Crime and Nourishment_A Cozy Mystery Novel

by Miranda Sweet

  “Oh, yes,” Dory said.

  Angie’s interest was piqued. She started to feel like she was watching a play, one with a few lines of audience participation. “What feud?” she asked. “It must have been pretty serious for two grown men to hang onto it for so many years.”

  Aunt Margery stood in the doorway, put her finger against her nose and said, “‘But it isn’t old!’ Tweedledum cried, in a greater fury than ever. ‘It’s new, I tell you—I bought it yesterday—my nice NEW RATTLE!’”

  “Alice in Wonderland!” Dory said.

  “You got one! Finally!” Said Aunt Margery with a roll of the eyes.

  Dory shook her head. “I don’t know why I bother speaking to you. You can’t stop quoting books I haven’t read, which is rude, and you’re lazy.”

  “Lazy?” Aunt Margery demanded.

  It was impossible not to be charmed by them. They had a secret language; who knows what they were really talking about. Their quick wits were a smokescreen to conceal the truth, but Angie was determined that they get back to it.

  “Ahem,” Angie said. “The feud?”

  Aunt Margery’s eyes seemed to twinkle. “It wasn’t over anything serious, my dear. It comes down to the fact that they never liked each other, that was all.”

  “Come on. There has to be a reason they never liked each other.” Angie prickled with impatience.

  “Curiosity killed the cat, you know,” Dory said.

  “But satisfaction brought it back,” both Aunt Margery and Angie said at the same time, which made Dory chortle.

  “What did it start with?” Dory asked. “There were so many episodes.”

  “The boat race?”

  “It might have been the boat race. But wasn’t that in high school? Surely it had started before that.”

  Aunt Margery arched an eyebrow toward her friend. “Before that?”

  “Yes, before that,” Dory said firmly.

  They could have been talking about the boat race, whatever that was, but Angie didn’t think so.

  “Oh, I know,” Aunt Margery said. “They both had a crush on our teacher, don’t you remember? Miss Prall.”

  “Miss Prall! She was six feet tall!” Dory chanted, and they both laughed. “Oh, she was pretty, wasn’t she? Or is that just my memory?”

  Angie scratched her head. This was like trying to follow the mind of the Mad Hatter.

  “I’d have to look it up in the old school photos,” Aunt Margery said. “And heaven knows where those are. In the attic somewhere.”

  “You know exactly where those photos are,” Dory said. “You never misplace a thing.”

  That simply wasn’t true, but Angie didn’t bother to correct her. She was still wondering what it was that these two women were really trying to accomplish. To tell her something, obviously…but in such a roundabout way that it made her suspicious.

  “Or in…” Aunt Margery stared upward into the sunset-orange sky. “No, it wouldn’t have been in any of the papers. She only taught those two years—kindergarten with us then moved up to first grade. We were all so enchanted to have her both years.”

  “I thought she was an angel,” Dory announced.

  “I remember,” Aunt Margery said drily. “But you remember that Alex and Ray were at each other’s throats over her? Both of them fighting over her attention, and pleased as punch when they found out the best way to get it was to fight each other?”

  “Oh I do,” Dory said. “But they were like that in kindergarten, too. One of them couldn’t have anything that the other didn’t have to have better. Toys, crayons, chairs…”

  They both shook their heads.

  Okay, thought Angie, now they were getting somewhere: a woman, probably not their teacher, was the source of the tension between Ray and Snuock.

  “And the worst part was growing up, knowing that eventually Alex would have to win,” Dory said.

  “Oh, yes. Every time they fought, it was ‘when I grow up I’ll be rich and you’ll be a nobody’ at the end. It must have been maddening,” Aunt Margery said.

  Then they both looked at Angie.

  “What are we doing, standing out here and talking when you should be asleep?” Aunt Margery said.

  Sleep was the furthest thing from her mind; she’d only awakened a few hours ago.

  “Really, I’m fine,” said Angie. She hoped a salient detail would slip out the longer they kept up this charade.

  “She needs food, not sleep,” Dory insisted.

