Moonlight Becomes You

Sarah Cushing turned and dropped back to rejoin the group she had been with.

“Let’s have a quiet lunch,” Liam suggested. “I’m sure you’re not up to any more post-funeral get- togethers.”

“No, I’m not. But I really do want to get back to the house. I simply have to go through Nuala’s clothes and sort them out.”

“Dinner tonight, then?”

Maggie shook her head. “Thanks, but I’m going to stay at the sort-and-pack job till I drop.”

“Well, I have to see you before I go back to Boston tomorrow night,” Liam protested.

Maggie knew he wasn’t going to allow her to say no. “Okay, call me,” she said. “We’ll figure something out.”

He left her at her car. She was turning the key in the ignition when a rap at the window startled her. It was Malcolm Norton. “We need to talk,” he said urgently.

Maggie decided to bite the bullet and not waste his time or hers. “Mr. Norton, if it’s about buying Nuala’s house, I can only tell you this: I have absolutely no plans of selling it at this time, and I’m afraid that, absolutely unsolicited, I have already received a substantially higher offer than yours.”

Murmuring, “I’m sorry,” she slid the selector into DRIVE. She found it almost painful to see the horrified shock in the man’s expression.

51

Neil Stephens and his father teed up at seven o’clock and were back in the clubhouse by noon. This time, Neil heard the phone being picked up after the second ring. When he recognized Maggie’s voice, he let out a sigh of relief.

Sounding disjointed, even to himself, he told her how he had phoned her after she left on Friday, how he had gone to Jimmy Neary to try to get Nuala’s name so he could contact her here, how he had learned of Nuala’s death, and was so terribly sorry… “Maggie, I have to see you, today,” he finished.

He sensed her hesitation, then listened as she told him she had to stay in and finish clearing out her stepmother’s personal effects.

“No matter how busy you are, you still have to eat dinner,” he pleaded. “Maggie, if you won’t let me take you out, I’m going to arrive on your doorstep with meals-on-wheels.” Then he thought about the man with the Jaguar. “Unless somebody else is already doing that,” he added.

At her response, a smile broke out on his face. “Seven o’clock? Terrific. I found a great place for lobster.”

“I gather you reached this Maggie of yours,” Robert Stephens said dryly when Neil joined him at the door of the clubhouse.

“Yes, I did. We’re going out to dinner tonight.”

“Well, then, we’ll be happy for you to bring her along with us. You know we’re having your mother’s birthday dinner at the club tonight.”

“Her birthday isn’t until tomorrow,” Neil protested.

“Thanks for telling me! You’re the one who asked that we have the celebration this evening. You said you wanted to get started home by midafternoon tomorrow.”

Neil stood with his hand to his mouth, as though in deep thought. Then he silently shook his head. Robert Stephens smiled. “A lot of people consider your mother and me good company.”

“You are good company,” Neil protested feebly. “I’m sure Maggie will enjoy being with you.”

“Of course she will. Now let’s get home. Another client of mine, Laura Arlington, is coming over at two. I want you to go over what’s left of her stock portfolio and see if you can recommend any way to upgrade her income. Thanks to that sleazy broker, she’s really in bad shape.”

I don’t want to risk telling Maggie over the phone about the change in plans, Neil thought. She’d probably bow out. I’ll show up at her doorstep and plead my case.

Two hours later, Neil sat with Mrs. Arlington in his father’s office. She is in bad shape, he thought. She had once owned blue-chip stocks that paid good dividends but had sold them all to buy into another of those crazy venture offerings. Ten days ago, Mrs. Arlington had been persuaded to buy one hundred thousand shares of some piece of trash at five dollars a share. The next morning the stock went to five and a quarter, but by that afternoon it had begun to plunge. Now it was valued below a dollar.

So five hundred thousand dollars in stock is reduced to about eighty thousand, assuming there’s even a buyer, Neil thought, glancing with pity across the desk at the ashen-faced woman whose entwined hands and slumping shoulders betrayed her agitation. She’s only Mother’s age, he thought, sixty-six, yet right now she looks twenty years older.

“It’s pretty awful, isn’t it?” Mrs. Arlington asked.

“I’m afraid so,” Neil said.

“You see, that was the money I was going to use when one of the larger apartments in Latham Manor became available. But I’ve always felt guilty about the idea of using so much money selfishly. I have three children, and when Douglas Hansen was so persuasive, and Mrs. Downing told me how much money she had made in less than a week with his help, I thought, well, if I double that money, I’ll have an inheritance for the children as well as being able to live in Latham Manor.”

She tried to blink back tears. “Then not only did I lose my money last week, but the very next day I got a call that one of the big apartments was available, the one that Nuala Moore had been scheduled to take.”

“Nuala Moore?” Neil said quickly.

“Yes, the woman who was murdered last week.” Mrs. Arlington held a handkerchief to the tears that she could no longer hold back. “Now I don’t have the apartment, and the children not only don’t get an inheritance but one of them may be stuck with having to take me in.”

She shook her head. “I’ve known this for over a week, but seeing the confirmation of the stock purchase in writing this morning just about did me in.” She dabbed at her eyes. “Oh, well.”

Laura Arlington stood up and attempted a smile. “You’re just as nice a young man as your father keeps telling all of us you are. So you think I should just leave what’s left of my portfolio alone?”

“Absolutely,” Neil said. “I’m sorry this happened, Mrs. Arlington.”

“Well, think of all the people in this world who don’t have half a million dollars ‘to piss away,’ as my grandson would put it.” Her eyes widened. “I cannot believe I said that! Forgive me.” Then a hint of a smile appeared on her lips. “But you know something? I feel a lot better for saying it. Your mother and father wanted me to stop in and visit. But I think I’d better run along. Do thank them for me, please.”

When she left, Neil went back to the house. His parents were in the sunroom. “Where’s Laura?” his mother asked anxiously.

“I knew she wouldn’t want to visit now,” Robert Stephens commented. “Everything that has changed for her is just beginning to sink in.”

“She’s a classy lady,” Neil said heatedly. “I’d like to strangle that jerk, Douglas Hansen. But I swear that first thing Monday morning I’m going to dig up every last little bit of dirt I can get to pin on him, and if there’s any way I can file a complaint with the SEC, trust me, I’ll do it.”

“Good!” Robert Stephens said enthusiastically.

“You sound more and more like your father every day,” Dolores Stephens said dryly.

Later, as Neil watched the rest of the Yankees-Red Sox game, he found himself annoyed by the feeling that he had missed something in Laura Arlington’s portfolio. There was something wrong there other than a misguided investment. But what? he wondered.