I preheated the oven and poured boiling water over the currants. While the currants were plumping up, I measured dry ingredients into the Hydes’ food processor. Chunks of cold unsalted butter went in next, followed by a quick binding with egg, milk, and cream. I patted out and cut the resulting rich dough, then slid scone triangles into the oven. While Tom merrily squabbled with Julian over the taste merits of meat-based over vegetarian chili, Julian searched through the kitchen jam cabinet for lemon marmalade.
“See if you can nab some mint jelly,” I begged him. After a few minutes of clattering, Julian brought out small crystal jars of blackberry jelly, orange and lemon marmalades, and raspberry jam.
“No mint jelly,” he said, discouraged. After a moment, he brightened. “Hold on, I think I remember seeing some mint jelly in Eliot’s other jam cabinet.” He grabbed the keys, disappeared into the buttery/dining room, and cursed colorfully. Then more sounds of clanking glass reached the kitchen. After a moment, Julian marched back into the kitchen, clutching jars of mint and sherry jelly.
While the baking scones filled the kitchen with a homey scent, we sipped Tom’s dark, hot, perfectly brewed English Breakfast tea and ate the delectable cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches. Julian remembered that Michaela had called to say she was bringing Arch home. When I expressed guilt that we weren’t including our hosts, Julian said the Hydes would be out until the evening meal. Eliot, Julian went on, had signed up to attend a late- afternoon seminar on running a home-based business. Sukie, vowing that she was the only Hyde who had any business running anything, had insisted on accompanying him. Julian had packed them a snack of gourmet vegetarian wraps. They’d said they’d be back at seven for dinner in the Great Hall, where Eliot had already set up the Elizabethan games he wanted us to try. Great, I thought. Cook, eat, and playa rousing game or two of indoor badminton and horseshoes. Excuse me - shuttlecock and penny prick. Why did Elizabethan games sound like naughty sex? Would the Elk Park parents call after Friday’s banquet and complain?
I put these worries out of my head when the steaming scones emerged from the oven. We cooed and chattered and spread layers of whipped cream and jams on each split half. Yum, my brain cried, when I bit into flaky, moist layers slathered with cream and melting sherry jelly. I noticed Tom was still not eating much. Nevertheless, his spirits seemed to have perked up in the presence of family and food. I glanced at the clock: quarter to four. If we were going to have our heart-to-heart, the time was approaching.
“Goldy?” asked Julian. “I forgot to tell you your supplier finally arrived. She brought another lamb roast, plus all the extra foodstuffs for tomorrow and Friday. When we finish here, do you want me to keep working on the labyrinth lunch? I finished the soup. Eliot said before he left that he wanted us to check that the tables would arrive early tomorrow morning.”
“Let’s wait on that,” I replied. “And thanks for helping Alicia, and for getting started here. I want to work on tonight’s dinner, but not quite yet.” Even though the bedroom would have been a better setting for my tete-r-tete with Tom, the time was ripe. I gave Julian a meaningful glance.
“Okay!” Julian exclaimed. “I guess I’ll go set the six of us up in the Great Hall.” In a wink, he was gone.
“Tom,” I plunged in, “we need to talk. Something’s been bothering me.…” I faltered.
He furrowed his brow, but his face was blank. “Go on.”
“Right after you were shot, you said something strange to me. You said, ‘I don’t love her.’”
His shoulders slumped and he looked away. “Oh God. So it’s true. I didn’t imagine it.”
“Didn’t imagine what? That Sara Beth O’Malley is alive?”
Tom’s eyes, when he turned back to me, were the lucid green of sunlit seawater. “Goldy, I love you. I’m married to you. When I woke up in that hospital, I didn’t know whether I’d dreamed that she’d come back or not. They warned me that the pain medication might be hallucinogenic, so I put it down to that. Then I woke up here, and I thought I saw somebody run out of our room.”
