Free Murder Under the Palms by Stefanie Matteson Page B

Eddie turned to her. “And what about you?” he asked. “Are you still married?”
    Of course, Charlotte thought. How would he have known? She had the benefit of Connie’s espionage, but he had no spies working for him. Nor was she such big news anymore that her divorces were splashed all over the newspapers. Or maybe it was that she’d had so many husbands, nobody cared anymore.
    “I was divorced three years ago,” she said. “From my fourth husband. The first and second you knew about. The third was a very brief-lived mistake. And the fourth … The fourth was a mistake too, I guess I’d have to say. But not quite such an ill-considered mistake as the third.”
    “I heard about number three,” he said. “I never heard about number four.”
    “Well, no use in boring you now. It was boring enough for me.” She looked over at Eddie. “I guess I kept trying to find what I had with you.”
    “Did you ever?” he asked.
    “Yes, once. But not with any of my husbands.” The other love of her life had been Linc Crawford, the cowboy actor. Funny how different the two men were. Linc: tall, quiet, serious. Eddie: short, garrulous, charming. “He died in 1957,” she said. “And you?”
    He shrugged. “Celia and I. Well, you know about that. I guess I could say that I loved Mary, my second wife. She died just last spring—in Pasadena, where we lived, where I still live. We were very comfortable with one another. But I didn’t love her the way I loved you.”
    “How long will you be here?” Charlotte asked.
    “Until after the Big Band Hall of Fame Ball. It’s at the Breakers, where I’m staying. I came down here early for rehearsals. I’ll be going out on tour for two and a half months right after the ball, which is on February twenty-second, two weeks from yesterday. Would you like to be my date?”
    “Very much,” she said.
    “I’m playing,” he added. “So it will mean a lot of sitting around.”
    “I don’t mind.” She smiled at him. “I’m sure the music will be good.”
    “Not just good—great,” he said. “But I’d like to see you before that. I have to go away on a little trip, but I’ll be back on Thursday. Would you like to go out to dinner on Thursday night?”
    Charlotte nodded. “René is having a special Normandy night at his private dining club that night,” she said. “Featuring the cuisine of Normandy. My friend Spalding Smith says the club has the best food in Palm Beach. He and his wife Connie are members.”
    “Could he arrange for us to eat there?” Eddie asked.
    “I think so,” said Charlotte. As she smiled at him, she noticed that her heart was pounding.
    Their conversation was interrupted by one of the white-jacketed stewards, who announced that dinner was about to be served. Passing through the sliding glass doors into the Grand Salon, they joined the throng that was drifting into the dining room through the doors on either side of the mural. Like the Grand Salon, the dining room was a large, high-ceilinged room in which a couple of dozen round tables seating ten or twelve people each had been set up. Though it was a beautiful room, with sliding glass doors that stood open to the deck, it was not decorated in the style of the Normandie . Charlotte could just imagine what the Dupas mural must have cost if its other half was hanging in the dining room at the Metropolitan Museum of Art; apparently even the resources of the bumper king were not extensive enough to decorate two large rooms with original Normandie artworks.
    They were greeted at the door by René. “Aha,” he said, his face radiant. “I see that the two lovebirds have met up again after all these years.” He spoke with the appreciation for romance that only a Frenchman could have. “Please come with me.”
    Winding his way among the tables with the authoritative air of a man who is in charge, he led them to the far end of the room, where Connie and Spalding were already seated. “The captain’s