Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine. Vol. 112, No. 3 & 4. Whole No. 684 & 685, September/October 1998

Recipe Secrets by Joan Richter

©1998 by Joan Richter

Though she took a ten-year break from short story writing while she went “rocketing around the world” on a job for American Express in the 1980s, Joan Richter made a splash comeback in 1995 with a story that ranked in the top ten in the Mystery Writers of America’s Golden Anniversary Short Story Contest. She is best at characterization, hut her new story for EQMM shows that she also knows how to deliver a surprise.

After the real-estate agent left, Larry stood in the front doorway of the house where he and Evelyn had lived for most of their marriage and contemplated the quiet tree-lined street. His glance drifted from house to house, each on an oversized lot, beautifully landscaped, typical of suburban Philadelphia.

“I’m not sure I even want to sell,” he told the woman when she first arrived. “It’s only a possibility.”

An accommodating smile had multiplied the wrinkles of her grandmotherly face, framed in wisps of gray hair. “I understand. Big decisions need to be taken in stages. It’s hard to leave a house you’ve lived in for so long.”

“Twenty-one years,” he said with something of a sigh and hoped it didn’t reach her like a pitch for sympathy.

She appeared not to notice. “This is a marvelous house and a lovely neighborhood. When you decide, you’ll have no trouble selling. Could we start with the kitchen? For me that’s the heart of a house.”

He’d wondered if it had been that for Evelyn. No question it had been important to her, but the heart? He led the way and then stood aside as Mrs. Brody took in the last of his wife’s redesigns. His reward was the woman’s small gasp as her gaze traveled over black and white cabinets, marble counters, the broad sweeping length of a center island. Her eyes widened when she entered the breakfast room, where floor-to-ceiling windows gave view to a terraced garden, banked with specimen evergreens and flowers that changed with each season. It was June. Mounds of white peonies alternated with clumps of salmon-colored poppies.

“It’s magnificent,” she said.

Larry nodded, thinking. So were the earlier kitchens, and the other gardens. Evelyn had never been satisfied.

“The Wilsons told me your wife was a professional. I can see how important this space was to her.”

It was Madge Wilson who had given him Mrs. Brody’s name. “She’s not pushy, and you can learn a lot from her,” Madge had said and so he had given the woman a call.

“Phil and I play golf together. Evelyn and Madge were best friends.”

“I understand your wife was a food and flower stylist. I’m not sure I know what that is.”

“I’m not the best to explain it. Evelyn was a terrific cook and liked to fiddle with flowers. At some point she turned a hobby into a profession. She prepared food and flowers for magazine ads and TV commercials. She did things like paint a roast turkey with shellac to keep it looking shiny and crisp. Madge can tell you more.”

They toured the rest of the two-story house at an efficient pace, and in less than an hour were seated in the living room going over a few details. “Have you thought where you might move?” Mrs. Brody asked.

“Something much smaller. Maybe one of the townhouses on the golf course. But I need more time. I don’t know where to begin with all of this.” He waved an arm, embracing the sprawling house and its contents.

“An inventory of each room will help. Decide what you can’t part with, and then what you hate.” She gave a sharp little laugh. “I won’t bore you with how I know about that, except that my late husband collected birdcages. I got rid of every last one.”

Larry felt himself grinning, not at what a house full of bird cages must have been like, but the prospective fate of the big painting in Evelyn’s study, by that long-haired artist who called himself Aztek.

“When you’re ready,” Mrs. Brody went on, “I can recommend people who run estate sales. You give them a list of what stays and what goes. They find buyers for the bigger things. The rest they tag and sell. You don’t even have to be around; in fact, it’s better if you’re not.”

At the front door, she smiled. “It helps to start by throwing things out. The kitchen is a good place to get the feel for that — stale cereals and cookies, all those baking ingredients your wife kept on hand...”

