Murder with Lemon Tea Cakes

by Karen Rose Smith

  “Oh, I do.”

  “All right. Find a seat, and Tessa will serve you.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Swanson.”

  As Foster seated himself at a table near the front window, Tessa said, “I’ll brew his tea if you want to finish putting the produce away. Do you think he’s a good candidate for help?”

  “I’ll know when I check his thumb drive and his references. He probably has teachers listed who can provide recommendations. They’ll tell me the truth.”

  At least, she certainly hoped they would.

  * * *

  On Friday night, Daisy picked up takeout for dinner on the way home. She’d called Sarah Jane’s and ordered turkey potpie and the shoofly pie Cade had mentioned. Sometimes she and her girls appreciated the expertise of local bakers.

  As she and Jazzi sat at the kitchen island with glasses of apple cider to accompany their meal, Jazzi talked about her classes and friends. Daisy was about to broach the idea of making the video Jonas recommended when her landline rang. Pushing away from the island, she stood and crossed to the counter. She picked up the cordless phone. Caller ID told her it was her Aunt Iris calling. This evening, after dinner with Daisy’s mom and dad, her aunt had intended to go back to her own place. Maybe she’d changed her mind.

  “Aunt Iris. Are you back home?”

  “Oh, Daisy. I don’t know what to do.” Her aunt’s voice shook, and she sounded panicked.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “My house was broken into. And not just broken into. It’s been ransacked. I didn’t know who to call. Can you come? I didn’t call the police or do anything yet. I just don’t know what to do.”

  “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Lock your doors.”

  “Apparently that didn’t do much good before,” Iris said dryly.

  As soon as Daisy ended the call, she said to Jazzi, “Aunt Iris’s place has been broken into. I hate to take you with me because I don’t know what I’ll be walking into. On the other hand, I don’t know if you should stay here alone either.”

  “Mom, I stay here alone a lot.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts. I’m fifteen. Our house has an alarm.”

  “I don’t know, Jazzi. I don’t like everything that’s been going on.”

  “Mom, somebody murdered Harvey Fitz. They didn’t want to hurt you.”

  “But they might want to hurt your Aunt Iris. What if she’d been at home?”

  “Go help her. I’ll set the alarm. I promise. I’ll keep my cell phone right beside me. Pepper and Marjoram will be here too. I’ll be fine.” Pepper suddenly appeared and brushed against Jazzi’s foot with a soft meow as if agreeing to be a guard cat.

  “You’ve got to start treating me like an adult,” her younger daughter insisted. “There are kids my age who are out on the street fending for themselves—”

  Daisy held up her hand. “All right. You’ve convinced me. I might bring Aunt Iris back here with me.”

  “That’s fine. Go help her.”

  So Daisy did. The thing was, however, she didn’t know what help she was going to be.

  Ten minutes later, she parked her PT Cruiser at the curb in front of Iris’s house. It was a charming little stone bungalow with about a thousand square feet of living space. It was located in an older section of town on a street with mature trees, other bungalows, ranch houses, and modest two-story homes. The single-car garage was located on the west side. A gable with a tall Palladian window was located on the east. Iris particularly gushed over the pretty oval window with stained glass that decorated the entrance, along with two white pillars and a gabled overhang.

  Iris opened the door as soon as Daisy rang the bell. Her face was red, which meant her blood pressure was up.

  “You just won’t believe this,” she said, “You won’t.”

  Daisy walked into the foyer onto its ceramic tile floor. A doorway on the left led to the garage. She walked straight in, crossing in front of another door that led to the basement.

  “Just look at this mess,” Iris said, waving to the master bedroom located on the right and the living room that was straight ahead.

  The place was a disaster. When Daisy peeked into the bedroom, with its pretty lilac bedspread and curtains, she saw the dresser drawers all pulled out and dumped. The mattress had been slid to one side, and the bedroom chair cushion had been sliced open.

