“No, it takes me a couple of months, at least. I like to take my time. Introduce new materials and think about the composition. A lot of people have the misconception that all you do is glue a bunch of unrelated items onto a canvas. I like to do layers. The viewer might not even see what lies underneath, but I know it’s there, and that resonates with me. It’s like the secret to the Mona Lisa’s smile—you never know what lies beneath da Vinci’s masterpiece, only what he wants you to see on the surface. Using reflective light technology, a French scientist has found another woman’s portrait behind the iconic painting. Not that I’m comparing my work with The Master’s.”
“It’s like writing a novel, too. There’s so much background, research, and character analysis you need to do before you even write a single word, and most of it doesn’t ever find its way onto the page—it just remains in the author’s head.”
“Great analogy.”
“Hey, I just saw Francie. Home Arts looks fabulous for the Spring Fling.”
“It was a great idea,” Minna said, as she started to pack up. “I hope your new hotel guest, Regina Harrington-Worth, doesn’t show her face here tomorrow.”
Liz was intrigued. “Why?”
“She almost sabotaged a showing of my art at the Vero Beach Women’s Club. I had a line of women interested in my pieces, until she came up and told everyone to save their money because Sotheby’s was going to have an auction of some of her father’s recovered jewelry and other items found on the shipwrecked San Carlos.”
“Wasn’t her father still alive at the time?”
“Well, that’s the kicker. There never was an auction because her father wouldn’t allow her to sell anything he’d given her. It was all to go to local museums after her death.”
“How’d you find that out?”
“After I came home from the luncheon, I got ahold of one of my contacts at Sotheby’s. She told me there was going to be an auction and sent me the link to look at the pieces online. Later, I got an e-mail saying the auction had been canceled, so I called her back and she told me that Percival Harrington II himself had called to cancel—and the reason why. It seems his daughter, Regina, had tried to do the same thing at Bonhams in London.”
Liz stood. “Why am I not surprised.” She looked at her watch. “Oh boy, I better run. I still have a list of things to do. Thanks for donating one of your pieces to the Barrier Island Sanctuary, Kate told me her brother called to say he was over the moon about it.”
* * * *
When Liz returned to the Indialantic, she checked to see if her father was in his office or his apartment, but he wasn’t. She wanted to warn him about the possibility of people picketing the hotel because of their new celebrity guest, Regina Harrington-Worth. As she turned the corner on her way to the exterior kitchen door, she found Pierre in his garden.
“Lizzy, why don’t you join me and Betty for a late lunch?” he offered.
Her stomach growled, and she responded with an emphatic “Yes!”
Twenty minutes later, Liz’s plate was so clean, it looked like it had just come out of the dishwasher. The goat cheese quiche and microgreen salad hit the spot. Which wasn’t hard to do lately. Her “spot” seemed to be growing larger and larger since being back around Pierre’s meals and all the gourmet goodies from Deli-casies that she kept stocked in her fridge.
While waiting for Pierre to bring out the dessert, Betty told Liz that Pierre and Aunt Amelia had been burdened that morning with packing an elaborate picnic luncheon for the Worths to take on their Queen of the Seas boat ride with Captain Netherton.
“And that loud, bossy Mrs. Harrington-Worth insisted your aunt Amelia go with them to serve it,” Pierre added.
Liz was sorry her great-aunt had to go through what she imagined was such a trying experience. Especially since Aunt Amelia got seasick easily. “I should have gone instead, but perhaps it’s all for the better. I might have been tempted to push Regina overboard.”
Pierre scuffled to the sideboard, retrieved a folded piece of paper, and handed it to Liz. “Amelia said I should give this to you.” He handed her the paper.
The note read: Iris had a small family emergency and will be back before the dinner hour. Lizzy dear, can you do your auntie a favor and clean the Worths’ suite? It can’t be that bad, they’ve only been here for a night.
Famous last words, Liz thought.
“Polly wants his damn kiwi, already,” a voice called from the butler’s pantry. Barnacle Bob wasn’t allowed in the kitchen in case the health inspector made a surprise visit, but with his booming voice, he might as well have been shouting directly into Liz’s ear.