Larry stared at the enormous painting that hung on the wall in Evelyn’s study. It was one of the pieces from Aztek’s first show, a gift to Evelyn for doing the reception for the exhibition. Larry wondered if his prejudice against Aztek’s long hair and phony name had gotten in the way of fair judgment. He shook his head. It was no more to his taste now than it had ever been. He remembered telling Evelyn she’d been shortchanged, her cocktail tidbits and flower arrangements had stolen the show. Aztek’s paintings were just a joke. It had been a nasty remark. In retrospect it made him cringe.

Fury had leapt in his wife’s gray eyes. “You don’t know a thing about art. Aztek is going to be big.”

She turned out to be right. A gallery owner from Manhattan had come to the show and was smitten with what she saw. She took some paintings back to SoHo, where they sold at good prices. They were all from Aztek’s egg period — large canvases, dominated by large ovals, with smaller ovals inside.

Larry eyed the big purple and yellow oval on the wall and moved closer to examine the crowded illustrations framed in other eggs. The worlds of activity surprised him — a picnic in the woods, a volleyball game, an outdoor cafe, a ballet class. In each of the scenes Aztek had painted himself as the dominant figure — lean, tall, darker-skinned than he really was, his hair in a long plait down his bare back.

A ripple of discomfort crept over Larry as he looked from one scene to the other and realized that the figures were caricatures of people he knew. It was a shock to find himself — at the picnic, lying on his back, asleep. Well, not everything about him was asleep. Jesus! He was naked. So what, so was everyone else — just not so prominently.

It was a bigger jolt when he found Evelyn — alongside the ballet bar with her leg raised high. He stared in stunned disbelief at the tiny strawberry mark in the crease of her inner thigh. Aztek had painted it as a rose, which is exactly what it looked like in real life, up close.

A memory slid over him like warm oil, transporting him to a hotel room overlooking the Gulf of Mexico. The sun poured in through wide-slatted plantation blinds and the shadows of palm trees traced intricate patterns on the walls, but he hardly noticed. He was too absorbed in stroking the satiny skin of the woman who lay at his side. He leaned closer to kiss the softness of her inner thigh, and saw the rose for the first time.

He stood in the shadow of Aztek’s canvas, trapped in the meaning of what was there. There was only one way Aztek could have known about that tiny mark.

When the phone on Evelyn’s desk rang, it was only after the third ring that he managed a croaking hello.

“Larry?” He recognized Madge’s hesitant voice. “Did I wake you? It’s Madge.”

He shook his head, fumbling for a sensible response. “Mrs. Brody just left. She’s given me a lot to think about.”

“Good things, I hope. I just called to remind you about tomorrow — Sunday night supper at our house. No need to wear a tie. It’ll be just the three of us.” She laughed goodnaturedly, and he knew she was referring to the cocktail party she and Phil had given two weeks ago where he had been less than attentive to the two single women invited for his benefit. They were attractive enough, but he’d felt no spark. That was how it had been since Evelyn died. It was as though he’d lost interest in the game.

He brought up the issue when he went to his doctor about a pain in his shoulder the next week. After dealing with the shoulder and writing out a prescription for tendinitis, Hubbard settled back in his chair.

“So, your libido is a bit low... you’re a little depressed... I’m not surprised. It’s not even a year since your wife died.”

“Five months,” Larry said, and found himself recalling the day.

He’d come back from a week-long business trip and spent the day at his office, catching up. Around lunchtime he left a message on Evelyn’s machine saying he’d be home between six and seven. He suggested dinner out. Maybe Phil and Madge were free.

He hadn’t expected to hear from her. She would either act on his suggestion or choose an alternative. If she had something of her own to do, he’d find a note.

It was six-thirty when he turned into the driveway and hit the garage-door opener, already savoring the idea of the scotch he’d pour himself as he turned on the news. But the thought evaporated as his attention swerved to take in the length of green garden hose trailing alongside Evelyn’s car. One end was taped securely into the exhaust pipe, the other threaded through the driver’s window.

“You came to see me after the funeral,” he heard Hubbard say and saw the doctor eyeing him over the rims of his half-glasses. “You asked me if your wife might have been ill.”

Larry nodded. “I remember. You said she was in good health. According to the police, most suicides leave a note. Evelyn didn’t. I guess I was looking for a reason.”

