Murder Makes it Mine

by Christina Strong

  As Samantha re-entered the living room, she decided it was time to make an announcement about their Bridge partner. She smiled brightly around at them. “Did all of you know that Emilee is going to move to one of Alison’s condominiums?”

  Brenda Talley’s lips tightened. It irritated her that everyone there thought of the elegant condominiums as Alison’s condominiums just because Laura’s niece was chief salesperson there.

  Only Brenda, whose husband had gone to great lengths and considerable financial strain to build those condos, frowned at them being called Alison’s. Her husband’s straitened financial condition had resulted in the curtailment of her shopping trips to Richmond and to Tyson’s Corner and all the outlet malls near D.C. and she resented it.

  Nobody noticed Brenda’s frown, however. Everybody was too excited for Emilee. Delighted cries rang throughout the room.

  “Oh, what wonderful news.” Laura was the first to comment.

  “No! You don’t mean it,” came from Anne Stuart.

  “Oh, Emilee, how nice.” Tyler Brokenborough was all smiles.

  “It’s about time you got rid of that albatross of a house. If you’d kept it hanging around your neck much longer, it would have been the death of you.” This last was from Agnes, and for once Samantha wholeheartedly agreed with her.

  Emilee sat and beamed, her hands tightly clasped in her lap to keep them from flying around to express her happiness. “Yes, it is wonderful, isn’t it? Brenda’s Herb got me a very good price for my place, and Alison sold me a delightful condominium. A corner one. With room for a small garden.”

  Brenda’s displeasure dissipated to see that everyone took for granted Herb’s involvement with the sale of Emilee’s house. Fiercely possessive of her handsome mate, she basked in any praise of his abilities.

  Emilee wiggled in her seat like a happy puppy. “And it was all Samantha’s idea.” Instantly, everybody turned to her benefactress. “Oh, good for you, Samantha.”

  Samantha calmly accepted their compliments for having thought of the condos for Emilee. She only regretted that she hadn’t thought of them earlier.

  Everyone returned to their seats, smiling. With all the bad news they’d had lately, they were especially joyous to have this bit of good.

  Agnes Chamberlain broke into their happy murmuring to announce, “I hope you’ve made your apricot pound cake, Samantha. Bridge at your house wouldn’t be worth the trouble without it.”

  Samantha burst out laughing. “Agnes, I’m glad you like my pound cake so much.” It would do no good to hint that Agnes might have left off her second comment.

  Everyone agreed that Agnes Chamberlain was hardly the soul of tact. It was no secret that Agnes had long ago decided that tact was a waste of her time.

  Anne Stuart couldn’t resist. “As for me, I hope you haven’t made your apricot pound cake.” She glanced down at her voluptuous figure. “You know I can’t resist it, and if I gain one more ounce I won’t be able to get into this dress.”

  Agnes took this as a direct attack on her chance for apricot pound cake, bristled and retaliated. “Well, I don’t see why that has to interfere with my enjoyment of dessert.” She lifted her chin and delivered the coup de grace. “Next time buy your dress in a size that fits you.”

  “Agnes!” Samantha almost shouted. “Don’t worry about a thing.” She put a firm hand on Anne’s shoulder and shoved her back down in her chair. “I did make apricot pound cake!”

  From her place at the farthest table, Brenda Talley hooted with laughter.

  Tyler Brokenborough, always intimidated by Agnes and fearful that the impossible was going to happen and an actual fight between Anne and Agnes break out, tried hard to find something to distract them. “Oh, dear,” she called out in a tremulous voice, “I’ve broken a nail.”

  She held the finger up for them to see. Everyone jumped on the silly diversion with little murmurs of sympathy, but it was Janet who saved the day. She said, “Here, I always carry a nail kit in my purse.” She dug for it and handed a small leather case to Tyler. “It has all you’ll need. File, scissors, the works.”

  Smiling broadly, Tyler thanked her and took it. Battle had been averted.

  Samantha took a deep, relieved breath and said, “Ladies! It’s past time to start. Please, let’s play Bridge!”

