Kissed a Sad Goodbye

sunlight streaking through the trees.
    Sipping her cider, Gemma said, “I think it’s generous of you to elevate Brandy to the status of girlfriend. Martin Lowell should be ashamed of himself—and so should you for ogling her.”
    “I didn’t ogle.”
    “You did so. But I suppose you should get some dispensation, as she might as well have been going about in her bra and knickers.”
    “You’d have thought Lowell would be more discriminating, after Jo and Annabelle,” Kincaid said, hoping to redeem himself in the matter of Brandy. “But how does a thirty-something banker manage to pull half-naked teenaged birds, tasteful or not?”
    “I thought surely Martin Lowell couldn’t be as bad as Jo made him sound, but he’s a forty-carat bastard if I’ve ever met one,” Gemma said with feeling.
    Kincaid glanced at her, amused. “I rather got the impression you didn’t take to him.”
    “You noticed?” She smiled and settled a bit further down in her chair. “The odd thing is, I can see why they were attracted to him. Jo and Annabelle, I mean, and even Brandy.”
    “The Heathcliff-in-a-suit looks?”
    “He made me feel like a butterfly pinned to a board. If you didn’t know what a rotter he was...” She took a contemplative sip of cider. “Or for some women, he might be appealing even if they did.”
    “Including Annabelle?” Kincaid asked. The sun dropped behind the roof of the house next door, and the garden seemed instantly cooler.
    “Mrs. Pargeter, Jo’s neighbor, said she thought that Annabelle was so devastated by her mother’s death that she grabbed the first thing that looked like love. But if that’s the case, I think she must have realized fairly quickly what Martin Lowell was really like.” Gemma scowled. “What I don’t understand is why she told Jo. In spite of what Lowell says, Annabelle hasn’t struck me as a righteous sort, or as someone who deliberately hurt people.”
    “Lowell seemed to want to have his cake and eat it, too, so Jo need never have known—”
    “But he might have threatened Annabelle, told her he’d confess to Jo if she tried to end things. I don’t think he’d have let her go easily, and maybe Annabelle saw telling Jo as the only option.”
    It seemed to Kincaid that Gemma was going to great lengths to whitewash Annabelle Hammond’s behavior. : “What about her affairs with Gordon and Lewis Finch? Surely she knew Mortimer would be hurt if he learned the truth about those.”
    “I think she was searching for something she hadn’t J found in Reg Mortimer. And she kept those relationships J secret. Up to a point anyway. She only told Mortimer there was someone else under extreme provocation.”
    “ If Mortimer is telling the truth,” Kincaid agreed with some skepticism. “I still believe he’s holding out on us. Did you get a look at his papers?”
    Nodding, Gemma stretched out her feet and wiggled toes unencumbered by sandals. “Looked like bills and bank statements, but I didn’t catch the details. Were those paintings as valuable as I thought?”
    “If I remember what I read recently in the Times, I’d say twenty to thirty thousand pounds apiece.”
    Gemma whistled through her teeth. “Crikey. How could he afford that?”
    “Family money?” Kincaid finished his beer, upending the bottle to get the last drops. “His father’s on the Hammond’s board, but from what I’ve seen, none of the Hammonds have that sort of lolly.”
    “Posh flat, expensive furniture, expensive paintings, expensive clothes... and a stack of bills and bank papers.” Gemma wrinkled her nose. “Financial overextension? But I can’t see how that would give Reg a reason to kill Annabelle. He had everything to lose and nothing to gain.”
    “He might have thought she’d left him her shares. Or that he’d get her position.”
    “A big risk, either way, but we should do a bit of digging into his affairs—as much as we can without getting up Sir Peter’s nose,” added Gemma.
    “I’m not happy about the Finches, either—major or minor,” Kincaid said, glancing at her. “I find it very hard to swallow that neither of them learned about the other.”
    “Reg Mortimer’s story seems to bear out what Gordon told us—that he was the one who rejected her. What if it was because he found out about Annabelle and his father?”
    “That would give him a bloody good motive for killing her—”
    “Maybe when he found out, two or three months ago. But why kill