The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery Read online

  Genia barely heard the conversation as it tilted around the table, lurching around the empty chair where Stanley was to sit, and another one where a place was set for Kevin Eden. The storm continued noisily, until it seemed to Genia’s distracted imagination like a living thing that was trying to get their attention by pinging at the windows and blowing at the doors. But except for Genia—and for Harrison Wright, who kept staring out at the rain with a pleased smile on his face—the rest of the guests were all talking—arguing was more like it—about the proposed art festival for their town, as if that’s all anybody had to worry about at the moment.

  “We’re all for it,” Donna said, emphasizing the plural pronoun.

  Genia tried to pay attention and did focus long enough to realize that her niece looked sweet tonight. She was short and plump, with a round face and curly short light brown hair, a complete physical opposite to her tall, thin children who favored their father. Donna’s wardrobe consisted mainly of sailor-suit jumpers in red, white, and blue; Genia thought that the one she wore this evening looked as crisp and colorful as a brand-new flag. For a woman who spent most of her days feeling upset about her children, her ex-husband, or money, Donna had an irrepressibly cheerful look about her.

  “Well, who isn’t for it?” Celeste asked, in a derisive tone. Her voice had a rich, throaty quality that held people’s attention. Genia thought the Realtor had the high coloring, the buxom figure, and the dramatic flair of an actress or an opera singer. She knew how forceful Celeste had been during the process of renting this summer home, and she could easily imagine her sweeping young homebuyers along in her wake. Celeste repeated, “Who isn’t? Except for your ex-husband and a few backward businesspeople.”

  “Aren’t you forgetting someone?” Lindsay said with a pointed edge to her voice. When Celeste look puzzled, the younger woman pointed to her own well-groomed chest. “The president of the arts council. Me. Surely I have some say in this, since it’s our council’s money that’s supposed to fund this thing.”

  “What’s your objection to it, Lindsay?” Genia asked, making an effort to be an attentive hostess.

  “Crafts,” was the reply, sounding more like a retort. “We’re an arts council, may I repeat: arts. Not arts and crafts. I don’t think our town wants to be known for all those ticky-tacky doodads.”

  “Like Kevin’s work, you mean?” Donna inquired acidly. He might be her ex-husband but she was still his sales agent. Kevin Eden created witty seascape “pictures” of wood and paint and bits of this and that. They might not be fine art, but they were charming, and Genia had recently bought four of them and shipped them home to Arizona. She planned to hang one in her guest room and wrap the others as Christmas gifts for her children.

  “Oh, she doesn’t mean Kevin’s,” Celeste assured her, with a blithe wave of the same hand that held her glass of wine. Genia held her breath for the tablecloth. “Kevin’s pieces may be craft, but they’re very … artistic … craft.” If it was meant to smooth Donna’s feelings, it didn’t succeed very well, Genia thought, observing her niece’s face.

  Good-naturedly, the mayor said, “You can’t really blame Kevin and the business owners, Celeste.”

  “Why can’t I?” she asked, and everybody but Genia laughed. Stanley claimed that Rhode Islanders were argumentative by nature. She wanted him to be here to enjoy this. “Kevin just doesn’t want to be disturbed out on that island that doesn’t even belong to him, right, Donna?”

  Genia’s niece nodded her head vigorously and briefly wagged her soup spoon at them as if she were lecturing her artist husband. “I’ve told him, ‘You ought to be grateful, Kevin Eden, that Stanley lets you live and work out there at all. So you’ll have to lock up your studio for a little while, so what? It’s such a small thing to ask for the good of the community.’ ”

  David Graham twinkled at her from across the table. “I’m sure he loves it when you explain it to him like that, Donna.”

  She looked surprised, then blushed and laughed.

  “Kevin and the business owners are just being selfish and shortsighted, Larry,” Celeste continued, punctuating her thoughts with sips of wine. “All we’re asking for is one measly weekend out of an entire year, and they act as if we’re going to take every parking place downtown for the whole tourist season. And who do they think is going to be coming, anyway, if not tourists? We’ll make money for them, not take it away.”

