Shadow of a Spout (4 page)

She played with Pearl, trailing around a blue feather toy as the cat bounded and attacked, over the furniture and across Nana’s bed, until the beautiful chocolate point Birman finally just sat and stared at her, then turned her back and leaped in one elegant motion to the top of her cat tree.

“I guess we’re done,” Sophie said.

She ascended to her third-floor attic apartment and looked around, eyeing the shelves of teapots in the living area—her own collection, mostly art deco and art nouveau. One of the things she enjoyed about teapots was how the design of them really reflected the artistic themes of the time. She loved art deco teapots for the clean lines and beautiful shapes. They should be dusted after the past few hot, dry August weeks, but she was too tired. She needed something not related to work, nothing to do with teapots or tea.

What to do, with the house to herself? She was restless, the late-summer heat building and an electric feeling in the air, like a storm was going to break. They could use the rain, so she hoped it poured. She ate a salad left over from the day’s luncheon crowd, read an e-book for a while, and was about to settle in for an evening-long marathon of true crime shows, her new obsession, when her cell phone buzzed. She eagerly picked it up and clicked on a text message.

“
Come to the window
,” the message from Jason Murphy read.

She assumed he meant the one overlooking the street and raced over, threw open the sash and leaned out.

Jason lounged against a fire-engine-red sports car parked at the curb and waved, grinning. “Look what I borrowed from Julia!” he said, naming a colleague. “Want to come for a ride to the lake?”

“I’ll be down in two minutes,” she said, holding up two fingers and then ducking back, shutting the window. This was exactly what she felt like doing, she thought, as she raced around her tiny, slant-ceilinged apartment. She changed into cute plaid shorts, a tee and sandals, and on her way out the door grabbed her bag and a hoodie.

The ride was invigorating, the wind pulling at her dark ponytail, flipping it around. It ended in the parking area by the dock where they used to swim on the eastern shores of Lake Seneca. It was private property, but the owners were Jason’s cousins, and he used the spot whenever he wanted.

By mutual consent they walked down to the end of the dock and sat, draping their feet into the water as the sun descended close to the hills on the opposite shore, the sultry heat unbroken even by a breeze. Swishing her bare feet through the refreshing water, Sophie wondered . . . did he remember a little over fourteen years ago when on an evening just like this they had kissed for the first time? This was the exact spot, this wooden dock, with the family’s motorboat bobbing gently in its slip, buffeting against the rubber tires that protected the boat against damage from the dock. Crickets chirped this time, unlike last time when it was birdsong that fluted through the air. It was June, that long ago evening, the beginning of a golden summer she had never forgotten, when she was Jason’s girl and thought they’d be together forever.

“How are preparations for the new school year going?” she asked.

“I haven’t even thought about that much; suppose I have to get going on it,” he replied. “Working on my doctorate has had me so busy this summer. I’m lucky that Cruickshank is really generous about teaching and pursing your doctorate at the same time, but it’s exhausting.” He glanced over at her. “I would have liked to spend more time with you this summer, Sophie, but work comes first, right?”

That was the mantra she had always chanted, but coming back to Gracious Grove had made her question the priorities of the last ten years of her life. “I suppose. It’s so nice right now for me to just do my job at Auntie Rose’s and then have time to catch up with old friends.”

“Like Dana and Cissy,” he said. His hand clutching the edge of the dock was so close she could feel it brushing against her bare leg.

“And you,” she said, bumping her shoulder against his, and smiling up at him.

His brown eyes were warm and lit by the sinking golden sun, and those rays found highlights in his shoulder-length hair. He had always looked a little like a seventies hippie, with hair longer than the current fashion. On this warm evening, wearing khaki board shorts and a bleached-out tee, he still looked like the teenager he had been that long-ago summer, except that he was leaner and not as tanned.

