The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery Read online

  “It’s wickedly extravagant of you,” she’d teased him.

  “For you, anything,” he’d said with a wide smile.

  Their meal had been memorable, though not entirely in a good way. It had started well enough, with delicious baked lobster stuffed with wild mushrooms, corn so sweet it took her back to her Iowa roots, and exquisite Key lime pie for dessert. It was their conversation that had soured the evening for her, and which made her still feel uncomfortable when she recalled it.

  It had started when she told him the outcome of Jason’s hearing for possession of marijuana.

  “… has to remain free of drugs and alcohol.”

  “No jail time?”

  “Thank goodness, no. He’s only seventeen, Jed.”

  “Old enough to know better, young enough to be taught a lesson.”

  “Surely you don’t think an ordinary seventeen-year-old high school boy … who has never been in trouble before … deserves to be sent to jail … do you?”

  “It would be convincing, Genia.”

  “It might be a good deal more than that, Jed. It might also be dangerous. I can’t believe you really believe what you’re saying. Marijuana is not harmless, I know, but neither is prison. In fact, I suspect it holds a great many worse dangers for a young boy than marijuana does.”

  “Are you a hippie, Genia?”

  “No, Jed,” she had retorted. “I am a grandmother.”

  “Soft-hearted,” he’d pronounced with a patronizing tone.

  “Realistic,” she had snapped back.

  Their evening had never got back on course after that.

  Since then they had chatted by phone, but there always seemed to be some reason to cut their conversations short. Jed’s business and travel schedule—and her cooking schedule with Stanley—had made it impossible for them to meet again. They were so near to one another, and yet so far. And that might be true in many ways, Genia suspected. She hated to think what he might say about Jason testing positively for drugs. As the weeks passed for her without seeing Jed again, she wondered if it was the man she missed, or only the dream of romance.

  Dinner with David Graham would not be the same thing at all.

  It was a reassuring thought that did not prevent her from feeling just a bit disloyal, and not only to Jed White, but also to Celeste Hutchinson. I hope Celeste isn’t at the club tonight. However little this dinner meant to Genia, she had an uncomfortable feeling that Celeste might read it differently.

  Celeste was more likely to look at it as competition for David.

  “But that’s silly,” Genia assured herself as she fastened pearl earrings onto her earlobes. “It’s just a dinner date. It’s not as if I want to marry the man. Celeste is welcome to him, if he’s interested in her.”

  Before she left she looked around the bedroom again.

  “Oh, I wish I could find Grandmother Andrews’ brooch,” she said to herself.

  15

  DINNER FOR TWO

  Genia wore to dinner a simple black summer dress, one that draped easily over those small bulges that seemed to appear in spite of her daily walks. Glancing in the side mirror of David’s car, she checked the light sweep of blush across her cheeks, the touch of gray eye shadow, her lipstick. Over her shoulders, she wore a soft, handwoven shawl to ward off the possible chill of air-conditioning at the club. The shawl was black angora, shot through with pearly threads that picked up the luminescence of her earrings. A strand of pearls around her neck and black watered-silk pumps completed her ensemble, in which she felt a great deal more dressed up than usual.

  “You look lovely, Genia,” her date greeted her.

  At first they drove to the Devon Yacht Club in a silence that seemed to acknowledge that they’d both had a very long week. Genia enjoyed being squired, and watched the view roll by while David remained attentive to his driving.

  She stroked the buttery yellow seat of the car.

  “This is very nice, David.”

  “It’s a Lexus.”

  “I’m more accustomed to pickup trucks.”

  “It’s hard to think of you as a rancher, Genia.”

  “Why is that?”

  “Well, you hardly look like one.” He glanced at her and laughed. “Where are your cowboy boots? Where’s your horse?”

  “The boots are back home in my closet, the horse is in the stable.”

  He smiled. “Maybe you are a rancher, after all.”

