The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (10 page)

She hurried off to shower and change clothes, thinking, with bittersweet pleasure,
What good things would you like me to fix for your friends and relatives to eat, Stanley?

Before Genia could step into the shower, the phone rang.

“Mrs. Potter?” asked a male voice on the other end. “Ma’am, I’m Ted Massey, one of the police officers who was just out to see you.”

“Oh, yes, Officer Massey, what can I do for you?”

“Well, you can tell me again what time—to the best of your knowledge—each of your guests arrived at your house last night. I’m sorry to have to ask you to go through this again, but we need to double-check these times.”

Genia’s heart began a rapid pounding as she took in the implications of the question, even as she began to try to answer it. “All right. Well, I think I can tell you almost exactly, because I had been watching the clock—because of Stanley.” She repeated for him—within a few minutes of possible error, she believed—when and in what order David Graham, Harrison and Lindsay Wright, Celeste Hutchinson, and Larry Averill had come knocking at her door.

“Weren’t there other people at your house last night, too?”

Was it her imagination, or did the way he said that make it sound as if he thought she had “forgotten” some names on purpose?

“Oh, well, my niece, Donna Eden, I forget to think of her as a guest. And …” Reluctantly, Genia repeated how her grandniece and -nephew had also been on the premises, helping her out with the dinner party. Patiently, the police officer led her again through her memories of the number of times, and the length of those times, that the teenagers had come and gone from the house. And then he made her guess again at the time at which their father had flung open the French doors so dramatically.

“I suppose you have to ask these questions,” she said tentatively, trying to keep resentment and worry out of her voice.

“I’m afraid I do, Mrs. Potter, this being a murder and all.”

“Do you know exactly what time Stanley … was killed?”

“We’re working on that now, ma’am. It might help if you could tell me the last time you saw or talked to Mr. Parker.”

This was a new question, and she tried to answer it accurately.

“About two hours before the party,” she informed him, and she also told him about calling the Castle and getting the answering machine. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

“Not at this time,” he said formally.

He was the first to hang up. Genia felt terribly unhappy as she clicked the receiver down upon its base again. This house and Parker’s Castle lay on a cul-de-sac, with only one way in and the same way out. There were only five other houses in the neighborhood, and at least two of them were currently empty, their owners off on summer vacations. Because of the timing and the location, it seemed possible to Genia—as surely it must also look to the Devon police—that whoever killed Stanley might be somebody who came into the cul-de-sac around the time of her dinner party.

That put her guests under a deep shadow of suspicion.

The memory of a sharp pine needle came unbidden to her. She hadn’t noticed it until after she had greeted all of them. All of them had hugged her, or handed her objects which she had clasped to her breast. From which one of them had she picked up that pine needle, and had it come from the woods where Stanley died?

She was horror-stricken to think that she might have cordially greeted his killer at her front door almost immediately after the terrible deed. She might have embraced that person, smiled at him or her, welcomed him, fed her, entertained him.

“No!” For the time being she would cling to the hope that no killer had dined at her table. She would pay attention to evidence of her guests’ innocence, as well as of their guilt. “It could have come from anywhere, it could have blown in with the rain.” But pine needles didn’t ordinarily just blow in with the rain and attach themselves to one’s white silk blouse.

Genia sank down into a nearby chair, and hung her head.

“Oh, Stanley,” she whispered. “Who hated you so much?”

      8
F
OOD FOR
T
HOUGHT

Jason fumbled with the lock on the greenhouse door. The key slipped between his fingers as if he’d greased his hands. It was only perspiration, but even when the door swung open, he could hardly get a good grip on the knob.

He was scared and in a hurry.

He had to get in now, as his dad had instructed him, before the cops came here, before his mom knew he was gone.

It was either now, or it might be never.

Once he was in, brilliant color greeted him: the rich purple and lavender of orchids, the sharp reds and blues of cardinal flowers, the sunny yellows and orange of marigolds, and all other manner of bloom and hue. Row after row of beauty. God, he loved this place.

