The Name of the Game Was Murder (6 page)

Unfortunately, no one else was there.

The table had been reset, and on the sideboard there was an array of covered warming dishes, bowls of strawberries and melon, platters of rolls and muffins, and small boxes of cereal. I was glad to find that this food was familiar, and there weren’t any artistic sauces to confuse me, so I helped myself to some of everything except the cereal—I could have cornflakes at home—and sat down to eat.

“Good morning, Miss Burns. Is there anything else you’d like?” As she entered the room Mrs. Engstrom eyed my heaping plate, then walked to the nearest warming
dish and peeked inside as though to reassure herself I hadn’t taken
all
the eggs. “Please tell me if there’s anything you need or if there is anything I can do for you. I want your stay here to be as comfortable as possible.”

“Thank you,” I said, and then I blurted out, “Mrs. Engstrom, I haven’t told Aunt Thea yet, but I will as soon as I see her, and I’m telling you because you probably have to plan for how many there are at meals and all that …” I took a deep breath and tried to slow down. “What I mean is, I’m going home as soon as the storm is over and the launch comes back.”

I expected her to nod formally, but instead her face softened, and she said, “Your aunt will be disappointed. She told me how much she was looking forward to your visit.”

“But not everyone here wants me,” I began, and uncomfortably shifted in my chair.

“Your aunt does and she’s lonely,” Mrs. Engstrom told me.

I nodded. “I’d be lonely too, if I had to live in this castle, away from my friends and the malls and all that. Aunt Thea and—and Aug—and her husband used to travel a lot, and I remember Mom talking about their town house in New York City. I don’t understand why they decided to hole up here.”

“Mr. Trevor has always come here to write,” she said. “He demands complete quiet. When he’s working on a book, no one—not even Mrs. Trevor—is allowed in his office.”

I didn’t mean to pry, but I was curious. “But what does Aunt Thea do to keep busy while they’re living here?”

Mrs. Engstrom’s lips tightened again, and she said,
“Mr. Trevor has never wanted to hire a secretary, so Mrs. Trevor has always done the job. She answers Mr. Trevor’s mail. You wouldn’t believe how much mail he gets. There’s fan mail, and invitations to speak to various groups, and requests for donations—all sorts of things—and she takes all his phone calls, and watches out that he’s not disturbed while he’s working or resting.”

“But what does she do for fun? I saw a cribbage board in Aug—uh—Mr. Trevor’s office. Do they play cribbage? Read? Watch TV?” I sidetracked myself by asking, “There
is
a television set somewhere around, isn’t there?”

“I’m sorry,” Mrs. Engstrom said. “It’s too difficult to get good reception here.”

I wanted to ask her more about Aunt Thea, but Mrs. Engstrom’s face had closed over, like someone pulling down a shade, and I had to admit to myself that I had no right to get nosy. “All right, I’ll stay,” I called after Mrs. Engstrom as she turned and moved toward the door.

She stopped and actually smiled at me, and I could see how protective she was of Aunt Thea. I guessed that the staff all detested Augustus and loved Thea, and must be here only because they were paid awfully well.

My mouth was full of hash browns when Laura Reed staggered into the dining room and flopped into a chair. “Coffee,” she groaned. “There must be coffee around here.”

I got up and brought her a cup of coffee. It was hot and black. She sipped at it for a few minutes, and apparently it did something for her, because she began to wake up. She sat a little straighter, took a deep breath, and looked to each side, twisting to peer behind her.

“Do you want something else?” I asked. “Breakfast is over there.” Pointedly, I added, “It’s a serve-yourself.”

“I’m not hungry,” she whispered, and leaned toward me, shoving a folded paper into my hand. “I just wanted to make sure that Augustus wasn’t skulking around someplace. Honestly! The nerve of that man! He reminds me of the director on my last picture. Terrible personalities, both of them.”

I opened the paper and saw that it was the list of football scores.

“You offered to help me,” Laura said. “So help. Okay?”

“Augustus said …” Oh, who cared what Augustus had said. I scanned the list. “Have you tried to work it out yourself?”

Laura sighed. “Work out what? I didn’t even read it. I don’t know anything about football scores or what they mean.”

