Val sipped her wine. “My sources suggested that you and Scott had more than a professional relationship.”
“God, I miss the city where nobody pays any attention to what other people are doing. Even without living in Bayport, I’m the subject of small-town gossip.” Junie May swirled the remaining liquor in her glass. “Scott said he loved me and asked me to marry him. I told him I’d think about it. I liked him well enough, a sweet, dependable guy, but too tied to his mother. Given time, I’d have probably accepted him. Now it’s too late.”
Val saw no sign of grief, just wistfulness about a lost opportunity. She bit into the chocolate truffle. “How did you two meet?”
“I was doing interviews in May at Ambleside Village for a report on the first anniversary of its opening. I saw a sign for Scott’s lecture, went to it, and talked to him afterward.”
Easy to understand why an unmarried man pushing fifty would fall for an attractive woman a decade younger. And he might not want to tell anyone about it until he was sure she reciprocated those feelings. Yet another reason to act like strangers at Granddad’s dinner, especially with his mother present. “How well do you know Thomasina?”
“Scott introduced me to her after the lecture the day I met him. From then on, he and I got together in other places. I don’t think she even recognized me when your grandfather did the introductions Saturday night. She must not watch local news.” Junie May’s fingers drummed on the table.
Val interpreted the tapping fingernails as a sign of impatience. She might as well tell Junie May what she knew and get reactions from her. “My grandfather and I talked to Thomasina today. She told us she’d been pushed down the stairs at the last retirement place where she lived. Did Scott say anything about that?”
Junie May shook her head. “What an odd thing for her to say. How did it come up?”
“In connection with her theory about the murder. Old friends, or maybe enemies, of her husband went after her and Scott.” Val recapped the few details Thomasina had given. “It didn’t make a lot of sense.”
“Hit men on the Eastern Shore. Now that would make a great story.” Junie May nibbled on a chunk of dried apple. “Maybe Thomasina blames everything bad that happens on Scott’s rotten father. She’s struggling to figure out why anyone would kill her son. So she concocts a motive for murder that makes sense to her.”
“Leaving motive aside, Junie May, how could anyone have poisoned Scott at the chowder dinner?”
“The only way to guarantee Scott would die, and not some random person or persons, was to poison the bowl in front of him. Omar had the chance when he leaned over Scott’s bowl to pour the wine. All he had to do was check to make sure no one was looking.”
“My grandfather thought Omar made Scott nervous. Did you get the same impression?”
“Scott wasn’t himself at the dinner. I doubt it had anything to do with Omar. It was weird how that guy went around pouring wine like it was a fancy restaurant. I know Omar brought the wine, but still the host usually pours, not the guest. It was one of the best wines I’ve ever tasted, a French white, perfectly chilled.” The waiter appeared and asked if they wanted drink refills. Junie May declined a second drink and waved him away. “Lillian could have done it too. She was sitting at the end of the table next to Scott. Just as your grandfather sat down, a dog began barking right outside the dining-room window and wouldn’t stop.”
Oops. Granddad must have butt-dialed RoboFido.
Junie May scooped up the last of the crab dip. “Scott and Irene turned around to look out the windows behind them when the barking started, and the rest of us looked there too. Lillian could have reached over and poisoned Scott’s chowder while everyone’s attention was diverted.”
Val suppressed a smile. That scenario made RoboFido an unwitting accessory to murder. “So Lillian brought arsenic with her in case a barking dog or some other diversion gave her the chance to poison Scott? You can’t be serious.” But if Junie May knew that Granddad could make a dog bark as a diversion, she might view him as a witting accessory.
“Okay, then Omar must have done it. Do you know his last name?”
“I asked Lillian, and she wouldn’t tell me. She invited him to the dinner. If Omar poisoned Scott, she must have told him Scott would be there. Or else Omar carries arsenic with him in case he runs into someone he wants to poison.”
“They worked it together.”
