Murder at the Tremont House (A Blue Plate Cafe Mystery)

by Alter, Judy

  I slogged my way through Sunday, went home as early as I could and curled up with a book. But in the middle of the night, I woke and could not turn off my mind. Why did I think Cary Smith was the key to Sara Jo’s murder? As your mind can do strange things to you at three in the morning, I began to fantasize about being in jail, tried for murder. I prayed and wished I’d gone to church that morning. I swear I didn’t sleep again until the alarm went off though truth be told I probably dozed in and out. In wakeful moments, I waited for Gram to come to me, but she didn’t. Surely she knew how miserable I was.

  ****

  The next morning the world didn’t look quite as hopeless to me, but I was dragging because of lack of sleep. By the time I got to the café, I had pulled my spirits together, so I was able to banter with Benny and Marj and the others and get the day off to a good start. I decided on spaghetti for the feature of the day and pulled ground meat out of the freezer.

  The morning went along as usual until about ten when Bonnie Smith entered the café, a first I could ever remember. My impression of her remained the same from the cooking class—a woman not afraid of hard work and not intimidated by the world. Cary must have gotten his looks and his slightly shy demeanor from his father. This time, though, the worried expression on Bonnie’s face caught my attention. Immediately when I seated her at a small table, she asked, “Aren’t you known for sticky buns?”

  “Yes, we are, and I still have a few left this morning. Would you like one?”

  “Yes, please. And black coffee.”

  She didn’t even leave me time to say, “Nice to see you again,” or “I’m sorry you missed the cooking classes.” I sensed this was not to be a cordial visit. Between Sally Vaughn and Bonnie Smith, I wasn’t making friends in town over the murder of Sara Jo. And I knew two women who would just as soon see me arrested and the whole matter behind them.

  As I brought her order to her, I was aware she was studying me. When I set the coffee and bun down, she asked if I would join her.

  Uncertainly, I sat down.

  She wasted no small talk. “I’m Bonnie Smith, Cary’s mother.”

  “I know that. You were in the cooking class for one session. I’m sorry you didn’t return,” I honestly tried to be cordial. “Cary’s a fine young man.”

  “I came to ask why you wanted him to mow your lawn. There are lots of nice young men in this town.” Apparently instead of being flattered, she was suspicious.

  “I’ve been impressed the few times he’s been in here with how polite he is. And my niece, a freshman at the high school, mentioned that he’s a really good guy and was looking for ways to earn a little money. Your husband even said as much.” I was getting suspicious myself. Why was she so concerned? Something clicked…her husband said they had been overprotective of Cary…well, not in so many words, but that’s what he meant.

  “He’s been in here? He never told me that.”

  “I suppose high school seniors don’t tell their folks every little thing about their lives. Maybe not even some big things.” I tried to treat the subject lightly.

  “We like to keep up with where he is and what he’s doing.” She was almost prim as she said that.

  It wasn’t my place to tell her to loosen the reins a bit, so I just said I was sure no harm had come of his stops at the café. We were a respectable family-oriented place, and he was with some nice boys, not rough, not rowdy.

  “Please don’t expect him to mow for you again,” she said. “He has enough to keep up with between sports and schoolwork. He struggles with math a bit.”

  I wanted to protest that her husband seemed glad to have him doing some responsible work but once again, it wasn’t my place. And as for Cary and math, I was getting really mixed messages.

  “Of course. If you wish.”

  “I do. Thank you for the sticky bun. It was delicious.” She’d only eaten half of it, but she left the cost plus a generous tip on the table before she managed to mutter, “It was nice to see you again. I’m sure you meant no harm. You just have to understand…ours is a unique situation, and Cary is a very special boy.” And then she graced me with her version of a smile and sailed out the door.

  Wonder what she thought of Sara Jo? I cleared the table and called Rick to see if he was free, my mind wandering on various ways of presenting this new development to him.

  “Is this an invitation?”

  “Nope. It’s business. I’ll be right there. And this time, you really can’t accuse me of meddling.”

  “I’m breathless with anticipation.”

