by Imogen Plimp
“Must have helped you along as an artist though, don’t you think?” I nudged.
“I guess,” she shrugged. “Or maybe it made me an artist against my will. With a name like Star Dreams, there’s not much else I could do for a profession.”
Star told me that, before he moved back to Washington, he lived in Paris. I was so jealous! He was allowed to stay rent-free in the back room of a bookstore, provided he kept it clean and was willing to work a few on-call type shifts every week. When he wasn’t working, he was sitting inside (and outside) various Parisian cafes, drawing.
He showed me some of the sketches he did while living there. There was the Seine and the cherry blossoms, old women in oversized coats walking arm-in-arm, the portrait of an old man with a map of the world on his face … as well as some more abstract works, all of which I adored. He agreed to sell me a black and white drawing of an African elephant smoking a cigar and tying up his tap shoes. He was pleased when I asked to buy it: “This one is an original, actually—meaning I never copied it. Even though it’s one of my favorites. I sure was in a strange mental place when I drew it…”
“It’s very Toulouse-Lautrec,” I suggested.
He grinned. “My ‘absinthe years.’ But don’t take it just yet—I want to frame it for you, first.”
Finally, I had two women travelling together from Germany who booked my last available room. They came to the states to drive around the country in a rental for a few weeks, sticking mostly to Appalachian backroads, and they were staying for the weekend to do some snowshoeing.
“But isn’t the snowshoeing much better in Europe? In the Alps, I mean?”
“Oh yes,” the tall brunette assured me. “Much nicer. But not as cheap.”
“And not as nice people,” added the petite blonde. They seemed kind, but mostly kept to themselves.
Saturday I think I overdid it with breakfast. I made European-style pancakes (special for my European guests). They were very thin. Crepes, really—but Al rolls her eyes when I call them that. I served them with fillings of cottage cheese and lavender honey, sliced toasted almonds, bananas, homemade blackberry preserves and homemade ginger jam. I also made poached eggs with chives, some leftover maple sausage from the week before, homemade tobacco cilantro tomato juice, fresh-squeezed carrot and orange juices (with a brut option for mimosas), and coffee. Everyone seemed to enjoy the spread—even Harold, the older man from Ohio, who said he “usually doesn’t go for pancakes.”
Surprisingly, all of breakfast got polished off—mostly thanks to Star, who did an excellent job of eating as much as he possibly could. Funny, isn’t it, how sometimes the littlest people with the thinnest of frames can eat the most unimaginable amounts of food?
After everyone was off to their respective weekend plans, Evelyn came over to sit and read by the fire in the den—while I cooked, naturally.
She had brought over a collection of gossip magazines, but she got bored after a few minutes of perusing the celebrities’ latest, and sauntered into the kitchen—where I was deep in the throes of a pared-down cassoulet recipe—popping a squat on a barstool at the island (which was fast becoming my favorite spot in the house).
“Glass of red?” I asked.
“Aye aye, capt’n,” she replied.
I served her a generous pour of cabernet, then bent down to peek at the duck in the oven. “Why didn’t you tell me James and Nina were married?” I tried to make it come out casual, like it was no big deal at all. Like I hadn’t been thinking about it all week long.
Evelyn shrugged. “Dunno. I guess it just didn’t occur to me it’d be important. It was so long ago…” She reached across the island for a handful of sea salt and rosemary popcorn. “It was so – long ago –” she managed to spit out between bites “that’s it’s – old – news. It’s not even – news.”
“How long ago?” I asked, wiping my hands on my apron.
“Twenty years, I think?” she guessed. Then she took a good-sized swig from her glass. “You think somethin’ fishy’s going on there?”
“I don’t know,” I answered honestly. “He gets poisoned in his hotel room … pretty personal … and you know how they say poison is a woman’s weapon?” I took a sip of vino.
“A woman’s weapon—or the weapon of a coward,” Evelyn retorted.
“Sure, but…” I paused to think for a second. “My gut tells me this is the work of a woman. Some sort of jilted lover. A woman scorned.”