No wonder he’d been looking so full of pain. My heart ached. “A man or a woman was running out of our room? Didn’t you have your door armed?”
“The door was armed.” There was more than a hint of irritation in his voice. “It didn’t look like a man or a woman. It looked like a kid in a suit of armor, like that ghost story last night. It looked like a hallucination, except the armor clanked pretty loudly.”
“But Sara Beth O’Malley isn’t a hallucination, right?”
He shook his head. “No, I think she’s alive. All these years of silence, then she starts sending me e-mails. I was trying to figure out what was going on when I was shot.”
He looked so forlorn that I took his big hands into mine. “Since it’s full-disclosure time,” I said hesitantly, “I want to tell you that I downloaded her e-mails, plus the one you received from the State Department. I also downloaded Andy’s e-mails, because I thought it might help figure out who shot the two of you. I put all the e-mails on a disk before our computers were stolen.”
He lifted a sandy eyebrow. “Let me get this straight. You not only read my personal, private e-mails from Andy Balachek, you also read my personal, private electronic correspondence from and about Sara Beth?”
“I’m sorry. It’s just that when you told me that you didn’t love some woman, I was sure she was the one who’d shot at our house and shot you. I was trying to figure out who it was, too.”
“But I’d already told you I didn’t love her.”
“So, you haven’t actually seen her yet?”
“No.”
“Well, I have to tell you, I have.”
“What?” Tom’s face furrowed. “Are you sure? You saw her? Talked to her?”
“Both. But not for more than a minute. The day after you were shot, she staked out our house. I looked at an old photograph of her from your album. She looked like the same woman, only older.”
“Uh-huh.”
I tried to control my trembling voice. “I’m wondering if she shot out our window, and then she shot you, because she’s the jealous type.” I forced myself to stop talking.
“My, my.”
I paused, then went on: “Look, Tom, I’m terribly sorry about prying into the Sara Beth thing. Can you just please tell me what’s going on?”
He lifted his left shoulder. “She didn’t die. Or else, I figured, someone was doing a great hoax job. But if you saw her and talked to her, I don’t know. I do think I should try to meet her. She said in her e-mail she has a dentist’s appointment Friday morning … .”
I swallowed. Did I trust him meeting with that lovely, enigmatic woman? What were my choices? I could hear the reluctance in my voice when I said, “I won’t do anything else about her if you don’t want me to. But here’s one more thing I’ve been wondering about … although it’s a bit far-fetched.”
“Don’t worry, Miss G.” His voice was grim. “I’m used to far-fetched these days.”
“The owner of The Stamp Fox insists any stolen philatelic material can be easily fenced in the Far East. Do you think there’s a possibility Sara Beth could be part of the stamp robbery?”
He considered the crumbs on our plates, then shook his head. “It’s not like her. Or at least, not the way she used to be. Obviously, I didn’t know her as well as I thought I did.”
“As long as this is truth time, you should know I’ve been doing some poking around on a related matter.” Tom groaned and I continued hastily, “I’m not sure it’s safe for us to stay here. Sukie was treated by John Richard for cancer, and didn’t tell me - “
“That makes her dangerous?”
“The Lauderdales hate me, and Charde is the castle decorator. She can get into the castle anytime she wants.”
“Now there?s an indication of guilt.” “And Eliot Hyde had an affair with Viv Martini, who is John Richard’s new girlfriend and was Ray Wolff’s - “
“You have been busy. Listen, I want to go home, too. And we will, soon. Meanwhile, I think it’s fine for us to be here. Eliot Hyde is so afraid of looking bad in the public eye he wouldn’t dare try anything, and Sukie knows where her bread gets buttered.”
“I’m not so sure - “
“You’ll have to trust my judgment. Of course, you haven’t been doing too well in the trust department lately.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, and meant it. Still, my brain buzzed with unanswered questions. The minutes ticked by. I had lied to Tom by not immediately ‘fessing up to my e-mail snooping; he had lied to me by covering up the whole