  “I love it there,” she said, as she stared out the window. They were just pulling into the club, where there was a wonderful view of the ocean on three sides. “It’s where we raised our children. It’s home.”

  “A ranch must be worth a king’s ransom these days.”

  “I don’t know about that, but ours is certainly priceless to us.”

  “Ours? I’m sorry, I was under the impression that your husband—”

  “Oh, yes, Lew died about twelve years ago. I just meant the children and me, our family.”

  “I see. I wish I could say the same about children of my own.”

  “Were you not ever married before, David?”

  “No, not until Lillian.”

  David let a valet open the doors for them and take the car. He offered his arm to her when he came around to her side. They strolled together up the stone walkway to the club. Halfway there, an outburst of noise at the edge of the parking lot drew their attention.

  “There they go again.” David shook his head. “Drunken sailors.”

  Genia saw two men squared off. “Are they fighting?”

  “Usually. Wednesday is half-price night at the bars down there.”

  A small crowd of men and women had gathered around the two would-be combatants. Genia stiffened when she thought she recognized Ed Hennessey, Stanley’s fired handyman. And the traitor who had told the police that Jason was growing pot in the greenhouse. She could have sworn that he was staring right back at her, and she would have bet her bottom dollar he was smirking at her.

  “I’d like to knock his block off,” she muttered.

  Her escort looked startled, amused. “Whose?”

  “That man …” Genia pointed. “Stanley’s handyman.”

  “What did he do to make you so mad at him?”

  “It isn’t what he did to me,” she said, but then said no more.

  When David tried to get her to explain herself, she squeezed his arm lightly and turned him in the direction of the entrance to the club. “I promise not to make a scene,” she said lightly. “No fistfights, I swear. Not unless he starts it.”

  David burst out laughing. “You surprise me, Genia Potter.”

  If there was anything she couldn’t forgive, it was somebody who hurt her family, especially the children. Aloud, she merely said, “Why, David, it’s lovely in here.”

  “You’ve never been before? I thought surely Stanley had brought you.”

  He looked surprised and delighted to be the first to show her around. Genia tactfully refrained from telling him that Stanley had told her he wouldn’t set foot in the Devon Yacht Club once Lillian and David made it their favorite place for drinking and dining.

  By eight o’clock that evening Genia felt glad that she had accepted David’s invitation to dinner at the Yacht Club. Seated amid elegant surroundings, with a moonlit view of the bay, Genia enjoyed being able to relax for a few hours in the company of a handsome, gracious man. His own affection for his stepdaughter, Nikki, made him sympathetic to her niece’s and nephew’s growing pains.

  “They seem like great kids to me,” he commented at one point. “Almost everybody goes through a rough time at that age, don’t you think so? As long as they don’t get killed, or end up in jail, or hurt anybody else, or get pregnant, I say they’ve done just fine.” His smile was rueful. “Modest goals, perhaps. But it looks like hard work to me to navigate teenagers through the shoals of high school these days. My hat is off to all of you for trying so hard to do it right.”

  “Thank
you, David.”

  Genia felt warmed by his kind words, and also by the wine, and she couldn’t help but compare his empathy with the harshness of Jed White’s attitude toward Jason, a boy Jed didn’t even know.

  Then, for over an hour, they talked of almost nothing but Stanley, of his life, his murder, his funeral. There was much to say, and there were many speculations to lay on the white-covered table. Cold stone crabs with remoulade sauce came and went, followed by Caesar salad made with fresh eggs and anchovies, and twice they emptied little plates of thin, crisp, buttered, crustless toast. Genia declined David’s generous offer of champagne, but was happy to accept a glass of delicious, fruity white wine.

  Her host raised his own glass of wine.

  “To Stanley, of whom many fine things may be said, but the finest of all is that he was loved by Lillian.”

  “Why, David, what a sweet thing to say.”

  They touched glasses.

  “Did you know her, Genia?”

  “I only met her a few times, years ago.”

