“There are two odious young men who have been staring at me this half hour.… They are not coming this way, are they? I hope they are not so impertinent as to follow us.… And which way are they gone? One was a very good-looking young man.”
—Isabella Thorpe to Catherine Morland, Northanger Abbey
Katie was working in the kitchen, Lizzie asleep in a sling on her back. Bustopher still crouched under the table, paws invisible beneath him. He shot them a baleful glare from unblinking eyes. A slice of chicken and a mound of tuna lay untouched in his bowl.
“I’ve tried offering him treats, but he’s not interested,” Katie said. “He growls if I get close. I guess he needs some time to get used to me.”
“He would tolerate you better in any other room but this one,” Marguerite told her. “He associates this room with his old mistress. You are an interloper. He may even blame you for her absence.”
Seeing Katie’s stricken look, Emily put in hastily, “I doubt that. Katie didn’t show up until the day after Agnes died. Bustopher was already pretty much catatonic by then.”
Marguerite shrugged. “Well, no matter, we will soon put him right.” She knelt, poked her head under the table, and waggled her fingers. “Allo, Bustopher Jones. Moi, je suis Marguerite, l’amie de tous les chats. Voici ce que j’ais pour toi.” From her pocket she pulled a mouse toy complete with fur and a long leather tail. “C’est un souris de cataire. Tu aimes beaucoup la cataire, n’est-ce pas?”
Over her shoulder she said to Emily, “Les chats always respond best to le français. And to catnip.”
She dangled the mouse in front of Bustopher. His nose twitched, but he didn’t move. She moved the toy closer, and his whiskers went into a frantic dance. His agony was palpable, as his longing to pounce warred against his firm resolve to play dead with these Wrong Humans.
Marguerite crooned to him. “Tu sais que tu le veux, Bustopher. La cataire, c’est fraîche comme un souris nouveau-né.” She pulled the mouse back a few inches. “Saute-toi, Bustopher! Avant qu’il s’échappe!”
At last the catnip won. Bustopher pounced, all claws extended, and tore the mouse from Marguerite’s fingers, narrowly missing tearing her flesh as well. Emily watched, amazed and rather alarmed, while the cat fought the toy as though it were a living mouse. At one point the mouse shot across the floor toward the doorway. With all four paws, Bustopher leapt onto it and carried the battle into the hall, then into the dining room.
Marguerite brushed her hands together. “You see, he responds, he is out of the kitchen. He will go crazy for a while until the catnip loses its freshness, then he will be himself again.”
Emily quailed to think what that would mean for her own cats. “Maybe we’d better shut him in the dining room for the time being. I don’t want him meeting Levin and Kitty in this condition.”
* * *
Luke phoned as Emily was helping Marguerite get settled in the guest room. (“Mais c’est charmant, chérie! All it needs is a little furniture more light, more delicate. Louis Quinze, peut-être. You can afford that now, n’est-ce pas?”)
Emily took the call in Beatrice’s room and stopped Katie with a raised palm as she was about to head back downstairs.
“Hey there, beautiful.” Luke sounded just like his teenage self, using his old name for her. “Got some news for you.”
“Just a sec.” She covered the mouthpiece and whispered to Katie, “Can we handle another person for dinner?”
Katie’s eyebrows shot up, but she nodded.
Emily spoke into the phone. “Come tell it to me over dinner. I’ve got a friend here I want you to meet.” As soon as she said that, she regretted it. What was she thinking, introducing her beloved to the most accomplished seductress she knew? But Luke wasn’t Marguerite’s type. She liked her men suave and continental. More like Brock—or at least like Brock’s facade.
“I’d love to come to dinner, but my news is kinda confidential—you know, about the case.”
“I’m afraid I’ve already told Marguerite about the case. I didn’t see how it could hurt—she’s from Portland. She doesn’t know any of the people involved. Except me, of course.”
