Better Homes and Corpses (10 page)

THIRTEEN

Sun filled the cottage. Last evening’s shadowy ambiance was gone. I’d fallen asleep in the same chair Cole had occupied the night before. I wouldn’t call Cole’s and my parting anything special, only our kiss on the beach. Once we reached the top of the landing, Cole made a swift, silent exit, not even a
Good-bye—catch ya later
.

A shaft of light pointed to the primitive wood bench in front of the sofa. It shone on a folder that held my Internet copies of newspaper and magazine clippings—clippings more specifically about the Spenser family, and, of course, the article on top was the blurb about Cole’s engagement.
Damn
. He probably thought I was a stalker. Would he have kissed me like he had if he’d seen my Peeping Tom dossier? I took the folder and shoved it under the sofa and focused instead on how I was going to get from Montauk to East Hampton without my Jeep. Today, tea wouldn’t do. I needed coffee. A dark roast made in my French press. The vintage enamelware kettle whistled on top of my small
two-burner stove. I turned off the flame and brought the kettle to the sink. As I emptied the kettle into the French press I’d bought with my ex on a weekend trip to Paris, scalding water splashed onto my hand. I lost my grip and the carafe went crashing to the bottom of the sink. With damp eyes, I picked up shards of broken glass and tossed them in the trash.
Damn.
The good Michael memories always mixed with bad—a Freudian package deal.

I nixed the coffee-making idea in favor of a walk to town and a cup from Paddy’s.

I stepped out the door. A huge, exotic, fluorescent yellow vehicle was parked in the driveway. A piece of paper flapped against the windshield.

Meg, they sent away for parts for your car. Please feel free to use the Hummer. It’s mine and I rarely use it, so I sent Adam and Van to drop it off.

Regards, Jillian

It was a classy offer. For some reason, I couldn’t picture delicate Jillian driving a Hummer. It looked like a Brink’s armored truck. After the way I’d left her last night, I was surprised she remembered I was carless.

I had an hour before I was due at Seacliff. Enough time for a quick peek in the window of a new home décor shop scheduled to open in April and a visit to Montauk’s only bookstore.

I parked the Hummer in front of The Old Man and the Sea Books. The aromas of lemon furniture polish and butterscotch hit me when I entered.

I thumbed through a glossy hardcover on a table strategically placed near a cavernous wing chair. A new
section was devoted solely to Long Island authors. One dust jacket cover caught my eye:
The Sting of the Sea
, by my neighbor, Patrick Seaton. I picked it up as Georgia, the bookstore’s owner, stepped from the back room. Georgia was a fit septuagenarian who biked six miles each morning from the bookstore to the lighthouse and back again.

“That’s a good one.” Georgia pointed to the book. “The first he’s written since the tragedy.” She handed me a cellophaned candy. “Not like his usual corporate thrillers.
The Sting of the Sea
is different. Very dark and introspective.”

“Have you met him?”

“A few times. Tall, dark, and handsome. And very quiet. His publicist told me his wife and daughter died in a car accident.”

I flipped to the back flyleaf and looked at the black-and-white photo. He was silhouetted against an ocean backdrop. Then I turned to the first page. No dedication, only a quote:

The roaring of the wind is my wife and the stars through the window pane are my children.

—JOHN KEATS

Sold.

Georgia bagged
The
Sting of the Sea
, along with a stack of last month’s unsold home and garden magazines. No
American Home and Garden
s allowed. Georgia let me continue my magazine addiction without spending a dime.

I hit the peaks of Hither Hills at sixty miles per hour. The front suspension of Jillian’s Hummer handled each curve like a champ; the dark-tinted windows hid me in a very visible, neon-hued tank. The sticker on the windshield had a Toby’s Service Station logo. The car was serviced the month before. I was learning.