  He didn’t look breathless when I got there. In fact, he had his nose buried in paper work, and I had to knock twice before he looked up. Then he stood, offered coffee that I declined—I knew the quality of his coffee. It’s why he always came to the café.

  After we were both seated, I described Bonnie Smith’s visit in detail, and he listened attentively, even looking serious. When I ran out of story, he spoke.

  “Okay, I agree with you. Cary Smith seems to be in the center of something, but we can’t be sure it’s murder. And I sure can’t arrest people on the basis of what we know. Really can’t even question them, though I might have another chat with Roger Smith. I suspect he’ll just plead that they’re overprotective parents, which they seem to be. I don’t think there’s anything to this math teacher business…maybe the kid is a good student, maybe not. Your niece can’t be sure of what she hears, and you know how teens gossip. So it’s a dead end.”

  Defeated, I slumped in my chair. “My instincts have been right before, and I know they are this time.”

  “Law enforcement is a matter of logic. Oh, sure, instinct comes into it sometimes, but it’s got to be based on facts.”

  For you, because you aren’t an intuitive person.

  “If it’s any consolation, I’ve got a private eye checking on Sara Jo in Dallas. He should turn up something in a couple of days.”

  “Meantime, I’m still suspect number one?”

  “Well, yeah, but Halstead has no proof. Hasn’t found the gun. Didn’t check your hands for residue.” Then he hastened to add, “I know he wouldn’t have found any. You’re the only suspect but there’s really no case against you. The last person to see a victim alive is always suspect.”

  “Not too comforting.”

  I went back to the café, dragging my heels. I didn’t want to be considered a murder suspect. I wasn’t sure I even wanted to work in the café. In plain fact, I didn’t know what I wanted. Maybe David Clinkscales to talk to, but I’d been expecting to have him pop into the café for two days now…and he hadn’t. I told myself if he had gone back to Dallas, he’d have called. If I couldn’t have David to talk to, I wanted to hear from Gram. It was just plain a blue day for me. Blast Bonnie Smith anyway!

  Chapter Fifteen

  Sometimes wishes come true. Okay, not very often but sometimes. When I got back to the café, Marj took one look at me and said, “Go home. Sleep. Rest. Cook. Read. Do whatever relaxes you. You look like a spring wound too tight.”

  “You sure?” It sounded like good advice though I wasn’t sure what I’d do when I got home, except maybe wander around the house in a fog. Then inspiration hit—one of the things Marj said was cook, and that did relax me. I’d go home, raid the freezer and fridge and see what exotic thing I could throw together. Probably I didn’t have the ingredients for exotic, but I could do something. And I had a good book I’d just started—State of the Onion, the first of Julie Hyzy’s White House Chef Mysteries. I loved to find new series and read them all in order. So I hugged Marj, told her to call if she needed me, and went home.

  I no more than walked in the door when my cell phone rang. David.

  “Sorry I haven’t been in touch. A client’s problems called me back to Dallas in a hurry, but I’ve done some investigating…not that it’s gotten me much. Anyway, I’ll be back at the café for dinner tonight. If I come in a little after the dinner hour, can we eat together?”


  “Better than that,” I said. “I’m taking the day off, with Marj’s blessings. Oh, I’ll go in to close up, but she told me to go home, read, cook, do whatever, and I decided to be creative with what I have in the fridge. So if you’re willing to take a chance….”

  “On your cooking? Anytime. I’ll be there by six. White or red wine?”

  “One of each. I have no idea what dinner will be.”

  I dug into the fridge, the freezer and the cupboard. I had a can of diced tomatoes, a can of artichoke hearts—a treat I was saving for who knows what? Some new potatoes. Good grated parmesan in the freezer. And eggs, lots of eggs. Poached eggs in dishes were popular right now, so I decided I’d make a vegetable casserole with eggs poached into its surface. I could season it with some thyme that had wintered over, and I always had onions and garlic. Happily I set out the ingredients on the counter and set the table for two. I was feeling better already.

