Tempest in a Teapot (A Teapot Collector Mystery) (25 page)

She slipped on a pair of tennies and, followed by Pearl, galloped down the steps and wound her way through the kitchen, hoping she’d be in time to help, or at least scold Nana for doing the labor herself. But when she got to the street, all she could see was the garbage can and no Nana. How the heck . . . ?

“Nana? Where are you . . . oh!” Sophie saw a pair of slippered feet sticking out from behind the garbage can. As she raced toward her grandmother, someone ran up behind her and scooped up Pearl, who yowled indignantly and struggled to get free.

The hooded figure, face shadowed in darkness, muttered, “Keep your nose out of everyone else’s business, or you’ll suffer. We’ll start with the cat.”

Sophie shrieked, “Let her go!”

He tossed Pearl down and raced off. Torn between following and taking care of her grandmother, Sophie chose to scoop up Pearl and go to help Nana, who was now clambering to her feet, quivering all over with fear.

Chapter 23

“W
ho do you think did it?” Laverne asked Sophie the next morning.

Sophie shook her head, staring out the window toward Belle Époque. The attack was deeply troubling. She feared that even the police, who had come rapidly when she called 911, couldn’t stop a determined killer. Wally Bowman and the detective agreed that given the attacker’s words, it had to be related to the murder next door. Their officers scoured the neighborhood, but the attacker was nowhere to be found. Sophie spent the night in her grandmother’s apartment, not content to be even one floor away.

“I don’t know,” Sophie said, in response to Laverne’s question. “But I know who I suspect.” She related her conclusions of the night before.

Nana limped into the kitchen, looking exhausted. “I’ll be glad when all of this is over,” she moaned, getting a mug from the mug tree on the counter.

“You sit!” Sophie said, jumping up. “I’ll get your tea. After what you’ve been through . . .” She shook her head and grabbed the teapot, as Pearl ambled in and wound around her feet, none the worse for the trauma of the night before.

Nana slumped down in a chair and Pearl jumped up on her lap. Nana hadn’t argued with Sophie about getting her own tea, and she normally would have. Laverne cast her a worried glance, brows raised.

“Don’t go fussing about me just because I’m letting someone else get my tea,” Nana said, hugging the cat to her in a fierce embrace. “I’ll be fine, but at my age aren’t I entitled to take it easy sometimes?”

“You sure are,” Laverne said, promptly. “It’s just that we’ve been telling you that for a while, but you never let us take care of you.”

“Maybe I’ve decided I should. Anyway, you were talking about the crime, the
real
crime, poor Vivienne Whittaker’s death.” She shifted the cat and pulled a paper out of her housecoat pocket. “I tried to figure out a list of suspects. Like Sophie said, it ended up being everyone at the tea the day Vivienne was killed!”

“I know,” Sophie said, putting the steaming mug in front of her grandmother. “But surely we can eliminate some.”

“Like Gilda?” Laverne said. “That woman couldn’t poison anyone unless it was with bad cooking.”

“And Mrs. Earnshaw,” Sophie agreed, taking her grandmother’s list and drawing a line through them both.

“It’s her bargain hunting that’ll kill someone. She never saw day-old anything she wouldn’t buy and pass off as fresh!” Laverne said.

Nana frowned at the paper. “I just can’t see that Belinda, the mayor’s wife, as doing anything. She seems like such an inoffensive little thing! My bets are on Florence Whittaker, Marva Harcourt, Gretchen Harcourt, or Francis himself.”

“You think he would kill his own mother?” Laverne’s dark face wrinkled in a troubled frown. They had gone over it again and again, but still, it was shocking to consider.

Nana shook her head. “I just don’t know anymore. I can’t believe he would, but you really never know.”

Sophie was alarmed by her grandmother’s weary willingness to consider Francis the villain. “I just can’t believe he’d do it!”

Laverne shrugged. “If you’d said two weeks ago that there would even
be
a murder next door, I would have said you were crazy. We can’t rule anyone out!”

Nana said, “I’m just
afraid
to rule anyone out.”

“So we’re back to square one, with everyone who had access on the list of suspects, including Phil Peterson.”

“Poor Thelma. If he’s guilty . . . just imagine how she’ll feel!” Nana shook her head.

