A Fatal Twist of Lemon

by Patrice Greenwood

  Feeling shy all of a sudden, I finished the tea in my cup and picked up the teapot, offering to refill the detective’s cup. He nodded, ate the rest of his scone, and reached for another.

  “Oh, by the way,” I said as I poured for him and then myself, “I thought you might like to know that we’re missing a napkin from the linens we used on Wednesday.”

  “Why would I like to know that?”

  “Well, I think the killer probably used it to wipe the back door handles in the dining parlor. I suppose they took it with them and dumped it in the trash somewhere. I looked around out back but didn’t find it.”

  He was frowning now. “How did you know the door handles had been wiped?”

  I put the teapot down and covered it with the cozy, then picked up my cup and took a sip. “When I cleaned the room I found that black fingerprint dust all over the china and the furniture, but there wasn’t any on the door handles. I assumed that was because they had been wiped, so there were no prints for the powder to stick to.”

  Detective Aragón nodded slowly. “You’re pretty observant.”

  “I think that’s a compliment, so I’ll say thanks.”

  He gave a half smile. “It was a compliment. You want to be careful, though. Take too much interest in an investigation and cops get suspicious.”

  “I can’t help wanting to figure out what happened in my own home.”

  He shrugged and nodded acknowledgment. I ate the rest of my scone, realizing with slight surprise that I felt more relaxed and comfortable than I had all day. Detective Aragón was turning out to be pleasant company, when he wasn’t in cop mode.

  “Did Claudia Pearson tell you about Mrs. Carruthers’s intention of donating money to buy a property for the Trust?” I asked.

  “Yeah, she mentioned it.”

  “I’m wondering if Donna Carruthers knew about it. Assuming she’s the heir, she might have objected.”

  Detective Aragón leaned back in his chair and gave me a long look, which would have intimidated me had the corner of his mouth not turned up in a slow smile. “She knew,” he said. “She told me about it. She was pi—I mean, she was annoyed about it.”

  “I thought she must be. I know she and her mother didn’t see eye to eye. There was a little tension between them at the tea, now that I think of it.”

  He tilted his head. “Do you remember over what?”

  “I’m afraid not. I just remember being worried they’d get into an argument, so I changed the subject.”

  “So you think Donna Carruthers is a suspect.”

  “We’re all suspects, aren’t we? Everyone who was at the tea?”

  A grin crinkled the skin at the corners of Aragón’s eyes. “Yeah.”

  I swallowed, looking down at my cup. I’d wanted him to deny it. I swirled the tea, gazing through it at the flowers painted in the bottom of the cup.

  “Although Mr. Ingraham and Mr. Salazar and my aunt all left while Mrs. Carruthers was still alive,” I said. “I assume you collected that information.”

  “Yes.”

  I looked up. “You’re laughing at me.”

  “No,” he said, chuckling. “I think it’s cute.”

  “Cute?”

  I gave him an indignant look. He shifted in his chair, lounging comfortably now.

  “Yeah, I mean—you’re doing pretty good for not having access to all the evidence.”

  I took a deep swallow of tea, then set the cup aside, stifling a sigh. “I hope you don’t mind my talking it through. It makes me feel less … helpless.”

  “I don’t mind.” His face went serious, though not the harsh seriousness of the investigator. “I can’t tell you what we’re doing, though.”

  “I know.”

  We fell silent, but it was a comfortable silence, softened by the gentle crackling of the fire. Detective Aragón wasn’t the only one who had made false assumptions. I had assumed he would remain bullheaded and generally intolerable, but today he had shown me a different side.

  “Where did you go to high school?” he asked suddenly.

  “Santa Fe High.”

  “Oh. I went to Capital.”

  I nodded. Capital High was out in the southwest part of town near the municipal airport, a newer school.

  “I thought maybe you went to Prep,” he added.

  “No, my folks weren’t that rich.”

  The moment I said it I felt a shift, a return of constraint. Julio must have been right; money was a touchy subject for Detective Aragón. I felt regret that the pleasant mood had been spoiled.

