The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery Read online

  “Listen, darling, don’t even think about coming by to pick me up tonight. Larry Averill just insists that I go with him. We’re going to pop in on Stanley Parker to see if he needs a lift, too. I know what you were planning, you thoughtful man, but save yourself the effort, just this once, because I’m all taken care of already.”

  Stop, she commanded herself. Enough, for God’s sake. The man on the other end of the line said “Oh,” in a puzzled way, but then quickly recovered his manners. “Are you sure I can’t pick you up, Celeste? You’re right, I was just on my way to the phone to call you to see if you needed a ride.”

  “You sweetie. I just knew it. See you at Genia’s!”

  Like hell you were. She slammed down the receiver after she was sure he had hung up. Damn you, and damn Stanley Parker, and damn the whole damn town. They’d all let her down, the whole town of Devon. They were supposed to be her lifelong friends, her business clients, nearly her family. I’ll just make new friends, she thought, with a grim determination that bordered on a feeling of panic. Starting tonight, starting with Genia Potter, and the rest of you can just go to hell!

  She saw what she looked like in the mirror above the table that held the telephone: a late-middle-aged woman in a floral silk dress, with a puffy face and thirty extra pounds on her body. Where was the attractive woman who used to appear in the mirror when she looked? Celeste stared, as if that other, more acceptable, woman might magically reappear. No wonder he doesn’t want me! As soon as the vicious thought sneaked into her awareness, she took a drink and chased it away again.

  Celeste grabbed a purse, a shawl, and the “ticket” to dinner tonight, which was a recipe with a secret ingredient. They’d all been asked to bring one, and she had decided on her mother’s lemon cake, with the ingredient that nobody ever knew, not unless she told them. It was called “Warmed-over Husband,” and it was made with stale cake. That was the secret—dry, hard cake you dipped in cream and then fried lightly in butter and topped with creamy lemon sauce. It wasn’t on anybody’s list of AMA-approved foods, but it was wonderful—rich and sinful. Just like David Graham. He, too, was rich from having been smart enough to marry Lillian Parker, and sinful because surely nobody that handsome could possibly be good.

  Her choice of recipe was deliberate, reached after many drinks the night before: She wanted to make a point—a nasty, not-so-subtle one—to show him what she thought of him for dumping her.

  She picked up her highball glass and gulped the rest of the liquor.

  But instead of releasing her inhibitions as it usually did, the alcohol spoke with a warning voice: Careful, you’re making too much out of it. This is nutty. You might be losing it. She was losing it all right, she told herself, with a feeling of fear so acute she nearly screamed, all alone in her house. She was losing everything, it was evaporating as fast as salt off the ocean.

  Marrying David could make all the difference.

  She was crazy to want him, Lillian’s warmed-over husband, when he obviously didn’t give a damn about her. The times they’d spent together didn’t mean a thing to him, that was clear. And that had to be Stanley Parker’s fault, because Stanley was the only person who knew just what to say about her to discourage an eligible suitor.

  Damn you, Stanley Parker!

  Why else would David have stopped calling her? It had to be because of Stanley, who was always sticking his nose into other people’s lives as if he owned them. As if he owns all of us, like he owns the bank. He always thought he knew everything about everybody.

  Celeste swayed where she stood, thinking of what he knew.

  Well, there might be one chance left to untangle any damage that Stanley had done to her life. Maybe she could still shift the picture back to hopeful again. If she managed to do that tonight, she would just slip the insulting recipe back into her purse and pretend she’d forgotten to bring one.

  When she set the glass down, it missed the edge and fell to the floor, spilling ice cubes at her feet.

  From memory she dialed the telephone number of the mayor of Devon. She’d known Larry Averill almost all of their lives. Over the years he had often escorted her to events to which they were both invited, but this time she’d better make sure he was coming so she wouldn’t make a fool of herself by showing up alone in her own car. When she got his answering machine instead of him, it seemed depressingly apropos.

  “Larry, where are you?”

