The Bennett Sisters Mysteries Box Set, page 65
part #1 of Bennett Sisters Mystery Series
“I don’t like wine.” Amanda fell back into her chair again, her temper gone.
Pascal glanced at Merle. She said, “Is that why you sold the Frères Celice? Because you don’t like wine?”
Amanda shook her head slowly but said nothing, lips in a tight line.
Pascal said, “I imagine that case of wine in Clifton’s car cost a bundle. Such a shame. Eight-thousand a bottle, times twelve? How much is that, Merle?”
“Ninety-six thousand dollars.”
“Down the drain,” he added.
Amanda’s chin jutted out, her jaw working. “How could he? After all I did for him.”
“The bastard,” Merle added for good measure. “Stealing your wine.”
“Was that the last of it?” Pascal asked.
Amanda’s shoulders slumped. “There’s more,” she said quietly.
“Come now,” Pascal said. “You must have sold it all off by now. The yacht club membership is more than a hundred-thousand even if you don’t plan to have a wedding reception there. And buying the beach house and the four condos in Florida was expensive, wasn’t it?”
The old woman glared at him. “Not for someone like me.”
“Someone smart, very clever, you mean.”
Pascal had told Merle on the train what he’d found out from Florida state officials, that Amanda had grossly underestimated her real estate holdings there. She was much more wealthy than she let on.
Amanda was smiling coquettishly, her mood turning flirtatious. “Clever and patient. The patient ones always win, if they’re smart.” She and Pascal smiled at each other for a long beat. They both knew it was over.
Merle touched the old woman’s arm. “Can I see it, Amanda?”
Beneath the hall runner, a heavy old Oriental rug, on a spring-loaded mechanism for easy access if a person had a key, the trap door to the cellar waited. Amanda pulled the key from her cleavage where it hung on a long chain. She muttered about Clifton’s betrayal, how he must have taken it off her in the night. Pascal pulled the latch and the well-oiled hinges pulled back, revealing a steep flight of stairs. A light came on automatically. Pascal offered his hand to the old woman and she took it, stepping down the wooden steps.
“There’s a railing on the right,” she called, her mood light, almost excited. Showing off her big secret at last.
Merle stepped below. Pascal followed, both bending over to miss hitting their heads on the edge of the flooring. The basement was unexpectedly large and high-ceilinged. The air was musty and cool. Somewhere a fan rattled. The floor was cement. Besides a few paint cans it was empty.
“This way,” Amanda said, pulling a cord for another lightbulb. Merle blinked into the shadows. She was having flashbacks of the cellar in Malcouziac, the wine cave hidden behind a half-century’s junk, inside a wooden door very much like the one in front of her now. Weston had fashioned this cellar like his original one and squirreled away another stash of fine vintages. What a cagey old reprobate.
The mildew smell, the dark: it brought back the bad times in Malcouziac as well. The thieves, poor crazy Justine LaBelle, the awful mayor. The stone house in its original, rank state, the mice, the pigeons. And then, as Amanda rattled her keys, a curious lightening came over Merle. Weston Strachie was dead. And good riddance. But that wasn’t it, exactly. Something else was gone. That cloak of shame, the responsibility, the guilt of his actions no longer smothered her. He was dust and she was alive. His power over her, strange and weirdly malevolent as it had been, was gone.
Merle felt lightheaded. She looked at her feet. They were planted firmly on the ground.
Amanda unlocked the door with a second key and turned on a light inside the cellar. It was clean, cool, and tidy in here, racks lining the two long walls. The wood racks were nearly three-quarters empty.
“You see, plenty more.” She squinted at the bottles as if counting them. She frowned then gave a small shrug. “Wes never told me about the wine. He didn’t tell anyone. He left us to figure it out for ourselves. It took me ten years to work it out, to find the right keys. Ten long years when I could have used the money to help Harry. Of course it wouldn’t have had the payday then.” She patted a bottle lovingly. “Good old brothers. They’ve been good to me.”
“To you?” Merle asked. “Did Harry know about this wine?”
Amanda acted like she hadn’t heard the question, running a hand down the rows.
Merle raised her voice: “Wasn’t it Harry’s wine too, Amanda? Or Sylvester’s?”
“Wes never said. Sylvester didn’t even know about it. He wouldn’t have noticed I had extra money if you hit him over the head with it. I always said he was so clever, a financial genius.” She looked at Merle. “Don’t be stupid. There was no will.”
Pascal put a hand on Merle’s arm, as if she was going to strike the old woman. Her temper was simmering; it was possible. His cell phone rang. “I’ll take this upstairs,” he told her. “Be gentle.”
Merle backed up to a wall and calmed herself. Something about being called ‘stupid’ by this diabolical old bitch. But no, use your time wisely, Merdle. “How did you do it before Clifton? Sell the wine.”