  Larry Averill smiled at her. “I’m on your side, Celeste. But there’s more to it than that, and I have to try to understand the viewpoints of all my constituents. The store owners downtown say that all the tourists will be out on the island, looking at art and buying things out there, and all they’ll be doing downtown is parking. The downtown restaurant owners aren’t happy about it, either, especially since we want to sell food at the festival. You can see their point.”

  But his old friend shook her head. “No, I can’t.” She grinned wickedly. “Think of all of those future homebuyers who will be coming to the festival.” Then she lifted her glass in a toast. “I say, here’s to progress.”

  “Second that.” David raised his own glass and tapped it against hers. “Luckily, it is Stanley’s island to do with as he pleases, and it appears that what pleases him is to hold an art festival on it. Your ex-husband can object all he wants to, Donna, but I doubt that’s going to sway Stanley. I predict this town will have its art festival out on Parker Island—”

  “Over Kevin’s dead body,” Donna muttered, and they laughed again when she added, “which I might be happy to provide at no cost to the town!” Belatedly, she realized that her daughter had just entered from the kitchen, bearing a tray for picking up appetizer plates, and had overheard that last remark. “No offense to your father, Janie.”

  Janie said nothing, but when the time came to pick up her mother’s plate she snatched it away and barely missed Donna’s nose with it. Her mother looked half-angry, half-amused. To the others she commented, “It’s a good thing she makes good grades, although you’d never guess it from looking at her. And if she had to support herself on tips, she’d starve. I don’t know what my son’s going to do; he doesn’t even make the grades!”

  Celeste laughed and held out her glass for more wine.

  Genia understood that Donna felt embarrassed by her daughter’s appearance, and that made her tongue sharp, but there was no excuse for humiliating the child. She felt like kicking Donna under the table. David Graham was frowning, too. He personally handed his own empty plate to Janie, saying as he did so, “Well, I’d tip her generously, Donna. I think she’s doing a lovely job. She deserves a lot of credit for helping out her aunt tonight.” As Janie removed his plate, he said courteously, “Thank you, child.” Her great-aunt Genia’s heart warmed in gratitude to him for salving the cut of her mother’s hurtful words.

  “I heard Kevin changed his mind about the festival,” Harrison suddenly inserted, hearkening back to earlier comments.

  His wife stared at him. “Where’d you hear that?”

  “At the TV station, I think.”

  “When?” she pressed him.

  “Maybe yesterday.” He frowned in thought. “Or, maybe not.”

  “I can’t believe it,” the mayor said. “Who’d you hear that from, Harrison?”

  “Somebody,” the weatherman answered, with the expression of a man who sincerely wishes to be helpful. “Might have been the reporter who’s assigned to the city council. Or to the arts council. I’m not sure. Anyway, I know I heard it.”

  “And you didn’t tell me?” Lindsay asked, half-laughing.

  “Sorry, honey.” He smiled beatifically at her and then turned to stare out the window again. “Isn’t this a great storm? There must be a gigantic cumulonimbus cloud up there, or we wouldn’t get this much of a downpour. It’s so exciting when a cold front comes up under a warm front and forces it to rise. That’s when we get turbulence like this.” He looked riveted to the drama of nature playing outside the warm
, well-lighted house. “There’s real drama playing up there. Clashing and flashing, banging and clanging. I could watch it twenty-four hours a day. It’s better than theater, better than TV or the movies.”

  His wife grinned and shook her head so that everyone but her husband saw her. “Sometimes I think that if he weren’t nailed down, he’d blow away with the first wind.”

  “I’d love to,” Genia heard the weatherman murmur.

  “That’s what a wedding ring is for,” David Graham joked, “to nail a man down. Isn’t that right, Larry?”

  “Wouldn’t know about that,” the mayor said jovially.

