Free Tarnished and Torn by Juliet Blackwell Page B

these measurements exactly right. I’ll pull a couple of the women away from other projects for a few days. We’ll get it done. Don’t you fret.”
    Rosa met Lucille’s eyes and nodded a silent thank-you. Lucille winked.
    “Now, anything else?” Bronwyn asked.
    “My tiara!” Metzli said.
    Last on the list was what had brought them to Aunt Cora’s Closet in the first place: as royalty for a day, no girl could do without a tiara. Fortunately, I had a humdinger of an antique tiara waiting for the right owner.
    We polished the rhinestones, wrapped it in tissue, gave the group the name of an informal restaurant down the street that served great pizza, and sent the satisfied
quinceañera
party off with friendly waves and sighs of a job well done.
    Lucille went home to get a jump on the alterations, and after putting away the discarded merchandise and straightening the dressing room, Maya, Bronwyn, and I retired to the back room and enjoyed a slightly cold Thai food feast. Sighing contentedly, I sipped a strong cup of French-roast coffee before turning to Maya, my go-to person for anything technical.
    “How would I find the phone number of someone in Germany?”
    “Depends. You know what part of Germany?”
    “No.”
    “You know her name, though, right?”
    “It’s a he, and I even know his middle name.”
    “Piece of cake, then. Follow me,” she said, and took a seat at the computer and started clicking. “Sooo, it’s a guy, huh?”
    “Mmm,” I said.
    “Would this be an old boyfriend, by any chance?” asked Bronwyn in her oh so innocent voice.
    “I wouldn’t exactly call him . . . I mean . . . okay. Yes.”
    “Good for you! Time really does heal all wounds, doesn’t it? Time to put Sailor behind you and move on with your life.”
    Even just hearing Sailor’s name was like a physical slap. Not wanting to engage in this sort of conversation or explain exactly why I was calling a man in Germany, I shrugged and remained silent.
    Maya pulled up an Internet directory and tracked down a listing for one Hans Wilhelm Brach. She clicked several times and voilà, up came a bilingual Web page for a psychic who, with the proper monetary motivation, would help you with your love life, your finances, your health, and your career. He would also, the site claimed, contact the dearly departed should one need to “clarify inheritance issues” or “put to rest old demons.” Apparently, dropping into the great beyond just to say hi was not the done thing.
    I peered at Hans’s photo, in which he was posing in front of Tarot cards laid out in an arc on a black silk tablecloth. I would have recognized him anywhere. Same square-jawed face, same blue-green eyes. Same self-satisfied smirk, though he sported a few more wrinkles around the eyes and a thickening of everything, the kind that came with age and overindulgence.
    “You want to e-mail him?” Maya asked. “I can just click on this.”
    “Is there a phone number listed?”
    “Right here,” Maya said. “I’ll bookmark the page for you so you can pull it up anytime.”
    “Excuse me, Lily, but while it’s quiet, would you mind if I quickly run over to Chinatown for supplies?” Bronwyn kept a botanical stand on one side of Aunt Cora’s Closet, and recently had been gaining a bit of local fame with her custom tea blends. “Yesterday a customer placed an order for two birthday gift baskets.”
    “No problem,” I said.
    “Could I go with you?” Maya asked. “I promised my mom I’d find out the secret ingredients in your echinacea–rose hip blend. We all done here, Lily?”
    “Yes, thank you. You two go ahead. I’m going to finish up a few things here in the back room.”
    After Bronwyn and Maya left, I glanced at the clock. Germany was eight or nine hours ahead of San Francisco, which meant that since it was two thirty in the afternoon here, it was ten thirty—or eleven thirty—in the evening there. Such a late phone call bordered on rude, but in