The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery

by Nancy Pickard

  After Donna left Genia tried to reach Stanley’s daughter to offer her sympathy and to warn Nikki about the continued presence of Ed Hennessey on her father’s property.

  Randy Dixon answered on the first ring.

  Stanley’s daughter and her husband lived in Wickford, only about fifteen miles away, just far enough to separate Nikki’s husband from his father-in-law. South County, Rhode Island, was a collection of several towns, closely linked, but individual in their own ways, too.

  “Sorry, Mrs. Potter. Nikki just left for her dad’s house to start making funeral arrangements. I’ll be headed that way myself soon. We’re going to stay there for a while, maybe even go ahead and sell this place, and move in there.”

  His tone, though friendly enough, was flat and matter-of-fact. Both Randy and Nikki were in their early thirties, married six years, with no offspring so far. Randy was a carpenter by trade, dependent on local builders for work, which meant he labored hard for three seasons, but not much at all over Rhode Island’s long winters. As for Nikki, she had never held a “real job,” according to her father, and now she wouldn’t ever have to. The trust fund her mother had set up for her already supported her and her husband. Now with the big inheritance from her father, they were set for life. Genia thought it spoke well of Randy Dixon that he had continued to take carpentry jobs even when he didn’t have to, after his mother-in-law died. Stanley had not agreed with her: “He does it to impress me,” the old man had scoffed. “He’s afraid if he acts like the lazy bum he really is, I’ll fix my will so he can’t get to any of the money I’m leaving Nikki.”

  “Would you do that, Stanley?” Genia had asked him.

  “You bet I would. I could write it so she doesn’t get a dime as long as she’s still married to him.”

  “You wouldn’t really do that,” she had insisted.

  “I might. Damn good-for-nothing.”

  It wouldn’t have changed anything, in Genia’s opinion, unless Nikki was a good deal greedier than she seemed. Stanley could have cut her off entirely, and she would still have had the trust fund from Lillian, and when David Graham died, Nikki would inherit the remainder of her mom’s estate, too. For now, David had only the use of the income for the rest of his life; the principal would always belong to Nikki.

  Now Genia asked the object of Stanley’s scorn: “Do you think the police will release her father’s body this soon, Randy?”

  “Not for a while, I guess, but Nikki doesn’t want to wait for that, she wants to hold a memorial service this week. She says she’d rather have just the family for the cremation, anyway.”

  “I can understand why she might feel that way.” Genia well knew that grief didn’t wait for clearance from the police. “I’m sure that people here in Devon will be needing to express their admiration for her father in some kind of official way. I think a memorial service sounds just right, Randy.”

  “Some of it might not be admiration,” he said in a wry tone.

  “Well, nobody’s a saint,” she replied evenly.

  “My father-in-law less than most,” he said.

  She could hardly blame the young man for sounding so bitter, given how Stanley had treated him. As far as Genia knew, Randy had never been anything but polite to his father-in-law, but mere courtesy hadn’t satisfied Stanley. The problem with Randy Dixon was simply that he wasn’t the son-in-law Stanley Parker wanted for his daughter. “Fathers don’t get to pick their daughters’ husbands anymore, Stanley,” Genia had once pointed out to him. To which his tart reply had been, “It’s a damned shame we don’t.”

  Before getting off the phone she told his son-in-law, “I need to tell you Stanley was planning to fire his handyman yesterday, Randy. But I went to the Castle this morning, and Hennessey was still there, and he was trying to pretend that he hadn’t been fired. He had a shotgun, and he made me leave the property. He acted as if he owned the place. You may have to ask the police to escort Mr. Hennessey off the grounds.”

  “He forced you to leave at gunpoint?”

  Randy Dixon sounded astonished, appalled.

  “No, no, he was just carrying the thing around with him.”

  “Oh, I get it.” His tone flattened out again. “I’ll let Nikki handle this, but thanks, Mrs. Potter.” He didn’t sound particularly concerned; she hoped he would remember to inform his wife.