“Ignore that brat,” said Betty. “He already ate.”
“Kiwi. Kiwi. Kiwi,” BB chanted.
Betty stuck her tongue out in Barnacle Bob’s direction. “We were out of kiwi, as you might have gathered,” she said to Liz. “It’s at the top of Iris’s shopping list over there on the counter.”
Barnacle Bob ate the same thing every day: half of a plum, half of a banana, half of an apple, and half of a kiwi. The first time Liz had fed the parrot, she’d made the mistake of peeling off the skin on the fruit. Barnacle Bob pouted and went on a hunger strike that lasted for about an hour.
Iris was shirking her duties. Aunt Amelia wouldn’t be too happy if she found out her precious parrot had gone without his favorite food.
Chapter 11
Following a dessert of key lime pie squares, of which Liz had three, she left Pierre and Betty in the kitchen and proceeded to the housekeeper’s closet to get the supplies needed to do the thing she dreaded the most—clean the Worths’ suite. Liz filled a bucket on wheels with a mop, cleansers, and rags. She snatched Iris’s ring of keys from a hook on the wall and took the service elevator to the second floor. After grabbing the hotel’s prehistoric Kirby vacuum from the maid’s closet, she hurried to the Oceana Suite. She knocked before she put the key in the door. Phew! No Worths.
The outer room and bedroom to the suite were a breeze to clean. As she dusted, polished, and vacuumed, she mulled over all the things on her checklist for the Spring Fling. One thing she’d been avoiding was asking whether Pops still needed her to help with the wine-and-cheese tasting at Deli-casies. The thought of working next to Ryan made her stomach flutter—she wasn’t sure if she felt butterflies or the vampire bats from one of Aunt Amelia’s episodes of Dark Shadows.
Liz placed a bar of imported dark chocolate on each king-sized pillow on the plantation-style four-poster bed. Feeling pleased at how easy it had been to clean the suite, she took her bucket of supplies and mop into the bathroom.
There was only one thing to say: Regina Harrington-Worth was a pig.
It took her a good hour and a half to get the bathroom cleaned. On top of the cleaning, she also had to collect Regina’s dirty unmentionables, which were actually worth mentioning, because there were so many. Makeup paraphernalia was scattered on every available flat surface, including the ledge of the Jacuzzi bathtub. The inside of the tub had a lavender ring around it. When Liz proceeded to fill the tub with water to clear the jets, bubbles shot out and popped against the window she’d just cleaned, leaving more lavender circles on the glass.
After finishing the bathroom, she didn’t venture into the walk-in closet and hoped that when the Worths came back from their boating trip they had picked up “a girl” to cater to Regina’s every whim.
Liz sprayed sea breeze air freshener and left the suite. Then she thought of something. The cat! Where was Regina’s cat? She stepped back inside the suite and searched under the bed, sofa, and dressers. No feline. Liz thought she heard a scratching from the walk-in closet.
“Here, kitty, kitty. Here, Venus.”
She opened the closet door, and sure enough two pale blue eyes looked out from a crate, a larger bejeweled version of the one Liz had seen at dinner last night. She
stepped closer. “What are you doing locked in the closet, Kitty?” She knelt next to the carrier and opened it. “Come on, pretty baby, let me get a good look at you. I know Pierre gave you parboiled tuna as instructed.”
At the word “tuna,” the cat torpedoed out of the carrier and latched itself onto Liz’s chest. The cat’s front claws stuck to her sundress like Velcro. Venus resembled the cat on the infamous poster with the tagline Hang in There, Baby. The only difference between Venus and the cat in the poster was that Venus was bald from head to tail. When Liz had lived in SoHo, she’d passed an exotic Manhattan pet shop that had a sphynx kitten in the window with a price tag of two thousand dollars. Venus was off-white and wore a pink collar around her tiny hairless neck that Liz guessed, by the amazing sparkle of the stones, was likely studded with real diamonds. When Venus finally relaxed her claws, Liz picked her up, her hand grazing the cat’s collar. Something pricked her finger, drawing blood. As she placed Venus back inside the crate, she noticed sharp prongs where a stone used to be. Venus snuggled onto the leopard-print velour cushion and closed her eyes. Liz latched the crate and left the closet.
