He picked up his key ring, and, locking the door behind him, set off for Nuala’s dinner party.
5
EARL BATEMAN WAS STRETCHED OUT ON THE COUCH, A glass of wine in his hand, the book he’d just finished on the table beside him. He knew it was time to change for Nuala’s dinner party, but he was enjoying a sense of leisure, using the moment to contemplate the events of the past week.
Before coming down from Providence, he had finished grading the papers turned in by his Anthropology 101 class and was pleased to note that all but a few of the students had performed at the A or B level. It would be an interesting—and perhaps challenging—semester with them, he decided.
And now he could look forward to Newport weekends mercifully free of the crowds jamming restaurants and traffic tie-ups so typical of the summer season.
Earl lived in the guest wing of the family home, Squire Hall, the house Squire Moore had built for his youngest daughter on the occasion of her marriage to Gordon Bateman, “the ghoul” as Squire called him because the Batemans had been funeral directors for four generations.
Of all the residences he had presented his seven children, it was by far the smallest, a reflection of the fact that he had been opposed to the marriage. Nothing personal, but Squire had a horror of dying and even forbade the word “death” to be mentioned in his presence. To take into the family bosom the man who undoubtedly would attend to the rituals surrounding his own demise was a continual reminder of the forbidden word.
Gordon Bateman’s reaction had been to convince his wife to name their home Squire Hall, a mocking tribute to his father-in-law and a subtle reminder that none of his other children had thought to so honor him.
Earl had always believed that his own given name was another jab at Squire, since the old man had always tried to convey the impression that he’d been named for generations of Moores who in the county of Dingle had had the courtesy title of squire. A squire in Dingle tugged his forelock in homage to an earl.
After Earl finally convinced his father that he had no intention of becoming the next Bateman funeral director, his parents sold the mortuary to a private corporation that retained the family name and hired a manager to run it.
His parents now spent nine months of the year in South Carolina, near his married sisters, and had urged Earl to take over the entire house during those months, an offer he declined. The wing was arranged to his liking, with his books and artifacts locked away in glass-fronted cabinets against the possibility of careless dusting. He also had a sweeping view of the Atlantic; Earl found the sea infinitely calming.
Calm. That was perhaps the word he valued most.
At the noisy New York reunion of Squire Moore’s descendants, as much as possible he had stayed on the sidelines where he could simply observe the lot of them. He tried not to be too judgmental, but he did not join in their “can you top this?” tales. His cousins all seemed to be given to bragging about how well they were doing, and like Liam, they all loved to regale each other with far-fetched stories about their eccentric—and occasionally ruthless—ancestor.
Earl also knew how gleefully some of them seized on his father’s background as a fourth-generation funeral director. At the reunion, he had overheard two of them belittling him and making snide jokes about undertakers and their profession.
A pox on the lot of them, he thought now as he swung his feet to the floor and sat up. It was ten of eight, time to get a move on. He wasn’t looking forward to going to Nuala’s dinner party tonight, but on the other hand, Maggie Holloway would be there. She was extremely attractive . . .
Yes, her presence would ensure that the evening would not be dull.
6
DR. WILLIAM LANE, DIRECTOR OF THE LATHAM MANOR Residence, looked at his watch for the third time in five minutes. He and his wife were due at Nuala Moore’s place at eight o’clock; it was ten of eight now. A large, balding man in his fifties, Dr. Lane had a soothing bedside manner with his patients—an attitude of forbearance that did not extend to his thirty-nine-year-old wife.
“Odile,” he called, “for God’s sake, get a move on.”
“Right with you.” Her voice, breathy and musical, floated down the stairs of their home, a structure that once had been the carriage house of Latham Manor. A moment later she rushed into the living room, still fastening an earring.
“I was reading to Mrs. Patterson,” she said. “You know how it is, William. She’s not used to the residence yet, and she resents the fact that her son sold her house out from under her.”
