Shadow of a Spout Page 21

  “I think it will help the police, but it doesn’t really tell me anything,” Sophie replied.

  “Why not?” Cissy asked.

  “The police will be looking at where the hammer is from, if any of the suspects bought one recently or if it’s from the inn’s stash of tools.” Each of those possibilities had potential to point to one person more than the others. “But I won’t know any of their conclusions. If we’re going to figure this out it will have to be from what we already know, can find out or can deduce.”

  “Look at you, Stephanie Plum!” Dana said.

  Sophie laughed. “I only wish I were half as gutsy!”

  “Detect away,” Dana said. “I’m taking Cissy to see a stylist friend of mine who has a house just outside of town, close to the lake.”

  “A stylist?”

  “Fashion stylist, darling,” she drawled. “I’m getting Cissy a makeover. We are going to tip Wally over the edge from boyfriend to fiancé.”

  Cissy blushed but nodded, looking determined. “Wally is the one. I want to get married.”

  Since her last engagement had turned out to be disastrous—being engaged to a guy who considered matricide the price of business did not bode well for her choices—Cissy Peterson was entitled to some happiness and Sophie wished her well. Wally was a much better choice, and he adored her, always had.

  “You could use a makeover yourself,” Dana said, eyeing Sophie’s clothes and hair. “For a rich girl, you don’t look so hot.”

  “You can’t offend me, Dana, so don’t even try,” Sophie said with a smirk. “My mother has said it all and worse. Right now I have bigger fish to fry. I am going to figure out who killed Zunia Pettigrew and hand him—or her—over to the police wrapped in a bow.”

  Chapter 20

  It was late afternoon, and the street outside was shadowed by a thick ceiling of dark clouds, though the day was at its hottest. The convention was meeting again behind closed doors, then they would break for dinner and meet again for the last time that evening. Sophie had gone outside briefly to sit in the garden but it was far too hot and humid, the air so stifling it was even too much effort to think. Also, there was a foreboding sense of a storm building. The whole hotel and everyone in it seemed to be clouded by an aura of fear as the detectives worked on methodically, always there, rarely speaking. They had finished with Zunia and Orlando’s room, finally, and the tape was off. Was Orlando nervous at all, Sophie wondered, about going back into the room that he had shared with his wife?

  “What took the police so long to clear it?” Sophie had asked Detective Hodge, who had told them the news—more because it was already evident by the seal coming off the door than by any wish to share information—but he wasn’t willing to go into it. It was a procedural issue, he claimed; O’Hoolihan was a good and thorough detective and left nothing to chance. She was left with the feeling that the older man was not handling it how Eli would, but Laverne’s nephew was not going to criticize.

  A rumble of thunder rattled the window in the alcove where Sophie was sitting. Bertie Handler, alone at the check-in desk, jumped and looked around fearfully. Whatever else she wondered about his version of events on the fateful night, his fear of storms was real. She just couldn’t believe he would be out and about during a storm, and so his story of cowering downstairs while the storm raged had to be true.

  But still, he was hiding something, Sophie felt. That wasn’t the kind of thing you could say to a detective, though. She texted Jason and watched Bertie futzing around with the check-in desk computer. She decided to stay where she was to wait for a reply.

  Josh slunk out of the meeting room, guiltily looking over his shoulder.

  “Caught you sneaking out,” Sophie said, loud enough to make him jump.

  He rolled his eyes and looked down at his phone, tapping the screen. “Mrs. Earnshaw keeps giving me the shifty eye every time I look at my phone. What’s she got against texting?”

  “She doesn’t need to know or be personally affected by something to be against it. If I listed all the things she’s ratted people out for over the years I’d be talking into tomorrow. I was afraid of her growing up, but she’s harmless enough.”

  He perched on the edge of a chair, and grumbled, “Except for her laser vision. It’s like a superpower.”

  Sophie slipped her sandals off and tucked her feet up under her. “Josh, I’m still worried about Emma. She seemed so vague when we asked her what she was doing that night. I have a feeling her mother dropped her off but she didn’t go right up to her room. But where else would she go? You don’t think she’s involved with the murder, do you?”