  He smiled, looking as if he were remembering something sweet. “I hope you don’t mind it if I talk so much about my wife.…”

  “I enjoy hearing about her.”

  “She was beautiful, in every way. I fell in love with her the first time I saw her. You know”—he glanced frankly at Genia—“the rumors were that we had an affair before she divorced Stanley, but that is a slander on a good woman’s name. I won’t say that I would have had any scruples, but she certainly would have. The fact is, we never even met until after her divorce. And if we had met before then, I doubt she would have noticed me.”

  Privately, Genia thought it unlikely that any woman would fail to notice David Graham. He had the looks and charm to attract the attention of people of any age.

  “When did she finally notice you?” Genia teased gently.

  He smiled, looking pleased. “At an art auction in New York City. I bid on a Chagall print, just an inexpensive little thing, and she counterbid, and I bid again, and she beat me. I walked over to congratulate her and fell in love with her blue eyes. Lillian used to tease me that the only reason I married her was to get my hands on that print.” He laughed out loud, and Genia found herself feeling charmed both by the man and by his story.

  A little later, Genia found a tactful moment to ask:

  “David, is it true that she drowned?”

  “Didn’t Stanley tell you about it?”

  “No, he wouldn’t discuss it.”

  “Really? Not at all?”

  “Not at all.”

  “That’s interesting, because I’ve always thought he blamed me.”

  “Oh, he probably did,” she admitted ruefully. “But he still never talked about it, at least not to me.”

  “Yes, she drowned on her birthday.”

  “Oh, David! How awful!”

  “She had a little sailboat that she loved, and she took it out for a solo cruise late that afternoon.” His face darkened, and an expression of such sadness crossed it that Genia wanted to reach out to grasp his hand. “I’ll tell you something I don’t tell many other people. We’d had an argument that day, on her birthday, just to make it worse. I think we’d had too much wine for lunch. Usually we never argued. Never. But we did that day, and that’s why she took the boat out alone. To get away from me—”

  “Oh, David …”

  “Not that she didn’t love me. She did. The argument would have blown over. It was nothing. But she left angry, and maybe a little drunk, and the current was a little more than she was used to handling, only neither of us thought about that at the time, and …”

  He sat quietly, staring down at his dinner plate.

  After a moment, he continued. “She had promised to be back by six, because we had a dinner party to attend. When she didn’t show up, I called her on her cell phone. It was a birthday gift. Actually, that was what the argument was about. She accused me of thinking she was an incompetent sailor. She said if I really trusted her ability, I wouldn’t feel the need to reach her by telephone. I got defensive about it and said that was ridiculous, that there could be a million reasons why I might need to talk to her on the boat. But she was right, of course. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust her ability or her judgment, it was just that she hadn’t been sailing long enough to have a chance to develop them. I hated it when she took the boat out alone. So, yes, I admit it, I got her the cell phone to make myself feel better, so I could call her and hear her voice when she was out on the sea.

  “I called once. Twice. I knew she could have her hands full with the sails, I prayed that’s why she didn’t answer.” He shuddered visibly. “That was the worst feeling I ever had, listening to that cell phone ring and ring. The damn thing was waterproof, because I got it for the boat. It was this elegant little teak thing, custom-made for sailors, with the name of her boat embossed on it, and it could have been ringing at the bottom of the ocean by then.” He made a fist with his right hand and silently and slowly pounded it on the white tablecloth, as if crushing something. It was one of the most poignantly impotent gestures Genia had ever seen. “She never came back. They found the boat, capsized. I don’t know if the boom came around and struck her, or if waves swamped her. It doesn’t matter now. She’s gone, and I couldn’t even bury her. It seems horribly ironic now that we named her boat Waterlily.”

  When she heard that, Genia had to suppress a shiver of her own. This time, she did reach over and briefly grasp his hand. Under her touch, the tightened fist relaxed a little.

  “I’ve never been that frightened, when she didn’t answer.”

