“Is this some kind of flavored coffee?” I asked. “Hazelnut or something?” I wasn’t fond of hazelnut.
“Nope, it’s premium brand regular beans, fresh ground, fresh made.”
I picked up the mug, then set it down. “You know, Marie, I don’t think I want coffee right now.” I got up. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll go fix myself a piece of toast.”
Suddenly, the simplicity of it sounded heavenly. My mouth watered.
Marie smiled indulgently. “Well, I do need to get back to work. I’ll drink the other cup myself.”
Back in the kitchen, Hester wouldn’t let me lift a finger. She insisted on toasting some new bread, freshly delivered from her sister in Vermont.
“Got whole wheat in it, and nuts and stuff. Etienne says it’s what people want these days.” She dropped two slices in the toaster slots. “Two pieces all you want? Where’s that nephew of yours, Vern? He’ll eat half a loaf if I’m a judge of big boys like him.”
I couldn’t think of what to say. I stared at the table.
“Golly, Miss Prentice, what is it?” Hester pulled a chair up and laid a warm, damp hand on mine.
In fits and starts, I told her about Vern’s appointment with the police.
“Is that all?” Hester laughed heartily. She stood and hastened to retrieve the toast as it popped up. “Don’t you worry yourself about that. Why, if I got that shook up every time one of Bert’s people got invited to visit the police, I’d be old before my time, that’s for sure.”
She laid the plate of toast before me, accompanied by the jar of apple butter and the butter dish. “There, get some sugar into you. You’ll be right as rain.” She poured me a tall glass of milk. “And you need this to go with it.”
She was right. The homely snack was apparently exactly what I was craving. I dug in hungrily and thought about asking for more once I’d finished this portion.
Hester shook a generous amount of scouring powder into the sink and continued her commentary. “No, you don’t want to borrow no trouble yet. Why, years ago Bert’s father was over to that place all the time.” With a large sponge, she began scrubbing enthusiastically. “Didn’t do him no harm.” She held up the dripping sponge. “Maybe you heard that he did a little bootlegging out of Canada.”
I nodded, because my mouth was full. I had heard. She had told me on the occasion of our first meeting.
Hester chuckled. “That dad of Burt’s was a case, all right.” She put down the sponge, rinsed her hands, and came over to the table. “There wasn’t a place on a car that he couldn’t fiddle with and hide stuff in.”
“Bootlegging never made sense to me,” I said. “Those bottles of liquor must have been bulky and noisy, clanking together. A lot of trouble, and there’s always a chance you’ll go to jail.”
“It wasn’t only bottles, y’know. It was money, too, to pay for the booze. The old man would drive up with cash stuffed in all these little cubbyholes—in the seat padding, behind the glove compartment, even in those convertible tops they had back then, y’know, with pleats in ’em. One time he was on the border near Champlain and it started to rain, and the border guy says, ‘Aren’t you going to put the top up?’ and Bert’s dad had a heck of a time trying to explain why not. When they finally made him open it up, the money fell out!” She laughed. “That story’s my favorite. I can’t swear any of ’em is true, but I get a kick out of ’em.”
She returned to her sink cleaning, tossing her comments over her shoulder at me. “What I mean to tell you is, don’t worry. All’s they’re going to do is ask questions, and all’s he has to do is say he don’t know.”
“Don’t—doesn’t know what?”
Hester shrugged. “Does he know the Rousseau boys?”
“Yes, he’s been tutoring one of them in French. But what could he tell the police?”
“Who knows?” She squeezed out the sponge and rinsed her hands. “It’s just a fishing expedition,” she said with a sage squint. “That’s what they call ’em on the TV, fishing expeditions. Trying to find out stuff anywheres they can.”
She took a clean kitchen towel and dried out the sink. It seemed like a self-defeating task to me, but Hester was an expert housekeeper and knew her job far better than I.
