top of her acting like she can’t wait to get away from us, she also looks terrible.”
“So, did you find anything?”
“Not really on her. I mean, a bit. I found pictures of her when she was married to Richard Stonehill, which were freaky because she looked completely different. She was a blazing redhead. I swear, you’d never recognize her. But I did find something else that was . . . odd. You remember how she mentioned a first husband? Jed? I found him. Jed Halstead. And he has a criminal record.”
“Are you serious?” Charlie is shocked.
“I know. I felt the same way.”
“But what does that mean, criminal record? What for?”
“Larceny and credit card fraud. That was all I could find. God knows what else there is.”
“Oh Jesus.” Charlie whistles. “And what about Tracy? Nothing on her?”
“Not that I could find. Just an old story which linked her to him, but she was never implicated.”
“God. I knew my instincts were good. So what now?”
They sit in silence for a while.
“It’s just so strange. What do you think the story is?”
“I have no idea,” Charlie says. “But I’m pretty certain there is a story. Hey, why don’t you ask Robert McClore? He’s the expert on mysteries.”
“Oh right. Hey, Robert, don’t you think there’s something totally weird about your new girlfriend? How do we find out more? That would be one surefire way to get myself fired.”
“Don’t tell him it’s about Tracy. Say . . . say it’s about Annabel.”
“You know what?” A smile spreads on Kit’s face. “That, as Annabel would say, is sheer bloody genius.”
Chapter Twenty-one
Edie swings into Rose’s driveway, pulls out her tennis racket and marches up the steps and into the house.
She has been friends with Rose for almost fifty years and has been coming to this house for swimming and tennis and parties for all that time. In almost five decades nothing has changed. The house, a stucco contemporary that was featured in all the architectural magazines of the time, was once the biggest and grandest house on the street, but it is now dwarfed by the huge shingle houses that surround it.
Many an offer has been made, because the plot is worth a fortune. Rose is used to going out to the mailbox to find many a handwritten envelope.
“We love your house,” they all say. “It would be a dream house for our growing family, and we’d love to talk to you if you ever decide to sell.”
Some have been more forward, some even asking her to name her price. A couple of times, hedge fund boys, at the height of the boom, threw ridiculous numbers at her and were aghast that she wouldn’t accept, not understanding that this wasn’t about money, this was about her home.
And she isn’t stupid. However many times the letters tell her how much people love the house, she knows that in their eyes they see a demolition. The thought of the bulldozers coming in and razing all that she has built, loved, shared with her husband before he passed away, is inconceivable. She will not allow it to happen.
They would all love to buy Rose’s house because hers occupies a double plot, almost four acres, and is perched on a hill, with magnificent views over the harbor, but Rose has often said that the day she leaves, she will be carried out in a coffin.
She has a tennis court, a pool, even—heaven forbid in these days when safety is paramount—a waterslide, and opens her house regularly to all the neighborhood kids, who are thrilled to tumble down a slippery slide into an icy-cold swimming pool, for she does not believe in heating a pool when there are far more important priorities.
The house is filled with paintings and sculptures, either works by friends of Rose, a painter herself, or those bought while she was married, when she and her husband traveled all over the world.
There are books lining the walls, and these are not books for display but books that have been lovingly held and read and reread, their pages well thumbed, their spines sometimes split.
Blown-glass animals from Murano, huge lumps of amethyst and rose quartz, porcelain pill boxes that were her mother’s—it is a house that has only been added to over the years, with nothing ever taken away.
The cream of Highfield high society has always been found in the living room of Rose’s house, or sipping cocktails on the terrace. Not the people who consider themselves high society today, the