Where to begin, Sara thought.Maybe with a less personal topic than her and Reid. Did you two kill him? No, that wasn’t the way to begin.“Tell me about Greer.”
Rachel looked startled. “Is she a suspect?”
“Maybe.” Sara buttered a scone as Rachel poured the tea.She certainly knows her way around a teapot! She even knows how to use the strainer.
“Greer was nice, quiet, and very young. She worked a lot so we didn’t see her much.”
“I heard that Oliver was quite nasty to her.”
“He treated everyone with disdain, and he seemed to know secrets about them.”
“Did he know something about Greer?”
Rachel smiled. “I don’t think she’d had enough life experience to have any secrets. She’d lived mostly with her grandmother.”
“A forced isolation?”
“Oh no!” Rachel said. “At least not that I heard. Greer and her grandmother went places and did things and read a lot.” She looked up at Sara. “May I ask you a personal question?”
“Just so long as it isn’t ‘Where do you get your ideas?’”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Sorry. Writer’s joke. Ask me anything.”
Rachel’s face softened. “Quinn asked me to have dinner with him and Gil tonight. What do I take? What do I wear? Maybe I could bake a pie. If Lenny will let me borrow the kitchen, that is. Or I could buy something. But what?” She sighed. “Do you have any suggestions?”
Sara wasn’t often knocked speechless but Rachel left her grasping for words. “Gil? Quinn?” she managed to say.
“Yes. Excuse me, but that bookcase behind you is driving me crazy. Do you mind if I fix it?”
Sara believed in organization. “Sure.”
Rachel got up and went to the bookcase and began sorting the children’s books. “They were by age and now they’re shoved in anywhere.” She halted and looked around. “This room appears to be the same, but it’s not. The little turtle rug is missing. It was Kate’s favorite.”
“Turtle?” Sara asked.
“Billy used to say this room was to be untouched. It had something to do with two little boys. All the furniture and toys had been custom-made for this room. So where is the turtle rug?” She nodded to an empty place on the floor.
“I have no idea,” Sara said.
Rachel walked to the other side of the room and switched cushions from a chair to the window seat. “The cottage is beautiful, isn’t it? That big stained glass window is spectacular. Are you going to renovate it?”
“It’s not my place.”
“But won’t the estate be put up for sale?”
Sara hesitated. “James Lachlan’s will leaves it to his eldest descendant.”
“And who is that?”
“We’re not sure yet.”
Nodding in understanding, Rachel stepped back and looked around the room, studying it critically. “That’s better.” She sat back down at the tea table and filled Sara’s cup then her own. “The tea’s not quite hot but it’s all right. Did you want to ask me things?”
Sara was so surprised by her behavior that she’d almost forgotten her purpose. “What happened to your aunt’s jewels?”
Rachel’s look could only be described asblank.