“I had someone deliver it. You may not realize it, dear, but it’s not difficult to get someone to deliver a package for you in New York. Doesn’t cost that much. Of course I prefer hand delivery. So when Clifton came back from Florida with me this fall he got the job.”
Came back with me? Her condescending tone set Merle’s teeth on edge. Then it occurred to her: “You weren’t really married, were you?”
Amanda chuckled, still in her own private dream-land of cleverness. “He wanted to get married. But just for the money.”
“So you sent him back to Florida.”
“No, dear. That was his idea. He really was quite a bastard when he wanted to be.”
“Well, I’m sorry he’s dead,” Merle said quietly.
“Oh, me too. Quite sorry. Very sad.”
Footsteps clomped down the wooden steps. Pascal appeared in the doorway again. “Ladies? We should lock up the wine now.”
By the time they had relocked all the doors, turned out the lights, and helped Amanda navigate up the stairs, it was getting dark outside. Four-forty-five, twilight of the month and year, New Years Eve had arrived in all its ordinary lock-step. Merle sat Amanda down at the kitchen table again as Pascal arranged the rug over the trap door. Amanda took a sip of lukewarm tea and asked Merle to microwave it as cars pulled up out front. Their headlights streamed across the dead grass.
Pascal answered the knock.
“Who is it?” Amanda called. To Merle she said, “The neighbors are always so kind. Word must have gotten out about Clifton.”
Pascal stood in the doorway. “Company for you, Mrs. Gillespie.”
She stood up, smoothing her blouse and smiling. “Is that you, Ruth?”
A large black policeman moved into the kitchen, followed by two more uniformed officers. “State Police, ma’am. Amanda Wilson, you’re under arrest for the death of Clifton Gillespie. You have the right to an attorney. . .”
Chapter 26
The taxi stopped in front of a busy liquor store just before the bridge. Pascal jumped out and returned five minutes later with a bottle of champagne and two plastic cups. As the driver pulled through the toll center and onto the bridge, Pascal popped the cork, letting it bounce around the interior. They laughed as bubbles went everywhere. The cabbie cursed in some foreign language.
Merle lay her head back on the seat, angling herself so she couldn’t see the meter ticking away the dollars. It was worth it, she knew it, taking an expensive cab ride home. But her Yankee ways went deep. Pascal’s phone rang for the seventy-fifth time.
“Is it Mateo again?” she asked, eyes on the Sound, twinkling in the moonlight.
“May he rot in hell.” Pascal downed his champagne and poured himself more.
“I can’t believe Amanda would poison Clifton.” It was still too fresh, this revelation. But her brother had the same lack of morals.
“I can’t believe they did the autopsy so fast. But they knew what they were looking for.”
“Because of the sandwich? She actually packed a lunch for his getaway?” She laughed. Merle remembered how Amanda had complained that Clifton always wanted his meals on time. “That is rich.”
“Packed him an arsenic-laced sandwich and sent him on his merry way. I guess he didn’t like it much. He only ate half.”
“Conveniently leaving the evidence.” Merle turned on the seat. “Pascal, while everything was crazy out in the living room I looked in that wooden trunk in her bedroom.”
“Tampering with evidence?” he scolded.
“It was empty. I think he stole her money too. She must have been keeping it under the bed.”
He said, “They found a large amount of cash on him. But thankfully no wine.”
She turned to him. “What? You made that up. To make her mad enough to turn on him?”
He gave a Gallic shrug. “How do you say it? A man’s got to do what a man’s got to do.”
His phone rang again. He swore and hit the button. “Allo?” Merle could hear an irate voice as he held the phone away from his ear. “Mateo, c’est vous? Ce qui se passé? Vraiment?” He winked at Merle, his lip twitching. “Oooh-la-la. Dommage.”
They arrived at Rick and Stasia’s New Years Eve party in their dirty jeans, late, grubby with city grit, and half drunk. It had been hours since they’d eaten. The champagne, mixed with relief that answers to most of the questions had been found, that justice had been served, had gone to their heads. The State Police had told them that the North Carolina cops were stumped at first by the car accident. Clifton had lost control, that much was true. But his Chevy had run off the road outside Raleigh, into the ditch, and up the other side, crashing through an old fence. It came to rest in a pasture. The next morning loose cows alerted the neighborhood to the event. Clifton was found dead with no visible wounds, lying in the grass beside the open door of his car. With no injuries, the medical examiner immediately suspected a toxic substance. The half-eaten sandwich provided the answer.
Inside Stasia’s immaculate, sparkly house Merle fell on the meats and cheeses. She made herself several small sandwiches, thinking of Amanda’s vile cleverness. How did you do that, put poison into a sandwich for someone you live with? What if he’d lost control of his car and killed someone else? Amanda didn’t care about that. She cared about very little beyond her bank account. Had she ever loved Clifton? Were they just partners in crime? Did he steal her money or did she give it to him to make him look guilty? Whatever went down they had fallen out. Big time.
