The Lavender Teacup

by Mary Bowers

  The crowd had thinned out a lot by then, but it was also that much darker. We hadn’t managed to find anybody we knew before we heard a scream at the water’s edge of the wharf, and everybody started to run.

  We saw Helena first; she was standing at the edge of the wharf where the crowd began to gather, and people were pushing forward to see so impatiently that she was in danger of being pushed into the water.

  “Michael,” I said urgently, “get her!”

  He knew what I meant, and he got himself through the crowd and took hold of Helena’s arm, drawing her away from the edge.

  He brought her back to me. She was struggling and pointing and trying to make herself understood, and when we could finally figure out what had happened, Michael went right back to the edge of the wharf and dove into the water.

  Chapter 19

  By the time he dove in, two other men and a young woman were also in the water, all coming up for air and then diving back down again. The water was black. Lights reflected off the surface without penetrating.

  Somebody grabbed my arm and I turned around to see that it was The Professor.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  “Maryellen,” Helena said. She had settled into quiet tears by then, and was speaking intelligibly. “She fell into the water.”

  “My God, how did that happen?” The Professor demanded.

  “I don’t know,” Helena said. “I didn’t see it.”

  Lily, Teddy, Camille and Oswald joined us, seeming to come from different directions. Turning to address all of us, Helena said, “I didn’t see her fall in. I heard a commotion and came for a look and then I saw her struggling in the water. Then . . . she went down and didn’t come up again.”

  “The teacup,” Camille said.

  There was a moment where we all reacted in different ways, I suppose. I can only speak for myself: I wanted to scream at her. In that charged-up moment, the idea of a killer teacup seemed more ridiculous than ever, and the mere mention of it seemed disrespectful. Others, like Teddy, reacted differently.

  “But she didn’t have it anymore,” Teddy said. “She gave it to . . . oh, lord, she gave it to Ed.”

  Popping out of nowhere, Arielle was suddenly beside us. It was a few seconds before I noticed her cousin, Darrien, standing behind her.

  “What happened?” she asked.

  “It’s Maryellen,” I said. “She fell into the Gulf.”

  After a shocked moment, Arielle said, “The teacup,” exactly as Camille had said it. Behind her, Darrien took hold of her shoulders.

  My nerves were shredded by then. “Now don’t you start,” I barked at her, and Lily came up beside me and took my arm, trying to settle me. She whispered, “Not now.”

  I turned to Lily. “Michael went in after her. He’ll save her.”

  But it was already too late.

  There is no protection at the wharf’s edge to keep people from falling in, and there’s only a bare-bones exit strategy for them if they do. Those who had jumped in to try to rescue Maryellen were all strong swimmers, of course, but they were getting tired by the time they gave up and climbed the ladder on the seawall. They came out wet and exhausted, and were still resting on the wharf when Key West rescue personnel arrived and offered medical attention. By then the police were also there, and they started interviewing bystanders.

  It seemed like forever before Michael came back to us, and all I wanted was to get him back to the B&B and get him into some warm, dry clothing. He had a small, thin blanket over his shoulders, but he was otherwise drenched and he had lost his sandals. Beside him was a substantial-looking policeman who loomed over Michael by a good half a foot.

  “It’s Big Billy,” Helena said, and she rushed the young cop and wrapped her arms around his waist, pressing her face against him at approximately the bottom of his ribcage. He tolerated this placidly, gave her back a comforting rub and walked her back to us.

  “You’re friends of Mr. Utley, here?” he asked us generally.

  “I’m his girlfriend, Taylor Verone,” I said. I hate the word girlfriend. At my age, it’s ridiculous. It just popped out.

  He nodded in acknowledgement, looked around and said, “Hey, Arielle. Oswald.” He looked closer. “Camille. Hey, Professor.”

  They all murmured at him.

  “And these are our friends, Teddy Force and Lily Parsons,” Michael told him. He’d caught his breath by then, but his voice was thin and rough, and something inside me broke.

  “I’m taking Michael back to the B&B,” I said. “Now.”

