He stood, crossed to my side of the table, and gently pulled me to my feet. “Don’t cry.” He wiped my wet cheeks with his finger, and his kiss was gentle but insistent. “You’re exhausted. Get some rest. I’ll call you tonight.”
He held my hand as we walked together to the door. He stepped out into the hall, then turned back toward me, smiling.
“Oh, about the Sprint Cup races next weekend. Do you still want to go?”
“Of course I do.”
“Great. I’ll call up there tomorrow and get us a couple of rooms.”
“Pete . . .”
“Yes?”
“Just get one room.”
EPILOGUE
Tripp Hampton is still awaiting trial on kidnapping, two counts of murder, and several felony charges, including money laundering and fraud. Federal marshals have seized his assets, including the Hampton mansion. His lawyers are pursuing an insanity plea. He complains about a black cat that, he says, sits outside the barred window of his seventh-floor cell at night, watching him.
Pete got permission to exhume the body of Helena’s dog, Nicky. The pink diamond necklace was around his neck, just as I’d said it would be. Nicky was quietly reburied, with just Pete and me and an island guide in attendance. Because Helena had deeded the property on Misery Island, with all “buildings, improvements, and appurtenances,” to the trustees of reservations, the court ruled that the diamond belongs to them. The money the organization will realize from the sale of Helena’s necklace will go a long way toward preserving New England’s historic heritage.
O’Ryan’s back fence fan club still visits sometimes on warm summer nights, but we haven’t seen the black cat with the red collar or the gray cat with the white star marking again.
Mr. Pennington and Aunt Ibby are still “keeping company,” and The Tabitha Trumbull Book of New England Cookery is due to be published next year, with all proceeds going to the Tabby’s scholarship fund.
Daphne’s run as Billie Dawn in Born Yesterday was so successful that she’s been invited to reprise the role with a Boston theater company, and there’s a rumor going around that she and Tommy may be headed for Los Angeles soon for a round of interviews with a major movie studio.
The summer play season was entirely successful, and Mr. Pennington has offered me a new teaching contract at the Tabby. I’m looking forward to the start of classes in the fall, when I’ll welcome students to a class on television performance and production.
Pete and I have relaxed into a relationship that gets more comfortable every day. We’re at the point where we finish each other’s sentences and laugh at the same silly things. We’ve gone out to the island several times and always remember to take along a pansy plant for Helena’s grandmother and, of course, for Nicky. I haven’t had any more visions lately, scary or otherwise, and I’m getting so that I can pass a mirror without flinching. I’ve been helping Pete with picking out some new furniture for his apartment, and he’s even bought a few small antique pieces from both Jenny’s and Gary Campbell’s shops. River has offered to check everything for proper feng shui when we’re finished.
But I’m sure Pete’s bagua is great, just like everything else about him.
From The Tabitha Trumbull Book of
New England Cookery
(Recipes adapted and edited by Isobel Russell)
Joe Frogger Cookies
In 1798, in the seafaring Barnegat section of old Marblehead, Massachusetts, a black man named Joe Brown opened a tavern in a saltbox house at the edge of a frog pond. Joe’s wife, Lucretia, served the drinks, and Black Joe’s Tavern soon became popular as a place where a thirsty man in from the sea could count on a glass of good homemade beer or a taste of honest rum at a fair price.
It was said that Black Joe made the best molasses cookies in town, and people called them “Joe Froggers,” after the plump little frogs who lived in the pond. Fishermen liked them because they never got stale and hard, and Marblehead women regularly packed them for the men to take to sea. Joe claimed that what kept them soft was rum and salt water, but he wouldn’t tell how he made them.
When Joe died in 1834, people thought that was the end of Joe Froggers. But one day Lucretia shared the secret recipe with a fisherman’s wife, and before long most of the women in Marblehead were making them. Served with a pitcher of cold milk, Froggers became the town’s favorite Sunday night supper.
3½ cups all-purpose flour
1½ teaspoons ground ginger
1 teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon ground cloves
½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
¼ teaspoon ground allspice
1 cup molasses*
1 cup light brown sugar
½ cup vegetable shortening
cup hot water
2 tablespoons rum
1½ teaspoons sea salt
Waxed paper, for rolling out the dough
Mix the flour, ginger, baking soda, cloves, nutmeg, and allspice in a large bowl until well combined. In a separate large bowl beat together the molasses, brown sugar, and shortening. In a small bowl, combine the hot water, rum, and sea salt.
Add the dry ingredients and the water-rum-sea salt mixture alternately to the molasses-sugar-shortening mixture and mix well to make a dough. On a cutting board, roll out the dough between two sheets of waxed paper until ¼ inch thick. Refrigerate the rolled out dough on the cutting board for at least 2 hours.
Preheat the oven to 375°F. Grease 2 baking sheets.
Remove the top sheet of waxed paper. Dip the cookie cutter in flour, then shake it and cut the chilled dough into 2½- or 3-inch rounds.** (Old-timers claim that originally Froggers were the size of a luncheon plate!) Gather up the dough left after cutting, put a fresh sheet of waxed paper on top, and roll it until ¼ inch thick and cut some more rounds. Place the rounds on the prepared baking sheets, and bake for 10 to 12 minutes, or until they are a little bit dark around the edges and firm in the middle. Check on them after about 9 minutes of baking.
Cool the cookies on the baking sheets for 5 minutes, then remove them to wire racks to cool completely.
Makes about eighteen Froggers
*Aunt Ibby uses Grandma’s Molasses, Bacardi rum, Crisco shortening, and Atlantic Saltworks sea salt.
**A 14½-ounce vegetable can with both ends cut out makes a nice 2½-inch cookie cutter and results in 3½-inch cookies after baking.
Love Lee? Want to know how it all began?
Be sure to read the first two books
In
The Witch City Mystery series
CAUGHT DEAD HANDED
And
TAILS, YOU LOSE
Available now
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Copyright © 2015 by Carol J. Perry
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ISBN: 978-1-6177-3373-4
ISBN-10: 1-61773-373-3
First Kensington Mass Market Edition: November 2015
eISBN-13: 978-1-61773-374-1
eISBN-10: 1-61773-374-1
First Kensington Electronic Edition: November 2015
k Both Ways
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