The Best of Sisters in Crime (18 page)

The question was
directed to both the Tuckers, but it was Noreen who answered, looking up from
straightening the sailor collar on her dress. “A fight?”

The question was
spoken casually enough, but Adele saw how the information had piqued Noreen’s
interest. She had made no secret of her fascination with Sam Clearey, a U.C.
Berkeley botanist.

“It was a doozy,”
Dolly said. “Apparently, Sam was just getting in. Just getting in at six-thirty
in the morning! Can you believe it? He spent the night in someone else’s room!”
She grinned. “I love these Cambridge intrigues, don’t you? It’s sorta like high
school all over again. Where d’you think he was?”

“Not with me, I’m
afraid,” Adele replied. “You’re a better bet than I am to catch his fancy.”

Dolly laughed. “
Me?
Adele, he’s at least sixty years old! Come on!” She twirled a lock of hair
around her finger and looked reflective. “But he is pretty great for an older
guy, isn’t he? All that gray hair. The way he dresses. I wonder who snagged
him?”

“I saw him in
the bar last night with that blonde from the Austen class,” Howard Breen
offered. “They seemed friendly enough.”

Noreen Tucker’s
lips pursed. “I hardly think that Sam Clearey would be taken in by a
forty-nine-year-old divorcée with three teenagers and dyed hair. He’s a college
professor, Howard. He has taste. And intelligence. And breeding.”

“Thanks. You
were
talking about me, I assume?” Cleve Houghton
slid into place next to Dolly Ragusa, carrying a plate heavily laden with eggs
and sausages, grilled tomatoes and mushrooms.

Adele felt a
quick release of tension at Cleve’s arrival. Through mentioning the fact that
Sam Clearey had shown interest in another woman, Howard Breen had innocently raised
Noreen’s ire. And Noreen was not the type of woman to let such a slight go by
unanswered. Cleve’s presence prevented her from doing so for the moment.

“Ran eight miles
this morning,” he was saying. “Along the backs to Granchester. The rest of you
should try it. Hell, it’s the best exercise known to man.” He tossed back his
hair and contemplated Adele with a lazy smile. “The
second
best exercise.”

Heat took Adele’s
face. She crumpled her napkin in her fist.

“Goodness. In
mixed company, Cleve.” Noreen Tucker’s gaze was hungrily taking in the most
salient aspect of Cleve Houghton’s figure: jeans sculpted to muscular thighs.
He was fifty but looked at least a decade younger.

“Damn right in
mixed company,” Cleve Houghton replied, digging into his eggs. “Wouldn’t
consider it in any other kind.”

“I certainly
hope not,” Noreen declared. “There’s nothing worse than a man wasting himself
on another man, is there? In one of my novels, I deal with just that topic. A
woman falls in love with a homo and saves him. And when he realizes what it’s
like to have a woman and be normal, he melts. Just melts. I called it
Wild Seed of Passion. Seed
seemed appropriate.
There’s something in the Bible about spilling seed, isn’t there? And that’s
exactly what those homos are up to. If you ask me, all they need is a real
womanly woman and that would take care of that. Don’t you agree, Howard?”

Adele offered a
quick prayer that Howard Breen would see the barb for what it was and would
hold his tongue. But Noreen’s provocation was too much for him.

“I’d no idea you’d
done research in this area,” he said.

“I . .
.
research?” Innocently, Noreen pressed a hand
to her chest. “Don’t be silly. It’s only reasonable to assume that when a man
and a woman . . . Heavens, surely I don’t have to point out the obvious to
you
? Besides, a creative artist sometimes has to
take license with—”

“Reality? The
truth? What?” Howard spoke pleasantly enough, but Adele saw the tightening
muscles of his hand and she knew very well that Noreen saw the same.

Noreen reached
across the table and patted his arm. “Now confess to us, Howard. Are you one of
those San Francisco liberals with half a dozen homosexual friends? Have I
offended you? I’m just an old-fashioned girl who loves romance. And romance is
all about true love, which as we all know can only exist between a man and a
woman. You know that, don’t you?” She smiled at him coolly. “If you don’t, you
can ask Dolly. Or Cleve. Or even Adele.”

