Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) Page 22

  He yowled at her, then leaped from the dining table to the floor and trotted away. Sophie followed to the kitchen, where he sat on the marble work area by huge windows that overlooked a ravine. Spellbound, Sophie strolled over to the windows and gazed out over the lush green gardens, and then down to the town below.

  The cat yowled and she whirled. “Okay, all right. Food first, view after.” She found the food exactly where Cissy had told her, and gave him a full bowl of canned food, which he gobbled down as she took his empty bowl to the sink. She felt a little like the housekeeper, because Sweet Pea was clearly the lord of the manor. She filled another bowl with kibble, scooped his litter, depositing the clumps in the litter locker Vivienne had used to keep the odor from the kitchen, then washed the dishes.

  Dishes done and dried, she was free to wander. She had permission to be in the house, but that probably didn’t extend to cracking a safe, if that’s what the series of numbers really was. Still . . . oh, darn her conscience. If she found a safe, she should ask Cissy what she ought to do. That was a big if, she realized, as she explored the house, followed by the snoopy Siamese.

  The house was huge. There was a gallery above the dining room, parlor and entrance, off which most of the main rooms were situated. But there was another wing, she soon discovered, with a home office furnished in leather and decorated in wood paneling and brass. It was all too heavy and ornate for Sophie’s tastes. She’d been in many nice homes, some of them her own, but she appreciated the clean, the stark and the simple best.

  Sighing, she turned in the big room as Sweet Pea sat gazing at her from the desk. “Kitty, there is no way I’m going to find a safe in this house. I should leave it alone and turn this stuff over to the police to handle. So I’ll just go and let you get on with your day, whatever that consists of, and . . .” She trailed off as she caught sight of something not quite right.

  There was a painting ajar on the wall behind the desk. Couldn’t be, she thought, shaking her head. That was so cliché, like every safecracking movie she had ever seen. But then she glimpsed a sliver of gray steel just beyond the edge of the painting. She slipped behind the desk and lifted the painting off the wall to reveal a safe. Now, her moral dilemma: To open or not? To call Cissy or not?

  Sweet Pea followed and leaped up to the desk in one fluid bound. “Mrow!” he said, abruptly.

  “You know, I’m going to take that as permission from the lord of the manor to open the doggone safe,” she said. “There’s probably not a thing in there; telling the police would just be a distraction to them and require a long explanation. If there is anything in there, I’ll close it up and get Cissy to come back with me. Or Wally. Or someone!” She found a short key on the house keychain, and it fit in the lock. She turned it and heard a click, but it still wouldn’t open. She got out the piece of paper with the combination. “Here goes me embarking on a life of crime.” She punched in the number on the keypad.

  • • •

  Thelma Mae Earnshaw was sorely troubled, and in her hour of need she turned to the Lord for guidance. “I’ve been a miserable old woman at times, and I am not gonna deny it. But I’ve had my trials, now you know that’s true! Losing my only child was awful, and raising two high-strung teenagers was hard. But Cissy has always made me proud. Not so much Phil, but he’ll straighten out, I just know he will. There’s no harm in the boy.” She paused, then added, “No, I won’t hear of it! There is no harm in him, and he would not kill that woman no matter how much he hated her and no matter how much he put something in the darned punch that she never did drink, anyway.”

  Even with the Lord, Thelma had a tendency to become argumentative. She didn’t mean to, but it was part of a running conversation in her head, as if she knew exactly what he would say to her. As always, communing with God gave Thelma the free space in her noggin to think, and what she thought was, if she could just figure out who did it—who killed that woman in her beautiful tearoom—then she would have peace and Phil would be safe. Besides, if someone killed Vivienne Whittaker, then it might be her next!

  She glanced up at the clock. Gilda would be there any minute, and she would set her employee on the task . . . not that Gilda had the brains of a pigeon, but if directed the right way, she could at least follow orders. Thelma, with her bum hip and cranky knees, found it rough to do more than get out of bed in the morning and stay upright.

