Moonlight Becomes You Page 4

  She had seen the same look on the faces of nursing home residents she had photographed for Life magazine last year. One woman had said wistfully, “Sometimes it bothers me a lot that there’s no one left who remembers me when I was young.”

  Maggie shivered, then realized the temperature in the car had dropped rapidly. Turning off the air-conditioning, she opened the window a few inches and sniffed the tangy scent of the sea that permeated the air. When you’ve been raised in the Midwest, she thought, you can’t ever get enough of the ocean.

  Checking her watch, she realized it was ten of eight. She would barely have time to freshen up and change before the other guests began to arrive. At least she had phoned Nuala to let her know she was getting off to a late start. She had told her she should be arriving just about now.

  She turned onto Garrison Avenue and saw the ocean in front of her. She slowed the car, then stopped in front of a charming clapboard house with weathered shingles and a wraparound porch. This had to be Nuala’s home, she thought, but it seemed so dark. There were no outside lights turned on at all, and she could detect only a faint light coming from the front windows.

  She pulled into the driveway, got out, and, without bothering to open the trunk for her suitcase, ran up the steps. Expectantly she rang the bell. From inside she could hear the faint sound of chimes.

  As she waited, she sniffed. The windows facing the street were open, and she thought she detected a harsh, burning smell coming from inside. She pressed the doorbell again, and again the chimes reverberated through the house.

  There was still no answer, no sound of footsteps. Something has to be wrong, she thought anxiously. Where was Nuala? Maggie walked over to the nearest window and crouched down, straining to see past the lacy fringe on the partly drawn shade, into the darkness inside.

  Then her mouth went dry. The little she could see of the shadowy room suggested it was in wild disorder. The contents of a drawer were strewn on the hooked carpet, and the drawer itself was leaning haphazardly against the ottoman. The fireplace was opposite the windows and flanked by cabinets. All of them were open.

  What faint light there was came from a pair of sconces over the mantel. As her eyes adjusted to the dim light, Maggie was able to pick out a single high-heeled shoe, turned on its side in front of the fireplace.

  What was that? She squinted and leaned forward, then realized she was seeing a small stockinged foot, extending from behind a love seat near where the shoe had fallen. She lunged back to the door and twisted the handle, but it was locked.

  Blindly, she rushed to the car, grabbed the car phone and punched in 911. Then she stopped, remembering: Her phone was attached to a New York area code. This was Rhode Island; Nuala’s number began with a 401 area code. With trembling fingers she punched in 401–911.

  When the call was answered, she managed to say “I’m at 1 Garrison Avenue in Newport. I can’t get in. I can see someone lying on the floor. I think it’s Nuala.”

  I’m babbling, she told herself. Stop it. But as the calm, unhurried questions came from the dispatcher, with absolute certainty Maggie’s mind was shouting three words: Nuala is dead.

  10

  NEWPORT CHIEF OF POLICE CHET BROWER STOOD ASIDE AS the police photographer snapped pictures of the crime scene. Aside from the wrenching fact that someone in his jurisdiction had been savagely murdered—Nuala Moore had suffered multiple blows to her head—there was something about the entire picture that bothered him.

  There had been no reported incidents of housebreaking in this area for several months. That kind of thing started when many houses were closed for the winter and so became favorite targets for looters looking for television sets and such. Amazing how many people still didn’t have an alarm system, Brower thought. Amazing, too, how many people were careless about locking their doors.

  The chief had been in the first squad car to answer the 911 call. When they had arrived at the house, and the young woman who identified herself as Mrs. Moore’s stepdaughter pointed to the front window, he had looked in and seen just what she had reported. Before forcing the front door, he and Detective Jim Haggerty had gone to the back of the house. Careful to barely touch the doorknob to avoid smudging existing fingerprints, he had found the door unlocked and they had gone in.

