Lineage Most Lethal

by S. C. Perkins

  I grinned. “You may be right, Mrs. P.” I addressed the chef, thanking her for picking up my books, and asking, “Are you all right? I hope I didn’t hurt you with my bag of books. I’m Lucy, by the way—the genealogist. I don’t think we’ve met.”

  “No, no, I’m fine,” she said, adding the two books back into my paper tote. “I’m Ysenia, the sous chef.”

  Mrs. P. was looking down at the book in her hand, then at the same titles in Ysenia’s hand. “What are all these for, Lucy?”

  “For my grandfather,” I said, thinking fast and trying not to blush. “He’s always loved The Thirty-Nine Steps and collects various editions of it.”

  “Miss Pippa told me he was in the hospital after some sort of accident,” Mrs. P. said, searching my face. “I’m so sorry, my dear.” She perched the book on top of the others. “Is this something to make him feel better?”

  “Thanks, Mrs. P.,” I said. “He’s doing okay, yes, thank goodness, but I’m hoping the books will help perk him up.”

  A booming voice from the foyer that I recognized as Great-Aunt Tilly’s called out, “Mrs. P.?” I heard rather than saw Mrs. P. hurry back to her post at the front desk. I used my chin to gesture toward the bunch of herbs in Ysenia’s hand. “Is that for the famous chocolate mint–chocolate chunk gelato I’ve been hearing about?”

  She flashed me a smile. “It is. I just cut some from the knot garden. Since it hasn’t been too cold this winter, it’s still growing.” She paused, then said, “It was Chef Rocky’s special recipe, actually. He grew mint himself and experimented for a good year with the recipe at home before he started making it at the Sutton Grand, where we both used to work before coming here.” She paused again, and there was a sheen of tears in her brown eyes. “It got to be that he smelled like chocolate mint so much that we called it his signature scent.”

  “That’s a lovely memory,” I said. “I think he’d like being remembered that way.”

  She sniffled, but managed another smile. “Yeah, Chef Rocky would test his batches on anyone who was willing. There was this one older guy who was living at the Grand at the time, and I think he tried every last batch of it.”

  She glanced over my shoulder, then leaned toward me, lowering her voice. “In fact, we all thought the guy had a thing for Mrs. P. because he was always inviting her to have gelato with him when she went off duty.” Her voice went to a whisper and she added, “I think she liked him, too, because she almost always accepted.”

  “You don’t say,” I said with a conspiratorial grin.

  Ysenia nodded. “They’d sit at this little corner table near the kitchen doors and talk about history. It was really cute.”

  My smile went bigger. I could totally see Mrs. P. doing that.

  Ysenia glanced over my shoulder, then leaned in again, whispering, “And I hear that eventually it led to drinks and more. Chef Rocky actually saw them out on a date one night.”

  “That’s so sweet,” I whispered back. “Are they still seeing each other?” In the weeks I’d been in and out of the Hotel Sutton, I’d had many a conversation with Mrs. P., and she’d never mentioned a boyfriend. Not that I’d ever asked, I realized.

  Ysenia shrugged. “She moved over here to help with the hotel’s opening and Mr. H.—that’s what we called him—came to the dining room less and less. Then Chef Rocky and I moved over here, so…” She shrugged again. Sometimes you lost touch; that was the way the cookie crumbled.

  “And you’ve never asked her?” I said, nodding back toward the front desk.

  Her eyes widened and she shook her head. “You don’t ask the Force of the Front Desk personal questions. She doesn’t like it.”

  Huh. Mrs. P. had always seemed so open to me—but then again, I wasn’t a member of the hotel staff with whom she had to work every day. I could understand her not wanting to overshare.

  “Anyway,” Ysenia said, holding up the chocolate mint. “In honor of Chef Rocky, you’ll get some of his chocolate mint–chocolate chunk gelato tonight, plus about ten other of his favorite dishes, so bring your appetite.”

  I told her I couldn’t wait, and the sous chef and I went our separate ways. When I reached the stairs and made it up the first step, however, I realized I’d been feeling a prickle between my shoulder blades the whole time. It was that same feeling I’d had the other night in the back parlor, when I thought someone had been watching me.

