Cookin' the Books

by Amy Patricia Meade

  ‘Now that she’s gone, I’m sure you will too,’ Edwin chuckled.

  Augusta shot her husband a warning glance. Brenda, having served the refreshments and possibly sensing that she had caused a disagreement between her employers, quietly left the porch and returned indoors.

  ‘Well, I’m glad you’re feeling better and that the prognosis for your recovery is good,’ Tish stated. ‘With Binnie gone, the library will need your leadership now more than ever.’

  ‘Thank you, Ms Tarragon. That’s a very kind thing for you to say,’ Augusta said as she launched a fork into her cake. ‘Mmm … delicious. However, with Roberta Dutton and Darryl Dufour at the reins, the library is probably safer now than it’s been in years.’

  ‘Sounds as if you can rest easy now.’

  ‘Easier, yes,’ Augusta corrected. ‘We’ll need to replace what was lost, and then there’s the matter of selecting Binnie’s replacement, but we’ll get there. In the meantime, at least we won’t be losing any more books. My husband and I used to work for the county school system. I know how much the children of Hobson Glen and its neighboring communities rely upon the library to supplement their education. As an educator, I also know that allowing one person to have the power to decide what is fit to be read and what is not is just one step away from censorship.’

  ‘With your background in education, it’s no wonder this situation affected you the way it did.’ Tish took a sip of tea and then shook her head in disbelief. ‘It’s a shame the other board members didn’t back you. At least, from what I’ve heard, the mayor was about to step in on your behalf.’

  ‘“Was” being the operative word,’ Edwin interjected. And then, aside, ‘Please tell Celestine that she has, once again, outdone herself.’

  ‘I will,’ Tish promised, distractedly. ‘But, um what about the mayor? What happened?’

  ‘Two days ago, I received a phone call from Mayor Whitley explaining that he was preparing to hold a press conference the next day,’ Augusta detailed. ‘During that press conference, he was to announce that an independent investigation commissioned by his office had cleared Lavinia Broderick of any wrongdoing. She was to continue her role as director without any censure whatsoever.’

  ‘But how? I mean, even if the book purge was, indeed, an accident – and I can’t see how it could have been – Binnie Broderick should have been punished in some way, be it suspension, public service, or, at the very least, monetary reparations.’

  It was Augusta’s turn to shake her head. ‘Mayor Whitley didn’t even require Binnie to apologize.’

  ‘Wouldn’t have made a difference if he had,’ Edwin remarked. ‘The woman was completely unrepentant.’

  ‘All the more reason to wonder why the mayor would make such an abrupt about-face,’ Tish observed.

  ‘Well, whatever his reason, Mayor Whitley has a lot to answer for. He’s gonna hear it from me too. I was going to tell him last night at the fundraiser, but then all hell broke loose.’

  ‘Edwin,’ Augusta chided.

  ‘I don’t care, Augusta. You were already tightly wound, but Whitley’s announcement pushed you over the edge,’ Edwin grumbled. ‘As soon as you hung up the phone with the man, you went pale and started experiencing chest pains.’

  ‘Oh, you’re being dramatic. It wasn’t quite that instantaneous,’ Augusta dismissed.

  ‘Close enough to lay the blame at his doorstep,’ Edwin argued. ‘Although we both know who was responsible for the start of your issues.’

  ‘Did you ever tell Binnie about your health problems?’ Tish asked Augusta. ‘I know she wasn’t what you might describe as a kindly woman, but if she knew that her behavior had put your life in jeopardy—’

  ‘She didn’t care,’ Edwin interrupted. ‘We went to see her at the library the morning after our trip to the hospital. The morning of the fundraiser.’

  ‘Despite my warning against it,’ Augusta inserted.

  ‘Lavinia needed to be put on notice. She needed to understand what she had done to you and that it would not be tolerated. She needed to know that we wouldn’t rest until she had resigned.’

  ‘For all the good it did.’

  ‘Binnie wasn’t in the slightest bit sympathetic?’ Tish asked, although knowing what she knew about Cynthia Thompson, she realized she should hardly be surprised by such callousness.

  ‘On the contrary, she seemed pleased. Quite pleased,’ Augusta replied.

  ‘When we—’ Edwin started.

  ‘When you,’ Augusta amended.