Hubbard came from around his desk and Larry knew his time was up; there were other patients waiting. He felt Hubbard put his arm around his shoulder. “You’ll be okay. It just takes awhile. Any death is hard. This is one of the hardest. Keep in touch. I’m here if you need me.”

At some point in his wanderings through the house, Larry decided he was hungry. It was past one o’clock. A beer and a corned beef sandwich at the Red Dog would be just the thing, with a stop at the liquor store for some empty boxes. After lunch he’d start on the kitchen cupboards.

When he reached the mini mall, a flower sale was taking up the center space and he had to park off to the side. All the flats and pots of summer blooms made him think about Evelyn’s talent with flowers — amazing what she could do with a few twisted branches and a couple of blooms. Some arrangements were much more elaborate, like the ones she had made for Aztek’s shows — driftwood and rocks that weren’t really rocks but pottery shaped in that form, hollow and lighter in weight. Displayed on their own pedestals, her arrangements were stunning works of art. One time he asked her where she got her ideas.

“It has to do with balance and form,” she said without warmth or elaboration, and he knew he had been dismissed.

He had thought a lot about their marriage since her death. He wondered how they had gotten into living such parallel lives, hardly intersecting at all. From the beginning his job with the pharmaceutical firm had meant long days, spilling over into weekends. Evelyn had accommodated, seeming to find ways to keep herself entertained and occupied. Even when his travel increased, she didn’t seem to mind.

He got the hang of having a good time on the road. Taking his golf clubs along had opened up things. There was that game, and the other — women. Most of them had been married, bored, looking for some fun. There was hardly a city in his territory where he hadn’t found someone to fool around with. Things changed after he met Hadley. He lost interest in the others, and began thinking of spending his whole life with her, but it had never come to that.

What a sport she had been, always on time, waiting for him at the Providence airport in that sharp little red Mustang she drove with the top down when the weather was right, looking like she’d just jumped out of the shower and had tossed her hair dry. Off they’d go, headed for one of the fancy New England inns she had on her list. The syndicated travel column she wrote under a pseudonym gave her a ready excuse to take off, so that her husband, who was with a brokerage firm and worked long hours, never questioned her being away.

It lasted almost two years, and then suddenly it was over. No explanation. One day he called and heard a recording saying the number had been disconnected, no forwarding number.

He had toyed with the idea of driving by her house and just ringing the bell, or hiring someone to do the same thing, but have them pretend they were making a survey. But then what? He dropped both ideas. He had no interest in messing up her life. But the way it ended still had him wondering. It hadn’t fit with Hadley’s open style.

It wasn’t until Sunday morning that he tackled the kitchen cupboards. He tossed out stale cookies, crackers, cereal, and whatever else looked old and tired. He filled the cartons with things the food bank could use, and set aside bars of baking chocolate and cans of nuts to give to Madge. She was a good cook, but no match for Evelyn, especially when it came to pies. No one made a pie like Evelyn. Apple, peach, cherry — the fruit almost didn’t matter — it was the warm, flaky, buttery crust that melted in your mouth and made you ask for more.

Thinking about it brought on a painful recollection of the day he and Phil had finished a golf game and were sitting over beers — maybe three years ago.

“Say, Larry, Madge’s birthday is next week. I’d like to give her something special — something she wants, and can’t buy. What would it take for Evelyn to give me her pie recipe?”

He remembered his surprise. “What do you mean, what would it take? Just ask her.”

Phil’s face reddened. “Madge tried that. Evelyn refused. She says it’s a family secret.”

Larry guessed he must have laughed, a shaky cover for his embarrassment. “I don’t understand those kinds of secrets,” he said awkwardly, wincing inside.

He found himself wondering once again how Evelyn could have done that to someone like Madge.