  “The police were just here at my house, Randy, to ask my niece and me if we had noticed anything suspicious last night,” she told him, and then she emphasized, “I told them the only suspicious behavior I’ve seen was the way Ed Hennessey behaved toward me this morning.”

  “Like I say, I’ll pass that along to Nikki.”

  She had to be satisfied with that, though in truth, she wasn’t.

  Her phone conversation with Randy Dixon was yet another reminder that not everybody shared her high opinion of Stanley Parker. Even if she had never had the chance to get to know him well, she still would have loved him for the sake of his kindnesses to her late husband when Lew was a boy, such as hiring him for summer work and lending him money for college. But as Donna and now Randy had made clear, not everyone in Rhode Island felt as positive about the old man; she needed to remember not to idealize her friend or to assume that other people felt as she did about him.

  The information Randy had passed along told Genia exactly what she might do to help the young couple. If Nikki and Randy were staying at the Castle, they would need food, and they wouldn’t have the time or energy to shop or cook.

  The thought of being able to help them eased her feeling of helplessness in the face of tragedy. People would be paying condolence calls as soon as word got out that Stanley’s daughter was in Devon. A table needed to be set, drinks put out, and Nikki didn’t have any mom, or aunts, or cousins to help her do that. She would need coffee, desserts, bread and cheese, pies and cakes, various things for her guests to nibble on. Not to mention actual meals for Randy and Nikki and for any out of towners who might come to stay with them. Of course, the women of the town would leap in to assist; it wasn’t as if Genia, a newcomer, should feel a compulsion to take charge. Nevertheless, there were many things she could do to help.

  She hurried off to shower and change clothes, thinking, with bittersweet pleasure, What good things would you like me to fix for your friends and relatives to eat, Stanley?

  Before Genia could step into the shower, the phone rang.

  “Mrs. Potter?” asked a male voice on the other end. “Ma’am, I’m Ted Massey, one of the police officers who was just out to see you.”

  “Oh, yes, Officer Massey, what can I do for you?”

  “Well, you can tell me again what time—to the best of your knowledge—each of your guests arrived at your house last night. I’m sorry to have to ask you to go through this again, but we need to double-check these times.”

  Genia’s heart began a rapid pounding as she took in the implications of the question, even as she began to try to answer it. “All right. Well, I think I can tell you almost exactly, because I had been watching the clock—because of Stanley.” She repeated for him—within a few minutes of possible error, she believed—when and in what order David Graham, Harrison and Lindsay Wright, Celeste Hutchinson, and Larry Averill had come knocking at her door.

  “Weren’t there other people at your house last night, too?”

  Was it her imagination, or did the way he said that make it sound as if he thought she had “forgotten” some names on purpose?

  “Oh, well, my niece, Donna Eden, I forget to think of her as a guest. And …” Reluctantly, Genia repeated how her grandniece and -nephew had also been on the premises, helping her out with the dinner party. Patiently, the police officer led her again through her memories of the number of times, and the length of those times, that the teenagers had come and gone from the house. And then he made her guess again at the time at which their father had flung open the French doors so dramatically.

  “I suppose you have to ask these
questions,” she said tentatively, trying to keep resentment and worry out of her voice.

  “I’m afraid I do, Mrs. Potter, this being a murder and all.”

  “Do you know exactly what time Stanley … was killed?”

  “We’re working on that now, ma’am. It might help if you could tell me the last time you saw or talked to Mr. Parker.”

  This was a new question, and she tried to answer it accurately.

  “About two hours before the party,” she informed him, and she also told him about calling the Castle and getting the answering machine. “Is there anything else I can tell you?”

  “Not at this time,” he said formally.

