“Of course I am,” Angelica said, but her words weren’t malicious. “If you don’t mind, would you let me come up with the menu, decorations, and party games for the shower?”
Tricia took in her sister’s hopeful expression. Angelica was right. She better understood what would make Pixie happy, and she felt more than a little down that she wasn’t as tuned in to what her employee would prefer. But the whole idea of hosting the shower was to make Pixie happy, and that was Tricia’s sole goal.
“Okay, but please—let me help.”
“Oh, there’s no question—you’re invaluable,” Angelica said. “You are the glue that will make this shower a tremendous success.”
It sounded like Angelica was throwing her a bone, but since she trusted her sister implicitly, Tricia was willing to acquiesce.
“Okay.”
Angelica wiped her hands on a dishcloth and grabbed her own drink. “Good. If it’s available—and I’m pretty sure it is—I think the parlor at the Sheer Comfort Inn will suffice. I mean, this isn’t a large party, is it?”
“I invited Grace and Ginny, some of my best customers, and a few of the merchants. Maybe a dozen in all.”
Angelica went to the fridge, took out some eggs, and broke them into a bowl. “Then it’ll be a lovely, intimate affair.”
Tricia nodded. “And I thought I’d order either a cake or cupcakes from the Patisserie.”
“My people could supply a gorgeous cake, but I think it would be nice to throw Nikki a little business. Why not spread the joy around the village?”
“Exactly. And let’s face it, her cakes and pastries are to die for.”
“Let’s hope not,” Angelica said. “We’ve had more than enough of that around here.”
Tricia ignored the jibe. “What else needs to be done?”
“The sausage needs to be browned. Are you up for it?”
“Of course.” She stepped over to one of Angelica’s kitchen drawers and withdrew a bib apron and tied it on. She didn’t want any grease splashes on her pretty peach sweater set. She grabbed one of the shiny skillets from the rack that hung over the island and set it on the stove, found the sausage wrapped in butcher paper and dumped it into the skillet, then lit the burner. She found a wooden spoon in a crock on the counter and poked at the sausage to break it up. After a few months of lessons from Angelica, Tricia felt like she was making real progress with this cooking thing. Too bad she didn’t have any victims to practice on. Then again, once her new kitchen was assembled, maybe she’d invite hers and Angelica’s surrogate family to dinner. And she’d make it herself. Okay, maybe she’d let Angelica supervise, but she would do the actual cooking by herself.
While she tended to the sausage, Angelica retrieved a carton of cream from the fridge, measured out a cup and poured it into the eggs, and took a whisk to the mixture.
“Once we pop this casserole into the oven, we’ll have half an hour to kill. Did you still want to take Sarge for a . . .” She looked over at the doggy bed. Sarge’s ears had pricked up at the mention of his name. “. . . you-know-what?”
“Yes. With my treadmill relocated to the basement and me living off-site, I’m not getting my usual amount of exercise.”
“Well, you look fabulous—so it doesn’t show.” Angelica retrieved the bowl with the onions and garlic and handed it to Tricia. “You can add these now.” She did.
Angelica rounded up the rest of the ingredients, and between the two of them, they assembled the casserole. Angelica popped it in the oven, glanced at her watch, and then polished off the last of her drink. Tricia still had half of hers. She stowed it in the fridge.
“Walkies!” Angelica called, and Sarge shot out of his bed as though from a catapult. She clipped the leash to his collar, and the three of them headed down the stairs. Once outside, Angelica locked the Cookery. “What direction do you want to go?”
“How about up Pine Avenue. I like to zigzag my way up to Oak Street.”
“Okay, but we have to start back in precisely”—Angelica checked the diamond-studded watch on her wrist—“fourteen minutes, otherwise our dinner will be ruined.”
“No problem.”
