A Killer Kebab

by Susannah Hardy

  “I’m coming over there now. Brenda hasn’t pulled her boat from the water yet. I’ll borrow it and come get you.”

  Liza let out a weak cough. “Dr. Phelps wants us to stay here. Says the motion of a boat ride or helicopter ride will make us even more nauseous than we already are.”

  “Then I’m coming to stay. I can take care of you.” I’d just bring in my own food.

  “Love to have you, but no need. The doctor is arranging for a visiting nurse. She’ll be here in a few hours. We’ll be fine until then. Trust me,” she said. “You want a professional dealing with these . . . symptoms.”

  I remembered that I’d promised to take Dolly to her follow-up appointment tomorrow morning so Brandy and Harold wouldn’t have to miss time from work. “Are you sure?” I was torn. A lot of people I loved needed me right now. How was I supposed to choose?

  “I’m sure. We’ll be okay for a few more hours.”

  “All right. But the minute that nurse gets there, I want her to call me so I can talk to her.” I wasn’t at all happy, but at that point, nothing could make me so. Liza was sick, but she seemed functional at this point, so presumably whatever bug they had just needed to work its way out of their systems.

  “I will. And don’t worry. As soon as the doctor says we can move, we will. You could do me a favor, if you want.”

  Finally. A way to help. “Of course. What?”

  “Can you call Steamie’s and have them clean the carpets in my mainland condo and e-mail me a bill? I’m too tired to look up the number.”

  “Good idea. Your place will be ready when you are. And Melanie and Caitlyn can come stay with me until they head back to California. Now go get some rest. And have that nurse call me,” I ordered.

  Liza gave a soft chuckle. “Yes, ma’am.” The call disconnected.

  Food poisoning? Of course it could happen in any kitchen, home or professional, no matter how careful someone was. But it was rare. I was grateful, for Liza’s sake, that she didn’t have a castleful of guests, only Melanie and Caitlyn, who could presumably keep it quiet. Based on the timing of the illnesses, it seemed like Liza would be able to figure out what the culprit was by process of elimination without too much difficulty when she was feeling better. Although at this point, it probably didn’t matter. She was closing up, and all the perishables would presumably be discarded. Anything sealed would be donated, just as I had done with Franco’s food.

  While I had my phone out, I sent another text to my daughter. Why wasn’t Cal answering? I hoped she wasn’t going to show up here to try to surprise me. I’d had enough surprises to last a lifetime in the last few months.

  I pulled out of the lot and drove to the River Rock Resort.

  The building hadn’t gotten any nicer since the last time I was here. A fresh coat of paint would have done wonders for the place, at least the exterior. I’d never seen the guest rooms. As I walked toward the front steps, I thought about the woman I’d seen coming here the other night. Today the parking lot had only a handful of cars, which was to be expected this time of year. None of them looked like the car the woman had driven, but then again, it had been dark and I hadn’t gotten a close look at it.

  I entered the lobby. Quite a difference between this place and the comfortable, understated feeling of elegance the Camelot engendered. And it was light-years away from the foyer of Liza’s Castle Grant, but maybe that wasn’t a fair comparison. Still, Angela Wainwright could have done a better job here, even if she was on a low budget. The rack of Thousand Island dressing bottles was full, indicating either that she was vigilant about restocking, or she hadn’t sold any since I’d been here last. I was betting on the latter, since there was a thin coating of dust on most of them. I still had a bottle back at the Bonaparte House and it hadn’t even been opened.

  And where was Angela anyway? I’d been here at least five minutes waiting for Sheldon Todd to come down from his room. Five minutes might not seem like a long time, but if I’d been a paying customer waiting for someone to rent me a room, I might have left and tried somewhere else in that time.

  Angela. Could she have been behind the break-in at the Casa di Pizza? Bonaparte Bay was a small town. I didn’t know who else Franco had told about his discovery of the very old—quite possibly the oldest—recipe for Thousand Island dressing, but it was a safe bet other people knew about it and it could have gotten back to Angela. And Brenda had said something about Angela trying to capitalize on it somehow.

