Cloche and Dagger by Jenn McKinlay Read Free Book Online

of all shapes and sizes, and out front one of her floor-to-ceiling display racks boasted everything from narrow-brimmed trilbies to trendy fascinators.
    It seemed mandatory that I try a few on, so I spent a good half hour in front of one of the many freestanding mirrors placed about the shop, trying on hats and turning this way and that. My red hair clashed horribly with the magenta hats, but I found a divine olive green number that I was pretty sure was going to find its way into my collection.
    When I lived in Florida, I had been a sun hat and visor sort of girl. In fact, I rarely went outside without them because I have the genetic predisposition to being part crustacean. In other words, if I spent a half hour in the tropical sun, I was soon red enough to sport claws and a snappy tail.
    I glanced through the floating hat display to the street outside. It was a cozy gray day. Maybe it would even rain. I found myself looking forward to it as a nice change from the land of eternal sunshine.
    Fee left the shop early on Tuesdays and Thursdays. She was still a student, slogging through classes in the hope that she would run a shop of her own one day.
    “I’ll see you tomorrow, yeah?” she called on her way out the door.
    “I’ll be here,” I said.
    The posted hours for the shop meant we were open for one more hour. I figured I could handle anything that came up. Now here’s the thing about me, in case you missed it: when I am wrong, I am so very wrong.
    Ten minutes before I would have turned the dead bolt, drawn the shades over the windows and door and called it a day, the door was yanked open with unnecessary force, setting its bells jangling and sounding more like an alarm than a pleasant ringing announcement of a customer arriving.
    The woman who strode in was wearing a leopard-print dress that hugged her bodacious curves. She had on matching leopard-print shoes. A Coach bag dangled from her arm and her jewelry was not what one would wear for an everyday errand but rather the stuff of walks down a red carpet somewhere. Unless of course, she considered Mim’s Whims that auspicious an outing but I suspected not. Rather, I think she was what the Brits call a toff, showing off her wealth, well, because she could. We had a lot of those in the hotel industry in Florida as well.
    Her black hair was scraped back from her flawless face, a face that left even me staring at her in wonder. It wasn’t a face that had been manufactured by nips and tucks and injections of toxins. No, it was a perfectly oval face with arching brows over luminous aqua-colored eyes, a narrow nose and perfect full pink lips.
    “May I help you?” I asked.
    The woman looked me up and down. “You’re not Vivian.”
    “She’s on vacation,” I prevaricated. That sounds so much better than saying ‘I lied,’ doesn’t it?
    The woman turned and handed her purse to the man behind her. He was handsome but not overly so. In fact, he was of medium height, medium build, with pale skin, brown hair and hazel eyes and made an impression about as exciting as a glob of mayonnaise as he stood in the shadow of the beauty beside him.
    “Vacation?” the woman asked.
    I gathered from her tone that this was unacceptable. I wondered if Viv had a special order for the woman and I hoped like heck that there was a paper trail for it.
    “When will she be back?” the woman asked. Her voice was curt and it was easy to see that she was irritated.
    “Any day now,” I said. Not a total lie because for all I knew it could be any day.
    “You obviously don’t know who I am,” the woman said.
    I wasn’t sure if she was slamming me for being a foreigner or for being ignorant shop help, but I didn’t want Viv to lose an account because of me.
    “Of course, I know who you are,” I bluffed.
    One of her thin eyebrows rose higher than the other and I knew I had messed up somehow.
    “Of course she knows you, Lady Ellis, or should I say The Right Honorable Countess of