Moonlight Becomes You (24 page)

“You look spectacular,” he told her. “I'll have to change the plans for the evening. Obviously McDonald's won't do.”

Maggie laughed. “Oh dear! And I was so looking forward to a Big Mac.” She quickly read the note he had brought in. “Where was this?” she asked.

“On your front door, madame.”

“Oh, of course. I came in through the kitchen earlier.” She refolded the piece of paper. So Neil is in Portsmouth, she thought, and wants to get together. Isn't that nice? She hated to admit to herself how disappointed she had been when he hadn't called last week before she left. And then she reminded herself of how she had chalked it up as another indication of his indifference toward her.

“Anything important?” Liam asked casually.

“No. A friend who's up for the weekend wants me to call. Maybe I'll give him a ring tomorrow.” And maybe I won't, she thought. I wonder how he found me.

She went back upstairs for her handbag, and as she picked
it up she felt the extra weight of the bell. Should she show it to Liam? she wondered.

No, not tonight, she decided. I don't want to talk about death and graves, not now. She took the bell out of her purse. Even though it had been there for hours, it still felt cold and clammy to her touch, causing her to shiver.

I don't want this to be the first thing I see when I get in later, she thought as she opened the closet door and put it on the shelf, pushing it back until it was completely out of sight.

*   *   *

Liam had made a reservation in the Commodore's Room of The Black Pearl, a toney restaurant with a sweeping view of Narragansett Bay. “My condo isn't far from here,” he explained, “but I miss the big house I was raised in. One of these days I'm going to bite the bullet and buy one of the old places and renovate it.” His voice became serious. “By then I'll have settled down and, with any luck, will have a beautiful wife who's an award-winning photographer.”

“Stop it, Liam,” Maggie protested. “As Nuala would have said, you sound half daft.”

“But I'm not,” he said quietly. “Maggie, please start looking at me with different eyes, won't you? Ever since last week, you haven't been out of my mind for a minute. All I've been able to think about is that if you had walked in on whatever hophead attacked Nuala, the same thing could have happened to you. I'm a big, strong guy, and I want to take
care
of you. I know that such sentiments are out of fashion, but I can't help it. It's who I am, and it's how I feel.” He paused. “And now that's entirely enough of that. Is the wine okay?”

Maggie stared at him and smiled, glad that he had not asked for a further response from her. “It's fine, but Liam, I
have to ask you something. Do you
really
think a stranger on drugs attacked Nuala?”

Liam appeared astonished at her question. “If not, who else?” he asked.

“But whoever did it must have seen that guests were expected and yet still took time to ransack the house.”

“Maggie, whoever did it was probably desperate to get a fix and searched the place for money or jewelry. The newspaper account said Nuala's wedding ring was taken off her finger, so robbery
must
have been the motive.”

“Yes, the ring was taken,” Maggie acknowledged.

“I happen to know she had very little jewelry,” Liam said. “She wouldn't let Uncle Tim give her an engagement ring. She said that two of them in one lifetime was enough, and besides, both of them had been stolen when she lived in New York. I remember her telling my mother after that happened that she never wanted to own anything except costume jewelry.”

“You know more than I do,” Maggie said.

“So except for whatever cash was around, her killer didn't get much, did he? At least that gives me some satisfaction,” Liam said, his voice grim. He smiled, breaking the dark mood that had settled over them. “Now, tell me about your week. I hope Newport is beginning to get under your skin? Or better yet, let me continue to give you my life history.”

He told her how, as a child, he had counted the weeks in boarding school until it was time to go to Newport for the summer, about his decision to become a stockbroker like his father, about leaving his position at Randolph and Marshall and starting his own investment firm. “It's pretty flattering that some gilt-edged clients elected to come with me,” he said. “It's always scary to go out on your own, but their
vote of trust led me to believe I'd made the right decision. And I had.”

By the time the crème brûlée had arrived, Maggie was fully relaxed. “I've learned more about you tonight than I knew from a dozen other dinners,” she told him.

“Maybe I'm a little different on my home territory,” he said. “And maybe I just want you to see what a terrific guy I am.” He raised an eyebrow. “I'm also trying to let you know what a substantial guy I am. Just so you know, in
these
parts, I'm considered quite a catch.”

“Stop that kind of talk right now,” Maggie said, trying to sound firm, but unable to suppress a slight smile.

“Okay. Your turn.
Now
tell me about your week.”

Maggie was reluctant to really go into things. She did not want to destroy the almost festive mood of the evening. It was impossible to talk about the week and not to speak of Greta Shipley, but she put the emphasis on how much she had enjoyed her in the time she had spent with her, and then she told him about her blossoming friendship with Letitia Bainbridge.

“I knew Mrs. Shipley, and she was a very special lady,” Liam said. “And, as for Mrs. Bainbridge, well, she's great,” he enthused. “A real legend around here. Has she filled you in on all the goings-on in Newport's heyday?”

“A little.”

“Get her going sometime on her mother's stories about Mamie Fish. She really knew how to shake up the old crew. There's a great story about a dinner party she threw, when one of her guests asked to bring Prince del Drago from Corsica with him. Of course Mamie was delighted to give permission, so you can imagine her horror when ‘the prince' turned out to be a monkey, in full evening dress.”

