First Impressions

by Jude Deveraux

  Jared didn’t open his mouth and didn’t look as though he was going to. He cast a glance at Eden as though to warn her, but she smiled coolly at him in return, then looked down at the paintings.

  She had no idea what she was looking for either. Why had an FBI agent painted the interiors of her house? If she wanted to make a record of the place, why not photograph it? There was the living room with the pale green paneling and the furniture that nearly matched the color of the walls. The paintings were so detailed that they even showed six of Tyrrell Farrington’s paintings, so familiar to Eden that she rarely looked at them anymore. The dining room showed the table and chairs, the windows with the tall burgundy velvet curtains drawn, and more of Tyrrell’s paintings. There was the hall with the big secretary, and the master bedroom. There was even a painting of Eden’s bathroom, with the big clawfooted tub in the corner. As far as she could tell, the pictures were photographically correct.

  “I see nothing different,” she said.

  Straightening, Brad looked at Jared. “Me neither. What is it we’re supposed to see?”

  Jared put his hands in his pockets and stepped back. “I don’t know.” He stared at the fireplace for a moment and seemed to be trying to make a decision. When he looked back at them he seemed to have softened. Some of his animosity seemed to have left him. “I don’t know,” he repeated softly. “We’re pretty sure Ms. Brewster’s death was no accident, and we’d like to know who killed her and why.”

  “Can I assume that Brewster is the real name of my tenant? It’s not the name I knew her by, but that’s neither here nor there. And what do you mean by ‘we’? Who are you affiliated with?”

  Jared mumbled, “Yeah, Tess Brewster.” Then he had a look on his face that said he’d told all that he was going to.

  Brad looked back at the watercolors. “Think anything is written on the back of these pictures?”

  Fifteen minutes later, they’d taken the pictures out of their frames, but there was nothing written on them. Nor was there a signature at the bottom. No proof that Ms. Brewster had painted them.

  “There has to be something,” Eden said, frustrated. “If all she’d wanted to do was record what was here, she could have taken a roll of film.”

  “Or a thousand photos on one disk,” Jared said.

  Brad sat down on a dining-room chair and kept looking at the pictures. “Murdered. She was run down in the wee hours of the morning, so someone knew she was in here night after night. Someone was watching her. I wonder if they had any idea what she was doing inside this house?”

  “Obviously not,” Eden said, “or they would have taken the paintings before she could get them to the framers.”

  Jared looked at her in amazement. “Good point. So someone was watching her, but they didn’t know what she was doing.”

  “Maybe they thought she was doing something else,” Brad said.

  “Searching for those damned jewels,” Jared said and sat down, his fingers on his temples. “Look, I knew Tess for years. Not well, but we were friendly enough, I guess, but I never knew she could paint.”

  “What if she was doing this just to kill time?” Eden asked. “No reason, but just waiting.”

  “For someone?” Brad asked. “Or for something to happen?”

  “Very possible,” Jared said, nodding.

  “Like a watchdog,” Brad said.

  Eden walked to the far end of the room. “So Ms. Brewster sneaked into the house at night and waited for whatever, or watched for something, and to keep herself busy, she made watercolors of the house. It wouldn’t take much light, a good flashlight would be enough. Then, one day, when she was leaving or just arriving, someone hit her with a car and ran off.”

  “So maybe the pictures she was doing had nothing to do with anything,” Brad said.

  Jared glanced at Brad but said nothing. He seemed to be determined to give nothing more away.

  “I’ve never been on a stakeout,” Brad said, looking at Jared, “but from what I’ve seen on TV, they’re pretty boring.”

  “Yeah,” Eden said. “In the movies, the men mostly seem to eat fried food. I think painting watercolors would be better than that. A watercolor box is quite portable.”

  Jared leaned forward, his arms on the table. “I’m not convinced. I feel that there’s something in these pictures. She took them to the framer’s for a reason.”

  “Yeah,” Brad said. “I know what you mean. If you write something down, someone can read it. And if you make a call, someone can trace it. So how to leave a message that no one knows is a message?”

