Sweet Tea and Secrets

by Joy Avon

  Callie played with her fork. “Maybe Jamison never knew that he held a bit of vital information. Maybe now that there was new talk about the case, he went back through his notes and things on file and drew a conclusion he had never drawn before. He called someone about it, to ask for clarification maybe, before he turned to the police. That someone asked for a meeting, came to his office, supposedly to talk it over, and—bam!—killed him.”

  Quinn shook his head. “You just suggested that the person involved could have been connected to the company who created the TV series she was a part of. Those people don’t live around here. How would they know that we were digging into the case again? How could any of them just pop up here in Heart’s Harbor and kill Jamison?”

  “Let me make a call.” Callie pulled out the card that Mr. Bates had given her and dialed his number.

  He answered on the fifth ring. “Yes?” It sounded disgruntled.

  “Sorry if I’m disturbing your painting. It’s Callie Aspen. I was with you earlier today. I wanted to ask if you have any idea if people who were staying in Heart’s Harbor around the time of Monica’s disappearance are staying here again. Does the hotel ever notify you of old guests, or do you stay in touch with them to …?”

  Mr. Bates’s breathing rustled down the line. It sounded as if he had run fast to get to the phone before the ringing stopped. “I go to the Cliff Hotel every Thursday night to play bridge. I usually walk around and look at the old place, the guests. Just for fun. Sometimes I do see familiar faces. People who have been guests with me for decades. We have a chat, a laugh. But if guests were with me for a single time, I doubt I’d remember them.”

  That made total sense. “Could you give the hotel a call and find out if they know about any people having stayed with them during the disappearance and now? I mean, they trust you, and it would be so much easier for you to get that information than it would be for me.”

  Mr. Bates didn’t respond at first. Callie was sure he’d just hang up and think she was rude to even ask.

  But he said, “All right, I can do that. But what’s in it for me? I mean, I’ll be taking a risk. We have a killer about, you know.”

  “If we can solve the old disappearance and find out what really happened at the time, you can tell about your part in it. The part of your hotel.”

  Bates laughed softly. “You know how to tempt a vain old man. I’ll make a few calls and let you know how I get along.”

  “Thank you very much. I appreciate it. Bye.”

  Callie lowered the phone and looked at Quinn. “Mr. Bates is going to find out more for us. If there’s anything to find out, that is. He said, and he’s right of course, that if someone stayed at the Cliff Hotel years ago, just for a single stay, he won’t remember that face or a name.”

  “Is it even likely that someone who wanted to talk to Monica about her plans to leave the series would come to the Cliff Hotel?” Peggy asked. “And stay there? Why not meet her away from the hotel and people who might remember something later about an argument, raised voices?”

  Callie nodded. “I know. We’ll have to wait and see.”

  She folded her hands in her lap and focused on Quinn. “You, uh … do you have any idea who your father is? I mean, at the time of her disappearance, Monica had just ended a high-profile relationship. But, doing the math, that can’t have been your father.”

  Quinn shook his head. “I was born when Monica was just a teenager. Before she ever had a part in any show, let alone in a hit series like Magnates’ Wives. Her parents are no longer alive—her father died when she was just a toddler, and her mother died a few years ago—and she didn’t have any known siblings, so I couldn’t turn to any close relatives for information about a possible teenage pregnancy and a baby given up for adoption. There are more distant family members, but I doubt they would have known about something so sensitive. Of course, I did look into her boyfriends, hoping I could find my father there, but those relationships didn’t make the front page until she got famous. It seems she never managed to fall in with the right kind of man. It was always an athlete, an actor, a magnate of some sort. And it never lasted long.”

  Callie frowned. “Mr. Bates mentioned to me that there were flowers delivered for her at the hotel. Several bunches, all with the same card attached, reading ‘You are my life.’ That sounds pretty obsessive.”

  “Meaning she had a stalker?” Quinn said. “Some fan who believed he could woo and marry her?”

  “Possibly. Monica was upset about the flowers and didn’t want to accept them. So they didn’t come from the man she possibly eloped with.”

