Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery)

by Amanda Cooper

  Sophie swallowed hard and felt her throat close. Cyanide! She remembered a little chemistry and a course in geology she had taken once. Cyanide was present in nature, especially in peach pits and cassava root. It had a lot of uses, including the refinement of gold and silver. Did all that mean it was readily available?

  She also remembered a court case a few years ago where a man used a cyanide “suicide” pill to kill himself right there in the court after his guilty verdict was read. He had died quickly, just like Vivienne Whittaker. Sophie sat and pondered that; could someone have stuffed a suicide pill into a cupcake? How could you be sure the right person would take the right cupcake?

  Or . . . Sophie’s eyes widened. Had Vivienne maybe killed herself? No. That was the last thing the woman would do at the engagement tea for her son and daughter-in-law-to-be when she had been so looking forward to having Cissy as her new family. No loving mother would ever do such a thing in front of her son. Thoughts in a tumult, Sophie checked her mirrors and pulled out, driving slowly through town.

  As she drove she turned her thoughts away from the awful death she had witnessed and focused on the beauties of Gracious Grove. She remembered each place she passed along the way and what it meant to her: the library where she had devoured cookbooks and biographies, the public garden where she and Nana had walked and talked, marveling at the roses that were her grandmother’s favorite flower, the local high school all her Gracious Grove friends had attended, and where she had longed to go. The closest she ever got was attending a few school events during vacations, a Christmas concert, an Easter festival chorus. Maybe if she had spent all her life in this town it would not affect her the same way, but having been away for a few years, she saw it with fresh eyes.

  Gracious Grove was lovely, gowned in pastel trees: cherry blossoms bursting into flower, apple blossoms a shower of white and lilacs heavy and fragrant with flowers. Every corner she turned took her to a new vista, sometimes of gracious homes and two-centuries-old stone buildings sloping down the steeper streets, and then a view of the lake in the distance, sparkling in the sun, blue sky arching in splendor above. The lake . . . she would always remember it fondly, whole days spent on its shore, swimming, picnicking, then later a bonfire and marshmallows toasted, couples drifting off hand in hand to kiss and cuddle in the dark.

  She thought about Jason Murphy, and how she would always see him as he was the summer she turned sixteen. He was already tall, skinny and as brown as an acorn from being out in the sun. He drove his dad’s boat around the lake with all of them yelling and whooping it up. His hair shone with golden streaks in it, and as she watched him pilot the craft she had never been happier.

  Until her mother descended on Gracious Grove for one of her brief, flying visits near the end of August. Jason was going nowhere, her mother insisted. He was lazy. He didn’t even work. (That wasn’t true; he did work in his dad’s hardware store, but his hours were flexible because Jason’s parents believed that he should be a kid while he could.) He had no future plans, goals . . . did Sophie really think he would amount to anything other than taking over the family hardware store?

  The battering had gotten to her, and she reluctantly accepted the reality that she was going to go off to her last year of high school, then directly to a summer of prep courses, then on to university, the same one her two brothers were attending, if she kept her grades up. When would they ever be together again? So she broke it off in a weepy, stormy scene and allowed her mother to haul her back to New York.

  And now he was, of all things, an English professor! That still wouldn’t be good enough for her mom because he wasn’t a professor at Brown, or Harvard, or Yale. It was disconcerting how often her mother’s voice was in her head, judging, commenting, criticizing. It had taken a lot for her to break away from her mother’s expectations and do what she wanted, to go to cooking school and earn her degree in restaurant management.

  If she hadn’t let her mother pull her away from Jason, who knew what would have happened? Instead, every man she met and liked, she judged by Rosalind Freemont Taylor’s exacting measures. If she ever managed to erase her mother’s voice from her head, maybe she’d be able to move on in other ways than just her career aspirations.