  My thoughts jumped to my trip to Watertown the other day. Someone had tossed my car in the mall parking lot, the same day the fake recipe had been delivered to me by Piper, Franco’s waitress. Could someone have thought Franco had already given me a copy? Followed me to Watertown then followed me—too closely—home?

  But I still couldn’t see what Angela, or anyone, would have to gain from the recipe. If someone wanted to make money, all he or she would have to do would be to start bottling and selling any version of the dressing—and anyone could claim they were using the original. One wouldn’t necessarily sell any better than the other one, since there was no way to prove it. And outside the geographical region of northern New York State, I was willing to bet nobody cared.

  A large figure appeared in my peripheral vision. I turned.

  “Hi, Sheldon.”

  The genealogist took up a lot of space. He gave me a big smile. “Georgie. Lovely to see you again. Can I buy you lunch? A cup of coffee or dessert?”

  Generous. The expenses on Melanie’s bill were mounting with a series of almost audible clicks. “Uh, no, but thanks. Any progress on the genealogy?” There was no one around, but I kept my voice low anyway.

  “Yes,” he said. “Let’s go into the business center, where there’s a table we can spread out at.” He led me down a short hallway in the opposite direction of the dining room. Angela still hadn’t appeared. No wonder her hotel didn’t seem to be doing well, with that kind of customer service.

  The business center turned out to be a square room painted a dull peachy color. Chairs upholstered in faded sage green woven upholstery flanked a mismatched rectangular table. At one end of the room, a huge old-fashioned fax machine—the kind with an actual telephone receiver on a curly cord attached—sat next to a small printer-photocopier combination. A cup full of assorted pens and pencils and a stapler with pretend wood panels rounded out the accoutrements. This little office would have been state of the art—about twenty years ago.

  Sheldon sat down on one side of the table and began to spread out some papers. “I have to say, yours has been one of the more interesting families I’ve worked on.”

  Interesting? I supposed to an outsider, it would be. But “interesting” wasn’t the word I would have used. Everything had changed—some things for the better, some decidedly for the worse—since I started learning about my family. I wasn’t sure I wanted to learn anymore.

  “You got the attorney’s records I sent you? Did they help?”

  “Not really. They know less than I do.” His expression was the slightest bit smug.

  Sheldon was making me work for it. Of course, he was getting paid by the hour, so it was to his advantage to drag things out. “Which is what?”

  He sat back in his chair, which gave an ominous creak under his weight. “I’ve accounted for all the descendants from both of Elihu Bloodworth’s wives. You, your daughter, your mother, and Liza Grant are it. The only ones left.”

  I let out a breath I didn’t know I’d been holding. Thank goodness. This damn trust, what was left of it, was going to dissolve in February, and then we could put this behind us. Or could we? I needed to call Kim Galbraith and see what she’d found out about the supposedly failed mutual funds. Liza and Melanie, the legal heirs to the trust, would probably want to pursue Jim MacNamara’s estate to see if any of the money could be recovered. After all, it was theirs. But so many people had die
d, so many people had been hurt. It was tempting to tell them to just let it all go.

  Another thought struck me. “Didn’t you say something about a cousin, Percy, who disappeared? What happened to him?”

  Sheldon leaned forward again and shuffled the papers around. He pulled out a photograph printed on a sheet of copy paper and handed it to me. “As I suspected, Percy died fighting overseas in World War Two. He never married. No known offspring. Here’s a photo of his grave at Normandy.” I studied the picture. A simple white cross in a sea of thousands of other white crosses. A lump rose in my throat as I looked at his name and the dates of his birth and death. “He was just a kid.”

  “Most of them were,” Sheldon said. “And an awful lot of them didn’t come back.”

  I took a deep breath to compose myself, then looked up at Sheldon. “So that’s it? No more surprise twigs on the family tree?”