They set off, with Angelica holding Sarge’s leash. He walked at her heel, his tongue lolling a bit, his gait jaunty—happy as only a dog can be. He knew the way, of course. Tricia had taken him on this exact route a hundred or more times in the previous year after her store had burned, using their walks as her preferred mode of exercise.
Tricia only half listened as Angelica spoke about her day and the mountain of zucchini she needed to deal with at her café. Her thoughts kept going back to the body they’d found only the evening before. If she was correct, Carol had lived on Oak Street. Had her neighbors known Carol better than anyone else in the village did? From what Tricia gathered, her darts nemesis had lived in Stoneham for decades, but had pretty much kept to herself until the death of her husband. Had the man kept her in line for some reason, or was it sheer loneliness that had forced her to seek company elsewhere?
Angelica was winding down as they turned onto Oak Street. “We’re going to have to start back in just a few minutes.”
“Is it that time already?” Tricia asked, looking at her own watch.
“Didn’t Carol live here on Oak Street?” Angelica asked.
“Did she?” Tricia asked, playing dumb.
“Yes. That yellow house over there.”
The rest of the houses on the street were either painted white or beige, or the raw shingles had been left to weather to gray. For someone who hadn’t stood out in life, the color of Carol’s home sure did.
As they approached the house, Tricia noticed that Carol’s next-door neighbors, who must have been in their midfifties, were out watering the floral border that graced the front of their home. She didn’t think she’d met either of them before, but she recognized the man as the person who had held the door for her at Booked for Lunch earlier that day. The slender, petite woman with short-cropped dark—and obviously dyed—hair noticed them, waved, and then approached.
“Is that a Bichon?” she asked, and bent down, holding out her hand to let Sarge sniff it. He did, and then he licked her fingers. The woman laughed. “What a cutie-pie.”
“His name is Sarge, because he’s such a brave little soldier,” Angelica said. “And yes, he is a Bichon.” Sarge sat down on the sidewalk, basking in the praise.
“I always heard they’re like poodles—they don’t smell when they get wet.”
“Sarge is always as fresh as a daisy,” Angelica said, rather sidestepping the question.
And now Tricia had an opening to bring up Carol. In future, she’d have to remember to take little goodwill ambassador Sarge with her on all her information-gathering forays.
“Were you thinking of getting a dog—for protection? Because Sarge is a wonderful watchdog.”
The woman straightened. “I hadn’t thought we needed that until last night.” Her gaze traveled to Carol’s house. The yard was tidy, and the curtains in the home were drawn. It looked deathly quiet.
“Wasn’t your neighbor Carol Talbot?” Angelica asked.
“Yes, she was.”
“So sad,” Tricia said, “and unexpected.”
The woman nodded. “She was a good neighbor. We have a cat, and when we went out of town, Carol would come over and feed her. She’d even spend time with her—and read to her. Not many pet sitters are willing to do that.” She shook her head. “I can’t understand why anyone would want to kill her. She was quiet and unassuming.”
Until she had a dart in her hand, and then she was consumed with single-minded determination. But Tricia kept that opinion to herself.
“I suppose the police have spoken to you,” Tricia said, noting the woman’s husband kept looking up from the wand sprinkler on the end of his hose to take them in.
> “Yes, and the owner of the Stoneham Weekly News, too. He said he was going to write a nice obituary for Carol. She deserved it.”
So, not all of Russ’s news-collecting skills had gone dormant.
Tricia noted the husband had turned off the faucet and was winding up the hose. “Did Carol have many friends?”
“Not that I know of. I guess she sometimes went to that bar on Main Street. My husband and I don’t drink, so we’ve never been there, although she did ask us if we wanted to see her trounce her last opponent at darts.”
Ha! Tricia had only lost to Carol on two occasions, and they’d played at least a dozen times.
“Did Carol have any relatives? What will happen to her house?”
“I don’t know—to both questions.”
Studying the woman’s rather guilty expression, Tricia somehow doubted that.
“What were the police interested in?”
