“You gave up acting?”
“There wasn’t much to give up. My acting career was going nowhere. I told myself, Girl, there are three things that you do well. You can act but that didn’t work out. You can write—and that’s where you come in.” Another pat on my hand and I folded my arms to ward off any further attempts. “And you can sew. Under the bench in the trailer back there is a Singer. You’d be amazed how many girls who think they’re going to hang on to their wedding dresses forever wind up getting rid of them. The marriage goes sour, what are they going to do? They’re going to offload them onto me for a knockdown price and I’m going to remodel them into amazing gowns I can sell to gullible new brides.”
“Where’s your showroom? The beach?”
“Don’t knock it,” she said. “What better place? Most of the weddings take place there anyway. But no, you’re right. Actually I go to their houses for the fittings.”
“And Sean Marriott modeled for you? How did you meet him?”
“Hah!” She slapped her knee. “That’s a good one. I met him right here on the beach. It’s secluded down here. No one’s ever around and there were these guys, they had a ceremony like your mother’s only they were gay. I made the bride’s dress. Sean came to the ‘wedding’ and I showed him my collection. After that he borrowed dresses one at a time, at least once a month.”
“And that’s how he came to be wearing it when he was killed?”
“I wondered if maybe he was returning it to me when he was attacked? I wasn’t here. I had a big problem that night. I’d had a ride earlier in the day to Sag Harbor where I had an appointment with the foot doctor there. Have you ever had an ingrown toenail? It’s the worst. And then I did a little shopping; there’s a health food store where I can get the short-grain brown rice that I like. I browsed in BookHampton and I walked over the bridge to North Haven to catch the sunset. And then I did something quite unusual for me. I stuck out my thumb and hitched a ride to the Shelter Island ferry. It’s a really special place, totally unspoiled.”
“Did you really?” I was impressed. I would never in a million years hitch a ride from a stranger. I always imagined they’d strangle me as soon as I got in the car.
“So I went to Shelter Island—it’s only a five-minute hop and I wandered around there as far as I could get on foot but then, of course, I couldn’t get home. I had my cell phone but I didn’t know the numbers for cabs on Shelter Island. And when I finally knocked on a door and asked for a number, there were no cabs available. No one wanted to drive as far as Lazy Point.”
“So what did you do?”
“I went and stood by the ferry until I found someone who was coming this way. I didn’t get back until nearly midnight by which time, from what I can make out, poor Sean was already floating in the bay.”
So much for M saw something.
“You said you lived near Mallaby? It’s close to here?”
“Just along the bay and through the woods over there.” She nodded behind her.
“So the next night—Bettina was killed very near here?”
“And I was over by the ocean watching them haul poor Sean out of the water.”
“And then? You said you were with Louis Nichols?”
“You don’t miss a trick, do you? I went home with Louis, spent the night there. He lives within walking distance of the Old Stone Market.”
“He brought you to the market this morning?”
She looked at me quizzically. “Yes. He did. We’re an item, as they say, only he’s not too keen to make it public. Doesn’t really like us being seen as a couple. I think he’s got a crush on Franny Cook and he never likes me cramping his style when he goes to the Old Stone Market.”
“Surely not?” I tried to make it sound as if I didn’t believe what she was saying but I recalled noting Louis Nichols’s interest in Franny at the Stone Landing Residents Association meeting, and the way he had followed her around this morning was revealing.
“Stands to reason. She’s a beautiful creature who’s at least twenty years younger than I am.” Once again the vulnerable side of her filtered through a chink in her buoyant and theatrical armor.
I wondered who had jilted her all those years ago. However much she might claim she had put it all behind her, her confidence was clearly still pretty shaky where men were concerned. Louis Nichols would be a good catch. His money would get her out of her precarious trailer existence.
I was uncomfortable in her presence. Was it because I felt sorry for her? Was it a case of it takes one to know one and having been jilted by Tommy, I knew how she felt? Was I worried that at the rate I was going, I too would wind up one day living on the beach like this eccentric old maid?
“I’d better be going,” I said, getting to my feet.
“What about my manuscript?” she asked. “I’ve got it right here.”
There was a pleading note in her voice that got to me. I knew how important it was to get feedback on your work. Whenever I finished a book I’d ghosted, I sat around biting my nails until I had first the publisher’s and then—twice as nerve-racking—my subject’s reaction.
I thought quickly. By all accounts, Bettina had interviewed several people in the area while researching Shotgun, Sean Marriott included. I wouldn’t be able to talk to Sean for obvious reasons but access to someone who’d known him might prove to be valuable.
“Okay,” I said, “let me take it with me but I have to tell you, I’m not sure how much time I’ll have.”
“Listen,” she said, “take your time. Here’s my number, just give me a call when you’re ready to talk about it. If it’s a nice day I can walk to you along the bay.”
It was only as I was driving home that I realized she knew where I was staying.
There was a message from Cath on the Phillionaire’s answering machine and it was highly intriguing to say the least.
