by Delia James
“Well, we sat in the kitchen and talked,” Gretchen was saying. “Jimmy told me how he’d been fired from his last job in Boston. The chef there wanted to hire his nephew, and Jimmy had said some things he maybe shouldn’t have. Unfortunately, the chef there was very well connected, and suddenly Jimmy found he couldn’t get work at all.”
“How awful!” said Grandma.
“He was very impulsive,” Gretchen was saying, “and proud, and his temper could get the better of him.”
Now, that sounded a lot more like the man Martine had described. The problem was that this story didn’t match with the one Jimmy had told Frank about backpacking around Europe to get trained, and coming to Portsmouth to “perfect his craft.” He hadn’t said anything about being fired in Boston during that interview. You’d think a guy who was always willing to go on the attack would be happy for a chance to do it in print.
Miss Boots seemed to decide she’d had enough of her owner’s lap and jumped down to settle herself in the sunny spot on the windowsill. She rolled over onto her back, getting comfortable. I watched her, thinking about how Alistair seemed to be on a first-name basis with every sunbeam in Portsmouth. I was also thinking how it sounded like there were multiple versions of Jimmy Upton out there. Which one, I wondered, was real?
It seemed like Grandma B.B. was wondering something similar.
“But, Gretchen.” Grandma leaned forward. “I can’t believe you just hired a stranger on the strength of a sad story. Not as a chef, certainly.”
“Well, I may be a sentimental old woman, but I’m not that sentimental. No. I asked him to make me an omelet.”
Grandma glanced at me and I nodded. I’d heard about that trick from Martine. As part of a job interview, a new cook in a kitchen might be asked to make an omelet or roast a chicken. Those are very simple dishes, but very hard to make perfect because there’s nowhere to hide any mistakes.
“I take it he did,” I said.
Gretchen smiled fondly. “It was the best-tasting, loveliest, fluffiest omelet I ever had. That was when I hired him,” she concluded, triumphantly enough that Miss Boots lifted her head in indignation at the noise.
“Wow. He must have been grateful.”
That made Gretchen laugh. “Not in the least. He said he’d consider it and get back to me.”
Now, that was some Grade A chutzpah. “You must really have seen something in him to put up with that.”
“It’s not an attitude that would work well for a manager, I admit, or necessarily in any other department in the hotel,” said Gretchen. “But the kitchen is different. These days, people like a chef to be a showman. I still can’t believe . . .” She touched the corner of her eye.
“You must have been terribly worried when he disappeared,” murmured Grandma. “Was there even anybody for you to call?”
Gretchen’s perfectly made-up mouth twisted up tight. “There was a sister, somewhere, but Jimmy said he hadn’t been in touch with her in years.”
I covered my surprise with a sip of martini. Jimmy’s sister had been in town, working for Jake and Miranda, but he hadn’t told his boss? I wondered where the sister was now and if we could find her. Then I reminded myself the police would be handling that. Then, much to my chagrin, I found myself wondering if Kenisha had a name and phone number for Jimmy’s sister, and if it would be worth it to talk to her.
“I tried to find out more, of course; family is important.” Mrs. Hilde said this like it was something engraved in stone. “But Jimmy just wouldn’t open up.”
“How sad,” murmured Grandma B.B. “I can’t imagine what you thought when he vanished like he did.
It was a long time before Mrs. Hilde answered. “Considering how he came in the door, I assumed he’d just decided to up and leave. It was the sort of thing he’d do. I just didn’t think he’d do it to me,” she added softly.
I lifted my martini glass. “If somebody’d done that to me, I’d be furious,” I said over the rim.
Gretchen’s face twisted up so tightly, I wasn’t sure whether she was trying to hold back tears or screams. “I’d invested in Jimmy’s future. For him to just abandon me and Harbor’s Rest was an insult. I believe if I’d found him, I would have . . . Well, I don’t know what I would have done . . . Oh, Lord, that sounds so awful.”
Grandma laid a hand on Gretchen’s arm. “No, it doesn’t. It sounds like you cared a great deal about him.”
