The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (4 page)

“Ready to stuff the apples, Janie?”

“Sure, but is this gravy supposed to boil like this?”

Genia hurried over to examine what was actually a creamy base for lobster bisque. It was to be the entrée of the tasting party that she and Stanley were hosting this evening for six, maybe seven people, if Janie and Jason’s father showed up. Flecks of bright green tarragon—its secret ingredient—floated on top. She was relieved to see that the mixture wasn’t actually boiling: One tiny bubble worked its way up but gave up the struggle before bursting and dissolving back into the sauce.

“No, you don’t ever want to boil a cream sauce, love, or the milk will curdle. Turn it way down to the lowest setting for now, and then we’ll add the lobster just before we serve it.”

Earlier that day, grandniece and great-aunt had cored Rhode Island greening apples and then prepared a filling of cloves, nuts, and raisins that Janie had soaked in a fine brandy that Jason had brought over from Stanley Parker’s exemplary cellar. Genia had shown Janie how to make a light pastry in which to wrap the stuffed apples and from which they also cut tiny starfish to put on top.

As the two settled at the center island to work, Genia said, “We need to give this dessert a name for the cookbook. What should we call it?”

“It doesn’t have a name?”

“Well, I call them yummy.”

Janie grinned over at her, and Genia’s heart lifted again. It was so nice to see her smile. When she wasn’t helping Genia, the girl often went around looking glum or outright crying over a million different things ranging from her mother’s failings to a slight from one of her friends, to the plight of the rain forest in South America. Genia didn’t mean to disparage Janie’s concerns by thinking of them like that; she just knew that for Janie there were no small upsets. Everything from curdled cream sauce to war elicited a deeply felt response.

“How about ‘Apples in Jackets’?”

“Perfect!” Genia cried. “They’re a kind of dress-up dessert.”

Typically, Janie’s idea was quick and clever.

The girl was smart as a whip, her great-aunt thought, and despite her appearance made the kind of grades in school that used to be associated only with girls who wore glasses. And the child was sensitive, too, to her brother’s greater struggle with academics. “It’s not Jason’s fault he had dyslexia,” Janie often said. “It’s just because he’s the boy, and they get it a lot more often than girls do. I’m just lucky, that’s all.” Genia thought that if Janie could have done so, she would have “split” her grade point average with her twin, evening life out between them.

“I’ll credit you in the back of the book,” Genia told her.

“I’ll get my name in a book?”

“You bet.”

“Wow. My name in a book! Can you put in Jason’s, too?”

“I’ll find a way.” Genia refrained from saying, “It’s just a cookbook.” The truth was, it wasn’t “just” a cookbook to Genia, either, and it certainly wasn’t to Stanley Parker. She had a feeling he had been lying in wait for someone like her to come along and help him produce it. He brought to the project his collection of cookbooks and his publishing connections; she had a modest talent for thinking up original recipes; they were both good cooks. Voilà: a perfect team. They’d devoted many full and satisfying days to their project.

Genia glanced up at the kitchen clock and felt a shock.

“Janie, it’s nearly six-thirty! Where’s Mr. Parker?”

“I thought your guests weren’t coming until seven-thirty.”

“But he promised to get here early. Hand me the phone, will you?”

She took the portable telephone that her niece gave her and punched in the familiar number at the Castle. After three rings, she heard Stanley’s familiar gruff voice saying, “Parker here. If you’re calling with good news, leave a message. If it’s bad news, call somebody else.”

Genia smiled as she hung up. That was a brand-new message. And it was so like him! Stanley thought he could say anything he liked to anybody, and they just had to take it. Never famous for his tact, in his old age he was becoming infamous for his blunt, barbed observations.

“I guess he’s on his way,” she said to Janie.

The girl nodded, but Genia didn’t feel so sanguine. He should have arrived a half hour ago, and he hadn’t called to say he’d be late. Besides, he was an old man, and he’d been acting lately as if he didn’t feel very well. What if he’d had a fall, or even a stroke? There was nobody at the Castle to help him except for that worthless Ed Hennessey, and Stanley had told Genia he was going to fire the man this very day. Genia felt a twinge of alarm. What if Eddie had taken the news badly? What if he had gotten angry and harmed the old man? When another five minutes passed and Stanley still hadn’t arrived, Genia put down the apple she was working on.

“Janie, do me a favor. I want you to take my car and drive up to the Castle, and make sure he’s okay—”

“Mr. Parker won’t like that.”

“Pretend you’ve come to ask him if he needs a ride.”

“He’ll say no.”

“I know he will, but then you can drive back and tell me that everything’s all right.”

