The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery

by Nancy Pickard

  “This is private property.”

  She jumped at the sound of a harsh voice behind her.

  Turning around, she found that Stanley’s fired caretaker was standing only a few feet away from her, with a shotgun held loosely under his left arm and a cigarette in his other hand. Although he had the gun pointed to the ground, she felt unnerved by the sight of it and of him.

  “What are you doing here?” he demanded of her.

  “I could ask you the same thing, Ed Hennessey.”

  She spoke sharply, unwilling to allow him to intimidate her. “You know perfectly well that I’m a friend of Mr. Parker’s,” she added for good measure. “He would be glad for me to be here.”

  He was a wiry, rumpled figure, a man she didn’t know well, or care to, but about whose work habits she had heard plenty of complaints. He’d been in and out of prison several times. Stanley had frequently hired ex-convicts, considering it to be a civic duty in his small state to try to turn its troublesome citizens into better ones. Some of his attempts had been more successful than others; this one had been doomed.

  “What do you mean?” he challenged her.

  “Mr. Parker told me he was going to fire you yesterday.”

  “Was-going- to ain’t the same as did.” A sly look came over his face, and it was only the stone wall behind her that kept Genia from stepping back a pace. “Anyway, that’s what you say.”

  “That’s what he told me, Eddie.”

  “Yeah, well, let’s see it in writing.”

  “Do you think you can just keep on living here?”

  It would be no wonder if he tried; the garage apartment must be comfortable. And since he never worked hard anyway, this was a cushy place to try to hang on.

  “It’s my job.” He smirked at her and took a drag on his cigarette. “Gotta do it.”

  “Mr. Parker’s family will have something to say about that.”

  “What family?” He said it in a scoffing tone, as if he knew the only person he had to deal with was Nikki, Stanley’s thirty-four-year-old daughter, who was hardly an intimidating force. Her exasperated father had often described Nikki as a pushover for any man with a sad story. “They got to have somebody staying on to look after this place now the old man’s gone. Who knows more about looking after it than me?”

  After swallowing the lump in her throat, Genia said, “How do you know he’s gone, Eddie?”

  “I got ways to find things out.”

  It sounded like braggadocio, but Genia assumed a more pedestrian explanation: The police must have told him of his employer’s death.

  “You’d better pack up your things and leave, Eddie.”

  He shifted the shotgun under his arm, so that the nose of it pointed ever so slightly higher, toward her. “I think you’re the one who’d better leave.” He said it mockingly, aping her words and her tone.

  Genia suddenly sensed Stanley whispering in her ear: “Don’t mess with this man. Get out of here now.” She realized that was excellent advice. Eddie was an ex-convict, he was a man with something valuable to lose, and—overriding everything else—he was the one with the gun.

  Genia swallowed her pride, put her hands into the pockets of her sweater, and began to walk with as much dignity as she could muster back in the direction by which she had come.

  Behind her she heard a chuckle, and although it sounded forced, she knew he was making fun of her. She didn’t care about that; she only cared about getting back onto the path and away from him, so that his shotgun was no longer turned toward her back. Should she take the more public road, instead? That was a good idea, she decided, and she altered her direction a bit. She didn’t really fear that Eddie was going to shoot her; she sensed that he merely wanted to flex his temporary power and force her off “his” property. But she didn’t want to take the chance of underestimating his bad intentions.

  Soon enough, either Nikki or her attorneys would fix his wagon, as Genia’s father used to say about people with broken attitudes. She made up her mind to call Nikki Parker Dixon the minute she got back home. The Dixons needed to know that a man Nikki’s father had intended to fire was now alone on their property, probably with access to house keys.

  Her alteration in course took her around the front of the garage. As soon as it stood between her and the man at her back, she felt her muscles relax a little. Suddenly, she felt a little silly for having let him scare her like that. Surely, there was nothing to be afraid of here.

