Thank heaven for Christie.
Last week, Liz walked into the Indialantic’s kitchen and found Pierre with his feet up, reading The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, reminding her of her teenage days when she and Pierre would lounge on the terrace overlooking the ocean, reading Christies while sipping Pierre’s famous lemon-limeade. Now, as a distraction from her past, and with the approval of her therapist, Liz was on a mission to read everything Christie had written. She kept a notebook of her progress—six books down—seventy-four to go, not counting the short story collections. Liz didn’t want to read heavy literary best sellers, and she completely avoided the New York Times Book Review. The competition and pressure of trying to remain on top of the list had been one of the reasons leading to her and Travis’s demise.
Liz went into the bedroom and changed into an oversized Columbia University T-shirt. Francie Jenkins had made an amazing hand-sewn quilt that she’d framed and hung on the wall behind the bed. It was made from vintage fabrics in sea colors, some of which had been donated by Aunt Amelia and came from old trunks stored in the hotel’s luggage room. The king-sized bed faced a floor-to-ceiling glass window with a no-holds-barred view of the Atlantic. Every morning when she woke, she felt like she was on the deck of a ship, only there weren’t any rolling waves to make her seasick.
She turned back the duvet, got in bed, and nestled down into cool, high-thread-count Egyptian cotton sheets, then switched on the bedside lamp and reached for Evil Under the Sun.
Chapter 6
Friday morning, Liz woke to a jewel of a sunrise. She took a shower, pulled her hair up into a clip, added some mascara and lip gloss, put on a simple pale aqua sundress, and went in search of her father. When Liz got to the outside door of her father’s office, she didn’t knock; instead she burst in. “What a morning! I’m ready to hear more about my new assignment, and I want to know what you think about a raffle for the Spring Fling by the Sea to raise money for the Barrier Island Sanctuary.” She stopped short when she noticed the stranger from yesterday’s dinner sitting in a chair across from her father.
“Uhh, sorry, Dad. Didn’t know you weren’t alone.”
“Obviously not,” the man said, twisting slowly in his chair to face her. He gave her the same annoying once-over he had at last night’s dinner, and Liz’s face heated in anger. His dark, almost black hair was on the longish side. His deep brown eyes assessed her from under hooded lids with thick lashes. She met his piercing gaze with what she hoped was cool disdain. He seemed the type that enjoyed making a woman squirm. But not this woman. Liz had to admit he was attractive, but he wasn’t her type—actually the opposite. Kate would go for him in a heartbeat. Then she thought about Travis. He’d been her type, a bookish academician, and look how that’d turned out.
“I’ll come back later,” Liz said.
The guy snorted and turned back to her father.
Her father closed the file in front of him, oblivious to the negative vibes in the room. “We’re almost finished here. Just give me five minutes.” As an afterthought, he said, “Ryan Stone, this is my daughter, Liz. Ryan is on leave from the New York City Fire Department to help his grandfather in Deli-casies by the Sea, until Pops’s new knee heals.”
So much for typecasting him as a villain. Pops was kind and sweet, always smiling. Ryan must take after someone else in his family, not his grandfather.
Ryan turned and gave Liz a dismissive gaze her father couldn’t see. His lip curled up on one side. “A pleasure, I’m sure.” Then he turned and said, “Mr. Holt, I really should be getting back to my grandfather.”
Liz could take a hint. “I’ll be at Books & Browsery by the Sea. Come by, I’d love to show you what Kate has done.”
Fenton said, “As soon as we’re finished, Elizabeth.”
Uh-oh. Liz knew that when her father called her “Elizabeth,” she was in trouble. She regretted interrupting his meeting with Pops’s ungracious, and yes, irritating grandson. What exactly was he doing, talking to her father in such a lawyerly fashion? Liz knew her father would never tell her anything confidential about an open case, but when she helped him with his paperwork, maybe she could find out. Liz was privy to where he hid the keys to his files and she knew the password to his laptop—her mother’s maiden name and birthday.
If Ryan Stone had come from Manhattan, or one of the boroughs, then he probably knew all about the infamous Elizabeth Holt scandal, likely explaining his bristly posture.
