The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (25 page)

      26
L
AST
M
EAL

She pulled her car quietly under the overhanging branches of a pin oak tree where it was shady and where her car could not easily be seen from the windows of the residence in question. A line from a beloved Robert Frost poem came into her mind … “whose house this is, I think I know.…” If she were recognized, no one would guess what she was doing here. She could make up all sorts of believable excuses if she had to.
“I want to invite you to a dinner party.” “I’m thinking of moving here full time, and I’d like to ask your advice.” “I was in the neighborhood and thought of you. I’m so glad that I caught you at home. I hope you don’t mind that I have just dropped by like this.”
If she were thought rude, fine; better that than to be thought suspicious. There was no earthly reason for anyone to surmise that she knew anything important about any of the murders or the attack on poor Mrs. Stewart.

Genia told herself that her own appearance of innocuous ignorance would cloak her in safety.

No one knows that I suspect anything
, she thought.

But her heart was pounding fearfully, her palms were sweaty, and her face felt frozen with tension. There was such urgency! And yet she could not afford to seem hasty.

She decided to take her purse with her—to further the appearance of normalcy—but to leave her car unlocked in case she needed to get back into it in a hurry. Genia stepped out of the vehicle, her gaze on the pavement, her mind on her next course of action. With one foot on the street and one still inside the car, she heard her name called forcefully: “Genia Potter!”

Genia jerked her head up just as a man’s hand pulled the car door away from her grasp and opened it wide for her.

“Harrison!” she gasped.

“I’m sorry, did I scare you?” The weather forecaster smiled sweetly at her and reached out his other hand to assist her out of her car. “What are you doing in our neighborhood today?”

“Just visiting,” she said brightly, breathlessly. And then before he could ask her anything else, she added, “What about you? Why aren’t you at the television station, Harrison?”

“I like to come home for lunch and then walk back.”

“Oh. So Lindsay’s home?”

He nodded as she closed her car door, and then they walked up onto the sidewalk together. Suddenly Genia knew she could not waste a second more in pretense; she had to do what she had to do.

“Harrison,” she said, grabbing one of his arms, “I need your help.”

When she told him what she wanted from him and why, he looked flabbergasted. Disbelief clouded his pleasant expression. “Genia, I just can’t believe that’s true,” he protested.

“I don’t have time to convince you, Harrison. But would you please just get the police for me? You don’t have to believe me. They don’t have to believe me. But they have to come here. Please. And then we’ll sort it all out.”

Instead of rushing to do as she pleaded, he shook his head.

“Genia, this is a terrible thing to do to a nice person.”

“Not nice,” she said, and shuddered. “You won’t help me?”

He looked reluctant, and she realized who could blame him for that? Why should he believe what sounded like a wild accusation about a respectable citizen of Devon? He must be thinking that if she were wrong, he could get sued, the police could be charged with wrongful arrest, the publicity might ruin his career. Nor could she fault his reasoning.
I must sound like a crazy woman
, she thought. “All right, I understand, but do this much for me, Harrison. I’m going in there, if I can, to look for my niece. If I don’t come out in ten minutes, then will you go for the police?”

“Yes,” he said, with no hesitation. “I can do that.”

She left him standing there beside her car, staring at her as she walked hurriedly on down the sidewalk to her destination.

She decided not to try a frontal assault. She couldn’t just walk up to the front door and demand to see her niece. If Janie were in there, the owner of this house might not want anyone to know.

Trying to remain hidden by trees, shade, and shrubbery, Genia made her way around to the rear of the big house. Behind it a large brick patio led down to a private dock on the water. Large windows faced that view, and through them she could see the kitchen with its modern appliances built to fit into an old, old home. She edged up to the windows and, seeing no one there, peered in.

A backpack just like Janie’s lay on the floor by the center island.

But what made Genia’s heart stop was another object lying on a table right beside the window through which she was looking. It was a portable phone, made of expensive teakwood, with the name of a boat embossed boldly along its back:
Waterlily
.

