Paul held a washcloth under the hot water tap, wrung it out and used it to wipe the remaining shaving cream off his neck and ears. ‘Are the police any closer to tracking down the hit-and-run driver?’ he asked as he draped the washcloth over the edge of the sink to dry.
‘Not that I’ve heard.’ More or less satisfied with the state of my eyebrows, I tucked the tweezers and mirror away. ‘Every day since it happened, I’ve been replaying the scene in my head. The speeding car, the deliberate swerve…’
‘The driver might not have done it on purpose,’ Paul pointed out. ‘Maybe he was changing the radio station.’
‘Or texting,’ I added, although that was strictly against Maryland law, not that anyone was paying attention, from what I could observe. ‘Still,’ I said after a pause, ‘the farmer saw it all in his rearview mirror. I made quote marks in the air, “Asshole swerved sudden-like, run him off the road on purpose.” I tend to agree.’
‘Why would anyone want to hurt Rusty?’ Paul wondered aloud.
‘I’ve asked myself the same question. And when I asked Dwight, he was just as puzzled.’
‘Does Rusty have a girlfriend?’ Paul asked.
I remembered the brief text message I’d seen on Rusty’s phone back at the accident scene. ‘Maybe,’ I said. ‘A girl named Laurie wanted to meet him at the movies.’
‘The car you described seemed like a young man’s car to me,’ Paul said. ‘A rival for Laurie’s affections, perhaps?’
‘Seems a bit extreme in this day and age,’ I said. ‘Running someone’s motorcycle off the road. Cyber-bullying is more the style.’
I cast my mind back to the day of the accident. It had been Grand Central Station around Our Song that day. Workmen coming and going, reporters, cameramen, politicians, even the Fedex guy. Was it just bad luck that Rusty wasn’t wearing his helmet when he set out for town that day, or was that exactly what one of our visitors had intended? I shivered.
Paul noticed, and welcomed me into his arms.
Kendall’s estate, Tulip Point, was about two miles downstream from Our Song, situated on the point where Chiconnesick Creek met the Chesapeake Bay. Paul was still tinkering with the outboard engine on the runabout – it lay in a hundred pieces on the floor of the garage – so we had to drive the long way around, by land.
At a mailbox festooned with red, white and blue balloons, we turned right and proceeded down a paved avenue lined with ancient tulip poplars, their interlocking branches forming a covered archway over our heads. The alley stretched from the main road all the way down to a breathtaking mansion that dominated the point, surrounded by numerous outbuildings. The house bore the clear imprint of an architect’s hand. Five hexagonal pods sprawled over a tastefully landscaped hill, each pod connected to the next by a glass-enclosed passageway. To the left, several tiki-huts on the far side of a decorative iron fence indicated the presence of a swimming pool.
As for the outbuildings, I lost count. Just outside the main gate, a row of six, single-story cottages were arranged in a semi-circle – housing, I presumed, for the field hands and staff it must take to maintain the place. There was a stable for the horses and a barn for the decorator cows presently chewing their cuds in a disinterested way, considering us with soulful, liquid eyes from behind a white rail fence. ‘Do you suppose they were hired for the occasion?’ I asked my husband as we drove slowly by. ‘From Acme Rent-a-Cow?’
Paul laughed. ‘Or Cows-R-Us.’
One hundred yards further on, we were directed to park in a vacant field by a teenage boy wearing an orange vest, waving Day-Glo wands like a ground controller at BWI airport. We parked where instructed, locked the car, then followed several other party guests through an enormous, wrought-iron gate adorned with cattails and herons. A control box had been installed on the pillar to the left, but for today, at least, the electrically controlled gates stood wide open. Just inside, another teen, a girl this time, muttered ‘Ives, Ives, Ives,’ as she pawed through the name tags spread out on the table in front of her. There must have been a hundred of them, arranged in alphabetical order. Perhaps the A-B-C’s were a challenge for her.
‘Here we are,’ I said, helpfully touching my tag, which sat on the table immediately below the pair of nametags intended for Dwight and Grace Heberling.
‘Ah ha!’ the teen said, handing ours over. ‘Paul and Hannah. Welcome!’
‘I doubt they’ll be coming today,’ I said, indicating the Heberlings’ nametags.
The girl’s face clouded. ‘Isn’t it just awful?’
We agreed that it was.
‘Well,’ she chirped, ‘if they come they come, if they don’t they don’t.’
I clipped my tag to the strap of my sundress. ‘There!’ I said, patting the plastic holder. ‘We’re official.’
Paul and I stood by the table for several moments, looking around, scanning the guests for somebody – anybody – we knew, while the sweet smell of mesquite and barbecued ribs drew us inexorably forward. A jazz combo – sax, trumpet, bass guitar and drums – played on a raised platform in the formal garden which had been decorated for the occasion with Chinese lanterns.
I inclined my head toward Paul. ‘There’s our hostess. I recognize her from her pictures.’
‘Damn!’ Paul muttered under his breath. ‘Has the woman been Photoshopped?’
Kendall, perfect in every conceivable way, stood next to one of two long buffet tables where uniformed staff were fussing with Sterno tins and chafing dishes. As blustery as it was that day, even the wind didn’t dare mess with her impeccably styled platinum hair. She wore a white, ankle-length linen skirt and a white crochet sweater. A silk scarf was looped casually around her neck – Hermes, if I wasn’t mistaken – festooned with interlocking Escher-esque horse heads in gray and black. The ends flapped cheerfully in the breeze as she issued instructions to her staff.
‘I’ll have to be nice to her, I suppose. Fran tells me that Kendall is donating the office space we need to process the documents from the courthouse basement, plus two computers and a telephone.’
Paul, who had been eyeing the buffet tables hungrily, turned to me. ‘That’s generous of her. Why?’
I shrugged. ‘I haven’t the foggiest idea. Maybe it’s a tax write off? I can’t imagine Kendall doing anything out of the pure goodness of her heart.’
‘Where is it? The office space, I mean.’
‘In town. Directly over the old drug store.’
Paul leaned close. ‘Maybe she has a tenant she needs to evict.’
Suddenly he whistled, long and low.
My head spun around. ‘If that wolf whistle is for Kendall Barfield, Professor Ives, you’re a dead man.’
Paul chuckled, then pointed. ‘If I’m not mistaken, that’s a classic Cris Craft sedan cruiser, Hannah. What a beauty!’
I followed the line of his arm all the way down to the far end of the dock where a large cabin cruiser was tied. Even I, who knew precious little about boats and was usually invited on board simply to serve as ballast, was impressed with the vessel’s gleaming white hull, the mirror-like varnish on the exposed woodwork. The vessel’s name, Liquid Asset, was painted in fancy gold script on the transom. Standing watch at the head of the gangplank was a young server dressed in nautical attire. Clearly, the cruiser was meant to be part of the picnic venue because another, smaller bar had been set up in its cockpit.