Arsenic with Austen (20 page)

“So how do you two know each other?”

“We're in the same department at Reed. Marguerite teaches French. We've been friends for—”

“My whole career,” Marguerite finished for her. The real number would give away Marguerite's age, which was a secret more closely guarded than any Emily had ever held.

They made small talk over sherry. Marguerite behaved with admirable restraint, her usually mobile face giving nothing away.

In a few minutes Katie announced dinner. Luke gave a start when she came in but didn't say anything. Emily filed that away to ask him about later.

She was relieved to see that Bustopher had fled the dining room at some point while Katie was preparing it for the meal; Levin and Kitty were closeted in the library, safe from potential attack. Dinner was simple—roast chicken with red potatoes and steamed asparagus—but the chicken was moist, the potatoes subtly flavored with garlic and rosemary, and the thin stalks of asparagus cooked barely to tenderness. And Katie had pulled this off with a baby to tend to. Yes, Emily thought she would do.

When Luke had taken the edge off his appetite, she asked him, “So what about this news?”

He wiped his mouth and took a drink of sauvignon blanc. “Finished up that background check on Brock. Slippery devil. List of jobs long as the Oregon rainy season between acting gigs. Different names here and there—just for fun, apparently, 'cause he's got no criminal record at all. Long and short, he did work as a carpenter or an odd-jobman more than once. So we know he lied about that, anyway.”

Emily chewed this information with her chicken. “He lied. But that doesn't necessarily mean he fixed that stair.”

“Nope. He's the kind'd lie just to keep our eyes off him. Naturally sneaky. Still, it's suggestive.”

Marguerite had listened in uncharacteristic silence, picking at her food but taking long drinks of wine. She refilled her glass for the third time, then looked up at Luke through her impossibly long dark lashes. “
Very
suggestive.”

Luke raised an eyebrow, and his mouth quirked.

Emily shot Marguerite a look calculated to set fire to all that wine. “He's sneaky, but he may still be
innocent
of murder.” She put an unnatural stress on the word
innocent
. Marguerite wrinkled her nose at her.

Luke cocked his head at Emily, a crease between his brows. It wasn't like her to restate the obvious. She gave him a dazzling smile to distract him. His slow smile in response suggested her diversion had been successful.

Katie brought in dessert—ice-cream sundaes in tall glasses with long spoons. Emily quailed. She'd seen Marguerite eat ice cream. The woman could get a lot of mileage out of her agile pink tongue and full red lips.

Well, Emily's lips might not be quite as full or red as Marguerite's, but she still knew how to use them. And she had a potent memory on her side. Ice cream had been involved the first time she and Luke made love.

She spooned up a bite dripping with sauce and closed her lips around it. She'd expected caramel, but Katie had outdone herself—the sauce was flavored with Grand Marnier. She closed her eyes in ecstasy, then opened them to see Luke gazing at her, his spoon at his lips. The memory had visited him, too.

Emily had no doubt Marguerite was putting on quite a show across the table, but neither Emily nor Luke once glanced at her. They made love to each other without ever touching, just by eating ice cream.

*   *   *

After coffee in the library, Marguerite excused herself with an ostentatious yawn. Emily forgave her trespasses against innocence at once.

She and Luke sat side by side on the love seat, Levin curled on Emily's lap and Kitty on Luke's. The scene was almost unbearably domestic, as if they'd been married for years—except for the undercurrent of leaping passion that ran between them. Luke put an arm around Emily and pulled her close. Before she completely lost her head, however, she remembered to ask him about his reaction to Katie.

“Oh yeah. I didn't want to say anything in front of her—or your friend—but do you realize you're harboring the enemy? You didn't tell me your new housekeeper was Katie Parker. She's the mayor's niece.”

“The mayor's niece?” So maybe Trimble had sent her after all. Emily had dismissed this possibility once she heard Katie's tale of woe.

She tried to reconcile this information with the state of the parental home in which Katie was no longer welcome. “Is there a family feud or something? Katie's parents seem awfully poor. I'd expect a mayor's relatives to be better off.”