  ***

  When the others had left, Laura Fulton wiped tears of merriment from her eyes. “I thought you were going to actually leap on Agnes when you shouted, I did make apricot pound cake!”

  Samantha chuckled. “I wanted to, but I had all I could do to hold Anne in her chair. She was the one who was about to do the leaping on Agnes.”

  They both sat smiling for a while, companionably sipping their tea. Then Laura said, “Did you notice that Anne ate the strawberries you’d fixed for the diet conscious among us . . . and the apricot pound cake.”

  Samantha opened her eyes wide under lifted brows and refused to comment. An instant later they were both laughing again.

  Nothing was really that funny, but they needed laughter to release the awful tension of the last few days. When their laughter died down, things were a little more in proportion.

  Samantha wiped the corners of her eyes with her napkin, and said quietly, “You know, we’re certainly a diverse group. It’s a wonder we get along as well as we do.”

  “Yes, it is.” Laura sipped her tea. After a moment she said, “Janet Wilson fitted right in, didn’t she?”

  “Well, she always has, the few times she’s subbed.”

  “Yes, but you know people change sometimes when they become regulars.” Laura twined two fingers in the hair beside her right cheek.

  “It was sweet of ‘the girls’ to ask her to be a regular so soon. I suppose it had a lot to do with . . .” It was still hard for Samantha to talk about Olivia’s death. “. . . her loss of her cousin.”

  Laura twisted her hair. “Yes. That’s got to be difficult for her. Olivia was the one who brought her here, and who got her the job with Herb Talley at Greater Tidewater Realty, too. It’s no wonder she’s a little quiet just now.”

  Samantha took a sip of tea.

  “Several of ‘the girls’ remarked on how friendly and easy to get along with she was. She seems to be fitting in without any effort.” Laura grimaced. “I guess we’re lucky Janet survived Brenda. Poor Olivia almost didn’t when she got Herb to agree to hire Janet. Remember? I thought Brenda was going to wring Olivia’s neck over that. She didn’t like having such a pretty young woman come into the office to be near her precious Herb one little bit.” She sighed. “Brenda’s so darned possessive of him. She was pretty cool to Olivia for quite a while as a result.”

  “I’m certain she’s sorry now.” Samantha refused to give in to the sadness that came over her.

  “Yes, I’m sure she is. Brenda may be a little hard, but she’s not totally without feelings.”

  “Hard?” Samantha gave that a moment’s thought. “Yes, I suppose that does describe her. Has she always been?”

  “She was certainly tough when Herb was just starting out. She got listings for him by absolutely refusing to take ‘no’ for an answer. She was the driving force that built that brokerage.”

  Samantha smiled. “Really? I wasn’t here then. They were well established and quite successful by the time Andrew bought our property through them. But I can see how it would be. Herb was the charmer, Brenda was the sledgehammer?”

  “Yeah, and it worked.” Laura looked into her empty tea cup.

  “And very well, too. They’re doing fine now.”

  “Yes, and Herb just paid a fortune to build the condos Alison is selling, so they must be even more successful than we thought.”

  “I don’t know, Laurie. Brenda gripes about not being able to whiz up to D.C. to shop at her favorite places as much as she used to.” She looked at her friend’s empty cup. “Want some more tea?”

  “No, thanks.” Laura sighed, got up and went to put her tea cup on the
counter beside the sink. “Alison’s due home any time now, and she’s been a little depressed lately. I’d better be there for her.”

  Samantha sat up straighter. “It’s not like Alison to be depressed.” Samantha’s voice held a note of concern. “Let me know if there’s anything I can do.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. She listens to you.” Laura sighed again.

  Samantha interpreted the sigh. “That’s because you’ve always been like a mother to her, you know. Sad to say, at Alison’s age, nobody listens to their mother. If you think she needs to talk, and you’d like to, just send her over. I can’t imagine that she’s holding back anything from you, though.”

  “Okay. I will. Maybe she’s just tired. That ghastly man she was dating—that Randal Hale—seems to have fallen by the wayside, so she isn’t keeping late hours. I haven’t a clue what’s wrong between them. If anything. I’m just glad he’s gone.” She moved through the kitchen. “Thanks for the tea.” With a flip of her hand, Laura disappeared out the kitchen door.

