“No doubt about it, something is always happening here in Stoneham,” Tricia said.
“And I do apologize for telling people you’re responsible for the bad things that have occurred here in the village. I admit I was feeling desperate.”
“Let’s not get into that again,” Tricia advised.
Mary nodded and set down her crocheting. “Would you like to join me and have some cocoa?”
Tricia glanced at the clock on the wall behind Mary. “Thanks, but no. Dinnertime is sneaking up on me, and I’ve got plans.”
Mary turned to have a look. “Sorry. I didn’t realize it was so late. I’m probably going to stop at the Bookshelf Diner before I head home. Or maybe,” she said rather thoughtfully, “I might stop at the Dog-Eared Page and soak in some of the conviviality.”
Obviously she knew nothing about Chauncey’s visit there the evening before—or that he’d done nothing but slander Tricia during his visit. Well, if nothing else, that would never happen again.
“Pixie’s probably wondering where I’ve gotten to. Have a good evening, Mary.”
“You, too.”
“I’ll talk to you soon,” Tricia said, and headed for the door. Mary followed, locking it behind her.
Tricia started down the empty sidewalk toward her store. Poor Mary. But she sounded like she knew what she wanted in her new life without Chauncey, and Tricia wished her well.
Now, if she could just figure out her own short-term plan for happiness.
*
• • •
The last forty-five minutes of the workday were quiet. Maybe too quiet, giving Tricia far too much time to think about the terrible events of the day. There’d been virtually no foot traffic all afternoon, and the day’s take in the till was not worth the time and effort it would take to walk to the bank to make the night deposit.
Despite the hectic day, it was Pixie who seemed restless as darkness settled in and it was almost time to close the store.
“Have you got any plans for the evening?” Tricia asked.
“No. Well, maybe just a discussion with Fred about moving. My place seemed pretty big—until he brought all his stuff over. It’s been five months and I don’t have room to fa—” She stopped, and Tricia suspected she had been about to say something mildly vulgar. “To turn around,” Pixie amended. “We’ve got to look for a bigger place.”
“A house?” Tricia asked.
“I wish. There’s no money for that—not that we’re big spenders. We’ve been saving for a rainy day, and I guess that day is coming up fast.”
Tricia remembered Angelica’s desire to liberate her assistant. And she remembered that the house that had temporarily been home to the Chamber the year before was ready to go on the market. Angelica hadn’t done so, because she worried about finding just the right owner. Perhaps Pixie and Fred would fill the bill. Tricia mentioned the property, where Pixie had worked during the months before the Chamber had found its present home.
“That would be a real pipe dream.”
“If you could afford it, would you like something like that?”
“You bet.”
Tricia sighed. “I think you could more than swing it if you went to work for Nigela Ricita Associates.”
“Why would I want to do that?”
“Because … someone in the organization contacted me and asked about it.”
Pixie frowned. “Why didn’t they call me directly?”
“They wanted to know what I thought of you and your abilities.”
“And you said?” Pixie asked, sounding wary.
“That often I think your talents are wasted here. That you have a world of experiences and an abundance of creativity and that I want only the best for you.”
Pixie was quiet for several long seconds, then her eyes filled with tears. “You want to get rid of me?”
“No! Not at all. But I don’t want to hold you back, either. I didn’t do that to Ginny, and look where she is now.”
“Yeah, but she’s just a kid,” Pixie said bitterly.
“And that’s one thing I really admire about Nigela Ricita Associates. They don’t discriminate; not by race, not by gender, not by sexual orientation, and not by age.”
“And not by a criminal record,” Pixie added. She knew about Jake Keenan, who’d had a record for assault. He’d been a short-order cook at Booked for Lunch and now worked as the head chef at the Brookview Inn.
“That’s right,” Tricia affirmed.
“This Nigela chick seems to be the real thing,” Pixie said.
“Yes. She is,” Tricia agreed.
