The Missing Heir. Jane Toombs
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Isabel was ten. Peering at her own face in the long narrow mirror on the wall by the study door, she could see no resemblance to Yvonne. Mari didn’t find any pictures of Isabel anywhere.
Turning to leave the study, she noticed Diana, the cook, standing in the hall beyond. “I was waiting to ask if you’d be in for dinner,” the woman said.
“Oh, I’m sorry. I was on my way to the kitchen to tell you I’d be eating out.” Deciding the cook might be a source of information, Mari said, “I wondered if there might be a portrait of Isabel Haskell somewhere, like the one of her mother in here.”
Diana glanced over her shoulder. Looking for the housekeeper? Mari asked herself, aware that Pauline could be intimidating. “I’m not supposed to know anything,” the cook said in a low tone. “But I heard tell Mr. Haskell had her picture stored in the attic after she ran off to marry that rock drummer. They say Mort Morrison was pretty well-known, but you can’t prove it by me. Anyway, Mr. Haskell’s supposed to have burned all the photos of her. They had one in the papers from where she went to school.”
Mari had seen several newspaper photos of Isabel at age eighteen, with Morrison, but in each, her face was half-hidden by her hand, as though she didn’t want to be recognized. In the school photo, taken with five other girls, Isabel looked to be about twelve. Her face wasn’t clear enough in any of the pictures for Mari to decide one way or the other if they looked anything alike.
“After Mrs. Haskell died, they say little Isabel moped about for a long time,” Diana continued. “Her father was away a lot, a busy man, and she badly missed her mother. They were real close, everyone said.”
“How sad,” Mari murmured. Poor Isabel. While Mari’s own mother—could it have been Isabel?—had died when she was born, at least she’d had loving parents in Aunt Blanche and Uncle Stan.
“Yeah, it was that. Mr. Haskell had to raise her all by himself, and they didn’t get on, by all accounts. They say he was kind of strict with her. Well, I got to get back and check on my pies.”
After Diana was gone, Mari started for the stairs to the second floor, planning to see if she could find a way to climb to the attic. Did she belong in this family? Maybe if she could see that portrait of Isabel she might find some feature that had been passed down to her. Besides the hair. Mr. Haskell had said on TV that Isabel’s hair was “an unusual shade of gold.”
Mari fingered her own short curls. Aunt Blanche had always said she’d been named well, since her hair was close to the color of a marigold. Named well? Mari had never picked up on it before, but could Blanche have meant that her birth mother had named her? The thought gave her goose bumps.
Searching for the attic meant she had to open all the closed doors on the second floor. Since she’d already learned that Pauline’s suite of rooms was on the ground floor and that Diana lived on the island, so didn’t spend nights at the house, Mari didn’t worry that she might be intruding.
Behind one door she saw what had to be Mr. Haskell’s suite, surprisingly austere. Most of the other doors led to guest bedrooms except for one that proved to be the entrance to an upstairs sitting room. She ventured inside, toward French doors to a balcony looking out over the lake. Far below, one of the hydrofoils that ferried folks to the island swished past in a spume of spray that glistened in the late afternoon sun.
Behind the next to last door in the hallway, a winding staircase led upward. Mari peered up it and realized she’d found the way to the cupola, not the attic. She closed the door and tried the last one. Locked. It had to be to the attic. She sighed. Stymied, unless she got up the nerve to ask Pauline for a key.
Not today, Mari decided. It was after five and she still had to shower before dressing for dinner.
Later, after trying three different shirts with the skirt, Mari sat at the wicker vanity table, trying to decide if her red earrings were close enough in color to the red belt to be passable. She scowled at herself, annoyed because she’d taken so much time getting ready. What did it matter, when she wasn’t certain she’d be staying on the island or how Russ felt? It was a sure bet he wasn’t spending an hour and a half getting ready just to impress her.
He didn’t need to. Though she’d only seen him in jeans so far, she knew he’d look just as good in anything he had on. Or didn’t have on? She shook her head, warning herself not to get into that. Wasn’t she in a precarious enough situation already?
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