  Jared looked at Brad with new respect.

  “So what was the message she was trying to leave?” Eden asked, looking at the pictures. “She didn’t take photos because—” She looked at the two men, then her eyes lit up. “Because something is different in these pictures. You know, like where they have two pictures and you’re supposed to find out what’s different.”

  The three of them looked at one another.

  “I’ll take the living room, you take the hall,” Brad said.

  “I’ll take the dining room,” Jared said.

  “Bed and bath,” Eden said.

  In a flurry of motion, they grabbed their pictures and separated. Twenty minutes later, they met back in the dining room.

  “Nothing,” Jared said.

  “Nothing,” Brad and Eden echoed.

  “I even checked ol’ Tyrrell’s paintings,” Brad said.

  “You mean these paintings that are all over the house?” Jared asked.

  “Yeah. Painted by an angry son of the house,” Eden said, smiling. “He wanted to live in Paris, but the family wouldn’t allow it, so to get them back, he returned home and never left. He wouldn’t marry and produce babies, wouldn’t have anything to do with the running of the family businesses. He just painted night and day, and these are the results.” Eden waved her hand about to indicate the paintings on the walls. “Mrs. Farrington always said that for talent, they’d make a good bonfire, but they’re family, so they were kept. Personally, I rather like them.”

  “That’s because you like families,” Brad said.

  “Yes, that’s true,” Eden said, smiling at him, and their hands inched toward each other’s.

  “At least he got to see that necklace that caused so much fuss,” Jared said.

  Eden’s and Brad’s hands stopped moving, and they looked at each other, then at Jared.

  “What?” Eden asked.

  “Here,” Jared said, picking up the now-unframed watercolor. It was a picture of the big hallway in the center of the house. On the wall was a portrait of a woman with a little white dog. Due to the nature of the medium, it was blurry, but there was a blue and white necklace around the woman’s neck.

  After a moment’s stunned hesitation, both Eden and Brad ran for the door of the dining room, Jared behind them. Two seconds later they were standing in front of the familiar portrait done by Tyrrell Farrington over a hundred years before. Around the woman’s neck was indeed a sapphire necklace. Gaping, mouths open, Brad and Eden stared at the portrait.

  “Somebody want to let me in on what’s going on?” Jared asked from behind them.

  “There was no picture of the necklace,” Brad said softly. “The Farringtons said that if it was ever photographed or reproduced in any way, that…” Brad shook his head to clear it. “Who knows what they believed about that cursed necklace? All I know for sure is that the woman in that picture didn’t have on a big, gaudy sapphire necklace when I used to visit Mrs. Farrington. She loved to keep me waiting, and I used to spend umpteen hours in this hallway. I could draw the wallpaper pattern by heart. There was no necklace.”

  While Brad and Eden were standing there, immobile, staring at the painting, Jared stepped between them and lifted the big, heavy painting off the wall. “What do you say we see what’s behind this frame?”

  Jared carried the big painting into the dining room, moved the watercolors aside, and p
ut it facedown on the table. Taking his pocket knife, he started to cut the backing, but Eden put her hand on his.

  “It’s new,” she said. “The paper tape is new.”

  “And poorly applied,” Brad said.

  “So maybe it was put on recently,” Jared said as he slit the tape around the edges.

  Carefully, he pulled the painting out of the frame and saw that there was a flat, thin package taped to the back of it. On the outside, written in a shaky hand, was “Miss Eden Palmer, spinster.”

  “Puts you in your place, doesn’t it?” Jared said to Eden, making a joke to lighten the air, but Brad and Eden were standing as stiff as statues, their eyes wide as they watched Jared cut the tape off the package.

  Slowly, Jared cut the paper off the package, and even more slowly, torturously slowly, he began to unwrap it. “Sure you want to see what’s in here?”

  Eden didn’t bother to answer him. Unblinking, her eyes were on that package. She well knew that it was Mrs. Farrington’s handwriting on the outside.

