Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) (10 page)

“Phil? When was he there?” Laverne asked.

“Before the party began,” Sophie said, watching Gilda’s face. Nana turned to stare at her, but Sophie didn’t elaborate.

The woman nodded. “That’s right. Thelma knew he was there, but she was off doing something, or getting ready. He didn’t know I saw him, but I was peeking at him out the door of the back bathroom. Thelma is always blaming me for food missing, but I think Phil sneaks in and takes it, so I watch him every chance I get. That’s when I saw him lookin’ around and pouring something out of a bottle into the punch bowl.”

“Did you tell the police about him being in there and what he did?” Sophie asked.

“Turn in little Philly, Thelma’s grandson? Might as well slit my own throat,” the woman grumbled.

“And he actually put something in the punch?” Nana asked.

Gilda nodded. “I saw it, plain as day.”

“You
should
tell the police, Miss Bachman.” Sophie circled to stand behind Laverne and watched the woman’s face. “Did he do anything else?”

She shrugged. “Not that I saw.”

It didn’t seem like she was lying or being evasive. “What about the cupcakes? Who made those?” Sophie asked, sliding into a seat beside her grandmother.

“I don’t know, they just appeared.”

“The red-velvet cupcakes?”

Gilda nodded. “I didn’t see who brought ’em. I’d bought some other cupcakes that never got put out. Got ’em at the bakery and decorated them real nice with buttercream frosting we buy by the tub.”

“You picked those ones up yourself?”

“Honey, what is this about?” Nana asked, eyeing her. “Why the interest in the cupcakes?”

“Okay, this doesn’t go beyond this room, but the poison was apparently in the cupcakes, the police think. Or in
one
cupcake, anyway. But the question is, what kind, and where did it come from?”

• • •

T
helma sat, stoic, in the barren police cell. Torture could not break her. Not even if they pulled out her nails, or whacked the bottoms of her feet with whips. Even the tears of her only granddaughter wouldn’t work.

“But Granny what were you thinking? Why did you tell the police that Francis did it?” Cissy was weeping, her lovely pale-blue eyes, so like her mother’s, drowned in water.

Thelma stared at Cissy and prayed that by the grace of God Cissy would never know the pain of losing a child. Yes, the girl had lost her
mother
at sixteen and it had been a mighty blow; she’d never take that away from her. Poor Cissy, little more than a child, had wept and then gone downright sullen. It had taken months of coaxing to get her to eat almost anything at all, much less normal meals. So much work had gone into Cissy that Phil had been forgotten and had run wild. Their father was in his own fog—he took off shortly after that for the coast, and hadn’t been heard from in years—and everyone else was too busy to do what was necessary except for Thelma Mae Earnshaw. She had done
everything
for her grandchildren and would never regret that.

But her choices had come with a price. While she tended to everyone else, Thelma’s own bitterness at losing her daughter had grown like mold in a closet.
You don’t even know it’s there
, she thought,
but every day that misery gets blacker and takes up more space
. After a while even the church folk started ignoring her. She couldn’t really blame them after she about bit their heads off whenever they asked how she was doing. There was no pain like the burn of losing a child at whatever age, and she hoped no one she knew ever felt it. It was like part of her heart had been amputated.

She asked the Lord to make sure that Cissy would never know the depth of the burning hole in her heart. Thelma had pictured her and Cassie, her only child, getting older together, watching Cissy and Phillip grow up, find jobs, marry and become parents themselves. They would sit on the porch dandling Cassie’s grandchildren on their knees. Instead Thelma had been thrown back into the awful terror that was raising a teen—
two
teens—motherless and angry, both of ’em.

