by Barbara Ross
Once the impulse to see the house was satisfied, I began to feel a little ridiculous for getting myself cold and wet and delaying my trip. I climbed down the stairs of the deck and returned to the truck.
Before I could climb inside, my childhood friend Jamie Dawes pulled his Busman’s Harbor PD patrol car up behind the pickup. He emerged from the driver’s side door. “Hey. Julia. What’re you doing out here?”
“Checking on Windsholme.”
“Still there?” He flashed his charming, surfer-dude grin.
“Yup. You?”
“Routine patrol.”
I looked around the empty landscape. “There’s no one out here.”
“That’s why it needs patrolling.”
“I’m headed to Boston for a couple of days. Keep an eye on the family for me?”
“Of course. When’s Livvie due?”
“Any day. We’ve already had one false alarm.”
“Tough time for you to leave. What takes you out of town?”
I was acutely aware of the cold seeping through the wet legs of my jeans. This wasn’t the time or place for a long explanation. “I’m going to meet Chris,” I said, a partial truth.
“Oh.” As I’d expected, it wasn’t a topic Jamie wanted to explore further. “I’ll look out for your family,” he responded, turning back to his cruiser. “Take care of yourself in the big city.”
“Will do,” I called after him. He pulled away and I got in the truck, turned up the heater full blast, and headed toward Route 1. It would be dark before I got to Boston.
Chapter 13
Four hours later, I rattled through the dark streets of Back Bay in Chris’s truck. I wondered why the heck I’d brought a vehicle to this city, a known circle of hell for driving in the best of times, made worse by a foot of dirty, slushy snow piled by the side of the roads. I’d sped out of Maine and across the New Hampshire border, and then I’d been caught in the most hellacious traffic jam I’d ever seen. “I’m going into the city, not out of it!” I yelled at the universe. Rush hour traffic should be going the other way. “Why is it like this? Where are all you people going?”
I found Marguerite and Hugh’s town house, or at least I thought I did. As I cruised by slowly, lights streamed from every window. I passed one empty parking spot, but concluded I could never fit the truck into it. There was nothing to be done but to park at my hotel and then walk back.
Once the truck was in the hotel garage, I figured I might as well check in. I took my suitcase to my room, a perfectly utilitarian shoe box. I was rapidly winding down, losing my nerve. What was I thinking, ringing the doorbell of total strangers at eight o’clock at night?
I stood at the window, looking over the city. I didn’t know Boston well. I’d gone to prep school in New Hampshire and college in western Massachusetts, but trips to Boston had been rare and I’d never been on my own. From twenty-two stories up, the dirty snow was white and beautiful. The lighted windows of Back Bay, the black ribbon of the Charles River beyond it, and the streetlights and signs of Cambridge on the other side were warm and welcoming, a city at a human scale.
It was the lights that got me going again. The lights in the windows at Marguerite’s house. She was home. Maybe Hugh Morales was there with her. This was the time to go. No reason, and even possible some risk, to putting it off. I hadn’t taken my coat off. I pulled my gloves back on and headed outside.
Once I was walking, I was happier. Like my dear Manhattan, Boston was a city meant to be experienced on foot. The restaurants along Newbury Street were filled with diners, and even when I turned off onto Dartmouth Street, there were people everywhere, rushing home from work or to an evening activity. The practical Bostonians wore boots that gripped the sidewalk and long coats that hid their clothes.
As I approached Marguerite’s brownstone, my heart thumped and I slowed my pace. What was I doing? But the light over the front door beckoned me, welcomed me. I walked up the stone steps and pushed the bell before my courage gave out.
There was a rustling sound inside and the door flew open. I immediately recognized the woman who stood in the front hall. Her thick, wavy hair and deep-set brown eyes were unmistakable.
“Rose? Rose Morrow?” I said. “I thought you lived in San Francisco.”
“Julia Snowden!” she cried. “What a shock. Come in, come in. We’re all here.”