  Sheldon chuckled. “I’ve traced every descendant of both wives. I’ve even scoured historical newspapers—many of them are digitized now, so it’s relatively easy—as well as the library’s and historical society’s records for any mention of illegitimate children. Or I should say more illegitimate than those from his second wife, your great-great-great-grandmother. I hope my saying that doesn’t offend you?”

  I shook my head. “Doesn’t bother me.”

  “And I found nothing. So I’m confident we have this buttoned up.”

  I wished I could be so confident. Great Gramps seemed to have had rather liberal views when it came to fidelity. But I believed Sheldon had done thorough work. If anyone else decided to come forward, they were going to have to produce some spit on a swab and pay for some genetic testing.

  Sheldon gathered up the papers and stacked them, then patted one short and one long edge into a neat stack, which he secured with a big binder clip. He handed the whole packet to me. “This is for your mother,” he said. “I could wait around until she comes back from that island, if you want me to tell her in person what I found.”

  More likely, Sheldon just wanted to see Melanie again. “I’ll let her know. And thanks for all your help.” I stuck out my hand, and Sheldon took it.

  “My pleasure. I’ll prepare the genealogical charts and send them to you so you’ll have a nice record, but I can do that from my office. The weather report says there’s some bad weather coming in, so I’ll check out and head home now before it hits.”

  I tucked the packet of papers under my arm and rose. “Send your bill to Melanie.”

  He smiled broadly. “Oh, I will. Maybe I’ll hand deliver it.”

  Go for it, I thought.

  EIGHTEEN

  I was just finishing up my lunch at the counter in the Bonaparte House kitchen, after talking to the visiting nurse, who assured me she had things under control on Valentine Island, when my cell phone rang. I put down my Raphaela Ridgeway novel—regretfully, as the story was at a suspenseful point—and answered.

  “Hey, Georgie,” Kim Galbraith said. “We’ve got ’em.”

  I sat up straighter. “We do? What did you find?” Maybe Liza and Melanie, and eventually my daughter, would get their money after all.

  “Those mutual funds? I did a random sampling and checked the actual fund prices for the dates on the ledger. Of course, there were fluctuations in the value, but over the course of the last twenty years, they’ve all shown a decent return.”

  That dirty Jim MacNamara. “Do you think this is enough to take to the police?”

  “I don’t know enough about criminal law to give you an answer. But it should be enough for an ethics complaint with the New York State bar, at least.”

  “But Jim MacNamara is dead, so realistically what are they going to do?”

  “My guess is that you’d need to hire a new lawyer, maybe file a civil lawsuit and let him or her subpoena all the documentation from Ben. Then you could decide together whether there was enough to file a criminal complaint. Although who you’d file it against, I don’t know, since the perpetrator is dead.”

  Great. More lawyers. A formal complaint and discovery process would probably take months, maybe years. “Thanks, Kim. I’ll talk with Melanie and Liza and see what they want to do.”

  “Anytime. I’ll write up a summary of what I found and e-mail it to you. Let me know what you all decide. If you want to share, that is.”

  “After all your help, I’d say you deserve to know the outcome. Talk to you later.” I rang off.

  Of course I planned to talk to Melanie and Liza. But I planned to talk to Ben MacNamara first. He was almost young enough to be my son and I had pretty good truth-detecting skills. I needed to find out if he’d known about this all along, and was just playing innocent about the locked filing cabinet.

  Fifteen minutes later, I entered the law offices of MacNamara and MacNamara. Lydia was at her desk. She looked up in surprise when I came in. “Hi, Georgie,” she said. “The office is officially closed. Jim’s funeral was this morning.” I’d been so preoccupied the last few days, I hadn’t bothered to read the obituaries in the Blurb, or I would have known that myself.

  “Sorry,” I said. “I was just hoping to have a quick word with Ben about my divorce. How it’s going.” Melanie and Liza had given me an authorization to look at the Bloodworth Trust file. It had said nothing about authorizing me to talk to the law firm about it. Lydia was an experienced gatekeeper. No way would she let me in if she knew I wanted to talk to Junior about the trust.