  Callie pointed at Quinn. “Can you get me a list of men she was involved with? Just so I know a little about them. And who knows, Mr. Bates might come back with information about guests at the Cliff Hotel that we can compare to the list.”

  Quinn nodded. “I’ll have to look at some paperwork in my luggage.”

  The boys came back out, carrying half their toy collection. A brick castle with a drawbridge, wooden farm animals, fluffy puppets, and a race car.

  Quinn rose from the table and went to meet them, kneeling in the grass to look at everything. He calmed Biscuit with one hand, patting him and ensuring he didn’t snatch a toy, while with the other he moved the race car, imitating the roar of the engine. Then he turned it over and explained something, pointing at the wheels.

  Peggy studied him with that same glimmer of tenderness in her eyes that Callie had noticed before.

  She remarked, “Quinn hasn’t had an easy life. And this murder is making all of it even worse.”

  Peggy sighed. “I know. I guess he won’t stick around here as soon as Ace says he is free to leave.”

  “Maybe if he had a reason to …” Callie leaned toward Peggy and said in a low voice, “Quinn is going through so much right now that he probably thinks he shouldn’t involve you and the boys in it. But if you like him and if he likes you, you should give it a chance.”

  Peggy flushed deep. “It’s been just a year since Greg died. I’m not looking to—”

  “I’m just saying that Quinn might think he has to leave right away when it might be good for everybody if he stayed around. Just some free advice.” Callie rose to her feet. “Thanks for a fab meal. I have to run now. I just remembered the Historical Society and Swing It! are rehearsing at Haywood Hall this afternoon, and I want to see how everything is coming along for the Fourth of July party. Enjoy your afternoon off.” She winked at Peggy, who was still red in the face and looking confused.

  Callie left with a spring in her step. Despite the complications of the case, she had a feeling something good could come out of this for Quinn and Peggy. Neither had had the easiest of times lately, and maybe they could understand and support each other now.

  Chapter Ten

  Arriving at Haywood Hall, Callie remembered how different the house had looked in December, wrapped up in a layer of snow, with all the evergreen and sparkly Christmas decorations on the pillars and the railing leading up to the front door. Now the house’s front looked rather sleepy in the summer heat, the curtains drawn against the bright sunshine and the weathervane on top sparkling so brightly Callie had to half-close her eyes to be able to look at it. She parked the station wagon with a bunch of other cars to the left of the house and walked around to the back, lured by the upbeat tunes of woodwind instruments and a double bass.

  On the large back terrace, several couples consisting of men in evening wear and ladies in bright tasseled dresses and feathered headbands moved to the music, whirling around at a dazzling pace. Callie was surprised they didn’t collide with one another.

  A dancing instructor had climbed onto the stone wall surrounding the terrace, to get a better view, and was trying to shout instructions over the music.

  A quartet, equally divided between woodwinds and strings, sat in the open doors leading into the house, giving a tantalizing glimpse of the nineteenth-century interior with its gold-leafed wallpaper, l
arge mirrors, and delicate chairs with embroidered cushions and twirled legs.

  The dance came to an end, the couples freezing in a dramatic final position, the ladies slung casually backward over their partners’ arms, their pearl necklaces dangling almost to the floor.

  The instructor clapped his hands together, shouting, “Wonderful! Take a short break, and then we’ll do the two-step one more time.” Turning his head, he spoke to someone Callie couldn’t see, “This ambiance works wonders for the crew. It’s invigorating.”

  “I’m sure that with an audience they will be even better,” a fragile but warm voice replied. A figure moved in the shadows of the house, and Dorothea Finster stepped out into the light, blinking her eyes and smiling.

  Callie rushed past the dancers to greet her. The elderly owner of Haywood Hall had always had a special place in her heart, from the day she had first come to the house to play on its grounds with Dorothea’s sole relative and future heir, Stephen Du Bouvrais. Just a girl at the time, spending her summers in Heart’s Harbor with Great-aunt Iphy, Callie had loved the house with its many corridors full of old paintings, rooms with large cupboards full of china and crystal glasses, and the library, full of leather-bound volumes in languages she couldn’t read. They had drawn maps of the forest, giving every clearing and old oak a mysterious name and history. And they had fantasized about the people who had lived here and who had thrown parties where live orchestras had played and carriages with distinguished guests had rattled up and down the drive.

