s.sed, and you came, no questions asked."

"I'm honored. Sincerely."

"Yesterday at the train station, I saw in you what Mom saw from the beginning," Kyle said. "A kindred spirit, a kind soul. Family. From now on, can I just call you Sis?"

Okay, I thought, he must be sedated. "Of course." "What will you call me?" Eve asked him in a whisper to tease the sadness from his expression.

"Nothing that I can repeat in polite company," he said, nuzzling her ear and pulling her close against his side. She had become his weapon against despair. Hardly the stuff of a lasting relationship, but I figured Eve knew that.

Without Nick, I felt lost, and beside Kyle and Eve, a fifth wheel. Ian, Kyle's ex-dad, must have seen my discomfort and decided to take me in hand, because he stepped up to take my arm.

Attached to him, I felt like I needed a hazmat chemical wash. Ugh. I extricated myself from the man who hurt my friend and made a beeline for Werner. "I don't belong here in the inner circle," I said.

He cleared his throat and turned me toward the skating rink picture. "She really was your friend," he said. "I'm sorry I didn't get it the other morning."

"What are you really doing here? I mean, thank you, but aren't you afraid that Mystick Falls will fall apart without you?"

"Nah, I had some vacation time coming, and I was just looking for a good excuse when somebody got interested in Nick's house."

"You were worried about me."

"Life gets interesting around you, Mad, and dangerous. Very dangerous."

I may have been ticked, but when he took my arm as Pierce Pierpont approached, turning the unlikable man in another direction, I was relieved to belong to someone. Well, paired off, anyway. I didn't belong to Werner.

Werner enforced the law while coloring within the lines. Me, there wasn't a line I hadn't crossed with crayons, or otherwise, my whole life, except for maybe the law, most of the time. I did try not to break that.

The silence between us became uncomfortable. "What's taking so long?" I wondered out loud.

"The police are downstairs going through Dominique's casket," Werner said.

"On the day of the funeral? That's odd," I said. "How do you know that?"

"I'm a law enforcement officer. I made it a point to introduce myself as a friend of the family, offer my services, if necessary, and tell them I'd stay out of their way, otherwise."

"As a courtesy then?"