Hearse and Gardens (8 page)

I decided to take the crystal staircase leading down into the gallery so I could marvel at the ocean and the artwork, but when I stepped over the threshold from old to modern, low voices rumbled. Through the clear patch in the floor, I saw Celia and Richard standing with their backs to the window. I couldn't hear their words, but I was close enough to read their lips.

Richard said, “I hope this guy's a winner. I've
researched him and he's been used to testify in many a competency hearing.”

Celia leaned in to Richard.

Darn.
I couldn't see her mouth.

He laughed, then stuck out his lip in a disgusting imitation of Uncle Harry. Even Celia looked appalled and she walked away.

Did Liv know about their plan to take away Uncle Harry's power of attorney? I turned around to head back the other way before they saw me. As if on cue, an entire corner alcove, with a marble bust on a carved column, moved and Liv stepped into the hallway.

She giggled when she saw my look. “The secret staircase I told you about the night of Father's wake. Wanna see?”

Does a bear
 . . .

She pushed at the back of a revolving alcove, leaving me enough room to squeeze through, then grabbed the molding and pulled it shut. Oh, if only Elle could see this!

There were Persian-carpeted stairs leading up one level and another set leading down. Dimly lit sconces created the perfect shadows for ambiance. Like the rest of the old part of Sandringham, the walls were lined with mahogany panels, minus the art. I wanted to explore the third floor, thinking perhaps Uncle Harry kept one of his wives locked in a room like Mr. Rochester in
Jane Eyre
, but Liv was already waiting for me at the bottom of the staircase.

When I reached her, she pulled a round brass knob next to the stair rail, and the wall in front of us parted. Through the brick archway to the kitchen, Elle came into view, stuffing her face with another piece of pie.

I touched Liv's arm before we stepped into the hallway.
“What an imaginative house, with all its passageways and staircases.” I remembered what Elle had told me about Nathan and his family in regards to the tunnels leading from the shore to the cellar that were used for transporting illegal booze. Sandringham was built in the early 1890s and probably had tunnels of its own.

Liv turned. “Yes. I've always admired the planning that must have gone into all of Sandringham's nooks and crannies. Before the funeral, Grandfather just gave me a sketching journal that was one of my father's. I've looked through it, briefly. Many of the drawings are of the interior of Sandringham. All the stories in the picture books my father made for me take place at Sandringham too.”

“I'd love to see the journal. I'm a bit of an interior design addict myself.” I reached into my pocket and handed her another Cottages by the Sea business card, in case she misplaced the first one.

“Sure. Maybe you can help me organize them. I want to make a book about Sandringham and its history, along with my father's drawings. I think he would've liked that.”

“I'm sure he would.”

Detective Shoner might also want to take a look at the journal for possible clues to her father's murder.

When we stepped into the hallway, Kate was standing off to the side, out of Ingrid and Elle's view.

Had she been eavesdropping on Liv's and my conversation?

In Sag Harbor, we unloaded the pickup and piled the boxes from the bungalow in Elle's thankfully empty woodshed.

Over a cup of Darjeeling tea, Elle shared what she'd learned about Ingrid. She came to live at Sandringham about ten years ago and was a distant relative of Pierce's mother and Uncle Harry's second wife, Tansy. Ingrid grew up and lived in Springs for most of her life. She originally worked in a few art galleries in Bridgehampton but found her real passion was food. She started her culinary career in the kitchen of the acclaimed Vic and Tina's Restaurant in East Hampton. Apparently, Uncle Harry came into the restaurant and saw her as the spitting image of his second wife, and made her an offer she couldn't refuse.

Elle and I said our good-byes and I took off for Montauk, wanting to take the long way home, past the harbor.
The sky was dark, lightning zigzagged the horizon, and the wind caused choppy waves on the bay. The swells weren't as high as the ocean waves in front of my cottage, a reason Sag Harbor had been one of America's top ports when whaling was at its peak in the early- to mid-1800s. On a day like this, it wasn't a stretch to picture worried spouses pacing their widow's walks, wringing their lace handkerchiefs in anticipation of their husbands' safe return.

When I turned onto Route 114, the drizzle turned to a steady rain. I flipped on my wipers and thought about Pierce Falks's murder. Just from meeting everyone at Sandringham, I was able to come up with a suspect list. Liv and Kate were ruled out because of their ages. Of course, at the top of the list was Helen Morrison. But what if she didn't kill Pierce and take the Warhol? Maybe she was dead too? Richard, Celia, Brandy, Ingrid, and Nathan were all around the same age. Brandy might have been a little younger, but they were all close to the age Pierce would be if he were alive. Even Uncle Harry had to be thought of as a suspect. And one last person, who'd never be able to defend herself, was Pierce's wife and Liv's mother, Sonya, because she died in a boating accident after Pierce and Helen had disappeared. I wanted to get a look at Pierce's journal and if Liv didn't call me, then I was going to call her. I needed more intel on Brandy and Richard. Elle said she was meeting Detective Shoner on Wednesday at the East Hampton Adopt-a-Pet. Maybe I'd drop in and see if I couldn't schmooze something out of him.

