Tea & Treachery

by Vicki Delany

  The edge of the curtain folded back, and my grandmother’s pale face appeared at the window. She gave me a thumbs-up. I waved.

  Before unlocking the front door, I shone my flashlight over it. I could see no signs of tampering or other damage. I called to Éclair, she joined me, and we went inside. I shut the door behind us, firmly twisted the lock, and checked it was indeed secure.

  I walked slowly down the hall, my feeble human senses alert. Éclair trotted happily ahead of me; her strong doggy senses clearly noticed nothing out of place.

  Rose’s suite is at the end of the long ground-floor hallway. No light spilled out from any of the guest rooms, and all was quiet. Except for room 103, the snoring coming from which would wake the dead.

  I tapped at Rose’s door, and she cracked it open immediately. Her gray hair stood on end, her face was pale, and her eyes wide. My heart turned over. “Are you okay?”

  “Okay.” She opened the door fully and stepped back. She carried the new pink cane, but her hand was not resting lightly on the top. She gripped it in her fist, prepared to use it as a weapon if needed. She saw me looking at it and gave me a wry smile. “The only thing that came to hand.” She wore a long white cotton nightgown trimmed with lace, and an orange shawl was tossed over her thin shoulders.

  “No one’s outside. No one I saw, anyway, and Éclair didn’t sense anything. Are you sure . . . ?”

  “I’m sure,” she said. “I don’t sleep all that well these days. I was awake, reading in bed. I heard footsteps outside and something scratching at the window. No trees are next to that window, and the scratching was rhythmic. A one-two-three-stop-one-two-three pattern. It stopped when I called out, and then started again. Robbie heard it, too. He scratched at the window in response.”

  The cat watched me from the top of a bookshelf, his tail flicking back and forth, back and forth.

  Rose’s nightgown had a small pocket at the top. From inside that pocket, a voice squeaked.

  “Almost forgot about her.” Rose pulled her phone out. “My granddaughter has arrived. She says nothing appears to be amiss.”

  At that moment, I heard sirens coming down the driveway.

  “You wait here,” I told my grandmother. “I’ll talk to the police.”

  “No. I’m coming with you. I have to tell them what I heard. Otherwise, they’ll think I’m an easily frightened old lady.” She gave me a crooked grin. “They’ll think that, anyway. Oh, well, can’t be helped.”

  She spoke into the phone. “The police are here. I’m hanging up now. Thank you.”

  Knowing the police wouldn’t want the assistance of a small but helpful dog, I shut the door on Éclair. She wouldn’t be happy being confined with Robert the Bruce, but that couldn’t be helped.

  As we walked down the hallway, heads popped out of guest rooms.

  “I hear sirens. What’s happening?”

  “Is everything all right?”

  “Do you need us to leave our room?”

  I told the guests the alarm had gone off and the police were responding routinely. Nothing to concern themselves about.

  “Good thing the guest list has almost completely turned over since the weekend,” Rose said. “We don’t need a reputation as the sort of establishment where police activity is the norm.”

  I hurried to answer the hammering on the front door.

  Two uniformed officers stood there. They shone flashlights around the foyer and into my face.

  “Thanks for coming. I’m Lily Roberts. My grandmother called nine-one-one because she heard someone outside her window.”

  Rose wiggled her fingers in a wave.

  “I’m Officer Kowalski, and this is Officer LeBlanc. Let’s have a look, then, shall we?” one of the cops said. He was an older guy, bald, round bellied, red nosed. “I’ve called Detective Williams. You had a death here recently, right?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Wait here please, Rose.”

  She nodded.

  I went outside, and walked with the cops to the far end of the house. I was highly conscious of being dressed only in my summer pajamas, which featured tiny pink bottles of champagne sprinkled over the black fabric of the pants and a pithy saying on the top.

  “This is a big place,” LeBlanc said. “It’s a B & B, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “You have guests staying here now?”

