“He’ll be along shortly,” Maribelle said. “Did you know him well, Miss…?”
The girl sat down on the sofa again, but this time she sat up straight. “My name is Michelle, madame, and it is Mrs.,” she said. “Mrs. Paul David Delaney.”
“I beg your pardon?” Addy said. She heard Maribelle’s sharp intake of breath.
“I said I am Mrs. Delaney.” The girl smiled at Addy. “He and I were married in France just before he was called to home to see his father.”
“Oh, dear,” Addy said.
Maribelle collapsed into the armchair behind her. “Nonsense,” she said.
“No, madame, I assure you it is not nonsense.” Her hands twisted on the clasp of her handbag. “I have the livret de famille.”
“What’s that?” Addy asked.
“The certificate of marriage, except that it is a small red book.”
“You have it with you?”
“Non, madame. It is put away, although it is quite simple to send for it.” She smiled at Addy. “I have told you who I am, madame. May I ask who you are?”
“I’m Addy Norwood.” Addy leaned across the coffee table and offered the girl her hand.
“And I,” said Maribelle, making no move to extend her hand in turn, “am Maribelle Delaney. I am David’s mother.”
Michelle sat back in embarrassment at choosing the wrong woman. “Oh. Then you are my belle-mere—my mother-in-law.”
“If what you say is true.”
“I assure you it is. When he comes home he will tell you.”
“David is—” Addy began.
Maribelle Delaney cut her off. “My son is working in the fields this time in August. He may be quite late. Perhaps you would prefer to go to your hotel and let me have him call you when he comes in.”
“I have no hotel, madame. I have just arrived.”
“Why on earth did you take so long?” Addy asked, despite a withering glance from Maribelle. “He’s been home more than five years.”
“It is complicated, madame. David will explain it all when I see him.”
“Well,” Maribelle said, “it’s a shock. I can’t deny that.” Suddenly she smiled. “To have a French daughter-in-law is certainly unusual around here.” She patted Michelle’s hand. “Quite a treat, in fact. You’ve made me forget my manners. You wanted a glass of water. We can do better than that. Addy, is that pitcher of lemonade still in the refrigerator?”
“Yes, Maribelle. Shall I get it?”
Maribelle stood. “No, I’ll get it. I admit I need a little time by myself to take all this in. Excuse me, my dear.”
Addy didn’t know what Maribelle was up to, but this sudden display of charm meant she was planning some devilment.
Purely to make conversation, Addy said, “Michelle, is it? That is a lovely dress. Is it French?”
The girl had a sweet smile. If she married David just before he came home from Paris, she couldn’t have been more than seventeen or eighteen at the time.
“My mother worked as a seamstress when I was little. She taught me to sew. I make all my own clothes and some for my…friends.”
Addy was certain she hadn’t meant to say friends. “You made that lovely dress?”
“Dresses are too expensive to buy.”
“And you did all those bound buttonholes by hand? And the buttons! How lovely and unusual. Are they antique?”
“Not quite, but they are old. They are handmade. See, each is different.” She proudly showed the tiny creatures on the buttons.
Maribelle came back into the room carrying a tray on which an enormous cut-glass pitcher sat among three equally elegant glasses filled with ice. The girl waited politely until she was handed a glass and a lace doily on which to set it, then waited to drink until both the older women had taken sips.
Maribelle leaned forward chummily. “How did you and David meet? Surely you can’t be old enough to have been married long.”
“I was barely eighteen when we married, madame.”
“Please, call me Maribelle. Madame sounds so formal from the newest member of the family.”
Addy stared at her sister. This girl, a member of the family? Just like that? Addy didn’t think so for a minute.
“He lived in a small studio in our neighborhood,” Michelle said. “I worked for my father. He owns a shop that makes confections and has a small café. David came in from time to time to eat and to buy marrons glacés—candied chestnuts.”
“Oh, yes, he adores marrons.”
“I posed for him.”