He finished sorting through the food cupboards and turned to the closet next to the refrigerator. It was lined with shelves, crowded with cookbooks. On the middle shelf, right out in front, was a bright blue recipe box, the kind that fit three-by-five index cards. The pie recipe still on his mind, he wondered if this was Evelyn’s secret file. He reached for it eagerly and took it to the breakfast room and sat down. In the brighter light he saw the pale blue card taped to the lid. Evelyn’s handwriting leapt up at him. For Larry only — Destroy on my death. Evelyn

He stared at the date she had written below her name. It was the day she died. He reeled back as though he had been punched.

He closed his eyes, struggling to understand. She’d left him no note of farewell, no explanation for why she had taken her life, yet she left him instructions about the disposition of her recipes. Why the hell hadn’t she destroyed them herself!

Angrily, he grabbed the file. He would start with A. What would he find — Apple Pie, Apple Strudel, Apple Tart? And behind B — Brownies? And when he finally got to P? Would he find Pie Crust, a family secret...?

He looked at the first card and got a second jolt. A hot current of disbelief ran through him, jangling every nerve. His hands were trembling as he turned to the second card and then the third. His heart was doing strange flips as he moved through the alphabet, through the eastern seaboard cities where he had traveled over the years.

His head was throbbing and his mouth was dry when he came to P.

He clutched the side of the table and then brought his hands up to his face and covered his eyes, but there was no blotting out what he had seen — the cities in capital letters, the women’s names in lower case, and their addresses, all written in Evelyn’s careful, slanted script. She had known about them all.

For a long time he sat like a child hiding behind his hands. He felt publicly disrobed.

He wouldn’t have cared about all the others, but Hadley had been different. Discreet was the word they had used. They had talked it over and agreed he would never call her from his office or from home. He always called from a pay phone and never with a credit card. All hotel and restaurant bills he paid for in cash.

Their phone arrangement was simple, but secure. When she answered, he would say, “Mrs. Noble?” If she laughed he would know the coast was clear. Otherwise, he would hang up and call at another time.

His hands dropped from his face and he stared out into the garden. Shifting clouds had obscured the sun, bringing on a premature darkness that turned the windows into mirrors. At every angle, he faced the reflected image of his sagging shoulders.

He had no idea how many women there had been before Hadley. A few were just one-night stands, others went on for a while. He thought of the energy it had taken to court and persuade, to set things up, cover his tracks, and have everything go off without a hitch. All that, and Evelyn had known. How had she found out about Hadley?

A clock in the living room chimed. In an hour he was due at the Wilsons’. If only he could call them and say something important had come up, or that he wasn’t feeling well; but he couldn’t do that to them, nor would they buy it. It would only bring on questions that would be impossible to answer.

He began to wonder just how much Madge knew. He was aware that women shared confidences in the way men did not. Had Evelyn talked about his out-of-town activities? And what about Evelyn’s affair with Aztek? Surely Madge must have known about that. How quickly he had accepted that as fact. Well, it was pretty plain. And it explained a lot — Evelyn’s rage when he’d put down Aztek’s art, the flower arrangements she designed for all his shows. Had she been in love with him, or had it just been a frolic? How long had it gone on?

He found the Wilsons where he expected they would be on a warm summer evening, settled into chairs on the patio beside their rambling stone house. Phil served drinks and Madge brought out a plate of spiced shrimp. Whenever he got together with them, which was often, Madge made a point of mentioning Evelyn, cautiously and only in passing. Sometimes he wondered whose grief she was tending, his or her own.

He had to be careful tonight. There was a lot on his mind and he wasn’t sure just how much he wanted to say, if anything at all.

As she passed him the shrimp, Madge asked him about Mrs. Brody.

“She was terrific,” he answered honestly, seizing the neutral topic. “Helpful, like you said. She got me started on cleaning out. She suggested I hire an estate-sales agent when I’m ready.”

They discussed that for a while and then drifted on to other things — the proposed widening of a road alongside the library, the golf tournament scheduled for the fall. Just as darkness began to fall they moved inside to the screened porch where Madge had dinner ready — poached salmon with a dill sauce, potato salad, and fresh asparagus. They drank a lot of wine.

