The Grim Steeper: A Teapot Collector Mystery (9 page)

She turned away and saw something glinting in the corner of the graveled section of Auntie Rose’s front yard near the Japanese maple. What had she and Laverne missed, another teacup? She shone the flashlight that way and saw a piece of fabric with what looked like a shiny button.
What the heck?

She moved toward it, speeding in one second from unaware to horrified. By the brilliant beam of the flashlight she saw Dean Asquith’s face, eyes wide, drool hanging out of his open mouth, his suit jacket ripped and blood seeping through his torn white shirt. He was twisted, contorted, his hands clutched into claws, and he was dead . . . very,
very
dead.

Chapter 9

S
he shrieked, the sound echoing in the still night air, then bolted back along the lane into the kitchen, not waiting to run upstairs. She called 911 from the kitchen phone, taking the cordless handset back outside with her as she gabbled the facts to the dispatch, answering questions she didn’t remember later. Lights came on inside as the wail of sirens scythed through the cold clarity of the night. A dog howled in time with the keening sirens, a duet of mourning and horror.

Nana flicked on the light and opened the front door of the tearoom as she knotted the tie of her robe. Pearl sleepily stuck her nose out the door at her feet. “Sophie, what’s—”

“Nana, go back inside!”

“Why? What’s going on?”

“I f-found Dean Asquith.”

“Is he okay?” Nana stepped outside anyway, pushing Pearl back in with her slippered foot as the police car
screamed up to the curb. Gilda came running out of the front door of Belle Époque, shrieking unintelligible questions. “Oh, my dear lord, the poor man!” Nana said, staring down at him. She clasped her hands together, whispered something, then looked up at Sophie. “Are you okay, sweetie?”

“I am,” Sophie said. She glanced to the police car. Thank goodness! It was Wally Bowman getting out. He was an old friend and now Cissy Peterson’s boyfriend, someone she could trust and explain the situation to. “It’s cold out here tonight, Nana; you should get back in where it’s warm.”

But as Wally approached, Nana was examining the scene with a surprisingly calm demeanor. Sophie looked down, forcing herself to face it, the overhead light illuminating the scene much more clearly than had her small flashlight. Hours ago Dean Asquith was alive, vital, the center of things in his academic world, and now he was dead.

She focused on individual features, trying not to let the fear overwhelm her. Drool: There was still a string of it dangling from his mouth. Surely that must mean he was killed recently? His body: Why was he contorted so? His fingers: She shuddered at the way they were cramped, like he suffered agony. And the blood seeping from his chest: Where did that come from? She didn’t dare touch him. This was a murder scene, and she mustn’t move an inch. “Wally! I’m so glad it’s you,” she said, looking up at the officer.

“Sophie,” he said, with a curt nod. He muttered something into the radio that was clipped by a nylon thingie that looked like a carabiner to his epaulette, then studied her. “Are you okay? You look pale.”

“I’m okay.”

Wally knelt beside the dean and studied him, then stood back up. “Ma’am, if you could go back inside, I’ll talk to you in a moment,” he said to Nana. She stepped back in the
tearoom without a murmur. Wally turned to Sophie. “You and I are going to move back to the street, and you can tell me what happened.” He took her arm in his gloved hand and guided her to the street near his cruiser, as another cruiser pulled up, lights flickering. “Wait here a moment,” he said, then approached the other car and spoke to the female officer who climbed out. She nodded curtly and radioed in.

Sophie explained everything that had happened from the moment she served the last customer to the second she first laid eyes on the fluttering piece of fabric that had drawn her to the dean’s body. As she explained what went on, she kept thinking that it was going to be a long, awful night.

*   *   *

T
helma was having a nightmare—or at least she hoped it was a nightmare—that she was being attacked by the clucking chickens from the farm she had been raised on. Gabble, cluck, peck! She felt like she was swimming, then someone was hauling her up out of the water and . . . she opened one eye. Gilda leaned over her, babbling about something, spit raining down from her dentureless mouth while she shook Thelma by the shoulder.

“What are you quacking about now?” Thelma asked, swinging her feet over the edge of the bed and squinting at the clock. “It’s eleven at night, you stupid hen!” she growled.

