“I’d call it Murder at the Stone and Scone,” Jemima said, working on a crocheted baby blanket in Christmas colors, a snowflake the center of each square with a border of red or green. She had a great-grandchild due in November and wanted to be ready.
“We have a cast of characters,” Rose said, deciding to play along. “We have the nervous innkeeper who seems extra jumpy this year, as opposed to the past.”
Jemima paused in her crocheting. “That’s true, isn’t it? Bertie is all over the place, jittery like a long-tailed cat in a room full of rocking chairs. Why do you suppose that’s so?”
“He was convinced that Zunia was going to talk us all into holding the convention somewhere else next year. He counts on this as a revenue boost.”
Faye Alice, who had run a bed-and-breakfast in the past after a career in the navy, nodded sagely. “No one event could sink him, but once word got around that we were not coming back, speculation would be rife. It could have been the beginning of the end.”
“But he knows now we’ll be back, so why is he still so jumpy?” Rose said.
“Can you blame him?” Faye Alice said, looking down her nose at them, her gray brows arched. “The police are ever-present and he’s had to postpone and move bookings for tonight. I believe Bertie is close to a nervous breakdown.”
“Go on with the cast of characters, Rose,” Jemima said, her eyes gleaming. “This is like watching a good episode of Murder, She Wrote.”
“Okay, we’ve got the wealthy patrician pair, Walter and Nora Sommer, dilettantes. He’s a playboy, she’s a club woman.”
“Oooh!” Jemima cooed, finishing a square and directly starting another, chaining for the center of the next snowflake. “He cheats with the dead woman and she’s a jealous harpy! Nora did it!”
Faye Alice said, “I’ll bet you always think you know who did it in the opening scene of the Murder, She Wrote episode, too, right?”
Jemima paused to count out her chain, but then said, “The kids gave me a box set of DVDs for my birthday, so I do always know who did it.”
“Then there is the wretched husband,” Laverne said. She cast a look at her father and Horace, chatting with Orlando and Walter, who had joined them. “I sure hope those two don’t get themselves in trouble. Eli would not be happy if his grandfather interfered in the investigation.”
Jemima shivered. “I just can’t look at Orlando when he mops his nose like that; it’s so . . . ick!”
“He can’t help having allergies,” Rose said.
Thelma stomped over to the table and stood glaring at them. “I say you’re all missing the point,” she said. “No one listens to me. You’re all gib-gabbing away, but don’t see what’s right in front of your nose.”
“And that would be?” Rose asked, smiling up at what Sophie called her frenemy.
Thelma leaned over and said, “That Nora woman, Mrs. Sourpuss . . . She and the innkeeper are having a fling. Told you I saw her coming out of his office!”
“Even if that was true—which I doubt—what has that got to do with anything?” Rose asked.
Thelma harrumphed and plunked down in an empty seat. “Don’t know yet, haven’t gotten that far.”
“Anyway, we were going through the suspects,” Faye Alice Benson said, shooting an irritated look at Thelma. “Who else?”
“Well, the husband, of course,” Rose answered. “He’s always a suspect.”
“Poor Orlando,” Jemima said, softly. “I feel sorry for him with that nasty daughter, Zunia getting herself murdered and Dahlia creating all kinds of trouble for him.”
Rose took a deep breath as Laverne watched her and bit her lip. “Orlando had an affair, from what I understand, and then deserted his daughter and wife, getting a quickie divorce and marrying the other woman. Given Zunia’s character, I think we can agree that he was headed in the wrong direction. Don’t you think if Emma is nasty it is her father’s behavior that is at least partially to blame? It can’t be easy on the child, being dragged to this dull convention with the stepmother she loathed, all to put on a display of fake family solidarity.”
“Having to put up with Zunia could not have been a picnic,” Laverne added.