Luke gave an exaggerated huff. “Some assistant! I can’t leave you alone for a second without you going blabbing to the first stranger who walks in.”
Emily bit back the self-justification that sprang to her lips. If Luke were standing in front of her, she’d see the teasing light in his eyes, the quirk at the corner of his mouth. “You left me alone for most of a day. I had to talk to somebody.”
“Well, shame on me. I guess I should be thankful your friend’s a woman. But I have been pretty busy. Tell you when I get there.”
Marguerite was waiting on the landing when Emily hung up. “That was the lover, non? It is written all over your face. When do I get to meet this man who can make my old friend light up like a bride?”
“He’s coming to dinner. And none of your tricks, understand?”
“Moi?” Marguerite laid her hand over her heart. “I will be more innocent than a child of ten.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it. I’m going to change.”
Emily fixed herself up as well as she could without seeming overdressed for a dinner at home, praying Marguerite would dress discreetly. But when they met downstairs, Emily’s heart sank at the sight of Marguerite in a knee-length, boat-necked, form-fitting black silk sheath with a string of pearls, looking far more like Audrey Hepburn than any middle-aged woman had any right to look. Luke would have to be love-blind indeed not to notice how far Emily was outclassed.
“Innocent, you said. A child of ten, you said.”
Marguerite spread her hands. “Mais, chérie, what did you expect, the pigtails and the pinafore? This is the most innocent dress I have.”
That was probably true. Inwardly, Emily cursed the impulse that had led her to invite Marguerite into the vicinity of this fragile relationship, so new and uncertain although it was so old. But she couldn’t get out of it now.
Luke arrived punctually at seven, dressed in a crisp dress shirt and jeans, bearing a bouquet of yellow roses. Emily opened the door to him herself so they could have a moment before she introduced Marguerite.
Looking into his eyes was like seeing love spark there for the first time so long ago. She put up her face to be kissed, and came to only when a thorn pricked her arm.
“We’re squishing the flowers,” he murmured into her ear.
She buried her face in the blooms and inhaled. “You remembered.” Yellow roses had always been her favorite.
“I remember everything.” The look he gave her boosted her confidence that it could be safe to introduce him to Marguerite after all. She took his arm and led him into the library.
She watched him carefully as she made the introductions. He certainly noticed Marguerite—he was a man, after all—but his glance didn’t linger. He turned back to Emily as soon as courtesy allowed.
“So how do you two know each other?”
“We’re in the same department at Reed. Marguerite teaches French. We’ve been friends for—”
“My whole career,” Marguerite finished for her. The real number would give away Marguerite’s age, which was a secret more closely guarded than any Emily had ever held.
They made small talk over sherry. Marguerite behaved with admirable restraint, her usually mobile face giving nothing away.
In a few minutes Katie announced dinner. Luke gave a start when she came in but didn’t say anything. Emily filed that away to ask him about later.
She was relieved to see that Bustopher had fled the dining room at some point while Katie was preparing it for the meal; Levin and Kitty were closeted in the library, safe from potential attack. Dinner was simple—roast chicken with red potatoes and steamed asparagus—but the chicken was moist, the potatoes subtly flavored with garlic and rosemary, and the thin stalks of asparagus cooked barely to tenderness. And Katie had pulled this off with a baby to tend to. Yes, Emily thought she would do.
When Luke had taken the edge off his appetite, she asked him, “So what about this news?”
He wiped his mouth and took a drink of sauvignon blanc. “Finished up that background check on Brock. Slippery devil. List of jobs long as the Oregon rainy season between acting gigs. Different names here and there—just for fun, apparently, ’cause he’s got no criminal record at all. Long and short, he did work as a carpenter or an odd-jobman more than once. So we know he lied about that, anyway.”
Emily chewed this information with her chicken. “He lied. But that doesn’t necessarily mean he fixed that stair.”
“Nope. He’s the kind’d lie just to keep our eyes off him. Naturally sneaky. Still, it’s suggestive.”