“They wanted to look around her house. We have a key and let them in.”
What Tricia wouldn’t give to have a chance to give the place a thorough going-over—not that that was likely to happen.
Angelica looked at her watch. “Oh, my! I’ve got a casserole in the oven. Trish, if we don’t leave now, it’ll be ruined.”
Tricia would have liked to have stayed longer to pump Carol’s neighbor for more information, but it sounded like Carol had been on good, but not very personal, terms with her neighbors, and since the husband had gone inside, Tricia wasn’t going to get an opportunity to speak to him, either. “Yes, we’d better go. It was very nice speaking with you.”
“And you. If you walk this way again, I’ll look out for you. I’d love to say hello to Sarge once again.”
Sarge wagged his tail enthusiastically and if she ever needed it, Tricia had an excuse to return and pump the woman for information.
The sisters waved good-bye and headed down the street. They’d spent far too long conversing and didn’t retrace their steps, instead taking Poplar Avenue back to Main Street and the Cookery.
“That was rather an uninformative conversation,” Angelica commented as they turned the corner.
“I agree. Not that I have a stake in finding out anything more about Carol.”
“Nonsense. If you’d had more time, you would have interrogated the woman.”
“What’s at stake is Daddy may be considered the prime suspect in her death, as Grant told me he’s ruled out Steven.”
“Why’s that?”
“He wouldn’t tell me, but I’m still suspicious and I do intend to grill him. . . . That is, if I get the chance. I might like to speak to the husband of the woman we just spoke to,” Tricia admitted.
“And how will you finagle that?” Angelica asked.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
“Don’t you think it was a little odd that the woman didn’t introduce herself?”
“We didn’t introduce ourselves,” Tricia pointed out.
“Just about everybody in the village knows who I am. I’m already a legend in my own time,” Angelica quipped as they approached the Cookery.
Tricia smirked. “You mean in your own mind.”
Angelica ignored the jibe, unlocked the door, entered, and let Sarge off the leash. He immediately ran for the back of the shop and the stairs. Once they’d caught up, Angelica scooped him up, and the three of them headed for her apartment.
The timer on the stove went off just as they entered. Angelica hung the leash on a peg by the door. “You set the table, and I’ll get the casserole out of the oven. It can sit for a few minutes while I slice the baguette I picked up earlier at the Patisserie.”
“Sounds like a plan.”
Tricia retrieved plates from the cupboard and cutlery from a drawer, and then snagged her drink from the fridge, topping it up and poured another for Angelica.
Angelica set the casserole on a hot pad, plunged a large serving spoon into the concoction, and set the platter of bread, as well as a stick of sweet butter, on a plate on the kitchen island, and the sisters sat down to serve themselves.
Tricia tasted the casserole and experienced a moment of bliss. “Wow—this tastes fantastic.”
“Doesn’t it, though?” Angelica agreed, and smiled. “And it’s rather like a cross between a quiche and a soufflé.” Her smile faded, however. “Do you really think Daddy’s the chief suspect in Carol’s death?”
Tricia reached for her glass and nodded. “I’m afraid so.” For a moment, she wrestled with asking if Angelica knew about their father’s past, and again decided not to mention it. It could wait.
Maybe.
SEVEN
The sky above the towering maples that surrounded the Brookview property was pale blue—a sure sign of humidity, which Tricia felt like a slap in the face as she exited the bungalow the next morning. She locked the door and had started for her car across the parking lot when she saw a familiar face. “Grace!”
Grace Harris-Everett looked around, spotted Tricia, and waved. “Hello, Tricia. Isn’t it a lovely morning?”
“Humid—but I’ll take this over ice and snow any day. What brings you to the Brookview so early?”
“The Stoneham Horticultural Society is having their annual luncheon today, and I’m on the decorating committee. We’ll have fresh flowers on every table—all of which were grown in the Society’s own gardens.”
