“So you investigate murders—like that lady from Maine on television. My wife watches it sometimes.”
“I’ve had a little experience investigating murders,” Susan admitted.
“And you’re looking into the murder of this caterer,” he added.
“I …”
“Don’t you get bored denying your involvement?” he continued.
“Then there’s no reason for me to do so, is there?” Susan asked, picking up the truffle in her fingers and taking a bite.
“You don’t look like a detective,” he insisted, looking accusingly at her new sweater.
Susan, realizing her neighbor was very drunk, wondered if he expected her to wear a Sherlock Holmes hat. “I’m just an ordinary guest.”
“Really? I don’t seem to remember you as part of the group before.”
Susan took a deep breath, but Camilla interrupted before she could think of a sufficiently insulting reply. “Why don’t we go into the library? I’m feeling a little stuffy.”
“Excellent idea, my dear. Hey, listen to that, I’m a poet, and I don’t know it!” Buck chuckled at the age-old witticism. “I’ll lead the way, shall I? If you will accompany me?” He stood and offered Susan his arm. She felt silly accepting, but she would have felt sillier to refuse.
The party trailed down the dim hall into a tiny book-lined room. Except for a few obligatory pink ribbons tied around andirons in the fireplace and a bowl of shiny silver balls on the mantel, this room seemed to have been spared the excesses of Camilla’s theme decorating.
Buck got busy turning on the gas fire in the grate and switching Christmas carols on the stereo, and Susan was left to wander and look at the bookshelves as the rest of the guests seated themselves on the two large sofas and in the four window seats this corner room boasted. Accustomed to judging people by the books they owned, Susan had decided that she had been all wrong about the Logans, when Buck joined her and explained that the reading material had come with the house.
“Quite a collection, isn’t it? And it sure looks better than the piles of Robert Ludlum paperbacks that we moved here with.”
“Then you and Camilla don’t read these?” Susan asked, aching to open the leather-bound Trollopes and early P. G. Wodehouses.
“Nah. Actually we’re too busy to get much reading in. Just the odd chapter or two before we drop off at night. You know how it is.”
Buck looked so self-satisfied that Susan didn’t bother to answer. She returned to her examination of the shelves. The Holly and Ms. Ivy workers were scurrying around, doing their best to adapt to the sudden change in plans, passing cups of coffee, brandy, and candied peels as well as chocolate truffles. Susan made a mental note to speak to Gwen about adding the candied fruit peels to her menu Saturday night. If Gwen was still running The Holly and Ms. Ivy come Saturday night, she reminded herself.
The rest of the evening (about double the time she had estimated; the group didn’t break up until almost midnight) continued to be boring. Apparently unaware that the wine they loved to discuss was alcoholic, the guests, depending on their personal reactions, became either more voluble or sleepy as the evening wore on and the vintage bottles were passed around repeatedly. Susan wasn’t sure the party would have broken up when it did, if the wife of the editor in chief of the county’s only newspaper hadn’t started explaining in detail exactly how inadequate her husband’s bedroom performance had become in the last few years. The guests practically flew into their furs and out the door to their cars.
Susan knew that she was going to be late for her assignation with Jamie and her friends. But, when she arrived at the carriage house, she wondered if she had misunderstood the tiny edible note. Old-fashioned gas lights lit the brick walkway, and tiny Christmas lights were wound around the variegated holly wreaths that hung up on the double doors, but other than that, the building seemed to be dark. Feeling a little nervous and trying not to slip on the fresh snow, Susan carefully made her way up the walk to the door. She didn’t expect the building to be unlocked, but she was cold, so she tried the brass knob.
And, there she was, inside the building. Susan carefully closed the door behind her, wondering if she should turn on the lights, wondering if she could find the switches. She backed against the wall and thought, her eyes picking pools of dim light out of the darkness. The tiny red and green knobs on some of the appliances were visible, and, as her eyes adjusted, she was able to see around the room—at least enough to keep her from crashing into anything while she searched for the light switch.
She moved slowly, following the wall around the room. The switch must be by the door at the rear of the room, she decided. That’s probably the way the employees entered the building. She was headed there when she heard noises coming from the employees’ locker room under the stairs. She almost called out before realizing that it might not be the people she’d come to meet. Jamie would have turned on the lights, wouldn’t she? Susan decided to remain quiet.
She edged toward the door and tried to figure out what she was hearing. Then she realized that someone was, one by one, opening and closing the employees’ lockers. She wondered who it was and moved back into a shadow to wait and find out.
But the person was taking his or her time, and Susan was beginning to think that hiding was foolish. What if this was a common burglar? She should call the police. Or maybe it was just an employee who had lost something. She was trying to make up her mind what to do when she heard a car pull up in the courtyard behind the building.
The cheerful voice of Jamie Potter rang out, and reassured, Susan left the shadows and headed toward the back door. “Jamie! It’s me! Susan.” Relieved to have company, she ran out into the courtyard.
“Susan! I’m glad to see you.” Jamie was heading toward the carriage house, her arms loaded with foil-covered trays. “That bitch kept us around forever. Her husband vanished almost half an hour ago. I didn’t think we were ever going to get away. Is Gwen around?”