Merle remembered her wish that Clifton was responsible, not Amanda. Now she silently backpedaled, hoping her unkind thought hadn’t stuck wherever it landed in the cosmos, that whatever had happened hadn’t been her fault because of her intention to spare Amanda. Who obviously didn’t deserve sympathy.
Merle ate and drank and hugged her kin. The tension seeped away. Normality returned in the warmth of her family. Such good sisters. Elise, in a short black dress and her hair wrapped up, lipstick bright, eyes twinkling, that odd but pleasant young lawyer on her arm. Francie, defiantly single in silver lamé and five-inch heels, giddy, boasting, brash, and lovely. Annie with her Scotsman, in his tartan tonight, his strong legs encased in black socks and shiny boots. Stasia, the rock, the gatherer of good tidings, the maker of good moments. They were all so perfect, so right in their individual ways. And yes, Merle realized she was a little bit drunk. Still she loved them all, so much.
Pascal regaled the sisters and their friends with the story of Mateo Leblond and his naughty exploits in the dangerous discos of Manhattan. The story of Amanda, aunt and surrogate mother to Harry, was not so funny. She had been charged with first-degree murder but the drama that was the old wine wasn’t done. Although the bottles in the cellar were almost definitely genuine even without contemporaneous paperwork, the vintners of Frères Celice wanted it analyzed in France, at the high tech labs at the Université de Bordeaux. It would be Pascal’s job to escort the bottles home. Would he bring them back as well? The idea made Merle smile.
At eleven-thirty Tristan thundered up the stairs from the family room with his cousin Oliver on his heels, giggling madly, looking for someone to kiss. Merle raised her eyebrows, searching the room for someone unrelated to him and under forty. The boys grabbed a box of sparklers and headed outside instead. Merle sank into a chair, exhaustion catching her like a freight train. She was going to need a vacation from her Christmas vacation.
Annie was near the stereo, putting in a disc. A breathy voice emerged from the speakers. It was Blossom Dearie, her adorable girlish voice across the decades, from a smoky Paris nightclub to right here, right now. Francie and Annie linked arms and sang along like the rowdy patrons of the Black Dog. “Give him the ooh-la-la,” they trilled, wiggling their hips and causing an uproar.
Pascal found Merle just before the clock struck midnight. He held her coat, two sparklers, and a lighter. “On y va, chèrie. Il est temps pour les cierges magiques.”
Time for magic candles, time for sparklers.
Tick-tock.
Merle’s infamous inner clock wanted to be accurate, wanted to say, yes, it is definitely eleven-fifty-five on the last day of the year. But something rebelled inside her. Stop the clock. Freeze this moment. Be here, stay. Stretch it out, love this time with all your being for as long as you can. What else is there but this moment?
On the front lawn a skim of snow clung to the grass. The half moon had risen above the pine trees, turning the blue-black world of dead midwinter into something shimmery and fine. They laughed with the boys whose sparklers lit the yard, their young faces so happy, so light. Pascal lit his sparkler and touched the other to the flame. He handed it to Merle. Inside the house the adults were counting down the seconds.
Silly, silly grownups. Don’t they know?
Merle took Pascal’s free hand and squeezed it. This moment, she thought, trying to sear it into her memory, and her heart.
Hold on. Hold on.
“Five, four, three, two, one.” Tristan and Oliver whooped.
Pascal swirled his sparkler in a figure eight, an infinity of light, then reeled her in and kissed her hard, his mouth sweet with grape and promise.
His breath warmed her ear. “Happy new year, blackbird.”
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Read about the adventures of Merle Bennett and the Bennett Sisters in these literary suspense novels, available wherever books are sold.
For more information on all of Lise McClendon’s books
visit lisemcclendon.com
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Blackbird Fly
The Girl in the Empty Dress
Learn more about the real Blossom Dearie
and listen to her music
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THE
THINGS
WE SAID
TODAY
a Bennett Sisters Novel
•••
Lise McClendon
Thalia Press
USA
© Lise McClendon, 2016
ISBN: 978-1535312394
All rights reserved. No portion of this work may be copied without express permission of the publisher, except for bonafide reviews.
Published in the United States of America by Thalia Press.
For permissions contact the publisher through the website at www.thaliapress.com
Also by Lise McClendon
The Bennett Sisters Series
Blackbird Fly
The Girl in the Empty Dress
Give Him the Ooh-la-la, a novella
Writing as Rory Tate
PLAN X
Jump Cut
Dorie Lennox Mysteries
One O’clock Jump
Sweet and Lowdown
Alix Thorssen Mysteries
The Bluejay Shaman