“I’m really angry. I’ve never been so afraid in my life as when I saw you lying on the ground, hurt,” she said to her grandmother. “And to threaten poor Pearl? That sweet cat never did anyone harm in her life! I want this over, and I want it over soon. I know the police are doing their best, but I almost feel like we have a better shot of figuring this out than they do. We should have some kind of a gathering and invite all of the people who had opportunity or motive to do it, even if they weren’t on the scene.”

“Then what?” Laverne said.

“Then we watch, listen and make comments. Maybe one of them will reveal something if we put them all together.”

“It works in the movies!” Laverne said. “But I don’t know about real life.”

“It might be worth a try.” Nana sat up straighter. “We’ll only have one chance with all the suspects together.”

“I was thinking about how we could get them all here,” Sophie said. “Maybe we could make it a memorial tea to honor Vivienne’s charity work?”

“Good idea!” Laverne said. “Bigwigs can’t resist making it look like they’re committed to charitable causes, even if they only do it to network. Probably never heard of the widow’s mite,” she grumbled, referring to the biblical parable.

“It’s a good thought, Sophie, and I hope I have another one,” Nana said. “I want to hold it over at Thelma’s.”

“At Belle Époque, right where the murder happened?” Sophie asked.

Nana nodded. “Make the guilty squirm.”

“Do you think Mrs. Earnshaw will go along with the plan?”

“Old fool ought to, with you two trying to help her!” Laverne said.

“She’ll do it if Cissy says it’s a good idea,” Nana commented.

“So I’d better get Cissy on our side,” Sophie said. “But I don’t know whether to tell her everything or not.”

“Do you know, I never once thought of Cissy as a suspect?” Nana said.

“I considered it,” Sophie admitted. “But not seriously. Is that strange?”

“Not at all,” Laverne said. “It just means we know that child better than to believe her capable of it.”

The two older women set to planning the menu for the memorial tea, and Sophie promised to design invitations and hand deliver them. Her mind was still working furiously on the problem of who killed Vivienne Whittaker, but she was also wondering who would have the nerve to attack Nana. Everyone in Gracious Grove adored Rose Freemont.

She hadn’t recognized the voice, nor the figure, but the person—probably a man—had been growling and was hunched over. She must have been asking the wrong questions and had endangered Nana, and that just wouldn’t do.

So it was imperative that they figure it out. First things first: Get Cissy on board with the charity memorial, without letting her in on the secret motive behind it. She thought for a moment, then called her friend. “Cissy, how are you? How is Francis today?” she asked. Cissy replied that they were both all right, and Sophie launched into an explanation of their intent to put on a charity memorial on a more personal scale to honor Vivienne Whittaker. “I think we could do a better job to honor her than the country club, I mean the true essence of who she was. What do you think?”

“I think it could be a good idea,” she said, slowly, sounding unsure.

Sophie immediately continued, saying, “We were wondering, though, if you could talk your grandmother into having it at Belle Époque?”

There was a pause, then Cissy said, “Why would you want to have it there? Why not Auntie Rose’s, away from the . . . uh, the scene of the crime?”

Sophie was ready for that. “Nana is concerned for your grandmother, Cissy. Business has fallen off at Belle Époque since the murder, right? If we have the event there, it will signal the public that the tearoom is open and ready for business, and that it’s safe to go there.”

“Ah, I get it! Public Relations 101 . . . appearance is everything.”

“Right!”

There was silence for a minute. “I guess we can try it, but it’ll mean convincing Grandma to go ahead. She’s kinda difficult.”

No kidding
, Sophie thought. “I’m sure you could get her to agree if you tell her that it will be good for business. I’m still working toward resolving that old feud between our grandmothers. Maybe this will help, if we’re all working together? We’ll take care of the menu, all she has to supply is the venue.”

“Okay, so when do you want to do this?”

“Is this Sunday afternoon all right? I’m going to have the invitations printed and hand deliver them myself.” She paused for a beat, then added, “Oh, and Cissy? Please don’t invite anyone yourself. I’d rather do this with the invitations so we can be sure to get the right folks there.”

“Okay,” she said. “Are you inviting Gretchen?”

“Yes, of course.”

“What about Dana?”

