OUT ON A LIMB (16 page)

“This was years ago,” I said dismissively, or so I hoped. “I’m so glad to find you here so that I can offer my condolences.”

“But you said that you and Anthony were close friends.”

“Perhaps I should have said associates. My husband dabbled in rentals around the campus.” That much was true, if somewhat euphemistic.

“Oh, really,” she said as she resumed massaging her ankle. “You must excuse me, ah, Ms. Malloy. I’m going to have to get ice on this before it begins to swell. It’s been weak since I sprained it in high school, and I wish I’d had enough sense not to risk an injury now. I have so many things to see to, what with the funeral and all. I anticipate at least five hundred people at the church, and then eighty at the luncheon afterwards—and what a circus that’s going to be. Anthony’s sister and her husband are vegans. His uncle is strictly meat and potatoes. His secretary is allergic to gluten, mushrooms, and dairy products; and his lawyer will go into anaphylactic shock if a bee so much as looks at him cross-eyed. His grandmother, who must be a hundred and sixty years old, starts in with her gin at nine in the morning. How am I supposed to arrange this? It’s going to be a disaster, the talk of the town for the next ten years.”

I picked up her gym bag. “Let me help you, Adrienne. Chantilly and I will get you home and settle you in with a nice cup of tea and an ice pack, then start making phone calls.”

“Do you really know how to do this?” she asked tearily. “I could, but my husband’s been murdered and the police are crawling all over the yard. Reporters are lined along the driveway like starving hyenas. That woman— that dreadful woman—that beastly woman—”

“Jessica Princeton?”

“Yes!” Adrienne said as she grabbed my arm and pulled herself to her feet with only a genteel grunt. “Can you believe she had the audacity to show up here, my one haven, and pretend she was a member! Sucking up to me, trying to trick me into”—she gulped loudly— “telling her things about my private life with Anthony. Is there no decency in this world?”

“Outrageous,” I said.

“So you will come by and help? Chantilly simply has no idea how to put on a luncheon of this magnitude. When your husband died, you must have gained some experience.”

“Some.” I saw no reason to elaborate. After Carlton’s funeral, about a dozen of us had gone out for pizza. Out of respect for his memory, we’d eschewed anchovies. Carlton had always turned up his nose at anchovies, so it was the least we could do. He wasn’t fond of black olives, either, but we were willing to make only so many concessions.

“I will be so grateful,” Adrienne continued. “You are such a dear friend … ah?”

“Claire,” I supplied. “I have a small complication, but I’ll come over to your house in an hour. I hope we’ll have a chance to talk further.”

Chantilly joined us in the hall. “I left your racket, and they promised to have it in a week. Adrienne, you absolutely must go home and lie down. The reverend is coming by at eleven to discuss the service, and the funeral director is asking all these ludicrous questions. I cannot cope with either if I don’t have a stiff Bloody Mary. When Mother and Daddy died, Aunt Beebie and the church ladies took care of everything. When my goldfish bellied up, I flushed it down the toilet. I don’t know what to say to all these reporters and detectives. I don’t even know what to say to the damn florist!”

Adrienne touched her sister’s lips. “Claire has agreed to supervise things.”

I did the best I could to keep the panic out of my eyes. “I’ll be at the house shortly. Please instruct the police to allow me inside.”

“You can’t come now?” asked Chantilly.

Not with Skyler. “No, but I’ll be there as soon as I can,” I promised.

Once they’d gone outside, I fetched Skyler, paid the four-fifty minimum, and drove to Luanne’s store. Ignoring a small bevy of sorority girls pawing through molted fur coats, I pulled Luanne into the back room, told her what had transpired, and said, “You’ve got to watch Skyler.”

“Do you really think Adrienne will recognize Skyler?”

“I don’t think I can explain why I have an infant in my care. What’s more, I’m putting on a luncheon for a hundred people, and I won’t have time to warm up bottles and change diapers.”

“So how many crab rolls will you be ordering?”

“Just stay by your phone,” I said with some degree of urgency. “When we get around to ordering quantities, I’ll need you. Skyler, on the other hand, needs you now. His diaper was not changed at the fitness center. I think I’ll cancel my membership in the morning.”

“You didn’t buy a membership.”