  Big Billy regarded me pacifically and said, “I’ll give you both a ride in a few minutes. He can’t walk all that way barefoot. Right now, I‘ve just got a few questions. Who was with Miz Grundy when she fell in?”

  Nobody answered. Bewildered, we all looked around at one another and I realized what a crowd of us there were.

  “Oh, come on,” The Professor said quietly. “Somebody had to be with her.”

  “You know Maryellen,” Helena said. “She liked to people-watch. She was probably moving through the crowd, making mental notes and eavesdropping. She was always ditching us when we were in a crowd.” She stopped, looking as if she wanted to rephrase that but was having a hard time thinking.

  “That’s right,” Arielle said. “She probably got interested in some character she was observing, and that’s why she lost her footing and went over the edge. It’s dark, she was being nosy . . . .”

  There was a doubtful silence as we all continued to look at one another, then quickly look away.

  “Well, let’s do it like this,” Big Billy said. “Who might have been with her last, before she wandered off on her own?”

  “I was with Michael and Taylor, packing up my stuff,” Camille said. “I didn’t see which way Maryellen went, or who she was with.”

  “Neither did I,” Teddy said. “I couldn’t figure out how to fold the legs of Camille’s table, and Taylor and Michael took so long coming back I figured they’d knocked off and gone for a drink or something. Then I saw Lily and went over to her.”

  “I thought you went to talk to Teddy,” I said, looking at Camille.

  “By the time I got to where I thought I’d seen him, he was gone. I never did find him.”

  “I took Lily over to try to get a drink at that tiki bar,” Teddy said, “but we couldn’t get anywhere near it and we finally gave up. By the time we came back onto the wharf, we didn’t see where everybody had gone. We weren’t around Maryellen for long, and only while the whole group was together for a few minutes.”

  Oswald spoke up, first clearing his throat and then looking determined to speak plainly. “I took Helena and went down toward the condos over there. We sort of walked away from Maryellen. She’d been having one of her flirty spells,” he added dryly.

  “She liked to stir things up,” Helena said. “Once Oswald and I started going around as a couple, she started playing up to him.”

  “She didn’t have the hots for me,” Oswald said, making us all suppress chuckles. “She just wanted to see if she could get a rise out of Helena.”

  “And you two were together for the whole time?” the policeman asked.

  Oswald and Helena both looked down, embarrassed. Then Oswald looked up defiantly. “My bladder isn’t what it once was. I took a walk to the public toilets. She waited for me out here on the wharf. T-o-i-l-e-t,” he added, as Big Billy wrote in his notebook.

  Without looking up, Big Billy said, “You know I gotta ask, Oswald.”

  “I know,” the old man muttered, but he settled down again.

  “And while you were waiting for him, you never saw Maryellen?” he asked Helena.

  “No. While I was waiting, there was a commotion and I went to see what was going on. I wasn’t worried at first. Young people get frisky and jump in the water sometimes. I wasn’t even all that interested, because they can usually get themselves back out again, but I was just standing around waiting for Oswald so I we
nt and took a look. When I saw the person in the water surfacing and realized who it was, I started screaming for someone to help her.”

  “I wasn’t with her either, and after the group broke up, I never saw her again,” The Professor said. “I wasn’t looking around; I was busy talking to Miss Parsons. Then her young man showed up and I quietly withdrew. I was looking for Maryellen, but I’ll admit frankly that it was only so I could avoid her. She was being cuddly tonight, as Oswald said. I like her better when she’s feisty. When she was feisty,” he corrected himself softly. “In any event, I didn’t see her.”

  “What about you?” Big Billy asked Arielle. “You see her at all?”

  “No, I didn’t,” she said, looking at her cousin for confirmation. Darrien shook his head. “We had a lot to talk about,” she added. “We weren’t looking around.”

  Big Billy was apparently the strong, silent type. Instead of asking the question, he merely lifted his eyebrows and gazed until Arielle added, “We’ve been having some problems lately, and it’s been affecting our relationship. Other than Uncle Oswald, we’re all we have in the world, my cousin and I. We decided to talk things out and I think we managed to settle our differences tonight.”