After Janie left Genia found she couldn’t concentrate on her cooking. Having made sure that nothing was going to burn, she walked out onto the deck of the house and looked in the direction of the path that meandered through the woods from Stanley’s house. She told herself she was being a worrywart. Surely he would arrive at any moment, possibly even sputtering up on that old motorbike of his. On second thought, that was another cause for concern. Maybe she should have sent Janie through the woods to look for him there.

Genia tried to tell herself she was being foolish, that there was no reason for her to stand there fretting over him as if he were a little boy who couldn’t find his way home.

Raindrops started to fall, spotting the wooden floor of the deck and the railing. She’d heard Harrison Wright predict this very change in the weather on the last news program she had watched. A few light drops fell on her hair and shoulders, but Genia didn’t move. A few sprinkles wouldn’t hurt her. She continued staring off into the woods, oblivious to the spectacular ocean view to her left, and thinking instead about Stanley and about her other guests. She wasn’t worried about the rest of them getting there; certainly not the mayor of Devon, Lawrence Averill, or the Realtor who had found this house for her to rent, Celeste Hutchinson. Nor Harrison Wright and his pretty wife, Lindsay, who was president of the local arts council. Or David Graham, or her own niece, the twins’ mom, Donna Eden. Nor their artist dad, Kevin, from whom their mother was divorced. Kevin, perhaps true to his artist’s nature, had failed to RSVP, though Genia hoped he’d show up anyway.

Genia shivered as a cool breeze brushed her shoulders.

She had a sudden eerie feeling of being snagged by a particular moment of time and fate. Here she was in this unlikely place: a rented house on the southern coast of Rhode Island, far from her real home. Last May she hadn’t even heard of any of these people, except for her relatives, of course, and for Stanley Parker. And at that time, oddly enough, she had also been worrying about someone she loved. It was amazing, really, how the disparate threads had woven together to catch them all up and bring them together for this one night.

      3
A
N
I
NVITATION

In early May of the same year, Eugenia Potter had stood beside the swimming pool of her cattle ranch in the Sonoran Desert south of Tucson with a printed e-mail in her hand. Its message seemed to beg between its lines, “Aunt Genia, help us.”

A puff of dry desert breeze ruffled the limp page in her hand. She grasped it tighter. The wind carried a tantalizing smell of barbecue, blending the aromas of mesquite logs and succulent, juicy pork ribs with the lime, vinegar, cilantro, and tomato base of her secret sauce. She had lately come to the conclusion that in another life she might become a vegetarian, but while she earned her living from cattle, she would continue to eat meat, rather than be a hypocrite.

Her stomach growled, and her mouth watered in anticipation, but she held firmly to her resolve to decide before supper what to do about this crisis in Rhode Island. The message was from Lew’s niece, Donna Eden, about Donna’s son—and Genia’s grandnephew—Jason.

Aunt Genia
, the frantic message began.
Jason’s been arrested for possession of marijuana! He’s home now, and they didn’t put him in jail, or anything like that, but he
won’t talk to me, and I don’t know what I’m going to do. They stopped him last night for a traffic violation—the dumb kid was speeding down Main Street, showing off for his friends, no doubt—and the police made him get out of the car, and a joint fell out of his shirt pocket when he bent over! Can you believe that? How could he be so dumb?!! First of all, to smoke pot to begin with, and second of all to get caught like that. They took him into the police station and let him call me, and I went and got him. But now he’s got to appear in front of a juvenile board, and I’ve got to find a lawyer, and I can’t afford one, and Kevin doesn’t have any money. Thank God, Jason’s still seventeen! In one more month, they could try him as an adult! Aunt Genia, he could go to prison if he ever does anything like this again. I don’t know what I’m going to do about my kids! I guess I should count myself lucky that they didn’t catch Janie, too.…

Genia read it as a cry for help of every sort imaginable: financial, advisory, emotional. The teenage son wasn’t the only member of the Eden family who needed help. His mother needed love and attention at this moment, too. And no doubt with their family in an uproar over this, Jason’s twin sister Janie could use support, as well. Their dad, Kevin, was a sweet and talented man who meant well, but he lived way out on an island and wasn’t much use in a pinch.

“Aunt Genia, please come to Rhode Island.…”

The e-mail didn’t actually say that, but Genia got the message.

She heard a familiar haunting cry, and raised her head to listen.

It was a coyote calling in the distance, from the mountains that sloped toward Mexico. Even before the first cry died out, a second one arose from the southwest, and then a third from still another direction. It was an eerie chorus and one of her favorite sounds in all the world. It made her imagine a family signaling their vulnerable positions, crying out for the reassuring company of one another.

Genia felt a surge of loneliness.