Jemima’s cheeks colored pink and she bent to her crocheting. “I was just giving my opinion.” She finished the loop to start another square, then gathered her crocheting, stuffed it in a cloth bag and rose. “I think I’ll go up and have a nap before dinner.” She flounced off.
“What bit her bum?” Thelma griped, watching her leave the room.
Faye Alice stood and straightened her beige slacks. “It’s this heat and all the nastiness. She’s touchy. I think I’m going up, too, for a bit.”
When she exited Rose heard a cry of shock through the open door, and Laverne did, too. They both headed to the lobby, where they saw nothing, at first, until Rose spotted Sophie bent over on the floor. “Sophie!” she cried, stumbling.
Laverne grabbed her arm to keep her from taking a tumble. “Slow down and take it easy! Sophie’s okay; it’s Bertie who’s in trouble.”
They approached and found that Sophie was kneeling by Bertie Handler, who was shrieking like a banshee. Her granddaughter was wrapping his hand in a tissue while she tried to soothe him.
“Mr. Handler, it’s okay. Yes, there is blood, but it’s just a small cut, really! Nothing major.”
“What’s going on?” Laverne said sharply.
“He cut his hand on a letter opener,” Sophie said over the wailing cry of the innkeeper. “I can’t get him to shut up!”
Domenico, the new cleaner, bolted toward them. “Te puedo ayudar?”
“Sabes de primeros auxilios?” Laverne asked.
“Si. Soy una enfermera.”
“What did you say?” Sophie asked, looking up at Laverne.
“He asked if he could help and I asked if he knew first aid. He said, yes, he’s a nurse!” Laverne answered, looking bemused.
Domenico dashed into the office and Rose could see him locating the first-aid box mounted on the wall. He rapidly sorted through it and came back with alcohol, peroxide, ointment and bandages. As Sophie sat cross-legged on the floor by them he donned plastic gloves, then crooned in Spanish and tossed the bloody tissues aside as he examined the wound.
“Will you help?” he asked Sophie, with a thick accent, looking up at her. “Is not so bad, but he nervous.”
“Of course.”
Bertie had calmed somewhat but still looked away. He had some kind of revulsion to blood, Sophie guessed. As Dom worked efficiently, cleaning the wound with alcohol, dabbing with peroxide, then applying ointment, she looked up at her grandmother and Laverne with raised eyebrows. She had wondered about Bertie as the culprit, given his run-in with Zunia about moving the convention and her threat and false lawsuit. But surely a man who couldn’t stand the sight of blood would not kill someone by bashing them over the head.
Dom finished up and Sophie gingerly disposed of the bloody tissues and disposable gloves, then helped the nurse to his feet. “Thank you, Dom,” she said, patting his shoulder.
He ducked his head, then examined Bertie closely. “You okay now?” he asked. He put one hand under the innkeeper’s elbow and helped him up.
Bertie nodded. “I’m all right. I just can’t handle the sight of blood, even my own!” He shuddered. “Uh, Domenico, thank you! You have the job, if you want it; it’ll be wonderful having you here.”
He nodded.
“Sophie, could you help me into my office?” Bertie plaintively whined. “And get rid of that garbage bag with the bloody tissues, please!”
“Sure, Mr. Handler.” She cupped her hand under his elbow.
Thelma, panting heavily, joined them and eyed the innkeeper. “Why don’tcha get your girlfriend to help you out?” she loudly asked.
“Girlfriend?” Sophie asked.<
br />
“Yeah, that Nora Sommer. She’s your girlfriend, right? I saw her comin’ out of your office that night, the night that woman got herself murdered.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about, you horrible . . . you . . . You’re mistaken,” he finished, his voice breaking. “Sophie, please, help me!”
Laverne grabbed Thelma’s arm, and said, “Just let them be, Thelma. You’re making a scene.”
Indeed, the folks from the convention room were buzzing, whispering and watching. Bertie’s face was blanched and he wavered on his feet.
“Sophie, you help Bertie into his office. We’ll get Thelma out of here,” Nana said.