  “Hear, hear,” Oswald said heavily. “I’ve been getting tired of you two squabbling.”

  “Well, we’re not going to do it anymore,” Arielle said, threading her arm through Darrien’s and giving it a squeeze.

  Darrien, still a bit frosty around the edges, allowed it, and then even went so far as to give her hand a little pat.

  “So nobody was with her when she fell in?” Big Billy said.

  We all looked around, shaking our heads and murmuring negatives.

  “Okay, well maybe Al and Pinkie will be able to get something,” he said vaguely, looking over to where other uniformed cops were interviewing people. He smoothly pocketed his little notebook. “I’ve got my squad car over there, and I can give three of you a ride back to your places. Mr. Utley’s all wet, so I’m taking him, and also his lady-friend. Who else?”

  “We’ll walk,” Teddy said immediately, putting his arm around Lily.

  “In fact,” she added, “I think we’re going to walk straight to a bar and get ourselves a drink.”

  “Good idea,” Teddy said. “Go ahead and take Arielle with you, officer. She looks all-in.”

  “I’ll get her home,” Darrien said. “And I’ll take my uncle and Helena, too.”

  Camille spoke up. “I’ll take Helena. She lives right on my block.” Looking around and counting heads, she said, “You too, Professor. I’ll drop you off first.”

  So we sorted ourselves out that way. I told Camille her things were all in the back of her SUV, and she thanked us, having forgotten all about them. It was only the mention of her SUV that had made me think of it.

  We straggled away from one another, each little group going a different way and seeming reluctant, as if something had been left unsaid.

  Chapter 20

  Back at our room, Bella came in with us and instead of settling on the bed, she paced around the bathroom while Michael took a hot shower.

  I’d been seething inside for a while by then, and once we were alone I let myself go.

  “Can you believe Camille bringing up the stupid teacup at a time like that?” I had to back up outside the bathroom door as he came out of the shower because the room was so tiny, but I stayed just beyond the doorway, talking to him.

  He considered what I’d said, rubbing himself with a bath towel. “Don’t be too hard on her. For us, I suppose it’s partly a game, all this getting up a show and going ghost-hunting. For her, it’s not just her living, it’s her identity. She doesn’t look at the situation and wonder; she knows – she believes, anyway. And you have to admit, it’s odd.”

  “What’s odd?”

  He shrugged, then began to get dressed. “Maryellen having the teacup, and then dying like that.”

  All kinds of arguments for and against flooded my mind, but somehow, the gravity of a death made them all seem trivial.

  “Maybe we should check on Ed,” he suggested. “He probably doesn’t even know what happened yet.”

  I let out a heavy sigh and said, “Sure. I’ll go check to make sure the teacup hasn’t eaten him yet. After that I’ll tell him about Maryellen, God help me, and then I’ll have to stand back, because he’s going to have the same reaction as Camille, only with a lot more vibrato.”

  He gave me a little smile and said he’d be in the kitchen seeing if he could get something hot to drink.

  I tapped at Ed’s door and said his name, and he called for me to come in and shut the door behind me.

  He’d been doing lab tests on the teacup, apparently, because he had it positioned on a little riser under a blacklight. As I came in, he turned the light off, removed his glasses and rubbed his eyes.

  “I’m disappointed in Dobbs,” he said before I could begin. He carefully threaded his glasses on again, as if he’d been concentrating on the teacup so hard he couldn’t find his own ears. “I still haven’t received his report.” Then he took a closer look at me and said, “What’s wrong?”

  “I have some bad news, Ed.”

  He quivered. “Maryellen?”

  When I didn’t answer immediately, he said, “She’s dead, isn’t she.”

  I nodded mutely. Then I went to the end of the bed and sat down.

  “Tell me,” he said tersely, and pulling myself together, I did.

