The View from Alameda Island - Robyn Carr Page 0,123

hand rose to cover her mouth, her eyes disbelieving and her head already shaking denial. Eleanor touched Gabby’s cheeks, her neck, her hands, muttering over and over, My God My God My God, then, Oh No Oh No No No, while Sable, stunned and terrified, stood frozen, not breathing. Elly stopped touching Gabby after a few seconds and straightened herself stoically. She turned toward Sable as rigidly as a soldier. “She’s dead, Sable. She’s been dead for some time.”

“No,” Sable whispered.

Elly nodded, frowning, because by then she had noticed there was a smell of some kind. Eleanor had talked to Gabby the previous afternoon; it wasn’t as though she’d begun to decompose. There were no visible signs of blood, bruises or marks. It was the smell of death and it’s accompanying atrocities.

“Go back outside,” Elly said calmly. “Wait for Barbara and Beth. Don’t let them come in. I’m going to have to call the police.”

“The police?”

“It wasn’t old age, Sable,” Eleanor said, her voice cracking. “What would you suggest?”

Sable’s eyes had taken on a stricken, panicked gleam. She hugged herself to keep from shaking or being sick. Not sick with disgust, but sick with horror. Her dearest friend. Dead before her very eyes. Sable couldn’t answer. Her face went white.

“Don’t fall apart on me now,” Eleanor instructed calmly but firmly. “Just don’t. Hang on for a while. I’ll join you outside in a minute. Now go.”

Eleanor walked into the kitchen and picked up the cordless. She dialed 911. She figured whatever had killed Gabby hadn’t been homicidal...and even if it had been, it was safe to use the phone. She didn’t care very much about fingerprints and all that. The cause of death, she had already decided, hadn’t been murder, but rather theft. Elly’s dearest treasure had just been stolen. “Yes, ah, my name is Eleanor Fulton and I’ve just let myself into my friend’s house to find that she’s...she’s...expired. Expired, I said. Dead. Dead for some time, I guess. She’s very cold and white. I think it must have been natural—a heart attack perhaps. What I mean is, there doesn’t seem to be any...any sign of anything. No, no, she’s only fifty.” She did not add “today.” She noticed that the message light on Gabby’s answering machine was blinking madly, something that would no doubt help the police determine how long her dearest friend had been gone. She wanted to play the messages, to hear what final words had been spoken to Gabby while she lay on the sofa, dying to late-night TV. Birthday well-wishers? Instead, she gave the police dispatcher the address and asked that there please be no sirens. This was all bad enough without flashing lights and sirens.

When she replaced the receiver she realized her hand was shaking almost violently. She tucked it under her arm like an annoying old sock and took a deep breath. She would have to call Don, Gabby’s ex-husband, but she’d wait until after the police had come to the house. She might even be the one to tell the children—David and Sarah—but not without Don. She would see to that. Don would manage, somehow, to be civil to his children, or Elly might physically make her point about it. Maybe just coldcock him, something she’d had an impulse to do for years now. Gabby was much more forgiving than Eleanor.

But before she would let herself enjoy the prospect of decking Don, she went back to Gabby. She stared down at her. Over twenty years, she thought in desolation. They were young together, even though Elly felt she, herself, had never been young. They had survived things that should have killed them. The others—Sable, Barbara and Beth—might love Gabby equally, but they hadn’t had her quite as long. Hadn’t been through quite as much with her.

Eleanor picked up her heavy purse and looped the strap over her shoulder before she dug inside for a handkerchief. She felt her eyes and nose drip before she was even aware she was crying, and she sopped up her leaking pain as best she could, dipping the linen under her glasses.

Gabby didn’t look particularly peaceful to her, or maybe that was just her own emotions projected. Was that a slight frown? Had Gabby’s face recently taken on those lines without Eleanor noticing? It was lividity, she finally realized, the color drained from Gabby’s face, her lips falling slack and drying out. It was outrageous that Gabby be the first to go; she was the youngest