That phone should have gone down under the ocean along with the drowned body of Lillian Parker Graham. What was it doing here, in the kitchen of her widower?

“Why, Genia.”

She whirled to see him standing right behind her.

“No, turn back around please. That’s good. You’ve seen that I have a gun, haven’t you? Yes, that’s what you feel pressed up against your spine. We’ll go inside the house now and collect your niece. Don’t move! Not unless I tell you to. All right, begin walking toward the door. When we get there, you open it and go inside. That’s right. Excellent. You’re doing very well, Genia. Now keep walking on through the kitchen. We’re going upstairs now. Yes, one step at a time. Don’t trip over that blue hair clip. I’ll pick it up and put it safely in my pocket. You recognize it? It certainly doesn’t look like something Lillian would wear, does it? It looks like something a much younger woman might use, a teenager, perhaps. No, don’t talk. I said don’t talk! It’s really a shame you have done this, Genia.”

“Where is—”

“I said don’t speak. Oh, I’m sorry, did that hurt? I take it you want to know why I said it’s a shame? I’ll tell you, but first go toward that open door, the second bedroom on our left. Your niece is in there, Genia. You’ll get to see her, just as you wanted to. The reason I said it’s a shame that you have behaved like this is that now you will never get to be my next wife. You could have been the fifth Mrs. David Graham—”

“The fifth!”

“Stop here. We’ll wait a moment before we go in there. I want to let you think about this for a bit. Will you find your niece alive? Or might she be dead? Have I harmed her? In what sort of condition will you find her when we go in there, Genia? You don’t know, do you? You have no way of predicting what you will find in that room. You think you know things about me, but you don’t actually know the full extent of what I am capable of doing, do you? Is it dawning on you that you will soon find out?

“I’m very close to you now, aren’t I? Can you feel my breath on your face, Genia? Does the metal of the gun hurt as it presses into your spine like … this?

“I would not have hurt you if I had chosen you as my next bride, Genia. You would have been so delightfully happy with me as your husband. I know how to please women in so many ways. Lillian was ecstatic with me, you know. She loved every moment of our marriage. And I must say that I enjoyed it, too. But then, I always do. Why would I want to spend several years courting and then living with any woman whose company I did not enjoy? For her merely to be rich is not enough. She must also be beautiful, charming, delightful to be with, and oh, so lonely. My aim is to enjoy life to the fullest, and I know that in a marriage the very best way to do that is to make sure my wives enjoy it with me. And then they try so very, very hard to make my life happy. They are so grateful to me. So sweetly appreciative. I’m always touched by that. Really, I am. Sylvia Stewart’s sister, Amelia—poor Amelia—was almost fawning in her appreciation for the pleasure I brought back into her life. Oh! You didn’t know that the late Sylvia Stewart was my former sister-in-law? One of my former sisters-in-law. I have so many! I don’t know how Stanley found that out, but it was certainly her unlucky day when he did, wasn’t it? Because that brought her to Devon, where I could see her face in the crowd, where I could know that if the police put Lillian’s death together with Amelia’s …

“Unfortunately, Sylvia never liked me, never really trusted me. When Amelia died—another drowning, it’s so easy to arrange—she was so distrustful, I was forced to leave the beautiful home I had inherited. I had to leave it all behind me, and change my name, and seek another wife much more quickly than usual. I was so lucky to find Lillian so soon. And wasn’t she a lucky woman to find me, Genia?

“But you, poor Genia, will never know how full a life can be that is lived in my presence. You will only know the fullness of death. Go into the room!

“Ah, Jane, my dear. Look who has come to visit you! Shut up, Genia. Don’t move a hair toward her. Jane, dear, I know it is difficult for you to move with your hands tied up like that, but do get out of that chair now and come over here. We are all three going to leave the house and go out into my little motorboat. And then we’ll have a pleasant little journey out to the island where your father lives, Jane. Yes, isn’t that nice? I knew you’d be pleased. There is a well there, you see. Did you know that, either of you? A deep old empty one. Well, not entirely empty, not with Lillian’s body at the bottom of it. She’s been so lonely there. I think the dear woman needs company, don’t you?

