Read Online Death by Surprise (Carolyn Hart Classics) by Carolyn Hart - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Carolyn Hart
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odd combination, Travis exuberant, his face a little flushed now from his cocktail, and Lorraine withdrawn and aloof. She is an oncologist. She wore a grey chiffon dress and she looked impatient and bored.
Edmond and Sue sat stiffly on a Chippendale sofa, not looking convivial at all.
Mother was chatting with Priscilla but she saw me in the doorway.
“K.C., we’ve been waiting,” she said immediately.
“Sorry. Hello, everyone.”
“We’ll go in to dinner now,” and Mother nodded to Edmond to walk with her.
The dining room, with its heavy baroque furniture, depressed me as it always had, but, as usual at Mother’s house, the dinner, thanks to Amanda, was superb.
The courses came and went, Jason serving from a sideboard and conversation surged up and down the table. It was quite animated for this particular group. It might almost be Christmas with its automatic cheer. The wineglasses sparkled and Jason kept them full. California wines, of course. There are no better in the world, despite what the French might think. It was a gay and voluble group with no outward sign of trouble—except for Edmond’s somber face when the conversation lulled and the haunted look in Kenneth’s eyes and Priscilla’s strained stare.
I made polite conversation with Travis but it was Kenneth who dominated my thoughts. That look in his eyes reminded me of when he and Priscilla came to live with us. Edmond and Travis were already grown, Edmond married and well started on his investment career, Travis was in college. Uncle Bobby and Aunt Margaret were flying home to La Luz from Scottsdale, Ariz., one snowy December. He had been warned not to take off, a huge storm was building in the Sierras. But no one ever told Uncle Bobby what to do. They didn’t find the wreckage until the following April.
Kenneth and I became allies of a sort against the coldness of my mother and the sense we both carried that life continued under siege. I don’t remember much of Priscilla then. She had fitted into the house, content with a newly decorated room, absorbed in playing with a doll’s house built like a Victorian castle.
I never had the feeling Priscilla grieved for her parents.
It was the summer after Kenneth and Priscilla came to live with us that Kenneth and I made detailed and intricate plans to run away. We wanted to follow the harvests all the way to Central America.
We hadn’t included Priscilla or Sheila, of course. They were just little kids.
That wasn’t the reason I left out Sheila. I didn’t tell Kenneth. Perhaps, then, I hadn’t even admitted it to myself, but I was running away from Sheila and mother’s absorption in her. I just told Kenneth that Sheila and Prissy were too little to go and Kenneth agreed.
Prissy wouldn’t have been interested in our scheme. She was never interested in anything outside her own comfort.
But Sheila was interested. She always in that huge house knew everything. Perhaps that summer day she followed us up the stairs, as we crept so surreptitiously toward the third floor. She could have hidden behind the blue urn on the first-floor landing, skipped on silent feet after us up the second flight and the third. In the dim and shadowy reaches of the ballroom, she must have crouched behind the covered grand piano as we tied the rope, then stayed behind as we started back downstairs.
There wasn’t any logic, of course, to our plan to scramble three flights down a scratchy hemp rope. The house was locked at night but we could have started our trek soon after breakfast, making a nocturnal escape unnecessary. It would have been hours before we were missed. Who knows if we ever would have climbed down the rope at all? It was the romance of escape that fascinated us, the desire to be free and gone mixed in our minds with visions of desert brigands fleeing castle walls by rope.
So we left the rope, tied insecurely to a narrow band of metal, and crept down to the second floor; then, tired of stealth, burst
Edmond and Sue sat stiffly on a Chippendale sofa, not looking convivial at all.
Mother was chatting with Priscilla but she saw me in the doorway.
“K.C., we’ve been waiting,” she said immediately.
“Sorry. Hello, everyone.”
“We’ll go in to dinner now,” and Mother nodded to Edmond to walk with her.
The dining room, with its heavy baroque furniture, depressed me as it always had, but, as usual at Mother’s house, the dinner, thanks to Amanda, was superb.
The courses came and went, Jason serving from a sideboard and conversation surged up and down the table. It was quite animated for this particular group. It might almost be Christmas with its automatic cheer. The wineglasses sparkled and Jason kept them full. California wines, of course. There are no better in the world, despite what the French might think. It was a gay and voluble group with no outward sign of trouble—except for Edmond’s somber face when the conversation lulled and the haunted look in Kenneth’s eyes and Priscilla’s strained stare.
I made polite conversation with Travis but it was Kenneth who dominated my thoughts. That look in his eyes reminded me of when he and Priscilla came to live with us. Edmond and Travis were already grown, Edmond married and well started on his investment career, Travis was in college. Uncle Bobby and Aunt Margaret were flying home to La Luz from Scottsdale, Ariz., one snowy December. He had been warned not to take off, a huge storm was building in the Sierras. But no one ever told Uncle Bobby what to do. They didn’t find the wreckage until the following April.
Kenneth and I became allies of a sort against the coldness of my mother and the sense we both carried that life continued under siege. I don’t remember much of Priscilla then. She had fitted into the house, content with a newly decorated room, absorbed in playing with a doll’s house built like a Victorian castle.
I never had the feeling Priscilla grieved for her parents.
It was the summer after Kenneth and Priscilla came to live with us that Kenneth and I made detailed and intricate plans to run away. We wanted to follow the harvests all the way to Central America.
We hadn’t included Priscilla or Sheila, of course. They were just little kids.
That wasn’t the reason I left out Sheila. I didn’t tell Kenneth. Perhaps, then, I hadn’t even admitted it to myself, but I was running away from Sheila and mother’s absorption in her. I just told Kenneth that Sheila and Prissy were too little to go and Kenneth agreed.
Prissy wouldn’t have been interested in our scheme. She was never interested in anything outside her own comfort.
But Sheila was interested. She always in that huge house knew everything. Perhaps that summer day she followed us up the stairs, as we crept so surreptitiously toward the third floor. She could have hidden behind the blue urn on the first-floor landing, skipped on silent feet after us up the second flight and the third. In the dim and shadowy reaches of the ballroom, she must have crouched behind the covered grand piano as we tied the rope, then stayed behind as we started back downstairs.
There wasn’t any logic, of course, to our plan to scramble three flights down a scratchy hemp rope. The house was locked at night but we could have started our trek soon after breakfast, making a nocturnal escape unnecessary. It would have been hours before we were missed. Who knows if we ever would have climbed down the rope at all? It was the romance of escape that fascinated us, the desire to be free and gone mixed in our minds with visions of desert brigands fleeing castle walls by rope.
So we left the rope, tied insecurely to a narrow band of metal, and crept down to the second floor; then, tired of stealth, burst
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