“Katie's mother married ‘beneath her,' as they used to say. Trimble refused to help her, said she made her own bed and she could lie in it. To be fair, he's not so very rich himself—comfortable, sure, but not loaded.”

“If that's the case, I wouldn't expect Katie to be very sympathetic toward him.”

“You might think that, but the one thing he did do for them was look after Katie. Got her jobs, made sure she finished high school, that sort of thing. He's a sucker for a pretty face.”

“So why didn't she go to him when her parents kicked her out?”

Luke shrugged. “That's what I'm wondering. Maybe she did, and he sent her here.”

Emily lifted an indignant Levin from her lap and tiptoed to the hall door. It was fully closed, and in that sturdy old house, a closed door was as good as soundproofing. She turned back toward Luke. “I refuse to believe Katie could be spying on me. She's the sweetest girl in the world.”

“She might not even know she's spying. Trimble might ask her, all innocent-like, how things are going, and she might tell him—all innocent-like—things we'd prefer he didn't know.”

“Such as, for instance, how close you and I are.” The words were pulled out of her.

“Yeah. Such as that.” He came up to her and put his hands on her shoulders. “That being the case, I think I better go home.”

She looked into his eyes, longing to pour herself into them, hating everything that stood between the two of them—the murders, the need for discretion, and not least of all, her own still-unquenchable fear.

He kissed her gently, then she walked him to the front door. “See you at the funeral tomorrow?”

“Right.” He kissed her again and left.

 

twenty

“But what can have been his motive?—what can have induced him to behave so cruelly?”

“A thorough, determined dislike of me—a dislike which I cannot but attribute in some measure to jealousy.”

—Elizabeth Bennet and Mr. Wickham,
Pride and Prejudice

Marguerite insisted on coming to the funeral. “I must wear my new oh-so-cunning black suit. And the hat with the little veil. And then I must see all these people you tell me about. Oh no,
chérie,
I would not miss this for all the sand on Stony Beach.”

Emily resigned herself with little difficulty. After all, she really preferred not to be the center of attention at this event. She preferred to observe.

The small church was about a third full—far from the crowd that had packed it for Beatrice's funeral. Emily suspected that had Agnes's death not occurred so close to Beatrice's—which must give rise to speculation even in minds that had not suspected foul play before—the attendance would be limited to herself, Billy, and perhaps a handful of others. Agnes had hardly been one to spread goodwill around the town, and Billy was her only family.

Emily kept an eye on Billy throughout the service. His grief seemed neither feigned nor exaggerated. In fact, he was the only one present other than herself who seemed genuinely sorry Agnes was dead.

The eulogy was brief, Father Stephen lauding Agnes as an “upright” woman and faithful supporter of the church; with all his goodwill, he could hardly muster any warmer praise. The whole thing seemed to be over very quickly. Before Emily could summon a tear, they were standing by the grave.

Billy had purchased the plot next to Beatrice and Horace for Agnes. The dirt over Beatrice's grave was piled haphazardly, as fresh as if it had just been filled in—which in fact it had. The exhumation must have taken place the night before. Emily swallowed and focused on Agnes's coffin, now being lowered into the ground. At least Agnes would be able to rest in peace.

The blank space on Beatrice and Horace's joint headstone reminded Emily she'd not yet decided on an epitaph. She pictured Beatrice bustling about the town and was reminded of the woman described in Proverbs 31, who seemingly never slept as she both brought home the mutton and fried it up in a pan. Emily had always wondered what that woman's husband was doing while she kept so busy. She made a mental note to look up the passage when she got home and choose the perfect verse from it to sum up Beatrice's life.

Marguerite, standing beside Emily, played the scene to the hilt, dabbing a lace-edged black handkerchief at her eye as the coffin was lowered. Emily was reminded of an Edward Gorey illustration to a witty poem by Felicia Lamport about a “peachable widow with consolate eyes.”

Brock came up to them when it was over. He addressed Marguerite with a leer thinly veiled by a mask of concern. “I'm so sorry for your loss,” he said unctuously. “Agnes was a great old girl. Are you a relative?”

