For long minutes, Meghan sat in her car in front of the handsome limestone house in Chestnut Hill, twenty miles from downtown Philadelphia. The graceful lines of the three-story residence were accentuated by the mullioned windows, antique oak door and the slate roof that gleamed in shades of deep green in the early afternoon sun.
The walkway that threaded through the broad expanse of lawn was bordered by rows of azaleas that Meghan was sure would bloom with vivid beauty in the spring. A dozen slender white birches were scattered like sentinels throughout the property.
The name on the mailbox was C. J. Graham. Had she ever heard that name from her father? Meghan didn’t think so.
She got out of the car and went slowly up the walk. She hesitated a moment, then rang the bell and heard the faint peal of chimes sound inside the house. A moment later the door was opened by a maid in uniform.
“Yes?” Her inquiry was polite but guarded.
Meghan realized she did not know who she should ask to see. “I would like a word with whoever lives in this house who might have been a friend of Aurelia Collins.”
“Who is it, Jessie?” a man’s voice called.
Behind the maid, Meghan saw a tall man with snow white hair, approaching the door.
“Invite the young woman in, Jessie,” he directed. “It’s cold out there.”
Meghan stepped inside. As the door closed, the man’s eyes narrowed. He waved her closer. “Come in, please. Under the light.” A smile broke over his face. “It’s Annie, isn’t it? My dear, I’m glad to see you again.”
33
Catherine Collins had an early breakfast with Meghan before Meg left to meet with the investigators at the Danbury courthouse and then to drive to Philadelphia. Catherine carried a second cup of coffee upstairs and turned on the television in her room. On the local news she heard that her husband’s official listing with the law was no longer missing-presumed-dead, but had been changed to wanted-for-questioning in the Petrovic death.
When Meg called to say she was finished with the investigators and about to leave for Philadelphia, Catherine asked, “Meg, what did they ask you?”
“The same kind of questions they asked you. You know they’re convinced Dad is alive. So far they have him guilty of fraud and murder. God knows what else they’ll come up with. You’re the one who warned me yesterday that it was going to get worse before it got better. You sure were right.”
Something in Meg’s voice chilled Catherine. “Meg, there’s something you’re not telling me.”
“Mom, I have to go. We’ll talk tonight, I promise.”
“I don’t want anything held back.”
“I swear to God I won’t hold anything back.”
The doctor had cautioned Catherine to stay at home and rest for at least a few days. Rest and give myself a real heart attack worrying, she thought as she dressed. She was going to the inn.
She’d been away only a few days, but she could see a difference. Virginia was good but missed small details. The flower arrangement on the registration desk was drooping. “When did this come?” Catherine asked.
“Just this morning.”
“Call the florist and ask him to replace it.” The roses she had received in the hospital were dewy fresh, Catherine remembered.
The tables in the dining room were set for lunch. Catherine walked from one to the other, examining them, a busboy behind her. “We’re short a napkin here, and on the table by the window. A knife is missing there and that saltcellar looks grimy.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
She went into the kitchen. The old chef had retired in July after twenty years. His replacement, Clive D’Arcette, had come with impressive experience, despite being only twenty-six years old. After four months, Catherine was coming to the conclusion that he was a good second banana, but couldn’t yet do the job on his own.
He was preparing the luncheon specials when Catherine entered the kitchen. She frowned as she noticed the grease spatters on the stove. Clearly they came from the dinner preparation the night before. The garbage bin had not been emptied. She tasted the hollandaise sauce. “Why is it salty?” she asked.
“I wouldn’t call it salty, Mrs. Collins,” D’Arcette said, his tone just missing politeness.
“But I would, and I suspect anyone who orders it would.”
“Mrs. Collins, you hired me to be the chef here. Unless I can be the chef and prepare food my way, this situation won’t work.”
“You’ve made it very easy for me,” Catherine said. “You’re fired.”
She was tying an apron around her waist when Virginia Murphy hurried in. “Catherine, where’s Clive going? He just stormed past me.”
“Back to cooking school, I hope.”
“You’re supposed to be resting.”
Catherine turned to her. “Virginia, my salvation is going to be at this stove for as long as I can hang onto this place. Now what specials did Escoffier line up for today?”
They served forty-three lunches as well as sandwiches in the bar. It was a good seating. As the new orders slowed down, Catherine was able to go into the dining room. In her long white apron, she went from table to table, stopping for a moment at each. She could see the questioning eyes behind the warm smiles of greeting.
I don’t blame people for being curious, with all they’re hearing, she thought. I would be too. But these are my friends. This is my inn, and no matter what truth comes out, Meg and I have our place in this town.
Catherine spent the late afternoon in the office going over the books. If the bank will let me refinance and I hock or sell my jewelry, she decided, I might be able to hang on for six months longer at least. By then maybe we’ll know something about the insurance. She closed her eyes. If only she hadn’t been fool enough to put the house in both her and Edwin’s names after Pop died . . .