“I’ve a surprise for you two,” she said when she rose to clear the table. “For dessert — I’ve made one of Evelyn’s pies.” He had been playing with the stem of his wine glass, which Phil had just refilled, and almost tipped it over. “You have Evelyn’s pie recipe?” Disbelief roughened his voice.

“I’d given up trying to pry it out of her, then last year she just gave it to me, but she made me swear I wouldn’t tell.”

Larry forced a smile; the false promise of the blue file had been too bruising to leave him with any interest in Evelyn’s recipe secrets. Yet he was glad Madge had the pie recipe. She’d wanted it for so long. Surprisingly, it made him feel a little better about Evelyn. Even so, there was a knot in his stomach when Madge appeared with the pie.

It was lightly dusted with powdered sugar, attractively centered on a fluted glass plate. He could tell from the fragrance that drifted toward him, it was warm, the way Evelyn had always served it. Madge cut generous slices for each of them, and then waited expectantly. Larry took the first forkful and felt the mingling of fruit and flaky crust spread across his tongue and slide smoothly down his throat. “Wonderful,” he exclaimed with a prolonged, exaggerated sigh.

Madge laughed, a happy, affectionate trill. “Evelyn was such an artist when it came to food, I was just flabbergasted when she told me the trick.”

Slowly, Larry lowered his fork. “What do you mean?”

A look of surprise arched Madge’s brow. “You weren’t in on Evelyn’s secret?”

He shrugged, faking an indifference he didn’t feel. Trick. The word bothered him. A lot of things were bothering him. “I always enjoyed the food Evelyn prepared, but I can’t say I was interested in her recipes.”

“It’s a store-bought pie, right off the supermarket shelf. Evelyn’s trick was to spread a quarter of a pound of sweet butter on the top and bake it for twenty minutes. I’d always thought it was some complicated recipe. Everyone did — a family secret.”

“Jesus,” he said, too embarrassed to say anything else.

Madge quickly poured coffee, and Phil, gifted in bridging awkward moments, returned to the real-estate agent’s suggestion. “An estate sale is the right idea, Larry. You’ve got too much stuff in that house to handle alone.”

“I’m sure that’s what Mrs. Brody thought, though she was too polite to say. She told me her husband collected bird cages. She got rid of them after he was gone.” He laughed. “You know what that made me think of? That big egg painting of Aztek’s — the one he gave Evelyn. I’ve always hated it.”

The words were out before he had time to think about where the subject might lead, but again Phil came to his rescue, or so it seemed.

“I’d be careful with how you dispose of that,” he said. “I’d advise Sotheby’s or Christie’s. An Aztek brings a hefty price these days.”

“Oh, come on, Phil. He may be a better artist than I ever gave him credit for, but you make it sound like he’s up in the stratosphere.”

“Phil’s right,” Madge said softly. “With so many of his paintings destroyed in that fire, the few left have just skyrocketed.”

Larry frowned. “What fire?”

Beside him he felt Madge take a quick breath. Across the table Phil cleared his throat.

Larry looked from one to the other, waiting. It was Phil who spoke. “Aztek was having a big show in New York — part retrospective, part new stuff. Some of his earlier paintings were on loan. He and the gallery owner were working late the night before the opening. There was an explosion and a fire.”

Larry’s frown deepened. How come he didn’t know about this? “Was a lot destroyed?”

“Everything,” Madge said softly.

Larry saw her press her lips together to keep them from trembling. He wasn’t sure what to say. He was having trouble digesting it all. “Aztek must be pretty busted up — losing everything he’d worked on for so long.” He paused, startled that he was actually feeling sorry for a guy who had slept with his wife and then bragged about it by painting her nude.

“It wasn’t... just the paintings,” Phil said, haltingly. “It was a pretty brutal fire. Aztek and the gallery owner were killed.”

“Jesus! When did this happen? How come I didn’t know?”

“You had enough on your mind,” Phil said. “It was the same day Evelyn died.”

He drove home slowly, mindful that he’d had too much to drink. He normally didn’t go for brandy, but after the second bombshell of the evening, he let Phil pour him a hefty snifter.