  “Well, I’d better be going,” he said, standing up. “Lots of work to do. Thanks for the tea and the—scones?”

  “Scones, yes. You’re welcome.”

  I stood up, too, wanting to say more but not really knowing what. I followed him out into the hall where he donned his black raincoat.

  “Come by any time,” I told him. “Next Friday at four we’ll be serving a full afternoon tea.”

  He looked at me with the flat cop stare I remembered. Then he gave an exasperated sigh.

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means more food,” I said. “Sandwiches and salty things as well as scones and sweets. It’s a meal, really. Come try it.”

  “Maybe.”

  His face was a mixture of lost boy and tough cop, a shifting shadow in a gentleman’s clothes, as if he couldn’t make up his mind what to be. He dug his hands into the pockets of his raincoat and hunched his shoulders, and the cop took over.

  “Stay out of trouble, Ms. Rosings,” he said, turning toward the front door.

  “You, too, Detective,” I said quietly.

  He didn’t turn around, but raised a hand and waggled it in farewell, then stuffed it back in his pocket. I watched him go, my feelings a bit confused. I was relieved that he apparently wasn’t angry with me any more, and glad that he didn’t seem to mind my making my own inquiries about the murder. On the other hand I felt rather unsettled by the knowledge that my understanding of his character was much poorer than I had thought.

  Detective Arrogant. I blushed a little for having thought of him that way.

  Dee came out of the north parlor with an empty teapot. She paused and glanced toward the front door.

  “Is he gone?”

  “Yes. Thanks for adding the scones.”

  She dimpled. “I thought maybe it would sweeten him up a little.”

  I chuckled as we both headed for the butler’s pantry. “I think it was an adventure for him.”

  “Did he ask you more questions?”

  “No, I think this is his day off.”

  “Cops are never off duty,” she said with conviction. “Never completely.”

  “Mm. How are the customers doing?”

  “Jonquil’s done, Lily’s almost done. Iris wants more tea.”

  “Go ahead and make it for them, then you can go home. I’ll close up.”

  She glanced at me. “You sure?”

  “Positive. You’ve all done a great job this week.”

  I fetched a tray from the pantry, which I took to Marigold to clear away the dishes from the tea Detective Aragón and I had shared. By the time I was done, some of the customers were ready to leave, and I followed them into the gift shop. Iz glanced up from the hostess station.

  “You can go, Iz. I’ll finish up.”

  She bobbed her head with a shy little smile. “Thanks, Ms. Rosings. See you Tuesday.”

  As the staff departed and I helped the last few customers settle their bills, a quiet peacefulness settled over the tearoom. The gentle music of a Mozart concerto for flute and harp set a relaxing background, and I took pleasure in the simple tasks of helping my customers. At six, I locked up and began clearing the last of the dishes. Mick got them washed, then went home as well, leaving me alone.

  I tidied the parlors, not setting out fresh china as we would be closed Sunday and Monday and I didn’t want the settings to get dusty. The staff would be gone—go
ing about their lives for our “weekend.” It felt strange knowing that for the first time in months, I would have the house to myself for two whole days.

  Of course, there were plenty of things that needed to be done around the tearoom. I would keep busy enough, but I had been working so hard every day for so long that the lack of pressure and the prospect of actually having a little free time seemed alien.

  I turned off the lights in the parlors, shut off the stereo, then closed out the cash register and took the bank bag up to Kris’s office, shutting it in the top drawer of her desk. Going into my own office, I found several paperclipped pages of printout on my desk, with a sticky note from Kris saying this was all she could find on the Internet. I sat down to look them over.

  An old newspaper article about School Board politics mentioned Sylvia’s name, but only in passing as a member of the Board. There were a couple of mentions in fluffy articles about events around town, one of them when Sylvia’s husband had still been alive. I realized I didn’t know much about Donna’s father. Maybe Kris could find out some stuff about him.

  That was getting a bit far afield, but you never knew what might be interesting, and besides, I was starting to enjoy digging around for information. It was a little like treasure hunting.

