Homer’s wife switched her glass into her left hand and thrust out her right hand to shake Val’s. “I’m Emma Jean Huxby. Pleased to make your acquaintance. Are you visiting, or are you local?”
“Local, but not close by. I live forty-five minutes away.” Though Val hated to come across as nosy, she couldn’t tamp down her curiosity about how the Huxbys had met. Emma Jean had opened a door with her personal question. “I’m guessing from the way you talk that you aren’t from this part of Maryland, and Homer isn’t either.”
“We come from Chattanooga. We’ve known each other since we were kids.”
Val gaped at her. Hard to believe the husband and wife came from the same hemisphere. “Were Homer’s parents British?”
“His momma was. She married a GI stationed in England. He brought her back to Tennessee. Homer took to talking like her, not like his daddy and the rest of us.” She sipped from her glass. “Homer and I lived in London for five years right after we were married. I never did pick up the accent. Homer didn’t just pick it up—he held on tight to it.”
Val suppressed a smile. “I took him for a Brit.”
“He visits England every year to buy smalls and get a booster shot for his accent.” Emma Jean giggled into her glass.
“How did you end up in Maryland?”
“We’ve got a son in Pennsylvania, a daughter in Virginia, and another one in North Carolina. So we plunked ourselves down in the middle when we retired and started our antiques business.” The bell over the shop door jingled as two women came in. Emma Jean put her glass down amid the smalls on the table. “If you have any questions, just holler.”
She met the newcomers with the same welcome speech she’d given Val, word for word. Val leaned down to peer at the tiny flowers painted on an enamel pillbox and got a whiff of evergreen and alcohol. The fragrance came from the glass inches from her nose. Emma Jean had been drinking gin, not water.
Val straightened up, simmering inside about the nastiness of Otto’s game. If Emma Jean had attended his dinner with her husband as planned, she would have played the role assigned to Bethany, the chaperone with a drinking problem. Val realized for the first time that Otto wasn’t just manipulative, he was malicious. He’d intended to embarrass one, or all, of his guests.
Val could understand his frustration at being cheated by Trey and Homer and the urge to take revenge for that. But she couldn’t excuse Otto for drawing attention to a woman’s weakness. Fortunately, Emma Jean had escaped embarrassment by staying home. But Otto’s cruel intentions would have been obvious to her husband. Homer might have felt the urge to kill as he sat at the dinner table, but would he have brought a gun with him?
Val drifted toward the back of the shop, ready to claim Homer’s attention as soon as he was free. She stopped at the table devoted to ocean liner memorabilia. On one side of the table were postcards, menus, and brochures, all in cellophane envelopes, from a variety of passenger ships. Most of the memorabilia dated from the first half of the twentieth century. The table also held souvenirs passengers had either bought in a gift shop on board or swiped, like playing cards, ashtrays, and napkin rings. There was an eggcup from the SS United States, a silver spoon with the Cunard crest on it, and two bud vases, neither of them the White Star Line vase Otto had told Homer was stolen. Despite that claim, Homer had accepted Otto’s dinner invitation. Val wondered why.
She studied the emblem on the eggcup and tuned in to Homer’s sales pitch when she heard him mention the Titanic to the young woman he was helping.
“This silver ring is modeled on an original artifact recovered from the Titanic,” he said. “Openwork designs like this were popular in the Edwardian era. The ring has seventy-nine crystals. Can you read the inscription here?” He handed his customer a magnifying glass.
“It looks like letters and numbers.”
“Yes. L to A 6.9.10. The numbers are the date: the ninth of June in 1910. The inscription suggests someone with the initial L gave the ring to someone with the initial A. It was salvaged from the wreckage at the bottom of the sea, protected by a leather purser’s bag. Leather is impermeable, and the fish don’t eat it. The same bag contained an ID bracelet with the name Amy spelled out in diamonds. The A in the ring inscription may refer to Amy. Alas, no one knows for sure who she was.”
