Murder at the Tremont House (A Blue Plate Cafe Mystery) Read online

  There was my answer: she sure wasn’t going to talk to me about it. So I pressed the conversation forward in general terms. “What do you think of Wheeler so far?”

  She was thoughtful again, until she finally said, “Surprising. Oh, there’s the little stuff I’d expect. The minister’s wife who’s so protective of her husband’s position, as though he were the Bishop of Canterbury, and that spinster sewing lady….”

  “I’m sure you didn’t know,” I interrupted gently, “that she lost her fiancé in Vietnam and has never gotten over it. Folks around here know and they just don’t talk to her about it.”

  Callously, she asked, “What does that have to do with it? Maybe she’d be better off talking about it.”

  She, honest to Pete, whipped out that AirMac thing and made a note.

  “Wait! I didn’t tell you that because I thought you should talk to her about it. I told you because I wanted you to know you’d been on uncomfortable ground for her.”

  “My business is not to make people comfortable. It’s to find out what makes them tick…and that’s part of what makes her tick. I’ll ask her about it.”

  I had a feeling that my plea of “Please don’t” fell on deaf ears. I was also deciding I really didn’t like Sara Jo much.

  Before I could say more, she said, “Your sister, Donna, may be a big part of my article. She’s what I expected to find in a small town…dissatisfied, unhappy, wishes she lived in Dallas. I would too if I lived here. I have to find out more about the time she was accused of murder and how she felt about it.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t include that,” I said it softly, not as an order but as a plea. “And it sounds to me you came with an agenda…to discover discontent and scandal and reveal that small towns aren’t as peaceful as people think.”

  “No!” she said sharply. “I came with an open mind.”

  “Have you ever lived in a small town?” I asked.

  She swung her head around. “No,” she said sharply. “That’s one reason I am interested. I can’t imagine it, living permanently in a place like this.” She waved a hand in the air, as though indicating the entire town.

  “So you do have preconceived notions about small towns.” I didn’t mean it as a question.

  She started to rise. “No, and don’t accuse me of that. I’m a journalist. That means I’m impartial. I go about any assignment with an open mind.”

  She had opened a door I wanted. Boldly, before she could stalk off, I put my hand on her arm and asked, “Do you have some clippings of previous stories. Something that could verify your credentials for us?” It was almost a declaration of war, and she certainly took it that way.

  “I don’t have to prove anything to you or anyone else in this town.” She was gathering her purse and notebook, so I stood too.

  “No, you don’t. But if you don’t approach us with a chip on your shoulder and an eye for our weak spots, you mind find us all more cooperative. I’m not sure I’m crazy about being back in Wheeler after years in Dallas, but there are things I like. I’d be glad to talk to you about them and about the things I don’t like.”

  “Like a lack of men?” Her tone was bitter.

  “No, that’s not one of them. Please don’t pre-judge me…or my town.”

  She stalked away, and I knew I’d made an enemy.

  Donna came in a little later. “Sara Jo’s back. I don’t know if I’m glad or not.”

  “I know. She was here early this morning.” I thought it best not to say any more.

  “Well, I’m glad to have her back for the cooking school if nothing else. You know, it was her idea. Have you made any progress on your menus?”

  I knew there was a deep down reason I resented Sara Jo, and now I knew what it was. “Not yet,” I said, “but I’m working on it.

  ****

  And that’s how Rick Samuels found himself in my kitchen that night, eating Beef Wellington and Caesar salad. I’d even made a quick trip to Canton in the afternoon to pick up some good beef tenderloin, the kind I could never afford to serve at the café, and some puff pastry, along with a better than usual cabernet.

  “What’s the occasion?” he asked, seating himself at the table. It was one of those rare evenings when he had changed out of his tan uniform and wore a plaid shirt with starched jeans and, of course, boots. I always liked him in his uniform but somehow he looked better to me tonight.

  I, on the other hand, had on jeans that were not creased, an oversize shirt, and one of Gram’s aprons. Not a fashion picture. “I’m practicing for Donna’s cooking school.”

