The Grim Steeper: A Teapot Collector Mystery (8 page)

“Thank you!” Sophie said.

“Did you make them?”

“I did. I make them regularly for the tearoom, usually in pink and green, Auntie Rose’s colors.” She told them about her education in New York, and her restaurant, In Fashion.

“And you run this establishment?” the woman asked, looking up at the Auntie Rose sign.

“No, this is my grandmother’s place. My name is Sophie Taylor.”

The woman stopped and eyed her. “Ah, the instructor’s friend.”

Sophie noted the frostiness in her tone. “Ma’am, I don’t know what you’ve heard, but Jason is
not
involved in that grading problem. I’ve known him a long time, and he’d never do anything underhanded.”

“Young lady, when you have lived as long as I, you will know that even people you think you know can surprise you, and not in a good way. He and Dean Asquith do not get along; Dale has told us all about it. It sounds like spite or revenge to me. I’d be more careful who you back.”

Sophie stifled the urge to snarl, and simply said, “He didn’t
do
anything, and if Dean Asquith says differently, then he’s the one who will look like a fool.” She took a deep breath; there she went running her mouth again. Judging by the woman’s angry stare, it hadn’t gone over well. Stiffly she added, “If you’d like to go in, my grandmother, Rose Freemont, and her business partner, Laverne Hodge, are inside giving tours and talking about her teapot collection.”

“That would be lovely,” the woman replied, her tone frosty. “I may want to hold a tea here one day for my sorority sisters. I went to Cruickshank, you know, in the sixties, and now I am
chairwoman
of the Board of Governors.” Sophie opened the door and held it for the group. Vince and Brenda surged in after the board members. The dean’s gaggle had lingered at Belle Époque. Cissy was doing her best to help them, but it
didn’t look like it was going well, and it didn’t help that Gilda appeared to be berating the dean.
What on earth?

Dana slunk across the lane to listen in, then scooted back, her eyes gleaming with malicious amusement. “Gilda is telling them what horrible people they are for sidelining Thelma and ignoring her. She told the dean’s wife that Thelma Mae Earnshaw was twice as good as Rose Freemont, but that Rose was always stealing her thunder and copying her ideas.”

“Oh, lord, Dana, we have to
do
something!”

The dean waved Gilda off and led the way to Auntie Rose’s. He cast a long, steady look back, and Gilda, eyes wide, shot into the tearoom.

“That is one exceptionally strange woman,” he was saying to his wife, as they strolled up to Sophie’s tea table. He eyed Sophie. “I know you. You’re Jason’s young friend.”

Jason moved forward. “Sophie Taylor, sir. You met the other night at the basketball game reception.”

Sophie glanced at him; his voice was tight with tension. What was up?

The dean leveled a long, steady look at Jason, his heavy-lidded eyes expressionless and his mouth turned down. “Yes. Just so. Why was that . . . that
woman
saying you steal all their ideas?” he asked, turning to Sophie.

How to explain? She took a deep breath. “That’s Gilda Bachman, sir. She works for Thelma Mae Earnshaw, the owner of Belle Époque. She’s, uh . . . overly loyal and imagines schemes where there are none. Julia Dandridge and my grandmother, Rose Freemont, got together to plan our Fall Fling offerings. We tried to include Mrs. Earnshaw but . . .” Sophie shrugged. “She wasn’t interested.”

“Dale, enough chitchat,” his wife said. “We came to sample the tea.”

Sophie served tea and told the dean that the Board of Governors members had gone inside. He and his wife entered Auntie Rose’s to look around; Sophie was relieved, knowing that Nana and Laverne would soothe the gentleman and make a good impression. But the couple was only in there a few minutes when he came out and shoved his cup at her, splashing tea over her clean white chef’s coat. “Is this your idea of a joke?” he bellowed, his words echoing in the crisp evening air.

“I beg your pardon?”

“My tea is
salty
. Is this because of Jason and his troubles at Cruickshank? If that’s the case, you have chosen poor timing for a joke or some . . . some petty revenge.” His voice was carrying. They were joined by the board members and the others, who drifted out the door and toward the dean. “This is outrageous!” he declared, as his audience grew.