  A flame was still flickering under a pot, now burned black. The acrid smell of charred potatoes overwhelmed the other, more pleasant scent. Roasting lamb, his mind had registered. Automatically he had turned off the stove’s burners before going through the dining room into the living room.

  He hadn’t realized that the stepdaughter had followed them until they reached the body and he heard her moan. “Oh, Nuala, Finn-u-ala,” she had said as she sank to her knees. She reached out her hand toward the body, but he grabbed it.

  “Don’t touch her!”

  At that moment the front doorbell chimed, and he remembered noticing that the table in the dining room was set for company. Approaching sirens announced that more squad cars were on the scene, and in the next few minutes the officers had managed to get the stepdaughter and other arriving guests into a neighbor’s house. Everyone was told not to leave until the chief had a chance to talk to them.

  “Chief.”

  Brower looked up. Eddie Sousa, a rookie cop, was beside him.

  “Some of the folks waiting to talk to you are getting kind of restless.”

  Brower’s lifelong habit of frowning, whether in deep thought or annoyance, furrowed the skin of his forehead. The cause this time was annoyance. “Tell them I’ll be over in ten minutes,” he said testily.

  Before leaving, he walked through the house once more. The place was a mess. Even the third-floor studio had been ransacked. Art supplies were thrown on the floor, as though hastily examined and discarded; drawers and cabinets had been emptied. Not too many intruders who had just committed murder would have taken the time for so thorough a search, he reasoned. Also, it would seem obvious from the overall appearance of the house that no money had been spent on it in a long time. So what was there to steal? he wondered.

  The three second-floor bedrooms had been subjected to the same search. One of them was tidy, except for the open closet door and yanked-out dresser drawers. The bedding had been turned back, and it was obvious the linen was fresh. It was Brower’s guess that this room had been prepared for the stepdaughter.

  The contents of the largest bedroom were scattered everywhere. A pink leather jewelry chest, the same kind he once gave his wife for Christmas, was open. What was obviously costume jewelry was scattered on the surface of the maple lowboy.

  Brower made a note to ask Nuala Moore’s friends about any valuable jewelry she might have had.

  He spent a long moment studying the bedroom of the deceased in its disarray. Whoever did this wasn’t a vicious, common thief, or a drug-addicted burglar, he decided. He had been looking for something. Or she had been looking for something, he amended. Nuala Moore had apparently realized her life was in danger. From the look of things, his guess was that she had been running in an attempt to escape when she was struck down from behind. Anyone could have done that—man or woman. It didn’t require great strength.

  And there was something else Brower noticed. Moore had obviously been preparing dinner, which suggested she was in the kitchen when the intruder arrived. She had tried to escape her attacker by running through the dining room, which meant the intruder must have been blocking the kitchen door. He or she probably came in that way, and since there was no sign of forced entry, the door must have been unlocked. Unless, of course, Mrs. Moore had let the intruder in herself. Brower made a note to check later whether the lock was the kind that stayed open once it was released.

  But now he was ready to talk to the dinner guests. He left Detective Haggerty to wait for the coroner.

  11

  “NO, THANK YOU,” MAGGIE SAID AS SHE PRESSED HER index fingers to her temples. She vaguely realized that she hadn’t eaten since noon, ten hours ago, but th
e thought of food made her throat close.

  “Not even a cup of tea, Maggie?”

  She looked up. The kind, solicitous face of Irma Woods, Nuala’s next-door neighbor, hovered over her. It was easier to nod assent than to continue to refuse the offer. And to her surprise the mug warmed her chilled fingers, and the near-scalding tea felt good going down.

  They were in the family room of the Woodses’ home, a house much bigger than Nuala’s. Family pictures were scattered on tabletops as well as on the mantel—children and grandchildren, she supposed. The Woodses appeared to be contemporaries of Nuala.

  Despite all the stress and confusion, Maggie thought she had the others straight, the ones who were to have been the dinner guests. There was Dr. William Lane, the director of Latham Manor, which she gathered was a senior citizens’ residence. A large, balding man somewhere in his fifties, Dr. Lane had a soothing quality about him as he expressed his condolences. He had tried to give her a mild sedative, but Maggie had refused. She found that even the mildest of sedatives could make her sleepy for days.