  “I don’t think so. She acts tough, but it’s all a put-on.” He glanced around and leaned closer. “I think I might know where she was. I was talking to one of the kitchen guys when we went out for a smoke—”

  “Smoke?”

  “Not me, them!” he said, exasperated.

  “Sorry, just a knee-jerk reaction.”

  “Do you think I’m nuts? Anyway, he said he was hanging out in this all-night café and saw her there with her mother. They left, but a while later she came back alone. I think she likes him and wanted to hang out with him more.”

  Sophie was relieved. “Okay, good. So it’s likely that her mother dropped her off outside the inn but instead of coming in she went back to the café.”

  He nodded.

  “But she doesn’t want her mom knowing that, and no one would have been the wiser if it wasn’t for the murder.”

  “That’s what I would guess.”

  “I wonder if she saw anything.”

  He frowned down at his phone. “Aha!” He jabbed the screen and read something. “You know what, I wondered the same thing, so I just texted her. She’s out back. You want to talk to her?”

  “Let’s go.”

  They headed toward the door to the stairs down to the basement but Bertie gave her a look, so she turned and led Josh out the front door. The air was like trying to breathe through a wet electric blanket, it was so muggy, and thunder vibrated in the distance. She and Josh scooted around the side of the building as it got gloomier.

  Emma was out back with a couple of guys. She sat up on the closed Dumpster smoking a cigarette. She wore jeans, even on a hot August day, and her eyes were made up with dark rings of eyeliner; along with the newly pinkened hair, it was an interesting look. She watched them approach with an uncertain expression. But Sophie had found a few moments during the day to make friends with the kitchen help, and the two guys welcomed her with smiles and nods.

  “Hey, Lenny, Gord, Emma. What’s up?” she asked.

  They chatted for a moment because Lenny, the older of the two guys, was actually interested in becoming a better cook and kitchen manager but didn’t know how to go about it. She gave him pointers about training and offered to show him some tricks and give him some basics to work with, then turned to Emma. “What about you? Have you decided what you want to do in college?”

  She shrugged. “Like it matters?”

  “Of course it matters,” Josh said, leaning back against the cobblestone wall. “You can do anything you want in life, but it starts now. May as well get some of the education over with first, I figure, then I can go and do whatever I want.”

  She cast him a pitying look.

  Domenico Dominguez came through the basement door with two heavy trash bags and then stood looking up at Emma on the Dumpster. She just sat and puffed on a cigarette.

  “Come on, Emma, give the guy a break. He’s just trying to do his job,” Lenny said. He was a tall, slim fellow and strode over to her, helping her down.

  She was blushing. Aha, so this was the knight in shining armor, Sophie thought, the one she was interested in. He was hipster, with a small neat beard and long hair tied back in a ponytail, but he was smiling and polite. He didn’t seem interest
ed in Emma—she was probably too young for him—but he wasn’t a bad choice for a teenage crush.

  As Lenny helped Dom by opening the Dumpster lid, easier for him to do because of his height, Sophie said casually, “What an awful thing this was, the murder in the hotel. Lucky you were nowhere near the inn when it happened, right?” she said pointedly, looking at Emma.

  “Right.”

  “You and your mom were talking?”

  She nodded.

  “Yeah, her and her mom were at the coffeehouse where some of my friends and I were hanging out. It’s called the Poor Relation,” Lenny said, helping the night cleaner lift the heavy bags into the bin. “They have an all-night open mic on Friday nights.”

  “Open mic?”

  “They host kind of a poetry slam,” he said. “Emma competed!”

  Sophie gazed at her, trying to imagine that and failing, but it was interesting to say the least. “Do you like poetry?” she asked the girl.

  “Sure.”

  Dom ducked his head and said thank you. Lenny clapped him on the shoulder and the new cleaner shuffled back through the door.

  “And you write it?” Sophie prodded.

  The girl shrugged.

