Hide Yourself Away (18 page)

Grace braced herself.

“Excuse me, Mr. Nazareth.”

The executive producer turned to look at her, his eyes bulging with anger. Grace noticed a vein throbbing beneath the skin on his right temple.

“What is it?” he barked.

She took a deep breath and blurted it out, praying that Linus wouldn’t dismiss her suggestion as ridiculous. “Professor Cox, our consultant, knew Madeleine Sloane and her mother. In fact, he was sitting with Madeleine at the clambake. He may not be a witness to her death, but he was with her on the night she died.”

Grace could almost see the wheels spinning in the executive producer’s head as he considered her suggestion.

“The eyewitness to the death of a daughter of Newport society tells what he saw,” Linus muttered to himself. “It’s not an exact fit, is it?”

Rebuked, Grace bit her lower lip.

“But it’s the only thing we’ve got,” Linus continued. “And it’s better than anything anyone else around here has come up with. Let’s go with it.”

Grace felt a rush of satisfaction. Emboldened, she asked,
“Don’t you first have to see if Professor Cox is willing to talk about Madeleine?”

A sly smile spread over Linus’s face. “Oh, he’ll talk, all right. Gordon Cox is on our payroll for the week.”

  CHAPTER  
57

The shot from the helicopter provided the first video for the broadcast, a sweeping aerial view of the mansions that dotted the Cliff Walk.

“Good morning,” Constance Young’s energized voice welcomed the television audience. “It’s Monday, July nineteenth, and this is
KEY to America,
coming to you this morning from Newport, Rhode Island.”

The
KTA
theme music began, the graphics ran on the screen, and the director switched to the primary camera shot, showing Constance and Harry standing on The Breakers’ lawn with the Atlantic Ocean gleaming in the morning sun behind them.

“All this week, we’ll be broadcasting from this glorious city by the sea, sharing with you the beauty and history of this remarkable
town.” Constance seemed to ignore the fact that the breeze blowing off the water was pushing her carefully styled hair into her face. “This morning we start off here at The Breakers, the seventy-room
cottage
that Cornelius Vanderbilt II had built for his family’s summer vacations.”

The camera panned over the Renaissance Revival–style structure’s oceanside façade. Four stories of Indiana limestone, hand-carved columns, open balconies, and multiple chimneys glistened.

“But, first, here’s Harry with the morning’s news.”

  CHAPTER  
58

It was early. None of the other guests had left their rooms yet, so Izzie could take her sweet time in this one. It was a checkout and had to be cleaned from top to bottom.

She switched on the television in the armoire, keeping the volume just high enough to hear as she stripped the sheets from the double bed. Izzie groaned as she tugged at the clean fitted sheet, securing it over the mattress. Her arm was really paining her this morning. She had to take a little rest.

How much longer could she keep this up? As it was, she had barely made it to Mass yesterday morning and had spent most of the day sleeping, not bothering to turn on the TV or open the newspaper. After all that rest, she was still exhausted.

Taking a seat on the chair at the desk, Izzie happily watched the aerial shot of the Cliff Walk, thinking of all the times that she and Padraic had strolled there, hand in hand. It was one of their favorite things to do, especially in the last months, when he was so sick. Such a soothing and cleansing pastime, costing absolutely nothing. The right price for their eternally tight budget.

She sat on the edge of the bed and watched a bit more, but when the panoramic views of Newport stopped and they started with the news, Izzie forced herself to get up. She didn’t want to hear about fighting in Iraq or suicide bombings in Israel. She felt sorry for those people over there, but she had plenty of problems of her own right here. Izzie didn’t want to bring herself down. Her doctor was always telling her it was important to have positive thoughts. He claimed that it would help her immune system.

As she pulled back the shower curtain to scour the tub, Izzie caught a snippet of conversation that drew her back to the bedroom.

“These are what are known as the Forty Steps, and this is where Madeleine Sloane’s body was found Sunday morning.”

As she focused on the screen, Izzie’s hand went to her chest, covering the spot where her heart beat beneath, the spot where her left breast had once been. The picture of the steep stone
steps and the crashing waves was taken from high above, and the video was shaking a bit. Izzie watched intently as the shot changed and that pretty Constance Young reappeared on the screen.

“Professor Gordon Cox, our KEY News historical consultant for the week, was among the last people who saw Madeleine Sloane alive Saturday night. Thank you for being with us, Professor Cox.”

The teacher nodded, a solemn expression on his face. Solemn or sour, Izzie couldn’t decide which.

  CHAPTER  
59

The professor was painfully aware of the television camera trained upon him, uncomfortable with the questions he was being asked, resentful of being called in as a last-minute replacement to fulfill Linus Nazareth’s sensational promise.

This was not what he had signed on for, thought Gordon as he stood talking with Constance Young at the top of the Forty Steps. He was supposed to discuss Newport’s history, one of his areas of professional expertise—not rehash Charlotte Sloane’s
disappearance or describe his time with Madeleine the night she died.

Gordon cleared his throat. “Well, Madeleine had seemed to be doing pretty well, to me, considering the fact that she had just learned that her mother’s remains had been identified as those found in the old slave tunnel at Shepherd’s Point.”

“There have been reports that Madeleine had been drinking that night,” Constance led.

Gordon glowered at the cohost. “Just about everyone at the clambake had been drinking. Madeleine didn’t seem to be overly affected to me.”

“If you had to speculate, Professor, would you say that it was more likely that Madeleine fell down these steps or that she was pushed?”

“I wouldn’t care to speculate one way or the other. All I can say is that Madeleine Sloane was quite a fine young woman, and her death is a very great tragedy.”

