'Til Death Do Us Part (19 page)

“Here you go,” she said, passing a cup to me. “So tell me. What type of information are you looking for?”

“Have you heard about the deaths?” I asked, taking a sip but keeping my eyes on her.

“I heard about Ashley’s death the night it happened—a friend phoned me. Ashley had decorated her house a couple of years ago. But it wasn’t until someone showed me the item in the
Post
the next day that I knew about all
three
deaths. Peyton and David must be totally grief-stricken.”

“Uh, yes—of course,” I said, caught off guard again. Could she tell from my stammering, I wondered, that Peyton and David were stricken by the experience, but not so much with grief as with concern as to what the fallout on them would be?

“I really don’t see how I can help, however.”

“I just feel that if I talk to enough people, I might stumble on something that could help me figure out what’s going on.”

“What’s ‘going on’? You don’t really think there’s some curse, do you—like the paper suggested? Of course, people do say that Peyton is from the Dark Side.”

She offered the last remark with an impish smile.

“Is Peyton the reason your marriage broke up?” I asked.

She opened her mouth slightly, took half a breath, then cocked her head.

“Are you married?” she asked.

“No,” I said, surprised to find the word catching in my throat. “But I
was
married—for a brief time.”

“Then I assume you know that they’re absolutely right when they say it takes two to tango. David
did
leave me for Peyton. But I hadn’t been doing a very good job of minding the store. Men as rich and successful as David need constant vigilance. Trust me, I know. I stole him from his first wife.”

“He was married
before
?”

“Yes, for fifteen years. He was nearly forty when we met.”

“Was that in California?”

“Sort of,” she said. “I was a flight attendant, and we met on the red-eye. David strolled into the galley in his perfect white shirt with the sleeves rolled up and struck up a conversation. A year later we were married.”

“You said you weren’t as vigilant as you should have been. Any particular reason you let the ball drop?”

“To be honest, my heart wasn’t in it anymore. Unfortunately, we didn’t have what you’d call an
inspired
marriage. In fact, I’d been giving serious consideration to leaving myself. I’d signed a prenup, but it was a generous one. It guaranteed me a very nice sum if the marriage broke up
after
five years, as long as I wasn’t unfaithful. That was the funny thing about David. He didn’t have a problem cheating on
me
, but he couldn’t bear the idea of being cuckolded himself. Anyway, there was no major financial incentive for me to hang in there. There was my daughter, Lilly, to think of, but . . . frankly, David does some things very well, but being an attentive father isn’t one of them. I hope your friend Peyton isn’t planning to have a family with him.”

As soon as she uttered the last sentence, my mind flew back to my impression of Peyton last Wednesday: with her fuller-looking figure and slightly puffy face, I’d thought that she might be pregnant.

“I don’t really know their plans in that regard,” I said.

But I knew from her expression that she’d seen something register on my face.

“That must be Lilly, there,” I said, pointing to a young blond girl in a silver-framed photo on a table.

“Yes, though she’s about two years older now than she is in the picture.”

“Oh wait, she was at the wedding. I knew she looked familiar.”

“That’s right,” Mandy answered coolly. It was the first time
she’d
seemed disconcerted today. “Speaking of the wedding, you were going to tell me what your concerns were—about the bridesmaids.”

“That’s right,” I said. Instinctively I glanced toward the doorway and out into the long hallway. The Bud’s Landscaping guy was still there, fussing now with a potted tree. “I don’t think there’s any curse—and I don’t think the deaths were accidents, either.”

Her eyes widened, and she gazed at me for a moment without speaking.

“So you think the women were
murdered
?” she said.

“Yes—I do.”

“What reason could someone possibly have for killing them?”

“I don’t know. That’s what I’m trying to find out. You’re pretty removed from all this, but I thought you might be able to shed some light on it. Perhaps you’re aware of someone who might have threatened David in the past.”

She knew, of course, that she’d be on my list of potential suspects but that I would never come right out and say it. She stared at me, her eyes raised up and to the right, as if she were thinking. She was going to play along with me.

“Nothing comes to mind,” she said, letting out a big sigh. “David’s made a lot of money for clients, but he’s lost money, too. People get very testy about that sort of thing.”

“What about his partner?” I asked. “Did you know him very well?”

“Trip? What makes you ask about him?”

“Just curious.”

“To be honest, I was surprised to hear that David had asked him to be his best man—they’re more business partners than friends. But on the other hand, I can’t think of anyone else he
could
have asked. David hasn’t had much time for keeping up friendships over the past years.”

“How do the two of them get along, do you think?”

“Well enough. Trip runs the hedge fund part of the business, and he’s apparently a genius at it. David is more of a rainmaker, the one who brings
in
the business. So the two of them balance each other out.”

She slid up the edge of her sweater sleeve and glanced at a gold Cartier Panther watch.

“You know, I’d love to chat longer, but I have people coming for lunch,” she announced. “You’re staying with Peyton, I presume. Why don’t I call you there if I think of anything?”

“Uh, sure,” I said. “I appreciate your seeing me considering I just showed up unannounced.”