  “I can’t even imagine it.” But then Genia realized she could exactly imagine it: That’s how scared she had been after Lew had collapsed with his heart attack. Like the man seated across from her, she had feared the worst, and the worst had happened to her.

  “One of the most awful parts of it was telling Stanley,” he said unexpectedly. “He wouldn’t believe me at first. Did he think I was making it up to torture him? No, that’s unkind of me. He didn’t want to believe it, any more than I did. I just let him rail at me. Maybe I thought I deserved it. If I hadn’t encouraged her to learn to sail … if we hadn’t argued …”

  “If life weren’t what it is.”

  “Yes.” He grimaced as if he’d had a sudden sharp pain. “As far as Stanley was concerned, I thought, if it makes him feel better to hate me, then let him rant at me. I knew how he felt. I wished I had somebody to blame, too.”

  “That was very generous of you, David.”

  He shrugged off the compliment. “Anybody would have pitied him.”

  Genia didn’t think so; she thought it took a special kind of second husband to be so understanding of a hostile first husband. She listened as David added, “I think Stanley was in worse shape than I was, Genia. He really loved her, I believe. He just didn’t have any talent for showing it. Lillian never quite believed that he cared as much about her as he did about himself and his many other interests.”

  “Do you think she was wrong about that?”

  This time his smile was a little embarrassed. “Well, if I did, I never tried to argue her out of it.”

  Genia laughed a little. “I understand. You’re only human, after all.”

  “All too!” He sat up straighter and made an obvious effort to smile and to inject some cheer into his voice. Rather incongruously, he inquired, “How’s your lobster?”

  “Perfect. But I can’t eat another bite.”

  Genia took his cue that he had said all he could about Lillian.

  “But it’s all-you-can-eat!”

  “This,” she said, smiling, “is all I can eat.”

  16

  POSTPRANDIAL

  Genia! Oh, David!”

  Genia looked around at the loud sound of their names, but David did not. He seemed to freeze where he sat, his right hand holding a water glass in midair. When Genia spotted the source of the greeting, she saw it was Celeste Hutchi
nson, perched at the bar on a tall stool, a drink in her own right hand, posed in a salute to them. She wore the same floral print dress she had worn to the dinner party; when she slid down off the stool, the back of the dress caught, hiking it up above her knees for an instant, though she didn’t appear to notice.

  With a feeling of dread, Genia watched her weave their way.

  Celeste’s gait was unsteady, her smile a bit loose.

  Politely but slowly, David got up and stood beside his chair.

  “Celeste,” he said in a tone of resignation. “Join us?”

  Genia would have felt embarrassed to be the recipient of such reluctant courtesy, but Celeste accepted the invitation cheerfully, plunking herself down at their table and then emitting a big sigh, like someone whose feet hurt and who had finally got to rest them.

  “Why thank you, darlings!” Celeste had sat down too hard in the chair that David held out for her, and her body took a moment to realign itself on the cushion. She plopped her drink down hard, too, so that still more of it splashed out. There was a slur to her voice, and she was talking loudly enough to cause other diners nearby to turn their heads to look at her. With a coy lilt, she inquired, “Am I interrupting something private?”

  “Not at all,” Genia said with a reassuring smile.

  Celeste cocked her head coquettishly at David. “A little tête-à-tête, a dinner date for two?”

  “I’ll order something for you to eat,” he said bluntly.

  Genia thought that was a good idea, but an expression of hurt crossed Celeste’s expressive face. She looked indignant and martyred. “You don’t have to feed me, David. I’m not a beggar here. I can take care of myself.” She started to get up, but then gave up the struggle. The anger disappeared as quickly as it had come, and she giggled drunkenly. “Later. Oysters. And crackers. That sounds good. ’Long as you’re paying.”

  She giggled again, and winked at Genia.

  “Here’s to Stanley Parker,” Celeste said then, raising her glass high again. Her flushed face grew even redder. “Rest in peace, you lousy bastard.”