  In real estate sales, you learned to turn liabilities into assets. If Celeste had to drive over by herself, maybe she could turn it into an opportunity. But she needed another drink first. She kicked the glass on the floor out of the way and hurried to the kitchen for a fresh one.

  Larry Averill shifted his weight in his car seat and his SUV into third gear and sped through downtown Devon. For some reason that he had never understood, the good voters of Devon forgave him for speeding, and double parking, and turning right on red without a stop. Hardly anybody ever honked at him. Now and then he got upbraided by an elderly person, but that made him feel good, as if he were being scolded by an exasperated but fond parent. It was almost as if the citizens of Devon knew he was in a hurry for them. A mayor was a busy person, even in a town as small as this one. And then there were the county meetings, and statewide referendums, and the going back and forth to the statehouse. Luckily, Rhode Island was only as big as one of the smaller counties in a state like Texas. Sometimes the mayor felt as if he crisscrossed it twice a day, trying to keep his job and maybe earn a step up on the political ladder.

  The state legislature, that’s what he had his eye on.

  He was late for Mrs. Potter’s dinner, darn it.

  And he hadn’t had time to take the shower he needed, or shave. He’d look like a bum in a cheap suit. Well, the only politician in a good suit was the one on the take, in his opinion. Either that, or one who was a lawyer first and a servant of the people second. But he’d grown up without two dimes to rub together and never yet had found a reason to feel ashamed of it. He still didn’t have the dimes, but he never had a wife or children to support, either, so that had worked out all right in its way.

  “You’ll never get anywhere in politics without a wife,” people said.

  That’s what he’d always heard, but the one woman he would have married any time she said yes was much too good for him. He would have wondered what was wrong with her if she had ever changed her mind and accepted his standing proposal of marriage.

  “Will you marry me, Celeste?” he’d asked when they were twenty.

  “No,” she’d said. “I love you, Lar, just not to marry.”

  “The offer will stand,” he’d said back then, “as long as I do.”

  “Don’t be silly,” she’d said, laughing. “You’ll find a nice girl, and she’ll work the polls for you, and you’ll have enough kids to staff your own campaign headquarters.”

  He’d known then that wasn’t the way it was going to be.

  This was how it was going to be, and was: him, the mayor, her the town’s premier Realtor, him so proud of her and still taking her to dinner any time she needed company. Which seemed to be happening more often than usual lately. It worried him. Celeste was drinking more. Not that he judged or condemned her for it. She was lonely, he figured, and there wasn’t a single man around who was fine enough to patch that crack in her life. He’d thought for a while that David Graham might fill that bill, but that liaison seemed to have broken apart before it ever really got started, leaving Celeste looking desperate enough to break Larry’s heart. He wondered what had happened there but didn’t feel he had a right to ask her.

  Odd how life turned out. She’d never married, either.

  All this time, they could have been—

  “No,” he said out loud, wheeling right without stopping, just after a light turned red. “It wasn’t meant to be.” He slowed down slightly now as he drove along the twisting, narrow roads of the seaside residential neighborhood, marveling as always at the beauty
of his town. Lush blue-violet hydrangeas hugged the winding stone walls bordering the large estates. The houses themselves were hidden behind thick stands of oak and elm and sycamore trees, but the mayor had been a guest in many of them and knew firsthand the elegance hidden in many of the “cottages,” as their owners called them. There were no sidewalks here, and people walked on the side of the road, lugging folding chairs, coolers, and towels as they made their way to the beach. He pulled to the middle of the road and waved to a group of teenagers with towels thrown around their necks, riding their bikes toward the ocean for a twilight swim. Future voters, he thought with an inward smile of affection for them.

  Larry turned west then, away from the ocean drive and toward Celeste’s neighborhood, a historic area rich in Federal-style homes and carefully tended gardens. It was a neighborhood that didn’t quite suit her, he thought, though he would never have said so to her. It was all roses, elegant, old-world, restrained; she was extroverted and her beauty was as lush as blue hydrangeas. Larry felt a pang of guilt at the word “lush,” even to apply it to her appearance. By right of family, Celeste belonged in this neighborhood, even if the town gossips now prattled more about her drinking than her lineage.