The chairwoman sniffed, clutched her purse to her chest and said, “I’m not surprised.”

“I’m so sorry,” Sophie said, mortified. She took a sip of what tea was left in is cup; it
was
salty. What was going on? “I’ll make you a fresh cup, sir.”

“Never mind. I don’t want any now. Who knows what would be in it next?”

“But I assure you, sir—” Sophie glanced over at Belle Époque and saw Thelma Mae Earnshaw’s pouchy face in the wide window of the tearoom. There was a grin on the woman’s face. Somehow, some way, that woman had something to do with the salty tea. Sophie had thought Mrs. Earnshaw’s long history of dirty tricks was over, but apparently not.

Chapter 8

T
he college group stalked away in the wake of the dean’s departure. Vince and Brenda trailed them, and they were shadowed by Sherri Shaw, Tara Mitchells and the unknown dark-haired fellow, who caught up with the dean and drew him aside.

“
She
did it! I don’t know how, but she did it,” Sophie muttered to Dana.

“Did what?”

“Tampered with our sugar.” Sophie grabbed a fistful of the sugar packets and held them up to the light. Sure enough, a couple looked like they had been slit open. She tore into one of the tampered-with packets, licked her finger and tested the contents. “I don’t believe it! This is the absolute worst. She actually filled these with salt and put them in with our others.”

“
Who
did?”

Sophie cast a look across the lane. “Somehow, some way, Thelma Mae Earnshaw did it.”

The strolling tea party ended in a jumble of good-byes, voices calling out through the dark, people hugging and saying adieu. Some folks lingered, chatting. Others headed for cars, parked along the street or downtown. Sophie watched, pondering the evening, wondering what would become of Jason now that she had single-handedly torpedoed his shot at making nice with the dean. It was depressing. She felt like marching right over and telling off Thelma Mae Earnshaw and her frizzy-haired henchwoman Gilda, but she knew she would never do it. It had been hammered into her early (by Nana) to be respectful of her elders, even if those elders were frustratingly juvenile and impossible to deal with.

And besides, she had done much worse by railing at the chairwoman of the Board of Governors, who was likely at that very minute poisoning Jason’s chances by spewing lies into the dean’s ear.

Jason loped toward her. “Soph, how are you doing?”

“I’m so sorry, Jason!” she wailed, as he hugged her tight. She explained about the salted tea and the dean’s accusations, and her own attempt at intervention in his plight.

“Not your fault,” he said, stroking her hair and hugging her tight. “Not your fault at all. It’s not over ’til it’s over. That’s what they say in sports, and I believe it.”

“So it’s okay? Do you know who he’s going to announce as the guilty party?”

His expression in the dim light from the lamp over the table looked evasive, to Sophie. “We had a talk earlier, that didn’t . . . well, it didn’t go quite as I’d planned. But I’m going to talk to him again right now, corner him and
make
him listen. I won’t be blamed for something I didn’t do,” he said, his voice hard with anger. “I’m going to point out to him that if he pins it on me and an investigation finds the real culprit,
it won’t look good for the college.” He hugged her tightly, then released. “I have to go if I’m going to catch him. I saw him talking to that woman, his, uh . . .”

“His girlfriend? I know about her, Jason. I saw her here.”

“Oh, okay. Yeah. I saw him talking to her a few minutes ago. I’m going to catch up with him.”

“I also saw him talking to another person, a guy, dark haired, average height.”

“Crap.” He scanned the street, but the dean had disappeared. “I’ll have to find him. I
need
to speak with him. Talk to you later!”

*   *   *

R
ose sipped a cup of tea at the table in the tearoom kitchen as Sophie, downhearted, cleared the last of the clutter, in and out from the front of the tearoom. It had not gone as her granddaughter had hoped and worked toward, which was unfortunate, since it was one more “failure”—not really, but that was how she would see it—that she had caused. Rose wished she could impart the wisdom of over eighty years, that few things were as important as they seemed at the time, that failure was never final, that success in life was often not felt until the twilight years. Sophie was young but, burdened with a mother who seemed to deliberately misunderstand the stellar value of her daughter’s work ethic and talent, she mistrusted herself, underestimating her own value.