Nicely done, Val thought. His customer tried on the ring. He’d told her up front that the ring was a replica, but from then on he’d talked only about the real artifact. The history of the original embellished the copy of it.
“I love it! Would you please put it aside for me?” his customer said. “I’m going to ask my husband to buy it for my birthday.”
“Talk to Emma Jean at the counter up front. She’ll explain our policies on holding merchandise.” He locked the ring away in the jewelry display.
Val put down the eggcup as the tall, thickset man wearing a red plaid bow tie approached her. “Hello, Homer. We meet again. I’m Val, the caterer on Otto’s yacht.”
He looked at her over his reading glasses, which rested halfway down his nose. “I remember your excellent dinner, sadly cut short. Such a tragedy. And now, we hear a gun was involved. Do you know that a few Titanic survivors reported hearing gunshots as the lifeboats were deployed? Rather more realism than any of us bargained for Saturday night.” Homer tucked his reading glasses into his shirt pocket. “I’m delighted you stopped in. I have something to discuss with you. But first, have you found any treasures that interest you?”
“Nothing on this table caught my eye.” She pointed to the ocean liner souvenirs. “But I enjoyed your description of the ring. I couldn’t help overhearing the fascinating story behind it.”
“Unlike most antique purveyors, I tell the history behind the object, making it more meaningful. So often the story sells the item. Come with me and I’ll show you our vintage jewelry collection.” He led her to a wall decorated with dangling necklaces and bracelets. “Here you have high-quality costume jewelry. More valuable pieces are in the glass cases.”
“Do you have any real Titanic artifacts?”
He laughed. “Real artifacts go for a fortune. Low supply, high demand. Titanic museums in Southampton, Belfast, Halifax, and several states in this country want them, not to mention private collectors. The Amy bracelet you heard me describe was part of a jewelry collection that sold for two hundred million. A letter written on the Titanic, saved in the jacket a survivor wore, went for almost two hundred thousand dollars. I don’t have anything of that caliber, but I do have some White Star Line decorative objects, as well as jewelry and decorative items from the same era.” He pointed to a glass case along the wall. A sign on top read Titanic-Era Collectibles. “If you see anything in here that catches your fancy, I’ll unlock the case and you can look more closely at it.”
Val scanned the case for the bud vase that Otto had believed was his. Nothing like that was in it. “Is this the sort of thing Otto collected, or did he have genuine artifacts?”
“More the former than the latter, I suspect, though I’m not familiar with his collection.” Homer took a key from his pocket but tucked it back in after Val moved away from the glass case. “When I offered my condolences to Otto’s widow yesterday, I asked about the booklets from the mystery game. She said you were to fetch them from the yacht. If you’ve done so, I’d very much like to have them.” He paused and then added, “Happy to pick them up from . . . wherever you call home.”
Wherever you call home. Was that to convince her he couldn’t have pushed her into the trunk because he didn’t know where she lived? “Your booklet wasn’t with the others on the yacht. I assume you took it with you. Do you mind if I borrow it for a few days?”
“What are you going to do with the booklets in the next few days?”
“Satisfy my curiosity about how Otto’s game was supposed to end. What are you going to do with them?” Val suspected he planned to “lose” them, the sooner the better.
“Throw Titanic dinners, muc
h like Otto’s, but on land. People pay to attend mystery dinners. Mine would have the added attraction of a Titanic theme. I’ll move from table to table, share stories about the Titanic passengers, and showcase my collectibles to entice people to the shop.”
His marketing scheme impressed Val. He’d charge for the dinner and use it to drum up customers—but he didn’t need Otto’s scripts to do that. “You can download a mystery game much like Otto’s. I’ll send you a link for the website where you’ll find the game that I believe he based his on.”
Homer flicked his wrist. “I’ve played that game in the UK. Twice. I want to offer a unique experience.”
Val pounced on his words. “Unique because Otto customized it for the guests he invited?”