  “Whoa! Back up! She’s going to teach a cooking school? I thought you said she can’t cook worth…well, you know.”

  “She can’t, and she isn’t. I am.”

  “And you got roped into this how?” He was laughing as he opened the wine.

  “I told you Sara Jo would be trouble. This is all her idea. But I decided it might be fun, and I want to practice my cooking skills on some nicer things. So, tonight, Monsieur, you get Beef Wellington and Caesar salad.”

  “You aren’t going to put chopped liver on it, are you?”

  “Liver pâté? No, it’s not in this recipe. I’m trying to simplify for the ladies.”

  “Whew! That’s a relief.”

  I started to laugh, and then the giggles came, stopped only by a sip of wine and a sobering thought about Sara Jo. “If this is the worst trouble she causes, it won’t be so bad. But I talked to her this morning, and I have lots of worries.”

  “Let’s eat first,” he said.

  I tasted, rolled the wine around on my tongue, and pronounced it superb. Then I giggled again. We were not exactly wine connoisseurs—what’s the word for that? Oenophiles?

  Over dinner, served of course on Gram’s Blue Willow china but with Reidel O glasses I’d recently ordered, I told him how Donna was going to be administrator of the class.

  “What’s that mean? She’ll collect the cash?”

  “Well, yes, but I’ll demand my fair share. And we’ll send the ladies home with dinner that they’ve cooked. For two. If they have children, they’ll have to feed them chicken nuggets.”

  “I think you’re crazy to get into this,” he said, “but if you’re sure you want to and you’re not just doing it to appease Gram…”

  Does he know Gram talks to me? Or is that a figure of speech or whatever?

  “Depends on who signs up, but I do think it could be fun. I mean, I expect Mrs. Reverend Baxter and a few others from the church. We can only take ten or twelve. Donna says she’ll put up flyers in the café and an ad in the Wheeler Tribune. She’s even talking about advertising in Canton, though I can’t imagine anyone would come that far.”

  “Is Sara Jo coming, since she suggested the whole idea?”

  “Oh, I doubt that. She doesn’t strike me as the domestic type.”

  “Me either,” he said wryly.

  It was a chilly night, even for March, and dishes done, Rick built the first fire I’d ever tried in Gram’s fireplace. I guess he was a former Boy Scout because he knew exactly what he was doing—from opening the damper to laying the fire—and we soon had a nice but small blaze going. Granted, it was a little smoky, but he warned me it would be because the fireplace hadn’t been used in forever. I doubted Gram ever built a fire, but she’d had some firewood stored on one side of the house, now dry as could be from age.

  “You need a man around here,” Rick growled. “Firewood shouldn’t be stored against the house. Bugs and termites and all kinds of critters. You need a storage shed.”

  “One of those ugly prefab things?”

  “Yep.”

  “I have that old wood shed of Gram’s.”

  “Yeah, the one that’s about to fall down on itself. Termites would eat it in a flash.”

  My first thought was if Steve Millican were here, he’d put a pre-fab one together for me, but he was in prison somewhere in Texas.

  “So what else are you going to teach
these ladies to cook?” he asked.

  “Well, how about making veal piccata with chicken?”

  “Good idea. And?”

  “And I haven’t gotten any further. Maybe stuffed Cornish hens?”

  “No man in his right mind will eat a Cornish hen,” he scoffed. “You’ve got to choose meals they can feed their husbands but don’t yet know how to cook.”

  “That leaves out a lot of good things, like roast chicken and pot roast. These ladies already do that.”

  Our talk quieted, and we sat peacefully staring at the fire, Rick’s arm around my shoulders, resting lightly, but still I was much aware of it. Finally, he said, “Ten o’clock. Way past my witching hour, and I have to tell my deputy he can go off the clock.”

  “Deputy? I thought you didn’t have one.”

  “I don’t, but I told Tom I had special plans tonight, and he volunteered.” And with that Rick Samuels took me in his arms and kissed me, hard and deep, and I felt myself responding, though my first instinct was to push him away. He was the one who pulled away, saying, “Too tempting, Kate. It’s been too long for both of us.”