  When Jared had peeled back the paper, the three of them drew in their breaths. Inside, lying on top of a white envelope, was the necklace. It was the sapphire and diamond necklace that for over a century people had been looking for.

  It was Eden who recovered first. She put out her hand and touched the big, round, deep blue sapphire in the center. Two other, smaller, but equally huge, diamond-surrounded sapphires flanked it. In the light of the dining room chandelier, the necklace sparkled, with lights dancing off it to send a million colors through the air. Slowly, reverently, Eden picked up the necklace and held it, turning it in the light. She was hardly aware when Jared picked up the white envelope. It too had Eden’s name on it.

  Brad took the letter and held it out to her. “It’s something from Mrs. Farrington. It’s private,” he said softly, “so I’m sure you’ll want to read it when you’re alone.”

  Eden heard the tone in his voice and looked up. Both McBride and Brad were looking at her wistfully, like little children wanting her to read them a bedtime story. Smiling, Eden handed the necklace to Brad and took the letter, then carefully opened it. Mrs. Farrington had used her beloved sealing wax on the back. “The only thing the hippie culture ever did that was good was to bring back sealing wax, so it’s easy for me to find,” she used to say.

  When Eden saw Mrs. Farrington’s handwriting on the letter she pulled from the envelope, she had to sit back. This is going to be difficult, she thought. The last words of a woman she’d loved very much.

  “ ‘My dearest Eden and Melissa,’ ” Eden read aloud, then had to wait a moment for her eyes to clear and her voice to come back. She took a deep breath.

  “ ‘Eden, dear, if you’re reading this letter, then you’ve found the necklace. Congratulations! You always were the cleverest person! I wonder how long it took before you saw that the necklace had been painted on one of Tyrrell’s dreadful paintings. I painted the necklace on Great-Aunt Hester’s neck and I think I did a damned fine job of it! Maybe I could have been a painter too. I certainly have as much talent as Tyrrell did.”

  Pausing, Eden chuckled before she continued. “ ‘Oh! How I wish I could hear you laugh at that witticism. You always did laugh long and hard at my jokes. It was one of your most endearing qualities.

  “ ‘Now, on to business. I found the necklace—and the poor woman who was wearing it—when we renovated this old house. Toddy—you remember him, don’t you?—helped me cover everything up. Or, in this case, bury it. My great-grandfather Minton said he’d gone to New York to sell the necklace and had returned to find his beautiful wife dead on the library floor. On his deathbed he admitted to his son that he’d killed her lover, but I think he killed his wife too. There’s a stone for her in the family cemetery, but I think the grave is probably empty.

  “ ‘Toddy found a grisly sight when one of the walls of the cellar came down, and I had to go down there to see it. You know how much I loved doing that! Minton must have disinterred his wife because what we were sure was her body was in a little stone-lined closet. A wall had been hastily and poorly erected to conceal the entryway. Inside was a skeleton wearing the tatters of what had surely been her wedding dress. Around her neck was the necklace that has caused my family so much misery. It’s my guess that Minton killed his wife when he discovered she was about to run off with her lover. Maybe he thought that a decent burial in a churchyard was too good for her, so he dug her up and hid her in the cellar. Or maybe he was so sick of all the unhappiness that necklace had caused that he let her have it for all eternity.

  “ ‘Whatever happened, Toddy found the poor woman’s remains when the wall fell in. With the help of one of Toddy’s strong young grandsons—who, of course, was sworn to secrecy—we buried her far away from my family, and very far away from Minton. I hope that she can at last rest forever.

  “ ‘As for the necklace that has caused my family so many problems, I spent several days thinking about what to do with it. Tell the world that it had been found? Then what? Have every shyster in the country show up here and try to sell me things? Would I have to tell the truth about Grandfather Minton? Would I have people wanting to write those nasty, hate-filled biographies about my family? Have the world know about the tears shed in my family over those stones? Know about the murders committed because of them? People would say the sapphires and my family had a curse on them. No, I didn’t want any of that. After a dozen sleepless nights, I decided to turn the whole thing over to you, my dear, clever Eden. The necklace is now yours, and you can do with it what you want. Wear it out to dinner. It’ll look good with your eyes.