  And that’s when Gram chose to appear. “You always were a creative cook, Kate. In a way I’m sorry to see you at the café because you can’t branch out to the foods you like to create, but I’m so grateful that you’re running it for me.”

  “Thanks, Gram, but that’s not what I want to talk about.”

  “You want to talk about that murdered woman and the high school student and your sister, don’t you?’

  “Sort of in that order,” I said. “I don’t like being a murder suspect.”

  “You aren’t really, dear. And you’re on the right track. David will help you. But there are secrets you’ll have to uncover. And Donna? She’s out of control again, but I knew she would be. Watch after Tom but don’t let him get too close.”

  “Gram, could Donna have killed Sara Jo?” I hated to even ask, and I guess Gram hated to answer, because she faded away, leaving me completely puzzled. Mostly about Donna and Tom. And I couldn’t tell David any of that. If he thought I was talking to Gram or hearing her… Well, I thought he’d hightail it back to Dallas. I looked at Gram’s old wall clock: only noon, though it felt like evening. I’d fix a tuna sandwich and read while I ate.

  I had a little wine with my sandwich, so I was more than ready for a nap. To my horror, I slept from two to four and then had to rush around, throwing on a shift instead of jeans, repairing my make-up, starting over with my hair. Finally I called Marj, who said not to worry about a thing, and I assured her I’d be in to close up.

  By the time David arrived, I had dinner ready to pop in the oven and an appetizer of hummus and crackers waiting for us. He brushed my forehead with a quick kiss, and I noticed he carried a briefcase.

  “Where can I sort out these papers?”

  “Right here,” I said, moving the place settings aside. I served the hummus, poured white wine that seemed to go with the dinner, and we sat down. David’s source had found Sara Jo under another name—Sara Jo Morgan—as a teen and young woman in Dallas, rebellious, wild, high school dropout. Didn’t sound like a journalist to me, but the pictures were unmistakably her. He had used a morgue picture, but I had one of her on my cell phone. I’d taken it surreptitiously on one of those rare occasions she came into the Blue Plate. Just as I’d known she’d be trouble, I knew a picture would be helpful. I enlarged it as much as possible and handed the phone to him.

  “From her high school yearbook photo her junior year, before she dropped out, I’d say that’s her. Can you print this?”

  “Not very well. It will come out big and grainy, but it’s better than nothing. It’s her, isn’t it?”

  “Yep.”

  “She didn’t strike me as the wild child type. She was pretty straightforward, blunt in fact, and all business. No small talk, no sociability. At least not in Wheeler. You know, actually I didn’t see that much of her. I heard more about her than I saw. She rarely came into the café after that first day. But I just happened to be the last one to see her alive.”

  He covered my hand with his. “No, you weren’t. Whoever killed her was.”

  Somehow during our conversation I had managed to crack eggs into the vegetables and slip the dish in the oven. Now I checked, and the eggs looked set. So I put a loaf of French bread into get crispy, moved the papers, and re-set the table. “Let’s put murder aside and have supper,” I suggested.

  It was a one-dish meal. I had worried David would miss meat, but he didn’t seem to. He ate seconds with relish, spread plentiful helpings of already-soft butter on the bread, and poured my wine. Of course, we talked murder. We talked a lot about Cary and Roger and Bonnie Smith and how they figured in it, and I told him about Sally Vaughn.

  “I agree. The key is there somewhere, but I don’t know how Rick can get to it. And you can’t, Kate. As a suspect you simply have to say clear.”

  “So far, no one in town is gossiping and pointing fingers, like they did when Donna was accused of murdering Irv Litman, but I don’t think it’s been made public yet that I was the last person, as far as the sheriff knows, to see her alive. The weekly paper comes out tomorrow, and it may well be in there.”

  “You’ll handle it. I’m going to stay at the lake at least through the weekend, so I’ll be here a lot. I’ve brought work to do, and I’m in constant touch with my office by phone and email and even Skype. So I’ll be busy…but not that busy. I really want to help, Kate.” We fist bumped to seal the deal.

  And Rick Samuels let himself in the back door at just that moment. First time I’d ever seen him flustered, but he was. His face even reddened a bit. “Uh, sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt.”