  “Sheldon’s always has an extra table or two open for the locals,” Aunt Margery said.

  “But she’s just been,” Dory said. “Don’t you think she’d rather—”

  Angie laughed. “Fine, fine, I’m going! I can pick out my own supper, thank you very much.”

  Aunt Margery looked at her, tilting her head as if weighing her up. “You should call Walter and see how he’s doing.”

  Hmm. She did have his cell phone number now.

  “Perhaps I shall,” she said.

  “Good. Now off you go…it’s eight o’clock already, and I have to start closing up the shop if we’re going to get anything to eat before midnight…”

  “I won’t wait up,” Angie said, and took a step back.

  Aunt Margery let Dory in, then closed the door tightly, not going as far as to lock it, but urging Angie with a pointed finger toward Angie’s car in the parking lot before she disappeared into the shop.

  Angie laughed, amused and perplexed by her great-aunt and Dory.

  She leaned against her car and admired the orange and red of the evening sky. As she was about to call Walter, the next door down the alley opened. Ruth emerged, struggling with a large bag of trash. Angie jogged over to help.

  The bag was heavy. Fortunately it was a heavy-duty bag; otherwise, whatever was inside would have torn out of the bag and spilled all over the sidewalk.

  “What’s in here, a body?” Angie joked.

  “I didn’t do it, I wasn’t there, and I don’t know nothing,” Ruth said immediately.

  Angie cracked up. “What’s with you broads tonight?”

  “Oh?”

  “First Dory, then Aunt Margery, now you. All three of you are fast on the draw.”

  Ruth perked up. “Is Dory here?”

  “Yes, she and Aunt Margery are closing up the shop. I’ve been kicked out and told to go back to sleep, when I just woke up at five-thirty.”

  “You could call Walter,” Ruth said, brushing a lock of hair away from her face. Her bangles jingled on her wrist. “See if he wants to go out for supper and sympathy.”

  “Are all three of you in cahoots? Can’t you talk about anything else?” It was like a memo went out warning everyone that her spinsterhood was imminent, so would they please do their best to get Angie a date with the most eligible bachelor in town; never mind that he was the most likely suspect in a murder case.

  “We’re old,” Ruth said. “All we think about is sleep, food, and getting all single women younger than us set up with nice young men who have a bit of money to spend. You’ll only know what it’s like when your child is old enough to have grandchildren. There’s a voice whispering in the back of your head…diapers…must have diapers…”

  “You think about plenty more than that.” Angie bit her lower lip. She was curious about Ruth. All the merchants in town who rented from Snuock had a motive. “Are you going to be all right, by the way? If the rent increase still goes through?”

  Ruth looked back and forth along the alleyway then waved Angie inside the back door of her shop. Once inside, she whispered, “Don’t let it get around, but the increase is almost sure to go through. Alexander filed the paperwork months ago. I’m sure we’ll get letters in the mail in a day or two from the lawyers. You know lawyers, once they have signed paperwork in hand, it’s almost impossible to derail them. They’ll just argue that it’s for the good of the estate.”

  Angie sighed. Her trip to Greece was receding ever further from the realm of p
ossibility.

  “But I’ll be fine,” Ruth added. “God willing, and fingers-crossed that the Internet auction sites don’t get shut down anytime soon. Plus I have a bit tucked away for retirement. No, don’t worry about Auntie Ruth.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “What are you going to do about the Jerritt twins?”

  “Me?”

  “The three of you have always been as thick as thieves. Surely you have some scheme up your sleeve to help them out.”

  “I haven’t really had time to think,” Angie admitted. She suddenly felt the burden of responsibility.

  “Well, get on it. Those are good kids, even if they’re a little proud. Not a patch on their mother, of course—”

  “Was it you that she had supper with the other night?” Angie asked. “On Thursday?”

  “Thursday? No, why?”

  Angie pulled at her bottom lip with her fingers. Something wasn’t right.

  Ruth chuckled. “Oh, is there hanky-panky going on? I’ll have to ask.”

