THE SAND HILL REVIEW http://www.sandhillreview.org 2001 May

TWELVE FOR BRIDGE

Sarah Bambrook

Lyla Louise Murphy surveyed her living room and dining room in a final inspection. She turned up the corners of her mouth into a little smile and gave a quick nod of approval. Her guests would be comfortable and pampered.

She counted on her fingers. Five, six, seven. This was the seventh year of these monthly bridge games, established as a way for her former sorority sisters to keep in touch after college. Scenes from the intervening years passed through her mind like a speeding train. So many years and so many changes among the twelve of them. Engagements and marriages, jobs and volunteer work, and children--

Lyla forced her eyes back into focus and scrutinized the room. She had placed three card tables between the sofa that stretched along the wall of windows and the brick hearth opposite. Each table was laid ready with a neatly stacked deck of cards, a score pad, a stub pencil and a delicate china dish of pastel mint wafers. Four folding chairs were drawn up to each table in perfect symmetry like partners in a square dance. The gleaming silver silent butler on the end table waited to receive the dregs of the individual crystal ashtrays she had set out for the convenience of the smokers among her guests. She pictured them mentally. Polly and Dorothy always smoked, of course, and Marjorie. At the last gathering, Susan claimed to have given it up. She couldn’t really imagine Susan giving up smoking, as enamoured of her mother-of-pearl cigarette holder and matching lighter as she was. Lyla raised her eyebrows and shrugged.

She looked at the large radio that stood by the French door on one side of the fireplace and thought about the many evenings Dan turned it on so he could hear the police calls while he took his dinner break. She had even learned some of the codes from hearing them so many times. It made her feel closer to her husband and his intriguing world of police work. She was lucky he was a policeman and exempt from the draft. Otherwise he would have surely been called up or have volunteered. He had already served in the Navy before he entered the police force. That had been just two years before she had met him and long before she had even imagined the country could be drawn into the war.

Her gaze turned toward the dining room. She had pulled the dining chairs away from the near side of the mahogany table with its great claw-footed pedestals so that her guests could easily reach the refreshments. Her tablecloth was so starched and ironed that no wrinkle would dare mar its pristine surface. She recalled the long hours she had spent to perfect the colorful bouquets of hand-embroidered pansies that decorated the border of the cloth above the tatted edging. She had had a lot of time for that sort of thing in the years since college, waiting for the baby that never came.

With a shake of her head, Lyla brushed away the thought of her greatest disappointment and continued her inspection. She had polished the glinting tea service and the flatware until her wrists had ached, but it had been worth it. The engraved tea tray and its stately pots were the highlight of the far end of the table. She had set matching glasses in a semi-circle around Grandmother Murphy’s cut glass pitcher, filled with lemonade, leaving ample space between it and the large bowl of bronze and yellow chrysanthemums for a tray of open faced sandwiches: egg and chicken salad, cucumber, and deviled ham, now waiting in the icebox. At the other end of the table were two plates of homemade cookies.

Lyla adjusted the cookies slightly to juxtapose them with the scrolled glass plate that held one of her famous angel cakes, all moist and gooey in its coat of fluffy pink icing. It was a good thing that Dan wasn’t fond of sweets because it had taken nearly her entire hoarded stock of sugar to do the baking and make the lemonade. For a good cook like herself, it was a nuisance to be on rationing, yet she was glad to do what she could for the boys overseas.

“Oh, no!” Lyla moaned and swooped down on one of the glasses. She held it up to the light to reveal the single water spot that had caught her meticulous eye. A glance at her wristwatch told her there was still plenty of time to make a correction.

She grasped the blemished glass to her aproned bosom and marched through the swinging doors to her kitchen sink. She gave the glass a good dousing, smothered it in soapsuds and rinsed it off again. She wiped it with a soft, blue tea towel and held it up to the window.

Movement caught her attention. Lyla focused past the glass and down the long expanse of grass to the street. An unfamiliar cream-colored Chrysler sedan edged its way to a parking spot just beyond her driveway and nearly out of view. She saw her friend, Muriel Collins, extricate herself from the passenger’s seat after leaning for a moment toward the driver, whose identity was obscured. Her eyes widened as she observed Muriel straightening her black dress with one bare hand and holding a little wisp of a black hat and veil that kept slipping from atop her silky blonde pageboy with the other. It was quite unlike Muriel to be so unpresentable. She couldn’t ever remember seeing Muriel being anything but beautifully coifed and dressed, completely composed, as if she were a model out of Harper’s Bazaar. Muriel was the obvious looker in their little group with her slender figure and luminous, violet eyes. So much more lovely than she was herself, a tall brunette with an average face, freckles and light blue eyes.