Would he ever get to come back here again?

He was so scared he felt as if he were moving in slow motion. Once, the first time he had ever ridden a really high roller coaster, he’d felt like this when he was standing in line waiting his turn to get on. It was as if he got lethargic all of a sudden, the way those science shows said that a predator’s prey did when it got grabbed. Feeling more like a sleepwalker instead of a focused man with a mission, Jason began to move between the neatly planted tables of plants, herbs, vegetables. Home. That’s what this place felt like, more than his real home did, even more than the island did. It was how Mr. Parker had encouraged him to feel about this place.

Mr. Parker …

No, he commanded himself, don’t start thinking.
Just do what you came to do, Eden. Do it, and get out, like Dad said
. But he couldn’t stand it: There was morning watering to do, and nobody to do it if he didn’t. Ed Hennessey would never think of it or care enough to do the job. Besides the daily watering, there were dead leaves to pick off, and stuff that needed thinning and harvesting, like the tomatoes in the outside garden where the sun shone all day long on good days. He knew his mom and his Aunt Genia would like it if he took them some fresh tomatoes.

Jason turned on a hose in the center of the room and picked up a watering wand, staring at it for an instant as if it were something strange that he’d never seen before. Then he walked up and down the raised rows, spraying bedded plants with one hand and with the other plucking off dead leaves and spindly stems.

“Why don’t you get one of those automatic watering gizmos?”

He’d asked the old man that question, early on, and gotten the sharp, offended retort he’d deserved.

“The world’s altogether too automatic, already! Automatic this, automatic that,” the old man had fumed, “and nobody ever has to do things personally the way they ought to be done. You’ll never get to know your plants if you let some machine take care of them for you. These people who let machines milk their cows! Or cram chickens all together in a chicken concentration camp! No wonder things don’t look or taste as good as they used to. We don’t do it that way here. You water each plant, you take a close look, you look for bugs, you look for wilt, you look to see if it’s a happy damn plant, you get acquainted with every one of them. Then maybe you’ll be a gardener, but not before.”

Over time, doing it that way, Jason had come to know the plants in the spacious greenhouse and the garden as individuals with distinct needs, appearances, and even personalities. And he reacted to them like that. Not that he would ever in a million years admit this, but he liked to spend time with the pansies, for instance, who were sophisticated and elegant, and he didn’t like the petunias, who were brassy and thought entirely too much of themselves. He enjoyed the company of the sugar snap peas—and liked to eat them raw with ranch dip—but didn’t much care for any of the beans, who seemed like a lot of trouble for not much taste, unless you added a lot of stuff for flavor. Beets were interesting, but they smelled like dirt, and who could eat that? Garlic was cool as hell; it amazed him, the way it looked like a big fat papery flower with bulbs for petals. If it were
his
nursery, he knew exactly what he’d grow, which flowers, which fruits and vegetables.

Mist soon hung in the trapped space, until he felt he was in a fog that covered him and made him invisible. It was only him and the plants now, just the way he liked it, although it had been nice when Mr. Parker worked with him. Droplets of water fell onto his hair, his face, his clothes. It felt good, proof that he was alive and not dead the way he felt inside.

Mr. Parker. Murdered
.

His dad had told him that, warned him in a phone call that had shot him out of bed, into his clothes, and then into his car to come here.

“I know what you’ve been doing out there, Jason,” his dad had said, making his heart jump into his throat. “I tried to get in there this morning and destroy the evidence of it, but I couldn’t get in. You’ve got to do it. Get out there now. I ran into a cop I know when I went to breakfast at the diner this morning, and he told me they wouldn’t be searching Stanley’s place until late this morning, so you’ve got a little time. Don’t get caught, son. Be careful. If somebody shows up and asks you what you’re doing there, tell them you’re just there to water the plants. And if that doesn’t work, blame me. You got that? You tell them I sent you out there to do your job.”