Howard Breen
stood. “I’ll forgo that pleasure for now,” he said, and left them.

“Gosh. What’s
the matter with him?” Dolly Ragusa asked, her fork poised in midair.

Cleve Houghton
lifted a hand, dropped it to dangle limply from his wrist. “Figure it out for
yourself. It shouldn’t be tough. Howard’s a hell of a lot more likely to chase
after me than you.”

“Oh, Cleve!”
Noreen Tucker chuckled, but Adele did not miss the glint of malicious triumph
in her eyes. She excused herself and went in search of Howard.

She didn’t find
him until eight forty-five, when she went to join the rest of the Great Houses
class at their appointed meeting place: the Queen’s Gate of St. Stephen’s
College. He was leaning against the arch of the gateway, stuffing a lunch bag
into his tattered rucksack.

“You all right?”
Adele tried to sound casual as she took her own lunch from the box in which the
kitchen staff had deposited it.

“I took a walk
along the river to cool off.”

Howard didn’t
look that composed, no matter his words. A tautness in his features hadn’t been
there earlier. Even though she knew it was a lie, Adele said, “I don’t think
she really knew what she was saying, Howard. Obviously, she
doesn’t
know about you or she wouldn’t have brought the subject up at all.”

He gave a sharp,
unamused laugh. “Don’t kid yourself. She’s a viper. She knows what she’s doing.”

“Hey, you two.
Smile. Come on!” Some ten yards away, Dolly Ragusa held a camera poised. She
was making adjustments to an overlarge telephoto lens.

“What are you
shooting with that thing, our nostrils?” Howard asked, and Adele heard in his
voice the quick change of mood that Dolly seemed capable of inspiring in
people.

Dolly laughed. “It’s
a macro-zoom, you dummy. Wide angles. Close-ups. It does everything.”

Nearby, Cleve
Houghton was pulling on a sweater. “Why are you carting that thing around anyway?
It looks like a pain.”

Dolly snapped
his picture before she answered. “Art historians always have cameras smashed up
to their faces. Like extra appendages. That’s how you recognize us.”

“I thought that’s
how you recognize Japanese tourists.” Sam Clearey spoke as he rounded the yew
hedge that separated the main court from the interior of the college. As had
been his habit for all their excursions, he was nattily dressed in tweeds, and
his gray hair gleamed in the morning sunlight. His wife, a few steps behind
him, looked terrible. Her eyes were bloodshot and her nose was puffy.

Seeing Frances
Clearey, Adele felt a perfect crescent of pain in her chest. It came from
recognizing a fellow sufferer.
Men are such shit
, she thought, and was about to join Frances and offer her the
distraction of conversation when Victoria Wilder-Scott steamed down from Q
staircase and rushed to join them, clipboard in hand. Her spectacles were
perched on the top of her head, and she squinted at her students as if
perplexed by the fact that they were out of focus.

“Oh! The specs!
Right,” she said, lowered them to her nose, and continued breezily. “You’ve
read your brochures, I trust? And the section in
Great Houses of the Isles
? So you know we’ve
dozens of things to see at Abinger Manor. That marvelous collection of rococo
silver you saw in your textbook. The paintings by Gainsborough, Le Brun,
Lorrain, Reynolds. That lovely piece by Whistler. The Holbein. Some remarkable
furniture. The gardens are exquisite, and the park . . . well, we won’t have
time to see everything but we’ll do our best. You have your notebooks? Your
cameras?”

“Dolly seems to
be taking pictures for all of us,” Howard Breen said as Dolly snapped one of
their instructor, whirled and took another of Howard and Adele.

Victoria
Wilder-Scott blinked at the girl, then beamed. She made no secret of the fact
that Dolly was her favorite student. How could she be otherwise? They shared a
similar education in art history and a mutual passion for
objets d’art.

“Right. Then,
shall we be off?” Victoria said. “We’re all here? No. Where are the Tuckers?”

