Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) Read online

  Every belle époque has its end . . .

  “Enough chatter,” Florence said, standing slowly, tugging at the frilled cuffs of her springy blouse. “Cut to the chase, Wally. What happened to poor Vivienne?”

  “Well, that’s a problem; we don’t exactly know.”

  Francis sat down, thudding into the nearest chair as if his legs wouldn’t hold him any longer. He buried his face in his hands and moaned.

  Wally glanced at him, then continued. “The medical examiner says if he was to hazard a guess, he’d say that Mrs. Vivienne Whittaker had been poisoned, either purposely or accidentally, by something she ingested in the minutes before her demise.”

  “You mean something she ate?” Thelma Mae loudly asked. “If that’s what you mean, just say it plain, Wally; don’t beat around the bush.”

  He met her grim stare. “All right then, yes, it appears it was something she ate or drank in your tearoom that killed her.”

  “You finally did it,” Francis said, lifting his face and glaring at the senior owner of Belle Époque. “You finally killed someone with your awful food!”

  THE BERKLEY PUBLISHING GROUP

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  TEMPEST IN A TEAPOT

  A Berkley Prime Crime Book / published by arrangement with the author

  Copyright © 2014 by Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

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  eBook ISBN: 978-1-101-61047-3

  PUBLISHING HISTORY

  Berkley Prime Crime mass-market edition / June 2014

  Cover illustration by Griesbach Martucci.

  Cover design by Diana Kolsky.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product

  of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  PUBLISHER’S NOTE: The recipes contained in this book are to be followed exactly

  as written. The publisher is not responsible for your specific health or allergy needs

  that may require medical supervision. The publisher is not responsible for any adverse

  reactions to the recipes contained in this book.

  Version_1

  For Karen: mystery reader, tea drinker,

  and most of all, wonderful friend!

  Contents

  Every belle époque has its end . . .

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Cranberry Pecan Yogurt Scones

  How to Steep the Perfect Cup of Tea

  Prologue

  “So, you’re a cook, right?” Sebastian DeRocque sat back in his chair in the dining room of the Eastern Star restaurant in Tribeca and crossed his legs. He pinched the knife-edge crease of his gray wool slacks and shot his white French cuff just enough to show one inch of white linen and a gold monogrammed cuff link.

  “I’m a chef,” Sophie Taylor corrected, lifting a dumpling from the dim sum plate with chopsticks and popping it into her mouth. She savored the flavor, head cocked to one side. What was that spice the chef had used?

  “I thought that men were chefs and women were cooks,” Sebastian said, signaling for another tokkuri, a ceramic carafe of sake.

  Sophie stared at him for a moment, examining the supercilious curve of his lips. There was a chance he was teasing, but she didn’t think so. As she’d suffered his snobbery throughout the meal, he had exhibited not a single shred of a sense of humor. He had regaled her with the wonder that was Sebastian, but this was the first time he had asked anything about her. She didn’t really care if he was trying to be funny, anyway. Misogyny was rarely humorous. “No, a trained cook is a chef. Period. Gender, age, race and/or sexual orientation don’t enter into it. I have a culinary degree and one in restaurant management.”

  “I see I’ve touched a PC nerve.”

  “I don’t consider a refusal to discriminate being politically correct,” she said. “The way I was raised, it was called politeness and respect.” At least that was the lesson from her nana, in Gracious Grove, New York, though her mother didn’t feel the same. She would say if you are clearly superior, you deserve to discriminate.

  “Anyway . . . is that why your restaurant failed so badly . . . your, er, degree in restaurant management?”

  His effort to irritate her made her wonder if perhaps she hadn’t worshipped readily enough at the altar of his magnificence. As a surgeon of familial wealth and some fame, Sebastian was accustomed to adulation from women, she supposed. But she had known other doctors and many wealthy people, and most were not such snobs. No, his failings were his fault, not that of his situation in life. This blind date, set up by her mother, the ineffably lovely and cultured Rosalind Freemont Taylor, was not going to be repeated.

  Sophie knew her mother meant well, which was the only reason she had agreed to the date. Her mom was convinced that her only daughter, having lost her livelihood—in other words, having lost In Fashion, the restaurant that was her reason for getting up every morning—should now give up, marry well, and retire to domestic bliss in Manhattan in winter, the Hamptons in summer.

  That was not Sophie’s plan, but to be fair, did she even have a plan anymore? The restaurant had failed, yes, but it was one of a hundred or more that failed every year in New York. The economy’s nosedive had taken so many great eateries down with it that it was like some culinary Darwinian environment; only the strong survived. Sophie put her hand over her sake cup, so when Sebastian tried to pour, it spilled over her hand and onto the white linen tablecloth.

