The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (13 page)

Genia observed Nikki as she moved among the groups of guests. Randy Dixon stayed at his wife’s side, touching her, getting her water to drink, placing a steady hand on her back.
Look at your son-in-law, Stanley
, Genia thought.
He can’t be all bad if he can be as supportive and loving to Nikki as this
.

When Donna appeared Janie hurried to her father’s side, and then worked her way around the room to her aunt. Genia could hardly blame her for wanting to avoid her mother: When her children were in the same room with her, Donna just couldn’t seem to help but criticize and fuss over them. If it wasn’t Janie’s hair that Donna disparaged, it would be her jewelry, or her fingernail polish, her clothes, her posture, or the way she carried a tray. Genia thought the girl looked trapped and took mercy on her. “You’ve been a great help, sweetheart, and you can leave anytime you want to. Get my keys out of my purse over there and you can have my car for the rest of the day.”

“But how will you—”

“I’ll get a ride with someone, or I’ll walk home.”

“You sure? Thanks a lot, Aunt Genia. I’ll be really careful.”

“I know you will. Go have some fun for the rest of the day, dear.”

“What will you tell Mom?”

“Why,” Genia said, surprised, “I’ll tell her the truth, that your job was finished here, and that I gave you my car so you could get home.”

“She’ll tell you I’ll wreck it.”

“You seem like a very good driver to me. Have you ever had an accident before, Janie?”

“No, but she’ll—”

“Go. Drive safely. I’ll handle your mother.”

In a flash the girl had grabbed the keys and was gone out the back door, as if she were afraid her aunt might change her mind if she took too long to leave. When Genia reentered the dining room and Donna approached her and asked where Janie was, Genia said, “I sent her home with my car.”

“You trust my daughter with your car?”

“Yes,” Genia said firmly in a voice that brooked no argument. “I do.”

Behind her back she crossed her fingers and hoped for the best.

Suddenly she felt the weight of the long night and day. If she didn’t get home soon, she’d collapse right there, she thought. When Donna turned away to chat with someone else, Genia began to work her way through the crowd toward the front door, trying to be unobtrusive about it.

“Genia, wait up!”

She turned around to find that Nikki was hurrying toward her through the throng of visitors in the entry hall.

“I have something for you!”

Nikki thrust a thick, familiar, dog-eared cookbook into her hands. Genia recognized it instantly as Stanley’s everyday favorite. “Oh, Nikki,” she said, feeling touched by the gesture. “I couldn’t possibly—”

“Yes, you can, and you should. I don’t like to cook, and I know Dad left me a whole slew of valuable antique cookbooks, so I sure don’t need one more. It ought to be in the hands of somebody who will appreciate it. Like you. It would please me so much for you to have it.”

Others, gathered in the foyer, listened to their exchange.

Genia ran a finger over the ragged edge of the cover where it was beginning to separate from the spine.

“I’d feel guilty taking it from you, Nikki.”

“Oh, you shouldn’t! Look how greasy and yucky it is. Really, I ought to be ashamed to offer it to you. Do you mind that it’s such a mess?”

“Mind? It’s perfect. It will be like having him right there cooking with me. Thank you, Nikki. I will cherish this, but if you ever change your mind and want it back, it’s yours.”

With the others looking on, Genia said her good-byes, tucked the cookbook securely under her arm, and walked outside. Then she had to laugh to herself: She had forgotten she didn’t have her car! She’d given it to Janie to use. Well, that was all right, she could walk home.

But when she saw Ed Hennessey lingering in the shadows near some of the parked cars talking with Randy Dixon, she changed her mind. The two men appeared to be arguing about something—which Genia took as a good sign that Nikki and Randy were finally doing something about the problem of the fired caretaker. Nikki must have changed her mind about whatever hesitation she had felt in asking her husband to deal with Hennessey.
Or maybe I only imagined that
, Genia thought.