  At that very moment, as if summoned by her employer, Gilda slipped in the back door, her wiry, graying hair covered in a silk(ish) kerchief, and dark sunglasses perched on her beaky nose. Still looking like she fancies herself an international spy, Thelma thought, snickering to herself. The woman carefully undid her trench coat and hung it up on the coat tree by the door, then untied her kerchief, took it off, folded it in a neat square and placed it in her coat pocket. Then the sunglasses came off, were folded and joined the kerchief.

  “You about done with your fiddling?” Thelma barked.

  Gilda leaped and whirled, one hand over her heart. “I did not see you there! You about scared me right out of my skin.”

  Her powers of observation were not those of a spy, for sure. But she was all Thelma had in the way of gofer. “Sit down. We need to talk.”

  Gilda made them a cup of tea, first, and thawed some muffins. She ate her buttered muffin, and then finally wiped the crumbs off her fingers and stood, dusting them from her lap, as well. She heaved a sigh, shoulders slumped. “I suppose I ought to go make sure the tearoom is ready to open.”

  “Didn’t I say we needed to talk?” Thelma griped. “You have the attention span of a gnat. I was just waiting for you to finish stuffing your gullet. I know you can’t eat and think at the same time. Those cops are going to try to pin that murder on me or Phil, I just know it. They’ve always had it out for my poor Philly-boy, but I won’t let them.”

  “No ma’am.” When nothing more came, Gilda said, “So what can we do about it?”

  “I want you to do some snooping for me. Go over to talk to Laverne . . .”

  Gilda perceptibly brightened; it sounded like a bit of gossip and a cup of tea.

  “Not to gossip, but I want you to find out who Rose and Sophie and Laverne think did it. I want to know if they saw anything, especially that granddaughter of hers. That girl is sharp. More so’n Cissy, I have to say. Not as pretty, though.”

  “Okay . . . find out who they think did it,” Gilda repeated, dutifully.

  “And find out if they know who brought in the cupcake that killed that woman.”

  Gilda looked frightened. “A c-cupcake did her in?”

  Sounded like a title from one of the old black-and-white movies Thelma loved. She grimaced. “I think so. Lord knows I have no clue who done it. With all of ’em yammering and milling around, any one of ’em could have slipped the cupcake onto the plate. But someone was trying to pin it on Cissy or me, ’cause someone suggested she bring red-velvet cupcakes to the party. The little ninny says she can’t recall who.”

  Gilda’s mouth formed an O of astonishment. “Who would do such a thing?”

  “If I knew that, I’d have a handle on this whole thing,” Thelma snapped. “Now, get moving, and then come back here and get a start on the tearoom. I got baking to do.”

  Chapter 19

  The safe looked empty. Sophie peered into the dark cavity, then turned on a desk light and picked it up, directing it to shine into the depths. Sweet Pea leaped up onto the back of the chair with an inquisitive mrow? It was practically punctuated with a question mark at the end.

  “I wish I knew, Sweet Pea,” Sophie said. It paid to talk to animals; one never knew where the conversation would lead. “If I knew who killed your owner, I’d turn him in to the cops this minute.”

  “Yow!” The cat took one flying leap from the chair up into the safe.

  “Sweet Pea!” Sophie cried, and reached up to get him. As she grabbed him, her ha
nds brushed against something that crackled; there was some paper stuck to the side of the safe wall with a strip of tape. She took the cat out and carefully set him down on the desk, then peeled the tape from the wall, releasing the folded-over note and an envelope. “What in the world is this?”

  She sat down at the desk and unfolded the paper. This time there were names, some of them the same as in the first note—the mayor, Shep Hammond, Marva Harcourt, as well as a couple of new ones, including Harvey Leathorne, a founding partner of Leathorne and Hedges—but there was also a list of questions. In an elegant scrawl, Vivienne—it was the same handwriting as the note in the teapot—had written:

  Who bought the property?

  Why did Francis get promotion?

  GG Group . . . Marva, Hollis, and . . . who else?

  Who influenced the rezoning? Mike.