  Shaking, I stood when he did but I was speechless. In the kitchen, he made light of things, thanking me in a sweeping bow for a lovely evening. He planted a kiss on my nose, and then he was gone.

  Why did I think of David Clinkscales at that moment?

  Chapter Six

  In the end, Donna and I decided on six lessons rather than the ten that had overwhelmed me, with a $100 fee for the course. We wouldn’t make much profit, and we’d have to have twelve students to make it work. We had studied the kitchen at The Tremont House and thought we could fit twelve women in there. They’d take turns cooking, but each would leave with portions for two.

  I’d fix the Beef Wellington with oven roasted potatoes, chicken piccata with risotto, chicken enchiladas with refried beans and Mexican rice, shepherd’s pie with a spinach salad, quail with dirty rice and black coffee gravy (for the husbands who hunted), and pan-fried trout with home-style fries—the kind where you slice a raw potato thinly and fry those slices until they’re golden brown. It takes patience. And I’d explain that the same technique for the trout could be used for the bass that men caught locally, provided they cleaned their fish for their wives to cook. Printed recipes, with suggestions for side dishes would accompany each lesson—and I’d incorporate Gram’s old dictum that you had to have something green on your plate at every meal. No turnip greens, because of my horror of them since my grandmother died after eating greens tainted with digitalis and because these ladies knew how to cook greens. But maybe a spinach casserole.

  To my surprise, we got twelve ladies within three days and had a waiting list. And the first one to register? Sara Jo Cavanaugh. I was so surprised I asked her why she registered one day when I ran into her at The Tremont House. I was there for a planning session.

  “Sorry, but I didn’t think you’d be the domestic type,” I said. “Hope you’re not offended.”

  “Not at all, and you’re right. But what better way to get to know the ladies of the town? I’ll send my portion home with Donna and go on eating veggies and fruit and yogurt.”

  She’d been in town three weeks, and she’d signed up for a six-week course. I was dismayed.

  Mrs. Reverend Baxter was indeed one of the ones who signed up, as I expected, but I was surprised that Miss Tilly signed up. “It will give me meals for two nights,” she explained. “I do get so tired of cooking for myself. And I’ll enjoy the fellowship.”

  We didn’t tell either of them that Sara Jo had signed up.

  There were others, some of whom I didn’t know well. Bonnie Smith, mother of that high school boy Cary who’d been teased in the café, was on the list, and so was Barbara Wallace, who now managed Joanie Millican’s old dress shop, with, I must say, considerably less panache.

  To my amazement, Carolyn Grimes called from Crandall and said, “Chester can find himself another 911 dispatcher once a week. I need to get out and among some ladies who aren’t from Crandall.” I laughed and said I’d be delighted to see her.

  Two sisters from Canton registered, and the rest were a blur to me, though I was sure I’d recognize most of them from the café. From their addresses, they lived nearby—one or two actually in Wheeler and I couldn’t believe I’d missed them, one from Van, two from Martin’s Mills. Donna knew the two from Wheeler but dismissed them as “old biddies.”

  “Donna,” I said sternly, “you got us into this, and you’re going to have to go into it with the attitude that every one of these ladies is your best friend.”

  She glared at me.

  Meanwhile, Sara Jo kept a low profile, so low it scared me.

  ****

  The cooking lessons weren’t scheduled to begin for a week when a totally different trauma erupted in our lives, unconnected to Sara Jo. Or was it?

  Donna flew into the café a little after three one afternoon, hair flying, eyes red, mood—frantic was the only word for it. I prepared myself for one of Donna’s tragedies that were minor disturbances to the rest of us, but this time I was wrong.

  “Ava!” she shouted. “She wasn’t at school when I went to pick them up. Nobody has seen her. Kate, do something! Find my child.”

  I’d be lying if I didn’t say fear clutched my heart. I had to steady myself by holding on to a chair. When I could move, I put my arms around Donna. “Slow down, Sis. Let me help. When did anyone last see her?”