The sight of Hennessey’s angry face forcefully reminded her—and if she weren’t so tired, she wouldn’t have needed reminding!—that a murder had been committed in those woods last night. She was worn out from the tumultuous events of the past twenty-four hours. She wasn’t thinking straight. And suddenly, again she felt ready to drop where she stood. When David Graham and Celeste Hutchinson came out, she asked them if they’d mind dropping her off on their way back to town.

“I’d be honored to, Genia,” David assured her.

“Take her home first, David.” Celeste wobbled a bit on her high heels and reached out to cling with both hands to David’s arm. Genia would have felt like a third wheel, except that it was obvious that David felt embarrassed by Celeste’s behavior. She was more than a little drunk, and she was acting as if this handsome man belonged to her. When he walked Genia to her front door, leaving Celeste in the front passenger’s seat, which she had claimed, he said, “It’s been a shocking day, hasn’t it? Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

His tone was so kind, so understanding, that Genia felt tears spring to her eyes. “I’m just tired,” she said quickly. “And I need a good cry about Stanley.”

The sadness in David’s eyes mirrored her own feelings for a moment, and he said softly, “The only good thing about this is that Lillian isn’t here to see it.” He stepped down from her front stoop. “I hate leaving you alone out here. Are you sure you’ll be all right?”

“Yes. Promise.”

When she closed the front door behind her, she felt just a little bit better.

      11
S
PECIAL
R
ECIPES

A long soak in the deep, skylit bathtub in the master bathroom helped Genia to ease some of the tension out of her body and mind. Afterward she slipped into a cotton nightgown and padded back to her bedroom in her house slippers.

She’d left Stanley’s cookbook on top of the nightstand.

A nightcap and a good book, that was just what she wanted.

She picked up a small glass of sherry that she had poured earlier and set it beside the bed. Then she got in between the sheets and lay back against plump pillows. First she reached for the book and then for the sherry.

She opened the precious, dog-eared cookbook.

No antique cookbook worth hundreds of dollars could possibly have meant as much to her as this one. Genia couldn’t count the number of times she had sat across from Stanley in the past few months, watching him scribble in this book, listening to his strong opinions about food and people and life. And it wasn’t merely a cookbook, she saw as she opened it, it was also a diary of the recipes he served and to whom he served them. She found odd bits of paper stuck in it—a postcard here, a grocery receipt there, all wedged between pages. Some such scraps appeared held in by the “glue” of a spot of grease, or what she suspected might be honey.

Stanley’s bold, penciled notations were everywhere. They were scribbled in margins, in between recipes, written on divider pages, and in the index. Some recipes he had crossed out entirely, as if they weren’t even worth the paper they were printed on. Others he had circled, or starred. He commented on ingredients, added his own inventions, listed who came for lunch.

Sometimes his notes had nothing to do with the recipes at all:

Served to Genia and Celeste June 2. Delicious! Celeste brought a California Cab., and G. brought a cheese bread that could have used a zinger like red peppers. Told her so
.

June 10—Nikki and what’s-his-name, crazy about these rolls. Next time, serve him something he hates, so he won’t come back
.

Beneath a recipe for deviled chicken there was a wickedly funny note:
For David Graham!
Genia smiled at Stanley’s humor, knowing he had remained more jealous of Lillian’s second husband than he liked people to know.

There were also notes beside recipes that Stanley had not yet tried, and finding those, Genia felt especially melancholy. There were suggestions to himself that he invite particular people over to try one recipe or another. She came across her own name several times and fondly recalled the meals and conversations that it signified.

Stars, asterisks, and circles denoted a rating system that Genia didn’t begin to understand. Here and there a Post-it note elaborated a recipe’s usefulness:
Serve cold for picnics, hot for Oktoberfests, lukewarm for what’s-his-name
.

His dislike of his son-in-law glared from the pages.

“Stanley, Stanley,” Genia murmured, chiding his ghost.

A faintly sour smell wafted up from the pages, from wine stains, grease splotches, and even bits of shaved cheese that clung here and there. She pictured him grating cheddar over a bowl while simultaneously checking a recipe from the cookbook.