  ‘When I told Lavinia that she should resign from her position as executive director, she actually had the audacity to suggest that it was Augusta who should resign. Can you believe that? The nerve of that woman.’

  ‘Resign? On what grounds?’ Tish challenged.

  ‘That’s what I said.’ Edwin sat back in his chair and took a big bite of cake, clearly satisfied that at least one of the women on the porch had finally agreed with him.

  ‘Did Binnie provide an answer?’

  ‘Yeah, some nonsense about Augusta being morally compromised.’

  ‘Compromised?’

  ‘God only knows what was going through Binnie’s head,’ Augusta said as she lowered her plate and teacup on to the bamboo coffee table with a clatter. ‘She was obviously trying to deflect from her own misdoings.’

  ‘Yes, of course she was, my dear.’ Edwin rose from his seat and, kneeling beside his wife, stroked the back of her neck. ‘There’s no reason to fret. No one in their right mind could ever accuse you of wrongdoing.’

  ‘Unless Binnie poisoned the board against me.’ Augusta’s voice grew shrill. ‘Binnie might be gone but my board is still here. What if she stirred up trouble with them?’

  ‘I’m sure she didn’t,’ Edwin assured. ‘And even if she had, who cares? I’ll always be here.’

  Tish, wanting to give the couple privacy, rose from her seat to excuse herself. Before Tish could utter a word, Augusta brought her hand to her head as if struck by a sudden pain.

  ‘Augusta! Are you all right?’ Edwin cried.

  ‘Yes, I–I–I just wish I shared your confidence, Edwin,’ Augusta murmured, ‘that everything is going to be all right.’

  ‘It is, honey. I promise. Now that Lavinia Broderick is gone, all our troubles are over.’

  As Edwin embraced his crying wife, Tish quietly took her leave, her mind awhirl with suspicion.

  ELEVEN

  Cursing her sartorial choices for the afternoon, Tish attempted to descend the concrete steps that led back to Main Street as quickly and quietly as possible – an endeavor thwarted by the confines of her long dress and the inflexibility of her strappy, hard-soled sandals. Exasperated by her slow pace, Tish hiked the hem of her dress above her knees, slipped out of her shoes and shoved them into her handbag, opting to make the final dash to her car barefoot.

  Tish needn’t have hurried. As she climbed behind the wheel of her car and placed her sandals back on to her feet, she saw that Main Street was a transportation nightmare. Straight ahead, in the middle of the road, the local police were tending to a traffic accident. The passenger door and front panel of the first car bore an expansive dent, while the front fender of the second car was hanging on by a thread. The drivers of each car looked to be unharmed and were providing their statements to a uniformed policeman, but the incident blocked road traffic in both directions.

  Without hesitation, Tish started the engine of the Matrix, shifted the transmission into reverse, pulled away from the curb, and made a U-turn. Retracing her route, she continued past the library and on toward the west end of town, where she made a right turn. From there, Tish drove for several hundred yards before reaching the dirt-lined lane that led to Celestine’s house. This time, instead of turning on to the dirt pathway, she continued along the asphalt-paved road that skirted along the northern edge of town and re-intersected Main Street diagonally across the street from Cookin’ the Books.

  Established centuries be
fore the advent of motorized vehicles, the bypass provided carriages and mail delivery riders with an express route around the congestion of Hobson Glen and its inevitable tangle of pedestrians, carts, and farm equipment. The bypass also ran through Hobson Glen’s oldest and most scenic neighborhoods – the neighborhood that, not surprisingly, Lavinia Broderick called home.

  As was the wont of summer afternoons in the south, the brilliant sunshine and blue skies that graced the early part of the day had been replaced by strong gusts of wind and an ominously dark cover of clouds. Forsaking the air conditioner in favor of fresh air, Tish rolled down the driver’s side window to take in the cooling breeze.

  Just as she perched her left elbow upon the window ledge, a flash of lightning, followed almost immediately by a violent crack of thunder, illuminated the sinister-looking sky and sent a tree of starlings scattering into the wind.

  The hairs on Tish’s arm stood on end, not so much because of the sudden atmospheric disturbance but because of the disturbing view through her front windshield. An elderly woman dressed in a cardigan sweater and a housecoat was sneaking out of the back door of a well-maintained and rather expansive colonial farmhouse, clutching some unidentifiable object close to her chest. As lightning flashed again, she glanced over each shoulder surreptitiously, looked up nervously at Tish’s approaching car, and hastened into the woods behind the house.