Marguerite gazed at him soulfully. Before she could manufacture some story, Emily put in, “This is my friend Marguerite Grenier from Portland. She never met Agnes. She just likes funerals.”

Marguerite shot her a knife-edged glare, but Emily parried it. “Marguerite, this is Brock Runcible. I've told you about him.” A pointed look at Brock added,
So don't try to get away with anything.

Brock gave Marguerite his best show-business smile. “Then we have something in common. I find funerals fascinating. All that raw emotion. Great material for an actor to work with.”

“Ah, you are an actor! Have you done any of the great French plays? Molière, Rostand, Genet?”

Brock cleared his throat. “I've concentrated on film, actually. And a little television here and there.”

Emily smirked inwardly. Luke had looked up Brock's bio online. He had one film credit, a bit part; the rest was all television.

“You must tell me about it sometime.” Marguerite gazed up at him from behind her veil.

“I'd love to take you to lunch and do just that.” He tore his eyes from Marguerite and turned to Emily. “I'd invite you, too, Emily, but experience tells me you don't have much interest in eating with me.”

A look from Marguerite warned her off, and anyway Emily had an idea Marguerite would get more out of him on her own. “As a matter of fact, I do have other plans. You two go on.”

They moved off, Brock's hand on Marguerite's elbow. Definite elbow fetish, that man.

Emily turned to find Luke close behind her. “Hey, beautiful,” he said. “Didn't want to be too obvious in front of Brock. But I would've stepped in if he got obnoxious. You think it's okay for your friend to go off with him like that?”

“Marguerite has yet to meet the man she couldn't handle. I highly doubt Brock will be that man.”

“Good point. Do you really have other plans? Or can I get you to have lunch with me?”

“You are my other plans. Crab Pot? That seems like a place Brock would avoid with a woman he's trying to impress.”

Luke drove her in his patrol car, leaving her car at the church. When they got to the Crab Pot, Mayor Trimble and Vicki Landau were already installed at the same table where she'd seen them before. Emily decided to try an experiment.

She walked up to the table. “Mayor Trimble, how nice to see you! I understand I have you to thank for my new housekeeper.”

He blinked at her, for once apparently speechless.

“Katie Parker? She is your niece, isn't she? I assumed you sent her. And so promptly, too.”

The mayor opened and shut his mouth like a codfish. Emily longed to quote Mary Poppins at him but refrained.

“Well, anyway, she's a great cook. It's a little challenging with the baby and all, but I think she's going to work out just fine.”

He mopped his brow, still without a word to say. Emily turned and followed Luke to their usual table.

“That ought to disarm him,” she said. “I couldn't quite tell whether he was caught out or just bewildered, but if he
was
planning to spy through Katie, at least he knows we're onto him.”

Luke shook his head, grinning. “You are really something, you know that? I couldn't've pulled off that maneuver in a million years.”

Emily laughed. “Stony Beach is bringing out the femme fatale in me.” She gave him a sultry look. “Or maybe it's you.”

He swallowed. “I know you're bringing out all kinds of things in me. Things I thought were dead and gone years ago. Emily—well, this isn't the time nor place.”

Sunny the wizened gnome shuffled up to their table and plunked down two glasses of water.

“Congratulations, Sunny, you did that just like a real waiter. Didn't even have to ask.” Luke clapped the gnome on his grubby shoulder. “And I already know what I want to eat. You ready, Em?”

“Crab melt, please.” Emboldened by her attack on the mayor, she added, “And could I have a salad instead of the fries?”

Sunny made an indeterminate grumbling noise that Emily decided to interpret in the affirmative.

“Fish and chips for me today. And don't forget the malt vinegar.” Luke winked at Emily. “Gotta mix it up every now and then.”

Emily swept a glance around the small dining room as Sunny shuffled off. “Do you ever mix it up on a higher level? Like going someplace else for lunch? Or even sitting at a different table?”

“Hey, this was your suggestion, remember? I've tried all the other places in town. This is the best. And I sit at the same table 'cause all the regulars sit at the same tables every day. If I moved, I'd be taking somebody else's spot.”