It had been a trial, one that she had not always managed well. At the same time, she had started up Belle Époque because the medical bills left after Cassie passed had been atrocious, and Thelma’s pension wasn’t enough to even begin to cover it all. Cassie’s husband had sent a little money back east at first, but then he disappeared and Thelma was left to take care of it all. And she did. Now no one would ever come between her and her grandchildren. Phil might be what everyone called a screwup, but he was
her
screwup. And Cissy . . . she would not waste her life on a drip like Frankie Whittaker. She just knew deep in her heart that the boy was not right for her precious granddaughter, but how to tell her that? So maybe he didn’t kill his mother, but who knew, after all?

Cissy was staring at her, tears streaming down her hollow cheeks, waiting for an answer to her question. Thelma opened her mouth, then closed it again. But she just couldn’t stay silent. “Francis Whittaker . . . bad blood, there, you know. Are you so sure he
didn’t
do it?” she finally asked her granddaughter, hoping the seeds of doubt were planted and would grow.

• • •

L
averne and Rose got Gilda calmed down and sent her back to Belle Époque. Gilda would have to close up the place and put a sign on the window that they would not be open today because of “unforeseen circumstances.” That wouldn’t fool anyone because word—warped by repeated telling—was surely speeding through town that crabby old Thelma Mae Earnshaw had finally done it, gone and killed someone and gotten herself arrested. There would even be some church folks who would sniff approvingly, hoping the gossip was true. That couldn’t be helped. Belle Époque would stay closed; Gilda couldn’t run the place alone or at all, since she hadn’t even been trusted with the keys to the cash register.

Sophie then told her grandmother and their friend what she had learned about Belinda Blenkenship.

“I did hear some kind of gossip like that,” Laverne said. “That girl’s auntie goes to my church, and she asked for a prayer intervention.”

“What’s that?”

“We all pray for the Lord to work his might on someone’s life.” Laverne sighed. “Too often the one asking uses it as an excuse to air their grievances. Woman last week stood up in church and asked us all to pray for her neighbor so-and-so that he might change his wicked ways and not cheat on his wife with the widow across the road.”

“Good grief, that was a little pointed, wasn’t it?” Nana said.

Sophie said, “So if this auntie asked for a prayer intervention for the girl, she may have revealed a little too much of what was going on in her life.”

Laverne nodded. “Still . . . two months later she was marrying the mayor, so Belinda’s auntie takes all the credit for getting her right with God.”

Knowing Laverne, and her no-nonsense relationship with the Lord, she didn’t hold with that. “So much drama right here in Gracious Grove. What about her dating Francis and supposedly being pregnant by him at some point?”

“That must have been a while before all of this,” Laverne said. “That girl has never had a child, that’s all I can say.”

Sophie dashed off upstairs and Rose and Laverne looked at each other.

“This is not good, Rose, all of this trouble with Thelma Mae.” Laverne made a noise between her teeth and took a sip of her cold tea.

“She’s really gotten herself into it this time. Why did she have to call the police on Francis? She always did rush in where she oughtn’t.” Still, Rose had a deep well of sympathy for Thelma that she drew on constantly when the woman tried her patience. Thelma’s miserable disposition had soured forever the day she lost her daughter. Rose had ached for her on that day and the many difficult ones to come after, but didn’t know how to get past the frosty divide between her and her old friend. A card expressing sympathy, a sincere offer to help in any way, offerings of food: All had been brushed away with a short “Not needed.”

“Who do you think really did it?” Laverne mused.

“I don’t know, but Sophie’s got a bee in her bonnet about trying to figure it out. She always was the kind of girl to try to solve folks’ problems.”

Laverne cast her a sly look over the teacup. “You did want her to get more involved in Gracious Grove doings, right? So she’d stay?”

Rose chuckled, but then became serious. “I never thought it would take a murder for her to get involved. But she’s a smart girl. She’s not going to interfere, I’m sure.”

Laverne looked skeptical. “I don’t know. That girl never could leave a problem alone. She’ll worry at it like a knot until she unravels it, if I know our Sophie.”