  Seeing no cars behind her, Tish put her foot on the brake and stopped in front of the farmhouse driveway. The sign above the gate read Wisteria Knolls.

  And Tish easily recognized the woman in question as Enid Kemper.

  ‘What? You saw Enid out wandering around in a storm again?’ Mary Jo exclaimed from her spot on the café’s front-porch swing. Heavy rain had begun to fall, but beneath the shelter of the porch roof she, Jules, and Tish remained cool and dry.

  ‘Not just wandering. Lurking. I could see her quite clearly. The lightning illuminated her face and body,’ Tish explained.

  ‘Sounds like a Boris Karloff film.’ Jules shuddered and leaned against one of the porch columns.

  ‘What do you mean she was lurking?’ Mary Jo asked.

  ‘I don’t know.’ Tish shrugged and sat beside her. ‘Just lurking. There were no cars in the driveway and, despite how dark it had gotten, there were no lights on inside Wisteria Knolls. And Enid looked suspicious. She was carrying something – God only knows what – and when she saw me, she took off into the woods.’

  ‘By all accounts, Enid Kemper’s always been a strange one,’ Jules stated.

  ‘Yeah, that’s what I’ve been told. But why would she be in Binnie’s house? There’s no reason for it.’

  ‘You’d better tell Sheriff Reade,’ Mary Jo directed.

  Tish nodded. ‘I’ll give him a call in a bit.’

  ‘Are you going to tell him all about your snooping?’ Jules smirked.

  ‘Snooping?’ Tish was indignant. ‘I’m not snooping. I’m just doing the public relations stuff you and Mary Jo recommended. I can’t help it if people talk to me.’

  ‘Of course you can’t.’ Jules pretended to examine a perfectly manicured hand. ‘Especially if they just happen to talk to you after you feed them cake. Delicious, yummy, boozy-iced cake.’

  ‘Delicious, yummy, boozy-iced cake which, given your phone call, I can only surmise I no longer have.’ Tish folded her arms across her chest.

  ‘That’s because you now have five hundred dollars. In cash.’

  ‘Five hundred—’ She leaned forward in her seat eagerly. ‘What? Wait, how?’

  ‘I took Celestine’s cakes and several carafes of coffee—’

  ‘And a large thermos of my Arnold Palmers,’ Mary Jo added.

  ‘Down to the police station where my news team was hanging out,’ Jules finished. ‘Turns out other reporters were there too. We sold every cake—’

  ‘And all of my Arnold Palmers.’

  ‘And all the coffee in less than three hours.’ Jules squealed with glee. ‘Everyone loved it!’

  ‘That’s … that’s amazing!’ Tish exclaimed.

  ‘I know! Well, except that we have to do the same thing tomorrow. I was thinking something savory this time. You know, shake things up a bit.’ Jules emphasized the concept with a shimmy of his shoulders.

  ‘So that’s why you wanted the madeleine recipe,’ Tish deduced. ‘How many do you need? And when do you need them by?’

  ‘Same as the cakes. Say, two hundred and fifty or so. By tomorrow morning.’

  Tish nearly choked on her reply. ‘Two hun— by tomorrow morning? I’m not even sure I have the ingredients, let alone the time.’

  ‘Oh yes, you do!’ Grinning like a demented Christmas elf, Jules opened the door of the café and led Tish inside. There, in front of the refrigerator case, stood a pallet bearing three fifty-pound bags of flour, two twenty-five-pound bags of cornmeal, three potted rosemary shrubs, three thirteen-pound bags each of baking soda and baking powder, one twenty-pound bag of sugar, and a five-pound bag of Kosher salt. ‘There’s a few dozen eggs and several pounds of butter in the fridge too. I didn’t know how much to buy of everything so I just estimated. I figured you’d eventually use it all anyway.’

  Tish took several moments to process the scene before her. ‘Well … good thing we had the five hundred dollars in sales.’

  ‘Five hundred dollars?’ Jules laughed. ‘Oh, no, honey, this came to way more than that.’

  Gulp. ‘Then how did you pay for it?’