“Uh, I don’t know.” Sophie thought quickly. Dana was a good coconspirator and one of the few people who could not have committed the crime. “Do you want her there?”

“She could be helpful.”

“Helpful?” For a moment Sophie thought Cissy had caught on to their plot to uncover the murderer of Vivienne Whittaker, but then she continued.

“She’s great at pitching in to serve food, and all that. Gretchen would have a fit if I asked
her
to help, and we can’t leave it all up to Gilda, poor old dear, on her day off!”

Sophie wondered how Dana would appreciate being volunteered to help, but she made a swift decision to appeal to their friend’s sneaky side. “I’ll invite her myself,” she said. “Don’t you worry about it.”

The quick copy place out near the college did a great job with the invitations Sophie carefully designed on her laptop, and Cissy called late that night to let her know that her grandma had acquiesced, after a lot of grumbling and a promise from Cissy to help her get ready for the memorial.

So the next day Sophie, envelope of invitations on the seat beside her, checked the list she and Nana and Laverne had made.

• Gretchen and Hollis Harcourt
  
• Marva and Holly Harcourt
  
• Mayor and Mrs. Michael Blenkenship
  
• Nuñez Ortega and Julia Dandridge
  
• Shep Hammond
  
• Harvey Leathorne
  
• Oliver Stanfield
  
• Forsythe Villiers
  
• Randy and SuLinn Miller
  
• Francis Whittaker
  
• Florence Whittaker
  

She was inviting a couple more folks, of course, like Jason—she just liked having him around—and even Phil Peterson, who she could not eliminate from her list of suspects.

One of the people on the list was a killer; someone, with malice in their heart, had laced a cupcake with poison and arranged it so that Vivienne would eat it and die in agony. That was easier to imagine in some of the invitees than others.

Sophie had begun to like Gretchen Harcourt after she showed up and acted like she was a plain-ole country girl out of her depth. But after seeing her sneaking around with Forsythe Villiers, who seemed to have his finger in the whole Leathorne and Hedges development pie, she had moved to distrust. Was the girl devious and vindictive enough to kill Vivienne Whittaker, though? And if so, why? Did it have something to do with her mother-in-law, who seemed to be tied in with the development coalition?

Then there was the mayor and his sly conference with Marva, Shep Hammond and Harvey Leathorne . . . they had chosen an odd place to talk, at the memorial service for a woman they swore was a Gracious Grove benefactor. What had come up that made a confab so important? Was it Phil’s appearance, as it seemed to be by Leathorne’s words about the “boy”? But why? Phil couldn’t be in on any of it, could he?

Or . . . were they worried that he was about to spill something he knew? If she could only get ahold of Phil, she’d ask him herself, but he seemed to have dropped off the edge of the world after being released from jail, where he had been briefly held until he sobered up, according to Cissy. She’d need to find Phil, because she wanted him at the memorial tea at his grandmother’s.

Shep Hammond she out and out did not trust; who could trust a lech?

Maybe by getting them all together Sophie, Nana and Laverne could figure it out. The event had to be managed carefully to make sure everyone she invited came to the tea, and that no stragglers snuck in.

The invitation read:

You are cordially invited to a memorial tea and charity event dedicated to the memory of the late Mrs. Vivienne Whittaker. Time: Sunday, 2–4
P.M.
Venue: Belle Époque Inn and Tearoom. Please bring a cash donation or check made out to Foodies for Families and be prepared to speak briefly on what Mrs. Whittaker did for the charities of Gracious Grove.
*Note:
The media have been alerted, and we hope that they will attend and report on the event to highlight the primary benefactors in our beautiful town!

That was to guarantee the media hogs among the group would attend, but she had no notion of including reporters. Nope, this was a private shindig. Sophie had carefully worded it so that everyone invited would attend, for fear that others would appear more charitable than they. She set off to deliver the invitation to the easiest guest first. Where would be the best place to accost the mayor of Gracious Grove?

• • •

L
ater that day, weary and sick of smiling, Sophie pulled up to the bookstore. She slumped into the store, the cheery bell tinkling overhead, and was greeted by Beauty, who thumped down off the cash desk and wound around her feet, welcoming her back as a frequent visitor. “Hey, Dana,” Sophie said, throwing her purse down on the floor and stooping to pet the gorgeous cat.