Keepsake (57 page)

"And I'm not prim," she threw out over her shoulder.

Passive, maybe. Proper, obviously. But not prim.

"Of course you're prim!" snapped Norah. "Who the hell else could resist gawking at a bona fide celebrity who's spending the summer a few hundred yards away from her?"

"The man is renting a lighthouse," Maddie reminded her friend. "In a backwater summering hole. It's obvious, at least to me, that he wants privacy."

"It's obvious that he
doesn't
want it. He went and became a celebrity of his own free will! If you had a shred of decency in you, you'd be fawning over him like the rest of us. He's entitled to it!"

"Oh, pooh," said Joan in a disappointed voice. "He has a woman with him."

"What? Let me have those," said Norah, snatching the binoculars back from Joan with such vigor that she knocked Joan off balance.

"Watch it!" Joan snapped.
The edge in her usually soft-
pitched voice was a clear sign, at least to Maddie, that Norah had gone over the line again.

He has a woman with him.

Norah stared intently through the binoculars. After a thoughtful silence she said, "Hard to say. If she's his lover, she's not a recent one. They seem too used to one another. She's leaning against the mud shed with her hands in the pockets of her sundress, mostly listening to him—the wind just blew her dress up;
great
legs—and nodding once in a while. I get the sense that she's just soaking him up. As if they go back together."

Norah looked up for a moment. "I'm right that he never married?"

Joan said, "
Not as far as I know. He made
People
's most-
eligible list a few years ago—after the War—but then he kind of faded. So it's possible he went off and did something stupid, but I doubt it. We would've read about a wedding, in
People
if not in
Newsweek.
I imagine he was just living with someone. Probably her."

Joan rose up on tiptoe, trying for the same vantage over the caf
é
curtains that Norah had. In heels, Joan was able to manage an inch or two over five feet, but today she was wearing sandals. She was short. Her two best friends were tall. It made her peppery sometimes.

"Norah, would you mind?" Joan asked in a dangerously mild voice. "They're my binoculars, after all."

She reached for them but Norah shooed her away with her elbow, the way she might a pesky terrier. Maddie stepped in, as she always did, to keep the peace. She took the binoculars.

"All right, you two clowns. Have a little dignity."

With Norah, dignity was always in short supply. She proved it now by nodding slyly toward the lighthouse. "Check it out—if you're not too prim."

Probably she'd used the exact same line on half the men she'd dated; Norah had no reason to be shy. With her knockout figure, creamy skin, red, red hair and full red lips, she was the kind of woman who made men take off their wedding rings and hide them in their hip pockets.

But Maddie was not, and never would be, Norah.

"Why are you being such a pain, Nor?"

"You're abnormal, you know that? Anyone else would look. Prim, prim, prim."

With an angry, heavy sigh, Maddie accepted the binoculars and aimed them in the general direction of the lighthouse. Her sense of dread ran deep. She did not want to gape at the man and did not want, most of all, to gape at the woman. What was the point? It would be like staring into her own grave.

"Yes. I see him. Yes. He looks like on TV." She held the binoculars out to Norah. "Happy now?"

"What about the woman? What do you think?"

"I didn't see any woman," said Maddie, grateful that a billowing bed sheet hid all but a pair of slender ankles from view.

"No, she's there, Maddie. I can see her now, even without the binoculars. Look again," Joan urged.

It was going to be so much worse than Maddie thought. She sighed and tried to seem bored, then took the glasses back for another look. This time she was spared nothing. A slender woman of medium height was facing squarely in their direction, laughing. The wind was lifting her blunt-cut hair away from her face and plastering her pale blue sundress against her lithe body. She was the picture of vitality and high spirits. And the sight of her filled Maddie with relief.

"It's obviously his sister," she said.

"Ah, his sister. Wait—how would you know?" Norah demanded.

She walks the way he does... throws her head back when she laughs the way he does... does that jingle-change thing in her pocket the way he does. Who else could she be?

Maddie spun a plausible lie. "I overheard it in the post office yesterday. I remember now."

"I don't believe it. She's half his age."

"I doubt it."

The two were five years apart. But the sister looked young for her years, and the brother carried thoughts of war and savagery with him everywhere he went. Joan was right: he looked burned out. Maddie could see i
t in the apathetic lift of his
shoulders after the woman said something. It was such a tired-looking shrug.

Norah was watching Maddie more carefully now. She folded her forearms across her implanted breasts and splayed her red-tipped fingers on her upper arms. "What else did you manage to
... overhear, in the post office?" The question dripped with skepticism.

Maddie met her friend's steady g
aze with one almost as good. "
That was pretty much it. It was crowded. You know how little the lobby is. They took the conversation outside."

"Who were they? Man? Woman? Did you recognize them from town?"

"Two women, as I recall. I didn't bother turning around to see who. As I've said, I'm not really interested."

Norah cocked her head. Her lined lips curled into a faint smile. Her eyes, the color of water found nowhere in
New England
, narrowed. "Really."

"Okay, they're getting into the Jeep!" Joan cried. "Now what?"