  “She has gym the last period of the day—that damn basketball practice she loves so much, and the coach said she was there today. She was in her classes all day until then. It’s like she just vanished into thin air.”

  You can’t help it. The worst scenarios go through your mind. A predator had grabbed her—she was fourteen, on the edge of womanhood, ripe for a pedophile. Oh, hell, what did I know about pedophiles? The calmest solution that came to me was still fraught with danger. She’d run away. How many kids run away at fourteen and are never seen again, victims of the streets, white slavery—hadn’t I read an article about that recently? Reason took hold of my brain—unless she thumbed a ride out of Wheeler, she was probably safe from predators and slavers. But what if she headed to Dallas?

  “Donna, did you call Tom?

  She gave me a withering look. “Of course. He and that boyfriend of yours are out looking all over town for her now. That Samuels is driving the town, and Tom is questioning people at the school.”

  I didn’t miss the derision in the words “that boyfriend of yours.” But, not knowing what else to do, I said, “Donna, sit down and start calling all her friends. You know them, know their families. Ask if they’ve seen her.”

  She moaned. “My poor baby. Out there all by herself.”

  Probably not, but I kept that thought to myself. Seemed likely to me we’d find another girl missing, and the two were off on a lark. It was a pleasant day with warm sun, though it would be cool by dusk—surely they’d turn up by then.

  “Did you check the B&B?”

  “No. Why should I?”

  “Just trying to think of places she’d go. You sit here and call her friends. I’ll get Marj to bring you coffee, tea, whatever you want.”

  “Wine,” she said.

  “Sorry. We don’t have that. Pick up your phone and start calling. I’ll be right back.” I flew to my car and broke every speed limit to get to The Tremont House. She wasn’t there, but Rick was and so was Sara Jo.

  Rick took one look at me and said, “I guess we had the same thought.”

  “Yeah. No good?”

  He shook his head. “I’ve searched the house and the outbuildings. Nothing.”

  Sara Jo was visibly upset and for once didn’t have her notebook out. “What can I do to help?”

  Rick looked at her. “Stay here. Call me if she comes here.” He handed her his card.

  “What about Henry and Jess? I didn’t even think to ask Donna.”

  “They’re with Tom at t
he school. When he’s finished there, he’ll deposit them in the café. Where’s Donna?”

  “I told her to call all Ava’s friends. Left her at the café, though I wouldn’t be surprised if she goes home. Maybe on the off chance Ava decided to walk home. Maybe because Donna wants a glass of wine.”

  He shook his head, as though unbelieving. “You go back to the café, keep Henry and Jess. I’m going to start searching places we might not think of—like the stock tank behind this place.”

  I didn’t even want to go there in my mind…unless he possibly thought he’d find her meditating by the water’s edge. Fourteen-year-olds didn’t kill themselves did they? Particularly not popular ones? I knew I was fooling myself. Teen suicide was a huge problem, and Ava was unhappy… No, Kate, don’t go there!

  As we headed to our cars, he said to me, “You know of anything she’s upset about?”

  I’d been going over that in my mind and nothing seemed helpful. “Donna doesn’t pay much attention to her now, what with the B&B and Sara Jo for company.”

  He looked at me sharply.

  “Her mother spends a lot of time at The Tremont House, late at night, talking to Sara Jo. Tom says she sometimes doesn’t come home until the kids are in bed, and then she’s not up when they go to school.”

  “Not good.” He shook his head again. I knew there were no love lost between Donna and Rick, but now he seemed truly disgusted.

  “Rick, a year ago, when Irv Litman was alive, Ava had it pretty good. Donna kept taking her to Dallas for weekends with Irv. They’d shop, they’d go to high tea at the Adolphus—all pretty heady stuff for a young girl. You don’t think….” I didn’t want to put this into words, but I finally did. “You don’t think she’d try to get to Dallas thinking she could live that life again?”

  “I don’t know. How stable a girl is she?”

  I had to think long—and honestly—about that. “I don’t think she’s grounded, because she doesn’t get Donna’s attention. And I think her head was turned by those trips to Dallas and all the clothes Irv bought her and….”