Death on a Platter (14 page)

“It’s not me; it’s Jake,” Alyce said.

“He was worried about you?”

“My husband wasn’t happy that his dinner was late,” Alyce said.

Typical, Josie thought. Jake was spoiled. Alyce catered to her husband—literally. He provided Alyce with the life she wanted, but he expected a gourmet dinner waiting when he came home. Her committees and dinner parties had to advance his career.

“I feel bad about our misbegotten lunch at Tillie’s,” Josie said.

“That wasn’t your fault,” Alyce said. “It was more interesting than my other alternative, the subdivision landscaping committee meeting. But Jake wasn’t happy with a salad and reheated lasagna.”

Did Jake ever hear of pizza delivery? Josie thought. “I promise no dead bodies today,” she said. “I need to mystery-shop chocolate for TAG Tours.”

“What kind of chocolate?”

Ah. Alyce couldn’t resist chocolate. “The good kind,” Josie said. “Kakao has a store in Maplewood. We’re supposed to try the sea-salt caramels made with cream, amber honey, and Tahitian vanilla beans. They’re dipped in semisweet chocolate and then—”

Alyce interrupted. “Josie, you wouldn’t know a Tahitian vanilla bean from a common Madagascar bean. What are you reading?”

“The description TAG sent me, which was probably ripped off Kakao’s Web site. It says the caramels are ‘finished with a few grains of sea salt’ and ‘also available with toasted Missouri pecans.’”

“Guess we’ll have to try both kinds,” Alyce said. “I’m partial to pecans, but I can be persuaded to change my mind.”

“You’ll have to eat a marshmallow pie, too,” Josie said.

“I’ll make the sacrifice,” Alyce said. “Is Kakao on Manchester Road?”

“Right in our little shopping district,” Josie said.

“Near Vom Fass?”

“The store that sells the fancy oil? It’s a couple doors away.”

“Good,” Alyce said. “I want to get some pistachio oil. My special dinner for Jake tonight is pan-seared wild salmon with pistachio oil and tarragon. I wanted to make up for tossing something together when I came home from Tillie’s. I’ll pick you up in forty minutes.”

Josie threw in a load of laundry and vacuumed the living room while she thought about her conversation with Alyce. Was her friend really making Jake a special dinner?

Josie knew better than to criticize her friend’s husband. She didn’t have to live with Jake—Alyce did and she loved him. She loved her life as a full-time homemaker and happily devoted her considerable talents to advancing her husband’s career. She seemed content.

Jake wasn’t concerned that his wife might have been frightened or tired after the police questioned her. He wasn’t worried that she’d seen a man clutch his throat and collapse. Jake was concerned about himself.

Was marriage worth it if a woman was a housekeeper with benefits? Josie attacked a clump of cat hair on the carpet, running the roaring machine over the area long after the cat hair disappeared. She turned off the vacuum, afraid she might suck the life out of her tired carpet, and put the machine away. She decided to use that excess energy on her bathroom.

Josie scrubbed her claw-foot tub. The tub was her refuge. She loved to fill it with bubble bath and light scented candles for a half-hour vacation. She rubbed at a persistent ring with cleanser and a sponge.

How could Jake expect a home-cooked meal when he came home that evening, like some midcentury adman? Josie knew she’d rather be a single mother than married to a man like that.

Not my husband, not my life, not my business, she reminded herself. In the past, that’s how she’d shrugged off Jake’s imperfections. Now that Josie was seriously in love with Ted, Alyce’s stories made her uneasy. What if Ted asked her to marry him? Would walking down the aisle turn her considerate lover into a demanding spouse?

He’s hardly going to marry you for your cooking skills, Josie thought. He’s a better cook than you are. Better wait till Ted pops the question before you borrow trouble. She gave the bathtub another vigorous scrub and then a rinse. Clean at last.

She changed into fresh jeans and a button-down blue shirt, then checked her hair and makeup in the bathroom mirror. Good to go.

She heard Alyce tap the horn. Josie grabbed her jacket and ran out into the pale golden sun. The warm day felt so good she nearly danced down the sidewalk to Alyce’s shining black Escalade.

“You look like a teenager running to my SUV,” Alyce said.

“I feel like one. I have to enjoy the sunshine before winter hits,” Josie said, as she climbed inside.

“Let’s walk to the shopping district,” Alyce said. “We shouldn’t waste a day this perfect.”