“She’ll settle in,” Lane said dismissively. “Everyone else seems to have managed to end up being quite happy here.”
“I know, but it sometimes takes a while. I still say a little TLC while a new guest is adjusting is important.” Odile walked to the mirror over the carved marble fireplace. “How do I look?” She smiled at her wide-eyed, blond-haired reflection.
“You look lovely. You always do,” Lane said shortly. “What do you know about this stepdaughter of Nuala’s?”
“Nuala told me all about her when she visited Greta Shipley last Monday. Her name is Maggie, and Nuala was married to her father years ago. She’s going to stay for two weeks. Nuala seems very happy about it. Don’t you think that’s sweet, that they met each other again?”
Without answering, Dr. Lane opened the front door, then stood aside. You’re in a great mood, Odile thought, as she walked past him and down the steps to the car. For a moment she paused and looked at Latham Manor, its marble façade glistening in the moonlight.
Hesitantly she suggested, “I meant to tell you that when I looked in on Mrs. Hammond, she was a bit out of breath and rather pale. I wonder if you should check her before we go.”
“We’re late already,” Dr. Lane replied impatiently as he opened the car door. “If I’m needed I can be back in ten minutes, but I can assure you that Mrs. Hammond will be all right tonight.”
7
MALCOLM NORTON WAS NOT LOOKING FORWARD TO THE evening. A silver-haired man with an erect, military posture, he made an imposing appearance. It was an appearance, however, that concealed a troubled mind.
Nuala’s call three days ago, asking him to come to dinner tonight and meet her stepdaughter, had been a shock—not the invitation to dinner itself, but the unexpected news that Nuala had a stepdaughter.
A lawyer with a general practice, working alone, Norton had seen his client list reduced drastically in the past few years, partly through attrition—he had become almost expert at handling estates of the deceased—but also due, he was certain, to the arrival of several young, aggressive lawyers in the area.
Nuala Moore was one of his few remaining clients, and he thought he knew her affairs inside out. Never once had she mentioned this stepdaughter.
For some time Malcolm Norton had been quietly urging Nuala to sell her home and become a resident of Latham Manor. Until recently she had shown signs of agreeing that it would be a good move. She admitted that since her husband, Tim, had died, the house was lonely, and it was beginning to cost more and more in repairs. “I know it needs a new roof, that the heating system is antiquated, and anyone who bought it would want to put in central air-conditioning,” she had told him. “Do you think I could get two hundred thousand for it?”
He had reacted carefully, responding, “Nuala, the real estate market here falls apart after Labor Day. Maybe next summer we’d get that much. But I want to see you settled. If you’re ready to move to Latham now, I’ll take the house off your hands for that price and do some basic fixing up. I’ll get my money back eventually, and you won’t have any more expenditures on it. With Tim’s insurance money and the house sale, you could have the best accommodation at Latham, maybe even turn one room of a suite into a studio for yourself.”
“I’d like that. I’ll put in my application,” Nuala had said at the time; then she had kissed his cheek. “You’ve been a good friend, Malcolm.”
“I’ll draw up the papers. You?
??re making a good decision.”
What Malcolm had not told Nuala was something a friend in Washington had passed along. A proposed change in environmental protection legislation was sure to go through, which meant that some property now protected by the Wetlands Preservation Act would be freed from development restrictions. The entire right end of Nuala’s property would be included in that change. Drain the pond, cut down a few trees, and the view of the ocean would be spectacular, Malcolm reasoned. Moneyed people wanted that view. They would pay plenty for the property, would probably even tear down the old house and build one three times the size, facing the ocean. By his calculations, the property alone would be worth a million dollars. If it all went as planned, he should turn over an eight-hundred-thousand-dollar profit within the next year or two.
Then he would be able to get on with his life. With the profit he would make from the sale of the property, he would have enough cash to settle with his wife, Janice, retire, and move to Florida with Barbara.