And then his dad had said, “How could you be so—”

Stupid
. That was the word that had hung in the air like the mist that now hung in the greenhouse. His dad hadn’t said it, wasn’t the kind of dad who ever would say something like that, but he’d come close this time.
“How could you be so stupid, Jason?”

He had wanted to tell his dad the truth, but he couldn’t.

So he’d just muttered “Okay,” and hurried to the greenhouse.

Mr. Parker, murdered …

Who would do such a thing?

He couldn’t stop himself from thinking about it.

The old man had scared the bejesus out of him one day right after his hearing when he got put on diversion. Parker had come out of nowhere, charging into the local pizza joint known as “RIPPP’s.” Its real name, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantation Pizzeria,” was based on the official name of the state. The kids all boasted that Rhode Island pizza, a thick-crusted kind without cheese, was unlike any other pizza on earth. Everybody knew that the secret to its appeal was its tangy, oily sauce. One of the kids had said that noon, “Let’s go get Ripped,” and so Jason was hanging out there with his sister and some of their friends, sharing a large pie and dribbling vinegar over fries, another favorite culinary habit of their state.

“Are you Jason Eden?” the old man had growled.

Janie and their friends had stared at the old man, then at Jason, and then they’d all edged away, except for his sister, who never backed down when he needed her for anything. But his friends had cringed back until it was just him, and Janie, and the old man at the table.

Parker had looked a little crazy, with thin hair that shot out in all directions like he was some kind of Einstein, and eyebrows that looked like caterpillars stuck on his forehead. He may not have known for sure who Jason was, but Jason knew who he was. Everybody did. Old Man Parker. From the Castle. He practically ran Devon, even though he was older than God. Jason’s own dad lived on some of Parker’s land, one of the islands. Jason hadn’t even been able to imagine owning your own island, but this old guy did, and more than one of them, too.

For a moment, they’d sized each other up.

Jason had felt the silence in the restaurant and he’d known what everybody else was thinking:
Eden must be in trouble again. What did he do this time? Steal something from Old Man Parker? Is it drugs? Pot again? Maybe coke. Who knows what either of those twins will do?

In the greenhouse, Jason felt like crying.

Yeah, who knew? Who knew the old coot would become his best friend, even better than his sister. It was because of Aunt Genia that Parker had come after him. Aunt Genia had talked to the old man about Jason’s trouble with the cops, about the marijuana, because Parker knew about that, too.

Oh, yeah, he knew
all
about
that
.

Great-aunt Genia also told Mr. Parker about how Jason had worked on her ranch two summers ago, and she must have said he did an okay job down there, or else why would the old man have hired him? Jason thought that working on the ranch was the best thing he had ever done, until this summer when he got introduced to growing plants instead of cows.

So what did the old man do that first day but haul Jason out of the pizza place—under the hostile stare of his twin sister—and feed him a bowl of the best chili Jason had ever tasted. “Your aunt’s recipe,” the old man had told him. “Twenty-seven damn ingredients, believe it or not.” And then he had offered Jason humongous bucks for daily help in the greenhouse and outside gardens. And all he had to do was tend the plants and care for the herb garden, and Mr. Parker would show him how. Well, there were a few more delicate details about the job that would have to be explained, the old man said that day. And then Jason would have to decide …

Midway through the watering, Jason half smiled at the way Mr. Parker had presented his real proposition: completely businesslike, in that great deep voice of his that Jason had grown to find as comforting as a big warm blanket on a cold New England night. Hell, Jason had thought that day, he’d be rich by the end of the summer with pay like that, plus Aunt Genia’s hefty checks for helping her out when he wasn’t at the Castle. So he’d signed up, “lock, stock, and a barrel of water,” as Mr. Parker had called it. He’d done what the old man asked,
everything
he’d asked, even kept the old man’s secret locked up inside of him.