  I turned the page and found that Kris was there ahead of me. Roger Carruthers had been a well-known businessman in Santa Fe for four decades before his death in 1997. He had owned a chain of office supply stores, which Sylvia had helped to manage and had sold after his death. Ever since then she had devoted herself to charitable work, most notably with the Santa Fe Preservation Trust.

  Donna had graduated from Santa Fe Prep in 1999, and a clipping from that spring showed her as Prom Queen. She had dropped out of sight until 2006, when she appeared listed as a Gold Circle patron on the website of a modern dance company that performed in both Santa Fe and Scottsdale.

  I laid the pages down and gazed out my window at the twilit evening sky. If Donna was playing patron of the arts, she had to have a fair amount of money. I was no judge of modern art, but I’d have been willing to bet that the pieces on display in her home had cost a pretty penny.

  It appeared that Roger Carruthers had left both his widow and his daughter comfortably well off. Either that or Donna had found some other source of income, but she wasn’t married, had no career of which I was aware, and I hadn’t noticed any men around her exuding the possessive air of someone who spends a lot of money on his significant other.

  So Donna was financially independent. That fit with her rather blasé description of her mother’s gift of her house to the Trust, and pretty much shot a hole in my suspicion that Donna might have killed Sylvia because of the money she was going to sink into the Trust.

  Of course, greed knows no limits for some people. She could have been angry about the money even though she didn’t need it. Or she could have killed her mother out of spite. There was no lack of that between mother and daughter, but it was not as easy to credit as a motive for murder.

  I found myself wondering what Detective Aragón would think of my theories. I was tempted to fax him the information Kris had gathered, but quickly talked myself out of it. He had a whole team of investigators looking for this sort of thing. He would probably think my fax was cute.

  I left the papers on my desk, giving up for the moment. It was getting on toward seven-thirty, and I hadn’t had lunch except for a couple of scones and one artistic celery stick. I was decidedly peckish.

  I went across the hall to my suite and threw a frozen pot-pie in the oven. Not a commercial pot-pie, but one Julio had made as a possible lunch time offering, along the line of British meat pies. I had fond memories of lunches in crowded tearooms in England, seated at tiny tables elbow to elbow with other patrons, wolfing down hot casserole lunches like steak and kidney pie washed down with pots of tea.

  Julio had come up with a couple of versions, a turkey pot pie and a sort of beef bourguignon pie, and had frozen them to test how well they would stand up to being stored that way. If they worked out, the girls would be able to heat them up quickly at lunch time, preserving our aim of keeping the food prep time to a minimum during most of our business hours.

  The present exception to that rule was the full afternoon tea on Fridays, with hot savories and sandwiches that had to be made fresh. If afternoon tea became popular, as I hoped it would, we would add it on more days.

  At the moment we only served cream tea and light tea during the rest of the week. For that, the petits fours and other sweets could be made ahead and needed little or no prep right before serving. The exception was the scones, which had to be baked fresh, but they could be made ahead and frozen.

  The savory smell of the pot pie began to fill my suite, making my mouth water. I made a salad while I waited, and poured myself a glass of wine. I was just beginning to think about putting on some music when I realized I was already hearing music. Harp and flute music. The stereo downstairs was on.

  “Oh, no,” I said, and closed my eyes for a moment, then took a big swallow of wine and went downstairs.

  The doors were locked. Julio hadn’t come in, and no forced entry had occurred. Even the light in the dining parlor was off, but the stereo was cranking out Mozart.

  I stood in the hall staring at the dining parlor door. “Like music, do you?” I said softly, then went into the butler’s pantry and took the Mozart disc out of the stereo.

  “We already listened to this today,” I said, feeling foolish that I was explaining my actions to a ghost.

  I pulled out a disc of Chopin’s Ballades, which were rather too exuberant for business hours, and put them on. Piano music filled the house. I turned it up a bit louder so I’d be able to hear it upstairs. Felt a little silly doing that, too, but I shrugged it off and went back up to rescue my pot pie, which was just shy of starting to burn.

