A Catered Tea Party

by Isis Crawford

  “How so?” Sean asked, not that he really wanted to know. “Maybe Mike is lying.”

  “Why would he?” Libby demanded. “He has nothing to gain.”

  “Maybe he’s just one of those guys who likes to start trouble,” Sean posited. He knew his hypothesis was lame, but it was the best he could come up with at the moment.

  Libby made a can-you-be-serious-gesture with her hands, then put them on her hips, always a bad sign. “That I doubt. Michelle just wants to copy our recipes.”

  “Now you’re being paranoid,” Sean told her.

  “Really?” Libby began tapping her foot on the floor. “Then why did she name her shop after ours.”

  “The names are similar, Libby. They’re not the same. And I already explained that was my fault. Michelle asked me if you’d mind, and I said you wouldn’t. I should have been paying more attention,” Sean added ruefully. “She’d change the name, but it’s too late now. The sign has already been made. So if you want to blame anyone, blame me.”

  “Of course, I don’t want to blame you,” Libby said, but Sean looked at Libby and knew from the tightness in her jaw that she wasn’t mollified.

  He sighed again, a longer deeper sigh. He’d known this was going to be difficult; he just hadn’t realized how difficult it was going to be. After all, Libby and Bernie weren’t like this when he’d been seeing Inez. In fact, they’d been encouraging. Sean rubbed his chin with the thumb of his left hand. Could they feel this way because Michelle was so much younger? Was that it?

  “Maybe,” Sean suggested to Libby, “you should take Michelle choosing a similar name to your shop as a compliment.”

  “Maybe we should,” Bernie said, trying to broker peace. Not that she didn’t feel the same way that Libby did; she was just determined to take a different path. She believed that harping on Michelle would drive her dad further into Michelle’s arms, so she ignored Libby’s glare and changed the subject to something she knew her dad would like to discuss. “Do you mind if we talk about the case?” she asked him.

  “By all means,” a relieved Sean replied.

  Libby didn’t say anything. She grumped over to the sofa, sat herself down, and sulked. Bernie ignored her and started talking. She was in the middle of telling their dad about what had happened to their van and discussing why Jason might or might not have been the perpetrator when the downstairs door opened and Bernie heard the clop of heels coming up the stairs.

  “I hope I didn’t interrupt anything,” Michelle trilled as she opened the door a second later and came inside the flat. She gestured with her chin to the white box she was carrying. “I just came by to drop off some sugar cookies.”

  “You’re not interrupting anything at all,” Bernie said sweetly. “We were just talking about the case.”

  “Oh yes, the case.” Michelle gave a little laugh. “I understand you two are at a standstill.”

  Libby roused herself. “And who told you that?”

  Michelle’s smile got brighter. “Marvin.”

  “Where did you see him?” Libby asked, feeling something ugly begin to stir in her belly.

  “Oh, he was buying a salad at Whole Foods. He’s really quite delightful,” Michelle said, giving Libby her full-on-charming smile. “You’re lucky to have him.”

  “I know,” Libby replied, forcing a smile, while what she really wanted to say was don’t talk to him, don’t look at him, don’t even think about him. But she didn’t. Even she knew her reaction was over the top.

  Michelle waved in Sean’s direction. “Well, don’t let me stop you. I know Sean is anxious to hear the progress you’re making—he told me so yesterday, didn’t you, dear?” At which point she walked over, planted a kiss on the top of Sean’s head, then put the box of cookies on the side table next to Sean’s armchair. “A snack for later,” she told him. “You two have been so busy,” she explained to Bernie and Libby. “I know he misses seeing you and eating those special treats you make him. Not, of course, that I could take your place.”

  “That’s not exactly what I said, Michelle,” Sean informed her as she perched on the arm of the chair Sean was sitting on.

  Michelle did a pretend pout. “You know you did, sweetie.” She turned to Bernie and Libby. “Your dad is so adorable.” Then before Libby or Bernie could say anything, Michelle added, “You’re coming to my opening, right?”

  “We wouldn’t miss it for the world,” Bernie replied. “So sorry we have to go now,” she added, grabbing Libby by the hand before her sister could say anything.

