“Did you get through?”
“Yes. It … it was a local call.”
“Oh.” Susan was embarrassed. “That’s not what I meant. I just wond—is there anything else you need?” she finally asked.
“No.” But still he didn’t move.
“Then why are you here?” She was afraid she sounded as exasperated as she felt.
“I wondered if you could come to the library tomorrow to speak to me. It’s important,” he added, probably in response to the surprised look on her face.
“Of course …”
“I usually lunch at twelve-thirty. Come to my office.” Then he turned and hurried from the room.
Susan stood next to the stove, blinking. She had always thought that Charles Grace was a strange man, an unlikely combination of nerd and tyrant, but why did he seem to think it so urgent that he speak with her? Why was he at her house? The timer rang as she decided that this was one of the smallest mysteries she had to worry about. She tossed the croissants on a tray in what she hoped was an artful manner, grabbed an unopened bag of candy bars from on top of the refrigerator, and headed to the living room. The crowd was still there. And its focal point was still Rebecca.
“I thought some of you might be hungry,” she announced, setting down the tray.
“Starving,” one of the network men agreed, reaching for sustenance.
“The coffee is enough for me,” Rebecca said, cradling the cup against her chest. “But thank you.”
“You look tired. Did you get a chance to lie down?” Susan asked.
“No. I feel so … so strange … almost disoriented.” Rebecca ran one hand through her fabulous hair.
“I picked up your things from your house. Why don’t you go upstairs and get ready for bed? I can bring you a snack there,” Susan offered. “Go on. Rest is the best thing for you.”
To her surprise, Rebecca’s colleagues joined in Susan’s urging, and, in a few minutes, she was headed upstairs to the guest room. The network men commanded Susan’s attention as soon as Rebecca had left.
“I’m sure Rebecca can find everything by herself, so why don’t you just sit down and rest yourself for a few minutes? We’re all sorry about the confusion that kept you out of your own house earlier, but we do need to talk to you, Mrs. Henshaw … and your husband, of course.”
“I think I’d better be going.” Charles Grace stood immediately, understanding the not-too-subtle hint. “I’ll see you at lunch tomorrow?” he added, picking up his coat.
“Yes. Of course.”
Jed looked curiously at his wife but said nothing. Kathleen offered to escort the librarian to the door, stating that it was time she herself was leaving.
“We need to figure out some sort of strategy here,” one of the men said when the Henshaws’ guests had left, not bothering to introduce himself.
“ ‘Strategy?’ ” Susan was surprised by his choice of words. “I think she’ll be okay once the initial shock has worn off.…”
“I’m thinking of the press and the public. We have to protect Rebecca. Famous people are in a more vulnerable position than the rest of us, as you surely understand.”
Susan nodded sagely, thinking of the warning Kathleen had given about these men and wondering what was coming next.
The other, older man was speaking. “It was truly wonderful of you and your family to open your home to Rebecca in this crisis—not many people would have done it.”
“And there aren’t many people that Rebecca would feel comfortable with in a situation like this. You’ve really received a compliment here,” his partner joined in. “How long have you been friends?”
“Uh … we only met today,” Susan answered after a short pause.
The men exchanged what she was sure were meaningful glances, except that she didn’t know what they meant. “Then you don’t know very much about her professional life …” one of them began.
“We don’t know very much about her life at all,” Jed interrupted impatiently. “We don’t watch television in the morning, unless there’s something important going on in the world that we’re anxious to hear about, so we’re not exactly major fans of the Armstrongs. But we will certainly do anything we can to help any of our neighbors who are unlucky enough to experience a tragedy like this one.”
“I’m glad to hear that, because this problem isn’t as simple as it might look at first glance. You see, Rebecca is going through a terrible crisis. A terrible tragedy has occurred in her life, and we are here to try to make sure that the results of this don’t affect her permanently.”