  ‘Your company credit card. I found it lying in the till and didn’t want to bother you with another phone call, so I put it to good use.’

  Tish tried to reply, but all she could muster was a whimper.

  ‘Oh, don’t worry, honey. Another day like today and we’ll make that up in no time,’ Jules reassured.

  ‘That’s right. And it’s not like you’re on your own – we’re both sticking around to help you bake,’ Mary Jo announced with the same look of unadulterated glee that Jules bore.

  ‘Thanks. Really. But I’m not sure …’ Tish attempted to argue.

  ‘Sure that you’ll use everything before it expires?’ Mary Jo guessed.

  Tish nodded.

  ‘Don’t be silly! Of course you will. Especially with all the publicity I put together for you today.’

  ‘Publicity?’

  ‘Yes, I have a press release ready for you to review. If I get to the news editors by the end of the day, it will appear in tomorrow’s Sunday online edition.’ Mary Jo handed Tish a piece of printer paper bearing three short paragraphs and retained a copy for herself. ‘The first paragraph essentially states how sorry you feel about the death of Mrs Broderick, that you send condolences to her family and loved ones, and that, although you’re confident that no one affiliated with Cookin’ the Books had anything to do with the crime, you’re cooperating with the ongoing police investigation.’

  ‘Um, yeah, that part about being confident that no one affiliated with the café committed the crime?’ Tish pulled a face. ‘We may need to strike that.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Celestine’s visit didn’t quite go as planned.’

  ‘Are you back on the Baking Granny murder theory again?’ Jules laughed.

  ‘No, I’m not saying Celestine’s guilty, but I can’t rule her out.’ Tish went on to describe their conversation with special emphasis on Celestine’s ambiguous last statement.

  ‘Good Lord,’ Jules called out. ‘What if she is a murderer? I just sold her cakes to every news reporter, photo journalist, and camera person in central Virginia.’

  ‘How was I to know you were going to spend the afternoon pimping baked goods to your co-workers?’

  ‘Calm down, you two,’ Mary Jo urged. ‘I doubt Celestine poisoned three hundred cupcakes just to murder one woman, but you’re right, Tish; we’ll get rid of that bit.’ She took a black pen and struck the line from her own copy of the press release. ‘The second paragraph announces your official grand opening in thre
e weeks.’

  ‘Three weeks?’ Tish questioned.

  ‘Yes. I figured that gives you enough time to plan the menu and order supplies, and gives me a chance to promote the event while not losing any momentum from the murder.’

  ‘What do you mean, “momentum”?’

  ‘Well, people are morbid, aren’t they? I’m sure we’ll have lots of people stopping by just to see who catered Binnie Broderick’s last meal. We need to take advantage of that traffic.’

  Tish frowned. ‘I’d rather appeal to those who want to enjoy a high-quality lunch, snack, or afternoon tea.’

  ‘If you scan down in the press release, you’ll see that I’ve addressed that.’

  ‘Offering bookish breakfasts, literary-themed lunches, and killer cookies and cakes inspired by your favorite fictional characters …’ Tish read aloud before coming to an abrupt halt. ‘“Killer” cookies?’

  ‘Oh! Oh, yes, you’re right. Sorry.’ Mary Jo scratched out yet another line of copy. ‘How about crunchy? Chewy? Consumable?’

  ‘Criminally good?’ Jules happily offered.

  Mary Jo let the joke roll off her shoulders. ‘I’ll come up with something. So, under the announcement of the grand opening, I’ve added a statement about your Grandparents Day tea party at Misty Acres. The event is open to residents of the home and their family members and runs from noon until three o’clock. You’ll provide sandwiches, tea, soft drinks, and cakes.’

  ‘What a sweet idea,’ Tish said approvingly. ‘I love it!’

  ‘There’s more. I’ve arranged for some light entertainment during the afternoon. A musician friend of mine has offered to play some old standards on the piano, the variety store here in town has donated some prizes for a raffle, and our own Julian Jefferson Davis will be on hand for tarot readings.’

  ‘Everything sounds great, except for, um, well, perhaps, the tarot readings.’

  ‘What’s wrong with tarot readings?’

  ‘For starters, Jules has a difficult enough time predicting the weather.’

  ‘Helloooo,’ Jules sang out. ‘Irony! That’s what makes it so brilliant.’