Murder the Tey Way: A Golden Age of Mystery Book Club Mystery (The Golden Age of Mystery Book Club Mysteries 2) (2 page)

“Don’t bother. I’ll whip up a batch. Two batches, in fact, and keep one for us. Ruthie’s supply of gluten-free desserts is running low.”

I laughed as I saw Joy out. The quintessential homemaker. Who would ever guess that Joy had been a much decorated FBI agent before setting down to have her third offspring?

I sat down to reread Chapter One of my manuscript. I promised myself I’d read for content, but the editor in me took over. I wasn’t happy with a phrase in the first sentence, then I decided the entire sentence had to go. I changed more phrases and deleted another sentence. I’d reached page two, when the phone rang.

“Lexie?” The voice was almost a whisper.

“Gayle! I’m glad you called,” I told my baby sister, embarrassed because we hadn’t spoken in months. “I was never sure you received the card I sent with my new address and phone number.”

“I did. Lexie….”

She paused so long, I was about to ask what was wrong when her words spilled out in a torrent. “Can I come stay with you for a while?”

“Of course,” I said automatically, though my stomach twitched with anxiety.  “What’s wrong? You sound upset.”

“I’m in Ohio. I should get to you some time after nine.”

“You’re driving here?”

“Uh huh. I left Utah two days ago.”

And you’re first calling me now?
My typical go-with-the-flow sister.
I swallowed back my annoyance and asked, “Do you know how to get to my house?”

“I plotted it out on Map Quest. Lexie, don’t tell anyone I’m coming.”

A chill ran down my body. “Who would I tell?”

“I mean,
anyone.
Promise me, Lexie.”

“I promise, Gayle, but why would anyone call me about you?”

Instead of answering, she disconnected. When I called back, there was no response, not even a robotic voice instructing me to leave a message.

I drove to the supermarket and bought what I remembered were Gayle’s favorite foods: bagels and cream cheese, tuna fish salad, stuffed grape leaves and chocolate-covered nuts. How she used to devour chocolate-covered nuts!  And all the while I mulled over what was driving her from the home she loved so much—a four-room cabin her friends had helped her build seven years ago in rural Utah.

Gayle was forty-two, six years younger than me, and would have been at home among the Flower Children of the Sixties. She’d left college in her freshman year to wander around Europe on God knows what money. She’d ended up living in an ashram in India. When she returned to the U.S., she moved to California then to Utah, living a communal life with friends until she built her own home. She made jewelry with semi-precious stones, and these last few years had gotten into pottery. She’d had various lovers over the years, but no one she’d stayed with for more than two years. She was my sister, but we’d seen each other half a dozen times in the past twenty-five years.

Home again, I put away the groceries and tried to call Gayle. No answer. I told myself there was no use fretting. I’d find out what was happening when she arrived tonight sometime during my meeting. The thought left me even more unsettled. I  returned to my manuscript and spent the rest of the afternoon tweaking Chapter One.

It was nearly five o’clock when I closed my laptop, forced to admit that I didn’t much like my sleuth. She was too cerebral, too hesitant to act. I sighed. Maybe tackling a novel was too big a job to start with. Maybe I should write short stories instead, at least until I my writing skills improved.

I made a cheese omelet for dinner, then dragged three dining room chairs into the living room and placed them between the sofa and two armchairs, forming a circle around the rectangular cocktail table. We’d be seven without Felicity, a small but lively group of people more than willing to voice their opinions.

I turned on lamps and set out the snacks. Now the room looked almost homey. Al and his wife had bought the house fifteen years ago, and he’d been renting it out ever since. Except for the two paintings I’d hung on the wall, the living room was devoid of character. I decided not to pull the curtains on the picture window looking out on the cement patio. No one could see us, since tall hedges separated the backyard from my neighbors behind me.

The doorbell rang at a quarter to eight. Marge and Evan, was my educated guess, and I was right. Retired dairy farmers in their mid-seventies, both were large in every sense of the word, with generous smiles and curly gray hair. They looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.

After each had hugged me, Evan claimed one of the armchairs. Marge handed me a plate of cookies. “Gluten-free.”

“Wonderful,” I said. “Joy’s baking another batch for you.”