  He parked in front of Celeste’s house and trotted to the door.

  Trim could use some fresh paint. Maybe I can get to that this week.

  The idea reminded him unpleasantly of Stanley Parker. Just last week the old man had made it clear that he didn’t approve of certain assistance the mayor had quietly directed toward Celeste, without her even knowing it. Darn it, what was wrong with the old guy? Since when was kindness illegal? Stanley must be getting senile. He was old enough for it. And cranky as heck sometimes. And self-righteous as a preacher with an ax in his hands.

  There was only one way to deal with people like that.

  Surprised when Celeste didn’t answer after three rings, the mayor looked at his watch and found he was running even later than he’d thought. Celeste must have given up on him and driven off to the party by herself. That sure makes me look good, he thought in disgust at himself. I ought to get myself one of those alarm watches and set it every fifteen minutes to get myself going where I ought to be.

  On the other hand, maybe this would give him time to make a stop.

  He trotted back to his car and hurried off toward the road that led both to Mrs. Potter’s house and to Stanley Parker’s Castle, too.

  In the house at the end of the cul-de-sac, Genia Potter smiled at the sight of her grandniece “slaving away” over a hot stove. It was an improbable sight: a seventeen-year-old girl, five foot ten, in clunky black shoes with three-inch heels, black tights, a short black pleated skirt, a black sleeveless T-shirt, a golden scarf around her neck, and three golden earrings in each earlobe. Topping it off was henna-red hair that was caught up at the back of her head with a huge green plastic clip. In New York City, Jane Eden might have passed unnoticed on any street, but here in Devon, Rhode Island, she looked as conspicuous as her great-aunt Genia suspected she wished to be.

  Genia felt her heart swell with affection for the girl.

  Janie had been such a companionable help all summer long, just as her twin brother, Jason, had been up at Stanley Parker’s greenhouse. Working part-time for Genia was Janie’s summer job; working up at the Castle was Jason’s, though he also helped out here in the little herb garden. Their mother might wring her hands over them, but to their great-aunt they were perfect teenagers. Gazing fondly at Janie, Genia was reminded of a time long ago when she had picked up her own little son at his grandparents’ house where he had behaved like the little angel he never was at home with his parents. “Why,” his mother had asked him, “don’t you ever misbehave at Grandma and Grandpa’s house?” In his little-boy voice, Benjie had replied, “Because I want them to think well of me.” Genia and Lew had laughed till they cried over that one, at his precocious grammar, at the refreshing candor of what he’d said. Now, all these years later, she suspected that might be the reason Janie and Jason never gave her a moment’s trouble.

  “Ready to stuff the apples, Janie?”

  “Sure, but is this gravy supposed to boil like this?”

  Genia hurried over to examine what was actually a creamy base for lobster bisque. It was to be the entrée of the tasting party that she and Stanley were hosting this evening for six, maybe seven people, if Janie and Jason’s father showed up. Flecks of bright green tarragon—its secret ingredient—floated on top. She was relieved to see that the mixture wasn’t actually boiling: One tiny bubble worked its way up but gave up the struggle before bursting and dissolving back into the sauce.

  “No, you don’t ever want to boil a cream sauce, love, or the milk will curdle. Turn it way down to the lowest setting for now, and then we’ll add the lobster just before we serve it.”

  Earlier that day, grandniece and great-aunt had cored Rhode Island greening apples and then prepared a filling of cloves, nuts, and raisins that Janie had soaked in a fine brandy that Jason had brought over from Stanley Parker’s exemplary cellar. Genia had shown Janie how to make a light pastry in which to wrap the stuffed apples and from which they also cut tiny starfish to put on top.

  As the two settled at the center island to work, Genia said, “We need to give this dessert a name for the cookbook. What should we call it?”

