Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) (19 page)

Chapter 17

S
ophie made a quick call to Cissy to ask that they meet the next day, then went to bed. After morning coffee and a quick shower, she headed out. It was Dana’s day off, so Cissy was tied to the store. She was at the computer that was in a corner behind the counter when Sophie came in, carrying a white pastry bag of cranberry lemon scones and a little pot of homemade strawberry preserves. “Let’s have a feast,” she said to her new/old friend.

As they wiped their fingers clean on paper napkins after their repast, Sophie took a sip of coffee and said, “Cissy, who do
you
think did it, poisoned Vivienne Whittaker?”

Pale-blue eyes wide, Cissy shook her head. “I just don’t know! I’ve had nightmares, and in my dreams it’s . . .” She stopped and shook her head. “Never mind.”

“No, go on,” Sophie said, crumpling the paper bag into a ball and tossing it into the recycling bin. Beauty dashed after it and sniffed the bag, then returned to hop up on the counter, using a stool nearby as a step.

“In my dreams it’s Florence who died, not Vivienne.” She shot a quivery look at Sophie. “That sounds bad, right?”

“You can’t help wishing Vivienne hadn’t died—she was your fiancé’s mother—and even if you subconsciously wish it was Florence instead, that doesn’t make it bad, either. I know you wish
no one
had died.”

“That’s true.” She took a deep breath, and let it out. “Thanks, Soph.”

“I’ve heard so many stories about the engagement party,” Sophie said, carefully. “What really happened?”

“What do you mean?”

“Okay, can we start at the beginning? I don’t mean to be nosy, but it’s so confusing! The engagement tea was your grandmother’s idea, right?”

“No, not at all. Where did you hear that?”

“I don’t exactly remember . . . I think it was your grandmother who said it. So, if it
wasn’t
your grandmother’s idea, whose was it?”

“Well, it was Vivienne’s, really,” Cissy said, frowning into her coffee mug. “I was telling her that Grandma complained that she felt left out, since I wanted my bridal shower at Auntie Rose’s. Vivienne said, why didn’t Grandma have a tea to celebrate the engagement?”

“Okay.” Sophie readjusted her thinking. “But your grandmother was happy about it?”

“She grumped about it a lot. You know what she’s like.”

“I did wonder about that. It was a lot of work, and meant she had to close the tearoom for that one day.”

Cissy nodded. “She complained about it being just her and Gilda doing everything, so I told her I’d have people bring stuff, you know, to help out. Like a potluck.”

“And
did
they bring stuff?”

“Sure. I wasn’t supposed to bring anything, but I brought red-velvet cupcakes.”

Sophie was stunned. “
You
brought the red-velvet cupcakes?”

“Sure. Why?”

“Uh . . . no reason.” This changed everything. “Did you buy them or make them?”

“Oh, bought them. I don’t bake.”

“Who put them out on a plate?”

“I did,” Cissy said.

Sophie stared at her friend, trying to rein in her ideas. She had been wondering where the cupcakes had come from, but not once did she consider Cissy as a possible source. “Why red-velvet cupcakes?”

Cissy shrugged. “Someone suggested them, so I brought them.”

“Someone said to bring red-velvet cupcakes?”

“Not specifically.” She paused and furrowed her brow. “What was it . . . ? Oh, I don’t remember!” she cried, shaking her head. “This has all been so difficult . . . it’s chased thoughts right out of my head.”

“If you plated them, where did you get the one non-red-velvet cupcake?”

“I don’t understand,” Cissy said. “I only put six red-velvet cupcakes on that plate.”

“Six?” There had been at least that many left on the plate when Sophie saw it, but they were just arranged in a sporadic semicircle. “And then what? Did you take it out to the tearoom?”

“No, I left the plate where it was; we weren’t ready for dessert. We hadn’t even had lunch. Besides, the plate wasn’t full. I thought I’d put something else on it to fill it up.”

