The Grim Steeper

by Amanda Cooper

  How did you reply to that and still be angry? Sophie wasn’t sure what to say. Just the way she had thought of that showed her that she wanted to stay angry at her mother. She was holding on to it, coddling it, stoking her anger like a blast furnace. Why?

  She plunked down in a soft chair and amused herself with clicking through the TV channels while her mother described the absolutely gorgeous new resort she had discovered, and how she was trying to get Sophie’s father to join her there. When Rosalind Taylor paused for a breath, Sophie decided to take the bull by the horns.

  “Mom, when I left Bartleby’s the owner said some stuff I’d like you to explain.” She told her mother what Adrian Van Sant had told her, that his father had been bribed by Sophie’s mother to hire her as sous chef at Bartleby’s on Shinnecock in order to get her back to the Hamptons, where there was potential to meet a wealthy mate, rather than be stuck in Gracious Grove near strictly middle-class Jason Murphy. The last bit Sophie had inferred, but felt it was true.

  There was silence for a long minute. Then Rosalind said, her voice soft, “Sophie, darling, it’s not like that at all. I don’t have a thing against Jason, really, but—”

  “No, what you have something against is any hope for me to have a happy life.” Sophie paused; she didn’t like the sound of her own voice. It was hard and sharp, like flint, and ugly.

  “You can’t possibly be happy there in Gracious Grove, Sophie, not in the long term. Oh, you think you will be, but it’s not your home.”

  “Mom, it’s not your home, but I love it here and you know that. I’m thirty, Mom, thirty! Not sixteen, not ten, not five. I’m staying here, maybe for the rest of my life. You need to make peace with that.” That was better; assertive but not nasty.

  There was silence for a long minute.

  “So did Adrian tell the truth?” she asked. “Did you bribe Mr. Van Sant to hire me?”

  “I don’t think that matters now, does it?” Rosalind favored avoidance over denial. She chatted about coming home to New York in time to celebrate her anniversary with Sophie’s father. “The trick is getting him there at the same time as me,” she admitted.

  “Mom, changing the topic, I do have another question,” Sophie said. It was pointless to hammer away at her mother about the restaurant. “Do you know Jeanette Asquith? She has a home in the Hamptons near ours.”

  “Well sure, I know Jeanette. We’ve been on some of the same boards.”

  “What is she like?”

  “A lovely person, even though she’s much older than me,” Rosalind said.

  Sophie grinned and shook her head. Rosalind and Jeanette were probably about the same age. Much older in her mother’s lingo meant a few months, or a whole year, perhaps.

  “Last time I saw her, she had let her hair go gray. I hear that’s the fashion now, but I will not be following that particular trend.” Rosalind Taylor’s hair was perpetually a soft, golden, youthful blond.

  “Anyway it’s her husband, Dale Asquith, who was murdered on our doorstep.”

  “Oh dear! Poor Jeanette! I can’t believe that, Dale Asquith? I’ll need to send her a note of condolence. What does one say to a widow whose husband has been murdered?”

  “I’m sure Emily Post has advice. Who in the family has the money? I’ve heard their families were entwined business-wise. Can you find out anything about that?” There was silence on the other end. “Mom, I don’t want to make you do anything you’re not comfortable with.”

  “It’s not that . . . it’s just . . . you’ve never asked me to do anything for you before.”

  It was Sophie’s turn to be silent; she wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Of course, I’ll do it! I’m just surprised and . . . and touched. All I want is to help you be happy.”

  That was what Nana said about Rosalind, but Sophie had never seen it that way. “So who does have the money in the family?”

  “You’ve come to the right person. There isn’t much I don’t know about who has what money among the financially viable of this country.” Her tone was unexpectedly wry and full of self-knowledge. “When Jeanette and Dale married, it wasn’t so much a marriage as a merger, the joke among our set went. It was an agreement put together by their fathers, and it seems to have worked remarkably well for many years. Neither wanted children, or at least that’s what Jeanette always said. That seemed so sad to me; I don’t know what I’d do without you or your brothers.”