Or he could just be a jerk.
Liz walked to the back of the office and opened a door that led into her father’s apartment, then stepped inside his main living space. All four walls of the room had built-in bookcases packed with books—and not just law books, but fiction, biographies, psychology texts, and his favorite, courtroom thrillers—both fiction and true life. On the other side of the hotel was a library ten times the size of her father’s. If her father wasn’t to be found in his office, pouring over law books or with a client, he would be reading in one library or the other.
She walked through the room, loving the way her father had arranged things to be both masculine and cozy at the same time. Liz stopped next to a teak end table displaying a photograph of her father, mother, and herself at age four, standing in front of their apartment in Manhattan. It was impossible to believe that the vibrant, smiling woman with Liz’s blue eyes would die of breast cancer the next year. She had only a few memories of her mother, but at least they were all good. And she had the video that was full of love and bright smiles that her mother had left her “just in case.”
Opening a door next to her father’s kitchen that led to the interior of the hotel, she followed a narrow-tiled hallway, passing the hotel’s dumbwaiter that hadn’t been used in decades. At the end of the hallway was an ornate wrought-iron staircase leading up to a Juliet balcony facing the Indian River Lagoon. When Liz was in middle school, she and Aunt Amelia would practice lines from Shakespeare, dressed in cone-shaped hats topped with a half dozen of her great-aunt’s chiffon scarves, giving their productions, per Aunt Amelia, a Renaissance feel.
Romeo, O Romeo, leave me the hell alone, Romeo. As Liz knew firsthand, there was a thin line between passion and obsession, and once you crossed it, there was no going back.
She continued on through a curved archway that opened into the kitchen. Betty Lawson sat at the wooden farm table with Caro on her lap. Pierre stood at the stove, filling Betty’s bowl with steel-cut oatmeal. Every morning but Sunday, Betty added two tablespoons of molasses to her oatmeal to “unclog the pipes” and keep her “regular.”
Pierre wore his white chef’s toque from morning to evening, making Liz wonder as a child if he slept with it on. “Liz, darling. Can I make you some breakfast?” Pierre asked, as he handed Betty the bowl with shaky hands. “I just made Betty some eggs.”
Liz caught Betty’s usually mischievous gaze, which now looked concerned and directed at Pierre’s hands holding the bowl of oatmeal, not eggs. Liz had thought only her father and Aunt Amelia knew about Pierre’s memory loss, but Betty didn’t miss a thing. Maybe it had something to do with decades of writing teenage mystery novels.
“I wish I had time, Grand-Pierre, but I’m meeting with Aunt Amelia about the Spring Fling. I’ll try to talk her into coming back to the kitchen afterward.”
Betty motioned for Pierre to sit across from her, where his soft-boiled egg on a slice of homemade multigrain toast waited. He took a seat and smashed the egg into his toast with his fork. Yolk oozed onto the plate. Then he picked up a bottle of Tabasco sauce and shook it liberally over his egg. Liz was happy because she’d researched cayenne pepper and found it was beneficial when used in the diets of patients with memory loss.
The day’s lunch and dinner menu wasn’t on the center island cutting board like it usually was. She usually checked to make sure Pierre had everything he needed. Lately, she’d been prepping the ingredients and plac
ing them in small bowls with numbers on top of the cellophane so all he had to do was lay them in order on the counter. “Chef, do you have today’s menu? I have a feeling our new guests, the Worths, will be expecting one of your masterpieces.”
“Of course I do, my dear.” He reached up and took off his toque. Inside was a rolled-up piece of paper tied with string. “Voilà.”
Laughing, she took it from his hand and unrolled it. Pierre’s calligraphy was beautiful, full of flourishes and curlicues he’d learned as a young boy in primary school in France. Every morning at 6 a.m., Pierre would be at his desk in the butler’s pantry writing out the day’s menu with a pen he dipped in India ink that Aunt Amelia had special-ordered for him.
Today’s menu seemed simple and elegant, but Liz doubted the poached salmon entrée he had planned for dinner would satisfy Her Haughtiness, Regina Harrington-Worth. She also knew how important it was for Aunt Amelia to impress the Worths.