  My arms still full of books that were getting heavier by the second, I silently moved backward down to the hallway again, turning my head first toward the French doors, then back toward the front desk area. Mrs. P. and all the Suttons were in the front room, but no one looked like they’d been watching me. Then, from under the portrait of Sarah Bess, Roselyn turned and met my eyes. Her expression was icy cold, leaving me with the distinct impression she’d send me packing this instant if she could.

  In contrast, my eyes shifted to a tall woman about the same age as Roselyn, who was approaching me with a warm smile. It was Ginny, Pippa’s first cousin, once removed.

  “I’m so excited for my interview, Lucy,” she said, clapping her hands together.

  I smiled, telling her I was as well, and we could start as soon as I had my equipment set up. “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” I assured her. With that, I hoofed it upstairs with my books and made for my room.

  THIRTY-FIVE

  I packed up my equipment as soon as I finished interviewing Ginny, who was indeed a firecracker who kept me enthralled with stories for the whole ninety-minute interview.

  The dark-haired beauty had me laughing so hard at one point, I had to stop the recording for fear I wouldn’t be able to successfully edit out my laughs. Especially when she told the story Uncle Dave had mentioned, how she’d driven her grandfather James’s “brand-spanking-new” Cadillac all the way to the Mexican border in the early 1980s, picking up her cousins Bracewell and Dave along the way, just to have dinner at the famed, though now defunct, Mrs. Crosby’s restaurant in Acuña, Mexico.

  She said, “We made it back to Austin at six the next morning and drove back into the garage—me wearing only my undies and a serape, Bracewell in a big, black sombrero, no shirt, and a pair of castanets on each hand, and Dave in nothing but his boxers after losing his Levi’s and his Ralph Lauren polo shirt in a strip poker game with two of the barmaids.

  “So I pull in and Gramps is standing there with his hands on his hips, looking like he was about to kick our rumps into next Tuesday, but only after tanning our hides shiny first. Then he comes over, opens my door, and holds out his hand for the keys. When I gave them to him—my hands shaking from a combination of fear and the tequila DTs, of course—he leans over, stares each of us down like a vulture deciding whose eyes to peck out first, and says if we ever did that again and didn’t invite him along with us, we could consider ourselves out of the will.”

  She’d winked at the camera and said, “That was when I realized I’d come by my crazy streak honestly.” Then she’d looked up toward the heavens and said with a huge grin, “Thanks a million, Gramps.”

  Despite the other things on my mind, I couldn’t wait to go through and edit Ginny’s and Catherine’s stories into the video. They’d added another layer of color and insight into Pippa’s family that you couldn’t get with documents and photos.

  Pippa was going to be ecstatic with the final video, I thought, as I left through the hotel’s back doors to head to the hospital. I didn’t want to run into any Sutton family members and miss the chance to catch Grandpa awake.

  I was rolling slowly out of the parking lot, digging in my tote for more lip balm and a mint, when a red Tesla Model S passed by, Roselyn at the wheel. She was talking emphatically and gesturing wildly, but no one else was in the car. It was clearly a phone call, and whoever she was talking to was stressing her out.

  I was just about to follow her when I saw Pippa and Boomer walking the opposite way, coming in from an afternoon walk. I watched as she tried to flag her mother down
, but Roselyn just kept going.

  “Mom!” Pippa yelled after her mother, but Roselyn didn’t stop. I pulled up alongside Pippa even as Roselyn made the light at Cesar Chavez and turned, heading east.

  “Something’s not right, Lucy,” Pippa said, echoing my own thoughts as I rolled down the window.

  “Get in,” I said.

  She opened the back door and Boomer happily hopped in and flopped down on my back seat, panting lightly. His human was in the passenger seat in seconds, and I tore off after the Tesla.

  “Are you sure she doesn’t just have an appointment with the caterer for the New Year’s Eve gala or something?” I asked.

  “No, she’s totally free this afternoon,” Pippa said, then held out a calming hand. “But slow down. Don’t let her see you following her.”