“No, I …”
“Really? She or Z are usually here until everything is put away.…”
“That’s when there were two owners,” the young man who had been cooking reminded her. “Running this company is going to be a lot more difficult for just one person.”
“True.”
“Well, let’s get all this stuff back inside, and we can talk while we put it away and check into tomorrow’s setup,” Jamie suggested. “Is that all right with you?”
“Of course,” Susan said. “But someone’s in there—in the employees’ locker room. It might be Gwen.”
“Gwen wouldn’t be in our room.” Jamie hurried into the building.
“And she wouldn’t walk around with the lights off,” one of her fellow employees said, hurrying behind her.
But the building seemed deserted when they entered and Jamie turned on the lights.
“Maybe in the locker room,” Susan suggested.
“Or upstairs in the office,” someone said, and headed up the stairs to find out.
But Susan had noticed that the front door had been left open and ran in that direction. She was in time to see a white Range Rover speeding off.
“Is that the person who was here?” Jamie came up behind her.
“I don’t know,” Susan admitted. “I sure wish I did.”
TEN
The lights on Susan’s tree were still shining through the window when she arrived home. She had visions of a cup of hot tea and a nice chat with her husband. Instead, a note on the kitchen table suggested that Clue needed to go out because Jed was exhausted after a difficult day in the city. Susan wondered briefly what her daughter’s and son’s excuses were to stay inside, but the dog’s wagging tail enchanted her.
“Okay, Clue. Just give me a few minutes to get into warm boots,” Susan suggested, automatically heading for the cookie jar on the counter. After all, it was cold outside. Cold burned calories, didn’t it?
The animal pranced around until they were wa
lking down the sidewalk; at least they were walking on what Susan thought was the sidewalk. The snow had obliterated any sign of the cement. Clue, happiest when outside in cold weather or swimming in an icy ocean, pulled against her leash, and Susan realized that she was going to have a difficult time making the walk a short one.
It was very late, and hers were the only lights still on in the neighborhood, so Susan walked carefully, paying attention to every step. She had admired black-fur-lined red boots at Saks today, and she was wishing she had decided to treat herself when she realized that a white Range Rover was sitting at the curb about four houses down the block from hers. Of course, there were a lot more cars around than usual. She knew a few of her neighbors had houseguests this week. But this car was different.
This car wasn’t covered with snow.
Susan had circled around for about half an hour after realizing that the car was empty. But she got so cold that even Clue was pulling toward home when she decided to go back inside. She would set the alarm to go off before daylight and maybe see who left in the Rover.
But in the morning, she was to learn once again that the best-laid plans do, in fact, go astray.
She woke up to the sounds of Jed’s electric razor. A glance at the alarm clock told her she’d overslept. Leaping out of bed in a manner usually foreign to her in the morning, she hurried to the window. No Range Rover. “Damn.”
“Merry Christmas to you, too,” Jed said cheerfully, appearing in the doorway between bathroom and bedroom.
“Hi. Did you sleep well?” Susan asked politely. No reason to be mad at him when she’d made a mistake.
“I woke up once, and you should be glad. I checked the alarm, and it was set for five-thirty. I turned it off. You’d have hated to wake up that early after getting in so late last night.”
Susan got back in bed and snuggled down under the quilt. “Will you make coffee before you leave?”
“Leave? I’m taking the day off, remember?”
Susan realized that Jed was wearing chinos and a plaid flannel shirt. “Of course, I’d forgotten.” She yawned and then frowned. “We’re going someplace, aren’t we?”
“We promised Kathleen and Jerry that we’d spend the afternoon with them up in the country. You don’t remember?” Jed squinted in her direction. “Are you feeling okay? Catching a cold?”
“I hope not,” she answered, mentally knocking on wood. A cold was the last thing she needed now. “I don’t remember what time we’re due up there.” Kathleen and Jerry had bought a vacation home, a few hours away, in late September. Susan had seen it the weekend of the purchase, and she and Kathleen had shopped together for antiques, but this was the first time she was going to see it furnished. Normally, she would be looking forward to the afternoon, but she had planned on trying to track down Gwen today. Maybe before they left this morning, she thought, sitting up in bed.
“Why don’t you take a break this morning? I’ll bring up something for you to eat,” her husband offered. “I promised Chad and Chrissy I’d make them my famous eggnog French toast.”
Susan decided this was no time to mention cholesterol. “No thanks. I know Kathleen will have lots of food.” She paused for a second. “I have a few errands to do.”
“We’re supposed to be there between two and three, and I think it took us over an hour to drive up there.…”
“I’ll be back by noon. Don’t worry.” Susan got out of bed while speaking. If she hurried, she’d be out of the house before Jed realized that someone had to walk the dog—and this morning that someone was going to be him.
Susan didn’t see a lot of point in going back to the carriage house, but she didn’t know where else to go. Jamie was right when she worried about Gwen being the primary suspect. As far as Susan knew, Gwen was the only suspect.
