Shadow of a Spout Page 5

  “Amen,” Rose said.

  “Don’t say ‘amen.’ I won’t be at church on Sunday, and I don’t like missing!”

  “Well, I’m sure the Lord will let you off a week, and I’m glad you’re here,” Rose said.

  “Now, that is very sweet.”

  “Otherwise I’d be rooming with Thelma,” Rose added, with a chuckle.

  “You are just too bad! G’night, Rose.”

  “Good night, Laverne.”

  * * *

  Rose had been asleep, that she was sure of. But a commotion out in the hallway made her sit up with a start, for a moment forgetting where she was. Laverne’s moan of irritation reminded her.

  “Who is that making a racket?” her roommate mumbled.

  “I don’t know, but I’m going to tell them to pipe down!” Rose clambered out of bed, pushed her feet into mule slippers and shuffled to the door, beyond which she could hear voices raised in anger. She paused, but then decided she just had to know what was going on, a trait her Sophie called the snoop gene, which she had inherited.

  Laverne followed, hovering over her as she turned on the overhead light and threw open the door. Down the hallway near the elevator there was an altercation. Two shadowy figures were clutched together, swaying back and forth.

  “Get off me, you idiot!” one man grunted.

  “You’ve got no right,” the other howled. “You don’t deserve her!”

  “Orlando? Frank?” Rose had recognized the men in the dimly lit hallway. “What’s going on?”

  There was more grunting, and the sound of a scuffle, but the hallway was dim and they were a ways from the commotion. Just then the elevator doors opened and Bertie Handler hustled toward the two. He shrieked, “Frank Barlow, what the heck do you think you’re doing?”

  Others poked their heads out of doorways. Josh staggered sleepily out of his room and toward the fray, rubbing his eyes.

  “Josh, you go back; don’t get involved!” Rose said, worried the young fellow would get mixed up in the fracas. How would she explain to his mother that he went to a teapot-collecting convention and got beaten up?

  Walter’s stentorian voice came from the crack in his doorway. “What is going on? Stop this, this instant, before you awaken Nora!”

  Bertie had hold of the pastor and dragged him toward the elevator, as he said, “Go back to bed, everyone. Nothing to see here. Sorry about this, Orlando.” He grunted and struggled some. “Frank, you come with me or I’ll call the cops.”

  A couple of doors shut, but Thelma had hers open and leaned out, watching with glee. “More excitement than I’ve seen for ages,” she said.

  The pastor was sobbing. Rose could see that his lip was bloody as they passed under a light sconce. Bertie dragged him along the hall to the elevator and punched the down button.

  Orlando Pettigrew, hand over one eye, called after them, “What in God’s name is wrong with you, Frank?”

  The pastor pulled away from the innkeeper and straightened. Glaring back at Pettigrew, he said, “You don’t deserve love, you pathetic piece of sh—”

  “Enough!” Bertie said, and stabbed the down button again.

  Penelope Daley, one of the Niagara Teapot Collectors Group, popped out into the hall, housecoat on over a filmy nightgown. “Poor Frank. I must go to him!” she cried, clutching the neck of her housecoat with one hand and flapping the other.

  “Miss Daley, please go back to your room!” Bertie said, struggling with the pastor.

  “You’re out of your mind, Frank!” Orlando shouted after him as the elevator doors opened and the two men got on. The doors closed. Orlando glared around at the watchers. “What do you all want? That guy’s crazy. Drunken fool.” He slammed his door.

  Thelma chuckled and went back into the room, where SuLinn could be heard drowsily asking what was going on. Penelope Daley dithered for a moment but then retreated into her room, as did Rose and Laverne. A low, distant rumble of thunder shuddered through the old inn. Laverne turned out the light and the two climbed into their beds.

  “Where was Zunia during that little dustup?” Rose asked.

  “I can’t imagine. Standing behind her husband, working Orlando’s mouth, I’d imagine,” Laverne groused.