Pixie said nothing, and Tricia felt she had to tell the truth—at least to a certain extent.
“If I had won the Chamber presidency, I was prepared to have you take on a lot more responsibility here at the store. I know you would have excelled. Unfortunately, I lost.”
“I may not have said it aloud, but I’m real sorry that happened. You would have done a great job for the Chamber and its members.”
“I like to think so. But it is what it is.”
“Yeah.” Pixie let out a long breath. “I’d like to think about this for a while. I mean, I couldn’t walk out on you during the holidays. The store’s about to see its best sales of the year. And I’d need to talk this over with Fred. It’s a big, a really big decision.”
“Take all the time you need. As I understand it, the offer is pretty open-ended.”
Pixie nodded. “Okay. But I was wondering … you had your heart set on that Chamber job. You’ve been thinking about it for months. Isn’t there something else you’d like to do? Devote time to a hobby or something?”
“I don’t know. I used to repair old books, and I’m pretty good at it, but a lot of the books we see are paperbound. We don’t see a lot of damaged books worth saving.”
“That’s true,” Pixie agreed. “But I thought you said a time or two that you might like to work with or start a pet rescue.”
Tricia thought about Carol Talbot and her legacy. “Yes, but … like you said, it’s kind of a pipe dream. Angelica has urged me to start a second business.”
“The area could use another shelter. Mr. E had to go to Milford to get Charlie—God rest his kitty soul. And even if you didn’t open a shelter, you could always give your time or donate to that shelter. The world is full of crappy people who abuse animals—and just as full of nice people who want those dogs and cats to have a better, happy life.”
That was true.
“It’s something to think about,” Tricia said. “Are you sad that you didn’t find it feasible to open a tailor shop?”
Pixie shook her head. “Nah, I’m not like Frannie.”
“Frannie wants to open her own furniture repair shop?”
Pixie shook her head. “But she’s thought about selling her own brand of wood gunk.”
“What do you mean?” Tricia asked.
“I guess her father was into making wood finishes. He left the recipes for his concoctions to Frannie. She cooks them up on her kitchen stove—when the weather is fine. I guess the fumes can be kind of nasty, so she only does it during the summer when she can have the windows open and run a fan.”
“Really?”
“Oh, yeah. She goes out along the highway and picks all kinds of wild stuff to cook up. Stuff like poison sumac and other leaves and bark.”
“Sumac?” Tricia asked, remembering what Chief Baker told her about Ted Harper’s allergy to one thing: the sap from a sumac plant. “I thought it only grew here in the Northeast.”
“Apparently not. Frannie’s into all kinds of natural crap. I asked her if it wasn’t a lot of trouble to cook that crap and risk your lungs rather than buy a can of the ready-made stuff, but she said there was no comparison.”
No comparison? Maybe. But deadly lethal to ingest, at least for someone like Ted Harper. Would putting something like that in a canapé have been just worth a tummy upset to someone who wasn’t allergic to the poisonous subs
tance? Would a small dose of the stuff merely make the average person ill, but not kill? And why—why would Frannie want to pull such a stunt at Tricia’s party? The idea turned her stomach. Frannie’s actions had caused a man’s death—a man she professed to care about, and yet she hadn’t acted guilty in the least.
“Are you okay?” Pixie asked, studying Tricia’s face. “You look kind of pale.”
Tricia shook her head. “It’s been a very long and troubling day.”
Pixie nodded and glanced at the clock. “It’s almost time to go home.”
“We may as well close up shop for the night,” Tricia agreed, and they went through their end-of-day routine.
It was still only five fifty, but Tricia had had more than enough for one day, turned the OPEN sign to CLOSED, and pulled the blinds on the front window before giving Pixie a good-night wave as she left for home.
And Tricia pondered what she should do with the knowledge of what Frannie had done.
THIRTY-ONE
Like most of the businesses in Stoneham—at least during the off season—the Cookery closed its doors at six o’clock. Tricia usually left her own store to go to Angelica’s for dinner about five minutes later—but that day she waited ten. There was no way she wanted to run into Frannie.