“Thelma, oh, Thelma, we’re in so much trouble!” Gilda, frizzy hair partially restrained by prickly curlers, waved her hands around and plucked at her fuzzy pink housecoat.

“What do you mean?”

“Over at Auntie Rose’s! You remember you wished someone would die there sometime so
they’d
be known as the murder tearoom and not us? Well, you’ve wished it right into being!” Gilda’s eyed widened as she stared down at her
employer. “You wished for this to happen! And the salt . . . oh my! Those packets will have my fingerprints on ’em because I’m the one who snuck them into their stuff. And that awful,
awful
man, the college dean . . . I told him off. They’ll be coming for me soon!”

Thelma, now fully awake, stared up at her employee. “I don’t understand one word in twenty that you’re cackling!”

Once Gilda calmed down and explained, Thelma tottered over to the window, joints popping and feet aching, and stared down over the street scene below, cruisers with top lights blinking cheerily, and lights ablaze over at Auntie Rose’s. “What did you say? Who was it that was killed this time?”

“That college dean, the mean one who helped Rose exclude you.”

Thelma felt a chill, like a goose had walked over her grave. “You talking about that dean feller that was running the whole shebang?” Reasoning it out, she decided that as usual, Gilda had gotten it all muddled around in her brain and the previous night’s kerfuffle with the dean had added to Julia Dandridge and Sophie Taylor’s shutting them out of the whole deal. “He’s
dead
? Come on, you’re imagining things. Had a nightmare. Go back to bed, you chicken-headed idiot.”

And then there was a rapping at the door,
thud, thud, thud
, like in a horror movie when death comes knocking. Gilda squawked and flapped her hands, dashing around the room clucking in anxiety.

Thelma swallowed hard. What if Gilda wasn’t imagining things? “We didn’t do anything but put some salt in a couple o’ sugar packets, that’s all. Nothing else,” she said. “A little salt never killed anyone.”

Or could it? She wasn’t sure. But she did remember when the dean drank the salty tea and made a fuss over at Auntie Rose’s. Sophie Taylor had looked directly at her as she stood
in the window gloating over the fuss. That girl . . . she had her grandmother’s sharp eyes, for sure. Wouldn’t take her but two minutes to point the shameful finger of blame at poor Thelma.

Thud, thud, thud
again. “We’d better get going,” Thelma said. “You go down and hold ’em off.”

“Me?” Gilda squawked again, jumping like she’d been scalded. “Why me?”

“Because you’re already decent. I’ve got to get my housecoat on and splash some water in my eyes. Make some tea, while you’re at it. My mouth feels like the bottom of a barnyard boot.”

When Thelma finally got downstairs, Gilda, now with her teeth in, was sitting quivering, with Wally Bowman asking her about what she saw.

“N-nothing!” she stuttered.

“Look, Miss Bachman, Sophie Taylor says you hauled the garbage out to the street just before she did; that’s how she was reminded it was garbage night. She heard you, then looked out the window and saw you. Did you see anything? Anyone?”

Gilda shook her head. Wally sighed and made a note in a booklet, then looked up at Thelma. “What about you, ma’am? Did you see or hear anything?”

How much to say? Thelma eyed Wally; he was Cissy’s beau, and she didn’t exactly want to lie to him, but she sure wasn’t going to tell him the truth. She had to think that over, first, for sure. Then she’d decide. “After I told Gilda to haul her butt down and take out the garbage, I hopped into bed and was dead asleep in two seconds flat. Gilda had to come wake me up just now. I was in la-la land dreaming of Rock Hudson and Cary Grant engaging in fisticuffs over me at
the Gracious Grove Methodist Church picnic. Is it true it’s that school dean that’s dead?”

“I can’t comment on that, ma’am.”

“Oh, come on, Wally,” she said, eyeing the boy slyly. She’d known him forever, since he was a little boy, and then a boney skinny teen kicking a Hacky Sack in her driveway, trying to make up to her granddaughter. He flushed up to the roots of his sandy hair and looked away. “Now, you’re my Cissy’s steady fellow. Surely you can tell her poor old grandmother who raised her something about it, so I don’t worry? Is there some mad killer on the loose? Should I be getting out my daddy’s shotgun?”

He swiveled and stared at her, wide-eyed, an uneasy look on his face. “You don’t really have a shotgun, do you, Mrs. Earnshaw?”