“I don’t know all the teams myself,” I said. I checked the first of the scores to see if they were in that easy number-code, and they weren’t, but maybe there was another kind of clue in one of the numbers. “I’ll read the list out loud,” I told her. “If anything seems familiar to you, just speak up. One of these numbers might be a locker number, or part of an old address, or something like that.”

She nodded, and I began to read: “Final Scores: Rams 14, Buffalo Bills 6; Falcons 13, Oilers 21; Giants 6, Forty-Niners 7; Emerald Bay 1, Stars 0.”

There were a lot more listed, but I didn’t read them, because Laura let out a tiny, high-pitched shriek, sounding like a mouse being chased by a cat. She clapped her hands to her cheeks, gasped as though she were hyper-ventilating, and stared at me in terror.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Nothing!” she wheezed, and snatched the paper out of my hand.

“Something I read must have—”

“Never mind! Forget about it!” Laura jumped to her feet and ran out of the room.

She couldn’t have worried that much about the scores. Was it the Emerald Bay and Stars teams that upset her? I’d never heard of either team, but then I wasn’t that much of a football fan. I buttered a muffin and began to eat it. The people in this house were getting stranger and stranger.

By the time I’d finished breakfast Alex and Julia had come downstairs. Alex had dark bags under his eyes, and Julia looked terrible. The heavy makeup she wore hadn’t helped a bit. I tried to make some kind of conversation with them, but Alex made it obvious that he didn’t want to talk.

Julia seemed to like to talk about herself, so I said, “I couldn’t believe it when Norelle died.”

Julia peered at me over the rim of her coffee cup. “Who?”

“Norelle. In your
Sudden Surrender.
I watched it on TV.”

“Oh,” she mumbled, and then she said, “Oh” again as though she’d suddenly figured out who I was talking about.

“Why did you decide to have her die?”

“I—I guess it just seemed to fit the plot.”

“Even though Prince Eric wanted to marry her?”

“Tough luck for him,” she mumbled.

“Wait a minute,” I said. “I was mixed up. Prince Eric wasn’t in
Sudden Surrender.
He was in
Leftover Love.
”

Julia seemed flustered, and a couple of drops of coffee
sloshed onto the saucer as she put down her cup. “Oh. That’s right,” she said.

I chuckled. “I can see how
I
could get mixed up about which of your characters were in which book, but it’s funny that you would, too.”

She didn’t look too happy, so I searched my mind for something else having to do with writing. “When you were first starting out as a writer, did you get many rejections?” I asked.

She had just put her coffee cup to her lips, and she made a kind of funny sputtering sound in it. She managed to wipe off her mouth and chin before she turned and clutched my arm with one hand. Her long fingernails hurt. “What do you mean by that?” she demanded.

Alex had stopped eating to watch us, and that seemed to upset Julia even more. “Tell me,” she snapped. “What do you mean?”

Startled, and a little bit scared of her, I tugged my arm away and slid my chair out of her reach. “I—I’m hoping to be a writer too,” I said quickly, “and I need to know all sorts of things, and I don’t have any writers at home to talk to. Of course, when I was in the ninth grade an author came to visit our school. She’s one of my very favorite authors, and I love her books, but she told us that her first book was rejected twelve times, and then the thirteenth publisher—”

“Stop!” Julia cried, and clapped her hands over her ears. “I didn’t ask for a history of your life.”

“I was just trying to explain,” I said. “The visiting author told us her husband encouraged her to keep trying. Did your husband encourage you?”

Julia put both hands on the table to steady herself and frowned at me. “Who put you up to this? Augustus?”

“Put me up to what? I was just trying to be friendly.”

She studied me for a moment, then seemed satisfied and went back to staring into the bottom of her coffee cup. “I can’t think this early in the morning, so no more quizzes. Haven’t you got something better to do?”

“I’m sorry,” I mumbled, even more embarrassed because I could feel myself blushing. I pushed back my chair and left the dining room. What a grouch Julia was! I bet she wouldn’t tell me about any early rejections of her manuscripts because she’d had a million of them.

In the entry hall Aunt Thea met me with a smile. “I’ve got fresh orange juice and cinnamon rolls in the sun-room,” she said. “You probably didn’t feel like eating much breakfast, Samantha. Why don’t you settle in with me, and we’ll nibble on rolls and enjoy the storm?”

“You enjoy storms too?” I asked.