  He was the first to hang up. Genia felt terribly unhappy as she clicked the receiver down upon its base again. This house and Parker’s Castle lay on a cul-de-sac, with only one way in and the same way out. There were only five other houses in the neighborhood, and at least two of them were currently empty, their owners off on summer vacations. Because of the timing and the location, it seemed possible to Genia—as surely it must also look to the Devon police—that whoever killed Stanley might be somebody who came into the cul-de-sac around the time of her dinner party.

  That put her guests under a deep shadow of suspicion.

  The memory of a sharp pine needle came unbidden to her. She hadn’t noticed it until after she had greeted all of them. All of them had hugged her, or handed her objects which she had clasped to her breast. From which one of them had she picked up that pine needle, and had it come from the woods where Stanley died?

  She was horror-stricken to think that she might have cordially greeted his killer at her front door almost immediately after the terrible deed. She might have embraced that person, smiled at him or her, welcomed him, fed her, entertained him.

  “No!” For the time being she would cling to the hope that no killer had dined at her table. She would pay attention to evidence of her guests’ innocence, as well as of their guilt. “It could have come from anywhere, it could have blown in with the rain.” But pine needles didn’t ordinarily just blow in with the rain and attach themselves to one’s white silk blouse.

  Genia sank down into a nearby chair, and hung her head.

  “Oh, Stanley,” she whispered. “Who hated you so much?”

  8

  FOOD FOR THOUGHT

  Jason fumbled with the lock on the greenhouse door. The key slipped between his fingers as if he’d greased his hands. It was only perspiration, but even when the door swung open, he could hardly get a good grip on the knob.

  He was scared and in a hurry.

  He had to get in now, as his dad had instructed him, before the cops came here, before his mom knew he was gone.

  It was either now, or it might be never.

  Once he was in, brilliant color greeted him: the rich purple and lavender of orchids, the sharp reds and blues of cardinal flowers, the sunny yellows and orange of marigolds, and all other manner of bloom and hue. Row after row of beauty. God, he loved this place.

  Would he ever get to come back here again?

  He was so scared he felt as if he were moving in slow motion. Once, the first time he had ever ridden a really high roller coaster, he’d felt like this when he was standing in line waiting his turn to get on. It was as if he got lethargic all of a sudden, the way those science shows said that a predator’s prey did when it got grabbed. Feeling more like a sleepwalker instead of a focused man with a mission, Jason began to move between the neatly planted tables of plants, herbs, vegetables. Home. That’s what this place felt like, more than his real home did, even more than the island did. It was how Mr. Parker had encouraged him to feel about this place.

  Mr. Parker …

  No, he commanded himself, don’t start thinking. Just do what you came to do, Eden. Do it, and get out, like Dad said. But he couldn’t stand it: There was morning watering to do, and nobody to do it if he didn’t. Ed Hennessey would never think of it or care enough to do the job. Besides the daily watering, there were dead leaves to pick off, and stuff that needed thinning and harvesting, like the tomatoes in the outside garden where the sun shone all day long on good days. He knew his mom and his Aunt Genia would like it if he took them some fresh tomatoes.

  Jason turned on a hose in the center of the room and picked up a watering wand, staring at it for an instant as if it were something strange that he’d never seen before. Then he walked up and down the raised rows, spraying bedded plants with one hand and with the other plucking off dead leaves and spindly stems.

  “Why don’t you get one of those automatic watering gizmos?”

  He’d asked the old man that question, early on, and gotten the sharp, offended retort he’d deserved.

  “The world’s altogether too automatic, already! Automatic this, automatic that,” the old man had fumed, “and nobody ever has to do things personally the way they ought to be done. You’ll never get to know your plants if you let some machine take care of them for you. These people who let machines milk their cows! Or cram chickens all together in a chicken concentration camp! No wonder things don’t look or taste as good as they used to. We don’t do it that way here. You water each plant, you take a close look, you look for bugs, you look for wilt, you look to see if it’s a happy damn plant, you get acquainted with every one of them. Then maybe you’ll be a gardener, but not before.”