  “We do, but before you ask, my grandmother is not fanciful or easily frightened. She didn’t just hear someone who couldn’t sleep walking in the garden. She definitely heard someone at her window.”

  I pointed to Rose’s windows. One is at the front of the house, opening onto the end of the verandah, and the other’s on the side, above a flower bed. I’d not thought to ask her at which one she’d heard the scratching.

  The officers had far more powerful flashlights than my little key chain one. They focused them on the floor of the verandah and on the ground beneath the windows. Officer LeBlanc crouched beneath Rose’s window. I leaned over him.

  I sucked in a breath.

  A carefully maintained bed of purple and white impatiens runs along the side of the house. Tonight, directly under Rose’s bedroom window, a patch of the delicate flowers was crushed, blooms trodden on, stems broken, the ground trampled.

  “Looks like someone stood here,” LeBlanc said. “And not long ago.”

  “Whatcha got?” a voice said, and I jumped. Detective Williams had arrived.

  LeBlanc pushed himself to his feet with a grunt. “Lady reported a possible intruder. Seems like someone was at her window.”

  “These are my grandmother’s rooms,” I said. “She heard a noise and was sure someone was at the window, so she called nine-one-one and me. It looks as though she was right.”

  Williams leaned over the flower bed. “How do you know this happened tonight? Might have been some kids playing earlier.”

  “The damage is fresh,” I said. “The foliage will begin to grow back and close up almost immediately.”

  He grunted. “Sure you weren’t poking around yourself?”

  If anyone else had asked me that, I wouldn’t have bothered to grace the insulting question with an answer. Seeing as how he was the police and he’d already accused my grandmother of murder, I stood a bit straighter, lifted my chin, and said, “I had absolutely no reason to poke around, as you put it. My grandmother phoned me to say someone was outside her room, and I came immediately. I ran past here and called out to let her know it was me. I went into the house without treading on the plants.”

  “You can go back inside, Ms. Roberts,” he said.

  “I don’t mind watching for a while.”

  “Go back inside.”

  “Okay.”

  I walked away as slowly as was humanly possible while actually remaining on two feet. I heard Officer LeBlanc say, “K-nine?”

  I went through the entire house, checking to ensure that the doors and ground-floor windows in the public areas were locked and secure. Nothing I could do about the guest rooms. I didn’t want to wake the guests and have them milling around, asking questions.

  And probably wanting tea.

  But I did make tea for Rose and me, and while it steeped, I let Robbie and Éclair out. Back in the kitchen, I put two leftover muffins onto plates, arranged tea things, and carried the tray into the drawing room.

  The drawing room sits at the front of the house with a view over the gardens, down the driveway, past the tearoom, to the road. Rose and I drank our tea and ate our muffins in silence as we watched the activity outside the windows. Robbie curled up on Rose’s lap, and Éclair took her place at my feet.

  The police seemed to be taking our concerns seriously and didn’t simply get in their cars and drive away. Flashlights moved across the lawn, and people talked, not bothering to keep their voices down.

  A tousled head popped into the drawing room. “Hello? What’s going on?” It was a woman, her feet bare, her gray hair twisted into a braid that ran down her back
, and pillow lines on her cheek. She clutched a blue terry-cloth robe tightly around her.

  I jumped to my feet. “I’m so sorry. We believe an intruder was on the premises, and the police are checking things out.”

  “They’re right outside my window. Are we safe? Can we move rooms?”

  “You couldn’t be safer, now could you?” Rose said. “With the police under your window.”

  “I guess not,” she said. “Good night, then.”

  “Good night.”

  Once the woman had gone back to her bed, Rose said, “The other garden-facing room on the ground floor is empty tonight.”

  “Good thing,” I replied.

  I went to the window to watch the activity. A van drove up, and the driver helped a vest-wearing German shepherd out of the back. Éclair leapt onto the window seat and began barking. I put my hand on the top of her head and gave her a scratch behind the ears.

  “You’re better off in here,” I told her. “That guy looks like he takes no nonsense from anyone.”