  The long-suffering waiter was there in an insta
nt. Sophie smiled up at him, and he ducked his head while he mopped up the spilled rice wine.

  “I’m sorry,” she said, to the waiter, not Sebastian, as she wiped her hand with the linen napkin. “But I’ve had quite enough to drink. Could you ask the chef if that is white truffle in the dumpling? I’m curious.”

  He ducked his head again—his English was not very good, and he was unlikely to risk speaking much after Sebastian had savaged his inability to pronounce his name—and took away the soiled linen with him.

  “Chef, cook, manager . . . you sweat in a kitchen for a living. I wouldn’t have thought that my mother and your mother would have much in common, but apparently they belong to the same clubs.” He sipped his sake, made a face and said, “We should have gone to my choice of a restaurant, but I assumed that you, as familiar as you should be with the Manhattan restaurant scene, would be able to recommend some place decent.”

  Sophie took in a deep breath, ready to let Sebastian have it, but instead a whiff of good black tea floated up her nostrils, the honey scent rolling across her in a wave. It took her away, to Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House in Gracious Grove, New York. Auntie Rose’s was her grandmother’s establishment and where she had learned, as a kid on vacation, to make cranberry scones and strawberry compote. The tearoom was the genesis of her hunger for and knowledge of food.

  And teapots! The adorable teapots that lined shelves and shelves of Nana’s tearoom had been a source of endless pleasure as a child. If she was good . . . very, very good . . . she could take them down one by one and dust them. A teapot in the shape of a kitten on a cushion, abandoned by Nana because it was chipped, had been the start of her own sizable collection. Though she preferred art nouveau and art deco, now, over chintz and figural, it was something that bonded her and her maternal grandmother.

  It was not even worth her while to chew out Sebastian for his presumption and arrogance. He wasn’t going to have an epiphany and realize he was a giant, braying ass. Her grandmother had always said, “Sophie, you have to choose your battles in life. Don’t waste your time on folks who don’t matter.”

  Sebastian most definitely did not matter.

  She took a deep breath and let it go, slowly. Sophie had made a decision regarding her future; she was going home. Not to her mother’s Manhattan apartment, not to the house in the Hamptons, nor the South Beach condo, but to Gracious Grove and Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House, her nana’s tearoom. She would find herself there, as she always did, among the teapots and cranberry scones.

  Chapter 1

  Thelma Mae Earnshaw peeped through the lacy curtains that adorned the side window of La Belle Époque, her quaint(ish) inn and tearoom. She was trying to figure out what had her archenemy and business competitor, Rose Freemont, in such a fuss. Rose had already, several times that morning, gone to the front door of Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House and paced the narrow sidewalk. She had scrubbed that front door, polished the teapot-shaped brass knocker and washed the windows as high as a woman too old to climb a ladder could.

  If Thelma didn’t know better, she would have speculated Rose was waiting for a visitor as important as Queen Elizabeth, with Philip, Charles, Camilla, Will, Kate, the baby and handsome Prince Harry in tow! But such a string of luminaries would never brighten the modest streets of Gracious Grove, New York, “Prettiest Town in All the Finger Lakes.” Folks were always surprised to find out that it wasn’t just pretty, it was “dry,” and perhaps the ban on alcohol had a positive influence on the prettiness, who could judge?

  But back to Rose: Thelma gathered her thoughts, which had a tendency to scatter like chickens from a barking dog. It had to be someone important Rose was expecting. Who? Or was it whom? Thelma could never remember the right usage, and hadn’t even seventy-some-odd years ago when she and Rose were pigtailed schoolgirls sharing secrets at Gracious Grove Elementary. That was years before the fateful Methodist Church pie social where Rose Beaudry had stolen Harold Freemont from Thelma.

  Rose exited her tearoom again and this time walked right out into the street, wringing her hands and looking anxious. Well, now, what had her knickers in a knot?

  That very minute a rattletrap van came tootling down Seneca Street. It screeched to a halt in front of Auntie Rose’s, and a youthful figure leaped out of the passenger side and ran at Rose. It was like one of those home invasion attacks you heard of happening in Buffalo or Rochester, the ones that were so common on the news, Thelma thought, one hand over her heart and one on the telephone, in case the police were needed. But in another second she realized who the youthful figure was . . . Sophie Taylor!

  While still watching the girl and her grandmother in a tight, long-lasting embrace—the proceedings were complicated by Pearl, Rose’s gorgeous chocolate-point Birman cat, winding around their legs—Thelma quickly dialed a number she knew by heart. Her granddaughter answered the phone with her customary “Peterson Books ’n Stuff . . . Cissy Peterson speaking. How can I help you?”