“Whatever.” I swept past the sorority girls and went outside, gazed sadly at the Book Depot down the street, where nov lucrative financial transactions were taking place, then drove home to change into slacks and a blouse in order to fend off funeral directors, florists, caterers, and reporters. Maybe. Medieval literature was my forte, popular culture my frailty.

I was heading out the door when the phone rang. Envisioning scenes of a SWAT team on the roof of Farberville High School, I snatched up the receiver.

“Claire,” Peter said.

“Name,” I said, “but rank and serial number unknown, having been issued neither. Social Security number, possibly. License plate number if you want to hold while I run down and look.”

“It’s been two days.”

“Two days since you made dire threats at the police department?”

He took a deep breath. “Is something going on? I thought we’d gotten past the situation with Leslie and were moving ahead. Now, you won’t see me. Jorgeson told me that you were at Sheila Armstrong’s house only hours after you promised me you’d stay out of this case. You’ve been evasive, and I don’t know what it means. I’m a guy, after all. Show a little compassion.”

I wanted to collapse in a puddle, babble endearments, and suggest that we meet at a sleazy motel for a steamy afternoon romp. However, circumstances precluded such a thing. “I did go by Sheila’s house to ask her about Daphne. She didn’t say anything useful. Did Jorgeson do any better with her?”

“Not really. She acknowledged that Daphne moved in with a boyfriend last summer, but she didn’t know his name and Daphne won’t tell us. We’d like to talk to him, but we have no way to find him without more information.”

“Surely he’ll come forward,” I said. “I’m sorry, but I was on the way out the door for an appointment. We can continue this later.”

“An appointment?”

“Not with a neurosurgeon or anything like that. I’ll call you this evening and we can talk. It’s complicated, Peter.”

He exhaled loudly. “Tracking down potential suspects, I assume.”

“I have to go now,” I said, and then replaced the receiver. I did not allow myself to consider the implications of my actions as I grabbed my purse and went out to the car. But as I drove to Anthony and Adrienne Armstrong’s house, it was challenging not to remember my sanctimonious remark to Caron only an hour or so earlier. Oh, no, I never lied to Peter; I merely hedged. And her parting shot had hurt. I put it on the fist of things we’d have to discuss in the future.

I found the road to the Armstrong house without problem, and parked next to a police car. I reluctantly acknowledged my name to an officer, who looked at a notebook and then waved me up the sidewalk. Chantilly opened the door before I reached the porch.

‘This is so super of you,” she said as she caught my hand. “I just really don’t know how to do this sort of thing. I can book a European tour or a Mediterranean cruise, but I am not a party person. It’s all I can do to buy a veggie platter when I have people over.”

“So you’re a travel agent?”

“In Atlanta. Would you like a glass of iced tea?”

“I’d love one,” I said, then followed her across an artfully decorated living room cluttered with potted plants and flowers, and into a kitchen that would cause many a chef to weep. Double this, double that, an island to rival Capri, an extensive range (on which the deer and antelope actually could have played), ice maker clunking steadily, dozens of cookbooks neatly aligned on hardwood shelves above a desk with a telephone and a small television.

“Goodness,” I said as Chantilly took a pitcher out of a dauntingly large refrigerator that might have contained a couple of corpses. “Does anyone cook?”

“I don’t think so. Adrienne certainly doesn’t. Sugar or lemon?”

“Neither, thank you. She and Anthony were married three years ago?”

Chantilly handed me a glass, then sat down on a stool. “Something like that. They took off to an exotic island without telling anybody except Daphne. Well, he must have told his secretary, and Adrienne left a message on my machine. It’s not like any of us were invited, though. Strictly romantic.”

“Had you met Anthony before they were married?”

“Claire!” Adrienne said as she came into the room, limping just a bit. “I am so glad you came. Why don’t we all just settle down right here and get to work? Chantilly, would you be a sweetheart and get me a glass of tea? I’ve been on the phone with some newspaper reporter, and my mouth is so dry I could spit cottonseeds. Claire, look in that drawer in the desk and find us some paper and something to write with.”

I did as instructed, reminding myself that I was on a mission of significance. Adrienne’s limp was unconvincing, but I was not a physical therapist qualified to diagnose the extent of her injury—if any.

“Thank you, sweetie,” she said as I produced a pad and several pens. “There’s so much to be done, and I just won’t be able to hold my head up if this luncheon is a disaster. Mary Margaret is going to propose my name to Junior League next fall.” She paused to blot her forehead with a napkin. “Unless, of course, she thinks this business is too sordid. Poor Anthony, killed by his daughter’s hand. It’s like one of those tacky daytime soap operas.”