The air was close and humid, the water refreshing and the company wonderful. She was content, an odd feeling for her because contentment had never been a part of her makeup. She had been driven by ambition, fighting every day against her mother’s wishes for Sophie to attend a top-notch college and find a wealthy, socially acceptable husband. Getting her culinary degree had been barely tolerable to her social-climbing mom, but actually working in restaurants as a sous chef and then pushing to open her own restaurant at an unfathomably young age had horrified her mother, almost breaking the fragile bond between them. Her two older brothers had both gone the business-school route, and now were working in two of their father’s businesses. Her mother would have preferred if Sophie had done that, because at least she would have had a chance to meet eligible men, but she had gone her own way.

She knew in her heart that her mom wanted what was best for her, or what she
deemed
best for her only daughter: a quality husband, a gracious home and babies. As hard as Rosalind Taylor worked at staying astonishingly young-looking at sixty, she still longed for grandchildren. Maybe Sophie would want kids eventually, she thought, remembering Dana’s wistful comments, but . . . not yet. It was her older brothers’ turn first, she always reminded her mom.

Still, how would her life have been different if she and Jason hadn’t broken up so abruptly before her senior year? She stifled the melancholy when she thought of the missed opportunities. It just confused her, though she had long ago stopped worrying over her mom’s part in that, the way she had talked Sophie into breaking it off and then dragged her away to head back to boarding school early. She had now convinced her mom to stop interfering in her life, and so she’d forgive and forget the past.

She straightened and turned her thoughts away from those memories. “So I haven’t had time to ask, seeing you so little this summer, but what
is
your doctoral thesis?”

“You sure you want to hear it?”

“I do,” she said.

He took a deep breath. “Okay, here goes: when I was a TA I did a course on poetry from the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries. It made me think of the way literature was so a part of everyday life in the past. The Tudors, the Stuarts, the Georgians, the Victorians: politics was talked about in their poetry, and allegory was used to explore the important movements of the day. So because that was a period of intense global exploration, the imagery in the poetry reflected that.”

She had followed him so far, but as she listened on and he connected world exploration to the social and political movements of those centuries, and how that came together in literature, her mind wandered. He had changed over the years, and she felt a little intimidated. She was straightforward; she loved food and cooking. The ultimate expression of that was to be a chef in her own or someone else’s restaurant. But Jason spent his time thinking and writing and musing and pondering. His journey in life so far had been internal. He had left her behind academically, and perhaps he had left her behind emotionally, too.

She missed the rest of his explanation of his doctoral thesis subject as she fretted about the miles between them intellectually, and after she had asked him about it, too! Gloomily, she wondered if she would even have understood it. She shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked. He picked up her folded hoodie.

“Not really. I guess I’m just a little tired.” She wished she could find a way to talk about her concerns, to explain how she felt. She worried that with Jason having become a professor, being surrounded by the kind of people he was every day—like Julia Dandridge, his beautiful, intelligent department head—Sophie would not be able to share the things with him that he needed from a woman he would consider dating. Nothing came to her, or at least nothing that didn’t sound like she was fishing for compliments or asking him if he wanted to get more serious.

Thunder rumbled in the distance, the warning of a summer storm to come. She looked up at him, his stubbled chin, his lips so close. Though they had hung out on occasion in the last couple of months, it was always with others. She wanted to kiss him. Or she wanted him to kiss her.

“Jason,” she murmured softly. “Do you—”

Just then a crack of thunder crashed above them. She jumped, and then rain began spitting down, dotting the lake with little rings. A gust of wind came up, sending waves scudding across the dark surface.

“Shoot, the top is down on the car,” Jason said. “Julia will kill me if I let the leather get wet!” He leaped up, took her hand and hauled her to her feet as he shoved his wet feet into tan deck shoes. “Last one back to the car gets soaked!” he yelled and took off, sprinting ahead of her.