In the butler’s pantry, she found the cookbook she and Aunt Amelia had printed and bound with all of Pierre’s signature dishes and had presented to him on his eightieth birthday. Liz had her own copy in the beach house that she referred to time and time again. To her, thumbing through The Chef Pierre Montague Cookbook was like walking down memory lane.
She decided on salmon wrapped in crêpes with a lemon dill sauce. They would add a little pizzazz to the meal, and Pierre’s crêpes were the best she’d ever tasted. Pierre wasn’t like the chefs seen on television—he had no ego. So when she explained about the change in the menu, he was on board with her selection.
After checking the pantry and huge refrigerator to make sure Pierre had all the supplies he needed for the upgraded entrée, Liz walked over to Betty, leaned down, and scratched behind Caro’s ears, winning a few affectionate head butts. She asked, “Did Iris show up this morning?”
“She was up before me and left a note that she was going to the supermarket,” Pierre said, pointing to the kitchen counter. “But she forgot to take the list.” He stuffed the last bite of his toast into his mouth, got up, and put his dishes in the dishwasher. Then he said, “Au revoir,” and went outside to tend to his kitchen garden.
Liz sat next to Betty and Caro. The cat transferred laps, and Liz and Caro commenced a short discussion—Liz rolling her tongue in imitation of Caro’s distinctive gravelly meows, while Betty laughed and joined in the conversation. She realized, after years of living with Aunt Amelia and her Animalia, that if she talked to an animal, it would no doubt talk back to her.
“I see that Percival Harrington II’s daughter is staying in the Oceana Suite,” Betty said, interrupting Liz’s discussion with Caro. “You do know there are rumors she killed her father so she could inherit Castlemara and the treasure from the San Carlos?”
“That’s not like you to believe rumors. Are you just bored and need a good mystery to solve? Although, I must admit, after meeting her, I wouldn’t be surprised.”
“He officially died of a heart attack. Captain Netherton told me the Coast Guard had him airlifted from his yacht, but he died before reaching the hospital. His daughter was the only one on board besides the crew.”
“Well, if anyone can bring on a heart attack, that woman can. I’d better go. Auntie’s probably wondering where I am.” Caro jumped off Liz’s lap, probably to find her buddy, Killer. Liz got up, kissed Betty on top of the head, and moved toward the door leading into the dining room, passing the cappuccino/espresso machine. She was jonesin’ for a cup of French roast topped with a layer of frothy milk and one of Pierre’s better-than-donuts beignets that called to her from under a glass-domed cake plate, but she resisted and went on into the dining room.
Only one table had been used for breakfast, and it was piled with a stack of dirty dishes. Liz guessed the Worths had breakfasted there, because she knew Captain Netherton and Betty usually ate in the hotel’s kitchen for breakfast and lunch. She cleared the table, knowing Iris was out. As she folded up the tablecloth, she glanced at Regina’s lipstick-stained napkin. The woman had actually used her white linen napkin as a makeup blotter. What a piece of work, Liz thought as she headed back to the kitchen. She balanced the stack of dishes, then used her shoulder to push open the swinging doors and walked inside.
Betty was gone, and the kitchen was now neat and spotless. Liz rinsed the dishes, put them into one of three industrial-sized dishwashers, and left the room. On her way back through the dining room, she spied a business card on the floor under the chair where she’d found Regina’s lipstick-stained napkin. The card belonged to Captain Clyde B. Netherton; all that was printed on it was his name and a cell phone number. She put it in her pocket. Liz had to give him credit, the captain was a player and not afraid of going after the happily married—if, indeed, Regina Harrington-Worth was happily married.
Chapter 7
The dining room had three exits: one leading to the kitchen, another to the interior courtyard with the Indialantic’s famous sixty-foot coconut palm in the center, and the third, which Liz took, had her entering a short hallway. She passed the closed door to the library, and continued through a twenty-foot archway that opened into the lobby. Everything in the lobby seemed copacetic—almost too quiet without Aunt Amelia’s presence. She felt like she’d time-traveled and was back in 1926, the year the Indialantic by the Sea Hotel had opened to much fanfare and had been booked from September to June for almost fifty years.