A sign read
YARD SALE
on the outskirts of East Hampton. Two words I could never resist. I made a sharp blinkerless turn and pulled into the driveway of a brown cedar-shake bungalow. Wobbly folding tables displayed the usual garage-sale fodder: mismatched coffee mugs, odd-numbered sets of crystal, calendar dish towels, and poorly executed Christmas and Easter crafts. Despite the ordinary, there was always a chance I’d find a gem. Sometimes the thrill of the hunt superseded the actual “find”—a little like my personal life.

The owner of the sale was trying to convince a young couple of the merits of owning an electric ice-cream maker. I smiled because mine was still unopened in its box.

In the garage I rummaged through a plastic milk crate under a workbench. The crate contained old license plates dating back to the ’30s and a couple of grimy flower pots. My heart did an extra flip-flop when I spotted a Rookwood vase that appeared to have been dipped in motor oil.

I pulled the crate into the open. As I reached for what I hoped was a 1939 New York World’s Fair license plate, a familiar nasal voice said, “I’ll give you ten bucks for both boxes, not a penny more.”

Tara, proprietress of Champagne and Caviar Antiques, and Cole’s ex, stood in the driveway waving a bill at the home owner.

“Uh, I don’t know . . . You seem to have a lot of items.”

“Garbage, it’s all garbage. I’ll be doing you a favor. I don’t have time for this. Take it or leave it. Final offer.”

The woman took it.

The antique tall clock I’d seen in Tara’s shop didn’t fit her MO. Throw in Adam’s mother, Frances Prescott Hughes, and what did you have?

I had no idea.

I hid in the garage until Tara left in an early model silver Jaguar. Her trunk was tied with a yellow rope. This hadn’t been her first sale.

With my license plates and other newspaper-wrapped goodies in the back of the Hummer, I continued on to the Spenser estate. I should have been happy, but I was unsettled. Was I jealous of Tara or upset that Cole’s kiss had been much more than I expected?

The sky was clear, but I’d packed an extra set of clothes and even a small cosmetic bag for any unforeseen mishaps. An East Hampton Town patrol car was parked near the front steps of the main house, so I pulled next to a six-car garage on the south side of the estate. A vintage turquoise Ford pickup followed suit.

Elle got out of the truck and strode to the back of the Hummer. “Nice wheels. Whose is it?”

“A loaner from Jillian.”

“They don’t make Hummers anymore. I still bet it’s worth a hundred thou.”

“One hundred thousand?”

“It’s worth every penny. It’s got a T-6 aircraft aluminum body, can climb a twenty-two-inch wall, goes through thirty inches of water with no sweat, and, if you get a flat tire, it self-inflates.”

“How do you know all that?”

“Old pretentious boyfriend.”

Elle wore a sleeveless shirtdress designed with waves of turquoise and blue paisley, very ’60s-inspired and a little too springish for the forty-degree weather.

I rolled my eyes.

“Vintage Pucci.”

“You’re going to freeze off your ‘Pucci.’”

She grabbed a matching Pucci knee-length coat affixed
with her usual baker’s dozen of rhinestone pins. “The van should be pulling up any minute with the town house stuff. Wait till you see it.” She put her arm around my shoulders and we took a stone path that led to the front of the house.

Mrs. Arnold answered the door with her usual inverted smile.

“Mrs. Arnold, is there any chance we could get some coffee?” I turned to Elle. “What room are we working in?”

Elle pointed. “The grand salon.”

The grand salon was a room you’d find in the great castles of Europe. The entrance was in the front of the house, across from the room Elle and I had worked in the day before. There wasn’t a door, just two huge mahogany columns supporting a carved wooden arch. The furniture was set in small conversational groups. There were clusters of upholstered furniture with occasional tables displaying assorted trinkets and green plants in priceless Oriental pottery. Designers called them tablescapes.

Elle walked over to a curio cabinet that held a collection of glass paperweights. She tripped the switch and the sparkle of the pieces in the cabinet rivaled those on her chest. “If you photographed this room for
American Home and Garden
, you wouldn’t need to add a thing.” An enormous tapestry hung over the fireplace. Adjacent to the three front windows were two “lesser” tapestries—children to Big Momma. “Oh, I remember these babies,” Elle squealed. “The sale made the front page of the arts and entertainment section in the
Times
.”

