The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (12 page)

She had been going to stop at a Del’s Lemonade Stand for a cup of the famous Rhode Island beverage that had a lemon peel in every drink. Now she only wanted to get away from all of the gossip and go home.
Stanley
, she thought as she drove away,
you would have to have had a cat’s numerous lives—and deaths!—to satisfy all the theories being tossed around in Devon today
.

      10
C
OOKING UP A
S
TORM

That afternoon Genia made her second trip of the day to the Castle. This time she drove her car along the paved road of the cul-de-sac, accompanied by her grandniece. They had fixed a big pot of quahog chowder and two dozen muffins made from the season’s last fresh blueberries.

“I’m overdoing it,” Genia admitted to Janie as they loaded all of the food into the car, “but cooking has always been my favorite way to cope. My children tell me they always knew they’d eat well if there was something to celebrate or somebody died. I don’t know, I just seem to think best when I’m cooking large amounts of food for other people. It makes me feel better.”

“I wish my mom felt that way.”

Genia glanced at her niece, and they both laughed.

“Did I tell you that your father loved the bisque we made last night?”

“He did? I didn’t really do much, though.”

“Well, you cooked it. I didn’t even stir it. I just told you what to do.”

“It was easy, except I almost boiled it over.”

“
Almost
is not the same as did.”

Janie grinned at her. “Yeah, but that works both ways, Aunt Genia. That’s what Jason’s teachers say when he
almost
gets his homework in on time.”

Her aunt smiled at her, appreciating her wit.

“But you always do, don’t you?”

“Jason could, too, if he wanted to.”

Genia looked up at the defensive tone in Janie’s voice. “Oh, honey, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have compared you to him. I know your brother is plenty smart, and he can’t help it that he has dyslexia. I know it makes it harder for him.”

Janie’s face still looked flushed with resentment. “I’m sorry, too. I just get this knee-jerk reaction when somebody tells me what a good student I am, ’cause when Mom says it what she really means is what a good student Jason isn’t. Sometimes I hate getting good grades. It just makes life harder for him.”

Genia reached over to grasp one of Janie’s hands and pull her around to face her. “Sweetheart, let me tell you something. First of all, your mother loves both of you more than you know.” When Janie started to interrupt, Genia held up a hand to silence her. “And second, I am not worried about either of you. You will do just fine in this life, and so will he, honey. I should know. I got to see him in action down on the ranch, remember? He worked hard, he got along well with everyone he met, and he was smart as a whip about catching on to things.”

She had a feeling that Janie wouldn’t feel so defensive of her twin if the girl herself had more genuine confidence in him. Her words, as she hoped they would, seemed to buoy up her niece, and Genia felt Janie’s arm relax a little in her grasp. Gently, she let her go.

“Sometimes I feel like I’m his mother,” Janie muttered.

“I know you do,” Genia said kindly, “and the hardest thing a mother ever has to do is let go of her child.”

She smiled at Janie and suddenly got a lopsided grin in return.

“Weird, huh?” the girl asked, with a little laugh.

“Normal,” her aunt pronounced.

“Oh, gross, just what I want to be, normal!”

They both laughed at the very idea of it.

When they arrived at the Castle, Nikki herself answered the door, looking, to Genia’s sympathetic eyes, sweet and young and very sad. Stanley’s only child wore a long pink cotton skirt, a white cotton blouse, and sandals. As she tucked a loose strand of her brown hair behind an arm of her eyeglasses, she smiled tiredly at Genia and Janie. Under the glasses her eyes were puffy, as if she’d been crying a lot.

“Genia, you sweetie. Look at all this that you’ve brought for us.” The young woman reached for one of the packages. There was a catch in her voice. “My dad was right, you’re really a dear person. This is wonderful. This whole town is wonderful. People are so kind and generous. I do believe we’ve got enough food to feed the whole state. It’s a good thing, too, because it’s beginning to look as if everybody in Rhode Island is going to show up. I think Dad knew everybody!” As she held open the door for them, she said, “Randy told me you called earlier.”

“Nikki, I’m so sorry about your dad,” Genia told her, pausing in the doorway to say it. “It’s such a terrible thing.” She hesitated, and then added, “Did Randy tell you about Ed Hennessey?”