I entered East Hampton. The town was packed with film-festival goers. There was a fender bender at the
crossroads of Route 27 and Main Street, so I decided to park and check out Grimes House Antiques. I rarely bought anything because of the shop's high prices, but that didn't mean I couldn't get inspiration or ideas on what was trending.

Before getting out of the Jeep, I pulled up the hood of my raincoat, then stepped into the pounding rain. The wind and rain lashed at the stately elms as they tried gallantly, but unsuccessfully, to hold on to their foliage. I left my umbrella in the car. It would be useless.

Grimes House Antiques sold mostly Americana, specializing in Hamptons historical items. The exterior of the shop was in the traditional New England style, with white painted wood shingles and two large display windows on either side of a red door.

I walked in and wiped my boots on the front mat, already spying a trinket I knew would set me back a thousand dollars or two. It was a sailor's valentine, almost impossible to find, although there were plenty of reproductions. Even the reproductions sold in the two-hundred-dollar range. Sailor's valentines were thought to be made in the mid-1800s by homesick men who were away at sea for long periods of time. The sailors had access to thousands of small seashells in different pearly hues that were typically glued to the bottom of an octagonal hinged box with a glass top. The designs of the tiny glued shells were usually made in the compass rose or heart pattern, some even spelling out words. Recent research had found that perhaps the sailors weren't the original artists of the shell valentines—more than likely a group of native women
artisans from Barbados, an important stop of sailing ships in the nineteenth century. Did the sailors make them or buy them from souvenir shops? It was up for debate. Believe which story you would—but from what I'd seen, men were always last-minute shoppers.

Grimes House Antiques had once been a nineteenth-century drugstore. On my left stood the original floor-to-ceiling carved mahogany apothecary cabinet with four mirror-backed shelves and a wood counter. Below the counter were wood drawers with original brass pulls and slots to put labels. One section of the cabinet held glass apothecary jars, some with their Latin-named contents still intact. The rest of the shelves held antique oddities, all in early pharmacy décor. Amazingly enough, the ginormous cabinet was for sale—only $100,000. Contents not included.

The rare paper section at the back of the shop was my favorite place to browse. There were maps, posters, Audubon prints, naturalists' handwritten journals with sketches, and matted pages from hand-tinted books going all the way back to the days of early American exploration. If I had tons of disposable income, I'd spend it here, not on a vintage Hermès bag or Louis Vuitton luggage. Elle might beg to differ.

“Can I help you?” Tara Gayle walked toward me.
Ugh
.

Tara had beauty-queen looks, perfect lips, and white teeth. Although her eyeteeth looked a little longer than the average human's—dare we say Vampirella?

I said, “This is your shop? Thought Rita was the owner.”

She looked over my head and waved at someone in the
back; it was Byron Hughes in the antique paper section. He must've been bent over looking through labeled portfolios when I walked in. If he'd been standing, his pheromones would have drawn me like a metal spaceship to Magneto.

Tara said, “I run things now.”

Byron motioned to me.

“Excuse me, I see a friend.”

She wrinkled her brow and gave me an unbelieving look and said, “Whatever.”

Tara went to the front of the shop and sat on a stenciled wooden chest. She took out a file from her skirt pocket and went to work on her nails. Crimson dust fell onto the bleached oak floor. I walked to the back, stopping at a huge poster displaying American beetles in various stages of development.

“Fancy meeting you here,” Byron said.

I was glad I'd dressed in my skinny jeans, butterscotch leather knee-high boots, and a long hand-knit sweater, not knit by me, but by Karen Oats, the owner of Karen's Kreative Knitting in Montauk. However, I did pick out the yarn—soft alpaca wool in variegated shades of teal. Knitting was on my bucket list, along with surfing. But if it took me two hours to decide on the yarn because there were so many colors and textures to choose from, and another hour poring over patterns while drinking cappuccino from Karen's espresso machine, I could only imagine how long it would take me to learn to knit.

I pointed to the beetle poster. “A little serendipitous, don't you think?”

Byron laughed, a sound I could listen to till the next millennium. And he smelled good. I leaned into him, just to give my olfactory glands a treat.

He pointed at the poster. “Why is it everywhere you go, bugs are involved? Although, I didn't see any at Pierce Falks's wake.”

Warmth filled my face. Was I excited that he noticed me at the wake or embarrassed because I passed him by without saying hello? I tried a little misdirection. “I wonder which is worth more, an eighteenth-century naturalist's beetle chart or a twentieth-century Beatle poster—as in John, Paul, George, and Ringo?”

“Probably the latter.”

