Blood Will Have Blood by Linda Barnes Page B

Darien?”
    â€œArthur? He never listens to me. He believes in the goodness of humanity at large, particularly the female gender. It’s one of the truly delightful things about him.”
    â€œYou’ve known him a long time.”
    â€œWe do go back a ways. But then,” she smiled archly, “I understand you know Arthur from your past as well.”
    Terrific. Just what he needed: a discussion of his own past. Lesson number two: get the man to talk about himself. Even without a script, Caroline sounded programmed. He said nothing. Let her think he was hard of hearing.
    After a moment’s pause, she chattered on. “Arthur and I have been friends forever, really. I am so grateful to him. It’s the old story: he took me under his wing from my first New York show, and we’ve never really lost touch. I depend on him so much. He and Spider and I were the three musketeers for a while. You could never find one of us without the other two.”
    â€œSpider?”
    â€œDennis, Dennis Boland. I shouldn’t call him Spider. He hates it, really. An old childhood nickname. Sometimes they can be so hard to lose.”
    Spraggue murmured agreement.
    â€œHaven’t you met him? A dear man. He’s the house manager here. So devoted to Arthur—and to me.”
    With a start Spraggue realized that it was his line, that he was expected to say something like “That shouldn’t be too difficult,” to take part in the flirtatious little skit Caroline Ambrose was constructing.
    He picked up his cue, somewhat tardily. Caroline beamed. He had passed the test. From now on, he would be Michael Spraggue, that charming young actor. He bit his lip.
    â€œIt’s rather a sad tale,” she rattled on. “Spider—Dennis—comes from a very cruel background, very poor. He and Arthur were boyhood friends in New York. They lost touch. It’s so easy to lose touch. Arthur always had that genius, you know. Scholarships, Eastern colleges. And then when he was a successful New York director, he went to a party. And there was Spider, his best friend from the hard times. I don’t think they’ve been separated since.” She sighed deeply. Every word had been spoken as if rehearsed many times before, each gesture, every graceful turn of the head choreographed. The sigh completed the tale. It was again his cue. Spraggue searched for the expected line.
    â€œAnd you became Spider’s friend, too.”
    She opened her violet eyes wide. “But of course. He is a darling man. I was married to Domingo, my third husband, then. Domingo de Renza.”
    She paused. Spraggue nodded encouragement. De Renza, huh? Emma hadn’t exaggerated about the wealth of Caroline’s ex.
    â€œDomingo took a great liking to Spider.” Caroline laughed, a carefully calibrated trill. “He visited us at the plantation, almost lived with us.” With a graceful arm movement, she indicated a lush mass of spotted and streaked violet and yellow blooms. “Domingo still sends me flowers, you know. Every day. And Spider arranges them for me. He adores orchids, and he knows how much it pleases me to have them done really well.”
    â€œHow kind of him,” Spraggue said, feeling that he’d become enmeshed in a drawing-room comedy, seeking vainly to return to the question of who she thought had arranged the trip wire. Not that her opinion would hold much water. She lived in fantasyland.
    â€œI love coming down to the dressing room each morning to find something delicate and exotic. Domingo understood that part of me so well.” She detached one violet spray from the arrangement and held it against her cheek. “I rarely wear them, but just knowing they’re available picks up my spirits. That’s why I think she took them that day.”
    â€œShe?”
    â€œ Emma , darling. That is what we’re talking about, isn’t it? Who set up the trip wire.