“Move, Jane. If you try anything, I’ll kill your aunt Genia.

“Yes, keep going … back down the hall … down the steps … you’re both doing so well. Jane, my sweet, I’ll take the tape off your mouth when we get to the kitchen. And then we’ll wrap a shawl around your shoulders so that your bound hands will not be visible. But do remember that if you scream or do anything you shouldn’t, I will shoot your dear aunt through her spinal column, see where I have placed my gun? Do you see it? Good. Now you understand the gravity of your responsibility, don’t you?

“Genia, you would be so proud of your niece. The dear child came to me for help! Isn’t that marvelous. She had herself convinced that my stepson-in-law committed the … er, killings … and that I was such a nice man, so fond of my stepdaughter, that I would want to do everything I could to save everybody from such a terrible killer. Isn’t that clever? And so thoughtful of her to want to save Nikki as well as her own brother. She thought that Jason was in danger from Randy, you see. Amusing, isn’t it? I don’t have any idea where Jason is, truly I don’t. I couldn’t care less, although I admit I will be vastly entertained to watch his response—and his mother’s and father’s—when you and Jane go missing. Oh, don’t cry, Jane. I insist. I want you smiling gaily as we all troop happily down to the docks. That’s a girl, stop your crying now.

“Are we all set? Shawl comfy on your shoulders, Jane? No chance of screaming, is there? You go first, and then I’ll follow close … so close … behind Genia. All right, here we go. Just the three of us, off for a pleasant afternoon of boating.

“Keep walking, Jane, a little faster if you please.…

“We’re nearly there, very good, ladies.…

“Do enjoy the sunshine this one last time.

“Wait! I heard something.… No!”

Just as a gun was pressed against Genia, so did David Graham suddenly feel a hard metal object pressed against his own spine. Jammed into it, in fact, and accompanied by the no-nonsense growl, “Drop it, Graham.”

He did drop it, and then turned with a supercilious smile.

“Watching too much TV, Larry?”

“Just enough, David.”

Their unlikely savior was the mayor of Devon himself, Lawrence Averill, followed close on his heels by the police, whom Harrison Wright had notified, just as he had promised Genia he would. Harrison had found them surprisingly easy to convince, since they had just heard from Sylvia Stewart’s own injured lips a description of the man who had attacked her so brutally. “He said ‘room service,’ ” she whispered, “and I let him in without looking first. I let my sister’s killer in.”

The big storm that Harrison Wright had predicted for the end of the week had unexpectedly dissipated far offshore. It seemed incongruous to Genia now to watch a man being led away in handcuffs on such a sunny, cheerful day.

“Larry?” Genia asked him. “Do you always just happen to be walking along the beach behind David’s house, right when somebody might need you to save her life?”

The mayor smiled. “I walk here every day, Genia.”

“But do you always carry a pistol to poke in somebody’s back?”

His smile turned a bit embarrassed. “It wasn’t a gun, Genia.”

“It wasn’t? What was it?”

Larry held out his hand for her to see the hard metal “weapon” he had stuck in David Graham’s back to force him to drop his own gun. “Trade secret,” he said, and smiled at them.

It was a brass key to the city of Devon.

Then he swept both women into his arms in a bear hug of an embrace.

“I would vote for you for President,” Janie wept on his chest.

“Oh, you don’t have to do that,” the mayor said modestly, “but now that you’re eighteen, if you and your brother would vote for me for the State Legislature, I’d sure appreciate it, Janie.”

      27
C
LAMBAKE

For all the rest of the year, Parker Island must seem a place that time forgot
, Genia thought as she walked up from the island’s dock to the site of the Lillian Parker Art Festival. In two hours she would be seated at a bookstore booth signing copies of the newly published cookbook, but for now she was free to wander on the island. Seen from the air, it was only a small green patch in the blue-black waters of Narragansett Bay, a scant three miles off the coast of Rhode Island. Once she set foot on it, she found it was a woodsy refuge rich in geese and other waterfowl, and without the noise and fumes of civilization. Even today, the opening day of the festival, motorized vehicles were banned. There were bicycles for rent, and horse-drawn carriages. Genia paid ten dollars for a seat in a carriage, in order to tour the island, a trip that took her around and then across it. The entire island, shaped like a pear, was less than twelve acres, but the thick woods surrounding the salt pond in the middle made it seem bigger, more private, more mysterious. She thought she understood very well why Kevin Eden loved to live here and create his art, and why he had so obstinately refused to budge until his ex-wife generously offered him his old studio.

