Murder in a Teacup

by Vicki Delany

  “You were driving, Bernie,” Redmond said. “Why don’t you go first. Take your time. Tell me what you remember.”

  There wasn’t much to tell: Bernie turned down the private road to the hotel; when she applied her foot to the brakes, nothing happened.

  “If,” Redmond said, “it’s discovered the brakes were deliberately tampered with and didn’t fail of their own accord, do you have any idea when that might have happened?”

  “As far as I know,” I said. “the last time we had the car out was Wednesday evening when we went into town for ice cream. I drove and I didn’t notice anything at all wrong. Rose takes good care of that car. I know I keep repeating that, but I want to be sure you understand.”

  Redmond nodded. “What garage does she take it to?”

  “North Augusta Motors. When she was sick one day over the winter, I took it in for her. I don’t have a car of my own, so we share hers. I didn’t use it yesterday, and Rose didn’t say anything to me about going out. She doesn’t always, so you should check with her.”

  “You have a garage at your place.”

  “Yes, we do. Rose’s car’s kept in there. Always. The sea air, as you no doubt know, isn’t good for cars. The garage door’s kept closed at all times because of visitors wandering the property, but it isn’t locked. We have two sets of keys to the car. One’s kept on a hook in the kitchen and one in Rose’s suite.”

  “If someone fiddled with the brakes,” Bernie said, “they had the time and the privacy to do it.”

  “As for that someone,” Redmond said, “who knew you were taking the car out today?”

  Bernie and I exchanged a look. “It might not have mattered to whoever it was,” I said. “If the apparent accident happened today or any other day.”

  “They all knew,” Bernie said.

  “All of who?” Redmond asked.

  Bernie turned to me. “You remember, Lily. Last night, I was about to get in my car to go home when I remembered that I had to take my own car in today, and I said I’d bike over this morning and we could take Rose’s car to come here.”

  “That’s right.” I drew up a mental picture of the scene. “The McHenry family had returned from their day’s outing, but they hadn’t gone to their rooms yet. Rose and Sandra were having drinks on the porch with some other guests. Rose asked us where we were planning on going, but we didn’t tell her.”

  “No doubt,” Redmond said, “you exchanged secretive looks.”

  “Do we do that?” I asked.

  She rolled her eyes.

  “Every one of the McHenry/French bunch heard us,” Bernie pointed out. “With one obvious, and highly significant, exception.”

  “Trisha,” I said, “who’d been carted off to the clink.”

  “Although,” Redmond pointed out in return, “Trisha was at the B and B until yesterday evening and thus could have tampered with the car at any time.”

  “Why would she do that?” I asked. “Why would any of them?”

  “Because we’re getting close,” Bernie said. “We’re onto them. Or they think we’re onto them, because in reality, we don’t have a clue.”

  “If we’d been killed.” I suppressed a shudder. “It would have been a fluke. Most of the roads around here are fairly level. It’s only dangerous near the bluffs. More likely, we would have plowed into a patch of sand or bumped into another car at a stoplight in town.”

  “A warning, then,” Bernie said.

  “A warning,” I agreed.

  Redmond stood up. “Don’t get ahead of yourselves. You’re making a lot of assumptions. First, that the brakes were deliberately tampered with. And secondly, that someone wanted to stop you from investigating the French murder.” She cleared her throat. “Someone, that is, other than the police, who’ve told you not to get involved.”

  “Just trying to be helpful.” Bernie gave her a big grin.

  “And how’s that working out?”

  “Maybe not so well,” I admitted.

  The door flew open, and Detective Williams marched in. “Are you ladies finished with your little tea party? Good. The car’s been taken to the state police garage. I told them I want the results ASAP. If you don’t have grounds to arrest Ms. Murphy for dangerous driving, Detective, let’s go. The chief wants an update.”

  Bernie leapt to her feet. “Great! We’re off. We’ll wait for your report, Detectives. I can be contacted at any time.”

  We ran out of the meeting room.

  “I suppose,” Bernie said, “as long as we’re here, we might as well do what we came to do.”

