Death In Duplicate

NINETEEN

DESPITE HER INTERRUPTED NIGHT’S SLEEP, SUSAN WAS ON the road by ten the next morning. She had gotten up early and, after making a dozen phone calls, had found three people who were willing to “contribute” to the eulogy she claimed to be writing. Among those three were two women who were the Baineses’ former next-door neighbors. She was going to see them first.

Sheets of paper printed from MapQuest’s Web site had slipped from the passenger’s seat to the floor when she braked suddenly to avoid a large purple tractor trailer that had swerved into her lane, but she was fairly sure of her route. Before moving to Hancock the Baines had lived near the border that Connecticut shared with Westchester County, New York. It was a rural area and Susan was enjoying the meandering roads when she spied a familiar name on a street sign. Brampton Lane. She turned right onto a narrow road. On her left, a stream twinkled in the midday light, the first wild greens of spring lining its banks. On the right, walls of stone and wooden fences protected homes worth millions of dollars. Many of the homes bore elegant names; some displayed street numbers as well. She was looking for number twenty-three. One hundred and nine… Ninety-nine… Eighty-seven… A long row of houses without apparent numbers… Thirty-three… Thirteen… Susan slammed on the brakes. She’d missed it!

A loud blast came from the green BMW behind her and she reluctantly put her foot on the accelerator. Brampton Lane was too narrow for a U-turn. She drove slowly and wasn’t surprised when the car zoomed around her, honking loudly. She ignored the driver’s incredibly rude gesture and searched for a driveway to turn around in.

Brampton Lane ended abruptly and Susan found herself facing a stone mansion and the choice of turning either right or left onto Fern Lane. She frowned, glanced in her rearview mirror, and made an illegal U-turn. She watched for number thirteen and saw that there was a long driveway after the white colonial that carried that unlucky number and before number thirty-three. She turned, discovered what she had mistaken for a driveway was actually a private road leading to four large homes. It appeared to be some sort of development. All the houses were colonial style, all were brick with white trim, all had been built within the last few years, and all were massive with wings extending in numerous directions and four- or five-car garages peeking out from behind. And, happily, they all had mailboxes on the street-numbered mailboxes! She realized she was about to pass number twenty-three, made a sharp right between tall brick pillars, and drove up a wide brick driveway. Two chocolate labs appeared around the corner of the house and dashed across the lawn, barking happily. A tall redheaded woman wearing black wool slacks spattered with soil and a bright Dale of Norway ski sweater followed the dogs.

“Don’t worry. They’re friendly,” she called out as Susan pulled her car over and stopped.

Susan took her at her word and got out to greet the animals and their owner.

“You must be Daria Woods.”

“And you must be Susan Henshaw. Come into the house. I’m dying for some coffee… unless you would prefer tea?”

Susan followed her hostess up the brick steps and into a large two-story marble-floored foyer. One of the biggest crystal chandeliers she had ever seen dominated the space. The owner kicked her muddy shoes off and tossed them into a corner where a few similar pairs lay as the dogs slid around on the floor’s slippery surface. She padded across the room in her socks. “Do you garden?” she asked.

Susan thought of the crew of men who appeared at her home weekly when the weather was good and trimmed, mowed, and filled her beds with annuals. “A little,” she said, although she was in the position of directing rather than doing any actual tilling of the soil.

“I love it. In fact, the opportunity to have a big garden was the only reason I agreed to buy this hideous McMansion.”

Susan looked around. “You don’t like this house?”

“Hate it. It’s too big, too pretentious, too formal, too… well, I could go on forever. But it’s my husband’s dream home and the grounds were exactly what I wanted. Tea or coffee?” she asked as they entered the kitchen.

“Coffee, please. This is amazing.” The kitchen was exactly what Susan expected from the outside of the house-large, filled with the latest appliances set in the midst of hand-painted and glazed tiles, granite countertops, custom-made cabinets, designer lighting. The back wall had been removed and a sunroom, lined with metal shelves, had been added on to the house. It brought sunlight into the room and displayed an extensive collection of bonsai.

“We lived in an apartment in the city for twenty-seven years. This was my only garden during that time. Now I’m expanding a bit.” She pointed outside and Susan realized that the backyard, easily two acres, was almost entirely cultivated. Hundreds of early small bulbs were blooming in the flower beds with the foliage from thousands of others pushing through the surface of the soil. Rose bushes had been cut to the ground to winter over and delicate shrubs were wrapped in burlap to protect them from the bitter Connecticut winter. Dried vines twined around rustic wood arbors and a knot garden was right outside the kitchen door.

“I’d love to see this in the summer,” Susan said.

“Perhaps we’ll get along this morning and I’ll invite you back in a few months. Although I must warn you that if you and Nadine were good friends, I don’t imagine we’ll be particularly compatible.” Daria was busy at the counter grinding coffee beans and Susan couldn’t see her face.

“I gather you didn’t like her,” Susan said, examining an elegant tiny split leaf Japanese maple.

“She was my next-door neighbor. I was determined to get along with her-and I did-but, no, I didn’t like her. She was too much like this house for my taste.”

“I don’t understand.”

“Pretentious. It was all show with that woman. Nothing underneath the surface, no root system.” She put a steaming coffeepot and mugs down on the table. “Have a seat. Cream?”

“No, black is fine.” Susan sat down and decided to be honest. “I didn’t like her either.”

“So why are you giving a eulogy at her memorial service?”