How his life had changed since Barbara started working for him as a legal secretary! Seven years younger than he, she was a very pretty widow of fifty-six. Her children were grown and scattered, so she had taken the job in his office just to keep busy. It wasn’t long, however, before the mutual attraction between them was palpable. She had all the warmth Janice had never offered him.
But she wasn’t the kind who would get involved in an office affair—that much she had made clear. If he wanted her, he would have to come to her as a single man. And all it would take to make that happen was money, he told himself. Then . . .
“Well, are you ready?”
Malcolm looked up. His wife of thirty-five years was standing before him, her arms folded.
“If you are,” he said.
He had been late getting home and had gone directly to his bedroom. This was the first time he had seen Janice since this morning. “What kind of day did you have?” he asked politely.
“What kind of day do I always have?” she snapped, “keeping books in a nursing home? But at least one of us is bringing home a regular paycheck.”
8
AT 7:50 P.M., NEIL STEPHENS, MANAGING DIRECTOR OF Carson & Parker Investment Corporation, stood up and stretched. He was the only one left in the office at 2 World Trade Center, except for the cleaning crew, whom he could hear vacuuming somewhere down the hall.
As the firm’s senior executive, he had a large corner office that afforded him a sweeping view of Manhattan, a view which, unfortunately, he had little time to savor. That had been the case today, especially.
The market had been extremely volatile the last few days, and some of the stocks on the C&P “highly recommended” list had reported disappointing earnings. The stocks were all solid, most of them blue chips, and a dip in price now wasn’t really a problem. What was a problem was that too many smaller investors then became anxious to sell, so it was up to him and his staff to convince them to be patient.
Well, enough for today, Neil thought. It’s time to get out of here. He looked around for his jacket and spotted it on one of the chairs in the “conversation area,” a grouping of comfortable furniture that gave the room what the interior designer had called “a client-friendly atmosphere.”
Grimacing as he saw how wrinkled his jacket had become, he shook it and thrust his arms into the sleeves. Neil was a big man who, at thirty-seven, managed to keep his body muscle from sliding into fat by a program of disciplined exercise, including racquetball sessions two nights a week. The results of his efforts were apparent, and he was a compellingly attractive man with penetrating brown eyes that bespoke intelligence and an easy smile that inspired confidence. And, in fact, that confidence was well placed, for as his associates and friends knew, Neil Stephens missed very little.
He smoothed down the sleeves of his jacket, remembering that his assistant, Trish, had hung it up this morning but pointedly ignored it when he had once again tossed it down after lunch.
“The other assistants get mad at me if I wait on you too much,” she had told him. “Besides, I do enough picking up after my husband. How much can a woman take?”
Neil smiled at the memory, but then the smile faded as he realized that he had forgotten to call Maggie to get her phone number in Newport. Just this morning he had decided to go to Portsmouth next weekend for his mother’s birthday; that would put him just minutes away from Newport. Maggie had told him she would be staying there for a couple of weeks, with her stepmother. He had thought they would get together there.
He and Maggie had been dating casually since early spring, when they met in a bagel shop on Second Avenue, around the corner from their East Fifty-sixth Street apartment buildings. They had begun chatting there whenever their paths crossed; they then bumped into each other one evening at the movies. They sat together and later walked over to Neary’s Pub for dinner.
Initially, Neil liked the fact that Maggie apparently took the dates as casually as he did. There was no indication on her part that she viewed the two of them as anything more than friends with a shared interest in movies. She seemed as wrapped up in her job as he was in his.
However, after six months of these occasional dates, the fact that Maggie continued to act uninterested in him as anything other than a pleasant film and dinner companion was beginning to annoy Neil. Without realizing it was happening, he had found himself becoming more and more intent on seeing her, on learning all he could about her. He knew that she had been widowed five years ago, something that she mentioned matter-of-factly, her tone suggesting that emotionally she had put that behind her. But now he had started wondering whether she had a serious boyfriend. Wondering and being worried about it.