“I did,” she whispered. “When Dale told me they’d found him, I couldn’t believe it . . . I . . .” She looked at us both. “It’s so strange. I’m not even sure I care about who killed him. I just want to know why.”
Grandma looked at me sharply. I cleared my throat. “I’m sure the police will find out soon.”
“Yes.” Mrs. Hilde sucked in a long, steadying breath. “Lieutenant Blanchard is very efficient. Unlike some members of the force.” She glowered out the windows. “Mind you, I’ve had my suspicions about Jake and Miranda Luce for a very long time.”
Despite the warmth of the sun shining through the window, a chill crept over me.
Grandma shot me a warning glance. “Well, I know they were radicals once upon a time, but we were all young and silly once, weren’t we?”
“I suppose,” Mrs. Hilde said reluctantly. “But I think this goes beyond poaching a boyfriend, don’t you, Annabelle? It’s just all unbelievably coincidental, them buying the building and then Jimmy being found dead underneath it.”
I thought about pointing out that Jimmy had been found a lot closer to Harbor’s Rest than he had to the old drugstore, but Gretchen had already leaned forward. “You were with them, Anna. Now that we know . . . what we know . . . can you think of anything you saw that might have been suspicious?”
“No. Nothing,” I told her.
“Did you show Jimmy the tunnel, Gretchen?” asked Grandma.
Mrs. Hilde had been relaxing a minute earlier. Now she pulled herself up straight. “I didn’t even know it was there. How could I?” she demanded. “If it did have an entrance into the basement, it must have been bricked over decades ago.” She took a quick swallow of tea, as if she was trying to wash a bad taste out of her mouth. “Even the police haven’t been able to find where it opens, but it was easy enough to find that trapdoor on the Luces’ end.”
Which was an awfully strong reaction to have over something you didn’t know about.
Grandma B.B. turned to me. “Anna, when you uncovered the door on your end, Jake wanted to find out what was down in the tunnel, didn’t he?” she prompted. “That’s hardly the reaction of a guilty man.”
I didn’t answer. Of course, Grandma was right, but there was something else that was making me even colder. Because she was right: Jake had wanted to see what was down the tunnel.
Miranda, though, most emphatically had not.
17
Grandma was giving me a very strange look. She’d realized I’d thought of something and that it was probably unpleasant. She had no idea.
Fortunately, I didn’t have to scramble for a covering remark. Mrs. Hilde’s attention was diverted by a man in a red blazer and Clark Kent glasses walking into the bar with a stack of folders in his hands.
I recognized Dale Hilde at about the same moment he recognized me. To say that he was not happy to see me or, rather, us there was something of an understatement. The look he gave my grandmother was something special, but it was nothing at all compared to the look he reserved for Mrs. Hilde.
“Here you are, Mother. I’ve been looking for you,” he said as he reached the table.
Gretchen Hilde returned her son’s unambiguous glower calmly. “Annabelle, this is my son Dale,” she said to Grandma B.B. “He’s our chief financial officer at the Harbor’s Rest. Dale, this is an old friend of mine, Annabelle Britton, and her granddaughter Anna.”
“Yes, we’ve met,” Dale
muttered. “Briefly.”
He did not offer to shake hands. Miss Boots meowed from out of her patch of sunlight, a little disappointed at his manners, I thought. Or maybe I’d just been hanging around Alistair too long.
The sight of the cat only sharpened Dale’s glower.
“Mother!” he snapped. “The health inspectors—”
“Are not here, Dale.” Despite this, Mrs. Hilde scooped Miss Boots up off the sill. Affronted, the cat jumped out of her arms and threaded her way out of the bar, nose and tail in the air.
“There.” Gretchen folded her hands on the tabletop. “Health code violation removed. Annabelle, you didn’t say you’d met my son.”
“They were standing outside with the Luces when the body was discovered,” Dale told her, shuffling the folders back into a tidier pile. “With the police.” He made it sound like a social disease.