Val figured Junie May had chosen the wrong career. She should have been a TV scriptwriter, not a reporter. “Why would Lillian and Omar want Scott dead? You can’t possibly think they’re hired killers.”
“There’s a motive. We just don’t know what it is yet.”
Val almost suggested retaliation against the swindler, but that motive wouldn’t fly with Junie May, who believed, or said she believed, Scott to be honest. “We need to find out more about Lillian and Omar. Lillian hasn’t been forthcoming with me. I’ll tackle her again, but I can only go so far with her because she’s my grandfather’s girlfriend. You should work on this too, because you have research skills and contacts I don’t have, and you don’t have to go easy on her.”
“I’ll try to fit in the research tomorrow.” Junie May pointed to the huge watch on her wrist. “Time for me to go. Still have to write something for the eleven o’clock news.”
“One more question. How did you happen to bring Irene Pritchard to my grandfather’s dinner?”
“When I told her I was going to dinner at the Codger Cook’s house, she invited herself along. She expected me to prove your grandfather can’t cook. I never intended to do that.”
“Because you didn’t believe it?”
“Because I didn’t care. According to Irene, your grandfather used influence to win the contest for recipe columnist, and you actually write the column. I investigated the influence allegation. Nothing in it. He clearly writes the column. It sounds like him, not you. Maybe he started with your recipes, but it doesn’t matter as long as they’re good.”
Val steered the conversation away from her recipes. “What about the cooking demo you want him to do on camera? That’s asking a lot of a man in his seventies.”
“Irene pushed for that too, but she doesn’t know how it works. My cameraman and the video editor can make anyone look like a gourmet chef. Throw a party when the Codger Cook demo airs and invite Irene. I’d love to see her face when your grandfather cooks like a pro on TV.”
Nice try at blunting Val’s opposition to the cooking demo, but it wouldn’t work. The reporter and her team could do what they wanted once they had Granddad in front of the camera, including make him look ridiculous. “It’s too stressful for him.”
Junie May swept her hand across her bangs. “Relax, Val. The Codger Cook is a feel-good story. Pricking holes in it won’t get me a better job. I need a more important story than that.” She jotted on the back of a business card. “Let’s compare notes tomorrow evening. Come to my house around six-thirty. Here’s my address.”
Val glanced at the card. “Where is this?”
“It’s my grandmother’s house in the woods, on a lane not far from the highway to Salisbury. See you tomorrow, and thanks for the happy hour.” Junie May stood up.
Clad in red, she began a trip to her grandmother’s house in the woods. A familiar story, lacking only a big, bad wolf.
Val finished her wine and paid the bill. She’d come to the tavern expecting the reporter to stonewall her. Instead, Junie May had disarmed her by sharing information, answering her questions, and recruiting her as an ally. But had Junie May told the truth? Maybe she’d made up the romance between her and Scott as a smoke screen for her partnership with a scammer. She could have a vested interest in convincing the world that Scott wasn’t a swindler so that no one would go after the money the two of them had raked in.
Gunnar was the one person Val knew with the background to research someone in the financial field. He could ignore her phone calls, but not her presence. Instead of
walking home, she detoured to the River Edge B & B. As she rounded the corner from Osprey Street onto River Avenue, she spotted a red sports car stopping in front of the B & B half a block away. Gunnar. Perfect. She could bump into him.
Gunnar’s ex climbed out of the car on the driver’s side, crossed the guest parking area, and walked past another red sports car—Gunnar’s Miata. Val looked again at the car parked at the curb. Shinier than the Miata, probably newer.
How cute. They had his-and-hers red cars.
Val turned back toward Osprey Street, dejected. Her phone chimed. She fumbled for it in her fabric shoulder bag. Her cell phone often ended up buried in the expandable bag. She answered the phone seconds before her voice mail would have kicked in.
“Hi, Val.It’s Gunnar. Sorry I didn’t return your call. I’ve been busy. What’s going on?”
