Moonlight Becomes You

that he was the one being interviewed.

“You do understand that this is only a preliminary meeting,” Mrs. Chandler was saying. “I am not at all sure that I’m prepared to enter any residence, however attractive. I will say that from what I’ve seen so far, the restoration of this old place is in excellent taste.”

Approbation from Sir Hubert is praise indeed, Lane thought sarcastically. He smiled appreciatively, however. “Thank you,” he said. If Odile were here she would be gushing that, coming from Mrs. Chandler, such praise meant so much to them, and on and on.

“My eldest daughter lives in Santa Fe and very much wants me to make my home there,” Mrs. Chandler continued.

But you don’t want to go there, do you? Lane thought, and suddenly he felt much better. “Of course, having lived in this area so many years, it’s a little hard to make such a complete change, I would think,” he said sympathetically. “So many of our guests visit their families for a week or two, then are very glad to come back to the quiet and comfort of Latham Manor.”

“Yes; I’m sure.” Mrs. Chandler’s tone was noncommittal. “I understand you have several units available?”

“As a matter of fact one of our most desirable units just became available.”

“Who most recently occupied it?”

“Mrs. Constance Van Sickle Rhinelander.”

“Oh, of course. Connie had been quite ill, I understand.”

“I’m afraid so.” Lane did not mention Nuala Moore. He would explain away the room that he had emptied for her art studio by saying that the suite was being totally redecorated.

They went up in the elevator to the third floor. For long minutes, Mrs. Chandler stood on the terrace overlooking the ocean. “This is lovely,” she conceded. “However, I believe this unit is five hundred thousand dollars?”

“That’s correct.”

“Well, I don’t intend to spend that much. Now that I’ve seen this one, I would like to see your other available units.”

She’s going to try to bargain me down, Dr. Lane thought, and had to resist the urge to tell her that such a ploy was of absolutely no use. The cardinal rule of all Prestige Residences was absolutely no discounts. Otherwise, fury resulted, because the word of special deals always got around to those who hadn’t gotten them.

Mrs. Chandler rejected out of hand the smallest, the medium-size, and then the largest single bedroom apartments. “None of these will do. I’m afraid we’re wasting each other’s time.”

They were on the second floor. Dr. Lane turned to see Odile walking toward them, arm in arm with Mrs. Pritchard, who was recovering from foot surgery. She smiled at them, but to Lane’s relief did not stop. Even Odile occasionally knew when not to barge in, he thought.

Nurse Markey was seated at the second-floor desk. She looked up at them with a bright, professional smile. Lane was itching to get to her. This morning Mrs. Shipley had told him she intended to have a dead bolt put on her door to insure privacy. “That woman regards a closed door as a challenge,” she had snapped.

They passed Mrs. Shipley’s studio apartment. A maid had just finished cleaning it, and the wide door was open. Mrs. Chandler glanced in and stopped. “Oh, this is lovely,” she said sincerely, as she absorbed the large alcove seating area with the Renaissance fireplace.

“Step in,” Dr. Lane urged. “I know Mrs. Shipley won’t mind. She’s at the hairdresser’s.”

“Just this far. I feel like an intruder.” Mrs. Chandler took in the bedroom section and the magnificent ocean views on three sides of the unit. “I think this is preferable to the largest suite,” she told him. “How much is a unit like this?”

“Three hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

“Now that I would pay. Is there another like it available? For that price, of course?”

“Not at the moment,” he said, then added, “But why don’t you fill out an application?” He smiled at her. “We’d very much like to have you as a guest someday.”

27

Douglas Hansen smiled ingratiatingly across the table at Cora Gebhart, a peppery septuagenarian who was clearly enjoying the scallops over braised endive she had ordered for lunch.

She was a talker, he thought, not like some of the others that he’d had to shower with attention before he could elicit any information from them. Mrs. Gebhart was opening up to him like a sunflower to the sun, and he knew that by the time the espresso was served, he would have a good chance of winning her confidence.

“Everyone’s favorite nephew,” one of these women had called him, and it was just the way he wanted to be perceived: the fondly solicitous thirty-year-old, who extended to them all the little courtesies they hadn’t enjoyed for years.

Intimate, gossipy luncheons at a restaurant that was either upscale gourmet like this one, Bouchard’s, or a place like the Chart House, where great views could be enjoyed over excellent lobster. The lunches were followed up with a box of candy for the ones who ordered sweet desserts, flowers for those who confided stories of their long-ago courtships, and even an arm-in-arm stroll on Ocean Drive for a more recent widow who wistfully confided how she and her late husband used to take long walks every day. He knew just how to do it.

Hansen had great respect for the fact that all of these women were intelligent, and some of them were even shrewd. The stock offerings he touted to them were the kind that even a moderate investor would have to admit had possibilities. In fact, one of them had actually worked out, which in a way had been disastrous for him, but in the end turned out to be a plus. Because now, in order to cap his pitch, he would suggest that a would-be client call Mrs. Alberta Downing in Providence, that she could confirm Hansen’s expertise.

“Mrs. Downing invested one hundred thousand dollars and made a three-hundred-thousand-dollar profit in one week,” he was able to tell prospective clients. It was an honest claim. The fact that the stock had been artificially inflated at the last minute, and that Mrs. Downing had ordered him to sell, going against his own advice, had seemed like a disaster at the time. They had had to raise the money to pay her her profits, but now at least they had a genuine blue-blood reference.

Cora Gebhart daintily finished the last of her meal. “Excellent,” she announced as she sipped at the chardonnay in her glass. Hansen had wanted to order a full bottle, but she had informed him adamantly that one glass at luncheon was her limit.

Douglas laid his knife on the plate and carefully placed the fork beside it with prongs turned down, European style.

Cora Gebhart sighed. “That’s the way my husband always left the silver on his plate. Were you educated in Europe as well?”

“I spent my junior year at the Sorbonne,” Hansen responded with studied nonchalance.

“How delightful!” Mrs. Gebhart exclaimed, and immediately slipped into flawless French, which Douglas desperately tried to follow.

After a few moments, he held up his hand, smiling. “I can read and write French fluently, but it has been eleven years since I was there, and I’m afraid I’m a bit rusty. En anglais, s’il vous plait.”

They laughed together, but Hansen’s antenna went up. Had Mrs. Gebhart been testing him? he wondered. She had commented on his handsome tweed jacket and his overall distinguished appearance, saying it was unusual in a time when so many young men, her grandson included, looked as though they had just returned from a camping trip. Was she telling him in a subtle way that she could see right through him? That she could sense that he wasn’t really a graduate of Williams and the Wharton School of Business, as he claimed?

He knew that his lean, blond, aristocratic appearance was impressive. It had gotten him entry-level jobs with both Merrill Lynch and Salomon Brothers, but he hadn’t lasted six months at either place.

Mrs. Gebhart’s next words reassured him, however. “I think I’ve been too conservative,” she complained. “I’ve