The antique dealer’s gray eyes hardened into stones. “Unique because no one else has a copy, and because there’s a real mystery associated with the fictional mystery. What happened to the girl on the Titanic, and what happened the first time the game was played?”
“You mean the dinner on a yacht, a storm on the bay, and a tragic death.” Probably a murder. “That’s the story you’re going to tell your guests?” Nothing like exploiting someone else’s misfortune.
“Precisely. The connection of the mystery game to a recent death would make the dinner more piquant, don’t you think? Past and present coming together. We will, of course, have a moment of silence for Otto.” Homer indulged in a split-second of silence. “I envision holding these dinners several times a year, if possible with multiple tables.” He smiled at her like a kindly uncle bestowing an unexpected gift. “Perhaps you’d like to cater the dinners?”
Otto’s proposed dinner had tempted Val. This one didn’t. She opened her mouth to decline, but changed her mind. As someone who could help him, she had a bargaining chip she could use to extract information. “We’d have to iron out the details. By the way, how did you meet Otto?”
“He visited the shop a few months ago. We found out we shared an interest in the Titanic.”
“And he became a regular customer?”
“No. He only came here a couple of times.”
But Cheyenne had visited the shop more often. Which of them had noticed Emma Jean’s tippling? “Were you surprised when Otto invited you to the dinner on the yacht?”
“Frankly, yes. He invited me under false pretenses, as I discovered. He led me to believe the dinner would be a gathering of Titanic enthusiasts who might be interested in my antiques. That proved not to be true. He also hinted that he planned to sell off some of the less expensive items in his collection and would give me first shot at them. Obviously, he can’t do that now, but perhaps his widow will.”
Not if she knew Homer would use the story of Otto’s death as dinner party entertainment.
The shop door had rung three times while Val was talking to Homer, and a couple of customers were now heading toward them. “I don’t want to take up any more of your time, Homer.” Cut to the chase. “Do you have your booklet with you?”
“No, I don’t, but let’s talk again.”
Val left Timeless Treasures without the one thing she’d come for, but the trip hadn’t been a waste. She’d been mistaken about Homer’s reasons for wanting the scripts. He wasn’t going to destroy the booklets with their hints that he was dishonest and his wife drank to excess. Rather, he’d hatched a scheme for making money from Otto’s game—an idea so weird that it had to be the truth.
Talking with Cheyenne, Emma Jean, and Homer had given Val insights into Otto and the mystery game that might explain his death. He’d assigned at least three guests roles intended to make them uneasy—the possible thief Trey, the possible fence Homer, and the definite imbiber Emma Jean. Did the parts Otto assigned the others at the table follow the same pattern? To answer that, Val would have to study not just the scripts but also the people who’d played the roles.
Chapter 14
On her way home from Homer’s antique shop, Val stopped off at the Bayport police station. Otto’s business card with the message on the back had been burning a hole in her pocket all day. If the chief wasn’t in the building, she’d leave the card at the reception desk with a note of explanation.
She was glad the chief was in his office and willing to see her. She sat across the desk from him, in a hard metal chair designed to discourage long visits.
He took a sheet of paper from a folder on his desk. “I was gone all day and just saw the report that someone assaulted you last night. The officer described it as a purse-snatching with minor injuries to the victim.”
She rubbed the bruise on the back of her right leg. Tender to the touch, but not otherwise painful. “I agree about the minor injuries, though being stuffed in my car’s trunk freaked me out. I don’t think the thief was after cash.”
“What then?”
“The booklets for the role-playing mystery game Otto created for his guests. I picked them up from the yacht.”
The chief rested his folded arms on the desk in an I’m-listening pose. “Why would anyone want them?”
“Otto modified a Titanic mystery game that he’d downloaded. He customized the plot and the roles, using the game to accuse his guests of crimes and failings he suspected they had in reality. Those guests might not want their faults to become public.”
Val recounted what she’d learned from her visit with Cheyenne and the trip to the antique shop. The chief took notes as she talked.
