The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (6 page)

“There,” she said, patting it and checking it in a mirror.

She hurried around the upper floor, closing windows.

Then she went back downstairs to launch a more serious search for the old man.
Lew will kill me
, she thought,
if I’ve let anything happen to you, Stanley
.

Leaving her guests to fend for themselves, Genia returned to the kitchen and found nearly the whole Eden family there. Janie was filling an ice bucket; her brother had his nose in a fistful of fresh mint, which Genia assumed he had picked up at Stanley’s greenhouse, and their mother was washing blueberries at the sink.

Genia immediately asked her grandniece, “Did you find him?”

“No!” It sounded blunt, almost surly.

All three of them stopped what they were doing and stared at the girl, and even Jason looked a little shocked. He was six feet tall, two inches more than Janie, and slim, like her. Both twins had expressive faces; at the moment, hers looked angry, his looked surprised. He was “dressed up” for the occasion in clean blue jeans, with a belt, a white summer shirt, and even a tie. There was dirt on the knees of his denims, suggesting he had knelt to pick the mint.

Genia was momentarily too surprised to speak.

When Janie looked up and caught them staring at her, she blurted out, “I rang the bell for five minutes, at least, and nobody answered, and I hope he doesn’t come at all!”

“Mr. Parker?” Jason asked her, sounding puzzled.

“Yes!”

“Janie!” her mother remonstrated.

“But why, honey?” Genia asked the girl.

“Because he’s awful, and I hate him.”

Suddenly her smart, sophisticated, seventeen-year-old niece looked and sounded like a hurt and angry young girl, and Genia couldn’t for the life of her imagine why.

“Janie, dear, was Mr. Parker rude to you?”

“I told you, I didn’t find him, and I don’t want to talk about it.” Janie cast an unreadable look at her brother, who looked at her as if she’d suddenly gone crazy. With uncharacteristic spitefulness, his sister said in a taunting voice, “Do I, Jason?”

“How do I know? What’s the matter with you, anyway?”

“Young lady—” their mother started to say in a lecturing tone. But Genia waved a warning hand at her and interrupted.

“Whatever it is, Janie, I’m sorry you feel this way, but we’ve got a dinner party to put on now. Jason, will you please go down the path and look again for—”

“Yeah,” the boy agreed, and in a moment he was gone.

Behind her daughter’s back Donna made an apologetic face.

The way her dinner party was going, Genia wasn’t entirely surprised when thunder rumbled so close to the house that it shook the kitchen windowpanes. Frighteningly soon after that lightning hit somewhere close enough to raise the hair on her arms and make Janie exclaim out loud in startled fear. The rain began to pour in buckets—or lobster pots, as one might say around here—and all she could think of was
Stanley’s out in this
. She wanted to hand out yellow slickers to all of her guests and make them go search for him, but she knew she had to serve them lobster bisque, instead.

Genia barely heard the conversation as it tilted around the table, lurching around the empty chair where Stanley was to sit, and another one where a place was set for Kevin Eden. The storm continued noisily, until it seemed to Genia’s distracted imagination like a living thing that was trying to get their attention by pinging at the windows and blowing at the doors. But except for Genia—and for Harrison Wright, who kept staring out at the rain with a pleased smile on his face—the rest of the guests were all talking—arguing was more like it—about the proposed art festival for their town, as if that’s all anybody had to worry about at the moment.

“We’re all for it,” Donna said, emphasizing the plural pronoun.

Genia tried to pay attention and did focus long enough to realize that her niece looked sweet tonight. She was short and plump, with a round face and curly short light brown hair, a complete physical opposite to her tall, thin children who favored their father. Donna’s wardrobe consisted mainly of sailor-suit jumpers in red, white, and blue; Genia thought that the one she wore this evening looked as crisp and colorful as a brand-new flag. For a woman who spent most of her days feeling upset about her children, her ex-husband, or money, Donna had an irrepressibly cheerful look about her.

“Well, who isn’t for it?” Celeste asked, in a derisive tone. Her voice had a rich, throaty quality that held people’s attention. Genia thought the Realtor had the high coloring, the buxom figure, and the dramatic flair of an actress or an opera singer. She knew how forceful Celeste had been during the process of renting this summer home, and she could easily imagine her sweeping young homebuyers along in her wake. Celeste repeated, “Who isn’t? Except for your ex-husband and a few backward businesspeople.”

“Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Lindsay said with a pointed edge to her voice. When Celeste look puzzled, the younger woman pointed to her own well-groomed chest. “The president of the arts council. Me. Surely I have some say in this, since it’s our council’s money that’s supposed to fund this thing.”

“What’s your objection to it, Lindsay?” Genia asked, making an effort to be an attentive hostess.

“Crafts,” was the reply, sounding more like a retort. “We’re an arts council, may I repeat: arts. Not arts and crafts. I don’t think our town wants to be known for all those ticky-tacky doodads.”

“Like Kevin’s work, you mean?” Donna inquired acidly. He might be her ex-husband but she was still his sales agent. Kevin Eden created witty seascape “pictures” of wood and paint and bits of this and that. They might not be fine art, but they were charming, and Genia had recently bought four of them and shipped them home to Arizona. She planned to hang one in her guest room and wrap the others as Christmas gifts for her children.

“Oh, she doesn’t mean Kevin’s,” Celeste assured her, with a blithe wave of the same hand that held her glass of wine. Genia held her breath for the tablecloth. “Kevin’s pieces may be craft, but they’re very … 
artistic
 … craft.” If it was meant to smooth Donna’s feelings, it didn’t succeed very well, Genia thought, observing her niece’s face.

Good-naturedly, the mayor said, “You can’t really blame Kevin and the business owners, Celeste.”

“Why can’t I?” she asked, and everybody but Genia laughed. Stanley claimed that Rhode Islanders were argumentative by nature. She wanted him to be here to enjoy this. “Kevin just doesn’t want to be disturbed out on that island that doesn’t even belong to him, right, Donna?”

Genia’s niece nodded her head vigorously and briefly wagged her soup spoon at them as if she were lecturing her artist husband. “I’ve told him, ‘You ought to be grateful, Kevin Eden, that Stanley lets you live and work out there at all. So you’ll have to lock up your studio for a little while, so what? It’s such a small thing to ask for the good of the community.’ ”

David Graham twinkled at her from across the table. “I’m sure he loves it when you explain it to him like that, Donna.”

She looked surprised, then blushed and laughed.

“Kevin and the business owners are just being selfish and shortsighted, Larry,” Celeste continued, punctuating her thoughts with sips of wine. “All we’re asking for is one measly weekend out of an entire year, and they act as if we’re going to take every parking place downtown for the whole tourist season. And who do they think is going to be coming, anyway, if not tourists? We’ll make money for them, not take it away.”

Larry Averill smiled at her. “I’m on your side, Celeste. But there’s more to it than that, and I have to try to understand the viewpoints of all my constituents. The store owners downtown say that all the tourists will be out on the island, looking at art and buying things out there, and all they’ll be doing downtown is parking. The downtown restaurant owners aren’t happy about it, either, especially since we want to sell food at the festival. You can see their point.”

But his old friend shook her head. “No, I can’t.” She grinned wickedly. “Think of all of those future homebuyers who will be coming to the festival.” Then she lifted her glass in a toast. “I say, here’s to progress.”

“Second that.” David raised his own glass and tapped it against hers. “Luckily, it is Stanley’s island to do with as he pleases, and it appears that what pleases him is to hold an art festival on it. Your ex-husband can object all he wants to, Donna, but I doubt that’s going to sway Stanley. I predict this town will have its art festival out on Parker Island—”

“Over Kevin’s dead body,” Donna muttered, and they laughed again when she added, “which I might be happy to provide at no cost to the town!” Belatedly, she realized that her daughter had just entered from the kitchen, bearing a tray for picking up appetizer plates, and had overheard that last remark. “No offense to your father, Janie.”

Janie said nothing, but when the time came to pick up her mother’s plate she snatched it away and barely missed Donna’s nose with it. Her mother looked half-angry, half-amused. To the others she commented, “It’s a good thing she makes good grades, although you’d never guess it from looking at her. And if she had to support herself on tips, she’d starve. I don’t know what my son’s going to do; he doesn’t even make the grades!”

Celeste laughed and held out her glass for more wine.

