Rhiannon Galway had tried to put her name forth as a candidate, Laverne told Rose, but Zunia had made sure that Rhiannon backed away. No one was quite sure what Zunia held over Rhiannon’s head, other than vague rumors made worse by her quitting the race, but whatever it was did the trick. Zunia ran unopposed with her fawning husband’s obvious approval. According to Thelma’s report from her encounter with him, Pettigrew claimed to be crushed by his wife’s murder. Something about the relationships among that group at the conference bothered Rose. She thought back to Friday, closing her eyes and picturing the conference room and the various interactions she had witnessed.
They had been seated in rows, but from her angle she could see Orlando as he watched his wife. Ah, yes, there it was, just a moment, but a pivotal one. That was the reason she didn’t feel convinced of Pettigrew’s grief! There was one brief flash, a look of intense distaste and dislike as Zunia critiqued the first two presenting their teapots. The scales had dropped from Orlando Pettigrew’s eyes, and what he saw when he looked at his wife was anyone’s guess, but it didn’t look like love to Rose. She opened her eyes, wondering what to do with her thoughts. How could you tell the police that you just didn’t think the victim’s husband was really sad to see her gone? Maybe Laverne’s nephew would be able to help.
Bertie Handler was just getting up from his meeting with Nora Sommer, so it didn’t look like she’d be able to corner him alone, as she had intended. He retreated back into the inn through the glass door that opened onto the lobby. Rose, finished with her tea and toast, left money for the bill plus a handsome tip and approached Nora.
“How are you, dear?” she asked, sitting down opposite her in the seat Bertie had vacated.
“Pardon?” she said, looking up. “Oh, hello, Rose. I’m not bad. How are you this morning?”
“I’m fine. Just a little tired after yesterday.”
Nora sighed. “I know. How dreadful! It’s not good publicity for the ITCS. Walter is most concerned.”
Funny that Zunia’s death struck Nora first as a blow to the ITCS, but that was her main focus, Rose supposed. She noticed the schedule of events that Nora had marked up with a black pen. “Are we going ahead with the convention, then? We’ve only got today.”
“We’re going ahead and we’ll cram as much as we can into one day,” Nora said, not looking up from her work. “It’s the highlight of the year for so many! We can’t let all these folks down. Since many of us are staying until tomorrow anyway, I plan to canvass the other members and see if we can finish it up with an evening seminar, if folks don’t mind cramming three presentations into one day. I’ve already talked to the speakers, and they’re all on board.”
“And we’ll have to figure out what to do about the divisional presidency.” Rose watched the other woman, wondering how to get onto the subject she really wanted to talk about.
“Walter will have to figure out what to do about that,” Nora corrected, looking up.
“I suppose,” Rose said.
“There’s no ‘suppose’ about it. There would not normally be an election this year, as the president is elected for two years. Since this is midterm, though, Walter has the right to appoint someone to serve out the term.”
For the first time Rose wondered if the real smarts in running the ITCS was the woman sitting opposite her. Was Walter nothing more than a figurehead? But why wouldn’t Nora take over the society herself? Even a woman as traditional as she would certainly not think running a teapot collectors society was unbecoming of her womanhood. “I heard something about the convention not being held here in Butterhill after this year. Bertie seemed quite concerned.”
“I just told him not to worry about it. We’ll be back here next year as always. That was some wild speculation on Zunia’s part.”
“But I thought she and Bertie were special friends?” Laverne had said that the previous year Zunia and the inn owner were “thick as thieves.”
Nora’s carefully darkened eyebrows lifted. “A woman like Zunia . . . You have to know her affections were fickle in the extreme.”
“She did seem mercurial, at the very least.” Rose paused, but then plunged ahead with what she wanted to say. “You do know I didn’t do it, Nora . . . murder poor Zunia, I mean. I could never . . .” She shook her head. Maybe it was ridiculous to think anyone would suspect an eighty-something-year-old woman, but the fact that it was her teapot had rattled her.
