Gunpowder Green

by Laura Childs

  “I’m worried about my boat,” said Jory. “Eldon Cook, one of my sailing buddies, went over to the Isle of Palms a couple days ago and brought it back, so it’s moored at the yacht club now. But if there’s an even worse storm blowing in . . .”

  “What can I do to help?” offered Theodosia.

  “Could you stop by my office and pick up the second set of keys? I know Eldon locked up the boat, so if you could take the keys to the yacht club and give them to Billy Manolo—”

  “Billy Manolo?”

  “Yeah,” said Jory, “he works there. He’s a kind of handyman.”

  “I know who he is,” replied Theodosia. “I met him yesterday morning. Well, I didn’t actually meet him, I saw him. At Oliver Dixon’s funeral.”

  “Of course,” said Jory. “I’d completely forgotten that the funeral was yesterday. How was it?”

  “Sad,” said Theodosia. “But nicely done. A lot of his friends stood up and said some wonderful things about him.”

  “That’s good,” said Jory. “Oliver deserved it.”

  “So take the keys to Billy and have him do what?” continued Theodosia.

  “Secure the boat, turn on the bilge pump. Probably check to make sure the sails are stored properly. Your basic hurricane preparedness.”

  “You trust this guy to do this?”

  “Yeah. Sure I do. It’s his job to do this kind of stuff.” Jory paused. “Is there some problem, Theo? Something I don’t know about?”

  “No, of course not. Don’t worry about a thing,” said Theodosia. “I’ll take care of everything. How are things on your end? How are the depositions going?”

  Jory sighed. “Slow.”

  Theodosia hung up the phone and peered out her kitchen window as rain thudded heavily on the roof and sloshed noisily down drain spouts. She could barely make out the little garden apartment across the cobblestone alley where Haley lived, so strong was the downpour.

  Shuddering, she buttoned the top button of her chenille sweater. Charleston was usually engulfed in warm weather by now, and everyone was enjoying a lovely, languid spring before the buildup of summer’s oppressive heat and humidity. But this was a whole different story: nasty weather and a chill Atlantic breeze that seemed to whip right through you.

  The teakettle on the stove began its high-pitched, wavering whistle, and Theodosia quickly snatched it from the back burner. Pouring boiling water over a teaspoon of Darjeeling, she let it steep for three minutes in the tiny one-cup teapot. It was funny, she thought, the biggest enemies of tea were air, light, heat, and dampness. And, so often, Charleston’s climate offered up abundant helpings of all of these!

  Theodosia retreated to her living room and stretched out on the couch. Earl Grey, already well into his evening nap, lifted his head a few inches, eyed her sleepily, and settled back down.

  As Theodosia sipped her tea, she thought about Lizbeth Cantrell, the woman who had implored her for help just a few days ago.

  She still didn’t know why she’d promised Lizbeth that she’d try to clear Ford Cantrell’s name. After all, she was the one who’d been suspicious of Ford in the first place.

  She supposed it was the connection between Lizbeth Cantrell and her mother that had triggered her answer. The bittersweet flood of memories had been a strange, slightly mind-altering experience.

  And, deep down, she knew that she also felt beholden to Lizbeth. In the South, with its curious code of honor, when you were beholden to someone, you helped them out when they needed you. No questions asked.

  But what would she do if she couldn’t keep her promise to Lizbeth?

  What if more investigating proved that Ford Cantrell really had tampered with that old pistol? Ford was, after all, the one with an extensive gun collection. So he had expertise when it came to antique weapons. And the man had recently turned his plantation into a hunting preserve. She wasn’t exactly sure what that proved, but it was the kind of thing that could carry nasty implications in court.

  But Lizbeth had seemed utterly convinced of her brother’s innocence. Then again, Lizbeth was a believer in signs and portents. Like the wreath of coltsfoot. What was it supposed to symbolize again? Oh, yes, justice.

  And exactly what justice had Lizbeth been making reference to? Theodosia wondered. Justice for her brother, Ford Cantrell? Or the type of justice that might have already been meted out against Oliver Dixon?

