Read Online Bones of Contention by Jeanne Matthews - Free Book Online

By the process of elimination, she ID’d him as Dr. Desmond Fisher.
    Neesha, glamorous in a clingy, floor-length mauve gown, sat enthroned in one of the leather chairs in the center of the room. Her platinum hair was hooked behind one ear and her plump lips curved in a rueful smile. She held out her right hand to Wendell, Cleon’s eldest, and said, “It’s from that elegant little shop in the Harbour Hotel. A keepsake from Cleon.”
    Wendell, balder and heavier than when Dinah last saw him, bent forward in his chair for a closer look. He’d been a football jock in high school and college, but time and the sedentary life of a banker had turned muscle to fat and his jacket strained at the seams. His face was solemn and stiff, as if he’d been botoxed from the eyes down, and his voice was sepulchral. “That’s quite a rock.”
    Eduardo rolled Lucien’s wheelchair to Neesha’s side and the two of them bowed their heads over the ring like lapidaries. “Well, aren’t we the pampered one,” said Eduardo. “How many carats?”
    “Ten.” She dropped her chin and lifted her eyes, studiedly demure. “Of course, he shouldn’t have.”
    “You deserve twenty,” said Lucien, “after all these years putting up with the old tyrant.”
    She threw a nervous look around the room and took back her hand.
    Eddie giggled. If he was steamed about Lucien’s cheating, he was covering it well.
    Cleon’s first wife Margaret, a handsome woman in her early sixties with gray-blond hair sleeked back from a widow’s peak into a bun at the nape of her neck, leaned her back against the bar and surveyed the room, alert as a raptor. She was that rare woman who actually looked good in gold lamé.
    Dinah had to start somewhere and Margaret was the one standing closest to the champagne. Dinah went to say hello. “Margaret. It’s good to see you.”
    “Dinah, Cleon must be tickled pink. He tried to woo your mother into coming, but she had too much sense. You’ll be his consolation prize.”
    Grin and bear it, thought Dinah. Up to a point. She poured herself a flute of champagne. “It’s just possible that Uncle Cleon likes me for myself, Margaret.”
    She smiled and put a hand on Dinah’s arm. “I didn’t mean that the way it sounded. I happen to know that Cleon likes you very much, indeed, and so do I. I’m overjoyed to have somebody with a brain to talk to.” She shifted her eyes to Neesha. “The widow-in-waiting is blinging tonight. That bauble must’ve addled her brain or she wouldn’t have let him Svengali her to this boondocks.”
    “You’ve got more sense than anyone I know, Margaret. How’d he Svengali you?”
    “When I married him forty years ago I wanted the usual
’til death do us part
boilerplate. He overruled me with
so long as we both shall love
. Providence has finally overruled him and I wouldn’t miss this parting for all the tea in China.”
    Dinah saw what Eduardo meant about grief being in short supply.
    Margaret’s out-of-context smile was disconcerting. “Cleon can pull the wool over Neesha’s eyes. She’s never looked any deeper than his pockets. But I know him down to the ground. He’s plotting something.”
    “Changing his will, you mean?”
    “There’s that. I’d hate to see him do Wendell out of his rightful share of the estate. Wen’s a good son, but he’s a cream puff. He won’t stand up to Cleon or compete for his birthright. But Cleon’s nothing if not devious. Something tells me the will is a red herring.” She gestured with her eyes toward Neesha. “Miss Georgia made a mistake by letting him come to Australia by himself.”
    “Hasn’t she been with him in Sydney these last few months?”
    “No, no. She didn’t want to take the children out of school in Atlanta. She and the kids arrived in Sydney only a day or so before Wendell and I did.”
    K.D. hovered behind her mother’s chair, no doubt gathering material for her little book of invective. Neesha kept up a conversation