* * *
Rose led me down a grand hallway clad almost to its high ceiling in warm oak wainscoting. How did she know who I was? Who was the “we” that was “all” here? My mind spun, grasping for the edges of some possible explanation.
We passed through a double doorway into a formal front room filled with antiques. A small group was gathered there and, if the scattering of china cups was any indication, they were having after-dinner coffee.
“Julia,” Rose said. “May I present our cousin Marguerite Morales. Marguerite, this is Julia Snowden, Jacqueline’s daughter.”
The woman seated in the straight-backed chair was ancient and tiny, her white hair parted in the center and woven into two braids that were pinned to her head. She put one of her hands out to me. “Ellen’s Jacqueline?” she said, dark eyes dancing. “Julia, I’m so glad you’ve come. How did you hear, dear?”
Before I could ask, “Hear what?” Rose hustled me off to meet the rest of the people in the room. “This is Marguerite’s granddaughter, Tallulah,” Rose said, presenting a woman in her early twenties with soft, round curves. “And Tallulah’s husband, Jake.”
I put my hand out to both of them, repeating their names in my head. Jake had a boyishly round face and kind brown eyes. Handshakes completed, Rose moved me across the room to where a man and a woman sat on a sofa. The woman appeared to be in her late fifties or early sixties. Her helmet of hair was an improbable shade of blond that went poorly with her olive complexion.
“This is Vivian, Tallulah’s mother, Marguerite’s daughter.” Rose cleared her throat. “And this is her . . . fiancé, Clive.” Clive was impeccably dressed, in a blazer and expensive shirt. He had a full head of caramel-colored hair and a trim physique, but then that wouldn’t be unexpected in someone thirty years Vivian’s junior. When Rose said the word “fiancé,” Tallulah rolled her eyes at her husband, Jake.
“And finally . . .” Rose brought me to the back of the room where a large man stood against the wall. While the others were smartly but casually dressed, this man wore scrubs and his slightly bulging eyes were rimmed in red. “This is Paolo Paolini.”
Paolo’s red eyes filled me with dread about what I had to ask next. “Is Hugh home?” I asked. “Hugh Morales?”
There was a moment of stunned silence.
“We thought that was why you were here,” Vivian said from across the room. “For the funeral. Hugh died Friday morning.” The day we’d received the package.
Tears stung my eyes and the room spun a little. Rose Morrow put a reassuring hand on my arm and guided me to an overstuffed chair. “Hugh’s dead?” I didn’t know why I took it so hard. I’d never met the man, and if he was who I thought he was, until this morning I’d believed he’d been dead for more than thirty-five years. But even as I rationalized, I knew why I was so stunned. Because I had pictured myself as the heroine, triumphantly returning her beloved cousin to my mother. I’d been dying to see her face when I told her. My hopes burst like a balloon pricked by a pin. Thank goodness I hadn’t mentioned my suspicions to Mom.
“He was ill,” Rose said gently. “It was a blessing in the end.”
“He knew it was coming,” Vivian added. “He made all the arrangements, wrote his own obituary. We were talking final details when you arrived.”
Paolo, still standing, took a tissue from the pocket of his scrubs and blew his nose.
They looked at me expectantly. Questions. So many questions. Where even to start?
“If you didn’t know about Hugh, why are you here?” Vivian inquired.
I didn’t know what to say. I was certai
n one of the people in that room knew why I was there. One of them had sent the Black Widow to my mother.
“It’s a time for family,” Marguerite said, as if it were as simple as that. “Rose, bring our new guest some coffee.”
“Certainly.” Rose moved to a cart that held a silver coffee service. She put a hand on the pot. “This is cold. I’ll go along to the kitchen and get some from the machine. Anyone besides Julia?” When no one answered, she headed out the double doors into the long hallway.
“I’ll come with you,” I said, and scurried after her.
* * *
The town house’s kitchen was in the basement. It was spare and not updated, a place for servants and not family, though I saw no sign of hired help. Rose took a china cup from an old-fashioned glass-fronted cabinet and poured coffee from a modern machine on the wooden countertop.