After puzzling for a minute, Neil decided to see if maybe Maggie had left her Newport number on her answering machine. Back at his desk, he listened to her recorded message: “Hi, this is Maggie Holloway. Thanks for calling. I’m out of town until October 13th.” The machine clicked off. Obviously she wasn’t interested in getting messages.
Great, he thought glumly as he replaced the receiver and walked over to the window. Manhattan stretched before him, ablaze with lights. He looked at the East River bridges and remembered that when he had told Maggie his office was on the forty-second floor of the World Trade Center, she had told him about the first time she had gone for a cocktail at Windows on the World atop the center. “It was just becoming dusk. The lights of the bridges went on, and then all the buildings and streetlights started glowing. It was like watching a highborn Victorian lady put on her jewelry—necklace, bracelets, rings, even a tiara.”
The vivid image had stayed with Neil.
He had another image of Maggie as well, but this one troubled him. Three weeks ago, on Saturday, he had dropped in to Cinema I to see the thirty-year-old French classic A Man and a Woman. The theater wasn’t crowded, and halfway through the film, he had noticed that Maggie was sitting alone a few rows ahead of him, four seats over. He had been about to join her when he realized that she was crying. Silent tears coursed down her cheeks, and she held her hand to her mouth to prevent sobs, as she watched the story of a young widow who could not accept her husband’s death.
He had hurried out while the credits rolled, not wanting her to see him, thinking that she would be embarrassed to be caught so emotionally vulnerable.
Later that evening, he had been in Neary’s having dinner with friends when she came in. She had stopped by his table to say hello, then had joined a group at the big corner table. There had been nothing in her face or manner to indicate that earlier she had been watching a film and identifying with a heartbroken young widow.
Damn! Neil thought, she’s gone for at least two weeks, and I have no way to reach her. I don’t even have the faintest idea of her stepmother’s name.
9
EXCEPT FOR THAT UPTIGHT ART DIRECTOR, IT HAD BEEN A good week, Maggie reflected as she turned off Route 138 in Newport. Both photo shoots this week had turned out exceptionally well, especia
lly the one for Vogue.
But after the meticulous attention she had to give to noting how the camera was capturing every fold of the astronomically priced gowns she was photographing, it was a distinct joy to put on jeans and a plaid shirt. In fact, with the exception of a blue silk print blouse and matching long skirt she planned to wear tonight for Nuala’s dinner party, everything she had brought to wear on this vacation was quite casual.
We’re going to have such fun, she thought. Two uninterrupted weeks in Newport. Nuala and I really will have a chance to catch up with each other! She smiled at the prospect.
It had been a surprise when Liam called to say that he would be at Nuala’s tonight, as well, although she should have realized he spent a fair amount of time in Newport. “It’s an easy drive from Boston,” he had pointed out. “I go there fairly regularly for weekends, especially off-season.”
“I didn’t know that,” she had said.
“There’s a lot you don’t know about me, Maggie. Maybe if you weren’t out of town so much . . .”
“And maybe if you didn’t live in Boston and use your New York apartment so little . . .”
Maggie smiled again. Liam is fun, she thought, even though he does take himself too seriously much of the time. Stopping at a red light, she glanced down and rechecked her directions. Nuala lived just off the fabled Ocean Drive, on Garrison Avenue. “I even have a view of the ocean from the third floor,” she had explained. “Wait till you see it and my studio.”
She had called three times this week to be sure there were no changes of plan. “You are coming, Maggie? You won’t disappoint?”
“Of course not,” she had assured her. Still, Maggie had wondered if it was only her imagination or was there something in Nuala’s voice, an uneasiness that perhaps she had detected in her face the night they had dinner in Manhattan. At the time, she had rationalized that Nuala’s husband had died only last year, and she was starting to lose her friends as well, one of the nonjoys of living long enough to get old. Naturally a sense of mortality has to be setting in, she reasoned.