She lived by herself in a large ranch house surrounded by thousands and thousands of flat acres populated by nothing much more than cactus, cattle, rattlesnakes, and rabbits. Her nearest neighbors were a truck ride away. Her children lived far enough away to make their visits very special. Her husband had died more than a decade ago. On Las Palomas Ranch, there was only Genia, and her new ranch manager’s family in a separate house, and nobody else.

Rhode Island was only a plane ride away from her.

She stood beside her pool wearing huarche sandals, a blue denim skirt to mid-calf, a hammered silver belt, a light blue denim shirt, simple silver earrings, and an old straw hat to shield her face. In New England she’d look like somebody pretending to be a cowgirl. Here, she looked like what she was, the owner of a cattle ranch that spread over ten thousand acres.

Rhode Island was only a little over twelve hundred square miles, total.

Genia knew ranchers who could fit it between their fence lines.

It seemed to Genia as if the Edens lived a whole culture away from her, and not just a mere continent away. Here she was deep in the Sonoran Desert, where the moon rose over sagebrush, and the natives drawled their vowels, where men added hot peppers to their food, and cowboy boots peeked out from under the hems of women’s dresses. Devon, Rhode Island, couldn’t have been more different if it were planted on Mars. It would take more than a change of wardrobe to shift her focus there.

And yet …

She loved New England, and now that she had an invitation—practically an imperative—to go there, she felt a familiar longing for it. She’d gone to college there, fallen in love, married, given birth to three children there. She hadn’t been back East in a long time. Spring was her favorite season here, though, and this promised to be a spectacular one, with the succulents expected to bloom so profusely they would transform the desert floor into a Berber carpet of color, pattern, and texture. But spring was lovely in New England, too.

And cooler …

Under the buttoned cuff of her denim blouse, even though the air was dry, her wrists were perspiring. Her waist, under the silver belt, felt as damp as if she’d been swimming with all of her clothes on.

Much cooler, by the ocean …

If Lew Potter were alive, he would drop everything to help his young relatives. Donna’s sole source of income was a small gallery where she sold Kevin’s unique folk art, a business arrangement which they had somehow managed to maintain in spite of their divorce. And Kevin, like most artists, didn’t earn much. Genia loved the whole family, even the ex-husband, but she was especially fond of Jason, whom she knew better than the rest. The boy had spent the summer before last, his fifteenth, on her ranch, working alongside the cowboys, getting strong and brown, and he’d seemed to like it.

She hadn’t seen any of them since then.

As she stood by the swimming pool, her mind already half made up, the other half fell into line. If she traveled to Devon, Rhode Island, she could renew her acquaintance with Lew’s old mentor, Stanley Parker. That, alone, would make it worth the trip, even without the excuse of a family emergency. Not to mention the chance to see her good friend Jed White, who lived in nearby Boston.

And … as good as the pork smelled, the thought of a fresh cold crab remoulade salad sounded even more delicious at the moment.

“Good grief,” she chided herself, “does your stomach rule you?”

She hoped she would be as willing to fly off to help her family—if they lived someplace where she didn’t care for the food!

Genia intended to stay for only a few days in Devon, Rhode Island, certainly no more than a week. She stood with the family through the pain of Jason’s hearing on the misdemeanor charge of possession of marijuana. The five-person juvenile board placed him in a diversion program that was intended literally to divert him into healthier—and legal—activities like a job or community service. It was contingent on his staying away from drugs and alcohol. It made his great-aunt feel queasy to think that had Jason been only one month older, he would have received a sentence of adult probation that would have appeared on his permanent record.

“We can add random drug tests,” the chairman said to Donna. On this difficult morning Genia’s forty-two-year-old niece by marriage looked near tears and barely able to cope with what was happening to her son. Kevin Eden wasn’t there, having expressed his fury at a judicial system that would “arrest a kid for doing what every kid does,” as he had put it. Genia thought he ought to have been there anyway to help his ex-wife and to support his son. Donna needed help, sitting up there with Jason and the lawyer; this was too much for one parent to bear alone. Meanwhile, the board chairman continued: “But that’s up to you, Mrs. Eden. In this state, we leave that up to the parents. Do you want us to?”

“What would that entail?” she asked him, her voice quaking.

Genia knew that the attorney she had hired for the Edens had already gone over all of this with them, but Donna was obviously so distraught she had forgotten almost everything he had told them.

“It means urine tests,” the chairman said bluntly. “It means we can test Jason at any time, without any warning, for drugs or alcohol in his system. What’s your decision?”

“Yes,” said Donna, quickly. “Please do that.”

Genia drew back in surprise. She thought Donna had promised Kevin not to do that; she thought it had been agreed by the parents that a child ought not to be punished overmuch for his first mistake, and that it was humiliating enough to be put on diversion, without also having to submit to the mortification of urine sampling.