“I don’t understand,” Susan said, wondering if anyone could lose their husband and not have the event affect the rest of their life. Even if she remarried, Rebecca would always feel this loss, no matter … Her thoughts were interrupted.
“She’s going to want to take some time off from the job—hell, everyone will expect her to take some time off—but we’re here to see that she has a job to come back to.”
“I don’t understand. Surely the network isn’t going to fire her because her husband was murdered,” Jed stated.
“No one at the network would ever want to take Rebecca’s job from her—she’s been the premier morning-show hostess on television for almost a decade now—but you know what happens to people when their Q score drops.”
“Yes,” Jed said, “we do.”
“We do?” Susan, amazed, looked at her husband with a puzzled expression on her face. She certainly didn’t know what was being talked about. It couldn’t possibly have anything to do with G spots (not that she had ever really understood that one either), could it?
“Q scores are simple, Sue. They’ve been used by television and admen for years. It’s a measure of audience recognition—the higher the score, the better known the personality. And in television, the better known you are, the more desirable you are. People like to watch familiar faces.”
“But won’t all this publicity make Rebecca more familiar?”
“There is such a thing as a negative Q score as well. The right publicity is good for people. The wrong can kill them.”
Susan had the sense not to take that statement literally. “So what do you want me …”—she glanced at her husband—“or rather us, to do?”
“Nothing.”
“What my colleague means is that we want you to keep doing what you’re doing—giving Rebecca a place to stay, taking care of her, listening to her stories.…”
“What we don’t want you to do is talk to the press, or your neighbors, or your cleaning woman, or your minister, or anyone about Rebecca or anything that has happened to her,” the more abrupt of the two interrupted to say. “And we want you to make damn sure that your kids don’t say anything to anyone either. Remember that Kissinger boy and Nixon’s trip to China.”
Susan opened her mouth to defend her children, but Jed beat her to it. “Chad and Chrissy aren’t small children, they’re teenagers—young adults—and I’m sure if we explain the situation to them, they will have the maturity to understand the need for discretion. But they are certainly too old to be ordered around.” As if they had stood in line and taken orders when they were young, Susan thought, but refrained from speaking. These men were making her angry. Jed was still talking. “I also think you’re misjudging my wife and myself. We brought Rebecca into our home to help her—and we will help her. But we certainly won’t let her presence hurt any of our family relationships—or endanger any of us. You may not be aware of it, but my wife was mugged at the Armstrong house while running an errand for Rebecca.”
“That is exactly the type of thing we don’t want to press to know.”
“I hope you’re okay, Mrs. Henshaw,” the more moderate man interrupted his companion. “We had no idea you’d been hurt this evening. I wish”—he looked pointedly at Jed—“that we could convince Rebecca to go to a hotel in New York City. She would be comfortable there, and we could look out for her without endangering anyone.”
/> “Have you suggested that?” Jed picked up immediately.
“Of course we have,” said the man Susan was coming to think of as the bad PR man. His tone of voice implied that he thought the Henshaws had been underestimating him—and that he was tired of it.
“For some reason Rebecca is determined to stay away from her colleagues in the city. We suggested that she occupy the network’s suite at the Waldorf for a week or two, but she refused. She said she didn’t want to talk with any of her colleagues—at least not right now.”
“That’s strange,” Jed commented, almost to himself. “I wonder if there is someone in the city that she doesn’t want to see.”
Chad’s noisy entrance changed the topic. Ignoring the man at the front door, he sloppily dumped the large plastic Gap bag full of candy on the polished surface of the delicate antique table in the hall and barged into the living room. “I heard you were attacked,” he cried out to his mother.
Susan was gratified by his distress and maternal enough to try to relieve it immediately. “I’m fine. Someone stole my purse, but I didn’t get hurt, and there wasn’t even very much money in it,” she assured him.
“How did you hear about it?”