  Lenny said, “She’s pretty good, actually. Better than me. When she came back to the Poor Relation she laid a cool one on us—what was it called?” He looked to Emma, who tossed her cigarette down and stubbed it out.

  Forced to answer by his expectant look, she grudgingly said, “‘Stepmother of Invention.’”

  “Was it about Zunia?”

  She rolled her eyes and sighed deeply, the ritual of the misunderstood teen. “It wasn’t a literal poem.”

  Lenny’s gaze switched back and forth between Emma and Sophie. “It was more like, she talked about family and how messed up everyone is,” he helpfully supplied.

  “So your mom dropped you off at the inn but you didn’t actually go in, you just went back to the coffee shop and did the poetry slam. And then you came back,” Sophie said.

  “How long did that take?” Josh asked. “Is it far?”

  Sophie was grateful he chimed in, because it was beginning to sound like an inquisition coming from her.

  “She was only gone a few minutes before coming back to the Poor Relation,” Lenny said. “We hung out, then I walked her back here,” he added. He ducked his head in embarrassment. “I didn’t want her getting in trouble.”

  Sophie smiled at him. It was funny how an old-fashioned guy often popped up in the most unusual places. Old-fashioned by some standards, she supposed, but good manners never went out of style. Increasingly Sophie thought Emma showed good taste in her crush. “Must have been late.”

  “Yeah, it was morning, like five or so? I didn’t think much about it, but there were a couple of cop cars here already, so . . .” He shrugged and looked away, not wanting to bring the topic back to Zunia’s death.

  That probably let Emma out of contention as the murderer, and Sophie was happy about it. From what Lenny said, there was only time for her to walk back to the coffeehouse after being dropped off at the inn, certainly not enough time for her to commit a murder and hide the weapon.

  He looked at his watch. “Crap, I’ve got work to do. Dinner service is in two hours.” He paused and looked at Sophie. “Uh, do you think you could come down to the kitchen and show me some stuff right now?” he asked.

  “I don’t know how Bertie will feel about that.”

  “He ought to be grateful,” the other kid, Gord, mumbled, the first time he had spoken, other than casting longing glances at Emma. “Anything that would make the Lenster a better cook would be good news.”

  She descended to the basement kitchen with the two fellows, as Josh and Emma went back into the inn. After washing up, donning a hairnet and pulling on an extra chef’s jacket that was two sizes too big, Sophie explained mise en place, the proper way to coordinate a cooking and prep area, then moved on to knife skills and a lot of general information that Lenny had vaguely grasped before his training was ended by the inn chef quitting in a fit of pique over not having proper creative control.

  She then swiftly helped him set up for the evening’s dinner in the dining room, rustling around in the fridge and storeroom and finding enough fresh food to create some new entrees. She showed him how to properly assemble a bulk salad—they had been doing it, but adding garnishes like croutons and bacon too early, so they became soggy—and make side dishes that would hold until service, like roasted Parisienne potatoes and green beans amandine.

  She then found a chalkboard in the storeroom and some colored chalk, and wrote the day’s specials in flowing cursive. That was for just inside the doorway of the dining room, she explained, mostly to help the waitstaff remember. Whether he’d be able to follow her instructions was another thing, but she had given him the basic tools. Lenny was energized, practically bouncing off walls in his excitement, and he set to work on all the prepping.

  Gord shyly expressed some interest in pastries, so she gave him a rough run-through on the chemistry of baking, explained leavening ingredients and the differences among baking soda, baking powder and double-acting baking powder. He caught on fairly quickly once she made it into a science project; this was just his summer job, as he was still a student going into his last year of high school in September.

  “I can’t believe you guys have been dealing without any of this. How have you been cooking? Where are the recipes you used to use?”

  “Chef took them with him when he left two weeks ago,” Lenny said gloomily, wriggling his chin under this beard net. “Since then we’ve been barely staying above water.”

  Above water? Sinking like the Titanic, in truth, judging by what she had eaten the night before. “I hope this helps.” She turned to Gord. “Okay, let’s get you making some pastries.” She thought a minute, then got together all the things to make a simple rustic apple tart. He caught on fast and in quick order there were several baking to be served as dessert that evening.