“Mind you, I knew Martin Rousseau in high school. That’s the father, y’know. Could’ve been sweet on him, too, but he never really fell for a girl till he met that Aimee.” She folded the towel and made a face. “You said it A-may, not A-mee like regular people. She was way younger than him, and kind of full of herself, y’know, and spoiled. That was a one for the movie stars, that girl. Named her babies after two of ’em: John Travolta and that guy, what’s his name, in The Graduate. Martin took over where her dad left off, everybody said. It’s too bad she died on him,” she concluded, rather heartlessly, I thought.
She observed me retrieving stray crumbs with my pinkie. “Here, you need another piece of toast, at least.”
I didn’t protest, which wasn’t like me. To tell the truth, for many years, food had been only a peripheral component of my existence, at least the preparation thereof. From the time before my parents died, I had subsisted on light suppers of Campbell’s soup and saltines, and since our marriage I had expanded my repertoire only to include the better brand of microwave dinners and large cans of hearty stew. The second serving of toast smelled even more wonderful than the first, and I fell to consuming it with enthusiasm.
“I’m glad your worries didn’t spoil your appetite today; does me good to see you enjoy your food. Most days, you’re not much of an eater, that’s for sure.”
I finished chewing and swallowed. “It’s your cooking, Hester.”
Hester laughed. “That’s right. I really know how to use a toaster. I get to laughing every time I remember when we first met and I give you my special recipe for apple pie. Shows I didn’t know you too good. I bet a buck you lost it.”
I finished the last toast crust and restrained myself from licking stray apple butter off the plate. “No, as a matter of fact, I put it in my mother’s old all-purpose cookbook and etiquette guide.” I pointed to a bookshelf tightly-crammed with cookbooks among the cabinets. “But I haven’t found time to try it yet.”
Hester chuckled. “Probably used it for a bookmark.”
I drank the last of the milk in guilty silence. The truth was, several months ago I had used it to mark the chapter on weddings.
The doorknob on the big front door made its familiar clink-jangle, and a chill breeze quickly made its way through the dining room and into the kitchen, dancing around my ankles for what seemed an intolerable length of time.
“Whoever it is, shut the door!” Hester shouted. “You’re freezin’ us back here!”
“Sorry,” said a familiar voice and we heard the door close with a thud.
I took a deep breath and closed my eyes with relief.
“I’ve often wondered,” Vern remarked as he strolled to the kitchen table, snow clinging to his shoulders and his short haircut, “why don’t you have a storm door like most people?” He brushed off his jacket. “You have a deep enough frame on that door to support one. I looked.”
“Yeah, while we was turning into blocks of ice,” Hester said with a chuckle. “Y’want something to eat?”
“No, thanks. But I mean it. You need to tell Etienne.”
I couldn’t stand it. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Vern, tell us what happened!”
“What happened? Oh, you mean at the cop shop?” Vern shrugged and worried the tip of his nose with a knuckle. “Nothing, nothing to speak of. Just asked me a few questions.”
Hester said, “What did I tell ya? It was a fishing expedition, just like I said. Isn’t that right?”
Vern gave her a blank glance. “I guess so. Look, Amelia, can we get going? It’s starting to snow. I’ve got a paper due next week, and I’ve got to get home to my computer.”
He stood, arms akimbo, bouncing impatiently on the tips of his size 12 s
neakers. I was reminded of a sprinter waiting for the sound of the gun.
Disappointment was written all over Hester’s face. “Sure you don’t want a little snack, there? You could take it with you, even. I could put a couple cookies in a napkin.”
“No, thanks,” Vern said, a little too sharply. “Come on, Amelia, shake a leg.” He took my coat off the back of the kitchen chair and draped it clumsily around my shoulders. “Let’s go. Put on your coat.”
I complied, puzzled and a little concerned. Something was obviously bothering him. I hurried to gather my things, confident that he would enlighten me in the privacy of his car.
I was to be disappointed. Not only did he not confide his experiences at the police station, he was close-mouthed the entire trip home, answering my forays into conversation with terse, single-syllable words: “Yes.” “Nope.” “Maybe.”
Once inside the house, without a word, he hung up his coat and ambled into the cluttered den that was his headquarters, closing the door firmly.
I knocked. “You okay in there?”