  She had to go to a tea-blending store in Butterhill, so she headed out of Gracious Grove, hoping the drive would clear her head. She had only gone a quarter mile when a huge, shiny-new signboard set in a field made her pull over and stare in surprise. That was the signboard from the photo she’d found under the table where Vivienne Whittaker and that fellow had sat. The exact one! She could tell by the background, a farmhouse and big red barn in the distance, with a set of three silos, and an old oak tree right near the sign.

  Now she could see what it read: COME HOME TO LAKEVIEW ENCLAVE; HOMES OF DISTINCTION, A GATED COMMUNITY. Lakeview? Not exactly; she had driven inland from Seneca Lake, but okay. It was illustrated with photos of a smiling, pale, blond family all wearing polo shirts and riding bicycles. Builders were listed as Stanfield Homes and Hammond Construction, and the developer was listed as GG Group. According to the billboard it was going to be a planned, gated community with a retail component along the highway so home buyers would have all the conveniences.

  Maybe this was the development Francis had brought to Leathorne and Hedges, the reason he got such a big promotion. But even so, why did Vivienne Whittaker have a photo of the development with her? Or . . . was it the man she was with who had dropped the photo? Either way, it was odd that the photo had even been taken. Why was it of interest? And was Vivienne really concerned about Francis’s part in the development, as it seemed from her words?

  Sophie started up the SUV again and pulled back onto the road. She drove on, her path taking her past Cruickshank College. On a whim, she turned around and pulled through the stone gates and up the long, crushed-gravel drive that curved past a grove of graceful white paper birch. The vista opened out to the college building itself, made of white limestone and originally used as a home by Cruickshank, a lumber baron in the Finger Lakes region. She stopped the SUV and sat for a moment in the visitors’ parking lot, watching students lolling in the spring sunshine and one professor under a huge, old chestnut tree laden with spikes of fragrant white flowers.

  Was that . . . she squinted and stared through the glare of the windshield. Jason was the professor teaching his class out under the spreading chestnut tree! Just then, the kids all got up, dusted themselves off and headed toward the building, while he put his briefcase on a bench and gathered the papers he had been reading from. She got out of the truck and crossed the grass to the shade tree, and stood before him.

  “Sophie!” he exclaimed, looking up from his papers.

  “Jason. How are you?”

  “Good! That was my Introduction to American Poetry class. I thought an outside class would keep the students awake.” He smiled, but then his eyes widened. “Oh, hey, I heard you saw that terrible scene yesterday . . . Vivienne Whittaker’s death. So tragic!”

  She nodded but didn’t answer as he clicked his case closed. After a pause, she said, “I’m kind of trying not to think about that today.”

  He looked stricken for a moment, then stepped over to her and pulled her into a hug. She took a deep breath and relaxed. He smelled so good! Like aftershave, but not too strong, and fresh laundry and leather. She luxuriated for a long moment, but then a silvery voice said, “Jason, we have a meeting?” Sophie looked up.

  A woman stood near them, smiling; she was slim and attractive, dressed neatly in a skirt suit and holding a sheaf of papers.

  “Oh, sorry!” Jason said, with a start. He held Sophie’s arm lightly, still. “Julia, this is Sophie Taylor, an old, old friend of mine!”

  This was the part of the romantic comedy flick where Julia should say “Not too old a friend,” with a sarcastic, jealous edge, as she grabbed Jason’s other arm, but instead the woman looked compl
etely pleasant. “Julia Dandridge,” she said, striding forward, hand outstretched. “So nice to meet a friend of Jason’s.”

  Her handshake was warm but brief, a mere clasp and release. Sophie smiled at her, wondering what her relationship was with Jason.

  “I do have a departmental meeting,” he said, with regret in his tone. “Julia is the English Lit department head . . . medieval literature is her specialty. It’s nice to see you again, Sophie. I hope you’re doing okay? I’ll drop in at your grandmother’s on the weekend.”

  “I’d like that.”

  Heads together, the two professors walked off, comparing notes. Sophie and he were old, old friends, he’d said. She wasn’t going to dwell on it. Jason was her past and it was pleasant to look back on that time in her life, nothing more. She had shopping to do, a tearoom to work in and a bridal shower tea to plan.

