Shadow of a Spout (16 page)

“
Did
she, now?” Dana said, an edge to her voice.

Sophie shook her head. Dana had always been competitive with other girls, and Sophie had never understood why. In any group of women she would always stand out as the one the guys would drool over. In the past Sophie would have tried to be conciliatory, but she and Dana were friends, and friends shouldn’t need to do that kind of crap.

She turned back to Eli. “Detective, if you have Zunia’s cell phone, then you know if she was going out to meet someone, or if someone was coming to meet her here, right?”

His expression didn’t change. “That would be correct.”

She heard a subtle emphasis on the word “would.” “But you don’t have it,” she concluded.

“I am not at liberty to confirm or deny the existence or whereabouts of Ms. Pettigrew’s cell phone,” he said, an edge in his tone. “And if you have in mind to be an amateur sleuth, I would seriously discourage you from that.
Someone
targeted Zunia Pettigrew and took the time and effort to point the finger of blame at your grandmother.”

He leaned over slightly from the waist and looked directly into her eyes with a gaze intended not to intimidate, but to hammer home his point. “Look, I
get
that you’re concerned about your grandmother. This affects me, too. Auntie Lala is my favorite aunt, and I can see how worried she is about Mrs. Freemont. That’s why I made sure I was given the job of helping the lead detective on this case, even though he doesn’t want me here. But O’Hoolihan
is
still the lead detective and I’m not out to usurp him.” He took a deep breath, straightened, then finished by saying, “Don’t interfere unless you’re trying to make our job harder.”

Well, she had certainly been told, hadn’t she?

“Now, if I could borrow your booklet for a moment?”

She handed it over without comment. He propped it on a ledge near the elevator, whipped out his cell phone, took a photo of her sketch and handed it back to her. He had the grace to look sheepish as he said, “Like I said, yours is a lot better than the detective’s and it’ll save me time.”

Dana bit her lip and tried not to laugh as she hoisted her bags further up on her wrist. “Now, that was unnecessary, Detective Hodge,” Dana said. “I’m sure Sophie would have been happy to photocopy her sketch for you if you’d asked
nicely
.”

Sophie snickered.

“If you ladies will excuse me,” he said stiffly, “I’ll go back to my job, which was to have a look at the layout of the inn.”

Dana looked crestfallen, but Sophie thought if the guy couldn’t take a little teasing then he was too serious for someone as vivacious as Dana. Sophie tucked the notebook under her arm, and said, “Come on, Dana, let’s go to Nana’s room and you can show me what you bought. Whatever it is, I’ll bet you look gorgeous in it.”

In reality Sophie’s cell phone was buzzing in her pocket and she desperately wanted to know how Jason had replied, so she was relieved when Dana said, with a side glance at the detective, who was writing notes on a small pad, “I have to go to Cissy’s grandmother’s room. SuLinn is going to meet us here in a few minutes. She wanted to stay downstairs and call Randy to tell him she wouldn’t be back to GiGi until tomorrow.”

They all parted ways but Sophie noticed that the detective watched Dana sashay into Mrs. Earnshaw’s room with a regretful expression.

*   *   *

T
his time the tea after the meeting was kind of a late luncheon, hastily put together by the Stone and Scone staff. The dining room was only used at lunch and dinnertime, so at this point in the early afternoon it was only the ITCS group that was eating. The food was better than the dinner they had suffered through the previous evening—just sandwiches, but fresh and full of flavor. Pickle trays, salads, rolls with butter, scones, biscuits and fresh fruit rounded out the meal. Rose surmised that the coffee shop cook had been pressed into service, and that was why the food was better. She made a mental note to ask Sophie why Bertie would put up with such substandard fare from his inn cooking staff.

But her main focus today was on Walter Sommer, whom she eyed with curiosity. Nora was off in a corner talking to the two Niagara members, the sisters whom no one could tell apart or remember their names.

“I’ve seen that look in your eye before,” Laverne said, her tone worried. “What are you up to?”

“It occurred to me that all these years we’ve belonged to the ITCS, we never really knew what the Sommers do—I mean, aside from this. Walter isn’t old enough to be retired, is he? So what does he do for a job?”

“We know Nora’s family has money.”

“But is he dependent on her to live? Would he ever leave her? She said no, but no wife thinks her husband is going to leave before he does. I think I’ll just talk to him a bit. Run interference for me if Nora looks like she’s coming back to her husband.”

“Run interference? Listen to you with your football terminology,” Laverne said. “Should I tackle her?”