He had never liked Aztek, and since that morning, he had good reason to like him less. But his death bothered him. Larry kept seeing the image of the artist’s lean naked form, which dominated each of the scenes in the painting in Evelyn’s room, suddenly consumed by flames. He shuddered and gripped the steering wheel to steady himself, knowing that there was something else that had him shivering — the awful coincidence of the fire happening on the same day Evelyn died.

As soon as he got home he went straight to the kitchen and poured himself a glass of ice water. He drank it slowly, as though it were some potent medicine with the power to settle his nerves. Over the rim of the glass he saw the recipe box on the table where he left it. It seemed to blink at him.

After Providence and Hadley’s name he hadn’t gone any further. What did it matter who Evelyn had known about? Still, he sat down and went to the end of the file. There were only two more white cards. The names of the women rang some distant bell, but their faces were a blur. There was a final light blue card.

He stared at the name and the two addresses, and then said the name out loud. Maria Fernandez. It had a familiar ring, the way the name of an actress or a singer might have, but he was sure he had never slept with a woman by that name. Yet Evelyn had included it in the file with all the others, set it apart, out of alphabetical order, on a different-colored card. That meant something. But what?

In the middle of the night he woke and lay wondering if Maria Fernandez could be the name of a detective Evelyn had hired. How else could she have found out about Hadley?

When morning came he stood under a hot shower and made his decision. He would take time off from work and get the house ready. The sooner he could sell it and move out the better.

He’d just finished a quick breakfast when Phil called to set up a golf game the next weekend.

“It’s tempting, but I’ve made up my mind about the house. I’m going to sell. I’ve got a lot to do.”

“That’s great. Call me if you need any help.”

“I will. By the way, thanks for dinner last night, and thank Madge for me, will you?”

“Sure, but you can do that yourself. She should be at your place in about an hour. She’s on her way to buy some geraniums. You left your jacket here. She’ll leave it by the front door, if you’re out.”

“I’ll be here,” he said, and then, suddenly, took a chance. “Say, Phil, you know anyone named Maria Fernandez?”

Even over the phone, he sensed Phil’s surprise. “Well, I can’t say I knew her. I met her a couple of times...”

“Who is she?”

“She had a gallery in SoHo, the one that gave Aztek his big break. Later she opened a place in midtown...”

Larry heard the slight hesitation in Phil’s voice, and then the hurried rush to finish. “She was with Aztek the night of the fire — it was her gallery that burned.”

He was in the garage with the door open, waiting for Madge, giving the appearance of sorting through garden tools, when she pulled into the driveway.

“Not only do I get a great dinner, now it’s special delivery,” he said and opened her car door, anxious not to have her hurry off.

“It was on my way,” she said, handing him the jacket.

“How can I thank you... not for dinner last night, but for everything else you and Phil have done.” He paused, afraid he couldn’t go on. He wasn’t sure he could do it, not to Madge, but there were things he needed to know. He would be careful and not push too hard. Above all, he didn’t want to hurt her. No, that wasn’t true. Above all, he wanted some answers.

The expression in her eyes was troubled as she stood waiting for him to go on.

“You’ve both been so great through all of this. I had no idea of all that you had been dealing with. It couldn’t have been easy.”

She nodded. “I won’t pretend. Some of it wasn’t.”

“There was so much about Evelyn I didn’t know... I was in her study just a little while ago. There are albums with photographs of food she prepared for events I never knew about... photographs of flower arrangements, and lists of prizes she won...” His voice trailed off. There was a lot more that he had seen that had set him back on his heels, but he’d said enough.

A shiver of sadness moved slowly across her face. “What can I say, Larry? It wasn’t all your fault. She was my best friend, but Evelyn had a side to her I didn’t understand... I never understood the two of you — you were never around, and when you were you didn’t seem to register anything she was doing. And she didn’t seem to care.” She stopped abruptly and shook her head. “I’m talking too much.”

“No, you’re not. You knew us both. You were Evelyn’s closest friend.”

Madge lowered her eyes, not quickly, but in a way that said she wanted time. When she looked up, her expression was uncertain.

