I never would have made it through the year my mother was killed if it hadn’t been for Faith Eastman. The mother of my best and oldest friend, Faith had been the one I’d gone to for comfort during the dark days when everything was going to hell at home and no one was coping well with the shock of my mom’s death. My father, who never cared much for his three children and no longer had her as a buffer between us, fought constantly with my older brother, Eli, who began staying out all night and showing up the next morning sullen and hungover, and my younger sister, Mia, who started hanging out with friends who looked like they’d done time in juvie. My salvation from the family dysfunction was fleeing to Faith’s happy, loving home.
Faith’s daughter, Kit, was her only child and she had raised her as a single parent after Kit’s dad walked out on them when Kit was a baby. In spite of a big age difference—Faith was forty-eight when Kit was born—the two of them were as inseparable as peanut butter and jelly. Three years ago, after Faith suffered a stroke, Kit, a journalist whose star was ascending at the Washington Tribune, walked away from a senior editor’s job and the offer of an overseas assignment and asked for a transfer to the Trib’s sleepy Loudoun County bureau so she could take care of her mother. It wasn’t exactly like being exiled to Siberia, but it wasn’t far off.
A year ago, when it became clear Faith needed more skilled care than Kit could provide, Kit moved Faith to Foxhall Manor, a luxurious assisted living community that reminded me more of a hotel filled with pampered guests. I never asked Kit how she’d scraped together the money to afford the fees, but it wouldn’t have surprised me if she’d gone into debt to manage it. Or robbed a bank.
Foxhall Manor was an elegant mansion built as a labor of love by an eccentric English colonel for his American wife after they left India at the end of the British rule in 1947. Today it was the main building for the entire complex. Set on one hundred acres of rolling hills, manicured gardens, and wooded land that backed up to a panoramic view of the Blue Ridge Mountains, the 220-room home was a quirky architectural combination of Palladian symmetry juxtaposed with Indian-style pavilions, elaborate carved stonework, and tucked-away interior courtyards. Its most distinctive feature consisted of four small rooftop domes, each mounted on four columns, which sat atop the corners of the two wings of the pale peach sandstone house. Eli told me the architectural name for the smaller domes was chhatri, which literally means “umbrella,” and that they were common additions to Indian palaces and wealthy homes.
After the colonel’s wife died, a local family bought the estate and renamed it Foxhall Manor, a tribute to the regal-looking bronze fox they installed on a plinth in front of a fountain in the central courtyard. Eventually, the new owners ran out of money, and there were stories about the mansion being haunted, so it had been abandoned for years, until a group of entrepreneurs bought it, restored it, and turned it into an upscale assisted living community. The pavilions had been glassed in and connected to the main house, making the place even more sprawling, and the entire complex now housed community rooms, a library, offices, and a restaurant, as well as forty small apartments. Two more low-rise apartment buildings and twenty semidetached bungalows had been built on land directly behind the manor house, all of which were connected by flagstone paths and a series of culs-de-sac.
I drove through the gated entrance and found a parking place not far from the main building. The courtyard fountain had been turned off for the winter and was filled with snow. Someone had hung a wreath of red and pink artificial flowers around the neck of the haughty-looking bronze fox, obviously in anticipation of Valentine’s Day. Next month it would wear a bright green fedora for Saint Patrick’s Day.
I stopped at the desk in the main lobby, where a cut-glass vase filled with long-stemmed red roses sat next to a heart-shaped bowl of wrapped candies with their tiny messages stamped in silver on the foil. Be mine. True love. Cutie-pie.
“Can I help you, miss?”
I looked up into the eyes of a young woman sitting behind the desk.
“Yes, please. I’m Lucie Montgomery. I’m here to see Mrs. Eastman in two oh five.”
“Let me see if she’s in her apartment. I didn’t see her at breakfast this morning.” The woman picked up the phone and dialed Faith’s number. “Lucie Montgomery is downstairs to see you, Mrs. Eastman.… Very good. I’ll tell her.” When she hung up, she said, “The maid just finished her rooms, so you can go right on up.”