She perked up. So what if his ex was waiting for him in the B & B’s reception area or climbing up to his attic room? He wasn’t calling his ex. “I was hoping we could get together. Maybe tomorrow night we could—”
“Why don’t we try for tennis again? Does four o’clock tomorrow work?”
“That sounds good.... Oh, wait. I have a ladder match starting at three-thirty. It could go on for ninety minutes or even two hours. I guess we could play later. How about six-thirty?” That would give her time to shower and change.
“That’s cutting it too close for me.”
For evening plans that included the blonde? Val could suggest an alternate date. Thursday afternoon she’d offered to run the Brain Game session at the Village, but Bethany had agreed to work a few hours at the café that day. “Can you play on Thursday around noon? I have someone to cover the café.”
“Thursday’s tight. I’m busier than I expected this week. I’ll phone you when I know more about my schedule.”
Would he know more when he talked to his ex? Val might as well get information from him while she could. “Did you find time to check out Scott Freaze?”
“Not thoroughly. Online reviews about his investment business are mixed. People who complained about it had investments that didn’t do well at a time when everyone’s investments were going down. I’ll research him more when I get a chance. A call’s coming in on the room phone. Talk to you in a day or two.” He clicked off.
Disappointed, she trudged home. Last weekend when Gunnar arrived in Bayport after nearly a month away, she’d anticipated spending a lot of time with him and getting to know him better after the shaky start to their relationship. In the past three days, they’d managed only a few hours together and the next few days didn’t look more promising, especially if he was trying to fit both her and the blonde into his schedule. To be fair, Val had also been pressed for time ever since the chowder dinner.
A faint burning smell hit her as she opened the front door. Not again. Granddad often scorched his morning toast, but he didn’t eat toast this late in the day. She raced through the sitting room and dining room.
From the butler’s pantry, she saw water overflowing a pot on the stove, hissing and sputtering onto a red-hot burner. On the other back burner, round seeds crackled, popped, and flew into the air from a sizzling frying pan. She zoomed toward the stove.
Granddad backed away from it, stepped on a cookie sheet, which sat on the floor for some reason, and flattened cookie dough with his shoe. “Look what you made me do, storming in here like that!”
Val grabbed the lid lying idle next to the stove and clapped it over the frying pan full of mustard seeds. The seeds kept popping, hitting the metal lid like machine-gun fire. She moved the overflowing pot from the hot burner to one that wasn’t glowing red and turned off all the burners. All the while, the oven gave off intense heat, its door open and covered with splats of dough.
Granddad pulled a metal spatula from a drawer and tried to scrape off the dough stuck to the open oven door. “Don’t just stand around, Val. Help me out here.”
She didn’t know where to start. Inside the oven, dough globules hung from the center rack like Dali’s melting clocks. “What happened here, Granddad?”
“Your stupid cookie recipe says to shape the dough into balls and space them out on the cookie sheet. When I went to put the sheet in the oven, the balls started rolling off. I tried to catch them and more of them fell off. I put the cookie sheet on the floor to get it out of the way.”
“That’s where I came in.” His bright pink cheeks alarmed her. He looked as if he’d spent an hour under a sunlamp. “Your face is red from the heat.” Or anger. Val took the spatula from him and pulled the trash can toward her. “I’ll get the dough off the oven. What’s in the pot with the boiling water?”
He straightened up. “Noodles.”
“How long have they been cooking?”
“Ten minutes or so.”
“Drain them or they’ll turn to mush.” If they haven’t already. “The colander’s in the cabinet next to the sink.”
She bent down and concentrated on lifting off the dough before it baked onto the oven door.
“Doggone it. Half of the noodles went down the drain.”
She stood up and checked the sink. Sure enough, pasta the size of rice had escaped from the colander. “If I’d known you were making orzo, I’d have suggested using the strainer.” Of course, he could have looked at the size of the orzo and realized it was smaller than the holes in the colander.