  “ ‘Finding the necklace has caused me no happiness, but finding the teapot caused me nothing but joy. Toddy came to me one Sunday morning, very excited. He said he’d seen something on TV that was like something I owned. He’d seen the hallmark of a Paul Revere teapot and remembered seeing it when he used to polish the silver for me. I can tell you that the two of us old duffers had an awful time prying up loose floorboards and walls to find that particular pot. But we found it, and I sold it, and it paid for at last making my house into the beauty that it had once been. And it paid to send four of Toddy’s grandchildren to college. The other two went on full scholarships, so they had no need of me.

  “ ‘Eden, my dear, I have missed you and your dear child every day since you left. That you had to leave and why you had to leave was the curse of my life. No matter what my ancestors had done, nothing compared to the evil that was in my son. I will not burden you with what happened at the last. That is between God and me, and I pray that He can forgive me.

  “ ‘The Farrington family that I sacrificed my happiness for in an attempt to keep the name going, is no more, and I think it’s fitting that it ends. Too much hate and anger runs in our blood. There was too much bloodshed in our history. Maybe Minton’s punishment for the murders he committed was that his seed should die out forever.

  “ ‘Dear, dear, Eden, I leave my beloved house to you. I know this is selfish of me, for I know that you’ll take care of the house and love it as I did. I am glad that, in the end, I had the wherewithal to make it beautiful again. And I’m especially glad that I’m not leaving you a mummy in the basement.

  “ ‘I wish you and Melissa all the happiness in the world. I’ve tried to keep up with where you were and what you were doing. I cried on the day of Melissa’s wedding. I hope she presents you with a dozen grandchildren.

  “ ‘I’m sorry that you have never found the right man for you. Have you become bisexual like me?

  “ ‘I want you to know that wherever you are, I’m looking down on you and sending you my love. If it’s possible, I will be protecting you from heaven—if they let me in there, that is.

  “ ‘I must go now. I’m an old, old woman and I don’t have much strength left. I send you all my love. Kiss Melissa for me. And why don’t you give one of the younger Granville boys a call? Maybe one of them is as good in the sack as my Granville boys
were.

  “ ‘I will love you always,

  “ ‘Alice Augusta Farrington.’ ”

  Chapter Fifteen

  IT wasn’t until late that night that Jared got enough privacy to call Bill. Granville had stayed late, looking at the necklace as though it were the Holy Grail, and talking to Eden about what she should do with the jewels. Eden seemed to be more interested in the historical significance of the necklace than in any monetary value, so she’d talked about doing more research into the family history. Mostly, she just clutched Mrs. Farrington’s letter. It was obvious that the letter meant more to her than the jewels.

  As for Jared, all evening, he’d sat back and watched and listened to both of them. He liked that Eden hadn’t had an attack of greed the second she realized that she owned a necklace that was worth…What? Millions? She hadn’t started talking about all the things she was going to buy. Her only mention of money had been to say that she’d like to set up trust funds for all her grandchildren. “Which reminds me,” she said, “I haven’t talked to my daughter in days.” Soon after that the party broke up and Granville went home. Jared knew that the two of them wanted time alone, probably to do more kissing, he thought, and was ashamed of himself at how jealous he felt at that thought. He’d given Eden a look, then glanced upward at the tiny cameras in the shadows of the corners of the ceiling. If Granville had noticed them, he hadn’t shown it. But Jared was forming the opinion that Granville didn’t let on to a lot of what he saw—or knew.

  Eden had taken the hint and hadn’t performed for the FBI cameras, but had given Brad cheek kisses when he left. As soon as the door closed, she held up the necklace to the cameras. “We found it,” she said, addressing the lens. “So now all of you can go away and let me have a life.”

  Jared had started to say that they had no way of knowing that the necklace had anything to do with Applegate’s swallowing of her name, but she wouldn’t listen. “I don’t want to hear it,” she said. “I’m tired and I want to go to bed.”