  Being able to bring to life some of the history of the house now was amazing, already fulfilling in Dorothea’s lifetime what she had asked Iphy and Callie in her new will: to ensure Haywood Hall would be preserved for future generations. Ever since accepting this momentous task at Christmastime, they had made plans to open up the house for events: cooperating with the Historical Society, a theatrical company looking for a location to perform an Agatha Christie play, and musicians looking for an original venue for a performance. The first-ever summer-night concert recently had been a great success, and Iphy and Callie were making plans to do more concerts the following summer and have more intimate performances indoors all through the year.

  “Callie!” Dorothea stood on tiptoe to hug her. Her grasp was quite firm for such a breakable-looking old lady. But she had enough willpower to have survived many heartaches in her life and still be full of energy for the future of her beloved house. “How good of you to drop by and make sure everything is going to plan. Your furniture arrived safely and is in the old stables.”

  “Thank you for keeping it for me. I feel rather guilty for not having shown my face sooner,” Callie admitted. “But things have been so crazy since I came back to town. Iphy rented a cottage for me, so there are some decisions to make about decorating it, and then the handyman I hired to help me with it got into some trouble.” She fell silent a moment.

  Dorothea nodded gravely. “Joe Jamison’s murder. I’ve known him for so long it seems odd he’s no longer there. He used to come here, you know, when he wanted to look up something in a book I own. He knew a lot about local history. I think he also wrote about it in the Historical Society’s quarterly magazine.”

  “So the members of the Historical Society knew him well?” Callie asked, nodding in the direction of the people who were busy on the lawn. Some of them were dressed up in fishermen’s clothes, others in uniforms from World War Two.

  “Pilots,” Dorothea explained, following her gaze. “Heart’s Harbor delivered a few young men who went to Europe to fight against Hitler. The plane they are bringing in is going to be a real attraction. It’s an original fighter plane, now owned by a private collector. I’m delighted we have the space here at Haywood Hall to make something like that possible.”

  Callie’s smile at Dorothea’s enthusiasm faded when she detected a familiar tall, sunburned figure among the pilots. Dave Riggs, her new neighbor. She couldn’t help wondering why he had been so eager to report to her that he had met Monica Walker while also assuring her that he didn’t know all that much about the woman and that her visit to the lighthouse had been purely for research purposes.

  Nobody else had mentioned this alleged new series Monica had been working on. Had Dave invented it to explain her visit to the lighthouse?

  Dorothea touched her arm. “I hope, with all the unrest just as you’re moving here, you’re not sorry about your decision.”

  “I’m not sure.” Although Callie felt reluctant to mention her feelings to Iphy, who had prepared everything for her move here and seemed so delighted with it, she felt comfortable sharing them with Dorothea. Perhaps the astute elderly lady could give her some advice. “It’s a big step, you know, giving up my job and my apartment. I loved all the traveling and telling my stories to people.”

  “You could do guided tours here, at the Hall. There’s so much to tell people about it. And I’m sure we have international tourists staying nearby too, so you could even keep up your languages. Iphy gushed to me that your French is magnifique.”

  “My French is passable.” Callie nodded in the direction of Dave Riggs. “I couldn’t translate historical novels like his wife does. Do you know Elvira? Dave mentioned to me in passing that she didn’t have an easy life before she married him, and … well, I was curious what he was referring to.”

  “I wouldn’t really know. I’ve met her on several occasions over the years, and she’s always been charming and friendly, but not someone you get close to easily, if you know what I mean. Guarded might be the best word to describe it.”

  Dave had insisted that Elvira hadn’t yet come to Heart’s Harbor when Monica Walker had vanished. But had he been lying? Had she arrived unexpectedly and seen her husband with another woman? Perhaps she had freaked out, thinking he was betraying her, with a TV star no less, and killed Monica. Had she hidden the body, stolen a boat, and made it disappear as well, to suggest that Monica had sailed off to start a new life?