  The pastry was crispy gold and steaming. Gravy had burbled out of the slits in the top crust and browned, making a tantalizing caramelized smell. I slid the pie onto a plate, heaped salad beside it, and sat down to enjoy my dinner with a good book for company.

  An hour later I was sated and yawning. The music downstairs had progressed to the next disc in the changer, Handel’s “Water Music.” I took a bubble bath, then threw on my robe and slippers and padded downstairs to turn off the stereo.

  “I’m going to sleep now,” I announced in the hall, hoping to fend off any midnight musicales.

  If Captain Dusenberry got into the habit of playing the stereo at all hours, I could be in trouble. Maybe I should have left well enough alone. At least the light in the dining parlor couldn’t keep me awake.

  I went to bed, but despite being tired and relaxed I couldn’t get to sleep right away. I lay staring at the brocade canopy overhead, my brain refusing to shut down. Part of it was me waiting for the stereo to come on, but I also found myself thinking through the day.

  The funeral, and Donna’s house, and the unexpected visit from Detective Aragón all flitted through my mind. I wondered if I was being too obsessive about the murder, then decided that no, it was healthy to want to work through it. Much healthier than denying the seriousness of the situation.

  I was a suspect in a murder case. I hadn’t really acknowledged that square-on before, I’d just sort of been looking at it from the corner of my mind’s eye. Detective Aragón had confirmed it that afternoon, though.

  Worst case, I could go to jail. Lose the tearoom, not to mention my freedom for the rest of my life, possibly.

  That was why I was trying to solve the murder, I acknowledged to the canopy. It wasn’t just for my own peace of mind. It was self-defense.

  In that light, it seemed I had made pretty poor progress in four days. I hadn’t eliminated any suspects but my staff, Gina, Manny, Nat, and Mr. Ingraham, and it could be argued that any of the latter three could have slipped back to the tearoom and come in the dining parlor’s back door.

  I threw back the covers and got up, wa
lking around the chimney to my sitting area. Flopping into a chair, I picked up the stack of place cards and sorted through them.

  Vince Margolan. Too busy remodeling to care about my opening or Sylvia’s funeral. Never met her before the thank-you tea.

  Claudia Pearson. Pretty much the opposite; she had made time for the tearoom’s opening and plainly cared enough to deliver Sylvia’s eulogy, though she hadn’t been at Donna’s that I’d seen.

  Katie Hutchins. Sweet and obsessed about her earring.

  Mr. Ingraham, also unacquainted with Sylvia before the tea. Left early, probably innocent. Ditto for Nat, Gina, and Manny.

  Me. Not guilty.

  Sylvia. I paused, biting my lip as I looked at her name.

  “Why did you die?” I whispered. “I wish you could tell me.”

  I moved her card to the bottom of the stack, leaving Donna’s on top.

  Donna a killer. I wasn’t happy with that. She had a reasonably strong motive, but she wasn’t stupid. If she had wanted her mother dead, she would have had plenty of time to plan a safer, less public murder. Sylvia’s killer had taken an extreme risk of being discovered, and I still felt strongly that the murder had been an act of impulse, a crime of opportunity.

  I was missing something. I wanted to call Detective Aragón and talk over the list of suspects with him. That was nuts; I knew he couldn’t discuss the case with me. Annoyed with myself, I went back to bed, rolled over a few dozen times, and finally managed to go to sleep.

  The next morning dawned cloudy again. I went downstairs and made myself an omelet, enjoying the luxury of having the huge old kitchen to myself. After carefully cleaning up the dishes and wiping the stove and counter tops (to avoid the wrath of Julio), I called Nat.

  “I’m inviting myself to dinner,” I told her.

  “Finally! Yes, do come. Cocktails at six, dinner whenever Manny gets the grill going.”

  “Sounds great. What can I bring?”

  “Nothing, darling. We’ve got it all under control. We’ll have a few other guests.”

  “Oh—should I pick another night?”

  “No, no! It’s no one alarming, I promise.”