The carriage took her through thick tangles of bayberry bushes and stands of pine, through small private meadows, and right up to the quiet pond in the middle of a grassy field. She heard songbirds, saw chokeberry and blackberry bushes. She heard the women in the seat beside her bragging about having already spotted a white ibis, a semipalmated sandpiper, and a black-backed gull. The shore around the island was scalloped like a clamshell, torn and ragged from centuries of storms, and there were tiny coves scooped out of the shoreline as if by some hungry sea monster’s mouth.

It was a peaceful, lovely place, but she was glad she wasn’t buried there! On a far side of the island, where a small cliff bordered the sea and a curve of sandy beach invited boats to land, there was a stone wall sheltered by a curve of spruce trees, and up from the wall there was a very old stone well where Nikki Parker Dixon said she used to drop pennies, listening, listening, listening for the tiny splash when they touched the bit of water left long after the well was closed.

It was generous of Nikki to have donated this island to the city.

And generous of her to have made that offer contingent on the city allowing Kevin to continue living and working there, except for when he voluntarily vacated the premises during the month in which the festival weekend was held. Genia had heard why Nikki had been willing to relinquish the valuable property: “I couldn’t bear to own it anymore, not knowing that my mother had been murdered there, and that her body had lain there for all that time.”

Genia shivered at the thought of her own body lying at the bottom of the old well and nobody ever knowing. Of Janie … of Lillian … She thought, too, of the other three women whom David Graham had wedded, bedded, and slain. It was he whom Stanley Parker’s private investigator was researching, not Randy. It was he whom Stanley had always suspected of foul play in the death of Lillian. And it was David whom Stanley had accused of murder on the day of their luncheon at the Castle.

In the old cookbook, Genia had found what David had been looking for when he slipped into her house the same night he killed Eddie Hennessey: a small white envelope containing two clippings. One was a photograph of a bride named Amelia and her debonair groom, whose name was something other than David Graham at the time. The other clipping was of her obituary one year later.

David, Genia learned, had gotten into her rented house by taking the master key from Celeste, and having a copy of it made. But he hadn’t found the cookbook, so he hadn’t been able to steal the clippings.

“What did you think you were going to do, Stanley?”
Genia silently inquired of her late friend, as the carriage came back around toward the bustle of the festival.
“Did you think you could accuse David over dinner at my house?”

She had a feeling that’s exactly what he had intended to do: Spill the whole story, at least as much as he knew of it by then, and turn it all over to the good citizens of Devon to take into their own hands. He was dying, and he couldn’t bear to think of Lillian’s murderer going uncaught and unpunished. Nor would he have wanted to leave David—his real name, it turned out, was Donald Ray—at liberty to seduce and harm other women who, like Lillian, had too much money and not enough love. But time was running out for Stanley—if he’d only known how quickly!—and in his haste he made errors of judgment, mistakes born out of physical pain and mental anguish.

Why didn’t you confide all this in me?
she wondered now.

But she thought she knew the answer: As fond as he was of her, to Stanley, Genia was only a newcomer to Devon. He would be loyal to his Devon friends and not discuss their secrets with her. And in the end, he would take the question of crime and punishment to the people who—whatever their other problems—were well known as leaders in the town he loved. If they began to suspect and accuse David, then everyone else might, too, even if Stanley didn’t live long enough to prove it unequivocally.

As she alighted from the carriage, she spotted Harrison.

He walked toward her, a warm smile in his eyes.

“Genia!” he said quietly, and offered his hand to her. In his other, he held a “coffee cabinet,” which was Rhode Island lingo for milk shake. It looked cool and delicious to Genia; instantly, she craved one, too.