  Traffic was light on East Cesar Chavez, so we could see her accelerating, the Tesla smoothly zooming forward.

  “Why?” I asked, ready to gun it through the light, but I braked to a stop instead. “We’ll lose her and won’t know where she’s going.”

  Pippa was sliding her phone from the pocket of her running vest. “Oh, we’ll know where she goes. I put a tracking app on her phone last night without telling her.”

  I briefly lifted up my sunglasses so she could see me goggling at her.

  “Mom was kept at the police station longer than me,” Pippa explained, tapping an app within her phone, “and they didn’t allow her to have her phone or other devices. She’d given her phone, iPad, and smartwatch to our lawyer’s second in command, but then that dude was asked to run back to the office, so he handed all Mom’s devices to me.”

  She turned her phone so I could see a little blue dot crossing over Guadalupe Street.

  “Since I already know her passcode, I downloaded the app while I waited for her, then verified permission to track her and erased any messages the system sent to her other devices to let her know what I did.”

  Pippa looked sideways at me with a stealthy half smile. “She’s got at least four pages of apps, and I hid it on the page she hardly ever uses.”

  I held out my hand, eyes still on the road. “High-five, sister.”

  She gave me an enthusiastic high-five, but added, “Now all I’ve got to worry about is what she’s doing that’s causing her to freak out like this.”

  “We’ll figure it out,” I said.

  Pippa’s voice quavered. “Mom’s scaring me, Lucy. I’ve been trying to follow her for the past two weeks, but she always manages to leave when a client is scheduled to come in, which forces me to stay at the hotel. I asked Chef Rocky about it once, thinking like you did earlier, that they were having troubles. He said I shouldn’t worry. He said he was taking care of things and everything should be all right, but he didn’t explain what that meant.”

  She pushed a loose tendril behind her ear. “I kept meaning to check back in with him about it, but we had the New Year’s Eve gala to plan, all the family was coming in, and”—she gestured to me—“you’ve been finishing up the project I hired you to do, and doing everything brilliantly, I might add. But basically, other things kept getting in the way of talking to Chef Rocky again.” Her voice choked up. “And suddenly, I had no more chances.”

  I gave her a sympathetic glance. Before she let herself go teary, though, she straightened her shoulders, gave her head a little shake, and checked her tracking app for Roselyn’s progress.

  “She’s coming to Congress Avenue … nope, she didn’t turn. She’s still on Cesar Chavez.”

  There was something about Pippa’s calm, though, that had me thinking she knew more than she was letting on.

  “Pippa,” I began as we made the light at Guadalupe Street and cruised toward Congress Avenue. “I have a feeling that you know in your heart what’s going on with your mom already—or you have a pretty good idea—but you’re just not saying it out loud.” I glanced at her, but when I didn’t see any signs of anger, I said, “Look, I was recently reminded that a problem shared is a problem halved, and so just know I’m here if you need to hand over a half to someone else.”

  Pippa nodded, but kept watching her mother’s progress in silence. Then, just when I thought she was shutting me out, she spoke.

  “I think she’s gotten in with some bad people.”

  “Okay,” I said when she went silent again. “Bad in what way?”

  “I don’t know, because I don’t know who they are. But I went through her phone last night.” This time she flashed me a guilty look. “I was desperate.”

  I was already slowing for the light at Congress Avenue. “Hey,” I said, holding her gaze and sounding like a stern older sister. “I am not judging you. You’ve given your mom ages to come to you and come clean about what she’s been up to. She may be doing something that affects the hotels, for Pete’s sake. You’re only doing what you have to do and I know that.”

  “Thanks, Lucy,” she said, “but I didn’t find out much. I didn’t see any weird emails or text messages. The only thing I noticed was she’d gotten a bunch of phone calls from a guy named Brent Embry recently, but there weren’t any voice mails or texts from his number. Only calls.”

  “Did you google or call the number?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “I spent too much time looking around her devices last night and I either haven’t had the time or the guts to call it so far.” She pushed another loose tendril of blond hair back behind her ear. “I think I’ve been too scared to as well.”