Bertie leaned on her heavily as she helped him into his office and sat him down. She knelt by him, looking up into his watery eyes. “Don’t let Mrs. Earnshaw rattle you,” Sophie said.
He whimpered but then said, his gaze darting around, “She’s right, though.”
“What?”
“She’s right about me and Nora,” he said, his voice a little loud. “We’ve been working together so closely over the years, and this year she was so upset about Walter and Zunia that she came to my room and we had a drink, and . . . we . . .” He trailed off and shrugged.
It defied her imagination to think that fireplug Nora and weepy Bertie could be passionate, but maybe she was just seeing the world through thirty-year-old eyes. Nana always told her that though young folks believed love was only for the young, you never truly got too old for romance.
“You won’t tell anyone, will you?” Bertie said, a pleading look on his face. “We were together. That’s . . . that’s why I forgot to let Frank out of the room downstairs.”
“But someone let him out!”
“I don’t know who. Nora and I were together, that’s all I can tell you.”
“But Walter claims his wife was in her bed and slept all night.”
A sly smile tilted one corner of his mouth, as he said, “He sleeps like a log, Nora told me. And why do you think she slept through all the commotion? By the time she got upstairs and into bed, she was exhausted.”
A shudder of revulsion shivered through Sophie, but she chastised herself, saying just because Bertie wasn’t for her, it didn’t mean he wasn’t for somebody. However, none of this cleared either of them of the murder if Nora returned to her room on the second floor before the body was found by the elevator. “Are you feeling better now?”
He nodded and caught her hand. “Thank you, Sophie. I feel better just for having told someone. I didn’t know what to do, what to say.”
“You haven’t told the police this?”
He shook his head. “Should I? I don’t want to get dear Nora in trouble with her husband. I don’t know if we’ll ever be together again,” he said, and looked pensively down at his hand, joined with Sophie’s.
“I think you should most definitely tell the police,” Sophie said.
He nodded. “I will.”
There were still a few people in the lobby, and Sophie had the uneasy sense that some of them must have overheard Bertie’s admission of an affair with Nora Sommer, but that was not her problem. She went upstairs in a thoughtful frame of mind. Bertie’s confession hadn’t changed much for her because she hadn’t considered him a real suspect anyway. The only thing that made her suspect him was his evasiveness about where he was that night and why he didn’t let Frank out of the locked room, and now that had been explained.
She was beginning to wonder if they would ever figure out who killed Zunia Pettigrew. And did it really matter as long as the police didn’t pin it on Nana? She tried to tell herself no, but yes, it did matter. It mattered because whomever did it had tried to make Nana look guilty, and Sophie was not going to stand for that. Whoever did that should pay. She went upstairs in a determined mood.
Chapter 21
The evening meal in the dining room was interesting. As much as Sophie tried to concentrate on looking around at the other convention goers to figure out who killed Zunia, she was too involved with the food and wondering how the fellows were doing in the kitchen. Service was still slow, but when she ordered the special she had helped them put together, a salmon steak with a simple maple Dijon sauce and the green beans amandine, she was thrilled with the result and so were the diners around her. She had warned Lenny to keep the entrees simple while they were shorthanded and figuring things out. Salmon, so delicate and fragile, could be overcooked in minutes, but hers was perfect.
The beef special looked good. Laverne marveled over it. “It’s as if they got a new cook between last night and tonight,” she said.
Sophie smiled inwardly, a glow of satisfaction warming her. Lenny, though relatively inexperienced, was an engaged and interested cook, which meant he could become a great chef if he wanted to. The other two fellows were good helpers.
But after the first edge of her hunger was sated, her mind inevitably returned to the mystery in which they were embroiled, and Bertie’s confession. She eyed Nora and Walter, who sat alone, silent and ignoring each other. Josh was eating with Emma and Orlando Pettigrew, while Pastor Frank sat with the two sisters and Penelope Daley, who all but cut his steak for him. Jemima and Faye Alice dined with Nana’s group.