As he pulled off his microphone at the end of the segment, Gordon fumed inside. Yet his anger was assuaged almost immediately as he remembered a very important fact. Shepherd’s Point might become the Preservation Society’s property sooner rather than later.

Agatha Wagstaff now had no heirs.

  CHAPTER  
60

Monday was usually Mickey’s day off, a welcome respite following the hectic weekends. After the Vickerses’ clambake Saturday night and the wedding at the Eisenhower House yesterday, he wished he could sleep until noon. But he had set his alarm for 7:00, determined to catch up with his bookkeeping.

Though the business was doing amazingly well and he could easily afford an accountant to do the work for him, Mickey didn’t trust anyone with his financials. He knew how easy it was to lie and cheat.

Mickey rolled over in bed, pleased with how far he had come. The boy raised by middle-class parents in Newport’s Fifth Ward had made it much further, on the economic scale at least, than his parents ever had. When his mother had wrung her hands in despair over his grades at Rogers High School, Mickey had ignored her pleas. He didn’t want to go to college anyway. Those were four wasted years as far as Mickey was concerned. He wanted to get out in the world and make money.

It hadn’t turned out to be as easy as he had thought it would
be, though. The world hadn’t exactly welcomed him with open arms. Mickey quickly discovered how hard it was to make a buck, especially with no college degree. But he was stubborn and full of pride. He wouldn’t admit that his parents had been right. He was going to show them and everyone else that Mickey Hager was somebody to be reckoned with.

And he had. His house was bigger, his cars were newer, his bank accounts were fatter than his parents’ had ever been. Seasons Clambakes was making money hand over fist, and the deluxe catering business that had spun off was thriving as well. Mickey thought with satisfaction of the job that was coming up on Wednesday, the formal charity affair at The Elms. Everyone who was anyone in Newport would be there to see what his company could do. After that shindig, Mickey was certain the sky would be the limit for his catering business.

His hand fumbled for the remote control on the nightstand. Mickey pointed and clicked at the plasma TV built into the wall across from his bed. The tape of Madeleine Sloane’s face appeared, large and clear, and spoke from the big screen. “If the police had found my mother early on, there might have been more clues for them to work with to find the real killer. But I’ll tell you one thing. My father didn’t kill my mother. I’m sure he didn’t.”

Mickey listened as the
KTA
cohosts speculated on possible connections between the deaths of the society mother and daughter. What did it matter, all this time later, who killed Charlotte Sloane? All Mickey knew was that it was a blessing Charlotte
had disappeared right after she caught him ripping off the country club, before she had a chance to blow the whistle on his scheme. The money that he had embezzled from those pompous snobs had been the seed money for Seasons Clambakes.

  CHAPTER  
61

Grace watched on a monitor as Caridad Vega delivered the national weather report from the studio in New York. In the downtime in Newport, Constance’s hair and makeup were retouched and Harry played a quick makeshift stickball game with crew members. Batting a rubber ball with a truncated boom mike pole relieved some of the tension. The first hour of the summer vacation show had been anything but light and carefree.

“We’ve had enough blood and guts in the last hour,” Linus called across the lawn. “Now we’ll leave ’em on a happier note.”

The cohosts got into position again, taking off the sunglasses they had donned during the break. The floor manager signaled to begin, and Harry did the honors, teasing to the segment that would appear after the commercial break.

“Coming up, a tour of The Breakers. We’ll show you the opulence
and the glory of Newport’s most famous Gilded Age mansion.”

The camera followed Constance and Professor Cox as they strolled through the lofty arches of the Great Hall. The Vanderbilts’ oak leaf and acorn motif appeared again and again on the plaques of rare Italian marble. A freestanding bronze candelabra hung from the breathtakingly high ceiling, a ceiling painted to represent the view an open courtyard would have afforded—a blue sky. At the back of the room, glass walls opened out to a mosaic-roofed loggia pulling the eye onward to the ocean.

They and the audience at home toured the Music Room, the Morning Room, the Billiard Room, the Breakfast Room, and spent extra time in the Dining Room, the most imposing and richly embellished room in the house. Two stories high, with a dozen enormous red-and-cream-rose alabaster columns. The vaulted ceiling was carved, painted, and gilded, rising in stages to an elaborately framed oil-on-canvas painting of Aurora, goddess of dawn, on the ceiling. Two towering Baccarat chandeliers, each composed of thousands of crystal balls and beads, hung above the sixteenth-century-style oak and lemonwood table.

“This table could be extended to seat thirty-four guests,” Gordon said.

“My goodness,” said Constance, looking up and around.

“What a domestic staff they needed to run this place. I can’t imagine having to clean those chandeliers alone.”

“Shall we go upstairs and see the bedrooms?” Gordon offered.

“Yes. Let’s.”

A broad grand staircase with an ornately detailed bronze and wrought-iron railing swept up to the second floor. As cohost and professor climbed the red-carpeted marble steps, Constance asked, “How did they heat this place? It must have cost a fortune.”

The professor smiled, pleased to display his knowledge. “Well, since the Vanderbilts were primarily here during the summer season, that helped. But an enormous heating plant beneath the caretaker’s cottage was joined to the basement of the house by a tunnel. Several hundred tons of coal could be stored at once in the underground boiler room.”

  CHAPTER  
62

His head throbbed with a pain worse than any he had ever felt. Sam used every bit of strength he had to open his eyelids. But after all the effort, there was only blackness. Was he blind?

The floor beneath his body was cool and damp, and the
smell was musty. His reeling brain tried, in vain, to bring order to the chaotic input from his senses. Where was he? What had happened?

No answers came to him as he slipped back into unconsciousness.

  CHAPTER  
63

Elsa switched off the television set and pulled her silk robe closer around her body. Watching the news had been a mistake. It just made her feel worse.