Tricia dithered, waiting for the big hand on the clock to make its way to the ten-minute mark before she grabbed her cloak. Despite her tussles with Russ, her arm was feeling much better, and she decided to leave her sling on the hook. She’d take it upstairs and put it away. Then she thought better of that idea. She’d toss it out. If she ever hurt her arm again, she’d be given a new sling.
She wasn’t sure what she would say to Angelica about Frannie. She wouldn’t want to believe her assistant—the woman she trusted to run the Cookery—could be so callous, so reckless, and so damnably unrepentant.
Tricia lowered the lights and locked her shop door. But as she swung around to enter the Cookery, she noted that though the blinds had been pulled, the lights were still blazing behind them. She pushed the shop’s door and found it unlocked. The first thing she noticed was that the plate had been taken off the light switch and that bare wires hung from it. The floor below it was sopping wet. As she stepped inside, she saw Frannie standing behind the cash desk—the last person she wanted to run into.
“Hello, Frannie. You’re here late tonight,” Tricia said, feeling uncomfortable. She shut the door and moved off of the saturated carpet.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” Frannie said, none too friendly.
A bigger twinge of unease gave Tricia a shudder. She moved farther into the store. “Why’s that?”
“Because you figured it out. Somehow you always do,” Frannie said bitterly.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Pixie told you not twenty minutes ago.”
Tricia swallowed. There was only one way Frannie could have known that. She must have bugged Haven’t Got a Clue, too. But when? Tricia hadn’t seen the woman in the shop in quite some time—but then she often worked in her office in the converted basement. She and Angelica had an agreement that if their stores needed change, either Pixie or Mr. Everett could pop next door to get it—and Frannie could do the same. She must have planted one of her little listening devices during just such a visit.
“The question is,” Frannie asked, her voice deadly calm, “what are you going to do about it?”
“I don’t know what you mean,” Tricia bluffed.
“Of course you do. Chief Baker told you about Ted’s allergy—he tells you everything,” she said snidely.
“As he must have told you,” Tricia added.
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you say something?”
“And get arrested for murder? I didn’t mean for anyone to die—just to get a little sick.”
“And who was your intended target?”
Frannie smiled. “Guess.”
And then everything seemed to slip into place, and Tricia knew.
“Angelica.”
Frannie’s smile widened and she nodded.
“That doesn’t make sense.”
“She almost always takes the last of anything,” Frannie practically growled. “And what did it matter who got sick? Damn Ted for having a sumac allergy, anyway.”
“But why would you want to hurt Angelica? She’s treated you with nothing but kindness, respect, and most of all, trust.”
“Like hell. If she respected me so much, why am I still working in retail when she’s got about ten businesses and hires people with a lot less experience than me? She’d even hire Pixie—an ex-prostitute—for one of her high-and-mighty Nigela Ricita businesses.”
Again Tricia swallowed. Despite the obvious trap of water and electricity, which she’d stepped well away from, as far as she could see, she was in no immediate danger, although she couldn’t see Frannie’s hands. Did she have a gun behind the counter?
The prudent thing was to get the heck out of there—but what about Angelica? Would Frannie go right upstairs and threaten—harm—her sister?
Stall for time. Keep her talking.
“Did you ever ask to interview for another job?”
Frannie’s lip curled. “I wasn’t supposed to know about her double life.”
Frannie, the eyes and the ears of Stoneham, was known for ferreting out secrets—and blabbing them to the world at large. Why hadn’t she told that tale?
“It’s you who’s been blackmailing her,” Tricia accused.
Frannie shrugged. “So what?”
“You threatened a child,” Tricia pointed out.
“But I would have never gone through with it.”
“You poisoned your own boyfriend,” Tricia said, as though to belie that statement.
“That was an accident.”
“But you would have been okay with poisoning Angelica.”