  “Are you going detectiving?” Michelle asked.

  “That’s exactly what we’re doing,” Bernie said as she dragged Libby toward the door.

  “Oh, that sounds so exciting,” Michelle squealed. “Maybe you’ll let me come with you sometime.”

  “We’d love to,” Bernie said.

  “It’s funny how things work out,” Michelle said to Bernie as Bernie was closing the door to the flat.

  Something in Michelle’s voice made Bernie open the door again.

  “Meaning what?” Bernie asked, sticking her head into the room.

  Michelle waved her hand in the air. “I feel bad.”

  “Bad about what?” Bernie asked.

  Michelle contrived to look guilty, “All the problems you’re having.”

  “How’s that your fault?” Bernie asked in her nicest voice.

  Michelle let out a nervous giggle. “Well, Ludvoc asked me if I wanted to cater his soirée, and I said no. Thank God. Otherwise, I would have been the person involved in the mess you’re in.”

  Bernie and Libby both stepped back into the room.

  “You never said you knew Zalinsky,” Bernie said to Michelle.

  “Oh dear,” Michelle replied, contriving to show remorse. “I’m so sorry. I thought I did.”

  “No, you didn’t,” Bernie replied.

  Michelle wrinkled her forehead. “Are you sure?”

  “Of course, she’s sure,” Libby said. She was about to make an extremely unpleasant comment when Bernie laid a restraining hand on her arm, so she just scowled instead.

  Michelle reacted by looking even more contrite.

  Sean patted her knee. “I’m sure you didn’t do it on purpose,” he said to her.

  Michelle sniffed and gave him a grateful smile. “Of course, I didn’t. And I didn’t know, know Ludvoc, if you know what I mean. I’d just talked to him a few times.”

  “Where?” Libby said sharply.

  “At a couple of receptions at the Asia Institute.”

  “What were you doing there?” Libby demanded.

  “It’s not like I was born in a barn,” Michelle snapped, her hurt feelings forgotten for the moment. “What do you think I was doing there?”

  Bernie took a step toward Michelle. “That’s not what my sister meant,” she said in a soothing voice.

  Michelle harrumphed, but Bernie noticed she had relaxed her shoulders, a sign that her level of hostility had gone down.

  “I went to school with Lucy Chin. She’s the curator there,” Michelle explained when she saw the blank looks on Bernie and Libby’s faces.

  Bernie and Libby exchanged glances.

  “Do you think she would talk to us?” Bernie inquired of Michelle, even though it killed Bernie to ask her father’s girlfriend for a favor.

  Michelle’s smile returned, broader than ever. “I’m sure she would if I asked her to.” She bent over and opened the box of cookies she’d brought, took two out, and offered one to Bernie and the other to Libby. “I’ll be very interested to hear what you think of these,” Michelle purred.

  Libby smiled as she accepted one—even though she didn’t want the cookie and she didn’t want to smile. She has us right where she wants us, Libby thought as she took a bite. Then she got even unhappier because the ginger-flavored shortbread fan really was very good. Better than hers and Bernie’s, in fact.

  Chapter 40

  As it turned out, Michelle proved to b
e as good as her word about arranging a meeting. A day later, Bernie and Libby found themselves in Lucy Chin’s office at ten in the morning, drinking tea out of bone china cups and nibbling on whole wheat apricot biscuits. The Asia Institute didn’t open until eleven on Thursdays, so the only sounds the sisters heard were the hum of the floor polisher on the hardwoods outside Lucy Chin’s office, the rumble and honking of the traffic on Park Avenue, and the quiet comings and goings of guests in the upstairs bedrooms.

  The building, a three-story, white limestone affair, had been built in the days of the robber barons, the days when families were large and the staffs that cared for them even larger. The mansion had belonged to one of New York’s wealthier families; over the years, it had gone through various incarnations as a variety of embassies, libraries, and private clubs for alums of the Ivy League. Now, as the members-only Asia Institute, it was all plush carpeting, dark wooden floors, cream-colored plaster walls, high ceilings, and subdued lighting. The former ballroom had been turned into a library with floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, comfortable armchairs, and reading tables, while the dining room and the kitchen had been updated, and the garden had been filled with Japanese plantings.