  * * * * *

  When I got to the kitchen, Michael and Arielle were sitting at the cooking island having coffee, and Darrien was with them. Oswald wasn’t there; Darrien must have dropped him off first. Bella was nowhere to be seen. Ed had decided to stay in his room. He wasn’t finished with his “physical inquiry,” as he called it, and he was constantly monitoring his e-mail for Dobbs’s PDF on voodoo.

  “Everything okay in there?” Michael asked me.

  Darrien got up and pulled up a chair for me, and we sat cozily together around the little island. Arielle had moved the big cookie jar to a back counter and left little bowls of snacks that nobody was eating. Instead, they were all drinking coffee. The only lights on in the kitchen were the recessed ones inside the glass-fronted cabinets, so it was almost the same effect as candlelight. Somehow, it was soothing. I didn’t realize just how tense I had been until I felt my skin ease down around my neck and shoulders after I put my elbows down on the island’s cool granite top.

  “He’s fine,” I said. “He’s got the thing under a blacklight. I didn’t even ask what that was going to prove.”

  “What thing?” Arielle asked.

  “The thing,” I emphasized.

  “The teacup?” She looked as if she were going to stand up, then changed her mind. She sat blankly for a moment, breathing through her mouth.

  “Uncle Oswald’s teacup?” Darrien asked.

  Arielle nodded, wide-eyed. “It’s in my house.”

  “But not in your possession,” I said. Superstitious people tend to make up their own rules, and I hoped that would make a difference to her. “Ed’s got it.”

  “Is that . . . ?” she began, then she pulled herself together. “That’s what they’re going to do their show about, isn’t it? That teacup. I think the joke has gone far enough,” she said, suddenly on the brink of hysteria.

  Darrien put his arm across her back and held her. “Come on, cuz,” he said, “you’re not getting carried away with that nonsense too, are you?”

  “It’s just,” she began, but she had to stop and get control of her voice. “It’s kind of a striking coincidence, don’t you think? Everybody dies when they have that thing.”

  “Technically, she didn’t have it anymore,” Michael said. “She’d already given it to Ed. Besides, all the people who have died have been elderly. How old was Maryellen?”

  “About the same age as Uncle Oswald,” she said. “Eighty, eighty-two.”

  “Did she have any health problems?
”

  “Not that I know of, other than the aches and pains everybody gets at that age.”

  “Any balance problems?”

  Arielle stopped and thought about it. Then she looked at Darrien and said, “She did fall that one time, didn’t she? She hurt her knee. But that was ten or fifteen years ago.”

  Darrien nodded. “And in that ten or fifteen years, she didn’t get any younger.” He turned to us. “Maryellen wasn’t the kind to admit a weakness. If she’d been having dizzy spells, she wouldn’t have told anybody about it. Maybe not even her doctor, because I don’t think she would have been able to admit it to herself. But you don’t have to be old and dizzy to fall; people do it all the time. She fell into the Gulf and drowned. The last one that did that was in his 40s – half Maryellen’s age. It was just a terrible accident.”

  “Where were you two when it happened?” I asked.

  Darrien started to answer, but Arielle cut him off. “Back by the sculpture garden. I never get tired of looking at all the busts there, but for some reason, I don’t get over there very often. When I do, I always seem to find someone I haven’t noticed before, who did important things for Key West. They’re all so interesting. Darrien and I didn’t know anything had happened out on the wharf until we heard all the commotion. I heard a woman screaming. I don’t like to get involved in situations, but I thought I recognized Helena’s voice, so we came to see what was going on.”

  Darrien looked at her a moment as if he had something to add, but he decided not to.

  “So the two of you were together at the sculpture garden at the time, talking things over?” I asked.

  “That’s right,” Arielle said firmly. Darrien didn’t say anything.

  Porter suddenly scrambled up from where he’d been dozing in a corner and ran for the front door. In a moment we heard Teddy and Lily coming in.

  Darrien stood up. “I’d better go. Are you all right, Elle? If you want me to stay, I will.”

  “That’s all right,” she said warmly. “I’m not alone. You go back to your lovely house.” She turned to us. “He lives in a historic mansion on Eaton Street. Gorgeous! Boy, could I make a bed-and-breakfast out of that place.”