Genia’s fingers paused on a recipe for sautéed veal chops. Stanley had circled it, but that wasn’t what stopped her. Above it, he had scribbled a date and initials: “8/8” and “C.H.” There was a strip of plain white paper, serving as a bookmark, stuck in the crease of the book, and it bore the same notations: “8/8” and “C.H.” Celeste Hutchinson? Had he served these chops to Celeste? Many of the scribbles in the cookbook had faded or smeared with time, but these hadn’t. If he’d meant August 8 of this year, that would have been only last week. Genia didn’t remember Stanley mentioning having Celeste Hutchinson over for a meal, however. Not that Genia had expected him to tell her all of his engagements, it was just that he had usually seemed to do so while they planned and cooked. She would ask Celeste about it, she thought, and find out if she’d liked the chops. But then she realized that the recipe must not have been sufficiently outstanding to adapt for the cookbook, or Stanley would surely have mentioned it to her.

Stanley’s “suggestions” had been more in the nature of fiats, but she’d learned to maneuver around them whenever she strongly opposed them. It was not worth arguing with him, because Stanley never backed down from a fight. If someone tried to argue, he just escalated, and kept that up until his opponent threw in the towel. That had been no hindrance to Genia, however. In her opinion anybody who had ever been a mother to teenagers could handle a man like that.

With sad pleasure she read through the list of marvelous ingredients for the veal dish, both the original ones and some Stanley had added: garlic, butter and cream, thick loin chops, fresh tarragon, and the finest dry French vermouth. That last was “a Stanley touch.” She could almost taste the food, smell the aroma of the herb, hear the sizzle of the butter and garlic in the pan.

Genia sighed and closed her eyes briefly.

She felt very tired all of a sudden.

When she opened her eyes and her glance fell again on the closed book, she recognized several other bookmarks just like the one that had fallen down in the middle of the page by the veal chops. She hadn’t paid any special attention to them before, because there were many other bits of paper stuck in the book, too. But it dawned on her now that these all had a newer and similar appearance. Curious, she opened to the first one, and discovered it was for a lamb curry salad. On the bookmark itself, he’d written “8/7,” and then “Lindsay, a little lamb.”

She turned to where another white strip marked a place and found a recipe for a Caesar salad that used seafood instead of the usual chicken. That bookmark also bore a date, 8/11, four days later than the one for Lindsay Wright (Genia assumed she was the Lindsay he meant), and then: “what’s-his-name, hates salad.”

After that she found garlic steak stir-fry for “Larry, 8/6,” and chicken satay for “David, 8/9,” Thai pizza for “Kevin, 8/10,” and saffron egg salad for “Donna, 8/5,” duck with honey, date, and walnut sauce for “Nikki, 8/12.”

She also found one that read “S.S., 8/19,” which was the only other one for this month. She couldn’t think of any of Stanley’s acquaintances—at least among the ones she’d met—who had those initials. Perhaps it wasn’t a person at all, but an event of some kind, although she couldn’t think of anything except “summer solstice,” and she knew that wasn’t on August 19, which was only a few days away. Except for the “S.S.” entry, all of the other white markers denoted last week’s dates, leading right up to her dinner party.

And to his murder.

It looked very much to Genia as if Stanley Parker either had—or planned to have—every one of her dinner guests, plus his daughter and son-in-law, over for a consecutive series of private meals with him at the Castle.
If
these dates actually did refer to this year, and not to some other year. Genia thought they did, or why else would the bookmarks still look so clean?

Her guests, all in a row, in the week before he died.

Genia listed them in order on a separate piece of paper:

There was that stray one for 8/19, but except for the fact that it was marked by a white strip of paper, it didn’t seem related to these eight, so she forgot about it for the time being. Randy and Nikki were the only ones who had not also been invited to the dinner party, nor could Genia recall that Stanley had ever said he wanted them to be. She would have been happy to include them if he had asked her to.

