“What does she do with her time? Does she have any hobbies?”
“Not unless you consider shopping and taking care of yourself a hobby.”
“What sort of care?”
“Oh, you know. Working out. Getting your hair done. Manicures, pedicures.”
“The usual.”
“And the not so usual as well. She went to a specialist in some sort of stone massage, and an Alexander Technique teacher, a Rolfer, two or three herbalists, a practitioner of Chinese medicine…”
“Any reason why she took such good care of herself?”
“Nothing else to do?” Susan realized she was being seriously bitchy. “I shouldn’t say that. She had a cancer scare a few years ago-irregular cells in a Pap smear-and she always said it changed her life. It probably did. I’ve been lucky enough to have good health. I don’t know how I would react to something like that.”
“After the initial shock was over, you would be mature and sensible, just like you always are.”
“I hope so,” she said, less assured than he was on this subject. “Anyway, Nadine put an enormous amount of time and effort into taking care of herself.”
“And money. I assume these services aren’t cheap.”
“No, but they have a lot of money.”
“How do you know that?”
“Well, Donald has sold a lot of houses around here in the past few years. And there aren’t many that would sell for under a million and most go for a lot more than that. I don’t know exactly what percentage of the sale goes into his pocket, but more than enough for Nadine to indulge, I’d imagine.”
“Six percent.”
“What?”
“The agent’s fee-it can run as high as six percent of the sale price. Erika thinks we need more room now that the baby’s here so we’ve just begun looking at houses in the area-not that a policeman’s income buys much around here.” He frowned. “So you said Donald works for his mother.”
“Well, he’s certainly connected to her agency. If you’re in the market for a house, you would have heard of Blaine Baines.”
“If you’ve picked up any newspaper in southern Connecticut or the Real Estate section of the Sunday New York Times, you’ve heard of Blaine Baines Executive Homes and Estates. The ads are everywhere. And they all have her photograph prominently displayed. Is she old enough to have grown children?”
“I think she’s using a photograph that was taken more than a few years ago,” Susan explained. “Although she looks pretty good for a woman in her early sixties. But I did hear that one of her husbands was a plastic surgeon.”
“Just how many husbands has she had?”
“I think five-or maybe six. I do know that Donald’s father was her first and Travis Dean-you know him; he works down at the Field Club-was her last.”
“The only Travis I know at the club is the bartender.”
“That’s him.”
“He couldn’t be more than twenty-five.”
“I think closer to thirty, but yes, he’s a lot younger than she is. Anyway, they’re divorced.” Susan wasn’t sure what she thought about any of this. On one hand, it seemed very liberal and up-to-date for a woman to be involved with a younger man. On the other hand, she had a twenty-one-year-old son and she sure hoped he would fall in love with someone his own age. The last thing in the world she wanted was a daughter-in-law as old as she was!
“You said they moved to town recently. Did Donald just start working for his mother?”
“No, he ran her office over in New Canaan for years and years. I got the impression that he moved here to help out his mother…” She hesitated.
“But you’re not so sure.”
“Not really. I’m not sure where I heard it or how I got the impression, but for some reason I think Donald’s mother wasn’t too thrilled with the situation. But she owned the firm so she could certainly have him work wherever she wanted.”
“Interesting. How did Nadine get along with her high-powered mother-in-law?”
“I think just fine. I know Blaine liked her. She was always saying that the best thing Donald ever did was marry Nadine. And if Nadine didn’t reciprocate those feelings, she was smart enough to shut up about it.”
Brett nodded. “It’s important for relatives to get along.”
While Susan agreed with him, that wasn’t exactly what she had been saying.
“If there’s nothing else important, I’d better get back to the crime scene,” Brett said, standing up.
“No, there’s nothing else that I can think of,” Susan lied.
TEN
THERE WAS A DINER ON A SIDE STREET IN HANCOCK THAT few residents patronized. Frequented by workmen, contractors, landscapers, and groups of disenfranchised high school students, the booths were nearly as greasy as the food, but that didn’t matter as much to the clientele as the fact that they were unlikely to run into their employers-or their parents.
A young man slouched in the rear booth, looking much the worse for wear. His silky blond roots betrayed an inept dye job on hair that drooped into his eyes. The way he fell on the food his waitress brought was a sign of recent hard times.
It was a slow night and the waitress propped one hip against his table, ready to chat. “I don’t think I recognize you. You a student at the high school?” she asked amiably.
“No.”
“Do you work here in town?”
“No.”
“Just passing through?”
He looked up from his burger and fries. “Yeah. That’s it. Just passing through.” And he was gonna keep passing. What a mistake to pause in this town. Here he was trying to avoid the police, and the house next door to the place Shannon was working was swarming with them. God, she sure could attract trouble. But she was generous. He’d say that for her. He stopped eating long enough to pat the bulging wallet in his jacket pocket. But he wasn’t going to hang around here for long, that was for sure. Staying here could bring him nothing but trouble.
Susan sat up in bed and turned on the light hanging over her nightstand. “Jed, are you asleep?”
They had been married for over three decades; he knew answering “yes” wouldn’t help him. “It’s after midnight,” he replied.
She ignored his statement and continued. “I’m worried about Chrissy. She has hardly even glanced at her baby presents.”
“I was going to talk to you about that,” he said, sitting up. “Do you think we could move them out of my library? I was going to pay some bills after dinner tonight and couldn’t even find them in that mess.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that. I hid them. But about Chrissy, Jed…”
He was completely awake now. “Why did you hide the bills?”
“ Shannon.” She saw the surprise on his face and continued. “We don’t really know her and she’s going to be alone in the house sometimes-well, not counting the twins. Anyway she has a lot of opportunity to go through our things and… well, I just felt more comfortable with everything put away.”
“How is she different from the dozens of people we’ve hired to clean or fix appliances over the years?”
“It’s a different situation completely. In the first place she’s here all the time. Because she was sort of dumped in our laps-or in our house, I guess is more accurate.”
“You’re saying that we don’t know anything about her-and I’m not arguing with you-but that’s also true of lots of people we hire.”
“But those people aren’t here overnight while everyone is asleep. Shannon could be downstairs right now going through everything we own and we would never know it.”
“Or she could have dashed next door this afternoon and killed Nadine?”
Susan gasped. “What do you know?”
“Nothing at all, but that’s what’s worrying you, isn’t it?”
“It is true that Shannon arrived here and then Nadine was killed.”
“And what’s the connection between the two of them?”
Susan hesitated. “I don’t really know if there is one.”