  I could understand that. “Did you check her texts and voice mails from Chef Rocky?”

  “I did,” she said. “There were a couple of texts that alluded to something going on, but nothing specific. One text said, ‘I screwed up,’ and he replied, ‘Again? You’re going down a big hole, Rose.’” Pippa sniffed. “He always called her Rose or Rosie. I always thought it was sweet. Regardless, I’m worried she may be addicted to something, and she can’t kick the habit.”

  My mind immediately went back to the Hotel Sutton ballroom, where Roselyn came up on Grandpa discussing addiction and looked like she was about to explode. I wondered if Roselyn thought she’d been found out and we were discussing her.

  Before I could reply to any of this, however, Pippa pointed ahead and said, “She’s turning right on Red River.”

  I knew Red River dead-ended quickly in that direction, becoming the gateway to Rainey Street, a formerly residential street that had been transformed in the early 2000s to a hotbed of food trucks and hip, eclectic bars and restaurants, mostly housed in the street’s renovated bungalows.

  “Maybe she’s heading to Rainey Street?” I said.

  “I think you’re right,” Pippa said, her eyes fixed on the moving dot on her screen. “She just pulled into that pay-to-park lot at the corner of Red River and Cesar Chavez.”

  “I’ll do the same, then,” I said.

  I navigated through three more lights to Red River and pulled into the parking lot. Pippa clipped her lead to Boomer’s collar and used her credit card to pay for the parking meter. I grabbed my tote and we started walking across the crushed-limestone parking lot.

  “She’s at the Boarhound,” Pippa said, looking at her phone. She screwed up her face. “Is that new? I haven’t heard of it. But then again, I haven’t had time to date or even go out with my friends in ages, so I’m way out of the loop.”

  “It’s been around a couple of months now,” I said, buttoning up my coat as we walked, Boomer trotting happily at Pippa’s side. “It’s dark and pubby-feeling, with a couple of bigger rooms and some smaller ones. Jazz music, mismatched furniture, lots of craft cocktails, that sort of thing.”

  We crossed over one small side street, and it was immediately like entering another world, going from residential normality to a street full of vibrant bars and restaurants, its sidewalks teeming with people. And because this was Austin, Boomer was hardly the only dog on Rainey Street. He was, however, one of the best behaved, proving Mrs. P. wrong that he hadn’t lear
ned anything in all his weeks of training.

  Rainey Street was technically only one block long, and the Boarhound was on the east side of the street, abutting an area left open for food trucks to park. We set off, and I realized we hadn’t formulated any plan for when we actually saw Roselyn. However, there was something I needed to ask first.

  “Pippa,” I said. “What kind of addiction do you think your mom has?”

  “I don’t know,” she said. “She hurt her back last year, so I’ve been wondering if it’s prescription painkillers, but I’ve never seen any in her house or in her purse. So, to answer your question, I really have no clue.”

  “Okay,” I said as we neared the Boarhound. “Then the only thing I have left to ask is this.” I gestured to the pub, which was up ahead and housed in a bungalow painted the color of blackberries with white trim. “Whatever we find in there, no matter how bad and embarrassing or scary, are you willing to help her deal with it and get help? Because if not, I’ll go in there alone and talk to her. One of my cousins is an addiction counselor. I can call her for recommendations once we know what’s going on.”

  Pippa looked me in the eyes. “I’ll do whatever it takes to help my mom, Lucy. I’ll pay whatever, do whatever—it doesn’t matter. I’ll keep helping her no matter what.”

  I nodded with satisfaction. I knew that Roselyn had to want to get help before Pippa could do anything else, but we didn’t have time to discuss that now. I smiled bravely and she gave me a wobbly smile back.

  “Let’s go,” I said.

  THIRTY-SIX

  It was Pippa who stopped. “Wait, we don’t even have a plan. What are we going to do? Just rush in, interrupt whatever conversation she’s having, and haul her out of there?”

  I opened my mouth, then closed it. Finally, I said, “Why don’t we try to go in and see if we can hear their conversation first? Then we can make rushing over, interrupting, and hauling out our plan B.”