Why those people? Why last week? And why had he not said a single thing to her about them, even though he and she had talked every day about their cookbook project? He must have been exhausted to have cooked that many lunches for that many people all in a row. No wonder Stanley had seemed to move ever more tiredly and painfully as the week progressed! Genia recalled that she had seen much less of him last week than usual; he had claimed that business appointments and civic meetings were eating up his time. She’d accepted his word without question, for why should she not? Was that what all these luncheons were about? Business and civic matters? It appeared that he had deliberately failed to discuss any of this with her. If all he was doing was discussing—say—the art festival with these people, then why not say so?

And why hadn’t he discussed with her the food he served them? There had been nothing Stanley Parker enjoyed more than a good debate on the merits of angel hair pasta over fettuccine, or lamb chops over veal. Every other time he had had company this summer, as far as she knew, he had hashed out his menus with her, just for the pleasure of it.

As far as I know …

Evidently, she had known him less well than she thought.

It saddened her to contemplate that possibility.

For some reason Stanley had considered it none of her business that he was having a series of luncheons at the Castle for a short list of prominent citizens of Devon. Nor had he seen fit to tell her they were the very same people he had asked her to invite to her house for their tasting dinner.

“Stanley, what were you up to?”

Genia sat up for a long time with his open cookbook on her lap. And then suddenly it occurred to her that maybe he’d only
planned
to have those people over; maybe none of these meals had ever happened. Even though it was very late, she decided to interrupt her niece’s sleep by telephoning her with a single question:

“Donna, dear, I’m so sorry to be calling so late—but did Stanley have you to lunch last week?”

There was a long pause on the other end of the line, which might have been prompted only by the fact that Genia had awakened her. Finally, Donna dragged out a word as if she didn’t want to say it.

“Yes.”

Again, there was a long pause.

“Why, Aunt Genia?”

“Oh, I’m just trying to decipher this cookbook of his, and he had your name written down by a recipe, with the date, but no year. I just wondered when it was. I didn’t remember either of you mentioning it to me.”

“Well, that’s when it was.” Her niece’s tone was sulky.

“Thank you, dear. I apologize for waking you over something so trivial.”

“That’s okay. Good night, Aunt Genia.”

“What was the occasion, dear?”

“What do you mean?”

“I just wondered why he invited you to lunch with him.”

Again, there was a longish pause. “He wanted to talk about Jason.”

“Really? To let you know what a good job he was doing?”

“Yeah.” Another pause. “And to tell me not to send him to military school. As if it was any business of Stanley’s.” The sulky, reluctant tone became sharply indignant. “Jason is my son, and I’ll do what I think is best for him.”

“Did you say that to Stanley?”

“Sort of.”

“What did he say?”

That question produced another pause, and then Donna said, “I really don’t remember what he said.” Genia heard her yawn pointedly into the telephone receiver. “I’m too sleepy.”

But Genia wasn’t letting her go so easily. “It looks as if Stanley had Kevin out to lunch last week, too—”

“He did? Why, that conniving old—”

“Kevin didn’t tell you?”

“No, he didn’t tell me. I’ll bet you they cooked this plan up together, to get me to change my mind about sending Jason—”

“What plan?”

Donna’s torrent of angry words stopped abruptly. “Just … well, just the … plan for Stanley to … uh, try to convince me. Aunt Genia, I don’t mean to be rude, but I’m really so tired—”

“Of course. I’m sorry. Good night, sweetheart.”

But after Genia hung up and checked her list again, she saw that what Donna had suggested could not be true: Donna had gone to lunch with Stanley a full six days before Kevin did. If Kevin had “cooked up” some plan with Stanley, it hadn’t been then.

Why was her niece apparently so loath to tell her about lunching with Stanley? And what “plan” did she think they cooked up?
And why did Stanley invite all of my other dinner guests over to his house that very same week without giving me so much as a clue that he was doing it?
Not so many days ago, she had inquired suspiciously, though humorously, of Stanley, “What are you up to?” Now, in her mind, she asked his spirit:
What were you up to? What was the real point of the dinner party you lobbied so hard for me to have?

Genia felt terribly disloyal to her own kin when an unavoidable question rose next in her mind:
Stanley, did all of these mysterious goings-on lead in some way to your death?