“No, but a sucker punch would ring her bells, wouldn’t it?” Rose said, with a wink. “See, I can even mix sports metaphors!” She strolled over to Walter, who sat gloomily alone with his cell phone and a tablet device, frowning as if he was working so very hard. When she snuck a look she could see that he was playing some kind of brightly colored game on the tablet.

He warily looked up, closing the little booklet the tablet was in and setting the stylus aside. “Mrs. Freemont. What can I do for you?”

“Nora was talking about the ITCS division presidency. Who do you think will run?” She paused, then slyly asked, “Will you consider Rhiannon Galway if she decides to run again like she did last year?”

He colored, his gaunt cheeks darkening. She could see the spider trails of broken capillaries over them and across his nose. “As much as I think she is a fine young lady and like her very much, I don’t think Miss Galway will be standing this year even if we decided to have another election,” he said, firmly.

“Why not?”

He huffed and moved things around on the table in front of him, then finally said, “She just won’t. I’m very fond of her, but she and Nora do
not
see eye to eye.”

I’ll just bet they don’t
, Rose thought. “Then who? Laverne would be a perfect state president,” she said. “I could probably talk her into standing.”

“Nora says . . . uh . . . We believe the most expeditious manner to handle this is to simply appoint Pastor Frank Barlow to finish Zunia’s term, which goes until next summer. He has served as his chapter president in past, and knows the work from his close friendship with Zunia.”

“You’re going to
appoint
someone? That’s unfortunate.” Rose leaned toward Walter. “Walter, I feel sorry for Frank, but he and Orlando came to blows that awful night, before the murder. How is that going to work with Frank as president? Orlando may believe that as the widower he should be asked to step in, don’t you think?” She paused, watching his eyes; he didn’t appear to quite know how to answer. “What was that fight about? Do you know?”

He sighed and shook his head, thrusting one hand through his thinning white hair, making it stick straight up. “Look, Rose, I don’t think I should be talking about Frank and Orlando’s problems with you.”

“You’re right, Walter,” she said, sitting down opposite him. “It’s just . . .” She paused, patting the table surface with both palms as she chose her words carefully. “I know how important the ITCS is to you and Nora. You’ve been at this awhile.”

“Founding members,” he said. “Me, Dahlia Pettigrew and Lacey Galway.”

“Rhiannon’s mother? I did not know that.”

He nodded. “That was, oh, more than twenty-five years ago now. We all lived in New York City.”

Distracted, Rose cocked her head to one side and regarded him closely, truly seeing the man for the first time in a while. “Walter, I don’t think I’ve ever asked you this before. How did you get interested in collecting teapots?”

She saw a spark alight in his cold eyes and was surprised by the warmth she felt toward him in that moment.

“It was my grandmother. My mother, father, brother and I lived with her in an apartment in the Village, you know?” It was clear that to him there was only one village, Greenwich Village. “She was very
Hochdeutsch
 . . . high German,” he explained. “That’s a linguistic designation, but pretty much cultural, too. I was much smarter than my brother, who only wanted to play in the streets, so that is why my grandmother preferred me. Young Josh over there,” he said, motioning with one elegant hand to the teenager. “He reminds me so much of myself! So comfortable in the company of adults.”

Rose watched Josh, who had joined the group of Nora and the two sisters, both of them intently quizzing him on something or other. “Interesting,” Rose said, more to keep the conversation going than anything.

“My grandmother would have all her friends over for tea and I would serve them, then have my cup, too, and listen to them talk.” His eyes were misty with remembrance, his thin lips stretched into a smile. “They were not just old ladies to me; they were fascinating, worldly and wise. One was an opera singer from Vienna. Another had been married several times, once to a famous Spanish artist who died tragically when he leaped from a bridge. It was all so vivid, the tales they told and the lives they had lived. Now I wonder how much was true and how much was fantasy, but that never mattered. What tied it all in together was tea; the brewing of it was as detailed as a tea ceremony ever can be and had to be just so.”

He fumbled with the tablet and for a moment she thought he was going back to his game, but instead he rapidly shifted to a folder and brought up an old black-and-white photo. “That’s me,” he said, pointing to a towheaded boy in a sports jacket, standing by an autocratic-looking elderly woman. Beside them was a round antique table with a cloth over it, an elaborate silver tea service exactly in the center. “That is Großmutter Sommer.”

“I thought ‘grandmother’ in German was ‘
oma
’?” she said, examining the photo, which was posed in a very stiff and formal parlor, with the woman in question seated, straight and proud, hands on the head of a cane, young Walter standing at her shoulder.

He smiled. “Oh, no, you
never
called her Oma. That was low German, you see, to her. She was Großmutter or ma’am, nothing else.” His smile died as he traced her visage on the tablet, but his finger on the surface made it shuffle and vanish, like a reflection in a pond.