She put an arm around my shoulders, and I put one of mine around her waist. In spite of my anger at Augustus, I really wouldn’t have walked out on Aunt Thea. I was glad that I had told Mrs. Engstrom I’d changed my mind about leaving.

When we’d settled into comfortable chairs in the sun-room, I asked Aunt Thea some of the same questions I’d asked Mrs. Engstrom. Aunt Thea was an intelligent, active woman, and I couldn’t imagine that she’d be happy hidden away here, trying to placate her husband. As she talked about some of the famous people they’d visited and who had visited them in New York and here on the island, I tried to figure it out. She was here either because
she was still very much in love with Augustus, or because she was afraid of him, or because … maybe …

I began to wonder if he might have some hold over her. He’d included Thea in the game. Did that mean she had a secret in her past life? One too awful to be made public?

But Thea was Augustus Trevor’s wife! What kind of a monster would terrify his own wife?

Laura came into the room and sat on one of the wicker couches. She stretched out and sighed dramatically before she said, “Whatever Augustus plans to do, I wish he’d get it over with. This waiting is horrible. I tried to call my agent, and would you believe, because of the storm your phone is out.”

Alex, still carrying his coffee cup, wandered in, stared out the windows for a moment, then perched next to Laura. “I hate rain,” he said. “It makes everything look dreary.”

“I’m sorry about the storm,” Thea said. “I’m sure none of us slept well.”

“As a matter of fact I did,” Alex said. He drained the cup and put it on a nearby table. “I even slept quite late this morning.”

“Probably because you were up so late last night,” Laura said.

He shot her a glance from the corners of his eyes. “I wasn’t up late. We all went upstairs together, as I remember.”

Laura shook her head. “Your room is next to mine. I heard you moving around and your door opening and closing. I looked at my bedside clock, and it was nearly midnight.”

I perked up and listened carefully. Had it been Alex at my door?

“I don’t know what you heard, but it wasn’t me,” Alex insisted.

“It couldn’t have been anyone else.”

“Laura dear,” he said, “you’re beginning to sound like a busybody.”

Laura apparently decided not to continue the argument, but she pressed her lips together in a pout and glared at Alex before she said, “You’re such an inspiring person, Alex. It’s wonderful how you managed to achieve so much when you had the terrible handicap of a dysfunctional childhood.”

“Laura …” The word sounded like a warning.

“Even changing your name,” she said. “Of course, I suppose that didn’t bother you, since you never knew your parents and Alex Chambers has so much more … marketing appeal than—what was it? Keriomaglopolous or something like that?”

Thea reached over and patted Alex’s arm. “No one’s childhood is perfect,” she said. “If you had a difficult time, then I’m sure it helped you to be even more sympathetic and understanding of others.”

He glanced sharply, questioningly, at Thea, mumbled “Thank you,” then stared down at his white ostrich boots as though he hadn’t seen them before.

His air of conceit had vanished, and I felt sorry for him for thinking he needed it as a security blanket. Why couldn’t he be proud that he’d been able to rise above his early poverty?

Julia wandered into the sun-room, complaining, “So here’s where everyone is gathering. No one told me.” She
dragged a small wooden chair from its place by the wall, in order to sit close to the group. “Arthur’s furious,” she announced. “He tried to get through to his Washington office, but your phone isn’t working.”

“I’m sorry,” Thea apologized. “We often lose phone service during bad weather.”

Laura sighed. “When
is
this dreadful storm going to be over?”

Lucy, who had just arrived with fresh hot coffee, said, “Mrs. Trevor, the weather reporter on the radio said he’s not counting on good weather until Monday or Tuesday.”

There was a general groan, but Thea said, “Thank you, Lucy. If you see Senator Maggio, will you please ask him to join us?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Lucy said, but as she left the room the senator and Buck passed her.

“We heard voices,” Buck said, and he pulled up another of the small, straight-backed chairs that stood against the wall. Senator Maggio did the same, squeezing his chair into the circle. It occurred to me that we were like a group of pioneers, drawing our wagons into a ring for protection.

Buck was his unruly, beefy self, but Senator Maggio probably looked worse than anyone else in the room. His face sagged, and his eyes were sunken behind such dark circles, he looked as though someone had punched him.

“I’m afraid you didn’t get much sleep last night,” Thea said gently. “Didn’t the hot milk help?”