Scene of the Brine

by Mary Ellen Hughes

  The two debated over other choices until Mallory eventually called Piper over for an opinion on a pretty cotton floral. “What do you think of a duvet cover in this with a matching valence? I’d hang plain white sheers beneath the valence.”

  Piper could see that Mallory loved it. “I think that’d be beautiful,” she declared, and Mallory beamed.

  “I do, too.” Mallory turned to Jeanine, who was also beaming. “Let’s go with it.”

  Jeanine worked out the final details and Mallory placed her order, looking ecstatic.

  “That went pretty quick,” Piper said when she was ready to leave.

  “I’ve been looking through lots of magazines. I knew what I liked and didn’t like. Jeanine was great.”

  Piper checked her watch. “I have a few minutes to spare. Want to stop for a quick coffee?”

  “Oh!” Mallory smiled. “That’d be nice.”

  “There’s a place right around the corner.” Piper led the way to the Clover-Daily Deli, which offered good food and quick service.

  “They have bakery things and sandwiches if you’re hungry,” she told Mallory as they went to the front counter to order.

  Mallory apparently was hungry, adding a blueberry bagel to her order of chai tea. She let Piper pay and they carried their items to an empty table and sank into their chairs, Mallory still looking like a little girl who’d just gotten her first pair of patent leather shoes.

  “How soon will your duvet cover and curtains come in?” Piper asked before taking a sip of her French roast.

  “Jeanine thought it might be two weeks. She’ll call and let me know.”

  “Think you can wait that long?” Piper asked with a smile.

  Mallory smiled back. “It’ll be hard. But exciting, too. I love decorating.” She stirred cream into her tea, then bit into her bagel.

  “You seemed very knowledgeable, back there. I probably wouldn’t know a brocade from a batiste.”

  Mallory laughed. “Yes, you would. I’ve read a lot of decorating books, so I learned the names of all the fabrics and what works best for what.” She stirred her tea. “I used to dream of being a decorator,” she said, looking down at her cup.

  “I’ll bet you would have been good. What stopped you?”

  Mallory shrugged. “Mother didn’t like it.”

  Piper wanted to say Mother wouldn’t be the one doing it, but instead said, “Your mother has strong opinions.” She paused. “For a while, I was letting someone make decisions for my life, someone I thought I wanted to marry. But I finally saw that I wasn’t as happy as I thought I’d be about that. That’s when I moved here to Cloverdale and opened up my pickling shop.”

  “Was that scary?”

  “Absolutely. I gave up a steady job and sank my savings into the shop. I didn’t know if it would work out. But with a lot of effort—and a lot of support—it did. I’ve never been happier.”

  “Support,” Mallory repeated softly, as though that were a new word to her.

  They fell silent for a while, each sipping their own beverage. Then Piper said, “Your mother might not have liked the idea of you being a decorator, but she seems fine with Jeremy’s career. That’s a little surprising since she sounded so proud of an uncle who had been a member of Congress. I would have thought her preference would be for Jeremy to go into politics.”

  “She’s okay with Jeremy being in real estate. She likes that he makes a lot of money in it.”

  I’m sure she does. “But what about Dirk? You said she pressed Jeremy to get rid of him. Was she very upset when he didn’t?”

  “Oh, she didn’t like Dirk. But she put up with him. I guess she figured Jeremy needed Dirk.”

  “Needed him? For what?”

  Mallory shrugged. “To do all the things Jeremy wanted done but didn’t like to do himself.”

  “What, tedious or boring things?” Piper asked, hoping to draw out more details.

  Mallory shook her head. “Like . . .” She bit into her bagel and chewed. “Well, like, back when Jeremy was in high school, he had this friend who was kind of weird. Jeremy said he felt sorry for him. But when Jeremy didn’t make first-string quarterback, which he really wanted, this weird friend, Clive, got into a huge brawl with the kid who was picked for first string. The fight wasn’t over football, but something else—I don’t know what—and it was dumb of Clive, who wasn’t big or strong at all, to pick a fight with the bigger guy.

  “Clive ended up pretty beat up but the other kid got suspended. That meant that Jeremy was moved up to first-string quarterback. He got pretty good, actually, with practice, and he ended up winning a trophy. And Chrissie Hagan, who never looked twice at him before, started dating him.”