  “Don’t tell her I said anything.”

  Ruth put a hand on her chest. “What, give away a source? Me?”

  “You’re terrible.” Ruth would definitely mention it to Dory. Gossips. Her Aunt Margery was no exception, either. They never told a straight story. It peeved Angie to no end that they didn’t let her into the circle.

  “I am,” said Ruth. “Now, if you have a minute, I need some help with a few other bags…”

  Angie’s groaning question, “Just what’s in here anyway?” was answered variously with, “more dead bodies,” “paperwork I’m trying to hide from the IRS,” “cartloads of cement from the basement for the tunnel I’m trying to dig under the bank,” and “oh, I went to an estate sale and picked up a large lot with a few things I wanted…and a lot of trash I didn’t need.”

  The last reason was the one most likely to be true, but not the only possible one. The packed antique store had everything from crystal chandeliers to racks of silver serving spoons, to an entire row of double-hung silver mirrors, each of them reflecting back on itself. A carousel horse stood next to a Sixteenth-century French armoire; boat paddles rested next to a rack full of handmade lace. A stubby, tiny banjo hung among a set of copper pans, and antique pot-metal ashtrays surrounded a wooden rack filled with printer’s letters.

  She remembered the day she’d first come into the shop with her parents. The three of them had wandered through the narrow aisles, Angie with her hands held carefully behind her back. It had seemed a magical place. When she found out that she would be able to get the shop next to Ruth’s, Angie had been overjoyed.

  She hauled the last bag toward the back door and paused to get her breath. The one she was dragging now was the heaviest of the bunch. Ruth must have overfilled it because it was the last one.

  Panting, Angie looked up. The far wall of the back room was covered in layers and layers of photographs. The ones near the bottom were black and white with ragged-trim edges. Some color photos, very faded. Above them were scads of Polaroid shots, faded even worse than the color photos below them. Above the polaroids were more recent color photos. The very top layer was made of inkjet color printouts.

  Ruth was back at her counter, counting her drawer. Angie could hear the jingle of change and the credit card machine running its nightly batch on its tiny internal printer.

  Decades of history were right here: a few snapshots of famous visitors; a lot of photographs of Ruth standing proudly in front of some antique that must have meant a lot to her, shaking hands with a customer as she turned it over; vacation photos of Ruth, Dory, and Aunt Margery standing on the beach.

  Using the side of her hand, Angie gently touched some of the pictures to lift the edges so she could look underneath them at the black and white ones on the bottom.

  Some of the photos were of children. One of them looked like Angie’s father as a boy, dark-haired and staring up at the sky. A thumb’s silhouette darkened the edge of the photo. Ruth must have been an amateur shutterbug from a very young age. The photo looked almost secretive, as if Ruth had been taking photos of Angie’s father on the sly.

  She riffled gently through the photographs, making sure not to knock any of them down. Her fingers stopped on a photo of two people standing next to a boat. She couldn’t make out the name of the boat, but at least one of the people looked familiar—a teenaged Dory. Her face looked like Josephine’s had in high school, minus the strange haircut. She looked almost waifish. The day must have been windy; she was wearing a windbreaker, unzipped, over an ankle length sundress, and a long, streaming scarf. Her hair, which was trying to stay tucked behind her ears, tugged to the side where it had come loose.

  She looked happy.

  The man next to her was much taller than she was, practically a giant. His arm casually draped around her shoulders. He was remarkably handsome, with a cleft chin and dimples in his smile. The loose locks of his hair had flipped over in the breeze, looking almost comic. Their happiness shined.

  Who was he?

  She heard a noise from behind her and picked up the bag, dragging it outside with her. “My arms are falling off.”

  “You can do it!” Ruth cheered.

  How the bag made it into the dumpster, Angie didn’t know, but finally the heavy lifting was done. She went back inside. Ruth stood in front of her wall of photographs looking thoughtful with one finger laid alongside her cheek.

  “How time passes,” she said. “Who would have thought, when we were younger, that we would still be here?”

  “When you’re really young, it seems like nothing will ever change,” Angie said.