“Yes, but I can’t do anything about that right now.” Nikki looked harried, overwhelmed, and ready to burst into tears, and Genia felt guilty for overburdening her. She stepped into the foyer in order to let Nikki and Janie in, too. “I need somebody to take care of the grounds, and there’s no time to hire anybody new until all this is over.”

“Nikki, do you know my grandniece, Jane Eden?”

Janie nodded her head politely above the load of packages she was carrying for her aunt, and explained, “I’m Donna’s daughter.”

“And Kevin’s,” Nikki said, with a warm, quivery smile for the girl.

As they followed their hostess back into the Castle’s kitchen, Genia thought about how Stanley used to call his daughter “soft,” and “a pushover.” Genia wondered if the truth might be that Nikki was just plain nicer than he. Stanley had always said exactly what was on his mind, often to a fault, and frequently mowing over people’s feelings in the process. “They shouldn’t get their feelings hurt so easily,” he’d say, thus neatly absolving himself of any responsibility for being kind. Genia had a feeling that his daughter would never do that. Maybe that made Nikki weak, or maybe it made her good.

They walked by groups of visitors in the central living room to the right and the library to the left. Genia recalled how very “masculine” this residence had seemed to her the first time she had walked into its massive foyer with its thirty-foot ceiling, walnut balustrade, and dark paneling. Stanley had appeared quite naturally at home in the vast rooms with their dark brocaded draperies that shut out the light, but she had wondered how Lillian had stood it for all of those years of their marriage. If there had been suits of armor standing about, it could not have seemed any more like a “castle” or any less like a home for a queen.

This was a king’s castle, no doubt of it.

Genia looked curiously about her: There were many faces she recognized, people who smiled or nodded to her courteously, and she to all of them. Some of her dinner-party guests were there, as well as people she recognized from town. Was one of them a murderer, come to pay sardonic tribute to the victim? It was a terrible thought.

“Hello, Mrs. Potter!”

She looked up to see Randy Dixon coming down the main staircase from the second floor. The young man looked confident and at ease in a way Genia had never seen him look around his late father-in-law. He was a physical type that girls through the generations had always labeled “cute”—below average in height, but broad shouldered and slim waisted, with lots of curly black hair, outrageously blue eyes, and an infectious grin.

“Hello, Randy,” she responded, stopping to see if he wanted to talk.

But he merely smiled in a welcoming way, and strode past her into the living room to greet the important guests for whom he was now the host.

In the vast kitchen Nikki briefly removed her glasses and Genia noticed again the pillows beneath her brown eyes. Suddenly Nikki turned around and cried out in tones of deep distress, “Genia, they’re saying my dad was murdered! No one would murder my father! You don’t think it’s really true, do you?”

“Oh, my dear,” Genia said, with deep sympathy.

She had certainly never expected to stand in this familiar kitchen having this kind of conversation. Everywhere she looked were reminders of Stanley, because it was he—not Lillian—who had planned every inch of this cooking space, and he who had used it the most, apart from their hired cooks. From the stainless steel of the custom-made counters to the wide window above the triple sinks, from the cast-iron utensils to the industrial stove and oven, it was all Stanley’s design.

“The police have been here!” Nikki said, a look of disbelief on her face. “The police! The way they asked Randy and me questions, you’d have thought they suspected we murdered my dad for the inheritance! But Genia, I’ve always known I would inherit almost everything! Randy has, too, and if we were going to kill my dad for the money”—she looked utterly dismayed by her own words—“why would we wait to do it now? I mean, sure Randy’s out of work a lot, but that’s the nature of what he does! We’ve always gotten by, with some help from my dad. So why would we do such a thing now? And, anyway, I loved my dad!” She smiled, and her mouth trembled. “He claimed I nearly killed him when I married Randy. But for me to really kill my own father? It’s so impossible; I told the police that. And they know me, for heaven’s sake, I went to grade school with most of them. I told them I hope they’re looking for the person who really did it.”

Her words reminded Genia painfully of what Kevin Eden had said the previous night in her own kitchen, about how the Devon police knew him, too, and ought to know better than to treat him with suspicion. These things were especially hard in a small town if neighbor turned against neighbor, and longtime friends against their own school chums.

Genia put an arm around Nikki and led her to a chair to sit down.

