At the top of the marble steps— seventeen of them— a broad marble terrace ran across the front of a white-pillared portico. If you focused just on the portico, the house bore a striking resemblance to the way Monticello would look if you painted all the red brick parts white. If you looked at it from farther away, you noticed that the elegant neoclassic portico was stuck onto a disproportionately large white cell-block of a house, making the poor thing look rather like a graceful little tugboat trying to guide an oil tanker into port. I felt so sorry for the poor little portico that I always tried not to look at it until I reached the terrace.
Mrs. Winkleson was waiting at the top of the steps. I’d never actually seen her go up or down them, and was more than half convinced she had an elevator hidden somewhere in the house that no one but she was allowed to use.
“Mrs. Winkleson, this is Caroline Willner and my grandfather, Dr. Montgomery Blake,” I said.
Mrs. Winkleson turned her gaze from me to them, as if waiting for them to perform. Luckily my grandfather was slightly winded from the climb and only nodded at her, rather than attempting the Vulcan Death Grip, as Michael and I had nicknamed his excessively firm handshake. Caroline leaped into the breach.
“What a lovely estate!” she exclaimed. “And it was so gracious of you to agree to hold the flower show here!”
“Thank you,” Mrs. Winkleson said. Her tone was rather stiff, but for Mrs. Winkleson, this was relatively gracious, so I could tell Caroline’s enthusiasm had charmed her.
“Let’s go in,” Mrs. Winkleson said, and turned on her heel to lead the way.
I stepped aside to let the others go in first and turned to look down toward the barns where we’d be holding the flower show. My heart sped up slightly when I saw that there was a police car parked by the barns, with a uniformed county deputy getting out of it. Was this just part of the search, or were the barns becoming a key part of the dognapping investigation? If that happened, there was no telling how much damage it would do to my plans for the show.
Then the deputy tripped over his own feet and I realized it was only Sammy Wendell, who had volunteered to help out with the setup for the rose show. I wasn’t sure whether to be relieved that he was still available to volunteer or concerned that the chief hadn’t cancelled all leave to mount an all-out investigation into the disappearance of Mrs. Winkleson’s dog.
Sammy walked over to a large pickup truck whose bed was piled high with folding cafeteria tables. My cousin Horace, wearing the battered gorilla suit that might as well have been his uniform, was letting down the truck’s tailgate, and Sammy ambled over to help him unload.
No other cars or volunteers visible, but most of them would be in the way anyway if they arrived before the tables were set up. Sammy and Horace could handle that. I turned back to follow Mrs. Winkleson inside.
As usual, I mentally kicked myself for not remembering to bring a sweater, though I was never sure whether the chill I felt on entering Mrs. Winkleson’s house was entirely due to her overuse of air conditioning. The stark black and white décor and her own chilly personality probably contributed just as much.
“What a lovely house,” Caroline exclaimed. Knowing her, I could tell she was just barely restraining herself from adding something like, “Too bad the way you’ve decorated it looks like a cross between a funeral parlor and a museum.”
“Pawn to king four,” my grandfather muttered, looking down at the marble floor, which was laid out in large black and white squares and did rather look like an oversized chess board.
Around us, the walls and woodwork were all painted stark white. A white-painted chandelier hung from the ceiling, decorated with a few strands of jet beads. In four little alcoves, recessed spotlights highlighted large, elegant vases made of black pottery or glass. At one side of the foyer, an enormous black-painted Victorian hall stand was festooned with a variety of black hats, black gloves, black umbrellas, black coats, and one lone white silk scarf.
“You may put your wraps there,” Mrs. Winkleson said, waving at the hall stand. I reluctantly shed my parka, and hung it on one of the lower hooks. Dr. Blake deposited his umbrella there, and Caroline was following suit when one of the gloomy black garments fell on her— a voluminous cloak. It took both my efforts and my grandfather’s to extricate her from its massive folds, while Mrs. Winkleson looked on disapprovingly. Or maybe she disapproved of my sturdy hiking boots. If that was it, tough luck. They were the only sensible shoes for dealing with the amount of mud I’d be encountering at her farm, and I’d wiped them carefully before coming inside.