“That could be significant,” Kathleen said.
“Well… I was thinking that the logical person to suspect in the murder is Allison’s sister! It sounds to me as though she certainly wouldn’t want this book published, and-” Rose looked from Susan to Kathleen. “You don’t agree with me, do you? You don’t think that Allison’s sister killed her, but think about it for a bit. Just because her sister isn’t a guest here doesn’t mean that she isn’t on the island. She could be staying someplace else. She could have slipped in under cover of darkness and killed her sister. She could have-”
“No,” Kathleen interrupted. “She couldn’t have done anything. Allison’s sister died in an auto accident years ago.”
Rose turned pale beneath her makeup. “I-I had no idea. I thought your husband and she had gotten a divorce. I never thought she might be dead.” She rocked back in the chair and closed her eyes for a moment. “I thought I would be helping by telling you all this. And it doesn’t matter at all, does it?”
“Of course it matters!” Susan cried, getting up and moving closer to Rose. “We know very little about Allison. Kathleen’s never even met her, and I haven’t seen her in years and years. Anything you tell us about her might lead us to the killer.” That sounded a bit dramatic even to Susan’s ears, and she shut up and perched back on the edge of the mattress.
“Oh, well, then you would be interested in knowing that she was in love. Head over heels in love. Those are her words, not mine,” Rose added quickly, twirling one of her rings around her finger.
“Do you know who the man is? We understood that she was here alone,” Kathleen said.
“She was here alone. She said it was very freeing to be on vacation alone. That she could do what she wanted when she wanted. And she didn’t tell me who she was in love with. She said he was wonderful. The most wonderful man she’d ever met. She-frankly-she talked about him as though she was a teenager and this was her first crush. She said he was handsome, and smart, and rich, and kind.”
“Did she mention any names?” Susan asked.
“No. I’m sure she didn’t.”
Kathleen frowned. “Did she say anything that might help identify him? How long she’d known him? What he does for a living?”
Rose thought that over for a while. “I got the impression that he worked with her. She said they had a lot in common and she could talk to him about anything. But I think the only thing she actually mentioned was some help he’d given her on an account. I don’t know much about advertising, but…”
Susan and Kathleen both nodded. “Both of our husbands are in advertising,” Susan explained. “We hear about it all the time. In fact…” She paused.
“What?” Kathleen prompted.
“I think it’s possible that Jerry and Allison met at work and she introduced him to June… Allison’s sister,” Susan explained to Rose.
“I remember Jerry telling me that,” Kathleen spoke up. “But Allison hasn’t worked with Jed and Jerry for decades, has she?”
“No. She quit around the time June and Jerry were married, and she moved to an agency in Chicago. She came back to visit on holidays, but she was in the midwest for years and years. I think she returned to New York around the time of June’s death.” Susan stopped and considered all this for a moment.
“Do you think that could be significant?” Rose asked, leaning forward. “Because in the book, one of the sisters leaves the country, and moves to Paris, and changes her life-becomes beautiful and then returns home and marries the man of her dreams.”
“Sounds a bit like the script for Sabrina,” Kathleen said.
“Such a beautiful movie. It’s one of my favorites,” Rose responded enthusiastically. “I actually bought the videotape so I can watch it over and over again.”
“But it does sound kind of like Allison’s life. She really doesn’t look at all like she did when June was alive,” Susan mused.
“What else did she tell you about her novel?” Kathleen asked.
“She said it had a surprise ending. I could tell that’s what she liked about it the most. She kept saying that readers would never know what hit them when they got to the end. She seemed really pleased about that.”
“What else did she say about her life?” Susan asked. “Did she tell you how she ended up here? How she even knew about Compass Bay?”
Rose thought for a minute before answering. “No. I told her about my wonderful travel agency and how they got me such a great deal here, but I don’t believe she said anything about how she found Compass Bay.”
“When you came in here you said that something Allison said didn’t make any sense,” Kathleen pointed out. “What was that?”
“Oh, heavens. I do get off the point, don’t I? She said that she had thought about writing a murder mystery, but that was too close to her real life. But the murder happened after she told me that. And, of course, it happened to Allison herself. So how could her life be close to a murder mystery without a murder in it? And that’s not all. We were talking about our lives and she said that she had spent much of her life being a victim, but now all that was changing.”
“But it didn’t, did it?” Kathleen mused. “She ended up being a victim. A murder victim.”
“I know.” Rose’s jiggling with her jewelry became almost frantic. “That’s something else that doesn’t make any sense.”
SEVENTEEN
“What do you think about that?” Kathleen asked Susan when Rose, promising to return if she remembered “anything else important,” had departed.
“She’s not the most reliable reporter, but she wants to help and she may be the type of person people talk to. I was stunned to hear that Allison was going to have a book published.”
“Do you think it will turn out to be as autobiographical as it sounds?” Kathleen asked.
Susan looked at her friend. Kathleen was staring into the large mirror hung between the two windows on the wall across from the bed, idly arranging and rearranging her hair. Her shoulders were sagging, and even from behind, she looked tired and discouraged. “You know, I can’t imagine Allison writing a book, but then I guess I really didn’t know her all that well. I thought about her as an extension of June.”
“You know what’s bothering me?” Kathleen spoke up, still facing the wall. “What’s bothering me is that you won’t talk to me about June.”
“I-”
“You never wanted to talk to me about June. No one wanted to talk to me about June. Damn it, even Jerry keeps me in the dark about her.”
Susan, realizing Kathleen’s shoulders were shaking as she began to sob, hurried over and embraced her friend. “You’re right. I didn’t realize. I’ve been stupid. Maybe we’ve all been stupid.”
With a loud sniff, Kathleen pulled herself together. “I’ve been stupid, too. I should have encouraged Jerry to talk about her before we got married, but I didn’t. To tell the truth, he talked so much about their children that I thought he was talking about her. It wasn’t until we were married and living together that I realized how little I knew about her.”
“What do you mean?”
Kathleen sat down in the rocking chair Rose had so recently vacated, bit her lips, and started to explain. “When you introduced me to Jerry he was living in that condo down by the water, remember?”
“Yes.” Susan couldn’t imagine what was coming.
“Well, he was subletting the place and it was furnished-pretty much. He’d brought his computer, stereo, and some personal things. Then we got married and both agreed that it was a good idea to buy a house. I had some savings and Jerry had the profits from the home he had sold just sitting in the bank getting almost no interest. So we found our house, bought it, and a week later a huge moving van pulled up from the company that had been storing his stuff and began to unload.”