  “Cissy, you’ll never guess who’s come home to Gracious Grove!” Thelma kept watching out the window as Rose propped open the front door of the tearoom and some young fellow started lugging boxes labeled TEAPOTS out of the back of the van. Thelma might be old, but her far vision was sharper than ever!

  “Who, Granny?” Cissy said, her voice sounding as bored as it always did nowadays.

  “Sophie Rose Freemont Taylor, that’s who!” Thelma stated. “And it looks like she’s come to stay!”

  • • •

  Three days had already passed since Sophie arrived, Rose Freemont fumed, and still she hadn’t so much as dipped her toe in the local friendship circles. Rose figured that’s the first thing she would want to do, get reacquainted with all the kids she used to be friendly with when she came to stay in Gracious Grove every summer. She hadn’t been back in years, too busy trying to shore up a dying business, her restaurant in the garment district in New York.

  Rose stood at the door of Sophie’s sitting room, one of three rooms in her attic apartment above Rose’s second-floor quarters, which were, in turn, above the tearoom, her beloved business for the last forty years. Sophie, screwdriver in hand, was eyeballing a shelf she was mounting on the only straight wall in the room. As in most attic apartments, many of the walls were slanted, with dormer-style windows that had a gorgeous view of Seneca Lake, two miles distant.

  “Nana, is this level, do you think?” Sophie asked, holding the shelf in place with one hand and trying to lean back to judge.

  “Looks like it,” Rose answered. As level as the other six shelves that held Sophie’s collection of art deco, art nouveau and modernist teapots. But after twenty years, the white-Persian-cat-on-a-cushion teapot, which Sophie had begged to keep when Rose was going to reluctantly chuck it after it got chipped while cleaning, was still in the center, the heart of the collection.

  Sophie bent all her strength to fastening the seventh and final shelf to the wall then stood back, eyeing the display. She unpacked her last box of teapots and began to arrange them on the shelf. The Silver Spouts, Rose’s teapot-collecting group, would be fascinated by Sophie’s collection. The next meeting was in just a few days, and Rose hoped Sophie would bring some down to the tearoom to show them off to the other collectors.

  “I’m so happy to have you here, Sophie dear. I’m not getting any younger; neither is Laverne,” she said, of her only employee. “I was just saying to her the other day, I wasn’t sure how we’d manage everything with the bridal shower season upon us and more reservations than I know what to do with. When you called and asked to come home to stay, it was like the answer to a prayer.”

  Lovely Sophie, twenty-nine, dark haired and blue eyed, was across the room in two long strides and hugged her. “No, you’re the answer to my prayers, Nana. It was like a voice told me to come home to Gracious Grove! Well, I know it was never really my home,” she said, squeezing and releasing. “J
ust my favorite place to be during summer holidays and at Christmas and Easter.”

  Rose gazed up at her gorgeous granddaughter, feeling a swell of pride. She was vivacious, smart, beautiful and . . . a little downhearted. She cocked her head to one side as she looked up at the child. There was a hint of self-doubt in her manner since the lingering death of her restaurant.

  “This is your home!” Rose stoutly insisted. “Your brothers hated it here in Gracious Grove; nothing to do, they said. So I just let them go off and hunt and fish and wander the woods. But I could always count on my little helper to dust and polish and serve the guests. And now I really need you to do all that, and probably more.”

  “I’m happy to help, Nana.”

  Help. Hmm. Probably best not to drop the whole load of her plans on the child right away. Start small: “I had a teeny bit more in mind for you than just helping, my dear. You remember Cissy Peterson?”

  “Do I!” Sophie said, fervently, crossing her eyes and making a face. She went back to placing teapots, talking over her shoulder. “What a pain she was! She never wanted to do anything fun. No tree climbing because she’d get her dress dirty. No mud pies, ditto. I kind of felt sorry for her, stuck with old Mrs. Earnshaw as a grandmother. Is she still as cranky as ever? I’ll never forget her chasing me off her front porch when I came trick-or-treating that time I was staying here over Halloween weekend!”

  “Thelma was born cranky,” Rose declared. “She insists that I stole your Grandpa Harold away from her, when she knows I saw him first!” She shook her head, in disbelief. Thelma had married a lovely man who adored her, and they had a sweet daughter who had loved Thelma more than she deserved. Though her daughter had died too young, Thelma still had Cissy and Phil, her grandkids; both loved their grumpy grandmother.

  Rose’s supposed “snatching” of Harold Freemont away from Thelma during the Methodist Church pie social had driven a wedge between the former best friends that had never been removed. Despite living and working right next door to each other for all these years, they rarely spoke. It was sad, really.