After wrapping a tissue around her bleeding finger, she left the Worths’ suite and went down the hall to the linen pantry. Armed with fresh sheets and towels, she entered Captain Netherton’s suite. His was neat and tidy, perhaps having something to do with the captain’s military background. He got free room and board in exchange for skippering Queen of the Seas. Aunt Amelia didn’t give him a salary, but he did get to keep all of his tips, and he also collected a pension from the United States Coast Guard.
In the sitting room, there was a mahogany bookcase filled with antique maritime books, and on a desk, a map showing the different water depths and currents off of Melbourne Beach, including the famous Sebastian Inlet. The ocean side of the inlet was a surfer’s paradise; on the western side, a snorkeler’s paradise. Countless times growing up, Liz swam in the inlet’s calm bay alongside friendly manatees.
She left the clean linens on the captain’s bed, then exited the suite. After returning the Kirby to the maid’s closet, she went down to the first floor, put away the cleaning supplies, and dropped the used sheets and towels in the laundry room. Her stomach growled. It was time for a snack.
When she entered the butler’s pantry, she caught Barnacle Bob napping. He was a beautiful bird when sleeping, even with his bald head. The parrot must have sensed Liz’s kind thoughts and decided to set her straight. He awoke and stood at attention. “Push Regina overboard. Push Regina overboard,” the parrot shouted, mimicking Liz’s earlier conversation with Betty. Then he added, “Liz is a bad girl. Liz is a bad girl.”
She marched up to Barnacle Bob’s cage and pointed her finger at him. “Keep quiet or else.”
BB repeated, “Liz is a bad girl. Liz is a bad girl.” Then he bit the tip of her finger, and she bled for the second time in an hour. She opened the pantry cupboards and found a rubber finger cot, something every good chef kept handy in case of accidents, and put it on her finger.
“Lizzy darling, where are you?” Aunt Amelia bellowed.
She grabbed an orange scone from the cookie jar, left the pantry, and closed the door, only to hear a muffled, “Who’s got their hand in the cookie jar? Liz is a bad girl. Push Regina overboard.”
Liz entered the kitchen to find a pale and disheveled Aunt Amelia. There were black trails on her cheeks left by her mascara and black eyeliner.
“We must get rid of that woman!” Aunt Amelia said as she plopped down on a chair at the farm table. “I don’t know what I was thinking. Regina complained the whole time on the boat, and she actually spit out her Brie, prosciutto, and apricot chutney sandwich because Pierre didn’t cut the rind off the Brie! What a prima donna. Then the water started getting rough and dark clouds rolled in. Clyde wanted to turn back, but “The Boss” wouldn’t let him until we pulled up to the Harrington property. She took photos and made a million calls to her contractor, asking him why Castlemara hadn’t been bulldozed yet, and then she went bonkers when she found out there was a holdup on getting permits from the town.”
“That’s good news for the historical society,” Liz said.
“Not if it means the Worths will be staying here until it gets sorted out.”
“True.”
“Her poor husband, David, was at her beck and call the whole time, and he also made numerous phone calls. That guy’s a saint, and he knows his way around a boat. I’m sure I’ve met him before somewhere. You know I never forget a face, but he’s assured me that isn’t the case. He said this is the first time he’s ever been to the Indialantic. Lizzy, maybe you can make a few calls of your own to see if any rooms opened up elsewhere. I think I’ve made a big mistake letting the Worths stay here. Hell, I’ll even keep her pet, whatever it is, for free, if you can’t find pet-friendly lodging for them.”
“Oh, Auntie, please don’t get riled up. We’ll figure something out. By the way, Regina’s pet is a cat—a hairless sphynx, to be exact.”
“Lovely creatures.”
A clap of thunder made them both jump. Liz looked out the kitchen window and saw black clouds rolling in from the ocean. “Looks like a storm. I just got a lightning strike warning on my phone. You look like you need some chai tea, an orange scone, and a hot bath.”
Her great-aunt stood. “That sounds wonderful.”