  We watched the dog sniff the ground, his nose moving as he cast around for a scent.

  I turned at the sound of more footsteps in the hallway, and Williams came into the drawing room.

  He looked at me. He looked at Rose. He looked at the tea tray.

  “Can I offer you a cup of tea, Detective?” I said. “No coffee tonight. Sorry.”

  “Sure. That would be nice.”

  I left. I didn’t want to. I wanted to stay and hear what Rose had to say. To stop the conversation if Williams tried to imply my grandmother was either imagining things or exaggerating for effect.

  But I’d been raised to offer guests refreshments, and the guest had accepted, and the pot was empty.

  What else could I do?

  The water had barely reached a full boil before I poured it into a mug, dunked a tea bag in the water, stirred it around a couple of times, took a guess he had a sweet tooth, and dumped in a spoonful of sugar and some milk. While the water had been boiling, I’d taken out one of yesterday morning’s leftover muffins and slapped it on a plate.

  I lifted the tray and walked as quickly as I could back to the drawing room.

  I needn’t have worried. Rose had simply told Williams, without any drama, what happened, and he’d listened without interrupting.

  Robbie sat in Rose’s lap, glaring at the detective. Éclair was still standing on the window seat, her attention fixed on the police dog. I wondered if she was thinking there’s nothing like a male in a uniform.

  Rose smiled at me when I came in. “After I called Lily, I phoned nine-one-one. I then shouted as loudly as I could manage that the police were on their way. I heard no more after that, until Lily told me she was outside. I assume we frightened my intruder off.”

  I put the tray on the table next to Williams’s chair. He grunted thanks, then asked, “Several minutes passed before you got here and the police arrived?”

  “Yes,” I said.

  “You called Ms. Roberts on her cell phone?” he asked Rose.

  “She only has the one number.”

  “Meaning you don’t know if she was in her own room when you called.”

  “Hey!” I said. “What are you implying, Detective?”

  He took a big bite of the muffin and chewed. “Mmm, good. I’m not implying anything. Just asking questions.”

  “Well, you can just stop asking that sort of question.” Rose’s voice was sharp, and Robbie hissed at Williams. “We told you what happened. We have no reason to make anything up.”

  Williams looked at me. I bristled. I didn’t like that look.

  “We found part of a footprint in the flower bed under your window. Looks like an ordinary running shoe.” He glanced at my sneaker-clad feet. “Belonging to a woman . . . or a medium-sized man. Do you do the gardening yourself, Ms. Roberts?”

  “I do not. As I’m sure you know, I’m busy enough. Our gardener is tall, and he doesn’t wear sneakers at work. I didn’t step into the flower bed tonight, or at any other time. What did the dog find?”

  Éclair’s ears twitched.

  “He found a recently laid scent trail leading directly to the front door, Ms. Roberts.”

  “You think one of our guests . . . ? Oh. You think he followed me.”

  “Most likely. We can’t tell the dog to concentrate on one scent and ignore any others. He follows the one most recently laid down. The handler redirected him, and the dog tracked the scent to the parking lot, where he lost it. Did you see a car?”

  “I heard something on the road. I didn’t think anything of it. There’s never much traffic at this time of night, but there’s usually some.”

  “It hasn’t rained for a few days, and you have cars coming and going all day. We can’t identify any tire tracks specifically laid down tonight.” He popped the last of the muffin into his mouth and stood up. “We’re done here. Call us if anything else happens tonight.”

  “What a good idea,” Rose said. “I never would have thought of that myself.”

  Once again, Robbie hissed at the detective. Rose stroked his back and smiled at Williams.

  He did not smile in return.

  “This has to be related to the death of Jack Ford,” I said.

  “What makes you think that?”

  “Someone deliberately attempted to frighten my grandmother, and that has never happened before. They made no attempt to get into the house. I checked the doors and couldn’t find any evidence of such, and I assume your people did also.”

  He said nothing.