  Rose chuckled. Laverne’s imagery was apt, since Zunia did seem to speak for her husband more often than not. Orlando wasn’t always like that. She had known him with his first wife, Dahlia, and he had seemed much more decisive. “Did Frank seem drunk to you, Laverne?” Rose asked, glancing over at the digital clock on the nightstand. Just about midnight.

  “I know for a fact that Frank Barlow does not touch a drop of alcohol.”

  “That’s what I thought. What got into him, I wonder?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we’ll find out in the morning.”

  Chapter 5

  It was much later. The room was pitch-dark, and then it was filled with a sudden flash of brilliant light, every piece of furniture in the place throwing shadows. Rose sat up with a cry, as did Laverne, as more lightning flashed. An alarm went off in the hall, then swiftly after, a woman screamed.

  “What the heck is going on now?” Rose staggered from bed and pulled on her cotton housecoat.

  “I have no idea,” Laverne grumbled. “What time is it anyway?”

  “About three. One of those nights, I guess. Wonder what that alarm is? We’d better get up in case there’s a fire.” Rose once again slipped her feet into her mule slippers and started toward the door, as Laverne switched on a bedside lamp, pulled a flowered cotton housedress over her head and followed. As Rose jerked open the door she could hear voices. It seemed like everyone else had the same idea, to investigate what was going on. She followed the chatter, as someone cried, “Call nine-one-one!”

  “What’s going on? Is there a fire?” Rose asked of Josh Sinclair as he, she and Laverne followed the crowd. SuLinn followed, too, as did Thelma, crabbing about the worst night’s sleep she’d never had.

  “Don’t know, but I’m going to find out.” Josh, dressed in a T-shirt and boxers, pushed through the people in front of him.

  Moments later, as Rose and Laverne reached the pack of people near the elevator, they heard Josh yelp and say, “I know CPR; let me help.”

  “What in tarnation is going on?” Laverne demanded.

  Rose, who was slightly in front of her, peeked through the gap left by taller folks and could see. Her heart thudded and she clutched at her chest, the pang fearfully like angina. “It’s Zunia,” she said, her voice weak with horror. “There’s blood. I think she’s dead!”

  Laverne made a pathway for them to the front and tugged Rose after her as the alarm mercifully stopped. Penelope Daley, gowned in a frilly pink nightie, stood, eyes wide, huffing and puffing and staring down at the floor. Zunia Pettigrew lay by the elevator with her legs crumpled beneath her. She was indeed bloody, streaks over her face and matting her dark hair, eyes wide and staring straight up at the ceiling, a puzzled expression forever etched on her face. She was dressed as they had seen her the day before, in a skirt suit. Lying on the carpeted floor beside her crushed, bloodied head was Rose’s antique teapot, one side completely dinged in, and a dark patch stained the carpet.

  Penelope Daley finally found her voice and cried, the words echoing in the hallway, “That’s your teapot!” as she pointed at Rose.

  The crowd parted and some of the teapot collectors pulled back, staring at Rose in consternation. Whispering started. “Rose Freemont . . . She had an argument with Zunia . . . I heard she’s dangerous!”

  * * *

  Thunder rolled and crashed, the hotel convention room lighting up even through drawn curtains. Police had responded swiftly to the 911 call, and two deputies had first hustled them all to a sitting area at the far end of the hall, one staying with them to be sure no one talked about what they had seen. But soo
n after their arrival the Butterhill police detectives had herded them down the stairs, which was a slow process with the number of seniors in the group. In the convention meeting room the police had established an organized hub: a U shape of tables and a few chairs, extension cords snaking across the floor for laptops and a printer and a separate interview area that consisted of a long table with two chairs on one side, and four on the other. Everyone with a room on the second floor—and that meant all of the teapot collectors who were staying at the inn, except for Horace and Malcolm—was sitting with the others facing the police hub.

  Josh stood alone, watching everything. He didn’t appear alarmed, just interested. SuLinn was yawning and checking her watch. She had her phone with her, but the police had told her to refrain from using it. Rose and Laverne sat on hard wooden chairs along one wall holding hands, still in their nightgowns and housecoats, getting chilly from the air-conditioning that now seemed to be working perfectly, unlike the afternoon before. Any time they tried to talk an eagle-eyed deputy—she was young, but her pale blue eyes looked steely and humorless to Rose—moved closer and asked them to please not discuss what they had witnessed.

