Moonlight Becomes You (11 page)

Years of giving intimate dinners for clients and potential clients, only to see them take their lucrative accounts to other attorneys, leaving Malcolm with token bones to pick over. Now even most of
those
were gone.

And then the ultimate insult. Despite the way she had stuck by him all these years, knowing she would have done better to strike out on her own, yet clinging stubbornly to what little dignity she had left, she had realized that he was mooning over his secretary and planning to get rid of
her!

If only he'd been the man I thought I married, Janice mused as she pushed back the chair and stood, flexing her stiff shoulders. Even better, if only he'd been the man
he
thinks he is! Then I really
would
have had a prince.

She smoothed the sides of her skirt, taking a modicum of pleasure from the feel of her slim waistline and narrow hips. In the early days, Malcolm had compared her to a thoroughbred, slender, with long neck, lean legs, and shapely ankles. A beautiful thoroughbred, he had added.

She
had
been beautiful when she was young. Well, look what that had gotten her, she thought ruefully.

At least her body was still in excellent shape. And not because of regular visits to spas and pleasant days at the golf course with her well-heeled friends. No, she had spent her adult life working, and working hard—first as a real estate agent, then for the last five years as bookkeeper in this place.

She remembered how, as a real estate agent, she used to salivate over properties that went for a song because people needed ready cash. How many times she had thought, “If only I had the money . . .”

Well, now she had it. Now she could call the shots. And Malcolm didn't even have a clue.

Not ever to have to set foot in this place again! she thought exultantly. Never mind the Stark carpet and brocaded draperies, even in the office area. It might be pretty, but it was still a nursing home—God's waiting room—and at fifty-four, she was hurtling rapidly toward the age when
she would be a candidate for admittance herself. Well, she would get out of here long before that ever happened.

The phone rang. Before she picked up the receiver, Janice glanced around the room, checking lest someone might have tiptoed in behind her back.

“Janice Norton,” she said sternly, holding the receiver close to her mouth.

It was the call she had hoped to receive. He didn't bother with a greeting. “Well, for once dear Malcolm got something straight,” he said. “That Wetlands Act amendment absolutely will go through. That property will be worth a fortune.”

She laughed. “Then isn't it time to make a counteroffer to Maggie Holloway?”

22

A
FTER
L
IAM
'
S CALL
, M
AGGIE SAT AT THE KITCHEN TABLE
, sipping tea and nibbling on some cookies she had found in the cupboard.

The box was almost full and looked as though it had been opened recently. She wondered if only a few nights ago Nuala had been sitting here sipping tea, eating cookies, planning her menu for the dinner party. She had found a shopping list next to the telephone: leg of lamb, green beans, carrots, apples, grapes, new potatoes, biscuit mix. And then there was a scribbled, typical Nuala note to herself: “Forgetting something. Look around store.” And Nuala obviously forgot to bring the list.

It's funny, Maggie thought, but in an odd and certainly unexpected way, being here in Nuala's house is giving her back to me. I feel almost as though I've lived here with her all these years.

Earlier she had glanced through a photograph album she found in the living room, and realized that the pictures of Nuala with Timothy Moore began the year after Nuala and her father divorced.

She also found a smaller album filled with pictures of herself taken during the five years Nuala had been part of her life. On the back pages were taped all the notes she had written to Nuala in those years.

The unmounted picture at the very end was of Nuala and her father and herself on their wedding day. She had been beaming with joy to have a mother. The expression on Nuala's face had been just as happy. The smile on her father's lips, however, was reserved, questioning, just like him.

He wouldn't let her inside his heart, Maggie thought. I've always heard he was crazy about my mother, but she was dead, and wonderful Nuala was there. He was the big loser when she finally left because she couldn't stand his carping.

And I was the loser, too, she reflected as she put the cup and saucer in the dishwasher. The simple act brought back another memory, that of her father's annoyed voice: “Nuala, why is it so impossible to transfer dishes directly from the table to the dishwasher without first piling them in the sink?”

For a while, Nuala had cheerfully laughed about being genetically messy, but later she would say, “Dear God, Owen, this is the first time I've done that in three days.”

And sometimes, she'd burst into tears and I'd run after her and put my arms around her,
Maggie thought sadly.

It was four-thirty. The window over the sink framed the handsome oak tree that stood to the side of the house. It
should be trimmed, Maggie thought. In a bad storm, those dead branches could break and land on the house. She dried her hands and turned away. But why worry about that? She wasn't going to stay here. She would sort out everything and earmark usable clothes and furniture for charity. If she started now, she could be done by the time she had to leave. Of course she would keep a few mementos for herself, but most things she would just get rid of. She supposed that after the will was probated, she would sell the house “as is,” but she preferred that it be as empty as possible. She didn't want strangers going through Nuala's home and perhaps making sarcastic comments.

She began in Nuala's studio.

