mauve tank top and blue chambray shorts. She held a book in her lap. The immaculate, simply furnished room was cool and quiet.
I came nearer. The page was opened to “Nocturnal Reverie” by Anne Finch. Shannon pressed a finger against a line.
I bent to see.
I reappeared on the front porch and knocked.
She was unsmiling when she opened the door. She glanced at my dowdy clothes. “No soliciting permitted.”
Before the door closed, I said quickly, “I’m not soliciting. I’m Francie de Sales, Kay Clark’s assistant.”
“Kay Clark.” A scowl marred her young face.
“You can be very important in a book about Jack Hume. I understand he felt a real rapport with you.”
Her eyes widened.
“I hope you will share what you know about his last days.”
“His last days…” Her voice was shaky.
“In his e-mails, he said you were very kind to him and he admired you.” I didn’t feel that was too much of a stretch. Certainly he’d told Kay how flattering he had found Shannon’s attention.
“He did?” Her eyes lighted. “He said that?”
How little it takes when someone hungers for even a crumb from a beloved figure.
“He said you were gorgeous and sweet.”
I could not have given her a greater gift. Her face bloomed. She opened the screen and I followed her into the living room.
When we sat on the sofa, I leaned forward and spoke in a confidential tone. “The hope”—I carefully avoided saying this was Kay’s hope—“is to know what he was thinking and feeling those last few days.”
Shannon talked fast. “He was so much fun. We first spent time together at the pool. If Evelyn doesn’t need me, I can do whatever I want. I help Mom a lot, but I have a bunch of free time. We swam together and twice we went canoeing. One night I ran into him at Mama Pat’s.” She glanced at me and added, “That’s a club near the campus. I love old jazz. I go there a lot. He was there by himself, listening to the piano, having a drink. We danced to ‘A Nightingale Sang in Berkeley Square.’” Her eyes shone with the memory of a night and the touch of his arms and a smiling face looking down at her. Slowly, the softness faded, replaced by a dumb misery compounded of hurt feelings and puzzlement. “We had fun. I know we did. He liked me. I don’t know what went wrong. I thought maybe I’d said something, done something. It was that last weekend and I found him in the study. Maybe I shouldn’t have bothered him. He looked upset, and when I asked him if we weren’t friends, it was like he didn’t even know me. He kind of shook his head and told me to go away, he was busy. I couldn’t believe he’d act like that after the way he’d held me. It wasn’t right.” There was aching humiliation in her eyes and passionate denial in her voice. “I found out he was seeing that woman next door. She’s old. I don’t know what he saw in her. But they had something going on. I heard the last thing she said to him. ‘I wish you were dead.’ I hope she feels bad now.”
“I understand you were in love with him at one time.” She pressed her lips together and clipped another egg on the side of the bowl. “He dropped you for another woman.”
A flash of satisfaction gleamed in her green eyes.
Her unexpected response caught my attention. I doubted that she harbored kind feelings toward the woman who had supplanted her. She could only feel pleased if in some way she had caused difficulty for her long-ago rival. I remembered Kay’s description of the photograph which she had assumed pictured Jack Hume on his graduation. Photographs of a darkly handsome boy covered a wall in the Dunham home. A photograph was missing from the Dunham wall.
“You slipped the photograph of Ryan Dunham under Jack’s door.” I had no doubt in my mind.
For an instant, Margo stood rigid, one hand gripping an egg. She didn’t drop her eyes to the bowl quite quickly enough to hide a quiver of shock. Then she cracked the egg with a snap.
“Why did you want Jack Hume to see that picture?”
She picked up a whisk, gently whipped the eggs. Her face was set and hard and utterly determined.
My tone was sharp. “Did you guess that Ryan was his son and want to cause trouble for him and Gwen Dunham?”
She placed the beater beside the bowl, turned to one side to pour flour into a sifter.
I moved to stay within her vision whether she acknowledged me or not. “Apparently your daughter made a spectacle of herself, chasing after Jack.”
Margo combined dry ingredients with the flour in a smaller bowl.
“Were you angry because he charmed your daughter, then dropped her? Did it remind you of what happened to you?”
She added the dry ingredients to the larger mixing bowl.
“If you decline to offer information, the book may contain material from others that you won’t find pleasing.”