What else had been on the platter? She had pictured a plate with a full ring of red-velvet cupcakes and one non-red-velvet cupcake in the center. But was that the case? It didn’t make any sense. If Cissy’s were store bought, then who provided the homemade ones? “You sure you didn’t notice if someone else put more red-velvet cupcakes out?”

Cissy said, “I didn’t see if they did, but I got distracted and didn’t think about it after that. It was about then that Vivienne took me aside to talk for a moment. She was worried about something.”

“Worried? What about?”

“I don’t know. It was too busy and there were too many people milling around, so we never got to finish our talk.” She clicked on her cell phone, checked her text messages, then looked back up. “How are you and Gretchen doing with the shower plans?”

“You’re not supposed to fret about that,” Sophie said absently, while she considered all that she had heard. If she was right, then someone, between the time Cissy had put her red-velvet cupcakes on the plate and went to talk with Vivienne, had finished filling it. It was then brought out to the tearoom with that one poisonous vanilla cupcake with yellow frosting.
If
she was right. But who did it?

“Cissy, how well do you know Belinda Blenkenship?”

“Not very.”

“So who invited her to the engagement tea? There seems to be some confusion about that.”

“I don’t know.”

Cissy’s vagueness could be so frustrating at times! “Who is likely to have?”

“Maybe Vivienne? Or Florence?”

“Why didn’t they leave it up to your grandmother?”

Cissy sighed and rubbed her forehead. “I don’t know. Vivienne probably thought Granny would invite Phil and his girlfriend and no one else. She’d have been right.” She paused. “What you need is the Gracious Grove Whisperer.”

“What?”

“It’s this social site where rumors and gossip are traded. I’ll bring it up for you; give me your phone.”

Sophie handed over her cell phone and Cissy tapped in some searches and came up with a social network called Whisperer. She handed it back to Sophie, explaining that towns, cities, social groups, all kind of units had Whisperer sites.

“There is one voice in particular on the GiGi Whisperer site that seems to have all the dirt on everybody. You can privately ask prominent Whisperers or post a public message asking for whispers, or you can do a search.”

Sophie did a quick search on Belinda Blenkenship and came up with all the old scandals, but also saw some interesting photos. There was Belinda with a man who must be her husband, the mayor, and a bunch of men all by the development sign going into the ground. Everything she looked into came back to the new development, and it all started with Vivienne’s concern that Francis was going to be connected to it and it was going to backfire. Why? And could that actually have led to her murder? Or did it just mask a more personal reason for her killing?

How frustrating investigation must be for the police, all the innuendo and confusing paths that led nowhere. But maybe they had already figured it all out. Maybe even now they were planning an arrest.

Sophie hoped so; she wanted to stop worrying about it, but she just couldn’t while it was unresolved, such a terrible crime and right next door to her grandma’s establishment. She watched her friend, who was now just staring out the store window and petting Beauty, who did not seem as friendly with Cissy as she did with Dana. “I’m curious, Cissy; how did you and Francis get together?”

She cocked her head to one side. “It just kinda happened, you know? There aren’t many guys in Gracious Grove. Most of them leave for college and never come back, so I haven’t dated a whole lot. Grandma always fussed that I’d be an old maid. But one day Vivienne came into the bookstore and we got talking. She invited me over to the house for dinner. Francis was there, too, and he asked if I wanted to go out for coffee. We talked, and he was so nice to me. Then he asked me out to dinner, and I went. He had changed a lot from when we were teenagers and he listened to me as I talked about the store, and what I wanted to do with it; it was nice to be listened to for once. That was a year ago.”

It almost sounded like an arranged marriage with Vivienne as the matchmaker, and Sophie couldn’t help but remember the women who had been chased off to make way for her. Belinda was only the latest, Sophie would bet, and Dana one of the earliest. It was likely no coincidence that Vivienne
happened
to come into the bookstore and
happened
to invite Cissy to dinner on the same night Francis
happened
to be there. Jason said Sophie had a devious mind, but it wasn’t devious to see the careful planning behind so-called happenstance, was it?

