Page 67 of The Newcomer
“You mean her murder,” Letty said. “Evan murdered Tanya.”
Letty couldn’t stop thinking about Declan Rooney, the con man whose deep blue eyes were the same distinctive shade as Maya’s. “Did Tanya ever hint to you that Evan wasn’t the father of her child?” she asked.
“No!” Sammi said sharply. “Are you telling me that Evan isn’t Maya’s father?”
“I’m not telling you anything,” Letty said. “As you’ve already noted, Tanya was complicated. She liked secrets and she was really good at keeping them.”
Sammi exhaled loudly. “Let’s set that aside for a moment, please. Evan’s attorney has notified me that he’ll fight any attempt by the estate to claim those real estate assets. What I need from you…”
“No,” Letty said. All this talk about Evan Wingfield was making her feel panicky and cornered. “I can’t talk about this, Sammi. You do what you have to do. But you can’t tell anyone that we talked. Especially Evan. You have no idea what he’s capable of. This isn’t just about me. It’s about Maya. If something happens to me, Evan will get custody of Maya.”
“Wait,” Sammi said.
She heard voices approaching outside, from the breezeway. Maya burst in, holding a foil-lined shoebox in both hands, followed by Isabelle.
“Lookit, Letty,” Maya crowed. “Cookies!”
Letty disconnected the call.
26
“GOOD NEWS,” AVA SAID, ASLetty settled herself behind the registration desk on Wednesday. “I’ve booked your old room.”
“Already? That was fast.” Letty sat Maya down at her table, and unpacked her crayons and markers and the new reading workbook Isabelle had bought for her, and the child went right to work.
“Those photos of yours did the trick,” Ava said. “I’m thinking, when it slows down in the fall, or maybe sooner, right after the spring breakers leave, I’ll get you to style and photograph all the rooms. You could sprinkle some seashells around and freshen things up. I bet I could raise prices by at least ten percent, and nobody would even notice.”
“Merwin would notice,” Letty said. “But Ava, about fall…”
Ava waved away her objections. “I realize, you said you weren’t sure if you’d hang around ’til then, but I’m just gonna pretend I didn’t hear that. You know, with Isabelle going off to college in August, I’ll need all the extra help I can get around here.”
Letty nodded in Maya’s direction. “Can we talk about this later, please?”
“Oh. Right. Anyway, we’ve got a guest checking into the efficiency this evening. She’s coming down from New York, and wasn’t exactly sure of her arrival time, so I told her if it’s after six she can just call my phone and I’ll meet her here and check her in.”
“How long is she staying for?” Letty asked, pulling up theMurmuring Surf’s booking page on the computer monitor. She clicked over to the page she’d designed for her old unit.
“She paid in advance for four days,” Ava said.
Letty frowned. “I thought we had a one-week minimum stay during the season.”
“Well, yeah, but since we just added the efficiency, I thought it would be okay to take a shorter stay. Just this once.”
Letty shrugged. “You’re the boss, but seems to me we’d be better off waiting for the weekend and booking a guest who’ll be here at least a week.”
“Now you sound like Joe,” Ava said. “It’s just four days. After this, yes, I’ll absolutely apply the one-week minimum stay.”
RuthFeldman was not happy. “Ava, would you please look at this?” She held up a piece of faded and frayed plastic webbing. “Billie sat down on one of the lounge chairs by the pool just now and the thing collapsed. She could have been killed!”
Ruth and Billie were both dressed in their modest one-piece bathing suits and matching terry cover-ups. Ruth’s swim goggles were pushed on top of her still-damp steel-gray hair.
“Oh Lord,” Ava said. “I’m sorry, Billie. Are you okay?”
Billie Feldman turned around and displayed a mildly scraped ankle. “It could have been much worse,” she said. “I managed to catch myself or I might have broken a hip or something.”
“Okay,” Ava said. “Thanks for letting me know.” She looked over at Letty. “Could you please go over to the pool and drag the broken lounger over to the dumpster? I don’t want anyone else getting hurt.”
“We already took care of that,” Ruth said. “But Ava, the webbing on all those chairs is in the same condition. You need to do something before someone gets seriously injured.”
