The Soon-To-Be-Disinherited Wife

“Murder!” someone said.

Emma’s head shot up. “Say what?”

Abby spoke up from the corner, her voice a thousand times more tentative than normal. “You’ve had your head in the clouds, Em. I don’t blame you, with a wedding coming up. But I was just telling the group what happened since I went to the police about my mother.”

“The police?” Emma knew about Abby’s mother’s death. Everyone did. Lucinda Baldwin-alias Bunny-had created the Eastwick Social Diary, which had dished all the dirt on the moneyed crowd in Eastwick. Marriages, cheating, divorces, touchy habits, legal or business indiscretions-if it was scandal worthy, Bunny somehow always knew and loved to tell. Her death had been a shock to everyone. “I know how young your mom was, Abby. But I thought someone said she had a heart condition that hadn’t been detected before, that that was what she died from-”

“That’s what I thought originally, too,” Abby affirmed. “But right after Mom died, I couldn’t face going through her things. It took me a while…but when I finally got around to opening my mom’s private safe, I just expected to find her journals and jewelry. The jewelry was there, but all her journals were gone. Stolen. They had to be. It was the only place she ever kept them. That’s when I first started worrying. And then, finding out that someone tried to blackmail Jack Cartright because of information in those missing journals added to my suspicions.”

“Abby’s become more and more concerned that her mom was murdered,” Felicity clarified.

“My God.” Scandal was one thing, but Eastwick barely needed an active police force. There hadn’t been a serious crime in the community in years, much less anything as grave as murder.

“I can’t sleep at night,” Abby admitted. “I just can’t stop thinking about it. My mom loved secrets. Loved putting together the Diary. And for darn sure, she loved scandals. But she never had a mean bone in her body. She had tons of things written down in her journals that she never used in the Diary because she didn’t want to hurt people.”

Emma groped to understand. “So that’s partly why you think she was murdered? Because someone stole those journals? Either because they wanted to use the information, or because they had a secret themselves they wanted covered up?”

“Exactly. But I still can’t prove it,” Abby said restlessly. “I mean, the journals are gone. That’s for sure. But I can’t prove the theft is related to her death. The police keep telling me that I don’t have enough to open up a new inquest. Honestly, they’ve been really nice-they all agree the situation sounds suspicious. But there’s no one to arrest, no suspects. I can’t even prove the journals were stolen.”

“But she’s positive they were,” Felicity filled in.

Abby nodded. “They had to be stolen. The safe is the only place my mother ever kept them. Unfortunately, the police can’t act just because I know something is true. There’s no evidence to prove my mother didn’t simply hide the journals somewhere else. And there isn’t a single suspect.”

The whole group clustered close to discuss the disturbing situation-and to support Abby-but eventually the Emerald Room filled up with kids and families. Serious talk became impossible. The women lightened up, chitchatted about family news, but eventually the group broke up.

In the parking lot Emma climbed into her white SUV, her mind spinning between Caroline’s troubling behavior at lunch and the worrisome suspicions about Bunny’s death. Still, by the time she turned on Main Street, her mood instinctively lifted.

Her art gallery, Color, was only a couple blocks off the main drag in town. Emma didn’t mind running the fund- raising committee for Eastwick’s country club or any of the other social responsibilities her parents pushed on her. If it weren’t for her parents-and a mighty huge trust fund coming to her on her thirtieth birthday-she couldn’t do the things she really loved. Most people never knew about the volunteer work she did with kids, but the whole community was well aware how much time and love she devoted to the gallery.

She parked in the narrow, crooked drive. The building was at the corner of Maple and Oak, and in June now, a profuse row of peonies bloomed inside the white picket fence. Typical of old Connecticut towns, Eastwick had tons of pre-Revolutionary history. Her building had once been a house. It was two hundred-plus years old, brick, with tall, skinny windows and a dozen small rooms-which was the advantage. Although something always seemed to need maintenance, from the plumbing to the electricity, she had a dozen rooms to display completely different kinds of artwork. Customers could roam around and examine whatever they liked in relative privacy.

