Dread on Arrival (29 page)

“Dina, you’re a genius!” Quill said.

“I have to be. My boyfriend’s career is on the line.”

“I hate to be the grinch in the group, but if she was clever enough to trick Neville Peterson, would she be brainless enough to leave her fingerprints on that trompe l’oeil? Not only that, but there are bound to be a bunch of other prints on there, too. If we don’t have a benchmark for her fingerprints, even if they are on the painting, they’ll be useless as evidence.”

Quill started to pace. “Rose Ellen told me she picked the painting up at a flea market somewhere. Belter told me
Your Ancestor’s Attic
made a practice of buying antiques cheap and selling high from prospects that showed up to audition for the show.

“I’m wondering a lot about that painting and I need to sit down and think.” Quill sat down in the rocker and got it going with a push of her toe. “Now, who’s more believable? A murderess or an honest pawnbroker in flip-flops?”

“You’ve lost me, Sis.”

“First thing we do is get Devora Watson up here. And the second thing—can you Google an address for me, Dina? I’ve got an idea.”

20

∼Potato Crepes with Caviar∼

1 pound white potatoes5 eggs1 tablespoon flour1¾ cups sour cream½ shallot, peeled and crushedGrated peel of lemonSprigs of dillSalt and pepper to taste1 tablespoon butter for each crepe4½ ounces salmon or white fish caviarCook potatoes in boiling salted water for twenty minutes. Let cool. Peel and grate in food processor. Add eggs, flour, sour cream, and shallot. Season with lemon peel, pepper, and salt. Mix well. Divide the batter into four parts. Melt butter in frying pan, and spoon the batter evenly into the pan. Sauté until golden on each side.
Serve each of the four crepes with one teaspoon sour cream, a sprig of dill, and a fourth of the caviar.
Ida Mae Clarkson liked the look of Hemlock Falls. There was a lot of snow on the ground. She hadn’t dealt with snow for years, not since she and Frank had left Madison, Wisconsin, for Delray Beach, Florida. But it suited this cobblestone village. Christmas was more than three weeks off, but that’s what the village made her feel like. Christmassy.

She liked the look of this Provencal suite, too. The blue-and-yellow patterns on the duvet and the old settees were just about perfect. There was a fire in the small fireplace, scenting the air with pine and apples.

And it really was astonishing that Aunt Cecilia’s trump loy painting of the fountain had ended up here, of all places, right over the fireplace mantel in this elegant room. That pretty innkeeper had asked her if she wanted it back, but she’d had enough of that painting after being embarrassed by the smarty-pants Edmund Tree on national TV. The innkeeper could have it, thank you very much. As for Edmund Tree—well, he’d gotten what was coming to him, hadn’t he?

Ida Mae tweaked the lace scarf at her throat and smoothed the lapels of her Alfred Dunner black velveteen jacket. She’d looked up the Inn on the Internet, right after the phone call that told her she and Frank had won this all-expenses-paid weekend. It was famous for its food and the setting of the waterfall. She’d gone right out and ordered the jacket to celebrate.

“You ’bout done there, Ida Mae?” Frank shrugged into his sports coat with a reluctant frown. He hadn’t been happy about leaving his shorts and sandals behind in Florida, but he could hardly go to a gourmet dinner at a five-star Inn in his flip-flops.

“I’m done, Frank. How do I look?”

“Beautiful.” He swept her in his arms, bent her over, and gave her a kiss. “My bride.”

“Old fool,” Ida Mae said fondly. “Let’s go on down.”

They took the elevator—Ida Mae’s shoes pinched a bit, and she didn’t want to chance the stairs—and went through the small, delightfully furnished foyer into the dining room.

The dining room was magnificent. There was a full moon out, and Ida Mae made out the faint, silver reflection of the falls outside the floor-to-ceiling windows. The tables sparkled with wineglasses and fine cutlery. Arrangements of white carnations and pine boughs sat in the middle of each table.

There weren’t as many diners as Ida Mae had expected, what with the Inn being so famous. A tall, good-looking man with gray eyes and a deepwater tan sat at one table. Next to him was a young, fair-haired guy who blushed bright red when she looked at him. The other tables seemed to be occupied by a different assortment of people. There was a pudgy guy in one corner who looked as uncomfortable as Frank in his sports jacket and tie. She thought the man looked familiar. She poked Frank. “My gosh, Frank, that’s Belter Barcini! You know, from
Pawn-o-Rama
!” She wasn’t surprised to find celebrities here, not at all. “He got married, you know. To some nice hairdresser who gets to do all of the makeup for the show.”