  In the living room, the disarray was worse. Her aunt’s sofa cushions in a pretty green and yellow leaf pattern had been sliced open. Everything on the shelf under the coffee table had been swiped to the floor, and one of Iris’s crystal vases had been broken. Books had been tossed off the bookshelf, and photo frames lay flat and crooked on the bookshelves. Fortunately, the lamps hadn’t been touched, and none were broken. But peering into the small dining room, Daisy could see the doors to the hutch standing open and shards of broken cups inside. The kitchen was small, only about eight by twelve. Even there, all the cupboard doors hung open. Food and glassware had been tossed out. The same with the pantry closet beside the refrigerator. The second bedroom near the kitchen had seen the same angry ransacking.

  “Someone even looked through my medicine cabinet,” Iris exclaimed with outrage. “All my medication bottles are on the floor.”

  “Don’t touch anything. I’m going to call Jonas and then Detective Rappaport.”

  “You’re going to call Jonas?”

  “He told me to call him if I needed him, and I can certainly use his cop’s eye.”

  Iris looked at all of it, and tears came to her eyes. She began to cry.

  Daisy put her arms around her and gave her a huge hug. “It’s going to be okay. I’ll help you clear all this up. We’ll put everything back the way it was.”

  “We can’t, Daisy. Some of those cups and saucers were irreplaceable. Oh, sure, I can get a new sofa, but am I ever going to be able to forget what this looked like?”

  Daisy patted her aunt’s back. “Let me call Jonas and the detective, and we’ll go from there.

  Iris had collapsed into one of the dining room chairs when Jonas arrived barely ten minutes after Daisy’s call. He gave a low whistle as he came inside. “Someone was looking for something, and they got really angry when they couldn’t find it.”

  “But I don’t have anything,” Iris said.

  The words were barely out of her mouth when Detective Rappaport was at the door. They’d left it open, and he walked right in.

  “You’re all contaminating this crime scene.”

  “He’s right,” Jonas said. “If he wants to call in the forensics team, our hair, fibers, and DNA could be here too.”

  “We didn’t touch anything,” Daisy told the detective, almost defensively. And my fingerprints and DNA are everywhere because I come here often.” She really didn’t like his attitude.

  “Great to know,” the detective said. “But you’d better step outside.

  “Shouldn’t my aunt look around and see if anything’s missing?”

  “I imagine you’ve already done that since you were here before me. Or—” He gave his pause emphasis with arched fuzzy brows.

  “Or?” Jonas asked.

  “Or . . . Miss Albright could have done this herself.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  At Detective Rappaport’s preposterous accusation, Daisy felt her blood boil. She was going to make this detective see reason, no matter what she had to do.

  Despite contaminating the crime scene, she stepped into the kitchen and picked up a chunk of porcelain that had once been her aunt’s favorite teapot.

  “Look at this, Detective,” she ordered, waving it in front of his nose. “This is one of my aunt’s favorite teapots, handed down to her by her mother. Do you really think she would do this?”

  He gave a shrug that was supposed to be nonchalant. “Persons of interest do unbelievable things to escape a murder charge.”

  Jonas placed a hand on Daisy’s shoulder. She supposed he did it to kee
p her from erupting. In a gentle voice, he advised, “Why don’t you and your aunt step outside. Let me talk to the detective.”

  Detective Rappaport was looking around now. Before Daisy took a broom from the broom closet and swatted him with it, she decided Jonas’s suggestion was best.

  She tugged on her aunt’s elbow. “Come on. Let’s wait on the porch.”

  What she wanted to do was eavesdrop. Instead, she and Iris exited the house and stood on the porch. Not long after, a patrol car pulled into the driveway. Two officers climbed from the vehicle, nodded to Daisy and Iris, and went inside.

  Jonas came out. “I tried to talk sense into him,” he said.

  “You mean telling him that Iris isn’t guilty?”

  Jonas frowned. “No. That would just make him even more determined to prove she is. I suggested other possibilities. They have to decide where the point of entry was, if the lock was jimmied, or if possibly someone could have crawled in a basement window, maybe in the back.”

