She was reflecting on how deceptive appearances could be as she made her way toward it. She took out her cell and snapped ten pictures of the flower, after which she went about the business of getting a sample. She was breaking off a stem when she felt rather than heard someone come up behind her. Before she could turn her head, the person had their forearm across Bernie’s neck, cutting off her breathing. She could feel the barrel of a gun jammed against the side of her forehead. Dumb, Bernie thought. Really dumb. The garden shed. I should have checked it.
“What you doing here?” A man’s voice, a voice she recognized as Ivan’s, asked her.
She wanted to answer him, but she couldn’t, because her vocal cords weren’t working.
Chapter 47
Libby’s eyes widened as Ivan opened the sliding glass door that led onto the patio and frog-marched her sister into the middle of the living room
“Look what I found snooping outside,” Ivan declared, throwing Bernie next to her sister and pointing his gun at Libby and Bernie.
Bernie rubbed her throat. “I take it that weapon is real?” she asked, her voice coming out in a croak.
“No. Is fake,” Ivan snapped.
“I thought it might be a prop,” Bernie replied. “Like at the play. When you were supposed to be guarding the teapot but were actually planning on stealing it.”
Ivan straightened up. “You think you’re so smart, but you not smart enough.”
“I think we can agree on that,” Libby said as she watched Ivan grab Bernie’s tote with his free hand.
“Looking for something?” Bernie asked as Ivan rummaged through it. “If you want my lipstick, it’s in my cosmetic case.”
Ivan ignored her and kept rummaging. “Aha,” he said a moment later, taking out her phone and holding it aloft. Then he went through the photos on the phone while keeping an eye on the sisters. “Why you taking this?” he demanded, showing Bernie the pictures of the yellow flowers.
“Would you believe I’m submitting them to a gardening magazine as the mystery flower of the month?” Bernie asked him.
Ivan didn’t smile. Neither did Alla.
“Not funny,” she said.
“I thought it was,” Bernie told her. She held out her hand. “Now if you’ll give me back my phone, we’ll be going. I didn’t realize we would be intruding.”
“You not going anywhere,” Ivan snarled.
“And how are you going to stop us?” Bernie asked him.
“Simple.” Ivan nodded toward the gun with his chin. “I shoot you.”
“Then you’d have to shoot all of us,” Bernie pointed out as she wondered where Casper was.
Ivan smiled. “Why not? I no see problem.”
“You’re not helping the situation,” Libby told Bernie.
“I’m open for suggestions,” Bernie replied.
“You two be quiet,” Alla ordered.
“I guess you could,” Bernie observed. “After all, if you’ve killed one person, another three probably wouldn’t matter. You know, in for a penny, in for a pound. Not that I know this from personal experience, you understand.”
Alla got up and stood next to Ivan. “Ivan is a hot head. I’m not. Maybe I make you some tea, and we all feel better, yes? Then we can talk.”
“No,” Libby said. “No tea.”
“It’s good,” Alla told her. “It’s special.”
Bernie laughed. “That’s one way of putting it. You should have stuck with rigging the teakettle,” Bernie informed her. “The poison was de trop.”
Alla wrinkled her nose. “De trop? What does that mean?”
“French words that mean over the top, too much,” Libby informed her.
“Told you,” Ivan said to her.
“You be quiet,” Alla admonished.
“Why?” Ivan asked her. “They no be speaking to anyone.”
“You can’t kill us,” Bernie repeated.
“And why is this?” Ivan asked. “You just said I could.”
“That’s not what I meant,” Bernie told him. “Anyway, think of the labor involved in getting rid of three bodies.”
“Not that hard,” Ivan said, grinning unpleasantly.
“In any case,” Bernie continued, “people know we’re here. They’ll come looking for us.”
“And we will tell them we don’t see you,” Alla told her.
Bernie decided to change the conversation to a pleasanter topic. “So how long have you been seeing this guy?” Bernie asked Alla, indicating Ivan with a nod of her head.
“Magda introduced us,” Alla replied.
“You know Magda?” Libby asked.