  Off to her right, and hidden a bit by trees, was the greenhouse where Stanley had put Jason to work all summer. She glanced through the leaves hoping for a glimpse of it, and when she did she heard a distinct rattling noise coming from that direction. After first making sure that Eddie wasn’t following her, Genia moved a branch aside to try to see what was making the noise. It didn’t sound as if it was coming from anything natural. She couldn’t see what it was, but it continued in an on-again, off-again way, so she stepped quietly among the trees to go see for herself. A few hidden yards later, she came up to the backdoor of the greenhouse, and there she discovered the source of the rattling.

  It was Kevin Eden, trying the doorknob of the greenhouse.

  “Kevin?”

  Genia kept her voice down, not wanting to startle him, not wanting to be overheard by Ed Hennessey. But Janie and Jason’s dad spun around at the sound of her voice anyway, looking as guilty as if he’d just murdered somebody.

  “Genia! What are you doing here? I’m looking for … for Jason. But it’s …” He turned and looked at the greenhouse, then turned back toward her. “… locked.”

  “Are you sure he’ll come here today, Kevin?”

  “Oh. Well, I don’t know, I just need to … find him.”

  “Have you tried his mother’s house?”

  “No. I didn’t have any way to get into town.”

  “Oh, that’s right. Well, Jason’s probably still in bed anyway.”

  “Sure. You’re right. I don’t know why I thought he’d be here.”

  “I hope you slept all right at your friend’s house?” When he nodded, she pointed down toward the ocean. “Is that your boat down at the pier, Kevin?”

  “My boat? Oh, yeah. That’s where I left it last night.”

  “I thought you landed on the beach where Stanley—”

  “No, I docked it here.”

  “I could have sworn you said—well, never mind, I just misunderstood.”

  “Yeah, you must have, ’cause my boat was here all this time.”

  He shifted his weight and flashed an awkward grin at her. Her former nephew-in-law was still wearing the loud Hawaiian shirt, and now Genia could see that some of the splotches of color really were paint. Oil paint, she thought, or surely it would have run in the rain.

  “Nice to see you this morning, Genia,” he said, “but I guess I’d better be getting back to the island.”

  “Without seeing Jason?”

  “Oh, I’ll see him later, I expect.”

  “I’d be happy to give you a ride to Donna’s.”

  “No, no, you don’t have to do that.”

  “Have you had breakfast …?”

  Already he was moving away from her, in the direction of the hill that led down to the sea. Genia raised her hand in a farewell wave, feeling confused by their odd exchange. She hadn’t misunderstood him the night before, she felt positive: Kevin had said in her kitchen that he pulled his boat up onto the same beach where he found Stanley’s body. Why would he change that story now? And why in the world would he come looking for Jason here, at seven o’clock in the morning on the first day after Stanley’s death?

  Genia cupped her hands at a pane of glass in the greenhouse and tried to peer in. The glass was frosted over with age, making it difficult to see much more than vague rows of greenery and splotches of color. Whatever Kevin Eden was after here, surely it couldn’t have been his son, and if it was, why meet him here, at this time? The only reason that Genia could think of was the
possibility that Kevin wanted to see Jason where he wouldn’t run into Donna, too.

  “I’m making too much out of nothing,” she chided herself.

  When she turned to go, she nearly gasped out loud: Ed Hennessey stood not ten yards away, leaning against a corner of the garage, smoking a cigarette and staring at her.

  She waited for a moment, to see what he would say.

  When he only stood there, but didn’t speak, she quickly left. This time she went directly toward the public road and walked home along the gravel shoulder in full view of every passing car. She felt resentful that Eddie had prevented her from satisfying her need to spend some time alone at the Castle with her memories of Stanley. She didn’t like being forced to leave somewhere she had a right to be, or of being made to feel so anxious that her heart still hadn’t quite settled back down to its regular beat. All she had wanted to do this morning was commune with her sadness about Stanley, and instead she felt all worked up. She trudged on unhappily until she pulled up in surprise at the entrance to her own rented property.

  What’s a car doing parked in my driveway?

  It was Donna’s, she realized. Her family was up early today!

