Restrike (27 page)

My thanks for the support, encouragement and assistance of Marilyn Breslow, Susan Cheever, Kenny Cook, Bert Fields, Amanda Foreman, Barbara Guggenheim, Susan Kinsolving, Susan Larkin, Elisabeth Norton, Mollie and John Julius Norwich, Alexandra Penney, Betty Richards, and Noreen Tomassi. A very special thank you to Emma Sweeney, my wonderful agent, and above all, thanks to Dave.

Reba White Williams worked for more than thirty years in business and finance—in research at McKinsey & Co., as a securities analyst on Wall Street, and as a senior executive at an investment management firm.

Williams graduated from Duke with a BA in English, earned an MBA at Harvard, a PhD in Art History at CUNY, and an MA in Writing at Antioch. She has written numerous articles for art and financial journals. She is a past president of the New York City Art Commission and served on the New York State Council for the Arts.

She and her husband built what was thought to be the largest private collection of fine art prints by American artists. They created seventeen exhibitions from their collection that circulated to more than one hundred museums worldwide, Williams writing most of the exhibition catalogues. She has been a member of the print committees of several leading museums.

Williams grew up in North Carolina and lives in New York, Connecticut, and Southern California with her husband and Maltese, Muffin.  She is the author of two novels featuring Coleman and Dinah Greene,
Restrike
and
Fatal Impressions
, along with the story of Coleman and Dinah when they were children,
Angels
. She is currently working on her third Coleman and Dinah mystery.

We hope you enjoyed reading 
Restrike
and getting to know Coleman and Dinah. If so, you’ll be happy to know that the second Coleman and Dinah Greene Mystery is out now:

Coleman’s magazine publishing empire is growing and Dinah’s print gallery is gaining traction. In fact, Dinah has just won the contract to select, buy, and hang art in the New York office of the management consultants Davidson, Douglas, Danbury & Weeks – a major coup that will generate The Greene Gallery’s first big profits. However, when Dinah goes to DDD&W to begin work, she discovers a corporate culture unlike anything she’s ever encountered before. There are suggestions of improprieties everywhere, including missing art worth a fortune. And when two DDD&W staff members are discovered murdered, Dinah and Coleman find themselves swept into the heart of another mystery. Revealing the murderer will be no easy task…but first Dinah needs to clear her own name from the suspect list.

Here’s an excerpt from 
Fatal Impressions
:

By five thirty Thursday morning, Dinah had eaten a light breakfast, dressed, and packed. At 5:45, Tom, Jonathan’s driver, picked her up in the Lincoln Town Car. Tom would drive her to the DDD&W office in the Fry building, wait while she made a final check of last night’s installations, then take her to the airport in time for the nine a.m. flight to Los Angeles.

They dropped Baker at his vet’s for the weekend and were on their way uptown by a few minutes past six. Dinah mentally checked everything she should have done. Her suitcase and carry-on bag were in the trunk, and she was dressed in a favorite travel outfit, a navy blue pantsuit and a crisp white shirt. Her ticket was in her bag, as were her sunglasses, 
The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
, and cash in small bills to buy newspapers or magazines, and for tips. She’d remove the jacket when the plane arrived in warm LA. The New York weather was typical for March: cold, damp, and overcast. She smiled. In a few hours she’d be in sunshine, surrounded by the beautiful Bel Air gardens, enjoying a loving welcome from Jonathan. Making up after a quarrel could be fun.

At the Fry building, she took the elevator to the thirty-third floor. She paused to admire the prints in the reception area, then hurried toward the dining area. But before she reached it, she noticed the door to the anteroom of the managing director’s suite was open. Hunt Frederick must be in. She’d invite him to join her for a tour.

The door to his office was ajar. Dinah called his name but got no reply. Maybe he was on the telephone and couldn’t hear her? She tapped on the door and pushed it open. The carnage jumped up at her, a vision in a nightmare, and the smell was horrific—blood, urine, feces, and—oh, God—a whiff of Jungle Gardenia. The heavily carved bookshelves on the left had pulled away from the wall, and shelving and books lay all over the floor. Beneath the jumble of dark wood, red leather, and white pages splattered with blood: a body—and more blood, black against the red carpet. Blonde hair soaked in blood. A blood-stained beige platform shoe. A hand with purple painted nails.

Dinah tiptoed into the room, avoiding the blood, and touched a white wrist: no pulse, and the skin was cool. Nothing could help the poor woman.

Fighting nausea, she backed into the corridor and called 911 on her cell phone. “There’s b-been a f-fatal accident,” she said.

You can also get more of Coleman and Dinah’s story in
Angels

Here is the deeply moving and entirely irresistible story that introduces Coleman and Dinah Greene, the stars of RESTRIKE and FATAL IMPRESSIONS. Set in small-town North Carolina, it tells of orphaned cousins who discover each other and believe that angels are watching them and guiding them through their most important moments. Seven-year-old Dinah has been blessed with a loving grandmother and great aunt. Five-year-old Coleman has not been so lucky. But now that the two have been united the wonders of the world begin to reveal themselves.