  But the girl couldn’t stop Rose from thinking. As Penelope had pointed out, it was Rose’s teapot beside Zunia’s lifeless body, and it had, if she was not mistaken, a smear of blood on it. How was that possible? When did she last see the teapot? She knew she’d have to explain all that to the police, so she frowned down at her hand joined with her best friend’s and thought it over. Laverne squeezed her hand every once in a while and they exchanged looks. Rose knew she was thinking, too.

  The teapot—before she went down to dinner she had stuffed it in one of her bags, the blue tapestry one with the soft sides. It was a reminder of an unpleasant encounter that she still wasn’t sure she had handled correctly. On the one hand, in her life she had learned not to be a pushover. But on the other, she knew that bold-faced contradiction often served the opposite side in a confrontation. It had made her look angry and insulting, which was far from her real personality.

  And now Zunia was dead, presumably killed with Rose’s teapot. How did the antique get out of her bag and become the murder weapon used against Zunia Pettigrew? Try as she might she could think of no possibilities. It was in her bag, then it was by Zunia’s bludgeoned head.

  She felt some tension radiating from Laverne, but she couldn’t ask her why. Suddenly she felt a surge of excitement from her friend, who squeezed her hand harder. A young man in a tan summer-weight suit strode into the room. He was tall and handsome, dark-skinned with a high bridged nose and close-cropped natural hair. In other words he was a younger, taller male version of Laverne.

  He briefly surveyed the room but his gaze stopped and settled on them. He looked conflicted, but then came over and crouched down in front of them. “Auntie Laverne, how did you get involved in this?”

  Auntie Laverne? Rose turned to her friend in astonishment.

  “First things first, nephew. Rose, this is Detective Elihu Hodge, of the Butterhill Police Department.”

  “Eli, Auntie Lala,” he corrected, with a dazzling smile, pronouncing “auntie” to rhyme with “on tea.” He met Rose’s gaze and asked, “How do you do, ma’am?”

  “I’m all right, considering the circumstances,” Rose replied.

  He nodded, acknowledging the situation, then turned back to Laverne. “I was going to take you and Granddad to lunch today, but that doesn’t seem likely now. He just called me and told me what happened. How are you mixed up in it?”

  She was about to answer, but he shook his head and put up one finger. “No, that’s all right. Save it for the detective. This isn’t my investigation and I won’t interfere with a colleague’s work. But I will get them to let you and your friend go upstairs. I’ll make sure my buddy O’Hoolihan takes your statements right away and lets you get some rest.” He stood, stretching out his long body to its full height.

  Rose looked up at him. “I don’t think our statement will be over that quickly,” she said.

  “Why is that?” His tone was indulgent, as young people’s tones often are toward the elderly or differently abled.

  They didn’t mean to be patronizing, Rose knew, it was just that youth and health invigorate the young with a sense of invulnerability; those approaching the end of life, or those mired in disability, must be pitied. It was a credit to their empathy, but the fact remained, they had it backward. In her experience poor health and age sometimes—though not always—enlightened the mind, rather than inhibiting it, though that tidbit would be pooh-poohed most severely by those invincible young.

  So she didn’t fault him for his condescension and calmly said, gazing up into his unusual gray-blue eyes, “Unfortunately the teapot that bashed in Zunia Pettigrew’s head was mine, and it’s the same one we argued over earlier in the day.”

  * * *

  Thelma sat alone and fretted, darting glances over at Rose and Laverne, who were talking to a tall dark fellow, one of the police, from the looks of it. That little girl police officer, the one who kept shooting suspicious gazes at Thelma, had turned her back and let him be, so he had to be police. He walked away and chatted with one of the other plainclothes cops, the older redheaded fellow who wore the rumpled suit and grumpy expression.