  Lydia frowned, just a little. “He’s in there, but now’s maybe not the best time. Jennifer Murdoch came to the funeral and made a big scene in the Episcopal Church Fellowship Hall after the service. Can this wait?”

  “I just need to know for my own peace of mind that Jim’s death isn’t going to slow the progress. I’m anxious to put my marriage behind me and move ahead.” I knew I was being insensitive, and that I was pressing some buttons for Lydia. Her own divorce had been bitter, from what I’d heard.

  She looked at my face, then nodded. “I understand,” she said. “Let me see if he’ll talk to you. Wait here.” She rose from her desk, crossed the room, and opened a metal filing cabinet. After thumbing through the file tabs, she pulled one out and headed for the door to the interior office. She rapped softly on the surface, then opened the door. She disappeared inside.

  While I waited, I looked around. Lydia’s desk was enviably neat. No stray sticky notes or loose pens. A file lay on the blotter. The tab read, “Tripler Enterprises.” The door to the office opened again, so I quickly glanced away, my gaze landing on an innocent coat hanging on the rack. I hoped I looked innocent too. It would be bad to be caught snooping in a law office, where confidentiality was king. Or queen.

  “You can go on in,” Lydia said. “And cut him some slack. It’s been a tough day, and it’s going to get tougher. His mother’s in town. That’s why he’s hiding out here.”

  “Thanks.” I made my way into the office and shut the door.

  Ben was seated behind a broad mahogany desk. He looked up when I sat down in the visitor’s chair across from him.

  “You want to know about your divorce?” he said, opening the file. “I’m sorry I haven’t really had a chance to get up to speed on all my father’s files. He was working on this one himself.”

  “Yeah. When can I expect the decree?” He quickly reviewed the first few pages in the file. His hands shook slightly as he turned the pages. The guy was keyed up, though it was impossible to say why.

  “It looks like we’re just waiting for the time to run out. We should be able to apply for the final dissolution within a couple of weeks.” I already knew this, but it was nice to hear it confirmed.

  “Great. I hate to press you at a time like this, but I want to move forward as soon as possible.”

  “Okay,” he said. “This will be one of the easier things I have to do now.” He closed the file, pick
ed up a pen, and began tapping on the manila cover. Junior was definitely agitated.

  “Oh,” I said casually. “While I’m here, thanks for that file on the Bloodworth Trust. My mother and Liza Grant appreciated it.”

  The tapping got faster. “You’re welcome,” he said.

  “There’s not as much money in there as we expected.” I tried to keep my voice neutral while I watched his reaction.

  His jaw stiffened. Junior knew something, but how much? “Oh?” he said. “I’d never seen that file until a couple of days ago, so I have no idea how much is, or is supposed to be, in there. You’d have to talk to my father about that. And that’s not possible.” He rose. “If you don’t mind, my family is waiting for me.”

  Dismissed. I also rose. “Of course. How rude of me to keep you, today of all days. My condolences to you and your mother.”

  “Yeah, my mother needs condolences. Her alimony has just been cut off. Now she’s probably going to sue Dad’s estate. She’ll figure out some way to squeeze money out of the old man, even now he’s dead.”

  He followed me into the front of the office and shrugged into the topcoat that had been hanging on the rack. I zipped up my coat and nodded to Lydia. Thanks, I mouthed. She nodded.

  Junior and I left together, though we separated when we got outside. Once I was half a block away, I turned. He was headed in the direction of the Camelot. That was probably where his mother was staying, though I hadn’t seen her when I’d been there. Ben lived in a condo owned by his father down by the marina. Jim had lived in one of the smaller Victorians—which were still huge, by today’s standards—on Wellesley Island. Perhaps Junior hadn’t invited her to stay with him, or perhaps bachelor pad living didn’t suit her. The crime scene tape might still have been up at Jim’s house. I hadn’t been by, so I didn’t know.

  The back vent of the dark wool topcoat Ben wore flapped open as he walked away. The sight jogged something in my memory. The cold wind blew it away. I couldn’t stand here all day staring after Ben. I turned back toward the Bonaparte House and started walking.