Liar by Jan Burke Page A

was eyeing the piles of paper with twitching tail; I tensed as he tensed, and saw him ready to pounce. As on all his previous forays, I was able to shoo him off before he did much damage, but the scuffle woke the dogs. Worn out from a long run on the beach, Deke, a big black Lab, quickly went back to sleep, but Dunk, the shepherd, decided to gently sniff at all of the boxes again. Apparently satisfied, he lay down with a paw across my ankle and went back to sleep. This show of possessiveness was oddly comforting. Technically, he’s Frank’s dog, and like his master, he was soon snoring.
    I stretched a little, then went back to work. The phone calls to Briana’s former neighbors hadn’t been of much use; only two of the neighbors remembered her, and neither knew what had become of “Mrs.” Maguire or her son. They told me that she and her son had kept to themselves, had been polite but very private. After reading the headlines, it was easy to understand why Briana and Travis had sought privacy.
    I made notes based on the articles I had copied, recapping what I had learned, putting the information in chronological order.
    As Mary had remembered, Gwendolyn DeMont was raised by her grandfather after her mother’s death. Gwendolyn’s father, who died a hero’s death in World War I, was one of two sons, but apparently her grandfather had quarreled bitterly with his surviving boy, Horace DeMont. When the old patriarch died, this son was left only a small monetary bequest; the bulk of the estate, including all the DeMont lands, was left to Gwendolyn.
    At the time of her grandfather’s death, Gwendolyn was forty-five years old. Within a month of his death, and to her uncle Horace De-Mont’s shock, she married one of the few men who had ever made her acquaintance: the estate’s sixteen-year-old gardener, Arthur Spanning.
    In the articles, her uncle made much of the fact that throughout her life, Gwendolyn seldom ventured outside the family home. She was shy of strangers, especially male strangers. It was Horace DeMont’s contention that Arthur Spanning had connived his way into the household and then taken advantage of her grief. That Arthur bore no real affection for her was now proven by his illegal second marriage. Greed and impatience, DeMont said, had led Arthur to murder his rich wife.
    This was vigorously denied by Arthur’s older brother, a man named Gerald Spanning. Gerald Spanning had once been Arthur’s legal guardian-like Gwendolyn, Arthur had lost his parents at an early age. He speculated that this might have been one reason Gwendolyn felt drawn to Arthur, who had worked on the estate from the age of twelve. Perhaps she took advantage of a young man’s first crush, but Gerald Spanning had consented to the marriage of his underage brother because Arthur’s heart was set on it.
    However set Arthur’s heart had been at sixteen, it roved by the time he was twenty-two. Briana, who was then working in a nursery and landscaping supply company, was courted by and married the charming young man she knew as Arthur Sperry. His landscaping business required frequent absences.
    The articles in the
Express
supplied few details about this business, but apparently Gwendolyn had indulged her young husband’s whim to have his own business, to earn his own money. If this business required him to travel, she did not seem upset by her days alone.
    The cook and housekeeper, Mrs. Coughlin, was interviewed. She had worked for the Spannings for twelve years. She worked there every weekday, with weekends off, and did not live on the premises. She declared that the Spannings had always seemed to be a happy couple, that Arthur was an attentive husband. True, she admitted, they slept separately, but she had never heard them argue or complain of one another. Mrs. Spanning seldom ventured away from the house, and was rarely seen outdoors except in her own very private garden-a garden Mr. Spanning tended for her. No, Mrs. Coughlin was