There were three other ladies with him, an older one, who wore a brilliant gold lamé top and a feather boa, and two younger women with very distinctive hairdos. Ida Mae wasn’t sure which one was the wife.

“You sure this dinner is with the contest?” Frank hissed in her ear.

“Darn sure,” Ida Mae said confidently.

The dark-haired hostess caught sight of them and came up with a smile. “Mr. and Mrs. Clarkson? I’m Kathleen. I’m glad to say your table’s ready.”

Ida Mae and Frank followed her across the room.

Kathleen stopped at a table for two. An unhappy-looking man in a three-piece suit sat across from a small, dumpy woman in a caftan that looked homemade. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I forgot to bring your salad out. If you’ll just give me a moment, I’ll be right back. Mrs. Clarkson? This is another one of our guests.”

Ida Mae bent forward. “My goodness!” she said. “Why, I know you! You bought that tromp loy off of me after I was on
Ancestor’s Attic
. It’s Smith. Mary Smith. How have you been, honey?”

Mary Smith jumped, as if Ida Mae had stuck a knitting needle up her backside. “Never seen you before in my life,” she whispered.

“Now,” Ida Mae said kindly, “I’d know you anywhere from those poor scarred hands of yours, remember?” She took Mary Smith’s left hand in hers. “See? Poor Mary got these little scars from putting out a kitchen fire. Remember, honey?” She turned to Frank, beaming. “I remember the name Mary Smith because it’s such an ordinary name. It’s funny, though, it’s so ordinary that not many people have it? You remember that, Mary. We laughed a lot about it. Whatever are you doing here?”

The man with the deepwater tan and his younger partner got up from the table. The younger one had a pair of handcuffs. “What Ms. Watson is doing here,” said the young man, “is getting arrested. Devora Watson, also known as Rose Ellen Whitman, also known as Mary Smith. You have the right to remain silent. You have the right to an attorney …”

Epilogue

Quill raised a glass of Moët & Chandon champagne and swept a low bow. “We couldn’t have done it without you, Mrs. Clarkson.”

She had shepherded the Barcinis and the Clarksons into the Tavern Lounge after Myles, Davy Kiddermeister, and his deputies had taken Rose Ellen away to be arraigned for the murder of Edmund Tree.

Quill was shaken.

Mrs. Clarkson was bewildered.

Mr. Clarkson sank his head between his shoulders and looked as if he wanted to be back in Delray Beach.

Josephine Barcini looked grave.

Belter asked for two Molson Goldens from Nate the bartender and drank both of them one after the other. Nadine Peterson Barcini patted his hand and sipped at a Brandy Alexander.

Mrs. Barcini was simply quiet. Then she said, “What you couldn’t have done without is my boy.”

Nadine Peterson Barcini patted Belter on the shoulder. “That’s right.”

“I don’t understand a thing about what just happened,” Mrs. Clarkson said. “Who was that woman? She wasn’t Mary Smith?”

Quill said sadly, “She wasn’t Mary Smith. And she wasn’t Rose Ellen Whitman. She was Edmund Tree’s half sister, Devora Watson, and she murdered her half brother for his twenty-million-dollar estate.”

Ida Mae’s eyes widened. “Glory,” she said. “I read about that in the
Palm Beach Post
. I’ll tell you what I thought. I thought it was that woman chef.”

“Clarissa Sparrow?” Quill said, startled. “For heaven’s sake. Why?”

“Stands to reason. It was her kitchen. But you say it was Mary Smith? I sold Aunt Cecilia’s painting to a murderer?”

“She wasn’t a murderer then,” Frank Clarkson said heavily. “If I’ve got that right. So don’t you go puffing off to the girls at the coffee club, Ida Mae. When did this Mary Smith decide to turn to crime?”

“My guess is pretty early on. At least two years ago, when the woman we knew as Rose Ellen Whitman showed up as a buyer for
Your Ancestor’s Attic
TV show. She is—was—very beautiful and she knew a lot about antiques, and she caught Edmund Tree’s eye right away.

