One Way or Another(46)

“Men who live alone do not have much taste. The place needs a woman’s touch, don’t you think? Soften it up a little?”

“Get rid of all the red,” Lucy advised, suddenly finding her way into the interior design world. Not that she knew much, but she did know when it was wrong. “And all those chandeliers.”

“I should take you to see my boat,” Ahmet said, coming to sit next to her on the sofa.

Uncomfortable with his nearness, Lucy edged slightly away, hoping he would not notice, though of course he did and immediately moved to the other end.

“I’m sure you would find that beautiful, more to your taste, all very simple.”

“Martha will take care of this for you,” she said, hoping her sister could see her way through all this “stuff,” all this heavy darkness, because she surely could not.

“Of course I will.” Martha strode into the room, iPad in one hand, memo pad and pen in the other, phone tucked under her chin as she waited for a call to the fabric place to go through. When it did she told them exactly what she needed, and asked if they would get back to her right away. The job was urgent. Priority was everything.

Ahmet had gotten to his feet when she walked in and now he smiled his approval. “I do like efficiency, especially in a woman,” he said. “Rarer, you see, in women than men.”

“I don’t believe I agree with that,” Martha said in what Lucy recognized as her “acid” voice. “Women have come a long way in every facet of business. Surely you have met many of them. Your own Mehitabel is one of the most efficient women I’ve ever encountered.”

“Mehitabel is a gem. I appreciate her more every day,” Ahmet agreed, making a quick decision to keep Mehitabel away from Martha. “Well, now, what do you think of my little palace?”

“It definitely needs to be less ‘palacey,’ more ‘homey,’” Martha said. “I told you I needed to rip it all out, and I wasn’t joking. Ahmet, you’ll simply have to trust me on this. I promise you’ll be happy with the result.”

He shrugged in agreement. He said, “Now, what do you say we all have some tea?”

He was, Martha thought, amazed again by him, always the perfect English gentleman.

*

Driving back in the car she said to Lucy, “So? What d’you think?”

“Of him, or that house?”

“Both.”

Lucy thought a minute, then, “He’s oddly fascinating. The house gives me the creeps. And all that green swampy stuff and that scary river. Why would anybody want to live there?”

“The previous owner was killed by his lover in the dining room. Using the knife with which he was about to carve the roast beef.”

“Jesus.” Lucy’s eyes were on stalks. “No wonder it’s creepy. What happened to him?”

“Well, he was killed, of course, with the roast beef knife.”

“No! What happened to the killer?”

“Nobody knows. It seems he just wandered off into the marshes, and nobody cared to take the risk and follow him. Never seen again.”

“OMG,” Lucy said this time. This was a long way from the cute pizza delivery guy and suddenly she wanted to get back to him, and that “normality.” “Are you sure about this, Marthie? Doing this house over? It’s so far from anywhere, it seems almost uncivilized, with the river and the marshes and the red brocade sofas.”

“We’ll change all that, you and I,” Martha said, just as her phone rang. It was Marco. She pressed Answer and kept her hands on the wheel.

“Am I glad to hear your voice,” she said, astonished by the sudden feeling of relief that swept through her. Today had been exhausting in a different way; challenging, in fact.

“You hadn’t even heard my voice yet,” Marco said, and she heard the smile in his voice. “Are you alone in the car?”

“Lucy’s here.”

“That’s okay then. Besides wanting to hear your voice, and tell you I’m missing you, I wanted to tell you I’m on the track of Angie Morse. I’ve found out where she lived and I’m going there to see if anybody knows what happened. And it’s my belief she is the girl I saw murdered.”

“Jesus.” Martha said it this time.





31

Ahmet was alone again. The place he seemed always to be. Even Mehitabel was gone, off to check on the yacht, make sure supplies had arrived, make sure the crew was not roistering round ports at all hours of the night, causing trouble. It wasn’t easy keeping a crew, even with the generous wages Ahmet paid. Men got bored and bored men got into trouble. Mehitabel knew that from experience and Ahmet appreciated her concern, but he missed having her to share his thoughts with, to plot with, to prowl those ports with in search of the next young woman. It was surprising how easy Mehitabel made those searches; she knew what those young women on the make wanted and she told them she could give them their dreams. And they believed her.

It was rarely Ahmet who made the first move. It was usually she who found them.

“It’s so easy,” she’d told Ahmet once, sitting and drinking very good brandy with him after a long night in the port of Piraeus, Greece, where they had dined and danced and even thrown plates around, though Ahmet had no girl on his arm. There’d been none he’d fancied. That, or he simply had lost the desire. The urge. It worried him, and Mehitabel of course noticed that.