“Hey, Lee, it’s me, Cath. Where are you? Out on the town with Shotgun Marriott? Well, guess what? Angie Marriott’s in my AA program right here in Notting Hill. Apparently she stopped coming to meetings for a few years so I never saw her until now. But she’s back—and I tell you, she looks a wreck. So anyway, I told her, I went up and said I was a friend of yours and you were working with her husband and she said yes, she’d met you out there. And she wants to talk to you. That’s what she said. She told me to tell you that she’s changed her mind. So call me soon, okay?”
No word about Tommy, I noticed.
As I got into bed that night and prepared to fall asleep, I thought about how it would be to talk to Angela Marriott now that I knew so much more about her. I couldn’t stop myself thinking that it would be some kind of betrayal to Shotgun to talk to her about him.
Yet nothing was going to stop me.
When the phone rang again in the middle of the night, I fumbled for the receiver in a befuddled state, thinking that it was Angie who had tracked me down and wanted to talk now and I wasn’t ready.
But Rufus’s voice said: “Lee, sorry to wake you but we’ve got a problem. Dumpster just called. Franny’s been attacked at the store. She needs to get away from there fast so I’m going to go get her and bring her over to the Stucco House. Can you meet us there? Dumpster says she won’t say who it was but she might open up to you. Lee, are you there?”
“I’m here,” I said. I was wide awake in a matter of seconds. “Give me twenty minutes and I’ll be there.”
CHAPTER 10
I THREW ON JEANS AND A SWEATER, GRABBED A FLASH-light and left the cabin. As I ran down to the water, I was aware of agitated rustling in the tall beach grass on either side of the sandy trail. I glanced behind me, looking beyond the cabin to Cranberry Hole Road. The darkness seemed to stretch for eternity but for once it was welcoming because the lack of headlamps meant no one was lying in wait for me in a car.
Unless it was already parked out there in the darkness. The beam from my flashlight would send a signal of where I was going. What if someone came after
me along the deserted beach? Maybe I should have taken the Jeep and driven over to the Stucco House but that would have meant going up the dirt road in the dark and confronting whoever was out there. If they were out there.
As I walked along the shoreline, shining the flashlight over the murky water—there was no moon and everything was pitch-black—I began to imagine horrible creatures clambering out of the sea to claim me. As far as I knew, there were no alligators in the Hamptons, but there was always a first time. For all I knew, there could be a posse of them on their way up the Eastern seaboard from Florida eager to gobble me up.
As I neared the Stucco House, the dunes were illuminated by the glare of Rufus’s headlamps approaching from the opposite direction. He had those lights on the roof that shine down on everything in a truck’s path, perfect for hunting at night, I assumed. With a bow and arrow. Or a shotgun. Oh stop!
I waved my arms in the air to show him I had arrived and he leapt out as soon as his truck came to a stop.
“I don’t know what the hell’s going on,” he muttered to me. “There isn’t a mark on her and she hasn’t said a single word since I picked her up. Eliza’s been yelling her head off and Franny’s used it as an excuse to ignore all my questions. But Dumpster was pretty hysterical when he called me and Franny couldn’t get out of the place soon enough when I turned up. Something happened to her but so far it’s all a mystery to me. Anyway”—he patted my arm—“thanks for coming over. I’ll go on in and sort out a room for her.”
I took Eliza from Franny while she climbed down from the truck and she followed me into the house.
“What are you doing here?” she asked me, almost grabbing Eliza back from me. It didn’t signify much gratitude on her part but at least she was speaking to me.
“I’m living just along the beach, didn’t I tell you? Rufus thought you might want someone with you.”
“This is Lucia,” Rufus told Franny as Lucia emerged from the kitchen in a quilted robe.
Franny shrugged and said nothing. I wanted to shake her and tell her to be more gracious.
Lucia tried to take Eliza from her, making soothing baby noises, but Franny screamed and backed away from her. “Leave my baby alone!”
“Franny,” I said, with mounting impatience, “let her take Eliza. She’s only trying to help.”
Miraculously, Eliza fell into almost instant silence once Lucia was cradling her. In Franny’s arms she had picked up her mother’s tension and it had frightened her. Franny followed Lucia and Rufus up the staircase. On the landing Rufus surprised me by rattling off some Spanish at Lucia.
“I’ve told her to put Eliza in the crib in the old nursery. I don’t think it’s been used in forty years but she’ll be safe there. Franny, you can sleep in the room next door. I’m going to shoot off now because I have to get up and go to work in an hour and a half. Tomorrow we’ll go get your stuff. Okay, Franny? Say something, please!”
“How am I supposed to get to work in the morning?” she said. “I’ll have to be there by seven to start serving breakfast.”
Rufus looked at me.
“I’ll come by and get you,” I said. “No problem.”
“Thanks,” said Franny and began to follow Lucia down the long corridor, leaving us standing at the top of the stairs.
“I’ll talk to her in the morning,” I said.
“I just want to know who it was who gave her such a scare that she won’t sleep in her own bed,” said Rufus. “Do you think it could have been my bastard of a brother? It might explain why she’s so reluctant to talk to me.”
“Scott?” I was shocked at the thought of it but it was a possibility. “What did Dumpster say?”