The main tapestry depicted a Romanesque scene of naked women lounging around a lake. Their plump bodies were covered in sheer flowing panels of white, strategically covering their nether regions but exposing a breast or two. In the
background were trees, mountains, and a beautiful multihued sky. Not a man in sight. The two smaller tapestries were typical medieval hunting scenes. Not a woman in sight, and, of course, all the men were fully dressed.

As we paid homage to the main tapestry, an “Uh, umm” sounded from behind. Mrs. Arnold stood in the middle of the grand salon with a tray. It wasn’t a sterling tray topped with delicate Sèvres cups, but it was coffee, nonetheless—two mismatched, chipped mugs of it. “Hope you like it black.” She placed the tray unceremoniously on a glossy lacquered table and exited via a small door that appeared to be part of the wood paneling.

“She gives me the creeps.” Elle pulled back the floor-to-ceiling curtains at the window. A white moving van was making its way up the drive. “They’re finally here.”

Elle and I went through the same hidden door Mrs. Arnold used to bring in our coffee. The passageway led us into the kitchen, where Mrs. Arnold stood in front of a huge eight-burner Viking stove. She stirred an aromatic concoction in a gleaming copper pot. Next to the stove was a brick fireplace with a recessed area to warm bread. Oh, what my father could do in this kitchen.

The knife block was full; all twelve slots displayed lustrous knives. Elle pushed me aside and scurried through an adjoining doorway. I followed, curious about the more casual aspects of the Spenser house.

Inside the room was a rustic farm table where I pictured Cole and Jillian, as children, eating their Froot Loops.

“
Ooh la la—très magnifique!
” Elle exclaimed.

To my left was a small swimming pool. “In a breakfast room! It’s not even big enough to do laps.”

Elle walked over to the wall and pushed a button. A strong
gush of water erupted. “You’ve been out of the loop—didn’t you read the latest
American Home and Garden
? It’s not a swimming or lap pool. It’s called a current or infinity pool. You swim against the current for a good workout.”

“Wow. Cool. No, I don’t read
American Home and Garden
, nor anything else under the Whitney publication umbrella.”

“That’s probably a good thing. You wouldn’t be happy to know they totally dissolved the antiques and collectibles editorship and are going in a more contemporary direction—more in the verve of
Ultramodern Digest
.”

“Damn that Michael!”

“I wonder if the Sag Harbor Historical Society will let me install one of these pools in my kitchen.”

“Sure. Along with a tennis court on your widow’s walk. Let’s get movin’. I want to see everything sent over from the Manhattan town house.”

FOURTEEN

Elle and I oversaw the unloading of twenty boxes of books and knickknacks, along with assorted furniture from the Spenser town house. All of the items went up to the attic, with the exception of a Pennsylvania secretary. The top drawer of the secretary had been jimmied open, most likely by the NYPD.

“All they had to do was look for the key taped under the center drawer,” Elle moaned. The desk went to the back of her pickup. She told me the reparation would run in the thousands and the value of the desk had probably dropped by the tens of thousands. Adam wouldn’t be too happy, seeing as it was part of his inheritance from Caroline Spenser.

The job of matching the list of contents from the Manhattan town house to the insurance list fell to me, while Elle went to work in another first-floor room.

*   *   *

My feet were on a silk dupioni footstool when Jillian walked into the grand salon. She went to the window and
peered through a crack in the heavy drapery. “Looks like Cole’s back at it.”

I shot up at the word “Cole” and joined her at the window. Cole and a woman stood near the pond. At first I couldn’t tell who the woman was. Regardless, my stomach somersaulted when I saw the way Cole looked at her. They were too far away for me to read their lips. The woman turned her head to the sun, goddess-style.
Damn!
It was Tara Gayle. I jumped back and closed the drapes, elbowing poor Jillian by mistake.

