For good reason.
Rufus swung by the house about an hour later.
“I came by to show you this.” He flashed the New York Post in front of me. I caught the headline: GAL PAL DEAD IN SHOTGUN'S WOODS. WOMAN'S BODY FOUND 24 HOURS AFTER SON DIES IN WEDDING DRESS.
And below it was a blurred but easily recognizable photo of Bettina.
I sat down suddenly. I hadn’t exactly been Bettina’s biggest fan but I was deeply shocked and when I told Rufus about the connection, I could see that he was too.
“She was there for a job interview? The stories in the press make it sound like she was there on a date. Anyway, I’d better draw you a little map of how to get to Shotgun’s place,” he said. I guessed he was being practical to cover his nervousness. “It’s quite complicated. I mean you could walk along the beach and through the woods but it’s probably more professional to arrive via the front entrance.”
“Assuming I really do have the job,” I said, hesitating a little at the very thought of what it might entail, “I’m going to have to find somewhere to live around here.”
“You mean you don’t want to stay in this cozy little nest?”
“I’m not sure I—”
“Just kidding.” He smiled. “When I was a kid I was always outside on the beach. I never noticed what a miserable place it was. Don’t worry, we’ll find you somewhere.”
Later that day I mentioned the possibility that I might be staying out on Long Island in a phone call to my mother and she whooped in excitement.
“But Lee, that’s utterly perfect. You can oversee the building of my house because God knows I won’t have the time to come chasing out there every five minutes.”
I noticed it had now become her house even though the Phillionaire was paying for it—and what exactly was it that would keep her so busy that she couldn’t take a quick helicopter ride to monitor progress herself?
“I’m going to redecorate Phil’s apartment,” she said by way of explanation, “it’s so fuddy-duddy. I’m going to gut it and start from scratch.”
“What does Phil say about that?” I had thought his Fifth Avenue apartment the epitome of good taste and how anyone could say his state-of-the-art kitchen was fuddy-duddy was beyond me.
“Oh, Phil thinks it’s a blissful idea. We’re going to take a suite at the Carlyle. Now let me ask him what you should do about a place to live out there and get back to you.”
As it turned out it was Phil himself who came back to me within the hour.
“It’s a bad business,” he said, referring to Bettina’s death. “You sure you want to get mixed up in the life of this character?”
“I can’t afford not to,” I told him, glad that we weren’t face to face so he couldn’t tell how shaky I was about the possibility of being even remotely involved in a murder investigation. “Shotgun Marriott’s story will be red-hot material now and I’ll be right in the thick of it. I have a chance to make my career take off into the stratosphere and I can’t afford not to take it.” I was rather pleased about the career taking off into the stratosphere bit. I waited for Phil to be impressed by how ambitious I had become.
“You’re a ghost, not a ghoul.” He said it so quietly I had to strain my ear to the receiver. “It’s the type of assignment that Bettina woman would have relished by the sound of things but you’re too nice, Lee, too”—he paused—“too gentle.”
“I—am—not!” I shouted down the phone, offended that he should think me less able to do the job than Bettina. “I’m very tough. I can handle it, easy. I’ll do a terrific job.”
“I’m sure you will,” he said. “I’m just not so sure you’ll come out of it unscathed. But anyway, it’s your decision and Vanessa tells me you need somewhere to live. Listen up, I’ve got a suggestion. Put Rufus on the line, will you, please?”
Rufus listened for a while and then smiled. “Sure thing, Dad. I’ll take her over there right away. Come on,” he said when he’d hung up, “I’ll show you where you’re going to live.”
I followed him out of the back of the house, stepping off the veranda and down a trail through the beach grass to the bay. Then we turned left and took the walk along the beach I had come to know so well. But after about seven minutes, Rufus suddenly turned inland again up another sandy trail through the dunes. And there in a clearing midway between the beach and the road, and hidden from both by tall bamboo, was a little wooden shack.