Lyla finished wiping the glass and returned it to the dining table. On the way to the front door, she untied her frilled, organdy apron and draped it on the arm of the sofa. She stepped through the arched door into her tiled and domed entryway and felt the familiar rush of pride at the gracious first impression she knew it made of her lovely home. She opened the door and then stifled a gasp.

“Muriel, whatever--”

“Oh, Lyla,” Muriel said and stepped forward to embrace her briefly. “I’ve had the most trying day.” Her voice sounded strained behind the smile.

“Well, come in, come in.” Lyla closed the door behind Muriel and wondered.

“Oh, it’s so silly,” Muriel was saying.

Lyla felt the full effect of those wide violet eyes, but noted that they were red-rimmed with dark smudges underneath. Muriel must have sensed her curiosity, for she lowered her eyes quickly.

“I’ve been running late all morning and then--” With a perfectly manicured hand, Muriel swept the golden tresses back from the left side of her face to reveal a discolored and swollen cheek. “--I pulled the car door open in a rush and hit myself in the face. Can you imagine? Knocked my hat off and everything. Then the car wouldn’t start. Do you think Polly would give me a ride home?”

Lyla nodded and put her arm around Muriel’s waist. She steered her toward the hall. “You poor darling. Come along to my room where you can lie down for a moment. I’ll get you an ice pack for that cheek and a nice cup of tea.”

She felt Muriel lean against her as they moved along the hall. The violet eyes, even with her own blue ones, looked almost desperate.

“Oh, Lyla. I knew I could count--”

Lyla sensed her astonished look was the reason Muriel had broken off in mid-sentence, as if her friend realized how inappropriate her statement must sound. Especially when it had been accompanied by undisguised relief that was too great for a bumped cheek, too great for a mussed costume, too great for an ice pack and a cup of tea.

“Oh, tea would be--heaven.” Muriel said instead and looked away again.

In the bedroom, Lyla plumped cushions on the chaise lounge and gestured to Muriel to sit down. “Just lie back here, dear, I won’t be a minute,” she said.

From the hallway after leaving the room, Lyla reached back to close the door. She saw Muriel swing her legs up onto the chaise and sink into the cushions like a wilted flower. She realized that for the first time in their relationship, it was she who was the strong one and Muriel who was vulnerable. She had always been a little in awe of Muriel, so beautiful, rich, a debutante. It made her feel proud that Muriel turned to her now.

But there was something that just wasn’t right about Muriel’s story. It wasn’t like her to be late or flustered or needing reassurance any more than it was like her to be disheveled. Lyla checked her watch again. Muriel hadn’t been late, either, she had been early. There was still a good twenty minutes before the other women would begin to arrive. And there was much to do before they came.

Lyla sped through the living room and grabbed her apron along the way. She dashed into the kitchen, pulled a tea bag from the box and put it into a cup. She suddenly felt compelled to bring the icepack and tea quickly as if to keep an unspoken pact between herself and her friend. It was important that she help Muriel. Suddenly she stopped, teakettle held in mid-air above the cup. She watched the steam escaping in a stream and heard the whistle slowly die into silence like the call of a departing train as the water stopped boiling. To help Muriel do what?

“To help Muriel keep her secret, whatever it is,” she said aloud and nodded her determination to do so.

After ministering to her friend, Lyla returned to the kitchen to brew coffee and retrieve the platter of sandwiches from the icebox. She placed the sandwiches on the dining room table and then arranged dishes of nuts and bonbons here and there between the other buffet dishes, like little treasures to be discovered after the more substantial items had been eaten. She filled the cream pitcher and poured the last of her sugar into the sugar bowl.

Lyla had just emptied the remaining water from the teakettle into the teapot and filled the coffee server when the doorbell rang. Through the living room windows, she could see that four more friends had arrived, probably riding together in Susan’s car to save gasoline. She bustled to the front door.

“Hello, hello.”

“You look wonderful.”

“It’s so good you all could come.”