“Rose Ellen’s real name is Devora Watson. Edmund’s birth mother divorced his father soon after Edmund was born and moved to California. She traded her little boy to his father for a generous settlement in the divorce.” Quill stopped speaking for a moment and took a sip of the wine. That fact that Edmund’s mother had given up her own child for a mass of money had made her ache for Edmund Tree.

“In any event, Edmund’s mother didn’t keep the money for long. She married a man named Art Watson, who left her soon after she became pregnant with Devora. She made a couple of attempts to extort money from Edmund after that, but he resented her, poor man, and refused to give her a cent. She died when Devora was fifteen.

“Devora grew up hating her half brother. She took up … um … I suppose you could call it the oldest profession …”

“Hooking,” Belter said briefly. “Poor gal was a hooker.”

“And put herself through UCLA. She has a fine arts degree, you know. If she’d only …” Quill sighed. “Anyway. She targeted Edmund as the man who owed her. She got the job on
Ancestor’s Attic
. I don’t know if she’d intended to kill him all along or not. I do know that she made a practice of skimming off what she could of the undiscovered treasures the show turned up as it traveled across the country. And I know that Edmund must have supported her in that. In any event, her acquisition of your trompe l’oeil painting, Ida Mae, was typical of the way she scooped things up. She’d disguise herself as Mary Smith, an avid fan of the show, and approach owners of all kinds of old and interesting things. Some of them she resold in her antique shop here in Hemlock Falls. Some of them she took to the big auction houses in New York and Paris and Rome. It didn’t seem to matter if she was going to make a huge amount of money, or just a couple of hundred dollars. If she thought she could make a profit from a piece, she went after it.”

“I’ve known people like that,” Ida Mae said. “I taught sixth grade for twenty-two years in Madison, Wisconsin, and I’ve pretty much seen it all. There’s a few kids—not many—well, when you offer them a straight way to do something or a crooked way, they’ll take the crooked way every time.”

Quill wasn’t so sure about that, so she said, “My goodness.”

“So we’ve got Devora Watson as Rose Ellen Whitman, plotting revenge,” Josephine Barcini said. “Go on, Mrs. McHale.”

“My personal opinion is that her plan evolved as time went on. My husband Myles isn’t so sure. Anyway, Edmund was attracted to her, Edmund asked her to marry him, and Rose Ellen decided it was time to revenge her mother. Time to revenge herself. Myles thinks she picked up the rat poison from somewhere outside of Hemlock Falls, but we don’t know for sure. She dropped it into the Marsala in the melee surrounding the slam, conned one of our less alert deputies in the matter of fingerprints, and left Rose Ellen Whitman behind.

“She was clever about that, too. She made an attempt to sue Edmund’s estate on the basis of the promises he made to her—and who knows? If she’d been successful, she may have left her real identity as Devora Watson back in San Diego. But she wasn’t successful, so Rose Ellen disappeared, and Devora arrived at the lawyers’ door, ready to claim her inheritance.”

“It’s like one of those TV movies,” Ida Mae said. “This is amazing. I’m amazed, Frank. Aren’t you?”

“How did you catch her?” Frank demanded.

“The artist’s eye,” Belter said, unexpectedly poetic. “Quill seen her on TV and looked through that disguise right away.”

Quill cleared her throat. “That’s true.”

“You’re a genuine artist, you see. Your eyes can’t be fooled.” Belter burped and patted his belly in satisfaction.

“Yes, well. Devora had covered her tracks really well. There had to be some hard evidence that she was really Rose Ellen Whitman out there, but I was darned if I could figure out a legal way to get it. She sold your aunt’s painting to us, you know, and we checked to see if there were any fingerprints on that, but of course, without a set of prints we knew to be Rose Ellen’s to compare them to, we were up the proverbial creek, paddle-less.”

“That’s when you called me!” Ida Mae exclaimed. “I didn’t win a grand prize after all!” She slapped the tabletop. “I remember that clear as clear. You called me up, said I’d won this fabulous weekend for two …”

“And then I asked you if you were the same Ida Mae Clarkson that had been on
Your Ancestor’s Attic.
Yes. And what had you done with the painting?”

“And I said I sold it to this Mary Smith.”