  Wow. Piper’s eyebrows shot up, but she said nothing.

  “Dirk didn’t pick fights with people,” Mallory said.

  “No, that wouldn’t be his way of doing things. But he was, um, useful to Jeremy?”

  “I think so. But,” she said, shrugging, “I don’t really know a lot about it.”

  Piper wanted to ask more but just then the deli’s door opened and Sugar Heywood hurried in.

  “I spotted you through the window,” Sugar said. She appeared tense. “Zach and I just talked with Scott.”

  19

  Mallory seemed surprised to see Sugar, and Piper wondered what Lydia might have told her to explain the sudden absence of Jeremy’s girlfriend from their lives. Sugar slid onto a chair at their table.

  “Scott advised Zach to go with him to talk to the sheriff. He thinks it might help Zach to give his explanation of what happened at that basketball game.”

  “That sounds like good advice,” Piper said.

  “They’re on their way now. I thought it best not to go with them.” Sugar rubbed at her eyes tiredly. “I wish Zach had told me about it when it happened. He said he didn’t want to upset me. Hearing about it now, on top of everything else, is worse.”

  “Zach couldn’t know what was going to come up with Dirk.”

  “I know. But I’m really concerned that his hiding this could make him look bad to Sheriff Carlyle.”

  “Why are you worried about Sheriff Carlyle?” Mallory asked, apparently clueless about Zach’s situation.

  Piper glanced at Sugar for an okay, then explained, “Zach is under suspicion for Dirk’s murder. I don’t know if you heard that Dirk was poisoned with a plant called bloodroot. Zach is a botany student and would know about it. He was also pretty upset with Dirk for, well, for being highly disrespectful to his mother, Sugar.”

  “Oh! But he didn’t poison Dirk, right?”

  “He absolutely didn’t,” Sugar said. “You’ve met Zach, Mallory. Did he strike you as someone who could commit murder?”

  Mallory shook her head. “No, he didn’t. I liked Zach.”

  “This is terrible for him, being under such suspicion,” Sugar said. “He might not be allowed to leave Cloverdale to go back to school and finish his semester. Plus the stress.”

  “It’s extremely hard on Sugar, too,” Piper said to Mallory.

  Mallory looked from one to the other. “I didn’t know.”

  “We’re all trying to find out what really happened to Dirk to put an end to this for Zach and for Sugar,” Piper said. “If you—” she began, but Mallory suddenly stood up.

  “I’d better go. Mother will be wondering.” She took a final quick swallow of her tea and grabbed her purse. In a moment she was out the door, Piper and Sugar staring after her in surprise.

  “Did we upset her?” Sugar asked.

  Piper shook her head. “Not necessarily upset. She just might not be used to hearing harsh truths.” She took a sip of her cooling coffee and added thoughtfully, “It might actually have been good for her.”

  Piper came back to her shop to find Ralph Strawbridge there, waiting as Amy
finished with a customer.

  “I thought I’d catch Sugar here,” he explained. “She said she might stop in after the meeting with Zach’s lawyer.”

  “She found me at the Clover-Daily Deli.” When Amy’s customer left, Piper told Ralph about Scott accompanying Zach to the sheriff’s. “You know about Zach’s problem at college?”

  Ralph nodded. “If it weren’t for this Dirk Unger mess, the boy might have gotten away with not telling Sugar about it.” He shook his head. “But it’s too bad it happened. And hiding it can’t help but make anyone wonder what else he might be covering up.”

  “College kids keep things from their parents all the time,” Amy defended. “Not that it ever worked for me with a master interrogator for a father,” she added with an eye roll. “What I mean is, keeping quiet about things you just feel stupid about doesn’t automatically mean you’re an evil person.”

  “I hope your father sees that,” Ralph said.

  Piper realized Ralph hadn’t yet heard what she’d learned about Marguerite Lloyd, and she updated him.

  “Now that sounds like a good motive to me,” Ralph said. “When your livelihood is being threatened, and by an old enemy, I can imagine wanting to strike out.”

