Resort to Murder Read Online Free PDF

was curious whether he would explain what he meant, but he simply continued to look out at the glittering blue water. Jennings had piqued my curiosity. I didn’t have faces for Ellen or R.T. or Margaret, but they pressed against the edge of my consciousness. I’d given no thought at all to Connor Bailey’s past when I agreed to attend the wedding. I knew only that she was a widow with two daughters. I’d had no idea that she and Lloyd had met here, nor had I known that this was a favorite resort of her first marriage.
    â€œDid Connor and her first husband stay at Tower Ridge House?” I finished my coffee, shaded my eyes against the sun.
    â€œAlways.” His tone was casual.
    â€œAre there children from R.T.’s first marriage?” I was guessing there were not, or surely they would be in attendance.
    Jennings confirmed my guess. “No. R.T. and Margaret were married such a short time before her death. And he didn’t meet Connor until he was almost fifty. It came as quite a surprise to everyone when he remarried.” Jennings looked amused. “R.T. was a tough old bird, but Connor bowled him over. She was just out of college and had her first job with an ad agency that was doing a corporate promotion featuring R.T. and she was assigned to follow him around for a couple of weeks. By the end of a month, he’d decided to marry her.”
    I wondered at Jennings’s bemused tone. Had he opposed that long-ago marriage?
    Perhaps the lawyer sensed my question or perhaps he wanted to keep talking about anything other than what he’d seen last night in the garden. He cleared his throat. “I thought it would be a disaster. But R.T. knew what he was doing. Connor thought he was wonderful. And he decided Connor needed looking after and he was the man for the job. She took to his protective manner like a duck to water. And the greatest happiness, of course, was the children. R.T. loved his kids. He thought Marlow was the neatest person he ever met and he was proud of Jasmine being a towhead the way he’d been as a kid. And he loved bringing them here. I think that’s why Connor decided to keep coming back, even after he was gone.”
    â€œAnd this is where Lloyd and Connor met?”
    â€œLast year.” The words were clipped, his face impassive. Was he remembering that meeting or was he thinking of his wife’s last visit here and her death only a few months later? Suddenly, he lifted a hand, his face breaking into an easy smile. “Here they come.” He stood.
    Jasmine Bailey ran toward us, her hand outstretched. “Uncle Steve, look what I got!” She raced up to us and opened pudgy fingers to reveal a silver charm of the Sea Venture . “Lloyd got it for me.”
    â€œThat’s wonderful, honey.” He patted her head.
    We were swept up by the others. Connor was gesturing energetically to Lloyd, but the big Texan was close at hand, still booming. I felt sorry for Lloyd, wished my granddaughter would stop frowning, andcontinued to battle occasional waves of dizziness. Yet these were swift, surface thoughts. During the rest of our visit in the narrow streets of old St. George’s, despite the pleasure of seeing an altar in St. Peter’s and knowing that human hands lovingly fashioned it more than 376 years ago, and my disappointment that the Featherbed Alley Print Shop wasn’t open, I was preoccupied by my talk with Steve Jennings. I kept wondering about a knock in the dead of night and something glimpsed in the silent garden.

three
    L OW-HANGING metallic-looking clouds had turned the sky a pale gray. The wind was picking up, whipping whitecaps as far as the eye could see and roiling the water over the reef. I steadied myself against the breeze, strong enough to pluck at my hair, tug at my clothes.
    Connor’s dress flattened against her. “Oh, it’s too windy. Let’s go back.” She lifted her hands to press