Murder Under the Palms by Stefanie Matteson

table,” he announced, as he pulled out a chair for Charlotte.
    After Charlotte had introduced Eddie to Connie and Spalding, they sat down. The place settings were identical to those on the Normandie , with elegant Lalique stemware and Haviland porcelain, each item bearing the CGT logo of the French line. A silver-plated coupe in the center of each place held an elegant tropical fruit cocktail.
    They were joined a minute later by Lydia, sans Song Song, and the admiral, and by a couple whom their hostess introduced as the president of the preservation association and his wife. Dede arrived a moment later. She looked as if she had been crying, and Charlotte wondered if there had been a scene at the beach.
    Introductions were made all around.
    “Nice to see you again, sir,” said Eddie when Lydia introduced him to the admiral. He went on to reintroduce himself: “Edward A. Norwood, Lieutenant J. G., U.S.S. Lafayette , Third Naval District. Assistant to Commander Jack McLean.”
    The admiral broke into a smile and extended his hand. “I remember you, Norwood. But I never realized that my junior officer and the famous bandleader were one and the same. Well, here we are on the Normandie again.”
    “Yes,” said Eddie as they started eating their fruit cocktails. “After fifty years. Did you realize that today is the fiftieth anniversary of the fire?”
    “No,” said the admiral. “I didn’t. But you’re absolutely right, Norwood.”
    “Really?” said Lydia. “I hadn’t realized that either. If I’d known, I would have changed the date. We’re supposed to be celebrating the life of the Normandie , not her death.”
    “February ninth, 1942,” said Eddie.
    But Lydia’s attention was occupied by the two empty seats at the table, whose place cards indicated that they were intended for Marianne and Paul. “I wonder where Ms. Montgomery and Mr. Feder are?” she said, clearly perturbed by their tardiness.
    “The last I saw them, they were out at the beach,” offered Dede, with more than a hint of petulance in her voice.
    “We’ll be having the speeches soon. They’d better get back here,” Lydia said. She thought for a moment, and then summoned one of the stewards and asked him to go out to the beach to fetch Marianne and Paul.
    Then she gave a discreet signal to René, who was still stationed at the door, and the phalanx of waiters sprang into action. Within minutes, their empty fruit cocktail coupes had been cleared and they were served the next course, a classic soupe à l’oignon .
    “Are the place settings all original?” asked Charlotte as she picked up her heavy Christofle soup spoon.
    Her hostess nodded. “I bought most of them at an auction in Monte Carlo in 1979, and I’ve added to them over the years. Unfortunately this is the only table that’s set with originals. I only have a complete service for fifteen.”
    “That strikes me as a substantial number,” Charlotte commented. She had once been tempted to buy a Lalique goblet from the Normandie as a memento until she saw the price: $400. “How did you come by your interest in collecting Normandie art?” she asked. “Were you a passenger?”
    “Regretfully I was never a passenger,” Lydia replied with a saccharine little smile. “I wasn’t even born when the Normandie burned.”
    Charlotte doubted that, but she wasn’t about to challenge her.
    “It started with an egg cup, actually. A silver-plated Christofle egg cup. Harley and I bought it at an antique shop for three dollars. Now it’s probably worth three hundred. I fell in love with that egg cup. We had been collectors of art deco furniture and objets d’art for some time, because of the house.”
    “This is quite a place,” Eddie commented.
    “Thank you. It was built in 1935, the same year that the Normandie made her maiden voyage. It was designed in the streamline moderne style and is meant to resemble a ship. We found that we needed to narrow the focus of our collecting,