“Well I don’t know anything about that, but I do know it was somebody who was real angry.”
I looked at her. “Why do you say that?”
“Poison’s not a good way to go—it’s … mean.” Evelyn shivered.
I nodded, then turned to my oaken countertop and worked a layer of white beans into my massive copper casserole dish—a beaut George’s grandmother gifted me when we got married.
“You got any theories?” Evelyn asked.
“Not really. But Nina seems sure it had something to do with Leslie Stevens.”
“Nina got her claws in ya – did she?” She was back into the popcorn bowl.
“Yes, down at the café. You think she’s wrong?”
“Not necessarily. There was tell a couple years ago that Leslie and James were an item.”
“Evelyn!” I dropped my oven mitts. “Why didn’t you tell me they dated? Of course Leslie’s upset! And of course James’s ex-wife would suspect his much-younger girlfriend.”
“Nah,” Evelyn waved my mounting theory off, unimpressed. “I don’t believe it for a second.”
“You don’t believe Leslie killed James?”
“I don’t believe they dated. Plus, the rumor came from Nina. Nobody else knew anything about it. Boy does she love her gossip.” She rolled her eyes.
“Look who’s talking,” I teased, pointing with my wooden spoon at the pile of People and OK Magazines sprawled out on my island.
“These old rags? Now this is news.” She cradled the magazine on the top of the pile to her chest like a newborn baby. “Very important news.”
That gave us a good laugh. My first in a while.
* * *
By Saturday evening, my house had seamlessly morphed from a bed and breakfast into a bed and beverage. All my guests were available for a 5 o’clock happy hour, which we took in the den, fireside. Most of us had dry martinis with lemon twists—which Star offered to expertly doctor up. It was good to see my mostly stocked bar put to use. One drink in, we were all of us hungry, so I offered up some of my cassoulet—which wasn’t entirely finished yet, plus I had planned to freeze it for much later… But, like any cook, I was tickled pink to serve it fresh out of the oven, instead.
By nine o’clock, I had an empty house on my hands—my guests dispersed for the art walk and bluegrass concert.
I settled in in my sunroom, curled up with a slice of rhubarb pie and a cup of ginger lemon tea, where I could faintly hear the concert—and the accompanying drunken reverie—wafting through the old bay windows.
Suddenly, there were sirens—to which I was accustomed in Brooklyn, but here they seemed so out of place… Rupert, sprawled out alongside my chair, lifted his head and howled—a long, mournful call. The vehicles to which the sirens belonged whizzed down Main Street, coming from the valley, and then raced uphill—via Pine Grove. Then Rupert fell back asleep.
Minutes later, I heard some yelling outside—toward the front of the house … but it was drowned out by the music. I bundled up under a wool blanket, grabbed an extension cord and a space heater, and headed out to the screened-in front porch—to pretend to be reading, on the off chance I could catch any pertinent gossip about the sirens.
I tucked the space heater under my blanket at my feet and waited. I needn’t wait long. A small group of girls—each no more than about twenty-five years old or so—hurried past my porch stake-out in a cluster. And they didn’t feel the need to use hushed voices.
“It’s Leslie!”
“Stevens?
”
“Yes!”
“What happened?”
“She fell down the stairs!”
“Is she hurt?”
“Yes, real bad!”
“Whitney said she’s unconscious—they’re taking her to General down the mountain.”
Fell down the stairs, I thought. ‘Pushed’ was more like it.
I stayed glued to my bench, under the warmth of my blankets, unsure of what to do next. Until a feral white-blonde poof, bundled in her winter wear, came tearing up my steps and barreled into my porch.
“Evelyn! Did you hear?”
“Yes! The sheriff picked up Ben! They’re charging him for the murder of James Matthews and the attempted murder of Leslie Stevens!”
Chapter Nine
Sunday morning. I cooked breakfast like a dead woman. I made French-style croissants (an involved ritual I learned from a Julia Child television episode back in the day) with salted chive butter and an assortment of my homemade preserves, mango and spinach smoothies, fried eggs with parmesan grits, and oatmeal with a little buffet of toppings: sliced almonds and pecans, golden raisins, banana, toasted coconut shavings, crème, and local honey. Honestly though, my heart wasn’t in it.
