“Please tell me that you haven’t heard rumors to that effect.” Mars winced.
“Pretty embarrassing to date your client’s paramour, huh?”
Mars’s eyes widened in horror. “Can you even imagine the headlines?”
“Relax, Mars. I don’t know anything,” I said. “Do you remember Eunice Crenshaw?”
He frowned. “The wealthy socialite?”
“That’s the one. She’s Abby’s next-door neighbor. According to Eunice, Abby was quite fond of Wesley.”
“That doesn’t mean they were having an affair.”
“I’m in total agreement about that. I just thought I’d point it out to you. It’s always better to be forewarned. Right?”
Mars did not seem happy. He rubbed the side of his face in discomfort. “You really don’t know how Abby died? Wolf didn’t tell you?”
“Not the first clue. To be honest, I don’t think the cops know yet. They’re waiting to see what the autopsy turns up.”
“Mind if I call Wesley?”
“Not a bit.” I wondered if I should give him some privacy, but I decided he knew his way around. He’d lived in this house. If he wanted to speak privately, he could get up and go into the sunroom. I plucked a croissant off the platter and tore a piece off. Mars was right. They were almost as fresh as the day they were baked.
Mars didn’t leave the table. He punched a number into his phone. “Wes, Sophie confirms that Abby has died.” He was silent for a moment. “The cause of death wasn’t immediately apparent. Uh-huh. I have some contacts, so we’ll probably know what happened before it hits the news. I’ll draft a statement and be over”—Mars glanced at his watch—“by five. That should give us enough time.” He hung up and took a croissant from the platter. “At least your clients don’t wake you in the middle of the night to confirm rumors.”
“I don’t know how you do it. Wesley seems like a nice guy, though.” Still, I was a little surprised that he found Abby’s death to be of such concern that he was up phoning people about it in the middle of the night. That made me suspicious of Wesley. I didn’t care what Mars thought on the subject. People didn’t call a guy in the wee hours of the morning about a woman’s death unless there was a very close connection.
“The news will identify Abby as working for TV star Tilly and her husband the congressman. It will make me sound like a complete jerk to say this, but the truth is that Tilly’s fame and her husband’s powerful job are what make Abby’s death sensational. If she was just Abby Bergeron who had a boring job and no interesting connections to the rich and powerful, she’d probably get a passing mention or two.”
“Did you smooth over the e-mail that was released?”
Mars groaned. “What a mess. I’m not sure we’ll ever know who the culprit was. For now, I’ve hired a security consultant to put up a new firewall on the computers at Wesley’s office. That will make it more difficult to penetrate them.”
“Assuming it wasn’t simply someone in his office,” I pointed out.
“True. But if another e-mail is released, then we’ll know where to look for the offender.”
“Are you going to have him send some fake e-mails as a test?”
“What a great idea!” Mars finished his coffee and croissant, patted Daisy, and took off. He had work to do.
Meanwhile, I was wide awake, and it wasn’t even five in the morning yet.
I took Daisy for an early walk. It was absolutely chilly. Naturally, I couldn’t help wandering in the direction of Abby’s house. I stopped and observed it from across the street. The lights were off. It looked dead and dreary. At that very moment, the gate that led to the back patio opened and a man stepped through. I didn’t recognize him but I wondered what he was doing there before daylight.
Daisy tugged at her leash. I thought it wise not to follow him in the dark. I coaxed Daisy to turn around. Two blocks later, she pulled at the leash again. This time I let her steer me. I had no particular destination in mind. All I could think of was the man I had seen. What had he wanted at Abby’s house?
I felt more secure when we were back in our house. I went straight to the den and looked up Abigail Bergeron on my computer. There were a lot of women by that name. It didn’t help that I had never seen her, though it appeared to me that most of them were probably too young to be our Abby Bergeron.
I rose and locked the kitchen door before pouring myself another mug of tea and looking through the recipes for something to cook.
It was more than a little bit eerie to know I was reading through the work of a woman who was no longer alive. I had read lots of things written by people who had passed on, but Abby’s handwriting in the margins screamed out to me. I wasn’t usually melodramatic about this kind of thing, but I couldn’t shake the feeling that this project had been meant to fall into my hands.
Nonsense! I was letting Abby’s gruesome death get to me. I tried to focus on the recipes, making note of the ingredients I needed. I had everything for Grandma Peggy’s Pumpkin Bundt Cake, and it sounded good.
I took eggs and butter out of the fridge and placed them on the counter to come to room temperature. Meanwhile I took a shower, trying to aim the stream of water so it wouldn’t hit the spot in the wall that no longer had tiles.
Half an hour later, I watched my bright red KitchenAid mixer cream the butter and sugar. Following the recipe carefully, I mixed the flour with nutmeg, cinnamon, and a tiny bit of cloves. My kitchen was beginning to smell like fall. I poured the thick batter into a Bundt pan and popped it into the oven to bake.
Grandma Peggy’s Pumpkin Bundt Cake was one of the recipes that bore the odd code. I knew I should give up on the strange markings. Now that Abby was dead, we would probably never know what she meant.
Nevertheless, I studied the codes again.
They meant nothing to me. Just numbers preceded by letters. Each had three letters at the beginning, followed by three or four numbers.
I chided myself for being obsessed with the notations. If I ever figured them out, they would probably mean something ridiculously unimportant, like whether Abby approved of a recipe.
The sun was rising by the time I poured a glaze over the pumpkin cake. The scent of the cake had filled my kitchen, and I was itching to try a piece.
I decided I would wait and reward myself with a slice for breakfast, after I made fall wreaths for my doors.
Daisy accompanied me to the storage room on the third floor of my house, which was actually a finished attic. Someone, probably Mars’s aunt Faye, had converted it into one lovely bedroom and one mini-bedroom, which despite its size often came in handy and had been very popular with my niece when she was young.
I opened the door to the storage room, and Mochie leaped inside to sniff the array of storage boxes. I located straw wreath bases and a box of dried and silk flowers. Remembering the lemon wreath on Abby’s door, I wondered if it was too early for miniature pumpkins on a wreath. Huge dried hydrangea blossoms in creamy pink and green and others that had turned light brown looked like good choices for the season. I affixed them to the bases and tied them with a coral—almost pumpkin-colored—ribbon with a velvety texture.