“She wouldn’t have died.”
“You don’t know that.”
Again Frannie shrugged.
Tricia’s gaze wandered to the clock. Angelica would soon be wondering why she hadn’t arrived upstairs for their predinner drink.
“Was it you who vandalized my store? My car?”
“And Ginny’s car—let’s not forget about her.”
“But why?”
“The people who work for Nigela Ricita have all had chances to move up—to make a better living—all except me.”
“For instance?” Tricia asked, still stalling.
“Jake moved from Booked for Lunch to the Brookview Inn—with a hefty increase in salary. Bev moved from Booked for Lunch to the Dog-Eared Page. And of course we can’t forget dear, sweet Ginny.” She said the name with utter disgust.
“What do you mean?”
“She went from shopkeeper to management—nepotism at work,” she practically spat.
“Excuse me, but Ginny is tremendously capable. It took me months to replace her. And she proved her mettle with last summer’s Wine and Jazz Festival.” Frannie’s lip curled, and Tricia changed tacks. “Did you ever tell Angelica you wanted that kind of opportunity?” she pressed again.
“I’m over fifty. Who in the world would hire me for anything other than retail?”
“You’d never find out without asking. And, by the way, I hired someone over the age of fifty to take Ginny’s place at Haven’t Got a Clue.”
“That’s you—not Angelica.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Michele Fowler, at the Dog-Eared Page, was over fifty when she got the manager’s job. Bev is over fifty. The innkeepers at the Sheer Comfort Inn are over fifty. If nothing else, Angelica and Nigela Ricita Associates are well known for hiring people by their abilities, not their race, not their age, but by their qualifications.”
Frannie’s sneer deepened. What was her real beef? Or was she just playing victim because it was easier?
“Why did you bug my apartment?” Tricia demanded.
“To find out more about Angelica’s bu
siness dealings. She only talks about it to you. She could have confided in me. She could have used me as a sounding board. She could have done so much more for me!”
“What about Ted?” Tricia had believed that Frannie’s tears had been real the night Ted Harper died.
“How was I supposed to know he was allergic to sumac?”
“Why did you pull all those pranks?”
“Not all. There’s a copycat somewhere in the village.”
Yeah; Russ Smith.
Frannie shrugged. “It was Bob Kelly’s idea.”
“Bob? But you and he weren’t friends. After how he treated you at the Chamber for all those years, you vowed you’d never speak to him again.”
“Yeah, well, it’s hard to put your ex-lover completely out of your life—no matter what they’ve done to you.”
Ex-lover?
“When were you and Bob lovers?”
“Early on in my tenure at the Chamber. I’ve been visiting him in jail—when they let me. He only gets to see someone every other month—and you made sure he was sentenced to life in prison. Now we can never be together.”
Bob used people. He was using Frannie. In her present state of mind, she’d never be able to see that. “That’s a better outcome than he gave my husband.”
“Ex-husband,” Frannie corrected.
“Christopher didn’t deserve to die.”
Frannie moved around the counter, and Tricia noticed how sturdily she was built. She must have had forty or fifty pounds on Tricia. She advanced, her gaze hard.
“I think it’s time you joined him.”
Tricia backed up, crashing into a display of kitchen utensils that hung on the wall, sending a number of them clattering to the floor. Tricia ducked right, straight into the puddle, as Frannie lunged for her.
She bobbed to her left, just missing Frannie’s outstretched arms.
“Angelica!” Tricia hollered as Frannie grabbed hold of her, yanking her off balance and toward the door once more. Younger and faster, Tricia dipped lower, but then Frannie’s clenched fist came around, smashing into Tricia’s face, sending her reeling.
“What on earth?” came a muffled voice.
Frannie grabbed Tricia by her cloak and hauled her upright, but Tricia knew what was in store if she didn’t move quickly—get away. She twisted around, giving Frannie a mighty shove, which sent her stumbling backward, smashing into the wall.
Poisoned Pages Page 25