My first impression was of a pioneer log cabin—a twenty-first-century version, at least. This was no quaint, shingled beach cottage. It was a simple, relatively modern design—about the size of a two-car garage—with a flat roof, wide cedar planks, glass sliding doors leading to a deck. The little Jeep my mother had been driving was parked over to the side, the fishing rods still protruding from the hood.
“Who lives here?” I asked him.
“No one. Dad built it a couple of years ago as his own little private retreat. He comes here to be on his own, to read, to fish—I don’t know, maybe he meditates. I’m the only one that knows about it but right before they left, he said he might want me to show it to you. You know, they’re taking off on a trip, your mom and my dad—Venice, and maybe London. I guess he knew he wasn’t going to be using it for a while. Even if you don’t want to live here, he said you should use the Jeep.”
But when we went inside I knew I did want to live there. More than anywhere else in the whole world. I fell in love with it instantly. It was just one room with a shower and a john behind a curtain but what a room! One corner was taken up with a state-of-the-art kitchen—Viking stove, Sub-Zero fridge, stainless steel cabinets, their clinical look warmed up by butcher-block countertops. In the opposite corner stood a wood-burning stove with a couple of inviting easy chairs in front of it and in the remaining space a bed, a nightstand, and a desk area surrounded by built-in, floor-to-ceiling bookshelves.
“And here’s the keys to the Jeep,” he said handing them to me. “Come back to the Stucco House with me and I’ll give you some sheets. Maybe Lucia can come over and make the bed up for you.”
“No, no, I can manage,” I said quickly. I couldn’t wait to move in.
I packed up my belongings, took a shower, and changed into a pair of clean pants and a sweater for my meeting with Shotgun. When I returned to the cabin, the Jeep beckoned me, and I decided that before anything else, I would drive to the Old Stone Market and stock up on provisions. I’m never entirely comfortable unless I know I have a well-stocked fridge. I’m not that big an eater, I just need to know it’s there. You never know what might be right around the corner. Hurricanes, tornadoes, four feet of snow that could keep me housebound for days on end.
“Oh, we get all of the above,” said Franny cheerfully when I explained why I wanted to stock up on a mountain of provisions. “So you’re planning to be with us for a while, huh?”
She had been feeding the baby at the till when I walked in and now she was rocking her in her arms, the soft maternal gesture at odds with a tattoo of a snake I could see on her bare shoulder now exposed by the sleeveless undershirt she was wearing.
“I think I’m going to be working with Shotgun Marriott on his autobiography,” I explained, wondering if I was being a little indiscreet. I wasn’t too sure how public Shotgun had gone with his intention to do a book. “I’m going to be staying in Rufus’s father’s house.”
“That miserable old place? Can’t say I envy you.”
I wondered if her bluntness ever let up. “No, he has a little cabin further up the beach.”
“Oh.” She looked up and smiled. “That’s a cool little house. I’ve checked it out a few times. That’d be a perfect place for Eliza and me.”
Well, tough, I thought, beat you to it. “So I need a whole load of stuff, all the basics,” I said, running my finger along a shelf containing a line of bottled salad dressings, Skippy peanut butter, packets of granola, Uncle Ben’s rice. “Where’s the coffee and butter and eggs, that sort of thing?�
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“Over there.” She nodded in the direction of the back room. “But if I were you”—she stood up and carried a sleeping Eliza to her baby carriage behind the counter—“I’d do my bulk buying at one of the bigger markets, maybe even up the island at Costco. This is a small convenience store. My markup is a total rip-off but what am I going to do? I’ve got to make the place pay. See, I got two kinds of customers here. The guys you saw the other day, the construction workers picking up their breakfasts, their lunchtime sandwiches, and maybe their dinners to go—meatloaf, spaghetti and meatballs, Italian wedding soup, whatever, they eat pretty well for about eight or nine bucks.”
She pointed to a blackboard where the menu of the day was written up.
“Then you got the weekend crowd popping in for whatever they’ve run out of and those people, they don’t even notice they’re paying three times what it costs at the IGA. But you—if you’re going to stock up a whole house, you’re better off going somewhere else.”