Rose was trying to figure out how to bring the topic around to what she wanted to know, but in light of his opening up, she decided to do the same. “Walter, I’m scared.”

He frowned, gazing at her. “What?”

She clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m frightened. One of us is a murderer and tried to point the finger of blame at me. Do you have any clue who killed Zunia Pettigrew?”

He swallowed hard and cast his glance about the room. “Look, you didn’t hear it from me, but Frank was pretty steamed up that night,” he said in a low tone, still looking around the room.

“I know that; we witnessed the argument with Orlando.”

“He insists Zunia told him she was running away with him.”

“But that’s not true!” Rose said.

“I know that. Zunia herself told me he was imagining it. I didn’t think anything of it, but now I wonder . . . How would he react if it finally hit him that she was not leaving Orlando?” His eyes widened as he looked over Rose’s shoulder.

Rose turned. Pastor Frank Barlow was sitting in a corner with Penelope Daley, who was talking earnestly to him, clutching at his arm. But he was watching them, his expression one of loathing toward Walter, of all people. A chill raced down Rose’s back, and it was not her sciatica acting up. Was Walter right? Where was Frank Barlow that night after the confrontation with Orlando, and why had she not taken him seriously as a suspect until now? “So the argument was over Zunia, and whether she was running away with Frank,” Rose summarized.

“Apparently. Nonsense, of course. Zunia was
not
going to run away with Frank.”

Certainly not if she was having an affair with Walter, which would explain the expression on Frank’s face when he looked at the ITCS president. “What did Bertie do with Frank after the quarrel?”

“I understand he hauled him away and locked him in some room somewhere to simmer down. I don’t know where.”

“There aren’t any vacant rooms, we know that,” Rose mused. How long had Frank been locked away? There were two people who knew that information: Frank and Bertie. One of them would tell her, but which one?

She eyed Frank, who was sullenly staring at the wall now, alone, as Penelope had left him to go talk to Nora Sommer. Rose didn’t think she’d ask Frank, but who knew if the opportunity would arise? She sighed as a wave of weariness washed over her. What was her world coming to that she was considering asking a pastor about the violent murder of his illicit love interest not fifteen feet from her hotel room?

Chapter 17

S
ophie sat cross-legged on her rollaway bed and called Jason. He had texted her simply to call him at home. He answered right away, and they went through the niceties before getting down to business.

His take on it was clear from the beginning. “Sophie, I hope you’re not thinking just because you got lucky with the solution to that thing in May that now you’re some TV-style detective.”

Stung, she replied swiftly, “Of course not. It’s just that the cops keep questioning Nana, and it
was
her teapot that was found with blood on it by Zunia’s bashed-in head. Surely you get why I don’t want to just leave her here and come home?”

“Yeah, I get it, I do!” he replied with a conciliatory tone, perhaps sensing her irritation. “I’m sorry, I’m just worried about you
and
your grandmother. What an awful thing to happen. So, your question was?”

She asked him about parents and college visits, and he affirmed what Josh had said: that parents could visit the college with or without their kids and often stayed overnight, especially in summer when most of the other students were gone. “We use the dorms for a lot of things, like conventions and symposiums, as well as parental visits.”

“Is there any way to tell when someone comes back to the dorm?”

“There’s no check-in policy or anything.” He was silent for a moment, and she let him think. “The best way to tell when someone comes and goes might be the parking lot. If she is staying here overnight and has her car—she
must
have a car, since we’re off the beaten path, unless someone dropped her off and picked her up—then she would have been issued a temporary parking pass that would trigger the lift bar in the parking building.”

“Is it on a clock?”

“It is, and there’s a security camera, too.”

She hesitated, but then plunged ahead. “Jason, I hate to ask, but could you do me one teeny, tiny favor?”

He groaned. “You’re going to ask me to find out if she was here, aren’t you?”

“Her name is Dahlia Pettigrew. I don’t know what she drives, but it should be easy enough to figure out.”

“Why don’t you just tell the police what you suspect?”

“I will, but they won’t tell
me
anything in return, I guarantee it, and I need to know. Besides, Josh has kind of made friends with Emma. If I can clear her and her mom, I think he’d be relieved. Can you just check on Dahlia Pettigrew, please?”

“I have to go to Cruickshank anyway to prep for summer class exams, so I’ll see what I can find out. For your Nana and for Josh!”

“Thank you, Jason,” she said.

“So, when are you coming back to Gracious Grove?”

“Tomorrow, as long as they’ll let Nana go.”

