“So you can leave again?”
“Maybe.” I thought of Paris.
Paul just shook his head, but when he looked away, Richard squeezed my hand.
Hugh’s house was in the woods. We arrived right at four, but had trouble parking. The road was narrow, only about a car-and-a-half wide. God forbid two cars going opposite directions should try to pass each other. Someone would have to back up a half mile.
My town ran the gamut from lavish waterfront estates to hip downtown condos to horse farms to luxurious and discreet hideaways. Hugh’s house was nestled in among the rock slabs that had slid through here during the last ice age. In the summer, shade gardens and a slate patio surrounded a blue-green pool. Today, the pool was tarped and sifted over with snow.
The slate theme had been carried into the house in the floors of the vestibule and the kitchen, which was at the end of the center hall. Floor-to-ceiling windows looked out from the kitchen over the pool deck. To the right and down a step was the living room, carpeted in white. I wondered whether that had been Maria’s decision or Hugh’s. No woman in her right mind would install white carpet; it would be white with a beige path in about six weeks, no matter how good the maid was.
Rows of chairs faced the fireplace and an elaborate silver music stand. Next to the stand, a small table was set with a white cloth and a silver-framed picture of Hugh. The house was crowded with people, but each sat nearly silent holding a white rose handed to them by a white-gloved, tuxedoed teenager stationed at the front door. There was definitely a theme here. Who themed a memorial service? Was this the latest trend?
I tried to remember how to get downstairs to Hugh’s office. It had been a long time since I’d been here, and anxiety about how I was going to get Hugh’s files buzzed in my gut. A silver-haired woman in a white dress stepped to the music stand. Richard, Paul and I hurriedly took roses and found seats.
“That’s Maria,” Richard whispered.
“Thank you for coming.” Her voice was melodious and soft, like listening to Madeleine Peyroux sing “Summer Wind.” She was also beautiful. The dress, a fitted woolen sheath, fell just to her knees, accentuating her trim figure and muscular legs. With blue eyes and silver hair almost to her waist, she looked like a gracefully aging Snow White.
“I want to keep this pretty casual,” she continued. “I see so many people who knew Hugh well. I have a few words to say, but then anyone who wants to talk may. I don’t want to keep you here all afternoon, so if each person could limit their thoughts to a minute or so, I would be grateful.” She paused and seemed to pull some energy from the packed room.
“Hugh loved this town. He loved the people; he loved the place itself. That someone here brutally murdered him is an outrage I’m having difficulty comprehending. Most of you know Hugh and I loved each other deeply, but chose to live apart. While I don’t regret that decision, I do regret I was not here for him the night he was killed. People say you can’t second-guess life, but I will always second-guess Hugh’s death. If the killer is in this room, I want you to know that I won’t let the police rest until you’re behind bars forever.”
I looked at Richard and Paul, a little shocked. Is this how people behaved at society funerals these days? Maybe I wasn’t the only one who was out of sync. Paul raised an eyebrow at me and Richard gave a little head shake. Surreptitiously, or at least as surreptitiously as I could, I looked around the room to see who might be counted among the suspects. Everyone else was looking around, too.
Hetty cowered in her chair at the end of a row, her clogs caked with mud. Andrew and Mary Ellen Winters sat two rows from the front with Andrew’s wife, Jennifer, a blonde with the kind of perfect face only achieved under the surgeon’s knife. A senior lawyer at Bailey’s firm, William Morgan, and his wife, sat in the front row with Nat and Beulah Mueller. Winken, Drinken, and Nod, as I’d nicknamed them, three of my new Women’s League buddies, had settled a couple rows up from the mayor. Winken, I had learned from Paul, was having an affair with her podiatrist, Drinken smelled of gin, and Nod was in serious danger of overdosing on decaf coffee. She must have had eight cups at our two-hour Women’s League meeting. Their real names were Wendy, Darcy, and Nancy, but it was much easier to remember them this way. I knew most of the other people by sight, but my recent self-imposed exile had caused their names to vanish.
Every one of them looked a little sick. Why would any of them want Hugh dead? What could Hugh possibly have done to anger anyone? The man I remembered was kind, even when he was skewering one’s self-delusions. I shook my head, wondering how I would escape all this to find the file.
Maria paused for a moment of silence, then took the rose from her hair and laid it in front of Hugh’s framed picture. “Would anyone like to speak?”
Andrew waved his rose in the air. Of course.
“We all loved Hugh,” he began, as he made his way to the front of the room, and I wondered if he was making that up or knew it to be true. “When we attended Chumley Academy, we were close, close friends.” I saw Richard give Paul a look. Winters then recited a story about some prank he claimed he and Hugh had pulled involving a goat