“Ah.” Maribelle nodded as though everything had just been explained to her satisfaction. “You’re an artist’s model.”
“Oh, no, madame. Pas du tout. Not at all. I posed for him—with all my clothes on. He wanted more, of course, but my father would have been scandalized. We fell in love.”
“I see. Of course he would be enchanted by such a lovely creature.”
Somehow Maribelle made the word creature sound ugly.
“He wanted me to…” Michelle was blushing. “But I believe that a woman should go to her marriage bed a virgin.”
“Admirable. So he married you. How on earth did you manage it?”
“He had his carte d’identité with his Paris address. The banns were posted in his arondissement where my parents would be unlikely to see them.”
“Your English is very good.”
“Thank you, madame. If I had not married David, I would have gone to the Sorbonne. I wished to be a simultaneous translator.”
“So you were married without telling your parents?”
“We were both over eighteen. We did not need permission.”
Was there a slight jut to that pretty jaw? Was she reminding Maribelle that her husband didn’t need his parents’ permission to marry, either?
“We agreed to keep the marriage a secret so that I could continue to live at home. David’s studio was not acceptable for two.”
“Secret from us, as well, it would seem.”
“He said he must break it to his parents gently. So when he was called home, he said he would tell them—you—and return to Paris as soon as he could.”
“To stay?”
“Oh, yes. He didn’t want to live in America. He wanted to paint and to make statues. He had already painted several of the people in the neighborhood for small commissions. He would have progressed quickly. He is a wonderful portraitist. Then when he didn’t come back, I tried to get in touch with him, but I could not. There was something not right about the address he gave me for his home here.”
“I’ll bet there was,” Maribelle whispered.
From the way the girl stiffened, Addy thought she’d both heard and understood the comment.
“So I assume you got a divorce?” Maribelle asked.
“Oh, no, madame. I do not believe in divorce, and I would never divorce David. I love him. And I know he loves me.”
“If he loved you, my dear, he would have given you his correct address, surely. And he would have come back for you,” Addy said. She felt genuinely sorry for this child. “Instead, he disappeared and I’m sure hurt you terribly.”
“I know that when I see David he will explain.” It was obvious she was trying not to cry.
“No doubt he will. To both of us.” Maribelle said dryly. “I don’t know about you, but I definitely need some more lemonade.” She drained her glass, picked up the pitcher and went toward the kitchen. As she reached the hall doorway she turned. “I suspect a French divorce is extremely expensive, isn’t it?” Then she walked out.
The girl whispered to Addy, “She thinks I came for money, but I did not. I know David still loves me, and I have one weapon he cannot resist. One look into my eyes, one touch, one kiss, and he will be mine again, whatever has happened between.” The chin definitely jutted now. So she planned to defy Maribelle? A dangerous game for one so unsophisticated.
“Can you call him on the telephone?” the girl asked. “And give him som
e reason to come home?”
“He’s out in the fields, dear,” Addy said, taking her cue from Maribelle. “He can’t be reached by phone.”
Maribelle came back through the front hall carrying the pitcher by its heavy handle. “You deserve to be paid for your pain and suffering. And of course to live in Paris in comfort. No doubt we can come to some arrangement so that you can go back to Paris and arrange a quiet divorce like your quiet marriage.”
Now there was no mistaking the steel in the girl’s dark eyes. She would be a formidable opponent for Maribelle. She had the strength of her love to rely on. Poor romantic little thing. She had no idea how much heartbreak she was in for. Sooner or later they’d have to tell her that David had married again and had a son.
The girl half turned on the sofa to look back at Maribelle. “I know that you mean well, madame,” she said. “But I did not come for money. I came for my husband.”
“I see,” Maribelle said. “Of course I understand precisely how you feel.”
Maribelle took one step toward the girl, raised the pitcher and brought it down on the girl’s skull. The jug exploded in her hand. She stood there clutching the handle while glass and lemonade cascaded around her.