Why did I do it? she wondered. I know why. I didn’t want Edwin to think of himself as living in my house. Even when Pop was alive, Edwin had always insisted on paying for the utilities and repairs. “I have to feel as though I belong here,” he’d said. Oh, Edwin! What had he called himself? Oh yes, “a wandering minstrel.” She’d always thought of that as a joke. Had he meant it as a joke? Now she wasn’t so certain.
She tried to remember verses of the old Gilbert and Sullivan song he used to sing. Only the opening line and one other came back to her. The first line was, “A wandering minstrel, I, a thing of shreds and patches.” The other line: “And to your humors changing, I tune my subtle song.”
Plaintive words when you analyzed them. Why had Edwin felt they applied to him?
Resolutely, Catherine went back to studying the accounts. The phone rang as she closed the last book. It was Bob Marron, one of the investigators who had come to see her in the hospital. “Mrs. Collins, when you weren’t home I took a chance on calling you at the inn. Something has come up. We felt we needed to pass on this information to you, though we certainly don’t necessarily recommend that you act on it.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Catherine said flatly.
She listened as Marron told her that Fiona Black, a psychic who had worked with them on cases of missing persons, had called. “She says she is getting very strong vibrations about your husband and would like to be able to handle something of his,” Marron concluded.
“You’re trying to send me some quack?”
“I know how you feel, but do you remember the Talmadge child who was missing three years ago?”
“Yes.”
“It was Mrs. Black who told us to concentrate the search in the construction area near the town hall. She saved that kid’s life.”
“I see.” Catherine moistened her lips with her tongue. Anything is better than not knowing, she told herself. She tightened her grasp on the receiver. “What does Mrs. Black want of Edwin’s? Clothing? A ring?”
“She’s here now. She’d like to come to your house and select something if that’s possible. I’d bring her
over in half an hour.”
Catherine wondered if she should wait for Meg before she met this woman. Then she heard herself say, “Half an hour will be fine. I’m on my way home now.”
Meghan felt frozen in time as she stood in the foyer with the courtly man who obviously believed they had met before. Through lips almost too numb to utter the words, she managed to say, “My name isn’t Annie. It’s Meghan. Meghan Collins.”
Graham looked closely at her. “You’re Edwin’s daughter, aren’t you?”
“Yes, I am.”
“Come with me, please.” He took her arm and guided her through the door to the study, on the right of the foyer. “I spend most of my time in here,” he told her as he led her to the couch and settled himself in a high-backed wing chair. “Since my wife passed away, this house seems awfully big to me.”
Meghan realized that Graham had seen her shock and distress and was trying to defuse it. But she was beyond phrasing her questions diplomatically. She opened her purse and took out the envelope with the obituary notice. “Did you send this to my father?” she asked.
“Yes, I did. He didn’t acknowledge it, but then I never expected that he would. I was so sorry when I read about the accident last January.”
“How do you know my father?” Meghan asked.
“I’m sorry,” he apologized. “I don’t think I’ve introduced myself. I’m Cyrus Graham. Your father’s stepbrother.”
His stepbrother! I never knew this man existed, Meghan thought.
“You called me ‘Annie’ just now,” she said. “Why?”
He answered her with a question. “Do you have a sister, Meghan?”
“No.”
“And you don’t remember meeting me with your father and mother about ten years ago in Arizona?”
“I’ve never been there.”
“Then I’m totally confused,” Graham told her.
“Exactly when and where in Arizona did you think we met?” Meghan asked urgently.
“Let’s see. It was in April, close to eleven years ago. I was in Scottsdale. My wife had spent a week in the Elizabeth Arden Spa, and I was picking her up the next morning. The evening before, I stayed at the Safari Hotel in Scottsdale. I was just leaving the dining room when I spotted Edwin. He was sitting with a woman who might have been in her early forties and a young girl who looked very much like you.” Graham looked at Meghan. “Actually, both you and she resemble Edwin’s mother.”
“My grandmother.”
“Yes.” Now he looked concerned. “Meghan, I’m afraid this is distressing you.”
“It’s very important that I know everything I can about the people who were with my father that night.”
“Very well. You realize it was a brief meeting, but since it was the first time I’d seen Edwin in years it made an impression on me.”
“When had you seen him before that?”
“Not since he graduated from prep school. But even though thirty years had passed, I recognized him instantly. I went over to the table and got a mighty chilly reception. He introduced me to his wife and daughter as someone he’d known growing up in Philadelphia. I took the hint and left immediately. I knew through Aurelia that he and his family lived in Connecticut and simply assumed that they were vacationing in Arizona.”
“Did he introduce the woman he was with as his wife?”
“I think so. I can’t be sure about that. He may have said something like ‘Frances and Annie, this is Cyrus Graham.’”
“You’re positive the girl’s name was Annie?”
“Yes, I am. And I know the woman’s name was Frances.”
“How old was Annie then?”
“About sixteen, I should think.”
Meghan thought, that would make her about twenty-six now. She shivered. And she’s lying in the morgue in my place.
She realized Graham was studying her.
“I think we could use a cup of tea,” he said. “Have you had lunch?”
“Please don’t bother.”