I saw a tiny slit. “And you drove up just as Daphne ran out of the house. Did you wonder what had happened?”

“I was simply bewildered,” Adrienne said, shaking her head. “Chantilly, I’d like just a squirt of lemon in my tea, if it’s not too much trouble. I’d do it myself, but my ankle’s swelling up like a ham hock.”

“No trouble at all,” said Chantilly. “Why don’t we all go out to the conservatory so you can elevate your foot? I’ll bring an ice pack.”

Adrienne allowed me to cling to her arm as she hobbled through the living room and out to a glassed enclosure filled with wicker furniture and well-doctored houseplants. “I know you think I sound callous,” she said as she lowered herself onto a sofa. “I’m still in shock. Anthony and I loved each other very dearly. I fell for him the day he hired me, and I guess I didn’t hide it well. He was so smart, so savvy, so much more mature than the jocks I dated in high school. He knew everything about fine wines and gourmet food. I was just a kid with a degree in communications, hoping to find an office job to pay the rent. When I saw what was going to happen between the two of us, I should have quit and left town. But I didn’t, obviously. Do you think I’m a terrible person?”

“He
was
married,” I pointed out quietly.

“And miserable. His wife drank to excess, communicated with spirits, ran around the property stark naked, and had been arrested for shoplifting the week before Anthony hired me. He said they’d had separate bedrooms for ten years. It wasn’t much of a marriage.”

“What about Daphne?”

“Anthony really believed that she and I could be friends and that I could steer her in the right directions. Her mother had neglected her. Even before Anthony filed for divorce, I tried everything to convince Daphne to trust me.”

“Daphne’s a disaster,” Chantilly said as she came onto the porch with a pitcher of iced tea and an ice pack. “If you step back, she’s not all that unattractive. With a decent haircut, makeup, clothes from someplace other than a Dumpster, she might not look like something no respectable cat would drag in. I suppose if I’d been sent to that puritanical academy I’d slink around and whine, too.”

“And get yourself pregnant?” added Adrienne. “If I’d had any idea she was sexually active, I would have hauled her off to a gynecologist.”

I pulled over an ottoman and eased Adrienne’s foot onto it. “Did you and Anthony ever meet Joey?”

“Was that his name?” she said, wincing as Chantilly settled the ice pack on her ankle. “I don’t think I even heard that much. When Daphne and Anthony had the blowup, I retreated to the bedroom and stayed there until he came upstairs. He was so angry that I didn’t dare ask him what had occurred until the next morning. He felt betrayed by her irresponsible actions. Even in my role as the wicked stepmother, I did, too. If she had only come to me instead of her father, I could have helped.”

Chantilly put the pad and pens on the glass-topped table in front of the sofa. “I don’t think we can serve peanut butter and jelly sandwiches tomorrow.”

Adrienne smiled wanly. “No, I suppose not. Claire, if you don’t mind too dreadfully, would you please call the caterer, run through the menu, and remind him that we’ll need ten tables and eighty chairs to be set up in the backyard tomorrow morning by nine o’clock? Tablecloths, linens, utensils, glassware, and so forth. Tell the florists we prefer centerpieces to those dreary arrangements. Randy Scarpo has agreed to bartend, but he’ll need the necessary paraphernalia. The liquor store will deliver, but they must absolutely be here by ten and not one minute later. We’ll need plenty of ice, as well as limes, lemons, olives, and all that sort of thing.”

“Sounds like we’re set then,” Chantilly said. “The reverend should be here in an hour. Why don’t you rest?”

I trailed her back to the kitchen. “Do you have the names and numbers of all these people I’m supposed to call?”

“They’re in here.” She gave me a leather-bound address book. “Adrienne’s already made the arrangements, but she doesn’t quite trust them—or anyone else these days. She cried all night after we found Anthony’s body. I finally had to force her to take a sedative.”

“You were with her?”

Chantilly nodded. “I came last week to stay for a few days. We were supposed to meet at this fabulous resort in Cancun, but she decided at the last minute not to leave Anthony on his own. He could get so caught up in his business affairs that he’d forget to eat without her around to nag him. She was devoted to him.” Her voice dropped. “I’ve always wondered if he was kind of a father figure. Our parents died while we were in elementary school.”