The two women strolled through a shower of red and gold leaves. Many of the trees were more than a century old. Maplewood houses had wide porches and big windows. They were generous homes, built when the city’s expectations were just as expansive.

After three blocks of crunching through leafy confetti, they were on Manchester. One side was lined with two-story buildings brightened by huge plate-glass windows. The red-brick shops were time-mellowed and their glass sparkled.

“You’re lucky to have a real shopping district instead of a boring mall,” Alyce said. “Each store is different.” She studied an outfit in the window of Femme, a clothing shop with giant pink polka dots on the glass. “How do you think that blue sweater would look on me?”

“Blue is your color,” Josie said.

“Maybe I’ll buy it when I lose twenty pounds.”

Josie knew that day would never come. Alyce would never have a fashionable stick figure. She also knew there was no point in giving her friend a body-image lecture. Instead, she pointed to the shop next door. “We’re here. This is Kakao.”

They stood in the doorway and inhaled. “Chocolate, my favorite perfume,” Alyce said.

The shop was tall, long, and filled with light. A brightly-painted red tree hung with dark cocoa pods spread across the walls. But the chocolates, displayed in little baskets like works of art, captured their attention.

“Dragées!” Alyce said. She noticed Josie’s blank look and said, “Almonds toasted in sugar and dredged in chocolate. I have to get those. Almonds are good for you.”

“A source of protein,” Josie deadpanned. “And chocolate is good for your heart.”

“Definitely a health food. And a vegetable.”

“The only vegetable I truly like,” Josie said. “I’ll get some of those for Mom and Amelia, too. What about this chili pepper chocolate?”

“Don’t even say the words ‘chili pepper,’” Alyce said. “Not after that lunch at Tillie’s.”

“Sorry,” Josie said. “I’ve been snorting too much chocolate.”

“I want that coffee bark covered with locally roasted coffee,” Alyce said. “Locavores are good for the environment.”

“What’s a locavore?” Josie asked.

“People who eat locally grown food,” Alyce said.

“Not only are we eating locally, we’ll walk off the calories locally.”

“I could walk all the way back to Wood Winds and I wouldn’t be a pound thinner,” Alyce said. “But I’ll be happier if I eat chocolate.”

“That’s the spirit,” Josie said. “Don’t forget the sea salt caramels and the marshmallow pies.”

“With Missouri pecans,” Alyce said. “Dr. Oz says nuts are good. I love wicked virtue.”

After their chocolate binge, they stopped at Vom Fass for Alyce’s pistachio oil. She treated herself to date oil, orange oil, and two olive oils from Greece.

“Now we should go back,” Alyce said. “These packages are heavy.”

“Better lighten the load by eating the caramels and the marshmallow pies,” Josie said.

They set their packages down at a bus bench, unwrapped the sea salt caramels, and popped them into their mouths.

Josie craned her neck to examine the clear blue sky.

“What are you doing?” Alyce asked.

“Checking for clouds,” Josie said. “I don’t want to get hit by a lightning bolt when I say this caramel is a religious experience. Marshmallow pies next and then my work is done.”

“These sure don’t taste like the ones I had as kid,” Alyce said. “The marshmallow is sandwiched between dark chocolate.”

“I may collapse in a chocolate swoon,” Josie said.

“I assume Kakao passed the TAG Tour test,” Alyce said. She and Josie divided the packages and continued their trek back.

“The walk home seems faster,” Josie said. “Must be the sugar high.”

“We made it to my car before the chocolate melted,” Alyce said.

“Or we ate it all,” Josie said. “Now I need a favor. Will you go with me to Gemma’s Junktique? She runs a sort of antique and junk shop not too far from Tillie’s.”

“She’s Clay’s girlfriend, right? The wide-bottomed brunette? Not that I should talk.”

“That’s her,” Josie said. “Tillie thinks Gemma could have killed Clay.”

Alyce checked her watch. “We have time, but I’m not parking on another deserted street. It was too creepy last time.”

“We’ll park in front of the store. I promise, if you don’t feel safe, we’ll turn around and go back. I’ll take my car and you can follow, so you can leave straight for home. I’ll put your chocolate in a cooler so it won’t melt.”

“Your mother really wants you to save her friend Tillie, doesn’t she?” Alyce said.

“Mom blackmailed me into it,” Josie said. “There’s a price for that free babysitting. I want to see Gemma in her natural habitat and find out if she’s really grieving over her loss.

