Moonlight Becomes You (12 page)

E
ARL
B
ATEMAN HAD NOT INTENDED TO DRIVE TO
N
EWPORT
on Tuesday evening. It was while preparing for a lecture he would be delivering the following Friday that he realized that for illustrative purposes he needed some of the slides he kept in the museum on the grounds of the Bateman Funeral Home. The home of his great-great-grandfather, the narrow Victorian house and the acre it stood on had been separated from the main house and property ten years earlier.

Technically the museum was private and not open to the public. It could only be visited by written request, and Earl personally escorted the few visitors through it. In response to the derisive humor heaped on him by his cousins whenever they discussed “Death Valley”—as they called his little museum—his icy and knowingly humorless retort was that, historically, people of all cultures and breeding attached great importance to the rituals surrounding death.

Over the years, he had gathered an impressive array of materials, all having to do with death: slides and films; recorded funeral dirges; Greek epic poems; paintings and prints, such as the apotheosis picture of Lincoln being received into heaven; scale reproductions of the Taj Mahal and the pyramids; native mausoleums of brass-trimmed hardwood; Indian funeral pyres; present-day caskets; replicas of drums; conch shells, umbrellas, and swords; statues
of riderless horses with reversed stirrups; and examples of mourning attire throughout the ages.

“Mourning Attire” was the subject of the lecture he was to deliver to members of a reading group that had just finished discussing an assortment of books on death rituals. For the occasion, he wanted to show them slides of the costumes in the museum.

Visuals always help make for a lively lecture, he decided, as he drove along Route 138, over the Newport Bridge. Until last year, the final slide used when he lectured on attire was an excerpt from the 1952
Amy Vanderbilt's Etiquette Guide,
in which she instructed that patent-leather shoes were never appropriate at a funeral. Accompanying the text he had placed pictures of patent-leather shoes, from children's Mary Janes to ladies' pumps and men's bowed evening slippers, all, he felt, to whimsical effect.

But now he had thought of a new twist for ending the lecture. “I wonder what generations in the future will say of us when they see illustrations of widows in red miniskirts and family mourners in jeans and leather jackets. Will they perhaps read social and cultural custom of deep significance into these costumes, as we ourselves try to read it into the clothing of the past? And if so, wouldn't you like to have an opportunity to eavesdrop on their discussions?”

He liked that. It would lessen the uneasy reaction he always received when he discussed the fact that the Beerawan community dressed the widow or widower in rags, because of their belief that the soul of the dead person begins wandering immediately after cessation of breath and might reflect hostility to the living, even to those people the deceased had loved. Presumably the rags reflect grief and appropriately deep mourning.

At the museum, that thought had stayed with him as he collected the slides he wanted. He sensed a tension between
the dead Nuala and the living Maggie. There was hostility to Maggie. She must be warned.

He knew Nuala's phone number from memory, and in the dim light of his museum office, he dialed it. He had just started to hang up when he heard Maggie's breathless greeting. Even so, he replaced the receiver.

She might think the warning odd, and he didn't want her to think he was crazy.

“I am
not
crazy,” he said aloud. Then he laughed. “I'm not even odd.”

24

N
EIL
S
TEPHENS WAS NORMALLY ABLE TO GIVE HIS TOTAL
, undivided attention to the shifting tides of the stock market. His clients, both corporate and private, swore by the accuracy of his predictions and his strong eye in discerning trends. But in the five days since he had been unable to reach Maggie, he had found himself distracted when he needed to be attentive, and as a result, needlessly sharp with his assistant, Trish.

Finally allowing her irritation to show, she put him in his place by raising her hand in a gesture that clearly said
stop,
and saying, “There's only one reason for a guy like you to be so grouchy. You're finally interested in someone, and she isn't buying it. Well, I guess I should say ‘welcome to the real world,' but the fact is, I am sorry and so I'll try to be patient with your unnecessary carping.”

After a feeble and unanswered “Who runs this place anyhow?” Neil retreated to his own office and renewed his memory search for the name of Maggie's stepmother.

The frustration from a nagging sense that something was wrong made him uncharacteristically impatient with two of his longtime clients, Lawrence and Frances Van Hilleary, who visited his office that morning.

Wearing a Chanel suit that Neil recognized as one of her favorites, Frances sat elegantly straight on the edge of a leather club chair in the “client-friendly conversation area” and told him of a hot tip on an oil-well stock they had received at a dinner party. Her eyes sparkled as she gave him the details.

“The company is based in Texas,” she explained enthusiastically. “But ever since China opened to the West, they've been sending top engineers there.”

China!
Neil thought, dismayed, but leaned back, trying to give the appearance of listening with courteous attention while first Frances and then Lawrence talked excitedly of coming political stability in China, of pollution concerns there, of oil gushers waiting to be tapped, and of course, of fortunes to be made.

Doing rapid mental calculations, Neil realized with dismay that they were talking about investing roughly three quarters of their available assets.

“Here's the prospectus,” Lawrence Van Hilleary concluded, pushing it at him.

Neil took the glossy folder and found the contents to be exactly what he had expected. At the bottom of the page, in print almost too small to read, were cautionary words to the effect that only those with at least half a million dollars in assets, excluding their residences, would be allowed to participate.