  Over time, doing it that way, Jason had come to know the plants in the spacious greenhouse and the garden as individuals with distinct needs, appearances, and even personalities. And he reacted to them like that. Not that he would ever in a million years admit this, but he liked to spend time with the pansies, for instance, who were sophisticated and elegant, and he didn’t like the petunias, who were brassy and thought entirely too much of themselves. He enjoyed the company of the sugar snap peas—and liked to eat them raw with ranch dip—but didn’t much care for any of the beans, who seemed like a lot of trouble for not much taste, unless you added a lot of stuff for flavor. Beets were interesting, but they smelled like dirt, and who could eat that? Garlic was cool as hell; it amazed him, the way it looked like a big fat papery flower with bulbs for petals. If it were his nursery, he knew exactly what he’d grow, which flowers, which fruits and vegetables.

  Mist soon hung in the trapped space, until he felt he was in a fog that covered him and made him invisible. It was only him and the plants now, just the way he liked it, although it had been nice when Mr. Parker worked with him. Droplets of water fell onto his hair, his face, his clothes. It felt good, proof that he was alive and not dead the way he felt inside.

  Mr. Parker. Murdered.

  His dad had told him that, warned him in a phone call that had shot him out of bed, into his clothes, and then into his car to come here.

  “I know what you’ve been doing out there, Jason,” his dad had said, making his heart jump into his throat. “I tried to get in there this morning and destroy the evidence of it, but I couldn’t get in. You’ve got to do it. Get out there now. I ran into a cop I know when I went to breakfast at the diner this morning, and he told me they wouldn’t be searching Stanley’s place until late this morning, so you’ve got a little time. Don’t get caught, son. Be careful. If somebody shows up and asks you what you’re doing there, tell them you’re just there to water the plants. And if that doesn’t work, blame me. You got that? You tell them I sent you out there to do your job.”

  And then his dad had said, “How could you be so—”

  Stupid. That was the word that had hung in the air like the mist that now hung in the greenhouse. His dad hadn’t said it, wasn’t the kind of dad who ever would say something like that, but he’d come close this time. “How could you be so stupid, Jason?”

  He had wanted to tell his dad the truth, but he couldn’t.

  So he’d just muttered “Okay,” and hurried to the greenhouse.

  Mr. Parker, murdered …

  Who would do such a thing?

  He couldn’t stop hims
elf from thinking about it.

  The old man had scared the bejesus out of him one day right after his hearing when he got put on diversion. Parker had come out of nowhere, charging into the local pizza joint known as “RIPPP’s.” Its real name, “Rhode Island and Providence Plantation Pizzeria,” was based on the official name of the state. The kids all boasted that Rhode Island pizza, a thick-crusted kind without cheese, was unlike any other pizza on earth. Everybody knew that the secret to its appeal was its tangy, oily sauce. One of the kids had said that noon, “Let’s go get Ripped,” and so Jason was hanging out there with his sister and some of their friends, sharing a large pie and dribbling vinegar over fries, another favorite culinary habit of their state.

  “Are you Jason Eden?” the old man had growled.

  Janie and their friends had stared at the old man, then at Jason, and then they’d all edged away, except for his sister, who never backed down when he needed her for anything. But his friends had cringed back until it was just him, and Janie, and the old man at the table.

  Parker had looked a little crazy, with thin hair that shot out in all directions like he was some kind of Einstein, and eyebrows that looked like caterpillars stuck on his forehead. He may not have known for sure who Jason was, but Jason knew who he was. Everybody did. Old Man Parker. From the Castle. He practically ran Devon, even though he was older than God. Jason’s own dad lived on some of Parker’s land, one of the islands. Jason hadn’t even been able to imagine owning your own island, but this old guy did, and more than one of them, too.

  For a moment, they’d sized each other up.

  Jason had felt the silence in the restaurant and he’d known what everybody else was thinking: Eden must be in trouble again. What did he do this time? Steal something from Old Man Parker? Is it drugs? Pot again? Maybe coke. Who knows what either of those twins will do?