Moonlight Becomes You by Mary Higgins Clark Page A

as it had begun, the pounding slackened. She managed to say, “Just give me a moment. I’ll be fine. I just felt a little breathless, that’s all.”
    â€œI want you to lean back and close your eyes. I’m going to call Dr. Lane.” Nurse Markey’s face was barely inches from hers now. Instinctively Greta turned away.
    Ten minutes later, propped up on pillows in bed, Greta tried to reassure the doctor that the little spell she had had was completely past. But later, as she drifted off to sleep with the help of a mild sedative, she could not escape the chilling memory of how just two weeks ago, Constance Rhinelander, who had been here so briefly, had died of heart failure, so unexpectedly.
    First Constance, she thought, then Nuala. Grandmother’s housekeeper used to say that deaths come in threes. Please don’t let me be the third, she thought as she drifted off.

14
    N O , IT HAD NOT BEEN A NIGHTMARE ; IT REALLY HAD happened. The full reality of events of the past few days settled firmly in Maggie’s mind as she stood in Nuala’s kitchen, in the house that now, incredibly, was hers.
    At three o’clock, Liam had helped carry her bags here from the Woodses’ guest room. He had left them at the top of the stairs. “Do you know which bedroom you’re going to use?” he had asked.
    â€œNo.”
    â€œMaggie, you look ready to collapse. Are you sure you want to stay here? I don’t think it’s such a hot idea.”
    â€œYes,” she had replied after a thoughtful pause, “I do want to stay.”
    Now as she put the kettle on, Maggie reflected with gratitude that one of Liam’s nicest qualities was that he didn’t argue.
    Instead of objecting further, he had said simply, “Then I’ll leave you alone. But I do hope you’ll rest for a while. Don’t start unpacking or trying to sort out Nuala’s things.”
    â€œCertainly not tonight.”
    â€œI’ll call you tomorrow.”
    At the door, he had put an arm around her and given her a friendly hug. Then he was gone.
    Feeling suddenly exhausted, moving as though it was an effort to put one foot in front of the other, Maggie had locked the front and back doors, then climbed the stairs.Glancing through the bedrooms, she saw immediately that the one Nuala had meant her to have was the second largest. It was simply furnished—a maple double bed, a dresser with mirror, a night table and rocking chair—and there were no personal effects around. The dresser top held only an old-fashioned enamel toiletry set: comb, brush, mirror, buttonhook and nail file.
    After dragging her bags into that room, Maggie had peeled off her skirt and sweater, slipped into her favorite robe, and climbed under the covers.
    Now, after a nearly three-hour nap, and aided by a cup of tea, she was finally beginning to feel clearheaded. She even sensed that she was over the shock of Nuala’s death.
    The sadness, though, that’s another story, she thought. That won’t go away.
    She realized suddenly that for the first time in four days she was hungry. She opened the refrigerator and saw that it had been stocked: eggs, milk, juice, a small roasted chicken, a loaf of bread, and a container of homemade chicken soup. Obviously Mrs. Woods, she thought.
    She settled on making herself a chicken sandwich, slicing and skinning the chicken and using only a trace of mayonnaise.
    She had just gotten comfortable at the table when she was startled by a rap at the back door. She spun around and was on her feet even as the handle turned, her body tense, poised to react.
    She gasped with relief as Earl Bateman’s face appeared in the oval window that comprised most of the top half of the door.
    Chief Brower theorized that Nuala had been surprised by an intruder in this kitchen, an intruder who had come in the back door. That thought, and the mental image it conjured up, ran through her mind as she