“Darn,” she muttered, eyeing the sky. “Couldn’t you have held off for just a few more minutes?” She grabbed her sandals and trudged barefoot back along the dock to relatively dry land and up the hill to the lane where the car was parked. Jason was already in the car, raising the top, but it was a soggy drive home.

Chapter 4

R
ose and Laverne had dinner in the dining room, all the Silver Spouts at a single small table, since SuLinn had gone with Josh to the coffee shop for a light meal and Thelma was nowhere in sight. Laverne, Rose, Horace and Malcolm chatted, but all were tired and had called it a day.

It was later now, about nine. Laverne was going through her habitual night routine of taking a shower, then slathering moisturizer over every joint.
No ashy elbows for Miss Hodge
, Rose thought, with a smile. She’d put cold cream on her face, leave it for exactly three minutes, then gently wipe it off. That was the virtue of getting older, Rose supposed; if you were smart you knew, by then, what was best for you and established a routine. Her own routine (other than the hygienic necessities) consisted of gentle stretching, finishing by reaching down to touch her toes. Like Laverne’s father, who climbed the stairs, she reasoned that if she touched her toes every day, she’d never stop being able to do it. Maybe that was unrealistic, but so far, so good.

She had already checked her daily list of things to do—she had made it a habit to check every night to be sure she didn’t forget anything important—and had tried to finish the list off, but found that impossible. If she had only caught Rhiannon Galway at the convention tea she could have asked if the tea purveyor could bring her a case of her special blend, Auntie Rose’s Tea-riffic Tea Blend, for the gift nook back in Gracious Grove. She had mentioned it before the convention and had just tried calling the girl, but there was no answer on her home line and Rose didn’t have her cell number. She left a message on the machine but she’d definitely have to follow up the next day. She jotted a note to herself on a fresh page to do just that.

Rose was tempted—
so
tempted—to call her granddaughter and see how the day had gone at the tearoom, but resisted the urge. Sophie was a bright girl and had shown good sense by calling in Dana Saunders to help, given the heavy schedule the tearoom had as folks tried to get in some last-minute fun before school started in a couple of weeks and everyone got back down to business. Laverne had been set on staying in Gracious Grove to work with them, but Sophie appeared insulted at the notion that she couldn’t handle it on her own. She was still a little prickly. Rose felt it was up to her to help rebuild her precious grandchild’s fragile self-esteem, so when Sophie insisted that Laverne and Rose go together for the very first time to the ITCS convention, Rose agreed, and maybe she was right. At their age it was time Rose and Laverne got to enjoy a few outings together. Laverne was her best friend in the world, after all.

She just hoped they actually
did
enjoy the convention, starting the next day. She grunted a little as she bent down to touch her toes one more time.

“Careful, there, roomie,” Laverne said. “Don’t you bust anything.”

“I’ve done this every single evening for fifty years. I think I’ll be okay.”

Someone hammered on the door and Laverne yelled, “Come on in!”

Thelma shoved open the door, clumped in and slumped into a chair. She looked around the spacious room, nineteenth-century elegance expressed in high ceilings, tall windows, and furnishings that were a compromise between Victorian style and modern utility. For the Stone and Scone Inn, that meant there were wing chairs and dressing tables, as well as a flat-screen TV and decent mattresses.

“Figures you’d get a better room than me and
that girl
,” she said, referring to SuLinn Miller, her roommate for financial purposes only.

Poor SuLinn
, Rose thought. “This is thirty dollars a night more than yours, which is the only reason I have it and you don’t. I offered it to you, but you said no.”

Laverne suppressed a snicker as she continued her moisturizing routine; face, neck, elbows, knees and hands.

“Some people don’t mind throwing money around like they’ve got a million bucks stashed in their mattress,” Thelma retorted. After a pause she went on with her grumbling. “
That girl
is in the bathroom again! Doesn’t she know that an old lady needs access to the toilet at all times? Can’t she do some of that fussing somewhere else?”

“Fussing? You mean like she could shower in the hallway? Bathe in the elevator?” Laverne eyed Thelma, eyebrows raised.

