Read A Lie for a Lie Online

Authors: Emilie Richards

A Lie for a Lie (4 page)

BOOK: A Lie for a Lie
3.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads
We passed ostentatious takeoffs on Greek Revival, Second Empire, and Tudor architecture. The Tudor had been the scene of one of the murders I’d been caught up in. I looked away, just in case the house remembered and blew a raspberry in our direction.
“Here we are.” Lucy slowed and stopped in front of the largest home on the block, sitting on at least three outsized lots and trying with some small success to put its neighbors to shame.
“One of the first homes to go up in Emerald Estates,” she recited. “The home of Veronica and Farley Hayworth is a modern interpretation of the Italianate period, in vogue during the latter part of the nineteenth century. You’ll note the low-pitched roof, the elaborate brackets under the eaves, and the soaring arched windows. That cute little tower at the top is called a campanile.”
“You forgot the double columns.”
“And the double columns,” Lucy finished up. “I was a guide on a house tour for the Junior Women’s Club a couple of years ago, and that was my spiel. Of course a good wind would blow this masterpiece away. You’d be amazed at the problems these homeowners have. Too much attention to appearance and not nearly enough to substance. Rumor is the Hayworths spent more than they paid just to bring it up to code.”
“I hear the snickers of the little people now.” Truly, though, the whole concept behind Emerald Estates always gives me pause. There are some lovely homes in our town that have seen centuries of use and still stand tall, with ageless grace. Too often they’ve been divided into cheap apartments, or converted into law or medical offices. While those homes yearned for dignity and a few bucks to make necessary improvements, the developers of Emerald Estates were busily building froufrou copies and selling them for the moon.
Still, a residence in Emerald Estates automatically comes with a country club membership and some unspecified number of Jacuzzis. Plus a chance to live among rich or richer neighbors. It isn’t about architecture at all.
Lucy made a shooing motion. “Scoot now. Go and see how the other 1 percent lives and remember every detail so you can describe it to me. I hear Veronica Hayworth redecorates every two years, whether the economy needs it or not. You have a ride home?”
“Sally Berrigan will give me one.”
“Are you going to tell people why you’re”—Lucy checked her watch—“ten minutes late? I’ve got to warn you, I’ve been on committees with Veronica, and she’s known for being at least ten minutes early to every meeting. She’s not going to look kindly at you for walking in late.”
“I’m sure she’ll forgive me if I tell her I was hobnobbing with a prophet, right? Even people in Emerald Estates understand that the end of the world is worth being a few minutes behind on my schedule.”
Lucy narrowed her eyes.
“No,” I promised. “I won’t breathe a word. But I bet Farley Hayworth and every other realtor in town is spreading the news.”
I slammed the door and Lucy took off. I looked down at my gray cotton pants and hoped that there were no unspeakable splatters from the old Weilly farm. Eau de tiger poop. I straightened my cotton shirt, but that did little to keep it from clinging to my damp skin and C-cup breasts. I was afraid the maid would tell me to use the rear entrance.
The porch was surprisingly narrow, not a comfortable place for the Hayworths to sit and enjoy their reign as the unofficial king and queen of Emerald Estates. There was a plant stand with pots of blooming annuals in one remote corner, and a grouping of palms and rubber plants closer to me, but no furniture within yards of the door. Perhaps the point was to keep we-of-the-riffraff standing straight and tall while we waited for someone to answer the doorbell’s summons.
Testing my theory, I pressed the button and heard the opening bars of Bach’s Minuet in G chiming in the entry-way. I’m not much of a musician since, if I admitted to such a thing, I would forever be called on to direct choirs or accompany hymns. Still, I do know a bit. One of Junie’s boyfriends was a classical pianist. That was the year we hauled a trailer with a Chickering upright behind our RV from one coast to the other, a small price to pay for music lessons.
Just as I’d guessed, my knees were ready to buckle into a sedate curtsy by the time a woman in a double-breasted navy dress arrived. The outfit was completed by a headband of the same color and fabric, piped in white to match the dress’s collar and cuffs. I supposed this was an update on the frilly little triangular hat of another era. The headband successfully held back every strand of naturally blonde hair, but unfortunately the Hayworths’ maid had a wide, high forehead marred with a constellation of lines. I wondered if the headband had been chosen by the mistress of the house to highlight this flaw, in case Mr. Hayworth liked to dally with the help.
