“You’re welcome.”
“It’s a black-tie affair.”
Of course it was. “Black-tie like my blue dress?”
“We ruined the blue dress, remember?” he said. “We were having sex on the bed and knocked the bottle of cabernet onto it?”
I flashed back right to that sunny afternoon. We had wanted to go to dinner, and I had laid the blue dress on the bed, and then Raphael brought a bottle of wine to the bedroom and did his Raphael thing, and we ended up on the bed ourselves, with the dress on the floor.
Anger bubbled up inside me, mixing with sadness, and a sick feeling that I was falling and falling, and somewhere below, a hard bottom waited for me. I was angry with Raphael. I was angry with myself. I wanted to bite someone or something.
“That’s right.” Damn it. “Okay, I’ll come up with something.”
“I’ll pick you up at seven,” he said.
“Much obliged,” I drawled.
“Don’t do your Texas thing on me; it won’t work.”
“I’ve done my thing on you and you quite liked it at the time.”
“Not nearly as much as you liked what we did after.”
I didn’t answer and neither did he. We just sat there, with the phone line between us. We had to stop doing this to each other.
“Raphael, there is something else I wanted to mention. I meant to tell you this yesterday morning, but the appearance of your fiancée knocked me off my stride. From talking to Stefan, I understand there were six people besides you who were there when the vault was discovered.”
“I know where you’re going,” Raphael said, “and I can tell you right now, none of them would betray me.”
“Then this will be very easy. Help me eliminate them. I need to account for every moment of their time from the instant they left the site until four a.m. If they made phone calls, we need to know. If they went to a bar and talked to someone, we need to know. You know them best and I would rather you do it, because my hands are full.”
“I’ll take care of it.”
“Stefan needs to be checked out, too.”
“I said I would take care of it.”
He would. Raphael was infuriatingly thorough when he wanted to be. “I’ll see you tonight, then.”
“Maybe.”
Bastard. “Seven o’clock. Be there or your site will stay closed.”
“You do understand that if we get caught, the Pack will be blamed. The PAD isn’t going to bother with subtleties like you not being an official member of the Pack or that we’re investigating a murder. They’ll see it as two shapeshifters burglarizing the house. We’re disenfranchised enough as is.”
“I’m aware of that, thank you.”
“Just thought I’d remind you,” he said.
“I appreciate your concern.”
“Fine.”
“Perfect.”
I hung up. I felt like taking a cold shower. The clock on the wall behind the counter showed twelve minutes past ten. I had until three p.m. to find a dress and read through Doolittle’s report. Then I’d go to see the mechanic with a check from the mysterious woman and her towed car.
Since I was near a shopping district, I tackled the dress first. When you are short and curvy, your choice of dresses is limited. I had decent br**sts, muscular calves, and strong, pretty legs. There was a magic point about two to three inches above my knee, where dresses and skirts looked great on me. Anything else had to be floor length, because people generally looked at me from above, and lengths in between made my legs look shorter and wider. Styles that made my neck look shorter than it already was, like bateau and collar necklines, were right out. On top of that, dresses with a bold pattern or bright mix of colors completely swallowed me, overwhelming my pale face and blond hair.
When I needed formal wear, I usually shopped at Deasia’s, a family-owned shop ran by Deasia Randall. The owner, a stern-looking black woman in her mid-fifties, had impeccable taste.
After an hour at Deasia’s, I’d tried all of the usual suspects: teal, peach, blue…I even tried a chartreuse, which made me look like a barrel dyed in pea soup. Things that should have looked good on me, because they always had, suddenly didn’t.
Deasia examined me with the critical eye honed by thirty years of fashion experience. “What is the dress for?”
“For a formal birthday party at a millionaire’s house.” And I had to look presentable enough to get through the door.
“Who’s escorting you?”
“My ex-boyfriend.”
Deasia’s eyebrows rose. “Ah. Mystery solved. Has he moved on?”
“Yes.”
“And you want to make an impression?”
“I want to knock his socks off. I want him to see that I’m just fine on my own. I want to be vibrant.”
“Vibrant or shocking?” Deasia asked.
“I’ll take shocking.”
“Wait here.”
She disappeared between the racks of clothes. I surveyed my latest attempt. A violet, high-waisted number should have been flattering, but it wasn’t. My face had changed, too. I used to be able to pull off fresh and even sweet. The woman who looked at me now looked good in a duster and a pair of guns. Draping pretty purple fabric on me was like coating a razor blade in a Skittles candy shell.
Deasia reappeared, carrying a hanger with something black and lacy.
“I appreciate it, but black is not me,” I said. “It washes me out.”
Deasia fixed a junkyard dog stare on me. “Try it.”
I took the dress and went to the dressing room. I took the purple monstrosity off and pulled the black dress off the hanger. Black lace over black fabric. Not me. I slipped the black dress on, stepped out, and looked into the three-paneled full-length mirror.
The black dress hugged me like a glove, stopping about three inches above my knee. Solid black below the waist, the asymmetric gown climbed up diagonally across my chest, over my left shoulder. The left side had a tiny sleeve, but the right shoulder was shockingly bare. A long serpentine shape of a Chinese dragon was cut into the black fabric of the dress. Its head rested on the left side of my chest, its long body slithering between my br**sts, just a hair too narrow to be indecent, curving to the right, and sliding down my right thigh. Black, jagged lace overlaid the dragon’s outline, its pattern mimicking the dragon’s scales, giving a sexy glimpse of my bare skin. A single red stone marked the dragon’s eye and as I turned, it shone with the pure ruby glow of a bouda’s eyes.