  “If someone had planned on stealing from us, there are plenty of windows they could have chosen to gain entry. The window of an occupied bedroom isn’t the best option. No one has ever tried to break in here before. No one has ever died on our property before. Therefore, the two incidents are likely to be related. This was a warning.”

  “What sort of a warning?” Rose asked.

  “Don’t let your imagination run away with you, Ms. Roberts,” Williams said. “People do plenty of things you and I might not understand. Old ladies have the reputation of having lots of good jewelry lying around.”

  Rose harrumphed. “I agree with Lily. Fortunately for me, but unfortunately for our intruder, I don’t frighten easily.” I believed her. Even dressed in her nightgown and shawl, like a character out of Dickens (all that was missing was the stub of a candle flickering in a brass candlestick), my grandmother looked surprisingly formidable.

  “Why do you think someone would want to send you a warning, Mrs. Campbell?” Williams asked. “It wouldn’t be because you and Ms. Roberts here are interfering with a murder investigation, would it?”

  “We’re not interfering with anything,” Rose said.

  “That’s not what I hear from Detective Redmond. You’ve told her some interesting things concerning the activities of Jack Ford. As it happens, I was going to pay you a call this morning, anyway, to tell you to mind your own business. I might as well do that now, seeing as I’m here. Mind your own business.”

  “If you’re not considering all the possible suspects,” Rose said, “then it might be up to concerned citizens to do so.”

  “Rose, let’s not . . .” I stopped talking when I realized Williams had said the word. “So it is a murder investigation?”

  “It’ll be in the papers tomorrow. This is now an official murder inquiry. Jack Ford was struck on his left shoulder by a blunt instrument. The blow would not have killed him, but it was sufficient to knock him off his feet. The ground’s disturbed at the top of the stairs in a way that indicates he fell against the gate. Particles of wood from that gate were embedded in his jacket and pants, indicating the gate broke under his weight, and he fell through it, down the steps, and hit his head on the ground at the bottom.”

  Rose and I were silent for several seconds. Rose continued to stroke Robbie. Éclair scratched at the window. I wondered if she was asking the bigger dog to come inside and play.

  “How dreadful,�
� Rose said.

  “A blunt instrument,” Williams said, “such as a cane.”

  Rose snorted. “Not that again.”

  “You can stop by the police station anytime and pick up your cane,” he said. “We found no residue on it.”

  “If by residue, you mean from contact with Jack Ford, I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Doesn’t mean you don’t have another cane.” He eyed the one at her side.

  She lifted it up and pounded it on the floor. “Bought last Saturday afternoon. I have the receipt if you want to see it.”

  “I’m sure that won’t be necessary.”

  “Has anyone reported seeing me using another cane in the days leading up to the unfortunate event?” Rose said. “I’m sure you asked.”

  He shrugged and looked away, not wanting to give her the satisfaction of hearing him say no. Outside, the dog jumped into the van. Officers got into cruisers and drove away, the glow of their rear lights moving through the dark.

  “More likely,” I said, “to have been a hiking pole. Have you found anyone who can identify the one you found in the water?”

  He didn’t answer my question, but I hadn’t expected him to. “We’re finished here, for now.”

  I walked him to his car. When we reached it, he turned and faced me. “I’m telling you to stay out of this, Ms. Roberts. You can tell your grandmother that also. Stop running to Amy Redmond with your fanciful stories and conspiracy theories. She’s as bad as you two.”

  I dipped my head, trying to appear suitably chastised.

  “Good night.” Williams got into his car and drove away. I watched his lights turn onto the road without him making a turn signal and disappear into the darkness.

  First thing tomorrow, I’d call Detective Redmond. I couldn’t see that what happened here tonight—wherever that might be—had anything to do with the Ford case. But, on the other hand, I couldn’t see how it couldn’t.

  I went inside and walked Rose to her suite while Robbie and Éclair galloped on ahead. Without trying to be too obvious about it, I checked behind the drapes and under the tables.

  “No ghoulies or ghosties or things that go bump in the night,” she said.

  Okay, so I had been obvious about it.