I couldn’t stop thinking about Leslie—and James and Ben. Poor things. Caught up in something so nasty. But what for?
Most everyone slept in, having “tied one on” at the previous night’s town-wide festivities. Everyone, that is, except for Harold and his wife, Alma, who saw their daughter off early—the touring van had a hard 7:00 am departure time. Then they raced back into the house to collect their things and grab a cup of coffee (and “maybe I’ll try just one croissant, to see what all the fuss is about…”), their hearts set on getting an early start back to Ohio—where they lived in a town with far less murders, I presumed.
Evelyn came over at about 10 o’clock, when I was between breakfast guests, to tell me that Leslie had died early that morning. She was never conscious at the hospital, so the police were never able to speak with her about what had happened.
“Does that mean they’re going to charge Ben with two murders—officially?” I asked.
“Yes—officially.” Evelyn shook her head. She had remained bundled in her fur-hooded red coat, hat, and mittens, but pulled a stool up to the island. “I just can’t believe he did this!”
“Of course he didn’t! They’ll clear him soon, I’ll bet.” I was keeping myself busy restocking nuts and jams, trying not to think too much about … well, any of this.
“I don’t know… They seem to have a pretty solid case…” Evelyn reached across the island and began assembling a makeshift trail mix out of my oatmeal fixings.
They couldn’t possibly, I thought. “How so?”
She shoveled a pile of her snack into her mouth (via mitten). “Ben owed James a bunch of money—it turns out James gave him a huge loan a few months ago, which is part of the reason he was at the house last Saturday to begin with—and Ben was one of the last two people to see James before he died. Ben lived with the other person who was among the last two people to see James before he died—and she wound up dead, too. Plus, he n’ Leslie fought like cats n’ dogs. And, he doesn’t have an alibi for either murder. And—the cherry on top—he’s got priors.”
I was lost. “Priors?” I had started in on restocking the coffee crème and sugar, neither of which especially needed restocking. “What for? Public intoxication? Graffiti? Tax evasion?” I was being purposefully flippant.
“Attempted murder.”
I did a double-take—and almost dropped the sugar bowl.
Evelyn shifted into a more comfortable position up on her barstool. “A few years back, he got into a fight with some guy down at the pub. Pulled him by the scruff and dragged him out into the street, then had at him. Nearly killed the guy. The guy was in a coma for weeks.”
I stood in the middle of my kitchen, speechless, my mouth agape.
“Word on the street—by which I mean at the post office—was that the guy had beat up Ben’s ex-girlfriend real bad. Ben wouldn’t say a word about that to the cops, though. And the ex-girlfriend never pressed charges.”
I came to. “So … the bastard deserved it?”
Evelyn shrugged and helped herself to more almonds and raisins. “Not sure. The guy’s name is Ralph—I knew him when he was a teenager. Even then, he was a bad apple. But I can’t say anybody deserves to have their head stomped on.”
I nodded. “But a man like that, like Ben—whose only violent offense is vigilante justice for an old girlfriend—doesn’t end up murdering his female roommate and landlord in cold blood! And then try to cover it up so poorly…”
Evelyn shifted positions on her barstool again—this time perched up on top of her heels. “Yeah, sure, but who’s a better suspect?”
I folded my arms across my chest, leaning back against one of my countertops. “Nina Delacroix.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes dramatically. “You really think she could kill somebody? She’s rail thin! A frail lil’ thing. I could take her drunk, blindfolded, and...” she paused for effect, “with one arm tied behind my back, no problem!”
“Yes, but you’re scrappy.” I smiled at her.
“True…” She added a pile of coconut shavings to her birdseed mix.
I turned back toward my countertops, in search of something else to keep my hands busy. “Look, these murders didn’t require any elbow grease! All she had to do was slip some nightshade into one of James’s drinks and trip Leslie down the stairs.” I paused to think it through some more—and the more I thought about it, the more I became convinced that my hunch was much more than a hunch. “Leslie is pretty petite… And I’ll bet she’d had far too much to drink last night—all those younger girls had.”