  Genia felt so impatient with them for chattering on about the weather and their art festival when Stanley was missing. But everytime she said anything like “I can’t imagine what’s keeping him,” one of the others would dismiss her worry, saying, “If anybody can take care of himself, it’s Stanley.” And, “Oh, he just wants to make a grand entrance.” And, “Don’t worry so much, Genia, you don’t know Stanley like we do. He probably stopped along the way to start a committee or launch a museum.”

  While they laughed and carried on, she seriously considered leaving the table to call the police. Five more minutes, she told herself, if he’s not here in five minutes, I’ll do that. It was only because Jason hadn’t returned that she didn’t hop to the phone immediately; the boy’s continued absence reassured her, causing her to imagine that maybe he had helped the old man out of the heavy rain and was even now waiting for Stanley to change into dry clothes, and then would drive them both over in Stanley’s car. Although, why the boy hadn’t called to tell her …

  Maybe the storm had knocked the telephones out.…

  She felt a warm touch, and looked up to find that Harrison Wright was gazing at her with concern in his nice hazel eyes. Quietly, under the hum of the other conversations, he said, “I’ll take any excuse to go out in a storm. Would you like for me to drive up to the Castle and look for him?”

  She grasped his hand thankfully and was just about to say “Oh, yes, would you please, Harrison?” when the answer arrived in a shocking gust of wind and rain.

  The French doors blew open with a crash that startled everyone into silence. For a moment Genia thought the storm had done it. But the open doors admitted not only a torrent of cold rain, but also the figure of a man who stood before them soaked and dripping. A burst of lightning flashed behind him, as if Frankenstein’s monster had suddenly materialized there. He had wild hair that stuck out in every direction from his scalp, and he wore brown boat shoes, blue jeans, and a Hawaiian shirt of so many colors it looked as if he had wiped his paintbrushes on it.

  “Dad!” Janie, who was serving coffee, set the pot precariously on the table and ran to her father. He reached for her and hugged her close. Kevin Eden stood with his legs spread wide, panting for breath as if he’d run a long way.

  “My God, Kevin.” Donna looked at her ex-husband’s muddy brown boat shoes with disgust. “Look what you’re tracking in!”

  “It’s Stanley,” Kevin Eden said, ignoring her. “I found him down on the beach. He’s dead. Stanley’s dead. Somebody call the police.”

  At that moment, if Genia had been asked to swear in a court of law how the other people in her house reacted to the news, she would have said with relief. If anybody else felt the shock and grief that she did, she didn’t sense it. Soon they were all claiming to feel terrible, and maybe they did, she thought, giving them the benefit of the doubt. But in that first instant, the feeling that traveled round the table from one guest to another was … relief.

  She suddenly remembered Jason and asked his father if he’d seen the boy.

  “He’s down there,” Kevin told her. “I left him with Stanley.”

  “You did what?” Donna exclaimed, looking horrified.

  “He can handle it, Donna,” he snapped at her. “I couldn’t just leave the body there. But I have to get back.” He released his daughter, whose skin looked pale as pudding beneath her dyed red hair. Kevin Eden ran back outside into the storm. The mayor hurried to the telephone to call the police. At the dinner table, Genia was the only one to shed tears for Stanley Parker.

  5

  LEFTOVERS

  An endless hour later Kevin Eden returned to Genia’s rented house, to her kitchen, trailing his silent, wet, bedraggled son behind him. Everyone else had gone home, taking their speculations and excitement with them, leaving her alone to await some final word. Even Donna had departed with Janie. The girl had wanted to run out into the rain after her father; it took the combined efforts of the grown-ups to persuade her not to go.

  “Kevin, Jason,” Genia said anxiously to them as she led them in from the rain. “I’m so glad you came back here. I’ll fix you something warm to drink. Would you like something to eat?” In a crisis, she felt a need to feed people. “Sit down, and tell me everything, won’t you?”

  The men looked exhausted as they took chairs at the kitchen table and slumped there, dripping onto the floor.

  “We’re making a mess,” Jason mumbled.