  David was on his feet, holding out his hand for a cordial shake. “Not at all. Come join the conversation. Kate, pour this man some wine.”

  Rick held up a hand. “I’m sort of on duty.”

  “Well, we’re discussing Sara Jo Cavanaugh, and we could use your input,” David said, perhaps a bit too heartily. “I’ve found her as a teenager, under the name of Sara Jo Morgan, but my sleuth, such as she is, lost track of her after she dropped out of high school.”

  Rick let himself sink into a chair at the table. “Then I can help. The PI I hired worked backward, using her cell phone to start.”

  I smacked myself in the head. Why hadn’t I thought of that?

  “Found an address in Oak Cliff, and we got a search warrant. Not much in the place of interest. Bank statements—she was okay but not rolling in dough—but few personal letters or anything, and no record of family.”

  “I can help there,” David said. “Her parents, Joseph—probably where the Jo comes from—and Sarah lived in South Dallas until the area went bad. Then they moved up around Haskell Avenue. An area of modest housing. Not much money. She had two siblings—a brother named Joe and a sister named Mary. I didn’t try to contact them, so I don’t even know if they know she’s been murdered.”

  “My job,” Rick said in a businesslike manner. “Give me the address and phone number if you have it.” He wrote down what David read off to him, and then said, “One odd thing in her small efficiency apartment—there were a lot of pictures of a baby boy. I’m no judge of kids, but I’d say the pictures are of his first year, and then there are no more.”

  Something clicked in my mind, but I was afraid to say it to either man, so I kept quiet.

  “Did you find out what she did between dropping out of high school and becoming a journalist?” David asked.

  Rick shook his head. “No diplomas, no correspondence about schools, no records of any job. It’s like she erased her past…deliberately.”

  “Boyfriends, lovers?” I asked.

  “Not on the record,” Rick said. “But I have a hunch that baby was hers, so yes, there must have been.”

  I opened my mouth and said it. “Cary Smith. She came here looking for her son.”

  Both men stared at me as if I’d taken leave of my senses.

  “Instinct,” I said stubbornly.

  “That and a quarter will get you a cup of coffee.”

  “Not at the Blue Plate. It’s a dollar these day
s, and you know it very well.”

  Rick punched me lightly in the arm. “If that’s so, who killed her? And how do you fit Sally Vaughn into the picture? And if he isn’t Bonnie Smith’s son, why is she so protective of him? Too many holes in your theory, Kate.” He said it gently.

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. But I bet I’m right.”

  “I can’t go right up to Roger Smith and ask him who the mother of his son really is.”

  David was sitting quietly, musing to himself. “Kate may have something. But we’d have to bait a trap, and I’m not sure how to do that.”

  They both looked at me, and I knew I would be the bait.

  Chapter Sixteen

  To my great relief neither Rick nor David thought up a plan to use me as bait. My two suitors—because that’s how I’d begun to think of David—had become allies, often found at the café, huddled with their heads close together. David was dedicated to clearing my name; Rick had that goal too, but his primary concern was restoring law and order to a town that had become “his.”

  Ava, Henry, and Jess spent the night with me on Friday, and I acquiesced to Henry’s need for privacy, letting him sleep in his mom’s old room while the girls shared Gram’s big bed. We had grilled cheese sandwiches and raw vegetables with that old onion soup dip for supper. Henry complained he’d prefer potato chips, but I told him they weren’t as healthy and the dip was bad enough. We spent the evening playing Monopoly, which they had brought with them. Jess and I played as one, but Henry triumphed, and crowed with glee when he beat us.

  The cooking class met for the last time. I figured too many in town would object to dirty rice, with chicken livers and gizzards in it, and switched to risotto (much harder to do) to go with the quail. I knew these ladies were used to stuffing quail with a jalapeño and wrapping it in bacon, so I gave them an entirely different recipe: baked quail stuffed with green grapes and butter and then wrapped in bacon, baked in white wine. They were skeptical but later I heard that the husbands loved it.