A pause. “Fine.”
For the next hour, I occupied myself correcting papers and tried to ignore the strangeness that had settled over the house.
It wasn’t fair, I fretted. He must know that I was dying to find out what happened to him at the police station. Maybe he thought I was being nosy.
I immediately rejected the thought out of hand.
Nonsense! I just care about the boy, I thought, circling a stray misplaced comma with unnecessary vehemence. The point of my red pencil snapped, leaving a jagged line.
If the circumstances had been reversed, I told myself as I dug in a desk drawer for a pencil sharpener, he would have long since wormed the information out of me. There was no way he would have tolerated such a petulant silence. I rose abruptly from my chair and walked to his door.
“Vern—” I began.
The front door opened and Gil ushered in a cold breeze. “What’s this I hear about the kid at the police station?” he asked without so much as a perfunctory peck in my direction. “Where is he?”
I pointed.
Abruptly, Gil handed me his coat and leather computer case and knocked on Vern’s door. “Hey, pal,” he said, turning the knob and barging right on in, “what gives with you and the cops?”
I heard a low-pitched mumble from the depths of the room.
“Talk,” Gil said before closing the door, virtually in my face.
With a frown, I returned to my students’ papers, hardly seeing the words before me.
Is this how it’s going to be around here from now on, I asked myself and circled a superfluous comma, the Boys against the Girl? Every time a crisis arose, would the family members of the male persuasion circle the wagons and leave me outside—literally?
I scrawled a C- at the top of the page and moved on to the next essay.
I thus immersed myself in adolescent interpretations of Great Expectations until a rattling gurgle in my middle interrupted. “Maybe Butch and Sundance are ready for dinner too,” I murmured petulantly as I unearthed and nuked three Hungry Man frozen dinners.
A vigorous tattoo on Vern’s door yielded no response. “Dinner!” I called with what I hoped was a cheerful, unresentful lilt in my voice. “Yoo hoo! Soup’s on!”
No answer.
I had consumed the little plastic triangle of turkey and dressing, along with the mashed potatoes and was starting on the much-touted Apple Crumble Dessert when Gil and Vern ambled up to the kitchen bar and took a seat in front of tepid plates of Home-style Meat Loaf and Old Fashioned Pot Roast, respectively.
If I had expected an explanation, I was again disappointed. Gil was stolid and silent as he ate, while Vern had a furtive, guilty air. He wolfed his food and retired to the apparent safety of his room in record time, while Gil continued to scowl into his segment of succotash.
Miraculously, I was able to keep my own counsel during this interlude and was rewarded at last by a confidential murmur.
“Say again?”
“He’s hiding something.” Gil glanced over his shoulder, though we both knew that the walls of Vern’s room were as thick as his head. “He didn’t tell me everything, I know it.”
“Are you sure? You two were in there long enough to recite The Iliad in its entirety.”
Gil picked up his now-empty plate and carried it to the trash pail. “I know. I tried everything short of horsewhipping that idiot to get him to tell me what it was, or to at least tell the police. But no go. Stupid kid!” he said with a snort as he deposited his burden forcefully. He looked at me straight for the first time since he arrived home. “You want coffee? I want coffee. I’ll make some.”
“What did Vern tell you?”
“Says he’s just been tutoring J.T. in French and helping Dustin with his English, and that’s as far as it goes.”
“Tell me what it is you know.”
“The two boys are definitely the favored suspects in this lake murder and are currently in the county jail.”
“Oh, no!”
Gil worked his jaw ruefully and spooned coffee into the coffeemaker. “Couldn’t be helped. With their wild reputations, the DA—they’ve got Elm DeWitt himself working on this one—was disposed to ask for remand, but Judge Ryan is a kindly sort and he’s letting them go home and stay under house arrest.”
“They’ll hate that.”
“They’ll just have to suck it up. And the public defender they’re getting is a new guy, a real go-getter I hear, so they’ll get a fair shake.”
“Tell me exactly what they’re supposed to have done. From what I’ve heard, it happened on the lake.” I reached for two coffee cups.
