“So he was a fool for sleeping with a banker? But it would have been okay if his girlfriend was a cocktail waitress?”
He blinked. “That’s not what I meant at all. Riley is a good woman. A beautiful woman. He ought never to have cheated on her.” Ed sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. “I would never do that to you,” he said, turning to look at her. “And I know you wouldn’t do it to me either.”
He stood up and padded, naked, toward the bathroom. A moment later, she heard the water in the shower running, and his deep voice humming.
14
Parrish was sitting on the front porch of the cottage staring moodily out at the bay when Riley rode up on a rusty red beach cruiser with a straw basket wired to the front.
“Hey!” She opened the screened door and waved her friend in. “What’s up?”
Riley collapsed onto the porch swing and Parrish sat down beside her. “Where’s Ed?”
Parrish rolled her eyes. “Up in his office. He swears he’s just going to answer a few ‘urgent’ e-mails, but we both know he’ll stay up there until I physically drag him away from that damned computer.”
“Just like Wendell. And yet, nothing like Wendell,” Riley said.
Parrish raised an eyebrow, and Riley shrugged.
“Horrible things just keep coming out of my mouth. Anyway, sorry about the unannounced drop-in, but I just had to get out and away from the house for a little bit.”
“You know you never need an invitation to show up here,” Parrish said. “What’s with the bike?”
“Mama took the golf cart. She and Roo are playing golf this morning. Well, they call it golf. I call it Bloody Marys and gossip and a little putting and very little actual driving.”
“Evvy’s playing golf today? That’s kind of cold.”
“Just be happy she’s out of my hair.”
You want some iced tea? Or an Arnold Palmer? I just made tea and lemonade.”
“Don’t judge me, but I’d love an Arnold Palmer if you could just drop a thimble-full of vodka into it.”
“Me? Judge? Ha!”
Riley sat back in the swing and took an appreciative look around the porch. Parrish and Ed’s house wasn’t particularly big, maybe fifteen hundred square feet in all, and it wasn’t old by island standards. Basically it had been a 1960s concrete block bunker when they bought it, but the way the house was situated, on a knoll at the end of a cul-de-sac with the other houses built downhill, gave it the best, most unobstructed view of the bay on the island.
And, of course, in the ten years since they’d bought the house, Parrish had remodeled and refurnished it to magazine-worthy perfection. She’d covered the concrete block exterior with cedar shingles that had weathered to a soft silver, added a peaked-roof portico over the front door, put in divided-light windows, and painted the trim a deep green, Now the bunker looked like a snug New England cottage.
“Here.” Parrish thrust a frosted tumbler with a piece of skewered lemon and a mint leaf into her hand.
“Thanks.” Riley sipped and grimaced. “Kinda strong there, girlfriend.”
“Desperate times, desperate measures. What’s happening over at the Shutters? I know Evvy is driving you crazy.”
Riley fluttered her hand. “Not just Mama. It’s everybody. The word about Wendell is officially out. The casserole brigade started up this morning around eight and it has not let up. We have enough food to feed Pharaoh’s army, and it just keeps coming. Mama’s fridge and Billy and Scott’s at the firehouse is full, so Roo took a bunch of stuff over to the carriage house. And the phone’s been ringing off the hook…”
She pulled her cell phone from the pocket of her shorts. “The voice mailbox on this thing is full too. I know people mean well, and I should at least listen, but honestly, I just can’t take one more ounce of sympathy.”
Parrish put her hand out. “Gimme that thing. I’ll listen, write down the messages from people you care about, erase the ones from the pests.”
“Would you? That would be great.”
Parrish went into the house and came back with a yellow legal pad and pen.
She stationed herself at the glass-topped wicker table and started taking notes while Riley slowly sipped her drink.
“Your cousin Jacky called. You’re in her prayers. She wants to know when the funeral is going to be.”
“Me, too,” Riley said. “I’ll call her when we’ve got everything set.”
Parrish nodded and continued with the note taking.
“Julie, your neighbor on St. Mary’s Street. Sends her love. Wants to know if you need anything.”
“Julie?” Riley wrinkled her brow. “I haven’t talked to anybody in Raleigh. How does she know about Wendell?”
“Dunno,” Parrish said. She listened for another five minutes and put the phone down. “Word’s out up there, that’s for sure. The book-club girls want to know where to send flowers, and the principal at Maggy’s school also sends condolences.”
“How in the hell?… It’s only been a day.”
“Bad news travels fast,” Parrish pointed out.
She picked up the phone again, listened for a moment, scribbled something on the legal pad, listened again, and scribbled some more before setting the phone carefully down on the tabletop.
“Uh, Riles? You’ve got three phone calls from reporters here.”
“What?” Riley stopped swinging abruptly. “Who called? What do they want?”
Parrish consulted her notes. “Some guy from the Wilmington paper. His name’s Bert … something. He left a number, wants you to call. Says he’s working on Wendell’s obituary.”
“No way,” Riley said. “Who else?”
“Nancy Olivera—from the Raleigh News and Observer. Same thing, says she’s working on an obituary.”
“I can’t figure out how they know about Wendell,” Riley said. “This is so bizarre. When I worked at WRAL, we’d get tips from the funeral home, or sometimes the cops, when there was a suspicious death, but I haven’t even called a funeral home yet. And I can’t believe the sheriff would go around notifying the media.”
“Don’t reporters check police reports to find out stuff like this?”
“They used to,” Riley said. “But things have changed since I got out of the business. Newspapers have skeleton staffs these days. No way some reporter from Wilmington or Raleigh just happened to check the police reports in little bitty Baldwin County. Somebody must have tipped them off.”
“Speaking of WRAL, you have a call from them, too.”
Riley’s shoulders relaxed a little. “Probably somebody I worked with back in the day, calling to offer condolences.”
“You know a woman named Kelsey Kennedy? She sounds young. Like maybe she’s still in kindergarten.”
“Everybody who works in television today is just barely out of kindergarten,” Riley assured her. “That name sounds familiar, but I don’t know why.”
She chewed on a piece of ice while she thought. “You must mean Kasey Kennedy. She really is a kid. Or she was. She was an intern the last summer I worked at the station. That’s kind of nice that she called, I guess.”