“They don’t seriously suspect that sweet little old lady of murder, do they?”

“I don’t know. One of the detectives said they can’t rule anyone out just because they’re not the
type
to commit murder, and I know what he means. But that’s why I can’t leave her here alone and why I need to make sure they clear this up. You understand, right?” She was anxious to make sure she got her point across.

“I do,” he said, his voice warm. “I didn’t mean to make light of your efforts, Sophie; I’d do the same thing in your shoes. I’ll talk to you later once I find out what you need to know.”

They signed off just as Sophie got a text from Josh saying to come see him in the dining room. He was very mysterious, but she would bet he had things to tell her. She exited her grandmother’s room and knocked on Thelma and SuLinn’s door.

“Hey, you guys there?”

“We’re coming!” Dana sang out. She flung open the door and said, “Ta-da!”

SuLinn stood in the middle of the room, her dark straight hair up off her neck. She wore a red Chloé mandarin-collar dress.

“Wow!” Sophie exclaimed. “You look beautiful!”

“I know,” she said, her voice gurgling with laughter. “Isn’t it gorgeous?” She whirled. “It was all Dana’s doing.”

Cissy was busy with her bag, but she didn’t look happy. “Can we get going?” she asked, complaint in her voice. “I don’t know where Grandma is. Who knows what mischief she’s gotten herself into.”

Sophie and Dana exchanged a look, and Dana shrugged. Cissy sometimes got her nose bent out of shape if the drama in her own life didn’t take top priority. She was a sweet girl most of the time, and Sophie loved her old friend, but she could be moody.

“Okay, let’s move,” Sophie agreed. “I need to hook up with Josh, who I think has some news for me. He’s in the dining room, apparently. Let’s enter the lion’s den.”

*   *   *

T
helma Mae Earnshaw plunked down on the prison cot, weak with exhaustion. The place was dusty and her voice was hoarse from shouting. Dang it, you’d think that punk kid in the kitchen off the hall would hear her, but he had those whatchamacallits, those earbuddies in his ears, the things her grandson Phil swore were headphones. Didn’t look like headphones; looked like earplugs, and given that Phil always had them in his ears when she wanted him to listen to her, maybe they were just the same.

She had shouted herself hoarse, and was ready to expire.

How had she gotten into this mess? It was all Rose Freemont’s fault. If Rose hadn’t brought the dumb teapot to the convention to be looked at and admired and marveled over as if it were something special, then Zunia Pettigrew wouldn’t have torn a strip off Rose, and if she hadn’t done that then maybe Mrs. Highfalutin Rose Freemont wouldn’t have torn into Zunia. And if she hadn’t done
that
 . . . well, then it never would have occurred to Thelma to make that little joke about Rose being dangerous, which had landed her in this awful fix.

But that was too far back. How had she gotten into this
particular
fix? It had started innocently enough, with her snooping around like Miss Ariadne Oliver from the Agatha Christie books or, even better, Mrs. Pollifax from the Dorothy Gilman series of books. Now,
that
was a senior on a mission—a
CIA
mission. Ever since she started reading those books she wondered if there really were such things as senior citizen CIA operatives.

A gal could dream, even a gal with an artificial hip. And knee. And gout. She wiggled her big toe, which was hurting something awful.

But
that
was what had gotten Thelma into this particular jam: her curiosity. She had simply wondered if the killer had hidden out in the basement until everyone was asleep before carrying out his dastardly deed, so she had slunk down there and had a look around. That was almost as good as snooping around people’s homes when they weren’t looking.

The few she had been inside of in recent years were fascinating. Folks would be surprised at what people had in their medicine cabinets and armoires, some things she wasn’t even sure what they were for, like pink fuzzy handcuffs. Who would want handcuffs in their bedroom? No criminals there. Or at least she hoped not, because the handcuffs were in the bedroom of the local church ladies guild president.

Anyhoo . . . she had just been snooping around downstairs when that kid, the one who was peeling carrots in the kitchen, suddenly charged out into the hallway to get something out of one of the storerooms. Thelma had nearly fainted and staggered into this room after pushing the door open. But the door had closed after her and now wouldn’t budge. She had been imprisoned for . . . how long? Felt like hours. She pushed the little knob on her light-up watch and squinted at the face. It had been a good . . . oh, almost ten minutes.

She had found her own way to the basement when she was taking a look-see at the stairs by the check-in desk. She had discovered that there was even an exit, a back door to the parking lot. She knew that because it was propped open to let in air, and she could practically see the shimmer of heat waves rising from the pavement. She was a little confused; could the murderer have run down the stairs and out that back door? Did that mean it could have been someone from outside? But the door wouldn’t be open in the middle of the night; it would be locked. Right? Inn guests had keys to their individual rooms that also opened the front door, which was locked after hours, too.