“How do you know who I am?” I demanded. “How long have you known about me?”
She raised an eyebrow, amused, not defensive. “I could ask you the same thing. But in answer to your question, I’ve known about you for years. You and your mother and your sister.”
I was dumbfounded. “But how? There was never any communication.”
“Sadly, that’s true. My grandparents wrote to your grandfather a few times, hoping to be a part of your mother’s life, but he never responded, and as far as I know, all communication was cut off.”
That had to be right after Hugh’s disappearance, when Mom was still young enough my grandfather could stand as a gatekeeper. “How did you know what I look like?”
“I expect the same way you knew what I look like,” Rose answered. “The Internet. You led a busy professional life in Manhattan, plenty of references to you on the web, photos of you at the companies your firm invested in, and so on. And there’s been some publicity around the family clambake lately, not all of it good.”
I nodded, acknowledging that was true. The murder on Morrow Island in the spring, followed by the fire at the mansion, had made the local papers. The Maine statewide papers too. “But how come no one seemed surprised when I showed up?”
“I was,” Rose said. “But I’m delighted you’re here. We’d better rejoin the others.”
Chapter 14
Back in the formal living room, no one had moved. Paolo still stood against the wall, a wounded giant. Vivian was on the couch, every faux-blond hair in place, her makeup perfect. Clive, the fiancé, sat at the other end of the couch, wearing the self-satisfied look of a purebred Siamese cat. Tallulah and her husband, Jake, were on the bench of the grand piano, he facing the instrument, she away from it into the room. Despite the February weather, she had on a sleeveless sundress, which showed off a large tattoo of a bird on a tree branch that snaked over her left shoulder to her breast. Her eyes were surrounded with heavy black makeup. She put her chin in her hand and stared at me with her raccoon eyes. Whatever they’d been talking about, the conversation had stopped when Rose and I returned.
I sat in a straight-back chair not far from Marguerite. She, frail but powerful, broke the uncomfortable silence. “We’ve been laboring under a misunderstanding,” she said. “We assumed you’d arrived because our attorney had been in contact with you. Or rather with your mother. She’s been left a bequest.”
Aha, here it comes. Hugh left Mom the Black Widow. “A bequest?”
“A small bequest of personal property. Don’t get your hopes up,” Vivian said. “Hugh’s half ownership in this house goes to my mother, as it should, along with his financial portfolio. The family attorney will be here at ten o’clock tomorrow morning. He can explain it to you then. I suggest, if you are going to act for your mother, that you obtain her power of attorney while you are here. But then, it will be some time until the estate is distributed. Perhaps she will grace us with her presence as time goes on.”
The long day hit me all at once. I felt as though my brain had turned to mush. “I have so many questions.”
Marguerite felt for her cane and stood, stomping it on the wooden floor. “They will keep until the morning. I’m tired now. See you at ten.”
The others stood as well, and it was clear Marguerite had the last word. Rose saw me to the door, giving me a quick hug before I set out. “I’m so happy to know you,” she said.
“Me too,” I answered. “Me too.”
* * *
Unusually, the trip back to the hotel seemed far longer than the walk over. The temperature had dropped and the slush on the sidewalks had frozen, meaning I had to concentrate on every step. I stumbled into the hotel lobby and took the elevator straight to my floor.
I intended to call Mom, but as I pulled off my boots, a glance at my phone told me it was after ten o’clock. She was undoubtedly asleep. I’d call in the morning. I hadn’t decided how much to tell her and how much to save until I got home.
I’d just drifted off when my phone erupted, startling me awake. I looked at the display. 11:06 PM. Mom! I answered, heart pounding. What was she doing up?
“Julia, I’m calling because Page and I are on our way up the peninsula to stay at Livvie’s house.”
“Is Livvie—”
“She’s fine, but she’s had another false alarm. I want to be available if I’m needed. There’s another storm coming through over the weekend and I would hate to be stuck in the harbor if Livvie goes into labor. Fee and Vee will take care of Le Roi.”