The Tuckers
arrived as she asked the question, Ralph shoving a plastic bag of trail mix
into the front of his safari jacket while Noreen stooped to pick up their
lunches, opened hers, and grimaced at its contents. She followed this with a
wink at Sam Clearey, as if they shared a mutual joke.

Her students
assembled, Victoria Wilder-Scott lifted an umbrella to point the way and led
them out of the college, over the bridge, and down Garret Hostel Lane toward
the minibus.

Adele thought
that Noreen Tucker intended to use their walk to the minibus as an opportunity
to mend her fences with Howard, for the romance writer joined them with an
alacrity that suggested some positive underlying intent. In a moment, however,
her purpose became clear as she gave her attention to Sam Clearey, who
apparently had decided that a walk with Howard and Adele was preferable to his
wife’s accusing silence. Noreen slipped her hand into the crook of his arm. She
smiled knowingly at Howard and Adele, an invitation to become her fellow
conspirators in whatever was to follow.

Adele shrank
from the idea, feeling torn between walking more quickly in an attempt to leave
Noreen behind and remaining where she was in the hope that somehow she might
protect Sam, as she had been unable to protect Howard earlier. The nobler
motive was ascendant. She remained with the little group, hating herself for
being such a sop but unable to abandon Sam to Noreen, no matter how much he
might deserve five minutes of her barbed conversation. She was,

Adele noted,
even now winding up the watch of her wit.

“I understand
you were a naughty little boy last night,” Noreen said. “The walls have ears,
you know.”

Sam seemed to be
in no mood to be teased. “They don’t need to have ears. Frances makes sure of
that.”

“Are we to know
the lady who was favored with your charms? No, don’t tell us. Let me guess.”
Noreen played her fingers along the length of her hair. It was cut in a
shoulder-length pageboy with a fringe of bangs, its color several shades too
dark for her skin.

“Have you read
the brochure on Abinger Manor?” Adele asked.

The attempt to
thwart Noreen was a poor one, and she countered without a glance in Adele’s
direction. “I doubt our Sam’s had much time to read, Adele. Affairs of the
heart always take precedence, don’t they?” She gave a soft, studied laugh. “Just
ask our Dolly.”

Ahead of them,
Dolly’s laughter caught the air. She was walking with Cleve Houghton, her gait
like a bounce. She gestured to the spires of Trinity College to their right and
bobbed her head emphatically to underscore a comment she was making.

With Sam within
her grasp, Noreen’s suddenly dropping the subject of his assignation on the
previous night and moving on to target Dolly seemed out of character. It was
not quite in keeping with Noreen’s penchant for public humiliation, especially
since there was no chance that Dolly could hear her words.

“Just look at
them,” Noreen said. “Dolly’s digging for gold and she’s found the mother lode.”

“Cleve Houghton?”
Howard said. “He’s probably older than her father.”

“What does age
matter? He’s a doctor. Divorced. Piles of money. I’ve heard Dolly sighing and
drooling over those slides Victoria shows us. You know the ones. Antiques,
jewelry, paintings. Cleve’s just the one to give her that sort of thing. And he’d
be happy to do so, make no mistake of that.”

Sam Clearey was
examining the shine on his well-buffed shoes. He cleared his throat. “She doesn’t
seem the type—”

Noreen squeezed
his arm. “What a gentleman you are, Sam. But you didn’t see them in the bar
last night. With Cleve holding forth about seducing women by getting to know
their souls and appealing to their minds, and all the time his eyes were just
boring into Dolly. Ask Adele. She was sitting right next to him, weren’t you,
dear? Lapping up every word.”

Noreen’s teeth
glittered in a feral smile, and for the first time Adele felt the bite of the
woman’s words directed against herself. A chill swept over her at the realization
that nothing escaped Noreen’s observation. For she
had
listened to Cleve. She had heard it all.

“Little Dolly
may like to play virgin in the bush,” Noreen concluded placidly, “but if Cleve
Houghton’s doing eight miles in the morning, I’d bet they’re right between
Dolly’s legs.”