Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 (9 page)

I watched her walk down the drive and cross the street. She waved at the boy on the mower and walked briskly toward the front steps of the colonial.

She hadn’t given me time to answer. But I’d be there.

I closed the door. Toward the back of the house, a door opened to the outside. A telephone and answering machine sat atop another butler’s table near a door to the kitchen. A
woman’s cotton madras patchwork purse, jaunty for spring, sat by the telephone.

The red message light blinked seven times in rapid succession, paused, blinked again.

I reached for the purse first. I lifted out a cream leather billfold. Inside, I found Patty Kay’s driver’s license, an astonishing array of credit cards, and sixty-three dollars in cash. A lemon lace handkerchief, a crystal vial of Mondi, Visine eyedrops, a sack of sugarless candies, loose coins, a used bridge tally, a column raggedly torn from a newspaper. I looked at the piece from the newspaper carefully, but it was merely a review of a new biography of Edith Wharton. A portion of an ad for swimsuits was on the other side. Lipstick, compact, makeup brush. An emery board. An address book. I flipped through it. So many names. Too many names. But the last page, entitled Useful Numbers, was useful indeed.

I opened my own purse and jotted down these names and numbers:

I returned the address book, unzipped a side pocket. A photo packet. Photos of Craig, of Craig and Patty Kay, of the two of them and a skinny teenage girl with sunlight glinting on her silver braces. Patty Kay’s daughter Brigit, no doubt. I tucked the album back in the pocket. My fingers touched another slick surface. I pulled out a holder with a
single picture, a man in swim trunks shading his eyes against the sun.

Not Craig.

Definitely not Craig.

Six feet tall. Built like a boxer, strong chest, powerful legs, sturdy shoulders and arms. A crop of thick, curly brown hair. An open, attractive face with a devil-may-care smile.

I turned the photo over. The inscription on the back read simply:
Hilton Head
.

I studied the man’s face and smile for a moment more. I wouldn’t forget this picture.

No woman would.

I returned it to the pocket, zipped it shut.

I held the purse beneath the rose lamp, opened it wide for a thorough check, then replaced all the belongings.

All that one would expect to find in a woman’s purse— except for one thing.

I looked over the table.

No keys.

Hmm. Had she dropped them in the pocket of what she was wearing that afternoon?

I’d have to find out.

I put the purse down.

The message light on the recorder continued to blink.

I punched the Play button.

“Craig, this is Melissa Higgins from Patty Kay’s guild, calling on Monday morning at nine. We’ll plan on bringing food for luncheon after the services Wednesday, if that is agreeable to you. My number is 555-2094. We’re so sorry. If there’s anything else we can do, please call me.”

The second call was in sharp, emotional contrast.
“Craig, I can’t believe it! They can’t keep you in jail. Oh, it’s so
awful! Call me.”
The voice was young. Quite young. And terribly upset.

The next two calls were also from the girl. She didn’t identify herself.

The fifth call was a woman’s voice, hesitant and guarded.
“Craig, this is Stevie. Call me if you can.”

Melissa Higgins called a second time. Her voice was jerkily nervous.
“Uh, Craig, the guild
—
uh, one of our members talked to Pamela and we’ll be serving the food at her house after the funeral. Thank you very much. ”
The disconnection was abrupt. Melissa obviously had learned of Craig’s arrest.

The seventh call was the young voice, still fraught with unhappiness.
“Craig, I’ll do everything I can, I promise. I won’t let this happen!”

I punched the Save button.

Hmm. Curiouser and curiouser. I wanted to know who the young caller was. And I intended to find out about Stevie. Her tone was so carefully uninflected.

But for now I still had much to explore. I opened the door on the left side of the hall. It was another entrance to the kitchen. To the right, an archway opened into a game room. I looked inside. Six carousel horses provided much of the seating.

I pulled myself up to sit sidesaddle on a wooden roan with its head tossing and mane ruffled. My weight apparently triggered a tape of tinny carousel music so faint that it seemed more a memory than a sound. If the carved mounts had begun to move, I wouldn’t have been surprised. As the reedy tune tinkled, I surveyed the expensive assortment of entertainment devices, a huge television screen, VCR, pool table, Ping-Pong table, game tables. An unfinished game of checkers remained atop a table in front of the limestone fireplace. A box of marshmallows sat on the fireplace ledge.