Marge chuckled. “How sweet. Our own Martha Stewart.” She followed me into the kitchen and was spooning decaf coffee into the coffee maker a minute later.

The bell rang again, and Evan went to the door. I heard Timothy Draigon’s booming bass alternating with Sadie Lu’s sweet contralto as they came into the kitchen to find me. We exchanged greetings and hugs. I was fond of both Tim, a tall, jocular lawyer in his mid-forties, and Sadie, a high school guidance counselor ten years his junior. Both were divorced. They drove to book club meetings together. I couldn’t decide if they were a couple or not.

Joy arrived, her face flushed and frowning. “A slight emergency,” she whispered, shoving a tin of cookies at me.

“Relax! What happened?’

She pressed her lips together. “Nothing I won’t get to the bottom of ASAP.”

“That explains it very clearly,” I tossed over my shoulder as I placed the cookies on a plate and checked on the coffee. When I joined the others in the living room, Evan was exclaiming,

“We got hit last month in broad daylight while we were at the supermarket. The no-good SOB took off with all of Marge’s jewelry—her good pieces as well as her costume jewelry.”

“How did he get in?” Sadie asked.

“We don’t know,” Marge said. “None of the locks were forced.”

Tim grimaced. “No sign of a forced entry when I was burgled in the spring, also in the middle of the day. He took my stamp collection, which was worth several thousand bucks. At least my gold coins remained secure in the safe.”

“It sounds like the thief had access to your homes and knew what to go after,” Joy said.

Tim stared at her. “What are you implying?”

“I’m not implying anything,” Joy responded in a cold tone I’d never heard her use before. “I was wondering what strangers had been inside your homes.”

“We don’t have a cleaning woman,” Marge said. “And Evan and I never leave workmen alone in the house.”

Tim thought a bit. “I have. On occasion.”

“I’ve heard of other burglaries in the neighborhood,” Marge said, her eyes wide with anxiety. “We moved to Ryesdale because it was voted one of the most peaceful towns in America.” She turned to her husband. “Maybe we should have stayed in Wisconsin, like my sister begged us to.”

Evan patted her hand. “Don’t you worry, honey. It’s only a matter of time before they find the guy and throw him in jail.”

Sadie and I exchanged glances. Finding the thief was one thing, keeping him behind bars was another.

Five minutes later I opened the door to Corinne and a sad-looking Felicity.   Corinne, slim and angular, her black hair cropped short, was still dressed in her banker’s suit and low-heeled pumps. She tossed out a general greeting as she entered the living room. Felicity sent me an apologetic look.

“I decided to come, after all,” she said meekly.

I patted her arm. “I’m glad.”

The Roberts sisters headed for the two remaining dining room chairs. Tim offered to move so they could sit next to one another, but Corinne shook her head, her lips pressed in a tight seam. Was she angry at Felicity or simply in a bad mood? Probably the latter, I decided. Corinne wasn’t a warm and fuzzy person, but she was always solicitous toward her younger sister, whom she treated more like a daughter than a sibling.

And what was bugging Joy? Hours earlier she’d been her usual bouncy self.

I cleared my throat and began my spiel.

“Josephine Tey is the pseudonym Elizabeth Mackintosh used when writing five of her mysteries. She was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1896. She trained as a phys ed teacher, and taught for some years before returning home to care for her ailing widowed father. She was a private sort of person, and we know little about her personal life. Using the name Gordon Daviot, Mackintosh wrote several plays. Her biggest success was ‘Richard of Bordeaux,’ whose leading actor was none other than John Gielgud.”

“How fascinating!” Marge exclaimed. “It seems famous people are always crossing paths with one another.”

Sure they do
, I thought cynically, but her husband and Tim nodded. The four young women wore blank expressions.

I grinned at Joy. “You do know who John Gielgud is, don’t you?”

She shrugged. “Sure. He played the butler in the old version of ‘Arthur.’”

Tim laughed. “Gielgud was one of the most famous British actors of the last century, on screen and in the theatre.”

Felicity glanced at her sister, sitting still as a statue, then looked down at her feet. Were those tears I saw in her eyes, or merely a reflection from the light? I wondered what Felicity had been planning to do tonight before Corinne badgered her to come to the meeting.

“Lexie?” Evan touched my arm, and I nearly jumped out of my seat.