Touching, thoughtful, and rewarding, ANGELS is a treasure.

Here is an excerpt of ANGELS, which will be available July 15, 2014:

Soon as Coleman said “roadside stand” I wondered why we hadn’t thought of it before now. Everybody goin’ to the beach has to drive through Slocumb Corners. People say the fruit and vegetables for sale at the beach aren’t real fresh, and the prices are as high as a cat’s back. Ours would be right out of the garden, and cheaper. Lots of folks passin’ by would stop at our stand, and those who came to pick up Miss Ida’s cakes and fried chicken and ham biscuits, and the ladies who have fittings with Aunt Polly—they’d all buy from us. I saw how it would be a big success.

Good an idea as it was, I don’t think Miss Ida and Aunt Polly would have let us do it, but while we were discussin’ it, Aunt Mary Louise stopped by, and as soon as she came through the door, Coleman told her all about the stand. Aunt Mary Louise said it was a real good idea, and the Byrds would help; they’d bring things to sell, and work at the stand.

Now, Aunt Mary Louise’s mama was Miss Ida’s nurse when Miss Ida was a baby, and Miss Ida and Aunt Mary Louise slept in the same crib, and grew up side by side, and they’ve always been best friends, so Miss Ida sets a lot of store by what Aunt Mary Louise thinks. She still looked worried, though, and I believe she was wondering how we’d get it built, and how we’d pay for lumber and nails and all. But before you could say boo to a goose, some of the big Byrd boys had built that stand, and we were in business. They’d also made and set up two wooden picnic tables and benches in the shade near the stand. They’d even painted a green sign
with gold letters: Slocumb Corners Produce and Baked Goods.

One of Aunt Mary Louise’s connections—nobody can keep straight who’s a niece and who’s a cousin in the Byrd family, so when we don’t know ‘zackly what the relationship is, we say “connection”—Sarah Ann, was out of college for the summer and waitressin’ at the beach. Sarah Ann hated waitressin’—she’s too brainy to want to spend her time serving hamburgers and clearing tables—so Aunt Mary Louise called her home. and Sarah Ann took over the stand—pricing, pasting labels on the canned food, asking friends and relatives what they had to sell, foraging all over Slocumb County. She had everything organized lickety-split. I do believe Sarah Ann could organize the entire state of North Carolina, and people say she’s goin’ to get even better at it ‘cause Sarah Ann is going to business school and get her MBA after she graduates from East Carolina. Goodness knows what she’ll organize then. (Maybe she’ll go to Washington and help the Congress. Aunt Polly says they need all the help they can get.)

We’ll sell lots of vegetables and fruit. Everybody has too many tomatoes or squash or butter beans or whatever when they’re in season, and we can’t can or freeze ‘em fast enough before some spoil. We can’t give ‘em away either, because everybody else has too many, too.

We decided to sell home-canned food to make life easy for the beach people: spaghetti sauce and soup mix and chili, and jars of strawberry preserves and cucumber pickles and pickled peaches. The Herb Lady brought over candles—there’s lots of power failures at the beach—and lotions for sunburn and skeeter bites. Sarah Ann’s beekeeping sister brought little glass pots of honey, and a Byrd cousin who’d learned grass-weaving in Charleston brought a bunch of baskets she’d made.

For the opening, Miss Ida and I made cookies and cakes and fruit pies and cupcakes and sandwiches. We made lemonade, too, and iced tea. We didn’t have a grand opening; we just filled the stand and waited. Every car full of hot, thirsty people stoppin’ to buy spring onions and lettuce and peas and new potatoes had to have some of that lemonade or tea, and cookies to go with it, and some to take with ‘em. Lots of folks bought sandwiches and cake and drinks and had a picnic at one of the shady tables.

Coleman’s face was one big smile at the end of the day, and so was mine. I asked her how she thought up the produce stand, and she said she saw ‘em by the road on the way up from New Orleans, and she’d wondered why there weren’t any around here. And when she learned how Miss Ida and everybody in Slocumb Corners could cook and make delicious preserves and such, seemed like travelers would want ‘em, too. But the big reason she thought of it was she’d prayed to the Lord to show her the way to help save Peter from the owl, and He’d put the stand in her mind.

Nobody said anything more about Peter, and he moved in. Miss Ida fixed a bed for him in the kitchen, but he howled all night and nobody could sleep, and after that, he slept in the bed with Coleman and me.

Sometimes in the night, I reach out to pet him; his tummy is warm and round and fat, and his fur is so soft, he feels better to hold and to snuggle up to than the cuddliest stuffed animal. He’s good company, and he never lets Coleman out of his sight if he can help it. He doesn’t bark except to announce a visitor, and we all like that. He earns his keep. Every day and night I thank the Lord for bringin’ Coleman home, and for how she’s made our lives so much better, and for the produce stand, and for Peter.