  Theodosia stared at the bone china cup that held her tea. She had begun collecting individual coffee, tea, and demitasse cups long before she’d opened the tea shop. She’d found that when she set her table for a dinner party, it was fun to arrange it with mismatched pieces, pairing, for example, a Limoges plate with a Lilique cup and saucer.

  Now the information she’d managed to collect so far on the people surrounding Oliver Dixon also seemed like mismatched pieces. But unlike the eclectic table settings her guests often raved over, none of these pieces seemed to fit together.

  Theodosia stood, stretched, and tried to shake off the chill. She’d been avoiding turning on the heat—it seemed kind of silly to still be using heat in April—but her apartment felt like it was growing colder by the minute.

  Relenting, Theodosia walked across the room and flipped the lever on the thermostat. She was immediately rewarded by an electrical hum followed by a small puff of warm air.

  Okay, she asked herself, what am I missing? She stood, staring at the droplets of water that streamed down the outside of the windows, reminding her of tears. Like Doe’s tears for her dead husband, Oliver Dixon?

  She believed fervently that Oliver Dixon was more than just the victim; he was also the linchpin in all this. If she could figure out why someone wanted Oliver out of the way, she could establish motive.

  And when you found motive, you usually found the murderer.

  Theodosia went to her computer and sat down. She had looked at the financial and start-up information on Oliver Dixon’s new company, Grapevine, and nothing seemed particularly out of the ordinary. They’d spent a lot of money on research and development, but that was fairly typical. And because Grapevine was a start-up high-tech company, their burn rate, or rate of spending for the first few months, had been high but certainly not unexpected.

  She wondered what the media had written about Grapevine. Haley had quoted from an article in the business section of the Post and Courier. But, from the rah-rah sound of it, the article had probably been reedited from a press release that the company itself had prepared. That was usually how those things worked. Lord knows, over the years she herself had written enough press releases that got turned into newspaper articles or sidebars in trade publications.

  But what had the hard-nosed business analysts said about Grapevine? The techie guys from Forrester or the business mavens at Arthur Andersen? Or even the reviewers at some of the vertical trade pubs?

  Easy enough to check, she thought, as she clicked on Netscape and typed in the key word “Grapevine.”

  Forty-seven thousand hits came up for Grapevine, everything from rock bands to a restaurant in Napa Valley. Oops. Definitely got to narrow the search, Theodosia decided.

  Now she added the term PDA to the search parameter. That yielded sixty-three hits. Far more manageable.

  Theodosia scanned down her new list of hits, searching for a company profile, analyst’s report, anything that might give her an outsider’s snapshot view of Grapevine.

  She clicked open an article from Technology Voyage, a well-respected publication that reported on new products and trends in E-commerce and provided top-line analyses of various new high-tech companies. She had actually placed advertising in Technology Voyage and met with its editors when she worked on the Avanti account, a company that manufactured semiconductors.

  The Technology Voyage article was titled “PDAs on the Fast Track.” It began with a good overview of the PDA market. Sales were erupting, topping three billion dollars with projections of more than six billion dollars by next year. And just
as Haley had said, PDAs were touted as portable, pocket-sized devices that let you magically keep track of appointments, addresses, phone numbers, to-do lists, and personal notes. More full-featured PDAs could even be used to send and receive E-mail, surf the Internet, or support digital cameras.

  The article went on to list the various PDA manufacturers, manufacturers of PDA applications, chips and inner workings, and PDA wireless service and content providers.

  According to the article, Grapevine was a manufacturer of flash memory cards, thirty-two and sixty-four-megabyte SD cards for storing data in those PDAs that used the Palm operating system.

  Wow, thought Theodosia. What with working on computers, setting up a Web site, and trading stocks on-line, I’m fairly well versed in technology, but this is getting slightly complicated!

  The article went on to list the burgeoning number of PDA manufacturers that included such companies as Casio, IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Royal, Compaq, and Hand-spring, and briefly detailed Microsoft’s competing operating system, Pocket PC.