Lyla, Susan, Polly, Edith and Dorothy exchanged greetings and hugs. The sounds of laughter and frivolous chatter flitted and twittered around the living room and filled its emptiness with life. Lyla carried piles of coats into the spare bedroom, directed guests toward the bathroom and offered refreshments like the conductor of an orchestra, first giving the cue to the tympani, then to the woodwinds and finally to the brass.

She greeted another wave of arriving guests: Shirley with a new, shockingly red hairstyle, Marjorie, and Penny who was seven months’ pregnant and looked nine. Lyla felt a little pang of envy at seeing Penny so close to the motherhood she herself longed for, but buried it immediately in a burst of sincere joy for her friend. After hugging Penny, she greeted Carla, who was bohemian in dress and discourse as usual, Lucy, who was only too anxious to show off a whopper of a diamond engagement ring, and Barbara, who brought the news that the twelfth member of their little group, Judy, was down with the flu and couldn’t come.

“Poor Judy.” Dorothy said.

Lyla noted that it took precisely five seconds before Dorothy’s need to organize overtook her sympathy for Judy’s illness.

“No matter. Whoever is dummy at one of the other tables can fill in for each hand. Then we’ll rotate between tables at the end of each rubber. Muriel, come play with Lyla and me. We’ll start with the vacant seat.”

Lyla whirled around. She hadn’t noticed Muriel come out from the bedroom in the midst of all the commotion stirred up by nearly a dozen friends who hadn’t seen each other in a month. Lyla likened it now, as she always did, to a gust of wind that exploded in the pile of leaves that was their lives, kicking them up and out from their orderly places and then letting them settle back down again in new arrangements, never the same. Muriel had stepped out to be part of the group as if she, too, had only just arrived on the gust of wind.

Lyla noticed that Muriel had put the intervening minutes to good use. She had parted her hair so that it fell over her left eye and screened the swollen cheek, made less obvious by the deft application of makeup. Her hat perched perfectly on the yellow mane. Her black wool dress now hung in proper folds. She seemed like her usual self, smiling, chatting easily with the others, as if she had forgotten the events of the morning, safe in the circle of her friends.

Lyla began to relax. She thought she must have imagined there could be something more to Muriel’s simple explanation for her disarray when she arrived. Still, when she urged her guests to take their places at the card tables, she made sure that she sat across from Dorothy with Muriel on her right side and opposite the vacant seat.

The next hours passed with cries of “One spade” and “Two hearts” and “Game” set to the music of shuffled cards and engulfed in the scent of tobacco smoke. The players finished the games in orderly succession, then broke for a stretch and more refreshments.

Lyla was glad to stand up and move around. She had noticed Dorothy looking thoughtfully at Muriel more than once and worried that the too candid Dorothy would try to draw her out. She had only just served another cup of coffee to Barbara and Polly when she saw Dorothy advancing on Muriel. Dorothy reached out to tip the lovely face with the violet eyes toward the light.

“Who’s hit you, Muriel?” Dorothy said. “Not that husband of yours, I hope.”

Lyla’s stomach sank at Dorothy’s words. She saw Muriel blanch and then flush. She held her breath while the normal color returned to her friend’s face.

“’Course not, Dottie,” Muriel said. Her laugh tinkled brightly like a wind chime. “But leave it to you to imagine the worst. I hit myself with the car door, hurrying because my watch stopped and I thought I was late. Silly thing to do. I was a sight when I got here, wasn’t I, Lyla?” Muriel turned towards her. Her face looked composed, but the message in the lilac eyes was perfectly clear.

“Oh, yes,” Lyla said. “Can you picture our Muriel with a cocked hat and a bruise coming on?” She took a step forward and slipped her arm around Muriel’s waist. “But a little lie down and a cup of tea did wonders, didn’t it, darling?” Lyla pressed her cheek briefly against Muriel’s, then turned to confront Dorothy with a smile.

“Good heavens, Dottie! Haven’t you ever been rushing around and done something clumsy like trip over your own feet?” She looked around for support from the others, who nodded obligingly. “I know I have. More sandwiches anyone?”

She passed the platter, then offered cookies, cake and more coffee so quickly that everyone appeared to be distracted from Dorothy’s remarks. The women began chatting about other things. After awhile, they returned to the bridge tables. As Dorothy rotated to the next table, Lyla breathed a sigh of relief that the crisis was past.

In the middle of the next game, Lyla looked up in surprise at the sound of the doorbell. She saw the figures of two men at the door, one of them in a familiar policeman’s uniform.