  “Marguerite is definitely not a person to take things lying down. And striking out is likely in her personality. But that’s exactly why I’m having trouble with the idea of her choosing poison. A face-to-face confrontation seems much more her style.”

  “It’s more Zach’s style, too,” Ralph said, “if, of course he were capable of it at all, which I don’t believe he is. But that aside, poison has a lot going for it as a method of murder. No gunpowder residue to worry about or blood splatter on clothing.”

  “No weapon to dispose of,” Amy chimed in.

  “Or alibi needed,” Piper said, “if the poison is consumed at a later time.”

  “And in the case of bloodroot, no record of purchase,” Ralph added, “since it grows wild.”

  “And, at the moment, no actual murderer to name in place of Zach,” Piper said with a grimace.

  “We’ll find him,” Ralph said. “Or her. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Piper nodded but wasn’t as sure as Ralph sounded, or as comforted. Time could be just as destructive as productive. If Dirk Unger’s murder became a cold case, Zach’s once-bright future could be destroyed. With people’s names so searchable on the Internet, what graduate school admissions board or future employer would choose a candidate whose name was still linked to an unsolved murder? Then there were friends, potential girlfriends, neighbors—the list of distrust and potential damage went on. It was a bleak thought.

  . . .

  From the moment Piper opened up shop the next morning, business bustled. For whatever reason, customers she hadn’t seen for a while dropped in that day, and not just to hear or spread news but to buy. When Amy arrived, her first order of business was restocking the shelves.

  “Your brandied cherries are popular today,” she said as she returned from the back room with an armful of replacement jars.

  “There’s been a run on my hand-blended pickling spices, too. We might have to put up more, soon—when we have time.” Piper had spotted another customer—Jody Norris—approaching and readied herself for another good sale. Mrs. Norris was a particularly avid pickler.

  As Piper waited on Mrs. Norris, two more women arrived, and Amy left her jars of brandied cherries to take care of them. The rest of the morning continued in that mode, keeping both Piper and Amy jumping until at one particularly busy point Lydia walked in, Mallory in tow.

  “Good morning, ladies!” Lydia called out as though the current gathering of customers had been arranged for her benefit. Most everyone returned the greeting enthusiastically, which told Piper that Lydia was fast becoming a Cloverdale Grande Dame, largely due, she supposed, to the success of her tea.

  “Miss Lamb,” Lydia said, interrupting Piper from a discussion with Lorena Hicks about the various ways to use pickled beets. “I just stopped in for a jar of mint jelly. Do you have it? Jeremy likes it with his roast lamb.”

  “It’s right over here,” Amy said, answering for Piper. “One jar?” she asked, reaching upward.

  “That should do.”

  Amy took the jelly to the cash register to ring up but Lydia continued addressing Piper, browsing idly, as she did, through the section of jellies and preserves.

  “We’re heading over to Jeanine’s,” she said, pulling down a jar of strawberry preserves, looking at it, and putting it back. “Mallory has had a change of heart on her order. We’re going to choose something else.”

  Piper shot a look at Mallory, who was gazing expressionlessly at Piper’s papier-mâché cat, tucked into a corner near the cookbooks. Mallory had a change of heart? Piper wondered what the real story was and felt sorry if Mallory had been bullied into giving up her own choice. She turned back to Lydia to see a disconcerting look of triumph on her face. Don’t interfere with my control of my daughter, Lydia seemed to be saying, and Piper felt sure that the mint jelly had been only an excuse to send that message.

  Mallory followed her mother to the cash register, stolidly avoiding eye contact with Piper or anyone else in the shop, and the two left soon, Lydia pausing on her way out to bestow a gracious word or two on Piper’s other customers.

  Amy caught Piper’s eye and Piper made a subtle shrug before returning to her discussion with Lorena Hicks.

  About an hour later, Piper was surprised to see Stan Yeager walk in, and, with a quick nod, begin his own search about her shop. Piper didn’t remember Stan ever having come as a customer before and had assumed he just wasn’t a pickle or preserve person. Eventually he brought over two jars of kimchi, a Korean mixed-vegetable ferment that Piper liked but whose strong taste had limited appeal.

