I smiled. I’d met Mrs. Newsome about a month ago, when Greg had talked me into lunching at Vittles on the Water, the very upscale waterfront restaurant in the equally upscale Franklin retirement community where Mrs. Newsome lived. She was a fairly terrifying old lady, who had grilled me thoroughly about my life and my work, clearly trying to determine whether I was good enough for her boy. I had apparently passed muster because she’d told Greg I was a keeper.
She had also offered me ten thousand dollars if I figured out who murdered her older son, and the money had arrived by check a week or so after Heidi was arrested. You have to admire people who keep their promises even when they don’t have to.
Greg nodded. “My mother’s always been a pistol. I’m glad she came through for you.”
“Well, I’m glad she’s doing well. I enjoyed meeting her.”
“You can meet her again,” Greg offered, “any time you want. She said I should bring you by for dinner sometime. She doesn’t do much cooking herself anymore, but the restaurant does a mean takeout.”
Of course. “Are you staying with her while you’re in town?”
He nodded. “She has a two-bedroom cottage, and I think she likes having someone to fuss over.”
“Has she…” I cleared my throat. “I know it’s none of my business, but has she done anything about getting to know Cressida and Tara better? They could use more family—it’s just the two of them—and Cressie is Harold’s daughter, even if she never spent much time with him. And if you’re gone most of the time…”
Then old Mrs. Newsome could use a family member or two who was local, not off in Wyoming or Italy, now that Harold was dead and Heidi was in prison.
She had friends in the retirement community, no doubt, and nurses and doctors keeping an eye on things, too, but that’s not quite the same as family.
Greg nodded. “I am. And she has. She was telling me about it yesterday. I haven’t met either of them yet, but it’s happening this weekend, I think. The girl has had school until today.”
Yes, of course she had. Cressida was twelve, and her aunt wouldn’t let her off school just so she could meet her father’s brother when he arrived from Italy. Not when the weekend was two days away and would serve just as well.
“It’ll be good for Mother to have company when I’m not around,” Greg added. “I’m here once or twice a year, but I spend most of my time bouncing between Wyoming and Italy.”
“That’s quite a commute.” If two beautiful parts of the world.
“It is,” Greg acknowledged. “But it works for me. Wyoming for the winter, when I’m writing, tucked away in the snow with the fireplace going. And Italy for the summer, when I’m pretending to write but mostly just eating my way through Tuscany. And Nashville whenever I can manage it, to visit my mother and—” he smiled, “—other people I’m interested in seeing.”
I smiled back, or perhaps it would be more accurate to say that I simpered.
Luckily the waiter arrived with our entrees before I had to come up with something to say to that. Greg’s Osso Buco looked like something out of a magazine spread, and the waiter lowered the Branzino in front of me with the air of someone delivering nectar of the gods. When he opened the parchment packet—with a dramatic verve that belonged on a stage—and revealed the fish and tomatoes, capers and fennel, I wanted to applaud.
And it tasted just as good as it looked. For a couple of minutes, at least, sea bass was all I could think about.
“So,” Greg said eventually, when he had polished off half his veal and risotto and was stopping to take a sip of wine, “tell me about this case you’re working on. The one that made you change your mind about where to have dinner.”
“It’s a long story,” I warned him, since, if I was going to do it justice, I really ought to start with Jackie-with-a-q and David.
“I’m not doing anything else.” He grinned at me across the table.
“Well, you know that David left me for another woman. Her name was Jacquie Demetros, and she was—still is, I assume—twenty-five, unless she’s had a birthday since then…”
I filled him in on the background, including a vivid recounting of the spectacle Jacquie had made of herself at David’s funeral, complete with a wide-brimmed hat with a veil and a black-edged handkerchief that she used to dab at her eyes, like a femme fatale in a nineteen-forties noir.
“That takes guts,” Greg commented.
“Tell me about it. Either that, or a total disregard for anyone else’s feelings. I was there, and so was David’s other ex-wife, and his brother and both his children…”
“What did you do?”
“I didn’t have to do anything,” I said. “Detective Mendoza stepped up and hauled her out of there.”
Along with Nick, as it happened. And they did it more politely than I made it sound, too. But the experience had been excruciating. Not only had she taken my rightful place as the widow, sobbing over the coffin, but she had pretty much accused me of murder, and at a time when I hadn’t been sure whether Mendoza was about to arrest me for David’s death or not.
“That’s amazing,” Greg said, “and I mean that in the best possible way. I wish I could have been there to see it.”
“Are you going to put it in a book sometime?”
