Read Online Carolyn G. Hart_Henrie O_02 by Scandal in Fair Haven - Free Book Online Page A

me that April weather in Tennessee can be treacherous. There was no wind. The sounds of life and movement in the neighborhood—the hum of the mower, the slam of another car door up the street, the yapping of an excited dog—seemed far away. I felt caught up in the somber quiet of spent violence.
    As I walked toward the door, black wood in a purplish shadow, I was aware of being an intruder, an intruder intent upon pillage. Not, of course, in a literal sense. But I intended to wrest secrets from this house. Before I was done, I hoped to find out who Patty Kay Matthews was and why she died.
    I turned the key Desmond Marino had given me in the lock. It stuck for an instant. I had a sudden fanciful feeling that the house was shuttered against me, loath to yield its grim knowledge.
    “Nonsense.”
    I said it aloud, as much to dispel the brooding quiet as to reaffirm my rationality. I twisted the key hard. The lock clicked and the knob turned.
    My discomfort was easy to understand. Violent death imbues its surroundings with dread and horror, forever casting a bloody shadow in our memory. Think of the stained passageway in Holyroodhouse in Edinburgh, or thechill when you pass the former Texas School Book Depository in Dallas.
    The huge wooden door swung noiselessly on its gleaming bronze hinges. I stepped into a baronial entrance hall with hand-troweled stucco walls and a dark parquet floor. Dark wooden beams increased the gloom. Straight ahead rose the stairway. Massive arches opened on either side. It was as welcoming as a crypt
    I switched on a light.
    And looked straight into huge, dull dark eyes.
    The moosehead struck a jarring note, and not simply because stuffed wildlife isn’t politically correct these days. The nineties, after all, is the environmental decade. But this extraordinary—and huge—example of the taxidermist’s big-game artistry was mounted eye level beside the arch to my right.
    There was an odd scent I wouldn’t care to identify. It was mixed with the sweet smell of ripening fruit in the pink-cellophaned wicker basket that sat on a butler’s table to the left of the arch. Craig’s dutifully delivered gift basket.
    My eyes swung again to the mounted head. It was impossible to enter the living room of the house without engaging the forever-stilled glance of the moose. Casually snagged on the immense spatulate antlers was an eclectic variety of headgear, two billed caps, a gardener’s straw with a chartreuse tie, a filmy wisp of patterned burnt-orange silk, a round yellow rainhat, a high-crowned silver-trimmed black sombrero, and a bright red swim cap.
    The moose’s bulbous nose was molting. One glass eye tilted, giving him a rakish air.
    It was as impudent as an elegantly thumbed nose.
    No decorator devised his positioning as a hat rack of first resort and an inanimate majordomo without peer.
    No, this was Patty Kay speaking.
    That Craig had a hand in decorating this house wasn’t worth considering. I’d talked to him enough, even in his present distraught state, to know that Margaret’s nephew was neither ironic nor clever. Nor especially self-confident.
    Whoever chose this magnificent example of jubilant raffishness was most assuredly all three.
    I was smiling as I set out on my survey of the house. It didn’t seem half so gloomy now.
    Unconventional touches were everywhere.
    The living room, in addition to a white Steinway baby grand and a fabulous collection of Ming vases, contained a shiny bronze framework supporting a silk-cushioned swing. Shades of Stanford White’s obsession.
    The dining room was through the archway to the left of the main entrance hall. Past the stairs and down the hall, I saw a door that likely led to the kitchen. But that would come later. In the dining room, the mahogany Georgian-style table was still eerily set for a sumptuous dinner. Waterford crystal and Limoges china glittered in the diamond-bright light cast by the seven-tiered chandelier overhead. Utter