  The Institute sponsored art exhibitions, lectures, and trips to various overseas destinations, as well as providing a quiet place for its members should they wish to conduct business meetings there. The bedrooms on the second and third floors, eight of them, all with private bathrooms and canopied king-sized beds, could be reserved for visiting out-of-town guests and were frequently full during the holidays.

  As Bernie admired the slender white vase filled with a few yellow blossoms on Lucy Chin’s desk, she couldn’t help thinking that Zalinsky must have felt out of place in the quiet, hushed atmosphere. He was too loud, too big, too boisterous. If Bernie felt ill at ease here, she couldn’t imagine what Zalinsky had felt.

  She wondered if his experiences here had been the impetus behind the building of The Blue House. She thought maybe they were, that he’d built the art center as an I’ll-show-you kind of thing, a gauntlet flung down to the culturally elite.

  “Nice flowers,” Bernie said as she took a sip of her tea.

  Lucy Chin smiled. “The color is pretty, don’t you think?”

  Bernie and Libby both nodded.

  “What are they?” Bernie asked.

  Lucy Chin shook her head. “I have no idea. The florist brings a new arrangement twice a week.” She leaned forward. “Although he did warn me not to eat them or use them to make tea. He said they were quite toxic.” She gave a little laugh. “Who would eat flowers?”

  “Well, they did in the Middle Ages,” Bernie said. “And some people still do. Like rose petals in a salad, for instance. Or nasturtiums.”

  “I much prefer looking at them,” Lucy Chin replied. She re-crossed her legs. “So what do you think of the tea you’re drinking?” she asked, changing the subject.

  Bernie didn’t think much of it, but she was hardly going to say that. “Interesting,” she said instead. “I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  “I’m not surprised,” Lucy Chin said. “It’s not to everyone’s palate.”

  “It’s”—Bernie searched for a neutral word to describe the taste—“earthy.”

  “What kind of tea is it?” Libby asked, wondering how much of it she had to drink to be polite.

  “It’s called pu-erh tea. It’s from China’s Yunnan province,” Lucy Chin answered. “I get it from a purveyor out in Flushing. It has a multitude of health benefits.”

  “I’ve never heard of it,” Libby said.

  Lucy Chin nodded her head as if Libby’s comment reconfirmed what she already knew. “You’re not alone. A lot of people haven’t,” Lucy Chin told her. “It’s extremely rare and expensive because it’s post-fermented.”

  “Post-fermented?” Libby repeated.

  “The tea is fermented for varying amounts of time after the tea leaves have been fried and rolled. It’s a very difficult, exacting process,” Lucy Chin explained, seeing the puzzled look on Libby and Bernie’s faces. “It takes years to master the technique.”

  “Is that like the yellow tea Zalinsky drank?” Bernie asked.

  “Hardly.” Lucy Chin frowned at Bernie’s lack of knowledge. “You don’t drink much tea, do you?”

  “No, I don’t,” Bernie admitted, feeling as if she should.

  “Well, that tea is in a completely different category.” Lucy Chin raised her hand. “But enough about tea. We could spend all day talking about it. Michelle said you wanted to know about Ludvoc,” she said, using Zalinsky’s first name. She took a delicate nibble of her biscuit.

  Looking at her, Bernie reflected that she was probably one of those ladies you see on Fifth Avenue sauntering along, looking cool and collected, never mind that it’s a hundred degrees. Lucy Chin would look elegant wearing a potato sack, Bernie decided. Even though Bernie was wearing her Missoni and her Prada sandals and had felt good leaving her flat, she now felt dowdy and fat and sweaty.

  Bernie stole a look at Libby. She didn’t seem to care, but Bernie didn’t want to think about the impression her sister, in her Bermuda shorts and polo shirt, was making on Lucy Chin.

  Bernie nodded. “Did you know him well?”

  “Really hardly at all,” Lucy Chin said.

  “Well, anything you can tell us would be appreciated,” Libby told her.

  “I’m afraid you’ve made the trip down from Longely for nothing then. I don’t have much to say about him,” Lucy Chin said, resting her biscuit on the edge of her saucer. “He was only here for the receptions, and our conversations were superficial at best. He and his girlfriend . . .”