Up in her apartment Sophie dressed in what she thought of as going-out-to-the-grocery-store clothes—something a little better than yoga pants and a T-shirt—then headed back downstairs. She heard voices as she entered the kitchen and found Phil Peterson, of all people, standing by the back door talking to Laverne and Nana. She paused and watched for a moment. Phil was an acquaintance, of course, from the old days. He was one of their group, but had chummed around mostly with Francis Whittaker. It had been common knowledge among the teens that he was hung up on Dana Saunders, but that she had little time for him except when she needed a date to the prom or someone to drive her around.

His enduring legacy was a stubborn determination to smuggle booze into Gracious Grove gatherings. He had spiked every liquid anyone drank, and by Gilda’s account, even the punch for the engagement party yesterday. Why, no one knew. He was hell-bent, it seemed, on getting dry Gracious Grove very wet, and very drunk.

But that didn’t make him a murderer. The poison was in the cupcake, or so Dana said the
police
said. But how did she find that out? That was something Sophie wanted to know firsthand.

“If Granny says that Francis did it, then he did it!” Phil was saying to the two women.

“But does she have any proof? Did she
see
anything?” Nana asked.

“How am I supposed to know?” Phil whined. “I wasn’t there!”

“But you
were
there, just before the guests arrived,” Sophie said, approaching.

Phil whirled around and watched Sophie, fear in his eyes. “I . . . no, I wasn’t. Why would you say that?”

Typical Phil . . . when caught at something, deny and lie. She wasn’t about to bring Gilda into it, so she said, “I saw you sneak out the back door just as the guests were arriving at the front.”

He didn’t meet her gaze, instead his eyes shifted back and forth, as if he was examining everything in the kitchen but her. “Grandma knew I was there. I didn’t do anything. I wasn’t really in the kitchen, I was just in the storeroom.”

That was a lie, but she couldn’t very well confront him about it without saying what Gilda saw. “What were you doing, hiding more booze? What’s the story with that, Phil?”

“God, Soph, you are such a little snob! Always were.”

“Enough, young man,” Nana said, using her no-nonsense voice.

“It’s okay, Nana,” Sophie said, tilting her head and eyeing Phil. “It’s not the first time I’ve heard that since coming back to Gracious Grove. Phil, why don’t you just move to a town that’s not dry, if it’s so important to drink?”

He rolled his eyes. “You just don’t get it. I don’t give a damn about the booze, but we need to loosen up this town, take it back from the puritans! We’re young; why do we have to live like a bunch of tea-drinking old fogies?”

“Nice thing to say in a tearoom and next to your own grandmother’s tearoom.” She was so over Phil Peterson. So Gilda saw him spiking the punch; that didn’t make any difference. It was the cupcake that killed Vivienne Whittaker, after all. “Whatever. Nana, I’m going out. May I take the SUV? And do you need anything while I’m gone?”

“Silver Spouts meeting tonight, honey. Can you pick some things up at the grocery store for me, and my special tea at the tea blender?” She handed Sophie a list, along with the keys.

“Sure.” She watched Phil for a moment. Maybe he knew more than he was saying. On an impulse she said, “Can I give you a ride anywhere?”

He shoved his hands in his jeans pockets and hunched his shoulders in a defeated stance. “Yeah. To hell, because that’s where I’m going, according to local busybodies.”

“I’ll need to fuel up for that,” she said, with a slight smile. “It’s a long trip, and the road there is paved with good intentions, or so I’ve heard.”

Chapter 9

P
hil was sullenly silent despite several conversational attempts from Sophie until they pulled up to Peterson Books ’n Stuff. “What the hell?” he said, whirling in his seat to glare at her. “I thought you were heading downtown. I can’t go in
there
!”

“Why not? It’s your sister’s store, and your house. Didn’t your mom leave it to you both?”

“I don’t live there anymore,” he grumbled. “And I can’t go there during business hours. Cissy banned me, and Dana always gets on my case, anyway.”

“I thought you two dated once?”