Alla nodded. “Yes. She is my cousin. She gave me the idea for this.”
Wonderful, Bernie thought. “Was that you in the apartment when Libby and I came to speak to Ivan and Igor?” she asked.
“Da.” Alla stroked Ivan’s arm. “Ludvoc, he was a bad man. He promised everyone everything, but he didn’t have anything to give. He rented everything.”
“Except for the teapot,” Libby said.
Ivan and Alla both nodded.
“We need to know where it is,” Ivan said.
“We are waiting for the short, fat one to come back.” Alla said to Ivan. “He will tell us.”
“I wouldn’t call him that,” Bernie protested. “He’s very sensitive about his weight.”
Ivan ignored her. “Where is he?” he asked Alla. “I thought you said they both come together.”
Alla nodded toward the hallway. “He is in the bathroom. He told me he drank too much coffee and he had to go pee because he had a nervous bladder.”
“We wait,” Ivan announced. Five minutes later, when Casper hadn’t come out, Ivan announced that he was going into the bathroom to check. He handed Alla the gun. “You keep eye on them,” he instructed her.
Bernie looked at her sister and nodded imperceptibly. Libby nodded back and started her spiel.
“I told you this wasn’t a good plan,” she said to her sister. “In fact, this is the epitome of a not-good plan.”
“Not true,” Bernie replied, taking a step closer to Alla.
“How can you say that?” Libby countered.
“I can and I am,” Bernie responded. “The problem with you is that you’re too negative.”
“Negative?” Libby said indignantly. “You really are crazy.”
“Me crazy?” Bernie cried as she slowly inched closer to Alla. “I’m not crazy. You’re stupid.”
“Are you calling me stupid?” Libby screamed. By now she and Bernie were within an arm’s reach of Alla.
“I most certainly am,” Bernie told her as she prepared to shove Libby into Alla. She was just about to when Ivan came running back in.
“Casper no there,” he yelled. “He go out window. How you be so stupid?”
Alla flushed. “Me stupid?”
“Stupid seems to be the word of the day,” Bernie commented as she reached out her hand. She was just about to grab for the gun when she heard a noise. A loud noise. A loud noise that was getting closer. It sounded like their van, Bernie decided. And she was correct. It was their van.
Everyone looked up just in time to see Mathilda speeding over the front lawn. Casper was in the driver’s seat, and he had a demonic look on his face. The van was heading toward the house. A moment later, Mathilda tore through the living room wall with a tremendous roar. Alla dropped the gun and ran into the kitchen. Everyone else scattered. Mathilda went a little farther and stopped with a jerk in front of the sofa.
Casper jumped out of Mathilda and ran toward Alla. “Now we’re even,” he screamed at her as Libby picked up the gun Alla had dropped and turned it on Ivan, who had been stunned into immobility.
“I’ll call the police,” Bernie said, taking back her phone from Ivan.
“You do that,” Libby told her as she watched Casper tackle Alla and bring her to the ground.
“You ruined everything,” he growled at Alla. “Everything. Now I’
m going to have to go back to dinner theater.”
Chapter 48
Three weeks later, Bernie, Libby, Sean, Marvin, and Clyde were gathered at Michelle’s shop for its official opening. By now the majority of the crowd had dispersed, leaving the Simmonses, the Simmonses’ friends, Michelle’s friends, and her staff behind. Thirty people in all.
The opening had gone well, with Michelle giving out free samples of the food she was going to sell, food Bernie and Libby were distressed to see was a lot like the food they were selling. So was the store layout, for that matter. Maybe the colors on the walls weren’t exactly the same shade as the ones on the walls of A Little Taste of Heaven, but they sure weren’t that far apart either.
Bernie, Libby, Marvin, and Clyde were quietly standing off in the corner discussing Casper’s stunt with Mathilda, while Sean was near the display cases chatting with Michelle’s friends.
“It’s a miracle she’s still running,” Libby was saying, her eyes darting to her dad and back again.
“No,” Marvin said, “it’s a miracle you’re still alive.”
