Scene of the Brine (6 page)

9

P
iper took a moment to gather herself before stepping out to meet Lydia Porter. She glanced down at her apron, which had become spotted with spicy-carrot splashes, but let it stay. If evidence of Piper's hard work offended Jeremy Porter's mother, so be it. She could deal with it.

“Miss Lamb,” the silvery-coiffed, short but somehow still imposing woman said, holding out her hand. “Lydia Porter. I'm so pleased to meet you.”

In a blue Chanel-styled suit, heels, and a string of pearls, Lydia Porter appeared dressed more for an elegant lunch than a visit to Piper's shop. Piper shook her hand, which wouldn't have surprised her if it'd been white-gloved, and responded cordially. What was Lydia Porter doing there at a time like that? Mrs. Porter quickly illuminated her.

“I wanted to personally invite you to my tea. Somehow yours was not included in the invitations that were sent out. I'm here to rectify that unforgivable oversight.”

“You're still holding the tea?” Piper asked, surprised.

“Oh, yes. I so want to get to know Cloverdale and its residents.”

And carefully cull the ones who don't meet your standards?
Piper badly wanted to stand up for Sugar Heywood but decided to hold off and listen. Amy had gone into the back room but left the dividing door open and was probably all ears herself.

“I understand from one of the ladies at the Cloverdale Women's Club that you recently moved here from Albany?” Lydia asked.

“That's right. Several months ago.”

“Albany is my family home as well,” Lydia said with a satisfied smile. “You may know of my uncle, Congressman Wardell Smyth?”

“Um . . .”

“An extremely effective representative for our state during the Roosevelt and Truman administrations. He was seriously considered to be Harry Truman's vice president but then Alben Barkley, you know . . .” Lydia's voice trailed off, hinting at possible political machinations that had insidiously blocked Congressman Smyth's much-deserved political rise.

Piper nodded as sympathetically as she could manage, still puzzled as to what had brought about this personal invitation to Lydia's tea.

“Your parents, I hear, are renowned archaeologists.” Lydia said, smiling.

Ah! That was it.
Piper was tempted to respond that no, she had been raised by two high school dropout hippies whose commune, in addition to decrying anything governmental, still enthusiastically practiced free love—just to see the look on Lydia's face. But in fairness to her parents, she nodded. “They've had some success in their field.”

“And are they in the area?”

“Sadly, no. They are currently on a dig on one of the Greek islands.”

“How disappointing. I would have loved to meet them as well.”

Would that affect Piper's invitation? To find out and possibly put Lydia on the spot, Piper asked, “When is your tea?”

“This coming Sunday,” Lydia answered smoothly, apparently still willing to welcome a simple pickling shop proprietor. “I did put it off a few days,” she said, and Piper expected the reason to be Dirk Unger's death until Lydia explained, “We've had to have a few renovations done on the house. Not too surprisingly, things took much longer than promised to get done.” She laughed deprecatingly. “One can never rely on guarantees from the working class, can one?”

“Actually, I've had very good experience, lately. Ralph Strawbridge installed my new front door two days ahead of his own deadline.”

“Yes, well . . .” Lydia glanced vaguely at Piper's door but was clearly unimpressed.

Piper could contain herself no more. “I was sorry to hear about Mr. Unger's death. That must be very upsetting to your family.”

“Oh, yes, terribly,” Lydia said, appearing quite unruffled. “Jeremy relied on Dirk quite a bit. But nobody is irreplaceable, of course. I'm sure the entire situation will be sorted out very soon.” Lydia turned toward Piper's shelf of preserves. “While I'm here, I should pick up a jar of your lovely brandied cherries. Oh, there they are!” She plucked a jar from its spot and handed it to Piper to ring up, having smoothly changed the subject to something more “tasteful.” Piper, however, was not to be deterred.

“Sheriff Carlyle,” she said, carrying the cherries toward her cash register, “will certainly discover the truth of the matter—in time. As the people who knew Mr. Unger best, your family must have been able to provide him with good information about the man's movements on the day he died.”