  Others who were staying at the inn, ITCS members from the Niagara, Monroe and Genesee Valley groups, clustered together and watched the Gracious Grove Silver Spouts as if they were going to make a break for it, or stand up and confess all. Bunch of gossips! Every one of them had been more than happy to hang on Thelma’s every word at the tea the previous afternoon, even though she had just been hoaxing about Rose’s sordid reputation. Couldn’t anyone tell a joke from the truth anymore?

  Rose sure wouldn’t if she found out. She and her best friend would find some way of blaming this all on Thelma. That Laverne was too sharp-eyed and sharp-tongued, and they had noticed the buzz in the tearoom the previous afternoon. It had made her squirmy when they questioned her, but she was darn sure she was not going to confess what she’d done. Looked like maybe she should have, ’cause now they’d find out in the worst possible way.

  But how was Thelma to know the danged woman would go and get herself knocked off, and with the same stinking teapot she and Rose had argued over? She sniffled and pawed in her housecoat pocket for a tissue, into which she honked. The sound echoed in the convention room. Faces turned toward her. She glared at a couple of the women, and they hastily turned away.

  The detectives were now interviewing folks, starting with the Genesee Valley Tea Totalers, who were briefly questioned and escorted away. They headed out of the room, not meeting anyone else’s gaze. The tall young man who had been chatting with Laverne and Rose was still talking, but the detective was shaking his head vigorously and waving his hand toward the crowd.

  They appeared to part on bad terms and then the others were called up, one by one, starting with Penelope Daley, the plain-faced gal who had been mooning over the sweaty pastor at the meeting the previous afternoon. She was talking shrilly, practically hysterical; Thelma could hear every word she said. She had heard the alarm and dashed out of her room, holding on to her purse, and found Zunia dead. She was the first one there and had screamed loud.

  The detective regarded her calmly and then started her going back over her story, from the beginning. If he was going to do that with everyone, this could take forever.

  Just then there was a commotion at the door and a deputy came rushing in after a middle-aged woman who raced into the convention room and looked around wildly. When she saw that boy, the young fellow who belonged to the Silver Spouts, she cried out and rushed to him where he stood watching everything with an avid stare. “Joshy! My poor boy!” She grasped him to her, pushing his head against her shoulder. She glared at the police detective seated nearby and said, “I hope not one of you has questioned him without me prese
nt!”

  He pulled away, rolling his eyes. “Mom, I’m sixteen, not ten. They can ask me anything they want, and I can answer.”

  * * *

  Rose had been watching Laverne’s nephew as he appeared to have a disagreement with the other male detective. He then strode back to them and crouched beside their chairs.

  “I’m sorry, Auntie, Mrs. Freemont, but given what you told me and what I passed on to O’Hoolihan, he wants to interview the others first and then you both.”

  “That’s okay, Eli. You did the best you could,” Rose said. “I expected this would take a while. Are they going to let us have a drink? I need to take my pills. Oh! I don’t have them with me,” she finished, patting her housecoat pocket.

  “Are they important, ma’am?”

  “One is; I need to take my heart pill in the morning. My pill container is in my purse.”

  His handsome face firmed and he stood. “I’ll do my best to get your medicine for you, ma’am.”

  As he strode away, Rose said, “He’s a nice boy. Now, which one of your brothers is his father?”

  “My oldest brother, Abraham. Elihu is his youngest from his second marriage.”

  “I lose track of your big family,” Rose said, wistfully. They didn’t mention Rose’s son who died in Vietnam, nor her other son, Jack, who had taken off for California years before and hadn’t been heard of in ages. She had spent years trying to track him down, but to no avail. “I envy it, actually.”

  Also unspoken between them was Laverne’s disappointment in love. She had been engaged once, but the man married another and left Gracious Grove. That was decades ago now, their separate heartbreaks.

  “I love all my nieces and nephews. And my goddaughter,” she said, speaking of Sophie and putting her arm around her friend’s shoulders.

  “She’s the light of my life,” Rose said. “Oh, I adore her brothers, too, but those boys . . . I know they love me, but Sophie loves me!”