“Evelyn was into so many things. Years ago she and I talked about starting a business together — a bookstore, a gift shop. They were such simple ideas. They didn’t work out, but we stayed friends. It took her awhile, but eventually she found her niche.”

“What was that?”

“Oh, Larry.” There was a little laugh and a note of exasperation in Madge’s voice. “She was a food and flower stylist. You knew that.”

“Is that what she called herself?”

“That’s what the advertising industry called her. It’s a profession. She was good at it. She developed a lot of tricks.”

There was that word again.

“Sure, I knew the basics of what she did. Some of it didn’t register — as you said. Maybe a lot of things didn’t, like her affair with Aztek.”

Madge’s chin lifted and she sent him a level gaze. “So you knew. Evelyn thought you didn’t.”

Evelyn had been right, he hadn’t known, not until yesterday. “When did Maria Fernandez enter the picture?” He asked the question slowly, not liking himself one bit. It was the ambush question he had planned. It paid off. The expression that came to Madge’s face told him there was more to Maria Fernandez than he had figured out.

“Madge, this is hard for me, but I think it’s worse for you. You were Evelyn’s friend. I’m sure she told you things you’d rather not have known. She took her life and left no explanation. I can learn to live with that if I have to, but it isn’t easy.”

A ripple of pain moved across Madge’s brow. Tears filled her eyes. She took a breath and reached for his arm and motioned toward the gate at the side of the house. It led to the garden in back.

They settled into facing chairs. Although her composure had returned, her tears freshened as she looked around at the graceful terracing of evergreens and early summer flowers. “It’s so beautiful here. Evelyn had a talent for creating beauty, but that was only one side of her. Oh, Larry, it’s the side I want to remember, but it’s so hard.”

He waited, saying nothing, deciding it was best to give her time.

“You asked me about Maria Fernandez...”

He nodded. “I’m just guessing, but I assume she and Aztek became involved with one another. Was Evelyn upset over that?”

“If it had only been that simple,” Madge said in a voice that was hardly more than a whisper. Dark shadows moved across her face, a turmoil of emotions flickered in her eyes. “Evelyn knew Maria long before Aztek came on the scene. Maria was part of the New York set Evelyn got into — artsy people. It drew her like a magnet. She was up there all the time. She and Maria... well, they developed a relationship.”

“A relationship?”

“Larry, I’m not good at this. I never understood what was between Evelyn and Maria. I think Evelyn was experimenting with things she didn’t understand.”

He tipped back his head and stared up at the sky. I don’t believe it. I don’t believe it. But he did. Some of the photographs he had found in Evelyn’s study had prepared him.

“How did you put up with all of this?”

“I didn’t know about Maria, not for a long time. It came later, after Evelyn told me that she and Aztek were having an affair. I thought he was weird, and I told her, but she wasn’t interested in hearing any of that. At some point, Evelyn began to suspect that Maria and Aztek were spending time together, and not including her. They weren’t a threesome anymore. When Evelyn found out they had moved in together, she went wild. She’d been jilted by both of them. I remember the day they told her they were in love, that they were going to be married right after Aztek’s show.”

Madge’s eyes were dry, but there was a constant tremor in her voice. “Evelyn rallied and put up a crazy front, pretending everything was just fine, but I knew it wasn’t. She set about making the most elaborate flower arrangements for Aztek’s show — and for the wedding, which was to have been in the gallery, right after the opening.” Her voice broke, and her hand flew to her mouth, stifling a cry. “Oh, Larry, I should have known. I should have done something to stop her.”

Larry’s heart froze.

“I should have talked to her,” Madge went on in a frenzied rush. “I tried, but you know how she could be. She wouldn’t listen. I suggested that she see someone — a therapist. I even gave her some names. But it was no use.” She stopped, tears running down her cheeks, her hands clenched in her lap. She took a deep breath and wiped her eyes. “Maybe I should have told you...”

Oh yeah, he thought. I would have been a big help. “Does Phil know all of this?”