Gretchen’s mouth tightened into a straight line, and I got the feeling she didn’t exactly disagree with Dale’s sentiments, but she was too polite to remark on it. “Yes. Well. We all have our bad days. Did you have something for me?”
“It’s just about the spring tour packages that Christine is putting together.”
“Oh, for heaven’s sake.” Gretchen’s sighed. “What is it now?”
“Well, there are several issues . . .” Dale flipped open the folder he was carrying and began rifling through the pages. He stopped and looked at us all from over the rims of his Clark Kent glasses. “But I don’t want to interrupt.”
Except, of course, he did. What I couldn’t tell was whether whatever was in those folders was really a vital concern, or he just didn’t like the company his mother was keeping.
“I’m afraid we’re the ones who are interrupting,” said Grandma pleasantly. “I know you have work to do, Gretchen. Where you find the energy, I can’t imagine.”
“Well, it’s never been easy.” Gretchen sighed and got to her feet. “Please let’s have a real catch-up soon, Annabelle.”
“Of course we will,” said Grandma.
“You’re both of course welcome to stay and enjoy our view,” she said, and it seemed to me that was as much for her son’s sake as for ours. “All right, Dale.” She sighed. “Show me what problem Christine’s created this time.”
Grandma and I both smiled, and we kept right on smiling until the Hildes were out of earshot. Then I leaned across the table and whispered at my grandmother in my most pleasant and reasonable tones.
“What are you doing here?”
“Visiting an old friend,” replied Grandma calmly. “What are you doing here?”
There are few things as frustrating as someone giving you a flimsy excuse for what she’s doing while at the same time exposing the fact that you have no excuse at all.
“At least I have a reason to be asking questions.”
“So do I.”
“I’m a guardian of Portsmouth, Grandma,” I whispered. “I’m supposed to be helping.”
Grandma leaned forward, and I can only hope when I reach her age I’ll still be able to put as much steel in my gaze and my voice. “And my granddaughter is in trouble,” she said. “I’m not going to just sit on the sidelines.”
“I’m not in trouble.” At least I didn’t think I was. I certainly hoped I wasn’t. But then I remembered Lieutenant Blanchard’s bright little eyes, and I wasn’t so sure.
“Good. You’re not in trouble. All I’m doing is making sure you stay that way,” Grandma said firmly. “That Lieutenant Blanchard seems to have gotten hold of the wrong end of the stick. We can’t be sure what else might pop into his head.” She paused. “I wonder if he’s related to Mousey Mickey Blanchard? I never did like that boy’s attitude—”
“Grandma B.B.,” I said urgently, and softly, hoping this might encourage Grandma to keep her voice down. “You have got to stay out of this.”
“Too late, dear. I’m already in it.”
“No, you’re not.”
“Yes, I am, as long as you are.”
I closed my mouth. There was absolutely no way I was going to be able to argue her out of this. I slumped back in my chair, but Grandma looked down her nose at me and I automatically sat up straight. And then I rolled my eyes, because I really couldn’t believe any of this. Not only was I dealing with a dead body and a (possibly) real ghost; I had my grandmother riding shotgun.
Well, if life gives you grandmothers, really, all you can do is make the best of it.
“Lieutenant Blanchard isn’t the only one who has problems with Jake and Miranda,” I said. “Your friend Gretchen seemed pretty ready to believe they were up to something illegal.”
Grandma contemplated her half-empty glass of tea. “Well, you have to understand, Anna, Gretchen grew up working. This is a grand hotel, but the profits were always very slim, and her whole family had to pitch in to keep the place running. Other people might’ve spent their summers hitchhiking around the country and talking about flower power and so on, but to someone like Gretchen, that doesn’t look like finding yourself; it looks like laziness. For a family like the Hildes, sloth is the deadliest of all the sins.”
“I wish you’d found a different expression,” I muttered.
“Oh, I’m sorry. That was insensitive of me, wasn’t it?” She patted my hand. “Well, never mind, dear. Tell me how you’ve been spending your day, now that you’re sprung.”