His mom said he didn’t have any loyalty in him. She said because he used drugs and got caught that meant he was disloyal to her and his dad, to their whole family, and that he didn’t care about anything or anybody except himself.

She said the only welfare he cared about was his own.

But that wasn’t true, and he’d already proved it, and if he had to, he’d keep on proving it, whatever the cost to himself. He hadn’t even tried to defend himself to his dad. He couldn’t. He’d sworn to Old Man Parker that he’d never tell anybody, ever.

At first, he hadn’t liked it when Mr. Parker came around the greenhouse and watched him work, asked questions, eased himself into his life. A job was one thing. Being subjected to the Great Inquisitor was another. But almost before he realized it had happened, he began to look forward to the company of his scary employer. The old guy was a hoot. He cussed around Jason, and didn’t mind if Jason did, too, and he said hilarious, sarcastic things about grown-ups Jason had known all his life, people who hadn’t necessarily been very nice to him or his sister when he got into trouble. Man, what Jason knew now about this town that he’d never ever suspected before! He could write a book.

Jason found he missed Parker’s company when there was a meeting of the arts council, or the bank, or when Parker went to work on the cookbook he was doing with Aunt Genia. She was somebody Mr. Parker never said anything bad about. Of course, Jason would have had to knock his block off if he had, ’cause his aunt was the greatest, a real relief after living with his mom. Aunt Genia and Mr. Parker actually seemed to
like
kids. Incredible. Jason found he could talk to the old guy, maybe because Parker had his own pain, and he understood Jason’s because of that. He never seemed to judge Jason, although he could lecture like a teacher when he got going on something. And if he thought Jason was making a stupid decision, he’d say so in no uncertain terms.

Mostly, though, he just listened, nodding that big white head of his, and accepted whatever the hell came out of Jason’s mouth. Except for Aunt Genia, and except for his dad sometimes, he’d never met an adult who acted that way around kids. Sometimes the two of them—old man and boy—just sat on tall greenhouse stools in total silence. “Watch these plants grow,” Parker had instructed him. “Smell ’em, taste them, listen to them. You might surprise yourself and actually learn something. And then when you’ve got a real feel for plants, then we’ll get started on cooking. You don’t want to depend on women all your life to do the things for you that a man ought to be able to enjoy for himself.”

Jason had been surprised, all right, at what he’d learned.

But he had felt safe here, anyway, and accepted for whatever he was, whatever he was worth. Parker sometimes talked with him about things like college, about business. “You’ve got a green thumb,” he’d said a lot of times. Even told Jason he could see him running “a whole damn string of greenhouses” someday. That made sense in Rhode Island where nurseries were a major industry. The dream had stuck, and they kept it between themselves, a dream hung out there to think about and stretch himself toward each day.

Jason turned off the hose and hung it up.

He wandered into the tiny supply area tucked into a corner of the greenhouse. They kept a small refrigerator there, filled with soft drinks for Jason and bottled water, wine, and beer for Mr. Parker. That’s one thing the old man never let him do—drink alcohol or smoke. “Cussing won’t kill you, unless you cuss out the wrong man,” Parker had claimed, “but drinking and smoking will do you in.”

In the refrigerator, there was always food.

Peering inside, Jason realized he hadn’t eaten for a long time.

He pulled out a thick hunk of pale cheese and a loaf of Mill Hollow bread that Mr. Parker had baked just a day ago—a lifetime ago—and placed them on a high pine table where the two of them had sat to eat, and to argue about baseball.

They had a running argument about the longest game ever played in professional baseball history. It happened right there in Rhode Island, when the Pawtucket Red Sox—the Boston Red Sox’s farm team—beat the Rochester Red Wings 3–2 after thirty-three innings played over three days. The game had begun on April 18, 1981, and been temporarily called at four A.M. the next morning when the score was 2–2. It didn’t get finished until two months later, on July 23, on a Marty Barrett single with the bases loaded. Wade Boggs had been there, playing for the Pawsox.