By the time she bolted out of the SUV-and nearly tripped on the cobblestone steps-she was humming. A shipment of Alson Skinner Clark prints was due in late that afternoon. They needed sorting and hanging. And two weeks before, she’d come across an old Walter Farndon oil on canvas that was still stashed in the back room-her workshop-that needed cleaning and repair, which she loved doing. And a room on the second floor was vacant right now, just waiting for her to set up a display of local artists’ work, another project she couldn’t wait to take on.

Her gallery rode the edge of making a profit and not. Emma knew perfectly well she could have run it more efficiently, but she’d always known she had the trust fund coming. It wasn’t the money that mattered to her but the freedom to open up art to the community, to be part of making something beautiful in people’s lives.

She’d never told anyone how important that goal of beauty was to her. The Debs would just roll their eyes at her goofy idealism. Her family would sigh as if she’d never understand practical reality-at least, reality on their terms. And maybe all of them were right, but when Emma opened the ornate red-lacquer door into Color, she felt a sweeping burst of plain old happiness.

“Hey, Ms. Dearborn! I was hoping you’d be back by midafternoon. You got that crate from New York you were waiting for. Came in FedEx before noon.” Josh, who’d worked part time for her for years, blessed her with a shy smile. He was somewhere in the vicinity of sixty, skinny as a rail and paler than paint. Some said he’d been an artist once. Some said he was gay. Some said he’d had a too-long relationship with bordeaux. All Emma knew was that he’d walked in and started helping her when she first opened the place. He’d taught her tons.

“I can’t wait to get into it. You can watch for customers up front?”

“Sure thing.”

She glanced at her office, stashed her summer bag and spun around to zoom in the back room when the phone rang. When she grabbed it, she heard the familiar voice of her fiance.

“Hey, sweetheart. I was wondering if you had time for dinner tonight. I’m tied up most of the afternoon but pretty sure I could make it into town around, say, seven.”

Instinctively she twisted her arm behind her to claw at that strange, aggravating itch again. The restless, stressy feeling that had been bugging her for hours suddenly fiercely intensified. “Sure,” she said. “How’s your day?”

“Couldn’t be better. Bought a honey of a stallion…”

Standing with the phone to her ear, close to the window, she ignored the itch and suddenly, slowly lifted her hand. The sapphire on her left hand was from Sri Lanka. Reed had taken her to a jeweler, shown her a bed of sapphires, only argued when she’d first tried to pick a smaller stone. The ring was more than a breathtaking gem. It was a symbol of something she’d been so positive she’d never have.

She’d always been positive that marriage wasn’t for her. She liked men fine and totally adored kids. But so many couples in Eastwick, including her parents, seemed more like business mergers than love affairs. Sex was a commodity pretty much like any other. Emma didn’t knock anyone else’s choices, she just never wanted that kind of life. Yet when Reed asked her to marry him, well…maybe he’d never made her heart race or her mood go giddy, but damn. He was such a good guy. Impossible not to love. When it came down to it, she’d easily said yes, recognizing that he was probably the only man she could imagine being married to.

Today, she felt no differently than she’d felt the day he’d slid the engagement ring on her finger.

It was just…she couldn’t seem to quell the strange, edgy sensation of panic that had been hounding her mood for hours now. “I can’t wait for tonight!” she assured him brightly.

But when she hung up the phone, guilt smacked her in the heart. What kind of goofy woman was she that she’d rather spend the evening unpacking old crates in the back of her gallery than go out to a romantic dinner with a man she loved?

Four-thirty in the afternoon, any weekday afternoon, always turned into a work frenzy. Garrett Keating had hired a driver about four years ago, not because he didn’t enjoy driving himself-even in the craziness of downtown Manhattan-but because the crises automatically seemed to kick in during that late-afternoon time frame. This afternoon, typically, he’d left his investment-banking firm less than ten minutes ago, yet his cell had rung nonstop. As he sat in the backseat, his briefcase was open and papers were scattered everywhere.