“I ran into one of the girls in my class down at the diner. She has a friend who saw it happen. I couldn’t believe it,” Chad answered the public relations man. “Everything happens to my mother. Everything.” He didn’t sound thrilled by the fact.
“Well, the important thing is that no one got hurt,” Jed said, trying to redirect his son’s anguish. “Now that you’re home, why don’t you take a shower and wash some of that makeup off.…”
“I just stopped in to dump my loot and get another bag. You didn’t think I was ready to come home, did you?” Chad’s voice got shriller as he protested.
“It’s late …” his father began.
“But I promised Chad he could stay out till eleven tonight,” Susan surprised her son and husband by saying. “After all, Halloween only comes once a year, and he has finished his homework. I’ll just get you another bag.” She got up, and her son followed her from the room and back to the kitchen.
“Listen, what exactly did the girl who saw me get mugged say to you?” she asked, rummaging in a drawer full of plastic bags. “Is this one okay?” She held out a large Saks bag.
“Yeah. Fine.” He took the proffered object. “She just said that someone came up from behind you and grabbed your purse and that you fell down when you ran after him.”
“Did she see where the mugger went?”
“She said he ran back behind the Armstrong house. One of the guys she was with was going to try to catch up with him, but they thought it was just a prank—not a serious mugging, I mean. Why do you want to know all this?”
“Because it may have something to do with the murder,” she said slowly, assuming he was going to object to her involvement.
But he surprised her. “Okay. If I hear anything else, I’ll tell you about it.” He started for the door and then turned back, a grin on his face. “You know I don’t like you messing around in these murders, but I guess a person has the right to find out who stole something from them. Besides, I owe you for letting me go back out tonight. Bye. I’ll be home by midnight.” And the door slammed behind him.
“Midnight?” Susan didn’t have time to object. There was a strange woman entering her kitchen. She was wearing a green-plaid bathrobe and carrying one of Susan’s antique Spode cups and saucers in her hands.
“I wonder if it would be an imposition if I asked for some Earl Grey tea?” the woman asked, apparently right at home. “I always have a cup before going to bed.”
FIVE
The woman, whose name turned out to be Hilda Flambay and who was also from the press department at the network, got her Earl Grey tea, and Susan took a quick shower long after midnight. (The chilled Chablis would have to wait for another day.) She and Jed did manage to grab a short private conversation, deciding only that next year they would go anywhere rather than spend Halloween in Hancock. They were discussing it again the next morning.
“What I’m having trouble with is that you agreed to let that woman stay here without telling me,” Susan repeated for the third or fourth time.
“A lot had happened. I already told you that I wasn’t thinking. Can’t we forget about Hilda for a while?” he asked, handing his wife a cup of the coffee he had just brewed.
“I find it a little difficult to forget about people when they’re sleeping on the Hide-A-Bed in my den.” But she took the coffee and sipped it gratefully. “Thanks. Yesterday was awful, and I’m not sure today is going to be much better. I suppose I should spend some time with Rebecca, but I have no idea what she might want to do. And I should speak with Brett again about the mugging.… Did I tell you that Charles Grace asked me to meet him in his office for lunch?”
“You’re kidding. Maybe that’s why he was here last night. I never figured out how he got in. I just looked up, and there he was.…”
“You didn’t let him in?” Susan was so surprised that she stopped stirring the large bowl of pumpkin muffin batter she held in her arms.
Jed shook his head. “I didn’t let anyone in. Right after you left, Brett showed up. He asked one of the network people to keep an eye on the front door. After that, there was no reason for me to answer every time it rang.”
“You mean that man let Charles Grace into my house and he wouldn’t let me in?” Susan angrily filled the greased muffin cups.
“I guess Charles Grace had identification, hon.”
Susan just sighed and shoved the pan into the oven. “Did he explain?”
“Who?”
“Charles Grace. Didn’t he say anything to anyone?”
