The Garden Tour Affair: A Gardening Mystery Read Online Free PDF Page A

be ghosts here.”
    Overhearing them, Bill said, his eyes twinkling, “They can’t be that scary: They’re probably Congregational ghosts, since they made up a good part of the population back in the old days,” Louise rolled her eyes.
    Beyond the living room was a sunroom. It was filled with overstuffed furniture covered with gently faded chintz and strewn with plump matching pillows, in what Louise knew was the most venerable East Coast decorating style. Beyond that was the huge veranda. Scattered with an array of antique wicker chairs and tables, it obviously served as the outdoor dining room in good weather. Now it served as a waiting room.
    Elizabeth had tea brought to them and refused to accept any more apologies for their early arrival. Barbara Seymour was still nowhere to be seen, but there was a hum of activity within the enormous mansion. Louise could smell, even from the veranda, delightful food aromas that whetted her appetite for the evening’s dinner.
    The five of them sat on the wicker chairs in their rumpled traveling clothes, clutching their cups of tea. “Don’t
we
make an interesting picture,” said Louise. “The other guests will never figure us out. Janie, you and Chris are so tall and blond that you look like brother and sister.” She grinned. “Wait ’til somebody sees you with your arms around each other!”
    Janie frowned her disapproval, and Chris looked embarrassed. On a roll now, Louise said, “And Nora and I, with our dark hair, might pass for sisters. Since Ron’s not here,we’ll share the attentions of Bill and raise more eyebrows. And Bill, you’re so blond they’ll think both Janie and Chris are your kids, of course.”
    “Sounds incestuous to me,” he said, and then lowered his voice. “The real question is, what kind of people are we going to meet here—or do we care?”
    Louise shrugged her shoulders: “I don’t think it will matter. My guess is we’ll be so busy we won’t get a chance to get well acquainted. And we can always go out on the town tonight.”
    Nora looked skeptical. “I wonder about that. Small towns like this roll up the sidewalks at the fall of darkness.”
    As fifteen minutes stretched into a half hour, they consumed a steady supply of cucumber, watercress, and pimento-cheese sandwiches off a frequently replenished tray. The restless Janie and Chris explored some of the thirty acres of grounds attached to the inn and returned. By then, two other guests were drifting toward them, looking as if they had stepped out of the pages of a fashion magazine.
    “Dressed to kill,” murmured Nora.
    “From the way she’s hanging on him, they have to be the newlyweds,” replied Louise.
    Mark and Sandy Post introduced themselves smoothly, then made the rounds of the table, schmoozing individually with each member of the group. Sandy was small, with a perfect figure and a feathered blond hairdo, and wearing a honey-beige, wide-legged St. John knit pantsuit. Her smart, blocky shoes clacked gently as she crossed the wide floorboards. On her shoulder was an enormous, flawlessly coordinated leather bag big enough for anything—a small arsenal, perhaps, or enough clothes for the entire weekend.
    The tall, self-assured Mark had a thin face and aquiline nose, and his brown hair had been styled by an expert. His body was muscular but slim, as if he were a runner. Louise was surprised to find out that
Sandy
was the jock. “I hardly had time to plan my wedding,” she complained, “because Iwas training for the Olympics with the U.S. women’s biathlon team.” In that outfit, it was hard to imagine her cross-country skiing while shooting a gun. Particularly eye-catching was the little bee pinned to Sandy’s jacket; its body was made of one enormous pearl, its wings of many tiny diamonds—probably a throwaway item from Tiffany. Mark held up his end of the image, decked out in sports clothes with expensive logos.
    “We, like,
just
returned from Italy,” Sandy told