“That too,” Libby agreed. “Thanks to Casper. Otherwise we’d be dead.”
“Disagree. When it comes down to it, I don’t think Ivan or Alla would have shot us,” Bernie said. “I think they would have tied us up and run away.”
“As you pointed out, they already killed one person. Why not three?” Libby demanded.
“So did Casper actually bring the teapot over to Alla’s house?” Marvin asked, interrupting the conversation. Just hearing about the possibility of Libby or Bernie being killed was enough to make him feel queasy.
Bernie shook her head. “Nope. It was at the shop.”
“So where is it now?” asked Marvin.
“The bank has it. I understand it’s going to go back on the market again.”
Bernie explained.
“Zalinsky bought it with money he borrowed from the National Bank of Florida. He got that money by putting up the apartment building he ‘owned’”—Bernie did air quotes with her fingers—“and by using the painting he’d rented as collateral. His fortune was all a house of cards.”
“And no one thought to check?” Marvin asked. “I find that hard to believe.”
“He forged the provenances,” Libby told him. “And anyway, the more it looks like you have money, the less people are tempted to investigate.”
“Lucky my father got paid in advance,” Marvin observed.
“Yes, it is,” Bernie agreed. “I’ll say this for Zalinsky, though. He was a pretty good con man.”
“But not good enough,” Libby pointed out.
“True,” Bernie agreed. “If he was, he’d be in Belize right now, soaking up the sun and planning his next scam instead of six feet under in the Longely cemetery.”
Marvin took a sip of water and rested his cup on the wrought-iron table next to the window. “I thought for sure it was Erin that killed him.”
“Me too,” Bernie replied.
“So why Alla?” he asked.
“Because,” Bernie told him, “not only had Zalinsky ditched Erin for a younger model, but he was in the process of ditching Alla as well.”
“And Magda,” Libby said. “Don’t forget about her.”
“I don’t think I’d have the energy,” Clyde commented, speaking up for the first time. “Even when I was younger. Three women. That’s too much for me.”
“And evidently for Zalinsky as well,” Libby said.
“For sure,” Bernie agreed. “And if you do do that, here’s what you don’t do,” she said, warming to the topic. “You don’t ditch the woman you’re using to help you steal something. Especially when that woman knows about poisons and her boyfriend knows about electricity.”
“Well, Zalinsky didn’t know that,” Libby said.
“Evidently not,” Bernie agreed. “He wasn’t as smart as he thought he was.”
“But how did Alla find out about the other woman?” Marvin asked.
“She didn’t. Magda did. She listened in on one of Zalinsky’s phone calls, after which she started going through his financial statements. She was so upset with what she found that she went to her cousin Alla for advice . . .”
“Which was how Alla found out,” Clyde said, finishing Bernie’s sentence for her.
Marvin frowned. “But why electrocute the man and poison him at the same time? Why not one or the other?”
Clyde stifled a cough. “According to the statement Alla gave, she wanted to make sure he was dead, dead, dead. She wasn’t sure that the shock would do it, so she decided to add an insurance policy.”
“Well, she certainly accomplished that,” Libby observed.
“And Ivan?” Marvin asked. “How did he figure in this?”
“He was just the poor shmuck who went along for the ride,” Clyde said. “Sex is a powerful incentive.”
“Speaking of ride, let’s not forget our tires,” Libby said.
“That was just because Ivan wanted to put suspicion on Jason,” Bernie said. “He saw us talking to him and figured we’d suspect him when we came out of The Blue House. Which we did.”
“So what’s going to happen to Alla, Ivan, and Magda?” Marvin asked. There hadn’t been anything in the local paper to date.
Clyde answered. “Magda agreed to testify against Ivan and Alla, so she’s probably going away for seven years and will be out in three, while Alla and Ivan will be going on trial for murder two.”
“And The Blue House?” Marvin asked.
“Evidently, the town is going to take it over,” Bernie answered.
“Well, that’s one good thing to come out of this at least,” Marvin said.
“True,” Libby said.