  “It doesn’t have a name?”

  “Well, I call them yummy.”

  Janie grinned over at her, and Genia’s heart lifted again. It was so nice to see her smile. When she wasn’t helping Genia, the girl often went around looking glum or outright crying over a million different things ranging from her mother’s failings to a slight from one of her friends, to the plight of the rain forest in South America. Genia didn’t mean to disparage Janie’s concerns by thinking of them like that; she just knew that for Janie there were no small upsets. Everything from curdled cream sauce to war elicited a deeply felt response.

  “How about ‘Apples in Jackets’?”

  “Perfect!” Genia cried. “They’re a kind of dress-up dessert.”

  Typically, Janie’s idea was quick and clever.

  The girl was smart as a whip, her great-aunt thought, and despite her appearance made the kind of grades in school that used to be associated only with girls who wore glasses. And the child was sensitive, too, to her brother’s greater struggle with academics. “It’s not Jason’s fault he had dyslexia,” Janie often said. “It’s just because he’s the boy, and they get it a lot more often than girls do. I’m just lucky, that’s all.” Genia thought that if Janie could have done so, she would have “split” her grade point average with her twin, evening life out between them.

  “I’ll credit you in the back of the book,” Genia told her.

  “I’ll get my name in a book?”

  “You bet.”

  “Wow. My name in a book! Can you put in Jason’s, too?”

  “I’ll find a way.” Genia refrained from saying, “It’s just a cookbook.” The truth was, it wasn’t “just” a cookbook to Genia, either, and it certainly wasn’t to Stanley Parker. She had a feeling he had been lying in wait for someone like her to come along and help him produce it. He brought to the project his collection of cookbooks and his publishing connections; she had a modest talent for thinking up original recipes; they were both good cooks. Voilà: a perfect team. They’d devoted many full and satisfying days to their project.

  Genia glanced up at the kitchen clock and felt a shock.

  “Janie, it’s nearly six-thirty! Where’s Mr. Parker?”

  “I thought your guests weren’t coming until seven-thirty.”

  “But he promised to get here early. Hand me the phone, will you?”

  She took the portable telephone that her niece gave her and punched in the familiar number at the Castle. After three rings, she heard Stanley’s familiar gruff voice saying, “Parker here. If you’re calling with good news, leave a message. If it’s bad news, call somebody else.”
/>   Genia smiled as she hung up. That was a brand-new message. And it was so like him! Stanley thought he could say anything he liked to anybody, and they just had to take it. Never famous for his tact, in his old age he was becoming infamous for his blunt, barbed observations.

  “I guess he’s on his way,” she said to Janie.

  The girl nodded, but Genia didn’t feel so sanguine. He should have arrived a half hour ago, and he hadn’t called to say he’d be late. Besides, he was an old man, and he’d been acting lately as if he didn’t feel very well. What if he’d had a fall, or even a stroke? There was nobody at the Castle to help him except for that worthless Ed Hennessey, and Stanley had told Genia he was going to fire the man this very day. Genia felt a twinge of alarm. What if Eddie had taken the news badly? What if he had gotten angry and harmed the old man? When another five minutes passed and Stanley still hadn’t arrived, Genia put down the apple she was working on.

  “Janie, do me a favor. I want you to take my car and drive up to the Castle, and make sure he’s okay—”

  “Mr. Parker won’t like that.”

  “Pretend you’ve come to ask him if he needs a ride.”

  “He’ll say no.”

  “I know he will, but then you can drive back and tell me that everything’s all right.”

  After Janie left Genia found she couldn’t concentrate on her cooking. Having made sure that nothing was going to burn, she walked out onto the deck of the house and looked in the direction of the path that meandered through the woods from Stanley’s house. She told herself she was being a worrywart. Surely he would arrive at any moment, possibly even sputtering up on that old motorbike of his. On second thought, that was another cause for concern. Maybe she should have sent Janie through the woods to look for him there.