“Why, that looks like Dan,” she said and stood up. “I wonder why he doesn’t use his key?” She hurried to the front door, opened it and observed the two men standing on the front porch.

“Hello, Sweetheart,” her husband said. He came inside the entryway and hugged her. The other man, taller and blonde with a moustache, removed his hat and came inside also.

“This is Detective Herzog,” Dan said. Lyla nodded and shook the detective’s hand.

“Mrs. Murphy,” Detective Herzog said, “is Mrs. Muriel Collins among your guests?”

“Why, yes. She is. Did you wish to speak with her?” Lyla felt her eyes staring from the face of one man to the other.

Detective Herzog nodded and started toward the living room when Dan grabbed his arm and stopped him.

“Wait a minute, Pete. Let me handle it for now. Muriel knows me.”

Lyla felt panic grip her heart. “Dan, what’s wrong?”

Her husband just shook his head at her. He strode into the living room where Muriel and the other women had stopped playing cards. All eyes turned toward him.

“Good afternoon, ladies,” Dan said. “Sorry to interrupt your game. If you’d just let us talk to Muriel a minute.”

Dan crossed the room to stand near Muriel’s chair. She looked up at him with no expression on her porcelain features.

“Muriel,” he said, “would you mind coming into the kitchen a minute?”

There was complete silence in the room while Muriel rose from her chair and followed Dan toward the kitchen. Detective Herzog fell in behind them and it flashed through Lyla’s mind that the three of them formed a procession as if going to the gallows. Fear welled up in her and she rushed to follow them. At the kitchen door, Dan stopped her.

“No,” Muriel said. “I want Lyla to come with me.”

“All right,” Dan said. He pushed the door fully open again.

While Lyla was walking through the door into the kitchen, she heard a buzz of whispered conversation begin behind her. Through the corner of her eye, she saw the bridge players moving forward into the dining room, to congregate like a group of conspirators.

In the kitchen, Detective Herzog asked Muriel to sit down at the table. Lyla moved next to her and took her hand. Her husband hovered near the detective.

“Mrs. Collins--” Detective Herzog cleared his throat. “Mrs. Collins, I regret to inform you that your husband is dead.”

Muriel gasped and half rose from her chair. The pallor that covered her face was deathly. Lyla swallowed her own distress and put her arm around Muriel’s shoulders, pressing her back downwards into the chair. Both women looked up at Detective Herzog.

“And I’m sorry,” he said, “but I must ask you, Mrs. Collins, where you were between eight and eleven o’clock this morning.”

As a policeman’s wife, Lyla knew instantly what he was asking. Howard’s death must not have been an accident. For some reason, the detective suspected Muriel of being involved. But that couldn’t be. Not Muriel. Muriel could never kill anyone. There must be some mistake. Why didn’t Muriel say anything?

Muriel was looking at her and then she turned toward Dan. Her purple eyes were stormy, her brows knit. Her lips seemed to be forming words, but no sound came out.

“Muriel, darling,” Lyla said. “Tell them. Don’t let them think--” It was like a bad film noir. The bare kitchen table. The two men interrogating the helpless slip of a woman. The anxious friend, not wanting to believe the worst.

Muriel licked her lips. Her voice came out as a croak. “I — uh — I was at home until nine thirty.”

“Was your husband there, too?”

“Yes.” Muriel nodded slowly as if it took her a long time to process what was said to her. “He was there until I left –- to come over here to Lyla’s –- for bridge.”

“Was your husband alive when you last saw him?”

Muriel stood up. She turned half way around to face Lyla. Then she collapsed like a deflating balloon. Lyla tried to support her as she slipped downwards. Dan and Detective Herzog sprang around the table and caught Muriel just as she was falling on the floor. Detective Herzog lifted the unconscious body in his arms.

“Where can I lay her down?”

Lyla was routed from her shock. She began walking toward the kitchen door. “In the living room,” she said. She pushed the kitchen door open and held it. She watched Detective Herzog carry Muriel through the door toward the living room sofa. Dan followed closely behind. The other women stepped back from their huddle of concern to let the men pass through.

Detective Herzog laid Muriel down upon the sofa. The other women clustered around her. Lyla stood frozen at the kitchen door.

“Lyla,” she heard Dan call out. “Bring some brandy.”