  The detective suddenly appeared on the porch. Hearing what Jonas said, he addressed the women. “I called in our evidence tech.” He focused on Iris. “You, of course, can’t stay here tonight.”

  “I wouldn’t want to,” she said.

  “Did you have anything of Harvey Fitz’s in your bungalow?” he asked brusquely.

  “No, I didn’t.”

  “Was Mr. Fitz ever inside your bungalow?”

  Her aunt’s face reddened. “A few times.”

  “He didn’t leave any belongings here?”

  “No, of course not. We were dating, not sleeping together.”

  Daisy had never seen her aunt so outraged, and she felt sorry for her.

  “Miss Albright, you must realize I need to ask you these questions. If Mr. Fitz didn’t leave any of his belongings here, if you weren’t keeping anything for him, then how would anyone get the idea that you had something that they might want?”

  “If I knew that, Detective, we all wouldn’t be standing here like this,” her aunt shot back.

  Jonas, in a voice filled with reason, interjected, “Iris, I know you and Harvey were just dating. But outside perceptions of that might be different. Someone could think your relationship was different than it was, without old-fashioned values. If Harvey told anyone he intended to marry you, an outsider could think he was sleeping here or dividing his time between your house and his condo. Isn’t that possible?”

  Iris looked deflated when she realized that was entirely possible. She said, “I suppose you’re right.”

  Detective Rappaport gave Jonas an odd look as if he respected his skills but didn’t appreciate having his interview hijacked. He said to them, “Mrs. Swanson, Miss Albright, I have your fingerprints in the AFIS database. As I said, I’ll send out my tech and see what we can find. I’ll give you a call when they’re finished.”

  Daisy felt dismissed, and she hated feeling dismissed. Jonas must have seen that in her expression because he offered, “Why don’t I go back to your place with you? We can talk about this, maybe come up with ideas and information that could help the detective. What do you think?”

  Though Daisy was feeling a little “handled” by Jonas, she knew she probably needed handling right now or she’d say something she shouldn’t or encourage Iris to say something she shouldn’t. They were both tired and upset and didn’t like Detective Rappaport.

  She gave Jonas an “I know what you’re doing” look, but she said, “That’s a good idea. Aunt Iris, you can stay with me tonight. Let’s go back to the house and talk about all this. Jonas might be able to give us perspective that we can’t gain on our own.”

  And that’s how the three of them ended up on the stoop of Daisy’s house. She’d called Jazzi to tell her they were coming.

  Jazzi opened the door to them, and after they’d stepped inside, she gave her Aunt Iris a hug. “I’m so sorry all this is happening to you.”

  “I am too, sweetie,” Iris said. “I just wish I knew why.”

  “We’re going to talk about it and try to figure it out,” Jonas told Jazzi.

  Pepper came to the top of the steps and meowed at them all.

  “I promised her I’d give her and Marjoram treats,” Jazzi said. “I’d better go do that.”

  Daisy was just as glad to see Jazzi climb the stairs to her bedroom. She wanted her daughter to be far away from anything connected with this murder.

  As soon as Jazzi was at the top of the stairs and picked up Pepper, Iris asked, “Any progress finding her birth parents?”

  “Not yet. But Jonas is helping.”

  Jonas was looking around the living room and peered into the kitchen. “This house is really neat. It was an old barn?”

  Daisy nodded. “I saw it and the possibilities.”

  Iris said, “I need tea while we talk. I’ll make it.” When Daisy started after her, she said, “No, stay and talk to Jonas. I can certainly brew tea on my own, and I know where you keep yours.”

  As she went into the kitchen, Jonas continued to study the walls, the chandelier, the way Daisy had decorated the space.

  She motioned to the sofa, and they both went there to sit.

  “Did you furnish and decorate this yourself?” he asked.

  “I did, with Jazzi and Vi’s help. We wanted it to be our taste. Ryan’s insurance money enabled me to come back here and make a brand-new start. I’m so grateful for that.”

  After a moment’s hesitation, as if he was debating with himself, he asked, “Do you have good memories from your marriage?”