Thelma sniffed. “
You
try rooming with a thirty-year-old and see how you like it, Laverne Hodge.”

“Your other choice would have been Josh Sinclair,” Rose said, and exchanged a glance with Laverne while they both tried not to laugh.

Thelma gave her a squinty, purse-mouthed look.

“Since you decided to invade our room I feel free to ask,” Rose said, “what in heaven’s name were you talking about so intently with all the other teapot collector groups this afternoon at the tea?”

The woman shuffled her feet together and examined her nails, frowning in intense concentration. “Nothing much,” she said. “Just, uh . . . you know, collecting teapots and such.”

Laverne stared at her through narrowed eyes. “It’s funny that when I went down to the desk to get some postcards to send to my nieces and nephews, Jemima Littlefield came up to me and asked if I was nervous, rooming with Rose.”

“You didn’t tell me that!” Rose exclaimed.

“Didn’t want to worry you, but since Sally Sunshine is here I’ve thought better of it.”

Thelma shrugged, the movement shuddering over her from her tightly permed silvery curls to the tips of her sad-looking shoes. As usual, she wore a flowered muumuu, this one a pattern of poppies in an eye-catching red, white and black. Her ankles were swollen, and the sides of her orthopedic shoes were broken down, Thelma being too cheap to buy shoes more than once every three years or so. “She just thought you were a little forceful with that Pettigrew woman, you know, when she told you your pot was fake.”

“Really? Jemima seemed to be cheering me on when she spoke to me personally, before she joined your little clique.” Rose sat down on the end of her bed and watched her old nemesis carefully. A rumble of thunder added an ominous sound track to her comments.

“You know how folks are. Strange, all of them.” Thelma licked her lips and tried on a smile. “Anyhoo, isn’t that Bertie Handler an odd duck? Kind of a weirdo, I say.”

“He’s perfectly nice,” Rose said, a little cross that Thelma was clearly avoiding something. But what? She dreaded to think on it, but she had a feeling she’d find out the next morning when she went down to join the others for coffee.

“Maybe so, but I think he’s having a fling with that teapot president’s wife.”

“Nora Sommer?” Rose exclaimed. “Proof, Thelma? You can’t go around slinging accusations like that without proof.”

“She was alone with him in his office! Saw it with my own eyes just now.”

“That’s not
proof
,” Laverne said. “Doesn’t mean a thing. She helps her husband organize the convention every year, and so she has to talk to Bertie about seating arrangements, the daily tea, that kind of thing.”

Thelma harrumphed and stood, shifting on her feet, an expression of pain on her lined face. “None so blind as they who will not see,” she intoned, with a priggish sniff. “And now I’m tired. Going to see if
that girl
is out of the bath yet so I can do my business in privacy.”

Thunder rumbled, rattling the windows. Rose and Laverne exchanged a look after Thelma hobbled out of their room.

“She was being shifty,” Laverne said.

“That’s no change. I’ve known that woman for sixty-five years, since we were girls, and she’s always been shifty.”

“I know, but still, it worries me. I don’t know what she’s done, but I sure hope it doesn’t come back to haunt us.”

“Especially me,” Rose said. “I thought we were tolerably made up, but now I’m not so sure.”

Laverne yawned and capped her moisturizer bottle. “I am plumb wore out!” she exclaimed, climbing into bed. “And there is no lovelier bed than one that I didn’t make, and for which I won’t be responsible tomorrow!”

“Amen,” Rose said.

“Don’t say ‘amen.’ I won’t be at church on Sunday, and I don’t like missing!”

“Well, I’m sure the Lord will let you off a week, and
I’m glad you’re here,” Rose said.

“Now, that is very sweet.”

“Otherwise I’d be rooming with Thelma,” Rose added, with a chuckle.

“You are just too
bad
! G’night, Rose.”

“Good night, Laverne.”