  “That’s true. Ach, I remember spending so much time looking in the mirror as a girl, thinking that I would never be as pretty as Ann-Margaret or Farrah Fawcett. That girl, she seems to be so pretty now.” She was looking at a picture of three women sitting on the hood of a pale green El Camino: Ruth, Aunt Margery, and Dory, all three of them incredibly young.

  “Look at us now. Old and fat.”

  “And happy?”

  “Happiness is fleeting. Don’t wish for it. Because the second you ask yourself, ‘Am I happy?’ the answer has to be no. Strive for satisfaction.”

  The two of them left the shop, with Ruth locking up behind them. Dory and Aunt Margery were waiting for her in the parking lot, sitting on the hood of Dory’s Toyota. Angie had to smile. Definitely in cahoots, she thought.

  “Ready?” Dory asked.

  “Finally,” Aunt Margery added.

  “I don’t want to hear it! It would have taken longer if I hadn’t had someone’s help.” Ruth slipped an arm around Angie’s waist and squeezed.

  “I thought you were supposed to be out on a date,” Dory said to Angie.

  “I got distracted.”

  Dory turned to Aunt Margery. “That’s it, then. If hanging out with Ruth is all it takes to distract her from a date, she’s never getting married. She’s going to die an old maid, like you.”

  “I like being an old maid,” Aunt Margery said.

  “Not that again,” Ruth said. She strode toward the car, climbed into the back seat without another word, and closed the door firmly behind her.

  Angie hoped she would be as lucky in her friendships when she was that age.

  She waved them off then called Walter’s number. He answered after the second ring.

  “Angie?”

  “How are you?” she said. “Do you need some company?”

  “I could desperately use a distraction.”

  She suggested they return to Sheldon’s for supper. His answer, when it came, was a little disheartening: “I’ll have to skip, then.”’

  “Why? Didn’t you like it?”

  “I liked it well enough, but my lawyer’s asked me to stay away from the public view for a while. He doesn’t want any pictures being taken of me.”

  She thought quickly. “Then I’ll pick up something on the way over to the B&B. You said you were st
aying at Jellicoe House?”

  He confirmed and she told him she’d be there as quickly as possible, bearing food and libations.

  “And a book,” he said.

  “What do you want?”

  “I don’t care. It just has to be good enough to distract me until all this is over.”

  She wasn’t sure that a single book would do the trick, but she would do her best to find the right one.

  #

  Jellicoe House was a slate-gray building with white trim and windows divided into small, slim panes of glass. Most of the curtains were pulled, but the windows still glowed with warm, reassuring light.

  Walter sat on the front porch on the edge of a rocking chair with his hands folded in front of him, head down. He was both wired as tight as a piano string and lost in thought.

  Angie drove around the side of the B&B and parked behind the building with the rest of the guests. She had brought the makings for a picnic supper. Jellicoe House didn’t overlook the beach, but it was on a small hill and had a decent view of the water in the daytime, if you didn’t mind the row of mansions between the B&B and the water.

  When she came around the corner, Walter seemed oblivious to her approach. She decided not to startle him. Instead she stood quietly next to him, grocery bags in hand. It was a fresh, cool night, and she was glad that she had put on a jacket before she’d left for the grocery store.

  Finally, he looked up at her. “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Only a moment or two.”

  “I’d invite you upstairs, but I can’t stand being cooped up inside any longer than I have to be. ‘Stay inside during daylight hours.’ It’s like a prison sentence.”

  The light had drained from his eyes in the last few days. All Angie wanted to do was help.

  “I have a plan,” she told him, and handed him the bags of groceries before running into the B&B for a bottle opener and a sharp knife.

  Then the two of them headed out for the top of the hill. The small patch of land was owned by the B&B, and held a pair of picnic tables under a single light. She wouldn’t exactly have called it romantic, but it would do.

  She handed Walter the bottle opener and the Belgian beer, then started setting out the rest of her provisions: salami, pâté, a few cheeses, cornichons, crackers, fig jam, fresh plums.