After she closed the front door behind me and I made my way to the Jeep, I considered giving myself a swift kick in the ass. The charming and disarming former Mrs. Slavin had flattered me, then presented herself as someone eager to hear me out and even help, but she’d ended up cleverly eliciting information from
me.
She’d caught me off guard with her comments, and I’d managed to give away way too much: first, that I didn’t think Peyton and David were prostrate with grief; and second, that Peyton might be pregnant. She’d also managed to learn that I was staying with Peyton. Probably the only reason she’d even invited me in was to find out what she could—and she’d managed it brilliantly. I felt like a little kid whose playmate has just tricked her into swapping her best Barbie for a single Pez.

But as far as motives for murder went, Mandy didn’t appear to have one. She’d been awarded a nice chunk of David’s fortune. And she hadn’t been brokenhearted about his departure—or at least that’s what she said.

Though I figured that Mandy’s house was probably not far from Ivy Hill Farm, I didn’t know the backcountry area well enough to find my way there, so I decided to retrace the route I’d taken from downtown Greenwich. As I sat in a snarl of traffic, I realized that I must not be far from David’s office, and I made a quick decision to pop in there. I had no idea what I’d say when I got there—maybe just something about my concerns—but it would give me the chance to see Trip again and get a feel for him.

I checked the address in my Palm, asked directions from a man jumping into his car, and after enduring ten more minutes of bumper-to-bumper Beemers and Range Rovers, I pulled up to a seven-story contemporary building on Railroad Avenue. According to the lobby directory, the office was on the fifth floor. But when I rapped on the door, no one answered. Granted it was lunchtime, yet it seemed odd that no one was manning the phones.

I returned to my original plan and headed out to the farm. When I was still half a mile away, I spotted the top of the silo in the distance, and the sight of it once again made my stomach turn. In my mind’s eye I saw Ashley lying on the hard stone floor, the halo of blood around her head. I glanced quickly in my rearview mirror. All I saw was the road and old stone fences covered with snow.

The parking lot of the farm was packed with cars. As I stepped inside the big red barn a few minutes later, I was greeted by an intoxicating lemony, garlicky smell and the sight of a dozen Junior League types in yellow aprons standing in a circle around Peyton. It was a cooking class—though apparently in its final stages. The butcher block center island was piled with steaming dishes, and from just a few words I could tell that Peyton was now dispensing her philosophy on the art of entertaining. She paused briefly, caught my eye, and returned to her lecture.

“It’s a good idea to constantly change the dishes you use so that you surprise your guests—and yourself,” she announced. “My dinner plates are all in neutral colors: white, cream, and black. But I use them with interesting salad and dessert plates that I collect—Fiestaware, for instance, Chinese lacquer, and lots of eclectic antique pieces. One night lately, David and I had a small group over, and I served chowder by the fire in Bunnykin bowls I’d found at a flea market.”

Oh please, was all I could think. The closest she’d been to any kind of bunny lately was the lining of her gloves.

Though I did need to talk to Peyton at some point, I was even more eager to connect with Phillipa. Thinking that she might be in the smaller kitchen, I slipped back out of the building and walked to an entrance at the far end of the barn, which, as it turned out, opened onto the hallway I’d been in last week. It was eerily quiet inside. I thought it was empty at first, but when I poked my head into the small kitchen, there was Phillipa. She was sitting all by herself on a stool at a small butcher block island, dressed in a blue oversize man-style shirt, though the effect was softened by a pretty necklace of crystal stones. In front of her was a plate of some kind of fritters, dusted with powdered sugar. She stared at it as if she were waiting for it to
do
something. When she glanced up at me in surprise, I noticed that she had powdered sugar on her lips.

“Hi there,” I said. “Catering a party tonight?”

“No,” she said bluntly. “Why?”

“Just wondering.” I took a few steps closer to the island. “Are things back to normal here?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by
normal
,” she said, pushing the plate into the center of the island with her perfectly manicured fingers. “Normal isn’t a word I’d ever use to describe this place.”

“I was just curious how everyone was doing . . . after last week.”

“You’ll have to ask them.”

Gee, this was turning out to be as much fun as stripping old wallpaper. I pulled out a stool from the side of the island directly across from her and plopped down. She wasn’t looking very good today. Her chubby cheeks were red from some kind of rash, and her blond hair was styled in tight ringlets, like that ribbon you curl with scissors on Christmas presents. I also realized that one of the things that kept her face from being pretty was her eyebrows. She’d overplucked them and wrecked the shape in the process, so that they resembled two pale commas above her eyes.

“How about
you
?” I asked. “You must be feeling pretty relieved you weren’t in the wedding party.”

“I was
always
relieved I wasn’t in the wedding party,” she said in annoyance. “I don’t know how the rumor got started that I was upset about it.”

“You’re Peyton’s cousin. It would seem like you should have been in it.”

She blew her lips like a horse. “I wouldn’t have been caught dead in that yellow thing. It was proof that there really is such a thing as a dress that doesn’t flatter anyone. Someone
was
super pissed-off about not being included, but it wasn’t me.”

“Who?”
I asked, startled.

“David’s daughter, Lilly,” she declared. “She wanted to be a junior bridesmaid, and Peyton wouldn’t let her. She was livid, and so was her mommy.”

CHAPTER 10

W
AIT,” I SAID
, “let me get this straight. Mandy Slavin wanted Lilly to be in the wedding?”

“Well, I doubt she
wanted
her to be in it,” Phillipa said. “But she’s apparently obsessed with that little daughter of hers and doesn’t deny her anything. I heard the kid has a Juicy Couture sweat suit in every color they make.”