  Theodosia put two fingers to her forehead, kneaded gently at the beginnings of a techno headache. Better to quit while she was ahead? She scanned the rest of the article quickly, then became caught up again. As she read the “Editors Choice” thumbnail sketches of several different PDAs, she wondered how she’d ever gotten along without a Blackberry to deliver wireless E-mails. Then she changed her mind in favor of an Ericsson that boasted handwriting and voice recognition. And finally, Theodosia decided the daVinci, with its tiny folding keyboard, had to be the slickest thing yet.

  Would one of these minicomputers work for her? Perhaps so. A whizbang PDA might help her keep better track of all manner of things. Tea party commitments, shopping lists and—she pulled her face into a wry grin—a list of murder suspects? She shook her head. Time to give it a rest. She was starting to obsess, and that wasn’t good. That wasn’t good at all.

  CHAPTER 17

  “HALEY, WHERE ARE the tea candles?” barked Drayton. “Top shelf,” she called from the kitchen. “Not the colored ones, I want the beeswax candles in the little Chinese blue and white containers.” Drayton stood behind the counter, frowning, studying the floor-to-ceiling shelves.

  “Bottom shelf,” came Haley’s voice again. “On the left.”

  Mumbling to himself, Drayton bent down and began pulling rolls of blue tissue paper, small blue shopping bags, and corrugated gift boxes from the cupboard in a mad rush to find his candles.

  “Stop it.” Haley, ever vigilant and slightly phobic about tidiness, appeared behind him and admonished him sharply. “You’re getting everything all catawampus.”

  She knelt down. “Better let me do it,” she said in a kinder tone. Opening the cupboard door on the far left, she pulled out the candles Drayton had been searching for. “Here,” she said as she put two boxes into his outstretched hands. “Candles. Far left.”

  “Thank you,” Drayton said sheepishly. “Guess I really am in a twitter today.”

  “You got that right,” Haley grumped as she stuffed everything back into the cupboard. “Good thing this mystery tea thing isn’t a weekly event. I’d be a wreck. We’d all be a wreck.”

  “Who’s a wreck?” asked Theodosia as she let herself in the front door.

  “Drayton is,” joked Haley. “In his sublime paranoia to keep everything a secret, he’s ending up doing most of the prep work himself. Although he has deigned to allow me to bake a few of his menu items,” she added with a wicked grin.

  “Like what?” asked Theodosia. “I’m in the dark as much as you are,” she explained as she slipped off her light coat and shook raindrops from it.

  “Oh, let’s see,” said Haley. “Cannelles de Bordeaux, croquets aux pignons, and fougasse. Which is really just pastry, cookies, and breads. Except when you say it in French, it sounds exquisite. Of course, anything said in French sounds exquisite. A case in point: boudin noir.”

  “What’s that?” asked Theodosia.

  “Blood sausage,” replied Haley.

  Drayton rolled his eyes. “A bit bizarre for one of my teas,” he declared as his eyes went to his watch, a classic Piaget that seemed to perpetually run a few minutes late. “Haley, it’s almost nine. Better unlock the door.”

  “Theodosia already did,” Haley shot back, then threw Theodosia a questioning glance. “You did, didn’t you?” she whispered.

  Theodosia gave a quick nod.

  “I heard that, Haley,” said Drayton.

  “I don’t know how many customers we’ll have today,” said Theodosia. “It’s still raining like crazy out there.”

  “Oh, there’ll be a few brave souls who’ll come out to tromp the historic district,” said Drayton. “And when they find their way to us, there’s a good chance they’ll be hungry.”

  “And cold,” added Haley as she gave a little shiver.

  “Right,” agreed Drayton. “Which is why you better get back there and finish your baking,” said Drayton.

  “You don’t need me to help out here? Set tables and things?”

  “I’ll set the tables and brew the teas, you just tend to baking.”

  “Okay,” Haley agreed happily.

  Standing at the cash register, fussing with an arrangement of tea canisters, Theodosia was aware, once again, of how much she loved their mix of personalities and the easy bantering that went on among the three of them. Anyone else walking in might think they were being slightly argumentative, but she knew it was the unrestrained familiarity that was usually reserved just for family members. Yes, they joked and pushed one another at times, but at the first sign that someone was feeling slightly overwhelmed or even provoked, they rallied to that person’s defense.

