Paperwhite Narcissus Read Online Free

threat.”
    Victoria reached across the desk and picked up the letter. “It’s either a threat or a bizarre practical joke. Who’s upset with you? Besides me, that is.”
    Colley took the letter and slapped the back of his hand against it. “You didn’t write this?”
    “Don’t be ridiculous. You called me in here just to accuse me of writing that note?”
    “I couldn’t imagine anyone else,” Colley said.
    “We might have settled this over the phone. I had nothing to do with it.” Victoria rose from her chair. “What do you intend to do now?”
    “Nothing,” said Colley. “Bill me for your carfare.” He slung the obituary into his wastepaper basket.
    “May I?” Victoria reached over and reclaimed it.
    “Suit yourself.” He added, “You will anyway.”
    Victoria tucked the cream-colored note into her cloth bag, left the editor’s office, marched between the reporters’ desks, and headed down the narrow stairs.
    The two girls, both fresh and pretty and awfully young looking, stood as she went by the receptionist’s desk.

    “Thanks, Mrs. Trumbull,” the dark-haired one said. “Keep your fingers crossed for us.”
    Victoria smiled.
    She caught the bus returning to West Tisbury and got the same driver. He waited until she was seated. “I hear somebody’s been sending Jameson his own obituaries, is that right?”
    “Good heavens! How did you hear that?”
    “It’s in the air,” said the driver. “You want off at your place or at the West Tiz police station?”
    “The police station,” said Victoria, settling back into her seat.
    The bus driver leaned forward and looked up through the windshield. “Looks like we might be in for some weather.”
    Victoria hadn’t noticed the thunderheads that had been building up while she was at the Enquirer. From her seat in the front of the bus she could see the flat anvil tops of the clouds spreading rapidly. Lightning flickered.
    By the time the bus stopped in front of the police station, the wind had picked up. Victoria climbed the steps to the front door and pushed it open. She set aside her walking stick and sat down in the chair Candy Keene had vacated the day before. Victoria unzipped her light jacket, the silky bombardier’s jacket her niece had given her, and fanned herself with the sides.
    “The seat is nice and clean,” Casey said. When Victoria looked puzzled, Casey laughed. “Candy Keene— Miss Candy Keene—needed to dust your chair with her lace hanky before she would sit down.”
    “You know who Candy Keene is, don’t you?”
    Casey nodded. “She bought the Captain Rotch house and has the whole town in an uproar because of the renovation.”
    “Renovation!” Victoria stopped fanning herself. “She tore the house down and built that monstrosity in its place.”
    “She left one wall of the old place,” said Casey. “That makes it a restoration. She claimed the house was in pretty bad shape.”
    “That house was a classic eighteenth-century sea captain’s house. Historic.”

    “Seems like the trend these days.” Casey leaned her elbows on her desk. “Everybody wants four bathrooms and a sauna.”
    “Did you know she’s one of Colley Jameson’s ex-wives?”
    Casey sat up straight and took her elbows off the desk. “The Enquirer Jameson? He was married to her? She doesn’t seem his type. The present Mrs. Jameson is classy.”
    “Calpurnia is wife number five.” Victoria settled back in the chair. “His first wife was his college sweetheart. That lasted about five years until he met Candy, who was an ecdysiast in a New Jersey nightclub.”
    “A what ?”
    “Ecdysiast. A stripper. Ecdysis is what snakes do when they shed their skins.”
    “How do you learn this stuff, Victoria?”
    “I’ve been around,” Victoria said, fanning herself again. “H. L. Mencken came up with the term ‘ecdysiast’ in the 1940s to describe striptease artists. But that’s not why I’m here.” She handed Casey the obituary she’d