She surveyed her surroundings in the dim light of one lamp, which she had felt around for and turned on. It was prison-like, for sure, but not bare. There was the cot she was sitting on, as well as some boxes piled against the cinder-block wall. The boxes contained food: canned tomatoes, beans, vegetables, soup and cases of dried pasta. So if she could find a can opener, she wouldn’t starve.

But there was no bathroom, and her bladder at that moment decided to warn her that she needed one pronto. Tears welled in her eyes. All alone, and even her granddaughter probably wouldn’t notice she was missing until they finally opened this storeroom to get some canned tomatoes one day and found her desiccated body. She lay back on the torture rack that was the cot and resigned herself to her fate.

*   *   *

T
he moment they entered the ITCS luncheon, SuLinn took Dana by the arm and went around introducing her to people, ending up near the two sisters, who appeared to be exclaiming over SuLinn’s new dress. Dana was smiling and nodding, but she kept stealing glances over her shoulder. Sophie suspected she was looking for Detective Eli.

“Where the heck is Grandma?” Cissy asked as they scanned the convention dining room.

“Let’s ask Nana if she’s seen her,” Sophie said.

The room was poorly set up, Sophie thought, glancing around. The flow was bad from a waitstaff point of view: no room to move all the way around tables, haphazard and inefficient. But she was not here to critique the room; she was here to find her grandmother and godmother.

“There they are,” she said to Cissy, who was waiting and following her friend’s lead.

Her grandmother and Laverne were at a table with two other older women, all with their heads together.

“My Sophie!” Nana exclaimed, looking up and beaming when she saw Sophie.

She looked tired, Sophie thought, examining her petite grandmother as she squeezed between a couple of tables that were too close together. Nana should have been home by now from her weekend away with her feet up, a cup of tea in one hand and a
Murder, She Wrote
book in the other. Sophie hugged her grandmother and Laverne.

Nana introduced them both to the two other ladies, Mrs. Littlefield and Miss Benson. They had a moment of polite conversation.

“It is good to see you, Cissy!” Laverne commented. “You look very pretty today.”

Cissy’s mood improved immediately, and she did look pretty, Sophie thought, glancing at her friend, who wore a sundress and sandals, her hair in a waterfall bun. Since her disastrous engagement a few months before to a man who was now charged with being an accessory to murder, she had come out of her shell some. She was now dating a local police officer, Wally Bowman, one of their childhood friends who had always been secretly in love with her.

She was still the same Cissy, prone to feeling underappreciated and sometimes self-pitying; however, those were minor character flaws. Sophie worked hard to stay aware of that. Maybe that was why she appreciated the smart, sophisticated and occasionally snarky Dana so much, though they had never been friends as teens.

“We were wondering if you’d seen Mrs. Earnshaw lately,” Sophie said, her gaze going back and forth between the two women.

“I haven’t. Have you, Rose?” Laverne said.

“I saw her,” said Miss Benson, a gaunt, tall woman in her early seventies. She had a sour expression on her face. “I’ll
never
forgive myself, Rose, for letting that woman take me in about you. She is a bit odd, don’t you think?”

Cissy’s pale cheeks pinkened. “My grandmother is
not
odd. She’s . . . imaginative.”

Sophie glanced over at her in surprise.
Good for you, Cissy!
she thought. Thelma
was
odd, but she was Cissy’s grandmother, and family stuck together.

“Yes, well, I was heading to the loo and saw her
imagining
herself down the stairs to the basement,” the woman said tartly. “Whatever on earth she would want in the basement I do not know. That peculiar woman has been avoiding everyone since her little charade came to such a bad end.”

Laverne stood. She was a tall woman, and though in her seventies, strongly built, imposing in her occasional severity. “That is enough, Faye Alice,” she said. “This poor girl is worried about her grandmother, who is our friend.” She turned to Cissy and touched the younger woman’s arm. “I’ll go with you to see if we can find her,” she offered.

Sophie stepped in, giving Laverne a grateful smile. She would never have been able to censure the other woman—she had been raised too well—but Laverne, the woman’s peer in age, did it splendidly, and Sophie could see that Cissy appreciated it. “It’s okay, Laverne,” she said. “I’ll go with her. I know my way around downstairs since that’s how I came in last night.”

“Come back after you find her, Sophie,” Nana said. “I know Josh wants to talk to you.”

Sophie led Cissy out of the convention dining room and toward the door to the basement, but as she started to open it, Bertie Handler popped out from behind the check-in desk.