  Sophie rolled her eyes, but then stopped. She was being disrespectful, if only in thought, and that was not honoring her grandmother’s request that she try to be kinder to her mother. Rosalind Taylor may not be a conventionally huggy-kissy mom, but there had been moments in her life that Sophie remembered; a cool hand on her brow when she was sick, a night spent crying on her mother’s shoulder over a dead pet, and how hurt her mother had seemed when every school holiday, Sophie chose to spend it in Gracious Grove rather than whatever big trip her mother planned. She took a deep breath. “So you don’t think they ever loved each other?”

  “I didn’t say that, but everyone knew that they each had . . . outside interests.”

  “That’s still true. He had a mistress and she has a boy toy, a younger guy who is crazy about her. Mom, do you think she’d have any reason to kill him?”

  Rosalind thought for a long minute. “I cannot imagine. You’ve only seen her once or twice, I gather, but Jeanette is exquisitely cultured. She’s calm, not passionate. I can’t see her killing Dale. Why would she?”

  “Not even to leave her life as a college dean’s wife? I understand she hates it.”

  “I don’t know who you’ve been listening to, but there was nothing keeping her there. I think she rather enjoyed the collegial life, and she always has the house in the Hamptons and the pied-à-terre in Paris if she wearied of it.”

  It was Kimmy who had suggested Jeanette Asquith hated the college life. Did she have a reason? Was it in an attempt to throw suspicion onto the dean’s wife? Or an opinion shared as fact? “How are their finances? Did they have money? I mean, money in the sense that Daddy has money? And what happens now that the dean has been killed?”

  “Both sides have old money, and quite a bit of it. Dale was ambitious because he thought being a dean gave him a certain image that he appreciated. His older brother was the star of the family, you know; he took over the business reins from their father. I think Dale went out of his way to differentiate himself from that business life, even though he has a business degree from some prestigious business school in Canada. But if I understand their case correctly—and I believe I do—if one of them died, the other inherited everything from their marriage agreement.”

  “Sounds like a dangerous agreement to have.”

  “But why, darling? The agreement was very specific as to what was included and what was not. I know for a fact Dale always used his marriage as a way to keep his girlfriends in their place. He would never divorce, and every single one of them knew that. It was probably the same for Jeanette. A very chilly woman, if you ask me, but one who has always known exactly what she wanted and how to get it. And speaking of cold . . . it must be getting positively frigid in Gracious Grove. Winter is coming. Will you come and visit me if I go to Aruba or Sint Maarten over Christmas?”

  Sophie paused, but could think of no nice way to say what she felt, that she was looking forward to spending Christmas in Gracious Grove, and to helping out in the tearoom, experimenting with holiday treats. And spending time with Jason, Dana, Cissy and the others, as well as Laverne and Nana. “We’ll talk more often, Mom, I promise. But no more tricks to get me back to ‘society,’ okay?”

  “From now on, no more tricks. I’ll see if I can find out anything more about Dale and Jeanette, but I don’t think there’s much more to tell. Their marriage worked for them both, if you ask me. Every marriage is different, darling. Like your father’s and
mine; we don’t spend a lot of time together, but . . . but we love each other. We really do.”

  When they hung up, Sophie felt slightly uneasy, but she wasn’t sure why.

  * * *

  On a lonely back road, Thelma gunned the motor of her old car and tooled along as twilight darkened the sky. She pulled up at the gates of Cruickshank College, turned into the drive and followed it back to the dormitories. Many, many years ago she had snuck out here to visit a boy, back when no one in her set of friends thought of sex before marriage—only bad girls did that sort of thing—and “making out” meant a little kissing under the bleachers.

  She sat and looked up at the dormitory building, a turn-of-the-century ivy-covered three-story redbrick with white stone caps and corbels. If what she’d heard was right, then all this hooey and the dean being murdered came down to one spoiled brat athlete named Mac MacAlister, who didn’t have two brains to rub together and needed a piece of someone’s mind. Maybe some of Thelma’s. And if someone had faked up his grade, he would sure as heck know who did it. He’d play dumb—and be dumb, sounded like—but maybe, just maybe, a surprise attack would have him admitting who puffed his grade for him.