Once again, the carriage house was full of activity. As Susan entered, she saw Gwen leaning over a large roasting pan that had just been pulled from an oven. She was thinking that maybe Jamie had been worrying needlessly when she spotted a uniformed police officer standing near the stairway to the office floor. Gwen Ivy noticed her presence at that moment and came over, arms out.
“Susan, good to see you. We’re in the middle of a mess here. We had a break-in last night, as you can see.”
Susan realized that two more policemen were at the top of the stairs, sprinkling something around a light switch. She could have told them that they were wasting their time; no one had turned on any lights last night. But, remembering that she wasn’t involved in this investigation, she kept her mouth shut.
Gwen was walking at her side, down the main aisle of the room. “I was going to call you …,” she began.
“You are going to be able to do my party Saturday night, aren’t you?” Susan asked before realizing that she wasn’t being terribly tactful. “I mean, I know that you catered a dinner for the Logans last night. It was good. I was there.”
“The Holly and Ms. Ivy will continue to work. The police have assured me of that.”
“Really?”
“Yes.” Gwen shook her head so that her gold earrings swung against her shoulder. “Apparently they don’t have enough evidence to arrest me.”
“Oh, I don’t think …”
“You’re very kind,” the other woman said dourly, “but I’m a realist. I’m the primary suspect in this murder. I’d be a fool not to know it.” She glanced up at the men working at the top of the stairs. “One of them even implied that I staged last night’s break-in to distract them from the main issue.”
“Do you have any idea why someone was here?”
“Well, if they came for money, they made a big mistake. We don’t do any transactions in cash. We’re paid by check, and we pay our suppliers by check. There’s nothing to steal.”
“That probably means that the break-in had something to do with the murder,” Susan suggested.
“Or some kids. There are thousands of reasons that people do these things. Maybe it was a competing company that wanted the secret of our fried chocolate truffles.”
Susan’s mouth began to water at the thought of the confections with the crisp outside and the meltingly soft centers. She herself had wondered how they were made. “How did the person get in?” she asked, reminding herself what she was supposed to be doing here.
“Through the back doorway—the one that goes out into the courtyard. Apparently it hadn’t been dead bolted, and whoever it was just broke one of the tiny panes of glass, reached in, and turned the knob.”
“You don’t have an alarm system?”
“Oh, we do. In this day and age, there’s no way to get insurance without it. But we don’t bother to set it until our day’s work is over. We catered three parties yesterday. People were working here from six a.m. until well after one a.m. today.”
“But apparently there were times when no one was here—like when the break-in occurred.”
“True. But people come and go. Catering a party involves lots and lots of hard work, but things go wrong—you can depend on it.”
“What sort of things?” Susan asked, following Gwen up the stairs.
“Well, let’s see. We once catered a wedding where, in the middle of the service, the bride decided that she preferred the best man to the groom.”
“What happened?”
“Well, there was a lot of shouting and a lot more tears, but it turned out that the best man was in love with the bride. So the service was reconvened, and they plighted their troth. I suppose that would have been fine except that the groom’s family had been paying for half of a very expensive reception, and they decided that was one burden they didn’t have to bear. The new groom’s family wasn’t in a position to pick up such a large tab. It was a huge wedding—over three hundred of their nearest and dearest—and we weren’t going to start serving until we got paid. We expect some losses in this business, but not willingly. Luckily a rich uncle of the bride announced that he’d chip in, and all was well.” She opened the
door to her office and peeked in. “Looks like they’re through here. Come on in. I’ll tell you more stories of our near disasters.”
“Such as?” Susan asked, accepting a cup of coffee.
“Well, there was the time that seventeen pounds of spiced shrimp collided with twenty dozen freshly shucked oysters minutes before they were to be served with cocktails at the opening of an art gallery. All that was left was the raw vegetable platter with tofu dip that was to be offered to anyone with a shellfish allergy.”
“What did you do?”
“Robbed Peter to pay Paul. Luckily the event was just down in Westchester County so we could dash back here and pick up the seafood pates that had been made for a party the next day. Someone headed for the best bakery in Connecticut and bought out their supply of French bread to serve with them. Our fish supplier had special ordered the oysters for us, but he had dozens of tiny clams on hand, so we served them raw with the horseradish sauce that was for the oysters. We gave the client a very large discount.…”
“And he didn’t object?”
“As it was his black Lab who had dumped the food in the first place, he really couldn’t.”
“Then you didn’t actually have to come up with a substitute, did you?”
“Oh yes, we did. We have a reputation to maintain. For some insane reason, everyone wants to own a catering business. There’s a lot of competition out there. We’re the best because we work the hardest, and we adapt to any crisis. Balloons fly off, flowers wilt, band members show up too high to even find their instruments, much less play them, but the party goes on. And it goes on in the style people have come to expect from us. We cater special occasions. They’re important moments for our clients. We work hard to make them special—no matter what happens.”
Susan wondered why she felt that she was hearing a sales pitch.
“But we have to be on our toes and ready to improvise at the last minute. And that means dashing in and out of here a thousand times a day. And that’s why we don’t set the alarms. They’d be going off all the time. Want a cookie?”
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