“My dear, of course I know you didn’t do it!” Nora said, reaching across and patting Rose’s hand, her diamond rings, adorning most fingers, glittering in the pendant light over the booth. “Set your mind to rest on that point.” Her tone was warm and her smile genuine.
“Thank you, Nora. I appreciate that. Maybe it seems silly, but I couldn’t bear it if anyone thought I did it.”
“No one who knows you would think you would do something so awful, even to someone as poisonous as Zunia.” Her expression was placid, but a snapping anger flared in her dark eyes.
Rose nodded, but her mind was on that look, even as Nora went back to her schedule. That was another thing she had seen at the convention: When Walter reached out to calm Zunia down, Nora had a look of outrage on her face. It was just momentary but unmistakable. And she remembered something one of the women had said, when chafed about running for division president, that she wouldn’t want to work with “that letch,” Walter.
There was one circumstance that would fit with Nora’s fury and Orlando’s disillusionment. Walter Sommer could have been having an affair with Zunia Pettigrew, but even if that was so, it didn’t mean Nora had murdered Zunia. Why would she? Zunia was married and Walter appeared to be known for his flings. Or rumored flings, Rose corrected herself, not willing to make that assumption. That indicated a wandering interest that would never light on one woman for long. “I’m so sorry, Nora,” she said simply, watching her.
“Sorry?” The woman stared across the table, arrested in the middle of making notes in the margin of the schedule.
Rose paused, trying to find the right words. “I’m so sorry for what you’ve had to put up with. I know it hasn’t always been easy.”
“What do you mean?”
“There have been rumors. Aren’t there always?”
“Those women! What gossips,” she said. “It was that Faye Alice Benson, wasn’t it? She’s got a big mouth.”
Rose’s breath caught in her throat; she didn’t want to get anyone in trouble. “Actually, no, it wasn’t her,” she said. Or not just her, she thought, trying to justify the fib. “You must have known Zunia would talk.”
Nora smiled, her demeanor calm after the momentary blaze of anger. “Whatever the rumor mill would have you believe, he was not going to leave me for her. He saw what was happening to Orlando and how poor Dahlia was suffering. Zunia was toxic, and Walter is not an idiot. He knows what side his bread is buttered on.”
“Wiser men than he have been taken in by a certain kind of woman.” Rose was just sending out feelers, probing in a quest to get at the truth. “I’ll confess I didn’t see what attracted them—not being a fan of Zunia’s—but she certainly had some men wrapped around her little finger.”
Nora shook her head, adamant in her conviction. “You may think my husband is a fool, but he’s not that much of a fool.” She hesitated, but then continued, leaning slightly across the table, “I’ll tell you something in confidence, Rose: All of our money is mine. We married many years ago, but my father made sure my money was tied up right and tight. I cried, begged and pleaded, because Walter was a little miffed when my father insisted on a kind of a prenuptial agreement, but Daddy said that if he loved me it wouldn’t matter, and if he didn’t, then I’d be protected. Walter knows where we stand, and he’s happy with it.”
“So you knew about everything?” Rose asked. She didn’t need to be explicit.
“Of course. I’ve known
about every one of Walter’s little adventures. He tells me.” She appeared amused. “I told him a long time ago, do whatever you want, just don’t expect a divorce unless you plan on being broke. I promised ’til death do us part.” She gathered up the paperwork and stood. “And now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go. I have calls to make and the rest of the day to plan. You will be coming to the talk on hallmarks, won’t you? We’re having it first thing this morning. I’m going off to tell everyone now.” She whirled and swept out of the coffee shop.
Laverne, just entering the coffee shop, passed Nora and watched her stride off, then joined Rose at the table.
As Laverne had her coffee and cinnamon roll, Rose filled her in on what she had just learned. “It made me wonder . . . if Zunia demanded that Walter leave Nora, would that be reason enough for him to kill her?”
“Try this; it’s so good.” Laverne cut a quarter of her cinnamon roll and put it on a napkin in front of Rose. “I don’t know; what do you think? You’re the one who just talked to her.”