“I’d like you to join me. I’ll ask Jessie to put something together for us.”
When he left the room, Meghan clasped her hands on her knees. Her legs felt weak and wobbly, as though if she stood up they would not support her. Annie, she thought. A vivid memory sprang into her mind of discussing names with her father. “How did you pick Meghan Anne for me?”
“My two favorite names in the world are Meghan and Annie. And that’s how you became Meghan Anne.”
You got to use your two favorite names, after all, Dad, Meghan thought bitterly. When Cyrus Graham returned, followed by the maid carrying a luncheon tray, Meghan accepted a cup of tea and a finger sandwich.
“I can’t tell you how shocked I am,” she said, and was glad she was able to at least sound calm. “Now tell me about him. Suddenly my father has become a total stranger to me.”
It was not a pretty story. Richard Collins, her grandfather, had married seventeen-year-old Aurelia Crowley when she became pregnant. “He felt it was the honorable thing,” Graham said. “He was much older and divorced her almost immediately, but he did support her and the baby with reasonable generosity. A year later, when I was fourteen, Richard and my mother married. My own father was dead. This was the Graham family home. Richard Collins moved in, and it was a good marriage. He and my mother were both rather rigid, joyless people, and as the old saying goes, God made them and matched them.”
“And my father was raised by his mother?”
“Until he was three years old, at which point Aurelia fell madly in love with someone from California who did not want to be saddled with a child. One morning she arrived here and deposited Edwin with his suitcases and toys. My mother was furious. Richard was even more furious, and little Edwin was devastated. He worshiped his mother.”
“She abandoned him to a family where he wasn’t wanted?” Meghan asked incredulously.
“Yes. Mother and Richard took him in out of duty, but certainly not out of desire. I’m afraid he was a difficult little boy. I can remember him standing every day with his nose pressed to the window, so positive was he that his mother would come back.”
“And did she?”
“Yes. A year later. The great love affair went sour, and she came back and collected Edwin. He was overjoyed and so were my parents.”
“And then . . .”
“When he was eight, Aurelia met someone else and the scenario was repeated.”
“Dear God!” Meghan said.
“This time Edwin was really impossible. He apparently thought that if he behaved very badly they’d find a way to send him back to his mother. It was an interesting morning around here when he put the garden hose in the gas tank of Mother’s new sedan.”
“Did they send him home?”
“Aurelia had left Philadelphia again. He was sent to boarding school and then to camp during the summer. I was away at college and then in law school and only saw him occasionally. I did visit him at school once and was astonished to see that he was very popular with his schoolmates. Even then he was telling people that his mother was dead.”
“Did he ever see her again?”
“She came back to Philadelphia when he was sixteen. This time she stayed. She had finally matured and taken a job in a law office. I understand she tried to see Edwin, but it was too late. He wanted nothing to do with her. The pain was too deep. From time to time over the years she contacted me to ask if I ever heard from Edwin. A friend had sent me a clipping reporting his marriage to your mother. It gave the name and address of his firm. I gave the clipping to Aurelia. From what she told me, she wrote to him around his birthday and at Christmas every year but never heard back. In one of our conversations I told her about the meeting in Scottsdale. Perhaps I had no business sending the obituary notice to him.”
“He was a wonderful father to me and a wonderful husband to my mother,” Meghan said. She tried to blink back the tears that she felt welling in her eyes. “He traveled a great deal i
n his job. I can’t believe he could have had another life, another woman he may have called his wife, perhaps another daughter he must have loved too. But I’m beginning to think it must be true. How else do you explain Annie and Frances? How can anybody expect my mother and me to forgive that deception?”
It was a question she was asking of herself, not of Cyrus Graham, but he answered it. “Meghan, turn around.” He pointed to the prim row of windows behind the couch. “That center window is the one where a little boy stood watch every afternoon, looking for his mother. That kind of abandonment does something to the soul and the psyche.”
34
At four o’clock, Mac phoned Catherine at home to see how she was feeling. When he did not get an answer he tried her at the inn. Just as the operator was about to put him through to Catherine’s office, the intercom on his desk began to buzz. “No, that’s all right,” he said hurriedly. “I’ll try her later.”
The next hour was busy, and he did not get to phone again. He was just at the outskirts of Newtown when he dialed her at the house from the car phone. “I thought if you were home I’d stop by for a few minutes, Catherine,” he said.
“I’d be glad for the moral support, Mac.” Catherine quickly told him about the psychic and that she and the investigator were on their way.
“I’ll be there in five minutes.” Mac replaced the receiver and frowned. He didn’t believe in psychics. God knows what Meg is hearing about Edwin in Chestnut Hill today, he thought. Catherine’s just about at the end of her rope, and they don’t need some charlatan creating any more trouble for them.
He pulled into the Collins driveway as a man and a woman were getting out of a car in front of the house. The investigator and the psychic, Mac thought.
He caught up with them on the porch. Bob Marron introduced first himself and then Mrs. Fiona Black, saying only that she was someone who hoped to assist in locating Edwin Collins.