  Enough thinking. Doing was more her style.

  She eased herself out of the car and wrapped her heavy sweater around her. She had come prepared, and grabbed a bag full of cookies from the passenger seat, then hobbled up the steps to the dorm, easing through the door as a skinny, pale student came out with an armload of books, holding the door open for her while eyeing her with some surprise.

  She grunted her thanks, but then turned before letting the door close behind her. “I’m looking for my grandson, tall feller, reddish hair, basketball player. Do you know where I might find Mac?”

  The kid’s eyes widened. “Mac MacAlister?”

  “Who else, Mac Aroni?”

  The guy smiled. “His room is third floor, to the left.” He rolled his eyes and shifted his books. “You can’t miss it; he’s always got some of the other b-ball players hanging around, or some girl who is mooning over him. It smells like beer belches and stale perfume.”

  Third floor. Why did it have to be the third floor? She eased into the dorm, letting the door swing shut, and stared; three flights of polished wood stairs wound up. And up. And up!

  There was a clatter from above and a girl stomped down the stairs, yelling a string of curse words over her shoulder. As she turned back she spotted Thelma and paused, hand on the polished wood railing, turning beet-pickle red. “Sorry,” she muttered, as she continued past Thelma toward the door.

  “Hey, you, is there an elevator here?”

  The girl paused. “An elevator upstairs?”

  “No, I want the one that only goes down,” Thelma growled. Seeing the confusion on the girl’s face, she said, “Of course, an elevator up!”

  She shook her head, then paused and said, “Well, there is a freight elevator for taking furniture up, you know. But it’s locked.”

  “I guess I’ll have to climb,” Thelma said. “And you . . . stop swearing. No boy likes a girl with a mouth like a sailor.”

  “Yeah, well Mac can kiss my—”

  “Mac MacAlister?”

  “Sure.” The girl eyed her. “Do you know him?”

  Thelma considered her cover story, but decided not to use it again unless she had to. “You his girlfriend?”

  “Mac doesn’t have a girlfriend, singular,” she said with an angry sniff. “He’s got several girls on the string, including his adviser—some desperate chick named Kimmy. Honest, I never saw such a bunch of desperate women in my life!” She made a rude gesture upward, tears glistening in her eyes. “And then he gives me the cold shoulder when all I want to do is help him out with his geography term paper. Says he doesn’t need my help, he can buy whatever he wants. Well, he can kiss my . . . atlas. He tells me I’m his girl, and then as soon as he gets chugging beer with his buddies he forgets about me. Well I’m done. He’s dumb as a stump anyway, and not even hot. He may be the best Cruickshank can produce, but that’s not saying much.”

  “You’re better off without him, honey, let me tell you that. Anyone who has to bribe his way into a degree probably peaked in high school.”

  As the girl stomped out of the dorm, Thelma began the long and arduous climb up. This better be worth it.

  As she drove home an hour later, she thought it had. Not in the way she expected, but in a totally different way.

  Chapter 17

  Sophie awoke the next day with determination in her heart. Jason had called her late the night before and they talked at length; though the police were still completely polite to him, they had made it clear that he was a suspect. Someone, they didn’t say who, had given an account of the evening that differed enough from his that they were trying to substantiate his version.

  He had given them his phone and they had one of their guys go through it; he hoped it helped establish where he was at the time of the crime. Given their suspicion of him, he needed to stay out of their informal investigation; how would it look if he was badgering some of his colleagues at Cruikshank? Somehow, some way, Sophie needed to figure out who killed Dean Asquith on their doorstep, and clear Jason.

  She realized that the one person who was unaccounted for in all of this was Sherri Shaw. What if the dean’s murder had absolutely nothing to do with the grade alteration? That was as likely as anything. She called Dana, who in an aside told Sophie that she would be speaking to Wally about Cissy that day at some point, and asked her one question.