  The minute her front doorway came into view, she saw Donna standing there, and as soon as her niece saw her she came running, yelling, “Aunt Genia! Aunt Genia!”

  Genia called out to her, hurrying to meet her halfway.

  “What is it, Donna? Is something wrong with the children?”

  “No, no, it’s about Stanley, Aunt Genia! He didn’t just fall off his motorbike! You’ll never believe this, it’s just awful! The police are saying that Stanley was murdered!”

  7

  MISSING INGREDIENTS

  Genia put an arm around her niece’s shoulders as they walked together up the stairs that led to the deck in back of the house.

  Donna talked fast, explaining her terrible news.

  “They say there were big bits of wood in the wound on Stanley’s head, and they think somebody clobbered him with a tree branch, or a baseball bat, or something awful like that.”

  She paused, breathlessly, to negotiate the steps.

  Genia grabbed the railing because her own knees had gone weak. Stanley, murdered? It was horrible to imagine.

  Aunt and niece sat down side by side on a wicker couch that faced out to sea, and held hands. A temporary clearing in the weather, which Harrison Wright had accurately predicted for this morning, had come. At dinner the night before, he had forecast sunny skies for this day and the next, but had warned them there was “something major” building hundreds of miles offshore.

  Genia felt herself rebelling against the implications of Donna’s news. She didn’t want it to be true, not for Stanley’s sake, or for their own. If it was true, then the murderer might be somebody they knew. Or it might be a homicidal stranger. Both were terrifying possibilities.

  “Just down the path!” Donna said, looking frightened.

  “Who in the world …?” Genia murmured in dismay.

  “If they know, they’re not saying.”

  “Do you think they have a suspect?”

  “I don’t know, but I don’t think so.”

  “Have they found the murder weapon, Donna?”

  Her niece stared at her. “Aunt Genia! You sound so cool, as if you’ve been through this a hundred times before.”

  In reply, she merely patted Donna’s hand, but she thought, Not a hundred times, but enough to know. Aloud, she said, “I guess it’s all the mysteries I’ve read and movies I’ve seen.”

  “Well, I don’t know about a murder weapon, either.”

  “How did you learn this, Donna?”

  “From Kevin. He dropped by real early this morning, if you can believe that, for coffee and to tell me the news.”

  “Kevin?” Genia stared at her, uncomprehending.

  “Yeah, is something wrong with that? I thought you’d be pleased that he would think to tell me first. Maybe there’s some hope for him, after all. He wanted to wake up Jason and tell him, too, but I didn’t see any sense in that, not after last night. I wouldn’t let him go upstairs. I said to him, ‘Jason feels bad enough, you don’t have to make him feel worse by waking him up to tell him that Stanley was murdered.’ ”

  Genia was relieved to hear that Donna had been sensitive to her son’s feelings. “Dearest, I am glad that Kevin thought of you. I’m just in shock from this news about Stanley. Don’t mind me if I don’t make much sense for a little while. But how did Kevin hear about it?”

  Donna shrugged. “I don’t know.”

  “Did Kevin know any other details?”

  “I don’t think so, and he didn’t stay long. He didn’t like it very well when I wouldn’t let him go upstairs, and he left right after that. I guess he went on back to the island.”

  But Genia knew that Kevin hadn’t gone right back to his island. He had gone, instead, to Parker’s Castle, to try to get into the greenhouse, supposedly to talk to Jason. But Jason, according to what Donna said, was back home in bed, and Kevin knew that. There must be a good explanation, she thought, but at the moment, Kevin’s words and actions didn’t make any sense to her. And he hadn’t even told her about this awful news!

  “I think you ought to move back in with us, Aunt Genia,” Donna said.

  Genia was startled out of her own thoughts. “What?”

  “Look, Stanley got killed right on this property, or close to it. There could be some crazy person out there in the woods right now.” Donna shivered, and looked ready to bolt off the deck and drag her aunt with her. “I won’t feel safe until they find out who did it and catch him. You’d better not stay out here all by yourself.”

  “That’s very kind of you, dear, but I think I’ll be fine.”