Lyla walked over to the buffet, took a brandy snifter and a bottle out of one of the lower cupboards, and hurried into the living room. She poured some brandy into the glass and handed it to Dan. He propped Muriel up and held the glass to her lips. As the amber liquid touched her mouth, Muriel stirred and opened her eyes.

“Here, drink this,” Dan said.

Muriel took a sip of brandy. Then she struggled to sit upright. She pressed her right hand against her forehead. Her hand trembled.

“Please, ladies,” Detective Herzog said. “Give us some room.”

The women moved back a little way from the sofa to stand amongst the card tables and chairs.

“But what has happened?” Dorothy said.

Lyla found her wits again. “Dottie, dear,” she said, “Howard’s been killed and the police think our Muriel did it.”

For once, she had been more blunt than Dorothy. She watched Dorothy gasp and step back in horror along with the others.

“Oh, no!” Polly said. She pushed forward and grasped Detective Herzog’s arm. “No, Muriel couldn’t have done such a thing. She couldn’t.”

“What makes you think she did?” Susan asked. Her brown eyes were angry and her fists were clenched.

“The timing for one thing,” said Dan. “That and the fact that the neighbors heard Howard and Muriel fighting this morning.”

“Aha!” Dorothy looked triumphant. “I knew she didn’t get that bump from the car door. I –- oh, dear, I --” Dorothy stopped talking when Lyla and the others glared at her.

“What’s this about?” Detective Herzog said. His voice was gruff. He looked at each of the women in turn as if to scare an answer out of them.

“I’ll tell you what it means.” Everyone turned toward Muriel, who has risen to her feet. She pinned her hair back with her hand to expose the swollen check to the detective. “Dorothy asked me earlier if Howard had hit me and I made up a story about hitting myself in the face with the car door. But Dorothy was right. And it wasn’t the first time he had hit me.”

The women looked at each other with shocked expressions on their faces. Muriel turned toward Lyla. “I’m sorry to have lied to you, Lyla, I was so ashamed. Howard did hit me. And I threw his football trophy at him and ran away.”

Lyla heard another chorus of gasps around her. She put her fingers against Muriel’s lips. The violet eyes were drowning in tears.

“Hush, dear,” Lyla said. “Don’t say any more. You need an attorney.” She looked for Barbara’s face and caught her eye.

“Yes. I’ll call him immediately. Phone in the kitchen?” Barbara started in the direction she had pointed.

Lyla nodded. “Barbara’s husband, Joe, is an attorney,” she said to Detective Herzog.

“We may as well take her downtown,” Dan said to the detective. “Joe can meet with her there.”

Detective Herzog took Muriel’s arm. “Come along, Mrs. Collins, and get your things. We need to ask you some more questions.”

Lyla ran down to the spare bedroom to fetch Muriel’s coat. She put it around Muriel’s shoulders. “Don’t worry, dear. It sounds like an accident. Joe will know what to do.” She squeezed Muriel’s hand.

Lyla was surprised to look up and see Dan frowning at her. Surely he didn’t think Muriel was guilty. She watched with a growing feeling of despair as Dan and Detective Herzog half-supported Muriel between them until they reached the police car. They put Muriel in the back seat of the car, settled into the front seat and drove away.

Lyla slid into a seat next to Marjorie. It was the second day of the trial and the courtroom was packed. Most of her other friends were there, too, and the press and curious onlookers. She frowned as she realized just how much the of a stir the trial of the attractive young woman accused of killing the college football hero had created in the community.

Lyla saw that the jury was already seated. A stern-faced group of mostly men in suits and starched white collars. She waved at Dan who sat behind the prosecutor’s table with the other police officers. He no longer appeared upset with the degree to which she had involved herself in Muriel’s dilemma, strategizing defenses with her friends, searching for one of Muriel’s neighbors who had gone out of town, taking little gifts over to Muriel’s parents’ home where Muriel had escaped when bail was posted.

She watched while Joe waited for Muriel at the other table. When the accused entered the courtroom, Lyla’s heart went out to her. She looked so young and frail in her pink twin set and slim, gray skirt. She wore a single strand of pearls, but no other jewelry. Two pale combs held her golden hair back from her face. She might have been sixteen.

The courtroom was called to order and everyone stood up for the entrance of the judge. Lyla didn’t like him. He had sat there the entire first day in his sour face appearing to pay little attention to the proceedings. Occasionally, he would issue a ruling when Joe or the prosecutor entered objections, but otherwise, he looked down at his papers and was silent.