  Half an hour later Dana got back to her with an answer; Sherri Shaw worked at a downtown dress shop that catered to the well-heeled in Gracious Grove. Dana offered to visit the shop, since she could do so with the view to look at their wedding dress collection, and find out where Sherri went that night after the tea stroll.

  As she made tea and put together a tray with soft-boiled eggs and toast, Sophie pondered what she knew, and what she didn’t. The dean had a wound on his neck, but his death had been caused by being stabbed in the chest. But there was also that drool, the bluish skin and the contorted hands, which suggested poisoning. Why multiple wounds? Why poison? And why, then, a final stabbing? Had the intent been to kill him another way and he wouldn’t die? Like Rasputin, she thought, remembering from a long-ago history lesson on the Russian that he was both poisoned and shot.

  And why was Dean Asquith murdered on their doorstep in particular? It could be happenstance, she supposed, but wasn’t it more likely that the killer wanted it to happen there, as opposed to in front of SereniTea or Belle Époque, because of the salted tea incident, and her own connection to Jason? If that was true, it indicated a killer who was present at the tea stroll and saw what went down, and who also understood Sophie’s connection to Jason, supposedly the prime suspect in the grade scandal.

  But was the killing related to the grading scandal, or incidental to it? There were two sets of suspects, those who were involved with the college and the grading scandal, and those who may have had personal reasons for wanting Dale Asquith dead. This morning, she would handle the college side of things, while Dana helped her with the personal side.

  There was still a police presence on their street. Nana was that very morning going with Laverne to police headquarters to speak with the detective, as was Sophie, at some point. Her grandmother desperately wanted to reopen Auntie Rose’s, but the front was still cordoned off, though the white tarp enclosure was gone, and the only folks strolling the street were what Laverne called “looky loos.” Sophie circled to the back parking lot and hopped in her car, revving the engine and backing out of the parking spot.

  Sophie stopped the Jetta while still in the laneway and scanned the houses across the street, knowing that the police would have canvassed every neighbor by then, to find out if they’d seen or noticed anything. Those poor long-suffering folks were likely not
pleased with Auntie Rose’s at this point. Maybe they could do a neighborhood tea party to try to regain some good neighborly feelings. People on their street were very patient with the increased traffic that came from having several tearooms.

  She noticed a neighbor, one of their defenders, standing across the street and waving to get her attention. Sophie got out of her car and crossed. “Good morning, Mr. Bellows,” she said.

  “Morning, Sophie,” he said, his voice as creaky as a door in a horror film. “How is your grandmother holding up after all this?”

  Sophie smiled down at the elderly gentleman, a tiny gnome of a fellow stooped over a tripod cane, with a few wisps of hair over a bald head. “She’s doing all right. I worry, of course, because of the health scare we had.”

  He nodded. “You tell her to take it easy and let folks help. She’s an independent woman, is Rose Freemont. When my Mary was alive, Rose was sweet as could be about taking her shopping when I was laid up with the surgery.”

  Garfield Bellows had been a good friend to Sophie’s grandmother over the years. He was one of the few residents still living on the street from before it became a tea drinkers mecca, and had been supportive of Auntie Rose’s, though he sometimes got cranky about tour buses blocking his drive. He was also still sharp as a dagger and despite thick glasses, noticed more than most a quarter his age.

  “Mr. Bellows, did the police speak to you about that night?”

  “The night of the murder? Sure did. Wally first, then that woman detective.” He looked up at Sophie, twisting his whole body to do so. He had hurt his back badly in an industrial accident many years before and had some fused disks in his spine, meaning he couldn’t turn easily. “I was sitting by my front window, that evening, watching all the hoopla. Best entertainment I’ve had in years, or it would have been if someone hadn’t died at the end of it. I’m sorry about that, for his wife and kids, if he had any.”

  “He was married, but didn’t have children, that I know of, anyway.” Sophie was trying to think of a way to ask him if he’d seen anything.