  “Don’t be stubborn, Aunt Genia.”

  Genia had to laugh. “Who, me? I guess I can be. But I don’t think I’m being obstinate, Donna. I just want to wait and hear more about it before I do anything as dramatic as that. I loved staying with you, but it would be quite a bit of trouble to get all packed up again, and it wouldn’t be easy for you, either. I promise you, I won’t be foolish. If the police say I’m not safe here, I’ll be over with my suitcase for dinner.”

  “Well, all right, if you mean it.”

  “I do. Donna, why would anybody want to kill Stanley?”

  To her surprise, her niece laughed bitterly in response. “Who wouldn’t want to kill Stanley?”

  Over coffee and muffins, Donna told Genia what she meant.

  “He made enemies right and left, Aunt Genia. I know you thought he was great, and I guess he was, mostly, but he was pretty domineering, you have to admit. He tried to run everything and everybody. If you were doing something that Stanley didn’t like, he told you to stop, and if you weren’t doing something he thought you ought to do, he told you to do it. Not everybody takes that kind of thing as well as I do.”

  Genia was a bit amused to see her niece look so smug.

  “I mean, I could take Stanley, or leave him. But he riled up a lot of people, and there was almost always somebody who hated his guts for some reason or other. Just look at the people who were here in this very house last night, Aunt Genia! Lindsay Wright is mad at Stanley for pushing the arts festival, and Harrison automatically hates anybody that Lindsay doesn’t like. And Celeste just blew steam out her ears if anybody mentioned his name, and poor Larry is so devoted to Celeste that he’d probably kill anybody who crossed her, and David Graham can’t have been too fond of him, because how many second husbands like their wife’s first husbands, and …”

  She had been ticking guests off on her fingers.

  “And that was just last night at one dinner party. Multiply that by everybody in town, at one time or another, and that’ll give you some idea of who’d want to murder Stanley Parker. Oh! And I haven’t even mentioned his son-in-law, who Stanley treated like a muddy doormat, or his daughter, who will inherit all that money.”

  Geni
a felt a little overwhelmed by the litany.

  “And yet he could be so generous,” she protested.

  “Yeah,” Donna admitted. “I’ll have to give him that, but there were always strings, if you know what I mean.”

  Unfortunately, her aunt knew exactly what she meant. Even in her short acquaintance with Stanley Parker, she had discovered that no good deed of his went unrewarded. He had done a wonderful thing for her by getting her to write a cookbook, but she had sensed from the beginning that she was being manipulated to please him. Not that she’d minded, but still, Donna was right: When Stanley gave, he took. His own best interests were never far from his mind. Even when it came to giving employment to ex-convicts, it meant cheap labor for him. At least, it did unless the ex-con was somebody named Ed Hennessey. But now somebody had taken everything away from Stanley. Was it somebody from whom he had asked too much?

  “This is going to upset Jason,” Genia warned Donna.

  “What doesn’t?” his mother asked, and sighed.

  And suddenly Genia found herself wondering: What did Stanley ask of Jason, in return for the favor of employment at the greenhouse?

  Police detectives arrived while Donna Eden was still at Genia’s house. They asked questions from every apparent angle, but neither woman was able to provide them with much information, although the police paid close attention when Genia told them about her run-in with Ed Hennessey that morning. Other than that, no, Donna hadn’t seen anybody unfamiliar on the road between the houses last night. No, they hadn’t seen or heard anything unusual until Kevin Eden burst in with his news of Stanley’s death. And neither woman had any specific reason to think that someone might have wanted to kill the old man.

  “He made enemies,” Donna conceded, though her tone was nowhere near as dramatic as it had been only a little while earlier with her aunt. “But not enemies like that.” When pressed to say who those harmless enemies might be, she named everybody from the groundskeeper to the mayor, though she did it with every show of reluctance. After the detectives took their courteous leave—having jotted down copious notes—Donna turned to her aunt with a guilty expression, and said, “Gee, I hope I haven’t gotten anybody in trouble.”