part0016

We tried sneaking in the same way we snuck out, but Gerald Witherspoon had stationed himself in the drawing room, and watched attentively as we entered from the patio. “Luncheon is served,” he informed us with the requisite bow.

“How did it go with Lieutenant Kapinski?” Piers asked.

“You and Madam Hewitt shall have worked up quite an appetite during your—” cough “—stroll through the gardens.” He shifted his attention to me and bowed again, but eventually the three of us began our stroll toward who knows which dining room. If memory served, the mansion has five.

As we wound our way hither and yon, Piers continued enquiring after the staff interviews, but Gerald was determined we learn the details of our luncheon. At some point he gave up on describing the poached salmon and rice pilaf almandine, stopped, and turned.

“The powder room, Madam Hewitt.” He indicated the room to my right. “Perhaps you care to freshen up before luncheon?”

Madam Hewitt cared to hear some answers to Pierpont’s questions, but she recollected her time spent bonding with Maybelline. Freshening up was definitely in order.

Piers freshened after I was through, and somehow we never did hear about the staff interviews before Gerald ushered us into what he labeled the breakfast room.

“I have taken the liberty of inviting Lieutenant Kapinski to join you, sir.”

Thanks for the heads up, Gerald.

“Where have you been?” Al demanded.

“In the powder room.” I sat in the chair Gerald held for me, and waited while Piers sat also.

“Where?” Al repeated, and Gerald, I observed, continued hovering close by. Oh, and there was Caesar Newland. He had parked his cart outside the window to my left and was busy weeding something or other .

I sat up straight. “As instructed, we were outside playing.”

“Playing, my foot.”

“Speaking of feet.” I pushed back my chair and pointed downward. “I’ve always liked the lion-foot pedestal on this table,” I told our host.

Piers bit his lip, Al mumbled something I didn’t quite catch, and still speaking of feet, the footman entered. At least I assumed the young man, dressed in a uniform similar to Gerald’s and carrying a silver tray, was the footman. My TV show has educated me on this kind of thing.

He set the tray on a sideboard, served our luncheon, and departed. Gerald, however, required a bit more in the “That will be all” department.

Meanwhile, Al stayed on topic. “You did exactly what I told you not to,” he snapped. “You’re the world’s busiest busy-body.”

“No.” Piers spoke up. “My butler takes the prize on that.”

Busy-body me asked Al how his interviews had gone, but he refused to discuss anything. Thus the three of us ate lunch in rather awkward silence, and eventually dessert was served.

Piers frowned at the cut crystal dessert dish set before him.

“What’s wrong?” I asked.

“Karen loves chocolate mousse.”

I took a deep breath and put down my spoon, but clearly, thoughts of my chocoholic friend did nothing to quench Al’s appetite. He ate with gusto and issued orders with equal enthusiasm. “Go home and behave yourself,” he told me. “And you.” He nodded at our host. “You stay out of trouble, too.”

“And you?” Piers asked.

“More interviews.” His dessert dish empty, he stood up to address Gerald. And yes, of course Gerald was hovering nearby. “How do I get out there?” Al pointed to the window, and I noticed Caesar had not moved .

Actually, that’s not true. During the course of our luncheon, the gardener finished weeding under the left window, and had moved to the right.

Al and Gerald departed, and I let out a prolonged sigh. “I guess I’ll go home now.”

“Please don’t, Jessie,” Piers said. “I have plans for you.”

I perked up. “But what about Al’s orders?”

“Considering how he treats you, I’m surprised you care.” He stood up and gestured for me to follow, and soon we were traversing the hallways of the east wing. “Why is Lieutenant Kapinski so rude to you?” he asked, and as we rounded the third or fourth corner, I explained my love-hate relationship with the Clarence PD.

“For some reason, some of Wilson’s colleagues think I snoop and sleuth too much,” I said. “They think I’m nosy. Can you imagine?”

“Wilson appreciates you,” Piers said. “He likes it when you help the police.”

An overstatement if ever there was one, but I agreed that occasionally, on rare occasion, Wilson does see the value of my insight and intuition. “His partner Lieutenant Densmore also appreciates me.” I stopped to glance around. “Where are we, anyway? This hallway isn’t on the tours.”

Piers grinned. “The tours take people through the other entrance.”

“This is the back entrance?” I squinted at the door straight ahead. “To what?”

He waited to catch my eye. “Karen’s told me what kicks your intuition and insight into high gear, Jessie.”

I again blinked at the door. “She has?” I asked, and with that Pierpont Rigby escorted Little Girl Cue-It—i.e. Jessie Hewitt—into the most spectacular billiard room she has ever seen.