  Bernie leaned forward. “Girlfriend?” she asked.

  Lucy Chin corrected herself. “Fiancée, I think. In any case, she was wearing a rather large engagement ring.”

  “Was her name Erin?” Bernie asked.

  Lucy Chin shook her head. “I don’t recall.”

  “Magda?” Libby queried.

  “Sorry, that doesn’t ring a bell.”

  Libby leaned forward too. “What did she look like?”

  Lucy Chin thought. “I think maybe Russian. Good posture. Dark hair. Lots of jewelry. Lots of makeup. Expensive dress. Nothing out of the ordinary.”

  “Anything else?” Libby asked.

  “Not really.” Lucy Chin took another sip of her tea. “All these Russian women look the same to me. You know, I like to chat with everyone at our events,” she added, “but since they are usually quite well attended, all I have a chance to do is say hello and move on.”

  “Did Zalinsky want to join the Asia Institute?” Libby asked.

  Lucy Chin laughed at the absurdity of the idea. “That’s not how we do things here. This is a private club. You can’t join. You have to be sponsored and voted on by the members.”

  Libby smoothed down the collar of her polo shirt. Even though Bernie hadn’t wanted her to wear what she was wearing, Libby was glad that she had. At least she was comfortable, which was more than she could say for her sister in her four-inch heels and tight silk sheath. Why Bernie had insisted on wearing something like that in the city when the temperature was supposed to top one hundred degrees was beyond Libby.

  “And would anyone have sponsored him?” Libby asked, picking up on Lucy Chin’s tone.

  “Probably not,” Lucy Chin said, dismissing the idea with a wave of her hand. “And even if someone did, Ludvoc probably wouldn’t have gotten all the votes he needed. It has to be unanimous.”

  “And why do you think he wouldn’t have been voted in?” Bernie asked.

  Lucy Chin took another sip of her tea and put the cup down. “Because,” she replied, “to put it bluntly, he wouldn’t fit in here. Most of our members are on a certain economic and social level.”

  “And Zalinsky was a self-made man,” Bernie observed.

  Lucy Chin nodded. She fingered a strand of pearls around her neck.

  “But he was
interested in the arts,” Libby pointed out.

  “From what I could tell by the tenor of his conversations,” Lucy Chin replied, “he was mostly interested in acquiring pieces of art,” she made the word acquiring sound like a dirty word, “whereas our members are interested in deepening their knowledge and appreciation.”

  “Are you referring to Zalinsky acquiring the clay Yixing teapot?” Bernie asked.

  Lucy Chin nodded. “Just so. Because he wanted to brew his tea in it, he was willing to pay an exorbitant amount of money.”

  “So then other members of the Asia Institute wouldn’t want it?” Bernie asked.

  “Of course they would,” Lucy Chin answered. “It’s a masterpiece.”

  “Then I don’t see what the difference is,” Libby said.

  “What I mean,” Lucy Chin said in a tone that made it clear that Libby’s question was too obvious to merit a reply, but she was going to explain anyway because that’s the type of person she was, “is that there are people who are collectors, and then there are people who just want stuff because it confers a level of respectability on them. No one who is a member here would have purchased that teapot and treated it the way Ludvoc did.”

  She sniffed. “Using something like that as a stage prop, in a production of Alice in Wonderland, no less. Ridiculous. Trying to garner publicity with it. Absolutely unacceptable.” The corners of her mouth turned down. “No one who had any true feeling for the teapot would have done something like that.” Lucy Chin’s voice rose and wobbled with indignation. “No one.”

  “What would they have done?” Libby asked.

  “Well,” Lucy Chin replied, “I’ll tell you what they wouldn’t have done. They wouldn’t have turned the teapot into a media circus, for one thing. They would have treated the teapot with the respect it merited. They wouldn’t have bragged about how much money they’d spent on it so that that was the only thing people thought about when they saw it.”

  Lucy Chin took a deep breath and got hold of herself. Then she took another sip of her tea and put the cup down gently on the saucer, which was sitting on top of a black lacquered table, which Bernie assumed was hundreds of years old.