When I dismounted, the music cut off instantly. I
checked out the cabinets. They contained an astonishing array of board games, reams of photograph albums, and flamboyantly titled home movie cassettes. All were dated. Among the most recent were
Our Madcap Stay in Rio, Brigit’s Sweet 16, To-and-Fro Aboard the World’s Most Boring Yacht, Christmas with the Mudville Clan, Let’s Have Another Round
, and
Fair Haven Fives at the Tennis Spa
.

I picked up the last one, dated only the month before. I turned on the television and VCR and slipped in the cassette.

In living color with sound to match.

Scene: a semitropical tennis retreat.

I watched and was impressed with the tennis prowess of the four women. I understood the tape’s title. They obviously were all ranked 5.0 or better.

It didn’t take me long to peg the players’ names. Patty Kay, of course, I recognized from the newspaper photo and the photos in her purse. The redheaded pro at the tennis spa, Evan, was a flirty, sexy Australian who always called his pupils by name, Gina, Edith, Brooke, Patty Kay.

Gina’s short dark hair fit her like a sleek fur cap. She danced around the court and had an astonishingly strong serve for her size. She talked incessantly. “Good shot. Good
shot”
“Oh, damn!” “I’ve got it, I’ve got it.” “Did you drill that right in my face, Edith?” “Short, Brooke, short!” This must be Gina Abbott, whom the lawyer described as Patty Kay’s best friend.

Edith’s plump face was claret red by mid-match. She huffed and puffed, but she had a wicked backhand and a corkscrew serve that drove the others mad. She chattered brightly, but when she had a chance to drill an opponent, her eyes glittered with undisguised satisfaction.

Brooke—Brooke Forrest, the trustee?—was the classic beauty of the bunch. She had an elegant, patrician face,
luxuriant jet-black hair, aquamarine eyes, camellia-smooth skin. Somehow Brooke never looked hurried or hot or frantic. Her timing was superb, and her strokes smooth as spun glass.

Patty Kay was in charge. With great good humor, of course, but there was no mistaking the leader. And she was the champion of the doubles players, a booming serve, a slashing return of serve, put-away volleys. She was always moving.

In life, Patty Kay Prentiss Pierce Matthews had a mischievous grin, sparkling green eyes, and a husky, almost breathy voice. Her laugh ranged from an infectious peal to an earthy whoop. She laughed a lot. She wasn’t conventionally pretty. Her face was too angular, her mouth too wide. But she was compelling, fascinating, a woman who would always be noticed.

The laughter stopped when the tennis started. Patty Kay’s eyes blazed with fierce determination and total concentration. She was the kind of player who would rather die than lose. But they all played hard, Gina making little cries of victory or despair, Edith’s mouth a thin, straight line, Brooke’s body arching gracefully for an overhead.

Patty Kay’s iron will wasn’t as apparent off the court. At night—the four women lounging in brief, expensive silk gowns as they played bridge and gossiped—Patty Kay was the life of the party. Her earthy laughter sounded again and again. She could outlaugh them all: Gina, thin and nervous, talking a mile a minute; Edith, smiling and agreeable on the surface, but eager to cut down her companions in a superficially nice way; Brooke, tall, dark-haired, serious, her beauty almost breathtaking.

Perhaps the four women took too long a holiday. It was toward the end of the tape, again during one of the nightly
bridge games, that Brooke—Brooke Forrest?—and Patty Kay clashed.

“I wonder what David will think about you and Evan?”

Brooke was arranging her cards. Her beautiful eyes studied Patty Kay for a moment before she said, “What are you talking about?”

“Our tennis pro from heaven, my sweet. You can’t tell me,” Patty Kay said slyly, “that you aren’t lusting for his body. I saw the way you leaned against him this afternoon. Mmm-mmm.”

“Who wouldn’t lean on him?” Gina gave a raucous whistle.

Edith simpered. “Brooke, your secret’s out.”

Brooke’s exquisite face might have been chiseled out of stone. Her eyes flashed as she looked from Edith to Patty Kay. “You’re not funny, either one of you. And don’t you dare say anything like that to my husband.”