  “You mean talk to Trisha? I’d totally forgotten about that.”

  “Rose is probably right that Trisha’s more likely to talk openly to her than to us. Let’s try and find her. I just hope she isn’t too traumatized by our recent brush with death.”

  Chapter 18

  We found my grandmother happily ensconced in a game of bridge in a big sunny room overlooking the sparkling waters of Cape Cod Bay.

  “My arrival was timely,” she said when Bernie and I arrived. “These ladies were in need of a fourth hand. Two spades.”

  “Sorry,” I said, “but we have to go.”

  “Three hearts,” the woman to her left said.

  “Once I’ve finished this hand,” Rose said.

  Her cane was hooked over the back of her chair. I lifted it off and handed it to her. “Remember why we came here? To visit someone. We’ll ask reception to call her room.”

  “But I have a good hand,” the three-heart woman said.

  “No table talk,” Rose’s partner snapped.

  “I’ve already attended to that,” Rose said.

  “To what?” I asked.

  “You two were busy, so I spoke to Trisha. I suppose you want to know what she had to say. If I must. Sorry, ladies, duty calls.” Rose laid her cards on the table and spread them out faceup. Scarcely a face card among them, and not many spades, either.

  “But you don’t have anything,” her partner said.

  “I was bluffing.” Rose got to her feet. “It would have worked.” She indicated the woman to her left. “She doesn’t have enough for nine tricks, but she enjoys bidding. Thank you for the game, ladies.”

  “Does she think we’re playing poker?” Rose’s partner said as we walked away.

  “Where’s the car?” Rose asked.

  “The police have impounded it. We’re pretty sure the brakes were cut,” I said.

  “That’s what I suspected,” Rose said. “As we are now without transportation, ask the young lady at the desk to call us a cab.”

  Bernie took care of that, while Rose and I went outside to wait. An iron bench was under the portico by the front door, and Rose settled herself onto it.

  We watched hotel guests come and go, many of them lugging golf bags. No one paid us any attention. The crowd at the final bend in the long lane had dispersed.

  “The cab’ll be here in about fifteen minutes,” Bernie said. “You shouldn’t have spoken to Trisha without us.”

  “I saw no need to waste time,” Rose said. “It was just as well I did. She was about to go for a walk. If we had delayed, we would have missed her.”

  “She’s been asked to stay on the hotel grounds,” I said. “We would have found her.”

  “The point of working as a team, love, is that we can cover more ground than working individually.”

  “We’re a team? I wouldn’t call us that.”

  “Never mind. It’s done,” Bernie said. “What did she have to say for herself?”

  “She assured me she didn’t kill Ed,” Rose said.

  “That’s to be expected,” I said. “Anything else?”

  “Her lawyer ordered her not to speak to anyone in the McHenry family, not even Heather, who’s paying his bill. I told her I might be Sandra’s friend, but I wasn’t a member of the family and she can trust me. She freely admits she searched for information about gardens in and around North Augusta. She’s a keen
gardener and enjoys visiting them when she travels.”

  “That might be true,” I said. “I saw her walking in our garden not long after they arrived, and she seemed to be taking her time admiring the plants. Simon told me the same.”

  “Last night,” Rose said, “she was wearing a T-shirt from Butchart Gardens in British Columbia, which would indicate she does like to visit gardens when on vacation.”

  “She might have gotten it as a gift.”

  “When she arrived, the T-shirt she had on was from the Desert Botanical Garden,” Bernie said. “The evidence isn’t conclusive, but it all helps toward building a pattern.”

  “She never did have a chance to visit the places she was interested in,” Rose said, “because of Ed’s unexpected death. She claims she wasn’t searching for any plants in particular, just wanting to see what was available to tour. Her lawyer has assured her that simply looking at publicly available tourist information is hardly grounds for charges. He’s going to try to have the police’s case thrown out.”

  “Williams acted prematurely,” I said. “Redmond thinks so, too.”