At that moment Jason turned and stared at his mother as if she had betrayed him beyond forgiving. In the row of seats behind them, his twin sister gasped, and seated beside her, Genia felt an awful sinking sensation. This was a terrible mistake, she sensed, and one which Donna might one day live to regret.

“Mom, how could you?” Janie demanded afterward.

Jason refused to talk to anyone at all.

Donna looked helpless and stubborn, all at the same time. “I just don’t want Jason to ruin his life.”

“You’ve just ruined it!” the boy burst out.

“But Jason, if you don’t use drugs or alcohol, you won’t have anything to worry about—”

“You don’t trust me,” he shot back.

“I do trust you,” his mother protested. “But I don’t know if you can trust yourself, and I want to protect you from getting into serious trouble—”

“You just don’t understand,” his sister accused her.

Genia felt as if she were watching the little family split apart.

If only Donna hadn’t promised one thing, and then done the opposite. To a teenager that kind of thing was the worst sort of betrayal. And Jason and Janie were far too young to see their mother as Genia did: as a young woman herself, inexperienced at such things, and grasping for any kind of help for her children.

Genia decided she’d better stay on for a few days more.

After the hearing the twins ran off angrily to find their friends. Genia walked out of the courthouse with her arm around their mother.

“Kevin’s going to kill me,” Donna told her.

“If Kevin has anything to say, he should have said it in the hearing this morning,” was her aunt’s tart reply. “It’s not your fault he wasn’t here.”

“Everything’s my fault,” her niece said miserably.

Genia wasn’t going to tolerate that kind of self-pity, not for long, and so she made a point of taking Donna out for a nice lunch at a cheerful restaurant. Before their desserts arrived, Donna was smiling again and saying that Jason could probably live through six months of random drug testing without it killing him.

It struck Genia again that just one month into the diversion program, the boy would be eighteen. Old enough to be tried as an adult if any other drug charge were brought against him. Under the white tablecloth, his great-aunt crossed her fingers and hoped for the best for all of them.

Things seemed to calm down. She could have gone home.

But Devon, Rhode Island, worked its charm on her.

Genia was surprised by how at home she felt in the little town, where there wasn’t any crime to speak of, and the most controversial thing happening was whether or not to start a citywide art festival like the ones in other towns in South County. It was all so peaceful, so pleasantly civilized. Sometimes she felt almost like a “Swamp Yankee,” which was the affectionate nickname given lifelong residents of South County—people like Lew’s old mentor, Stanley Parker, and her own relatives-by-marriage. There was something about being in the smallest state in the union that also charmed her. But even more compelling was the fact that Devon brought a sweet renewal of memories of her late husband, who had summered there with his grandparents when he was a boy. Genia suspected that was the real reason she lingered, even when spring changed into summer, and she wasn’t even thinking of packing her bags.

Her late husband’s mentor, Stanley Parker, worked his wiles on her, too. He was seventy-nine years old, retired from the presidency of the local bank he owned, though not retired from trying to run the town of Devon. Upon her arrival, the old man had invited her immediately to dinner at his “Castle” on the highest cliff overlooking his town.

“I’ve taken a liking to you,” he informed her.

To Genia’s amusement and pleasure, she discovered that meant being swept into Stanley Parker’s confidence, his privileged social circle, and his ever-evolving plans.

Afterward she thought that it was all Stanley Parker’s fault when her two weeks turned into three, and then into a month, and then three. It was all his fault when a Realtor friend of his located a perfect house for Genia to rent: a story-and-a-half Cape Cod, weathered clapboard with white trim, and a wonderful wide deck overlooking the ocean. And it was Stanley Parker’s fault, too, that suddenly she was busy as a short-order cook in a room full of gluttons.

“Genia Potter,” he said with an air of dramatic pronouncement, after only one month, “let’s do a cookbook together. You and I. Rhode Island recipes. We’ll get it published by an editor I know who owes me money.” When she laughed in surprise and didn’t answer right away, he threw in the kicker: “Lew would approve.”

And so there she was, ensconced in a pretty little house on the ocean on the northeast tip of the southern edge of Rhode Island, writing a cookbook, and deeply involved in her late husband’s family’s life, and feeling as happy as a clam that hadn’t been caught and steamed yet.

In August Stanley Parker suggested that she host a sit-down dinner party, whose purpose was to test recipes for their cookbook. “Whom shall I invite?” she asked her new mentor.

As if he had a list in his pocket, he reeled off seven names: “I want you to ask your niece and that artist ex-husband of hers, even though Kevin probably won’t come if Donna’s here, but ask him anyway. And send an invitation to Lindsay and Harrison Wright—he’s that black TV weatherman you like so much, and she’s the president of my arts council—and to Celeste Hutchinson …”