"We follow 'em. Let's go!"

Maddie stared agape as th
e two made a dash for the half-
open Dutch door that led to the seashelled drive of the Cape Cod cottage. "Are you out of your minds? What do you hope to accomplish?"

Norah slapped the enormous glove-soft carryall she'd slung over her shoulder. "I have a camera," she said on her way out.

"You're going to photograph them?"

"If we don't, the paparazzi will!"

She had her Mercedes in gear before Joan was able to snap her seat belt shut. The top of the convertible was down, of course, the better for Norah to be seen. Maddie watched, boggled, as the two took off in a cloud of dust, Norah pumping her fist in a war whoop the whole time.

The episode bordered on the surreal: an educated, beautiful forty-year-old woman and an even more educated thirty- eight-year-old one, tracking down a media celebrity like two hound dogs after some felon in the bayou. All they needed was Maddie in the rumble seat and there they'd be: Three perfect Stooges.

She closed the lower half of the Dutch door, and then, because she felt a sudden and entirely irrational chill, closed the upper half. June meant nothing on the
Cape
. June could go from warm and wonderful to bone-chilling cold in the blink of an eye.

June had done just that.

Buy 
A
Cha
r
med Place

Antoinette Stockenberg

"
Richly rewarding
… a novel to be savored
.
"

--
Romantic Times Magazine
 

A
Nantucket
cottage by the sea: the inheritance is a dream come true for Jane Drew. Too bad it comes with a ghost —and a soulfully seductive neighbor who'd just as soon boot Jane off the island.

Chapter 1

"Do
you think she
'
s really dead?
"

"
Man, we don
'
t even know if she
'
s
in
there.
"
The boy reached out a grimy hand and laid it gingerly on the closed lid of the gleaming casket.

His pal
—
younger, cleaner, better behaved
—
sucked in his breath.
"
You
'
re not supposed to touch it!
"

"
What
'
s she gonna do? Open it and come after us?
"
The older boy
'
s voice was defiant; but he glanced around furtively, then rubbed away his smudge marks with the sleeve of his jacket.
"
Come on, let
'
s go. It looks like we have to take their word for it.
"

Watching the two from her seat in the front row of folding chairs, Jane Drew tried not to smile.
You never should
'
ve kept their baseballs, Aunt Sylvia. Fifty years from now they
'
ll still be saying you were a witch.

The kids made a run for the door around a plain-dressed woman, who promptly collared the younger one.

"
Walk.
This is a place of respect.
"

The boy squirmed out of her grip, then walked briskly the rest of the way out. The woman, sixty and bulky, shifted her handbag from her right forearm to her left and glanced tentatively around the room, taking in the closed coffin, Jane, and the two visitors chatting quietly in the back.

Jane went up to the new arrival.
"
I
'
m Jane Drew, Sylvia Merchant
'
s great-niece,
"
she said with a smile.

The visitor stuck out a well-worn hand.
"
How do you do. I
'
m Mrs. Adamont. Adele Adamont. I work at the A&P where Mrs. Merchant shopped,
"
she explained.
"
I wanted
to pay my respects because, well
..."
She nodded to the empty chairs.
"
You see for yourself. When a widow has nobody, this is how it ends up.
"

Surprised by the islander
'
s bluntness, Jane said something dutiful about her great-aunt having outlived most of her friends.

"
Oh, no; she never had none, not that I recall,
"
Mrs. Adamont said evenly.
"
Everyone on
Nantucket
knew that. They say her husband died in the First World War; I suppose she never got over it. She was always one to say good morning, but never one to stop and pass the time of day. She was funny that way. How old was she?
"
the woman added.

"
My aunt had just turned ninety-four. The last two years were hard for her,
"
Jane volunteered.
"
She didn
'
t like living in a nursing home, away from
Nantucket
.
"

"
I did wonder why she
decided to go into a home off-
island. Was she all right
—
you know
—
up there?
"

"
Sharp as a tack,
"
Jane said, taken aback again.

Leave it to an islander to think anyone living on the mainland must be insane.
Jane racked her memory, trying to remember whether her aunt had ever mentioned a Mrs. Adamont. But the visitor was right; Sylvia Merchant had had little interest in other people. In the nursing home she
'
d reminisced about her house, and her garden, and the two cats who
'
d shared it with her. Books were important to her. So were movies: she
'
d had a VCR in her room, and her own copy of
Casablanca
.
But as for friends and neighbors .
...

"
She did give me zucchini from her garden once,
"
Mrs. Adamont said, as if that were reason enough to pay her last respects.
"
So then, you
'
re all there is for family?
"

"
Almost,
"
Jane answered, drawing herself up to her full five-feet-seven, trying to make up for lost relatives.
"
There
'
s an elderly cousin no longer able to travel. I have a sister living on the West Coast, and of course my parents;
but unfortunately they
'
re in
Europe
right now.
"
Not that they
'
d come in any event, Jane knew. Other than an occasional exchange of Christmas cards, there
'
d been no contact between her parents and Sylvia Merchant for decades.