Mom’s words were reassuring, but her voice quivered a touch. My chest squeezed. “Are you sure Livvie’s all right?”
“She’s fine.” Mom said it more forcefully this time, with a touch of impatience. “What’s happening there? Did you find out who sent the necklace?”
“Maybe. I met your cousin Marguerite.” I waited for a reaction, but none came. I heard the engine of her ancient Mercedes rev. I wouldn’t tell her about Hugh yet. Not while she was driving late at night, already concerned about Livvie. Besides, no one at the house on Marlborough Street had exactly confirmed Hugh Morales’s identity. “Mom, I may need your power of attorney to straighten everything out down here. I’ll call Cuthie Cuthbertson in the morning.”
“Does that mean the Black Widow could be ours?”
“Not clear. Not clear at all. Don’t get your hopes up.”
“All right. I can stop by Cuthie’s in the morning if needs be. I’ve arranged my shifts so I can be home when Page gets out of school.”
“We’ll talk in the morning.”
Chapter 15
I spent some time in the hotel business center the next morning going back and forth with Mom and Cuthie to get the power of attorney. Mom had stopped in his office on her way to work and was frazzled and in no frame of mind to ask many questions.
After Mom did the paperwork and rushed out, Cuthie kept me on the phone. “What’s going on, exactly, Julia? I assume this is in regard to the tiara we discussed.”
“It’s not a tiara, it’s a necklace, and yes, this is related. Or at least I think it is.” I filled him in on my tale of long-lost relatives and the long-lost Black Widow.
“And you’re convinced this Hugh Morales is your mother’s cousin, the late Hugh Morrow?”
“I am, but I’ve no more proof than I had yesterday morning when I found Hugh Morales on the web. The family attorney is showing up at the town house at ten. I assume I’ll know more then.” I had a sudden thought. “Do you think I need my own attorney at this meeting?”
Cuthie’s trademark baritone traveled across the airwaves in his most soothing tones. “What did they say Jacqueline was left?”
“A small, personal bequest.”
“Let’s not prepare for battle yet. Find out exactly what his will says. And see if there’s an inventory with it that includes the necklace. If this Hugh owned it, he must have had it insured. Call me after the meeting. If you do need your own attorney, I have some friends down there I can recommend.”
“Thank you, Cuthie. Thanks for everything.”
* * *
Jake, Tal
lulah’s young husband, answered the door at Marlborough Street. “It’s you,” he said. “Come in.” He helped me out of my coat and hung it on a tree in the hall. He seemed like a nice enough guy, with an earnest manner that went with the boyish face.
I left my boots in the tray by the front door and slipped into a pair of flats. I’d dressed in a black pencil skirt, crisp white blouse, and black tights. I looked like a waitress, but it was the best of what I’d brought with me. “Is Rose around?”
“Kitchen,” Jake answered, inclining his head toward the floorboards.
“Thanks.”
Downstairs, Rose was bent over the sink, finishing up the breakfast dishes.
“Morning.”
She nodded in acknowledgment. I grabbed a towel and started on the items in the dish rack. I didn’t see a dishwasher in the outdated kitchen.
“How did you sleep?” Rose asked.
“Just okay.”
“I can imagine. This must all be very strange for you.” She rinsed off a frying pan and put it in the rack. “You can ask me questions, if you want. And I know you do.”
“Is Hugh Morales really Hugh Morrow, your uncle?”
Rose turned to look at me. “Yes.”
“How long have you known?”
“Since I was twenty-five, right after my grandmother died.”
“Did your grandparents know Hugh was alive?”
“Absolutely not. That’s why I inherited everything.” She put another dish in the rack. “I was only a year old when my dad died. My mother had given up her career to stay home with me. Dad had no life insurance. He was so young. So we lived with my grandparents until my mom got a job and got back on her feet. We moved out when I was three, but stayed nearby. They never warmed to my mother.”