Marguerite had listened in uncharacteristic silence, picking at her food but taking long drinks of wine. She refilled her glass for the third time, then looked up at Luke through her impossibly long dark lashes. “Very suggestive.”
Luke raised an eyebrow, and his mouth quirked.
Emily shot Marguerite a look calculated to set fire to all that wine. “He’s sneaky, but he may still be innocent of murder.” She put an unnatural stress on the word innocent. Marguerite wrinkled her nose at her.
Luke cocked his head at Emily, a crease between his brows. It wasn’t like her to restate the obvious. She gave him a dazzling smile to distract him. His slow smile in response suggested her diversion had been successful.
Katie brought in dessert—ice-cream sundaes in tall glasses with long spoons. Emily quailed. She’d seen Marguerite eat ice cream. The woman could get a lot of mileage out of her agile pink tongue and full red lips.
Well, Emily’s lips might not be quite as full or red as Marguerite’s, but she still knew how to use them. And she had a potent memory on her side. Ice cream had been involved the first time she and Luke made love.
She spooned up a bite dripping with sauce and closed her lips around it. She’d expected caramel, but Katie had outdone herself—the sauce was flavored with Grand Marnier. She closed her eyes in ecstasy, then opened them to see Luke gazing at her, his spoon at his lips. The memory had visited him, too.
Emily had no doubt Marguerite was putting on quite a show across the table, but neither Emily nor Luke once glanced at her. They made love to each other without ever touching, just by eating ice cream.
* * *
After coffee in the library, Marguerite excused herself with an ostentatious yawn. Emily forgave her trespasses against innocence at once.
She and Luke sat side by side on the love seat, Levin curled on Emily’s lap and Kitty on Luke’s. The scene was almost unbearably domestic, as if they’d been married for years—except for the undercurrent of leaping passion that ran between them. Luke put an arm around Emily and pulled her close. Before she completely lost her head, however, she remembered to ask him about his reaction to Katie.
“Oh yeah. I didn’t want to say anything in front of her—or your friend—but do you realize you’re harboring the enemy? You didn’t tell me your new housekeeper was Katie Parker. She’s the mayor’s niece.”
“The mayor’s niece?” So maybe Trimble had sent her after all. Emily had dismissed this possibility once she heard Katie’s tale of woe.
She tried to reconcile this information with the state of the parental home in which Katie was no longer welcome. “Is there a family feud or something? Katie’s parents seem awfully poor. I’d expect a mayor’s relatives to be better off.”
“Katie’s mother married ‘beneath her,’ as they used to say. Trimble refused to help her, said she made her own bed and she could lie in it. To be fair, he’s not so very rich himself—comfortable, sure, but not loaded.”
“If that’s the case, I wouldn’t expect Katie to be very sympathetic toward him.”
“You might think that, but the one thing he did do for them was look after Katie. Got her jobs, made sure she finished high school, that sort of thing. He’s a sucker for a pretty face.”
“So why didn’t she go to him when her parents kicked her out?”
Luke shrugged. “That’s what I’m wondering. Maybe she did, and he sent her here.”
Emily lifted an indignant Levin from her lap and tiptoed to the hall door. It was fully closed, and in that sturdy old house, a closed door was as good as soundproofing. She turned back toward Luke. “I refuse to believe Katie could be spying on me. She’s the sweetest girl in the world.”
“She might not even know she’s spying. Trimble might ask her, all innocent-like, how things are going, and she might tell him—all innocent-like—things we’d prefer he didn’t know.”
“Such as, for instance, how close you and I are.” The words were pulled out of her.
“Yeah. Such as that.” He came up to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “That being the case, I think I better go home.”
She looked into his eyes, longing to pour herself into them, hating everything that stood between the two of them—the murders, the need for discretion, and not least of all, her own still-unquenchable fear.
He kissed her gently, then she walked him to the front door. “See you at the funeral tomorrow?”
“Right.” He kissed her again and left.