  Maggie observed that whenever Dr. Lane’s very pretty wife, Odile, said anything, her hands began to move. “Nuala came to visit her friend Greta Shipley at the home almost every day,” she had explained, her fingers gesturing in a come-hither movement as though inviting someone to come closer. Then she shook her head and clasped her fingers together as though in prayer. “Greta will be heartbroken. Heartbroken,” she repeated decisively.

  Odile had already made the same remark several times, and Maggie found herself wishing she wouldn’t say it again. But this time Odile amended it with an additional remark: “And everyone in her art class will miss her so much. The guests who attended it were having so much fun. Oh dear, I didn’t even think of that until this moment.”

  That would be like Nuala, Maggie thought, to share her talent with others. A vivid memory of Nuala giving her her own palette for her sixth birthday flooded her mind. “And I’m going to teach you how to paint lovely pictures,” Nuala had said. Only it didn’t happen that way, because I was never any good, Maggie thought. It wasn’t until she put clay in my hands that art became real to me.

  Malcolm Norton, who had introduced himself to Maggie as Nuala’s lawyer, was standing at the fireplace. He was a handsome man, but it seemed to her that he was striking a pose. There was something superficial—almost artificial—about him, she thought. Somehow his expression of grief, and his statement, “I was her friend and confidant as well as her lawyer,” suggested that he felt he was the one who deserved sympathy.

  But then why should anyone think I’m the one to receive condolences? she asked herself. They all know that I’ve only just met Nuala again after over twenty years.

  Norton’s wife, Janice, spent most of the time talking quietly to the doctor. An athletic type, she might have been attractive except for the downward lines at the corners of her mouth that gave her a harsh, even bitter, expression.

  Thinking about that, Maggie wondered at the way her mind was dealing with the shock of Nuala’s death. On the one hand, she hurt so much; on the other, she was observing these people as though through a camera’s eye.

  Liam and his cousin Earl sat near each other in matching fireside chairs. When Liam came in, he had put his arm around her and said, “Maggie, how horrible for you,” but then he seemed to understand that she needed physical and mental space to absorb this by herself, and he did not take the place next to her on the love seat.

  Love seat, Maggie thought. It was behind the love seat that they had found Nuala’s body.

  Earl Bateman leaned forward, his hands clasped in front of him, as though in deep thought. Maggie had met him only on the night of the Moore reunion, but she remembered that he was an anthropologist who lectured on funeral customs.

  Had Nuala indicated to anyone what kind of funeral she would want? Maggie wondered. Maybe Malcolm Norton, the lawyer, would know.

  The sound of the doorbell made everyone look up. The police chief Maggie had followed into Nuala’s house now came into the room. “I’m sorry to have detained you,” he said. “Several of my men will take your individual statements, so we will have you out of here as soon as possible. First, though, I have some questions I want to ask you as a group. Mr. and Mrs. Woods, I wish you’d stay, too.”

  The chief’s questions were general, things like, “Was Mrs. Moore in the habit of leaving her back door unlocked?”

  The Woodses told him that she always left it unlocked, that she even joked about forever mislaying the key to the front door, but she knew she could always sneak in the back.

  He asked if she had seemed troubled recently. Unanimously they reported that Nuala had been happy and excited and looking forward to Maggie’s visit.

  Maggie felt tears sting the back of her eyes. And then the realization came: But she was troubled.

  It was only when Chief Brower said, “Now if you’ll just bear with us a few minutes more while my men ask you each a few questions, I promise you we’ll have you home soon,” that Irma Woods timidly interrupted.

  “There is just one thing that maybe we ought to explain. Yesterday, Nuala came over. She had handwritten a new will and wanted us to witness her signature. She also had us call Mr. Martin, a notary public, so that he could make it official. She seemed a bit upset because she said that she knew Mr. Norton might be disappointed that she was canceling the sale of her house to him.”