“Ouch! You okay?”

“Fine. Just got a chill. It’s cold by the window.”

I knew Cole and Tara had a past. What I didn’t know was did they have a future? It came down to Cole’s kiss, an apparently meaningless one.

Jillian said, “That woman with Cole is his old girlfriend. She’s crazy to come here. She wouldn’t dare hang around if Mother were alive. Meg, I have a favor to ask. Would you mind taking a look at my novel?”

“Um, sure. I’m no expert, though.” I was happy for the change of subject.

“You were a magazine editor. I’m sure you have a good eye. I’ll leave it on the center hall table. Don’t forget to take it on your way out.”

I wanted to correct her that my publishing ties had nothing to do with fiction, unless you counted all the times
American Home and Garden
had filled their interior shots with things imported from a prop room. If anyone wondered how four towheaded, Lacoste-garbed children under the age of seven and a slobbering English sheepdog could live day-to-day in the pristine homes featured in home and garden magazines, they couldn’t. Truckloads of fresh flowers and plants were one of the magazine’s secrets. Even I had
given up weekly manicures in lieu of fresh flowers when I realized how much they perked up a home. Plus, I was tired of my manicurist complaining about my wood-stained fingernails.

I’d scan Jillian’s novel and give it a glowing review. After all, she had been working on it since college. How bad could it be?

Detective Shoner breezed in just as I was thinking of a way to get Jillian to scoot. I wanted to get back to cross-referencing the contents from the town house to the inventory list. Today the detective wore a raspberry polo shirt, layered over a crisp white T-shirt, topped with a navy gold-buttoned blazer. Khaki pleated pants and soft suede loafers completed his ensemble. “Hello, Jillian. How are you feeling today?”

“I still don’t remember much. Like I told you yesterday, it comes in patches. I think I remember something, then bam, it’s gone.”

“Based on the few flashbacks you’ve had, the doctor assures me you’ll remember in time.” He sat on the bench in front of the fireplace and looked up at the tapestry. He seemed mesmerized by the buxom near-naked woman eating grapes in the foreground.

Jillian said, “If you’ll both excuse me, I have a headache.”

Detective Shoner jumped up. “Ms. Barrett, do you know where Ms. Warner is? I have a few questions for her.” He turned to me and winked.

What the hell was he winking about?

Jillian said, “I’ll take you to her.”

I was happy they both left the room. I needed a minute of reflection to analyze my feelings about Cole and his ex—ah, there it was again, the EX-factor!

When Tara and Cole failed to show up at the front door, I assumed they’d taken the path to the beach. The vision crushed salt into an already oozing wound.

*   *   *

I worked without a break and completed cross-referencing the items from the town house list to the insurance list Elle had given me. There was a discrepancy on one item—a small eleven-by-fourteen-inch painting. I sought out Elle and told her about the missing art.

“That’s not a little painting. It’s a Ficherelli, a Florentine artist, a contemporary of Vermeer. Barbara Johnson, the Johnson & Johnson matriarch, bought a Ficherelli in 1969,
Saint Praxedis
. Later it turned out to be an original Vermeer.”

“In a bear market, fine art’s the place to be.”

“How about a bullish bear market? Bill Gates must agree with you. He paid thirty million for Winslow Homer’s
Lost on the Grand Banks
. Gates’s old partner, Paul Allen, has an even more impressive art collection. He buys Monets, Cézannes, and Gauguins by the truckload. There were even rumors Picasso’s
Garçon à la pipe
might have been bought by Gates, Allen, or an Italian pasta mogul for one hundred and four million—only the Sotheby’s chairman knows for sure.”

“Buying art is a gamble, but at least you have something nice to look at the end of the tough day.”

“Do you mind checking out the town house stuff in the attic to make sure there wasn’t an oversight on my part? I’ll be honest, that pig thing is so creepy, the less time I spend up there the better.”