Sophie toted in another box and set it down on the kitchen counter, unloading the empty treat plates and trays to wash by hand in the deep stainless steel sink.

“Honey, sit for a moment,” Rose said, patting the table opposite her. The kitchen blinds were drawn and just the light over the sink was on; the kitchen felt cozy and intimate.

“I have some stuff to do, Nana,” Sophie replied, taking off her stained chef’s coat and draping it over the back of a chair. “I want to get it all done and go to bed.”

“Sit! I need to talk to you.”

Sophie obeyed, sitting down in the chair opposite her grandmother and slipping her phone out of her jeans pocket, glancing down at it. She was likely waiting for a text from Jason. She was worried, Rose knew, that the events of the evening had damaged whatever little reliance remained between the dean and Jason Murphy. She was blaming herself for not noticing Thelma’s creative interference, which Rose would deal with on the morrow, and for speaking up in her friend’s defense, ill timed as it was. “Honey, listen to me,” Rose said.

Sophie looked up from her phone, then laid it screen down on the table, folding her hands and paying attention.

“You did everything you could to make it all work out. Jason’s career does not hang by the slim strand of a tainted cup of tea. Jason is a good man; even if things go badly, he’d never blame you for something so silly. I know Thelma did this somehow, but in the end it won’t be what hurts Jason’s career, nor will it be your harangue at the chairwoman. It will be someone who sabotaged him at the college, or the dean, too lazy to find the real culprit behind the changed grade.”

“That’s what Jason said. He’s not going down without a fight.”

“He’s a winner, honey, and he’s like you; never count him out.”

Sophie sighed. “I guess you’re right. I feel like I let him down.”

“You didn’t. Put that thought right out of your head. I’ve learned the hard way that you can’t single-handedly make or break someone’s life. If I could, I’d have changed my
relationship with your mother long ago, but it has to be a two-way street.”

“What do you mean?”

“I handled Rosalind all wrong when she was a teenager, minimized her feelings. Didn’t take her worries about her weight seriously. I feel like I created, in a way, her obsession with her looks, her aversion to fat. If I could go back, I’d change things. I have tried to talk to her in the years since, but I believe now that it has to come from her. She has to be prepared to talk and to listen. I’ll keep telling her how much I love her. Someday I hope she’ll come around.”

“I don’t understand what that has to do with this.”

Rose thought for a second. She was tired, and had to take her time to sort her thoughts out. “I guess I’ve been thinking about your mother a lot lately. You’re right; it doesn’t have much to do with this. What I’m trying to say, honey, is that we’re all doing the best we can in a difficult world.
You
did the best you could, and Jason knows that. If the dean is going after Jason, it won’t be because of salt in his tea or a miffed board member.”

“Okay, message received,” Sophie said, springing up and kissing her grandmother’s cheek.

*   *   *

L
averne and Sophie cleaned up the last of the debris, finding paper napkins in the Japanese maple’s branches, cupcake liners in the hedge and even an upset teacup on the ground under the tree. Gilda and Cissy were tidying over at Belle Époque, but Sophie was in no mood to talk to anyone. She was tired and cross and resentful. Thelma Mae Earnshaw, despite what Nana said, had been a thorn in her side for years. Just when Sophie thought they had everything worked out, the woman got into a snit and went at it again.

Laverne drove home with some treats in a container for her elderly father. Cissy left, too, without a word to Sophie, whether out of embarrassment over her grandmother’s trick, or upset about something. As usual. Nana was already in bed softly snoring, Pearl curled up with her, so Sophie tiptoed upstairs and sat cross-legged on her bed hoping for a text or call from Jason to tell her what happened with the dean.

It disturbed her deeply that Jason was being blamed for something he didn’t do. The unfairness of it rankled, as unfairness always had. When she was a kid, her brothers could do no wrong. While at the Hamptons, if they tracked sand and seaweed all through the house, it was “boys will be boys.” But her mother expected Sophie to be ladylike and demure, when all she wanted to do was follow her brothers and do what they did. So it was always,
Sophie, you’re getting filthy
, or
Sophie, can’t you stay out of the dirt for two minutes?