  “I do,” she answered, leaning back into the sofa, becoming more comfortable. “No marriage is perfect. Ryan and I had bumps, like every married couple does. But somehow we always managed to work through them. Sometimes I wondered if we did it for the girls’ sake more than we did it for ours. We didn’t want them living with tension. We wanted them to have a solid understanding of what a relationship should be.”

  Jonas got a faraway look in his eyes, and Daisy could see he was remembering something too. She wondered what or who. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

  “I don’t mind, but I reserve the right to give you a yes or no answer.”

  “You sound more like a lawyer than a former cop,” she said dryly.

  “Some of the same qualities are necessary for both.”

  “Can you tell me why you left the police force?”

  With his silence, Jonas communicated that this wasn’t a question he answered lightly or often. Finally, he revealed, “My partner and I received a notice that a witness in a murder investigation had been found. We were sent to question him. Long story short, the witness shot and killed my partner and injured me.”

  Daisy couldn’t help but reach out and touch his arm. “I’m so sorry.”

  He didn’t shrug or brush off her condolences, like many men might have. He just looked her straight in the eye, and she could see the pain his history had caused him. She sensed there was so much more to his story than what he’d just told her. But his story was his to tell. If in time they became closer friends, maybe he’d reveal more.

  The teakettle whistled. That whistle was like a signal, a signal to think about what was happening between her and Jonas. They were sitting close on that sofa, her leg against his. They were looking at each other as if . . . as if they had more on their minds than past history.

  Without warning, Jonas reached up and touched Daisy’s face. He simply said, “Memories are hard to handle sometimes, aren’t they?”

  She found her mouth was dry, and she couldn’t speak. She nodded. They seemed to sit there suspended in time as his fingers brushed her cheek, as she breathed in the scent of his soap, noticed the beard stubble on his jaw, wondered how soft his hair was. She suddenly imagined herself running her fingers through it.

  No! Those feelings didn’t belong in this conversation. They didn’t go with the memories of Ryan and the life they’d shared together. Those fee
lings didn’t go with raising two teenage girls without their father, running her tea garden, and organizing her life.

  Iris called from the kitchen, “Oatmeal cookies with the tea or lemon tea cakes?”

  “Up to you,” Daisy called back, knowing what her aunt would pick. Iris would choose lemon tea cakes because those had been Harvey’s favorite.

  Daisy shifted a bit so she and Jonas weren’t so close as Iris set the tea tray on the coffee table. She’d used one of Daisy’s favorite enamel teapots with pretty blue and silver flowered cups and saucers. She’d arranged the cookies on a plate to match.

  Jonas cleared his throat and studied the tray. “You ladies know how to serve a snack.”

  “I learned from my mom and Aunt Iris,” Daisy said.

  “Those lemon tea cakes are fabulous. I can see why they were Harvey’s favorite,” Jonas remarked, as if it were the most natural thing in the world to do.

  Iris ducked her head for a moment. “He surely did like them.”

  “Have you thought more about what the intruder might have wanted at your bungalow?”

  “I’ve thought and thought and thought, and I just can’t imagine what it would have been.”

  “From the places he or she looked and the way he or she looked, I’d say whoever it was was searching for something small—a key, maybe. A gem. A piece of jewelry. It had to be small enough to hide in a cushion or a drawer,” Jonas noted.

  Daisy hadn’t thought about that. She’d just seen all the damage.

  “Like an engagement ring?” she asked.

  “Possibly.”

  He studied Iris. “Was Harvey ever in your bungalow alone so that he could have hidden something without you knowing it?”

  Iris’s face showed pure concentration. She finally responded, “He was certainly in a room alone, like if I went to the kitchen to make tea or if I went into the bedroom to change.” Her face reddened. “I don’t mean anything intimate by that, I just mean after work I liked to get into something more comfortable than the clothes I’d worn all day to serve.”

  Daisy gave her a gentle smile. “We understand, Aunt Iris. Really we do.”

  “I don’t think that detective believed me,” Iris said dejectedly.