“Oh! Heavens!” Lydia laughed and flapped a hand. “Hardly. At least not Mallory or myself. Mallory, of course, is my daughter. You'll get to meet her at the tea,” Lydia said, as though that were an added treat for Piper to look forward to. “Neither of us had much to do with Dirk Unger. He was Jeremy's employee.” Her pinched lips as she said that confirmed Tammy Butterworth's claim of battles with Jeremy over the man.

Piper was eager to pursue the topic more but her shop door opened at that moment, admitting Mrs. Tilley, whose face lit up like a Christmas tree at the sight of Lydia Porter.

“Lydia, imagine finding you here! You poor, dear thing. What a terrible time you all must be going through. How are you holding up?”

Quite well,
Piper thought, but Lydia Porter shook her head and sighed as Mrs. Tilley twittered away, full of sympathy for Lydia's imagined distress. Amy emerged from the back at that point and caught Piper's eye, rolling hers in exasperation. The two waited silently, Piper beginning to wish she could ease the pair out and onto the sidewalk as the exchange continued.

Finally Lydia Porter said, “Well, I must be going. There are one or two more stops I need to make concerning my tea.”

“I hope you found a replacement caterer as good as Sugar Heywood,” Piper said.

“Oh, Sugar couldn't do it?” Mrs. Tilley piped up, apparently not up to speed on all the recent developments. “What a shame. She really is the best around.”

Lydia Porter's eyes narrowed but she quickly regained her composure. “Actually, I've found someone in Bellingham who came with the highest references. I'm positive he . . .” She took Mrs. Tilley's arm at that point and walked her out of the shop as she enthused over her new caterer, leaving Piper and Amy to stare wordlessly.

“My gosh!” Amy said as Ralph Strawbridge's beautiful door closed behind the pair.

“She's quite the unique individual, isn't she?” Piper said.

“Unique? She's awful! Sugar is lucky to be out of her reach.”

“I agree. I'm not sure Sugar is ready to see that, but she has worse things to think about.”

“You mean about Zach? That should be cleared up by now, though, don't you think? I mean, Daddy must just be eliminating people, 'cause no way could a nice guy like Zach do anything so awful.”

“How well do you know Zach?” Piper asked. She had to admit that her own good opinion of Zach was based on fairly brief interactions along with anecdotes shared by his not-unbiased mother.

“Zach was a couple of years behind me in school, so we weren't good buds or anything. But he dated the younger sister of one of my friends for a while and I used to see him at her house a lot.” Amy paused a moment, considering. “He was quiet but always friendly. He liked to talk about plants all the time, even then. Allie's mom, I remember, would ask him to check her gardens for poison ivy 'cause she was sensitive to it but could never spot it herself.”

“Allie is the younger sister?”

“Uh-huh. A cute kid but kind of immature at the time—even for fifteen. She dumped Zach in a flash after they'd been going together for most of the year when someone on the football team took an interest in her.”

“How did Zach handle that?”

Amy grew somber. “Pretty hard, actually. I remember Jessica, Allie's sister, telling me that Zach still came over to the house, asking to see Allie. When she wouldn't talk to him, he'd stand on the sidewalk out front for hours, looking at the house and I guess hoping she'd come out. Jessica felt sorry for him but eventually her dad had to have a firm talk with him.” Amy winced. “I guess that sounds a little creepy, huh?”

“Well, he was what? Fifteen? What teenaged boy hasn't acted a little goofy over a girl at that age? Or am I rationalizing?”

“No, you're probably right. I don't know why I brought that up when you asked me about Zach. Everything else about him was fine. Great, actually. He was terrific in science, you know, and he tutored kids who weren't so good in it.”

“Did he finally get over Allie?”

Amy shrugged. “I don't know. He didn't date anyone after that. But Jessica told me he brought flowers to the hospital.”

“Hospital?”