  Samantha got up, let a resentful Rags out of his box, and went to find her apron. It was one of the rules of the Bridge Club that the hostess must refuse all offers of help from the players. It was a good rule. It cleared the decks for the hostess to clean up as she pleased, and to take care of any family duties. It also got ‘the girls’ home in time to cook a decent supper for their own families and thus avoid having to drop out of the group because of husbandly discontent.

  Samantha thought about that as she tied her apron strings. Husbandly discontent. Even with all the advances made by the feminist movement, it still existed. Hmmmmm. There were worse things, she decided, than being a widow.

  She was up to her elbows in soap suds—never would she trust her fine china to the dishwasher, no matter what the manufacturer said about the gentle cycle—when the phone rang. Quickly she wiped her hands.

  “Hello?”

  “Sam.” It was the Dratted Colonel, of course. Nobody else was rude enough to call her Sam. “We need to get together and make some plans.”

  “About catching the vandal?”

  “Absolutely.”

  “Very well. When would you like to meet?”

  “How about now?”

  “Colonel McLain. It’s supper time.”

  “So?”

  “So I’m going to eat supper before I meet with you.”

  “Hey. How about going out to eat? Do you like Chinese?”

  Samantha was hesitant. Why did he have to say Chinese? If only he hadn’t said Chinese. She didn’t want to encourage this man to think of her as anything but a neighbor. She certainly had no desire to graduate to dinner partner—even if she was an absolute pushover for Chinese food. But she had, after all, insisted that she was going to be part of the plot to catch whomever was ruining gardens.

  It mattered even more, now that the situation had escalated far beyond mere vandalism. Now it was murder. Olivia Charles had been murdered. That opened the door for a lot of questions. Was Olivia’s death tied to the murder of the stranger that the police didn’t seem to be making any headway with? Or was Olivia’s murder tied to the vandalism they’d been experiencing.

  Now that there was the distinct possibility that the same person who had been vandalizing the gardens of Riverhaven had been seen by Olivia and she had consequently been killed by him, there was no way she was going to chicken out. She was more determined than ever to catch the vandal if by doing so she could bring to justice Olivia Charles’s murderer.

  “Come on, Sam! What’s the holdup? Will you go or won’t you? I know a great little Chinese restaurant out where Chesapeake and Portsmouth run together. The drive’ll give us time to talk.”

  “Give me fifteen minutes.”

  “Be sure to cage the mutt.”

  As if she’d forget to do so. She always put Rags in his airy indoor kennel when she left the house for any length of time. That way, if a fire should break out, the firemen knew exactly where to find him. Every Christmas, she took a big plate of cookies to the station house and when she did, she never failed to remind the firemen there of just exactly where Rags would be found and to impress upon them that he must be saved.

  “Does Rags make you nervous, Colonel?”

  “Yeah. I’m wearing good slacks.”

  “All right. I’ll put him in his kennel.” From the floor at her feet, Rags began to percolate. She’d said the ‘k’ word.

  As if he could hear the little dog, the Colonel said, “Don’t forget to padlock it.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  Samantha absolutely loved Chinese food. She rarely got to eat it because she hated to go out alone for dinner. Laura, with whom she usually went out whenever Laura’s pilot husband Bob was away, was certain that all Chinese cuisine was loaded with monosodium glutamate and wouldn’t touch it. It had therefore been a real treat tonight to eat Broccoli Beef, Pepper Steak and Cashew Chicken to her heart’s content.

  Dinner had been wonderful. On the drive home, Samantha was fairly content with the Dratted Colonel. Until he drove into the oncoming lane.

  “Well, that’s the list. I . . . Ooooh!” Samantha cringed back into the expensive leather bucket seat as McLain swerved back into the right lane. The red Mustang he’d almost met head-on flew past with a blare of its horn. “Will you please be careful!”

  “Had to get around that old fart in the Lincoln. He was five miles under the speed limit.”

  “Kindly watch your language! And, for your information, that man was a full decade younger than either one of us, Colonel McLain.”