A cleaning cart stood in the hallway two doors down from Faith’s apartment and a vacuum droned through her neighbor’s open door. I used the brass knocker and rapped loudly. A silver-framed wedding photo of Kit and Bobby Noland, a detective with the Loudoun County Sheriff’s Department, taken last fall at my winery, sat on a small shelf outside the door. Next to it a plush white bear clutched a red satin heart with True Love embroidered on it. A moment later, Faith’s familiar voice called out that the door was open and to come in.
Pale winter-morning sunlight streamed through the windows of a cheerful sitting room furnished with items I remembered so well from her home. It was still a jolt to see them here and not be overwhelmed by memories. Not everything had come with her when she moved—the new apartment was smaller—and I had to fight the urge to look around, feeling the way they say amputees do when they sense the limb they lost is still somehow there.
Faith sat in her favorite recliner, bundled up in a bright pink cardigan over a turtleneck, baggy blue jeans, and fur-lined moccasin slippers. Her snow-white hair was done up in a bun and bristled with hairpins. An afghan she’d crocheted lay across her lap, and the television was blaring with the morning news from CNN. Her oversized walker, which she’d nicknamed “Big Blue,” was parked next to her chair.
“Lucie, darling, how nice to see you.” She smiled and picked up the remote, muting the television. “I wasn’t expecting you today, with that blizzard we’re supposed to get.”
I went over and gave her weathered cheek a kiss. As always, she smelled of Shalimar, her signature scent.
I took a white bakery box out of a canvas bag with the winery logo on it. “It’s not supposed to start until tonight. I stopped at the Upper Crust and bought two slices of French apple pie for us. Shall I warm them up in the microwave?”
She flashed me a grateful look and said, “Please do. What a dear you are.”
I walked into the tiny galley kitchen and found plates in one of the cabinets.
“The woman at the front desk said you didn’t go downstairs for breakfast this morning.” I set the pie on the plates, put them in the microwave, and punched buttons. “Are you feeling all right? Kit said you finally got over the flu, but you look like you’ve lost weight.”
“I’m fine,” she said. “I decided to have breakfast in my room.”
The kitchen looked immaculate and there were no dirty dishes. “What did you eat?”
“A granola bar and a banana.” She sounded defensive.
“That’s not breakfast; that’s a snack.” The microwave beeped. “Where did you hide your trays? Can I make you some coffee or tea?”
“The trays are in the bottom drawer next to the fridge. And I’d love a cup of tea, if you’ll have one. There’s Earl Grey. You know where I keep it.”
Faith had an old-fashioned kettle that whistled. I filled it with water, got out two of her favorite Spode china cups and saucers, and found the tea. I carried the tray with her pie over to her.
Ten days ago, Roxanna Willoughby, who’d lived in the apartment next door to Faith, had passed away, and Faith had taken it hard. The death of one of the residents in a place like this happened all the time, though it still shocked me how matter-of-fact everyone could be about it. There was even a table in the lobby where framed photos of the recently deceased were placed in memoriam for a few weeks—part shrine, part information desk. I had walked by it on my way upstairs and wondered if I would be as calm and accepting about the end of my own life. If I even made it to my eighties or nineties.
Some of the photographs had been taken recently, others during another lifetime, when the future lay ahead, full of hope and promise. Roxy Willoughby’s picture was still there, a black-and-white World War II photo in her pilot’s uniform. One of the first women aviators to fly noncombat missions, she was standing next to a British Spitfire with a cocky, confident look in her eyes, like she was ready to take on the Germans single-handedly if they’d let her.
Faith had been too ill to attend Roxy’s funeral, but I’d gone with Kit. Roxy had been cremated, so it had been a memorial service, a full Catholic Mass at St. Michael the Archangel in Middleburg, followed by a luncheon in the parish hall. Though I hadn’t known Roxy well, her nephew, Mac MacDonald, who owned an antiques shop in Middleburg, had been one of my parents’ oldest friends. Growing up, I’d called him “Uncle Mac.”