He twirled his pen when she finished. “Otto suspected Trey of stealing and Homer of fencing stolen items. He had no proof, so he taunted them through his mystery game?”
“Yes, and he intended to humiliate Homer’s wife. She’s fond of alcohol, like the character she was supposed to play in the game. Otto might have ferreted out the other guests’ secrets and planned to expose them. Maybe one of them put an end to his game and him.” She could tell she hadn’t yet convinced the chief that the game had been a factor in Otto’s death. “I found evidence on the yacht that Otto had set up a private meeting with one guest in the middle of dinner. Maybe they had a confrontation.”
The chief sat up straighter in his chair. “What evidence?”
She turned her jacket upside down over his desk and shook it until Otto’s business card fell out of the pocket. “This card dropped out of one of the booklets. I don’t know which one.”
The chief leaned over the note. “Meet me, swim platform 8:45. Hmm. We’ll check if this is Otto’s writing and if there are any fingerprints on the card.”
“Bethany and I handled it before we knew it had a note on the back. We may have smudged any prints that were on it.”
The chief grunted. “Even so, the note may be useful. Exactly what’s in those booklets?”
“The goal was to identify the person responsible for a young woman’s death. Each guest got a booklet containing lines to speak, questions to ask, and answers to give. To make it easier to see the big picture, Granddad, Bethany, Gunnar, and I are going to play all the parts tonight. We’ll do it while we eat the leftovers from Otto’s Titanic dinner. You want to join us at seven?”
“I’m not going to play a mystery game, but dinner sounds good. I’ll come if I don’t get bogged down with paperwork.” He pointed to a stack of folders on his desk. “I’ll call you either way.”
“If you come, you may be able to figure out who Otto’s culprit was. He put his solution in an envelope and hid it somewhere on the yacht. Did the officers who searched it find the envelope?”
He shook his head. “They were looking for evidence of a crime, not for a game piece.”
“Homer’s script wasn’t with the others. He took it with him on Saturday night. I went to his shop to get it, but he didn’t have it there.” Or so he’d said. She debated a moment before hinting at her suspicion that Homer had pushed her into the trunk. “I also found out Cheyenne told him that I was going to pick up the booklets yesterday evening. Bethany saw someone lurking near the yacht while we were there.”
H
e leaned forward. “Are you saying he followed you from the marina and pushed you into the trunk to get the scripts?”
“Possibly.” Another scenario popped into her head. “Or he might have told Trey I was going to get them.” It made more sense that Trey would hang around the Bayport marina than Homer, who lived in Annapolis.
The chief thought for a moment and shook his head. “You’re jumping to conclusions again, Val. Most people would assume there are other copies of this game. They wouldn’t risk an assault charge to suppress one set of them.” He picked up the paper in front of him and put it in a folder. “We’ll stick with what the report says for now—a purse snatcher. I’m looking forward to dinner tonight.”
A clear dismissal of her, but she hoped not of her information. “See you later, Chief.”
* * *
Val expected Granddad to be home, but his car wasn’t parked on the street when she pulled into the driveway. Usually by this time of the evening, if dinner wasn’t ready, he was popping open a beer and foraging for a snack.
As she climbed out of the car, she saw her neighbor Harvey fertilizing his lawn. He’d retired a year ago and now lavished time on the lawn and landscape he’d previously neglected. She greeted him and asked if he’d seen Granddad.
“Not for a couple of hours.” Harvey leaned toward her as if telling her a secret. “A woman visited him this afternoon and stayed a good while. Ten minutes after she left, he drove off. Haven’t seen him since.”
Val guessed Granddad’s visitor was a woman he knew from church or from the retirement village where some of his friends lived. “What did she look like?”
“Small like you, with short, brownish hair. Fifteen or so years older than you. Your grandfather’s quite a silver fox.” Harvey sounded as if he wouldn’t mind being a silver fox himself. He went back to fertilizing the lawn.
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