  • • •

  Thelma Earnshaw stared out her window over to Auntie Rose’s. They had had a steady stream of customers and a lot of them were locals, all of ’em taking a gander at Belle Époque as they slowly entered the tearoom next door. Darned rubberneckers. It was an outrage, but did the police take an interest and stop those people from staring? No.

  She had thought she ought to stay closed so folks didn’t ask awkward questions or make a big deal about someone dying after eating something at her tearoom, but darned if she didn’t think that was a bad idea. She was missing out on a whole passel of customers who would love to come and gawk, and she’d make them buy tea and food, too, whatever she could scrounge up from the freezers. They might not eat it, but they’d buy it. As she usually did, she ignored whispers in her brain; this time the whispers murmured that it was unfeeling to open so soon after her granddaughter’s mother-in-law-to-be died in her establishment.

  She hoofed it awkwardly over to the wall phone and dialed a number. “Gilda? Get your butt up out of your easy chair and come on down to work. We’re going to open, and no one can stop me. Oh, and go pick up cleaning supplies at the dollar store. Darned flatfoots left fingerprint powder everywhere.”

  She hung up as Gilda squawked some questions Thelma wasn’t about to answer, and went back to the window. Rose would just love to lord this over her, if they were speaking, which they weren’t. While it wasn’t exactly true that they hadn’t spoken at all in the past sixty-some-odd years, they hadn’t spoken much. But it wasn’t her fault that Rose had the audacity to claim she didn’t know what she was doing when she stole Thelma’s beau back . . . how long ago was it, actually? Let’s see . . . she did some quick math, which turned into confusion. What year was it right now? Lord, it did not seem possible that she had lived past the millennium, and here it was . . . how many years later?

  She got confused and gave up. The important thing was, never once had Rose apologized for stealing Harold Freemont away from her, all those years ago. Not to say she lamented marrying her own gone and regretted hubby; he was a good man and he did his best, even though his best was often second rate.

  Gilda, who lived in a rooming house five doors down, slipped in the back door wearing a silly scarf and big sunglasses.

  “Good lord, what kind of getup is that?” Thelma said, lathered that Gilda hadn’t bothered getting the cleaning supplies she’d asked for.

  “I can’t believe, Thelma Mae Earnshaw, that you intend to open the tearoom up after everything,” Gilda whispered, peeking out the front window. “A murder here, you being hauled off to the police! All those people . . . oh!” She fanned herself. “It gives me palpitations.”

  “You’re not having one of those hot flashes again, are you? You’re too old for that nonsense. It’s all just mind over matter anyway,” Thelma said.

  “It’s not right; it’s just not right! Someone died out there in the tearoom!”

  “But I didn’t kill her, and by staying closed it pretty much says I did. So we’re going to open for late tea. Now, get down in the cupboard and see if we have any ammonia and bleach. Gotta clean up the mess those cops made.”

  • • •

  Sophie was surprised to see Belle Époque open for business when she got home. Nana and Laverne were busy in the tearoom, but both said they could handle it because they had Laverne’s niece Cindy helping out. Cindy was just fourteen, but tall for her age, and with a big, broad gorgeous smile that folks clearly warmed to. Sophie liked the girl on sight and knew that any relative of Laverne’s would be helpful and polite, as well as sharp and quick.

  She put the supplies away in the kitchen, and looked around. It wasn’t quite In Fashion caliber, but the commercial-grade ovens were spotless, as was the large glass-doored fridge. The counters were clear of all clutter. At first she had thought there was little she could do at Auntie Rose’s Victorian Tea House. Nana and Laverne worked together in perfect harmony after many years, so what could Sophie add?

  But her mind had started wandering, as it was wont to do, and she had reimagined the tearoom without the chintz drapes and floral wallpaper. If it was her establishment, she’d get rid of all of that in favor of a simpler decor. It wasn’t a matter of improving the place, just updating it. Or if Nana was still stuck on the typical tearoom look, maybe they could go in the other direction and make it more opulently shabby chic, with cabbage roses and white-painted chandeliers, aqua walls and worn white furnishings.