  Seeing Piper’s look of mild surprise, Stan smiled somewhat awkwardly. “My daughter likes the stuff.”

  “Is your daughter visiting?” Piper asked, having a vague memory that Stan had a married daughter living somewhere other than Cloverdale.

  “Um, no.” He fumbled for his credit card and handed it over. “Maybe later.”

  “I see,” Piper said, though she didn’t. What she was seeing was an agitated man and knew that Sugar would want to attribute that to guilt over Dirk Unger’s murder. Could Sugar be right? Was Stan showing signs of a troubled conscience?

  “Oh, Mr. Yeager, I’m so glad to find you. I stopped at your office and . . .” A woman Piper didn’t know grabbed Stan’s arm and attention and slowly dragged him away with his bagged jars of kimchi as she prattled on about some question to do with house sales. Stan’s place at the counter was quickly filled by another customer, so Piper temporarily shelved thoughts of murder and refocused on her work.

  Business continued briskly enough for Piper and Amy to have to alternate break times instead of lunching together as they liked to do. Taking the first turn at the helm, Piper was pleased to see Tammy Butterworth open her door.

  “One of my ladies gave me a recipe for radish pickles that she swears by,” Tammy said with her usual cheeriness, referring, Piper figured, to a housecleaning client. “I had such fun putting up the beets, I thought I’d try this. What do you think?”

  She handed Piper the recipe, which Piper scanned. “Looks good. I think you’ll love this on pumpernickel,” she said. “What do you need?”

  “Everything but the radishes,” Tammy said, cackling. “Already picked up a big bunch at a farmer’s market.” So Piper went around gathering up jars of peppercorns, fennel seeds, and mustard seeds.

  “Vinegar?” she asked, pausing at the row of jugs.

  “Need it. And the kosher salt. Plus the jars and lids.” Tammy laughed. “I do have the tablespoon of sugar that it calls for.”

  “Glad to hear it,” Piper said with a grin. “Well,” she said, looking over
the small pile of items she’d gathered. “Anything else?”

  “That should do it for now.” As Piper began ringing up, Tammy asked, “Any luck looking into that problem between Dirk and the landscaping lady?” At that moment, the shop door opened and the landscaping lady herself—Marguerite Lloyd—walked in, followed closely by Mrs. Tilley.

  “Oops!” Tammy said and mimed a tape-slap over her mouth.

  Marguerite, back in her garden center clothes of jeans and rolled-sleeve shirt, scowled in their direction, though it seemed to be over Piper’s being occupied rather than having heard Tammy’s question. Marguerite, she knew, was not a person filled with patience but she seemed able to pull up enough at the moment to stop where she was and not interrupt.

  Mrs. Tilley cheerfully stepped around Marguerite after twittering a greeting and picked up one of Piper’s shopping baskets to load with whatever struck her fancy that day. Marguerite moved toward Piper’s shelves, aiming her frown toward the collection of preserves and spices.

  Tammy handed her credit card to Piper and shifted her conversation to her cleaning efforts at the Porter mansion following the tea. “Took me the full day to put the place back to rights,” she said. “You’d be surprised how much ladies dressed to the nines can mess up a house. Spilt tea, squashed cakes on the hardwood. If you didn’t know better you’d think a kindergarten class had made a field trip there.” Tammy chuckled merrily and Piper thought how pleasantly Tammy would have livened up the event—if Lydia had deigned to invite her. That was probably a concept as alien as Marguerite Lloyd inviting those same kindergartners to run among her flowers.

  Piper glanced at Marguerite as Tammy signed her receipt and wondered just a bit nervously what the landscaper had come for. Though Marguerite picked up the odd spice jar or two, Piper was sure she hadn’t come for curry powder or turmeric.

  Mrs. Tilley, on the other hand, had come for cinnamon, ginger, canning jars and lids, a jar of brandied cherries—which she’d reached around Marguerite to get—and two jars of pickled peppers, the kind of varied assortment that Piper had come to expect from the woman. Marguerite, who’d become distracted for a moment reading the ingredients of a jar of do chua, Piper’s first attempt at the Vietnamese pickle blend, whipped around as Mrs. Tilley unloaded her shopping basket. She’d apparently reached her limit of patient waiting.