Read Murder Under the Palms for Free Online

Nana, we’ve gotten someone different. We’re really lucky, in fact. We’re going to have a famous big-band leader who’s down here because he’s being inducted into the Big Band Hall of Fame at their annual ball, which is in two weeks.”
    Connie turned to Charlotte. “The Big Band Hall of Fame is one of Palm Beach’s charities,” she explained. “They hold a ball to raise money for a Big Band Hall of Fame museum; it’s going to be in a beautiful old Mediterranean-style building at Palm Beach Community College in West Palm Beach.”
    “Who is this bandleader?” Charlotte asked, wondering if the two separate trajectories might finally be about to intersect.
    “Eddie Norwood,” Dede replied.

3
    Charlotte was staying at the Brazilian Court, an old Mediterranean-style hotel built around a charming fountained courtyard, and located in a residential section of Palm Beach four blocks from the ocean. She had chosen to stay at a hotel rather than with Connie and Spalding in order to spare them the burden of her constant presence. Though Connie and Spalding’s house was large—in fact, it might have been called a mansion—she knew that if she had stayed there, they would have felt obligated to entertain her. A measure of privacy might have been provided by their guest house, Grace and Favour, but at the moment, it was occupied by Marianne, who like Charlotte, spent most of her time in New York. When Charlotte had asked Connie where she should stay, Connie had recommended the Brazilian Court, and Charlotte had been very pleased with the accommodations. The hotel had been a Palm Beach landmark since the twenties and had the charming, unpretentious feel of old Florida. She wasn’t the first movie star who had stayed there: the hotel had a reputation for discreetly pampering the rich and famous. She occupied a one-bedroom suite on the first floor whose stucco walls were painted lemon-yellow, and which was charmingly furnished with French provincial furniture painted a cheerful green and white. A bay window in her sitting room looked out over the courtyard through a thicket of jungly vegetation that left no doubt that she was a visitor to the tropics.
    She had spent the day on nearby Worth Avenue, which rivaled Rodeo Drive’s reputation as the most expensive shopping street in the country. She had been trying to forget the subject that was uppermost in her mind: her anticipated meeting with Eddie that evening. Now she sat in one of the rattan chairs in her bedroom, looking at the gown that was spread out on her bed. It was the Fortuny gown that she had worn in the Grand Salon scene of The Normandie Affair and again on the return trip, the night she had met Eddie. Both times she had worn it with the Cartier necklace. For fifty-three years, the dress-had hung in its garment bag in the closet in the spare room of her Manhattan town house, a memento of those four short days just before the outbreak of the war. And now she would be wearing it again, to a dinner dance at a house filled with artworks from the Normandie at which Eddie Norwood would be leading the orchestra. Little had she known that she would be meeting Eddie again when she had unearthed the gown from her closet. Her instructions from Connie when she had called to invite Charlotte for a visit had been to pack an evening gown that one might have worn to a gala dance on board the Normandie . Though she knew the plans for Eddie to play must have been made long in advance of Connie’s call, she nevertheless felt as if it was her decision to wear the Fortuny gown that had set in motion the series of events that would result in her reunion with the first man she had ever fallen in love with.
    She had retrieved the necklace from the hotel safe on her way back from Worth Avenue and now laid it out on the bed above the neckline of the dress and draped the ensemble with the silver fox stole that she had also worn on that voyage. The effect was stunning: the deep red of