They laughed together. “Mrs. Bainbridge is probably one
of the very few left whose parents took part in the famous 1890s parties,” Liam said.

“What's nice is that Mrs. Bainbridge has so many protective family members nearby,” Maggie said. “Just yesterday, after she heard that Mrs. Shipley died, her daughter came over to take her to the doctor for a checkup, because she knew she'd be upset.”

“That daughter would be Sarah,” Liam said. Then he smiled. “Did Mrs. Bainbridge happen to tell you about the stunt my idiot cousin Earl pulled that sent Sarah into orbit?”

“No.”

“It's priceless. Earl lectures about funeral customs. You've heard that, haven't you? I swear the guy is batty. When everybody else is off playing golf or sailing, his idea of a good time is to spend hours in cemeteries, taking tombstone rubbings.”

“In cemeteries!” Maggie exclaimed.

“Yes, but that's only a small part of it. What I'm getting to is the time he lectured on funeral practices to a group at Latham Manor, of all places. Mrs. Bainbridge wasn't feeling well, but Sarah had been visiting her and attended the lecture.

“Earl included in his little talk the story about the Victorian bell ringers. It seems that wealthy Victorians were so afraid of being buried alive that they had a hole built into the top of their caskets, for an air vent reaching up to the surface of the ground. A string was tied to the finger of the presumed deceased, run through the air vent, and attached to a bell on top of the grave. Then someone was paid to keep watch for a week in case the person in the casket did, in fact, regain consciousness and try ringing the bell.”

“Dear God,” Maggie gasped.

“No, but here's the best part now, the part about Earl. Believe it or not, he has a sort of museum up here near the
funeral home that's filled with all kinds of funeral symbols and paraphernalia, and he got the brainstorm to have a dozen replicas of a Victorian cemetery bell cast to use to illustrate the lecture. Without telling them what they were, the jerk passed them out to twelve of these ladies, all in their sixties and seventies and eighties, and tied the string attached to them onto their ring fingers. Then he told them to hold the bell in their other hand, wiggle their fingers, and pretend they were in a casket and trying to communicate with the grave watcher.”

“How appalling!” Maggie said.

“One of the old girls actually fainted. Mrs. Bainbridge's daughter collected Earl's bells and was so irate she practically threw him and his bells off the premises.”

Liam paused, then in a more somber voice added, “The worrisome part is that I think Earl relishes telling that story himself.”

49

N
EIL HAD TRIED TO PHONE
M
AGGIE SEVERAL TIMES
,
FIRST
from the locker room of the club, and again as soon as he got home. Either she's been out all day, or she's in and out, or she's not answering the phone, he thought. But even if she was in and out, she surely would have seen his note.

Neil accompanied his parents to a neighbor's home for cocktails, where he tried Maggie again at seven. He then elected to take his own car to dinner so that if he did reach
her later, it might be possible to stop by her house for a drink.

There were six people at the table in the dinner party at Canfield House. But even though the lobster Newburg was superb, and his dinner companion, Vicky, the daughter of his parents' friends, was a very attractive banking executive from Boston, Neil was wildly restless.

Knowing it would be rude to skip the after-dinner drink in the bar, he agonized through the chitchat, and when everyone finally stood up to go at ten-thirty, Neil managed to refuse gracefully Vicky's invitation to join her and her friends for tennis on Sunday morning. Finally, with a sigh of relief, he was in his own car.

He checked the time; it was quarter of eleven. If Maggie was home and had gone to bed early, he didn't want to disturb her. He justified his decision to drive by her house by telling himself that he simply wanted to see if her car was in the driveway—just to be sure she was still in Newport.

His initial excitement at seeing that her car was indeed there was tempered when he realized that another car was parked in front of her place, a Jaguar with Massachusetts plates. Neil drove by at a snail's pace and was rewarded by seeing the front door open. He caught a glimpse of a tall man standing next to Maggie, then, feeling like a
voyeur,
he accelerated and turned the corner at Ocean Drive, heading back to Portsmouth, his stomach churning with regret and jealousy.

50

T
HE
R
EQUIEM FOR
G
RETA
S
HIPLEY AT
T
RINITY
C
HURCH
was well-attended. As she sat and listened to the familiar prayers, Maggie realized that all the people who had been invited to Nuala's dinner party were in attendance.

Dr. Lane and his wife, Odile, sat with a number of the guests from the residence, including everyone who had been at Mrs. Shipley's table on Wednesday evening, with the exception of Mrs. Bainbridge.

Malcolm Norton and his wife, Janice, were there. He had a hangdog look, Maggie thought. When he passed her on the way in, he stopped to say he had been trying to reach her and would like to meet with her after the funeral.

Earl Bateman had come over to speak to her before the service began. “After all this, when you think about Newport, I'm very much afraid that your memories of the place will be of funerals and cemeteries,” he said, his eyes owlish behind lightly tinted round-frame sunglasses.

He hadn't waited for an answer but had walked past her to take an empty place in the first pew.