“At the bar, she was all lovey-dovey with Clay. I wonder if she loved him to death.”

Gemma’s Junktique was aptly named. The dusty display window showcased lackluster cut glass, stained quilts, and unloved children’s toys.

Gemma Lynn Rae perched like a crow behind the counter. She wore full modern mourning: black T-shirt and jeans and a veil of lank dark hair. A box of tissues waited like a faithful pet to comfort her. The counter’s shelves were cluttered with brassy costume jewelry, some of it missing stones.

“May I help you?” Gemma Lynn asked, her voice as flat and dull as the display window.

“I want to look at your tin advertising signs,” Josie said.

“I want to see your china,” Alyce said.

“The china is over there,” Gemma Lynn said, waving her hand to the left. Her arm dropped as if the movement exhausted her.

“The tin signs are propped against that wall,” she told Josie, waving in the other direction. Gemma Lynn picked up a fat paperback, exhausted by her labors.

Alyce seemed to float toward the shelves like the dust motes in the air. Josie moved carefully through the clutter, banging her hip on a wooden plant stand decorated with water rings. She nearly upset a lumpy glass vase, the kind that florists gave away. Gemma had priced it at ten dollars.

Josie edged her way past a brass bed draped in faded pink chenille and a rusty velvet Victorian settee. The settee, all knobs and brass nails, looked too uncomfortable for a tryst. Josie pitied the long-gone bottoms condemned to pass time on that torture device. The brass bed looked fairly comfortable. She tried not to imagine Clay and Gemma Lynn bouncing on it.

The stack of tin signs leaned against the wall behind the bed. They were either genuinely weathered or artfully reproduced. Josie was captivated by the bright red sign screaming for King Edward Cigars. She also liked the delicately drawn 1920s Clown Cigarettes ad, but thought the name had too many possibilities for parody. She could almost hear detractors saying: “Smoke like a Clown” or “Only Clowns smoke our tobacco.”

The King Edward Cigars sign was big enough for a barn. It would never fit in her flat. The Clown sign cost sixty dollars. Both out of my price range, Josie thought. Now that I’ve used my excuse to be in here, I should talk to Gemma.

She picked her way back to the counter without breaking any merchandise.

“Find anything?” Gemma Lynn asked from behind her paperback, and turned the page. Josie thought the woman had raised indifference to an art form, and she’d encountered masters as a mystery shopper.

“Your prices for those signs are a little higher than I can pay,” Josie said.

“Hm.”
Gemma Lynn yawned. She didn’t bother hiding it. She didn’t stop reading, either.

“I was at Tillie’s the day your friend Clay took sick,” Josie said.

Now Gemma Lynn looked stricken. “He wasn’t sick,” she said. “He was murdered. And he wasn’t my friend. He was my fiancé. We were going to be married.” Her grief changed to anger and that gave her energy. She brushed her limp hair out of her face and sat up straighter.

Before Josie asked the next question, she looked for Alyce. There she was, a sunny spot of blond hair near a crooked red ginger jar lamp. Alyce was examining the bottom of a teacup. Josie caught her friend’s eye and nodded slightly. Gemma was already angry. If she turned threatening, Josie could grab Alyce and bolt for the door.

Josie unleashed her question: “Did his wife know you wanted to marry Clay?”

“She didn’t love him,” Gemma Lynn said.

That’s not an answer, Josie thought.

“She’s playing the grieving widow now,” Gemma said, “but Henrietta was cheating on him and Clay knew it.”

“Who was the guy?” Josie asked.

“Clay never found out, but he saw the signs. Henrietta stopped complaining that he wasn’t looking for a job—and she used to nag him about that constantly. She even called Clay a mooch.”

“No!” Josie said. Alyce coughed delicately. Oops, Josie thought. I should be careful not to overact.

“Clay wanted to work,” Gemma said, “but he couldn’t find a company that appreciated his talents.”

“I’m sure,” Josie said, hoping she sounded sympathetic.

“Henrietta started going into work early and leaving late,” Gemma Lynn said, “but there was never any overtime on her paycheck. Clay found matches from a hotel by the airport. That made him more curious. He searched her purse while she was asleep. He found her cell phone, but he didn’t see any numbers that weren’t family or business. Clay thought she had another cell phone hidden somewhere, but he never found it.