Evelyn was getting impatient. “But why would Nina want to kill James or Leslie?”
“Nina used to be married to James, and she thought Leslie was James’s new hot, young girlfriend. Women like Nina—with all that make-up and cosmetic work—they want nothing more than to look young!” I opened up one of my countertop drawers and pulled out a pile of silverware I thought could use some reorganizing. “Nina had put all this effort into making herself look young again for her ex-husband, to try to win him back, and then what does he do? He dates Leslie—a 20-something—anyway!”
Evelyn shook her head and frowned. “I don’t know, Claire. I think you’re stretching it a little…”
I knew she was right. At this point, I was grasping at straws. I closed the silverware drawer. But there was something to it—I could feel it!
I just needed to find some kind of missing link… “Well, Nina and James used to be married—maybe there was also some sort of business investment gone wrong, and…” I started pacing in the center of the kitchen, thinking “…and James wanted out! He said he was shuffling around some of his properties—maybe one of them he co-owned with his ex-wife! Plus—I just have a feeling, you know? A gut instinct Nina has something to do with it. She gives me the heeby-jeebies.”
As if on cue, the bed and breakfast landline rang (for whose ownership Al would have surely hung me out to dry). I walked over to the little pantry nook I had transformed into a cute old-fashioned phone booth—my house was blessed with ample kitchen storage—and squinted at the caller I.D. It was Nina Delacroix.
My mouth dropped open.
“Who is it?” asked Evelyn, excited.
“It’s her. It’s Nina.” I stared dumbfounded at the phone, as if it were a ghost.
Evelyn jumped up and out of her stool. “Oh my God! How did you do that? Hold on,” she pretended to scout the kitchen with binoculars, “is this house bugged?”
I ignored her. I suddenly had an uneasy feeling in the pit of my stomach. “What could she possibly want?” I muttered under my breath.
“Maybe she wants to borrow a cup of sugar.” Evelyn sat back down.
I spun away from the booth-nook. “I’m not answering it,” I said wit
h resolve.
“Yeah, I wouldn’t neither.”
“Either.”
Evelyn rolled her eyes and reached for another handful of coconut.
Chapter Ten
Since it was Sunday—Evelyn’s day off—and since, after Star checked out, I didn’t have another guest on the docket until the following weekend, Ev and I decided to spend the afternoon catching up on the case.
We took a very brisk January stroll down to the café, where Evelyn was certain Whitney was working until its 6 pm close. But she wasn’t there. She had called in sick that morning—no doubt because her friend had just been murdered. So we each picked up a latté and a treat—a peanut butter banana muffin for me and a strawberry cream cheese cupcake for Evelyn—then we headed over to Whitney’s place, just to check on her.
Whitney’s apartment was a cute little one-bedroom above the Three Penny Diner. Although it was small—it was an attic apartment with low, vaulted ceilings with exposed beams, and it seemed to get shorter and shorter the further in you went, kind of like a scene from Alice and Wonderland—but it also had floor-to-ceiling windows and thus was flooded with sunlight.
It had been beautifully painted, a different color for each room. The front room, which looked out onto the main street, was a warm pumpkin. The kitchen nook was a pale violet, with two openings that looked out into the front room and the hallway—which was the color of a dark red wine. All kinds of art and knick knacks hung on her walls: tiny mud statues and broken seashells, vintage liquor bottles filled with dried roses and wilted lilac, a collection of copper cups filled with glass marbles, lush hanging vines and delicate bird cages of all shapes and sizes, a cloth New Orleans voodoo doll posed at a miniature custom-made wooden desk—it looked like an art museum in there! Plus, it being above the Three Penny, it smelled deliciously of bakery.
Whitney opened the door holding a bundle of Kleenex to her nose—and burst into tears.
“Oh, puddin’,” Evelyn jumped in to comfort her first, wrapping her arms around her. Since I didn’t know Whitney at all, I figured it was for the best. I closed the door gently behind me and gave them both a wide berth.