“We did,” he grumbled, glaring out of the SUV window. “She said I was selfish and a jerk. I said she was needy and too much like a girl.”

“Did she slug you?”

He gave her a quick look. “She did.”

“You deserved it. She isn’t ‘like’ a girl, she
is
a girl . . . a woman, now.”

“Well, anyway, I can’t go in there. Plus, Cissy has
Francis
upstairs babying him since he lost his mommy dearest.”

Just the way he said
Francis
, with a mocking tone, reminded Sophie that he and the other man had been best buddies once. To draw him out she asked, “You didn’t like Vivienne Whittaker?”

“Who did? She had balls, I will say that, though. More than Francis.”

Again, the way he said Francis’s name revealed a level of disdain that was worrisome. “What do you mean by that?”

“Everyone in town knows that he got where he got because of his mother. She pushed him. Back in the day, when we were friends, she was always trying to get rid of me. Said I wasn’t good enough for her Francis to be seen with.”

“Yeah, so?” Sophie privately thought most of the parents in town felt the same way about Phil the Pill. “His mother couldn’t make him
not
associate with you.”

“Oh yeah? Let’s just say, she
found
a way to make sure we didn’t hang out anymore.”

“What do you mean?”

“Never mind. I gotta go.”

“But Phil . . . wait! I wanted to ask—”

Too late; he had gotten out and slammed the car door on her questions. He slouched off down the street, hoodie pulled up over his bristly hair, looking the very essence of a thug up to no good. Maybe he was fulfilling everyone’s expectations. Sophie got out and entered the bookstore. Dana was on the floor shelving some children’s books as Beauty rubbed up against her back. The kids’ section was centered in a play area, the books on low shelves with seating areas on top. Cozy, Sophie thought, and very inviting.

“Hey, Dana. How are you?”

“Peachy keen,” she said, clambering to her feet. Beauty curled around her legs, eyeing Sophie with disdain.

“Any news?” Sophie asked.

“What do you mean?”

“The investigation . . . you seem to be in the know.”

“Why do you say that?” Dana asked, circling behind the cash desk and rearranging some of the bookmarks and trinkets displayed for sale on the counter. Her bangles glittered in the pin spot halogen lights.

“Otherwise how could you know that the poison that killed Vivienne Whittaker was in the cupcake she ate?”

Dana made a show of looking around, then leaned over the counter. She put one finger to her red lips. “Shhhh! Don’t tell anyone, but I’m a secret agent.”

Sophie laughed, as she knew she was intended to, and said, “No, really . . . how did you find out?”

“I have a friend on the force,” she said, tidying a stack of books. She twirled a postcard rack that showed various scenes of Gracious Grove and the surrounding areas, including Cruickshank College, which made Sophie think of Jason.

“A male friend?” Sophie asked, setting her mind back to the problem at hand.

“Well, yeah.”

“A boyfriend?”

“Not really. Not now, anyway. He’s married.”

Dana Saunders was the kind of woman who could get men to do things for her, Sophie thought. She had a lush, curvy figure, what had been called a
Coke-bottle figure
in another era. Today she wore turquoise capris, high heels and a filmy, white chiffon blouse with a low décolletage. A turquoise pendant dangled in her cleavage, drawing the eye. But besides all that she had a subtle charm when she chose to use it.

“Did he, this married police officer, say anything else?” Sophie asked.

“Aren’t you the curious little Nancy Drew?”

“Just wondering.”

Dana eyed her for a long moment, and then said, “He didn’t really say anything, but I got the impression that they’re investigating if Vivienne Whittaker was really the intended victim.”

Sophie started . . . now
that
was an interesting question, wasn’t it? It took her back to Cissy’s hysterical fears; maybe she wasn’t just dramatizing herself. But there were other possibilities, she supposed. Who else was at the engagement tea? Florence, Francis, Cissy, Belinda, Gretchen, Thelma and Gilda. She opened her mouth to ask Dana who the police might think was the intended victim if not Vivienne.