There was a noise outside, the vroom of a car engine and the sound of a car door closing. She looked at the clock; 10:03. Could that be Jason? She jumped up, dashed to the window that overlooked the front of the tearoom and looked down. If it had been him, he would have parked at the curb and she would see the car, but she didn’t. And yet . . . there was
someone
out there.

She squinted into the dark; there was a car parked across the street, but it wasn’t in the pool of light from the streetlamp, so she couldn’t tell much about it except that it was smallish. She then noticed movement near the maple tree in front of Auntie Rose’s; it was like . . . like two people embracing? Or dancing? Weird. But she didn’t care to accidentally spy on anyone’s love life, so she turned away from the window and went back to her bed, checking her phone again, hoping for a text saying Jason had sorted everything out with the dean.

He texted her that he had tried to talk to Dean Asquith again,
but the man avoided him. Instead Jason went to Julia’s tearoom after the stroll to talk to his department head about what to do, though she didn’t have any answers. The dean was apparently making his announcement the next morning, and Jason hadn’t even had a chance to talk to him, present his case and hear what proof, if anything, the dean had on him. Asquith was now not answering his phone, so Jason was going to get up early and go directly to the dean’s home and confront him.

She could feel the frustration and worry in his words, and sent back a note telling him it would all work out (even though she wasn’t so sure it would) and that she’d call him in the morning to find out how it went. She hoped he was doing okay, not worrying too much. What she didn’t say was that she’d worry enough for both of them.

She’d only been back in Gracious Grove for a few weeks, and here she was worried about losing Jason again. When this mess was over, she needed to have a real conversation with him about their relationship. How did you start, with the ominous phrase
we need to talk
? That always seemed to indicate the end of the party for one person or the other. But she needed to know, was this all one sided? She knew he cared for her, but did he really
care
for her. The difference was subtle but real. He could care for her as a friend, or he could care to take it one step further, back to real dating.

All she knew was how she felt every time she saw him, and whenever he took her hand. It was electric. He was special to her, even more so for all the time they had spent apart. But there was so much she didn’t know about the years between them saying good-bye, and her coming back to Gracious Grove last spring. She knew one thing about his relationships in between those times; he had been engaged a couple of years before, but she didn’t know to whom, or how it ended.

They
definitely
needed to talk.

She heard another noise and jumped out of bed, dashing to the window again. It was Gilda dragging a garbage can out to the street. Garbage collection must be the next day! She’d entirely forgotten and so had Nana, but with the stuff she had tossed from the tea, she couldn’t afford to miss the week’s trash removal.

She slipped on a hoodie, grabbed a flashlight and tiptoed down the stairs to the side door, then scooted out. In the time it had taken her to do that, Gilda had already gone back in, and Belle Époque was closed up tight, lights out. She had a strange sensation that there was someone else around, but shivered and shrugged it off.

She trotted around back to the darkest corner of the backyard, shone the flashlight on the little wooden cabinet in which the garbage can was locked, and worked the combination lock, snapping it open. The cabinet kept the garbage can safe from foraging raccoons; the lock was overkill, in her estimation. Though who knew? Raccoons, clever little thieves, might develop number recognition and opposable thumbs. Then Nana would have to use a padlock with a key. She snickered as she pictured a raccoon bandit spinning the tumblers while another shone a penlight on the lock.

She dragged the plastic can down the lane toward the street, the sound echoing in the still, cold night air. Slowly, carefully, she made herself move at a snail’s pace, afraid that the sound would awaken Nana, who habitually left her bedroom window open two inches except in the dead of winter. Finally, she got it to the road. Their street had no real curbs, just a grassy boulevard and then the pavement. So she checked to be sure the lid was on tightly, and wiggled the can until it was secure on the dew-dampened grass. If you didn’t do that, a random dog or raccoon could easily tip it over, and she didn’t want food all over the place.