  Who is pushing for annexation? Mike

  Why did Olly back off when Mike was running again? Payoff?

  Who paid who?

  Where did my money go????

  Sophie sat and stared at the paper. Did this have anything to do with Vivienne’s death, or was it just things she was worried about? It was in the safe, and she had given the safe combination to Cissy. Not Francis, not Florence, not Marva Harcourt, and not any one of her other friends. Not even a lawyer.

  There was no avoiding one thing: This must have to do with her son’s promotion and new job at Leathorne and Hedges and the development outside of town. If there was something dirty about Francis’s promotion, then did he kill his own mother to keep her quiet? It was possible, Sophie supposed, though it horrified her to even imagine that. It wouldn’t be the first time a son had plotted and carried out his parent’s death, though.

  She looked at the envelope, wondering about the contents. It was sealed. Opening the safe was one thing, but opening a sealed envelope now that she knew the safe contents must have some bearing on the case . . . she just couldn’t. She held it up to the desk lamp as Sweet Pea sniffed the envelope. It looked like a wad of paper with a list of numbers . . . maybe a bank statement or something? That would fit with Where did my money go?

  She had enough to wonder about, anyway, that was for sure, even without knowing the contents of the envelope. She needed to talk about this with her grandmother and Laverne, both of whom knew more about Gracious Grove politics and society than she did. She picked up the phone and called information, wrote down a phone number and called the police.

  In ten minutes, Wally Bowman and Detective Morris were there. She had already compromised the scene, the woman told Sophie. Sophie wasn’t about to apologize; after all, her first thought had been to just lock it all up, or call the cops without confessing what she had found, but her prints would be everywhere if she’d done that and she’d have to explain why. She pointed out that they wouldn’t have even known to look in the safe if she hadn’t followed the teapot clues, and after all, she didn’t know she’d find anything. “What’s done is done,” she told them.

  Wally guided her down to the kitchen, sat her at the table and told her to wait, and the detective joined her there a few minutes later. They took her through everything she did and thought. Sophie held Sweet Pea on her lap while telling them her conjectures and musings, everything she had talked about and pondered. This was not a time to hold anything back.

  Detective Morris eyed her with interest. “You, young lady, have taken an awful risk, asking so many questions, coming here like this and exploring.”

  “It didn’t feel like a risk at the time. I didn’t expect to find anything.”

  “Just so you know, we were in the process of getting the safe combination from her attorney. You should have called us first.”

  Sophie hung her head and thought. “You’re right,” she said. “I just . . . I didn’t think it through. I really only came here because of the cat. I wanted Sweet Pea here to have someone check on him, someone who loves cats, not someone who’s afraid of him, like Cissy is.” She snuggled him and he began to purr. “What’s going to happen to him?” she asked.

  “I don’t know,” the detective admitted, her expression softening as she reached out and stroked his head. “No one seems to want him. We asked both Florence and Francis, and even Cissy Peterson, but no one volunteered to take him home.”

  “I can’t without asking my grandmother, but maybe I can find him a home.”

  “You let us know if you can.” She stood and said, “You can go now, but don’t talk about this with anyone.”

  “Okay,” she said, but in her mind made an exception for her nana and Laverne.

  On her way home, she called Cissy to confess what she had done, though she didn’t reveal the contents of the safe. Cissy took it stoically, simply saying it was probably for the best, and that she would let Francis know about the safe and why cops were at his mother’s house, though she wouldn’t tell him it was Sophie who had discovered it unless she had to. It was still relatively early in the day, so neither Auntie Rose’s nor Belle Époque was open yet. Sophie let herself in the back door to find Gilda and Laverne deep in conversation. Thelma’s factotum looked weary and worried, but that was her usual expression, and who could blame her, working for such a fractious employer?

  “How is everything going over at Belle Époque?” Sophie asked Gilda.

  The woman shrugged. “As good as usual, I guess,” she said.

  Sophie had always felt sorry for long-suffering Gilda, but really, the woman needed to grow a backbone and maybe she wouldn’t be treated like a human cleaning rag. “No more murders, right?”