“And if you’re going to ask me who that could be,” Dana said, one hand up, “don’t bother, because I don’t know.”

Disconcerted, Sophie said, “Uh . . . thanks for telling me that, though.”

Dana sat down in the chair behind the counter and put her feet up. “Seriously, are you trying to figure out who did it?”

Beauty jumped gracefully up to her lap, and then up to the counter. The cat eyed Sophie with unblinking interest.

“Isn’t everyone?”

Dana nodded, as she took a novel off the shelf behind the desk and opened it to where a bookmark held her place. “You have a point. Every single person who has come in here today has asked first thing, ‘So, who do you think killed Vivienne Whittaker?’”

“Like murder mystery theater, only real. Hey, you were going to tell me more about Belinda Blenkenship, that she was pregnant and it was supposed to be Francis’s baby.”

“So some said, but it could well have been just a rumor.”

“Laverne goes to church with her aunt and says for sure that Belinda never had a baby.”

“She could have lost it, I guess. She disappeared for a couple of weeks and could have been recovering.”

“Vivienne seems to have had a history of breaking up Francis’s love affairs,” Sophie mused, eyeing Dana.

“No comment,” Dana said sourly. She fluttered the pages of her book. “Cissy got along with her just fine—I don’t know how—but then, our little Cissy would be the perfect unquestioning wife for a man on the rise, wouldn’t she?”

Dana looked down at her book and Sophie got the hint that the inquisition was over. “Is Cissy home? She still lives upstairs, right?”

“Yeah, she’s up there. So is Francis.”

“Good. Thanks, Dana.”

Sophie knew she had to go back outside, down off the porch and around to the side to access the steps that ascended to Cissy’s converted apartment. She climbed the wooden steps and paused at the blue door, but then knocked. To her surprise it was Florence Whittaker who answered. She stared at Sophie blankly.

“Hi, Mrs. Whittaker. I’m Sophie Taylor, Rose Freemont’s granddaughter.”

“Oh, yes, the Taylor girl . . . come in!” She stepped back and Sophie entered. Mrs. Whittaker looked like she hadn’t slept, her sweep of dark hair in a tangle, and who could blame her? Her sister-in-law was dead and no matter how they had gotten along, it was still a shock. But as Sophie turned and regarded her, she wondered how much the two women had really disliked each other. Enough to kill? And if so, why now? Or had Florence Whittaker been the intended victim all along, and she knew it? How would that feel, if you had cheated death by so little, and someone else close to you had died in your place?

So many questions, no answers. “Is Cissy available? I’d like to see her.”

“She’s looking after my nephew right now. This has been such a terrible shock.” Her voice was hoarse, her tone despondent.

“Aunt Flo, who is that? Is it the police? Have they found who did it?” Francis’s voice sounded thick with unshed tears. A soothing murmur followed . . . Cissy, no doubt.

“No, Francis,” Mrs. Whittaker called out. “It’s just that Taylor girl, Sophie, here to talk to Cissy.”

Cissy emerged from the next room and ran to Sophie, giving her a hug. “Oh Soph, it’s so nice to see you!” She turned to Florence and said, “I just want to talk to Sophie for a minute about poor Nana. We’re going to go down to the store porch. Can you get Francis a cup of coffee? And can you make him eat a few spoonfuls of soup? He hasn’t touched a thing, and I’m worried.”

“I’ll make sure he eats, don’t you worry. You run along. That Thelma! What possessed her to tell the police that poor Francis killed his own mother? Your grandmother is her own worst enemy.”

“I know, I know,” Cissy murmured.

It sounded like old ground. People had probably been saying the same thing about Thelma Mae since she was a girl in pigtails, if she ever was. When they were all kids, Sophie’s older brothers used to tell her that Mrs. Earnshaw had sprung up out of the earth fully formed and breathing fire. The woman’s personality was such that it gave the young Sophie pause before she dismissed it as just her brothers’ idiocy.