*   *   *

R
ose had been asleep, that she was sure of. But a commotion out in the hallway made her sit up with a start, for a moment forgetting where she was. Laverne’s moan of irritation reminded her.

“Who is that making a racket?” her roommate mumbled.

“I don’t know, but I’m going to tell them to pipe down!” Rose clambered out of bed, pushed her feet into mule slippers and shuffled to the door, beyond which she could hear voices raised in anger. She paused, but then decided she just
had
to know what was going on, a trait her Sophie called the snoop gene, which she had inherited.

Laverne followed, hovering over her as she turned on the overhead light and threw open the door. Down the hallway near the elevator there was an altercation. Two shadowy figures were clutched together, swaying back and forth.

“Get off me, you idiot!” one man grunted.

“You’ve got no right,” the other howled. “You don’t deserve her!”

“Orlando? Frank?” Rose had recognized the men in the dimly lit hallway. “What’s going on?”

There was more grunting, and the sound of a scuffle, but the hallway was dim and they were a ways from the commotion. Just then the elevator doors opened and Bertie Handler hustled toward the two. He shrieked, “Frank Barlow, what the heck do you think you’re doing?”

Others poked their heads out of doorways. Josh staggered sleepily out of his room and toward the fray, rubbing his eyes.

“Josh, you go back; don’t get involved!” Rose said, worried the young fellow would get mixed up in the fracas. How would she explain to his mother that he went to a teapot-collecting convention and got beaten up?

Walter’s stentorian voice came from the crack in his doorway. “What is going on? Stop this, this instant, before you awaken Nora!”

Bertie had hold of the pastor and dragged him toward the elevator, as he said, “Go back to bed, everyone. Nothing to see here. Sorry about this, Orlando.” He grunted and struggled some. “Frank, you come with me or I’ll call the cops.”

A couple of doors shut, but Thelma had hers open and leaned out, watching with glee. “More excitement than I’ve seen for ages,” she said.

The pastor was sobbing. Rose could see that his lip was bloody as they passed under a light sconce. Bertie dragged him along the hall to the elevator and punched the down button.

Orlando Pettigrew, hand over one eye, called after them, “What in God’s name is wrong with you, Frank?”

The pastor pulled away from the innkeeper and straightened. Glaring back at Pettigrew, he said, “You don’t deserve love, you pathetic piece of sh—”

“Enough!” Bertie said, and stabbed the down button again.

Penelope Daley, one of the Niagara Teapot Collectors Group, popped out into the hall, housecoat on over a filmy nightgown. “Poor Frank. I must go to him!” she cried, clutching the neck of her housecoat with one hand and flapping the other.

“Miss Daley, please go back to your room!” Bertie said, struggling with the pastor.

“You’re out of your mind, Frank!” Orlando shouted after him as the elevator doors opened and the two men got on. The doors closed. Orlando glared around at the watchers. “What do
you
all want? That guy’s crazy. Drunken fool.” He slammed his door.

Thelma chuckled and went back into the room, where SuLinn could be heard drowsily asking what was going on. Penelope Daley dithered for a moment but then retreated into her room, as did Rose and Laverne. A low, distant rumble of thunder shuddered through the old inn. Laverne turned out the light and the two climbed into their beds.

“Where was Zunia during that little dustup?” Rose asked.

“I can’t imagine. Standing behind her husband, working Orlando’s mouth, I’d imagine,” Laverne groused.

Rose chuckled. Laverne’s imagery was apt, since Zunia did seem to speak for her husband more often than not. Orlando wasn’t always like that. She had known him with his first wife, Dahlia, and he had seemed much more decisive. “Did Frank seem drunk to you, Laverne?” Rose asked, glancing over at the digital clock on the nightstand. Just about midnight.

“I know for a fact that Frank Barlow does not touch a drop of alcohol.”

“That’s what I thought. What got into him, I wonder?”

“I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out in the morning.”