She stayed quiet, puckering up her lips and squinting.

“Okay, okay! It is Dean Asquith; I guess there’s no harm in telling you that much. But I can’t say anything more. We won’t know a lot until the autopsy is done. But you don’t need to worry. The police will be watching your houses, and Detective Morris will be around to talk to you.”

“That’s that woman detective?” Thelma asked.

“Yes.”

“Changed my mind about that one. Maybe
more
women ought to be detectives, since we’re a whole lot smarter than most men.”

*   *   *

S
ophie felt like she was going to jump out of her skin, she was so agitated. Wally had sent her back to the tearoom kitchen to sit with Nana as the night commenced. More police had arrived, the whole street lit up like the Vegas strip.

“What do you think they’re doing?” Sophie asked her grandmother.

Her lined face weary, she cradled Pearl on her lap, slowly petting the chocolate-point Birman as the cat purred her pleasure. “I don’t know, and I don’t think you should dwell on it, honey.”

“I can’t help it. I keep seeing the dean’s face.” It was the contrast between the last time she saw him, disapproval etched on his aristocratic face, distaste twisting his mouth, and then in death . . . the string of drool, the contorted hands, the slack mouth, the eyes, wide and startled. She saw again the blossom of blood on the white shirt under the wool blazer. And a bloody wound on his neck; what was that, a knife cut? It all kept coming, unbidden, into her mind. She needed a distraction. “Nana, do you think the dean was killed by someone in his group tonight?”

“We won’t know what happened until we know what actually killed him.”

“His skin looked bluish, to me, and so did his lips,” Sophie mused. “He had a cut on his neck, but then he had some kind of wound on his chest, too. His white shirt was saturated in blood, and the cloth was kind of in tatters. I didn’t hear a gunshot; I think I would have, right?”

Nana nodded. “You were in your room right at the front of the house. I’m sure you would have heard a gunshot.” Her grandmother eyed her but remained silent.

“Is something wrong?” Sophie asked. “I mean, other than the obvious? You seem concerned.”

“I was wondering if it had occurred to you that this might change how things go for Jason.”

“I’m glad
you
said it. I felt like a monster for even thinking it, but I don’t know. Whatever Dean Asquith was going
to say will be said anyway, right? He must have written down his conclusions, and put into effect his intent.”

Nana nodded and stroked the cat. “I hope . . . I don’t mean to alarm you, honey, but I do hope . . . I mean, I know he didn’t
do
anything . . .”

Sophie got the gist of what her grandmother was not saying. Her stomach twisted. “You’re hoping they don’t blame Jason for this. He lives alone, and that’s not much of an alibi. We were texting back and forth though, so that ought to help. I hope.” She sighed and rubbed her eyes, glancing up at the clock. It was now well after midnight. She wondered how Jason would find out about the dean’s death. They likely would have gone to the dean’s wife first, to inform her of her husband’s death, the wife who had a lover on the side, just as he did.

She frowned down at her hands; Dean Asquith had a lover he was trying to dump, and who was angry at him. His wife had a boyfriend. People other than Jason were upset about the grading scandal. And then there was whoever really
did
alter Mac MacAlister’s grade. Did someone fear they were going to be exposed as the culprit, not Jason? “It seems to me that there were a dozen people angry at the dean, and any one of them could have killed him.”

“You’re so right, honey. I have a feeling this isn’t going to be an easy case to investigate unless someone confesses.”

Finally, at about one in the morning, Sophie and her grandmother were briefly interviewed by Detective Morris, who then strolled across to Belle Époque to interview Gilda and Thelma. Sophie wished her well of it. It had come out, during the interview, about Thelma and/or Gilda’s tampering with the Auntie Rose sugar packets.

Sophie felt bad exposing Thelma and Gilda to the detective’s
questions, but she was not going to hide anything, and at some point the dean’s reaction to his salted tea, when he implied that Sophie was targeting him for his behavior toward Jason, would come up. It was better coming from her. The detective heard her out, nodding, but there was a definite twinkle in her eye. She was familiar with Thelma Mae Earnshaw from the past, but it was difficult for Sophie to tell if Detective Morris most dreaded or looked forward to confronting her again.