“Tell the truth and shame the devil,” Patty Kay crowed.

Brooke threw down her cards. “Patty Kay, stop it. You don’t understand. David—” She shook her head and her lustrous black hair swirled around her narrow, elegantly boned face. “That would make David wild.”

“Oh, ho. That’s an almost irresistible temptation. Are you saying David Forrest, Mr. Perfect, can be roused to
passion?”
Patty Kay’s eyes glittered with amusement. “Oh, dear. Now, that’s another deep question. But one perhaps we’d better not pursue.”

“Why not?” Edith asked, her laughter trilling.

Gina frowned, suddenly serious. Perhaps she had recognized the cruelty of their taunts. “Knock it off, you two.”

Abruptly, Brooke shoved back her chair. “I’ve had enough. Sometimes you go too far, Patty Kay.” The door slammed. The sharp crack almost drowned out Patty Kay’s murmured “She’s never had enough.”

That was the end of the film. I punched Rewind. As the tape whirred, I kept hearing Patty Kay’s final vibrant whoop of laughter.

I returned the cassette to the cabinet and checked my watch. Just after four. Plenty of time. The library came next. It appeared to be the least lived-in room in the big house. The books were so evenly aligned, I knew they’d not been moved in a long time except perhaps to be dusted and reshelved. But it wasn’t the books, though many were beautifully bound, that attracted my interest.

The focal point of the room was the portrait of Patty Kay.

Portrait painters must despair of the unoriginal poses so often selected by their wealthy subjects. The most common, I suppose, are the demure hostess in a white organdy dress seated on a garden bench or the jodhpur-clad horsewoman standing next to an elegant Thoroughbred.

Instead, Patty Kay was forever captured in sweat-dampened tennis whites, her forehand curving into an overhead smash, her tanned face flushed, her green eyes intent and arrogantly triumphant, her curly dark hair bunched beneath a worn headband, her lips parted in effort, her tennis shoes smudged with dust from red clay. The portrait wasn’t especially flattering. The tendons in her neck were distended, the muscles in her arm were bunched, the bones of her vivid face were predatory and implacable. But the artist without doubt captured her intensity, her vitality, her total and complete determination.

Here was a victor, a champion, fiercely proud of her strength, of her body, of her will.

Here was a woman who would never give up.

Or in.

I felt as though Patty Kay’s ghost walked with me
through the rest of her home. I imagined her grin as I surveyed the master bath.

It was Italian Renaissance-inspired: a vaulted ceiling, painted mirrors framed by blond onyx, a deep, golden marble bath. The space was generous enough for a bevy of nymphs to cavort in. Patty Kay could have practiced her serve in this sumptuous chamber—or whatever other physical pleasures she enjoyed.

The master bedroom, too, suggested physical delight as well as respite. A silk spread covered the king-size bed. The walls, too, were of silk, and the window hangings all in subtle shades of rich apricot. At the four corners of the massive bed hung delicate light golden muslin swaths that could be pulled shut. They and the spread were reflected in the mirrored ceiling.

I had no difficulty determining Patty Kay’s closet from Craig’s.

Hers contained rack after rack of designer dresses and suits with every possible matching accessory, all in vibrant, eye-catching primary colors. Gold. Emerald. Scarlet. There were dozens of equally brightly hued shoes and purses for every occasion and season. The drawers held elegant sports apparel for the seashore, the mountains, the courts, the riding trails.

It was easy to imagine her fresh from her bath, lithe and eager, ruffling through the sachet-scented drawers, hurriedly pulling one dress from a hanger, discarding it, picking another.

Craig’s sparsely filled closet and a monogrammed silver hairbrush on the dresser were the only evidence he’d shared in the life of this luxurious room. A dozen suits for winter and summer. Ten conservative dress shirts. More sports clothes, mostly khaki slacks and patterned sports shirts.
Two pairs of black dress shoes. Three pairs of loafers. Athletic clothes. Tennis shoes. Of course.

I would ask Craig. I felt confident he was a good player. But probably not quite good enough to beat Patty Kay.

The hallway walls were covered with framed photographs. I scanned them quickly. The teenage girl, the same one in the album in her purse, had to be Brigit.

Definitely not a case of like mother, like daughter.