Moonlight Becomes You

They had finished their meal and were lingering over coffee when the Scotts stopped by their table to say hello.

“Neil, you owe Harry a word of thanks,” Robert Stephens said by way of introduction. “He switched tee-off times with us today.”

“Didn’t matter,” Harry Scott responded. “ Lynn was in Boston for the day, so we planned on a late dinner anyway.”

His wife, stocky and pleasant faced, asked, “Dolores, do you remember meeting Greta Shipley at a luncheon here for the Preservation Society? It was three or four years ago, I think. She sat at our table.”

“Yes, I liked her very much. Why?”

“She died last night, in her sleep, apparently.”

“I’m so sorry.”

“What upsets me,” Lynn Scott continued contritely, “is that I’d heard that she had lost two close friends recently, and I’d been meaning to call her. One of the friends was that poor woman who was murdered in her home last Friday. You must have read about that. Her stepdaughter from New York discovered the body.”

“Stepdaughter from New York!” Neil exclaimed.

Excitedly, his mother interrupted him. “That’s where I read that name. It was in the newspaper. Finnuala. Neil, she was the woman who was murdered!”

• • •

When they got back home, Robert Stephens showed Neil the neatly bound newspapers in the garage, waiting for recycling. “It was in Saturday’s paper, the 28th,” his father told him. “I’m sure it’s in that pile.”

“The reason I didn’t remember the name right away was that in the article they called her Nuala Moore,” his mother said. “It was only somewhere toward the end of the article that her complete first name was mentioned.”

Two minutes later, with increasing dismay, Neil was reading the account of Nuala Moore’s death. As he did, his mind kept replaying the happiness in Maggie’s eyes when she told him about finding her stepmother again, and the plans she had made to visit her.

“She gave me the five happiest years of my childhood,” she had said. Maggie, Maggie, Neil thought. Where was she now? Had she gone back to New York? He quickly called her apartment, but her phone message was unchanged-she would be gone until the 13th.

The address of Nuala Moore’s home was in the newspaper account of the murder, but when he called information, he was told that the phone there was unlisted.

“Damn!” he exclaimed as he snapped the receiver back on the cradle.

“Neil,” his mother said softly. “It’s quarter of eleven. If this young woman is still in Newport, whether at that house or somewhere else, it’s no time to go looking for her. Drive over there in the morning, and if you don’t find her there, then try the police station. There’s a criminal investigation taking place, and since she discovered the body, the police will certainly know where to reach her.”

“Listen to your mother, son,” his father said. “Now, you’ve had a long day. I suggest you pack it in.”

“I guess so. Thanks, both of you.” Neil kissed his mother, touched his father’s arm and walked dejectedly into the hallway that led to the bedrooms.

Dolores Stephens waited until her son was out of earshot, then quietly said to her husband, “I have a feeling Neil has finally met a girl he really cares about.”

37

Even a painstaking examination of each of the enlarged photographs did not reveal to Maggie anything on those graves that should have troubled her subconscious so greatly.

They all looked the same, showed the same things: headstones with varying degrees of plantings around them; grass still velvety green in this early fall season, except Nuala’s, which had sod that showed some patchy spots.

Sod. For some reason that word struck a note with her. Mrs. Rhinelander’s grave must have been freshly sodded as well. She had died only two weeks earlier.

Once more, Maggie studied all the photographs of Constance Rhinelander’s grave, using a magnifying glass to pore over every inch of them. The only thing that attracted her attention was a small hole showing in the plantings around the headstone. It looked as though a rock or something might have been removed from there. Whoever had taken it had not bothered to smooth over the earth.

She looked again at the best close-ups she had of the tombstone at Nuala’s grave. The sod there was smooth to the point where the plantings began, but in one of the shots she thought she could detect something-a stone?- just behind the flowers Greta Shipley had left yesterday. Was whatever it was there simply because the earth had been carelessly sifted for clods and stones after the interment, or was it perhaps a cemetery marker of some sort? There was an odd glint…

She studied the pictures of the other four graves but could see nothing on any of them that should have attracted her attention.

Finally she laid the prints down on a corner of the refectory table and reached for an armature and the pot of wet clay.

Using recent pictures of Nuala she’d found around the house, Maggie began to sculpt. For the next several hours, her fingers became one with clay and knife as she began to shape Nuala’s small, lovely face, suggesting the wide, round eyes and full eyelashes. She insinuated the signs of age in the lines around the eyes, and around the mouth and neck, and in the shoulders that curved forward.

She could tell that when she was done, she would have succeeded in catching those traits she had so loved in Nuala’s face -the indomitable and merry spirit behind a face that on someone else might have been merely pretty.

Like Odile Lane, she thought, and then winced at the memory of how the woman had wagged her finger at Greta Shipley barely twenty-four hours ago. “Naughty, naughty,” she had said.

As she cleaned up, Maggie thought about the people she had dined with last evening. How distressed they must be, she thought. It was obvious how much they enjoyed Greta, and now she is gone. So suddenly.

Maggie looked at her watch as she went downstairs. Nine o’clock: not really too late to phone Mrs. Bainbridge, she decided.

Letitia Bainbridge answered on the first ring. “Oh, Maggie, we’re all heartsick. Greta hadn’t been feeling well for a few weeks, but till then she was perfectly fine. I knew she was on blood pressure and heart medicine, but she’d been on them for years and never had any problems.”

“I came to like her so much in such a short time,” Maggie said sincerely. “I can imagine how all of you must feel. Do you know what the arrangements are?”

“Yes. Bateman Funeral is handling them. I guess we’ll all end up there. The Requiem is Saturday morning at eleven at Trinity Episcopal Church, and interment is at Trinity Cemetery. Greta had left instructions that the only viewing was to be at Bateman’s between nine and ten-thirty.”

“I’ll be there,” Maggie promised. “Did she have any family?”

“Some cousins. I gather they’re coming. I know that she left her securities and the contents of her apartment to them, so they certainly should show that much respect for her.” Letitia Bainbridge paused, then added, “Maggie, do you know what has haunted me? Practically the last thing I said to Greta last night was that if Eleanor Chandler had been seen eyeing her apartment, then she should change her locks.”

“But she was amused by the remark,” Maggie protested. “Please, you mustn’t let that upset you.”

“Oh, that’s not what upsets me. It’s the fact that I’d bet anything, no matter who else may be on the list, Eleanor Chandler gets that place now.”