She nodded. “Most of it. He says we should try to forget it. There’s nothing we can do about it now. I think he’s right. I’m glad you know. It will be easier when we get together now. There was always so much Phil and I had to avoid.”

He couldn’t remember what he did after Madge left, but later in the day he saw that there were more bags and cartons in the garage. The simple-minded task of cleaning out allowed him to keep on thinking, going over all the things he had learned in the last twenty-four hours. There was a missing piece in what he knew. Whatever it was, continued to elude him, in a way that teased, that made him think he already knew, but was afraid to admit. When it finally came, he rejected it as the product of his mind gone haywire. It was crazy to think that Evelyn had done anything to orchestrate the deaths of Aztek and Maria, but the idea, once admitted to his consciousness, wouldn’t leave. The coincidence of the three deaths on the same day was too much to accept as chance. His suspicion swelled and grew into an even darker horror — that Evelyn might also have done harm to Hadley.

There were inquiries he would have to make, discreetly, so that if his suspicions had no basis, there would be no repercussions. He drew a line down the middle of a yellow pad. On one side he wrote “New York” and on the other “Providence.” He listed all he’d learned from the Wilsons about the gallery fire, but when he turned to Providence his knowledge was a blank. Something had happened, he was more sure than ever before. It seemed the only explanation for Hadley’s abrupt silence, her inexplicable departure from his life, without warning — the disconnected phone.

If his most extreme fears were true, any inquiry, to any authority, would send up an alarm, invigorating an investigation that had dried up or been put on hold, waiting for a break. An alert that would connect an incident in Providence to the fatal fire in New York would bring the FBI to his front door. His life would be torn apart.

He was losing courage.

Maybe he should heed what Phil had said to Madge. “... try to forget it. There’s nothing we can do about it now.”

He began to wonder why the Wilsons had kept the fire a secret from him all these months. By itself it would have been a piece of news. Withholding it gave it other meaning. What was it Madge had said? “I should have done something to stop her.”

What in God’s name had Evelyn done?

He wandered through the house, as if in some forgotten corner an answer might be hidden. In the living room, he stood by the piano Evelyn had once played. He couldn’t remember when she had stopped. A fringed silk shawl was draped across it now, anchored by a grouping of three large rocks. They weren’t rocks, of course, but the pottery replicas Evelyn used in her flower arrangements. They had other uses. Garden shops sold them as clever hiding places for house keys. There was one in the small rock garden outside the door to Evelyn’s workshop on the side of the house.

He’d forgotten all about that room. He hadn’t even shown it to Mrs. Brody. She would have liked seeing where Evelyn had worked. Fluorescent lights were hung over a long worktable where she had done all her flower arranging. It was her private space, one he had not entered often, nor was he interested in exploring it now. He’d not been there since her death.

He found the key, hidden in the hollow rock, and unlocked the door. Inside, the lights flickered on, revealing a pegboard hung with a variety of wire clippers, shears, and assorted other tools. The contents of the shelves along one wall rivaled those of a hardware store — drills, saws, a blowtorch, tubes of glue, clay, spools of wire, bags of stones, marbles, and cans of paints and other things he had little knowledge of. Everything was as he remembered, orderly and without surprise, except for the flower arrangement that was centered on the worktable. It was as elaborate as any of Evelyn’s he had seen. Shards of gilded wood and her signature rocks provided the background for dried flowers of subtle and exquisite color. An envelope was tucked among the foliage. His name was written in Evelyn’s familiar hand.

So here was his letter. He should have known. This was the room that was most her own. This had been the heart of her house, not, as it was for Mrs. Brody, the kitchen.

He hesitated, not sure he wanted to read the message she had left, afraid it would be just another trick — as the recipe file had been, and the pie. We cheated each other, he thought; he reached for the envelope and saw that it was just a card. There was no message. His name was all she had written. But that was enough. The card was already in his hand, tripping the wire that had held it fast.

The flash of terrifying light came before the sound, before he felt himself lifted off his feet, before the heat and flames roared around him and his mind had lost its sense; time enough for the horror of the truth to reach him and make him glad for death.