Murderous Endeavour

CHAPTER FOUR

That morning, Diana did something totally not like her.

Instead of driving into the city early to avoid the traffic, she called and left a message for Sandy, saying something came up and she’d be in later in the afternoon.

Everyone who worked at Addict had the ability to work from home, if they chose. Diana, though, had never taken HR up on the offer. Usually, she enjoyed making the drive, being in the city, and of course, making things happen at work.

But this time, she had no choice.

The thing that had begun tugging at her last night was now yanking her so hard, she could think of nothing else. Certainly not work. A drumbeat kept thrumming in her head: Europe, Europe, Europe.

Her eldest, Lily, was twenty-seven and lived with her husband in East Norwich, a town just south. Though they lived not ten minutes apart, Diana’s schedule was so busy that they rarely saw one another. Lily didn’t seem to mind because she was a chip off the old block—as a realtor, she was constantly hustling all over Long Island, showing homes to prospective buyers. Despite the closeness, theirs was a long-distance relationship—mostly relegated to phone calls and texts. They rarely just “stopped by” unannounced.

That’s probably why it took Lily a good ten minutes to answer the door. By then, Diana had been sitting on the porch and pressing the doorbell under the “No Soliciting” placard until her fingertip hurt. Lily came to the door in a bathrobe, her long auburn hair up in a towel turban. Tall and slim with her father’s Roman nose and her mother’s dramatically arched eyebrows, she moved with all the grace that ten years of ballet lessons and recitals at the Oyster Bay Dance Troupe had given her.

“Mom?” she asked as if she wasn’t sure whether aliens had taken over her body. Clutching her robe closed at the neck, she even looked up and down the street for the UFO.

“Of course it’s me. Can I come in, darling?” Diana asked, motioning.

“Oh. Now I know why you’re here. You want to talk about Dad, don’t you?” Lily said, clicking her tongue as she pulled open the door and let Diana pass. “Isn’t it absolutely gross? I have no idea what’s gotten into him.”

“Actually, I don’t want to talk about him at all,” she said, dropping a little care package from Addict’s summer lineup on the foyer table. Lily livedfor her mom’s cosmetics. She’d already mailed the same one out to Beatrice in Japan—in the interest of fairness.

She looked around the large foyer, Better Homes and Gardens-perfect as usual. It was like her daughter had staged it for a sale—right down to the scent of home-baked cookies wafting through the air.

Not that it would look that way for much longer. She patted her Lily’s still-flat stomach. “How are you?”

She gripped her stomach. “You know, everyone is always touching my stomach now! It’s like I’m not a person. I’m a womb. The peanut’s fine. The doctor said everything’s normal, so I don’t have to go back for another month. It’s the size of a pea. I have to get pre-natal vitamins. I keep forgetting to stop by the Rite Aid and—”

Diana shook her head. “That’s why I asked how you were doing.”

Lily shrugged. “Oh, fine. Never better. I was just getting ready to meet a client. The market’s booming. I have six showings today. You know that big Victorian on Elm that we thought would never sell? The one with the major HVAC issues? I think I have a potential buyer.”

Diana shot her a disapproving that’s still not what I asked look.

Lily’s smile faded, and she yawned. “Okay. Exhausted. And bloated as heck. I feel so funky all the time like my body’s been invaded by an alien. You know, I had a bloody nose at the office yesterday that wouldn’t stop? It was like a crime scene.”