“You should have known. The box is right there.” He gestured toward the counter where a food processor, mixer, garlic press, juicer, and zester sat, along with myriad ingredients.
“How could I miss it? It’s behind the flour and sugar, and surrounded by butter, lemons, maple syrup, parsnips, olives, and half-a-dozen other things. What happened to your five-ingredient limit on recipes?”
“I was making three five-ingredient recipes at once.”
“Oh, it’s the Codger Cook Three-Ring Circus. Focus on one recipe at a time.”
“I was going to, and let you make the rest of the meal, but you were so late, I figured I’d starve if I didn’t make more food.” He gestured at the counter with his palm up. “This is what happens when I listen to you.”
She was used to his finger pointing, but blaming her for a kitchen disaster that occurred when she wasn’t even home took some fancy footwork. “How is this my fault?”
“You accused me of running a scam with the Codger Cook column. You lumped me with people like Scott. Well, you won’t be able to call me a fraud once I get this cooking stuff down.”
She had three strikes against her—her cookie recipe, coming home late, and calling his column a scam. Up until today, he’d needed only free access to her recipes. The cutesy names he gave them and his cornball writing style made her cringe, but until now his new career had made few demands on her time. If he really tried to cook, more kitchen disasters loomed, and more cleanups.
But how many men approaching their eighties tackled something totally new? She was proud of him for doing it. “I’ll pay for my sins by cleaning up. You go sit down. Be careful not to slip with that dough on your shoes.”
He didn’t slip, but he did leave bits of dough along the path to the kitchen table. “All this work, and I haven’t even started making the chicken. It beats me how cooks get everything ready at the same time.”
She cleared away enough space on the counter to work. The longer he had to wait for dinner, the grumpier he’d get. “I’ll cut the chicken in small pieces. It’ll cook fast.”
While it cooked, she made parsnips with mustard seeds, the side dish he’d chosen. She also salvaged the cookie dough that hadn’t rolled away or gotten smashed under his foot.
When she put the food on the table, he dug in. Between bites, he told her how he’d spent the day—taking Ned to lunch to make up for leaving him out of the chowder dinner and then going to a movie.
“Was the movie any good?” she asked. Maybe she and Gunnar could—No, that wouldn’t work. He was busy . . . with another woman.
“Talked to Irene and Junie May. I found out that Junie May and Scott spent time together Saturday before the chowder dinner.”
Granddad’s white eyebrows jumped halfway up his forehead. “She could have poisoned him with something that wouldn’t take effect until later.”
If guilty, Junie May was playing a deeper game than Val could fathom. Why would she mention arsenic if she’d used it to poison Scott? “She said something that surprised me. The research she did on Scott convinced her he was a legitimate financial adviser with happy clients. Do you have any proof that Scott defrauded Ned? Does he have any paperwork?”
“He didn’t get an account statement yet.”
“All you have are rumors of Scott’s dishonesty and no more facts than Irene had when she spread rumors about food poisoning here. Scott might not have been a swindler after all, but a victim of gossip.”
Granddad rolled his eyes. “As usual, Val, your instincts about men are all wrong. Scott’s worse than we thought. I found out something today that made my blood boil.”
Chapter 13
Granddad put his fork down and folded his arms. “An eighty-year-old man committed suicide a few months ago after losing his life savings. He trusted a financial expert who gave investment seminars at his retirement community. I’d bet my Codger Cook apron that Scott was that expert.”
Val pushed her orzo salad around the plate, her appetite gone. “That’s terrible. How did you find out about it?”
“A woman at the Village told Ned and me. She heard it from a friend of hers at the retirement place where it happened, just outside Washington.”
Thirdhand hearsay. “Can you ask the woman for the name of the place where the suicide occurred? If we have that, we can find out if Scott gave seminars there. And if he didn’t, we’ll at least know he wasn’t the kind of monster who drives people to suicide.”
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