Three hours later, grimy from the dust of cabinets and countertops that had been cluttered and jammed with stiffened paint brushes, dried-up tubes of oils, paint rags, and small easels, Maggie had an impressive number of tagged trash bags lined up in a corner of the room.

And even though she had only made a start, just that much clearing up changed the appearance of the room for the better. Loyally, she reminded herself that Police Chief Brower had told her this space had been thoroughly ransacked. It was obvious that the cleaning service had not bothered to do more than shove as many items as possible back into the cabinets, and the spillover had been left on the countertops. The result was a sense of chaos that Maggie found disconcerting.

But the room itself was quite impressive. The floor-to-ceiling windows that seemed to be the only major alteration made in the house must let in wonderful northern light, Maggie thought. When Nuala had urged her to bring her sculpting materials with her, she had promised that she would find the long refectory table a perfect work area. Even though she was sure she wouldn't use them, to please
Nuala she had brought along a fifty-pound tub of wet clay, several armatures, the frameworks on which the figures would be constructed, and her modeling tools.

Maggie paused for a minute, wondering. On that table she could make a portrait head of Nuala. There were plenty of recent pictures of her around to use as models. As though I need them, Maggie thought. It seemed to her that Nuala's face would be forever imprinted in her mind. Except for visiting Greta and clearing out the house, she had no real plans. As long as I know I'm staying until a week from Sunday, it would be nice to have a project, she told herself, and what better subject than Nuala?

The visit to Latham Manor and the time she had spent with Greta Shipley had served to convince her that the uneasiness she thought she had perceived in Nuala was simply the result of her concern over the effects of radically changing her life by selling the house and moving to the residence. There doesn't seem to have been anything else weighing on her, she thought. At least, not that I can see.

She sighed. I guess there's no way I can be sure. But if it
was
a random break-in, wasn't it risky to kill Nuala, then take time to search the house? Whoever was here could smell the food cooking and see that the table was set for company. It would make sense that the killer would be terrified that someone might arrive while he was ransacking the house, she told herself. Unless that someone already knew dinner was scheduled for eight o'clock, and that I wouldn't be arriving until nearly that time.

A window of opportunity, she reasoned. There certainly had been one for a person who knew the plans for the evening—perhaps was even part of them.

“Nuala
wasn't
killed by a random thief,” Maggie said aloud. Mentally she reviewed the people who had been expected
at the dinner. What did she know about any of them? Nothing, really.

Except for Liam; he was the only one she really knew. It was only because of him that she had run into Nuala again, and for that she always would be grateful. I'm also glad he felt the way I did about his cousin Earl, she thought. His showing up here really gave me the creeps.

The next time she and Liam talked, she wanted to ask him about Malcolm and Janice Norton. Even in that quick moment this morning, when she had greeted Janice at Latham Manor, she could detect something amiss in the woman's expression. It looked like anger. Because of the canceled sale? Maggie wondered. But surely there were plenty of other houses like this one available in Newport. It couldn't be that.

Maggie walked over to the trestle table and sat down. She looked at her folded hands and realized they were itching for the feel of clay. Whenever she was trying to think something through, she found working in clay helped her to find the answer, or at least come to some kind of conclusion.

Something had bothered her today, something she had noticed subconsciously. It had registered mentally but had not made an impression at the moment. What could it have been? she asked herself. Moment by moment, she retraced her day from the time she got up, to the cursory inspection of the downstairs floor at Latham Manor and her appointment with Dr. Lane, to the drive with Greta Shipley to the cemeteries.

The cemeteries! Maggie sat up. That was it! she thought. That last grave they went to, of the Rhinelander woman, who died two weeks ago—I noticed something.

But what? Try as she might, she could not conceive of what had troubled her there.

In the morning, I'll go back to the cemeteries and look
around, she decided. I'll take my camera, and if I don't see exactly what it is, I'll take pictures. Maybe whatever it is that's nagging at me will show up when I develop them.

It had been a long day. She decided to bathe, scramble an egg, then go to bed and read more of the books about Newport.

On the way downstairs, she realized that the phone in Nuala's bedroom was ringing. She hurried to answer it but was rewarded by a decisive click at the other end.

Whoever it was probably didn't hear me, she thought, but it doesn't matter. There was no one with whom she wanted to talk right now.

The closet door in the bedroom was open, and the light from the hallway revealed the blue cocktail suit Nuala had worn to the reunion party at the Four Seasons. It was haphazardly draped over a hanger, as though carelessly put away.

The suit was expensive. A sense that it might be damaged if left that way made Maggie go over to the closet to rehang it properly.

In the course of straightening the fabric, she thought she heard a soft thud, as though something had dropped on the floor. She looked down into the cluttered array of boots and shoes in the closet bottom and decided that if something
had
fallen, it would just have to wait.

She closed the closet door and left the room, headed for her bath. The solitude she enjoyed on many evenings in her New York apartment was not appealing in this house with flimsy locks and dark corners, in this house where a murder had been committed—perhaps by someone whom Nuala had counted as a friend.

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