“Yeah. They were driving in their car and—”
“Car? On the ice?”
Gil nodded.
“What were they thinking?”
He poured coffee into each cup. “Who knows? The way the police tell it, the boys encountered a man out there. His identity is undetermined so far.” He pushed a cup across the counter toward me.
“What, just walking across the lake?”
“No, he was ice fishing. The police say the boys robbed the man, fought with him, and drowned him. His head was hanging down through the hole in the ice, frozen.”
I shuddered. So the rumor young Frank had told the class was true.
“Oh, Gil!”
Gil grimaced. “Yeah. Not nice. Not nice at all.” He stirred his coffee. “I have a source in the police department who says they found a gun in the tent, but the man was drowned, not shot.”
“Maybe there were fingerprints.”
Gil smiled and shrugged. “My source didn’t tell me.”
I leaned over my coffee cup to take a sip and paused. “Is this our usual brand? It smells odd.”
“Nope. Same old, same old.”
I sniffed at the cup. My stomach churned and I swayed a little.
“What’s the matter?” He resumed his seat next to me, rubbing my back. For once, the caress didn’t soothe me. It only made me feel queasier.
I rested my face in my hands. “Nothing. I guess it’s just so horrible. A man killed that way. It makes me feel a bit sick.” I had once narrowly escaped death by drowning.
“We all feel like that, honey,” Gil said.
“And there’s something wrong with this coffee, that’s for sure.”
“What are you talking about?” He took a large gulp. “Mmm, pure caffeine! Just what the doctor ordered! Come on, drink up!”
I jumped from my seat and ran from the room.
“Amelia, come back! I was just kidding! I’m sorry.”
I made it to the bathroom just in time.
CHAPTER TEN
Maybe the honeymoon wasn’t exactly over, but the following day, Saturday, I learned just how stubborn my new husband could be.
I was fully recovered from my upset stomach by morning, but he insisted on serving me a breakfast of dry toast and tea as a precaution. “And yo
u’ve got to promise me to see Dr. Ben on Monday,” he said, placing the plate before me at the breakfast table.
“That’s silly. I’m fine. It was just all the stress yesterday. First, I had that parent-teacher conference with the Sheas, and then seeing the Rousseau boys led out of school in chains.”
Gil’s dimples made an appearance, though his eyes still frowned. “Not chains, honey, just handcuffs. And don’t change the subject; you’re going to the doctor.”
I ignored the latter half of the statement. “Well, the dramatic effect was the same: those poor boys, arrested for such a horrible crime.” I turned to Gil’s nephew. “Vern, what do you think about all this? Could they really do such a dreadful thing?”
“I’m sorry, Amelia,” he said, and drained a tumbler of orange juice. “All I know is that J.T. is starting to get a little French under his belt and that he and Dustin wanted to take the Gervais girls to the ice dance. Guess that’s off.”
Vern turned his exclusive attention to the rapid consumption of the plate of scrambled eggs he’d prepared. Seconds later, he heaved a deep sigh and stood.
“Better go get a shower. By the way, I want to get in some extra hours driving the cab today. And I got a few, um, other things to do. Probably be real late tonight. Expect me when you see me.”
“Spending time at the Gamma house?” I asked mischievously.
Vern reddened, but maintained his easy-going tone. “Maybe,” he said, and headed for the door.
“Gamma House?” Gil asked, watching Vern’s departing back.
I answered him in his native language, journalese. “The story is developing. I don’t know much, just a name and a sorority: Melody Branch and Gamma. Don’t ask me Gamma what.”
“Hmm, a sorority. Interesting, and about time. When I think of how he nagged me to chase after you.”
“Pretty good advice, wouldn’t you say?”
Gil picked up his cue deftly. “Oh, excellent advice. I’m a lucky, lucky man, so they tell me.” He blew me a kiss, headed for the bedroom, then turned. “By the way, this special ice festival edition is giving me a pain. Looks like I’ll be working all day on it myself.”
Death Dangles a Participle (Miss Prentice Cozy Mystery Series) Page 7