He cleared his throat. “Okay, Frances and Lawrence, you pay me for my advice. You are two of the most generous people I've ever dealt with. You've already given away a tremendous amount of money to your children and grandchildren
and charities in the family limited partnership, real estate trust, generation-skipping trusts, and charitable IRAs. I firmly believe that what you have left for yourselves should not be wasted on this kind of pie-in-the-sky investment. It's much too high risk, and I'd venture to say that there is more oil dripping from the car in your garage than you'll ever see spurting from one of these so-called gushers. I couldn't with any conscience handle a transaction like this, and I beg you not to waste your money on it.”

There was a moment of silence, broken by Frances who turned to her husband and said, “Dear, remind me to get the car checked.”

Lawrence Van Hilleary shook his head, then sighed with resignation. “Thanks, Neil. There's no fool like an old fool, I guess.”

There was a soft knock, and Trish came in carrying a tray with coffee. “Is he still trying to sell you that Edsel stock, Mr. Van Hilleary?”

“No, he just cut me off at the pass when I was about to buy it, Trish. That coffee smells good.”

After discussing a few items in their investment portfolio, the subject changed to a decision the Van Hillearys were pondering.

“We're both seventy-eight,” Lawrence said, glancing fondly at his wife. “I know we look pretty good, but there's no question that we can't do things we used to do even a few years ago . . . None of the kids live in the area. The house in Greenwich is expensive to maintain, and to top it off, our old housekeeper has just retired. We're seriously considering looking for a retirement community somewhere in New England. We'd still go down to Florida in the winter, but it might be nice to get rid of all the responsibilities of a house and grounds.”

“Where in New England?” Neil asked.

“Perhaps the Cape. Or maybe Newport. We'd like to stay near the water.”

“In that case, I might be able to do some scouting for you over the weekend.” Briefly he told them how several of the women whose income tax his father handled had moved to Latham Manor Residence in Newport and were very happy there.

When they got up to go, Frances Van Hilleary kissed Neil's cheek. “No oil for the lamps of China, I promise. And let us know what you find out about the place in Newport.”

“Of course.” Tomorrow, Neil thought, tomorrow I'll be in Newport and maybe I'll bump into Maggie.

Fat chance! said a niggling voice in the back of his mind.

Then the brainstorm hit him. One night, when they had had dinner at Neary's, Jimmy Neary and Maggie had talked about her pending visit to Newport. She told Jimmy her stepmother's name, and he said something about it being one of the grandest of old Celtic names. Jimmy would remember, surely, he told himself.

A much happier Neil settled down to finish up the day's business. Tonight he would have dinner at Neary's, he decided, then go home and pack. Tomorrow he would head north.

*   *   *

At eight o'clock that evening, as Neil was contentedly finishing sautéed scallops and mashed potatoes, Jimmy Neary joined him. Mentally keeping his fingers crossed, Neil asked whether Jimmy could remember the name of Maggie's stepmother.

“Ah-hah,” Jimmy said. “Give me a minute. It's a grand name. Let's see.” Jimmy's cherubic face puckered in concentration. “Nieve . . . Siobhan . . . Maeve . . . Cloissa . . . no, none of those. It's—it's—by God, I've
got
it! Finnuala!
It means ‘the fair one,' in Gaelic. And Maggie said the old girl's known as Nuala.”

“At least that's a start. I could kiss you, Jimmy,” Neil said fervently.

A look of alarm crossed Jimmy's face. “Don't you dare!” he said.

25

M
AGGIE HAD NOT EXPECTED TO SLEEP WELL
,
BUT WRAPPED
as she was in the soft eiderdown quilt, her head burrowed in the goose-down pillows, she did not wake up until the phone rang at nine-thirty in the master bedroom.

Feeling clearheaded and refreshed for the first time in several days, she hurried to answer it, even taking note of the bright sunbeams that spilled into the room around the edges of the window shades.

It was Greta Shipley calling. Almost apologetically, she began, “Maggie, I wanted to thank you for yesterday. It meant so much to me. And please don't agree to this unless it's something you really want to do, but you mentioned that you wanted to collect the art supplies Nuala left here and, well . . . You see, we're allowed to invite a guest for dinner on a rotating basis. I thought that if you don't have any plans, you might consider joining me this evening.”

“I don't have any plans at all, and I'd enjoy it very much,” Maggie said sincerely. Then a sudden thought flashed through her mind, a kind of mental picture. The cemetery. Mrs. Rhinelander's grave. Or was it? Something
had caught her attention there yesterday. But what? She'd have to go back. She thought it had been at Mrs. Rhinelander's grave, but if she were wrong, she would have to revisit all the other ones they had gone to.

“Mrs. Shipley,” she said, “while I'm up here, I'm going to be taking some pictures around Newport for a project I'm working on. It may sound macabre, but St. Mary's and Trinity have such a tranquil, old-world feeling about them, they're perfect for my purposes. I know that some of the graves we left flowers on yesterday had beautiful vistas behind them. I'd like to go back there. Can you tell me which ones we visited?”

She hoped the hastily assembled excuse didn't sound too lame. But I
am
working on a project, she thought.