Jane Darrowfield, Professional Busybody by Barbara Ross

Author:Barbara Ross [Ross, Barbara]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Kensington
Published: 2020-04-10T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter Fifteen

By the time Jane arrived at lunch, she was starving. The meal was just about over, and she had to cajole the lunch ladies into giving her a salad and a roll. She sat down with the artists and the dancers and tucked into her food. The dining room was quiet. Candace and Doris’s ladies-in-waiting had joined Bill’s golfing buddies at their usual table. There was still no sign of Doris, and the women’s long faces put a damper on the chatter in the rest of the room.

When the meal was over and Maurice and Evangeline stood to go, Jane pulled Maurice aside. “The morning Bill’s body was discovered, you mentioned other hens in Bill’s chicken coop,” she said. “Do you have any idea who they were?”

Maurice motioned with his chin toward the stairs to the balcony that overlooked the dining room. Evangeline glanced back anxiously when she realized Maurice wasn’t in his permanent place by her side, but when she saw he was with Jane, she continued on out the door.

Maurice and Jane climbed the stairs. When they reached the top, he hung over the balcony and pointed into the still-crowded dining room below. “There.”

“Where?” Jane wasn’t sure where he was pointing. It seemed to be toward one of the couples’ tables, where four men and four women in tennis clothes were seated. Maurice pointed directly at a woman seated in the center of the row.

“Really?” The woman was attractive, tanned, and athletic, but in a world where so few women had partners, it seemed selfish for her to have two.

“And there.” Maurice pointed again, indicating one of Doris’s entourage, a beautiful, model-thin woman with a mane of glamorous white hair. Weren’t she and Doris supposed to be friends?

“And there.” Maurice pointed to one of the all-female tables. The women laughed and chatted, but one sat, head down, shoveling food into her mouth.

“Why do you know all this?” Jane asked Maurice as he continued to scan the room.

He shrugged his bony shoulders. “It’s Walden Spring. Everybody knows everything.” Maurice recognized her skepticism. “And,” he continued, “I made it a point to keep up with what was going on with that rat bastard, Bill Finnerty.”

* * *

When she left the clubhouse, Jane was determined to talk to the “other women” about Bill to see if he’d ever said anything to them about his background or, maybe more important at this point, Mary’s. She chose the woman from Doris’s retinue—the thin, glamorous one—to speak to first, guessing it would be easier to get her to open up than the married woman. Sort of a practice run. Jane wasn’t surprised Bill had gone for her. She was gorgeous even if she looked a little older than he did. Jane tagged along behind Doris’s group when they left the dining room. Candace wasn’t with them, and Jane wondered where she’d gone. Jane waited until the group broke up and headed to their separate units.

“Hello, I’m—”

The glamorous woman whirled around, glaring. “I know who you are.

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