Chastain wasn’t her maiden name, either. It looked like she’d remarried since her name kept popping up along with Sumner Chastain, CEO of a construction company bearing his name. According to the website, Chastain Construction was a multiaward-winning leader in the industry, advertising itself as “one-stop shopping” for any type of building project from retail to residential to commercial. Most of their work was on the East Coast. They even had a slogan: “Building Your World, Building by Building.” Catchy.
I was about to close down the search when I saw a link that intrigued me. A polo website. With a photo. Annabel and Sumner at a match in Florida presenting a check to the director of a program that rescued pets abandoned during natural disasters like the hurricanes that plagued that state and the entire Gulf Coast. The photo was grainy but at least now I knew what she looked like. A pretty, willowy blonde in a white pantsuit and a double strand of Wilma Flintstone choker pearls around her neck. Either she’d been a teenager when she married Beau or she took good care of herself—maybe both. Sumner looked old enough to be her father. White haired, black caterpillar eyebrows, heavy horn-rimmed glasses, and a movie-star tan.
I printed out the picture and studied it. They looked at ease and in their element, but who was I to judge after chiding Kit for her stereotyped generalizations? I folded the page in quarters, shoved it in my purse, and left for Middleburg.
I drove down Mosby’s Highway as it narrowed to two lanes and became Washington Street inside the Middleburg town limits—which was only a few blocks. If I continued east for another forty miles or so, I’d be in Washington, D.C., and what was a winding country road out here would gradually widen to accommodate lanes of thundering traffic and the second-worst rush hour commute in the country.
But here in the western part of Loudoun County, we’d fought hard to keep our land open and green, and to preserve the charm and allure of villages like Middleburg, with its pretty main street of shops and restaurants owned and patronized by neighbors and friends. On weekends the town was always full of folks from D.C. who came to get away from the city’s relentless pace and brutal politics, and metropolitan suburbanites looking to escape the sameness of strip malls, big-box stores, and fast-food restaurants. I saw them at the vineyard, as well. What they wanted, it seemed to me, was reassurance that small-town America, with all the nostalgia and conjured images of a sweet, simpler life, still existed as a place they could reclaim, even if only for a few hours.
The Coach Stop was one of those old-fashioned places, a fixture of Middleburg since the late 1950s that had retained its down-home atmosphere combined with family-style cooking. The restaurant was bustling with the usual lunchtime crowd and half a dozen people waved or called out hello, including all the waitresses, as I walked in. Kit waved from one of the booths. I slid into the semicircular banquette and we did the perfunctory air kiss.
“I ordered onion rings already,” she said. “With ranch dressing.”
She saw my face. “Oh, come on. Don’t give me that what’s-with-the-diet? look, will you? For the past month I’ve been totally stressed ever since I took over as bureau chief. Anyway, it’s only an extra ten pounds. You know I can take if off like that.” She snapped her fingers.
The “extra ten” had actually crept up to an extra thirty, but that depended on when she began counting. And she’d been talking about the diet for years, long before she got her new job.
“You asked me to remind you,” I said. “I’m only doing what I’m told.”
“Well, don’t do it today. I’ll get back on track. But right now I’m still stressed.”
Our onion rings arrived and we ordered. A chef’s salad and iced tea for me, a bacon cheeseburger plus a strawberry milk shake for Kit.
She picked up an onion ring and dunked it in a blob of dressing she’d poured on her plate. “You’re mad at me. I can tell.”
I took an onion ring and skipped the dressing. “I hope the
“Luce, Bobby did pick up your dad’s gun.”
“You know about
Kit had been going out with Bobby for the past two years, but he bent over backward to make sure the sheriff’s department didn’t cut the
“Someone saw the cruisers pulling out of the entrance to your vineyard this morning and went by the General Store afterward. My crime reporter happened to stop in for coffee and heard about it, so he called and pestered the life out of public affairs at the sheriff’s department,” she said.
Her crime reporter could probably do a bang-up job of reporting if he parked himself in one of the rocking chairs at the General Store and just sat there all day. Sooner or later he’d know everything about everyone.
“A lot of people own a Smith and Wesson thirty-eight,” I said. “It doesn’t mean Leland did anything.”
“That’s what it was? A thirty-eight?”
“You are trying to pump me for information, aren’t you?” I slumped back against the banquette. “How can you be so disingenuous?”
The waitress showed up with our beverages. “Be right back with your food, ladies.”
When she was out of earshot, Kit said in a low voice, “That’s not fair. I’m not being disingenuous and I’m not trying to pry anything out of you. But I am worried about you.”
“You don’t need to be. I’m fine.”
She picked up her milk shake and drank. When she set her glass down, she’d left a thick cerise lipstick kiss on the rim. Kit wore makeup like she was onstage at the Kennedy Center and needed to be seen in the balcony.
“I just don’t want you to get hurt,” she said.
“You think Leland killed him, don’t you?”
“The evidence is stacking up—”
“What evidence? It’s all circumstantial.”
Our meals arrived, silencing us again.
Afterward, Kit said, “You know I’m on your side.”
I picked at my salad. “I wasn’t aware there were sides.”
“Come on, Lucie.”
“Can we talk about something else? How about Beau Kinkaid? Did you find out anything about him?”
She sighed and ate another dressing-drenched onion ring. “Not much. These days with the Internet all you have to do is be on some PTA committee and your name pops up on the school website. Unfortunately, Beau Kinkaid didn’t do anything that made him show up anywhere on the Web. Believe me, I searched. What I found out the old-fashioned way was that he was born in Richmond, June 30, 1939. Went to high school same town, no college record anywhere. Married Anne Gresham, no kids. Parents and a brother all dead.”
“That’s it?”
“Some people leave a bigger footprint in the world than others.” Kit shrugged. “The only one left who knows anything is his wife, Anne. Now married to—”
“Sumner Chastain. I checked, too. And she’s ‘Annabel’ now.”
“Well, the Chastain Construction machine is closing ranks around her. I called their house, and all calls are being forwarded to the company press office. The only thing I got was a two-sentence statement about Mrs. Chastain being distressed at the discovery of her ex-husband’s body and that she’s cooperating fully with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department,” she said.
“You going to talk to her when she comes to town?”
Kit finished chewing. “You bet.”
“It’s weird she didn’t report that he was missing, don’t you think?”
“You didn’t hear? He abused her and she wasn’t sorry he was gone.”
“I heard. I still think it’s odd not to report it at all.”
She shrugged. “You know, she could have blackmailed your father, if she suspected him of murder. Had the best of both worlds. That would be a reason not to report it.”
“That’s an evil theory. She’d hardly be likely to admit something like that when she talks to Bobby, if that’s what she did. Besides, she seems to have remarried well enough that she wouldn’t need to blackmail anyone.”
“Maybe. But after dating a cop for two years and hearing some of his stories, I’m less and less surprised at