  Irma Woods looked at Maggie. “Nuala’s will asks that you visit or phone her friend Greta Shipley, at Latham Manor, as often as you can possibly manage it. Except for a few charitable bequests, she left her house and everything else she owned to you.”

  Monday, September 30th

  12

  IT WAS OBVIOUS THAT MAGGIE HOLLOWAY WAS NOT satisfied with the theory that an intruder had murdered Nuala. He had seen that at the funeral parlor. Now at the Requiem Mass, he watched with narrowed eyes when she shook her head in disbelief as the priest spoke about the random violence that today claims so many innocent lives.

  Maggie was much too smart, too observant. She could easily become a threat.

  But as they filed out of St. Mary’s Church, he comforted himself with the thought that undoubtedly she would now go back to New York and put Nuala’s house up for sale. And we know who’s going to step in there with an offer before she leaves, he thought.

  He was glad to note that Greta Shipley had been accompanied by a nurse when she arrived at the Mass, and then had had to leave almost immediately afterwards. Maggie would probably pay her a courtesy call at the residence before she took off.

  He stirred restlessly. At least the Mass was nearly over. The soloist was singing “Here I am, Lord,” and the casket was being wheeled slowly down the aisle.

  He didn’t really want to go to the cemetery now, although he knew there was no way out of it. Later. He would go there later . . . and alone. As with the others, his special gift would be a private memorial to her.

  He filed out of the church with the thirty or so others who accompanied Nuala to her final resting place. It was the cemetery in which many of Newport’s more prominent longtime Catholic residents were buried. Nuala’s grave was beside that of her last husband. The legend on the marble would soon be complete. Next to Timothy James Moore’s name and birth and death dates, her name and birth date were already inscribed. Soon, Friday’s date would be added. “Rest in peace” was already there.

  He forced himself to look solemn as the final prayers were read . . . rather too rapidly, he thought. On the other hand, it was obvious that the dark clouds above were about to release a heavy torrent of rain.

  When the service ended, Irma Woods invited everyone back to her house for refreshments.

  He reasoned that it would be awkward to refuse, and besides, it would be a good time to learn exactly when Maggie Holloway planned to leave. Go away, Maggie, he thought. You’ll only get in trouble here.

  * * *

  An hour later, as the gu
ests mingled and chatted, drinks and sandwiches in their hands, he was stunned to hear Irma Woods tell Maggie that the cleaning service had completed straightening the house and removing the mess created by the police when they had dusted for fingerprints.

  “So the house is ready for you, Maggie,” Mrs. Woods told her. “But are you sure you won’t be nervous there? You know you’re welcome to continue staying here.”

  Trying to seem casual, he moved closer, straining to hear. His back was turned toward them as Maggie said, “No, I won’t be nervous in Nuala’s home. I’d intended to stay two weeks, and so I shall. I’ll use the time to sort out everything, and, of course, to visit Greta Shipley at Latham Manor as Nuala requested.”

  He stiffened as she added, “Mrs. Woods, you’ve been so kind. I can’t thank you enough. There’s just one thing. When Nuala came to see you Friday morning with that handwritten will, didn’t you question her? I mean, weren’t you surprised that she was so anxious to have it witnessed and notarized, so intent on having it done at once?”

  It seemed to him that an eternity passed before Mrs. Woods answered, her response measured. “Well, yes, I did wonder. At first I just thought it was impulsive. Nuala had been very lonely since Tim died and was absolutely ecstatic that she’d found you. But since her death, I’ve been thinking that there was more to it than that. It was almost as if Nuala knew something terrible might happen to her.”

  He drifted toward the fireplace, joining a group gathered there. He responded to their remarks, but his mind was racing. Maggie would be visiting Greta Shipley. How much did Greta know? How much did she suspect? Something had to be done. It could not be risked.