“I’m here for the Emerald Springs Idyll meeting,” I explained. “Agate Sloan-Wilcox?”
“It’s already begun,” she said, standing firmly between me and the entry hall.
“They’re expecting me.”
She sighed. “I was polishing the silver.”
I saw the problem. She had allotted the time between three fifty and four for arrivals, for showing committee members to the room where the meeting would be held, for offering tea or coffee, even sherry. She would have been happier if I hadn’t come at all.
“I apologize.”
She didn’t sigh again, at least not audibly. But her nostrils flared. Then she stepped aside and allowed me entrance. The floor was a rusty red marble, probably Italian, and the towering chandelier was fine leaded crystal. A curved staircase, a rosewood masterpiece, swept up to the next floor.
I had no time to admire the views or the antique table replete with a florist’s arrangement of roses, irises, and Canterbury bells. “Please follow me,” the maid said, turning toward a hall leading left. I wondered if the strict attention to schedule was her invention, or if it had been foisted on her by Veronica Hayworth.
“They’re in the conservatory,” she said.
“With the lead pipe and Colonel Mustard.”
She pivoted, frowning, and I saw how some of the lines in her forehead had gotten their start.
“Clue,” I explained, in apology. “The board game. I’ve played a million rounds of it with my daughters.”
And could that explain my unnatural interest in solving murders? Maybe it really was that simple.
When the lines didn’t smooth, I tried my friendliest smile, digging deeply for my dimples. “I don’t want to keep you from the silver a minute longer than necessary.”
She turned on her heel again and stomped into the hall.
We walked so fast I wasn’t able to grasp many details. Lots of gilt-framed mirrors. Walls in dark, earthy tones. Renaissance art with the requisite somber religious themes, then farther along—to lighten the mood—oil portraits of dogs from different historical periods. We passed many different living areas, most likely each with a different title. Parlor, den, family room, formal living room with a gorgeous grand piano, throne room. All were decorated with unique and tasteful flair.
About the time I thought we needed to call for rescue, we turned a corner into a supersized sunroom. The stone floor was sprinkled with tribal rugs, and the furniture looked like it had been hand-carved in some South American rain forest before it was smothered in bright prints and poufy pillows. Shrubs and trees, including what amounted to a citrus grove, were clustered in groups next to a bubbling fountain. Orchids and bromeliads bloomed in profusion, and orange blossoms scented the air.
“Mrs. Wilcox has arrived,” the maid announced from the doorway. Then she led me toward the group of women sitting at a glass table near the fountain.
Talk at the table ceased the moment I appeared. I felt eight pairs of eyes sizing me up. The only pair that looked familiar were the pale blue ones belonging to Sally Berrigan, the no-nonsense chairperson of our church Women’s Society. Sally is involved in every worthwhile charitable cause in Emerald Springs and runs a good portion of them. Midsixties, military bearing, silver hair styled in a short bob that probably takes ten seconds a day to care for, Sally focuses on getting things done. I’d stood no chance once she caught me in her sights. Sally had decided I needed a new focus for my life, and here I was.
I am a wimp.
The other women were a complete contrast. Sally has a solid retirement income, a shipshape brick Colonial landscaped with native plants and trees, and a Prius. If she had millions, she would dress and live exactly the same way. My first impression of the other women was that they would deny their aging parents shelter and their suckling babes nourishment if it meant climbing another rung up the social ladder.
Okay, that was
so
not fair. But I had never seen that many diamonds twinkling around necks and wrists, not to mention fingers, in my life. And this was not a crowd that would resort to cubic zirconias, because this was also a crowd that could spot them in a heartbeat.
“My apologies for being late,” I said. Then, because I couldn’t help myself, I added: “It’s a real circus out there.”
The woman at the head of the table rose gracefully and held out a long-fingered hand. She had dark hair drawn back in a knot from a sharp-featured face perfectly suited to the hairstyle. Her figure was willowy and tastefully garbed in a black spandex shirt adorned by a wide, gold chain belt. She didn’t have to tell me who she was.
