The Secret Ingredient Murders: A Eugenia Potter Mystery (7 page)

“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
L
EFTOVERS

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.”

“Jason, 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.”

“Suspicious of what? You haven’t done anything.”

“You make them think I have!”

“I did not, Jason.”

Genia slid their plates in front of them. “Who needs water? Salt and pepper? Kevin, Donna claims you eat Tabasco sauce with everything. Is that true? Should I see if I can find some for you?”

The distraction of food did the trick she had hoped it would.

The father grinned at Genia and said, “That was only because her cooking is so bad, right, Jason? No offense to your mother, but if we hadn’t got divorced, I would have grown an ulcer from all that Tabasco I had to eat. But this looks great, Genia, even without hot sauce.”

“What will happen now, Kevin? Do you know?”

“I guess they’ll take his body to a funeral home.”

“I wonder if they’ve notified his daughter.”

Kevin sat up straighter, looking startled, as if he’d only just realized there would be other people who had loved Stanley who had to be told. “My God, Nikki and Randy! She’ll be so upset about her dad.” A small, wry smile moved his lips. “Randy will have to pretend to be upset.”

There was a time when Genia might have felt compelled to remonstrate with Kevin for saying such a thing, when she might have chided him. But she had lived long enough and seen and experienced enough things to feel that it was far better to voice an uncomfortable truth than to speak comfortable lies. She took note of the implied cynicism about Stanley Parker’s son-in-law and let it pass. It wasn’t as if Stanley himself had ever had a good word to say about Randy Dixon. Why should she be surprised if the bad feelings were mutual?

“Aunt Genia, may I have more of this lobster stuff?”

“You like it, Jason? Your sister helped make it.”

Kevin pulled his mouth down into a funny grimace. “It’s a good thing you didn’t tell us that before we tried it. It’s really good. Are you sure Janie had anything to do with it?”

“Stop it, Dad.” Jason’s eyebrows drew together in the scowl that appeared so often on his face. “Janie’s not Mom.” Before bending to his food again, he muttered, “And I’m not you.”

His dad’s face flushed, and he looked hurt again.

When Genia went over to pour extra coffee in Kevin’s cup, she placed her hand on his shoulder for a moment, wanting both to comfort him and to pull him back from saying any more of the wrong things. Gently, she said to both of them, “I love the way you and your sister support each other, Jason. I wish my own children had been so nice to each other when they were growing up. It’s good to see.”

“Janie is his best friend,” his father said.

“No, she’s not,” his son countered. “My best friend’s dead.”

And suddenly, the boy began to cry. He put his elbows on the kitchen table and bent his face into his knuckles and sobbed until his whole body shook. His dad looked surprised and helpless. Genia placed her hands on his shoulders and leaned over until she could place her cheek against the top of his head.

“I’m so sorry, Jason,” she said. “I’m so sorry.”

When she straightened up and caught a glimpse of the father’s face, she was surprised to see that he didn’t look sympathetic, he looked angry again. Was Kevin jealous of his son’s relationship with Stanley? she wondered.
If so
, she thought a bit angrily herself,
he need never worry about that competition again!
She couldn’t stay mad though; it was unkind to resent a father for loving his son so much.
But maybe that’s why Janie was so hateful about Stanley earlier this evening
, Genia suddenly realized.
If she wasn’t her brother’s best friend anymore, she might understandably feel left out and jealous
. But why would that anger crop up so suddenly, when the girl hadn’t previously expressed any hostility toward her twin’s employer?

Genia shook off the questions. They no longer mattered.

As soon as Jason and Kevin finished eating, Jason took the car that he shared with Janie and said he was going home to his mother’s. Genia gave Kevin a ride in the opposite direction, to a friend’s house where he said he could spend the night.

“Weather’s too bad right now to get back out to the island,” he commented. “I’d have to be crazy to take my boat back out tonight.”

“You’re more than welcome to stay here, Kevin.”

“Thanks, Genia, but my friend will have clothes I can change into. I wouldn’t look too good in one of your dresses.”

She had to laugh at that, in spite of the burden in her heart. And she felt secretly glad to be able to return to her cozy rented home to collapse into bed, without having to worry about an overnight guest. On the way to his friend’s house, and just to make conversation, she said, “I hear you’ve changed your mind about the art festival, Kevin.”

“Me? Changed my mind about what?”

“About holding it on the island. I know you were really opposed to that idea, but I heard tonight that you think it’s all right now.”

“No offense, but you heard wrong, Genia. I mean, no way. I don’t want all those people out there tromping around my studio. Who said that, anyway?”

“I must have heard wrong,” she fudged. “So you’re still opposed to it?”

“Absolutely. Look, if they want to hold their stupid festival in town, let them. But Stanley rented me that island for my own private use. I’ve got my little house. I’ve got my studio in the barn. I’ve got my dock and my boat, and just enough room for my kids to come out and visit me. Do you know that island’s even got a well on it I can use? I’m completely self-sufficient and solitary out there and that’s the way I like it. If Stanley wants to invite thousands of tourists to look at arts and crafts, let him hold the damn festival up at his own house.”

Genia didn’t say anything in reply, because she couldn’t speak.

“Oh, God,” Kevin said quietly. “I’m really sorry I said that.”

They rode in silence, until Kevin broke it. “I didn’t know the old man meant that much to Jason, did you?”

“Well,” Genia said, “I know Stanley thought the world of him.”

Kevin glanced at her. “He said that?”

“Yes, in many ways.”

Kevin turned toward the window. “Somebody ought to tell his mother that, because she thinks he’s going straight to hell. I tell her this is normal teenage stuff, and Jason just got unlucky and got caught, but she’s determined that if he doesn’t straighten up we’ve got to send him to military school.”

“Kevin, no, not really?”

He nodded. “One more slip, Donna says.”

Stanley would have hated to hear it
, she thought sadly. He’d been sent to military school himself, when he was a boy, and he had hated it, and he had resented his parents deeply for making him go there. “I was only a boy,” he’d groused to Genia, “and I should have got to stay a boy until I was ready to become a man. They forced the sprout to grow and that’s not natural.” She recalled the anger in his eyes as he spoke of it. “Turn a boy into a man too soon, turn him out into the company only of other males, and you’ll make him disciplined and hard, and ruin him for living with women.” His smile had been wry and bitter. “You could ask Lillian, if I hadn’t sent her to an early grave.”

“Stanley!” she objected. “It’s not your fault she died!”

“Yes, it is,” he’d argued stubbornly. “If I’d been a better husband, she wouldn’t have left me, and then she wouldn’t have remarried, and then she wouldn’t have fallen in love with sailing, and then she wouldn’t have gone out in that damn boat of hers alone, and then it wouldn’t have capsized, and she wouldn’t have drowned out there.” He looked determined to hold on to self-recrimination. “If I’d been a better man.”

“It’s not your fault,” she had repeated firmly.

Genia resolved to discourage Donna from sending the boy off to military school. It made her feel better, to think of doing something positive for Jason, in Stanley’s honor.

While undressing for bed, Genia discovered that her grandmother’s diamond and pearl brooch had fallen off her blouse, exposing the bloody spot. She wasn’t particularly worried about the brooch at first, because she thought it had to be either in the house or in her car.

Exhausted though she was, she felt she ought to look for it now.

It was large and should be easy to spot.

But after going downstairs and carefully checking every room, she found it wasn’t so easy after all. Despite the rain, she even went back out to check her car. Front seat, backseat, in between, under the seats and even on the floor of the garage—no brooch.