“And you can’t say Zalinsky wasn’t a force to be reckoned with,” Bernie said.
“Also true,” Clyde agreed. He was about to say it was a force he could do without when Michelle clapped her hands.
Everyone turned toward her. She smiled and began to talk. “The first thing I want to do is thank everyone for coming. I want to especially thank Bernie and Libby for being my inspiration.” At that point, she gestured to Bernie and Libby, leaving them no option but to smile their thanks, even though that was the last thing they wanted to do. “It’s been a long, hard slog,” Michelle continued, “but I finally made it, and I hope to see everyone back here soon, and if you like my stuff, I hope you’ll tell your friends about this place. I’d really appreciate it.”
“We will,” one of Michelle’s friends called out.
“Definitely,” another of Michelle’s friends said.
Everyone clapped.
“Super,” Michelle replied. Her smile grew. “And now I have one more announcement to make. An important one.”
Libby turned to Bernie. For some reason, Libby could feel a knot in her stomach, and she could tell from the expression on Bernie’s face that Bernie was feeling the same way she was.
Michelle paused again to increase the suspense. Then she said, “This just happened, and I am so happy that I wanted to share it with you immediately. Sean and I have decided to get engaged.”
Everyone started clapping and stamping their feet and catcalling. Except for Libby and Bernie. They were in shock.
“This is not going to turn out well,” Libby predicted when she got her voice back.
But Bernie hadn’t heard what Libby was saying because she was looking at her dad. Was it her imagination, or did he seem to be in shock too? Or was that just wishful thinking on her part?
“We have to do something,” Libby whispered in Bernie’s ear.
“Yes, we do,” Bernie replied.
The question was what.
RECIPES
I have three recipes for you. I thought I’d have four, but making clotted cream turned out to be much more difficult than I imagined. I’m going to give you the recipe anyway, though, because it is the traditional adjunct to scones and strawberry jam in an English tea, and because maybe you
’ll have better luck than I did. Also, clotted cream is delicious, and you can always whip the cream if worse comes to worst.
The recipe is simplicity itself. Take two pints of heavy (not ultra-pasteurized) cream, then put a filter in a coffee basket, put the basket in a strainer, put the strainer in a bowl, and pour the cream into the filter in the basket. Put the bowl with the strainer in the fridge for six hours, and scrape down the sides of the filter with a spatula every once in a while. The whey will separate from the cream, and what is left in the strainer will be clotted cream. At least that’s the theory. Only, as I said, it didn’t work for me. I’m not sure why. If you want to have a go, please feel free and write me if you’re successful. I’d love to know what I’m doing wrong.
CHINESE MARBLED EGGS
In keeping with the tea theme, the next recipe is for Chinese marbled eggs, basically hard-boiled eggs with their shells cracked and marinated in soy sauce, tea, and spices. This recipe uses black tea, which can either be loose or in bags. The eggs are easy to make, they’re a great snack, they look cool, and kids seem to love them. It’s one of those recipes that you can tinker with.
6 large eggs
1 or 2 tablespoons or 1 or 2 tea bags of black tea
½ to ¾ of a cup of soy sauce
2 tablespoons of Chinese five-spice powder or two-star anise
1 cinnamon stick
1 teaspoon of sugar
A couple of strips of dried tangerine peel
Bring water to a boil, put in the 6 large eggs, and let them cook for 3 to 5 minutes. Then take the pot off the burner, take the eggs out, allow them to cool, and carefully crack the shells. You can do this with the back of a spoon or by rolling them around on the counter. The deeper the cracks, the more the marbling. Then add to a pan with boiling water the black tea, the soy sauce, the Chinese five-spice powder or two-star anise, the cinnamon stick, and the sugar. You can also add a couple of strips of dried tangerine peel if you have that on hand. Put the eggs back into the pot and bring the water to a boil. Then turn the heat down to a low simmer, cover the pan, and let the eggs cook for 30 minutes or so. Remove from heat and let them steep for anywhere from 2 hours to overnight in the fridge.
A Catered Tea Party Page 26