“Maybe Nora got sick and tired of his flings.” Rose thought about it, but it just didn’t seem likely. “No, that just doesn’t fit. She sounded resigned and tolerant. Amused, even. And what would be the point? Killing Zunia wouldn’t stop him. If he’s a serial cheater, he’ll just move on to the next one. Now, if he had died, I might think she was the guilty party. She did say ’til death do they part.”
“Still, I think we ought to find out where those two were at the anointed hour.”
Rose gazed at her and smiled. “Maybe your sweet nephew could help out two old biddies in search of a murderer?”
Laverne chuckled. “Well, there’s no harm in asking, though I doubt it. Eli takes his position in the police department very seriously. He’s coming by later to take his granddad and auntie to lunch. I’ll tackle him then.”
* * *
It was still early, just a little after nine. Sophie sat on the foldaway bed, staring out the window to the street below. Sunday traffic was sparse, but Butterhill, like Gracious Grove, was a town where folks walked for fun and exercise, so there were lots of people coming to the coffee shop at the inn while on their Sunday-morning stroll. Her grandmother and godmother had come back to the room after breakfast with coffee and a muffin for her, then they had gone back downstairs to the morning’s rescheduled lecture, which was on silver hallmarks.
Sophie was into teapots but didn’t think a whole lecture on hallmarks would be bearable, and she wasn’t an official ITCS member anyway. She was free to snoop, but where to start? Josh’s suggestion that she ask Jason if he could find out if Dahlia Pettigrew was at the college overnight was still rolling around in her brain. She had replayed the conversation a hundred ways, and every time it ended with her asking him if he was at all interested in rekindling their abruptly shortened romance from a dozen years before. Until she could be sure she wouldn’t embarrass herself, she didn’t want to call him.
Her cell phone buzzed and she picked it up. Josh sent her a text with a selfie of him cross-eyed—he was at the lecture, but like most kids, could do several things at once—briefly telling her that he had talked to Emma again that morning, and her mother was indeed staying at Cruickshank. He had not been able to establish where the mom was that night and, even stranger, where Emma had been. He had expected her to say that she was in bed, asleep, or explain where she was, but she shrugged off his roundabout question about seeing her come in early in the morning. She also, according to Josh in his next text, had not seemed overly upset that her stepmother was murdered. When asked who could have done it she pretty much said any one of a number of people, given how her stepmother couldn’t talk without offending someone.
Sophie was able to glean all of that from Josh’s cryptically abbreviated texts.
The suspect list was growing, and no one had yet been knocked off it. Her phone chimed again, but this time the text was from Cissy. She and Dana were on their way to Butterhill in response to a confusing phone call from Cissy’s grandmother, who claimed that everyone in the Silver Spouts hated her and they all thought she had killed Zunia Pettigrew out of spite.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake!” Sophie exclaimed. Who knew there were octogenarian drama queens? She swiftly texted back that everything was actually fine and no one suspected Thelma, but Cissy messaged back that they were on the road anyway, so they’d come to at least check in with Cissy’s grandmother, and stay for brunch. Sophie texted SuLinn to tell her if she wasn’t interested in the hallmarks lecture and wanted to sneak out, they could all join up and have brunch and discuss what was going on.
Before they arrived Sophie decided she’d better get herself organized. Someone had targeted her beloved nana, trying to pin the blame on her by using her teapot to kill the ITCS chapter president. There seemed to be enough folks who disliked Zunia Pettigrew that finding the actual culprit would be daunting but not impossible. If it wasn’t for her fear that the police would actually believe her grandmother did it, she’d probably just leave it alone.
But no one messed with Nana and got away with it. She got out the notebook she had bought with the rest of the stuff at the drugstore the previous evening and scribbled a list of suspects and her own thoughts.
Orlando Pettigrew—the husband is always the first suspect, right? And according to what Nana discovered from Mrs. Sommer, Zunia was cheating on her hubby with Walter. They’ve only been married a year or so!