  “I’m impressed,” she said, watching the two fellows work. “You guys are going to be okay.”

  “That’s because you’re a great teacher,” Lenny said.

  “I appreciate that,” she said, dusting flour off her hands. “I always tried to communicate with staff and fill in all the holes left in their training. Len, I’ll give you my e-mail address and phone number and you can e-mail or text me anytime with questions, but you’re obviously going to need more help in the kitchen beyond Mr. Headphones over there,” she said, hitching her thumb in the direction of the third guy, who was bopping to the tune of the music in his ears as he worked. He, at least, had good knife skills and chopped or sliced whatever was put in front of him with dispatch.

  “Especially once you go back to school,” she said to Gord. “Anyway, let me help get you ready for tomorrow morning.” While the kitchen team worked efficiently—dinner service was in a little over an hour—she found the ingredients and worked up a quick scone batter and a couple of cookie doughs that could be stored in the fridge and baked up as needed. She wrote down times and temperatures, then set to work with one of the chilled cookie batters and produced a baking sheet full of Cherry Blossoms, an almond-flavored cookie that had a maraschino cherry–and–slivered almond “flower” in the center of each. She made them regularly for Auntie Rose’s, and they were a hit among kids and adults alike. She baked them off and left them to cool.

  As she peeled off her chef’s coat, stuck to her skin by sweat because of the heat in the kitchen, she realized that she felt better—clearer of mind and more relaxed—just for having spent a couple of hours cooking and baking. She missed the comradery of working in a kitchen with other cooks. She checked her phone, but there was no message back from Jason yet, then she threaded her way through the passages and up the stairs. She cautiously opened the door to the lobby but was met with a howl o
f pain or horror.

  She bounded out of the passage to find Bertie Handler sitting on the floor behind the check-in counter holding his hand out and covering his eyes with the other. From his hand there dripped crimson blood.

  “Help me, someone!” he wailed.

  * * *

  In the meeting room after a brief discussion about the next year’s convention, when it was overwhelmingly decided to again hold it at the Stone and Scone Inn, the debate raged on concerning the chapter presidency. They had taken a straw poll to see who thought what, but it was fairly evenly split, with a slight majority favoring holding a mail-in ballot to vote a new president and reinstate the two-year term, rather than appointing Pastor Frank to serve out Zunia’s term.

  Frank sulked in the corner. Nora was making the rounds of the tables, haranguing individuals to try to get a majority to vote her way. Horace eyed Orlando, who sat alone at a table. “Now, Rosie, girl,” he said reflectively, “why do you think Orlando didn’t notice that his wife wasn’t in bed with him?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “Heavy sleeper?”

  “When my wife was alive I couldn’t sleep if she wasn’t in bed with me, near enough to touch. Maybe I’ll just mosey on over and ask him. You coming, Malcolm? You can be my wingman, as the young fellas say.”

  “Now, Horace, don’t you go stirring up a hornet’s nest!”

  “Why, what do you think’s going to happen?”

  “You just might say the wrong thing to the wrong person and get yourself killed!”

  “Rosie, I’m almost a hundred.” His rheumy eyes sparkled as he went on, “Reminds me of my days in the intelligence service. Worst that can happen is I’ll cheat the Grim Reaper by a year or two. Or maybe more.” He then winked and, leaning on his cane, toddled off with Malcolm so they could grill the grieving widower, who sat mopping his nose and sneezing.

  Rose joined Jemima Littlefield and Faye Alice Benson, who were anxious to discuss the murder. Having all read a fair amount of Agatha Christie novels, they fancied themselves experts, Rose thought, though she knew that the dark passage of a murderer’s mind was a much more intricate highway than she had encountered in any Christie novel. The great dame had a set notion of how evil worked. In Rose’s experience there was no such thing as a wholly evil person, but more a broken one who had let evil seep in through the cracks like rising damp, as the Brits called the moisture that leads to rot in foundations. Like that rot, it didn’t always show until you did some digging.