  “Don’t worry about it.” Genia bustled about, pulling coffee and hot chocolate mix out of a cupboard, and then putting a kettle of water on to boil and getting the coffeepot started, too. “You must be cold, and I don’t have any men’s clothing here to give you. Hold on a minute and I’ll be right back.”

  She hurried to switch on the furnace and then to snatch blankets out of the linen closet. To the absent owners of the house she murmured, “Forgive me for getting your blankets muddy. I promise I’ll get them cleaned, or replace them.”

  Back in the kitchen as the smell of burning dust began to waft from the heating vents, she draped the blankets over the shoulders of the men. Jason, who was shivering, huddled deep in his, but his father shrugged his off his Hawaiian shirt, and it fell over the back of the chair. “Thanks, Genia,” he said, “but I’m fine.”

  “Tell me everything, from the start, Kevin.”

  She pulled leftovers from the refrigerator, arranging them on two plates and then warming the plates one at a time in the microwave.

  “I was coming in to your dinner,” he said.

  She was pleased to hear it. Donna would have said this proved he was ill-mannered, to appear at a dinner for which he had not called in his RSVP. Genia chose not to judge his manners, but she did reflect upon how little she really knew this man, in spite of the fact that he had fathered her grandniece and nephew.

  “Well, now you’re getting it after all,” she said equably.

  “Yeah, thanks. So, I was coming over from the island in my boat, and I tied up my boat to a tree, and I was starting to climb up to get to your house, and I saw somebody lying in the rocks. I thought—I don’t know what I thought—but I went running over, and there was Stanley. He was limp, and his head looked all bashed in from the rocks, and his eyes were wide open. I knew he was dead.”

  Genia felt a last bit of resistance inside her give way as she finally realized she must accept this news as true: Stanley Parker was dead, and there was no mistake about it. She realized she had been holding out a hope that Kevin would come running back to say he’d been wrong, that it wasn’t Stanley, it was some other poor soul. Or that Stanley was injured, but not dead.

  She forced herself to speak calmly and to listen carefully.

  “You think he fell over the cliff?”

  “Yeah. Must have lost control of his motorbike.”

  “Where was it?”

  “The bike? Kinda halfway down the hillside.”

  “No, I mean where … where did it happen, Kevin?”

  “Oh, well, I’d say about a hundred yards from here, I guess. On that little strip of beach down there between this property and Stanley’s. You know the one I mean?”

  “Yes, I frequently swim there.” So close, she thought with helpless dismay, he was so close to safety. “You found him, and then you came running back here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Jaso
n, where were you all this time?”

  The boy started to tell her, but his father jumped in, speaking in a loud, firm voice that overrode his son’s. “Jason showed up right when I was getting back up to the path. He was coming from the direction of Stanley’s house where he’d been looking for him, isn’t that right, son?”

  Jason looked down at the cup of hot chocolate that she gave him.

  “Yeah. Thanks, Aunt Genia.”

  “And then the police came?”

  “Right,” Kevin said.

  “What did they do, Kevin?”

  He hesitated. “A lot. More than you’d think they would for an accident like that. They measured and took pictures, and called out the medical examiner. They wouldn’t even move Stanley’s body, or take it away, until the medical examiner said they could. I guess that’s standard procedure.” Suddenly his voice became heated. “I’ll tell you what isn’t standard procedure, though! It isn’t normal to interrogate innocent people who just happen to come across a dead body. The way they asked us questions, you’d think they thought we murdered Stanley. It made me so mad, especially the way they treated Jason. Just because they know about his drug arrest, they acted like he’s some kind of hardened criminal. I told them to back off. Hell, I went to school with some of those guys. They know better than to treat my son like that. And I told them so, too.”

  Genia glanced over at Jason as she got out the silverware.

  The boy caught her glance. Out of his father’s eyesight, Jason gave Genia a disgusted look, as if he weren’t as grateful for his father’s defense as Kevin might have thought he should be.

  “You’ll just get me in more trouble with them, Dad.”

  Kevin looked hurt. “I’m trying to keep you out of trouble, son.”

  “Well, just don’t, okay? You’ll make them more suspicious.”