“Two reasons: the first is not one I’m proud of-I’m one of those people who has trouble refusing any request. And the other reason is that I’m… uh, interested in finding out more about Nadine and this was an opportunity to talk with people who knew her.”

“Why?

“She was my next-door neighbor too,” Susan began.

“So I think you’d be glad to get rid of her. If I was looking for her killer, I’d look at the people who live nearby-unless she had changed a lot since leaving here.”

“Why?”

“Oh, nothing horrible-unless you value your sanity and your privacy. The woman was an egocentric pest.”

“Did she come over and sit in your kitchen all day long too?”

“No, but only because I don’t sit in my kitchen all day long. When I’m home, I’m usually outside and the rest of the time I teach classes at various garden centers. But Nadine did seem to feel that I was just what she was looking for whenever I went out to work in my garden.”

“What do you think she was looking for?”

“An audience. When we first moved out from the city I thought she was lonely and I put up with her constant dropping in.”

“I did, too. I mean, when she moved to Hancock that’s the way it was.”

“And how long did it take for her to become irritating?” Daria asked.

Susan grimaced. “About a week.”

“Then you’re more tolerant than I am. I put up with it for three days and then told her I needed to be alone-sounded a bit too much like Greta Garbo to be believable-which might be the reason why she didn’t believe me and just kept on coming over. I finally just stopped paying any attention to her and went on with what I was doing. It was rude, but I didn’t think I had any alternative.”

Susan nodded. “That’s what I did, too. And then, when she died, I realized that I didn’t really know very much about her even though she had talked and talked and talked about herself. I guess I wasn’t listening.”

“It may have had nothing to do with you. She didn’t have much of a life.”

“Do you really think so?”

“Well, what did she have?”

“A husband, a house, a-”

“And that’s all they were for her-accessories. They weren’t serious interests.”

“You don’t think she took her marriage seriously?”

“Oh, I think that’s the one thing in her life that she took seriously. So seriously that when I read the article about her murder in the paper, I assumed Donald had killed her.” Daria walked over to the window and bent a copper wire coiled branch on a tiny evergreen. “Can’t say I would have blamed him if he had.”

“Why?”

“She was holding him back.”

Susan leaned forward. “Really?”

“Yes. He could have been one of the most successful businessmen in this state, but she quite simply was not up to the task of being the wife of someone like that.”

“Really?” Susan repeated.

“Absolutely.”

“Did he tell you this?” Susan was thinking that it sounded like something that might come from the inflated ego of Donald Baines.

“No, his mother did. She’s a remarkable woman. Do you know her?”

“We knew each other a bit years ago.”

“Well, I think she’s wonderful. A self-made woman. She’s smart and funny, a real people person. Not something anyone would say about her daughter-in-law.”

“Nor her son,” Susan added. “I mean, he does try, but there’s no warmth there, is there?”

“Well, Blaine is remarkable. Her husband left her when Donald was just a baby and she went to work as a secretary for some little real estate agency somewhere. She got her license at night and worked during the day, accepting the free rent of an apartment above the office as part of the payment for her job. She bought that agency less than two years after she got her license. That’s how well she did. She opened a branch office in a better community less than a year later and began Blaine Baines Executive Homes and Estates before Donald was ten years old! She was completely focused. They lived in that small apartment until Blaine Baines Executive Homes and Estates was making money-big-time.”

“You like her a lot.”

“I admire her drive, her determination, her energy. And Nadine possessed none of those qualities.”

Susan sipped her coffee and didn’t say anything. She was thinking about a woman who could move up from poverty and create a successful statewide business in less than ten years-and leave her son living in a tiny apartment the entire time. Maybe it wasn’t so surprising that Donald had married a woman with less ambition.

“She’s also interested in gardening. Of course, she doesn’t have lots of time now, but when she retires, she’s planning on creating a vegetable-flower garden at her house-very Rosalind Creasy.”

“So she’s seen this?” Susan looked out the window and wondered if, perhaps, there was room for a rustic pergola in her backyard.

“Not yet, but she was in on the planning. She’s always saying she’ll stop by, but she’s a very busy woman and it’s difficult to get together. We keep in touch, but mostly by phone.”

Susan was reminded of the phone messages Donald’s mother had left for him. “Do you have any idea how she felt about Nadine?”

“She was much too diplomatic to make disparaging remarks in public but, as I said before, she thought Nadine was holding Donald back. The truth is, I got the impression that she wasn’t particularly impressed by her son’s choice of wife.”

“Did Nadine like her?”

Daria looked up and seemed to consider this question. “You, know, I’m not so sure. She never said anything negative about her mother-in-law per se-although she used to blame her for Donald’s many late nights of work. I always thought that was a bit odd.”

“Why?”

“Well, in the first place, all real estate agents work strange hours showing people homes. She should have known that when they got married, or at least adjusted to it over the years. And, to tell you the truth, I figured that Donald was happy to be working away from home. That way he didn’t have to waste his entire life listening to Nadine babble on and on.” Daria stood up. “I hate to be rude, but I’m teaching a class on bonsai at the New York Horticultural Society in a few hours and I need to shower and get into the city.”

Susan took the hint. “Of course. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to me. I should leave anyway. I have other people to speak to-including your neighbor at number twenty-seven. I think her name is Sophie Kincaid. Will I find her house if I keep going on up this road?”

Daria laughed. “Oh, you’ll find her up the road, all right. But take everything she tells you with a big grain of salt.”

“Why?”

“I don’t listen to a whole lot of gossip, but it was hard to live in this town a few years ago without knowing that Sophie and Donald were a hot item.”