Tricia would bet that the florist who usually supplied the Brookview’s arrangements wasn’t too happy about that plan, but she was sure Antonio Barbero, the inn’s manager and Ginny’s husband, had soothed any ruffled feathers. “Sounds lovely.”
“I invited Russ Smith from the Stoneham Weekly News to come take pictures, but he wouldn’t commit.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” But after her conversation with the local rag’s publisher the previous day, she wasn’t entirely surprised, either. “Here’s hoping it’s a slow news day.”
It occurred to Tricia that this might be the perfect opportunity to quiz Grace on Carol, since Mr. Everett had chosen not to disclose what he knew about her.
“The news wasn’t slow on Tuesday night. I mean, after what happened to Carol Talbot.”
Grace’s lips pursed, and she sported a guarded expression that mirrored her husband’s from the day before. “Yes.”
Tricia decided to push it. “Mr. Everett seems to know something about Carol, but was reluctant to say anything.”
“I think you’re being incorrect when you say reluctant; I think you mean he won’t share an opinion on her.”
“Exactly,” Tricia agreed.
Grace nodded.
“I haven’t lived in Stoneham all that long. I don’t know the gossip that went on decades ago. I thought perhaps—”
“That I might be willing to tell all?” Grace asked, her expression wry.
“Oh, no—that’s not what I meant.” A lie if ever she’d uttered one.
“I know what you meant. And there is a difference between idle, malicious gossip and knowing the facts. Or at least, thinking one knows the facts.”
“What are the facts concerning Carol?”
Grace seemed to weigh the merits of speaking versus keeping what she knew to herself, and Tricia wondered who else in the village might know what had gone on decades before. Stella Kraft, the retired high school teacher, might be a source of information. Then again, Tricia hadn’t spoken to her for several years, and she’d heard that the poor woman had been suffering with the onset of Alzheimer’s disease. And Frannie Mae Armstrong knew all the current gossip, but she hadn’t resided in Stoneham decades before when Carol had arrived to live in the village.
“There’s a saying I’ve heard since I was a young girl,” Grace said, and Tricia suspected she might be on the receiving end of a lecture. “That one keeps oneself to oneself.”
Was Grace talking about herself or the dead woman?
“Carol kept to herself?” Tricia guessed.
“Yes. It was only this past year or so—since her husband died—that she began to participate in village events. They kept to themselves and didn’t socialize much.”
“And that changed when Mr. Talbot died?” Tricia guessed.
Grace nodded. “I must say I was quite startled to see Carol begin to frequent the Dog-Eared Page on a regular basis.”
“She liked playing darts,” Tricia pointed out.
Again Grace nodded. “I understand she and her husband played at home. I know from experience how lonely it can be when you lose a life partner, and I suspect that was her motivation.”
Though Tricia had lost someone whom she’d thought of as her life partner via divorce, she understood exactly what Grace was saying. “And his passing was the reason Carol came out of her shell?”
“Exactly. But there was another reason she kept to herself all those years. It was a bit of a scandal when she first arrived, you see.”
“Scandal?”
“Yes. A number of the villagers were upset to have a murderer in their midst.”
“Carol killed someone?” Tricia found it hard to wrap her mind around that announcement. Carol a murderer? Considering the number of deaths that had occurred in the village during the previous five years, Carol should have felt quite at home.
“Apparently she and her husband deliberately sought out a dying little village where they could escape her past notoriety.”
It was true; before the booksellers had been invited to locate to the village in an effort to create a New England version of Hay-on-Wye in Wales, the place had seen a dwindling population and a strangled tax base. The booksellers—and the other businesses that had joined their ranks—had brought prosperity back to the village in the form of tourism.
“Who did Carol murder?”
“A schoolmate.”
“How old was she?”
“I believe she was eleven at the time of the incident. Apparently the girls had been rivals. The school hosted a spelling bee, and Carol and her victim went head-to-head. Carol lost.”
A Just Clause Page 7