A long string of testimony had been given by policemen, coroner’s men, neighbors who attested to Muriel and Howard’s quarrels. The prosecution had made a plain case that Muriel was guilty. Lyla has listened impatiently, waiting for Joe to get his turn. When he did, he had been brilliant.

Joe had asked the police about the fingerprints on the football trophy. The police had had to admit that they could only read one thumbprint, Muriel’s, and that the rest of the prints were smudged. Joe had also gotten them to say that the smudging could have occurred if the trophy had been handled later by someone wearing gloves. With Joe’s skillful questioning, the coronor said that the wound that had killed Howard could actually have been made by two blows, not one. Then several employees of the sporting goods store attested that Howard had young man the week before the murder and that the man had threatened him.

Lyla had testified about Muriel coming to her house, how afraid she had seemed and how she had asked if Polly could take her home. If Muriel had thought Howard was dead, she would not have wanted to go home, would she? Everyone had laughed when she had described how Muriel had looked, all mussed, adding, “Even her seams were crooked,” as if that were the final proof that Muriel was uncalculating. She had said that she had wondered about the previous bridge dates Muriel had missed, that Muriel had seemed upset or frightened when she had called in her excuses. She had made sure the jury heard how sweet and generous Muriel was and how she was so proper and considerate. Then Joe had asked her if Muriel had been wearing gloves when she arrived at her house and she had turned triumphantly to the jury and said that Muriel had not.

Muriel had taken the stand and had admitted, in a small, timid voice, that Howard had hit her several times before, that he didn’t like her being with her friends, and that he had told her he had only married her for her parents’ money. Joe had had Muriel go over and over the scene where she had thrown the football trophy at Howard. Muriel had insisted that she had seen it strike him, but that she had fled in fear and gone to Lyla’s. She had turned those purple-blue eyes on the jury and said that she never dreamed she might have killed Howard. She didn’t think she could have thrown that heavy trophy so hard and she certainly had never wanted her husband dead.

Then Joe had produced the surprise witness, Mrs. Heffner, who lived next door to Muriel, but who had been away for the past two months visiting her daughter so the police had not questioned her. It had been Lyla who had finally found her, explained the circumstances to her and persuaded her to return in time for the trial. Mrs. Heffner had sworn that she had seen a man with scraggly blonde hair who matched the description of fired employee, now missing, lurking around Muriel’s house at about ten o’clock on the day of the murder.

Joe had rested the defense case on Mrs. Heffner’s testimony. The jury had withdrawn to deliberate and court had been adjourned until today.

Now Lyla endured the agonizing wait until the jury could return and the verdict be read. She felt the jury must find Muriel innocent since there was another suspect, but she was afraid to hope.

Finally the jury foreman was called. He rose and unfolded the paper upon which the verdict was written. It seemed to Lyla that it took hours for that simple act.

The jury foreman cleared his throat and looked around the courtroom. “We find the defendant not guilty,” he said.

Lyla felt like jumping up and down and cheering. She was ecstatic. The weeks of worry and doubt fell away like someone else’s nightmare. Muriel was free and she had helped to make her so. She and her friends hugged each other and Muriel and Joe.

Dan came over to her, smiled and kissed her before leaving to go back to work. “I’m glad, Sweetheart. I know how much this meant to you,” he said.

The gaiety swept them all out into the hall. After chatting and congratulating each other, the women began to drift away to their cars to go home. Lyla felt the need to have a moment to herself, to take in the tremendous joy she felt at having helped to right the wrong done to her friend. She was breathless from all of the excitement.

She decided to freshen up a bit before leaving the courthouse.

She soon discovered that Muriel had also retreated to the ladies’ lounge. Muriel had set a large hatbox-shaped case on one of the sinks and was beginning to take things out of it. First came a pair of gray high-heeled pumps with which she replaced the flat shoes she had been wearing. Next, she removed the pink cardigan and put on a gray suit jacket, boxy, with a black velvet collar that buttoned up to the neck and hid the pink pullover sweater she still wore underneath. Muriel drew out the strand of pearls and tucked them under the collar of her jacket so that they just showed at her throat.

“You were wonderful, Lyla,” she said.

“Oh, you were too. But Mrs. Heffner really saved the day.” Although her response had been modest, Lyla beamed at her friend’s praise.