“You’re still upset about Roxy’s death, aren’t you?” I said, kneeling next to Faith. “I’m so sorry. I know you were good friends.”
“Lucie.” She took one of my hands in both of hers. They felt cold and clammy. “I need to tell you something about Roxy.”
“What is it?” I asked.
Faith looked into my eyes and said in a deceptively calm voice, “She was murdered.”
The kettle gave off a wild shriek. “Pardon?”
“You heard me,” she said. “Katherine thinks I’m nuts and Bobby doesn’t believe me, either. I know you won’t think I’m losing my mind. You’ll believe me.”
The whistling noise from the kitchen grew louder, like an approaching train. “Let me get the kettle and then you can tell me about it.”
I retreated to the kitchen and fixed our tea. The medical examiner had said Roxy died in her sleep. Her heart just stopped beating. Where had Faith gotten the idea that someone had murdered her?
When we were both settled with our trays, I said, “Tell me why you think Roxy was murdered.”
Faith shook her fork at me. “I don’t think so. I know so.”
“Okay, how do you know so?”
“I heard something,” she said, her mouth set in a determined line. “Roxy had a visitor and they got into a terrible argument. The maid was here cleaning my apartment and she had to leave to get something. She forgot to close my door and left it ajar, so I heard them shouting.”
“Who was shouting? About what?”
“Roxy and a man. He was speaking more quietly than she was … like he was trying to reason with her, I’d say. Roxy was the one who was shouting,” she said. “I don’t know about what.”
“And you don’t know who the man was, either?”
“You’re starting to sound like Katherine.” She gave me an irritated look. “I know what I heard. An argument and then two days later Roxy was dead. Something happened to her, Lucie. I think the man she was arguing with killed her. He managed to put something into her food and that’s how he did it. He poisoned her.”
It is profoundly disturbing to have a conversation with someone you love and respect, listening to the account of a completely illogical story that you are assured in the most earnest way is God’s truth, and not wonder if that person is starting to lose it.
“The medical examiner didn’t find anything, Faith.”
“Because he wasn’t looking for anything,” she said, exasperated. “Roxy was ninety-two, for heaven’s sake.”
“All right, why would someone kill her? She was beloved; you know that. At her funeral, every pew in the church was full.”
Faith picked up her teacup and drank. “That was before her will was read and people found out she’d changed it just before she died. In favor of a granddaughter in England no one knew existed.”
The revelation, which came out along with the news about her new will, had floored everybody. It seemed that Roxy, a devout Catholic with the upright morals and pristine virtues of a Victorian, had had an affair with an RAF pilot when she was stationed in England during the war. Unfortunately, he was killed on a mission over Germany, and when Roxy found out she was pregnant, she decided to give the child, a daughter, to his sister and her husband and never told anyone about the baby. The daughter passed away a few years ago, leaving behind an adult daughter of her own—Roxy’s never-before-heard-of granddaughter.
“The one person who lost out when Roxy changed her will was her nephew,” I said to Faith. “Mac MacDonald. He still got the house and the art collection and the antiques, but her granddaughter inherited the money. Are you saying you believe Mac killed his aunt?”
“Oh, dear Lord, of course not. Mac adored Roxy, took care of her the way Katherine looks after me. I’ve known him for ages. No, Mac wouldn’t have harmed a hair on Roxy’s head.”
“Then who did it? Who are the other possible suspects?”
Faith stared at the muted television, where a man and a woman dressed like chickens were holding hands and jumping up and down on Let’s Make a Deal.
“Well, she had loads of visitors; you know that,” she said. “Roxy helped so many people. I couldn’t even begin to tell you who came by. Everyone stopped in to see her, especially folks from her charities. She was always writing checks.”