“I don’t think so. Rebecca was talking and crying, and the three network people were trying to comfort her and making a bunch of phone calls—Charles Grace seemed to be the least of our problems. Those look pretty good,” he added. “I guess having people in the house is going to make a lot of extra work for you.”
“It usually does—but that’s not what I had in mind,” she added. “I just don’t understand these people. Rebecca is upset, so I can’t blame her, I guess, but Hilda seems to think absolutely nothing of asking for special favors or making extra work. I gave her some printed sheets—Ralph Lauren and brand-new—and she explained that she really preferred sleeping on white cotton.”
“And you ran right back up to the linen closet and found a set,” Jed concluded.
“I know!” Susan admitted her own culpability. “But I want guests to be comfortable, though apparently she thinks I’m the maid or something.…”
“She is a rather determined lady …” Jed began.
“No, she’s a bitch,” Susan said flatly. “And, worse than that, she’s one of those people who thinks that a woman who chooses to stay home and raise a family is inherently inferior to all professional women.”
Jed had heard his wife’s opinions on this particular subject before. He knew the only thing to do was nod and look sympathetic. Not that he wasn’t. He had no illusions about raising children and running a house; his wife had worked and worked hard. She had also finished speaking.
“Well …” Jed searched around for a less emotional subject and found one. “I guess the kids had a good time last night. Chad has enough candy to feed an army, and he was teasing Chrissy about her new boyfriend, and she was blushing like crazy. Did they make it off to school on time?”
Susan poured orange juice into a glass pitcher and laughed. “Yes. Chad filled his backpack with candy and said something about saving money by not buying lunch in the cafeteria, and Chrissy sipped some tomato juice and sort of floated out the door in that new sweater she bought last weekend. I don’t think much of their diets, but at least they’re involved in their own lives—I really wish we could keep them out of this mess.”
“Hmm.” Jed’s agreement was rather absentminded. “You don’t happen to know when she
’s going to leave, do you?”
“Rebecca or Hilda?”
“I think where Rebecca goes Hilda will follow.”
“You’re probably right. I have no idea. I think it would be awfully rude to urge her out the door,” Susan said, joining her husband at their kitchen table. “You didn’t seem to mind having her here last night,” she reminded him.
“You know, in person, she’s pretty hard to resist. She’s beautiful and has lots of personality, and right now, of course, it’s hard not to feel sorry for her. But when she’s not right here … I don’t know. I guess I’m not explaining very well, am I?”
“No, but I think I know what you mean. Aren’t you going to be awfully late for work?”
“I called and explained that something had come up. You know, it’s going to be rather strange when the word gets out that Rebecca is staying here.”
“I suppose so.…”
“You suppose so. Susan, you may not be a big fan of morning TV, but a lot of the country is. Jason’s murder is going to be big news.… Looks like we have company,” he added, getting up and opening the back door. Brett Fortesque stood on the doorstep.
“I know it’s early, but I thought you might be interested in what was dropped off at police headquarters sometime during the night.” He held up a dirty brown leather bag.
“My purse!”
“Dropped off … ?” Jed began the question as his wife leapt up and ran to the door.
“Come on in,” she urged. “Have some coffee. Tell us about it.”
“I’d love some coffee, and there’s not much of a story. The purse was apparently tossed on the mat in front of the door sometime in the early-morning hours. Between four and five a.m., as far as we can pin it down … Thanks.” He accepted a steaming cup from Susan. “It’s filthy, but it’s also pretty full. But you’d be the only person who can tell us if something’s missing.”
Susan was rummaging around in the bag as he spoke. “It looks like everything’s here—as far as I can tell, that is. I’m not terribly organized when it comes to my purse. I just dump stuff in and hope it will be there when I need it. But the big things are here: wallet, makeup bag, comb, notebook, checkbook.…” She poured everything out on the table. They grabbed to keep pens, breath mints, tubes of lipstick, and a silver pillbox from rolling to the floor.
All Hallows Evil Page 8