“It’s good to see you, Harrison.”

There was an awkward pause for a moment.

Thanks to the doggedness of the president of the Devon bank, it had been revealed that the president of the Devon Arts Council had transferred some of its funds into her own account. In a private agreement, it had been arranged for her to go to work to pay back the council; in addition, several hundred hours of community service and counseling were required of Lindsay Wright.

Genia came right out and asked: “How is she?”

“She’s having a hard time admitting she did anything wrong,” he said frankly, and Genia saw sadness in his eyes. “She thinks she was only doing it to benefit me, to give me a wife I could be proud of, as if I wasn’t proud of her already.”

“I know.”

He took a deep breath. “I’ve quit weather forecasting, did you know? It didn’t seem right to be on television anymore, because every time I appeared, I felt it gave people another chance to gossip about Lindsay. Brown University has invited me to be a guest lecturer, what do you think of that idea, Genia?”

“I think your students will be fortunate to have a teacher who loves his subject as much as you do. I wish you all the best, Harrison. You and your wife, too.”

“And congratulations to you on your cookbook!”

They parted ways, Genia to locate the food fair—or “clamslurper”—and buy a coffee cabinet to drink.

There was a lot of talk about universities these days, Genia reflected as she slurped, later. Janie and Jason had gone off to schools of their choice, he to study horticulture, she to the College of Culinary Arts at Johnson and Wales University in Providence. Jason had been cleared of the second drug charge, mostly because the citizens on the juvenile board chose to believe his story about the marijuana cookies. Sometimes, it paid to live in a small town where everybody knew everybody else, Genia thought. She had been grateful to those citizens for their mercy.

From a short distance away Genia watched Mayor Larry Averill work the crowd. What a nice man! From Donna, Genia had learned that Larry had finally persuaded Celeste to enter a treatment center for drug and alcohol addiction, and she was there now. “Alcoholics steal” was the blunt reply Genia got when she asked an A.A. friend about her brooch. “It’s common among us.” In her absence, her best friend the mayor had made sure that Celeste had an ad in the festival newspaper, though he no longer handed out her business cards as freely as he used to do, especially now that he was an official candidate for the State Legislature. This time, everyone was convinced Larry would win the seat he had wanted for so long, and Genia hoped so, too.

She strolled toward the booth where her funny little family had Kevin’s work displayed, and thought how proud Lew would be of them all. Although she didn’t expect Donna and Kevin ever to remarry, it seemed they got along better now than they ever had. Genia was proud of them for that and pleased for the children. She suspected that Lew would also be happy that Jed White was coming to the festival. Jed had apologized for his attitude toward her nephew.

“I can be a hard man sometimes, Genia. Sometimes there’s too much business in me and not enough heart. I guess you know that now. I feel bad about what I said without even knowing the boy. It made me think of my own boy, and the terrible mistake I made.…” The grief and regret of his life had been that he had encouraged his young physician son, his only child, to serve in Vietnam, from which the boy had not returned alive. “I hope you will forgive me, and give me a chance to redeem myself.”

She was glad, even more for his sake than for hers.

“How do you raise teenagers?” Donna had asked her only yesterday, in mock despair. Jason’s first-semester grades at the university weren’t what they might be, and his mother had a feeling he was playing more than studying. Janie, meanwhile, had a new boyfriend with three rings through his nose. Genia had assured her niece that Donna already possessed the recipe, which was known to mothers all over the world. “The secret ingredient is love.”

“Hi, Genia!” Kevin Eden smiled when he caught sight of her.

There was plenty of that secret ingredient to go around in this little family, Genia thought as she greeted them. Janie ran around the edge of the booth to plant a lipsticked kiss on her cheek, and Jason grinned and asked, “T’sup?” Their recipe might not be perfect—few were—but Genia had a feeling it would turn out fine.

She dug in her handbag for her special “autographing pen” that her own children had sent her, and thought happily,
Let’s go sell some cookbooks, Stanley
.