  The door flew open, and cold, moist air rushed in. A bulky man in a nondescript gray raincoat lowered his umbrella and peered at them.

  “Detective Tidwell,” Theodosia greeted him as she closed the door quickly and ushered him to a table. “You’re out and about early. And on a Saturday yet.”

  “Tea?” offered Drayton as he approached Tidwell with a freshly brewed pot of Kandoli Garden Assam.

  Tidwell lowered himself into a chair and nodded. “Thank you. Yes.”

  Drayton poured a cup of tea, then stroked his chin thoughtfully. “Perhaps I’m being presumptuous, Detective Tidwell, but you look like a man who might possibly be in need of a Devonshire split.”

  Tidwell’s beady eyes gleamed with anticipation. “Pray tell, what is a Devonshire split?”

  “A traditional little English sweet bun that we serve with strawberry jam. Of course, if we were in England’s lake country, we would also serve it with clotted cream.”

  “Pretend that we are,” Tidwell said. “Especially in light of this hideous wet weather.”

  Slipping into the chair across from Tidwell, Theodosia studied the man carefully. Tidwell had obviously come here bearing some type of information. Would he be forthright in telling her what was on his mind? Of course not. That wasn’t Tidwell’s style. He preferred to play his own maddening little games.

  But today Tidwell surprised Theodosia. For, once his pastry and accompaniments arrived, he became quite talkative.

  “We’ve finished most of our ballistics tests,” he told her. “Regretfully, nothing’s jumped out at us.” Tidwell sliced his Devonshire split in half, peered at it expectantly. “At first we thought the bullets in the pistol might have been dumdums.”

  “What exactly are dumdums?” asked Theodosia. She’d heard the term before, but had no idea what dumdums really were.

  “A nasty little trick that originated in India,” said Tidwell as he lathered clotted cream onto his pastry. “Put succinctly, dumdums are expanding bullets. When they impact something, they expand.”

  “And you thought these tricky little bullets might have impacted Oliver Dixon’s head?” she said.

  “Well, not exactly,” said Tidwell. “The pistol would have to have been pointed directly at him for that to occur. And from ev
erything we know, from interviews with fairly reliable people, Oliver Dixon was holding the pistol at shoulder level and pointing it up into the air. If it had been loaded with dumdums, they could have exploded and dealt a fatal wound, but something would’ve been needed to make them explode.”

  “So your tests revealed nothing,” said Theodosia.

  Tidwell took a sip of tea and set his tea cup down with a gentle clink. “Let’s just say our tests were inconclusive.”

  “What about Oliver Dixon’s jacket?” asked Theodosia. “I would imagine you ran forensic tests on that?”

  Tidwell sighed. “Spatters of blood, type B positive, which is somewhat rare, maybe only ten percent of the population. Definitely belonging to Oliver Dixon, though; we checked it against his medical records. On the sleeves and jacket front, residue from Charleston Harbor showing a high nutrient concentration and a low N-P ratio. And a small amount of imbedded dirt. Probably from the shore.”

  Theodosia thought about the blood-spattered, dirt-smeared linen tablecloth that now resided in Professor Morrow’s botany lab. “Probably,” she agreed, trying to keep any sign of nervousness from her voice. If Tidwell knew what she was up to, she’d be in deep trouble, and the tablecloth would undoubtedly be confiscated by the police.

  They both fell silent as the front door opened with a whoosh and two couples, obviously tourists, pushed their way in.

  “Can we get some coffee and muffins?” asked one of the men. He wore a yellow slicker and spoke with a Mid-westerner’s flat accent.

  Theodosia was up and out of her chair in a heartbeat. “How about tea and blackberry scones?” she invited. “Or a plate of lemon tarts?”

  “Tea,” mused the man. He turned to the rest of his party, who were all nodding agreeably, pulling off wet outerwear and settling into chairs. “Why not,” he said, “as long as it’s hot and strong.”

  Tidwell sat at his table, happily sipping tea and eating his pastry while Theodosia and Drayton quickly served the new customers.

  Like many tourists who wandered into the Indigo Tea Shop, they seemed eager to embrace what would be a new experience for them.