Cissy Peterson would make the ideal ambitious and successful fellow’s wife, intelligent, gentle, reserved. Even clothes-wise she was perfect; no shocking outfits or risqué head turners on Cissy. No scandalous past, and no tattoos or piercings to frighten the conservative in Gracious Grove political and social circles. Today she was dressed in a pretty butter-yellow twin set with real pearls and a blue-floral skirt, very ladylike and proper.

“You must love Francis,” Sophie said.

“Of course,” Cissy said calmly, and went back to checking her messages.

“Are you waiting for something?” Sophie asked, watching her thumb through her list. “If I’m holding you up . . .”

“No, not at all,” Cissy said, looking up from the phone. “I ran into Wally last night and he said he’d let me know if he found out anything about Vivienne that he can share with me.”

“Ran into him? Where?”

“At the grocery store.”

Sophie was silent, wondering about all she’d heard about Wally still caring for Cissy. “What made you decide to get married?”

“Francis asked,” she replied, with a surprised expression.

“That doesn’t mean you had to say yes,” Sophie said.

“But I want to be married. Don’t you? I want . . .” She paused and sighed, wrapping her arms around herself and looking up at the display of twinkling crystals overhead. A prism of color kissed her cheek. “I want a home; a
real
home. And kids. I want . . . I want . . .” She stopped, tears gleaming in her eyes.

“Oh Cissy, I’m sorry!” Sophie said, tears welling in her own eyes. Of course all that would mean a lot to Cissy; she’d lost her mother at sixteen, just when a girl needed her mom the most. “But we’re young; we’ve got time. Besides, marrying doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll get it all. Is Francis the right guy?”

Cissy, her eyes glittering, said, “Yes, he
is
. He’s a good man; he loves me and we want the same things. That’s what’s important, you know, not all this other pie-in-the-sky, love-forever-after stuff. People think I’m a little flighty, but I’m really very practical.”

“More than I am,” Sophie admitted, thinking that she really wanted the
love-forever-after stuff
, as Cissy called it. “It’s too bad for him his mom died, and so close to the wedding.”

“Vivienne was going to be the mom I lost,” Cissy said, turning her engagement ring round and round on her finger. “I miss her already. She brought a gift to the engagement tea, you know, a really nice one!”

“You told me that, but you didn’t know then what it was. Do you know now?”

She nodded. “I finally opened it. She would have wanted me to,” she said, her voice soft.

“You said before that she was worried; are you
sure
you don’t know what about?”

“I really don’t. She said she didn’t know how much she could trust people, and she looked toward the tearoom, then she thrust the box into my hands and asked me to open it later and tell me what I thought when we talked.”

“What you thought? About what? What did that
mean
?”

“What I thought of the gift, I guess.”

Sophie asked, “So what did you think? What
was
the gift?”

“A vintage teapot. Really pretty, but not very practical. It looked like it was out of her own collection, you know?”

“I didn’t know she
had
a collection.”

“Oh yes, she did; she has . . . had . . . a
lovely
collection. That’s why Grandma tried to get her to start a collector’s group with her, The Teapot Society. The one Vivienne gave me is a Haviland Eglantine-pattern teapot; I looked it up on the Net to see if it was special in some way. Pretty, but a strange choice. Like I said, I’m not a collector. I’ll cherish it, though, just because she gave it to me.”

“Eglantine . . . I’ve heard that flower name before. I wonder what it means? Do you remember when we were kids and Nana set us down with a book on the language of flowers, and told us to write a poem?”

Cissy smiled. “I do! Mine was awful, like ‘roses are red’ awful. Wait . . . let me see what it does mean.” She took out her phone and went to a browser, then tapped in
EGLANTINE—LANGUAGE OF FLOWERS
. She frowned, her mouth twisted in puzzlement. “It means
a wound to heal
, ” she said, softly.