Fanned out on a low table was an assortment of unrolled antique hand-tinted landscape designs.

He followed my gaze. “I'm getting some ideas for a historical project I'm starting in April with the Town of East Hampton. We're working on building a park on the land next to Sandringham.”

“Darn. Thought those plans were for Little Grey.”

“Little Grey?”

I put my hands on my hips and stuck out my bottom lip.

“Ahh. Your garden by the sea. I thought you didn't want to copy Grey Gardens in East Hampton—wanted to make it your own.”

“I do, but we talked about using as many heirloom and local plants from the same time period. I plan on getting landmark status from the town for the cottage because it was designed by Greenleaf Thorpe.”

I was happy he was working with the Town of East
Hampton. Maybe he could use his clout to help sway the board once I had the title in my mitts. The Town of East Hampton was all encompassing and included the hamlets of Montauk, Amagansett, Wainscott, and Springs, along with the villages of Sag Harbor and East Hampton.

He picked up one of the renderings and spread it out on the table. “Don't you think this layout might be a little too grand for your property? I remembered an early owner of Grey Gardens had a hard time with her plantings. It took many seasons of trial and error until she got it right.”

“Delphiniums!” We said at the same time. We laughed loud enough to make Tara, who was now flipping through a fashion magazine, look up.

I said, “I see we both read the same book.”

Byron said, “
Forty Years of Gardening.
Anna Gilman Hill. I have a signed first edition.”

Of course you do
. Anna Gilman Hill moved from Grey Gardens mainly because of the nor'easters and the fact her favorite flower, the delphinium, couldn't survive, no matter how hard she babied it. Anna Gilman Hill was the second occupant of East Hampton's Grey Gardens, and Jackie Kennedy's cousins, the Beales, were the third owners.

Anna Gilman Hill and her landscape architect, Ruth Dean, planted the garden behind concrete walls imported from Spain as a barrier to the strong winds off the Atlantic. I didn't plan to have Byron Hughes import anything, but I wanted him to give me a landscape similar to Anna Gilman Hill's garden. She used pale-colored flowers to mesh with the sand and sea mist. Little Grey sat on a cliff in Montauk, whereas Grey Gardens was tucked behind
dunes, almost level with the ocean, so naturally, my horticultural requirements would be different.

I said, “I read her book online and printed out all the pages having to do with Grey Gardens. The photos were in black and white—gray gardens, indeed.”

“I have to say, I took it for granted you were a ‘keeping up with the Joneses' type of girl, like a lot of Hamptons housewives—not really caring what goes into their landscaping, only that it's pretty and has more flowers than the neighbors.”

His comment put him just this side of the sexist line, but I gave him a pass. “I'm not a housewife. Not even a wife. And I don't give two figs about the Joneses. Who are they again?”

He laughed that laugh again, and I reached over and stroked his cashmere-sleeved arm. My alpaca yarn made me do it.

“You're a woman of many hats.”

Yes. The first time he saw me, I was wearing a backward Tigers baseball cap.

A booming voice called out, “Ms. Gayle! What do you think you're doing?”

Rita must have walked past us while we were chatting. She stood next to Tara. “I hope you're comfortable on my eighteenth-century Pennsylvania marriage chest rumored to be from the Franklin household—as in Ben. One warped board and the price goes down significantly.”

Tara shot up like her rear end was on fire.

“If you have time for magazine reading, at least read one on American antiques, not fashion.”

Uh-oh. Tara was in the doghouse. She belonged there, trying to pass herself off as the shop's owner.

Tara brushed off the nail file dust from her skirt and put on her stuck-up face. “There happens to be a spread on Bill Blass's former penthouse.
Fashion Times
magazine isn't all about fashion.”

Rita Grimes wasn't someone you talked back to. “Well, maybe you can save your reading and nail filing for your break. I just got a shipment of antique lace you need to measure and put on old wood factory bobbins. I'll take care of the store.”

Tara stuck her chin out as she passed us. She gave Byron a wink and an air-kiss.

Byron said to me, “Let's make our escape. The last time I talked to Rita, I ended up with a bill even my accountant couldn't make disappear.” He put his hand on my back and guided me toward the front door.

We almost made it.

“Mr. Hughes. Mr. Hughes.” Rita came scuffling after us. She was a tiny woman, with round tortoiseshell glasses, and dark hair sprinkled with gray that she wore in a tight bun.

Byron stopped for a second, but only to pull out his cell phone. He put it to his ear and said, “Of course, Muriel. Tell Ralph I'll be at his compound in five minutes.”

I tried to think of all the famous Ralphs he could be talking about, then realized no one was on the other end. It was a ruse to get away from Rita.

“Sorry, Rita,” he said. “Important client. Gotta run.”

Rita Grimes wasn't nice to anyone. How come Byron
warranted special treatment? One look in his eyes and I figured it out.