“Thank you,” I said, and I was genuinely grateful.
She shrugged. “You’re a friend of Rufus. I don’t want to rip you off.” She pulled a face. “Although if I’ve got any sense, I should. I gotta do something to drag the customers in here. Somehow I don’t think the Stone Landing Residents Association is going to be holding meetings here anymore.” She picked up a copy of the Post and tapped the photo of Bettina. “So, you’re stepping into a dead woman’s shoes. You sure about that?”
This was uncomfortably close to the Phillionaire’s reservations.
“I’m sure,” I said firmly.
“You know him?” she asked. I shook my head. “I mean, you’re going to be going in there right after he’s lost Sean and—”
“Sean? That’s his son? Did you know him?”
“Not real well. He was a lot younger than I am. Matter of fact, his mother was here earlier. Came right from the cremation and believe me she was in a truly bad way. She was so devastated she even left him here. I can introduce you.”
I looked around without thinking but the store was empty.
“Here,” said Franny, pointing to an object beside the doughnuts on display by the cash register. “Oh, I know I should have more respect for the dead but she came rushing in carrying this urn, drank a quick cup of coffee, and then she was gone. She left this behind. I figure it has to be him. Oops, he’s got a little powdered sugar on him.” She gave the urn a quick wipe with a cloth.
I felt sick. It was hard to think that the body I had seen lying in a wedding dress could be reduced to fit into the tiny urn.
“Any word on what happened to him—how he died?” I asked her.
“No, but if they’ve released the body for the funeral they must have determined the cause of death.”
“What was he like?”
“As far as I know he was sweet and he never hurt a fly.” She paused. “And I got this from Rufus—Sean was gay. He kept that on the down-low because he thought it didn’t exactly fit in with his father’s womanizing image but given that he was found wearing a dress, it’s a cinch it’s all going to come out. Maybe Shotgun will wind up putting it in the book. That’s the kind of stuff folks are going to want to know.”
“So what is his mother like?”
“Shotgun’s ex? Well, you’ll get to find out for yourself when she comes back to pick up her son.” Franny gestured to the urn.
“I will? She’ll be back soon?”
“Who knows? But you’ll be here because I’m going to ask you to watch Eliza while I run out and do some errands. You see, I was nice enough to tell you where to do your shopping so I thought maybe you’d like a chance to return the favor.”
“Oh, you’re good!” I smiled. “But I’ve absolutely no experience looking after babies.”
“She’s asleep,” said Franny, grabbing her purse and heading for the door. “How hard can it be?”
Not hard at all if Eliza stayed asleep but Franny banged the screen door so hard behind her that her baby woke up and began to bawl. Two women chose that moment to come in and begin gathering groceries.
“Don’t pick her up,” said one as I moved toward the baby carriage. “You’ve got to leave her. Never let her think she’s the boss, that way she’ll grow up spoiled.”
“Oh, that’s nonsense,” said the other woman. “Poor little thing. She needs a cuddle and maybe her diaper needs changing. You don’t want her to think she’s abandoned, do you?” She looked at me sharply.
I didn’t know what to do so I compromised by rocking the baby carriage back and forth and then I went into a state of panic as I realized these women would want to pay for something and I had no idea how to work the cash register. When I said as much, the first woman reassured me.
“Oh, for goodness sake. We just leave money in that can over there”—she pointed to an empty Maxwell House tin perched on top of the freezer—“and we take the change if we need it. Franny leaves the place to run itself half the time while she’s off checking people’s yards and stuff.”
Eliza was still howling when they left and as I bent over her, I caught a pungent whiff that told me the diaper-changing theory was definitely the correct one. I recalled how Franny had sent Rufus upstairs to find a diaper in the bathroom but when I tried the door to the apartment above, it was locked. I didn’t know much about babies but I could hazard a guess that Eliza would not shut up until I changed her.
And then I saw the solution. Boxes of Pampers were lined up on the top shelf in the back of the store. I couldn’t see a stepladder or a chair but there was a broom propped against the door so I used the handle to knock one of the boxes off the shelf.