For a moment the girl was motionless, then she crumpled forward from the waist and slid in a heap between the sofa and the coffee table.
“What have you done?” Addy screamed and dropped to her knees beside the girl. “My God, the poor child! Call an ambulance!”
“Sit down and shut up, Addy.” Maribelle kicked aside the shards of glass at her feet. “She fell on the Oriental rug, thank God. We’d never be able to get blood out of that yellow silk upholstery.”
Addy reached for the girl’s wrist. Her eyes were open, her mouth slack. A thin trickle of blood oozed onto her forehead from under the dark hair. “Belle, I don’t think she’s breathing. Why on earth did you hit her?”
“Seemed the best thing to do,” Maribelle said evenly, and came around to kneel on Michelle’s other side. She stuck her fingers expertly beneath the girl’s chin. “No pulse. Not much blood. Must have died almost instantly, otherwise you know how scalp wounds bleed—the rug would be soaked.”
“Dead? Maribelle, what on earth have you done?” Addy pulled herself to her feet but dropped immediately into her chair. “We have to call the police. You didn’t mean to do it—”
“Of course I meant to do it, you idiot.”
“What if somebody knows she’s here?”
“If somebody comes looking for her, we’ll say we never saw her.”
“And if somebody in town saw her come into the house?”
“Four o’clock on a hot August afternoon? Don’t be ridiculous. They’re all on their back porches trying to keep cool. She never came to our door. We never saw her. Period. Never heard of her.”
“And what about David?”
“He won’t be back in Rossiter for another two weeks. He’ll never know she came.”
“And Esther? What about Esther? She’ll see the mess.”
“She won’t be back until tomorrow morning. Thank God it was her afternoon off. By the time she gets here the place will be spotless and the girl will be gone.”
“Where?”
“I don’t know. If we put her into the trunk of my car and dump her out in the woods, some hunter could come across her. They can identify people’s remains these days even from skeletons. I suppose we’ll just have to bury her.”
“Bury her? Maribelle Norwood Delaney, do you have any idea how hard the ground is in August? You may be strong, but Hercules couldn’t drive a spade into that dirt.”
“He could into the flower beds.”
“And have the gardener unearth her? I don’t think so.”
“How about the basement?”
“That’s harder than concrete.”
“Then it’s going to have to be the garden, Addy. Back behind the old summerhouse. Those rosebushes haven’t been dug up in years, and I can keep Vern from turning them again. If we dig a deep enough hole, he can plant rosebushes over her until he’s blue in the face without finding her.”
“It’s got to be deep enough so the coyotes and raccoons don’t get at her, either. Do we have to sit here and look at her like that? She makes me nervous.”
“Go get some of those big plastic leaf bags out of the pantry. Four or five, anyway. We’ll roll her up and put her in the window seat until it gets dark and the café closes.”
“What about fingerprints?”
“What about ’em? Oh, very well, put on your dishwashing gloves and bring me my gardening gloves, though how they’re going to find fingerprints if they don’t find her is more than I can see.”
“What about the pitcher?”
“We’ll put the pieces in the garbage and tell Esther I broke it.”
“What about her purse? Her clothes? She can’t have come with nothing but that dress.”
“She said she didn’t have a hotel. Let’s hope she put everything in a locker somewhere. When she doesn’t pay the fee, they’ll open the locker, toss her suitcase into the lost luggage, and after a while they’ll throw it away.”
“You hope.”
“Open her purse.”
“You open her purse, Maribelle. You killed her.”
Together they removed the contents of Michelle’s small purse. They found fifty dollars and some change, the stub of a bus ticket from Memphis to Rossiter, a powder compact, a lipstick and a lace-edged handkerchief.
“We’d better strip her,” Maribelle said.
“What? That’s obscene.”
“Get a grip, Addy. We don’t want them to be able to identify her by the labels in her clothes, do we?”
“There aren’t any. She made her dress.”