Next to the antique elevator, she saw that the brass stand to Barnacle Bob’s cage stood cageless. The Indialantic had a working service elevator off the kitchen, which Aunt Amelia kept up to code for any guests who couldn’t use the stairs in the lobby. The old lobby elevator hadn’t worked for as long as Liz remembered. Aunt Amelia held out hope that one day they would have enough money to repair the charming 1920s Otis elevator cab with its brass accordion gate and ornate art deco floor indicator. Family folklore had it that on its last voyage, the cab had stopped between floors with gangster Al Capone inside—angry as a bull in a zoot suit. And there were rumors that the elevator operator went missing and was never seen again.
The décor in the lobby was the same as when Liz had left ten years ago, when she’d moved to Manhattan. And it had changed little from when she and her father had arrived twenty-three years before. Aunt Amelia always said, “If it ain’t broken, why fix it?” Liz glanced down at the Persian carpet that covered the lobby’s terra cotta–tiled floor. She was sure Regina would notice the carpet’s worn spots and frayed edges.
The lobby had a vaulted ceiling and stucco walls, and it was filled with six-foot potted palms, bamboo tables, and bamboo chairs with comfy upholstered cushions in tropical prints. Aunt Amelia hadn’t needed a porter or a reception desk clerk for years, because even though the Indialantic had the word “Hotel” in its title, it was more of a boardinghouse—that was until Aunt Amelia let the Worths stay. Her favorite part of the lobby was its long, highly polished wood registration counter. On top of the counter was the hotel’s original guest register, filled with famous and infamous names dating from the 1920s.
A wooden cabinet behind the counter had mail and telegram cubbies corresponding to the hotel’s original guest rooms. Now only the top two rows were used for sorting mail and messages for Liz, Aunt Amelia, Betty, Captain Netherton, and Iris.
She thought about the constantly disappearing housekeeper. Iris was hard to warm up to. Aunt Amelia must have felt sorry for her for some reason or another to have hired her. Liz often heard the housekeeper tell whomever would listen that she “ran” the hotel, not “Old Lady Holt.” It wasn’t any of Liz’s business how much the housekeeper earned at the Indialantic, but she knew room and board came with the job and she didn’t want Aunt Amelia to be taken advantage of.
Then she remembered that those in glass beach houses shouldn’t throw seashells. Wasn’t she doing the same thing as Iris? Freeloading off of her father and great-aunt? Liz had some money saved
up from the proceeds of her book and the sale of her loft, but her father had refused to let her sink it into the Indialantic. Not that Liz had spent much time in the past cleaning the guest rooms, but how hard could it be to vacuum, dust, fluff pillows, and leave a couple of mints on each bed? Then Liz stopped dead in her tracks, when she remembered Regina and the list. She suddenly wished Iris the best. It would be interesting to see the unflusterable Iris tackle Regina’s list of demands. She had glanced at the list last night, stopping after she read the first item: Fresh Parboiled Tuna Three Times a Day. It looked like the mystery of the species of Regina’s pet, Venus, had been solved—she must be a feline.
Liz left the lobby and continued down the hallway to the screening room. When she opened the door, it was dark inside. Only a faint light spilled onto the back row of seats from the projection booth. She felt her way down the aisle. As she got closer to the screen, she saw the outline of Aunt Amelia’s head, front row and center. Liz slid into the seat next to her and took her soft, ring-bejeweled hand in hers. “What are you doing sitting here in the dark?”
“I was getting inspiration for the Spring Fling by watching the episode of My Three Sons, where Ernie tries to raise money for a charity event at school, spends some of the proceeds on a candy bar, then is called into the principal’s office.”
“Let me guess, you played the principal?”
“Nope. The secretary. Complete with cat-framed glasses on a pearl chain and an angora twinset that had me sneezing from all the little rabbit hairs I inhaled. It took eight takes for a one-line speaking part.”
Death by the Sea Page 4