“Sorry,” I mumbled. I’d mull over my neighbors’ moods on my own time. After all, I
was
getting paid to facilitate these meetings. I cleared my throat.

“With only a handful of mysteries to her credit, Josephine Tey has a fixed place among the more prolific Golden Age of Mystery authors. She was fascinated by psychology, and was of the opinion that facial characteristics reveal a person’s character. She also took great interest in history, and believed many so-called historical facts are no more than legends passed along from generation to generation.”

“Like Oliver Stone movies,” Tim murmured.

I grinned at him. “Exactly. Tey’s interest in facial expressions and historical accuracy play important roles in her novel,
The Daughter of Time
. From his hospital bed, Inspector Alan Grant gathers solid historical facts to prove that Richard the Third never murdered his young nephews as most people claim he did.”

“I found it a most unusual type of mystery novel,” Marge commented.

“I couldn’t put it down,” her husband said.

Tim and Sadie nodded in agreement. But Joy and the Roberts sisters remained lost in their own thoughts. Gloomy ones, judging by their frowns. 

Suddenly, Joy bolted from her seat. She ran to the picture window and stared out into the night. “Did you see that?”

“See what?” Evan asked.

“The face in the window! Someone’s out there.”

“How can you see anything?” Sadie asked. “It’s dark outside and we’ve lights on.”

Joy didn’t bother to answer as she unlocked the door to the patio and bounded out into the night. The rest of us gathered at the window, but could see nothing. For a moment, no one spoke. Then the murmuring began.

“She seemed edgy when she came in,” Sadie said kindly, in what was probably her Guidance Counselor voice. “No doubt the new baby’s exhausting her.”

“I doubt it,” Marge said. “Brandon’s almost a year old now and sleeping through the night.”

Corinne turned from the window to frown at us. “I can’t make anything out, but Joy must have. She was an agent, for God’s sake!  She’s been trained to notice things we don’t.”

“Oh, no!” Felicity exclaimed.

We stared at her. She’d turned pale. Her shoulders heaved with emotion.

“May-maybe it’s that thief who’s been breaking into houses,” she said. “Maybe he’s planning to rob you next, Lexie.”

Corinne put her arm around Felicity and stroked her hair. In a gentle voice I’d never heard her use before, she said, “Don’t be frightened, sweetie. Joy was an FBI agent. She’ll protect us.”

Minutes later Joy returned, gasping for breath. “I chased the guy across three lawns and lost him.”

The doorbell rang, startling us all. I went to answer it.

“Check the peephole first,” Tim advised.

I did, then swung the door open to admit my sister.

I was shocked by the lines in Gayle’s face that hadn’t been there the last time I saw her at some relative’s wedding. Her long brown hair hung limp and unkempt. I reminded myself she’d been driving the better part of two days.

“Hello, Lexie.”

She sank into my arms. I hugged her tight. She felt brittle. Fragile.

“You must be starving, ”I told her.

“I ate on the way.” She reached down to grab the duffle bag at her feet. “I’m thoroughly exhausted. Do you think I could just rest, maybe go to sleep?”

“Of course.”

“Oh!” Gayle exclaimed, sounding more anguished than surprised at the sight of seven people staring at her.

“We were holding a meeting of our mystery book club,” I explained.

She cupped her hand to my ear and whispered, “You never told me all these people would be here.”

I swallowed back my exasperation. Gayle was sweet-tempered, but under pressure she had a tendency to blame others for imagined faults.

“I never had the chance to,” I pointed out as Joy approached, some of her good cheer back in place.

“Hello, Gayle! I’m delighted to meet Lexie’s sister. I’m Joy Lincoln.”

Gayle stared at the outstretched hand, then shook it. “Hi.” She managed to work up a half smile.

The others took this as a signal to get into the act and introduce themselves. I worried their attention would agitate Gayle further, but their friendliness calmed her.

“I’m sorry to have disturbed your meeting,” she said, then turned to me. “Can I go to sleep now?”

“Of course.” I started for the bedrooms, when Marge said, “You didn’t disturb our meeting in the least. Joy caught someone spying on us. She chased him across several backyards.”

“And lost him,” Joy added, shaking her head in disgust.

Gayle bit her lip. “I almost hit him when he ran into the street—if it’s the same guy.”