Speaking of little girl, I ran circles around both the antique tables. I had seen them during the tours, but to touch them? To actually run my hands along the entire rosewood railing of the Oliver Briggs table. Oh, and that mahogany Brunswick Balke with its magnificent inlay—

At least I didn’t drool.

And eventually I remembered my host. “My father would have loved this room,” I said.

“Karen told me he was a pool shark.”

“In his heyday Leon Cue-It Hewitt was the best pool player south of the Mason Dixon Line.”

Piers smiled. “I hear you’re not so bad, either.” He held out a cue stick. “Teach me?”

Okay, so I tried. Really, I did.

But after two excruciating games, and all the coaching and encouragement I could muster, the man’s complete lack of talent was abundantly clear.

“The third game’s a charm,” I insisted, and Piers proceeded to flub his first four shots in that game also.

After missing a shot at the two ball one of my cats could have managed, he put down his cue. “I stink.”

Well, yes. But I told him to concentrate and caressed the railing of that magnificent table. “Just think of it as six easy pockets,” I insisted. I handed him back his cue and pointed him to the five ball, and will wonders never cease, it fell. But that got him all excited, and before I could coach him, he took aim at the four and flubbed spectacularly.

He stood up and laughed. “I can’t believe you put yourself through college doing this.”

“Something had to pay my tuition—Duke University wasn’t cheap even back then.” I stepped to the table. “What I can’t believe,” I said as the thirteen ball disappeared, “is how you have this table at your beck and call, and still don’t know how to shoot a decent game.”

Apparently his father, grandfather, and Great Uncle Oscar had all tried to teach him. “But until recently I never stayed home long enough to learn,” he said. “I was always outside when I was little, and always out, sowing my wild oats, as I got older.”

I recollected the articles I’d seen in People magazine over the years. “Nothing particularly sordid,” I said as I shot in the fifteen .

“True,” he agreed. “And nowadays I’m a regular homebody. I have everything I need right here.”

I missed the twelve and stood up. “Excuse me?”

“Once Karen gets back, that is.”

“Coco certainly isn’t a homebody,” I ventured.

His mouth dropped open. “You don’t suspect Coco?”

“No! Much as I love her, my cousin doesn’t have the attention span to commit a crime.”

While I pointed him to the one ball, I agreed Coco did seem restless. “For instance, she knows you’re upset, and yet she traipsed off to Miami yesterday, and today she’s at Tate’s?”

Piers took haphazard aim and told me that once Al gave the okay, he was certain she would be using Mallory’s services to fly up to Manhattan. “Coco goes nightclubbing with her chums on Saturday night.”

“You disapprove,” he said.

“Yes, I suppose I do,” I said as I repositioned the one ball.

He waited until I looked up. “You don’t know about Coco, do you?”

No, but I learned. Coco Rigby lost both her parents in a private plane crash when she was twelve. “Coco was the only survivor,” Piers told me.

I cringed and apologized for judging her so harshly.

He shrugged. “It was a long time ago, but she’s never quite gotten over it.”

“She seems so happy and carefree,” I said, and Piers told me his cousin makes a point of living a carefree life.

He shrugged again. “Not to be crass, but she inherited so much money, it’s pretty easy.”

I thought about Coco’s carefree life, and especially all her travels. “I’m surprised she’s not afraid of flying.”

“But she is, Jessie. She’s terrified of flying. That’s why she doesn’t have a plane of her own—she borrows mine. ”

I scowled at that logic, if it were logic, and asked where exactly she lived. The answer was here there and everywhere. Apparently Coco had inherited her grandmother’s Park Avenue penthouse in Manhattan, and her parents’ mansion in the Beacon Hill section of Boston.

“She also owns a pied-a terre in Monto Carlo,” Piers said, “and one in LA, and London, and San Moritz, and—”

I waved my cue stick and told him I got the picture.

“Coco and I used to run into each other all over the globe,” he said, and with that, he took aim at the pesky one ball, and shot it in.

His luck ran out immediately, however, and by our fifth game we had grown impatient with his less than stellar pool-playing skills, and my complete dearth of intuition and insight.

“Where’s Karen?” he kept asking me.

“I don’t know,” I kept answering.

“I thought shooting pool jump-started your intuition,” he said.

“So did I,” I whined, and it was almost a relief when Gerald Witherspoon appeared in the doorway.

“If I may interrupt, sir.” He looked pointedly at me. “Lieutenant Kapinski is on his way back to the house.”

I handed Piers my cue. “That’s my cue,” I said, and allowed the butler to escort me out.