A woman suddenly burst into the kitchen, holding a casserole pot in her hands, but paused when she saw the emotional little scene. She put her contribution down on a counter, murmured, “I’m so sorry,” threw a compassionate look toward Nikki, and then tiptoed back out again. Janie walked right over, picked up the casserole, and placed it in one of the two large refrigerators. Then she busied herself with the things that she and her great-aunt had brought. Genia felt proud of the girl for trying to be so tactfully helpful, when many teenagers might have hung back or fled from the scene.

Just then the doorbell rang, causing Nikki to rise halfway up from the chair instinctively. Genia placed a hand on her shoulder and gently pushed her down again. “Just sit here and rest for a minute, Nikki. There are lots of people out there who can answer the door for you. Janie, let’s you and I get some of this food out into the dining room.”

While Nikki sat at the table, her face buried in her hands, Genia put Janie to work layering clam cakes on lettuce on a platter and arranging the gingerbread in a basket. Periodically, the three women were interrupted by other people coming in to deposit more food and to give Nikki hugs and words of sympathy. Foodstuffs were piling up, so Genia started dishing a few of them up and then making room for the others in the refrigerator and along the countertops. From spending time in this kitchen with Stanley, she knew right where to go for serving spoons and napkins, glasses and pickle forks. She plugged in the big stainless coffeepot that Stanley had used for large groups and she uncorked several bottles of wine. And through all her tasks she wondered if Stanley would approve.

“There you have it, Stanley,”
she said silently to the spirit of her friend.
“The imported cheeses are for you, of course. God forbid we should ever serve processed cheese in your house. We’re fresh out of caviar and toast points, I’m embarrassed to say, so you’ll have to put up with ham and store-bought egg rolls. We weren’t exactly prepared for this, you know.…”

Suddenly, Genia felt like crying herself.

She stopped working and sank down into a chair near Nikki.

Janie had been keeping busy at the kitchen table, putting ham sandwiches together, but suddenly she was kneeling beside her aunt. For the moment there was nobody else in the kitchen but the three of them. Janie laid her cheek against Genia’s arm, as if to comfort her. It was a sweet gesture, and Genia quickly put her arms around the girl and hugged her.

“I’m sorry your father died,” Janie said to Nikki.

Nikki heard, and looked over at them gratefully.

“You’re a nice girl, Jane Devon,” she observed. “You take after your aunt Genia.”

Genia hesitated, but felt she must say, “Nikki, I’m sorry to trouble you about this, but I feel as if I need to bring up the subject of Ed Hennessey again. Your dad did fire him. And the man behaved in a very threatening way toward me this morning.” Genia was worried that the man might steal things right from under the Dixons’ noses, or that he might take some kind of nasty revenge on them when they finally did roust him from their property.

“You’re right,” Nikki said wearily. “I’d better do something.”

“Maybe Randy could do it for you?”

Nikki’s glance slid away, and she mumbled, “Good idea.”

But Genia was left with the impression that Nikki wasn’t altogether sure her husband could handle that. It was the only hint of evasiveness that Genia had seen in the young woman since they’d arrived. She knew there wasn’t anything she could say to make Nikki do something about Hennessey; she was just going to have to leave the matter of the caretaker in the kind hands of Stanley’s daughter. Genia could almost hear Stanley worrying that when it came to Hennessey, Nikki had better not be so kind as to be foolish.

With a tremulous smile Nikki got up from the table, pushing herself up with her hands. She looked girded to reenter her father’s rooms and to greet and talk with the dozens of people who would come calling on this first and most difficult day. She straightened her clothes and hair, thanked Genia and Nikki again, and then walked out of the kitchen.

“She’s nice,” Janie observed.

“Yes, she is,” her aunt agreed.

Genia could have sworn she heard Stanley mutter in her ear,
“Too nice for her own good.”

Judging from the number of people crowding the Castle, it appeared to Genia as if Stanley had known everybody in Devon, if not in the whole state. The mayor was there with a retinue of town council members and other Devon bigwigs. The bank was well represented. Harrison and Lindsay Wright entered with a handsome man whom Genia recognized from the evening newscasts. Although Celeste Hutchinson arrived on the arm of David Graham, he inched away from her when Genia greeted them, as if he realized—better than Celeste—that it wasn’t tactful of him to come into Lillian’s former home on the arm of another woman. As gently as he did it, Celeste still looked hurt when his arm slid away from her hand. He stepped to one side, a bit closer to Genia. Donna appeared, and also Kevin, though they kept to opposite sides of the room.