“Certainly not with me.”

“And the stock was on one of the exchanges, or was it over the counter?”

“It was listed.”

“And it had a brief, fast run-up, and then dropped like a stone. And now it isn’t worth the paper it was written on.”

“That’s about it.”

“You’ve heard the expression, ‘There’s a sucker born every minute.’ For some reason that goes double in the market; otherwise fairly bright people go brain dead when someone gives them a hot tip.”

“In this instance I think there was some kind of extraordinary pressure applied. Anyhow, I wish you’d talk to her. Her name is Laura Arlington. Maybe you can go over the rest of her portfolio with her and see what she can do to enhance her remaining income. I told her about you, and she said she’d like to talk to you.”

“I’d be glad to, Dad. I just hope it’s not too late.”

At six-thirty, dressed for dinner, they sat on the back porch, sipping cocktails and looking out at Narragansett Bay.

“You look great, Mom,” Neil said with affection.

“Your mother’s always been a pretty woman, and all the tender loving care she’s received from me over the last forty-three years has only enhanced her beauty,” his father said. Noticing the bemused expression on their faces, he added, “What are you two smiling at?”

“You know full well I’ve also waited on you hand and foot, dear,” Dolores Stephens replied.

“Neil, are you still seeing that girl you brought up here in August?” his father asked.

“Who was that?” Neil wondered momentarily. “Oh, Gina. No, as a matter of fact I’m not.” It seemed the right time to ask about Maggie. “There is someone I’ve been seeing who’s visiting her stepmother in Newport for a couple of weeks. Her name is Maggie Holloway; unfortunately she left New York before I got her phone number here.”

“What’s the stepmother’s name?” his mother asked.

“I don’t know her last name, but her first name is unusual. Finnuala. It’s Celtic, I believe.”

“That sounds familiar,” Dolores Stephens said slowly, searching her memory. “Does it to you, Robert?”

“I don’t think so. No, that’s a new one on me,” he told her.

“Isn’t it funny. I feel as though I’ve heard that name recently,” Dolores mused. “Oh well, maybe it will come to me.”

The phone rang. Dolores got up to answer it.

“Now no long conversations,” Robert Stephens warned his wife. “We’ve got to leave in ten minutes.”

The call, however, was for him. “It’s Laura Arlington,” Dolores Stephens said as she handed the portable phone to her husband. “She sounds terribly upset.”

Robert Stephens listened for a minute before speaking, his voice consoling. “Laura, you’re going to get yourself sick over this. My son, Neil, is in town. I’ve spoken to him about you, and he will go over everything with you in the morning. Now promise me you’ll calm yourself down.”

35

Earl Bateman’s last class before the weekend had been at 1:00 P.M. that afternoon. He had stayed in his campus apartment for several hours, grading papers. Then, just as he was about to leave for Newport, the phone rang.

It was his cousin Liam, calling from Boston. He was surprised to hear from Liam. They had never had much in common. What’s this all about? he asked himself.

He responded to Liam’s hearty attempts at general conversation with monosyllabic answers. It was on the tip of his tongue to tell him about the cable series, but he knew it would only become yet another family joke. Maybe he should invite Liam over for a drink and leave the latest three-thousand-dollar check from the speakers bureau where he couldn’t miss seeing it. Good idea, he decided.

But then he felt anger build as Liam gradually got to the point of the call, the gist of which was that if Earl was going to Newport for the weekend, he shouldn’t just drop in on Maggie Holloway. His visit the other day had upset her.

“Why?” Earl spat out the word, his irritation growing.

“Look, Earl, you think you can analyze people. Well, I’ve known Maggie for a year. She’s a terrific girl-in fact, I hope I can soon make her realize just how special she is to me. But I promise you she’s not the kind who’s going to cry on someone’s shoulder. She’s contained. She’s not one of your prehistoric cretins, mutilating herself because she’s unhappy.”

“I lecture about tribal customs, not prehistoric cretins,” Earl said stiffly. “And I stopped in to see her because of genuine concern that she, like Nuala, might carelessly leave the door unlocked.”

Liam’s voice became soothing. “Earl, I’m not saying this right. What I’m trying to tell you is that Maggie isn’t fey, the way poor old Nuala was. It isn’t necessary to warn her, especially when it comes out more like a threat. Look, why don’t we have a drink over the weekend.”

“Fine.” He’d shove the check under Liam’s nose. “Come over to my place tomorrow night around six,” Earl said.

“Not good. I’m having dinner with Maggie. How about Saturday?”

“All right, I guess. See you then.”

So he’s interested in Maggie Holloway after all, Earl thought as he hung up the phone. One would never have guessed it from the way he left her by herself at the Four Seasons party. But that was typical of Liam the glad-hander, he reasoned. He did know one thing for certain, though: If he’d been seeing Maggie for a year, he would have paid much more attention to her.

Once again a strange feeling came over him, a premonition that something was about to go wrong, that Maggie Holloway was in danger, the same sensation he’d had last week regarding Nuala.

The first time Earl had had such a premonition was when he was sixteen. He had been in the hospital at the time, recovering from an appendix operation. His best friend, Ted, stopped in to see him on his way to an afternoon of sailing.

Something had made Earl want to ask Ted not to go out on the boat, but that would have sounded stupid. He remembered how all afternoon he had felt as though he were waiting for an ax to fall.

They found Ted’s boat two days later, adrift. There were a number of theories as to what had gone wrong, but there were never any answers.

Earl, of course, never talked about the incident, nor about his failure to give his friend a warning. And now Earl didn’t ever let himself think about the other times the presentiment had come.

Five minutes later, he set off on the thirty-six-mile drive to Newport. At four-thirty he stopped at a small store in town to pick up some groceries, and it was there that he heard about the death of Greta Shipley.

“Before she went to live in Latham Manor, she used to do her shopping here,” the store’s elderly owner, Ernest Winter, said regretfully. “A real nice lady.”

“My mother and father were friends of hers,” Earl said. “Had she been ill?”

“From what I hear, she wasn’t feeling well the last couple of weeks. Two of her closest friends died recently, one at Latham Manor, and then Mrs. Moore was murdered. I guess that really got to her. That can happen, you know. Funny I should remember it, but I recall years ago Mrs. Shipley told me that there was a saying, ‘Death comes in threes.’ Looks like she was right. Kind of gives you the chills, though.”

Earl picked up his packages. Another interesting lecture topic, he thought. Is it possible that there is a psychological basis for that expression as there is for so many others? Her close friends were gone. Did something in Greta Shipley’s spirit cry out to them, “Wait! I’m coming too!”

That made two new topics he had come up with just today for his lecture series. Earlier, he had come across a newspaper item about a new supermarket about to open in England where the bereaved could select all the necessary trappings for a funeral -casket, lining, clothing for the deceased, flowers, guest book, even the grave site, if necessary-and thereby eliminate the middleman, the funeral director.