“Veronica Hayworth, Aggie. And we’re glad you could make it. We know young mothers have trouble getting away. We’re just glad you could join us.”
Her grip was reassuringly firm, her smile wide enough over large, perfect teeth. Despite this, when her brown eyes didn’t light along with it, I knew I had gotten off on the wrong foot and would have to do major tap dancing to get back in rhythm.
Veronica introduced the other women, and although I tried, I remembered only a few by the time she’d finished. There was a Bitsy or Mitzi, a Diana, a Camille. They ranged in age from Veronica’s mid- to late forties all the way to retirees like Sally. I murmured greetings and took the only empty seat, hoping that I could simply disappear now, while knowing full well I would never disappear among these women. I was a chunk of agate surrounded by large-carat gems.
“We’d really only just begun,” Veronica said, with another toothy smile. “Most of us know each other already, but for fun we picked a question out of the bowl and answered it by way of introduction.” She reached for a lovely handblown fishbowl and held it out to me. There was, of course, only one folded slip of paper inside.
I wondered if this was my punishment. The expressions at the table ranged from bored to expectant. Gamely I thrust my hand inside, unfolded the paper, and read the question out loud, glad I hadn’t suggested that Teddy do anything remotely similar last month at her eighth birthday party.
“If you were an instrument in the Cleveland Orchestra, which instrument would you be?”
I smiled, as if I thought the question were intriguing, even fun. “I’d be a sarrusophone.”
There was a long silence. Finally a blonde at the end of the table smiled dismissively. “Oh, you mean
sousaphone
.”
I called on that summer of music history. “No, a sarrusophone’s a wind instrument, something like the contra-bassoon. It’s made of metal, so it’s louder. But you can see why being one would be appealing?”
They couldn’t.
“They’re almost never used,” I explained. “I would rarely be called on to perform.”
The room was silent, and in seconds I realized why. I’d as much as announced I was not a worker bee. I hastened to improve the situation.
“Not that I’m lazy, of course. I just don’t like the limelight.”
Veronica gave a throaty laugh. “Well, we won’t have to worry about a conflict of interest with Aggie, girls. She won’t be trying out for the Idyll, will she?”
Everybody else laughed, too, although the ripple was strained. I was now on probation.
“Aggie, you must have worked on a number of committees,” Veronica said. “Being a pastor’s wife.”
I tried my most winning smile. “Not so many. I make a point of not going head-to-head with the people who issue Ed’s paycheck. I worry—”
“Aggie is our historian and a tireless worker,” Sally interrupted, vouching for me.
“Well, nobody here is issuing anybody’s paycheck.” Veronica paused. “Except Grady Barber’s.”
“Which still concerns me,” Sally said, leaning forward, her hands clasped earnestly on the table. “The size of that paycheck, I mean. We’re paying that man twenty thousand dollars to judge this show! That’s twenty thousand that could go toward the new pediatric wing.”
Veronica’s voice was soft, but her tone was as hard as, well, a sarrusophone’s.
“Sally, without a celebrity judge, the only people that will come to see the Emerald Springs Idyll are the family and friends of the participants. And then only reluctantly. It’s all about the judges, don’t you see? With Grady sitting at the side of the stage, everybody’s going to come. They’ll all want to hear what he has to say. They’ll buy tickets for every single night. Advertisers are fighting to put ads in the programs and to be announced as sponsors. We’ll make money hand over fist.”
“But twenty thousand dollars? It’s extravagant.”
“It’s cheap! It’s well below his normal fee. He’s an Emerald Springs boy; he’s famous, and he’s only doing it at that rate as a special favor to me. Besides, we’ve solicited personal donations from the hospital board to cover most of it.”
There was a silence as they both regrouped and drew deep breaths. And into the breach I leapt.
“Grady Barber?”
Every head turned; every eye stared at me again.
Tropical birds were singing from airy bamboo cages behind Veronica’s chair. I’d missed this on my initial view of the conservatory. I squelched an urge to spring to my feet and throw open cage doors as a distraction.
BOOK: A Lie for a Lie
3.62Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
ads

Other books

Adverbs by Daniel Handler
The Silent Wife by A S A Harrison
The Fall Girl by Denise Sewell
One Mississippi by Mark Childress
Mission to America by Walter Kirn
Mastering a Sinner by Kate Pearce
The Black Widow by Wendy Corsi Staub