  “Tell us something we don’t know,” Bernie muttered. “Man’s way over his head in a murder case that wasn’t witnessed by half-a-dozen people in a bar in a shady part of town.”

  “I didn’t know there were any shady parts of North Augusta,” Rose said. “Are there?”

  “That’s the totality of the police case?” I said. “Trisha’s Internet searches?”

  “As far as she knows.”

  “What about Julie-Ann’s accusations?” I asked. “Did you ask Trisha about that?”

  “A bad word or two might have escaped Trisha’s lips when I mentioned Julie-Ann,” Rose said. “They haven’t spoken in years, but the animosity doesn’t seem to have diminished because of that. Mostly, according to Trisha, on Julie-Ann’s part because of Julie-Ann’s jealousy over Trisha marrying Ed.”

  Bernie snorted. “For heaven’s sake. The man wasn’t exactly male model material.”

  “Perhaps he had a kind heart,” Rose said. “Trisha’s aware, as is almost everyone else in Grand Lake, that Julie-Ann and Lewis have separated. She thinks Julie-Ann’s interest in Ed was rekindled because of his financial prospects.”

  “What financial prospects? Was he about to come into money? I didn’t know that,” I said.

  “You know these businessmen, love. They’re always about to discover the next big thing. The fact that Ed’s brother did create the next big thing might have made Ed think he could do so, too.”

  At that moment, a taxi arrived and we got to our feet.

  “Do you want us to drop you off?” I asked Bernie.

  “I need to get my bike. Besides, I want to see their faces when we arrive unscathed. Maybe the guilty party will expose themselves.”

  “That would be convenient,” I said.

  “Victoria-on-Sea,” Rose said to the driver.

  He headed up the hill and turned slowly at the first bend. A scrap of yellow police tape fluttered in the wind. Our car was gone, but deep gouges in the sand marked where it had gone off the road.

  “I keep tellin’ ’em they need to fix that bend,” the driver growled. “Someone’s gonna go right over that cliff one day, and bam!” He pounded the steering wheel with his hand. Bernie, sitting in the seat next to him, yelped and hit her head on the roof. I swallowed heavily and put my hand on Bernie’s shoulder. She laid hers on top of it. Rose took my other hand in hers.

  “You ladies visiting Cape Cod for the first time?” the cabbie asked. “I hope you enjoy your time here. I can recommend things to see if you’d like. You should try the restaurant down at the pier in North Augusta. Best seafood this part of the Cape. And that’s sayin’ somethin’.” He chattered on, not noticing or caring that none of us replied with anything but grunts.

  It was almost noon and I needed to get to work. As we waited for the police to arrive, I’d called Cheryl and told her I was delayed. She and Marybeth could open the tearoom, make sandwiches, and serve the first lot of customers with what scones and pastries we had in the fridge and freezer. But they couldn’t work both the kitchen and dining rooms, so I had to get in there.

  The cab turned into our driveway and drove past Tea by the Sea. Cars filled the parking lot and most of the tables on the patio were taken, but I didn’t ask the driver to stop and let me out.

  Like Bernie, I was hoping to be able to make some deductions based on the reactions of the McHenry guests when we arrived home safe and sound. Although carless.

  That idea came to naught. Their cars were gone and none of them were in.

  * * *

  We walked through the front door as the housekeeper clattered down the stairs, the vacuum cleaner bouncing along behind her.

  “Are any of the guests in their rooms?” Rose asked.

  “Nope. All gone out. Not a day for people on vacation to be sitting indoors, now is it?” She dragged the vacuum down the hall.

  “What now?” Bernie asked.

  “I’m going to work,” I said.

  “All we can do is wait for the police to tell us what they find,” Rose said.

  “We know the brakes were cut,” Bernie said. “I don’t need Detective Williams telling me as though he arrived at that deduction all by himself.”

  “No,” Rose said. “But they may find something else. Fingerprints, perhaps? Maybe something distinctive about the tool used.”

  “Do you think it would be worth asking them to fingerprint the garage?” Bernie said. “We’re assuming the car was interfered with there.”