The two friends descended. When they got to the bottom of the steps, Cissy paused and took in a deep breath. She fished around in her little clutch purse for a piece of gum. “I know I shouldn’t say this, but I’m so grateful to be out of there for a few minutes!”

“Don’t feel bad,” Sophie said. Cissy looked like she could use a break. “I saw a patisserie downtown that I really want to try while I’m in Gracious Grove. Can you come for a cup of coffee and a pastry?”

“I don’t know,” Cissy said, looking back up the stairs. “Francis is in a bad state. He’s so upset he won’t sleep, won’t eat . . . I can’t even get him to talk.”

“It won’t hurt if you come out. Maybe if you’re gone for a half hour he’ll sleep. His aunt looks like she can manage him.”

Cissy shivered. “I’m surrounded by domineering old women.”

“Come on; it’ll be good for you.”

“Okay, I’ll go!” As they got in the car, Cissy pulled her phone out of her clutch and tapped in a message. “I just let Francis know where we’re going. He’s so frightened right now, afraid to let me out of his sight. But I can’t stand to be watched all the time, to be hemmed in and fussed over. Grandma did that after Mom died. Drove me nuts.”

“What is he scared of?” Sophie asked, backing out of the drive.

Cissy shrugged. “I don’t know. I feel like he’s worried about something but he won’t tell me what.”

Maybe he believed
he
was the intended target, Sophie thought. Or Cissy! “Did your grandmother say why she tried to turn Francis in?”

Cissy sighed. “She just kept saying he isn’t the man for me, and there was bad blood there. It goes back to the old days, I think. Grandma would never set foot in a Whittaker grocery store.”

“But Mrs. Whittaker is only a Whittaker by marriage.”

“I know. I’ve given up trying to make sense of Grandma’s vendettas. You know how she’s treated your nana. If she can hold a grudge over sixty years . . .” She sighed. “If I didn’t know better, I’d suspect
her
of poisoning Vivienne.”

Sophie pulled into the municipal parking lot closest to GiGi’s French Pastries.

“You’ll like this place,” Cissy said, climbing out of the passenger side. “I know the owner. We both belong to the Gracious Grove Businesswomen’s Association.”

As they stood in line waiting for their order, Cissy perked up, pointing to the far side of the bakeshop. “That’s the owner over there, at that table. I’d introduce you, but it looks like she’s busy.”

She pointed to a mid-forties woman wearing a baker’s apron who was sitting at a table with a man in a suit, far from the hustle and bustle. Sophie’s eyes narrowed; she had seen that man the day before. He was one of the plainclothes police detectives who had swarmed Belle Époque. When she mentioned that to Cissy, her friend paled, but just shook her head when Sophie asked what she thought they were talking about.

As they wove back through the crowded and noisy patisserie with their plates and cups, Sophie eyed the pair. The detective was showing the woman a series of photos. It had to be about the poisoned cupcake! The police had to be trying to track down who brought the cupcakes, every last one of them! Gilda didn’t seem to have a clue. Sophie’s stomach turned at the memory of the yellow frosting and crushed cake on the rug, and she averted her gaze.

Once they were seated with a cappuccino and piece of mille-feuille to split, as well as a couple of hunks of baklava and a few palmiers, Sophie devoted herself first to tasting the pastries, which were delicious. The mille-feuille was flaky, the baklava intensely sweet. Cissy picked at her food and Sophie wondered if that was her usual way, or if it was because she was upset about everything that was going on.

“I am so sorry about Vivienne. That poor woman! Francis must be in shock after such a sudden loss.”

“He is. I wish Granny wouldn’t make things worse. Why does she always do that . . . make things worse for me?” Cissy started eating, her cheeks suffused with blotchy red and her eyes filling. She took a big bite of baklava and chewed, little flakes of phyllo dropping on the white tablecloth.