  “Do you know if Elvira is handy with boats?” Callie asked Dorothea.

  “Oh yes, she and Dave have had their own boat for years, taking people out for trips. That was before she had the translation work, I think. They really took on everything they could get back then, to make ends meet.”

  So both of them knew their way about a boat. Interesting.

  Dorothea pointed in the direction of a group of trees. “That’s where they’ll put the table for the sweet tea contest. Every participant is allotted a number, and the jury won’t know who made which tea. To prevent another wedding cake debacle.”

  “Wedding cake debacle?” Callie queried.

  “Two years ago an influential couple wanted to get the best wedding cake for their daughter’s wedding. They asked several local bakers to present a cake and several local sweet tooths to test the samples. It turned out later they had all voted for the same cake because they knew who had made each entry, and the winning baker had bribed them. We won’t have any of that in our sweet tea contest.”

  Dorothea leaned over and added in a whisper, “Mrs. Keats is also participating. I talked her into it. You know how she is, never asking attention for any of her accomplishments. I think her creation with raspberries is quite special.”

  “I’m glad I’m not on the judging panel. It’s going to be very hard to find the grand winner.”

  Dorothea hadn’t seemed to hear her. She was looking around her with a smile of deep satisfaction. “This is how Haywood Hall should be, you know. Alive and full of activity. Just what I wanted when I made the new will.” She squeezed Callie’s arm. “You helped to make my dream come true.”

  * * *

  Having lingered a little while longer in the bustle at Haywood Hall, Callie came back to Book Tea rather late and offered Iphy some help cleaning up after closing time. “You go and sit down for a bit. I bet you intend to stay up late to redo those macarons that didn’t turn out exactly the way you wanted them to.”

  “The taste was all right,” Iphy said w
ith a frown. “But they fell apart too easily. I want to use them to decorate the rim of the base tier of my three-tiered cake for the Fourth of July party.” She walked off, muttering to herself, while Callie took the vacuum cleaner out of the closet.

  Despite the vacuum’s hum and other sounds as she pulled chairs away from tables to clean underneath, Callie became aware of some action in the street near the newspaper building. A police car had arrived, and several men were going in and out of the building. She couldn’t help peeking out the window every once in a while, trying to determine what they were doing.

  Once all the tables were in perfect order for the next day’s guests and she had even straightened every book on the shelves along the wall and picked out dead flowers from the centerpieces that weren’t really all that dead yet, she couldn’t take the tension anymore, so she slipped into her coat, and headed out into the street. She walked down the sidewalk casually as if she was just enjoying the summer evening and kept her eye on the group of locals gathered on the pavement, watching the action.

  A woman on the edge saw her and waved at her. Taking this as her cue, Callie went up to her at once. The woman, in her late fifties, with ash-blonde hair swept back by a gemstone-studded headband and carrying a Pekingese on her arm, enthused, “You’re Iphy’s grand-niece, right? I saw you at Book Tea the other day when I was in with friends. You do have the best brownies I ever tasted in my life. And I try the brownies wherever I go. I’ve been trying to tease the recipe out of Iphy for as long as I can remember, but she won’t budge.”

  “I have no idea what she does when she’s baking,” Callie said quickly. “She won’t let me in on her secrets either. She’s even up and about at night, when no one can disturb her.”

  The woman smiled. “Too bad. But what a terrible thing this is with Joe Jamison. Known him all my life. He used to pull my pigtails in school. And he wrote a really nice piece about my husband’s upholstery business for the eightieth anniversary. Dug up some old black and white photos of my father-in-law, fresh out of school, working outside his tiny workshop when he first started here in town. We had never even seen those photos. But Joe knew the photographer who had taken them, or rather his grandson, who’s now in charge of his archives. Oh, Joe was a treasure trove. Not much he didn’t know about or couldn’t find out about through some connection.” She sighed ruefully. “Now they’re turning everything inside out to look for more on that boat.”