“He says when he came in, he went upstairs to bed and fell asleep immediately.”
“I think Dumpster sleeps in the kitchen,” I said, “which isn’t above the back room so he probably couldn’t hear anything once he was upstairs.”
“Whatever,” said Rufus, “he woke up around two thirty when he heard a car door slam outside his window and he went down and found Franny in a bad way.”
“Bad way, how? Was she injured?”
“He didn’t go into specifics. All he said was that she was slumped at the table in the back room crying and she wouldn’t tell him what had happened so he called me. She didn’t appear to be injured as such when I got there but she was shaking all over. Anyway, see what you can get out of her in the morning. By the way,” he called back to me as he walked toward his truck, “my dad called last night and they’re on their way home. He said he’s going to get out here as soon as he can.”
Back at the cabin, I didn’t even bother to take my clothes off. I set the alarm for six thirty, lay down on the bed, and when it went off, I leapt up, brushed my teeth, and set off in the Jeep.
When Lucia answered the door, I wondered if she’d even bothered to go back to bed. She had Eliza in her arms once again.
“I’m going to leave Eliza with her for this morning,” said Franny. “I’ve told him to tell Lucia I’m going to send Jesus back with all her stuff. I only brought a couple of feeds with me.”
I think I’d known from the beginning that Franny was a pragmatist but until that moment I don’t think I’d fully understood just how much of an opportunist she was. Last night she had been unwilling to let Lucia even touch Eliza but only a few hours later she was entrusting her to the woman’s care. Franny wasn’t about to overlook the fact that she had found a haven with a built-in babysitter.
“So how long are you planning to stay?” I asked her as we set off along Cranberry Hole Road.
“How is it living in the cabin?” she asked me by way of reply.
This was crazy. Was she going to pretend last night had never happened?
“Franny! You got Rufus and me out of bed in the middle of the night to rescue you from a situation and now you won’t tell us what it was.”
“I never got you out of bed. Don’t put that on me. It was Rufus who called you. Anyway, sounds like you already know what happened from my son.”
And that was all I could get out of her before we arrived at the Old Stone Market and she hailed Jesus with, “I’m moving out of the apartment upstairs. I’m going to need you to go over to Napeague with our stuff, once we’re done with the breakfast shift. Is the coffee brewed?”
I helped myself to a cup of coffee and marched up the stairs to Franny’s little apartment where I found her packing up Eliza’s paraphernalia into canvas holdalls.
“Okay, Franny. The game’s up. I want to know exactly what you’re playing at.” I kicked the door shut behind me to show her I was angry. “I’m not leaving until you give me the real reason why you’re too scared to stay here at night.”
“All right. All right!” She threw down a baby’s rattle on the bed so hard it bounced onto the floor. “I was going to tell you anyway. I sort of feel I can trust you not to tell anyone mostly because who are you going to tell? You barely know anyone. But Rufus is another story. I just don’t want him scattering my business all around the neighborhood.”
“Oh, he wouldn’t do that. He—”
I stopped short. I was going to say, He loves you. But I didn’t feel I quite had the right to speak for Rufus just yet. Instead I said, trying not to sound too judgmental: “But you’re happy to accept his hospitality and allow him to shelter you.”
She had the grace to look ashamed. That was the thing about Franny, I was beginning to realize. She could be arrogant and outspoken one minute and modest and contrite the next.
“He’s a darling, isn’t he?”
“You really think so?” I smiled.
“I like him quite a lot.” She sat down on the bed. “We haven’t had another date as such but he comes in here all the time and it’s changing between us. For the better. I’m comfortable around him because we’ve known each other for so long.”
“And he’s cute?” I said with a grin.
“Not only that,” she was suddenly seriou
s, “he’s kind. I haven’t had a lot of that with men. And most important—Eliza likes him. She’s quite a handful as you may have noticed but when she takes to someone, that’s it. She’s the proverbial putty in their hands—like she was with Lucia.”
“Well, I’m afraid I’m not on that list,” I said and then I flinched at Franny’s next words.
“Nor am I,” she said. “I’m beginning to think I’m a terrible mother. I don’t seem to have any control over Dumpster. God knows what he’s up to every night. And I can never get Eliza to settle down the way Lucia did last night.”
“It’s not about control, Franny,” I said. “I think it’s about love.”
“But I love my kids desperately,” she protested, and there was a break in her voice. “You have to believe me when I say that. I truly, truly love them. They’re everything to me.”
“I do know that,” I said, putting my arm around her shoulders and feeling how bony they were. She was whippet thin, probably because she raced around expending more energy in a day than most women do in a week. “So what happened last night?”
“Evan Morrison,” she whispered. “That’s what happened. He said he dropped by to speak to Dumpster about the bow and arrow in that pit. And while he was here he decided to make it clear to me that I had no chance of hiding anything from him.”
“He was threatening you?”
“Oh, he did more than threaten me. He pushed me up against the wall and thrust himself against me and reminded me that he only had to say the word and Dumpster would be arrested—just like that.” She clicked her fingers in the air.
How to Marry a Ghost Page 17