“Yeah. When Allie had appendicitis. Or they thought she did. It turned out it wasn't her appendix after all. I'm not sure they ever figured out exactly
what
it was. But she was okay. Anyway, it was nice of Zach to bring her flowers, don't you think?”

Piper wasn't able to comment because at that moment Will walked in, coincidentally holding a beautiful bouquet of flowers. He grinned sheepishly as Piper's eyes widened.

“Don't give me too much credit,” he said. “These came from a neighbor, Marguerite Lloyd, thanking me for pulling her car out of a ditch last week with my tractor. She grows them,” he said, looking down at the lovely bunch of white lilies mixed with pink carnations. “In her greenhouse. I thought you'd appreciate them more than I would.”

Piper took the bouquet he held out and buried her nose in it, inhaling the lovely perfume. “Thank you!” she said, delighted, even knowing they'd been regifted.

“I'll get a vase,” Amy said. She turned toward the back, then stopped. “Are there any down here?”

“I have a couple upstairs. In the kitchen broom closet. Top shelf.”

Amy scooted up the stairs to Piper's apartment as Piper leaned over her counter to give Will a thank-you kiss. “This makes my day, which hasn't been the greatest up until now.”

“The Unger thing,” Will said, nodding.

Piper told him about Zach being taken in for questioning because of the poison that had been used. “Sugar's pretty upset about it, of course.” She heard faint noises of Amy's scrambling through her broom closet, then a muted cry of “Hah!” In a moment Amy trotted back down to the shop carrying a green vase that Piper immediately recognized. It was the vase that had held the huge bouquet of roses that Scott sent her last August. He'd ordered them while traveling through Thailand, timed to arrive on the anniversary of their first date—a highly romantic gesture of a kind he'd never managed to come up with when they were actually engaged.

Could she put Will's flowers in Scott's vase, Piper wondered? Oh heck, she decided, it was just a vase. Scott had never seen it, and Will had no notion of its origin. And they were actually Marguerite Lloyd's flowers, if you wanted to be totally picky. Piper took the vase to the back and half-filled it with water, then arranged the lilies and carnations in it.

“Beautiful!” Amy cried when Piper carried them back to the shop. “They'll look wonderful right next to the cash register, don't you think?”

“Yes—” Piper began, then looked up as her shop door opened. “Oh! Scott!”

Scott Littleton walked in, looking very lawyerly in a dark suit and tie and holding a brown leather briefcase. “Piper,” he said, “I just came from—” He stopped, seeing Will standing there, looking outdoorsy in his usual rolled-sleeve shirt and jeans. “Oh. Hi!”

Will acknowledged Scott with a faint smile and a nod.

The four stared awkwardly at each other for a moment until Amy asked, “Did everything go okay with Zach?”

“Um, well enough,” Scott said then turned to Piper. “I wanted to thank you for sending me the client.”

Piper felt Will's gaze swing toward her. “I just thought Zach should have someone watching his back,” she said.

“Absolutely. Your father,” Scott said to Amy, “knows his job, no question. And I'm sure he's not out to pin things on anyone who's not guilty. But evidence can be misconstrued and suspects can blurt out information they're not required to give unless someone's there to advise them.”

“But Zach's totally covered, right? He has an alibi.”

Scott paused, then said, “I can't get into that, Amy. But rest assured, I'll do my best for him.” He suddenly noticed the filled vase Piper held. “Nice flowers.”

Both Piper's and Amy's gaze automatically turned to Will, and Scott said, “Oh. Well, then. Hey, look at the time! I'd better get going. Nice seeing you all!”

He turned and hurried out, and as the door closed behind him another silence ensued. Then Will said, “It's good Zach got a lawyer. Let's just hope he won't need him for very long.”

Piper smiled and nodded. Will was being his usual wonderful, understanding self. Scott's hesitations, however, and lack of reassurances on Zach's situation hadn't totally filled her with confidence that Zach wouldn't be needing him for long.