Small Plates by Katherine Hall Page Page A

took a sip of the Kir Royale she’d ordered and shuddered slightly. “Her own sister, that’s what keeps coming back to me!” Faith and Hope had had their differences, but even as kids, nothing remotely murderous.
    â€œI keep imagining Carolann’s last moments. She knew her husband was after her, but what a horror it would have been to see her twin sister’s face!”
    Tom nodded. “Evidently Carolee had purchased a large life insurance policy with Carolann as sole beneficiary. Carolee—or rather, she and Jim—were smart enough to have done it over a year ago and not used his company. The girls had no other siblings, and their parents are dead, as are Jim’s. It was almost the perfect crime—the discovery of the tragic murder, the inheritance, and all the Mercedes and ‘teardowns’ they wanted—except somehow Carolann got away from them and came to our cottage.”
    â€œAnd they have been watching us, especially me. To see if they were pulling it off. That must have been a tense moment at breakfast when I asked Carolee—really these names are so confusing, why do parents of twins do that?—if she was all right.”
    Breakfast reminded Faith of Elsa Whittemore, who had practically started the Fairchilds’ car for them, so eager was she to hurry them off the grounds. Murders didn’t happen at The Retreat. And if they did, they weren’t committed by nice people like the Hadleys who had been coming for years, except the Hadleys weren’t nice and weren’t the Hadleys, at least not both of them.
    â€œYou know, honey, I can’t believe this, but I keep forgetting to ask you how you knew Carolann Hadley was her sister, Carolee Reese? Did she let something slip at that class?”
    â€œIn a way.” Faith smiled. “When she took her wedding band off her left hand, there was no mark. There should have been a stripe as white as snow, given her tan. There was no way they could have been married for as long as they said. I think she was so busy keeping an eye on me she got sloppy. Agree?”
    Tom reached for his wife’s left hand, raised his glass once again, and said, “I do.”

T HE W OULD -B E W IDOWER
    M r. Carter wanted to be a widower. And since he already had a wife, he figured he was halfway there.
    The idea of bereavement was irresistible. At meals, sitting across the table from his wife, he would indulge in rosy reverie, picturing especially those first days—the steady stream of comfort flowing into his house in the form of sympathetic friends bearing casseroles and baked goods. He would be stoic, breaking down only occasionally to shed some tears and whisper, “Why? Why?”
    His new status would confer instant membership into the club that he knew from careful observation yielded invitations to dinner, parties, plays, concerts, cruises, and bed from widows, divorcées, the never-marrieds. An unattached man of his age in decent health, still with his own teeth, was a rarity. He was his own best capital and he longed to spend it. Mourning beckoned with all the promise of a new day. Besides, he loathed his wife.
    Mabel had been a secretary at the small family-owned insurance agency where Mr. Carter, not part of the family, had worked his entire adult life. Two years ago he’d been forced to retire by the grandson of the founder, a kid he used to entertain by pulling nickels from his ears. Apparently Mr. Carter’s inability to master the new technology, go with the flow on the information highway, made him a liability instead of an asset. The fact that most of his accounts had gone to the great big actuarial table in the sky had also hastened his departure. Mabel hadn’t been a family member either. She’d come in off the street to apply for the position after Mr. Carter had been working there ten years or so. She was a cute little thing then. “Petite,” not