  She stared out the window. Maybe change would be a mistake. After all, Auntie Rose’s was doing great without her input. Were her ideas any good at all? Look what had happened with In Fashion; they had started out great guns, but after the first while customers had dropped off. It wasn’t the food, because that was always top notch. But it took something more to beat the competition in New York, home of some of the greatest restaurants in the world. Still, they could have gotten by, giving her time to find her way, but the investors got nervous and began to pull back. It was almost as if they had wanted it to fail, because every suggestion she had for improvements and upgrades had been met with a We can’t afford that or There just isn’t money in the budget.

  A software-designing friend had floated the idea of “planned failure” on the part of her partners. Planned failure in software design was putting flaws in a program for beta testers so they could toil through problems and see how things worked. But that was not appropriate to the business model of a restaurant, she argued. No one went into business to fail. Did they?

  She awoke from her memories and looked around the kitchen. Okay, so her restaurant had failed. But she was still a darned good chef, and she had a tearoom right there. Food wasn’t cheap but it didn’t cost the earth, either, and she could afford to experiment a little. Nana had wanted her to get involved, so she would, starting with food. Auntie Rose’s offered luncheons and tea, the usual expected light fare like finger sandwiches and salads.

  But there was no reason that soups couldn’t be added, and maybe even some pasta dishes. Everyone loved Italian food; maybe they could add a little Italian fare to the other more traditional English tea offerings. Why offer only what folks could make at home in ten minutes when you could give them taste challenges? She rolled up her sleeves, put a net over her abundant hair, washed her hands thoroughly and set to work. First she would make some things for the Silver Spouts meeting that evening. It would be good to test her creations on non-customers first, to get reactions.

  Then she would have some fun, really go overboard with the inventiveness, on new dishes for the tearoom lunch crowd. Zuppa Maritata, first, a traditional Italian wedding soup, and maybe a nice bread pasta for the soup, a passatelli. It was good to be in a kitchen again.

  Chapter 11

  The tearoom was closed, but it needed to be set up for the weekly Silver Spouts meeting, which meant rearranging the chairs and tables. Sophie did the hard work of moving tables and chairs, with her grandmother’s direction. When Nana tried to help, she shooed her away.

  “You’ve done more than
enough. It’s my turn to do this stuff.” She stood back and eyed the arrangement, a semicircle of chairs pointing toward the servery and two tables behind the chairs with serving pieces ready for all of the treats they would eat after the meeting. “I was surprised to see Belle Époque open when I got back today.”

  “Thelma couldn’t resist. I know they were going to stay closed because Laverne went over to help Gilda lock up. But Thelma came home and I guess later she called Gilda back to work.”

  “Mrs. Earnshaw couldn’t pass up all the money from the curiosity seekers.”

  “Oh! Speaking of curiosity seekers . . . when Laverne went over, it was with a purpose.” She told Sophie what Laverne had discovered about the cupcakes.

  “So there were two different sets of red-velvet cupcakes?” she said.

  “Sounds like it. One set homemade, one set store bought. So if we find out who brought the red-velvet cupcakes, we can eliminate them from the possible murderers.”

  “Why?” Sophie asked.

  “If they brought red velvet, then they didn’t bring another type of cupcake, right?”

  “You mean because the yellow frosting on Vivienne’s face was clearly not from the red-velvet cupcakes,” Sophie said. “But maybe bringing red-velvet cupcakes was a cover-up.”

  “Oh. You could be right. You are the bright one, my Sophie!”

  “But it would still be interesting to find out who brought the cupcakes, right? And we can’t assume that just because the bakery clamshell said red velvet, that there were red-velvet cupcakes in it. Nor does it mean if there were red-velvet cupcakes in it, they were necessarily store bought.”

  “This is getting more complicated by the minute!” Nana exclaimed, one hand to her forehead.