Dixie Browning - Social Graces

Besides, he had a couple of decades on the bubblegum-chewing kid, who was saying, “I think Miss Achsah used to live on the Back Road.”

In certain pockets of population, he’d learned, Miss was an honorary title given to women over a certain age, regardless of marital status. When the first name was used, it generally indicated that there were a number of women with the same surname.

“You go out the door and turn left—” The young clerk continued to talk while Mac mentally recorded the data. “I heard her house was rented out after she died, but I don’t think there’s anybody living there now. Marian Kuvarky over at Seaview Realty could tell you.”

Something—call it a hunter’s instinct—told him that the Bonnard woman was holed up in her great-grandmother’s house, probably keeping a low profile until things cooled down. If she had a brain under all that glossy black hair she had to know she was probably still considered “of interest” by certain authorities, even if they hadn’t found anything to hold her on.

The smart thing would have been to go someplace where she had no ties and wait until the heat died down. After say, six months—a year would be even better—with what she had stashed away in an offshore account, she could settle anywhere in the world.

With what she allegedly had stashed away, he corrected himself reluctantly. So far, he was the only one doing the alleging, but then, he had a personal stake. Will hadn’t embezzled a damned thing. In the first place, his stepbrother couldn’t lie worth crap, and in the second place, if he could’ve got his hands on that kind of money, his wife would’ve already spent it. Macy could easily qualify for the world shopping playoffs.

Mac was good at extrapolations. As a marine archeologist, it was what he did best. Study the evidence—the written records, plus any prevailing conditions, political or weatherwise, that might affect where a ship had reportedly gone down. Not until he had thoroughly examined all available data and given his instincts time to mull it over was he ready to home in on his target.

In this case the field had officially narrowed to two suspects: Bonnard and Will. Eliminate Will and that left only Bonnard—or in this case, Bonnard’s heir. The auditors were still digging halfheartedly, but the case had been shoved to the back burner as new and bigger cases had intervened in the meantime. Which left poor Will dangling in the wind, his next hearing not even on the docket yet.

Mac made up his mind to wait until morning to scope out the house. He even might wait another day before making contact, but no longer than that. He needed answers. Will wasn’t holding up well. He’d lost weight, he had circles under his eyes the size of hubcaps, and his marriage was falling apart.

Timing was crucial. He didn’t want to spook her, but neither could he afford to wait too long. The feds hadn’t been able to find anything to hold her on, not even as a witness, but to Mac, the logic was inescapable. That damned money hadn’t just gone up in smoke. Someone close to Bonnard held the key. The man had been divorced more than twenty years; he’d never remarried. So far as anyone knew, he’d never even had a mistress. A few brief liaisons, but none that had lasted more than a few months. The press had gone after the ex-wife, now reportedly in the process of shedding husband number three. There was no love lost between her and Bonnard, so if she’d known anything it would probably have come out. Another dead end.

By process of elimination, it had to be the daughter. Millions of bucks didn’t just slip through a crack in the floor like yellow dust in a gold-rush saloon. Someone was waiting for the heat to die down to claim it. And he knew who the most logical someone was.

Valerie Stevens Bonnard, Mac mused. He knew what she looked like, even knew what make car she drove. He’d seen her around town a couple of times when he’d been in the area visiting Will last spring. Cool, flawless—sexy in a touch-me-not way. Talk about your oxymorons.

He’d even spoken to her once. Will had gone to some BFC function at the country club while Mac was spending a few days in Greenwich on his way back from DC last summer. He’d forgotten his prescription sunglasses and called to asked Mac to drop them off.

Mac had been changing the fluid in his transmission when he’d answered the phone and hadn’t bothered to change clothes, intending to leave the sunglasses with an attendant. Driving the same weathered Land Cruiser, he had just squeezed into a parking place between a Lexus and an Escalade when Ms. Bonnard drove up in Mercedes convertible. Evidently she’d mistaken him for one of the groundskeepers, because she’d informed him politely that service parking was in the rear. She’d even smiled, her big gray-green eyes about as warm as your average glacier.

So yeah, he knew what she looked like. There was no chance she would recognize him now though. She’d summed him up and dismissed him in less than two seconds flat.

Val was good at any number of things, among them organizing intimate dinner parties for fifty people and overseeing thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raisers. She excelled at tennis, skiing and hanging art shows. She’d been drilled in what was expected of someone with her privileged background from the time she could walk.

Now, faced with an oven that was lined with three inches of burned-on gunk she burst into tears, only because cursing was not yet among her talents.

She wiped her eyes, smearing a streak of grime across her cheek and glared at the rattling kitchen window. There had to be a way to keep the wind from whipping in through the frames. How had the previous tenants managed to stay warm?

They hadn’t, of course. Probably why they’d moved out, leaving the place in such a mess. Three of the rooms had air-conditioner units hanging out the windows. No one had bothered to remove or even to cover them, much less plug all the cracks around them. She had stuffed the cracks with the plastic bags from her first shopping foray, for all the good it did.

Neither the space heaters nor the ugly brown oil heater were a match for the damp chill that seemed to creep through the very walls. Hadn’t anyone in the South ever heard of insulation?

She added a roll of clear plastic and a staple gun to the growing shopping list that included more of the sudsy cleanser, another six-pack of paper towels and a few more mousetraps. The plastic would have to serve until she could afford storm windows.

After hours spent scrubbing, most of the downstairs rooms plus her bedroom and the upstairs bath smelled of pine cleanser instead of mice and mildew. She’d ended up buying live traps instead of wire traps, even though they’d cost more, because while she refused to share her new home with rodents, she wasn’t into killing. Spiders, roaches and mosquitoes, perhaps, but nothing larger.

Her new lifestyle, she was rapidly discovering, called for a drastically new mindset. Belinda and Charlie, her father’s housekeeper and man-of-all-work, had spoiled her, she’d be the first to admit. Now, instead of taking her comfort for granted, she was forced to acquire a whole battery of new skills. In the process she was also acquiring an impressive array of bruises, splinters and broken fingernails, not to mention a rash on her left hand from the rubber gloves she’d tried to wear. French manicures and sleek hairstyles were definitely things of the past. After the second day, she hadn’t bothered to apply makeup, only a quick splash of moisturizer and, when she remembered it, lip balm. Instead of her usual chignon, she wore her hair in a single braid that, by day’s end, was usually frazzled and laced with cobwebs—or worse.

On the plus side, she was too busy to waste time crying. Hard work was turning out to be a fair remedy for grief. Somewhat surprisingly she was even making a few friends. Marian Kuvarky at the real estate office, the clerk at the hardware store who had advised her on mousetraps, and the friendly woman at the post office where she’d rented a mailbox. She’d asked questions of all of them, everything from where to find what on the island to what kind of weather to expect.