I had never changed a diaper before and the countertop covered in powdered sugar was not the best place to start but I had no option. Eliza wriggled and screwed up her little features until she was red in the face. She knew I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. The smell was overpowering and what on earth did I do with the old diaper? There was no convenient bucket or trash can close at hand. Then I realized I hadn’t broken open the box of diapers before removing the old one. While I wrestled with that, Eliza would probably roll off the countertop and crack her skull open. And wasn’t I supposed to wipe her clean with baby lotion or something? I saw the magic words “baby wipes” on a package over on a far shelf. I reached for them and just as my hand closed over the package, out of the corner of my eyes I saw Eliza begin to roll over.
“I think you need some help there.”
The voice was quiet and low and the accent was British with a mid-Atlantic inflection. She was a tall woman somewhere in her fifties. She was wearing a tailored black pantsuit and a white shirt, and her eyes were obscured by a pair of oversize dark glasses. Her mouth was a slash of dark red and some of her lipstick came off on Eliza’s forehead as the woman raised her and kissed her briefly.
“You’re a little treasure, aren’t you?” She snapped her fingers at the package of baby wipes my clumsy fingers were trying to open. She plucked several from the wad and went to work, expertly wiping all around Eliza’s little pink bottom. “You’re a little darling, yes you are. What are you, six months? Maybe eight?”
She turned to me and I said quickly, “Oh, she’s not mine. She’s Franny’s.”
“And you’re English,” said the woman. “Here, take this.” She handed me the dirty diaper. “Take it outside and bury it or something.”
I found a garbage can around the back of the store. When I returned, Eliza was sitting on the edge of the counter in just her fresh diaper, banging her little heels against the side and chortling as the woman held her hands and brought them together as if to clap.
Suddenly I noticed that the urn was no longer where it had been. The woman had moved it to stand beside her purse.
“You’re Angela Marriott,” I blurted out, and then, because I had to say something: “I’m so sorry about your son.”
“So am I,” she said and choked. I noticed tears were running down her face be
low the dark glasses. “This baby—when Sean was a baby, he was so”—she took a deep breath—“adorable. Here, you take her now. I’m going to crack up completely if I spend much more time with her. So who are you, anyway?”
Her tone was a little abrupt but it was understandable under the circumstances. I felt at a disadvantage because I couldn’t see her eyes behind the sunglasses. I couldn’t read her expression or how she was reacting to me but I knew I had to grab this opportunity with Shotgun Marriott’s ex-wife. I’d have to wing it a little because I knew next to nothing about her. They’d been separated for about fourteen years and the press clippings on Shotgun that I’d studied in a tearing rush before leaving London had focused mostly on his career rather than his personal life. Even so, there was something oddly familiar about her and I had the distinct feeling that maybe I’d met her somewhere before.
“I’m Lee Bartholomew. I’m minding the store for Franny—and the baby, as you can see. And I can’t thank you enough for rescuing me there. Actually, it’s a bit of a coincidence meeting you like this because I’m in America to work with your ex-husband.”
She took off her glasses and stared at me for a few seconds.
“What are you doing with Kip?”
“Kip?”
“Well, you don’t think he was born ‘Shotgun,’ do you? His name’s Christopher. ‘Kip’ for short. But I think probably only his family calls him that.”
“Oh. I’m going to be helping him with his autobiography. I’m a ghostwriter.”
“Are—you—really?” She said it slowly and she leaned forward as if to take a closer look at me. “You’re going to take over from the woman who was murdered?”
Eliza reacted at the sudden sharpness of Angela Marriott’s tone and her little face puckered. There was a pause while we waited to see if she would cry. When she didn’t, Angela repeated in a whisper, “Murdered. Just like my son.”
“What?” I couldn’t believe what she’d just said. “I thought he drowned—that it was an accident.” I saw her mouth begin to crumple. “Oh, I’m sorry. I don’t want to put you through this.”
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