Genia understood that Donna felt embarrassed by her daughter’s appearance, and that made her tongue sharp, but there was no excuse for humiliating the child. She felt like kicking Donna under the table. David Graham was frowning, too. He personally handed his own empty plate to Janie, saying as he did so, “Well, I’d tip her generously, Donna. I think she’s doing a lovely job. She deserves a lot of credit for helping out her aunt tonight.” As Janie removed his plate, he said courteously, “Thank you, child.” Her great-aunt Genia’s heart warmed in gratitude to him for salving the cut of her mother’s hurtful words.

“I heard Kevin changed his mind about the festival,” Harrison suddenly inserted, hearkening back to earlier comments.

His wife stared at him. “Where’d you hear that?”

“At the TV station, I think.”

“When?” she pressed him.

“Maybe yesterday.” He frowned in thought. “Or, maybe not.”

“I can’t believe it,” the mayor said. “Who’d you hear that from, Harrison?”

“Somebody,” the weatherman answered, with the expression of a man who sincerely wishes to be helpful. “Might have been the reporter who’s assigned to the city council. Or to the arts council. I’m not sure. Anyway, I know I heard it.”

“And you didn’t tell me?” Lindsay asked, half-laughing.

“Sorry, honey.” He smiled beatifically at her and then turned to stare out the window again. “Isn’t this a great storm? There must be a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud up there, or we wouldn’t get this much of a downpour. It’s so exciting when a cold front comes up under a warm front and forces it to rise. That’s when we get turbulence like this.” He looked riveted to the drama of nature playing outside the warm, well-lighted house. “There’s real drama playing up there. Clashing and flashing, banging and clanging. I could watch it twenty-four hours a day. It’s better than theater, better than TV or the movies.”

His wife grinned and shook her head so that everyone but her husband saw her. “Sometimes I think that if he weren’t nailed down, he’d blow away with the first wind.”

“I’d love to,” Genia heard the weatherman murmur.

“That’s what a wedding ring is for,” David Graham joked, “to nail a man down. Isn’t that right, Larry?”

“Wouldn’t know about that,” the mayor said jovially.

Genia felt so impatient with them for chattering on about the weather and their art festival when Stanley was missing. But everytime she said anything like “I can’t imagine what’s keeping him,” one of the others would dismiss her worry, saying, “If anybody can take care of himself, it’s Stanley.” And, “Oh, he just wants to make a grand entrance.” And, “Don’t worry so much, Genia, you don’t know Stanley like we do. He probably stopped along the way to start a committee or launch a museum.”

While they laughed and carried on, she seriously considered leaving the table to call the police.
Five more minutes
, she told herself,
if he’s not here in five minutes, I’ll do that
. It was only because Jason hadn’t returned that she didn’t hop to the phone immediately; the boy’s continued absence reassured her, causing her to imagine that maybe he had helped the old man out of the heavy rain and was even now waiting for Stanley to change into dry clothes, and then would drive them both over in Stanley’s car. Although, why the boy hadn’t called to tell her …

Maybe the storm had knocked the telephones out.…

She felt a warm touch, and looked up to find that Harrison Wright was gazing at her with concern in his nice hazel eyes. Quietly, under the hum of the other conversations, he said, “I’ll take any excuse to go out in a storm. Would you like for me to drive up to the Castle and look for him?”

She grasped his hand thankfully and was just about to say “Oh, yes, would you please, Harrison?” when the answer arrived in a shocking gust of wind and rain.

The French doors blew open with a crash that startled everyone into silence. For a moment Genia thought the storm had done it. But the open doors admitted not only a torrent of cold rain, but also the figure of a man who stood before them soaked and dripping. A burst of lightning flashed behind him, as if Frankenstein’s monster had suddenly materialized there. He had wild hair that stuck out in every direction from his scalp, and he wore brown boat shoes, blue jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt of so many colors it looked as if he had wiped his paintbrushes on it.

“Dad!” Janie, who was serving coffee, set the pot precariously on the table and ran to her father. He reached for her and hugged her close. Kevin Eden stood with his legs spread wide, panting for breath as if he’d run a long way.

“My God, Kevin.” Donna looked at her ex-husband’s muddy brown boat shoes with disgust. “Look what you’re tracking in!”