“I’m staying tonight but leaving in the morning,” Faye Alice said. “And I don’t know if I’m going to stay with the ITCS.”
“Don’t quit the group because of this,” Nana said.
“Oh, it’s not Zunia’s murder,” the woman replied, forking up the last of her maple salmon with gusto. She chewed, swallowed and continued. “It’s the Sommers. It just seems no one has their head screwed on straight. What is Nora thinking, foisting Frank Barlow on us as chapter president? That man is a wreck. I wasn’t here last year or I never would have let them rush Zunia through as president. I would have run myself just to avoid it. Zunia Pettigrew got on my last twitchy nerve.”
“She got on everyone’s last nerve,” Laverne said. “Which is why it’s so hard to figure out who killed her.”
The topic rested as everyone finished their food.
Nana had been speaking with Malcolm and Horace through part of dinner. The two gentlemen had decided to eschew dessert, since neither was much into sweets, and stated their intention to take another walk, long and slow, now that the day was beginning to cool a bit. Laverne fussed over her father, making sure he had his wrist gadget on, the one that let him call for help from wherever he was. He sighed but let her fidget, then made his way out with his old friend, arm in arm. It was nice that the two gents had each other, Sophie thought.
Nana beckoned to Sophie when dinner was done and the dessert course about to be served. Sophie joined her at her end of the table, taking Horace Brubaker’s empty chair. “What’s up?”
“At the end of the meeting this afternoon, Malcolm and Horace spent some time with Orlando and Walter. Horace told me just now that Walter admitted that he wouldn’t really know if Nora was out of the room or not. They sleep in separate beds.”
“Ah. Well.” Sophie paused for a moment, but then divulged what Bertie had told her about his affair with Nora, and their rendezvous that night.
Nana looked stunned, her creased face frozen in an openmouthed expression of disbelief. “I would never have guessed that in a hundred years,” she finally said.
“I don’t believe it,” Laverne said flatly, leaning into the discussion.
“Me neither. I’ve known Nora for a few years and it just doesn’t fit,” Nana added, her palm flat on the table, patting as she did when thinking deeply. “She’s too . . .” She paused as she lined up her silverware. “She’s just too dignified to cheat with an innkeeper.”
Laverne nodded. “Exactly! I was trying to think what I meant, but you hit it on the head, Rose. If she was going to cheat, it wouldn’t be with Bertie.”
Thelma, who was leaning across the table, ear t
oward them, listening in, snorted and said, “Don’t put it past her! These women going through the change . . . They’ll do anything to feel young again.”
“Thelma Mae Earnshaw, you don’t even know her!” Laverne said.
“Human nature,” she said, settling back in her chair. “My father always said never overestimate human character and never underestimate how low folks can sink.”
“That explains a lot,” Laverne said, exchanging a look with Sophie and Nana.
Dessert arrived and effectively stopped conversation. The rustic apple tart with locally made vanilla bean ice cream was an enormous success.
* * *
An hour later Dana, Cissy and Sophie were holed up in SuLinn and Thelma’s room while those two ladies were downstairs with Laverne and Rose at the last formal meeting of the convention. Sophie checked through her purse, then took out what she needed: her cell phone, lip gloss and Nana’s room key.
“So tell me again why you called Jason and why you’re meeting him to go for a drive in the middle of trying to solve the murder?” Dana was lying back on SuLinn’s bed, her bare foot in the air, examining her toenail polish, which she was touching up.
Cissy, who sat on her grandmother’s bed, turned her back as she continued to talk to Wally. She had called him ostensibly to ask him to check in on Gilda Bachman at La Belle Époque, but her friends knew it was really so she could exchange telephone kisses with him. A text saying “I love you” and a string of hearts just wasn’t enough. Sophie was happy for Cissy, who had finally woken up to the good guy right in front of her who only wanted to love her and take care of her.
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