I looked at her, dismayed. “Well, that doesn’t narrow the field down much, does it?”
“I’m afraid not.” Faith finished the last bite of pie and looked around for a place to set the tray.
“Here, I’ll take that.” She handed it to me and I took it into the kitchen.
“Leave the dishes,” she said. “The maid will take care of them tomorrow.”
“I’ll wash them now and save her the trouble. Did you ask Roxy about that argument? Or talk to her afterward and find out why she was upset?”
“I would never do anything like that.” She sounded horrified. “She was a very private woman. I was as surprised as anyone to learn she had a granddaughter in England. Roxy never spoke about her. Never. I don’t think anybody knew, to be honest.”
“Including Mac,” I said. “Though obviously Sam Constantine knew. He was her lawyer.”
“And probably Father O’Malley. Or so I would imagine. He used to come over from Veronica House regularly to hear her confession and bring her Communion after it became too difficult for her to go out to church.”
I finished our dishes and wiped my hands on a towel hanging over the dishwasher’s door handle. “Neither Father O’Malley nor Sam could ever talk about anything Roxy told them in confidence. A priest and a lawyer. They’re both sworn to secrecy.”
I went back into the sitting room and pulled up an ottoman so that I was facing Faith. “What is it?” I asked, taking her hands in mine and rubbing my thumbs across the tops of her bony knuckles. “What’s bothering you?”
“I told you my door was ajar,” she said. “I didn’t see who they were, you understand, but they must have realized I heard everything. I’m worried that I’m next after Roxy. I’m worried that someone is going to poison me, too.”
Big clanging alarm bells went off in my head.
“Wait a minute.” I gave her hands a gentle squeeze. “First of all, who are ‘they’? I thought you said there was only one person in Roxy’s room. A man.”
“Two men walked past my door,” she said. “I heard the door to her apartment close and then someone walked down the hall, the man I heard her shouting at, I suppose. Then about half a minute later, someone else walked by.”
“Were they together?”
“I don’t know. I guess I assumed they were. Now you’ve got me a bit confused.”
“What day was this?”
“Roxy died on a Friday. It was the Tuesday before.” She looked at me with fearful eyes. “She started taking her meals in her apartment those last few days instead of going downstairs to the restaurant. It would have been so easy to slip something into her food, you see. Who would ever know?”
“Are you saying someone from Foxhall Manor poisoned her?”
“I think someone who was at Foxhall Manor put something into her food and poisoned her. It fits, don’t you think?”
What I thought was that she had looped a story around and around itself, twisted it into a pretzeled knot until it seemed logical in her mind, and then persuaded herself of its veracity: Roxy Willoughby had been poisoned because of an argument she’d had with a mystery man a few days before she died.
Right now I agreed with Kit and Bobby. None of this made sense. But I didn’t want to upset Faith even more than she already was.
“You know we’ve always been honest with each other,” I said. “We’ve always told each other the truth.”
Faith gave a faint moan and turned pale. “Oh, my God, Lucie. That’s it. That’s what she said.”
“What who said? Roxy?”
She nodded. “I’d forgotten until just now. She kept saying it over and over. ‘I want to know the truth. I want to know the truth.’”
“The truth about what?”
“I don’t know.” She gave me a despairing look. “I’m so sorry. I just don’t know. But whatever it was, it’s the reason she’s dead.”
“Faith—”
“You have to believe me, Lucie. I’m not crazy.”
“Of course you’re not—”
“Then promise me you’ll try to find out why Roxy was so upset and who came to visit her that day. No one will suspect anything if you ask a few questions.”
“I don’t know—”
“My darling child, I never turned my back on you when you needed me.” Faith sat up and gave me a steely look. “Now I need you and I’m asking you to do this favor for me. Katherine won’t, so you must.”
I closed my eyes. Emotional blackmail. I opened them and took a deep breath. She was watching me like a hawk.
Okay,” I said. “I’ll do it.”