  Gilda looked horrified.

  “Now honey, you know you shouldn’t joke about things like that,” Laverne said, dropping a wink at Sophie.

  “Sorry, Miss Bachman,” Sophie said, with a prim politeness that made Laverne smirk into her napkin. “I didn’t mean to be cheeky.”

  Gilda harrumphed and sat up straight. It was amazing what a little coddling did for her sense of self-worth. “I forgive you, child. No, no murders, but I swear, with Phil creeping around the place I worry the cops are going to come down on us again.”

  Sophie got a cup of tea and sat down at the table. “Phil has been around? What does he want?”

  “Exactly my thought,” Gilda said, her tone acid. “Thelma lets him get away with murder, but me . . . one broken cup, and I’m docked on my pay.”

  Lets him get away with murder. Sophie was sure Gilda didn’t mean that literally. She decided not to point out the not-so-subtle difference between family and employees. Of course, Nana treated Laverne more like family than an employee, so Gilda had a difficult pattern to follow. “That afternoon, the day of the party . . . what all went on over there? I get the sense there were a lot of folks in the kitchen, at some point in the afternoon.” Laverne gave her a look, but Sophie shook her head slightly.

  “There sure were. Every single person was in the kitchen at one point or another.”

  “Except Gretchen Harcourt,” Sophie corrected.

  “Are you kidding? She was in there, too! Nosing around in the fridge, lifting the covers on food tubs, putting her finger in the frosting . . . she was the worst of the bunch and in there first, last and in between. She was in there before anyone else, even when I was trying to shoo the rest of them out.”

  Sophie was taken aback. Gretchen had been so definite that she had not been in the kitchen at any point, and now it turned out that she had been there during just the right time frame to have put the poisoned cupcake on the tray. “Did you see her near the, uh . . . sweets?”

  “Didn’t I just say? Fingers in everything.”

  “Was she ever in there alone?”

  “I wouldn’t know that, would I?”

  “Well, were you ever out of the kitchen?”

  Gilda looked around, as if there were spies in the walls, then leaned forward and whispered, “I h
ad a touch of tummy upset—nervous bowel syndrome, you know—and I had to sneak off to the ladies’ room for a moment or two.” She cleared her throat. “Or three.”

  Leaving the kitchen unattended. “When would that have been? I mean, had the luncheon started?”

  “Well, yes, yes it had. It was during the speeches, you know. Mrs. Whittaker—Mrs. Vivienne Whittaker, that was—was quite the orator.”

  Interesting . . . Sophie wondered what she had spoken about. She eyed Gilda and asked, “So, Mrs. Vivienne Whittaker made a speech. What all did she say?”

  “I don’t know. Do you think I had time to listen, with Thelma telling me to hurry up, bring this out, bring that out, don’t be so slow, don’t be so stupid?”

  Sophie was reminded of what people had told her. “You carried out the food, that’s right. You carried out a platter with the cupcakes on it, right?”

  Gilda’s eyes widened. “Y-yes. But . . . but I didn’t know, that is—”

  “You didn’t know then what we know now. I understand that. Was the platter full? What did it look like? How many red-velvet cupcakes were there on it?”

  “I-I-I . . . uh, well, now, I don’t quite remember.”

  Sophie eyed the older woman. Beads of sweat had broken out on her temples among the sprouting gray hairs. “More than six red-velvet cupcakes?”

  “Oh yes, more than six.”

  “And the vanilla cupcake in the center. Who put that one there?” Sophie asked, holding her breath.

  “The police asked the same thing and I’ll tell you what I told them,” she said sharply, restlessly moving in her seat. “I have no idea. Not a single one.”

  Well, if Gilda was the one who had put the lone poisoned cupcake on the platter, she would certainly not volunteer that information.

  Gilda sighed dramatically. “I suppose I had better go back soon,” she said. “Thelma will be telling me how much time I waste if I don’t.”

  “I honestly don’t know why you put up with it,” Laverne said.