  “Well if he’s so damn young, he ought not to drive like an old fart.”

  Samantha clamped her lips together and ignored him. Such behavior on a multiple-laned thoroughfare was beyond her comprehension. What was not beyond her comprehension was the fact that Colonel John Francis McLain enjoyed shocking her.

  She thrust the list she been going to go over with him back into her purse and sat looking resolutely ahead. Time for a little payback.

  McLain zipped off Interstate 64 right after Forest Lawn Cemetery, and they were all the way down Terminal Boulevard to Naval Station Norfolk before he said, “You wanna go over to her house and run all this by your friend Laura?”

  “It’s late.”

  “Now you’re being picky. It’s not even eight-thirty yet.”

  “It will be by the time we get there.”

  “Naw.” He shoved the gas petal down and the Jaguar growled as it leapt forward. “We’ll make it in plenty of time. Even prissy ladies like you don’t mind calls before nine.”

  “That’s telephone calls, not personal appearances.”

  “It’s all the same. Ms. Fulton’s a class act. She won’t mind.”

  He wove in and out of traffic until he was at the head of the pack waiting for the signal light at Sewell’s Point Road to turn green, revving his engine impatiently.

  “Will you stop that! You act like a teenager trying to race off a stoplight.”

  “Yeah, I do, don’t I?” He grinned at her. “I’ve always found that being first off the light gets me ahead for the next one. Do it enough, and you can make pretty good time—for being in town.”

  “This fine car is wasted on you, Colonel,” Samantha said scathingly. “You should have gotten one of the little ones that everyone expects to zip around like a water bug.”

  “Thanks for the suggestion. Maybe I will get one.” He made the turn into Riverhaven with tires screeching and shot down the slight hill past the Yacht and Country Club.

  “I wish you’d slow down. There are children and pets in this neighborhood, you know.”

  “Leash law.”

  “Not for children.”

  “More’s the pity. Besides, by this time of night they’re all in bed.”

  He whipped around the dogleg past her house, braked on the last of the asphalt and entered Laura Fulton’s gravel drive with care.

  Samantha muttered, “Well. Nice to know you can
be considerate about something.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Do you mutter a lot, Sam?”

  “Never before I met you. And do not call me Sam.”

  “Don’t get surly, now, Sam.”

  He let the car roll to a stop and set the brake. “Lights are on downstairs, and they already have company.” He nodded toward a dark car parked a little further on.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t intrude.”

  “Why? Haven’t you ever heard ‘the more the merrier’?” He was already out of his side and coming to open her door.

  Before Samantha got out of the Jaguar, Laura swung her front door wide. “Samantha! Colonel McLain. I thought I heard a car. Come on in.”

  Samantha wondered why Laurie was so glad to see them. Her tone of voice made them seem like a rescue mission. Whoever her company was, wasn’t she enjoying them? Walking sedately into the living room, Samantha hid her burning curiosity to see whom she’d find there.

  Janet Wilson sat in one of the wing chairs bordering the fireplace. She shot to her feet as they walked in. “I should be going.”

  “Oh, no. Please don’t let us chase you off.” Samantha smiled warmly.

  Laura put in, “Do sit back down, Janet, it’s early yet.” She gestured toward the sofa the bulk of which marked off the conversational grouping there at the fireplace. “Won’t you and the Colonel sit there, Samantha? Then we’ll all be close.”

  Considering the cavernous size of Laura’s living room, the suggestion was a sensible one. Samantha sat, and McLain folded his length down beside her on the opposite end of the couch.

  When all the fuss of who wanted coffee, who wanted tea, and would the Colonel prefer a Bourbon? Whiskey? Scotch? was over, Laura looked straight at McLain and added the final enticement, “I have Wild Turkey, if you’d like some.”

  “Coffee’ll be fine, thanks.”

  While Laura went about playing perfect hostess, Samantha noted that McLain was watching Janet Wilson with a great deal of interest. Good. She was certainly a lovely young woman. Blonde and beautiful, perhaps she’d engage the ex-Marine’s interest long enough for Samantha to get on with her plans for the entrapment of the vandal without him. She could only hope!