And on that note . . . Walter Sommer—the boyfriend is always the next suspect, at least on all the true crime shows I’ve watched. He could have been tired of Zunia. According to Mrs. Earnshaw’s overheard phone conversation, Orlando Pettigrew had supposedly claimed that his wandering wife was afraid of her love interest, and not serious about him, but there was no independent verification of that.
Emma Pettigrew—given how foul Zunia Pettigrew seemed to have been, Emma may have gotten sick and tired of her stepmom. But would a teenager be devious enough to steal Nana’s teapot and use it? Get Josh’s opinion. He knows her better than I do.
Dahlia Pettigrew—the ex-wife. There was certainly hatred there, and what a coincidence that she just happened to be in the area.
Sophie thought for a few seconds, then jotted a note to try to find out if Dahlia Pettigrew’s trip to Cruickshank was long planned or spur-of-the-moment.
And she hated to even think it, but she had to consider something she didn’t want to.
Rhiannon Galway, she wrote, then sat tapping the notepad with her pen.
Poor Rhi. Sophie refused to believe it, but the cops would certainly be looking at her, given what had apparently happened last year. Zunia had destroyed her chances of running for the presidency of their division of the ITCS, and Rhi had suffered, in more ways than one. Had there been any other fallout, Sophie wondered? Had she lost business or standing in the community from gossip? Maybe it was time to have a serious talk with her and find out where she was at the important time. In all the true crime shows, which Sophie had been watching obsessively on sleepless summer nights over the last two months, finding out where the suspect was at the time of the murder was the first line of inquiry.
Was Rhiannon at the morning lecture or not? Sophie texted Josh and he responded immediately; she was not at the lecture. Sophie texted Rhiannon to ask if she was at the shop. One way or another, Rhi was going to have to talk. Please don’t let it be Rhiannon, Sophie thought. She looked around the room. Missing was the blue tapestry bag her grandmother carried her knitting and books in. The police had confiscated it when they were searching the room. “And please don’t let the police think Nana did it,” she said out loud, looking up to the ceiling. As ridiculous as it seemed to her, the police couldn’t rule out Nana just because she was an octogenarian. Weird things had happened, like the grandmother who had hired her grandson to kill her husband, or the silver-haired Oklahoma granny who was the local drug kingpin.
&nb
sp; She really had to stop watching true crime shows.
Chapter 13
Thelma sat behind the other Silver Spouts as the hallmark woman yammered on and on and on. Who cared that silver hallmarking in Britain dated back to the year 1300, and was intended to protect the public against fraud? Or that it was a symbol ’cause no one could read back then? So they were a bunch of ignoramuses . . . so what?
Bertie Handler bustled into the lecture room and went right up to Nora Sommer and whispered in her ear. There! Proof of what she was saying; the woman was clearly carrying on with the inn owner, but no one would listen to her! Now, if Rose said it, everyone would be all agog and crowding around her asking her questions.
Brooding, she glared at Rose Freemont’s back and curly silver hair. Why did everyone love the woman so much?
She supposed, if she had to admit it, Rose was usually smiling and greeted everyone with a sincere question about their day, their health or what their week had been like. And she always seemed to be doing something for someone else. Rose donated extra baked goods to the food pantry at Laverne’s church. Gilda made sure Thelma heard all about it.
The woman was just too . . . Something was buzzing. What the heck was that? She peered around and spied SuLinn looking at her infernal cell phone again. Her roomie quietly got up and sidled out of the row of chairs, then left the room. May as well have that thing glued to her ear, her and Josh both. And Sophie. And Cissy. Whole lot of them, a lost generation that could only communicate by some device, rather than face-to-face. The art of communication was gonna be lost forever.
Though it sure would be handy to have one of those thingamajigs for times when you got yourself in a spot of trouble, Thelma thought, screwing up her mouth and staring up at the ceiling. Like the time Thelma got locked in the storeroom at La Belle Époque after Gilda had gone home for the day and had to bust the door handle with a can of tomatoes. Or the time she got wedged into a parking space at the MediMart in Ithaca and had to wait until a skinny fellow came along to help her out.
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