  “Might be,” I said. “If they decide to take the matter further. No one was hurt, and there’s no evidence pointing to what happened with our car having anything to do with the death of Ed French.”

  “Once again,” Bernie said, “all we can do is wait. I hate doing that. Rose, don’t say anything about what happened. Not even to Sandra. We’ll pretend nothing did and see if one of them slips and gives something away.”

  “Like spies,” Rose said.

  “Precisely. I need to get home, anyway. While we were in the taxi, I had a great idea for a scene in my book and I want to get the idea worked out and down on paper. Get this! Rose—my Rose—and Tessa are in a runaway carriage heading for the edge of the cliff. Someone has put burs under the horse’s saddle and it bolts. Do you think they should save themselves—maybe Tessa spent lots of time with the horses back on the estate in Ireland—or should the handsome young farmworker come to their aid?”

  “Neither,” Rose said. “Carriage horses don’t wear saddles. Thus burs cannot be placed under them.”

  “You know what I mean,” Bernie said.

  “He should if this is intended to be a romance. Is it?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Maybe that’s something you need to figure out,” I said.

  Bernie got her bike and we walked up the driveway together. “My problem,” she said, “is that I want to do it all. And I end up doing nothing. I have so many marvelous ideas for this book, all tumbling around in my head. But when I sit down to write the scenes, nothing comes.”

  “All right, then. Monday evening, I want to see a detailed plot outline. Tuesday night, character sketches of the main characters.”

  “What?”

  “You told me you don’t want me reading your rough work. That’s fair enough. I don’t give people unbaked dough to taste so they can tell me what they think of it.”

  “Nothing better than raw cookie dough.”

  “Not my point, Bernie. You can show me what you’re thinking of doing. Get it down on paper. Let me see it. Then set yourself to follow the plan. No more wild ideas and rushing off in a totally different direction. You have to make up your mind. Time’s passing. Your savings won’t last forever.”

  She turned and grinned at me. “Lily Roberts, you are the best friend ever!”

  “I wouldn’t go that far.”

  “I’m on
it! That’s a great idea. Bye.” She leapt on her bike and peddled away in a cloud of writerly enthusiasm and sand.

  Whether or not Bernie would follow my plan, I didn’t know. I’d done what little I could.

  I went into the tearoom through the back door. Marybeth was at the counter peeling hard-boiled eggs to combine with curry paste, mayonnaise, and a touch of Dijon mustard and salt and pepper for tea sandwiches. “Everything okay?” she asked.

  “Fine. Sorry to be late. The place looks full.”

  “It is. And reservations for the rest of the day will keep it full. We had two tables for Royal Tea already, and we’re running out of those orange scones. We’ll need plenty more sandwiches.”

  “You and your mom are lifesavers, or at least tearoom savers. You know that, I hope. With all that’s been happening, I’ve left more work to you than I should, and I’m sorry.”

  Marybeth smiled at me. “Not your fault the police shut the place down, Lily. You’ve been trying to help your grandmother and her friend, and so you should. I know you’ve been worried about us—Mom knows, too—and we appreciate it. We’re good here.”

  “In that case,” I said, “I’ll start with the scones and then do sandwiches. Finish what you’re doing there and then go and help Cheryl.”

  I got out my mixing bowls and dry ingredients and set to work. As I mixed and sliced, rolled and cut, I thought back over what had happened earlier, trying to reach some sort of conclusion.

  Nothing came. I was stymied. We’d learned nothing of significance from Trisha and had no idea who would have sabotaged Rose’s car, in what I could only assume was an attempt to kill us.

  I opened the oven to pop in the first batch of orange scones. I froze as a thought hit me.

  To kill us? Or to kill Rose?

  It was Rose’s car. We’d talked last night, in front of the McHenry group, about going out in Rose’s car. But plans change all the time.

  I shoved the baking trays in the oven and set the rooster timer. I washed up the bowls and measuring cups and spoons and then I did a quick inventory of the fridge and freezer. We had enough scones and pastries to last a while but, as Marybeth had said, the supply of sandwiches was getting low.