Muriel sniffed. “Mrs. Heffner. That deluded old fool? Who knows who Mrs. Heffner saw or if she really saw anyone? She’s so suggestible, you could have asked her if she’d seen a camel in the yard and she would have testified to it.”

Lyla stopped beaming and looked at Muriel wide-eyed. “But the jury believed that she may have seen someone who did the murder. Maybe that man that Howard had fired. I thought so, too. When I showed her his picture, she identified him right away. I thought she was very convincing.”

Muriel looked at her with a crooked smile. She turned back to the mirror to replace the pale shade of pink lipstick with a darker one. She powdered her nose, put a touch of mauve eyeshadow over each eyelid, and freshened the mascara on the lashes that ringed those luminous, violet eyes. “Yes, but you set the jury up to believe it.”

“Set them up?”

“Yes, darling. It was your testimony that convinced them that I was innocent. They were just looking for some evidence, any kind of evidence so they could vote the way they felt. So, when Mrs. Heffner said she saw a man lurking about, well, they were just ready to believe that she actually saw someone and that he was the murderer. But they wouldn’t have been ready if it hadn’t been for what you said.”

Lyla blushed. “Oh, Muriel, I was just saying what I believe. I know you couldn’t have done it. But aren’t you worried about who did? I mean, poor Howard.”

Muriel shrugged. She brushed her hair back and shaped it into a chignon at the nape of her neck. She took several hairpins from the hatbox and slipped them into place to hold it. Next she clipped two large pearl and diamond earrings on her ears and stood back to admire them.

“Howard and I should never have married.”

Lyla was shocked to hear Muriel say so. She knew Howard had been a heel, but to hear Muriel deny her marriage like that was too brutal. She was sure Muriel had loved Howard. They had been the most popular couple in college.

She watched in silence while Muriel took a gray wool hat out of the hatbox and positioned it on her head. It had a black velvet ribbon around the back of it and a black veil.

“Why didn’t you get divorced, if you really felt that way? Especially when Howard was so cruel,” she said finally.

Muriel turned toward her with cold eyes.

“I asked for a divorce, you know. I did. But Howard, poor Howard, wanted money. Since I was the guilty party, he wanted a big payoff to give me a divorce. I don’t think he really ever intended to give me one, just make me pay and pay. I couldn’t have that.”

“What do you mean ‘guilty party’?”

Muriel took a pair of gray gloves out of the hatbox. Without touching them, Lyla knew they were luxuriously soft and supple. Muriel slipped the gloves on and then closed the case. She lifted it and stood there, ready to leave.

The final effect of the change of clothing and hairstyle stunned Lyla and took her breath away. It was as if the distraught Muriel of the past few weeks had been transformed into someone else. Gone was the frightened, vulnerable little golden-haired girl in the pink sweater, so helpless in the courtroom. In her place stood a glamorous, sophisticated, capable woman. The woman she had always thought was the essence of beauty, the woman who had never seemed to need protecting. The woman she had forgotten existed.

“Why do you think Howard and I were always fighting? I had men friends, several of them, and Howard didn’t like it, of course. Howard may have been a big man in college when he was on the football team, but without that he was boorish and boring, so I enjoyed myself with other people. That’s why he hit me before. And why he hit me that last day, too. And, of course, he threatened me. Well, when someone tells you they’re going to take away from you what makes you who you are, you have to do something about it. I can’t imagine being without money.”

Lyla’s mouth fell open. She stared at Muriel. She really didn’t know her at all. This Muriel wasn’t beautiful. Her features were contorted, her eyes like ice. Lyla felt repulsed and devastated.

Muriel walked toward the door. She paused and turned back to face Lyla. The beautiful, serene mask covered her face once again. “You were wonderful, darling,” she repeated. “I knew I could count on you.” She blew Lyla a kiss before passing through the doorway.

Lyla stood still for a full minute before following Muriel out into the hall. She saw that Muriel was already at the courthouse door, pulling it open and stepping out into freedom. She followed her as if doing so would make something happen to erase the last few moments and restore her illusions.

At the top of the courthouse steps, Lyla watched Muriel descending the last several of them in that gliding mannequin’s walk of hers. Then she saw the cream-colored Chrysler sedan that waited at the bottom of the steps and the darkly handsome young man in a navy blue suit who waited with the door open.

All at once, Lyla knew the full truth. But it was too late. Muriel had counted on that, too.