She walked to the pantry and set Aunt Amelia’s favorite teacup and saucer onto a sterling tray. The cup was trimmed in gold and had butterflies and cherry blossoms on the outside. The cup and saucer were one of a set of forty that had been Liz’s great-grandmother’s. The other thirty-nine and matching dinner service had been destroyed in the hotel fire, years ago. Liz opened the tea canister, took out a packet of tea, opened it, and poured it into the cup. She reached into the cookie jar, took out another orange scone, and set it on a cake plate.
On her way out of the pantry, Liz said to Barnacle Bob, “Hush, BB. Don’t upset Aunt Amelia or I’ll tell her what you did to my finger, you brute.”
The parrot must really have had a soft spot for her great-aunt, because for once, he kept his big beak closed.
Liz went into the kitchen, placed the tray in front of the electric kettle on the sideboard, and filled the cup with hot water, while Aunt Amelia got out a napkin, spoon, and tea bag strainer.
Aunt Amelia picked up the tray. “I’ll be in my suite for a little R-and-R. Is everything all set for tomorrow?”
“Yes, everything’s taken care of. No worries. Go take a nice restorative bath.”
“I’ll let Calgon take me away… from the memory of my recent boat ride with Mrs. Harrington-Worth. Wish Calgon still made those bath oil beads today. I got a year’s worth after I did that commercial.”
“Ha, in this day and age, they would probably have something carcinogenic in the ingredients.”
“Things were better before sell-by dates and ingredient lists,” Aunt Amelia said. “GMOs, HMOs, and all the other stuff they make you worry about now. We never had expiration dates when I was growing up. My mother even left the butter out on the counter.”
Craack!
Aunt Amelia’s teacup shook, and tea filled the saucer. “That one sounded close. Hope we don’t lose power. The generator is only good for the first floor of the hotel. Thanks for cleaning the Worths’ suite. Iris should be here any minute.”
“You hired her with references, I hope? She doesn’t seem too dedicated. Always disappearing.”
“She told me she has an ailing mother. And you have to admit, she does a great job cleaning.”
“Yes, she does.” Liz put her hand on her great-aunt’s shoulder and gave it a squeeze, then held open one of the swinging doors to the dining room for her to pass through.
Halfway across the room, Aunt Amelia turned and said, “I don’t want anything you’re doing here at the Indialantic to take away from
your writing, and I do appreciate all the time you’ve taken to plan the Spring Fling. I’ll only ask one more time. Are you sure you don’t want to do a book signing of Let the Wind Roar tomorrow?”
“No, that ship has sailed. But thanks. Sales are still brisk, anyway. Nothing like a good scandal to revive sales figures.”
“It was a beautiful book. And your next one will be, too.”
Aunt Amelia was under the impression that Liz was writing in the evenings. Liz did have a contract with the publisher of Let the Wind Roar. She had to produce a 90,000-word manuscript by February, only eleven months away, and all she had was an outline that she hated. She was on her third extension from her publisher, and her agent had told her there wouldn’t be another. Apparently, three strikes and she’d be out. “I can put my writing on hold, if need be. I don’t want you to worry about anything. Oh, I left clean sheets and towels for Captain Netherton.”
“That poor captain. What he had to endure on our trip from hell. Thank you for all your help, my love.”
“You’re welcome. I think you’re the saint for going on a boat ride with that woman.”
Aunt Amelia turned and walked out of the dining room toward the lobby. She never used the service elevator, saying that climbing the spiral staircase helped to keep her young and spry.
It was only four thirty, but it was as dark as night. Liz ran out through the kitchen door with a basket on her arm to harvest some of Pierre’s herbs. A raindrop hit Liz on the nose. She hurried and snipped some dill, parsley, and arugula, then sprinted to one of the four lemon trees, plucked two lemons, and made it inside before the sky let loose its fury.
She finished laying out the last ingredient on the marble counter just as Pierre walked in.
“Mon cherie,” he said, kissing Liz on the cheek. “You are too good to me, my little sous-chef.”
“My pleasure, Grand-Pierre.”
Death by the Sea Page 7