“She’s wearing undergarments, isn’t she? Before we bury her, we’ll strip her and burn her clothes.”
“In August?”
“We’ve got the charcoal grill outside. No reason we couldn’t do a little late-night barbecue, is there?”
“You have an answer for everything.”
“I have to, since you have all these silly questions. Get the damn trash bags.”
“Esther will notice if we use that many bags at one time. She watches those things like a hawk.”
“Damnation, Addy, sometimes you drive me to distraction.” Maribelle stood up. “All right. I’ll drive into town and buy a shower curtain liner. That’s plenty big enough to wrap her in. In the meantime, you clean up the mess. Be sure you pick up every piece of that pitcher. One or two of them might have blood on them.”
Addy knew it would take Maribelle at least an hour to drive to Collierville, buy the shower-curtain liner and drive back. More than enough time to pick up the pieces of the pitcher and clean up the lemonade.
She realized with a start that she’d become an accessory to murder.
She’d also become a real threat to Maribelle. Maribelle had learned to ignore Addy’s long affair with her husband, but now Conrad was dead and unable to protect her.
She’d best protect herself.
She sat down at the desk in the library, took out a sheaf of stationery and some carbon paper, and began to write. She’d make certain Maribelle knew that if anything happened to her, Addy, before Maribelle died, the story of Michelle Delaney’s death would be revealed.
She’d assure Maribelle that if her sister predeceased her, she’d destroy all three copies. She wasn’t any more interested in being brought up on charges than Maribelle was. The secret must die with the two sisters.
In the meantime Maribelle would finally have to change her will so that Addy could live in the house for the rest of her life and have enough money to travel.
Maribelle would be furious, but if the confession was finished and in the mail before Maribelle got back, there was little she could do about it.
She gathered up all the shards of crystal, put them into a paper grocery bag, bundled them with the original copy of her confes
sion, taped the entire thing together and hid it in the dumbwaiter. She’d hidden her journal there for years successfully, but it had become too much trouble to climb in and out of the thing now that she was getting so arthritic. Maribelle had only discovered the diary after Addy moved it to the top of her chifferobe.
She had no intention of writing a single word about this incident in her journal, so she didn’t care that Maribelle stole it periodically to read what she’d written. She wouldn’t have to take the package out of the dumbwaiter again unless she wanted to destroy it after Maribelle’s death.
When Maribelle returned with the liner, Addy was innocently scrubbing blood and lemonade out of the rug. She’d wrapped the poor girl’s head in a tea towel so she wouldn’t have to look at her face.
Burying her took most of the night and all of both women’s strength.
They stripped Michelle’s body and wrapped it in the liner before they lowered it into the grave.
Filling in the grave was easier than digging it, but still took a couple of hours. Both women had to rest frequently and were bedeviled by mosquitoes.
By the time they finished covering their tracks and cleaning up after themselves, they were much too tired to deal with Michelle’s clothes, so Addy took them to her room and hid them in the back of her closet in a shoe box.
Later the next day after Esther had gone home, she cut all those marvelous buttons off Michelle’s dress. They were too beautiful to burn. Perhaps one day she’d feel safe enough to use them on one of her own dresses.
They burned the clothes that evening.
All they could do now was wait to see if they’d gotten away with it. It was hell, especially for Addy.
“No one will ever know,” Maribelle said to Addy after a lovely welcome-home dinner with David, Karen and Paul Edward, already known as Trey. “No one’s looking for her. It’s obvious David has forgotten all about her. We’re home free.”
Not quite, although Maribelle didn’t know that yet.
When Addy finally told her about the three confessions, she thought Maribelle would kill her at once. After she calmed down, she agreed to Addy’s terms. Addy didn’t tell her about the pieces of the pitcher she’d saved with the confession.
Both women tried to get on with their lives, but their relationship—always rocky—was soured for good. Maribelle worried that Addy would get an attack of conscience and confess. Addy worried that they’d get caught.
House of Strangers (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 24