“Nobody says ‘sprung’ anymore, Grandma.” At least, I didn’t think they did. I was a little outside my linguistic comfort zone here. “Anyway, I wasn’t arrested. It was just some questions.”
Grandma waved this away. “Anna, I do know something about how the world works. If this Lieutenant Blanchard is looking at Jake and Miranda, he’s looking at you as well.”
This was the problem with having a well-traveled grandmother. She’d seen a whole lot. But she was always so sunny and cheerful, I could forget that as quickly as anybody else.
We sat in silence for a minute. The room moved around us. The servers came and went with practiced efficiency, but there weren’t enough customers to fill up the hush. Sean’s dad came out of the back and the pair of them slapped each other on the arms in a kind of father-and-son tag-team gesture, and Sean left and Mr. McNally tossed a bar towel over his shoulder and got busy setting out fresh glasses and wiping down the counters. He gave Grandma a cheerful salute and she raised her glass back to him. What guests there were finished their drinks and left and a few new guests came in. Mostly, they were middle-class and above, well dressed and relaxed. They talked and they laughed and they pointed out the lights of the boats passing on the river.
While I stared out the darkening window and tried to sort out my ideas and my feelings, I saw Miss Boots in all her sleek orange-and-white splendor come strolling across the green grass. And she wasn’t alone. A much rounder, much more smug, smoke gray cat galumphed after her.
Alistair?
My familiar glanced toward the window, blinked once, and proceeded to plump himself down next to Miss Boots and start grooming his hind leg.
Seriously, big guy?
Well, what did I know? Maybe girl cats liked that sort of thing. But at the moment, Miss Boots seemed more interested in nosing around in the neatly trimmed grass.
I turned my attention back to the room. Yes, it suddenly felt like I was spying on somebody else’s date. No, I didn’t really want to think about that too much.
“Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m starving,” said Grandma. “You said something about fried clams?”
I had, and I was glad the subject had come back up. We said good-bye to Old Sean and headed back up toward the square and the River House.
Grandma and I both agreed that we needed a break from murder and suspicion, so as we squeezed lemon over fried seafood and drank Perrier, we’d engaged in some aggressively normal conversation abou
t the rest of the family. We’d talked about my father, Robert, who was probably going to move in permanently with my brother Bob, his wife, Ginger, and their son, Bobby III. We shook our heads over my sister, Hope, who was out in California and planning on joining a bar band, last we heard anyway. We wondered when or if my other brother, Ted, was going to propose to his current girlfriend.
It was great. It was comfortable and entirely normal, and there was no way it could last.
“Grandma,” I said slowly. “I’ve got an unfair question to ask.”
“I thought you might, dear,” she replied with a satisfied smile. I resisted the urge to make a face.
“Do you think that story Gretchen told about meeting Jimmy Upton in a dark alley was true?”
“I think it very likely was, but I don’t think it was the whole truth.” She paused, and her eyes went distant, turning over recent conversations and old memories to see what lay beneath. “Poor Gretchen.”
“Why ‘poor Gretchen’?”
“Well, surely you noticed, dear, she had very strong feelings for the young man.”
It would have been hard not to. “Could Upton have been using her?” What we’d heard about the man so far was not good. Everybody agreed he could cook like a Food TV star. But other than that, he seemed to have been a pretty comprehensive jerk. Maybe that was why his sister had stopped talking to him.
“I think it’s possible someone was being used, but you shouldn’t underestimate Gretchen, dear.”
I laid my hand over my heart. “Now, would I do that?”
Grandma huffed. “Anna, I know we look like a passel of sweet little old ladies now, but you will please do me the favor of remembering we were your age once. Gretchen took full control of the hotel at a time when the only reason girls from families like hers were supposed to go to college was to find a good husband. Of course, I wasn’t here for it, but I can promise you, she had to fight tooth and nail for everything she has.”
“But you said she always worked . . .”
“Yes, she worked. She clerked and typed and hostessed. Most of it without being paid, and it was to help the family out. That was expected. It was also considered entirely different from actually daring to think she could run the business.”