Honeymoon

Chapter 22

SHE AWOKE THE next morning and shuffled downstairs with a big yawn to make a pot of coffee. Actually, she didn’t feel too bad. Nora didn’t feel much of anything.

After she downed the first cup, her thoughts turned to the day and what important things had to be done. There were phone calls to make—people who needed to know about Connor’s death. And she had to check in with Jeffrey.

The first call was to Mark Tillingham. He was Connor’s attorney and executor of his estate. He was also one of Connor’s best friends. When Nora called, Mark was heading out the door for his Saturday-morning tennis game. She could just picture him, dressed in white, as he responded to the news with utter shock. In a way, Nora was jealous of the emotion.

Next was the immediate family. The list of whom to call, however, couldn’t have been any shorter. Connor’s parents were no longer alive; that left his one and only sibling—a younger sister, Elizabeth, whom he called Lizzie or sometimes Lizard.

The two were close in every way except geographically. Lizzie lived three thousand miles away, in Santa Barbara, and had her own busy career as a successful architect. She rarely made it back to the East Coast, the last time being before Nora and Connor had met.

Nora poured herself another cup of coffee and considered how best to tell a woman she’d never met, let alone spoken to, that her brother was dead at forty.

She knew she didn’t have to make the call. She could’ve had Mark Tillingham do it. But Nora also knew that someone who truly loved Connor would do it herself. So after finding the phone number in his PalmPilot, she dialed.

“Hello?” came a woman’s voice, groggy if not a little annoyed. It was barely past seven A.M. in California.

“Is this Elizabeth?”

“Yes.”

“My name is Nora Sinclair….”

Oddly, the sister didn’t cry, at least not on the phone. Instead, there was a stunned silence, followed by a few softly spoken questions.

Nora told her what she’d told the police. Word for word: her script. “Though I guess we won’t know anything for sure until the autopsy is done,” she pointed out.

Again, there was the stunned silence from Lizzie. Maybe, thought Nora, it was the guilt of having not seen her brother in a long while. Or maybe it was the sudden loneliness of being the only surviving member of her family. Maybe she was in shock, as Mark Tillingham had been.

“I’ll fly out tomorrow morning,” said Elizabeth. “Have you made funeral plans?”

“I wanted to speak to you first. I figured—”

Elizabeth had begun to cry. “I hope this doesn’t sound terrible, but that’s the last thing… I don’t think I could…. Would you mind taking care of it?”

“Of course not,” said Nora. She was beginning to say good-bye when Elizabeth choked back sobs and asked, “How long had you been engaged to Connor?”

Nora paused. She wanted to affect a good cry herself, but thought better of it. Instead, she said solemnly, “Only a week.”

“I’m sorry. Oh, I’m so sorry,” said Elizabeth.

In the wake of the phone call with Elizabeth, Nora spent the afternoon concentrating on the funeral arrangements. From flowers to food, there was a lot she was able to accomplish over the phone. However, there remained some things in life—and especially in death—that were best done in person. Choosing a funeral parlor was one.

But even there Nora was able to use her skills as a decorator. She selected the casket as she would any piece of furniture for a client. For Connor, that meant a most regal burl walnut with carved ivory handles. The instant the undertaker showed it to her, Nora knew it was the one.

“Done!” she said.