“Yes. He does put a damper on things. When I go up, I’ll cover him with a sheet. I don’t mind looking at all the
goodies from the town house. From what you’ve told me, I doubt you’d overlook a Ficherelli, even if it is a small one.”

“Oh, by the way, I searched the attic for the bookcase you told me about. It wasn’t there. You said it was by Mr. Piggy, right?”

“That’s strange. I’ll look when I go up.” Maybe there was a Nancy Drew–ish mystery brewing in the attic.

Adam was on the top step of the narrow staircase leading to the fourth floor. He had a slight flush to his bronzed skin. “Hello, Meg. Hope you don’t mind. I was looking through the things from the town house. It’s bittersweet to see so many objets d’art that are mine and, at the same time, knowing Caroline had to die in order for me to get them.”

“Elle said until her murder’s solved, the estate will remain in escrow.”

“What you mean to say is, when I’m ruled out as a murderer, I can collect my inheritance.”

“I have nothing to do with those decisions. I’m only here to help Elle and lend Jillian support.”

“Anything missing?”

The painting, the box of coins, and the hidden, now missing, bookcase. “I really can’t say.”

“What a loyal assistant. They’re lucky to have you. By the way, have you seen Cole? His dog ate my pillow. There are a million microbeads rolling around my bedroom floor—damn mutt.”

“You have a bedroom here?”

He came down to the step above mine. “Are you thinking of visiting?”

“Uh, no. I’m surprised you live here. That’s all.”

“I have my own place in the city, but Caroline let me stay anytime I wanted. I’m sure once the estate is settled, Cole won’t be so solicitous.”

“I just saw Cole with Tara Gayle.”

“That bastard! He doesn’t waste much time. He’s already done enough damage to Tara. I’m surprised she’d even look at him.”

“Why’s that?” I’d been looking for a reaction, but this was better than expected.

“Years ago, he drove his motorcycle off the road with Tara as a passenger. When Caroline chastised him about being reckless, he took off. A month later, he came back for his father’s funeral. That was the last we saw of him for seventeen years. Now he’s trying to take over where he left off. Tara won’t fall for it. She’s too smart.”

Smart or cunning?

I pressed my spine against the wall as he passed. He stopped on the step below and tucked my hair behind my ear and leaned in to whisper something. He drew back sharply when he saw my hearing aid. Then he said loudly, enunciating each syllable, “My offer still stands, if you need help.”

The warthog was in the same spot I’d last seen him, and all the pieces I’d inventoried earlier were accounted for, even the embarrassing Ecuadorian fertility god. But, as Elle had said, the bookcase that had been hidden behind the faux-Japanese screen was gone.

The boxes and furniture from the town house were stacked on the west end of the attic. There was a beautiful Chippendale dining room set with twelve Queen Anne chairs. I was tempted to explore the pieces hidden under padded blankets but instead went to a section of stacked boxes, a more logical place to search for the missing painting.

I leaned over a rectangular cardboard box and tried to make out Elle’s distinctive scrawl. I opened the box and found not the missing painting, but stacks of photo albums
and scrapbooks. I flipped one open. It was a color snapshot of Salvatore with his arm around Caroline Spenser. He looked like one of those long-haired Latin lovers from the cover of a romance novel, right down to his ruffled unbuttoned shirt. Caroline was the same as always, composed and tight-lipped. I turned the page. Four adolescents were attired in make-believe clothes. There was no mistaking Cole’s young eyes. He seemed happy and laid-back. Jillian wore sheer jewel-toned scarves and a pointed Renaissance headpiece. She had a huge smile. Adam and Van stood in the foreground wearing football helmets, frozen in a sword fight. Behind them was a shiny knight in armor. I glanced to my right at the same knight in armor. Glistening steel had turned to dark pewter.

Lost in thoughts of Jillian, Cole, Adam, and Van as children, I almost swallowed my heart when something poked me from behind. I let out a small screech then bravely turned to see my attacker.